Michael Griffith

2 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

As I recall, that nurse said she saw JFK outside in the hallway, and not in trauma room one. Is that correct? If so, her story hardly backs up Landis. 

Really? Just because she recalled seeing the stretcher in the hallway and not in the ER when she saw a bullet on it? She came forward with her story in 2013, 10 years ago, and now Landis says he put the rear-seat bullet on JFK's stretcher. That's one heck of a coincidence.

3 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Yes. 

I doubt that you really believe this. I doubt that you genuinely believe that the small, mangled tail fragment is the object that Dr. Young described as a "misshapen bullet." The tail fragment is CE 569. Anyone can look at photos of CE 569 and see that, at most, it is only 1/2 inch in height, if that. Moreover, it has no lead, only copper. Now, come on: no one is going to describe such a fragment as a "misshapen bullet." It's not a bullet--it's a small fragment with no lead in it.

Deep down, no sensible, rational person is going to buy the idea that two military men looked at CE 569 and viewed it as a "misshapen bullet." Also, the deformed bullet was found in the rear of the limo, but the nose and tail fragments were found in the front of the limo and were found by different people at a different time. 

37 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

Did Dr. Young simply find the tail section of the bullet that struck JFK in the head? This was in the front seat of the limo and could be regarded as a "deformed bullet". 

Dr. Young didn't find the bullet. Two Navy NCOs found it during the autopsy and brought it to the autopsy room, where Dr. Young received it, examined it, and then passed it along.

The tail-section fragment is noticeably smaller than a bullet, as is the nose-section fragment that was also found in the limousine. Have you seen the pictures of the nose and tail fragments? Could you imagine anyone, even a child, looking at one of those and calling it a "deformed bullet"? A fragment is just that: a fragment. A bullet, whether intact or deformed, is not a fragment but a bullet.

Plus, the nose and tail were found in the front of the limo, whereas the Navy NCOs found the bullet in the rear of the limo.

Dozens of medical personnel, including two neurosurgeons, knew the difference between a wound over the right ear and a wound 3-4 inches farther back on the head, and Dr. Young would not have a mistaken the small tail fragment for a deformed bullet.

So I guess the argument is that Landis is either imagining the finding of the bullet or is lying. Never mind that he insists that he has purposely withheld the finding of the bullet until now and that he says he is disclosing it because he believes it should now be made known. And never mind that a former Parkland nurse has now come forward and reported that she saw a bullet on JFK's stretcher. 

Predictably, WC apologists have reflexively rushed to reject former Secret Service agent Paul Landis's bombshell disclosure that he found and removed a bullet lodged in the limo's back seat and put the bullet on JFK's stretcher, even though a former Parkland Hospital nurse has reported that she saw a bullet on JFK's stretcher. Lone-gunman theorists stress the fact that Landis's initial statements contradict his disclosure, even though we have a number of examples of other witnesses who withheld important information from their initial statements because they felt pressured to do so or because they feared the information would spark controversy and criticism, e.g., Kennedy O'Donnell and Dave Powers regarding shots from the grassy knoll.

WC apologists also note that when interviewed in 1983 and 2010, Landis said he found a fragment on the back seat, not a bullet, although they don't address the fact that this fragment is not recorded in the official record and that it poses a severe problem for the lone-gunman theory. They also, naturally, refuse to see Landis's 1983 and 2010 statements as an attempt on his part to partially reveal what he found.

Anyway, if WC apologists reject Landis's disclosure, what excuse do they have for rejecting Dr. James Young's accidental 2001 disclosure about the finding of a deformed bullet in JFK's limousine on the night of the autopsy? 

During the autopsy, a deformed bullet was found in Kennedy's limousine by two Navy chief petty officers who had been ordered to search the limousine. Dr. Young was a Navy doctor at the autopsy. He examined the bullet after the two chief petty officers brought it to the autopsy, and the bullet was then given to Dr. James Humes, the chief autopsy doctor (Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, “Navy Medicine and President Kennedy’s Autopsy: Recollections from a former White House Physician,” Washington, D.C.: Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, 2013, pp. 9-11; Milicent Cranor, “Navy Doctor: Bullet Found in JFK’s Limousine, and Never Reported,” WhoWhatWhy website, 10/6/2017, https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/navy-doctor-bullet-found-jfks-limousine-never-reported/).

I call Dr. Young's disclosure "accidental" because he had no idea he was disclosing anything that contradicted the WC's version of the shooting. For years, Dr. Young assumed that the bullet had been discussed in the Warren Report. Years later, Dr. Young discovered that there was no mention of this bullet in any of the Warren Commission’s records. When he realized this, he tried to find out why the bullet had been ignored and why it had vanished. In an attempt to find out what had happened to the bullet, on December 27, 2000, Dr. Young wrote a letter to former President Gerald Ford, a former member of the WC. He also contacted former WC member Arlen Specter about the bullet.

In 2001, Dr. Young discussed the finding of the bullet with the Navy’s Office of Medical History. His interview was not published until 2013 when the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery published it in a paper titled “Navy Medicine and President Kennedy’s Autopsy.” 

What makes Dr. Young’s account so compelling and credible, aside from the fact that Chief Mills confirmed it, is that Dr. Young was an ardent believer in the WC’s version of the shooting. He had no idea why the deformed bullet found in the limousine was ignored and why it had vanished. He assumed the bullet was one of the three shots acknowledged by the WC. And he had no idea that his account destroyed the WC's version of the assassination. The 2021 documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed includes an excellent segment on this historic disclosure.

What excuse do WC apologists have for not accepting Dr. Young's account? They ignore it and reject it only because it refutes the lone-gunman theory. The few times I've been able to get WC apologists to discuss the subject, they've offered the lame argument that Dr. Young "simply made an honest mistake" and was "sincerely mistaken." Never mind the fact that Chief Mils confirmed the finding of the deformed bullet, and never mind that Dr. Young said he actually handled the bullet. How exactly would one "misrecall" handling a deformed bullet and talking about it with one of the petty officers who found it? 

I discuss Dr. Young's account in more detail in my article "Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza."

Yup, as I've said many times, there are many conservatives who do not buy the lone-gunman theory. 

21 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

You'd think Connally would have had a "bag man" picking up his payoff money.

Especially a cash one.

However, maybe Jack's place was the better place to do this. A back room where no one could just saunter in. Worst place to do so would be in a more public setting.

I can't see Connally being caught dead in a strip club, much less attending a meeting in one. He was, after all, the governor of the state. In the 1960s, a governor taking the risk of being seen in a strip club was unthinkable. The much more logical place for such a meeting would have been in a private home or in a hotel room. 

On 4/10/2023 at 5:39 AM, Greg Doudna said:

• Governor John Connally--showed up once with another man with him, a closed-door meeting with Chuck and Nick and Ruby in Ruby's office, briefcase of cash changed hands. 

I find this part of Estes's story very hard to believe. Connally was straight-laced. Also, if Connally were going to hold such a meeting, he certainly would not have held it in Ruby's club.

29 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

I think the shallow upper back wound that did not penetrate may be correct, and also there may be something to the Paul Landis bullet or fragment given the 1983 article found by David von Pein.

But I am having difficulty seeing how an intact bullet could reverse itself out of JFK’s back and place itself in a crevice at the top of the rear seat, in the space of four minutes. 

If the shallow back wound is accurate, that has to have been a bullet that exploded into powder upon hitting the bottom side of a rib going in with nothing intact left to be found in the body. And the throat wound must then be a through-and-through from the front with an upward trajectory from the storm drain at about Z330 and exiting near the rear EOP of the back of the head, the reverse direction but same path argued by Pat Speer, the reported original theory of both bullet path and direction of Cyril de Wecht. 

Then the Landis bullet piece might be from some ricochet or something inside the limo from one of the head shots? (Or a Connally through and through shot?)

It’s just a puzzle. 

Gut feeling though is the deathbed confession interpretation more than the book enrichment for heirs interpretation. 

Second gut feeling: it is not C399. Hypothesis: the mystery of what happened to the fragment was easily thought wrongly connected to the mystery of explanation of how C399 came to be? In that light, maybe Landis does not remember at this point what he did with the bullet piece that day? And has filled in an absence of memory with his story of walking it in since he reasons he “must have” done so?

I have seen 90-plus year old John Curington change details in his telling of stories from published versions decades earlier, in ways that look to me that he believed the changed version detail. My father’s true World War II Pacific Theatre combat war experiences in the tellings over the years, same phenomenon. Has something like that happened with Paul Landis’s memory?

Finding a bullet lodged in the back seat is a very specific event that does not seem to lend itself to being imagined. Also, the fact that Landis privately shared this with Clint Hill, and that Hill advised him--in an email--against revealing it because it would cause too much controversy, indicates that Landis is telling the truth. 

I don't think this bullet was the bullet that hit JFK's back. I think it was just missed shot, perhaps even the bullet that came through the windshield.

However, the shallow back wound is firmly established by the ARRB materials and other disclosures. As I have documented in this forum, the record is clear and compelling that on the night of the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were absolutely, positively certain that the back wound had no exit point. 

On 8/13/2023 at 7:42 PM, Anthony Thorne said:

1:38:44 - The ‘Trojan Horse’ inside the Kennedy family: Maxwell Taylor

I just finished watching this segment. Another very sad and rather odd segment. Newman accuses Taylor of having been a trojan horse who was pushing for a larger war in Vietnam. This is a misleading claim.

Yes, for a time, Taylor did advocate deploying a modest number of combat troops to South Vietnam for defensive purposes only--even then he opposed having U.S. troops do the bulk of the fighting. However, after Taylor went and stayed in South Vietnam as the U.S. ambassador (and the head of military operations in country), he became one of the leading opponents of sending any combat troops to South Vietnam, in any capacity. Taylor was so strident in his opposition to sending combat troops that even LBJ's JFK-holdover aides urged that he be replaced as ambassador. This fact is profusely documented in H. R. McMaster's widely acclaimed, award-winning book Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

It is worth noting that the situation was so bad in South Vietnam in early 1965, because of the large-scale Communist offensive ordered by the Hanoi regime, that even former JFK advisers McGeorge Bundy and John McNaughton recommended to LBJ that combat troops be deployed to South Vietnam.

The 1965 NVA-VC offensive was the largest aggressive action ever undertaken up to that time--it was much larger than any previous Communist offensive.

This gets back to the key point that JFK was never confronted with such a massive Communist escalation, and that when this situation arose in early 1965, even most of JFK's former advisers who then worked for LBJ recommended introducing combat troops into the fight. 

It is rather surprising that Newman fails to mention any of these important facts.

Landis has come forward with his disclosure about finding a bullet lodged in the back seat because he knows he is nearing the end of his life and wants this information to be revealed before he dies. It is close to being tantamount to a death-bed confession.

Given the situation that existed in the hours and days after the assassination, it is perfectly understandable why Landis decided not to reveal his finding of the bullet.

Look at Kenny O'Donnell's very belated disclosure to Tip O'Neill that he was certain some shots had come from the grassy knoll. That's not what O'Donnell said in his WC testimony. He told O'Neill that he did tell the FBI about hearing shots from the knoll, but that they told him he "must have been imagining things," and so O'Donnell chose to testify "the way they wanted me to." Yet, years later, he finally revealed the truth to his good friend Tip O'Neill, and Dave Powers, who rode in the follow-up car with O'Donnell, confirmed O'Donnell's account.

14 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

“The Mafia certainly played a role, but not the leading one.”

Thank you Michael for supporting the point! Yes, from the Ruby connection, and the reach of Marcello’s power into control over Civello and Dallas, it’s pretty obvious Marcello (who also had motive in spades), was a suspect for a role as you say contrary to the position of the Garrison investigation. That is not counting that Ferrie and Oswald’s attorney Dean Andrews working directly for Marcello, and Oswald’s uncle and surrogate father, Dutz Merrett, worked for the Marcello organization much of his life. Or that Marguerite was in thick with persons close to Marcello and said she called Marcello-linked attorney Clem Sehrt in New Orleans the weekend of Oswald’s arrest trying to get Lee legal counsel. Wasn’t Banister also alleged to work for Marcello? I forget. 

So I am glad you agree that Marcello should have been investigated. And obviously it’s easy to speculate how unimportant the suspected involvement might have been prior to investigating and finding out. The question is: if it is obvious to you and everyone else to see Marcello as suspected involved, how did Garrison not see that? It’s not as if there was a jurisdiction issue. He was right there in New Orleans. 

Garrison didn’t even think there was Mafia activity happening in New Orleans! (Can you believe he would seriously believe that?) And his interpretation of Ruby was Ruby was CIA, of all things!— instead of mob and Marcello.

I did not ignore the leads. I said Garrison developed thousands of leads. Some of much interest. On the Clinton-Jackson presence of Oswald and probably Ferrie (I am doubtful the big man driving the black Cadillac was Shaw or Banister either, was it a mobster?), all interesting.

But with Clinton-Jackson, I’ve always wondered where that goes. The “so what?” question. So what if somebody is seen with Oswald somewhere in rural Louisiana. It’s interesting but where does it go. What does it have to do with relevant to the jfk assassination in Dallas. What’s the connection. I know, a hundred possibilities “could be”’s. Here’s one more: was it a contact with a Marcello man, Marcello who told a witness FBI informant that he had made contact with Oswald via Ferrie?

Just like Clay Shaw being mixed up with the CIA in some op name and the CIA and Shaw covering that up. Sure, I, you, we all would like to know what that was about. But we don’t know do we. Garrison despite rhetoric didn’t. Just because someone is CIA who is in the international trade business and circles which the CIA was very thick in, that doesn’t translate to that classified op was a formal CIA op to assassinate jfk in Texas! 

I see an “ends justify means” mentality, that it was ok to go after an innocent man in court, railroad him into a prison sentence if that were possible (innocent of the jfk assassination), plus recklessly accuse and smear who knows how many other innocent persons on the flimsiest of bases for suspicion, if it serves the good of raising public suspicion. 

I think Garrison probably did take the payoffs he was accused of, despite beating the charges in court. He seems like a variant of the Huey Long populist demagogue southern pol type, who often have redeeming and sympathetic and humanitarian qualities mixed in with the demagoguery and corruption. Gotta love those populist southern pols. 

Were the leads of interest, the wheat among the chaff, in the Garrison investigation, valuable? Yes (I say yes). But that’s like crediting LBJ for the civil rights act passage. That was true, and I do not believe it was all for show on LBJ’s part on that, but it doesn’t change LBJ was one of the most outstanding corrupt southern pol types in Americas history. 

And I believe Garrison didn’t go after Marcello on JFK because Garrison was compromised. How is that not just obvious. It was useful to some people for Garrison to die on the Clay Shaw hill, a “look over here” spectacle that went nowhere because, well, not that it mattered, but the man was innocent.

It was an Innocence Project case of a wrongful conviction, a Dreyfus Case analogy, in the making, if the jury had not gone against Garrisons wishes and acquitted before it became that.

I think Garrison may have feared Marcello, since he was smack dab in the middle of Marcello's territory. I agree that it is possible that Garrison was compromised by Marcello; if so, I think fear would have played a role in his being compromised. But I think it is also quite possible that Garrison simply believed that the main force behind the assassination was the CIA and other intelligence entities, and that he should focus his attention on them.

The continued refusal of WC apologists to admit what their own eyes can see in the Zapruder film is further proof that they are too emotionally committed to the lone-gunman myth to acknowledge the plainly visible reality seen in the film.

It is a waste of time arguing with them on the subject. The fact that JFK starts to react at around Z200, and that Jackie starts to react to his reaction almost immediately, is as plain as day. That's why she's staring intently at him when she emerges from behind the road sign. Yet, starting in Z226, we see JFK suddenly knocked powerfully and visibly forward. 

And Connally. The man survived, studied blowups of the Zapruder film, and adamantly insisted he was not hit before Z231. This is self-evidently obvious in the film. Yes, of course he has a concerned look on his face and his body is tensed when he emerges from behind the road sign--that's because he has just heard gunfire. But WC apologists tell us the fantasy that by Z225 Connally has had a bullet tear through his chest, shattering several inches of rib bone, pulverize a wrist bone, and plant itself in his thigh, and just never you mind that the man who actually experienced the wounding said he wasn't hit before Z231! 

And the powerful slamming down of Connally's right shoulder that starts in Z238? Well, uh, it's either an optical illusion or a delayed reaction to the bullet strike, according to WC apologists!!!

It's very simple: Landis is nearing the end of his life, and so he's decided it is time to reveal something that he has always known would be a bombshell revelation. Landis undoubtedly recognized right away that the bullet he found embedded in the back seat must have been fired from the front. He also undoubtedly recognized that revealing the finding of the bullet would cause a gigantic firestorm because it would prove there was more than one shooter. 

Within a few hours of the assassination, the dominant story on TV and radio was that there had been a single gunman and that he had been arrested. There was virtually no talk about multiple gunmen, four to seven shots, etc., etc. 

Thus, it is totally understandable why Landis chose to stay quiet about finding the bullet. 

It is very easy to understand why Landis did not reveal that he found a bullet embedded in the limo's back seat: Obviously, that bullet was fired from the front, not from behind. It could not have been fired from the alleged sniper's nest, or from any other point behind the limo, and then made a magical U-turn to embed itself in the back seat. It came from a point in front of the limo. 

As we all know, literally within two hours of the shooting, if not sooner, the TV and radio airwaves were flooded with references to a single shooter who fired from behind the limo. Virtually all news reports spoke of a single shooter and a single suspect, Oswald. 

Landis would have caused an enormous firestorm if he had revealed that he had found a bullet lodged in the back seat of the limo. Landis undoubtedly realized this and chose to stay silent about it. 

On 9/8/2023 at 4:57 PM, Greg Doudna said:

Ferrie if he had been further pursued by Garrison would have put the investigation right at the doorstep of Marcello. Garrison refused protection to Ferrie (cut him loose from protection after several days). Hours later by coincidence Ferrie is dead. 

Did Garrison ever express regret for not better ensuring Ferrie’s security?

It is pretty clear Garrison was pulling his punches on Marcello, the elephant in the JFK assassination New Orleans room. Garrison denied Marcello was involved in organized crime in his (Garrison’s) jurisdiction, said with a straight face he believed Marcello to be in the lettuce business with a few unproven allegations of criminal behavior not worthy of prosecution but nothing to see there re JFK.

Even though Ferrie, one of Garrison’s top suspects, was working for Marcello at the time of the assassination. 

Ferrie, without protection from Garrison, dead. Garrison does not go after Marcello, while generating and going after thousands of other leads at the end of which produced not one actionable thing linking the CIA to the JFK assassination apart from rhetoric and suspicion and argument from propinquity. All that work for no proof for his major claim in the end. Blame it all on sabotage of his investigation!

And Marcello does not knock off Garrison, the loose cannon (except never aimed at Marcello) in his backyard. 

I think RFK knew Garrison was a demagogue and wasn’t helpful to bringing his brother’s killers to justice, one suspect of whom in New Orleans a lot of organized crime experts believed had district attorney Garrison in his hip pocket along with many other politicians in Louisiana. 

Is there any record of anguish or remorse from Garrison over failure to ensure Ferrie’s security? Especially when Garrison was among those who found the death suspicious, and not the predictable fate of an already sick man.

If there is I missed it. 

And Garrisons mistake in failing to ensure Ferries security is the most favorable way to put it. 

And if Garrison did believe Ferrie had been the victim of foul play, why not a word breathed from Garrison of suspicion of the man in New Orleans with very possibly the most motive: Marcello? 

Why was that dog not barking in Garrison’s investigation?

These attacks ignore the fact that Ferrie also had extensive CIA connections, and that in previous CIA assassination plots the Mafia had been the hired gun, not the other way around. Clay Shaw and Guy Banister were intelligence assets, not Mafia assets. 

Your attacks also ignore the many valuable, historic leads that Garrison developed, such as the Clinton-Jackson witnesses who saw Oswald with Ferrie and Shaw. 

I reject the idea that the Mafia was the main force behind the assassination. The Mafia could not have rigged the autopsy, suppressed medical evidence, altered the autopsy skull x-rays, removed Oswald's name from the FBI's watch list, suppressed Oswald's intelligence connections, impersonated Oswald in Mexico City, suppressed the existence of extra bullets (such as the one handled by Dr. Young), etc., etc. The Mafia certainly played a role, but not the leading role. 

16 hours ago, Vince Palamara said:

Clint Hill's 2014 email to Landis urging him not to speak out because his account would have "many ramifications" says volumes.

When a few of the medical witnesses changed their descriptions of JFK's large head wound, WC apologists brushed aside the fact that their later descriptions of the wound contradicted their initial ones. But, oh, now they insist that Landis must be mistaken or lying because his disclosure about finding a bullet in the back seat contradicts his initial statements.

On 8/16/2023 at 9:14 AM, Tom Gram said:

Really? Now you are uncritically defending cluster munitions?  

I used to work for DoD, and was involved in the demilitarization of the entire US stockpile of 155mm DPICM rounds, M483/483A1s, after they were banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. For those who don’t know, these were big artillery shells designed to explode in the air and release 88 miniature shaped charged grenades. The grenades have a wound-up cloth ribbon on top that is designed to unwind and spin as they fall through the air and detonate just off the ground with the shaped charge pointing down, killing anyone unlucky enough to be underneath. 

The problem is the ribbon fuze mechanism is total crap - it doesn’t always unwind - so for each round you get x amount of these innocuous looking mini death grenades scattered all over the ground with the ribbon held on by a glorified paper clip, or nothing at all. A kid comes by, thinks it’s a toy, unwinds the ribbon and gets blown in half, hence the CCM in 2008. 

DPICM rounds were first used in combat in Vietnam. Criticizing Fonda and Vietnam vets for being sharp enough to realize how f-ed up these things were over 30 years before the CCM is the only thing here that’s bordering on the obscene. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munitions

If you're unhappy that we used cluster munitions in Vietnam, then I'm sure you'll join me in roundly condemning the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army (NVA) for the following actions during the war:

-- Assassinating school teachers, nurses, doctors, mail carriers, clergy, and local/low-level government officials by the thousands.

-- Shelling tens of thousands of civilians who were fleeing on crowded roads and highways. The NVA did this more than once. The Communists viewed fleeing civilians as traitors who were refusing to be "liberated."

-- Sending children on suicide missions by giving them time bombs or other explosives and sending them to nearby American or South Vietnamese troops. When the bombs would fail to denotate, interviews with the children revealed that most of them had not been told they were carrying explosives. 

-- Drafting teens as young as 14 and forcing them to serve in the NVA. 

-- Chaining soldiers to their weapons or in their firing position so they could not flee.

-- Booby-trapping corpses.

-- Using claymore mines (an anti-personnel cluster munition) to blow up restaurants and hotels. The Viet Cong would repeatedly detonate claymore mines inside a restaurant or hotel, and would then wait until the survivors began to flee the building and then would detonate more claymores that they had positioned on the escape routes from the building.

Criticizing Fonda and Vietnam vets for being sharp enough to realize [how wrong the war was]. . . . 

One, only a small minority of Vietnam vets criticized the war effort. The overwhelmingly majority did not.

Two, Jane Fonda and the small minority of anti-war vets oddly said nothing about the above-listed actions. Nor did they have anything to say when the North Vietnamese imposed a "reign of terror" on the South Vietnamese, as one former Viet Cong leader described it, executing tens of thousands of people and sending nearly one million others to concentration camps, where the death rate was, as even Max Hastings admits, at least 5%. 

Fonda and the anti-war vets suddenly fell silent about their professed concern for "human rights" when news of the butchery and concentration camps in Vietnam began to reach the U.S. Nor did Fonda and the anti-war vets complain about the fact that Hanoi's tyrants broke their repeated promise to allow South Vietnam to govern itself under a neutral or friendly government. The breaking of this oft-stated promise was part of the reason that a number of Viet Cong officials defected and left the country.

A few people in the anti-war movement did speak out about the brutality and oppression that the Communists imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, but Fonda, Hayden, Sutherland, Abzug, etc., were not among them. 

On 9/9/2023 at 6:48 PM, David Von Pein said:

Below is a portion of what Special Agent Paul Landis said in this extremely detailed Secret Service report that he wrote on November 27, 1963. Here's what Landis said he found "on the back seat" of the Presidential limo at Parkland:

"By this time someone was lifting the President's body out of the right side of the car. Agent Hill helped Mrs. Kennedy out of the car, and I followed. Mrs. Kennedy's purse and hat and a cigarette lighter were on the back seat. I picked these three items up as I walked through the car and followed Mrs. Kennedy into the hospital."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2023/06/paul-landis.html

 

LOL. So predictable. And of course it's just unthinkable that Landis covered up the finding of the bullet, either voluntarily or under orders, right? IOW, Landis is either incomprehensibly "mistaken" or he is lying.

What actions did Landis "mistake" for the actions he describes--the finding of the bullet, removing the bullet, and placing it on the stretcher? What actions could he have performed that he would wrongly recall as finding a bullet, removing it, and putting it on a stretcher? 

You guys have endlessly said that "someone would have talked." Well, some people have talked, but you guys bend over backward and look for any excuse to reject their accounts because they contradict the lone-gunman theory. 

I have a bold prediction to make: WC apologists will say that Landis is "mistaken." Of course.

Clearly, Landis has only imagined that he found an intact bullet embedded in the back seat, that he removed the bullet to keep it from souvenir hunters, and that he put the bullet on JFK's stretcher.

His account actually makes a lot of sense and has the ring of truth, but, alas, it cannot be true because it refutes single-bullet theory. If the magic bullet was found embedded in the back seat, it could not have gone through Connally and ended up in his thigh. Thus, Landis's account "must" be wrong.

Anyone with two working eyes who examines the Zapruder film with any care can see that JFK starts to react long before Z224, i.e., at around Z200. Even Itek's experts concluded that JFK is already reacting to a wound by Z225, which means the bullet must have hit him at least 7 frames earlier--he actually starts to react before he disappears behind the freeway sign.

Has any WC apologist wondered whether a lapel can flip up and down in no more than 1/9th of a second (or no more than 111 milliseconds)? This is not to mention the fact that the bullet's exit point was nowhere near the alleged lapel flip.

If Connally was hit at Z224, pray tell, what slams his right shoulder downward and caused his cheeks to puff starting in Z238, 14 frames after he was allegedly hit?

For that matter, what knocks JFK visibly forward and flings his elbows upward starting in Z226? Second only to the head shot, JFK's 226-232 reaction is the most obvious and visible reaction in the Zapruder film. The only rational explanation is that JFK was first hit at around Z188, as the HSCA's photographic experts acknowledged, and that he was hit again at Z224. 

On 9/6/2023 at 1:37 PM, Michael Griffith said:

I watched the segment on JFK and Vietnam. Very sad. Newman is badly informed and sorely mistaken on this issue. He makes a number of claims that are simply erroneous and that were debunked years ago. 

The war was not going terribly in 1963. Quite the opposite. An abundance of sources, including North Vietnamese sources, confirm that the U.S. war effort was going well in 1963, and also in 1962. The war effort did not start to go badly until after Diem was assassinated. Has Newman not read any of these materials?

Diem was not corrupt, and he enjoyed considerable support among the people. Diem enabled tens of thousands of people to own their own farms for the first time ever. Under Diem, South Vietnam's economy performed far better than did North Vietnam's economy. Diem greatly improved South Vietnam's education system, and, unlike Hanoi's leaders, allowed private schools to operate and gave public school districts some control over curriculum. 

The Buddhist crisis was markedly exaggerated by JFK's liberal advisers and by the American press. The majority of the officials in Diem's government were Buddhists, as were many ARVN generals. Diem had done a great deal to help the Buddhists. The militant Buddhists were a minority among their fellow Buddhists. Many ARVN generals who were Buddhists believed that Diem was being too lenient with the militant Buddhists. And, it has been known for years now that some of the militant Buddhists were Communists and that Communists had substantially penetrated the Buddhist protest movement. 

As for Newman's claim that JFK had decided to abandon South Vietnam after the election, it is sad to see him repeat this specious claim, after all we now know on the subject. Even the vast majority of stridently liberal, anti-war historians reject the claim as baseless. No trace of any intention to pull out can be found on the JFK White House tapes--instead, we hear numerous affirmations of JFK's desire to win the war, not to mention the fact that JFK publicly and repeatedly rejected and criticized the idea of withdrawal in the months leading up to his death. 

Even on the civil rights issue, Newman is off base. He says that JFK was not going to take strong action on civil rights until after the election in order to avoid losing the Souther vote. This is pure fiction. JFK's forceful interventions against segregation in Mississippi and Alabama had already infuriated most conservative Southern Democrats. Furthermore, JFK had already introduced civil rights legislation in Congress, and it was DOA because of Southern Democratic opposition. Democrats were already quite fearful that they were going to have a hard time winning Southern states in the 1964 election. 

I might add that the revised version of NSAM 273 that LBJ signed on 11/26/63 was virtually identical to the draft that JFK was going to sign after he returned from Dallas. The 11/26/63 version said nothing about U.S. combat troops--not one word. It tacitly allowed the direct intervention of U.S. forces, but it did not expressly say this. And, U.S. military personnel had already been directly involved in military actions for well over a year before JFK's death. 

Furthermore, there is a mountain of evidence that shows that LBJ was not chomping at the bit to send large numbers of U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam. Indeed, in his first meeting with the Joint Chiefs soon after the assassination, LBJ told them he wanted to cut defense spending. Additionally, the record shows that LBJ hoped to keep U.S. intervention in Vietnam to a minimum, and that he even hoped that the American advisers there could start to be withdrawn soon.

Moreover, there is also the fact that JFK never faced the kind of massive Communist escalation that LBJ faced. Hanoi's leaders drastically escalated the Communist war effort in late 1964 and early 1965, far beyond what they had ever done before. JFK had never been faced with such a situation. When LBJ was faced with it, he dragged his feet and nearly waited too long.

An especially curious error in Newman's segment on JFK and Vietnam is his claim that OPLAN 34A was a plan to "invade" North Vietnam and that Maxwell Taylor and Victor Krulak "suppressed" the plan and "didn't let that go back." 

He is wrong on both counts. OPLAN 34A was not a plan to "invade" North Vietnam. The plan called for covert raids and limited aerial attacks on North Vietnam in response to the terrorist attacks and military ambushes that the North Vietnamese had been sponsoring and/or conducting in South Vietnam for over two years. Moreover, Taylor and Krulak did not "suppress" OPLAN 34A. In fact, JFK approved OPLAN 34A.

Ultra-liberal historian Edwin Moise says the following about OPLAN 34A:

          Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) finalize the details on a plan, approved by President Kennedy just before his assassination, to secretly but more directly support the South Vietnamese armed forces in their conflict with North Vietnam. McNamara and the JCS believe that the CIA’s actions in North Vietnam so far have been too piecemeal to significantly deter Communist activities in the South. They codename the plan Operations Plan 34A (OPLAN 34A) and it directs U.S. forces to engage in covert actions against the North, both directly and in support of South Vietnamese troops. These include commando raids and aerial attacks against military and communication facilities as well as espionage, sabotage, intelligence, and counterinsurgency operations.

          Wherever possible, OPLAN 34A activities are carried out without direct U.S. involvement or in ways that maintain plausible deniability of American involvement. Much like other political, diplomatic, and military measures being taken against North Vietnam, the Department of Defense conceives of OPLAN 34A as a way to pressure Hanoi’s government to shut down its support for the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam and to reexamine its alleged aggression in neighboring Laos. (https://www.vietnamwar50th.com/1945-1964_the_road_to_war/Military-Assistance-Command-Vietnam-and-the-CIA-Finalize-Operations-Plan-34A/)

10 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Ivon correctly sensed the true frantic mental state of Ferry after Ferry called him to tell him he" Ferry" was a dead man walking because his name came out in the press.

How and why Garrison dismissed Ivon's desperate level of concern for their star witness, was both baffling and frustrating for me to watch in the film depiction of it.

Sometimes I wonder if there wasn't some arrogance involved in Garrison's demeanor as "the boss."

Not enough to sway my opinion of him as a brave and courageous hero in his hugely personal sacrificing effort to find the truth.

Garrison was certainly a brave man who unearthed a great deal of important information. He had the entire might of the FBI, the CIA, and the White House arrayed against him, planting spies in his office, bugging his office phones, killing some of his witnesses, pressuring governors not to honor his extradition requests for witnesses, smearing him in the press through their media allies, etc., etc.

And while Garrison was battling to reveal the truth about the assassination, RFK did not lift a finger to help him. In fact, RFK's Justice Department actively opposed Garrison's investigation.

33 minutes ago, Sean Coleman said:

IMHO….don’t think there was much of a process, just the head guys of the relevant investigating authorities (CIA, FBI, DPD, SS etc) having the arrogant attitude of ‘we can cover up any loose ends.’

There seems too many ineptitudes too call it a well planned operation- wallets, jackets, cab rides, single bullets, X-rays, caskets, dodgy checks, blankets, paraffin tests and so on and so on for hours and hours because the list is as endless as an endless thing.

yeah so, thrown together with a bit of a wish and a prayer. And tons of authority I reckon.

Some carefully planned military operations have experienced unexpected mistakes, overlooked items, etc., etc. I think the assassination was carefully planned but that some mistakes occurred and that some things were overlooked. I think the wounding of Connally was a major unexpected development. The wounding of Connally created a myriad of unexpected problems. 

3 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

(remember the report of guys with a rifle on the knoll only days before and how slow DPD was to respond to that - just another test of timing and police routes and communications).

I thought this story had been debunked. Wasn't it determined that this report was mistakenly based on a police/FBI report about target practice in a location that was near the plaza but not in it? As I recall, there were two men who were seen firing at silhouette targets not far from the plaza.