The Witnesses v The Fake Films

[Jack White]

Leave DiEugenio out of that group, please.

Jack,

Take a good listen to Di's comments on last week's Black Op radio. They were appalling, as he first denounced pro-alterationists, then conceded there were "anomalies" in the films. It was dreadful stuff, by turns patronising, contradictory, superficial and hypocritical. Has he done some great research? Absolutely. But that doesn't excuse or explain his performance last week. And we shouldn't hesitate to say so.

Paul

Jim is a great researcher. He has never studied the alteration of all the film.

Like many researchers, he still thinks the Zfilm genuine and is a clock of the events.

His specialty is in other areas.

Jack

[Pat Speer]

Leave DiEugenio out of that group, please.

Jack,

Take a good listen to Di's comments on last week's Black Op radio. They were appalling, as he first denounced pro-alterationists, then conceded there were "anomalies" in the films. It was dreadful stuff, by turns patronising, contradictory, superficial and hypocritical. Has he done some great research? Absolutely. But that doesn't excuse or explain his performance last week. And we shouldn't hesitate to say so.

Paul

Jim is a great researcher. He has never studied the alteration of all the film.

Like many researchers, he still thinks the Zfilm genuine and is a clock of the events.

His specialty is in other areas.

Jack

Jack, as I recall Jim didn't spend much time on Z-film alteration. What annoys him is people like Paul trying to resuscitate the Greer-did-it argument, and Fetzer's claiming Tink is a spook.

I think you have already acknowledged that you don't think Tink is a spook (or was that Lifton?). Care to comment on the Greer did it theory?

[Dean Hagerman]

For once I think Mr. Rigby is correct. Like Greer, Kellerman has SUSPECT written all over him.

Greer's job was to slow the limo and make JFK a sitting duck. Kellerman stole the body at gunpoint, to prevent a professional autopsy.

Two key players in the plot to kill JFK.

For once I agree with Ray 100%

[Jack White]

For once I think Mr. Rigby is correct. Like Greer, Kellerman has SUSPECT written all over him.

Greer's job was to slow the limo and make JFK a sitting duck. Kellerman stole the body at gunpoint, to prevent a professional autopsy.

Two key players in the plot to kill JFK.

For once I agree with Ray 100%

I agree with Dean AND Carroll. Horne spells out the case against Kellerman and Greer

fairly strongly...especially Kellerman.

Jack

[Don Jeffries]

Jack, as I recall Jim didn't spend much time on Z-film alteration. What annoys him is people like Paul trying to resuscitate the Greer-did-it argument, and Fetzer's claiming Tink is a spook.

I think you have already acknowledged that you don't think Tink is a spook (or was that Lifton?). Care to comment on the Greer did it theory?

Pat,

I have to say that I find Paul Rigby to be one of the most lucid and fascinating posters on this or any other forum. On the surface, the suggestion that Greer shot JFK is ridiculous. However, everything else Paul posts is full of sound reasoning and impeccably articulated, in my view. Who knows- I wouldn't hesitate to say that the "Greer did it" theory at least is more plausible than the official lone assassin fairy tale.

I, for one, find Paul Rigby's contributions here to be delightful and entertaining.

[Michael Hogan]

Extract from Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams, Murder From Within (Santa Barbara, California: Probe, 1974), chapter 3, “Execution,” chapterlet entitled “Gunpowder”

Patrolman Earle V. Brown, stationed 100 yards west of the underpass, stated that he heard the shots and then smelled gunpowder as the car sped beneath him. (10)

(10) Earle V. Brown, “Testimony of Earle V. Brown [dated April 7, 1964],” in Hearings, v. 6, p. 311.

Volume VI, Page 311 of the Warren Commission Hearings contains the testimony of D V Harkness, not Earle V Brown.

Brown's testimony begins on page 231. Newcomb and Adams do not accurately reflect his statements.

[Paul Rigby]

Extract from Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams, Murder From Within (Santa Barbara, California: Probe, 1974), chapter 3, “Execution,” chapterlet entitled “Gunpowder”

Patrolman Earle V. Brown, stationed 100 yards west of the underpass, stated that he heard the shots and then smelled gunpowder as the car sped beneath him. (10)

(10) Earle V. Brown, “Testimony of Earle V. Brown [dated April 7, 1964],” in Hearings, v. 6, p. 311.

Volume VI, Page 311 of the Warren Commission Hearings contains the testimony of D V Harkness, not Earle V Brown.

Brown's testimony begins on page 231. Newcomb and Adams do not accurately reflect his statements.

Mike,

You're quite right about the N&A error in testimony location - unusual for Fred, but there we are - but then over-egg the pudding: N&A are entirely within their rights to a) state that Brown reported smelling gunpowder (233), as he unquestionably did so; and to infer from that that the only way he could have done so was if the presidential limo was the source. For as McAdams demonstrates at the link below, it couldn't have been detected by Brown from anywhere else, by virtue of timing, wind direction, or viable alternatives :

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/smell.htm

“…the wind in Dealey Plaza at the time of the head shot was from the southwest…”

"Is it plausible that an officer could smell gunpowder from shots in Dealey Plaza from 100 yards past the Underpass in the opposite direction? And that any such smell would still be in the air two minutes after the shooting?"

McAdams, of course, can only offer us one the one alternative, the grassy knoll. The rest of us have no need to accept such limitations, do we?

Brown's testimony is also interesting, and of relevance to this thread, in a couple of other respects.

Firstly, there's this:

"And then we saw the car coming with the President, and as it passed underneath me I looked right down and I could see this officer in the back; he had this gun and he was swinging it around, looked like a machinegun..." (234).

And then there's this exchange with Joseph Ball, one which illustrates rather nicely Sylvia Meagher's point concerning the anxiety of the WC-ers to transform witness accounts of the presidential limousine stopping into something all together less damaging, most notably to the fake films:

Mr. BROWN. Now they came down Main, didn't they, to Houston?

Mr. BALL. Yes.

Mr. BROWN. No. sir; actually, the first I noticed the car was when it stopped.

Mr. BALL. Where?

Mr. BROWN. After it made the turn and when the shots were fired, it stopped.

Mr. BALL. Did It come to a. complete stop?

Mr. BROWN. That, I couldn't swear to.

Mr. BALL. It appeared to be slowed down some?

Mr. BROWN. Yes; slowed down.

I admire pedantry, even if selective: At its most constructive, as in this instance, it's just so productive of additional proofs for the pro-alterationist case.

Paul

[Paul Rigby]

PS A tip: If you really want to go after Newcomb and Adams, try the passage on James Chaney, it's truly terrible.

[Michael Hogan]

Mike,

......You're quite right about the N&A error in testimony location - unusual for Fred, but there we are - but then over-egg the pudding: N&A are entirely within their rights to a) state that Brown reported smelling gunpowder (233), as he unquestionably did so; and to infer from that that the only way he could have done so was if the presidential limo was the source. For as McAdams demonstrates at the link below, it couldn't have been detected by Brown from anywhere else, by virtue of timing, wind direction, or viable alternatives :

Paul, I read Brown's testimony. I have nothing against Newcomb and Adams; Generally, I like their manuscript.

But if expecting them to accurately report what a witness says is over-egging the pudding, then so be it.

When N&A give the appearance of accurately reproducing a witness' statement, while adding to it their own inferences.....

now to me that is over-egging the pudding.

[Paul Rigby]

Paul, I read Brown's testimony. I have nothing against Newcomb and Adams; Generally, I like their manuscript.

But if expecting them to accurately report what a witness says is over-egging the pudding, then so be it.

When N&A give the appearance of accurately reproducing a witness' statement, while adding to it their own inferences.....

now to me that is over-egging the pudding.

All things considered, I'd keep to that narrow point if I were in your shoes.

Still, thank goodness you haven't yet encountered an obscure tome called Six Seconds in Dallas by a guy called Thompson. As a man with a keen eye for scholarly precision, you'd be really shocked by what goes on with witness testimony within those pages.

Darn, I forgot.

You rushed to his defence.

How very odd.

[Michael Hogan]

Still, thank goodness you haven't yet encountered an obscure tome called Six Seconds in Dallas by a guy called Thompson. As a man with a keen eye for scholarly precision, you'd be really shocked by what goes on with witness testimony within those pages.

Darn, I forgot.

You rushed to his defence.

How very odd.

That really doesn't have anything to do with this issue. The only issue here is the accuracy or lack

thereof in Newcomb and Adams' account of what Earl V Brown testified to the Warren Commission.

[Paul Rigby]

The only issue here is...

Is your hypocrisy; and attempt to parley a minor inaccuracy into a point of significance impugning the integrity of the most influential manuscript yet compiled on the assassination.

There, I think that about covers it.

Not that Murder From Within won't survive your compelling assault: I'm told that Doug Horne's work includes a Parkland witness to the stench of gunpowder from within the presidential limo. If that distinctive aroma wasn't carried there by the the car, that really was some wind blowing through Dallas that day!

[Paul Rigby]

I'm told that Doug Horne's work includes a Parkland witness to the stench of gunpowder from within the presidential limo. If that distinctive aroma wasn't carried there by the the car, that really was some wind blowing through Dallas that day!

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/

Brave and honest stuff from Doug Horne, and Bill Kelly:

10) Do you believe, as it has been alleged on internet forums, that Greer shot JFK in the head with his pistol?

D.H.: No, I do not "believe" this as an article of faith, or as a firm finding. It is merely an unpleasant and disturbing possibility. I raised it as an "evidentiary afterthought," because there were so many nagging and interlocking indicators of both a left temporal entry wound, and of a pistol being discharged during the assassination...The fact that Triage Nurse Bertha Lozano smelled gunpowder as JFK and Connally were wheeled past her at Parkland implies that there was a firearm discharged in the limousine and that particulate matter was embedded in someone's clothing - otherwise she would not have smelled gunpowder...

Now we see why it was so important to the SS that the victims' clothing was not scrutinised properly; and have an additional reason for the cleaning out the limo.