Arlen Specter, though only 35, had had a brilliant career. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania, he became an editor of the law journal at Yale Law School. He was now an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. I met him in his office on the 28th floor of the PSF building at 2:10 PM.
He began by explaining what happened on the Warren Commission. He had been hired to assist Francis Adams on Panel 1, which had been charged with establishing the central facts of the shooting. When Adams failed to show up for the investigation, Specter assumed the job of establishing the sequence. Specter then discovered that there was a blatant 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 from the Secret Service reconstruction, which showed that 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 ending the investigation, allowing Specter only ten weeks to re-interrogate the doctors and other witnesses.
I wanted to know how he had come up with the so-called single bullet theory and asked, “When the Secret Service did a reconstruction on December 7th [1963], why didn't they arrive at your single-bullet theory?”
“They had no idea at the time that unless one bullet had hit both Kennedy and Connally, there had to be a second assassin.” He added that the FBI had also missed this problem. So he had to find a way to explain how one shooter could have hit both men in the available time.
“How did you convince the Commission?,” I asked.
“I showed them the Zapruder film frame by frame, and explained they could either accept the single-bullet theory or begin looking for a second assassin.”
The interview lasted nearly two hours. He then congenially invited me to his home for dinner, where I met his wife, Joan, and their children. He cooked lamb chops on his grill.