A JFK Assassination Book All Serious Researchers Need to Read!

Richard Charnin’s new book: Reclaiming Science- The JFK Conspiracy, features an apt title because it entails reclaiming the content that has hitherto been obfuscated and distorted under the specious science (or what I call pseudo-science) of the Warren Report as well as its PR apologists like Gerald Posner ('Case Closed') and Vince Bugliosi ('Reclaiming History'). These charlatans have sought to reinforce all manner of pseudo-science to do with the assassination - that's been pumped out by a clueless and complicit media the past five decades. And believe me, Richard Charnin's book is the ideal antidote.


Granted, it likely won’t be on any NY Times best sellers’ lists but I found it to be one of the best new books on the JFK assassination to emerge in the past 25 years. Charnin, a former consultant and quantitative programmer for investment banks has written a mathematical masterpiece which uses Poisson analysis to show a significant number of witness deaths in the wake of the JFK assassination were indeed unnatural (Confirming an earlier London Times actuarial assessment).

This is important given how the matter of JFK witness deaths represents what many serious researchers regard as one component of the ongoing cover up.  It is also important because the issue is rife with disinformation and misinformation from know-nothings.

These are people who believe they're entitled to just recklessly babble about the assassination from a position of woeful ignorance, like Marilyn Elias. Recall that in a prior post, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-second-assassination-today-fifty.html

I'd noted how Elias had tried to refute witness deaths such as that of Dorothy Kilgallen- in her piece 'Conspiracy Act' , in The Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report (Winter, 2013, p. 15). Elias also, in some of the worst yellow journalism, tried to tar the  whole witness murders theme by castigating Richard Belzer for being a nasty, anti-government sort because he appeared on a radio program with Alex Jones to promote his new book,  'Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination' .

I have read Belzer's book, along with Charnin's, and believe it to be one of the most important for newcomers and also more experienced researchers (who've done  at least 10 yrs. work) to get a handle on the matter of the witness deaths, and why they are not coincidental.  Elias, for her part,  shows her incompetence by her reliance on hack Gerald Posner who has already been exposed as one of several disinformation agents, see e.g. how his slapdash investigations have been exposed here:

http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm

Re: Kilgallen, as Charnin notes (p. 120):

"was the only reporter granted an exclusive interview with Ruby in jail. She openly attacked the cover-up in her New York Journal-American columns on 2/2/64 and 9/3/65."

Most notably (ibid.):

"She reported a meeting between Ruby, Tippit and a Texas oilman, and revealed that Oswald was in too many places at one time, had links to U.S. intelligence and his true story was known to just a few government agents."

This alone would have put Kilgallen on the architects' radar, for likely elimination, because of:  a) her prominence as a journalist, and b) exposing aspects of the plot the architects wanted kept under wraps. This especially applied to LBJ who had many links to Texas oilmen, (including Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt) which he didn't want broadcast, not to mention undermining his Warren Commission fraud.  Two key aspects were the Oswald double - which I examined before and cited James Douglass' sterling work exposing it in his 'JFK and the Unspeakable', including the actual intelligence background of Oswald. The latter destroys the lone nut madman myth that LBJ and Hoover wanted to plant in their illegitimate 'child' - the Warren Commission Report.

Thus, one sees there would have been ample reason to eliminate Kilgallen, as much or more as the reasons to eliminate David Ferrie (when the Garrison investigation started) and William Bruce Pitzer, the lab specialist at Bethesda who vowed to expose the actual autopsy photos and chicanery.

But this is where Charnin's probability analyses (e.g. in Chapters 3, 4) really comes to the fore - in separating the suspicious witness deaths from the natural ones. And note, imho this could only have been done using a Poisson -type analysis.  Much of this hearkens back to statistics shown at the end of the excellent movie, Executive Action (1973) which I strongly recommend to any interested person. Those stats cited an actuary's finding reported in the London Sunday Times which calculated the odds of 18 material witness deaths within three years of the assassination at 100, 000 trillion to 1. In other words, 100,000 trillion to 1 against being coincidence!

As Charnin points out (p. 25):

"The HSCA statistician dismissed the odds as being invalid, claiming the universe of witnesses was unknowable."

But, of course, this is nonsense since as Charnin later notes 1400 material witnesses are listed in 'Who's Who in the JFK Assassination'.

Charnin also correctly observes (ibid.)

"The (London) actuary's probability was actually very conservative. At least 42 JFK-related witnesses died unnaturally in the three years following the assassination.  Using the 0.000220 weighted JFK -witness mortality rate the probability is E-53 (1/ Trillion ^4). "

For those more accustomed to standard (scientific) notation this would be:  10 ^-53    or, alternatively, 1 in  10⁵³   odds.

Linked to the issue of witness deaths is how they could have been accomplished with so many seeming objective observers being none the wiser. This Charnin takes up in Chapter 6 on 'Motives and Techniques' where we learn, for example, of the poison dart gun umbrella developed by the CIA at Fort Detrick, Maryland - used in the JFK throat shot. (There was a small entrance wound in JFK's neck but no bullet was ever recovered - leading researchers to believe a small dart left the partial wound which later dropped out, or an ice pellet)

We also learn of "a special type of poison that induces a heart attack and leaves no trace unless an autopsy is conducted." This was surely the type used to eliminate David Ferrie, as well as others (Clay Shaw, Earlene Roberts).

Charnin's other chapters are equally compelling including to do with the Warren Commission itself (p. 17),  Dealey Plaza (p. 55),  Acoustics (69), the Zapruder Film ( 79) , Wounds (83), the Patsy (87), Disinformation (105) and his JFK Calc Spreadsheet (p. 135). The latter has now been enhanced to include Dealey Plaza witnesses' reference to the origin of the shots.

There are also 38 pages comprising nine appendices- ending with a quiz on the assassination. (Something every would - be bloviator or opinion provider needs to take - to prove he is worthy of making comments!)

No one should let the math get in the way of owning this useful and essential book, a critical addition to the assassination literature.

See also:

http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/jfk-witness-deaths-graphical-proof-of-a-conspiracy/

Frequently Asked Questions on fhe JFK Assassination (Pt. 6): Oswald's Rifle and The WC Rifle Tests

We continue now with frequently asked questions to do with Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle, alleged to be the weapon used to kill JFK, and the rifle tests the Warren Commission used.


   Exactly how good a rifleman was Oswald-   any measures or testimonies?

From the records available, Oswald's highest rating was achieved on Dec. 20, 1956, not long after entering the Marines. This was 'sharpshooter'. Three grades are used in all: expert marksman, sharpshooter, and marksman. The shots made in Dallas on 22 November, 1963 - if made by one person and on the moving targets specified - would have required a 'master expert marksman' level of skill, or  the 'best of the best'. In other words, the caliber associated with the three experts enlisted by the Warren Commission (to try to simulate the shots) but as we  will see (below) none of them were able to hit the head or the neck in 18 rounds, and for a stationary target and rifle with its sight fully reconstructed!

 

By the time Oswald was discharged from the Marines, he was barely able to qualify in any defined shooter category - with a 191 score (or Marksman). Corporal Nelson Delgado, the marine most familiar with Oswald's skills, referred to his being tagged with the label of 'Maggie's Drawers', meaning he was a lousy shot. In effect, what we see is just the opposite of what one would expect for the alleged assassin. His shooting skills never adequate to begin with, then deteriorating over time, as opposed to improving!

Logically, also, bear in mind that regular practice would have been required in the Marines and Oswald deteriorated in skill even in this environment. It is rather illogical, therefore, to suppose that in an environment ('civilian') which required no regular training (and for which no evidence of any extraneous 'practice' exists)  Oswald's skills would have significantly improved to the level of being able to make the shots attributed to him on Nov. 22, 1963. At best, therefore, his skill rating would've been no greater than 'marksman', if that.

 

 

 

What about the rifle tests that the Warren Commission used to try to duplicate Oswald’s alleged shots? How reliable or authentic were they?

Let’s go through this in some detail, covering each aspect, including: a) who was recruited for the tests, b) How the tests were conducted, c) the results.

 

a)     Who was recruited?

 

A first guide for the accuracy of selection would have been to choose riflemen at or just barely above Oswald’s last calibrated grade. That would have been ‘Marksman’. But instead of this, the Warren Commission enlisted three “master marksmen” also professionals, and members of the National Rifle Association[1]. This would have meant they had frequent practice.   The bottom line is that the choice of these three (two of whom were civilian gunners in the Small Arms Division of an Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, the other regular Army) was not a faithful replication of the human factor.

 

b)     How were the tests conducted?

 

Oswald was presumed to have fired from the 6^th 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’)[2]. In addition, while Oswald had to have fired at a limousine moving at 11 mile per hour, the experts fired at stationary targets[3].  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”[4]. He added that the aiming apparatus had to be rebuilt by a machinist[5], 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.

 

Again, the replication was contrived, and unfaithful to the facts of the case as claimed by the Warren Commission. If they were invested in those facts, and they were as invested in the truth, they ought to have emulated the conditions exactly, not fudged them for hopeful success.

 

a)     What was the outcome?

 

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 (ibid.). 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! (The Mannlicher-Carcano had a bolt action recycling time of 2. 33 secs)

More explicitly, in terms of the fatal head shot, the Mannlicher-Carcano fires full-metal jacketed bullets and would not likely have left the 'lead snowstorm' seen in the radiology photos . Forensics expert Vincent DeMaio, MD also noted that "military bullets, by virtue of their full metal jackets, tend to pass through the body intact, thus  producing less extensive injuries than hunting ammunition."

 

 Are there any other anomalies concerning these rifle tests?

 

Yes. The full results were not disclosed in the Warren Commission Report itself. The Commission was also surely prevaricating (based on the jury rigged conditions we’ve seen, i.e. above ) when they claimed the “weapon was tested under conditions which simulated those in the assassination”.

No way. Not when stationary targets are substituted for moving limos, and the whole rifle sight has to be reconstructed because sighting couldn’t be done with the telescope proper. Not when the altitude is only half of that of the purported shooter, and 18 rounds were needed to even get three shots off in the time, never mind none of the three struck where the Kennedy bullets did.
 

As for Oswald, I doubt he'd been able to get the same three shots off even benefiting from the same advantages as the three Army-NRA experts. The fact is he didn’t and couldn’t because their own failure proves more than anything else (except for the acoustic tests)  he wasn’t the shooter. Any shooter – at least in terms of an injurious shot. Former Justice Dept. Special Agent Walt Brown offers perhaps the most trenchant observation on Oswald’s alleged rifle (Brown, op. cit. p. 26):

 

"The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was an anachronism even by the time its weary Italian users were surrendering them en masse in the 1940s. The gun had begun its production run in 1891 and can be seen today for what it was: a product of mass warfare concepts of its  time, in which huge armies charged each other, volleys were fired, and the bullets hit someone or something."

 

 

This may, of course, be one reason most Europeans believe Americans are idiots if they don't realize how useless this Italian rifle was, and especially if they think a lone assassin could have used it to make the world class shots (from a partially obstructed  6th floor window) on Nov. 22, 1963.

 

 

How come Vince Bugliosi (in 'Reclaiming History') insists critics  are wrong by saying that no rifleman has ever duplicated Oswald's feat?  He points to an example in the Warren Commission of a mysterious soldier named "Miller" (no first name given) who a commanding officer said actually bettered Oswald's feat.

 

How can I say this other than bluntly? Bugliosi is a LIAR  - as much or moreso than Gerald Posner. He also seems to have an even more active imagination than Posner. First, there never was any such person as “Miller”. He is a confection and nothing more, a red herring. The Warren Commission actually enlisted three master marksmen (professionals), and members of the National Rifle Association – NONE of whom had the name “Miller”. (Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, 1964: Vol. II, p. 243, Government Printing Office)
 

The notable bottom line (not Bugliosi's phantoms) is that the choice of these three expert marksmen  (two of whom were civilian gunners in the Small Arms Division of an Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, the other regular Army) was not a faithful replication of the human factor. That is, choosing riflemen with the same skill level, aptitude as Oswald, i.e. marksman - no higher.

 

 

This lie about "Miller" is but one example, and despite Bugliosi writing (Introduction, p. xxxix): "I will not knowingly omit or distort anything." 

 

Another example: Bugliosi (p. 1003) insists that one of the first critical authors of the Warren Commission , Mark Lane, never mentioned in his book Rush to Judgment, that Oswald had been arrested. Bugliosi’s exact words are: “He doesn’t even mention Oswald’s arrest”. 

 

But when I checked my copy of Lane’s book I found (p. 81) not only the details of the place of arrest but the time and the exact words:   “Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theater at approximately 1.50 p.m. that day” as well as other confirmations. 

 

The question that emerges is: If Bugliosi can lie with impunity about even a minor pro forma (generally accepted) event as concerns the critical pro-conspiracy community, how many larger events would he be prepared to misrepresent in the interest of his propaganda? 

 

 

There will be more to do with Bugliosi's bollocks and balderdash in another FAQ )

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[1] Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, 1964: Vol. II, p. 243 (Government Printing Office)

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

[3] Op. cit. p. 133.

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[4] Op. cit. (Vol. II), p. 250.

[5] Ibid.