New Photographic Proof: Todd's Initials on 399!

[Pat Speer]

5 hours ago, Allen Lowe said:

that's not my understanding of how Josiah Thompson described his interviews; if anything, he implied that Tomlinson's change in testimony was later, after he, like more than one law enforcement official, had been put under pressure. Not to mention Thompson's location of Odum (I believe it was) who very clearly contradicted the Warren Commission's claims about 399.

And as Thompson added: "John Hunt has done some very good work in the Archives, has examined CE 399 with exquisite precision, and has determined that Elmer Todd's initials are not on Commission Exhibit 399. So this is, this is a running crap game! "

So, as far as I am concerned, end of story.

Well you'd be wrong. I love Tink but he's just wrong about this. Before speaking to Tink, Tomlinson spoke to Raymond Marcus, and told him a different story. He later told Earl Golz a different story as well. (Both Marcus and Golz were CTs and would love to have had Tomlinson say CE399 was not the bullet he saw, but he did not.)

From chapter 3 at patspeer.com:

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.

 

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I don't think that's possible, Pat. John's photos are even more blurry than the NARA ones, and you can't see the T in those, right? I think you're seeing a random artifact that just kinda, maybe, could be a T... but isn't.

JMO

 

The photos are taken from slightly different angles. The photo in the Roe article was taken with the bullet tilted slightly away from the camera, so as to accentuate the gouge at the top of the bullet. The  photo in Hunt's article, on the other hand was taken with the bullet flat to the camera. Even so, one can see that the ET in the Roe photo starts beneath the gouge at the top of the bullet and runs towards a nick on its right side. When one looks at this location in the Hunt photo, moreover, one can make out a blurry ET in this exact same location. As shown below...

(And no, it's not remotely surprising to me that no one noticed this before. Keep in mind that I got sucked into this rabbit hole because nobody had acknowledged an obvious bullet hole in the so-called mystery photo, and that I was also able to locate the EOP entry hole in the back of the head photos. People don't see what they don't want to see--and it's usually because they look in the wrong location.)

Edited June 15, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Allen Lowe]

35 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Well you'd be wrong. I love Tink but he's just wrong about this. Before speaking to Tink, Tomlinson spoke to Raymond Marcus, and told him a different story. He later told Earl Golz a different story as well. (Both Marcus and Golz were CTs and would love to have had Tomlinson say CE399 was not the bullet he saw, but he did not.)

From chapter 3 at patspeer.com:

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.

 

ok; well researched. So I take it you do believe this bullet - the one found and then initialed - caused all those wounds in JFK and Connally?

[Pat Speer]

14 minutes ago, Allen Lowe said:

ok; well researched. So I take it you do believe this bullet - the one found and then initialed - caused all those wounds in JFK and Connally?

No, absolutely not. I suspect the bullet was undercharged and caused Kennedy's back wound, and that it was then found in the limo during the clean-up outside Parkland. I suspect further that SS agent Sam Kinney discovered it and then placed it on a stretcher he thought was associated with the assassination, but was in fact the stretcher used in the treatment of Ronnie Fuller. (IOW. I think Tink nailed this last part.) 

Edited June 15, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

I went ahead and made a slide demonstrating the two ETs.

 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Thanks for your work Pat, I can see it now.

[Allen Lowe]

10 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Thanks for your work Pat, I can see it now.

"I see," said the blind man.

[Allen Lowe]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

No, absolutely not. I suspect the bullet was undercharged and caused Kennedy's back wound, and that it was then found in the limo during the clean-up outside Parkland. I suspect further that SS agent Sam Kinney discovered it and then placed it on a stretcher he thought was associated with the assassination, but was in fact the stretcher used in the treatment of Ronnie Fuller. (IOW. I think Tink nailed this last part.) 

I seem to recall Thompson saying in that first book that one of the rear shots was something of a dud.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

10 minutes ago, Allen Lowe said:

"I see," said the blind man.

I was looking in the wrong spot for one thing.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

I think it is fair to say that the 3D scans have revealed detail that was not previously obvious. But the bigger issue is what i posted earlier. This does not explain the timeline problem and Steve uses different standard of scrutiny when evaluating evidence depending on if it supports the official conclusion or questions it. This cognitive bias undermines his otherwise hard work. 

[Greg Doudna]

8 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

The photos are taken from slightly different angles. The photo in the Roe article was taken with the bullet tilted slightly away from the camera, so as to accentuate the gouge at the top of the bullet. The  photo in Hunt's article, on the other hand was taken with the bullet flat to the camera. Even so, one can see that the ET in the Roe photo starts beneath the gouge at the top of the bullet and runs towards a nick on its right side. When one looks at this location in the Hunt photo, moreover, one can make out a blurry ET in this exact same location. As shown below...

(And no, it's not remotely surprising to me that no one noticed this before. Keep in mind that I got sucked into this rabbit hole because nobody had acknowledged an obvious bullet hole in the so-called mystery photo, and that I was also able to locate the EOP entry hole in the back of the head photos. People don't see what they don't want to see--and it's usually because they look in the wrong location.)

I see it now. Well done Pat. I missed it before in the NARA photos because this photo (= the one on the right above) which I studied, https://www.maryferrell.org/archive/photos/NARA-CE399/Photo_naraevid_CE399-2.jpg, has the marks so faint and mixed with non-mark darkenings (signal vs. static issue) I did not distinguish, but looking at the location where it is in the NIST photo as you show, I see the initials now. Meaning they were there all along from the time Elmer Todd said he put them there, and the idea that they were a late addition (forged) can be excluded.

[Denis Morissette]

Some are working overtime trying to dismiss Pat’s discovery.

[Denis Morissette]

Now there is no longer a need to suppress Hunt’s photos.

[Benjamin Cole]

13 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

No, absolutely not. I suspect the bullet was undercharged and caused Kennedy's back wound, and that it was then found in the limo during the clean-up outside Parkland. I suspect further that SS agent Sam Kinney discovered it and then placed it on a stretcher he thought was associated with the assassination, but was in fact the stretcher used in the treatment of Ronnie Fuller. (IOW. I think Tink nailed this last part.) 

Great, steady work, IMHO.

But why would Kinney, finding a near-pristine bullet in the limo (CE399), then enter Parkland and deposit the bullet near some stretchers? 

CE399 in the limo still connects back to LHO's gun--indeed, seems less curious or planted. 

 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Benjamin Cole

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Great, steady work, IMHO.

But why would Kinney, finding a near-pristine bullet in the limo (CE399), then enter Parkland and deposit the bullet near some stretchers? 

CE399 in the limo still connects back to LHO's gun--indeed, seems less curious or planted. 

 

At the time, Kinney knew nothing of Oswald or even where the shots came from. All he knew is that in his desire to clean up some of the blood and conceal the President's brains from the crowd, he had improperly screwed up a crime scene, which could result in his termination. So he put the bullet on a gurney he thought had been used to carry the President, and went back to the limo. 

It's telling, IMO, that no report describing the clean-up of the limo was published by Kinney or anyone in the SS, even though the clean-up was viewed by the media and mentioned in numerous publications. The SS knew it was a major snafu, and sought to keep it out of the public eye. This CYA mentality among the SS was exacerbated, moreover, by talk of LBJ disbanding the SS detail and handing Presidential protection over to Hoover, and by Drew Pearson's column detailing how members of the SS detail were out drinking on the night before the assassination. And then, of course, there was that black SS agent spewing stuff about alcoholism within the SS as well as other assassination attempts with a similar MO as what supposedly happened in Dallas. He had to go away as well. The continued existence of the SS Presidential detail depended on it. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Pat Speer