My latest essay, a detailed critique of ballistics expert Lucien Haag's recent attempted defense of the 'Magic Bullet Theory', is online here:
http://www.ctka.net/2015/HaagCritique.pdf
The Mysteries of Dealey Plaza
Tuesday, 16 June 2015
Monday, 15 September 2014
How Dave Reitzes Get's it Wrong Part 7
Cui Bono, Redux
Despite the fact that he has presented no evidence establishing
Oswald's guilt, Reitzes nonetheless feels the need to pontificate
upon his motivation. To say that he is on shaky ground here would be
a vast understatement. After all, people who knew Oswald testified
that he was an admirer of President Kennedy who bore him no malice.
No doubt fully aware of this fact, Reitzes has little choice but to
suggest that Oswald was “mentally unstable”. He writes: “The
Warren Commission heard testimony and examined psychological
evaluations from his teen years suggesting he was a greatly troubled
individual.” Indeed Oswald did have a difficult childhood, during
which a spell of truancy led to his being remanded at an institution
named Youth House for psychiatric evaluation. However, as the Warren
Commission reported, “Contrary to reports that appeared after the
assassination, the psychiatric examination did not indicate that Lee
Oswald was a potential assassin, potentially dangerous, that 'his
outlook on life had strongly paranoid overtones' or that he should be
institutionalized.” (WR379)
Essentially, Oswald was a lonely, withdrawn child who suffered from
neglect. As social worker, Evelyn Siegel, reported, she saw “a
rather pleasant, appealing quality about this emotionally starved,
affectionless youngster which grows as one speaks to him.” She
concluded that Lee “just felt that his mother never gave a damn for
him.” (Ibid, 380) Years later as a grown man in the Soviet Union,
following a feigned suicide attempt, Oswald spent three days in a
psychiatric ward for observation. One report concluded that he was
“not dangerous to other people” and another describes him as
being “of clear mind” with “no sign of psychotic phenomena.”
(18H464 & 468) If Oswald's troubled childhood left him “mentally
unstable” the Soviet psychiatrists did not pick up on it. Nor did
the United States Marine Corps. As legendary critic Sylvia Meagher
noted, “The Marine Corps medical records on Oswald for 1956-1959
consistently show no sign of emotional problems, mental abnormality,
or psychosis.” (Meagher, Accessories After the Fact,
p. 244)
Reitzes attempts to resurrect the
notion of Oswald as a “radically leftist...Castro idolater” which
is not something most researchers take seriously today. Although
Oswald frequently told anyone that would listen that he was a
communist or a Marxist, his behaviour indicated otherwise. The fact
of the matter is that Oswald never joined any communist or Marxist
organization, even when living in the Soviet Union, and all of his
known contacts and acquaintances were right-wingers and
anti-Castroites. In the summer of 1963 when Oswald started his own
make-believe chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New
Orleans—which, as previously noted, was at the same time the CIA
was running a campaign against the FPCC—it only ended up
embarrassing the organization when Oswald was publicly revealed as a
former resident of the Soviet Union. Once he had discredited the FPCC
in New Orleans by effectively linking the organization with Russian
communism, Oswald moved on. For these reasons, and many more, most
serious researchers now believe that Oswald's self-professed Marxism
was a cover and that he was, in fact, some type of intelligence
asset. A thorough discussion of this subject is beyond the scope of
this critique so interested readers are referred to the books
Conspiracy? by Anthony
Summers, Destiny Betrayed
(second edition) by Jim DiEugenio, and Oswald and the CIA
by John Newman.
Continuing his skewed, hackneyed portrait, Reitzes claims that Oswald
had a “history of violence”. When considering that particular
deceleration, readers should bear in mind that Reitzes is describing
a U.S. Marine who only ever got in one fight during his entire adult
life. As it happens, Oswald was considered so timid by his fellow
Marines that they nicknamed him “Ozzie Rabbit”. One Marine,
Daniel Powers, testified that in his opinion Oswald “was the meek
mild individual that a person felt if he had something, that he
wouldn't really fight to keep it. He would take the easy way out to
avoid conflict.” (8H270) Nevertheless, in support of this supposed
“history of violence”, Reitzes offers “the time he [Oswald]
threatened his sister-in-law with a knife as a teen”, and alleges
that “numerous witnesses...testified about the physical abuse he
directed at his wife.” The first of Reitzes' two examples is barely
worthy of discussion. It refers to the time a 13-year-old Oswald
flashed a pocket knife at his brother's wife. That was the extent of
it. It was silly kids stuff and no one was hurt. The second example
is more complex.
Contrary to the impression Reitzes attempts to convey, there was
actually only one witness who claimed to have first hand knowledge of
Oswald hitting his wife, Marina, and he never “testified” to that
fact. The witness was Alex Kleinlerer who appears to have taken an
instant dislike to Oswald and gave an uncorroborated statement
claiming that he once saw him slap Marina around the face. (11H120)
The only other person who would claim personal knowledge of such
matters was Marina herself who, to say the least, has credibility
issues. As Warren Commission lawyer Norman Redlich noted in a once
secret memo, “...Marina Oswald has repeatedly lied to the [Secret]
Service, the FBI, and this Commission on matters which are of vital
concern to the people of this country and the world.” (11HSCA126)
Indeed, Marina gave so many conflicting stories that investigators
for the HSCA prepared a report titled Marina Oswald Porter's
Statements of a Contradictory Nature which totalled over 30
pages.
Physical abuse was one of the many subjects on which Marina gave
conflicting accounts. During one of her appearances before the
Commission she said that her husband had been a “good family man”
and described only one occasion on which he had hit her after she had
written a letter to a former boyfriend saying she wished she had
married him instead. (1H32-33) Later, she changed her mind and
claimed that Lee was “not a good husband” and had “beat” her
“on many occasions.” (5H594) In all likelihood, neither of these
accounts is quite true. Although Marina attempted to paint herself as
a devoted housewife who suffered at the hands of her abusive husband,
as Norman Redlich suggested, “...there is a strong probability that
Marina Oswald is in fact a very different person—cold, calculating,
avaricious, scornful of generosity, and capable of an extreme lack of
sympathy in personal relationships.” (11HSCA126) There is testimony
that suggests Marina delighted in tormenting and embarrassing Lee in
front of others. Jeanne DeMohrenschildt remarked that when friends
were giving Marina the things that Lee could not afford, she “was
throwing it into his face.” (9H309) Mrs. DeMohrenschildt also noted
that “...she ribbed him even in front of us...if I would ever speak
to my husband that way we would not last long.” (Ibid, 311-12) “I'm
not a quiet woman myself”, Marina testified as she confessed to
provoking Lee. (5H598) More importantly, Lee Oswald was himself
observed covered in scratches inflicted by his wife (12HSCA129) who
admitted that she would hit him and throw objects at him. (5H598)
“...he is not a strong man”, Marina said, “and when I collect
all my forces and want to do something very badly I am stronger than
he is.” (5H389) It is clear that the Oswalds had a tumultuous and,
at times, violent relationship. It also seems apparent that neither
party was entirely blameless.
Although in her earliest interviews Marina could name no acts of
violence by her dead husband, on December 5, 1964, she threw the FBI
a bone and claimed that Lee had told her he had taken a shot at
right-wing zealot, General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963. (23H391)
Of course, Marina came out with this story during the two month
period that she was being held at the Inn of Six Flags in Arlington,
Texas, in which she was repeatedly interrogated by the Secret Service
and FBI and threatened with deportation. (see 1H79 & 410)
Nevertheless, Reitzes claims that there is “documentary evidence”
to support Marina's story. He does not detail precisely what that
“documentary evidence” is but when we check his citation—pages
688-697 of Bugliosi's book—we see that it consists of an unsigned,
undated note that does not mention General Walker and a few
photographs of Walker's house that were found in the garage of
Michael and Ruth Paine. Not exactly overwhelming stuff.
The truth is that in the eight months the Dallas police investigated
the attempt on Walker's life, Oswald was never considered a suspect.
The mutilated bullet that was recovered from Walker's home was
described by police as being 30.06 steel-jacketed and not 6.5 mm
copper-jacketed like the bullets fired from “Oswald's” rifle.
(Dallas Morning News, April 11, 1963 & 24H40)
Additionally, eyewitness Walter Kirk Coleman told police that almost
immediately after the shot was fired, he saw two men getting into two
different cars in the nearby church parking lot. One of these men
bent over the front seat of his car “as if putting something in the
back floorboard.” The other man got into a light green or blue Ford
and “took off in a hurry”. (24H41) Oswald could not drive and did
not own a car and Coleman later told the FBI that “neither man
resembled Oswald and that he had never seen anyone in or around the
Walker residence or the church before or after April 10, 1963, who
resembled Lee Harvey Oswald.” (26H438)
Also on the subject of violence, Reitzes writes that “The
commission heard testimony that Oswald...believed that societal
change could only be brought about by violent means”. This he again
sources to Bugliosi (p. 937) who quotes from an interview Michael
Paine gave to HSCA investigators in 1978 claiming that it was
“Oswald's belief that the only way the injustices in society could
be corrected was through a violent revolution.” The first thing of
note here is that this hearsay claim was made in 1978—14 years
after the Warren Commission shut up shop. So Reitzes' claim that the
Commission heard such testimony is false. The bigger problem,
however, is that in 1964, when Paine testified to the Commission, he
specifically stated that Oswald “didn't mention advocating violence
or didn't say anything in regard to violence...” (2H411) Paine's
latter day claims can only be regarded as either faulty recollection
or a deliberate attempt to mislead. Either way, this type of
cherry-picking—ignoring earlier, sworn testimony in favour of later
claims more friendly to the author's thesis—is par for the course
with Bugliosi and Reitzes.
Still relying on Bugliosi (p. 938-39), Reitzes tells us that Oswald
“aspired to greatness, though greatness had thus far eluded him”.
In this regard, Bugliosi quotes Marina as stating that her husband
“wanted in any way, whether good or bad, to do something that would
make him outstanding, that he would be known in history.” He also
quotes Texan lawyer Max Clark who knew Oswald very briefly and said
that it was his “general impression” that Oswald “wanted to
become famous or infamous” and “seemed to think he was destined
to go down in history someway or other.” From this I presume we are
meant to conclude that killing Kennedy was Oswald's way of getting
the recognition he so desired. But such reasoning makes little sense
in light of the fact that Oswald protested at every available
opportunity that not only was he innocent but that he was a fall guy;
a “patsy”. Are we really to believe that Oswald decided to kill
the President just so that he could achieve a place in the history
books as somebody's dupe? As just a pawn in someone else's scheme?
Why would he not want to take credit for his “great deed”?
Bugliosi struggles mightily with this question. He weakly suggests
that Oswald's “conduct after the shooting” shows that he wanted
to escape and then “disclose his identity on his own terms and at a
time and place he, not the authorities, chose, such as in Cuba or
Russia.” But Oswald's movements after the assassination suggest no
such thing. When he returned to his rooming house he did not pick up
his passport or pack a bag or do anything that suggested he was
planning on leaving the country. Not only that but, once he was in
custody, Oswald would have had to have known that he was not going to
get away and that there was going to be no opportunity to dictate his
own terms or choose his own place in which to confess. Right then and
there, with the spotlight of the world's media shining directly on
him, would have been the perfect time and place for Oswald to get
recognition if he so desired it. Instead he denied shooting Kennedy
quite literally to his dying breath.
Thursday, 4 September 2014
How Dave Reitzes Gets it Wrong Part 6
The Single Bullet
Theory
It is hard to believe that 50 years after it was first conceived we
are still discussing something as ridiculous and ill-supported as the
Single Bullet Theory. If not for the fact that it has been endorsed
by so many socially constructive government panels it may well have
been consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs decades
ago. But Warren Commission apologists will simply not let it die
because they know that to admit to the obvious fallacy of the SBT is
to admit to a conspiracy. As former Warren commission lawyer Norman
Redlich commented to author Edward Epstein, “To say that they
[President Kennedy and Governor Connally] were hit by separate
bullets, is synonymous with saying that there were two assassins.”
(Epstein, Inquest, p. 38) It
is no surprise, then, that Reitzes makes a stab at defending the
theory. But make no mistake, he does so in spite of the evidence.
Because the SBT is challengeable on every level, from the
trajectories involved, to the nature of the wounds, to the condition
and provenance of the bullet itself. There is not one facet of the
SBT that holds up to scrutiny.
It has long been accepted that
Commission lawyer Arlen Specter, a man with no medical or ballistics
training, was the “father” of the SBT. But hoping to lend it some
legitimacy, Reitzes claims that it was actually JFK's pathologist Dr.
Humes “who first voiced the possibility that JFK and Governor
Connally had been struck by the same bullet.” Let's be very clear
about this: The SBT holds that a bullet (dubbed
Commission Exhibit 399) entered JFK’s back heading downwards and
leftwards. Hitting no bony structures it exited his body from an
anatomically higher position, just below the Adam’s apple, then
somehow struck Connally under his right armpit. It sailed along
Connally’s fifth rib, smashing four inches of it, before exiting
his chest below the right nipple and pulverizing the radius of his
right wrist. It then entered his left thigh just above the knee,
depositing a fragment on the femur, before miraculously popping back
out to be found in near-pristine condition on an unattended stretcher
in Parkland Hospital. That is the SBT and, despite the impression
Reitzes attempts to convey, Humes neither suggested nor endorsed it.
At Specter's
prompting, Humes did raise the “possibility” that one bullet had
passed through the torsos of both men. However, he considered it
“extremely unlikely” that the same bullet had also caused the
wounds to Connally's wrist and thigh. The report from Parkland
Hospital noted that “small bits of metal were encountered at
various levels throughout” Connally's wrist wound as well as in his
thigh. Looking at CE399, Humes noted, “this missile is basically
intact; its jacket appears to me to be intact, and I do not
understand how it could possibly have left fragments in either of
these locations.” He suggested that a separate bullet had been
responsible for these two wounds. (2H375-76) Humes' colleague, Dr.
Finck, concurred. Asked if CE399 could have “inflicted the wound on
Governor Connally's right wrist” Finck said, “No; for the reason
that there are too many fragments described in that wrist.” (Ibid,
382) Connally's wrist surgeon, Dr. Charles Gregory—who
also did not believe the SBT—testified
that the amount of debris carried into the wound suggested "that
an iregular missile had passed through the wrist". (6H98) Dr.
Gregory pointed to the two mangled fragments found on the floor of
the limousine as being likely culprits. (5H127-28)
Nonetheless,
Reitzes assures his readers that the trajectory analysis of "an
actual rocket scientist" and "meticulous reconstructions of
the shooting...have confirmed again and again the plausibility, if
not certainty, of the single bullet theory". He finishes his
discussion of the SBT with the following quote from Vincent Bugliosi:
“‘the single-bullet theory’
is an obvious misnomer. Though in its incipient stages it was but a
theory, the indisputable evidence is that it is now a proven fact,
a wholly supported conclusion.” There are numerous hyperbolic
statements in Bugliosi's tedious and bloated tome but this is one of
the most ridiculous. In fact it may be one of the silliest claims
found anywhere in the JFK literature. In point of fact, the SBT
barely meets the requirements necessary to be considered a viable
theory. Why? Because it is based on a number of entirely unproven and
highly contradicted assumptions.
Firstly, there is
the location of Kennedy's back wound. Because a bullet fired from the
sixth floor of the depository building would have been travelling at
a downward angle of apprxomiately 20 degrees, for the SBT to work,
the back wound had to have been considerably higher than the hole in
the throat. But as crazy as it seems, five decades after the
assassination, we still do not know the precise location of this
wound. In large part this is due to the faliure of the autopsy
doctors to record its position according to fixed anatomical
landmarks. The autopsy report states that the "7 x4 mm oval
wound" was "14 cm from the tip of the right acromion
process and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process."
But as the HSCA pathology panel noted, the mastoid process and the
acromion "are moveable points and should not have been used."
(7HSCA17) A more precise way to record the location of the back wound
would have been with respect to the thoracic vertebrae. This was, in
fact, done but not by the autopsy doctors.
The official death
certificate prepared and signed by Kennedy's personal physician, Dr.
George Burkley—who
was present at both Parkland Hospital during the attempts to
save the President's life and at Bethesda Naval Hospital for the
autopsy—states that the wound of "the
posterior back" was situated "at about the level of the
third thoracic vertebra" which is typically 4 to 6 inches below
the shirt collar. This location is fully supported by the bullet
holes in Kennedy's shirt and jacket, which are approximately 5.5
inches below the top of the collar, (7HSCA83) and by the autopsy
descriptive sheet prepared by the autopsy surgeons. (ARRB MD1)
However, it must be admitted that Burkley's wording, "about
the level of", is not precise and the clothing could have
ridden up Kennedy's back somewhat during the shooting.
The Warren
Commission could and should have tried to clear this matter up but
instead it added to the confusion. The transcript of the Commission's
January 27, 1964, executive session reveals that it had the autopsy
photos at its disposal and was fully aware that Kennedy's rear wound
was below the shoulder. Nonetheless, in order to make the SBT more
palatable, the Commission wrote with deliberately misleading language
that the bullet had "entered the base of the back of his neck"
(WR2). It then kept the troublesome autopsy photos out of the report
and accompanyng volumes and instead presented another of its
deceptive drawings which showed a bullet hole above the
shoulder (CE386)—far above where the
Commission knew it to be.
A decade and a half
later, following its review of the autopsy materials, the HSCA
forensic pathology panel suggested that the bullet had entered at the
approximate level of the first thoracic vertebra (T1). Although this
location has been generally accepted by proponents of the SBT, it is
far from proven. The HSCA panel admitted that it was not possible to
determine "the exact entrance point" from the available
evidence (7HSCA87) but largely based its conclusion on two factors:
Interstitial emphysema (a pocket of air) overlying T1, and a fracture
of the transverse process of T1. (Ibid, 93) However, the panel
explained that although the "air in the soft tissues" could
have been caused by the passage of a bullet, it was just as likely a
result of the tracheotomy performed at Parkland Hospital. (Ibid) As
for the alleged fracture of the transverve process, Dr. Baden only
said in his testimony that it could have been caused by a
bullet strike. "...we cannot be certain of that," he
admitted. (1HSCA305) Additionally, it seems that there is some
disagreement as to the very existence of the fracture as one of the
panel's consultant radiologists, Dr. William Seaman, told the panel
that to him, "the transverse process appears normal..."
(7HSCA99)
The available
evidence simply does not allow us to pinpoint exactly where the
bullet entered the President's back. When the three autopsy doctors
gave depositions for the Assassination Records Review Board, both
Humes and Finck refused to be pinned down on this issue. Dr. Boswell,
however, at least tried to be a little more helpful. "Well, it's
certainly not as low as T4", he said. "I would say at the
lowest it might be T2. I would say around T2." (Boswell
deposition, p. 155) But this again is just an estimate. It seems that
the best that can be said is that the wound was somewhere between T1
and T3.
As
previously noted, most single bullet theorists accept the HSCA's T1
hypothesis. But even this assumed entrance location is problematic
for the SBT since it is anatomically lower than the hole in the
throat. Looking to endorse the SBT, the pathology panel suggested
that the theory was still possible but that JFK had to be leaning
significantly forward at the moment he was struck. The necessity of
the forward lean was confirmed by two of the "meticulous
reconstructions" Reitzes alluded to. One of these, utilizing
lasers, dummies, and the Presidential limousine, was undertaken in
1998 for the TV special, The
Secret KGB JFK Assassination Files.
In order to get a trajectory through the body that pointed back to
the sixth floor, the show's participants had to bend the JFK dummy
markedly forward.
The
second of these reconstructions was conducted for the 2004 Discovery
Channel show, JFK: Beyond
the Magic Bullet.
The Discovery Channel shot a rifle from a crane set at the height of
the sixth floor window into specially made torsos that were placed in
normal, upright seated positions. The bullet entered the upper back
of the Kennedy torso just below the shoulder and exited through the
upper chest—completely
missing the throat. Thus, these real-world experiments demonstrated
that the forward lean is absolutely integral to the SBT. The problem
is that the Zapruder film shows President Kennedy in the moments
before and immediately after he was shot and at all times he is
sitting upright.
SBT proponents,
therefore, must assume that Kennedy adopted the necessary pose during
the tiny 0.9 second interval that he was hidden from Zapruder's view
by the Stemmons Freeway sign. Forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht
rightly ridiculed this notion in his HSCA testimony: "I just
think it is important for the record to reflect upon the fact that
what presumably they are asking us to speculate upon is that in that
0.9 second interval, the President bent down to tie his shoelace or
fix his sock, he was then shot and then sat back up...I would suggest
that is a movement that the most skilled athlete, knowing what he is
going to do, could not perform in that period of time."
(1HSCA339)
On
top of assuming that the back wound was at T1, and that Kennedy was
leaning forward when shot, it must also be assumed that the throat
wound was an exit for the bullet which entered the back. This has
also never been established. As noted in part one of this critique,
all of the doctors at Parkland Hospital believed the wound looked
more like an entrance than an exit and described it as small, round
and neat. Dr. Perry told Dr. Humes that it measured only 3-5 mm and
Dr. Carrico recalled that it had "no jagged edges or stellate
lacerations." In tests performed for the Commission at Edgewood
Arsenal using the very rifle and ammunition Oswald is alleged to have
used, Dr. Alfred Olivier fired numerous rounds through blocks of
gelatin, horsemeat, and goatmeat with skin and clothing attached. At
a distance of 60 yards, which was the approximate distance from the
sixth floor window to Kennedy's back at Zapruder frame 224, typical
exit wounds were elongated and measured 10-15 mm
(5H77, 17H846)—twice
the size or more than the wound in Kennedy's throat.
More
importantly, no pathway between the two wounds was observed at
autopsy. On the contrary, physical probing of the wound led the
prosectors to conclude that the back wound was shallow with no point
of exit. FBI agents James Sibert and Francis O'Neil were present for
the entire autopsy and filed a report of their observations. The
report states: "During
the latter stages of the autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening which
appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the shoulders and two
inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column. This
opening was probed by Dr. Humes with the finger, at which time it was
determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point
had entered at a downward position of 45 to 60 degrees. Further
probing determined that the distance travelled by this missile was a
short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with
the finger." (AARB MD44) Further inspection of the wound was
carried out with the use of a surgical probe as Secret Service Agent
Roy Kellerman explained in his Warren Commission testimony: “There
were three gentlemen who were performing the autopsy. A colonel
Finck—during
the examination of the President, from the hole that was in his
shoulder, and with a probe, and we were standing alongside of him, he
is probing inside the shoulder with his instrument and I said,
‘Colonel, where did it go?’ He said, ‘There are no lanes for an
outlet of this entry in this man’s shoulder.’” (2H93)
Bethesda
laboratory technician James Curtis Jenkins recalled that the back
wound was “very shallow…it didn’t enter the peritoneal (chest)
cavity.” He remembered the doctors extensively probing the wound
with a metal probe, “approximately eight inches long”, and that
it was only able to go in at a “...fairly drastic downward angle so
as not to enter the cavity.” (MD65) Jenkins also recalled in an
interview with David Lifton that the doctors continued to probe the
wound after the chest was opened and the organs removed. At that time
he could “see the probe…through the pleura [the lining of the
chest cavity]…where it was pushing the skin up…There was no entry
in the chest cavity…it would have been no way that that could have
exited in front because it was then low in the chest cavity…somewhere
around the junction of the descending aorta [the main artery carrying
blood from the heart].” (Lifton, Best
Evidence,
p. 713)
Jenkins'
colleague, Paul O'Connor, concurred. In an interview for the HSCA,
O'Connor said that “it did not seem” to him “that the doctors
ever considered the possibility that the bullet had exited through
the front of the neck.” (MD64) He later told author William Law:
“…another thing, we found out, while the autopsy was proceeding,
that he was shot from a high building, which meant the bullet had to
be traveling in a downward trajectory and we also realized that this
bullet—that
hit him in the back—is
what we called in the military a ‘short shot,’ which means that
the powder in the bullet was defective so it didn’t have the power
to push the projectile—the
bullet—clear
through the body. If it had been a full shot at the angle he was
shot, it would have come out through his heart and through his
sternum.” (Law, In
the Eye of History,
p. 41)
In
1973, pathology professor John Nichols, MD, Ph.D., suggested that a
straight-line from the back wound to the throat wound would have had
to have to passed directly through the hard bone of the spine. In
1998, radiologist Dr. David Mantik provided striking confirmation of
Nichols' conclusion using a cross-sectional CAT scan of a patient
with approximately the same upper body dimensions as President
Kennedy. Mantik added the proposed entrance and exit points to the
CAT scan and demonstrated that a straight-line from one to the other
had to intercept the spine. Any bullet taking this path through
Kennedy's torso would have been severely deformed and the spine would
have been shattered. And yet there had been no major trauma to
Kennedy's spine and CE399 is in the same near-pristine condition as
test bullets fired into water.
To
recap, the SBT assumes that the back wound was at T1 but there is
evidence that it was considerably lower. It assumes that President
Kennedy was leaning significantly forward when he was struck even
though the Zapruder film shows no such thing. And it assumes that the
throat wound was an exit for the bullet which entered the back when
no such thing was established at autopsy, the only physical
examination ever conducted contradicts the idea, and medical evidence
strongly suggests that such a path through the body was not possible.
The reader will notice that all of these assumptions have to do with
the wounds to President Kennedy which is just one section of CE399's
supposed journey. There are numerous other problems with the bullet's
magical voyage but to highlight them all now would be simply flogging
a dead horse. The point has been made: The SBT is not built upon
proven facts but upon a series of unproven assumptions that are not
borne out by closer examination of the evidence. The SBT, therefore,
is not even remotely close to being considered a “proven fact”
and no honest person would make or repeat such a claim.
Saturday, 9 August 2014
How Dave Reitzes Gets it Wrong Part 5
The Assassin
After
spending a few paragraphs dismissing—to
his own satisfaction if nobody else's—usual suspects like the Mafia
and the CIA, Reitzes turns his attention to Lee Harvey Oswald. “How
do we navigate a path through the complex morass of claims,
speculation, rumors, and confusion...?” He asks. “We use critical
thinking tools to discern the most reliable evidence” he answers,
right before demonstrating that he has no idea what either critical
thinking or reliable evidence actually means.
Reitzes
writes that immediately after the shooting “eyewitnesses directed
police” to the depository building and the Knoll. In point of fact,
many officers made their own way to the Knoll having either made up
their own mind about the source of the shots or having been ordered
to do so by Police Chief Jesse Curry and Sheriff Bill Decker. (see
21H390-91) Reitzes then makes a point of noting that “no one had
actually seen
a
gunman” behind the fence—again failing to mention the previously
discussed smoke consistent with a rifle discharge—and that a search
of the area turned up “no suspect, no weapon, no spent shells, and
no other evidence of a crime.” This is all undeniably true but,
once again, does not tell the full story.
Firstly,
it is hardly surprising that officers did not encounter a man
standing with smoking gun in hand waiting to be caught. And since the
acoustics indicates that if there was a Knoll gunman he only fired a
single shot, picking up one shell and taking it with him would hardly
have been a taxing exercise. Secondly, and more importantly, officers
did encounter a still unidentified man who was brandishing fake
Secret Service credentials before he disappeared never to be seen or
heard from again. We know the ID was fake because there were no
Secret Service Agents in the area, having all accompanied the
motorcade to Parkland Hospital. (5HSCA589) Commission apologists like
Vincent Bugliosi have tried to explain this away by claiming that
Dallas policeman Joe Marshall Smith, who confronted the fake agent,
was mistaken and probably just “assumed” the man showed him
Secret Service ID. (Bugliosi, Reclaiming
History,
p. 865) But this ignores what Smith himself told author Anthony
Summers: “The man, this character, produces credentials from his
hip pocket which showed him to be Secret Service. I
have seen those credentials before,
and they satisfied me and the deputy sheriff.” [my emphasis]
(Summers, Conspiracy,
p. 36-37) So the very real possibility exists that this man with the
fake ID was, if not a gunman himself, an accomplice who helped one to
escape. And the fact that, after all these years, no one has ever
come forward to identify himself and explain who he was and what he
was doing up on the Knoll with Secret Service credentials supports
that contention.
Although
Smith later noted that the man's appearance “didn't ring true for
the Secret Service” and came to believe that he “should have
checked that man closer”, (Ibid) on the day of the assassination
officers were unaware that no genuine agents were in the area so they
saw no reason to treat him with suspicion. It is understandable,
then, that they soon came to concentrate their efforts on the Texas
School Book Depository where a man with a rifle had indeed been
spotted. Inside the building they found an old, bolt-action,
Mannlicher Carcano rifle and three spent shells. According to Reitzes
“Documentary evidence...established that the weapon had been
purchased through the mail under an assumed name by Lee Harvey
Oswald...” This is not nearly the clear-cut issue he makes it out
to be but rather than waste time on the details here, I will instead
refer the reader to chapter 4 of Jim DiEugenio's excellent book,
Reclaiming
Parkland.
For the sake of argument let us accept the premise that Oswald did
indeed mail-order the rifle found on the sixth floor of the
depository building. That in itself raises some intriguing questions.
Oswald
had never shown much of an interest in guns. His brother Robert
testified to the Warren Commission that he had only ever known Lee
“to own but one firearm in his life” which was a small, .22
caliber rifle that he owned briefly as a teenager before selling it
to Robert for $10. (1H397) His buddy in the Marines, Nelson Delgado,
recalled that Oswald was often getting in trouble for failing to
clean and take care of his weapon and “didn't give a darn” about
keeping up his rifle practice. (8H235) And when he was living in
Russia Oswald apparently joined a hunting club but, as his wife
Marina told the Secret Service, “he never attended any meetings.”
The only reason he had joined the club is because it entitled him to
“free transportation in an automobile which enabled him to go out
of town.” (CD344, p. 22) It is quite clear that throughout his life
guns had held no special fascination for Oswald. So why, in early
1963, would he suddenly decide to purchase a rifle from Klein's
Sporting Goods, of Chicago, and a pistol from Seaport Traders, of Los
Angeles? This mail-order purchase, made using a false name, seems all
the more bizarre in light of the fact that, at the time, he was
living in Texas where it was easy to obtain firearms over the counter
without leaving a long paper trail.
The
above oddities leave open the possibility that, if Oswald actually
did purchase those weapons, he did so at somebody else's suggestion
or request. It is known that at the very time Oswald allegedly placed
his orders, a Senate Subcommittee led by Senator Thomas Dodd was
investigating the availability of firearms through the mail and both
Klein's and Seaport had been named as companies involved in illegal
practices. (Alex Cox, The
President and the Provocateur,
p. 127) Whether or not there is any connection between the activities
of the Dodd Committee and Oswald's alleged decision to break the law
by mail ordering two weapons under a false name is unknown. However,
it is curious to note that Oswald also “defected” to Russia
during the period of time that the CIA was running a fake defector
program, and launched a one-man FPCC chapter that ended up
embarrassing the organization at the same time the FBI and CIA were
conducting their own anti-FPCC campaigns. Perhaps these are all
coincidences. Then again, perhaps not.
Regardless,
the central question is not why (or indeed if) Oswald purchased the
rifle but whether or not he had it in his hands at 12:30 pm on
November 22, 1963. Even by the official account, it was certainly not
in his possession in the two months leading up to the assassination
when it was allegedly sitting in the garage of Ruth Paine—although
nobody actually saw it there. Reitzes writes matter-of-factly and
without elaboration that “Oswald's palm print was found on the
weapon”. But Reitzes knows that this claim is hotly contested. And
with very good reason. The print was supposedly found on the
underside of the barrel by Dallas police lieutenant J.C. Day on the
evening of November 22, 1963. But when FBI fingerprint expert
Sebastian Latona carefully inspected the entire rifle a few hours
later he found “no latent prints of value” anywhere on it. (4H23)
It was not until after Oswald was dead at the hands of Jack Ruby that
the Dallas police suddenly announced they had found his print on the
rifle. Lt. Day claimed that he had “lifted” the print before
sending the rifle to the FBI but could never adequately explain why
he had failed to inform the Bureau of his discovery when he handed
the evidence over. Nor could he explain why he failed to photograph
the print before it was “lifted” in accordance with proper
procedure. To make matters worse, Day later declined “to make a
written signed statement” when the Bureau asked. (26H829)
An
FBI memo that was suppressed until 1978 reveals that even the Warren
Commission was dubious of Day's claims. The memo dated August 28,
1964, states: “[Warren commission general counsel J. Lee] Rankin
advised because of the circumstances that now exist there was a
serious concern in the minds of the commission as to whether or not
the palm impression that has been obtained from the Dallas Police
Department is a legitimate latent palm impression removed from the
rifle barrel or whether it was obtained from some other source and
that for this reason this matter needs to be resolved.” FBI Special
Agent Vincent Drain, who had collected the evidence from the Dallas
police on November 22, 1963, was also highly skeptical when he was
interviewed by author Henry Hurt in 1984: “'I just don't believe
there ever was a print,' said Drain. He noted that there was
increasing pressure on the Dallas police to build evidence in the
case. Asked to explain what might have happened, Agent Drain stated,
'All I can figure is that it [Oswald's print] was some sort of
cushion, because they were getting a lot of heat by Sunday night. You
could take the print off Oswald's card and put it on the rifle.
Something like that happened.'" (Hurt, Reasonable
Doubt,
p. 109)
With
the above in mind one has to ask, is this really Reitzes' idea of
“the most reliable evidence”? Quite obviously, had Oswald lived
to face trial, any defense lawyer worth his salt would surely have
argued that the palm print should be thrown out for lack of proof.
And were it actually admitted, it would most certainly have become
the focus of his appeal. But even if we choose to take Lt. Day at his
word and accept the print as genuine, it still does not place the
rifle in Oswald's hands at the time of the assassination. Why?
Because Day would only say it was an “old dry print” that “had
been on the gun several weeks or months”, (26H831; Summers, p. 54)
a detail which Reitzes and his fellow anti-conspiracy buffs never
fail to omit.
Reitzes
goes from bad to worse when he writes that in addition to the palm
print, “fingerprints lifted from the trigger housing were later
determined to be” Oswald's. Which, quite frankly, is just nonsense.
The partial prints in question were discovered by Lt. Day who could
not identify them as belonging to Oswald. As he told the Warren
Commission, “...in fingerprinting it either is or is not the man.
So I wouldn't say those were his prints...from what I had I could not
make a positive identification as being his prints.” (4H262) The
prints were then examined by the FBI's Sebastian Latona who also
judged them to be “of no value”. (4H21) Another FBI expert,
Ronald Wittmus, agreed with Latona's assessment. (7H590) 15 years
later, yet another expert examined the prints on behalf of the HSCA
and once again they were said to be “of no value for identification
purposes.” (8HSCA248) And in 2003, researcher James K. Olmstead
reported that a new analysis had been conducted using the FBI
laboratory computer software. The computer had failed to find a
match. (Thomas, p. 85)
So
where does Reitzes get his claim that the prints were “determined
to be Oswald's”? Well, if you can believe it, from a TV show. In
1993, the producers of the PBS documentary Who
Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
asked two experts to review the fingerprint evidence. The first,
former head of the FBI's latent print section, George Bonebrake,
reached the same conclusion as every expert who came before him and
stated that the prints were “simply not clear enough to make an
identification”. The second, Vincent J. Scalice, claimed that not
only had he positively matched the prints, but he had found 18 points
of identity! At this point, the real skeptics and critical thinkers
out there might well be wondering how it was that Scalice was able to
see what no other expert could see. And they might find it all the
more bizarre to learn that one of opinions he was disagreeing with
was, in fact, his own since he was the very same expert who had told
the HSCA that the prints were “of no value for identification
purposes”.
So
what had changed between 1978 and 1993? Well, nothing. Scalice
claimed that he was able to reach his conclusion after carrying out
various enhancements on the photographs that Lt. Day took of the
prints on the evening of November 22, 1963. But unlike Scalice, Day
and the FBI experts were not just working with photographs, they were
working with the rifle and the actual latent prints when they
concluded that they were “insufficient” for identification. And
no amount of enhancement, no matter how sophisticated, can bring out
more detail in the photographs than was visible on the actual prints.
Scalice's claim is simply not worthy of serious consideration and not
surprisingly, neither PBS nor Scalice has ever made available a chart
displaying his alleged 18 match points so that they can be
corroborated or refuted by independent experts. It hardly needs
pointing out that by no stretch of the imagination was Reitzes using
“critical thinking tools to discern the best evidence” when he
cherry-picked Scalice's unsupported and highly contradicted
“determination” over that of all the other experts. That he
presented this malarkey to readers as if it were established fact is
blatant dishonesty.
Having
utterly failed to put Oswald in the depository building with a rifle
in his hands, Reitzes next seeks to establish that all of the shots
were fired from the sixth floor window. “The autopsy of the
President...” he writes, “confirmed that the shots had come from
above and behind the limousine, not the grassy knoll.” This, of
course, was the rushed and incomplete autopsy—performed
by inexperienced and under qualified prosectors—that
former president of the American Academy of Forensic Science, Dr.
Cyril Wecht, described as “a botched autopsy, a terrible piece of
medicolegal investigation.” (Wecht, Cause
of Death,
p. 23) This does not worry Reitzes who claims that “Later reviews
of the autopsy photographs and X-rays by panels of forensic experts
appointed by Attorney General Ramsey Clark in 1968, the Rockefeller
Commission in 1975, and the HSCA in 1978 affirmed the conclusions of
the autopsy report.” But once again Reitzes is not telling the
whole truth.
The
first group of experts to “review” the autopsy materials—the
“Clark Panel”—was convened by Attorney General Ramsey Clark in
1968 after he read the proofs of the not yet published book, Six
Seconds in Dallas
by Josiah Thompson. In the book, Thompson used the Zapruder film, the
autopsy report, and the testimony of both the Parkland and Bethesda
physicians to make a case for two shots striking President Kennedy's
head almost simultaneously; one from the rear and one from the Knoll.
He also highlighted a seeming trajectory problem that had gone
ignored by the Warren Commission. In their report, the autopsy
doctors described an entry wound low down in the back of the skull,
“2.5 centimeters to the right, and slightly above the external
occipital protuberance.” To illustrate the trajectory the bullet
took through JFK's head, the Warren Commission published a drawing
prepared according to Humes' verbal descriptions by Naval artist
Harold Rydberg. This illustration showed Kennedy with his head tilted
significantly forward as if looking at the floor of the limousine.
The problem, as Thompson demonstrated, was that at frame 313 of the
Zaprduer film the position of Kennedy's head was nothing like that
shown in the Rydberg drawing. When the head was placed in the correct
position it became clear that the bullet, supposedly travelling
downwards from the sixth floor window at an angle approaching 16
degrees, would have had to have taken a steeply upward trajectory
through the skull.
Maryland
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Russell Fisher, who led the Clark Panel,
later admitted in an interview for the March, 1977, Maryland
State Medical Journal
that the Attorney General was so “concerned” by what he had read
in the proofs that he created the panel “partly to refute some of
the junk that was in [Thompson's] book”. Clearly, if Fisher and his
colleagues were being told what they had to “refute”, then they
were never tasked with an honest and objective assessment of the
autopsy materials. And they never made one. They did, however,
deliver as promised and found a creative solution to the apparent
trajectory problem by moving the entry wound four inches up the
skull! Quite obviously, the Clark panel claiming the autopsy doctors
were completely wrong about where the bullet entered the skull stands
in stark contradiction to Reitzes' claim that the panel's review
“affirmed the conclusions of the autopsy report.”
In
truth, as Dr. Wecht and others have pointed out, Kennedy's autopsy
doctors did make many errors. However, it strains credulity to
suggest that mistaking the top of the skull for the bottom was one of
them. Even if one wants to argue that the three doctors were so
utterly incompetent that they were unable to do what a child could
do, there were at least four independent eyewitnesses who recalled
seeing the entry wound and fully corroborated them. Secret Service
Agent Roy Kellerman, FBI Agent Francis O'Neil, Richard Lipsey (aide
to U.S. Army General Wehle), and Bethesda photographer John Stringer
all placed the wound low down in the back of the skull. Conversely,
not a single witness recalled seeing an entrance in the top of the
head where the Clark Panel claimed it was. In the years since, a
number of experts including neuroscientist Dr. Joseph Riley,
radiologist Dr. Randy Robertson, and pathologist Dr. Peter Cummings,
have independently identified the same defect on the right lateral
skull X-ray as being the entrance hole. And this defect sits to the
right and slightly above the EOP—precisely where Humes said the
entrance wound was. The Clark Panel's decision to move the wound
upwards clearly had nothing to do with what the evidence showed and
everything to do with “refuting” Josiah Thompson.
The
next socially constructive assessment of the medical evidence was
conducted on behalf of the Rockefeller Commission which had as its
Executive Director none other than former Warren Commission lawyer
David Belin. The make-up of the medical panel leaves no doubt about
its loyalties or the pre-ordained nature of its conclusions. Dr.
Werner Spitz and Dr. Richard Lindenberg were both close professional
associates of Dr. Russell Fisher, having worked under him at the
Maryland State Medical Examiner's Office. Dr. Fred Hodges worked
alongside Clark Panel radiologist Russell Morgan MD at John Hopkins
University in Baltimore. Pathologist Lt. Col. Robert R. McMeeken was
a colleague of one of Kennedy's autopsy surgeons, Dr. Pierre Finck,
at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. And Dr. Alfred Olivier
had previously served as the ballistics expert for the Warren
Commission. (Gary Aguilar, How
Five Investigations into JFK's Medical/Autopsy Evidence Got it Wrong,
Part IV) Is it any wonder that this particular group of individuals
rubber-stamped the Clark Panel's report? Not hardly. As Dr. Cyril
Wecht noted in a telephone conversation with Rockefeller Commission
Senior Counsel Robert Olsen, given their strong ties to the
government and especially to Dr. Russell Fisher, “it was wholly
unrealistic to expect that anybody on this panel would express views
different from those expressed by the Ramsey Clark Panel in 1968...”
(Olsen, memo to file, April 19, 1975) Later, in a public press
release, Dr. Wecht—alongside Professor of Criminalistics, Herbert
MacDonell, and President of the American Academy of Forensic
Sciences, Dr. Robert Joling—charged that the Commission had “set
up a panel of governmental sycophants to defend the Warren Report.”
(Aguilar, Op. cit.)
The
trend continued with the HSCA forensic pathology panel which included
Rockefeller medical expert and close Fisher associate, Dr. Werner
Spitz, as well as Dr. Charles Petty who had spent nine years under
Fisher at the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office. (Spitz
and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death,
p. 13) In fact, according to researcher Pat Speer, “of the nine
pathologists on the HSCA panel, six had embraced a professional
relationship with Dr. Russell Fisher...” The HSCA panel was chaired
by Dr. Michael Baden who had contributed to Spitz and Fisher's book,
Medicolegal
Investigation of Death.
Baden is himself a controversial figure. He was Chief Medical
Examiner for the city of New York from 1978 until 1979 when he was
dismissed for his “inability to work within the system.” (The
New York Times,
June 26, 1982) In 1995, in exchange for more than $100,000, he took
the stand in defense of O.J. Simpson, claiming that Nicole Brown
Simpson and Ron Goldman were killed by multiple assailants using
multiple weapons. (Ibid, August 11, 1995) In 2007, he testified on
behalf of the defense in the trial of legendary pop music producer,
Phil Spector. Baden's wife, Linda Kenney Baden, just happened to be
Spector's trial counsel. As Journalist Jonathan Turley noted, “...it
was fair game for the Spector prosecutors to challenge the
objectivity of forensic pathologist Michael Baden...and the
prosecution scored points on the issue, particularly after Michael
Baden said he could not define a 'conflict of interest' and
prosecutors asked if he would end up 'sleeping on the couch' if his
testimony did not favour Spector's case.” (L.A.
Times,
September 11, 2007)
In
his book Dead
Reckoning,
Baden wrote that "Physicians
may be the worst witnesses. They are often swayed by whoever asked
them to be an expert. If that lawyer is smart enough to ask their
advice, they conclude, he must know what he is doing. That being the
case, physicians therefore adopt whatever the lawyer tells them as
the facts of the case and become, if only subconsciously, an advocate
for the lawyer rather than an independent adviser." (Baden, p.
89) This is certainly true of Baden himself. According to original
HSCA Deputy Chief Counsel Robert Tanenbaum, when the committee was
being led by dedicated truth seeker Richard Sprague, Dr. Baden was
saying that there had been a conspiracy with shots coming from the
right front. (see this video)
But when the leadership changed so too did Baden's expert opinion.
Once
Baden had decided to back the official story, he and the rest of the
Fisher-influenced panel members went to work denigrating the autopsy
surgeons and affirming the Clark Panel Report. In spite of the
evidence to the contrary, Baden was determined to prove that the rear
entry wound was in the top of the skull where Fisher claimed it was
and not the bottom where the autopsy doctors had observed it. The
HSCA panel claimed that the autopsy photographs of the back of
Kennedy's head showed a “red spot” high in the rear and that this
was the wound of entrance. But when the panel tried to impress this
on the autopsy surgeons—the men who had inspected the actual wounds
on the body—its interpretation was firmly rejected. Referring to
the “red spot”, Dr. Humes stated, “I don’t know what that
is...I can assure you that as we reflected the scalp to get to this
point, there was no defect corresponding to this in the skull at any
point. I don’t know what that is. It could be to me clotted blood.
I don’t, I just don’t know what it is, but it certainly was not
any wound of entrance.” (7HSCA254) Rather than accept that Humes
may have had some idea what he was talking about, the HSCA pressured
him to change his testimony.
When
it came time to illustrate the entry wound, the HSCA did not publish
the autopsy photo of the back of the head. Instead they presented a
lifelike drawing of the photo prepared by professional medical
illustrator Ida Dox. The difference between the photo and the drawing
is that in the drawing the “red spot” has been greatly
accentuated to look more like a bullet wound. At a JFK conference in
2003, Dr. Randy Robertson presented a stunning document from the
newly declassified HSCA files. It was a note from Baden to Dox that
said “Ida, you can do much better.” Attached to the note was a
picture of a typical entrance wound from Spitz
and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death.
In other words, Baden was actually instructing her to make the red
spot look more like an entrance wound than it really did in the
photographs. Which just goes to show the lengths Baden was willing to
go to in order to push the Clark Panel's more lone assassin friendly
revision of the head wound.
There
is another extremely important point that needs to be made when
discussing these latter day reviews of the medical evidence. Even if
the HSCA pathology panel had not been stacked with Russell Fisher
acolytes and experts for hire like Dr. Baden, it would still have
been hampered by the fact that crucial autopsy materials had long
since “disappeared” from the archive. Photographs showing the
interior of the chest and skull, microscopic tissue slides,
Kodachrome slides of the interior of the chest, and even the
President's brain were all among the items that were mysteriously
missing by the time the HSCA came to inspect the evidence. Is it not
reasonable to suggest that in order to make an accurate determination
about the number and direction of bullets striking JFK it is
important to have all the relevant evidence? Dr. Cyril Wecht, the
HSCA panel's lone dissenting member, certainly believed so.
Dr.
Wecht criticized his colleagues for engaging in “semantical
sophistry and intellectual gymnastics”, for being “slavishly
dedicated to defending the Warren Report”, and noted a
“preconceived bias and professionally injudicious attitude
vis-a-vis this case.” (7HSCA209-11) In his testimony before the
committee, Wecht was asked why he felt his colleagues had taken the
position they had. Apparently with the allegiances to Russell Fisher
in mind, he responded, “There are some things involving some
present and former professional relationships and things between some
of them, and some people who have served on previous panels.”
(1HSCA354) Years later he added that “many of these same people had
a long-standing involvement with the federal government—many had
received federal grants for research and appointments to various
influential government boards. To be highly critical of a government
action could end that friendly relationship with Uncle Sam.”
(Wecht, p. 43-44) Indeed, it is not normally considered a sensible
course of action to bite the hand that feeds.
Reitzes
may pretend or even wish to believe otherwise but scientists do not
operate in a vacuum. As Don Thomas writes, “science is a social
process and...scientific conclusions are in fact, social constructs.
The consequences of the results, as much if not more than the
empirical evidence itself, will often steer the scientist to one
conclusion over the other.” (Thomas, p. 8) The reports of the
Clark, Rockefeller, and HSCA panels are the perfect example of what
happens when genuine experts allow political considerations, as well
as personal and professional biases, to cloud their judgement and
dictate their conclusions.
Thursday, 24 July 2014
How Dave Reitzes Gets it Wrong Part 4
Shots in the Dark
The
Dallas Police dictabelt recording, previously mentioned in part two
of this critique, is the only piece of evidence that has ever changed
the way the Kennedy assassination has been reported by officialdom;
albeit for all too brief a time. The way Reitzes chooses to cover
this particular topic is revealing to say the least. It certainly
makes a mockery of Skeptic's
claim that it promotes science and critical thinking since these two
things are notable only by their absence. For those who are new to
the subject, the dictabelt is an audio recording of Dallas police
radio transmissions made at the time of the assassination by a police
motorcycle officer who's microphone had become stuck in the 'on'
position. It was brought to the attention of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s by researchers Mary
Ferrell and Gary Mack.
As
Reitzes describes it, the HSCA “endorsed the findings of a computer
science professor and his assistant, indicating that a shot had
indeed been fired from the grassy knoll.” This description of the
committee's experts is laughably inept, incomplete, and clearly
intended to downplay their expertise. Analysis of the acoustics data
was, in actual fact, undertaken by two independent teams of
scientists who were at the very top of their profession. To find
someone with the requisite qualifications to conduct an analysis of
the tape, the HSCA asked the Acoustical Society of America for a
short list of leading experts in the field. Top of the list was the
Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm of Bolt, Baranek and Newman. As the
HSCA reported, BBN “specializes in acoustical analysis and performs
such work as locating submarines by analyzing underwater sound
impulses. It pioneered the technique of using sound recordings to
determine the timing and direction of gunfire in an analysis of a
tape that was recorded during the shootings at Kent State University
in 1970.” (HSCA report, p. 67)
The
second team of experts recommended by the ASA was that of Mark Weiss
and Ernest Aschkenasy of Queens College, New York. As well as being
involved in various acoustical projects such as the examination of
the Watergate tapes, (Ibid, p. 69) Weiss and Aschkenasy wrote
computer programs for processing acoustical data for military
applications. For example, a submarine navigates by bouncing sounds
of its environment and the on-board computer is able to factor in
and adjust for important elements like the vessel's speed and the
water temperature which varies with latitude. Weiss and Aschkenasy
wrote those software programs for the U.S. Navy. (Thomas, p. 594)
They were genuine, proven and trusted acoustical experts, something
one would not realise from reading Reitzes' facile characterization.
In
his typically misinformed manner, Reitzes writes that the dictabelt
“contained no audible sounds of gunfire”, which is factually
incorrect. It is not that the sounds are inaudible but that they are
mixed in with other white noises making them indiscernible to the
human ear. BBN chief scientist, Dr. James Barger, and his colleagues
discovered six impulses on the tape occurring at approximately 12:30
pm (the time of the assassination) that it was believed could be
gunfire. On-site testing was then conducted in Dealey Plaza with
microphones being placed along the parade route on Houston and Elm
Streets. Test shots were then fired from the Texas School Book
Depository and the Grassy Knoll and recorded at each of the
microphones. BBN found that five of the suspect impulses on the
dictabelt acoustically matched the echo patterns of tests shots fired
in the plaza, the fourth in sequence matching a shot fired from the
Knoll. (8HSCA101) However, at that point in time, Barger could only
attach a statistical probability rating of 50% to the matching of the
Knoll shot. (HSCA report, p. 72)
The
HSCA then turned to Weiss and Aschkenasy, asking if they could move
that 50-50 probability off center, one way or the other. The sonar
experts refined BBN's analysis using, as Dr. Weiss testified,
“fundamental things in acoustics...basic well-tested,
well-established principles” (5HSCA558) and were able to reduce
the margin of error from six one-thousandths of a second to one
one-thousandths of a second. Thus, after more than two months of
calculations, they were able to move the probability of a Grassy
Knoll gunshot from 50 to “95 percent or better”. (Ibid, 556) Dr.
Barger and his colleagues at BBN then reviewed the work of Weiss and
Aschkenasy, making their own independent calculations, and agreed
that “the likelihood of there having been a gun shot from the
knoll” was “about 95 percent or possibly better”. (Ibid, 674)
It
should come as no real surprise that the work of the HSCA's
scientists came under attack long before the committee had finished
its work. Dr. Barger even had to dispose of criticisms made by
private investigator, Anthony Pellicano, during his second appearance
before the committee. (5HSCA671-72) Reitzes claims that when the
findings of the acoustics experts “were subjected to peer review by
a National Academy of Sciences committee...the failings of the HSCA's
conspiracy theory were revealed.” But “peer review” does not
accurately describe a group with no intentions of approaching the
evidence fairly and objectively deliberately setting out to discredit
the work of another.
When
the Justice Department commissioned the NAS study, it revealed
immediately that it had no interest in conducting an open-minded
analysis by offering the chairmanship to none other than Luis
Alvarez, a vocal defender of the Warren Commission who had staked his
professional reputation on there having been no shots from the Knoll.
Alvarez, who had publicly dismissed the acoustics evidence before he
even looked at it, wisely declined the position and instead
recommended his colleague, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Norman
Ramsey. Nonetheless, Alvarez stayed on as the panel's most active
member. (Thomas, p. 618) Needless to say, the conclusions of the
“Ramsey Panel”, which did not include a single expert on
ballistics or acoustics, were preordained. When Dr. Barger met with
the panel to explain and defend his work, Alverez let him know that
it didn't actually matter what he said, they were going to shoot down
the HSCA's findings regardless. (Ibid, 619)
The
Ramsey Panel spent two years going over the acoustics data with a
fine tooth comb looking for serious flaws but kept coming up empty
handed. In the end, the only significant argument in its report was
based on a discovery made not by a member of the panel but by a rock
drummer from Ohio named Steve Barber. Before discussing what Barber
found, it is important to understand that on the day of the
assassination, the Dallas police were using two radio channels. Ch-1
was for routine communications and Ch-2 was for the police escort of
the Presidential motorcade. If two police units who were tuned to
opposite channels came close to one another, and one opened a
microphone, it could capture a broadcast from one channel and
simulcast it over the other. This phenomenon, known as “cross-talk”,
occurred several times during the five and a half minute sequence
during which the motorcycle microphone that recorded the alleged
shots was stuck open. These simulcasts are a potential means of
synchronizing events between both channels.
Steve
Barber acquired a copy of the dictabelt recording that came as a
promotional plastic insert with a girlie magazine and, after repeated
listens, heard something that nobody else had noticed—a
barley audible instance of cross-talk in which Dallas Sheriff Bill
Decker seems to say the words “...hold everything secure...”
These words came from a broadcast Decker made about a minute after
the assassination on Ch-2. On Ch-1, they appear only one-half second
after the impulses identified as a gunshots by the HSCA acoustics
experts. The Ramsey Panel seized Barber's discovery with both hands
and with it concluded that whatever the impulses on the tape were
they could not be the shots that killed Kennedy because they occurred
a minute after the assassination. The HSCA's conclusion of a probable
conspiracy had supposedly been “debunked”.
However,
in 2001, Dr. Donald Thomas reopened the acoustics debate with a paper
published in the British forensics journal, Science & Justice.
Dr. Thomas debunked the debunkers, pointing out that the Ramsey Panel
had overlooked a second instance of cross-talk, the “Bellah
broadcast”, and that using that simulcast to synchronize the
transmissions placed the impulses “at the exact instant that John
F. Kennedy was assassinated”. Several years later, Dr. Thomas noted
that none of the five instances of cross-talk on the recordings
actually synchronizes with one another, “Hence, the cross-talk
evidence does not prove that the putative gunshots are not
synchronous with the shooting.” (Hear
No Evil,
p. 662) In his original paper, Dr. Thomas pointed out numerous errors
made by the Ramsey Panel and called special attention to facts which
the panel had been very careful to omit from its report. Namely, the
“order in the data”.
If
the impulses on the dictabelt are not gunshots then any matches to
the test patterns are spurious. Therefore, a match would be equally
as likely to occur at the first microphone as the last and the five
matches could fall in any one of 125 random sequences. But, as Dr.
Thomas explains:
“...the
matching of the five putative shots were to five microphone positions
in the correct topographic order...Moreover, not just the order but
the spacing was correct. The time lapse between the five matching
impulsive sounds was 1.7, 1.1, 4.8, and 0.7 sec on the evidence tape.
The first three impulses obtained their highest matches...at three
consecutive microphone locations...which were spaced at 6 m
increments on Houston Street. The fourth sound matched to a
microphone location on Elm Street...24 m removed [from
the previous matching microphone]...and,
the last matched to a pattern recorded at the very next microphone
location...Thus the order spacing revealed by the matching procedure
is an accurate fit with the hypothesis that the sounds were gunshots
captured on a microphone of a motorcycle travelling north on Houston
Street then Westerly on Elm Street at the time of the assassination.”
Furthermore,
the distance from the first matching microphone to the last was 143
feet and the time between the first and last suspect impulse on the
tape was 8.3 seconds. In order for the motorcycle with the stuck
microphone to cover 143 feet in 8.3 seconds it would need to be
travelling at approximately 11 mph—the
very speed that
the Presidential limousine was travelling on Elm Street. (see Warren
Report, p. 49) And lastly, the impulses on the
dictabelt synchronize perfectly with the images on the Zapruder film.
The most obvious reaction to a shot on the film occurs at frame 313
with the explosion of President Kennedy's head. This is preceded by
the flipping up and down of Governor Connally's white Stetson hat
between frames 225 and 230; the apparent result of a bullet passing
through his wrist. When we align the fourth shot on the dictabelt—the
Grassy Knoll shot—with
frame 313, the third shot falls precisely as expected at frame 225.
Therefore, the exact same 4.8 second gap between shots is found on
both the audio and visual evidence.
The
above described correlations between the dictabelt recording and all
other known data are beyond coincidence. In fact, NASA physicist G.
Paul Chambers has calculated the odds of the order in the data and
the synchronization of film and audio being random together as “only
one chance in eleven billion”. (Chambers, Head
Shot: The Science Behind the JFK Assassination,
p. 142-143) And yet, as noted, the Ramsey Panel mentioned absolutely
none of it. The same is true of Reitzes and the authors he most
frequently relies upon such as Gerald Posner, John McAdams and
Vincent Bugliosi. In Bugliosi's case this is a particularly egregious
omission given that his critique of the acoustics evidence takes up
some 66 pages of his endnotes section. 66 pages and yet he could not
find room for what I summarized above in just a few short paragraphs?
Of course he could. But Bugliosi, Reitzes, the Ramsey Panel and their
cohorts know full well that if they disclose the order in the data to
their readers they will end up convincing them of the validity of the
acoustics evidence.
The
order in the data leaves us with only two possible conclusions.
Either the Dallas police dictabelt genuinely captured the sounds of
the shots that killed President Kennedy, or, as Dr. Thomas remarks,
“...within moments of President Kennedy being assassinated a burst
of static (perhaps cosmic particles from some supernova, or an
eruption of the sun, or a thunderclap in the distance) had occurred,
and...these static clusters [gave] rise to seperate patterns that
just happened to mimic the echo patterns of three gunshots from the
Texas School Book Depository, one gunshot from nearby, and one from
the grassy knoll, if recorded over a microphone travelling north on
Houston Street then west on Elm Street at 11 mph when the air
temperature was 65 degrees F.” (Thomas, p. 625)
I
believe most reasonable-minded people will agree that the latter is a
notion much too ridiculous to take seriously.
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