Jim Garrison on the single-bullet theory (from Oliver Stone’s JFK)
“A
picture speaks a thousand words. Yet sometimes the truth is too simple for
some…The Warren Commission thought they had an open and shut case: three bullets,
one assassin—but two things happened that made it virtually impossible: 1) the
Zapruder film which you just saw, and 2) the third wounded man, Jim Tague, who
was nicked by a fragment down by the Triple Underpass. The time frame of 5. 6
seconds established by the Zapruder film left no possibility of a fourth shot
from Oswald’s rifle, but the shot or fragment that left a superficial wound on
Tague’s cheek had to come from a bullet that missed the car entirely. Now they
had two bullets that hit, and we know one of them was the fatal head shot. So a
single bullet remained to account for all seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally.
But rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Commissioners
chose to endorse the theory put forth by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen
Specter. One of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people, we’ve
come to know it as the “magic bullet” theory.”
“…the
magic bullet enters the President’s back, headed downward at an angle of 17
degrees. It then moves upward in order to leave Kennedy’s body from the front
of his neck—his neck wound number two—where it waits 1.6 seconds, turns
right and continues into Connally’s body at the rear of his right
armpit—wound number three. Then, the bullet heads downward at an angle of 27
degrees, shattering Connally’s fifth rib and leaving from the right side of
his chest—wounds four and five. The bullet continues downward and then
enters Connally’s right wrist—wound number six—shattering the radius
bone. It then enters his left thigh—wound number seven—from which it later
falls out and is found in almost “pristine” condition on a stretcher in a
corridor of Parkland Hospital. That’s some bullet. Anyone who’s been in
combat can tell you never in the history of gunfire has there been a bullet like
this (the court laughs). The Army
Wound Ballistics experts at Edgewood Arsenal fired some comparison bullets and
not one of them look anything like this one. Take a look at CE 856, an identical
bullet fired through the wrist of a human cadaver—just one of the bones
smashed by the magic bullet. Yet the government says it can prove this with some
fancy physics in a nuclear laboratory. Of course they can. Theoretical physics
can prove an elephant can hang from a cliff with its tail tied to a daisy, but
use your eyes—your common sense—seven wounds, skin, bone. This single bullet
explanation is the foundation of the
Warren Commission’s claim of a lone assassin. And once you conclude the magic
bullet could not create all seven of those wounds, you have to conclude
there was a fourth shot and a second rifleman. And if there was a second
rifleman, there had to be a conspiracy, which we believe involve the accused
Clay Shaw. Fifty-one witnesses, gentlemen of the jury, thought they heard shots
coming from the Grassy Knoll, which is to the right and front of the
President…”