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there.” Clearly, Decker did not issue his orders till after the shooting.
    Undeterred, acoustical scientist James Barger said this apparent anomaly could have been caused in several ways. Was it possible that the Dictabelt needle jumped back—as was said to occur sometimes with that old-fashioned system? Or did the process of copying the original police recording cause the illusion of “crosstalk”?
    Dr.Barger stood by his original findings. “The number of detections we made in our tests, and the speed of the detections—the odds that that could happen by chance are about one in twenty. That’s just as plain as the nose on your face.”
    In the fullness of time, however, it has become evident to others that the findings are far from proven. Barber’s discovery triggered an onslaught on the acoustics evidence. Because of the timing, the Academy of Sciences was to conclude the sounds on the recording had to be something other than gunshots, static perhaps, but not gunshots.
    Fifty years on, a significant number of responsible researchers indeed think that a conspiracy finding based on the acoustics is untenable. A 2001 study by researcher Michael O’Dell suggested that the impulses on the Dictabelt “happen too late to be the assassination gunshots,” and that “there is no statistical significance of 95% or higher for a shot from the grassy knoll.”
    On the other hand, one of those who has specialized in the acoustics evidence asserted in a 2010 book that there was indeed a shot from the knoll, and that it was the fatal headshot. Only for O’Dell, author of the 2001 study, to produce a further analysis refuting the Committee’s findings, as this book was going to press.
    It is evident that science—whether forensic, acoustic, or ballistic—has produced no certainties, and will not resolve the questions surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
    House Assassinations Committee Chief Counsel Robert Blakey, though shaken by the negative studies of the acoustics evidence, nevertheless held to his view. “I think our conclusion was correct,” he has said. “On balance, I say there were two shooters in thePlaza, and not just because of the acoustics… .” Blakey remained persuaded by “all the other evidence and testimony,” not least the human testimony about the day of the assassination. “I find on balance,” Blakey added, “that the earwitness and eyewitness testimony is credible.”

Chapter 3
    How Many Shots?
Where From?
    “Thegreat tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
    —Thomas H. Huxley, evolutionist,
nineteenth century
    M uch of the testimony of those present when President Kennedy was shot may seem old hat to readers with long memories. Yet it remains vitally relevant to any serious account of the assassination.
    Of 178 people in Dealey Plaza—according to an Assassinations Committee survey—no less than 132 later came to believe that only three shots had been fired. Three spent cartridges were found near the window of the Texas School Book Depository. Initially, therefore, a count of three shots seemed rational, if not conclusive. Most witnesses’ statements, though, were given hours—in some cases weeks—later, when the generally published version of the assassination had already put the total of shots at three. A few people, including Mrs. Kennedy and a Secret Service agent in the follow-up car, thought they had heard as few as twoshots. O thers, though, thought they had heard more than three, some speaking of as many as six or seven.
    Ballistics and acoustics specialists have looked at how and why people become mixed up in their memories of gunfire. The sound of a first shot comes upon a witness when he does not expect it, subsequent shots compound the surprise, and muddle ensues. Further confusion may be caused by the fact that a rifle shot actually makes three minutely separated sounds—the muzzle blast, the sound of a bullet breaking the sound