AT OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM

JFK+50:  Volume 5, No. 1915

GENERAL WALKER NARROWLY ESCAPES ASSASSIN'S BULLET

Dallas, Texas (JFK+50) Fifty-three years ago this evening, April 10, 1963, retired United States Army General Edwin Walker* narrowly escaped death when a sniper fired a rifle shot through a window at his home here in Dallas.

The bullet struck the wall just above Walker's head as he sat working at his desk.  The incident took place at 9 p.m. local time.  The General was grazed in the arm by fragments of the bullet. 

An eyewitness, a 14 year neighbor boy, told police he saw two men drive out of a church parking lot adjacent to Walker's home just after the shooting.** General Walker, an unsuccessful candidate for governor of Texas in 1962, had been dismissed from the army for passing out ultra right-wing John Birch Society literature to his troops.

The shooter remained unknown until the Warren Commission, while investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, determined that Lee Harvey Oswald had fired the shot that missed the General.

The Commission based their conclusion on a letter Oswald left for his wife, Marina, on photographs found in Oswald's personal possession, and the testimony of firearms experts.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations determined using Neutron Actuation Analysis that the bullet fired at General Walker was 'probably a Manlicher-Carcano bullet.'  FBI ballistics expert Robert A Frazier, however, was "unable to reach a conclusion" as to whether the bullet was fired from the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Depository.


*General Edwin A."Ted" Walker (1909-1993) was born in Center Point, Texas.  He graduated from West Point in 1931 and served in both WWII and the Korean War.  EAW opposed integration of Little Rock High School and attempted to resign from the army, but President Eisenhower reassigned him to Germany.  Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara relieved him of command in 1961.  

**According to Robert Groden, it was Marina Oswald who told authorities after her husband's arrest for the murder of JFK that he had tried to kill Walker.  Groden also states that Walker said the bullet retrieved from his wall did not match CE399, the bullet alleged to have passed through both JFK and Texas Governor John Connally.   Groden concludes...

 "It is highly unlikely that Lee (Oswald) was the assailant in the Walker shooting. Indeed, as targets, President Kennedy and General Walker were at opposite ends of the political spectrum."


SOURCES

 "The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald," by Robert J. Groden, Penguin Books, New York, 1995.

"The Walker Assassination Attempt," www.mcadams.posc.mu.edu/

General Edwin A. Walker