Pat Speer

Your second point has inspired me to start a thread sharing some stuff on my website that has mostly gone unnoticed. I will start a thread on it called Sniper's Nest Shenanigans.

It appears to be the Greer did it theory, holding that limo driver William Greer turned around and shot Kennedy in the head in front of dozens of witnesses, and no one noticed.

The removal of powder to make a bullet subsonic removes the sound created as high velocity bullets fly past. It also cuts into the bang as the bullet is fired, to such an extent that the sound of a rifle firing subsonic ammo from inside an upper-floor window would be heard at ground level, but would probably not be recognized as a rifle shot. So, yes, I think the many people claiming the first shot or shots sounded like a firecracker or firecrackers supports the possibility subsonic ammunition was used. I am reluctant to say for sure, though, because a lot of the "firecrackers" I grew up with were cherry-bombs and 1/4 sticks, which were roughly as loud as a rifle shot. I am reminded of this every 4th of July and New Years, for that matter, when loud explosions ring out in the distance. My first instinct is always that someone has fired a rifle, but it's just someone having "fun". To be clear, though, I have not fired a rifle since I was a kid, and that was a .22. I did accompany my dad on a few hunting trips, however, and the sound of his 30.06 was deafening.

Let's be clear. They weren't aiming for the head. They were aiming for the center of the target. But even so, their "success" rate was far less than Oswald's purported "success" rate, as their hits were not as close to the center of the target as the hits attributed to Oswald. Here are the targets for shots 1 and 2. For the the first of these the test shooters were given all the time they needed, after performing some warm-up shots. (The hits attributed to Oswald are marked by red stars.) Now notice how their accuracy drops off considerably on the second target, after they began rapid fire. And then realize that the first shot attributed to Oswald was also rapid fire, as this shot is purported to have occurred as the limo cleared the trees.

I was contacted at one point by a man claiming to be Craig's nephew, if I recall. He saw that I'd presented Mike Brownlow as a possible eyewitness to the shooting, and wanted me to know that Brownlow had taken to claiming he was friends with Roger Craig, when this wasn't true, and that he considered Brownlow to be a serial fabricator. He said further that he believed his uncle was mentally ill at the time of his death, and that no one in the family suspected foul play. I have written very little about Craig. I find the whole subject depressing. But it seems quite likely he honestly believed he saw Oswald (or someone looking like Oswald) run down the slope and get into a Rambler, and was knocked a bit off center when no one would believe him.

There was a quote in a book I was reading that sourced back to an old book. I then found this quote in other books, all sourcing back to that book. When I read the book, however, it sourced back to a magazine article. It became clear to me at this point that none of the authors had ever read this article for themselves, and were simply quoting another author's take on that article. So I decided to read the full article. But none of the libraries I went into had it, and I couldn't find it online. So, upon visiting Dallas, I actually went into the Sixth Floor Museum's library, and asked the Librarian if they had the magazine. They did. And the staff was actually excited to help me solve the mystery of whether or not the article said what book after book had claimed it said. It took awhile but they located the magazine in some room not open to the public, and not in the main library. In any event, when I looked through the magazine it took me awhile to find the quote, but I finally found it. While book after book had attributed the quote to Howard Brennan, the article did not mention him by name, as I recall, and had attributed the quote to an "eyewitness" or some such thing. In any event, I ultimately decided that this witness was indeed Brennan. But the author of the first book could have been wrong about this, and the numerous authors to reference his book could very well have been spreading a myth.

And yet, even Mark Furhrman--a man fully convinced Oswald was guilty--saw the folly of the magic bullet theory, and refused to embrace it in his best-selling book.

No, there's no consensus. I think Secret Agenda is designed to get Nixon off the hook by blaming everyone's favorite boogeyman, the CIA. As stated, it makes no sense at all. If the plot was to set up Nixon, it failed miserably because evidently no one told the burglars they were supposed to finger Nixon before his re-election, and before he could fire Helms. P.S. There was a time when this forum had an active forum on Watergate. Douglas Caddy and Alfred Baldwin joined. As I recall, they were both quite dismissive that McCord and/or Hunt would deliberately get caught, and totally disrupt their lives...for what? To frame Nixon for something everyone agrees he did. Well, even before the Watergate break-in, Nixon had engaged in numerous impeachable offenses. No mousetrap-like plot was necessary. A few leaks would have done the trick.

DVP: And, naturally, Pat Speer knows WAY more about these things than do the THREE professional pathologists who attended JFK's autopsy at Bethesda. Let me remind you, Pat, what Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Finck concluded: "The missile contused the strap muscles of the right side of the neck, damaged the trachea and made its exit through the anterior surface of the neck." Let me guess----all three doctors who signed off on the above conclusions were rotten l i a r s, right? PS: No, I don't think they were necessarily lying on this point. They said the strap muscles were on the neck, which they are, and not the back of the neck. It was Specter who then told lie after lie indicating the strap muscles were on the back of the neck. The doctors, by their own admission, and in violation of standard autopsy protocol, failed to track the wound from the back wound to the throat wound. They essentially GUESSED that the bullet creating the back wound exited the throat. And they needed to make this GUESS because without making this anti-scientific leap of faith, they thought they would have to acknowledge Kennedy was hit by three bullets. And since the SBT had not yet been developed this would have meant Connally's wounds were caused by a fourth bullet. So they needed to subtract a bullet from the scenario, and voila! the back wound now connected to the throat wound. They may very well have believed this to be true. But what is undoubtedly true is that the first draft of the autopsy report was destroyed and that the finished product connecting the two wounds was created after Oswald had been fingered as the sole assassin. Your outrage over this point, moreover, is obviously for show. You yourself believe these men were gross incompetents and mistakenly believed a bullet entrance at the top of the head near the midline was actually a bullet entrance low on the back of the head an inch from the midline. And here's what the Clark Panel said five years later (more l i a r s here? Yes, I know you can't stand the Clark Panel either, but their conclusions are in black-&-white for all time anyway, whether you like it or not).... "There is a track between the two cutaneous wounds as indicated by subcutaneous emphysema and small metallic fragments on the X-rays and the contusion of the apex of the right lung and laceration of the trachea described in the Autopsy Report. In addition, any path other than one between the two cutaneous wounds would almost surely have been intercepted by bone and the X-ray films show no bony damage in the thorax or neck." Instant Replay.... "There is a track between the two cutaneous wounds..." But CTers like Patrick Speer know WAY more than the four members of Ramsey Clark's panel. Right? (Phooey.) PS: Thanks for posting this, because it helps make my point. The Clark Panel said there was a shadow on the x-rays that ended at the throat wound. This shadow represented the bullet's path. And I suspect they were right. Lattimer and Sturdivan have also mentioned this shadow. But here's the problem. This shadow BEGINS far up the neck, and not on the back. This was what led Lattimer to claim Kennedy was a hunchback. That the Clark Panel was bluffing when they said this shadow traced back to the back wound seems certain, moreover, because they simultaneously affirmed the measurements taken at autopsy, which presented the wound at the level of the shoulder tips, and not high up on the neck.That the HSCA FPP saw the folly of their thinking, and feared where it would lead, furthermore, is demonstrated by their treatment of this "emphysema". They said it did not represent a bullet track, but was simply air trapped in the neck when the hole in the president's throat got blocked off by his tie. It wasn't "recorded" at all, since Perry's trach obliterated all but a very small part of it. If by "recorded" you mean the testimony of Dr. Perry, et al, I guess you're convinced that when Perry told the WC that the throat wound could have been "either" an entry or an exit, he was being coerced or forced to do so? I, of course, would disagree. He was merely telling the truth as he saw it---i.e., that bullet hole could have a been either an entrance wound or an exit. No coercion necessary to tell a truth like that. PS: Nope, I think it was an exit wound. A missile traveling at a low velocity will leave a small hole resembling an entrance wound. As far as Perry, he and others often specified that while the wound may have been an exit wound it was a small wound and was most certainly not what one would expect to be the exit of a high velocity bullet. Is the "Official CIA Manual On How To Commit A Presidential Assassination" currently for sale at Amazon? I'd like to get a copy. PS: I bought it years ago from a company that packaged up documents from the archives, and sold them on CD-Roms. The CIA Manual was written by someone involved in the training of the Guatemalans who overthrew Arbenz, quite possibly David Morales and/or Rip Robertson. Numerous articles have been written on it since the archives let it surface in the 90's. If you actually studied this case as opposed to regurgitating long-debunked arguments, you would know about it and have it in your collection. And your above comment isn't supposed to suggest that you, yourself, think that the Central Intelligence Agency might have had a hand in Mr. Kennedy's demise....is it Pat? Or is it?And the thought has occurred to me that most conspiracy theorists (including even you, Pat) suffer from an overabundance of imagination. (With the "discovery" of your make-believe entry wound in the back of JFK's head being a prime example of your very fertile imagination, plus your willingness to "see" things that simply aren't there.) Get real (again), Pat!! PS: I think the CIA may have had a hand, but consider it more likely that the assassins were CIA-trained. As far as my "make-believe wound," I don't know what you mean. You mean the one described in the autopsy report and confirmed by the doctors after reviewing the autopsy photos? Well, this wound is not a product of my imagination. It is the historical record your boy Bugliosi claimed to love. Do I really need to remind you that not one person who actually saw Kennedy's body said the wound was in the cowlick, and that the cowlick entry has been almost universally rejected by everyone (CT or LN) to view the autopsy materials over last 40 years? You're nuts if you think it was Vincent Bugliosi who convinced me the SBT is true. I was thoroughly convinced that the SBT was correct years before Vince's book came out. And it wasn't Bugliosi's participation in the London mock trial that convinced me of the SBT either. In fact, as you know, Vince supported the silly Z190 SBT timeline at that television trial in 1986, which he later had to revise for his book because he knew, as did I, that Z190 was simply absurd because it's way too early. PS: Yes, but that Z190 time was confirmed by the photography panel, working independently from the acoustics panel. And it's easy to see why. It's quite obvious the Kennedy jerks to his left before he goes behind the sign in the film. And calling Vincent Bugliosi "illogical" is akin to calling Donald J. Trump "sane". PS: No. I say Bugliosi is illogical because was hellbent on proving Oswald the sole assassin and answering all the questions, but couldn't keep his story straight from chapter to chapter. As you know, he presented two different shooting scenarios, two different back wound locations, and two different versions of Kennedy's position within the limo at the time he was first shot. Try this one. It's excellent. (I'm sure all CTers despise it, but it's very good nonetheless.) PS: Yes, I've read and dissected Larry's book, but it's not an actual textbook, is it? It's propaganda, as demonstrated by his changing the loss of velocity associated with the various wounds from Olivier's 1964 testimony and even his own 1978 testimony. That must be why EVERY panel/commission that has looked into the JFK murder has endorsed the SBT. And the autopsy doctors started it off with the first two-thirds of the SBT by saying that one bullet definitely did pass through Kennedy's upper body. And that was a conclusion that was reached five days before Mr. Specter and the WC were ever tasked with their Warren Commission duties. (So why did Humes, et al, tell that big fat lie, Pat? Why did they want or NEED to do that? Please tell me.) PS: As stated elsewhere, the HSCA FPP endorsed the SBT under the belief Guinn's NAA proved it (which it didn't) and under the belief it occurred after Kennedy had bent over while behind the sign in the Z-film. They had thereby most definitely NOT endorsed the SBT as proposed by the HSCA. As one of their leading lights (Wecht) was at that time and this time perhaps the greatest critic of the SBT, it is not exactly honest to claim they endorsed it. As far as why the doctors would say the bullet passed through the neck from back to front, its' really quite simple. They'd been told three shots were fired, and were trying to make it add up. I don't need Specter and I don't need Myers to help me decide whether to believe the SBT. The autopsy report, the Zapruder Film, and the basic knowledge about what a bullet can (and will) do when it is slowed down significantly are the main things needed for me to decide whether the SBT is a fact vs. being bullshit. Specter and Myers (and others) have helped solidify and firm up my pro-SBT opinions, yes. I don't deny that. But to quote Mr. Bugliosi --- "From the first moment that I heard that Specter had come up with the single-bullet theory, it made very little sense to me since the theory was so obvious that a child could author it." PS: Have you actually looked at the velocity loss associated with the various wounds? Because if you did you would see that they have never added up, and that they actually suggested--strongly suggested--that the bullet creating these wounds was traveling at a subsonic velocity. As far as your last statement, yes, I know, Your hero Bugliosi routinely boasted that he was bit of a simpleton in that he liked things to be simple. Well, this should have disqualified him from engaging in a massive study of perhaps the most complex crime in U.S. history. But no, he sought to simplify the case not by doing the homework necessary, but by substituting what should have been serious analysis with hyperbole and vitriol.

No that's not my position. The weapon itself may have been high-powered, but the ammunition was not. Snipers and assassins are known to remove just enough gunpowder from high-velocity cartridges to make them subsonic. I suspect too many grains were removed from the bullet creating the back wound. The fatal bullet was clearly not subsonic. As to the bullet or bullets creating the other wounds, I think there may have been one high-velocity bullet or two subsonic bullets. I'm on the fence.

I didn't say that a high-velocity round entered Kennedy's back. I'm saying that since the doctors found no evidence the bullet penetrated beyond the outer layer, that it was almost certainly not a high-velocity round.

David, I've laid out my scenario on my website and on numerous forums for 15 years or more. But it doesn't matter what I think. What matters according to your boy Bugliosi is the historical record. As to your points.. 1.) A bullet hole of entry in JFK's upper back. (That showed no signs of penetrating beyond the outer layer, which is unthinkable if this was high-velocity bullet, as pushed by the single-bullet HOAX.) 2.) A bullet hole in the very lowest part of JFK's neck/throat. (That was recorded as being too small to be the exit of a high-velocity bullet, particularly one that had been tumbling, as pushed by the single-bullet HOAX.) 3.) Not a single bullet located in JFK's body. (No argument here.) And this fourth item needs to be tacked on here as an extra bonus in the "common sense" department, which is something that nobody (not even a CTer) can possibly think is wrong): 4.) Anybody wanting to kill President Kennedy would have to be a complete moron/idiot to have fired two very low-powered, non-lethal bullets into Kennedy's throat and upper back, which would result in both of those bullets penetrating JFK's body only a few inches (each) and causing virtually no damage to the President's body whatsoever. Buit, hey, maybe the killers just wanted to give JFK a fighting chance to survive those TWO shots, huh? (Please get real!!) (Yes, let's get real. This is a straw man argument. I never said the throat wound only penetrated a few inches, or even that it was an entrance. And you're also wrong. The CIA's Manual on Assassination recommended the use of subsonic ammunition in assassination attempts. Are you, David, Von Pein, telling me you don't think the CIA knows how to kill people?) The thought occurs that you suffer from a lack of imagination. The SBT HOAX makes sense to you because you were told it was logical by a singularly illogical man, Bugliosi. But have you ever read a book on wound ballistics? Or gunshot wounds? Or anatomy? I suspect not. Because if you had, you would know that the trajectory of the bullet and the nature of the wounds outlined by the SBT HOAX make no sense, and that a better solution is required. Now, I've always been open to a single-assassin solution, but the single-bullet theory is junk, propped up by deliberate deceptions regarding the nature of Kennedy's wounds, and the position of the men in the limousine. I have been waiting, for years now, for someone to come up with an SBT not reliant upon Specter's lies and deceptions and Myers' inaccurate animation. But, alas, none has been proposed. Instead we get the same ole arguments. And this has led me to believe that single-bullet theorists are a modern day Flat Earth Society, with an emotional attachment to nonsense.

Oh Lord, Bill. Get thee to a library. Every book and article on wound ballistics will tell you that bullet wounds in general and high velocity wounds in particular leave a permanent cavity within muscle tissue that can readily be probed. The back wound was, officially, not probed, beyond Humes using his finger. He said, moreover, that there was no sign the bullet entered past the outer layer of tissue, and that trying to probe such a shallow wound with no visible entrance into the underlying muscle might create a false passage. Later, when trying to piece things together, he remembered that the strap muscles at the front of the throat were bruised. So he mused that the bullet creating the back wound could have exited the throat. Specter, however, realized that this was weak sauce and so presented the strap muscles as residing on Kennedy's back, and that the bullet creating the back wound had slipped between two muscles, and that that was why there was no hole in the muscle tissue. There was a problem with this, of course. There are no strap muscles on the back, and the lone muscle at the location of the back wound location was the trapezius muscle. And yes, I've looked, and could find no record of anyone being shot in the trapezius muscle where there was no hole in the trapezius muscle. Nevertheless, Specter pushed this falsehood till the end. Until single-assassin theorists can acknowledge that massive deceptions were engaged to help sell the single-bullet theory, and the single-assassin conclusion, there is no single-bullet theory, let alone a single-bullet "fact", as purported by Specter and Myers. It is the single-bullet HOAX, pure and simple.

Not at all. Hill and Landis both said they heard but two shots, with Hill saying that the second one sounded like an echo. Landis, for that matter, admitted in his statements that his initial impression was that the shots came from in front of the limousine. None of them supported the single-bullet theory. If anything, Hill and Landis were thinking "Damn it, perhaps the reason we didn't hear two separate shots was because they were so damned close together."

They put her in the wrong position for that show. Donaldson was actually standing on the curb directly in front of the TSBD. She can be made out in the Wiegman film.

Three things on Watergate. One is that the Nixon quote about who shot John was in reference to the Bay of Pigs, and that Morley has extended that into being about the JFK assassination, when it may very well have not been a reference to the JFK assassination. Two is that Hunt's being a mole is pretty silly, seeing as he was hired because he had ongoing connections to the CIA, and could use them to get access to materials (such as disguises) that he could then use while being Nixon's personal spook. These CIA connections were also helpful in the assembly of the "Plumbers" unit, some of whom thought they were working for the CIA, and not just Nixon. These men all kept their silence and were willing to rot in jail for the CIA/Nixon (which they largely saw as equivalent seeing as the Dems to their minds had "lost" the Bay of Pigs, and would almost certainly make nice with Castro.). But McCord had worked with Mitchell and knew damn well who and what was behind it all. Three is that the United States is not a monarchy and that the President does not have ultimate authority to look through every file and/or falsify files and put them in the record just because he feels like it. To my understanding Helms smelled that Nixon wanted access to top secret info so he could use it for political gain, and that Helms pushed back, only to give in to Nixon's wishes. In my opinion this was the right thing to do, but that upon giving in to Nixon's wishes he should have immediately informed members of the Senate Intelligence committee what was happening. Now, two points on Trump. One is that upon his potential return to power, he plans on re-making the government so that every employee in the executive branch is personally beholden to him and personally loyal to him. The litmus test for their continued employment would be whether or not they think he won the last election. That's crazy town but also familiar. In Haldeman's book he relates that Nixon planned a similar purge in his second term, but that these plans were de-railed by Watergate. In any event, I think most Americans would agree that it's not a good idea for a President to surround himself with unqualified and marginally-qualified sycophants, at the expense of seasoned professionals. Such a thing is a recipe for fascism/disaster. Two is that your statement about the Proud Boys is deceptive. It wasn't 10 to 20 Proud Boys vs. 3,500 officers. It was 10-20 Proud Boys mixed in with what? 5,000 rioters...against a thousand or so officers under orders not to shoot...seeing as these rioters were supporters of the sitting President and were there at his urging. Although I haven't followed the investigations as close as I'd like, it was clear from the get-go that there was a lot of foot-dragging among the military about supporting the police and helping to fight the riot, and that what little help arrived came at the urging of Mike Pence, who saw that Trump was behind the riot and knew if he didn't act nothing would get done. This is what you should be worried about, IMO. We had a President who'd lost the faith of his cabinet, but they wouldn't invoke the 25th amendment when they saw he was grossly derelict in his duties, and was actively seeking the physical harm of congress and the potential murder of his vice-president. So, in short, the real threat is not not the "deep state." The real threat is the obsequious nature of suck-ups, who will let a President indulge his whims and revenge fantasies, at the possible expense of democracy.

I don't think it's fair to say Hill has changed his views much. To this day, he says he disagrees with the single-bullet theory, and he continues to say the head wound he saw was on the back of the head. It's just that when he points out where he recalls seeing this wound he points to a location at the top of the back of the head behind the ear. And people who desperately want to believe the wound was below this location have taken to claiming he's a xxxx. This is grossly unfair, as these same people don't seem to mind the contradictory statements of men like McClelland and Crenshaw, who undoubtedly changed their recollections and ended up telling people what they knew they wanted to hear. On a separate point, moreover, Hill claimed that when he looked down into Kennedy's skull it looked like someone had taken a scoop out of his brain. This is inconsistent with the single-assassin scenario. Such a wound to the brain would not occur at exit and would only occur in a wound of both entrance and exit--a tangential wound. Dr. William Kemp Clark, a neurosurgeon with a military background, who was the only doctor to fully inspect the wound at Parkland, told the press and never recanted that in his impression the wound was a tangential wound. Ultimately, this obsession with location location location has been an enormous distraction, as Hill's observations and Clark's impressions--when viewed in conjunction with the autopsy photos and x-rays--are clear evidence for two head shots and more than one shooter. And have been since day one...

1. The "Who shot John?" reference is an old reference that long pre-dates the Kennedy assassination. To my understanding it was an English children's game, with the words being a substitute for "Who was responsible?", but with the attitude that at that point it doesn't really matter. So, no, Morley is dead wrong in claiming Nixons' saying "Who shot John" proves the "Bay of Pigs thing" was a veiled reference to the Kennedy assassination. I do agree that this might have been his intention when he told Haldeman to mention the "Bay of Pigs thing" but his previously using the phrase "Who shot John" does not actually support as much. 2. I believe Hunt was in direct contact with Lucien Conein during the time he was creating fake documents to insert into the public record. These documents were ordered up by Nixon via his hatchet-man Colson, and were designed to dirty JFK's reputation by implicating him in the assassination of Diem. It's long seemed probable to me that Conein told Helms what was going on, and that Helms' reluctance to assist Nixon during Watergate stemmed from his basic distrust of Nixon, who'd begged for files related to the Diem assassination because he "wanted to know what happened" but who'd in fact then made them available to Colson and Hunt, to assist in their creation of a false history implicating JFK. In any event, the Watergate burglars got caught, and Nixon tried (and temporarily succeeded) in strong-arming Helms (via the threat about the "Bay of Pigs" thing) into letting the early investigators believe the burglars were working for the CIA. At a certain point, the assistant director Vernon Walters prevailed and the CIA stopped pretending the burglars were working for them. Within a few months, Helms was forced out. Within a few weeks of his ouster, James McCord, who was 1) fearful of spending years in jail, 2) disgusted with the Justice Dept.s failure to properly investigate the Watergate break-in, and 3) disgusted with Helms' ouster by Nixon for political reasons, decided to blow the whistle on the Nixon administration and admit the "burglars" had all committed perjury to protect Nixon and his minions. While some like to pretend this was all part of a CIA plot to "get" Nixon, this doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, in that the "burglars" all kept their silence until after Nixon had been re-elected, and after Helms was no longer DCI. The more realistic interpretation is that McCord didn't want to serve the time he was expected to serve if he didn't cooperate, and that his disgust with Nixon and his corrupt administration was sincere. At the time, moreover, McCord became friendly with a number of prominent members of the JFK research community, and they saw him as someone who shared their agenda of fighting corruption and making the government more transparent. And yes, I know, it's become fashionable to make the CIA out to be a "boogeyman" in all instances, but when it comes to Watergate it's clear to those who've read mountains of testimony and autobiography after autobiography after autobiography, that the CIA was not the "boogeyman" in this instance, and that in comparison to the Nixon White House, the Justice Dept., and FBI, the CIA was squeaky clean.

You should remove Helen Forrest from your list. Her name was mentioned in a book by Kurtz, but no one else ever talked to her or even knew who she was. And Kurtz, well, uh, he routinely made up or changed witness statements, and got way with it so long that by his last book he was claiming numerous interviews with key witnesses, many of whom were actually dead at the time he'd supposedly interviewed them.

Yes, the circumstances of the drawings and the fact neither Warren nor Specter made an effort to have them corrected after viewing the autopsy photos and confirming that the "back of the neck" wound in the drawings was 2-3 inches higher than it was on the body is one of the "smoking guns", if you will, demonstrating that the single-bullet theory was a hoax. To be clear, those in on the hoax might not have known, for a fact, that there was more than one shooter, etc. But they knew, for a fact, that the bullet trajectories presented to the public by the commission were inaccurate and deceptive. And they perpetuated this hoax for 15 years.

To be clear, Zedlitz was not a "blow-out wound on the back of the head" witness and believed the "McClelland" drawing to be inaccurate. When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Dr. William Zedlitz reported that he arrived in Trauma Room One just before the tracheotomy was performed. He said he noted "a massive head injury to the right occipito-parietal area (right posterior-lateral) of the cranium." He said the wound covered an area approximately 10-12 centimeters in diameter. Well, this is too big to be the wound in the McClelland drawing, but is in the approximate location of that wound. Zedlitz spoke in public at the 2003 Lancer Conference in Dallas, however, and further detailed his observations. He said Kennedy was supine (flat on his back) when he (Zedlitz) came in the room. He then said the head wound was "massive--the entire posterior and right side of the head was nothing but matted hair and clots, and pieces of bone and tissue, and it was a mess. I gently palpated the area and it felt like somebody had boiled an egg and then dropped it. And then picked it up. The bones were just in crinkly pieces." He was asked about this again and added: "There was an area, I'd say, 8 by 12 centimeters in the back of the head on the right hand side on the occipito-parietal area, that was gone. And it was filled with blood, tissue, hair, bone fragments, and brain fragments, and that's all you could see." Well, this is not the gaping hole behind the ear depicted in the McClelland drawing. Zedlitz was then asked to depict the location of Kennedy's head wound on his own head. He placed his hand on the back of his head, with his fingers stretching from above his right ear on back to just below the top of his ear. He then admitted that beyond this area one "couldn't really tell the depth of it, or the extent of it." He was then asked if he had to rotate Kennedy's head to get a good look at the wound, and responded "No, no, there was enough of it there." He was then asked if he'd placed his hand under the head to palpate the skull, and said "No, it was in the back, and to the side." When then asked if he'd felt the extent of the wound, he admitted "No, I didn't see all of the wound. I couldn't see all of it because he was laying on that." (He then pointed to the back of his head)." He was then asked about the wound again. He put his hand back where the wound is in the McClelland drawing, and responded "It wasn't strictly straight back." He then moved his hand up to the top of his head with his fingers stretching above his right ear, and continued "It was top, back, and side." When then asked if the skull in this area was gone, he replied "It was in pieces." When then asked if the shattered skull in this area was still attached to the scalp, he continued "I could not tell. It was covered with blood and hair and other stuff. I could feel the bones but they felt like they were (he wiggled his fingers) loose." He expanded: "The bony fragments that were there were loose. And there was a spongy mass in the center of that, most obvious without bone, so I guess part of the bone was gone, but still there were fragments of bone still there." When then asked the million dollar question if he felt the autopsy photos showing the back of the head to be intact were altered, he clarified "The back of the head was not intact, but it was covered, as again I mention, with hair, blood, tissue, y'know, it was all there so you couldn't tell whether it was intact underneath that or not." So, yeah... Zedlitz had placed the wound about half-way between the location of the wound in the autopsy photos and the location of the wound in the McClelland drawing. His extended description of the wound, and insistence he could see it without rotating Kennedy's head, moreover, supported that the wound was not as depicted in the McClelland drawing.

There is actually some conflict on this issue. While the thinking of Redlich among others was that the SBT was indispensable to the single-assassin conclusion, Arlen Specter himself disagreed. Since that time, moreover, a few LN books have come out (e.g. Mark Fuhrman, Robert Wagner) which argued against the SBT, but nonetheless claimed Oswald was the sole shooter. Few take them seriously, however. Least of all their fellow LNs.

It's been tested ad nauseam, and the results are always the same: the wounds do not line up. Below are some screen grabs from the Discovery Channel program Beyond the Magic Bullet. They positioned simulated torsos in the presumed positions of Kennedy and Connally and fired from what is presumed to have been the angle from the depository window. And the bullet hitting the measured location of Kennedy's back wound exited from his chest and hit the Connally torso well below the armpit. This is demonstrated in the image in the upper right corner. From patspeer.com, Chapter 12b. In 2004, the Discovery Channel began running a new program entitled JFK: Beyond the Magic Bullet. While appearing authoritative, using scientists and experts to simulate the shooting in Dealey Plaza, the program was rife with errors and/or distortions. Ultimately, it demonstrated reasons to disbelieve the magic bullet theory, but then turned around and claimed the opposite! They simulated the shots from the sniper's nest by placing their shooter on on an elevated platform, at a distance of 180 feet, the distance they claim the HSCA claimed for the second shot. Well, there are two problems with this: one is that the HSCA claimed the shot came at around Z-190, which according to the Warren Commission’s recreation, would make it roughly 160 feet, and two is that the Dale Myers animation they used as evidence depicted the shot at Z-224, which would make it roughly 190 feet. It’s unclear where they derived their 180 foot measurement, but the Warren Commission, which failed to pick an exact moment for the shot, estimated the length of the shot to be 180 feet. They then shot through a gelatin block simulating Kennedy's back and neck to see if the exiting bullet would leave an elongated entrance like the one they claimed was on Connally. (Following the well-worn path of Dr.s Lattimer and Baden, previously discussed, they incorrectly believed the bullet was traveling sideways upon impact with Connally). When the bullet headed straight through the gelatin with scarcely a wobble, they decided to add rope into the gelatin to better simulate the "dense sinu" of the human neck. There is a huge problem with this: Dr. Humes et al testified that the bullet striking Kennedy's neck passed between the strap muscles, and not through them. Their second try, not surprisingly, created the wound desired. They then expanded their test to include two gelatin blocks representing Connally's chest, and were similarly pleased with the results. They then began to shoot at simulated human torsos. After shooting on some empty shells, they placed a target on a fully-simulated torso of the President at a point several inches to the right of the wound seen on the autopsy photos. They claimed this placement came after “triple-measurement.” What they failed to mention was that the autopsy measurements reflected the distance from the shoulder and from the back of the head and that their torso had no head. The HSCA and Clark Panel made estimates as to the distance from the spine, which they clearly ignored. Even so, the shooter missed this target and actually hit the torso very close to where the wound is depicted on the autopsy photos. (See Exhibit 1 on the slide above.) I’d like to think this “miss” was on purpose. But this was just the beginning of their troubles. Since their “magic bullet,” after traversing simulated torsos of both Kennedy and Connally, failed to explode the simulated wrist to the extent Connally’s was damaged and actually bounced off the simulated thigh, they had to look for it in the surrounding brush. They found a clearly deformed bullet several yards to the right of the torsos. (See Exhibit 2 on the slide above.) During a slow-motion replay of the shooting, moreover, the narrator stated as a matter-of-fact that the bullet “struck Kennedy in the neck.” Someone should have told the writer that that particular lie, although an all-time favorite, died with the HSCA. At this point, the direction of the program became obvious. While one of the great controversies surrounding the single-bullet theory is whether or not a bullet striking Kennedy in the back from above would exit his throat as purported, the program failed to show a close-up of the bullet's exit from the Kennedy torso. Nevertheless, the profile shot of the bullet's path made it clear the bullet exited from the Kennedy torso's chest, and not its throat. (See Exhibit 3.) They then conducted a post-mortem to see what went wrong with their simulation. After taking the Connally torso to a doctor for a cat-scan, they concluded that the bullet struck two of Connally’s ribs instead of the one struck by the “magic bullet” and that this was why their bullet was more damaged. Still, the cat-scan revealed more than the producers of the show could possibly have desired. The cat-scan (Exhibit 4 above) revealed that the two damaged ribs on the Connally torso were the 8th and 9th ribs, some distance below the entrance on Connally’s 5th rib. This demonstrated once again that the bullet trajectory from the sniper's nest didn't quite line-up with Kennedy's and Connally's wounds. But this wasn't all the cat-scan revealed. Astonishingly, (and as seen in Exhibit 5) it also revealed that the simulated ribs on the Connally torso were not even connected to the sternum! This meant that there was no bones in the front of the Connally torso to slow or damage the “magic bullet” before it struck the simulated wrist. Since the purpose of the simulation was purportedly to see if a bullet creating Kennedy's and Connally's wounds might emerge as undamaged as the "magic" bullet, CE 399, removing bone from the purported path of the bullet was undoubtedly deceptive and dishonest. At this point, I ran a quick replay. I went back to the beginning of the program where they created the torsos and noticed this time that the Kennedy torso had no spine, and that neither torso had shoulder blades. While these bones may have been left out because the producers believed the real “magic” bullet missed these bones, the exclusion of Connally’s front ribs, where the bullet made its exit, was inexcusable. That this was no mistake is confirmed by the statements of their wound ballistics expert. When they were preparing for their torso shoot by shooting at two gelatin blocks simulating Connally's chest, he said "The thorax is not one piece of muscle. It is a piece of muscle, some bone, then an airspace--the lung--and then another piece of tissue after that." It's almost certain he knew perfectly well that the bullet exiting Connally's chest exited through his fifth rib, and not through just "another piece of tissue". It then became clear. Rather than testing if a bullet hitting the President in the assumed location would go on to hit Connally in his armpit, wrist and thigh, and come out largely unblemished, the program’s creators were testing if such a bullet, after missing Kennedy’s spine, which is doubtful, after exiting Kennedy’s throat, which is doubtful, and after hitting Connally’s ribs in only one place, which is doubtful, would go on to create the other wounds and appear unblemished. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the program’s creators neglected to tell their audience the significance of that which they did discover. That the tumbling bullet in their re-enactment hit two ribs while the bullet striking Connally stuck but one suggested that the bullet striking Connally was not tumbling. This supported the statements of Dr. Robert Shaw, Connally’s doctor, who said the entrance wound was only 1.5 cm long. It was, however, in direct contradiction with all too many single-assassin theorists, including the HSCA’s Dr. Baden, who cite the fact (which is not a fact) that the bullet was tumbling as evidence that the bullet first struck Kennedy. These single-assassin theorists, and the Discovery program under their influence, repeat like a mantra that the entrance in Connally’s armpit was 3 cm, the size of a bullet traveling sideways, and ignore Shaw’s statements that the wound was but 1.5 cm and the inconvenient fact that the corresponding tear in Connally’s jacket was only 1.7 cm. (As discussed in the Ovoid? Oy Vey! section of chapter 11.) In any event, instead of telling the audience the significance of the bullet hitting two ribs, the Beyond the Magic Bullet program cut to some supposed expert stating that their simulation had taken the “magic” out of the “magic bullet”. But the program wasn’t over. For their final act they took an autopsy report reflecting the wounds incurred by their simulated torsos to an L.A. County Coroner. Surprisingly, the face sheet created for the Kennedy torso revealed that the bullet exited not from the torso’s throat but from its left chest, and that it probably would have hit its spine (if it had one) and must have hit its sternum (if it had one). (Exhibit 6 above.) Even worse, a probe poked through a skeleton by the doctor to depict the path of the bullet exploded the program’s assertion of replicating the magic bullet, as the probe passed below the clavicle and first rib. (Exhibit 7.) A bullet traveling on such a trajectory would not have bruised the President’s lung, but pierced it, and would have exited far below his throat.

I don't understand the point of this thread, David, other than wasting everyone's time. You should know your arguments were all refuted by myself and others more than 10 years ago. You should know your "feelings" on this subject rely on a deliberately misleading comparison of autopsy photos, and a deliberately deceptive exhibit published by the WC. Well, ok, maybe you don't know. So let me remind you of a few of the facts presented by myself at the 2014 Bethesda conference. Facts that have never been refuted and need to be ignored to push the SBT fiction. 1. The autopsy face sheet and the measurements provided in the autopsy report place the back wound at the level of the shoulder tips. This is at or slightly below the throat wound. 2. Joseph Ball and David Belin were assigned the task of placing Oswald in the sniper's nest window. Among the steps to reaching this task were that they needed to resolve that the back wound was lower than the throat wound on the autopsy face sheet. 3. In early March, Ball accompanied Arlen Specter on a visit to Dr.s Humes and Boswell. They asked the doctors to prepare drawings that could be used to demonstrate that the back wound was really above the throat wound, and not the reverse. Humes and Boswell then corralled Skip Rydberg into making these drawings. Rydberg would later insist they just told him to put the wound on the back of the neck and have the bullet exit the throat, and that no measurements--which would have proved the wound to have been on the back--were provided. 4. These drawings were then entered into the record by Arlen Specter as part of the testimony of Dr. Humes. 5. Within a few weeks, Arlen Specter started having doubts about what he had just done. He knew his career could be in jeopardy. He then began begging that Dr. Humes be allowed to verify the accuracy of these drawings. 6. Judge Earl Warren, who was in a rush to finish the report by June, and was anxious to close doors, not open them, then made the ridiculous and possibly criminal decision that Dr. Humes would not be allowed to review the photographs he'd had taken for his review. Instead, Warren himself reviewed them, and decided they were horrible and awful and that there was nothing to see. Tellingly, these photos proved the wound to have been on the back, in opposition to the drawings already entered into the record. 7. Even so, Specter and others continued to push that the single-bullet theory be tested via a re-enactment in Dallas. 8. Whether through his own efforts or that of Judge Warren, he was shown a photo of the back wound on the day of the re-enactment. 9. This location was then marked in chalk on the back of the Kennedy stand-in. After the re-enactment on the street a more precise re-enactment and measurement of angles was performed in a garage. The FBI took photos of this re-enactment. The photos taken from behind show the trajectory rod pointing back from Connally's wound to the TSBD passing inches above the chalk mark on the back of the Kennedy stand-in. None of these photos were published by the commission or entered into the record. Instead, Specter and the commission chose to publish but one photo--taken from the front--that failed to show the chalk mark on the back of the Kennedy stand-in. 10. It was around this time--after he'd been shown a photo proving the wound was on Kennedy's back--that Specter began saying it was a wound on the back of the neck. 11. The testimony on the re-enactment was also deceptive. Specter had agents say the trajectory rod approximated the location of the back wound, as opposed to entering into the record a photo showing its location. He also had them suggest the chalk mark was derived from the drawings he knew to be incorrect, and that the re-enactment demonstrated that the drawings he knew to be incorrect were accurate. He also had them say the jump seat was 6 inches inboard of the door, when the schematics proved it was actually 2 1/2 inches from the door. All these "errors" served to help sell the single-bullet theory Specter now had plenty of reasons to doubt. 12. A few years later, when the face sheet was published and people began doubting the SBT, the Johnson Administration began pushing that it was government policy that the SBT be supported. At this point the autopsy doctors were shown the photos and Dr. Boswell was co-erced or forced into providing interviews claiming this review supported the accuracy of the drawings we now know to be inaccurate. The next year was Dr. Humes' turn. He was provided a script by the government on what to say on national TV and he also claimed the photos supported the accuracy of the drawings we know to be inaccurate. 13. As a response to Tink Thompson's book and Jim Garrison's investigation, a new top secret review of the autopsy photos and x-rays was then conducted. This panel comprised three pathologists and one radiologist--all colleagues and all heavily-connected to the government. All drafts of their report were destroyed and the final draft was largely put together by a lawyer added onto the panel for undisclosed reasons. Well, this panel, of course, upheld the SBT. 14. Within a few years, moreover, private citizens were allowed to inspect the autopsy materials. The first of these, and the only one within the first year of the materials being available, was John Lattimer. Lattimer then published an article that was widely disseminated within the medical community. It pushed that the drawings we now know were inaccurate were indeed inaccurate, because the wound in the photos was much HIGHER up Kennedy's neck than shown in the photos 12. In order to sell this point, moreover, he claimed the photos proved Kennedy was in fact a hunchback, and that a bullet entering what would appear to be his back (at T-1 or below) had actually entered into a hunch of fat resting on the back of JFK's neck around C-4. (This was completely whack-a-doodle. And yet, very few if any prominent LNs have ever denounced Lattimer for this disgusting lie.) 13. It then fell upon the HSCA FPP to study the SBT. They unanimously agreed that the wound was on the back and not the back of the neck. But they'd been pressured by Blakey who'd told them Guinn's analysis of the bullet fragments (later revealed to be junk science) had confirmed the SBT. So they tried to make things fit. They then signed off on the SBT under the proviso JFK had suddenly leaned forward while behind the sign in the Zapruder film. They were not told that the dictabelt analysis and photography panel had separately concluded that JFK was hit before he went behind the sign in the film. The HSCA, under Blakey, then pretended that the FPP had signed off the SBT, when in fact they had not signed off on the HSCA's version of the SBT. 14. Since that time, numerous TV shows have presented simulations of the SBT...in which the back wound location and the relative positions of the men in the limo have been routinely misrepresented. Your beloved SBT is, in short, the hoax of the century.

He said that based on a drawing created after he'd met with Joe Ball, who was tasked with explaining how a bullet fired from above could go upwards in the body. Voila! Humes claimed the face sheet was in error and that it was all an optical illusion. Specter, who'd seen the photos and knew the wound was on the back and not the back of the neck, similarly played "ball" and changed the wound from being a back wound to being a back of the neck wound in the report. He then performed interviews in which he said that if the back wound was lower than the throat wound than the autopsy doctors should be prosecuted. When the HSCA FPP determined as much, moreover, instead of complaining about the doctors, or demanding their prosecution, he forced his son onto the HSCA as an assistant to one of its members, and then lawyered up before providing any testimony. The historical record is clear, then, that these guys all lied and obstructed justice through the falsification of evidence. If your hero Bugliosi had a lick of common sense he would have uncovered this fact over his years and years of "research." But, no, instead he insisted that Oswald killed Kennedy because he was just filled with hate, and that the black warehouse workers were "stockboys". His book is a travesty, and your treating it like it's some kind of Bible is an embarrassment. Not as if I have an opinion on this, or anything...