Pat Speer

The photos are taken from slightly different angles. The photo in the Roe article was taken with the bullet tilted slightly away from the camera, so as to accentuate the gouge at the top of the bullet. The photo in Hunt's article, on the other hand was taken with the bullet flat to the camera. Even so, one can see that the ET in the Roe photo starts beneath the gouge at the top of the bullet and runs towards a nick on its right side. When one looks at this location in the Hunt photo, moreover, one can make out a blurry ET in this exact same location. As shown below... (And no, it's not remotely surprising to me that no one noticed this before. Keep in mind that I got sucked into this rabbit hole because nobody had acknowledged an obvious bullet hole in the so-called mystery photo, and that I was also able to locate the EOP entry hole in the back of the head photos. People don't see what they don't want to see--and it's usually because they look in the wrong location.)

Well you'd be wrong. I love Tink but he's just wrong about this. Before speaking to Tink, Tomlinson spoke to Raymond Marcus, and told him a different story. He later told Earl Golz a different story as well. (Both Marcus and Golz were CTs and would love to have had Tomlinson say CE399 was not the bullet he saw, but he did not.) From chapter 3 at patspeer.com: The Switcheroo That Wasn't: a Brief Discussion In Which I End Up Defending The FBI (No, Really, I'm Not Kidding) The apparent contradiction between the FBI's 6-20-64 Airtel and 7-7-64 letter was just the beginning of the mystery surrounding the bullet. In November 1966, Josiah Thompson showed O.P. Wright a photo of the bullet supposedly found on the stretcher (by then dubbed Commission Exhibit CE 399) and asked him if CE 399 was in fact the bullet he'd remembered seeing on the day of the assassination. Amazingly, Wright told him that the bullet he'd handed the Secret Service on that day had had a pointed tip, while CE 399 had had a rounded tip. Wright then showed Thompson a bullet with a pointed tip like the one he'd remembered seeing. Thompson then showed Darrell Tomlinson a photo of a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet, along with the bullet shown him by Wright. While Tomlinson was reportedly non-committal, and couldn't remember if the tip was rounded like CE 399, or pointed like the bullet shown him by Wright, Thompson, and a large swath of his readers, took from Wright's statements that the stretcher bullet had been switched. Thirty-five years passed. In 2002, Thompson and Dr. Gary Aguilar finally contacted the FBI's Bardwell Odum, to see if he remembered Tomlinson and Wright saying CE 399 looked like the bullet found on the stretcher, per the FBI's 7-7-64 letter to the Commission, or their not identifying the bullet, per the 6-20-64 FBI memorandum. Amazingly, Odum insisted he had no recollection of ever handling CE 399, let alone showing it to Tomlinson and Wright. Now, for some this was a smoking gun. If Odum had never shown the bullet to Tomlinson and Wright, and the FBI letter said he had, and that they'd told him the bullet looked like the one they saw on 11-22-63, then someone was almost certainly lying. Deliberately. In December, 2011, however, I came across something that gave me great doubts about the smoke coming out of this gun. A transcript was posted on the alt.assassination.JFK newsgroup by author Jean Davison. This transcript, acquired by Ms. Davison from the National Archives, was of a 7-25-66 conversation between Darrell Tomlinson and researcher Ray Marcus. This transcript asserted that when asked if he'd ever been shown the stretcher bullet after giving it to Wright, Tomlinson had admitted "I seen it one time after that. I believe Mr. Shanklin from the FBI had it out there at the hospital in personnel with Mr. Wright there when they called me in." When then asked by Marcus if "Shanklin" and Wright had asked him if this bullet looked the same as the one he'd recovered on November 22, 1963, Tomlinson responded "Yes, I believe they did." When then asked his response to their question, he replied "Yes, it appeared to be the same one." Let's note the date of this transcript. This was months prior to Tomlinson's being shown the pointed tip bullet by Thompson. And yet, at this early date, he'd thought the bullet he'd been shown by "Shanklin" (more probably Odum--Tomlinson was unsure about the name of the agent and there is little reason to believe Shanklin--the Special Agent-in Charge of the Dallas Office--would personally perform such a task) resembled the bullet he'd found on the stretcher. This suggests, then, that his subsequent inability to tell Thompson whether the bullet was rounded or pointed was brought about by his not wanting to disagree with Wright. In November 2012, moreover, I found additional support for this suspicion. It was a 4-22-77 article on the single-bullet theory by Earl Golz for The Dallas Morning News, which reported "Darrell C Tomlinson, the senior engineer at Parkland who found the slug, told The News he 'could never say for sure whose stretcher that was ... I assumed it was Connally's because of the way things happened at Parkland at that time.' Tomlinson acknowledged he was not asked to identify the bullet when he testified before the Warren Commission in 1964. He said some federal agents earlier 'came to the hospital with the bullet in a box and asked me if it was the one I found. I told them apparently it was, but I had not put a mark on it. If it wasn't the bullet, it was exactly like it.'" So there it is. Tomlinson told Marcus in 1966 that he thought the bullet he'd found looked like CE 399, was less certain on this point when talking to Thompson later that year, and then returned to telling reporters the bullets looked the same by the time he talked to Golz in 1977. Either he'd misled Marcus and Golz, or was momentarily confused by the bullet Wright provided Thompson. Wright was a former policeman. Perhaps Tomlinson had momentarily deferred to his expertise. In any event, Tomlinson's recollection of the bullet over the years did not support Wright's recollection, and supported instead that he'd been shown CE 399 by the FBI in 1964, had told them it appeared to be the same bullet as the one he'd found on the stretcher, and had nevertheless refused to identify it. This scenario was consistent, moreover, with the FBI's 6-20-64 memo and 7-7-64 letter to the Warren Commission. It seems hard to believe this was a coincidence. As a result, Tomlinson's recollections cast considerable doubt on Wright's ID of a pointed bullet, and the scenario subsequently pushed by Thompson and Aguilar--that the FBI had lied in its 6-20 memo and 7-7 letter about the bullet--appears to be inaccurate.

I don't think there's any conspiracy about it. Stu Wexler has been in contact with John's sister and she gave him access to John's files. I think these were the files on his computer. To my understanding the raw files were stored on discs. When the Archives provided me with large files of Oswald's reddish shirt, they sent it to me on a disc because the files were so large they couldn't be sent through email. So I think the files were on discs and that the discs might be in storage somewhere. Unfortunately, they may also have been thrown out under the impression they were music discs or simply unimportant.

It's not as clear as all that. While researchers often claim Tomlinson disavowed the bullet, he told others (who researchers chose to ignore) that he thought it was the same bullet. The wording of the FBI report (which people claim is a fraud), is also a mixed bag. The wording is such that it could very well mean that Tomlinson and Wright refused to ID the bullet, but thought it could be the same bullet. Sad to say, you have to fight your way through CT spin just as you have to fight your way through WC or LN spin. And there's a lot of spin on both sides.

I pointed this out earlier. John took thousands of scans and photos of the JFK evidence. These were high-resolution scans. He published some of these images in articles and shared some on this website. These were lower-resolution. I asked him at the time if he could please put his images online so that others could access them. He said his image files were so massive that it would be difficult to post them online, but that he would figure something out. Years passed. He died. What has been made available after his death are the lower resolution images he incorporated into articles and presentations. The massive raw files he told me about are MIA.

Does anyone know when Mantik held this exhibit in his hand? I'm pretty sure I've read all of his articles, but don't recall his saying he actually held non-medical evidence in his hands until just recently.

While the photos in John's article were taken from different angles than the new one showing the ET, I think I see the T on John's photos right where it is on the newer photos.

The photos made available by John were not taken from this angle. He may have had other photos, but it appears they disappeared when he died. (His family made a lot of files and articles available to researchers, but the raw image files of the JFK evidence John scanned were not among them.)

My understanding is that the Justice Dept. is following the hearings and will follow up on leads.

I agree. I wrote a response to this article on his website. I don't know if he's published it or not. I said it made some good arguments, but that its assertion as fact at the beginning of the article that CE 399 passed through Kennedy and Connally and was found on Connally's stretcher, was a liability. I mean, if you're gonna debunk a minor claim you should focus on that claim, not preface it with a bunch of disputed stuff that you're not gonna even discuss in your article. I haven't checked but I hope he goes back and adds "The Warren Commission concluded" or some such thing. It would make his article a lot more accessible, and successful in the long run, than it is in its current form.

The recollections of the Parkland witnesses were in fact quite erratic. And only a handful ever said they thought the autopsy photos had been faked. Most thought the head wound was further back than in the photos but higher up than on the so-called McClelland drawing. And this could have a number of innocent explanations. People make such mistakes all the time. I write about this on my website. People who've looked at world maps numerous times nevertheless come away thinking the coasts of North and South America are in rough alignment, when South America is actually far to the east. Similarly, people tend to think their eyes are on the upper part of their head, length-wise, when they are in fact very near the middle.

Yeah yeah we know what she said she saw. This has been written about for decades. But there's no reason to believe she was actually there. To give credit, this was first brought to my attention by David Lifton. Her presence in the room was not mentioned in any of the early reports, interviews or testimony. She worked at Parkland. She was handed the Connally wrist fragments. But there is no evidence she was in JFK's room or was shown his injuries by Perry. That is crap, pure and simple. My mom was an admitting nurse. My mom, brother, and sister spent almost their entire professional lives in hospitals. And I spent half of last year in a hospital. And there's a pecking order in hospitals, as in all workplaces. And Bell would not have been in the room while they were trying to save JFK's life. There were emergency room nurses to help the doctors. Bell was not an emergency room nurse. And no other nurses would have been welcome. And no, I don't think she was necessarily even lying. People's grasp on what actually happened versus what feels like it could have happened is weak, at best. It's kinda like that game we played in school, where we whispered something to someone and they whispered it to someone and so on, and by the time it got back to you it was grossly distorted. Well, that's what happens to memories, only the person doing the whispering is yourself. (Sometimes under the influence of a book or pushy researcher...) And no, I'm not just making this up. I spent approximately 3 months full time reading up on cognitive psychology and human memory. And I'm embarrassed, frankly, that so many of my fellow researchers prefer to just believe what and whom they want to believe as opposed to studying witness credibility, etc. or figuring out if what was said makes any sense.

I agree that there is a substantial difference between CT nonsense and LN nonsense. I believe the single-bullet theory has been debunked, or at least proven highly unlikely. That pretty much destroys the single-assassin (or LN) theory. Whether or not Todd's initials are on the bullet is on the other hand a minor data point that proves nothing in and of itself. My concern, however, is that people inclined to embrace the LN perspective blow things like this way out of proportion, and see the debunking of one data point as a debunking of the whole film. I think (scratch that...know) that CTs should learn to let things like this go. Instead, the reluctance to admit they may be in error on a minor point tarnishes an outsider's perception of all their points. That's just a fact. I know for certain, for example, that when John McAdams was approached about debating me on the JFK evidence, that he orchestrated things so he could debate David Wrone instead. Why? Well, Wrone is one of those who could never never let go of the idea it's Oswald in the Altgens photo, and not Lovelady. And McAdams knew he could use this to make himself seem like the reasonable one.

Sure. Depending on the lighting, it can be very hard to pick up a faint inscription on metal.

But it's a two-way street. For years researchers pointed to nonsense in the WR and claimed it destroyed the case for a lone assassin. if someone is gonna make a case for conspiracy and load it full of stuff, some of which can be discredited, they are taking that same risk. To quote Donnie Osmond--one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch. But to some--in this case a mainstream media anxious to dismiss Jim's research and Stone's movie--it can.

What does that mean? They also interviewed Joe O'Donnell, who turned out to have been a fantasist in the throes of dementia. I suspect the same is true of Bell. As pointed out by David Lifton, there is no evidence she was ever in ER 1 when Kennedy was in there. And her story about being shown the wound by Perry is absolute rubbish. Doctors immersed in trying to save the life of a patient don't put everything on hold for a few seconds to show the wounds of their patient to a looky-loo nurse. They just don't. The statements of O'Donnell and Bell belong in the garbage bin. It's pathetic that people still cling to them.

What makes you think Bell was even there?

Oh my. Without getting into the much-traveled muck of whether or not the Parkland witnesses thinking it was on the far back of the head could have been wrong, can we at least agree that your stating the odds of them being wrong are "1 in 1.048,576" is a gross overstatement? I mean, where did you get such a number? I personally contacted two of the top cognitive psychologists--one of whom was the single-most prominent expert on eyewitness testimony in the country--and asked them about this, and they both said it was easily conceivable that the witnesses could have been wrong. For a number of reasons. Such as: 1. They could have had only vague recollections, and then engaged in group-think, where they let what others told them afterwards or what Clark said at the press conference color their thoughts. 2. They could have had only vague recollections, and then been swayed by the drawings in Thompson's and Lifton's books. 3. They could have had strong recollections, but been fooled by perspective or the rotation of the skull--the very thing you're claiming for the witnesses in the plaza. As previously stated, I spent a considerable amount of time looking into this question, and it is beyond dispute that those citing Aguilar's account of Prof. Loftus on this question have not done the reading to actually know what they're talking about, and that Aguilar (a friend) misrepresented Loftus' findings regarding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. It's well documented that far more people claimed they went to Woodstock than actually attended. There are also numerous people who conflated the subsequent showing of the Zapruder film on TV and think they saw Kennedy killed live on TV. Eyewitness recollections in general and emergency room doctor recollections in particular are not considered reliable. This is one of the many reasons they perform autopsies. The autopsy report is, legally speaking, the last word. I've looked through hundreds of forensic publications and have not found one instance in which an autopsy report was over-ruled or even disputed in a court of law via the recollections of emergency room personnel. As far as "unfortunate coincidences"... I suppose you also think it's an "unfortunate coincidence" that the wounds described in the autopsy report--when removed from the spin put on them by the doctors--not only match the wounds described by the Dealey Plaza witnesses, but strongly suggest two head shots. I mean--that would be unfortunate--that the proof for conspiracy has been in the official record all this time but that people have been too busy chasing spooks and ghouls to notice. OK. I said I wasn't gonna get into it, but here I go again... People witness a car accident. They say it occurred half-way down a block. The police who first responded, the ambulance driver, and tow-truck driver, however, write up reports in which they indicate it was at an intersection. Later that night, an accident investigation ensues, and photographs of skid marks, shattered glass and a broken bus bench are taken half-way down the block. Even more telling, there is film of the accident which shows it occurred half-way down the block. To some, the film must be fake and the accident investigators must be part of some monstrous scheme. But common sense indicates otherwise and strongly suggests the police on the scene, the ambulance driver and tow truck driver were wrong, yes?

Custer testified to the ARRB that he took the x-rays at the beginning of the autopsy. He even spotted his personal marker on them. The x-rays, furthermore, show brain within the skull, and shattered skull at the top and back of the head. This corresponds 100% with Humes' testimony that shattered skull fell to the table as he peeled back the scalp.

Yes, by all means, repeat the myth as often as possible.

FWIW, I studied hundreds of autopsy photos and x-rays in dozens of textbooks and articles, and came to the conclusion JFK's photos and x-rays do in fact match. They all show a large defect on the top right side of the head above and slightly in front of the right ear. This location, moreover does not in itself designate the direction of the bullet. But the damage to the scalp, skull, dura and brain all indicate that the primary impact on Kennedy's skull was at the large defect depicted in the photos and x-rays. This leaves the small entrance on the back of the head unexplained and is strong evidence for two headshots and more than one shooter.

Wow. It turns out Hitler started WWII to "denazify" the Sudetenland. Who knew?

I live in Simi Valley. Sometimes it keeps me up at night. LOL

If I recall that's where the 11/22 meeting took place where Desmond Fitzgerald offered him a poison pen.

The story about the man with the baseball bat was a metaphor for the cumulative level of fear bestowed on those opposed to Trump. It wasn't overt violence, but it was an ongoing threat via T-shirts worn by moms at Target proposing the murder of Hillary, signs in storefronts saying f Gavin Newsom (with the f spelled out), banners for Trump on lawns and atop houses, and the insistence God and the military were backing Trump. Many of the houses flying Trump flags also flew (and still fly) Semper Fi flags. A large percentage of Trump's supporters wore camouflage 7 days a week, every week. Sometimes they would gather in a parking lot with a megaphone proclaiming God had sent Trump to save America from its sins. I was warned numerous times by numerous friends that I was taking my life in my hands if I wore an Obama or Black Lives Matter t-shirt, etc. And it wasn't because Rachel Maddow had poisoned our minds. It wasn't part of some left-wing mass psychosis. It was the threatening and brutish behavior of Trump supporters, which went far behind the behavior of Reagan, Bush, McCain, or Romney supporters. Trump made it okay to be a bully, to be a monster, and to terrorize your neighbors. And terrorize they did. There's a house a few blocks away that flies the American flag upside down. I'm not sure why. It could be someone protesting the Trump crazies but odds are it's someone who thinks we stopped being America when Biden was elected, and a black woman became VP. My family still goes out to eat sometimes. We have to sit outside because I am immuno-suppressed. In any event, I eavesdrop on 3 or 4 political conversations a week. And they are almost always about how our country is dying and how only Trump can bring it back, and how we have to do everything we can to destroy Newsom's governorship and Biden's presidency, so Trump can re-take the throne and we can be America again.