"Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming that he carried out the tragic shooting all by himself. .... In fact, you could throw eighty percent of the evidence against him out the window and there would still be more than enough left to convince any reasonable person of his sole role in the crime. .... The Warren Commission looked at a tremendous amount of evidence and concluded that Oswald acted alone. I've studied the evidence, and I agree."
-- Vincent T. Bugliosi; 1986
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Damn straight, Vince!
After the official 888-page Warren Commission Report was released in
September 1964, public controversy began to swirl around the
Commission's "Single-Assassin" conclusion, and the controversy
surrounding the Warren Report hasn't let up in the several decades
since its publication.
But, in my view, Chairman Earl Warren's Commission got it right -- Lee
Harvey Oswald fired three shots at John F. Kennedy on 11/22/63, killing
the then-46-year-old U.S. President and critically wounding another
victim (Texas Governor John B. Connally, who survived Oswald's attack).
Most Americans do not agree with this one-assassin assessment
concerning the events of November '63. But, then too, I'd also guess
that a large percentage of those disbelievers have not even bothered
to wade through the Warren Commission's hefty tome.
The Warren Report is actually a very well-done publication. Some errors
do appear in the book, but that, IMO, is to be expected from such a
large piece of detailed work, which involved interviewing hundreds of
assassination-related witnesses and evaluating many hundreds of
individual pieces of evidence connected with the three murders that the
Commission was assigned to investigate (Kennedy's, J.D. Tippit's,
and Oswald's own murder at the hands of Jack Ruby). And all of this
work was done in a fairly short amount of time (9-plus months), and
by a relatively small number of Commission and staff members.
Here are some of my own thoughts regarding certain aspects of the JFK
and J.D. Tippit murders:
Re: The "Single-Bullet Theory" (which nearly all conspiracy theorists
hate with a vicious passion, despite the fact that it is the ONLY
conceivable way the shooting could have possibly occurred, given the
known factors in evidence):
It's my belief that virtually anyone with an ounce of common sense and
a small bit of brain power could have (and would have) ultimately come
up with the "SBT", given the evidence that is on the table surrounding
the events of November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas.
In short, there simply IS no other valid and logical conclusion to the
simultaneous wounding of President Kennedy and Governor John Connally.
None. Donald Duck could have figured it out given the following
parameters:
1.) Pretty much a straight-line bullet path from Kennedy to Connally.
(Taking into account, of course, the automatic restriction of not being
able to pinpoint to the exact square-inch where JFK was in the
limousine in comparison to Connally's seated position.)
2.) Not a single bullet found in JFK's body.
3.) Not a single bullet found in John Connally's body.
4.) Not a speck of bodily damage done to JFK's innards (neck or back
regions), save the slight bruising of a lung and the pleural cavity (said
to have been caused by the mere passage of the bullet through the
body, but not via a direct strike) and slight damage to the trachea
as the missile exited JFK's throat.
5.) Bullet CE399 is the only bullet found which could be connected to
either man's wounds (and found in the hospital where the victims were
taken, no less).
6.) No damage done to the back seats of the limousine.
7.) No other people wounded in the limousine.
8.) No whole bullets found in the limousine.
I highly recommend that every person interested in the SBT (and the
Kennedy assassination in general) take a good, long look at the
Discovery Channel's re-creation of the SBT performed in Australia in
October 2004 -- "JFK: Beyond The Magic Bullet".
That re-creation very nearly duplicated the SBT/CE399 path through
TWO bodies (mock-ups of the victims), and came fairly close to
duplicating the way bullet CE399 ended up looking on 11/22/63. Not
a perfect match, true. But the shooting can NEVER be duplicated with
100% accuracy...and it is completely unreasonable to think it ever
could be (especially given the bodily damage within two human victims
that would need to be done to perfection to make an exacting duplication
possible, which is just not feasible).
But within a normal and reasonable percentage of "plus or minus of
probability", that 2004 test proved beyond a reasonable doubt that
the Single-Bullet Theory is (and was) a shooting event that could most
certainly have occurred from a 60-foot-high perch.
If conspiracists cannot see that, then that provides proof beyond a
reasonable doubt, in my view, that such CTers just refuse to be
convinced of the Single-Bullet Theory's possibility no matter what is
demonstrated to them.
And I also find it very revealing that it seems that no conspiracy
promoters have a desire to try to "re-create" the SBT with tests of
their own (sponsored by, say, Robert J. Groden, or Oliver Stone, or
James Fetzer, or Mark Lane, et al), in order to "prove" once and for
all that the SBT is an "impossible" shooting feat.
It's even more interesting to note that all of the SBT tests and
re-creations that have been done (e.g., the 2004 Australian test I
just mentioned, plus the FAA computer simulation test done in the
1980s, and the more-recent computer animations done by Dale K.
Myers) show just exactly the opposite of what CTers seem to believe --
i.e., all of those tests show that the Single-Bullet Theory is a
definite possibility.
And when factoring in all the variables of the shooting -- such as: no
whole bullets found in JFK's body (or in the back seats of the
limousine), the alignment of the victims in the car, and the official
autopsy report which says that one bullet travelled straight through
JFK and exited his neck -- the SBT then comes much closer to an
absolute CERTAINTY, rather than just a mere "theory".
------------------
Switching gears now to the murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit
(which was a second murder committed by Lee Oswald on 11/22/63) ---
Many conspiracists seem to actually feel that the overall evidence is
"weak" against Oswald when it comes to this murder in Oak Cliff.
NOTHING could be further from the truth than that false
conspiracy-favoring myth. Because, to put it bluntly -- Anyone who
thinks Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill Officer Tippit is either a total
pro-conspiracy nutcase...or is just flat-out stupid. There is no third
option that I can think of.
After assessing the facts in the Tippit case, any person who can state
the blatant falsehood that the evidence surrounding Oswald's guilt in
the Tippit crime is weak or inconclusive (as many CTers often do claim)
is a person who obviously WANTS to have Oswald innocent of killing
Officer J.D. Tippit (no matter how much evidence exists to say he was
guilty).
And I'm still stumped (and always will be I guess) when it comes to the
question of why no conspiracy theorist can seemingly manage to evaluate
the assassination "Patsy Plot" from the PRE-November 22nd point-of-view
of the conspirators (who were responsible for JFK's assassination and
supposedly "framed" Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder, according to many
conspiracy theorists).
That is to say, if those same CTers were to put themselves in the
shoes of the "plotters" on the day before the assassination took place,
they would easily be able to see the general mayhem and illogic and
massive stumbling blocks that the ultra-silly (but yet
widely-accepted-as-true) "Oswald Was Just A Patsy" plot would have
created for this array of conspirators, assassins, and evil henchmen.
By performing this little bit of "time travel" in their heads, anyone
can readily detect the lunacy of a "One-Patsy" plot that sports many
different shooters firing at the very same target.
In other words, any assassins who would have needed only Oswald
fingered for the two murders on 11/22/63, must have all (to a man!)
been under the influence of large quantities of hallucinogenic drugs
when they decided to place a variety of different shooters throughout
Dealey Plaza (and on 10th Street for Tippit's killing), as many CTers
advocate.
And these powerful drugs they must have been on I guess must have
had a crazy type of "Miracles Are Possible" effect on all of the shooters
and behind-the-scenes schemers -- because only a "miracle" could have
rescued such an inane multi-shooter "Patsy" plan from certain failure
on that 22nd day of November back in '63.
---------------------
Conspiracy theorists should begin to accept the obvious -- with that
"obvious" consisting of the following:
1.) A 24-year-old former defector to Russia named Lee Harvey Oswald got
damn lucky one day in late 1963 when he happened to find himself alone
on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building at just
the right moment in time to get off three shots from his $21
Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, with two of those 6.5mm bullets finding
Oswald's target of President Kennedy's body, resulting in the tragic
death of America's thirty-fifth Chief Executive.
2.) Less than one hour after gunning down the President, in obvious
flight from the murder he had just committed in Dealey Plaza, Oswald
shot and killed Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippit (as viewed by a variety of
unwavering eyewitnesses who positively identified Oswald as the one
and only killer of this police officer or as the one and only gun-toting
individual who fled on foot from the Tippit murder scene).
3.) The Single-Bullet Theory is the most logical and valid scenario to
explain the non-fatal wounds sustained by John F. Kennedy and all the
wounds sustained by John B. Connally in Dealey Plaza. And it is the
only possible explanation of the event that stands up to critical
scrutiny, detailed analysis, and common-sense interpretation of the
evidence when the ENTIRE batch of Single-Bullet-favoring evidence is
gathered together in the same place.
------------------
In my view, a person who denies or questions the integrity of all the
above-mentioned facts and thinks that Lee Oswald was "set up" to take
the fall for the President's murder in 1963 (and possibly set up to be
the dupe in Tippit's murder as well) is a person who believes in
conspiratorial fairy tales; i.e., never-proven tales that have been
spun with skill by authors of various pro-conspiracy books and
movie-makers ever since John Kennedy's death.
I, myself, would have an extremely difficult time in believing that all
of the physical evidence in this case has been "manipulated" to suit
the needs of a bunch of forever-unidentifiable, unknown conspirators
who were hell-bent on framing a schnook with the initials "LHO". And
this would include "faking" the evidence that has always shown, via the
1963 JFK autopsy report and the autopsy pictures and X-rays, that the
fatal shot that struck the President in the head came from behind
Kennedy's car.
The sheer COMPLETENESS of such mass after-the-assassination "fakery"
is just too unbelievable in scope for me to give serious credence to.
It just simply could not have happened, IMO.
And it's quite obvious that noted and respected JFK expert, author, and
attorney Vincent Bugliosi doesn't believe that such grand-scale
evidence-forgery was carried out with such skilled precision in this
case either. Mr. Bugliosi has studied the JFK case for more than two
decades, and believes, as do I, that the ultimate findings arrived at
in 1964 by the Warren Commission are as sound today as they were back
in '64. .....
"There was no plot, no conspiracy. JFK wasn't murdered by anti-Castro
Cubans, the mob, or rogue CIA agents. In almost 40 years, there has
not been one scintilla of proof tying the assassination to anyone but
Oswald. There have been theories, but no evidence. Oswald had the
motive, the opportunity, and the skill to kill President Kennedy."
-- Vince Bugliosi
--------------
"I am writing two volumes on the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy. My conclusion is that I believe beyond ALL doubt that Lee
Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, and beyond all REASONABLE doubt
that he acted alone." -- Vince Bugliosi
David Von Pein
April 7, 2006
CORY SANTOS SAID:
So David, you admit the HSCA final conclusion was wrong. Certainly I would expect you to admit it was a government investigation. Therefore, you admit a government investigation can be wrong. Yes or no?
So, would you admit that the Warren Commission—a government investigation—could be wrong? Yes or no?
Logically, in any aspect, could you admit that there was even a 1% chance on some WC finding [that] was wrong? Or, in your opinion, is there a zero percent chance that the WC was wrong on any of its findings?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In my opinion, there's virtually no possibility that the Warren Commission was wrong when it comes to their basic bottom-line conclusions, which were:
However, there is at least one mistake to be found in the Warren Commission's Final Report. (And there are probably several other errors in the Report too, which wouldn't surprise or shock me at all. Finding a few relatively minor errors in a report that's nearly 900 pages in length is, I would think, perfectly normal and to be expected.)
The WC mistake I had in mind today can be found on Page 166 of the Warren Report, where there's an error concerning Domingo Benavides and the J.D. Tippit murder. The Warren Commission incorrectly thought that it was Benavides who had made the citizen's call on Tippit's police radio ("We've had a shooting out here"). But it was later learned that it was really another witness, T.F. Bowley, who made that radio call, which was done only after Benavides had been pumping (or mashing) the microphone for about ninety seconds. [See the quote below from Dale Myers' book, "With Malice".]
"Beginning at 1:16 p.m., a microphone is keyed a number of times on channel one of the Dallas police tapes, as if someone were 'pumping' the microphone button of a police radio. This continues for a little over 90 seconds, right up until the time passing motorist T.F. Bowley successfully contacts the dispatcher. .... Considering the timing of the sounds heard in the Dallas police radio recordings, and the corroborating accounts of three witnesses, the murder of Tippit probably occurred about 90 seconds prior to Benavides' bungled attempt to notify the dispatcher. Therefore, there is good reason to believe that J.D. Tippit was shot at approximately 1:14:30 p.m." -- Dale K. Myers; Pages 86-87 of "With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald And The Murder Of Officer J.D. Tippit" (1998 Edition)
The Warren Commission was apparently relying on a truncated transcript of the Dallas Police radio tapes that appears on Page 52 of Commission Exhibit No. 1974, which is a transcript that has several radio transmissions omitted, as well as having a "long pause" of 15 seconds omitted (as we can see when comparing CE1974 with this more complete version of the DPD radio tapes).
The Commission, therefore, in trying to pinpoint the precise time of Officer Tippit's shooting, failed to take into account the extra 90 seconds of microphone clicking and pumping that was done by Benavides, which I don't think was even discovered until the 1990s when Dale Myers talked about it in his 1998 book.
So the actual time when Officer J.D. Tippit was shot and killed had to be sometime prior to 1:16 PM, because Benavides' "pumping" begins at exactly 1:16.
If you give me a few more hours (or days....or maybe weeks 😁), I can probably find a few more things that the Warren Commission got "wrong" in their 888-page Final Report. But none of the errors I am liable to find in the Report could possibly be substantive enough to dismantle or demolish this conclusion reached by the Commission:
"The Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy."
And the main reason I can be so confident that the above WC conclusion can never be debunked is because the evidence and Oswald's own actions prove that LHO killed JFK and J.D. Tippit. And that evidence was in existence for a full week before a Government entity known as "The Warren Commission" was even created.
David Von Pein
August 21, 2019
