Arlen Specter Options

[John Simkin]

Thought I would start a thread on Arlen Specter. I will link it to my page on Specter so it will give you an opportunity to get your view on him to the general public.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKspecter.htm

This is what Jefferson Morley had to say about him in The Man Who Did Not Talk (November, 2007):

http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/jfk/jfk-page06.html

The single bullet theory, of course, was the scenario developed in 1964 by Arlen Specter, a young lawyer on the Warren Commission and now a Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Originally, the FBI said that three shots had been fired at Kennedy's motorcade. The first supposedly hit President Kennedy in the back but did not penetrate too deeply. The second, which hit Governor John Connally in the back, exited his chest, punctured his wrist and wound up in his thigh. The third shot hit Kennedy in the head. The Warren Commission staff accepted this three-shot scenario until a staff lawyer, Arlen Specter, began looking frame by frame at the home movie from the crime scene made by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder. Selected frames from the film were published by Life magazine but the movie was not broadcast, not the least because it showed the wounding of President Kennedy by a first shot in the back followed by the wounding of Governor Connally about 1.1 seconds later. It was impossible for Oswald to have fired his Mannlicher-Carcano bolt action rifle twice in 1.1 seconds. The photography from the crime scene indicated a second gunman -- a finding that the entire weight of the federal government from the president to the director of the FBI had already rejected.

Specter solved the problem by arguing that one bullet had caused all the non-fatal wounds to both JFK and Connally. This scenario has been much mocked over the years, though Specter has said, "the single bullet theory has become the single bullet fact."

Specter's theory remains the keystone on which the edifice of Oswald's sole guilt rests. For if one bullet did not cause all of Kennedy's and Connally's wounds, the only explanation of their injuries is that they were caused by two gunmen and some kind of conspiracy.

The latest study of JFK ballistic evidence was conducted by Patrick Grant and Erik Randich and published in 2006 in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Grant, the deputy director of the Forensic Science Center at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, is fond of saying, "Forensic science is the application of technological displays that can narrow the limits of plausible conjecture." Grant and Randich's article raises the very real question of whether the single bullet theory is still within the limits of plausible conjecture.

The new article is an outgrowth of a scientific paper Randich published with William Tobin in 2002 which casts doubt on the FBI's technique known as bullet-lead analysis. This technique is based on the assumption that each batch of lead used to make the core of bullets has a unique chemical "fingerprint" that can be used to match it with other bullets. Thus bullet lead found at the scene of a shooting could be matched to bullets found in a suspect's gun and prove complicity in gun violence. But Randich's study of bullet manufacturing found that batches of lead are not chemically unique, and bullets from the same box could have very different chemical signatures. His work helped persuade the FBI in 2005 to stop using bullet-lead analysis in criminal prosecution.

Says Grant: "We applied the same thinking to the JFK bullet fragments that had been analyzed by a man named Vincent Guinn [on behalf of the HSCA] back in the 1970s. I knew Guinn because I took his forensic science course when I was in graduate school and it helped inspire my interest in the subject."

Guinn, now dead, had concluded that the level of a trace element called antimony in five bullet fragments taken from the JFK crime scene fell into two distinct groups chemically. Given their chemical similarity, the handful of fragments taken from Kennedy's head, Connally's body and the front seat of the limousine could have come from two -- and only two -- bullets. From 1978 to 2006, Guinn's findings heartened defenders of the Warren Commission which found that Kennedy and Connally had been hit by only two bullets.

Randich and Grant's paper found that Guinn's analysis was fatally flawed. He had assumed the chemical composition of bullet lead is consistent throughout a given bullet, a finding that Randich's metallurgical analysis refuted. Guinn also underestimated the margin of error in his measurement of antimony and wrongly discounted contradictory evidence, they said. Grant and Randich concluded that their findings "considerably weaken support for the single bullet theory."

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Thought I would start a thread on Arlen Specter. I will link it to my page on Specter so it will give you an opportunity to get your view on him to the general public.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKspecter.htm

This is what Jefferson Morley had to say about him in The Man Who Did Not Talk (November, 2007):

http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/jfk/jfk-page06.html

The single bullet theory, of course, was the scenario developed in 1964 by Arlen Specter, a young lawyer on the Warren Commission and now a Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Originally, the FBI said that three shots had been fired at Kennedy's motorcade. The first supposedly hit President Kennedy in the back but did not penetrate too deeply. The second, which hit Governor John Connally in the back, exited his chest, punctured his wrist and wound up in his thigh. The third shot hit Kennedy in the head. The Warren Commission staff accepted this three-shot scenario until a staff lawyer, Arlen Specter, began looking frame by frame at the home movie from the crime scene made by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder. Selected frames from the film were published by Life magazine but the movie was not broadcast, not the least because it showed the wounding of President Kennedy by a first shot in the back followed by the wounding of Governor Connally about 1.1 seconds later. It was impossible for Oswald to have fired his Mannlicher-Carcano bolt action rifle twice in 1.1 seconds. The photography from the crime scene indicated a second gunman -- a finding that the entire weight of the federal government from the president to the director of the FBI had already rejected.

Specter solved the problem by arguing that one bullet had caused all the non-fatal wounds to both JFK and Connally. This scenario has been much mocked over the years, though Specter has said, "the single bullet theory has become the single bullet fact."

Specter's theory remains the keystone on which the edifice of Oswald's sole guilt rests. For if one bullet did not cause all of Kennedy's and Connally's wounds, the only explanation of their injuries is that they were caused by two gunmen and some kind of conspiracy.

The latest study of JFK ballistic evidence was conducted by Patrick Grant and Erik Randich and published in 2006 in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Grant, the deputy director of the Forensic Science Center at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, is fond of saying, "Forensic science is the application of technological displays that can narrow the limits of plausible conjecture." Grant and Randich's article raises the very real question of whether the single bullet theory is still within the limits of plausible conjecture.

The new article is an outgrowth of a scientific paper Randich published with William Tobin in 2002 which casts doubt on the FBI's technique known as bullet-lead analysis. This technique is based on the assumption that each batch of lead used to make the core of bullets has a unique chemical "fingerprint" that can be used to match it with other bullets. Thus bullet lead found at the scene of a shooting could be matched to bullets found in a suspect's gun and prove complicity in gun violence. But Randich's study of bullet manufacturing found that batches of lead are not chemically unique, and bullets from the same box could have very different chemical signatures. His work helped persuade the FBI in 2005 to stop using bullet-lead analysis in criminal prosecution.

Says Grant: "We applied the same thinking to the JFK bullet fragments that had been analyzed by a man named Vincent Guinn [on behalf of the HSCA] back in the 1970s. I knew Guinn because I took his forensic science course when I was in graduate school and it helped inspire my interest in the subject."

Guinn, now dead, had concluded that the level of a trace element called antimony in five bullet fragments taken from the JFK crime scene fell into two distinct groups chemically. Given their chemical similarity, the handful of fragments taken from Kennedy's head, Connally's body and the front seat of the limousine could have come from two -- and only two -- bullets. From 1978 to 2006, Guinn's findings heartened defenders of the Warren Commission which found that Kennedy and Connally had been hit by only two bullets.

Randich and Grant's paper found that Guinn's analysis was fatally flawed. He had assumed the chemical composition of bullet lead is consistent throughout a given bullet, a finding that Randich's metallurgical analysis refuted. Guinn also underestimated the margin of error in his measurement of antimony and wrongly discounted contradictory evidence, they said. Grant and Randich concluded that their findings "considerably weaken support for the single bullet theory."

"For if one bullet did not cause all of Kennedy's and Connally's wounds, the only explanation of their injuries is that they were caused by two gunmen and some kind of conspiracy."


An error in the application of logic is not sufficient grounds upon which to build a "multiple assassin/conspiracy" scenario of the shooting event.

It is merely an error in application of logic, which ASSUMED that the WC shooting scenario was correct.

Which in and of itself brings up the old question: WHY? would anyone believe the WC?


"Connally's body"


There is no "chain of evidence" which could be utilized in any court of law which clearly defines that those fragments tested by Guinn actually came from the wrist of JBC.

In fact, with the missing fragment from CE840, as well as the tampering with the fragments while apparantly stored within the National Archives, the lack of validity that those fragments tested actually came from the wrist of JBC is more than sufficient to have this evidence (and it's resulting testing) completely dismissed from any consideration.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Thought I would start a thread on Arlen Specter. I will link it to my page on Specter so it will give you an opportunity to get your view on him to the general public.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKspecter.htm

This is what Jefferson Morley had to say about him in The Man Who Did Not Talk (November, 2007):

http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/jfk/jfk-page06.html

The single bullet theory, of course, was the scenario developed in 1964 by Arlen Specter, a young lawyer on the Warren Commission and now a Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Originally, the FBI said that three shots had been fired at Kennedy's motorcade. The first supposedly hit President Kennedy in the back but did not penetrate too deeply. The second, which hit Governor John Connally in the back, exited his chest, punctured his wrist and wound up in his thigh. The third shot hit Kennedy in the head. The Warren Commission staff accepted this three-shot scenario until a staff lawyer, Arlen Specter, began looking frame by frame at the home movie from the crime scene made by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder. Selected frames from the film were published by Life magazine but the movie was not broadcast, not the least because it showed the wounding of President Kennedy by a first shot in the back followed by the wounding of Governor Connally about 1.1 seconds later. It was impossible for Oswald to have fired his Mannlicher-Carcano bolt action rifle twice in 1.1 seconds. The photography from the crime scene indicated a second gunman -- a finding that the entire weight of the federal government from the president to the director of the FBI had already rejected.

Specter solved the problem by arguing that one bullet had caused all the non-fatal wounds to both JFK and Connally. This scenario has been much mocked over the years, though Specter has said, "the single bullet theory has become the single bullet fact."

Specter's theory remains the keystone on which the edifice of Oswald's sole guilt rests. For if one bullet did not cause all of Kennedy's and Connally's wounds, the only explanation of their injuries is that they were caused by two gunmen and some kind of conspiracy.

The latest study of JFK ballistic evidence was conducted by Patrick Grant and Erik Randich and published in 2006 in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Grant, the deputy director of the Forensic Science Center at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, is fond of saying, "Forensic science is the application of technological displays that can narrow the limits of plausible conjecture." Grant and Randich's article raises the very real question of whether the single bullet theory is still within the limits of plausible conjecture.

The new article is an outgrowth of a scientific paper Randich published with William Tobin in 2002 which casts doubt on the FBI's technique known as bullet-lead analysis. This technique is based on the assumption that each batch of lead used to make the core of bullets has a unique chemical "fingerprint" that can be used to match it with other bullets. Thus bullet lead found at the scene of a shooting could be matched to bullets found in a suspect's gun and prove complicity in gun violence. But Randich's study of bullet manufacturing found that batches of lead are not chemically unique, and bullets from the same box could have very different chemical signatures. His work helped persuade the FBI in 2005 to stop using bullet-lead analysis in criminal prosecution.

Says Grant: "We applied the same thinking to the JFK bullet fragments that had been analyzed by a man named Vincent Guinn [on behalf of the HSCA] back in the 1970s. I knew Guinn because I took his forensic science course when I was in graduate school and it helped inspire my interest in the subject."

Guinn, now dead, had concluded that the level of a trace element called antimony in five bullet fragments taken from the JFK crime scene fell into two distinct groups chemically. Given their chemical similarity, the handful of fragments taken from Kennedy's head, Connally's body and the front seat of the limousine could have come from two -- and only two -- bullets. From 1978 to 2006, Guinn's findings heartened defenders of the Warren Commission which found that Kennedy and Connally had been hit by only two bullets.

Randich and Grant's paper found that Guinn's analysis was fatally flawed. He had assumed the chemical composition of bullet lead is consistent throughout a given bullet, a finding that Randich's metallurgical analysis refuted. Guinn also underestimated the margin of error in his measurement of antimony and wrongly discounted contradictory evidence, they said. Grant and Randich concluded that their findings "considerably weaken support for the single bullet theory."

"For if one bullet did not cause all of Kennedy's and Connally's wounds, the only explanation of their injuries is that they were caused by two gunmen and some kind of conspiracy."


An error in the application of logic is not sufficient grounds upon which to build a "multiple assassin/conspiracy" scenario of the shooting event.

It is merely an error in application of logic, which ASSUMED that the WC shooting scenario was correct.

Which in and of itself brings up the old question: WHY? would anyone believe the WC?


"Connally's body"


There is no "chain of evidence" which could be utilized in any court of law which clearly defines that those fragments tested by Guinn actually came from the wrist of JBC.

In fact, with the missing fragment from CE840, as well as the tampering with the fragments while apparantly stored within the National Archives, the lack of validity that those fragments tested actually came from the wrist of JBC is more than sufficient to have this evidence (and it's resulting testing) completely dismissed from any consideration.

[Ron Ecker]

There seems to be a contradiction in Morley's explanation of the SBT. It has been my impression that Specter came up with the SBT after it was discovered that bystander Tague had also been wounded. Thus there was another bullet to account for. Specter solved this by claiming that one bullet wounded both JFK and Connally.

The SBT did not solve, but rather contradicted, the 1.1 seconds that Morley says was evident on film between the woundings of JFK and Connally. So how could trying to solve the 1.1 seconds problem be the rationale for the SBT? The rationale, so I've always thought, was the wounding of Tague.

[Denis Pointing]

There seems to be a contradiction in Morley's explanation of the SBT. It has been my impression that Specter came up with the SBT after it was discovered that bystander Tague had also been wounded. Thus there was another bullet to account for. Specter solved this by claiming that one bullet wounded both JFK and Connally.

The SBT did not solve, but rather contradicted, the 1.1 seconds that Morley says was evident on film between the woundings of JFK and Connally. So how could trying to solve the 1.1 seconds problem be the rationale for the SBT? The rationale, so I've always thought, was the wounding of Tague.

I belive your right Ron, in that Specter had to come up with a quick answer to account for a possible fourth bullet. Ironically, I dont think the SBT was necessary, if he had considered the possibility that Tague's wound had been caused by a fragment of bullet rather than a ricochet from a complete bullet we may never have been burdened by his crazy SBT.

[Nathaniel Heiden...]

Here is a good example of Arlen Specter's "questioning skills" during his interview of the Parkland doctors. It is about as gracefull as a Hummer turning
a corner during the second Clinton Administration, and is taken from James W. Dougless' incredible book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and
Why It matters:

When the government took charge with its official story of a lone assassin firing from the rear. the doctors were pressured
by the Warren Commission to change their initial observations of Kennedy's body. The Warren Commission's staff counsel,
Arlen Specter, a future U.S. senator,confronted the Dallas doctors with a question that contained the answer the Commission
was seeking:

"Assuming... that the bullet passed through the President's body, going in between the strap muscles of the shoulder without
violating the pleura space and exited at a point in the midline of the neck, would the hole which you saw on the President's
throat be consistent with an exit point, assuming the factors which I have just given to you"(note 551, Chapter 6)[/font]

As Charles Crenshaw (who was not asked to testify) pointed out later, Specter had asked the doctors, "If the bullet exited from
the front of Kennedy's throat, could the wound in the front of Kennedy's throat have been an exit wound" (note 552, Chapter 6)
[font="Impact"]
The doctors went along with Specter's show of logic: Yes, assuming the bullet exited from the the front of Kennedy's throat, that
wound could indeed have been an exit wound. Pressed further by Warren Commission member Gerald Ford, who would later
become president, Dr. Malcolm Perry repudiated as "inaccurate" the press reports of his clear description of the hole in the throat
as an entrance wound.(note 553)

That was not enough for Allen Dulles, who wanted the Warren Commission to draw extensively on the doctors' denial of their
earliest press statements as a way to counteract the "false rumors" of the hole in the throat as an entrance wound. The Commission,
Dulles felt, needed "to deal with a great many of the false rumors that have been spread on the basis of false interpretation of
these appearances before television, radio, and so forth (note 554)

Dr. Perry's retraction was not only manipulated but given under stress. He had been threatened beforehand by "the men in suits,"
specifically the Secret Service. As Dallas Secret Service agent Elmer Moore would admit to a friend years later, he "had been
ordered to tell Dr. Perry to change his testimony." Moore said that in threatening Perryn he acted "on orders from Washington
and Mr. Kelly of the Secret Service Headquarters." (note 555, Chapter 6)

Moore confessed his intimidatin of Dr. Perry to a University of Washington graduate student, Jim Gochenaur, with whom he became
friendly in Seattle in 1970. Moore told Gochenaur he "had badgered Dr. Perry" into "making a flad statement that there was no entry
wound in the neck" (note 556) Moore admitted, "I regrett what I had to do with Dr. Perry." (note 557) However, with his fellow agents,
he had been given "marching order from Washington." He felt he had no choice: "I did everything I was told, we all did everything
we were told, or we'd get our heads cut off." (note 558) In the cover-up the men in suits were both the intimidators and the
intimidated.

With the power of the government marshaled against what the Parkland doctors had seen, they entered into what Charles Crenshaw
called "a conspiracy of silence." (note 559) When Crenshaw finally broke his own silence in 1992, he wrote:

"I believe there was a common denominator in our silence-- a fearful perception that to come forward with what we believed to be
the medical truth would be asking for trouble. Although we never admitted it to one another, we realized that the inertia of the
estabilished story was so powerful. so thoroughly presented, so adamantly accepted, that it would bury anyone who stood in its
path... I was as afraid fo the men in suits as I was of the men who had assassinated the President... I reasoned that anyone who
would go so far as to eliminate the President of the United States would surely not hesitate to kill a doctor. (note 560, Chapter 6)

The above is taken from James W. Douglass incredible book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.

In school we were taught that "to assume makes an ass out of u and me"

Apparently it made Arlen Specter Senator For Life.

This post has been edited by Nathaniel Heidenheimer: Jun 27 2008, 02:47 AM

[William Kelly]

http://www.rollcall.com/news/36466-1.html

Police Investigate Threat Against Specter
By Roll Call Staff
July 5, 2009, 1:07 p.m.

The Capitol Police are investigating a telephone threat against Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), according to the Associated Press.

Mandan (N.D.) Deputy Chief Paul Leingang told the AP that his police department interviewed a local man on Tuesday at the request of the Capitol Police.

According to Leingang, the man left a message saying he would travel to Washington to assassinate the Senator, but in the course of his interview said he was under the influence of alcohol and did something “stupid.”

The Mandan police have finished their role in the investigation, leaving it in the hands of the Capitol Police.

[David Andrews]

http://www.rollcall.com/news/36466-1.html

Police Investigate Threat Against Specter
By Roll Call Staff
July 5, 2009, 1:07 p.m.

The Capitol Police are investigating a telephone threat against Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), according to the Associated Press.

Mandan (N.D.) Deputy Chief Paul Leingang told the AP that his police department interviewed a local man on Tuesday at the request of the Capitol Police.

According to Leingang, the man left a message saying he would travel to Washington to assassinate the Senator, but in the course of his interview said he was under the influence of alcohol and did something “stupid.”

The Mandan police have finished their role in the investigation, leaving it in the hands of the Capitol Police.

It was Phil Spector, calling from jail. Something about copyright infringement.