Fred's Flim-Flam Written by Matt Douthit at Kennedys & King with an Afterword by James DiEugenio- powerful!

[David Von Pein]

24 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

Look at Connally's mouth. His mouth opens just as quickly as JFK's does.

But the problem there, Gerry, is we can't know whether JFK's mouth is open in Z224, due to that darn sign in the way. If Kennedy's full face was visible in Z224, we'd be able to possibly see BOTH Kennedy's and Connally's mouths CLOSED in 224 and then OPEN in 225. Which would enhance the SBT even that much more.

If only that damn sign weren't there. (sigh)

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

And the 225-226 gif pretty much seals the deal on the validity of the SBT (IMO), when both Kennedy's and Connally's right arms are raised in perfect unison (and yet CTers want me to believe that Connally hasn't been hit yet at all.....yeah, right)....

Edited February 15, 2023 by David Von Pein

[Charles Blackmon]

JFKs right hand made a move as a result of an injury he sustained while he was behind the sign. The question becomes at what frame. Somebody has probably has addressed this in detail Pat maybe?

[Gerry Down]

I think JFKs right elbow was resting on the side of the car as he goes behind the sign. This is why his arm and hand is just floating there until he gets shot and then that right arm begins to rise up.

[Benjamin Cole]

9 hours ago, Michaleen Kilroy said:

So the FBI got it wrong from the Z film?

The JFKA investigation was stunted from the start by political imperatives. Why don’t we agree to start there?

And imho, the Z film shows exactly what Connally described. @Benjamin Cole does a much better job of explaining how than me.

Thanks for the note, MK.

Since I wrote that piece, after more review, I find JBC's explanations even more compelling.

Not in the linked article, JBC described himself as being pushed forward by the bullet that struck him. That is believable, as his surgeon said the bullet traveled along his fifth rib, meeting resistance the whole way. JBC is pushed forward about Z295 (JFK head shot at Z313).

Then, we have JBC telling the WC (on the record) that bullets were entering the cab of the limo so quickly, he thought they were "automatic weapons fire."

I always thought JBC must have misspoke then to WC, or there a flub in stenography, etc. Maybe he meant "semi-automatic weapons fire," or something to that effect. 

But, JBC later held a press conference and said, "I told the Warren Commission I thought we were being hit by automatic weapons fire." 

OK, so JBC earnestly believes the limo came under very rapid weapons fire. He repeated in public, on film, his testimony to the WC. 

This conforms with the Secret Service agent in the limo (I forget name) who described a "flurry" of weapons fire entering the cab. 

Then, of course, we have the many witnesses who say the third audible shot followed the second shot very closely "on top of each other" and so forth. 

None of this is explained by a lone gunman armed with a single-shot bolt action rifle. 

Nor all the gunsmoke in Dealey Plaza, in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA. 

In the vernacular of the street, "Dudes, that LN dog just don't hunt."

If some researchers wish to contend that LHO played a role in the JFKA, they have a valid point. Perhaps even LHO did fire at JFK---someone did fire a rifle from the TSBD on 11/22, and LHO was in the TSBD. 

But to hold onto the "lone gunman" position---that has not been tenable for decades. 

Moreover, much additional information has been coming out that LHO was an intel asset--it rather looks like he was. 

The last official investigation, the HSCA, concluded JFK died as a result of a conspiracy and referred the case to the Justice Department, which did nothing. And that is where we stand today. 

And jeez---the JFKA files are still radioactive. What does that tell you? 

 

 

 

 

[Pat Speer]

JFK reacted to the first shot. The SBT as currently proposed has him smiling and waving for seconds after the first shot was fired. It's total bs. But don't take my word for it. 

William Newman (11-22-63 interview on WFAA, prior to the announcement of the President's death, at approximately 12:45) “the President’s car was some fifty feet in front of us still yet in front of us coming toward us when we heard the first shot and the President. I don't know who was hit first but the President jumped up in his seat."

Frances Gayle Newman (11-22-63 second interview on WFAA, at approximately 1:17 PM) “We were standing next to the curb so the children could see the President. And the car was just up apiece from us and this shot fired out, and I thought it was a firecracker, and the President kind of raised up in his seat. And I thought, you know, he was kind of going along with a gag or something."

Abraham Zapruder (2:10 PM 11-22-63 interview on WFAA) “as I was shooting, as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn, it was about a half-way down there, I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side, like this." 

S.M. Holland (11-22-63 statement to Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, 19H480, 24H212) “the President’s car was coming down Elm Street and when they got just about to the Arcade I heard what I thought for the moment was a fire cracker and he slumped over...After the first shot the President slumped over and Mrs. Kennedy jumped up." 

Charles Brehm (11-22-63 (KLIF) radio interview) “the first shot rang out and I was positive when I saw the look on his face and saw him grab his chest and saw the reaction of his wife that he had been shot and just at that time, which was probably a few seconds later the second shot rang out and he just absolutely went down into the seat of the car." 

John Chism (11-22-63 statement to Dallas Sheriff’s Department, 19H471) "just as he got just about in front of me, he turned and waved to the crowd on this side of the street, the right side; at this point I heard what sounded like one shot, and I saw him “The President,” sit back in his seat and lean his head to his left side." 

Faye Chism (11-22-63 statement to the Dallas Sheriff’s Department, 19H472) “As the President was coming through, I heard this first shot, and the President fell to his left."

Jean Newman (11-22-63 statement to the Dallas Sheriff’s Department, 19H489, 24H218) “The motorcade had just passed me when I heard something that I thought was a firecracker at first, and the President had just passed me, because after he had just passed, there was a loud report, it just scared me, and I noticed that the President jumped,"  

June Dishong (Letter written on 11-22-63, as read by her daughter on CNN, 11-21-2003, and featured on the Sixth Floor Museum website) “here come the president and his wife…His arm in the air waving… He drops his arm as they go by, possibly 20 feet. Suddenly--a sound. Gun shots? So hard to tell above the clamor of the crowd. The president bent forward into his wife’s lap as his arm slipped off the side of the car." 

Malcolm Summers (11-23-63 statement to Dallas Sheriff’s Department, 19H500) “The President’s car had just come up in front of me when I heard a shot and saw the President slump down in the car." 

Ruth Smith (12-21-63 FBI interview, CD206 p.9) “she heard what she felt was a shot. She stated there was a pause then two more shots fairly close together…At this time people seemed to panic…She looked back toward President Kennedy’s car after the first shot and thinks he raised his hands to his face." 

Lillian Mooneyham (1-10-64 FBI report, 24H531) “Mrs. Mooneyham heard a gunshot and observed President Kennedy slump to the left of the seat of his car." 

Cecil Ault (1-10-64 FBI report, 24H534) “After the presidential car had turned the corner onto Elm Street, Mr. Ault heard three loud reports…Following the first shot Mr. Ault noted that President Kennedy appeared to raise up in his seat." 

Dave Powers: (5-18-64 affidavit, 7H472-474): “the first shot went off and it sounded to me as if it were a firecracker. I noticed then that the President moved quite far to his left after the shot from the extreme right hand side where he had been sitting."

Linda Willis (7-22-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H498-499) (When asked if she heard shots) “Yes; I heard one. Then there was a little bit of time, and then there were two real fast bullets together. When the first one hit, well, the President turned from waving to the people, and he grabbed his throat, and he kind of slumped forward."

Marilyn Sitzman (11-29-66 interview with Josiah Thompson) “There was nothing unusual until the first sound, which I thought was a firecracker, mainly because of the reaction of President Kennedy. He put his hands up to guard his face and leaned to the left."

 

And here's the HSCA photography panel: 64) By a vote of 12 to 5, the Panel determined that President Kennedy first showed a reaction to some severe external stimulus by Zapruder frame 207, as he is seen going behind a sign that obstructed Zapruder's view. 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Charles Blackmon]

Thanks Pat. So we are looking at around a second between the two shots?

[Steve Roe]

Fred Litwin responds to Matt Douthit's silly book review. 

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/james-dieugenio-s-deflector-shields

[Gerry Down]

2 hours ago, Steve Roe said:

Fred Litwin responds to Matt Douthit's silly book review. 

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/james-dieugenio-s-deflector-shields

Thanks. That article mentions a very good point. JFKs brain had swelled due to the trauma of the head shot. I presume this swelling would have created more airspace in the vessels of the brain which were then filled with formalin. 

Pat Speer previously said that some male brains do weigh up to 1500g. So when you take away the 20-25% of the brain that was blown out, then consider the brain swelled, and the weight added by the formalin, you could end up with a brain weight, post formalin fixing, of 1500g.

Fred provides tables showing that formalin fixing can add up up 30% in weight to a brain, which negates the 25% or so that was blown out.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Gerry Down

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

Thanks. That article mentions a very good point. JFKs brain had swelled due to the trauma of the head shot. I presume this swelling would have created more airspace in the vessels of the brain which were then filled with formalin. 

Pat Speer previously said that some male brains do weigh up to 1500g. So when you take away the 20-25% of the brain that was blown out, then consider the brain swelled, and the weight added by the formalin, you could end up with a brain weight, post formalin fixing, of 1500g.

Fred provides tables showing that formalin fixing can add up up 30% in weight to a brain, which negates the 25% or so that was blown out.

Yes, this is a point I've made for years. It isn't likely but a 1500g post-formalin weight is possible. 

I suspect the doctors thought it in bad taste to weigh the brain when removed at autopsy, and that they probably rounded up in the subsequent exam. 

So it's really a non-issue in my opinion. Far more concerning is that the damage to the brain does not align with the trajectory proposed by the WC.

But, alas, this gets lost in the kerfuffle over the brain weight. 

From patspeer.com, Chapter 16c: 

Some Thoughts About the Brain

One of the great complaints about the medical evidence is that the weight given for Kennedy's brain at the Supplemental Exam--1500 gms--is just too much. Some take from this that Kennedy's brain had been swapped out, and that a substitute brain had been studied in its place.

Such thoughts go too far, in my opinion. In The Assassinations (2003) Dr. David Mantik and Dr. Cyril Wecht argued that this brain weight was much too heavy, while supplying data suggesting it may very well have been correct. They wrote that the upper limit of normal for an adult male brain is 1605 gms. Kennedy was a larger than average man, whose brain could very well have been at that limit, or perhaps even larger. (The brain of William Pitzer, a Bethesda Hospital employee whose death aroused much speculation, is reported to have weighed 1625 gms upon removal.) Mantik and Wecht then wrote that soaking the brain in formalin would increase its weight by a mean of 8.8%, and that injecting the brain with formalin would increase its weight by a mean of 5.7%. Both procedures were purported to have been performed on Kennedy's brain.

Well, let's do the math. If these procedures increased the weight of the brain by 14.5% (8.8 plus 5.7), as seems reasonable, Kennedy's presumably 1605 gm brain would have weighed as much as 1837 gms. But it only weighed 1500 gms. This suggests then that roughly 18% of the brain was missing.

Now, this is where it gets tricky. The autopsists, when asked for an estimate, said that roughly 33 % of the brain was missing. Something seems to be awry. But then look again. Although the means of the weight increase from formalin soaking and infusion were 5.7 and 8.8%, respectively, the highs were 19.2 and 31.8%, respectively. That's a 50% increase, when taken together. A 1605 gm brain, if soaked and infused with formalin, then, could have weighed as much as 2400 gms, more than the 2250 gms needed to correlate to the 1500 gm weight of the brain with the doctors' recollection a third of the brain was missing.

But was there so big an increase? Almost certainly not. It seems likely that the two procedures would overlap somewhat, and that the largest increase from performing both procedures would be smaller than the sum of the largest increase from performing each of the procedures. The fact remains, however, that a perfectly reasonable combination of a larger than average beginning weight for Kennedy's brain, a smaller than estimated 33% loss of brain matter from the shooting, and larger than expected weight increase from the formalin can be found, and that this combination of factors makes the 1500 gm weight provided for Kennedy's brain, well, perfectly reasonable.

Let's try these on for size.

Suppose Kennedy's pre-mortem brain weighed 1500 g. This is not unreasonable in that the brains of some famous and semi-famous men were reported to have weighed as follows:

Roger Craig (1300 g), Vladimir Lenin (1340 g), J.D. Tippit (1350 g), Michael Jackson (1380 g), Corey Haim (1390 g), Ron Goldman (1400 g), Martin Luther King (1400 g), Lee Oswald (1450 g), Dale Earnhardt (1450 g), David Ferrie (1480 g), Christopher Wallace (1490), Dylan Klebold (1500 g), Chester Bennington (1530 g), River Phoenix (1540 g), Russell Armstrong (1600 g), William Pitzer (1625 g), and Andy Irons (1664 g).

Suppose the doctors over-estimated the amount that was missing, and that only 20% was actually missing. That's a 1200 gm brain. (James Jenkins, Humes' and Boswell's assistant, who handled the brain and infused it with formalin, told a 1991 conference hosted by Harrison Livingstone that the brain he infused was approximately the size of a woman's brain, and weighed 1200 or 1300 gms.)

Suppose then that the formalin procedures added 25% onto this weight.

These are all reasonable adjustments. And yet they arrive at the supposedly impossible number of 1500 gms.

Now consider that 1500 is a nice round number and that it seems possible, even likely, that whoever weighed Kennedy's brain rounded up.

Well, this means the formalin procedures would only have to have added 20% onto the weight of Kennedy's pre-formalin-infused brain.

Sometimes what seems impossible is well within the grasp of the possible.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Denny Zartman]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

Suppose Kennedy's pre-mortem brain weighed 1500 g. This is not unreasonable in that the brains of some famous and semi-famous men were reported to have weighed as follows:

Roger Craig (1300 g), Vladimir Lenin (1340 g), J.D. Tippit (1350 g), Michael Jackson (1380 g), Corey Haim (1390 g), Ron Goldman (1400 g), Martin Luther King (1400 g), Lee Oswald (1450 g), Dale Earnhardt (1450 g), David Ferrie (1480 g), Christopher Wallace (1490), Dylan Klebold (1500 g), Chester Bennington (1530 g), River Phoenix (1540 g), Russell Armstrong (1600 g), William Pitzer (1625 g), and Andy Irons (1664 g).

In my view it still seems to be a bit of a stretch with a number of assumptions that are necessary to make the theory work. Do you know if all these weights quoted above are pre or post-formalin?

[Pat Speer]

19 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

In my view it still seems to be a bit of a stretch with a number of assumptions that are necessary to make the theory work. Do you know if all these weights quoted above are pre or post-formalin?

Brains are supposed to be weighed during the autopsy. That's SOP. So I assume those weights were all pre-formalin. I have read studies, moreover, that confirm this array of brain weights. 

Here is a chart from a South African brain weight study in 2018. As you can see brain weights over 1500g were not unusual in adult men.

 

 

 

[George Govus]

What I get is that the weight of the brain, which nobody can find, is more or less in line.

[Tom Gram]

I don’t see this discussed very much, but isn’t the bigger issue not so much the brain weight but the circumstantial evidence of two different brain examinations? Jeremy Gunn the world class attorney with a PhD from Harvard is not exactly an idiot, and he has stated, publicly, that there is “very compelling evidence” for two brain exams and that it is “quite plausible” that such a thing actually occurred. I don’t agree with a lot of Doug Horne’s conclusions but his “two brain memorandum” for the ARRB is pretty interesting IMO: 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-two-brain-memorandum

It does seem quite plausible that RFK would’ve wanted JFK’s brain interred with his body, so I’m not sure why discussion about the brain is usually limited to Stringer’s ARRB testimony and the brain weight. I haven’t studied it enough myself to really have an opinion, but I feel like the case for any subterfuge with JFK’s brain should be considered in its entirety.