The Wounding of James Tague Refutes the Lone-Gunman Theory

[Michael T. Griffith]

It should be pointed out that a shot fired from a lower floor of the Dal-Tex Building could have narrowly missed JFK and gone on to strike the curb near Tague. A number of witnesses believed a shot or two came from the Dal-Tex Building, and, interestingly enough, a reenactment done with lasers in Dealey Plaza in 1999 found that one of the acknowledged hits on Kennedy could be traced back to a lower floor of the Dal-Tex Building. A miss from the first, second, or third floor of the Dal-Tex Building is far more plausible candidate for the cause of the curb mark than a shot from the TSBD. Just look at these photos:

[Michael T. Griffith]

It should be noted that when the Dallas Morning News published one of Tom Dillard’s photos of the Tague curb scar, it gave the photo the caption “Concrete Scar," and the narrative under the photo said,

A detective points to a chip in the curb. . . .  A bullet strike from the rifle that took President Kennedy’s life apparently caused the hole. (Dallas Morning News, 11/23/1963, in Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, University Press of Kansas, 2015 edition, p. 118)

“Concrete scar,” “chip in the curb, “the hole.” So the editors who viewed the photos did not see a “smear” but a “scar,” “chip,” and “hole.”

Moreover, the first two FBI reports that mentioned the Tague incident corroborated this description. The FBI report on the FBI interview with Tague quoted him as saying that when he looked around on the curb near him, he saw "there was a chip missing" (McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 119). And in the Dallas FBI field office's report on the assassination, SA Gemberling said that "one bullet . . . crashed into a curb and struck Jim Tague" (Ibid.).

[Royell Storing]

  This stuff about the Teague curb strike being a Bullet FRAGMENT is proposed solely to stay within the confines of 3 Shots Total & ALL 3 being fired by the Carcano.  The distance from the 1st strike to the Teague curb is roughly a Full Football Field. A Bullet FRAGMENT traveling roughly 100 yds and then somehow still managing to inflict damage to a street curb is  . A missed 4th Shot hitting the Teague curb is far more plausible.

[Brian Roselle]

Previously my gut feeling was that a Carcano fragment that had to travel 260 feet or so could not get there and do any damage to the curb by Tague. 

But looking into the situation further it appeared that indeed it could. If the curb mark was related to the shooting, I concluded that one cannot exclude that scenario as a possible cause of the curb mark (and possible indirect cause of a cheek scratch).

[Brian Roselle]

I should have clarified on my last message that a 250-260 foot distance for a fragment reaching Tague that I looked at would have been for a 3rd shot (head shot) fragment.  A fragment doing this from a first (missed) shot, much further upstreet, would be more unlikely given the distance involved and the likely magnitude of change in direction required for the resultant fragments vs the source bullet. Sorry if there was any confusion. Thx.

[Michael T. Griffith]

By the way, the August 14 and August 25 drafts of the WC’s report, relying on FBI information on the Tague curb mark, said that “scientific examination” corroborated Walters and Tague’s statements that the mark had been made by a bullet:

Scientific examination of the mark on the south curb of Main Street corroborated the opinions of Walthers and Tague that it was made by a bullet.

But then Rankin and other WC staffers realized this was unacceptable, and they ensured that the final version of the report contained no such clear-cut admission. Dr. Gerald McKnight, a professor emeritus of history at Hood College in Maryland, comments on the report’s treatment of the Tague wounding:

The absence of copper, according to the report, precluded the possibility that the “mark on the curbing section was made by an unmutilated military full metal-jacketed bullet.” The report left open the possibility that the mark had been made by a bullet fragment but was quick to declare that it “cannot be identified conclusively with any of the three shots fired.” What the FBI had earlier identified as a “nick” or “chip mark” on the curb was suddenly a “smear.” The more decisive language of the August 25 draft, relying on FBI lab results, which did not shrink from asserting that a bullet had hit the curb, was now revised. Citing the same FBI science, the Warren report resorted to inconclusive and fuzzy speculation about long-shot possibilities of a fragment from the headshot or a ricocheting missed shot that first hit some other object before it hit the curb.

As will be made apparent, the report’s flimsy reasoning and evasive and tortured construction were intended to salvage credibility for the single-bullet theory and to hide evidence of the presence of at least one other Dealey Plaza gunman. . . .

Reporting the complete results of the FBI's laboratory examination of the Tague curbstone would have destroyed the single-bullet theory and the Commission's solution to the assassination. If a bullet had scarred the curb, as the August 14 and the August 25 "Final Draft" had unequivocally stated, then at least one shot had come from somewhere other than the "sniper's nest," and Dallas was a conspiracy. (Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, University Press of Kansas, 2005, pp. 281-282, 285)