Greg Doudna

Can anyone identify an FBI record that corresponds to or sheds light on this from Jim Hosty, Assignment: Oswald (1996 [2011 edn]) (bold added)? "[O]ne of Oswald's acquaintances, George DeMorenschild [sic], reported to us that a short time before the Walker shooting, he and Oswald had been discussing politics when Walker's name came up. DeMorenschild mentioned that Walker, who was fervently anti-Castro, was just another Hitler. He told Oswald that Walker was a menace to society and that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if someone took a shot at him. DeMorenschild told us he had said this in the heat of passion--he hadn't been serious about that comment. But he might have inadvertently put the idea in Oswald's head." (Hosty, Assignment: Oswald, 107) I can find no FBI interview report of de Mohrenschildt. But on its face, this reads as a claim that there was one. When? Well in 1964 when the FBI had been asked by the Warren Commission to do further interviews, de Mohrenschildt was in Haiti and de Mohrenschildt was not interviewed. It sounds like an FBI interview of de Mohrenschildt in April 1963 before de Mohrenschildt left Dallas. But where is this mystery interview? Hosty refers to de Mohrenschildt having "reported to us", meaning the FBI, but does not say which FBI agent or agents conducted the interview. Was the recipient of that information from de Mohrenschildt on FBI's end possibly Hosty himself? (Since Hosty knows about this interview and no other FBI agent is known to have ever spoken of this.) Hosty says that in this time frame he was investigating Walker. "[I]n May 1963 I decided that the Oswalds had had enough time to cool off. It wasn't as if the Oswalds were my only, or even my major, concern. I was heavily involved in investigating the former U.S. Army general and leader of the Dallas-based Minutemen Edwin Walker for possibly inciting a riot at the University of Mississippi in Oxford during a tense confrontation over desegregation. I was under intense pressure from headquarters on the Walker case; they had made it my top priority." (Hosty, Assignment: Oswald, 46) But why no FBI document or report of an April 1963 de Mohrenschildt FBI interview (or at any other time)? Then it occurred to me: could that puzzling Hosty paragraph answer a longstanding question in a way that has not heretofore been noticed? For it has always been a puzzle why Natasha Voshinin, who claimed in 1992 to Dick Russell that de Mohrenschildt had visited her several days after April 10, 1963, the night the shot was fired into Walker's house, and told her that Oswald had fired that shot, and that she, Voshinin, absolutely, emphatically, had reported that immediately to the FBI. And yet there is no FBI record of that. (Though Mrs. Voshinin did not mention this in her 1964 Warren Commission testimony, at the end when asked if she had any other information of interest to tell the Commission.) "[N]ot long after the Walker shooting, Mrs. Natasha Voshinin recalled de Mohrenschildt dropping by to see them one evening. 'He said, "Listen, that fellow Oswald is absolutely suspicious, you are right." Thousands of times before, he would say we were wrong. "Imagine," George said, "that scoundrel took a potshot at General Walker. Of course Walker is a stinker, but stinkers have a right to live." Then he told us something about the rifle ... I immediately delivered this information [from de Mohrenschildt] to the FBI.' "That last statement seemed to me [author Dick Russell] a remarkable one, for according to the Warren Commission Report, 'The FBI had no knowledge that Oswald was responsible for the attack until Marina Oswald revealed the information on December 3, [1963].' Yet Mrs. Voshinin was saying she had alerted the FBI of the possibility sometime back in April. Had the FBI looked into this at the time? Was the bureau's disclaimer of any foreknowledge in the Walker matter a fabrication, designed to cover up its prior awareness of Oswald?" (Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much [1992, 1st edn], 317-18, citing interview of Natasha Voshinin of 4/5/92) Could it be (a) the answer to Dick Russell's last question above is "yes", and (b) Hosty's unidentified FBI interview of de Mohrenschildt in April 1963 cited above IS an echo of an FBI followup to the Mrs. Voshinin information? It reads like it! The logical thing for the Dallas office of the FBI to do to something incoming as described by Mrs. Voshinin--a declarative information identifying the shooter at Walker as a named person, Oswald--would be to contact and interview the reported source of that information named by Mrs. Voshinin, George de Mohrenschildt. And what Hosty describes de Mohrenschildt said sounds very much like what it can be imagined de Mohrenshildt could well have answered the FBI in response to their specific questions about the Voshinin report. Did some sector of the FBI know (as in, believe) within days that Oswald was the suspected shooter at the Walker house the night of April 10, 1963? How can Hosty's published paragraph on page 107 of Assignment: Oswald not read as direct confirmation that de Mohrenschildt and the FBI had an April 1963 contact, shortly following the Walker shot, which reads exactly like the FBI had received Natasha Voshinin's phone call report and had followed up on it? And how can the FBI say it (the FBI) had no information Oswald was the suspected shooter when Hosty's own statement says de Mohrenschildt told them (and it had to be April 1963 because after that he was gone from Dallas) that he, de Mohrenschildt, had "told Oswald that Walker was a menace to society and that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if someone took a shot at him". Oswald is named. And if Hosty was the contact or interviewer of de Mohrenschildt, Hosty already knew who both Lee and Marina Oswald were--he had their file. So, in April 1963, the FBI is discussing Oswald with reference to the Walker shot. And later denied that altogether to the Warren Commission. And did that enter into the famous dispute over what Hosty did or did not say to Dallas Police officer Revell on Nov 22, 1963 concerning what Revell said Hosty told him was FBI knowledge that they knew Oswald was capable of killing the president? (affirmed by Revell, denied by Hosty) And did that enter into what General Walker always later claimed which has always sounded so crazy, that he was told by someone in the Dallas Police something about the police knew within days of the shot at him that it was Oswald, but that Robert Kennedy, head of the Justice Department, had spiked going after Oswald? Well, Walker did get things garbled, said all sorts of things. The Justice Department would be more likely to have spiked something in the FBI, which was part of the Justice Department, rather than something in the Dallas Police Department, over which they had no actual jurisdiction beyond asking as a favor (and there is no evidence from DPD of any awareness of Oswald as a suspect to the Walker shot prior to Nov 1963). Also, Oswald was never "arrested" as in Walker's garbled claim of the story he heard. But the notion that Oswald was known by name to the FBI early, and they spiked it or did nothing about it, could that be the kernel of truth in Walker's long-held story? A story which first became public the weekend of the JFK assassination with Walker's interview with that newspaper in Germany. But if there was awareness internal to the Dallas FBI office of Oswald as a suspect in the Walker shot as early as several days after April 10, 1963 (and if there was, surely that awareness would have gone to headquarters!), why did the FBI not pursue investigation of Oswald then, or inform Dallas Police of the name of Oswald as someone to look at, and later answer falsely to the Warren Commission about it? Who ever heard of a law enforcement body receiving an otherwise promising investigative lead toward a suspect in a high-profile case that is unsolved with no other promising leads, and covering that up instead of investigating it, for no reason? Why? I don't know why, but my first supposition is such a decision would have had to have come from headquarters, and my second supposition is there will have been a reason, which in the absence of any more promising possibilities, by default might be not wanting to interfere in some intelligence or informant activity of some other agency (if not one's own). Does someone else have a better analysis to offer?

Good valid question if Brewer's identification was correct that the man at the front of his shoe store seen through his glass front door of his store was Oswald. But if that man of Brewer was not Oswald (but was the Tippit killer), the same man who after going into the balcony of the theater was seen by officer Courson coming down from the balcony and Courson too also thought he was Oswald (though that man was not), then the question collapses. So the question is only as solid as the Tenth and Patton plus Brewer witness testimonies of the Oswald identification, however strong or not, as the case may be, as those witness identifications are. Just to be clear on that point. There is a non-zero possibility that that many witnesses, none of whom got a close look at Oswald and knew him from before (apart from Brewer who had once sold shoes to Oswald), could be mistaken in that identification, for various reasons now familiar to law enforcement and Innocence Projects, in the climate of the context then. There sure were a lot of people who thought they saw Oswald who came forth after the assassination, who didn't. The WC documents and elsewhere on the MFF site must have hundreds of such false positives of sincere but simply wrong Oswald identifications.

Thanks Joe, I thought so too. This is off topic but trivia note: the ad at the top right of the Scattergood article for Olney Friends Boarding School in Barnesville, Ohio, is where my grandparents met and where are located the graves of “John Doudna—ancestor of all the Doudnas” and Sarah his wife. I had an article published in the May 15, 1985 issue telling of a visit to Barnesville, at pp 15-16 here, https://www.friendsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/emember/downloads/1985/HC12-50778.pdf. (In answer to Karl’s question Friends Journal is the leading publication of unprogrammed-meeting Friends in North America.)

When someone is publicly accused and mocked in a group hate phenomenon for decades asserting what in some quarters is believed with bedrock certainty, that that person forged and fabricated and planted all kinds of documents and physical evidence with wilful intent to knowingly frame an innocent person--which is a horrible thing and a serious series of crimes if true, without the remotest, slightest, speck of actual evidence or conscience about doing so--(of a person with no training, expertise, experience, or criminal record in any such arts)--without disclosure that "we acknowledge there has never been one speck of evidence ever come forth for this"--that is not right. If anyone here cannot see that that is victimizing someone, I don't know what to say. Ruth in good faith believes Oswald killed JFK, whom she voted for and like a generation of Americans, supported and mourned the loss of JFK. Many see that conclusion concerning the assassination of JFK differently and are angered at anyone who in good faith believes what the authorities have said and concluded happened. I get that. But Ruth Paine did not create that finding or the constellations of evidence and argument marshaled in making that prosecutors' case. Nor is Ruth Paine materially preeminent in causing that case to be believed by the American public (that was accomplished by the major investigative bodies, news network specials, and heavyweight authors like McMillan, Posner, Bugliosi, Myers, and dozens of others who could be named. Ruth Paine is not up there in that league). That Ruth Paine may be wrong in a good faith belief upon a contested historical question does not make her a fabricator or forger or planter of physical evidence.

This is unjustified and an example of a recurring grievous phenomenon among some CT types who inhabit forums such as this: spreading entirely unfounded smears about innocent persons. There is nothing whatever in the source you cite or any other source that supports "Lady Scattergood has written CIA all over her face". It is irresponsible of you to quote that soundbite which has no substantiation, where it will be picked up by some readers here who will assume because of your words that there may be something to it, which never was even alleged to my knowledge by anyone who knew her or of her. Margaret Scattergood had an outstanding reputation among Friends. She was almost legendary in how highly she was esteemed among Friends. She was opposed to the CIA because of the things it did in the world, demonstrated that in her words and actions from birth to death. As I understand it, she lived with a woman companion, her lifelong friend, in a mansion inherited from her ancestors. The CIA wanted her property upon which to build or expand their headquarters, and threatened to take it by eminent domain. This was not of Margaret Scattergood's wish or doing and she fought it. It was eventually settled in court to where she agreed to sell the estate (this sale was under duress), provided she and her companion were allowed to remain in the mansion and on the grounds which they lovingly tended for the remainder of their lives, which she did--living another forty years until age 92, before the CIA could take possession of her land of that forced sale. Here is a more accurate picture of Margaret Scattergood. Chuck Fager, "Margaret Scattergood: In Memorium": https://www.friendsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/1987/04/margaret-scattergood-in-memorium.pdf. Please, be more careful about spreading smearing of innocent persons.

I think Michael Paine informed whoever was involved in security at Bell, and perhaps the FBI directly or indirectly via a security office at Bell, and cleared that it was OK for his wife to take in Marina, knowing who Oswald was and all. In fact I can hardly imagine he would not have checked whether that was going to be a problem or not, in the Cold War atmosphere at the time. And who says Michael Paine "never gets a visit by the FBI" or was not in contact with the FBI, perhaps even an informant? Michael Paine never was asked, and never denied being in contact with the FBI, to my knowledge. Ruth Paine denied knowledge that Michael was an FBI informant, is the closest there is to a denial. But that did not come from Michael directly. Michael could have been feeding reports in regularly on Marina and Lee for all we know. It doesn't make him or Ruth involved in killing Kennedy or framing Oswald with planted or forged physical evidence etc etc.

This is not logical. The number of questions asked is irrelevant, not in Ruth Paine’s control anyway. Nothing in Ruth’s testimony implicated Oswald in any crime. That is just fact. She never witnessed Oswald committing a crime or planning a crime, never claimed so in her testimony. That is just fact. And to attack Ruth Paine for the contents of physical belongings she let Oswald store in her home rent-free as if she was guilty of wrongdoing in doing that, is illogical, unless you are claiming she was party to planting any of those things, for which there is not the slightest proof and no plausibility, nothing stronger than baseless witchcraft-accusation genre. And you cite a Mexico City item as if that is evidence Ruth implicated Oswald in a crime. Good grief. Crime of what?? Going to Mexico City? That is crazy tunes logic. The Warren Commission in its massive report claimed it had evidence Oswald killed JFK (and Tippit and the shot at Walker). It detailed its evidential claims of its case against Oswald. But they did not get any claimed evidence that Oswald did any of those crimes from Ruth Paine’s testimony. They just didn’t. It is simply not accurate to keep repeating that factually untrue description, designed in this audience to pile on further smearing of Ruth Paine. These comments are directed at DiEugenio not Cairns. I don’t agree with Cairns in the article but he makes several serious points which deserve addressing, not my purpose here. Cairns at least has the decency to address Ruth Paine by her correct name. Jim your “Ruthie” is offensive.

You've got me convinced, Tony, on the Frank Tortoriello identity of the man Jada phoned that morning after the incident with the injury of the pedestrian, which functions to place him with Jada at Parkland Hospital at the time of arrival of the presidential limousine following the shooting of JFK and Connally, this bad man Tortoriello, reported to terrorize women and travel in the company of Dallas mob boss Joe Civello. Also I don't know if it means anything but you can add one more Carousel Club stripper present at Parkland Hospital that morning to your list: Joy Dale (Joyce McDonald). She says she was there taking her girl to an eye doctor's appointment at Parkland that morning. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/artist-reunites-carousel-club-stripper-ruby-in-deep-ellum-mural/287-411304395.

Interesting Tony. Ruby at Parkland on Nov 22 (Seth Kantor)--why was he there? What do you want to bet it was because he had foreknowledge Oswald could be arriving to the hospital shortly, having been shot but might still be living? (Except Oswald eluded that fate at Dealey Plaza?) Then as you bring out in your discussion on your forum, after Jada almost ran over a man with her Cadillac the morning of Nov 22, Jada called another man who showed up in another Cadillac who was "large, dark, and heavy set" who may have been named "Nick". And then your find of the Jan 1, 1964 El Paso Herald-Post article quoting Jada as saying she was at Parkland at the time the presidential limousine arrived with Kennedy and Connally (https://jacks.forumotion.com/t36-the-red-head-and-the-cadillac), perhaps in the company of the big bruiser of a man with her that morning. Jada doesn't say why she went to Parkland. And then what an interesting document you note, the Nov 24, 1963 FBI report in which Jada is reported by a gas station attendant in Hawkins, Texas (a few miles down the road from where I later lived in Big Sandy), on Sunday Nov 24, in that gas station making phone calls "concerning shooting of Oswald by Rubenstein" and "talked considerably about this shooting" and "remarked she knew the 'SOB' was going to shoot him" (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=56987#relPageId=2). The thoroughly mobbed-up Jada knew Ruby was going to shoot Oswald? What was that about? What would have caused Jada to think that? And on Jada's "large, dark, and heavy set" man driving a Cadillac who may have been named "Nick", compare possibly the figure named "Nick" in the Odell Estes story, who showed up at the Carousel Club at about the same time of Jada's arrival there in the summer of 1963 (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29006-decipherment-of-the-james-odell-estes-story-carousel-club-july-aug-1963/). "Nick" was described by Odell Estes as age 30s-40s, 6'2", 200-plus lbs, big man, moustache, black hair cut short, and drove a maroon Cadillac with Louisiana plates. However, the witness who saw Jada's Nov 22 possibly-named "Nick" had him in a green Cadillac whereas Odell Estes remembering some years later had his "Nick" in a maroon Cadillac. Maybe Estes was mistaken in his memory of the color years later, and this was the same Nick. Hard to know for sure, but could be.

A tiny detail, Bill Simpich: despite how commonly it is reported that Oswald visited the FBI with his "Hosty note" after the Nov 9 Soviet embassy letter, Ruth Paine's testimony indicates that visit of Oswald to the FBI office happened before the weekend of Nov 9-11, because Ruth says Oswald told her the weekend of Nov 9-11 about having gone to the FBI offices to attempt to see Hosty, in response to being upset about Hosty's visit to Marina. https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/pdf/WH3_RuthPaine.pdf That is Ruth's testimony, and it dates the Oswald visit and Hosty note before, not after, that weekend of Nov 9-11. It is a mystery to me why Ruth Paine's testimony on this point has been ignored instead of being considered decisive in dating the visit of Oswald to Hosty's office. I have checked what evidence supports the common notion (e.g. of the Warren Commission; of the Church Committee report of your link) that that Oswald Hosty note occurred later than Nov 9 and all I can see are unreliable later memory estimates of Hosty and maybe others as to the date, nothing hard and solid establishing a later date. I don't know if there are any consequences to a correction on this date detail, but for what it is worth.

Sandy I read the Aguilar link and I see you are right that Aguilar's flap suggestion for the BOH photograph goes down farther in the back of the head than I think Pat Speer's does. Its not a matter of "weeping". I don't regard myself as having a dog in this fight, just want to know the truth sensibly whatever it is. What I'm opposed to is attempts to suppress or bully into silence informed discussion presented from divergent points of view, such as from some quarters, Pat Speer's. May intelligent, informed discussion flourish and may the best arguments win. The only weeping from me in that case would be tears of joy.

Pat, your argument on the blow-by-blow of how the autopsists' EOP/rear-hairline bullet hole was disappeared and the new bullet hole was found at the cowlick--and how that came about without for the first three years anyone reporting that--was stunning to read. My M.A. thesis adviser at Cornell, Martin Bernal, devoted attention to not only the substance of contested scholarly interpretations but also to what he called the "sociology of scholarship", how changes in ideas get accepted and changed in scholarly disciplines. It is like a retired US federal marshal who was my father's closest friend in his final years told me, speaking from long experience: "Greg, in every town and city there are a few families who run everything." In academic disciplines there are usually some major figures with positions and lots of graduate students. Any new idea in a field put forth by, say, some bright graduate student, will take traction if one of the major names in the field endorses it and tells the rest of the field, "look at this". Whether that happens, so far as I have seen, is largely accident, it depends on some major name deciding they like something and deciding to make that public endorsement. If no major figure proactively does that, the work gets published and a few will read it, but--news flash--most scholars do not read most of what is published in their field, they read only what is being done on their specific research question or niche, and may read some of what a few major names of their field publish generally, but not unrecognized names. They don't have time or energy to read unrecognized names. Once a theory attached to a new name is brought to wider attention by one of the major names, then the past publications of that new name may be looked up and read. I honestly think there is a significant percentage of peer-reviewed journal articles with a lot of work and expense going into their publishing that are hardly read by anyone. Of course everyone scans abstracts or may take a 3/4 second glance but that's it for some articles indefinitely.

Thanks Stu on noting there does exist current advocacy of the EOP/hairline bullet hole and LN interpretation, as well as the rest of your sound comments. All of your comments make good sense, and on this one, I have it corrected now but in mine originally I had somehow mistaken in memory the (correct) 6 x 15 mm autopsists' measurement for (I called it mistakenly) 5 x 16 mm. A difference only between 6.0 and 6.5 mm, not 5 and 6.5, so yes, I accept that a half a millimeter sounds within margin of human measuring error, and withdraw any claim that that is an argument that can be pressed, thanks.

Sandy, your reply responds to something different than what I said, and what I understand Dr. Aguilar to have meant. I was not referring to a flap covering up the entire back of the head or any blown-out exit hole in the middle of the back of the head. I was referring to a limited flap coverup of only a small part of the total back of the head, to the top or top-right, in the BOH photos, but not most of the visible back of the head in the BOH photos. That is what I thought I made clear in the way I worded it; that is what Pat Speer has been saying in these discussions recently though I am not sure you have been aware of that; and that is what I assumed Dr. Aguilar meant, though I do not presume to speak for Dr. Aguilar and hope I do not have him wrong on that. But you rebut entirely a claim that is not, in this discussion, being made by anyone at issue--you cite someone else's notion of an entire gaping hole in the back of the head covered up by a flap. You then attribute that to Dr. Aguilar, then argue for that being implausible and/or impossible (with which I agree with you on that point--but that is not what was at issue in the question I asked you). Dr. Aguilar said in his quoted words to Pat Speer: "'Re the 'back of the head blowout' controversy, I think you put your finger on it, Pat: Jack's scalp flaps fell backward as he lay on the gurney, face up, at Parkland. (And at Bethesda, too.) It was likely NOT a blown-out exit wound; the Z film wasn't altered, etc.'" Yet you set up a straw man, claiming that Dr. Aguilar is saying what he explicitly said is "likely NOT" the case: a blown-out exit wound in the back of the head. You wrote (bold is my added): Except the problem there was you don't quote Aguilar. You quote someone else that you thought may have inspired Dr. Aguilar in his views, then stuck those words (from someone else) on to Dr. Aguilar as if that was an accurate representation of what Dr. Aguilar believes. But you did not show that from any direct quotation from Dr. Aguilar. And in the quotation from Dr. Aguilar that is under discussion, Aguilar explicitly said he does "NOT" think a blown-out exit wound in the back likely existed, the opposite of what you attribute to Dr. Aguilar on the basis of quoting somebody else. Then you attribute to Dr. Aguilar what you term three "strange beliefs". But Dr. Aguilar said he does "NOT" think a blowout back of the head is likely, of your first line above (your bold). Of the three "strange beliefs" you claim Dr. Aguilar holds, the first two you list do not even make a claim as to what Dr. Aguilar believes, let alone establishing that he believes such, if your wording is read carefully. Those first two points are in the form of "if-then" propositions, "if" Dr. Aguilar believes what you quote someone else saying, "then" <that is implausible/impossible>". You make those "if-then" logical arguments without quoting Aguilar, without establishing that Aguilar believes the "if" premise. That is faulty logic, as stated, to conclude that Aguilar holds a "strange" belief (the "then" conclusion of your "if-then") based on what logically follows from what someone else said if Dr. Aguilar also holds that, without establishing that he does. On your third point of the three, yes and no. I understand your point there, that the BOH photo shows the right side, whereas Dr. Aguilar speaks of a missing right-side autopsy photo (without acknowledging that the BOH photo shows the right side). However I believe Dr. Aguilar, who has spoken elsewhere in favor of the idea that some photographs taken at the autopsy are missing in the extant autopsy photos, clearly meant a missing specific photo taken full-on from the right side. That was Dr. Aguilar's actual point, I believe. But back to the main point (bold below is my added). But Dr. Aguilar said the opposite: "It was likely NOT a blown-out exit wound". The flap referred to by Pat Speer, I believe Dr. Aguilar, and what I was asking you about, is not a supposed "flap hanging down over the BOH hole" but rather a reduced-size flap hanging down covering a part of the gaping wound that extended into the top-right or upper right of the back of the head--not a massive full flap covering the entire back of the head or rather covering a huge gaping blowout exit wound in the middle of the back of the head. And I was asking you to run a recount of your odds-probabilities based on whether witnesses' claims of what they saw was either consistent or inconsistent with that small-covering by a flap, not what you misunderstood as being a question about a total flap covering a major blow-out hole in the back of the head. I very clearly in asking my question to you, said that Parkland witnesses who said they saw a gaping wound in the middle or lower part of the back of the head would be inconsistent with the flap interpretation I meant, and which I understood (I hope correctly) Dr. Aguilar also to have meant, and Pat Speer as well. I was not disputing all of your witnesses, just asking for a recalibration of your odds based on reshuffling your categorizations, since the way you set up your odds seemed straw mannish in its starting assumptions. You did not allow in your starting categorizations for witnesses who said they saw wound in the upper or right back that would be consistent with what Dr. Aguilar appears actually to have meant, which Pat Speer clearly means, and which I meant, in my question.

First point, does there even exist today a EOP/rear hairline bullet hole LN theorist, even though that was the Warren Report’s position? If you can name anyone today who holds to the Warren Report position on that, and also believes the Warren Report conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin, I would be interested to know the names. Not even Bugliosi or David von Pein defend or hold to the Warren Report on that part of the WR’s conclusions. Second, on arguments against a LN/EOP bullet hole attached to the gaping head wound being possible (i.e. against the WC interpretation that no known LNer today holds), here are two more in addition to what you name: The autopsists’ 6 x 15 mm measurement of the bullet hole in the skull bone is incompatible with a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano bullet. Bone does not shrink, and, if that measurement is accurate, that bullet therefore cannot have come from the Mannlicher-Carcano. Given that other evidence does indicate one or more shots came from the Mannlicher-Carcano, therefore, it follows: more than one shooter. And second, the trajectory of EOP to exit at the gaping head wound just is a great stretch to consider plausible for a JFK sitting upright. Which is why all WR defenders abandoned the WR on this point, became critics or opponents of the WR on this point—decided that a mere item of evidence, the autopsists’ report of a simple fact as to a particular bullet wound’s location, was to be dismissed out of existence and declared nonexistent, presto, just like that. A mere simple fact reported by the autopsists, accepted by the WC, and without any contrary evidence other than that it does not agree with the LN interpretation, was declared out of existence because it conflicted with the LN interpretation.

Sandy, have you factored into your odds calculation the below from Dr. Aguilar? According to Dr. Aguilar, all of the witnesses would have seen a gaping wound in the upper part of or to the right of the back of the head, but that does not mean the BOH photograph is not authentic if a flap at the top or right side covered up part of what was visible prior to the flap pulled up in that photograph. In that reconstruction, the witnesses who saw a gaping wound lower in the back of the head would indeed run counter to BOH photo authenticity, but those witnesses who saw the gaping wound high, or at the top right, in the back of the head, not so. Could you rerun your calculations with new counts of the witnesses based on Dr. Aguilar's framing of the issue? Would that change your claimed proof from astronomical odds that the BOH photo must be faked? "Here is our friend Dr. Aguilar in an email to me last week (and yes, he said I could quote him): "'Re the 'back of the head blowout' controversy, I think you put your finger on it, Pat: Jack's scalp flaps fell backward as he lay on the gurney, face up, at Parkland. (And at Bethesda, too.) It was likely NOT a blown-out exit wound; the Z film wasn't altered, etc.'" (Pat Speer, 2/7/24, https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30120-so-is-david-liftons-final-charade-just-going-to-be-lost-to-history/page/8/#comment-527924)

It could be, but I think that could be a reaction to being hit in the upper back. Just out of curiosity, suppose the first shot that hit JFK was the upper back hit. How would you expect him to react differently than what we see in Zapruder with the elbows raising? I take Bennets affidavit establishing a terminus ad quem, time no later than, for the back hit, which means the back shot was before Z313. Bennet saw the back shot there when he looked. I don’t see evidence of JFK reacting to another hit between the elbows-raising and Z313, therefore I reason that first hit, the one of the elbows raising, was the bullet in his back.

From the foundation that there was a bullet hole just above the rear hairline--to the right of the EOP--as the autopsists and other witnesses said--Pat Speer makes an excellent argument that the huge gaping head wound was not connected to that but caused by a different, tangential shot, not a through-and-through shot with a separate entrance and exit for if that had been the case comparative parallels indicate (Speer cites) that it would not have blown out as much of the skull as a tangential shot would and, in the case of JFK, did. The autopsists said the rear hairline bullet hole was an entrance wound due to beveling on the inside, but I would like to see that interpretation analyzed. I know Pat Speer accepts that it is an entrance wound with the exit in the throat. But there are several things that seem to me could weigh in favor of reversing that direction, with entrance at the throat and exit at the rear hairline. First, the impressions of nearly everyone who saw the throat bullet hole that it was an entrance. Second, the throat wound was only 3-5 mm, much smaller than the rear hairline 6 x 15 mm, and all else being equal, usually the smaller hole is the entrance, the wider hole is the exit. Third, from some gunshot articles I have been reading, beveling in skull bone is a usually decisive argument on direction but there are exceptions; in the case of tangential hits there is beveling on both sides, or rather the bullet channels in making a "trough" on one side of the exit hole, from the inside (before beveling on the outside of the exit). But that "trough" on the inside can look like beveling too, which runs counter to the idea that beveling always is on the opposite side of the direction of the bullet. The question is whether the autopsists' 6 x 15 mm bullet hole could have had a "trough" looking like beveling on the inside, with the "oval" hole representing a tangential exit rather than an entrance. I was struck in reading Speer's chapter (13) by the analysis of the Clark and HSCA panels. I have come to see that those panels did not "move" the autopsists' rear-hairline bullet hole "up" four inches higher. No. What they did was they simply disappeared or declared nonexistent the autopsists' rear-hairline bullet hole. They then found a new alleged bullet hole at the cowlick, much higher, based on an indeterminate photo and an interpretation of an indeterminate lateral x-ray, both very equivocal in interpretations as necessarily indicating a bullet hole at that location. As Speer brings out, nobody had previously noticed any bullet hole at the cowlick before the Clark and HSCA panels newly "found" one there. The Clark and HSCA panels obviously did not have access to the actual skull so were working solely from photos and x-rays. Whether or not they were correct in finding a bullet hole at that location--Speer makes a good argument they were incorrect on that, that it was dried blood in that location--has no connection to whether they were right or wrong in "disappearing" the autopsists' and other witnesses bullet hole near the rear hairline. The cowlick clearly was not what the autopsists saw and measured and reported located as a bullet hole near the rear hairline. Then Speer argues the rear-hairline bullet hole is visible in the BOH photo and in the "mystery photo" of inside the skull. Speer goes through how the panels tried to get the autopsists to say they had mistakenly located the rear-hairline bullet hole and that they had really all along seen the one the panels were saying was located at the cowlick (which is pretty ridiculous, really)--but 8 of 9 (or whatever the numbers were) of the rear-hairline bullet hole witnesses refused to agree with that. The only one who did, one time, was autopsy author Hume, after he was threatened to be ripped apart publicly in a hostile cross-examination bringing out other errors he had made in a way that would ruin him professionally, in other words coercion. Humes then said what was wanted re the cowlick location, avoiding the threatened hostile public evisceration of his reputation, but after that Humes repudiated that and returned to his former (and all the others') original location of the rear-hairline bullet hole location as they had all measured and reported. And troubling, is one of the autopsists, I forget which one, thought he remembered photos being taken of the skull showing that rear-hairline bullet wound, but none survive in the autopsy photos today, as if there may have been intentional "losing" of certain photos. But back to the entrance versus exit issue of the rear-hairline/near-EOP bullet hole. If it was an entrance (as the autopsists' thought, citing I believe almost entirely beveling on the underside as their reason or evidence for that--but was that true beveling on the underside, or was that a long-trough one-side bevel of a bullet tangentially exiting?) ... if it was an entrance then there are the questions of when was that additional shot from the rear fired, what is the explanation for the small exit hole, and what became of the bullet. The other alternative, that it was an exit but the autopsists mistakenly thought it was an entrance, in some ways intuitively seems a better fit with the evidence, if the beveling issue could survive scrutiny and analysis on that point. The very small entrance at the throat becomes the entrance wound that everyone's first impression of it was. The trajectory would work with a shot from the storm drain. A storm drain shooter would have to have fired a handgun on practical grounds for space reasons. I have read that .22's were favored by professional assassins because they were quieter and easier to silence. On the other hand there were reports that an unexplained .45 bullet was found in the north knoll grass. Perhaps a storm drain shooter fired a .45 pistol, and the .45 bullet found was from that shot exiting near JFK's rear hairline. The only timing window of opportunity for such a storm drain shot--which would be a perfect assassin's shot--would be just after the Z312-313 head shot, not before, and there is a whole literature of jiggle analysis as well as witnesses hearing shots close together at the end that support another shot after Z313, about 3/4 of a second later; perhaps this was it. At that timing and limousine location there is no windshield in the way of the shot, and JFK is leaned back and to the left lessening the discrepancy between trajectory and bullet path going up the neck and out near the rear hairline of the head. And what happened to the bullet is no longer a problem with the rear-hairline being an exit since it either is the .45 bullet possibly found, or else some other bullet that ended up outside of the limousine, but does not need to be found inside the limo. Cliff is skeptical that a T1 right transverse process could be damaged by a bullet in transit from the throat to a rear-hairline exit. I am not expert enough to know whether that is a real or illusory objection. I would be swayed if Cliff could cite convincing expert testimony on this point but am not willing to simply take Cliff's word for that on its own. As is well known there was no dissection of the neck to find where the throat bullet track "went", but I recall something about it did go "upward" in direction from the throat. And then there is mortician Robinson's testimony claiming he saw a probe inserted in the autopsists' rear-hairline bullet hole which he says he saw come out at the throat wound. If true--Robinson insisted it was--that would be decisive and end all argument on this. However that testimony of Robinson was decades later and no one else directly corroborated it to my knowledge, which seem to be major objections to considering that possible confirmation. I would be interested if someone knows of a concise, single article (or book chapter) which directly and in an informed way refutes or falsifies this line of analysis--the notion of a connection between the autopsists' near-rear-hairline bullet hole and throat wound.

I have read that .22 bullets, for example, can move around all sorts of ways inside a body after entrance. I have read differing explanations of air in the x-rays, and referred damage to locations not caused by direct bullet impact. Can you prove that a throat to rear hairline path (whichever direction it was) can NOT have caused what you cite? You KNOW that, do you?

Where did that bullet go (if it is interpreted as an entrance)? Did it exit?

But Cliff, what do you do with the bullet hole just above the rear hairline? Deny its existence? On what grounds?

But Cliff, the argument that there was a 5 x 16 mm bullet hole (whether it was entrance or exit is a separate issue) at the rear hairline, as attested by the three autopsists and other witnesses and shown with devastating force in Pat Speer's chapter 13, one of the strongest and most significant chapters in Pat Speer, is extremely compelling (https://www.patspeer.com/chapter13solvingthegreatheadwoundmyster). It is true the Warren Report tried to connect that to a head wound exit but that is impossible, and that interpretation of that bullet track was simply in error. But that does not change the empirical existence of that rear hairline bullet hole at the rear hairline. There is no other possible connection to that rear hairline bullet hole than the throat wound. The only issue is which was the entrance and which was the exit at either of those two ends (and associated questions, the caliber of bullet and from where the origin of the shot). But what cannot be in question is that those two wounds are connected, a bullet entering/exiting at those two ends, the one bullet hole being the exit for the other's entrance. Because once the rear hairline bullet hole is acknowledged to be fact, then there is no other possibility. That still leaves the back entrance wound unexplained. But the back wound cannot connect to the throat wound (as in the single-bullet theory) because the throat wound is connected to the rear hairline wound. So far as I can tell I believe this logic is airtight, even if it is not widely recognized.

With thanks to Greg Parker for the information, Dorothy Kilgallen reported on the Shirley Martin interview of Acquilla Clemons, giving it wider currency. It was not a previously-unknown interview of Acquilla Clemons conducted by Dorothy Kilgallen personally (https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg12239.html). Sara Jordan-Heintz's new book, The Incredible Life & Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen (2023). I have just received this book, have not read most of the book but what I have seen is interesting. Naturally she focuses some attention on Ron Pataky--who died in 2022--the man who entered her life and with whom Dorothy was enamored at the time of her death. According to Jordan-Heintz, Pataky actively worked with Dorothy on her JFK assassination research, a book. As part of that Pataky said he met with two leading figures in the JFK assassination case, evidently on his own complementary to but not at the behest of Dorothy: Mark Lane and Jim Garrison. Jordan-Heintz says Pataky went to Guatemala in 1954 at the time the CIA sponsored the coup overthrowing the Arbenz government, and Jordan-Heintz sees an intelligence agency connection to Pataky: "[Quoting Pataky] 'I did go to Guatemala when in a small military thing. There was a communist uprising in Guatemala. I did go, but nothing to do with assassins for God's sake ... I was in the military then, and they sent a detachment of us down there because of this communist uprising. They sent many, not just me" ... Pataky was never formally in the U.S. military, but as was previously mentioned in this book, he did attend Stanford for a while on a Navy ROTC scholarship, but was kicked out ... 'Several hundred of us went. We were highly trained'... "The U.S. officially had no military troops in Guatemala during the timeframe in which Pataky admitted to being there ... Though he [Pataky] had denied ever attending a CIA run assassin's school in Panama, he later contradicted himself. Larry Jordan recalls, 'Pataky told me, in one of our last conversations, "I always denied it, but I really was there."' At the very least we know Ron Pataky was in Guatemala in 1954 when the CIA staged a coup d'etat and got President Jacobo Arbenz removed from office. The covert operation to overthrow Arbenz was code-named Operation PBSuccess ... The CIA armed, funded and trained a force of at least 490 men who invaded Guatemala on June 18, 1954, backed by a heavy campaign of psychological warfare. The democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was deposed on June 27 in order to protect the profits of the United Fruit Company, which had vast land holdings there, and shipped a lot of bananas. What ensued was decades of brutal U.S.-backed regimes that committed widespread torture and genocide... "The invasion force of which Ron Pataky was apparently a part, was called a 'liberation army' and headquartered at Copan, Honduras, about four miles from the Guatemalan border ... According to the Central Intelligence Agency's own in-house historian, Gerald Haines, the agency compiled lists of individuals in Arbenz's government 'to eliminate immediately in event of [a] successful anti-Communist coup.' Planning for assassination included budgeting, training programs, creation of hit teams, drafting of target lists of persons and transfer of armaments. ... Vans of CIA-trained thugs would kidnap people on the hit list, and in some cases their mutilated bodies would be thrown out of a helicopter in front of a stadium during a sporting event to terrorize the local populace. "Since Ron Pataky finally confessed that he had, indeed, attended a Panamanian assassin school (after acknowledging he had denied it for years), one can only conclude the role he assumed in Guatemala fell within the scope of some of the CIA's most egregious terrorist activities... The coup was widely denounced internationally, dealt a death blow to democracy in Guatemala, and engendered long-lasting anti-U.S. sentiment across Latin America which continues to this day... "Given Ron Pataky's experience in Guatemala as a paid participant in a paramilitary operation, it is not unreasonable to suspect that he further lent himself to other CIA-sponsored activities in the years ahead. Could one of those have been to befriend Dorothy Kilgallen, keep tabs on her progress in investigating the assassination of John Kennedy, and then eliminate her by methods he had learned from the CIA at Stanford? [reference to earlier discussion of CIA MK-ULTRA drug- and poisoning research carried out at Stanford starting in 1953 at the time Pataky was there]" Steve Rossi, a famous entertainer (comedian), friend of Dorothy: "To this day, the files are open in the New York police department on how she died. They never solved the case. They alleged that she died from an overdose of barbiturates, but I know for a fact that she wasn't taking anything at the time. She felt like she was being poisoned. And I think that's what happened. Once she started writing the book on the Kennedy assassination, I think somebody came in there and poisoned her. She was turning yellow, you know. I saw her two weeks before she died. She looked really bad. And she thought she was being poisoned, but they couldn't detect it." Ron Pataky was a poet. One of his poems: "While I'm spilling my guts/ She is driving me nuts/ Please fetch us two drinks/ On the run/ Just skip all the noise'n/ Make one of 'em poison/ And don't even tell me/ Which one!"

On Robert Morrow’s claim that Lansdale killed JFK: so far as I can see the only claimed evidence is argument that he was in Dealey Plaza, and motive. Is that it? That’s insubstantial, not evidence of killing Kennedy, a wild leap. Thousands of civil servants had motive in the sense of passed over for promotion or fired from a job or disagreed on policies, motive is not proof of anything. Did Prouty have anything more than the Dealey Plaza photo claim? So what if that was Lansdale? How go from that to he killed JFK? Why not rephrase that to that’s enough to put Lansdale on a short list of maybe only 5000 or 10,000 possible suspects, at least the vast vast majority of whom are assuredly completely innocent. Would that not be more accurate reasoning?

The link does say Dorothy Kilgallen in 1964 reported an interview with Acquilla Clemons, true enough. I wonder if Kilgallen’s original column would clarify whether that was Mark Lane’s interview (in which case nothing new), or an interview of her own. I have never heard of a Kilgallen Clemons interview transcript.