Alterationists: Thoughts from Gary Mack.

[Robin Unger]

Pamela is correct. Only a fool would have his foot on the accellerator while turning his head completely

to the rear twice. 59 witnesses say he STOPPED or SLOWED DRASTICALLY. Thus he had his foot on the brake.

Jack

Toni Foster interview wiith Debra Conway.

Edited January 17, 2010 by Robin Unger

[Jack White]

As opposed to good old Lee, who gives every indication of a fierce desire to gain brownie points by the zeal of his conformity:

“My own personal experience in such groups taught me that dissenters are frequently only inverted conformists…That is to say, he desperately wants popularity, attention (& sometimes even prestige) so that while he is willing to fight an unpopular cause, he struggles for personal popularity within the band of common dissidents…The result is that…the dissenter takes over the tactics and procedures of those he opposes.”

Harry Zitzler, “From Readers Letters: The Conforming Dissidents,” The Minority of One, May 1962, (Vol 4, No 5 [30]), p.15

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I'd not do so.

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.

A traveler journeys along a fine road. It has been strewn with traps. He falls into one. Do you say it is the traveler's fault, or that of the scoundrel who lays the traps?

Le Marquis de Sade, in a letter to his wife Renee Pelagie de Montreuil

Brownie points Paul? What we react badly to in others - we strengthen in ourselves.

If you told me the best way to get from where I am to where you are is to travel up the A565 I wouldn't believe you mate. Keep the pointy hat on ice...

Lee

Lee apparently majored in PSYCHOLOGY and thinks that it trumps evidence. He adduces or supposes thoughts

in witnesses' minds according to what he thinks they should have thought or how they should have reacted.

Jack

[Michael Hogan]

Why, the watching audience might even be treated to an honest statement of Miller's belief that the shots came from inside the presidential limo - and that would never do, would it?

also:

Inspect the first testimony cited by Thompson and you find Miller not offering the following opinion on the origin of the shots on Elm St:

Mr. Belin: “Where did the shots sound like they came from?”

Miller: “Well, the way it sounded like, it came from the, I would say right there in the car,”6WCH225

http://www.jfk-assassination.com/warren/wch/vol6/page225.php

Unscrupulous coves, these people who quote eyewitness testimony accurately.

Not that you would know, of course, having sought systematically to expunge any testimony you found inconvenient.

Paul, what do you make of the 12/18/1963 FBI report on Miller's recollections?

Excerpt:

He (Miller) heard three shots, and also noticed a powder dust spray in the street directly

to the driver's side and rear of the car. He immediately looked to his left and back on the

hill west of the Texas School Book Depository building to see if anyone was standing there.

It was his first impression that the noise of the shots was a motorcycle backfire or firecrackers.

Turning back to observe the car, he saw someone fall forward, but he could not tell who was in this car,

and the car was then driving very fast under the railroad overpass. After the car disappeared, a motorcycle

policeman drove up on to the hill, west of the Texas School Book Depository building and ran up the hill.

There were other men that he assumed were plainclothes police officers, some carrying guns in their hands,

and other uniformed police officers also running up the hill. He noticed that there was no one moving on the hill

other than the police officers or on the railroad tracks behind the park wall. He did not notice anyone in the building

and did not know where the "shot" sounds came from....

....During the whole incident, he does not recall ever seeing the President of the United States.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=30

What do you make of the testimony of Royce Skelton, who knew Miller and was standing near him at the time?

[Pat Speer]

Jack, seeing as you were ambushed by the HSCA, I'd think you'd understand the truth of my observation. Let's say "the limo stopped and therefore the Z-film is fake and therefore there was a widespread government conspiracy" argument catches on, and is held up, circa 2013, as the proof we have been waiting for. Say, circa 2013, during the run of HBO's mini-series, Larry King invites CTs and LNs on the program to debate the evidence for a conspiracy. Say someone--I don't know--perhaps Jim Fetzer--brings up the limo stopped argument and claims all these witnesses said it stopped. Say that, in response, Gerry Posner or Vinnie Bugliosi, says, "Well, hold on there! That's a bunch of nonsense!" and pulls Bill Newman out and shows him the Z-film, and Newman says "Well, that's what I saw. I guess it didn't stop!" Point. Set. Match. The entire CT community is discredited in one second...

Yeah, let's imagine the horror of a dedicated defender of the OCT ambushing an advocate of an alternative, conspiratorial interpretation by pointing out the latter's mis-use of testimony....

Actually, no need. There are a number of interesting examples of this already out there on the web. Here's "Von Pein" doing precisely that to Vincent Salandria in a review of False Mystery from March 2006:

Mr. Salandria's earwitness selectivity, used to attempt to buttress the idea that shots came from the Grassy Knoll area of Dealey Plaza during the JFK shooting, is rather interesting, somewhat strange, and not very convincing. By utilizing, on page 2 of this publication, the selective testimony of only the witnesses who were located on the bridge atop the Triple Underpass (plus Lee Bowers in the railroad tower to the north of the bridge, who said the shots could have come from "either the Depository or the Underpass", which certainly doesn't FAVOR a Knoll shooter any more than a Depository sniper), Mr. Salandria has (IMO) actually bolstered the "Lone Assassin" position.

The reason I say that is -- Because the cited witnesses (Austin Miller, S.M. Holland, Thomas Murphy, and Frank Reilly) seemed to hear shots from ONLY the Knoll general area, although Reilly is actually closer to a "TSBD" witness than he is a "Knoll" one. And since there is no doubt at all that at least SOME shots did come from the Book Depository, it would tend to undercut and weaken these witness' claims of hearing the gunshots all coming from the front of JFK's car. Which would indicate, logically, that all of these "Triple Underpass witnesses" were located in an area of Dealey Plaza where the Depository shots sounded as if they had come from further west than they actually originated.

Witness Austin Miller, by the way, said he thought the shots had actually come from INSIDE the President's limousine itself! And yet he is still used to try and improve Mr. Salandria's theory of shots from the Knoll area, when he actually heard none from that specific location. Curious. (Although it's possible that the author was using Miller as a "pro-conspiracy" witness based only on another portion of his account of the shooting, when Miller also claimed to see "smoke or steam" on the Knoll following the shots that he thought came "from right there in the car". But this book's author doesn't mention that portion of Miller's account at all on page 2.)

"Curious," indeed, though anything but an isolated example of the gross dishonesty of the handling of Miller's testimony by advocates of a grassy knoll gunman.

Now imagine, if you will, the sheer awfulness of, say, Doug Horne representing the CT-ers in the kind of programme outlined by Pat in his post. Why, the watching audience might even be treated to an honest statement of Miller's belief that the shots came from inside the presidential limo - and that would never do, would it?

While Miller did testify the shots sounded like they came from inside the limo, he originally said he assumed they were backfires. Not particularly helpful to the Greer did it scenario, which holds that only one shot came from the limo.

Austin Miller (11-22-63 statement to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, 19H485, 24H217) “I saw a convertable automobile turn west on Elm off Houston Street. It had proceeded about halfway from Houston Street to the underpass when I heard what sounded like a shot a short second two more sharp reports. A man in the back seat slumped over and a woman in a bright colored dress (Orange or Yellow) grabbed the man and yelled. One shot apparently hit the street past the car. I saw something which I thought was smoke or steam coming from a group of trees north of Elm off the railroad tracks.” (12-18-63 FBI report, CD205 p.27-28) “He saw an open top limousine containing people turn left off of Houston, driving west directly in front of the Texas School Book Depository. He heard three shots and also noticed a powder dust spray in the street directly to the driver’s side and rear of the car…It was his first impression that the noise of the shots was a motorcycle backfire or firecrackers….he saw someone fall forward but could not tell who was in the car.” (4-8-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 6H223-227) “it came down Main Street and turned North on Houston Street and went over two blocks and turned left on Elm. Got about halfway down the hill toward the underpass and that is when as far as I can recall the first shot was fired…I thought at first the motorcycle backfiring or somebody throwed some firecrackers out…just a few seconds later, there was two more shots fired or, or sounded .like a sound at the time…it was after that I saw some man in a car fall forward, and a woman next to him grab him and hollered…the way it sounded like, it came from the, I would say right there in the car.” (11-09-83 AP article found in the Indiana Gazette) "Miller, a railyard worker in 1963, had walked over to Elm Street on his lunch-break and was looking right at Kennedy "when shots began to crackle." - - - At first he didn't realize what was happening, he said. But when he saw a Secret Service agent jump onto the back of Kennedy's limousine, he knew. "I've tried to forget all I could of it, but I still remember most of it," said Miller, 25 at the time. "I guess you never forget it." Miller said he has told very few of his friends and co-workers that he was there when Kennedy was killed."

Edited January 18, 2010 by Pat Speer

[Jack White]

Lee apparently majored in PSYCHOLOGY and thinks that it trumps evidence. He adduces or supposes thoughts

in witnesses' minds according to what he thinks they should have thought or how they should have reacted.

Jack

How DARE you assume what I am thinking!! You haven't spoken to me about this. NO OFFENCE INTENDED!

See how easy it is to fall into the trap of accusing others for what we ourselves display?

I simply try to address one of the issues in this case from a different perspective?

I suggested this in my reply to Jim Fetzer:

Here’s what I think influenced the whole slowed versus stopped observations.

• Whether your observation was from the front or the rear of the limo

• Whether the brake-lights influenced your judgement

Whether you quickly looked at the stopped cavalcade behind after looking at the limousine

• Whether you were operating a brake yourself

Let me just explain my judgement on that last point. Martin, Hargis and Chaney were all on motorcycles. When the limo braked they too had to quickly brake (the Nix film shows Martin and Hargis on the left side STOPPING).

Are you 100% convinced that the fact that the Officers THEMSELVES had to brake sharply and therefore STOP would have absolutely NO bearing on their recollection of what the limousine did? There is no possible chance that this had an influence on their memory of the event?

What are your thoughts on this Jack? Not your thoughts of ME?

Lee

.

Edited January 18, 2010 by Jack White

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

See the thread, "SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS: Truth or Obfuscation?", page 26. As I have explained there--and substantiated with photographs from HOAX (2003) 3rd printing, page 436--Jim Lewis has been traveling around the South and firing high-velocity bullets through windshields. Not only do them make small, white spiral nebulae like the one seen on the presidential limousine in the Altgens--for which we have several clear and even color copies on that thread--but they make the sound of a firecracker when they pass through. So there is convergent medical, photographic, and even acoustical evidence of the shot through the windshield by the bullet that hit JFK in the throat. I don't know Lee, but the evidence for the through-and-through bullet hole (which made the sound of a firecracker) and of the limo coming to a stop is overwhelming.

Lee apparently majored in PSYCHOLOGY and thinks that it trumps evidence. He adduces or supposes thoughts in witnesses' minds according to what he thinks they should have thought or how they should have reacted.

Jack

How DARE you assume what I am thinking!! You haven't spoken to me about this. NO OFFENCE INTENDED!

See how easy it is to fall into the trap of accusing others for what we ourselves display?

I simply try to address one of the issues in this case from a different perspective?

I suggested this in my reply to Jim Fetzer:

Here’s what I think influenced the whole slowed versus stopped observations.

• Whether your observation was from the front or the rear of the limo

• Whether the brake-lights influenced your judgement

Whether you quickly looked at the stopped cavalcade behind after looking at the limousine

• Whether you were operating a brake yourself

Let me just explain my judgement on that last point. Martin, Hargis and Chaney were all on motorcycles. When the limo braked they too had to quickly brake (the Nix film shows Martin and Hargis on the left side STOPPING).

Are you 100% convinced that the fact that the Officers THEMSELVES had to brake sharply and therefore STOP would have absolutely NO bearing on their recollection of what the limousine did? There is no possible chance that this had an influence on their memory of the event?

What are your thoughts on this Jack? Not your thoughts of ME?

Lee

.

Edited January 18, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[Jack White]

As opposed to good old Lee, who gives every indication of a fierce desire to gain brownie points by the zeal of his conformity:

“My own personal experience in such groups taught me that dissenters are frequently only inverted conformists…That is to say, he desperately wants popularity, attention (& sometimes even prestige) so that while he is willing to fight an unpopular cause, he struggles for personal popularity within the band of common dissidents…The result is that…the dissenter takes over the tactics and procedures of those he opposes.”

Harry Zitzler, “From Readers Letters: The Conforming Dissidents,” The Minority of One, May 1962, (Vol 4, No 5 [30]), p.15

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I'd not do so.

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.

A traveler journeys along a fine road. It has been strewn with traps. He falls into one. Do you say it is the traveler's fault, or that of the scoundrel who lays the traps?

Le Marquis de Sade, in a letter to his wife Renee Pelagie de Montreuil

Brownie points Paul? What we react badly to in others - we strengthen in ourselves.

If you told me the best way to get from where I am to where you are is to travel up the A565 I wouldn't believe you mate. Keep the pointy hat on ice...

Lee

Definitely resides in an ivory tower, above it all.

[Bernice Moore]

WHAT HAPPENED ON ELM STREET.THE WITNESSES SPEAK,,..B

Edited January 18, 2010 by Bernice Moore

[Doug Weldon]

That's a valid point, Paul. But how many of these witnesses later claimed the limo did come to a complete stop and that they'd been pressured into saying it did not? And that they believed the Z-film is fake?

That would be zero, I believe.

Your problem here, Pat, is that you know, I know, and every one reading this knows, that you've never conducted any properly systematic survey of the eyewitnesses' responses to the Z fake - which renders your insistence that "zero" believe the film to be fake, well, at most generous, a nonsense. You don't know, and we know you don't.

What we do know, and can prove, is that the WC:

a) failed to call witnesses it considered inconvenient;

sought to browbeat into submission those it considered malleable; and

c) revealed to the attentive - or should that just be "honest"? - reader the existence of two versions of the Z fake:

Mark Lane. Rush to Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1966), p.66, footnote 2:

The Commission explained the method it used to designate the individual frames of the film for purposes of reference: “The pictures or frames in the Zapruder film were marked by the agents, with the number ‘1’ given to the first frame where the motorcycles leading the motorcade came into view on Houston Street. The numbers continue in sequence as Zapruder filmed the Presidential limousine as it came around the corner and proceeded down Elm,” (223).

Note 223 to chapter 3 is to be found on p.423 – it cites WCR at 98. On p.418, Lane explains that the version of the WCR he used was the one published by the “U.S. Government Printing Office (1964).”

And you ask us to discount eyewitness testimony which contradict the Z fakes and their supporting filmlets?

Now why would you want to do that?

There are dozens of witnesses of the assassination still alive. If you or anyone else seriously thinks the limo stopped, and that this proves the Z-film is fake, you are gonna need to track these witnesses down, and show them the film, and get them to state, in writing, that they believe the film to be fake. Otherwise, no non-believer will take your claims seriously.

Greetings Pat:

This is an interesting issue that I am trying to follow and listen to evryone objectively In 1998-2000 I was speaking with Dallas Officer James Courson. I don't believe he is listed as one of the 59 witnesses who claimed to have seen the limo stopped. It was a taped phone conversation. He had been on his motorcycle on Houston Street during the assassination. Without being prompted by me he volunteered or implied that he had seen the Zapruder film and was puzzled because, as he had stated, he could have sworn that the limo had come to a stop. I am not offering an opinion but merely reporting what he conveyed to me.

My best,

Doug Weldon

[John Simkin]

Agreed, I'm also most interested in the timing of Lee's entry to this Forum...coincidence, or just in time to cast a very hidden doubt on those who think the Z-film and many others [motion and still] were altered by the very same persons [entities] that murdered our President and our Polity. Just wondering out loud.....

Peter, I don’t understand the point you are making. Are you suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Jack is part of some sort of conspiracy? Why cannot people like Lee be able to disagree with Jack?

[Pamela Brown]

Agreed, I'm also most interested in the timing of Lee's entry to this Forum...coincidence, or just in time to cast a very hidden doubt on those who think the Z-film and many others [motion and still] were altered by the very same persons [entities] that murdered our President and our Polity. Just wondering out loud.....

Peter, I don’t understand the point you are making. Are you suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Jack is part of some sort of conspiracy? Why cannot people like Lee be able to disagree with Jack?

John, you seem to have hit on one of the stranger themes on this forum -- namely, that there seems to be little room for 'agreeing-to-disagree' and moving forward in tandem. With the more vocal people on the forum, such as Jack and Jim Fetzer, it can be difficult to not agree with them. Hopefully, we can each get to the point where we acknowledge the beliefs the others espouse without trying to hammer them, or be hammered, into a false agreement. In the CT community, we should be above having others do our thinking for us. We ought to be able to ask questions and decide for ourselves what to think.

I hope that I am setting a good example with the recent redux of the T&T windshield hole. I haven't posted in that thread except to voice my appreciation for Weldon's valuing the testimony of the PH witnesses, which others had attempted to dismiss. Perhaps others could follow suit, and when they have had their say on an issue, just move on.

Edited January 21, 2010 by Pamela McElwain-Brown

[Jack White]

Agreed, I'm also most interested in the timing of Lee's entry to this Forum...coincidence, or just in time to cast a very hidden doubt on those who think the Z-film and many others [motion and still] were altered by the very same persons [entities] that murdered our President and our Polity. Just wondering out loud.....

Peter, I don’t understand the point you are making. Are you suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Jack is part of some sort of conspiracy? Why cannot people like Lee be able to disagree with Jack?

I have NO PROBLEM WITH ANYONE DISAGREEING WITH ME as long as it is done in a courteous and civil

manner without attacking me personally for being old or mentally incompetent or professionally inept.

STICK TO DISCUSSION OF INFORMATION. No problem!

It is absurd for anyone to state that this is not so.

Jack

[Todd W. Vaughan]

Agreed, I'm also most interested in the timing of Lee's entry to this Forum...coincidence, or just in time to cast a very hidden doubt on those who think the Z-film and many others [motion and still] were altered by the very same persons [entities] that murdered our President and our Polity. Just wondering out loud.....

Peter, I don’t understand the point you are making. Are you suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Jack is part of some sort of conspiracy? Why cannot people like Lee be able to disagree with Jack?

I have NO PROBLEM WITH ANYONE DISAGREEING WITH ME as long as it is done in a courteous and civil

manner without attacking me personally for being old or mentally incompetent or professionally inept.

STICK TO DISCUSSION OF INFORMATION. No problem!

It is absurd for anyone to state that this is not so.

Jack

Jack

Then why on the thread about the Hesters when I said to you….

“There is no "pryamid" or "pile of rocks". What your looking at are the blurred images of the Hesters.

Watch the film in motion Jack.”

…did you reply with…

“Motion helps disguise the sloppy animation. Here Todd...smoke this instead of whatever you're smokin'”

Do you really expect ANYONE here with half a brain to believe that “smoke this instead of whatever you're smokin'” was “courteous and civil”. Do you reallty expect ANYONE here to believe that your telling me to "smoke this instead of whatever you're smokin'" was “STICK(ING) TO DISCUSSION OF INFORMATION”?

Get real!

Todd

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Agreed, I'm also most interested in the timing of Lee's entry to this Forum...coincidence, or just in time to cast a very hidden doubt on those who think the Z-film and many others [motion and still] were altered by the very same persons [entities] that murdered our President and our Polity. Just wondering out loud.....

Peter, I don’t understand the point you are making. Are you suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Jack is part of some sort of conspiracy? Why cannot people like Lee be able to disagree with Jack?

I have NO PROBLEM WITH ANYONE DISAGREEING WITH ME as long as it is done in a courteous and civil

manner without attacking me personally for being old or mentally incompetent or professionally inept.

STICK TO DISCUSSION OF INFORMATION. No problem!

It is absurd for anyone to state that this is not so.

Jack

Jack

Then why on the thread about the Hesters when I said to you….

“There is no "pryamid" or "pile of rocks". What your looking at are the blurred images of the Hesters.

Watch the film in motion Jack.”

…did you reply with…

“Motion helps disguise the sloppy animation. Here Todd...smoke this instead of whatever you're smokin'”

Do you really expect ANYONE here with half a brain to believe that “smoke this instead of whatever you're smokin'” was “courteous and civil”. Do you reallty expect ANYONE here to believe that your telling me to "smoke this instead of whatever you're smokin'" was “STICK(ING) TO DISCUSSION OF INFORMATION”?

Get real!

Todd

OUCH!

[Jack White]

Agreed, I'm also most interested in the timing of Lee's entry to this Forum...coincidence, or just in time to cast a very hidden doubt on those who think the Z-film and many others [motion and still] were altered by the very same persons [entities] that murdered our President and our Polity. Just wondering out loud.....

Peter, I don’t understand the point you are making. Are you suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Jack is part of some sort of conspiracy? Why cannot people like Lee be able to disagree with Jack?

Conversely why cannot people like Jack be able to disagree with Lee...or anyone else?