Pat Speer

At quick glance it looks like you are doubling down on all your nonsense, including that I am a LN. If you'd been following this forum for more than a minute before you decided to fly in and litter it with your propaganda, you'd know that I am long-time CT, who is respected by many on both sides of the fence...because I refuse to swallow and recycle garbage. Now, I'm still waiting... You seem to be one who exists primarily to attack, and pretend everyone who disagrees with you is part of some conspiracy. Since it appears you believe the images have been faked, it appears you believe the photographic evidence has been altered and not the body. Or is it both? In any event, what do you make of Aguilar's dismissal of Horne and body alteration? Do you agree with him that all this talk of body alteration has been a huge distraction? P.S. You owe Clint Hill an apology. It is unfair to claim he changed his opinion about the head wound location, when he continued to use the same words when describing it, and was simply pointing out what he meant. IF he was part of a conspiracy to support the Oswald did it crowd, moreover, he would have said he now accepted the single-bullet theory, or some such thing, and would have described the brain wound as a hole in the brain substance, and not in the manner he did.

She was very much alive at the time. I don't actually know. Is she still with us? In any event, it would have been quite easy for her to put out the word that she thought her words had been misrepresented, if she thought they had been misrepresented. When Max Holland put together that awful program suggesting the first shot was fired before Zapruder started filming, and hit the traffic light, Tina Towner and James Tague both let it be known they thought the premise of the show was horse-poop. If Styles had thought she came downstairs much later than presumed, it seems clear she would have said as much. As it is, she refused to be tied down, and said for all she knew Oswald raced down before her, or raced down after. IOW, she didn't have a clear recollection...50 years after the fact.

I read a book once on the history of Presidential maladies, and it made the point that RFK hadn't lied, technically, as JFK's adrenal insufficiency wasn't technically Addison's, but a related complication. As far as interference at the autopsy... while someone in attendance, not necessarily Burkley, told the doctors to not inspect the neck, there's no evidence anyone told them to not inspect the adrenal glands, which are in the abdomen. So...there's not much support for the family interfering in the autopsy. Of course, that hasn't stopped people from claiming as much. Dr. Werner Spitz, has spread all sorts of nonsense over the years, including that the autopsy doctors mis-remembered the location of the entrance wound because the Kennedy family wouldn't let them cut the hair. But that was just evil nonsense designed to cover up that he and his buddies cut off speculation of a second shooter by pretending the bullet entered near the top of the head, and not 4 inches lower, where it was inspected and observed by numerous witnesses during the autopsy.

There may be some confusion. As I recall, Johnson made the "call" and refused to leave without the President's body, but I don't think he made an actual phone call. He simply told the SS he wouldn't leave without Jackie, as he thought it would look bad if he did, and he knew full well she wouldn't leave without JFK's body. In his book, Valenti cuts through the crud and spells out that Johnson was mostly interested in the body, and not Jackie. In any event, it's clear when one reads the statements of those involved that the SS desperately wanted Johnson to get into the air, but that he refused to leave without the body. And...huh...the SS took the body.

Styles was featured on an episode of America Declassified: JFK Exclusive Access, in 2013. This was broadcast on the Travel Channel. In this episode, she basically served as a stand-in for Adams, i.e. she was there to raise doubts about Oswald's running down the stairs. She wouldn't have done that, IMO, if she was convinced Adams was wrong about the timing of their race down the stairs.

There is a point in the interview where she is discussing the re-enactment that never happened, and says it would have shown whether her actions took five minutes or 30 seconds and a minute. Which I assumed was a weird way of saying ninety seconds. In any event, I took this as her recognizing that for her to beat Baker and Truly to the bottom of the stairs, she would have to have been downstairs within a minute and a half. I don't recall her ever giving an estimate for how long she stayed at the window.

I agree. I don't think I've seen so many images in one post before. I thought there was a limit. As far as the content... Any post arguing that Bill Newman is a back of the head witness is nonsense. I've transcribed numerous interviews of him, and talked to him myself on several occasions, and he is consistent as can be that he was looking at the President as he passed, and saw but one explosion on the President's skull, that was by the ear, essentially where it is in the Z-film. Neither Newman nor his wife saw an explosion from the back of the president's head, even though they were looking right at it. Bobby Hargis, moreover, pretty much said the same thing. He said the skull exploded on the far side of the president's head from him (which would be the right side, where Newman placed the wound) and that brain and blood went up into the air, that he then drove through. Clint Hill also is a problem. Although he said the wound was on the right rear etc, he has for many years pointed out where he means when he says this, and places his hand at the top of his head above his right ear and slightly behind. He has also described the nature of the injury to the brain. He says it looked like someone had taken an ice cream scoop, and scooped out the brain beneath the skull defect. This is not the description of a brain whose back quadrant had been blasted from the skull, etc. And then there's Marilyn Willis, who is presented as a witness for a frontal entrance and an explosion from the far back of the head, even though she viewed the incident from almost a hundred yards behind, and did not see the front of Kennedy at the time, and even though she pointed out on her own skull where she thought there was a wound, and pointed to the top of her head. So...the post is misleading at best, and confusing as heck to boot.

FBI reports don't get into the psychology of the witness. That is not in their training. They write down their words and report their demeanor. That's it. If you choose to believe Akin's latter day words, when they are clearly in opposition to his original testimony, then that's your choice. But there's a reason he is rarely cited as a key witness.

Oh my!!! Are you really saying the FBI was making stuff up and smearing minor witnesses in the 1980's??? Hoover was long dead. Who was overseeing this full-frontal assault on at best a minor witness? If YOU are gonna assume or even claim the FBI was just making all this stuff up about Akin, then YOU need to perform a deep dive, IMO. It sounds like he had an interesting life. If you write a book about him, I'll buy it.

He lost his license. He's changed his name. He's been arrested multiple times, and says he thinks the government has been harassing him since the Kennedy assassination, when he was a minor witness at best. AND, to top it off... He was verbally abusive to the FBI. Even if what he said made perfect sense, he does not sound like a stable man. As he told the Warren Commission he did not see an entrance wound, and as none of the other doctors reported such harassment, ,moreover, it is really very silly to assume he was being harassed for what he told the Warren Commission. There's just no there there. His latter-day statements regarding an entrance wound are not credible.

Yes, thank you, Gary. I thought I'd already said so, but see now I did not. Presumably, I was distracted by my frustration with the tech world. A few months back, my 2 year-old MacBook Pro fizzled and died without any warning. It took me awhile to get all my back up files into the new one. Then, when I went to download your chapter, I discovered that the new one didn't have Microsoft Office, which meant I'd lost access to my many word files and power point files and presentations. I then discovered they'd changed Office from a one-time purchase to a hundred buck a year commitment. Like Bill Gates isn't rich enough!!! Anyhow, I find that kind of stuff extremely upsetting.

Thanks, Sandy. I'm glad you're feeling better. I know what it's like to face low numbers like that. By the time I was finally hospitalized, my hemoglobin was at 4. which some nurses said was the lowest they'd ever seen. At this point, it's unlikely the leukemia will return. But I developed a disease as a response to the stem cell transplant that is also life-threatening. So I will probably be on immune-suppressants from here on out.

Thanks, Chris. That confirms my recollection. He didn't say anything out of line with the others. He didn't get a look at the back of the head, but thought the wound he saw (presumably towards the back of the head) could have been an exit wound. What I didn't remember, however, is that he specified that he did not see an entrance wound. I suspect that's why I never found his latter day claims credible. In looking at Palamara's book, I see there's an FBI memo from 1984 that draws into question Akin's mental state. While one might be tempted to dismiss this as a smear, one should realize no similar memos were created on McClelland, or Crenshaw. It's just hard to believe Akin was seeing things clearly. According to Livingstone, Akin told people Clark saw an entry wound in the temple. Well, this makes little sense. From the very first time Clark spoke on the head wound (the press conference) to the last time he spoke on the head wound (his WC testimony) Clark made clear that he suspected it to be a tangential wound of both entrance and exit. (I have concluded he was correct.) In any event, IF he had seen a temple wound, it seems clear he would have said so at the time. Now, I know some are saying to themselves that his mentioning a temple wound would have indicated a shot from the left and a shooter other than the one from behind. But that was not Clark's concern at the time, as he and Perry had no problem presenting the throat wound as a possible entrance, and the head wound as a tangential wound of both entrance and exit, OR the exit of a bullet entering at the throat. So, no, there was no effort by Clark to support the single-assassin solution, at least not in those first few days.

Greetings, Keven. As a long-time soldier on the battlefield, it was easy for me to spot the point of Gary's article. I hope you spotted it as well. Gary's article was not just to repeat his long-standing claims the head wound as recalled by the Parkland witnesses was inconsistent with the autopsy photos. He has, after all, been recycling this same stuff for decades now. No, his article was designed to spin this fact--that the wounds as recalled were different than the photos--to suggest the photos were faked, and that NO alteration of the body occurred. This has been his stance for decades. And he is re-stating it now to combat the seemingly resurgent tide of Liftonism within the research community. So, yes, his review is both a re-statement of his core beliefs, and a denouncement of the Lifton/Horne wing of the CT party. On what side do you stand? You've been here such a short time, and have spent so much of your energy attacking people like myself, and now Jonathan, that I've yet to figure out what you actually believe. Was the body altered so the photos would reflect the wounds of someone who'd been shot twice from behind? Or were the photos faked to reflect the wounds of someone who'd been shot twice from behind? And, assuming you choose one, or even both, why would body or photos have been faked to show three shots were fired?

Greetings, Keven. As a long-time soldier on the battlefield, it was easy for me to spot the point of Gary's article. I hope you spotted it as well. Gary's article was not just to repeat his long-standing claims the head wound as recalled by the Parkland witnesses was inconsistent with the autopsy photos. He has, after all, been recycling this same stuff for decades now. No, his article was designed to spin this fact--that the wounds as recalled were different than the photos--to suggest the photos were faked, and that NO alteration of the body occurred. This has been his stance for decades. And he is re-stating it now to combat the seemingly resurgent tide of Liftonism within the research community. So, yes, his review is both a re-statement of his core beliefs, and a denouncement of the Lifton/Horne wing of the CT party. On what side do you stand? You've been here such a short time, and have spent so much of your energy attacking people like myself, and now Jonathan, that I've yet to figure out what you actually believe. Was the body altered so the photos would reflect the wounds of someone who'd been shot twice from behind? Or were the photos faked to reflect the wounds of someone who'd been shot twice from behind? And, assuming you choose one, or even both, why would body or photos have been faked to show three shots were fired?

Jones has made it clear in numerous interviews that he didn't get much of a look at the wound, and really just saw a mass of bloody hair. He is not a conspiracy theorist as far as I know. He, among many, has continued to claim the throat wound looked like an entrance, however. As far as Akin, my recollection is that he said nothing controversial for 25 years or so after the assassination. I don't remember his precise story, to be honest. But I know he was not in a position to notice wounds not observed by others, at Parkland or Bethesda. If he thought he saw something important in 1963, moreover, he should have written it down. Because coming forward decades later and claiming you saw a wound nobody else saw, that is not apparent on the autopsy photos or x-rays, is not gonna convince anyone serious about the case, IMO. I mean, I don't remember the exact numbers, but studies have shown that roughly twice as many people claimed they'd attended the Woodstock Music Festival than actually attended. This is just human nature...exaggerating one's place in history...placing oneself closer to famous events. Heck, we should suspect that if a similar study had been performed in the Dallas area in 1973, it would have reflected a similar disparity, and shown that far more people had claimed to watch the motorcade than had actually watched the motorcade, and far more women had claimed to smile at JFK and have him smile back, than could fit into a stadium. So it wouldn't surprise me a bit if Akin exaggerated his role, and juiced up his story to make it more exciting... That's pretty much par for the course.

So??? When saying I don't rely upon someone, it is implicit that I don't rely on them when coming to conclusions. But do I rely upon them when making arguments that prove the hypocrisy of others? Of course, I do. Certain someones have been using the statements of the Parkland witnesses, which are admittedly at odds with the statements of other witnesses, as well as the photographic evidence, to claim the low back of the head was blown out. And this is a con. The majority of these witnesses did not place the wound low on the back of the head. And it's bizarre that I should have be subjected to these attacks, year after year, for saying what most everyone knows is true. Let's go back to kindergarten. The teacher asks "How many of you kids would like me to read The Cat in the Hat?" Five kids say yes. She then asks "How many of you would like me to read Goodnight Moon?" Five kids say yes. And then asks "How many of you would like me to read "Hippos Go Berserk!"? Five kids say yes. She then says since you voted for Hippos Go Berserk? by a score of 10 to 5, I'm gonna read Hippos Go Berserk!" Three of the five kids who'd voted for "Hippos Go Berserk then say, but no, we've changed our minds! Please read the Cat in the Hat!" Only she then wakes up five kids from their nap and says "Well, what do you think? You want me to read Hippos Go Berserk!, right?" And they say "sure". And she then says "By a score of 15 to 5, Hippos Go Berserk! wins!" And begins reading the book. It's a con. And you don't have to be a fan of The Cat in the Hat or Goodnight Moon to see it.

I had the same impression as Matt...that the program's creators were bending over backwards to avoid mentioning anything that might fuel talk of conspiracy. But I take exception to one paragraph in Matt's review. He writes: "Strangely, when we get to Parkland Hospital, zero of the treating staff are interviewed for the program. Did they not interview these people because they have been insistent since day one that the President was shot from the front? They could’ve interviewed Dr. Ronald Jones, who’s still very much alive. Dr. Jones said in 1983: “If you brought him in here today, I’d still say he was shot from the front.” Well, yikes, this is misleading. Not one of the Parkland doctors, outside perhaps Crenshaw, took a look at the wounds and "insisted" that the President was shot from the front. What he should have written was that the Parkland staff thought the wounds gave the appearance of having been inflicted from the front. That's not the same. Doctors and nurses (and unfortunately I now know a bunch of them) might insist on the accuracy of what they saw, but know far better than to insist on the accuracy of what they have come to believe at a quick glance. That was Jones' point: that it LOOKED like the shot or shots had come from the front. He would never insist that they had come from the front. That's not his role. And for good reason. Any emergency room doctor insisting their first impression is correct should be fired immediately, as they are a threat to their patients. I know this from personal experience. I was feeling quite weak and went into an urgent care facility. The doctor said I had an upper respiratory infection, and that I would get better with a few days' rest. But I didn't recover with rest. A few days later I contacted my normal doctor. This was during the COVID scare so he would only meet me over ZOOM. After going through my symptoms, he concluded I had a heart condition and referred me to a cardiologist. The cardiologist wouldn't see me for two weeks. I called back after two days and said I was getting worse. His secretary then said well I can move you up to ten days from now. The next day I could barely walk to the bathroom without fainting. So I agreed to go to a local hospital. After sitting outside for hours taking COVID tests, etc, they finally let me in. One doctor said she thought I had internal bleeding. She did a quick check and ruled out a lower GI leak. Then another doctor jumped in and said it must be an upper GI leak. And scheduled an elaborate procedure where he sent a camera down my throat for the next day. I was extremely weak, and could barely move without assistance. And yet they refused me food and water for 19 hours in preparation for this procedure, which was to be performed because this doctor had a gut feeling, literally. Of course, he was wrong. This procedure revealed no internal bleeding. So they went back to the first thought, and were going to release me and bring me back in a few days for a more elaborate procedure involving my lower GI. But then another doctor called me and said he'd had a look at my bloodwork and that he suspected I actually had leukemia. I was then transferred to a cancer hospital;, where they performed more tests. And determined that yessiree I had leukemia. So what's the point? If any of the first four doctors involved in my treatment had insisted that their first impressions were right, and I believed them, I would have died. Doctoring involves much guesswork. And no one knows this better than doctors. Which leads them to routinely defer to experts. And who are the experts regarding the exact cause of death, and the nature of gunshot wounds, and so on? Not emergency room doctors. Not surgeons. Forensic Pathologists. Now it's true that Finck was the only Forensic Pathologist at Bethesda and that he arrived there a bit late. But that doesn't change the fact that doctors are trained to defer to pathologists, and wouldn't insist on anything that can be contradicted by an expert.

What the??? I have never attacked McClelland as a person, nor as a doctor. In fact, I have said mostly nice things about him. By all accounts he was a nice guy, a pleasant person. Now contrast that to what some prominent writers and members of this forum have said of McClelland's friends: Perry, Carrico, Jenkins, and Baxter. These men have been vilified as gutless XXXXX, or even as participants in the assassination, One prominent member on this website, who left after I exposed him as a fraud, even started a thread in which he garnered substantial support, in which he made out that Perry had actually finished JFK off or some such thing. I have pointed out, since I first joined this forum, that experts of all kinds are humans, and prone to mistakes. I discuss the possible motives of those who are clearly wrong on my website, and almost always assume they are just mistaken, and not part of some plot. I remain one of the few if not the only researcher to study human cognition as well as the assassination, to help evaluate the value of eyewitness statements, and to understand why witness recollections evolve. So what have I done...to earn such hatred? Does pointing out that McClelland mentions but one wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report, explode your world or something? If so, I'm not sure why. It's very simple. Many if not most will say the initial reports are the most important. McClelland mentioned but one head wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report. A few days later, moreover, he assured Richard Dudman, who suspected shots had been fired from the front, that there was nothing about the head wound to indicate a shot had come from the front. A few weeks after that, a magazine article was published which quoted the Parkland Doctors' reports. For this article, McClelland's description of the one wound he mentioned was changed from being of the left temple to being of the right side of the head. He was almost certainly behind this change. But then, months later, in his testimony, he began echoing the statements of others, and described a wound on the far back of the head. Now some would have us believe that his months-after-the-fact testimony is the most reliable. But that reveals their hypocrisy. They reject Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, and Baxter's latter-day statements because they changed their impressions after being exposed to the photographic record. But refuse to reject McClelland's secondary statements after he was exposed to the reports of his fellow doctors. That's a double-standard, and a clear sign of cognitive dissonance, IMO.

Are you okay? I ask because you claim you've read my chapters on the head wounds. If you actually had done so, you'd know that I provided a much more extensive list than Gary, and actually discussed what they said. Despite your assertion, I do not rely upon the witnesses who changed their minds. The conclusion spelled out in my chapter, and repeated ad nauseam on this website, is that the statements of the Parkland doctors are not as consistent as some would have you believe, and that when one takes into account the Dealey Plaza witnesses and Bethesda witnesses, it seems clear the head wound was not as depicted in the "McClelland" drawing. I have never claimed the witnesses taken as a whole prove the authenticity of the photos. Never have. Never will. I have concluded the photos are legit, however, but not because of what witnesses have said. They are legit because they don't show what we've been told they show--by both sides in the LN/CT divide. They absolutely do not reflect the wounds of someone receiving a full-metal jacketed bullet to the head, that enters near the EOP and exits from the top of the head. Now, does it make sense that the "guvment" would go to great lengths to fake something that doesn't depict what it is purported to depict? No. It does not.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "quality". I thought you meant quality as in quality ice cream or quality movie. If you had something less subjective in mind, and have a precise criteria for the witnesses you find credible, please let us know. Perhaps you should start a thread on what you call "quality" witnesses. You can present them, one by one, and I will add information to help the readers assess their quality, And the readers can decided for themselves.

What kind of nonsense is this? You think the decades-after Parkland employees are "quality" witnesses? Says who? Says you? Because you want to believe them? IF you actually did any research, you'd know that the accuracy of witness recollections degrades over time. And you would also know that people who've seen lots of car crashes, or lots of gunshot wounds, etc, are more likely to make mistakes when recalling the specifics of a particular car crash or gunshot wound, due to their exposure to many car crashes and gun shot wounds etc. Because their mistaken recollection will feel more "familiar" to them than to someone who has never seen a car crash or a gunshot wound before. And, heck, if you'd actually paid attention, you'd realize most of the latter-day witnesses saw JFK for but a few seconds, and made no notes, and failed to file a report or give an interview for decades afterwards, and only came forward after being contacted by someone with an agenda. These are not "quality" witnesses. Far from it.

I think you meant "after being accused of being part of a conspiracy". And you are correct.

Sorry, Sandy, but your very words prove you to not be who you think you are.

Oh my!!! Your hypocrisy knows no bounds!!! You just admitted you only accepted the recollections of a select group of witnesses, whose only qualification was that you liked what they said...They didn't have to have been a doctor. They didn't have to have viewed the wounds for more than few seconds. And they didn't have to have written anything down or have been interviewed in the days/years/decades after the assassination. All they had to do was say what you liked at one point or another and then have refused to change their recollection if shown a photo in contradiction to what they recalled. That is the very definition of cherry-picking.