Arlen Specter and the Single Bullet Theory

THE MAGIC BULLET

The Warren Commission concluded that a lone assassin (Oswald) fired three shots at President Kennedy.  One bullet missed the limousine entirely, striking the curbstone by the side of the street; another bullet hit the President in the head; and still another bullet struck Kennedy in the back, continuing on to strike Governor John Connally—a single bullet accounting for a total of seven wounds in both men.  The Commission's conclusion that a single bullet caused seven wounds would come to be known as the Single Bullet Theory.  However, given the location of Kennedy's and Connally's wounds, for the Single Bullet Theory to be correct, the bullet would have had to change course several times, behaving in the manner shown in the diagram (below left).

The chief architect of the Single Bullet Theory was the Warren Commission's ambitious junior counsel, Arlen Specter, who would later become a U.S. senator.  In the reenactment photo (below right) Specter, with his pointer in hand, attempts to make his theory appear plausible by deceptively indicating a straight line trajectory for the bullet.

While Specter managed to sell his theory to a majority of the 7 member Warren Commission (4 members concurred, 3 members dissented), he had trouble selling it to a majority of the public.  A 2001 Gallup poll found that 81 percent of Americans reject the Warren Commission's conclusions.

For a list of Arlen Specter's other deceptions regarding the assassination click here: Fetzer (compiled by researcher, James Fetzer).

TESTIMONY OF AN EYEWITNESS

The FBI took me to Parkland Hospital.  I had no idea what I was doing there.  They escorted me through a labyrinth of corridors and up to one of the top floors of Parkland.  I didn't know where we were.  They took me into this little room where I met Arlen Specter.  He talked to me for a few minutes, trying to act real friendly, then this woman, a stenographer, came in and sat behind me.  He had told me that this interview would be confidential, then I looked around and this woman was taking notes.  I reminded him that the discussion was to be private and he told the woman to put down her notebook, which she did.  But when I looked around again she was writing.  I got mad and told Specter, 'You lied to me.  I want this over.'  He asked me why I wouldn't come to Washington, and I said, 'Because I want to stay alive.'  He asked why I would think that I was in danger and I replied, 'Well, if they can kill the President, they can certainly get me!'  He replied that they already had the man that did it and I told him, 'No, you don't!'  

He kept trying to get me to change my story, particularly regarding the number of shots.  He said I had been told how many shots there were and I figured he was talking about what the Secret Service told me right after the assassination.  His inflection and attitude was that I knew what I was supposed to be saying, why wouldn't I just say it.  I asked him, 'Look, do you want the truth or just what you want me to say?'  He said he wanted the truth, so I said, 'The truth is that I heard between four and six shots.'  I told him, 'I'm not going to lie for you.'  So he starts talking off the record.  He told me about my life, my family, and even mentioned that my marriage was in trouble.  I said, 'What's the point of interviewing me if you already know everything about me?'  He got angrier and finally told me, 'Look, we can even make you look as crazy as Marguerite Oswald [Lee Oswald's mother] and everybody knows how crazy she is.  We could have you put in a mental institution if you don't cooperate with us.'  I knew he was trying to intimidate me.... 

He finally gave me his word that the interview would not be published unless I approved what was written.  But they never gave me the chance to read it or approve it.  When I finally read my testimony as published by the Warren Commission, I knew it was a fabrication from the first line.  After that ordeal at Parkland Hospital, they wrote that my deposition was taken at the U.S. attorney's office in the Post Office Building.

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Nixon, Watergate, and the JFK Assassination
Kennedy Curse or a Right-Wing Vendetta?
CIA Operative Gen. Ed Lansdale Photographed in Dealey Plaza
The Garrison Investigation
Jim Garrison--1967 Lecture (Audio)
Oliver Stone Answers Audience Questions
Did CIA Hawks Assassinate Ron Brown?
Hale Boggs - Warren Commission Member and Critic
The Intimidation of Dealey Plaza Witnesses
The Senator who Suspected a JFK Conspiracy
Lee Harvey Oswald — The Patsy
Did Militarists Sabotage Gary Power's U-2 Plane?
J. Edgar Hoover - Blackmailed by the Mob
Gerald Ford's Role in the JFK Assassination Cover-up
The Enemy Within - The Pentagon Plan to Terrorize U.S. Citizens and Blame Cuba
The Plane that Never Hit the Pentagon
Vice President Dick Cheney's Stand-Down Order on 9/11
Cheney's Proposal to Dress Up Navy Seals as Iranians and Shoot at Them
Did a Neocon Gang Send Anthrax Letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy to Intimidate Them and Thwart a Congressional Investigation of 9/11?
'October Surprise' Plane Crashes (Election Eve Terror)
Using Disaster Drills as a Cover to Stage False Flag Terror Attacks
CIA Assassin David Morales Photographed at the Ambassador Hotel
General Curtis LeMay - Demented Cold Warrior
The Pentagon's Fleecing of America
The October Surprise
The CIA School of Assassination at Fort Bragg
A Timeline of CIA Meddling in Latin America
Trickle Down Economics - The Big Con
"Body of Secrets" - Attack on the USS Liberty
CIA Infiltration and Manipulation of the Mass Media
CIA Instructions to Media Assets
Tapes Reveal Nixon Prolonged Vietnam War for Political Reasons
Fonda was Right and Bush was Lying
Notable JFK Conspiracy Theorists: LBJ, Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover
The Reagan Years

The Truth about Arlen Specter
by Mark Tracy

"[Robert] Tannenbaum said the JFK assassination is a rare example of a murder that was captured on film.  But he said this is an area where dishonesty creeps into the official story.  'You see things, but are told that's not what you really see ... the President is hit in the head, and it goes backwards.  I don't have to get a degree from Yale to figure it out -- if a guy's head goes backwards, it probably means someone hit him from the front!'" --John Kelin, Fair Play magazine, "New Evidence from the Files," October 1995

"There were either two or three people involved, or more, in this -- or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle." --Texas Governor John Connally, testimony to the Warren Commission, W.C. Hearings, vol. IV, p. 133. (Connally was seated in front of John F. Kennedy in the presidential limousine and was wounded by gunfire.)

"Real patriots ask questions." --Carl Sagan