WND EXCLUSIVE
Wounded
eyewitness challenges Warren Commission
James T. Tague charges JFK panel tried to
ignore his testimony
Published: 6 days ago
Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND
senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times
best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command."
Corsi's latest book is the forthcoming "What Went Wrong?: The Inside Story
of the GOP Debacle of 2012 … And How It Can Be Avoided Next Time."
WASHINGTON
– James T. Tague, the eyewitness to the JFK assassination who was nicked by a
piece of concrete sidewalk or a bullet fragment from a shot aimed at President
Kennedy, has charged in a new book that the Warren Commission was planning to
ignore his testimony until he objected publicly.
“In early
June 1964 I read in a newspaper that the Warren Commission had finished its
investigation, was sending its Commission helpers home, and was going to write
its report: Three shots fired: first hitting Kennedy, the second Connally, the
third Kennedy, and the deed was done by a ‘lone nut assassin’ named Lee Harvey
Oswald,” Tague writes in “LBJ and the Kennedy Killing.”
“The
‘facts’ were just as (FBI Director J. Edgar) Hoover had stated 48 hours after
the assassination,” he says.
In his
book, Tague comments that in the six months after the assassination he had not
been called to testify before the Warren Commission, even though the FBI
interviewed him Dec. 14, 1963.
“Something
was wrong,” Tague continues. “I felt the missed shot was important, because it
indicated there was more than one shooter. I raised my hand and related to a
reporter what I knew – the story was printed nationwide, and I was at last
called to testify.”
A close
examination of Warren Commission records strongly suggests Tague’s evidence did
influence the commission’s conclusions, but not as Tague had expected.
The only
way for the Warren Commission to incorporate Tague’s testimony and still
conclude that only three shots had been fired, all by Lee Harvey Oswald, was to
adopt the “single-bullet theory.”
Make the evidence fit the conclusion
Of
relevance to Tague’s testimony is a memo written in April 1964 by Norman Redlich, a
special assistant to the Warren Commission. The memo provides evidence the
purpose of the investigation was not to examine the evidence of the JFK
assassination to determine who shot the president, but to substantiate a
politically preconceived conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “lone gun
assassin.”
On April
27, 1964, Redlich wrote a memo to Warren Commission chief counsel Lee J. Rankin
indicating the Warren Commission staff had determined Gov. John Connally was
hit by the second shot, a different bullet than the bullet from the first shot
that hit President Kennedy.
Redlich
wrote:
Our
report presumably will state that the President was hit by the first bullet,
Governor Connally by the second, and the President by the final and fatal
bullet. The report will also conclude that the bullets were fired by one person
located in the sixth floor southeast corner window of the TSBD (Texas School
Book Depository) building.
The
purpose of Redlich’s memo was to argue the Warren Commission staff should make
a field trip to Dallas to identify as closely as possible the exact location on
Elm Street where shots hit Kennedy and Connally, as determined by a close
examination of the famous film by bystander Abraham Zapruder.
“Our
intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy,” Redlich wrote.
He
specified the goal was not to determine whether or not the assassin could have
shot JFK prior to Zapruder frame 190, “but merely to substantiate the
hypothesis which underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin.”
The
wording suggests a predetermined political conclusion. The purpose of the field
trip was not to test whether or not Oswald could have fired all three shots
with the bolt-action rifle, but to “substantiate the hypothesis” by fixing the
earliest possible location where a shooter from that vantage point could have
fired the first shot hitting President Kennedy.
“As our
investigation now stands, however, we have not shown that these events could
possibly have occurred in the manner suggested above,” Redlich conceded. “All
we have is a reasonable hypothesis which appears to be supported by the medical
testimony but which has not been checked out against the physical facts at the
scene of the crime.”
What
Redlich was admitting was that the hypothesis that Oswald was the lone assassin
came first and the examination of the evidence came second, instead of
developing the hypothesis from the evidence.
“If we do
not attempt to answer these questions with observable facts,” Redlich argued,
“others may answer them with facts that challenge our most basic assumptions,
or with fanciful theories based on our unwillingness to test our hypothesis by
the investigatory methods available to us.”
When on
July 23, 1964, Tague testified to the Warren Commission in Dallas that he had
been hit in the cheek by a bullet fragment or a piece of concrete, the Warren
Commission had a problem.
The
problem was compounded when Tague’s testimony was confirmed the next day by the
testimony of Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Eddy Raymond Walthers.
The
officer confirmed Tague was struck by a bullet fragment or a piece of concrete
that had been dislodged from the curb in the Main Street lane of the three
roads that converge at the triple underpass.
Tague’s
testimony also was confirmed by photographic evidence showing exactly where he
stood to watch the motorcade and documenting the cut on his cheek after the
shooting.
Tague was
not sure which shot caused the injury, but he believed it was the second or
third, not the first.
His
testimony forced the Warren Commission to recalculate. If shots one and three
hit JFK, and shot two hit Connally, which shot hit Tague?
The
Zapruder film set a narrow time frame in which the shooting could have
happened, somewhere between 4.8 seconds and 7 seconds, according to the final
report. Even a top expert using a bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle would be
limited to three shots in that time range, especially with the need to zero in
the target with the scope anew for each shot.
Warren Commission’s conclusion
Warren
Commission junior counsel Arlen Specter, later a U.S. senator from
Pennsylvania, came up with the “single-bullet” theory, arguing one bullet hit
both JFK and Connally, one bullet missed and the third bullet was the fatal
head shot that killed JFK.
The
problem the Warren Commission faced was that if four shots were fired, there
had to be a second shooter, since the commission had already determined Oswald
could only have fired three shots in a 4.8- to 7-second interval.
In his
testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Redlich appeared
once again to suggest the Warren Commission’s purpose was to find Oswald
guilty, not necessarily to determine the truth.
“I think
there are simply a great many people who cannot accept what I believe to be the
simple truth, that one rather insignificant person was able to assassinate the
president of the United States,” Redlich told an executive session of the House
panel on Nov. 8, 1977.
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