Collection of Assorted Newspaper and Magazine Clippings: Jfk Assassination, Conspiracy Theories, Etc

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

... but did a second bit from up front drive him violently backward?

Belin, a Warren staff alumnus now directing the Rockefeller commission inquiry into the CIA, says flatly: "I have no doubt that Oswald killed Kennedy."

## WAS THERE A CONSPIRACY?

The Superbullet: The Warren commission's one-man theory rested heavily on the hypothesis that Oswald's first shot struck JFK in the upper back, exited from his throat, tore through then Texas Gov. John Connally's torso and right wrist, and burrowed into his left thigh. To have conceded that the two men were hit by separate shots would have been to acknowledge a second gun; Oswald almost certainly could not have fired his clumsy bolt-action rifle that quickly. Yet the single bullet said it have caused all this damage cause away miraculously unscathed. And causing studies of the Zaprucer film—most recently by Robert Groden, 29, a New York optics expert currently touring with a pirated print—seem to the doubters to show Kennedy and Connally reacting to their wounds a half-second to one and a half seconds apart. The conclusion: they must have been hit by separate guns.

The Flaws: The nearly pristine condition of what critics call Superbullet is indeed hard to explain; the commission's defenders are mostly reduced to arguing that it could have survived intact because it did. But the doubters are stuck

with the perplexing question of what did become of the bullet that hit Kennedy if it didn't strike Connally as well. And the film is at best ambiguous on the timing of their wounds. To some viewers, Connally seems to go stiff almost simultaneously with Kennedy's first visible reaction, and his right hand flies upward clutching his Stetson—relieves that might support a single bullet theory. Connally's major reaction to his wounds does come a half second or so later, when he begins sagging rightward, spins and then slumps heavily to his left. The commission called this a delayed reaction, and subsequent studies by UCLA physicist B.K. Jones tend

to bountry its case. Jones found that Connally's reaction was too exaggerated to be explained by the impact of the bullet; he suggests that Connally was reacting physiologically to his wounds.

The Fatal Wound: With gut-wrenching clarity, Gusden's blowups of the Zapruder film show JFX's head snapping forward under the impact of a bullet that blew away one side of his skull; then, a split-second later, his hand and body lurch even more violently up, back and leftward into Jackie's arms. The doubters' theory: that Kennedy was hit by separate shots, one from the rear and one from the front, a single movie frame (or one-eighteenth of a second) apart.

The Flaws: The film itself shows an explosion of blood, brain and bone fragments spraying upward and forward, suggesting a hit from the rear. A second bullet striking Kennedy from up front might have been expected to produce a comparable burst backward, but none is visible. Physicist Jones's studies, moreover, concluded that a double hit would have required a "giant" second bullet with ten times the momentum of the first to drive JFX back and leftward so forcefully. His hypothesis: the movement was a neuromuscular reaction to the damage to Kennedy's brain.

The Mystery Man: The conspiratorialists have long been fascinated by a frame in a second amateur film shot by Orville Nix;

And Graduation in the last

Wow! it seems to theysk by last round

two and a half times our assessee in

the Zympia to trim one, title still in land,

duly was to through some low changing

from brine to along the monster alley route,

the stitched path with backup man—

by hand a knot on the grassy knoll.

The Flaws. The Nix 'assassination' if he exists, could as easily be sighting a camera to a gun, that is a knife, he appears to have the wrong arm propped on the car; root. Gorden's 'agreement' are too gauzy even to be identified positively as human beings, let alone assassins, and are accordingly regarded as dubious even among some diehard conspiratorialists.

## WAS OSWALD A GOVERNMENT AGENT?

The FBI-CIA Connection: The conspiracy literature is shot through with speculation that Oswald was an operative or at least an informer for one or both agencies, which were then heavily involved in trying to penetrate domestic radical groups. The CIA links are largely suppositions, based on some striking oddities in Oswald's record (the ease with which he got a Marine Corps discharge, then defected to Russia, then came home on a government loan) and some thready connections with various people and places thought to be in the CIA's ambit. The FBI story had rather more body: Oswald in fact was carrying the name and phone number of Dallas agent James Hosty in his pocket notebook, and there were rumors—now often quoted as fact—that he was on the bureau payroll as informant number S-179 at $200 a month.

The Flaws: The CIA connection remains speculative, pending further inquiry by the Rockefeller commission and the two Congressional committees inquiring into the agency's operations. The FBI's Hosty insisted he had contacted Oswald only as a matter of routine surveillance of a returned defector. And the embellishments about his informant status and his payroll number apparently

Photo play: Some conspiracy theorists profess to recognize Watergate conspirators Sturgis and Hunt (above) among the three traps in police custody near the scene of the Kennedy assassination

continued