Kennedy Lone Gunman Theory Challenged

There are some Conspiracy theories that refuse to die. Be it the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, UFO’s or the Templar Knights. One of these enduring, albeit, far more realistic theories centers around the Kennedy assassination.

Lyndon B. Johnson established The Warren Commission, on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The commission got it’s name from Chief Justice Warren who headed the investigation.


The report found that “Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination of Kennedy and that the commission could not find any persuasive evidence of a conspiracy—either domestic or foreign—involving any other person(s), group(s), or country(ies)”.
The Single Bullet Theory often credited to a Warren Commission staffer named Arlen Specter (now a Republican US Senator), states that a single bullet, known as " "CE399 ", was responsible for all of the non-fatal wounds to both the President and then Governor John Connally. It was then a second bullet That caused the fatal head wound to Kennedy.


The Warren Commission, instead of putting “Closure” on the assassination, became a lightning rod for criticism and a catalyst for conspiracy theorists.


Wikipedia lists several of the most common 4 Conspiracy theories.


4.1 CIA and Anti-Castro Cuban Exile conspiracy
4.2 LBJ conspiracy
4.3 Mafia and Hoover conspiracy
4.4 Organized Crime and the CIA conspiracy
4.5 Soviet Bloc conspiracy
4.6 Roscoe White
4.7 Cuban conspiracy
4.8 Israeli conspiracy
4.9 Death threats on Irish visit
4.10 Alleged connections of George H. W. Bush


Over the years, the majority of Americans have been critical of the Warren report, yet were also unwilling to believe most of the conspiracy theories. Personally I have seen little reason to believe that our government is even capable of carrying off such a large “Cover-up.” Let Watergate stand as an example of how difficult it is for our leaders to hold on to secrets. It’s not that government officials are too honest to try, they are just too inept to pull it off.

So imagine my surprise to read today that the lone gunman theory was under atttact from a team of researchers including a former top FBI scientist. William Tobin, a metallurgist that worked for the FBI Lab, said new chemical and statistical analyses of bullets from the same batch used by Oswald suggest that more than two bullets could have struck the president. "Evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," the researchers said in their article.
"If the assassination (bullet) fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely."

The team in addition to Tobin, includes Cliff Spiegelman, professor of statistics at Texas A&M and an expert in bullet-lead analysis, and William D. James, a research chemist with the Texas A&M Center for Chemical Characterization and Analysis (CCCA). It is their conclusion that the bullets fragments could show that more that just two shots hit the president and John Connally.

The paper currently is available online at http://www.imstat.org/aoas/next_issue.html.

Maybe there are reasons why some Conspiracy theories that refuse to die. Maybe we should look harder for Nessie, or storm the gates at AREA 51.


Larry Lubell
Urban NewsBlog
http://www.urbaninsuranceagency.com/