The Law of Unintended Consequences

January 16, 2012

The greatest blunder you make, however, is that, if the blow-out were at the side of the head, which is the theme of your work, then it would not have had cerebral and cerebellar tissue extruding from it. I have asked you to explain that phenomenon-- how cerebellar and cerebral tissue could extrude from the wound as you portray it--and the answer is that you cannot.

Until you do, my interpretation is clearly superior to your own. The question that I pose again, as I have before, is how can you reconcile your side wound with the physicians' reports, which I am now posting again? If you would like, I will be glad to post a diagram of the contents of the cranium to locate the cerebellum for you and our readers, as I am now doing below:

Now since you apparently DO NOT KNOW THE LOCATION OF THE CEREBELLUM IN RELATION TO

THE CRANIUM, here is a nice diagram that shows their relative locations, which was first published in

BEST EVIDENCE (1980), which I would have thought would have been enough time to have taken note,

especially in relation to the multiple, consistent Parkland reports from these experienced physicians that

CEREBELLAR AS WELL AS CEREBRAL TISSUE WAS EXTRUDING FROM THIS MASSIVE WOUND:

What continues to astonish me is that your theory of a side wound is not supported by the witness reports and is clearly contradicted by the Parkland physicians, by David Mantik's X-ray studies, and by frame 374, yet you persist in defense of a hopelessly untenable theory of the medical evidence, whose inadequacy in relation to the evidence OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN APPARENT TO ANYONE WHO HAD EVER READ THOMPSON AND DAVID LIFTON'S BOOKS. Have you never read them?

It's bad enough when Tink tries to persuade us that the hole in the back of JFK's head HAS NOT BEEN PATCHED on the basis of the claim that THE MPI SLIDES NO LONGER SHOW IT and to try to claim that, IF THERE HAD BEEN A BLOW- OUT TO THE BACK OF HIS HEAD, WE SHOULD SEE IT IN MARY'S POLAROID. But if we don't see it in the MPI slides or in Mary's Polaroid, the right conclusion to draw, given the weight of the evidence, is that those sources have been revised!

I don't know what to do with you, Pat. You have displayed, again and again, an utter incapacity to acknowledge the evidence arrayed against you. Charles Peirce distinguished between several attitudes toward the formation of belief, one of which, the method of tenacity, is to adopt a position and rigidly adhere to that position, regardless of the weight of the evidence against it. That is not the method of science, which requires adjusting beliefs in response to the weight of all of the available evidence.

But that IS the method of Pat Speer! I am dumbfounded that you would continue to cite your own work after David Mantik has taken the time and effort to explain what you have wrong. But, then again, the methodology you adopt would not be self-sealing and self-certifying were you to acknowledge the force of EVEN ONE ARGUMENT that demonstrates you are wrong. Well, Pat, you are wrong, as the evidence clearly demonstrates. Not just a little wrong, but completely and hopelessly wrong.

In my opinion, your arguments become more and more implausible. The mistakes you commit are also complicated and rather subtle. Since I can see no point in continuing a debate between us, I would point out that, in response to a challenge from you, David Mantik has taken the time and effort to dissect your positions, which has now been published at CTKA:

David Mantik vs. Pat Speer on the JFK Autopsy X-rays:

A Critique of http://www.patspeer.com/

Chapters 18a, 18b, and 19b

by David W. Mantik

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/mantik_speer.html

That you are taking these HSCA exhibits seriously offers more evidence that I am right about your tendency to "special plead". We KNOW there should be a massive blow-out at the back of the head from the witnesses, the Parkland physicians, David's X-ray studies, McClelland and Crenshaw's diagrams and frame 374. Your position, in my view, is simply indefensible.

Not to nit-pick on this point, Jim, because we agree that the HSCA's drawing was deceptive, but your comparison of the autopsy photo and HSCA drawing is highly misleading. The red mark or blood stain they pretended was a bullet entrance IS visible on the photo you present, only not in the circle you provide. Your circle, moreover, is in an entirely different location than the one on the drawing.

Here is a slide I've created which shows where the red mark is on the photo.

Wait, let me get this right... YOU have, for years now, been posting and publishing a grossly misleading comparison between an autopsy photo and an HSCA drawing in which you have a circled area purportedly showing the same area, but in fact showing different areas, and you claim MY noticing YOUR mistake proves MY inadequacy as a critical thinker? Are you kidding? I hope so.

But suspect not. It feels as though you are incapable of admitting your mistakes, Jim. And even the mistakes of those you hold in high esteem...

Since you bring up Mantik's recent article, in which he makes one of the most embarrassing mistakes imaginable, I'll ask it again. On the slide below I present a number of Dr. Mantik's exhibits, and prove, beyond all doubt, he is wrong in his claim the metallic debris on the Harper fragment is on the top of the head in Dr. Angel's orientation. Now, you don't need a degree for this. I've made it real simple. The metallic debris is either at point A, B, or C. Well, which is it, Jim?

Edited January 16, 2012 by James H. Fetzer

Karl Kinaski · January 16, 2012

Excellent points, Jim. More interesting to me is the fact that the authors themselves appear to need to be reminded of the significance of what this means! That the photographic evidence is inconsistent with the voluminous eyewitness testimony is simply astounding. That the authors themselves have abandoned their earlier, very well thought out, positions--merely because the photographic evidence (as it now appears) does not support it--is disappointing. At the very least, one would hope that they would seek to find out why the discrepancy exists instead of simply dismissing it as though it was an expected outcome. It is anything, but, expected.

It's funny that even Umbrella-Witt is talking about a limo stop. Therefore the Zappi film OR Witt is a fake. Lone Nutters can decide.

KK

Pat Speer · January 16, 2012

Pat,

What can I tell you? I have ALREADY EXPLAINED that you take MINOR DISCREPANCIES and attempt to

convert them into MAJOR DIFFERENCES. For your argument to be correct, McClelland, Crenshaw, and

the Dealey Plaza witnesses, the other physicians at Parkland, David's X-ray studies and even frame 374

must all be wrong, not merely with regard to details, but even relative to their gross location of the wound.

Here's the McClelland diagram, which, like the Crenshaw diagram, was drawn/authorized by a physician

who attended JFK at Parkland. Notice how much it agrees with the witnesses and other Parkland reports:

It was first published in SIX SECONDS (1967), with an accompanying description by Dr. McClelland, and

a comment by the author, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound" (p. 107).

So what has happened in the meanwhile to cause Josiah Thompson to change his mind? Notice that this

wound is clearly inconsistent with the Moorman Polaroid, if it does not display a massive cranial defect.

Here is a comparison from BEST EVIDENCE (1980) that illustrates the gross differences between what

the Parkland physicians initially observed, the Bethesda autopsy report, and the HSCA reconstruction.

No one would imagine in their wildest dreams that the Moorman Polaroid is consistent with the Bethesda

autopsy report. If the blow out is missing, why would anyone think it is consistent with Parkland, either?

I can't believe you brought up the McClelland drawing, Jim. Have you forgotten we've been through this before, and that I

demonstrated that the drawing is NOT consistent with the statements of the witnesses? From patspeer.com, chapter 18c:

. . .

So there you have it. Only 7 of these 18 witnesses can honestly be claimed to have described a wound at the "low right rear" a la Mantik and Wecht, at the "bottom of the back of the head," a la Lifton, or in the location depicted in the "McClelland" drawing, a la Groden. 7 of 18, need it be said, is not the "almost unanimous" claimed by Mantik and Wecht, based on the research of Aguilar, nor the "every" purported by Groden.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates your incompetence at research than your dismissal of McClelland and your treatment of the other witnesses. You are not even taking into account THE ROLE OF PERSPECTIVE. The Willises were to his right side, where Phil appears to have seen the blow-out of the skull flap. Ed Hoffman was looking downward and similarly for others. VIRTUALLY ALL OF THEM ARE LOCATING THE WOUND IN THE SAME GENERAL AREA AT THE BACK OF THE HEAD.

But let's assume you are right: there is a mix of reports, because, after all, he had several wounds (when you factor in the blow-out of the skull flap). BY YOUR OWN CALCULATION, THERE WERE AT LEAST 7 WITNESSES WHO REPORTED THE BLOW-OUT AT THE CENTER-RIGHT OF THE BACK OF HIS HEAD, just as McClelland and Crenshaw described it in their diagrams. THEY ARE LOCATING IT AT THE BACK OF THE HEAD. NONE WERE LOCATING IT AT THE SIDE.

Now why would McClelland and Crenshaw, who were both experience physicians, HAVE GOT THIS WRONG? It is easy to grasp why bystanders with no experience in dealing with victims of gunshot wounds, might be impresses with the skull-flap as it was blown open at precisely the same time that his brains were being blown out the back of his head to the left-rear. And, lest you forget, Officer Hargis, riding to the left/rear, was hit by the debris so hard he initially thought he had been shot!

Unless you are implying that Josiah Thompson was incompetent when he composed SIX SECONDS (1967), why in the world would he make an observation of the kind that he does there on page 107 in relation to the McClelland diagram, which I believe he invited for publication in his book, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound"? WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound"?

Have you bothered to check that reference, because, beside the diagram itself, we have the following testimony from Dr. Robert N. McClelland, an extraordinary head-wound witness, whom Josiah Thompson quotes as follows on page 107:

"As I too the position at the head of the table . . . I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half, and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out."

So we not only have--by your own admission--seven witnesses who confirm this location but also a very specific, detailed description of the wound by Dr. McClelland, which even Tink acknowledges to be the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound! It is generally consistent with the locations specified by the witnesses and with David's X-ray studies. WHY WOULD YOU OR ANYONE ELSE THINK THEY SHOULD BE IN PRECISE AGREEMENT IN EVERY DETAIL?

BECAUSE YOU DO NOT FIND AGREEMENT IN EVERY DETAIL, YOU WANT TO EXAGGERATE THE DIFFERENCES AND SUPPRESS THE GROSS AGREEMENT ABOUT ITS LOCATION AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. That is not a responsible attitude to adopt toward witnesses who were not medical professionals as the event unfolded in the plaza and it is completely absurd relative to medical professionals, which is where you commit your most grievous blunder, as I shall show.

(continued)

Jim, you're always harping on about how someone should read such and such, and then after one reading of this magical work, they would KNOW you are right. Well, it's incredibly clear you have never read my online book on all this, which pretty much destroys your every argument. You're even in there a few times.

Let's start with your double-standard. You have it that witnesses' first statements are the best when they fit your agenda, but IGNORE them when they do not. You not only IGNORE that ALL the authenticated Dealey Plaza witnesses said the wound was on the side of the head, and failed to see a wound on the back of the head, you've now taken to pretending they said it was on the back of the head, and that my thoughts on all this are in opposition to their statements, rather than BASED on their statements. You also show your double-standard by including people like Clint Hill as a back of the head witness, when his recollection of the wound location is perhaps two inches from its filmed location, and about four inches from YOUR proposed location. If you look at my slide of the Groden witnesses, you'll see that numerous other witnesses also said the wound was in a location closer to its official location than YOUR proposed location. So, let's not kid ourselves. YOUR proposed location is NO closer to the location described by the Parkland witnesses than the location depicted in the autopsy photos. This is OBVIOUS when one looks at Groden's photos. We can go through them one by one, if you like.

But let's just take two, for now. Your friend Crenshaw's recollection of the wound location is nearly worthless--not only did he only see the wound for a second or two at best, he failed to write down his recollection for decades, and only did so after the so-called "McClelland drawing" had made the rounds as a supposedly authentic depiction of what was seen at Parkland. Which brings me to McClelland. While you and many others like to tout him as THE authority on all this, you IGNORE his earliest statements, which indicate that his latter statements are not to be taken so seriously.

Here's what he wrote on the day of the shooting.

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

Robert N. McClelland M.D.

Asst. Prof. of Surgery

Southwestern Med.

School of Univ of Tex.

Dallas, Texas

And here is what he told your pal Livingston's old school chum Richard Dudman a few weeks later: "As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front."

Think about it, Jim. You've been chasing phantoms. And pushing nonsense. There was NO blow-out wound on the back of the head below the ear.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Pat Speer

January 16, 2012

The witnesses who confirmed the blow-out were experts for whom there would be no reason to be wrong.

For some reason, you are utterly incapable of processing EVIDENCE, even when it comes from multiple

sources and points of view: witnesses, physicians, diagrams, X-ray studies, and even Z-frame 374!

You are beyond intellectual salvation, in my book, Pat. I really did not want to get into this with you,

because in my opinion you are completely and utterly out of your depth. There is no good reason for

anyone to take you seriously. I am going to have to rest content that the rational minds will see through

you. A man whose position is not even consistent with the gross anatomy of the human brain is not someone who

could reasonably be expected to shed any light on these issues, where that is obviously and demonstrably beyond

you. And to continue to cite your own stuff after David Mantik has patiently taken it apart, piece by piece,

is simply unbelievable. For anyone who wants to know David Mantik's expert dissection of Pat's work, see

David Mantik vs. Pat Speer on the JFK Autopsy X-rays:

A Critique of http://www.patspeer.com/

Chapters 18a, 18b, and 19b

by David W. Mantik

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/mantik_speer.html

Pat,

What can I tell you? I have ALREADY EXPLAINED that you take MINOR DISCREPANCIES and attempt to

convert them into MAJOR DIFFERENCES. For your argument to be correct, McClelland, Crenshaw, and

the Dealey Plaza witnesses, the other physicians at Parkland, David's X-ray studies and even frame 374

must all be wrong, not merely with regard to details, but even relative to their gross location of the wound.

Here's the McClelland diagram, which, like the Crenshaw diagram, was drawn/authorized by a physician

who attended JFK at Parkland. Notice how much it agrees with the witnesses and other Parkland reports:

It was first published in SIX SECONDS (1967), with an accompanying description by Dr. McClelland, and

a comment by the author, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound" (p. 107).

So what has happened in the meanwhile to cause Josiah Thompson to change his mind? Notice that this

wound is clearly inconsistent with the Moorman Polaroid, if it does not display a massive cranial defect.

Here is a comparison from BEST EVIDENCE (1980) that illustrates the gross differences between what

the Parkland physicians initially observed, the Bethesda autopsy report, and the HSCA reconstruction.

No one would imagine in their wildest dreams that the Moorman Polaroid is consistent with the Bethesda

autopsy report. If the blow out is missing, why would anyone think it is consistent with Parkland, either?

I can't believe you brought up the McClelland drawing, Jim. Have you forgotten we've been through this before, and that I

demonstrated that the drawing is NOT consistent with the statements of the witnesses? From patspeer.com, chapter 18c:

. . .

So there you have it. Only 7 of these 18 witnesses can honestly be claimed to have described a wound at the "low right rear" a la Mantik and Wecht, at the "bottom of the back of the head," a la Lifton, or in the location depicted in the "McClelland" drawing, a la Groden. 7 of 18, need it be said, is not the "almost unanimous" claimed by Mantik and Wecht, based on the research of Aguilar, nor the "every" purported by Groden.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates your incompetence at research than your dismissal of McClelland and your treatment of the other witnesses. You are not even taking into account THE ROLE OF PERSPECTIVE. The Willises were to his right side, where Phil appears to have seen the blow-out of the skull flap. Ed Hoffman was looking downward and similarly for others. VIRTUALLY ALL OF THEM ARE LOCATING THE WOUND IN THE SAME GENERAL AREA AT THE BACK OF THE HEAD.

But let's assume you are right: there is a mix of reports, because, after all, he had several wounds (when you factor in the blow-out of the skull flap). BY YOUR OWN CALCULATION, THERE WERE AT LEAST 7 WITNESSES WHO REPORTED THE BLOW-OUT AT THE CENTER-RIGHT OF THE BACK OF HIS HEAD, just as McClelland and Crenshaw described it in their diagrams. THEY ARE LOCATING IT AT THE BACK OF THE HEAD. NONE WERE LOCATING IT AT THE SIDE.

Now why would McClelland and Crenshaw, who were both experience physicians, HAVE GOT THIS WRONG? It is easy to grasp why bystanders with no experience in dealing with victims of gunshot wounds, might be impresses with the skull-flap as it was blown open at precisely the same time that his brains were being blown out the back of his head to the left-rear. And, lest you forget, Officer Hargis, riding to the left/rear, was hit by the debris so hard he initially thought he had been shot!

Unless you are implying that Josiah Thompson was incompetent when he composed SIX SECONDS (1967), why in the world would he make an observation of the kind that he does there on page 107 in relation to the McClelland diagram, which I believe he invited for publication in his book, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound"? WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound"?

Have you bothered to check that reference, because, beside the diagram itself, we have the following testimony from Dr. Robert N. McClelland, an extraordinary head-wound witness, whom Josiah Thompson quotes as follows on page 107:

"As I too the position at the head of the table . . . I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half, and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out."

So we not only have--by your own admission--seven witnesses who confirm this location but also a very specific, detailed description of the wound by Dr. McClelland, which even Tink acknowledges to be the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound! It is generally consistent with the locations specified by the witnesses and with David's X-ray studies. WHY WOULD YOU OR ANYONE ELSE THINK THEY SHOULD BE IN PRECISE AGREEMENT IN EVERY DETAIL?

BECAUSE YOU DO NOT FIND AGREEMENT IN EVERY DETAIL, YOU WANT TO EXAGGERATE THE DIFFERENCES AND SUPPRESS THE GROSS AGREEMENT ABOUT ITS LOCATION AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. That is not a responsible attitude to adopt toward witnesses who were not medical professionals as the event unfolded in the plaza and it is completely absurd relative to medical professionals, which is where you commit your most grievous blunder, as I shall show.

(continued)

Jim, you're always harping on about how someone should read such and such, and then after one reading of this magical work, they would KNOW you are right. Well, it's incredibly clear you have never read my online book on all this, which pretty much destroys your every argument. You're even in there a few times.

Let's start with your double-standard. You have it that witnesses' first statements are the best when they fit your agenda, but IGNORE them when they do not. You not only IGNORE that ALL the authenticated Dealey Plaza witnesses said the wound was on the side of the head, and failed to see a wound on the back of the head, you've now taken to pretending they said it was on the back of the head, and that my thoughts on all this are in opposition to their statements, rather than BASED on their statements. You also show your double-standard by including people like Clint Hill as a back of the head witness, when his recollection of the wound location is perhaps two inches from its filmed location, and about four inches from YOUR proposed location. If you look at my slide of the Groden witnesses, you'll see that numerous other witnesses also said the wound was in a location closer to its official location than YOUR proposed location. So, let's not kid ourselves. YOUR proposed location is NO closer to the location described by the Parkland witnesses than the location depicted in the autopsy photos. This is OBVIOUS when one looks at Groden's photos. We can go through them one by one, if you like.

But let's just take two, for now. Your friend Crenshaw's recollection of the wound location is nearly worthless--not only did he only see the wound for a second or two at best, he failed to write down his recollection for decades, and only did so after the so-called "McClelland drawing" had made the rounds as a supposedly authentic depiction of what was seen at Parkland. Which brings me to McClelland. While you and many others like to tout him as THE authority on all this, you IGNORE his earliest statements, which indicate that his latter statements are not to be taken so seriously.

Here's what he wrote on the day of the shooting.

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

Robert N. McClelland M.D.

Asst. Prof. of Surgery

Southwestern Med.

School of Univ of Tex.

Dallas, Texas

And here is what he told your pal Livingston's old school chum Richard Dudman a few weeks later: "As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front."

Think about it, Jim. You've been chasing phantoms. And pushing nonsense. There was NO blow-out wound on the back of the head below the ear.

Edited January 16, 2012 by James H. Fetzer

January 16, 2012

[quote name=Chris Scally' date='15 January 2012 - 04:22 PM'

timestamp='1326644576' post='243884]

[quote name=James H. Fetzer' date='15 January 2012 - 04:49 PM'

timestamp='1326638981' post='243874]

MOST OF IT WAS DONE BY SUNDAY NOVEMBER 24TH, WHEN IT WAS BROUGHT TO THE NPIC.

3. Can you provide the names of any of those who were directly

involved in altering it, or even present during the alteration

process?

NO--BUT DAVID LIFTON AND DOUG HORNE FIGURED THIS OUT AND HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT IT.

Dr. Fetzer:

Many thanks for your reply.

Can I assume from your first statement above, then, that you believe

the account of Homer McMahon, which is based (insofar as it relates to

the films's presence at Hawkeye) on what "Secret Service agent Bill

Smith" told him?

YES--Homer appear to me to have been candid about his experience at

NPIC. YES--A Secret Service agent who identified himself as "William

Smith" told them that he had brought the film from Rochester. It was

a 16mm unsplit film, which differed in content from the 8mm, split

film that had been brought there from Dallas the day before. Doug

Horne has done a brilliant job of discussing this in Vol. IV of INSIDE

THE ARRB. I summarize some of the ARRB's most important findings

about the film, the properties that distinguish the original from the

extant version, and other aspects of this issue in "US Government

Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication", which, I gather, you have

already studied.

Further, does your response to my question regarding the identities of

anyone involved in altering the film mean that you no longer subscribe

to the view that "it is highly probable that Rollie Zavada might have

been involved in the production of the substitute version of the film"

at Kodak's Hawkeye Plant in Rochester, as you suggested in your 'Real

Deal' interview with Doug Horne on Friday, November 18, last (1 hour

17 minutes 30 seconds into the programme)?

WELL, this is most interesting. Rollie Zavada of course was an

expert on celluloid, not on content. The five physical differences

that Doug elaborates upon should have been apparent to Rollie. I find

it very odd that he was brought out of retirement to deal with the

ARRB on this issue, just as George Joannides was brought out of

retirement to deal with the HSCA reinvestigation. I am not the only

one who has been disenchanted with his performance, where the

limitations of his competence should have led him to dissociate

himself from determinations of film authenticity or made it clear that

he was ONLY ADDRESSING WHETHER THE FILM WAS TAKEN

ON AUTHENTIC KODAK FILM. Tell me if you think I have it wrong.

Jim

Pat Speer · January 16, 2012

The witnesses who confirmed the blow-out were experts for whom there would be no reason to be wrong.

For some reason, you are utterly incapable of processing EVIDENCE, even when it comes from multiple

sources and points of view: witnesses, physicians, diagrams, X-ray studies, and even Z-frame 374!

You are beyond intellectual salvation, in my book, Pat. I really did not want to get into this with you,

because in my opinion you are completely and utterly out of your depth. There is no good reason for

anyone to take you seriously. I am going to have to rest content that the rational minds will see through

you. A man whose position is not even consistent with the gross anatomy of the human brain is not someone who

could reasonably be expected to shed any light on these issues, where that is obviously and demonstrably beyond

you. And to continue to cite your own stuff after David Mantik has patiently taken it apart, piece by piece,

is simply unbelievable. For anyone who wants to know David Mantik's expert dissection of Pat's work, see

David Mantik vs. Pat Speer on the JFK Autopsy X-rays:

A Critique of http://www.patspeer.com/

Chapters 18a, 18b, and 19b

by David W. Mantik

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/mantik_speer.html

Let the reader be the judge of who is "out of his depth," Jim. You keep citing Mantik as if he is some sort of prophet. On the slide below, I PROVE he is human, and IRREFUTABLY MISTAKEN on one of the key points of his supposed refutation of my research.

And so I ask you again, Jim, to look at Mantik's exhibits, and tell us, once and for all, if Mantik is correct, and the metallic debris at point B of the Harper fragment, or I am correct, and it at point C. It's real simple. All you have to do is type A, B, or C.

Now, let's deconstruct the opening sentences of your post.

You wrote:

"The witnesses who confirmed the blow-out were experts for whom there would be no reason to be wrong."

This avoids that only one "expert" (Clark) examined the supposed blow-out at Parkland, and he believed the wound to be a tangential wound of both entrance and exit, and not a blow-out. The other witnesses did not carefully examine the wound, and many of them never commented on it at all until after Dr. Clark's views were published in newspapers and medical journals. This also avoids that scholarly studies have shown that emergency room doctors are incredibly prone to make mistakes when estimating the nature of bullet wounds, whether they are of entrance or exit, and how many bullets were fired. Even worse, however, it avoids that many of these supposed experts later said they'd been wrong. Dr. Clark himself rarely spoke of the shooting beyond his testimony to the Warren Commission, in which he largely supported their scenario. He thinks so little of your scenario, in fact, that, in 1983, in one of his rare interviews since the shooting, he replied, when asked if he'd had any regrets, that "The only regret I have is that I'm constantly bothered by a bunch of damn fools who want me to make some kind of controversial statement about what I saw, what was done, or that he is still alive here on the 12th floor of Parkland Hospital or some foolish thing like that. Since these guys are making their money by writing this kind of provocative books, it annoys me, frankly."

You then wrote:

"For some reason, you are utterly incapable of processing EVIDENCE, even when it comes from multiple

sources and points of view: witnesses, physicians, diagrams, X-ray studies, and even Z-frame 374!"

Well, this is just malarkey. My processing of the evidence entails ALL the evidence, Jim. You cherry-pick some witnesses and disregard others, and completely ignore it when some of the witnesses you choose to believe admit they were mistaken and say you are wrong. You refuse to acknowledge that the Dealey Plaza witnesses saw the bullet explode on the side of the head, not the back. You fail to accept that many if not most of the supposed "back of the head witnesses" are really top or side of the head witnesses, whose recollection of the large head wound are equally or more in line with the wound shown in the photographs and Zapruder film as the wound shown in the McClelland drawing. (I would be glad to go through them one by one, if you like.)

Which brings us to the x-rays and Z-frame 374... I have already shown you that the "white patch" is on the side of the head mostly above the ear, and that the supposed blow-out on Z-frame 374 is on the back of the head below the ear. They do not confirm each other. You reveal your misunderstanding of Mantik's studies, furthermore, by claiming the "white patch" covers the "blow-out," when Mantik thinks the blow-out was in the middle of the back of the head (where he places the Harper fragment) and thinks the "white patch" on the side of the head was added, as I recall, to draw attention to the "dark patch" in front.

P.S. I believe you are also incorrect to suggest, as you do in Post 562, that both Mantik's x-ray studies and Zapruder frame 374 show no hole on the right top side of the head, where a hole is shown in the autopsy photos and other frames of the Zapruder film. If you could show me exactly where Mantik says this it would be appreciated. If you could show me how Zapruder frame 374 shows this it would be appreciated.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Pat Speer

Pat Speer · January 17, 2012

PS: Even worse, however, it avoids that many of these supposed experts later said they'd been wrong.

Pat, I think you are getting a bit carried away with the moment.

IF what you are saying here is in reference to the PBS show, Nova, then you are not telling the whole story. Anyone who watches Richter's show understands it was set up for the distinct purpose of getting the Parkland doctors to change their stories.

So what did the clever Mr. RIchter do to achieve that end? He took some of these troublesome witnesses into the National Archives and showed them the autopsy exhibits there e.g. the photographs. These photographs of course depict a neat, clean, combed, almost blow dried back of the head. There appears to be a dry spot of blood at the top and a kind of pin xxxxx penetrating hole at the bottom. The first is where the HSCA placed the rear skull wound and the second is where the WC placed it. Neither one resembles an entrance wound or an exit wound.

Now, Mr. Richter knows all the problems with this case. Why? Because he worked on the lying and fraudulent CBS 1967 series. The one which Les Midgley sold his soul over and Roger Feinman lost his job about when he learned that John McCloy was the secret consultant. RIchter later told a researcher that with all the film they took they could have easily put together another series proving conspiracy. In other words, CBS edited their film to produce a desired result. When Ray Marcus asked RIchter why he did not go public with this fact he replied with, "What, do you want me to work for the Peoria Press?"

This is important background since it shows that Richter understood the way the game was played. He then played it.

Knowing that the Dallas testimony about this rear skull wound was a serious trouble spot for the defenders of the official story, Richter now did something unethical. He showed these photographic exhibits to the Parkland doctors without telling them all the problems with those pictures in terms of their provenance e.g. the autopsy doctors did not see them for three years, and the problem in relation to the testimony of the Bethesda witnesses. The latter was so dangerous to the official story that the HSCA classified their statements and then lied about them. Why? Because it coincided with the Dallas witnesses who also saw a hole in the back of the head.

Now, as is so often the case, when witnesses are confronted with photographic evidence that differs from their original memory, they halt, hesitate and then falter, and then renounce. Why? Because they understand how they will look if they say on camera that someone rigged a picture. They will sound like a "conspiracy theorist", that phrase that the MSM has used to smear anyone who thinks the evidentiary record in the JFK case is dubious.

So Richter knew what he was doing here. And he was up to no good.

He was smart enough not to use SIbert and O'Neill. He would have had to edit them out. From the William Matson Law book In the Eye of History:"... the head wound was massive: Humes pointed out to Sibert and myself the gaping wound at the right rear of the president's head and the tremendous damage done to the brain therein." (p. 159)

I think you're off the mark on this one. By the time of the Nova program, it was already clear that there was a gap between what some witnesses remembered and what was shown on the autopsy photos. All that was left to do was show them the photos and ask them if they thought they were the real deal or not. They said they thought they were the real deal. it was up to the viewer to decide if they were right the first time or the second.

As far as Richter, If he knew in advance that one or more of the Parkland witnesses would say they thought the photos were fakes, and deliberately avoided them, I would agree he did a bad thing. But I don't think that was the case. Maybe Lifton knows for sure.

As far as S and O, they claimed there was a small entrance hole low on the skull and that this shot came from behind. While it's true O'Neill thought someone had doctored the photos he also said all shots were fired from behind and that he believed the shooter was Oswald. So let's not get carried away and pretend he's a good witness for the purported blow-out low on the skull when he in fact said not only that the wound he saw was an exit wound high on the back of the skull, but that it was related to an entrance wound low on the skull where the McClelland drawing depicts an exit wound.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Pat Speer

Josiah Thompson · January 17, 2012

It's easy to "lose the thread" on this thread. I think it has exposed an interesting mistake in thinking. You might call it "blindness to when something happened."

One of the quotes given to show that the Zapruder film was altered because Officer Chaney immediately rode ahead of the limousine to rendezvous with the lead car, is this quote from Winston Lawson in the lead car: "A motorcycle escort officer pulled alongside our lead car and said the President had been shot. Chief Curry gave a signal over his radio for police to converge on the area of the incident." (CE 772; 17H632) Since both Officer Chaney and Chief Curry say that Chaney did rendezvous with the lead car, he probably did. The photos show the limousine passing the lead car as Chaney trails some hundreds of feet. So the photo evidence including the Zapruder film plus statements of Lawson, Chaney, and Curry all support the notion that Chaney met up with the lead car after the limousine took off. In short, what Lawson said really happened. It just didn't happen at the time some would have it happen. Remove the "blindness to when it happened" and things become clearer.

Likewise, with respect to the wound in the back of JFK's head. It doesn't show in the Zapruder fim or in the Moorman photo. No eyewitness from Dealey Plaza noted it. Yet it is clear that many witnesses from both Parkland and Bethesda saw it. Yet because it is seen later at Parkland and Bethesda does not mean it was visible in Dealey Plaza and should show up in the Dealey Plaza photo record. A lot happened after Z 313 including JFK getting hit a second time in the head and his body being extracted from the limousine. If one pays attention to the time difference there is no conflict.

JT

Excellent points, Jim. More interesting to me is the fact that the authors themselves appear to need to be reminded of the significance of what this means! That the photographic evidence is inconsistent with the voluminous eyewitness testimony is simply astounding. That the authors themselves have abandoned their earlier, very well thought out, positions--merely because the photographic evidence (as it now appears) does not support it--is disappointing. At the very least, one would hope that they would seek to find out why the discrepancy exists instead of simply dismissing it as though it was an expected outcome. It is anything, but, expected.

January 17, 2012

Since Tink seems to have problems with reading comprehension, I have bolded

the more important observations about Chaney's motoring forward. This takes

his BELIEVE ME INSTEAD OF YOUR LYING EYES to an entirely new level.

See the source at http://assassinationresearch.com/v5n1/v5n1costella.pdf, pages 85-86.

Tink says this happened after the limo had already passed the TUP and that

we have simply not been thinking about the temporal relationship here. My

three favorites are Bobby Hargis, Forrest Sorrels, and Chief Jesse Curry:

(1) Forrest Sorrels: "A motorcycle pulled up alongside of the car and Chief

Curry yelled ‘Is anybody hurt?’, to which the officer replied in the affirmative,

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

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

alongside,"

(2) Bobby Hargis: "I remembered seeing Officer Chaney. Chaney put his motor

in first gear and accelerated up to the front to tell them to get everything

out of the way, that he [the President] was coming through, and that is when

the Presidential limousine shot off ….”

(3) Chief Jesse Curry: "at that time I looked in my rear view mirror and I

saw some commotion in the President’s caravan and realized that proba-

bly something was wrong, and it seemed to be speeding up, and about

this time a motorcycle officer, I believe it was Officer Chaney rode up be-

side us and I asked if something happened back there"

MOTORCYCLE POLICE OFFICER CHANEY RODE UP TO THE LEAD CAR

AND SPOKE TO POLICE CHIEF JESSE CURRY

James Chaney (motorcycle policeman, on the right rear fender of the Presi-

dential limousine), November 22, 1963: “Then the, uh, second shot came,

well then I looked back just in time to see the President struck in the

face by the second bullet. He slumped forward into Mrs. Kennedy’s lap,

and uh, it was apparent to me that we’re being fired upon. I went ahead

of the President’s car to inform Chief Curry that the President had been

hit. And then he instructed us over the air to take him to Parkland Hos-

pital, and he had Parkland standing by. I went on up ahead of the—[lead

car]—to notify the officer that was leading the escort that he [the Presi-

dent] had been hit and we’re going to have to move out.” [interview with

Bill Lord of ABC News for WFAA-TV, as quoted in Trask, That Day in Dal-

las]

Bobby Hargis (motorcycle policeman on the left rear fender of the Presiden-

tial limousine), November 23, 1963: “The motorcycle officer on the right

side of the car was Jim Chaney. He immediately went forward, and an-

nounced to the Chief that the President had been shot.” [Daily News re-

port]

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

dential limousine), November 28, 1963: “I noted that the President’s car

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

motorcycle pulled up alongside of the car and Chief Curry yelled ‘Is any-

body hurt?’, to which the officer replied in the affirmative, and Chief

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

had gotten just about under the underpass when the President’s car

pulled up alongside, and at that time Chief Curry’s car had started to

pick up speed, and someone yelled to get to the nearest hospital, and

Chief Curry broadcast for the hospital to be ready.” [statement: 21H548]

Winston Lawson (Secret Service agent, in the lead car ahead of the Presi-

dential limousine), December 1, 1963: “A motorcycle escort officer pulled

alongside our Lead Car and said the President had been shot. Chief

Curry gave a signal over his radio for police to converge on the area of the

incident.” [statement: CE772: 17H632]

James Chaney (motorcycle policeman, on the right rear fender of the Presi-

dential limousine), from the testimony of Marrion Baker (Dallas Police

Officer, on Houston Street when the shots started), March 25, 1964: “I

talked to Jim Chaney, and he made the statement that the two shots hit

Kennedy first and then the other one hit the Governor. (Mr. Belin:

“Where was he?”) Mr. Baker: “He was on the right rear to the car or to

the side, and then at that time the chief of police, he didn’t know any-

thing about this [the shooting], and he [Chaney] moved up and told him

[the chief], and then that was during the time that the Secret Service

men were trying to get in the car ….” [Warren Commission testimony:

3H266]

Bobby Hargis (motorcycle policeman on the left rear fender of the Presiden-

tial limousine), April 8, 1964: “… when President Kennedy straightened

back up in the car the bullet hit him in the head, the one that killed him

and it seemed like his head exploded, and I was splattered with blood

and brain, and kind of a bloody water. It wasn’t really blood. And at that

time the Presidential car slowed down. I heard someone say, ‘Get going,’

or ‘get going,’——” (Mr. Stern: “Someone inside——”) Mr. Hargis: “I don’t

know whether it was the Secret Service car, and I remembered seeing Of-

ficer Chaney. Chaney put his motor in first gear and accelerated up to

the front to tell them to get everything out of the way, that he [the Presi-

dent] was coming through, and that is when the Presidential limousine

shot off ….” [Warren Commission testimony: 6H294]

Chief Jesse Curry (in lead car, in front of the Presidential limousine),

April 15, 1964: “I heard a sharp report. We were near the railroad yards

at the time, and I didn’t know—I didn’t know exactly where this report

came from, whether it was above us or where, but this was followed by

two more reports, and at that time I looked in my rear view mirror and I

saw some commotion in the President’s caravan and realized that proba-

bly something was wrong, and it seemed to be speeding up, and about

this time a motorcycle officer, I believe it was Officer Chaney rode up be-

side us and I asked if something happened back there and he said, ‘Yes,’

and I said, ‘Has somebody been shot?’ And he said, ‘I think so.’ ” [Warren

Commission testimony: 12H28]

Winston Lawson (Secret Service agent, in the lead car ahead of the Presi-

dential limousine), April 23, 1964: “… I recall noting a police officer

pulled up in a motorcycle alongside of us, and mentioned that the Presi-

dent had been hit.” [Warren Commission testimony: 4H353]

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

dential limousine), May 7, 1964: “Within about 3 seconds, there were two

more similar reports. And I said, ‘Let’s get out of here’ and looked back,

all the way back, then, to where the President’s car was, and I saw some

confusion, movement there, and the car just seemed to lurch forward.

And, in the meantime, a motorcycle officer had run up on the right-hand

side and the chief yelled to him, ‘Anybody hurt?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ He said,

‘Lead us to the hospital.’ And the chief took his microphone and told

them to alert the hospital, and said, ‘Surround the building.’ He didn’t

say what building. He just said, ‘Surround the building.’ ” [Warren Com-

mission testimony: 7H345]

It's easy to "lose the thread" on this thread. I think it has exposed an interesting mistake in thinking. You might call it "blindness to when something happened."

One of the quotes given to show that the Zapruder film was altered because Officer Chaney immediately rode ahead of the limousine to rendezvous with the lead car, is this quote from Winston Lawson in the lead car: "A motorcycle escort officer pulled alongside our lead car and said the President had been shot. Chief Curry gave a signal over his radio for police to converge on the area of the incident." (CE 772; 17H632) Since both Officer Chaney and Chief Curry say that Chaney did rendezvous with the lead car, he probably did. The photos show the limousine passing the lead car as Chaney trails some hundreds of feet. So the photo evidence including the Zapruder film plus statements of Lawson, Chaney, and Curry all support the notion that Chaney met up with the lead car after the limousine took off. In short, what Lawson said really happened. It just didn't happen at the time some would have it happen. Remove the "blindness to when it happened" and things become clearer.

Likewise, with respect to the wound in the back of JFK's head. It doesn't show in the Zapruder fim or in the Moorman photo. No eyewitness from Dealey Plaza noted it. Yet it is clear that many witnesses from both Parkland and Bethesda saw it. Yet because it is seen later at Parkland and Bethesda does not mean it was visible in Dealey Plaza and should show up in the Dealey Plaza photo record. A lot happened after Z 313 including JFK getting hit a second time in the head and his body being extracted from the limousine. If one pays attention to the time difference there is no conflict.

JT

Excellent points, Jim. More interesting to me is the fact that the authors themselves appear to need to be reminded of the significance of what this means! That the photographic evidence is inconsistent with the voluminous eyewitness testimony is simply astounding. That the authors themselves have abandoned their earlier, very well thought out, positions--merely because the photographic evidence (as it now appears) does not support it--is disappointing. At the very least, one would hope that they would seek to find out why the discrepancy exists instead of simply dismissing it as though it was an expected outcome. It is anything, but, expected.

Edited January 17, 2012 by James H. Fetzer

David Lifton · January 17, 2012

Pat,

What can I tell you? I have ALREADY EXPLAINED that you take MINOR DISCREPANCIES and attempt to

convert them into MAJOR DIFFERENCES. For your argument to be correct, McClelland, Crenshaw, and

the Dealey Plaza witnesses, the other physicians at Parkland, David's X-ray studies and even frame 374

must all be wrong, not merely with regard to details, but even relative to their gross location of the wound.

Here's the McClelland diagram, which, like the Crenshaw diagram, was drawn/authorized by a physician

who attended JFK at Parkland. Notice how much it agrees with the witnesses and other Parkland reports:

It was first published in SIX SECONDS (1967), with an accompanying description by Dr. McClelland, and

a comment by the author, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound" (p. 107).

So what has happened in the meanwhile to cause Josiah Thompson to change his mind? Notice that this

wound is clearly inconsistent with the Moorman Polaroid, if it does not display a massive cranial defect.

Here is a comparison from BEST EVIDENCE (1980) that illustrates the gross differences between what

the Parkland physicians initially observed, the Bethesda autopsy report, and the HSCA reconstruction.

No one would imagine in their wildest dreams that the Moorman Polaroid is consistent with the Bethesda

autopsy report. If the blow out is missing, why would anyone think it is consistent with Parkland, either?

I can't believe you brought up the McClelland drawing, Jim. Have you forgotten we've been through this before, and that I

demonstrated that the drawing is NOT consistent with the statements of the witnesses? From patspeer.com, chapter 18c:

. . .

So there you have it. Only 7 of these 18 witnesses can honestly be claimed to have described a wound at the "low right rear" a la Mantik and Wecht, at the "bottom of the back of the head," a la Lifton, or in the location depicted in the "McClelland" drawing, a la Groden. 7 of 18, need it be said, is not the "almost unanimous" claimed by Mantik and Wecht, based on the research of Aguilar, nor the "every" purported by Groden.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates your incompetence at research than your dismissal of McClelland and your treatment of the other witnesses. You are not even taking into account THE ROLE OF PERSPECTIVE. The Willises were to his right side, where Phil appears to have seen the blow-out of the skull flap. Ed Hoffman was looking downward and similarly for others. VIRTUALLY ALL OF THEM ARE LOCATING THE WOUND IN THE SAME GENERAL AREA AT THE BACK OF THE HEAD.

But let's assume you are right: there is a mix of reports, because, after all, he had several wounds (when you factor in the blow-out of the skull flap). BY YOUR OWN CALCULATION, THERE WERE AT LEAST 7 WITNESSES WHO REPORTED THE BLOW-OUT AT THE CENTER-RIGHT OF THE BACK OF HIS HEAD, just as McClelland and Crenshaw described it in their diagrams. THEY ARE LOCATING IT AT THE BACK OF THE HEAD. NONE WERE LOCATING IT AT THE SIDE.

Now why would McClelland and Crenshaw, who were both experience physicians, HAVE GOT THIS WRONG? It is easy to grasp why bystanders with no experience in dealing with victims of gunshot wounds, might be impresses with the skull-flap as it was blown open at precisely the same time that his brains were being blown out the back of his head to the left-rear. And, lest you forget, Officer Hargis, riding to the left/rear, was hit by the debris so hard he initially thought he had been shot!

Unless you are implying that Josiah Thompson was incompetent when he composed SIX SECONDS (1967), why in the world would he make an observation of the kind that he does there on page 107 in relation to the McClelland diagram, which I believe he invited for publication in his book, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound"? WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WOULD HAVE WRITTEN, "This is the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound"?

Have you bothered to check that reference, because, beside the diagram itself, we have the following testimony from Dr. Robert N. McClelland, an extraordinary head-wound witness, whom Josiah Thompson quotes as follows on page 107:

"As I too the position at the head of the table . . . I was in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half, and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out."

So we not only have--by your own admission--seven witnesses who confirm this location but also a very specific, detailed description of the wound by Dr. McClelland, which even Tink acknowledges to be the clearest description we have of the Kennedy head wound! It is generally consistent with the locations specified by the witnesses and with David's X-ray studies. WHY WOULD YOU OR ANYONE ELSE THINK THEY SHOULD BE IN PRECISE AGREEMENT IN EVERY DETAIL?

BECAUSE YOU DO NOT FIND AGREEMENT IN EVERY DETAIL, YOU WANT TO EXAGGERATE THE DIFFERENCES AND SUPPRESS THE GROSS AGREEMENT ABOUT ITS LOCATION AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. That is not a responsible attitude to adopt toward witnesses who were not medical professionals as the event unfolded in the plaza and it is completely absurd relative to medical professionals, which is where you commit your most grievous blunder, as I shall show.

(continued)

Jim, you're always harping on about how someone should read such and such, and then after one reading of this magical work, they would KNOW you are right. Well, it's incredibly clear you have never read my online book on all this, which pretty much destroys your every argument. You're even in there a few times.

Let's start with your double-standard. You have it that witnesses' first statements are the best when they fit your agenda, but IGNORE them when they do not. You not only IGNORE that ALL the authenticated Dealey Plaza witnesses said the wound was on the side of the head, and failed to see a wound on the back of the head, you've now taken to pretending they said it was on the back of the head, and that my thoughts on all this are in opposition to their statements, rather than BASED on their statements. You also show your double-standard by including people like Clint Hill as a back of the head witness, when his recollection of the wound location is perhaps two inches from its filmed location, and about four inches from YOUR proposed location. If you look at my slide of the Groden witnesses, you'll see that numerous other witnesses also said the wound was in a location closer to its official location than YOUR proposed location. So, let's not kid ourselves. YOUR proposed location is NO closer to the location described by the Parkland witnesses than the location depicted in the autopsy photos. This is OBVIOUS when one looks at Groden's photos. We can go through them one by one, if you like.

But let's just take two, for now. Your friend Crenshaw's recollection of the wound location is nearly worthless--not only did he only see the wound for a second or two at best, he failed to write down his recollection for decades, and only did so after the so-called "McClelland drawing" had made the rounds as a supposedly authentic depiction of what was seen at Parkland. Which brings me to McClelland. While you and many others like to tout him as THE authority on all this, you IGNORE his earliest statements, which indicate that his latter statements are not to be taken so seriously.

Here's what he wrote on the day of the shooting.

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

Robert N. McClelland M.D.

Asst. Prof. of Surgery

Southwestern Med.

School of Univ of Tex.

Dallas, Texas

And here is what he told your pal Livingston's old school chum Richard Dudman a few weeks later: "As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front."

Think about it, Jim. You've been chasing phantoms. And pushing nonsense. There was NO blow-out wound on the back of the head below the ear.

You are lifting the McClelland quote out of context, and --as is often the case--context is everything.

Dr. McClelland was visited by Secret Service agents who showed him the Bethesda autopsy report, which contained two entries on the back of the body, not observed in Dallas, and a description of the head wound that was entirely different than what was observed in Dallas.

After he saw that report is (as I recall) when he made the statement you are quoting.

As to the rest, I believe you are promoting entirely incorrect information.

More on this later.

DSL

Pat Speer · January 17, 2012

Jim, you're always harping on about how someone should read such and such, and then after one reading of this magical work, they would KNOW you are right. Well, it's incredibly clear you have never read my online book on all this, which pretty much destroys your every argument. You're even in there a few times.

Let's start with your double-standard. You have it that witnesses' first statements are the best when they fit your agenda, but IGNORE them when they do not. You not only IGNORE that ALL the authenticated Dealey Plaza witnesses said the wound was on the side of the head, and failed to see a wound on the back of the head, you've now taken to pretending they said it was on the back of the head, and that my thoughts on all this are in opposition to their statements, rather than BASED on their statements. You also show your double-standard by including people like Clint Hill as a back of the head witness, when his recollection of the wound location is perhaps two inches from its filmed location, and about four inches from YOUR proposed location. If you look at my slide of the Groden witnesses, you'll see that numerous other witnesses also said the wound was in a location closer to its official location than YOUR proposed location. So, let's not kid ourselves. YOUR proposed location is NO closer to the location described by the Parkland witnesses than the location depicted in the autopsy photos. This is OBVIOUS when one looks at Groden's photos. We can go through them one by one, if you like.

But let's just take two, for now. Your friend Crenshaw's recollection of the wound location is nearly worthless--not only did he only see the wound for a second or two at best, he failed to write down his recollection for decades, and only did so after the so-called "McClelland drawing" had made the rounds as a supposedly authentic depiction of what was seen at Parkland. Which brings me to McClelland. While you and many others like to tout him as THE authority on all this, you IGNORE his earliest statements, which indicate that his latter statements are not to be taken so seriously.

Here's what he wrote on the day of the shooting.

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

ADMISSION NOTE

DATE AND HOUR Nov. 22, 1963 4:45 P.M. DOCTOR: Robert N. McClelland

Statement Regarding Assassination of President Kennedy

At approximately 12:45 PM on the above date I was called from the second floor of Parkland Hospital and went immediately to the Emergency Operating Room. When I arrived President Kennedy was being attended by Drs Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, James Carrico, and Ronald Jones. The President was at the time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube and assisted respiration was started immediately by Dr. Carrico on Duty in the EOR when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and I then performed a tracheotomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury and Dr. Jones and Paul Peters inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoracis secondary to the tracheomediastinal injury. Simultaneously Dr. Jones had started 3 cut-downs giving blood and fluids immediately, In spite of this, at 12:55 he was pronounced dead by Dr. Kemp Clark the neurosurgeon and professor of neurosurgery who arrived immediately after I did. The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. He was pronounced dead after external cardiac message failed and ECG activity was gone.

Robert N. McClelland M.D.

Asst. Prof. of Surgery

Southwestern Med.

School of Univ of Tex.

Dallas, Texas

And here is what he told your pal Livingston's old school chum Richard Dudman a few weeks later: "As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front."

Think about it, Jim. You've been chasing phantoms. And pushing nonsense. There was NO blow-out wound on the back of the head below the ear.

You are lifting the McClelland quote out of context, and --as is often the case--context is everything.

Dr. McClelland was visited by Secret Service agents who showed him the Bethesda autopsy report, which contained two entries on the back of the body, not observed in Dallas, and a description of the head wound that was entirely different than what was observed in Dallas.

After he saw that report is (as I recall) when he made the statement you are quoting.

As to the rest, I believe you are promoting entirely incorrect information.

More on this later.

DSL

I think we're on different pages here, David. The purpose of the December SS visit, to my understanding, was not to get the Parkland doctors to go along with the autopsy report's description of the head wound, but the throat wound. The description of the head wound in the autopsy report, after all, was a description of the wound after scalp was reflected and skull fell to the table, and included damage to the occipital bone. I don't recall any of the Parkland doctors being surprised by its description. If they were, it certainly had little or no impact on their Warren Commission testimony, which more than confirmed the early reports of a wound on the back half of the head. Did Dr. McClelland say he was scared into lying to Dudman, or is this something you've put together on your own?

P.S. On second thought I think I see what you're getting at. McClelland, and others, first thought the back of the head wound was an exit for a shot from the front, and only changed their opinions after being told the large wound was an exit for a smaller entrance wound near the EOP. My point, however, stands. McClelland told Dudman he had "no reason" to suspect shots had come from the front. Unless he was lying, this would indicate that he, as of mid-December, did not believe the wound was a blow-out wound low on the back of the skull. Correct? I mean, if he felt certain the wound was an exit low on the back of the skull, he couldn't possibly believe it was the exit for the entrance low on the back of the skull described in the autopsy report, could he?

Edited January 18, 2012 by Pat Speer

Pat Speer · January 17, 2012

Gary Aguilar from MIDP, p. 233

"For the 25th observance of the assassination (1988) four Parkland physicians (Robert McClelland, RIchard Dulaney, Paul Peters, and Marion Jenkins) traveled to the National Archives to view the autopsy materials. On leaving, they were asked by Nova if their recollections disagreed with the photographs. This time many investigators expected they would disagree, but now--another kind of surprise--these physicians seemed to imply that they had seen no discrepancies. Nonetheless, on subsequent careful questioning, they later complained that the Nova program had either misquoted or misinterpreted their comments...." (italics added)

As per Sibert and O'Neill, I quoted them not for directionality, or if the wound was one of entrance or exit, just where it was and its size. Anyone can check my source if you think its wrong.

But further, they both prepared diagrams for the ARRB. They picture the wound in the rear of the skull. (See Gary Aguilar's essay in MIDP, FIgure 8, p. 200) When shown the back of the head photo, O'Neill said it looked like the photo had been gussied up in some way. He had seen a more massive wound. (ibid p. 208) This testimony aligns with my previous quote of his. SIbert said the same. When Gunn showed him what I like to call the VItalis hair grooming photo, he said it did not look like that at all...."There was much--Well, the wound was more pronounced." He went on to say that the photo looked like a reconstruction. (ibid)

As per McClelland, let us quote him from the WC, on this actual wound, not on where the shot came from:

"...probably a third or so, at least of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out." (6H 33)

Anyone who has read a book on the medical evidence knows where cerebellar tissue is at.

Jim, only one of the six witnesses you mention ever indicated the wound was LOW on the back of the head where most CTs assume it to have been. Well, if we're to conclude the wound was NOT where these people said it was, why not assume it's where the Dealey Plaza witnesses said it was, where it's shown in the autopsy photos, X-Rays, and Zapruder film?

From chapter 18c:

Groden starts out with the photos of four witnesses who claimed to have seen the shooting.

While Beverly Oliver claims to have been one of the closest witnesses to the shooting, many if not most long time researchers doubt her claims, as she only came forward years after the shooting, and told some pretty wild stories. Even so her description of a wound on the back of the head is in keeping with the wound described by Dr. McClelland, and the drawing prepared by Phillip Johnson. Back of the head witness.

Although Phil Willis made several statements over the years indicating he thought the fatal shot blew out the back of Kennedy's head, he was clearly repeating what his wife and daughters had told him. You see, he'd testified before the Warren Commission that he was not looking at Kennedy at the time of the head shot. Not actually a witness.

Although Marilyn Willis, Phil's wife, was a witness to the head shot, and said the wound was on the "back" of Kennedy's head, when ultimately asked to point out the location of the wound she saw from 50 yards or so away, she pointed to a location high on the top of her head above her right ear. Top of the head witness.

While deaf-mute Ed Hoffman only came forward years after the assassination, and while his stories of watching the shooting from a nearby freeway and then seeing Kennedy's wounds as the limo passed underneath were never fully accepted, he was at least consistent on one point: he always placed the head wound on the top of Kennedy's head. Not always in the same way, mind you. While the photo in Groden's book shows Hoffman with his hand over the crown of his head, and his fingers over the wound location shown in the autopsy photos, other photos found online show him with his hand forward of this location, and more in line with the wound seen on the autopsy photos. Top of the head witness.

Groden then presents the photos of ten witnesses observing Kennedy's wound at Parkland Hospital.

As one might expect, the head wound location pointed out by Dr. Robert McClelland is fairly consistent with the head wound location depicted in the drawing by Johnson based upon McClelland's Warren Commission testimony. Fairly consistent but not fully consistent. McClelland's hand in the photo is, in fact, almost entirely above his ear, which places the wound about two inches higher on the back of his head than in the drawing. This is not surprising. As previously mentioned, Josiah Thompson, who'd arranged for the drawing's creation, insists that Dr. McClelland had actually had "nothing to do with" its creation. And it's not as if McClelland's recollections were reliable anyhow...

Although he stood at the head of Kennedy in the ER at Parkland and was thus well-positioned to note his fatal wounds, McClelland's initial report claimed the fatal wound was on Kennedy's left temple, and not his right. While he would later claim he wrote this after Dr. Jenkins led him to believe there was a separate entrance on the left temple, this fails to explain why Dr. McClelland wrote that "The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple." By writing "of the left temple," as opposed to "to the left temple," McClelland had failed to indicate there was any wound anywhere but on the left temple. This suggests that, perhaps just perhaps, Dr. McClelland actually thought the large head wound was near Kennedy's right temple, and that he'd confused his right with his left after looking at Kennedy upside down. Now, this might seem unfair. Dr. McClelland appears to be a very nice man, and has been most helpful to researchers and writers. But some of his claims are clearly wrong. In 2009, he told a Canadian radio interviewer that the "massive" wound on the back of Kennedy's head was "at least five inches in diameter." Such a wound would, of course, envelop the entire head. When discussing the drawing made for Thompson with the ARRB, moreover, after noting that "the edge of the parietal bone was sticking up through the scalp. And that's not on this picture" McClelland made another monstrous gaffe, adding "but what we were trying to depict here was what the posterior part of the wound looked like. In other words, it's not the entire wound. It's simply the posterior part of it and what I thought of as the critical part of it at that time and still do." Yep. That's right. Dr. McClelland had in time come to believe both that the wound stretched further forward than as depicted in the "McClelland" drawing...and that he'd participated in the creation of the drawing.

It's actually worse than that. Since at least his appearance in Robert Groden's 1993 documentary JFK:The Case for Conspiracy, in which he holds a copy of the drawing up for the camera and declares "This is the drawing I had made for Josiah Thompson's book," McClelland has claimed a connection to the drawing. In 1994, what's worse, he signed a copy of the "McClelland" drawing for researcher Brad Parker and indicated that he'd personally created the drawing. According to Thompson, of course, McClelland had nothing to do with the drawing's creation. He did not draw it. He was not consulted on its creation. Nothing... Ouch. The fallibility of human memory... Back of the head witness who does not support the accuracy of the McClelland drawing.

Dr. Paul Peters, on the other hand, has tried to have it both ways. Although he had repeatedly claimed the wound he saw was in the "occiput" or the back of Kennedy's head, and is pictured in Groden's book pointing to this location, he also told Nova, after being shown Kennedy's autopsy photos in 1988, that the autopsy photos were "pretty much as I remember President Kennedy." He later confirmed his support for the legitimacy of the autopsy photos, furthermore, by telling Gerald Posner that the "head wound is more forward than I first placed it. More to the side than to the rear." When interviewed by the ARRB and given yet another chance to claim the autopsy photos and x-rays were fake, moreover, he claimed instead that "I was amazed when I saw the first x-ray of the skull — the lateral skull of the extent of the fragmentation of the skull. I did not appreciate that I think because a lot of it was covered by scalp at the time we worked on him. We were doing a resuscitation, not a forensic autopsy." He had thereby deferred to the accuracy of the x-rays. Back of the head witness who does not support the accuracy of the McClelland drawing, and defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos.

Fortunately, Dr. Kenneth Salyer was a little more consistent. But only a little. From his Warren Commission testimony to the present day, he always claimed the wound was primarily a temporal wound...on the side of the head. The photo in Groden's book, moreover, shows him grabbing the side of his head, just above his ear, an area at least as suggestive of the wound in the photos as the one in the "McClelland" drawing. Side of the head witness.

Dr. Charles Crenshaw, of course, became a star witness for the supposed wound on the "back of the head" when he wrote a book on his experiences in the early nineties. The problem with Crenshaw as a witness, however, is that, not only did he fail to see Kennedy for more than a few seconds, his recollections were not recorded prior to the publication of the "McClelland" drawing showing him how other Parkland witnesses purportedly recalled the wound. Back of the head witness.

Dr. Ronald Jones, as Peters, has claimed many times in many ways that the wound was on the back of Kennedy's head. In the photo in Groden's book, however, he points to a wound location slightly to the side of the wound on the "McClelland" drawing. In 1992, furthermore, he described the wound as a "side wound." To the ARRB, ultimately, he explained his confusion, insisting "it was difficult to see down through the hair," and by admitting "All my view was from the President's left side." He then clarified his position to researcher Vincent Palamara, first admitting that he really didn't have "a clear view of the back side of the head wound. President Kennedy had very thick dark hair that covered the injured area" and then offering "In my opinion it was in the occipital area in the back of the head." He had thereby made it clear that he'd failed to see the large hole missing scalp and bone depicted in the "McClelland"drawing. Back of the head witness who does not support the accuracy of the McClelland drawing, and defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos and X-Rays.

As the first doctor to inspect Kennedy upon his arrival at Parkland, Dr. Charles Carrico would certainly have been in good position to accurately note the wound location on Kennedy's head. While the wound location he points to in Groden's book is actually a bit too high for anyone to claim he confirmed the "McClelland" drawing, it's really academic. You see, on January 11, 1978, Dr. Carrico was interviewed by the HSCA staff, and specified that the head wound was "five to seven centimeters, something like that, 2 1/2 by 3 inches, ragged, had blood and hair all around it," and was "located in the part of the parietal occipital region...above and posterior to the ear, almost from the crown of the head." Uhhh, this is clearly NOT the wound depicted in the McClelland drawing. In 1981, when the Boston Globe asked him specifically about the "McClelland" drawing, moreover, Carrico replied "it was a very large wound as indicated in the drawing. However, I do not believe that the large wound was this far posterior since, one thing I can be certain of, is that we were able to see the majority, if not all of this wound, with the patient laying on his back on a hospital gurney. The location of the wound represented in the drawing suggests that it would barely have been visible, if visible at all, with the patient laying in such a position." When asked to comment on the HSCA's tracing of the back of the head photo, in which the back of the head is intact and the wound is above the ear, moreover, he told them there was "nothing incompatible" between what he remembered and the drawing. Well, that oughta seal it, but if that's not enough, Dr. Carrico eventually made his rejection of the McClelland drawing's accuracy crystal clear. In 1992, he told single-assassin salesman Gerald Posner that if he and his colleagues had initially claimed the head wound was in the occipital bone, instead of the parietal bone, they "were mistaken." Yep. It's a slam dunk case. Dr. Carrico rejected the accuracy of the McClelland drawing, and deferred to the accuracy of the autopsy photos. Back of the head witness who does not support the accuracy of the McClelland drawing, and defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos.

Although Dr. Richard Dulaney made a number of statements over the years suggesting the large head wound was on the back of Kennedy's head, the wound location he points to in Groden's book and video is up at the top of the head...as close to the wound depicted in the autopsy photos as the one depicted in the "McClelland" drawing. Only making matters worse for those claiming him as a "back of the head" witness, moreover, is that, after being shown the autopsy photos, he told the television show Nova in 1988 that he failed to see "evidence of any alteration of (the) wound in these pictures from what I saw in the emergency room." Top of the head witness who defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos.

Nurse Audrey Bell is similar to Dr. Crenshaw in that, while she has been consistent in her claim that the wound was on the back of Kennedy's head, there is no record of her making this claim prior to the 1980's, long after the "McClelland" drawing was published in Six Seconds in Dallas. Back of the head witness.

Justice of the Peace Theran Ward is also similar to Dr. Crenshaw, in that he really didn't get much of a look at the head wound. Even so, when one looks at the interview with Ward in Groden's Case for Conspiracy video, and in the image on the slide above, it's clear that Ward, much as Dr. Salyer, felt the wound was on the side of Kennedy's head, and not the back. Side of the head witness.

This brings us to the final Parkland witness presented in Groden's book. And he wasn't even a witness... While ambulance driver Aubrey Rike claimed to feel a hole in the back of Kennedy's head as he helped put his body in its casket, he has always admitted the head was covered at the time, and that he never actually saw the wound. As a result it's possible Rike was mistaken, or merely confused by the fractured bone on the back of the skull seen on the x-rays. Not actually a witness.

We now move to the Bethesda "back of the head" witnesses... The statements of these witnesses, purported to confirm the Parkland doctors' account of the wounds, should seal the deal if there was really a wound on the back of the head behind the ear.

Unfortunately, they do no such thing. While radiology tech Jerrol Custer made many statements over the years indicating that he thought the autopsy photos and X-rays were faked, he actually told the ARRB, after having finally been shown the original X-rays, that they were indeed the ones he took on 11-22-63, and that he had been in error. This, of course, was years after the publication of Groden's book. Even so, when one watches Groden's video, JFK: The Case For Conspiracy, one can see that Custer was never really a "back of the head" witness, as he does not point out a wound on the back of Kennedy's head, as suggested by the frame used in Groden's book, but drags his hand across the entire top of his head while claiming the wound he saw stretched "From the top of the head almost to the base of the skull..." He was thereby describing the wound's appearance after the scalp was reflected, and the brain was removed. (In support of this proposition, it should be noted that he'd also claimed there was no brain in the skull that he could remember.) Entire right side of the head witness. Defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos.

Ditto Paul O'Connor. While O'Connor, as Custer, had made many statements over the years suggesting the autopsy photos and X-rays had been faked, his credibility, seeing as he'd depicted the wound location in the upper right quadrant of the back of the head in a drawing he'd created for the HSCA, and then moved it to beneath the top of the ear years later, was questionable. In Groden's video The Case for Conspiracy, moreover, O'Connor repeated Custer's performance almost word for word, stating there was "an open area all the way across into the rear of the brain right there," while pointing out the dimensions of this hole--basically the dimensions of the hole after Kennedy's scalp had been reflected, and his brain had been removed. O'Connor, as Custer, also claimed no brain was in the skull when he observed the large defect. He was thereby, like it or not, supporting the accuracy of the autopsy photos and the official story of the wounds. Entire right side of the head witness.

Ditto ditto assistant autopsy photographer Floyd Riebe. Much as Custer, Riebe made many statements suggesting the autopsy photos were fake--in Groden's book, he even pointed at the location of the wound in the "McClelland" drawing. Once shown the original photos by the ARRB, however, he, too, deferred to their accuracy. Back of the head witness who defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos.

This leaves us with Frank O'Neill, an FBI agent who observed Kennedy's autopsy. While O'Neill claimed the large head wound included part of the back of Kennedy's head, he always placed this wound at the top of the back of the head, inches above the wound in the "McClelland" drawing. He also claimed, in his report on the autopsy, that a "high velocity bullet had entered the rear of the skull and had fragmentized prior to exit through the top of the skull." His recollection of the wounds is therefore more supportive of the wound described by the autopsy doctors than of the wound depicted in the "McClelland" drawing, which shows, after all, a blow-out wound on the back of the skull... not the top of the skull. Top of the head witness.

Chris Scally · January 17, 2012

Can I assume from your first statement above, then, that you believe the account of Homer McMahon, which is based (insofar as it relates to

the films's presence at Hawkeye) on what "Secret Service agent Bill Smith" told him?

YES--Homer appear to me to have been candid about his experience at NPIC. YES--A Secret Service agent who identified himself as "William

Smith" told them that he had brought the film from Rochester. It was a 16mm unsplit film, which differed in content from the 8mm, split

film that had been brought there from Dallas the day before. Doug Horne has done a brilliant job of discussing this in Vol. IV of INSIDE

THE ARRB. I summarize some of the ARRB's most important findings about the film, the properties that distinguish the original from the

extant version, and other aspects of this issue in "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication", which, I gather, you have

already studied.

Further, does your response to my question regarding the identities of anyone involved in altering the film mean that you no longer subscribe

to the view that "it is highly probable that Rollie Zavada might have been involved in the production of the substitute version of the film"

at Kodak's Hawkeye Plant in Rochester, as you suggested in your 'Real Deal' interview with Doug Horne on Friday, November 18, last (1 hour

17 minutes 30 seconds into the programme)?

WELL, this is most interesting. Rollie Zavada of course was an expert on celluloid, not on content. The five physical differences

that Doug elaborates upon should have been apparent to Rollie. I find it very odd that he was brought out of retirement to deal with the

ARRB on this issue, just as George Joannides was brought out of retirement to deal with the HSCA reinvestigation. I am not the only

one who has been disenchanted with his performance, where the limitations of his competence should have led him to dissociate

himself from determinations of film authenticity or made it clear that he was ONLY ADDRESSING WHETHER THE FILM WAS TAKEN

ON AUTHENTIC KODAK FILM. Tell me if you think I have it wrong.

Jim

Dr. Fetzer:

Many thanks for your reply.

So you "know" the film was altered at Rochester, because of the unsworn evidence of Homer McMahon to the ARRB, nearly 34 years after the event? Let me quote these three extracts from his taped interview with Doug Horne, Michelle Combs and Jeremy Gunn on July 14, 1997:

"I have senile dementia. I can’t really answer that. Most of my reflections are what I have recalled and remembered after the fact. In other words, I did it once, and then I recalled it, and remembered it. I don’t know how the mind works, but I do know that I am not. I am a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Do you know what a wet brain is? You’re looking at one. I damn near died. And I’m not a competent witness because I don’t have good recall. Absolutely not - absolute recall."

"I don’t have good remembrance anyway. I’m almost 70 years old, I’m almost 80 years old, I’m almost 90 years old, I don’t know, but that was the best of my knowledge."

"I just told you, I don’t have a full deck. I don’t know how (laughs) I am presenting anything here. This is not...at the time I did it I was not, I was not impaired, but I later became impaired. So whether you are talking to a reliable witness or not, that’s up to you to decide. (laughs)"

Elsewhere in the interview, McMahon - head of NPIC's colour lab at the time - claimed not to know Captain Pierre Sands, the Deputy Director at NPIC. Doug Horne then told McMahon that McMahon's assistant, Ben Hunter, "independently recalled that a Captain Sands brought in the film and he could not remember anyone being with him. Subsequently he remembered there might have been a Secret Service fellow, but he remembered a Captain Sands." Doug Horne continued, "If I was to call this person Captain Sands, would that help any?". McMahon replied: "Okay. We might have had an intermediate naval officer that brought the chap in. Someone had to bring him in because they wouldn’t have had clearance and to get behind the barrier was pretty tough to do (laughs) without either presidential or above Top Secret clearance (laughs)."

I should also add that Ben Hunter never remembered the name ‘Bill Smith’, even after discussing the matter with McMahon, nor did he recall anything being said about the film having been processed at Rochester. (Horne Vol. IV, p. 1224, Murder In Dealey Plaza, p. 322) Furthermore, Doug Horne subsequently checked a roster of all Secret Service agents attached to the White House Detail in 1963, and found that there was no agent named Bill (or William) Smith on that list. (Horne Vol. IV, p. 1223)

That said, I don't believe that McMahon set out to deliberately mislead the ARRB. I believe that McMahon – because of the references to the Secret Service being the initial source of the film – may have simply erred by assuming that "Bill Smith" was a Secret Service agent, and then assumed the reference to Kodak was to the Kodak plant in Rochester (with which McMahon would have been familiar), rather than Kodak in Dallas. By then mixing facts and assumptions together, he finished up with the story he told to the ARRB. A simple explanation, perhaps – but the simple explanation is often the correct one.

Turning now to your response regarding Rollie Zavada's implied involvement in the "production of the substitute version of the film" at Kodak in Rochester, his credentials and area of expertise have absolutely NOTHING to do with my question. As for his report for the ARRB, he DID "dissociate himself from determinations of film authenticity". Indeed, when Doug Horne was critical of his FAILURE to state that the film was authentic, you will be aware that Zavada responded by saying that his "report did not contain a statement or certification of authenticity for one simple reason! ARRB requested – through you - that ‘NO’ statement of authenticity be provided: by me (Rollie Zavada) or by Kodak." (Zavada's Open Letter response to Doug Horne’s Chapter 14, May 26, 2010, p.1).

I would suggest that your response is a VERY long way from proving that Zavada was in any way involved in anything improper, which is what you said on the 'Real Deal' interview in November.

In summary, I'm sorry to say that I am still far from convinced that you really do KNOW the 'who, where and when' of the allegedly production of any substitute version of the Zapruder film.

Chris.

January 17, 2012

That's fine, Chris. I had wondered if you were trying to "set me up". I am sure that David Lifton will find this post as fascinating as I do. If you understand "inference to the best explanation", you know that we are dealing with probabilities and likelihoods, where likelihoods as measures of evidential support for an hypothesis h, given evidence e, are equal to the probability of evidence e, if that hypothesis h were true. It's evaluating possible causes in relation of to observed effects by calculating the probability of those effects if those causes had produced them and comparing them.

Since this reasoning is common in forensic research and police investigations, I often use simple illustrations such as, if the police discover a corpse with no bullet wounds or knife marks, but some bruising around the throat, then what is the likelihood that they were shot, stabbed, or strangled? Obviously, the probability that they were shot, when there are no bullet wounds, would be zero. Similarly for having been stabbed, when there are no knife wounds. Having been strangled has a higher probability, given the evidence, even if the autopsy reveals that the victim had been poisoned.

We know two films were brought to the NPIC, one an 8mm split film developed in Dallas, the other an unsplit 16mm film that a man who identified himself as "William Smith" reported was developed in Rochester. The film was clearly faked at some place and some time. Rochester happens to be the location of Kodak Headquarters, where the CIA has a secret lab called "Hawkeye Works". The likelihood that a fake film (as an effect) was developed at a secret CIA lab some where (as its cause) is overwhelming, where the location at in Rochester appears to be--far and away--the most reasonable possibility.

I thought there was something funny about you from the beginning and sensed some kind of trap. Do you have in mind a different location, such as Ft. Meade, perhaps, that would account for all of the evidence, including the five physical differences that are discussed in "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication"? Homer and Ben's story makes sense, even if he (Homer) is no long in the best of cognitive conditions. No empirical knowledge is certain, where you appear to be imposing a standard of proof that is not appropriate to this case. If you are aware of a more reasonable alternative, kindly share it with us.

You not only adopt an overly stringent standard for the possession of knowledge but you are employing ad hominem attacks in your attempts to discredit Homer McMahon, in particular. You seem to think that we need signed confessions from CIA employees who worked at "Hawkeye Works" to establish what happened here. However, given the circumstantial evidence we have about the film, which has "settled down" given the additional information we have from the investigation by the ARRB--where you can quibble about my use of that word here, too--there really isn't room for a lot of doubt about it. And even a "confession" could be faked.

So (1) we have a phony film, which you do not appear to dispute; (2) we have a location where it was brought, which you also do not appear to dispute; (3) it has to have been processed somewhere, which I am sure you will not dispute; (4) the CIA has a secret lab in Rochester, which I suppose you are also going to grant; (5) the party who delivered the fake film said it had been developed in Rochester, which is what you are attempting to undermine by your ad hominems against Homer and Ben; but where (6) INSIDE THE ARRB provides considerable corroboration. If we were to obtain additional new evidence, we could reassess the situation.

Is there something I have missed?

Can I assume from your first statement above, then, that you believe the account of Homer McMahon, which is based (insofar as it relates to

the films's presence at Hawkeye) on what "Secret Service agent Bill Smith" told him?

YES--Homer appear to me to have been candid about his experience at NPIC. YES--A Secret Service agent who identified himself as "William

Smith" told them that he had brought the film from Rochester. It was a 16mm unsplit film, which differed in content from the 8mm, split

film that had been brought there from Dallas the day before. Doug Horne has done a brilliant job of discussing this in Vol. IV of INSIDE

THE ARRB. I summarize some of the ARRB's most important findings about the film, the properties that distinguish the original from the

extant version, and other aspects of this issue in "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication", which, I gather, you have

already studied.

Further, does your response to my question regarding the identities of anyone involved in altering the film mean that you no longer subscribe

to the view that "it is highly probable that Rollie Zavada might have been involved in the production of the substitute version of the film"

at Kodak's Hawkeye Plant in Rochester, as you suggested in your 'Real Deal' interview with Doug Horne on Friday, November 18, last (1 hour

17 minutes 30 seconds into the programme)?

WELL, this is most interesting. Rollie Zavada of course was an expert on celluloid, not on content. The five physical differences

that Doug elaborates upon should have been apparent to Rollie. I find it very odd that he was brought out of retirement to deal with the

ARRB on this issue, just as George Joannides was brought out of retirement to deal with the HSCA reinvestigation. I am not the only

one who has been disenchanted with his performance, where the limitations of his competence should have led him to dissociate

himself from determinations of film authenticity or made it clear that he was ONLY ADDRESSING WHETHER THE FILM WAS TAKEN

ON AUTHENTIC KODAK FILM. Tell me if you think I have it wrong.

Jim

Dr. Fetzer:

Many thanks for your reply.

So you "know" the film was altered at Rochester, because of the unsworn evidence of Homer McMahon to the ARRB, nearly 34 years after the event? Let me quote these three extracts from his taped interview with Doug Horne, Michelle Combs and Jeremy Gunn on July 14, 1997:

"I have senile dementia. I can’t really answer that. Most of my reflections are what I have recalled and remembered after the fact. In other words, I did it once, and then I recalled it, and remembered it. I don’t know how the mind works, but I do know that I am not. I am a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Do you know what a wet brain is? You’re looking at one. I damn near died. And I’m not a competent witness because I don’t have good recall. Absolutely not - absolute recall."

"I don’t have good remembrance anyway. I’m almost 70 years old, I’m almost 80 years old, I’m almost 90 years old, I don’t know, but that was the best of my knowledge."

"I just told you, I don’t have a full deck. I don’t know how (laughs) I am presenting anything here. This is not...at the time I did it I was not, I was not impaired, but I later became impaired. So whether you are talking to a reliable witness or not, that’s up to you to decide. (laughs)"

Elsewhere in the interview, McMahon - head of NPIC's colour lab at the time - claimed not to know Captain Pierre Sands, the Deputy Director at NPIC. Doug Horne then told McMahon that McMahon's assistant, Ben Hunter, "independently recalled that a Captain Sands brought in the film and he could not remember anyone being with him. Subsequently he remembered there might have been a Secret Service fellow, but he remembered a Captain Sands." Doug Horne continued, "If I was to call this person Captain Sands, would that help any?". McMahon replied: "Okay. We might have had an intermediate naval officer that brought the chap in. Someone had to bring him in because they wouldn’t have had clearance and to get behind the barrier was pretty tough to do (laughs) without either presidential or above Top Secret clearance (laughs)."

I should also add that Ben Hunter never remembered the name ‘Bill Smith’, even after discussing the matter with McMahon, nor did he recall anything being said about the film having been processed at Rochester. (Horne Vol. IV, p. 1224, Murder In Dealey Plaza, p. 322) Furthermore, Doug Horne subsequently checked a roster of all Secret Service agents attached to the White House Detail in 1963, and found that there was no agent named Bill (or William) Smith on that list. (Horne Vol. IV, p. 1223)

That said, I don't believe that McMahon set out to deliberately mislead the ARRB. I believe that McMahon – because of the references to the Secret Service being the initial source of the film – may have simply erred by assuming that "Bill Smith" was a Secret Service agent, and then assumed the reference to Kodak was to the Kodak plant in Rochester (with which McMahon would have been familiar), rather than Kodak in Dallas. By then mixing facts and assumptions together, he finished up with the story he told to the ARRB. A simple explanation, perhaps – but the simple explanation is often the correct one.

Turning now to your response regarding Rollie Zavada's implied involvement in the "production of the substitute version of the film" at Kodak in Rochester, his credentials and area of expertise have absolutely NOTHING to do with my question. As for his report for the ARRB, he DID "dissociate himself from determinations of film authenticity". Indeed, when Doug Horne was critical of his FAILURE to state that the film was authentic, you will be aware that Zavada responded by saying that his "report did not contain a statement or certification of authenticity for one simple reason! ARRB requested – through you - that ‘NO’ statement of authenticity be provided: by me (Rollie Zavada) or by Kodak." (Zavada's Open Letter response to Doug Horne’s Chapter 14, May 26, 2010, p.1).

I would suggest that your response is a VERY long way from proving that Zavada was in any way involved in anything improper, which is what you said on the 'Real Deal' interview in November.

In summary, I'm sorry to say that I am still far from convinced that you really do KNOW the 'who, where and when' of the allegedly production of any substitute version of the Zapruder film.

Chris.

Edited January 17, 2012 by James H. Fetzer

Chris Scally · January 17, 2012

Dr. Fetzer:

Before I begin to address the rest of your latest post, I wish to state that at no time was I making - or attempting to make - ad hominem attacks on either Homer McMahon or Ben Hunter. My point was that, even by his own admission, Homer McMahon was not the most reliable witness, and Ben Hunter did not back him up with regard to either Bill Smith existance or Smith's story about Rochester. That said, if I have have inadvertantly and in any way offended either gentleman, I unreservedly apologise to them.

Now, let me turn to your comments about me. I was not trying to "set you up", and there is nothing "funny" about me, I assure you, so if you would care to withdraw both of those remarks, I would appreciate it. Perhaps you would also like to withdraw your ad hominem attack on Rollie Zavada at the same time? And why did David Lifton get dragged into this?

If you had read what I wrote, you would have seen that I DID offer an alternative hypothesis to the film being altered or created (or whatever word you want to use) at Hawkeye Works - a simple misunderstanding, a simple human error, on Homer McMahon's part.

You said in your reply that I was attempting to undermine you belief that "(5) the party who delivered the fake film said it had been developed in Rochester". You are correct - I dispute that statement, because there is no evidence to support it. There is nothing to support the "Secret Service agent Bill Smith" story.

My interest here is in trying to establish, to the extent possible, the exact whereabouts of the film in the days after the assassination. It matters not a bit to me if someone proves it was in Disneyland - as long as we can state that with certainty, and back it up with evidence, I'm happy. The whole point in this exchange with you was to determine whether or not you could support - with concrete evidence - your assertion in post #4 that "WE KNOW THE FILM IS A FAKE AND WHERE AND WHEN IT WAS DONE." If you could, I would have been delighted. However, your answers suggest to me that you cannot support it, and that the assertion is merely your opinion. You THINK you know, which is a different matter altogether, although I fully accept that you are entitled to your opinion. Indeed, your opinion is as valid as mine, and mine is as valid as yours - but that, I think, is where we disagree, and will continue to disagree.

Chris.

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