Federal Judge Jack Tunheim believes Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone 50 years ago today to murder President John F. Kennedy. But on a topic where a great many people — on both sides of the question — are close to frothing-at-the-mouth sure that the other side is some version of blind, crazy or part of the cover-up, Tunheim asserts his conclusion mildly, humbly, even a tad uncertainly.
“I wouldn’t dismiss any theory,” Tunheim told me earlier this week.
In fact, he expressed great respect for some of those who believe that Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy. He acknowledged that some of the established evidence is hard to believe. He supposes that the ultimate answers to all of the troubling questions that have fed those conspiracy theories will probably never be known.
Tunheim’s conclusions carry some weight, considering that he has been, for almost two decades, chair of a special board that reviewed all records relating to the assassination for the purpose of making most of them public.
As he often has in the many interviews he has given in this week of the assassination anniversary, Tunheim plays the judge card. Is there any evidence or testimony that could be introduced in a courtroom, stand up under cross-examination, and convincingly prove that anyone other than Oswald was involved? Tunheim says no. And he oughta know, both what the evidence shows and how that evidence would stand up in court.
On the other hand
Personally, I fell out of the “lone gunman camp” many years ago and remain skeptical. Mostly, my doubts start with Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald two days after the Kennedy assassination. Ruby was a Dallas strip club owner with many established relationships to members of organized crime. Tunheim confirmed that those Ruby-Mafia associations existed, although the details were murky.
In custody, Ruby claimed to have killed Oswald out of compassion for Jacqueline Kennedy, specifically to spare her the trauma of having to come back to Dallas to participate in a trial of Oswald. Seriously? I asked Tunheim what he made of the question of Ruby’s motive. “We really don’t know,” he said. “Certainly the reasons he gave didn’t seem to make much sense.”
Many of the conspiracy theories assign an important role to organized crime. Attorney General Robert Kennedy wanted to go after organized crime. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who technically worked for RFK, was less enthusiastic, even to the point of denying there was any such thing as organized crime.
When I asked Tunheim whether he agreed that Hoover seemed to have a cooperative relationship with the mafia, he replied: “Well, he never went after them very hard.” During the decades that Hoover ran the FBI, “the mob had a free hand,” Tunheim said. He added that there were a few high-ranking mobsters who were reported to have said on their deathbeds that the Mafia had a role in the assassination. The FBI was among the key agencies that contributed material to the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination.
Ruby died of cancer three years after the assassination, while awaiting a second trial for killing Oswald. If Oswald knew something about a Mafia role, if Ruby knew he was dying and could get some kind of favor from the mob in exchange for silencing Oswald, perhaps that would explain why he would shoot Oswald. Tunheim agreed that the strongest suggestion that organized crime may have been involved in the assassination would be the role of Ruby and his lack of a credible motive. Tunheim said that two employees of Ruby had testified that they saw Ruby with Oswald before the assassination. Seriously, if those witnesses were correct, the two men had to be part of a larger conspiracy.
Tunheim also expressed “great respect” for the work of the House special committee that investigated the assassination and reported in 1978 that it believed there had been a conspiracy and that, although it was unable to reach a conclusion about who, other than Oswald, participated, the investigators told Tunheim that they had what the judge called “a strong and distinct impression that organized crime, or some members of organized crime, were involved.”
Ever since the “on the other hand” sub-headline above, I’ve been explaining why I do not subscribe to the lone gunman theory. Others who are more serious believers in a conspiracy have many more points. But, as you have noticed, the main points I’ve mentioned were all more or less confirmed by Tunheim, but he does not subscribe to a conspiracy theory.
Why not? Apparently because the evidence is not hard or confirmed enough to stand up in court.
There’s a big leap of faith
between “could have happened”
and “did happen.”
The only proposition that is supported by direct evidence (not conjecture) is that Oswald did the shooting.
Beyond that we’re in the land of conjecture.
Magic bullet…
If you know the magic bullet theory, consider the Warren Commission testimony of Conally’s wife:
(quote)
Mrs. Connally.
In fact the receptions had been. so good every place that I had showed much restraint by not mentioning something about it before.
I could resist no longer. When we got past this area I did turn to the President and said, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Then I don’t know how soon, it seems to me it was very soon, that I heard a noise, and not being an expert rifleman, I was not aware that it was a rifle. It was just a frightening noise, and it came from the right.
I turned over my right shoulder and looked back, and saw the President as he had both hands at his neck.
Mr. Specter.
And you are indicating with your own hands, two hands crossing over gripping your own neck?
Mrs. Connally.
Yes; and it seemed to me there was–he made no utterance, no cry. I saw no blood, no anything. It was just sort of nothing, the expression on his face, and he just sort of slumped down.
Then very soon there was the second shot that hit John [Connally]. As the first shot was hit, and I turned to look at the same time, I recall John saying, “Oh, no, no, no.” Then there was a second shot, and it hit John, and as he recoiled to the right, just crumpled like a wounded animal to the right, he said, “My God, they are going to kill us all.”
I never again—-
Mr. Dulles.
To the right was into your arms more or less?
Mrs. Connally.
No, he turned away from me. I was pretending that I was him. I never again looked in the back seat of the car after my husband was shot. My concern was for him, and I remember that he turned to the right and then just slumped down into the seat, so that I reached over to pull him toward me. X was trying to get him down and me down. The jump seats were not very roomy, so that there were reports that he slid into the seat of the car, which he did not; that he fell over into my lap, which he did not.
I just pulled him over into my arms because it would have been impossible to get us really both down with me sitting and me holding him. So that I looked out, I mean as he was in my arms, I put my head down over his head so that his head and my head were right together, and all I could see, too, were the people flashing by. I didn’t look back any more. The third shot that I heard I felt, it felt like spent buckshot falling all over us, and then, of course, I too could see that it was the matter, brain tissue, or whatever, just human matter, all over the car and both of us.
http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol4/page147.php
(end quote)
There was evidence that Oswald only fired 3 bullets, one missed entirely (hit a curb), the second was the magic bullet that went through Kennedy and Connally, and the third hit Kennedy in the skull.
Mrs. Connally’s testimony clealy has Kennedy hit in the throat on the first shot heard, Connally hit with the second shot, and Kennedy’s head hit with the 3rd shot.
Seems to me that is 4 shots–adding in the shot that hit the curb.
Too much oddness about the whole thing–in the era of the Evil Empire, a Marine with a security clearance, defects to the Soviet Union, then returns to the US, and then campaigns for fairness for Castro, travels to the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico, socialized with de Mohrenschildt (who was a friend of the Bouvier family–Jackie called him “Uncle George”), and somehow personally is in the know and cool enough to spontaneously assassinate the President who happens to pass by the place where Oswald happens to work,
And John Connally discounts the “magic bullet” theory
(quote)
Mr. Specter.
In your view, which bullet caused the injury to your chest, Governor Connally?
Governor CONNALLY. The second one.
Mr. Specter.
And what is your reason for that conclusion, sir?
Governor CONNALLY. Well, in my judgment, it just couldn’t conceivably have been the first one because I heard the sound of the shot, In the first place, don’t know anything about the velocity of this particular bullet, but any rifle has a velocity that exceeds the speed of sound, and when I heard the sound of that first shot, that bullet had already reached where I was, or it had reached that far, and after I heard that shot, I had the time to turn to my right, and start to turn to my left before I felt anything. It is not conceivable to me that I could have been hit by the first bullet, and then I felt the blow from something which was obviously a bullet, which I assumed was a bullet, and I never heard the second shot, didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear but two shots. I think I heard the first shot and the third shot.
Mr. Specter.
Do you have any idea as to why you did not hear the second shot?
Governor CONNALLY. Well, first, again I assume the bullet was traveling faster than the sound. I was hit by the bullet prior to the time the sound reached me, and I was in either a state of shock or the impact was such that the sound didn’t even register on me, but I was never conscious of hearing the second shot at all.
Obviously, at least the major wound that I took in the shoulder through the chest couldn’t have been anything but the second shot. Obviously, it couldn’t have been the third, because when the third shot was fired I was in a reclining position, and heard it, saw it and the effects of it, rather–I didn’t see it, I saw the effects of it–so it obviously could not have been the third, and couldn’t have been the first, in my judgment.
http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol4/page135.php
(end quote)
So the two witnesses in the car that testified before the Commission discount the “magic bullet” theory that Spector developed.
And finally, the testimony of Clint Hill, the Secret Service agaent that jumped on to the back of the limosine
(quote)
Mr. Hill.
Well, as we came out of the curve, and began to straighten up, I was viewing the area which looked to be a park. There were people scattered throughout the entire park. And I heard a noise from my right rear, which to me seemed to be a firecracker. I immediately looked to my right and, in so doing, my eyes had to cross the Presidential limousine and I saw President Kennedy grab at himself and lurch forward and to the left
.
Mr. Specter.
Why don’t you just proceed, in narrative form, to tell us?
Representative Boggs.
This was the first shot?
Mr. Hill.
This is the first sound that I heard; yes, sir. I jumped from the car, realizing that something was wrong, ran to the Presidential limousine. Just about as I reached it, there was another sound, which was different than the first sound. I think I described it in my statement as though someone was shooting a revolver into a hard object–it seemed to have some type of an echo. I put my right foot, I believe it was, on the left rear step of the automobile, and I had a hold of the handgrip with my hand, when the car lurched forward. I lost my footing and I had to run about three or four more steps before I could get back up in the car. Between the time I originally grabbed the handhold and until I was up on the car, Mrs. Kennedy–the second noise that I heard had removed a portion of the President’s head, and he had slumped noticeably to his left. Mrs. Kennedy had jumped up from the seat and was, it appeared to me, reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper of the car, the right rear tail, when she noticed that I was trying to climb on the car. She turned toward me and I grabbed her and put her back in the back seat, crawled up on top of the back seat and lay there.
http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol2/page138.php
(end quote)
Doesn’t look good for the “magic bullet” idea of Kennedy and Connally both hit with the second bullet.
Eye witnesses
are notoriously unreliable, particularly those who have been directly involved in a traumatic event. Add the time between the event and the testimony and the fact that Gov. and Mrs. Connally had no doubt discussed the event between themselves more than once and there’s more than enough reason to question their recollection of events. As Mr. Brandon wrote, the only thing for which we have any direct evidence is that Oswald fired a weapon. I’d add to that that we know Ruby killed Oswald the following Sunday morning.
Both were irrational acts. Seeking rational explanations for irrational acts is futile.
Eyewitnesses
I’ll second your point about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony.
It is unreliable even when given -immediately- after the event.
If you wait even a day, you’re dealing with the vagaries of memory, which Liz Loftus and others have shown is highly unreliable.
Where is the proof that Oswald fired a gun?
I challenge anyone to give indisputable proof that Oswald even fired a weapon on the day of the Kennedy assassination and that includes Officer Tippet. Rush to judgment, for shame.