AUDIO: Odum denies showing CE 399 to either Tomlinson or Wright

[Gil Jesus]

CE 2011 says that FBI agent Bardwell Odum showed CE 399 to Parkland Hospital witnesses Darrell Tomlinson and O.P. Wright.

But in this 2006 audio clip from an interview with Rex Bradford, Dr. Josiah Thompson explains what happened when Dr. Gary Aguilar contacted Odum and asked him about it.

https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2006_04_12_Thompson-on-bardwell-odum.mp3

Edited June 17, 2022 by Gil Jesus

[Pat Speer]

Yes, of course, we should trust what 82 year-old people say about incidents that happened 38 years before. Because their memories are rock solid and they always tell the truth to researchers. 

Sorry about the smug tone. But this whole school of "Let's track down a senior and see if their memories conflict with the official story" research has been a waste of time, IMO. And actually worse than that. It's been a red herring that has led people astray. 

FWIW, I have done this myself a few times. At one point I tracked down Richard Dudman to ask him his current viewpoint on the case. He said he stood by an article he wrote in which he admitted he was was wrong about the hole in the windshield. He also told me that yessiree Dr. Robert Livingston was an old school chum with whom he'd talked about the Kennedy assassination, but that Livingston (who claimed in his old age that he'd talked to Humes on the day of the assassination, and had told Humes about the throat wound) had never mentioned his supposed conversation with Humes to him. This was quite remarkable in that Livingston came forward by contacting Harry Livingstone, after being rebuffed (if I recall) by David Lifton. In any event, Livingston was lifelong friends with a famous journalist who'd written about the assassination, and elected to come forward through the CT community without ever mentioning this to his friend.

After communicating with Dudman, however, I decided not to share what I had learned. At least not until his death. I worried that Jim Fetzer or one of his acolytes would show up on Dudman's doorstep and accuse him of lying about Livingston, or some such thing. And my feeling about old age is that seniors should be allowed some peace before they go.

Between my mom, my wife's parents, my best friend's parents, and my other best friend's parents, I know 7 people between ages 79 and 88. And they all suffer from memory loss, with 2 suffering from serious dementia. Growing old is not kind to our brains. While we may remember fuzzy feelings and even specifics about some events, entire blocks of time and even years (and sometimes the names of our children) get lost. Gone. Vanished. I'm only 61 and I'm starting to feel the effects of Father Time. Famous faces on television used to have names, but now as often as not I recognize the face but struggle with the name. 

One other point, which most everyone chooses to ignore. Study after study after study has shown that the clarity of one's memory has little connection to its accuracy. So whenever some researcher says so and so says he has a clear memory that blank happened, or did not happen...you just can't rely on it. You just can't. Among the witnesses I have spoken with is William Newman. And he says that while he knows full well his earliest statements said he'd heard two shots, he now has a clear memory of three shots. He has no recollection, moreover, of changing his mind. He recalls hearing three shots, but looks at the record and sees he at first said two shots, and can't figure out what happened. 

But I can. While compiling my list of witness statements, I came across numerous inconsistencies. Sometimes they could be attributed to a witness being misquoted by someone writing a report or writing up an interview. But frequently it was the witness' own words that were at odds. 

Humans are not recording machines, or at least not accurate recording machines. We actually kinda suck at it. 

 

[Gil Jesus]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Yes, of course, we should trust what 82 year-old people say about incidents that happened 38 years before. Because their memories are rock solid and they always tell the truth to researchers. 

Sorry about the smug tone. But this whole school of "Let's track down a senior and see if their memories conflict with the official story" research has been a waste of time, IMO. And actually worse than that. It's been a red herring that has led people astray. 

FWIW, I have done this myself a few times. At one point I tracked down Richard Dudman to ask him his current viewpoint on the case. He said he stood by an article he wrote in which he admitted he was was wrong about the hole in the windshield. He also told me that yessiree Dr. Robert Livingston was an old school chum with whom he'd talked about the Kennedy assassination, but that Livingston (who claimed in his old age that he'd talked to Humes on the day of the assassination, and had told Humes about the throat wound) had never mentioned his supposed conversation with Humes to him. This was quite remarkable in that Livingston came forward by contacting Harry Livingstone, after being rebuffed (if I recall) by David Lifton. In any event, Livingston was lifelong friends with a famous journalist who'd written about the assassination, and elected to come forward through the CT community without ever mentioning this to his friend.

After communicating with Dudman, however, I decided not to share what I had learned. At least not until his death. I worried that Jim Fetzer or one of his acolytes would show up on Dudman's doorstep and accuse him of lying about Livingston, or some such thing. And my feeling about old age is that seniors should be allowed some peace before they go.

Between my mom, my wife's parents, my best friend's parents, and my other best friend's parents, I know 7 people between ages 79 and 88. And they all suffer from memory loss, with 2 suffering from serious dementia. Growing old is not kind to our brains. While we may remember fuzzy feelings and even specifics about some events, entire blocks of time and even years (and sometimes the names of our children) get lost. Gone. Vanished. I'm only 61 and I'm starting to feel the effects of Father Time. Famous faces on television used to have names, but now as often as not I recognize the face but struggle with the name. 

One other point, which most everyone chooses to ignore. Study after study after study has shown that the clarity of one's memory has little connection to its accuracy. So whenever some researcher says so and so says he has a clear memory that blank happened, or did not happen...you just can't rely on it. You just can't. Among the witnesses I have spoken with is William Newman. And he says that while he knows full well his earliest statements said he'd heard two shots, he now has a clear memory of three shots. He has no recollection, moreover, of changing his mind. He recalls hearing three shots, but looks at the record and sees he at first said two shots, and can't figure out what happened. 

But I can. While compiling my list of witness statements, I came across numerous inconsistencies. Sometimes they could be attributed to a witness being misquoted by someone writing a report or writing up an interview. But frequently it was the witness' own words that were at odds. 

Humans are not recording machines, or at least not accurate recording machines. We actually kinda suck at it. 

 

Pat I would agree with you that Odum's memory may have been bad except for two reasons that seem strange to me:

a.) that there are no FBI 302s for those interviews of Tomlinson and Wright and

b. ) the only evidence that the witnesses were even shown CE 399 comes from an airtel from the FBI Dallas office to HQ.

That airtel makes no mention of Odum.

 

I believe they were shown CE 399, I just don't believe that it was Odum who showed it to them.

Edited June 17, 2022 by Gil Jesus
spelling

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Gil Jesus said:

Pat I would agree with you that Odum's memory may have been bad except for two reasons that seem strange to me:

a.) that there are no FBI 302s for those interviews of Tomlinson and Wright and

b. ) the only evidence that the witnesses were even shown CE 399 comes from an airtel from the FBI Dallas office to HQ.

That airtel makes no mention of Odum.

 

I believe they were shown CE 399, I just don't believe that it was Odum who showed it to them.

Tomlinson told Marcus in 66 and Golz in 77 that the FBI came out to the hospital and showed him a bullet. So it's not just the say-so of one report. As far as it being Odum, Tomlinson said he thought Shanklin showed it to him. Shanklin was the big boss in Dallas and I don't recall his going into the field on any other occasion. But I suppose it's possible he handled this himself and pretended it was Odum, in order to conceal his involvement from Hoover. He was the guy, after all, who ordered Hosty to destroy the note from Oswald...and then lied about it under oath. He may very well have handled this himself so that if Tomlinson and Wright said they were positive it wasn't the bullet, he could contain the damage. I would be willing to believe that's what happened, moreover, if Tomlinson hadn't told Marcus and Golz he thought the bullet shown him looked like the bullet he discovered. 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Oh please Pat.

On the biggest case that the Dallas FBI ever worked on, Odum would forget what he did in showing that exhibit to the first two people who saw it?

And Odum said that if had done so he would have certainly recalled it 1.) Because he and Wright were friends, and 2.) He would have made out a 302.

And you are also forgetting the contradictory reports in the FBI record.  Namely the ones that said they could not make a positive identification and the ones saying they could.  And those are contemporaneous.

https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Vince Palamara]

19 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Oh please Pat.

On the biggest case that the Dallas FBI ever worked on, Odum would forget what he did in showing that exhibit to the first two people who saw it?

And Odum said that if had done so he would have certainly recalled it 1.) Because he and Wright were friends, and 2.) He would have made out a 302.

And you are also forgetting the contradictory reports in the FBI record.  Namely the ones that said they could not make a positive identification and the ones saying they could.  Ad those are contemporaneous.

https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm

Hi, Jim! I am dying to know what you think of the whole Elmer Todd/ET issue. Parnell thinks it debunks the Stone film and the two & four-hour documentary combined hahaha! In my opinion, it is just an "aww shucks" matter; one peg out of many regarding CE399.

[James DiEugenio]

I replied to this on that thread, and will add something more.

I just got back from Quebec.

There are four major stories in two of the biggest newspapers up there about Oliver's visit.

But remember, Roe says Oliver failed.

Edited June 17, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Vince Palamara]

27 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I replied to this on that thread, and will something.

I just got back from Quebec.

There are four major stories in two of the biggest newspapers up there about Oliver's visit.

But remember, Roe says Oliver failed.

Great! Thanks, Jim!

[James DiEugenio]

By the way, the big time correspondent who did the last night interview with Oliver told Paul Bleau that all the way until a day or two before, he was getting messages from this Litwin guy, smearing Oliver.

He ignored him and concluded he was a hack.

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Oh please Pat.

On the biggest case that the Dallas FBI ever worked on, Odum would forget what he did in showing that exhibit to the first two people who saw it?

And Odum said that if had done so he would have certainly recalled it 1.) Because he and Wright were friends, and 2.) He would have made out a 302.

And you are also forgetting the contradictory reports in the FBI record.  Namely the ones that said they could not make a positive identification and the ones saying they could.  And those are contemporaneous.

https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm

 

This is what I mean. You can't just assume people wouldn't forget something because you consider it important. To Odum, it could very well have been just another day at the office. And his latter-day claim he wouldn't forget it means nothing.

When I was a kid, my mom accidentally set my hair on fire. It was something we later joked about, and the whole family was in on the joke. But a few years ago she started saying it never happened and I just made it up. She's now 85 and has not suffered severe memory loss. She reads a book a day and does word search puzzles to keep her mind fresh. And she can tell you the names of her school friends and what schools she went to and a ton of details about her past. But that memory is just gone. It happens to all of us. And it gets much worse once one turns the corner past 80. 

As far as the supposedly contradictory reports, it's just semantics. 

Here is the wording in the 6-20-64 Airtel from Dallas Special Agent in Charge J. Gordon Shanklin to J. Edgar Hoover: "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."

And here is the wording in the letter sent to the commission on 7-7-64: "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..."

These are not contradictory. Tomlinson told Marcus and Golz that the bullet looked like the one he saw, but that he could not positively ID it seeing as it didn't have his initials or anything. 

We need to stop latching onto stuff and then refuse to let it go when contradictory evidence arises. it's a huge distraction from the multitude of evidence for which there is no contradictory evidence. 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

I stand by what I wrote. 

Even though I never caught my hair on fire.

[Karl Kinaski]

So we not only have bogus-evidence everywhere (CE 399 stands not allone) but broken chains of custody of that bogus-evidence ... which is a truism. In order to implement bogus-evidfence you have to break the chain of evidence.

 

[Gil Jesus]

19 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Oh please Pat.

On the biggest case that the Dallas FBI ever worked on, Odum would forget what he did in showing that exhibit to the first two people who saw it?

And Odum said that if had done so he would have certainly recalled it 1.) Because he and Wright were friends, and 2.) He would have made out a 302.

And you are also forgetting the contradictory reports in the FBI record.  Namely the ones that said they could not make a positive identification and the ones saying they could.  And those are contemporaneous.

https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm

 

Jim, another thing to consider is that, just like in the case of the police lineups, terms like "looks like", "similar", "could be" and "resembles" are NOT positive identifications.

The FBI used the term "similar" to hide the results of their examinations when the evidence was not "identical".

If I'm shown a bullet and I say it "looks like" the bullet I handled, does that necessarily mean I've positively identified it ?

If I say Oswald "resembles" the guy I saw kill Tippit, is that a positive idenification ?

Or is it a positive identification when I say, "THAT'S the bullet." 

Or "THAT'S the guy who pulled the trigger. I'll never forget him. That's the guy."

Positive identifications are not hesitant or ambiguous. They leave no doubt.

They are immediate, convincing and conclusive.

And the witness is POSITIVE of his INDENTIFICATION.

These witnesses were not positive of their identification. 

Odum said he never showed the bullet to anyone. There's no 302 on the identifcations. There's no mention of his name in the telex, but in the telex indicating that Todd showed the bullet to Johnson and Rowley, Todd's name IS mentioned. So why isn't Odum's name mentioned ?

I believe the perponderance of the evidence indicates that Odum didn't show the bullet to anyone.

Whether or not Todd's initials were on the bullet all these years doesn't change the chain-of-possession of the bullet.

It still begins with the FBI.

Edited June 18, 2022 by Gil Jesus

[Pat Speer]

While I suspect Odum was wrong and that he did show the bullet to Tomlinson and Wright, it's a relatively minor issue. What's important is that people stop pretending the FBI Airtel and letter are in disagreement, and that the letter's saying they thought CE 399 looked like the bullet is a lie. Tomlinson has confirmed the truth of this statement, at least as far as himself. That the FBI letter also says they wouldn't positively ID the bullet further suggests its veracity. 

As far as FBI verbiage, yes, it's true--saying something looks similar to something else is not a positive ID. Brennan told the SS Oswald looked the most like the assassin of the men in the line-up, but refused to make a positive ID. Tomlinson said the bullet shown him looked like the bullet he discovered but refused to make a positive ID.

Both did the right thing. This hesitation continues, moreover, in the FBI's reports. Most fields of study do not lend themselves to positive IDs. The FBI's experts can say things are identical in some fields of study, but only that they are similar in others. Saying something is similar is not to say it is not the same, only that there is an insufficient amount of characteristics or data to reject the possibility they are not the same. In such fields the FBI's agents might be asked the odds of this similarity being a coincidence. And this is where the FBI got itself in trouble. There was a major investigation and house-cleaning back in the 90's I believe after it came out some FBI agents were routinely exaggerating these odds in front of juries. 

As far as missing 302's, this may or may not mean anything. I have found a number of Hoover letters to the commission that have no internal FBI report as backing (e.g. the ID of the rifle print based on marks on the rifle). There are still others that say an agent spoke to so and so, that fails to name the agent, where there is no record otherwise of any agent speaking to so and so. I agree that this is a problem but it may indicate an overall sloppiness, as opposed to deliberate deception. 

By way of example, Specter made an allusion to an early report on Tomlinson during Tomlinson's testimony...that was not in the record. This seemed mighty suspicious. I found this report a decade or so, however, in the Commission's key person file on Tomlinson. What happened to the original that should have been in the FBI's files? Who knows? 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Gil Jesus]

20 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

While I suspect Odum was wrong and that he did show the bullet to Tomlinson and Wright, it's a relatively minor issue. What's important is that people stop pretending the FBI Airtel and letter are in disagreement, and that the letter's saying they thought CE 399 looked like the bullet is a lie. Tomlinson has confirmed the truth of this statement, at least as far as himself. That the FBI letter also says they wouldn't positively ID the bullet further suggests its veracity. 

As far as FBI verbiage, yes, it's true--saying something looks similar to something else is not a positive ID. Brennan told the SS Oswald looked the most like the assassin of the men in the line-up, but refused to make a positive ID. Tomlinson said the bullet shown him looked like the bullet he discovered but refused to make a positive ID.

Both did the right thing. This hesitation continues, moreover, in the FBI's reports. Most fields of study do not lend themselves to positive IDs. The FBI's experts can say things are identical in some fields of study, but only that they are similar in others. Saying something is similar is not to say it is not the same, only that there is an insufficient amount of characteristics or data to reject the possibility they are not the same. In such fields the FBI's agents might be asked the odds of this similarity being a coincidence. And this is where the FBI got itself in trouble. There was a major investigation and house-cleaning back in the 90's I believe after it came out some FBI agents were routinely exaggerating these odds in front of juries. 

As far as missing 302's, this may or may not mean anything. I have found a number of Hoover letters to the commission that have no internal FBI report as backing (e.g. the ID of the rifle print based on marks on the rifle). There are still others that say an agent spoke to so and so, that fails to name the agent, where there is no record otherwise of any agent speaking to so and so. I agree that this is a problem but it may indicate an overall sloppiness, as opposed to deliberate deception. 

By way of example, Specter made an allusion to an early report on Tomlinson during Tomlinson's testimony...that was not in the record. This seemed mighty suspicious. I found this report a decade or so, however, in the Commission's key person file on Tomlinson. What happened to the original that should have been in the FBI's files? Who knows? 

There's also the question of why Odum's initials are not on CE 399 if he handled it to show Tomlinson and Wright.