I read recently that it was a Secret Service agent which had an accidental discharge of the M16 rifle which fired the fatal bullet. The agent was in the car following Kennedy and when the first shot by Oswald was fired, he grabbed the rifle and is so doing fired the fatal round. It seemed to be totally plausible to me.
“Mortal Error” covers the work by ballistics expert Howard Donahue. It’s very well done. Folks that call it unsubstantiated speculation miss the fact that it is the simplest and most plausible, and as far as I have found in 40 years of interest in the JFK assassination, the only theory that fully accounts for both all of the physical and witness evidence and all of the massive irregularities in the secret service actions after the shooting, the investigation, and the autopsy.
Colin McLaren, an Australian police detective, wrote “The Smoking Gu” from his police investigation perspective and came to the same conclusions.
In effect, you had a rookie Secret Service Agent you was in the car due to an unforeseen vacancy, who was carrying a just introduced to the secret service AR-15 using 55 gr soft point ammunition. He was sitting on the back of the rear seat of the convertible following Kennedy, he heard Oswald shoot, looked over his shoulder in Oswald’s direction while bringing up the AR-15, slipped and pulled the trigger shooting Kennedy in the back of the head.
It explains:
- the cadence of the three shots fired;
- the witness reports of gunfire at street level;
- the witnesses who smelled gun powder at street level;
- the wound in Kennedy’s head;
- the many small fragments in the X-ray of his head (when the low velocity FMJ round from the Carcano doesn’t fragment);
- the Secret Service’s refusal to allow an autopsy in Dallas;
- the bizarre Secret Service interference in the autopsy that did occur in MD;
- the suppression of evidence from the autopsy;
- the disappearance of Kennedy’s brain (which prevented analysis of the fragments which would have matched the jacket material of the Remington made .223 round, and excluded the 6.5 Carcano ammunition in Oswald’s possession;
- the call to Bobby Kennedy by the agent in charge stating “there has been an accident”; and
- the fact that Hickey was the only agent on scene who was never formally interviewed by anyone from the justice department, treasury department or warren commission.
Donahue did a superb job with the trajectory analysis based on the autopsy evidence and wound descriptions that were available, and the relative positions of the cars.
It also makes sense. The Kennedy assassination was tragic as it was, but for Kennedy to have died as a result of a ND by his own protection detail would have made it even more so.
Also at the immediate time it wasn’t readily apparent that the other round that hit Kennedy would have also most likely been fatal by itself as it was equivalent to a C2 “hangman’s fracture”.
That’s before we even get into the “how incredibly bad this makes the Secret Service look”, even before the inevitable conspiracy/political coup theories would have popped up. Kennedy was a president who won by a very narrow margin in the popular vote, close enough that Nixon could have contested the election but declined to do so as it would have undermined confidence in our electoral process. Kennedy was also a president who was loved or hated with very little middle ground.
Covering up the ND by Hickey was a smart move from several perspectives.
And that cover up also explains why so many of the documents related to the assassination, investigation and autopsy are still classified 60 years after the accident. Releasing them now would still undermine confidence in the government and the secret service. Castro, the Soviets, the mob at the time, are all areas that are dead and buried and would otherwise pose no barrier to releasing the information after 50 years. But the secret service accidentally shooting Kennedy and the resulting cover up? That’s still big news.