SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS: Truth or Obfuscation?

[Pat Speer]

My comments added in bold:

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied. I have summarized my views for your consideration, which I shall repost here for convenience:

Raymond,

Perhaps you can help me to find the words. I regard him as a prevaricator, an obfuscationist, and a dissembler. Let me offer a few reasons why:

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

Did the highest quality versions of the film depict a blob? Wasn't it an artifact found only on third and fourth generation prints? No blob is visible on the quality prints now available.

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

It is entirely consistent with Hargis' statements. The large defect was on the top of JFK's head. Blood and brains exploded upwards, and into the air. Hargis drove through this spray within a second.

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

Only if you consider McClelland's description "evidence" while tossing out the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of the autopsists. Perhaps Thompson had read the Warren Report and had seen that McClelland initially reported a wound on Kennedy's left temple. If so, he would have been understandably reluctant to rally behind McClelland at the expense of Humes and Boswell.

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

If you go back and read the coverage it received, you'd see that it did create a sensation, and in the process, convinced thousands if not tens of thousands of readers, that there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. It is your belief that alteration is the end-all be-all through which a conspiracy can be proved. Implicit in that argument is that the available evidence, if taken at face value, suggests there was NO conspiracy. (Dr. Mantik, echoing Judge Earl Warren, claims as much in one of your books). In 1967, Thompson thought, quite rightly in my opinion, that the suppression of the Zapruder film had something to do with the fact that most of those viewing it would become concerned Kennedy was shot from the front. History has proved him correct. It is only through your strange prism that his use of the Zapruder film is suspicious.

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

(9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

(11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

None of which he, or the majority of conspiracy theorists, accept as proof.

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

The number of film experts believing the film to be altered and the degree to which film experts believe the film to be altered remains in question. I've had discussions on this topic with two film-makers, both conspiracy theorists. Both believe alteration unlikely. Perhaps this new, much smaller claim, that the back of JFK's head was painted in on a few frames will gain more support.

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

We all await the position paper of these "experts", along with the photographic evidence for their claims.

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

This, in a nutshell, is the source of much of the problem. You, as Horne, think talking to an old man and having him tell you something at odds with the official story is a "discovery", and cause to re-interpret everything we thought we knew. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. The 30 year-removed memories of people so unconcerned with getting things straight that they never wrote anything down just are not reliable. They may be interesting. They maybe worth reporting. But you cannot construct a new version of events based upon the isolated recollections of people far removed from the events in question, and expect widespread acceptance. Right here on this forum, on another thread, David Lifton has told Pamela McElwain-Brown that he doesn't believe her story of seeing the Zapruder film in a movie theater in 1964. He is, IMO, correct to do so. But where is this objectivity when it comes to the medical evidence, where we have people readily accepting the otherwise unsupported claims that Kennedy had no brain when he arrived at Bethesda, etc.? It's nowhere. This suggests to me that some of us are more concerned with making a "discovery" than in getting things straight. (And no, I'm not being holier than thou. I discuss this tendency within myself in the Seduction of Intrigue section of chapter 20 at patspeer.com.)

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

And this revelation to you that Thompson has always been an evil-doer, of course, has nothing to do with any personal dislike you feel for the man... I'm sorry but at this late date in the Thompson/Fetzer wars that's truly hard to believe.

He is extending his efforts by disavowing or minimizing indications of conspiracy that were included in SIX SECONDS, while he attempts to perpetrate the fraud that the film is authentic. It should not be difficult, even for one as kindly as you, to see though his obvious hypocrisy.

Since Thompson continues to believe the film suggests a conspiracy, it remains to be seen how his changing a few of his conclusions is so troublesome.

If you prefer to place propriety and manners ahead of distortions and perversions about evidence and truth in the assassination of JFK, that is your prerogative. But that, in my view, is simply one more form of apology for betraying the trust of you, me, and the American people.

Jim

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

Josiah, I don't understand why you can't answer a simple question. Is this the same paragraph that incensed Vince Salandria so much that, when he confronted you about it and you replied in was simply a matter of a lack of felicity in expression, he accused you of being an op? The section it concludes happens to be the last section of the final chapter, which concerns "Answered and Unanswered Questions". When I review the final paragraph of the preceding chapter, however, I find nothing that would have offended him. So, if this wasn't it, then what paragraph was? This is a simple and direct question, Tink. How about a simple and direct answer?

I quoted the paragraph in full in an earlier post on another thread, which, apparently, like so many others, you didn't bother to read or are now misrepresenting. What I would like to know--given you are making so much of it--is this: Is this not the same paragraph that led Vincent Salandria to conclude that you were a government agent? He has written that he was so outraged by your dismissive attitude that he confronted you personally and accused you of whitewashing the case. What I want to know is whether you are prepared to admit that this paragraph has raised the most serious doubts about your integrity, not only in my mind but also in the minds of other qualified students of JFK. If it was not this paragraph, kindly quote the one that so upset him. Thank you.

I hope this might be relevant to your post, Mr. Cohen.

Professor Fetzer concludes a confused blast against me on another thread by writing, “How could he possibly conclude his book by asserting, ‘It does not prove that the assassination was a conspiracy?’ I think Tink owes us an explanation.”

Here’s the explanation.

The quote does not come from the conclusion of Six Seconds but from a catch-all chapter entitled, “Answered and Unanswered Questions.” He pulled one sentence out of a larger quote that makes clear what is being said.

The book ends with a chapter called “The Warren Report.” This chapter summarizes the points made earlier against the background of the Warren Report. The book ends with this summary paragraph:

"This book has attempted to perform a task of archaeology, to lay bare a whole level of contradictory evidence buried beneath the facile conclusions of the Commission’s Report. This evidence (much of it never published) was either ignored, disregarded, or misrepresented by the Commission. Now it has been brought to light. If its introduction makes necessary the emergence of new conclusions, then so be it." (213)

This was then followed by a catch-all Chapter X entitled “Answered and Unanswered Questions.” This chapter picked up the various pieces of information learned over the course of writing the book that could find no place in the books structure. The questions were things like, “Are the ‘missing frames’ from the Zapurder film still missing?” “Was the rifle found in the TSBD a Mauser or a Mannlicher-Carcano?” “Were the President’s coat and shirt bunched at the time he was struck in the back?” “Does the Altgens photo show Oswald or Billy Joe Lovelady in the doorway of the TSBD?” “Who is the ‘umbrella man’?” “Who owned the jacket discarded by Officer J.D. Tippit’s assailant?” “Which shot caused the ‘Tague hit.?” This chapter then ends with a sixteen-page discussion of whether Oswald shot the President. Included in this section are numerous witness reports I discovered in the Archives detailing movements of various people near the Depository. The last several pages of this section are devoted to enlargements from the Hughes film and Weaver photo concerning the vexed question of whether in the film and photo the outlines of two people can be seen near the sixth floor corner window. The chapter ends with a short paragraph commenting on the miscellaneous evidence put forward in the final sixteen page section:

What does this collection of new evidence prove? It does not prove that the assassination was a conspiracy and that two men were together on the sixth floor of the Depository at the time the shots were fired. Nor does it prove Oswald’s innocence. What it does suggest is that there are threads in this case that should have been unraveled long ago instead of being swept under the Archives rug. It also shows that the question of Oswald’s guilt must remain – nearly four years after the event – still unanswered. (246)

The sentence that Professor Fetzer wants to make much of could have been written just as well as “It does not prove that the assassination was a conspiracy because two men were together on the sixth floor of the of the Depository at the time the shots were fired.” Then this closing paragraph of the section refers back to the topic of the section, “Did Lee Harvey Oswald shoot the President?” The last sentence of the paragraph affirms that that question “must remain – nearly four years after the event – still unanswered.”

By cutting off the front of a sentence from its tail, Fetzer wants to press the idea that I said in Six Seconds that I hadn’t shown a conspiracy in the death of John Kennedy. What I said was that the photo and ancillary evidence concerning two men at the sixth floor window was not dispositive whether a conspiracy existed and whether Oswald was innocent. This statement remains as true today as it was in 1967.

A final word. It is difficult now to get back into the ambience 1967. I can say only that I made a determined effort to write toned-down prose with a scholarly edge to it. Given the temper of the times and the often shrill claims of assassination related writings, a quieter, more objective, more scholarly approach seemed better. But that tone should not mislead anyone as to the robust and serious aim of the book. It was to show that the best reconstruction that can be made of the event shows that shooters fired from three locations. Does this mean a conspiracy was involved in the assassination? Are you kidding?

Josiah Thompson

>Taking a fresh look at SSID, which I am now doing, it is occurring to me that it might be valuable to ask whether or not this book was intended as some sort of >limited hang-out for the CTs, appearing to give new information but concealing more than it revealed.

I must say I am somewhat taken aback by the accusations being leveled at Josiah Thompson on this board over the past several days. Pamela, are you actually suggesting that Thompson intentionally tried to deceive his readers with "Six Seconds in Dallas?" What could possibly be the point of giving "new information but concealing more than it revealed?" What a waste of time! And do we really expect him to have to stand by every claim or theory he espoused 40 years ago? Isn't it possible that he simply made some mistakes, without there being some sinister overtone in play?

Edited January 3, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[Pamela Brown]

Will the poster please explain what movie theater showed the Zapruder film in 1964?

According to the record (as we now know it), the Z film was locked up tight as a drum at the offices of Time Life.

So I would be very interested in knowing the circumstances of its alleged projection at a New York City theater in 1964. Certainly, there was no media coverage of any such event.

Thanks.

DSL

If Six Seconds needs a defense, then someone apart from the author should give it.

Of course SIX SECONDS needs no defense. While I reserve the future right to point out its shortcomings, no one can deny that the act of writing and publication (it is a superbly produced book) was a courageous act, much to be admired.

I would basically agree with you Raymond. My initial reaction to SSID was very positive because it alluded to conspiracy and included sketches of a number of the Z-frames, which were more clear than the photocopies in the WC H&E. However, I did find it muddled and puzzling in many respects; it was difficult to determine whether the leads being presented were opening doors to new research or merely rabbit-trails.

Taking a fresh look at SSID, which I am now doing, it is occurring to me that it might be valuable to ask whether or not this book was intended as some sort of limited hang-out for the CTs, appearing to give new information but concealing more than it revealed.

Anyone can tell by looking at the Z-film, for example, that it was altered. It was spliced in at least two critical places. So then the question becomes not whether it was altered but how maliciously it was altered.

I had a chance to see the Z-film once in a movie theatre in NYC in December 1964. It made an indelible impression. How different would my or any other researcher's perceptions have been if they had had access to it on a daily basis back then. Why, then, are so many now recognized anomalies glossed over in SSID?

By 'the poster' do you mean me? How dismissive.

The Bleeker Street Cinema, and it followed the David Wolper film "1000 Days" which was in black+white. They rolled without comment into the Zapruder. At the time I did not question who was responsible for the showing. I did not realize until later how unusual that was.

There was indeed a small ad in one of the NYC papers, but, there was no press hype over it. I sat in the front row and my obsession with the limo began that evening, watching the limo move into view with the flags flapping in the wind, then watching JFK move from life to death on a large screen.

Pamela

So you are claiming to have viewed the Z-film in 1964 before Groden had a copy from Moe Wietzman in the late 60s early 70s?

What copy could you have possibly seen? Not Lifes for sure, and no way a SS copy

Sorry but thats real hard to believe

I did. I don't know what copy it was. It certainly wasn't the original, but it was quite good. I've been sharing this event with the research community for a very long time.

Ok

I dont see how that was possible

What exactly is *not* possible?

Here's a link to another forum post that might help you and Lifton catch up...

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=581

Martin says:

"The idea that anyone had 12 years to "work on" the film is, of course, untenable. No one who saw in on November 22 or 23, 1963 has alleged alteration, and the film was readily viewable by researchers by late 1964, which would be a maximum of 12 months, not 12 years.

Many of us had seen the film before it was shown on television in March 1975. "

Edited January 3, 2010 by Pamela McElwain-Brown

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

My replies are underlined.

My comments added in bold:

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied. I have summarized my views for your consideration, which I shall repost here for convenience:

Raymond,

Perhaps you can help me to find the words. I regard him as a prevaricator, an obfuscationist, and a dissembler. Let me offer a few reasons why:

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

Did the highest quality versions of the film depict a blob? Wasn't it an artifact found only on third and fourth generation prints? No blob is visible on the quality prints now available.

Don't confound the white piece of paper that seems to float across the grass in the background with the massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which appears to have been part and parcel of the interlocking and mutually reinforcing deceptions of altering the X-rays to make it appear there was missing mass to the right-front, the caption in LIFE magazine for frame 313, and Zapruder's hand gesture during his television interview that evening. I have explained this so many times, I presume you know what I am talking about. This is the most striking and dramatic aspect of the film in 313, 314, 315, and 316, which was always a part of the film, though less clear in various bootlegged copies.

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

It is entirely consistent with Hargis' statements. The large defect was on the top of JFK's head. Blood and brains exploded upwards, and into the air. Hargis drove through this spray within a second.

No, it isn't. Hargis was riding to the left-rear. He was hit so hard he thought that he himself had been hit. It was not a matter of simply "driving through this spray within a second"! Egad, you are even more ignorant than I had supposed. Now I doubt that you have even read SIX SECONDS, since Josiah reports his words on page 100: "This debris hit Officer Hargis with such force that he told reporters the next day, 'I thought at first that I might have been hit'." And of course the Harper fragment was found on the grass the next day, which I suspect hit Hargis and was deflected onto the lawn. You really don't know what you are talking about.

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

Only if you consider McClelland's description "evidence" while tossing out the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of the autopsists. Perhaps Thompson had read the Warren Report and had seen that McClelland initially reported a wound on Kennedy's left temple. If so, he would have been understandably reluctant to rally behind McClelland at the expense of Humes and Boswell.

Again you demonstrate that you are utterly ignorant of the best studies on these matters. Try reading the chapter by Gary Aguilar in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), for example, which demonstrates that the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of Humes and Boswell were fabrications. The "left/right" mis-description is common, since looking at the body, it is "on the left" from the perspective of the observer, even though it is "on the right" of the patient's body. Mantik explained this some time back, if you only read his chapter in MURDER. I am completely astonished at your ignorance of the objective and scientific research on these points.

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

If you go back and read the coverage it received, you'd see that it did create a sensation, and in the process, convinced thousands if not tens of thousands of readers, that there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. It is your belief that alteration is the end-all be-all through which a conspiracy can be proved. Implicit in that argument is that the available evidence, if taken at face value, suggests there was NO conspiracy. (Dr. Mantik, echoing Judge Earl Warren, claims as much in one of your books). In 1967, Thompson thought, quite rightly in my opinion, that the suppression of the Zapruder film had something to do with the fact that most of those viewing it would become concerned Kennedy was shot from the front. History has proved him correct. It is only through your strange prism that his use of the Zapruder film is suspicious.

Well, the "double-hit" study, which most of us considered to be the most objective and scientific in the book, was a demonstration that there had to be at least two shooters. Today, however, using arguments that are specious, he is trying to disavow it, where I have already shown that his disavowal is based upon the false premises of a simultaneous hit and "startle reaction", which is a neurophysiological impossibility. The bullet travels so much faster than sound that, even if the shooter were close to Zapruder, the effects of the sound and the neurological response to them would have taken time and rendered Thompson's purported analysis null and void. PLUS, of course, it does not explain why Richard Feynman, a world famous physicist, would have arrived at the same "double-hit" hypothesis. None of the witnesses, by the way, reported observing the back-and-to-the-left motion many students have found convincing, which appears to be an artifact of editing.

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

(9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

(11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

None of which he, or the majority of conspiracy theorists, accept as proof.

Well, I'll call your bluff. Tell me the arguments that are presented there and why they are not persuasive. I am under the impression that you are faking it here, as you do elsewhere. Since "the majority of conspiracy theorists [do not] accept what I have published there "as proof", you have an obligation to explain why. The arguments have been published. Your basis for rejecting them has not. I hate to say it, Pat, but you appear to be completely unqualified for research on this or, I would surmise, any complex subject. So prove that I am wrong. Give me an inventory of the arguments that are present in the sources that I have cited and explain what is wrong with them. I have no doubt that you can't do it and won't even try. I regard your answer here as phony as the film.

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

The number of film experts believing the film to be altered and the degree to which film experts believe the film to be altered remains in question. I've had discussions on this topic with two film-makers, both conspiracy theorists. Both believe alteration unlikely. Perhaps this new, much smaller claim, that the back of JFK's head was painted in on a few frames will gain more support.

Well, then, it might make a difference if they have actually looked at the relevant evidence. Ask them to take a look at HOAX (2003), especially the Prologue, pages 21 to 28, "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery", "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid"--where these articles are accessible via google--and the relevant portions of Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV (2009). Invite them to visit my public issues web site an view John Costella's tutorial at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/. I would be fascinated to learn more about your "film maker" friends, but you response is artificial and contrived. If you had an argument to show we were wrong about any of this, you would have made it. You have not.

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

We all await the position paper of these "experts", along with the photographic evidence for their claims.

So when they whisper in your ear, you will become a believer? You seem to be implying that Doug Horne, who was there and did that--and even has a degree in history!--is slanting or fabricating reports that he is attributing to Hollywood film restoration experts, whom he cites by name? Have you read the reports from Roderick Ryan in Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1998)? The number of Hollywood film experts who agree with this has grown to seven--eight, including Ryan! Are you telling me that, if this actually is their opinion, then you will convert? My confidence in you ability to reason has been enormously diminished by this exchange.

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

This, in a nutshell, is the source of much of the problem. You, as Horne, think talking to an old man and having him tell you something at odds with the official story is a "discovery", and cause to re-interpret everything we thought we knew. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. The 30 year-removed memories of people so unconcerned with getting things straight that they never wrote anything down just are not reliable. They may be interesting. They maybe worth reporting. But you cannot construct a new version of events based upon the isolated recollections of people far removed from the events in question, and expect widespread acceptance. Right here on this forum, on another thread, David Lifton has told Pamela McElwain-Brown that he doesn't believe her story of seeing the Zapruder film in a movie theater in 1964. He is, IMO, correct to do so. But where is this objectivity when it comes to the medical evidence, where we have people readily accepting the otherwise unsupported claims that Kennedy had no brain when he arrived at Bethesda, etc.? It's nowhere. This suggests to me that some of us are more concerned with making a "discovery" than in getting things straight. (And no, I'm not being holier than thou. I discuss this tendency within myself in the Seduction of Intrigue section of chapter 20 at patspeer.com.)

The "discovery" that the film is a fabrication has been proven over and over again. If you have a modicum of intellectual integrity, you will explain the proofs I have advanced and explain why each of them is wrong. I not only do not believe that you can do that, I don't think you will even try. So surprise me! Try to show that the arguments we have actually given are wrong!

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

And this revelation to you that Thompson has always been an evil-doer, of course, has nothing to do with any personal dislike you feel for the man... I'm sorry but at this late date in the Thompson/Fetzer wars that's truly hard to believe.

Arguments are independent of attitudes. Discounting an argument because of its source is an elementary fallacy I taught freshmen to avoid for 35 years! Today I regard the man as a disgrace, but I could still be one of his biggest fans, because the points that I have made are completely objective. He offered an opaque sketch of frame 313. He did not offer any but a very abstract outline of frames 314, 315, and 316. He published the McClelland drawing and even quoted Officer Hargis, who was hit by debris so hard he thought he himself had been shot. The drawing and testimony stand in striking contradiction to the events shown on the film. He cannot not have known they were incompatible. But, instead of driving for the truth by a determined effort to resolve this contradiction, he obfuscated it significance. Because he did not even offer sketches of what the film showed in these crucial respects, his readers had no idea that he was suppressing, ignoring, or otherwise concealing some of the most important indications of fakery in the cover up. He is playing you and others for saps--and you, alas, are falling for it! Josiah is like "The Force": he can have a powerful effect on the weak-minded!

He is extending his efforts by disavowing or minimizing indications of conspiracy that were included in SIX SECONDS, while he attempts to perpetrate the fraud that the film is authentic. It should not be difficult, even for one as kindly as you, to see though his obvious hypocrisy.

Since Thompson continues to believe the film suggests a conspiracy, it remains to be seen how his changing a few of his conclusions is so troublesome.

My guess is that he was working toward declaring that he has become agnostic in time for the 50th observance of the assassination. That appears to be what this is all about. He and Mack and Lamson and Colby and McAdams and others are all targeting the 50th.

If you prefer to place propriety and manners ahead of distortions and perversions about evidence and truth in the assassination of JFK, that is your prerogative. But that, in my view, is simply one more form of apology for betraying the trust of you, me, and the American people.

Jim

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

None of the witnesses, by the way, reported observing the back-and-to-the-left motion many students have found convincing, which appears to be an artifact of editing.

At last, we have the FINAL PROOF of alteration. The film shows that JFK was driven violently backwards, but this is not supported by the eyewitnesses.

Since we know that eyewitness memory is infallible, we must conclude that JFK was NOT DRIVEN BACKWARD by the fatal bullet and that the Zapruder film is a fake. Q.E.D.

[Dean Hagerman]

Will the poster please explain what movie theater showed the Zapruder film in 1964?

According to the record (as we now know it), the Z film was locked up tight as a drum at the offices of Time Life.

So I would be very interested in knowing the circumstances of its alleged projection at a New York City theater in 1964. Certainly, there was no media coverage of any such event.

Thanks.

DSL

If Six Seconds needs a defense, then someone apart from the author should give it.

Of course SIX SECONDS needs no defense. While I reserve the future right to point out its shortcomings, no one can deny that the act of writing and publication (it is a superbly produced book) was a courageous act, much to be admired.

I would basically agree with you Raymond. My initial reaction to SSID was very positive because it alluded to conspiracy and included sketches of a number of the Z-frames, which were more clear than the photocopies in the WC H&E. However, I did find it muddled and puzzling in many respects; it was difficult to determine whether the leads being presented were opening doors to new research or merely rabbit-trails.

Taking a fresh look at SSID, which I am now doing, it is occurring to me that it might be valuable to ask whether or not this book was intended as some sort of limited hang-out for the CTs, appearing to give new information but concealing more than it revealed.

Anyone can tell by looking at the Z-film, for example, that it was altered. It was spliced in at least two critical places. So then the question becomes not whether it was altered but how maliciously it was altered.

I had a chance to see the Z-film once in a movie theatre in NYC in December 1964. It made an indelible impression. How different would my or any other researcher's perceptions have been if they had had access to it on a daily basis back then. Why, then, are so many now recognized anomalies glossed over in SSID?

By 'the poster' do you mean me? How dismissive.

The Bleeker Street Cinema, and it followed the David Wolper film "1000 Days" which was in black+white. They rolled without comment into the Zapruder. At the time I did not question who was responsible for the showing. I did not realize until later how unusual that was.

There was indeed a small ad in one of the NYC papers, but, there was no press hype over it. I sat in the front row and my obsession with the limo began that evening, watching the limo move into view with the flags flapping in the wind, then watching JFK move from life to death on a large screen.

Pamela

So you are claiming to have viewed the Z-film in 1964 before Groden had a copy from Moe Wietzman in the late 60s early 70s?

What copy could you have possibly seen? Not Lifes for sure, and no way a SS copy

Sorry but thats real hard to believe

I did. I don't know what copy it was. It certainly wasn't the original, but it was quite good. I've been sharing this event with the research community for a very long time.

Ok

I dont see how that was possible

What exactly is *not* possible?

Here's a link to another forum post that might help you and Lifton catch up...

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=581

Martin says:

"The idea that anyone had 12 years to "work on" the film is, of course, untenable. No one who saw in on November 22 or 23, 1963 has alleged alteration, and the film was readily viewable by researchers by late 1964, which would be a maximum of 12 months, not 12 years.

Many of us had seen the film before it was shown on television in March 1975. "

That thread does nothing for me, and what Martin says really does nothing for me

You keep saying "I've been sharing this event with the research community for a very long time."

What does that have to do with anything?

I could claim to have seen the Titanic docked in New York harbor and have been telling other researchers that for years

It does not mean it happened

[Pat Speer]

More comments in bold.

My replies are underlined.

My comments added in bold:

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied. I have summarized my views for your consideration, which I shall repost here for convenience:

Raymond,

Perhaps you can help me to find the words. I regard him as a prevaricator, an obfuscationist, and a dissembler. Let me offer a few reasons why:

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

Did the highest quality versions of the film depict a blob? Wasn't it an artifact found only on third and fourth generation prints? No blob is visible on the quality prints now available.

Don't confound the white piece of paper that seems to float across the grass in the background with the massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which appears to have been part and parcel of the interlocking and mutually reinforcing deceptions of altering the X-rays to make it appear there was missing mass to the right-front, the caption in LIFE magazine for frame 313, and Zapruder's hand gesture during his television interview that evening. I have explained this so many times, I presume you know what I am talking about. This is the most striking and dramatic aspect of the film in 313, 314, 315, and 316, which was always a part of the film, though less clear in various bootlegged copies.

I assume you are claiming the spray of blood and brains on the slide above to be a "blob". I don't see it as one. I see it as an explosion of blood and brain matter from a bullet wound. Since there is no such explosion from the back of the head, moreover, I see this explosion as clear-cut evidence the bullet impacted at this location. either from behind or from the front. By claiming the Z-film is fake you downplay this clear-cut and easy to discern argument against the official story. Are you merely ignorant of the concept of back spatter, and the fact that Itek found no evidence of back spatter in frame 313 of the Z-film? Or are you an obfuscationist?

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

It is entirely consistent with Hargis' statements. The large defect was on the top of JFK's head. Blood and brains exploded upwards, and into the air. Hargis drove through this spray within a second.

No, it isn't. Hargis was riding to the left-rear. He was hit so hard he thought that he himself had been hit. It was not a matter of simply "driving through this spray within a second"! Egad, you are even more ignorant than I had supposed. Now I doubt that you have even read SIX SECONDS, since Josiah reports his words on page 100: "This debris hit Officer Hargis with such force that he told reporters the next day, 'I thought at first that I might have been hit'." And of course the Harper fragment was found on the grass the next day, which I suspect hit Hargis and was deflected onto the lawn. You really don't know what you are talking about.

The Z-film depicts a large fragment sailing through the air. The only large fragment found in the plaza was the Harper fragment, found 80-100 feet from the impact location. A bullet impacting on the back of Kennedy's head would not send a large fragment sailing a hundred feet through the air from the exit. The film and the fragment are therefore clear-cut evidence the bullet did not impact on the back of the head as purported, but at the supposed exit. Are you merely ignorant of wound ballistics? Or are you an obfuscationist?

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

Only if you consider McClelland's description "evidence" while tossing out the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of the autopsists. Perhaps Thompson had read the Warren Report and had seen that McClelland initially reported a wound on Kennedy's left temple. If so, he would have been understandably reluctant to rally behind McClelland at the expense of Humes and Boswell.

Again you demonstrate that you are utterly ignorant of the best studies on these matters. Try reading the chapter by Gary Aguilar in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), for example, which demonstrates that the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of Humes and Boswell were fabrications. The "left/right" mis-description is common, since looking at the body, it is "on the left" from the perspective of the observer, even though it is "on the right" of the patient's body. Mantik explained this some time back, if you only read his chapter in MURDER. I am completely astonished at your ignorance of the objective and scientific research on these points.

Once and for all, I have read everything ever published by Aguilar and Mantik. As far as McClelland's reporting a wound in the left temple, he never denied it by claiming he was mistaken between his right and his left. That's just something someone made up. He told the ARRB there was blood on the left temple and that Pepper Jenkins told him there was a wound there:

DR. McCLELLAND: Let me just tell you that Paul brought it up.

Dr. Jenkins, when I came in the room, told me as I walked by to come up to the head of the table and he said , Bob, there's a wound in the left temple there. And so I went to the table and I thought, you know, knowing nothing else about any of the circumstances, that's like that (indicating).

MR. GUNN: Just for the record, you're pointing in with your -

DR. McCLELLAND: Yeah, the left temple -

MR. GUNN: -- finger at the left temple and now the back o the head.

DR. McCLELLAND: -- came out the back. And there was a lot of blood on the left temple. There was blood everywhere, but there was a lot of blood on the left temple, so I didn't question that. And in fact, in something else -- Pepper testified somewhere else, he denied that he said that to me in the Warren Commission. And I told him -- I said Pepper, don't you remember? No, I never said that, Bob, and I never said the cerebellum fell out. Well, yes, you did, too, but I didn't argue with him."

If you'd have ever conducted an INDEPENDENT study of the medical evidence, beyond regurgitating what so and so wrote or told you, you would have known this.

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

If you go back and read the coverage it received, you'd see that it did create a sensation, and in the process, convinced thousands if not tens of thousands of readers, that there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. It is your belief that alteration is the end-all be-all through which a conspiracy can be proved. Implicit in that argument is that the available evidence, if taken at face value, suggests there was NO conspiracy. (Dr. Mantik, echoing Judge Earl Warren, claims as much in one of your books). In 1967, Thompson thought, quite rightly in my opinion, that the suppression of the Zapruder film had something to do with the fact that most of those viewing it would become concerned Kennedy was shot from the front. History has proved him correct. It is only through your strange prism that his use of the Zapruder film is suspicious.

Well, the "double-hit" study, which most of us considered to be the most objective and scientific in the book, was a demonstration that there had to be at least two shooters. Today, however, using arguments that are specious, he is trying to disavow it, where I have already shown that his disavowal is based upon the false premises of a simultaneous hit and "startle reaction", which is a neurophysiological impossibility. The bullet travels so much faster than sound that, even if the shooter were close to Zapruder, the effects of the sound and the neurological response to them would have taken time and rendered Thompson's purported analysis null and void. PLUS, of course, it does not explain why Richard Feynman, a world famous physicist, would have arrived at the same "double-hit" hypothesis. None of the witnesses, by the way, reported observing the back-and-to-the-left motion many students have found convincing, which appears to be an artifact of editing.

So let's look at this critically. Critical thinking, that's your bag, right? You're claiming SSID was a deliberate obfuscation, even though it included compelling arguments for a conspiracy. You're also claiming Tink's stepping back from one of these arguments, THIRTY OR MORE YEARS LATER, when almost no one noticed, as proof it was an obfuscation. Well, doesn't it make a wee bit more sense, professor, that he not make the argument to begin with, if his goal was shut down talk of conspiracy?

As far as your comments about back-and-to-the-left...a number of witnesses noted that Kennedy was knocked down into the car. As the films and photographs reveal Kennedy to have been leaning forward before the fatal shot, getting knocked back and to the left is consistent with their statements. In fact, it suggests a shot from the front. So why is it again, that the government faked the film?

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

(9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

(11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

None of which he, or the majority of conspiracy theorists, accept as proof.

Well, I'll call your bluff. Tell me the arguments that are presented there and why they are not persuasive. I am under the impression that you are faking it here, as you do elsewhere. Since "the majority of conspiracy theorists [do not] accept what I have published there "as proof", you have an obligation to explain why. The arguments have been published. Your basis for rejecting them has not. I hate to say it, Pat, but you appear to be completely unqualified for research on this or, I would surmise, any complex subject. So prove that I am wrong. Give me an inventory of the arguments that are present in the sources that I have cited and explain what is wrong with them. I have no doubt that you can't do it and won't even try. I regard your answer here as phony as the film.

What bluff? It is a fact that of the 80 percent or so of the public believing JFK was killed by more than one shooter, only a small minority think the Zapruder film was faked. I am at work showing how the available evidence, including the Z-film, is clear-cut proof of a conspiracy. Trying to prove the Z-film not to be fake to fellow conspiracy theorists is therefore both of no interest to me, and a tremendous waste of time. Particularly as you and your crowd continue to tout that the available evidence, if not fake, proves Oswald did it. Here is something I brought to Dallas:

It shows quite clearly, IMO, that the paper bag in evidence purportedly used to smuggle in the rifle is NOT the bag removed from the building on 11-22-63. And yet this does not remotely interest you and your crowd. If so, you would not be able to tout that the evidence if taken at face value is a clear cut case for Oswald's sole guilt.

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

The number of film experts believing the film to be altered and the degree to which film experts believe the film to be altered remains in question. I've had discussions on this topic with two film-makers, both conspiracy theorists. Both believe alteration unlikely. Perhaps this new, much smaller claim, that the back of JFK's head was painted in on a few frames will gain more support.

Well, then, it might make a difference if they have actually looked at the relevant evidence. Ask them to take a look at HOAX (2003), especially the Prologue, pages 21 to 28, "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery", "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid"--where these articles are accessible via google--and the relevant portions of Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV (2009). Invite them to visit my public issues web site an view John Costella's tutorial at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/. I would be fascinated to learn more about your "film maker" friends, but you response is artificial and contrived. If you had an argument to show we were wrong about any of this, you would have made it. You have not.

As stated, I'm not all that interested in the possibility of Z-film alteration. When I read threads on alteration, I usually end up siding with those claiming the films weren't altered, but I remain open to the possibility the back of Kennedy's head was colored in, etc. My movie producer and director friends had a particular problem with the claims certain people or objects were inserted into the film. From what I can gather, none of the "film experts" (a really vague term--half the people in Hollywood can be considered a "film expert") contacted by Twyman or Horne supported such conjecture.

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

We all await the position paper of these "experts", along with the photographic evidence for their claims.

So when they whisper in your ear, you will become a believer? You seem to be implying that Doug Horne, who was there and did that--and even has a degree in history!--is slanting or fabricating reports that he is attributing to Hollywood film restoration experts, whom he cites by name? Have you read the reports from Roderick Ryan in Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1998)? The number of Hollywood film experts who agree with this has grown to seven--eight, including Ryan! Are you telling me that, if this actually is their opinion, then you will convert? My confidence in you ability to reason has been enormously diminished by this exchange.

No slight on Horne, but showing someone something and asking "What do you think?" will receive a less-detailed, less-credible answer than having them write a report on what they saw. People talk out of their rumps all the time, "film experts" included. BTW, if McAdams finds nine "experts" to disagree with these 8, do we have to throw in the towel and assume they are right? Of course not. There is a presumption of bias based on the company they keep.

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

This, in a nutshell, is the source of much of the problem. You, as Horne, think talking to an old man and having him tell you something at odds with the official story is a "discovery", and cause to re-interpret everything we thought we knew. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. The 30 year-removed memories of people so unconcerned with getting things straight that they never wrote anything down just are not reliable. They may be interesting. They maybe worth reporting. But you cannot construct a new version of events based upon the isolated recollections of people far removed from the events in question, and expect widespread acceptance. Right here on this forum, on another thread, David Lifton has told Pamela McElwain-Brown that he doesn't believe her story of seeing the Zapruder film in a movie theater in 1964. He is, IMO, correct to do so. But where is this objectivity when it comes to the medical evidence, where we have people readily accepting the otherwise unsupported claims that Kennedy had no brain when he arrived at Bethesda, etc.? It's nowhere. This suggests to me that some of us are more concerned with making a "discovery" than in getting things straight. (And no, I'm not being holier than thou. I discuss this tendency within myself in the Seduction of Intrigue section of chapter 20 at patspeer.com.)

The "discovery" that the film is a fabrication has been proven over and over again. If you have a modicum of intellectual integrity, you will explain the proofs I have advanced and explain why each of them is wrong. I not only do not believe that you can do that, I don't think you will even try. So surprise me! Try to show that the arguments we have actually given are wrong!

I can play the 'intellectual integrity' game, too, Jimbo. if you had an ounce of intellectual integrity, you would admit that the evidence, as interpreted by men like Thompson and myself, can be used to argue for a conspiracy, and that photo and film alteration need not be proved to prove conspiracy. Do you really want to continue playing Bugliosi's and McAdams' game and continue pretending that the evidence all points to Oswald, or are you willing to divorce yourself from Mantik's claim that ""If the evidence in the JFK case is merely accepted at face value, then the conclusions are rather trivial. The rookie Scotland Yard detector can easily solve this case--it was Oswald alone"? Are you willing to work WITH your fellow CTs towards a common goal, or are you really so hung up on the idea that the only route to the truth goes through Fetzerland that you are determined to continue shouting down any speculation the Z-film and autopsy photos, when taken at face value, suggest a conspiracy?

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

And this revelation to you that Thompson has always been an evil-doer, of course, has nothing to do with any personal dislike you feel for the man... I'm sorry but at this late date in the Thompson/Fetzer wars that's truly hard to believe.

Arguments are independent of attitudes. Discounting an argument because of its source is an elementary fallacy I taught freshmen to avoid for 35 years! Today I regard the man as a disgrace, but I could still be one of his biggest fans, because the points that I have made are completely objective. He offered an opaque sketch of frame 313. He did not offer any but a very abstract outline of frames 314, 315, and 316. He published the McClelland drawing and even quoted Officer Hargis, who was hit by debris so hard he thought he himself had been shot. The drawing and testimony stand in striking contradiction to the events shown on the film. He cannot not have known they were incompatible. But, instead of driving for the truth by a determined effort to resolve this contradiction, he obfuscated it significance. Because he did not even offer sketches of what the film showed in these crucial respects, his readers had no idea that he was suppressing, ignoring, or otherwise concealing some of the most important indications of fakery in the cover up. He is playing you and others for saps--and you, alas, are falling for it! Josiah is like "The Force": he can have a powerful effect on the weak-minded!

Josiah is not playing me for a sap. And I am anything but weak-minded. If you were to step outside Fetzerland for a second, I suspect you'd see that I have pretty much put you on a leash and walked you around the block, leading you back to a question: DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THE EVIDENCE, WHEN TAKEN AT FACE VALUE, SUGGESTS OSWALD KILLED KENNEDY ALL BY HIS LONESOME? If so, what evidence do you find the most convincing? If not, then why do you consider any study of the photographic evidence undertaken with the acceptance the evidence is legit beyond contempt and unworthy of your attention?

He is extending his efforts by disavowing or minimizing indications of conspiracy that were included in SIX SECONDS, while he attempts to perpetrate the fraud that the film is authentic. It should not be difficult, even for one as kindly as you, to see though his obvious hypocrisy.

Since Thompson continues to believe the film suggests a conspiracy, it remains to be seen how his changing a few of his conclusions is so troublesome.

My guess is that he was working toward declaring that he has become agnostic in time for the 50th observance of the assassination. That appears to be what this is all about. He and Mack and Lamson and Colby and McAdams and others are all targeting the 50th.

If you prefer to place propriety and manners ahead of distortions and perversions about evidence and truth in the assassination of JFK, that is your prerogative. But that, in my view, is simply one more form of apology for betraying the trust of you, me, and the American people.

Jim

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

Edited January 4, 2010 by Pat Speer

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

Well, it didn't happen the way it is shown in the Zapruder film--and on multiple counts! If you want the truth, you aren't going to settle for fabricated evidence, even if its creation appears to have involved the fluke of publishing the frames in an unintended sequence. Perhaps you know the story, which originated with David Lifton's observation that their order was changed when they were published in the supporting volumes.

What David noticed is that the frames were published in the order 313,315, 314, 316, which considerably mitigates the left-and-to-the-rear motion and appears to have been the order in which the fabricated film was supposed to have been sequenced. If you have ever had any military experience, you will understand what I mean when I say that, "It appears someone didn't get the word!" and left the frames in the wrong order.

If you can't understand such blatant forms of fabrication as introducing brains building to the right-front, when they were blown out to the left-rear, which has been confirmed by a series of cinema experts, beginning with Roderick Ryan and supplemented by a series of additional experts who have confirmed that the massive wound to the back of the head was painted over in black and the "blob" painted in, I am completely at a loss.

You have apparently either nor read or else not understood the results of extensive and patient research published in HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery", and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid", not to mention Roderick Ryan and the Hollywood experts. My inference is that you have some form of mental blindness that renders your mind incapable of rational thought when it comes to the alteration of the film.

None of the witnesses, by the way, reported observing the back-and-to-the-left motion many students have found convincing, which appears to be an artifact of editing.

At last, we have the FINAL PROOF of alteration. The film shows that JFK was driven violently backwards, but this is not supported by the eyewitnesses.

Since we know that eyewitness memory is infallible, we must conclude that JFK was NOT DRIVEN BACKWARD by the fatal bullet and that the Zapruder film is a fake. Q.E.D.

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

More comments in bold.

My original replies are underlined.

My new replies are in italics.

My comments added in bold:

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied. I have summarized my views for your consideration, which I shall repost here for convenience:

Raymond,

Perhaps you can help me to find the words. I regard him as a prevaricator, an obfuscationist, and a dissembler. Let me offer a few reasons why:

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

Did the highest quality versions of the film depict a blob? Wasn't it an artifact found only on third and fourth generation prints? No blob is visible on the quality prints now available.

Don't confound the white piece of paper that seems to float across the grass in the background with the massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which appears to have been part and parcel of the interlocking and mutually reinforcing deceptions of altering the X-rays to make it appear there was missing mass to the right-front, the caption in LIFE magazine for frame 313, and Zapruder's hand gesture during his television interview that evening. I have explained this so many times, I presume you know what I am talking about. This is the most striking and dramatic aspect of the film in 313, 314, 315, and 316, which was always a part of the film, though less clear in various bootlegged copies.

I assume you are claiming the spray of blood and brains on the slide above to be a "blob". I don't see it as one. I see it as an explosion of blood and brain matter from a bullet wound. Since there is no such explosion from the back of the head, moreover, I see this explosion as clear-cut evidence the bullet impacted at this location. either from behind or from the front. By claiming the Z-film is fake you downplay this clear-cut and easy to discern argument against the official story. Are you merely ignorant of the concept of back spatter, and the fact that Itek found no evidence of back spatter in frame 313 of the Z-film? Or are you an obfuscationist?

The blob is the mass of bulging brains so conspicuous in frame 314 above. I thought this was a matter of common knowledge. I am interested in drawing warranted conclusions from authentic evidence. Apparently, the fact that most of the evidence in this case has been faked has escaped you. I can't imagine why, but it clearly has.

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

It is entirely consistent with Hargis' statements. The large defect was on the top of JFK's head. Blood and brains exploded upwards, and into the air. Hargis drove through this spray within a second.

No, it isn't. Hargis was riding to the left-rear. He was hit so hard he thought that he himself had been hit. It was not a matter of simply "driving through this spray within a second"! Egad, you are even more ignorant than I had supposed. Now I doubt that you have even read SIX SECONDS, since Josiah reports his words on page 100: "This debris hit Officer Hargis with such force that he told reporters the next day, 'I thought at first that I might have been hit'." And of course the Harper fragment was found on the grass the next day, which I suspect hit Hargis and was deflected onto the lawn. You really don't know what you are talking about.

The Z-film depicts a large fragment sailing through the air. The only large fragment found in the plaza was the Harper fragment, found 80-100 feet from the impact location. A bullet impacting on the back of Kennedy's head would not send a large fragment sailing a hundred feet through the air from the exit. The film and the fragment are therefore clear-cut evidence the bullet did not impact on the back of the head as purported, but at the supposed exit. Are you merely ignorant of wound ballistics? Or are you an obfuscationist?

The right-temple hit appears to have occurred a ways down Elm Street and approximately opposite the concrete steps, which you would understand if you actually had read David Mantik's work. So we have here another indication of Pat Speer faking it!

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

Only if you consider McClelland's description "evidence" while tossing out the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of the autopsists. Perhaps Thompson had read the Warren Report and had seen that McClelland initially reported a wound on Kennedy's left temple. If so, he would have been understandably reluctant to rally behind McClelland at the expense of Humes and Boswell.

Again you demonstrate that you are utterly ignorant of the best studies on these matters. Try reading the chapter by Gary Aguilar in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), for example, which demonstrates that the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of Humes and Boswell were fabrications. The "left/right" mis-description is common, since looking at the body, it is "on the left" from the perspective of the observer, even though it is "on the right" of the patient's body. Mantik explained this some time back, if you only read his chapter in MURDER. I am completely astonished at your ignorance of the objective and scientific research on these points.

Once and for all, I have read everything ever published by Aguilar and Mantik. As far as McClelland's reporting a wound in the left temple, he never denied it by claiming he was mistaken between his right and his left. That's just something someone made up. He told the ARRB there was blood on the left temple and that Pepper Jenkins told him there was a wound there:

DR. McCLELLAND: Let me just tell you that Paul brought it up.

Dr. Jenkins, when I came in the room, told me as I walked by to come up to the head of the table and he said , Bob, there's a wound in the left temple there. And so I went to the table and I thought, you know, knowing nothing else about any of the circumstances, that's like that (indicating).

MR. GUNN: Just for the record, you're pointing in with your -

DR. McCLELLAND: Yeah, the left temple -

MR. GUNN: -- finger at the left temple and now the back o the head.

DR. McCLELLAND: -- came out the back. And there was a lot of blood on the left temple. There was blood everywhere, but there was a lot of blood on the left temple, so I didn't question that. And in fact, in something else -- Pepper testified somewhere else, he denied that he said that to me in the Warren Commission. And I told him -- I said Pepper, don't you remember? No, I never said that, Bob, and I never said the cerebellum fell out. Well, yes, you did, too, but I didn't argue with him."

If you'd have ever conducted an INDEPENDENT study of the medical evidence, beyond regurgitating what so and so wrote or told you, you would have known this.

I know the boundaries of my own competence, as you apparently do not. It entered the right temple, just as Malcolm Kilduff reported (while pointing to his right temple) and as Admiral Burkley confirmed--and as it was reported by NBC NEWS, for example, by Chet Huntley and others that afternoon and evening. You cannot have studied Mantik's work and continue to make these bizarre allegations unless you didn't understand it.

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

If you go back and read the coverage it received, you'd see that it did create a sensation, and in the process, convinced thousands if not tens of thousands of readers, that there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. It is your belief that alteration is the end-all be-all through which a conspiracy can be proved. Implicit in that argument is that the available evidence, if taken at face value, suggests there was NO conspiracy. (Dr. Mantik, echoing Judge Earl Warren, claims as much in one of your books). In 1967, Thompson thought, quite rightly in my opinion, that the suppression of the Zapruder film had something to do with the fact that most of those viewing it would become concerned Kennedy was shot from the front. History has proved him correct. It is only through your strange prism that his use of the Zapruder film is suspicious.

Well, the "double-hit" study, which most of us considered to be the most objective and scientific in the book, was a demonstration that there had to be at least two shooters. Today, however, using arguments that are specious, he is trying to disavow it, where I have already shown that his disavowal is based upon the false premises of a simultaneous hit and "startle reaction", which is a neurophysiological impossibility. The bullet travels so much faster than sound that, even if the shooter were close to Zapruder, the effects of the sound and the neurological response to them would have taken time and rendered Thompson's purported analysis null and void. PLUS, of course, it does not explain why Richard Feynman, a world famous physicist, would have arrived at the same "double-hit" hypothesis. None of the witnesses, by the way, reported observing the back-and-to-the-left motion many students have found convincing, which appears to be an artifact of editing.

So let's look at this critically. Critical thinking, that's your bag, right? You're claiming SSID was a deliberate obfuscation, even though it included compelling arguments for a conspiracy. You're also claiming Tink's stepping back from one of these arguments, THIRTY OR MORE YEARS LATER, when almost no one noticed, as proof it was an obfuscation. Well, doesn't it make a wee bit more sense, professor, that he not make the argument to begin with, if his goal was shut down talk of conspiracy?

As far as your comments about back-and-to-the-left...a number of witnesses noted that Kennedy was knocked down into the car. As the films and photographs reveal Kennedy to have been leaning forward before the fatal shot, getting knocked back and to the left is consistent with their statements. In fact, it suggests a shot from the front. So why is it again, that the government faked the film?

No, I am saying that the double-hit is present in the extant film, but that it appears to have been an artifact from the way in which it was recreated, using some actual footage but faking others to introduce events thqt did not actually occur. In this case, what we are viewing is a merge between a back of the head shot and the right temple hit, which occurred but not in such close proximity. In particular, in reworking these frames, the fabricators painted in the "blob" and the blood spray out the massive defect to the back of the head--all of which was done so crudely that it made these Hollywood experts cringe! Moreover, you are being creative in suggesting what was consistent with their statements. NONE OF THE WITNESSES REPORTED THE "BACK AND TO THE LET MOTION". What is there about this you do not understand?

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

(9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

(11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

None of which he, or the majority of conspiracy theorists, accept as proof.

Well, I'll call your bluff. Tell me the arguments that are presented there and why they are not persuasive. I am under the impression that you are faking it here, as you do elsewhere. Since "the majority of conspiracy theorists [do not] accept what I have published there "as proof", you have an obligation to explain why. The arguments have been published. Your basis for rejecting them has not. I hate to say it, Pat, but you appear to be completely unqualified for research on this or, I would surmise, any complex subject. So prove that I am wrong. Give me an inventory of the arguments that are present in the sources that I have cited and explain what is wrong with them. I have no doubt that you can't do it and won't even try. I regard your answer here as phony as the film.

What bluff? It is a fact that of the 80 percent or so of the public believing JFK was killed by more than one shooter, only a small minority think the Zapruder film was faked. I am at work showing how the available evidence, including the Z-film, is clear-cut proof of a conspiracy. Trying to prove the Z-film not to be fake to fellow conspiracy theorists is therefore both of no interest to me, and a tremendous waste of time. Particularly as you and your crowd continue to tout that the available evidence, if not fake, proves Oswald did it. Here is something I brought to Dallas:

I agree with you about the paper bag, which is part of my public lectures on JFK. (Please go to "John F. Kennedy History, Memory, Legacy" at http://www.und.edu/instruct/jfkconference/ and download Chapter 30, "Dealey Plaza Revisited: What Happened to JFK?" and check it.

My point is that you are discounting multipe proofs of many different kinds that prove that the film is a fabrication. You have denied them WITHOUT EVEN STUDYING THEM. That is about as irrational as it gets in the study of JFK. You have disqualified yourself as a serious student.

It shows quite clearly, IMO, that the paper bag in evidence purportedly used to smuggle in the rifle is NOT the bag removed from the building on 11-22-63. And yet this does not remotely interest you and your crowd. If so, you would not be able to tout that the evidence if taken at face value is a clear cut case for Oswald's sole guilt.

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

The number of film experts believing the film to be altered and the degree to which film experts believe the film to be altered remains in question. I've had discussions on this topic with two film-makers, both conspiracy theorists. Both believe alteration unlikely. Perhaps this new, much smaller claim, that the back of JFK's head was painted in on a few frames will gain more support.

Well, then, it might make a difference if they have actually looked at the relevant evidence. Ask them to take a look at HOAX (2003), especially the Prologue, pages 21 to 28, "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery", "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid"--where these articles are accessible via google--and the relevant portions of Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV (2009). Invite them to visit my public issues web site an view John Costella's tutorial at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/. I would be fascinated to learn more about your "film maker" friends, but you response is artificial and contrived. If you had an argument to show we were wrong about any of this, you would have made it. You have not.

As stated, I'm not all that interested in the possibility of Z-film alteration. When I read threads on alteration, I usually end up siding with those claiming the films weren't altered, but I remain open to the possibility the back of Kennedy's head was colored in, etc. My movie producer and director friends had a particular problem with the claims certain people or objects were inserted into the film. From what I can gather, none of the "film experts" (a really vague term--half the people in Hollywood can be considered a "film expert") contacted by Twyman or Horne supported such conjecture.

Just as I suspected, you are a phony who has never studied the evidence of alteration. Why then do you offer arguments that you cannot justify based upon your own research, which in this case simply involves reviewing the proofs that Noel Twyman, Doug Horne, and I have published? And you accuse me of not doing my homework? You are some piece of work, Pat Speer. You owe us an apology for your deception.

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

We all await the position paper of these "experts", along with the photographic evidence for their claims.

So when they whisper in your ear, you will become a believer? You seem to be implying that Doug Horne, who was there and did that--and even has a degree in history!--is slanting or fabricating reports that he is attributing to Hollywood film restoration experts, whom he cites by name? Have you read the reports from Roderick Ryan in Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1998)? The number of Hollywood film experts who agree with this has grown to seven--eight, including Ryan! Are you telling me that, if this actually is their opinion, then you will convert? My confidence in you ability to reason has been enormously diminished by this exchange.

No slight on Horne, but showing someone something and asking "What do you think?" will receive a less-detailed, less-credible answer than having them write a report on what they saw. People talk out of their rumps all the time, "film experts" included. BTW, if McAdams finds nine "experts" to disagree with these 8, do we have to throw in the towel and assume they are right? Of course not. There is a presumption of bias based on the company they keep.

Egad! You are as insulting as you are arrogant. They created a 6k digital version at 6,000 pixels per frame. These experts viewed it and the alterations were blatant and amaturish--about on a par with the level of you research on the assassination. It is embarrassing that someone as incompetent as you even posts on this forum. When we began this exchange, I still harbored the illusion that you were a serious student of the case. What an absurd idea!

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

This, in a nutshell, is the source of much of the problem. You, as Horne, think talking to an old man and having him tell you something at odds with the official story is a "discovery", and cause to re-interpret everything we thought we knew. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. The 30 year-removed memories of people so unconcerned with getting things straight that they never wrote anything down just are not reliable. They may be interesting. They maybe worth reporting. But you cannot construct a new version of events based upon the isolated recollections of people far removed from the events in question, and expect widespread acceptance. Right here on this forum, on another thread, David Lifton has told Pamela McElwain-Brown that he doesn't believe her story of seeing the Zapruder film in a movie theater in 1964. He is, IMO, correct to do so. But where is this objectivity when it comes to the medical evidence, where we have people readily accepting the otherwise unsupported claims that Kennedy had no brain when he arrived at Bethesda, etc.? It's nowhere. This suggests to me that some of us are more concerned with making a "discovery" than in getting things straight. (And no, I'm not being holier than thou. I discuss this tendency within myself in the Seduction of Intrigue section of chapter 20 at patspeer.com.)

The "discovery" that the film is a fabrication has been proven over and over again. If you have a modicum of intellectual integrity, you will explain the proofs I have advanced and explain why each of them is wrong. I not only do not believe that you can do that, I don't think you will even try. So surprise me! Try to show that the arguments we have actually given are wrong!

I can play the 'intellectual integrity' game, too, Jimbo. if you had an ounce of intellectual integrity, you would admit that the evidence, as interpreted by men like Thompson and myself, can be used to argue for a conspiracy, and that photo and film alteration need not be proved to prove conspiracy. Do you really want to continue playing Bugliosi's and McAdams' game and continue pretending that the evidence all points to Oswald, or are you willing to divorce yourself from Mantik's claim that ""If the evidence in the JFK case is merely accepted at face value, then the conclusions are rather trivial. The rookie Scotland Yard detector can easily solve this case--it was Oswald alone"? Are you willing to work WITH your fellow CTs towards a common goal, or are you really so hung up on the idea that the only route to the truth goes through Fetzerland that you are determined to continue shouting down any speculation the Z-film and autopsy photos, when taken at face value, suggest a conspiracy?

CONTINUE PRETENDING THE EVIDENCE POINTS TO OSWALD? You are unbelievable! Lee was the patsy! I want to know the truth based upon authentic evidence. You want evidence that supports your preconceptions regardless of its authenticity. The point of David's observation is that the evidence has been faked, falsified, and fabrication to create a false impression of Oswald's guilt! You appear to suffer from intellectual incapacities that I have seldom encountered in any of my students over a 35-year career teaching logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning. You would have flunked these courses. You don't even have the foggiest idea what I have concluded about the assassination.

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

And this revelation to you that Thompson has always been an evil-doer, of course, has nothing to do with any personal dislike you feel for the man... I'm sorry but at this late date in the Thompson/Fetzer wars that's truly hard to believe.

Arguments are independent of attitudes. Discounting an argument because of its source is an elementary fallacy I taught freshmen to avoid for 35 years! Today I regard the man as a disgrace, but I could still be one of his biggest fans, because the points that I have made are completely objective. He offered an opaque sketch of frame 313. He did not offer any but a very abstract outline of frames 314, 315, and 316. He published the McClelland drawing and even quoted Officer Hargis, who was hit by debris so hard he thought he himself had been shot. The drawing and testimony stand in striking contradiction to the events shown on the film. He cannot not have known they were incompatible. But, instead of driving for the truth by a determined effort to resolve this contradiction, he obfuscated it significance. Because he did not even offer sketches of what the film showed in these crucial respects, his readers had no idea that he was suppressing, ignoring, or otherwise concealing some of the most important indications of fakery in the cover up. He is playing you and others for saps--and you, alas, are falling for it! Josiah is like "The Force": he can have a powerful effect on the weak-minded!

Josiah is not playing me for a sap. And I am anything but weak-minded. If you were to step outside Fetzerland for a second, I suspect you'd see that I have pretty much put you on a leash and walked you around the block, leading you back to a question: DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THE EVIDENCE, WHEN TAKEN AT FACE VALUE, SUGGESTS OSWALD KILLED KENNEDY ALL BY HIS LONESOME? If so, what evidence do you find the most convincing? If not, then why do you consider any study of the photographic evidence undertaken with the acceptance the evidence is legit beyond contempt and unworthy of your attention?

Rather than continue this meaningless drivel that bears no discernible relationship to my research or that of my colleagues, including David Mantik, Jack White, John Costella, David Lifton, David Healey, and Noel Twyman, why don't you actually take a look at some of my work on this subject? It is not difficult to find. I have even provided links here. You seem to be harboring illusions about me that are quite puzzling and removed from reality.

He is extending his efforts by disavowing or minimizing indications of conspiracy that were included in SIX SECONDS, while he attempts to perpetrate the fraud that the film is authentic. It should not be difficult, even for one as kindly as you, to see though his obvious hypocrisy.

Since Thompson continues to believe the film suggests a conspiracy, it remains to be seen how his changing a few of his conclusions is so troublesome.

My guess is that he was working toward declaring that he has become agnostic in time for the 50th observance of the assassination. That appears to be what this is all about. He and Mack and Lamson and Colby and McAdams and others are all targeting the 50th.

If you prefer to place propriety and manners ahead of distortions and perversions about evidence and truth in the assassination of JFK, that is your prerogative. But that, in my view, is simply one more form of apology for betraying the trust of you, me, and the American people.

Jim

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

Edited January 4, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[William Kelly]

I'd like to hear what TT has to say about what Doug Horne writes here:

Doug Horne writes in IARRB:

Josiah Thompson Sums It All Up in 1988—And A New Research Paradigm Takes Over in theMid-1990s

In 1967, when his book Six Seconds in Dallas was published, Josiah Thompson, a former Navy

'frogman' who had spent two years in the Navy (and had commanded the UDT detachment charged with beach reconnaissance when U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon in 1958), was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. His book was the first attempt at a scientific overview of all of the principal forensic and crime scene evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and its publication was preceded by a dramatic Saturday Evening Post condensation of the major points in his book which was published under the bold declaration on that issue's cover: "Three Assassins Killed Kennedy." His book still holds a special fascination for me because its approach—a no-nonsense, empirical study of the entire universe of physical evidence—is the one which is still the proper model to emulate today, in my view: it does not begin with a theory of "who killed the President," but instead focuses on what the wounds on the body, the ballistics and firearms evidence, the eyewitness and earwitness testimony, and the film evidence from Dealey Plaza all tell us about the crime. In short, Thompson was an empiricist who was willing to follow the evidence wherever it lead him in his search for a compelling explanation for how the President was killed.

In subsequent years he became a private investigator, such was his passion for crime-solving, and

for examining the story told by physical evidence after the commission of a crime. If he focused

much more on the crime scene evidence in 1967 than on the medical evidence, that is

understandable, since the autopsy photographs and x-rays had not yet been seen by any members of the general public; his primary focus was on Dealey Plaza, but so was that of the American public.

Thompson was still one of the most respected voices in the research community in 1988 when

former CBS employee Robert Richter assembled his independent documentary "Who Shot President Kennedy?", which was to be narrated by Walter Cronkite and would air on the PBS NOVA weekly documentary slot, in prime time. The documentary film—written, produced, and directed by Richter — was laudable in that it raised the most contentious issues within the universe of physical evidence which challenged the Warren Commission's findings, and which pointed toward a possible conspiracy to kill the President. However, it was extremely frustrating to watch, and ultimately an exercise in futility, because its final editorial conclusions (read by narrator Walter Cronkite) seemed to suggest that the ultimate answers to what happened in Dealey Plaza were essentially 'unknowable.' It presented several plausible arguments for conspiracy offered up by both the critical research community and the HSCA, and then attempted to dash cold water on each one of them. The film featured Robert Blakey discussing the HSCA's acoustic evidence of a shot from the grassy knoll, and then attempted to debunk it using an unsophisticated argument that ignored all of the scientific methodology that had gone into the HSCA's acoustic analysis. David Lifton was shown discussing his hypothesis in Best Evidence that the wounds inflicted on President Kennedy's body by gunfire in Dallas had been altered by post mortem surgery prior to his autopsy; and was followed by a nervous group of four equivocating Parkland treatment physicians who sketched their best recollections of the head wound seen on the President in Dallas—sketches not shown on the air—before viewing the autopsy photographs and x-rays in the National Archives (which also could not be shown on the air, because of the proscriptions of the Kennedy family deed-of-gift), and whose remarks after viewing the autopsy photographs in private had been carefully edited afterwards so that they appeared to disagree with Lifton. An eloquent Cyril Wecht debunked the single bullet

p. 1133

theory by comparing the lack of any serious damage to CE 399 with the wide range of damage and deformity inflicted upon various test bullets by the U.S. Army's wound ballistics tests; this was

followed by the apparent, but inconclusive support offered to the single bullet theory by Dr. Vincent Guinn's neutron activation analysis experiments for the HSCA, and by the strange and unlikely explanations offered up by the HSCA's resident contortionist, Michael Baden, in his attempt to explain how the trajectory necessary for the single bullet theory could have occurred, if only the President and the Governor had been positioned in the car in unlikely and unnatural postures (which dispositive photographic evidence shows was not the case). Richter actually commenced his documentary about the conflicts in the evidence in the Kennedy assassination by featuring Josiah Thompson discussing the timing problem that study of the Zapruder film presented to the Warren Commission—the apparent wounding of Kennedy and Connally by two separate bullets in less time than Oswald's rifle could be mechanically fired a second time—but failed to directly address how this timing problem resulted in the Warren Commission's adoption of a very unlikely hypothesis (i.e., the single bullet theory) to solve a political problem: the need to salvage the lone assassin conclusion, at any cost, to please its political master, the new President.

As the 50 minute documentary prepared on the 25th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination wound up, Josiah Thompson summarized the frustrating state of the evidence in the JFK case on the 25th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, and his words apply equally well today, over 45 years after the assassination, as they did some 20 years ago:

In a homicide case, you get a convergence of the evidence after a while. There may be

discrepancies in detail; but on the whole, things come together. With this case—it's now 25

years—things haven't gotten any simpler. They haven't come together. If anything, they've

become more problematical, more and more mysterious. That just isn't the way a homicide

case develops.

I agree with what Thompson said in 1988: the evidence hasn't "come together" in the Kennedy

assassination, and has become "more and more problematical." I believe that is the case because

there has been significant suppression of evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and because

immediately after the assassination, massive fraud was introduced into the evidence wherever

something was suppressed. After reading Best Evidence, I certainly realized on a logical plane that this was the likely explanation for why so much of the evidence in the JFK assassination didn't

present a coherent picture of what had happened; but I did not really believe it, on an emotional level in my gut, until I went to work for the ARRB in 1995 and swam in that sea of conflicting evidence for three full years. And it was Josiah Thompson who gave me much of the inspiration to attempt that journey in a keynote address he gave to the attendees at an awards dinner, at the conclusion of the Chicago Midwest Symposium on the JFK assassination, early in 1993.

Josiah Thompson announced in a rather perplexing way at the beginning of his speech that he was

there to speak about the agnosticism of which he had been accused, and to which he was now openly confessing. He also announced a rather sobering disclaimer, saying at the beginning of his remarks that people usually expect to hear inspirational remarks at the end of such conferences, but that he was not going to be able to offer any. Instead, he shared with us his profound sense of frustration and disquiet about the Kennedy assassination, just prior to the 30th anniversary of the event. He

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began as follows:

I submit that we know less now about what happened in those six seconds than we thought

we did a quarter of a century ago [referring to the 1966-67 time period when the first spate

of critical books had been published]. The profile of what happened has not gotten any

clearer in the intervening years, but more confused. Why? Because the evidence itself has

grown more confused, and confusing.

In 1966, he said, "I tried to put together all the evidence into a plausible account as to what

happened. It made sense to try that in 1966—I'm not sure it does now. The contradictions in the

evidence are so many and so profound that any attempt to offer a single convincing account of what happened may be impossible."

Thompson then launched into a detailed listing of the many improbabilities in the U.S. government's

single bullet theory, and explained that that theory was born not out of good science, or out of an

honest attempt to employ Occam's Razor in an attempt to provide a logical and likely explanation

for what happened in Dallas (my phraseology, not his), but rather out of political necessity—as the

only way to salvage the U.S. government's desired lone assassin conclusion in 1964. Calling the

single bullet theory the reductio ad absurdum of the government's attempts to sell a lone assassin

to the American people, Thompson discussed in detail the disturbing improbability of the HSCA's

desperate attempts to resuscitate a moribund patient, namely:

• Michael Baden's explanation on television that although the hypothetical bullet

which supposedly transited JFK's body from back to front had an 11 degree upward

trajectory anatomically speaking, that it could still have hit Governor Connally

providing President Kennedy had been leaning forward significantly in the limousine,

and providing Connally had moved well to his left in the bucket seat in which he was

sitting.

• The fact that HSCA General Counsel Robert Blakey hired four District of Columbia

policemen while the HSCA was in session to test fire a Mannlicher Carcano in an

attempt to demonstrate that it could be fired in less than the minimum mechanical

firing time (i.e., without aiming) of 2.3 seconds, which had been determined by the

FBI shortly after the assassination; and that when all four policemen abjectly failed

to beat the FBI's minimum mechanical firing time of 2.3 seconds, two lawyers—G.

Robert Blakey himself, and his deputy, Gary Cornwell—blithely claimed to have

accomplished the feat of firing the rifle in 1.6 seconds all by themselves. Apparently

they had to literally 'shoot from the hip' to accomplish this, a technique they termed

'point aiming,' in an Orwellian use of the English language.

• The fact that the HSCA re-endorsed the single bullet theory of Arlen Specter, even

though its acoustic analysis of the dictabelt tape led the Committee to adopt a shot

scenario which claimed that the first two shots came from the Book Depository, and

were fired within 1.66 seconds of each other. The HSCA concluded that the first

shot missed (since no human reactions to being hit could be seen in the Zapruder film

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between frames 157-161), and improbably decided that not only could Oswald fire

the next shot only 1.66 seconds later (in spite of the FBI's minimum mechanical

firing time of 2.3 seconds), but that he was able to do so between Zapruder frames

188-191 by firing through a tree which would have blocked his view between frames

160-210—and that in doing so, Oswald miraculously plugged both John Kennedy

and John Connally with that 'blind shot.'

After the audience finished laughing, Thompson soberly reminded everyone: "It's much easier to

destroy the single bullet theory than it is to come up with a plausible alternative." For example, he

reminded the audience, if CE 399 is a planted bullet, then what happened to the real bullet which

caused JFK's back wound? He concluded his remarks as follows:

From the beginning, critics of the official story have been faced with a conundrum. Since

nearly all the evidence in the case has been in governmental possession from the beginning,

except for such notable exceptions as the Zapruder film and the Dallas police dictabelt tape,

we have had to accept the authenticity of all the evidence, or abandon the attempt to try to

deduce from it what happened. Was the magic bullet the result of a switch made after 'a

bullet' came into government possession? Are the Connally wrist fragments authentic? Has

the autopsy and medical evidence been falsified and rigged? As soon as we even begin

asking such questions we abandon the attempt to solve the mystery, since we lack a criterion

for determining what evidence is genuine and what is not. To put it another way, you can't

begin solving a puzzle if you keep doubting whether a particular piece belongs in the puzzle!

But it should not escape our attention how extraordinary the present situation is.

Thompson wrapped up his remarks by admitting that when he wrote Six Seconds in Dallas he was a college philosophy professor who "knew literally nothing" about the investigation of homicides.

Since that time, he said, he had changed careers and had become a private investigator, and in this

capacity had investigated "several hundred" homicides since 1976. He concluded:

I know, for example, the more a case is investigated, the more coherent becomes the

evidence; I know that doubts may remain as to who did it, or why they did it, but hardly ever

about what actually happened. Yet here, in the most thoroughly investigated homicide in

human history, the evidence falls into deeper and deeper contradiction, so riven by

contradiction [that] the fact pattern of the case—what happened, when, and how?—begins

to unravel.

There was only one thing I disagreed with in his speech, and that was his assertion that if we do not

accept the authenticity of all of the government's evidence at face value, that we must abandon our

attempts to deduce what happened. Surely, accepting the possibility that some (or even much)

evidence was 'tainted' would make reconstructing what had really happened in Dealey Plaza much

more difficult, but I refused to throw my hands up in despair and simply give up on my attempts to

understand the 'mystery of the century' just because it was proving difficult.

This speech really lit a fire under my ass. [i didn't attend that conference, but I obtained his dinner[/font]

speech on videotape and watched it over and over again, and found I was as frustrated as he was

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about the state of the evidence.] I viewed Josiah Thompson's comments as a clarion call for

someone to "do something" about what seemed to him an 'unspeakable problem'—namely, how

does one go about honestly separating 'tainted' evidence from 'trustworthy' evidence? I didn't have any magic answers, any epistemological 'silver bullets' to throw at the problem, but one year later I did hear Jack Tunheim speak to the COPA conference organized by John Judge in Washington, D.C. about the new Assassination Records Review Board. I saw possibilities here—and unknown to me, Congressman Stokes of Ohio, former Chair of the HSCA, had told the Board Members the same thing in private—for attempting to clarify the medical evidence, for attempting to separate the 'wheat' from the 'chaff,' particularly in regard to the autopsy photos and x-rays, and in understanding what really happened at the President's autopsy. Like Thompson, I did not want to see American citizens sitting around at research conferences twenty years hence, endlessly debating the same, seemingly insoluble conflicts in the evidence. The thought of the same frustrating and inconclusive series of debates about the evidence in the JFK assassination continuing ad nauseum and ad infinitum reminded me too much of an overly excited dog chasing its tail in the summer heat—not a pleasant mental image, I can assure you. If David Lifton's research had gotten me 'hooked' on the assassination, then Josiah Thompson's discussion of the larger problem, the state of the evidence, and why it didn't come together, served as my continuing inspiration to do something. Figuring out what had happened to President Kennedy in Dallas was not a parlor game to me, a trivial pursuit or a hobby—it went to the very root of what seemed to have gone wrong with our country since 1963. The American people had been robbed of a democratically elected leader in this country when power had changed hands through violence in 1963. Following the death of Jack Kennedy, America's optimism and spirit of renewal, which had been on the rise, had seemed to dissipate, and to have been replaced with a sense that our best days as a society were perhaps behind us. The American people had been lied to—repeatedly—about what had happened in Dallas, and about a host of other national issues since that time, and had been fighting one war after another overseas, ever since. Had all of our governments since that time been illegitimate? This was a serious question for a people who truly loved and believed in democracy, and it was unsatisfactory to me that these questions should remain unanswered. For me, the whole question of whether or not I could trust the nation state in which I lived—whether I could have faith in the institutions of government—was at stake here. I knew I had been lied to about the Kennedy assassination, but I didn't know what had really happened in 1963, and why—and that remained unsatisfactory to me.

Two Bone Fragments Found in Dealey Plaza Are Consistent with a Fatal Shot from the Right Front

The first of these two fragments was found by Seymour Weitzman on the afternoon of the

assassination. As Thompson explains in Six Seconds in Dallas It was found some 8 to 12 inches from the south curb of Elm Street, a location some 10-15 feet left of the car's path (7H107). This was probably what both Charles Brehm and Clint Hill saw driven over the left rear of the Presidential car.

I disagree slightly here. I believe Clint Hill saw exit debris bouncing across the trunk lid, with Jackie

chasing after it, as revealed in the Nix film. What Charles Brehm saw was a piece of airborne debrisflying through the air for quite a distance, and landing near the curb. Therefore, I believe Weitzman probably found the piece of bone seen by Charles Brehm flying to the left and rear of the limousine after the fatal shot(s). We can never be sure, because Weitzman never marked the location on the street where he found it. This bone fragment, like all others found, is missing today.

The second and much more famous of the two fragments I mention here is the 'Harper' fragment,

which was found by pre-med student Billy Harper in the grass of Dealey Plaza on Saturday,

November 23rd. (Clint Hill was incorrect in his testimony—it was not found in the street.) The

Harper fragment was discussed previously in this book, and I explained at that time that in 1977 the HSCA staff had interviewed Dr. A.B. Cairns, who had been chief pathologist at Methodist hospital

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in 1963 when he identified it as occipital bone. (See Figures 41 and 42.) FBI agent A. Raymond

Switzer interviewed both Billy Harper's uncle, Dr. Jack Harper, and Dr. Cairns, on July 10, 1964,

and a typewritten report was completed on July 13, 1964. In the report it states that the chief medical photographer at Methodist hospital, Wayne Bolleter, is the individual who took two 35 mm color slides of the Harper Fragment next to a ruler for purposes of scale. [We should all be thankful for the professionalism of this individual, and for the foresight of Dr. Jack Harper in asking him to photograph it. The two slides of the Harper fragment are everything that good medical macrophotography should be, unlike the autopsy photographs of the 35th President: they are in perfect focus, are perfectly illuminated, and the ruler placed in the images for scale is in focus also, and can be read.] Dr. Harper had first been interviewed by the FBI in 1963 when he had voluntarily turned the fragment over to Hoover's men; the FBI apparently recontacted him in July of 1964 to obtain the photographs that had been taken—which of course were not published by the Warren Commission.

The FBI faithfully retained the two 35 mm slides, and also x-rayed the bone fragment after it came

into their possession the week following the assassination. The slides and the x-rays of the Harper

fragment are in the JFK Collection in the National Archives today, but the bone fragment, like

another called the 'Burros' fragment (found in unknown circumstances by David Burros), is missing today. (The last person to sign a receipt for the two bone fragments was George G. Burkley.) The HSCA interview of Cairns in 1977 did not reveal any information that conflicted with that reported by the FBI in 1964, only a bit more detail about how Dr. Cairns decided the bone was occipital; he told the HSCA that he came to that conclusion based primarily upon the imprint of the blood vessels on the inside surface of the bone.

The identification of the Harper fragment as occipital bone was cavalierly ignored by the HSCA

Forensic Pathology Panel, even though Drs. Harper and Cairns both held it in their hands and both

concurred, in 1963, that it was definitely from the occipital region of the skull. Finding occipital

bone from President Kennedy's skull in the grass on the south side of Elm Street is consistent with

the major pattern of impact debris discussed in this section—namely, exit debris from the rear of

President Kennedy's skull which was caused by a shot from the right front.

What It All Means

Summing up, the importance of our impact debris study is clear and incontrovertible: HSCA Staff

Director and General Counsel G. Robert Blakey was wrong when he concluded that the shot from the grassy knoll, revealed by the HSCA acoustical study, had missed the occupants of the limousine, and that the fatal shot that killed President Kennedy was fired from the Texas School Book Depository. Not only was Blakey wrong, but I submit to you that since he had most of the impact debris information cited above available to him—except for the Willis family interview and the Floyd Boring revelation—he knew he was likely wrong, and proceeded to knowingly trumpet the wrong conclusion anyway. Why? Because to accept that the grassy knoll shot had killed the President, based upon a study of the impact debris and the motion of President Kennedy's head and upper body in the Zapruder film (violently back and to the left), would have meant that he had no faith in the medical evidence from the autopsy. [The autopsy report and the photos and x-rays, remember, provide no clear evidence of a shot from the front, and only support shots from behind.]

To have admitted this, after all the investigating and interviewing done by the HSCA staff and its

Forensic Pathology Panel, would have been to publicly admit failure. Formally concluding that the grassy knoll shot killed President Kennedy would have meant, essentially, that the HSCA not only had no faith in the autopsy medical evidence, but that it could also not explain exactly what was wrong with that evidence. Rather than do this, Blakey 'buried' as much of the medical evidence that conflicted with the autopsy report as he could—namely, the Ebersole, Finck, and Knudsen depositions; and the staff interviews of the 'little people' at the autopsy—by sequestering (sealing) this material for 50 years; and then he lied about the extent to which the autopsy witnesses agreed with the autopsy photographs on page 37 of volume VII of his report. Thanks to the JFK Records Act, which opened up the HSCA files, the chicanery of Blakey and Baden has been exposed. It was this 'big lie' about the autopsy photographs—the brazen, dishonest statement that none of the autopsy witnesses disagreed with the location of the wounds in the autopsy images—that will forever damn the HSCA's conclusions as intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt. Rather than admit to the American public that the Committee had an insoluble puzzle where the evidence refused to some together—and explain why it did not come together and either continue the investigation until the matter was resolved, or turn it over to the Justice Department—Blakey and Baden cynically chose to endorse suspect medical evidence from the autopsy, and ignore and discount:

• the Parkland hospital medical witnesses to a blowout in the back of the head;

• the testimony of Secret Service agent Clint Hill that verified the Parkland

observations; and

• the clear pattern of the preponderance of the impact debris evidence (Hill, Hargis,

Martin, and the Harper fragment) pointing to a fatal shot from the right front.

Apparently, it was politically much easier for Blakey and his gang to announce the unpalatable

conclusion that the Warren Commission had come to the right conclusion about Lee Harvey Oswald after all—that he had really and truly killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally all

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by himself—than to admit that there were irreconcilable conflicts in the evidence that could not be

resolved. To do that would have taken considerable courage, and integrity.

The HSCA's fence-sitting provided the American people with a 'modified limited hangout' which satisfied no one: it gave us a 'probable' conspiracy supported only by an acoustics study, and yetnthe same unlikely murderer offered up by the Warren Commission; a presumed conspiracy with no names named, or motives explained; and a conclusion that all of the shots that struck Kennedy and Connally were fired from behind by Oswald, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the Zapruder film, in eyewitness testimony from Dealey Plaza and Parkland hospital, and in the ballistics evidence from the Edgewood Arsenal Firing Tests, published by the Army in 1965.

If the HSCA had possessed any cajones it would have stated up front that the irreconcilable conflicts within the forensic and crime scene evidence suggested that a major coverup had taken place in 1963, and that it suspected much of the evidence in the case may have been 'tainted' in ways not yet detected, meriting further investigation by the Justice Department. Instead, Blakey and Baden took the easier road of arrogantly pronouncing that they had solved the case, and bailed out of their burning airplane as quickly as possible. Blakey's golden parachute landed him a lifetime job as Professor of Law at Notre Dame. I'm not impressed. "For what hath a man gained, if he loses his own soul?

Equally important as the conclusion that the 35th President was killed by a conspiracy, is the

knowledge that the U.S. government attempted to cover up that fact, and that the coverup was

implemented immediately after his assassination. The immediate implementation of this coverup

in both Dealey Plaza (the theft of the .45 caliber slug by a Federal agent), and at Parkland hospital

(the theft of the body by the Secret Service in order to prevent an honest autopsy), was followed by radio conversations onboard Air Force One which reveal an attempt to separate the President's widow from the Dallas casket upon arrival in Washington. (This failed, resulting in an absurd shell game at the Bethesda morgue designed to conceal the fact that the President's body had been stolen and his throat and back wounds had been tampered with enroute Washington.) The performance of clandestine, post mortem surgery on the President's skull at the Bethesda morgue, prior to the formal commencement of the autopsy, permitted: (1) the removal of evidence of shots from the front, and the suppression of the fact that there was a crossfire in Dealey Plaza; (2) the alteration of JFK's head wounds so that they more closely resembled damage caused by shots from behind; and (3) the creation of a dishonest and intentionally deceptive photographic and x-ray record of his skull 'wounds.' This brazen attempt to manipulate American history, and hide the fact that a duly elected democratic head of state had been 'fired' by the secret vote of a national security 'star chamber,' should concern us as much as the murder itself. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, those who designed and managed the coverup were clearly among the cabal who murdered Jack Kennedy; their guilt is revealed by the speed with which they acted. The coverup was implemented with ruthless determination, if not efficiency, and was executed immediately by elements of the national security establishment (i.e., the Secret Service, the U.S. Navy, and unidentified civilians at Bethesda NNMC).

This basic fact is the biggest clue to the identity of the cabal that planned the assassination. The

likely membership of the cabal, and its motivations, will be the subject of Chapter 16.

THE NATURE OF THE MEDICAL COVERUP

This book has proven—conclusively—that there was a medical coverup of the true facts in President Kennedy's death. Let's take a step back from the trees, and look at the forest one more time.

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In my view the medical coverup could not have been uncovered without the evidence provided by

the following six key people: James J. Humes, Edward F. Reed, Tom Robinson, Robert Knudsen,

Roger Boyajian, and Dr. David W. Mantik. A nervous Dr. Humes, with his own big mouth, attracted attention to the fact that surgery had been performed on the President's skull. We can be verynthankful today that FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill wrote that quotation down in their notes, and that an alert David Lifton realized the true significance of that statement in 1966, and spent almost 15 years pursuing its meaning before publishing Best Evidence in 1981. Dr. Mantik, in nine visits to the National Archives, used optical densitometry to gather empirical data proving that the 3 existing skull x-rays of President Kennedy are altered copy films that display dishonest, inaccurate images of the condition of the President's skull at the Bethesda morgue on November 22, 1963. Without this proof that the skull x-rays have been altered, they could have been used in perpetuity by Warren Commission and HSCA apologists to 'prove' that the autopsy photos showing the back of the head intact are 'authentic;' but now that we know for a fact that an occipital-parietal blowout was masked by an optical patch in the two lateral skull films, this evidence focuses our attention on the fact that the autopsy photos of the seemingly intact back of the head show something that cannot be. (In other words, the Dallas witnesses who have insisted for decades that there was a large exit defect in the right rear of President Kennedy's head were right all along.) Robert Knudsen's consistent, lifelong claim that he photographed the President's autopsy has provided an answer to the "who" and "when" questions regarding how the misleading autopsy photos were created, and also accounts for their generally substandard quality—as noted by both the HSCA and professionally trained medical photographer Earl McDonald—for Knudsen was not trained to engage in macro-photography of cadavers, and was normally a social photographer, at the White House, of ceremonies and public events. Marine sergeant Roger Boyajian made a contemporaneous record of the fact that the President's body arrived at the Bethesda morgue prior to the Andrews AFB motorcade containing the Dallas casket, thus documenting, in an indisputable way, the broken chain-of-custody for the President's body, and proving that there was sufficient time to conduct the clandestine craniotomy witnessed by Reed and Robinson. (Boyajian's report stating that the President's casket arrived at 6:35 PM means that we have every reason to believe all of the shipping casket and body bag witnesses, because his report proves that the bronze Dallas casket driven to Bethesda from Andrews AFB in a gray Navy ambulance, and delivered to the morgue anteroom by the FBI and Secret Service just prior to 7:17 PM, had to be empty.) Finally, the priceless recollections of Ed Reed and Tom Robinson have revealed to us the exact nature of the "surgery of the head area" that Dr. Humes alluded to in his oral utterance; their testimony is the 'clincher,' the true basis of our new understanding of the monstrous and brazen coverup perpetrated inside the Bethesda morgue the night

President Kennedy was assassinated. The meaning of the activity witnessed by Robinson and Reed is indisputably clear, and is so important that it is worth revisiting one last time.

Robinson and Reed Provide Proof That A Clandestine, Modified Craniotomy Was Performed at the Bethesda Morgue Prior to the Autopsy on President Kennedy

Tom Robinson's recollections were dealt with in depth in Chapter 6 of this book, and are

unambiguous. He told both the HSCA and the ARRB, respectively, during his 1977 and 1996

interviews, that he had a clear recollection of a pathologist sawing open President Kennedy's skull

in order to remove the brain. The diagram of the damage to the back of President Kennedy's head

that he executed for the ARRB (Figure 28) makes clear just how extensive this post mortem surgery

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was—a large portion of the back of the skull was removed in order to gain access to the brain.

Furthermore, his comment to his ARRB interviewers that the extensive trauma seen in the autopsy

images of the top of the skull (see Figure 61) "was what the doctors did," and was not caused by a bullet, is a damning indictment of those photographs, and of the false testimony of Humes and

Boswell, who clearly committed perjury before both the Warren Commission, and the ARRB, when they described their ability to remove the brain without first performing a craniotomy.

Ed Reed's gift to history required a bit more sifting—more detective work—than did Tom

Robinson's revelation, but it is equally persuasive, in my view, and equally important.

First, both Ed Reed and Jerrol Custer stated that the skull x-rays were the first ones taken; it was one of the few things about the duties they performed the night of the autopsy where their recollections were in agreement. Second, both Jerrol Custer and Ed Reed testified to the ARRB in 1997 that they were required to leave the morgue shortly after President Kennedy's body was placed on the examining table. Jerrol Custer testified as follows on page 75 of his deposition transcript:

Custer: ...they took the body out of this casket, and we put it on the table. Then I left. I

came back later—came back later, took the first set of films...[Author's emphasis]

And then on page 78, he continued:

Custer: ...I did not see the second casket until after the first set of films...I saw the first

casket. I left for at least an hour. When I come back, I come in, took films. After

I took the films, I left again. This is when I saw the second casket.

This means Custer saw the Dallas casket only after he took the skull x-rays, which means that he

started taking the head films before the bronze viewing coffin was brought to the morgue anteroom

by Sibert, O'Neill, Kellerman, and Greer (at about 7:17 PM), and that he must have departed with

the five skull x-rays in his arms after 7:17 PM. His memory of only seeing the 'second casket' after

he had completed taking the first set of x-rays confirms that he started taking those x-rays before the

Dallas casket was brought into the morgue anteroom. We know with a fair amount of precision

when Sibert and O'Neill were barred from the morgue—7:17 PM. This also serves as a marker for the time the Dallas casket was set down on the floor in the anteroom.

Gunn: Were you present at the time of the first incision?

Reed: Yes.

Gunn: What was the first incision?

Reed: The cranium. The scalp, right here [gesturing to a wide area high up at the top of

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his forehead, from left to right]. [author's emphasis]

Gunn: And can you describe how that procedure—

Reed: Commander Humes made an incision. After we brought all the x-rays back, we

were allowed to sit in the podium and observe. And Commander Humes made an

incision—that I could see from my vantage point—an incision in the forehead, and

brought back the scalp. [author's emphasis]

Gunn: Okay. [Jeremy and I were quite tense at this moment, and made a point of not

looking at each other; our focus was riveted on the witness.]

Reed: Like this [gesturing].

Gunn: And you were making a line first across the top of your forehead, roughly along

the hairline—[author's emphasis]

Reed: With a scalpel.

Gunn: —and then pulling the scalp back.

Reed: That's correct. Just like this.

Gunn: And were you able to see the size of the wound when the scalp—

Reed: Not from my—not from where I was, no. The podium [sic] was a good 20 feet away.

Gunn: What else did you observe from where you were with regard to any incisions or

operations on the head?

Reed: Well, after about 20 minutes, Commander Humes took out a saw, and started to cut

the forehead with the bone—with the saw. Mechanical saw. Circular, small,

mechanical—almost like a cast saw, but it's made—[author's emphasis]

Gunn: Sure—

Reed: —specifically for bone.

Gunn: And what did you see next?

Reed: We were asked to leave at that time. Jerry Custer and myself were asked to leave.

[author's emphasis]

Although Reed recalled this post mortem surgery on the skull as occurring after he and Custer had

exposed all of the x-rays taken that night, this cannot be true. He provided his testimony about

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cranial surgery in response to the question, "what was the first incision?" The first incision recorded

by Sibert and O'Neill in their report was the Y-incision on the thorax at 8:15 PM; and yet, Reed

never recalled seeing a Y-incision on the body. This is strongly suggestive that the cranial surgery

he witnessed was prior to the Y-incision. Reed witnessed the arrival of a shipping casket, which

verifies that he witnessed the 6:35 PM casket arrival; 15 minutes after that casket arrived, there had.not been any Y-incision, and there would still not be one for another hour and twenty-five minutes.

Additionally, Reed's testimony that he and Custer were asked to leave as soon as Humes commence cranial surgery sounds exactly like what he had said earlier (on pages 32-33) about he and Custer being asked to sit in the podium, and then being asked to leave the morgue; Reed's first mention of being asked to sit in the 'podium' (gallery) was given in response to the question about what he did immediately after placing the President's body on the examining table. Therefore, I believe, it is reasonable to infer that the surgery to the head area that Reed recalled witnessing from the gallery really occurred right after the body arrived, when Reed and Custer sat briefly in the gallery before being sent upstairs for 15 minutes, and well before the Y-incision had been made.

Analyzing the testimony of Reed and Custer is a cautionary tale about how memories, particularly

memories about the duration of specific events, and sometimes about the sequencing of different

events, are clouded by the passage of time. My experience with the morticians, and with the x-ray

technicians, taught me that memories of what wounds looked like, or about where an incision was

made on the body, seemed much more reliable than memories about the duration of a given event,

or the sequencing of multiple events. Having said that, I believe I have made a persuasive case that

Reed and Custer witnessed the commencement of illicit, post mortem cranial surgery very soon after the President's body arrived; were then sent upstairs for about a quarter of an hour; and were then recalled to the morgue by Dr. Ebersole to take the skull x-rays. Witnesses to the same events often remember different aspects of that event, with one witness not recalling part of an event that another witness remembers clearly—and different witnesses to the same event may recall identical aspects of the event with varying precision. Reed remembered the details of the cranial surgery, and Custer did not. Custer accurately remembered taking five skull x-rays in one series, at the same time, and Reed inaccurately remembered taking only two skull x-rays, and taking them one at a time, and not in a series. Custer accurately remembered taking each series of x-rays upstairs accompanied by Reed and a Federal agent; Reed inaccurately recalled running each individual x-ray taken at the autopsy upstairs all by himself, to be developed one at a time, without any security escort. Reed's recollection of cranial surgery in the frontal bone just behind the hairline, above the top of the forehead, is highly credible to me because that is exactly where the scalp looks incised and bone is seen to be missing from the skull cap in the autopsy photos (see Figures 61 and 62), and where part of the cranium is missing in the 3 surviving skull x-rays. Professional interpretation of the three cranial x-rays by Dr. Fitzpatrick, Dr. Kirschner, Dr. Mantik, and even by the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, reveals that much of the frontal bone is missing just behind the hairline, especially on the right side of the skull. It is not just "unlikely" that Reed would have seen Humes perform this surgery late in the autopsy, after the brain had already been removed—it is a reductio ad absurdum to suggest that a pathologist—even Dr. Humes—would perform surgery on an area of the cranium where the bone is already missing! It is nonsense, therefore, to suggest that Reed's recollection that he witnessed this cranial surgery after all of the x-rays had been taken that night is worthy of belief.

He recalled the cranial surgery when asked where on the body the first incision was made—thus

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satisfying me as to when he saw it that night.

The surgery recalled by both Ed Reed and Tom Robinson, when considered as a whole, could bes be described as a modified craniotomy, because it removed skull cap from the rear, top, and right side of the skull, and created a defect large enough to gain ready access to the brain. I say 'modified' because the entire skull cap was not sawed off symmetrically and removed in one piece, all the way around the skull; rather, an existing exit wound in the rear of the skull was radically expanded from a surface area of about 35 square centimeters, to a defect about five times larger, of about 170 square centimeters. Ed Reed's graphic description of watching Humes making a transverse incision in the scalp above the forehead with a scalpel, cutting the frontal bone directly below that incision with a circular saw, and then pulling the scalp forward, is exactly what happens during a craniotomy.

The context that makes the observation of clandestine cranial surgery at Bethesda shortly after the

body arrived so important, is the fact that Dr. Humes did not have to perform a craniotomy when he removed the brain from the cranium sometime after 8:00 PM (when the Dallas casket was opened) and prior to 8:30 PM (when Finck arrived and noticed that the brain had been removed from the cranium). As Dr. Finck wrote in the Blumberg report (see page 5 of Appendix 29), "Cdr. Humes told me that he only had to prolong the lacerations of the scalp before removing the brain. No sawing of the skull was necessary. The opening of the large head wound, in the right frontoparieto- occipital region, is 130 millimeters in diameter." [Author's emphasis added] James J.

Humes is revealed here as the great prevaricator that Jeremy Gunn and I also found him to be. He

had just been observed 90 minutes earlier by Ed Reed and Tom Robinson performing major post

mortem surgery on the President's skull, yet when Dr. Finck arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 8:30 PM, Humes blithely told him that "no sawing of the skull" had been necessary to remove the brain.

No doubt what Humes meant was that no sawing of the skull had been necessary after 8:00 PM when the brain was publicly removed before the morgue audience, and James Jenkins. Clearly, when Humes said this to Finck, he was engaging in obfuscation, and concealing the fact that he did indeed have to saw off major portions of the skull earlier that evening; but since that had been clandestine activity, part of a covert operation to alter the President's wounds and remove evidence from the cranium, Humes could not reveal it to Dr. Finck. Humes was speaking to Finck at about 8:30 PM in front of the morgue audience, the same audience that had seen Humes remove the brain so effortlessly just moments before. It is obvious from what Humes told Finck, as recorded by Dr. Finck in the Blumberg report, that Lt.Col. Pierre A. Finck, an Army outsider in a Navy setting, had not yet been 'read in' on any coverup when he arrived at the Bethesda morgue, and that even long after the fact, in early 1965, he remained unaware that Humes had performed post mortem surgery on the cranium before he arrived at the morgue.

I have taken great pains to revisit how I arrived at my conclusion that illicit cranial surgery was

performed at Bethesda Naval hospital before President Kennedy's autopsy began, because it is such an essential finding to my hypothesis about the medical coverup. The post mortem surgery on the skull witnessed and independently remembered by Tom Robinson and Ed Reed is the key to

explaining when the skull x-rays were taken and why they show damage to the temporal, parietal,

and frontal bone that was not seen at Parkland hospital by the highly trained medical staff; and

likewise, explains when many of the autopsy photographs (Figures 59-62) were taken, and why theyalso show so much more damage to the head than was seen at Parkland hospital. [The surgery

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described by Robinson and Reed also allows us to place Dr. Boswell's autopsy sketch (Figure 11)

in its proper context, and to understand it for what it really is: a 'con-job' designed to sell the results

of clandestine surgery by Dr. Humes—a modified craniotomy—as the damage caused by an

assassin's bullet.]

…It is my contention that President Kennedy's assassination was the result of a domestic conspiracy,and that the conspirators implemented an immediate, effective, and wide-ranging coverup as soon as he was killed. The medical coverup was just a part of this effort, but it had to go into effect immediately, and did. An honest autopsy was prevented from taking place by the Secret Service's removal of the body from Dallas, and a dishonest autopsy was performed by persons who knowingly participated in that charade because they had been "gaslighted"—they had fallen for the World War III cover story, and with that justification in the forefront of their minds, they could all comfort themselves with the knowledge that they were 'just following orders' in a time of national crisis.

And it was a time of national crisis: fear and uncertainty ruled, and just 13 months after the Cuban

Missile Crisis, the fear of nuclear war was palpable because of the 'legend' carefully constructed

around the accused assassin…..

…No one ever came forward to officially acknowledge the coverup of the JFK assassination because of shame, as much as fear. The shame on the part of major players in the medical coverup—Burkley and Galloway, for example—was probably driven by suspicion that they had been hoodwinked by the World War III cover story in 1963, and literally suckered into aiding and abetting obstruction of justice. Mid-level players in the medical coverup such as Humes, Boswell, Finck, and Knudsen were not about to admit to covering up the true facts in JFK's death because it would have destroyed their professional credibility, and with it, their careers. Low-level participants like Dennis David and the duty sailors who carried in the shipping casket at 6:35 PM, the two x-ray technicians (Custer and Reed), the two autopsy technologists (O'Connor and Jenkins), and the two official photographers (Stringer and Riebe); outsiders like the guards from the Marine Barracks and the Joint Service Casket Team; and innocent witnesses like the two FBI agents (Sibert and O'Neill) and the morticians (Robinson and VanHoesen), were true victims of the coverup who were simply exposed to many strange things the night of the President's death, and who were really and truly 'in the dark,' and just innocently following the orders they had been given, without knowing a coverup was underway.

Neither Dennis David, Custer, Reed, O'Connor, Jenkins, Stringer, Riebe, Robinson, VanHoesen,

the U.S. Marine guards from Marine Barracks, the Joint Service Casket Team working for Lt. Bird, General Wehle, nor his aide, Richard Lipsey, fully understood what was going on around them because of compartmentalization and the suppression of evidence. By now, those who gave the cynical and deceitful orders to carry out the medical coverup are all deceased, and many of the midlevel participants have died or are close to death. And the American people are left today with a fraudulent visual record of the autopsy (which is still being suppressed); a dishonest, third-generation autopsy report; and the long-delayed, but reasonably accurate accounts of low-level participants to the strange events surrounding the autopsy—people like Tom Robinson and John VanHoesen, Jerrol Custer and Ed Reed, John Stringer and Floyd Riebe, Paul O'Connor and James Jenkins, Jim Sibert and Frank O'Neill, and Dennis David and Roger Boyajian—who have provided us with enough of the truth to allow us to ascertain that we have been lied to about a seminal event in our nation's history.

Studying the assassination and the coverup is a journey through darkness, and that journey will only lead into bright, sunlit uplands if the student of the assassination gains a proper overview of the deep politics, and the macro forces behind the crime, because with that knowledge comes a full and proper understanding of what a uniquely special politician and leader John F. Kennedy truly was.

[Pat Speer]

So, Jim, am I correct in assuming you are now admitting Mantik was wrong when he claimed "If the evidence in the JFK case is merely accepted at face value, then the conclusions are rather trivial. The rookie Scotland Yard detective can easily solve this case--it was Oswald alone", and that one need not believe evidence was altered in order to rationally conclude Kennedy was killed by more than one shooter?

Or are you still on the side of Bugliosi and McAdams, and of the belief the only way to prove conspiracy is to prove evidence was altered?

And...a refresher...I didn't join in this discussion to refute your Zapruder film studies. I joined in to refute your silly speculation that Thompson--the first CT to battle the "experts" on their own turf--wrote SSID to obfuscate and confuse people about the Zapruder film.

Have you seen just how silly this is?

Because if I were to follow your line of thought, I would have to consider you an obstructionist, or obfuscationist, or some sort of "ist" beginning with an O.

Edited January 4, 2010 by Pat Speer

[Josiah Thompson]

Professor Fetzer,

Since Pat Speer has handled your latest, somewhat hysterical outbursts, I’ve kept silent.... figuring that the more you rant the more you expose who you are.

Your latest attempt at character assassination seems to be based on the claim that forty years ago I didn’t write the book that you would expect me to write now. After all these years, isn’t that a rather unrealistic expectation?

To advance your smear, you point to various arguments I didn’t make and various sketches I didn’t include. You claim that this is all part of some dark conspiracy on the part of me and unnamed others to keep the truth from the American people. Given that you charge me with a dark conspiracy, it seems only right for me to point out that you have ended up over time misleading that small group of people who read your books by publishing photos that really show the opposite of what you say they show. Make no mistake. I am not charging that this feature of your work is part of a dark conspiracy. I am sure it is not. It is most likely only the result of slovenly editing.

Unlike your dark conspiracy that I defy anyone to figure out, it is simplicity itself to show how you have misled your readers.

(1) Take the photo that started the recent debate... the red pickup truck in Dealey Plaza taken from one of Rollie Zavada’s studies. In TGZFH, you published it in a blurry, black and white copy and then claimed it failed to show “left full frame image penetration.” As we’ve seen however, it is precisely “left full frame image penetration” that this photo demonstrates.

(2) In your latest foray, The 9/11 Conspiracy, you are trying to show that fires in WTC 7 were not very extensive or ferocious. As someone hired to investigate this building’s collapse on 9/11, I can tell you they were both. No matter. To prove the point you are trying to make, you publish a photo of the building showing it standing serene and untouched with a flash of orange near its base. The caption describes this photo as follows: “WTC-7, above right, during the attack on the Twin Towers, appears undamaged except for a modest fire at street level.” Well, the building should “appear undamaged” since the photo was taken in 1997. And the “modest fire at street level”? Well, that is a bright orange, Calder statue to be found on the mezzanine level.

(3) Years ago in MIDP, you published a photo purporting to show a particular sight-line in the Moorman photo (the line-up of the left top corner of the Zapruder pedestal with the right bottom corner of a pergola window behind it). The only problem was that you covered up the relevant intersection point with an orange cross. The effect was that the reader had to believe your caption about what was shown. Whoops! When the orange cross was removed, it became clear to the naked eye that the two points did not line up and, therefore, the whole argument was bogus.

(4) Again in MIDP, you publish the famous Altgens photo taken at Z 255 and showing the windshield pristine and undamaged. You circle a pristine area of the windshield and caption the circle as follows: “Circle 1. The apparent through-and-through hole in the windshield.” But there isn’t any hole. There isn’t even any suggestion of a hole. The surface of the windshield is pristine.

I point these facts out since it is very easy do so and requires not much description. I know you will say that the mistakes are not yours but those of your contributors. And, to some degree, you are correct in saying that. But I raise these mistakes also for another reason. Don’t you become so hysterical about me... wigged out enough to produce a completely silly theory of conspiracy to charge me with... because a few days ago I pointed out these mistakes? Aren’t you really so angry simply because I won’t go away and keep pointing out your errors? Isn’t that the real reason behind your recent tirade?

Josiah Thompson

My replies are underlined.

My comments added in bold:

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied. I have summarized my views for your consideration, which I shall repost here for convenience:

Raymond,

Perhaps you can help me to find the words. I regard him as a prevaricator, an obfuscationist, and a dissembler. Let me offer a few reasons why:

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

Did the highest quality versions of the film depict a blob? Wasn't it an artifact found only on third and fourth generation prints? No blob is visible on the quality prints now available.

Don't confound the white piece of paper that seems to float across the grass in the background with the massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which appears to have been part and parcel of the interlocking and mutually reinforcing deceptions of altering the X-rays to make it appear there was missing mass to the right-front, the caption in LIFE magazine for frame 313, and Zapruder's hand gesture during his television interview that evening. I have explained this so many times, I presume you know what I am talking about. This is the most striking and dramatic aspect of the film in 313, 314, 315, and 316, which was always a part of the film, though less clear in various bootlegged copies.

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

It is entirely consistent with Hargis' statements. The large defect was on the top of JFK's head. Blood and brains exploded upwards, and into the air. Hargis drove through this spray within a second.

No, it isn't. Hargis was riding to the left-rear. He was hit so hard he thought that he himself had been hit. It was not a matter of simply "driving through this spray within a second"! Egad, you are even more ignorant than I had supposed. Now I doubt that you have even read SIX SECONDS, since Josiah reports his words on page 100: "This debris hit Officer Hargis with such force that he told reporters the next day, 'I thought at first that I might have been hit'." And of course the Harper fragment was found on the grass the next day, which I suspect hit Hargis and was deflected onto the lawn. You really don't know what you are talking about.

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

Only if you consider McClelland's description "evidence" while tossing out the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of the autopsists. Perhaps Thompson had read the Warren Report and had seen that McClelland initially reported a wound on Kennedy's left temple. If so, he would have been understandably reluctant to rally behind McClelland at the expense of Humes and Boswell.

Again you demonstrate that you are utterly ignorant of the best studies on these matters. Try reading the chapter by Gary Aguilar in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), for example, which demonstrates that the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of Humes and Boswell were fabrications. The "left/right" mis-description is common, since looking at the body, it is "on the left" from the perspective of the observer, even though it is "on the right" of the patient's body. Mantik explained this some time back, if you only read his chapter in MURDER. I am completely astonished at your ignorance of the objective and scientific research on these points.

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

If you go back and read the coverage it received, you'd see that it did create a sensation, and in the process, convinced thousands if not tens of thousands of readers, that there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. It is your belief that alteration is the end-all be-all through which a conspiracy can be proved. Implicit in that argument is that the available evidence, if taken at face value, suggests there was NO conspiracy. (Dr. Mantik, echoing Judge Earl Warren, claims as much in one of your books). In 1967, Thompson thought, quite rightly in my opinion, that the suppression of the Zapruder film had something to do with the fact that most of those viewing it would become concerned Kennedy was shot from the front. History has proved him correct. It is only through your strange prism that his use of the Zapruder film is suspicious.

Well, the "double-hit" study, which most of us considered to be the most objective and scientific in the book, was a demonstration that there had to be at least two shooters. Today, however, using arguments that are specious, he is trying to disavow it, where I have already shown that his disavowal is based upon the false premises of a simultaneous hit and "startle reaction", which is a neurophysiological impossibility. The bullet travels so much faster than sound that, even if the shooter were close to Zapruder, the effects of the sound and the neurological response to them would have taken time and rendered Thompson's purported analysis null and void. PLUS, of course, it does not explain why Richard Feynman, a world famous physicist, would have arrived at the same "double-hit" hypothesis. None of the witnesses, by the way, reported observing the back-and-to-the-left motion many students have found convincing, which appears to be an artifact of editing.

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

(9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

(11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

None of which he, or the majority of conspiracy theorists, accept as proof.

Well, I'll call your bluff. Tell me the arguments that are presented there and why they are not persuasive. I am under the impression that you are faking it here, as you do elsewhere. Since "the majority of conspiracy theorists [do not] accept what I have published there "as proof", you have an obligation to explain why. The arguments have been published. Your basis for rejecting them has not. I hate to say it, Pat, but you appear to be completely unqualified for research on this or, I would surmise, any complex subject. So prove that I am wrong. Give me an inventory of the arguments that are present in the sources that I have cited and explain what is wrong with them. I have no doubt that you can't do it and won't even try. I regard your answer here as phony as the film.

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

The number of film experts believing the film to be altered and the degree to which film experts believe the film to be altered remains in question. I've had discussions on this topic with two film-makers, both conspiracy theorists. Both believe alteration unlikely. Perhaps this new, much smaller claim, that the back of JFK's head was painted in on a few frames will gain more support.

Well, then, it might make a difference if they have actually looked at the relevant evidence. Ask them to take a look at HOAX (2003), especially the Prologue, pages 21 to 28, "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery", "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid"--where these articles are accessible via google--and the relevant portions of Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV (2009). Invite them to visit my public issues web site an view John Costella's tutorial at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/. I would be fascinated to learn more about your "film maker" friends, but you response is artificial and contrived. If you had an argument to show we were wrong about any of this, you would have made it. You have not.

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

We all await the position paper of these "experts", along with the photographic evidence for their claims.

So when they whisper in your ear, you will become a believer? You seem to be implying that Doug Horne, who was there and did that--and even has a degree in history!--is slanting or fabricating reports that he is attributing to Hollywood film restoration experts, whom he cites by name? Have you read the reports from Roderick Ryan in Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1998)? The number of Hollywood film experts who agree with this has grown to seven--eight, including Ryan! Are you telling me that, if this actually is their opinion, then you will convert? My confidence in you ability to reason has been enormously diminished by this exchange.

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

This, in a nutshell, is the source of much of the problem. You, as Horne, think talking to an old man and having him tell you something at odds with the official story is a "discovery", and cause to re-interpret everything we thought we knew. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. The 30 year-removed memories of people so unconcerned with getting things straight that they never wrote anything down just are not reliable. They may be interesting. They maybe worth reporting. But you cannot construct a new version of events based upon the isolated recollections of people far removed from the events in question, and expect widespread acceptance. Right here on this forum, on another thread, David Lifton has told Pamela McElwain-Brown that he doesn't believe her story of seeing the Zapruder film in a movie theater in 1964. He is, IMO, correct to do so. But where is this objectivity when it comes to the medical evidence, where we have people readily accepting the otherwise unsupported claims that Kennedy had no brain when he arrived at Bethesda, etc.? It's nowhere. This suggests to me that some of us are more concerned with making a "discovery" than in getting things straight. (And no, I'm not being holier than thou. I discuss this tendency within myself in the Seduction of Intrigue section of chapter 20 at patspeer.com.)

The "discovery" that the film is a fabrication has been proven over and over again. If you have a modicum of intellectual integrity, you will explain the proofs I have advanced and explain why each of them is wrong. I not only do not believe that you can do that, I don't think you will even try. So surprise me! Try to show that the arguments we have actually given are wrong!

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

And this revelation to you that Thompson has always been an evil-doer, of course, has nothing to do with any personal dislike you feel for the man... I'm sorry but at this late date in the Thompson/Fetzer wars that's truly hard to believe.

Arguments are independent of attitudes. Discounting an argument because of its source is an elementary fallacy I taught freshmen to avoid for 35 years! Today I regard the man as a disgrace, but I could still be one of his biggest fans, because the points that I have made are completely objective. He offered an opaque sketch of frame 313. He did not offer any but a very abstract outline of frames 314, 315, and 316. He published the McClelland drawing and even quoted Officer Hargis, who was hit by debris so hard he thought he himself had been shot. The drawing and testimony stand in striking contradiction to the events shown on the film. He cannot not have known they were incompatible. But, instead of driving for the truth by a determined effort to resolve this contradiction, he obfuscated it significance. Because he did not even offer sketches of what the film showed in these crucial respects, his readers had no idea that he was suppressing, ignoring, or otherwise concealing some of the most important indications of fakery in the cover up. He is playing you and others for saps--and you, alas, are falling for it! Josiah is like "The Force": he can have a powerful effect on the weak-minded!

He is extending his efforts by disavowing or minimizing indications of conspiracy that were included in SIX SECONDS, while he attempts to perpetrate the fraud that the film is authentic. It should not be difficult, even for one as kindly as you, to see though his obvious hypocrisy.

Since Thompson continues to believe the film suggests a conspiracy, it remains to be seen how his changing a few of his conclusions is so troublesome.

My guess is that he was working toward declaring that he has become agnostic in time for the 50th observance of the assassination. That appears to be what this is all about. He and Mack and Lamson and Colby and McAdams and others are all targeting the 50th.

If you prefer to place propriety and manners ahead of distortions and perversions about evidence and truth in the assassination of JFK, that is your prerogative. But that, in my view, is simply one more form of apology for betraying the trust of you, me, and the American people.

Jim

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

[Jack White]

The error is in the first edition, and was taken from a source which identified it as a fire at street level;

it was very small and hard to discern. I sent Jim a substitute photo to use in later printings. That is a

specious argument.

Jack

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

Josiah,

What's this introducing irrelevant issues on a thread? In the past, you have declined to answer questions on the basis that they were on the wrong thread. That even happened for your "double hit" theory, which makes it all the more peculiar that you continue to ignore the perfectly legitimate questions that have been raised on this thread and introduce irrelevancies like (1), (2), (3), and (4)! That speaks volumes. Cute remarks may give you an infantile sense of satisfaction, but there are many here who want the answers to serious questions.

And for you to seek to hide behind Pat Speer's skirt is something else again. He has admitted that he has rejected the multiple proofs of alteration that have been published without studying them. I guess that makes him "a kindred spirit", which does not surprise me. You don't even use the latest exchange between us in creating this post. That suggests to me that you might want to explain this all away as "sloppy research" on your part! You are displaying plenty of that here, including an explanation of why you abandoned the "double hit" theory that entails violations of natural laws!

It troubles me is that you, Josiah Thompson, in January 2010, still appear to have not read THE GREAT ZARPUDER FILM HOAX (2003), which includes a very detailed report about Rich DellaRosa's viewing of this film on three occasions. No one who has actually read it would be inclined to make the absurd suggestion that he (Rich) was talking about a version from "Executive Action"! What kind of scholar are you to not have read the most important book on film fakey or have studied a witness report like DellaRosa's?

Moreover, it is stunning that you do not appear to be aware of some of the blatant disproofs of the film's authenticity, such as "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid", not to mention the confirmation of Roderick Ryan's observation that the back of the head wound had been painted over in black and that the "blob" and blood spray were painted in that Horne has reported, which has now been confirmed by seven Hollywood experts--eight counting Ryan!

You, Josiah Thompson, were in a unique position among students of JFK in having access to the very best versions of the film held by LIFE magazine. You were aware of the Parkland physicians' reports, some of which, including the McClelland diagram, you discuss, and that Officer Hargis was hit by debris so hard that thought he himself had been shot. Yet you did not make a point of the inconsistency of the medical evidence with the film, in spite of its blatancy. You are not being candid; you had to have know better, which makes it a work of obfuscation.

Insofar as (i) you do not use frames from the film but sketches (allegedly because of a breech of contract with LIFE), (ii) you do not provide sketches of the crucial frames (314, 315, and 315), and (iii) your sketch of 313, which was unavoidable, does not include the crucial feature of the "blob" bulging out to the right-front, they together suggest rather strongly that (iv) your book, SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS, was designed to defect attention from the contradiction between the medical evidence and the film.

And now, on various threads, I find that you are denying that you understand the medical evidence in this case, which you say is a complete mess, and even suggesting that you are not really an expert on photographs and films. I guess we can expect that, before long, you will be denying that you are an expert on the case--although it is my suspicion that all of this, including denying the "double hit" hypothesis on the basis of a specious explanation, is preliminary to undergoing a future "conversion".

For you to imply that the conclusion the film has been faked is a "tribal belief"--as though it had no foundation in logic or evidence--exemplifies the inflexible and irrational stance you have adopted. No matter how strong the proof, no matter how many experts on film conclude not only has the film been faked but the fakery was amateurish in the extreme, you, Josiah Thompson, will not budge. There are not many alternative explanations for such a stand, under these conditions, and none is flattering to you.

Not only have you avoided explaining how you could have constructed such an artful obfuscation without conscious intent, but you have not told us where you stand today on the medical evidence, its significance for the question of the film's authenticity, or even on the independent proof that the film is a fake. Are you, too, like Pat Speer, going to claim you have reviewed these proofs and found them wanting? And does that include the film restoration experts, who, like Roderick Ryan, have concluded the film has been altered--and in amateurish ways?

In fact, you made much of my citing the final paragraph of the text of your book as though that were somehow misleading or inappropriate. But you appear to be backing away from supporting the existence of a conspiracy in the death of JFK. I can see the headline now: "Former Conspiracy Theorist Josiah Thompson Abandon's His Belief!" The subtitle will say that you now agree with Gary Mack that "we will just never know". That is where you are heading, isn't it--and just in time for the 50th?

Are you going to adopt Pat Speer''s line--that the only way to prove conspiracy is by impeaching the evidence? He does not seem to understand that almost all of the evidence in this case has been faked, altered, or fabricated. And I have yet to hear a good reason for thinking the film is an exception. Even your cherished "chain of custody" argument is tattered and torn. You appear to be as unreasonable as Pat Speer in your unwillingness to display a rational response to new arguments based upon new evidence.

And why, for God's sake, are you not even willing to confirm that this every paragraph convinced Vincent Salandria that you were a government agent? He and I have corresponded about this and he explained to me that, when he confronted you about it, you dismissed his concerns on the grounds that it was simply an "infelicitous" use of language. So why can't you confirm it? Because you have suggested that it was abusive for me to cite it, when another JFK expert already called you on it? Why are we forming the impression that you, Josiah Thompson, are not a "stand up" guy?

The question is, since you were the "inside man" on the Zapruder film, why didn't you even sketch the most important frames? Why is frame 313 opaque? Since the inconsistency between the McClelland diagram and Officer Hargis' report was so blatant, why did you not address it? Those would have been obvious things to do. And, given your belief in the "double hit" analysis that was such a central feature of your account, how could you possibly have suggested that your book--not just those last few pages --does not prove the existence of a conspiracy, for which Salandria faulted you, too?

Stop bobbing and weaving, ducking and hiding. This has gone on too long. Just answer the questions, if you can, and let us all assess them.

Jim

Professor Fetzer,

Since Pat Speer has handled your latest, somewhat hysterical outbursts, I’ve kept silent.... figuring that the more you rant the more you expose who you are.

Your latest attempt at character assassination seems to be based on the claim that forty years ago I didn’t write the book that you would expect me to write now. After all these years, isn’t that a rather unrealistic expectation?

To advance your smear, you point to various arguments I didn’t make and various sketches I didn’t include. You claim that this is all part of some dark conspiracy on the part of me and unnamed others to keep the truth from the American people. Given that you charge me with a dark conspiracy, it seems only right for me to point out that you have ended up over time misleading that small group of people who read your books by publishing photos that really show the opposite of what you say they show. Make no mistake. I am not charging that this feature of your work is part of a dark conspiracy. I am sure it is not. It is most likely only the result of slovenly editing.

Unlike your dark conspiracy that I defy anyone to figure out, it is simplicity itself to show how you have misled your readers.

(1) Take the photo that started the recent debate... the red pickup truck in Dealey Plaza taken from one of Rollie Zavada’s studies. In TGZFH, you published it in a blurry, black and white copy and then claimed it failed to show “left full frame image penetration.” As we’ve seen however, it is precisely “left full frame image penetration” that this photo demonstrates.

(2) In your latest foray, The 9/11 Conspiracy, you are trying to show that fires in WTC 7 were not very extensive or ferocious. As someone hired to investigate this building’s collapse on 9/11, I can tell you they were both. No matter. To prove the point you are trying to make, you publish a photo of the building showing it standing serene and untouched with a flash of orange near its base. The caption describes this photo as follows: “WTC-7, above right, during the attack on the Twin Towers, appears undamaged except for a modest fire at street level.” Well, the building should “appear undamaged” since the photo was taken in 1997. And the “modest fire at street level”? Well, that is a bright orange, Calder statue to be found on the mezzanine level.

(3) Years ago in MIDP, you published a photo purporting to show a particular sight-line in the Moorman photo (the line-up of the left top corner of the Zapruder pedestal with the right bottom corner of a pergola window behind it). The only problem was that you covered up the relevant intersection point with an orange cross. The effect was that the reader had to believe your caption about what was shown. Whoops! When the orange cross was removed, it became clear to the naked eye that the two points did not line up and, therefore, the whole argument was bogus.

(4) Again in MIDP, you publish the famous Altgens photo taken at Z 255 and showing the windshield pristine and undamaged. You circle a pristine area of the windshield and caption the circle as follows: “Circle 1. The apparent through-and-through hole in the windshield.” But there isn’t any hole. There isn’t even any suggestion of a hole. The surface of the windshield is pristine.

I point these facts out since it is very easy do so and requires not much description. I know you will say that the mistakes are not yours but those of your contributors. And, to some degree, you are correct in saying that. But I raise these mistakes also for another reason. Don’t you become so hysterical about me... wigged out enough to produce a completely silly theory of conspiracy to charge me with... because a few days ago I pointed out these mistakes? Aren’t you really so angry simply because I won’t go away and keep pointing out your errors? Isn’t that the real reason behind your recent tirade?

Josiah Thompson

My replies are underlined.

My comments added in bold:

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied. I have summarized my views for your consideration, which I shall repost here for convenience:

Raymond,

Perhaps you can help me to find the words. I regard him as a prevaricator, an obfuscationist, and a dissembler. Let me offer a few reasons why:

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

Did the highest quality versions of the film depict a blob? Wasn't it an artifact found only on third and fourth generation prints? No blob is visible on the quality prints now available.

Don't confound the white piece of paper that seems to float across the grass in the background with the massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which appears to have been part and parcel of the interlocking and mutually reinforcing deceptions of altering the X-rays to make it appear there was missing mass to the right-front, the caption in LIFE magazine for frame 313, and Zapruder's hand gesture during his television interview that evening. I have explained this so many times, I presume you know what I am talking about. This is the most striking and dramatic aspect of the film in 313, 314, 315, and 316, which was always a part of the film, though less clear in various bootlegged copies.

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

It is entirely consistent with Hargis' statements. The large defect was on the top of JFK's head. Blood and brains exploded upwards, and into the air. Hargis drove through this spray within a second.

No, it isn't. Hargis was riding to the left-rear. He was hit so hard he thought that he himself had been hit. It was not a matter of simply "driving through this spray within a second"! Egad, you are even more ignorant than I had supposed. Now I doubt that you have even read SIX SECONDS, since Josiah reports his words on page 100: "This debris hit Officer Hargis with such force that he told reporters the next day, 'I thought at first that I might have been hit'." And of course the Harper fragment was found on the grass the next day, which I suspect hit Hargis and was deflected onto the lawn. You really don't know what you are talking about.

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

Only if you consider McClelland's description "evidence" while tossing out the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of the autopsists. Perhaps Thompson had read the Warren Report and had seen that McClelland initially reported a wound on Kennedy's left temple. If so, he would have been understandably reluctant to rally behind McClelland at the expense of Humes and Boswell.

Again you demonstrate that you are utterly ignorant of the best studies on these matters. Try reading the chapter by Gary Aguilar in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), for example, which demonstrates that the autopsy report, the Rydberg drawings, and the testimony of Humes and Boswell were fabrications. The "left/right" mis-description is common, since looking at the body, it is "on the left" from the perspective of the observer, even though it is "on the right" of the patient's body. Mantik explained this some time back, if you only read his chapter in MURDER. I am completely astonished at your ignorance of the objective and scientific research on these points.

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

If you go back and read the coverage it received, you'd see that it did create a sensation, and in the process, convinced thousands if not tens of thousands of readers, that there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. It is your belief that alteration is the end-all be-all through which a conspiracy can be proved. Implicit in that argument is that the available evidence, if taken at face value, suggests there was NO conspiracy. (Dr. Mantik, echoing Judge Earl Warren, claims as much in one of your books). In 1967, Thompson thought, quite rightly in my opinion, that the suppression of the Zapruder film had something to do with the fact that most of those viewing it would become concerned Kennedy was shot from the front. History has proved him correct. It is only through your strange prism that his use of the Zapruder film is suspicious.

Well, the "double-hit" study, which most of us considered to be the most objective and scientific in the book, was a demonstration that there had to be at least two shooters. Today, however, using arguments that are specious, he is trying to disavow it, where I have already shown that his disavowal is based upon the false premises of a simultaneous hit and "startle reaction", which is a neurophysiological impossibility. The bullet travels so much faster than sound that, even if the shooter were close to Zapruder, the effects of the sound and the neurological response to them would have taken time and rendered Thompson's purported analysis null and void. PLUS, of course, it does not explain why Richard Feynman, a world famous physicist, would have arrived at the same "double-hit" hypothesis. None of the witnesses, by the way, reported observing the back-and-to-the-left motion many students have found convincing, which appears to be an artifact of editing.

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

(9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

(11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

None of which he, or the majority of conspiracy theorists, accept as proof.

Well, I'll call your bluff. Tell me the arguments that are presented there and why they are not persuasive. I am under the impression that you are faking it here, as you do elsewhere. Since "the majority of conspiracy theorists [do not] accept what I have published there "as proof", you have an obligation to explain why. The arguments have been published. Your basis for rejecting them has not. I hate to say it, Pat, but you appear to be completely unqualified for research on this or, I would surmise, any complex subject. So prove that I am wrong. Give me an inventory of the arguments that are present in the sources that I have cited and explain what is wrong with them. I have no doubt that you can't do it and won't even try. I regard your answer here as phony as the film.

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

The number of film experts believing the film to be altered and the degree to which film experts believe the film to be altered remains in question. I've had discussions on this topic with two film-makers, both conspiracy theorists. Both believe alteration unlikely. Perhaps this new, much smaller claim, that the back of JFK's head was painted in on a few frames will gain more support.

Well, then, it might make a difference if they have actually looked at the relevant evidence. Ask them to take a look at HOAX (2003), especially the Prologue, pages 21 to 28, "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery", "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid"--where these articles are accessible via google--and the relevant portions of Doug Horne, INSIDE THE ARRB, Vol. IV (2009). Invite them to visit my public issues web site an view John Costella's tutorial at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/. I would be fascinated to learn more about your "film maker" friends, but you response is artificial and contrived. If you had an argument to show we were wrong about any of this, you would have made it. You have not.

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

We all await the position paper of these "experts", along with the photographic evidence for their claims.

So when they whisper in your ear, you will become a believer? You seem to be implying that Doug Horne, who was there and did that--and even has a degree in history!--is slanting or fabricating reports that he is attributing to Hollywood film restoration experts, whom he cites by name? Have you read the reports from Roderick Ryan in Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1998)? The number of Hollywood film experts who agree with this has grown to seven--eight, including Ryan! Are you telling me that, if this actually is their opinion, then you will convert? My confidence in you ability to reason has been enormously diminished by this exchange.

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

This, in a nutshell, is the source of much of the problem. You, as Horne, think talking to an old man and having him tell you something at odds with the official story is a "discovery", and cause to re-interpret everything we thought we knew. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. The 30 year-removed memories of people so unconcerned with getting things straight that they never wrote anything down just are not reliable. They may be interesting. They maybe worth reporting. But you cannot construct a new version of events based upon the isolated recollections of people far removed from the events in question, and expect widespread acceptance. Right here on this forum, on another thread, David Lifton has told Pamela McElwain-Brown that he doesn't believe her story of seeing the Zapruder film in a movie theater in 1964. He is, IMO, correct to do so. But where is this objectivity when it comes to the medical evidence, where we have people readily accepting the otherwise unsupported claims that Kennedy had no brain when he arrived at Bethesda, etc.? It's nowhere. This suggests to me that some of us are more concerned with making a "discovery" than in getting things straight. (And no, I'm not being holier than thou. I discuss this tendency within myself in the Seduction of Intrigue section of chapter 20 at patspeer.com.)

The "discovery" that the film is a fabrication has been proven over and over again. If you have a modicum of intellectual integrity, you will explain the proofs I have advanced and explain why each of them is wrong. I not only do not believe that you can do that, I don't think you will even try. So surprise me! Try to show that the arguments we have actually given are wrong!

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

And this revelation to you that Thompson has always been an evil-doer, of course, has nothing to do with any personal dislike you feel for the man... I'm sorry but at this late date in the Thompson/Fetzer wars that's truly hard to believe.

Arguments are independent of attitudes. Discounting an argument because of its source is an elementary fallacy I taught freshmen to avoid for 35 years! Today I regard the man as a disgrace, but I could still be one of his biggest fans, because the points that I have made are completely objective. He offered an opaque sketch of frame 313. He did not offer any but a very abstract outline of frames 314, 315, and 316. He published the McClelland drawing and even quoted Officer Hargis, who was hit by debris so hard he thought he himself had been shot. The drawing and testimony stand in striking contradiction to the events shown on the film. He cannot not have known they were incompatible. But, instead of driving for the truth by a determined effort to resolve this contradiction, he obfuscated it significance. Because he did not even offer sketches of what the film showed in these crucial respects, his readers had no idea that he was suppressing, ignoring, or otherwise concealing some of the most important indications of fakery in the cover up. He is playing you and others for saps--and you, alas, are falling for it! Josiah is like "The Force": he can have a powerful effect on the weak-minded!

He is extending his efforts by disavowing or minimizing indications of conspiracy that were included in SIX SECONDS, while he attempts to perpetrate the fraud that the film is authentic. It should not be difficult, even for one as kindly as you, to see though his obvious hypocrisy.

Since Thompson continues to believe the film suggests a conspiracy, it remains to be seen how his changing a few of his conclusions is so troublesome.

My guess is that he was working toward declaring that he has become agnostic in time for the 50th observance of the assassination. That appears to be what this is all about. He and Mack and Lamson and Colby and McAdams and others are all targeting the 50th.

If you prefer to place propriety and manners ahead of distortions and perversions about evidence and truth in the assassination of JFK, that is your prerogative. But that, in my view, is simply one more form of apology for betraying the trust of you, me, and the American people.

Jim

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

Edited January 4, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[Pat Speer]

The error is in the first edition, and was taken from a source which identified it as a fire at street level;

it was very small and hard to discern. I sent Jim a substitute photo to use in later printings. That is a

specious argument.

Jack

But Tink has a valid point, Jack, in that there are errors like this in a number of Fetzer's books. In this thread he has repeatedly accused me of not having read Aguilar's and Mantik's chapters in Murder in Dealey Plaza. If he had a clue what he was talking about, he would have known that I wrote about one of the MISTAKES they made in this book a few years back, and actually defended this mistake in a backhanded kind of way.

From patspeer.com, chapter 13:

When I compare the photos of the back of Kennedy's head, I find it remarkable that what appears to be a small hole appears in each photo slightly above and to the right of the gray matter, Even more remarkable is that this hole is in the exact same spot in each photo, and precisely where the doctors said there was a bullet hole. To me, this is clearly the wound described at autopsy. But that's just me. Now years after I first came forward to promote this round shape as the long-lost entrance on the back of Kennedy's head, I've found few theorists of any stripe willing to abandon their pre-conceptions.

But the wound is there, nevertheless, plain as day. It really makes me wonder if truth, much as beauty, is purely in the eye of the beholder.

When I compare the cowlick entrance in the photos, I find something else to shake my head about. For here, it seems equally clear that the purported hole in the cowlick is much fainter on the black and white photo, and almost certainly not a bullet entrance. I'm not the first to notice this. Dr. Humes noticed this as well, and pointed this out in his discussion with the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel. He explained that he rejected the mark in the cowlick as an entrance because: “despite the fact that this upper point that has been the source of some discussion here this afternoon is excessively obvious in the color photograph, I almost defy you to find it in that magnification in the black and white.”

That the mark seen on the black and white photo is so clearly not a bullet hole, unfortunately, has led some conspiracy writers to place this photo next to the Ida Dox drawing of the entrance in the cowlick and create the illusion that the entrance wound on the drawing was completely fabricated. This is undoubtedly deceiving, and is yet another reminder that conspiracy theorists are every bit as capable of deception as single-assassin theorists. Incredibly, in two separate articles in the collection Murder in Dealey Plaza, Dr.s Gary Aguilar and David Mantik place the Ida Dox drawing by the black and white photo for comparison. Dr. Aguilar’s caption reads: “…The small spot towards the top of the skull, which appears red in color photographs, was said to be an entrance location…The wound described is not evident in the actual photo.” By his use of the phrase “actual photo,” Aguilar had implied that the color photo was but a color version of the black and white. This was not true.

Fortunately, he tried to correct this mistake. In September 2006, when challenged online by an irate single-assassin theorist about this caption, Dr. Aguilar readily admitted his error, stating “it appears that I did indeed use the wrong image of the back of JFK's head. The only one I had was from a high quality black and white, 8x10 set that I'd gotten from Tink Thompson and used for this image. My error was in not realizing that there was a tiny change in perspective in the correct image vs. the one I showed.” Dr. Aguilar has in fact used the color photo in subsequent comparisons. He has also disavowed his use of the term “actual photo”. He related “I never noticed that phrasing before and I don't think I'd write it that way today, if I actually wrote it originally, as opposed to the editor's having written it. I simply don't now recall.” Intriguingly, this last statement suggests that the misleading caption was written by the editor of Murder in Dealey Plaza, Dr. James Fetzer. If true, this might help explain why a nearly identical mistake was made in Dr. Mantik’s article in the same book. Dr. Mantik’s caption reads: “Ida Dox inexplicably enhanced the red spot in her drawing. The actual entry is not visible; no other photograph shows it either." This, of course, is also not true.

But whenever one points out the mistakes of earnest researchers such as Aguilar, Mantik, and Fetzer, one should also inject some perspective, and note that, while their mistakes may mislead a few unsuspecting readers, they positively pale in comparison to the mistakes made by the mainstream media most every time they write a bout the assassination. In a May 20, 1992, AP article reporting on a press conference held by Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell, for example, the AP printed drawings of an entrance wound on the back of a head and beveling of the skull. Hundreds of thousands of readers were fooled into thinking these drawings supported the statements of the doctors, who, in an effort to combat some of the assertions in Oliver Stone’s film JFK, had asserted “The second, fatal shot entered the back of this head and exploded the right side of the skull.” The problem was that the drawing provided by the AP depicted the bullet entering near the top of Kennedy’s skull, in the HSCA entrance, when the doctors were describing the wound as measured at autopsy, 4 inches below this entrance. This “mistake” by the mainstream press hid from the public that the doctors were not only arguing against Oliver Stone, but also EVERY government panel to look at the assassination since 1968. Apparently, the AP didn't consider that news worth reporting.