DiEugenio, Cranor, and the mole (my mole) - 3/31/20

[David Lifton]

On 4/13/2020 at 12:46 AM, Andrej Stancak said:

I find merit in the possibility that President's body was not in the bronze casket already when it was loaded on AF1. The point is that the casket weighed 200 kg (about 400 pounds) without any body in it, and 280 kg with President's body. It puzzles me how could only two SS agents in the front of the casket could carry the casket while holding it with one hand only (at least the agent I see on the left side of the casket) and stepping up the stairs.

In Andrews airport, a forklift was called to handle the casket. There is a phenomenon in experimental psychology known as Weber-Fechner law which says that one can perceive an increment in some physical feature (e.g., weight) more finely if the basal intensity of that feature is low compared to high. For instance, President's body would be perceived as a big increment of weight of load if the casket would be the plain shipping casket weighing about 50 kg but it would be perceived less as a weight increment  if the casket were heavy, such as the bronze casket.

That said, I have no further data in support of the possibility that President's body was not in the casket when loaded on AF1.   

 

Yes, the Secret Service checked out that tunnel (at Parkland), but there is no credible evidence that that tunnel was actually employed to remove the body from Parkland Hospital.  Quite aware of this possibility, I questioned Aubrey Rike very carefully on this point. There appeared to me to be no reason to doubt Rike's account that he placed JFK's body --wrapped in sheets-- inside the Dallas coffin (the ceremonial coffin), and then "closed the lid."    That coffin was then rolled down the hallway (on a device called a "church truck"), brought outside and placed inside the hearse for the drive to Love Field, and to the port side of Air Force of Air Force One.  So (IMHO), there is no reason to doubt that JFK's body was inside the Dallas coffin when it was placed aboard Air Force One.

Furthermore: I believe the President's body was in the coffin when it was loaded aboard AF1 for another reason:  as evidenced by the image of S. S. Agent Kellerman -- tall and well built -- struggling with the heavy coffin in the Dallas "onload" photos.

 I invite readers to contrast that with the official USAF photos of the offload at Andrews AFB --published in Best Evidence (and included in the B.E. Research Video) -- which depicts the coffin tilted upwards (and, as noted by William Manchester) practically "bobbing" up and down as it was carried from the mechanical lift (at AF1), and over to the waiting naval ambulance. Bottom line: The Dallas "onload" images appear to depict a coffin that was considerably heavier than the coffin being offloaded at Andrews, some three hours later.

Edited April 15, 2020 by David Lifton

[James DiEugenio]

Well, now someone else has exposed the Cranor/DiEugenio substitution.  I might as well retire courtesy of Lifton.

😇

BTW, since Couteau and Montenegro mentioned it, I am  surprised at the popularity and longevity of that Dave Emory interview series.  

Its been at or near the top of the stat rating on K and K since we posted it.  Which was many months ago.  No other article we have ever done has lasted that long in the stat analytics.

It was Emory's idea to do it, and also to make it as long as it was.  He told me that the length was unprecedented for him in his career, which has lasted forty years. But week after week, I think with only one exception when I was under the weather, he would phone me, set up his engineer and interview me for two hours.  If I recall, this went on for 13 weeks.  That is how much he liked Destiny Betrayed. And BTW, towards the end of the last 2 hour interview, we began to get into other subjects besides Jim Garrison and New Orleans e.g. Kennedy's civil rights program.  He was surprised at what I said about this . Like for instance, that it was JFK who started affirmative action, and this was on the day he was inaugurated; that the Kennedys indicted the superintendent of education in Louisiana for not enforcing Brown vs Board; and the Kennedys started their own school district in Virginia when the state board refused to obey the Brown decision and left all the African American kids in that district without schools for three years.

The MSM, led by the likes of Sabato and Dallek and the sell out Greenfield, have tried to convey that somehow JFK was not strong on civil rights.  And that passed on dolt Chris Hitchens--while he was in leftist garb-- actually said something like Kennedy was a segregationist  at a debate in New York after Stone's film premiered.  What utter garbage. 

Anyway, even someone as informed as Emory seemed surprised by this when i pointed out a couple of things.

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Rob Couteau]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

it was JFK who started affirmative action, and this was on the day he was inaugurated

I believe that setting the record straight on this is one of your most important contributions. Especially since the notion that the opposite was true still lingers on as such a major misconception - and misrepresentation - in the media. Sometimes I try to imagine how JFK would respond if he could look down from the afterlife and see the hard work so many independent researchers have done and are still doing in his behalf. New Frontiersman of a new generation.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Rob.

BTW, a long time ago, a listener to Black Op Radio commented on my excavation of what Kennedy's foreign policy really was, and the difference between that and how it is  represented in the MSM.  He said words to the effect, Jim, I would be willing to wager that if you did that with each aspect of Kennedy's presidency the result would be the same.

Well, I did it with civil rights, and he was right.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

21 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

I wonder where does your aversion to David Lifton's Best Evidence comes from?

Lifton's far-fetched explanation of the shooting, and the effect of his book on public opinion, are where my "aversion to David Lifton's Best Evidence comes from". As I wrote earlier:

Quote

I'm agnostic on whether or not the body was tampered with, but if it was, it can't have been done the way Lifton claimed.

It's important to remember that Lifton wasn't just saying that the body was tampered with in some way before the autopsy. His theory claimed that the body was altered in a specific way for a specific purpose.

Lifton's specific claim was that the planning of the assassination required three things, each of which has its own problem:

(a) all the shots at Kennedy were to be fired from in front;

(b) the body was to be stolen (or "covertly intercepted", as Mr Lifton prefers to call it) while on Air Force One, and in such a way that none of the people on the plane or on the ground would claim to have noticed the theft (sorry, the covert interception);

(c) all the wounds were to be fabricated to indicate that they were fired from behind, from a gunman on the sixth floor, and the fabrication was to be done so skilfully that it would fool the pathologists at the autopsy.

Does anyone apart from Lifton himself actually believe item (a), that all the shots were fired from the front? Remember, this is not a trivial detail but an integral part of his theory. It is clearly incorrect, because we know for a fact that Governor Connally was wounded by a shot that was fired from behind. Lifton must have known that this fact was inconsistent with his theory, but he did not even bother to mention it in Best Evidence, let alone incorporate the existence of the rear sniper into his theory.

If anyone finds item (b) at all credible, please get in touch: I can supply you with a tall metal tower in Paris for a very reasonable price. See https://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/b_snatch.htm for some of the problems with Lifton's "covertly intercepted" scenario.

Item (c) cannot be true. The wounds did the opposite of what Lifton claimed. He wants people to think that the locations of the wounds support the Warren Commission's lone-gunman scenario, when in fact they contradict it. Again, Lifton must have been aware of this when he wrote Best Evidence.

Lifton's theory required a highly co-ordinated conspiracy involving, at a minimum, dozens of people, doing things that surely would have been noticed, but which no-one noticed, in next to no time. Of the three elements of Lifton's theory, two are contradicted by the facts. The other has no solid evidence to support it and is, to put it politely, not very plausible in principle. Not only that, but the promotion of Best Evidence by the media helped to mislead the public about what the genuine objections are to the lone-nut theory. That's where my aversion to Best Evidence comes from.

Quote

please say which piece of data in David Lifton's book is invalid. ... The scenario can be discussed, improved or even changed if new data becomes available but it does not disprove the ... conclusion that President's body had been altered before the start of the official autopsy.

You imply that Lifton has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the body was altered before the autopsy, and that all the data he presented in his book are sound. I'm not so sure. The notion that the head wounds were altered to support the lone-nut scenario, for example, is less certain than you seem to think. I've already pointed out one problem with the head wounds: the entry wound at the rear of the head was not consistent with having been caused by a lone gunman firing from the sixth floor, which according to Lifton was the whole purpose of faking it.

Of course, the muddy state of the medical evidence rarely allows for watertight conclusions, but if you look at what the doctors at Parkland actually said and wrote about the head wounds, their accounts tend to contradict the lone-nut scenario [edit:] agree with the pathologists' accounts, which implies that the wounds weren't faked; see https://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_5.htm.

There's a problem with speculating about the precise way in which the wounds were manipulated to support the Warren Commission's interpretation. Such speculation requires the assumption that the wounds support the Commission's interpretation, and implies that this point of view is uncontroversial. The wounds must be consistent with the lone-nut scenario, because even the conspiracy theorists say so!

But it's quite possible that, in fact, the wounds are not consistent with the lone-nut scenario, in which case there wouldn't have been much point in faking them.

In their eagerness to see a conspiracy everywhere they look, some people jump to the conclusion that this or that piece of evidence has been faked. By assuming that the medical evidence or the photographic evidence or whatever must have been faked to support the lone-nut theory, they're doing the Commission's work for them. They are saying, in effect: the evidence we have before us supports the lone-nut theory.

Some of the evidence in the case does seem to have been manipulated; some witness statements, for example. But if one criticises the lone-nut theory properly, and examines the evidence with an open mind, it often turns out that the evidence in question either actively contradicts the lone-nut theory (e.g. the Zapruder film and the entry wound in the rear of the head) or there is at least reasonable doubt that the evidence in question supports the lone-nut theory (e.g. much of the rest of the medical evidence). Again, if it contradicts the lone-nut theory, it can't realistically have been faked to support the lone-nut theory, can it?

The paranoid, 'everything is a fake' mindset does more than just legitimise the lone-nut theory. It causes another problem: it gives the general public the impression that everyone who questions the lone-nut theory is a paranoid fantasist.

Anyone who wants the JFK assassination to be more than a harmless pastime, a game of let's see who can think up the most extravagant and impractical conspiracy theory, anyone who actually wants the case to be resolved, needs to get the public on their side. To do that, you need to question conspiracy theories as well as the lone-nut theory, and question them properly.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Jeremy Bojczuk

[Andrej Stancak]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

It's important to remember that Lifton wasn't just saying that the body was tampered with in some way before the autopsy. His theory claimed that the body was altered in a specific way for a specific purpose.

Jeremy:

I think that here lies the problem. Lifton's theory says that the body was altered, especially the head and the neck. This is the essence and the novelty of the theory. Other elements in Best Evidence are hypotheses and explanations and these, therefore, do not refute the basic fact that the head and neck were altered. Doug Horne added one more alteration which was not described in Best Evidence, namely that later, after the official autopsy was finished and after Dr Humes called Dr Perry (about 2305), Dr Humes took a probe and forced a passage from the back wound (which was considered by Humes to be a non-penetrating wound during the period of official autopsy)  to the the front neck wound. This extra alteration does not refute Lifton's theory even if it was never mentioned in Best Evidence.

Even if President was shot from the back, and it is very likely he was (it would be difficult to introduce a wound in the back postmortem because every pathologist immediately recognises, according to the presence of vital signs, whether a wound was caused while a person was alive or dead), this does not refute the alterations made to the neck and head. The sole purpose of these illegal alterations was to obliterate any wounds caused by shots from the front.  This is how I understand Best Evidence. 

Whether the alterations were made by Dr Humes or somebody else, in Bethesda or somewhere else, before 7PM or after 7PM, whether there was an extra shot from behind of Kennedy, these aspects have no bearings to the validity of Lifton's conclusions (the body of President Kennedy was altered prior to the autopsy).

If President was also shot from behind and the non-penetrating back wound would be related to that shot, the wound (or its description in the autopsy report) was changed to a penetrating wound and this is fully in line with Best Evidence: the front-back trajectories were suppressed and the back-front trajectories were enhanced.

Thanks for taking time to respond to my post.

 

[David Lifton]

18 hours ago, David Lifton said:

"

DSL RESPONSE:

The pathologists were not fooled. (The real issue, I have always believed) is what were the supposed to do about it? (Call the Maryland State Police?" Seriously, they were in an impossible situation).

(A) Remember what Dr. Humes said to me, when I questioned him (in Oct/Nov 1966) seeking to determine his level of awareness.  And when he finally blurted out: "I'd like to know by whom it was done!  And when! and where!"   (See Ch. 8 - 10, B.E.) And when I pressed further and questioned him further, he said that he recorded exactly what he saw in the autopsy report. And that report, as I explained in Chapter 18 of B.E., begins with  precise description of how the scalp had already been "flapped."

Also: Dr Perry testified that he received a call on Friday night, 11/22/63,  from Commander Humes (the autopsy pathologist) who asked (this, from memory): “Did you make any wounds in the back?’

(B)  The two FBI agents who witnessed the autopsy reported that it was “apparent” that there had been “surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull.”

Tell me, Mr. Bojczuk: Does this fit your idea of a  medical situation that was so expertly executed that the result “fool[ed]” the pathologists?  (And, again. . What about Humes' outburst to me, when questioned on this very matter: "I'd like to know by whom it was done! . . .and when!  And where!". .See Chapters  8-10 of B.E.)

As to your assertion: “we know for a fact that Governor Connally was wounded by a shot that was fired from behind," there also, I beg to disagree. Because if so, then

please do explain:

(1) Why Gov Connally later (some years after his Warren Commission testimony) gave an account that he felt as if he were slammed in the chest from the front. Do you think Connally’s memory decayed with time; or is this a situation in which, to quote Josephine Tey, “Truth is the daughter of time”?

(2)  Regarding the JC rear entry. . . .: please do explain why the JC medical team reported that only the outermost layer of Gov JC’s muscle (the latissimus dorsi)

was punctured, shallowly (similar to the shallow wound on JFK's back-- although they did not say that) ) and that this supposed entry went no further; i.e., did not go through the underlying musculature?

(3) Why (if JC was struck from behind) was it reported (by the thoracic surgeon [as I recall]) that Gov JC’s ribs were bent inward. (How likely is that?)

I offer this info not as conclusions, but as reasons for serious skepticism about JC's testimony, and the conventional conclusion that he was shot once from behind.

P.S. If JC had testified to the Warren Commission what he said years later (shot from the front, etc.), that would have spelled “conspiracy” and (IMHO) ended any possibility of Johnson receiving the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency.  If the public believed that Kennedy was murdered as a result of a conspiracy executed in Dallas, there would have been no Johnson presidency, and no escalatIon of the Vietnam War. Again: IMHO.

Edited April 15, 2020 by David Lifton

[David Lifton]

18 hours ago, David Lifton said:

"

One other matter, and that concerns Bojckuck's concern about "getting the public on his side" (so there might be a new investigation):

Really? In 2020?  You’re dreaming.. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like a public relations strategy.  Sorry, but my goal has been to ascertain the truth.  And I believe polls show that a significant percentage of the population do not believe the official version of the Kennedy assassination.  From my informal monitoring of the situation, much of this derives from a refusal to believe validity of the naval autopsy conclusions about bullet trajectories, an autopsy performed by doctors who were subject to a military “order not to talk,” who burned their original notes, and by the use of artist’s drawings, instead of autopsy photos. Now whether the public agrees with my belief that the body was altered (and was tantamount to a medical forgery), or whether they believe that the doctors simply lied - -  that I don’t know. What I do know is (a) that the wounds were altered; (b) that the autopsy doctors knew it; and (c) they wrote a technically accurate autopsy report which (accurately) reported the condition of the body, but which did not explicitly state that there had been post-mortem surgery.

But that deadly fact was stated, in plain English, by the two FBI agents who were present, and who reported,  based on what the doctors were saying at the time of the autopsy exam, that it was “apparent” that there had been “surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull.”

IMHO: the two naval autopsy doctors were in the position of a bank teller who cashes a check that he knows to be a forgery -- indeed, a sloppy forgery.

Edited April 15, 2020 by David Lifton

[Micah Mileto]

56 minutes ago, David Lifton said:

As to your assertion: “we know for a fact that Governor Connally was wounded by a shot that was fired from behind," there also, I beg to disagree. Because if so, then

 

please do explain:

(1) Why Gov Connally later (some years after his Warren Commission testimony) gave an account that he felt as if he were slammed in the chest from the front. Do you think Connally’s memory decayed with time; or is this a situation in which, to quote Josephine Tey, “truth is the daughter of time”?

(2)  Regarding the JC rear entry. . . .: please do explain why the JC medical team reported that only the outermost layer of Gov JC’s muscle (the latissimus dorsi)

was punctured, shallowly (similar to the shallow wound on JFK's back-- although they did not say that) ) and that this supposed entry went no further; i.e., did not go through the underlying musculature?

(3) Why (if JC was struck from behind) was it reported (by the thoracic surgeon [as I recall]) that Gov JC’s ribs were bent inward. (How likely is that?)

I offer this info not as conclusions, but as reasons for serious skepticism about JC's testimony, and the conventional conclusion that he was shot once from behind.

P.S. If JC had testified to the Warren Commission what he said years later (shot from the front, etc.), that would have spelled “conspiracy” and (IMHO) ended any possibility of Johnson receiving the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency.  If the public believed that Kennedy was murdered as a result of a conspiracy executed in Dallas, there would have been no Johnson presidency, and no escalatIon of the Vietnam War. Again: IMHO.

Never heard these arguments before, very interesting! But what are you suggesting when you say Connally's back wound was shallow? Is this meant to sound consistent with an exit wound, or are you suggesting somebody might have mutilated the living Governor?

[David Lifton]

8 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Lifton's far-fetched explanation of the shooting, and the effect of his book on public opinion, are where my "aversion to David Lifton's Best Evidence comes from". As I wrote earlier:

Lifton's specific claim was that the planning of the assassination required three things, each of which has its own problem:

(a) all the shots at Kennedy were to be fired from in front;

(b) the body was to be stolen (or "covertly intercepted", as Mr Lifton prefers to call it) while on Air Force One, and in such a way that none of the people on the plane or on the ground would claim to have noticed the theft (sorry, the covert interception);

(c) all the wounds were to be fabricated to indicate that they were fired from behind, from a gunman on the sixth floor, and the fabrication was to be done so skilfully that it would fool the pathologists at the autopsy.

Does anyone apart from Lifton himself actually believe item (a), that all the shots were fired from the front? Remember, this is not a trivial detail but an integral part of his theory. It is clearly incorrect, because we know for a fact that Governor Connally was wounded by a shot that was fired from behind. Lifton must have known that this fact was inconsistent with his theory, but he did not even bother to mention it in Best Evidence, let alone incorporate the existence of the rear sniper into his theory.

If anyone finds item (b) at all credible, please get in touch: I can supply you with a tall metal tower in Paris for a very reasonable price. See https://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/b_snatch.htm for some of the problems with Lifton's "covertly intercepted" scenario.

Item (c) cannot be true. The wounds did the opposite of what Lifton claimed. He wants people to think that the locations of the wounds support the Warren Commission's lone-gunman scenario, when in fact they contradict it. Again, Lifton must have been aware of this when he wrote Best Evidence.

Lifton's theory required a highly co-ordinated conspiracy involving, at a minimum, dozens of people, doing things that surely would have been noticed, but which no-one noticed, in next to no time. Of the three elements of Lifton's theory, two are contradicted by the facts. The other has no solid evidence to support it and is, to put it politely, not very plausible in principle. Not only that, but the promotion of Best Evidence by the media helped to mislead the public about what the genuine objections are to the lone-nut theory. That's where my aversion to Best Evidence comes from.

You imply that Lifton has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the body was altered before the autopsy, and that all the data he presented in his book are sound. I'm not so sure. The notion that the head wounds were altered to support the lone-nut scenario, for example, is less certain than you seem to think. I've already pointed out one problem with the head wounds: the entry wound at the rear of the head was not consistent with having been caused by a lone gunman firing from the sixth floor, which according to Lifton was the whole purpose of faking it.

Of course, the muddy state of the medical evidence rarely allows for watertight conclusions, but if you look at what the doctors at Parkland actually said and wrote about the head wounds, their accounts tend to contradict the lone-nut scenario [edit:] agree with the pathologists' accounts, which implies that the wounds weren't faked; see https://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_5.htm.

There's a problem with speculating about the precise way in which the wounds were manipulated to support the Warren Commission's interpretation. Such speculation requires the assumption that the wounds support the Commission's interpretation, and implies that this point of view is uncontroversial. The wounds must be consistent with the lone-nut scenario, because even the conspiracy theorists say so!

But it's quite possible that, in fact, the wounds are not consistent with the lone-nut scenario, in which case there wouldn't have been much point in faking them.

In their eagerness to see a conspiracy everywhere they look, some people jump to the conclusion that this or that piece of evidence has been faked. By assuming that the medical evidence or the photographic evidence or whatever must have been faked to support the lone-nut theory, they're doing the Commission's work for them. They are saying, in effect: the evidence we have before us supports the lone-nut theory.

Some of the evidence in the case does seem to have been manipulated; some witness statements, for example. But if one criticises the lone-nut theory properly, and examines the evidence with an open mind, it often turns out that the evidence in question either actively contradicts the lone-nut theory (e.g. the Zapruder film and the entry wound in the rear of the head) or there is at least reasonable doubt that the evidence in question supports the lone-nut theory (e.g. much of the rest of the medical evidence). Again, if it contradicts the lone-nut theory, it can't realistically have been faked to support the lone-nut theory, can it?

The paranoid, 'everything is a fake' mindset does more than just legitimise the lone-nut theory. It causes another problem: it gives the general public the impression that everyone who questions the lone-nut theory is a paranoid fantasist.

Anyone who wants the JFK assassination to be more than a harmless pastime, a game of let's see who can think up the most extravagant and impractical conspiracy theory, anyone who actually wants the case to be resolved, needs to get the public on their side. To do that, you need to question conspiracy theories as well as the lone-nut theory, and question them properly.

Quoting Bojzcuk: The paranoid, 'everything is a fake' mindset does more than just legitimise the lone-nut theory. It causes another problem: it gives the general public the impression that everyone who questions the lone-nut theory is a paranoid fantasist.

MY RESPONSE:

First of all, based on polling data, this country must be loaded with paranoid fantasts.(Is that the right term? Or is "skeptic" a better choice? I prefer the latter).

Poor Mr. Bochuk. .he cannot get his mind around the idea that an Oswald frame-up was possible, or in any event even plausible.

Let’s review the basic chronology:

1. The Bethesda autopsy began (officially) at 8 PM EST

2. There were no bullets or macroscopic fragments in the body.  As the two FBI agents reported, the doctors “were at a loss explain. . why they could find no bullets”

3. At about 9 pm, at the White House, a Secret Service agent turned over the bullet that (he said) was found on a Dallas stretcher at Parkland Hospital (Note the time: The agent (Richard Johnsen) carried the bullet in his pocket for about six hours.)

4. At about 10:30 PM, two Secret Service agents (and/or FBI agents) assigned to search the limo (by then parked in the White House garage) found (in the front seat) the two large ballistically identifiable fragments that matched LHO’s rifle.  (Wow!  What a find. Proof that Oswald's rifle was the murder weapon - -either that, or that someone with an eye for detail was involved in the design of this frame-up.

FWIW:  The basic draft of the Warren Report was written by late March, 1964; and by June 1964, there were already many revisions. The Warren Commission legal staff didn’t seem to “catch on” to the possibility of fraud in the evidence until June 1964, long after the basic draft of their report (with its “case against Oswald", se Chapter 4)  was written.  At that time, they had no “chain of possession” on the bullet, the fragments, or lots of other critical evidence. That’s when (approx. June 1964) senior WC attorney Norman Redlich (of considerable academic brilliance, BTW) thought to address this situation.  So, at about that time, he requested of FBI Director J. E. Hoover something that most law students learn in their first year: if Director Hoover could please send out his agents and establish a “chain of possession” on all of the basic evidence on which the Warren Commission relied (!)....the rifle, the bullet fragments, etc.  (This bizarre situation is documented in the "working papers" of the Warren Commission, which I spent weeks studying at NARA, in the early 1970s).  If the FBI were to have proceeded in this fashion in the case of a stolen horse, there would have been a fistful of excellent FBI reports about the situation at the barn, after the horse was stolen, and no information about the missing horse, which —it perhaps would have been concluded— had simply run away.

To state it somewhat differently: eighth grade students know, from watching CSI or Law and Order—the necessity of establishing a chain of possession on the key evidence in a murder case.  But, unfortunately, this basic precept was ignored by the legal eagles on the Warren Commission until about June 1964. . . when, apparently, someone apparently realized that, without a valid chain of possession, they were vulnerable to the charge of having  “played cards” with a stacked deck.  OMG. . what then?! (And: Would the public notice?)

FWIW: The first public notice that the WC had a "chain of possession" problem (with regards to the President's body) appeared in a legal paper written by attorney Jay Schwartz (from upstate New York) -- a paper published (approx 1966) in an NYU legal journal.  Schwartz drily noted that  (a) the most important evidence in a murder case was "the body" and (b) there was no chain of possession on JFK's body (!).  He added a few words (tongue in cheek, perhaps?) that of course the presumption was (i.e., it was "assumed") that nothing could have happened to JFK's body  in the approximate six (6) hour period between the Dallas pronouncement of death (1 PM CST), and the (8 PM EST) start of the official autopsy at Bethesda. However, (in the spirit of "But') he politely noted at least one observation that was different, and raised (in a single sentence, as I recall)  the basic question (explored in great detail in B.E.)  He did not make any accusation, but he did raise the question.

Furthermore. .  : This is/was more than a procedural matter. Think about it: If the FBI had done a genuine chain-of-possession investigation (even if they started with the assumption that nothing was amiss, and this was simply a procedural matter of "dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's), and if they (as I did, in 1966/67) had questioned members of the U.S. Multi-Service Casket Team, what would have been the result? What would FBI officials have thought when they learned that, at Bethesda Naval Hospital (and after RFK and JBK exited the vehicle), there had been an "ambulance chase" (per Ch. 16 of B.E.). What would they had thought, if they had questioned Dennis David (as I did on 7/2/1979),  and learned that the coffin offloaded from Air Force One was empty? And were  told, in effect: "Not to worry, this was only a security measure." Rest assured that if any of this information had been discovered, and made public at the time (1963/1964) there would have been a public outcry, and a demand for explanations. And the Warren Report would have had to include several pages of explanation-- explaining to the general public (and the world) why --in the scene broadcast nationally, and to the world--showing the arrival of the Kennedy party at Andrews Air Force Base, that the coffin next to which Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy were standing, was empty.  None of this happened, of course; but I have wondered what the outcome would have been, if this bizarre situation had been discovered at that time.

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by David Lifton

[Evan Marshall]

If we start with a conclusion then all the "facts" that support that conclusion are golden but things that don't are discarded as irrelevant or simply wrong. I saw that happen time after time at Homicide when coworkers would "know" what happened and eventually find themselves with an unsolved homicide. 

And bullets can and will do all sorts of unpredictable things when they impact the human body AND the only time I saw anyone take three rifle rounds to the head and it was still relatively intact was when the M-1 carbine fmj was used.

[Pat Speer]

Governor Connally was, in fact, quite clear in his belief he was struck from behind. I have collected his numerous descriptions of the shooting on my website. Here are the quotes i've collected from the last years of his life.

(ABC News interview shown on the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the assassination, 1983) "I heard a sound that I thought was a rifle shot. So I looked in the direction from which I thought the shot came, and then suddenly I felt an impact like someone had walked up behind me and hit me with a doubled-up fist right in the back. And it knocked me over. And before I could straighten up I saw that I was literally just covered with blood and I knew I had been hit badly, and I assumed, probably fatally." (9-19-88 interview recounted in American History Illustrated, November 1988) "I was looking to my right," he says, 'and then I heard a shot. It was a rifle-shot...This was not a backfire or a firecracker. Right away, the thought came to me that this was an assassination attempt. I started to turn toward my left to look back at President Kennedy. I was sure that the shot had not hit me. I heard it, but I did not sense being hit by it. As I turned, I felt like someone had doubled up his fist and hit me hard just below the right shoulder blade. I knew I had been hit by a second shot. Those shots had come so fast I thought maybe someone was working an automatic weapon, or maybe two or three people were shooting. I looked down and saw blood all over me. I said 'My God, they're going to kill us all!' I nearly doubled up. I fell over into my wife's lap. Then I heard the third shot. It hit the President hard. It made a loud noise as it hit. I couldn't see the President. But I knew he was hit. His brain tissues had been blown out onto me." (The Men Who Killed Kennedy, broadcast 1988) “I heard what I thought was a rifle shot. I immediately reacted by turning to look over my right shoulder because that’s where the sound came from. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder when I felt a blow in the middle of my back as if someone had hit me with a doubled-up fist about like that. The blow was of such force that it bent me over, and I immediately saw that I was covered with blood, and I knew I’d been hit. And I said “Oh, my God, they’re going to kill us all. And I heard another shot. There was a last shot almost like that, and I immediately saw blood and brain tissue all over the back of the limousine.” (1988 interview broadcast in CBS program Who Killed JFK: the Final Chapter?, 11-19-93) "I heard what I thought was a rifle shot. I thought the shot came from behind me. (He turns right)  And I didn't see anything, so I was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder into the back seat. I had not gotten turned to my left to see the President when I felt a sharp blow like someone had walked up behind me and hit me with a closed fist. The force of the blow was strong enough to bend me over and I saw immediately that I was covered with blood. And I said "My God, they're gonna kill us all!" Nellie then pulled me over in her lap and put her head down on mine and said "Be still. Everything's gonna be alright!" I was still conscious. Then I heard another shot. I knew it had hit because it sounded with an impact (slaps hands) that loud.  And after that shot, the car, our clothes, were covered in blood, and even chunks of brain tissue." (11-16-88 Cox News Service article by Seth Kantor found in the Henderson, North Carolina Times-News) (Describing the impact of the shot) "It was like somebody had walked up behind me and hit me with a closed fist in the back"... 'I didn't hear that second shot. I felt the blow. Then I saw I was drenched with blood. I knew I'd been hit. I said 'My God, they're going to kill us all!' Then Nellie (Mrs. Connally) pulled me into her lap. I heard another shot, what I thought was a rifle shot (he slammed his hands together again). I heard the impact of it, which was very loud, a very distinct impact. I was conscious. I was lying down. I was looking straight into the back of the back seat. And after that shot had hit, I saw blood and tissue all over the blue velour covering of the presidential limousine. All over my clothes. My eyes were open. I knew what I saw. There was no question in my mind but what there were three shots. I did not hear the second. I only heard two. Nellie heard three, There weren't four. They didn't come from the grassy knoll. They all came from the same direction. From behind...they developed the theory that the president and I were hit by the same bullet and that one missed completely. I don't believe that. Never have believed that. They posed that question to me during the Warren Commission and I didn't believe it then; don't believe it now.'" (11-21-88 appearance on ABC's Nightline) "The man fired three shots. He hit three times. He hit President Kennedy twice and me once...There were three shots...The President got hit by the first one. I got hit by the second. And he got hit by the third." (Interview shown on C-Span, 6-15-91) "We turned onto Elm Street to go under the overpass, and I heard this sound that I thought was a rifle shot. I turned to look over my right shoulder because that's where the sound came from to see if I could see anything. I didn't. And I was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder when I felt an impact as if someone had hit me with a closed fist right in the middle of my back. The force was strong enough where it knocked me over and I saw that I was covered with blood. So, frankly, I thought I had been fatally hit. My wife pulled me down in her lap. She was seated on the jump seat to my left, and I was seated on the jump seat directly in front of the President. She pulled me down in her lap, (claps hands) and about that time I heard another shot, about that loud, a smack. And my eyes were open, I was conscious, and I saw the blue velour interior of this presidential limousine covered with blood and brain tissue." (On whether there was a conspiracy) "I don't know. I was there...I wasn't conscious of what was happening until Monday morning when I woke up enough to watch the funeral procession in Washington. If Oswald had a conspirator working with him, he's never been identified. A lot of strange things happened surrounding the assassination that there's no good explanation for. This gives rise to all the suspicions." (When asked about the Warren Commission) "Basically, the Warren Commission, I think, did a good job. I think they probably overlooked some things that they could have got into. I think the autopsy, the whole autopsy matter, was badly handled. I think the research on the president's body was not well done. But this is at the request of the Kennedy family." 

(Interview with Larry King on CNN, January, 1992) "I thought I heard a rifle shot...I turned to look over my right shoulder because that's where the sound came from. And I saw nothing out of the corner of my eye and I turned to look over my left shoulder. About the time I got square again, Larry, I felt a blow (slaps hands together) about like that, as if someone had hit me in the back with a closed fist. It knocked me over and as I looked down I was covered with blood... Conscious, and I said 'My God, they're gonna kill us all!'...I said it out loud...No pain, nope...just a thud. I felt no pain after that. Nellie then immediately pulled me down into her lap. And about that time ((slaps hands together) we heard another sound, another rifle shot. The loud smack was the bullet hitting the President's head... Immediately after that smacking sound the whole car was covered with blood and brain tissue. There were chunks of brain tissue as big as my little finger on my clothes." (1-28-92 letter to Dr. Louis Kartsonis, published in San Diego Magazine, September 1992) "I did not see the President after any of the shots on November 22. My wife saw him reach up and grasp his throat after the first shot, then saw him no more because she pulled me down in her lap and put her head down over mine after the second shot which hit me. I think the first shot hit the President. I think the second shot hit me and I think the third shot hit him. I know there are those that disagree but I am absolutely convinced that this is what happened." (CBS interview broadcast in "Who Killed JFK? Facts, Not Fiction" 1992) "To me, it's just inconceivable that the first shot that went through the throat, through the neck, entered my back. I don't believe that. I don't wanna believe that. They can't run enough tests to make me believe that." (Interview in the Discovery Channel program The End of Camelot, broadcast 1993) "I felt like someone hit me in the back with a balled-up fist. It knocked me over. And I looked down and I was covered with blood. And I said 'My God, they're gonna kill us all!" (In History’s Shadow, 1993, co-written with Mickey Herskowitz) “It was almost exactly 12:30 PM, November 22, 1963 when we followed the motorcycle escort onto Houston Street and past the ugly brick building where Lee Harvey Oswald waited with his scrambled egg off a mind. People were still jostling for a better view. The noise of the motorcycles, the clearing of the mechanical lungs, b-r-r-o-o-m, competed with the rising cheers, and at first many people thought what they heard was the backfire of a motorbike. I knew it wasn't. I had been to war, hunted, handled guns all my life. And even if there had been time to wonder, within seconds the evidence was all over us. The first shot struck the President in the neck. His hands flew to his throat, a reflex. I turned, and felt the blow against my back. My body was aligned in such a way that the bullet passed through my chest, shattered my right wrist, and lodged in my thigh. It is remarkable, over the years, how many people have tried to tell me where I was shot, and how. I never argue with them. I only need to consult my scars. I was still conscious when the third shot blew off part of John Kennedy's head...Everything I saw, heard, and felt is consistent with what was visible in the frame-by-frame analysis of the film taken by Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas merchant who became an accidental historian: The first shot passed through the neck of John F. Kennedy. I saw him clutch his throat. The second shot was the one that struck me; of this I have no doubt. Nellie had pulled me to her when the third bullet blew across the car a spray of the President's brain." (Final words on the subject) "I happen to support the major findings of the Warren Commission. I believe there were errors, including the so-called “magic bullet.” My ear and my body told me that I was not wounded in three places by a bullet that hit President Kennedy. I remain convinced that he was hit twice, and I once, by three separate shots.”

[David Lifton]

sis

3 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Never heard these arguments before, very interesting! But what are you suggesting when you say Connally's back wound was shallow? Is this meant to sound consistent with an exit wound, or are you suggesting somebody might have mutilated the living Governor?

I don't believe anyone "mutilated" the governor's body.  That is the wrong word.  But I do believe that a small (and relatively minor) entry wound was created on the rear surface of Governor Connally's body to create valid medical evidence he was struck from behind.  Governor Connally knew that he was struck from the front (and later interviews I have make this clear). But it was imperative --to the official version--that he "agree" (in 1963/64) that he was struck from behind.  (I would imagine that it was "explained" to him that the world was teetering on the verge of nuclear war, or some such "national security" cover story).  As you may (or may not) know, a motion picture projector was brought to Connally's hospital room on Sunday evening, 11/24, and the film (which, as you may be aware, I believe to have been altered by that time) was repeatedly played for him.  Again and again. That film does not show any car stop. None at all. It shows a "six second" assassination; not the actuality (a 20 second shooting, approx). Governor Connally knows what actually happened, and I'll have more to say about this in Final Charade. By the next Wednesday evening (11/27), Governor Connally was prepared to state--for the record--a version of events which was broadcast nationally, and which would become "his" version, and to which he testified in February, 1964. 

Edited April 15, 2020 by David Lifton

[David Lifton]

17 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Governor Connally was, in fact, quite clear in his belief he was struck from behind. I have collected his numerous descriptions of the shooting on my website. Here are the quotes i've collected from the last years of his life.

(ABC News interview shown on the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the assassination, 1983) "I heard a sound that I thought was a rifle shot. So I looked in the direction from which I thought the shot came, and then suddenly I felt an impact like someone had walked up behind me and hit me with a doubled-up fist right in the back. And it knocked me over. And before I could straighten up I saw that I was literally just covered with blood and I knew I had been hit badly, and I assumed, probably fatally." (9-19-88 interview recounted in American History Illustrated, November 1988) "I was looking to my right," he says, 'and then I heard a shot. It was a rifle-shot...This was not a backfire or a firecracker. Right away, the thought came to me that this was an assassination attempt. I started to turn toward my left to look back at President Kennedy. I was sure that the shot had not hit me. I heard it, but I did not sense being hit by it. As I turned, I felt like someone had doubled up his fist and hit me hard just below the right shoulder blade. I knew I had been hit by a second shot. Those shots had come so fast I thought maybe someone was working an automatic weapon, or maybe two or three people were shooting. I looked down and saw blood all over me. I said 'My God, they're going to kill us all!' I nearly doubled up. I fell over into my wife's lap. Then I heard the third shot. It hit the President hard. It made a loud noise as it hit. I couldn't see the President. But I knew he was hit. His brain tissues had been blown out onto me." (The Men Who Killed Kennedy, broadcast 1988) “I heard what I thought was a rifle shot. I immediately reacted by turning to look over my right shoulder because that’s where the sound came from. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder when I felt a blow in the middle of my back as if someone had hit me with a doubled-up fist about like that. The blow was of such force that it bent me over, and I immediately saw that I was covered with blood, and I knew I’d been hit. And I said “Oh, my God, they’re going to kill us all. And I heard another shot. There was a last shot almost like that, and I immediately saw blood and brain tissue all over the back of the limousine.” (1988 interview broadcast in CBS program Who Killed JFK: the Final Chapter?, 11-19-93) "I heard what I thought was a rifle shot. I thought the shot came from behind me. (He turns right)  And I didn't see anything, so I was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder into the back seat. I had not gotten turned to my left to see the President when I felt a sharp blow like someone had walked up behind me and hit me with a closed fist. The force of the blow was strong enough to bend me over and I saw immediately that I was covered with blood. And I said "My God, they're gonna kill us all!" Nellie then pulled me over in her lap and put her head down on mine and said "Be still. Everything's gonna be alright!" I was still conscious. Then I heard another shot. I knew it had hit because it sounded with an impact (slaps hands) that loud.  And after that shot, the car, our clothes, were covered in blood, and even chunks of brain tissue." (11-16-88 Cox News Service article by Seth Kantor found in the Henderson, North Carolina Times-News) (Describing the impact of the shot) "It was like somebody had walked up behind me and hit me with a closed fist in the back"... 'I didn't hear that second shot. I felt the blow. Then I saw I was drenched with blood. I knew I'd been hit. I said 'My God, they're going to kill us all!' Then Nellie (Mrs. Connally) pulled me into her lap. I heard another shot, what I thought was a rifle shot (he slammed his hands together again). I heard the impact of it, which was very loud, a very distinct impact. I was conscious. I was lying down. I was looking straight into the back of the back seat. And after that shot had hit, I saw blood and tissue all over the blue velour covering of the presidential limousine. All over my clothes. My eyes were open. I knew what I saw. There was no question in my mind but what there were three shots. I did not hear the second. I only heard two. Nellie heard three, There weren't four. They didn't come from the grassy knoll. They all came from the same direction. From behind...they developed the theory that the president and I were hit by the same bullet and that one missed completely. I don't believe that. Never have believed that. They posed that question to me during the Warren Commission and I didn't believe it then; don't believe it now.'" (11-21-88 appearance on ABC's Nightline) "The man fired three shots. He hit three times. He hit President Kennedy twice and me once...There were three shots...The President got hit by the first one. I got hit by the second. And he got hit by the third." (Interview shown on C-Span, 6-15-91) "We turned onto Elm Street to go under the overpass, and I heard this sound that I thought was a rifle shot. I turned to look over my right shoulder because that's where the sound came from to see if I could see anything. I didn't. And I was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder when I felt an impact as if someone had hit me with a closed fist right in the middle of my back. The force was strong enough where it knocked me over and I saw that I was covered with blood. So, frankly, I thought I had been fatally hit. My wife pulled me down in her lap. She was seated on the jump seat to my left, and I was seated on the jump seat directly in front of the President. She pulled me down in her lap, (claps hands) and about that time I heard another shot, about that loud, a smack. And my eyes were open, I was conscious, and I saw the blue velour interior of this presidential limousine covered with blood and brain tissue." (On whether there was a conspiracy) "I don't know. I was there...I wasn't conscious of what was happening until Monday morning when I woke up enough to watch the funeral procession in Washington. If Oswald had a conspirator working with him, he's never been identified. A lot of strange things happened surrounding the assassination that there's no good explanation for. This gives rise to all the suspicions." (When asked about the Warren Commission) "Basically, the Warren Commission, I think, did a good job. I think they probably overlooked some things that they could have got into. I think the autopsy, the whole autopsy matter, was badly handled. I think the research on the president's body was not well done. But this is at the request of the Kennedy family." 

(Interview with Larry King on CNN, January, 1992) "I thought I heard a rifle shot...I turned to look over my right shoulder because that's where the sound came from. And I saw nothing out of the corner of my eye and I turned to look over my left shoulder. About the time I got square again, Larry, I felt a blow (slaps hands together) about like that, as if someone had hit me in the back with a closed fist. It knocked me over and as I looked down I was covered with blood... Conscious, and I said 'My God, they're gonna kill us all!'...I said it out loud...No pain, nope...just a thud. I felt no pain after that. Nellie then immediately pulled me down into her lap. And about that time ((slaps hands together) we heard another sound, another rifle shot. The loud smack was the bullet hitting the President's head... Immediately after that smacking sound the whole car was covered with blood and brain tissue. There were chunks of brain tissue as big as my little finger on my clothes." (1-28-92 letter to Dr. Louis Kartsonis, published in San Diego Magazine, September 1992) "I did not see the President after any of the shots on November 22. My wife saw him reach up and grasp his throat after the first shot, then saw him no more because she pulled me down in her lap and put her head down over mine after the second shot which hit me. I think the first shot hit the President. I think the second shot hit me and I

17 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Governor Connally was, in fact, quite clear in his belief he was struck from behind. I have collected his numerous descriptions of the shooting on my website. Here are the quotes i've collected from the last years of his life.

(ABC News interview shown on the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the assassination, 1983) "I heard a sound that I thought was a rifle shot. So I looked in the direction from which I thought the shot came, and then suddenly I felt an impact like someone had walked up behind me and hit me with a doubled-up fist right in the back. And it knocked me over. And before I could straighten up I saw that I was literally just covered with blood and I knew I had been hit badly, and I assumed, probably fatally." (9-19-88 interview recounted in American History Illustrated, November 1988) "I was looking to my right," he says, 'and then I heard a shot. It was a rifle-shot...This was not a backfire or a firecracker. Right away, the thought came to me that this was an assassination attempt. I started to turn toward my left to look back at President Kennedy. I was sure that the shot had not hit me. I heard it, but I did not sense being hit by it. As I turned, I felt like someone had doubled up his fist and hit me hard just below the right shoulder blade. I knew I had been hit by a second shot. Those shots had come so fast I thought maybe someone was working an automatic weapon, or maybe two or three people were shooting. I looked down and saw blood all over me. I said 'My God, they're going to kill us all!' I nearly doubled up. I fell over into my wife's lap. Then I heard the third shot. It hit the President hard. It made a loud noise as it hit. I couldn't see the President. But I knew he was hit. His brain tissues had been blown out onto me." (The Men Who Killed Kennedy, broadcast 1988) “I heard what I thought was a rifle shot. I immediately reacted by turning to look over my right shoulder because that’s where the sound came from. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder when I felt a blow in the middle of my back as if someone had hit me with a doubled-up fist about like that. The blow was of such force that it bent me over, and I immediately saw that I was covered with blood, and I knew I’d been hit. And I said “Oh, my God, they’re going to kill us all. And I heard another shot. There was a last shot almost like that, and I immediately saw blood and brain tissue all over the back of the limousine.” (1988 interview broadcast in CBS program Who Killed JFK: the Final Chapter?, 11-19-93) "I heard what I thought was a rifle shot. I thought the shot came from behind me. (He turns right)  And I didn't see anything, so I was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder into the back seat. I had not gotten turned to my left to see the President when I felt a sharp blow like someone had walked up behind me and hit me with a closed fist. The force of the blow was strong enough to bend me over and I saw immediately that I was covered with blood. And I said "My God, they're gonna kill us all!" Nellie then pulled me over in her lap and put her head down on mine and said "Be still. Everything's gonna be alright!" I was still conscious. Then I heard another shot. I knew it had hit because it sounded with an impact (slaps hands) that loud.  And after that shot, the car, our clothes, were covered in blood, and even chunks of brain tissue." (11-16-88 Cox News Service article by Seth Kantor found in the Henderson, North Carolina Times-News) (Describing the impact of the shot) "It was like somebody had walked up behind me and hit me with a closed fist in the back"... 'I didn't hear that second shot. I felt the blow. Then I saw I was drenched with blood. I knew I'd been hit. I said 'My God, they're going to kill us all!' Then Nellie (Mrs. Connally) pulled me into her lap. I heard another shot, what I thought was a rifle shot (he slammed his hands together again). I heard the impact of it, which was very loud, a very distinct impact. I was conscious. I was lying down. I was looking straight into the back of the back seat. And after that shot had hit, I saw blood and tissue all over the blue velour covering of the presidential limousine. All over my clothes. My eyes were open. I knew what I saw. There was no question in my mind but what there were three shots. I did not hear the second. I only heard two. Nellie heard three, There weren't four. They didn't come from the grassy knoll. They all came from the same direction. From behind...they developed the theory that the president and I were hit by the same bullet and that one missed completely. I don't believe that. Never have believed that. They posed that question to me during the Warren Commission and I didn't believe it then; don't believe it now.'" (11-21-88 appearance on ABC's Nightline) "The man fired three shots. He hit three times. He hit President Kennedy twice and me once...There were three shots...The President got hit by the first one. I got hit by the second. And he got hit by the third." (Interview shown on C-Span, 6-15-91) "We turned onto Elm Street to go under the overpass, and I heard this sound that I thought was a rifle shot. I turned to look over my right shoulder because that's where the sound came from to see if I could see anything. I didn't. And I was in the process of turning to look over my left shoulder when I felt an impact as if someone had hit me with a closed fist right in the middle of my back. The force was strong enough where it knocked me over and I saw that I was covered with blood. So, frankly, I thought I had been fatally hit. My wife pulled me down in her lap. She was seated on the jump seat to my left, and I was seated on the jump seat directly in front of the President. She pulled me down in her lap, (claps hands) and about that time I heard another shot, about that loud, a smack. And my eyes were open, I was conscious, and I saw the blue velour interior of this presidential limousine covered with blood and brain tissue." (On whether there was a conspiracy) "I don't know. I was there...I wasn't conscious of what was happening until Monday morning when I woke up enough to watch the funeral procession in Washington. If Oswald had a conspirator working with him, he's never been identified. A lot of strange things happened surrounding the assassination that there's no good explanation for. This gives rise to all the suspicions." (When asked about the Warren Commission) "Basically, the Warren Commission, I think, did a good job. I think they probably overlooked some things that they could have got into. I think the autopsy, the whole autopsy matter, was badly handled. I think the research on the president's body was not well done. But this is at the request of the Kennedy family." 

(Interview with Larry King on CNN, January, 1992) "I thought I heard a rifle shot...I turned to look over my right shoulder because that's where the sound came from. And I saw nothing out of the corner of my eye and I turned to look over my left shoulder. About the time I got square again, Larry, I felt a blow (slaps hands together) about like that, as if someone had hit me in the back with a closed fist. It knocked me over and as I looked down I was covered with blood... Conscious, and I said 'My God, they're gonna kill us all!'...I said it out loud...No pain, nope...just a thud. I felt no pain after that. Nellie then immediately pulled me down into her lap. And about that time ((slaps hands together) we heard another sound, another rifle shot. The loud smack was the bullet hitting the President's head... Immediately after that smacking sound the whole car was covered with blood and brain tissue. There were chunks of brain tissue as big as my little finger on my clothes." (1-28-92 letter to Dr. Louis Kartsonis, published in San Diego Magazine, September 1992) "I did not see the President after any of the shots on November 22. My wife saw him reach up and grasp his throat after the first shot, then saw him no more because she pulled me down in her lap and put her head down over mine after the second shot which hit me. I think the first shot hit the President. I think the second shot hit me and I think the third shot hit him. I know there are those that disagree but I am absolutely convinced that this is what happened." (CBS interview broadcast in "Who Killed JFK? Facts, Not Fiction" 1992) "To me, it's just inconceivable that the first shot that went through the throat, through the neck, entered my back. I don't believe that. I don't wanna believe that. They can't run enough tests to make me believe that." (Interview in the Discovery Channel program The End of Camelot, broadcast 1993) "I felt like someone hit me in the back with a balled-up fist. It knocked me over. And I looked down and I was covered with blood. And I said 'My God, they're gonna kill us all!" (In History’s Shadow, 1993, co-written with Mickey Herskowitz) “It was almost exactly 12:30 PM, November 22, 1963 when we followed the motorcycle escort onto Houston Street and past the ugly brick building where Lee Harvey Oswald waited with his scrambled egg off a mind. People were still jostling for a better view. The noise of the motorcycles, the clearing of the mechanical lungs, b-r-r-o-o-m, competed with the rising cheers, and at first many people thought what they heard was the backfire of a motorbike. I knew it wasn't. I had been to war, hunted, handled guns all my life. And even if there had been time to wonder, within seconds the evidence was all over us. The first shot struck the President in the neck. His hands flew to his throat, a reflex. I turned, and felt the blow against my back. My body was aligned in such a way that the bullet passed through my chest, shattered my right wrist, and lodged in my thigh. It is remarkable, over the years, how many people have tried to tell me where I was shot, and how. I never argue with them. I only need to consult my scars. I was still conscious when the third shot blew off part of John Kennedy's head...Everything I saw, heard, and felt is consistent with what was visible in the frame-by-frame analysis of the film taken by Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas merchant who became an accidental historian: The first shot passed through the neck of John F. Kennedy. I saw him clutch his throat. The second shot was the one that struck me; of this I have no doubt. Nellie had pulled me to her when the third bullet blew across the car a spray of the President's brain." (Final words on the subject) "I happen to support the major findings of the Warren Commission. I believe there were errors, including the so-called “magic bullet.” My ear and my body told me that I was not wounded in three places by a bullet that hit President Kennedy. I remain convinced that he was hit twice, and I once, by three separate shots.”

the third shot hit him. I know there are those that disagree but I am absolutely convinced that this is what happened." (CBS interview broadcast in "Who Killed JFK? Facts, Not Fiction" 1992) "To me, it's just inconceivable that the first shot that went through the throat, through the neck, entered my back. I don't believe that. I don't wanna believe that. They can't run enough tests to make me believe that." (Interview in the Discovery Channel program The End of Camelot, broadcast 1993) "I felt like someone hit me in the back with a balled-up fist. It knocked me over. And I looked down and I was covered with blood. And I said 'My God, they're gonna kill us all!" (In History’s Shadow, 1993, co-written with Mickey Herskowitz) “It was almost exactly 12:30 PM, November 22, 1963 when we followed the motorcycle escort onto Houston Street and past the ugly brick building where Lee Harvey Oswald waited with his scrambled egg off a mind. People were still jostling for a better view. The noise of the motorcycles, the clearing of the mechanical lungs, b-r-r-o-o-m, competed with the rising cheers, and at first many people thought what they heard was the backfire of a motorbike. I knew it wasn't. I had been to war, hunted, handled guns all my life. And even if there had been time to wonder, within seconds the evidence was all over us. The first shot struck the President in the neck. His hands flew to his throat, a reflex. I turned, and felt the blow against my back. My body was aligned in such a way that the bullet passed through my chest, shattered my right wrist, and lodged in my thigh. It is remarkable, over the years, how many people have tried to tell me where I was shot, and how. I never argue with them. I only need to consult my scars. I was still conscious when the third shot blew off part of John Kennedy's head...Everything I saw, heard, and felt is consistent with what was visible in the frame-by-frame analysis of the film taken by Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas merchant who became an accidental historian: The first shot passed through the neck of John F. Kennedy. I saw him clutch his throat. The second shot was the one that struck me; of this I have no doubt. Nellie had pulled me to her when the third bullet blew across the car a spray of the President's brain." (Final words on the subject) "I happen to support the major findings of the Warren Commission. I believe there were errors, including the so-called “magic bullet.” My ear and my body told me that I was not wounded in three places by a bullet that hit President Kennedy. I remain convinced that he was hit twice, and I once, by three separate shots.”

 

[David Lifton]

Pat Speer: You're done a good job --a really excellent job --of collecting a lot of quotes. (I don't think my collection, is as good as yours).  But there is more to the story.  Stay tuned. DSL

Edited April 15, 2020 by David Lifton