The Zapruder Film and NPIC/Hawkeyeworks Mysteries

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

To Kevin and anybody else reading this thread:

Be aware of Pat Speer's misleading claim here. While it is true that nearly no gaping head wound witness placed it on the horizontal MIDDLE of the back of the head, most of the witnesses DID place it squarely on he back of the head. More specifically, on the right side of the back of the head.

 

Still stuck on the Pat Speer=the boogey man stuff? 

There is nothing misleading about my "claim"? 

It is a FACT that certain "researchers" who you pretend to respect have long claimed that the MIDDLE of the back of JFK's head was missing and that the many witnesses placing a wound on the RIGHT side of the TOP of the back of the head as evidence for this.

It's a bait-and-switch. A con. 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

40 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Still stuck on the Pat Speer=the boogey man stuff? 

There is nothing misleading about my "claim"? 

40 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

It is a FACT that certain "researchers" who you pretend to respect have long claimed that the MIDDLE of the back of JFK's head was missing and that the many witnesses placing a wound on the RIGHT side of the TOP of the back of the head as evidence for this.

It's a bait-and-switch. A con.

 

The true con game is how Pat Speer spends a great deal of time trying to make it sound as though witnesses pointing to a gaping wound on the back of the head are really pointing to the top of he back of the head. Which would be fine if they were pointing to the cowlick area of he head. But they aren't. 

If you study the early statements  and testimony of the gaping wound witnesses, you will see that nearly all of these witnesses placed the wound squarely on he back of the head... the right side of the back of the head. Virtually none of them even use the word "top" in describing the location. Though that doesn't stop Pat from using the word.

 

Edited August 9 by Sandy Larsen

[Greg Doudna]

In this autopsy photo I believe the massive gaping wound is visible at the top of the head, behind the hair. It definitely is at the top of the head in this photo. This is the same photo that Mantik says had some hair added in the back of the head, but that does not explain the gaping massive hole in JFK's head very visible at the top over the hair, unless you are going to claim a second alteration of the photograph to put that gaping wound in, after the alteration to remove it from two or three inches lower. The gaping hole at the top of JFK's head (looks like the rear of the top of the head) looks like it starts at the right, above the ear, and goes across much of the back part of the top of the head, just a massive huge hole of missing skull across the top of the head near the back of the head. 

https://archive.org/details/jfk-autopsy-photos-hd_202204/Back wound (B%26W 11 %26 12) (uncropped) (JFK Absolute Proof).jpg

If that gaping gigantic wound with missing skull that one could look right down into to see inside the skull cavity is the true gaping head wound of JFK--and its right there in the photo so it looks like it is--the BOH photos have not disappeared the huge gaping wound, and one of them actually really shows it. It is a little higher than where some of the witnesses indicated, but not by a huge amount. Could the witnesses hand photos range of locations be understood as true within margin of error, in agreement with where the gaping wound IS in this photo? And no need to suppose the autopsy photos were altered (only that a few might be missing)?

As for why some of the Parkland witnesses were puzzled by the BOH photos, one possibility is they were responding to BOH photos that had that top cropped or cut off, which is the case with some published versions of those photos. I don't recall any of the witnesses looking at that BOH photo and saying, "well I see it shows a gigantic gaping wound, about the right size as I remember but I thought it was a little lower". No, the reactions of puzzlement were "where is the gaping wound??" As if it is not in the BOH photos at all. When its actually there at the top in the BOH photo linked above if the top of that photo has not been cut off.

Also, I found a video on the autopsy photos that sounds like the views of Pat Speer, except its not by Pat Speer. Claims to show the gaping wound in the autopsy photos can be seen in 3-D on this video if one has the glasses.

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

Quote

You so conveniently forget that a government cover-up occurred. And that in cover-ups, evidence does get altered.

It is a mistake to argue that because there was a cover-up, anything is possible.

In how many official cover-ups have spectators' home movies or photographs been altered? This is at least the third time I've asked this question, and I'm still waiting for someone to produce a credible example (or indeed any example at all) of such alteration in any other assassination since the advent of photography.

So far, there's nothing. Apparently, if the Zapruder film was indeed altered, it would be the first and only time something like this has happened.

I'd be surprised if there aren't numerous examples of official cover-ups in which written documents such as witness statements were altered or invented. That's because altering a written document is a relatively straightforward thing to do. Altering a home movie is a much more complex undertaking.

Altering a home movie in the way the Zapruder film is alleged to have been altered, in just a few hours and without access to modern equipment, is so unlikely that it needs to be supported by very strong evidence indeed. Evidence such as eye-witness testimony really isn't good enough (especially when those eye-witnesses can't even agree among themselves), because we know that eye-witnesses often get stuff wrong.

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

I'd be interested to hear our pro-alteration friends' opinions about one specific thing: Brugioni's recollection that, in the film he saw at NPIC, debris flew upwards from JFK's head, and his failure to mention any debris flying backwards.

In this instance, do you think Brugioni's memory was accurate or not? In the film he saw, did the debris in fact fly vertically rather than horizontally?

The problem our friends face is that the film Brugioni saw on the Saturday evening cannot already have been altered, because the supposed alteration did not occur until the next day.

• If his memory was accurate, the vertical debris that's visible today cannot have been added later, and yet another pro-alteration claim bites the dust.
• But if his memory was not accurate, why should we trust anything else he claimed to have seen? In this case, the whole alteration-at-Hawkeye-Works scenario bites the dust.

Of course, the obvious solution to the riddle is that the film Brugioni saw was the Secret Service copy which had arrived in Washington that morning. In other words, there's nothing to see here, and the alteration-at-Hawkeye-Works scenario bites the dust again.

So: do you think Brugioni actually saw debris extending vertically above JFK's head, or not?

Edited August 9 by Jeremy Bojczuk
Added the word 'already' for clarification

[Chuck Schwartz]

I  think Brugioni actually saw debris extending vertically above JFK's head.

[Denny Zartman]

7 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Still stuck on the Pat Speer=the boogey man stuff? 

There is nothing misleading about my "claim"? 

It is a FACT that certain "researchers" who you pretend to respect have long claimed that the MIDDLE of the back of JFK's head was missing and that the many witnesses placing a wound on the RIGHT side of the TOP of the back of the head as evidence for this.

It's a bait-and-switch. A con. 

 

False. They claim it was in the right rear of the head. And you know this.

The only con here is you and your consistently false claims.

[Paul Rigby]

4 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

In how many official cover-ups have spectators' home movies or photographs been altered? This is at least the third time I've asked this question, and I'm still waiting for someone to produce a credible example (or indeed any example at all) of such alteration in any other assassination since the advent of photography.

So far, there's nothing. Apparently, if the Zapruder film was indeed altered, it would be the first and only time something like this has happened.

A paragraph of surpassingly cynical disingenuousness.

Remind us - when did mass ownership of affordable portable film cameras occur? In America, the wealthiest country on earth, the 1950s. So the period between the creation of the Z-fakes and the plausible utilization of mass film camera ownership as cover, was, at most generous, a decade.

Within that decade, name me any other target for CIA assassination that merited remotely comparable efforts to obscure and mislead through film? There aren’t any.

Prior to that decade, newsreel cameramen were the only likely source of such film coverage, and hereby hangs a tale.

The 1934 assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was the first caught on film. The cameraman was one George Mejat (1). The camera he used was cumbersome, required hand-cranking, and frequent change of reels. It was, in short, a technology best suited to “handling carefully staged public events, and so the footage of Alexander’s arrival and conversation” with the French foreign minister was “of far higher quality than the blurred, jerky images of the assassination itself.” (2) Yet capture them Mejat did, with interesting consequences.

Before too many questions could be asked about Mejat’s admirable “luck” in positioning himself to capture the assassination – he was dead, allegedly of natural causes. Meanwhile his assassination sequence was used to “prove” that Alexander was assassinated by fringe domestic extremists, and not, as very good evidence suggested, by state apparatuses (most obviously Mussolini’s).

He had served his purpose and was duly terminated.

010405 K Brown, The King is Dead, Long Live the  Balkans! Watching the Marseilles Murders of 1934

1- History Catcher: George Mejat (French documentary):

2 - 010405 K Brown, The King is Dead, Long Live the  Balkans! Watching the Marseilles Murders of 1934:

https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/research/projects/terrorist_transformations/The_King_is_Dead.pdf

Highly recommended:

K S Morawski, The assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in the light of archival press articles:

https://rcin.org.pl/ihpan/Content/62823/PDF/WA303_82385_SDR-51-1-SI_Morawski.pdf

Which leaves us with the question of lack of repetition by the CIA.

First, have all assassination film sequences since 1963 been released and analysed? If so, by whom and when? Perhaps you would care to share the source of your confidence. Otherwise one might conclude your winging it and have no firm evidentary base for such a claim.

Second, why would the CIA dedicate resources to lesser targets and run the risk of unwelcome scrutiny of the technique? It worked like a charm once, and that was likely enough.

 

 

 

[Denny Zartman]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

If you study the early statements  and testimony of the gaping wound witnesses, you will see that nearly all of these witnesses placed the wound squarely on he back of the head... the right side of the back of the head. Virtually none of them even use the word "top" in describing the location. Though that doesn't stop Pat from using the word.

Correct.

I checked the earliest statements myself.

You are correct, and @Pat Speer as usual, is misleading everyone with his statements to the contrary.

[Paul Cummings]

29 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

Correct.

I checked the earliest statements myself.

You are correct, and @Pat Speer as usual, is misleading everyone with his statements to the contrary.

Agree. 

[Paul Rigby]

On 7/21/2024 at 10:46 AM, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Paul Rigby writes:

But CBS didn't show the film, did they? It was owned by Life, who kept it largely hidden from the public for 12 years.

So a number of sources insist. It should therefore be a very straightforward matter for you to post a link to where you viewed CBS-TV's output from, let me be generous, say 8pm until close on the evening of Monday, 25 November 1963. 

You did check this claim before posting it, didn't you? After all, it's not unkown in this case for widely accepted "truths" to be nothing of the sort.

As a fair-minded chap, I extend my request to anyone to post such a link. And I do so from a concern that readers may harbour the entirely unfounded suspicion that you're once again winging it, and making claims you haven't checked.

And as for Life keeping the film "largely" hidden, I do like that adverb. I assume it means something akin to "a bit pregnant." That is, it means the opposite, certainly after the second version of the Z fake was shown on LA's KTLA-TV 5pm news on 14 February 1969, and thereafter popped up on local TV stations across the country, was displayed in lecture halls, and so on and so forth, until it "debuted" on ABC in March 1975. And that's to ignore Life's occasional flashes of Zapruder's ankles prior to February 1969.

 

[Denny Zartman]

1 hour ago, Paul Cummings said:

Agree. 

@Sandy Larsen is being generous, I think. As far as I have been able to determine, no medical staff at Parkland ever used the word "top" in their earliest statements. The only individual that I have been able to find who was characterizing the wound as being at the "top" of the head was Arlen Specter, a Warren Commission lawyer who 1. Was not present at Parkland hospital on November 22, 1963, 2. Never saw the wounds as they were when JFK was brought in, and 3. Had no medical experience of his own.

Edit: Here's a link to my own research. When the location of JFK's large head wound became an issue here recently, I decided I wasn't going to take anybody else's word for it when it came to the location of the wound and what the medical witnesses said about that location in their earliest statements. So, I went back and started from scratch. I assembled a complete list of Parkland medical staff who were present and observed JFK's head wound, attempting to rely only on WC & ARRB identified witnesses and their earliest available statements. Hopefully, no "controversial" witnesses and no degraded memories.

As far as I was able to determine, not a single person characterized the wound as being at the "top" of the head, other than Arlen Specter.

Edited August 9 by Denny Zartman
Added link

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

False. They claim it was in the right rear of the head. And you know this.

The only con here is you and your consistently false claims.

Yes. RIGHT rear. Most of the witnesses indicating right rear, moreover, placed it at the top right rear. 

My point for 20 years has been that Mantik and his minions have been pretending those claiming it was right rear were claiming it was the middle of the back of the head. 

Do the witnesses support that the wound was in this location? 

Of course not. 

So why am I the bad guy for pointing this out? 

[Kevin Balch]

4 hours ago, Paul Rigby said:

So a number of sources insist. It should therefore be a very straightforward matter for you to post a link to where you viewed CBS-TV's output from, let me be generous, say 8pm until close on the evening of Monday, 25 November 1963. 

You did check this claim before posting it, didn't you? After all, it's not unkown in this case for widely accepted "truths" to be nothing of the sort.

As a fair-minded chap, I extend my request to anyone to post such a link. And I do so from a concern that readers may harbour the entirely unfounded suspicion that you're once again winging it, and making claims you haven't checked.

And as for Life keeping the film "largely" hidden, I do like that adverb. I assume it means something akin to "a bit pregnant." That is, it means the opposite, certainly after the second version of the Z fake was shown on LA's KTLA-TV 5pm news on 14 February 1969, and thereafter popped up on local TV stations across the country, was displayed in lecture halls, and so on and so forth, until it "debuted" on ABC in March 1975. And that's to ignore Life's occasional flashes of Zapruder's ankles prior to February 1969.

 

Life gave access to Josiah Thompson during his research for Six Seconds in Dallas in 1966-67, though he was only allowed to make drawings of the individual frames.

[Keven Hofeling]

On 8/9/2024 at 11:17 AM, Pat Speer said:

On 8/9/2024 at 11:17 AM, Pat Speer said:

Yes. RIGHT rear. Most of the witnesses indicating right rear, moreover, placed it at the top right rear. 

Mr. Speer claims that "MOST" of the witnesses placed the large avulsive back of the head wound at the "top right rear" of President Kennedy's head, but cannot substantiate his claim. Former Bethesda autopsy technician James Jenkins has stated that the wound was like Dr. Robert McClelland's sketch (the one in Josiah Thompson's 1967 'Six Seconds in Dallas' which McClelland did not actually make), but who else would Speer's list include?

Various sketches of the occipital-parietal wound made by medical witnesses throughout the years demonstrate that the witnesses drew a wound that is consistent with the accounts of the Parkland physicians that they had observed macerated cerebellar brain tissue extruding from the wound:

That cerebellar brain tissue was observed by nearly all of the Parkland physicians who wrote first day Admission Notes on 11/22/1963 (as well as most of the other Parkland Physicians in their earliest reports) tends to place some limitations on Mr. Speer's efforts to move the back of the head wound to the top of President Kennedy's head (Speer, of course, has made the absurd claim that the Parkland physicians were unable to distinguish cerebellar tissue from cerebral tissue, but this smells of desperation, especially in the case of neurosurgeon Kemp Clark):

The sketch of the wound that Dr. Robert McClelland actually drew with his own hand on TMWKK in 1988 demonstrates how both he and James Jenkins are both correct, as it shows that the back of the head wound was both low and extended higher on the back of the head than is acknowledged by the sketches of other Parkland witnesses (probably because Dr. McClelland was the only Parkland witness to spend fifteen minutes closely examining the back of the head wound):

 

On 8/9/2024 at 11:17 AM, Pat Speer said:

My point for 20 years has been that Mantik and his minions have been pretending those claiming it was right rear were claiming it was the middle of the back of the head.

Here Mr. Speer alleges that "[Dr.] Mantik and his minions" -- which presumably includes Doug Horne -- have been "pretending" that the occipital-parietal wound was in the "middle" of the back of President Kennedy's head, rather than on the right side of the back of the head where all of the Parkland doctors and nurses reported that it was (and if Speer is now conceding to that location, that at least can be said to indicate the enormous progress that our efforts to correct him have made).

But the question remains: Is Mr. Speer's allegation that esteemed researchers such as Dr. David Mantik and Doug Horne are -- in contravention of the numerous reports of the earliest primary witnesses -- attempting to relocate the large avulsive wound from the right side of the back of the head to the middle of the head, and is this in fact  "THE POINT" Mr. Speer has been trying to make for years?

Anyone familiar with Mr. Speer's posts on this forum as well as his website knows that the point he has been trying to make for years is that the large head wound was on the top of President Kennedy's head, not on the right side of the back of the head; and anyone who has made even a minimal effort to fact check Mr. Speer should know that his research methods are primarily made up of blatant distortion and mischaracterization, as well as slanderous ad hominem attacks upon the primary witnesses who serve as bulwarks against Speer's agenda.

Of course, to remain compliant with the rules of this forum, I now have to provide factual substantiation for these characterizations, which I shall now do, starting with the following, which we shall label Exhibit A:

EXHIBIT A

For about the last three months, Mr. Speer has been incessantly posting this photograph of Doug Horne holding a skull model along with the claim that it represents Horne's conception of the exact physical location and characteristics of President Kennedy's back of the head wound. Consistent with Speer's fly by night style, he failed to post any citations or anything from Horne's written or multimedia work in support of his claim; he simply expects readers to accept his assertion on the basis of his by now extremely tarnished credibility.

Without exception in all of these instances, Speer failed to divulge that Doug Horne has various skull models which he uses for different purposes, as we see here.

Note that the particular skull model in question is the third from the left in the photograph:

Note also, that the final clause of text in Horne's slide reads "...thus confirming that he had a large wound in the right rear of his skull."

When we consult Doug Horne's explanation of the skull model in question we are informed that the purpose of the models is to demonstrate the size of the wound as reported by Dr. Carrico and its approximate location, as well as the location of the cerebellum, and not to claim that the wound was in the center of the back of the back of the head as claimed by Mr. Speer. Furthermore, Doug Horne consistently makes clear throughout his narration that he is referring to the large avulsive wound as being located in the right rear quadrant of the back of President Kennedy's head:

 

When we expand the scope of the video to include the segments preceding and following Doug Horne's explanation of the skull models we discover that he begins by presenting the testimony that falsifies the back of the head autopsy photographs, and concludes, specifically, by presenting the sketches of the back of the head wound that were executed for the ARRB by former Parkland Nurse, Audrey Bell, former Parkland doctor, Charles Crenshaw, and former Gawler's mortician, Tom Robinson, throughout which Horne consistently refers to the head wound as being located on the right side of the back of the head:

 

Clearly, Mr. Speer has misrepresented Doug Horne's position on the location and characteristics of the back of the head wound. And when we closely scrutinize Horne's presentation, we see that, unlike Mr. Speer's research, Horne's work is purely evidence based, never consisting of mere personal opinions, as those who negligently accept Speer's word for it would think. Yet that is exactly what Speer is claiming for consumption by his unwary readers and fans who do not understand that Speer's well known modus operandi is to attempt to bludgeon his conception of a top of the head wound into the JFK assassination literature by blatantly distorting the evidentiary record and attempting to demonize the primary witnesses who falsify Speer's mythmaking endeavors.

This is easily demonstrated by reviewing the distorted treatment Speer gives to some of the primary witnesses upon which Horne relies in the video above, Audrey Bell, and Tom Robinson (and it is also worthwhile to look at the hatchet jobs Speer performs on Bethesda X-ray technician Jerrol Custer, Bethesda autopsy technician James Jenkins, and Parkland doctor Robert McClelland):

Audrey Bell:

On March 12, 2024, on the EdForum, Speer regurgitated his myth about Parkland Nurse Audrey Bell (that Bell suddenly inserted herself as a witness into JFK assassination history starting in the 1980's after being groomed by JFK conspiracy advocates, and had never before claimed there was a large avulsive head wound, diplomatically characterizing her account as "bullshit") :

"...There are some major problems with Horne's response. 1. He cites Audrey Bell as a credible witness, when she is not. She never mentioned anything about the head wound till decades after the shooting, after she had been embraced by the research community as a truth-teller..."    https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30250-doug-hornes-response-to-gary-aguilars-review/?do=findComment&comment=530774

My response, on the same date -- https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30250-doug-hornes-response-to-gary-aguilars-review/?do=findComment&comment=530820 -- was to remind Speer of the existence of an item of evidence that had many times been pointed out to him by others on this forum which completely demolishes his claims about Nurse Bell. A November 1967 paper authored by Bell herself, published in the journal of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, titled Forty-Eight Hours and Thirty-One Minutes, that contains references to events supporting the representations Bell would make in the 1980's, such as referencing her proximity to Dr. Perry and the performance of the tracheotomy, as well as her observation of the "the massive head wound":     https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001209208700474

"...I helped cut the President's shirt from his right arm, and positioned the tracheotomy tray for Dr. Perry.

It was then that I saw the massive head wound. Even though the prospect of surgery-after viewing the proportions of the wound and the general condition of the President-was improbable, I rushed off in search of a telephone to call the Operating Room...."

________________

Tom Robinson:

On April 25, 2024, in an EdForum post, Speer asserted that (1) mortician Tom Robinson claimed in his HSCA testimony that he "saw a small wound that was not a bullet hole by [JFK's] temple," (2) that nineteen years later, before the ARRB, Robinson was no longer referencing the right temple wound, and testified instead "I think I saw two or three tiny wounds by [JFK's] right cheek," and (3) that fourteen years after that Doug Horne, without any actual reference to Tom Robinson's testimony at all claimed that "Robinson said he saw a bullet hole high on the forehead above the right eye."  https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30374-incision-made-on-jfks-head-kennedy-assassination-nothing-to-see-here-an-incision-made-on-jfks-head/?do=findComment&comment=534508

Later on April 25, 2024, (1) I presented Speer with the HSCA transcript of Tom Robinsen's demonstrating that Robinson had said the right temple wound had been caused by either "a piece of bone or a piece of the bullet," (2) I also presented Speer with the ARRB transcript demonstrating that Robinson in his 1996 ARRB testimony ALSO specifically described the right temple wound separately from the shrapnel punctures in the cheek and executed two drawings of that right temple wound, and (3) I pointed out that Doug Horne was basing his high forehead statement on Robinson's 1/12/1977 HSCA transcript showing that when Robinson was asked by HSCA attorney Andy Purdy whether the wound was "in the forehead region up near the hairline," Robinson replied in the affirmative, "yes," and that, as can be seen in Robinson's marking of the right temple wound in the skull diagram below, Speer's claim, made in an adjoining post, that the wound was below JFK's eye was also categorically false.    https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30374-incision-made-on-jfks-head-kennedy-assassination-nothing-to-see-here-an-incision-made-on-jfks-head/?do=findComment&comment=534511

________________

Jerrol Custer

On January 21, 2024, Speer made the following blatantly false factual misrepresentations about Bethesda X-ray Technician Jerrol Custer:

"Custer said that he would have to have placed the back of JFK's head on the x-ray cassette to take the A-P x-ray. And that he couldn't and wouldn't have done that if the back of his head was missing. Keep in mind that the x-rays were taken with the brain still in the skull. He wasn't about to take an x-ray where the brain would be smushed onto the cassette." https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30083-why-do-some-conspiracy-theorists-accept-the-x-rays-and-autopsy-photos-as-genuine/?do=findComment&comment=526563

My response was as follows:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30083-why-do-some-conspiracy-theorists-accept-the-x-rays-and-autopsy-photos-as-genuine/?do=findComment&comment=526695

Mr. Speer, I regret to inform you that I must once again point out your misrepresentation of testimony to the members of this forum. You claimed that Jerrol Custer "couldn't and wouldn't" have placed the back of JFK's head on the x-ray cassette to take the A-P X-ray if the back of his head was missing. This is, according to you, because the X-rays were taken with the brain still in the skull, so he wouldn't have taken such an X-ray as the brain would be "smushed onto the cassette" if he had done so. 

Below, I demonstrate your claims to be blatant misrepresentations:

As you can see in the first segment of Custer's deposition testimony I have highlighted in bright yellow, Custer testified that he didn't even see the stirrup at the autopsy, and that the stirrup was not used during X-rays, but only when the body was being probed.

With regard to your claim that Custer "couldn't and wouldn't" have placed the back of JFK's head on the X-ray cassette to take the A-P X-ray, in the second segment I have highlighted in light yellow Custer's testimony that he placed a sheet over the film to collect any bodily fluids that might drain while he was taking the X-rays.

In the third pink-highlighted segment, when Jeremy Gunn questioned Jerrol Custer about Autopsy Photos 42 and 43, he confirmed that he had X-rayed the back of JFK's head and mentioned lifting the head just enough "to place the cassette underneath."

Furthermore, contrary to your claim that Custer "couldn't and wouldn't" have placed the back of JFK's head on the X-ray cassette because the X-rays were taken while the brain was in the skull, so he wouldn't have taken such an X-ray as the brain would be "smushed onto the cassette" if he had done so, Custer consistently maintained throughout his deposition that there was no brain in the skull when he took the X-rays. Note that on page 89 of the deposition Custer states that the brain was missing from the skull at the time he took the initial set of X-rays, and indicated that he did not witness what was surely a pre-autopsy clandestine craniotomy:

Finally, despite the impression you gave of Jerrol Custer's ARRB deposition as uneventful and uncontroversial, the truth is that Custer recalled highly controversial and explosive events, including:

He mentioned seeing a mechanical device in the skull at the start of the autopsy; being told the body was at Walter Reed before being brought to Bethesda; witnessing Commander William Pitzer filming the autopsy; seeing more than one casket in the morgue; witnessing the Kennedy entourage arriving after the body had already been at Bethesda for over an hour; seeing interference with the autopsy from a four-star General and a plainclothesman in the gallery; and many indications that Kennedy had been shot from the front.

In the deposition, Custer's memories seem to overlap, such as when, as follows, he relates his memories of the mechanical device in JFK's skull, being told by two separate duty officers that JFK's body had been at the Walter Reed compound before arriving at Bethesda, and recalling having seen Commander William Pitzer filming the autopsy:

And after a couple of attempts to get Speer to respond to the refutations I had made regarding his claims about Jerrol Custer with something more on point than a cut and paste job from his website, Speer responded by accusing me of being a "stalker":

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30083-why-do-some-conspiracy-theorists-accept-the-x-rays-and-autopsy-photos-as-genuine/?do=findComment&comment=526705

________________

James Jenkins

On his website, Mr. Speer presents the following commentary and screenshot from a 1998 interview of James Jenkins that researcher William Law videotaped in 1998. Most notably, Speer makes the following representations about the screenshot he has taken from the videotaped interview: "Law filmed this interview, moreover, and this showed that Jenkins' hand -- the location of the "open hole" -- was entirely above the highest tip of his ear, on the parietal bone, and not on the back of the head below the highest tip of the ear, the location of the occipital bone, and cerebellum. Here, then, is Jenkins, as he said "open hole."

On the basis of this one screenshot, which Speer evidently darkened to conceal the fact that Jenkins is touching not the top of his head, but the upper portion of the back of his head, Speer over the span of a decade constructed an entire mythology holding that prior to 2015 Jenkins had always maintained that the large avulsive wound was on the top of JFK's head, and that he only thereafter changed the story to the back of the head after being pressured to do so by Dr. Michael Chesser and Dr. David Mantik:

The actual undarkened photograph of Jenkins as it appears in William Law's book here shows that Jenkins was in truth pointing to the upper portion of the back of his head, and not to the top of his head as Speer deceptively claimed. And as it turned out, Speer's deceptive screenshot is the sole basis of Speer's mythology that Jenkins had ever claimed the large wound was on the top of JFK's head. When Speer's claims came into question at the beginning of this very thread, and Speer was challenged to provide a single example of Jenkins saying the large wound was on the top of President Kennedy's head, Speer was unable to produce even one example:

On April 20, 2024, Speer again recited his myth that HSCA autopsy technician James Jenkins denied the existence of the large avulsive wound in the back of JFK's head that Jenkins had described to the HSCA in 1977, and to David Lifton in 1979. Speer wrote:

"...Jenkins said the back of the head between the ears was shattered but still intact beneath the scalp in filmed interviews with Harrison Livingstone and William Law, and then again at two different JFK Lancer conferences which I attended. At the first of these, there was a breakout session with about 30 people in attendance in which he was repeatedly grilled by Aguilar and Mantik about the back of the head, and told them repeatedly that it was shattered but intact beneath the scalp. Of course Mantik turned around and told this to Doug Horne and within days Horne had an article online in which he claimed Jenkins had told this audience that the autopsy photos are inaccurate and Horne then twisted this into Jenkins' claiming the back of the head was blown out--when he had actually said the exact opposite..." https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30149-can-speer-and-his-confederates-counter-the-only-math-that-really-counts-re-jfks-occipital-parietal-wound/?do=findComment&comment=534135

In telling this myth, what Speer did not realize is that there is a transcript of James Jenkins's 2013 Lancer Conference presentation that was independently prepared by someone who has nothing to do with David Mantik and Doug Horne which was posted on the Education Forum demonstrating that, contrary to Speer's claim, what Jenkins actually said at the conference was the following:

"...there was a small entry…..exit, anyway a small wound that appeared to be approximately four….right in front of the top of the right ear and slightly above it...."

"...At the conclusion of the autopsy my personal ideas of the things that I said, I was sure that the entrance wound was above the right ear and that the large wound in the back (of the head) was an exit wound.  In the wound in the back (of the head) there were some questions by Dr. Boswell to the gallery...."    https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30149-can-speer-and-his-confederates-counter-the-only-math-that-really-counts-re-jfks-occipital-parietal-wound/?do=findComment&comment=534146

Best demonstrating the ridiculousness of Speer's slanderous mythology about James Jenkins is the following drawing of the occipital parietal wound Jenkins executed for the HSCA in 1977 (corroborating his HSCA testimony), and the excerpt of Jenkins's 1979 interview by Dvid Lifton which follows it:

________________

Dr. Robert McClelland

As for Speer's defamatory misrepresentations about Dr. Robert McClelland; they are so numerous and malicious that I had to devote an entire thread to them which spanned 20 pages and had 285 replies:

 

Speer's claims are calculated to support a nefarious and deceptive agenda, and as a rule are simply not credible.

Edited August 10 by Keven Hofeling