JFK ASSASSINATION Cracking through the conspiracies

ABC News says its computer simulation illustrates the truth about the shooting.
By KATHY BLUMENSTOCK
WASHINGTON POST
When President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot in Dallas on a sunny Friday afternoon 40 years ago, national shock and disbelief were quickly followed by questions and speculation. The phrase "conspiracy theory" became commonly associated with the JFK assassination.
"Because there is still so much fascination, and so many Americans still believe in a conspiracy, it is a natural target for journalists," Peter Jennings of ABC News said. He explores the story in a two-hour special, "Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination -- Beyond Conspiracy" on Thursday at 9.
Technological aid
The show uses a digital re-creation that enables viewers to witness the shooting from different points. Tom Yellin, one of the show's executive producers along with Marc Obenhaus, said the events can be seen "from the point of view of [Texas governor] John Connally, through the scope of the gun, from the grassy knoll, from riding behind JFK. You can move within the space and see what happened from any perspective. It becomes a very powerful piece of evidence."
Jennings called the new technology "shocking in many respects, and yet so clarifying. The ultimate word for this technology is that it is clarifying, in every sense, what really happened.
"We believe we can answer so many questions, including the Dealey Plaza questions, which we have never had a way to do before," Jennings said. "Unless you are an unrequited conspiracy theorist, we think we will prove to you that [Lee Harvey] Oswald acted alone."
At the time of the shooting, Kennedy's motorcade was passing through an area of Dallas called Dealey Plaza. It included a sloping hill -- named the "grassy knoll" by UPI reporter Merriman Smith in his account of the assassination -- and the Texas School Book Depository among its landmarks.
Influence of film
Jennings said another reason for doing the program is that "there is a whole generation, including my own children, who have been raised in part on the Oliver Stone theory of the assassination. This is a terrific opportunity to put that into perspective."
Stone's 1991 film "JFK" showcased a fictional New Orleans district attorney who reopened the assassination files.
"The Stone film has become a kind of cultural touchstone that defines how people see this event," Yellin said. "It was a huge success as a drama. And it did pressure institutions that were holding documents to release them. There were a lot of things that were covered up [by the government], and while they don't inform the question of who killed JFK, they do fuel conspiracy."
Yellin said animator Dale Myers spent the past decade building the 3-D animation of the scene, using maps, autopsy reports, blueprints, more than 500 photos and the Zapruder film, and "you can put yourself in any place in Dealey Plaza."
Film record
Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas businessman, filmed the Kennedy motorcade with a Bell & amp; Howell 8 mm camera and captured the entire shooting sequence on silent, color film. The Zapruder film is the only known complete photographic record of the assassination.
Jennings and Yellin agree their re-creation would have been impossible without the Zapruder film.
"It is a remarkable piece of evidence, a film of a crime in action," Yellin said. "If it is analyzed correctly, it undermines the conspiracy idea."
Jennings said the special includes "a wonderful piece of tape from our TV station in Dallas interviewing Zapruder. They didn't even get his name right," he said. "But that film is a key to history."
The special, Yellin said, "is the 'CSI' version of the assassination, and it produces an unmistakable lab result. One shot missed, two hit -- and they all came from the rear and the area that includes the sixth floor of the book depository, where Oswald's fingerprints were found."
Interviews
For the show, Jennings and his team interviewed more than 70 people, including key players in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; former FBI, CIA, KGB and Dallas police officials; and friends and family of Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby. No members of the Kennedy family were interviewed.
"If you understand Oswald's character and Ruby's character, they are the last people to choose to conspire," Yellin said. "Ruby would've told anybody anything in five minutes, and Oswald was a complete loner."
Jennings said he is stunned by how many people still believe in a conspiracy. "There are tens of thousands of articles, 450 books," he said. "It is an industry, a community of people who very often take and run with one small element.
"The moment there was a suggestion of a gunman on the grassy knoll, conspiracy was born," he said.
Memorable moment
Like most of those who can recall the events of Nov. 22, 1963, Jennings, 65, remembers precisely where he was when he heard the news.
"I was in the Toronto airport. I was working for a news organization based in Ottawa, and I heard on the public address system that the president had been shot," he said. "I called my news director, said there's a plane leaving for Dallas in 20 minutes, should I get on it? He said no. So I got on the plane."
Jennings later covered JFK's funeral. "To go from Dallas, a town prepared to kill the president, to Arlington in a few days was to realize the impact on the country," he said. "I remember the mourning was so deep. The image of the riderless horse, that stayed with me," Jennings said, referring to the black horse that paraded behind JFK's coffin, symbolic of a fallen rider.
Jennings said, "It's fair to say we never in the country got over the assassination. It changed everything. In its own way it is not unlike Pearl Harbor or the events of 9/11. It carries the same emotional impact.
"This project has been very moving. Occasionally it catches you off-guard emotionally, to sit and listen to Oswald. He had never been called 'Lee Harvey Oswald,' you know, only 'Lee,'" Jennings said. "I read that it was William Manchester who wrote that the country needed to call him 'Lee Harvey Oswald.' That the president should have been assassinated by a drifter just named 'Lee' was not enough."