He didn't go so far as to accuse “Cold Case: JFK” of faking or staging any tests, but did say the program failed to fully examine acoustic evidence that suggests four shots were fired that day, because doing so might have derailed the show’s conclusion, that Lee Harvey Oswald was probably the only gunman. He added, and I fully concur:
"It was very reminiscent of what CBS News did in defending the Warren Commission in 1968 and successive years... It was biased and cooked at the beginning."
To fix ideas and perspective on his comment, let's understand that for virtually every anniversary of the assassination, CBS presented "specials" trying to confirm the Warrenite fable. For example, in its 25th anniversary special on the assassination in 1988, CBS tried the fancy computer ploy. They used computer programmed "simulations" with JFK’s car moving around a reconstructed Dealey Plaza from Houston onto Elm Street, and a virtual “Oswald” firing from a 6th story window. To the uneducated or superficial observer it looked "official" and conferred credibility. To the knowledgeable observer it was transparent BS.
The late Carl Oglesby, ('The JFK Assassination: The Facts and the Theories', Signet, 1992, p. 90) noted that no less than eleven “experts” were used by CBS to conduct the simulations, obviously to try to confer a bogus gravitas, despite the fact no expert sharpshooters or marksmen were able to duplicate Oswald's alleged feat with his alleged rifle. He adds (ibid.):
"CBS does not pause to say how many total series were fired by these eleven, or how many times the two who did it once could do it again. They were impatient to state their interpretation of this result."
Oglesby neglected to mention an even worse insult: That when the firing tests were conducted, the branches of an obscuring tree were drawn back, to expose the Elm Street 'target' for the simulations. More seriously, all the alleged "alignments" used were rigged to benefit the computer simulations, and to allow direct firing lines to cause the effects observed (see top graphics images for Z-313-314) where there were none.
Back to the Nova 'Cold Case JFK' farce:
I had myself held out some hope for a bit of objectivity and honesty, but that soon dissipated after learning it originally aired November 14, 2013 in the midst of the 50th anniversary media propaganda blitz to disinform citizens of the truth surrounding the event. Also, let's note PBS, after all, is partly beholden to government for funding. Government in the end has been the most pronounced upholder of the Warren Commission bunkum that one lone nut did all the shooting.
But anyway, let me parse the specifics to which I objected:
- Luke Haag and his son Mike And Their "New" Ballistics Tests
The duo brought out their fancy, refurbished 6.5 mm Mannlicher -Carcano rifle to perform these assorted ballistic tests, purportedly to test the JFK shots fired that day. These included (see below) that (1) the single bullet theory could be validated and (2) the single bullet could emerge unscathed. According to Luke Haag: "We acquired one for testing". Well, uh yeah, but not the one allegedly used by Lee Oswald - a point he doesn't belabor too much. The one they used didn't look at all like the ancient artifact they tied to Oswald but like a nicely refurbished, rebuilt weapon.
We're then informed "no one" has ever done such a thing or written a book about it (as opposed to dozens of conspiracy analysis books). But there is a good reason for that! NO ONE has been able to get hold of the actual rifle alleged used by Oswald which remains safely displayed in the National Archives. When one perspicacious person (Patricia Dumais) became suspicious the weapon was a stage prop and asked to examine it, she was informed by the National Archives (Livingstone, H.: 1993, 'Killing the Truth', p. 204): "We cannot disassemble Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle because this action might be destructive to the object.’' ".
In other words, the actual rifle - if indeed legit at all - was so fragile it couldn't be permitted to come in contact with serious handling, or likely even testing the bolt action. If it couldn't then it also meant it couldn't be used to perform any replicative tests. In effect, what the Haags did was simply to put on a ballistics show, but in no way a responsible, serious replication. The MC they used was nowhere near the condition of the Oswald alleged weapon, which experts could barely get the bolt action to work in 2.3 seconds, and for which the shims had to be rebuilt to get the sighting reasonably adjusted.. See also:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-fhe-jfk.html
- Comments from House Assassinations lead investigator G. Robert Blakey
Blakey early in the piece refers to the assassination as a "Rorschach" meaning that if you give him your conclusion (lone nut act or conspiracy) it says more about you than the actual events. In fact, this is rubbish, which is really saying no objective facts exist they're all subjective. In fact, the warp and woof of evidence including CIA files released, show clearly the killing of JFK has conspiracy written all over it. Where Blakey is correct is when he states some time later:
"The purpose of the Warren Commission wasn't to find out what really happened but to assure Americans what didn't happen."
Bingo! But that doesn't mean the HSCA investigation was in any way perfect -- though it did find for 96 percent probability of a conspiracy. The HSCA - rather than accepting the evidence of the actual autopsy photos, opted to stick with the earlier ones from the WC, and hence arrived at a contradictory conclusion to the evidence: namely that Oswald fired the killer head shot. Which the commission's own acoustic tests (with three 'master marksmen') showed to be preposterous. Note also, the actual rear shot hit Kennedy in the middle of the upper back. (Bullet hole in suit coat to prove it, but the suit coat was destroyed). It thus seems the HSCA was trying to "square the circle" by finding for conspiracy on the one hand yet unwilling to diverge from the Warrenites' misbegotten fake evidence for the head shot on the other . See also:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_19.html
- The fingerprints allegedly found on the rifle which supposedly "put the case away"
Hardly, especially given - see David Mantik's response to the show below - the Oswald palm print only turned up later, after the FBI apparently fingerprinted LHO at the morgue (according to the mortician)
- Agent Clint Hill's ruminations about Jackie's trunk motion:
Secret Service Agent Clint Hill is then seen ruminating mindlessly about Jackie's motion over the limo trunk. But she was very clear about what she was doing. In her special testimony delivered in secret and not formally printed with the main volumes of the Warren Commission Hearings (but in their Appendices), she states emphatically she was trying to retrieve a dislodged piece or fragment of JFK's skull. (Note: This is also affirmed by her in recently released audio tapes she made, dated from 1964, in interviews with historian Arthur J. Schlesinger, Jr.).
But here's the problem: If this is indeed so then it could not have been Lee Oswald firing from the Texas Book Depository to the REAR of the limo! Thus, Josiah Thompson is wrong in maintaining there was a rear shot from the TSBD, just as the Haags were in error making this assumption with their ballistics tests (which let us also note did not account for the 11 mph motion of the limo). The reason is linked to basic physics, specifically Newtonian mechanics and the transfer of linear momentum. Hence, if a piece of skull fragment is displaced over the rear of the limo, it could not have been from a bullet fired to the rear of the limo, but rather from the front. But the front is not where Oswald is claimed to have been by the Warrenites!
Below we see Jackie's rearward motion in pursuit of the skull fragment and the Warren fable circulated:
The noticeable backward motion of JFK's head in the Zapruder film is attributed to the reaction of a forward spray outwards - in what has been called the 'jet effect". (Similar to the well known rocket effect, where fuel leaves the exhaust under pressure and the rocket moves in the opposite direction).
The problem, of course, is that this doesn't comport with Jackie's motion over the limo trunk, i.e. in the rear direction- as shown in the lower left graphic.
Clint Hill's mumblings mention none of this, only questioning why she did it. So one is left to wonder why he was even included - if not to further muddy the waters - and try to uphold the Warrenite lone nut fantasy. As for the assumption of a rear head shot that was obliterated via the actual autopsy photos the rear of JFK's skull blown out which could only have come from a frontal shot, e.g.
Any actual rear head wound would have been obliterated by the frontal shot's cavitation path backward. In effect, anyone subscribing to such a rear head shot is more than likely misdirected by the bogus mortician's plaster reconstruction which was used to sell the TSBD shooter location (see left image).- Oswald "was a communist".
The typical twaddle the corporate media and government lackeys have been trotting out for 50 years now, but which any reasonably intelligent person can disprove with just a modicum of effort and investigation. "Oswald as communist" was actually the cover story for him to be used as a false defector to gain access into Russia. People first became aware of the CIA-ONI false defector program after the publication of 'The Cult of Intelligence' by Former CIA Agent Victor Marchetti- who actually informed researcher Anthony Summers about this program as well, noting:
“At the time, in 1959, the United States was having real difficulty in acquiring information out of the Soviet Union . The technical systems had, of course, not developed to the point they are at today, and we were resorting to all sorts of activities. One of these activities was an ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) program which involved three dozen, maybe forty, young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor American youths who had become turned off and wanted to see what communism was all about.
Some of these people lasted only a few weeks. They were sent into the Soviet Union or into eastern Europe with the specific intention the Soviets would pick them up and ‘double’ them if they suspected them of being U.S. North Carolina
This was confirmed by a CIA accountant with top secret clearance named James Wilcott, who had been with Oswald at Atsugi and retired in 1966. (Farewell to Justice, p. 178) Wilcott revealed that Oswald had indeed been debriefed at Atsugi after he returned from the Soviet Union. Wilcott testified that the murder of Kennedy was at the level of the DDP (Richard Helms' division) with Oswald "having been recruited from the military with the express purpose of becoming a double agent'"Furthermore, Wilcott expressed certainty that Oswald (who had drawn an advance on his salary) was "an employee of the agency and was an agent" and noted Oswald also "received a full time salary for operational work." Wilcott further concluded Ruby was paid by the CIA to eliminate Oswald, since the Agency wanted no loose strings after the deed was done, and only it's own framing setup to prevail in the media.
Interestingly, Wilcott's narrative was confirmed by a former Military Affairs editor at LIFE, J. Garrett Underhill, a CIA informant. Underhill related that a "small clique in the CIA" killed Kennedy and he was prepared to 'blow the whistle" on them. Alas, it didn't happen. He was found with a bullet wound behind his left ear on May 8, 1964.
As Michael Parenti notes (The JFK Assassination - Defending the
“Lee Harvey Oswald spent most of his adult life not as a lone drifter but directly linked to the
Lee Oswald then was no "commie" dupe but an intel operative. Most researchers who've delved into this in much more depth than superficial 'buffs' come away with the conviction Oswald was set up as part of ZR/Rifle. A classic decoy. However, with the plot now turned against Kennedy. Oswald was likely used as the dupe or decoy so the actual perps (likely Cuban exiles, and trained assassins - from the Army's Ft. Benning Assassin school) could escape .
The proof in the pudding was the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicating a CIA Staff D SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security Agency or NSA. As pointed out by Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994): “In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle.”
- The Haags' Test of the Single Bullet Theory
Again, using their remodeled Carcano and a chronograph, their data show the bullet traveling 2100 feet per second. The Haags attribute the ability of the bullet to come out virtually unscathed as a property of its "stability" and being "very hard". However, tests with actual 1960s' era MC bullets provided by the Warren Commission to ballistics expert Joseph Dolce disclosed no such "pristine" results. Pay particular attention to bullet B below, one of the Carcano bullets fired into bone by Dolce:
Dolce, consultant in wound ballistics to the Army, has stated he was given one hundred, 6.5mm bullets, by the Warren Commission, to fire at cadavers. (Documentary, 'The Single Bullet Theory' video). In no case, he went on, did any of the bullets come out pristine. In fact, all showed significant deformity. In his own words (ibid.):"No, it (CE399) could NOT have caused all the wounds. Our experiments here show beyond any doubt that merely shooting a wrist deforms the bullet drastically. In every instance, the front or tip of the bullet was smashed. It's impossible for a bullet to strike a bone, even at low velocity and still come out with a perfectly normal tip."
The only conclusion one can make here is that the modern MC bullets used by the Haags are in no way similar to the 50- plus year old bullets used by Dolce. We are informed by David Mantik (below) that in the 1950s, "the Marine Corps purchased four million rounds" of 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano bullets, but the Haags don't tell us if the bullets they used for their tests were of the same batch - or indeed-- from any of the 1960s batches for tests such as Dolce used. If not, and I suspect not, their tests with these new MC bullets are as useless as their tests with a Carcano rifle that bears no one-to-one similarity to the actual rifle purportedly used.
Luke Haag brags before one sequence leading to his pristine bullet that "from a science standpoint it's totally repeatable", but he misses the point. For genuine repeatability one must duplicate the same conditions with the same materials (i.e. no substitutes, especially in a critical case like a presidential assassination) . All the Haags' bullets and special boards and chronographs aside- they do neither. They have neither the actual MC rifle allegedly used by Oswald- but a modern, refashioned impostor - nor do they have the same bullets. It is one thing to actually show a serious replication of events and claim it is "scientific", it is another to make such claims and merely put on an elaborate show for the Nova cameras. By comparison, even the scenes with John McAdams' takes looked and sounded more sincere and believable (Please, .John, do not take that as a compliment!)
Added to that, Sgt. John Ritchson, Vietnam Vet who made similar test shots in the mid-1990s to what the Haags attempted in this farce, found no similar results. This was especially with the Haags' claimed angular orientations ("sideways moving bullet") depicted at 0:30-36 into the program. Ritchson's own tests found that never, at no time was a bullet moving "horizontally" between JFK and Connally.This applies with special force to the claim the sideways moving bullet struck Connally's wrist. Balderdash! But there were good physics reasons for this, and they become glaringly evident when politically motivated people attempt to alter physical laws to support their agenda. Of course, it generally takes physics-qualified experts to see through such shams and expose them. (See also physicist David Mantik's comment on this following my main post.
Ritchson, like me, pointed to the "horse fly" in the ointment being the entry point in JFK's back, which WC commissioner Gerald Ford then had to "adjust" using his notes, e.g.
moving the wound to the back of the neck as opposed to being parallel to the third thoracic vertebra e.g. of the back. This could then permit people - many otherwise intelligent - to buy into the single bullet baloney and dismiss the original improbable track.
This is what the Haags sought to prove with their ridiculous ballistics tests. So no wonder that Sgt. Ritchson and others could not get the results the Haags claimed. The Haags were adopting a false, unphysical position and a specious geometry from Ford's autopsy report re-do, not to mention using re-made MC bullets that never existed ca. 1963!
- The Attempt To Invalidate GK Shooter Location:
More malarkey, that could only be sold to people unfamiliar with the actual witness statements at the time. Carl Oglesby (op. cit., p. 94) notes the fact that " two -thirds (67 percent) of the ninety original witnesses the Warren Commission asked said that the shots had come from the grassy knoll" . There was simply no confusion about that, despite the Nova effort to muddy things up. But their reasons would make sense if their agenda was to reinforce the Warrenite lone gunman sham.
Thus, if most witnesses indeed heard shots from the grassy knoll there would had to have been a lot more than three shots, as well as at least a 2nd gunman. The program uses another Haag phony test with their "shattergraph" to dispel erroneous notions of where the GK shot came from and depict a "true" version. But once again, this is nonsense when one compares it to the actual acoustics work done by D.B. Thomas using echo computations and in Dealey Plaza.
In his paper ('Echo Correlation Analysis and the Acoustic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination Revisited' ) appearing in the journal Science and Justice. Vol. 41, p. 21, 2001. Thomas arrived at the impulses shown below, with the four highest amplitude peaks associated with rifle muzzle blasts (an association I will justify subsequently):
Thomas treated both the test evidence and actual data from the original date. He also used re- test evidence obtained in August, 1978 when a test shot was fired in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza to provide a fiducial mark for the putative Grassy Knoll shot – such that it could be compared with the impulse record obtained on Nov. 22, 1963 (also showing how this mark lined up to events recorded on the Zapruder film.) Thus, the test evidence, mainly in terms of echoes and echo delay times received via an echogram from a test shot (See Fig. 1, ) is essentially used to confirm the microphone recording & positions for the shots made on the actual date, by resort to microphones placed at the same (or approximately so) locations. The geometry for Thomas' echo correlation analysis is shown below:
The hypergeometric p-function was used for differing weighting factor distribution sets, H{M..N, n, i} to assess significance or likelihood of occurrence. It's based on the number of echo 'windows' M, with each spanning 190msec (total time) at 2msec width per window and n for assigned impulses in the evidence pattern, with 'i' the "coincident impulses" or those matching the original (11/22/63)evidence and the test result. The question was whether a succession of first impulses of given amplitude could be manifesting a signal or was merely random noise. Thomas found that for a given configuration for 2 motorcycles at designated locations, 1 for (GK) shooter location and one for alignment of muzzle blasts with one pair of echoes, the p -value is 0.000012 or about 1 in 100,000 against the null hypothesis, i.e. that the impulses were from random noise. An alternative way to put this is that the odds are 100.000 to 1 in favor of the impulses comprising actual rifle shots.
For the test shot, using Thomas' sonar model and the muzzle velocity for a Norma 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano (which is very doubtful that the GK shooter used), one arrives at a 171 msec time for the shock wave to take the defined path to the microphone, from a distance of 28.3m. One must add the time taken for the putative bullet to travel the distance to the time for the shock wave. In this case: 126 msec + 45 msec. The first parameter is relatively fixed since the distance from bullet to test microphone is fixed at 44.2m and the speed of sound defined for the sonar model was 350 m/s.
The second component will alter depending on the muzzle velocity. A German Mauser, with muzzle velocity not much greater than 760 m/s will have its bullet traverse the 28.3 m distance in 37 msec, so that the time will now be: 126 msec + 37 msec or 163 msec, which is some 8 msec shorter. If the rifle used is now a Remington Fireball with muzzle velocity 825 m/s then the total time becomes: t1 + t2 = 126 msec + 34 msec = 160 msec, or 3 msec shorter still.
In the “analytically determined” schema (e.g. actual data obtained on 11/22/63), all the above values change slightly. For example, the distance to Kennedy (from the GK shooter) becomes 30.5 m, and the speed of sound is 342 m/s given the air temperature was 18 C (64.4 F) at the time of the assassination. The distance from the (GK) assassin to the nearest motorcycle was 67 m leading to the muzzle blast arriving at the motorcycle some Delta t = [67m/ 342 m/s] = 196 msec, after the shot. When air resistance is corrected for by + 11.5% (from the shooter location) the muzzle velocity resulting becomes 748 m/s (using a starting assumed bullet speed of 672 m/s). Because of a shooter “location uncertainty” of +/- 1.5 m (A<-> A') the muzzle velocity uncertainty is at least +/- 32m/s, so one is left with a range of: 748 +/- 32 m/s. Assuming Thomas’ parameters are correct, then this excludes a Remington Fireball as a possible candidate weapon, but it does permit either a German Mauser or a .30-30 Winchester.
<->
In the “analytically determined” schema (e.g. actual data obtained on 11/22/63), all the above values change slightly. For example, the distance to Kennedy (from the GK shooter) becomes 30.5 m, and the speed of sound is 342 m/s given the air temperature was 18 C (64.4 F) at the time of the assassination. The distance from the (GK) assassin to the nearest motorcycle was 67 m leading to the muzzle blast arriving at the motorcycle some Delta t = [67m/ 342 m/s] = 196 msec, after the shot. When air resistance is corrected for by + 11.5% (from the shooter location) the muzzle velocity resulting becomes 748 m/s (using a starting assumed bullet speed of 672 m/s). Because of a shooter “location uncertainty” of +/- 1.5 m (A<-> A') the muzzle velocity uncertainty is at least +/- 32m/s, so one is left with a range of: 748 +/- 32 m/s. Assuming Thomas’ parameters are correct, then this excludes a Remington Fireball as a possible candidate weapon, but it does permit either a German Mauser or a .30-30 Winchester.
<->
The bottom line is that Thomas' investigation soundly reconfirmed the original acoustic tests and that the kill shot came from the grassy knoll. Again, the Haag acoustic tests proved absolutely nothing, nada, given they weren't even conducted in the echo environment where the assassination occurred.
- Attempt to Dispel Grassy Knoll Shot By Appeal To Laser Technology:
Here Nova's pseudo experts - like the paid lackeys in earlier CBS simulations- claim to use "laser sighting technology" to ascertain the actual position from which the fatal head shot would have to have been made. But even with all their fancy dancy laser equipment they failed to adhere to basic scientific methodology including checking for elevation positions vis-a-vis the GK in 1963 and currently. In addition, unlike Thomas they take no account of shooter location uncertainties (see the echo triangulation diagram and shooter position variance, e.g. from A to A'). In each case Thomas and his team had already checked the geometry to ensure not only the head shot could be made but that the specific acoustic patterns would be produced. This is also why author Josiah Thompson complained the Nova test was "rigged".
- Use of fake JFK autopsy head photo to find for a rear head shot
The coup de grace was administered when this special was exposed as based on phony evidence. This is in the segment near the end where the back of Kennedy's head is shown- all nicely intact! A flap of skull to the right front is shown displaced, but the objective with this fictitious autopsy image is clearly to get the viewer to believe in a rear shot blowing out the right front. You can see the same fake image above (at end of the 'Clint Hill' section of my post). This would be the photo on the left side, head nice and whole. The actual autopsy photo which the illustrious Nova dissemblers did not show, is the one at the right - with the complete rear of skull blown out.
With this last segment, the entire game and objective of the Nova special 'Cold Case JFK' is exposed for all the world as another elaborate propaganda fiasco. One which insults the intelligence of the diligent researchers who have seriously studied the case and now are left to clean up even more disinformation in its wake.
Here, Bethesda Naval Hospital lab tech Paul O'Connor's sketch of JFK's head at the autopsy is instructive, e.g.
The massive rear cavitation end path shows just how much of the skull had to be reconstructed using mortician's plaster to give the illusion of an intact back of head. You can compare this to the fake head autopsy photo used by Nova in its propaganda effort. Floyd Riebe, the medical photographic technician who took photographs of the body at Bethesda, also noted the President had a "big gaping hole in the back of the head" . He further indicated it displayed more damage than could possibly be done by a military jacketed bullet. The bullet was more likely the explosive or frangible type. Parkland surgeon Charles Crenshaw also validated the rear of the head being blown out and readers interested can obtain his excellent book, 'JFK - Conspiracy of Silence' . This link to a .pdf version of Dr. Crenshaw's book can be found below:
http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Conspiracy_Of_Silence.pdf
Most interesting (page 10) is when Dr. Crenshaw is shown one of the Warren autopsy photos (same one produced in the Nova exercise) and asked by Gary Shaw of the Sixth Floor Museum whether it matches what he observed when attending to JFK. Dr. Crenshaw was incredulous, immediately spotting the fake and ascertaining that the head had been "manipulated". It was immediately evident to him that a conspiracy was at work, else why alter the massive frontal head wound to a rear one? Dr. Crenshaw also noted the aberrant behavior of Secret Service Agent Clint Hill (pp. 80-81) running around Trauma Room 1 like a mad chicken with its head cut off, and gun out. Crenshaw also referenced Hill's later hospitalization for a nervous breakdown, eliciting the probability that he appeared in the Nova farce in an effort to redeem his rep.
Of course, it is evident from all the above that Nova's entire bogus program is intended to preserve the Warrenites' rear shot fiction - in conjunction with fake radiographs that Dr. David Mantik exposed in a paper in a radiological journal. See e.g.
http://journals.ke-i.org/index.php/mra/article/view/177
See also my addenda comments at the end of this post.
David Mantik's criticisms of the Nova program are also germane, e.g.
http://www.ctka.net/2013/nova.html
Excerpt:
Assumption: Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) owned the Mannlicher-Carcano (MC)
Comment: The weapon in evidence is not the one ordered by LHO. The Warren Commission (WC) states that he used a coupon from the February 1963 issue of The American Rifleman (but this ad does not appear in the WC). The ad is for a 36" Carcano carbine weighing 5.5#. The weapon in evidence is supposedly a 40" short rifle and weighs 8# (with sling and gunsight). Further, when the HSCA interviewed the gunsmith at Klein's, he said he placed scopes on the 36-inch model but not the 40-inch model. Yet this rifle had a scope on it. How did it get there?
No one addressed these problems on this program. Or even acknowledged they existed.
The first weapon reported in the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) was actually a 7.65 German Mauser; Eugene Boone filed two separate reports to this effect, and Seymour Weitzman filed a confirming affidavit. Boone later testified that Captain Fritz and Lt. Day also identified it as a Mauser. The weapon in evidence, however, clearly reads "Made in Italy" and "Cal, 6.5"." Therefore, how could those affidavits be filed if the police could read properly?
Furthermore, no one has explained why a wannabe assassin would purchase a weapon by money order through the mail – instead of paying cash locally (with no trace of ownership). In addition, on the supposed purchase date (March 12), LHO was at work from 8 AM to 12:15 PM (see Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong for company employee records). If the post office records can be believed, LHO walked 11 blocks to the General Post Office, purchased a money order, but then did not mail it from there. Instead, he walked many bocks out of his way (eventually using a mailbox) before returning to work, where his absence was not noted. This order then arrived the very next day at Klein's (in Chicago) – and was already deposited at the bank that same day! Unfortunately, the bank deposit actually reads February 15, 1963 – not March 13, 1963. Of course, if the date really had been February, then the serial number C2766 could not apply to the weapon in the backyard photographs. For even more anomalies on the MC see Reclaiming Parkland by Jim DiEugenio. (Especially Chapter 4, pages 56-63)
Omission: The witnesses pointed to the TSBD.
Comment: The narrator fails to say that most witnesses ran to the overpass and to the Grassy Knoll.
Misleading: John McAdams claims that the ballistics evidence would have been admissible in court.
Comment: The palm print on the weapon was not initially discovered by the Dallas Police Department, but only turned up later, after the FBI apparently fingerprinted LHO at the morgue (according to the mortician). In addition, fingerprint evidence can be surprisingly subjective (see my CTKA review of McAdams' book). Although CE-399 (the Magic Bullet) was supposedly matched to the MC (see Jerry McLeer's website for this controversy), that does not prove that LHO fired the gun on 11/22/1963, or even that LHO handled it that day. After all, the paraffin test on his cheeks was negative. And then there is the fundamental question of whether LHO actually owned the MC – as well as where the bullets were obtained.
Correct: The FBI did not stock MC bullets.
Comment: Nor did most gun shops in Dallas. Nor were any extra bullets found anywhere in LHO's possessions. In fact, the only MC shells in the case were in the sniper's nest. But the FBI did find a Mauser shell in Dealey Plaza, which they kept secret for 30 years.
Therefore, if LHO had actually purchased these bullets, he bought only a few, which is quite remarkable – or perhaps he did not buy any at all. Although the FBI did not have MC samples, the CIA likely did. In the 1950s, the Marine Corps purchased four million rounds – even though these bullets do not fit into any Corps weapons. This leads one to wonder if the purchase was for the CIA, since they often prefer weapons (and bullets) that cannot be traced.
Assumption: LHO was a communist.
Comment: This statement is made without any introduction or any context, almost as if it were a fundamental theory of physics. This is the most overt clue to NOVA's inexorable bias. James Jesus Angleton, who was CIA Chief of Counterintelligence, would have been amused to hear this. After all, according to John Newman, Angleton controlled the Oswald files at Langley. (2013 edition of John Newman's Oswald and the CIA.) Further, there is evidence from two FBI employees, Carver Gayton and William Walter, that Oswald was an FBI informant. It is even conceivable that LHO ordered a MC at the request of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agency, in order to assist with federal efforts to trace gun purchases.
Misleading: John McAdams speaks of an "entrance" for a bullet hole in JFK's back.
Comment: The pathologists clearly stated that this site could be probed only superficially. No bullet was ever discovered at that site (or at an exit site). The abrasion collar surrounding the wound suggested that the projectile (whatever it was) was traveling upward (not downward, as would be required for a shot from the TSBD). That this projectile penetrated to any real depth is nothing but sheer speculation. Furthermore, an entry into the back would have caused a lung puncture, but this was not reported at the autopsy.
Misleading: The pathologists did not know about the throat wound while at the autopsy.
Comment: My good friend, Dr. Robert Livingston (now deceased), had advised Dr. James Humes, the lead pathologist, about this apparent entry wound during a telephone call before the autopsy began. He repeated this recollection during the depositions for Charles Crenshaw's suit against the Journal of the American Medical Association. Many other witnesses attest to Humes's knowledge of this wound while the autopsy proceeded. These include the autopsy radiologist, Dr. John Ebersole, with whom I had two separate telephone calls. It also includes pathologist Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, who confirmed this directly to the Baltimore Sun (Richard H. Levine, 25 November 1966, front page article). He later repeated this to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Finally, tissue samples were taken of the tracheotomy site – and several autopsy witnesses saw probes passing through the tracheotomy. Neither of these items makes any sense unless the tracheotomy site harbored a forensically meaningful wound; it also implies that the pathologists understood that very fact during the autopsy.
Misleading: The shirt collar and tie show evidence of an exit.
Comment: Although both were damaged, such damage is mostly silent about the direction of a projectile. The nurses claimed that scalpels (used to remove JFK's clothing) caused this damage. Neither the front of the shirt nor the tie showed any scientific evidence (low energy X-ray scattering) of metal from a bullet passage, although the bullet holes in the back of JFK's jacket and shirt did show such evidence. Furthermore, the relevant witnesses described the throat wound as lying above the collar and tie. While before the WC, Dr. Charles Carrico clearly implied that the wound was above the necktie and above the shirt collar (3H361-362). To leave no doubt about what Carrico had seen, Harold Weisberg reports his own confirmatory interview with Carrico (Post-Mortem 1969, pp. 357-358 and 375-376). And then there is nurse Diana Bowron, who saw the throat wound while JFK was still in the limousine – before the shirt and tie had been removed. But here is the problem: the lacerations in the shirt lie well inferior to the top of the collar – and therefore well inferior to the throat wound. Moreover, I have seen the clothing at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The shirt does not exhibit any missing material, but such missing material would be expected for a real bullet. And the lacerations in the shirt do look like the work of a scalpel.
Misleading: The final shot (a headshot) occurred just an instant before Z-313 (where the bloody spray is seen).
Comment: The skull X-rays show a trail of metallic debris across the top of the skull. Using JFK's orientation in Z-312 (at the instant of impact), this trail lies at an angle of 34° from horizontal (proceeding downward from the rear). But the angle from the "sniper's nest" in the TSBD to JFK's head at this moment is only 16°, according to Thomas Canning, the rocket scientist for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Therefore, in order for LHO to reproduce this particle trail in the X-rays (at Z-312) he must have been hovering above Dealey Plaza in a hot air balloon. Furthermore, there is much evidence (including WC documents) for a shot well after Z-313. See this writer's review of Sherry Fiester's book at this website. There is also evidence for this in overviews of Dealey Plaza (published in Newsweek, November 22, 1993) and in Secret Service photographs (right after the event). In the latter, a traffic cone clearly marks a final shot well after Z-313. Curiously, NOVA's own interviewee, the famous author Josiah Thompson, at the recent Pittsburgh conference (October 17-19, 2013), announced his own new conviction that the final shot came well after Z-313.
Omission: NOVA failed to ask Thompson (their own interviewee!) for his opinion on this critical issue of when the final shot occurred.
Comment: While in Pittsburgh, Thompson shared with me the steps that led to his conclusion, which I found extremely interesting – since I had independently arrived at the same endpoint.
Misleading: CE-399 was quite deformed.
Comment: Not at all the case. For a truly deformed bullet, see Commission Exhibit 856, a bullet fired through a cadaver's wrist (See Cover-Up by Stewart Galanor, Document 23).
Misleading: Luke Haag, NOVA's ballistics expert, claims to see "bullet wipe" around the hole in the back of JFK's jacket. (This is superficial debris transferred from the bullet surface to the jacket.)
Comment: This critical observation was not demonstrated visually at this point in the show (although the bullet wipe from the experiment was clearly shown). Oddly, the hole in the jacket had been shown earlier, so it could easily have been shown again. When I rewound the recorded show to examine the jacket hole, I saw no bullet wipe. I also carefully inspected close-up and high resolution images of this hole from other sources (e.g., Galanor, Document 6) and still could see no bullet wipe. Finally, I have personally inspected the jacket at NARA. I recall no bullet wipe from that visit either. Curiously, Haag describes the jacket hole as showing a "small, round hole." Although Galanor's image agrees with Haag's description, the hole shown by NOVA is very elongated and quite irregular (obviously different from Galanor's image). In fact, about ½ of the circumference had been removed by the FBI, but Haag seems unaware of this. If samples had been taken, then whatever evidence initially existed for "bullet wipe" has been severely compromised.
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My addenda:
I basically agree with most of Mantik's points except the claim there was no back impact. In fact, there was such an impact never mind it didn't fully penetrate the body or was recovered. To substantiate that we also have the fact JFK's suit coat was penetrated at that same position, i.e. when overlaid on the back itself for the position of the third thoracic vertebra. The position of the back wound (which it was, never mind the 'hole' didn't go all the way in) is shown below with the throat wound.
As noted, it was identified as a throat wound 3-5 mm wide by Parkland surgeon Malcolm Perry though not by the actual Bethesda autopsists, Humes and Boswell who let us recall "were not forensic pathologists" nor were they familiar with many bullets holes as Perry was.Mantik also claims the bullet was likely traveling upward but this was what the Warrenites originally claimed before they altered the trajectory - see below- from the blue to the yellow path:
The problem with the upward path, as I've noted before, is that it would require a shooter firing from street level . Given two unlikely or improbable scenarios, one requiring a shooter at street level, i.e. literally firing from a manhole to induce the upper path, or an ice bullet fired into the back from an elevated level (most likely the Dallas Records Bldg) the latter is clearly the more plausible choice
Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford was obviously so distressed by the back wound findings that by the time Arlen Specter conjured up his "single bullet theory" - after it was found only 1.6 secs elapsed between the throat shot and fatal head shot- that he had to revise wound entry positions for the back
The initial draft of the report had stated:
"A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder to the right of the spine."
Ford altered it to read:
"A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."
Clearly, Ford wanted the document to conform with the single bullet myth and would stoop to altering a document on record to attain the goal. The problem for Ford and the Warrenites is one of basic anatomy. The original autopsy sheet, including the placement and description of the back wound, was signed and verified by Admiral George Gregory Burkley, personal physician to the president who directed the autopsy at
The clothing, of course, had been taken away by the Dallas police and with it the evidence of the bullet hole in the suit coat. See e.g. this image before LBJ gave the order to destroy it:
As one of the investigators quoted on the program correctly observed: "The clothing is part of the autopsy. It's very important to know".
Where 'Cold Case JFK' goes loopy - as Mantik notes - is when it connects the upper back wound to a throat exit wound. But the throat wound is not an exit wound, it is an entry wound - marking one of the two shots coming from the front. (The other being the kill shot head wound)
The takeaway here? If you want to waste your time with yet another Kennedy assassination whitewash, including all the fancy props (Haag rifle tests and paraphernalia) be sure to watch 'Cold Case JFK'. This tripe - like other media efforts - embodies the warning by Matthew B. Crawford in his new book, 'The World Beyond Your Head- On Becoming An Individual In An Age Of Distraction.' That is, we either develop the ability to direct our attention and valuation where we will - or allow ourselves to be reduced to a commodity held at the disposal of others for their ends. In most of these media-produced JFK assassination efforts, the ends are clearly to distract and bamboozle the weak minded from the facts of the case. Hence, to make it appear all the answers have been signed, sealed and delivered. If you accept that, you become a pawn of the deep state.
