The JFK 100

Stone's source for this assertion is an article by Harold Feldman, "Fifty-one Witnesses: The Grassy Knoll," published in Minority of One in March 1965. As the Kennedy Assassination Home Page notes, however, "Feldman doesn't list the 51 supposed Grassy Knoll witnesses, and his assessment of the witnesses he does list is wildly at variance with their actual testimony in many cases."

The most comprehensive and accurate tabulation of testimony comes from the House Select Committee that investigated the assassination in the late 1970s. They concluded that twenty witnesses reported that the shots came from the vicinity of the knoll, as opposed to forty-six who reported shots from the area of the Texas School Book Depository, twenty-nine who reported the shots came from another direction, and seventy-six (almost half the total) who said they did not know.⁽²⁾

More importantly, perhaps, only a total of four witnesses, out of 178 tabulated, reported shots coming from more than one direction. (Not surprisingly, these witnesses are commonly cited in conspiracy books -- and in Oliver Stone's JFK -- despite the fact that they are the exceptions, not the rule.)

But even the vast majority of conspiracy believers acknowledge that at least some shots came from behind the President, if not specifically from the Texas School Book Depository.

Also, an overwhelming majority of the witnesses -- 80.8% -- reported hearing two or three shots, with the next largest group -- 10.5% -- reporting a total of one or two shots, and a mere 8.7% reporting four or more shots.⁽³⁾

Yet Oliver Stone claims there were six shots, and he uses earwitness testimony to support his assertion that someone was firing from the grassy knoll.

In a giant echo chamber like Dealey Plaza, earwitness impressions are certainly of limited value; but when only 20.2% of the witnesses reported shots from the knoll, and an overwhelming 91.3% reported hearing a total of three shots or less, how can Oliver Stone justify using such testimony to support an argument of conspiracy?

NOTES:

1. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 153. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.

2. Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy of the Select Committee on Assassinations, House of Representatives, Vol. II, p. 122.

3. Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy of the Select Committee on Assassinations, House of Representatives, Vol. II, p. 122.