JFK Assassintion: The Last Two Days

One of the strangest omissions in the subsequent investigation by federal authorities concerns a Navy commander who was assigned to film major events involving President Kennedy.

In early 1963, Thomas Atkins was assigned as an official photographer for the Kennedy White House. As [16] such, he traveled to Texas with Kennedy and was photographing the motorcade with a quality camera–a 16mm Arriflex S. He was riding six cars behind Kennedy and filming as the motorcade moved through Dealey Plaza.

In a 1977 article, Atkins said the car he was in had just turned onto Houston Street and was facing the Texas School Depository, and … Kennedy’s car had just made the left turn heading toward the freeway entrance. Although I did not look up at the building, I could hear everything quite clearly … The shots came from below and off to the right side from where I was [the location of the Grassy Knoll (or, the street sewer)] … I never thought the shots came from above. They did not sound like shots coming from anything higher than street level.

After returning to Washington on Air Force Two. Atkins assembled his film into a movie he entitled The Last Two Days. That film was described as "terribly damaging to the Warren Commission finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin." Perhaps this explains why neither Atkins’s testimony, nor his film were studied by either of the federal panels investigating the assassination.

Atkins said in 1977: "It’s something I’ve always wondered about. Why didn’t they ask me what I knew? I not only was on the White House staff, I was then, and still am, a photographer with a pretty keen visual sense."

Obviously, the federal authorities didn’t want to hear from a man with a "keen visual sense" and strong credentials who might have told them things they did not want to hear. [17] (Crossfire, Jim Marrs pp. 16-17)