As a Pennsylvanian, there is a lot I could say, both positive and negative, about Arlen Specter’s life and public service. He was a complicated fellow who compiled a very mixed record. I am not surprised to discover that I am saddened by his death, but I have spent many hours of my life feeling exasperated by Specter’s behavior. I’m not going to go into all of that now, because I believe it is polite to withhold criticism for a few days after public figures die. I will, however, say that the strongest impression I have of Specter was formed from reading about his interview with Gaeton Fonzi where he unsuccessfully attempted to explain the bullet holes in JFK’s jacket and shirt and how they could be consistent with the autopsy report and his single-bullet theory. You can read part of the account of that interview here. Unfortunately, the interview of Fonzi portion is riddled with typos. Here’s the basics of it though. Back in the 1960’s, Mr. Fonzi read an article that questioned the findings of the Warren Commission. His reaction was that the author must be some kind of crackpot, so he interviewed him and discovered that he had some legitimate points. Since he lived in Philly and Arlen Specter had just been elected District Attorney, he decided to go ask Specter about some of the seeming discrepancies in the Report. What happened next was kind of amazing.
Remember that the bullets from Oswald came from behind the president. And the trajectory of the bullets started six stories above ground. So, any bullet passing through the president would make a hole in his jacket and shirt that was lower in the front than in the back (barring some ricochet off bone). That wasn’t the only problem, though. The “entry” holes in the jacket and shirt of the president were five to six inches below the collar, but the actual wound was reported to be under his ear.
The photographs of the shirt worn by the President shows a hole in the back consistent with the one in the jacket, about five-and-three-quarter inches below the top of the collar and one-and-one-eighth inches to the right of the middle. The discrepancy is obvious.
The locations of both these holes are inconsistent with the wound below the back of the right ear described in the Commission’s autopsy report.
I’ll never forget asking Specter about that as I sat in his City Hall office in Philadelphia. (It was about a year after he had returned from his Warren Commission job; he had recently been elected District Attorney.)
“Well,” he said, “that difference is accounted for because the President is waving his arm.” He got up from his desk and attempted to demonstrate his explanation on me, pulling my arm up high over my head. “Wave your arm a few times,” he said, “wave at the crowd.” He was standing behind me now, jabbing a finger into the base of my neck. “Well, see, if the bullet goes in here, the jacket gets hunched up. If you take this point right here and then you strip the coat down, it comes out at a lower point.”
A lower point?
“Well, not too much lower on your example, but the jacket rides up.”
If the jacket were “hunched up,” I asked, wouldn’t there have been two holes as a result of the doubling over of the cloth?
“No, not necessarily. It … it wouldn’t be doubled over. When you sit in the car it could be doubled over at most any point, but the probabilities are that … aaah … that it gets … that … aaah … this … this is about the way the jacket rides up. You sit back … sit back now … all right now … if … usually, as your jacket lies there, the doubling is right up here, but if … but if you have a bullet hit you right about here, which is where I had it, where your jacket sits … it’s not … it ordinarily doesn’t crease that far back.”
What about the shirt?
“Same thing.”
Was Specter saying there was no inconsistency between the Commission’s location of the wound and the holes in the clothing?
“No, not at all. That gave us a lot of concern. First time we lined up the shirt … after all, we lined up the shirt … and the hole in the shirt is right about, right about the knot of the tie, came right about here in the slit in the front … “
But where did it go in the back?
“Well, the back hole, when the shirt is laid down, comes … aah … well, I forget exactly where it came, but it certainly wasn’t higher, enough higher to … aah … understand the … aah … the angle of decline which …”
Was it lower? Was it lower than the slit in the front?
“Well, I think that … that if you took the shirt without allowing for its being pulled up, that it would either have been in line or somewhat lower.”
Somewhat LOWER?
“Perhaps. I … I don’t want to say because I don’t really remember. I got to take a look at that shirt.”
You can read the Warren Commission’s account of this bullet here. Mr. Fonzi was so suspicious of Specter’s behavior and explanation that he spent years investigating the assassination, including for Congress. You can read his bio here.
