Gary Mack Explains

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Uh, no, Ray, it’s called the truth, for I don’t know the answer. I didn’t record the conversation nor did he. So the real translation is:

Ray Carroll is a nut, and I won’t waste my time on him anymore.

Go Gary!

David:

I used to be under the impression

that you were a civilized person.

Of course I once had the same impression

of Gary Mack

[David Von Pein]

David:

I used to be under the impression that you were a civilized person.

What exactly did I do or say that prompted you to place me in the "uncivilized" category, Ray?

Was it my "Go Gary!" remark?

If so, perhaps your skin has become too thin for these never-ending JFK frays.

Edited March 14, 2013 by David Von Pein

[David G. Healy]

David:

I used to be under the impression that you were a civilized person.

What exactly did I do or say that prompted you to place me in the "uncivilized" category, Ray?

Was it my "Go Gary!" remark?

If so, perhaps your skin has become too thin for these never-ending JFK frays.

when it comes to winning baseball games Von Pein, ya gotta show up and field a team--dude, when it comes to: did a conspiracy do JFK in[?], you aren't in the right hemisphere much let alone playing on the right field. Perhaps you're standing to close to all those deep fat fryers, eh?

[David Josephs]

Thanks for bringing up Benavidas DVP... if anything he ADDS something about the suspect he saw that proves it was NOT OSWALD... he was very specific about the back of the man's head

Mr. BELIN - Okay, well, I thank you. I was flying from St. Louis to Des Moines, Iowa. at about this time. Is there anything else?

Mr. BENAVIDES - I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline was sort of--looked like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off. and he looked like he needed a haircut for about 2 weeks, but his hair didn't taper off, it kind of went down and squared off and made his head look fiat in back.

Domingo himself was a pretty dapper guy... very clean cut.... and seemed pretty sure of what he saw and added to his testimony...

Yes David, but which Oswald did they identify, the one arrested at the Texas Theater or the one who was driving Carl Mather's Plymouth a half hour later?

Or does it matter?

Your opinion on this appreciated.

Are you serious, Bill? Or just playing with the LNer (me)?

Well, I'll bite anyway....

The people I mentioned positively identified the man pictured below (except for Domingo Benavides, who didn't make a "positive" identification of Oswald, AFAIK, until 1967 on CBS-TV; but Benavides did tell the Warren Commission that the man he saw kill Tippit "looked like" Oswald [6 H 452]):

The man in the photo above, by the way, is the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald. And it's a picture of the man who was arrested in the Texas Theater.

Do conspiracy theorists want to pretend that witnesses like Ted Callaway, the two Davis girls, Bill Scoggins, and Sam Guinyard (among others) actually identified a DIFFERENT "Oswald" when those witnesses each picked the man pictured above out of a police line-up shortly after Tippit's murder?

You surely aren't suggesting something so crazy....are you Bill?

BTW, that photo of Oswald above is interesting for another "bushy" reason. There has been much talk about how Tippit murder witness Helen Markham supposedly described Oswald's hair as being "bushy". It's debatable whether Mrs. Markham ever used that word to describe LHO's hair, but let's assume she actually did say "bushy" to a reporter shortly after the Tippit murder.

Perhaps she saw Oswald's hair in much the same condition it was in after his arrest (as seen in the above photo). And while Oswald's hair isn't exactly long, perhaps it could pass for "bushy" in the eyes of some people who only saw his hair for a few fleeting moments on Tenth Street on 11/22/63.

It's possible, of course (and even quite likely, in fact), that Oswald's hair only achieved its mussed-up status after the wild brawl with the police in the theater, but it's also interesting to note this testimony of Helen Markham when she was questioned by Warren Commission counsel about the condition of LHO's hair:

JOE BALL -- "Is it your memory that his hair was bushy?"

MRS. MARKHAM -- "It wasn't so bushy. It was, say, windblown or something. What I mean, he didn't have a lot of hair."

Food for "bushy"-haired thought.

[David Josephs]

Could be why they didn't take him in to a line up...

Be a bummer for someone that close and with such a good view to ask the suspects to turn around and find Oswald NOT having the haircut he saw....

[David Von Pein]

Could be why they didn't take him [Domingo Benavides] in to a line up...

Be a bummer for someone that close and with such a good view to ask the suspects to turn around and find Oswald NOT having the haircut he saw.

No, David, the reason the DPD didn't take Benavides to see Oswald in a line-up is because Benavides told the police that he didn't think he could identify the shooter:

Mr. BELIN - Then what happened? Did the officers ever get in touch with you?

Mr. BENAVIDES - Later on that evening, about 4 o'clock, there was two officers came by and asked for me, Mr. Callaway asked me---I had told them that I had seen the officer, and the reporters were there and I was trying to hide from the reporters because they will just bother you all the time.

Then I found out that they thought this was the guy that killed the President. At the time I didn't know the President was dead or he had been shot. I was just trying to hide from the reporters and everything, and these two officers came around and asked me if I'd seen him, and I told him yes, and told them what I had seen, and they asked me if I could identify him, and I said I don't think I could. At this time I was sure, I wasn't sure that I could or not. I wasn't going to say I could identify and go down and couldn't have.

Mr. BELIN - Did he ever take you to the police station and ask you if you could identify him?

Mr. BENAVIDES - No; they didn't.

Mr. BELIN - You used the name Oswald. How did you know this man was Oswald?

Mr. BENAVIDES - From the pictures I had seen. It looked like a guy, resembled the guy. That was the reason I figured it was Oswald.

---------------

Domingo later, in 1967, said he was absolutely positive that the man he saw kill Officer Tippit was Lee Oswald. It's a good idea to take that '67 identification with a grain of salt, however.

But Domingo did tell the WC in 1964 that the man who shot Tippit "looked like" Lee Harvey Oswald.

Edited March 14, 2013 by David Von Pein

[David Josephs]

So in other words you have no idea why DB tells us the man he saw has a squared off haircut while Oswald's hair tapers off - exactly OPPOSITE of what DB tells us.

He may have "looked like" him, but the physical description does not match...

Be like he said the man had a 3 inch black birthmark on this face... "looked" like Oswald, but obviously was not him.

Nice try though

edit: that witnesses later changed their "first story" is no surprise dude.... most every first story that exonnerates Oswald were eventually changed...

Edited March 15, 2013 by David Josephs

[David Von Pein]

I'm sure you want to totally ignore the BEST evidence of Oswald's guilt in the Tippit murder, don't you David? -- I.E., those pesky bullet shells from Oswald's very own gun.

Just pretend ALL FOUR of those shells were planted, David. I'm used to hearing that B.S.

Edited March 15, 2013 by David Von Pein

[Ray Mitcham]

I'm sure you want to totally ignore the BEST evidence of Oswald's guilt in the Tippit murder, don't you David? -- I.E., those pesky bullet shells from Oswald's very own gun.

Just pretend ALL FOUR of those shells were planted, David. I'm used to hearing that B.S.

David, Mrs Markham said that only three shots were fired. Where did the fourth shell come from.

[Michael Hogan]

Once upon a time Raymond Carroll told David Von Pein that he was closer to the truth than most (EF) members.

It's a shame to see these two devotees of the truth at odds with each other.

Uh, no, Ray, it’s called the truth, for I don’t know the answer. I didn’t record the conversation nor did he. So the real translation is:

Ray Carroll is a nut, and I won’t waste my time on him anymore.

Go Gary!

David:

I used to be under the impression that you were a civilized person.

[Pat Speer]

...the evidence presented by Hoover and Bugliosi in support of the print's authenticity, is weak, weak, weak...

Let's leave Hoover and Bugliosi out of this for a moment and talk about the people who actually set the ball in motion for re-examining the palmprint that Lt. Day lifted off of the rifle -- namely Wesley Liebeler and (most importantly) fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona:

It was LATONA, not Hoover or Bugliosi, who said the palmprint contained the rust spots and other marks that EXACTLY matched the place on the rifle where Lt. Day said he lifted the print. Or do you think Mr. Liebeler was telling a big fat lie in the HSCA testimony shown below? (I would guess that some conspiracy theorists will rake Liebeler over the coals for using the word "happily" in this testimony, even if those CTers don't have the nerve to come out and call him an outright xxxx regarding this palmprint issue.) ....

"Latona went back and looked at the lift [CE637; Oswald's palmprint]. He found that there were indications in the lift itself of pits and scores and marks and rust spots that had been on the surface from which the print had been lifted, and happily they conformed precisely to a portion of the underside of the rifle barrel and the FBI so reported to us. As far as I was concerned that conclusively established the proposition that that lift had come from that rifle." -- Wesley J. Liebeler; HSCA Testimony [11 HSCA 254]

So what we have here, folks, is a situation where the Warren Commission and its staff (namely Wesley J. Liebeler) weren't totally satisfied with something associated with their investigation into President Kennedy's death (the palmprint of Oswald's lifted by DPD Lieutenant Carl Day), and so Liebeler did something about it. He had Latona re-examine the print to see if further information could be obtained in order to find out whether or not it could be proven that that print had, indeed, been taken off of Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

And even when such proof and corroboration is discovered, the conspiracy theorists (such as Pat Speer) are still not satisfied at all. The theorists will still cry foul and say that the print COULD have possibly been lifted on November 24 after the rifle was returned to Dallas (to use Pat Speer's exact words, he speculated that it was certainly possible that "the print was somehow added to the rifle, and THEN lifted").

In response to that speculation brought forth by Mr. Speer which I just quoted above, let me offer up the following excerpt from Vincent Bugliosi's book:

"Apart from the absurd notion that for some reason Lieutenant Day would decide to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for Kennedy's assassination, as he told me in 2002, "I don't even think such a thing [transferring Oswald's prints on the finger and palm print samples, or exemplars, he gave to the Dallas Police Department, onto the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle] could be done. In this day and age they might be able to figure out some way to transfer the ink print on the card to the weapon, but I wouldn't know how to do it myself. Sounds like an impossible task to me.""

-- Page 802 of "Reclaiming History"

Conspiracists are quite good at offering up a wide variety of convenient excuses in order to avoid the obvious truth. With that truth being:

Lee Harvey Oswald's palmprint was lifted off of Oswald's OWN RIFLE just hours after that same rifle was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building in Dallas, Texas.

Pat Speer says the evidence is "weak, weak, weak". But in my opinion, it's simply a case of a conspiracy theorist offering up more "excuses, excuses, excuses".

I'm capable of following both sides of an argument, David, and see your point. But there's a lot you either don't know, or fail to understand.

1. Latona did the comparison. Why was HIS report on this not entered into evidence, and why was he not asked to testify on this point, or, at the very least, sign a statement?

2. There is no master shot in evidence of the palm print showing where this print was on the barrel of the rifle.. Why not?

3. The FBI has documented numerous cases of fingerprint forgery--where fingerprints or palm prints have been added to weapons or crime scenes. I backed off from my investigation of this stuff when I couldn't come to a conclusion about the lift. But I can tell you this...one of the signs a lift has been added to a weapon or crime scene from an inked print card etc is a fiber being found on the lift. As discussed by James Olmstead on Greg Parker's site, John Hunt's photo of the exhibit in question shows a fiber trapped in the tape.

I'm not sure if this means anything or not. But it could mean something... And you can't rule it out...

[David Von Pein]

David, Mrs Markham said that only three shots were fired. Where did the fourth shell come from.

Conversely, Ted Callaway always firmly maintained that five shots were fired. So where did the fifth shell go?

The "shot counts" given by the witnesses (which varied from 3 to 6 in number as I recall) really don't mean a whole lot in the Tippit case when it comes to the major question of: Who shot Officer Tippit?

I mean, Ray, you surely aren't suggesting that Tippit's killer REALLY DID fire only three shots, are you? Tippit had FOUR bullets taken from his body (CE602-605). So, quite obviously, if Mrs. Markham said that only three shots were fired--she is simply mistaken.

Yes, I'll admit, I have in the past utilized Callaway's "five pistol shots" testimony to try and resolve the mystery of the mismatch between the brands of shells and bullets (since there isn't an even distribution of Remingtons vs. Winchesters). But it's only speculation that Oswald might have fired five shots. However, such speculation (IMO) is worth considering since a portion of the Tippit evidence doesn't quite "add up" perfectly regarding the brands of shells & bullets.

But conspiracy believers almost always want to forget that Oswald, when he was arrested, had those two EXACT same brands of bullets in his gun--Remingtons and Winchesters (3 each). And those are the exact same two brands of ammo found inside Tippit's body and the exact same brands of bullet shells found littering Tenth Street after the shooting.

The Tippit case is today what it was in 1963-1964:

A slam-dunk case favoring Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt.

And how anybody can dispute that fact is beyond me.

Edited March 15, 2013 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

1. Latona did the comparison. Why was HIS report on this not entered into evidence, and why was he not asked to testify on this point, or, at the very least, sign a statement?

Good points, Pat. And I don't have the answers to those questions. But maybe Latona didn't prepare an official report or statement concerning this matter. How can we know whether he did or not?

And I'm certainly not going to jump on the "everybody's lying" bandwagon (as many CTers seem to like to do). I'm not going to call Wesley Liebeler a xxxx when he says Latona came to the conclusions he came to about the Oswald palmprint.

As for Latona not testifying about the "rust spots" and other markings he found in the Oswald palmprint -- well, it was a September 1964 discovery by Latona, and the final WC report was coming out in 20 more days, so that might be the answer there. No "testimony" was taken at that eleventh hour.

However, we do have J. Edgar Hoover's letter to the WC, dated September 4, 1964. It's Commission Exhibit No. 2637, at 25 H 897.

That letter from Hoover to J. Lee Rankin makes it very clear that a comparison of the print and rifle was made by "Laboratory examiners" (plural) at the FBI lab in Washington. The letter goes on to say:

"The Laboratory examiners were able to positively identify this lift as having come from the assassination rifle in the area near the foregrip."

That letter in CE2637 is certainly enough proof for me. I see no reason to disbelieve or doubt the contents and conclusions reached in that letter. Of course, the conspiracy theorists will always cast doubt on anything written by the FBI. So I'm not the least bit surprised to find out that CTers don't think the letter in CE2637 is reliable information. They always want more. Just like they want much more proof regarding the "CE399" topic and CE2011 too. The written words we find in that Commission exhibit aren't nearly enough to satisfy the conspiracy theorists either (re: Tomlinson and Wright both saying that CE399 "looked like" the bullet they each saw on Nov. 22 and the additional fact revealed in CE2011 about Elmer Todd physically marking CE399 with his own initials). So, the CTers distrust the FBI completely. But, what else is new?

I'm wondering, however, if it's possible that some kind of signed statement or report from Sebastian Latona just might be buried somewhere within the 26 volumes. Although, I kind of doubt that any such Latona report exists in the volumes, because if there were such a report, I'm guessing that Vincent Bugliosi (or somebody) would have dug it out by now. But in his JFK book, Bugliosi's only sources on this matter come from Liebeler's HSCA testimony and the Hoover letter we find in CE2637.

But I keep finding things in the volumes all the time that I had either forgotten were in there or I hadn't been aware of in the first place. A good recent example of that occurred just yesterday in fact, when someone was asking whether the entire transcript of Mark Lane's telephone interview with Helen Markham was available anywhere online. I responded with a link to a page from John McAdams' website which contains excerpts from the interview but not the entire thing. And then McAdams himself posted a link to the whole transcript, and it was a link to the WC volumes. I had never seen it before and was surprised that John found it in the actual WC volumes themselves. It's located at 20 H 571.

I then responded with this comment:

"Good gosh, there's a lot of stuff in those 26 volumes, isn't there?"

So, I'm just wondering if there could possibly be something else besides CE2637 buried in those volumes about Sebastian Latona's eleventh-hour "rust spots" discovery concerning Oswald's palmprint. ~shrug~

BTW, Page 1 of that Lane/Markham transcript is rather interesting, because it confirms that in Lane's taped telephone call to Markham, there was another female voice (probably a telephone operator) who was speaking just before Markham began talking to Lane. That discovery is somewhat important because in at least one public debate (and perhaps more than one), Lane attempted to ridicule Markham when she said at one point in her Warren Commission testimony that she didn't recognize a female voice on the tape as being her own voice. And it wasn't. It was a female operator's voice. But Lane seemed to want his audiences to believe that Markham's was the ONLY female voice on the entire tape, which simply is not true. Which indicates that Mr. Lane was not being entirely fair to Mrs. Markham in that instance.

To give credit where credit is due -- That point about the extra female voice on the tape is something that another LNer named Bud brought up on the McAdams newsgroup today. And I think it's a good point too. Because even though Helen Markham might have exhibited some "screwball" tendencies, it's fairly clear when comparing the transcript of the Lane/Markham interview with the things Lane later tried to imply in at least one of his public appearances, that Mark Lane was trying his best to make Mrs. Markham look like even more of a "screwball" than she actually was.

In this audio excerpt featuring Mark Lane, please note how Lane refused to tell the audience that there HAD, in fact, been another lady's voice on that tape. Lane wanted his listeners to think that the ONLY female voice on the whole tape was Helen Markham's. That was misleading and unfair on Lane's part.

Edited March 16, 2013 by David Von Pein

[Pat Speer]

1. Latona did the comparison. Why was HIS report on this not entered into evidence, and why was he not asked to testify on this point, or, at the very least, sign a statement?

Good points, Pat. And I don't have the answers to those questions. But maybe Latona didn't prepare an official report or statement concerning this matter. How can we know whether he did or not?

And I'm certainly not going to jump on the "everybody's lying" bandwagon (as many CTers seem to like to do). I'm not going to call Wesley Liebeler a xxxx when he says Latona came to the conclusions he came to about the Oswald palmprint.

As for Latona not testifying about the "rust spots" and other markings he found in the Oswald palmprint -- well, it was a September 1964 discovery by Latona, and the final WC report was coming out in 20 more days, so that might be the answer there. No "testimony" was taken at that eleventh hour.

However, we do have J. Edgar Hoover's letter to the WC, dated September 4, 1964. It's Commission Exhibit No. 2637, at 25 H 897.

That letter from Hoover to J. Lee Rankin makes it very clear that a comparison of the print and rifle was made by "Laboratory examiners" (plural) at the FBI lab in Washington. The letter goes on to say:

"The Laboratory examiners were able to positively identify this lift as having come from the assassination rifle in the area near the foregrip."

That letter in CE2637 is certainly enough proof for me. I see no reason to disbelieve or doubt the contents and conclusions reached in that letter. Of course, the conspiracy theorists will always cast doubt on anything written by the FBI. So I'm not the least bit surprised to find out that CTers don't think the letter in CE2637 is reliable information. They always want more. Just like they want much more proof regarding the "CE399" topic and CE2011 too. The written words we find in that Commission exhibit aren't nearly enough to satisfy the conspiracy theorists either (re: Tomlinson and Wright both saying that CE399 "looked like" the bullet they each saw on Nov. 22 and the additional fact revealed in CE2011 about Elmer Todd physically marking CE399 with his own initials). So, the CTers distrust the FBI completely. But, what else is new?

I'm wondering, however, if it's possible that some kind of signed statement or report from Sebastian Latona just might be buried somewhere within the 26 volumes. Although, I kind of doubt that any such Latona report exists in the volumes, because if there were such a report, I'm guessing that Vincent Bugliosi (or somebody) would have dug it out by now. But in his JFK book, Bugliosi's only sources on this matter come from Liebeler's HSCA testimony and the Hoover letter we find in CE2637.

But I keep finding things in the volumes all the time that I had either forgotten were in there or I hadn't been aware of in the first place. A good recent example of that occurred just yesterday in fact, when someone was asking whether the entire transcript of Mark Lane's telephone interview with Helen Markham was available anywhere online. I responded with a link to a page from John McAdams' website which contains excerpts from the interview but not the entire thing. And then McAdams himself posted a link to the whole transcript, and it was a link to the WC volumes. I had never seen it before and was surprised that John found it in the actual WC volumes themselves. It's located at 20 H 571.

I then responded with this comment:

"Good gosh, there's a lot of stuff in those 26 volumes, isn't there?"

So, I'm just wondering if there could possibly be something else besides CE2637 buried in those volumes about Sebastian Latona's eleventh-hour "rust spots" discovery concerning Oswald's palmprint. ~shrug~

BTW/FTI:

Page 1 of that Lane/Markham transcript is rather interesting, because it confirms that in Lane's taped telephone call to Markham, there was another female voice (probably a telephone operator) who was speaking just before Markham began talking to Lane. That discovery is somewhat important because in at least one public debate (and perhaps more than one), Lane attempted to ridicule Markham when she said at one point in her WC testimony, Markham says she doesn't recognize a female voice on the tape as being her own voice. And it wasn't. It was a female operator's voice. But Lane seems to want his audiences to believe that Markham was the ONLY female voice on the entire tape, which simply is not true. Which indicates that Mr. Lane was not being entirely fair with Mrs. Markham in that instance.

That point about the extra female voice on the tape is something that another LNer named "Bud" brought up on the McAdams' newsgroup today. And I think it's a good point too. Because even though Helen Markham might have exhibited some "screwball" tendencies, it's fairly clear when comparing the transcript of the Lane/Markham interview with the things Lane later tried to imply in at least one of his public appearances, that Mark Lane was trying to make Mrs. Markham look like even more of a "screwball" than she actually was.

I looked for Latona's report at one point, but was unable to find it. This didn't come as much of a surprise. While Harold Weisberg was a CT, I think of him foremost as a patriot. Many of his FOIA cases revolved around a simple issue: what constitutes a "working paper." The FBI INSISTED, with the Justice Department's backing, that the public was only entitled to know the FBI's CONCLUSIONS, and not what information or test results allowed them to come to these conclusions. That is 100% Orwellian nightmare nonsense, IMO, and Weisberg fought this tooth and nail. At one point, just as he was about to win his case, Attorney General John Mitchell (later of Watergate fame) stepped in and told the judge he had to side against Weisberg. As I recall, Mitchell said national security would be compromised if defendants, defense attorneys, and professional scientists were allowed to second-guess the FBI's conclusions. And yet Weisberg pressed on... It's little noted that many of the documents received by Weisberg were handed over not because he won the case, but because the government was tired of fighting him. It's also little noted that many of these documents were never given the archives, as they constituted internal memos and working papers, and were kept at the FBI or AEC, in their files.

I realized this almost by accident. Perhaps my most ambition research effort was my research regarding NAA. I knew Weisberg had some papers on it, and was able to purchase a CD of thousands of little-seen documents on NAA from the Weisberg Archive at Hood College Library, several years before they put most of these documents online. Within these documents were dozens of FBI Jevons to Conrad memos, in which Roy Jevons, the head of the FBI's ballistics unit, revealed the results of tests performed within the FBI's ballistics lab, to Ivan Conrad, the head of FBI crime lab. Very few of these, to my understanding, are available on the Mary Ferrell site or at NARA, and would have ever seen the light of day were it not for Weisberg.

As discussed on my webpage, moreover, the story told by these documents was quite revealing,

And so...it could be that Latona's report was withheld from the WC due to its being considered a "working paper."

AND that there's something in this working paper, that we weren't supposed to know...

[Pat Speer]

Pat:

Can you reply to my question?

What did Olmstead conclude at the Wecht conference about the palm print?

He does really good work on this.

As I recall it, Olmstead spent most of his time talking about the trigger guard prints, and how the FBI took its own pictures of them, but won't release them. Day, as I recall, protected the trigger guard prints. He took some pictures, but did not try to lift them. The FBI took its own photos of the prints, and decided they were too smudged to judge. But they never gave their photos to the WC, which was forced to publish one of Day's photos.

Then came First Day Evidence, and the claim by Scalice one of the prints is Oswald's. If I recall, Olmstead is concerned that a non-Oswald print is also on the trigger guard, and that this has been covered up by the FBI.

While it seems likely he also talked about the palm print, I can't recall what he said at this time.

Edited March 16, 2013 by Pat Speer