The Law of Unintended Consequences

January 18, 2012

This is bizarre beyond belief. Having acknowledged that the McClelland diagram is "the clearest description of the Kennedy head wound" (p. 107) in his own book, knowing that the Moorman was taken a fraction of a second after JFK was hit in the head (at approximately 12:30 PM/CT) and that he was taken immediately to Parkland Hospital and pronounced dead (at 1 PM/CT), we know that the observations that I have reported and that Jim DiEugenio has reinforced were made within 30 minutes of the Polaroid. So if the blow-out is not present, then the photo has to have been "patched", just as the film has been "patched" and just as the X-rays were "patched". And now Josiah Thompson has linked arms with Pat Speer in one of the most bizarre performances of the year!

Plus we have had special effects experts (like Roderick Ryan) confirm that the "blob" was painted in (but according to Pat Speer, that is the real brains gushing out to the right/front) and Hollywood film restoration experts certify that the black "patch" on frame 317 was "crudely painted in" (but Josiah Thompson assures us it is NOT on the MIP slides in the museum), and we have had further expert confirmation from Patrick and the Director that indeed the black "patch" is an artifact that was added to the film (but no, according to Josiah Thompson, they are wrong), and we have one physician after another who reported that cerebellar as well as cerebral tissue was extruding from the wound (but according to Pat Speer, the wound was on the side of his head, so they are wrong, too).

This has to be one of the most revealing threads in the history of JFK research, where two members are willing to ignore the evidence and persist in maintaining positions that have been refuted again and again. Even when it is OBVIOUS that Chaney motored forward before the limo reached the TUP, that JFK has his brains blown out to the left/rear, that one witness after another reports that his brains were blown out the back of his head, which is confirmed by the Parkland physicians and the X-ray studies of David Mantik, where you can ACTUALLY SEE the blow out in frame 374--NO, THAT'S ALL WRONG, WE MUST BELIEVE WHAT PAT AND TINK ARE TELLING US AND NOT OUR LYING EYES! This is the most completely irrational exhibition of the method of tenacity that the world has ever seen. This is completely stunning. I am reminded of something about lunatics and asylums . . .

I took what Dr. McClelland reported and gave it to a medical illustrator who drew the illustration. This is what Pat told you earlier and this is what happened. In 1967, this was the clearest description from Parkland medical personnel of the wound in the back of the head. How could the Moorman photo be authentic if it does not show a massive blow out like this? Easy, JFK's head was to take another shot and then be bounced around both in the limousine and during its extraction before it found itself on a gurney for Dr. McClelland to see it. There was underlying damage to the cranium in the back intensified and exacerbated by a second shot crashing into the back of the skull. All that happened later.

Because it does not appear in the Moorman photo and does not appear in the Zapruder film and was not apparent to a single witness in Dealey Plaza... all these facts point to one result. It wasn't there in the milliseconds immediately after Z 313 and because it was not there there was nothing to fix with a patch in Z 317. That's why better copies of the film show no patch and why your pal, John Costella, can find in David Lifton's copy of Z 317 no doctoring. The "patch" is visible only in bad oopies.

I've said this three times now. All you do is claim over and over again that the Moorman photo has been doctored. However, characteristically, you fail to give any inkling of how this was possible. If you think the Moorman photo was doctored, then tell us how this came about. If you don't, it will become clear that all you have to offer is your anger and insult. That's not worth much.

JT

When Vince Salandria confronted you about this, you explained that it was simply infelicitous language.

Here's another example, where you cannot seriously claim that you were merely sloppy with your words.

The guy who is making stuff up is the one to whom I directed seven (7) questions. Where are your answers?

You are a past master of the art of distraction. I asked seven, so where are your answers to the other six?

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

who attended JFK at Parkland. All by itself, a massive blow-out of this kind, by itself, proves conspiracy:

. . . [MCCLELLAN DIAGRAM]

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).

Just to make the obvious point, since this blow out is "the clearest description we have of the Kennedy

head wound", how could the Moorman be authentic if it does NOT show a massive blow-out of this kind?

Obviously, IT SHOULD BE THERE. But the image is sufficient obscure that I am not in the position to

verify whether it's there or it's not. BUT I CAN AFFIRM THAT, IF IT'S NOT, THE PHOTO'S A FAKE.

Edited January 18, 2012 by James H. Fetzer

Greg Burnham · January 18, 2012

I just returned home after having spent the day in Burbank. I met with Sydney Wilkinson et al to view their incredibly HUGE (3rd generation) scans. When I say huge I am referring to the amount of data contained in the images. There are several observations that are worth mentioning. There is no question as to the existence of a BLACK PATCH in Z-317. It isn't merely suggested there--it is OBVIOUSLY there. There are several other frames that display similar evidence of "patchwork" having been applied. This is not a guess. It is simply inescapable.

I invite everyone to look at the current logo that GOOGLE employed today in protest of congressional censorship of the internet. Can you tell that the letters are being obscured by a BLACK PATCH? I bet you can.

So too, in these 3rd generation extremely high quality Z-film scans it is blatantly in your face.

Sydney gave me permission to personally invite Tink to accompany me on my return trip to DELUXE Studios in the near future. See, it's important that Tink gets to actually see the evidence for himself before stepping in it. Therefore, here's an open invitation, Tink. Let me know when you want to go. Pat Speer, I also invite you to ride along. Just let me know when.

Pat Speer · January 18, 2012

OK Pat.

You did not like the unsworn testimony of Riebe about a rear skull wound. So I quote sworn testimony about the rear skull wound, and now you don't like that either.

Good way to shift from a collapsing front.

But let me ask you: Are you saying what I think you are saying? That you can give equal weight to untrained and unprofessional witnesses caught in a loud cross fire, their lives endangered, looking at moving target for a few split seconds; you can equate that with trained and experienced professionals in a hospital setting looking into a fatal wound from a foot or two away for minutes on end? And Clark was chief of neurosurgery? And he swore he saw damaged cerebellum.

Really? What a novel way to measure testimony.

By the way, in Horne's book he does list Parkland witnesses who did see an entrance wound of the temple. They are enumerated on pages 765-66.

If you link that to the unforgettable ARRB testimony of Robinson at Bethesda, and how Don Thomas uses it, then you have a good case for a shot from the picket fence with a small entrance wound, leaving a large gaping wound in the rear skull.

I'm out of here.

I read all the ARRB medical testimony years ago, and am well aware some thought the head wound was in a different location than where it is shown on the autopsy photos. But how many, after being shown the autopsy photos, claimed they were fakes, and that they concealed a blow-out wound low on the back of the skull? That number would be zero. Correct?

Let me make this as clear as I can, Jim. Doctors make mistakes. All the time. We know this. And doctors protect each other, and defer to other doctor's opinions. All the time. We know this. So, knowing this, how can we rule out that Clark made a mistake? And that his mistake influenced other doctors into repeating his mistake? We can't rule that out. I don't know anyone who rules out that Dr. Humes or Dr. Boswell could have made a mistake, or that Dr. Baden could have made a mistake, so how can we rule out that Dr. Clark made a mistake? We can't. But let's say we agree that the odds are pretty small he made a mistake.

But if we decide to believe HE wasn't mistaken, well, what comes from that? Well, if he wasn't mistaken, then there really WAS a blow-out wound low on Kennedy's skull, that NONE of the witnesses to the shooting seemed to notice. No, it's even worse than that. These witnesses described an explosion on the right side of Kennedy's head, where Dr. Clark failed to note a wound. Well, what are the odds that all the Dealey Plaza witnesses were mistaken about the wound location, and that they just so happened to place it where it would later be shown in the autopsy photos, X-Rays, and Zapruder film? PROBABLY A MILLION times greater than that Clark could be wrong, or even that a group of doctors could be wrong?

Unless one proposes a vast conspiracy... That is, the odds that Newman, Newman, Zapruder, Sitzman, Moorman, Chaney, Jackson etc would all be wrong about the nature of the head wound and/or the authenticity of the films and photos becomes much much smaller if one proposes they were all part of a vast conspiracy to kill the president in public in an incredibly confusing manner. But, are you willing to do that? I'd bet not.

1. Was James Chaney mistaken or lying when he failed to describe a blow-out on the back of Kennedy's head when first interviewed, within minutes of the shooting?

2. Was William Newman mistaken or lying when he claimed to see an explosion by Kennedy's temple, within minutes of the shooting?

3. Was Abraham Zapruder mistaken or lying when he claimed to see an explosion by Kennedy's temple a short time later?

4. Was Clint Hill mistaken or lying when he claimed the wound was on the back of the head, and then showed where this was--above the right ear?

5. Was Dr. McClelland mistaken or lying when, but three weeks after the shooting, he said he'd seen nothing to make him think the shot came from the front?

6. Was Dr. Clark bluffing when he later denounced conspiracy theorists as a bunch of "damn fools"?

Or was Dr. Clark simply mistaken when he said he thought he saw cerebellum?

Do you see what I'm getting at? What I've been getting at all along? To accept there was no cerebellum apparent at Parkland means accepting that one influential doctor made a serious mistake, and that others followed suit. To accept there was cerebellum apparent, on the other hand, means accepting that most all the autopsy evidence is fake, that a number of Dealey Plaza witnesses lied from the get-go, that the bulk of the Parkland witnesses describing a wound higher up on the skull than the cerebellum were mistaken, and that even those claiming to see cerebellum lied or were mistaken when they later said they'd been mistaken.

As far as Horne's witnesses for a temple entrance, there really aren't any. Tom Robinson said there was a small shrapnel wound on Kennedy's face by his temple, and some like to pretend it was the entrance wound of a bullet. This is nonsense. If we're gonna prop up Clark and his pals as these infallible doctors, after all, how can we simultaneously claim they failed to notice a bullet hole on Kennedy's right cheek?

Edited January 18, 2012 by Pat Speer

David Lifton · January 18, 2012

From IARRb, p. 757, this is under oath in Dallas by Dr. Ronald Jones:

1. "Twice during the Dallas deposition, Dr. Jones volunteered that he saw no damage on the right side of the head above the ear nor any damage to the top of the head on President Kennedy....." (Emphasis in original)

2. More sworn testimony from Dr, Peters from IARRB, p. 758: "And so at that point I did step around Dr Baxter and I looked into the President's head, and I reported to the Warren Commission that there was about a seven centimeter hole in the occipitoparietal area and that there was obviously quite a bit of brain missing. Some brain was hanging down in the wound and I thought the cerebellum had been injured as well as the cerebral cortex." (Emphasis in original)

(I just want to add, seven centimeters is a large piece of area on the rear skull.)

3. McClelland, under oath, pretty much echoes Peters:

"It was a very large wound and I would agree that it was at least seven or eight centimeters in diameter and was mostly really in the occipital part of the skull. And as we were looking at it a fairly large portion of the cerebellum fell out of the skull. There was already some brain there on the cart, but during the tracheostomy more fell out and that was clearly cerebellum. I mean, there was no doubt about it..." (ibid, p. 759)

Gunn then asked him how far he was from the deceased at the time he looked at the large occipital wound. The doctor replied he was about 12-18 inches away and he was in that position for about five minutes or more.

When asked later about the rear skull wound, both men said it was cerebellum, they were sure of it:

MeClelland: "Well, I know it was. ...I looked at it for several minutes, and it was clearly cerebellum. There's no question abut it...."

Peters: "RIght."

McClelland : ".... I remember thinking now, "Well, that's the rest of the cerebellum oozed out on the table. So it's not, "Well, I kind of think it was." It was. (ibid)

Now, if this is not enough for you, later on McClelland said that there was no tentorium when he looked at the rear skull. This is a membrane that surrounds the cerebellum. As Horne notes, if this was gone, it is the equivalent of saying the right cerebellum was blasted out. (ibid, p. 762)

Jones later went on to say that "I thought the skin over the top of the head was intact from what I saw." (ibid p. 764)

4. Dr. Crenshaw's sworn deposition from the ARRB interview with Gunn said that there was a baseball sized wound in the right rear quadrant of the head reaching over to the parietal area. He saw cerebellum leaking from this wound. He observed no damage to the right side of the head, above the ear or forward of it. Nor did he see any damage to the top of the head. (ibid, p. 642) In fact, Crenshaw looked puzzled when he was asked that question, and replied, "Absolutely not."

5. Nurse Audrey Bell described the head wound under oath as a right rear posterior head wound which she depicted in her drawing as in the occipital area. (ibid, p. 644)

Quoting Horne: "When I asked her whether the top or right side of President Kennedy's head was damaged, she too, just like Dr. Crenshaw the day before, registered on her face what I interpreted as amazement that I would even ask such a question." (Ibid p. 644)

6. Written report of Dr. Kemp Clark (Chairman of Neurosurgery at Parkland): "a large wound beginning in the right occiput extending into the parietal region. Much of the skull appeared gone at first examination....There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding form the wound." (Ibid p. 658)

Kemp Clark's sworn testimony to to Arlen Specter: "I then examined the wound in the back of the president's head. This was a large, gaping wound in the right posterior part with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed." (ibid) Now recall what Clark's specialty is--neurosurgery-- and again read what he says about cerebral and cerebellar tissue.

7. Now let us link this with just one Bethesda witness out of many. Dr. Ebersole, under oath before the HSCA, was being shown the autopsy photos:

"You know, my recollection is more of a gaping occipital wound than this....But had you asked me without seeing these or seeing the pictures, you know, I would have put the gaping wound here rather than more forward." In other words he thought the defect was more occipital than the one shown in the photos. (ibid p. 241)

BTW, Randy Roberston does feel there is a blow out in the back of the skull. And a shot from the front. I have never talked to Riley but he does feel there is a shot from the front, so he must think it exited somewhere in the rear.

Thanks, Jim, for helping me prove my point. These men saw ONE wound, a big one, and thought it was on the back part of the head, They did not recall a wound above the ear or on the front part of the head, where the Dealey Plaza witnesses saw the ONE wound they saw. It follows, then, that they either saw the same wound, and that some of them were mistaken, or that, by some INCREDIBLE coincidence, they saw different wounds, and the incredibly diligent Parkland staff failed to note the large wound above the ear observed by Newman, etc., while at the same time Newman failed to note the large blow-out on the back of Kennedy's head directly in front of him.

So which is it? Who is more reliable on all this? William Newman or Robert ("The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple" "there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front") McClelland?

As far as Robertson, I'll have to re-read his article, but I could have sworn he'd said there was evidence for the entrance near the EOP described in the autopsy report, and that the large head wound represented an entrance from the front, and that this proved there'd been two gunshots to the head.

Pat,

You’re playing games with words, with terminology, and with facts.

First of all, with regard to the “Dealey Plaza witnesses”: Newman obviously saw the explosion of a bullet impacting against the right side of JFK’s head. We can say that with a fair amount of confidence because none of the Dallas doctors saw an exit wound at the site of where Newman saw an explosion of some kind. If there was an exit wound on the right side of JFK’s head in Dallas, it would have been as plain as day. But what the Dallas doctors saw was an exit wound low on the back of the head. Again, I repeat: low on the back of the head. That's what Dr. Peters told me, in detail, in our January 1967 interview, when he said that he could see the occipital lobes resting against the foramen magnum. Why do you ignore such data? What gives you the right to step in and claim that these physicians, who were there, were wrong? Dr. Jenkins, in a report that day, said the cerebellum "protruded" through the wound? Why do you ignore this data--or assume you can get away with this tactic of pronouncing it all in error. Why? Because Pat Speare says so?

Furthermore, I take issue with the notion that none of this appears on the Moorman photograph. If you look carefully at Kennedy’s right shoulder, you can see the outline of a fragment of JFK’s head which is caught, in motion, as it moves towards the rear. Almost certainly, that’s the piece of skull, with hair on it, that was found in the rear seat of the car.

Here are facts pertaining to Robert McClelland:

Regarding the diagram create in 1967 of the wound at the bottom of the back of the head:

(a) That is exactly in accord with Dr. McClelland’s filmed account, when interviewed by Stanhope Gould and Sylvia Chase for KRON-TV in the fall of 1988. I was the medical consultant on that show. I flew to Dallas with Stanhope and Sylvia. Critical excerpts from this interview were ten incorporated into the show.

(b ) Six months later, I returned with my own camera, and crew, and interviewed some of these same doctors again, once again using the same “McClelland diagram.”

Dr. McClelland used that diagram to illustrate what he was saying on camera. There was never any question as to where the wound was located.

I don’t see how anyone familiar with the facts of what McClelland said, and when he said it, can deny the obvious: He testified before the Warren Commission; he was interviewed on camera bin 1988, and then again in 1989. Dr. McClelland said there was an exit wound at the back of the head, in accordance with that diagram. And that he saw cerebellar tissue oozing out of that wound.

Why is there this repeated effort to avoid the obvious?

Re Floyd Riebe:

I interviewed Riebe in November, 1979; Best Evidence does not report if Riebe said anything about the location of the head wound.

Riebe told KRON ‘s team that there was a wound at the back of the head. Again, that was fall 1988; and he was so strong about it, on the phone with KRON, that they hired a photographic team to go over to his place in Oklahoma, and film it for the program. Just look at the program.

In the summer of 1989, when I showed him the autopsy photographs, he said, on camera, that the pictures did not depict what he saw.

Then, some nine years later, when he was flown to Washington, he was afraid to repeat that under oath (to the considerable disappointment of Doug Horne et al, who had seen and closely studied his previous statements).

But how can any reasonable person ignore what Riebe said in 1988 (on camera), and then again in 1989 (on camera), and instead accept what he said in 1998? Because that, Pat , is what you’re asking us to do.

This is absurd; and this kind of analysis does not deserve to be taken seriously. Yet you engage in this kind of "argument."

DSL

Edited January 19, 2012 by David Lifton

Craig Lamson · January 18, 2012

I just returned home after having spent the day in Burbank. I met with Sydney Wilkinson et al to view their incredibly HUGE (3rd generation) scans. When I say huge I am referring to the amount of data contained in the images. There are several observations that are worth mentioning. There is no question as to the existence of a BLACK PATCH in Z-317. It isn't merely suggested there--it is OBVIOUSLY there. There are several other frames that display similar evidence of "patchwork" having been applied. This is not a guess. It is simply inescapable.

I invite everyone to look at the current logo that GOOGLE employed today in protest of congressional censorship of the internet. Can you tell that the letters are being obscured by a BLACK PATCH? I bet you can.

So too, in these 3rd generation extremely high quality Z-film scans it is blatantly in your face.

Sydney gave me permission to personally invite Tink to accompany me on my return trip to DELUXE Studios in the near future. See, it's important that Tink gets to actually see the evidence for himself before stepping in it. Therefore, here's an open invitation, Tink. Let me know when you want to go. Pat Speer, I also invite you to ride along. Just let me know when.

Even more.."I SEE IT, JUST BELIEVE ME" Show us the DATA that proves this is not a natural shadow....

Better yet, post an 8 bit crop at around 2mb as a PNG on a website and we can all copy it pixel for pixel from our browsers.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Craig Lamson

January 18, 2012

Pat Speer appears to be caught up in a narcissistic absorption with his own fantastic

interpretation of witness testimony and physicians' reports that he does not understand

and often grossly misrepresents. Here is a perfect illustration. In relation to Thomas

Edward Robinson's description of the wounds he observed on the body, Speer writes:

As far as Horne's witnesses for a temple entrance, there really aren't any. Tom Robinson said there was a small shrapnel wound on Kennedy's face by his temple, and some like to pretend it was the entrance wound of a bullet. This is nonsense. If we're gonna prop up Clark and his pals as these infallible doctors, after all, how can we simultaneously claim they failed to notice a bullet hole on Kennedy's right cheek?

But Robison was NOT describing A BULLET HOLE ON KENNEDY'S RIGHT CHEEK!

He was describing two or three small shrapnel wounds, which David Mantik believes

were caused by pieces of glass striking his face when the bullet that passed through the

windshield dislodged them and, as Newton explained, their momentum carried them there:

Notice the extent to which Robinson's description of the wounds corresponds with the other

witness reports from Dealey Plaza and from Parkland Hospital, which has been corroborated

by expert studies of the X-rays and the film itself, where Speer does not even know what

Clint Hill said about the wound that he observed at the back of Kennedy's head (see below):

* large gaping hole in back of head (the back-of-the-head-wound)

* smaller wound in right temple (the entry wound from the right/front)

* crescent shaped, flapped down (3") (the skull flap near his right ear)

* approx 2 small shrapnel wounds in face (from those tiny glass shards)

* wound in back (5 to six inches below shoulder) to the right of back bone

Some of the considerations that Pat Speer has offered to argue for "mistakes" by multiple

thoroughly competent and experienced physicians, who only had a brief interval to observe

the wounds, do not apply here. Thomas Evan Robinson had hours and hours to study it with

the utmost care. The probability that he would be mistaken about these wounds equals zero.

What Pat has done is to take witness reports during a shooting incident for which they were

completely unprepared and treat them as "definitive". The Newmans, for example, appear to

have seen the blow out of the skull flap. Chaney saw some effects of the shots, but did not

see them all. Their reports were partial and incomplete. Robinson's report was more thorough.

With one exception, none of them was lying; but some of them appear to have qualified what they

knew to be true out of fear of their lives. We have many reports of harassment and intimidation

of the physicians, especially, by the FBI, where Malcolm Perry offers a sterling example. When I

asked Pat about him, however, he feigned ignorance--perhaps he actually just doesn't know.

. . . .

Unless one proposes a vast conspiracy... That is, the odds that Newman, Newman, Zapruder, Sitzman, Moorman, Chaney, Jackson etc would all be wrong about the nature of the head wound and/or the authenticity of the films and photos becomes much much smaller if one proposes they were all part of a vast conspiracy to kill the president in public in an incredibly confusing manner. But, are you willing to do that? I'd bet not.

Once you separate the blow-out of the skull flap, which would have been especially striking to those on the knoll, who were also poorly positioned to observe his brains blowing out to the left rear, the wounds that he sustained are really not that difficult to sort out. But the reports of those best qualified to give them have to be weighted appropriately, where those in Dealy Plaza are important but not as weighty as the physicians at Parkland and no where near as definitive as Robinson.

1. Was James Chaney mistaken or lying when he failed to describe a blow-out on the back of Kennedy's head when first interviewed, within minutes of the shooting?

Chaney was motoring forward to notify Chief Curry. His reports are collated with those of the other witnesses in Costella's compilation. But there is something rather odd in the way in which Speer treats him. NOT DESCRIBING A BLOW OUT ON THE BACK OF JFK'S HEAD WHEN FIRST INTERVIEWED DOES NOT MEAN HE WAS EITHER MISTAKEN OR LYING. So much was going on that his report was therefore simply incomplete. Remarkably enough, when we review what Clint Hill reported in his own words, he also confirms Chaney's motoring forward.

2. Was William Newman mistaken or lying when he claimed to see an explosion by Kennedy's temple, within minutes of the shooting?

There WAS an explosion by JFK's temple, which was the skull flap blasting open as an effect of the shock waves created by the frangible (or "exploding") bullet inside his cranium. Pat may be unaware, since he does not seem to read the research of others, but David Mantik has discussed the trail of small metallic particles in the brain, which revealed the existence of this second shot to JFK's head, where he also established the existence of the first in analyzing the Harper fragment.

3. Was Abraham Zapruder mistaken or lying when he claimed to see an explosion by Kennedy's temple a short time later?

Zapruder is an odd case, where, in my opinion, it is entirely possible that he was lying--or at least exaggerating. He was only exaggerating if he was describing the blowing out of the skull flap, but the placement of his hand to his forehead in a photograph I published in discussing his interview in "Distorting the Photographic Record", HOAX (2003), pp. 427-435, leads me to infer that he was offering another line of support for changes to the evidence--adding the "blob"--that would subsequently be made.

4. Was Clint Hill mistaken or lying when he claimed the wound was on the back of the head, and then showed where this was--above the right ear?

This is another sterling example of Speer not consulting what others have done, in this case, "Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?" Here is what Clint Hill says in his own words as compared with Speer's gross misrepresentation:

"His right side of his head was exposed. I could see his eyes were fixed. There was a hole in the upper right rear portion of his head about the size of my palm. Most of the gray matter in that area had been removed, and was scattered throughout the entire car, including on Mrs. Kennedy. I turned and gave the follow-up car crew the thumbs-down, indicating that we were in a very dire situation. The driver accelerated; he got up to the lead car which was driven by Chief Curry, the Dallas Chief of Police . . .”.

5. Was Dr. McClelland mistaken or lying when, but three weeks after the shooting, he said he'd seen nothing to make him think the shot came from the front?

Speer evaded my question about what happened to Malcolm Perry, M.D., who described the throat wound THREE TIMES as a wound of entrance during the Parkland Press Conference, which I published in ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998) as Appendix C, pp. 419-427, but which was not provided to the Warren Commission and Speer has apparently never read. An FBI agent was assigned to harass and brutalize him, where McClelland and the other physicians were undoubtedly harassed and warned not to talk.

6. Was Dr. Clark bluffing when he later denounced conspiracy theorists as a bunch of "damn fools"?

Indeed, Charles Crenshaw, M.D., even wrote a book about it, CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE (1992), where he makes it clear that he and the other physicians who were present in Trauma Room #1 had been warned by their superiors that, if they ever talked about their experiences, then their careers would be over. No one who knew Chuck or who has understood the harassment and the threats to which the doctors were subjected would have any serious about about why even Kemp Clark may have been in fear for his life.

Or was Dr. Clark simply mistaken when he said he thought he saw cerebellum?

Do you see what I'm getting at? What I've been getting at all along? To accept there was no cerebellum apparent at Parkland means accepting that one influential doctor made a serious mistake, and that others followed suit. To accept there was cerebellum apparent, on the other hand, means accepting that most all the autopsy evidence is fake, that a number of Dealey Plaza witnesses lied from the get-go, that the bulk of the Parkland witnesses describing a wound higher up on the skull than the cerebellum were mistaken, and that even those claiming to see cerebellum lied or were mistaken when they later said they'd been mistaken.

There is no good reason to believe that these competent and experienced physicians, who were extremely familiar with gun shot wounds, since Dallas was at the time the homicide capitol of the world, would have been mistaken. There was no "vast conspiracy". The probability that an eccentric student, Pat Speer, who disregards and discounts the testimony of the best witnesses and the strongest evidence, is wrong is overwhelmingly greater than the probability that those witnesses and that evidence are wrong.

It's as simple as that.

Edited January 18, 2012 by James H. Fetzer

Pat Speer · January 18, 2012

From IARRb, p. 757, this is under oath in Dallas by Dr. Ronald Jones:

1. "Twice during the Dallas deposition, Dr. Jones volunteered that he saw no damage on the right side of the head above the ear nor any damage to the top of the head on President Kennedy....." (Emphasis in original)

2. More sworn testimony from Dr, Peters from IARRB, p. 758: "And so at that point I did step around Dr Baxter and I looked into the President's head, and I reported to the Warren Commission that there was about a seven centimeter hole in the occipitoparietal area and that there was obviously quite a bit of brain missing. Some brain was hanging down in the wound and I thought the cerebellum had been injured as well as the cerebral cortex." (Emphasis in original)

(I just want to add, seven centimeters is a large piece of area on the rear skull.)

3. McClelland, under oath, pretty much echoes Peters:

"It was a very large wound and I would agree that it was at least seven or eight centimeters in diameter and was mostly really in the occipital part of the skull. And as we were looking at it a fairly large portion of the cerebellum fell out of the skull. There was already some brain there on the cart, but during the tracheostomy more fell out and that was clearly cerebellum. I mean, there was no doubt about it..." (ibid, p. 759)

Gunn then asked him how far he was from the deceased at the time he looked at the large occipital wound. The doctor replied he was about 12-18 inches away and he was in that position for about five minutes or more.

When asked later about the rear skull wound, both men said it was cerebellum, they were sure of it:

MeClelland: "Well, I know it was. ...I looked at it for several minutes, and it was clearly cerebellum. There's no question abut it...."

Peters: "RIght."

McClelland : ".... I remember thinking now, "Well, that's the rest of the cerebellum oozed out on the table. So it's not, "Well, I kind of think it was." It was. (ibid)

Now, if this is not enough for you, later on McClelland said that there was no tentorium when he looked at the rear skull. This is a membrane that surrounds the cerebellum. As Horne notes, if this was gone, it is the equivalent of saying the right cerebellum was blasted out. (ibid, p. 762)

Jones later went on to say that "I thought the skin over the top of the head was intact from what I saw." (ibid p. 764)

4. Dr. Crenshaw's sworn deposition from the ARRB interview with Gunn said that there was a baseball sized wound in the right rear quadrant of the head reaching over to the parietal area. He saw cerebellum leaking from this wound. He observed no damage to the right side of the head, above the ear or forward of it. Nor did he see any damage to the top of the head. (ibid, p. 642) In fact, Crenshaw looked puzzled when he was asked that question, and replied, "Absolutely not."

5. Nurse Audrey Bell described the head wound under oath as a right rear posterior head wound which she depicted in her drawing as in the occipital area. (ibid, p. 644)

Quoting Horne: "When I asked her whether the top or right side of President Kennedy's head was damaged, she too, just like Dr. Crenshaw the day before, registered on her face what I interpreted as amazement that I would even ask such a question." (Ibid p. 644)

6. Written report of Dr. Kemp Clark (Chairman of Neurosurgery at Parkland): "a large wound beginning in the right occiput extending into the parietal region. Much of the skull appeared gone at first examination....There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding form the wound." (Ibid p. 658)

Kemp Clark's sworn testimony to to Arlen Specter: "I then examined the wound in the back of the president's head. This was a large, gaping wound in the right posterior part with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed." (ibid) Now recall what Clark's specialty is--neurosurgery-- and again read what he says about cerebral and cerebellar tissue.

7. Now let us link this with just one Bethesda witness out of many. Dr. Ebersole, under oath before the HSCA, was being shown the autopsy photos:

"You know, my recollection is more of a gaping occipital wound than this....But had you asked me without seeing these or seeing the pictures, you know, I would have put the gaping wound here rather than more forward." In other words he thought the defect was more occipital than the one shown in the photos. (ibid p. 241)

BTW, Randy Roberston does feel there is a blow out in the back of the skull. And a shot from the front. I have never talked to Riley but he does feel there is a shot from the front, so he must think it exited somewhere in the rear.

Thanks, Jim, for helping me prove my point. These men saw ONE wound, a big one, and thought it was on the back part of the head, They did not recall a wound above the ear or on the front part of the head, where the Dealey Plaza witnesses saw the ONE wound they saw. It follows, then, that they either saw the same wound, and that some of them were mistaken, or that, by some INCREDIBLE coincidence, they saw different wounds, and the incredibly diligent Parkland staff failed to note the large wound above the ear observed by Newman, etc., while at the same time Newman failed to note the large blow-out on the back of Kennedy's head directly in front of him.

So which is it? Who is more reliable on all this? William Newman or Robert ("The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple" "there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front") McClelland?

As far as Robertson, I'll have to re-read his article, but I could have sworn he'd said there was evidence for the entrance near the EOP described in the autopsy report, and that the large head wound represented an entrance from the front, and that this proved there'd been two gunshots to the head.

Pat,

You’re playing games with words, with terminology, and with facts.

First of all, with regard to the “Dealey Plaza witnesses”: Newman obviously saw the explosion of a bullet impacing against the right side of JFK’s head. We can say that with a fair amoiunt of confidence because noe of the Dallas doctors saw an exit wound at the site of where Newman saw an explosion of some kind. If there was an exit wound on the right side of JFK’s head in Dallas, it would have been as plain as day. But what the Dallas docors saw was an exit wound low on the back of the head.

Furthermore, I take issue with the notion that none of this appears on the Moorman photograph. If you look carefully at Kennedy’s right sholder, you can see the outline of a fragment of JFK’s head which is caught, in motion, as it oves towards the rear. Almost certainly, that’s the piece of skull, with hair on it, that was found in the rear seat of the car.

Here are facts pertaining to Robert McClelland

Regarding the diagram create in 1967 of the wound at the bottom of the back of the head:

(a) That is exactly in accord with Dr. McClelland’s filmed account, when interviewed by Stanhope Gould and Sylvia Chase for KRON-TV in the fall of 1988. I was the medical consultant on that show. I flew to Dallas with Stanhope and Sylvia.

(b ) Six months later, I returned with my own camera, and crew, and interviewed some of these same doctors again, once again using the same “McClelland diagram.”

Dr. McClelland used that diagram to illustrate what he was saying on camera.

I don’t see how anyone familiar with the facts of what McClelland said, and when he said it, can deny the obvious: He testified before the Warren Commission; he was interviewed on camera bin 1988, and then again in 1989. Dr. McClelland said there was an exit wound at the back of he head, in accordance with that diagram. And that he saw cerebellar tissue oozing out of that wound.

Why is there this repeated effort to avoid the obvious?

Re Floyd Riebe:

I interviewed Riebe in November, 1979; Best Evidence does not report if Riebe said anything about the location of the head wound.

Riebe told KRON ‘s team that there was a wound at the back of the head. Again, that was fall 1988; and he was so strong about it, on the phone with KRON, that they hired a photographic team to go over to his place in Oklahoma, and film it for the program. Just look at the program.

In the summer of 1989, when I showed him the autopsy photographs, he said, on camera, that the pictures did not depict what he saw.

Then, some nine years later, when he was flown to Washington, he was afraid to repeat that under oath?

How can anyone ignore what he said in 1988, and then again in 1989, and instead accept what he said in 1998? Because that, Pat , is what you’re asking us to do.

This is absurd; and this kind o analysis does not deserve to be taken seriously.

DSL

What is truly absurd, IMO, is that you and others refuse to grasp and deal with the issues I've raised.

The whole "cerebellum" argument rests on the credibility of Dr. Clark, who thought conspiracy theorists "damn fools." In order to prop up his credibility, and deny he could have made a mistake, you have to malign the integrity and/or veracity of nearly every witness to see the impact of the bullet or see the head wound afterward. The irony about this is, if you'd only followed the other trail--the one where the Dealey Plaza witnesses and Z-film are trusted, instead of Clark--you'd have come to a place where the likelihood of a conspiracy is both undeniable, and in keeping with the evidence. To refer back to an earlier analogy, you got yourselves so obsessed with the red car in the photo's really being green that you failed to realize that the car's being red was just as damaging to the single-assassin conclusion as it's being green. Actually far more damaging.

FWIW, When you say "what the Dallas doctors saw was an exit wound low on the back of the head" you are pushing something that just isn't so. The doctors, for the most part, claimed they'd seen a wound at the top of the back of the head, and you and others have taken the reported sighting of cerebellum and the Harper fragment's purportedly being occipital bone to mean they really meant it was low on the back of the head. This is clearly demonstrated in the photos in Groden's book, where virtually none of the supposed "low on the back of the head" witnesses put their hands below the top of their ear. The irony regarding this point is that if you claimed the wound was high on the back of the head, where many witnesses claimed it to have been, you could still claim the top part of the cerebellum was damaged and in line with what the doctors saw. You could then claim the Harper fragment was parietal bone, and on the skull where Dr. Angel placed it. You'd then have metallic debris near Kennedy's temple, which would then prove a bullet impacted at that location.

Oh, but wait. You'd then have a defect on the skull above and in front of the ear, and this would cut into the credibility of your star "back of the head witnesses," who saw no such wound.

As far as McClelland, I'm pretty sure you don't really believe him, either. He insists the throat wound seen on the autopsy photos represents the appearance of the throat wound after the tracheotomy incision, and that people claiming the throat wound was altered are terribly mistaken. If I'm thinking of a different doctor, or if you now believe the throat wound wasn't altered, please let me know.

As far as Riebe, I have no doubt he told you what he believed to be true at the time. And only a slight doubt he told the ARRB what he believed to be true. When you talk to someone about something that happened years before, they are incredibly open to suggestion. Perhaps someone had shown Riebe the McClelland drawing when Tink's book came out. Then years later, after being shown the drawing once again, he felt a twinge of familiarity, which convinced him this was how Kennedy's head wound actually appeared. Well, when shown the official photos by the ARRB, he may have felt that twinge again. As photo after photo showed equipment he remembered, walls he remembered, and arms he remembered, he may have realized "Well, heck, this looks like the real deal. I guess I was mistaken."

I think he's still alive. Maybe you can call him up and ask him.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Pat Speer

Pat Speer · January 18, 2012

Pat Speer appears to be caught up in a narcissistic absorption with his own fantastic

interpretation of witness testimony and physicians' reports that he does not understand

and often grossly misrepresents. Here is a perfect illustration. In relation to Thomas

Edward Robinson's description of the wounds he observed on the body, Speer writes:

As far as Horne's witnesses for a temple entrance, there really aren't any. Tom Robinson said there was a small shrapnel wound on Kennedy's face by his temple, and some like to pretend it was the entrance wound of a bullet. This is nonsense. If we're gonna prop up Clark and his pals as these infallible doctors, after all, how can we simultaneously claim they failed to notice a bullet hole on Kennedy's right cheek?

But Robison was NOT describing A BULLET HOLE ON KENNEDY'S RIGHT CHEEK!

He was describing two or three small shrapnel wounds, which David Mantik believes

were caused by pieces of glass striking his face when the bullet that passed through the

windshield dislodged them and, as Newton explained, their momentum carried them there:

Notice the extent to which Robinson's description of the wounds corresponds with the other

witness reports from Dealey Plaza and from Parkland Hospital, which has been corroborated

by expert studies of the X-rays and the film itself, where Speer does not even know what

Clint Hill said about the wound that he observed at the back of Kennedy's head (see below):

* large gaping hole in back of head (the back-of-the-head-wound)

* smaller wound in right temple (the entry wound from the right/front)

* crescent shaped, flapped down (3") (the skull flap near his right ear)

* approx 2 small shrapnel wounds in face (from those tiny glass shards)

* wound in back (5 to six inches below shoulder) to the right of back bone

Some of the considerations that Pat Speer has offered to argue for "mistakes" by multiple

thoroughly competent and experienced physicians, who only had a brief interval to observe

the wounds, do not apply here. Thomas Evan Robinson had hours and hours to study it with

the utmost care. The probability that he would be mistaken about these wounds equals zero.

What Pat has done is to take witness reports during a shooting incident for which they were

completely unprepared and treat them as "definitive". The Newmans, for example, appear to

have seen the blow out of the skull flap. Chaney saw some effects of the shots, but did not

see them all. Their reports were partial and incomplete. Robinson's report was more thorough.

With one exception, none of them was lying; but some of them appear to have qualified what they

knew to be true out of fear of their lives. We have many reports of harassment and intimidation

of the physicians, especially, by the FBI, where Malcolm Perry offers a sterling example. When I

asked Pat about him, however, he feigned ignorance--perhaps he actually just doesn't know.

. . . .

Unless one proposes a vast conspiracy... That is, the odds that Newman, Newman, Zapruder, Sitzman, Moorman, Chaney, Jackson etc would all be wrong about the nature of the head wound and/or the authenticity of the films and photos becomes much much smaller if one proposes they were all part of a vast conspiracy to kill the president in public in an incredibly confusing manner. But, are you willing to do that? I'd bet not.

Once you separate the blow-out of the skull flap, which would have been especially striking to those on the knoll, who were also poorly positioned to observe his brains blowing out to the left rear, the wounds that he sustained are really not that difficult to sort out. But the reports of those best qualified to give them have to be weighted appropriately, where those in Dealy Plaza are important but not as weighty as the physicians at Parkland and no where near as definitive as Robinson.

1. Was James Chaney mistaken or lying when he failed to describe a blow-out on the back of Kennedy's head when first interviewed, within minutes of the shooting?

Chaney was motoring forward to notify Chief Curry. His reports are collated with those of the other witnesses in Costella's compilation. But there is something rather odd in the way in which Speer treats him. NOT DESCRIBING A BLOW OUT ON THE BACK OF JFK'S HEAD WHEN FIRST INTERVIEWED DOES NOT MEAN HE WAS EITHER MISTAKEN OR LYING. So much was going on that his report was therefore simply incomplete. Remarkably enough, when we review what Clint Hill reported in his own words, he also confirms Chaney's motoring forward.

2. Was William Newman mistaken or lying when he claimed to see an explosion by Kennedy's temple, within minutes of the shooting?

There WAS an explosion by JFK's temple, which was the skull flap blasting open as an effect of the shock waves created by the frangible (or "exploding") bullet inside his cranium. Pat may be unaware, since he does not seem to read the research of others, but David Mantik has discussed the trail of small metallic particles in the brain, which revealed the existence of this second shot to JFK's head, where he also established the existence of the first in analyzing the Harper fragment.

3. Was Abraham Zapruder mistaken or lying when he claimed to see an explosion by Kennedy's temple a short time later?

Zapruder is an odd case, where, in my opinion, it is entirely possible that he was lying--or at least exaggerating. He was only exaggerating if he was describing the blowing out of the skull flap, but the placement of his hand to his forehead in a photograph I published in discussing his interview in "Distorting the Photographic Record", HOAX (2003), pp. 427-435, leads me to infer that he was offering another line of support for changes to the evidence--adding the "blob"--that would subsequently be made.

4. Was Clint Hill mistaken or lying when he claimed the wound was on the back of the head, and then showed where this was--above the right ear?

This is another sterling example of Speer not consulting what others have done, in this case, "Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?" Here is what Clint Hill says in his own words as compared with Speer's gross misrepresentation:

"His right side of his head was exposed. I could see his eyes were fixed. There was a hole in the upper right rear portion of his head about the size of my palm. Most of the gray matter in that area had been removed, and was scattered throughout the entire car, including on Mrs. Kennedy. I turned and gave the follow-up car crew the thumbs-down, indicating that we were in a very dire situation. The driver accelerated; he got up to the lead car which was driven by Chief Curry, the Dallas Chief of Police . . .”.

5. Was Dr. McClelland mistaken or lying when, but three weeks after the shooting, he said he'd seen nothing to make him think the shot came from the front?

Speer evaded my question about what happened to Malcolm Perry, M.D., who described the throat wound THREE TIMES as a wound of entrance during the Parkland Press Conference, which I published in ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998) as Appendix C, pp. 419-427, but which was not provided to the Warren Commission and Speer has apparently never read. An FBI agent was assigned to harass and brutalize him, where McClelland and the other physicians were undoubtedly harassed and warned not to talk.

6. Was Dr. Clark bluffing when he later denounced conspiracy theorists as a bunch of "damn fools"?

Indeed, Charles Crenshaw, M.D., even wrote a book about it, CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE (1992), where he makes it clear that he and the other physicians who were present in Trauma Room #1 had been warned by their superiors that, if they ever talked about their experiences, then their careers would be over. No one who knew Chuck or who has understood the harassment and the threats to which the doctors were subjected would have any serious about about why even Kemp Clark may have been in fear for his life.

Or was Dr. Clark simply mistaken when he said he thought he saw cerebellum?

Do you see what I'm getting at? What I've been getting at all along? To accept there was no cerebellum apparent at Parkland means accepting that one influential doctor made a serious mistake, and that others followed suit. To accept there was cerebellum apparent, on the other hand, means accepting that most all the autopsy evidence is fake, that a number of Dealey Plaza witnesses lied from the get-go, that the bulk of the Parkland witnesses describing a wound higher up on the skull than the cerebellum were mistaken, and that even those claiming to see cerebellum lied or were mistaken when they later said they'd been mistaken.

There is no good reason to believe that these competent and experienced physicians, who were extremely familiar with gun shot wounds, since Dallas was at the time the homicide capitol of the world, would have been mistaken. There was no "vast conspiracy". The probability that an eccentric student, Pat Speer, who disregards and discounts the testimony of the best witnesses and the strongest evidence, is wrong is overwhelmingly greater than the probability that those witnesses and that evidence are wrong.

It's as simple as that.

Thanks for the refresher regarding Horne, Jim. You are correct. While many CTs like to pretend Robinson saw an entrance wound on Kennedy's cheek, Horne isn't one of them. Which means that, in Horne's opinion, Roninson is yet another "no entrance on the front of the head" witness. So where was this entrance? And why didn't anyone see it?

I discuss Robinson in detail in chapter 18c: Since you've clearly never read it, I'll slip it in here.

This is how researcher Michael Griffith presents Robinson in his online essay The Head Shot from the Front.

"Tom Robinson the mortician. He reassembled the President's skull after the autopsy. He reports that there was still a visible defect in the back of the head even after the inclusion of some late-arriving skull fragments from Dallas."

After discussing Dr. Burkley's claim the bullet entered Kennedy's temple, and pretending that Burkley's words suggest a separate exit on the back of the head, Griffith further discusses Robinson: "This was very probably the same small temple-entry hole that was described by some of the Parkland doctors and that was filled with wax by Tom Robinson."

Well, this suggests that Robinson not only saw an exit on the back of the head and an entrance on the front, but that the Harper fragment--the only large bone fragment not recovered by the end of the autopsy--was occipital bone, correct?

Well, maybe, but what Griffith presents is not a fair presentation of Robinson's words.

When asked, on 1-12-77, by HSCA counsel Andy Purdy if he could tell what percentage of the large hole on the back of Kennedy's head he'd observed had been caused by bullets, as opposed to the doctors, he responded: “Not really. Well, I guess I can because a good bit of the bone had been blown away. There was nothing there to piece together, so I would say probably about [the size of] a small orange.”

He is basing his guess, then, on the size of the hole left on the back of the head after reconstruction. He doesn't even realize that three large bone fragments had been retrieved and added back into the skull, and that the size of the hole after reconstruction does not reflect what he thinks it does...

He also offers no reason to believe the reconstruction was accurate. Morticians are not forensic anthropologists. They are not trained to piece shattered skulls back together. They are cosmeticians. They stretch and sew torn scalp together to hide head wounds. They use packing material and rubber to reconstruct skulls, not super glue. In this case, moreover, they were hired to make the body presentable at a State Funeral. So, OF COURSE the hole left over at the end of the initial phases of reconstruction -- which Robinson did not even perform, nor pay much attention to (he observed the autopsy from a location on the left side of the President's body and had no recollections of a large wound on the right top side of the President's head)--was on the back of the head (where it could be hidden in a pillow should the President have been given an open-casket funeral), and not the right top side of the head, from whence the Harper fragment almost certainly derived.

This is not even a stretch on my part. That the wound during the autopsy was not where Robinson saw it at the end of the autopsy is supported by Robinson himself. Consider the summary of Robinson's interview with the ARRB, written by Doug Horne, which reveals: "Robinson said he had a '50 yard line seat' at the autopsy...He said the President's head was to his right, which means that he was on the anatomical left of the president during the autopsy. He said that most of the pathologists and their assistants were opposite him, on the anatomical right of the president during the autopsy." Well, why would the autopsy team be standing on the right side of the body, if the wound was at the middle of the back of the head? This suggests the wound was on the right.

But that's not the only reason to doubt the hole seen by Robinson was the exit wound seen at Parkland. For one, he said this hole on the skull was "circular." Well, who believes the triangular Harper fragment--as stated, the only large bone fragment still missing by the end of the autopsy--would leave a circular hole on the skull? No one. When asked by Doug Horne and the ARRB in 1996 to further describe this hole, moreover, Robinson contended that he believed this hole to have been an entrance wound, and placed it in the middle of the occipital bone, inches away from where conspiracy theorists Robert Groden and David Mantik hold the Harper fragment erupted.

The strangeness surrounding Robinson's testimony, or at least most theorists' interpretation of his testimony, however, is best illustrated through a discussion not of Robinson's ARRB testimony, but Saundra Spencer's ARRB testimony. In Volume 2 of his 5 volume opus, Doug Horne writes: "Before the photograph that Saundra Spencer developed was exposed, a head-filler...was used to restore shape and structure to the severely damaged cranium; after a 'rubber dam' was located to help seal the large cranial defect and prevent body fluids from leaking from the cranium inside the casket, the remaining scalp was stretched back into place as much as possible and sutured together (as well as into the rubber dam material) outside the now hardened and reconstructed skull. The two-inch diameter 'wound' that Saundra Spencer recalls seeing squarely in the middle of the back of the head in one photograph, high in the occipital bone, simply represented the small area that the undertakers could not repair and close."

Robinson's fellow mortician John Hoesen described a similar hole on the back of the head. According to Horne, Hoesen claimed "it was roughly the size of a small orange...located in the center of the back of the head." Horne then proceeds to assert that Hoesen, as Spencer, was describing the small hole remaining after skull reconstruction.

And yet he maintains that Robinson, who described a hole in the exact same location, in nearly identical terms, (it was the size of a "small orange") was describing the head wound at the beginning of the autopsy! What? Where does he get that?

He gets that from Robinson's HSCA and ARRB interviews, and his claim the wound at the back of the head was enlarged by Dr. Humes to remove the brain (something Humes actually testified to). Apparently, Horne assumes Robinson's description of the wound prior to being enlarged was based upon an independent observation, and not on his speculation re the wound's size and location based upon what he was to observe up close later. Well, as we've seen, this just isn't true. When asked if he could estimate the size and location of the wound at the beginning of the autopsy, before the enlargement of the wound and removal of the brain, Robinson told the HSCA's Andy Purdy: “Not really. Well, I guess I can because a good bit of the bone had been blown away. There was nothing there to piece together, so I would say probably about [the size of] a small orange.”

"Not really. Well, I guess I can because..." Horne's "Epiphany" that Robinson saw an orange-sized hole on the back of Kennedy's head, and that Dr. Humes then enlarged this wound to hide its real size (as opposed to simply pulling out the brain), is thus exposed as smoke. If the hole started out as orange-sized, and was then expanded for the taking of the autopsy photos, and then reconstructed with the addition of the three large skull fragments flown in from Dallas, how could it be orange-sized at the end?

No. Nothing strange there.

As far as Hill, you know dang well he's claimed--repeatedly--there was no blow-out wound low on the back of Kennedy's head, where you want people to believe he saw a wound.

Here it is again. Note how the location of his hand does not even come close to overlapping the location of the wound according to Crenshaw, and yourself.

As far as the doctors being in fear for their lives, etc, can you name the name of the supposed FBI agent keeping tabs on them, and why these supposedly fearful doctors told the Warren Commission they saw cerebellum, etc? Perhaps you're thinking of Secret Service agent Elmer Moore, who showed them the autopsy report so that they'd stop saying the throat wound was an entrance. Well, shortly after this, Moore was assigned to Earl Warren as his confidant and body guard. So the idea he stuck around to keep tabs on the doctors is an incorrect one, if that's what you're implying. By the way, I don't dispute that Perry was singled-out and pressured into retracting that the throat wound was an entrance. I have a section on this on the webpage you refuse to read. But you seem to be pushing that Clark, et al, were more concerned for their lives decades after the shooting then they were leading up to their Warren Commission testimony. And this makes no sense at all, IMO. I mean, how many threats did McClelland receive over the years? Can you link to any interviews where McClelland said he was in fear for his life?

As far as Livingston, he offered his opinion that the Parkland witnesses could not be mistaken about the cerebellum. A number of these witnesses, who were far more qualified than he on this matter, disagreed with his opinion.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Pat Speer

Chris Scally · January 18, 2012

Do you have any good reason to doubt that the 8mm film was developed in Dallas? or to question that the 16mm film was developed in Rochester? Do you doubt the existence of the secret CIA lab at Kodak Headquarters, which is in Rochester? Or that Rollie Zavada was an expert on celluloid and completely unqualified to make determinations of whether the film was "authentic" with regard to its content? and, so far as I can see, other than certifying that the replacement was taken on authentic Kodak film, I have yet to see where he made any significant contribution to the resolution of these problems. Nor have I seen anything significant from you yet, to be entirely candid.

Now David Lifton and Doug Horne are both better positioned to address your questions than am I. So why haven't you directed your questions to them? I could give you an intro to the nature of scientific knowledge--which is never certain and always uncertain, where new evidence or alternative hypotheses could led us to reject hypotheses previously accepted and accept hypotheses previously rejected--so if you have new information for us, PLEASE SHARE IT. Something about your approach has troubled me from the beginning. If you think there is a more defensible theory of where and whey the film was revised, then by all means, JUST TELL US WHAT YOU THINK.

Dr. Fetzer:

When you start telling me with whom I should consult/communicate, I know I'm dealing with a totally lost cause. For your information, although it is actually none of your business, I have been in contact with Doug Horne (since shortly after his book was published) and with David Lifton since the late 1970s/early 1980s. Furthermore, our exchanges have been interesting, informative, and always cordial, although I'm sure there are things on which we all disagree with one another.

You ask if I have any reason to doubt that the Zapruder film was processed/developed in Dallas on the afternoon of the assassination.

The answer to that is a resounding NO - and why, because there is enough corroborated evidence to prove it many times over. Yes, Dr, Fetzer, that is what I said - corroborated EVIDENCE. There is the evidence of Zapruder himself, and the corroborating evidence of his business partner Erwin Schwartz, newsmen Darwin Payne and Harry McCormick, Secret Service agents Forrest Sorrels and Max Phillips, the two officers who escorted Zapruder and his party around Dallas in the afternoon, the DPD radio recordings, and even a photograph of the box containing copy 0186 of the film, with the date and time of receipt along with Zapruder's name and address written on the box by Secret Service agent Max Phillips. In addition, there are oral and written statements and affidavits from staff at both Kodak and Jamieson, as well as the statements of Richard Stolley and Zapruder's daughter, Myrna. Do you want me to continue?

You ask if I doubt the existence of a secret CIA lab at Hawkeye Works, in Kodak HQ in Rochester. Again, the answer is NO, because the work that was being done there was, by its very nature, secret. There is also corroborating evidence of the lab's existence, and the work it was doing.

My problem is, was, and continues to be, the alleged alteration/manipulation of the Zapruder film at Rochester, as you well know. That was why I initially asked you about it - you sounded so certain ["WE KNOW THE FILM IS A FAKE AND WHERE AND WHEN IT WAS DONE." (Caps in original)] that I wanted to determine if you actually had any more pieces of the jigsaw which makes up the history of the film in the days immediately after the assassination.

However, it transpired that your claim was based on the uncorroborated 33-year-old recollections of a gentleman who - by his own admission - had an unreliable memory. You produced not a scintilla of independent evidence to corroborate his claim - no "Secret Service agent Smith", and no details of ANYTHING that might support the story. The best you could do was make accusations about me which were unfounded, and tell me how difficult it would be to get "signed confessions" from people at Rochester. I might ask if you have made any efforts - yourself - to verify the story. I somehow suspect you have not.

You asked if I would tell you what I think. I have already done so, Dr. Fetzer, but you clearly did not read what I wrote. However, out of courtesy, I'll try again, one last time.

Every single element of the story which Bill Smith allegedly told Homer McMahon DID happen, except that it happened in Dallas, and not Rochester. The film had been taken by an amateur photographer, it had been taken to Kodak for processing, and then taken somewhere else for processing. The fact that it happened in Dallas is established by the wealth of corroborated evidence I outlined above. The fact that it happened in Rochester is unsubstantiated.

So what do I think happened? I think Homer McMahon made a simple human error, as I have already told you. The film was brought to NPIC on Sunday night (from FBI HQ in Washington, I believe), and McMahon heard that it had originated with the Secret Service (which it had). He assumed Rochester rather than Dallas when "Kodak" was mentioned (perfectly understandably again, in my opinion), and by mixing facts and assumptions over the next 33 years, he came up with the story he told the ARRB.

This, of course, is just my opinion - it is NOT fact, because I have nothing with which to independently verify it. That was why I was hoping you might have some EVIDENCE which would allow me to replace or refine my opinion with FACT. Sadly, you were unable to do so.

Dr. Fetzer, I have better things to do than continue this pointless discussion with you. We differ - and will always differ - for the simple reason that I do not subscribe to the view that my opinion will automatically become fact, if I repeat it often enough.

I will (again) ignore your nasty personal remarks, and end this exchange with your own words from post #585: "You are welcome to believe what you like, but, for my part, I can see no good reason to change any of my written or spoken thoughts about all this."

Chris.

January 18, 2012

Because of the seriousness of what Scally and Thompson have been maintaining and to be sure that I had these details right, I contacted Doug Horne to discuss them with him because he is the most authoritative source about the NPIC events as well as many other aspects of the assassination. I recommend INSIDE THE ARRB (2009) to every serious student of the death of JFK. He and I both agreed that these they are--intentionally or unintentionally--distorting the evidence by cherry picking one or two odd and unrepresentative remarks of a witness (Ben Hunter) and completely misrepresenting what actually happened at NPIC the weekend following the assassination. Here are some of the key points that Doug and I discussed in our exchanges:

(1) Ben Hunter only remembered a 16 mm film, but Homer McMahon's memory was better. He remembered two films: a 16mm unslit double 8 film with opposing image strips (which had every appearance of an unslit double 8 film), which he placed in the 10x20x40 enlarger when he made the inter-negatives; and ALSO a 16mm film (a copy) used for projection purposes. That is in the recorded ARRB interview. Hunter was obviously remembering only the version that was a copy and was used for projection purposes only, according to McMahon. Hunter's memory was incomplete on this score, but McMahon's was complete and superior to his. McMahon's memory was generally better in any number of respects (including the number of prints made). Tink and Scally are ignoring the most important evidence--McMahon's memory of a 16mm unslit double 8 film--and are cherry picking one fuzzy recollection by Hunter, which is only a small part of a larger story. This is intellectually dishonest and violates a basic principle of scientific reasoning, namely: that reasoning must be based upon all of the available evidence (which, of course, can include proof that certain purported evidence is phony or fake. Special pleading by citing only the evidence that is favorable to your side can be an effective way to attack a debate opponent to throw him off his game, but it is not good historiography. Doug made the point of keeping "the big picture" in front of him and his audience, while they are not doing that. They are not considering all of the evidence as science and rationality require: they are selecting bits and pieces that support a debunking argument they have constructed and are selectively ignoring the rest.

(2) Thompson, in quoting Scally, has reversed the true sequence of events, which is another indication that he should not be taken seriously (as in his endorsement of Aguliar's chapter in MURDER (2000), which impugns the integrity of the film, and his certification of Louis Witt as the Umbrella man, when Witt turns out to be a limo stop witness). Thompson has recently alleged that the Homer McMahon/Ben Hunter event occurred first (which would be Saturday night), and that the Dino Brugioni event occurred the next night (which would be Sunday). This is attempting to reverse history and I have a hard time seeing how any serious student of these events could have confounded them. In a series of audio recordings that were made in 2009, and in a recent HD video interview conducted in July of 2011, Dino Brugioni stated unequivocally that his event commenced Saturday night, 23 November 1963. There is no doubt in his mind of this whatsoever. Furthermore, both McMahon and Hunter have stated that their event took place "a couple of days after the assassination, but before the funeral", which places it at Sunday night--THE NIGHT FOLLOWING THE DINO BRUGIONI EVENT--and the day before the formal state funeral.

(3) Hunter remembered a Navy "Captain Sands" being present. Both an internet search, as well as numerous Dino Brugioni interviews, have confirmed that Captain Sands was then the Deputy Director at NPIC. Furthermore, Dino Brugioni has stated unequivocally that he knew both Captain Sands and Ben Hunter. He has stated unequivocally that neither Captain Sands nor Ben Hunter were present at his event. Since his event was Saturday night, 23 November 1963, this places the McMahon/Hunter event on Sunday night, 24 November 1963, one day later.

(4) In a subsequent ARRB interview (a follow-up phone call which was recorded in an ARRB call report), Hunter told the ARRB that, after further reflection, he actually did remember that a Secret Service agent was present along with Captain Sands. This indicated to the ARRB that McMahon did not "make up" or "invent" the "Bill Smith" story. In fact, it was independent corroboration that McMahon's story was most probably true. The Bill Smith quotes (about the film having been developed at Kodak in Rochester and about having been the courier who brought it from Hawkeyeworks to NPIC) are the proof, along with the changed format of the film he delivered to NPIC (the 16mm unslit versus the 8mm slit) of CIA/Kodak involvement in the film's alteration. (For those unaware of the five physical differences between the two films, see "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication".) Dismissing this key evidence by claiming it is "a figment of McMahon's imagination" is to commit the sophomoric fallacy of "begging the question" by taking for granted what has to be established on independent grounds. That is the desperate trick one would expect from a cheap lawyer--to have key evidence thrown out of court that evidence would destroy his case, if it were admitted. It may be worthy of a Vince Bugliosi, but not of a former professor of philosophy like Josiah Thompson. He ought to be ashamed but, alas, has committed too many fallacies to surprise us.

(5) Chris Scally approached Doug "ever so nicely", never telling him that he (Scally) was an intellectual adversary who was attempting to discredit Doug's work) back in 2010 and asked Doug a number of questions via e-mail. Doug replied to the best of his ability, but was rather floored when Scally later shared his draft timeline and invited Doug's comments. He took a look and observed that he (Scally) had made several value judgements and assessments that were seriously problematic, but that Doug didn't want to pursue them with him at the time. It was clear from reviewing his chain of custody timeline that he was convinced the film in the Archives was authentic and was determined to interpret the evidence in ways that would support his predetermined beliefs. His mind was made up, which led Doug to see no useful purpose by arguing with him. Doug's point was this: Chris Scally is not Moses, and his timeline is not carved upon stone tablets like the word of God. Doug considers the timeline his book--including some of the uncertainties noted--as superior to his and as a far more reliable guide to what happened to the film. Many of Scally's assertions in his timeline, Doug observed, would not withstand cross examination in a courtroom setting.

So we have another installment in an unending effort to promote a version of the history of the film that is not borne out by the evidence. Tink, Speer, and Scally all ignore the most important evidence that proves that the film is a fake. Even in his most recent posts, Speer has grossly distorted what we know about Clint Hill's actions and observations that day, as I have reported them in "Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?" Anyone who is serious about getting to the truth of these matters has to take to heart what Clint Hill has been telling us for nearly 50 years now:

"As I approached the vehicle there was a third shot. It hit the President in the head, upper right rear of the right ear, caused a gaping hole in his head, which caused brain matter, blood, and bone fragments to spew forth out over the car, over myself. At that point Mrs. Kennedy came up out of the back seat onto the trunk of the car. She was trying to retrieve something that had gone off to the right rear. She did not know I was there. At that point I grabbed Mrs. Kennedy, put her in the back seat. The President fell over into her lap, to his left.

"His right side of his head was exposed. I could see his eyes were fixed. There was a hole in the upper right rear portion of his head about the size of my palm. Most of the gray matter in that area had been removed, and was scattered throughout the entire car, including on Mrs. Kennedy. I turned and gave the follow-up car crew the thumbs-down, indicating that we were in a very dire situation. The driver accelerated; he got up to the lead car which was driven by Chief Curry, the Dallas Chief of Police . . .”.

Which of course is completely consistent with what Bobby Hargis, Forrest Sorrels, and Chief Jesse Curry have told us about those events that day about Officer Chaney motoring forward, where Tink has claimed that 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 probably 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 beside us and I asked if something happened back there . . ."

Tink tries to override their consistent reports, which make it unmistakeable that Cheney rode forward BEFORE the limo had reached the TUP, by selectively quoting a fragment of the testimony of Winston Lawson:

Real simple. Note the hidden ambiguity in your citing the quote from Lawson:

Winston Lawson (Secret Service agent, in the lead car ahead of the Presidential 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] (emphasis added)

Of course the lead car was ahead of the limousine at the time of the shooting. However, as the photo record shows, the limousine caught up with the limousine underneath the Triple Underpass and passed the lead car. From that moment on, the lead car is no longer in front of the limousine. It is at this point, as Chief Curry explained, Chaney caught up with the lead car on the on-ramp to the Stemmons Freeway. Hence, Lawson's statement is perfectly consistent with the photo evidence and other witness reports. It does not show the necessity of any faking up of the Zapruder film since it is completely consistent with it. Any honest person would not try to use it for that purpose.

. . .

JT

What no honest person would do is to appeal to the disputed film in a desperate attempt to rebut Hargis, Sorrels and Chief Curry, which has now been dramatically reinforced by the testimony of Clint Hill. How could anyone who is serious about getting to the truth of the assassination persist in special pleading by citing only part of the evidence and thereby attempt to suppress the rest? The authenticity of the film is what is at stake, where witness reports override photographic.

And, as I observed long ago, "New Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (5 February 2008), if Chaney motored forward, as we know took place from the reports I have cited and others yet, then since that event is not included in either the Zapruder or the Nix films, we know that both of them have to have been fixed, which leads us back to the NPIC, to Rochester and to Kodak. These films did not simply transform themselves! They were redone at "Hawkeye Works", the secret CIA lab at Kodak.

As Doug observed, citing only the evidence that is favorable to your side can be an effective way to attack a debate opponent to throw him off his game, but it is not good historiography. Thompson, Scally and Speer are not considering all of the evidence as science and rationality require: they are selecting bits and pieces that support arguments that would be clearly indefensible but for selectively ignoring the rest. It happens again and again. They simply hope that you won't notice.

Edited January 18, 2012 by James H. Fetzer

Greg Burnham · January 18, 2012

(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, . . ."

Interesting. Which building do you want surrounded, Chief? How do you know which building the shots came from, Chief? How will the entire DPD personnel on the scene know which building you are referring to, Chief?

Pat Speer · January 18, 2012

There WAS an explosion by JFK's temple, which was the skull flap blasting open as an effect of the shock waves created by the frangible (or "exploding") bullet inside his cranium.

I almost forgot about this one. So here you acknowledge that the head wound I propose really existed. Well, Jim, since you seem to think the Parkland doctors' earliest reports are the end-all, be-all, would you care to show us where in these reports they describe this wound?

You can't, of course. Because they don't describe a wound in this location.

So, let's refresh.

The Parkland witnesses, taken as a whole, described a wound on the top right back of the head. Some of them claimed to see cerebellum flow from this wound. They did not note a large defect on the top right middle of the head by the ear.

I believe those claiming to have seen cerebellum mistook macerated cerebrum for cerebellum. This is a mistake a number of them later claimed they'd made. I also believe they recalled the wound location incorrectly, and on average, placed it about two inches further back on the head from where it really was. A number of them deferred to the accuracy of the autopsy photos, and therefore claimed to have made this mistake as well. I thereby propose they made two sets of mistakes: 1, they mistook cerebrum for cerebellum; 2) they thought the wound above the ear was two to three inches further back. Both of these mistakes are mistakes they acknowledge could have happened.

You, on the other hand, insist the doctors were correct about the cerebellum, and place the wound low on the back of the head. This means you think they were wildly mistaken when they failed to note the wound on the top of the head. This means also that you think they were mistaken when they indicated the wound was high on the back of the head, and not low on the back of the head. This means also that you think they were mistaken or lying when they said they could have been mistaken about the cerebellum. This means also that you think they were lying or mistaken when they deferred to the accuracy of the autopsy photos, and said they could have been mistaken about the wound's actual location.

In sum, then, I propose they made two innocent mistakes that a number of them claim were made, and you propose they made two innocent mistakes that they didn't acknowledge, and two possibly not so innocent mistakes, that they fervently denied. It only follows then that my views are more in line with theirs, and that I am a bigger "supporter" of the Parkland witnesses than you.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Pat Speer

David G. Healy · January 18, 2012

I just returned home after having spent the day in Burbank. I met with Sydney Wilkinson et al to view their incredibly HUGE (3rd generation) scans. When I say huge I am referring to the amount of data contained in the images. There are several observations that are worth mentioning. There is no question as to the existence of a BLACK PATCH in Z-317. It isn't merely suggested there--it is OBVIOUSLY there. There are several other frames that display similar evidence of "patchwork" having been applied. This is not a guess. It is simply inescapable.

I invite everyone to look at the current logo that GOOGLE employed today in protest of congressional censorship of the internet. Can you tell that the letters are being obscured by a BLACK PATCH? I bet you can.

So too, in these 3rd generation extremely high quality Z-film scans it is blatantly in your face.

Sydney gave me permission to personally invite Tink to accompany me on my return trip to DELUXE Studios in the near future. See, it's important that Tink gets to actually see the evidence for himself before stepping in it. Therefore, here's an open invitation, Tink. Let me know when you want to go. Pat Speer, I also invite you to ride along. Just let me know when.

good news, Monk....

Greg Burnham · January 18, 2012

I just returned home after having spent the day in Burbank. I met with Sydney Wilkinson et al to view their incredibly HUGE (3rd generation) scans. When I say huge I am referring to the amount of data contained in the images. There are several observations that are worth mentioning. There is no question as to the existence of a BLACK PATCH in Z-317. It isn't merely suggested there--it is OBVIOUSLY there. There are several other frames that display similar evidence of "patchwork" having been applied. This is not a guess. It is simply inescapable.

I invite everyone to look at the current logo that GOOGLE employed today in protest of congressional censorship of the internet. Can you tell that the letters are being obscured by a BLACK PATCH? I bet you can.

So too, in these 3rd generation extremely high quality Z-film scans it is blatantly in your face.

Sydney gave me permission to personally invite Tink to accompany me on my return trip to DELUXE Studios in the near future. See, it's important that Tink gets to actually see the evidence for himself before stepping in it. Therefore, here's an open invitation, Tink. Let me know when you want to go. Pat Speer, I also invite you to ride along. Just let me know when.

Even more.."I SEE IT, JUST BELIEVE ME" Show us the DATA that proves this is not a natural shadow....

Better yet, post an 8 bit crop at around 2mb as a PNG on a website and we can all copy it pixel for pixel from our browsers.

Clearly this is not what I am saying. I have viewed the evidence--far and away the highest quality scans available--on perhaps the most sophisticated equipment on the planet, and consulted with those who are experts in their field. And I do NOT think that Tink or Speer or anyone should take my word for it.

That was the reason for my invitation.

Pat Speer · January 18, 2012

BTW, Randy Roberston does feel there is a blow out in the back of the skull. And a shot from the front. I have never talked to Riley but he does feel there is a shot from the front, so he must think it exited somewhere in the rear.

I went back and reread Robertson's findings. He described an entrance wound near the EOP and an exit for this wound on the top of the head. He held that a second bullet entered through this exit and left fractures on the back of the head on the parietal bone. You are therefore incorrect. Robertson does not "feel there is a blow out in the back of the skull."

I couldn't find what Riley's exact theory was, but recall, as you, that he claimed the Harper fragment was parietal, not occipital bone. This means he believed there was an exit where I propose one was--above the ear--and not where most CTs believe one to have been--low in the back of the head on the occipital bone.

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