Warren Commission (04 of 26): Hearings Vol. IV (of 15)United States. Warren Commission
History
Warren Commission (04 of 26): Hearings Vol. IV (of 15)
United States. Warren Commission
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 -- Assassination; Oswald, Lee Harvey
Mr. SPECTER. What would your assessment of the likelihood be for a
bullet under those hypothetical circumstances to have passed through
the neck of the President and to have passed through only the chest of
the Governor without having gone through either the wrist or into the
thigh?
Dr. GREGORY. I think that is a much more plausible possibility or
probability.
Mr. SPECTER. How about the likelihood of passing through the President
and through the Governor's chest, but missing his wrist and passing
into his thigh?
Dr. GREGORY. That, too, is plausible, I believe.
Mr. SPECTER. Are there any other circumstances of this event which have
been related to you, including the striking of the President's head by
a third bullet, which would account in any way, under any possibility,
in your view, for the fracture of the right wrist which was apparently
caused by a missile?
Dr. GREGORY. May I refer to this morning's discussions?
Mr. SPECTER. Yes, please do.
Dr. GREGORY. This morning I was shown two additional missiles or
portions of missiles which are rather grossly distorted.
Mr. SPECTER. Let me make those a part of the record here, and ask
if those are the missiles which have heretofore been identified as
Commission Exhibit 568 and Commission Exhibit 570.
Dr. GREGORY. These items represent distorted bits of a missile, a
jacket in one case, and part of a jacket and a lead core in the other.
These are missiles having the characteristics which I mentioned
earlier, which tend to carry organic debris into wounds and tend to
create irregular wounds of entry. One of these, it seems to me, could
conceivably have produced the injury which the Governor incurred in his
wrist.
Mr. DULLES. In his wrist?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. And in his thigh?
Dr. GREGORY. I don't know about that, sir. It is possible. But the
rather remarkably round nature of the wound in the thigh leads me to
believe that it was produced by something like the butt end of an
intact missile.
Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you an exhibit heretofore identified as
Commission Exhibit 388, which depicts the artist's drawing of the
passage of a bullet through the President's head, and I ask you, first
of all, if you have had an opportunity to observe that prior to this
moment?
Dr. GREGORY. Yes. I saw this illustration this morning.
Mr. SPECTER. Well, if you assume that the trajectory through the
President's head was represented by the path of a 6.5-mm. bullet which
fragmented upon striking the skull, both the rear and again the top, is
it possible that a fragment coming at the rate of 2,000 feet per second
from the distance of approximately 160 to 230 feet, could have produced
a fragment which then proceeded to strike the Governor's wrist and
inflict the damage which you have heretofore described?
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