‘JFK’ Is Not Irresponsible--Choosing to Ignore the Evidence Is

Former Warren Commission staffer Richard M. Mosk makes several mistakes in his outcry against my film “JFK” (Counterpunch, Calendar, Dec. 30):

1--The idea that the shots occurred over 10 seconds is a relatively recent one. It dates from former President Gerald Ford and former commission counsel David Belin’s Dec. 18, 1991, opinion piece in the Washington Post. It occurs nowhere in the assassination literature, not even in the Warren Commission volumes, which put the maximum time at 7.9 seconds.

“JFK’s” time frame of 5.6 seconds is based on the visual evidence of the Zapruder film of the assassination--from frame 210 when JFK is first visibly reacting to a shot in the throat to frame 313, the fatal head shot. Most researchers agree on this figure.

2--The neuromuscular reaction that Mosk claims accounts for the backward snap of Kennedy’s head when struck by a bullet from behind could happen only if a major coordinating center of the brain is damaged. According to the X-rays and autopsy photos that Mosk champions as evidence of a shot from behind, those areas of the brain are intact.

Mosk’s secondary explanation, the “jet effect”--a phenomenon wherein brain matter would exit back through the entry hole, driving the head backward--only works under certain pressure conditions, none of which exist in the human cranial vault.

3--While the “official” autopsy photos and X-rays do show all the shots coming from the rear, the 26 medical personnel who treated the President at Parkland Hospital testified to the Warren Commission that they saw an exit-type wound in the rear of the President’s head, inconsistent with the photos and X-rays.

Neither the commission nor the 1976-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations showed the autopsy material to the Parkland doctors to clarify this point. We also know now that if the Bethesda Naval Hospital autopsy was not rigged, it was certainly a compromised affair. Dr. Pierre Finck, one of the three military doctors who signed the Bethesda autopsy report, testified at the Garrison trial that he was “ordered” by generals and admirals not to track the bullet through the neck.

Two FBI reports filed by agents in attendance showed that the same bullet only penetrated about two inches into the President’s back and never exited from it, much less took the wacky course of the magic bullet through Gov. Connally.

4--Neutron activation analysis and other tests do not confirm the single-bullet theory. The NAA tests performed on the magic bullet and the fragments found in Connally’s wrist for the Warren Commission were “inconclusive.” The tests could only prove that the bullet passed through Connally’s wrist--merely one of the seven wounds allegedly caused by the bullet.

No scientific evidence has ever proved that the bullet passed through Kennedy’s body and there is convincing evidence that it did not. In addition to the aforementioned FBI reports, recently Gov. Connally once again reiterated he does not believe he was shot by the same bullet that hit Kennedy.

5--In overturning the “fourth shot” findings of the House Select Committee, the National Academy of Sciences unknowingly tested a second-generation dub of the Dallas Police Dictabelt, therefore invalidating their results.

The J.F.K. case is a simple homicide investigation but it has never been treated as such. It should be especially simple because we have the 8-millimeter home movie by Abraham Zapruder that shows us exactly what happened to President Kennedy.

In response to the Zapruder film showing Kennedy’s head snapping back in reaction to a shot from the front, the government produces a series of “experts” who tell you that what you see is not what really happened. Ask any homicide detective how many times they’ve had to take into account neuromuscular reactions, jet effects and seven wounds in two men with one undamaged bullet in all the gun-related murders they’ve investigated and you’ll get an astounded stare in response.

Mosk, without offering any evidence, is quick to dismiss Kennedy’s winding down of the Cold War as a possible motive for the murder. Not only do we have Kennedy’s policy difference with the Joint Chiefs twice over Cuba and once over Laos, but we also have an early form of detente under way with Khrushchev (the October ’62 deal: no U.S. invasion, no Soviet missiles), the groundbreaking signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and installation of the “hot line,” the American University speech, the back-door negotiations with Castro--and the fact, not speculation, that repeatedly during his presidency, Kennedy turned down requests for combat troops in Vietnam despite heavy pressure from the Joint Chiefs.

Gen. James Gavin, a much-decorated general and ambassador, said in 1968: “I know he was totally opposed to the introduction of combat troops in Southeast Asia.” We have Kennedy’s statements to five men that he would withdraw the advisers from Vietnam: Rep. O’Neill, Sens. Morse and Mansfield, and aides Forrestal and O’Donnell.

Though his public statements were deliberately ambiguous in view of the forthcoming conservative attack in the 1964 election, he issued the first step in the withdrawal plan with the top-secret document National Security Action Memorandum 263 the month before his murder.

Is this not a place to begin a serious debate? By looking into the nexus of forces--political, business and military--that stood to profit from the $100-billion Vietnam War? What Eisenhower warned us of as the “military-industrial complex”?

But Mosk is not interested in serious inquiry, he is looking only to whitewash the Warren Commission. It is a tragedy for this country that its “respectable” and “honorable” men, its jurists, government officials, media Establishment, continue to participate in the greatest lie ever put across on the American people. In accusing me of exploitation and irresponsibility, Mosk only disgraces himself.