A Shot from The Left

[John Dolva]

Since I revived the Headshot theory topic, Lee's and my initial discussion has diverged distinctly to separate threads and I feel I would be doing him a disservice to continue posting my thread there. So here is this topic summarising the points I've been concentrating on. I acknowledge the responses to my posts by here trying to incorporate the answers to them in this summary.

It's hard to get a good photo of Dealey Plaza from the time of the assassination. Usually all maps and photo's focus on the northern half (understandable). So far I've only found one grainy photo from the early 60's showing all of Dealey Plaza with all of the surrounding buildings. Earlier and Later seems to be easier, but on the later ones the emphasis is to the exclusion of the southern half. Well, I reckon there are some reasons to consider a shot from The South, or The Left Wing. (not Castro)

Edited July 29, 2005 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

some alternative views

[John Dolva]

There were indeed reports of shots from the Left.

Watching through binoculars from his fifth floor office in the Terminal Annex building (or Post Office Building) opposite the Texas School Book Depository, was Harry D. Holmes, FBI informant T7.

Harry had his office on the fifth floor of the Terminal Annex building (also known as the Post Office) on the corner of Commerce and Houston streets, cattywampus to the grassy knoll, directly opposite the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza. He liked to describe the Annex as 'my building'. Through his windows he could see on the right 'Old Red', The Jail, the Records Building, Dal. Tex. and about 300 feet opposite, the sixth floor of the TSBD. Panning in an arc further left along Elm Street down to the Triple underpass then out across the western plains over towards Fort Worth.

In Harry's words:

"....Right after the assassination I called the boss in Fort Worth, who already had the chief on the phone line in Washington because everything was chaos. He told me:

“Well, you’re in charge of the investigation over there for whatever they need in the way of postal inspectors’ help or cooperation. The entire manpower that we have over there is at your disposal and we’ll send more if you need them.”

"All the federal agencies would band together though they didn’t know what to do. Actually, for a while, they thought the shots came from my building, the Terminal Annex (post office). So immediately we interviewed everybody on the floors on that side of the building to see what they knew or had seen because there was a possibility that it came from the post office. Of course, that was cleared up in a hurry.

I had the radio on all the time but there wasn’t much that I could do. I had called Captain Fritz and told him, “If there is anything I can do, why, I’m available and I’ve got plenty of men available......”

Witnesses?? Harry D. Holmes, FBI informat T7, said : "Actually, for a while, they thought the shots came from my building, the Terminal Annex. So immediately we interviewed everybody on the floors on that side of the building to see what they knew or had seen because there was a possibility that it came from the post office. Of course, that was cleared up in a hurry."

"they thought" ? (agencies. DPD? Witnesses?), "my building" "we interviewed" ? (not the 'agencies' ?) "...to see what they knew": us, our people in our building. So it seems the word of Harry was sufficient for the 'agencies' to accept that the shot did not come from the post office?? funny that.? Of course, they knew it came from the TSBD.

Who the h..l was this Harry dude? It seems strange that he packed such an enormous untouchability.

He brought Lee's Post Box to attention of DPD, he took part in Oswalds interviews, he delayed the transfer so that Oswald was still there when Ruby turned up, he took part in uncovering the trail to the Carcano.

As postal inspector he would have been part of the CIA,FBI,Postal Inspection Service, illegal Top Secret mail opening operations.

Had he seen the Back yard photos?

Oswald would have been known to him and (through Harry, as T7) the FBI. He lied at WC about postal regulations, and also said he couldn't remember the names of people he associated with yet described himself (apart from calling himself a trained 'suspicioner' ( a play on the french word spy?)) as someone with a perfect memory? After the WC he seemed to vanish into thin air.*

What did he look like? It's a puzzle worth looking at.

*(of course as Pat has pointed out he didn't vanish But he did fade very much into the background)

Edited July 29, 2005 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

Harry remarked before the assassination, pointing to the Texas School Book Depository, in sight to him every working day since arriving in Dallas in 1948 : “Well, look at all those open windows. Wouldn’t that be a nice place to take a crack at the President?”

By all accounts (of which there are few) Harry D. Holmes was an interesting figure. He described himself as a 'trained suspicioner' and spent most of the day of the assassination and the following days in his office or at the police station taking part in the interviews of Oswald. He provided crucial information on Oswalds Post Box and was the reason for the delay in Oswalds transfer that resulted in Ruby being in time to shoot Oswald. He commanded respect and authority within the FBI, DPD and the Warren Commission. I haven't been able to find out much about him, perhaps someone could supply further details?

Suspicioner T7

Harry had his office on the fifth floor of the Terminal Annex building (also known as the Post Office) on the corner of Commerce and Houston streets, cattywampus to the grassy knoll, directly opposite the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza. He liked to describe the Annex as 'my building'. Through his windows he could see on the right 'Old Red', The Jail, the Records Building, Dal. Tex. and about 300 feet opposite, the sixth floor of the TSBD. Panning in an arc further left along Elm Street down to the Triple underpass then out across the western plains over towards Fort Worth.

In the lore of the Wild West, as an agent in the spread of the tentacles of commerce throughout the European invasion, the Post Office is a central player. The oldest Law enforcement organisation in the US, the Postal Inspectors, has an almost legendary status.

Indian territory, as Oklahoma was known, is nestled between the states of Texas and Kansas. This (thank's for the correction Tom) was confederate territory during the Civil War. And this is where Harry was born on the second of July, 1905. Little appears to be known about his early life, (in fact little is known about Harry, period) In Harrys mention of his father he describes him as a Goatherd*.

By age 12 he was attending school in Kansas City. He graduated from high school and spent two years at William Jewell College at Liberty, Mo. and part of a third year in Kansas City.

During his schooling he worked in a toy factory, a bakery, lighting lamps, and as a clerk in the post office. He continued working in the post office while studying to become a CPA, and also while studying dentistry.

Then on to the second world war.

In 1942 he was still working with the USPO where he now became a Postal Inspector. On the day before his 43'rd birthday in 1948, Harry arrived in Dallas where he remained with the Postal Inspection Service until his retirement in 1966. At some point he became an FBI informant codenamed "T7".*

On November 22, 1963, he observed the assassination through binoculars from his office. Throughout the following days he was a significant figure in the investigation.

He was with five or six other inspectors in his office. Through the morning he observed the preparations for the motorcade. He said, pointing out the TSBD, “Well, look at all those open windows. Wouldn’t that be a nice place to take a crack at the President?”

During the assassination he was using a pair of 7.5x50 binoculars when "all of a sudden there was a CRACK… CRACK… CRACK!! All of us thought that somebody was throwing firecrackers. We just never dreamed that anybody would be shooting at him.

Anyway, about the first or second crack, I wouldn’t know which, there was just a cone of blood and corruption that went up right in the back of his head and neck. I thought it was red paper on a firecracker. It looked like a firecracker lit up which looks like little bits of red paper as it goes up. But in reality it was his skull and brains and everything else that went up perhaps as much as six or eight feet. Just like that! Then just a minute later another crack, and everybody fell down like they were ducking firecrackers."

*".......... Contrary to popular belief that Reagan was a nice guy, portrayed him as a snitch, an FBI informant in the late 1940's, feeding information to J. Edgar Hoover regarding alleged Communist activities in the Screen Actors Guild and other Hollywood organizations. .............

Summers ::

FBI file 100-382196 contains the lowdown on a minor Hollywood actor—"6'1" tall, weight 175 lbs, blue eyes and brown hair"—named Ronald Reagan. The future president, who was spending as much time on union activity as on acting, was on the board of HICCASP [Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences, and Professions], which the FBI considered a Communist front. His brother Neil, however, was spying on HICCASP meetings for the Bureau, and warned Ronald it would be wise to resign. Instead, Ronald acted as an FBI stool pigeon, too.

..........As the Bureau's Confidential Informant, code number T10, Reagan took to calling FBI agents to his house under cover of darkness, to tell of "cliques" in the Screen Actors Guild that "follow the Communist Party line." He reeled off the names of the actors and actresses in question and, in an appearance arranged at Edgar's personal suggestion, did so again during a secret appearance before the Un-American Activities Committee."

Harry (Henry?) D. (?) Holmes was FBI informant T7. Does this mean he bacame an informant as early as 1942 when he became a Postal Inspector?

Does that mean also that the Top Secret, illegal, mail opening operations by the FBI, CIA, and the USPO started much earlier than indicated by declassified documents which put the date as sometime in 1952?

*He may have been just a plain Goatherd, but then again, taking into account Harry's penchant for wordplay he could be referring to the old Southern colloquialism 'Goats' used to describe the mainstay of segregation in post Civil war South, the southern Democrats.

Edited July 29, 2005 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

"Two FBI mail-opening programs were suspended for security reasons involving changes in local postal personnel and never reinstituted, on the theory that the value of the programs did not justify the risk involved. (Memorandum from San Francisco Field Office to FBI Headquarters, 5/19/66.) The CIA's San Francisco* mail-opening project "was terminated since the risk factor outweighed continuing an activity which had already achieved its objectives." (Memorandum to Chief, East Asia Division, June 1973.) The lack of any significant intelligence value to the CIA apparently led to the termination of the New Orleans mail-opening program. (Memorandum from "Identity 13" to Deputy Director of Security, 10/9/57.) Three other programs were terminated because they had produced no valuable counterintelligence information, while diverting manpower needed for other operations. "

*could this program be the one that Reagan performed a peripheral role in?

That Reagan was involved in something in San Fransisco is apparent from reports of "the Reagan Ruckus", where in 1965 the John Birch Society was offering to support or oppose Reagan depending on how he thought they could be most helpful to him.

Edited July 29, 2005 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

Harry's Boss, J.Edward Day prior to august 1963, was appointed by Kennedy as Postmaster General in '61.

a CIA document, written by Mr. Helms, describes a disturbing meeting Day had with Dulles, Helms and Roosevelt three weeks after he had started work, stating in the second sentence of the paragraph, “We gave him the background, development, and current status, withholding no relevant details.”

Day denied having been told this but admitted that Dulles and co. had come to see him to tell him something 'very secret'.

Day resigned for reasons variously described as 'financial', and 'differences with Kennedy', in July 1963.

[Lee Forman]

Hi John.

Here's a photo I took in 2004 which captured both the Postal Annex and the 'X' on Elm.

- lee

[John Dolva]

trajectory

[John Dolva]

Wound Ballistics

I think that a correct description of Kennedy's head movements over zframes is

"a gradual turning and tilting towards Jackie from sometime shortly after the sign. By zf312, JFK's shoulder is above his ear, possibly higher, this turning and tilting continues for about 2/3 of the time between zf312 and zf313.

By this time the top of his head is facing roughly the south knoll.

Then a bullet, possibly two, strikes his head on the top of his head above the hairline to the right of the midline.

This massive initial force propels his head to the right where it encounters the structure of the shoulder bones and is deflected downward from where it rebounds to the main position captured in the 1/35-1/40 seconds of a series of impressions on zf313.

As his body is kept rigid by a rigid web of back bracing, this force also transmits to the seat springs.

Further, he is restrained by Jackies hand.

As the seat springs rebound the Limousine also accelerates AND diverges from its path swinging to the right. The combination of these forces result in 'back and to the left'.

Kennedy was shot from the left. The 'blowback' of grey matter and debris is a typical result of the pulse effect of a bullet going from one medium into a denser one.

With regards to wound ballistics, as is shown at http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/ww...tcs/default.htm (warning: some of the images at this site and links may be disturbing) it is more than melons that show the distinctive pulsed response re material ejecta. It doesn't seem to matter if it's bananas, apples, buckets of water, dry skulls, filled skulls, goat skulls, cat skulls, stomachs, thighs, blocks of gelatine, frozen lemons, limes or melons. All exhibit the characteristic enlargement, fragmentation, pulsing, subsidence that contribute to the dispersal of wound matter.

Here is the side xray photo 'wrapped' on to a 3D model of Kennedy's head, then 'twirled' to the direction corresponding to a photo of Kennedy, superimposed and tilted into the orientation I think he was in if one looks at the limo roughly head on.

Photos of various objects passing from a medium into a denser one.

Photo of fracture pattern from side ways blow.

Edited July 30, 2005 by John Dolva

[Robin Unger]

Dealey Plaza 1968

Edited July 30, 2005 by Robin Unger

[John Dolva]

the lower row of skulls illustrates the position of the skull in frames 309 to 323, with interpolation between frames 312 and 313. As the US army film running at 1900 frames per second illustrates, one expects a scatter pattern such as that visible to occur if the shot had struck approximately 2/3 into the time between frames 312 and 313.

[Lee Forman]

Hi John.

You realize I'm not a proponent for a theory of a shot from the left - however, I had gone over an interesting scenario before with Ed O'Hagen - and it is curious. Thought I'd let you know about it.

If you examine the so-called 'AB Smith' version of the Z-film [which may be the same as the copy Groden acquired from Moe Weitzman's lab?] there are some rather curious anomolies. I searched through my files, and couldn't find it. Finally got it! Too many files.

Credit to Robin Unger for this frame, and credit to Ed O'Hagen for pointing out the anamoly to me.

Take a close look at the area of the red box. I have not enhanced this version of the frame in any way.

- lee

[Lee Forman]

go to the top please so that John will know there was a reply - thank you.

[John Dolva]

Wouldn't that be too good?? It's on dark areas that such things might register. However, skeptisism helps keep me sane (or at least a feeling of sanity ). However I don't thrash stuff just cause they're strange.

I've variously identified 5 individuals crowding the window in the dillard photo, proved that Will Smith is 65 years old and, sorry guys, America doesn't exist!!

However ridicule is NOT a reason for me to stop looking at stuff, quite the contrary in fact. It's when I start believing things that I also can prove are not true that I'd worry. Though I suppose If that happened, I'd be blissfully unaware. Anyway, happy hunting, and thanks for the interest.

[Lee Forman]

Wouldn't that be too good?? It's on dark areas that such things might register. However, skeptisism helps keep me sane (or at least a feeling of sanity ). However I don't thrash stuff just cause they're strange.

I've variously identified 5 individuals crowding the window in the dillard photo, proved that Will Smith is 65 years old and, sorry guys, America doesn't exist!!

However ridicule is NOT a reason for me to stop looking at stuff, quite the contrary in fact. It's when I start believing things that I also can prove are not true that I'd worry. Though I suppose If that happened, I'd be blissfully unaware. Anyway, happy hunting, and thanks for the interest.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, I know what you mean. I began to be very critical of my own work, as I was sure that some things were for real, and others weren't. Better to say it's not clear, or unknown. But it is interesting. Here's the enhancement.

It certainly is a bizarre coincidence. I never looked at the preceding or following frames to see if it continued.

- lee