Michael Griffith

David Lifton uncovered a great deal of crucial evidence, and for that alone he deserves great praise. I think Doug Horne has the better of the argument regarding when the pre-autopsy surgery was done, but Lifton deserves high praise for making the first case for pre-autopsy tampering. Lifton also merits high praise for developing the evidence of a casket switch, of multiple caskets, and of a decoy ambulance.

I'm not at all surprised that The American Conservative (commonly called TAC) would publish this article. TAC is a right-of-center journal that rejects neo-conservatism and embraces the original American principle of non-intervention in foreign affairs. TAC was sharply critical of George W. Bush's foreign policy. I don't always agree with TAC's articles, but I respect TAC as a serious and thoughtful political journal.

Joe, Allow me to humbly suggest that you lower the price of the Kindle version of your book. $30 for a Kindle book is unusually high. To give you some idea of a standard price, Dr. Mantik's new book, JFK Assassination Paradoxes, which is very long and contains numerous photos and graphics, sells for only $9.76 as a Kindle book. Monica Wiesak's new book, America's Last President, which is over 300 pages long, sells for only $8.99 as a Kindle book. Anyway, I read the sizable free Kindle preview of your book on Amazon and was very impressed with it. Judging from the segment I read, your book appears to be an excellent, informative work on the media's poor and harmful handling of the JFK case.

Napolitano is no doctrinaire right-winger, and I've always regarded him as a straight shooter. He's much more of a libertarian than a Republican. He attacked several of Trump's foreign policy moves as unconstitutional. However, as you probably know, he was fired by FoxNews after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. I'm curious about your comment regarding the "defamation of LBJ." LBJ was an utterly, thoroughly corrupt man and politician, and there is evidence that suggests he had advance knowledge of the assassination.

Well, I think you are way, way off base here. I honestly can't fathom what you are looking at in the skull x-rays and head photos. First of all, the overlapping bone does not cover the area that is occupied by the white patch. This isn't even a close call. And, good grief, if the overlapping bone corresponds with the red flap above the ear, how in the world can you believe that it constitutes the white patch? Have you replied to Dr. Mantik's response to your critique. Here is some of what he says therein: Does the overlapping bone (on the lateral X-ray) explain the “White Patch”? No, it does not—nor could it even do so in principle. First, these are two distinctly different areas, as should be obvious from the right lateral X-ray—the White Patch is much more posterior than the overlap area. See my image of the White Patch in [i]Assassination Science[/i] 1998, p. 160, or slide 5 in my Dallas lecture, or my Figure 5 just below. . . . In my Figure 2, I have identified the external auditory canal, which Speer ignores; that structural feature clearly locates the external ear—without any ambiguity. Speer also ignores the evidence of the AP X-ray (my Figure 1). Notice there how the wing lies far out in space, quite detached from the skull. On the other hand, if the wing had extended far posteriorly (as Speer wants to believe), then some part of it would be seen much more medially in the AP X-ray, but it is not there. This argument is so powerful that little else need be said. But there is more. Second, the ODs of these two areas are quite different: on the right lateral X-ray, the mean OD of the white patch (0.625 ±.055) is almost the same as the petrous bone (0.55), whereas a typical OD (1.33) for the overlap site is noticeably higher (than the White Patch), and it does not appear nearly so white to the eye. That visible difference is dramatically obvious in Figure 5 (especially on the right sided image). Speer claims that the White Patch was caused by three overlapping layers of bone. Despite his unrelenting caricature to the contrary, I have always accepted three layers of bone at the overlap site, although I have never emphasized this because no one (before Speer) had offered such a novel explanation for the White Patch. Incidentally, the three layers of overlapping bone should be obvious to anyone after viewing the AP X-ray (an image that Speer overlooks). He also argues that, because the ARRB experts (p. 10 and also Chapter 19b, pp. 26-27) noticed such bone overlap, they therefore support his conclusion that the overlap explains the White Patch. But that is simply absurd. . . . Third, the White Patch is so dense that whatever physical object it represents must appear somewhere on the AP X-ray film. I made this argument from the very beginning, even at our first press conference in New York City (1993). That transcript is reproduced in [i]Assassination Science[/i] 1998 (p. 155) and warrants a quote here: On the frontal [AP] X-ray, such an extremely dense [physical] object should have been as visible as a tyrannosaurus rex in downtown Manhattan at noon. However, when I looked at the frontal X-ray, there was no such beast to be seen. No one has even tried to explain this paradox. Even worse, Speer seems oblivious to it. Let’s next focus on the OD issues for overlapping bone, a quantitative exercise that Speer totally neglects. For these JFK skull X-rays, here are the pertinent OD changes (∆ODs) across various layers of bone: one layer = 0.45; two layers = 0.90; three layers = 1.35. The difference for one layer is easily measured at fracture lines; amazingly enough, Speer believes that I ignore these fracture lines (p. 9). If an extra bone layer truly explained the White Patch, then sites just outside the White Patch should yield ODs that are higher by about 0.45 (one layer). But that is not the case—on the contrary, the ODs suggest a difference of more than just one layer of bone. Of special interest is the OD over the occiput, at the very back of the skull (very close to the White Patch), where the bone is viewed tangentially: the data there suggest a ∆OD (compared to the White Patch) of not just more than one layer, but actually about two bone layers (i.e., it is much less white). In other words, the White Patch is truly an anomaly (much too white and with ODs that are far too low). It cannot possibly arise simply from overlapping bone. On the other hand, of course, a deliberate superposition of this area in the dark room could easily explain this paradox. That the ODs of the White Patch and the petrous bone are not nearly so identical (to one another) on the left lateral X-ray should also raise some doubt that not all is well in OD land. Now recall that three layers of bone yield a ∆OD of 1.35. Since the measured OD (cited above) in the overlap area is already 1.33, the OD without the three layers of bone would be 1.35 + 1.33 = 2.68. The ODs in the maxillary sinuses (mostly air) are 2.89, so this value of 2.68 clearly suggests substantial missing brain in the overlap area. But the site in question (medial to the overlapping bone on the lateral X-ray) lies near the middle of the brain, where the autopsy photographs show no missing brain tissue! ([url=https://themantikview.org/pdf/Speer_Critique.pdf]https://themantikview.org/pdf/Speer_Critique.pdf[/url])

It should be added that some of the 1/6 rioters were not Trump supporters but were leftist agitators dressed as Trump supporters. Although they were wearing pro-Trump buttons, hats, etc., they stood out like a sore thumb and many Trump supporters who were near them suspected they were not who they were pretending to be. Anyway, all this being said, and taking due notice of the presence of FBI informants, this does not in any way excuse the conduct of those Trump supporters who took part in the storming of the Capitol. Their actions were inexcusable, and I have no problem with their being prosecuted (although I think some of the sentences that have been handed down have been excessive).

This stuff is at least several decades behind the informative curve. It is surprising to see anyone who claims to be a serious student of the assassination repeating the myth that Oswald was any kind of a radical leftist. And the case against Oswald in the Walker shooting is downright pathetic and flimsy. Walker's own description of the bullet that was fired at him contradicts the claim that Oswald fired at him.

Well, I don't know. I don't know them and I don't know you. A lot of people would say that your aligning yourself with Dale Myers damages your credibility, given the errors and omissions that have been documented in Myers' writings. I've never used Holan's account in any of my writings on the Tippit case. The most I've ever been willing to say about her story is that it "may" be valid, but I have not considered it to be strong enough to cite in my writings. Now that you've convinced me that her apartment had no line of sight to the shooting scene, I cannot imagine even considering using her account as evidence. I think it's possible that she may have heard elements of her account from other people in the neighborhood or from her son, or both. I don't know. This is just speculation. Or, perhaps Brownlow fabricated her story and falsely attributed it to her. I'd be curious to know if Brownlow recorded any of his discussions with Holan.

If you mean the Mafia alone, I agree, but I think it is clear that the Mafia was part of the assassination plot. Obviously, I disagree with Blakey's stated belief that Oswald was hired by the Mafia to shoot JFK. Yikes. Well, that doesn't shock me, since I know that Blakey intensely dislikes conspiracy claims that he views as too "out there," too disturbing, conspiracy claims that point in directions that he finds unpalatable, and his endorsement of McAdams' book was probably a reflection of that attitude.

This photo, especially when compared with CE 530, convinces me that you are correct, that Holan would not have had a line of sight to Tippit and his car.

Perhaps it would help to remember that WC apologists roundly attacked Blakey when the HSCA report was published, and that they have continued to attack him ever since. They have continued to attack him for repeatedly defending the acoustical evidence (including appearing in two documentaries to defend it), for making a solid case that elements of the Mafia played a role in JFK's death in his book Fatal Hour, for saying it is a "historical fact" that the Mafia killed JFK, for endorsing several pro-conspiracy books, for saying in 2012 that "the Mob set Oswald up as a patsy," for debunking the WC's ridiculous version of Jack Ruby's Mafia ties and movements and motives, for stridently attacking the CIA in his Frontline interview and in his 2014 statement to the 2014 AARC conference, etc., etc.

From my article on the acoustical evidence: For years some critics regarded the sound of a carillon bell on the dictabelt tape as evidence that the tape was not recorded in Dealey Plaza. About 8 seconds after the last shot on the tape, the sound of a carillon bell can be heard. Critics argued that there was no carillon bell in or near Dealey Plaza, and that therefore the bell sound on the tape proved the open mike was not in Dealey Plaza 8 seconds after the shooting. The HSCA acoustical scientists were aware of this issue, and they plausibly argued that other police microphones could have recorded the bell sound, noting that a number of other policemen talked on Channel 1 (5 HSCA 591-592). After the HSCA investigation, researchers discovered that in 1963 there was a carillon bell near Dealey Plaza, and they found a KXAS TV-News video tape made in Dealey Plaza in 1964 on which the sounds of the nearby carillon bell can be heard. In 1982, an analysis of the dictabelt tape by some IBM scientists concluded that the bell sound is on both channels. The IBM scientists speculated that the bell sound might not be a bell sound but radio interference whose frequency mimicked a bell sound (Thomas 2013:643-644).

Based on the maps and their distance scales that I reviewed this morning, I'd say the distance from her apartment to the shooting scene was no more than 220 feet, and we should keep in mind that her second-story apartment was a good 18-20 feet above the ground. The period photos to which I referred are the 1964 FBI photos of the Tippit scene and of the surrounding area, the Heikes photo, and Commission Exhibits 523 and 530. CE 530 is a photo that shows the building in which Ms. Holan lived from the vantage point of a point on Tenth St., and keep in mind that Ms. Holan's second-story apartment was on the northern end of the building, i.e., the end that was closer to Tenth St. Note also that the building on the southern Tenth and Patton corner was at least 20-30 feet from the southern sidewalk and another 6 feet or so from the street. CE 523 is an annotated map of the Tippit scene that seems to show that Ms. Holan would have been able to see Tippit and his patrol car from her second-floor apartment. CE 523 seems to show that the two houses between her building and Tippit's car would not have obstructed her view of the shooting scene. I notice you avoided the question regarding whether Professor Pulte was lying when he said he attended one of Brownlow's meetings with Ms. Holan. I believe that Pulte was telling the truth. I believe that Brownlow did have several conversations with Ms. Holan. I believe that Ms. Holan's account may be genuine. One wonders why an old lady living in a nursing home would fabricate such a story, although one can always theorize that Brownlow and Hulte misrepresented what she said.

Yes, the HSCA--actually Blakey--said that the Z160, Z189, and Z312 shots came from the TSBD, that the Z302 shot came from the grassy knoll, and that the Z302/grassy knoll shot missed.

From sometime in 1962 until the fall of 1963, she lived at 409 E. Tenth St. In September 1963, she moved from 409 E. Tenth St. into a second-story apartment located at 113 S. Patton. I missed this move when I was hurriedly scanning some sources on her location yesterday. Anyway, her second-story apartment on S. Patton was only about 150 feet from the Tippit shooting scene, and period photos of the shooting scene and the surrounding area indicate that Ms. Holan may indeed have been able to see Tippit and his car. And I ask again: Are you saying that SMU Professor William Palte was lying when he said he attended one of Brownlow's two meetings with Ms. Holan?

So are you saying that SMU Professor Pulte was lying when he said he attended one of Brownlow's two meetings with Doris Holan? Holan lived at 409 E. Tenth Street, and even Myers allows that Ms. Holan may have been home when the shooting occurred. Furthermore, Holan may have had a view of the Tippit murder scene from her second-floor apartment. Some of her apartment's windows did face toward the 10th and Patton intersection. Overhead and street-level photos of the Tippit shooting scene suggest that Holan may have been able to see the scene.

The police car that Mrs. Roberts saw in front of the rooming house after it beeped its horn may not have been Tippit's car. It is unclear exactly when Tippit was at the Gloco gas station. If he was there until just after Oswald left the rooming house, then he could not have been the one who stopped at the house a few minutes earlier. If that's the case, it was another patrol car, one that was operating off-the-record. However, Mrs. Roberts thought the car's number may have started with a 1.

Another favorable scholarly treatment of the acoustical evidence is Dr. G. Paul Chambers' extensive discussion on the subject in his book Head Shot: The Science Behind the JFK Assassination (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010). I quote sizable segments from Chambers' analysis in my article on the acoustical evidence. Chambers is a physicist who has worked with the NASA Goddard Optics Branch and with Bellatrix, Inc. He has also worked as the supervisory research physicist for the Energetic Materials and Detonation Science Department of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland and as a research physicist with the Condensed Matter and Radiation Sciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

Good points all. When I first began to study the JFK case and for a few years thereafter, I believed that Oswald shot Tippit in self-defense, that Tippit was sent to Oak Cliff to find and kill Oswald but that Oswald beat him to the draw. However, in later years, as I read more about the shooting, I changed my mind and concluded that Oswald had nothing to do with Tippit's death. I've presented most of my case for Oswald's innocence in the Tippit shooting in my review of Myers' book With Malice.

I really don't care about someone's political views when it comes to the JFK case. I just wish the moderators would not allow people to post non-JFK-case-related threads in this forum.

No, there's not. There are enormous, gaping holes in the case against Oswald in the Tippit shooting. The eyewitness IDs of the shooter were all over the map, with some clearly pointing away from Oswald, but those IDs were minimized or ignored. The IDs of Oswald in the obscenely rigged police lineups are highly questionable and would have been subjected to a severe challenge at trial. The fingerprints on the patrol car's front passenger door, which at least one witness said the assailant touched, were not Oswald's. The clear weight of the evidence shows that Tippit's killer was walking toward him, west, not away from him, east, which, for a number of reasons, makes it even more unlikely that the assailant was Oswald. There is credible evidence that Oswald was in the Texas Theater several minutes before Tippit was shot. There is no credible innocent explanation for Tippit's being so far out of his assigned area and in Oswald's neighborhood, for his stopping at Oswald's rooming house and tapping his horn, for his speeding off from the Gloco gas station minutes before the shooting, and for his frantic use of the Top Ten Record Shop's phone shortly before his death when he could have used any one of the phones set aside for police use in the area. There is no believable way to even get Oswald to 10th and Patton without assuming he got a ride. The clothing and ballistics evidence is a mass of contradictions and smells to high heaven. No one has yet explained why Tippit would have stopped the assailant in the first place if the assailant was Oswald, since the man was, by all accounts, walking normally, and since the police description of the killer differed markedly from Oswald's appearance. And on and on we could go. For that matter, to even assume that Oswald would have had any reason to shoot Tippit, one must assume that Oswald shot JFK, but new research strongly indicates that Oswald was not even on the sixth floor of the TSBD during the shooting and that he did not fire a rifle that day.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I've read Last Second in Dallas. One problem is that Thompson is wedded to the idea of an unaltered, pristine Zapruder film, whereas I think there are obvious, clear indications in the film that it has been altered. There are several events in the film that simply could not have happened, that were physically impossible. We know from Doug Horne's ground-breaking research that the film was edited at a CIA-contracted photo lab in New York and that two versions of the film were viewed at CIA HQ in Langley. Anyone who argues that Connally was hit at Z224 based on the flimsy evidence of the lapel flip needs to explain how a bullet that made Connally's chest exit wound could have caused the lapel to flap when the wound was nowhere near the lapel, not to mention that Connally himself, after studying high-quality blowups of the Z film, said he was certain he was not hit before Z232 and identified Z234-236 as the moment of impact. They also need to explain the fact that JFK is visibly knocked forward starting at Z226 and that Connally's shows dramatic reactions starting in Z236, including the sudden collapse of his right shoulder. JFK's sudden forward jolt starting at Z226 is one of the most obvious reactions/movements in the Z film. Yet, JFK is clearly responding to some kind of wound starting at right around Z200 when his right hand abruptly stops in the middle of a wave and drops to the level of his chin/throat, and he starts to turn his head rapidly to the left, and when he emerges from behind the freeway sign he has both hands at his throat--this all happens well before he is visibly jolted forward starting at Z226. The most likely cause of the lapel flip was the brisk wind that was blowing intermittently in Dealey Plaza during the motorcade.

Tom Bass starts his far-left review with this dubious paragraph: The Vietnam War was a dog from day one. This was the scandal revealed by the Pentagon Papers, the forty-seven volumes documenting the lies and fakery that year after year racked up bodies like cordwood. More than 3 million Vietnamese were bombed, shelled, gassed, tortured and otherwise killed in a war that Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford should have ended the day it began, by acknowledging that the Vietnamese beat the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and that colonialism in Asia was dead. You can find this spin repeated virtually verbatim in communist propaganda about the Vietnam War. In point of fact, the Vietnam War was a noble effort to keep the 18 million citizens of South Vietnam from falling under North Vietnam's brutal, tyrannical communist rule. To read Bass's review, -- You'd never know that North Vietnam was the aggressor, that North Vietnam launched four large-scale invasions against South Vietnam (1964, 1968, 1972, and 1975). In contrast, South Vietnam never once sent a large army across the DMZ and/or through Laos to invade North Vietnam. -- You'd never know that the Saigon regime allowed its citizens far more basic rights than the Hanoi regime allowed its citizens. -- You'd never know that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh would not have defeated the French without massive aid from the Chinese, that China provided tens of thousands of support troops to aid the Viet Minh, that Chinese generals ran major Viet Minh operations (including the assault on Dien Bien Phu), and that Ho and his fellow Communists murdered tens of thousands of non-communist Vietnamese nationalists to consolidate their power in the north. -- You'd never know that there would have been no North Vietnam without massive Soviet and Chinese military and financial aid, that China had over 100,000 support troops in North Vietnam, and that Russia had over 1,000 advisers in North Vietnam (many of whom operated some of North Vietnam's Soviet-provided SAM missile batteries). -- And you'd never know that after the Communists took over South Vietnam, they imposed a reign of terror that nearly rivaled the Communist genocide in Cambodia. As has been thoroughly documented, when the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam, they executed tens of thousands of South Vietnamese, and sent well over one million others to concentration camps, where tens of thousands died from abuse and cruel conditions. To this day, Communist Vietnam remains one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, according to every major human rights group (including Human Rights Watch). And, is Bass aware that the portion of the war covered by the Pentagon Papers only goes to 1967, and that, even then, the Pentagon Papers is not a comprehensive record of the deliberations regarding the war up to 1967? If you'd like to read more to get the full story on the Vietnam War, I invite you to check out my website The Truth About the Vietnam War.

Dr. Paul Hoch and Dr. Murray Miron found evidence that the dictabelt recording has been altered in the segment that contains the suspicious transmissions regarding Tippit's presence in Oak Cliff. It is also entirely possible, if not certain, that the dictabelt in evidence is a copy, and that the timing of some transmissions was affected in the copying process. These are two other reasons that it's problematic to try to correlate the gunshot impulses on the recording with events in the Zapruder film. When asked about the issue of which motorcycle recorded the sounds on the dictabelt, acoustical expert Professor Ernest Aschkenasy explained to then-Congressman Christopher Dodd that if the motorcycle was not in Dealey Plaza, it must have been in a replica of Dealey Plaza: Mr. DODD. Let me try to conclude this, by asking you this, though. Having said that, and using the expertise that you have in acoustics, you, I think, said, Dr. Aschkenasy, that to have found a sound that you developed in your predicted response in some place other than Dealey Plaza, it would have been necessary to reconstruct, in effect, Dealey Plaza in some other place? Mr. ASCHKENASY. Correct. Mr. DODD. So that even if that sound that we hear is the third or fourth response, that would have only been able to have come, based on your expertise and your tests, only could have come from Dealey Plaza, unless you could have recreated Dealey Plaza? Mr. ASCHKENASY. Congressman Sawyer at that time asked the question, if somebody were to tell me that the motorcycle was not at Dealey Plaza--and he was in fact somewhere else and he was transmitting from another location--my response to him at that time was that I would ask to be told where that location is, and once told where it is, I would go there, and one thing I would expect to find is a replica of Dealey Plaza at that location. That is the only way it can come out. (5 HSCA 592)

This is great news to hear. I'm happy that the documentary is doing so well. Of all the videos on the JFK case that people can see, this is the best one currently available.