Science or propaganda?
JFK sniper's nest trajectory
gets short shrift from Nova

One-sided science is the best that can be said about Nova's partial defense of the Warren commission findings.

The thrust of the Nova special marking the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder is that a single military bullet from the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle allegedly used could indeed have inflicted the damage that occurred and still have been in nearly pristine condition. One cannot easily quibble with the expert analysis done by the father-son team of ballistics experts Luke and Mike Haag. They found that the military weapon's rifling combined with the bullet's shape and military jacketing helped ensure a powerful hit, the projectile capable of drilling through much skin and bone and emerging nearly undamaged.

However, Nova promised a full ballistics reconstruction based on modern technology, but then failed to deliver. The program demonstrated a laser-based image of the entire vicinity of the assassination, including the grassy knoll and the window that supposedly fronted the "sniper's nest." Months of computer time was needed to reconstruct the Dealey Plaza area. A computer analysis of this huge amount of data showed that a shot could indeed have been fired from behind a stockade fence at President Kennedy. However, the experts decided the bullet would have exited at an angle that did not match the angles attributed to findings of the botched autopsy.

Nova gave quite a bit of attention to arguments opposing a grassy knoll shot, but said very, very little about the reconstruction of the very difficult shots from the Texas School Book Depository. It is here in particular that one must question the scientific integrity of the show's producers. (By the way, the Haags' computer simulation verified this reporter's 1984 conclusion that there was a clear field of fire from behind the stockade fence to the president's vehicle.)

Another sign of bad journalistic practice: Excerpts of interviews with government critics were trimmed in such a way as to aid the desire of the writers to direct the reader toward certain conclusions that fit the lone-gunman theory, a theory that has been promoted by the federal government since Nov. 22, 1963. One is left with the (probably accurate) impression that some important criticisms have been deleted.

Nova showed bits of the Zapruder film in a decidedly unscientific manner, running segments at varying film speeds in a manner that added no knowledge.

Interestingly, a close examination of the film Nova shows includes an open umbrella (it's a sunny day) sticking out from in front of a big road sign just as Kennedy is being shot.  Not only does Nova ignore the "umbrella man" but the umbrella in its film appears to have been shaded in such a way as to make it very hard to notice. Many years later, the umbrella man said he had opened the umbrella as a protest against Kennedy's "appeasement" of communists, in emulation of Neville Chamberlain, the umbrella-toting British prime minister known for his appeasement of Hitler. Be that as it may, he and another man sat down on the curb and were cool, calm and collected while everyone else was running about or taking cover.

Would that Nova had undertaken a scientific analysis of the photo of Oswald that appeared on the cover of Life magazine. Anyone with a critical eye can see that there are numerous things wrong with it.

This photo, which seems to promote the idea of Oswald as Marxist revolutionary, has long been the subject of controversy. An interesting detail is that the scale is way off. In 1984, I visited the address where this photo was purportedly taken, and it was apparent that the staircase dimensions did not accord with a typical adult standing where Oswald is allegedly standing.