#029 - The Warren Commission Decided 8: Specter's Spectre (Side A)

This week marks the return of our series within a series, The Warren Commission Decided. Continuing our exploration into the Commission’s staff, in this episode we focus on the man behind the “single-bullet theory”--Arlen Specter. You see, it was Specter, then a young attorney with less than a decade’s worth of experience, who first posited that a single bullet caused multiple wounds to both JFK and Texas Governor John Connally, which of course is the key element in defending the conclusion that there was just one lone gunman, and thus no conspiracy involved in the assassination.

We start off by doing some exposition on Specter’s life both before and after his work on the Commission. “Know them by their deeds,” they say, so we begin with a dig into Specter’s work after the Commission, when Specter enjoyed a long and influential career as the U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania, where he became a respected figure on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was involved in numerous high-profile confirmations and investigations, including the failed confirmation of Robert Bork and the successful confirmation of Clarence Thomas. He was also a lifelong friend of Israel. We then turn back the clock to follow Specter’s early years, and cover his time at UPenn as an undergrad, and his time in the Air Force ROTC and later the Office of Special Investigations.

But fear not listener, the majority of this episode (one of our longest yet) focuses squarely on Specter’s work on the Commission, and his claim to fame: the infamous single bullet theory. We examine how Specter built out the case against Oswald as any crooked prosecutor might, fitting the evidence into his theory, and not the other way around. Drawing from a vast array of prime source audio material, we hear from several of the players themselves: eyewitnesses, doctors, ballistics experts, and pathologists. They all have one thing in common: their lived experiences and expert analyses run contrary to Specter’s theory. We systematically dismantle the theory by reference to some of the best evidence, including evidence of Specter’s self-interested, abusive relationship with the truth.

This one is another two-parter, with Side A available this week and Side B to be released next week. If you can’t wait until next week, sign up on our Patreon here and get the full three hour mega-episode TODAY!