Source 4: Testimony of James Richard Worrell from the Kennedy Assassination Information Centre
The John F. Kennedy Assassination Information Centre provides eyewitnesses testimonies of the assassination. James Richard Worrell, a senior high school student who had lived in Dallas for 12 years and was employed at El Capitan Oil Drilling at the time of the assassination, states in his testimony that he heard four shots ‘right in succession’ and that he looked up and saw the rifle in the Texas School Book Depository Building, from which he stood 4 or 5 feet away, in the sixth floor between the first two shots.
Source 5: Count the Bullets: Blow Away All Arguments
Furthermore, Douglas Herman, who regularly writes for Strike The Root and is the author of the recent novel The Guns of Dallas, proposes on his webpage that 10 objects were struck during the firing of the Kennedy assassination. According to him, ‘the first shot struck the street, sending sparks behind Kennedy’s car’, the ‘second shot struck a curb near the railroad overpass, wounding a bystander on the cheek’, ‘a third shot struck a manhole cover and lodges in the grass’, ‘a fourth shot struck JFK in the back’, ‘a fifth shot, from the front, struck JFK in the throat’, ‘a sixth shot struck the windshield of the limo, ‘a seventh shot struck the chrome strip of the limo's windshield’, ‘an eighth shot struck a sign along Elm’, ‘a ninth shot stuck Governor Connelly’ and ‘a tenth shot (was) the fatal shot to the brain of Kennedy’. Douglas Hermann eliminates the possibility that Oswald could have struck all of these objects by himself and therefore concludes that there must have been at least one more gunmen involved in the shooting.
Source 6: National Security Agency Records Regarding the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
In the documents index of the National Security Agency (NSA) website, there is a document that was released directly to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in 1993 by the NSA prior to the formation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), in which the scientist Reuter says that in his analysis ‘Kennedy was shot in the head from the rear-- not the front – as several assassination theories claim’. This conclusion is based on the Rhode Island University’s chemist Kenneth Rahm’s research and examination of the film recorded by Abraham Zapruder. He found that ‘at the instant Kennedy was hit – a moment marked by the cloud of blood that appears around the face – the presidents head snapped forward’ and that ‘it was not until a fraction of a second later, after the bullet passed through Kennedy’s skull, that the president began to lurch backwards and to the right’.
C. Evaluation of Sources (558 words)
The first source to be analysed is the report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of Kennedy, publicly known as the Warren Commission, which was issued on the 24th September 1964. The Commission was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and lead by Earl Warren, with the aim to investigate the circumstances surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the shooting of the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
This source is useful, because it was established by the government and therefore probably does not have motives to prove a specific theory to be true or false or to manipulate evidence. It is also directly from the time when the assassination happened, as it was founded one week after the assassination date. There is, furthermore, no evidence that can surely prove the events, as stated by the Commission, to have happened otherwise.
On the other hand, the Commission was criticised for its close co-operation with the FBI. It primarily relied on the FBI for investigative work, which establishes a possibility of the data being biased or influenced by the FBI to serve their interests. The report strongly disagrees with the evidence that suggests that more than three shots were fired and does not include all of the objects struck during the firing. In addition, the Commission has also been criticized for failing to identify members of the Dallas police standing on the bridge and the overpass as also of failing to search all buildings, rooftops and windows surrounding the path of the motorcade.
The second source to be analysed is the report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives (HSCA). The Committee was established in 1976 to investigate the and the . In 1979, led by Louis Stokes, it issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by , probably as a result of a . The HSCA was a follow-up to the Hart-Schweiker and Chruch Committee hearings that had revealed CIA engagement in other assassinations and assassination attempts. It also resulted form pulic demands after the outcry after the pulication of the Zapruder film and other books and articles.
The value of this source partially lies in its detailed consideration of the possibility of a conspiracy in each case, as the U.S. governemtents investigations were faulted for insufficnet consideration of this possibility. This makes the HSCA more valuble, as it is the only legitimate organisation supporting a strong possibility of a conspiracy. Although at first it might seem as a disadvantage for the committee to have been established so late after the assassination event, technical advancements may have extened the value of specif acoustal and video evidence.
One big disadvante, however, is that a lot of the evidence on which the committees conclusions are based are not reliable. The recordings of the police motorcycle, suggesting that there might have been a fourth shot and therefore a second shooter, was later found to be very controversial. The National Academy of Science (NAS) thought to have found the evidence as flawed, while other researchers in 2001 thought to have found the claims of the NAS as unfounded. Also the eyewitnes testimonies are not straight forward at all and allow a lot of room for interpretation and disregard of specific statements.
D. Analysis of Sources (461 words)
The historical importance of the question whether John F. Kennedy was shot due to Lee Harvey Oswald alone or whether there was more than one shooter, is very significant, as it is important to know if he was shot due to a conspiracy or not. If more than one gunman was involved, the probability that it was a conspiracy is very high. If he was shot due to a conspiracy, there must have been an organisation that wanted to dispose President Kennedy for their interests and carefully planned the crime. If this was so, it is important to find out what the motivations behind this conspiracy were and for what reason they wanted to see President Kennedy dead, in order to gain a full understanding of the history and the course of events.
The claim that one bullet could have caused all wounds of Connaly and some of the damage to President Kennedy seems very unlikely, due to the locations of the wounds and the position Oswald was firing from. The evidence for and against the single bullet theory is very contradictory. Many people deny the possibility that one single bullet could have gone through such a complicated series of direction changes, including Carlos Hathcock, who said “We reconstructed the whole thing, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did”.
Similarly, the FBI and the Warren Commission have been accused of not having searched the area of the Dealey Plaza properly and could have, therefore, missed physical evidence for the firing of more than just the three shots from Oswald. One can go even that far, of accusing the FBI to have erased such evidence, in view of their inaccurate investigative work. It is probably most sensible at this point to conclude, that the single bullet theory is very unlikely to be true, due to the failure of reconstruction by the former US Marine Snipers Craig Roberts and Carlos Hathcock and due to the acoustical evidence and the ear witness testimonies of more than three shots. This would mean that there must have been one or more assassins working together with Oswald.
There is more evidence suggesting that there were more than three shots fired, than there is suggesting that there were only three shots fired. The difference in the evidence is, however, that it is certain that three shots were fired, whereas the reliability of the evidence suggesting there were more shots is questionable. The fact that there is evidence suggesting that there were more shots, in my opinion, established a higher probability that there were more shots than that there were only three. This also ties in with the evidence of the number of objects struck, which is mentioned on Douglas Hermann’s webpage.
E. Conclusion (116 words)
In conclusion, given that there is a lot of evidence suggesting shots from elsewhere than the Depository Building even if some of the evidence is questionable, for example the eyewitness testimonies, and given that the Warren Commission’s report was found to be impossible to reconstruct by the former US Marine Snipers Craig Roberts and Carlos Hathcock , I believe that there were more shooters involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This would also be consistent with the theory of a conspiracy involved in the assassination, which, in a time of severe international tension and many different groups politically opposing President Kennedy, such as the armaments industry and Cubans, seems quite likely to have happened.
F. List of Sources
, 14th March 2007
, 14th March 2007
, 14th March 2007
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/wit.htm, 14th March 2007
, 14th March 2007
http://www.nsa.gov/jfk/jfk00001.tif, 14th March 2007
, 15th March 2007
The Guns of Dallas, Douglas Herman, Aventine Press, 30.05.2005
