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Wecht, Specter joust on single-bullet theory
Sunday, December 02, 2001 By James O'Toole, Politics Editor, Post-Gazette
The figures who met in a Duquesne University lecture hall yesterday share a rare, somber bond. As younger men, as investigators, Sen. Arlen Specter and Dr. Cyril H. Wecht were among the few people who had occasion to squint through the sights of what is perhaps the 20th Century's most infamous rifle, Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano.
"It was an experience I will never forget," Wecht wrote later of his examination of the weapon in the National Archives.
Specter, while a staff attorney for the Warren Commission, cradled the weapon and stood in the same spot in the Texas School Book Depository as Oswald had as part of the investigation's reenactment of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
"When I ... peered through the scope, sighting on the figure in the rear seat, I didn't mention how ill I felt aiming the weapon that had killed the president," Specter wrote in his recent memoir, "Passion for Truth."
Wecht and Specter have a profound, decades-old dispute on what happened to one of the three bullets that spat from Oswald's rifle on Nov. 22, 1963. But their unique bond was more apparent than their historic argument yesterday, as the combatants, for the first time ever, appeared together to discuss the assassination and the single-bullet theory.
After their years of contention, the encounter offered the potential for rhetorical fireworks. Instead, it was nearly a lovefest. The articulate antagonists repeatedly expressed their admiration for one another although neither gave any ground on the substance of their dispute.
Specter is recognized -- and in some quarters, reviled -- as the author of that theory, the analysis that one bullet passed through Kennedy's neck as his motorcade sped through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, then entered the back of Texas Gov. John Connally, exiting through the late governor's chest, then deflecting downward to wound his wrist and thigh.
Wecht, for years, has been one of the most prominent critics of the theory, ridiculing it before audiences from coast to coast, contending that it obscures evidence that the wound in Kennedy's throat was an entry, not an exit wound, inflicted by a second gunman in front of the motorcade. His prominence as a critic brought him the role of adviser to Oliver Stone when the director filmed "JFK," his conspiracy-convinced version of the assassination. Specter considered suing Stone for libel over his depiction in it.
"You all know the single-bullet theory," Wecht recounted yesterday. "It takes the bullet through the senator," he said, then immediately caught his mistake. "... through the president -- that's not a Freudian slip," he insisted as the audience laughed.
An amused Specter wasn't going to let the matter drop that easily. "Dr. Wecht's remark, about the bullet going through the senator, Freudian slip or not, is now part of the heritage of this matter," he intoned with mock solemnity.
Wecht has often been caustic in his treatment of Specter's position.
In his memoir, "Cause of Death," he called the Warren Commission report, "absolute nonsense."
"Librarians should move the report to the fiction section," he said.
He was even more dismissive of Specter's most noted contribution to the report: "[the single-bullet theory] is an asinine, pseudo-scientific sham, at best, and, very possibly, a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth about what really happened," he wrote.
As Specter's host, Wecht was considerably more conciliatory yesterday, couching his criticism as a compliment.
"What can I tell you," he said. "I think what I've learned from all of this is that it's possible to be an outstanding, excellent senator and not be such a great forensic scientist."
Specter, yesterday as in the past, stood fast behind the single-bullet theory, or "the single-bullet conclusion," as he terms it in "Passion for Truth." He said that through all the controversy and scrutiny since 1963, no one has been able to disprove the theory although he described the skepticism and questioning as a healthy reflection of the gravity of the event.
And while the two men are completely at odds on the core point of the single-bullet theory, Specter would concede some of the criticisms of Wecht and others about the work of the commission that he served as a young Philadelphia prosecutor. In his book, Specter acknowledges a variety of lapses in the commission's procedures that have made it vulnerable to conspiracy theorists. They include the lead autopsy physician's failure to retain his notes, the failure to include autopsy photographs in the Warren report, "obtuse" behavior by FBI investigators and the inexplicable decision to have Connolly's suit dry-cleaned before it could be examined by investigators. Specter predicted that controversy over Kennedy's death would never cease completely.
"To this day, there are still questions about the assassination of President Lincoln," Specter noted.
The encounter between Wecht and Specter was a fairly brief interlude in the midst of a weekend conference on DNA and the Law, sponsored by Duquesne's Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law. It broke no new ground on the assassination, but the pair may have a chance to review the traumatic events in greater detail in the future. Wecht took the opportunity to invite Specter to a major symposium on the issue that the institute plans to hold in 2003, the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's death.
"2003 looks open," said Specter, "I don't run [for re-election] until 2004."
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