JFK Assasination

by Big Tex 51 Replies latest social current

Mary

And again, if there were businessmen/oil men who wanted him dead, you would have to say the FBI, Secret Service and CIA are in on the coverup. You'd have to also say the doctors at Parkland are part of the coverup. The Warren Commission, and all the investigators are in on the coverup. How many hundreds (thousands?) of people are we talking about? And no one has said anything for 40+ years? There's too many moving parts by too many disparate people spread over decades to be believable.
Actually, I do not believe that the assassination had official approval from the FBI, CIA or the ONI. There are plenty of part time operatives connected with the government who act out on their own all the time using their connections to implement whatever task they have in mind. Good example? The mayor of Dallas at the time of the assassination was Earle Cabell. Guess who his brother was? General Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA until John Kennedy forced his resignation in early 1962 over the Bay of Pigs fiasco. General Cabell's subsequent hatred of JFK became an open secret in the political arena. Coincidence that Cabell's brother just happened to be mayor of the city where Kennedy is murdered 11 months later? Perhaps. Perhaps not but this is an excellent example of having "connections" in the right places. Plus, I think it very odd that Allen Dulles was appointed to chair the Warren Commission----a man who also had been fired by JFK and liked him about as much as Charles Cabell did.
My own feeling is that the assassination did not have official approval, yet after it happened, agencies like the FBI and the CIA were more or less forced to cover it up, lest other clandescent operations were exposed in the process, exposing intelligence connections that they preferred to keep quiet. Inadvertedly, there were alot of people who were compelled to partake in the cover-up, but who would have had no foreknowledge of the event and were not participants.
As for the bullets, if there was no wound in the back of the neck, then how could the frontal wound be a wound of exit? The bullet wound in Kennedy's back was too low to exit out his throat, and then hit Connally several times and then end up in almost pristine condition when it was found later. Then you've got the bullet that grazed James Tague and the bullet or bullets that blew practically the top half of Kennedy's head off. That's 4 bullets, minimum, right there.
Two of the Secret Service men in the car behind JFK's told Ken O'Donnell, a top aide of JFK, that they originally stated that they were both sure that shots came from behind the fence on the Knoll. When asked why this was never put in the Warren Commission, they said they were told they were wrong, that they only heard echos, etc. etc., so they caved and answered exactly how the Commission wanted them to.
I also find it very odd that in the subsequent years, JFK's brain mysteriously vanishes off the face of the earth. The official answer lays the blame at the President's brother, Bobby, saying he wanted it destroyed rather that be put on display......Of course, this was laid out in the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations in 1976......eight years after Bobby himself had also been assassinated so he could not defend himself against the accusation.
And if our government can pull off this coup so brilliantly, why do they do everything else so badly?
Actually, they didn't pull it off so brilliantly. If they had, there would not be all the inconsistencies that there are in the whole sorid tale.
Big Tex

My own feeling is that the assassination did not have official approval, yet after it happened, agencies like the FBI and the CIA were more or less forced to cover it up, lest other clandescent operations were exposed in the process, exposing intelligence connections that they preferred to keep quiet. Inadvertedly, there were alot of people who were compelled to partake in the cover-up, but who would have had no foreknowledge of the event and were not participants.
That is almost exactly how I used to feel.
But if it were proved, beyond not just a reasonable doubt, but all doubt, that there only 3 shots fired, and all 3 shots came from the 6th floor of the School Book Depository, and Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger, would that negate the possibility of governmental conspiracy? Just curious. I ask because when it was proved to my satisfaction then I let go of conspiracy ideas.
As for the bullets, if there was no wound in the back of the neck, then how could the frontal wound be a wound of exit? The bullet wound in Kennedy's back was too low to exit out his throat, and then hit Connally several times and then end up in almost pristine condition when it was found later. Then you've got the bullet that grazed James Tague and the bullet or bullets that blew practically the top half of Kennedy's head off. That's 4 bullets, minimum, right there.
Ah, but the wound in the back of the neck wasn't too low. I bought into the conspiracy books who said the same thing. They would show photos of Kennedy's bloodstained shirt with the bullet hole just above the shoulder blade and then say the same thing.
Consider this: ever notice how the suit jacket on news anchormen on TV are always perfectly smooth? That's because they pull the bottom of the jacket down far enough to sit on it. Now Kennedy didn't do that in the limo. Also, he had his arm up and was waving. This pulls the suit jacket, and shirt, up. I've attached some photos I found to give you an idea. I couldn't find the perfect one that was in Bugliosi's book, but anyway, even though the bullet went through the jacket and shirt that appeared up high, in fact the wound in his back wasn't.
I don't have the book in front of me now, but the bullet penetrated Kennedy at something like C-4 or C-5 near the vertebrae, and exited at his throat just above the bone of the chest/collarbone. Remember the bullet was traveling at a downward angle (dang I can't remember the degree angle; I hate having Alzheimers) before hitting Connally.
The wounds from this bullet hit no bone, this is consistent with the wounds discovered on Kennedy (back and throat) and Connally, until the bullet shattered his wrist.
See the pristine nature of the bullet always bothered me as well, but as I stated earlier in the thread, the program "Unsolved History" demonstrated it was possible for a Mannlicher/Carcano rifle to fire the exact same bullet (from the same batch of bullets Oswald bought by the way), pass through soft tissue and emerge in a relative pristine state. Now it wasn't exactly pristine as the lead interior was deformed, as was the bullet fired on the program.
My point is it has been demonstrated that this sort of shot is possible. For years I believed it was not. The first shot missed. The second hit Kennedy and Connally and the third killed Kennedy.
Again, if the throat wound is an entrance wound, what happened to the bullet? Where did it go? There was no exit wound on the back of Kennedy's neck and no bullet was found in his body or the limo. Process of elimination says the throat wound must be an exit wound, which means it is now possible for one bullet to have passed through both bodies, through mostly soft tissue, wounding both severely but not proving fatal.
Two of the Secret Service men in the car behind JFK's told Ken O'Donnell, a top aide of JFK, that they originally stated that they were both sure that shots came from behind the fence on the Knoll. When asked why this was never put in the Warren Commission, they said they were told they were wrong, that they only heard echos, etc. etc., so they caved and answered exactly how the Commission wanted them to.
Okay let's say for a moment they did hear shots from the grassy knoll. Where did that bullet go? We know it didn't hit Kennedy in the throat. We know it didn't hit him in the head (look at an autopsy photo of Kennedy's head, the back of his head is intact and the right front side is gone; this is not consistent with an entry wound). We know it didn't hit Connally. No one else was wounded and there were no other damages done to the street or the grass. Where did that bullet go?
But yes there is an echo in Dealey Plaza. As unsatisfying as that sounds, it is true. It's almost like an amphitheater really. Realize the majority of people in the plaza said 3, or fewer, shots came from the Book Depository. It is very difficult to process something as traumatic, in 1963, to watch the President being murdered, with everyone completely unawares, in a span of 6 seconds. Look out slowly trained bodyguards such as the Secret Service reacted. Remembering then can be sketchy. I'm just saying it's possible they were mistaken.
I'm not saying every question is answerable, but if it's proven Oswald was the assasin, and fired only 3 shots, then there isn't a conspiracy. Occam's Razor.
Actually, they didn't pull it off so brilliantly. If they had, there would not be all the inconsistencies that there are in the whole sorid tale.
But for this conspiracy thing to work, then you would have to say it was pulled off brilliantly. Realize "they" had 3 days to plan the assasination, get the assasin(s) in place, get the cooperation of the Dallas police, make sure the top wasn't used (remember the day started off with rain; no one knew then it was going to be sunny), set up Oswals as the patsy, and then afterward rope in the FBI, CIA, right-wing oilmen, angry businessmen, the Secret Service, Dallas police, Parkland doctors, autopsy doctors at Bethesda, the Warren Commission, all the investigators for the Commission, and who know who else, ALL these people would have to coordinate before, during and after. And then they would ALL have to keep quiet for 45 years.
Look at how many moving parts there would have been and then look at how well the secret has been kept. It's just not reasonable is it?
hillbilly

Mr Milam was one of the first folks to really harp on the Zapruder film and a possibility of the grassy knoll shooters. He seems to think the bullet covered from the stretcher was not of the same metallic composition of the bullet fragments that were recovered. A google search will reveal a ton of his research and what critics say about Milam's work.
Wally is a funny guy. It's a shame he retired from the class room. He coached tennis and freshman football back in my days at Dyersburg High.
As much as folks expain away the head motion in the film frames... I'd have to agree with TD...FMJ just dont work like that on flesh and bone.
I seem to remember that Connoly went to his grave with an bullet still lodged in his body. If so, why didnt some one recover that after he passed away?
Even if Oswald worked alone... the Book Depository was a bonus for him. That Plaza, from a tactical standpoint, is a great place to wack someone riding in an open car. Traffic funnels into that train overpass... there is some cover behind a fence ... and for an average shooter ... in my opinion... there isnt anyplace in that area that would make a hard shot on a man-sized target.
After 30 years of reading about this and watching documentary films... I finally got to Dallas the other day. Made a point to run into town and see the place.... but I needed to get to the airport. I will get back soon and take the tour.
I dont think we will ever know the whole story.
Hill
hillbilly

Problem is the 30-30 is a hunting cartridge, not a military cartridge and as such it is loaded with soft-nosed bullets 99.9% of the time. ~TD
And so many times this concept is lost by those who write books and produce documentary film.
Build some .30 WCF rounds with .308 FMJ and they will work just like a "military round" or build some 6mm military rounds with a soft nose sporting bullet and performance will change.
Conspiracy or not...... I still have to think there was a shot from the front......
Hill
Mary

Big Tex said: Ah, but the wound in the back of the neck wasn't too low. I bought into the conspiracy books who said the same thing. They would show photos of Kennedy's bloodstained shirt with the bullet hole just above the shoulder blade and then say the same thing.
Below are two pictures of where the bullet (supposedly) entered through the back and the the frontal wound. If this particular shot had come from the 6th Floor of the SBD, the wound (obviously) should have exited the front at a much lower angle since the shot would have been from a high trajectory range. But I have my doubts about the first picture (as presented to the Warren Commission) being authentic as there is clearly no gaping wound on the head as you can see in the third picture.
Plus in the original diagram below, the location of where Dr. Humes placed the bullet wound was obviously too low for it to exit out of Kennedy's neck, so it was 'revised' and presented to the Commission (at the behest of Gerald Ford, surprise, surprise). Plus it looks to me that on the original diagram below that there were more than just two wounds on Kennedy.......
Early after the assassination, Dr. Perry (who had worked on JFK) clearly stated that the neck would was a wound of entrance:
On 11-22-63, at 3:16 PM CST, barely two hours after JFK was pronounced dead, Perry appeared with Kemp Clark, MD, the professor of neurosurgery who had pronounced JFK dead.

A newsman asked Perry: "Where was the entrance wound?"
Perry: "There was an entrance wound in the neck..."
Question: Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At him?"
Perry: "It appeared to be coming at him."...
Question: "Doctor, describe the entrance wound. You think from the front in the throat?"
Perry: "The wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat; yes, that is correct. The exit wound, I don't know. It could have been the head or there could have been a second wound of the head. There was not time to determine this at the particular instant."
This is yet another diagram presented in the Warren Commission. The only thing is, Kennedy was not slouched over when the bullet first hit, he was sitting up straight. For the bullet to have entered and exited where the official report says it did, he would have indeed, have to be sitting like the drawing on the left below. But as you can see from the Zapruder film, he was sitting up straight.

Plus, John Connally is wounded in the back, chest wrist and thigh by the same bullet? Sorry---I'll never buy that one. Plus, both John Connally and his wife have both always stated that he had not been hit by the first bullet:
Nellie Connally, who was sitting next to her husband in the presidential limousine, always maintained that two bullets struck John F. Kennedy and a third hit her husband. "The first sound, the first shot, I heard, and turned and looked right into the President's face. He was clutching his throat, and just slumped down. He Just had a - a look of nothingness on his face. He-he didn't say anything. But that was the first shot. The second shot, that hit John - well, of course, I could see him covered with - with blood, and his - his reaction to a second shot. The third shot, even though I didn't see the President, I felt the matter all over me, and I could see it all over the car."
John Connally agreed with his wife: "Beyond any question, and I'll never change my opinion, the first bullet did not hit me. The second bullet did hit me. The third bullet did not hit me."
Since both occupants were there in the car and were closest to JFK when he was hit, I think it's fair to say that they know what they're talking about. Since there was yet another bullet, the one that hit James Tague by the overpass, that means at least 4 shots were fired. Since it is impossible to get off that many rounds in so short a time, the logical conclusion, to me, is that there was another shooter.
Again, if the throat wound is an entrance wound, what happened to the bullet? Where did it go? There was no exit wound on the back of Kennedy's neck and no bullet was found in his body or the limo.
Indeed....where did it go? Given the questionable way the entire thing was handled, I think a very likely possibility is that the bullet could have been removed from the throat and then discarded.
Okay let's say for a moment they did hear shots from the grassy knoll. Where did that bullet go? We know it didn't hit Kennedy in the throat. We know it didn't hit him in the head (look at an autopsy photo of Kennedy's head, the back of his head is intact and the right front side is gone; this is not consistent with an entry wound). We know it didn't hit Connally. No one else was wounded and there were no other damages done to the street or the grass. Where did that bullet go?
I believe it did hit Kennedy in the throat.
I'm not saying every question is answerable, but if it's proven Oswald was the assasin, and fired only 3 shots, then there isn't a conspiracy.
You're right. But if it's proven that Oswald could not have fired 4 shots in 6 seconds, then logically, someone else was firing too.
Look at how many moving parts there would have been and then look at how well the secret has been kept. It's just not reasonable is it?
Well, that's where we differ in opinion: I don't think they did such a hot job in keeping it a secret. I think it's more reasonable to conclude that it's far more likely that more than one bullet caused 6 or 7 wounds in two men, than believe that Oswald just happened to get off a million to one shot. I think the official version is extremely selective, biased and narrow-minded----kind of like the Organization.
In 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook reinvestigations of the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1979, a single Report and twelve volumes of appendices on each assassination were published by Congress. In the JFK case, the HSCA found that there was a "probable conspiracy. " This finding was based in part on acoustics evidence from a tape that recorded the shots, but was also based on other evidence including an investigation of Ruby's underworld connections. The acoustics evidence was disputed by a panel of scientists, but that "debunking" has itself come under attack recently.
The Kennedy assassination is fascinating in the fact that you can always find weaknesses on both sides of the argument. When the Warren Report first came out, it seemed that the majority of the public embraced it and believed it. Then starting some time in the late 70s, the pendulum of public opinion swung the other way and peaked after the movie JFK came out. Then a few years after that, it started swinging back the other way is right now appears to be: 'Ya, the Warren Commission was right after all". I give it another few years and it'll start swinging back the other way.
lancelink

james_woods states : "Then it all blew over, and we started the next 50 years of our lives without a peep from their war-god."

I would find it just fascinating to hear your story about that time, I was not a witness, and I was too young to really care about
what was happening.
No witness I know has ever mentioned to me aspects of time during the Kennedy assassination, I find all the opinions amazing.

Just what was it like being a witness during that time, besides the stuff you have already mentioned ?
XJW4EVR

This has been a most captivating read. Thank you for posting this, Big Tex. I am at the point where Oswald, has defected to the then USSR.
So far the only thing that I have not been able to wrap my head around is the back entrance wound and how the bullet seemed to be rising through Kennedy's neck. However, I suspect that I missed something during my current reading. Once I finish the book, I will go back and re-read that section.
While I was never a believer in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy in the first place, I am happy to find out that my reasons for dismissing the conspiracy theories are well founded. The other thing that has struck me, is the uncanny parallel between the JFK conspiracists and the 9/11 conspiracists. The arguments they use are similar, and the manner in which they respond to their debunking is even more similar.
SixofNine

"I believe it did hit Kennedy in the throat. "
and then?
Big Tex

But I have my doubts about the first picture (as presented to the Warren Commission) being authentic as there is clearly no gaping wound on the head as you can see in the third picture.
Mary that's because there is no exit wound in the back of his head. The third picture shows the gaping hole on the side of his head and with him laying down, and missing quite a lot of bone on that side of his skull, the loose material is hanging down. You don't see that in the first picture because (1) the body is lifted up; and (2) the photo is taken from the ear down. The third picture is almost of an optical illusion as you expect to see the head behaving normally but with so much missing, gravity will cause the loose pieces to drop when the body is flat.
Plus, both John Connally and his wife have both always stated that he had not been hit by the first bullet:
They're right. Neither Connally nor Kennedy were hit by the first bullet. Oswald's first shot missed, striking the curb and causing a piece of concrete to hit a bystander. It was the second shot that hit Kennedy, exited and struck Connally. He remembers correctly.
No Kennedy was not slumped when hit with the second bullet. I will agree with you there.
Indeed....where did it go? Given the questionable way the entire thing was handled, I think a very likely possibility is that the bullet could have been removed from the throat and then discarded.
No you misunderstand me. If Kennedy were hit in the throat from the front, the bullet would have exited out of the back of his throat. The line of fire from the grassy knoll was nearly level to the street, only a few feet above, so the line of trajectory was almost straight. Therefore if the bullet struck him in the throat, there is not enough material in the throat to stop a bullet, it would have had to exit out the back. There is no wound in the back of Kennedy's neck.
So again I ask, if he were hit in the throat from the front, where did the bullet go?
In the JFK case, the HSCA found that there was a "probable conspiracy. " This finding was based in part on acoustics evidence from a tape that recorded the shots, but was also based on other evidence including an investigation of Ruby's underworld connections. The acoustics evidence was disputed by a panel of scientists, but that "debunking" has itself come under attack recently.
It has been proven beyond all doubt that the acoustics evidence was incorrect. The dictabelt in question was from an open mike by a motorcyle cop who, at the time of the shooting, was a block and a half away at the corner of Houston and Elm. It would have been impossible for an open mike to have picked up the sounds of shooting from that distance.
The other thing that has struck me, is the uncanny parallel between the JFK conspiracists and the 9/11 conspiracists. The arguments they use are similar, and the manner in which they respond to their debunking is even more similar.
Yeah that's something I've noticed as well. There used to be a ton of threads here about the 9/11 conspiracy and you just could not talk with those folks. Forget physics, or visual evidence, etc. or anything whatsoever that contradicted their idea. It bordered on fanataticism.
So are you reading Bugliosi's book then?
Chris
XJW4EVR

So are you reading Bugliosi's book then?
Yes, and I am so glad that I am!
I wish this book had come out sooner. I had a very good friend, who was a huge JFK supporter, and held to the various and sundry conspiracy theories. Sadly, he passed away a couple of years ago.I know he had nothing but admiration for Bugliosi, and I know that his mind would have been changed had he been alive and reading this book now.

JFK Assasination

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