James DiEugenio

From Death of the NAA Verdict: The first serious broadside against Guinn and the NAA was issued by Wallace Milam at the COPA Conference in Washington in 1994. Milam questioned the very basis of Guinn's conclusions. Guinn had said that the metallic make-up of WCC MC could vary widely from bullet to bullet, the term for this being "heterogeneous" or irreproducible. But Guinn also added that the metallic make-up of a single MC bullet was not; the term for this was "homogeneous". But Milam showed that Guinn's data did show large variations within a single bullet, especially in the measure of the trace element antimony, which Guinn placed much weight on. He also noted that his testimony on this issue seemed to contradict a paper he wrote that very same year in Transactions of the American Nuclear Society. There he wrote that: "In the U. C. Irvine INAA background studies of the Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, it was found that this bullet lead is remarkably heterogeneous somewhat within a given bullet." (Emphasis added) Yet, for the HSCA, Guinn seemed to place the efficacy of the findings on the intra-bullet lead being homogenous or uniform and consistent throughout. And really, if this were not the case, then Guinn's whole testimony would dissolve. Milam's logic was penetratingly simple on this point. In the 1964 tests the FBI had taken microscopic samples from the same bullet and come up with different concentrations of antimony ranging from 636 parts per million (PPM) all the way up to 1125 PPM. With this wide range of data within one bullet, then it would be possible to match varying PPM values to differing fragments if one were to allow a large enough variance. And it appears that this variance is what led the Bureau to declare the earlier NAA results "inconclusive". Milam's discussion was well informed, pointed, and well documented. (It is available online at the site Electronic Assassinations Newsletter, under the title "Blakey's linchpin".) Later on Art Snyder, a physicist, questioned the statistical analysis used by Guinn. Interestingly, although Guinn prepared such an analysis, when challenged to assign a probability number for the certainty of his work, he declined. (For instance, the two acoustical analysts for the HSCA gave their work a 95% probably certainty statistic.) Snyder later commented that Guinn probably did not assign such a figure because the number would have been too high, signaling a high probability of error due to the high variables involved in his findings. Note above: Milam's critique began in 1994. And like Galanor, it went after Guinn's chart and his claim of antimony consistency. So if Litwin was a real researcher, which he is not, he would have found this presentation. Also note that Guinn contradicted himself about a major tenet of the test.

BTW, I went ahead and scanned the rest of Litwin's joke of an article. The first time around i started laughing when I saw he backed the CBLA that the HSCA did. Anyone who would accept Guinn's analysis even in the nineties had to be desperate. Since his figures on their own terms were deeply flawed. In his fine little book Cover-Up, Stewart Galanor showed this very clearly. In three pages, he showed that the bullet mixture for Carcano projectiles are not unique throughout, as Guinn said they were. Galanor did this with Guinn's own evidence chart. (See p. 43) That book was written in 1997 and published in 1998. At the same time, Wallace Milam was doing the same thing with Guinn's work at JFK seminars in Washington. Somehow Litwin was so wed to his Oswald did it dictum that he could not see straight, or he never looked at Guinn's chart. Probably both. So please do not use, "Well i wrote that essay before CBLA had discredited Guinn" as an out Mr. Litwin. As we shall see, for your search of evidence,, the ends justifies the means. Great example: This guy actually uses the HSCA's Canning as a witness for the trajectory test showing that the Single Bullet Fantasy is correct. LOL Yet by 1995, the material on the HSCA phony Canning experiments was being declassified. Canning's letter to Blakey shows that 1) He was terribly unhappy with the info he was getting via the compartmentalization Blakey used. 2.) He thought they had proved a conspiracy in the JFK case. (The Assassinations, edited by Jim DIEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 81) Litwin also fails to note that in Canning's work, he used the old WC version of where the back bullet struck, which was in the neck! (ibid p 79) We know that is not the case and we knew it back then. But just as bad, in Canning's work there is no downward angle in the trajectory through the neck. Further, Canning stopped his analysis of the Single Bullet Fantasy at Connally's back. So how does this bolster what Litwin says it does? I could go on and on with this since Canning's testimony is so full of holes that Pat Speer wrote about ten pages demolishing him. But this is the kind of work Litwin does. He does not understand that just because some quack says this or that, and it indicts Oswald, that does not make it true. But he does that with Canning and Guinn. BTW, I did not even get to the worst part of Canning, that is his sphere of incidence, that is from where the rifle could have fired from, that is flat out hilarious. (Ibid, pp 80-81) In certifying the BYP, Litwin does not note the wrong ring finger in the photos or pose the question as to why would LHO switch the ring for these pics. And he accepts the wrong chin, which even the members of the HSCA had real problems with. He just says, well, they could not detect any line there. He does not then add that if one follows that kind of logic then LHO had a chin operation. He accepts the autopsy photos and x rays without mentioning the different testimony on the back of the head, which the HSCA deliberately covered up. By not mentioning it, he does not have to explain it. The most hilarious part of this essay is the so called jet effect he uses from the discredited Luis Alvarez. This has been discredited so many times its ridiculous: by Wallace Milam, by Doug DeSalles for starters. TInk Thompson did so in his new book by using the actual data from Alvarez' own experiment. Gary Aguilar has used that to rip the experiment to smithereens. Alvarez lied. Period. End of story. If Litwin's book is like his essay, and I suspect it is, its a waste of paper. This guy did about as much honest research as John McAdams does. And that is why his essay is housed there. Which means he surfs the web for anything that will support his thesis, no matter what it says, or who wrote it, or how many times its been discredited. What a disgrace.

OMG, Baker pops up again with that semantical trick he always used. This guy tries to confuse the public with a shell game. The NAA technique vs the CBLA. You use NAA for Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis. The latter is JUNK SCIENCE. Period. This is why the FBI will never use it again in court. Somehow Baker knows better than the FBI and he calls it an old chestnut. What a joker. Here is my review of the evidence in that regard: https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/death-of-the-naa-verdict It was done in concert with Pat Grant. Who, along with Ric Randich, tore open the whole farce. Here is an overview of the whole battle to get CBLA thrown out of court. https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=faculty_publications

That was one of the reasons Hoover did it. Because Garrison was showing him up by pointing out all the flaws in the Warren Report. Bill Turner later told me he recognized one of the guys who the FBI used to do the tapping.

That stuff is all true. Garrison's phones were tapped by two sets of tappers, Gordon Novel for the CIA, and also by the FBI, which went through the actual phone lines. BTW, two people have emailed me about this article. One sent it to the original publisher, and asked if I could reply and one sent it to the author. As per the former, on a cold day in Hades.

No I think he is trying to say that if your book is worth reading, you at least should have addressed these questions. If not, its just another piece of McAdams style boilerplate.

You know, I like both Sandy and Bart, but this thread is not about this topic. At least I doubt if Litwin has it in his book. Can we get back to what the topic was, that is Mr Litwin reforming himself and finding salvation with the Warren Commission.

This came from an FBI interview with one of the justices down in New Orleans. He was not dealing with the Shaw case. Garrison showed him some of the stuff he had. Mellen mentions it in her book. As to your questions, I have no doubt that once the FBI learned about it they sent in, or got in contact with one of the various infiltrators in Garrison's office, and it disappeared. Which happened to a good deal of the evidence he had. As per your other question 1.) I don't think Garrison liked admitting the fact that so much valuable evidence was gone, and 2.) Garrison had so much fascinating stuff that there just was no way he could present it in an interview anyway.

Francois: In the above, do you mind answering the questions? Either you or Mr.Litwin, perhaps he deals with this matter in his book. Considering that Stringer denied taking the brain photos since it was not his film or technique, and the particle trail Humes described is not on the x rays today then: 1.) Who took the autopsy photos and why did it have to be someone else? 2.) Where did the particle trail go and why?

Francois, Its you, DVP and Tracy who have absolutely no standards of what constitutes proof or evidence. The non pareil of this is the fact that you stay in denial, even when the witness who created the record admits something is wrong with the record! Two examples: Humes and the missing particle trail above, and Stringer denying he ever took the photos of JFK's brain. In fact he actually said he could not have because its the wrong film and the wrong technique. He never used either one. Recall, what Davey Boy said about that one? Stringer had a bad memory. Yeah, he forgot what he was doing for 15 years and how he did it. So please do not ever tell anyone about what standard of proof or critical thinking is. Because you have no idea what either one is about. Those two samples, from about 70 of them, are enough to show that something was seriously wrong with the autopsy of JFK. At the very least, one has to ask: 1.) Who took the autopsy photos and why did it have to be someone else? 2.) Where did the particle trail go and why? It will be a cold day in Hades when you three ever ask those questions, even though they are completely logical and well founded by the evidence.

Does DVP even realize what he is saying at times? I really wonder. Davey: Are you saying that the pictures Minyard had, and which several other people have seen, that those pics and those descriptions are fake? You guys trap yourselves so often in this case its funny. Now did Humes write in his report that there was a trail of particles leading from the EOP to the trail near the top of the skull behind the eye socket? Yes he did. Is that fragment trail visible on the x rays today? No, and Humes was surprised when he saw that they were not. When Jeremy Gunn asked him about this he could not explain what happened. Same thing here. But in the face of the above, like your mentor Vince, you choose to go into denial. Remember what Vince said, this is a simple case.

BTW Mr Litwin, what did the late Mr Roy say about the following: Instead of looking at 1967, when everyone and their mother doubted the Single Bullet Fantasy and Garrison was closing in on him, why not tell us about 1963 Davey? If Ferrie had no connection at all, then why did he begin searching and calling his former CAP pals to see if anyone had any evidence linking him to Oswald? Why did he lie his head off in his FBI report? Why did he drive to Houston through a rainstorm to a skating rink and then sit by a phone for a couple of hours? Why was he worried about Oswald having his library card? And what about the Bomb package? You probably don't even know what that one is do you? Are you going to ignore these just like DVP did?

Litwin's logic is fascinating. Because Chetta decided to rule it was a suicide then the suicide notes do not say what even McAdams says at least one does say. Do you want to explain why the autopsy report does not mention the burns and cuts inside Ferrie's mouth and actually covers them up Fred? These are pics that Minyard saw and has shown to people. Based upon that, is it not possible that someone forced a solution down his throat with a tube? And if that was not possible then why did the report not just cover that evidence up but actually falsified it?

I agree with that. And if that was not enough, Kennedy offered Portugual 4 billion in aid if they would set free Angola and Mozambique. They said no, so JFK sent aid to the rebels. Wall Steet got the message.

Thanks for that correction Sandy. That was actually a source that Joan Mellen used. Can you show in the autopsy report where it talks about the bruising on the inside of the mouth?

Von Pein is almost as funny as Litwin. Instead of looking at 1967, when everyone and their mother doubted the Single Bullet Fantasy and Garrison was closing in on him, why not tell us about 1963 Davey? If Ferrie had no connection at all, then why did he begin searching and calling his former CAP pals to see if anyone had any evidence linking him to Oswald? Why did he lie his head off in his FBI report? Why did he drive to Houston through a rainstorm to a skating rink and then sit by a phone for a couple of hours? Why was he worried about Oswald having his library card? And what about the Bomb package? You probably don't even know what that one is do you? All of this is in Destiny Betrayed second edition. You and Litwin should read it, then you would not have foot in the mouth syndrome. In any other case, Bugliosi would have said this all indicated "consciousness of guilt". But since this is JFK, no way this time. He was being paid to prop up the Warren Report.

The autopsy report on Ferrie is about one page long. As Dr. Martin Palmer said the autopsy was "slipshod". Since it was only a partial one and they did not even open the brain case, casting the berry aneurism verdict into doubt. Also samples of the blood were not kept. The photos reveal the inside of Ferrie's mouth as really burnt and Minyard says you can actually see contusions there. MInyard speculated these could have been caused by "something traumatically inserted into Ferrie's mouth." (Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, pp 106-09) Now go back and look at the report and see if that information, preserved in pics, is in the report. I can save you the time. It is not. That piece of information is actually covered up in the report. In other words, you would not have gotten it from the report, you have to look at the pictures. Who was going to go down there and do that? Denny, does Mr Litwin mention this information in his book?

The two articles by Rose and Bridger are, "Important to Hold that Man", The Third Decade, Volume 2, No 4, p. 17 "The Myth of the Depository Roll Call", Dealey Plaza Echo, Volume 11, No. 2, p. 38

The following puts Chandler to rest: http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t166-dr-pittelli-vs-david-reitzes-friends No one knows how Ferrie died. You have two doctors, Palmer and Pitelli, who have problems with what Chetta did. And so did the following New Orleans coroner, Frank Minyard. So to assume the notes could not be suicide notes because Ferrie did not take his own life is pure McAdamsism: you direct the reader to your conclusion by cutting off other important information and professional views of what happened. This, of course, is precisely the fatal flaw in the WC. As per the so called line up that LHO was missing from at the TSBD: Can the man be real? Did Litwin really polish off that old chestnut? Then he really is a Posnerfile. From page 124 of my book The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today: Many years ago, Jerry Rose wrote an article which began to expose this canard. First of all, more than one business was located at the Depository. Such a roll call, if there had been one, could not account for everyone in that building. As Mark Bridger pointed out in 2007, there is no evidence that any such roll call, in the normal usage of that phrase, ever too place. At the most, there was an informal head count by Roy Truly of his own book warehouse employees. And the time for it is not definite. And even there, Oswlad was not the only one missing. As Bridger points out, so was Givens. As Bridger shows, Bugliosi appears to have borrowed this roll call device from the Warren Commission, Dallas DA Henry Wade and Gerald Posner, among others. As Bridger notes, it has little substance. Second, as Rose pointed out, in March 1964, it was discovered that there were several people missing from the TSBD from their lunch hour until 1:30... I should add, one of these people was told "the building would be shut down and so she went home." If this is the kind of book Litwin wrote then its just another diversionary waste of time.

Its neat that Mort is still around though sad he is not nearly at 100 per cent. About DeGaulle, there was a falling out between the two after 1961. It was due to JFK's manifest anti colonialism about Africa. Then, in 1963 JFK actually wanted suggestions from the State Department to further dislodge the still maintained ties between the former French colonies and Paris.

Thanks Andrew, will forward to web master.

Paul, I note you say you have talked to Mort Sahl a coupe of times recently. I assume this is his one man show up in northern California where you happen to live? Did you have a cup of coffee with him after?

I don't know for a fact. But Garrison did have a file on that matter. This is one of the things that is really frustrating in this field. See, what we have of the Garrison inquiry is, at best, maybe 60 per cent of what was there. As I have pointed out, Garrison's files were dissipated in three ways: 1. Saboteurs in his midst who walked off with them like Boxley. (Which was made easier by Garrison putting Tom Bethell in charge of the files. I can just see him dropping down a carton and Boxley putting it in his car.) 2. Garrison's friend Steve Bordelon had some of them in his garage and these were stolen. 3. Connick incinerated what was left behind. So the considerable amount of fascinating stuff that is there stands out even more since there is so much that is not there.

Ron, yes the HSCA said there were four shots and that did make the news for maybe a day or two. Steve is working on his book right now as far as I know. Those Garrison papers are available at the NARA. I had a friend back then who used to send me those documents since he lived in the area. Man, the stuff that was in Garrison's files was really something. Wallace MIlam once asked me to show him some of the material so I brought the docs to a conference. He said, "Garrison had stuff like this?" I tried to write about some of it in Probe, but there was material that I just could not get to. To give you one example: Garrison was the first guy who said Vietnam was part of the reason JFK was killed. I never understood why or how he said that back then. It turned out that a professor from Ohio University sent him a 25 page handwritten letter showing him why this was so. In going through his files, you see that many people saw this as a chance to go ahead and give him the information they had. Since he was the first guy to really investigate the case. So not only did Nagell want to talk to him, so did DInkin. So did Bolden. And so for the first time, you had these leads that the WC buried, that were now coming forth and getting a hearing. Garrison's investigation of the Clinton/Jackson incident was really something to behold. Just amazing the stuff he turned up there. No wonder Hoover wanted it buried. Or how about this one: Garrison had a job application Oswald filled out naming Ruby as a reference.

Thanks Paul and Joe, here is my favorite part of the essay: Garrison had always insisted that, for various reasons, he was never able to reveal most of the evidence he had secured from 1967-69. After authors like William Davy, Joan Mellen and myself went through what the ARRB attained, we had to agree. The Garrison files in the Archives today hold an abundance of utterly fascinating material on a wide array of subjects dealing with many aspects of the JFK case. Does the MSM reveal any of this to the public? Nope. One of the most embarrassing aspects of the three-week binge that the media went on last year in anticipation that the JFK files were finally going to be completely declassified was this: No one chronicled what the ARRB had already released. Which was significant. It was about 2 million pages of material that opened up new vistas on subjects like Rose Cheramie, Kennedy and Vietnam, and the medical evidence in the JFK case. Guests like Larry Sabato, Phil Shenon and Gerald Posner did not want to discuss those topics. Nether did their hosts like NBC stooge on JFK, Rachel Maddow. It is easy to understand why this would occur. As Upton Sinclair once said: It is hard to make journalists understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it. Contrary to popular belief there is no such thing as a liberal media. In the twentieth century, and up until today, the American media has been controlled by an oligarchical class. Some authors call this class the Eastern Establishment. Some call it the Power Elite. As sociologist Donald Gibson explained in his fine book Battling Wall Street, President Kennedy was not a part of that group. He never joined the Council on Foreign Relations; he did not join any secret societies at Harvard; he didn’t like working intelligence during World War II. He got transferred out to the South Pacific and served with a bunch of Joe Six Pack guys on what were close to suicide missions. As this author demonstrated in the second edition of Destiny Betrayed, both in the Senate and in the White House, Kennedy was opposed to much of what this Power Elite was doing abroad, especially in the Third World. (See Destiny Betrayed, second edition, pp. 21-33) After his death, the progress that he did make in the White House was largely halted, and then reversed. (pp. 367-77) Due in part to the ARRB, we know much more about these changes, especially regarding Indochina. My other favorite part if the ARRB memo saying the CIA destroyed Clay Shaw's 201 file. Geez, wonder why?