Background
Anyone who views Oliver Stone’s film JFK realizes that his prime evidence for conspiracy is JFK’s lurch to the rear and left when he is hit by the fatal head shot. This Stone interprets as proof of a shot from the right front, i.e., the grassy knoll. Given how our eyes can deceive us, it is very important to determine just how much scientific evidence Stone has to support his conclusion. I have searched the screenplay and the accompanying articles in the Stone/Sklar book and found six places where Stone discusses this evidence. Here are all the passages. Read each passage carefully and paraphrase its evidence in a few simple words or phrases. Then list them under the two categories "Evidence for a shot from the front" and "Evidence against a shot from the rear." Then summarize the types and strengths of each category. Overall, what can you conclude about Stone’s evidence for a shot from the front? You may write your paraphrases on these sheets.

Passages from Stone
(1) [Research note on page 162 of screenplay] Grassy Knoll shooter: The HSCA’s acoustics panel confirmed a 95% probability that the third shot came from behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll, to the right front of the President’s car [HSCA Report, p. 74] but that the shot fired from a distances of about 35 yards missed its target. The visual evidence says otherwise; the President’s head snaps back as if shot from the right front. [Emphasis added]

(2) Page 165 of screenplay:

(3) [Stone’s article "The JFK Assassination—What about the evidence?]

BELIN AND FORD: Nineteen medical experts have examined the autopsy photographs and x-rays of President Kennedy and concluded that all the shots struck Kennedy from the rear.

EVIDENCE [Stone]: While the "official" autopsy photos and x-rays to show that all shots came from the rear, the 26 trained medical personnel—doctors, nurses, technicians—who treated the president at Parkland Hospital testified to the Warren Commission that they saw an exit-type wound in the back of the head, a wound that is inconsistent with the photos and x-rays. Neither the Warren Commission nor the HSCA showed the photos and x-rays to the Dallas doctors. Until this happens, the medical evidence proves absolutely nothing.

BELIN AND FORD: Unequivocal ballistics evidence show [sic] that the bullet that struck the president in the head and the bullet that passed through President Kennedy’s neck and struck Gov. Connally were fired from Oswald’s rifle.

EVIDENCE: The evidence is far from unequivocal. the Warren Commission tests reported "minor variations" in the various bullet fragments, making the results at best inconclusive. More sophisticated analysis by the HSCA came to the same non-conclusion—that it was "highly likely" but not certain that the fragments matched each other in composition.

BELIN AND FORD: A "massive neuromuscular reaction" caused the president’s head to move backward when struck from the rear by a bullet.

EVIDENCE: A "massive neuromuscular reaction," according to Messrs. Ford and Belin, occurs when there is massive damage inflicted to nerve centers of the brain." The nerve centers of the brain are the pons, the medulla, the cerebellum—all located in the rear of the brain. According to the Warren Commission and the HSCA, the head shot damaged the right cerebral hemisphere of Kennedy’s brain—not a nerve coordination center, not capable of causing a "massive neuromuscular reaction."

(4) [Stone’s article "JFK is not responsible—choosing to ignore the evidence is"]

2—The neuromuscular reaction that Mosk [writer of previous article] claims accounts for the backward snap of Kennedy’s head when struck by a bullet from behind could happen only if a major coordinating center of the brain is damaged. According to the x-rays and autopsy photos that Mosk champions as evidence of a shot from behind, those areas of the brain are intact.

Mosk’s secondary explanation, the "jet effect"—a phenomenon wherein brain matter would exit back through the entry hole, driving the head backward—only works under certain pressure conditions, none of which exist in the human cranial vault.

3—While the "official" autopsy photos and x-rays do show all the shots coming from the rear, the 26 medical personnel who treated the President at Parkland Hospital testified to the Warren Commission that they saw an exit-type wound in the rear of the President’s head, inconsistent with the photos and x-rays.

Neither the commission nor the 1976-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations showed the autopsy material to the Parkland doctors to clarify this point. We also know now that if the Bethesda Naval Hospital autopsy was not rigged, it was certainly a compromised affair. Dr. Pierre Finck, one of the three military doctors who signed the Bethesda autopsy report, testified at the Garrison trial that he was "ordered" by generals and admirals not to track the bullet through the neck.

5—In overturning the "fourth shot" findings of the House Select Committee, the National Academy of Sciences unknowingly tested a second-generation dub of the Dallas police Dictabelt, therefore invalidating their results.

The J.F.K. case is a simple homicide investigation but it has never been treated as such. It should be especially simple because we have the 8-millimeter home movie by Abraham Zapruder that shows exactly what happened to President Kennedy.

In response to the Zapruder film showing Kennedy’s head snapping back in reaction to a shot from the front, the government produces a series of "experts" who tell you that what you see is not what really happened. Ask any homicide detective how many times they’ve had to take into account neuromuscular reactions, jet effects and seven wounds in two men with one undamaged bullet in all the gun-related murders they’ve investigated and you’ll get an astounded stare in response.

(5) [Stone’s article "Oliver Stone talks back"]

"It is completely beyond me, as a twice-wounded combat veteran, that grown men on government panels, some supposedly experts in wound ballistics and firearms, can sit through the 22-second Zapruder film and say that it looks like the fatal head shot came from behind. Or that the solitary, infamous "magic bullet" could cause seven wounds in Kennedy and Governor John Connally, breaking two dense bones, and emerge with virtually no metal missing, not to mention traveling along a path that defies the laws of physics. In the face of such implausibilities and new acoustics evidence, the 1979 HSCA Report acknowledged the 95 percent probability of a grassy-knoll shot, but immediately the government and the establishment media downplayed those official "fourth shot" findings in favor of the comfortable altogether unlikely Oswald-did-it-alone scenario.

(6) [Stone’s article "Warren Panel findings should stir outrage"]

To the Editor:

Anthony Lewis’s Jan 9 column is only one in a series of attacks in The Times on me and my movie JFK, and, in fact, on anything that questions the Warren Commission’s findings on the assassination of President Kennedy. New York Times writers have done no investigation of their own; why do they continue to defend tooth and nail the commission’s findings more than a decade after the House Select Committee on Assassinations sharply criticized and documented the deficiencies in the commission’s investigations?

Mr. Lewis tells us, for instance, that medical experts told the commission the backwards snap of the President’s head as seen in the Zapruder film were the result of a "seizure-like neuromuscular reaction" in response to damage to major nerve centers in the brain and not inconsistent with a shot from behind. This is entirely misleading and false.

Mr. Lewis is quoting from the House Select Committee on Assassinations report of 1973. Nowhere in the Warren Commission material is there an explanation of the backward movement of the President’s head. Moreover, a Federal Bureau of Investigation "printing error" of crucial Zapruder film frames in the commission volumes gave the impression that the President fell forward—exactly the opposite of what the running film shows. the autopsy photos and x-rays show no damage to the major nerve centers of Kennedy’s brain, making such a neuromuscular reaction impossible.

Explicitly for a shot from the front:

Against the evidence for a shot from the rear: