For anyone who didn't have time to read this long article, here's a summary (as best as I can understand the article, anyway). If I misunderstood something, feel free to make a correction.
Who was Howard Donahue?
He was a WWII veteran, a marksman, and a firearms specialist who testified as an expert witness in shooting cases.
In 1967, he participated in a CBS News reenactment of JFK’s assassination. He helped to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald could have assassinated JFK with his “Italian military-surplus, bolt-action rifle” by firing “three times with two hits on a moving target in less than six seconds.”
Afterward, however, Donahue began investigating the case on his own, and he reluctantly reached a different conclusion about the final shot that killed JFK.
First, here are the findings of the Warren Commission:
Oswald’s first shot hit JFK and Texas Governor Connally.
Oswald’s second shot missed.
Oswald’s third shot hit JFK in the head.
Now here’s Donahue’s Theory:
Oswald’s first shot hit the pavement “behind and to the right” of JFK’s limo. Fragments ricocheted, hitting JFK in the scalp. (Witnesses also said the first shot hit the pavement, and according to the Warren report, the scope on Oswald’s rifle was not properly adjusted.)
Oswald’s second shot hit JFK in his back, exited his neck, and hit Gov. Connally in his right side.
A Secret Service agent in the car behind JFK picked up an AR-15 to return fire. As he stood and turned, the car braked suddenly to avoid colliding with the president’s limo. The agent lost his balance, and “his finger slipped off the trigger guard, and the weapon discharged.” The bullet hit JFK in the back of his head and exited the “right, frontal portion of his skull.”
The Secret Service and, later, government officials engaged in a cover-up of the accidental shooting. Because why damage the reputation of the United States and JFK’s legacy, and destroy the life of a Secret Service agent, when Oswald did shoot JFK and one of his shots could’ve been fatal?
Here's the supportive evidence for Donahue’s Theory:
Trajectory: In the fatal shot to JFK’s head, the bullet’s path was left to right at a “shallow angle.” (If Oswald had fired the shot, the bullet would’ve traveled right to left at a steeper angle.) The trajectory lined up with the agent’s position in the car behind JFK.
The Bullet: The bullet disintegrated into tiny fragments, consistent with a .223 round fired from an AR15. (Oswald’s rifle shot “solid rounds” designed not to fragment, but to pass cleanly through a human body, which is what Oswald’s second shot did when it struck JFK and Connally.)
The Wound: The entrance wound was 6 millimeters wide. Oswald’s bullets were 6.5-6.75 millimeters, but the AR15’s were 5.56 millimeters in diameter.
Many witnesses gave statements consistent with Donahue’s theory. One was a senator riding in a car behind the Secret Service agents. The senator said, “The third shot may have been a Secret Service man returning fire.”
Other Notes
Donahue believed the agent was a brave man who took action and the shooting was an accident.
In written statements to his superiors, the agent claimed he didn’t even cock the weapon until after Oswald’s last shot. But the Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge in Dallas testified that the AR15 in the back seat was always “cocked and loaded,” “ready to go.”
Donahue and the writer tried to contact the agent, but he never responded. A few years after their book was published, the agent filed a lawsuit, and the publisher settled it, but the publisher “made no admission of guilt, did not issue a retraction,” and continued to sell the book. Both Donahue and the Secret Service agent have since passed on.
Interesting Information (Open Questions)
Medical staff (including a physician) at Parkland Hospital claimed two Secret Service agents rushed into the hospital after JFK was shot. One asked for two stretchers. The other was holding a “sub-machine gun.” An FBI agent then came running into the hospital, and the Secret Service agent(s) knocked him unconscious.
In the Kennedy family-authorized book about the assassination, Jackie Kennedy was quoted: “What was so terrible was the thought that it had been an accident, a freak, that an inch or two here, a moment or two there would have reversed history.”
Secret Service “mishaps” have been known to occur, including an accidental discharge near Iranian president Ahmadinejad.
The agent’s last name happens to be the maiden name of JFK’s paternal grandmother. The agent was age 40 when “Kennedy cleared the way” for him to be on the president’s personal protection detail, only four months before the assassination. At the time, the cut-off age for that detail was 30.
no
AR 15 in 1963?
.223 in 1963?
Time travel?
Interesting theory but I’m not buying it.
Wondering if it really was The secret service agent’s weapon that killed him, could that be why no President will release all the info to the public????
This is a fairly new “theory”, but was admitted to be being an outlandish bit of fiction soon after the book came out.
This is the part everyone misses. When they say that test shooters were able to reproduce the same shots within 4.6 seconds, they left out important facts: There were almost a dozen 'expert' shooters that tried, only one was able to do it. And that one tried something like 17 times (WITH a properly adjusted scope?)
The story is plausible, as are many others. We may never know until the Second Coming, when ‘all things become known’...............
Early model, prior to 1964, AR-15’s had ‘problems’.
It wasn’t until 1964 Colt, which had bought the patents from the original manufacturer, ArmaLite [AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle], that some of these problems were fixed. Even then, the AR-15 had problems jamming under heavy use in Vietnam, requiring another design review..............