In the case of John Kennedy the government instantly claimed that he was shot only from behind. This was necessary due to the fact that the govenment claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository Building, which was behind Kennedy at the time the shots were fired. The government further claimed that Oswald acted alone, which would make it impossible for any shots to have been fired from the front.
What the government did not know at the time they claimed Oswald was the lone nut assassin was that Abraham Zapruder took a 8mm film of the entire assassination. This film would become a very important source of information. The Zapruder film shows what many witnesses claimed they saw. It shows Kennedy first being hit in the throat and reacting to that shot. He holds up both of his hands to his throat. The bullet hit him in the throat around the area of the trachea. This would be right at the area of the knot in his necktie. A few seconds later he is hit a second time at frame 313 of the Zapruder film. This time he is hit in the area of the right temple above the right eye and just under the hairline. This shot caused severe damage to the right side and rear of President Kennedy's head. If the evidence of the witnesses and the Zapruder film is correct, John F. Kennedy was only shot from the front.
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Secret Service agent Sam Kinney, the driver of the follow up car, reported:I saw one shot strike...the right side of the head. The President then fell to the seat to the left toward Mrs. Kennedy. [18 Warren Commission Hearings 731]
Secret Service agent George Hickey, sitting in the left rear of the follow up car, wrote:I heard what appeared to be two shots and it seemed as if the right side of his head was hit...[18 Warren Commission Hearings 765]
William Eugene Newman with his wife and two small children, was standing at curbside, just in front of the wall on the grassy knoll. The President's car was coming abrest of Newman as Zapruder's camera exposed frame 313. In a TV interview within an hour of the shooting, Newman said,...as the car got directly in front of us...a gunshot from apparently behind us hit the President in the side of the temple. [WFAA TV Dallas,Tx 11-22-63]
Marilyn Sitzman, who stood alongside Zapruder told Josiah Thompson in November, 1966 that the shot hit the President: above the ear and to the front...between the eye and the ear. (in the right temporal region) [Six Seconds in Dallas, pg.102 by Josiah Thompson]
Motorcycle officers Hargis and Martin who were riding behind the Presidential limo and to the left both reported being splattered with blood and brain tissue. Hargis told reporters on 11-22-63 the fatal shot struck, the right side of the head He told the Commission, I was splattered with blood and brain, and a kind of bloody water.[Houston Post 11-23-63 and 6 Warren Commission Hearings 294] Officer Martin testified that the bloody matter ended up on his uniform, helmet and the windshield of his motorcycle. [6 Warren Commission Hearings 292]
Charles Brehm who was standing on the curbside to the left of the limo said about the fatal shot: That which appeared to be a portion of the President's skull went flying slightly to the rear of the President's car and directly to its left. It did fly over to the curb to the left and to the rear [Rush to Judgement pg.56 by Mark Lane]
Texas Highway Patrolman Hurchel Jacks was at the wheel of LBJ's car when it entered Parkland Hospital. Jacks reported what he saw as follows:...one of the Secret Service agents said he had been hit, put your coat over him. One of the agents removed his coat and spread it over the President's body from his chest up. Before the President's body was covered up it appeared that the bullet had struck him above the right ear or near the temple.[18 Warren Commission Hearings 801]
News reporter Seth Kantor made an entry in his notebook on 11-22-63 at Parkland Hospital that the shot entered right temple.[20 Warren Commission hearings 353]
United Press International's White House Correspondant, Merriman Smith transmitted at 1:47 CST by phone:President Kennedy was shot in the right temple. It was a simple matter of a bullet right through the head, said Dr. George Burkley, White House Medical Officer. [UPI A wire, 2:47 EST 11-22-63]
No credible witness claims to have seen Lee Harvey Oswald in the 6th Floor window of the Texas School Book Depository Building. No witnesses claim to have seen Kennedy getting hit from behind. The Zapruder film, in fact, shows reactions to shots that are consistant with shots fired from the front. If Kennedy was shot from the front and Oswald was in the Texas School Book Depository Building, which was behind Kennedy when he was shot, then Oswald did not shoot Kennedy!
Someone had to have been in the front in the area of the grassy knoll.