JFK Conspiracy Theories IV: The One With The Whales

[sackett]

Michah, you still haven't explained why anybody should give a **** about your disgusting obsessions.

I was around for the whole of JFK's rather short day in the sun. He was nothing special.

Are you?

 

[abaddon]

How can you know that to the exclusion of some filler like cotton wadding, ballistics gel, straw or water, or even something like a shot with a sabot?

A sabot? Is this how low you are willing to sink?

Even meticulous JFK documenter and lone nutter David Von Pein admits that the experiment from the Discovery Channel's Beyond The Magic Bullet is "the closest we're likely to ever get to a perfect duplication of the single bullet theory"

Sure, because nobody can ever 100% replicate any gunshot, ever. It is simply impossible. Surely you do not think it is?

 

[BStrong]

Reheat, I would recommend not ordering Posner's book. He does so much lying and distorting that even Bugliosi called him out on it. He said he only studied the case for two years. I've looked at this kind of stuff on the internet almost every day for the past year and I'm just getting a grasp on the medical evidence. He even still pushes a book claiming that James Earl Ray shot MLK alone, despite several proofs being presented that it was a powerful conspiracy (just read Judge Joe Brown's testimony at the 1999 Memphis conspiracy trial to see some of the ballistics-related proofs that Ray was framed). Posner is as fake as his plastic surgery Ken Doll face.

If you want to see the current version of what you may call "the official story" here's Reclaiming History, in ebook form for free.
snipped...
.

Only the confident seek illumination.

Facts not in evidence.

 

[MicahJava]

Only the confident seek illumination.

Facts not in evidence.

I know there's one part where Posner lies and says Humes and Boswell personally told him they agreed that the entry was in the cowlick, but in reality they never said that and actually spoke out in a 1992 JAMA article where they reaffirmed their original placement of the head wound, 2.5 centimeters to the right and slightly above external occipital protuberance.

 

[HSienzant]

How can you know that to the exclusion of some filler like cotton wadding, ballistics gel, straw or water, or even something like a shot with a sabot?

Even meticulous JFK documenter and lone nutter David Von Pein admits that the experiment from the Discovery Channel's Beyond The Magic Bullet is "the closest we're likely to ever get to a perfect duplication of the single bullet theory"

Because at this point the issue is resolved. The bullet can pass through two people and remain remarkably undeformed. What's the point of trying to get a better example?

Conspiracy theorists will still find some 'reason' to reject it, just like the Discovery Channel's attempt at a recreation is rejected.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

I want to correct my post above. The screenshot I posted was pulled from David Von Pein's blog. The Discovery Channel's Beyond The Magic Bullet bullet was actually WAY more deformed than you can see there, the entire thing was bent at like a ~30-50 degree angle. They just held it up to the camera a certain way to make it look less deformed. Never trust these TV specials!

It's still in one piece, and it struck two medical dummies with the appropriate sinew and bone simulants. And it still has an undeformed tip.

Conspiracy theorists have questioned for five decades whether a bullet could survive the passage through two men and emerge with an undeformed tip and in one piece.

For example, in RUSH TO JUDGMENT, Mark Lane wrote:

Since one bullet was supposed by the Commission to have struck the President and Governor Connally and to have remained intact, the Commission called experts to prove that -any 6.5-millimeter bullet could do the same.

Scientific medical experiments for the Commission were conducted by a veterinarian, Dr Alfred G. Olivier, described by the Commission as 'a doctor who had spent 7 years in wounds ballistics research for the U.S. Army'. One of Dr Olivier's main tasks was to have a bullet fired from the alleged assassination rifle through the carcass of a goat said by the Commission to simulate Governor Connally's back and chest. Dr Olivier said that the damage done to the goat carcass was 'very similar' to the injury to Governor Connally's rib. However, when asked to describe the bullet used in the experiment, he said, 'The bullet has been quite flattened.' Commission Exhibit 399 is almost unaltered.

Another bullet was fired through the wrist of a human cadaver. Asked how the fracture compared with Governor Connally's wound, Dr Olivier replied with pardonable pride, 'In this particular instance to the best of my memory from looking at the X-rays, it is very close. It is about one of the best ones that we obtained.' Yet Dr Olivier admitted of the bullet that struck the cadaver's wrist that 'the nose of the bullet is quite flattened from striking the radius [bone].'
Q. How does it compare, for example, with Commission Exhibit 399 ?
Dr Olivier : It is not like it at all. I mean. Commission Exhibit 399 is not flattened on the end. This one is very severely flattened on the end.
Dr Olivier also had a bullet fired through a gelatin block simulating the President's neck but was mercifully spared any question about the bullet's condition.

However, even after all that, Lane conceded that the appropriate test (to test for bullet condition) was never performed by Olivier, and thus, his criticisms aimed at the condition of the bullet were thereby invalid:

Although the Commission asserted that its experts had proved that one bullet could pass through the President's neck and then through the Governor's chest and wrist and enter his thigh, the experts had never attempted that comprehensive test. Instead, they had fired different bullets, each through a different substance, each bullet suffering distortion in the process. Nevertheless the Commission concluded that one bullet—Commission Exhibit 399—did all the damage, while remaining unshattered, unflattened, undeformed.

It is neither unflattened nor undeformed. Lane lied about its condition.

Faced now with a example of a bullet that survived the entire passage the Commission concluded CE399 underwent, they (and you) are forced now to quibble over the apparent amount of deformation.

Like that was not unexpected. Conspiracy theorists accept nothing that points to non-conspiracy, not matter how well documented.

Hank

PS: You still owe me a scenario for how a pointed tip bullet wound up in Parkland Hospital to be discovered on the same floor as Governor Connally's stretcher.

 

[traxy]

I know there's one part where Posner lies and says Humes and Boswell personally told him they agreed that the entry was in the cowlick, but in reality they never said that and actually spoke out in a 1992 JAMA article where they reaffirmed their original placement of the head wound, 2.5 centimeters to the right and slightly above external occipital protuberance.

Do you have the quote from Posner handy?

Humes and Boswell would have been speaking well before Posners book was even published.

 

[SpitfireIX]

BStrong is BS-strong. Just google "silencer", "noise", "opposite direction" and you'll find people on gun forums discussing this well-known phenomenon, to the point of some suggesting it's benefit in hunting. Why do you have to lie instead of honestly debate?

B.S. in mechanical engineering technology here. First, this is impossible according to the laws of physics as they are currently understood. Second, I googled the three words/phrases as you suggested, and didn't get any hits in several pages. I even added the word "hunting" and still got no hits in two pages. Third, even granting, arguendo, that such discussions exist, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". So either produce some real evidence for your claim (that is, that this is a real phenomenon, not that certain individuals believe it is a real phenomenon), or retract the claim and apologize to BStrong for your accusation of lying.

 

[MicahJava]

It's still in one piece, and it struck two medical dummies with the appropriate sinew and bone simulants. And it still has an undeformed tip.

Conspiracy theorists have questioned for five decades whether a bullet could survive the passage through two men and emerge with an undeformed tip and in one piece.

Undeformed tip? I don't know about that. I understand that the argument has always been that the bullet was tumbling when it hit bone.

Faced now with a example of a bullet that survived the entire passage the Commission concluded CE399 underwent, they (and you) are forced now to quibble over the apparent amount of deformation.

Are you projecting? Go back and look at the gif. The Discovery Channel bullet was bent to high heaven, while the base of CE399 was slightly pinched. At the least, one might expect CE399 to look like lone nutters wish the Discovery Channel bullet looked like. And that was THE CLOSEST THING TO A DUPLICATION OF CE399 IN HISTORY. I think you're just looking for that to be the answer. It's no less magic than it was in the Mark Lane days.

PS: You still owe me a scenario for how a pointed tip bullet wound up in Parkland Hospital to be discovered on the same floor as Governor Connally's stretcher.

You owe me a response to my older comment about the cranial opening apparent on the back photo and how it relates to the location of the small head wound as examined by Dr. Finck.

 

[traxy]

The Discovery Channel bullet also shattered more than one rib in the Connally mock up, which might account for the difference in damage.

Also, it's the best attempt at a replication because it's really the only attempt at a replication. I'd say they came pretty damn close.

If you need another demonstration of how tough those Carcano rounds are, for one of the specials around the 50th anniversary of the assassination they fired a round through over 3 feet of solid pine and it came out looking like it had never been fired.

 

[MicahJava]

The Discovery Channel bullet also shattered more than one rib in the Connally mock up, which might account for the difference in damage.

Also, it's the best attempt at a replication because it's really the only attempt at a replication. I'd say they came pretty damn close.

The damage was exponentially several times more than CE399.

If you need another demonstration of how tough those Carcano rounds are, for one of the specials around the 50th anniversary of the assassination they fired a round through over 3 feet of solid pine and it came out looking like it had never been fired.

I think your memory is garbled. The "3 feet of solid pine" was a claim by John Lattimer with no photographs to prove it.

"This bullet [a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano missile like Warren Commission Exhibit 399] can penetrate four feet of solid wood or three pine telephone poles side by side and come out looking completely undeformed.

On the other hand, if it is fired into the thick bone of the back of a human skull, the jacket and core of the bullet will separate, releasing a myriad of additional fragments of many different sizes."

-Lincoln and Kennedy: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations

There's no proof that this happened, and even if there was, wood is not comparable. Pine is a soft wood. Bone is about as strong as steel of the same density.

 

[BStrong]

I know there's one part where Posner lies and says Humes and Boswell personally told him they agreed that the entry was in the cowlick, but in reality they never said that and actually spoke out in a 1992 JAMA article where they reaffirmed their original placement of the head wound, 2.5 centimeters to the right and slightly above external occipital protuberance.

I know you have difficulty in differentiating between fact and fiction yourself.

Want to go a few more rounds about what "the worlds greatest snipers" and "Olympic Snipers" have to say about LHO? maybe some proof of these new-fangled "ventriloquist suppressors" you've discovered?

You throw that L word accusation at the drop of a hat. It's like you have a pile of rocks and you throw them at every point of the compass while living in a glass house.

Relying on the reset button isn't going to be fun for you.

 

[cmikes]

Are you projecting? Go back and look at the gif. The Discovery Channel bullet was bent to high heaven, while the base of CE399 was slightly pinched. At the least, one might expect CE399 to look like lone nutters wish the Discovery Channel bullet looked like. And that was THE CLOSEST THING TO A DUPLICATION OF CE399 IN HISTORY. I think you're just looking for that to be the answer. It's no less magic than it was in the Mark Lane days.

OK, if that's the standard of proof you're using, great. Could you link where the conspiracy version of the bullets are replicated? We need one bullet that penetrated JFK's upper back a couple of inches then stopped. And another bullet that penetrated JFK's neck from the front a few inches then stopped. Both these bullets then have to disappear into thin air and never be seen by anyone. And before you try the old ice bullet myth, that was definitely busted on the Mythbusters TV show.

And don't forget to show a trajectory that explains Connally's wounds without going through JFK first, taking into account that Connally was sitting inboard and lower than JFK at the time.

 

[traxy]

I think your memory is garbled. The "3 feet of solid pine" was a claim by John Lattimer with no photographs to prove it.

There's no proof that this happened, and even if there was, wood is not comparable. Pine is a soft wood. Bone is about as strong as steel of the same density.

Oh Micah...did you actually think I'd make a claim like that and not be able to back it up? I'm not you.

https://youtu.be/a-imJWUcMso

Bullet shot through 36 inches of pine, completely undamaged.

Anything else?

 

[cmikes]

Oh Micah...did you actually think I'd make a claim like that and not be able to back it up? I'm not you.

https://youtu.be/a-imJWUcMso

Bullet shot through 36 inches of pine, completely undamaged.

Anything else?

MicahJava, this YouTube channel also has other videos you might find interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiKrR7BLFv0

Particularly pay attention towards the end, there's a guy that agrees with you about the autopsy doctors being right about the rear entry and the HSCA being wrong. I found it informative, even if I don't necessarily agree with him.

Or is Peter Cummings, a forensic pathologist, a member of THEY?

 

[MicahJava]

I know you have difficulty in differentiating between fact and fiction yourself.

Fact: The only time any person present at the autopsy agreed that the red spot on the cowlick was the small head wound was when Dr. Humes was coerced into it for his testimony to the HSCA. Afterwards, he continued denying the red spot as having any significance at all.

Want to go a few more rounds about what "the worlds greatest snipers" and "Olympic Snipers" have to say about LHO? maybe some proof of these new-fangled "ventriloquist suppressors" you've discovered?

You throw that L word accusation at the drop of a hat. It's like you have a pile of rocks and you throw them at every point of the compass while living in a glass house.

Relying on the reset button isn't going to be fun for you.

From Reclaiming Parkland:

"In his introduction, Bugliosi makes a statement and uses an example that provides a recurring motif: an attempt to show that much of the work of the critical community is unfounded. He states that the critics have always written that no rifleman has ever duplicated Oswald’s feat at the Texas School Book Depository of firing three shots and scoring two hits in the head and shoulder areas in less than six seconds. He says that this charge is not accurate. He then points to an example in the Warren Commission Report of a mysterious soldier named Miller (no first name given) who, according to a commanding officer, actually bettered Oswald’s feat. Bugliosi’s implication is that this information has been out for years but the critical community has ignored it since it would undermine their arguments. Therefore you cannot trust them with even the evidence in the Warren Commission volumes. However, this implication is unfounded. You can read about this episode on Warren Commission critic Michael Griffith’s website and in Sylvia Meagher’s classic critique of the Warren Commission, Accessories After the Fact. In fact, Meagher goes into this specific subject and testimony at greater length than Bugliosi does. But why would she if, as the prosecutor says, it undermines her case for Oswald’s innocence?

Examining the testimony completely does not undermine the critics’ case at all. Three “master marksmen” took two tries at duplicating what Oswald was supposed to have done. As Meagher explains it, these “master marksmen” were rated at the very top of the scale, not by the Marines, but by the National Rifle Association. In other words, they were even better than the top shooters in the armed services by a level of two or more classes; so proficient they qualified for open competition and even the Olympic Games! Now compare this to Oswald, who barely made the lowest class possible when he left the Marines in 1959. How can one equate the two? Further, while these men practiced all the time, there is no known credible witness who saw Oswald target practice with the rifle in question. One wonders why the Commission allowed the military to select these marksmen and not a shooter more comparable to Oswald. The results show why. Of the three men, only one of them bettered Oswald’s time. But here’s the catch, Oswald was firing from sixty feet up at a moving target, while the three experts were firing from thirty feet up at still targets. As Meagher notes, wouldn’t it have been quite simple to just rope off Dealey Plaza, put these guys in the sixth floor window, place a convertible in the street below, and try a true experiment? If this was not done, why not? Neither in the text at this point, nor in the corresponding end note section does Bugliosi tell you about the different settings or pose the question as to why they were not the same."

 

[MicahJava]

MicahJava, this YouTube channel also has other videos you might find interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiKrR7BLFv0

Particularly pay attention towards the end, there's a guy that agrees with you about the autopsy doctors being right about the rear entry and the HSCA being wrong. I found it informative, even if I don't necessarily agree with him.

Or is Peter Cummings, a forensic pathologist, a member of THEY?

Dr. Peter Cummings agrees that the entry is somewhere low in the head, but implicitly admits that he cannot identify any specific mark or shadow on the X-ray that could be the actual hole, nor does he explain how the pattern of fragments could be caused by one bullet. He also has this idea that the bullet would only damage the occipital lobe after bouncing sharply upwards.


By default, he admits that the depressed cowlick fracture is just a defect related to the large head wound. Why would he be a member of 'they'?

 

[MicahJava]

Oh Micah...did you actually think I'd make a claim like that and not be able to back it up? I'm not you.

https://youtu.be/a-imJWUcMso

Bullet shot through 36 inches of pine, completely undamaged.

Anything else?

Oh right, NOVA's Cold Case did show that, I forgot about that. But did you forget the part where wood is in no way comparable to bones? Even the show's narrator admits that wood blocks are an old fashioned way of testing bullets!

The Warren Commission already answered what would happen when the nose hits bones. CE853 is a bullet fired through a goat's rib.

Henry Hurt fired the same kind of bullet in water and here was his result:

 

[MicahJava]

OK, if that's the standard of proof you're using, great. Could you link where the conspiracy version of the bullets are replicated? We need one bullet that penetrated JFK's upper back a couple of inches then stopped. And another bullet that penetrated JFK's neck from the front a few inches then stopped. Both these bullets then have to disappear into thin air and never be seen by anyone. And before you try the old ice bullet myth, that was definitely busted on the Mythbusters TV show.

Let's see. First, I've always argued here that the throat wound was some kind of exit. Second, David Lifton pointed out to me that Dr. Perry had apparently once rejected the tracheotomy as the incision he made, saying "I left the wound inviolate".

As for the back shot, the beauty of it is that is that the autopsy found it to be so shallow that it could've just naturally squeezed out of the body at some point in time. This is consistent with something like an undercharged round (like if somebody was trying to create less noise during the shooting, or if somebody was using a sabot).

And don't forget to show a trajectory that explains Connally's wounds without going through JFK first, taking into account that Connally was sitting inboard and lower than JFK at the time.

Do you have any actual evidence that Connally's right shoulder wasn't fully visible from behind Kennedy at ~z222, or is that just something that lone nut authors repeat?

 

[Meadmaker]

The damage was exponentially several times more than CE399.

Exponentially?