The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Thank you for publishing "The Assassination of JohnF. Kennedy: Revisiting the Medical Data."1 The centralconclusion of this study is that the assassinationremains controversial and that some of the controversymust be attributable to the "reporting and handling ofthe medical evidence." With the greatest respect foryou and Dr. Robert McClelland, let me argue that yourtext and on-line interviews perpetuate the central misunderstandingof the assassination and thereby pushresolution of this so-called controversy further into thefuture.The nearly half-century of criticism of The WarrenReport has left many Americans confused about thebasic facts of the case: eyewitnesses waiting for PresidentKennedy's motorcade next to the Texas SchoolBook Depository saw a man on the sixth floor pointa rifle and shoot at the president; the man was lateridentified in a police lineup as Lee Harvey Oswald;the murder weapon was found and traced to Oswald;his palm prints and fingerprints were on the rifle; andextensive ballistics tests proved that a recovered bullethad come from his rifle. Very few murders presentsuch a clear chain of evidence. If we cannot concludethat Oswald shot President Kennedy, we cannot concludethat responsibility for any murder can ever beestablished