JFK Conspiracy Theories IV: The One With The Whales

[MicahJava]

Oh! look what I found!


"It should be noted that no nick or break in the concrete was observed, in the area checked, nor was there any mark similar to the one in the photographs taken by Underwood and Dillard observed in the area checked either by the Special Agents, by Mr. Underwood or Mr. Dillard. It should be noted that, since this mark was observed on November 23, 1963, there have been numerous rains, which could have possibly washed away any such mark and also that the area is cleaned by a street cleaning machine about once a week, which would also wash away any such mark"

http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_Shaneyfelt_Ex_26.pdf

Take your pick: the magic raindrop or the magic street-sweeper. Both add mass to curbstone rather than subtract it. That is, unless either of these is capable of uniformly eating through a good 1/8th inch of concrete. So I haven't checked, has anybody argued how this could not be the result of someone literally covering up evidence?

 

[Tomtomkent]

"Magic" rain water or cleaning the removes scuff marks making indentations harder to find find are impossible.

But super secrets spies have super secret cement that ages in days to be indistinguishable from the rest of the paving stone?

All the statement proves is that the mark was small enough to not stand out when the scuffing was gone. No cover up needed. Somebody failed to find it. They have not claimed it was not there.

 

[Tomtomkent]

It's human nature. If "quieter" shots were used in conjunction with loud shots, you are most likely going to assume the shooting only consisted of the loud shots.

But we hate no evidence they were. Your stretching of that quote about the paving to the strange conclusion it was repaved, to the even stranger conclusion that means more bullets, is just a demonstration of straw clutching.

 

[MicahJava]

"Magic" rain water or cleaning the removes scuff marks making indentations harder to find find are impossible.

But super secrets spies have super secret cement that ages in days to be indistinguishable from the rest of the paving stone?

All the statement proves is that the mark was small enough to not stand out when the scuffing was gone. No cover up needed. Somebody failed to find it. They have not claimed it was not there.

Can you kindly point to me the location of the original mark?

Before:

After:

The part of the curb that was hit should be a white chip about 1/8 inch deep. I see nothing of the sort in the later piece of curb. It looks like someone took a dark-colored filling material and covered up the mark.

 

[Tomtomkent]

The part of the curb that was hit should be a white chip about 1/8 inch deep. I see nothing of the sort in the later piece of curb. It looks like someone took a dark-colored filling material and covered up the mark.

Why would it be a WHITE chip?
The scuff mark was washed off. The material darkened. It is still an indentation, but it looks darker. What is absent is any evidence of being filled.

You really are clutching at straws. You just posted a photograph that shows the mark is still there...

 

[Tomtomkent]

 

[Tomtomkent]

I mean... Am I the only one who sees the "before" and "after" and think "well, other than the angle of the camera giving a more dramatic shadow in the top picture, what is the difference? Same mark. Same apparent depth. No sign of being patched up..."?

 

[MicahJava]

Why would it be a WHITE chip?
The scuff mark was washed off. The material darkened. It is still an indentation, but it looks darker. What is absent is any evidence of being filled.

You really are clutching at straws. You just posted a photograph that shows the mark is still there...

Tomtomkent, thank you very much for driving me nuts enough to google the hell out of this curb mark.

Turns out the curbstone in the National Archives was closely examined proven to be altered with some filler substance years ago.

From Harold Weisberg's book Case Open:

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/C Disk/Cochran Johnnie/Item 03.pdf

 

[Tomtomkent]

So, no answer for why it would be white?

No?

Oh... and I will just let you look at that PDF again and see if you can spot why it is not conclusive...

But the point stands: Even if it was filled. How are you stretching this into evidence of another bullet?
Show us how you worked out the trajectory and mass of the impact object to discount it being a fragment of one of the three known bullets?
You clasp at straws, to bolster a conclusion you have already reached. But the evidence itself is not leading to that conclusion.

 

[BStrong]

What? Who says he was literally there for the shooting?



Well, combine his skills well before then with the fact that silencers did exist in the military long before then, and I don't see the purpose of trying to argue that there's no way you couldn't get a rifle to be pretty quiet compared to something like the MC.

If you have proof of a suppressed weapon in play at Dallas please post it, because so far jaq'ing about could have/maybe isn't going to work any better for you than it did for the last poster that wanted to assert the same thing.

The unsuppressed/suppressed weapon may be a fine imaginative part of a plot in popular fiction, the facts and the evidence don't support any weapon being used on JFK other than the MC.

 

[turingtest]

Quote:
PS: You still owe us a scenario. How many shots, from where, doing what damage to whom?

Hank

Hmm.

1. The first shot happened at 190-224.

2. I think that the idea of the three loud shots being evenly spaced is probably not true at all, the last two were most likely close together.

3. There seems to have been some action in the grassy knoll area. Some have pointed out that the area immediately behind the fence next to the pergola area is probably an awful hiding spot, and only one witness (Ed Hoffman) has claimed to see a gunman there. Even if Ed Hoffman was lying, I don't want to deny the witnesses who claimed to see a puff of smoke at that specific area. So, perhaps some kind of firecracker was set off there as a military-style deception.

Right here, however, is a brilliant hiding spot for a grassy knoll sniper:

[qimg]https://i.imgur.com/tPv54FB.jpg[/qimg]

Not only do the trees, hedges and parked cars give a fair amount of privacy, but there is a storm drain right there where a shooter could have escaped from:

[qimg]http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sewer1.jpg[/qimg]

Perhaps they could've even been sitting half-way in the storm drain, shooting through a gap between the wooden boards.

Great; here's something we can work with. Surely you'll agree that, since CTists have spent fifty years micro-nitpicking every excruciating little detail of the "official narrative," your own scenario should be able to withstand something approaching the same level of scrutiny? So, some questions-

1) A shot fired from behind this fence- which one was it? Silenced weapon? Headshot, missed shot, what?

2) Is the gap between the boards wide enough that the shooter could have a) fit a weapon with a silencer in the gap? and b) been able to see anything he was shooting at that wasn't directly in front of him? Because it looks to me that from that position, he could only have fired when the car was way down the road from where either of the two earlier hits were made.

3) The storm drain- have you checked to see if anyone could actually fit any further into it than the man in the picture? He needs to be able to escape entirely, which means the drain needs to be big enough for far enough to take him entirely away; otherwise, he's pretty much trapped himself if anyone tells a policeman "hey, I saw the rifle sticking out of the boards right by this drain" and the cop looks into it. Is this a conspiracy that can foresee (and forestall) every contingency like that? Lee Bowers was in a position to have seen someone there- how could your conspirators have been sure he wouldn't? Here's a view from the other side-

(3b- have you ever been to Dealey Plaza?)

4) Bonus question- you say (in another post, re the Tague strike) ) that "t just seems very unlikely that a bullet fragment could've gotten that far." On what basis do you conclude it's unlikely? Do you have the relevant ballistics/trajectory expertise? Or does it just seem unlikely because you're looking for something, anything, to hang a doubt on?

Because it seems to me that you, in common with every CTist ever, have confused reasonable doubt with any-doubt-will-do. The thing about the Tague strike (and any number of other bits of minutiae you folks cling to so fiercely) is that it's really not all that important. It is an unresolved question- bullet fragment? concrete chip?- but LHO's guilt or innocence doesn't hang on it, no matter how much you guys do. There are always unresolved questions in a case of this magnitude (I'd like to know what was going on with LHO and Sylvia Odio) but that's life- it's not the normative perfection CTists demand it be. LHO's guilt is a conclusion by the weight of consilience; and you can't, in a reasonable world, overturn that weight by just this one insignificant corner- a corner you don't really have a good grip on anyway.

 

[JayUtah]

2) Is the gap between the boards wide enough that the shooter could have a) fit a weapon with a silencer in the gap? and b) been able to see anything he was shooting at that wasn't directly in front of him?

This is quite salient because we already have the problem of the transverse shot. From the TSBD, Kennedy's car was traveling away, along the line of sight, and down an incline. In contrast, from the fence at the top of the grassy knoll the target is moving rapidly across the line of sight. That's already a difficult shot. The road signs and trees limit the time in which the shot can be taken. When you add the obstructions caused by using the fence as cover, making the fatal head shot from there, with a suppressed weapon, strains credulity.

 

[turingtest]

This is quite salient because we already have the problem of the transverse shot. From the TSBD, Kennedy's car was traveling away, along the line of sight, and down an incline. In contrast, from the fence at the top of the grassy knoll the target is moving rapidly across the line of sight. That's already a difficult shot. The road signs and trees limit the time in which the shot can be taken. When you add the obstructions caused by using the fence as cover, making the fatal head shot from there, with a suppressed weapon, strains credulity.

Well, we'll see how MJ answers, I guess; but it's just about a job requirement for CTists to have a pretty elastic credulity, at least when it comes to their own scenarios. Another requirement, of course, is that it not be too consistent a credulity; we'll compare with the "unlikely" reaction to the idea that the Tague strike could have been a bullet/fragment/whatever from LHO firing.

 

[Axxman300]

Even if that was true, why only stoop to manufactured weapons with silencers? When you have information that a brilliant firearms technician like Mitchell WerBel may have contributed to the crossfire in Dealey Plaza, what's the point of even arguing? If anybody could make the perfect weapon for that situation at that time, it was WerBel. The only thing him, or someone like him would have to do is create a weapon quieter than an extremely loud rifle similar to the MC. The witnesses can then be deceived into thinking they are hearing echoes associated with the three loud shots.

Accusing an innocent dead man of murder is tacky.

Were Mitchell alive this is what he'd say:

Why go to the trouble of fabricating a weapon, meaning months of design, testing, and redesign then construction for a one-off shooting? A weapon that has to be smuggled in and out, and then destroyed? Why not just use a proven rifle and shoot the guy and escape in the confusion...like Oswald did?

I don't see a technician like WerBell signing off on a convoluted assassination scheme with multiple gunmen in Dealey Plaza. Mitchell would emphasize that one man would be the way to go. Easier to get into place and easier to get away.

Oswald, if he had kept his cool, would have got away. Certainly to the Mexican border, or New Orleans where he would have been arrested later.

Mitchell would also point out that Oswald had the best position to make the shots, and that all the shots came from the 6th floor.

You can't throw a name around like that without knowing him on a practical level. WerBell was no idiot, and every 2nd gunman theory is by definition idiotic.

 

[MicahJava]

So, no answer for why it would be white?

No?

Oh... and I will just let you look at that PDF again and see if you can spot why it is not conclusive...

When Henry Hurt, a roving editor for Reader's Digest, was working on his book, Reasonable Doubt, I helped him all I could, mainly with its first half, a recap of known facts about the JFK assassination. I asked him, for his purposes and mine, the Digest having resources I lacked and lack, to have an expert on concrete examine that curbstone. They engaged Construction Environment, Inc., of Alexandrea, Virginia. It's chief engineer, Jose T. Fernandez, made an examination on March 10, 1983. He reported it March 17. He found the "dark gray spot" readily, "at the center of the concrete section, on the vertical face, just below the curbed transition between the horizontal ad vertical surfaces... The dark spot had fairly well-defined boundaries, as it stood out visually from the surrounding concrete surface... elliptical in shape approximately 1/2 in. by 3/4 in. in principle dimension. He found no other such areas on the curbstone and regarded that as "significant."

The spot also had different characteristics. He attributed the "difference in color" to "the cement paste" that was used. He found a difference in the sand grains because, unlike the rest, the "dark spot" contained only semi-translucent light gray sand grains. He found a flaw on the upper edge of the patch "consistent with the relatively weaker zones that normally occurs in the thin, or feathered edges of surface patch." His summary is: that it was a surface patch.

Source: Never Again!: The Government Conspiracy in the JFK Assassination
by Harold Weisberg

But the point stands: Even if it was filled. How are you stretching this into evidence of another bullet?
Show us how you worked out the trajectory and mass of the impact object to discount it being a fragment of one of the three known bullets?
You clasp at straws, to bolster a conclusion you have already reached. But the evidence itself is not leading to that conclusion.

Who cares? The patch would have been made before the single bullet theory was developed.

So... you're not as creeped out as I am about this? There's physical evidence of a bullet, or a piece of a bullet, striking the curb in Dealey Plaza; someone, probably from the government, looks and that and goes "Well, that doesn't fit with our story", so they take time out of their day to obtain some kind of cement filler-substance, and they pave over the bullet mark while nobody's looking. That's some heavy stuff. That's like something out of the X-Files. How can anybody say that there was no cover up?

 

[MicahJava]

This is quite salient because we already have the problem of the transverse shot. From the TSBD, Kennedy's car was traveling away, along the line of sight, and down an incline. In contrast, from the fence at the top of the grassy knoll the target is moving rapidly across the line of sight. That's already a difficult shot. The road signs and trees limit the time in which the shot can be taken. When you add the obstructions caused by using the fence as cover, making the fatal head shot from there, with a suppressed weapon, strains credulity.

The limo was very slow at the time of the head shot. This is very apparent on the stabilized version of the Z film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqk3sdfXFkc

 

[MicahJava]

Accusing an innocent dead man of murder is tacky.

Were Mitchell alive this is what he'd say:

Why go to the trouble of fabricating a weapon, meaning months of design, testing, and redesign then construction for a one-off shooting? A weapon that has to be smuggled in and out, and then destroyed? Why not just use a proven rifle and shoot the guy and escape in the confusion...like Oswald did?

I don't see a technician like WerBell signing off on a convoluted assassination scheme with multiple gunmen in Dealey Plaza. Mitchell would emphasize that one man would be the way to go. Easier to get into place and easier to get away.

Oswald, if he had kept his cool, would have got away. Certainly to the Mexican border, or New Orleans where he would have been arrested later.

Mitchell would also point out that Oswald had the best position to make the shots, and that all the shots came from the 6th floor.

You can't throw a name around like that without knowing him on a practical level. WerBell was no idiot, and every 2nd gunman theory is by definition idiotic.

This again? Read about the crazy ideas the CIA thought up to kill Castro and tell me that a decently suppressed rifle in 1963 was impossible. It's ridiculous. Even in your lame exaggerations, there is nothing infeasible about what you're saying at all for the purposes of an assassination.

In The Last Investigation by Gaeton Fonzi, who interviewed Werbell, we read: Mitch Werbell had admitted that he was in business there with two former CIA men manufacturing ultrasophisticated assassination devices.

In the book, he explicitly denied having any involvement in the Kennedy murder, but really, he's just one of many examples of people who could make firearms ahead of their time for special purposes.

And we don't even need all of that! We just need a rifle that's not very loud compared to something like the extremely loud Carcano!

 

[JayUtah]

The limo was very slow at the time of the head shot.

That doesn't address the points I raised. Have you ever been to Dealey Plaza?

 

[Border Reiver]

And we don't even need all of that! We just need a rifle that's not very loud compared to something like the extremely loud Carcano!

All you need is evidence that such a weapon existed, and was used in the assassination.

 

[MicahJava]

That doesn't address the points I raised. Have you ever been to Dealey Plaza?

I've been to Dealey Plaza on Google Maps.