The breakdown of Fetzer's "breakthrough"

[David G. Healy]

then you should have no problem finding a competent physicist to dispute the JCostella Ph.D claims... Get with it, what YOU personally think is irrelevant...

Why bother anyone with that nonsense, David. Let's use the one you relied on when you posted three years after seeing Costella's so-called work that you had not seen any proof of alteration. I'm just agreeing with you and if you spoke to a physicist to reach that conclusion, then fine ... I'll cite him, too! LOL!!!

yeah, if I couldn't find a physicist (for that matter anyone with credentials that could take apart JCostella's work), and I wanted no part of scientific findings, I'd say the same thing.....I believe its called, *Denial*

[David G. Healy]

David Healy writes: "So Dr. Thompson, how'd a philosophy professor from Haverford U. find his way into LIFE Magazines deal with the Zapruder film? For the record books for sure, eh? There's a scarcity of information concerning same."

Where have you been for the last twenty or thirty years? The full story of how I went to work at LIFE for a few months in 1966 and then wrote Six Seconds has been told over and again.

Josiah, you are aware that David Healy never cites data about the case .... so he may have never read anything about JFK's assassination. David's interest seems to be in making contradictory statements like 'I think the Zfilm is altered' and 'I have seen no proof of alteration'.

relax Bill, Dr. Thompson will recognize you soon enough, he may even autograph your T-shirt if he has the time. Right now he's busy with a question... So while we wait, how is the job 6th floor Museum going?

Edited February 19, 2008 by David G. Healy

[Jack White]

Forget all the other witnesses for a moment. Consider JUST SS man Forrest Sorrels

in the front seat beside Curry. Does he have any motive to fabricate a story? Is he

trying to protect the reputation of the Dallas Police? Would his sworn testimony have

credibility in a court of law?

Let's examine his sworn testimony:

Chief Curry immediately broadcast to surround the building.

Why would Sorrels lie?

Jack

That's an interesting one, Jack.

There is little doubt that Sorrels was lying when he swore that Curry ordered the building surrounded. Sorrels was in the car sitting beside Curry when Curry radiod an order to get men up on the overpass. We have the radio transcripts which PROVE that Curry said NOTHING about surrounding the building.

Leaving aside the question of WHY Sorrels lied, the fact is that he did lie. As judges always tell jurors, "if you conclude that a witness lied about ONE matter, then you MAY infer.......

SOMEBODY has improperly "quoted" me above, making it appear that I made

the statement quoted. I posted Sorrels testimony about CHANEY MOVING

FORWARD. Here is the FULL text of my posting:

QUOTE:

Forget all the other witnesses for a moment. Consider JUST SS man Forrest Sorrels

in the front seat beside Curry. Does he have any motive to fabricate a story? Is he

trying to protect the reputation of the Dallas Police? Would his sworn testimony have

credibility in a court of law?

Let's examine his sworn testimony:

Forrest Sorrels (Secret Service agent, in the lead car in front of the

Presidential limousine), November 28, 1963: "I noted that the President's

car had axcelerated [sic] its speed and was closing fast the gap between us.

A motorcycle pulled up alongside of the car and Chief Curry yelled 'Is

anybody hurt?', to which the officer replied in the affirmative, and Chief

Curry immediately broadcast to surround the building. By that time we had

gotten just about under the underpass when the President's car pulled up

alongside, and at that time Chief Curry's car had started to pick up speed,

and someone yelled to get to the nearest hospital, and Chief Curry broadcast

for the hospital to be ready." [statement: 21H548]

1. "was closing the gap"...THE LIMO WAS BEHIND CURRY, BUT ACCELERATING

AND GETTING CLOSER.

2. "A motorcycle pulled up alongside of the car and Chief Curry yelled 'Is

anybody hurt?', to which the officer replied in the affirmative"...WHILE THE LIMO

WAS STILL CLOSING THE GAP, CHANEY CAME ALONG SIDE THE LEAD CAR.

3."By that time we had gotten just about under the underpass when the President's

car pulled up alongside"...WHEN THE LEAD CAR WAS ABOUT TO ENTER THE

UNDERPASS, THE JFK LIMO PULLED UP ALONGSIDE

How can it be more clear?:

1. Limo is behind lead car when

2. Motorcop comes forward, speaks to Curry and

3. As lead car is about to enter underpass, JFK limo pulls alongside

...a clear and straightforward timeline from a credible witness.

Why would Sorrels lie?

Jack

[Craig Lamson]

then you should have no problem finding a competent physicist to dispute the JCostella Ph.D claims... Get with it, what YOU personally think is irrelevant...

Why bother anyone with that nonsense, David. Let's use the one you relied on when you posted three years after seeing Costella's so-called work that you had not seen any proof of alteration. I'm just agreeing with you and if you spoke to a physicist to reach that conclusion, then fine ... I'll cite him, too! LOL!!!

yeah, if I couldn't find a physicist (for that matter anyone with credentials that could take apart JCostella's work), and I wanted no part of scientific findings, I'd say the same thing.....I believe its called, *Denial*

The real problem David, is that we don't know ANYTHING about the "scientific" findings of Costella. Why? Because he has never released his work. He has been asked and he said sure, but it appears he is not a man of this word because the work HAS NOT NOT BEEN PRODUCED! Surely if Costella were a "scientist" he would have no problem at all with releasing the methods he used in to produce his findings.

Got hand it to him though. He claims an the angle of a vertical will not change (paraphrased) as the camera moves. Amazing that it still works when the object of his study is LEANING over sideways. Imagine that.

BTW, did you ever figure out that unsharp mask is a very real FILM based photographic process?

As a side note, do YOU even understand his work?

[Paul Rigby]

Why would Sorrels lie?

Jack,

I have just received an urgent email from a man calling himself "De Uncle." According to my mysterious source, there was a communist conspiracy abroad in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963, one involving Sorrels, Chaney et al, designed to cast doubt on the validity of the film record of the assassination. Following the logic of the anti-alterationists, this must be true, as there is no supporting proof whatsoever.

I am glad to have helped clear this one up.

Paul

[Josiah Thompson]

Sure, this will only take a couple of minutes. And it might be pleasant to go back over that time which is now more than forty years ago.

In 1965, I'd read Vince Salandria's groundbreaking studies of the case in Liberation and The Minority of One. I had been teaching at Yale and then got a job at Haverford. It was the winter of 1965/66. Along with another professor, I was arrested in Media, Pennsylvania after handing out American Friends Service Committee pamphlets against the War in Vietnam. Vince Salandria was the ACLU lawyer sent to get us out of jail without being charged with anything. I told Salandria that I admired his work. We became friends, and, over the next six months, made numerous trips to the Archives in Washington. Together, we started to write a magazine article on the case. After a week or so, Vince and I began to disagree about how certain pieces of evidence should be treated. I continued on my own that summer and drafted a ninety-page article. I had an introduction to Willie Morris at Harper's. But when I got up to New York, Morris couldn't see me for six or seven hours. I wasted some time by dropping by to see a friend of a friend who had expressed interest in all this. His name was Don Preston. He was the Executive Editor of Bernard Geis Associates and quite a wonderful editor. Don and I talked. Then Berney Geis and I talked. Geis gave me a $500 advance and a book contract. He agreed to pay my expenses to go to Dallas and make some measurements.

So how did I get to work as a consultant for LIFE magazine?

Geis knew people at LIFE. I told him that I had seen a dim copy of the Zapruder film in the Archives. I said that rumor had it that LIFE had a much brighter and clearer copy. LIFE at that point was starting an investigation of the whole case. They could train up an editor in a few months to tell them what doors to open but that would take time. As for me, I wanted to see their clear copy of the Zapruder film. My study was about all the evidence in the case and not particularly the Zapruder film. Yet it was a critically important piece of evidence. Geis managed to set up a meeting at LIFE attended by Don Preston and me, with attendance from Ed Kern, Dick Billings and Loudon Wainwright of LIFE. This all happened in late September or early October of 1966. We talked and looked at the LIFE copy of the Zapruder film. I was blown away by its clarity. We agreed that I'd work with Kern and Billings as a team and be paid as a consultant. I talked with Kern and Billings about the people we should interview and the photos we should try to obtain. We traveled to Dallas together and interviewed witnesses at Parkland Hospital, Governor Connally's doctor, Doctor Boswell in Bethesda, et al. We worked on a major story for some weeks and finally, in November 1966, produced "Grounds for Reasonable Doubt." This issue had Z frames on the cover and contained Governor Connally's refusal to go along with the single-bullet theory. It was the first breach in establishment support for the Warren Report. After a few months, LIFE discontinued their investigation.

Through this whole period I was teaching full-time at Haverford. I never took any leave of absence from my teaching job but fitted in the interviews around my teaching schedule. You often talk as if I were hired by LIFE as an expert on the Zapruder film. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I was hired to help Kern and Billings figure out who to talk to and where to turn their investigation. They wanted me to help them find other evidence. They already had the Zapruder film. Often times, you and Fetzer try to make it seem that my book was solely (or principally) about the Zapruder film. It wasn't. It was an attempt to synthesize what evidence we had in 1967 into a whole picture. The Zapruder film, then as now, was important but surely not the only focus of Six Seconds.

The insinuation that you and Fetzer keep making that I'm some sort of spook because I worked for LIFE as a consultant on this case in 1966-67 is both unfair and silly. I resent it. When you demean the whole process of discussion by making such slurs, you and Fetzer naturally produce hostility on the part of those whom you try to smear. Lay off it.

David Healy writes: "So Dr. Thompson, how'd a philosophy professor from Haverford U. find his way into LIFE Magazines deal with the Zapruder film? For the record books for sure, eh? There's a scarcity of information concerning same."

Where have you been for the last twenty or thirty years? The full story of how I went to work at LIFE for a few months in 1966 and then wrote Six Seconds has been told over and again. For example, take a look at a fine new book by John Kelin named Praise from A Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report (San Antonio, Texas: Wings Press, 2007).

Lacking any ability to deal with the argument put forward, you start shoveling out innuendo. Guess who that reminds me of?

Actually Dr. Thompson, for a good part of those 30 years right down the coast from you, during that time we probably read the same SF newspapers, watched the same news local programs (of course I was a bit closer to those news programs/studio than you were) ... however, that doesn't answer my simple query.... eh? I'm sure a few here don't have 6 Seconds available at their fingertips.... Think of it this way, if you and I were doing this on-camera a simple 2 paragraph response would do... here's the question again:

How did a Philosophy professor (Ph.D.), you sir, wind up in the executive offices of LIFE magazine, working on the film of the century? That same certain magazine that did NOT want the country to witness that same film as purchased (still pics.motion picture rights) by them...

And please, don't push a Bill Miller type out to fetch your paper, as it stands right now Miller can't believe your posting to this thread....

[Bill Miller]

yeah, if I couldn't find a physicist (for that matter anyone with credentials that could take apart JCostella's work), and I wanted no part of scientific findings, I'd say the same thing.....I believe its called, *Denial*

Who did you use before telling this forum that you have seen no proof of alteration, David???

[Bill Miller]

relax Bill, Dr. Thompson will recognize you soon enough, he may even autograph your T-shirt if he has the time. Right now he's busy with a question... So while we wait, how is the job 6th floor Museum going?

We'll David ... its going good. I am pushing for the 'David Healy wing' to be opened soon. It's going to be an empty room showing everything you have contributed to the Education Forum ... but there also will be signs at the far side of the room pointing to the 'trolling wing' where a collection of your ridiculous say nothing responses will be available for public reading.

[Paul Rigby]

Often times, you and Fetzer try to make it seem that my book was solely (or principally) about the Zapruder film. It wasn't. It was an attempt to synthesize what evidence we had in 1967 into a whole picture. The Zapruder film, then as now, was important but surely not the only focus of Six Seconds.

Thompson “synthesizing” evidence in Six Seconds: Or, How to make an exit wound into an entrance wound…

Yet our most detailed description of the Kennedy head wound appears in the testimony of Parkland Physician Dr. Robert N. McClelland:

“As I took the position at the head of the table…I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded through the scalp …posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out.”

Dr. McClelland is quite clearly describing an impact on the right-hand side of the head that blasted backward… (1)

Er, was he really? Not according to the Admission Note made out by McClelland on the afternoon of the coup, which is to be found within the Warren Report itself (2):

Cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple (3)

As Thompson knew full well, when asked by Arlen Specter whether he stood by this verdict – the heroic lawyer, it should be noted, could not bring himself to specify out loud what that verdict was – McClelland replied in the affirmative” (4).

(1) Six Seconds in Dallas (Bernard Geis Associates, 1967), p.107, citing 6WCH33.

(2) Warren Report, Appendix VIII, Medical Reports from Doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Tex., p.527.

(3) In Commission Exhibit 392, the two-page submission from McClelland, timed at 4:45pm on 22 November 1963, referred to in 2) is again reproduced in17WCH12.

(4) 6WCH35.

I love a good synthesis as much as the next man - but is that quite the right term here?

Paul

[Josiah Thompson]

See post immediately below. Thank you.

Edited February 19, 2008 by Josiah Thompson

[Josiah Thompson]

If memory serves, by 1967 Dr. McClelland had already said that note involved a mistake... like substituting left for right or perhaps that he never observed any entry hole in JFk's temple but heard about it. And I think.. if you look into it... that is what Dr. McClelland has been saying for forty years.

And now with respect to Chaney?

Often times, you and Fetzer try to make it seem that my book was solely (or principally) about the Zapruder film. It wasn't. It was an attempt to synthesize what evidence we had in 1967 into a whole picture. The Zapruder film, then as now, was important but surely not the only focus of Six Seconds.

Thompson “synthesizing” evidence in Six Seconds: Or, How to make an exit wound into an entrance wound…

Yet our most detailed description of the Kennedy head wound appears in the testimony of Parkland Physician Dr. Robert N. McClelland:

“As I took the position at the head of the table…I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded through the scalp …posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out.”

Dr. McClelland is quite clearly describing an impact on the right-hand side of the head that blasted backward… (1)

Er, was he really? Not according to the Admission Note made out by McClelland on the afternoon of the coup, which is to be found within the Warren Report itself (2):

Cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple (3)

As Thompson knew full well, when asked by Arlen Specter whether he stood by this verdict – the heroic lawyer, it should be noted, could not bring himself to specify out loud what that verdict was – McClelland replied in the affirmative” (4).

(1) Six Seconds in Dallas (Bernard Geis Associates, 1967), p.107, citing 6WCH33.

(2) Warren Report, Appendix VIII, Medical Reports from Doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Tex., p.527.

(3) In Commission Exhibit 392, the two-page submission from McClelland, timed at 4:45pm on 22 November 1963, referred to in 2) is again reproduced in17WCH12.

(4) 6WCH35.

I love a good synthesis as much as the next man - but is that quite the right term here?

Paul

[David G. Healy]

yeah, if I couldn't find a physicist (for that matter anyone with credentials that could take apart JCostella's work), and I wanted no part of scientific findings, I'd say the same thing.....I believe its called, *Denial*

Who did you use before telling this forum that you have seen no proof of alteration, David???

son, when one reviews the current wealth of evidence pointing in that direction, what is a thinking man gonna do? Run around Dealey Plaza looking for autographs? And, who did I use for what?

[Paul Rigby]

If memory serves, by 1967 Dr. McClelland had already said that note involved a mistake... like substituting left for right or perhaps that he never observed any entry hole in JFk's temple but heard about it. And I think.. if you look into it... that is what Dr. McClelland has been saying for forty years.

And now with respect to Chaney?

Is there a prose style and mode of disputation common to all the prominent anti-alterationists? I'm beginning to think there is.

Your reply is simply silly. You claimed McClelland - admirably positioned, according to Six Seconds, when it suited your purposes - was describing an impact wound when he was unmistakably describing an exit wound. The witless fib exposed, you now avoid that unflattering fact, and proceed to insist McClelland couldn't tell his left from his right. Oh dear. Curiously common problem, this:

1) Elm St eyewitness:

Norman Similas: “I could see a hole in the President's left temple...,” Jack Bell, “10 Feet from the President,” NYT, 23 November 1963, p.5, citing Toronto Star.

2) Parkland medical staff:

a) Dr. Robert McClelland: "The cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple," Commission Exhibit 392. [‘Admission Note,’ written 22 Nov 1963 at 4.45 pm, reproduced in WCR572, & 17WCH11-12: cited in Lifton’s Best Evidence, p.55; and Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, pp.159-160.]

Dr. Marion Jenkins: "I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process," 6WH48. [Cited by Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After The Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities, & The Report (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 40.]

c) Dr. Robert Shaw: "The third bullet struck the President on the left side of the head in the region of the left temporal region and made a large wound of exit on the right side of the head," Letter from Dr. Shaw to Larry Ross, "Did Two Gunmen Cut Down Kennedy?", Today (British magazine), 15 February 1964, p.4.

d) Dr. David Stewart: “This was the finding of all the physicians who were in attendance. There was a small wound in the left front of the President’s head and there was a quite massive wound of exit at the right back side of the head, and it was felt by all the physicians at the time to be a wound of entry which went in the front,” The Joe Dolan (Radio) Show, KNEW (Oakland, California), at 08:15hrs on 10 April 1967. (Cited by Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.)

3) Parkland non-medical staff:

Father Oscar Huber: “terrible wound” over Kennedy's left eye [AP despatch, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 24 November 1963]*

4) Bethesda: Drs. Humes & Boswell:

“The autopsy documents also provide some cryptic indications of damage to the left side of the head. The notorious face-sheet on which Dr. J. Thornton Boswell committed his unfortunate 'diagram error' consists of front and back outlines of a male figure. On the front figure, the autopsy surgeons entered the tracheotomy incision (6.5 cm), the four cut-downs made in the Parkland emergency room for administration of infusions (2 cms. Each), and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation '0.8 cm,' apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm and 3 by 1 mm respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about the damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled '0.4 cm' (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.45). Neither Arlen Specter, who conducted the questioning of the autopsy surgeons, nor the Commission members and lawyers present asked any questions about this indication on the diagram of damage at the left eye.

Turning back to the male outline of the figure – the one Dr. Boswell did not realize would become a public document even though it had to be assumed at the time of the autopsy that findings would become evidence at the trial of the accused assassin – we find a small circle at the back of the head about equidistant from the ears and level with the top of the ears. Apparently this represents the small entrance wound which the autopsy surgeons and the Warren Commission say entered the back of the head and exploded out through the right side, carrying large large segments of the skull. but an arrow at the wound on the diagram points to the front and leftand not to the front and right.

A forensic pathologist who was asked to interpret this feature said that it signified that a missile had entered the back of the head traveling to the left and front. As if in confirmation, an autopsy diagram of the skull (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.46) shows a large rectangle marked '3 cm' at the site of the left eye, with a ragged lateral margin, seemingly to indicate fracture or missing bone.

The autopsy surgeons were not questioned about any of the three diagram indications of bullet damage at the left eye or left temple. Nevertheless, when Dr. Jenkins testified that he thought there was a wound in the left temporal area, Arlen Specter replied, 'The autopsy report disclosed no such developments,'” Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities & The Report (NY, Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), pp.161-2.

As for your attempt to counter the Chaney problem, charity compels silence. For the moment.

Paul

[David G. Healy]

Sure, this will only take a couple of minutes. And it might be pleasant to go back over that time which is now more than forty years ago.

In 1965, I'd read Vince Salandria's groundbreaking studies of the case in Liberation and The Minority of One. I had been teaching at Yale and then got a job at Haverford. It was the winter of 1965/66. Along with another professor, I was arrested in Media, Pennsylvania after handing out American Friends Service Committee pamphlets against the War in Vietnam. Vince Salandria was the ACLU lawyer sent to get us out of jail without being charged with anything. I told Salandria that I admired his work. We became friends, and, over the next six months, made numerous trips to the Archives in Washington. Together, we started to write a magazine article on the case. After a week or so, Vince and I began to disagree about how certain pieces of evidence should be treated. I continued on my own that summer and drafted a ninety-page article. I had an introduction to Willie Morris at Harper's. But when I got up to New York, Morris couldn't see me for six or seven hours. I wasted some time by dropping by to see a friend of a friend who had expressed interest in all this. His name was Don Preston. He was the Executive Editor of Bernard Geis Associates and quite a wonderful editor. Don and I talked. Then Berney Geis and I talked. Geis gave me a $500 advance and a book contract. He agreed to pay my expenses to go to Dallas and make some measurements.

So how did I get to work as a consultant for LIFE magazine?

Geis knew people at LIFE. I told him that I had seen a dim copy of the Zapruder film in the Archives. I said that rumor had it that LIFE had a much brighter and clearer copy. LIFE at that point was starting an investigation of the whole case. They could train up an editor in a few months to tell them what doors to open but that would take time. As for me, I wanted to see their clear copy of the Zapruder film. My study was about all the evidence in the case and not particularly the Zapruder film. Yet it was a critically important piece of evidence. Geis managed to set up a meeting at LIFE attended by Don Preston and me, with attendance from Ed Kern, Dick Billings and Loudon Wainwright of LIFE. This all happened in late September or early October of 1966. We talked and looked at the LIFE copy of the Zapruder film. I was blown away by its clarity. We agreed that I'd work with Kern and Billings as a team and be paid as a consultant. I talked with Kern and Billings about the people we should interview and the photos we should try to obtain. We traveled to Dallas together and interviewed witnesses at Parkland Hospital, Governor Connally's doctor, Doctor Boswell in Bethesda, et al. We worked on a major story for some weeks and finally, in November 1966, produced "Grounds for Reasonable Doubt." This issue had Z frames on the cover and contained Governor Connally's refusal to go along with the single-bullet theory. It was the first breach in establishment support for the Warren Report. After a few months, LIFE discontinued their investigation.

Through this whole period I was teaching full-time at Haverford. I never took any leave of absence from my teaching job but fitted in the interviews around my teaching schedule. You often talk as if I were hired by LIFE as an expert on the Zapruder film. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I was hired to help Kern and Billings figure out who to talk to and where to turn their investigation. They wanted me to help them find other evidence. They already had the Zapruder film. Often times, you and Fetzer try to make it seem that my book was solely (or principally) about the Zapruder film. It wasn't. It was an attempt to synthesize what evidence we had in 1967 into a whole picture. The Zapruder film, then as now, was important but surely not the only focus of Six Seconds.

The insinuation that you and Fetzer keep making that I'm some sort of spook because I worked for LIFE as a consultant on this case in 1966-67 is both unfair and silly. I resent it. When you demean the whole process of discussion by making such slurs, you and Fetzer naturally produce hostility on the part of those whom you try to smear. Lay off it.

David Healy writes: "So Dr. Thompson, how'd a philosophy professor from Haverford U. find his way into LIFE Magazines deal with the Zapruder film? For the record books for sure, eh? There's a scarcity of information concerning same."

Where have you been for the last twenty or thirty years? The full story of how I went to work at LIFE for a few months in 1966 and then wrote Six Seconds has been told over and again. For example, take a look at a fine new book by John Kelin named Praise from A Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report (San Antonio, Texas: Wings Press, 2007).

Lacking any ability to deal with the argument put forward, you start shoveling out innuendo. Guess who that reminds me of?

Actually Dr. Thompson, for a good part of those 30 years right down the coast from you, during that time we probably read the same SF newspapers, watched the same news local programs (of course I was a bit closer to those news programs/studio than you were) ... however, that doesn't answer my simple query.... eh? I'm sure a few here don't have 6 Seconds available at their fingertips.... Think of it this way, if you and I were doing this on-camera a simple 2 paragraph response would do... here's the question again:

How did a Philosophy professor (Ph.D.), you sir, wind up in the executive offices of LIFE magazine, working on the film of the century? That same certain magazine that did NOT want the country to witness that same film as purchased (still pics.motion picture rights) by them...

And please, don't push a Bill Miller type out to fetch your paper, as it stands right now Miller can't believe your posting to this thread....

thank you for the above, your time and candor... frankly though, still doesn't answer a lingering question, why you? A full-time university professor/turned writer with a contract....

"LIFE at that point was starting an investigation of the whole case. They could train up an editor in a few months to tell them what doors to open but that would take time."

Interesting, a leading US publication of the time, needs an outside source [not only] to suggest how to conduct an investigation, but what doors to open? I'd like to relate to you sometime my experiences (Vietnam-1963 [in and OUT of Tudo Street bars]) with LIFE photographers. In general damn competent photog's and great reporting.

[Josiah Thompson]

If memory serves, by 1967 Dr. McClelland had already said that note involved a mistake... like substituting left for right or perhaps that he never observed any entry hole in JFk's temple but heard about it. And I think.. if you look into it... that is what Dr. McClelland has been saying for forty years.

And now with respect to Chaney?

Is there a prose style and mode of disputation common to all the prominent anti-alterationists? I'm beginning to think there is.

Your reply is simply silly. You claimed McClelland - admirably positioned, according to Six Seconds, when it suited your purposes - was describing an impact wound when he was unmistakably describing an exit wound. The witless fib exposed, you now avoid that unflattering fact, and proceed to insist McClelland couldn't tell his left from his right. Oh dear. Curiously common problem, this:

1) Elm St eyewitness:

Norman Similas: “I could see a hole in the President's left temple...,” Jack Bell, “10 Feet from the President,” NYT, 23 November 1963, p.5, citing Toronto Star.

2) Parkland medical staff:

a) Dr. Robert McClelland: "The cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple," Commission Exhibit 392. [‘Admission Note,’ written 22 Nov 1963 at 4.45 pm, reproduced in WCR572, & 17WCH11-12: cited in Lifton’s Best Evidence, p.55; and Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, pp.159-160.]

Dr. Marion Jenkins: "I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process," 6WH48. [Cited by Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After The Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities, & The Report (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 40.]

c) Dr. Robert Shaw: "The third bullet struck the President on the left side of the head in the region of the left temporal region and made a large wound of exit on the right side of the head," Letter from Dr. Shaw to Larry Ross, "Did Two Gunmen Cut Down Kennedy?", Today (British magazine), 15 February 1964, p.4.

d) Dr. David Stewart: “This was the finding of all the physicians who were in attendance. There was a small wound in the left front of the President’s head and there was a quite massive wound of exit at the right back side of the head, and it was felt by all the physicians at the time to be a wound of entry which went in the front,” The Joe Dolan (Radio) Show, KNEW (Oakland, California), at 08:15hrs on 10 April 1967. (Cited by Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.)

3) Parkland non-medical staff:

Father Oscar Huber: “terrible wound” over Kennedy's left eye [AP despatch, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 24 November 1963]*

4) Bethesda: Drs. Humes & Boswell:

“The autopsy documents also provide some cryptic indications of damage to the left side of the head. The notorious face-sheet on which Dr. J. Thornton Boswell committed his unfortunate 'diagram error' consists of front and back outlines of a male figure. On the front figure, the autopsy surgeons entered the tracheotomy incision (6.5 cm), the four cut-downs made in the Parkland emergency room for administration of infusions (2 cms. Each), and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation '0.8 cm,' apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm and 3 by 1 mm respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about the damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled '0.4 cm' (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.45). Neither Arlen Specter, who conducted the questioning of the autopsy surgeons, nor the Commission members and lawyers present asked any questions about this indication on the diagram of damage at the left eye.

Turning back to the male outline of the figure – the one Dr. Boswell did not realize would become a public document even though it had to be assumed at the time of the autopsy that findings would become evidence at the trial of the accused assassin – we find a small circle at the back of the head about equidistant from the ears and level with the top of the ears. Apparently this represents the small entrance wound which the autopsy surgeons and the Warren Commission say entered the back of the head and exploded out through the right side, carrying large large segments of the skull. but an arrow at the wound on the diagram points to the front and leftand not to the front and right.

A forensic pathologist who was asked to interpret this feature said that it signified that a missile had entered the back of the head traveling to the left and front. As if in confirmation, an autopsy diagram of the skull (CE 397, Vol XVII, p.46) shows a large rectangle marked '3 cm' at the site of the left eye, with a ragged lateral margin, seemingly to indicate fracture or missing bone.

The autopsy surgeons were not questioned about any of the three diagram indications of bullet damage at the left eye or left temple. Nevertheless, when Dr. Jenkins testified that he thought there was a wound in the left temporal area, Arlen Specter replied, 'The autopsy report disclosed no such developments,'” Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities & The Report (NY, Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), pp.161-2.

As for your attempt to counter the Chaney problem, charity compels silence. For the moment.

Paul