PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — On Monday, I broadcast a running commentary of the day the music stopped at a radio station in St. Louis. It was at that moment, on Nov. 22, 1963, that I stood, trembling, watching the words about the killing and eventual death of the man known as JFK come across the AP and UPI wire.
The trauma of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a jolt to the people of the United States and the world. I was 21 years old. It will always seem like yesterday to me.
Three years later, I came to Philadelphia. One of the first stories I covered was a news conference with Arlen Specter, the young district attorney of Philadelphia, who later would become the longest-serving senator in Pennsylvania history.
The late Sen. Specter had an extraordinary career — 30 years on Capitol Hill. But before that, as a young lawyer, Specter was a key investigator on the team who tried to answer this question: Who killed JFK?
In Specter’s life, it was all about detail and methodical examination. And so it was that after painstaking examination, special ballistic examination, and conferences with doctors and medical specialists that he came to a conclusion: Despite government reports that three shots were fired by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Specter declared that it was a single bullet that killed the president.
“I had developed the Single-Bullet Theory more than 30 years earlier as a staff lawyer on the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, more commonly known as the Warren Commission. I now call it the Single-Bullet Conclusion. It began as a theory, but when a theory is established by the facts, it deserves to be called a conclusion,” he wrote in his 2000 memoir, “Passion for Truth.”
“The conclusion is that the same bullet sliced through President John F. Kennedy’s neck and then tore through Texas Governor John Connally’s chest and wrist, finally lodging in the governor’s thigh, as the presidential motorcade wound through downtown Dallas on November 22, 1963. The Warren Commission adopted the Single-Bullet Conclusion as its official explanation.”
Of course for these 60 years, there have been so many conspiracy theories, movies, and accusations.
"When monumental historical events occur, such as the assassination of President Kennedy, the popular reaction is that the government deceives and covers up through an explanation like the Single Bullet Theory," Specter wrote in that memoir.
But the late senator never speculated about conspiracies, only that it was one bullet. And in the official record of the Warren Commission, assigned to find the truth, the single bullet conclusion remains official.
Here is part of a 2011 oral history interview with Specter, first airing on the Pennsylvania Cable Network, and produced in connection with the Specter Center at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University. He begins by recapping the original findings of the FBI, which were replaced by his conclusion.
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“You look at the evidence and you go where the facts lead you. I had no preconceived notions. I had no interest in doing anything but finding the truth,” Specter said.
“I think had the public seen the investigation and how it unfolded, there would have been a lot more public confidence in it.”
Asked about Oliver Stone’s attempt to recreate the investigation in the 1991 movie "JFK," Specter called it “highly irresponsible.”
“I think it was a great public disservice to fictionalize the assassination and mislead so many people about what happened,” Specter said.
“I saw an article recently that said 80% of the American people believe there was a conspiracy in the assassination. And Oliver Stone did a great deal to foment that — in fact, probably did the most to do that.”
Specter was of the opinion that more of the Warren Commission’s investigation should have been made public.
“I think had the public seen the investigation and how it unfolded, there would have been a lot more public confidence in it.”