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"It's a Certainty." Connally says he has never read the Warren Report, and he refuses to join the dispute over it. "History is bigger than any individual's feelings," he explains. "I don't want to discuss any other facets of the controversy except my wounds as related to the first shot that hit the President. They talk about the one-bullet or the two-bullet theory, but as far as I'm concerned there is no 'theory.' There is my absolute knowledge, and Nellie's [Mrs. Connally] too, that one bullet caused the President's first wound, and that an entirely separate shot struck me. It's a certainty; I'll never change my mind."
Of course, nothing Connally said added an iota of new evidence. From the start, the Warren Report pointed out that its single-bullet thesis was "not necessary to any essential findings of the commission." The critics have disagreed, contending that the thesis is the cornerstone on which the commission based its single-assassin conclusion. On the contrary, reasons Arlen Specter. Though the Zapruder film was a key to the commission's confusion about the timing of shots, Specter points out that the film is two-dimensional, and it is impossible to know—"precisely"—when Kennedy was first hit. The President, too, may have had a delayed reaction, and since scant fractions of a second are involved, there is a possibility that there was time for Oswald to shoot twice. Nevertheless, Specter argues that an even more convincing point was the fact that no bullet was found in Kennedy's body or in the limousine. "Where, if it didn't hit Connally, did that bullet go?" asks Specter. "This is the single most compelling reason why I concluded that one bullet hit both men."
The discussion and the doubts are not likely to abate, for nearly every significant incident of that tragic day is fraught with controversy and coincidence. Even a new investigation would be committed to making its own judgments and offering its best reasoned opinions—just as the Warren Commission did—in crucial areas where no firm facts exist. Thus, lacking any new evidence, there seems little valid excuse for so dramatic a development as another full-scale inquiry.