How many bullets did oswald fire

However, Bolinas author Josiah Thompson says he has answered one very important question. Thompson's new book, "Last Second in Dallas", comes to a startling conclusion about Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested for shooting the president from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

He did not kill John Kennedy. What is most important to this story is how Life Magazine hired him in to examine JFK assassination evidence for a cover story. Thompson himself interviewed many of the key witnesses, and in , he wrote what's considered to be one of the seminal books on the assassination, "Six Seconds in Dallas".

Thompson now says he got one important fact about the film wrong -- he thought between frames and , the president's head moved forward 2. Well, that's the bullet coming out. Now, Thompson realizes that the image smears from frame to , it's not the president's head that moves forward, it's Zapruder jerking his camera at the sound of gunfire.

Thompson said, "So, what we were seeing in and what I viewed as an exit of a bullet, because of that movement, is not that. It's very clear. It's the impact of a bullet which blows impact debris downwards and rearwards, and upwards and rearwards. Thompson is now convinced, the fatal shot came from a second gunman: "It was fired from the right front from 12 feet west of the corner of the stockade fence, a very, very exact location. Thompson makes another compelling argument for a second gunman, based on what the United States House Select Committee On Assassinations concluded.

At just the time that Americans were learning that the government lied to them about Vietnam and Watergate, they now discovered it had lied about aspects of the assassination of President Kennedy. There were now two conspiracies: The conspiracy to assassinate the President and, potentially, an even larger and more insidious conspiracy among powerful figures in government and the media to cover it up.

Before the s most conspiracy theories focused on the Russians or possibly the Cubans. By the s, polls showed that large majorities of Americans now believed their own government was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. In , filmmaker Oliver Stone tapped into these doubts, and added his own paranoid twist, to create the popular movie, JFK. The film portrayed an elaborate web of conspiracy involving Vice President Lyndon B.

The movie makes it seem that First Lady Jackie Kennedy was the only person in Dealey Plaza that day who was not planning to murder the President. The movie ended with a plea for audience members to ask Congress to open all Kennedy assassination records. The plea worked. In , Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act that placed all remaining government documents pertaining to the assassination in a special category and loosened the normal classification guidelines.

It set a year deadline for the release of all documents. That deadline was October 26, Lee Harvey Oswald holds a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and newspapers in a backyard. This is one of the controversial photos used in the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Credit: Corbis via Getty Images. The legislation led to the most ambitious declassification effort in American history—more than five million documents in total.

Over the next 25 years, the government fully released 88 percent of materials related to the assassination, and another 11 percent of partially redacted documents. As of October , only one percent of documents remained classified.

There have been no shocking revelations in these documents; nothing to challenge the conclusions of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Moreover, there have been no convincing alternative explanations of what took place in Dallas on November 22, At the same time, authors such as Gerald Posner Case Closed and Vincent Bugliosi Reclaiming History effectively refuted all the major conspiracy theories.

Technology has also conspired against conspiracy. Digital recreations of the Zapruder film prove conclusively that all three shots fired at the Kennedy motorcade came from the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building. This latter point about the second shot and its approximate timing has been settled by a number of investigators, scholars, and writers, whose estimated timing of the hit range is between about Z and Z One problem with pinpointing the time of the first shot has been the erroneous assumption that it must occur during the Zapruder film, but I believe this is a common error.

Please examine the Willis picture. This is from a series of pictures on Elm Street taken by Mr. Willis opposite the TSBD. Zapruder is visible on the pedestal filming what will become an assassination. Studies done in the mids indicated that the moment Mr. Willis took this picture was when a first bullet is in the air toward its intended target. Connally is obviously reacting to a first shot in frames and when the limousine emerges from the Stemmons sign. A startled Connally is looking to his right; he is not hit at this point.

Jackie is clearly looking at her husband. By frame , JFK is clearly reacting to the his bullet wound while Connally is showing no signs of being hit. Given the significant damage to Connally, especially to his right lung, he should be showing signs of distress. The Warren Commission, being puzzled as to how to explain this, concocted the notion that Connally was suffering from a delayed reaction.

Remember that Governor Connally, himself a lifelong hunter and familiar with the sounds of rifles, testified that he heard a shot before he was actually hit. That memory would be repeated in a major Life magazine investigation in , in Connally's Minutes interview in , and again in January when Connally appeared on Larry King Live.

I turned my head in the direction of the sound, which seemed to come from behind my right shoulder. I turned to the left, toward President and Mrs. In the middle of my turn, I felt a thud, as if someone had pounded me on the back with a fist, a blow so hard. Lastly, there are two other issues which are not being addressed. In no film or photo is any member of the Secret Service reacting to any such rifle shot in any Zapruder frame prior to frames to If there was such a shot at frame Z, one would have expected to have seen at least one agent, if not more, looking either at the presidential limo or to other surrounding areas of Dealey Plaza.

This is simply not the case. Neither agents Greer nor Kellerman are reacting in any manner prior to Frame Note that agents are clearly reacting after Z Agent Hill is seen in the Altgen photo looking at the limousine prior to his run to assist. As an aside, the newly released Jeffries film shows Agent Hill riding on left rear bumper of the presidential limousine seconds prior to the assassination. Hill jumped back to the Secret Service follow-up car before the car turned onto Houston Street on its way to Elm Street.

Many have tried over the years to place the first shot occurring on Houston Street or even directly below the 6th floor window. Even reading through Mr. This is still a question worthy of continued discussion.

Steve Armstrong. I am pleased to see that someone has finally looked at, and is taking seriously, the evidence in this case and not simply expounding a theory based on what they think they see in the Zfilm.

The witnesses to the assassination overwhelmingly not a simple majority but 44 to 6 recalled that the last two shots were closer together than the first two.

As these authors note, this is a highly significant convergence that could not occur by random mistake. It is probative evidence that cannot be ignored.

I will have to study this new theory carfully. But I think there are big problems with it. I don't think the authors have looked at enough of the witness evidence. All the witnesses who observed JFK at the time of the first shot said he reacted immediately by bringing his hands down and moving left. Of course we know that he does that because he was hit in the neck. But that is not all of it. The occupants of the motorcade cars put the first shot after the Vice President's car had turned the corner, and as the VP followup car was just completeing its turn.

At the time these authors say the first shot occurred, these cars were well down on Houston Street.