Why the James Tague Wounding Refutes the Lone-Gunman Theory

[Michael T. Griffith]

Here's a good, succinct article on the Tague wounding written in 2013 by NBC journalist Jeff Smith and published on the local NBC Dallas-Fort Worth website:

"Spectator's Minor Injury Changes JFK Assassination Explanation"
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/minor-injury-changed-jfk-assassination-history/2066552/

Smith wrote the article after interviewing Tague in Dealey Plaza. Here's the bulk of the article's content:

Tague was standing under the triple underpass on the west side of Dealey Plaza when the motorcade turned onto Elm Street, in front of the Texas School Book Depository. That's when a sharp noise pierced through the cheering crowds.

"Somebody threw a firecracker. And then I thought what kind of an idiot would be throwing a firecracker with the president driving by," Tague said.

Of course, it wasn't a firecracker -- it was an assassin's bullet.

"I'm standing there still in disbelief over somebody throwing a firecracker, and then, 'Crack! Crack!' Two rifle shots, not a second apart, and something stings me in the face."

What stung Tague was a fragment from a bullet that struck the nearby curb.

"It could've been a mixture of a little bit of lead and concrete," Tague said. "I was sprayed. Debris hit me in the face. Broke the skin in maybe three or four places. A drop of blood in each place. Nothing serious."

But it's arguably the most important "minor injury" in American history, and here's why: Just two weeks after the assassination, the FBI finished its investigation and concluded Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots. Two of those shots hit Kennedy and one hit Connally. The Warren Commission was prepared to reach the same conclusion months later.

But when commissioners read the local newspaper reports proving the curb shot, they realized that one of the three shots missed the motorcade entirely.

"I didn't know I was changing history. I just knew it was probably important that there was a missed shot," Tague said.

The 27-year-old filed an affidavit about what happened.

"All of a sudden the Warren Commission had a big problem. They had to rewrite the report."

That spawned the infamous "single bullet theory" or the "magic bullet theory," the contested conclusion that just one bullet caused significant injuries to both Kennedy and Connally.

"It changed history. If that policeman had not ran up to me, if I had just gotten back in my car and gone home, and forgot all about it, history would've been different," Tague said.

Tague understands his role in history. But even now, 50 years later, he struggles with what happened.

The Tague wounding was not the only reason Arlen Specter had to concoct the fanciful single-bullet theory (SBT), but it was one of two major reasons. The other reason was that Specter and other WC staffers realized there was a serious timing problem caused by Gov. John Connally's wounding as seen in the Zapruder film.

The WC said the first hit occurred between Z210 and Z225. However, they had to account for the dramatic drop of Connally's right shoulder, the puffing of his cheeks, and the pained expression on his face in Z238-242, which clearly indicated Connally was hit by a separate bullet after JFK was first hit, just as Connally insisted was the case. Even assuming JFK was hit at Z210 and Connally was hit two to four frames before Z238, that would still only allow 24 frames between the hit on JFK and the hit on Connally, or only 1.3 seconds -- far, far too little time for the alleged murder weapon to have fired two shots. This vexing timing problem was the other major reason that drove Specter to conjure up the SBT.

[John Corbett]

Tague's injury didn't change anything. It's likely the WC would have arrived at the SBT without it. The Secret Service recreations showed that at the moment JFK was first struck, JBC was directly in line to be hit by the bullet exiting JFK's throat. It would have taken a magic bullet to miss hitting JBC.

The WC considered the possibilities and could not reach a conclusion as to which stray shot had caused Tague's injury. What they did opine is that the mark on the curb contained lead and antimony indicating it was unlikely a whole FMJ bullet had struck the curb. That would mean it could have been the first missed shot that ricocheted and continued down range to strike the curb in front of Tague or it could have been a fragment from the head shot. I lean toward the first explanation but it cannot be proven conclusively that it was a fragment from the first shot that caused Tague's injury.

MTG has proposed a missed shot fired from the Dal-Tex building could have struck the curb near Tague but has offered no evidence of any shot fired from the Dal-Tex or any location other than the TSBD sniper's nest. He demands that the LNs prove every last detail of the shooting but doesn't apply the same standard to his own hypotheses. He offers theories completely devoid of supporting evidence.
His motto seems to be, "One rule for me, another for thee".

[Michael T. Griffith]

Hand waved away by a *know-it-all* that can only respond with insults.

Yes, exactly. He pretends to be a know-it-all but he actually knows very little and has repeatedly embarrassed himself with stunning gaffes.

For example, a few weeks ago Corbett started a thread aimed at my quoting of Dr. Vincent DiMaio on the established forensic fact that FMJ bullets will never shatter into dozens of tiny fragments when striking skull bone and that FMJ bullets are ruled out when x-rays show dozens of tiny fragments. Incredibly, Corbett said DiMaio was talking about FMJ handgun bullets and not FMJ rifle bullets, even though DiMaio specified twice in the quote that he was talking about FMJ rifle bullets.

Sometimes it literally seems like Corbett can't understand English. You just have to wonder how in the world he could have missed the fact that DiMaio specified, twice, that he was talking about FMJ rifle bullets. I had presented that quote to Corbett at least six times, and then he started a thread about my use of the quote and proceeded to make the hilarious blunder of claiming that DiMaio wasn't talking about FMJ rifle bullets but rather FMJ handgun bullets and that therefore I was misrepresenting DiMaio!

Corbett's responses in this thread are just more examples of his usual pitiful, uninformed, and dogmatic blundering and posturing. In his uneducated mind, the SBT is still the only plausible explanation for JFK and Connally's non-fatal wounds, yet our exchanges on the powerful evidence that refutes the SBT prove he has no rational, credible explanation for that evidence.

In his uneducated mind, the WC's comical theory that a fragment from the head shot caused Tague's wounding is "plausible," but then he turns around and hedges his bets by saying, gee, we don't really know what caused Tague's wound. Well, uh, yeah we do: a projectile from a bullet or propelled by a bullet cut Tague's face.

He responds with abject nonsense and evasion when asked to explain the fact that the closest projectile he can offer to explain Tague's wounding have would have come from a bullet (1) that was over 200 feet away, (2) had just finished plowing through a human skull, and (3) would have exited from the righthand side of the skull (whereas Tague was to the left of the limo), not to mention the fact that this fragment would have then had to clear both the limo's windshield and roll bar and then magically dive downward and leftward like a guided missile while somehow, someway, in defiance of the laws of physics, still retaining enough velocity to do the required damage.

And, one wonders who this alleged lone headshot bullet have produced a fragment large enough and with enough velocity to gouge the curb and/or cut Tague's face over 200 feet away, when this same bullet would have had to leave a 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment in the rear outer table of the skull, leave several tiny fragments near the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment (including the McDonnel fragment), leave a 3 x 1 mm fragment and a 7 x 2 mm fragment just above the right orbit at the opposite end of the skull, leave all the fragments contained in the high fragment trail, and also leave two large fragments inside the limo near the driver's seat.

I mean, yikes, even Gerald Posner and Jim Moore don't buy the WC's ridiculous theory.

There's another problem: the sample smears taken from the Tague curb scar contained no copper. Uh oh, that's a big problem, because Oswald's alleged ammo was copper-jacketed FMJ ammo. This is why Posner floats the unscientific fairy tale that when Oswald allegedly fired his first shot from the sixth-floor window, the bullet hit a branch of the oak tree on Elm Street, that this collision supposedly caused the copper jacket to separate from its lead core. Then, so Posner's tale goes, this lead core split into two large fragments, with one fragment flying downward and striking the pavement behind the limo and with the other fragment streaking in a straight line over 400 feet to hit the curb near Tague, somehow weaving through the rest of the tree limbs before continuing its mythical journey to the curb.

Anyone who has done any reading on the behavior of FMJ bullets knows that an FMJ bullet is not going to shed its copper jacket from its lead core merely from hitting an oak limb. That's just not going to happen. FMJ bullets will penetrate 2 to 7 inches into oak wood when fired from less than 200 feet away. If the bullet hits an edge of the limb, it will remove a chip from the edge and continue on its journey with no more than moderate deformation. Such collisions will certainly not cause the jacket to separate from the core.

It is comical that Posner would even propose such a theory and then turn around and defend the SBT, which says that an FMJ bullet ripped through seven layers of skin, smashed 4 inches of rib bone, and shattered a distal radius bone, yet emerged with its jacket and lead core still firmly attached, with minimal deformation, and even with its lands and grooves intact.