Pat Speer

Well, we're largely agreed on this, Sandy. But it should be noted that in 1968 the Justice Dept. convened a secret panel to address the trajectory problem, and this panel relocated the entrance wound after looking at the photos, but without talking to the doctors, or even being shown the 1966 inventory of the photos written by the doctors. This was the Clark Panel. The HSCA Panel, which was put together nine years later, and was comprised of close colleagues and/or former students of the Clark Panel's de facto leader, Russell Fisher, merely confirmed the Clark Panel's findings re the cowlick entrance. But that's not to let them off the hook. The HSCA Panel had access to both the doctors' original inventory of the photos, and the doctors themselves, but nevertheless spent much of their time trying to convince the doctors they were wrong, as opposed to trying to understand why their pal Russell Fisher would move a wound to a location where no one saw a wound. Now, Dr. Wecht was a member of this panel, and I have asked him about this. And he has insisted that these men, including his good friend Dr. Baden, were not lying, but were blinded by...confirmation bias. It was unthinkable to them that 1) Russell Fisher could be wrong and Dr. Humes right, 2) there were in fact two bullet entries on the skull and thus a conspiracy, and 3) a bullet could enter low and exit high without leaving a noticeable path through the brain. So the only way to make this work was to claim the autopsy doctors (along with a number of other witnesses) were incorrect, and had misidentified an entrance hole high on the skull with an entrance hole four inches lower, and not only that, but that a photo originally described as showing a bullet entrance on the back of the skull actually showed a bullet exit on the front of the skull. It boggles the mind. It's cognitive dissonance on parade. Of course, we see similar parades on this forum every day.

While I was at first tempted to believe Groden had made up his story about Oswald/s alibi, I saw an interview with Mike Brownlow where he makes a similar claim about Reid--that she was with Oswald when the shots were fired. So I believe she told them what they claimed she told them. But I think her claim is a fantasy. From compiling thousands of witness statements, I found that many witnesses came to claim things that were grossly at odds with their earliest claims, and that the trajectory was almost always in a consistent direction. That is, to say, people who originally said they didn't know where the shots came from might eventually claim they knew they came from the building, and then proceed to claim they thought they saw Oswald in the window, while other people originally claiming they didn't know where the shots came from might eventually claim they felt positive they came from knoll, and then. proceed to claim they saw someone behind the fence at the time of the head shot. In the case of Reid, I would bet she started out small, and first started saying she saw Oswald just a few minutes before the shooting and then shrunk this time over the years until it became an alibi. But we don't have enough statements from her over the years to know for sure.

Only nobody viewing the body and observing the small entrance wound ever changed their opinion as to the location of the wound. They all said it was low on the back of the head. The only one to pretend he'd changed his opinion was Humes. And it turned out that he'd been threatened into pretending he'd changed his mind when he had not. So the question remains as to why the "government" would conduct a secret panel to second guess the doctors, and give the illusion the doctors had re-appraised their position, when they had not. What were they afraid of?

So your theory holds that 1) everyone claiming they saw an explosion of skull from the top, right side, or front of the skull was delusional, as the only large defect was on the far back of the head, prior to Humes performing surgery to the head area. Well, this is straight from Horne, but there's a problem with Horne's theory. A HUGE problem. Horne says Reed saw this "surgery" but Reed specified that he saw Humes cutting after the x-rays were taken--the x-rays which of course show frontal bone already missing. So, if you're echoing Horne, well, you're better off leaving Reed out of it. 2) the Harper fragment was brought into the autopsy, and the three bone fragments actually brought into the autopsy were removed from Kennedy's skull by Dr. Humes and then paraded in so people believed they'd been brought into the autopsy. Well, this would mean there were two arrivals of bones at the autopsy--when people only remembered the one. So...not only do you have a pre-autopsy surgery recalled by no one, you have an arrival of bone at the autopsy recalled by no one. 3) Now, beyond having an unknown someone finding the Harper fragment, you have an unknown someone bringing it to Bethesda, and an unknown someone retuning it to Dealey Plaza, for...what was the reason again? Points 2 and 3 serve no purpose, IMO. They appear to be an attempt to avoid the obvious--that the large triangular fragment was believed to have exit beveling. Well, why not turn that around? Claim it was really entrance beveling for a shot from the front? As the only image of this fragment is an x-ray this would be hard to dispute beyond saying the autopsy doctors said it was exit beveling and not entrance beveling. But as long you're trying to piece this together, I have a question, which none of those claiming the back of the head was blown out have answered. And that is, where did the bullet blowing out the back of the head...exit? According to Mantik, the only beveling on the Harper fragment is entrance beveling. So, no, it didn't exit there. And according to Horne and Mantik, the beveled bone on the back of the head in the mystery photo was on the left side of the head, and represents the exit of a third shot that DID NOT blow out the back of the head. So where did the bullet blowing out the back of the head exit? And why is there no sign of it in the photos and x-rays?

His hand gesture is to the side, showing that brain and blood blew outwards. He does not say here nor has he ever said that brain blood and bone blew out the back of JFK's head. As Doug Horne holds that no parietal bone was blown off JFK's head during the shooting, and that the only large defect prior to Humes' expansion of the wound was one low on the back of the head, it's clear Newman's recollections are a problem for Horne's pet theory, correct? Can we at least agree on that?

I'm sorry, Chuck. But I know Mantik and am aware of his claims and methodology. There is little to be learned from him, IMO. And I am not alone. I have spent time with the most prominent writers on the medical evidence, and they almost uniformly claim 1) Mantik is a nice man, and 2) Mantik's conclusions are unreliable or worse. Here are but three examples. Tom Robinson told the HSCA he thought there was a tiny wound by the temple that was not an entrance wound for a bullet, and then told the ARRB that there were two or three of these tiny wounds...on Kennedy's right cheek. Well, this led Dr. Mantik to claim Robinson was probably describing a bullet entrance high on the forehead. NONE of the top researchers, the long-time researchers, believe this, and a number of them have confided that they think his pretending Robinson's description of a tiny cheek wound was a bullet hole on the forehead is an embarrassment. That's one. Here's a second. A number of autopsy witnesses said the largest fragment at autopsy was removed from behind the right eye. Dr. Lattimer, a lone-nutter, then wrote a book claiming he spotted this fragment on the x-rays...in the middle of the forehead. Mantik then began echoing this nonsense, even while noting that the fragment in the middle of the forehead on the x-rays could not be the fragment in the archives. Well, I came along and realized Mantik was right--that the fragment in the middle of the forehead was not the fragment in the archives, that was removed during the autopsy. I then looked for this fragment behind the right eye on the x-rays. And found it right where the doctors said they'd found it. But Mantik couldn't accept this because he'd built his reputation on his claim the largest fragment on the x-rays was on the back of the head, and not behind the right eye. And tried to convince everyone the fragment I'd identified must have been a bone fragment...which just so happened to be exactly where the doctors and others said there had been a missile fragment. Now that wouldn't be so bad if he explained this to his audience. But he doesn't. Instead he routinely tells them the fragment on the middle of the forehead is the fragment behind the right eye removed by Dr. Humes, which he knows to be untrue. Here's a third. He rose to prominence by claiming the white patch on the lateral x-ray covered a hole on the back of the head. As he had also claimed the Harper Fragment was occipital bone, this led them to claim the white patch covered up the hole from which the Harper fragment had been blasted. I then entered the fray and realized his placement of the Harper fragment put it on the very back of the head, rearward of the white patch. He then switched gears and said he'd never claimed the white patch covered missing bone, and that it actually covered missing brain. And eventually took to claiming the area to the rear of the white patch on the x-rays is an illusion, and that the skull in that area is actually missing, and that this was the former home of the Harper fragment. So, yeah he says the back of the head is missing on the lateral x-ray, but that only he can see it, with the help of his optical densitometer. Well, this is classic junk science. Mantik has been pushing this for years, and not a single radiologist has signed off on his conclusions. A more than 2 inch triangle of missing bone would be apparent to the naked eye on a lateral x-ray. Obviously.

Oh c'mon. You just keep digging and digging a deeper grave for your arguments. Just stop. Newman saw ONE explosion on the skull. ONE. And he said it was by the temple and ear. We didn't realize what happened until we seen the side of his head, when the bullet hit him. we seen him get shot in the side of the head. I was looking directly at him when he was hit in the side of the head. At that time he heard the bullet strike the president and saw flesh fly from the President’s head. (When asked about a drawing in which he depicted the fatal bullet's striking Kennedy by his ear) "That's what I saw. The way he was hit, it looked like he had just been hit with a baseball pitch, just like a block of wood fell over his... (When it was pointed out to him that he was moving his head backwards and to the left, and his drawing had depicted a wound by the ear) "In my opinion the ear went." (When asked again if his impression was that the bullet entered the side of the head) "Right. Right. My thoughts were that the shot entered there and apparently the thoughts of the Warren Commission were that the shot came out that side.” that is when the third shot was fired and it hit him in the side of the head right above the ear and his ear come off… I observed his ear flying off, and he turned just real white and then blood red, just as the President's car got directly in front of me, the President was probably fifteen feet away, Boom, and the side of his ear flew off, and justa, bits and pieces flew off. I can remember seeing just a white flash, and then the red, and the President fell across the car I can remember seeing the side of the President’s ear and head come off. I remember a flash of white and red and just bits and pieces of flesh exploding from the President’s head. he got nearer to us, and, bam, a shot took the right side of his head off. His ear flew off. I remember seeing the side of his head come off. I could see the white and then all of a sudden the red... (When asked if it hit him in the temple) "It appeared yes right in this area here (as he motions to his right temple) on the side of his head" I can remember seeing the side of President Kennedy's head blow off. There was black matter and then grayish It appeared to me that it hit him on the side of the head, as the side of his head came off. I thought the shot came from directly behind us in the grassy knoll area. The only basis I had for that was what I visually saw: the President going across the car and seeing the side of his head come off. I can remember seeing the side of President Kennedy's head come off, and I thought his ear came off. I was kinda dumbfounded to hear these people saying that, when just minutes earlier I'd seen the side of his head come off." It was the visual impact that it had on me more so than the noise--seeing the side of the President's head blow off I knew most definitely that was a gunshot and the side of his head blew off, you could see the white matter and the red and he fell across the seat I can recall seeing the side of President Kennedy's head blow off. I could see a mass of white and then the blood and fragments. I can recall seeing the side of President Kennedy's head fly off, Ten, 12 feet in front of us, the third shot rang out, and that's when the side of his head flew off Seeing the side of the President's head blow off, seeing the president go across the car seat into Mrs. Kennedy's lap, in her direction, it gave me the sensation that the shots were coming from directly behind me the third shot rang out, and the side of President Kennedy's head blew off (as he says this he reaches for his temple). We seen the brain matter and the blood fly off. And there's plenty more.

NO, but they may test them for gsr. The test performed on Oswald by the DPD was one in which the wax casts were exposed to a chemical, which resulted in purple specks on the casts where nitrates were present. But the loose term nitrates included elements that were not related to gunshot residue. The Neutron Activation tests later performed by the FBI, however, could isolate out barium and antimony, the primary components in gunshot residue. Both elements were found to be present on Oswald's hands in numbers sufficient to claim he'd handled a weapon. But the FBI testified, in pre-scripted testimony, that they could not come to a decision regarding the cheek cast because there was too much barium on the outside of the cast. Well, this led me to wonder "Well, what about antimony? Since both barium and antimony need be present in sufficient numbers to claim a positive result, what about antimony? How much was found on the cheek cast?" After years of searching I obtained the papers that provided the answer--these were papers provided Harold Weisberg after he sued the Atomic Energy Commission and FBI for materials related to the NAA testing of the magic bullet and wrist fragment. In any event, within these papers were the results for antimony, along with a control test performed by the FBI. And I then compared these to a number of other controls performed by nuclear physicist Vincent Guinn, that were never provided the WC but were published in a 1965 paper for the Dept. of Commerce. And these strongly suggest (I would say prove but I would like to get some feedback from an expert on these matters) that the number for antimony was insufficient to claim Oswald had fired a rifle. Now, back to your original question. In the years subsequent to the assassination a cheaper alternative was developed to assist officers trying to establish the presence of gun shot residue on a suspect's hands. And these tests are still performed today. So...to sum it all up. Oswald passed a test that was suggestive of his innocence--akin to passing a lie detector test. It did not prove his innocence, but it suggested as much, and this scared the FBI into concealing these test results from the public.

I'm not the one spinning here. Let us know when you've studied dozens of interviews with Newman and talked to him on numerous occasions. Here he is in the Moorman photo, looking at the back of JFK's head as he p[asses by, at the precise moment of the bullet's impact. And where did he see an explosion, the only explosion he saw? By the ear. Where it is proved to be in the photos you and your fellow obstructors so desperately desperately need to believe are fake. And why? Because in your limited imaginations you think the best proof for a conspiracy is a proof the photographic and medical evidence is fake. Well this is folly, as the photographic and medical evidence has always, always, suggested a conspiracy, and the claims the evidence is fake have proved disastrous for the research community.

Thanks, Bill.

Without even getting into the details, Sandy, I am wondering what bone fragment you suggest contained the other half of the entrance defect is the one you claim was brought into the autopsy room later. It couldn't be the large triangular fragment, which was either frontal bone or parietal bone. No one thinks it was occipital bone. And besides it had an exit defect and not an entrance defect. And it can't be the Harper fragment, which was not discovered until the next day and was never shown the doctors. And that, oh yeah, was also purported to have an exit defect and not an entrance defect. So what bone are you talking about?

Keep reading. The controls were washed as well.

This is all discussed in chapter 4f on my website. They stopped performing the nitrate test performed by the DPD within a few years of the shooting. But the use of NAA to uncover gsr on wax casts is still presumed to be solid science. The problem was that it was very expensive. And was replaced by a less expensive test, that is still performed today. But the results provided Weisberg, and discussed in chapter 4f, are still valid.

If you keep reading you will see that Guinn washed his casts when performing his controls, and that by the end of the chapter I make the argument they were not actually washed.

What? Not at all. 1. The crime lab person who took the casts home returned them to the FBI. The cheek cast was the only cheek cast the DPD had ever tested. So, no, it's unlikely he returned different casts than the ones he took home. And this becomes especially clear when one considers that someone tampered with the casts by adding barium. I mean, why would he or they have done that, if these were substitute casts, which could have been easily phoned up by having someone else fire a rifle and then testing his cheek? 2. Guinn never tested or even saw the paraffin cast from Oswald's cheek. Fearful the tests would be negative and that the press would find out, the FBI asked Guinn to conduct control studies using similar rifles--to see if one would expect to find gsr on the cheeks of someone who'd fired that rifle. His controls said yes. They then took this info and sat on it, and failed to tell Guinn both that they'd performed one control using the actual rifle which had led them to come to the same conclusion, and that their tests for the actual casts had found insufficient antimony, and had thereby provided a negative result. I go through all this in chapter 4f https://www.patspeer.com/chapter4fcastsofcontention If you can make it through you will know more about this topic than all but a handful... P.S. I wrote this response before seeing your most recent post, in which you make it clear you have taken a look at my chapter. I thank you for your interest.

I have been following the Mantik spiral for decades. He correctly concluded there was a bullet defect on the Harper Fragment. In trying to make everything fit his belief the back of the head was blown out, he placed the Harper Fragment on the occipital bone, which put this defect near the EOP entrance described by Humes. So he claims the Harper fragment is occipital bone and the defect is the entrance defect identified by Humes. He pretty much ignores that this placement means the large defect extended well onto the left side of the head, when the Parkland witnesses had indicated it was on the right side only. And he avoids that the beveling at what he calls an entrance is exit beveling, and that pretty much all if not all the doctors studying the medical evidence claim what he calls an entrance, is an exit. I believe he has indicated as well that the bullet entering near the EOP did not exit, and was found and removed at autopsy. Note: this might be one of Horne's claims that is not shared by Mantik. So... bullet #1 enters near the EOP and does not exit. Well, this leaves him without an explanation for what he claims was the blow-out on the occipital bone. So he claims there was an entrance by the temple that blasted out the back of the head. Now, his placement for this entrance puts it right where I long ago pointed out is the location of the bullet defect on the Harper fragment when the fragment is properly oriented, only to have Mantik and his attack dogs engage in a prolonged attack on my character, which only came to an end when the Wecht family intervened and asked Mantik and I to debate at the 2013 Wecht Conference, where Mantik finally admitted I was correct. (But not for long--I recently viewed a 2021 presentation in which he has returned to making his false claim the bullet defect on the Harper fragment is at the top of the head in the Angel orientation--something he admitted wasn't true back in 2013). In any event... bullet #2 enters near the temple and blows out the Harper fragment...which is kind of weird when you think of it. Wouldn't a bullet creating a large defect create a hole near the middle of that defect, or on bone on the margins of that defect? Mantik cites no hole and no such defect. The only bullet defect he claims for the Harper fragment is the entrance by the EOP. Now here's where things get tricky/stinky. For over 20 years Mantik has been claiming there was a bullet entrance on the forehead. When doing so he has misrepresented the statements of Tom Robinson, who said there was a tiny hole that was not a bullet entrance by the temple, and then later on that there were two or three tiny holes on the cheek. In any event, Mantik has routinely claimed Robinson saw a bullet entrance high on the forehead, that was not observed by others. But no, he has now taken to claiming the spot of blood Marion Jenkins thought he saw by the left temple which was presumed to have confused McClelland was actually a bullet hole on the right forehead. And, If I'm not mistaken, that McCelland had in fact observed this as well, even though McClelland had long-claimed he saw no such wound. Well, it should come as no surprise then that Mantik would encourage Chesser to go to the Archives, and that Chesser would come out claiming there was evidence for an entrance wound high on the forehead on the lateral x-rays that had gone unnoticed and unreported by all the radiologists to view the x-rays...that was not visible on the A-P x-ray in which the forehead is featured. Well, okay, so why was this largely unsupported and unsupportable entrance wound necessary? Well, Mantik had long observed that the "trail of fragments" on the skull x-rays ran pretty much straight across the head, and that was inconsistent with trajectories of BOTH the bullet entering by the EOP and the bullet he presumes entered near the temple and exited low on the skull. So a third bullet was required. I mean, why not, the more the merrier. So where did this bullet exit? Well, he has it exit at the beveled bone on the mystery photo, which, he interprets as existing at the LEFT side of the back of the head--due to his placement of the Harper fragment within the photo. So...yeah, Mantik and Horne claim a bullet entered high on the right forehead (where no credible witness noted a wound) and exit from the left side of the head (where no witness of any kind saw a wound). And that's bullet #3. Well, there's still a back wound and throat wound, which Mantik attributes to separate bullets, with the bullet creating the back wound falling out and the throat wound being caused by a shard of glass created when a bullet passed though the windshield. Now, I tend to agree with the former, but the glass shard theory was debunked decades ago when clear copies of Altgens' photos became available which proved the the crack on the windshield appeared at the time of the head shot, and not at the timeJFK reached towards his throat.

This is just not true. I go through the 11-22-63 statements of the Dealey Plaza witnesses one by one on my website and show how they thought the wound was on the face or right side. And no, none of them were claiming they thought they saw a bullet enter in one place and exit another. They saw an explosion on the skull...on the right side near the face. As far as Bill Newman...please. Bill Newman was on TV claiming the skull exploded by the temple within minutes of the shooting. While he initially pointed to his left temple, he did this because he was holding his kid with his right arm. His wife, moments later, pointed to her right temple. And Bill himself was filmed depicting an explosion from the right temple before he left the studio. The Newmans were looking at the back of JFK's head as he drove past. And yet they saw an explosion on the right side of his head by his ear and failed to see an explosion from the back of his head. And they have repeated this on camera and in person hundreds of times. And that's because no such explosion occurred.

Oswald's work would not entail his moving around the Scott-Foresman boxes unless the items inside were needed for an order. So one might think the DPD and FBI would isolate the orders pulled by Oswald throughout the day and see if any of them involved the items in those boxes, or even neighboring boxes. But they failed to do so. In fact, if memory serves, they even failed to note that the orders on his clipboard were for items on the sixth floor, and gave him a perfectly logical reason to be on that floor...even if Givens was telling the truth when he said he saw him on that floor. As a former warehouse worker I can tell you that there is NOTHING suspicious about Oswald's clipboard being found near the back stairs. An order puller would take a number of orders for a location and grab as much of those orders as he could before going down to drop them off in the shipping department. If heading out to lunch, he would leave his clipboard in the vicinity of where he was to resume work. The discovery of his clipboard by the stairs and elevator then is as suggestive of his innocence as his guilt.

It was a subsequent article. I remembered Griggs' claiming the photo showing the barrel and scope beside the stock and bag was misleading, and I remembered this correctly, but I was wrong about his reasoning--as he said the scope and barrel need not be separated. But I recalled his saying the disassembly of the rifle would mess with the alignment of the scope. And found his saying as much, here: https://docplayer.net/60141044-The-mannlicher-carcano-disassembly-and-reassembly.html

Well, I wrote a book on this topic because, whether or not the tests prove Oswald's innocence, the DPD and FBI's behavior regarding these tests is proof THEY thought they were suggestive of Oswald's innocence, and were scared this would come out. As far as the paraffin (wax) casts, they were taken home by the DPD crime lab employee who'd conducted the tests, and brought back a few days later when the FBI expressed an interest in them. This makes their chain of custody better than average (for this case)...certainly better than the chain-of-custody for the shells.

The paraffin tests were not considered reliable, even in 1963. The NAA tests are considered reliable, even today. But, as to your larger point, yes, you are correct. The tests were performed too late to be conclusive. But there was plenty of gsr on his hands, and he was not believed to have washed his face, so the negative result for antimony on his cheek is undoubtedly suggestive of his innocence. When one takes into account, moreover, that the cheek casts ended up with more barium on the control side of the cheek cast than the side that had been applied to his face, the suspicion someone tried to rig the tests is justified.

Upon double-checking it is clear you are correct in that Griggs didn't say the scope had to be removed. He did say, however, that one couldn't remove the scope and barrel without mis-aligning the scope. "The main metal component consists of the barrel and the firing mechanism. The latter includes the chamber, firing pin, bolt and trigger. For the purposes of this exercise the telescopic sight, permanently screwed to the top of this metal section, can be described as being part of it. It is not necessary to remove the scope when disassembling the rifle. It is inevitable, however, that during disassembly/reassembly, the precise alignment of the scope must be affected. This may be only minimal but nevertheless, it must have an effect."

The possibility exists that Oswald washed his face at the rooming house, and that the gsr on his hands came from the Tippit shooting. BUT... the housekeeper insisted he was in and out and had not visited the bathroom. AND...despite constant claims of as much, it's clear the rifle was not wiped down for fingerprints. Well...it makes little sense for Oswald--assuming he was the shooter--to not wipe down the rifle--when the study of fingerprints at crime scenes was common knowledge--and then turn around and wash his face to remove gsr--when the testing of cheeks for gsr was not nearly as commonplace or well-known--and he had no intentions of getting captured. So, perhaps he got "lucky" on two counts--he washed his face without realizing it might help him claim his innocence--AND no one noticed.

Minor point, Joe. The problematic Hosty notes are clearly a draft for a report, and not notes taken down during the interrogation itself. As this draft would have to have been written within a day or two of the assassination, it still carries some weight. It raises a secondary question, moreover. Bookhout wrote a solo report and a joint report with Hosty, but Hosty wrote no solo report. The notes/draft may very well have been the draft of a report which Hosty wrote, but was destroyed. Just spit-balling here. But the thought occurs that Hosty did in fact believe Oswald had said he'd been outside, and had put this in a report. And that his superiors noticed this, and said well this isn't what Bookhout remembers! And tossed his report. Now, we can recall here that Hosty was severely reprimanded after the WR was out and about, and shipped out of town/basically demoted. And I'm wondering if there's a paper trail within the FBI's records spelling out exactly what he'd done that was so embarrassing to Lord Hoover. We know, for one, that he wasn't supposed to mention Mexico City to Oswald. And we know, for two, that he went behind the backs of his superiors at times. But I'm curious if there's any mention of his writing an inaccurate report or some such thing in his records. Now, I think Hosty actually confronted this issue in his book, and said he tried to get access to his file, but that they'd refused to give it to him, or said it had been destroyed. I don't recall. But the thought remains that there could be some evidence somewhere that he did in fact write a report and that it was then thrown in the trash.

Ian Griggs bought a rifle like the one found in the building, and wrote an article and gave a number of presentations on the disassembly and re-assembly of the rifle. As I recall, Mark, among his findings was that the WC image showing the scope attached to the barrel was deceptive, as the scope would have to be removed from the barrel during disassembly, and added back on during assembly.