As a Pennsylvanian, there is a lot I could say, both positive and negative, about Arlen Specter’s life and public service. He was a complicated fellow who compiled a very mixed record. I am not surprised to discover that I am saddened by his death, but I have spent many hours of my life feeling exasperated by Specter’s behavior. I’m not going to go into all of that now, because I believe it is polite to withhold criticism for a few days after public figures die. I will, however, say that the strongest impression I have of Specter was formed from reading about his interview with Gaeton Fonzi where he unsuccessfully attempted to explain the bullet holes in JFK’s jacket and shirt and how they could be consistent with the autopsy report and his single-bullet theory. You can read part of the account of that interview here. Unfortunately, the interview of Fonzi portion is riddled with typos. Here’s the basics of it though. Back in the 1960’s, Mr. Fonzi read an article that questioned the findings of the Warren Commission. His reaction was that the author must be some kind of crackpot, so he interviewed him and discovered that he had some legitimate points. Since he lived in Philly and Arlen Specter had just been elected District Attorney, he decided to go ask Specter about some of the seeming discrepancies in the Report. What happened next was kind of amazing.
Remember that the bullets from Oswald came from behind the president. And the trajectory of the bullets started six stories above ground. So, any bullet passing through the president would make a hole in his jacket and shirt that was lower in the front than in the back (barring some ricochet off bone). That wasn’t the only problem, though. The “entry” holes in the jacket and shirt of the president were five to six inches below the collar, but the actual wound was reported to be under his ear.
The photographs of the shirt worn by the President shows a hole in the back consistent with the one in the jacket, about five-and-three-quarter inches below the top of the collar and one-and-one-eighth inches to the right of the middle. The discrepancy is obvious.
The locations of both these holes are inconsistent with the wound below the back of the right ear described in the Commission’s autopsy report.
I’ll never forget asking Specter about that as I sat in his City Hall office in Philadelphia. (It was about a year after he had returned from his Warren Commission job; he had recently been elected District Attorney.)
“Well,” he said, “that difference is accounted for because the President is waving his arm.” He got up from his desk and attempted to demonstrate his explanation on me, pulling my arm up high over my head. “Wave your arm a few times,” he said, “wave at the crowd.” He was standing behind me now, jabbing a finger into the base of my neck. “Well, see, if the bullet goes in here, the jacket gets hunched up. If you take this point right here and then you strip the coat down, it comes out at a lower point.”
A lower point?
“Well, not too much lower on your example, but the jacket rides up.”
If the jacket were “hunched up,” I asked, wouldn’t there have been two holes as a result of the doubling over of the cloth?
“No, not necessarily. It … it wouldn’t be doubled over. When you sit in the car it could be doubled over at most any point, but the probabilities are that … aaah … that it gets … that … aaah … this … this is about the way the jacket rides up. You sit back … sit back now … all right now … if … usually, as your jacket lies there, the doubling is right up here, but if … but if you have a bullet hit you right about here, which is where I had it, where your jacket sits … it’s not … it ordinarily doesn’t crease that far back.”
What about the shirt?
“Same thing.”
Was Specter saying there was no inconsistency between the Commission’s location of the wound and the holes in the clothing?
“No, not at all. That gave us a lot of concern. First time we lined up the shirt … after all, we lined up the shirt … and the hole in the shirt is right about, right about the knot of the tie, came right about here in the slit in the front … “
But where did it go in the back?
“Well, the back hole, when the shirt is laid down, comes … aah … well, I forget exactly where it came, but it certainly wasn’t higher, enough higher to … aah … understand the … aah … the angle of decline which …”
Was it lower? Was it lower than the slit in the front?
“Well, I think that … that if you took the shirt without allowing for its being pulled up, that it would either have been in line or somewhat lower.”
Somewhat LOWER?
“Perhaps. I … I don’t want to say because I don’t really remember. I got to take a look at that shirt.”
You can read the Warren Commission’s account of this bullet here. Mr. Fonzi was so suspicious of Specter’s behavior and explanation that he spent years investigating the assassination, including for Congress. You can read his bio here.
Some time will need to pass before we can fully account for Arlen Specter’s record. Having observed him as a constituent while at college in Philly, I only caught the latter end of career that one could arguably say he redeemed himself.
I think the rest ought to be left for another day.
There was a Television Series “The Men who killed Kennedy” (History Channel?) that explored the various and conflicting theories. Who knows which theory is correct? But one lasting impression the series made on me was that whatever theory was true, it was not the Warren Commission’s. For me, “the magic bullet” was proof enough. I never heard about the jacket and shirt holes, not being a buff, but Fonzi’s arguments go hand in hand in exonerating Oswald, “the Patsy”.
The magic bullet theory is small potatoes.
We all know that Nixon taped his conversations, to his everlasting regret. But, so did LBJ. You can listen to his phone conversations if you want. All except for one that was erased. But the transcript survived. It was a conversation that occurred at 10:01 am on November 23rd, 1963 between J. Edgar Hoover and the new president. You have to be a JFK assassination buff to understand it’s full import, but it should be obvious even to the layman why it was erased.
LBJ is asking about Oswald’s visit to Mexico City, where he came under physical and electronic and photographic surveillance. Hoover is telling the president that he has the photos and the audio tapes and that the man down there was not the same person as the Oswald they had in custody.
All the evidence Hoover had in his possession on the morning of November 23rd was destroyed and its very existence was totally denied.
Why was someone impersonating Oswald in Mexico making it look like he wanted to defect to Cuba two months before the assassination. And why did the government feel it necessary to completely cover that fact up?
In addition to that, LBJ immediately began recruiting people to join the Warren Commission by telling them that some funny business had happened down in Mexico and that the world might get blown up if they didn’t put a lid on any possible Soviet connection to the assassination. In other words, the reason LBJ needed Earl Warren and Richard Russell (in particular) on a Commission wasn’t to find the truth but to prevent the country from thinking that the commies killed our president. Under those circumstances, it would have been a miracle if the Commission’s conclusions corresponded with the truth.
Now, my point is not that Oswald was a patsy. My point is that you are right that the Warren Commission did not give us the truth. What really happened has eluded everyone who has investigated the matter.
For myself, I am satisfied that Oswald did not fire all the shots. Beyond that, I don’t pretend to know almost anything. But the biggest mistake people make, including guys like Norman Mailer, is to put all their investigative effort into looking at Oswald. Looking at him is like looking at a hall of mirrors. What people should look at is the way everyone behaved in the aftermath, and for thirty years afterwards. At least half the commissioners expressed doubt about their own report. LBJ didn’t believe it. RFK didn’t believe it. Nixon didn’t believe it.
Nixon threatened CIA director Richard Helms that he would expose the whole “Bay of Pigs” thing if he didn’t help him shut down the Watergate investigation. His own chief of staff said the Bay of Pigs comment was a reference to the assassination. Helms exploded in rage.
The CIA made George Joannides the congressional liaison without informing the committee that he should have been one of the prime suspects if the CIA had been involved.
The list of witnesses who died or committed suicide shortly before they were scheduled before the committee is highly suspicious especially this one.
The Committee nonetheless concluded that a fires had been shot from two locations and that a conspiracy had therefore occurred.
Some of their most direct evidence for that was later called into question, but the director now believes that the CIA ran a giant con-game on him.
link
He wasn’t just a member. He was the director.
So, these are just a few areas where I think it is obvious that the Warren Commission did not tell us what happened.
Obviously, the number of shots fired, the common sense reaction to the Zapruder tape, and the hard-to-believe magic bullet theory are all additional points. But they aren’t necessary to prove that we didn’t get the truth, nor do they do much at all to tell us what really went down.
Agree on most of this good post. Except I think LHO was what he claimed he was, a patsy, and I’ve never seen any credible evidence putting him in the sixth floor window. On the contrary most solid eyewitness evidence from TSBD employees has him in the 2d floor lunchroom and the first around the time of the shooting. And police nitrate tests on his cheeks turned up negative, strongly suggesting he didn’t fire a rifle that day.
As to the WC, add Earl Warren to the list of doubters, as later he offered a belief, wrong though it was, that Moscow was involved in a conspiracy to put Oswald in place.
The SS was suspiciously lax and negligent that day, as were other agencies normally used to provide protection. If it was lone nut Oswald doing the deed, he got very lucky that day with major assists from various quarters.
Specter played an important role in foisting one of the biggest official lies upon the American public. His mb theory is allowed to stand today not because of it’s inherent truth or scientific power but primarily b/c of the propaganda power of the military-intelligence complex as they continue to work hand in glove with the corporate media to bamboozle the public.
And I have no doubt someone as smart as Specter knew it was a lie. As in his embarrassing interview in 1966 with reporter Gaeton Fonzi where he fumbled around trying to explain the trajectory of the magic bullet. Specter’s first and, iirc, only media interview with a not in the tank reporter on the subject of his WC work.
Fonzi, later an investigator for the HSCA, himself just passed on a few weeks back. He’s the person, in a better more honest world, we should celebrating, not the lying Specter who used his deceitful Commission stint to build a dubious political career.
I may have disagreed with his record on much but I will forever be grateful for his NIH work on behalf of cancer research and health.
The elbow bump makes me smile a little smile to this day.
Kennedy conspiracy theories are very entertaining. I think my favorite is that it was the Mossad because Kennedy was going to end aid to Israel. Total bullshit, but I still like it.
My favorite one is the Warren Commission.
I like your reasoning. You pick one of the stupider theories (true, there are many as stupid or even stupider) to represent “Kennedy conspiracy theories” full stop. It may surprise you to know that there are some highly credible Kennedy conspiracy theories based on masses of confirmed, documented evidence. The Warren Commission report isn’t one of them. Oh, sorry, that was supposed to be a conspiracy between one guy and himself.
Of course there are more and less credible explanations. The Mossad one for instance, I believe was either created or popularized by a notable Arab anti-semite. I just think it’s a great story. Never the less, the science I’ve seen all strongly inclines me to something similar to the official version of events.
Makes me think of the murdered Holly Maddox, whose killer fled to a pleasant life in Europe thanks to Arlen’s intervention in his trial. I’ll never forgive the man for that.
It was no surprise to learn that he was involved in the assassination cover-up. Sorry, I feel no need to give my respect to the newly dead who never earned it when they could have.
Makes me think of his last efforts to cling to power. He had an opportunity to go out with class as Jim Jeffords demonstrated in 2001 by leaving the GOP and retiring at the end of his term. What he did only added to the power of those that he knew weren’t good for this country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikIRB3lvFvw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Specter on this day deserves to be honored for a lifetime of service – flawed that it may be.