Pat Speer

John, the x-rays are incredibly difficult to orient because 1) the A-P (front-back) x-ray was taken with the beam too close to Kennedy's face. As a result his face is distorted by 20% when compared to the back of his head. The other major problem is that the techs couldn't figure out how to prop up Kennedy's head, so they didn't. As a result his head is tilted back at a sharp angle, some will argue by as much as 30 degrees. In my presentation I argue that it was really only 14 degrees.

John, I'm sorry I didn't join the thread a little earlier. I thought BE7 was some new car. I have roughly 30 pages on this in my presentation. (Solving the Great Head Wound Mystery.) I believe I prove that the open cranium ohoto was taken of the back of Kennedy's head, and not his forehead. (You might not be aware of this but this photo is offically of Kennedy's forehead.) As far as Kennedy's body position, I never have fully decided whether he was lying on his left side or whether he was sitting up, a la the testimony of photographer John Stringer. I believed he was lying on his side, but then I noticed what appears to be a pool of blood in the base of his skull, which would indicate he was upright. As far as the head rest or stirrup... the testimony of everyone confirms that the x-rays were taken before the photos. After the x-rays, photos were taken of Kennedy lying on his back, with his head on the head rest. After this was over, they rolled him over and took pictures of his back wound. If you compare the photos of the back wound, and the earlier pictures, you'll notice that the "wing" of bone changes shape. I believe this is because the "wing" of bone fell off or was removed and that what you see in the back wound photo is really a "wing" of scalp. I explain this as well as I can in my presentation. I'm glad to see Dr. Fetzer is following this thread. I hope that he and Dr. Mantik will check out my presentation as well. I believe there was plenty of misrepresentation, but little alteration, of the medical evidence. I hope that they'll agree. I'd like to think that those in the "research community" are more open to new ideas than the mainstream press. I hope I'm not wrong.

While digging through some old editions of the Maryland State Medical Journal, I came across an interview with Dr. Jonas Rappeport, the psychiatrist who testified about Bremer's sanity. When asked if Bremer was part of a conspiracy, he gives a surprising reply (at least for me). He says "Nope, even with all the material Dan Rather collected for the CBS-TV News series on assassination in America, I still don't." Does anyone know what material Rather collected and exposed on this program? Or where we can find transcripts of this program? Another interesting tidbit is that, when discussing Bremer's childhood, he mentions that Bremer had an IQ of 92, but that later, when discussing tests that he personally ran on Bremer, he says he had an IQ of 114, well above average (and roughly the same as Oswald's). This is a tremendous leap! It kinda made me wonder if there wasn't something to this MKULTRA/Manchurian Candidate stuff after all.

I believe Sturgis testified to the Church Committee that he had been asked by his CIA contact (almost certainly Barker) to perform an assassination on U.S. soil, but that he'd refused. If this is true, it would make sense that Barker was himself doing Hunt's bidding. Maybe Gerry can tell us the target. Was it Manolo Ray? Or was this incident years later? In Hunt's testimony, where he discussed Boris Pash, he said something which is to me far more revealing. He said that it had NEVER occurred to him that the CIA did not have a license to kill. Men like Dulles, Helms, Barnes and Hunt went straight from WW2 to the Cold War without blinking. In their minds they were soldiers in a war between good and evil. All gloves were off, and all systems were go.

As I remember, the Anderson article that got him in bad with Nixon and the CIA to the extent they wanted him whacked was about the India/Pakistan war. I believe Anderson revealed we were secretly backing Pakistan, which was very embarrassing to Nixon, who was claiming we were neutral. The ever-dutiful mad dog Hunt convinced himself and Liddy that Anderson's spilling the beans put American CIA agents in Pakistan at risk, and that they should have him killed. They made the plans but never got the go-ahead.

Tim makes a decent point about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because Russo is wrong about some things doesn't mean he's wrong about everything. I spent over two years studying the medical evidence, basically full-time. I learned a lot from Lifton, Livingstone, Weisberg, Donahue, Wecht, Mantik, Aguilar, the McAdams site, the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, the radiology consultants for the HSCA, Lattimer, Myers, Thompson, Humes, Boswell, and Finck. Plus I have no idea how many others, probably hundreds. And I ended up disagreeing with all of them on a number of points. It doesn't mean the men I named weren't credible, or sincere, merely that I disagreed with them on many points. I believe this is the way a consensus will be reached, by people learning from their teachers and expanding upon the knowledge of their teachers. Tim claims he learned a lot from Russo but is not willing to buy the whole Russo line of clothing. Good for him. That's much better than his swallowing Russo's book whole. (That could be painful.) One of the reasons I came to this forum as opposed to some of the others is because it lacked a resident Posnerite...someone who learned everything he knew from reading Posner's book and refused to learn anything else. I didn't want to discuss the case with such men because it was pointless; they had an agenda rather than a sincere desire to learn. I don't see Tim as having such an agenda. I think he would agree that the CIA was behind the killing before he would accept the SBT and insist that a whacked-out commie killed Kennedy on a whim. Thankfully, the era of the Posnerites seems to be coming to an end. The Peter Jennings special may have been their last hurrah. Of course, the premise of this thread is ridiculous. Joan Mellen worked on her book almost as long as Lamar. The timing is just a coincidence. IMO.

The only person who has utilized evidence as "thin as a reed" here is you. Your "nonexistent" case for Castro's culpability (which has since morphed into the slightly more solid case for the Mob's culpability) in the assassination is/was based entirely on could-haves and would-haves. I find it particularly humorous that you fault Garrison's case because his only witness to the overt act of conspiracy was Perry Russo* (leaving aside the other evidence against Shaw). This a good deal better than the smoke from which you constructed your theory. Your thesis that the reason "left-wingers" implicate the CIA in the assassination is to harm the United States is so laughable, I don't know where to begin. So I won't. It speaks for itself. Owen, Tim has already admitted he was joking when he said that John hated the U.S. He was trying to point out how ridiculous it is to take someone's interpretation of a particular incident and attribute it to their world view. Tim has always insisted his views on the assassination are not directly related to his Republicanism. I think he has a valid point. While I believe Tim's proximity to Cuba and the anti-Castro Cuban community has blinded him somewhat to the likelihood of a right-wing conspiracy, I don't think his right-wing views are entirely responsible for his interpretation of the assassination. If they were he'd be in lock-step with Russo and insist Oswald was a legitimate commie sympathizer. Instead, Tim insists Oswald was an undercover U.S. intelligence asset framed by the real culprits.

John, chapter 6 of my presentation will help you, or anyone else interested, make sense of the x-rays. After looking at the things for years, it all began to make sense a few months ago. The x-rays are not faked, and are consistent, and are strong evidence for a second gunman. http://homepage.mac.com/bkohley/Menu18.html JFK: A New Perspective (2005)

Chris, it is intriguing to me that Waldron's scenario has seemed to light so many fires. I'm wondering if the attraction isn't that it clears LBJ and the CIA of any malevolence. The one piece that is an ABSOLUTE CROCK, as far as I'm concerned, is that Bobby Kennedy went along with the cover-up of his brother's death in order to protect the proposed coup. Anyone who's been around grieving people should understand that Bobby and Jackie were in deep shock, the kind of shock that takes months if not years to get over (if ever). If I'm reading Waldron right in that he proposes RFK went along with the Warren Commission cover-up in the name of national security, I must admit I'm skeptical. Pat and Chris: Thank you for these probative posts. Having just read all about the alleged Bobby cover-up in Mellen's book I have been quite saddened by such a prospect: something I always considered disinformation in prior books. Indeed, in 1986, when I read that Bobby and JFk were trying to kill Castro in Henry Hurt's "Reasonable Doubt" I was so incensed that I called "411", got his phone number and we had quite the debate, which continued by mail for months. I have read the closing chapters in "AFTJ" twice now. The first time I did not buy the story Angelo gave to Mellen. But yesterday, after reading at length about Sheridan being sent, allegedly by Bobby, to destroy Garrison-to cover for the get Castro allegations, again attributed to Bobby (and presumably JFK) I jumped ahead to see if Bobby was still portrayed this way in Melen's book. This required reading the last chapter again, and this time the story seemed more compelling. BUT: So what? Does this make it so? One poster here writes that this is "old news" called by a new name, but I find the above two posts more pursuasive. We know that JFK was planning to meet with Castro. We know that the CIA likely overheard this, via wiretaps and it was at total odds with the Agency's plans. We know that JFK and CIA were at war. We know that The Company has produced a number of "authors" to really muddy the waters. It's really back to that old LBJ quote : "Kennedy was trying to get Castro; only Castro got him first" (paraphrased). Now we are to believe this stuff, this time, on the basis of a few interviews? We do have Dick Goodwin, quoting how angry Bobby was to hear that he was "trying to kill Castro". That RFK was in reality the one trying to keep Castro alive. Is Goodwin fabricating? Is his view not instructive here? Dawn ----------------------- The ONLY time that Bobby & Company "backed-off" from hitting Fidel & Company was: When even "non-ex-Fidelista" Manolo Reboso aligned himself with "Harry" in the CONTINOUS ARGUMENTS [by others than just myself] -- and explained that: WITHOUT Fidel & Company, the Soviet Brigade would pull a coup d'etat and thenceforth we would be dealing with a SOLID Soviet satellite !! Too bad you have been fooled by the REAL experts for so long, but you are only one of thousands who have swallowed the tabloid trash about this matter for years. However, don't burn your books yet -- more is yet to come (FORTH) !! Chairs, GPH ______________________ Gerry, this is a strange post. It's well established that the Kennedys were running a carrot and stick game with Castro, trying to get him to jump through a ring of fire and back into the American sphere of influence. It's NOT well established, outside of the tabloid trash gossip of a few discreditable sources, that they had a commitment to whack the beard. It's a matter of historical record--not tabloid gossip--that JFK became quite upset upon hearing of the deaths of Diem and Trujillo. His reaction to Diem's death was even a source of ridicule to the hardened ambassador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge. The Church committee, furthermore, discovered that the state department was undecided about supporting the coup in the Dominican, and that Kennedy called it off after the BOP disaster. Nevertheless, the coup went off, due in part to the fact that the CIA's Tracy Barnes had arranged for rifles to be transferred to the plotters without the state department's knowledge, and without higher approval, and had thus set the wheels in motion months before. The record is therefore that the Kennedys were more moderate in their use of violence and murder than the rest of the government. This is proved once again by the October Missile Crisis, where the Kennedys stared down the Pentagon (and quite possibly saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe). And yet you seem to think that those of us who doubt the Kennedy's blood lust for Castro have been fooled by "experts". You seem to be stating that the REAL Kennedys were out for Castro's blood, yummy-yummy, and were committed to ending his life, even while they were secretly beginning negotiations whereby they would quite possibly receive all they could hope for in Cuba--a liberal democracy. If you honestly believe this I firmly believe that it is you who has been duped. I ask you, who among the anti-Castro community is so sure that the Kennedys were REALLY going to kill Castro? How can they be so SURE the Kennedys were not just playing along and giving them something to do (conveniently getting them out of the country) while the Kennedys were in fact secretly attempting to make peace with Castro? How can they be so SURE? I believe that if anyone within that community is SURE, then they are a xxxx. I suggest you take the names of those that are sure and draw a ring around them. I suggest that within that ring you will find the names of those that should be immediately investigated in order to determine who REALLY killed Kennedy. And it wasn't a commie.

Clark became an enemy of the "establishment" shortly after his run as AG. He took from his experience that most criminals were victims of their environment, and were not innately bad people, and wrote a book about it. This is not what the Nixon Administration, which had come into office with a "tough on crime" agenda, i.e. a "refuse to accept responsibility for the decaying inner cities" agenda, wanted to hear. Nixon and Hoover then teamed up to use their media sources and have Clark painted as a nutty bleeding heart. To everyone's surprise, one would guess, Clark adopted the Nixon/Hoover-commissioned portrait of himself as his self-portrait.

The Lorenz story had significance to the Liberty Lobby trial, and I believe my language was precise in that regard. As for what claims I accept or deny, you wouldn't believe how long the list is of assertions that I have not yet relegated to either category. While Gaeton Fonzi is one of the best, most reliable researchers in the history of the Kennedy assassination matter, I can't think of anyone whose qualifications are the be-all, end-all of discussion. T.C. I don't think Fonzi ever decided one way or the other if there was anything to Lorenz' story. He came to understand that both she and Sturgis were playing a game, and that neither one could be completely trusted. It didn't mean that she was necessarily lying, only that she couldn't be trusted. My question has always been as to why Hunt didn't go after her--after all, her testimony cost him something like a million dollars. The answer should be obvious--because, even if she was lying about Oswald, she knew too much about Sturgis and Op 40 to ever be put on the stand. She could have said Nixon himself pulled the trigger and they wouldn't have pursued her; the woman simply knew too much.

Yes, I'm also aware that Tom Clark was on Jack Halphen's payroll, and that LBJ made Ramsey AG so that Tom would step down. (There would have been a conflict of interest with a Supreme Court Justice hearing cases prepared by his son's Justice Dept.) This freed up space so that LBJ's number one son Fortas could become a justice; LBJ wanted Fortas to replace Warren. Somewhere on the LBJ tapes Johnson complains about Ramsey to...is it Russell? They say something like "I can't believe he's Tom Clark's boy" or something like that, indicating that he was never truly one of "them".

Tim, I would be a lot more comfortable with Russo if he hadn't mimicked Posner and tried to prove the Single Bullet Theory using grossly distorted drawings etc. If he'd have just stuck to Bobby and Castro his book would have carried a lot more weight, IMO. And then there's the strange coincidence that in The Outfit he claims Ruby's buddy Yaras was behind the Cermak hit. From this, I find it hard to believe Russo honestly believes Ruby's involvement was a coinky-dink. If you contact him, I wouldn't be surprised if he's changed his theory once again to incorporate the mob, a la Ultimate Sacrifice.

Spicoli: I've spent two years researching the medical evidence, available here. http://homepage.mac.com/bkohley/Menu18.html JFK: A New Perspective (2005) You need to read what is entitled Chapter 1 before you can discuss the medical evidence, and Ramsey Clark's role in same, without looking like an absolute fool. Please do your homework before you come back to class. Mr. Hand

Lynne, PLEASE do some homework before you drive all the intelligent people away from this Forum. While Jim Garrison MAY have obscured the truth in the Kennedy case, it is a pure unadulterated FACT--not remotely a matter of conjecture-- that Ramsey Clark oversaw two reviews of the Kennedy medical evidence, and that both reviews came to blatantly INCORRECT conclusions, that further obscured the truth in the Kennedy case. It is also a pure unadulterated FACT that the"brave and honest" Ramsey Clark has conveniently forgotten about the January, 1967 review which resulted in the reinterpretation of one of the autopsy photos--that only changed the meaning of all of the medical evidence. Dr. Finck's notes, moreover, indicate this falsification was created by Ramsey Clark's Justice Department. So Ramsey Clark is NOT to be fully trusted. That said, in his various interviews he has been quite forthcoming about Hoover's hatred of RFK, and has been more than outspoken about America's failed foreign policy. It could very well be he's trying to compensate for what he refuses to tell us--that is, what he knows about the JFK assassination...at the very least what he knows about the Johnson Administration's efforts to sell the lone nut theory to the public.

Gerry, I may be in the minority here but I believe MOST of what you say. The one thing that puzzles me, though, is that there seems to be a lack of continuity in what you say. While I'm not the Hemmingologist (thank god) of your pal Weberman, I seem to remember your stating, over the years, that this man and that man, most commonly former associates of yourself, were in Dealey Plaza during the assassination. You now appear to be extremely dismissive of the possibility that any of your former associates in the anti-Castro community could have been involved. You've stated that you feel a lot of people were sent there to murk up the waters, etc. Well, isn't establishing who sent people to Dallas one way of establishing who ACTUALLY DID IT? Have you ever looked at the photos yourself to try and determine who was there? Have you followed this up by asking these men who sent them? If not, why not? You are probably in the best position of anyone on this forum to help solve this thing, and yet you appear disinterested in this key aspect of the case. One possible explanation is that you know who was there, and don't want to stir things up. Another possible explanation is that you don't care. There must be a third explanation but right now it escapes me.

John, before you continue down this road of defending all things Sheehan, you should read this article. Avirgan, on whose behalf the lawsuit was filed, eventually pressed for Sheehan's disbarment. While Sheehan was right about investigating "The Secret Team," he was clearly WRONG in his methods. http://archives.cjr.org/year/93/3/spooky.asp CJR - Big Stories, Spooky Sources, by Chip Berlet

I believe it would be helpful if we could establish some perspective on all this information. Is there anything upon which Tosh and Gerry agree? Is it possible a lot of their 'differences" are simply the by-product of memory erosion? Or is it a pure slam-dunk fact that at least one of them is lying? Gerry, are you willing to accept any part of Tosh's story? Is there anyone who knows both of you, who could help sort this all out? Tosh, can you think of anyone who knew both you and Gerry, who could help set the record straight?

I think you misunderstand Dolce's significance, as did Weisberg. Dolce did not disprove the SBT. In the early discussions he merely voiced his disagreement that a bullet shattering a wrist could exit as undamaged as CE 399. Dr. Light, among others, agreed. Dolce was cut-out of the loop at that point. Dr. Olivier then had a gunner fire shots into ten severed arms, and sure enough, the exiting bullets were all far more damaged than CE 399. Dolce's theory had been proved. But this DID NOT disprove the SBT. To Olivier, and perhaps, more significantly, to Specter, this proved that the bullet shattering Connally's wrist had been traveling at a slower speed than the bullets fired in Olivier's tests. (The damage incurred by a bullet is directly related to the speed it is traveling when it hits bone.) What's significant is not that they disregarded Dolce's comments, but that they failed to test bullets traveling at a reduced speed to see at what speed a bullet striking a wrist might emerge and still look like CE 399. In other words, the tests were designed merely to add credence to Specter's theory, and not to establish fact. If they'd done the proper testing, they may very well have found that there was NO speed at which a bullet could shatter a wrist and emerge unscathed. But those tests have never been done, leaving the door open for the Posnerites and Lattimerites to spew their nonsense. (Both the CBS tests in 67 and the "Beyond the Magic Bullet" tests last year were flawed in their conception--and both failed to simulate a magic bullet.)

Bill, wasn't it New Republic who broke the Daniel story? Are you a disinfo agent? (A JOKE)

I have another point to make on the Christic case. I believe there oughta be a cap on the amount of attorney's fees that can be recouped through summary judgement. Although I am not a lawyer, I believe its blatantly unjust to make someone bringing a lawsuit against a large powerful interest pay for the other side's over-priced lawyers should the case fail to gel. This tactic encourages lawyers to over-charge and discourages people from bringing lawsuits against those already receiving the benefit of high-priced (and presumably superior) counsel. It's a protection for those already protected. There are a lot of reasons why the American Bar Association should be ashamed. I think the deliberate running-up of corporate legal costs to discourage individuals from bringing frivolous (and often times not so frivolous) lawsuits is one of them. I recently attended the final bankruptcy proceeding of my former employer. There was one lawyer there representing the trustee. That was it. The Judge made note that she felt the trustee's awarding 200k to the law firm that handled the chapter 7 filing was grossly excessive. She said she failed to understand how a chapter 7 filing could take 800 man hours at 200 dollars plus an hour. I explained to her that the whole case was a scam from beginning to end, and that I was there to register my complaint that the creditors--including the employees who lost the last several months of their 401k money (which went into the pockets of the new owners of the company)--were given bupkus while the high-priced bankruptcy attorneys hired by the crooks were paid huge amounts for helping to keep the lid on their crime. Her mouth dropped and she had no answers; she was unaware that the FBI, the IRS, and the Dept. of Labor had ever taken an interest in the case; she was unaware that there had ever been a civil suit brought by the bank against the former owners, a suit that was dismissed only when all those involved filed for bankruptcy; she was unaware even that the accountant of my former employer was convicted of keeping two sets of books in an unrelated case and had done time iin a Federal prison. It ain't my yob, she said, and brought down the gavel.

Here's a credible overview of the story: http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/laura.asp Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (Laura)

When Martha Honey was raising money for the appeal, she made an appearance at Cal State Northridge. My girlfriend was friends with the teacher who sponsored the engagement and we spent an evening chatting with her. She was as sincere and as straightforward a person as I've ever met. Her husband was hurt in the bombing and she wanted justice. I've read in several places where she now blames Sheehan for a lot of what went wrong. She believes Sheehan craved attention and used their case to get it. I believe she even accepts the subsequent-to-her-trial discovery that Ortega had hired an Argentinian assassin (as I remember) to plant the bomb. Sheehan is a kind of Garrison-like figure. He went after some big fish in order to draw some attention to the sea they swim in. Problem was, unlike Garrison, who could at least take solace that history has proven Shaw to be a perjurer, the men Sheehan went after probably had nothing to do with the La Penca bombing. Another similarity to the Shaw trial is that, due to the trial's proximity to those surrounding the President, the U.S. Gov. interfered with the case in every way they could. Land of the free, indeed. I have a Christic Institute comic book somewhere. Lots of Secret Team and Enterprise talk. Shackley as Satan, etc. I was skeptical then and even more skeptical now.

My Top Five Books (for today) are: 1. Not In Your Lifetime by Anthony Summers. Gets extra points for constantly updating his work... He really draws a compelling picture of Oswald and the usual cast of anti-Castro Cubans, etc.. 2. Six Seconds in Dallas by Josiah Thompson. The first book to really explore the evidence from a fresh perspective. My own research is in many ways built upon a foundation laid by Thompson. 3. Post-Mortem by Harold Weisberg. Weisberg really deserves a cumulative nomination for all his books. He was the most-in-your-face of the early researchers. He refused to jump at conspiracy theories, choosing instead to focus on the governments obfuscations and misrepresentations. His writing style is admittedly an acquired taste, but he dug up more documents and was a bigger thorn in the side of the government than all the other researchers combined. 4. Someone Would Have Talked by Larry Hancock. A connect the dots approach to the conspiracy pays off, showing how a conspiracy involving the mafia, the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans need not be as big a conspiracy as most would have you believe. Gets extra points for the thousand pages of documents on the accompanying cd-rom. 5. The Last Investigation by Gaeton Fonzi. Gives you an inside look at the HSCA investigation. Needs to be made into a movie. Of course, there are many others. If Robert Blakey were to write a tell-all book about what went on behind the scenes in the HSCA investigation, I would move that to number one.

I'm not sure if you can rightly call having a 40-year reign as a powerful Senator having your career destroyed. That's like saying Byrd's career was destroyed by his Klan ties, or Bush's career was destroyed by his Nazi ties. I was glad to see that Mel's article was fair to Mary Jo, the forgotten victim. There is NO evidence she was morally loose. There is also NO real evidence that Kennedy's drinking caused the accident. It could very well be that things happened pretty much as Kennedy claimed. He took a wrong turn and wham he was in the water... It was his delay in reporting the accident that caused the doubts about his character to linger on... It's interesting that those who smell a rat with the Kennedy accident see nothing mysterious about Laura Bush' killing of her young beau, and those who smell a rat with Laura are frequently quite forgiving of Kennedy. Accidents happen... even to good people.