Human error in the JFKA case

[Miles Massicotte]

This post will be short, but I hope relevant to several ongoing topics. "Human error" is invoked on many sides of the argument over who or what killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It is invoked by WC apologists primarily as a way to explain away discrepancies in witness testimony that might otherwise lead one way from the conclusions of the commission.  It is also invoked by CT'ers frequently for a somewhat similar reason: namely that misidentification/misremembering/misrepresentation by a witness must again simply be human error because it does not fit a certain prescribed or assumed version of events that fits a certain CT scenario (of which there are of course hundreds).

It is surely not enough to simply say "well obviously that was a mistake" when an observation from a 1st generation witness does not fit a certain researcher's version of events, on either side.

Why is it obvious? It is obvious to the researcher, and their bias towards a certain position. But it is not obvious that they, or their memory, are actually wrong.

I am seeing this crop up a lot on this forum, especially in regards to certain topics where conflicting eyewitness evidence is the norm, including: the medical evidence (Parkland vs. Bethesda), the Tippet shooting, and the veracity of Ruth Paine.

So,  I propose a new criteria upon which "eyewitness error" can be adjudicated. With the understanding that the more eyewitness error happens to favor one particular viewpoint/ narrative (LN or CT), it is less likely to be correct. That is to say, it is unlikely that individuals would consistently misremember a certain event that happens to suit a particular narrative of a historical event. It is more likely that, if mistakes are made, that they are happenstance.

The more random and unrelated the nature of the error, the more likely it is to be correct.

That is all, carry on JFKA comrades.

[Benjamin Cole]

You are correct, there is earnest witness error in many cases, including the JFKA. 

And CT'ers and LN'ers play it to the hilt, conflating error with plots or wild conspiracy theories. 

But...I will say this: By Nov. 24, the official emphasis was on confirming LHO as the leftie, loner, loser. 

I find it hard to believe that on April 10 1963 two Dallas Police Department detectives, and also two patrolmen, authored and signed two separate reports they had found a "steel-jacketed" slug, in General Walker's home, after an assassination attempt.

This was the highest-profile assassination attempt in Dallas history up until that time, of a nationally prominent figure, and the detectives knew their work would be reviewed by superiors and media, and the assassination target.

General Walker, whatever his politics, had been in combat, decades in the military, and was very familiar with ammo and firearms. He reviewed DPD records thoroughly, as he wanted the would-be assassin found. He had also handled the slug on April 10. 

No one ever said the Walker bullet was copper-jacketed. No one. Not the Dallas Police lab, not the officers, not Walker. 

Then, the Walker bullet is sent to the FBI, whereupon it becomes a copper-jacketed bullet, post-JFKA. 

So...witness error or official evidence tampering? 

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

On 12/3/2023 at 10:08 PM, Miles Massicotte said:

I am seeing this crop up a lot on this forum, especially in regards to certain topics where conflicting eyewitness evidence is the norm, including: the medical evidence (Parkland vs. Bethesda), the Tippet shooting, and the veracity of Ruth Paine.

What eyewitness "errors" are you referring to regarding Ruth Paine?

[Tom Gram]

A rarely discussed but thoroughly bizarre witness “error” IMO is the affidavit of Louis Feldsott. This guy signed a sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, that he found and turned over a record to the FBI on the evening of the assassination showing that the C2766 rifle was shipped from his company Crescent Firearms to Klein’s Sporting Goods on 6/18/62. 

The rifle was sold to Klein’s on 2/7/63 - according to documents turned over and described by Feldsott himself in multiple interviews with the FBI. Also, minus a few days in November, Feldsott supposedly had possession of all the original documents until March ‘64.

To make matters worse, a shipping record from Crescent to Klein’s was not actually discovered until the early morning hours of Nov. 24th. The New York Field Office reported unequivocally just after midnight on the 23rd to the entire FBI that Crescent Firearms had no record of the rifle at all - then did a complete 180 over 24 hours later. Here’s that gem of a document and the subsequent flip-flop: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62264#relPageId=68

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62266#relPageId=142

The affidavit was pre-written by the WC and sent to Feldsott to sign and return in July ‘64. There is a plausible “innocent” explanation for how the WC screwed up so badly in writing the affidavit that I won’t get into here, but I still wonder why the hell Feldsott would sign it. The best I can come up with is he just wanted to be done with it all so he signed whatever the WC told him to.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Miles Massicotte]

11 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

What eyewitness "errors" are you referring to regarding Ruth Paine?

A good example would be the "we both know who is responsible" phone call, where Ruth Paine allegedly asks "will Lee get the bonus loot?" I am thoroughly convinced this is a mishearing and has been wrongly used to incriminate the Paines.

[Miles Massicotte]

9 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

A rarely discussed but thoroughly bizarre witness “error” IMO is the affidavit of Louis Feldsott. This guy signed a sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, that he found and turned over a record to the FBI on the evening of the assassination showing that the C2766 rifle was shipped from his company Crescent Firearms to Klein’s Sporting Goods on 6/18/62. 

The rifle was sold to Klein’s on 2/7/63 - according to documents turned over and described by Feldsott himself in multiple interviews with the FBI. Also, minus a few days in November, Feldsott supposedly had possession of all the original documents until March ‘64.

To make matters worse, a shipping record from Crescent to Klein’s was not actually discovered until the early morning hours of Nov. 24th. The New York Field Office reported unequivocally just after midnight on the 23rd to the entire FBI that Crescent Firearms had no record of the rifle at all - then did a complete 180 over 24 hours later. Here’s that gem of a document and the subsequent flip-flop: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62264#relPageId=68

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62266#relPageId=142

The affidavit was pre-written by the WC and sent to Feldsott to sign and return in July ‘64. There is a plausible “innocent” explanation for how the WC screwed up so badly in writing the affidavit that I won’t get into here, but I still wonder why the hell Feldsott would sign it. The best I can come up with is he just wanted to be done with it all so he signed whatever the WC told him to.

Tom that is really interesting and perhaps helps illustrate the point I was attempting to make. As I understand the timeline you outlined, Feldsott's error is very inconvenient to a certain narrative about the rifle that was important at the time. The point I was making is that the more convenient a human error is in supporting a narrative the less likely human error is to be a plausible explanation. In this case, it is hard to come up with an innocent explanation for Feldsott signing the affidavit, except for what you give, that he just wanted to be done with it. Which, maybe. But my gut would be a more nefarious explanation.

Is it possible do you think, to play devil's advocate, that in the 24 hours between the 23rd and the 24th is when Feldsott found the record of sale to Klein's? That I guess would provide an explanation for the two FBI reports. It still doesn't make sense of why he would sign the WC affidavit with the June date of shipment though.

[Greg Doudna]

Miles I think I would amend your method statement to this: the more convenient a human error is in supporting an erroneous narrative the less likely the human error is to be true. If the narrative is true, then chances of the human error (removing a discrepancy or dissonance from a witness statement) being true increases. 

[Michael Griffith]

On 12/3/2023 at 10:08 PM, Miles Massicotte said:

I am seeing this crop up a lot on this forum, especially in regards to certain topics where conflicting eyewitness evidence is the norm, including: the medical evidence (Parkland vs. Bethesda). . . .

But most of the Parkland and Bethesda witnesses described seeing the same large right-rear head wound that Clint Hill observed up-close for several minutes as he rode on the back of the limousine on the way to the hospital. Naturally, there is some minor variation in their descriptions, but their accounts describe a large wound in the rear part of the head and not a huge wound over the right ear. 

[Jonathan Cohen]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

But most of the Parkland and Bethesda witnesses described seeing the same large right-rear head wound that Clint Hill observed up-close for several minutes as he rode on the back of the limousine on the way to the hospital. Naturally, there is some minor variation in their descriptions, but their accounts describe a large wound in the rear part of the head and not a huge wound over the right ear. 

Then why did nearly every Parkland doctor confirm the veracity of the autopsy photographs, which show no blowout wound low on the back of the head?

Edited December 5, 2023 by Jonathan Cohen

[Tom Gram]

6 hours ago, Miles Massicotte said:

Tom that is really interesting and perhaps helps illustrate the point I was attempting to make. As I understand the timeline you outlined, Feldsott's error is very inconvenient to a certain narrative about the rifle that was important at the time. The point I was making is that the more convenient a human error is in supporting a narrative the less likely human error is to be a plausible explanation. In this case, it is hard to come up with an innocent explanation for Feldsott signing the affidavit, except for what you give, that he just wanted to be done with it. Which, maybe. But my gut would be a more nefarious explanation.

Is it possible do you think, to play devil's advocate, that in the 24 hours between the 23rd and the 24th is when Feldsott found the record of sale to Klein's? That I guess would provide an explanation for the two FBI reports. It still doesn't make sense of why he would sign the WC affidavit with the June date of shipment though.

We know for a fact that there was no Crescent to Klein’s record as of around 4pm CST on the 23rd, which is when New York found out that William Waldman had located a receiving record from Crescent. He supposedly found it about an hour earlier while the Secret Service was at Klein’s. 

The agent assigned to Crescent had already gone home. He gets a call at 4pm telling him to recheck the Crescent records, which had already been rechecked at least once. After that it’s total radio silence for 10+ hours. Basically the early morning timing and lack of specificity in the Nov. 24th teletype suggests a recent discovery, IMO. 

The thing about the affidavit though is that Feldsott didn’t write it. The WC did, and there’s a plausible explanation for how they could’ve botched it. Very long story short, the FBI screwed over the WC by (deliberately) editing the shipment date out of Feldsott’s main FBI 302 report. Robert Gemberling had already reported the incorrect 6/18/62 shipment date in his 11/30/63 report; and that Gemberling report was the only other direct reference to Feldsott in the WC records. There was an April ‘64 letterhead memorandum on the rifle that had Feldsott’s name and all the correct info - but what I think happened is a WC staffer got assigned to write the affidavit, looked up Feldsott’s 302 report, didn’t see a date, and pulled the info from the erroneous Gemberling report instead and missed the April ‘64 LHM. 

There are aspects of this whole thing that get into possibly nefarious territory, IMO, but the rifle investigation in general is so complicated and was such a cluster**** that it’s very difficult to prove anything. A lot of the inconsistencies - and there are plenty - can be explained by the FBI trying to cover their ass for early screw-ups, like the flip flop with the Crescent records. 

On a related note, two other supposed “errors” are Waldman and Scibor’s testimony where they also claimed, under oath, that the FBI had a shipment record from Crescent to Klein’s on the night of the assassination. That claim is provably wrong, so why the heck did they say it? 

Before New York reported that the initial record search at Crescent had “failed”, they cabled Chicago that Crescent sold rifles N2766 to Klein’s on 6/18/62, and C2746 on 3/27/63, and ordered Chicago to contact Klein’s because they thought there could be an error in recording numbers. Perhaps more importantly, New York also found out from Feldsott that Klein’s sold rifles mounted with the exact same model scope found on C2766. 

I’ll cut off my rifle ranting for now, but basically the evidence very strongly suggests that the FBI contacted Klein’s under pretext. They probably even told Waldman et al. that the N2766 rifle with the June ‘62 shipment was actually C2766. 

[Ron Bulman]

On 12/5/2023 at 1:40 PM, Jonathan Cohen said:

Then why did nearly every Parkland doctor confirm the veracity of the autopsy photographs, which show no blowout wound low on the back of the head?

They didn't.  For starters: (watch the whole documentary)

 

[Miles Massicotte]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your detailed response, I really appreciate it. The June shipment date is obviously an error (really no other way it makes sense) and your explanation about a WC staffer writing Feldsott's affidavit (and using that date from the Gemberling report) seems logical enough to me.

I also agree about the rifle investigation being a clusterf**k. This is not an area I have researched as in depth as others, but there is so much conflicting information that it makes it hard to draw conclusions. I appreciate your observations. I'm fascinated with the idea that the FBI told Waldman that N2766 (or possibly C2746, I wonder) was C2766. My own feeling from the beginning has been that the FBI served essentially as a "fixer" throughout the investigation, and this would be a great example (assuming I am understanding this right). 

On 12/5/2023 at 6:09 PM, Tom Gram said:

On a related note, two other supposed “errors” are Waldman and Scibor’s testimony where they also claimed, under oath, that the FBI had a shipment record from Crescent to Klein’s on the night of the assassination. That claim is provably wrong, so why the heck did they say it? 

To me this is a good example of my point in my first post. This is a good example of an "error" that is awfully convenient to a particular narrative, and thus is not so likely to be a true error.

On 12/5/2023 at 2:23 PM, Michael Griffith said:

But most of the Parkland and Bethesda witnesses described seeing the same large right-rear head wound that Clint Hill observed up-close for several minutes as he rode on the back of the limousine on the way to the hospital. Naturally, there is some minor variation in their descriptions, but their accounts describe a large wound in the rear part of the head and not a huge wound over the right ear. 

Hello Mike,

I have been to your website and read many of your articles. I appreciate your willingness to take on unpopular positions and defend them staunchly and with erudition (even though I strongly and fervishly disagree with them, i.e. O.J. Simpson and David Irving). So please take this respectfully when I say: you are repeating a false "factoid" endlessly. Compile all contemporaneous observations of the head wound, Parkland and Bethesda. Then remember that there is a very good reason why autopsies are important and we don't rely on the recollections of ER doctors. And then, make a fair assessment of if a large rear head wound was truly observed. I don't agree with him or his website on some things, and I don't claim to be an expert on this topic whatsoever, but Pat Speer has you (and the forum members on your side) beat on this subject: the extent evidence supports a large wound of the right temporal region. 

(I'm not sure if I agree that it is a tangential wound of entry and exit, but it is clear that that is the major wound which killed Kennedy without a doubt).

 

On 12/5/2023 at 1:01 PM, Greg Doudna said:

Miles I think I would amend your method statement to this: the more convenient a human error is in supporting an erroneous narrative the less likely the human error is to be true. If the narrative is true, then chances of the human error (removing a discrepancy or dissonance from a witness statement) being true increases. 

Greg thank you for this, I do appreciate it. Part of the purpose of my post was to try to provide a criteria that can be helpful in assessing the usefulness of an argument regardless of whether the position it defends is true or not. It is exactly because I am personally unsure of the complete truth of the topics I mentioned (medical evidence, Tippett, the Paines) that I wanted to try to offer a criteria that could be used to help distinguish what is true from what is simply a narrative or metanarrative, as it were.

I realize now that the whole problem with the JFKA field is that each proposed solution to the crime feels somewhat like a "deus ex machina". The events of 11/23/63 are a reality, a physical, scientific actuality. And yet, there are seemingly several plausible versions of events that are all resolved in their own ways somewhat unexpectedly. I think that is what makes this topic a continued avenue of fascination for researchers. In many ways, not to get to self-indulgently heady, the JFKA is the single event which separates the modern from the postmodern. We, on this forum (for the most part) are seeking a Truth (capital T) to the assassination, a Truth that exists in physical reality. But we are wrestling with the postmodern reality that we live in, breathe in, exist in, that says: each "truth" we discover about the assassination is equally true, because each reveals a truth about which it has borne. There is no doubt that the events of 11/23/63 were the most impactful of the 20th century in terms of the course of world events. The question now is not who killed JFK, but what killed JFK.

In any case, to weed out bias amongst researchers, I think we should be asking ourselves, vigilantly: is that which we are attributing to human error actually convenient for my argument, rather than an error?