Erick A. Bovik

This has probably been covered before, but I thought I’d give my take on the subject and see what others say, regarding the fatal head wound. Initially, without considering what Dr, Crenshaw and other witnesses said about a large exit wound to the back of the head, examine the head wound on the Zapruder film. The flap of skull we see exploding to the right side above the ear is not, in my opinion, indicative of an exit (or entrance) wound. Exit wounds are generally round albeit much larger than entrance wounds. This wound in my opinion, is a shock wave wound. Bullet engineers often test bullets in a substance known as “ballistic gelatin.” This is a rectangular block of thick, clear gelatin of flesh-like consistency, which, when a bullet is fired into the end, allows the engineer to view the path of the bullet and the “wound channel” it would create in flesh. Round-nosed or pointed full-metal-jacket (FMJ) bullets at low subsonic velocity, 700-800 feet per second (fps), (such as fired from a handgun) will create a channel in the gelatin not much large in diameter than the actual projectile. FMJ bullets are usually copper-clad. The same FMJ bullet fired at supersonic speed (above 1130 fps) will enter the gelatin and create a shock wave near the entrance, then as the velocity decreases, the channel reduces in diameter. The shock wave increases in size with the velocity of the projectile. Muzzle velocities of handgun rounds are generally 700 to 1500 fps. Rifle rounds are generally above that. The muzzle velocity of a typical .30 caliber bullet fired from a deer rifle is between 2200 and 2800 feet per second (fps). A 6.5 by 52mm Carcano rifle round has a muzzle velocity of about 2100 fps. (6.5mm refers to the diameter of the projectile, 52mm refers to the length of the cartridge case.) A high velocity rifle bullet creates a shock wave, and sonic boom--this is the cracking sound heard when a high-powered rifle is fired. I once knew a fellow who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. He recounted being on guard duty at the perimeter of camp one night when the Viet Cong attacked unexpectedly. The soldier had laid his —16 rifle on the embankment in front of him and only had time to pick it up with one hand as an enemy soldier came over the top. He fired and the attacker immediately dropped dead. Later upon examining the body, they discovered the round had barely grazed the side of the enemy’s head. The shock wave of the bullet had shattered the skull. This was a 5.56 by 45mm (.223) round with a muzzle velocity of 2985 fps. There are wide variations in rifle bullet velocities depending on the size of the gunpowder charge and the weight of the bullet. Lighter bullets e.g. .223 and .243 caliber, usually have higher muzzle velocities (2900 fps+) than heavier .30 caliber bullets. Each particular caliber of bullet is manufactured in two or three, sometimes more weights, depending on the popularity of the round. Some hunters hand load their own cartridges to achieve a particular ballistic objective. The typical rifle bullet used by hunters for deer and other mid-sized game is a partial metal jacket. That type of bullet has a soft lead nose, sometimes with a hollow point, and the base is jacketed with copper, for controlled expansion. Upon penetration, the soft lead nose begins to flatten, which expands the lead within the copper base. The copper base in turn serrates and peels back. This creates several cutting surfaces on the expanding projectile which causes a great deal of tissue damage. Depending on the location of the impact and whether the projectile encounters thick bone tissue, the controlled expansion bullet may remain in the target or create a large, gaping exit wound. Viewed in ballistic gelatin, this projectile will cause an expanding pocket of damage, representing both high-velocity shock wave and gelatin disruption from the copper serrations. Another type of rifle bullet is what some refer to as a “fragmenting” round. These are bullets which rapidly disintegrate upon penetration. The tissue or gelatin contains and absorbs all the energy of the projectile, and depending on the entry location, there may not be an exit. This type of round causes a great deal of tissue damage. Fragmenting rounds are currently manufactured for both rifles and handguns. In 1963, fragmenting bullet technology was more primitive than today, although the concept has been around for quite some time. Old-time Mafia hit men used to carve deep X’s in the tips of their lead bullets, which would cause fragmentation. In Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal there is an interesting description of the assassin making fragmenting rounds by sealing drops of mercury into hollow point rifle bullets. Getting back to the head wound shown in the Zapruder film, the X-rays of the President’s skull show small metal particles dispersed in the brain matter, and the autopsy doctors at Bethesda recovered two larger fragments. This is indicative of a fragmenting rifle bullet, not an FMJ Carcano round, such as the legendary “magic bullet.” The skull flap indicates a shock wave from a high-velocity round. The backward movement of the head indicates the shot originated from the front. The fact that the skull flap occurred on the right side of the head indicates that the shot came from the right front, i.e. the grassy knoll or the right side of the railroad bridge. Mrs. Kennedy climbed onto the trunk of the limousine to retrieve a large chunk of tissue. Again, this indicates a bullet from the front. The same round which caused the shock wave resulting in the right skull flap and metal particles, could have remained sufficiently intact to create the exit wound to the back of the head, as observed by Dr. Crenshaw and others. I’ve heard an argument that a bullet wound to the human central nervous system could cause an involuntary spasm which could cause the victim to move counter to the force of the bullet strike. This is an attempt to explain the President’s backward head movement as not necessarily indicative of bullet trajectory. Let’s consider a typical rifle round which might have been fired from the Grassy Knoll. The .308 Winchester is a high velocity round with a fairly flat trajectory. It would be an ideal sniper round. In fact, that is the round the U.S. Army, police departments and Special Forces have used for decades in sniper rifles. A 150-grain .308 round has muzzle energy of 2648 foot pounds. At 75 yards, a probable distance from the grassy knoll, it would retain 2365 foot pounds of muzzle energy, in other words, the force of 2365 pounds moving one foot against the President’s head. That’s about the weight of a small car. The velocity of the .308, which is a component of the bullet’s energy, is 2820 fps at the muzzle and 2654 at 75 yards. So if a .308 was used, the velocity of the bullet striking the President’s head was more than twice the speed of sound. The physics of high velocity rifle bullets defy any attempt to explain the backwards head movement as being a mere spasm.

This is the contract I was talking about. In 1992 Dick Cheney, head of the US Department of Defence, gave a $3.9m contract (a further $5m was added later) to Kellog Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The contract involved writing a report about how private contractors could help the Pentagon deal with 13 different “hot spots” around the world. The KBR report remains a classified document. However, the report convinced Cheney to award a umbrella contract to one company to deal with these problems. This contract, which became known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Programme (Logcap), was of course awarded to KBR. It is an unique contract and is effectively a blank cheque from the government. KBR makes it money from a built in profit percentage. When your profit is a percentage of the cost, the more you spend, the more you make. KBR’s first task was to go to Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope. KBR arrived before the US Army. Over the next few months KBR made a profit of $109.7m. In August 1994 KBR made $6.3m in Rwanda. Later that year they received $150m profit from its work in Haiti. KBR made its money from building base camps, supplying troops with food and water, fuel and munitions, cleaning latrines and washing clothes. The contract came up for renewal in 1997. By this time Cheney had been appointed as CEO of Halliburton. The Clinton administration gave the contract to Dyncorp. The contract came to an end in 2001. Cheney was now back in power and KBR won back the Logcap contract. This time it was granted for ten years. The beauty of this contract is that it does not matter where the US armed forces are in action, the KBR makes money from its activities. However, the longer the troops stay, the more money it makes. KBR is now busy in Iraq (it also built the detention cells in Guantanamo Bay). What is more Halliburton was given the contract for restoring the Iraqi oil infrastructure (no competitive bid took place). Cheney sold his stock options in Halliburton for $30m when he became vice president. He claimed he had got rid of all his financial interests in Halliburton. However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) discovered that he has been receiving yearly sums from Halliburton: $205,298 (2001), $162,392 (2002), etc. They also found he still holds 433,333 unexercised stock options in Halliburton. Regardless of whether the KBR contract was for 1993, 2003, '04, '05 or '06 the profits therefrom were a very small percentage of Halliburton's overall profit. The Vice President's assets are held in a blind trust and most of the proceeds go to charity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_cheney Cheney has a Gift Trust Agreement pursuant to which an Administrative Agent has the right to exercise those options and distribute the proceeds from the sale of the resulting stock to certain charitable organizations.[29][not in citation given] Who that administrative agent is has not been disclosed. All proceeds of the options will be split between the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, Inc. for the benefit of the Cardiothoracic Institute, the University of Wyoming for the benefit of the University of Wyoming Foundation, and Capital Partners for Education for the benefit of low-income high school students in the Washington, D.C. area.[citation needed] Cheney resigned as CEO of Halliburton on July 25, 2000, and put all of his corporate shares into a blind trust. As part of his deferred compensation agreements with Halliburton contractually arranged prior to Cheney becoming Vice President, Cheney's public financial disclosure sheets filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics showed he received $162,392 in 2002 and $205,298 in 2001.[citation needed] Upon his nomination as a Vice Presidential candidate, Cheney purchased an annuity that would guarantee his deferred payments regardless of the company's performance.[citation needed] He argued that this step removed any conflict of interest. Cheney's net worth, estimated to be between $30 million and $100 million, is largely derived from his post at Halliburton.[citation needed] In 2005, the Cheneys reported their gross income as nearly $8.82 million. This was largely the result of exercising Halliburton stock options that had been set aside in 2001 with the Gift Trust Agreement. The Cheneys donated just under $6.87 million to charity from the stock options and royalties from Mrs. Cheney's books.[30][not in citation given]

Mr. Gorbachev, I hope you are still a member of this forum. I enjoyed your book, Perestroika and still have it on my bookshelf. I remember you wrote Perestroika in response to the tragedy in Chernobyl, and you called for a new openness in your country. I think that Chernobyl and your policy of perestroika, formed a new mindset in the Soviet people, which put them on the path to new freedoms. You will certainly be remembered in history as one of the people who changed world history for the better. That being said, my understanding--and please correct me if I'm wrong--is that major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union was the drop in oil prices in the mid-1980's. The Soviets were the largest oil producer in the world, and had profited greatly from the oil-price shocks in the 1970's. In 1983 CIA Director William Casey went to Saudi Arabia and made a deal. In return for selling them F-15 fighter jets and AWACS reconnaissance aircraft, the Saudis agreed to vastly increase oil production for the purpose of driving down prices and bankrupting the already weakened Soviet economy. At the time, were you aware of that deal Casey made with the Arabs?

For three years now I have read and heard people complaining about Halliburton getting rich off their Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) service contract with the US government for Iraq. A quick perusal of Halliburton’s cash flow at Yahoo Finance shows how much they are actually making. In 2003, Halliburton did not make a profit. They had a net loss of 820 million dollars. In 2004, they lost 979 million. In 2005 they made a profit of 2.3 billion. The actual profit from the KBR contract is a very small percentage of Halliburton’s overall profit. The gross revenue from the KBR contract is high, but the overhead expenses eat up most of the profit. In 2005 Halliburton’s gross revenues were 21 billion. For the first 9 months of 2006, KBR’s gross revenues were 7.1 billion, roughly a third of Halliburton’s gross revenues. However, KBR’s net profit for the first nine months of 2006 were a mere $119 million. KBR has been a low-performing subsidiary of Halliburton for quite some time. They would like to sell it but there aren’t any buyers. Whatever numbers you are reading, forget 'em. They have no bearing on reality. Remember that Halliburton was found to have over-charged the government by hundreds of millions of dollars, and that this was written off as a misunderstanding without their having to repay the money. There have undoubtedly been some games played with the books. (Seriously, do you think Bush's SEC would ever go after Halliburton?) The real issue is why was Halliburton given a COST-PLUS contract. The Bush Ad said it was because the war came upon us so suddenly that there was no time to take bids. Of course, it came out later that they'd been planning the invasion since 2001. OOOPS. A COST-PLUS contract is a crime against humanity in my opinion. The nature of such a contract guarantees corruption and inefficiency. Many of the Halliburton employees in Iraq make 4-5 times the amount of the serviceman beside them. And yet the more they are paid, the more profit Hallibuirton is guaranteed according to the terms of a COST-PLUS contract. This has been disastrous for American morale. And should be investigated. It would have to be considered more than a coincidence that Cheney's company was awarded a 7 billion dollar cost-plus contract just when it was bleeding money, and that the existence of this contract assured investors of the solvency of the company and its stock value grew as a result. I believe it was no less than the Wall Street Journal that looked into this and found that Cheney made over 20 million on the deal. I'm going on memory here but the whole deal smells BAD, even to the GAO. In case anyone should wonder, I do not own stocks or bonds issued by Halliburton, nor have I ever owned any and I don’t know anybody who works for Halliburton. The no-bid “cost-plus” contract should be quite profitable for Halliburton, especially after the sectarian violence subsides. I’m just guessing here, but I would speculate the no-bid oilfield contract was quid quo pro for taking the unprofitable KBR service contract. The KBR contract did not keep Halliburton afloat as Mr. Speer suggests. They barely turned a profit on it and the overhead was huge. Ken Lay and Enron were major contributors to the Republican Party. That did not prevent them from being hauled into court. The same could happen to Halliburton officers if they mishandle corporate funds. They are a public corporation and subject to the new Sarbanes-Oxley Act which imposes strict accounting guidelines. As regards executive compensation, the Halliburton CEO’s salary is 4 million and the other officers earn half or less than that. The CEO of Halliburton’s main competitor, Schlumberger LTD, earns 3.6 million and the other officers earn 1-1.5 million. This range of compensation and the stock options are comparable to what the executives of the mid-size energy company Marathon Oil receive. I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I were a Halliburton employee and headed for Iraq, and my job was to rebuild oil fields, they would have to pay me A LOT of money to risk getting kidnapped and beheaded. Former U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq are going back there to provide private security to the civilian workers; they are being paid quite richly and deservedly so.

Peter, the only time i saw TMWKK was on the 40th anniverary in 2003 on the History Channel. I believed it aired every night of week [m-f] for two hours. I dont know if all of the installments were included or not. I havent seen it since. [if it was on again i missed it] I know the Johnson family raised all kinds of problems for them, along with others, and i belive it was banned, as stated earlier. Everything else since then has been basically "pro-Oswald" Dale Myers bunk on the History Channel. [They] must have really put some pressure on them after they showed it in 03', for them to all of a sudden start showing "pro Oswald" junk. thanks-smitty The History Channel (owned by Disney Corp) stopped showing (censored) the above-referenced episodes, and selling the DVD's due to pressure from the Johnson family and Johnson family friend Jack Valenti. Fortunately Utube picked it up and there are a lot of bootleg copies floating around. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen any of the Men Who Killed Kennedy segments on the History Channel or A&E in recent years. I found Ed Hoffman's eyewitness account in one of the Men Who Killed Kennedy episodes quite compelling. I met Mr. Hoffman in Dallas in 1998, and saw his rendition of his memory in person (he was deaf and used a sign language interpreter). He said he went to the Grassy Knoll every year to recount his eyewitness to history. He has since passed away. In my business I am used to people lying to me and I can usually tell when someone is lying. Mr. Hoffman was extremely credible to me. Mr. Hoffman's description of the rifleman firing from behind the picket fence jibes with the backward snap of the President's head and the brain matter retreived by Jackie from the limousine trunk.

For three years now I have read and heard people complaining about Halliburton getting rich off their Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) service contract with the US government for Iraq. A quick perusal of Halliburton’s cash flow at Yahoo Finance shows how much they are actually making. In 2003, Halliburton did not make a profit. They had a net loss of 820 million dollars. In 2004, they lost 979 million. In 2005 they made a profit of 2.3 billion. The actual profit from the KBR contract is a very small percentage of Halliburton’s overall profit. The gross revenue from the KBR contract is high, but the overhead expenses eat up most of the profit. In 2005 Halliburton’s gross revenues were 21 billion. For the first 9 months of 2006, KBR’s gross revenues were 7.1 billion, roughly a third of Halliburton’s gross revenues. However, KBR’s net profit for the first nine months of 2006 were a mere $119 million. KBR has been a low-performing subsidiary of Halliburton for quite some time. They would like to sell it but there aren’t any buyers.

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