I was disappointed that Senator Richard Russell was now unable to give me see me because of a medical problem. The staffer, who relayed the message, told me that the Senator wanted me to know that the main problem he had with the Warren Report was its inability to satisfactorily factualize the shooting itself. He believed that three separate bullets had hit President Kennedy and Governor Connally, just as Governor Connally himself had described the shooting. The Commission's report had advanced the theory only two bullets had done the damage, one of them doing double-duty by wounding both men. According to Russell's staffer, the Senator had even considered writing a minority opinion, but, in the end, accepted the McCloy compromise of ambiguous wording.

So it now turned out that at least four Commission members--Russell, Cooper, Ford and Boggs--had doubts about a central issue: the chronology of the bullets. How could such a deep fissure arise in a Commission which had publically presented as a monolithic conclusion?

I had come to Philadelphia by train to see the 35 year old staff lawyer who had developed the so-called single-bullet theory that had caused this internal controversy, Arlen Specter. Specter had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951, served in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations for two years, then went to Yale Law School, where he edited its law journal. He was now the assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, and he had reluctantly granted me this appointment because McCloy and other Commissioners had discussed this internal issue, as he put it, with me. I met him in his office on the 28th floor of the PSF building at 2:10 PM.

He began by explaining what happened. When the Commission met on December 16,1963, it decided to hold an independent investigation, which meant it would not rely on the FBI, Secret Service or CIA, but, to do so, it needed independent investigators. By the end of December, J. Lee Rankin and Howard Willens, who was its chief administrators, had chosen five eminent lawyers as senior counsels, and assigned each a different investigative area. The area of resolving the central facts of the shooting, "Panel 1," was assigned to Francis Adams, a former New York City Police Commissioner, in early January. Adams had the impression it was only a two-month part-time job, and, when the investigation was delayed, he returned to his own law practice. Meanwhile, in January, Specter, who had known Willens from the Law Review at Yale, had been assigned as a junior lawyer to help Adams. Since Adams failed to show up for the investigation he was supposedly in charge, Specter took over (though the Commissioners themselves did not realize that Adams had de facto retired.). He had virtually the entire burden of establishing the sequence of which shots hit which person in the assassination. Compounding the problem, the Dallas part of his investigation was delayed for almost two months until mid March because of the Chief Justice's decision not to begin until the completion of the trial of Oswald's killer. By this time, Specter had established that there was a critical contradiction between the FBI summary report, which concluded that a single rifle accounted for three separate hits-- the first wounding Kennedy in the back, the second wounding Governor John Connally in the wrist, and the third hitting Kennedy's head-- and the photographic evidence, which showed there was not enough time for the rifle in question to have fired the first two of these shots. Either the FBI was wrong, or there had been a second gunman. Despite this critical inconsistency, the Commission set a June deadline for wrapping up the investigation, giving Specter only 10 weeks to re-interrogate the doctors and other witnesses.

The questions proceeded as follows:

Q. Why did you choose to work on Panel 1?

A. I wanted to deal with tangible facts.

Q. How Were you charged?

A. No specific charge. We were investigators as well as lawyers. We gathered facts, we didn't make conclusions.

Q. How did you attack your area?

A. We decided what to do ourselves. I had some specific orders. The Chief Justice told me to take the midnight plane to Dallas and clear up the Dallas Doctors testimony-- I left immediately.

Q. What witnesses did you call?

A. All that were important or I knew of. I didn't handle overpass or other sources of the shots.

Q. Were the original FBI reports helpful in your area?

A. Extremely so.

Q. Didn't the FBI Reports confuse sequence of the shots.

A. They held second bullet missed JFK and hit Connally.

Q. What changes or refinements did you make from these FBI conclusions?

A. We filled in gaps but there were very few changes.

Q. You changed the position of the President's car?

A. We made it more exact.

Q. What about Adams?

A. He was hard-driven. He wanted to get done.

Q. How did the Single-bullet theory develop?

A. It began with talks I had on March 16 (1964) with autopsy doctors, and it was suggested by J.J. Humes, who did the autopsy.

Q. Did you have that notion before that date that a single bullet might have hit both men?

A. Not really--it just developed, before I didn't know what had happened.

Q. The staff lawyers believe it was only one bullet?

A. It wasn't up to lawyers to venture opinions, we simply assembled the facts.

Q. Why didn't Commissioners accept it?

A. Russell didn't want to say Connally was in error. It is as simple as that.

Q. When the Secret Service did a reconstruction on December 7th (1963), why didn't they arrive at single-bullet theory?

A. They had no idea of it at the time.

Q. Why? Wasn't it obvious.

A. No.

Q. Why didn't FBI come to Single Bullet Theory?

A. They thought Connally was hit by separate bullet?

Q. So the Single Bullet theory was the Warren Commission's idea?

A. Yes. It was our most: dramatic contribution?

Q. And you were responsible for it?

A. Yes, I more than anyone else.

Q. What about the reconstruction Tests?

A. I pushed for the May 24 (1964) reconstruction. I thought it was very important.

Q. Why was there resistance to doing it?

A. Commission didn't want it to look like we didn't know all the facts by this late date.

Q. What about the wound ballistic tests?

A. I arranged and conducted them.

Q. But why didn't you line up models of both Kennedy and Connally so you could test single bullet theory?

A. It was impossible. We had to fire 15 bullets to have it slant through the goat's neck at the right angle. It would take thousands of bullets. We didn't have the time.

Q. Was another factor that single bullet theory had not developed yet?

A. Yes. We didn't know that either.

Q. Did you look at the Zapruder film.

A. About 180 times.

Q. Was there too much emphasis on the reconstruction tests?

A. I thought they were important corroborative evidence.

Q.Were there any limits on money?

A. None that I knew of.

Q. How exhaustive was investigation?

A. Very.

Q. But there were witnesses who were never called like Mrs. Walther?

A. I never heard of her.

Q. How good were the FBI agents assigned to help Commission?

A. Very good. Much better than State police. I worked with both.

Q. Did you see autopsy photos?

A. No, I never saw them.

Q. Did Adams?

A. Not to my knowledge.

Q. Why were autopsy photos not available to you?

A. Ask Rankin.

Q. What about the bullet found on the stretcher?

A. Witness was inconclusive which stretcher

Q. Could you trace stretcher?

A. No, impossible.

Q. Why did FBI differ from Warren Report on Autopsy?

A. The FBI report was compiled in haste, under great pressure. They had two agents there from their Maryland field office. At first doctors thought bullet did not penetrate. They (both?) ran out and phoned it. The FBI report was then rushed out.

Q. But what of the January 13th FBI Report, two months later.

A. No answer.

Q. What parts of the Warren report did you write?

A. Chapters II and III except for overpass and protection material.

Q. Were there any substantial changes in drafting process?

A. No.

Q. When did you conclude your investigation?

A. May 28, 1964.

Q. When did you begin your investigation?

A. March 15-16th? Q. What was Rankin like?

A. Very gentle.

Q. How was your work coordinated?

A. Usually, informally, over a Martini. Joe Ball (Senior lawyer, Panel II) and I would meet at times. Ball was interested in autopsy and he asked to be in on Doctors testimony.

Q. Did you write memos?

A. Not usually.

Q. Who would you consult with the most?

A. Ball, Belin, Willens, Rankin.

Q. Were there staff meetings?

A. They were usually informal.

Q. You said the reconstruction was corroborative. Did you have a theory going into it.

A. No. We just gathered facts.

Q. Why weren't autopsy surgeons better prepared for their testimony?

A. There was a big fight about this. There was an elaborate system Of filling memos I thought it was silly but I complied. Warren thought it was idiotic and discontinued it. That's why autopsy surgeons weren't prepared.

Q. Did you write a position paper on Connally single bullet theory?

A. No.

Q. Why did Adams quit?

A. He had other business. He was very convivial.

Q. Did you read Ford's book?

A. No.

Q. How would you describe separation between staff and Commission?

A. We did our job. They did their job.

The Specter interview lasted nearly two hours. He then congenially invited me to his home, where I met his wife Joan and children. He impressed me by perfectly cooking lamb chops on his grill. I had no doubts of his competency. He had operated on the Warren Commission under enormous time pressure. He had realized, even though others had not, that if Connally had been hit by a third bullet, as he claimed and the FBI also concluded, there would not have been enough time for Oswald to have fired three bullets according to the Zapruder film. His single bullet theory provided a Deus Ex Machina.