CHAPTER VII. LEE HARVEY OSWALD: BACKGROUND AND POSSIBLE MOTIVES
This chapter traces Oswald’s life from his October 18, 1939 birth in New Orleans—two months after his father’s death—through childhood in orphanages and foster homes, difficult New York City school years, and Marine Corps enlistment at seventeen. It examines his teenage interest in Marxism, October 1959 defection to the Soviet Union, attempted suicide and citizenship renunciation, April 1961 marriage to Marina Prusakova, and June 1962 return to the United States. The chapter reviews Oswald’s employment history, family relationships, the April 1963 Walker attack, his pro-Castro New Orleans activities, and his unsuccessful late September 1963 visa attempts in Mexico City.
The Commission identified factors possibly contributing to Oswald’s decision to assassinate the President: deep-rooted resentment of authority, inability to form meaningful relationships, pattern of rejecting environments for new surroundings, desire for a place in history, demonstrated capacity for violence in the Walker shooting, and avowed commitment to Marxism as he interpreted it. Although the Commission could not definitively determine Oswald’s motives, it presented the full range of background evidence so others might draw their own conclusions.
CHAPTER VIII. THE PROTECTION OF THE PRESIDENT
The final chapter evaluates Secret Service performance protecting President Kennedy and recommends improvements. The Commission found the Protective Research Section lacked sufficient personnel and technical resources, its threat-identification criteria were too narrowly focused on direct threats, and liaison with other federal agencies was insufficient. It concluded that more careful FBI coordination might have brought Oswald’s activities to the Secret Service’s attention, though the FBI bore no official responsibility to refer such information under existing criteria.
Advance preparations, thorough at Love Field and the Trade Mart, were deficient elsewhere. The Secret Service did not investigate buildings along the motorcade route; responsibility for watching windows was divided unclearly between local police and motorcade agents; and the Presidential limousine’s configuration limited agents’ ability to respond to danger. The Commission recommended creating a Cabinet committee to oversee Presidential protection, appointing a special assistant to the Treasury Secretary to supervise the Secret Service, overhauling the Protective Research Section, formalizing relationships with local police, ensuring adequate personnel and facilities, making Presidential assassination a federal crime, and establishing ethical standards for news media coverage of criminal investigations.
Chapter III
The autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital revealed that the bullet entered Kennedy’s back, passed between two large strap muscles without striking bone, bruised the top of the right lung, and tore the trachea before exiting through the front of the neck—the same area later obliterated by Dr. Malcolm Perry’s emergency tracheotomy at Parkland. Humes determined the bullet lost little velocity in soft tissue, exiting at approximately 1,772–1,798 fps after entering at 1,904 fps. Army Wound Ballistics tests at Edgewood Arsenal confirmed that 6.5mm entry and exit wounds at this velocity appear similar, explaining why Drs. Carrico and Perry initially could not determine the wound’s direction. Only after considering the autopsy, muzzle velocity, and travel distance did both conclude it was an exit.
Confusion arose from Perry’s remarks at a chaotic Parkland press conference on November 22. Without knowing of the back wound, Perry hypothetically considered a bullet entering the throat, striking the spine, and deflecting upward through the skull. The New York Herald Tribune reported Perry as saying only it was “possible” the neck wound was an entrance, consistent with his later testimony.
Clothing examination corroborated the autopsy. FBI Agent Robert Frazier identified a circular entrance hole on the suit jacket’s rear 5⅜ inches below the collar and 1¾ inches right of the center seam, with copper traces and inward-pressed cloth fibers. The shirt showed a corresponding entrance hole 5¾ inches below the collar and two ragged vertical slits on the front indicating exit. The tie bore a horizontal nick on the left side of the knot, consistent with horizontal bullet passage.
Governor Connally sustained four wounds from the same shot: back entry, chest exit below the right nipple after shattering his fifth rib, wrist wound with embedded metal fragments, and thigh puncture containing a small metallic fragment. Dr. Robert Shaw initially believed the bullet entered the wrist through the palm, but Dr. Charles Gregory’s surgical examination revealed cloth fibers carried into the wound, differential air patterns, and small metal fragments near bone—all indicating back-to-front passage.
In 70-yard tests using the C2766 into comparable tissue, Army experts demonstrated the wrist wound could not have come from a pristine bullet. Connally’s wrist showed the opposite pattern from test wounds—larger entry, smaller exit—indicating a tumbling projectile. The recovered stretcher bullet, weighing 158.6 grains versus an original 160–161, was nearly whole, indicating substantial prior velocity loss before striking the wrist. Three Parkland physicians independently concluded a single bullet traversed Connally’s chest, tumbled through his wrist, and punctured his thigh at very low velocity before falling out.
Through motion picture analysis and FBI reenactments on May 24, 1964, the Commission established shots came from above and behind the limousine, specifically from the southeast corner window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. The Zapruder camera operated at 18.3 frames per second; tests with the assassination rifle established a minimum 2.3-second firing interval. Using the Secret Service followup car with stand-ins matching Kennedy and Connally, agents repositioned the boxes, raised the window halfway, and mounted the C2766 with a camera recording the view through its scope.
At frame 166, the President passed behind an oak tree obscuring the assassin’s scope view. He briefly reappeared at frame 186, with full clearance from frame 210 onward. His neck-wound reaction became “barely apparent” at frame 225, indicating he was struck between frames 210 and 225, positioned 138.9 to 153.8 feet west of station C at the Houston curbline.
Frazier testified the bullet exiting Kennedy’s neck at high velocity could not have missed the limousine and its occupants, and windshield damage could not have resulted from it. Since no other bullet struck the vehicle, the shot most likely struck Connally, seated before Kennedy. Surveying through the rifle’s scope at frames 207 and 210 yielded declination angles of 21°34’ and 20°11’, averaging 20°52’30“. Adjusting for the 3°9’ downward street grade produced a probable angle through Kennedy’s body of 17°43’30“—consistent with a trajectory entering Connally’s back and exiting below his right nipple, matching Dr. Shaw’s measured 25° declination through Connally’s chest. Army experts Drs. Olivier and Arthur J. Dziemian, chief of the Wound Ballistics Branch, concluded it was “very good” probability that a single bullet caused both men’s wounds.
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