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Article: 15623 of alt.activism
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From: MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism
Subject: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Sep19.001848.23193@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
Date: 19 Sep 91 00:18:48 GMT
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Who Killed JFK?
The Media Whitewash
By Carl Oglesby
Oliver Stone's current film-in-progress, "JFK," dealing with
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is still months
from theaters, but already the project has been sharply attacked
by journalists who ordinarily could not care less what Hollywood
has to say about such great events as the Dealey Plaza shooting of
November 22, 1963.
The attack on Stone has enlisted (at least) the _Boston_
_Globe_ (editorial), the _Boston_Herald_, the _Washington_
_Post_, the _Chicago_Tribune_, and _Time_ magazine, and
several other outlets were known to have been prowling the "JFK"
set for angles. The intensity of this interest contrasts sharply
with 1979, when the House Assassinations Committee published its
finding of probable conspiracy in the JFK assassination, and the
mass media reacted with one day of headlines and then a long, bored
yawn.
How are we to understand this strange inconsistency? It is,
of course, dangerous to attack the official report of a
congressional committee; better to let it die a silent death. But
a Hollywood film cannot be ignored; a major production by a leading
director must be discredited, and if it can be done before the film
is even made, so much the better.
Garrison's Case
"JFK" is based chiefly on Louisiana Judge Jim Garrison's 1988
memoir, _On_the_Trail_of_the_Assassins_ (New York: Sheridan
Square Press), in which Garrison tells of his frustrated attempts
to expose the conspiracy that he (and the vast majority of the
American people) believes responsible for the murder at Dealey
Plaza.
Garrison has argued since 1967 that Oswald was telling the
truth when he called himself a "patsy." He believes that JFK was
killed and Oswald framed by a rightwing "parallel government"
seemingly much like "the Enterprise" discovered in the Iran-contra
scandal in the 1980s and currently being rediscovered in the
emerging BCCI scandal.
The conspirators of 1963, Garrison has theorized, grew alarm-
ed at JFK's moves toward de-escalation in Vietnam, normalization
of U.S. relations with Cuba, and dtente with the Soviet Union.
They hit upon a violent but otherwise easy remedy for the problem
of JFK's emerging pacifism, Garrison believes, in the promotion by
crossfire of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
Stone hardly expected a movie with such a challenging message
to escape notice, but he was startled to find himself under sharp
attack while "JFK" was still being filmed. "Since when are movies
judged," he said angrily, "sight-unseen, before completion and on
the basis of a pirated first-draft screenplay?"
The Ignorant Critics
The first out of his corner was Jon Margolis, a syndicated
_Chicago_Tribune_ columnist who assured his readers in May,
when Stone had barely begun filming in Dallas, that "JFK" would
prove "an insult to the intelligence" and "decency" ("JFK Movie and
Book Attempt to Rewrite History," May 14, p. 19). Margolis had not
seen one page of the first-draft screenplay (now in its sixth
draft), but even so he felt qualified to warn his readers that
Stone was making not just a bad movie but an evil one. "There is
a point," Margolis fumed, "at which intellectual myopia becomes
morally repugnant. Mr Stone's new movie proves that he has passed
that point. But then so has [producer] Time-Warner and so will
anyone who pays American money to see the film."
What bothered Margolis so much about "JFK" is that it is based
on Garrison, whom Margolis described as "bizarre" for having "in
1969 [1967 actually] claimed that the assassination of President
Kennedy was a conspiracy by some officials of the Central
Intelligence Agency."
Since Margolis and other critics of the "JFK" project are
getting their backs up about facts, it is important to note here
that this is not at all what Garrison said. In two books and
countless interviews, Garrison has argued that the most likely
incubator of an anti-JFK conspiracy was the cesspool of Mafia hit
men assembled by the CIA in its now-infamous Operation Mongoose,
its JFK-era program to murder Fidel Castro.
But Garrison also rejects the theory that the Mafia did it by
itself, a theory promoted mainly by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel
of the House Assassinations Committee (HAC) of 1978 and co-author
(with HAC writer Richard Billings) of _The_Plot_to_Kill_the_
_President_ (New York: Times Books, 1981). "If the Mafia did it,"
Garrison told _LOOT_, "why did the government so hastily
abandon the investigation? Why did it become so eagerly the chief
artist of the cover-up?"
More important, Garrison's investigation of Oswald established
that this presumed leftwing loner was associated in the period just
before the assassination with three individuals who had clear ties
to the CIA and its anti-Castro operations, namely, Clay Shaw, David
Ferrie, and Guy Banister.
Garrison did not draw a conclusion from Oswald's ties to these
men. Rather he maintains that their presence in Oswald's story at
such a time cannot be presumed innocuous and dismissed out of hand.
The Assassinations Committee itself confirmed and puzzled over
these ties in 1978, and even Blakey, a fierce rival of Garrison,
accepts their central importance in the explanation of Oswald's
role.
Lardner Grinds His Axe
The most serious attacks against the "JFK" project are those
of the _Washington_Post_'s George Lardner, perhaps the dean
of the Washington intelligence press corps. Lardner covered the
Warren Commission during the 1960s, at one point ran a special
_Post_ investigation of the case, and covered the House Select
Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s.
Lardner's May 19 article on the front page of the Sunday
_Post_ "Outlook" section, "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland,"
ran to almost seven column feet, and by far the greater part of
that was dedicated to the contemptuous dismissal of any thought
that Garrison has made a positive contribution to this case. Stone
must be crazy too, Lardner seemed to be saying, to be taking a nut
like Garrison so seriously.
And yet Lardner's particulars are oddly strained.
Lardner wrote, for example, that the Assassinations Committee
"may have" heard testimony linking Oswald with Ferrie and Ferrie
with the CIA. Lardner knows very well that the committee _did_
hear such testimony, no maybes about it, and that it found this
testimony convincing. Then Lardner implicitly denied that the
committee heard such testimony at all by adding grotesquely that
it "may also have" heard no such thing. Why does Lardner want
unwary readers to think that the well-established connections
between Oswald, Ferrie, and the CIA exist only in Garrison's
imagination?
Lardner stooped to a still greater deception with respect to
the so-called "three tramps," the men who were arrested in the
railroad yard just north of Dealey Plaza right after the shooting
and taken to the police station, but then released without being
identified. Lardner knows that there is legitimate concern about
these men. For one thing, they were in exactly the area from which
about half of the Dealey Plaza eyewitnesses believed shots were
fired. For another, they do not look like ordinary tramps. Photos
show that their clothing and shoes were unworn and that they were
freshly shaved and barbered. But Lardner waved aside the question
of their disappeared identities with a high-handed _ad_
hominem_ sniff that, even if the police had taken their names,
those who suspect a conspiracy "would just insist the men had lied
about who they were."
Lardner next poked fun at the pirated first-draft version of
Stone's screenplay for suggesting that as many as five or six shots
might have been fired in Dealey Plaza. "Is this the Kennedy
assassination," Lardner chortled, "or the Charge of the Light
Brigade?" As though only the ignorant could consider a fifth or
even, smirk, a sixth shot realistic.
But here is what the House Assassinations Committee's final
report said on page 68 about the number of shots detected on the
famous acoustics tape: "Six sequences of impulses that could have
been caused by a noise such as gunfire were initially identified
as having been transmitted over channel 1 [of police radio]. Thus,
they warranted further analysis." The committee analyzed only four
of these impulses because (a) it was short of funds and time when
the acoustics tape was discovered, (b) the impulses selected for
analysis conformed to timing sequences of the Zapruder film, and
(c) any fourth shot established a second gun and thus a conspiracy.
All four of these impulses turned out to be shots. Numbers one and
six remain to be analyzed. That is, the acoustics evidence shows
that there were at least four shots and perhaps as many as six.
Lardner's most interesting error is his charge that "JFK" mis-
states the impact of the assassination on the growth of the Vietnam
war. No doubt Stone's first-draft screenplay telescoped events in
suggesting that LBJ began escalating the Vietnam war the second day
after Dallas. Quietly and promptly, however, LBJ did indeed stop
the military build-down that JFK had begun; and as soon as LBJ won
the 1964 election as the peace candidate, he started taking the lid
off. Motivated by a carefully staged pretext, the Gulf of Tonkin
"incident," the bombing of North Vietnam began in February 1965.
It is puzzling to see such a sophisticated journalist as Lardner
trying to finesse the fact that Kennedy was moving toward
de-escalation when he was killed and that the massive explosion of
the U.S. war effort occurred under Johnson. In this sense, it is
not only reasonable but necessary to see the JFK assassination as
a major turning point in the war.
Strangest of all is that Lardner himself has come to believe
in a Dealey Plaza conspiracy, admitting that the Assassinations
Committee's findings in this respect "still seem more plausible
than any of the criticisms" and subsequently restating the point
in a tossed-off "acknowledgment that a probable conspiracy took
place."
The reader will search Lardner's writing in vain, however, for
the slightest elaboration of this point even though it is obviously
the crux of the entire debate. My own JFK file, for example,
contains 19 clippings with Lardner's byline and several _Wash-
ington_Post_ clippings by other writers from the period in which
the Assassinations Committee announced its conspiracy findings. The
only piece I can find among these that so much as whispers of
support for the committee's work was written by myself and Jeff
Goldberg ("Did the Mob Kill Kennedy?" _Washington_Post_
Outlook section, February 25, 1979).
If the Warren critics were a mere handful of quacks jabbering
about UFOs, as Lardner insinuates, one might understand the venom
he and other mainstreamers bring to this debate.
But this is simply not the case. The _Post_'s own poll
shows that 56 percent of us--75 percent of those with an opinion-
-believe a conspiracy was afoot at Dallas. And it was the U.S.
Congress, after a year-long, $4 million, expert investigation, that
concluded, "President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as
a result of a conspiracy."
The Reluctant Media
So what is it with the American news media and the JFK murder?
Why do normally skeptical journalists reserve their most hostile
skepticism for those who have tried to keep this case on the
national agenda? What is it about Dealey Plaza that not even the
massive disbelief of the American people and the imprimatur of the
Congress can legitimate this issue to the news media?
As one who has followed this case closely and actively for
nearly 20 years--and who has often heard the charge of "paranoia"
as a response to the bill of particulars--I find it increasingly
hard to resist concluding that the media's strange rage for silence
in this matter presents us with a textbook case of denial,
disassociation, and double-think. I hear frustration and fear in
the reasoning of Lardner and Margolis and their comrades who
constantly erect straw men to destroy and whose basic response to
those who would argue the facts is yet another dose of _ad_
hominem_ character assassination, as we are beholding in the
media's response to Stone and Garrison:
--Frustration because the media cannot stop Stone's movie from
carrying the thesis of a JFK conspiracy to a global audience
already strongly inclined to believe it.
--Fear because the media cannot altogether suppress a doubt
in their collective mind that the essential message of "JFK" may
be correct after all, and that, if it is, their current re-
lationship to the government may have to change profoundly.
And perhaps a touch of shame, too, because in the persistence
of the mystery of JFK's death, there may be the beginning of an
insight that the media are staring their own greatest failure in
the face.
First Sidebar:
About Clay Shaw
It is true that Garrison could not convince the New Orleans
jury that Shaw had a motive to conspire against JFK. This is
because he could not prove that Shaw was a CIA agent. Had Garrison
been able to establish a Shaw link to the CIA, then JFK's
adversarial relationship with the CIA's Task Force W assassination
plots against Castro would have become material and a plausible
Shaw motive might have come into focus.
But in 1975, six years after Shaw's acquittal and a year after his
death, a CIA headquarters staff officer, Victor Marchetti,
disclosed that Garrison was right, that Shaw, and Ferrie as well,
were indeed connected to the CIA. Marchetti further revealed that
CIA Director Richard Helms--a supporter of the CIA-Mafia plots
against Castro--had committed the CIA to helping Shaw in his trou-
ble with Garrison. What the CIA might have done in this regard is
not known, but Marchetti's revelation gives us every reason to
presuppose a CIA hand in the wrecking of Garrison's case against
Shaw.
George Lardner is not impressed by the proof of a CIA
connection to Shaw. He responds dismissively that Shaw's CIA
position was only that of informant: Shaw, he writes, "was a widely
traveled businessman who had occasional contacts with the CIA's
Domestic Contact Service. Does that make him an assassin?"
Of course not, and Garrison never claimed it did. But it certainly
does--or ought to--stimulate an interest in Shaw's relationship to
Oswald and Ferrie. Is it not strikingly at variance with the Warren
Commission's lone-nut theory of Oswald to find him circulating
within a CIA orbit in the months just ahead of the assassination?
Why is Lardner so hot to turn away from this evidence?
How fascinating, moreover, that Lardner should claim with such
an air of finality to know all about Shaw's ties to the CIA, since
a thing like this could only be known for a certainty to a highly
placed CIA officer. And if Lardner is not (_mirabile dictu_)
himself an officer of the CIA, then all he can plausibly claim to
know about Shaw is what the CIA chooses to tell him. Has George
Lardner not heard that the CIA lies?
--Carl Oglesby
Reprinted with permission from _Lies_Of_Our_Times_, September
1991, copyright (o) 1991 by the Institute for Media Analysis, Inc.
and Sheridan Square Press, Inc. Subscriptions to LOOT are $2year
(U.S.), from LOOT, 145 W. 4th St., New York, NY 10012.
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!mont!pencil!rich
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <rich.685326234@pencil>
Date: 20 Sep 91 00:23:54 GMT
Organization: UMC Math Dept.
Lines: 276
Who Killed JFK?
The Media Whitewash
By Carl Oglesby
Oliver Stone's current film-in-progress, "JFK," dealing with
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is still months
from theaters, but already the project has been sharply attacked
by journalists who ordinarily could not care less what Hollywood
has to say about such great events as the Dealey Plaza shooting of
November 22, 1963.
The attack on Stone has enlisted (at least) the _Boston_
_Globe_ (editorial), the _Boston_Herald_, the _Washington_
_Post_, the _Chicago_Tribune_, and _Time_ magazine, and
several other outlets were known to have been prowling the "JFK"
set for angles. The intensity of this interest contrasts sharply
with 1979, when the House Assassinations Committee published its
finding of probable conspiracy in the JFK assassination, and the
mass media reacted with one day of headlines and then a long, bored
yawn.
How are we to understand this strange inconsistency? It is,
of course, dangerous to attack the official report of a
congressional committee; better to let it die a silent death. But
a Hollywood film cannot be ignored; a major production by a leading
director must be discredited, and if it can be done before the film
is even made, so much the better.
Garrison's Case
"JFK" is based chiefly on Louisiana Judge Jim Garrison's 1988
memoir, _On_the_Trail_of_the_Assassins_ (New York: Sheridan
Square Press), in which Garrison tells of his frustrated attempts
to expose the conspiracy that he (and the vast majority of the
American people) believes responsible for the murder at Dealey
Plaza.
Garrison has argued since 1967 that Oswald was telling the
truth when he called himself a "patsy." He believes that JFK was
killed and Oswald framed by a rightwing "parallel government"
seemingly much like "the Enterprise" discovered in the Iran-contra
scandal in the 1980s and currently being rediscovered in the
emerging BCCI scandal.
The conspirators of 1963, Garrison has theorized, grew alarm-
ed at JFK's moves toward de-escalation in Vietnam, normalization
of U.S. relations with Cuba, and dtente with the Soviet Union.
They hit upon a violent but otherwise easy remedy for the problem
of JFK's emerging pacifism, Garrison believes, in the promotion by
crossfire of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
Stone hardly expected a movie with such a challenging message
to escape notice, but he was startled to find himself under sharp
attack while "JFK" was still being filmed. "Since when are movies
judged," he said angrily, "sight-unseen, before completion and on
the basis of a pirated first-draft screenplay?"
The Ignorant Critics
The first out of his corner was Jon Margolis, a syndicated
_Chicago_Tribune_ columnist who assured his readers in May,
when Stone had barely begun filming in Dallas, that "JFK" would
prove "an insult to the intelligence" and "decency" ("JFK Movie and
Book Attempt to Rewrite History," May 14, p. 19). Margolis had not
seen one page of the first-draft screenplay (now in its sixth
draft), but even so he felt qualified to warn his readers that
Stone was making not just a bad movie but an evil one. "There is
a point," Margolis fumed, "at which intellectual myopia becomes
morally repugnant. Mr Stone's new movie proves that he has passed
that point. But then so has [producer] Time-Warner and so will
anyone who pays American money to see the film."
What bothered Margolis so much about "JFK" is that it is based
on Garrison, whom Margolis described as "bizarre" for having "in
1969 [1967 actually] claimed that the assassination of President
Kennedy was a conspiracy by some officials of the Central
Intelligence Agency."
Since Margolis and other critics of the "JFK" project are
getting their backs up about facts, it is important to note here
that this is not at all what Garrison said. In two books and
countless interviews, Garrison has argued that the most likely
incubator of an anti-JFK conspiracy was the cesspool of Mafia hit
men assembled by the CIA in its now-infamous Operation Mongoose,
its JFK-era program to murder Fidel Castro.
But Garrison also rejects the theory that the Mafia did it by
itself, a theory promoted mainly by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel
of the House Assassinations Committee (HAC) of 1978 and co-author
(with HAC writer Richard Billings) of _The_Plot_to_Kill_the_
_President_ (New York: Times Books, 1981). "If the Mafia did it,"
Garrison told _LOOT_, "why did the government so hastily
abandon the investigation? Why did it become so eagerly the chief
artist of the cover-up?"
More important, Garrison's investigation of Oswald established
that this presumed leftwing loner was associated in the period just
before the assassination with three individuals who had clear ties
to the CIA and its anti-Castro operations, namely, Clay Shaw, David
Ferrie, and Guy Banister.
Garrison did not draw a conclusion from Oswald's ties to these
men. Rather he maintains that their presence in Oswald's story at
such a time cannot be presumed innocuous and dismissed out of hand.
The Assassinations Committee itself confirmed and puzzled over
these ties in 1978, and even Blakey, a fierce rival of Garrison,
accepts their central importance in the explanation of Oswald's
role.
Lardner Grinds His Axe
The most serious attacks against the "JFK" project are those
of the _Washington_Post_'s George Lardner, perhaps the dean
of the Washington intelligence press corps. Lardner covered the
Warren Commission during the 1960s, at one point ran a special
_Post_ investigation of the case, and covered the House Select
Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s.
Lardner's May 19 article on the front page of the Sunday
_Post_ "Outlook" section, "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland,"
ran to almost seven column feet, and by far the greater part of
that was dedicated to the contemptuous dismissal of any thought
that Garrison has made a positive contribution to this case. Stone
must be crazy too, Lardner seemed to be saying, to be taking a nut
like Garrison so seriously.
And yet Lardner's particulars are oddly strained.
Lardner wrote, for example, that the Assassinations Committee
"may have" heard testimony linking Oswald with Ferrie and Ferrie
with the CIA. Lardner knows very well that the committee _did_
hear such testimony, no maybes about it, and that it found this
testimony convincing. Then Lardner implicitly denied that the
committee heard such testimony at all by adding grotesquely that
it "may also have" heard no such thing. Why does Lardner want
unwary readers to think that the well-established connections
between Oswald, Ferrie, and the CIA exist only in Garrison's
imagination?
Lardner stooped to a still greater deception with respect to
the so-called "three tramps," the men who were arrested in the
railroad yard just north of Dealey Plaza right after the shooting
and taken to the police station, but then released without being
identified. Lardner knows that there is legitimate concern about
these men. For one thing, they were in exactly the area from which
about half of the Dealey Plaza eyewitnesses believed shots were
fired. For another, they do not look like ordinary tramps. Photos
show that their clothing and shoes were unworn and that they were
freshly shaved and barbered. But Lardner waved aside the question
of their disappeared identities with a high-handed _ad_
hominem_ sniff that, even if the police had taken their names,
those who suspect a conspiracy "would just insist the men had lied
about who they were."
Lardner next poked fun at the pirated first-draft version of
Stone's screenplay for suggesting that as many as five or six shots
might have been fired in Dealey Plaza. "Is this the Kennedy
assassination," Lardner chortled, "or the Charge of the Light
Brigade?" As though only the ignorant could consider a fifth or
even, smirk, a sixth shot realistic.
But here is what the House Assassinations Committee's final
report said on page 68 about the number of shots detected on the
famous acoustics tape: "Six sequences of impulses that could have
been caused by a noise such as gunfire were initially identified
as having been transmitted over channel 1 [of police radio]. Thus,
they warranted further analysis." The committee analyzed only four
of these impulses because (a) it was short of funds and time when
the acoustics tape was discovered, (b) the impulses selected for
analysis conformed to timing sequences of the Zapruder film, and
(c) any fourth shot established a second gun and thus a conspiracy.
All four of these impulses turned out to be shots. Numbers one and
six remain to be analyzed. That is, the acoustics evidence shows
that there were at least four shots and perhaps as many as six.
Lardner's most interesting error is his charge that "JFK" mis-
states the impact of the assassination on the growth of the Vietnam
war. No doubt Stone's first-draft screenplay telescoped events in
suggesting that LBJ began escalating the Vietnam war the second day
after Dallas. Quietly and promptly, however, LBJ did indeed stop
the military build-down that JFK had begun; and as soon as LBJ won
the 1964 election as the peace candidate, he started taking the lid
off. Motivated by a carefully staged pretext, the Gulf of Tonkin
"incident," the bombing of North Vietnam began in February 1965.
It is puzzling to see such a sophisticated journalist as Lardner
trying to finesse the fact that Kennedy was moving toward
de-escalation when he was killed and that the massive explosion of
the U.S. war effort occurred under Johnson. In this sense, it is
not only reasonable but necessary to see the JFK assassination as
a major turning point in the war.
Strangest of all is that Lardner himself has come to believe
in a Dealey Plaza conspiracy, admitting that the Assassinations
Committee's findings in this respect "still seem more plausible
than any of the criticisms" and subsequently restating the point
in a tossed-off "acknowledgment that a probable conspiracy took
place."
The reader will search Lardner's writing in vain, however, for
the slightest elaboration of this point even though it is obviously
the crux of the entire debate. My own JFK file, for example,
contains 19 clippings with Lardner's byline and several _Wash-
ington_Post_ clippings by other writers from the period in which
the Assassinations Committee announced its conspiracy findings. The
only piece I can find among these that so much as whispers of
support for the committee's work was written by myself and Jeff
Goldberg ("Did the Mob Kill Kennedy?" _Washington_Post_
Outlook section, February 25, 1979).
If the Warren critics were a mere handful of quacks jabbering
about UFOs, as Lardner insinuates, one might understand the venom
he and other mainstreamers bring to this debate.
But this is simply not the case. The _Post_'s own poll
shows that 56 percent of us--75 percent of those with an opinion-
-believe a conspiracy was afoot at Dallas. And it was the U.S.
Congress, after a year-long, $4 million, expert investigation, that
concluded, "President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as
a result of a conspiracy."
The Reluctant Media
So what is it with the American news media and the JFK murder?
Why do normally skeptical journalists reserve their most hostile
skepticism for those who have tried to keep this case on the
national agenda? What is it about Dealey Plaza that not even the
massive disbelief of the American people and the imprimatur of the
Congress can legitimate this issue to the news media?
As one who has followed this case closely and actively for
nearly 20 years--and who has often heard the charge of "paranoia"
as a response to the bill of particulars--I find it increasingly
hard to resist concluding that the media's strange rage for silence
in this matter presents us with a textbook case of denial,
disassociation, and double-think. I hear frustration and fear in
the reasoning of Lardner and Margolis and their comrades who
constantly erect straw men to destroy and whose basic response to
those who would argue the facts is yet another dose of _ad_
hominem_ character assassination, as we are beholding in the
media's response to Stone and Garrison:
--Frustration because the media cannot stop Stone's movie from
carrying the thesis of a JFK conspiracy to a global audience
already strongly inclined to believe it.
--Fear because the media cannot altogether suppress a doubt
in their collective mind that the essential message of "JFK" may
be correct after all, and that, if it is, their current re-
lationship to the government may have to change profoundly.
And perhaps a touch of shame, too, because in the persistence
of the mystery of JFK's death, there may be the beginning of an
insight that the media are staring their own greatest failure in
the face.
First Sidebar:
About Clay Shaw
It is true that Garrison could not convince the New Orleans
jury that Shaw had a motive to conspire against JFK. This is
because he could not prove that Shaw was a CIA agent. Had Garrison
been able to establish a Shaw link to the CIA, then JFK's
adversarial relationship with the CIA's Task Force W assassination
plots against Castro would have become material and a plausible
Shaw motive might have come into focus.
But in 1975, six years after Shaw's acquittal and a year after his
death, a CIA headquarters staff officer, Victor Marchetti,
disclosed that Garrison was right, that Shaw, and Ferrie as well,
were indeed connected to the CIA. Marchetti further revealed that
CIA Director Richard Helms--a supporter of the CIA-Mafia plots
against Castro--had committed the CIA to helping Shaw in his trou-
ble with Garrison. What the CIA might have done in this regard is
not known, but Marchetti's revelation gives us every reason to
presuppose a CIA hand in the wrecking of Garrison's case against
Shaw.
George Lardner is not impressed by the proof of a CIA
connection to Shaw. He responds dismissively that Shaw's CIA
position was only that of informant: Shaw, he writes, "was a widely
traveled businessman who had occasional contacts with the CIA's
Domestic Contact Service. Does that make him an assassin?"
Of course not, and Garrison never claimed it did. But it certainly
does--or ought to--stimulate an interest in Shaw's relationship to
Oswald and Ferrie. Is it not strikingly at variance with the Warren
Commission's lone-nut theory of Oswald to find him circulating
within a CIA orbit in the months just ahead of the assassination?
Why is Lardner so hot to turn away from this evidence?
How fascinating, moreover, that Lardner should claim with such
an air of finality to know all about Shaw's ties to the CIA, since
a thing like this could only be known for a certainty to a highly
placed CIA officer. And if Lardner is not (_mirabile dictu_)
himself an officer of the CIA, then all he can plausibly claim to
know about Shaw is what the CIA chooses to tell him. Has George
Lardner not heard that the CIA lies?
--Carl Oglesby
Reprinted with permission from _Lies_Of_Our_Times_, September
1991, copyright (o) 1991 by the Institute for Media Analysis, Inc.
and Sheridan Square Press, Inc. Subscriptions to LOOT are $2year
(U.S.), from LOOT, 145 W. 4th St., New York, NY 10012.
Path: ns-mx!uunet!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <BZS.91Sep20045447@world.std.com>
Date: 20 Sep 91 09:54:47 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil>
Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: The World
Lines: 53
In-Reply-To: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu's message of 20 Sep 91 00:23:54 GMT
> The conspirators of 1963, Garrison has theorized, grew alarm-
>ed at JFK's moves toward de-escalation in Vietnam, normalization
>of U.S. relations with Cuba, and dtente with the Soviet Union.
>They hit upon a violent but otherwise easy remedy for the problem
>of JFK's emerging pacifism, Garrison believes, in the promotion by
>crossfire of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
Wait a minute. 1963 is too early to consider "de-escalation" of
Vietnam as a problem. We had some involvement by then but if anything
that's the wrong word, we weren't really fighting yet (were US
military advisors there yet, officially? There were certainly no US
troops there for hostilities yet.)
Hmm, Kennedy had just come off the Cuban missile crisis.
I suppose one could claim that somehow after that he suddenly changed
his tune on Cuba and the Soviet Union but this all sounds like it's
meant to play to a "JFK = Liberal and all that means" sort of gullible
crowd. I think a brief reading of the Kennedy administration (or even
just newspapers of the era) would indicate that none of this seems
likely.
Back then (1963) "soft on communism" basically meant you weren't
plotting on nuking them this afternoon, but next week maybe...I'd
guess it's hard for people who didn't live then to understand how
different things were on these issues in mainstream govt, the right
wanted to kill them immediately and the moderate/liberals merely hated
their guts, about the range of opinion you'd get on Iraq today (in
Congress or the White House), as an analogy.
(I'm not saying there weren't exceptions, of course there were, but
they didn't become President or even nearly so. I'm saying this
sounds, um, broken.)
Anyone remember that first run movie about the Kennedy assassination
"conspiracy" around say 1970 with the four Texas oil billionaires
plotting the thing (I forget the reasoning.) It ended with photos of
like 48 people who might have known something (were scheduled to
appear before investigators etc) but all had "committed suicide by
shooting themselves several times in the back of the head while
running" or something like that.
Get a copy of that and I think you'll find Stone's movie isn't really
unique in challenging mainline views on the assassination in the
theater. And that one was filmed a lot closer to the event. I remember
it as being quite provocative even if a bit unlikely.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Path: ns-mx!uunet!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta
From: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <27722@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 20 Sep 91 11:27:42 GMT
Sender: news@nntpd.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 79
In article <BZS.91Sep20045447@world.std.com>, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
writes...
>
>> The conspirators of 1963, Garrison has theorized, grew alarm-
>>ed at JFK's moves toward de-escalation in Vietnam, normalization
>>of U.S. relations with Cuba, and dtente with the Soviet Union.
>>They hit upon a violent but otherwise easy remedy for the problem
>>of JFK's emerging pacifism, Garrison believes, in the promotion by
>>crossfire of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
>
>Wait a minute. 1963 is too early to consider "de-escalation" of
>Vietnam as a problem. We had some involvement by then but if anything
>that's the wrong word, we weren't really fighting yet (were US
>military advisors there yet, officially? There were certainly no US
>troops there for hostilities yet.)
I can't remember the exact number, but off the top of my head, the
number was 1600 `advisors'. All Special Forces types....
BTW- Kennedy stated he would have all U.S. military personnel out
of Vietnam by 1965, just three weeks prior to his assassination.
>
>Hmm, Kennedy had just come off the Cuban missile crisis.
>
>I suppose one could claim that somehow after that he suddenly changed
>his tune on Cuba
He never changed his tune on Cuba/Soviet Union, he stated he was dead-set
against assassination as a political tool and wanted the CIA/mafia to
stop their attempts on Castro..... he also made the statement around that
time that he would `bust the CIA up into a thousand pieces'
>and the Soviet Union but this all sounds like it's
>meant to play to a "JFK = Liberal and all that means" sort of gullible
>crowd. I think a brief reading of the Kennedy administration (or even
>just newspapers of the era) would indicate that none of this seems
>likely.
(some deleted to save bandwidth..)
>Anyone remember that first run movie about the Kennedy assassination
>"conspiracy" around say 1970 with the four Texas oil billionaires
>plotting the thing (I forget the reasoning.) It ended with photos of
>like 48 people who might have known something (were scheduled to
>appear before investigators etc) but all had "committed suicide by
>shooting themselves several times in the back of the head while
>running" or something like that.
The name of the movie was `Executive Action', released in 1973.
.....and the people listed at the end of the movie were various witnesses
to the assassination who had `died' from a wide-range of unlikely
causes. (ie. suicides,karate chop to the neck,falls, etc.)
>Get a copy of that and I think you'll find Stone's movie isn't really
>unique in challenging mainline views on the assassination in the
>theater. And that one was filmed a lot closer to the event. I remember
>it as being quite provocative even if a bit unlikely.
>
>--
> -Barry Shein
Pick up a copy of the book `High Treason' by David Groden and Harrison
Livingstone. The evidence they present in that book sure got me thinking...
BTW- David Groden was one of the photographic experts used by the House
Select Committee on Assassinations back in the late seventies....
>Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
>Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Path: ns-mx!uunet!wupost!corvette.utdallas.edu!tamsun!helios!zeus.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 20 Sep 91 17:24:33 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil>
Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU
Reply-To: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu
Organization: Incontinental Blather, Inc
Lines: 80
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4
In article <rich.685326234@pencil>, rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel) writes...
>Who Killed JFK?
>The Media Whitewash
>
>By Carl Oglesby
> The attack on Stone has enlisted (at least)
> [several news organs]
> The intensity of this interest contrasts sharply
>with 1979, when the House Assassinations Committee published its
>finding of probable conspiracy in the JFK assassination, and the
>mass media reacted with one day of headlines and then a long, bored
>yawn.
> How are we to understand this strange inconsistency?
The press's love of sensationalism?
>It is,
>of course, dangerous to attack the official report of a
>congressional committee;
That's strange; several people *have* attacked the report,
including several of the commitee's experts.
>The Ignorant Critics
> The committee analyzed only four
>of these impulses because (a) it was short of funds and time when
>the acoustics tape was discovered, (b) the impulses selected for
>analysis conformed to timing sequences of the Zapruder film, and
>(c) any fourth shot established a second gun and thus a conspiracy.
>All four of these impulses turned out to be shots.
>[...] That is, the acoustics evidence shows
>that there were at least four shots and perhaps as many as six.
Not at all. The two "experts" from Queens College were only
"70 percent sure" about the fourth shot, and no one
else has been able to find anything like four shots in the
static. They also claimed that they could find "sound
vectors" that would enable them to determine the origin
of the shots, which turned out to be the grassy knoll.
However, the report from the forensics team flatly
contradicts the "acoustic evidence". The wounds that
both Kennedy and Connely recieved obviously showed that
the bullets had entered their bodies from behind.
Given that the Grassy knoll was in front of the motorcade,
I don't see how those shots could have come from there.
> But this is simply not the case. The _Post_'s own poll
>shows that 56 percent of us--75 percent of those with an opinion-
>-believe a conspiracy was afoot at Dallas.
And 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, either.
> And it was the U.S.
>Congress, after a year-long, $4 million, expert investigation, that
>concluded, "President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as
>a result of a conspiracy."
The question is, how many people have ever seen the report.
the only physical evidence that "supports" the conspiracy
is a unique interpetation of a noisy tape that is contradicted
by the forensic evidence. The only other evidence for a
conspiracy amounts to guilt by association. Thats not much
to base a case on.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Path: ns-mx!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!spool.mu.edu!munnari.oz.au!bruce!trlluna!titan!brahma!mat
From: mat@brahma.trl.OZ.AU (Wesendonck)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Sep22.143924.27274@trl.oz.au>
Date: 22 Sep 91 14:39:24 GMT
References: <27722@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Sender: news@trl.oz.au (USENET News System)
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 45
In article <27722@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes:
>
> In article <BZS.91Sep20045447@world.std.com>, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
> writes...
> >
> >> The conspirators of 1963, Garrison has theorized, grew alarm-
> >>ed at JFK's moves toward de-escalation in Vietnam, normalization
> >>of U.S. relations with Cuba, and dtente with the Soviet Union.
> >>They hit upon a violent but otherwise easy remedy for the problem
> >>of JFK's emerging pacifism, Garrison believes, in the promotion by
> >>crossfire of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
> >
> >Wait a minute. 1963 is too early to consider "de-escalation" of
> >Vietnam as a problem. We had some involvement by then but if anything
> >that's the wrong word, we weren't really fighting yet (were US
> >military advisors there yet, officially? There were certainly no US
> >troops there for hostilities yet.)
>
> I can't remember the exact number, but off the top of my head, the
> number was 1600 `advisors'. All Special Forces types....
According to The Pentagon Papers it was around 17000 at the time
Kennedy was assasinated, and given that around 500 of these `advisors'
were killed that year, makes it difficult to suggest that they weren't
involved in the fighting (for example they'd been actively involved in
the bombing and strafing of South Vietnamese villages since 62 when they
helped drive millions of peasants into the `strategic hamlets').
>
> BTW- Kennedy stated he would have all U.S. military personnel out
> of Vietnam by 1965, just three weeks prior to his assassination.
>
There was a lot of optimism at that time that progress was being made.
A report produced by McNamara and Taylor on their return from South
Vietnam in October predicted US military involvment would not be
required by the end of 65. So, Kennedy was just echoing the consensus
view.
Mat.
--
"She was a Marxist, and the most interesting type - the kind
with long, tanned legs".
Article: 7407 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!wupost!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.bbn.com!bbn.com!ingria
From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <66431@bbn.BBN.COM>
Date: 20 Sep 91 18:33:03 GMT
References: <27722@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Sender: news@bbn.com
Reply-To: ingria@BBN.COM
Lines: 35
In-reply-to: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com's message of 20 Sep 91 11:27:42 GMT
In article <27722@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes:
In article <BZS.91Sep20045447@world.std.com>, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
writes...
>
>> The conspirators of 1963, Garrison has theorized, grew alarm-
>>ed at JFK's moves toward de-escalation in Vietnam, normalization
>>of U.S. relations with Cuba, and dtente with the Soviet Union.
>>They hit upon a violent but otherwise easy remedy for the problem
>>of JFK's emerging pacifism, Garrison believes, in the promotion by
>>crossfire of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
>
>Wait a minute. 1963 is too early to consider "de-escalation" of
>Vietnam as a problem. We had some involvement by then but if anything
>that's the wrong word, we weren't really fighting yet (were US
>military advisors there yet, officially? There were certainly no US
>troops there for hostilities yet.)
I can't remember the exact number, but off the top of my head, the
number was 1600 `advisors'. All Special Forces types....
BTW- Kennedy stated he would have all U.S. military personnel out
of Vietnam by 1965, just three weeks prior to his assassination.
I know there is a great belief that ``Kennedy would have gotten out of
Vietnam if only he had lived'', but I'd like to know what the
documentary support is (e.g. what the source is of the statement
referred to above). I really don't know one way or the other and
would like some evidence on the matter. As Barry said, both ``left''
and ``right'' were extremely anti-communist at that time. (For
something that might shake up the saintly image of JFK (it sure shook
mine), listen/watch the Kennedy-Nixon debate in which each tries to
top the other in what he would do to combat communism.)
-30-
Bob
Article: 7432 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta
From: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Keywords: Assassination,Kennedy
Message-ID: <27923@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 24 Sep 91 11:18:43 GMT
Sender: news@nntpd.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 43
In article <66431@bbn.BBN.COM>, ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria) writes...
>In article <27722@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes:
>>
>> I can't remember the exact number, but off the top of my head, the
>> number was 1600 `advisors'. All Special Forces types....
I stand corrected, according to a previous post and the book Vietnam:
A History, by Stanley Karnow, it was between 16-17000 troops at the time.
>>
>> BTW- Kennedy stated he would have all U.S. military personnel out
>> of Vietnam by 1965, just three weeks prior to his assassination.
Kennedy made this statement in a speech three weeks prior to being
shot, and I read it in the above mentioned book as well as in a book
entitled `High Treason' by Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone.
>
>I know there is a great belief that ``Kennedy would have gotten out of
>Vietnam if only he had lived'', but I'd like to know what the
>documentary support is (e.g. what the source is of the statement
>referred to above). I really don't know one way or the other and
>would like some evidence on the matter. As Barry said, both ``left''
>and ``right'' were extremely anti-communist at that time. (For
>something that might shake up the saintly image of JFK (it sure shook
>mine), listen/watch the Kennedy-Nixon debate in which each tries to
>top the other in what he would do to combat communism.)
>
>-30-
>Bob
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7580 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!mont!pencil!rich
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <rich.685932707@pencil>
Date: 27 Sep 91 00:51:47 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil> <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Organization: UMC Math Dept.
Lines: 32
In <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
>> The committee analyzed only four
>>of these impulses because (a) it was short of funds and time when
>>the acoustics tape was discovered, (b) the impulses selected for
>>analysis conformed to timing sequences of the Zapruder film, and
>>(c) any fourth shot established a second gun and thus a conspiracy.
>>All four of these impulses turned out to be shots.
>>[...] That is, the acoustics evidence shows
>>that there were at least four shots and perhaps as many as six.
> Not at all. The two "experts" from Queens College were only
> "70 percent sure" about the fourth shot, and no one
> else has been able to find anything like four shots in the
> static. They also claimed that they could find "sound
> vectors" that would enable them to determine the origin
> of the shots, which turned out to be the grassy knoll.
> However, the report from the forensics team flatly
> contradicts the "acoustic evidence". The wounds that
> both Kennedy and Connely recieved obviously showed that
> the bullets had entered their bodies from behind.
> Given that the Grassy knoll was in front of the motorcade,
> I don't see how those shots could have come from there.
I'm sure more knowledgable people can respond to this, but it's my
understanding that there's a great deal of doubt as to the credibility
of the autopsy. Strange goings-on between the departure from dallas and
the arrival in washington (or whereever) of the body,
like changed coffins and conflicting accounts of the condition of the body.
One might conclude that the body they examined in washington isn't the
same one that left dallas.
Rich
Article: 7581 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil!rich
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <rich.685933013@pencil>
Date: 27 Sep 91 00:56:53 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil> <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Organization: UMC Math Dept.
Lines: 7
An afterthought: if you'd watched the Zapruder film, you'd know there's
little doubt as to where the bullets came from. Definitely from the
front. Kennedy's head moved backwards, and Jackie climbed onto the trunk
to retrieve pieces of his skull which landed there. Not what you'd expect
from a shot from the rear.
Rich
Article: 7603 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta
From: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <28122@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 27 Sep 91 11:08:10 GMT
Sender: news@nntpd.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 75
In article <rich.685932707@pencil>, rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel) writes...
>In <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
>
>> Not at all. The two "experts" from Queens College were only
>> "70 percent sure" about the fourth shot, and no one
>> else has been able to find anything like four shots in the
>> static.
The experts who analyzed the acoustics (Bolt, Baranek and Newman of
Cambridge,Ma. (same folks who analyzed the `18 minute' gap in Nixons'
Watergate tapes)) found 6 impulses that could only have come from
gunshots w/ a possible seventh. Considered only possible because two
were hundreths of a second apart. These possible two gunshots supposedly
corresponded with the `head shots' on the Zapruder film where Kennedy
appears to be `pushed forward and violently jerked backward and to the
right.
>> They also claimed that they could find "sound
>> vectors" that would enable them to determine the origin
>> of the shots, which turned out to be the grassy knoll.
>> However, the report from the forensics team flatly
>> contradicts the "acoustic evidence". The wounds that
>> both Kennedy and Connely recieved obviously showed that
>> the bullets had entered their bodies from behind.
Because the forensic team, all Navy doctors at Bethesda, had never
repeat NEVER, done an autopsy previous to doing Kennedy. Seems odd
that the powers that be would put virtual `rookies' on a case such
as this, doesn't it? Also, all the medical personnel at Parkland
Hospital in Dallas, the first people to see and attempt to treat the
President, some of whom had performed many autopsies on gunshot
victims, all stated and still state, that the throat wound in the
front of Kennedy was an entrance wound and that a portion of the
occipital region of Kennedys' head was blown OUT, meaning a bullet
had most definitely entered from the right front and exited out the
rear. This explains Jackie Kennedys' statement to the Warren
Commission of why she was leaning over the back of the limosine
after the head shots, "To retrieve the back of my husbands head."
Also, the motorcycle cop to the right-rear of the limo (looking from
the front) stated to the Warren Commission and the HSAC that he was
splattered with blood and brain fragments.
>
>I'm sure more knowledgable people can respond to this, but it's my
>understanding that there's a great deal of doubt as to the credibility
>of the autopsy. Strange goings-on between the departure from dallas and
>the arrival in washington (or whereever) of the body,
The SS took Kennedys' body out of Texas and to Bethesda by
force. They had absolutely no legal jurisdiction to do so either.
>like changed coffins and conflicting accounts of the condition of the body.
>One might conclude that the body they examined in washington isn't the
>same one that left dallas.
One of the conflicting accounts appears to be the fact that when the
Parkland doctors were treating Kennedy, they used the entrance wound in
the throat to do a tracheotomy (sp?) so that when the `Autopsists' (and
I use that word loosely) at Bethesda saw the wound, it looked more like
an exit rather than an entrance wound. Also the official autopsy photos
(a majority of them anyway) have since been proven to have been cropped
and retouched. All of the Parkland doctors, when shown the `official
photos', remarked that "those are not the wounds that we saw" when
treating the President.
>
>Rich
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7606 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!helios!rigel.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 27 Sep 91 12:03:40 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil> <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> <rich.685933013@pencil>
Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU
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News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4
In article <rich.685933013@pencil>, rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel) writes...
>An afterthought: if you'd watched the Zapruder film, you'd know there's
>little doubt as to where the bullets came from. Definitely from the
>front. Kennedy's head moved backwards, and Jackie climbed onto the trunk
>to retrieve pieces of his skull which landed there. Not what you'd expect
>from a shot from the rear.
>
>Rich
It's not really that predictable. A 10 gram bullet travelling
at 850m/s (approximately the mass and speed of a 6.5mm)
still doesn't have near the momoentum as a 5kg head moving at
10mph. Add to this the vagueries of reflex action, any
acceleration that the limo might be undergoing, etc. and it
becomes very hard to determine the origin of the bullets from
the Zapruder film. As for the pieces of skull and flesh erupting
from the back of JFK's head, think of a meteorite striking the
ground. debris are thrown into the air (opposite to the
meteor's path) and not further into the ground. A similar
thing occurs when a bullet strikes a body. Take a gander
of some of Harold Edgerton's photos of bullets striking apples,
and I think you might get an idea.
If you want some interesting reading, try _Unnatural Death:
the Confessions of a Medical Examiner_ By Michael Baden.
Among other things, he's been chief medical examiner of New
York City, on the Select committee for assasinations as
a fornsics expert, and an advisor in the Klaus von Bulow trials.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Article: 7607 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!helios!rigel.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <22078@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 27 Sep 91 12:33:55 GMT
References: <28122@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU
Reply-To: mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu
Organization: Incontinental Blather, Inc
Lines: 146
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4
In article <28122@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>In article <rich.685932707@pencil>, rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel) writes...
>>In <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
>>
>>> Not at all. The two "experts" from Queens College were only
>>> "70 percent sure" about the fourth shot, and no one
>>> else has been able to find anything like four shots in the
>>> static.
> The experts who analyzed the acoustics (Bolt, Baranek and Newman of
> Cambridge,Ma. (same folks who analyzed the `18 minute' gap in Nixons'
> Watergate tapes)) found 6 impulses that could only have come from
> gunshots w/ a possible seventh.
That's strange. All of the reports I've heard --these being
from reliable sources-- claim that this team couldn't make
heads nor tails of the tape. That's why the two guys from
Queens were called in.
Considered only possible because two
> were hundreths of a second apart. These possible two gunshots supposedly
> corresponded with the `head shots' on the Zapruder film where Kennedy
> appears to be `pushed forward and violently jerked backward and to the
> right.
>>> They also claimed that they could find "sound
>>> vectors" that would enable them to determine the origin
>>> of the shots, which turned out to be the grassy knoll.
>>> However, the report from the forensics team flatly
>>> contradicts the "acoustic evidence". The wounds that
>>> both Kennedy and Connely recieved obviously showed that
>>> the bullets had entered their bodies from behind.
> Because the forensic team, all Navy doctors at Bethesda, had never
> repeat NEVER, done an autopsy previous to doing Kennedy. Seems odd
> that the powers that be would put virtual `rookies' on a case such
> as this, doesn't it?
Not really. In fact it is not only likely, it happens all
too often. Very few coroners are actually forensic specialists
of any sort. In some places, your corpse would be
lucky if even a pathologist were to autopsy you. The team that
autopsied Kennedy was headed by a pathologist with another
pathologist (who did have some experience with bullet wounds).
Neither one were exactly "rookies" in the medical field.
Neither, however, had much in the way of forensics training.
It is entirely plausable that some brass didn't know the
difference between pathology and forensics; it's certainly
not an uncommon mistake. The Bethseda team did, in the
end, document the autopsy both in photographs and x-rays.
Furthermore, were I to conspire to kill JFK, not only would
I arrange who would autopsy him, I'd also make sure that
I hired a reputable forensics expert to do the autopsy.
I sure as hell wouldn't allow unreliable ametures to
give the shebang away. Would you?
> Also, all the medical personnel at Parkland
> Hospital in Dallas, the first people to see and attempt to treat the
> President, some of whom had performed many autopsies on gunshot
> victims, all stated and still state, that the throat wound in the
> front of Kennedy was an entrance wound and that a portion of the
> occipital region of Kennedys' head was blown OUT, meaning a bullet
> had most definitely entered from the right front and exited out the
> rear.
Michael Baden, who probably performed more autopsies that
the everyone in the Parkland ER, and who was chief forensic
expert for the select committee on assasinations, claims that
the wound in Kennedy's back was the enterance wound, and the
wound in Kennedy's throat was an exit wound. His evidence?
JFK's shirt has a round hole in the back, consistent with
an entry wound. The collar has a slit where the bullet
exited, and so does the tie. These slits are the fingerprints
of exit wounds --when a bullet goes through a body, it
begins to both tumble and curve. Furthermore, a photograph
of the wound in Kennedy's back shows what is known as
an "abrasion collar", a feature found in entry wounds but not
in exits. I have seen (what was presented as) a picture of the
wound in Kennedy's back, and there is an identifiable collar there.
If Kennedy's shirt is perforated as the committee said it was,
then there is no doubt in my mind --I know a bit or two about
"terminal ballistics", though I'm no expert-- that the throat
wound is an exit wound.
As for the "bcak of the head blown out" theory, I've already
addressed that.
>>I'm sure more knowledgable people can respond to this, but it's my
>>understanding that there's a great deal of doubt as to the credibility
>>of the autopsy. Strange goings-on between the departure from dallas and
>>the arrival in washington (or whereever) of the body,
> The SS took Kennedys' body out of Texas and to Bethesda by
> force. They had absolutely no legal jurisdiction to do so either.
Exactly. But is that evidence of a conspiracy, or is it
the SS acting on the orders of the Royal Family (namely,
Jackie and Bob)?
>>like changed coffins and conflicting accounts of the condition of the body.
>>One might conclude that the body they examined in washington isn't the
>>same one that left dallas.
> Also the official autopsy photos
> (a majority of them anyway) have since been proven to have been cropped
> and retouched. All of the Parkland doctors, when shown the `official
> photos', remarked that "those are not the wounds that we saw" when
> treating the President.
The question I would asked is what exactly is meant by "cropped"
(ie, how much was done) and "retouched" (exactly how were the
photos retouched)? The Kennedy family had the select committee
publish the head X-rays with the jaw cropped out --they thought
it "looked too much like him" and wanted to be spared the
anguish. I haven't heard about any "proof" of the autopsy
photos being altered; who did it, when and where is it
published?
Whether or not the Parkland staff would identify the photos
as being the wounds they saw is something of a moot point.
I've often seen photographs of things I couldn't recognize,
only to find out later that I should have been able to.
The Parkland staff was working under a different set of circum-
stances when they were attending to Kennedy than when they
saw the pictures. The pictures themselves show only parts
of JFK, while the doctors and nurses at Parkland had the
whole President. That difference in veiwpoint and reference
can easily make all the difference.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Article: 7617 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta
From: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <28155@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 27 Sep 91 16:49:16 GMT
Sender: news@nntpd.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 153
In article <22078@helios.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>In article <28122@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>>>In <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
> Not really. In fact it is not only likely, it happens all
> too often. Very few coroners are actually forensic specialists
> of any sort. In some places, your corpse would be
> lucky if even a pathologist were to autopsy you. The team that
> autopsied Kennedy was headed by a pathologist with another
> pathologist (who did have some experience with bullet wounds).
> Neither one were exactly "rookies" in the medical field.
> Neither, however, had much in the way of forensics training.
> It is entirely plausable that some brass didn't know the
> difference between pathology and forensics; it's certainly
> not an uncommon mistake. The Bethseda team did, in the
> end, document the autopsy both in photographs and x-rays.
Unfortunately all my source material is at home and I happen to be at
work, so all that I'm stating is off the top of my head.....(we're in
trouble now! ;^)
All the head photographs taken at the autopsy, when viewed by the Parkland
doctors, were described as (I'm paraphrasing) "Does not in any way, shape
or form, appear the same as what we witnessed"
As for the x-rays, one in particular stood out as an obvious forgery
even to the HSAC in the late seventies. It was a `head shot' showing
the persons left side of the head and eye socket completely missing, and
the autopsy notes and photographs showed nothing of the kind happened to
Kennedy.
>
> Furthermore, were I to conspire to kill JFK, not only would
> I arrange who would autopsy him, I'd also make sure that
> I hired a reputable forensics expert to do the autopsy.
> I sure as hell wouldn't allow unreliable ametures to
> give the shebang away. Would you?
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you view it, that is
exactly what they did and the reason these `autopsists' won't even talk
about it today is that they are still under orders not to or face courts-
martial, although one of autopsists (damn, I wish I had my references
handy) atated to the HSAC that he thought the bullet hole in the back was
much lower than that shown in the photos.
>
>
> Michael Baden, who probably performed more autopsies that
> the everyone in the Parkland ER, and who was chief forensic
> expert for the select committee on assasinations, claims that
> the wound in Kennedy's back was the enterance wound, and the
> wound in Kennedy's throat was an exit wound.
Made by the same bullet? If so, you read different transcripts of
the HSAC report than I did. The report I read stated that Kennedys'
back wound was located just to the lower left of the right shoulder
blade and when probed at the autopsy, the bullet path was no deeper
than the `length of a finger'. The next question was, where was the
projectile that made this hole. None of the `experts' had an answer.
> His evidence?
> JFK's shirt has a round hole in the back, consistent with
> an entry wound.The collar has a slit where the bullet
> exited, and so does the tie. These slits are the fingerprints
> of exit wounds --when a bullet goes through a body, it
> begins to both tumble and curve.
The `slit' at the collar and what was described as a `nick' on
the tie was caused by the Parkland doctors cutting off the tie
in preparation for doing the tracheotomy. At least that is what
the Parkland doctors testified to. I've have photos of both the
shirt and the tie, and from what I can see, no bullet, entering
or existing could have made this 2-3" slit as straight and even
as it is.
> Furthermore, a photograph
> of the wound in Kennedy's back shows what is known as
> an "abrasion collar", a feature found in entry wounds but not
> in exits. I have seen (what was presented as) a picture of the
> wound in Kennedy's back, and there is an identifiable collar there.
> If Kennedy's shirt is perforated as the committee said it was,
> then there is no doubt in my mind --I know a bit or two about
> "terminal ballistics", though I'm no expert-- that the throat
> wound is an exit wound.
The wound in the back, as stated above, was much too low to have
created the exit at the throat. Also, the path was described as
`no longer' than finger length. As for the identifiable collar
on the back wound, I agree, there was. Funny thing though. Oswald
supposedly used 3 FMJ bullets. FMJ bullets do NOT leave an identifiable
collar, LEAD bullets do.......
> As for the "bcak of the head blown out" theory, I've already
> addressed that.
Sorry, I must have missed that post, would you restate it?
>
>> Also the official autopsy photos
>> (a majority of them anyway) have since been proven to have been cropped
>> and retouched. All of the Parkland doctors, when shown the `official
>> photos', remarked that "those are not the wounds that we saw" when
>> treating the President.
>
> The question I would asked is what exactly is meant by "cropped"
> (ie, how much was done) and "retouched" (exactly how were the
> photos retouched)?
As stated, I don't have my references handy, only remember that
a photographic expert named Robert Groden, who supplied this information
to the HSAC and the main photographic expert for Scotland Yard (can't
remember his name off the top of my head) stated something about
`matte' insertion, which is what they found when viewing the photographs
stereoscopically.
> The Kennedy family had the select committee
> publish the head X-rays with the jaw cropped out --they thought
> it "looked too much like him" and wanted to be spared the
> anguish. I haven't heard about any "proof" of the autopsy
> photos being altered; who did it, when and where is it
> published?
The HSAC Report, and a couple of books that I read that I can't
remember the names of right now. Ooops, one was named High Treason.
>
> Whether or not the Parkland staff would identify the photos
> as being the wounds they saw is something of a moot point.
> I've often seen photographs of things I couldn't recognize,
> only to find out later that I should have been able to.
> The Parkland staff was working under a different set of circum-
> stances when they were attending to Kennedy than when they
> saw the pictures. The pictures themselves show only parts
> of JFK, while the doctors and nurses at Parkland had the
> whole President. That difference in veiwpoint and reference
> can easily make all the difference.
But in an autopsy done by autopsists that know what they are doing,
everything is scaled to make it easy to identify using photographs later.
Also, one of the autopsy photos of the back of the Presidents' head
showed a small entrance wound in the occipital (crown) region, the doctors
and nurses at Parkland, stated, and still state, that there was most
definitely a 3-4" exit wound there. This photo was debunked by the
photographic specialists as being forged by using the above mentioned
`matte insertion' technique.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7644 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!sgi!cdp
From: bcclark@igc.org
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Wh
Message-ID: <1299600004@igc.org>
Date: 27 Sep 91 22:06:00 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil>
Sender: notes@igc.org (Notesfile to Usenet Gateway)
Lines: 3
Nf-ID: #R:rich.685326234@pencil:-951371514:cdp:1299600004:000:87
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!bcclark Sep 27 15:06:00 1991
Cf. the posting of an article by Paul Kangas, private
investigator, in "pn.publiceye".
Article: 7663 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!stanford.edu!mcnc!borg!oscar!davidson
From: davidson@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 28 Sep 91 22:15:35 GMT
References: <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> <rich.685933013@pencil> <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Sender: news@cs.unc.edu
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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In article <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
>In article <rich.685933013@pencil>, rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel) writes...
>>An afterthought: if you'd watched the Zapruder film, you'd know there's
>>little doubt as to where the bullets came from. Definitely from the
>>front. Kennedy's head moved backwards, and Jackie climbed onto the trunk
>>to retrieve pieces of his skull which landed there. Not what you'd expect
>>from a shot from the rear.
>
> It's not really that predictable. A 10 gram bullet travelling
> at 850m/s (approximately the mass and speed of a 6.5mm)
> still doesn't have near the momoentum as a 5kg head moving at
> 10mph. Add to this the vagueries of reflex action, any
> acceleration that the limo might be undergoing, etc. and it
> becomes very hard to determine the origin of the bullets from
> the Zapruder film. [...]
You are saying that a shot from the *back* (the Book Depository) might
hurl JFK's body *backward* at the extreme rate portrayed in the Zapruder
film (his body is hurled backward against the back of the seat in the
space of a couple of frames), due to "reflex action"? The limo was *not*
undergoing acceleration at that time, because of motorcycle police blocking
the path of the limo. Remember how Jackie climbed out onto the trunk of
the limo after JFK was shot? The limo did not accelerate until after she
was forced back into the limo by Secret Service Agent Hill.
Drew
--
Drew Davidson \\ HELP FULLY INFORM JURORS! TELL YOUR FRIENDS:
davidson@cs.unc.edu \\ As a juror, you have the right to vote NOT GUILTY
** LEGALIZE TRUTH ** \\ if you believe the law broken is unjust or wrongly
- FULLY INFORM JURORS * \\ applied, regardless of the facts of the case.
Article: 7671 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!seunet!mcsun!hp4nl!tuegate.tue.nl!gem!gtoal
From: gtoal@gem.stack.urc.tue.nl (Graham Toal)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Wh
Message-ID: <2005@tuegate.tue.nl>
Date: 29 Sep 91 17:10:49 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil> <1299600004@igc.org>
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In article <1299600004@igc.org> bcclark@igc.org writes:
>
>Cf. the posting of an article by Paul Kangas, private
>investigator, in "pn.publiceye".
I'm reading this on usenet; I don't know what 'pn.publiceye' is.
Could you forward the article here please?
Are these strange groups whose postings are often forwarded to
usenet available directly the internet from anywhere, by the way?
Some public-access site?
G
Article: 7674 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!helios!zeus.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 29 Sep 91 17:33:10 GMT
References: <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> <rich.685933013@pencil> <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu>
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In article <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu>, davidson@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes...
>In article <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
[about the movement of JFK's head in the Zapruder film]
>> It's not really that predictable. A 10 gram bullet travelling
>> at 850m/s (approximately the mass and speed of a 6.5mm)
>> still doesn't have near the momoentum as a 5kg head moving at
>> 10mph. Add to this the vagueries of reflex action, any
>> acceleration that the limo might be undergoing, etc. and it
>> becomes very hard to determine the origin of the bullets from
>> the Zapruder film. [...]
>You are saying that a shot from the *back* (the Book Depository) might
>hurl JFK's body *backward* at the extreme rate portrayed in the Zapruder
>film (his body is hurled backward against the back of the seat in the
>space of a couple of frames), due to "reflex action"? The limo was *not*
>undergoing acceleration at that time, because of motorcycle police blocking
>the path of the limo. Remember how Jackie climbed out onto the trunk of
>the limo after JFK was shot? The limo did not accelerate until after she
>was forced back into the limo by Secret Service Agent Hill.
It's certainly plausible. Furthermore, of the three shots fired,
the most probable scenario has the head shot after the other
injury. The whip of the head could easily be a reaction to the
earlier shot. Also, most of the people I have talked to (who
have seen the film in more detail than I have) say that
Kennedy's head jerks forwards a bit, and then backwards.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Article: 7675 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!helios!zeus.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <22153@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 28 Sep 91 20:34:23 GMT
References: <28155@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU
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In article <28155@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>In article <22078@helios.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>>In article <28122@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>> Not really. In fact it is not only likely, it happens all
>> too often. Very few coroners are actually forensic specialists
>> of any sort. In some places, your corpse would be
>> lucky if even a pathologist were to autopsy you. The team that
>> autopsied Kennedy was headed by a pathologist with another
>> pathologist (who did have some experience with bullet wounds).
>> Neither one were exactly "rookies" in the medical field.
>> Neither, however, had much in the way of forensics training.
>> It is entirely plausable that some brass didn't know the
>> difference between pathology and forensics; it's certainly
>> not an uncommon mistake. The Bethseda team did, in the
>> end, document the autopsy both in photographs and x-rays.
> All the head photographs taken at the autopsy, when viewed by the Parkland
> doctors, were described as (I'm paraphrasing) "Does not in any way, shape
> or form, appear the same as what we witnessed"
To begin with, So far as I have seen, the Parkland staff never
saw the hole in JFK's back. The President came into the ER on
his back; the ER staff immediately went to work on the
obvious injuries and didn't turn him over. I can well imagine
that they were suprised when they saw pictures of the back
wound.
An autopsy photo of a wound would be a closeup photo shot
to show only the wound. I can imagine that you have seen
photo puzzles of closeup shots of parts of ordinary objects.
Most people who see them are stumped as to what the object
in the photo actually is; without the context of the entire
object, it is often difficult to fully identify even a part
of it. In fact, some people are even disoriented when shown
one of these closeup photo-puzzles --they can't tell
which side is up.
When JFK was brought into the Parkland ER, and during his
subsequent treatment, his wounds, and the areas around them
would have been covered in blood. Wounds are cleaned
when autopsy photos are made so that the actual injury
shows up better (Typically, photos are also made before
the wound is cleaned; this wasn't done in JFK's case). This could
confuse the someone --I've been confused by something like this.
It's not that improbable at all that it could have confused
the Parkland staff.
Also, the staff at Parkland would have been busy treating
Kennedy rather than recording to memory exactly what his
wounds looked like. Were I to be sent to an ER with gunshot
wounds, I would certainly hope that the doctors would
concentrate on treating me rather that memorizing the
appearance of my injuries, and I'll bet you would to.
I doubt that any member of the medical staff gave much
more than cursory attention to the appearance of the
injuries. Doctors don't pay much attention to these
things, unless they have no idea what caused the injury,
and using the wound to identify the weapon may hold
vital clues to the proper treatment.
Lastly, I remember reading somewhere (though it's a
rather dim memory, and I can't recall the source, so
caveat emptor) that the Parkland staff couldn't agree
with each other as to the appearance of the wounds.
Anyone familiar with survivor's tales of disasters
knows that they are often different and often contradictory.
It's certainly not at all difficult to believe that the
Parkland staff would disagree with the autopsy photos,
even assuming that the photographs are genuine.
Knowing exactly which members of the staff said what
about which injury is terribly important here.
> As for the x-rays, one in particular stood out as an obvious forgery
> even to the HSAC in the late seventies. It was a `head shot' showing
> the persons left side of the head and eye socket completely missing, and
> the autopsy notes and photographs showed nothing of the kind happened to
> Kennedy.
What do you mean by "missing"? Is it "missing" in the sense
that these parts of the skull were blown away ? Were they
missing in the sense that the skull was otherwise broken?
Were they missing in the sense that they had been cropped out?
Were they missing because they were left out of the
original exposure? Because of poor development?
There are many reasons for a part of the skull to
be missing in an x-ray. I also do not remember anyone
in the forensic panel of the HSAC claiming that any
x-ray was "a forgery". "Unusable", perhaps. According to
Baden, the x-rays in the archive were checked with those
in Kennedy's medical records. Baden says nothing about
any "forged" x-rays. He indicates that all of the x-rays
were, in fact, genuine.
I'd like to know where you got the autopsy notes from,
since they were supposed to have been destroyed. Do you
mean the autopsy report?
>> Furthermore, were I to conspire to kill JFK, not only would
>> I arrange who would autopsy him, I'd also make sure that
>> I hired a reputable forensics expert to do the autopsy.
>> I sure as hell wouldn't allow unreliable ametures to
>> give the shebang away. Would you?
> Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you view it, that is
> exactly what they did and the reason these `autopsists' won't even talk
> about it today is that they are still under orders not to or face courts-
> martial, although one of autopsists (damn, I wish I had my references
> handy) atated to the HSAC that he thought the bullet hole in the back was
> much lower than that shown in the photos.
The Bethseda Chief of Pathology (he was the one who did the
autopsy, but I can't remember his name past his rank
--commander) testified at both the Warren Commission and the HSAC
hearings. Why wasn't he court martialled then? ;-> I think that the
Army and Navy doctors would have retired by now, anyway, so
where is the threat of a court martial?
If I remember corectly, the particular bullethole
you are talking about is the head wound (the HSAC
forensics panel paced it about 4 inches higher than
the autopsy did). The Warren commission placed the
back wound too high. If the back wound was much lower than
the shoulder blade
I'm proabaly less impressed by the original autopsy than
most conspiracy buffs. The weights and measures of the
organs, for instance, if correct, mean that Kennedy would
have been dead long before 1963. Ultimately, I find it odd that
so may of the conspiracy writers, while claiming that the
autopsy was a sham, much evidence was altered, and even more
evidence was either stolen or replaced, still find it expedient
to use the either the autopsy reprt, or the statements of the
people who conducted it, as evidence, often without stating
why one evidence should be considered to be genuine and the
others not. But that's my aside.
>> Michael Baden, who probably performed more autopsies that
>> the everyone in the Parkland ER, and who was chief forensic
>> expert for the select committee on assasinations, claims that
>> the wound in Kennedy's back was the enterance wound, and the
>> wound in Kennedy's throat was an exit wound.
> Made by the same bullet? If so, you read different transcripts of
> the HSAC report than I did. The report I read stated that Kennedys'
> back wound was located just to the lower left of the right shoulder
> blade and when probed at the autopsy, the bullet path was no deeper
> than the `length of a finger'. The next question was, where was the
> projectile that made this hole. None of the `experts' had an answer.
The autopsy report (which is the report I think you are talking
about) claims not only that the bullet went into the the body
only a finger length (A military rifle bullet would have gone into
soft flesh far more than just "a finger length"), but that
the bullet somehow backed out. Judge for youself.
>> His evidence?
>> JFK's shirt has a round hole in the back, consistent with
>> an entry wound.The collar has a slit where the bullet
>> exited, and so does the tie. These slits are the fingerprints
>> of exit wounds --when a bullet goes through a body, it
>> begins to both tumble and curve.
> The `slit' at the collar and what was described as a `nick' on
> the tie was caused by the Parkland doctors cutting off the tie
> in preparation for doing the tracheotomy. At least that is what
> the Parkland doctors testified to. I've have photos of both the
> shirt and the tie, and from what I can see, no bullet, entering
> or existing could have made this 2-3" slit as straight and even
> as it is.
My question to you is, how many shirts have you seen that have
had rifle bullets go through them? High speed objects make
for some pretty clean cuts in my experience (which is mainly
non-bullet, non-shirt, but I feel that I can interpolate
to bullets).
>> Furthermore, a photograph
>> of the wound in Kennedy's back shows what is known as
>> an "abrasion collar", a feature found in entry wounds but not
>> in exits. I have seen (what was presented as) a picture of the
>> wound in Kennedy's back, and there is an identifiable collar there.
>> If Kennedy's shirt is perforated as the committee said it was,
> The wound in the back, as stated above, was much too low to have
> created the exit at the throat. Also, the path was described as
> `no longer' than finger length. As for the identifiable collar
> on the back wound, I agree, there was. Funny thing though. Oswald
> supposedly used 3 FMJ bullets. FMJ bullets do NOT leave an identifiable
> collar, LEAD bullets do.......
If you believe, among other things, that Kennedy was sitting
straight up at the time. It has been shown (on NOVA, which
would probably be the esiest source to get, and the best, since
Nova makes extensive use of graphics) that a bullet track entirely
consistent with the HSAC report is possible from Oswalds position
In the school book depository.
Furthermore, any bullet (fmj, lead, etc)will leave an identifiable
abrasion collar, just from the friction of the bullet against the skin.
A lead bullet sometimes leaves a greasy looking discoloration
where some of the lead rubs off, but the forensic panel to the
committee describes a red, rashlike ring around the hole: an
abrasion collar. I've only seen B&W's of the hole, but I did
notice the ring.
> But in an autopsy done by autopsists that know what they are doing,
> everything is scaled to make it easy to identify using photographs later.
To begin with, you assume that the autopsist (and his
photographer) knew what they were doing. They didn't. The person
who shot the pictures was selected for the job solely because
of his security clearance.
> Also, one of the autopsy photos of the back of the Presidents' head
> showed a small entrance wound in the occipital (crown) region, the doctors
> and nurses at Parkland, stated, and still state, that there was most
> definitely a 3-4" exit wound there.
I remeber that the path of the bullet through the head passed
downward going from the back to the front. This creates
a great problem for the grassy knoll theory, in that it is
far harder to justify a track through the head from the
knoll than it is to justify the track through the back/neck
from the depository.
Futhermore, I wonder about the experience
of the ER staff at Parkland. Normally, Emergency rooms at hospitals
are staffed with interns and residents, often along with the
junior nurses. ER tends to be a dirty job, and seniority has its
priveleges. Now, the word that the President was shot would
likely have brought some of the older staff running, but
considering the distance between Parkland and Dealy Plaza,
It seems likely that JFK's arrival would have been greeted by
the normal ER staff. They believed that JFK had been shot
from the front, but I wonder if they would have done so had
they known about the hole in his back.
> This photo was debunked by the
> photographic specialists as being forged by using the above mentioned
> `matte insertion' technique.
I haven't heard this one. Which photographic specialists?
When? Where?
As for the "exploding head", when a bullet penetrates a body,
it creates a "temporary cavity" many, many times the size of the
bullet. In slow motion films of bullets travelling through a
20% gelatin solution, the gelatin balloons away from the
track of the projectile before closing back upon the wound.
This is one way the body absorbs the energy of a projectile.
Of course, this causes a lot of distention around the wound.
In most of the body, this distention can be accomadated without
too much of a problem, since there is nothing to prevent
exapnsion. In the braincase, the tissues are confined
by the skull, and something has to give. That something is often
the skull itself, and the result is seen in the Zapruder film.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Article: 7679 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!ucsd!qualcom.qualcomm.com!maui!rdippold
From: rdippold@maui.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <rdippold.686187102@maui>
Date: 29 Sep 91 23:31:42 GMT
References: <21832@helios.TAMU.EDU> <rich.685933013@pencil> <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu> <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU>
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mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
> It's certainly plausible. Furthermore, of the three shots fired,
> the most probable scenario has the head shot after the other
> injury. The whip of the head could easily be a reaction to the
> earlier shot. Also, most of the people I have talked to (who
> have seen the film in more detail than I have) say that
> Kennedy's head jerks forwards a bit, and then backwards.
That's what you'd expect from a shot from the back... the bullet blew
out a large chunk of the front of his head, producing an equal
backwards foce to snap his head back. Or at least according to a
ballistics expert I know. Maybe we could try an experiment. Think
George Martin would volunteer?
--
Signature length is inversely proportional to intelligence | Ron Dippold
Article: 7695 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta
From: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com (Cougar)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <28275@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 30 Sep 91 13:53:25 GMT
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In article <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>In article <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu>, davidson@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes...
>
>>You are saying that a shot from the *back* (the Book Depository) might
>>hurl JFK's body *backward* at the extreme rate portrayed in the Zapruder
>>film (his body is hurled backward against the back of the seat in the
>>space of a couple of frames), due to "reflex action"? The limo was *not*
>>undergoing acceleration at that time, because of motorcycle police blocking
>>the path of the limo. Remember how Jackie climbed out onto the trunk of
>>the limo after JFK was shot? The limo did not accelerate until after she
>>was forced back into the limo by Secret Service Agent Hill.
>
> It's certainly plausible. Furthermore, of the three shots fired,
> the most probable scenario has the head shot after the other
> injury. The whip of the head could easily be a reaction to the
> earlier shot. Also, most of the people I have talked to (who
> have seen the film in more detail than I have) say that
> Kennedy's head jerks forwards a bit, and then backwards.
It does jerk forward a bit,then backwards and to the left. Matching
the Zapruder film frames with the dictabelt audio which B.B.N. of
Cambridge analazed and showed two shots within hundreths of a second
of each other hit Kennedy in the head might explain this. Shot one
from the rear pushed Kennedy slightly forward. As he is pushed forward
another shot from the grassy knoll pushes him backwards to the right.
>
>
> ______
>___________________/ \________________________________________________
>\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
> \__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
> \__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
> \_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
> \\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
> \/\///
> \/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
> \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7696 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta
From: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "who killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <28277@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 30 Sep 91 14:16:24 GMT
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>In article <28155@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>>In article <22078@helios.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
> All the head photographs taken at the autopsy, when viewed by the Parkland
> doctors, were described as (I'm paraphrasing) "Does not in any way, shape
> or form, appear the same as what we witnessed"
>> To begin with, So far as I have seen, the Parkland staff never
>> saw the hole in JFK's back. The President came into the ER on
>> his back; the ER staff immediately went to work on the
>> obvious injuries and didn't turn him over. I can well imagine
>> that they were suprised when they saw pictures of the back
>> wound.
The Parkland staff definitely saw the gaping hole on the back
of Kennedys' head. I saw interviews w/ the medical staff and
the head nurse at the scene said she was told by one of the
doctors to put a pressure bandage on the wound, but the wound
was so LARGE that the bandage was useless....
>> Lastly, I remember reading somewhere (though it's a
>> rather dim memory, and I can't recall the source, so
>> caveat emptor) that the Parkland staff couldn't agree
>> with each other as to the appearance of the wounds.
That is not true according to the interviews I have seen. They all
agreed....
> As for the x-rays, one in particular stood out as an obvious forgery
> even to the HSAC in the late seventies. It was a `head shot' showing
> the persons left side of the head and eye socket completely missing, and
> the autopsy notes and photographs showed nothing of the kind happened to
> Kennedy.
>> What do you mean by "missing"?
Missing in the sense that the full frontal x-ray showed the left side
of the head and eye socket missing. IE. not there.
>> Baden says nothing about
>> any "forged" x-rays. He indicates that all of the x-rays
>> were, in fact, genuine.
How did he come to this conclusion when he had no body to match these
x-rays to?
>> I'd like to know where you got the autopsy notes from,
>> since they were supposed to have been destroyed. Do you
>> mean the autopsy report?
Some were destroyed and some were later `found'.
>> The Bethseda Chief of Pathology (he was the one who did the
>> autopsy, but I can't remember his name past his rank
>> --commander) testified at both the Warren Commission and the HSAC
>> hearings. Why wasn't he court martialled then? ;-> I think that the
>> Army and Navy doctors would have retired by now, anyway, so
>> where is the threat of a court martial?
His last name was Humes. He wasn't courts-martialed then because
he towed the line and said what he was told to say. Obviously
you have never held any form of government clearance to top secret
information. Retired or not, you are still held accountable.
>> I'm proabaly less impressed by the original autopsy than
>> most conspiracy buffs. The weights and measures of the
>> organs, for instance, if correct, mean that Kennedy would
>> have been dead long before 1963.
What????
>> Ultimately, I find it odd that
>> so may of the conspiracy writers, while claiming that the
>> autopsy was a sham, much evidence was altered, and even more
>> evidence was either stolen or replaced, still find it expedient
>> to use the either the autopsy reprt, or the statements of the
>> people who conducted it, as evidence, often without stating
>> why one evidence should be considered to be genuine and the
>> others not. But that's my aside.
Because when the Parkland staff witnessed an entrance wound to the
throat and a gaping exit wound that blew the back of Kennedys' head
off and later see autopsy photos,x-rays and statements to the contrary
after Kennedys' body was taken out of Texas by force and against the
law, it is circumstantial evidence that someone was trying to cover
up something.
>> The autopsy report (which is the report I think you are talking
>> about) claims not only that the bullet went into the the body
>> only a finger length (A military rifle bullet would have gone into
>> soft flesh far more than just "a finger length"), but that
>> the bullet somehow backed out. Judge for youself.
All the more reason why the medical staff doing the autopsy are
to be considered `rookies'and unreliable. The previous statement
makes absolutely no sense.... `the bullet somehow backed out?'
> The `slit' at the collar and what was described as a `nick' on
> the tie was caused by the Parkland doctors cutting off the tie
> in preparation for doing the tracheotomy. At least that is what
> the Parkland doctors testified to. I've have photos of both the
> shirt and the tie, and from what I can see, no bullet, entering
> or existing could have made this 2-3" slit as straight and even
> as it is.
>> My question to you is, how many shirts have you seen that have
>> had rifle bullets go through them? High speed objects make
>> for some pretty clean cuts in my experience (which is mainly
>> non-bullet, non-shirt, but I feel that I can interpolate
>> to bullets).
The cut was a clean slit. No frayed edges. The doctor who performed
the tracheotomy stated he made the cut in the shirt with a scalpel.
>> If you believe, among other things, that Kennedy was sitting
>> straight up at the time. It has been shown (on NOVA, which
>> would probably be the esiest source to get, and the best, since
>> Nova makes extensive use of graphics) that a bullet track entirely
>> consistent with the HSAC report is possible from Oswalds position
>> In the school book depository.
I have that NOVA program on tape. If you watch the Zapruder film
frame where Kennedy first reacts to being hit in the throat, take note
of the position of the limosine. At that point, it has been proven
by Josiah Thompson(freelance private investigator) that looking out the
sixth floor window of the TSBD there was a tree blocking the limosine
from view. Did `Oswald' fire through the trees?
>> Furthermore, any bullet (fmj, lead, etc)will leave an identifiable
>> abrasion collar, just from the friction of the bullet against the skin.
A low powered projectile would, a moderate or high powered weapon using
FMJ would not, in my experience.
>> I remeber that the path of the bullet through the head passed
>> downward going from the back to the front. This creates
>> a great problem for the grassy knoll theory, in that it is
>> far harder to justify a track through the head from the
>> knoll than it is to justify the track through the back/neck
>> from the depository.
Not if the medical personal stated they saw a 3-4" gaping exit wound
in the back of the head, a motorcycle cop at the left rear of the
motorcade getting sprayed with blood/brains and Jackie Kennedy
reaching out over the trunk of the limo to retrieve the back of her
husbands head.
>> They believed that JFK had been shot
>> from the front, but I wonder if they would have done so had
>> they known about the hole in his back.
Interviews I've seen show that the medical personnel at Parland
did know about the gaping hole in the back of his head, which
led them to believe he had been hit from the front.
> This photo was debunked by the
> photographic specialists as being forged by using the above mentioned
> `matte insertion' technique.
>> I haven't heard this one. Which photographic specialists?
>> When? Where?
Photographic specialist to the HSAC, Robert Groden as well as
Scotland Yard. There were a number of photos, autopsy, as well as
the photos supposedly of Oswald standing in his back yard holding
a rifle, that were debunked per the HSAC report as well as High Treason
among many other publications I have read.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7697 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!stanford.edu!mcnc!borg!homer!davidson
From: davidson@homer.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 30 Sep 91 17:06:52 GMT
References: <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu> <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Sender: news@cs.unc.edu
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In article <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu writes:
>In article <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu>, davidson@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes...
>>In article <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
>>> [about the movement of JFK's head in the Zapruder film]
>>> It's not really that predictable. A 10 gram bullet travelling
>>> at 850m/s (approximately the mass and speed of a 6.5mm)
>>> still doesn't have near the momoentum as a 5kg head moving at
>>> 10mph. Add to this the vagueries of reflex action, any
>>> acceleration that the limo might be undergoing, etc. and it
>>> becomes very hard to determine the origin of the bullets from
>>> the Zapruder film. [...]
>>
>>You are saying that a shot from the *back* (the Book Depository) might
>>hurl JFK's body *backward* at the extreme rate portrayed in the Zapruder
>>film (his body is hurled backward against the back of the seat in the
>>space of a couple of frames), due to "reflex action"? The limo was *not*
>>undergoing acceleration at that time [...]
>
> It's certainly plausible.
No, it is not at all plausible. Please explain how a shot from the back
could hurl JFK's head in any direction other than forward.
> Furthermore, of the three shots fired,
> the most probable scenario has the head shot after the other
> injury. The whip of the head could easily be a reaction to the
> earlier shot.
...which also came from the back, according to the Warren Commission.
What kind of reaction are you talking about? Please elaborate. Note
that the earlier shot came a least 2 seconds before, unless there
was more than one gunman.
> Also, most of the people I have talked to (who
> have seen the film in more detail than I have) say that
> Kennedy's head jerks forwards a bit, and then backwards.
This corresponds to the analysis of the audio tape which portrays two
gunshot sounds at exactly that instant.
On another subject, how do you explain all of the wounds, Mr. Todd? Of
the three shots you and the Warren Commission claim were fired, the
commission says that one missed (striking the pavement and ricocheting
a piece of concrete into Jame Tague's cheek). This leaves two bullets
to account for the injury of JFK (including a back wound, throat wound,
and fatal head wound), and all of Connally's wounds (in and out of the
trunk, in and out of the knee, and in and out of the wrist). Do you
really think that one bullet caused all of JFK's and Connally's wounds,
except for the fatal JFK head shot?
Drew
--
Drew Davidson \\ HELP FULLY INFORM JURORS! TELL YOUR FRIENDS:
davidson@cs.unc.edu \\ As a juror, you have the right to vote NOT GUILTY
** LEGALIZE TRUTH ** \\ if you believe the law broken is unjust or wrongly
- FULLY INFORM JURORS * \\ applied, regardless of the facts of the case.
Article: 7699 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!zeus.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <3973@tamsun.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 30 Sep 91 20:16:35 GMT
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In article <28275@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com (Cougar) writes...
>In article <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>>>You are saying that a shot from the *back* (the Book Depository) might
>>>hurl JFK's body *backward* at the extreme rate portrayed in the Zapruder
>>>film (his body is hurled backward against the back of the seat in the
>>>space of a couple of frames), due to "reflex action"?
>> It's certainly plausible. Furthermore, of the three shots fired,
>> the most probable scenario has the head shot after the other
>> injury. The whip of the head could easily be a reaction to the
>> earlier shot. Also, most of the people I have talked to (who
>> have seen the film in more detail than I have) say that
>> Kennedy's head jerks forwards a bit, and then backwards.
> It does jerk forward a bit,then backwards and to the left. Matching
> the Zapruder film frames with the dictabelt audio which B.B.N. of
> Cambridge analazed and showed two shots within hundreths of a second
> of each other hit Kennedy in the head might explain this. Shot one
> from the rear pushed Kennedy slightly forward. As he is pushed forward
> another shot from the grassy knoll pushes him backwards to the right.
I just checked the HSAC final report, and it says no such thing.
BBN and the Queens College twosome (Weiss, and a name I can't
hope to spell) did an echo analysis on the tape. According
to BBN, of the six "impulse sequences", two could not have
been gunshots, according to their mesaurements. Of the other
four, BBN calculated that there was a 50% probability
that any noise pulses were, in fact, gunshots. BBN and W-A,
never said anything about whether the shots hit the President;
all they tried to do was try and figure out how many of the
pulses had echo signatures that were consistent with a shooter
either on the grassy knoll of the TSBD.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
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Article: 7709 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!zeus.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "who killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <3976@tamsun.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 30 Sep 91 20:31:48 GMT
References: <28277@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Sender: usenet@tamsun.TAMU.EDU
Reply-To: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu
Organization: Incontinental Blather, Inc
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In article <28277@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>>In article <28155@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>>>In article <22078@helios.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>> All the head photographs taken at the autopsy, when viewed by the Parkland
>> doctors, were described as (I'm paraphrasing) "Does not in any way, shape
>> or form, appear the same as what we witnessed"
>>> To begin with, So far as I have seen, the Parkland staff never
>>> saw the hole in JFK's back. The President came into the ER on
>>> his back;
> The Parkland staff definitely saw the gaping hole on the back
> of Kennedys' head.
You may notice that I used the word "back" without conjuctive
use of the wod "head". Maybe I was talking about JFK's back
(ie, the part of the body between the back of the neck and the
buttocks), and not the back of the head?
>>> Lastly, I remember reading somewhere (though it's a
>>> rather dim memory, and I can't recall the source, so
>>> caveat emptor) that the Parkland staff couldn't agree
>>> with each other as to the appearance of the wounds.
> That is not true according to the interviews I have seen. They all
> agreed....
The question would now be, do they have any pictures/descriptions?
>> As for the x-rays, one in particular stood out as an obvious forgery
>> even to the HSAC in the late seventies. It was a `head shot' showing
>> the persons left side of the head and eye socket completely missing,
>>> What do you mean by "missing"?
> Missing in the sense that the full frontal x-ray showed the left side
> of the head and eye socket missing. IE. not there.
I note that you not only deleted my question,
("Not there" could mean that the skull had been shattered. It
could also mean that the X-ray was badly developed, or cropped)
but you have deigned to answer my question in full as well
(more on this in a sec)
>>> Baden says nothing about any "forged" x-rays. He indicates that
>>> all of the x-rays were, in fact, genuine.
> How did he come to this conclusion when he had no body to match these
> x-rays to?
As I remember saying before, Kennedy's private doctors had a wealth
of x-rays, notes, dental records, etc, that were compared to those
in the archives. They matched. The same with the photgraphs,
except the anthropologists and other experts had even more
materiel with which to compare. The HSAC report makes no
exceptions when it concludes that the x-rays, photos, etc.
are all of Kennedy.
You've made a big deal about the fact that Humes was told
to keep quiet about the autopsy, or face a court martial.
However, I have noted that he was allowed to testify.
You replied (right after jumping to a conclusion), implying
that the autopsy is somehow classified. I will now note that
the records of the autopsy have been released, apparently
to open records. Why can Humes be prosecuted for violating
secrecy rules when the information he supposedly carries
isn't a secret anymore?
>>> The weights and measures of the
>>> organs, for instance, if correct, mean that Kennedy would
>>> have been dead long before 1963.
> What????
Humes has (among other mistakes) Kennedy's liver (by mass)
much smaller than would keep JFK alive.
>>> Ultimately, I find it odd that
>>> so may of the conspiracy writers, while claiming that the
>>> autopsy was a sham, [...] still find it expedient
>>> to use the either the autopsy report[etc], as evidence, often
>>> without stating why one evidence should be considered to be genuine
>>> and the others not. But that's my aside.
> Because when the Parkland staff witnessed an entrance wound to the
> throat and a gaping exit wound that blew the back of Kennedys' head
> off and later see autopsy photos,x-rays and statements to the contrary
> after Kennedys' body was taken out of Texas by force and against the
> law, it is circumstantial evidence that someone was trying to cover
> up something.
My question is (and I should have asked this before), how did
the Parkland staff know which wound was an exit and which wound
was an entrance? (I've already had my say on why its quite
reasonable to expect them not to recognize the autopsy photos.
As for a coverup, who was trying to coverup what? Was the SS
trying to coverup an assassination, or was the Kennedy family
trying to cover up the fact that the President was suffering
from a debilitating disease?
>>> The autopsy report claims not only that the bullet went into the
>>> the body only a finger length, but that the bullet somehow backed
>>> out. Judge for youself.
> All the more reason why the medical staff doing the autopsy are
> to be considered `rookies'and unreliable. The previous statement
> makes absolutely no sense.... `the bullet somehow backed out?'
That is what Humes, in his autopsy report, claimed.
>> The `slit' at the collar and what was described as a `nick' on
>> the tie was caused by the Parkland doctors cutting off the tie
>> in preparation for doing the tracheotomy. At least that is what
>> the Parkland doctors testified to.
>>> My question to you is, how many shirts have you seen that have
>>> had rifle bullets go through them? High speed objects make
>>> for some pretty clean cuts in my experience
> The cut was a clean slit. No frayed edges. The doctor who performed
> the tracheotomy stated he made the cut in the shirt with a scalpel.
Why is a doctor making a slit in a shirt in order to treat a
patient? An ER staff member would cut the shirt off (and tie), and
not make a slit in it to get to a patient. Furthermore, Baden
sounds certain when he identifies the slits as exit phenomena.
>>> ...that a bullet track entirely
>>> consistent with the HSAC report is possible from Oswalds position
>>> In the school book depository.
> I have that NOVA program on tape. If you watch the Zapruder film
> frame where Kennedy first reacts to being hit in the throat, take note
> of the position of the limosine. At that point, it has been proven
> by Josiah Thompson that looking out the sixth floor window of the
> TSBD there was a tree blocking the limosine from view.
Well, my parents live in Dallas; I spent my last two years
before college there. I've been to Dealy Plaza many times, and
recently to the sixth floor. From what I saw, the tree really
wouldn't obscure a shot, particularly in late November, when the
trees have no leaves.
>>> Furthermore, any bullet (fmj, lead, etc)will leave an identifiable
>>> abrasion collar, just from the friction of the bullet against the skin.
> A low powered projectile would, a moderate or high powered weapon using
> FMJ would not, in my experience.
And your experience?
>>> I remeber that the path of the bullet through the head passed
>>> downward going from the back to the front. This creates
>>> a great problem for the grassy knoll theory, in that it is
>>> far harder to justify a track through the head...
> Not if the medical personal stated they saw a 3-4" gaping exit wound
> in the back of the head, a motorcycle cop at the left rear of the
> motorcade getting sprayed with blood/brains and Jackie Kennedy
> reaching out over the trunk of the limo to retrieve the back of her
> husbands head.
I've already explained that a shot into the back of the head
would result in what Jackie and the moto-cop observed.
Furthermore, I would really like to know how the ER staff
came to the conclusion on which wound was an exit wound,
and which wound was an enterance. I would also like to
know where your information about the Parkland staff comes from.
> Interviews I've seen show that the medical personnel at Parland
> did know about the gaping hole in the back of his head, which
> led them to believe he had been hit from the front.
So, the Parkland team decided that the wound in the back of
the head was an exit because the rear wound was larger than the
forward one? That's it? That's really not all that much to go on.
>> This photo was debunked by the
>> photographic specialists as being forged by using the above mentioned
>> `matte insertion' technique.
>>> I haven't heard this one. Which photographic specialists?
>>> When? Where?
> Photographic specialist to the HSAC, Robert Groden as well as
> Scotland Yard. There were a number of photos, autopsy,
> that were debunked per the HSAC report as well as High Treason
> among many other publications I have read.
The HSAC final report specifically states (on page 43) that the
photos and x-rays were examined by "photographic scientists and
radiologists", who did not find any evidence of forgery or
alteration.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Article: 7718 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!zeus.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <3985@tamsun.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 1 Oct 91 04:16:18 GMT
References: <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu> <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Sender: usenet@tamsun.TAMU.EDU
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In article <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu>, davidson@homer.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes...
>In article <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu writes:
>>In article <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu>, davidson@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes...
>>>You are saying that a shot from the *back* (the Book Depository) might
>>>hurl JFK's body *backward* at the extreme rate portrayed in the Zapruder
>>>film (his body is hurled backward against the back of the seat in the
>>>space of a couple of frames), due to "reflex action"?
>> It's certainly plausible.
>No, it is not at all plausible. Please explain how a shot from the back
>could hurl JFK's head in any direction other than forward.
To begin with, in the Zapruder film, JFK's head does jerk
forwards immediately before launching backwards.
Think about where JFK was hit in the head. The bullet tracked
straight through the cerebrum of JFK's brain; in fact, right
through the motor center. This could easily cause a massive
contract signal to be sent to the neck, back, and shoulders.
An expert testified this to the HSAC; he had a lot of films
of goats being shot in the head to prove his point. Remember:
goats died for Zapruder's sins.
>> Furthermore, of the three shots fired,
>> the most probable scenario has the head shot after the other
>> injury. The whip of the head could easily be a reaction to the
>> earlier shot.
>....which also came from the back, according to the Warren Commission.
[According also to the HSAC forensics panel.]
>What kind of reaction are you talking about? Please elaborate. Note
>that the earlier shot came a least 2 seconds before, unless there
>was more than one gunman.
What do I have to say? Have you ever seen someone in great
pain? There is a tendencey for people to bob their heads
back and forth, and sometimes, the motion is more that just
a bob of the head.
>> Also, most of the people I have talked to (who
>> have seen the film in more detail than I have) say that
>> Kennedy's head jerks forwards a bit, and then backwards.
>This corresponds to the analysis of the audio tape which portrays two
>gunshot sounds at exactly that instant.
The audio tape portrays "impulse sequences" which may or
may not be gun shots. The evidence for specific shots is
far from clear, and the methods used by the acoustics
people is rather kludgy.
It is difficult to believe that two shots, fired from two
opposite directions would hit JFK in the head in the way
that the "two shots at the same time" theory would indicate.
Having two bullets pass each other on basically the same track
is one hell of a coincidence, especially when the forensic
evidence for the entry of one cannot be found.
>On another subject, how do you explain all of the wounds, Mr. Todd? Of
>the three shots you and the Warren Commission claim were fired, the
>commission says that one missed . This leaves two bullets
>to account for the injury of JFK (including a back wound, throat wound,
>and fatal head wound), and all of Connally's wounds (in and out of the
>trunk, in and out of the knee, and in and out of the wrist). Do you
>really think that one bullet caused all of JFK's and Connally's wounds,
>except for the fatal JFK head shot?
Please also consider that the "two bullet theory" is not only
advocated by me and the Warren comission, but by the HSAC
as well.
This gets into the famous "magic bullet" theory, but first, let
me make one thing clear. The bullet never entered the knee;
there was no knee wound, only a superficial (about a half-inch
deep) flesh wound in Connely's thigh. It is entirely plausible
that a bullet from the Mannlicher-Carcano could enter JFK's
body in the back, exit out the throat, penetrate into
Connely's back, exit at the nipple (nicking a rib in the
process) , hit Connely's wrist, smashing into his radius,
and finally, spent, gouging itself into Connely's thigh.
Among other things I use as evidence is the HSAC forensic
panel's opinion that the hole in Kennedy's back is and entrance
wound; the fact that the wound in Connely's back is, as
per Baden, a "two inch long vertical scar" (the bullet
that made this hole was a tumbler that hit Connely sideways;
the only reason bullets tumble is that they hit something else
first); the identification of metal fragments taken from
Connely's wrist as belonging to ammunition for the M-C
rifle; the fact absence of an exit wound for the wound
in the throat, eliminating the possibility that the
throat wound is an entry wound; findings by the HSAC
and others that confirm that such a ballistic path is possible
given the postulated postions and postures of Oswald,
Kennedy, and Connely; the fact that the bullet encountered
nothing of substance until it hit Connely's wristbones
(the rib is a bone, but it's pretty thin. It has to, among
other things, flex to accomidate respiration). This does
not include, of course, the "pristine" or "mostly undamaged"
bullet. Satisfied?
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Article: 7752 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpcc05!hpcuhb!hpcupt3!chuckdp
From: chuckdp@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com (Chuck Dupree)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <50120014@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com>
Date: 1 Oct 91 00:38:43 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 144
/ busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com / 9:49 am Sep 27, 1991 /
writes:
>All the head photographs taken at the autopsy, when viewed by the
>Parkland doctors, were described as (I'm paraphrasing) "Does not in
>any way, shape or form, appear the same as what we witnessed"
It's true that you're paraphrasing, but it's also true that ALL the
doctors and nurses from Parkland repudiated the photographs when they
saw them for the first time (several years later; why weren't the
photos made available originally???).
>As for the x-rays, one in particular stood out as an obvious forgery
>even to the HSAC in the late seventies. It was a `head shot' showing
>the persons left side of the head and eye socket completely missing,
>and the autopsy notes and photographs showed nothing of the kind
>happened to Kennedy.
The discrepancy was as you stated. However, one doctor at Parkland
described a hole in the left side of the head that fit with the X-ray,
and claimed that this was the cause of death. Such a wound would be
consistent with a shot fired from the left front, either from the
overpass or from the storm sewer. Many witnesses claimed that shots
were fired from several directions, and that shots came in volleys.
The WC ignored this evidence, and did not take testimony from any of
these people.
For complete details on the photographs, the modifications to the body
made sometime between the removal of the coffin at gunpoint from
Parkland and the beginning of the autopsy at Bethesda, and a host of
details about the autopsy itself, read "Best Evidence" by David
Lifton.
Note that it was the *coffin* that the Secret Service took at gunpoint
from Parkland. As far as I know, there is no first-hand evidence that
the coffin contained the body, so some have theorized that the SS may
have taken the coffin to prevent anyone from realizing that the body
was not in that coffin. There is a great deal of evidence to indicate
that the body arrived at Bethesda in a different coffin from the one
in which it was supposedly loaded onto the plane in Dallas. And two
FBI agents who were present at the autopsy said in their report that
when the body arrived for the autopsy at Bethesda, "surgery to the
head area" had been performed. Once again, see "Best Evidence."
>[ someone else wrote: ]
> Furthermore, were I to conspire to kill JFK, not only would
> I arrange who would autopsy him, I'd also make sure that
> I hired a reputable forensics expert to do the autopsy.
> I sure as hell wouldn't allow unreliable ametures to
> give the shebang away.
1) If I were conspiring to kill the President, I'd make sure that the
autopsists were manipulable. I do not believe that *anyone* whose
place in the government was high enough to make decisions on the
autopsy of a President could be unaware of the importance of
experience in forensics.
2) If I were conspiring, I'd make sure that someone with authority to
control things was at the autopsy. The three doctors who performed
the autopsy told the Warren Commission and the HSCA that they had
received various orders to skip certain procedures that they wanted to
perform. They would not say the names of the officers who gave these
orders, but we know that there was at least one admiral and one or
more generals there (see "Best Evidence," "High Treason,"
(Groden/Livingstone) and "Crossfire" (Jim Marrs)).
3) If, as a conspirator, I wanted to kill the President without
attracting any more attention than necessary, I would have used one of
the poisons available at the time (according to CIA testimony before
Congress) that would have induced what appeared to be a natural heart
attack. My opinion is that the conspirators decided that the
President should be publicly executed in such a way as to make a
strong statement to all politicians and to the public.
>... one of autopsists (damn, I wish I had my references handy) atated
>to the HSAC that he thought the bullet hole in the back was much lower
>than that shown in the photos.
In fact, the placement of the so-called bullet hole in the back (1)
changed a few times as the investigation proceeded, and (2) was not
consistent with the location of the bullet hole in JFK's shirt.
> Michael Baden, who probably performed more autopsies that
> the everyone in the Parkland ER, and who was chief forensic
> expert for the select committee on assasinations, claims that
> the wound in Kennedy's back was the enterance wound, and the
> wound in Kennedy's throat was an exit wound.
The autopsists claimed this too. But ALL the doctors at Parkland who
expressed an opinion claimed the opposite, and the Parkland doctors
were the only ones who saw the original wounds.
[ someone else: ]
> If Kennedy's shirt is perforated as the committee said it was,
> then there is no doubt in my mind --I know a bit or two about
> "terminal ballistics", though I'm no expert-- that the throat
> wound is an exit wound.
Not a single person at Parkland agreed. Several doctors there saw the
original wounds. Some of these doctors had treated several HUNDRED
bullet wounds before seeing JFK's body. Every one who expressed an
opinion said that the neck wound was an entrance wound.
>
>> Also the official autopsy photos
>> (a majority of them anyway) have since been proven to have been cropped
>> and retouched. All of the Parkland doctors, when shown the `official
>> photos', remarked that "those are not the wounds that we saw" when
>> treating the President.
>
> As stated, I don't have my references handy, only remember that
> a photographic expert named Robert Groden, who supplied this information
> to the HSAC and the main photographic expert for Scotland Yard (can't
> remember his name off the top of my head) stated something about
> `matte' insertion, which is what they found when viewing the photographs
> stereoscopically.
Exactly. Groden was one of two authors of "High Treason"; read that
book for details on the rigging of the photographic evidence.
> The Kennedy family had the select committee
> publish the head X-rays with the jaw cropped out --they thought
> it "looked too much like him" and wanted to be spared the
> anguish.
This is the excuse given by the Warren Commission, but there's no
evidence that I ever encountered that it's true. The WC came up with
a number of reasons to seal the photos. But it seems to me that it's
more likely that they did this to prevent the exposure of the obvious
fakery involved in the photos.
For my money, the most coherent, best reasoned, least emotional book
on the entire assassination is Jim Marrs' "Crossfire". David Lifton's
"Best Evidence" is clean and well-written, covering only the autopsy
and the associated mysteries of the bullet paths, holes in the
clothing, and so on. "High Treason" is revealing, but not
particularly well-written. But it has a very valuable afterword
written by Fletcher Prouty, who was liason from the military to the
CIA for several years (eight or so). He calls the JFK assassination a
coup d'etat.
- ced
Article: 7762 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!news
From: lwb@cs.utexas.edu (Lance W. Bledsoe)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <kejnl9INN9j0@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 2 Oct 91 14:58:49 GMT
References: <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu> <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Organization: U Texas Dept of Computer Sciences, Austin TX
Lines: 32
In article <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu> davidson@homer.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes:
>In article <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu writes:
>>In article <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu>, davidson@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes...
>>>In article <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
>>>> [about the movement of JFK's head in the Zapruder film]
>>>> It's not really that predictable. A 10 gram bullet travelling
>>>> at 850m/s (approximately the mass and speed of a 6.5mm)
>>>> still doesn't have near the momoentum as a 5kg head moving at
>>>> 10mph. Add to this the vagueries of reflex action, any
>>>> acceleration that the limo might be undergoing, etc. and it
>>>> becomes very hard to determine the origin of the bullets from
>>>> the Zapruder film. [...]
>>>
I don't know if a bullet could cause his head to snap back as it did in
the Zapruder film, but it's pretty clear to me that, from that same film,
the entry of the bullet was through the front and the exit was through
the softball sized hole in the back (of his head).
It is also interesting to note that, although the president's head was
spewed all over the back of the limo, the autopsy (sp) photo showed
a perfect head with a pincil-sized hole (or mark?) on it. Perhaps
that's where they got the idea of a creature that can put itself back
together again for the "Terminator II" movie. :-)
--
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
| Lance W. Bledsoe, President | lwb@cs.utexas.edu |
| Avalon Software, Inc. | (512) 345-7830 |
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
Article: 7768 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tamsun!zeus.tamu.edu!mst4298
From: mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <4483@tamsun.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 2 Oct 91 16:19:50 GMT
References: <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu> <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu> <kejnl9INN9j0@cs.utexas.edu>
Sender: usenet@tamsun.TAMU.EDU
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In article <kejnl9INN9j0@cs.utexas.edu>, lwb@cs.utexas.edu (Lance W. Bledsoe) writes...
>>>>In article <22077@helios.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@rigel.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes:
>>>>> [about the movement of JFK's head in the Zapruder film]
>>>>> It's not really that predictable. A 10 gram bullet travelling
>>>>> at 850m/s (approximately the mass and speed of a 6.5mm)
>>>>> still doesn't have near the momoentum as a 5kg head moving at
>>>>> 10mph. Add to this the vagueries of reflex action, any
>>>>> acceleration that the limo might be undergoing, etc. and it
>>>>> becomes very hard to determine the origin of the bullets from
>>>>> the Zapruder film. [...]
>I don't know if a bullet could cause his head to snap back as it did in
>the Zapruder film, but it's pretty clear to me that, from that same film,
>the entry of the bullet was through the front and the exit was through
>the softball sized hole in the back (of his head).
I'm glad to hear that, but, I wonder, why is it "so clear" to
you that the President was shot from the front? What do you
know that the rest of the world doesn't? Inquiring minds
want to know!
>It is also interesting to note that, although the president's head was
>spewed all over the back of the limo, the autopsy (sp) photo showed
>a perfect head with a pincil-sized hole (or mark?) on it.
The explanation is that the hole is on a flap of skin that
was "blown out" when the back of JFK's head did the "explosion
thing". Instead of being shreaded, the skin just gave way,
tore, and formed the flap. It makes perfect sense if you
think about the "temporary cavity" explanation for an
enterance wound in the back of the head combined with
the eruption of JFK's tissues. The flap was put back into
place for the photo.
______
___________________/ \________________________________________________
\__ / mst4298\\\ _______/
\__ Mitchell S \ @zeus. /// Thunder, Perfect Mind ______////
\__ Todd \.tamu./// All the usual, and even more _______////
\_____________\ edu///________________________________________////
\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////
\/\///
\/ Are you happy now, Clark?\
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Article: 7769 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!decwrl!sgi!shinobu!odin!sgihub!zola!horus.esd.sgi.com!thant
From: thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <n1cqh7g@zola.esd.sgi.com>
Date: 2 Oct 91 15:59:12 GMT
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Much of the discussion of the assasination of JFK is based on the
assumption that the people behind the assasination were the same
people behind covering up a possible conspiracy. It is possible,
and I think likely, that the conspirators wanted people to know
there was a conspiracy, possibly to trigger a war with Cuba. The
Warren Commission all but blatantly stated that it's main purpose
was to disprove a conspiracy and restore faith in the legitimacy
of the U.S. government. But that doesn't mean that they were
necessarily in on the conspiracy. They may have just been trying
to prevent the conspirators from achieving their real goals.
thant
Article: 7771 of alt.conspiracy
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From: colten@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (marc.colten)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Summary: Why cover it up?
Message-ID: <1991Oct2.183302.28472@cbfsb.att.com>
Date: 2 Oct 91 18:33:02 GMT
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In article <n1cqh7g@zola.esd.sgi.com>, thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman) writes:
> Much of the discussion of the assasination of JFK is based on the
> assumption that the people behind the assasination were the same
> people behind covering up a possible conspiracy. It is possible,
> and I think likely, that the conspirators wanted people to know
> there was a conspiracy, possibly to trigger a war with Cuba. The
> Warren Commission all but blatantly stated that it's main purpose
> was to disprove a conspiracy and restore faith in the legitimacy
> of the U.S. government. But that doesn't mean that they were
> necessarily in on the conspiracy. They may have just been trying
> to prevent the conspirators from achieving their real goals.
This post helped me decide to post some thoughts on what I've been
hearing about the "cover-up" about Kennedy. The most recent theory
that I've heard consists of a plot to kill Kennedy and then temporarily
steal the body to perform surgery to hide the nature of the wounds.
I have the following questions:
1) Why would anyone want to kill JFK? While this sounds obvious,
remember - there have been a number of presidents assassinated
and from what I've seen none of the VP's changed anything in
national policy that would have justified it. Certainly a
lone psychopath, or a small group, would have their reasons, but
ALL the conspiracy theories seem to require a group of highly
intelligent, well-placed plotters (many in our government) with
the time to cooly make this decision. Why would they bother?
2) Why shoot him? If these plotters were so highly placed in the
US establishment that they seem to be able to manipulate time
and space and arrange for people to forget or die, for film to
change, for bodies to be moved at will - why a public shooting?
Why not a crash of Air Force One, or a heart attack or whatever?
3) The recent book (Best Evidence?) suggests that the same people
who arranged for JFK to be shot from the front also temporarily
stole his body to perform this surgery to hide the fact that he
was shot from the front. Are we to believe that they were
brilliant and stupid at the same time? The main questions are:
a. If it was so important that no one know he was shot from
the front, why shoot him from the front? Why not just have
2-3 assassins shooting from the rear using the same model rifle?
All the bullets would come from the same direction
and any differences in bullets would be explained away a
lot easier than bullets coming from different directions.
b. How could they know in advance that they could steal the
body? What if Jackie Kennedy was so distraught that
she planted herself on the casket and refused to be moved?
What was to be their alternate plan - kill her too?
marc colten
Article: 7773 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!stanford.edu!mcnc!borg!homer!davidson
From: davidson@homer.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <6524@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 2 Oct 91 18:14:32 GMT
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In article <4483@tamsun.TAMU.EDU> mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu writes:
>In article <kejnl9INN9j0@cs.utexas.edu>, lwb@cs.utexas.edu (Lance W. Bledsoe) writes...
>>It is also interesting to note that, although the president's head was
>>spewed all over the back of the limo, the autopsy (sp) photo showed
>>a perfect head with a pincil-sized hole (or mark?) on it.
>
> The explanation is that the hole is on a flap of skin that
> was "blown out" when the back of JFK's head did the "explosion
> thing". Instead of being shreaded, the skin just gave way,
> tore, and formed the flap.
What real evidence do you have for this flap? A theory mentioned in
the Warren Commission report does not constitute evidence. There is
eyewitness testimony from the doctors at Dallas that there was no
flap. Rather, there was a large hole -- an exit wound.
> It makes perfect sense if you
> think about the "temporary cavity" explanation for an
> enterance wound in the back of the head combined with
> the eruption of JFK's tissues.
Please explain this sentence.
Drew
--
Drew Davidson \\ HELP FULLY INFORM JURORS! TELL YOUR FRIENDS:
davidson@cs.unc.edu \\ As a juror, you have the right to vote NOT GUILTY
** LEGALIZE TRUTH ** \\ if you believe the law broken is unjust or wrongly
- FULLY INFORM JURORS * \\ applied, regardless of the facts of the case.
Article: 7777 of alt.conspiracy
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From: busta@vicki.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct2.172034.2870@engage.pko.dec.com>
Date: 2 Oct 91 18:10:01 GMT
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In article <3973@tamsun.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>In article <28275@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com (Cougar) writes...
>>In article <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>
>
>> It does jerk forward a bit,then backwards and to the left. Matching
>> the Zapruder film frames with the dictabelt audio which B.B.N. of
>> Cambridge analazed and showed two shots within hundreths of a second
>> of each other hit Kennedy in the head might explain this. Shot one
>> from the rear pushed Kennedy slightly forward. As he is pushed forward
>> another shot from the grassy knoll pushes him backwards to the right.
>
> I just checked the HSAC final report, and it says no such thing.
>
I never attributed the above statement to the HSAC.
> BBN and the Queens College twosome (Weiss, and a name I can't
> hope to spell) did an echo analysis on the tape. According
> to BBN, of the six "impulse sequences", two could not have
> been gunshots, according to their mesaurements. Of the other
> four, BBN calculated that there was a 50% probability
> that any noise pulses were, in fact, gunshots.
Not according to the documentation included in `High Treason'.
BBN and W-A,
> never said anything about whether the shots hit the President;
> all they tried to do was try and figure out how many of the
> pulses had echo signatures that were consistent with a shooter
> either on the grassy knoll of the TSBD.
Agreed.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@vicki.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!vicki.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%vicki.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7780 of alt.conspiracy
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From: busta@vicki.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "who killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct2.181024.4054@engage.pko.dec.com>
Date: 2 Oct 91 18:24:37 GMT
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In article <3976@tamsun.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>In article <28277@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
> You may notice that I used the word "back" without conjuctive
> use of the wod "head". Maybe I was talking about JFK's back
> (ie, the part of the body between the back of the neck and the
> buttocks), and not the back of the head?
Agreed. My mistake.
>>>> Lastly, I remember reading somewhere (though it's a
>>>> rather dim memory, and I can't recall the source, so
>>>> caveat emptor) that the Parkland staff couldn't agree
>>>> with each other as to the appearance of the wounds.
>
>> That is not true according to the interviews I have seen. They all
>> agreed....
>
> The question would now be, do they have any pictures/descriptions?
No pictures were taken in the ER, obviously. All those questioned
stated basically the same as to the wounds and whether they considered
them entrance or exit. I doubt all their collective memories could be
wrong.
>>>> What do you mean by "missing"?
>
>> Missing in the sense that the full frontal x-ray showed the left side
>> of the head and eye socket missing. IE. not there.
>
> I note that you not only deleted my question,
> ("Not there" could mean that the skull had been shattered. It
> could also mean that the X-ray was badly developed, or cropped)
> but you have deigned to answer my question in full as well
> (more on this in a sec)
The question was, `What do you mean by "missing"?'
Not there, ie. not on the x-ray, not viewable , what more can I
say? Please clarify.
>>>> Baden says nothing about any "forged" x-rays. He indicates that
>>>> all of the x-rays were, in fact, genuine.
>
>> How did he come to this conclusion when he had no body to match these
>> x-rays to?
>
>
> As I remember saying before, Kennedy's private doctors had a wealth
> of x-rays, notes, dental records, etc, that were compared to those
> in the archives. They matched. The same with the photgraphs,
> except the anthropologists and other experts had even more
> materiel with which to compare. The HSAC report makes no
> exceptions when it concludes that the x-rays, photos, etc.
> are all of Kennedy.
They could not see that which they didn't look at. They refused
to look at pretty much all of the contrary evidence.
> You've made a big deal about the fact that Humes was told
> to keep quiet about the autopsy, or face a court martial.
> However, I have noted that he was allowed to testify.
> You replied (right after jumping to a conclusion), implying
> that the autopsy is somehow classified. I will now note that
> the records of the autopsy have been released, apparently
> to open records. Why can Humes be prosecuted for violating
> secrecy rules when the information he supposedly carries
> isn't a secret anymore?
Very,very little has been released. All the evidence that didn't
fit neatly into the `Oswald, lone gunmen, three bullet' conspiracy
has been sealed until 2038AD. Now why would this information be sealed
for so long if there was nothing to hide?
> My question is (and I should have asked this before), how did
> the Parkland staff know which wound was an exit and which wound
> was an entrance?
Experience in treating hundreds of previous gunshot victims, according
to the attendant doctors.
> As for a coverup, who was trying to coverup what? Was the SS
> trying to coverup an assassination, or was the Kennedy family
> trying to cover up the fact that the President was suffering
> from a debilitating disease?
Why would the Kennedy family do this? A family member has been
murdered. Instead of trying to find out who,what,where, and why
it was done, let's cover it up so no one finds out about his
debilitating disease (if in fact he had one). Let's face it, the
man's dead now, what difference would it make. Moot point.
>> The cut was a clean slit. No frayed edges. The doctor who performed
>> the tracheotomy stated he made the cut in the shirt with a scalpel.
>
> Why is a doctor making a slit in a shirt in order to treat a
> patient? An ER staff member would cut the shirt off (and tie), and
> not make a slit in it to get to a patient. Furthermore, Baden
> sounds certain when he identifies the slits as exit phenomena.
The slit came as a rsult of cutting off the tie. The doctor who did
cut off the tie stated this. Take one look for yourself at the slit
in the shirt and I'm sure you would disagree w/ Baden.
> Well, my parents live in Dallas; I spent my last two years
> before college there. I've been to Dealy Plaza many times, and
> recently to the sixth floor. From what I saw, the tree really
> wouldn't obscure a shot, particularly in late November, when the
> trees have no leaves.
Try to shoot through branches, leaves, whatever, at a moving target
from that distance w/ a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano w/ a scope that was
not sighted properly and you or any marksman in the world would be
lucky, damn lucky, to hit something as large as a bus, let alone a man.
>> A low powered projectile would, a moderate or high powered weapon using
>> FMJ would not, in my experience.
>
> And your experience?
Approximately a year of treating wounds in the field 20 odd years ago.
>>>> I remeber that the path of the bullet through the head passed
>>>> downward going from the back to the front.
According to ??????
>>>> This creates
>>>> a great problem for the grassy knoll theory, in that it is
>>>> far harder to justify a track through the head...
The head wounds were never probed according to the autopsists.
>
>> Not if the medical personal stated they saw a 3-4" gaping exit wound
>> in the back of the head, a motorcycle cop at the left rear of the
>> motorcade getting sprayed with blood/brains and Jackie Kennedy
>> reaching out over the trunk of the limo to retrieve the back of her
>> husbands head.
>
> I've already explained that a shot into the back of the head
> would result in what Jackie and the moto-cop observed.
> Furthermore, I would really like to know how the ER staff
> came to the conclusion on which wound was an exit wound,
> and which wound was an enterance.
As I stated above, experience treating hundreds of gunshot victims.
> I would also like to
> know where your information about the Parkland staff comes from.
Various documentaries, books and articles I have watched and read.
I do not have any references here, unfortunately.
>> Interviews I've seen show that the medical personnel at Parland
>> did know about the gaping hole in the back of his head, which
>> led them to believe he had been hit from the front.
>
> So, the Parkland team decided that the wound in the back of
> the head was an exit because the rear wound was larger than the
> forward one? That's it? That's really not all that much to go on.
It was far more than that their opinions were based on. I do not have
a copy of the medical report written by the Parkland doctor/s that
treated Kennedy that day, and even if I did, I'm a terrible typist
and couldn't take the time to type it all in.
> The HSAC final report specifically states (on page 43) that the
> photos and x-rays were examined by "photographic scientists and
> radiologists", who did not find any evidence of forgery or
> alteration.
You must be reading the 200-300 page paperback that was released.
Read the multiple volume report ( and read it between the lines)
and you'll see that the HSAC couldn't see the forest because of the
trees.
Article: 7806 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!caen!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxh.cso.uiuc.edu!krust
From: krust@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Kelly Rust)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "who killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct3.042657.11383@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 3 Oct 91 04:26:57 GMT
References: <1991Oct2.181024.4054@engage.pko.dec.com>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
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>>In article <28277@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>> As I remember saying before, Kennedy's private doctors had a wealth
>> of x-rays, notes, dental records, etc, that were compared to those
>> in the archives. They matched. The same with the photgraphs,
>> except the anthropologists and other experts had even more
>> materiel with which to compare. The HSAC report makes no
>> exceptions when it concludes that the x-rays, photos, etc.
>> are all of Kennedy.
>> ...
>> You've made a big deal about the fact that Humes was told
>> to keep quiet about the autopsy, or face a court martial.
>> However, I have noted that he was allowed to testify.
When Humes was interviewed by the HSCA regarding the validity/interpretation
of the photos and x-rays there was a lot of confusion over placement of
entrance wounds in the back of the head, etc. After leaving the session,
Humes is quoted by a reporter from _The Washington Post_ to have said
"They had their chance, and they blew it. They didn't ask the right
questions."
>> Well, my parents live in Dallas; I spent my last two years
>> before college there. I've been to Dealy Plaza many times, and
>> recently to the sixth floor. From what I saw, the tree really
>> wouldn't obscure a shot, particularly in late November, when the
>> trees have no leaves.
I've never been to Dallas, but all of the photos taken in Dealey Plaza that day
show the big oak (and all other trees) with full foliage.
Kelly
Article: 7818 of alt.conspiracy
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From: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct3.145155.6858@nntp.hut.fi>
Date: 3 Oct 91 14:51:55 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil> <50120014@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com> <n1cqh7g@zola.esd.sgi.com> <1991Oct2.183302.28472@cbfsb.att.com>
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In-Reply-To: colten@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (marc.colten)
Nntp-Posting-Host: sauna.cs.hut.fi
> 1) Why would anyone want to kill JFK?
In a Finnish newspaper, there was an article about a book about JFK's
life (sorry, I don't have the details). The book apparently paints a
picture of JFK as a person who was lots into drugs, women and
otherwise wild life. But it was said that a short time before his
death he got a lot of his act together and got a lot more into doing
his job.
Perhaps that could be a reason?
//Jyrki
Article: 7820 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!master!freddy!mikeq
From: mikeq@freddy.CNA.TEK.COM (Quigley)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1848@masterCNA.TEK.COM>
Date: 3 Oct 91 17:07:27 GMT
References: <rich.685326234@pencil> <50120014@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com> <n1cqh7g@zola.esd.sgi.com> <1991Oct2.183302.28472@cbfsb.att.com> <1991Oct3.145155.6858@nntp.hut.fi>
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In article <1991Oct3.145155.6858@nntp.hut.fi> jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes:
>
>The book apparently paints a
>picture of JFK as a person who was lots into drugs, women and
>otherwise wild life.
>
Aaaaah, now there's a president who had the right priorities.
Mike
mikeq@freddy.CNA.TEK.COM
Article: 7837 of alt.conspiracy
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From: gary@ism.isc.com (Gary Swift)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct3.234733.13363@ism.isc.com>
Date: 3 Oct 91 23:47:33 GMT
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In article <1991Oct2.183302.28472@cbfsb.att.com> colten@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (marc.colten) writes:
>In article <n1cqh7g@zola.esd.sgi.com>, thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman) writes:
>> It is possible,
>> and I think likely, that the conspirators wanted people to know
>> there was a conspiracy, possibly to trigger a war with Cuba.
Good possibility. Or at least to "take it back".
>This post helped me decide to post some thoughts on what I've been
>hearing about the "cover-up" about Kennedy. The most recent theory
>that I've heard consists of a plot to kill Kennedy and then temporarily
>steal the body to perform surgery to hide the nature of the wounds.
Two separate conspiracies by separate groups with separate motives.
>I have the following questions:
>
> 1) Why would anyone want to kill JFK?
Revenge and a change of guard.
Our Central so-called-Intelligence Agency had contracted with
mafia types (Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello, via Sam
Giancana, via Roselli), who had been kicked out of Cuba by
Castro, to assassinate Castro.
Meanwhile the Kennedy brothers were putting a lot of heat on
organized crime. Carlos Marcello (New Orleans mafia kingfish)
had been deported and dumped in Guatamala without change of
clothes or money. Several people say they heard him swear he
would have JFK hit to "cut off the head that wags the tail"
(paraphrasing), i.e., to stop Bobby's pursuit of him and his
buddies. Giancana, who helped JFK in Chicago during the 1960
election, and who was sharing a mistress with him (Judith
Campbell [sp?]) felt betrayed, as did all the mafia and low-level
CIA operatives who were involved together in anti-Castro operations.
Check out the connections among these groups, David Ferrie, Guy
Bannister, Oswald's uncle in New Orleans, the Watergate Cubans,
E. Howard Hunt, etc. For example, David Ferrie was involved in
both the Castro-hit attempts and was a personal friend of
Marcello (in fact flew him back to the US after his deportation.)
One of the Cubans in the Watergate (name slips me, but his
original name was Fiorino or something like that) had worked
in the Havana casinos, was appointed Minister of Games and Chance
by Castro before he expelled the Mafia, later became involved in
the anti-Castro operations, then gets caught in the Watergate
hotel. In addition to the books about the JFK assassination
itself, check out "Mafia Kingfish" (about Marcello) and some of
the periferal works about Watergate.
Why the cover up? "National security", i.e., to keep the whole
sordid CIA-mafia affair secret from the US public who likely
wouldn't stand for it, and from the targets, Castro and
indirectly the USSR, who would get miles and miles of propaganda
out of it. Also, Bobby Kennedy had a motive to protect his
brother's and his family name over the Giancana-Campbell-JFK
triangle, and liaisons with Marilyn Monroe. The FBI (Hoover)
knew; the Mafia knew; it certainly would have come out in any
trial.
(Also Jackie and Bobby didn't want it to come out that JFK had
Addison's (sp?) disease which an examination of his adrenal
glands would have revealed, motivating them to manipulate the
autopsy results.)
Thus, between a wreckless policy to involve organized crime in
sensitive intelligence operations, and the wreckless conduct
by JFK in his romantic affairs, the country was put in a position
to have its president murdered, then to be blackmailed, by the
Mafia.
> 2) Why shoot him? If these plotters were so highly placed in the
> US establishment that they seem to be able to manipulate time
They weren't.
> and space and arrange for people to forget or die, for film to
> change, for bodies to be moved at will - why a public shooting?
Mafia-style hit to make a point and "save honor". See "Mafia Kingfish".
Article: 7855 of alt.conspiracy
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From: busta@vicki.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "who killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct4.113936.10811@engage.pko.dec.com>
Date: 4 Oct 91 12:35:57 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@engage.pko.dec.com (USENET News Daemon)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 48
In article <1991Oct3.042657.11383@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, krust@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Kelly Rust) writes...
>>>In article <28277@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>, busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com writes...
>
>>> As I remember saying before, Kennedy's private doctors had a wealth
>>> of x-rays, notes, dental records, etc, that were compared to those
>>> in the archives. They matched. The same with the photgraphs,
>>> except the anthropologists and other experts had even more
>>> materiel with which to compare. The HSAC report makes no
>>> exceptions when it concludes that the x-rays, photos, etc.
>>> are all of Kennedy.
>
>>> ...
>
>>> You've made a big deal about the fact that Humes was told
>>> to keep quiet about the autopsy, or face a court martial.
>>> However, I have noted that he was allowed to testify.
>
>When Humes was interviewed by the HSCA regarding the validity/interpretation
>of the photos and x-rays there was a lot of confusion over placement of
>entrance wounds in the back of the head, etc. After leaving the session,
>Humes is quoted by a reporter from _The Washington Post_ to have said
>"They had their chance, and they blew it. They didn't ask the right
>questions."
Please watch your attribution lines Kelly. I wrote none of this. Everything
here you have attributed to me was written by Mr. Todd.
>
>>> Well, my parents live in Dallas; I spent my last two years
>>> before college there. I've been to Dealy Plaza many times, and
>>> recently to the sixth floor. From what I saw, the tree really
>>> wouldn't obscure a shot, particularly in late November, when the
>>> trees have no leaves.
>
>I've never been to Dallas, but all of the photos taken in Dealey Plaza that day
>show the big oak (and all other trees) with full foliage.
>
>Kelly
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@vicki.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!vicki.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%vicki.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7872 of alt.conspiracy
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From: busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <28489@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 3 Oct 91 16:25:55 GMT
Sender: news@nntpd.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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In article <3985@tamsun.TAMU.EDU>, mst4298@zeus.tamu.edu (Mitchell S Todd) writes...
>In article <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu>, davidson@homer.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes...
>>On another subject, how do you explain all of the wounds, Mr. Todd? Of
>>the three shots you and the Warren Commission claim were fired, the
>>commission says that one missed . This leaves two bullets
>>to account for the injury of JFK (including a back wound, throat wound,
>>and fatal head wound), and all of Connally's wounds (in and out of the
>>trunk, in and out of the knee, and in and out of the wrist). Do you
>>really think that one bullet caused all of JFK's and Connally's wounds,
>>except for the fatal JFK head shot?
>
> Please also consider that the "two bullet theory" is not only
> advocated by me and the Warren comission, but by the HSAC
> as well.
Ahh, yes, but the HSAC also stated that they do believe a shot
was in fact fired from the grassy knoll..... That, in and of itself,
is enough to claim `conspiracy'. Oswald couldn't have been in both
places....
>
> This gets into the famous "magic bullet" theory, but first, let
> me make one thing clear. The bullet never entered the knee;
> there was no knee wound, only a superficial (about a half-inch
> deep) flesh wound in Connely's thigh. It is entirely plausible
> that a bullet from the Mannlicher-Carcano could enter JFK's
> body in the back, exit out the throat, penetrate into
> Connely's back, exit at the nipple (nicking a rib in the
> process)
Nicking a rib? According to the doctors who treated Connelly, it
shattered his 5th rib....
> , hit Connely's wrist, smashing into his radius,
> and finally, spent, gouging itself into Connely's thigh.
> Among other things I use as evidence is the HSAC forensic
> panel's opinion that the hole in Kennedy's back is and entrance
> wound; the fact that the wound in Connely's back is, as
> per Baden, a "two inch long vertical scar" (the bullet
> that made this hole was a tumbler that hit Connely sideways;
> the only reason bullets tumble is that they hit something else
> first);
Not true. Another reason a bullet will tumble, or `keyhole' its'
target, is if the weapon was poorly manufactured and/or maintained.
> the identification of metal fragments taken from
> Connely's wrist as belonging to ammunition for the M-C
> rifle;
Where did this information come from? The metal fragments taken
from Connelly weighed more than the amount of metal missing from
this `pristine' bullet, hence, there had to be more than one bullet.
Also, watching the Zapruder film, the timing between Kennedy grasping
his throat and Connellys' cheeks puffing out as a result of having
the wind knocked out of him when he was hit, make it impossible for
both their wounds being caused by the same bullet. Connelly himself
stated that there was no way the same bullet had hit both of them.
He turned around to see what the fuss was in the back seat and as
he began to turn the other way, was struck.
> the fact absence of an exit wound for the wound
> in the throat, eliminating the possibility that the
> throat wound is an entry wound; findings by the HSAC
> and others that confirm that such a ballistic path is possible
> given the postulated postions and postures of Oswald,
> Kennedy, and Connely; the fact that the bullet encountered
> nothing of substance until it hit Connely's wristbones
> (the rib is a bone, but it's pretty thin. It has to, among
> other things, flex to accomidate respiration). This does
> not include, of course, the "pristine" or "mostly undamaged"
> bullet. Satisfied?
Hardly. Let me see if I can get this straight. The bullet hits Kennedy
in the back to the lower left of the right shoulder blade, travels up
his throat exiting just below his adams apple, catches Connelly in the
back, shatters his fifth rib, exits just below his right nipple,
shatters the bone in his right wrist(and he never even dropped the hat
he was holding until a bit later), exits and lands in his thigh?
Hmmmm, I own a bridge in Manhattan I'd like to sell you.... ;^)
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@kozmic.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!kozmic.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%kozmic.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7965 of alt.conspiracy
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From: ewm@cbnews.cb.att.com (edward.w.mcfarland)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct8.140059.1913@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Date: 8 Oct 91 14:00:59 GMT
References: <6446@borg.cs.unc.edu> <22152@helios.TAMU.EDU> <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 35
In article <6473@borg.cs.unc.edu> davidson@homer.cs.unc.edu (Drew Davidson) writes:
>On another subject, how do you explain all of the wounds, Mr. Todd? Of
>the three shots you and the Warren Commission claim were fired, the
>commission says that one missed (striking the pavement and ricocheting
>a piece of concrete into Jame Tague's cheek). This leaves two bullets
>to account for the injury of JFK (including a back wound, throat wound,
>and fatal head wound), and all of Connally's wounds (in and out of the
>trunk, in and out of the knee, and in and out of the wrist). Do you
>really think that one bullet caused all of JFK's and Connally's wounds,
>except for the fatal JFK head shot?
>
>Drew
>
>--
>Drew Davidson \\ HELP FULLY INFORM JURORS! TELL YOUR FRIENDS:
>davidson@cs.unc.edu \\ As a juror, you have the right to vote NOT GUILTY
> ** LEGALIZE TRUTH ** \\ if you believe the law broken is unjust or wrongly
>* FULLY INFORM JURORS * \\ applied, regardless of the facts of the case.
There exists a TV documentary that may have been done by one of the networks,
I don't recall... In it they recreate the view that Oswald had of the parade.
They use the same bolt action rifle and had a car pass the Book Depository at
the same speed, time of day, etc., etc. The viewer gets the impression that
for Oswald to have gotten off the number of shots, bolting in new rounds,
re-aiming with the necessary accuracy, during the time Kennedy was visible from
that position is humanly if not physically impossible.
Ed McFarland We make history the old-fashioned
ewm@mvuzr.att.com way, we revise it!
- Truth : the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of *
- destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by *
- all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death. *
(unknown (to me))
Article: 7969 of alt.conspiracy
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From: busta@vicki.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct8.144821.21912@engage.pko.dec.com>
Date: 8 Oct 91 15:46:16 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@engage.pko.dec.com (USENET News Daemon)
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In article <1991Oct3.164127.23367@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes...
>
> A stupid question about the sound analysis: they can tell
>the difference between a gunshot and an echo of a gunshot, can't
>they?
>
> James Nicoll
`They' sure can. Using the gunshots and the echo pattern, the
HSAC came to the conclusion that there must have been a shooter on
the grassy knoll.....
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul R. Busta Busta@vicki.enet.dec.com Salem,N.H.
--or-- ...!decwrl!vicki.enet.dec.com!busta 603-894-3962
--or-- busta%vicki.enet@decwrl.dec.com
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
-U.S. Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
Article: 7996 of alt.conspiracy
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From: jburnes@swbatl.sbc.com (Jim Burnes - 235-7444)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: LOOT: "Who Killed JFK? The Media Whitewash"
Message-ID: <1991Oct8.145238.4661@swbatl.sbc.com>
Date: 8 Oct 91 14:52:38 GMT
References: <1991Oct8.140059.1913@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Southwestern Bell
Lines: 27
ewm@cbnews.cb.att.com (edward.w.mcfarland) writes:
[bunch of kennedy bullet theory stuff deleted]
>
> There exists a TV documentary that may have been done by one of the networks,
> I don't recall... In it they recreate the view that Oswald had of the parade.
> They use the same bolt action rifle and had a car pass the Book Depository at
> the same speed, time of day, etc., etc. The viewer gets the impression that
> for Oswald to have gotten off the number of shots, bolting in new rounds,
> re-aiming with the necessary accuracy, during the time Kennedy was visible from
> that position is humanly if not physically impossible.
>
In Victor Ostrovskey and Claire Hoys book, "By Way of Deception - the making
and unmaking of an Israeli Mossad Officer" Ostrovskey said that the Mossad
had recreated the incident numerous times themselves with their best assasins
(some of these are legendary).
Ostrovskey said that they could never get three acurate shots off even with
their best killers. The Mossad's opinion that the number of Americans that
accepted the Warren Commision report was a testament to the gullibility of
the large percentage of Americans. I myself would have to agree.
-----------------------------------+----------------------------------------
Jim Burnes, UNIX SysAdmin ! Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
SWBell Advanced Technology Labs ! And it will be a hundred times better
(314) 235-7444 ! for everyone.....
jburnes@swbatl.sbc.com ! Tao Te Ching # 19, Lao Tsu
-----------------------------------+----------------------------------------
Article: 3541 of alt.activism.d
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From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d
Subject: Oliver Stone movies
Message-ID: <JMC.91Dec20133037@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 20 Dec 91 21:30:37 GMT
Sender: news@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 30
Dec 20 NYT has a subeditorial denouncing Stone, Garrison and the movie
and an Op-Ed by Oliver Stone attacking his critics. The subeditorial
calls the movie immoral for slandering Clay Shaw. Shaw died before
his suit against Garrison could be adjudicated, and it would be interesting
as to whether Stone depicting him as doing things a jury and judge
said there was no evidence for would be regarded as libel. I suppose
not, on the ground that Garrison turned him into a public figure
by indicting him. Stone would claim correctly that he had no
malice against Clay Shaw but merely used him to make his point that
U.S. society is a conspiracy. When some of the British gangs beat
up an innocent, they sometimes attach a card to the knocked out
victim saying there was nothing personal about the attack.
Stone's _Who is Rewriting History_ Op-Ed accuses his liberal critics -
Tom Wicker and Dan Rather - of trying to suppress the truth. He
argues for his conspiracy theory on the basis of what Kennedy would
have done and what Johnson did. You can make a conspiracy out of
any killing on that basis.
Stone makes propaganda movies. What's new about that? We
conservatives grumble that liberal movie makers dominate. However,
there's nothing to be done about that. It is amusing that some
of the same people who criticize his assassination movie take his
equally propagandistic _Born on the Fourth of July_ as evidence
confirming what they always believed about Vietnam.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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From: acm@ux.acs.umn.edu (Acm)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Stone's _JFK_ promotes absurd accusations
Message-ID: <acm.693180506@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 91 22:08:26 GMT
References: <1991Dec8.180812.7370@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Organization: University of Minnesota, Academic Computing Services
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Xref: ns-mx rec.arts.movies:50117 alt.conspiracy:9389
STONE'S _JFK_ MAKES RECKLESS JUDGMENTS, ABSURD ACCUSATIONS
by Peter Kauffner
The release of Oliver Stone's movie _JFK_ has allowed at least
one sector of the economy to recover from recession: the
Kennedy assassination conspiracy industry. Polls show that 56
percent of Americans now reject Warren Commission's conclusion that
Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John Kennedy in 1963 on his
own.
Conspiracy mongers have never allowed evidence or common
sense to get in the way of good theory. If a well financed group
wanted to kill a president, they would presumably hire an expert
marksman with a high-powered rifle, plenty of ammunition, and an
escape plan. In contrast, Oswald was a mediocre shot, used a World
War II surplus carbine, had only four bullets, and did not appear to
have a coherent escape plan.
Since Oswald is such an unlikely instrument of a conspiracy,
`second gunmen' plots are the most popular type of conspiracy
theory. According to the typical second gunman plot, Oswald is
only a fall guy for a professional hit man who fired from the
`grassy knoll' near Kennedy's motorcade. Oliver Stone's scenario is
even more far fetched. He has gunmen firing from three different
locations around Dealey Plaza for a total of five to seven shots,
as opposed to the Warren Commission's three.
Stone's theory is based on an audio tape recorded by the Dallas
police and analyzed in a 1978 congressional report. In this report,
the House Select Committee on Assassinations claimed that the
probability that a second gunman fired from the grassy knoll was
`95 percent or better.' There were six noises on the tape that passed
preliminary screening tests as possible rifle shots.
The report's claims were thoroughly refuted by a 1982 National
Academy of Sciences study. The NAS panel concluded that `the acoustical
analysis does not demonstrate that there was a grassy knoll shot,
and in particular there is no acoustic basis for the claim of 95
percent probability of such a shot.' The part of the tape alleged
to contain the sound of gun shots was actually `recorded about
one minute after the president had been shot.'
A home movie of the murder, called the Zapruder film, provides
the best evidence that there was neither a fourth shot nor a
second gunman. After each of Oswald's three shots, the camera
shakes visibly. A high powered rifle firing from the grassy knoll
would have made a deafening noise from where Zapruder stood,
according to _Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical and Ballistic
Comparisons of Their Assassinations_ (1980) by John Lattimer.
Having gunmen at widely separated locations fire in succession
would only make an operation more difficult to coordinate. If the
Secret Service had reacted quickly, the first shot would have
been the assassin's only chance. Why let Oswald fire the first
shot if a professional marksman was available? As it turned out,
the Secret Service failed to react quickly enough to protect
Kennedy. Presumably, this wasn't something potential conspirators
could count on.
The sort of conspiracy envisaged by Stone would require the
involvement of so many people that someone would have spilled
the beans by now. But about the closest thing to an insider's view
of the conspiracy that we have is the testimony of Charles Speisel.
Speisel was called to testify against alleged Kennedy assassin Clay
Shaw in 1969 by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (the hero of
_JFK_, played by Kevin Costner).
On cross examination, Speisel confirmed that he had a filed suits
against the New York police, among others, for allegedly torturing him
and keeping him under hypnosis. He estimated that 50 to 60 people had
hypnotized him in order to plant wild ideas in his head. The jury
acquitted Shaw after deliberating for less than an hour.
How does Stone maintain Garrison's heroic image in the
face of such a fiasco? Speisel is explained as `one of [Bill] Boxley's
witnesses.' Boxley was a Garrison aid. In _JFK_, he's a double agent
working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Since he is also dead,
he can't sue for libel.
The murder of Oswald by nightclub owner Jack Ruby helps give
conspiracy theories a certain plausibility. This occurred only
two days after Kennedy was shot and while Oswald was being
transferred out of the headquarters of the Dallas police. Some
have speculated that Ruby was assigned to `shut Oswald up.'
Oswald's transfer was delayed by 19 minutes. If Ruby planned
the killing in advance he should have been waiting for Oswald
outside the police station. But according to the time stamp on
a receipt he was carrying, Ruby was at a nearby Western Union office
transferring money only four minutes before the shooting. The
fact the Ruby carried a gun with him at all times supports his
claim that he acted on impulse.
Did Oswald's murder really have `all the earmarks of a gangland
slaying'? Not many mob hit men strike when they are surrounded by
police and sure to be arrested.
In their zeal to show that Oswald couldn't possibly do what the
Warren Commission claims he did, conspiracy theorists make much of the
low marksmanship scores Oswald got while he was in the Marines. But
according to tests results published by Lattimer, Oswald's score in
the seated position--the position he used when he shot Kennedy--was
excellent. On one scorecard he hit a head-and-shoulders sized target
49 out of 50 times from a distance of 200 yards without telescopic
sights. He shot Kennedy from less than 100 yards and used telescopic
sights.
The Kennedy assassination certainly isn't the first prominent
killing to become the subject of crackpot speculation. `One never
speaks of this assassination without making reckless judgments. The
absurdity of the accusation, the total lack of evidence, nothing
stops them.' That was Voltaire writing about the assassination of King
Henry IV of France in 1610.
What is unusual about the Kennedy case is the way that doubt and
speculation has increased with the passage of time. When the Warren
Commission report was released, few Americans doubted that Oswald was
the sole assassin. By 1967, two-thirds believed that Kennedy
was done in by a conspiracy. Each new conspiracy theory makes
headlines. Careful rebuttals, like the NAS report, are lucky if they
get a few column inches on an inside page.
References:
Lardner, George Jr., `On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland,' _The Washington
Post_, May 19, 1991, p. D1.
Lardner, George Jr., `...Or Just a Sloppy Mess?' _The Washington Post_, June
2, 1991, p. D3.
Lattimer, John, _Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of
Their Assassinations_ (1980).
Moss, Armand, _Disinformation, Misinformation, and the `Conspiracy' to Kill
JFK Exposed_
Stone, Oliver, `Stone's _JFK_: A Higher Truth?' _The Washington Post_ June 2,
1991, p. D3.
Peter Kauffner UUCP: {crash tcnet}!orbit!pnet51!peterk
Minneapolis, Minnesota INET: peterk@pnet51.orb.mn.org
Libertarians put freedom first. Vote for Andre Marrou and Nancy Lord in 1992!
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From: lb2e+@andrew.cmu.edu (Louis Blair)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: Stone's _JFK_ promotes absurd accusations
Message-ID: <odII8FK00Voi8CGF06@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 20 Dec 91 01:06:25 GMT
References: <1991Dec8.180812.7370@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
<acm.693180506@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Organization: Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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In-Reply-To: <acm.693180506@ux.acs.umn.edu>
>STONE'S _JFK_ MAKES RECKLESS JUDGMENTS ...
Do people think this debate is going to be longer or shorter
than the shotgun argument? Place your bets now.
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From: jxxl@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Stone's _JFK_ promotes absurd accusations
Message-ID: <3652@huxley.cs.nps.navy.mil>
Date: 20 Dec 91 16:15:37 GMT
References: <acm.693180506@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Sender: jxxl@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies,alt.conspiracy
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acm@ux.acs.umn.edu (Acm) writes:
< STONE'S _JFK_ MAKES RECKLESS JUDGMENTS, ABSURD ACCUSATIONS
< by Peter Kauffner
< The release of Oliver Stone's movie _JFK_ has allowed at least
< one sector of the economy to recover from recession: the
< Kennedy assassination conspiracy industry. Polls show that 56
< percent of Americans now reject Warren Commission's conclusion that
< Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John Kennedy in 1963 on his
< own.
It was closer to that figure when the disappointing Warren Commission Report
was released. It's now, according to something I read recently, about 80%.
< Conspiracy mongers have never allowed evidence or common
< sense to get in the way of good theory.
That's certainly an indictment against theories that ignore common sense
or aren't supported by evidence.
< If a well financed group
< wanted to kill a president, they would presumably hire an expert
< marksman with a high-powered rifle, plenty of ammunition, and an
< escape plan. In contrast, Oswald was a mediocre shot, used a World
< War II surplus carbine, had only four bullets, and did not appear to
< have a coherent escape plan.
If this author can prove that Oswald did it, the nation would love to
hear about it. The amazing fact is (amazing to me, anyway--I just started
reading up on this conspiracy stuff to see if there was anything to it)
that no one ever proved that Oswald shot the President. What the Warren
Commission put forth as evidence would not stand up in a court of law. A
good lawyer would have gotten Oswald off, if not in a lower court, then
most certainly on appeal. The only thing that is known for sure is that
Oswald was in the building.
< Since Oswald is such an unlikely instrument of a conspiracy,
< `second gunmen' plots are the most popular type of conspiracy
< theory. According to the typical second gunman plot, Oswald is
< only a fall guy for a professional hit man who fired from the
< `grassy knoll' near Kennedy's motorcade. Oliver Stone's scenario is
< even more far fetched. He has gunmen firing from three different
< locations around Dealey Plaza for a total of five to seven shots,
< as opposed to the Warren Commission's three.
Stone combines a lot of theories into one big one, which is dramatic but
doesn't prove anything. The best the movie can do is tell a good story
and get people interested in what is one of the most fascinating murder
mysteries in history.
As for Oswald, he is not the "lone nut" that the Warren Commission made him
out to be. He was fluent in Russian (which he learned in the Marines); he
was a radar operator outside of Tokyo in the late fifties, which gave him
information about the U.S. U-2 flights over the Soviet Union; he defected
with his secrets to Russia after leaving the Marines; two and a half years
later he returned to the U.S., with virtually no questions asked; he lived
in Dallas and had friends who were CIA operatives; he went to New Orleans
in the summer of '63 and worked with people who were part of the CIA/Cuban
exile alliance to invade Cuba.
< Stone's theory is based on an audio tape recorded by the Dallas
< police and analyzed in a 1978 congressional report. In this report,
< the House Select Committee on Assassinations claimed that the
< probability that a second gunman fired from the grassy knoll was
< `95 percent or better.' There were six noises on the tape that passed
< preliminary screening tests as possible rifle shots.
< The report's claims were thoroughly refuted by a 1982 National
< Academy of Sciences study. The NAS panel concluded that `the acoustical
< analysis does not demonstrate that there was a grassy knoll shot,
< and in particular there is no acoustic basis for the claim of 95
< percent probability of such a shot.' The part of the tape alleged
< to contain the sound of gun shots was actually `recorded about
< one minute after the president had been shot.'
This same committee (HSCA) also concluded that a conspiracy was probable,
and that the Mafia were the likely conspirators. We were talking about
the CIA, now it's the mob. What's up? As revealed by the Church Committee
(Senate?) in 1975, the CIA linked up with certain Mafia members in the
early '60s with the goal of assassinating Castro and his government. The
goals were the same but the motives were different: the CIA feared a commie
state 90 miles off our shore at the peak of the Cold War; the Mafia wanted
all their hotels and casinos back.
< A home movie of the murder, called the Zapruder film, provides
< the best evidence that there was neither a fourth shot nor a
< second gunman. After each of Oswald's three shots, the camera
< shakes visibly.
This may be true, but two shots fired near simultaneously would not cause
two shakes of the camera.
< A high powered rifle firing from the grassy knoll
< would have made a deafening noise from where Zapruder stood,
< according to _Kennedy and Lincoln: Medical and Ballistic
< Comparisons of Their Assassinations_ (1980) by John Lattimer.
Zapruder said that one of the shots definately came from behind him (the
grassy knoll). Additionally, about two thirds of the Dealey Plaza witnesses
said they heard a shot coming from the grassy knoll and many people ran
up the knoll looking for the culprit. Also, a number of witnesses described
hearing two distinct sounds, one a sound like a distant firecracker, another
a close up rifle sound from the knoll.
< Having gunmen at widely separated locations fire in succession
< would only make an operation more difficult to coordinate.
There was a time gap between the first two and the third shots (as evidenced
by the impacts seen in the Zapruder film). The third shot was the fatal shot
to Kennedy's head. It may only have been fired because the earlier shots
didn't hit the mark.
< If the
< Secret Service had reacted quickly, the first shot would have
< been the assassin's only chance.
So why didn't they react? Wasn't that their job?
< Why let Oswald fire the first
< shot if a professional marksman was available?
There's no proof he fired a single shot.
< As it turned out,
< the Secret Service failed to react quickly enough to protect
< Kennedy. Presumably, this wasn't something potential conspirators
< could count on.
One SS agent did react. He was the closest to Kennedy's convertible. He
jumped on the back but that didn't prevent the fatal shot.
Besides, who knows what "potential conspirators" can count on?
< The sort of conspiracy envisaged by Stone would require the
< involvement of so many people that someone would have spilled
< the beans by now.
Many have. And there are those who have died after having been subpoened
by government investigative authorities: Santos Trafficante (Florida mob
boss), murdered before he was to testify before the HSCA; ditto John Roselli,
main Mafia member in the CIA/Mafia plot to assssinate Castro; Oswald's
CIA contact from Dallas committed suicide three hours after hearing he would
be called before the HSCA; Sam Giancana (mob boss of Chicago), murdered
after appearing before the Church Committee. And Oswald, of course, who
claimed he was a patsy and was killed before he had a chance to talk (there
is no record of his 11 hour interrogation by Dallas police). That's just for
starters.
< But about the closest thing to an insider's view
< of the conspiracy that we have is the testimony of Charles Speisel.
< Speisel was called to testify against alleged Kennedy assassin Clay
< Shaw in 1969 by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (the hero of
< _JFK_, played by Kevin Costner).
< On cross examination, Speisel confirmed that he had a filed suits
< against the New York police, among others, for allegedly torturing him
< and keeping him under hypnosis. He estimated that 50 to 60 people had
< hypnotized him in order to plant wild ideas in his head. The jury
< acquitted Shaw after deliberating for less than an hour.
Speisel was a lousy witness, alright. Shaw was a peripheral figure in
Garrison's investigation. He decided to go after Shaw because the main
figure he wanted to get, David Ferrie, committed suicide immediately after
word of Garrison's investigation got into the press.
< How does Stone maintain Garrison's heroic image in the
< face of such a fiasco? Speisel is explained as `one of [Bill] Boxley's
< witnesses.' Boxley was a Garrison aid. In _JFK_, he's a double agent
< working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Since he is also dead,
< he can't sue for libel.
Boxley was a CIA agent who claimed to be an ex-agent, let go because of a
drinking problem. Garrison hired him as an investigator after he convinced
Garrison he was sympathetic to the cause.
< The murder of Oswald by nightclub owner Jack Ruby helps give
< conspiracy theories a certain plausibility. This occurred only
< two days after Kennedy was shot and while Oswald was being
< transferred out of the headquarters of the Dallas police. Some
< have speculated that Ruby was assigned to `shut Oswald up.'
< Oswald's transfer was delayed by 19 minutes. If Ruby planned
< the killing in advance he should have been waiting for Oswald
< outside the police station.
He's got it backwards. Oswald was delayed until Ruby showed up.
< But according to the time stamp on
< a receipt he was carrying, Ruby was at a nearby Western Union office
< transferring money only four minutes before the shooting.
To make his next act look spontaneous...
< The
< fact the Ruby carried a gun with him at all times supports his
< claim that he acted on impulse.
Ruby insisted his motive was to spare Jackie Kennedy from a trial of Oswald.
This from a strip joint operator who had mob associations going back to Al
Capone.
< Did Oswald's murder really have `all the earmarks of a gangland
< slaying'? Not many mob hit men strike when they are surrounded by
< police and sure to be arrested.
They do when they're told to do it or else. Why wasn't Oswald eliminated
the day of the assassination? Probably a glitch in the plan.
< In their zeal to show that Oswald couldn't possibly do what the
< Warren Commission claims he did, conspiracy theorists make much of the
< low marksmanship scores Oswald got while he was in the Marines. But
< according to tests results published by Lattimer, Oswald's score in
< the seated position--the position he used when he shot Kennedy--was
< excellent. On one scorecard he hit a head-and-shoulders sized target
< 49 out of 50 times from a distance of 200 yards without telescopic
< sights.
Top marksman have been unable to duplicate "his feat" of getting off three
shots in six seconds with the cheap mail order gun he was supposed to have
used.
< He shot Kennedy from less than 100 yards and used telescopic
< sights.
And through a verdant tree top with a misaligned sight.
The Dallas police found no prints on the gun. It was taken to the FBI lab
in Washington. They found no prints. It was brought back to Dallas. By
this time Oswald was in a funeral home. FBI agents spent hours with the
corpse behind closed doors. They fingerprinted him, which had already been
done three times while he was alive. The mortician described washing the
ink off his hands. The gun was taken back to the FBI lab. Voila! Oswald's
prints are found on the gun.
< The Kennedy assassination certainly isn't the first prominent
< killing to become the subject of crackpot speculation. `One never
< speaks of this assassination without making reckless judgments. The
< absurdity of the accusation, the total lack of evidence, nothing
< stops them.' That was Voltaire writing about the assassination of King
< Henry IV of France in 1610.
You have to be naive or uninformed at this point to believe that Oswald
acted alone (or even acted at all). There's an abundance of evidence that
he did not.
< What is unusual about the Kennedy case is the way that doubt and
< speculation has increased with the passage of time. When the Warren
< Commission report was released, few Americans doubted that Oswald was
< the sole assassin.
Not true. When the FBI came out with their "lone nut" theory on the Monday
following the assassination, many people were shocked and expected the
Warren Commission to clear up the confusion. It came as a further surprise
when the Commissioners merely attempted to bolster Hoover's ready-made theory.
Three of the eight Commissioners disagreed with the official findings. As a
compromise, the language was watered down to elicit their agreement. Of the
five gung-ho members, one (Allen Dulles) was the former head of the CIA who
had presided when the CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate Castro. He was fired by
Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. Another, Gerald Ford, was the FBI's mole on
the Commission. He reported on all the Commission's work to the FBI. The
FBI, it should be noted, was the sole source of investigative material for
the Commission.
< By 1967, two-thirds believed that Kennedy
< was done in by a conspiracy. Each new conspiracy theory makes
< headlines. Careful rebuttals, like the NAS report, are lucky if they
< get a few column inches on an inside page.
These "careful rebuttals" continue to reiterate the badly flawed Warren
Commission report, as if saying it over and over again makes it true. It's
interesting to note that the CIA, by their own admission, carries a number
of authors and jounalists on their payroll. Why? Public opinion can affect
them from time to time, so it's useful to have a tool to counter it.
John
Path: ns-mx!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!netcomsv!tim
From: tim@netcom.COM (Tim Richardson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Stone's _JFK_ promotes absurd accusations
Message-ID: <1991Dec20.202101.21199tim@netcom.COM>
Date: 20 Dec 91 20:21:01 GMT
References: <acm.693180506@ux.acs.umn.edu> <3652@huxley.cs.nps.navy.mil> <8040@inews.intel.com>
Organization: techNET, San Jose, CA
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In article <8040@inews.intel.com> jreece@stravinsky.intel.com writes:
=In article <3652@huxley.cs.nps.navy.mil>, jxxl@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil writes:
=
=|> Top marksman have been unable to duplicate "his feat" of getting off three
=|> shots in six seconds with the cheap mail order gun he was supposed to have
=|> used.
=
=On the contrary, ordinary marksmen have bettered it. And they did so
=a *long* time ago.
=
=Over 20 years ago I saw a prime-time CBS reports that investigated
=this particular point. They placed state troopers with identical
=Carcanos who had equivalent target-shooting scores in a tower
=corresponding to the Depository. They ran a dummy by on a dolly
=corresponding to the path the limo took with respect to the Depository.
=They *all* got 3 shots off in the necessary time, and they averaged
=more lethal hits than Oswald did.
=
EXCUSE ME!!!
I have that 60 Minutes report on tape, it wasn't "over 20 years ago", it
was done in 1975. They did not use "identical Carcanos" and most importantly
NOT 1 OF THEM WAS ABLE TO GET OFF 3 SHOTS with bolt action rifles of ANY
type in the time-frame established by the Warren Commission as the period
in which Oswald had to have fired his 3 shots (any longer or any more shots,
and the whole Warren Commission theory is immediately null and void). The
CBS film does clearly show riflemen shooting at that "dolly" and shooting
with some considerable accuracy and speed. However, as is not highlighted
in the "report", the times when speed is being demonstrated by the rifleman,
it is NOT WITH THE BOLT ACTION CARCANO, nor, as was later proved, was the
shooting actually done with shooters of "ordinary" capability.
This CBS "report" was, as CBS was finally forced to admit; highly contrived,
and was generated with a firmly held pre-conceived conclusion in mind. All
in all, this CBS report was a well constructed, carefully conceived piece
of pure propaganda, which if the average American was able to see several
times in succession, could easily come to understand where it is fately
flawed.
The fact still remains, that to date, no one has EVER been able to duplicate
the shooting feat the Warren Commission ascribed to LHO... period.
--
Tim Richardson
Technical Network Products, Inc. "techNET"
email: tim@netcom.com {apple, amdahl, claris}!netcom!tim
- ******************************************************************************
"Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security
deserve neither security nor liberty". ------ Benjamin Franklin
- ******************************************************************************
Path: ns-mx!uunet!lll-winken!taurus!jxxl
From: jxxl@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: What's happened to the Warren Commission since 196X
Message-ID: <3665@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil>
Date: 20 Dec 91 22:31:09 GMT
References: <91354.142005MBADBH@ROHVM1.BITNET>
Reply-To: jxxl@cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke)
Organization: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey CA
Lines: 41
MBADBH@ROHVM1.BITNET (David B. Horvath, CDP) writes:
> Has anyone paid attention to what has happened to the members of the
> Warren Commission since their involvement?
>
> I don't have my copy of the report in front of me, so this may not be
> 100% accurate:
> * Gerald Ford - senator, VP, president
> * Arlen Spector - (lawyer), elected to PA state government, then US
> senator
> * Earl Warren - I know he moved 'up'
>
> I know that there was at least one more member who made quite a name for
> himself (I include support staff as members).
Most of the 8 Commissioners are dead. The only one I'm sure is alive is
Gerald Ford. Spector was a staff attorney working for the Commission. Many
of the other attorneys are probably around, since they tended to be younger
than the Commissioners. Eleven commission members became involved in the
Watergate affair--Leon Jaworski, for instance.
Ford and another staffer, David Benin, co-wrote an article for the Washington
Post. I read the reprint in today's San Jose Mercury. It's called "There Is
No Conspiracy" and like all this junk they spout a lot of platitudes but
never rebut the evidence that supports a conspiracy. They stress two main
points. 1) That pathologists generally agree that the shots came from behind.
But even allowing for this to be true, that still doesn't prove that Oswald
did it, or even handled the gun. 2) That a friend of Dallas Homicide Captain
Will Fritz's was allowed to question Oswald for thirty minutes before he was
taken to the basement (where Ruby shot him). That this friend, a postal
inspector, was on his way to church when he just happened to stop in to
see Fritz and Oswald. Since Ruby could not have known about this chance
occurance and since Ruby was in a Western Union office 4 minutes before
killing Oswald, the murder was also a chance event. What they don't tell
you is that what is likely, as researchers have speculated, is that Oswald
was held up until Ruby arrived. Now here is the excuse for the procrastination:
the postal inspector. So what business does this guy have questioning Oswald
for thirty minutes, delaying a carefully coordinated plan to get him safely
to the jail? And was this postal inspector one of Fritz's Klansman buddies?
John
Path: ns-mx!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!asparagus.berkeley.edu!chenchen
From: chenchen@asparagus.berkeley.edu (Cheng-Jih Chen)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: Stone's _JFK_ promotes absurd accusations
Message-ID: <kl5tq2INNdla@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 91 08:11:46 GMT
References: <acm.693180506@ux.acs.umn.edu> <odII8FK00Voi8CGF06@andrew.cmu.edu> <OLIVER.91Dec21000525@ballard1.mit.edu>
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Math. Department.
Lines: 14
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NNTP-Posting-Host: math1mac4.berkeley.edu
NOVA did a show on the assassination a month or so ago. They examined
the conspiracy theories from the point of view of physical evidence, and
concluded that all "evidence" that points towards multiple gunmen, people
on the Grassy Knoll, etc., was at best flimsy. I missed about half of the
show, though.
Any commentary on this?
--
Where's Zen-Waldo? |------------------------------------------------------|
by | |
Cheng-Jih Chen | |
|------------------------------------------------------|
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From: cbh@opus.mlb.semi.harris.com (Cherie R. Slasor)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: Stone's _JFK_ promotes absurd accusations
Message-ID: <1991Dec21.144822.13545@mlb.semi.harris.com>
Date: 21 Dec 91 14:48:22 GMT
References: <odII8FK00Voi8CGF06@andrew.cmu.edu> <OLIVER.91Dec21000525@ballard1.mit.edu> <kl5tq2INNdla@agate.berkeley.edu>
Sender: news@mlb.semi.harris.com
Organization: Harris Semiconductor, Melbourne FL
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Nntp-Posting-Host: opus.mlb.semi.harris.com
In article <kl5tq2INNdla@agate.berkeley.edu> chenchen@asparagus.berkeley.edu (Cheng-Jih Chen) writes:
>NOVA did a show on the assassination a month or so ago. They examined
>the conspiracy theories from the point of view of physical evidence, and
>concluded that all "evidence" that points towards multiple gunmen, people
>on the Grassy Knoll, etc., was at best flimsy. I missed about half of the
>show, though.
>
>Any commentary on this?
>
I watched the show, and they concluded that there are just too many
things that can't be proven either way to make a definitive judgement.
In other words, maybe Oswald acted alone and maybe he didn't. I thought
they did a good job of presenting both sides of each theory and not
trying to slant the evidence one way or the other.
On a side note - wasn't Zapruder's film in black & white? The film they
kept showing on Nova was in color (and a closeup of Kennedy's head) which
made it much more graphic than any other time I've seen it. Maybe it
was computer-enhanced & colorized. It was much more disturbing than
watching a theatrical movie production, because I knew it was *real*.
Cherie
--
====================================================================
Cherie Slasor | Harris Semiconductor
Phone: (407) 724-7607 | P.O. Box 883, MS #62B-022
Internet: cbh@mlb.semi.harris.com | Melbourne, FL 32902-0883
Path: ns-mx!uunet!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: Stone's _JFK_ promotes absurd accusations
Message-ID: <BZS.91Dec21125541@world.std.com>
Date: 21 Dec 91 17:55:41 GMT
References: <odII8FK00Voi8CGF06@andrew.cmu.edu> <OLIVER.91Dec21000525@ballard1.mit.edu>
<kl5tq2INNdla@agate.berkeley.edu>
<1991Dec21.144822.13545@mlb.semi.harris.com>
Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: The World
Lines: 29
Xref: ns-mx alt.conspiracy:9428 rec.arts.movies:50275
In-Reply-To: cbh@opus.mlb.semi.harris.com's message of 21 Dec 91 14:48:22 GMT
>On a side note - wasn't Zapruder's film in black & white? The film they
>kept showing on Nova was in color (and a closeup of Kennedy's head) which
>made it much more graphic than any other time I've seen it. Maybe it
>was computer-enhanced & colorized. It was much more disturbing than
>watching a theatrical movie production, because I knew it was *real*.
I'm old enough to remember the assasination and I remember the stills
in LIFE magazine the following week, from the Zapruder film, as being
in color.
But memory is funny like that.
I also remember watching TV and they were taking Oswald down some hall
with the cameras rolling and...wait...what was
that...a...shot...ladies and gentlemen Lee Harvey Oswald appears to
have been shot!
I remember that quite vividly, they re-played it a moment later in
slow motion which they referred to as something-scope, let's replay
that in xty-scope and try to see what happened...over and over.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Article: 3547 of alt.activism.d
Path: ns-mx!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!uchinews!ellis!thf2
From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Oliver Stone movies
Message-ID: <1991Dec26.033357.3047@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: 26 Dec 91 03:33:57 GMT
References: <JMC.91Dec20133037@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@uchinews.uchicago.edu (News System)
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Lines: 20
Xref: ns-mx alt.activism.d:3547 misc.legal:23645
In article <JMC.91Dec20133037@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>Dec 20 NYT has a subeditorial denouncing Stone, Garrison and the movie
>and an Op-Ed by Oliver Stone attacking his critics. The subeditorial
>calls the movie immoral for slandering Clay Shaw. Shaw died before
>his suit against Garrison could be adjudicated, and it would be interesting
>as to whether Stone depicting him as doing things a jury and judge
>said there was no evidence for would be regarded as libel.
1. It would be slander, not libel.
2. Slander is oral defamation of a person that tends to harm her
reputation as to lower her in the estimation of the community
or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with her.
As Shaw is dead, he cannot be defamed.
--
Ted Frank + "I believe that Oswald acted alone..."
1307 E 60 St, #109 + -- Kevin Costner as Crash Davis in Bull Durham
U o' C Law Skool + "It's too bad you saw me, Timmy. Now I'm going to have
Chi, IL 60637 + to kill you." -- Santa Claus
Article: 6590 of alt.censorship
Path: ns-mx!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnews!cbnewsl!jad
From: jad@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (John DiNardo)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa,soc.rights.human,alt.censorship
Subject: Part II, WBAI Radio: Oliver Stone Rebuts Critics of "JFK"
Keywords: Oliver Stone rebuts critics of "JFK"
Message-ID: <1992Mar6.002026.16486@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>
Date: 6 Mar 92 00:20:26 GMT
Followup-To: alt.conspiracy
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 163
Xref: ns-mx alt.conspiracy:12900 alt.activism:22381 talk.politics.misc:63197 misc.headlines:20532 soc.culture.usa:3324 soc.rights.human:8943 alt.censorship:6590
Thanks to Dan Stockman, x91stockman@gw.wmich.edu,
for transcribing this taped speech by Oliver Stone.
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The following transcript is from a broadcast by Pacifica Radio station
WBAI-FM Radio (99.5)
505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
New York, NY 10018
(212) 279-0707
The transcript of Oliver Stone's presentation to the National Press Club
in Washington D.C. Part II
[a conversation with Dave Emory regarding the JFK assassination
and other assassinations will follow in a later post.]
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(continuation)
OLIVER STONE:
The central historical question raised by "JFK", of course,
has not to do with the tramps in Dealy Plaza, not with who might
have been firing from the grassy knoll, not with the coalition of
Cubans, mobsters, exiles, rouge intelligence officers by whom the
conspiracy might have been concocted -- but by the darker stain on
the American ground in the 60s and 70s: Vietnam. It is Vietnam
which has become the bloody shirt of American politics, replacing
slavery of a hundred years before. Just as we did not resolve,
if we ever did, the great battle over slavery until a hundred years
after the Civil War when we passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
so it becomes clear that the Vietnam War becomes the watershed of
our time. And the divisions in our country among our people opened
up by it seem to get wider and wider with each passing year.
"JFK" suggests that it was Vietnam that led to the
assassination of John Kennedy; that he became too dangerous,
too strong an advocate for changing the course of the Cold War;
too clear a proponent of troop withdrawal for those who supported
the idea of a war in Vietnam, and later came to support the war itself.
Was President Kennedy withdrawing from Vietnam? Had he
indicated strongly his intention to do so? Had he committed himself
firmly -- and against all hawkish advice to the contrary --
to opposing the entry of U.S. combat troops? The answer to these
questions is, unequivocably, yes. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has
attested, and Major John Newman -- a young historian here on this
dias who has devoted himself to a ten-year study of this -- can
attest .... His book, "JFK in Vietnam", a major work coming next
month, when it is published, will surely contribute more heavily
than any other volume of immediate military history to the solution
of this question. Major Newman makes it very clear that President
Kennedy signaled his intention to withdraw from Vietnam in a
variety of ways, and put it firmly on the record with National
Security Action Memorandum 263 in October of 1963.
Those who say that it was no more than a call for a
rotation of troops or a gimmick, and that the Johnsom NASM,
within two weeks of the assassination, merely confirmed the policy,
ignore the obvious question. If LBJ was merely continuing Kennedy's
policies, why was it necessary to reverse the NSAM?
So the protectors of Vietnam, the new wavers of the bloody
shirt, leap to attack the central premise of "JFK". "Oliver Stone
is distorting history again," they say, "by even suggesting that
John Kennedy was positioning us for a withdrawal from Vietnam."
But the protectors of history had very little to say five years
ago when it was suggested in a motion picture that Mozart had not
died peacefully, but had been murdered by a rival and second-rate
composer. Where were all the cultural protectors when Peter Schafer
was distorting history with "Amadeus"? The answer, of course,
is that it wasn't worth the effort. Eighteenth century Vienna,
after all, is not twentieth century Vietnam. If Mozart was murdered
by Salieri, it would not change one note of that most precious
music. But, if John F. Kennedy was killed because he was determined
to withdraw from Vietnam, then we must fix the blame for the only
lost war in our history, for fifty-eight thousand American dead,
and for the unhealed split in our country, right where it belongs.
I've been ridiculed, and worse, for suggesting the
existence of a conspiracy -- as though only kooks, and cranks,
and extremists suggest their existence. But this is the wrong city
in which to ridicule people who believe in conspiracies.
[laughter, applause]
Is it inconceivable that the President of the United States
could sit at the heart of a criminal conspiracy designed to cover-up
a crime? We know what happened! We would have impeached him for it,
had he not resigned, just one jump ahead. Is it so far-fetched to
believe in a high level conspiracy involving the White House, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Air Force, and the CIA to bomb a neutral
country and lie about it in military reports to the rest of the
country? But it happened! Perhaps more than once. Is it inconceivable
that the National Security Council leadership, with or without the
knowledge of the President of the United States, and with the
collaboration of the Director of the CIA -- not just a few rouges --
could be engaged in a massive conspiracy to ship arms to our sworn
enemy, with the casual hope that a few hostages might be released
as a result? But it happened! Does it offend our sense of propriety
to suggest that an Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America
might have regularly lied to Congress about raising money abroad
to perform things which Congress had forbidden them to do?
But that happened! Is it inconceivable that a campaign manager,
later to become the CIA Director, negotiated with a foreign
country to keep American hostages imprisoned in order to ensure
the election of his candidate? WE SHALL SEE! [laughter, applause]
I think no one thinks that it is out of the question anymore.
So when I suggest that a conspiracy invloving elements
of a government, people in the CIA, people in the FBI, perhaps
people associated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- all in the
service of the "military-industrial complex" that President
Eisenhower warned us about -- might have conspired to kill
John Fitzgerald Kennedy because he was going to sharply change
the direction of American foreign policy, is it not appropriate
to at least look for evidence?
What was Allen Dulles [CIA Director] really up to in
those months? Or Charles Cabell, also fired by JFK? Or his brother,
Earl, the Mayor of Dallas?
Thomas Jefferson urged: [if truth competes in] the free
marketplace of ideas -- it will prevail. There is, as yet, no
marketplace in history for the years of the Kennedy assassination
and immediately afterward. Let us begin to create one.
What I have tried to do with this movie is to open a stall
in that marketplace of ideas and offer a version of what might
have happened, as against the competing versions of what we know
did not happen -- and some other possible versions, as well.
I am happy to say -- based not only on the nine million
people who've already seen the movie, but on the facts that they
take away with them from the movie -- that our new stall in the
marketplace of ideas is doing a very brisk business. We expect
that by the time this film has played out in video cassettes, etc.,
that another fifty million or so Americans will have a little
more information on their history.
I am very proud of the fact that "JFK" has been a part of
the momentum to open previously closed files in the matter of the
assassination. Congressman Louis Stokes of Ohio, who chaired the
House Committee on the Assassination, has expressed his willingness
to consider the opening of the files -- closed, as you know, until
the year 2029. And I am hopeful that his consideration will ripen
into approval. In addition, Judge William Webster, formerly the
Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and of the CIA,
has indicated his strong opinion that all of the files -- all of
the files ... House Committee, CIA and FBI among them -- be made
public, a proposal I was extremely pleased last weekend to see
endorsed by Senator Edward Kennedy.
In the meantime, we are grateful to Congressman Stokes,
Congressman Lee Hamilton, Judge Webster, Senator Kennedy, and
others who have indicated a willingness to consider opening these
files. Now, if the Army and Navy Intelligence services will join
suit, it is my hope that the American people will have the full
history of this assassination. Thank you.
********************************************************
WBAI-FM Radio is a non-commercial, listener-sponsored station
of the Pacifica Radio network. Their commitment to bringing you
unedited, uninterrupted information, not divulged in the mainstream
media, is only possible through people like yourself. If you like
what you've read of their broadcasts, and you would like the idea
of a group committed to this type of work -- please let them know.
Contact Valerie van Isler, General Manager
WBAI-FM Radio
505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
New York, NY 10018 (212) 279-0707
- ****************************************************************************
Dan Stockman _____________________________________________
Western Mich. University | I want to see ordinary people, living |
x91stockman@gw.wmich.edu | peacefully... |
| -Paul McCartney |
----------------------------------------------
Article: 14257 of alt.conspiracy
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From: lea00@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Larry Akers)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: JFK - Stone getting flak...
Message-ID: <3550004@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Apr 92 17:35:41 GMT
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Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland, CO
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There was a special "live" show broadcast on channel 31 in
Denver last night that tied many things together. Things from
Watergate, Nixon, Johnson, CIA, and the "S FORCE". The "S FORCE"
is a group of asassins who were formed in 1960 to kill leaders
of other countries. They say that JFK was killed by the "S FORCE"
I didn't see the show except for the last 15 minutes where
they were doing their summary. But from what I saw they looked
like they had done their homework. But they also said that
you can bet that opening the government files will do no good,
any nasty evidence has long been destroyed. So this will never
be solved most likely.
LA... LA... LA... LA... Later,,, Larry Akers...
Article: 14498 of alt.conspiracy
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From: holtz@tooltalk.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: JFK - Stone getting flak...
Message-ID: <kvlukcINNkhb@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 26 Apr 92 18:46:36 GMT
References: <282.29E9BEB4@business.UUCP> <3550004@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
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In article <3550004@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM> lea00@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM
(Larry Akers) writes:
> There was a special "live" show broadcast on channel 31 in
>Denver last night that tied many things together. Things from
>Watergate, Nixon, Johnson, CIA, and the "S FORCE". [...]
> I didn't see the show except for the last 15 minutes where
>they were doing their summary. But from what I saw they looked
>like they had done their homework.
Not! The show was a farce, complete with this hilarious exchange
between James Earl Jones and Ron Lewis, author and alleged Oswald
confidante:
Jones: "Was Oswald involved in the plan to kill Kennedy?"
Lewis: "Yes, he was."
Jones: [pause] "Oh." [pause] "Yes --" [points toward Lewis while
looking offstage toward someone; Lewis fidgeting]
Lewis: [looks offstage in response to a woman's whisper, then turns to
Jones, shrugs and whispers:] "Forgot my line."
Jones: [whispers] "Yeah. Yeah." [giving up, and apparently skipping
ahead in the script] "Later in the show, we'll actually
hear from the KGB..."
The more-seasoned conspiracy authors on the show seemed a little
amused by the amateurishness of the whole effort.
My favorite character was the guy who played David Ferrie in the
reconstructions. His manic intensity made Stone's Ferrie look
positively sedate, especially when he was gushing about the
near-metaphysical assurance of success that is afforded by a
"triangulation" shooting pattern...
--
Brian Holtz
Article: 14533 of alt.conspiracy
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From: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: JFK - Stone getting flak...
Message-ID: <181262@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 27 Apr 92 17:29:08 GMT
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LA > There was a special "live" show broadcast on channel 31 in
LA >Denver last night that tied many things together. Things from
LA >Watergate, Nixon, Johnson, CIA, and the "S FORCE". [...]
|>
|>
BH Not! The show was a farce, complete with this hilarious exchange
BH between James Earl Jones and Ron Lewis, author and alleged Oswald
BH confidante:
|>
BH Jones: "Was Oswald involved in the plan to kill Kennedy?"
BH Lewis: "Yes, he was."
BH Jones: [pause] "Oh." [pause] "Yes --" [points toward Lewis while
BH looking offstage toward someone; Lewis fidgeting]
BH Lewis: [looks offstage in response to a woman's whisper, then turns to
BH Jones, shrugs and whispers:] "Forgot my line."
BH Jones: [whispers] "Yeah. Yeah." [giving up, and apparently skipping
BH ahead in the script] "Later in the show, we'll actually
BH hear from the KGB..."
I have not seen the broadcast on Denver channel 31 which either ties
many things together or is a farce. It's fun to listen to you guys
argue about it, but quite frankly I'd like to see for myself.
Brian, clearly you have access to the video, since you are able to transcribe
it. Do you suppose you could take some time and do us all a favor and
transcribe it. Thanks.
Paul Collacchi
Article: 14541 of alt.conspiracy
Path: umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu!ns-mx!uunet!blkcat!Uucp
From: Steve.Rose@f134.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Steve Rose)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: JFK - Stone getting flak...
Message-ID: <704455220.F00001@blkcat.UUCP>
Date: 28 Apr 92 06:36:00 GMT
Sender: Uucp@blkcat.UUCP
Lines: 15
Hello Brian!
BH> Not! The show was a farce, complete with this hilarious exchange
BH> between James Earl Jones and Ron Lewis, author and alleged Oswald
BH> confidante:
BH>
BH> Jones: "Was Oswald involved in the plan to kill Kennedy?"
BH> Lewis: "Yes, he was."
BH> Jones: [pause] "Oh." [pause] "Yes --" [points toward Lewis while
Haha! That 'live' show did seem pretty contrived. JEJ looked as if he never
received any on-stage cues...and this man is a professional! The whole show
seemed ill-timed and every segment looked nervous and rushed through. I would
use a tape of it in a class designed to show students how NOT to produce a TV
docu-special. :-D
Article: 14558 of alt.conspiracy
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From: holtz@tooltalk.Eng.Sun.COM (Brian Holtz)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: JFK - Stone getting flak...
Message-ID: <kvrtdfINNckq@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 29 Apr 92 01:02:39 GMT
References: <282.29E9BEB4@business.UUCP> <3550004@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM> <kvlukcINNkhb@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <181262@pyramid.pyramid.com>
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In article <181262@pyramid.pyramid.com> pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com
(Paul Collacchi) writes:
>Do you suppose you could take some time and do us all a favor and
>transcribe it[?]
Yipe! That would be a lot of work. There was little, if anything,
new in the show. It basically presents the whole _High Treason_
/Fletcher Prouty version of events. Jean Hill sits in the studio to
plug a new book that was ghost-written for her. There are film clips
of deaf mute Ed Hoffman behind the grassy knoll fence telling us what
he saw; I hadn't realized that he meant that the rifle was allegedly
carried off down the tracks *away* from the overpass, instead of
- toward* it. (This may represent a change in his story; I'd have to
check to be sure.) They also show a clip of a recent interview with
Beverly Oliver, the "Babushka Lady". And there is a fascinating
speeded-up clip of Oswald's movements between the TSBD and the Tippit
slaying. It's kind of startling to see how ordinary all the
places are where these momentous events happened. Discredited
Garrison witness Perry Russo gets tons of uncritical air time, as he
narrates a hokey re-enactment of Ferrie/Shaw/Russo/Oswald
concocting the conspiracy. They flash on the screen a picture of an
alleged CIA purchase order for some pamphlets connected to Oswald; they
didn't say where they got it.
--
Brian Holtz