Cliff Varnell

I buy Badgeman, a few feet west of the corner. Well, since your designated fence-corner "sweet spot" is just a few feet from the alleged—but always fun—"Black Dog Man" position, while I was there I thought I ought to set up the motorcade where it was at the time of the throat shot, and take a peek. Here ya' go: I don't know about you, but I was having a bit of trouble picking the target out of the crowd, so I made him a bright sort of [G.W. BUSH] nyewkyuhler[/G.W. BUSH] green for you. Hope it helps. And now here's what I think in general: I think it's time we all snap out of over 40 years of mass shock and mass hypnosis, and get a reality check. Ashton Let's address the throat shot, first... Not so difficult a shot for a quick bead artist, Mr. BDM up behind the wall. This is Willis #5 taken at Z202, no foliage, no civilians, no motorcycle cops. The shot to the throat came from the right front unless you want to argue for the Single Bullet Theory... [cue "Twilight Zone"] The plotters were not taking any chances, however, and I speculate that another paralytric round hit JFK at Z227 in the back just below the upper margin of his shoulder blades less than two inches to the right of his spine. Now, as to the issue of mass shock and mass hypnosis -- I agree 100%. The JFK research community has hypnotized itself into thinking that the case hasn't already been solved.

I don't buy it. The assassination was designed to look like a conspiracy. They could hit JFK from that sweet spot behind the fence and if anybody got too wise they had a patsy named Jack in custody. Pure speculation, of course, but methinks if Oswald had been gunned down on Friday afternoon two guys in particular would have been sweating bullets -- Fidel Castro and Jack Lawrence. I think Jackie boy blew chunks back at the auto dealership cuz he realized he'd been set up. When Oswald was captured alive, the Castro-did-it scenario was pretty much dead. Plan B wasn't what the plotters had in mind. Cliff, Can you elaborate a little on your thoughts about Jack Lawrence? How do you think he was involved? I have always thought that he was involved in some way in the assassination, although alot of people wont agree with that. [just my opinion] I might get laughed out of here with this thought but here goes. In looking at people involved in the assassination, i always try to see who is who and put faces on people. One thing that struck me a while ago was, that to me anyway, Jack Lawrence looked strikingly similar to the Umbrella Man. I havent come across many photos of him, but the one that John has listed in his JFK assassination site under "Conspirators" is a well know photo of him. If you look at that photo, with the sport coat, shirt, hair, nose, etc...... [to me anyway], he looks very much like him. I know it may sound far fetched, but i havent come across many other people who look like the UM that were supposedly in DP that day. All of the photos i have seen of the UM that day, all look similar to Mr. Lawrence. Ok, ok, everybody stop laughing. Lol! Dont laugh me out of here too quickly. I just got in here! I figured i would go out on a limb and post what i thought. thanks--Smitty My advice as always is, as much as possible, follow the evidence to a conclusion and not visa verse. I think Jack Lawrence was in the patsy chain. He may have been sheep-dipped in ways he never knew. I think there had to have been contingency pasties on ice in case the lone-shooter scenario didn't come into play. I don't know Umbrella Man. I don't think JFK was hit in the throat with a flechette from an umbrella. I think Mitch WerBell adapted the blood-soluble paralytic technology pioneered by Charles Senseney to a sound suppressed firearm that struck JFK from the Black Dog Man position in the throat at Z199, nicked the trach, bruised the lung tip, fractured the tip of the right T1 transverse process, then dissolved, leaving a field of metallic particles, this technology using iron as a bonding agent. http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/r..._6_Senseney.pdf That's what I think fwiw...

Cliff: do you think you could locate that "sweet spot behind the fence" for me? (Don't get rude, Cliff. This ain't a D.C. lawyer you're talking to here.) I'd like to aim my virtual camera from this alleged "sweet spot." So far, I'm having a lot of trouble finding any spot behind that fence that doesn't have a motorcycle cop and/or spectator in the line of fire. You seem to know where it is, though. Help me out. Ashton The eastern corner of the fence. Ever been to Dealey? The joint is small, I'm tell'n ya.

I don't buy it. The assassination was designed to look like a conspiracy. They could hit JFK from that sweet spot behind the fence and if anybody got too wise they had a patsy named Jack in custody. Pure speculation, of course, but methinks if Oswald had been gunned down on Friday afternoon two guys in particular would have been sweating bullets -- Fidel Castro and Jack Lawrence. I think Jackie boy blew chunks back at the auto dealership cuz he realized he'd been set up. When Oswald was captured alive, the Castro-did-it scenario was pretty much dead. Plan B wasn't what the plotters had in mind.

The throat shot could only have come from that direction.

TO CLIFF VARNELL: I haven't mentioned the throat wound. I don't expect to any time in the foreseeable future. ^^^ Wise choice. Rock on...

And the throat wound, Ashton? Can you honestly argue that that was an exit wound? [cue "Jaws"]

[AG]: Oh. Well, then, Cliff, why don't y'all trot back over to the TSBD and all the other places that have been kicked to death for over thirty years that don't "have a lot of problems." [CV]: As I indicated in my post, I don't discount shots from the County Courts Building. [AG]: Me, I think I'm just going to continue to loiter around the County Courts building for a while. [CV]: By all means! I'm an Ashton Gray fan. I just calls 'em like I sees 'em, & I don't care if anyone thinks I'm stepping on their toes. [AG]: Well, now, that's an interesting way to put it. Didn't know I was betting my life on it. Very kind of you to apprise me of the fact here in front of God and everybody. [CV]: There's been a mis-understanding here, for which I take full responsibility. I should have stated: "...but it is another thing for the conspirators to BET THEIR LIVES on such a nebulous occurence." I was not accusing you of murdering JFK, no... [AG]: And I think I'll just go on standing right where I am anyway. I'm kind of enjoying the view and counting the passersby who keep telling me I should move along. [CV]: This passerby wants you to stay put, but I'm only pointing out a flaw in your argument -- who in their right mind is going to risk the gallows on the ASSUMPTION that all those people are going to bite on this "puff of smoke" mis-direction you posit? Read 'em and weep, pal: Ashton Gray Ashton, all you're showing here is the five card board! We ALL know they charged the knoll. That's not the issue. You haven't shown your hand down, yet. Your hole cards: the number of people who testified to seeing the puff of smoke on the knoll. My hole cards: the number of people who heard gun shots from the knoll. I'm all in, Ashton. Sure you wanna call?

Ashton, I dig the outside-the-box thinking but this one has a lot of problems. It's one thing to think that everybody in the Plaza MIGHT run toward a puff of smoke and totally ignore the direction of the sound of gun fire, but it is another thing to BET YOUR LIFE on such a nebulous occurrence. IOW, if you think it a lock that everybody would run to a puff of smoke, I'd be happy to play poker with you anytime. Also, you're assuming that the plotters were keen to mask evidence of a conspiracy. I contend they WANTED the assassination to look like a conspiracy -- a Castro conspiracy. It was only when the patsy survived to be captured alive that it became necessary to mask, distort, and deep-six the evidence of conspiracy. And thirdly -- there WERE people behind the fence. A guy flashing false SS credentials, fresh foot-prints in the mud, a "commotion" behind the fence according to Lee Bowers. Ashton, your essential point may be correct -- that the head shot did not come from the knoll. But the head wound evidence is a black hole out of which no light can escape.

This struck a nerve in a couple of places, and deserves a closer look, this question of intellectual dishonesty, especially as it relates to the physical evidence of conspiracy. Here is a textbook example of JFK research intellectual dishonesty: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/issues_and_ev...hing--Hunt.html John Hunt's "The Case for a Bunched Jacket" wherein he wrote: (quote on) [M]y research indicates that the difference between the impact point of a "smoothly oriented" jacket shot and a "bunched up" jacket shot is little more than two inches. The reader is invited to contact me via e-mail if he or she is curious as to how I arrived at the aforementioned figure. That essay, explaining in detail my methodology, is not yet finished. (quote off) ...Is not yet finished??? The title of this scholarly work is -- "The Case for a Bunched Jacket" -- but the actual "case" is not yet finished? That was 7 years ago. The argument that JFK's back wound was at T1 or above is inherently intellectually dishonest because these researchers cannot identify more than a fraction of an inch of clothing displacement in the Elm St photos and yet their pet theories require the shirt and jacket to have elevated 2+" in tandem.

And in all intellectual honesty please share with us your methodology for determining the amount of "bunched up" fabric we see in Croft #3. I get .75" to 1" -- tops. How about you, Pat? How did you determine that JFK's jacket was bunched up the 2" your T1-entry theory requires? Fair question, isn't it?

Aren't you making an unsupported assumption that the back shot was a conventional round? When you start your argument with the assumption your conclusion is correct -- it's circular logic, Richard. And keep in mind, as you push your pet theories, that you dismiss out of hand the testimony of the half-dozen people who described the throat wound as an entrance and the 15 who put the back wound at T3 or below. 20 different people got a hands on view of these wounds (Parkland nurse Bowron saw both) and they all got it wrong? Mass hallucination? Mass incompetence? Mass prevarication?

What did they say at the autopsy? The wound was shallow. You know and I know that Drs.Humes,Boswell, and Finck were incompetent fools. Humes, Boswell and Richard Lipsey are the only people to describe the back wound above T3. Humes came up with 3 different locations himself: just above the upper margin of the scapula (around T2), 14cm below the mastoid process (C7/T1), and in the Rydberg drawing the back wound was around C6. But the bullet holes in the clothes are 4" below the bottom of the collars, well below the base of the neck. The Dealey Plaza photos clearly show the jacket dropped. And they found no exit. Graphic descriptions of the low, non-transiting back wound are cited elsewhere on this thread . That's why we can eliminate a round travelling 1700-1800 fps. Never happened. Listen to the folks who saw the back and throat wounds and the facts of the case will point to the perps, imo. Cliff,why is the entry wound in JBC back elongated and the same length as 399? The entry wound is not circular it is Elongated! The WC got it right. Richard, JFK's back wound was oval, as well, 7mm x 4mm. If JBC's back wound was oval because the bullet hit something first, what did the bullet that struck JFK hit first? ... 95% of the first day witness testimony is gold. 95% of the photographic evidence is gold. Follow the evidence to a conclusion, not the reverse. [ADD] There seems to be one instance where the photographic evidence and the consensus witness statements conflict: the movement of the limosine in the Zap. I venture no explanation for this discrepency. Cliff, you cannot trust the Z-FIlm. I think it's okay thru Z227. That's the only part of it I cite in my analysis. After that...I prefer to stay out of that black hole...

What did they say at the autopsy? The wound was shallow. You know and I know that Drs.Humes,Boswell, and Finck were incompetent fools. Humes, Boswell and Richard Lipsey are the only people to describe the back wound above T3. Humes came up with 3 different locations himself: just above the upper margin of the scapula (around T2), 14cm below the mastoid process (C7/T1), and in the Rydberg drawing the back wound was around C6. But the bullet holes in the clothes are 4" below the bottom of the collars, well below the base of the neck. The Dealey Plaza photos clearly show the jacket dropped. And they found no exit. Graphic descriptions of the low, non-transiting back wound are cited elsewhere on this thread . That's why we can eliminate a round travelling 1700-1800 fps. Never happened. Listen to the folks who saw the back and throat wounds and the facts of the case will point to the perps, imo. Cliff,why is the entry wound in JBC back elongated and the same length as 399? The entry wound is not circular it is Elongated! The WC got it right. Richard, JFK's back wound was oval, as well, 7mm x 4mm. If JBC's back wound was oval because the bullet hit something first, what did the bullet that struck JFK hit first? ... 95% of the first day witness testimony is gold. 95% of the photographic evidence is gold. Follow the evidence to a conclusion, not the reverse. [ADD] There seems to be one instance where the photographic evidence and the consensus witness statements conflict: the movement of the limosine in the Zap. I venture no explanation for this discrepency.

What did they say at the autopsy? The wound was shallow. You know and I know that Drs.Humes,Boswell, and Finck were incompetent fools. Humes, Boswell and Richard Lipsey are the only people to describe the back wound above T3. Humes came up with 3 different locations himself: just above the upper margin of the scapula (around T2), 14cm below the mastoid process (C7/T1), and in the Rydberg drawing the back wound was around C6. But the bullet holes in the clothes are 4" below the bottom of the collars, well below the base of the neck. The Dealey Plaza photos clearly show the jacket dropped. And they found no exit. Graphic descriptions of the low, non-transiting back wound are cited elsewhere on this thread . That's why we can eliminate a round travelling 1700-1800 fps. Never happened. Listen to the folks who saw the back and throat wounds and the facts of the case will point to the perps, imo.

And from Paul O'Connor in the same book: O’Connor: When we started an autopsy, the first thing we always did…was to weigh and measure the body. We’d check for any scars, contusions, any abnormalities, and so on. But in this case, we didn’t turn the body over to look at the back while we were doing that. Finally we turned the body over, and there was a bullet wound—an entrance wound—in his back, on the right side of his spinal column. To emphasize where it was in proximity to the rest of his body: if you bend your neck down and feel back, you feel a lump and that’s the seventh cervical vertebra. This bullet wound was about 3 inches down and an inch or two to the right of the seventh cervical vertebra. I remember there was a big gush of surprise that nobody actually thought about turning him over right away, you know after we had done our initial investigation of the president’s body. Dr Humes took his finger and poked it in the hole---the bullet wound hole, the entrance wound hole---and said it didn’t go anywhere. There was a very big argument, a lot of consternation, that he shouldn’t have stuck his finger in the hole. Let's add this graphic, detailed account of autopsy attendee James Curtis Jenkins: (quote on) I remember looking inside the chest cavity and I could see the probe...through the pleura [the lining of the chest cavity]...You could actually see where it was making an indentation...where it was pushing the skin up...There was no entry into the chest cavity...it would have been no way that that could have exited in the front because it was then low in the chest cavity...somewhere around the junction of the descending aorta [the main artery carrying blood from the heart] or the bronchus in the lungs. (quote off) From BEST EVIDENCE.

Excellent cite of O'Connor's description of the wound as being 3 inches down from C7 -- matches the consensus testimony, the contemporaneous documents, the holes in the clothes, and the Dealey Plaza photos that show JFK's jacket dropping an inch right before he was shot. I know why LNers insist on a C7/T1 back wound -- they couldn't be LNers otherwise -- by why a CT would buy into it mystifies me.

Yes and no. We can say with 100% certainty that at least 4 shots were fired because JFK's proven T3 back wound was too low to allow any possibility of the Single Bullet Theory. We cannot say with 100% certainty who commanded and controlled the assassination, but I'll argue that we know to 95% certainty that the troika of Ed Lansdale, David Atlee Phillips, and David Sanchez Morales organized and controlled the assassination for the express purpose of pinning the hit on Castro in prelude to an invasion of Cuba. Although these men are rightly characterized as CIA operatives, I'll argue that these individuals did not work "for" any particular institution or group but rather drew upon the sympathy their goals engendered within many institutions and groups. My advice to you, Richard, is read McKnight's BREACH OF TRUST. You will not give so much weight to "evidence" provided by the FBI and the Warren Commission.

I don't fistfight or flamefest vets, JFK's back wound was at T3 and to contend otherwise is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest. Intellectual Dishonesty = xxxx! No, not necessarily. It means "in denial." That you choose to take this so personally is telling. If I thought we could have a collegial discussion of the facts of the case, I would continue a conversation with you. But you haven't indicated that such a thing is possible, so I'll discuss the case with others.

Mr. Purvis, I don't fistfight or flamefest vets, & since the latter seems inevitable, I'll discuss the JFK assassination with others. Thank you for your past service to our country.

Thank you, Michael. I prefer to discuss facts, but since Tom Purvis can't face the fact that JFK's jacket dropped an inch in Dealey Plaza he has no rhetorical recourse but ad hominem.

What did they say at the autopsy? The wound was shallow.

No one has a definitive answer for what happened 43 years ago. In event you search around, perhaps you may find one here. As regards Cliff, as a "new guy" to the forum it is recognized that you would have had absolutely no idea as to what would occur when you brought up the obvious "bunch/fold" in JFK's coat. Those who have been around are quite familiar with Cliff, and normally, from what has been observed, most apply the "William G. McAdoo" principal when dealing with his junk theories. http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/William_G._McAdoo/ Tom P.S. Welcome, & hope that you have thick skin! ***** This is the first response from Tom Purvis since waaaay back at Lancer in '02. Tom didn't address the evidence then -- and he won't address it now.

That's a path from the throat entrance wound. Bruised the tip of the lung, left a tiny fracture of the tip of the right T1 transverse process. DID NOT EXIT. It also left a field of small metallic debris. Look, Richard, before we go into this I'd advise you consider that 95% of what the first-day witnesses in Dealey, at Parkland, and at Bethesda say is pure gold. Listen to those who were there, Richard, never suppose many people suffered mass hallucinations just because what they say is inconvenient to your pet theories of the assassination.

All I know is what they said at the autopsy -- the bullet didn't exit. The bit about the bullet exiting didn't come up until later when it became a political necessity to cover up the real nature of the crime. I don't think any bullet was extracted from JFK's back.