Pat Speer

I'm not convinced he left by the front door, if that's what you're getting at. But it's certainly possible he left by that door and walked right past everyone while they were looking the other way. My own theory, based upon re-reading all the TSBD employee and DPD statements and testimony, is that he encountered Shelley as he went outside. This is discussed in my Pinning the Tale on the Oswald chapter. Shelley said he was told to watch the elevator. People ASSumed he was talking about the rear elevator. But he also said he took an officer upstairs, and this officer was obviously Sawyer, who said he was taken up in the front elevator to the fourth floor. In any event, the timing works out where Oswald's purported departure by the front stairs puts him in front of the elevator just before Sawyer's arrival. In such case he would have walked past Shelley and maybe even said something to him, before leaving. Shelley, we should recall, ran over to look at the activity in the train yards before running back into the building to call his wife. It follows then that he did not believe the shots came from the building. If Oswald had said to him "I'm going outside to see what's going on," he would have said "Fine!" It could be, even, that Oswald asked Shelley if he could leave, and Shelley said "Why not? We're not gonna be able to resume work!" So, yeah, go..." But we'll never know. And yes, I think it's possible Shelley lied about this encounter, when he said it never happened. I mean, think about it. Admitting as much would make him a suspect, and lead people to point fingers at him for the rest of his life. He wouldn't have wanted that.

So you believe Prayer Man is not Oswald. Shocking. Because you believe he was elsewhere on the steps. Even more shocking.

Merry Christmas. But you're just wrong. I have always stressed the need to look at the big picture--at all the evidence. In this case we have a theory that a man was standing out in public. So...are there any photos of this man out in public? There is a blurry image which sorta looks like him, but is far from conclusive. So...are there any witnesses to his being in the location of the blurry image? No, there are a number of witnesses who claimed to be standing near where the blurry person was standing, and none of them reported this man standing there, and several said flat out that they did not see him standing there. So...are there any reports or testimony to indicate he was standing there? Sorta. A draft of a report written by one of the half dozen men to interview this man has a vague phrase that suggests he was indeed outside, but does not specify exactly where he was standing. This draft, moreover, is contradicted by the notes of this man, and the notes, statements, and testimony of a number of others. You have like two pieces to a puzzle that would need 50 pieces before you could claim what it shows. And yet some think they have a smoking gun. Pareidolia...

Who was his supervisor? The ARRB's interview of McMahon says he was the head of the color lab.

Actually the inverse is true. The desperation with which certain people cling to prayer man etc is far more cringeworthy. Having spent time with FBI agents, I know it to be entirely possible Hosty misunderstood or misremembered something Oswald said, or worded it incorrectly in the draft of a report. But it remains possible Oswald did indeed say he was outside, and that there was a cover-up after he said this. Possible, but not likely. Consider...one possibility has one man recollecting something incorrectly OR jotting it down incorrectly in a draft of a report. While the other possibility has numerous people, including this man, engaging in a cover-up for decades. Hmmm... Most people would assume the first possibility is more likely, but some people not only assume the second possibility is more likely, they claim it as a fact. What? I've been watching the growth of the prayer man cult since it was a baby. And it all comes down to that blurry film frame, doesn't it? Pareidolia (/ˌpærɪˈdoʊliə, ˌpɛər-/;[1] also US: /ˌpɛəraɪ-/)[2] is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. It is a type of apophenia. Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, seeing faces in inanimate objects, or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon rabbit. The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing voices (mainly indistinct) or music in random noise, such as that produced by air conditioners or fans.[3][4]

The truth may be in the middle. In my quick glance at McMahon's interview. something stood out. NPIC did not have the capability of copying films, as they normally worked with photos or frames. So the thought occurred that the film was taken to Hawkeye Works for copying, and then taken to NPIC. I remember reading somewhere that some prominent people had their own personal copies of the film. Well, that could be it. The film was copied at Hawkeye Works and distributed to some VIPs.

The thread I linked to from 2009 or so says it was Lifton who first discussed Hawkeye Works in Pig on a Leash. He may have gotten this from Horne, who was yet to publish. P.S. You are correct about my bias. In 2013, in a breakout session at the Lancer Conference, Aguilar, Mantik, Thompson, myself and maybe 15 others bombarded James Jenkins about the head wound. Jenkins insisted under repeated questioning that the skull was damaged at the back of the head but intact beneath the scalp. Mantik then contacted Horne about this session, and within a day or two Horne put up an online article stating that Jenkins had said the autopsy photos weren't precisely as he remembered, and then presented this is as proof the back of the head was blown out...PRECISELY what Jenkins said was not true. And then there's the new film on what the doctors saw. Jenkins repeats his belief there was a bullet entrance by the ear. Horne then jumps in and says he is describing a bullet hole high up on the forehead, where ding ding ding...it just so happens he, Mantik and Chesser have taken to claiming a bullet entered. Well, heck, Jenkins said no such thing, and has specifically ruled out such an entrance in his book and in interviews. So, no, I don't trust anything Horne comes up with anymore...

1. In your scenario the NPIC boards in the record were made from an altered original, correct? And yet they don't show the sprocket holes and ghost images. These boards were never supposed to be seen by the public. So why do they not show the complete image, only available on the original? 2. In this scenario, the three copies made for Zapruder in Dallas would have to have been rounded up and re-copied, correct? As Life messed up and damaged the original, and Groden's SS copy is undamaged, these would have to have been collected and re-copied within weeks of the assassination. Is there any evidence this happened? As Hoover's FBI was in an undeclared war with the CIA, it seems certain there would be some memo or notation somewhere within its files indicating that their copy of the film was borrowed by the CIA. No such memo exists, correct? 3. It seems to me this whole Hawkeye Works bit has been built on the statements of Brugioni, who was what? In his 80's? when he came forward with he said he saw a different film, or does he even say that? No, let me guess... his decades later memory of the film he was showed wasn't precisely in line with the film, and Horne took from this because that's how he rolls that he must have been shown a different version of the film. Well, what kind of methodology is that? Let's ignore the paper trail and the statements of dozens of others so we can embrace the decades-later recollections of one old guy who suggests something spicy. Let's not forget Joe O'Donnell, who told Horne and the ARRB that he was shown the autopsy photos and they were different, naturally, and was then propped up by Horne in his book, naturally. EVEN THOUGH he'd also told Horne that he had shown the Z-film to Jackie, and that the two of them had edited it there in Washington, and EVEN THOUGH it had since come out that O'Donnell had been suffering from dementia back to when he spoke to the ARRB, and had developed an obsession with the Kennedys and had taken to claiming he'd taken many iconic photos of them which he had not taken, and had even sold copies of these photos which he had not taken in galleries. All this, and yet Horne still found him credible. Incredible! P.S. I don't see anything in your post about the origin of the "Hawkeye Works" angle. I recall Lifton and Fetzer discussing it on this forum, and remember it as something Lifton had pieced together and Fetzer had promoted. But I will stand corrected if it was Brugioni who first brought it up, when speaking to the ARRB? Do you know where it came from? P.P.S. A quick google search brought me this old thread in which Tink, Fetzer, Lifton and others, including myself, discuss Z-film alteration. Within it, it is mentioned that Hawkeye Works was something mentioned by Homer McMahon, and that Lifton looked into it and concluded it was where the Z-film was altered. https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/15166-fetzer-lifton-channel-doug-horne-truly-or-falsely/ P.P.P.S. Another quick google search, shows that in 1997 McMahon mentioned that he was told the film was brought to him by Bill Smith from Hawkeye Works. This jives with Horne's theory. But he also says that he and Hunter prepared the boards with a third man, who he does not name since this man is still employed at NPIC, which seems an obvious reference to Brugioni. If so, well, then, Brugioni worked on the same boards as the others and his latter day belief he was shown a different film and did not work with the others, etc, is nonsense.

Three quick points. 1. Mantik had told and allowed people to believe that the white spot on the lateral x-ray had been added to conceal a blow-out wound on the back of the head. When I started pointing out that the white spot did not extend to the far back of the head, he clarified that the white spot did not conceal missing skull on the side of the head, but missing brain near the back of the head. He then began claiming that the skull at the far back of the head was indeed missing, but it was imperceptible to the naked eye and only apparent from studying the OD measurements. (I suspect you agree this is nonsense.) In any event, you can't cite Mantik as support for the x-rays being altered to hide a wound on the back of the head when he has written books claiming there is such a wound on the x-rays. 2. What early statements claiming the body arrived without a brain? I hope you don't mean Custer, who recognized the x-rays in which brain is apparent once shown the originals. These x-rays were taken at the beginning of the autopsy, moreover, after Humes asked some of the staff to leave. There is no record of his asking people to leave numerous times, nor of his re-closing the skull after inserting a brain so he could open it up again in front of Jenkins etc and remove a substitute brain. 3. The primary source for the brain's coming out quite easily is Jenkins, who simultaneously maintains that no pre-autopsy surgery was performed at Bethesda. You can't use Jenkins to suggest Humes performed pre-autopsy surgery when Jenkins insists that he was there the whole time and no such thing happened. 4. The damage to the underside of the brain, which was described by Humes and others, even Chesser, is not shown in the drawing published by the HSCA, which is a view from above. No view of the underside has ever been made available. This may not be a coincidence, moreover. The HSCA pathology panel were all colleagues and cronies of the Clark Panel's Fisher, who "moved" the entrance wound to the top of the head. Any damage to the underside of the brain would have undercut his conclusion along with the HSCA's intended rubber-stamp of the single-assassin conclusion. So we can suspect that the HSCA's failure to present a drawing of the underside of the brain was not an oversight, but a deliberate omission.

FWIW, while I am fairly certain he's never weighed in on this issue, I've been told by people close to John Newman--who knows the paper trail better than anyone--that he feels certain the real Oswald was in Mexico when he was purported to have been there. Now, that doesn't mean he did everything he is purported to have done. That's a different ballgame.

So Brugioni did not work at Hawkeye Works, and there's no evidence the film was ever taken to Hawkeye Works, right? So I am correct in that Lifton figured out there was a CIA lab called Hawkeye works and "guessed" that the film was taken there. Is that right? If not, well, then, where is the evidence it was taken there? I am sorry to be a pain but a lot of this stuff was debunked by Thompson years ago. As stated, the supposedly top expert on the Z-film embraced by Fetzer in the Z-film hoax book dismissed Lifton and Horne's musings. As I recall, moreover, the problem with the editing this out and editing this in theories is that there are ghost images on the far side of the sprocket holes that connect the frames together, and that these are only viewable on the original film, not the FBI and SS copies. Well, guess what, the NPIC storyboards fail to have the sprocket hole images, because, because, they never had the original film. I think that's one of Groden's points, by the way. Somewhere somehow he received a copy of the SS copy, which had all the frames as none were stupidly cut off by Life. And this film matched up precisely with the intact frames of the original as published by the WC.

Excuse my confusion... Are you claiming Brugioni worked at Hawkeye Works? Because I'm pretty sure Hawkeye Works was something cooked up by Lifton and that there's no evidence the Z-film was taken there... To my recollection Brugioni worked at the NPIC, which studied the SS's copy of the film on behalf the CIA. As I remember it, the Rockefeller Commission obtained the charts created by Brugioni, which he decades later disavowed, claiming the film shown to him was a different film or some such thing. Am I incorrect in my recollection? P.S. The star expert for the Zapruder film is fake crowd was for many years John Costella. He was at one time a member of this forum. In any event, Costella concluded the film was either entirely real or entirely fake, and that no edits were performed to hide a limo stop, etc. Now here's what you may not realize...that when Fetzer started buddying up to Horne and pushing Horne's theories of mass alteration to hide this and conceal that, etc, Costella walked away from it all and even said things indicating he thought Horne was a disinformation agent designed to make the research community look stupid. In sum, then, you might want to read what Costella has written on the Z-film before embracing Horne's theories.

I understand your reasoning. But here are some problems. 1. Everyone who's studied the post-mortem x-rays and compared them to JFK's pre-mortem x-rays has agreed they are of the same skull.. 2. The autopsy report notes that the lining at the top of the brain which holds it in place was torn and loose. (This in itself is telling, as it designates the supposed exit location as an entrance.) In any event, the brain would thereby slump back in the skull when JFK was on his back. 3. The statements about the brain being gone are almost always made in conjunction with the skull defect being massive. It's clear then. that these men were describing the wound as seen after the skull defect was enlarged and the brain removed. Jenkins, of course, is an exception, in that he was right there when the brain was removed. He said he thought the brain appeared to be small and that Humes made a comment about how easily it came out. Well, heck, this is interesting. But it more logically suggests the underside of the brain was damaged and torn from its moorings than it suggests the skull wound was expanded, the brain removed, another brain inserted, and the skull wound closed back up before the brain observed and handled by Jenkins was removed. Dr. Humes did not normally remove brains, after all. That job was usually performed by an assistant, such as Jenkins. Secondly, the brains removed by Humes were not gunshot victims, where the moorings of the brain had been torn. So his commenting on the ease with which he removed the brain need not be a reference to body alteration, etc. 4. Dr. Mantik, one of the heroes of the alteration crowd, says the x-rays are deceptive and that they actually DO show the back of the head to be missing. Does that change your impression at all? Or do you agree with the likes of...well, me...that he is blowing smoke?

So...are you acknowledging the autopsy photos showing the face are legit? Or are they of someone else also? P.S. Mantik claims the x-rays are of JFK., but that they've been altered. Is there any foundation to your guess they are of someone else?

I don't remember his name, David, but the American who put together Nechiporenko's book spoke at the 2013 Bethesda conference. He came across as credible, IMO. As a good capitalist, he saw an opportunity to make a buck after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His angle--fly to Moscow and sign up former KGB agents to tell their stories. Well, he met with a number of them, and described them as mostly bitter old vodka drinkers, as I remember. In any event, he met with Kostikov and others who could confirm Nechiporenko's story, and said they all backed him up. He said, furthermore, that he was hoping they'd tell him something sexy, and was kind of disappointed when they did not. That's the way I recall it, anyhow. His presentation is probably available somewhere. FWIW, I was sitting with John Judge during this presentation. As I recall Judge was a bit mystified by what he had just witnessed. I remember talking with him afterwards and him expressing some disbelief, but I can't remember if he thought the man himself was some government shill, or that the former KGB agents had obviously lied to him. I think it was the former. But can not swear to it.

Oh my. Kelley may have made a mistake. But it's a mistake that was repeated by Myers and your hero dozens of times even though they should have known it wasn't true. They didn't say the seat was 6 inches in from the outside of the limo or whatever you're saying. They said Connally's seat was 6 inches inboard of the door. And that's just no true. From Chapter 12c: In Myers' defense ( I can't believe I'm doing this) it's clear he's in a trap. He can't admit his "mistake" without risking all he's worked for. He sold his animation to large entertainment corporations under the assurance it was accurate. He then snowballed this success to become a semi-visible ghost writer for Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History. In the acknowledgments section, in fact, Bugliosi writes "no one helped me as much as Dale Myers, the Emmy Award-winning computer animation specialist...Dale helped me in the writing of several sections of Book One." Included in Book One is Bugliosi's section on the single-bullet theory. Not surprisingly, he (or Myers) condemns conspiracy theorists for assuming that Connally was sitting directly in front of Kennedy by writing "In fact, Connally's jump seat not only was situated a half foot inside and to the left of the right door, but also was three inches lower than the backseat." This assertion has a footnote. As one might guess, it refers back to the inaccurate testimony of Thomas Kelley on June 4, 1964. Such a mistake would be bad enough, but Bugliosi ended up compounding this mistake during the 2007 promotional tour for his book. In appearance after appearance, from a video interview put online in April 2007 through the many interviews that followed, Bugliosi accused conspiracy theorists of telling an "unbelievable lie" when they depicted Connally sitting directly in front of Kennedy on drawings designed to discredit the single-bullet theory, and then told his audience, over and over, the all-too believable lie that Connally was actually "seated on a jump seat 6 inches in from the door." By 8-20-07, Bugliosi was still engaging in this embarrassing regurgitation of misinformation. On that day, he echoed his earlier statements and told George Mason University's History News Network: "If you start with an erroneous premise, everything that follows makes a heck of a lot of sense. The only problem is that it is wrong. There’s no question that Connally was not seated directly in front of Kennedy in the presidential limousine. He was seated to his left front. I have a photograph in Reclaiming History showing exactly where they were seated, and right along side of it I show sketches that they put in conspiracy books, [with Connally] right in front and the bullet is making a right turn and a left turn. But he was seated to [JFK’s] left front in a jump seat a half-foot in so the orientation of Connally’s body vis a vis Kennedy’s was such that a bullet passing on a straight line, through Kennedy, would have no where else to go, except to hit Governor Connally." Bugliosi died in 2015. One can only wonder then if anyone ever told him his defense of the single-bullet theory was based in large part on the "erroneous premise" the jump seat was 6 inches inboard of the door.

No, Nalli is a wanna be Lattimer or Haag. He'd tell you the moon is made of cheese if it would make Oswald the lone assassin.

Thanks for the encouragement. At one point I was pretty much the only person with copies of the notes on the NAA tests obtained by Weisberg. I added a chapter to my website reporting what was in them. A European scientist--egads I forgot his name--wrote a wikipedia article about it. The gatekeepers at wikipedia (I seem to recall that someone figured out who they were and that they were all devotees of the late great John McAdams) then contacted me to ask me my source. I explained that Harold Weisberg brought a FOIA case against the FBI and AEC that was settled when they bombarded him with a mountain of notes and papers, and that his papers were now at Hood College, which had made me copies for a price. I told them that I would gladly supply them with a copy of the disc I'd acquired if they wanted to double-check what I'd written. Instead, they wanted to know why what I'd reported wasn't in the Warren Report or Bugliosi's book. I was like wtf??? and tried to explain to them that I'd researched this part of the case precisely because the Warren Commission and Bugliosi et al had not researched this part of the case. They then thanked me for my candor and deleted the article created by the European scientist. In any event, I felt so bad about this scientist getting screwed over by wikipedia that I've pretty much avoided contact with those outside the "community." But you're right. That's got to change.

There is a doctor within the research community who has read chapter 16b (on the history of wound ballistics and the likelihood the large head wound was a tangential wound) and 16c (on JFK's brain injuries and the evidence suggesting they depict an impact at the top of the head). He was impressed. He has been trying to get some of our prominent friends to follow suit, who said they would, but are just too busy, etc. Some of my material, for that matter, was supposed to be included in a group presentation on the 60th, but those involved decided tackling new material was too challenging, and essentially repeated what they've been saying for years and even decades. (I have been told that the presentation in which some of my work was incorporated may eventually appear online. We'll see...) So I think you're right. It's time I move on and seek the input of "experts" outside the research community. It's such a minefield, however, that I suspect few will have an interest.

FWIW, the brain weight problem has been greatly exaggerated. As the weight was not written down until after the brain had been infused with formalin, which would add 10-20% or more to the weight, the "1500 " should not be compared to normal brain weights obtained at autopsy. Instead, an approximate weight of 1200-1300 pre-formalin is likely. As roughly half the right cerebrum was reported to be missing, this would suggest JFK's intact brain would have been around 1500 or more. So it seems possible the 1500 did reflect the weight of the brain at the supplemental autopsy. I have talked with Aguilar about this extensively, and this led me to conclude otherwise, however. I now suspect the brain weighed less than 1500 gm at the supplemental autopsy, but that someone rounded up or maybe even just made up a number they thought sounded good. Why? This was the President. His brain had been blasted. It may have seemed disrespectful to record how much had been removed by the blast. Consider...if a president or prominent figure had been beheaded, and they couldn't find the head, would they put the height of his torso down as his height? It's doubtful. Or if someone gets blown up and they only find the top half...would they put down the height or the weight for the half recovered? Or approximate the height and weight of the entire body? I don't know. It could go either way. In any event, it's clear to me there was no conspiracy behind the 1500. Well, how do I know? Because if "they" had thought it important to lie about the weight, they would also have thought it important to lie about the damage to the brain. A detailed study of JFK's brain injuries, such as performed in chapter 16c: Brain Exam, demonstrates, to a scientific certainty, that JFK was not killed in the manner proposed by the WC...or HSCA. There is no passage for a bullet heading from low to high within the brain. There is instead a groove within the brain from front to back, starting further back on the brain than where the HSCA said the bullet entered, and continuing further forward from where they said it exited. There are also multiple injuries to the mid-brain best explained by a powerful blow to the top of the head. And the dura was torn loose at the top of the head, which only happens at entrance, not at exit. ALL signs are that the fatal impact occurred at the supposed exit location, and not the small entrance by the EOP. And that's not the only problem. The supplemental exam also made note of damage to the underside of the brain. As this damage in no way correlates with the damage inches above, the brain exam performed by Humes et al actually suggests two brain injuries, not one. So, no, I don't buy that this was all part of a conspiracy to make us think there was but one shot to the head. Sorry.

You are correct in that it's difficult to determine exactly what happened. But the WC and HSCA pretended to know what happened, and what they claimed is certifiably false. To make the SBT trajectory work, the WC pretended the back wound was inches higher than its actual location, and that JBC's seat was 6 inches inboard of the door, when it was actually 2 1/2 inches... To make the SBT work, the HSCA pretended JFK was leaning forward at the time of the SBT shot, and that Oswald connected on this shot while point aiming, that is, not actually holding the rifle up to his eye. They couldn't get the SBT to work. So they lied.

If I recall it was more complicated than that. Much as the Detroit paper, Life had acquired a bootleg copy of the photo from ??? They wanted to publish to cut others off from publishing, and avoid a lawsuit should it be determined Marina had the rights. So they bought the rights to the photos, as I recall. Which effectively prohibited others from publishing them. Oh, that Life. Always trying to get a leg up on their competitors. This is all a bit fuzzy, so I apologize in advance should I be confusing the rights to the photos with the rights to Oswald's diary, or some such thing.

There is an interesting book entitled The Manchester Affair which tells the story of the book and the problems with its release. There is also a July 1967 article by Edward Epstein in Commentary Magazine that fills in a lot of the blanks, including that it was originally entitled The Death of Lancer, and used LBJ as a metaphor for the world JFK was fighting against. RFK and JBK were supposedly horrified, as it raised the question of LBJ's involvement, and LBJ knew it, and was telling everyone they needed to unite behind him because Bobby was out to get him. So JBK exercised her rights as the one who'd recruited Manchester to begin with by demanding the book be revised and edited. And it was. Fortunately, however, Epstein had been shown a copy of the original and wrote an article noting some of the key changes. Here is a quote from that article: "Schlesinger, in the same memorandum from which Manchester so proudly quoted, had gone on to warn that the portrait of Lyndon Johnson "too often acquires an exaggerated symbolism—so much so that some critics may write that the unconscious argument of the book is that Johnson killed Kennedy (that is, that Johnson is an expression of the forces of violence and irrationality which ran rampant through his native state and were responsible for the tragedy of Dallas) ."

When I went to add this to my computer files, it turned out I already had a letter from Lincoln saying she thought it was a conspiracy, etc. This one was addressed to Richard. So apparently there are a number of similar letters...