Despite the fact that thousands of pages of JFK assassination material were released earlier this year by the Trump Administration, most objective observers would agree that no definitive smoking gun has emerged. With respect to the Kennedy assassination, the more things change the more they stay the same.
Warren Commission defenders still remain convinced that Oswald was the lone assassin and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy to kill the President or cover-up the crime. Assassination critics remain just as convinced that the Kennedy killing was a conspiracy; that nefarious intelligence agencies were involved in the planning, execution and cover-up of the crime; and that the purpose of the killing was to effect a “regime change.” Few in either research community appear willing to entertain the slightest notion that some of their most fundamental beliefs about the assassination might just be wrong.
UNSOLVED RIDDLES
Take, for instance, this curious riddle: If Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to kill President John F. Kennedy, why didn’t he just shoot at him as the motorcade approached the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) along Houston Street? That approach lasted almost 15 seconds and would have been the far easier shot from the 6th floor sniper’s nest. Kennedy was seated full-frontal in the open Lincoln and would have been getting closer (and larger) in the 4X power rifle-scope. Further, there were no tree branches or street-sign obstructions that would have compromised any shot. So why did Oswald (a good but not great shot in the Marines) ignore the easy shot and take the more complicated one as the motorcade sped away down Elm Street?
Or take this riddle: What possible motive did Lee Oswald have for wanting to murder President Kennedy? No credible motive ever surfaced in the 888 page Warren Commission Report or in the thousands of pages of witness testimony detailed in the Warren Commission Hearings. Indeed, there is ample testimony from relatives and acquaintances of Oswald that he frequently spoke well of the president and appeared to respect both the man and his policies. So why in the world would he want to kill him?
Now with respect to the first riddle, perhaps Oswald simply wasn’t ready to shoot as the motorcade approached the sniper’s nest. Or that waiting to shoot later when the motorcade was on Elm Street would put Kennedy in a deadly crossfire from the grassy knoll. Or that a shot as the motorcade approached would have made his own getaway more difficult. Perhaps.
And as to the second riddle, some argue that Oswald’s personal history indicates that he was an unstable malcontent who desired to go down in history for some extreme political act. Again, perhaps. But if that’s the case, why didn’t Oswald openly confess his glorious crime to both the Dallas police and then to the world in his several courthouse interviews? No; instead he did precisely the opposite. He steadfastly maintained his innocence of the murder, called himself a “patsy” and repeatedly asked for legal representation. Very strange.
There may be a more reasonable explanation for both riddles. But that explanation may also require a radical rethinking of the entire JFK assassination scenario. Ironically, that radical rethinking will have nothing whatsoever to do with mainstream conspiracy theory. It will NOT depend upon alleged shots fired from the grassy knoll or from any storm drain. It will NOT depend upon multiple casket entries into the Bethesda morgue or upon any alleged “pre-autopsy” surgery to alter JFK’s head wounds. And it will not depend upon the involvement of nefarious intelligence agencies in the assassination to accomplish “regime change, although some changes in foreign policy may have occurred as a consequence of the murder. In short, this alternative theory of the assassination may resolve both riddles without reliance on conspiracy theory while, at the same time, still be entirely consistent with the three-shot ballistic evidence accepted by the Warren Commission.
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TRAGIC TRUTH
In 2016, a retired IBM engineer by the name of Pierre Sundborg published a comprehensive 764 page volume on the assassination titled TRAGIC TRUTH (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform) which, unfortunately, has all but been ignored by Warren Commission defenders and critics alike. This particular volume was unique because it was the only one (among the many hundreds of books that have been published on the assassination) that argued in painstaking detail ( 120 pages of “Notes and Sources”) that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John F. Kennedy by accident and that his intended target was Governor John B. Connally Jr. John Connally, it will be recalled, was seated in the Lincoln limo jump-seat almost directly in front of Kennedy and sustained near-fatal injuries during the shooting.
MOTIVE
Sundborg argued persuasively that Lee Oswald had no obvious motive to kill JFK but he did harbor a long and powerful grudge against John Connally. To make sense of that grudge and to gauge its severity, we must review Oswald’s contentious battles with various authorities over his discharge status from the U.S. Marines.
Oswald was 17 when he enlisted in the Marines for 6 years. His active service was not distinguished; although he served at some interesting places and assignments, he was court martialed twice for serious infractions of Marine rules. After serving about half of his 6-year enlistment commitment, Oswald requested an “early discharge” based (allegedly) on hardship concerns over his mother’s financial condition. But when Oswald was granted that early release from his service commitment–an “honorable” discharge–he did not go home to stay and help poor mother. Instead, he applied for and was granted a passport (in 6 days) and then almost immediately headed off to Russia.
When the U.S. Navy (the Marines operate under the authority of the Navy) learned of Oswald’s “defection” to the Soviet Union and of his reported attempt to spill secrets (he had been a radar operator in Japan) and renounce his U.S. citizenship, they changed his Marine service discharge classification from “honorable” to “undesirable for reasons of unfitness.” Oswald became aware of that change during his last weeks in Russia (he had decided by then to return to the U.S. with his Russian wife), and he petitioned the Navy for an appeal of the Marine’s decision. The Navy shuffled his appeal to Marine authorities who summarily rejected Oswald’s petition for review.
Oswald’s letter to the Navy was addressed to: “Secretary of the Navy John B. Connally.” (Connally’s name can also be found in Oswald’s diary, written while still in Russia). In the letter (misspellings and all) Oswald asserted that he had been treated unfairly by the Marines; that he had never renounced his U.S. citizenship (true); and that his discharge status should never have been changed to “dishonorable.” (Wrong. It had been changed to “undesirable”). He also maintained that he would “EMPLOY ALL MEANS TO RIGHT THIS GREAT MISTAKE OR INJUSTICE…” (Emphasis added). Indeed, he would.
But when John Connally received Oswald’s letter he was no longer Secretary of the Navy. Accordingly, he directed Oswald’s petition to Marine authorities who rather curtly denied it. Strike One.
When Oswald left Russia and returned to Texas, he sent a far-longer letter to the Navy Discharge Review Board with the same complaints about the unilateral change in his discharge status. He again requested a review of the entire matter. But Oswald was killed (by Jack Ruby) before the Navy ruled on his request. Strike two.
Both of Oswald’s letters to the Navy are filled with moral outrage over the way his discharge status had been handled. He argued that his service in the Marines had been honorable (debatable; he had been court-martialed twice ) and that his private activity after he left the military (his temporary residence in Russia) broke no U.S. laws. As a consequence, he requested that his discharge circumstances be reviewed and demanded that the “…DAMAGE THAT HAD BEEN DONE TO ME AND MY FAMILY BE REPAIRED.” (Emphasis added). But it never got repaired. Strike three.
It is important to understand the depths of Oswald’s disappointment here. First, Oswald admired his older brother Robert Oswald, and Robert had served his full term in the Marines and had been honorably discharged. Yet, younger brother Lee’s Marine discharge would forever read: “undesirable for reasons of unfitness.” This was a so-called “yellow-sheet discharge” and a major embarrassment in any military household.
Second, there were also purely practical reasons for his disappointment. Oswald likely believed that the change in his service status would forever hinder his ability to secure quality employment (true) or even obtain a driver’s license in the state of Texas. (John Connally, by the way, was now the Governor of Texas.) So with all of this in mind, he pleaded with the Navy “to take the necessary steps to repair the damage done to me…”; they refused to do so. Did he blame Connally personally for the rejection of his appeal? Given Oswald’s personal history and slightly unorthodox personality: probably.
There may also have been a straight-forward political component to Oswald’s resentment toward John Connally. Connally, after all, was not a political liberal like JFK; far from it. He was a far-right Democrat with very conservative policy positions on domestic and foreign policy matters. So Oswald may also have seen him the same way he viewed General Edwin Walker: as a proto-fascist, ( Oswald was the self proclaimed “hunter of fascists”) who, like General Walker, deserved to be hunted down and killed. Oswald had already taken a rifle shot at General Walker prior to November 22nd…and missed. Same rifle; same shooter; same political motivation.
Finally, there may even have existed some “best evidence” that Oswald planned to kill John Connally. Lee Oswald had long kept a diary or notebook that was hand-written in his unmistakable syntax. That diary was recovered by Secret Service agents Mike Howard and Chuck Kunkel from Marina Oswald shortly after the assassination. The agents claimed that they had ample time to read through Oswald’s diary several times before they turned it over to the FBI as part of the assassination investigation. They never saw the diary again.
When the Warren Commission Hearings were published, several pages of Lee Oswald’s diary were reproduced as Exhibit 18. When the agents viewed Exhibit 18, however, they immediately noticed that something was askew. Although Exhibit 18 indicated that pages 16-21 of Oswald’s diary had been reproduced (6 pages), only 5 pages actually appeared in the Exhibit. One page was missing; indeed, there was a visible rip in Exhibit 18 where page 17-18 (front and back) had been removed. Both agents have asserted that when they had initially read Oswald’s diary, one side of that “missing page” had contained a “kill list” written in Oswald’s own hand and that John Connally’s name (among others including General Walker) had been on that kill list. Unfortunately, that specific missing page has never been recovered.
In sum, there may have been strong motives and even some physical evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald intended to shoot John Connally.
MEANS AND OPPORTUNITY
In order to bolster the case that Connally was the actual target, Pierre Sundborg takes us back to the “easy shot” riddle: Why not shoot as the motorcade approaches the Texas School Book Depository? After all, regardless of whether the target is President Kennedy OR John Connally, that would have been the more logical shot. Yet, it was the shot not taken. Why?
The answer can be remarkably simple. While JFK was an easy target in the rear seat of the open Lincoln—and yet Oswald did NOT shoot–Governor John Connally was not an easy target at all. Although Connally was seated in the jump seat almost directly in front of and slightly below Kennedy, he was all but INVISIBLE as the limo approached the 6th floor sniper’s nest along Houston Street. There was no shot at Connally at that time, Sundborg claimed, because he simply could not be seen.
To understand the optics involved, we must turn to the actual configuration of the Presidential limo on the day of the assassination. As almost everyone is aware, the protective “bubble top” on the Lincoln had been removed (a history changing decision) before the motorcade departed Love Field; all of the occupants (John and Mrs. Kennedy; John and Nellie Connally; Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman; Secret Service agent William Greer) in the limo were riding in an “open” car during the motorcade to Dealey Plaza.
But as Sundborg demonstrated so expertly in TRAGIC TRUTH, the term “open car” is inherently misleading since John Connally was completely obscured from the sniper’s nest (as the car approached the TSBD) by at least three obstacles: One, the Lincoln windshield with the large upturned sun visors; two, Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman who is sitting directly in front of John Connally; and three, a substantial overhead bracket in the car that was used whenever the so-called “bubble top” was employed. On this particular day, that bubble top was missing but the fixed overhead bracket was not. And it’s that bracket, the car windshield and Agent Kellerman that obscured John Connaly from any clear shot from the 6th floor. If you can’t see him, you can’t shoot him; it may be as simple as that.
So if Connally was the actual target, Oswald must now wait until the motorcade passed the TSBD and proceeded down Elm Street before he could take a shot at Connally. The roof brace, windshield and Agent Kellerman were no longer an issue. BUT JFK CERTAINLY WAS. After all, from the sniper’s perspective, JFK was seated almost directly in front of John Connally, higher and just slightly to his left. Yet Oswald chose to fire anyway with a rifle and scope that several ballistic experts would later determine was slightly “misaligned” and may have shot high-left.
Three shots were fired in roughly 6-8 seconds. Not impossible since the first bullet was already chambered. The first shot probably hit a tree branch and likely struck the pavement in back of the limo kicking up sparks. A fragment of that shot hit a bystander (James Tague) who was standing far down Elm street on the left-hand side. The second shot hit Kennedy in the high-right back; passed through his throat below the Adam’s Apple; and tumbled slightly before it entered Connally’s right back, where it went on to severely injure his inner chest and ribs and right wrist.
And contrary to decade-long assertions of critics, there was nothing “magical” about that particular shot. Once we are clear on precisely where JFK and Connally were actually seated, we can see that all of the wounds on both men were in a precise straight-line trajectory from the 6th floor sniper’s nest. If Connally was the target and if Oswald was only an average marksman in the Marines, that second shot might well have been aimed at Connally; but it hit JFK first.
When Connally was struck by the second bullet, his wife Nellie immediately pulled him toward her and down, probably saving his life in the process. So as Oswald was firing the third shot, John Connally was actually being pulled out of the direct line of fire by his wife. The third shot goes slightly high left–relative to where Connally had been a moment earlier– and strikes JFK in the upper right posterior of the skull (Zapruder frame 312). Thus, according to Sundborg, the President was actually killed by accident.
Could be.
Did Oswald know he had killed the President with that final shot? Impossible. How could he? He quickly tossed the rifle behind some boxes and made his way down the back stairs and eventually out of the front of the TSBD. In less than an hour he would be arrested in a movie theatre for shooting a Dallas cop. The rest is history. Well almost.
A FINAL REVELATION
There is a brief but revealing video interview of Oswald in the Dallas Police Station some time after he was arrested for the cop shooting. A reporter stuck a microphone in Oswald’s face and asked him if he knew that he was being charged with killing the President.
Skeptics of the theory outlined in this article should take a second look at that interview. Oswald appeared completely taken aback by the question; the surprise and shock in his face and voice appeared absolutely genuine. I believe that he knew that he killed the cop; but the PRESIDENT? He stuttered and stammered and appeared totally befuddled. Could this all have been acting? It could have been, but if it was, it was truly Shakespearean. And let’s be honest. Oswald just wasn’t ever that good…at anything.
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A shorter op-ed with similar themes was published by American Thinker.
