Jump to content
The Education Forum

10 Conclusions (of Pat Speer)


Pat Speer

Recommended Posts

When one studies the timeline, Don, it seems obvious that there was no cover-up of the head wound location in the early days of the shooting, when Fox made his copies.

I don't know how you can say that when it was decided on day one that there was only one shooter, all shots from behind. Any head wound to the contrary thus had to be covered up, beginning that night with the autopsy, the report of which described a large head wound that only extended "somewhat into the occipital," an autopsy that included a back of the head photo showing no wound at all extending somewhat into the occipital. (Who was lying, Humes or the camera?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 338
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

7 hrs ago the Guardian

=============

A forensic study of JFK’s death debunked the conspiracies and taught me that tiny details can be critical

Mark Lawson

In my case, the answer to the question “do you remember what you were doing when JFK was shot?” is: probably sleeping or being sick. Eighteen months old at the time of the first Kennedy slaying, I was old enough to ask why my mother started crying when, in a Yorkshire shop in June 1968, a transistor radio confirmed that the second Kennedy had died.

Robert Francis Kennedy is a powerful presence – and John Fitzgerald Kennedy an overwhelming absence – in The Death of a President, a book by William Manchester that I have thought about immeasurable times since first reading it in 1975.

By then I was 13 and we had moved south to Hertfordshire, where I attended a Catholic school run by an American religious teaching order. Our teachers would speak (sometimes tearfully) of having voted for JFK or signed up for his peace corps. As the first (and still only) Catholic to reach the White House, his framed photograph was on the wall of the entrance hall. We played sport against another local school that was actually called John Kennedy, a measure of the impact his death had made in England.

My dad, a history graduate and obsessive consumer of the news, had a library of books about politics and it was there that I discovered The Death of a President. William Manchester was a newspaper reporter who became a history professor, and in this account of Kennedy’s assassination he combines the highest standards of both professions.

Jacqueline Kennedy had commissioned the book 10 weeks after the murder, although she subsequently delayed its appearance, apparently concerned by private details about family relationships. This pre-publication stumble has led the suspicious to question the independence and authority of the account.

For me, though, any worries about what might not be in the book are over-powered by what is. Its 700 pages cover just five days, from preparations for the flight to Dallas to the burial of the 35th president. Interviewees included all the major players – President Lyndon Johnson, the senior Kennedys and the relatives of the presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald – but also hundreds of minor ones: aides, caterers, undertakers, tourists, hospital orderlies, priests. From these transcripts, Manchester constructs an astonishing multi-viewpoint narrative in sections named after the Secret Service code-words in use on the days in question, including “Lancer” (the president) and “Castle” (the White House).

Manchester seems to have found out everything: not just what people said, thought, ate, and wore, but what was in JFK’s wallet (including the number of his driving licence) and how his widow planned to distract their young son during the funeral.

A teenager who read a lot of thrillers, I remember realising that this book was more gripping than any of them. Subsequent re-readings confirmed my view that this was how the stories of contemporary events – whether in journalism, history or fiction – should ideally be told.

At a direct level of influence, I wrote a novel, Idlewild, and a radio play, London, This is Washington, in which JFK was a character. One of Manchester’s minor but most striking interviewees, Father Oscar Huber, the priest who gave the president the last rites, is a character in my book.

Manchester’s working principle – if someone mentions curtains, ask which colour and, if they were chewing gum, which flavour – disfigured magazine journalism in the US and UK for a while, in pieces that told us more about the soft furnishings than the subject. But the general instinct is correct: tiny gestures and decisions can have massive significance. Interviews are a crucial tool for capturing history and the pursuit of detail should be exhaustive and pedantic.

I was a teenager who read a lot of thrillers, but this book was more gripping than any of them

Although the best American non-fiction writers who came after Manchester – Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Michael Lewis – tended to be brighter stylists, they carried on the understanding that the strength of contemporary history is the availability of primary oral accounts and that the reporter’s major job is to orchestrate and counterpoint these verbal sources. Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, his magnificent account of the life and judicial killing of criminal Gary Gilmore, is formally divided into sections called Eastern Voices and Western Voices, but the importance of the burning spoken memory equally informs Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and Lewis’s Moneyball and Flash Boys.

Those other great American factual narratives are as much part of Manchester’s legacy as his contribution to our understanding of Kennedy, which, because his aim was to capture the way it was then, has not been devalued by subsequent revelations.

For those who are convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy – or that Lyndon Johnson did – Manchester’s book is a travesty and a main supporting column of the establishment cover-up. For more open-minded readers – and any writer aspiring to tell the story of their times in any form – it is one of the few works of history that itself deserves to be described as historic.

Edited by Steven Gaal
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the perspective this photo is taken from is actually quite misleading? JFK's head is tilted back quite severely, and this has the effect of shortening the neck; making the entrance wound appear much closer to the scalp line and, hence, higher on the neck (the area of C7/T1).

However, in the photo, we can make out the outline of the scapula (shoulder blade) adjacent to the entrance wound, and even the crested top of the scapula, which appears to be slightly higher than the entrance wound.

If we look at this anatomical diagram, this location actually puts the level of the entrance wound at thoracic vertebra T3; exactly where the death certificate said it was.

stock-vector-levator-scapulae-muscle-did

The thoracic vertebrae are distinguishable from the cervical (neck) vertebrae by the fact you can see the ends of the ribs attached to the thoracic vertebrae. Vertebra T3 is the 3rd one down from the neck with ribs attached to it.

BE5_HI.JPG

Looks like about T 8 to me. it's below the bottom point of the scapula. the scapula extends from T2 to T7 and it's slightly below that.

You're joking, right?

why would I be joking? Depends on which spot you're looking at. The only thing that looks like a hole is about T7 - T8. Looks like a mosquito might have bit up about T 3 but don't see anything that looks like a bullet hole as that one at T7-8 does.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pat, of course the back wound on the Fox photo is lower than the throat wound, but the location best supported by the evidence is even lower, and thus demolishes the official shooting scenario more effectively.

The only evidence for the higher back location is highly suspect, because it also shows the intact back of JFK's head. I know you discount all the medical people who reported seeing a huge blowout in the back of JFK's head, but not that many researchers (outside of LNers) do.

When one studies the timeline, Don, it seems obvious that there was no cover-up of the head wound location in the early days of the shooting, when Fox made his copies. By early '64, however, the back wound location was known to be a problem. It was then and only then that the Rydberg drawings were created in which the back wound was now a base of the neck wound.

While one might say Fox was part of the plot, and that he leaked the photos to Crouch to sell that there was no wound on the back of the head, it seems mighty strange that these same photos would prove the WC lied about the back wound location. I don't buy it.

While Cliff and yourself might think the government faked evidence which proved there had been more than one shooter, I don't find that credible at all.

Pat, a while back you gave up on trying to reconcile your claims about the clothing with the Dealey Plaza photos and common sense.

Your claim that the top of JFK's collar aligned with his mastoid process -- that's obviously not true.

The top of your back isn't 4 inches below the bottom of your collars.

So rather than admit you're wrong on the subject you want to play this rhetorical game of misrepresenting my position.

I'm looking at one photograph -- Fox 5.

You claim that Fox 5 MUST 100% be authentic because it proves conspiracy and the conspirators 100% certainly wouldn't create evidence which points to a conspiracy.

But you have no idea under what circumstances that photo was made -- you ASSUME the plotters were competent.

You don't have a case, Pat.

You have one un-supported conclusion piled on top of another...

My study of the evidence indicates that, while some of the physical evidence against Oswald obtained by the DPD may have been phonied up, the evidence obtained by the Feds is legit, only misrepresented and lied about. Take for example, the wound ballistics tests. They showed that Kennedy's and Connally's wounds could only be replicated by a sub-sonic bullet. But Specter and Olivier spun it into their supporting the single-bullet theory. And this is not an isolated incident. Take, as another example, the May 24 re-enactment. The re-enactment did not support the SBT. So Kelley told Specter the jump seat was 6 inches inboard of the door when it was only 2 and a half. And Specter pretended the chalk mark used during the re-enactment was at the base of the neck, where the wound is shown in the Rydberg drawings. He then got Shaneyfelt to say the trajectory approximated this position. In short, they didn't need to fake anything. They just lied.

Wow. No defense of the T1 claim.

None.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hrs ago the Guardian

=============

A forensic study of JFK’s death debunked the conspiracies and taught me that tiny details can be critical

Mark Lawson

In my case, the answer to the question “do you remember what you were doing when JFK was shot?” is: probably sleeping or being sick. Eighteen months old at the time of the first Kennedy slaying, I was old enough to ask why my mother started crying when, in a Yorkshire shop in June 1968, a transistor radio confirmed that the second Kennedy had died.

Robert Francis Kennedy is a powerful presence – and John Fitzgerald Kennedy an overwhelming absence – in The Death of a President, a book by William Manchester that I have thought about immeasurable times since first reading it in 1975.

By then I was 13 and we had moved south to Hertfordshire, where I attended a Catholic school run by an American religious teaching order. Our teachers would speak (sometimes tearfully) of having voted for JFK or signed up for his peace corps. As the first (and still only) Catholic to reach the White House, his framed photograph was on the wall of the entrance hall. We played sport against another local school that was actually called John Kennedy, a measure of the impact his death had made in England.

My dad, a history graduate and obsessive consumer of the news, had a library of books about politics and it was there that I discovered The Death of a President. William Manchester was a newspaper reporter who became a history professor, and in this account of Kennedy’s assassination he combines the highest standards of both professions.

Jacqueline Kennedy had commissioned the book 10 weeks after the murder, although she subsequently delayed its appearance, apparently concerned by private details about family relationships. This pre-publication stumble has led the suspicious to question the independence and authority of the account.

For me, though, any worries about what might not be in the book are over-powered by what is. Its 700 pages cover just five days, from preparations for the flight to Dallas to the burial of the 35th president. Interviewees included all the major players – President Lyndon Johnson, the senior Kennedys and the relatives of the presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald – but also hundreds of minor ones: aides, caterers, undertakers, tourists, hospital orderlies, priests. From these transcripts, Manchester constructs an astonishing multi-viewpoint narrative in sections named after the Secret Service code-words in use on the days in question, including “Lancer” (the president) and “Castle” (the White House).

Manchester seems to have found out everything: not just what people said, thought, ate, and wore, but what was in JFK’s wallet (including the number of his driving licence) and how his widow planned to distract their young son during the funeral.

A teenager who read a lot of thrillers, I remember realising that this book was more gripping than any of them. Subsequent re-readings confirmed my view that this was how the stories of contemporary events – whether in journalism, history or fiction – should ideally be told.

At a direct level of influence, I wrote a novel, Idlewild, and a radio play, London, This is Washington, in which JFK was a character. One of Manchester’s minor but most striking interviewees, Father Oscar Huber, the priest who gave the president the last rites, is a character in my book.

Manchester’s working principle – if someone mentions curtains, ask which colour and, if they were chewing gum, which flavour – disfigured magazine journalism in the US and UK for a while, in pieces that told us more about the soft furnishings than the subject. But the general instinct is correct: tiny gestures and decisions can have massive significance. Interviews are a crucial tool for capturing history and the pursuit of detail should be exhaustive and pedantic.

I was a teenager who read a lot of thrillers, but this book was more gripping than any of them

Although the best American non-fiction writers who came after Manchester – Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Michael Lewis – tended to be brighter stylists, they carried on the understanding that the strength of contemporary history is the availability of primary oral accounts and that the reporter’s major job is to orchestrate and counterpoint these verbal sources. Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, his magnificent account of the life and judicial killing of criminal Gary Gilmore, is formally divided into sections called Eastern Voices and Western Voices, but the importance of the burning spoken memory equally informs Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and Lewis’s Moneyball and Flash Boys.

Those other great American factual narratives are as much part of Manchester’s legacy as his contribution to our understanding of Kennedy, which, because his aim was to capture the way it was then, has not been devalued by subsequent revelations.

For those who are convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy – or that Lyndon Johnson did – Manchester’s book is a travesty and a main supporting column of the establishment cover-up. For more open-minded readers – and any writer aspiring to tell the story of their times in any form – it is one of the few works of history that itself deserves to be described as historic.

Steven, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. I'm considerably older, having been 23 years old at the time of JFK's murder. There are 3 'world altering' events in my lifetime that leads to an answer for 'Where were you when you heard?". August 6, 1945, Though I was only 5, I remember. 11/22/63, I remember. 9/11/01 I remember. If RFK had not been killed during an election year, no one would even remember the year (my opinion) MLK killed in 68 also, only remember that it was same year as RFK.

But what is interesting to me that the 'fluff piece' by Manchester was a memorable book for you. It's not the kind of book I would read. I don't know if it is promoted as a History book or not, but I only read a History book that I figure has at least a 50-50 chance of being accurate. I figured his book as fluff. I, like many, was very impatient for the WCR to be released. It didn't take long to realize it is 'fluff' also. A book written with an agenda. The agenda usually not having anything to do with the word 'truth'.

There is a great difference in a book that has an agenda to not tell the truth and then there are those that try to tell the truth, but for various reasons, get it wrong. Most CT books fit that category. All LN books seem to be of the 'we don't want anyone to know the truth and we're telling whatever lies are necessary to cover up the conspiracy".

I have asked more than one Brit why there is such a fascination with JFK's death in GB and also in Australia. I think there are more Brits (including Canadians and Australian) that comment on JFK Forum's than there are Americans. Why do you think? The only foreign leader I recall much detail over their deaths are Adolf Hitler and the PM of Australia that drowned. (can't remember his name) I still kinda think he was Coup'd. Somebody wanted to get rid of him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When one studies the timeline, Don, it seems obvious that there was no cover-up of the head wound location in the early days of the shooting, when Fox made his copies.

I don't know how you can say that when it was decided on day one that there was only one shooter, all shots from behind. Any head wound to the contrary thus had to be covered up, beginning that night with the autopsy, the report of which described a large head wound that only extended "somewhat into the occipital," an autopsy that included a back of the head photo showing no wound at all extending somewhat into the occipital. (Who was lying, Humes or the camera?)

That's the currently popular story Ron, but it's just not true, IMO. The Parkland witnesses continued to talk about cerebellum for months and months and years and years. The Rydberg drawings, for which Ball, Specter and the doctors conspired to move the back wound, showed a wound on the back of the head.

While it may be true, then, that someone doctored the photos or faked the photos within days of the shooting, before Fox made himself some copies, no one got the word to Specter or the doctors in time for their testimony.

reasontobelieve2.jpg

Edited by Pat Speer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

reasontobelieve2.jpg

I think the first sentence in your "Reason to Believe" block, concerning where "eyewitnesses, taken as a whole," locate the large head wound is the exact opposite of the truth. Which gives me "No Reason to Read Any Further."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When the honesty and competence of all US Government employees is the given subtext of a study -- that study is inherently flawed.

Pat Speer assumes the infallible competence of those who covered up JFK's murder.

How can such assumptions be taken seriously?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The "wound" has a lower margin abrasion collar consistent with a shot from below.

PAT: This is consistent with a shot from above's hitting the back at shallower angle than the forward slope of the shoulder plus the forward lean of the body.

How far over, Pat, are you claiming that JFK was leaning when he was shot in the back?

bump for Pat. Well?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When the honesty and competence of all US Government employees is the given subtext of a study -- that study is inherently flawed.

Pat Speer assumes the infallible competence of those who covered up JFK's murder.

How can such assumptions be taken seriously?

Jesus, Cliff, you couldn't be more wrong. I could say "as usual" but the reality is I agree with you on an awful lot. I asked you before if you watched my video "The Single Bullet Theory, Voodoo Science and Zombie Lies." In that presentation I make the case for a massive cover-up of the medical evidence/back wound location, using "official" evidence. It's conclusive, IMO. Which is why you won't find people like McAdams or DVP challenging any of it. Or people like Burt Griffin, Howard Willens, and Robert Blakey commenting on it. (Griffin ran out of the room about half way through. I shared much of the info with Willens and Blakey via email but they refused to comment.)

One of your problems, IMO, is that you rely in part on the HSCA FPP's negative view of the original autopsy, without realizing they had an agenda: 1) sell the importance and value of civilian forensic pathologists to the nation; 2) attack the competence of Humes, Finck, and Boswell so the public will buy that these guys misplaced the head wound entrance, and were off by four inches, and thereby salvage the reputation of their esteemed colleague Fisher, who moved the entrance wound to appease the justice department and sell the single-assassin conclusion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

reasontobelieve2.jpg

I think the first sentence in your "Reason to Believe" block, concerning where "eyewitnesses, taken as a whole," locate the large head wound is the exact opposite of the truth. Which gives me "No Reason to Read Any Further."

Take a closer look, Ron. Here are the witnesses people like Groden claim point out a wound low on the back of the head, consistent with the McClelland drawing's being accurate and the Harper fragment's being occipital bone. Most of them point to a location above the ear, and thus above the cerebellum. Virtually all of them point to a location on the right side of the head, which is at odds with both the McClelland drawing and the Harper fragment's being occipital bone. There is very little overlap, moreover, between what most of these people remember and the wound depicted on the McClelland drawing. And these are the guys supposedly supporting the accuracy of the McClelland drawing! When one takes into account witnesses like the Newmans, Zapruder, Burkley, etc, who pointed out wounds on the top right side of the head in front of the ear, then, the average placement for the wound is as I've claimed, and your claim my claim is the "opposite of the truth" is exposed as wishful thinking.

JFKandtheunthinkable.jpg

P.S. The videos in which O'Connor and Custer pointed out the wound location showed them pointing out the entire right side of the head from front to back, the condition of the skull after the scalp was peeled back. As a result, one can not rely on Groden's cherry-pick of one frame as an accurate reflection of their recollections.

Edited by Pat Speer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cliff,

You asked me a question in a different thread that I didn't answer yet (because I couldn't find the thread). However, it is on topic for this thread, too. So I'll post the answer here. You asked where David Mantik believes the back entrance wound is located. Based on his taped telephone conversation with Ebersole, I think the answer is T-4. David asked Ebersole straight out if that wound was located at T-4 and Ebersole confirmed that location. (I am replying from memory, but I think that is the case).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cliff,

You asked me a question in a different thread that I didn't answer yet (because I couldn't find the thread). However, it is on topic for this thread, too. So I'll post the answer here. You asked where David Mantik believes the back entrance wound is located. Based on his taped telephone conversation with Ebersole, I think the answer is T-4. David asked Ebersole straight out if that wound was located at T-4 and Ebersole confirmed that location. (I am replying from memory, but I think that is the case).

Great news.

I owe Dr. Mantik an apology.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The "wound" has a lower margin abrasion collar consistent with a shot from below.

PAT: This is consistent with a shot from above's hitting the back at shallower angle than the forward slope of the shoulder plus the forward lean of the body.

How far over, Pat, are you claiming that JFK was leaning when he was shot in the back?

bump for Pat. Well?

I noticed many years ago that the back wound in the photos is on a part of the shoulder that slopes forward at an angle similar to the angle of the descending bullet. Even if Kennedy was leaning just a tiny bit forward, then, the bullet would create the lower margin of the wound first. Here is the slide that convinced me of this.

coatcheck2.jpg

Edited by Pat Speer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cliff,

You asked me a question in a different thread that I didn't answer yet (because I couldn't find the thread). However, it is on topic for this thread, too. So I'll post the answer here. You asked where David Mantik believes the back entrance wound is located. Based on his taped telephone conversation with Ebersole, I think the answer is T-4. David asked Ebersole straight out if that wound was located at T-4 and Ebersole confirmed that location. (I am replying from memory, but I think that is the case).

Great news.

I owe Dr. Mantik an apology.

I've read all of Mantik's articles. He says the back wound is at T-1, and that this location is at odds with the single-bullet theory and single-assassin conclusion. I remember this because it's one of the key points upon which we agree.

Edited by Pat Speer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...