General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy believed President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. [View all]Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)upon a time I actually believed in the idea of a conspiracy in the JFK assassination. But then I actually read and examined the available evidence from a non-conspiracy POV, and discovered something quite interesting: all of the obvious and wilful distortions of fact and misrepresentations of actual physical evidence? They all come from the pro-conspiracy side of the argument.
Basic, simple facts: the Warren Commission, the Ramsay Clark panel, and the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations found that the wounds to Kennedy and Connally were consistent with both men being struck by a single bullet, fired from behind; based on a) the nature of the entrance wound on Kennedy and the exit wound in his throat and the entry wound, caused by a tumbling bullet, in Connally's right armpit, b) the relative positions of Kennedy to Connally (Connally was seated inboard and below Kennedy, slightly to his left, and was turned to his right at the time of impact); the so-called "magic bullet" did exactly what one would expect a military FMJ round to do (through-and-through wound to Kennedy, striking only soft tissue, slight tumble due to deceleration, deflection after striking Connally's rib, further deceleration on striking wrist; the reason it's not more deformed is that it was significantly slowed down by its transit of first JFK's body and then Connally's). Recovered fragments account for less than the total mass missing from the bullet; those fragments have been matched to CE399 by neutron activation analysis, CE399 has been matched to Oswald's Carcano rifle ballistically. (As have the large fragments of the bullet that struck Kennedy in the head recovered from the windscreen frame and floorboard of the limousine.) So we have: a mostly intact and fragmented bullet, both matched to Oswald's rifle, which account for the wounds to Kennedy and Connally (credible analysis indicates that there were three shots fired; the first, a miss, struck the pavement and wounded James Tague, and obviously wouldn't end up in the presidential limousine or on Connally's stretcher at Parkland). There is no evidence that suggests any shots came from anywhere other than the sixth-floor window of the TSBD or that any shots were fired by any other weapon.