Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Same problem with the NAA cock-up. The SBT obviously fails on its trajectory but we had entire conference, Wecht 2003, purportedly devoted to the Single Bullet Theory, that pushed debates over the NAA to the exclusion of the back wound evidence.

All of this plays into the hands of the WC defenders.

THe Wecht Conference was mostly a bust. I was there along with my old friend Vince Palamara, and I suppose most serious students of the case have seen the videos.

Although the program focused on the medical evidence, David Lifton, author of BEST EVIDENCE was not invited,

yet Ken Rahn WAS invited to regurgitate his nonsense about CBLA, Oomparative Bullet Lead Analysis, AKA CABLA, AKA CABLA - CADABLA! (Voodoo SCIENCE).

That says a lot about the Wecht Conference.

The NAA CBLA theory was completely discredited just a few days after the Wecht conference, in the Federal Court decision in Mikos http://www.daubertontheweb.com/mikos.pdf THe Mikos decision was followed by state and federal courts throughout the land, the FBI abandoned CBLA, and even J. Robert Blakey admitted that CBLA is JUNK SCIENCE.

Just to blow my own trumpet for a moment, I predicted the 2003 Mikos decision seven years earlier, in 1996 at the Fredonia Conference sponsored by Jerry Rose of the Third Decade. I sent David Lifton a copy of the tape at the time.

As my great hero Charles Sanders Peirce emphasized, TRUTH IS A MATTER FOR THE LONG RUN. I may not be here to see it recognized, but I hope we are here contributing to the inquiry.

[Daniel Gallup]

Pat, this is from Debra Conway's interview with Toni Foster, the Running Woman, in 2000.

"And I remember everything stopped for me. I remember

[his head] looked like confetti, it was just blown off. It hit him

back here [puts her hand on the right rear of her head] and it was

just like confetti. The spray went behind him. I do believe from

what I heard and what I saw the shots came from the back2 . Now

this whole thing was a shock but that’s how I feel, what I heard

and what I saw. At the time when I looked at him and I saw [how

he reacted] – they were coming from the back.

I know the Governor and Mrs. Connally were there but I

wasn’t even thinking of them. I don’t mean that in an inconsiderate

way but it’s just what I saw. They were protecting themselves too.

For some reason the car stopped. It did stop for seconds. I don’t

ever know why it stopped and all of a sudden it sped up and they

went under the underpass."

Toni had a side view of the head shot, and she saw debris fly backwards, which accords perfectly with an avulsive wound in the back of the head, as recorded by the doctors there.

It is understandable, if the bullet entered the right temple area in a tangential way, that the Newman's would testify to that; this doesn't mean there wasn't ejecta shooting out the back (and I would guess left, away from the Newmans somewhat) so that it would strike Officer Hargis with some force. This might explain why Toni Foster was in a better position to appreciate the backwards direction of the spray than the Newmans. Just a thought. Best, Daniel

Thanks, Daniel. When discussing the eyewitnesses, I limited it to the eyewitnesses identified and interviewed during the Warren Commission investigation. So I ignored Oliver, and Arnold and Foster. Now, that said, I suspect Foster is the real deal and would like to go back and see where Foster pointed to on the back of her head. Do you have the image handy?

My outrage, if you choose to call it that, is not that people claim the Parkland witnesses said they saw a wound on the back of JFK's head. Many of them did. It's that people say they ALL said it was on the back of the head, and imply that where these people say they saw the wound was LOW on the back of the head in the occipital area, and that this supports the Harper fragment being occipital bone. This is incredibly disingenuous, IMO.

IMO, one cannot read the statements of the Parkland witnesses and look at the photos of them pointing out the location as they remembered it and claim they are describing a blow-out of the occipital bone any more than one can read their statements and look at the photos and claim they are accurately pointing out the location on the autopsy photos. It just isn't true.

As far as the Newmans, they were looking directly at the back of JFK's head from what? 25 feet away, and failed to see a blow-out on the back. I find this significant.

Pat, I googled TOni Foster the Running Woman and Debra's interview came up. There are pictures there but I was in too much of a hurry to take notice (I am at work and not suppose to be doing this). You should be able to find it easily. Best, DAniel

[J. Raymond Carroll]

A dead patsy by 1:15 -- as was likely planned -- would have meant Communist Conspiracy.

From memory news of Tippit's shooting hit the police radio at 1.14, so the timing is close.

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0217a.htm

I guess my memory ain't what it used to be. A check of the transcript (CE705) shows that news of the Tippit shooting first hit the police radio at 1.16.

According to your timeline, Cliff, LBJ had already left Parkland.

SO your theory might need a little tweaking.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Duplicate

Edited January 27, 2011 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Cliff Varnell]

A dead patsy by 1:15 -- as was likely planned -- would have meant Communist Conspiracy.

From memory news of Tippit's shooting hit the police radio at 1.14, so the timing is close.

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0217a.htm

I guess my memory ain't what it used to be. A check of the transcript (CE705) shows that news of the Tippit shooting first hit the police radio at 1.16.

According to your timeline, Cliff, LBJ had already left Parkland.

Factually incorrect. According to Hancock, LBJ was approached by Kennedy deputy press secretary Malcolm Kilduff at 1:15 and asked to make a statement, to which LBJ replied: “No. Wait. We don’t know whether it’s a Communist conspiracy or not.”

According to Vince Bugliosi's timeline in Reclaiming History (pg 90) at 1:26 Lyndon Johnson said, "Let's go," and he was off to Love Field.

Something must have happened in that intervening 11 minutes to answer LBJ's question as to possible Communist conspiracy, and I think it is reasonable to speculate that it was news of the death of Tippit that sent Ol' Lyndon scurrying back to DC with the body.

SO your theory might need a little tweaking.

Absolutely! And thanks for participating in the discussion, Raymond.

We have to consider the source, but according to Bugliosi it was Clint Hill who ordered the casket "a little after 1:00," and the casket arrived at 1:30 and took twenty minutes to prepare. If we accept that timeline, then obviously the arrest of Oswald had nothing to do with Lyndon deciding to get outta Dallas.

However, I think it quite possible it was news of Tippit's demise that "solved" the question of Communist conspiracy.

Edited January 27, 2011 by Cliff Varnell

[Pat Speer]

Pat, this is from Debra Conway's interview with Toni Foster, the Running Woman, in 2000.

"And I remember everything stopped for me. I remember

[his head] looked like confetti, it was just blown off. It hit him

back here [puts her hand on the right rear of her head] and it was

just like confetti. The spray went behind him. I do believe from

what I heard and what I saw the shots came from the back2 . Now

this whole thing was a shock but that’s how I feel, what I heard

and what I saw. At the time when I looked at him and I saw [how

he reacted] – they were coming from the back.

I know the Governor and Mrs. Connally were there but I

wasn’t even thinking of them. I don’t mean that in an inconsiderate

way but it’s just what I saw. They were protecting themselves too.

For some reason the car stopped. It did stop for seconds. I don’t

ever know why it stopped and all of a sudden it sped up and they

went under the underpass."

Toni had a side view of the head shot, and she saw debris fly backwards, which accords perfectly with an avulsive wound in the back of the head, as recorded by the doctors there.

It is understandable, if the bullet entered the right temple area in a tangential way, that the Newman's would testify to that; this doesn't mean there wasn't ejecta shooting out the back (and I would guess left, away from the Newmans somewhat) so that it would strike Officer Hargis with some force. This might explain why Toni Foster was in a better position to appreciate the backwards direction of the spray than the Newmans. Just a thought. Best, Daniel

Thanks, Daniel. When discussing the eyewitnesses, I limited it to the eyewitnesses identified and interviewed during the Warren Commission investigation. So I ignored Oliver, and Arnold and Foster. Now, that said, I suspect Foster is the real deal and would like to go back and see where Foster pointed to on the back of her head. Do you have the image handy?

My outrage, if you choose to call it that, is not that people claim the Parkland witnesses said they saw a wound on the back of JFK's head. Many of them did. It's that people say they ALL said it was on the back of the head, and imply that where these people say they saw the wound was LOW on the back of the head in the occipital area, and that this supports the Harper fragment being occipital bone. This is incredibly disingenuous, IMO.

IMO, one cannot read the statements of the Parkland witnesses and look at the photos of them pointing out the location as they remembered it and claim they are describing a blow-out of the occipital bone any more than one can read their statements and look at the photos and claim they are accurately pointing out the location on the autopsy photos. It just isn't true.

As far as the Newmans, they were looking directly at the back of JFK's head from what? 25 feet away, and failed to see a blow-out on the back. I find this significant.

Pat, I googled TOni Foster the Running Woman and Debra's interview came up. There are pictures there but I was in too much of a hurry to take notice (I am at work and not suppose to be doing this). You should be able to find it easily. Best, DAniel

I took a look at the picture of Foster, and she put her hand up to the back of the right side of her head. Due to the poofiness of her hair and the angle of the picture, it's hard to see if her hand goes all the way to the back or not. But that's beside the point.

The point I've been trying to make is that, IF conspiracy theorists are to claim we KNOW the head wound was on the back of the head because so many witnesses thought they saw it there, that it is the height of hypocrisy to turn around and claim the Harper fragment was occipital bone. For the Harper fragment to be occipital bone, there would have to have been a hole LOW on the far back of JFK's head. NONE of the eyewitnesses to the shooting saw a hole there, and NONE of the original statements of the Parkland witnesses place a wound in this location. While some of the witness statements over the years can be stretched to support a wound in this location, many more can not. Many of the photos of witnesses, in which they point out the wound location, including Conway's photo of Foster, show them pointing to a location on the right side of the back of their head above their ear, and do not remotely support that a chunk of bone exploded from the skull inches below and to the left of this location.

So WHY continue pretending that the Harper fragment is occipital?

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

Ray,

You have been making some nice posts on this thread. About the Wecht conference, not only was David not invited

but I was invited and then uninvited, apparently after Josiah Thompson and Gary Aguilar, I was told, said that they

would not come if I were there. That Josiah would take that stand does not surprise me, but if Gary did, that is very

disappointing. I gather they are friends. If Lifton and I had been there, the affair might have been more worthwhile.

On the NAA business, it was always a sham. Even if the fragments could have been shown to have come from a lot

of Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, that would not have shown who fired them nor the location from which they

were fired. And that is without addressing the possibility they might have been planted. Either way, there never

was any basis here for alleging that Oswald was the lone assassin. Ken Rahn has been peddling a phony theory.

Jim

Same problem with the NAA cock-up. The SBT obviously fails on its trajectory but we had entire conference, Wecht 2003, purportedly devoted to the Single Bullet Theory, that pushed debates over the NAA to the exclusion of the back wound evidence.

All of this plays into the hands of the WC defenders.

THe Wecht Conference was mostly a bust. I was there along with my old friend Vince Palamara, and I suppose most serious students of the case have seen the videos.

Although the program focused on the medical evidence, David Lifton, author of BEST EVIDENCE was not invited,

yet Ken Rahn WAS invited to regurgitate his nonsense about CBLA, Oomparative Bullet Lead Analysis, AKA CABLA, AKA CABLA - CADABLA! (Voodoo SCIENCE).

That says a lot about the Wecht Conference.

The NAA CBLA theory was completely discredited just a few days after the Wecht conference, in the Federal Court decision in Mikos http://www.daubertontheweb.com/mikos.pdf THe Mikos decision was followed by state and federal courts throughout the land, the FBI abandoned CBLA, and even J. Robert Blakey admitted that CBLA is JUNK SCIENCE.

Just to blow my own trumpet for a moment, I predicted the 2003 Mikos decision seven years earlier, in 1996 at the Fredonia Conference sponsored by Jerry Rose of the Third Decade. I sent David Lifton a copy of the tape at the time.

As my great hero Charles Sanders Peirce emphasized, TRUTH IS A MATTER FOR THE LONG RUN. I may not be here to see it recognized, but I hope we are here contributing to the inquiry.

Edited January 27, 2011 by James H. Fetzer

[David Lifton]

The point I've been trying to make is that, IF conspiracy theorists are to claim we KNOW the head wound was on the back of the head because so many witnesses thought they saw it there, that it is the height of hypocrisy to turn around and claim the Harper fragment was occipital bone. For the Harper fragment to be occipital bone, there would have to have been a hole LOW on the far back of JFK's head. NONE of the eyewitnesses to the shooting saw a hole there, and NONE of the original statements of the Parkland witnesses place a wound in this location. While some of the witness statements over the years can be stretched to support a wound in this location, many more can not. Many of the photos of witnesses, in which they point out the wound location, including Conway's photo of Foster, show them pointing to a location on the right side of the back of their head above their ear, and do not remotely support that a chunk of bone exploded from the skull inches below and to the left of this location.

So WHY continue pretending that the Harper fragment is occipital?

Pat: I do not have time to examine and critically analyze the full "chapter sized" postings you made, but just consider what you have written above. It is, in my opinion, easily refutable. Turn to Chapter 13 of BEST EVIDENCE, and just consider my December, 1966 interview with Dr. Paul Peters. "Dr. Peters emphazed that the head wound was at the back, that it was actually necessary to get to the back of the head to get a good view of it." Then, some pages later, and in the section under the breaker "What was visible through the wound," I dealt with all the testimony about the cerebellum, and here's what Dr. Peters had to say on that point, and I QUOTE:

"Dr. Peters gave me a most vivid description. . . . trying to impress upon me the locaton of the wound he saw, Dr. Peters said: "I'd be willing to swear that the wound was in the occiput, you know. I could see the the occipital lobes clearly, AND SO I KNOW IT WAS THAT FAR BACK, ON THE SKULL. I could look inside the skull, and I thought it looked like the cerebellum was injured, or missing, because the occipital lobes seemed to rest almost on the foramen magnum. . . [it] looked like the occipital lobes were resting on the foramen magnum." (For readers of this thread who may not be all that familiar with anatomic terminology, the "foramen magnum" is the hole in the base of the skull, in that part of the occiptal bone that wraps around and forms the base of the skull, through which the spinal cord enters and then connects to the brain.). It was as if something underneath them, [something] that usually kept them up from that a little ways, namely, the cerebellum and brainstem, might have been injured or missing." There can be no doubt about what part of the head Dr. Peters looked at, or how far down the back of the head the fatal wound he saw was located. Dr. Peters statement that he saw the occipital lobes resting on the foramen magnum was not the description of a casual observor."

Dr. Peters corroborated five Dallas doctors' testimony in the Warren Commisson records that erebellar tissue was visible in the sull wound. These observatons clearly indiated where the Dallas wound was located.

UNQUOTE

Pat: I do not understand how, with such vivid testimony spelled out in plain English, you can possibly deny the clear evidence of where the head wound was located--at the bottom of the back of the head. And then join that mis-conception, or misunderstanding (or mistake--however one wishes to characterize the manner of your analysis) --and then join that to the controversy re the Harper fragment, and state: " [it] is the height of hypocricy to turn around and claim the Harper fragment was occipital bone. For the Harper fragment to be occipital bone, there would have to have been a hole LOW on the back of JFK's head. NONE of the eyewitnesses to the shooting saw a hole there. . "

(Of course, do keep in mind that Dr. Jack Harper, who actually examined the bone, said it was occipital bone--and said so (as I recollect) on November 25, 1963, per the FBI interview.)

The problem with your analysis--and I now remember that I ran into this when I first emailed with you years ago--was your statement that you thought that entirely too much weight was given to the Parkland records, or some such thing. Immediately I understood then--and from your postings here I see that things have not changed all that much in the years since--that you simply do not understand or appreciate the legal and historical importance of statements made AT THE TIME (first of all); and secondly, you continually will equate, in importance, "the Parkland witnesses" with "the eyewitnesses to the shooting."

There is no comparison between an "eyewitness to the shooting"--who may have had a fleeting glimpse of the President (and his wounding), a glimpse lasting a few seconds, and the observations of someone like Dr. Peters, who was in the Emergency Room, and had a chance to observe the wounds at close hand (just inches away), and with the experience of a trained physician.

Yet you continually invoke the "Dealey Plaza witnesses to the shooting" as if their observations should (or do) carry the legal weight comparable to those of the doctors and nurses in the Emergency Room. That's just plain wrong. Its apples and oranges. You should not be doing that, yet you continually do so.

The proper and legitimate comparison should be between observations made in the Parkland Emergency Room (or even in the Parkland Hospital parking lot, if someone got a good look at JFK's wounds there) and the reports from Bethesda. That is reasonable and legitimate. But to start by creating (and then invoking, as you do) a data base consisting of "eyewitneses-to-the-shooting" observations, and comparing them to those of the doctors actually in the emergency room, is not just of dubious value; its completely wrong, and represents a very serious analytic error. No wonder your conclusions are so completely off the mark, if they are based on "reasoning" like that. I appreciate all the pretty graphics (obviously, you are talented in that regard) but its the reasoning that counts, and I find this kind of reasoning deeply flawed.

When I have more time, I'll try to critique the lengthy posting you have made (and addressed to me), but again and again, I find you traveling down this same false path, mixing apples and oranges, and drawing all kinds of unjustifiable inferences, based on this flawed methodology. That pervades your entire analysis of the medical evidence, and results in a mistaken view of what the President's body actually looked like, after the shooting; what wounds it contained; a flawed view of Dealey Plaza, and--perhaps most important of all--an inability to discern whether "the medical evidence" has been altered.

And that is really the key: because if your methodology is so flawed as to not be able to perceive the evidence that the wounds on the body were altered between Parkland and Bethesda, then you have lost sight of THE major issue in this case.

DSL

1/27/11; 11:50 AM PST

Los Angeles, CA

PS: Also remember what Dr. Charles Baxter (I think it was he) who said that the President's brain was "lying on the table." What veteran JFK researcher Wallace Milam concluded--decades ago (and I agreed with him)-was that this was Baxter's less than optimal way of describing the brain at the back of JFK's head (when JFK was lying face up) protruding through the wound, and touching the surface of the hospital cart. Again, more evidence as to the rearward location of the wound.

Edited January 28, 2011 by David Lifton

[David Lifton]

To David Lifton: When we discussed the Tippit murder (many years ago) you indicated that you believed it was LHO who shot Tippit. Is that still your view?

No. But I do believe he was there, and then ran away.

DSL

How did that happen? Timing-wise, if he was on the bus and in the cab?

I've always believed it was possible--even probable--that got a brief lift in traveling from the rooming house, to the general area of the Tippit murder. OTOH: depending on the time of the Tippit murder, he may have just walked over there. In view of all the eyewitness identifications (and I'm not including Markham) I do believe he was there--and was the man identified as running away, with a pistol in his hand.

[David Lifton]

Ray,

You have been making some nice posts on this thread. About the Wecht conference, not only was David not invited

but I was invited and then uninvited, apparently after Josiah Thompson and Gary Aguilar, I was told, said that they

would not come if I were there. That Josiah would take that stand does not surprise me, but if Gary did, that is very

disappointing. I gather they are friends. If Lifton and I had been there, the affair might have been more worthwhile.

On the NAA business, it was always a sham. Even if the fragments could have been shown to have come from a lot

of Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, that would not have shown who fired them nor the location from which they

were fired. And that is without addressing the possibility they might have been planted. Either way, there never

was any basis here for alleging that Oswald was the lone assassin. Ken Rahn has been peddling a phony theory.

Jim

Same problem with the NAA cock-up. The SBT obviously fails on its trajectory but we had entire conference, Wecht 2003, purportedly devoted to the Single Bullet Theory, that pushed debates over the NAA to the exclusion of the back wound evidence.

All of this plays into the hands of the WC defenders.

THe Wecht Conference was mostly a bust. I was there along with my old friend Vince Palamara, and I suppose most serious students of the case have seen the videos.

Although the program focused on the medical evidence, David Lifton, author of BEST EVIDENCE was not invited,

yet Ken Rahn WAS invited to regurgitate his nonsense about CBLA, Oomparative Bullet Lead Analysis, AKA CABLA, AKA CABLA - CADABLA! (Voodoo SCIENCE).

That says a lot about the Wecht Conference.

The NAA CBLA theory was completely discredited just a few days after the Wecht conference, in the Federal Court decision in Mikos http://www.daubertontheweb.com/mikos.pdf THe Mikos decision was followed by state and federal courts throughout the land, the FBI abandoned CBLA, and even J. Robert Blakey admitted that CBLA is JUNK SCIENCE.

Just to blow my own trumpet for a moment, I predicted the 2003 Mikos decision seven years earlier, in 1996 at the Fredonia Conference sponsored by Jerry Rose of the Third Decade. I sent David Lifton a copy of the tape at the time.

As my great hero Charles Sanders Peirce emphasized, TRUTH IS A MATTER FOR THE LONG RUN. I may not be here to see it recognized, but I hope we are here contributing to the inquiry.

I have some vivid memories of "not being invited" to that Wecht conference. The previous February (2004, as I recall), I was so excited about the work Doug Horne had done coming up with the completely original idea that the photographer of some of the supposed "autopsy photographs" was Knudsen, and that they were exposed "post-midnight" during the period of reconstruction. (Remember: this is what Godfrey McHugh had told me, back in 1967. See Best Evidence). And wouldn't that be something we wanted to share with the JFK research community?

Anyway, someone close to Wecht-who has worked with him for years--was also excited about all this, and so that person approached Wecht, got a preliminary green light, that Wecht had said fine; but then, a week or so later, came the bad news: No, that wouldn't be possible, and the reason was Gary Aguilar.

The extent of Aguilar's personal animus towards me can best be captured if you were to listen to him (as I did) cursing and screaming at me on the phone, circa March 2000, saying that if I came to a conference at "my hospital" (which he was sponsoring), he would have me arrested. That if I showed up, I was to take my seat, be silent, and not say a word. etc etc.

Here's a direct quote, from documentation created at the time, which is quite accurate:

AGUILAR (Screaming on the phone, and I'm omitting all theh "F-you's, David Lifton!" ETC ETC.:

QUOTE:

“Ok, if you come. . let me explain this to you! There will be no consideration! You will sit in the back of the room! You will not ask any questions! I will start the proceedings by handing out photocopies of emails that you wrote to show everybody what an asshole you are! You’ll not ask any question. If you want to speak to John Newman [who had invited me], you will speak to him out in the hall! And if you violate these conditions, I will call security and have you thrown out on your ass!”

UNQUOTE

This is the same Aguilar who--when he was a newbie--would call me "chief", but subsequently decided my book was all wrong, and-in general--has adopted the attitude that "this town isn't big enough for both of us."

Believe me: if you know only the "reasonable" Dr. Gary Aguilar, you do not know the full story.

DSL

1/27/11; 12:40 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

[Cliff Varnell]

To David Lifton: When we discussed the Tippit murder (many years ago) you indicated that you believed it was LHO who shot Tippit. Is that still your view?

No. But I do believe he was there, and then ran away.

DSL

How did that happen? Timing-wise, if he was on the bus and in the cab?

I've always believed it was possible--even probable--that got a brief lift in traveling from the rooming house, to the general area of the Tippit murder.

I agree. Wasn't he last seen at a bus stop across the street from his rooming house?

OTOH: depending on the time of the Tippit murder, he may have just walked over there. In view of all the eyewitness identifications (and I'm not including Markham) I do believe he was there--and was the man identified as running away, with a pistol in his hand.

Let's put that on our floating time-line, at circa 1:10.

circa 1:10 Oswald flees 10th and Patton with gun in hand.

1:15: Lyndon Johnson said he's waiting to see whether or not it was a Communist conspiracy.

1:16: Word of the Tippit shooting goes out on police radio.

1:25: Officer J.D Tippit DOA at Methodist Hospital goes out on police radio. (Bugliosi, pg 90)

1:26: LBJ says, "Let's go," departs for Love Field.

circa 1:30: Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital appears "extremely distressed" -- (Seth Kantor)

Edited January 27, 2011 by Cliff Varnell

[Pat Speer]

The point I've been trying to make is that, IF conspiracy theorists are to claim we KNOW the head wound was on the back of the head because so many witnesses thought they saw it there, that it is the height of hypocrisy to turn around and claim the Harper fragment was occipital bone. For the Harper fragment to be occipital bone, there would have to have been a hole LOW on the far back of JFK's head. NONE of the eyewitnesses to the shooting saw a hole there, and NONE of the original statements of the Parkland witnesses place a wound in this location. While some of the witness statements over the years can be stretched to support a wound in this location, many more can not. Many of the photos of witnesses, in which they point out the wound location, including Conway's photo of Foster, show them pointing to a location on the right side of the back of their head above their ear, and do not remotely support that a chunk of bone exploded from the skull inches below and to the left of this location.

So WHY continue pretending that the Harper fragment is occipital?

Pat: I do not have time to examine and critically analyze the full "chapter sized" postings you made, but just consider what you have written above. It is, in my opinion, easily refutable. Turn to Chapter 13 of BEST EVIDENCE, and just consider my December, 1966 interview with Dr. Paul Peters. "Dr. Peters emphazed that the head wound was at the back, that it was actually necessary to get to the back of the head to get a good view of it." Then, some pages later, and in the section under the breaker "What was visible through the wound," I dealt with all the testimony about the cerebellum, and here's what Dr. Peters had to say on that point, and I QUOTE:

"Dr. Peters gave me a most vivid description. . . . trying to impress upon me the locaton of the wound he saw, Dr. Peters said: "I'd be willing to swear that the wound was in the occiput, you know. I could see the the occipital lobes clearly, AND SO I KNOW IT WAS THAT FAR BACK, ON THE SKULL. I could look inside the skull, and I thought it looked like the cerebellum was injured, or missing, because the occipital lobes seemed to rest almost on the foramen magnum. . . [it] looked like the occipital lobes were resting on the foramen magnum." (For readers of this thread who may not be all that familiar with anatomic terminology, the "foramen magnum" is the hole in the base of the skull, in that part of the occiptal bone that wraps around and forms the base of the skull, through which the spinal cord enters and then connects to the brain.). It was as if something underneath them, [something] that usually kept them up from that a little ways, namely, the cerebellum and brainstem, might have been injured or missing." There can be no doubt about what part of the head Dr. Peters looked at, or how far down the back of the head the fatal wound he saw was located. Dr. Peters statement that he saw the occipital lobes resting on the foramen magnum was not the description of a casual observor."

Dr. Peters corroborated five Dallas doctors' testimony in the Warren Commisson records that erebellar tissue was visible in the sull wound. These observatons clearly indiated where the Dallas wound was located.

UNQUOTE

Pat: I do not understand how, with such vivid testimony spelled out in plain English, you can possibly deny the clear evidence of where the head wound was located--at the bottom of the back of the head. And then join that mis-conception, or misunderstanding (or mistake--however one wishes to characterize the manner of your analysis) --and then join that to the controversy re the Harper fragment, and state: " [it] is the height of hypotcriy to turn around and claim the Harper fragmebnt was occipital bone. For the Harper fragment to be occipital bone, there would have to have been a hole LOW on the back of JFK's head. NONE of the eyewitnesses to the shooting saw a hole there. . "

(Of course, do keep in mind that Dr. Jack Harper, who actually examined the bone, said it was occipital bone--and said so (as I recollect) on November 25, 1963, per the FBI interview.)

The problem with your analysis--and I now remember that I ran into this when I first emailed with you years ago--was your statement that you thought that entirely too much weight was given to the Parkland records, or some such thing. Immediately I understood then--and from your postings here I see that things have not changed all that much in the years since--that you simply do not understand or appreciate the legal and historical importance of statements made AT THE TIME (first of all); and secondly, you continually will equate, in importance, "the Parkland witnesses" with "the eyewitnesses to the shooting."

There is no comparison between an "eyewitness to the shooting"--who may have had a fleeting glimpse of the President (and his wounding), a glimpse lasting a few seconds, and the observations of someone like Dr. Peters, who was in the Emergency Room, and had a chance to observe the wounds at close hand (just inches away), and with the experience of a trained physician.

Yet you continually invoke the "Dealey Plaza witnesses to the shooting" as if their observations should (or do) carry the legal weight comparable to those of the doctors and nurses in the Emergency Room. That's just plain wrong. Its apples and oranges. You should not be doing that, yet you continually do so.

The proper and legitimate comparison should be between observations made in the Parkland Emergency Room (or even in the Parkland Hospital parking lot, if someone got a good look at JFK's wounds there) and the reports from Bethesda. That is reasonable and legitimate. But to start by creating (and then invoking, as you do) a data base consisting of "eyewitneses-to-the-shooting" observations, and comparing them to those of the doctors actually in the emergency room, is not just of dubious value; its completely wrong, and represents a very serious analytic error. No wonder your conclusions are so completely off the mark, if they are based on "reasoning" like that. I appreciate all the pretty graphics (obviously, you are talented in that regard) but its the reasoning that counts, and I find this kind of reasoning deeply flawed.

When I have more time, I'll try to critique the lengthy posting you have made (and addressed to me), but again and again, I find you traveling down this same false path, mixing apples and oranges, and drawing all kinds of unjustifiable inferences, based on this flawed methodology. That pervades your entire analysis of the medical evidence, and results in a mistaken view of what the President's body actually looked like, after the shooting; what wounds it contained; a flawed view of Dealey Plaza, and--perhaps most important of all--an inability to discern whether "the medical evidence" has been altered.

And that is really the key: because if your methodology is so flawed as to not be able to perceive the evidence that the wounds on the body were altered between Parkland and Bethesda, then you have lost sight of THE major issue in this case.

DSL

1/27/11; 11:50 AM PST

Los Angeles, CA

PS: Also remember what Dr. Charles Baxter (I think it was he) who said that the President's brain was "lying on the table." What veteran JFK researcher Wallace Milam concluded--decades ago (and I agreed with him)-was that this was Baxter's less than optimal way of describing the brain at the back of JFK's head (when JFK was lying face up) protruding through the wound, and touching the surface of the hospital cart. Again, more evidence as to the rearward location of the wound.

Thanks, David, for your explanation. But you reinforced my point. Look where Peters places the wound in this video.

Peters on youtube

He places it well above his ear...ABOVE the occipital bone.

If the Harper fragment (a pyramid shape roughly 2 1/2 in wide and 2 in tall) was missing from the occipital bone and was dislodged from the hole Peters saw, Peters would not have been looking down on the occipital lobes from above, wondering if there was any cerebellum down below, he would have been looking straight at the occipital lobes from behind and be able to see the damage to the cerebellum.

This is shown here (on an otherwise unrelated slide).

P.S. I actually find Peters' observation supportive of my own theory on the wounds. IF he was looking through a hole near the top of the head down at the base of the brain, and it seemed to him that the brain was sitting low in the skull, and that cerebellum was missing, then it follows that there could have been a second bullet trajectory involving cerebellum BELOW the one making the hole through which he was looking. This supports my conclusions, or impressions, or whatever you want to call it when you study something for years and develop strong suspicions on what really happened.

Edited January 28, 2011 by Pat Speer

[Daniel Gallup]

Ray,

You have been making some nice posts on this thread. About the Wecht conference, not only was David not invited

but I was invited and then uninvited, apparently after Josiah Thompson and Gary Aguilar, I was told, said that they

would not come if I were there. That Josiah would take that stand does not surprise me, but if Gary did, that is very

disappointing. I gather they are friends. If Lifton and I had been there, the affair might have been more worthwhile.

On the NAA business, it was always a sham. Even if the fragments could have been shown to have come from a lot

of Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, that would not have shown who fired them nor the location from which they

were fired. And that is without addressing the possibility they might have been planted. Either way, there never

was any basis here for alleging that Oswald was the lone assassin. Ken Rahn has been peddling a phony theory.

Jim

Same problem with the NAA cock-up. The SBT obviously fails on its trajectory but we had entire conference, Wecht 2003, purportedly devoted to the Single Bullet Theory, that pushed debates over the NAA to the exclusion of the back wound evidence.

All of this plays into the hands of the WC defenders.

THe Wecht Conference was mostly a bust. I was there along with my old friend Vince Palamara, and I suppose most serious students of the case have seen the videos.

Although the program focused on the medical evidence, David Lifton, author of BEST EVIDENCE was not invited,

yet Ken Rahn WAS invited to regurgitate his nonsense about CBLA, Oomparative Bullet Lead Analysis, AKA CABLA, AKA CABLA - CADABLA! (Voodoo SCIENCE).

That says a lot about the Wecht Conference.

The NAA CBLA theory was completely discredited just a few days after the Wecht conference, in the Federal Court decision in Mikos http://www.daubertontheweb.com/mikos.pdf THe Mikos decision was followed by state and federal courts throughout the land, the FBI abandoned CBLA, and even J. Robert Blakey admitted that CBLA is JUNK SCIENCE.

Just to blow my own trumpet for a moment, I predicted the 2003 Mikos decision seven years earlier, in 1996 at the Fredonia Conference sponsored by Jerry Rose of the Third Decade. I sent David Lifton a copy of the tape at the time.

As my great hero Charles Sanders Peirce emphasized, TRUTH IS A MATTER FOR THE LONG RUN. I may not be here to see it recognized, but I hope we are here contributing to the inquiry.

I have some vivid memories of "not being invited" to that Wecht conference. The previous February (2004, as I recall), I was so excited about the work Doug Horne had done coming up with the completely original idea that the photographer of some of the supposed "autopsy photographs" was Knudsen, and that they were exposed "post-midnight" during the period of reconstruction. (Remember: this is what Godfrey McHugh had told me, back in 1967. See Best Evidence). And wouldn't that be something we wanted to share with the JFK research community?

Anyway, someone close to Wecht-who has worked with him for years--was also excited about all this, and so that person approached Wecht, got a preliminary green light, that Wecht had said fine; but then, a week or so later, came the bad news: No, that wouldn't be possible, and the reason was Gary Aguilar.

The extent of Aguilar's personal animus towards me can best be captured if you were to listen to him (as I did) cursing and screaming at me on the phone, circa March 2000, saying that if I came to a conference at "my hospital" (which he was sponsoring), he would have me arrested. That if I showed up, I was to take my seat, be silent, and not say a word. etc etc.

Here's a direct quote, from documentation created at the time, which is quite accurate:

AGUILAR (Screaming on the phone, and I'm omitting all theh "F-you's, David Lifton!" ETC ETC.:

QUOTE:

“Ok, if you come. . let me explain this to you! There will be no consideration! You will sit in the back of the room! You will not ask any questions! I will start the proceedings by handing out photocopies of emails that you wrote to show everybody what an asshole you are! You’ll not ask any question. If you want to speak to John Newman [who had invited me], you will speak to him out in the hall! And if you violate these conditions, I will call security and have you thrown out on your ass!”

UNQUOTE

This is the same Aguilar who--when he was a newbie--would call me "chief", but subsequently decided my book was all wrong, and-in general--has adopted the attitude that "this town isn't big enough for both of us."

Believe me: if you know only the "reasonable" Dr. Gary Aguilar, you do not know the full story.

DSL

1/27/11; 12:40 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

Mr. Lifton, I have read and reread the "famous" email back and forth on the Garrison case between you and Lisa Pease, with Gary Aguilar thrown in the mix -- the one where you say Garrison was one of the "biggest frauds to come down the pike." If Aguilar didn't hate you before that, he might very well have after. You were pretty hard on him-- it seemed to this reader that you wounded his pride--and that he will not forgive. But then there's a history here of which I know nothing. Hope some day things get better between you two. Best, Daniel

[Daniel Gallup]

The point I've been trying to make is that, IF conspiracy theorists are to claim we KNOW the head wound was on the back of the head because so many witnesses thought they saw it there, that it is the height of hypocrisy to turn around and claim the Harper fragment was occipital bone. For the Harper fragment to be occipital bone, there would have to have been a hole LOW on the far back of JFK's head. NONE of the eyewitnesses to the shooting saw a hole there, and NONE of the original statements of the Parkland witnesses place a wound in this location. While some of the witness statements over the years can be stretched to support a wound in this location, many more can not. Many of the photos of witnesses, in which they point out the wound location, including Conway's photo of Foster, show them pointing to a location on the right side of the back of their head above their ear, and do not remotely support that a chunk of bone exploded from the skull inches below and to the left of this location.

So WHY continue pretending that the Harper fragment is occipital?

Pat: I do not have time to examine and critically analyze the full "chapter sized" postings you made, but just consider what you have written above. It is, in my opinion, easily refutable. Turn to Chapter 13 of BEST EVIDENCE, and just consider my December, 1966 interview with Dr. Paul Peters. "Dr. Peters emphazed that the head wound was at the back, that it was actually necessary to get to the back of the head to get a good view of it." Then, some pages later, and in the section under the breaker "What was visible through the wound," I dealt with all the testimony about the cerebellum, and here's what Dr. Peters had to say on that point, and I QUOTE:

"Dr. Peters gave me a most vivid description. . . . trying to impress upon me the locaton of the wound he saw, Dr. Peters said: "I'd be willing to swear that the wound was in the occiput, you know. I could see the the occipital lobes clearly, AND SO I KNOW IT WAS THAT FAR BACK, ON THE SKULL. I could look inside the skull, and I thought it looked like the cerebellum was injured, or missing, because the occipital lobes seemed to rest almost on the foramen magnum. . . [it] looked like the occipital lobes were resting on the foramen magnum." (For readers of this thread who may not be all that familiar with anatomic terminology, the "foramen magnum" is the hole in the base of the skull, in that part of the occiptal bone that wraps around and forms the base of the skull, through which the spinal cord enters and then connects to the brain.). It was as if something underneath them, [something] that usually kept them up from that a little ways, namely, the cerebellum and brainstem, might have been injured or missing." There can be no doubt about what part of the head Dr. Peters looked at, or how far down the back of the head the fatal wound he saw was located. Dr. Peters statement that he saw the occipital lobes resting on the foramen magnum was not the description of a casual observor."

Dr. Peters corroborated five Dallas doctors' testimony in the Warren Commisson records that erebellar tissue was visible in the sull wound. These observatons clearly indiated where the Dallas wound was located.

UNQUOTE

Pat: I do not understand how, with such vivid testimony spelled out in plain English, you can possibly deny the clear evidence of where the head wound was located--at the bottom of the back of the head. And then join that mis-conception, or misunderstanding (or mistake--however one wishes to characterize the manner of your analysis) --and then join that to the controversy re the Harper fragment, and state: " [it] is the height of hypotcriy to turn around and claim the Harper fragmebnt was occipital bone. For the Harper fragment to be occipital bone, there would have to have been a hole LOW on the back of JFK's head. NONE of the eyewitnesses to the shooting saw a hole there. . "

(Of course, do keep in mind that Dr. Jack Harper, who actually examined the bone, said it was occipital bone--and said so (as I recollect) on November 25, 1963, per the FBI interview.)

The problem with your analysis--and I now remember that I ran into this when I first emailed with you years ago--was your statement that you thought that entirely too much weight was given to the Parkland records, or some such thing. Immediately I understood then--and from your postings here I see that things have not changed all that much in the years since--that you simply do not understand or appreciate the legal and historical importance of statements made AT THE TIME (first of all); and secondly, you continually will equate, in importance, "the Parkland witnesses" with "the eyewitnesses to the shooting."

There is no comparison between an "eyewitness to the shooting"--who may have had a fleeting glimpse of the President (and his wounding), a glimpse lasting a few seconds, and the observations of someone like Dr. Peters, who was in the Emergency Room, and had a chance to observe the wounds at close hand (just inches away), and with the experience of a trained physician.

Yet you continually invoke the "Dealey Plaza witnesses to the shooting" as if their observations should (or do) carry the legal weight comparable to those of the doctors and nurses in the Emergency Room. That's just plain wrong. Its apples and oranges. You should not be doing that, yet you continually do so.

The proper and legitimate comparison should be between observations made in the Parkland Emergency Room (or even in the Parkland Hospital parking lot, if someone got a good look at JFK's wounds there) and the reports from Bethesda. That is reasonable and legitimate. But to start by creating (and then invoking, as you do) a data base consisting of "eyewitneses-to-the-shooting" observations, and comparing them to those of the doctors actually in the emergency room, is not just of dubious value; its completely wrong, and represents a very serious analytic error. No wonder your conclusions are so completely off the mark, if they are based on "reasoning" like that. I appreciate all the pretty graphics (obviously, you are talented in that regard) but its the reasoning that counts, and I find this kind of reasoning deeply flawed.

When I have more time, I'll try to critique the lengthy posting you have made (and addressed to me), but again and again, I find you traveling down this same false path, mixing apples and oranges, and drawing all kinds of unjustifiable inferences, based on this flawed methodology. That pervades your entire analysis of the medical evidence, and results in a mistaken view of what the President's body actually looked like, after the shooting; what wounds it contained; a flawed view of Dealey Plaza, and--perhaps most important of all--an inability to discern whether "the medical evidence" has been altered.

And that is really the key: because if your methodology is so flawed as to not be able to perceive the evidence that the wounds on the body were altered between Parkland and Bethesda, then you have lost sight of THE major issue in this case.

DSL

1/27/11; 11:50 AM PST

Los Angeles, CA

PS: Also remember what Dr. Charles Baxter (I think it was he) who said that the President's brain was "lying on the table." What veteran JFK researcher Wallace Milam concluded--decades ago (and I agreed with him)-was that this was Baxter's less than optimal way of describing the brain at the back of JFK's head (when JFK was lying face up) protruding through the wound, and touching the surface of the hospital cart. Again, more evidence as to the rearward location of the wound.

Thanks, David, for your explanation. But you reinforced my point. Look where Peters places the wound in this video.

Peters on youtube

He places it well above his ear...ABOVE the occipital bone.

If the Harper fragment (a pyramid shape roughly 2 1/2 in wide and 2 in tall) was missing from the occipital bone and was dislodged from the hole Peters saw, Peters would not have been looking down on the occipital lobes from above, wondering if there was any cerebellum down below, he would have been looking straight at the occipital lobes from behind and be able to see the damage to the cerebellum.

This is shown here (on an otherwise unrelated slide).

P.S. I actually find Peters' observation supportive of my own theory on the wounds. IF he was looking through a hole near the top of the head down at the base of the brain, and it seemed to him that the brain was sitting low in the skull, and that cerebellum was missing, then it follows that there could have been a second bullet trajectory involving cerebellum BELOW the one making the hole through which he was looking. This supports my conclusions, or impressions, or whatever you want to call it when you study something for years and develop strong suspicions on what really happened.

Pat, I am not one for good dictation but in the short clip on Peters he says there is large 7cm opening in the right occipitoparietal area and the occipital cortex was lying down by the opening of the wound. Anatomists, come to my aid. Where is the occipital cortex?? Best, Daniel

Edited January 28, 2011 by Daniel Gallup

[David Lifton]

Mr. Lifton, I have read and reread the "famous" email back and forth on the Garrison case between you and Lisa Pease, with Gary Aguilar thrown in the mix -- the one where you say Garrison was one of the "biggest frauds to come down the pike." If Aguilar didn't hate you before that, he might very well have after. You were pretty hard on him-- it seemed to this reader that you wounded his pride--and that he will not forgive. But then there's a history here of which I know nothing. Hope some day things get better between you two. Best, Daniel

Daniel,

About Garrison, and why I said what I did. . . :

FYI: Kerry Thornley was a personal friend of mine--not close, or anything like that, but someone I first met in 1965, someone who I knew well enough to go to his home with, and have dinner with (with his wife and young child), and someone with whom I had numerous conversations. The notion that Kerry Thornley had anything to do with Kennedy's assassination was ludicrous. Yet Garrison marched down that path, with bells ringing and horns blowing.

You have to experience something like that personally to understand how upsetting it could be. Unlike many on this thread, I met Garrison, personally. Had dinner with him. Spent hours with him alone, on at least one occasion. What he did with Thornley was right out of Kafka. Especially disappointing, if not frightening, was the manner in which he was able to persuade himself that Thornley was actually part of a conspiracy (!). I was astounded. The same was true of the way he went after Edgar Eugene Bradley (to whom he later apologized).

Those two fellows were not in any way involved in "the plot", and--personally--I did not believe Clay Shaw was either, although (and I've come to this view belatedly) I would not be surprised if it Shaw knew Oswald --briefly, in the summer of 1963-and I also believe it possible he was the person who called Dean Andrews. I'm not wedded to that position, but its something I have taken much more seriously, as a possibility.

But back to Aguilar: no, his enmity towards me has little to do with Garrison, but everything (unfortunately) to do with his King sized ego, and a propensity towards zealotry. That's just my personal opinion.

I have no doubt that the basic tenets of BEST EVIDENCE are going to be validated, over time, and Aguilar is going to be left with a sorry history of ill-founded criticism, and a very nasty and mean-spirited paper trail showing repeated attempts to attack my work. But then, of course (depending on the audience) he attempts to have it both ways, to hedge his bet And so, to repeat what he wrote, in an email, to an acquaintance of mine (let's call him Joesph) circa 1998: "Joe. Please don't misconstrue. I WILL NOT, nor have I EVER, claimed I can prove there was NOT body alteration."

DSL

1/27/11; 8:45 PM

Los Angeles, CA

Edited January 28, 2011 by David Lifton