Rachel Maddow Blows It On Her ‘Gun Reform’ Piece

Oswald "Ghost" photo  (TOP)- found at Dallas PD Headquarters. This is the photo assassination researchers believe was used to frame him using the bottom photos, one of which later appeared on a LIFE magazine cover and which Rachel Maddow displayed on her gun reform piece last night.


Well, it appears Rachel Maddow – one of our leading liberal lights - has disclosed she too is an imbiber of false history (or untold history) kool aid, buying into the codswallop that Lee Oswald assassinated JFK. This was in conjunction with an initial segment last night on a gun reform law (S. 3714) that JFK had proposed:
“to exclude from importation or re-importation into the United States arms or ammunition originally manufactured for military purposes.”


She then went on to name as one example the Italian 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, which she noted with irony, was purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald in March, 1963 and used to kill Kennedy in November of the same year.  She even displayed photos of Oswald holding the rifle in an effort to tie him to it (already attempted nearly 50 years ago)

But no where in her piece did she note that its nickname during WWII was “the rifle that never killed anyone” . This was how badly the weapon functioned, or rather, how often it malfunctioned. We in the JFK assassination research community have been trying for now going on 48 years to relate to the American public that on no account would a serious assassin have chosen or used such a weapon. But over and over well-meaning people like Maddow, especially in the "liberal media", set us back!


Ok, as for the photo shots of Oswald holding said weapon, i.e. the photos that appeared in LIFE magazine, I have already exposed those as fakes, frauds --- likely put together by a team of CIA specialists using a splicing technique to superimpose Oswald’s head onto the body of another actually holding the weapon.
The full blog on the techniques can be read here: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/11/hany-farids-pixelated-illusions.html

Therein I used a conceptual spaces analysis, in tandem with the known date on which the photo was taken, to show the shadow lengths did not match the solar position for the date. As it turns out, on March 31, 1963 (the documented date from FBI files for the backyard photo), one can compute (using a specialized computer program) the maximum solar altitude on the local meridian at noon (for lat. 32 deg 47’ 09” or Dallas, TX) as 57.0 deg. For example, in the LIFE photo, let x2 be the near edge of the 3rd fence picket and x1 be the position of the heel of Lee’s boot, and (x2 – x1) = 1.5 m. Let (y2 – y1) be the distance of Lee in front of the picket fence, or 3m.


Then the distance d1(x,y) ought to approximately yield the length of his shadow, in this case:

d1(x,y) = {3m)^2 + (1.5^m )2}^1/2 = 3.35 m.


We know from basic astronomy that the height of an object in the Sun is related to its minimum shadow length (L_s = d1(x,y)) by:

tan (a) = H/ L_s

where (a) is the altitude of the Sun. Thus:

tan (a) = (1.74)/ (3.35) = 0.464, or a = 24.8 deg

However, if d1(x,y) is off by 50% and therefore, d1(x,y) = 1.17 m instead of 3.35m then, the altitude of the Sun would be:

tan (a) = (1.74)/ (1.17) = 56.0 deg

Or, within 1 degree of the maximum solar altitude on the local meridian for noon (LMT)  at Dallas, TX on that date. This means that if the photo is legit, and conforms to the correct solar meridian crossing on that date, Oswald’s shadow can be no longer than 1.12m, which sets limits on how far he can be located from the picket fence. But estimated shadow measurements show a significant disparity (> 1m) - so the LIFE photo cannot be legit, but obviously confected to frame him.

In 1977, a Canadian Defense Dept. Photographic specialist: Maj. John Pickard,  noted a 99% probability the LIFE cover photo was a fake and that each photo was taken from a slightly different angle. When superpositions of the images are performed, e.g. one photo laid atop another in succession, it is found that nothing matches exactly. As Pickard observed:  "Yet, impossibly, while one body is bigger - the heads match perfectly."

Again, this can be explained using the same "spliced in head".


Adding to the weight for this claim was the discovery of what has come to be known as "the Oswald ghost photo" (see top image). This had been  recovered at Dallas PD headquarters some time after the assassination. As one can discern, the “ghost” is a cutout into which another image can be pasted-superposed. The cutout image, many of us conclude, was obtained using a Dallas cop stand –in, which photo was also found in Dallas Police files, along with the ghost image.

Photo specialist Robert Hester was called on 22 November, 1963 to help process assassination -related photos for the FBI and Dallas police. Hester reported (and his wife Patricia confirmed) that he saw an FBI agent with a color transparency of one of the backyard photos with NO figure in the picture.  Hester has surmised and many researchers agree, that the blank photo was intended to deliberately set up Oswald. The mistake of the Dallas PD (which former Justice Dept. special agent Walt Brown ties into the plot as accessories, see his book, 'Treachery in Dallas' - Chapter 'Blue Death') was leaving incriminating evidence for their frame- up lying around. If they'd had any sense, they'd have burned it.

Let's also bear in mind the fact that a trained team of expert marksmen (assigned by the Warren Commission)  was unable to replicate Oswald's alleged feat! Oswald was presumed to have fired from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, so effectively six stories up or 60’ in altitude. However, the experts were allowed to fire from a tower only half this altitude (30’)[1]. In addition, while Oswald had to have fired at a limousine moving at 11 mile per hour, the experts fired at stationary targets. Anyone who's ever fired a high powered rifle will tell you it's much easier to hit a stationary target than a moving one!


[1] The Warren Commission Report, p. 137.

The target area was also magnified for the experts, to the whole upper torso of the target prop’s body – while Oswald was limited to the head and neck. More to the point, the rifle was altered away from the one Oswald used. The rifle sight itself was rebuilt and “metal shims were fitted to provide a degree of accuracy previously absent’. When Ronald Simmons, the Chief of the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Army’s Ballistics Research Division was asked about this he replied: “Well, they could not sight the weapon in using the telescope" (Op. cit. ,Vol. II, p. 250.)


He added that the aiming apparatus had to be rebuilt by a machinist with two shims added, one to adjust for the elevation, the other for the azimuth. In other words, had they actually used the rifle in the same condition Oswald was alleged to have had it, then they’d likely not have hit the side of a barn. (Maybe one reason the Italians dubbed their Norma Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm bolt action rifle that Oswald was supposed to have used as "the rifle that never killed anyone").

More interesting to me (and many others) is that in the immediate wake of the assassination, the actual rifle reported found at the Book Depository (i.e. by NBC News, in real time tapes) was a MAUSER. Now, THAT is a weapon that could have been used in an assassination, as opposed to the ridiculous Mannlicher-Carcano (which National Archives personnel won't even let researchers touch for fear it will far apart - as per a letter to Patricia Dumais who asked them to check the serial no.).  But if  a Mauser was used from the TBSD the shot would not have been the kill shot but rather the shot to the upper back. (Since in the real autopsy photos the entry wound was in the right front, the gaping exit wound in the rear, see e.g.
At the end of the test trials, these Master Marksmen each fired two series of three shots each (18 rounds in all) at 3 stationary targets placed at distances of 175’, 240’ and 265’ (the last coming nearest to the distance from the Texas School Book Depository to the head shot). Even Chief Simmons admitted that the targets were not placed where they ought to have been to emulate conditions on November 22, 1963.


Just one of the three expert riflemen was able to get off three shots in under 5.6 seconds – the designated time interval for total shots declared by the Warren Commission. And most to the point: none of the total 18 shots fired struck the targets in the head or the neck. In other words, from a technical standpoint of duplicating Oswald’s alleged shots- this trio of experts failed. Another key aspect: for the duration of the 18 rounds, two of the master riflemen were unable to reload and fire at the stationary target as rapidly as Oswald purportedly did for the moving limo.


Why has Maddow - bright woman that she is - evidently bought into the Oswald killed Kennedy myth? My take, similar to the case of Stephen King doing it in his novel ('11/22/63’ ) is that it was the easiest path to take. For King it made for an expediently written novel, as opposed to one with hidden complexities of plot, albeit that reflected history more faithfully (such as Don deLillo's excellent, 'Libra'.) For Maddow, it allowed her to hone her focus in light of the fact her attention was primarily on gun reform law history and not on the assassination. Hence, to veer from the official dogma and mention “conspirators” as opposed to Oswald, would have deflected attention from her piece and the need for current gun reform.


I understand that, and appreciate it. But as we draw nearer to the 50th anniversary date, I do hope Maddow will have the courage to take on the real issues of the assassination, namely that JFK was murdered by a power cabal of big banking, intelligence and oil*, that couldn’t tolerate his assorted initiatives, whether pulling out of Vietnam in 1965 (by National Security Action Memorandum 263), or taking away the oil depletion tax allowance, or doing an end run around the Federal Reserve to issue $4.2 billion in U.S. Notes in place of Federal Reserve notes. See e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/yes-those-us-notes-were-real.html


*The nexus of how these are interlinked is discussed at length in Donald Gibson’s book: Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency