Governor CONNALLY. .....We had just made the turn, well, when I heard what I thought was a shot. I heard this noise which I immediately took to be a rifle shot. I instinctively turned to my right because the sound appeared to come from over my right shoulder, so I turned to look back over my right shoulder, and I saw nothing unusual except just people in the crowd, but I did not catch the President in the corner of my eye, and I was interested, because once I heard the shot in my own mind I identified it as a rifle shot, and I immediately—the only thought that crossed my mind was that this is an assassination attempt.
So I looked, failing to see him, I was turning to look back over my left shoulder into the back seat, but I never got that far in my turn. I got about in the position I am in now facing you, looking a little bit to the left of center, and then I felt like someone had hit me in the back.
Mr. SPECTER. What is the best estimate that you have as to the time span between the sound of the first shot and the feeling of someone hitting you in the back which you just described?
Governor CONNALLY. A very, very brief span of time. Again my trend of thought just happened to be, I suppose along this line, I immediately thought that this—that I had been shot. I knew it when I just looked down and I was covered with blood, and the thought immediately passed through my mind that there were either two or three people involved or more in this or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle. These were just thoughts that went through my mind because of the rapidity of these two, of the first shot plus the blow that I took, and I knew I had been hit, and I immediately assumed, because of the amount of blood, and in fact, that it had obviously passed through my chest. that I had probably been fatally hit.
So I merely doubled up, and then turned to my right again and began to—I just sat there, and Mrs. Connally pulled me over to her lap. She was sitting, of course, on the jump seat, so I reclined with my head in her lap, conscious all the time, and with my eyes open; and then, of course, the third shot sounded, and I heard the shot very clearly. I heard it hit him. I heard the shot hit something, and I assumed again—it never entered my mind that it ever hit anybody but the President. I heard it hit. It was a very loud noise, just that audible, very clear.
Immediately I could see on my clothes, my clothing, I could see on the interior of the car which, as I recall, was a pale blue, brain tissue, which I immediately recognized, and I recall very well, on my trousers there was one chunk of brain tissue as big as almost my thumb, thumbnail, and again I did not see the President at any time either after the first, second, or third shots, but I assumed always that it was he who was hit and no one else.
I immediately, when I was hit, I said, “Oh, no, no, no.” And then I said, “My God, they are going to kill us all.” Nellie, when she pulled me over into her lap——
First shot starts the clock and it hit a curb. The second hit Kennedy and Connally. The third shot hit Kennedy. 8.3 seconds.
Based on testimony. Based on hard evidence. Case closed.
Conspiracists have exploited Gov. Connally's testimony here to further their mission that multiple shooters were at work in Dealey Plaza. Some even maintain that this response and perhaps one more interview similar to this one signals that Connally believed in a conspiracy until the day he died.
Well, not so fast. As we've already seen the unreliability of eyewitnesses and earwitnesses in the spectating crowd in Dealey Plaza, we should also attribute the same confusion, misidentification, and conflicting testimony to the victims of the shooting.
"I'm sorry, but I regret to inform you that I simply cannot remember how many shots were being fired at me. Unfortunately, I was being cut down with bullets at the time and lost count. I also cannot say for sure which wounds I received were caused by which particular bullets in the several second timespan of the assassination attempt that I barely survived."
Don't you think that the conspiracists aren't being fair about this? I see it to be exploitation of unreliable testimony.
I think that those people who insist that they could determine the direction of shots being fired at them as they were being hit with said bullets are either disingenuous or don't appreciate the panic and chaos involved in being on the receiving end of such an event. From personal accounts of Marines I've known in Gulf War I and the current War in Iraq, none of them were able to immediately determine the source of enemy hostile fire even when taking direct fire.
One fellow I know who occasionally posts here on FR survived an IED attack in Iraq that neither killed nor injured any of the Marines in his patrol, but made everyone think that the whole world exploded around them when it went off. No sound, just instant ringing in the ears. No light, just darkness. No wall of heat or flame, just an eruption of dirt and cordite smoke. No shockwave, just instant contrast between the violent moment of the explosion compared to the peaceful moment just an instant before the blast. No warning whatsoever. Only when they recovered from the blast did they even know what had happened. For all the difference it would have made, the explanation could have been that the sun simply just went supernova. Instead, it was two 155mm shells rigged together that blew up less than 100 meters away from their position. Imagine being slapped to the ground by a giant invisible flyswatter while someone cuts the lights off in the room you're in. Let that happen to you and then take a quiz on how much detail you remember right before the blast. Compare your answers to everyone else's, and that ought to show everyone what the reliability of individual testimony amounts to during a time of extreme crisis.
It's one thing for conspiracists to be a forensic reconstructionist (or deconstructionist, as I believe is the better word for them) who believe that a mall full of people would be uniformly reliable witnesses to the chaos of a startling and unexpected violent event.
I'm sure you agree.