Pat Speer

It's true, he said fifth floor, but he must have been counting in a hurry. It's obvious he was describing a man in the sixth floor window. The men on the fifth floor were wearing dark clothing as I recall and they were most certainly not surrounded by stacks of books. And, oh yeah, they were dark-skinned, something he would have noticed, and mentioned. Robert Edwards (11-22-63 statement to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, 19H 473, 19H647) “Today, November 22nd, 1963, I was with Ronald Fischer, and we were on the corner at Elm and Houston, and I happened to look up there at the building, the Texas School Book Depository Building, and I saw a man at the window on the fifth floor, the window was wide open all the way; there was a stack of boxes around him, I could see. Bob remarked that he must be hiding from somebody. I noticed that he had on a sport shirt, it was light colored, it was yellow or white, something to that effect, and his hair was rather short; I thought he might be something around twenty-six, as near as I could tell. The motorcade rounded the corner at this time, and then I thought I heard four shots, but it never occurred to us what it was. The shots seemed to come from that building there.”

Yeah, that's Rachel...warmongering. Geez... Let me ask this... Under what circumstances do you think a war could have been avoided? Putin already broke off the Crimea. No one attacked. Should Ukraine have stood by while he slowly annexed half the country? Is that what you call diplomacy?

Edwards was one of those who reported seeing a man in the sixth floor window. Here he is walking over to the TSBD shortly after the shots. He confirmed to the reporter that this was where he saw the shooter.

The bullies where I grew up used to play a game. They would reach towards your face till you grabbed their hand. Now in control of your hand, they would slap you in the face with your hand while saying something like "Why are you doing that?" And then, if you broke free, they would accidentally on purpose hit you with their own hand, and say "See what you made me do?" You were hit by your own hand. And your breaking free caused you to get hit by the bully's hand. But it wasn't your fault. It was the bully's fault. Putin is the bully in this situation. The whole world knows it.

Rex Bradford acted out the transcript and found that it played out nowhere near the length of the gap on the tape. This strongly suggests that much was left out of the transcript. After Rex pointed out that the tape was blank, moreover, the library had it studied. They acknowledged that it was not wear and tear and that it must have been deliberately erased by some unnamed person. This is suspicious as heck. Only adding to the weirdness, when I compared the library transcript to the transcript in Max Holland's book I found that Max had changed some words to make Hoover's statements less problematic. He couldn't claim it was matter of interpretation, of course, because there was no recording to interpret. All we have is the incomplete transcript, and Max chose to change it for his book. Many have claimed there are no smoking guns and that if there was a smoking gun it would have been destroyed long ago. We have reason to suspect this tape was a smoking gun.

Thanks for doing that. As an observer and survivor of many a flame war, the biggest problem has not been people not telling us who they are, and coming here to do damage, but well-known people in research-land who can not handle disagreements. A number of other forums have spun off from this one, so that those departing could avoid contact with the other "side." The result has been a more peaceful forum. In my experience, those seeking to avoid contact with the other side---no matter which side--risk drowning in their own reflection. I tried to contact Bugliosi when he was working on his book, because I felt positive his book would suffer if he didn't receive massive input from a number of CTs. No response, of course. I have seen the same thing with some CTs. They spend years working on a book with some obvious flaws, but don't recognize them before publication because no one in their inner circle will say nope, that's batpoop.

My understanding is that the President can withhold records...personally. IOW, he has to take responsibility for withholding the records. Both Trump and now Biden have allowed agencies to withhold records, without the president's personal review. It seems probable, moreover, that T and B have no idea what they've been withholding. To my understanding, they are in violation of the law.

Agreed.

I didn't watch the video due to Livingston's face being on it. I spent a lot of time digging into his claims and concluded he has zero credibility.

I think you are recalling incorrectly. Chesser is in lock-step with Mantik, who presents his interpretation of the photo in the images presented by David Josephs.

It's still the key. The specimen jar and drainage hole disprove most every orientation of the photo. People look at the photo and say "Hey, it looks like forehead" or "Hey, I think I can place the Harper fragment in the photo if it was oriented like this." But they never study the photo to see if they can figure it out separate from what they choose to believe. I did just that. And have been waiting almost two decades now for someone to perform a similar study, to see what they come up with.

The memo noting the bullet behind the ear was an FBI memo based on a call from Sibert and O'Neill. This call was made during the autopsy. It was second-hand reporting. As no one at the autopsy, including Sibert and O'Neill, recalled such a bullet, and they instead recalled a large fragment's being recovered from behind the eye, it is clear to me it was misreporting, or misremembering, akin to Hoover's early claim the rifle was found on the fifth floor, etc. To me, the claims the body was faked are a red herring. It leads people away from what we know, or at least what I know. I know the medical evidence, when taken at face value, is at odds with the single-assassin solution. And I know, for a fact, that the subsequent panels to inspect the evidence, from the Clark Panel on down, were designed to conceal the truth by pushing alternative single-assassin scenarios they thought would be more palatable. But were not. At least not to anyone who was paying attention. When I first started down this rabbit hole, most everyone, CT and LN alike, was still claiming that the bullet entered near the cowlick. LNs embraced the Clark Panel's movement of the entrance wound because it helped with the trajectory. And CTs embraced the Clark Panel's movement of the entrance wound because it "proved" to them that those darn military doctors were incompetent and that civilian Forensic Pathologists would have been so much better. Over the last 15 years or so, however, that ship sailed, whereas a large percentage of LNs have come to doubt the cowlick entrance, and virtually all CTs now think it was bs. I had something to do with that. Over the next decade more ships will sail.

I currently believe the skull was angled a bit backwards from this orientation and that the beveling is actually on the top of the head, just forward of the crown.

Yes, David, the Sibert and O'Neill report--the very report that started Lifton down the body alteration cul-de-sac, the mother lode of all documents supporting body alteration, was written to conceal that a bullet not reported by any eyewitness was found behind the ear...because we know, we just know, that an FBI memo reporting second-hand information could not possibly be incorrect. Right? Nope.

The fragment "trail" is actually on the outside of the skull and suggests the impact and break-up of a bullet at the supposed exit location. As pointed out by Mantik, long before I, there was no brain in the upper right quadrant of the skull. So how could there be a trail of fragments across the brain where there was no brain?

Pretty much everything you've presented was debunked years ago, and is explained on my website. Although David Lifton and I disagreed on much, we shared our disdain for this decades later insistence an entry wound on the forehead was observed at Parkland or at the autopsy. As pointed out to me..by Lifton...Dennis David, a star witness for the forehead entry people...never even saw the body. So why did Mantik prop him up as an important witness? Because he was desperate. At a quick gander I saw you resurrect the bullet behind the ear nonsense. This was included in an FBI memo written after they'd received a call from Sibert and O'Neill. Sibert and O'Neill wrote an actual report and there was no mention of such a thing. A large fragment was removed from behind the EYE at the autopsy and the writer of the memo obviously misunderstood, or perhaps even Sibert and O'Neill mis-reported this over the phone. In any event, there is no eyewitness evidence for such a thing, and no evidence for such a thing on the autopsy photos and x-rays. I think Mantik would agree that no such bullet was recovered, moreover. I know he thinks the x-rays have been tampered with in certain areas but the last I checked he believes they were Kennedy's x-rays. And I've never heard him say anything about the x-rays being tampered with to conceal a bullet behind the ear.

Crenshaw did not see an entrance wound. He surmised there was an entrance wound. As stated, we've been over this before ad nauseam. As far as the problems with the timeline...Jenkins et al insisted there was no pre-surgery or whatever. It did not happen. This was concocted by Horne to sell his evolution of Lifton's theory, which Lifton himself. rejected. In Horne's desperation to sell this theory, moreover, he cites Tom Robinson, who told the HSCA he saw an orange-sized hole on the back of the head...at the end of the autopsy. He did not specify this to the ARRB, however, and Horne pretends it was at the beginning of the autopsy. He even acknowledges that Robinson's co-worker saw an orange-sized hole on the back of the head at the end of the autopsy. But--oh my--it doesn't occur to him that they were talking about the same hole? I mean, what does he think happened to the bones brought in mid-way through the autopsy? The reconstruction of the skull by the Gawler's people, moreover, was a cosmetic one, not a forensic one. They arranged the bones to simulate an undamaged skull, and hid the remaining gap by placing it at the back of the head. They thought there might be a public viewing, and a giant hole on the top of the President's head would have been unacceptable.

I've been through this stuff literally dozens of times on this forum, and cover it on my website. You seem to have mistaken what the doctors said...that pieces of bone fell to the table as they reflected the scalp--with the brain falling out on the table as they reflected the scalp. You also accept Mantik's orientation of the mystery photo, which is nonsense. There was no massive hole on the left side of the back of the head. He needs it to be there so he can pretend the Harper fragment is occipital. But there is no early eyewitness evidence for such a hole, and such a hole is most certainly not apparent on the photos and x-rays. I just skipped over it because well, like I said, I've been through this stuff dozens of times before, but it appears as well that you're pretending there are witnesses who saw an entrance wound above the right eye. This is just not true. McClelland maintained that he saw no such hole, but later came to suspect there was such a hole that was hidden in the hair. And he came to suspect this not because he thought the back of the head was blown out from a frontal entry, but because his viewing of the Zapruder film made him suspect there was a frontal entry. As far as the others cited by Mantik et al, they were witnesses trying to recall what they saw in the photos decades earlier, or were repeating what they were told decades earlier. There is not one mention of an entrance wound on the front of the head within the 1963-1964 reports and testimony, aside from Father Huber's comment about something he saw, that he later said was blood. There's no there there.

FWIW, I spent some time studying the 1954 coup in Guatemala, in which the CIA overthrew Arbenz. While researching this coup, I found a book about America's poor treatment of Latin America, and Guatemala in general. A few years after Arbenz fled, the general we picked to replace him, Castillo-Armas, was himself assassinated. His assassin was one of his bodyguards, who was killed as he tried to flee. Upon searching his body the other guards found a...wait for it...communist party membership card. He was a card-carrying communist! Only not everyone fell for it. Within one of the books I read on Guatemala was the notes to a U.S. National Security meeting in which the assassination of Castillo-Armas was discussed. One veteran intelligence expert voiced his belief the card-carrying communist bit was a fake, and that the murder was an inside job made to look like a commie hit. The nay-sayer as I recall was Allen Dulles!

I'm not sure what you're saying. The x-rays show that the skull was shattered on the back of the head. The only thing to keep it intact was the scalp. When Humes peeled back the scalp to remove the brain pieces of skull fell to the table. That the back of the skull was shattered but extant beneath the scalp was confirmed by supposedly CT witnesses Jerrol Custer and James Jenklins. This is what they said happened, and their statements are supported by the autopsy photos, which show the back of the head to be mobile, and the x-rays, which show numerous fractures on the back of the head.

As far as this drawing... I hope you realize that this and other similar drawings were created by Dr. McClelland towards the end of his life, and are grossly at odds with where he'd previously presented the wound. It seems clear, in fact, that he was trying to replicate the wound location presented on the so-called McClelland drawing, which he had repeatedly disavowed, but then come to believe he'd created. (I hope we can agree that he had nothing to do with that drawing.)

Oh my. Boswell's depiction of the damaged area on the skull includes his depiction of the area he thought was damaged beneath the scalp. A lot of the confusion about the head wounds stems from the doctors peeling back the scalp, and large chunks of bone falling to the table. Those desperate to believe there was a large wound on the back of the head frequently misrepresent the wound seen after bone fell to the table as the wound seen before the scalp was peeled back. if the Harper fragment was occipital the large defect would have been centered at and below the level of the ear and have stretched well over onto the left side of the head. No such wound was observed at Parkland or Bethesda. Some cherry-pick statements from minor players to make it seem like such a wound was seen, but it's sloppy at best AND at odds with the bulk of the witnesses, who placed the wound high and on the right side--further back than depicted in the photos, but well above where depicted in the so-called McClelland drawing. This is all stuff covered on my website and in my numerous presentations on the medical evidence. P.S. In support of his notion the Harper fragment is occipital, Dr. Mantik used to claim the orientation of the fragment pushed by Dr. Angel--the pre-eminent forensic anthropologist of his day--which is to say he was an expert at piecing skulls together--was obviously incorrect, because it would place the beveled exit at the midline of the top of the head--where no one saw an entrance. I then pointed out that Mantik was all turned around, and that Angel's orientation actually placed it by the right temple, where so many of Mantik's fellow CTs suspect a bullet entered. His sycophants then attacked and he went after me himself--even though he was 100% obviously in error. Within a few years our "feud" came to the attention of Dr. Wecht, and he invited us to debate this issue at the 2013 Wecht conference at Duquesne University Wary of being sabotaged by Mantik or his acolytes with questions about my medical background, etc, I asked if we could on the same bill discuss our disparate findings, and let the audience decide for themselves. On the day of the "debate" however, I received a surprise. Dr. Mantik admitted he'd been in error, and that the beveled exit in Angel's orientation was precisely where I said it was--just back of the right temple. Now, I was hoping this would make him realize that he was wrong about the Harper fragment, and realize that having a bullet exit by the temple was not such a bad thing. Instead, Mantik doubled-down on his claim the Harper fragment was occipital. In articles and books and more articles and books. More recently, I pointed out that the Harper fragment has no raised ridges on its inner aspect, when the occipital bone in the location from where Mantik claims it derived, is ruffled, and has a raised ridge. This was a point previously brought up by Dr. Riley. In response, Mantik claimed he still believes the fragment is occipital, and wonders if maybe just maybe Kennedy's Addison's disease had deformed his bones, so that his occipital bone no longer looked like occipital bone. Yep.

I was confused at one point, then read back and realized what it was. The autopsy report says there was an entrance wound near the EOP, with beveling on the inside of the skull. This wound is apparent in the mystery photo. The large head wound, and whether or not there was a beveled exit there, is a separate matter. In 1966 Humes and Boswell saw a small entrance wound on the mystery photo. In 1967, Humes Boswell and Finck made no mention of this entrance, but noted the beveling by the large defect in the mystery photo, and placed it at the top of the head. In 1968, the Clark Panel moved the entrance wound up to the top of the head, and declared that the beveling by the large defect in the mystery photo was high on the forehead, meaning that this photo, previously believed to have been taken from behind, was actually taken from the front. The HSCA pathology panel, in 1978, confirmed the findings of their buddies on the Clark Panel. When shown the autopsy photos by the ARRB, the autopsy doctors sought to avoid further controversy, and said they just couldn't tell what was shown in the mystery photo. To me, it's obvious that they'd learned their lesson. They tried to tell the HSCA that the entrance was by the EOP and not the cowlick, and were threatened and badgered as a result. Better to just play stupid.

I created a whole video series demonstrating that it actually shows the back and top of the head, as initially described by Humes and Boswell. It is available on my website and on YouTube.

I trust you are aware, Gerry, of the history of this photo. It is what sucked me down the rabbit hole. The autopsy doctors upon first review said it showed the entrance wound on the back of the head. A few months later, in a review controlled by the Justice Dept., they said it showed the beveled exit on the top of the head depicted in the Rydberg drawings. Yes, it's true. Finck claimed at that time that the blurry beveling represented an exit at the top of the head. In 1968, however, the Clark Panel was formed. They were supposed to end all the questions. The photo previously determined to show the back and top of the head, was now claimed to show the front of the head, with a beveled exit high on the forehead. The HSCA then rubber-stamped these findings. Their trajectory analysis etc. were all built upon the presumption there was a beveled exit high on the forehead that went unnoticed at autopsy. Humes, Boswell, and Finck refused to play along, however. Not only did Finck refuse to accept there was an entrance high on the back of the head, he refused to acknowledge that the supposed exit on the forehead showed just that. The HSCA twisted Humes' arms into pretending he'd had a change of heart. But the fact is these guys knew the Clark Panel and HSCA's conclusions regarding the entrance wound and exit wound were doo-doo. So...let's be clear. If you accept Finck's latter-day claim that the beveling on this photo is unclear and proof of nothing, then you must also accept that the Clark Panel and HSCA pathology panel's findings are doo-doo. Do you accept that? I do. But I've encountered a lot of people who think they can agree with Finck on this and other issues without simultaneously admitting that the most recent panels to claim the medical evidence supports a single-assassin...were doo-doo.