Assassinations committee raises new questions over Kennedy

Press, 28 December 1978, Page 6

Assassinations committee raises new questions over Kennedy

NZPA-Reuter Washington

A committee set up to confirm that President John F. Kennedy was killed by one man acting alone ceases its activities this week having instead raised new doubts.

Public disquiet over the assassination 15 years ago has increased since the House of Representatives Assassinations Committee heard that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald had probably also fired at the Presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Two years ago the com-

mittee was given SUS6M to quell speculation that a conspiracy existed. Instead, acoustics experts told the Congressmen they were 95 per cent certain that four shots were fired at the President and that one came from in front, not fron the schoolbook depository where Oswald was concealed. Their testimony — to be examined at a public hearing tomorrow — could provide the first real evidence that shots came from both directions and that the Warren Commission report 14 years ago was wrong about Os-

wald having acted alone. President Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded President Kennedy, was known at the time to be anxious to quell public concern about a possib I e communist-inspired plot against the United States — fears prompted by Oswald’s Soviet connections.

Conspiracy theories have includuded allegations that President Kennedy was killed in retaliation for Central Intelligence Agency efforts to murder the Cuban leader, Dr Fidel Castro, and that Dr Castro himself could have been involved. Dr Castro has cate-

gorically denied any in volvement.

: The new testimony by i Professor Mark Weiss and I his assistant, Mr Ernest ■ Aschkensay, of Queen’s College, New York, was based I on sophisticated studies of a tape recording inadvertently made by a Dallas motorcycle policeman at the time iof the shooting. The experts testified that there was a greater than 95 per cent probability that the sounds of four shots were ! on the tape and that one came from a grassy knoll in front of the Presidential limousine.