Pat Speer

You should be confused about Boswell's claims because his claims are confusing. He was confused. He reversed himself a number of times. While his initial recall was that the skull fragments brought in demonstrated a beveled exit, he later started claiming these fragments matched up with the entrance. This failed to correspond with what Humes and Finck recalled, and apparently what Boswell himself told Thompson years before. Nevertheless there are many who seize on Boswell's comments and drawings to claim there was giant hole on the back of the skull at the beginning of the autopsy, and that the photos and x-rays are thereby fakes. They often take his statements out of context. Humes, Boswell, Jenkins and Custer, at the very least, were in agreement that the skull on the back of the head was badly shattered, but intact, at the beginning of the autopsy, and that it fell apart when Humes peeled back the scalp. This explains a lot of the problems with the medical evidence--why, for example, the autopsy report and Humes in his testimony gave different numbers for the size of the defect. It's clear, at least to me, that Humes was approximating the size before the skull fell apart. This latter problem is important for another reason, however. It shows the incredible desperation and deceptiveness of many of those who've written on the medical evidence. Some claim the large numbers given for the defect represent the "real" numbers for its size before Humes peeled back the scalp. When this is absurd. The defect size in the autopsy report is 5 times, if I recall, the size of the defect supposedly witnessed by the Parkland witnesses. So, okay, you might think, they enlarged the wound to remove the brain, etc. But the problem is that a number of people witnessed the skull collapse when Humes peeled back the scalp. So, then, one might guess that they enlarged the wound to remove the brain, replaced the brain, and that this reconstruction collapsed when Humes peeled back the scalp. Sounds reasonable. Sort of. If anything, the large size of the defect in the autopsy report supports Lifton's claim someone other than Humes altered the body. (I don't believe the body was altered but I'm playing Devil's Advocate here.) Horne et al's theory there was a pre-autopsy in which Humes altered the body makes no sense when one takes into account the large size of the defect in the report. I mean, what? Was Humes freakin' stupid? He pulls out and replaces the brain and then stitches the skull and scalp back together to hide his dirty work, only to screw up and describe a defect large enough to remove the brain? Nonsense. Sorry about the ramble.

One of the best TV programs ever produced about the assassination was one put out in the aftermath of the HSCA, featuring Anthony Summers. I picked up a VHS of this program at a Salvation Army for a dollar and was shocked when it turned out not to be the schlock one usually finds, but a program with original interviews of key witnesses. It painted a mighty disturbing picture. Well, like I said, I couldn't believe the clarity of the thinking behind it. Unlike The Men Who Killed Kennedy, this program had a focus and wasn't just a compilation of dubious people saying dubious things, many of which made no sense. So I paid close attention to the credits and what did I find? That the chief researcher and consultant on the project was Mary Ferrell. So it's incorrect that she did nothing beyond collecting stuff. If one combs through her archives, moreover, one can find that she created numerous timelines and notes to be shared with her fellow researchers. As far as her never writing a book... I can totally relate. When I started looking into this case, I decided to record my ideas and discoveries in a free online "book" that gradually became a series of "books". This was for a number of reasons. Here are the prime ones. 1. Upon collecting a number of the key books on the case, I was horrified to find that a large percentage of the material was out-dated or repetitive of what was in other books. A 300 page book on the case might offer 100 pages of material not in other books, and 50% of that might be crap or stuff that had been made obsolete by subsequent discoveries or the increased availability of superior images. I kinda felt like it was wrong to ask people to pay 20 bucks for 50 pages of what would ultimately be relevant info. 2. I knew that the number one criticism of JFK researchers was that they were in it for the money. I knew, for that matter, that very few had actually ever made any money. So I thought I'd cut that critique off at the ankles by not pursuing the almighty dollar. 3. I knew, furthermore, that far too many researchers were hoarding documents, interviews, and other possibly important materials for that great pay-day in the sky. It made me feel sick then, and continues to do so now. How can people complain about the government holding back documents to avoid embarrassment when they are hoarding them and failing to share them with others for an even less worthy cause: money money money. It's disgusting. As a consequence, I have come to believe the real heroes of the case are those that acquire and share materials, such as Weisberg, Lesar, Ferrell, Bradford and Curme, and that those who save up mountains of stuff for their "books for the ages" are not heroes at all, but vampires.

Humes' original location was backed up by all the eye-witnesses who saw an entrance wound on the back of the head. This location became a problem when Thompson's book came out and proved a trajectory through this location failed to match up with Kennedy's position at Z-312. So Ramsey Clark convened a secret panel that moved the location to a red spot which no one but no one who saw the body thought was a hole. They had a radiologist on this panel, moreover, who coughed up that a hole was readily apparent on the back of the head on the x-rays. He even provided measurements for this hole, both on the inside of the skull and the outside of the skull. Subsequent experts, while willing to play along and claim the evidence suggested an entrance wound at the red spot, could not bring themselves to sign off on the precise measurements provided by the secret panel. And there's a reason for this. Because they were absurd. One of the great tragedies about this case, in my opinion, is that people got seduced by claims of alteration, etc. When the evidence has been clear since 1969 that no alteration would have been necessary, as Government lackeys were willing to lie and just make stuff up to sell the single-assassin theory. Now, to be clear, the reason I consider this a tragedy is that the focus on things that can never be proven took the focus off people who should have been held accountable for their provable lies, such as Specter, Fisher, Morgan, and Baden.

The X-rays make perfect sense and are perfectly consistent with the autopsy photos. Mantik's initial claim was that a white patch had been added to the back of the head on the x-rays to cover up a hole. When I pointed out that the so-called white patch was not on the back of the head but on the side of the head, he changed his tune and began claiming the white patch didn't cover up a hole, but an area of missing brain. This came as news to his biggest supporter, Fetzer, who had been telling people for years that Mantik had proved there was a white patch added to the far back of the head. The dark circle you see on the lateral x-ray, moreover, does not represent missing skull, but thin skull on the side of the head. There is missing skull on the frontal bone, and at the top of the head in the parietal area. This would presumably mark the locations of the skull fragments blasted from the skull, including the Harper fragment and large triangular fragment. Reading skull x-rays is confusing and is most certainly not for everyone. When discerning what is a hole, etc, one must take into account that the relative whiteness of an area is conditioned on the thickness of the skull, the density of the brain, and the settings on the x-ray machine. There are two settings that affect the appearance, moreover, the intensity of the x-rays and the length of exposure. Humes said something in his testimony, btw, that was positively laughable. He said the entrance wound up by the cowlick was more apparent on the A-P x-ray than the lateral x-ray. One wound not expect to find an entrance on the back of the head on an A-P x-ray. The large fractures one can see on the A-P x-ray that the HSCA presumed were on the back of the head were actually in the eye sockets. This is discussed and demonstrated at great length on my website.

Wait. What's this? Is that the SS follow-up car following up the LBJ Lincoln? And what's that on the railroad bridge? Could it be...people?

I had added next to nothing to my website since beginning my fight against leukemia last year, but the ridiculousness of one part of Humes' testimony inspired me to add a slide today. Here it is.

Quick correction, David. The Dox drawings were made for the HSCA. Humes had nothing to do with them. It was Baden who directed her every move, including that the non-hole "hole" in the cowlick needed to be made to look more like a bullet wound.

LBJ is not confessing. He is saying that if it weren't for Warren and the Warren Commission, Bobby would have found some way to make it look like he was responsible for JFK's death. You really need to look at the history of the men. While most today see Johnson as a Machiavellian manipulator, he routinely pushed on people that it was Bobby who was power-hungry. I see that as one of Johnson's manipulations. Like Putin claiming the Ukrainians are Nazis, Johnson and his cohorts were always pushing that Johnson was just a po' victim of RFK--the real bad guy. I discuss this in great detail in chapters 1 and 21. It really came to a head with the publication of the Manchester book. Johnson saw it as an RFK plot to make him look bad and steal the nomination in 68, when the reality was that Jackie and RFK were fighting like hell to stop the release of the original version of the book, which was heavily critical of Johnson. Here is another segment from chapter 1. Now...let's go back to the "smoking gun" document... Note that one of the arguments the CIA planned on using to assure the world Johnson was above reproach was that a "Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy." Well, this was grossly unfair. Robert Kennedy did not participate in the investigation of his brother's murder. He never even read the report of Earl Warren's commission. This argument was also familiar. On November 4 1966, just when critics of the Warren Commission started gaining traction, President Johnson made a similar argument at a press conference. He offered: "The late, beloved President's brother was Attorney General during the period the Warren Commission was studying this thing. I certainly would think he would have a very thorough interest in seeing that the truth was made evident." (Note that this was well after Johnson first started musing that the "beloved President's brother," Robert Kennedy, was behind all these critics...) The lie RFK cleared LBJ was then repeated by those closest to Johnson. A January 1968 letter to the New York Times by John Roche (subsequently quoted in its January 5 edition), offered: "Any fair analysis of Sen. Robert Kennedy's abilities, his character and of the resources at his disposal as Attorney General would indicate that if there were a conspiracy, he would have pursued its protagonists to the ends of the earth." Now, Roche was a "Special Consultant" to Johnson, his so-called "intellectual in residence." Roche had written Johnson a memo on 11-23-66 urging Johnson to make countering the critics of the Warren Commission a "top priority" of his administration. Well, this argument "Bobby would have caught the bad guys" was clearly part of Johnson's, and thereafter Roche's, playbook. Was it just a coincidence, then, that it soon became part of the CIA's? It should come as no surprise, moreover, that this sticky substance stuck to Johnson for the remainder of his days. In 1971, Johnson published The Vantage Point, his presidential memoir. On page 25, he relates: "One of the most urgent tasks facing me after I assumed office was to assure the country that everything possible was being done to uncover the truth surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. John Kennedy had been murdered, and a troubled, puzzled, and outraged nation wanted to know the facts. Led by the Attorney General who wanted no stone unturned, the FBI was working on the case 24 hours a day and Director J. Edgar Hoover was in constant communication with me." Well, this was bullshit of a presidential magnitude. Serious crap. Johnson knew full well that Robert Kennedy barely followed the FBI's investigation, and most certainly never "led" it. Kennedy even put this on the record, signing a statement to the Warren Commission declaring ""As you know, I am personally not aware of the detailed results of the extensive investigation in this matter which has been conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation." What's worse, Kennedy's statement was an understatement...a gross understatement. The June 4, 1964 memo of Warren Commission counsel Howard Willens, in which Kennedy's signing such a statement was proposed, admits "The proposed response by the Attorney General has, of course, not been approved by him, or on his behalf by the Deputy Attorney General. It represents a revision of an earlier letter which I did show to them during my conference with them earlier today. At that time the Attorney General informed me that he had not received any reports from the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the investigation of the assassination." And it's not as if Robert Kennedy later studied these materials... Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, in a 10-8-69 oral history performed for the Kennedy Library, admitted that Robert Kennedy "didn't approve" of the Warren Commission and never read its report. He said further that "I like to think that deep down he understood that it had to be done" and that, whatever his feelings on the matter, "he understood that he had to endorse it..." Katzenbach then added: "but he wouldn't read it." So...gulp...President Johnson was not only so paranoid he thought Robert Kennedy was behind the rumors he'd killed President Kennedy, and so concerned about these rumors he thought that only his appointing Chief Justice Earl Warren to chair the commission investigating President Kennedy's murder had saved him from an indictment for murder (and a reputation as one of the world's most evil men), but so ruthless he was willing to use Robert Kennedy's deep remorse over his brother's murder, and resultant failure to promptly investigate his brother's murder, to suggest what he (Johnson) undoubtedly KNEW was untrue--that Robert Kennedy, President Kennedy's brother, ("Bobby"), had led the FBI's investigation into President Kennedy's murder, and cleared Johnson of all wrong-doing.

Here are the railroad men, as shown in all the photos. (Admittedly, some of these photos were cropped as first published, perhaps because someone knew how bad it looked to have people standing above the parade route.)

Since you persist, I will as well. Look at the President's limo. It is at an angle to the press pool car. Why? Because the road curves. Now look where the limo is heading. A tunnel. Above that tunnel are some shapes. Those are the railroad men, standing right over the roadway.

To be clear, Crime of the Century is pretty good, aside from a few questionable interviews and dubious claims of personal knowledge. This was supposed to be Kurtz's big statement. In 2007, however, he came out with The JFK Assassination Debates, in which he now cited dozens of interviews with important people, some of them making claims they never made to anyone else. It was odd to me that many of these interviews preceded Crime of the Century's second edition, not to mention its first edition, and that Kurtz would only mention them in a book that came out decades after he'd made his grand statement in Crime of the Century. I then double-checked the dates of these interviews, and found that a dozen or so supposedly took place after the death of those interviewed. In the book, he said he was placing the notes on these interviews in an archive at the University where he had long been employed. But, alas, no such notes ever showed up and no response from the University came other than to say they had what they had, and that no new material was en route. As I recall, Larry Hancock backed me up on this, and said that he had also tried to get access to some of Kurtz's supposedly breakthrough interviews (he said he'd befriended a New Orleans CIA agent who'd told him Oswald was CIA) but that he also had run into a block wall. One can only conclude, then, that the notes of the interviews never materialized because the interviews themselves never existed. I write about this in Chapter 19d at patspeer.com. While comparing Crime of the Century with The JFK Assassination Debates, I noticed something that defies an innocent explanation, IMO. The bibliography to 1982's Crime of the Century, a book Kurtz obviously spent some time on, listed the following interviews: Roger Craig 8-18-72 (Curiously, one of the end notes refers to a 10-6-72 interview of Craig.) Helen Forrest (Mrs. James Forrest) 5-17-74 Jerry Herald 4-17-78 Fred Bouchard 5-18-78 George Wilcox 9-9-79 Van Burns 9-1-80 Numerous other interviews, the transcripts of which are in the author’s possession. This bibliography listed hundreds of sources--books, articles, government reports, etc. But, of the numerous interviews Kurtz claimed to have conducted, only these six were listed. Strikingly, none of these interviews (with the possible exception of Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig) were of a well-known witness or high-ranking member of the government. The 1993 edition of Crime of the Century, moreover, listed an additional hundred or so sources--books, articles, audio visual materials, etc... And yet, no more interviews were listed. So who were Craig, Forrest, Herald, Bouchard, Wilcox, and Burns? Well, Herald was a free-lance news photographer in 1964. He purportedly told Kurtz the real story behind a few of the stories to come out of Dallas in the aftermath of the shooting. Bouchard, on the other hand, was a supposed ballistics expert, who supposedly told Kurtz some details about the supposed assassination weapon. Okay, we have little reason to doubt these interviews occurred. The other interviews were more suspicious. No information is provided on Wilcox, other than that he supposedly saw Oswald with David Ferrie. Van Burns was a sociology professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. His interview with Kurtz was unexplained in the 1982 edition of Crime of the Century, but explained by Kurtz in his 1993 introduction, when he reported that Burns was yet another witness claiming he saw Oswald with Ferrie. (In The JFK Assassination Debates, of course, Kurtz fails to even mention these supposedly important witnesses that he himself uncovered.) That leaves Craig and Forrest. Craig was a Dallas County Deputy Sheriff, one of the first to run towards Dealey Plaza. He told the Warren Commission he saw Oswald run out to a car after the shooting, but was not believed by the commission, nor by his superiors in the Sheriff's office. It seems possible he spoke to Kurtz in 1972. This brings us to Forrest. She is purported to have not only backed up Craig's story, claiming she was in the plaza after the shooting and saw a man who looked like Oswald run out to a car, but to have backed up Kurtz's ultimate conclusion the first shot was fired from the second floor of the school book depository, by telling him she saw someone with a rifle on the second floor of the depository around noon, a half hour before the shooting. Now, this is puzzling. Kurtz claimed to have discovered a key witness who saw something no one else claimed to see, but provided no details as to what she saw (I mean, really, WHERE on the second floor did she see this man with a rifle?), and no details as to how he came to interview her. While many researchers have innocently quoted Kurtz's claims about Mrs. Forrest, for that matter, no researcher, outside Kurtz, has ever claimed to have spoken to her or been able to ascertain the validity of 1) her account, and 2) Kurtz's claims of her account. For all we know, she was a schizophrenic Kurtz met at Mardi Gras. For all we know, Kurtz had a fever dream about the big band singer Helen Forrest, in which she sang about Oswald and a man with a rifle, while backed up by the Harry James Orchestra. Now compare and contrast the list of interviews provided in Crime of the Century to a list of interviews cited in The JFK Assassination Debates--which I have created from Kurtz's end notes. (Where I have found the date of death of the interviewee, I have added it in parentheses. Names without DODs do not necessarily mean the interviewee is still alive, only that I couldn't readily ascertain the interviewee's date of death.) 6-6-68 Robert O Canada (DOD--12-6-72, age 59) 3-6-70 Charles Gregory (DOD 4-76, age 56) 1-10-71 Clem Sehrt (DOD 6-1-74, age 64) 5-5-72 Roger Craig (DOD 5-15-75, age 39) (Note that the date of this interview fails to match either of the dates presented in Crime of the Century.) 5-17-72 Bernard Fensterwald (DOD 4-2-91, age 69) 9-6-72 Henry Kmen (DOD 9-1-78, age 62) 8-18-73 Consuela Martin 10-9-75 Milton Helpern (DOD 4-22-77, age 75) 5-15-77 Craig Craighead 5-8-78 Billy Abel 7-8-78 Jesse Curry (DOD 6-22-80, age 66) 6-8-79 Henry M. Morris (DOD 4-91, age 69) 3-15-81 Hunter Leake (DOD 5-5-93, age 82) 3-18-81 Samuel Wilson (DOD 93, age 82) 3-18-81 Bernard Eble (also cited as Eberle?) (DOD 8-19-09?, age 95?) 3-14-82 Henry M. Morris (DOD 4-91, age 69) 4-16-83 Santos Miguel Gonzalez (later listed as Miguel Santos Gonzalez) 5-7-83 Robert A Maurin Sr. (DOD 1962, age 75) (Note: He probably meant Robert Maurin II--DOD--1988, age 70) 12-14-83 George Burkley (DOD 1-2-91, age 88) 1-16-84 Roy Kellerman (DOD 3-22-84, age 69) 1-16-84 William Greer (DOD 2-23-85, age 75) 3-18-84 Jesse Curry (DOD 6-22-80, age 66) 6-8-84 Hamilton Johnson (DOD 12-12-99?, age 93?) 6-17-84 Edward Grady Partin (DOD 3-11-90, age 66) 7-7-85 Edward Grady Partin (DOD 3-11-90, age 66) 7-17-85 William George Gaudet (DOD 1-19-81, age 72) 9-3-85 Allen (Black Cat) Lacombe (DOD 7-89, age 71) 9-6-85 Seth Kantor (DOD 8-17-93, age 67) 11-12-85 William Hawk Daniels (DOD 1-22-83, age 68) 5-17-86 Robert Shaw (DOD 1992, age 87?) 6-6-86 William Hawk Daniels (DOD 1-22-83, age 68) 9-14-86 Abe Fortas (DOD 4-5-82, age 71) 9-16-86 Leon Jaworski (DOD 12-9-82, age 77) 10-9-86 Joseph R. Dolce (DOD 3-15-94, age 85) 12-7-86 Henry Mentz (DOD 1-23-05, age 84) 5-19-87 Seth Kantor (DOD 8-17-93, age 67) 8-23-87 Manuel Artime (DOD 11-18-77, age 45) 6-12-88 Joseph R. Dolce (DOD 3-15-94, age 85) 10-8-88 Henry Mason 10-20-88 Eddie Adams 4-19-89 Deborah Schillace (DOD 1-1-12, age 56) 8-12-89 Morey Sear (DOD 9-6-04, age 75) 10-13-89 Robert Bouck (DOD 4-27-08, age 89) 8-15-90 Robert Livingston (DOD 4-26-02, age 83) 9-17-90 Sidney Johnston 2-17-91 William Eckert (DOD 9-24-99, age 73) 5-5-91 Edward Brown 11-6-91 Richard M. Bissell, Jr. (DOD 2-7-94, age 84) 11-7-93 Oren Anthony (Orien Anthon on final list) 11-18-93 David Belin (DOD 1-17-99, age 70) 11-18-93 J. Wesley Liebeler (DOD 9-25-02, age 71) 10-3-94 Richard Helms (DOD 10-23-02, age 89) 8-6-95 William Eckert (DOD 9-24-99, age 73) 3-18-97 James Humes (DOD 5-06-99, age 74) 11-21-2003 Henry Lee Kurtz's end notes also make reference to these undated interviews: Sylvia Meagher (DOD 1-14-89, age 67) Luis Alvarez (DOD 9-1-88, age 77) Tad Szulc (DOD 5-21-01, age 74) Lou Russell On page 246, furthermore, Kurtz provides a master list of those he'd interviewed in relation to the assassination. This includes the additional names: Gary Aguilar Russell Fisher (DOD 5-21-84, age 67) Michael Griffith Vincent P. Guinn (DOD 11-7-02, age 85) David Mantik John McCone (DOD 2-14-91, age 89) Charles Nelson Dean Rusk (DOD 12-20-94, age 85) Well, first note the number of high-profile interviews. While Crime of the Century boasted no interviews with prominent witnesses or high-ranking government officials, The JFK Assassination Debates laid claim to interviews with the two Secret Service agents riding in the front of Kennedy's limousine at the time of the shooting, the head of the Presidential Protection unit of the Secret Service, Kennedy's personal physician, the doctor who performed Kennedy's autopsy, the Commanding Officer of the hospital where the autopsy was performed, two of Governor Connally's doctors, the chief of the Dallas Police, two Warren Commission attorneys, a wound ballistics expert who consulted with the Warren Commission, two prominent physicists who conducted research related to Kennedy's assassination, three prominent forensic pathologists, a legendary forensic scientist, two former directors of the CIA, one of whom was a former director of black ops for the CIA, a second former director of black ops for the CIA, Kennedy's Secretary of State, two judges, and a former Supreme Court justice and top adviser to President Lyndon Johnson. Most of these interviews, furthermore, were purported to have occurred before Crime of the Century was re-issued in 1993. Well, why weren't these interviews mentioned in Crime of the Century? Or in articles or at conferences written or conducted prior to the release of The JFK Assassination Debates in 2006? To be clear, Dr. Kurtz teased his upcoming book in a 11-4-03 press release put out by Southeastern Louisiana University, and this press release mentioned but one interview--with Dr. Robert Shaw, Governor Connally's doctor, whose rejection of the single-bullet theory had been in the public record for decades. If Kurtz had actually interviewed rarely-interviewed doctors such as Canada, Burkley, Humes, and Fisher he would almost certainly have mentioned them before mentioning his interview with a more commonly-interviewed subject as Shaw. That only makes sense. Let's get real. One would think an historian would brag to the high hills about his numerous interviews with important historical figures. And yet here we have an historian who listed "numerous interviews" in the only book he was likely to write on a subject, only to come back 24 years later and claim that among these "numerous interviews" were some of the most prominent figures of the 1960's, nearly all of whom were now dead. This doesn't ring true, at all. Here is a promotional blurb put out by The University of Tennessee Press for the 1982 edition of Crime of the Century: "Thoroughly documented and based on the most exhaustive research carried out to date on John Kennedy's murder, Crime of the Century draws on a variety of primary source materials from the National Archives and the FBI's and CIA's declassified assassination files. It utilizes the latest source materials released by the House Select Committee's investigation. The depth of research, the rigorously objective sifting of evidence, and the incisive critique of official investigative bias make this a book of importance not only to students of the Kennedy assassination in particular, but also to scholars of government response to political violence in general." Notice anything? By 1982, Kurtz had supposedly already interviewed both Robert Canada and Hunter Leake, two of the most revelatory interviews ever conducted, or at least claimed to have been conducted, regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. And yet these interviews were not only not mentioned in Kurtz's 1982 book based on the "most exhaustive research carried out to date on John Kennedy's murder", they were not mentioned in a blurb put out by his publisher pushing the greatness of his research. No interviews, in fact, are mentioned anywhere in the blurb. Hmmm... Which seems more likely? That Kurtz's publisher forgot to add in that "Oh yeah, by the way, the good professor has been conducting his own investigation into the assassination, and has conducted some interviews that will change the way we look at Kennedy's autopsy and Oswald's possible connections to the CIA"? Or that Kurtz kept these interviews a secret from his own publisher? Or that, by golly, these interviews were never actually conducted? Now note that, aside from Roger Craig, whose interview in The JFK Assassination Debates has a different date than the two offered in Crime of the Century, the interview subjects listed in Crime of the Century, including the mysterious Helen Forrest, who Kurtz relied upon at two key points in Crime of the Century, and the mysterious George Wilcox, who purportedly saw Oswald with Ferrie, are no longer even listed among those Kurtz has interviewed. Now note that the first interview listed for The JFK Assassination Debates is Kurtz's interview with Dr. Robert Canada. This is more than curious. Why would Kurtz conduct his first interview regarding the assassination with Dr. Canada? Why not with Dr.s Humes, Boswell, and Finck, who'd actually performed the autopsy? Or some of the witnesses to the assassination itself? And why would Kurtz's second interview regarding the assassination not come until 1970, when he supposedly interviewed one of Governor Connally's doctors, Dr. Charles Gregory? Is it a coincidence that, much as Dr. Canada, Dr. Gregory died in 1976, at a relatively young age? (Canada died at 59. Gregory died at 56.) Is it another coincidence, for that matter, that they died at a younger age than all but one of the subjects Kurtz claimed to have interviewed prior to 1987? I mean, really, did Kurtz simply have a knack for interviewing people no one else was interviewing--before they dropped dead and no one else could interview them? Or is it more likely that, hmmm, Kurtz was just making up dates for a number of his interviews, and was forced to place the dates for those who died young in years preceding his other interviews? Now note the date of the last interview. It's Dr. Henry Lee on 11-21-03. Well, that's the day Kurtz moderated a panel on the basic facts of the assassination at the Solving the Great American Murder Mystery Conference in Pittsburgh. Dr. Lee was also in attendance at this conference. It seems likely, then, that this "interview" was not set up in advance, with prepared questions, but was more like a discussion of two men at a conference. Now note the date of the last interview before the one with Dr. Lee. It's an interview with Dr. James Humes, who performed Kennedy's autopsy, on 3-18-97. Well, this is nine years before the release of The JFK Assassination Debates. Are we really supposed to believe that someone claiming to have conducted "numerous interviews" relating to Kennedy's assassination in the 1970's and 1980's would fail to conduct ANY interviews while piecing together a book that is likely to be his final word on the subject? I mean, not one? Now note the highlighted interviews. These interviews all supposedly took place when the interview subject was DEAD.

Kurtz made up his witnesses. I wrote about this roughly a decade ago and he never attempted to defend himself. So, you may ask, why should he explain himself to you? Well, he's an historian. He has an understanding of the historical record. And he damn sure knows that a writer who cites numerous interviews with people who were already dead at the supposed time of these interviews better explain himself, or risk having his work thrown in the trash bin. While his analyses of the case may have some merit, you can pretty much throw everything he ever said regarding his own experience with the case, such as seeing Ferrie or Shaw with Oswald or talking to the CIA or talking to doctors who told him the whole thing was a cover-up, in the trash.

Now, as to your other point, Greg, that the fear driving the whitewash was the fear of nuclear war, I address that in chapter 1 at patspeer.com. While Chief Justice Earl Warren, the chairman of the Warren Commission, and the man tasked with overseeing its investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is reported to have told his staff that "the truth was their only client," much evidence has arisen over the years to indicate that this simply was not so. The available record, in fact, now suggests that the Commission had another client, one whose interests were to be placed above and beyond the Commission's search for truth. This client was called... "national security" or, more specifically, President Lyndon Johnson. One need look no further than the memoirs of Warren, for that matter, to see that this is true. There, in the final pages written at the end of his long successful life, Warren admitted that he was strong-armed into chairing the Commission only after Johnson, Kennedy's successor, told him that if people came to believe there was foreign involvement in the assassination it could lead to a war that would kill 40 million. This, one can only assume, gave Warren the clear signal he was NOT to find for a conspiracy involving a foreign power. But when one reads between the lines--and reads other lines--a fuller picture emerges. Warren was also told he was NOT to find for a domestic conspiracy, or at least anything that could point back to Johnson. There were signs for this from the get-go. The Voice of America, the U.S. Information Agency's worldwide radio network, had initially reported, in the moments after the shooting, that Dallas, Texas, the scene of the crime, was also "the scene of the extreme right wing movement." It soon stopped doing so. This suggests then that someone in the government was particularly sensitive to the idea that the right wing would be blamed for the shooting, and had ordered the Voice of America to downplay the possibility of a domestic conspiracy. This "sensitivity," moreover, was in the air and spreading. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, whose discussions in the days after the shooting sparked the creation of the Warren Commission, testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the "HSCA") on 8-4-78 that he sensed that the rest of the world would suspect Johnson's involvement, and that this in effect "disqualified" Johnson from leading an investigation into Kennedy's death. Katzenbach then explained that this feeling had led him to believe that "some other people of enormous prestige and above political in-fighting, political objectives, ought to review the matter and take the responsibility" of identifying Kennedy's assassin. He said much the same thing in subsequent testimony. On 9-21-78 he told the HSCA that his primary concern in the aftermath of the assassination was "the amount of speculation both here and abroad as to what was going on, whether there was a conspiracy of the left or a lone assassin or even in its wildest stages, a conspiracy by the then vice president to achieve the presidency, the sort of thing you have speculation about in some countries abroad where that kind of condition is normal." Egads. These words suggest that Katzenbach, who was only running the Justice Department in the aftermath of the assassination, considered Johnson's involvement unthinkable, and not really worth investigating. And this wasn't the last time Katzenbach suggested as much. In his 2008 memoir Some of It Was Fun, Katzenbach wrote that in the days after the assassination: "Among the many conspiracy theories floating around were those that put conservative Texas racists in the picture and even some that saw LBJ as the moving force." That Katzenbach's concern about these theories influenced the Warren Commission's investigation, moreover, seems obvious. Howard Willens, a Justice Department attorney reporting to Katzenbach, was made an assistant to Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, and was tasked with 1) hiring the commission's junior counsel (the men tasked with performing the bulk of the commission's investigation), 2) assigning these men specific areas of investigation, 3) supplying these men with the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA reports pertinent to their areas of investigation, 4) working as a liaison between these men and the agencies creating these reports, and 5) helping to re-write the commission's own report. On 7-28-78, in Executive Session, Willens testified before the HSCA; he admitted: "there were some allegations involving President Johnson that were before the Commission and there was understandably among all persons associated with this effort a desire to investigate those allegations and satisfy the public, if possible, that these allegations were without merit." But these allegations weren't investigated, not really. The Commission's final report amounted to a prosecutor's brief against a lone assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald, and the 26 volumes of supporting data published by the Commission contained next to nothing on Johnson or other possible suspects. That this "clearing" of Johnson's name was a major factor in the commission's creation is confirmed, moreover, by a 2-17-64 memo written by Warren Commission Counsel Melvin A. Eisenberg. While reporting on the Warren Commission's first staff conference of 1-20-64, Eisenberg recalled that Chief Justice Warren had discussed "the circumstances under which he had accepted the chairmanship of the Commission," and had claimed he'd resisted pressure from Johnson until "The President stated that the rumors of the most exaggerated kind were circulating in this country and overseas. Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the Government wishing to see the Presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched, could conceivably lead the country into a war which could cost 40 million lives." Eisenberg's account of Warren's statements was supported, furthermore, by Warren Commission Counsel--and subsequent Senator--Arlen Specter in his 2000 memoir Passion for Truth. In Specter's account, Warren claimed that Johnson had told him "only he could lend the credibility the country and the world so desperately needed as the people tried to understand why their heroic young president had been slain. Conspiracy theories involving communists, the U.S.S.R., Cuba, the military-industrial complex, and even the new president were already swirling. The Kennedy assassination could lead America into a nuclear war that could kill 40 million people..." Now this, apparently, wasn't the only time Warren admitted Johnson's worries extended both beyond and closer to home than the possible thermo-nuclear war mentioned in his autobiography. In his biography of Warren, Ed Cray reported that Warren once confided to a friend that "There was great pressure on us to prove, first, that President Johnson was not involved, and, second, that the Russians were not involved." And yet Warren refused to put Johnson's fears he'd be implicated on the record. While Warren was interviewed a number of times in his final years about the creation of the Commission, he never admitted in these interviews what he'd readily told his friends and the commission's staff--that Johnson had railroaded him onto the commission in part to clear himself. In fact, Warren claimed the opposite. When interviewed by Warren Commission historian Alfred Goldberg on March 28, 1974, Warren told Goldberg the opposite of what he'd told Eisenberg and Specter (and presumably Goldberg) in 1964. Instead of claiming Johnson told him "Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the Government wishing to see the Presidency assumed by President Johnson," Warren now related "There were of course two theories of conspiracy. One was the theory about the communists. The other was that LBJ's friends did it as a coup d'etat. Johnson didn't talk about that." It seems likely, then, that even Warren thought it improper for the President, the head of the Executive Branch of Government, to pressure the Chief Justice of the United States, the head of the Judicial Branch of Government, to head a Commission to help clear the President's name. Now, it's not as if Warren's fellow commissioners had a problem with serving this higher purpose--that of clearing their new President. John McCloy, Wall Street's man on the Commission, told writer Edward Epstein on June 7, 1965 that one of the commission's objectives was "to show foreign governments we weren't a South American Banana Republic." Well, seeing as the expression "Banana Republic" is not a reference to countries whose leaders have been killed by foreign enemies, but to countries whose leaders have been killed by domestic enemies, who then assume power, this is most certainly a reference to Johnson. And it's not as if this was all a big secret. The December 5, 1963, transcripts of the Warren Commission's first meeting reflect that Senator Richard Russell, Johnson's long-time friend and mentor, admitted "I told the President the other day, fifty years from today people will be saying he had something to do with it so he could be President." And it's not as if Washington insiders were unaware of this non-secret secret. In 1966, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak published Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power. There, they discussed the creation of the Warren Commission as follows: "There was first the question of the assassination itself. Inevitably, irresponsible demagogues of the left and right spread the notion that not one assassin but a conspiracy had killed John Kennedy. That it occurred in Johnson's own state on a political mission urgently requested and promoted by Johnson only embellished rancid conspiratorial theories. If he were to gain the confidence of the people, the ghost of Dallas must be shrugged off." Now, should one still doubt that Johnson was at least as concerned with suspicions of himself as of the Soviets, there is confirmation from an even better source: Johnson himself. In a rarely-cited interview with columnist Drew Pearson, cited in a November 14th, 1993 article in The Washington Post, Johnson admitted that, in his conversation with Warren, in which he convinced Warren to head his commission, Johnson brought up the assassination of President Lincoln, and that rumors still lingered about the conspiracy behind his murder 100 years after the fact. According to Pearson, Johnson admitted telling Warren that "The nation cannot afford to have any doubt this time." Well, that says it all. The doubt, according to Johnson, the nation could not afford to have, was doubt about Southern and/or military involvement in the assassination. The rumors about Lincoln's death, after all, revolved largely around his being murdered by The Confederate Army as revenge for his successful campaign to re-unite the States, or his being murdered by his own Secretary of War, or his being murdered by his Vice-President, a Southerner named JOHNSON. And Johnson acknowledged this was his concern in his presidential memoir, The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency 1963-1969, published 1971. Of the national mood on 11-24-63, after the man accused of killing President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, a purported communist-sympathizer, was shot down while in police custody, by Jack Ruby, a man with connections to organized crime, Johnson wrote: "The atmosphere was poisonous and had to be cleared. I was aware of some of the implications that grew out of that skepticism and doubt. Russia was not immune to them. Neither was Cuba. Neither was the State of Texas. Neither was the new President of the United States." Now, should there still be any doubts, we have Johnson's own words to nail this all down. From Chapter 1 at patspeer.com: In October 2007, the Johnson Presidential Library released a batch of previously withheld recordings of President Johnson's phone calls while President. Most interesting of these was a January 11, 1967 phone call between Johnson and his most trusted adviser, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. This call built upon similar calls with Fortas on October 1 and October 6, 1966. It was made, moreover, just one week after the "smoking gun" document was written. Well, in this call, surprise surprise, Johnson drops his guard completely, and tells Fortas that he believes Senator Robert Kennedy--his predecessor's brother--and Robert Kennedy's supporters--are behind the recent spurt of books and articles on the assassination. He claims, moreover, that: "They've started all this stuff...they've created all this doubt...And if we'd had anybody less than the attorney general--ah, the chief justice--I would've already been indicted." Now, should one think Johnson exaggerating here, and stating something he didn't really believe, one should consider that he said similar things to others--even after RFK was dead and buried. As reported by Robert Caro, in his 2012 epic The Passage of Power, Johnson dropped his mask once more during the August 19, 1969 recording of an oral history for the Johnson Library. He declared: "I shudder to think what churches I would have burned and what little babies I would have eaten if I hadn't appointed the Warren Commission." He also offered a slightly different and no doubt more honest version of how he got Warren to chair his commission. Leaving off the bit about the Russians launching nukes should they think we blamed them for killing Kennedy, he admitted he'd actually pressured Warren through a call for domestic tranquility. He said he told Warren: "When this country is threatened with division, and the President of the United States says you are the only man who can save it, you won't say no, will you?" And that Warren responded, "No, sir!" So there you have it, straight from the horse's--ah, President's--mouth. Johnson felt that his having left-wing icon Earl Warren chair the commission investigating President Kennedy's murder not only stopped Kennedy's brother Robert Kennedy from having him (Johnson) investigated as a suspect, but stopped him (Johnson) from actually being indicted for Kennedy's murder.

It's not my counter-narrative. It's the historical truth, or will be when the historians get their heads out of their rectums. Think about it. The right-wing in this country HATED Earl Warren and considered him to be a commie symp if not a commie himself. His leading a panel claiming Oswald did not do it for Russia meant nothing to them. So why was Warren necessary? Because the left held him in high esteem and would largely believe him if he told them no right-wing conspiracy was afoot. Well, what would be the point of Warren's investigating if he might go off the reservation and lead a fishing expedition of the right wing? No way was Johnson gonna allow that. No way. It's clear then that Warren was upset because Johnson not only told him he had to lead the investigation, but that it was his patriotic duty to clear Johnson in the process. The Warren Commission was political theater, that made no real attempt at getting at the truth. At the end of the section on the Warren Commission on my website, I list the clear-cut evidence Warren was in on the fix. From Chapter 3c at patspeer.com: 1. Chief Justice Warren was determined from the outset that the commission investigating President Kennedy's death limit its scope to the investigations already performed by the Dallas Police, Secret Service and FBI. Yes, unbelievably, the transcript of the commission's first conference reflects that Warren wanted the commission to have no investigators of its own, no subpoena power, and no public hearings. 2. When the Attorney General of Texas, Waggoner Carr, persisted in his plan to convene a Texas Court of Inquiry, a public hearing at which much of the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald would be presented, Warren convinced him to cancel his plan by assuring him the commission would be "fair to Texas." No record was made of this meeting. 3. Not long thereafter, the commission became privy to the rumor Oswald had been an intelligence asset. Although commissioner and former CIA chief Allen Dulles assured Warren and his fellow commissioners the FBI and CIA would lie about this, he also told them the only way to get to the bottom of it was to ask President Johnson to personally tell the heads of the FBI and CIA not to lie. Warren did not do this. And the transcript of the hearing in which this rumor was first discussed was destroyed, undoubtedly at Warren's direction. 4. The commission's staff had questions about the medical evidence. They were particularly concerned about the location of Kennedy's back wound, which may have been too low to support the single-bullet theory deemed necessary to the commission's conclusion Oswald acted alone. Even so, Warren personally prevented Dr. James J. Humes from reviewing the autopsy photos he'd had taken, and wished to review. 5. The commission's staff had questions about Oswald's trip to Mexico. What did he say to those he spoke to? What did he do at night? Did he actually go to the Cuban consulate and Russian embassy on the days the CIA said he'd visited the consulate and embassy? And yet, despite the commission's staff's fervid desire they be allowed to interview Sylvia Duran, a Mexican woman employed by the Cuban consulate, who'd handled Oswald's request he be allowed to visit Cuba, (and who, it turns out, was rumored to have entertained Oswald at night), Chief Justice Warren personally prevented them from doing so, telling commission counsel David Slawson that "You just can't believe a Communist...We don't talk to Communists. You cannot trust a dedicated Communist to tell us the truth, so what's the point?" 6. The commission's staff had questions about Russia's involvement in the assassination. Oswald, of course, had lived in Russia. His wife was Russian. While in Mexico, he'd met with a KGB agent named Kostikov, who was believed to have been the KGB's point man on assassinations for the western hemisphere. Shortly after the assassination, a KGB officer named Yuri Nosenko defected to the west. Nosenko told his handlers he'd reviewed Oswald's file, and that Oswald was not a Russian agent. The timing of Nosenko's defection, however, convinced some within the CIA that Nosenko's defection was a set-up. The commission's staff hoped to talk to Nosenko, and judge for themselves if his word meant anything. The CIA (er, rather, The CIA's Assistant Director of Plans--its master of dirty tricks) Richard Helms, on the other hand, asked the commission to not only not talk to Nosenko, but to avoid any mention of him within their report. Chief Justice Earl Warren, acting alone, agreed to this request. He later admitted "I was adamant that we should not in any way base our findings on the testimony of a Russian defector." 7. The commission's staff had questions about Jack Ruby's motive in killing Oswald. Strangely, however, the commission's staff charged with investigating Ruby and his background were not allowed to interview him. Instead, the interview of Ruby was performed by, you guessed it, Chief Justice Earl Warren. Despite Ruby's telling Warren such things as "unless you get me to Washington, you can’t get a fair shake out of me...I want to tell the truth, and I can’t tell it here. I can’t tell it here…this isn’t the place for me to tell what I want to tell…” Warren refused to bring Ruby to Washington so he could provide the details he so clearly wanted to provide. 8. The commission's staff had even more questions about how Ruby came to kill Oswald. It was hard to believe he'd just walked down a ramp and shot Oswald, as claimed. As Ruby had many buddies within the Dallas Police, for that matter, it was reasonable to investigate the possibility one or more of the officers responsible for Oswald's protection had provided Ruby access to the basement. Commission counsel Burt Griffin even found a suspect: Sgt Patrick Dean. In the middle of Dean's testimony in Dallas, in which Dean said Ruby had told him he'd gained access to the garage by walking down the ramp, Griffin let Dean know he didn't believe him, and gave him a chance to change his testimony. Dean was outraged and called Dallas DA Henry Wade, who in turn called Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin. Dean then asked that he be allowed to testify against Griffin in Washington. Not only was he allowed to do so, he received what amounted to an apology from, you guessed it, Chief Justice Earl Warren. Warren told Dean "No member of our staff has a right to tell any witness that he is lying or that he is testifying falsely. That is not his business. It is the business of this Commission to appraise the testimony of all the witnesses, and, at the time you are talking about, and up to the present time, this Commission has never appraised your testimony or fully appraised the testimony of any other witness, and furthermore, I want to say to you that no member of our staff has any power to help or injure any witness." It was later revealed that Dean had failed a lie detector test designed to test his truthfulness regarding Ruby, and that the Dallas Police had kept the results of this test from the Warren Commission. If Griffin had been allowed to pursue Dean, this could have all come out in 1964. But no, Warren made Griffin back down, and the probability Dean lied was swept under the rug. (None of this is mentioned in Willens' book, of course.) 9. Although Warren was purportedly all-concerned about transparency, and wanted all the evidence viewed by the commission to be made available to the public, he (along with commissioners McCloy and Dulles) came to a decision on April 30, 1964, that the testimony before the commission would not be published along with the commission's report. (This decision was over-turned after the other commissioners--the four elected officials on the commission, and thereby the only ones accountable to the public--objected.) 10. Although Warren was purportedly all-concerned about transparency, and wanted the public to trust the commission's decisions, he wanted to shred or incinerate all the commission's internal files, so no one would know how the commission came to its decisions. (This decision was over-turned after commission historian Alfred Goldberg sent word of Warren's intentions to Senator Richard Russell, and Russell intervened.) 11. Although Warren was purported to have worked himself day and night in order to give the President the most thorough report possible, he actually flew off on a fishing trip that lasted from July 6 to August 1, 1964, while testimony was still being taken, and the commission's report still being polished. 12. Although Warren was purportedly all-concerned about transparency, and felt the commission's work should speak for itself, he (according to Howard Willens' diary) asked the National Archives to hold up the release of assassination-related documents that were not used in the commission's hearings, so that said documents could not be used by critics to undermine the commission's findings. So let's review. The Chief Justice, who was, by his own admission, roped into serving as chairman of the commission by President Johnson through the prospect of nuclear war, refused to allow important evidence to be viewed, refused to allow important witnesses to be called, cut off investigations into controversial areas, demanded that testimony before the commission be done in secret, agreed to keep the testimony before the commission from the public, tried to keep the commission's internal files from the public, and ultimately asked the national archives to help hide some of the evidence available to the commission from the public until a decent interval had passed in which the commission and its friends in the media could sell the commission's conclusions. Now if that ain't a whitewash, then what the heck is?

Yikes. Hill exhibit 5 places hill across from the steps. And the Dorman frame you show, which includes many of the same people as in the Zapruder frame, was taken 30 seconds or so after the Zapruder frame.

Someone pointed this out years ago, John. I don't remember who. It might have been you. But I do remember coming to the conclusion it was just an illusion.. Here is a clearer frame from this same sequence. (It's Z-161.) P.S. I also suspect the car you are using for comparison is not the same car.

I had the same thing happen with Gerry Hemming. A man of means decided it was best to put out a video of Hemming telling his stories, but also include an interview of Hemming in which he was confronted on some of his nonsense. For some reason, I was asked to do the interview. I did a lot of homework, studying Hemming's Church Committee testimony and comparing it to what he told Twyman, and what he said here on the forum...and what he told me in private emails... I flew down to Key West for the interview, but guess what? He wasn't feeling up to it, and didn't come down. Now, he was in poor health at the time, but I don't believe he even offered to reschedule. On the forum he used to call me the "noticer" because I was always noticing things that others missed. Presumably, he was afraid that I'd "noticed" he was full of ca-ca. I still have regrets about it. I had a long talk with him on the phone while I was down there and I suspect I tipped my hand that I was gonna give him the third degree should we ever meet up on camera. And it's too bad. Although I'd concluded his stories were 90% nonsense, I wasn't sure about the other 10. It's not beyond the pale that Oswald did in fact have some contact with the likes of Sturgis and Hemming. But unfortunately, it appears we'll never know.

Litwin seems blind to the full context of the memo. In deciding to use the press to shut down "undue rumors" Katzenbach has started a defacto cover-up. Neither he, nor Hoover, nor the DPD, had enough info at that time to say it was Oswald acting alone, but they had already decided that was the best story to tell the public. He is also misleading about just what these "undue rumors" were. One of the biggest surprises I came across when I started looking into this horrible bit of history was that most everyone has bought the cover story--that Johnson was worried the assassination would lead to nuclear war, etc--when the historical fact is that Johnson was mostly concerned people would think he was behind the assassination. That's right. It's 100% clear when one looks at it that the WC was created to clear Johnson of the crime. Warren would not think it improper to chair a commission looking into the possibility of foreign involvement, after all, but would think it improper to have the Chief Justice--the head of the Judicial branch--clear a President--the head of the executive branch. And he was right. It was improper. Grossly improper. So improper that only a Machiavellian animal like Johnson would force Warren to do it.

Angel's orientation for the fragment, along with a heap of other stuff, led me to believe the bullet impacted at the supposed exit. (While I suspect this was from behind, I accept it could be from the front as well.) In keeping with this was that the lead found at the beveled exit was on the outside. It was only a few years ago, after re-reading Hunt's article and looking at Baden/Dox's drawing of the triangular fragment, that I realized that Baden had dishonestly misrepresented the location of the lead found in the margins of the exit. He depicted the lead on the inside of the skull, which is fairly bizarre, and proof, IMO, he knew the implications of the lead being on the outside. He just moved it, much as he moved the Harper fragment to a location where it didn't fit because the location chosen by Angel meant the exit was not the exit of an intact bullet, and much as his friend Fisher had just moved the small entrance wound on the back of the head when he couldn't get the trajectories to line up. While some see this case as a whodunit, and are trying to find a way to prove the guilty parties, I focus mainly on the cover-up. It haunts me to my core that the likes of Baden and Spitz have been able to spew their nonsense when it's quite clear they misled the public on point after point. I mean, some choose to believe some government lackey made the FPP report say the Bethesda witnesses all disagreed with the Parkland witnesses. My money is on Baden himself, perhaps in collaboration with Purdy and Blakey. They decided there was only one shooter and spun spun spun the evidence to make it appear so, to the extent the report was basically a sham.

I see that Anna Nelson is cited in the article. One should avoid that. We have reason to believe she knows little about the assassination, and simply decided, a la Bugliosi, that it was too complicated to think about, and that one should just accept Oswald's guilt. Here she is in 1998, in a chapter on the ARRB for a book entitled ""A Culture of Secrecy – The Government Versus the People's Right to Know." When discussing the Warren Commission's conclusions, she wrote "Three shots had been fired; one hit the president but did not kill him, one went astray, and the third killed Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally of Texas..." Yikes. Historian or not, she was so ignorant about the case that she thought the single-bullet theory related to a final shot head shot. That's not all that surprising, moreover. From studying the articles and TV programs that came out around the 50th it became clear to me that the average talking head, "pundit" or "historian" knows less than the average reader of this forum. And it's not even close.

We should probably view Ukraine as an extension of the Cold War. And by that I mean, as with the U.S. in South East Asia, and Russia in Afghanistan, Russia will eventually decide it's time to leave. A lot of people today forget that Vietnam won the war while actually losing the majority of the battles. The U.S.and South Vietnamese Government resolve to win was just not strong enough to overcome a constant flow of young Vietnamese soldiers, not to mention the weapons and advisers coming in from China and Russia. The U.S. then turned the tables in Afghanistan. It looks like the same could come true in Ukraine. As long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight and the west is willing to keep them in a constant supply of small arms and missiles, this will probably drag on. The smart move by Putin would be to take a few of the disputed areas, claim he'd "liberated" them, and tell the Russian people it was all worth it to hold off the advance of Nazism, or some such thing. He then gets to retain power, and the illusion of brilliance he's worked so hard to project. At this point, it appears that his master plan of reuniting Ukraine with Russia is doomed to failure. He can win, of course, by upping the ante, but the price would probably be too high, and, much like England after the World Wars, its claims to empire would be crushed.

I built upon John's research a bit, and came to realize the HSCA medical panel (in fact Dr. Michael Baden) not only ignored the interpretation of Dr. Angel re the placement of the triangular fragment, but decided to re-interpret the x-ray of the triangular fragment so that the metal fragments within the beveling on what was once the outside of the triangular fragment were now on the inside. (This was done, of course, to hide that a bullet broke up upon impact at this location.) This is the kind of thing that a panel of experts could look at and correct, and essentially re-open the case. But unfortunately the real experts won't come anywhere near this case.

No, that woman has not been positively ID'ed as the babushka lady. Someone colorized the photo years ago and raised the question if it was or was not the babushka lady, and many jumped in line and said it was proof positive Oliver was a fabricator. When the truth is we don't even know the color of that woman's coat. It was a rainy morning. There were dozens of women in the plaza with beige, tan, or yellow coats. There simply isn't enough info to say where the woman charging up the stairs came from.

You can tell by looking at the background. The black and blue dress as normally seen appeared to be gold and white when overexposed. This came as a surprise to millions, including myself, when this went viral. People knew that over-exposure caused differences in shades within a color, but few realized that it could also lead to something appearing to be a different color. This is why I thought this might be relevant. The gold/beige jacket on the babushka lady might appear blue in an underexposed image, that is, one in which the grass is far more green than its actual shade. I believe this was demonstrated in Ray's post.

I'm surprised no one brought this up already. This is the same dress. The images have not been colorized. Our perceptions of color can be affected by the level of exposure in an image.