JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theory #1 Quiz

Answer: Frames 313-316 of the Zapruder film

Frames 313-316 of the Zapruder film record the headsnap, back and to the left, which is counter-intuitive if the fatal headshot shot had been fired from the rear. Dan Rather, who saw an early copy of the film, incorrectly reported that the headsnap was to the front.

It was not until 1975 that the film was seen publicly, and that alone was a major reason for the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations. There were not supposed to be any Secret Service personnel on the ground in Dealey Plaza that day, but two Dallas policemen and one civilian reported seeing Secret Service I.D. presented to them by a man behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll. To this day, no one knows who he was. Whereas the war *DID* escalate under Johnson, this is not an immediate or obvious reason to suspect the assassination had anything to do with it. Finally, whereas Oswald was a poor shot using a poor rifle, it's not until you get into the case that this becomes a reason to doubt the lone-gunman theory.

Answer: The package identified was too short and it bore no gun-oil stains

Both Buell Wesley Frazier and his sister testified that the package Oswald carried to work that Friday was no more than 24 inches long. A disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano is 37 inches long. Also, if disassembled and in working order, it would have been well-oiled making it hard to believe the bag found carried a rifle in it.

Answer: Its ballistics did not match the Mannlicher-Carcano

Ballistic tests matched CE399 (the magic bullet found at Parkland Hospital) as being fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano to the exclusion of all other weapons. However, there is question that Tomlinson found it on Kennedy's stretcher at Parkland, not Connally's which would signal some sort of conspiracy. Also, there is great question that a bullet could make 7 wounds in two people, breaking bone, and come out as pristine as it was. Lastly, even the Warren Commission had to speculate that Connally suffered a delayed reaction to his wounds, to make it seem that the two men were it by the same bullet.

Answer: Ruby knew the name of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

At the Friday night press conference at the Dallas police station, amazingly nightclub owner Jack Ruby was in attendance. When someone misnamed Oswald's associations, Ruby publicly corrected him by naming accurately, 'The Fairplay for Cuba Committee,' a chapter of which Oswald had formed in New Orleans that summer. How'd he know that?

Answer: Throat wound was a wound of entrance

The Parkland doctors made an emergency tracheotomy over a wound which they thought was presumably a wound of entrance. If that was true, then Kennedy was shot from the front. Since it is claimed Oswald shot from the rear - conspiracy. It was the autopsy doctors who finished their procedures baffled at the course of events because there did not seem to be enough ammunition in the body or accounted for by other means to justify the carnage.

When the autopsy doctors discovered a day later that the tracheotomy had been over a bullet wound, they (some say incorrectly) did a thought experiment absent from the body to line-up a pass-through shot from the rear.

Answer: The rifle Oswald had with him in the lunchroom was a Mauser

Although Baker couldn't have known the timing implications, he accosted Oswald no more than 90 seconds after the assassination in the second floor lunchroom of the TSBD. If Oswald had done the shooting, then he would have had to wipe his rifle clean of prints, descend four flights of stairs, get into the lunchroom, buy a coke, and then be sipping it, all while not out of breath and allegedly passing two women on the stairs who didn't see him. Roy Truly, who had accompanied Baker into the building, vouched for Oswald and noticed nothing out of the ordinary either.

Answer: Howard Brennan

Although Newman and his family were on the north side of Elm and witnessed the whole thing at close range, and Jean Hill was opposite on the south side, neither were called to testify by the Warren Commission. Brennan was the Warren Commission witness who testified that the shots came from the sixth floor window on the east side of the TSBD.

Answer: The ease in which he defected and which he returned

At the height of the Cold War, a young ex-marine who had worked at a top-secret air base as a radar operator in Japan, defects to the Soviet Union and renounces his US citizenship. Some 15 months later he returns to the US completely unmolested by federal authorities who seem to keep losing track of him.

His tax records which would help in accounting for this expensive foray are still classified documents! Although the Gary Power's U2 shootdown happened in this period, there is no evidence linking the two.

Answer: Autopsy face-sheet and JFK's clothing

Both the Bethesda Hospital autopsy face and JFK's clothes establish a back-wound too low to have exited in a downward direction at the tracheotomy at the knot of the neck-tie. Although James Tague's wounding makes the Warren Commission's job more difficult, and calls for Arlen Spectre to speculate a bit too much, it is only part of the confusion of trajectories rather than directly calling them into question. Whereas the scope on Oswald's rifle WAS misaligned, that plays no part in the confusing trajectories.

Answer: Oswald all but admitted to the crime in private to his brother Robert

When Robert looked into Lee's eyes in their only post-assassination meeting, all Oswald said to Robert was, 'Don't bother looking, because there's nothing there brother.' In fact, no other suspects were ever pursued in the matter, except by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in 1969. Oswald did nothing but deny the charges until his death, uttering the now famous, 'I'm only a patsy.'

Answer: He went down the traffic ramp from the main street

The officer assigned to guard the ramp, Roy Vaughn, consistently testified that Jack Ruby did not go down it to get into the police department basement garage. The Warren Commission said he was mistaken, but the House Select Committee speculated that Ruby was let in through the building by persons unknown - in effect, conceding a conspiracy to kill Oswald.

Although that proves little about a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, it would be nice to know if the two were connected.

Answer: Fingerprints

Initially no one could find any fingerprints on the found rifle - curious, considering that Oswald was supposed to have owned it. But then again, no one ever saw him actually fire it - ever. After Oswald was killed, the FBI found what the Dallas police department couldn't - a palmprint on the stock, proving no more than Oswald touched it recently.

There was one shell left in the chamber of the Mannlicher-Carcano. There was a scope, although an expert who test-fired the rifle said it was so mis-aligned and useless that it would have been better to fire the rifle without it.

Answer: The FBI

FBI agents O'Neill and Sibert attended the unloading of Kennedy's body at Bethesda Hospital in Washington in preparation for the autopsy. They included in their report that there was surgery to Kennedy's head. When would this have been done? The Parkland emergency room doctors report no such surgery. Author David Lifton followed this line of evidence to form the opinion that Kennedy's body had been altered between Dallas and Washington to make his body conform to the Warren Commission scenerio of all bullets from the back.

Answer: Lyndon Johnson

Although accepting the findings of the Warren Report, Johnson occasionally let on that he believed otherwise. He more than likely thought that if the American public ever believed that a foreign power was behind Kennedy's death, a nuclear war would be inevitable.

Answer: True

Ok - this is a gimme. It's a conspiracy trivia test isn't it? Amongst other things, ex-Speaker of the House Tip O'Neal reports that some members of the Kennedy entourage of Nov 22 were pressured by the FBI to change their stories about source of shots because, 'The Kennedy family wanted this wrapped up quickly.' FBI field agent James Hosty has admitted to destroying a threatening note he claims was delivered to the Dallas FBI office in the days following Oswald's death. 'It wasn't illegal, because Oswald was dead, so there could be no trial.' A few days later the Warren Commission was formed, and they may have liked to take a peek at what the note said.