Josiah Thompson's brand new book LAST SECOND IN DALLAS

[Mark Tyler]

I think that the sirens are the key to understanding the location of the dictabelt microphone.  By my calculation the audible sirens start around 3 minutes 25 seconds after the head shot.  My full transcript and timings can be downloaded here and viewed in any spreadsheet program:

https://www.marktyler.org/mc63/mc63_dictabelt.csv

This timing is perfect if the three wheeled bike is located in the Trade Mart area as the motorcade and its sirens would have taken about 2.5-3.0 minutes to get from the Stemmons ramp to the Trade Mart (2.1 miles at an average of 42-50 MPH):

The other important siren issue is the missing siren from when the shooting happened.  Sam Kinney said he switched on the siren in the Secret Service follow up car immediately after he saw the effects of the head shot.  Here is a map of my animation showing the position of the siren at Z388 when it must have been in full flow:

The HSCA said that the microphone would pick up siren noise within 300 ft which is the red circle area.  As we can see, all of the bikes in Dealey Plaza were in range and should have picked up the noise if they were recording.  The only siren noise in the seconds following the shots was on channel 2 just before Jesse Curry starts talking (12:30:18 on my transcript).  The absence of a siren at 12:30 on channel 1 indicates that the microphone was not in Dealey Plaza, and the 2.5-3.0 minute delay until the motorcade passes the microphone suggests to me that the microphone was at the Trade Mart.  The timing and continuity seems to fit perfectly, including all of the time-clock announcements from the dispatcher on both channels.

The dictabelt is a very important piece of evidence, but I don't think it contains any shots on it.  The HSCA behaved impeccably by getting two sets of scientists to examine it, but the scientists were too narrowly focused on studying the wave-forms and echo patterns rather than studying the broader context of how and when the recording was made.  In other words they couldn't see the forest for the trees.

[Mark Tyler]

7 hours ago, Steven Kossor said:

Speaking of wave forms....  Thought this would be helpful.  The acoustical analyses go far, far beyond this little paper but sometimes its helpful to look at the data without numerical overlays and analyses.  Hope this stimulates conversation!  By the way, Mark Tyler's work with Motorcade 63 has been a terrific source of information and perspective, thanks so much!

Thanks Steven, it's good to see people finding Motorcade 63 useful!

[James DiEugenio]

Mark,

I thought that Don Thomas concluded the recording was only noise activated?

Therefore, the time factor was not on a continuum.

[Mark Tyler]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Mark,

I thought that Don Thomas concluded the recording was only noise activated?

Therefore, the time factor was not on a continuum.

Thats right James, the recording was noise activated, but with the bike noise running on channel 1 continuously we know we everything for the period from 12:28 to 12:34 was recorded on Channel 1.  Channel 2 is a bit more patchy, but due to the assassination chatter it was in near constant use after 12:30 so not much time was lost.

When I did the audio mixing for the animation I took the recordings directly from the Kennedy Library (i.e. no editing or splicing) and simply tried my best to align both channels correctly to 12:30:00 (where I put the head shot).  The early timestamps are slightly out but the others seem about right.  Here is a filter showing just the timings and a few other useful landmarks in the recording:

[Steven Kossor]

Mark, you're most welcome!  Where did you get the dictabelt transcript that you used in your 7/17/2020 release of Motorcade 63?

[Mark Tyler]

6 minutes ago, Steven Kossor said:

Mark, you're most welcome!  Where did you get the dictabelt transcript that you used in your 7/17/2020 release of Motorcade 63?

I put the transcript together myself but I also used other peoples work to help me where the audio was a little bit garbled, such as here:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/

The current version is here:

https://www.marktyler.org/mc63/mc63_dictabelt.csv

If anyone spots any errors or omissions please let me know and I will be happy to update it for the next version.

[Steven Kossor]

Thanks so much!  I've been collecting versions of the DPD audio recordings for the past couple of years and am especially interested in ones prior to 12:00 noon.  If you can help me find any of those, I'd sincerely appreciate it!  Of all the evidence resources, those seem to be among the harder-to-fake pieces (not like the visual record) since editing of audio content almost always leaves a particular "fingerprint" in the wave form.  The AF1 tapes are among the best examples of that; with "pops" occurring where the ends of the spliced tape overlapped and "voids" where the ends of the spliced tape are separated by a tiny gap.  I did some work with Doug Horne several years ago to showcase those editing fingerprints.

These are the sounds in the audio recording I analyzed some time ago, with the higher marks noting the loudest "gunshot sounds" I was able to detect.  Interesting that "8" is a number referenced by several other authorities over the years, and that at least one person reported a "late" shot which also appears in the waveform analysis.  I'm not sure if any of these are actually gunshot sounds, but I appreciate the discussion about them so that spurious "evidence" can be discarded as "noise" rather than "signal."  Best wishes to all!

Edited February 7, 2021 by Steven Kossor

[Mark Tyler]

1 hour ago, Steven Kossor said:

Thanks so much!  I've been collecting versions of the DPD audio recordings for the past couple of years and am especially interested in ones prior to 12:00 noon.  If you can help me find any of those, I'd sincerely appreciate it!  Of all the evidence resources, those seem to be among the harder-to-fake pieces (not like the visual record) since editing of audio content almost always leaves a particular "fingerprint" in the wave form.  The AF1 tapes are among the best examples of that; with "pops" occurring where the ends of the spliced tape overlapped and "voids" where the ends of the spliced tape are separated by a tiny gap.  I did some work with Doug Horne several years ago to showcase those editing fingerprints.

These are the sounds in the audio recording I analyzed some time ago, with the higher marks noting the loudest "gunshot sounds" I was able to detect.  Interesting that "8" is a number referenced by several other authorities over the years, and that at least one person reported a "late" shot which also appears in the waveform analysis.  I'm not sure if any of these are actually gunshot sounds, but I appreciate the discussion about them so that spurious "evidence" can be discarded as "noise" rather than "signal."  Best wishes to all!

The only versions of the recordings I have come across online are here:

https://www.jfklibrary.org/about-us/news-and-press/press-kits

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xd9p2zg51xtk37u/AAADhHRoPlAKBAx83biIxoOia/Audio?dl=0&subfolder_nav_tracking=1

https://www.nap.edu/resource/JFK_audio/

I agree with you, the more versions we can check the better.  Any tape recording from the original dictabelt made soon after the event in 1963 would be the most useful as it would be the best quality and least likely to have been interfered with.  There is an interesting history of how this evidence was handled after the event here:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/scally.htm

[Chris Bristow]

The tape being activated by sound is a new wrinkle for me. To the researchers that have been examining the tape far deeper than I have a question. Can we rely on the timing between the shots and the sirens being separated by at least 3 minutes?

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Chris Bristow

[Douglas Caddy]

 

 

Josiah Thompson 2013 JFK assassination - YouTube

[Vince Palamara]

8 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

 

 

Josiah Thompson 2013 JFK assassination - YouTube

EXCELLENT!!

[Steven Kossor]

I just searched for and found the phrase "Check it" in the DPD Channel 1 audio recording but I was not able to detect any sound or apparent fingerprint of a gunshot within 3-4 secords of that phrase in the recording I listened to.  According to Thompson's Last Second in Dallas, the first shot occurred about 3 seconds after that phrase appears on the recording.  Either my audio equipment isn't as sophisticated as I wish it was, or the fidelity of the audio recording I have of the DPD Channel 1 isn't high enough.  In any case, I'll keep looking and listening as this process continues.  Best wishes to all!

[Mark Tyler]

On 2/8/2021 at 4:20 AM, Chris Bristow said:

The tape being activated by sound is a new wrinkle for me. To the researchers that have been examining the tape far deeper than I have a question. Can we rely on the timing between the shots and the sirens being separated by at least 3 minutes?

 

It's a good question, so I shall explain what I did to arrive at the conclusion I did about the gap from the shots to the sirens.  In a nutshell it boils down to the synchronization between the two channels and the real time clock that the dispatcher periodically mentions.

Firstly, the judgement of the shot timing is done on channel 2 as we hear Curry mention he was approaching the triple underpass.  10 seconds later the dispatcher says it is 12:30.  About 10 seconds after that Curry starts transmitting again and we briefly hear a siren in the background and it is clear that the shooting has just taken place during the previous 20 seconds.  We then get some fairly constant chatter for the next minute until we hear Bill Decker mention about holding everything secure and then we hear what sounds like a bell.  These two events also happen on channel 1 (which was continuously recording for over 6 minutes due to the stuck open microphone), and is the so called crosstalk.  This is my sync point between the two channels, and by checking the time announcements on each of the channels there seems to be a good sync which confirms it is about right.  We can never know to the nearest second exactly how they sync, but everything seems to line up without any loose ends from what I can tell.

However, the shots that the HSCA scientists identify are just before the bell event and so therefore the alleged shots happened more than a minute after the actual assassination.  This is the big bone of contention between the defenders of the HSCA report and others who feel that the continuity doesn't align with the real time of the shots.

Taking the recordings of the dictabelt at face value these are my conclusions:

• The timing is wrong for the position of the alleged shots (it's too late by over a minute).
• The siren that appears 3+ minutes after the assassination indicates that the microphone is near the Trade Mart as the motorcade rushes past to go to the hospital.
• The lack of a siren during the shooting, and no crowd noise, suggests that the microphone was never in Dealey Plaza.  Curry on channel 2 was able to pick up a lot of crowd noise on Main Street before the shots, and a siren was audible seconds after the event, so this should have been audible on channel 1 (but it wasn't).
• The calculated position of the microphone turning from Houston Street onto Elm Street does not correspond to any single vehicle, and no motorbike is close enough for a match (McLain is well over 100 feet away for example).

The dictabelt evidence tells us many things about the events in Dallas, but sadly it tells us nothing about the shots fired in Dealey Plaza.

[Cliff Varnell]

On 2/9/2021 at 9:58 AM, Mark Tyler said:

The dictabelt evidence tells us many things about the events in Dallas, but sadly it tells us nothing about the shots fired in Dealey Plaza.

It tells us many things about the HSCA cover-up.  They wanted to distract from this bit of nonsense.

 

 

 

Edited April 12 by Cliff Varnell

[Steven Kossor]

Finished reading Thompson's Last Second in Dallas.  Lots of information focused on the DPD recordings and how the recordings available today came into existence (they are composites) and needed to be subjected to extremely rigorous analysis by exceptionally skilled professionals in order to be useful as evidence.  Thompson's book provides a wealth of information about those who have used the recordings to reveal the truth -- and documents the apparently intentional, nefarious efforts of some "eminent" authorities to conceal it.  But the question looming for me is: where was the microphone that was traveling through DP at about 11 mph that recorded the gunshot sounds on DPD channel 1? 

Unless the Z film (and other visual records) were altered to conceal it, the only possible microphones tuned to DPD channel 1 that were moving with the motorcade in any existing visual record were those in the Kennedy limo itself, or in the Queen Mary following right behind.  The sound of the motorcycle up near the Trade Mart (and other sounds as well) apparently may have been overdubbed when the existing recordings were created, based on hum analysis and other clues.  The evidence of film alteration that has become increasingly apparent over the last few years, and evidence of significant fraud in the medical evidence that has been similarly well-documented over the years, was not acknowledged in his final contribution to the body of JFK assassination research.