Favorite author-Jim DiEugenio; favorite researcher-Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

29 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

That brings up a question, Pat.  Did the severity of Kennedy's head wounds, and particularly the destruction of his brain, mean that for all intents and purposes Kennedy died instantly from the shots?  I think Clint Hill was one witness who thought Kennedy had died instantly.

I can understand initial attempts to get him breathing, but shouldn't the Parkland doctors have looked closely enough at his head wounds in order to determine the feasibility of trying to save his life? Do you think they did?  What was the determinant for them to stop working and declare death?

Btw, thanks for your thorough work on what happened on AF1 awaiting takeoff for DC after the murder. Particularly Valenti's take on Johnson ordering the body to the plane.

I tried to send you a note thru the system here to ask you about it, but got a message saying you couldn't receive notes.  True?

Thanks, Roger, for your civil tone. 

Clark said he studied the head wound in an effort to determine if it was a survivable wound, and quickly realized the answer was no. 

Now, he did say he saw cerebellum. And never retracted that statement. 

And I consider that a problem for my conclusion he was mistaken. 

But he refused to talk to conspiracy theorists, and denounced them in the press, and worked with Lattimer, so I think his ultimate position was probably that he was in fact mistaken. 

While studying his statements, moreover, I noticed that he claimed in the press conference, his report, and in his testimony, that the wound appeared to be a tangential wound. That led me to wonder 1) why those obsessed with his statements regarding cerebellum never discussed the significance of these statements, and 2) what was the implication of these statements. This sent me on a years-long journey into forensics journals and books on wound ballistics, and to the ultimate realization Clark was absolutely correct on this point. This is spelled out in chapter 16b Digging in the Dirt. 

As far as messages, my inbox is probably full and I probably need to clean up a few. I have been holding onto old messages from people like Gerry Hemming, Gary Mack, and David Lifton. 

This raises a question. Should I make these messages public now that they are no longer with us? Is that cool, and in the spirit of this website? I don't know. 

Edited May 4 by Pat Speer

[Vince Palamara]

3 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Thanks, Roger, for your civil tone. 

Clark said he studied the head wound in an effort to determine if it was a survivable wound, and quickly realized the answer was no. 

Now, he did say he saw cerebellum. And never retracted that statement. 

And I consider that a problem for my conclusion he was mistaken. 

But he refused to talk to conspiracy theorists, and denounced them in the press, and worked with Lattimer, so I think his ultimate position was probably that he was in fact mistaken. 

While studying his statements, moreover, I noticed that he claimed in the press conference, his report, and in his testimony, that the wound appeared to be a tangential wound. That led me to wonder 1) why those obsessed with his statements regarding cerebellum never discussed the significance of these statements, and 2) what was the implication of these statements. This sent me on a years-long journey into forensics journals and books on wound ballistics, and to the ultimate realization Clark was absolutely correct on this point. This is spelled out in chapter 16b Digging in the Dirt. 

As far as messages, my inbox is probably full and I probably need to clean up a few. I have been holding onto old messages from people like Gerry Hemming, Gary Mack, and David Lifton. 

This raises a question. Should I make these messages public now that they are no longer with us? Is that cool, and in the spirit of this website? I don't know. 

Thanks for your feedback, Pat!

[Keven Hofeling]

10 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I'll answer as part of an experiment. It has been my suspicion for months now that certain "members" are committed to making sure any mention of the medical evidence on my part is drowned out by pages and pages of rehashed information, much of which is questionable or flat-out wrong. 

1. Mantik's work has been an unfortunate distraction, IMO. 

2. While I suspect Mantik's OD readings are accurate, his interpretation of them is highly suspect, and almost certainly flat-out wrong. His original claims were questionable, but when he started claiming his OD readings prove there is a gigantic hole on the back of the head that can't be made out with the naked eye when looking at the x-rays, well, that was a red flag. It's junk science, people.

3. The white patch is real and is indicative of overlapping bone--bone that can be observed on the autopsy photos. While Mantik originally claimed the white patch was added to cover-up the hole from which the Harper fragment had been dislodged he alter changed it to be where the site patch was added to hide that brain was missing--which is in keeping with what was claimed by the doctors. So it's nonsense. 

4. The dark area on the back of the head  in the Z-film is apparent on the back of other heads as well, so I suspect it's just a photographic anomaly. But I would admit that IF any alteration was performed on the film, it would be of this nature. Now, some have claimed that the explosion of the skull on the front of the head was faked as well, but that's just ludicrous, akin to claiming someone confessed to a crime so we would think he was innocent. The large head wound is 100% clear proof the shooting did not go down as purported by the WC. I dug through the dirt and went back and read dozens of articles on the wound ballistics of the rifle, and proved the WC and HSCA wonld ballistics experts, Olivier and Sturdivan, lied through their teeth, in order to confess the public JFK's wound was a typical military rifle wound. It was not. Now, my friend Gary Aguilar has taken from this that non-military ammo was used, and that they covered this up, and I think that's worth thinking about, but this idea that they faked a gigantic head wound to make people think it was lil' Oswald firing from behind makes little sense. 

5. As far as the red spot...it is not a hole. No one at the autopsy saw a hole in that location. Even worse, this hole was "discovered' after the Clark Panel realized the trajectories from the building and through the brain proposed in the autopsy report made no sense. So, instead of rethinking their conclusions as to how many shots were fired, or from where they were fired, they simply moved the wound. It is a total HOAX in my opinion. One of my many frustrations with the research community is this focus on the Parkland witnesses and so on in hopes of making the historical case the back of the head was blown out. Well, even if true, this is HOPELESS, IMO, as too many witnesses said it was not so, and so many of the original witnesses changed their statements over the years. In the meantime, however, year after year, decade after decade, the public was told NOTHING about the movement of the head wound, and that a  paper trail demonstrating for fact it was moved for political reasons. I mean, which is a bigger story...in REALITY...that a 90 year old Secret Service agent has started making claims at odds with the official story, and everyone else's story...OR that there is a slam dunk case proving the President's fatal wound was moved in medical reports so the government could claim it was single assassin. Quite OBVIOUSLy, the second, right? And yet when I talk to normies about the case most all have heard of Landis and maybe even Donahue's Hickey-did-it theory, etc, but virtually none of them are aware of the historical fact lawyers and doctors working for the government moved, first, Kennedy's back wound, and second, the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head. 

Dr. David Mantik is not a member of this forum, so when Pat Speer regurgitates his ongoing smear campaign against Dr. Mantik (which he does relentlessly and frequently) there are forum members who defend Dr. Mantik; and interestingly enough, Speer interprets this as being a massive and sinister conspiracy against him.

But there was a time when Dr. Mantik did respond to Speer's slander of his work through individuals who are members of this forum, as well as presented a list of questions for Speer, most of which Speer has stubbornly refused to answer ever since.

To alleviate Speer's apparent fear of a massive conspiracy against him by Mantik defenders, here is one of the defenses Dr. Mantik himself presented through a forum member in 2018, and it should be interesting to see whether Speer will now respond to Dr. Mantik's questions after all of these years of slandering him on nearly a daily basis:

_______________

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24550-jfk-x-ray-where-is-rear-bullet-entry-point/?do=findComment&comment=368229

Speer’s Semantic Swamp—a Second Response by David W Mantik

January 17, 2018

 “Smear [aka Speer] campaigns, if you can survive them, help enormously…. There is a visible selection bias: why did he attack you instead of someone else…?

“My son, I am very disappointed in you. I never hear anything wrong said about you. You have proven yourself incapable of generating envy.”

            --Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile (2014)

This is a further response to Speer’s Education Forum post of Wednesday (edited at 02:20 PM, probably on January 2, 2018). Most of the following issues were lifted from

“The (JFK) Windmills of Pat Speer: A Sorrowful Knight Errant in the Land of ‘Education’ ”

                  at http://assassinationofjfk.net/jfk-win dmills-pat-speer/

1.    Does Speer acknowledge that the skull defect extended into the frontal bone, all the way to the hairline—as both Mantik and Fitzpatrick have reported? 

2.    Neurosurgeon Kemp Clark reported that the skull defect extended posteriorly to just above the EOP—where he saw cerebellum, as did a total of nine Parkland physicians. Does Quixote truly doubt all nine of these physicians?

3.    What does Speer make of Stringer’s statements—about not taking the brain photos? If not Stringer, then who did take those brain photos?

4.    What the Parkland MDs said was something like this: If the scalp had been pulled down to cover the hole then, sure, the photos were legitimate. Short of that though, why did so many Parkland MDs initially fail to recognize the autopsy photos? [See the documentary, “The Parkland Doctors” (2018).]

5.    In my online critique of Speer’s work, I pointed out that his explanation of the 6.5 mm object leads to a profound paradox: If the Outer Table Fragment (which lies on the posterior skull on the lateral X-ray) does not correlate (in 3D) to the 6.5 mm object (on the AP X-ray), then where do we see the correlate of the Outer Table Fragment on the AP X-ray? After all this time, when will Speer finally confront that profound paradox?

6.    In general, what does Speer really think about optical density data?

7.    It is well established that witnesses are reliable if three conditions are met: A) recollection is prompt,  the items recalled are significant, and D) the items are not too complex. So why does Speer needlessly confound this issue?

8.    Cairns, who held the Harper bone in his hand, noted “inner markings that run around the base of the skull” [emphasis added] on the inside of HF. How does Speer explain Cairns’s comments—and why would all three pathologists agree on occipital bone?

9.    After all these years, where has Speer posted his own reconstruction of the skull? 

10.  What does Speer make of Gary Aguilar’s list of occipital witnesses?

11. Why is this occipital site the only anatomic location—in all the autopsy photos—that appears 2D? [Robert Groden concurs.]

12. What does Speer make of Humes’s comment that the red spot does not represent a wound?

13. Based on remarkably detailed X-ray observations at NARA, Dr. Chesser has recently reported minute metal fragments embedded in the anterior skull. How does Quixote explain this in his scenario of four posterior bullets—and no frontal bullet? Does he deny that these minute fragments are authentic?

14. And what about those motorcycle men, who describe lots of activity on Elm Street—activity that is not seen in the Z-film? [See the Preface to my e-book.]

15. It would also be very interesting to hear Speer explain how a White Patch can appear on both lateral X-rays, but totally vanish on the AP X-ray.

16. Did the HSCA really authenticate JFK’s autopsy photographs?

17. Also note that, for Speer to be correct (about the head wounds), we must not believe the statements of nearly all the Parkland physicians, or of the radiologist John Ebersole, or Tom Robinson (about the forehead wound), to say nothing of the paramedical witnesses from Bethesda (who saw the posterior skull defect).

18. Eight Bethesda MDs described the same posterior head wound that the Parkland MDs had seen: George Burkley, Robert Canada, John Ebersole, Calvin Galloway, Robert Karnei, Edward Kenny, David Osborne, and John Stover. When will Speer address the recollections of these eight Bethesda MDs?

And then we still have two questions (from my immediately prior response) still pending:

19. The lateral JFK skull X-rays show essentially no brain in a very large frontal area (on both left and right sides), yet the brain photographs show virtually no missing brain on either side. How does Speer explain this?

20. How did that 6.5 mm object arise—especially since it was not seen at the autopsy by dozens of witnesses?

Finally, I’ve offered advice to Speer before, which still stands. He might consider becoming a bit more disciplined before careening into verdicts. I would also encourage him to lay aside his ad hominem attacks. David Hackett Fischer (Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought 1970, p. 293) has critiqued such ad hominem attacks: "But an ad hominem debate is unlike tennis in one respect – it is a match which everybody loses: players, referees, spectators and all." These attacks do not lead to any new knowledge and they surely won't win Speer many new friends. In this tent (of researchers) we have acres of space for divergent views – but tolerance is always welcome. 

_______________

And the following is a more recent (2/1/2024) follow up from @Greg Burnham attempting to elicit a response out of Speer:

_______________

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30115-the-three-morticians-photographer-and-photo-technician-who-saw-the-large-back-of-head-wound-all-mistaken/?do=findComment&comment=527487

I would like for Pat Speer to pretend he is in grammar school, or high school, or college…and abide by the minimal standard of proof one learns at such institutions, namely: an assertion is unsupported unless measurable evidence of its validity is supplied.

Pat Speer has not now—nor has he ever in the more than 15 years I have known of him—supplied any quantitative data to support his claim that Mantik, and now Chesser too, are wrong.

Mantik and Chesser published the quantitative (measurable) data that they have relied upon to reach their conclusions. Pat Speer has not published any quantitative data to support his claim that they are mistaken. He just repeats and reposts pseudo-refutations that bear no actual substance. Moreover, no other researchers can “test” Speer's hypotheses (that alleges to refute Mantik) because he has not published the data for all to see.

Could it be that he has no data? If he does have the data to support his conclusions, why hide it? And if he has no data, why are we even entertaining this absurdity?

So, I challenge you, Pat: Publish the HARD quantitative data that you relied upon to reach your “scientific” conclusion that Mantik and Chesser are mistaken. After all, they published theirs.

See: https://assassinationofjfk.net/a-review-of-the-jfk-cranial-x-rays-and-photographs/  by Michael Chesser, MD

 

Edited May 4 by Keven Hofeling

[Keven Hofeling]

1 hour ago, Keven Hofeling said:

Dr. David Mantik is not a member of this forum, so when Pat Speer regurgitates his ongoing smear campaign against Dr. Mantik (which he does relentlessly and frequently) there are forum members who defend Dr. Mantik; and interestingly enough, Speer interprets this as being a massive and sinister conspiracy against him.

But there was a time when Dr. Mantik did respond to Speer's slander of his work through individuals who are members of this forum, as well as presented a list of questions for Speer, most of which Speer has stubbornly refused to answer ever since.

To alleviate Speer's apparent fear of a massive conspiracy against him by Mantik defenders, here is one of the defenses Dr. Mantik himself presented through a forum member in 2018, and it should be interesting to see whether Speer will now respond to Dr. Mantik's questions after all of these years of slandering him on nearly a daily basis:

_______________

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24550-jfk-x-ray-where-is-rear-bullet-entry-point/?do=findComment&comment=368229

Speer’s Semantic Swamp—a Second Response by David W Mantik

January 17, 2018

 “Smear [aka Speer] campaigns, if you can survive them, help enormously…. There is a visible selection bias: why did he attack you instead of someone else…?

“My son, I am very disappointed in you. I never hear anything wrong said about you. You have proven yourself incapable of generating envy.”

            --Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile (2014)

This is a further response to Speer’s Education Forum post of Wednesday (edited at 02:20 PM, probably on January 2, 2018). Most of the following issues were lifted from

“The (JFK) Windmills of Pat Speer: A Sorrowful Knight Errant in the Land of ‘Education’ ”

                  at http://assassinationofjfk.net/jfk-win dmills-pat-speer/

1.    Does Speer acknowledge that the skull defect extended into the frontal bone, all the way to the hairline—as both Mantik and Fitzpatrick have reported? 

2.    Neurosurgeon Kemp Clark reported that the skull defect extended posteriorly to just above the EOP—where he saw cerebellum, as did a total of nine Parkland physicians. Does Quixote truly doubt all nine of these physicians?

3.    What does Speer make of Stringer’s statements—about not taking the brain photos? If not Stringer, then who did take those brain photos?

4.    What the Parkland MDs said was something like this: If the scalp had been pulled down to cover the hole then, sure, the photos were legitimate. Short of that though, why did so many Parkland MDs initially fail to recognize the autopsy photos? [See the documentary, “The Parkland Doctors” (2018).]

5.    In my online critique of Speer’s work, I pointed out that his explanation of the 6.5 mm object leads to a profound paradox: If the Outer Table Fragment (which lies on the posterior skull on the lateral X-ray) does not correlate (in 3D) to the 6.5 mm object (on the AP X-ray), then where do we see the correlate of the Outer Table Fragment on the AP X-ray? After all this time, when will Speer finally confront that profound paradox?

6.    In general, what does Speer really think about optical density data?

7.    It is well established that witnesses are reliable if three conditions are met: A) recollection is prompt,  the items recalled are significant, and D) the items are not too complex. So why does Speer needlessly confound this issue?

8.    Cairns, who held the Harper bone in his hand, noted “inner markings that run around the base of the skull” [emphasis added] on the inside of HF. How does Speer explain Cairns’s comments—and why would all three pathologists agree on occipital bone?

9.    After all these years, where has Speer posted his own reconstruction of the skull? 

10.  What does Speer make of Gary Aguilar’s list of occipital witnesses?

11. Why is this occipital site the only anatomic location—in all the autopsy photos—that appears 2D? [Robert Groden concurs.]

12. What does Speer make of Humes’s comment that the red spot does not represent a wound?

13. Based on remarkably detailed X-ray observations at NARA, Dr. Chesser has recently reported minute metal fragments embedded in the anterior skull. How does Quixote explain this in his scenario of four posterior bullets—and no frontal bullet? Does he deny that these minute fragments are authentic?

14. And what about those motorcycle men, who describe lots of activity on Elm Street—activity that is not seen in the Z-film? [See the Preface to my e-book.]

15. It would also be very interesting to hear Speer explain how a White Patch can appear on both lateral X-rays, but totally vanish on the AP X-ray.

16. Did the HSCA really authenticate JFK’s autopsy photographs?

17. Also note that, for Speer to be correct (about the head wounds), we must not believe the statements of nearly all the Parkland physicians, or of the radiologist John Ebersole, or Tom Robinson (about the forehead wound), to say nothing of the paramedical witnesses from Bethesda (who saw the posterior skull defect).

18. Eight Bethesda MDs described the same posterior head wound that the Parkland MDs had seen: George Burkley, Robert Canada, John Ebersole, Calvin Galloway, Robert Karnei, Edward Kenny, David Osborne, and John Stover. When will Speer address the recollections of these eight Bethesda MDs?

And then we still have two questions (from my immediately prior response) still pending:

19. The lateral JFK skull X-rays show essentially no brain in a very large frontal area (on both left and right sides), yet the brain photographs show virtually no missing brain on either side. How does Speer explain this?

20. How did that 6.5 mm object arise—especially since it was not seen at the autopsy by dozens of witnesses?

Finally, I’ve offered advice to Speer before, which still stands. He might consider becoming a bit more disciplined before careening into verdicts. I would also encourage him to lay aside his ad hominem attacks. David Hackett Fischer (Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought 1970, p. 293) has critiqued such ad hominem attacks: "But an ad hominem debate is unlike tennis in one respect – it is a match which everybody loses: players, referees, spectators and all." These attacks do not lead to any new knowledge and they surely won't win Speer many new friends. In this tent (of researchers) we have acres of space for divergent views – but tolerance is always welcome. 

_______________

And the following is a more recent (2/1/2024) follow up from @Greg Burnham attempting to elicit a response out of Speer:

_______________

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30115-the-three-morticians-photographer-and-photo-technician-who-saw-the-large-back-of-head-wound-all-mistaken/?do=findComment&comment=527487

I would like for Pat Speer to pretend he is in grammar school, or high school, or college…and abide by the minimal standard of proof one learns at such institutions, namely: an assertion is unsupported unless measurable evidence of its validity is supplied.

Pat Speer has not now—nor has he ever in the more than 15 years I have known of him—supplied any quantitative data to support his claim that Mantik, and now Chesser too, are wrong.

Mantik and Chesser published the quantitative (measurable) data that they have relied upon to reach their conclusions. Pat Speer has not published any quantitative data to support his claim that they are mistaken. He just repeats and reposts pseudo-refutations that bear no actual substance. Moreover, no other researchers can “test” Speer's hypotheses (that alleges to refute Mantik) because he has not published the data for all to see.

Could it be that he has no data? If he does have the data to support his conclusions, why hide it? And if he has no data, why are we even entertaining this absurdity?

So, I challenge you, Pat: Publish the HARD quantitative data that you relied upon to reach your “scientific” conclusion that Mantik and Chesser are mistaken. After all, they published theirs.

See: https://assassinationofjfk.net/a-review-of-the-jfk-cranial-x-rays-and-photographs/  by Michael Chesser, MD

 

PAT SPEER'S "ANSWERS" TO DR. DAVID MANTIK'S TWENTY QUESTIONS 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/22739-the-jfk-windmills-of-pat-speer/?do=findComment&comment=327769

 

 

Edited May 4 by Keven Hofeling

[Michael Crane]

Edited May 4 by Michael Crane

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Vince, but I could have told you what was going to happen with Speer.

[Jean Ceulemans]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

 

As far as messages, my inbox is probably full and I probably need to clean up a few. I have been holding onto old messages from people like Gerry Hemming, Gary Mack, and David Lifton. 

This raises a question. Should I make these messages public now that they are no longer with us? Is that cool, and in the spirit of this website? I don't know. 

Your call, but if it can help to make things clear, why not... I´m 100% sure you can handle it respectfully. Some people here could use some Voltaire btw, about having a minimum of respect for a different opinion, and their right to express it.  Progress comes from disagreement : thesis, antithesis, synthesis.  I´d like  to see more of that, not the "I´ll ignore you" type of behaviour.

[Keven Hofeling]

51 minutes ago, Keven Hofeling said:

PAT SPEER'S "ANSWERS" TO DR. DAVID MANTIK'S TWENTY QUESTIONS 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/22739-the-jfk-windmills-of-pat-speer/?do=findComment&comment=327769

 

 

Here, in pertinent part, is a fairly typical example of one of Speer's slanderous assaults on the work and reputation of Dr. David Mantik:

____________

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24550-jfk-x-ray-where-is-rear-bullet-entry-point/?do=findComment&comment=367594

 

____________

The following was Dr. David Mantik's response: 

____________

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24550-jfk-x-ray-where-is-rear-bullet-entry-point/?do=findComment&comment=368084

James DiEugenio wrote:

Since I don't think it's fair to say someone is misleading people when they are not here to reply, I am posting Dave Mantik's reply to that accusation: 

 

Speer’s Semantic Swamp—a Response by David W Mantik

January 7, 2018

“He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.”

–Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile, 2014)

Pat Speer wants us to believe that (in my work) the White Patch covered the Harper Fragment (HF) bone defect. But I have never said—or written—that.

In Speer’s Education Forum post of Wednesday (edited at 02:20 PM, probably on January 2, 2018) he lists many quotations about my work, including these descriptors about the posterior skull defect: “hole” (14 times), “exit wound” (4), “tissue” (4), “defect” (5), “blowout” (3), and “blowout of brain” (1). However, only two of these quotes come directly from me, and both of these use “tissue”—the word “bone” is never mentioned.

Speer even confesses that he drew his own conclusion about the role of bone: 

As he also claimed the Harper fragment had exploded from the back of the head, moreover, it seemed obvious Mantik had simultaneously claimed the white patch covered the hole from which the Harper fragment had exploded.

My earliest recorded description of the White Patch appears in Assassination Science (1998), edited by James Fetzer, which can be found online:

http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Assassination_Science.pdf (p. 153).

Although the White Patch was a central focus at that New York press conference (October 1993), the HF was not mentioned. After all, the point of my presentation was the artefactual nature of the White Patch—not its purpose.

Speer even admits this:

Mantik's writings show that he never mentioned the Harper fragment in his early articles, and that he first claimed it fit into the middle of the back of Kennedy's skull in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000).

On the Education Forum (2010), I stated (as Speer quotes): "I have never demonstrated exactly where on the lateral skull X-ray the HF would appear, but it would be at the very rear." 

In my e-book (available on Amazon), JFK’s Head Wounds: A Final Synthesis and a New Analysis of the Harper Fragment, see Figures 15A and 15B (also shown here):

  

These are X-ray images are from an experiment performed by Gary Aguilar, MD, in December 1997, which convincingly demonstrate how far posteriorly the occiput would appear on a lateral X-ray. (Note the red arrow, which identifies the metal pentagon on both views.) As I state in the e-book, in February-March 1993 (nearly 25 years ago now) I had anticipated Aguilar’s demonstration by 4 years. I had used lead wires to outline the HF on the occiput of an authentic skull—on both AP and lateral X-ray views. These original X-rays are still in my files. I am not at home now, or I would also post these; the 1993 dates are clearly displayed on them. [The three-headshot scenario—first articulated by Doug Horne—is also discussed in my e-book.]

That there was indeed a posterior blowout (or hole, or defect, or exit wound) of brain tissue is clear from the Parkland Hospital witnesses. But the objective evidence for this missing brain derives from data obtained directly from the JFK autopsy X-rays at the National Archives, as cited in “Paradoxes of the JFK Assassination: The Brain Enigma,” by David W. Mantik and Cyril H. Wecht (The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X (2003), edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease):

One final point is remarkable: the [OD] measurements showed that on the right side, at the level of the cerebellum, only about 30% of the normally expected brain tissue remained.

This book is available at Amazon, and can even be purchased for e-readers.

To summarize: The defect left by the missing HF derives from the upper occiput—as I showed in my 1993 X-rays. On the lateral JFK skull X-ray, this missing bone lies posterior to the White Patch. But there was indeed a posterior blowout—of brain tissue. It should be emphasized that the missing occipital bone probably included smaller bone fragments just superior to the HF. Furthermore, when McClelland’s (adjacent) bone flap swung open, the hole in the bone was appreciably larger. (See my e-book for further discussion of these issues.)

Regarding Speer, my previous critique (2010) of his work is here:

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-autopsy-x-rays-david-mantik-vs-pat-speer

Included in that critique is Speer’s “Rogues’ Gallery” of 29 researchers (plus all the doctors in the 1992 ABA Mock Trial) who made mistakes in this JFK case. My name is present, but the ever-infallible Speer is missing.

A definitive, albeit somewhat droll, corollary site (2016) is here:

http://assassinationofjfk.net/jfk-windmills-pat-Speer/

Highlighted in red at that site are disconcerting questions for Speer. In the nearly two years since they appeared, he has persistently evaded them. This site also includes a summary by Mike Chesser, MD, a neurologist, who corroborated my conclusions after his own visits to the Archives. He also visited the JFK library in Boston.

Here are just two (now very old) paradoxes for Speer to contemplate:

1.     The lateral JFK skull X-rays show essentially no brain in a very large frontal area (on both left and right sides), yet the brain photographs show virtually no missing brain on either side. How can this be?

2.     How did that 6.5 mm object arise—especially since it was not seen at the autopsy by dozens of witnesses?

My peer-reviewed paper about this 6.5 mm object, with an explanation for it, is here:

https://themantikview.org/

My own website is here:

https://themantikview.org/

 

 

[Nick Bartetzko]

7 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Thanks, Roger, for your civil tone. 

Clark said he studied the head wound in an effort to determine if it was a survivable wound, and quickly realized the answer was no. 

Now, he did say he saw cerebellum. And never retracted that statement. 

And I consider that a problem for my conclusion he was mistaken. 

But he refused to talk to conspiracy theorists, and denounced them in the press, and worked with Lattimer, so I think his ultimate position was probably that he was in fact mistaken. 

While studying his statements, moreover, I noticed that he claimed in the press conference, his report, and in his testimony, that the wound appeared to be a tangential wound. That led me to wonder 1) why those obsessed with his statements regarding cerebellum never discussed the significance of these statements, and 2) what was the implication of these statements. This sent me on a years-long journey into forensics journals and books on wound ballistics, and to the ultimate realization Clark was absolutely correct on this point. This is spelled out in chapter 16b Digging in the Dirt. 

As far as messages, my inbox is probably full and I probably need to clean up a few. I have been holding onto old messages from people like Gerry Hemming, Gary Mack, and David Lifton. 

This raises a question. Should I make these messages public now that they are no longer with us? Is that cool, and in the spirit of this website? I don't know. 

Yes, I certainly believe they should be made public. We have lost so much information with the passing of Tom Wilson, David Lifton and others. So it would be nice to at least have these messages... 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 5/3/2024 at 10:29 PM, Vince Palamara said:

Likewise, @Pat Speer is my favorite researcher- he has me questioning my beliefs on the medical evidence over and over again.

 

In my opinion, Pat Speer is a center of anti-CT disinformation and a friend of LNers.

His membership on the forum is a disservice to all of the anti-WC researchers here. That's my opinion.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

16 hours ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

17 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

Pat is a sloppy, careless researcher who arbitrarily ignores basic facts that contradict his agenda, and then he turns around and shows naked contempt for others who dare contradict him.

If I have ever seen naked contempt, your own reaction has to be close 😀

 

Denny's contempt is justified.

I don't know how many times I've seen @Keven Hofeling present evidence directly proving Pat wrong about something, only to see Pat double down on his just-proved-wrong position.

 

[Sean Coleman]

Cripes, don’t encourage him, I do this on a iPhone and my thumb goes into spasms getting past his guff….

[Jean Ceulemans]

On 5/4/2024 at 6:29 AM, Vince Palamara said:

 

@Pat Speer is my favorite researcher- he has me questioning my beliefs on the medical evidence over and over again. For example- at first glance, the new book by Dr. David Mantik and Jerome Corsi THE FINAL ANALYSIS is quite impressive, yet the entire time I was reading it (I just finished it), I kept thinking "I'll bet Pat Speer doesn't believe this" or "I think Pat Speer debunked this" and so on.

Pat- what is you take on the book and Mantik's work? Do you believe his optical density measurements are solid? What about the white patch on the x-rays? What about the dark area on the back of the head as seen in the Zapruder film? Also, what about the red spot on the color autopsy photos that is alleged to be an entry wound (the approximate Clark Panel and HSCA position) that others have disputed?

 

Agree, and at least Pat is expressing his own views and conclusions, does his own homework.  Some of his opponents are merely copying Mantiks homework.  I have serious doubts if they have actually read 18/18b.  I see long lists of questions that have been answered in those chapters, I can only assume they didn´t study it.  So be it, each their own if it makes´m happy, I don´t really care.  But why they often get so nasty and ad hominem. Kinda makes me feel there is more to it, don´t know.  I probably don´t want to know. Aha, it´s a sunny day out here, gonna enjoy that BBQ with friends and family today.  Have a nice Sunday ya all.

Edited May 5 by Jean Ceulemans

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Denny's contempt is justified.

I don't know how many times I've seen @Keven Hofeling present evidence directly proving Pat wrong about something, only to see Pat double down on his just-proved-wrong position.

 

Since you don't seem to know how many times, I'll tell you: zero. 

I said in my first response to Vince that I was responding as part of an experiment. Well, we have the results of that experiment. 

There are a number of members of this forum who can't bear to have myself--or anyone really--point out the problems with their pet theories, and pet theorists, or even mention that I disagree with them. And that goes against the spirit of the place--the spirit embraced by John Simkin and the founders of this forum. This was supposed to be a place where people of differing opinions can share information and argue about their interpretations of that information. Historically, people who wanted everyone here to think the same were encouraged to go elsewhere.

And yet, we now have a moderator who can't help himself and who feels it's perfectly proper to suggest someone more knowledgeable than himself-who dares to disagree with his whimsical and fantastical conclusions regarding a supposedly serious matter--is a dis-informationist. And deserving of contempt. And should, by extension, be banished from the research community. 

Sad. 

 

[David Von Pein]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

And yet, we now have a moderator who can't help himself and who feels it's perfectly proper to suggest someone more knowledgeable than himself-who dares to disagree with his whimsical and fantastical conclusions regarding a supposedly serious matter--is a dis-informationist. And deserving of contempt. And should, by extension, be banished from the research community. 

I have frequently experienced that exact type of attitude being aimed at me by conspiracy theorists during the last 20+ years---at this forum and also at every other Internet forum I've joined since 2003---without exception.

Most CTers I've encountered just simply cannot stand having their unprovable and untenable theories torn to shreds by anyone---be it an LNer or a fellow CTer like Patrick J. Speer. Such conspiracists prefer fantasy over reality (and facts).

Sad indeed. But that's the way it is. At least that's been my experience since plugging in my first computer in September of 2000.

 

Edited May 5 by David Von Pein