Pat Speer

Only one head wound was noticed at Parkland. That the wound was on the temple was claimed on TV three times before any of the doctors had written their reports. McClelland's report is not an outlier, then, in that he was actually the fourth source of the day to indicate the wound was on the temple. In his report he mentions a massive wound and then says the cause of death was a wound of the left temple. No mention of entrance or exit. Is it possible he meant that there was an entrance wound on the left temple and an exit on the back of the head? Sure. But that would mark him as an idiot, or a non-idiot guilty of an enormous blunder. Only an idiot or one guilty of such a blunder would write that the cause of death was a wound he did not see, and was not inspected, and fail to mention that "Oh yeah, there was a giant gaping wound on the back of the head!" It's worth noting, moreover, that the reports of emergency room doctors are just formalities, and are not studied or even considered by coroners or forensic pathologists when coming to their conclusions. Why? Well, it goes back to why forensic pathologists exist to begin with. They exist because the reports of emergency room doctors as to cause of death etc are notoriously inaccurate. It appears that people tasked with keeping someone alive are not particularly good at remembering the details of that person's injuries, and that someone else is needed to set the record straight. In the medical world, moreover, there is a rift, where doctors tasked with saving lives look down upon those tasked with dissecting corpses. That those dissecting corpses are given the ultimate authority to over-rule the emergency room docs as to cause of death, location of the wounds, etc, probably only adds to this rift. No one likes to be second-guessed, and when you are second-guessed by those who were not there, and those whom you think are not as skilled as you in saving lives, well, that's a burn. I have read several books which discuss this rift. And I think this explains Dr. Clark's reluctance to discuss the case after his WC testimony. He knew that forensic pathologists have the last word, and didn't want to be seen as someone disrespecting the order of things. He was like Al Gore, in a way. He felt he was correct, but knew that feeling would only lead to trouble, professionally and personally. So he sucked it up, the way doctors are supposed to do. I mean, how often do cops come forward and say their fellow cop shot without a warning, or should have waited a bit longer before shooting? Almost never. It's the same with doctors. Emergency room doctors don't publicly second-guess autopsy protocols. It just isn't done. And studies have shown why. A study was performed in which gunshot wounds of entrance and exit as determined at autopsy were compared to how these wounds were described in the reports of emergency room doctors. This study found that the ER doctors were routinely incorrect and that in cases where there were multiple entrances and exits the ER doctors shouldn't have written anything, as their descriptions were no better than guesses. Dr. Perry clearly knew this. That is why he stressed till his death that the throat wound looked like an entrance, but wouldn't swear it was an entrance.

McClelland wrote his report on the 22nd. Someone reading his report probably told his conclusions to the media. OR The reporter was watching TV on the 22nd, and saw Bill Newman point to his left temple when he said Kennedy was hit in the temple. (He was holding his kid in his right hand, and was just pointing to A temple, not THE temple.)

It's in McClellland's own report. PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ADMISSION NOTE DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone. Robert N. McClelland M.D. Asst. Prof. of Surgery Southwestern Med. School of Univ of Tex. Dallas, Texas

McClelland made no mention of a wound on the back of the head for months and months after the shooting. His earliest report said the wound was of the left temple, and when he spoke to Richard Dudman he said there was nothing about the wound to indicate the shot came from the front. He changed his testimony to match the reports of his fellow doctors.

Yes, they have the bones of Santa Claus. St. Nicholas. They sent slivers of his bones to all the Churches named in his honor, including the Greek Orthodox Church in my old neighborhood. I used to go in there during the annual Greek festival to pay my respects by the Silver container in which his bone sliver was kept.

Nice dodge. McClelland did not say there was an entrance wound on the left temple (which you can presume led to an exit on the back of the head), he said the wound was of the left temple, period. IF he thought there was an entrance wound on the left temple, because he misunderstood Jenkins or whatever, that led to the large defect, he should have said something about there being a GIGANTIC wound on the back of the head. As he didn't, then, it becomes quite clear he thought the wound he saw was by the temple.

It's not an ad hominem against Christianity, for crying out loud. The Catholic Church tested the shroud and discovered it was created in the Middle Ages, right? So it wasn't the shroud in which Jesus was buried, right? And besides, most of the Christians I've known would not consider Catholic relics, whether it be the shroud or the bones of Santa Claus, worthy of worship. They consider them superstitious nonsense, and more in line with voodoo than true Christianity.

So you agree then that McClelland should not be counted among the "best" witnesses, because his initial report said the wound was of the left temple. And you believe instead that we should accept the initial accounts of the other doctors, even though they later 1) admitted they were wrong, or 2) claimed they really didn't get much of a look, and shouldn't have said anything, or 3) refused to say anything encouraging to conspiracy theorists, and instead embraced single-assassin theorist John Lattimer. This is the ultimate in sloppy thinking, IMO. I mean, IF Howard Brennan had decided to withdraw his ID of Oswald after considering all the facts of the case, you'd have embraced him, and considered him an important witness. But here is the reverse. Someone says something you WANT to hear, then thinks better of it, but you won't accept their reversal because gol' darn it, YOU want to hear it. Do you see what I'm getting at? You can't say you support the witnesses or base your conclusions on the witnesses when you only believe a small part of what they've said, and consider the rest to be lies.

Yes, and nearly ALL statements of the Parkland doctors disagree with the McClelland drawing. So why, Sandy, have so many of the most prominent CTs held that drawing up as being representative of Kennedy's "actual" wound? It was sleight-of-hand. Look! They say this is incorrect--so this is what really happened. Let's move on. Only a close examination--an actual examination--of the witness statements over the years suggests a wound about half-way between where it is in the McClelland drawing and where it is in the autopsy photos and x-rays. I believe you've acknowledged this yourself. Now, one can take from this that the photos are fake, etc, but one can't do so, IMO, without also acknowledging virtually every prominent CT has incorrectly placed the wound at the center of the back of the head between the ears. Here's an analogy. 30 people witness a car accident. A hit and run. The police take statements from a few of them. And they mostly say the car was green. Then the police make an arrest, of a man who was driving a blue car. Years pass. A book comes out saying the car wasn't blue, it was green. And this leads to more witnesses being tracked down, who say the car wasn't blue, it was red. And some of the original witnesses issue a statement saying "Yeah. we were probably wrong--we said it was green but we now believe it was blue." And this leads to mucho speculation they were pressured into changing their stories, etc. And then someone makes a list presenting all the statements in which people said the car was other than blue, and makes the argument the car was really green--even though the most credible early witnesses now say they think it was blue, and most of the recently tracked down witnesses said it was red. In short, people can't have it both ways. They can't say we know the autopsy photos and Z-film are fake because the witnesses and then disregard the witnesses and claim there was a blow-out wound low on the back of the head between the ears. It's disingenuous and deceptive.

Nonsense. The wound on the back of the head described by Grossman was much smaller than the wound described by others. It was disingenuous, at best, to pretend he was describing the "blow-out" wound described by others, particularly in that he also described a large wound in the parietal area, and disavowed the accuracy of the McClelland drawing. The context is important, Sandy. Gary's list was not used to point out that some witness statements failed to support the accuracy of the autopsy photos, it was used to imply these witnesses had completely disavowed the autopsy photos, and had supported the accuracy of the McClelland drawing. And this was total bs. Heck, even today, there is incredible reluctance within the research community to admit the witness statements are at odds with that drawing. It's embarrassing as heck. It's like Catholics who still worship the Shroud of Turin. It needs to stop.

This is a canard. Only one wound was noticed at that point. He was pointing to where that wound was observed. Think about it. Newman points out a large wound near the right temple. Zapruder points out a large wound near the right temple. And then Kilduff (who himself saw the wound) points out a wound location at the right temple (while citing Burkley). And yet, some have spun this to be his pointing to an entrance location (that was not observed by anyone) that led to a large exit on the back of the head (that he did not mention, and never claimed he'd observed). Embarrassing.

Chapter 19a is a detailed history of my disagreements with Fetzer, and his supporters. The last 2/3 or so is about Mantik, who continues his attacks on me with the hope (I presume) I will remove this detailed account of his ever-changing claims and arguments. No further response is needed.

If you fail to see that Gary's list--in which he presented Grossman, an LN who said he saw a small entrance on the back of the head and a large exit at the top of the head, as evidence for a large blowout wound low on the back of the head--was grossly deceptive, then your opinion is not to be trusted. As stated, I am friends with Gary. I have talked with him on the phone a number of times. I have had dinner with him on several occasions. I have even spent the night at his house. He has a dour expression on his face most of the time, but he is actually quite funny. He made the list to make a point--that there was evidence in contradiction to the official story. But I don't believe he intended it to be taken as proof of anything, only that there was reason to doubt. When I talk with Gary he is very careful about certain things. He is very reluctant to say certain people lied, for example, and prefers to say they had confirmation bias. I think that confirmation bias affected his list. And if I sat down with him to discuss the list, I am confident he would re-write parts of it. As far as your last misguided jab, I assume you know, because after all you have "studied" this case, that Dr. Giesecke told the WC the wound was from the vertex to the ear. But that doesn't really matter. More important is that Newman, Zapruder, and Kilduff pointed out the wound's location within a short time of the shooting, and all pointed to the right temple area--the location of the wound in the autopsy photos and films. And no, you can't dismiss them because they weren't doctors. As stated ad nauseam, medical professionals are not trained to accurately recall the precise location of a wound, and there is no reason to believe they would do so. Their job is to save the patient in front of them, not record the wound locations of a DOA, or near DOA. That's the coroner''s job.

We can agree that a FMJ bullet that enters a skull intact would be unlikely to break up while passing through brain tissue. But FMJ bullets will break up when hitting a hard substance--such as bone--at an angle. Here is an image from one of the first books on FMJ ammunition. It demonstrates the break up of a bullet after hitting bone. (Hmmm. It looks just like the fragments found in the front section of the limo. Hmmm. I wonder why...)

The first part of chapter 3b on my website is a detailed history of the development of the single-bullet theory. To write this chapter, I re-typed (and made readily available) the WC staff and FBI memos regarding the various showings of the Z-film. You might want to check it out.

What??? There is nothing in the memo in contradiction with what Connally said elsewhere. The SBT memos were not designed to sell anything. Instead they showed that there was widespread disagreement about some aspects of the case, and that some doctors thought the SBT was nonsense.

The WC's internal memos were never supposed to see the light of day.

Ok. I'll offer a few quick comments to demonstrate why Gary's list is deceptive. 1. Clark: Clark did indicate that the wound was on the back of the head. It's clear he believed it. But he also went along with the autopsy report. One can assume then that he was either a coward or a dedicated professional--medical professionals routinely defer to doctors more expert than themselves (believe me, I know). And in fatalities, the expert is the pathologist. There's also this: while Clark never consented to an interview about Kennedy's wounds after his WC testimony, he did collaborate with single-assassin theorist Dr. John Lattimer, and comment on the research community. He claimed ""The only regret I have is that I'm constantly bothered by a bunch of damn fools who want me to make some kind of controversial statement about what I saw, what was done, or that he is still alive here on the 12th floor of Parkland Hospital or some foolish thing like that. Since these guys are making their money by writing this kind of provocative books, it annoys me, frankly." So it seems possible Clark was not as sure of his initial recollections as one might assume.. As far as David Naro, who came out of nowhere to claim Clark opened up about the case to him, there is a credibility issue. Naro came out of nowhere, made some outrageous claims, and then disappeared. No one in the research community knew him before, and no one kept in touch with him after. He had no tapes or notes or anything to prove Clark said what he claimed Clark had said, And he had no photographs or personal letters or anything to prove he actually knew Clark. Unfortunately, my time on this forum has reinforced that some people just make stuff up to get attention. We can suspect Naro was one of those. 2. McClelland; Gary hides that McClelland's initial report said the wound was of the left temple. As he was looking at the President upside down, it seems clear McClelland meant the right temple, and sure enough, a summary of the initial reports was published in which his mistake was changed to read right temple. Now, some have turned around and said well he meant that the bullet entered the left temple and exited the back of the head. But that's not how reports are supposed to be written. An emergency room doctor does not write what he thinks happened--he writes what he observed--and McClelland admits he failed to see an entrance wound on the left temple. So if one is to defend McClelland under the impression he reported a wound he did not see on the left temple, and failed to report a wound he did see on the back of the head, well then one is in effect arguing that their favorite truth teller is an incompetent idiot. And this isn't the only problem with McClelland's credibility. He was interviewed by a reporter within a week or so of the assassination, and he told the reporter the throat wound looked like an entrance. But here's the kicker. He also told this reporter that there was nothing about the head wound to indicate the fatal shot was fired from In front of Kennedy. Well, this makes no sense if he really saw a "blow-out" low on the back of the head, as claimed by all too many. It's clear, moreover, that McClelland was highly malleable. After reading the reports of Clark et al indicating the wound was on the back of the head, he began saying the wound was on the back of the head. He would later admit he was a lone-nutter until he saw the Zapruder film, and that (not JFK's body) convinced him the fatal shot was fired from the front. He would also come to claim he'd created or had helped in the creation of the so-called McClelland drawing, when he'd had noting to do with it. And he would end up making (and selling) drawings showing a head wound in the location it is in the McClelland drawing, even though he told the Boston Globe and the ARRB the drawing was incorrect. Nice Guy. Bad memory. 11. Grossman: Gary makes out that Grossman's observation of a wound on the back of the head supports the blow-out wound described by others. This is grossly (pun intended) unfair. Grossman insisted the wound on the back of the head was an entrance and that there was a large explosive wound at the top of the head. To wit, the wound on the back of the head described by Grossman was approx. 1/10 the size of the wound described by others. But Gary hides that away. Subsequent to the creation of this list, moreover, Grossman co-wrote a number of articles arguing for a single-assassin. So Grossman's presence on this list is an embarrassment. In the end there are problems with Gary's presentation. of most of the witnesses. Those who changed their opinions to match what Gary wants us to believe (such as McClelland), are presented as dedicated truth tellers, and those who came to think better of their original impressions (such as Carrico, Jenkins and Perry) are presented as unreliable. It's propaganda. As a closing note, it should be remembered that a number of Gary's witnesses demonstrated the location of the large head wound on their own heads, and placed it inches away from where it is shown in the McClelland drawing, where Gary and an army of CTs wanted readers to believe the wound was "actually" located. The list includes Richard Dulaney, Doris Nelson, Paul Peters, and Clint Hill. It is grossly unfair to make out they were describing a wound on the far back of the head at the level of the ears (what was at that time presumed to be the location of the wound) when they had demonstrated the location on their own skulls and it was inches away from where Gary and others were placing the wound, and just as close if not more close to its location in the autopsy photos.

You're missing it. Specter was desperate for Connally to say he could have been hit as late as 242, but Connally wouldn't bite. As far as Life Magazine, they brought Connally in in late 66 and showed him the blow-ups and asked him to pick out when he was hit. Well, when he picked an early slide, and said he didn't believe in the SBT, and Life Magazine and The NY Times called for a new investigation, all hell broke loose. The Johnson Administration pressured Connally, Boswell, and yes, even Hoover, to put out statements supporting the SBT. So, no, Connally's choice of an early frame was not a part of a conspiracy to sell the lone-nut. It was a huge problem for the single-assassin conclusion, and the Johnson Administration lost their s--t when he wouldn't play along.

My God. When I first came to the forum, I was impressed with Gary's list. But I came across a response to Gary's list on McAdams' website, and was absolutely horrified to find out McAdams was basically correct. Many of the statements cited by Gary were taken out of context or were absent subsequent clarifications. This is what led me to write my own chapters on the head wound witnesses--I wanted to take into account all the statements, and not just those pushing the back of the head religion. Now, to be clear, I have had meals with Gary, have stayed at his house, and have talked with him on the phone numerous times. I consider him a friend. If I was asked to debate the case on TV, and had my choice of researchers to stand alongside, it would probably be Gary and Tink Thompson. But I think they're both wrong about a lot of stuff. We all have blind spots. We all engage in group think. We all take shortcuts when pushing a theory. And I think Gary and Tink, along with numerous others, are wrong when they twist the medical evidence to support a shot fired from the knoll, and twist the photographic evidence to fit Don Thomas' take on the Dicta-belt.

JBC was shown the Z-film by the WC's staff, with the FBI and others in attendance. Much to their chagrin, he insisted he was hit by the 230's, much too close in time to when Kennedy was hit. The FBI and SS had been claiming he was hit roughly halfway between the shots on Kennedy, but Connally was adamant he was shot way before then. This then forced their hand and led to the creation of the SBT. So, no, he wasn't pressured into claiming he was hit early. The pressure put on him was to claim he was hit much later. But he resisted. I don't know. Maybe it had something to do with his cheeks puffing out, and his body turning, and his lapel flipping. Now, I've been talking out of my butt a lot lately, so let me try to make this more specific. Here is Eisenberg's memo on the conference... Melvin Eisenberg's memo on the April 21 conference April 22, 1964 MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD FROM: Melvin A. Eisenberg SUBJECT: Conference of April 21, 1964, to determine which frames in the Zapruder movies show the impact of the first and second bullets. On Tuesday, April 21, 1964, a conference was held to determine which frames in the Zapruder film portray the instants at which the first and second bullets struck. Present were: Dr. F.W. Light, Jr., Deputy Chief of the Biophysics Division and Chief of the Wound Assessment Branch of the Biophysics Division at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland; Dr. Olivier, Chief of the Wound Ballistics Branch of the Biophysics Division at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland; Dr. Joseph Dolce, Consultant to the Biophysics Division at Edgewood Arsenal; Dr. Charles F. Gregory and Dr. Robert Shaw of Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas; Messrs. Geuthier, Shaneyfelt, and one other unidentified agent of the FBI; and Messrs. Redlich, Specter, Belin and Eisenberg. Later in the proceedings, Governor and Mrs. Connally, Mr. Rankin and Mr. McCloy joined the conference. A screening was held of the Zapruder film and of slides prepared by LIFE from the films. Each slide corresponded with a separate frame of film, beginning with frame 171. The consensus of the meeting was as follows: (a) The President had been definitely hit by frame 224-225 when he emerges from behind a sign with his hands clutching at his throat. (b) After the Governor Connally straightened up at frames 224-225 he starts to turn to the right. As a result of this turn, at no time after frame 236 was Governor Connally in a position such that a bullet fired from the probable site of the assassin would have caused the wound in the chest cavity which Governor Connally sustained -- that is, after frame 236 the Governor presented a side view to the assassin rather than a back view. (1) Mr. Specter disagrees. (c) In many frames up to 250, the Governor's wrist is held in a position which exposed him to the type of wrist wounds he actually received. (d) After viewing the films and slides, the Governor was of the opinion that he had been hit by frame 231. (e) The Governor stated that after being hit, he looked to his right, looked to his left, and then turned to his right. He felt the President might have been hit by frame 190. He heard only two shots and felt sure that the shots he heard were the first and third shots. He is positive that he was hit after he heard the first shot, i.e., by the second shot, and by that shot only. In a discussion after the conference, Drs. Light and Dolce expressed themselves as being very strongly of the opinion that Connally had been hit by two different bullets, principally on the ground that the bullet recovered from Connally's stretcher could not have broken his radius without having suffered more distortion. Dr. Olivier withheld a conclusion until he has had the opportunity to make tests on animal tissue and bone with the actual rifle.

You keep repeating this stuff about 20 professionals can't all be wrong, etc. Well, when one looks through the actual statements many of the supposed back of the head witnesses said the wound was at the top of the head, and did not overlap one iota with the wound location presented in the McClelland drawing. Many of them even deferred to the accuracy of the autopsy photos long after the WC was no mas. It is extreme hubris for anyone to claim well they must have been scared. I've met some of them, and watched or read dozens of interviews with many others. They were not scared. And that brings me to the second point: "Professional". There is no evidence "professionals" make fewer location errors than non-professionals. In fact, study after study has demonstrated that professionals are prone to make MORE mistakes regarding something like a wound's location. Why? Well, a layman who has only seen one wound might be mistaken due to his angle on what he witnessed, or the rotation of the object, etc. But a professional--who has presumably seen many similar wounds--has the additional challenge of separating out one specific wound in his memory from countless others. I mean, think about it. If you saw a man get cut on the left arm, and he walked into a hospital and a doctor wrapped him up and he left, you would probably remember what arm was cut. But if you asked the doctor two weeks later, he'd probably have no idea without looking at the record. And hospitals know this. When I was in the hospital last year, I had a number of procedures on my left wrist. Well, they would always mark my wrist beforehand so the doctor would know which wrist to work on. My left wrist was bloated up to twice the size of my right wrist, and the doctor had just come in my room to inspect it, but here ten minutes later they were making my wrist. Because they knew there was a good chance he'd forget which wrist he was to work on.

I think you're missing something, Eddy. Perry was pressured by the SS and WC when President Johnson's political career was in jeopardy. Johsnon wanted it to be Oswald acting alone, so the evidence was twisted to make it look like Oswald acted alone. Hence, Perry was pressured into pretending he'd never said the throat wound was an entrance. Now, he never said it was an exit. He said it looked like an entrance but could have been an exit. And he continued to say this till the end. Later, when the case was re-opened by the HSCA, Blakey was determined to make the medical evidence add up. Michael Baden was in charge of the pathology panel, and he brought on men who were similarly determined to make things add up. Well, the autopsy doctors weren't cooperating, and would not play along with the Clark Panel charade that the entrance wound was in the cowlick. So Blakey's number 2 Cornwell pressured Humes into making it sound like he agreed it could have been in the cowlick, and cut Humes off when Humes tried to backtrack. Humes then backtracked when he spoke to JAMA, and the ARRB. So here we have two instances where people were pressured into going along with something they had reason to know wasn't true. We know who applied the pressure. And we know this in part because these men would later make statements at odds with what they'd said while they were caving. So now...in the years since a number of witnesses have said they could have been or almost certainly were mistaken regarding the precise location of the large head wound. And people jump to "Oh my God! They've been scared into changing their minds!" But there are huge problems with this. For one, these witnesses didn't run and hide. Many of them spoke at conferences, or were interviewed for books and television. And they uniformly denied being pressured into changing their minds by some nebulous "they". Instead, they said they'd spoke to men like Lattimer, or read Posner and Bugliosi, or just freakin' looked in the mirror, and concluded "Yeah, my first impression was probably incorrect." That's healthy. That's human. But some CTs are so immersed in conspiracy thinking they can't conceive that anyone could change their mind about anything, or conclude they were wrong about anything. They think there must be something to it--that those changing their minds or correcting their recollections must have been bought off or in fear for their life. And that's just gross, IMO. It's disgusting to me when LNs claim CTs are in it for the money, or because they hate America, and it's disgusting to me when CTs claim witnesses (or even fellow researchers, such as Gary Mack) who no longer support what they want to believe must be scared little rabbits, or after the big bucks. It's a symptom of the modern age, I guess. Scared little bunnies who have never been to a conference or met with an actual witness claiming all the witnesses who said things they don't like were pressured into doing so by the Boogeyman (aka CIA). Please. If a man ran naked through a crowd, half the crowd would claim he was a different race or had a different build than the other half. And some would change their minds later after talking to others. It doesn't mean they were scared. It doesn't mean they were bought off. It just means that our impressions and memories are liquid, merging over time with other memories, and changing based on fresh input.

Although I am inactive these days, I spent a decade or so as a moderator, and we did not moderate or censor things simply because they were wrong. That wasn't our purpose. If we were to remove or censor every stupid post the forum would be five people sitting around saying "Yeah, what you said." The threads and posts that got removed were largely ones focusing on sex (there was a member who tried to turn every thread into a discussion of some politician's sex life) or the Jews. Sadly, there could be no discussion of Israel's possible involvement without someone spinning it into an international Jewish conspiracy involving Jews in the media, Jews in the research community, etc. So those topics were largely off-limits. But most every other discussion was wide open. We had people denying the moon landing, people denying the Pentagon was hit on 9/11, people claiming the fall of the twin towers was a hologram, etc. Stuff that many of us found embarrassing, frankly. But the forum's commitment to the free exchange of ideas survived. As it will survive this silly notion Ukraine is full of National socialists, whatever.

After Posner's book came out, Aguilar called up Boswell and asked him if what Posner said he said (that he now believed the bullet entered the cowlick) was true. Boswell not only denied telling this to Posner, he claimed he'd never even talked to Posner. There used to be some threads on this online, but I just looked and I think they went down with McAdams' site. In any event, this was widely discussed, to such an extent that Posner was asked about this when he spoke to the Conyers committee, which was preparing to set up the ARRB. As I recall, there was preliminary testimony given by many researchers to this committee as to what the board should look into, and Posner was one of those to testify. Well, as I recall Posner said he could prove he talked to Boswell because he had the phone records to prove it. But he never coughed up those records, as I recall. It was either that or the phone call was listed as lasting less than a minute, which suggested he'd called Boswell but got a machine, or left a message. My memory is a bit foggy on this. But I recall quite clearly that the evidence was quite damning and strongly suggested Posner had never actually spoken to Boswell. I don't have time right now to dig back into this, but a quick search led me to this note in Weisberg's archives. http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/P Disk/Posner Gerald/About/Item 33.pdf The doctor referenced by Weisberg was Aguilar.