Donahue first became interested in the story of the assassination of John F. Kennedy after participating in a re-creation of the shooting as one of eleven invited marksmen and sharpshooters. He demonstrated that it would have been possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to have fired three shots in the time specified by the Warren Commission, and was the only one of the eleven to better the 5.6-second window. However, the experience highlighted to Donahue other concerns regarding the Warren report — in particular, the fact that the testimony of ballistics experts seemed to have been completely omitted from the Commission's evidence gathering.