JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass

[James DiEugenio]

Just read this:

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-impossible-one-day-journey-of-ce-399

 

And by the way, in 2003 Thompson made a speech in which he said that Wallace Milam had interviewed Wright's widow.  She was the head  of nursing at Parkland. She said they were turning up all kinds of bullets that day and even the day after.

Hmm.  One of these will hit the right stretcher.

Edited March 1, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Micah Mileto]

Teeny tiny points:

At 9 minutes in of episode 3 of Destiny Betrayed, Cyril Wecht seems to imply that the condition of the cerebellum is a matter of choice between the statements of Parkland or Bethesda witnesses - but this is not just an issue of witness evidence, the government has photographs allegedly showing Kennedy's brain with the cerebellum intact.

At 20:41, the actual sketch of one of the brain photos is shown on screen after Doug Horne talks of Francis O'Neill reporting a "half missing brain". Isn't the argument here supposed to be that the brain photos DON'T match the witness statements? The editing here accidentally gave a point in favor of the official story - like how one HSCA staffer compared the appearance of a damaged brain to a squished tomato.

28:53 on the deny in the chrome - no mention of the Secret Service agent who claimed the chrome was already dented before the shooting.

30:40 The viewer is not told that believing in a T3 back wound probably implies fake autopsy photos.

32:47 The graphic here implies that the pathologists suspected the bullet squeezed out of it's own entry wound after being submerged multiple inches within the body - not necessarily true, as it is physically possible for a bullet to just barely penetrate flesh. 33:31 I have never heard about a bullet falling into-and-out-of Kennedy's clothing.

My only other criticisms are the thing about Burkley's signature on the face sheet, using Robert Knudsen as a witness, and using Michael Kurtz as a witness.

Part  4 - Did I hear that right - there's no record of Oswald being paid for his time in the Marines???!!!

Edited March 2, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[James DiEugenio]

Out of curiosity Micah, what pieces of evidence do you consider to have a worse chain of custody than CE 399 and Kennedy's brain?

Since JFK's brain is gone I cannot imagine a worse chain.

Edited March 2, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Micah Mileto]

27 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Out of curiosity Micah, what pieces of evidence do you consider to have a worse chain of custody than CE 399 and Kennedy's brain?

Since JFK's brain is gone I cannot imagine a worse chain.

On the non-medical side, the answer is probably the fingerprints or the backyard photographs or the rifle itself. I mean, even when Bugliosi is believing that fingerprints were lifted off the corpse, where do you go from there? Imagine that headline in 1964. That should be like the first thing people learn when learning about the possibility that Oswald was framed.

 

On the medical side, the autopsy photographs might have the worst chain of custody. Even if you don't want to say photos were faked, it's pretty hard to deny that photos went missing. I mean, John Stringer said he remembered some of his camera film going missing on the night of the autopsy, and that's like #1 of the problems.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Greg Doudna]

For what its worth, it dawned on me at some point in puzzling over the whole Odum vs. FBI discrepancy in Warren Commission exhibit 2011 in which Dallas FBI Special Agent Odum years later, when he was in his 80s, denied he did Parkland Hospital interviews attributed to him in CE 2011 including related to C399... that that may not be a case of a truthful Odum versus a lying FBI ... rather it may have been Odum bullshitting Thompson and Aguilar, and the contradictory FBI report of interviews related to C399 (CE 2011) that say Odum did those interviews ... that unsigned document on a Dallas FBI letterhead that has no name of author on it ... Odum himself was the anonymous author of that document. That is, the "FBI" that Odum said had earlier been untruthful about him was Odum. And when Odum told Thompson and Aguilar I never did those interviews because you won't find a "302" form ... well, Odum knew there were no "302" forms for any of the interviews in that report, because he wrote the report and knew. (But he did not tell Thompson and Aquilar that, who after a lot of effort found that out on their own.) In other words, Odum was the anonymous author of CE 2011 reporting the interview by Odum re C399 which Odum in person years later told Thompson and Aguilar he did not conduct. Odum was jerking their chain. Rather than answer to Thompson and Aquilar addressing their questions re C399, that was how Odum handled it--claimed he never did the interview that the FBI (in a report written by, er, him) said he did. And obviously, if he never did those interviews that the anonymously-authored FBI document (which he wrote) said he did, that neatly avoids him having to answer questions concerning what was attributed to him. This then explains how Odum, otherwise a loyal retired career FBI man, could so cheerfully dispute a written FBI document, leaving out the detail that he himself was the anonymous author of that FBI document. Odum may have laughed himself hoarse after they left that evening. 

I hasten to add this is on the level of a "hunch", not proven, maybe I've got this wrong, but this is how it looks to me.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Good article by Steve Roe:

Is This How Real Documentaries Are Made? (steveroeconsulting.wixsite.com)

And one by Fred on Roger Waters who is touted by Jim D. as one of the people in "high places" that are promoting Stone's film:

Roger Waters Loves "JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass" (onthetrailofdelusion.com)

[Pat Speer]

12 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

For what its worth, it dawned on me at some point in puzzling over the whole Odum vs. FBI discrepancy in Warren Commission exhibit 2011 in which Dallas FBI Special Agent Odum years later, when he was in his 80s, denied he did Parkland Hospital interviews attributed to him in CE 2011 including related to C399... that that may not be a case of a truthful Odum versus a lying FBI ... rather it may have been Odum bullshitting Thompson and Aguilar, and the contradictory FBI report of interviews related to C399 (CE 2011) that say Odum did those interviews ... that unsigned document on a Dallas FBI letterhead that has no name of author on it ... Odum himself was the anonymous author of that document. That is, the "FBI" that Odum said had earlier been untruthful about him was Odum. And when Odum told Thompson and Aguilar I never did those interviews because you won't find a "302" form ... well, Odum knew there were no "302" forms for any of the interviews in that report, because he wrote the report and knew. (But he did not tell Thompson and Aquilar that, who after a lot of effort found that out on their own.) In other words, Odum was the anonymous author of CE 2011 reporting the interview by Odum re C399 which Odum in person years later told Thompson and Aguilar he did not conduct. Odum was jerking their chain. Rather than answer to Thompson and Aquilar addressing their questions re C399, that was how Odum handled it--claimed he never did the interview that the FBI (in a report written by, er, him) said he did. And obviously, if he never did those interviews that the anonymously-authored FBI document (which he wrote) said he did, that neatly avoids him having to answer questions concerning what was attributed to him. This then explains how Odum, otherwise a loyal retired career FBI man, could so cheerfully dispute a written FBI document, leaving out the detail that he himself was the anonymous author of that FBI document. Odum may have laughed himself hoarse after they left that evening. 

I hasten to add this is on the level of a "hunch", not proven, maybe I've got this wrong, but this is how it looks to me.

I'm with Greg on this one. The bullet switch scenario is very shakey, IMO.

Tomlinson thought the bullet shown him by the FBI was the bullet he'd discovered; he just refused to ID it because he hadn't put his initials on it. 

 

From chapter 3b at Patspeer.com:

"A few days later, we see a 7-7-64 letter from the Dallas FBI office, written in response to a 5-20 letter from the Commission, asking them to establish the chain-of-evidence for a number of items. When discussing the chain-of-evidence for FBI C1/Warren Commission Exhibit CE 399, a near-pristine bullet found on a stretcher at Parkland hospital, an hour or more after the President and Governor were admitted, and purported to have caused Kennedy's back and throat wound, and all of Connally's wounds, it relates: "On June 12, 1964, Darrell C. Tomlinson...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle slug, by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum...Tomlinson stated it appears to be the same one he saw on a hospital carriage at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963, but he cannot positively identify the bullet as the one he found and showed to Mr. O.P. Wright...On June 12, 1964, O.P. Wright...advised Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum that Exhibit C1, a rifle slug, shown to him at the time of the interview, looks like the slug found at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963 which he gave to Richard Johnsen, Special Agent of the the Secret Service...He advised he could not positively identify C1 as being the same bullet which was found on November 22. 1963...On June 24, 1964, Richard E. Johnson...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle bullet, by Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Johnsen advised he could not identify this bullet...On June 24, 1964, James C. Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle bullet, by Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd. Rowley advised he could not identify this bullet as the one he received from Special Agent Richard E. Johnsen and gave to Special Agent Todd on November 22, 1963. On June 24, 1964, Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd...identified C1, a rifle bullet, as being the one he received from James Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service." We note that the Secret Service has refused to swear by the bullet, and that an agent of the FBI itself, fifth in a line of possession, is the first to assert the bullet is the one found in the hospital. As this bullet has been linked to Oswald's rifle and is necessary to demonstrate that Oswald fired the lethal shots, this is problematic.  Fortunately, the first men to see the bullet, Tomlinson and Wright, appear to agree with Agent Todd's identification.

By now well familiar with the FBI's inadequacies, however, we decide to do a little digging. We uncover a 6-20 Airtel from Dallas Special Agent in Charge J. Gordon Shanklin to J. Edgar Hoover telling him that "neither Darrell C. Tomlinson, who found bullet at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, nor O.P. Wright, Personnel Officer, Parkland Hospital, who obtained bullet from Tomlinson and gave to Special Agent Richard E. Johnsen, Secret Service at Dallas 11/22/63, can identify bullet." As this memo specifies that Tomlinson and Wright could not identify the bullet, and as the letter sent to the Commission indicates they believed the bullets appeared to be the same, we find yet another reason to suspect the FBI's integrity, and to seriously question the Commission's reliance upon its services. 

The Switcheroo That Wasn't: a Brief Discussion In Which I End Up Defending The FBI (No, Really, I'm Not Kidding)

The apparent contradiction between the FBI's 6-20-64 Airtel and 7-7-64 letter was just the beginning of the mystery surrounding the bullet. In November 1966, Josiah Thompson showed O.P. Wright a photo of the bullet supposedly found on the stretcher (by then dubbed Commission Exhibit CE 399) and asked him if CE 399 was in fact the bullet he'd remembered seeing on the day of the assassination. Amazingly, Wright told him that the bullet he'd handed the Secret Service on that day had had a pointed tip, while CE 399 had had a rounded tip. Wright then showed Thompson a bullet with a pointed tip like the one he'd remembered seeing. Thompson then showed Darrell Tomlinson a photo of a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet, along with the bullet shown him by Wright. While Tomlinson was reportedly non-committal, and couldn't remember if the tip was rounded like CE 399, or pointed like the bullet shown him by Wright, Thompson, and a large swath of his readers, took from Wright's statements that the stretcher bullet had been switched. 

Thirty-five years passed. In 2002, Thompson and Dr. Gary Aguilar finally contacted the FBI's Bardwell Odum, to see if he remembered Tomlinson and Wright saying CE 399 looked like the bullet found on the stretcher, per the FBI's 7-7-64 letter to the Commission, or their not identifying the bullet, per the 6-20-64 FBI memorandum. Amazingly, Odum insisted he had no recollection of ever handling CE 399, let alone showing it to Tomlinson and Wright. Now, for some this was a smoking gun. If Odum had never shown the bullet to Tomlinson and Wright, and the FBI letter said he had, and that they'd told him the bullet looked like the one they saw on 11-22-63, then someone was almost certainly lying. Deliberately. 

In December, 2011, however, I came across something that gave me great doubts about the smoke coming out of this gun. A transcript was posted on the alt.assassination.JFK newsgroup by author Jean Davison. This transcript, acquired by Ms. Davison from the National Archives, was of a 7-25-66 conversation between Darrell Tomlinson and researcher Ray Marcus. This transcript asserted that when asked if he'd ever been shown the stretcher bullet after giving it to Wright, Tomlinson had admitted "I seen it one time after that. I believe Mr. Shanklin from the FBI had it out there at the hospital in personnel with Mr. Wright there when they called me in." When then asked by Marcus if "Shanklin" and Wright had asked him if this bullet looked the same as the one he'd recovered on November 22, 1963, Tomlinson responded "Yes, I believe they did." When then asked his response to their question, he replied "Yes, it appeared to be the same one." 

Let's note the date of this transcript. This was months prior to Tomlinson's being shown the pointed tip bullet by Thompson. And yet, at this early date, he'd thought the bullet he'd been shown by "Shanklin" (more probably Odum--Tomlinson was unsure about the name of the agent and there is little reason to believe Shanklin--the Special Agent-in Charge of the Dallas Office--would personally perform such a task) resembled the bullet he'd found on the stretcher. This suggests, then, that his subsequent inability to tell Thompson whether the bullet was rounded or pointed was brought about by his not wanting to disagree with Wright. 

In November 2012, moreover, I found additional support for this suspicion. It was a 4-22-77 article on the single-bullet theory by Earl Golz for The Dallas Morning News, which reported "Darrell C Tomlinson, the senior engineer at Parkland who found the slug, told The News he 'could never say for sure whose stretcher that was ... I assumed it was Connally's because of the way things happened at Parkland at that time.' Tomlinson acknowledged he was not asked to identify the bullet when he testified before the Warren Commission in 1964. He said some federal agents earlier 'came to the hospital with the bullet in a box and asked me if it was the one I found. I told them apparently it was, but I had not put a mark on it. If it wasn't the bullet, it was exactly like it.'" 

So there it is. Tomlinson told Marcus in 1966 that he thought the bullet he'd found looked like CE 399, was less certain on this point when talking to Thompson later that year, and then returned to telling reporters the bullets looked the same by the time he talked to Golz in 1977. Either he'd misled Marcus and Golz, or was momentarily confused by the bullet Wright provided Thompson. Wright was a former policeman. Perhaps Tomlinson had momentarily deferred to his expertise. In any event, Tomlinson's recollection of the bullet over the years did not support Wright's recollection, and supported instead that he'd been shown CE 399 by the FBI in 1964, had told them it appeared to be the same bullet as the one he'd found on the stretcher, and had nevertheless refused to identify it. This scenario was consistent, moreover, with the FBI's 6-20-64 memo and 7-7-64 letter to the Warren Commission. It seems hard to believe this was a coincidence. As a result, Tomlinson's recollections cast considerable doubt on Wright's ID of a pointed bullet, and the scenario subsequently pushed by Thompson and Aguilar--that the FBI had lied in its 6-20 memo and 7-7 letter about the bullet--appears to be inaccurate."

[Vince Palamara]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I'm with Greg on this one. The bullet switch scenario is very shakey, IMO.

Tomlinson thought the bullet shown him by the FBI was the bullet he'd discovered; he just refused to ID it because he hadn't put his initials on it. 

 

From chapter 3b at Patspeer.com:

"A few days later, we see a 7-7-64 letter from the Dallas FBI office, written in response to a 5-20 letter from the Commission, asking them to establish the chain-of-evidence for a number of items. When discussing the chain-of-evidence for FBI C1/Warren Commission Exhibit CE 399, a near-pristine bullet found on a stretcher at Parkland hospital, an hour or more after the President and Governor were admitted, and purported to have caused Kennedy's back and throat wound, and all of Connally's wounds, it relates: "On June 12, 1964, Darrell C. Tomlinson...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle slug, by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum...Tomlinson stated it appears to be the same one he saw on a hospital carriage at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963, but he cannot positively identify the bullet as the one he found and showed to Mr. O.P. Wright...On June 12, 1964, O.P. Wright...advised Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum that Exhibit C1, a rifle slug, shown to him at the time of the interview, looks like the slug found at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963 which he gave to Richard Johnsen, Special Agent of the the Secret Service...He advised he could not positively identify C1 as being the same bullet which was found on November 22. 1963...On June 24, 1964, Richard E. Johnson...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle bullet, by Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Johnsen advised he could not identify this bullet...On June 24, 1964, James C. Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle bullet, by Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd. Rowley advised he could not identify this bullet as the one he received from Special Agent Richard E. Johnsen and gave to Special Agent Todd on November 22, 1963. On June 24, 1964, Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd...identified C1, a rifle bullet, as being the one he received from James Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service." We note that the Secret Service has refused to swear by the bullet, and that an agent of the FBI itself, fifth in a line of possession, is the first to assert the bullet is the one found in the hospital. As this bullet has been linked to Oswald's rifle and is necessary to demonstrate that Oswald fired the lethal shots, this is problematic.  Fortunately, the first men to see the bullet, Tomlinson and Wright, appear to agree with Agent Todd's identification.

By now well familiar with the FBI's inadequacies, however, we decide to do a little digging. We uncover a 6-20 Airtel from Dallas Special Agent in Charge J. Gordon Shanklin to J. Edgar Hoover telling him that "neither Darrell C. Tomlinson, who found bullet at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, nor O.P. Wright, Personnel Officer, Parkland Hospital, who obtained bullet from Tomlinson and gave to Special Agent Richard E. Johnsen, Secret Service at Dallas 11/22/63, can identify bullet." As this memo specifies that Tomlinson and Wright could not identify the bullet, and as the letter sent to the Commission indicates they believed the bullets appeared to be the same, we find yet another reason to suspect the FBI's integrity, and to seriously question the Commission's reliance upon its services. 

The Switcheroo That Wasn't: a Brief Discussion In Which I End Up Defending The FBI (No, Really, I'm Not Kidding)

The apparent contradiction between the FBI's 6-20-64 Airtel and 7-7-64 letter was just the beginning of the mystery surrounding the bullet. In November 1966, Josiah Thompson showed O.P. Wright a photo of the bullet supposedly found on the stretcher (by then dubbed Commission Exhibit CE 399) and asked him if CE 399 was in fact the bullet he'd remembered seeing on the day of the assassination. Amazingly, Wright told him that the bullet he'd handed the Secret Service on that day had had a pointed tip, while CE 399 had had a rounded tip. Wright then showed Thompson a bullet with a pointed tip like the one he'd remembered seeing. Thompson then showed Darrell Tomlinson a photo of a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet, along with the bullet shown him by Wright. While Tomlinson was reportedly non-committal, and couldn't remember if the tip was rounded like CE 399, or pointed like the bullet shown him by Wright, Thompson, and a large swath of his readers, took from Wright's statements that the stretcher bullet had been switched. 

Thirty-five years passed. In 2002, Thompson and Dr. Gary Aguilar finally contacted the FBI's Bardwell Odum, to see if he remembered Tomlinson and Wright saying CE 399 looked like the bullet found on the stretcher, per the FBI's 7-7-64 letter to the Commission, or their not identifying the bullet, per the 6-20-64 FBI memorandum. Amazingly, Odum insisted he had no recollection of ever handling CE 399, let alone showing it to Tomlinson and Wright. Now, for some this was a smoking gun. If Odum had never shown the bullet to Tomlinson and Wright, and the FBI letter said he had, and that they'd told him the bullet looked like the one they saw on 11-22-63, then someone was almost certainly lying. Deliberately. 

In December, 2011, however, I came across something that gave me great doubts about the smoke coming out of this gun. A transcript was posted on the alt.assassination.JFK newsgroup by author Jean Davison. This transcript, acquired by Ms. Davison from the National Archives, was of a 7-25-66 conversation between Darrell Tomlinson and researcher Ray Marcus. This transcript asserted that when asked if he'd ever been shown the stretcher bullet after giving it to Wright, Tomlinson had admitted "I seen it one time after that. I believe Mr. Shanklin from the FBI had it out there at the hospital in personnel with Mr. Wright there when they called me in." When then asked by Marcus if "Shanklin" and Wright had asked him if this bullet looked the same as the one he'd recovered on November 22, 1963, Tomlinson responded "Yes, I believe they did." When then asked his response to their question, he replied "Yes, it appeared to be the same one." 

Let's note the date of this transcript. This was months prior to Tomlinson's being shown the pointed tip bullet by Thompson. And yet, at this early date, he'd thought the bullet he'd been shown by "Shanklin" (more probably Odum--Tomlinson was unsure about the name of the agent and there is little reason to believe Shanklin--the Special Agent-in Charge of the Dallas Office--would personally perform such a task) resembled the bullet he'd found on the stretcher. This suggests, then, that his subsequent inability to tell Thompson whether the bullet was rounded or pointed was brought about by his not wanting to disagree with Wright. 

In November 2012, moreover, I found additional support for this suspicion. It was a 4-22-77 article on the single-bullet theory by Earl Golz for The Dallas Morning News, which reported "Darrell C Tomlinson, the senior engineer at Parkland who found the slug, told The News he 'could never say for sure whose stretcher that was ... I assumed it was Connally's because of the way things happened at Parkland at that time.' Tomlinson acknowledged he was not asked to identify the bullet when he testified before the Warren Commission in 1964. He said some federal agents earlier 'came to the hospital with the bullet in a box and asked me if it was the one I found. I told them apparently it was, but I had not put a mark on it. If it wasn't the bullet, it was exactly like it.'" 

So there it is. Tomlinson told Marcus in 1966 that he thought the bullet he'd found looked like CE 399, was less certain on this point when talking to Thompson later that year, and then returned to telling reporters the bullets looked the same by the time he talked to Golz in 1977. Either he'd misled Marcus and Golz, or was momentarily confused by the bullet Wright provided Thompson. Wright was a former policeman. Perhaps Tomlinson had momentarily deferred to his expertise. In any event, Tomlinson's recollection of the bullet over the years did not support Wright's recollection, and supported instead that he'd been shown CE 399 by the FBI in 1964, had told them it appeared to be the same bullet as the one he'd found on the stretcher, and had nevertheless refused to identify it. This scenario was consistent, moreover, with the FBI's 6-20-64 memo and 7-7-64 letter to the Warren Commission. It seems hard to believe this was a coincidence. As a result, Tomlinson's recollections cast considerable doubt on Wright's ID of a pointed bullet, and the scenario subsequently pushed by Thompson and Aguilar--that the FBI had lied in its 6-20 memo and 7-7 letter about the bullet--appears to be inaccurate."

 

 

[Gary Murr]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

On June 24, 1964, Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd...identified C1, a rifle bullet, as being the one he received from James Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service."

Hey Pat:

As a little side-project distraction, actually a purposeful one of my own construct to take my mind off a manuscript I am currently attempting to finish, I spent a week earlier this year constructing a 42 page paper specifically on this subject matter. If you are interested, I can send you a copy. I tried to send you a PM through this forum but it indicates that your inbox if full. Let me know how I can get this paper to you - again if you are interested.

Gary

[Denny Zartman]

I'm completely confused on this one. Sorry.

Tomlinson couldn't say for sure that CE 399 was the same bullet because he did not mark it. Tomlinson allegedly did not have much experience with and/or knowledge of weapons and ammunition.

The bottom line is: was CE 399 ever positively identified by Tomlinson as the same bullet he handled on November 22, 1963? The answer is no.

According to Josiah Thompson, Wright, who, as I understand it did have experience and knowledge of weapons and ammo, was crystal clear that the bullet he handled that day had a pointed tip, unlike CE 399.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Denny Zartman
Clarification

[Ron Bulman]

2 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

I'm completely confused on this one. Sorry.

Tomlinson couldn't say for sure that CE 399 was the same bullet because he did not mark it. Tomlinson allegedly did not have much experience with and/or knowledge of weapons and ammunition.

The bottom line is: was CE 399 ever positively identified by Tomlinson as the same bullet he handled on November 22, 1963? The answer is no.

According to Josiah Thompson, Wright, who, as I understand it did have experience and knowledge of weapons and ammo, was crystal clear that the bullet he handled that day had a pointed tip, unlike CE 399.

Not confusing Denny (your post).  Succinct.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Ron Bulman

[Sandy Larsen]

45 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Not confusing Denny (your post).  Succinct.

 

Ditto. Thanks Denny!

 

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Gary Murr said:

Hey Pat:

As a little side-project distraction, actually a purposeful one of my own construct to take my mind off a manuscript I am currently attempting to finish, I spent a week earlier this year constructing a 42 page paper specifically on this subject matter. If you are interested, I can send you a copy. I tried to send you a PM through this forum but it indicates that your inbox if full. Let me know how I can get this paper to you - again if you are interested.

Gary

Sure. Thanks, Gary. You can send it to me at pat@patspeer,com. 

[Pat Speer]

4 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

I'm completely confused on this one. Sorry.

Tomlinson couldn't say for sure that CE 399 was the same bullet because he did not mark it. Tomlinson allegedly did not have much experience with and/or knowledge of weapons and ammunition.

The bottom line is: was CE 399 ever positively identified by Tomlinson as the same bullet he handled on November 22, 1963? The answer is no.

According to Josiah Thompson, Wright, who, as I understand it did have experience and knowledge of weapons and ammo, was crystal clear that the bullet he handled that day had a pointed tip, unlike CE 399.

Yes, this is correct. But did you read my post, the whole thing? Tomlinson said the bullet he was shown looked just like CE 399. He could not identify the bullet he saw as CE 399, but it looked just like it. 

Well, you don't need to be a ballistics expert to tell the difference between a pointed-tip bullet and a round-nosed bullet. Tomlinson, the man who discovered CE 399, confirmed both before and after he spoke to Thompson that the bullet he was shown (CE399) looked like the bullet he'd discovered. Wright failed to make an initial report describing the bullet he saw. When he was subsequently shown CE 399 by the FBI he said it looked like it, but evidently he, like Tomlinson, refused to say for sure it was the same bullet. It wasn't till three years later that he spoke to Thompson. If he was shown a bullet he knew to be a fake in 1964, why the heck didn't he say something at the time? 

(Now, I know some will say he wasn't actually shown CE 399, and that the FBI report was a fake. But that doesn't pass a smell test. If they were gonna fake a report about Wright's being shown a bullet, it would have said he'd IDed it. And not that the only person in the chain of custody who'd iD the bullet was an FBI man, number 5 in the chain.) 

Now, do I believe the bullet found on the stretcher was CE 399? Yes, I suspect it was. For one, I'm not entirely convinced CE 399 was fired on the motorcade. If it was not, well, what would be the point of planting a bullet on the stretcher if it couldn't be traced back to the rifle found in the building?  

And if it was...well, the lack of damage to the bullet suggests a short shot, which can be taken to mean more than Oswald was involved. 

I just don't see CE 399's getting switched as a necessary part of a plot. And Tomlinson's statements to Marcus and Golz undermine Thompson and Aguilar's research into this matter. 

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Pat Speer

[W. Tracy Parnell]

The Day Vladimir Putin Fooled Oliver Stone with a Doctored Video (onthetrailofdelusion.com)