My New Book, A Heritage of Nonsense: Jim Garrison's Tales of Mystery and Imagination

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Which, of course, is also provably incorrect. There was no "right rear lower occipital" head wound at all.....as proven by the X-rays:

DVP--

Thanks for your reply.

I can't tell anything from that x-ray. 

[David Von Pein]

14 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I can't tell anything from that x-ray. 

You can't tell that the ENTIRE RIGHT REAR OCCIPITAL area of JFK's head is there? I.E., the right-rear of the head is intact, with no missing (or "blown out") skull bone at all.

You really can't see that?

 

A larger view (via the HSCA volumes):

 

Edited Saturday at 10:26 AM by David Von Pein

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

You can't tell that the ENTIRE RIGHT REAR OCCIPITAL area of JFK's head is there? I.E., the right-rear of the head is intact, with no missing (or "blown out") skull bone at all.

You really can't see that?

 

A larger view (via the HSCA volumes):

1. So..where did the bullet enter? 

2. The missing portions of skull...what happened to them? 

3. Could the large missing pieces obscure another bullet entry? 

4. From this x-ray, I can't see anything on the left side of the skull. 

5. Since the HSCA accepted this x-ray as authentic, probably it is. But there appears some legitimate questions about surviving x-rays and photos. 

6. After Robert Blakey and Michael Baden both promoted the tumbling bullet theory of the JFKA...well, I lost some confidence in their observations. Especially Baden. Blakey, a lawyer, might be forgiven...but Baden? As an autopsist, he should have examined clothing, and known about the debriding/enlarging of wounds, and talked to Dr. Robert Shaw, Connally's surgeon.

So when Baden says this or that about JFK's skull...well, what should a layman believe?  

 

[Benjamin Cole]

1. So..where did the bullet enter? 

2. The missing portions of skull...what happened to them? 

3. Could the large missing pieces obscure another bullet entry? 

4. From this x-ray, I can't see anything on the left side of the skull. 

5. Since the HSCA accepted this x-ray as authentic, probably it is. But there appears some legitimate questions about surviving x-rays and photos. 

6. After Robert Blakey and Michael Baden both promoted the tumbling bullet theory of the JFKA...well, I lost some confidence in their observations. Especially Baden. Blakey, a lawyer, might be forgiven...but Baden? As an autopsist, he should have examined clothing, and known about the debriding/enlarging of wounds, and talked to Dr. Robert Shaw, Connally's surgeon.

So when Baden says this or that about JFK's skull...well, what should a layman believe?

[Cliff Varnell]

On 10/1/2024 at 7:17 AM, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Congratulations Fred and I look forward to reading your latest addition to the anti-conspiracy literature.

Conspiracy theory is one thing -- conspiracy fact is another.

The bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with his throat wound.

Would Tracy Parnell or Fred Litwin like to make fools of themselves arguing otherwise?

[Robert Morrow]

7 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Did Lifton also theorize that Lady Bird (as LBJ's assistant) went down into the bowels of SAM 26000 too? She's the one who handed Lyndon the scalpels, right?

 

No, the reason Lifton thought LBJ might have done this was that LBJ changed shirts. What Lifton does not know is that politicians change shirts all the time because they get hot and sweaty during a long day and they want to present a "fresh image" to the public. A lot of them take showers in the middle of the day as JFK, Bill Clinton often did.

Actually, I think Lifton actually told this to Sean Fetter. I think what Lifton told me was "if I told you what I really think, you are going to think I am crazy." But he did tell me he thought there was body alteration going on in the bowels of Air Force One to make it look like all the bullet shots came from behind.

I think David Lifton was a very smart man and he helped me a lot on deciphering Lyndon Johnson planning of the JFK assassination but sometimes really smart people become enthralled with their own batshit theories.

[Cliff Varnell]

The subtext of Litwin's Garrison critique is Oswald as Lone Assassin.

This subtext is fallacious. 

The correct subtext for all  discussions of the JFKA is the fact of 2+ shooters.

This matter was settled in June 1966 when Gaeton Fonzi confronted Arlen Specter with the clothing evidence and Specter had a nervous breakdown.

You know, there's something curious about the JFKA where otherwise highly intelligent people lose 50 points off their IQ when they start to research it.

 

 

[Paul Bacon]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

If JFK was shot from the right-front, or from the GK on 11/22...where is the exit wound?

The medical crew in Parkland seems on board with the right rear lower occipital area as the site of a large wound. 

How would gore exiting such a wound then be spread towards the motorcycle cops to JFK left? But not backwards much? 

If JFK was shot from the GK, should we expect to see an exit wound on the left side of JFK's head? 

 

The exit wound was where the Parkland doctors said it was--exactly where the black patch in the Zapruder film is located!

If a forhead shot (the one over the right eye) came from the grassy knoll, JFK's head had to have been turned toward the knoll. If it had been, that would have allowed a shot to the forehead to exit out the back and cover Hargis with brain matter.  At no point in the Z-film, is Kennedy's head turned toward the grassy knoll. 

(This assumes Z frames haven't been removed.)

JFK's head was turned, more or less, toward the south knoll at the time of the head shots.  So what did happen?  

First, a shot to the low back of JFK's head from behind, moving it forward.  Then, immediately, basically overlapping, two shots from the front.

The first of these two, came from the south knoll and entered the forehead over the right eye, where we see the fragment trail in one of the x-rays.

The second of these two, came from the grassy knoll, where it entered the right side of the head, blew out the occiput, and covered Hargis with brains.  It was a tangential wound, as speculated by Parkland Dr. McClelland.

I've read that Horne and Mantik think there were three shots to the head.  I, separately, came to this conclusion. 

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

The Warren Commission Report conclusion that a "Lone Nut"-- Lee Harvey Oswald-- assassinated President John F. Kennedy has been definitively debunked by a wide array of contrary evidence.

Simply your opinion. I do not agree that it has been "definitively debunked," at all.

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Oswald could not have fired the fatal bullet from the Grassy Knoll area that knocked JFK's head violently back and to the left, as observed in the Zapruder film.  The Grassy Knoll gunshot, and smoke, were also described by multiple witnesses.

Nobody on earth is claiming Oswald was positioned anywhere other than the Book Depository. There is just as much evidence that shots were fired from there as there is for the Grassy Knoll.

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

  Parkland Hospital physicians also described the occipital skull exit wound corresponding to the frontal skull entry wound.

They were mistaken, as has been covered to death on this forum and elsewhere.

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

The U.S. Congress, itself, concluded-- on the basis of the acoustical evidence-- that more than one sniper was involved in the JFK assassination.

The acoustic evidence is rightfully and highly disputed and certainly cannot in and of itself be used to claim a conspiracy.

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Furthermore, ballistics testing showed that a Carcano shot fired by Oswald from the TSBD would have blown off the right half of JFK's face.

Pure speculation and not applicable to any real-world scenarios. In other words, there's nothing definitive about ANY of the points you made.

[Joe Bauer]

Just a side observation of sick, gut wrenching amazement.

Regarding the skull X-Ray photo above:

The entire right quadrant side of JFK's skull is ... completely shattered!

I mean utterly so. Every area broken into totally separated parts!

A general curious thought/question would be...can one bullet from a Carcano rifle have that much destructive force to so obliterate a skull like that? The skull is one of the thickest bone structure parts of a human and mammalian body... correct?

Even with a distance from the alleged shot from the sixth floor to JFK's head being a relatively close 81 meters ( 265 feet ), is it normal to expect a Carcano bullet to cause so much damage like that?

I mean, do direct similar caliber head shot hits to deer skulls at that distance obliterate them that much as well?

I assume the left side of JFK's skull wasn't as blown apart. As well as the 10% front facial bone area?

 

[Pat Speer]

5 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

1. So..where did the bullet enter? 

2. The missing portions of skull...what happened to them? 

3. Could the large missing pieces obscure another bullet entry? 

4. From this x-ray, I can't see anything on the left side of the skull. 

5. Since the HSCA accepted this x-ray as authentic, probably it is. But there appears some legitimate questions about surviving x-rays and photos. 

6. After Robert Blakey and Michael Baden both promoted the tumbling bullet theory of the JFKA...well, I lost some confidence in their observations. Especially Baden. Blakey, a lawyer, might be forgiven...but Baden? As an autopsist, he should have examined clothing, and known about the debriding/enlarging of wounds, and talked to Dr. Robert Shaw, Connally's surgeon.

So when Baden says this or that about JFK's skull...well, what should a layman believe?

You are correct in that Baden is an unreliable expert. I have multiple chapters on this, including https://www.patspeer.com/chapter13battackoftheclones which includes a large section on Baden's hare-brained claims about the Kennedy assassination and HSCA. 

As far as the x-rays being deceiving, I believe they are, but not because they were faked. Close to the top of the head one can see a large fracture. Well I believe this fracture marked the bottom margin of a bone flap that was flapped out at Parkland, which resulted in a wound appearing to be at the top of the back of the head and more rearward than the defect shown in the x-rays and top of the head photos.

 

 

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Just a side observation of sick, gut wrenching amazement.

Regarding the skull X-Ray photo above:

The entire right quadrant side of JFK's skull is ... completely shattered!

I mean utterly so. Every area broken into totally separated parts!

A general curious thought/question would be...can one bullet from a Carcano rifle have that much destructive force to so obliterate a skull like that? The skull is one of the thickest bone structure parts of a human and mammalian body... correct?

Even with a distance from the alleged shot from the sixth floor to JFK's head being a relatively close 81 meters ( 265 feet ), is it normal to expect a Carcano bullet to cause so much damage like that?

I mean, do direct similar caliber head shot hits to deer skulls at that distance obliterate them that much as well?

I assume the left side of JFK's skull wasn't as blown apart. As well as the 10% front facial bone area?

 

That very question led me to spend several years locating and reading dozens of books and articles on the wound ballistics of rifles like Oswalds. I report on what I discovered in chapters 16b and 16c.

In short, the answer is no, the damage to Kennedy's skull and brain does not correlate with the shooting as proposed by the WC. 

But it does correlate with the an M/C bullet's hitting the skull at a shallow angle at the supposed exit...precisely as proposed by Dr. William Kemp Clark in the Parkland Press Conference. 

Now, this was a problem for the single-assassin solution, as it orphaned, so to speak, the EOP entrance wound, and necessitated two head shots.

So to get around this and keep the single-assassin solution alive, the autopsists pretended JFK was leaning sharply forward when struck in the head, and that a trajectory existed within the brain connecting the EOP entrance and large exit. 

But this was debunked by Thompson. And this led to the Clark Panel and HSCA Panel claiming the entrance was not at the EOP but in the cowlick, and to Cornwell's harassment of Dr. Humes into pretending he agreed with this assessment. 

In any case, it all goes back to your observation--that the damage is inconsistent with the supposed scenario. 

[Micah Mileto]

Somebody needs to go see the x-rays and check to see whether the emulsion over the "T" really is unbroken, but I fear another Prayer Man situation where suddenly it becomes impossible to do a bit of checking up.

[Micah Mileto]

On 10/7/2024 at 11:53 AM, Pat Speer said:

I am also a friend of Robert Wagner's, who resides on the non conspiracy side of the fence, but not because he worships Warren or Bugliosi, etc. In fact, he spends chapters in his books explaining why he thinks the single-bullet theory is crap. He gives me hope. if people can break from the orthodoxy on their side of the fence, they will see that there are many issues on which both sides can agree, IMO. And that it will then come down to a few facts, such as the single-bullet theory trajectory not being in alignment, and the president's wounds not supporting the official story. The true divide will then be clear. But as it is, there is so much smoke--with people claiming you're not a "true" LN if you don't subscribe to the single-bullet theory or a "true" CT if you don't feel certain the Z-film was faked, etc, that newbies and historians see our ongoing  dispute as a catfight, and choose to look away. 

 

Did Wagner propose a theory of a lone gunman without the SBT being true?

Edited Sunday at 05:07 AM by Micah Mileto

[W. Niederhut]

5 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The subtext of Litwin's Garrison critique is Oswald as Lone Assassin.

This subtext is fallacious. 

The correct subtext for all  discussions of the JFKA is the fact of 2+ shooters.

This matter was settled in June 1966 when Gaeton Fonzi confronted Arlen Specter with the clothing evidence and Specter had a nervous breakdown.

You know, there's something curious about the JFKA where otherwise highly intelligent people lose 50 points off their IQ when they start to research it.

 

 

Exactly right, Cliff.

Unfortunately, we have a vocal cadre of Education Forum members who tirelessly promote WCR/LN disinformation-- e.g., denying the facts about the Grassy Knoll sniper, the right frontal entry wound, and the occipital skull exit wound.

It's downright Orwellian.

In the absence of censorship of such disinformation, the forum has no choice but to endlessly fact-check people who repeat the WCR/LN lies.  We go around and around with this nonsense.

Their method seems to be-- repeat falsehoods to promote and maintain public confusion and doubt about the CIA conspiracy to murder JFK.

It's eerily similar to Cass Sunstein's concept of having the government fund "cognitive infiltrators" to promote public confusion and doubt about "conspiracy theories," and to attack researchers who have debunked government narratives about military and intelligence black ops.

And their last epistemological refuge is to declare that their disinformation is just as valid as the true facts