JFK Conspiracy Theories: It Never Ends

[HSienzant]

Depending on the source, the number is very uncertain. It's just like Joseph Stalin's opinion of a democracy, namely, he said, it matters not who gets the most votes, but who counts the votes. And so it is with the Grassy Knoll witnesses. But I will say this, that majority of the up close witnesses said the fatal shot came from the grassy knoll.

No, that's simply untrue. Please list the witnesses, and the source, and the statements each made and when it was made. Also list how many shots each witness heard.

Here, let me start you off:

Governor Connally - seated immediately in front of the President. Testified to the Warren Commission in 1964 that the shots came from above and behind him, over his right shoulder, at an elevation. Thought there were three shots, heard only two, said he did not hear the shot which hit him, due to the trauma inflicted.

What was your impression then as to the source of the shot?
Governor Connally. From back over my right shoulder which, again, was where immediately when I heard the first shot I identified the sound as coming back over my right-shoulder.
Mr. Specter. At an elevation?
Governor Connally. At an elevation.

http://home.comcast.net/~the-puzzle-palace/Connally.txt

Please add to this list as you feel fit. But please list the asked-for documentation.

By my count, you are down one at this time.
Hank

 

[HSienzant]

Thread participants:

Back in post #6421 I asked this:No answer(s) thus far, and we're quite a ways past it, so I'm asking again.

No, depending on the caliber of the bullet, the bullet can do quite a number of different things. One man was shot in the head with a small-caliber bullet, and the bullet entered the head and richocheted back and forth in the skull a number of times, effectively turning his brain into something resembling swiss cheese.

Oswald's bullets were tested against human skulls and the damage to the skulls was quite consistent with the damage suffered by President Kennedy.

The pertinent part of the WR starts here:
http://www.historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0305a.htm

Images of the skull in question:
http://www.historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0440b.htm

 

[HSienzant]

Because they were closest to the action. Obviously. Just like Joe Stalin said, it depends on who does the counting. You don't like my sampling of those up close and personal, then how about the Warren Commission:

"What follows is the result of a survey of the 121 witnesses to the assassination of President Kennedy whose statements are registered in the twenty-six volumes appended to the Warren Report.[1] On the question of where the shots that killed the President came from, 38 could give no clear opinion and 32 thought they came from the Texas School Book Depository Building (TSBDB). Fifty-one held the shots sounded as if the came from west of the Depository, the area of the grassy knoll on Elm Street, the area directly on the right of the President's car when the bullets struck."

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/12th_Issue/51_wits.html

You ask about the Warren Commission sampling, but you cite something else entirely, an conspiracy article from the mid-1960's by Harold Feldman.

If the witness count depends on who is doing the counting, why do you cite one specific pro-conspiracy article?

Further, whether you realize it or not, when you say it depends on who is doing the counting, you are saying the meaning of the witness, and therefore the source of the shots, is in the eye of the beholder to a great extent.

That means in many cases it's subject to interpretation.

So what's the point?

That Feldman's interpretation is the best of all?

Hank

 

[Robert Prey]

No. Stringer and Riebe said they had no reason to believe that the photos they were shown had been faked. Stringer said he didn't recognize some of the photos, but did not say they were faked; Stringer had a hard time remembering many of the details of the autopsy photography.

Spencer was involved with other photos and did not say the autopsy photos were fake.

O'Neill never saw the photos originally. He's comparing photos against his 30-year old memory. He never said they were fake. He said they had been "doctored," and then corrected himself and said that elements of skin and bone had been positioned differently by the doctors for different shot.

Your "quote" is not a quote from any of the people you named. Nor is it an accurate conclusion drawn on the basis of their testimony. In a number of instances, the witnesses themselves explicitly repudiate your characterization of their testimony.

You keep referring to "the photos." But you have no idea what photos. Were these the original photos which have never been published and probably no longer exist? Or the first set of faked photos? Or the other set of faked photos?
Also, doctored photos are faked photos.

 

[Robert Prey]

Great, Robert.

Now contrast that with what he told the Warren Commission and testified to at the Shaw trial, that all the shots came from his right - from the Texas School Book Depository.

Which statement was within a year of the shooting?
Which statement was next?
Which statement came about 20 years after the shooting?

Now, does memory improve due to the passage of time where you are from?
Do outside influences - like what a person has read or seen on TV sometimes have a deleterious effect on a person's memory?

If so, which of these is *least likely* to be accurate? -- The one you cite.
Which of these are more likely to be accurate - The two I cite.

Especially since the two I cite are supported by physical evidence.

Can you explain why we should believe a statement 20 or more years after the event when it conflicts with earlier statements made by the same witness and all the physical evidence?

Please respond to this question, as it is at the heart of the matter here.

You consistently base your conclusions on the weakest evidence, and ignore far stronger evidence. This goes right down the line in terms of the witness statements you cite, more often than not citing a statement 20, 30, 40 years after the assassination, and ignoring the more contemporaneous ones.

Hank

In the interview on TMWKK, Phill Willis stated that all the WC was interested in was 3 shots from the back. In other words, they edited his testimony and put words in his mouth. He said in the interview that at least one shot, the fatal shot came from the right front and that was confirmed and supported by his wife and daughter and that he would believe that til his dying day, and on the grave of his mother. Pretty emphatic.

 

[HSienzant]

Connally rejects the 3 shots from the back, and thus by inference, supports a shot from elsewhere, namely, the Grassy knoll.

"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."

Doug Thompson later revealed that in 1982 he asked Connally if he was convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the gun that killed John F. Kennedy. "Absolutely not," Connally said. "I do not, for one second, believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission." Thompson asked why he had not spoken out about this. Connally replied: "Because I love this country and we needed closure at the time. I will never speak out publicly about what I believe."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x302357

1. It's hearsay.
2. It's undocumented - he says he heard it in 1982.
3. It's questionable - he didn't publish this during Connally's lifetime - Connally died in 1993. By waiting until after Connally's death to first publish the claim, Connally could not deny the veracity of the claim.
4. It contradicts everything Connally is known to have testified to.

Above is four good reasons not to believe it.

We should believe this why?

Better yet, why do you believe it?

Hank

 

[Robert Prey]

Would you care to set a different agenda, then?

Walter has set the agenda for this entire thread by his since deleted OP which proudly boasted that he was not one of the "loons" and "wacktards" who distrusted the WC. And all I did was to challenge him for a single piece of evidence that LHO even fired a single shot. Still waiting.

 

[Robert Prey]

When did you become such an expert in interpreting crime scene evidence and testimony regarding gunshots?

When did you become such an "expert" on judging experts?

 

[HSienzant]

In the interview on TMWKK, Phill Willis stated that all the WC was interested in was 3 shots from the back. In other words, they edited his testimony and put words in his mouth. He said in the interview that at least one shot, the fatal shot came from the right front and that was confirmed and supported by his wife and daughter and that he would believe that til his dying day, and on the grave of his mother. Pretty emphatic.

Yes, but that is likewise two decades after the fact.

Why should we believe recollections two decades after the fact when they are contradicted by his WC testimony and his Shaw trial testimony, Robert?

Hank

 

[JayUtah]

When did you become such an "expert" on judging experts?

Please answer my question.

 

[Robert Prey]

1. It's hearsay.
2. It's undocumented - he says he heard it in 1982.
3. It's questionable - he didn't publish this during Connally's lifetime - Connally died in 1993. By waiting until after Connally's death to first publish the claim, Connally could not deny the veracity of the claim.
4. It contradicts everything Connally is known to have testified to.

Above is four good reasons not to believe it.

We should believe this why?

Better yet, why do you believe it?

Hank

"It is not conceivable to me that I could have been hit by the first bullet..."
-- Gov.Connally

Source:
Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. IV, p. 129.

 

[Monza]

According to Dr. Wecht, that was a misrepresentation as to what he testified:

"I testified that the evidence made it clear to me that the single-bullet theory was nonsense; that all the bullets were not fired from behind; that more than three shots were fired...; that the autopsy was a sham..."

"Imagine my surprise when I read the Rockefeller Commission's report that I concurred with its opinion that all of the shots were indeed fired from behind...'

"When I demanded to see a transcript of my testimony, I was told that is was confidential and to release it would be a breach of national security."

I told a reporter from the AP that 'if that transcript shows in any way that I have withdrawn my thoughts of the Warren Commission Report, I'll eat the transcript on the steps of the Whitehouse.'"

-- Dr. Cyril Wecht in Tales from the Morgue, P. 237

Dr. Wecht was talking about the conclusions of the report. The actual transcripts have been since been released and that is what I quoted from. They are Dr. Wechts's actual words.

 

[Rich_C]

"It is not conceivable to me that I could have been hit by the first bullet..."
-- Gov.Connally

Source:
Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. IV, p. 129.

And he wasn't! Amazing how that worked out.

 

[Southwind17]

He said in the interview that at least one shot, the fatal shot came from the right front and that was confirmed and supported by his wife and daughter and that he would believe that til his dying day, and on the grave of his mother. Pretty emphatic.

No. Entirely close minded, actually. His evidence for drawing his conclusion, and closing his mind on the matter, is based purely on audio signals. Please don't try to convince us, Rude Robert, that you've never heard a sudden noise and either not been able to deduce the location of the source, or been confused by the location of the source. I'll believe to my dying day, and on the grave of my mother (notwithstanding that she was cremated!), that you haven't. Pretty emphatic.

 

[abaddon]

No. Entirely close minded, actually. His evidence for drawing his conclusion, and closing his mind on the matter, is based purely on audio signals. Please don't try to convince us, Rude Robert, that you've never heard a sudden noise and either not been able to deduce the location of the source, or been confused by the location of the source. I'll believe to my dying day, and on the grave of my mother (notwithstanding that she was cremated!), that you haven't. Pretty emphatic.

The only response you will get is "Baloney".
Cos that is all Bob has.

 

[HSienzant]

"It is not conceivable to me that I could have been hit by the first bullet..."
-- Gov.Connally

Source:
Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. IV, p. 129.

Which has nothing to do with what you posted previously - that he didn't think Oswald did the shooting.

Nobody is disputing that Connally was hit by the second shot - you are supporting with a quote the one thing I don't dispute from your earlier post. That's not the issue.

Can you support any of the below from Connally's sworn testimony, rather than a hearsay story only published after his death?
Below is your original post with the shot sequence edited out (which again, isn't under dispute), along with my objections to the rest of it.

Connally rejects the 3 shots from the back, and thus by inference, supports a shot from elsewhere, namely, the Grassy knoll.

...

Doug Thompson later revealed that in 1982 he asked Connally if he was convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the gun that killed John F. Kennedy. "Absolutely not," Connally said. "I do not, for one second, believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission." Thompson asked why he had not spoken out about this. Connally replied: "Because I love this country and we needed closure at the time. I will never speak out publicly about what I believe."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x302357

1. It's hearsay.
2. It's undocumented - he says he heard it in 1982.
3. It's questionable - he didn't publish this during Connally's lifetime - Connally died in 1993. By waiting until after Connally's death to first publish the claim, Connally could not deny the veracity of the claim.
4. It contradicts everything Connally is known to have testified to.

Above is four good reasons not to believe it.

We should believe this why?

Better yet, why do you believe it?

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

In the interview on TMWKK, Phill Willis stated that all the WC was interested in was 3 shots from the back. In other words, they edited his testimony and put words in his mouth. He said in the interview that at least one shot, the fatal shot came from the right front and that was confirmed and supported by his wife and daughter and that he would believe that til his dying day, and on the grave of his mother. Pretty emphatic.

I find your answer above non-responsive to my points, Robert. Instead of telling us why we should believe a two-decade later statement instead of his WC testimony or his Clay Shaw trial testimony, you simply quote some more from his two-decade later statement.

That doesn't begin to answer the points I made.

Here they are again.

Great, Robert.

Now contrast that with what he told the Warren Commission and testified to at the Shaw trial, that all the shots came from his right - from the Texas School Book Depository.

Which statement was within a year of the shooting?
Which statement was next?
Which statement came about 20 years after the shooting?

Now, does memory improve due to the passage of time where you are from?
Do outside influences - like what a person has read or seen on TV sometimes have a deleterious effect on a person's memory?

If so, which of these is *least likely* to be accurate? -- The one you cite.
Which of these are more likely to be accurate - The two I cite.

Especially since the two I cite are supported by physical evidence.

Can you explain why we should believe a statement 20 or more years after the event when it conflicts with earlier statements made by the same witness and all the physical evidence?

Please respond to this question, as it is at the heart of the matter here.

You consistently base your conclusions on the weakest evidence, and ignore far stronger evidence. This goes right down the line in terms of the witness statements you cite, more often than not citing a statement 20, 30, 40 years after the assassination, and ignoring the more contemporaneous ones.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

You keep referring to "the photos." But you have no idea what photos. Were these the original photos which have never been published and probably no longer exist? Or the first set of faked photos? Or the other set of faked photos?
Also, doctored photos are faked photos.

You keep referring to the photos. But you have no idea what photos.

The photos examined by the HSCA are the same ones in the public domain.

The only thing contradicting that is the meaningless three-decade-plus *recollections* by some witnesses who say they recall other photos or other injuries. And their recollections don't even agree on what injuries or what photos.

So once again we see your entire case is based on throwing out the evidence and keeping the recollections.

Sorry, nobody can try a case based on recollections. So if you truly want to establish who was responsible for shooting JFK, you need to go back to Dealey Plaza and look at the hard evidence. Establish the rifle was planted. Establish there was a second shooter. Establish Oswald was on the second floor at the time of the shooting. If you can't do that, you have no case.

Parsing witness statements made 20, 30 or 40 years after the assassination isn't going to prove doodly-squat.

But that is all you have.

And you expect reasonable people to believe that should be paramount, over the original testimony and the original hard evidence gathered?

Sorry, no.

 

[HSienzant]

Monza wrote:

Originally Posted by Robert Prey
But I will say this, that majority of the up close witnesses said the fatal shot came from the grassy knoll.

The House committee "found" the witnesses they wanted to find. By up close I mean up close. Ken O'donnell, Dave Powers, the Wallises, the Newmans, Beverly Oliver, Bobby Hargis, Jean Hill.

Summary: I count one witness for the knoll, one non-witness, and seven for another source.

You cannot support any of that with actual testimony from the actual people involved, for the most part.
Jean Hill's initial statement names the knoll. But the others do not. By my count, that hardly qualifies as a majority.

You also seem to have omitted Governor Connally from your list. He was seated just in front of JFK, no more than two or three feet away. Other than Jackie Kennedy, Connally was the up-closest witness. I find it curious you omitted him from your list. He testified:

JOHN CONNALLY:
What was your impression then as to the source of the shot?
Governor Connally. From back over my right shoulder which, again, was where immediately when I heard the first shot I identified the sound as coming back over my right-shoulder.
Mr. Specter. At an elevation?
Governor Connally. At an elevation.
http://home.comcast.net/~the-puzzle-palace/Connally.txt


Now let's move on to your named up-close witnesses, none of whom were as close as Connally:

BEVERLY OLIVER:
No evidence has ever surfaced that she was in Dealey Plaza that day. If she was up-close, so was I, and I was in grammar school in Newark, NJ at the time. She first came forward in 1969 with a story. Her story doesn't withstand scrutiny. Let's start at the top: Do you have any evidence - other than her statement - that she was in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63?


KENNETH O'DONNELL:
Mr. SPECTER. And what was your reaction as to the source of the shots, if you had one?
Mr. O'DONNELL. My reaction in part is reconstruction---is that they came from the right rear. That would be my best judgment. [the right rear would be the TSBD, the knoll was to the right front]
Mr. SPECTER. Was there any reaction by any of the other people around in any specific direction?
Mr. O'DONNELL. The agents all turned to the rear.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/odonnell.htm
Extra Bonus: Here's a link to a photo showing some of the agents in the Secret Service follow-up car looking to the rear:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6kYzhJGqq...sOsh-l5UyI/s1600/999laAltgensPhotoZoomed2.jpg


BOBBY HARGIS:
Hargis named two potential sources of the shots - the overpass in front of him and the School Book Depository behind. You split the difference and come up with the knoll off to his right, apparently.
Mr. HARGIS - ...There wasn't any way in the world I could tell where they were coming from, but at the time there was something in my head that said that they probably could have been coming from the railroad overpass, because I thought since I had got splattered, with blood--I was Just a little back and left of--Just a little bit back and left of Mrs. Kennedy, but I didn't know. I had a feeling that it might have been from the Texas Book Depository, and these two places was the primary place that could have been shot from.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/hscaharg.htm


DAVE POWERS:
Powers, like Hargis, named two potential sources of the shots - the overpass in front of him and the School Book Depository behind. You split the difference and come up with the knoll off to his right, apparently.
My first impression was that the shots came from the right and overhead, but I also had a fleeting impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of the triple overpass. This may have resulted from my feeling, when I looked forward toward the overpass, that we might have ridden into an ambush.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/powers1.htm


PHIL WILLIS:
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you actually observe the President when he was hit in head?
Mr. WILLIS. No, sir; I did not. I couldn't see that well, and I was more concerned about the shots coming from that building. The minute the third shot was fired, I screamed, hoping the policeman would hear me, to ring that building because it had to come from there. Being directly across the street from the building, made it much more clear to those standing there than the people who were on the side of the street where the building was.
Mr. LIEBELER. So you thought you had picked out a particular building at the time when you heard shots?
Mr. WILLIS. Absolutely.
Mr. LIEBELER. What building was that?
Mr. WILLIS. The Texas School Book Depository Building.
Mr. LIEBELER. You were pretty sure?
Mr. WILLIS. I felt certain.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/willis_p.htm


MRS. PHIL WILLIS:
She did not testify to the Warren Commission.
Her statement below comes from the Shaw trial.
Q: Were you able to determine at that time from where these shots were coming?
A: No.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/willis_mshaw.htm


JEAN HILL:
Q. "Well, no...Where did the shots come from?"
A. "The shots came from the hill."
Q. "From the hill?"
A. "Yes..ah..It was just east of the underpass ... and we were on the south side."
http://www.jfk-info.com/whitmey3.htm


BILL NEWMAN:
Bill Newman marked this map with the source of the shots during the made for TV Oswald trial (with Gerry Spence and Vincent Bugliosi). His mark puts the shooter behind the president, and at 90 degrees to the shooter on the knoll. Behind his mark, from his location, is the Book Depository. Below that is a map I marked with his position and his source of the shots. The typical position for the knoll shooter is highlighted behind the fence in yellow. Newman has the shooter at 90 degrees from that location. His location is marked with the orange X. Please explain how Newman's marked location for the shooter yields a shot to the side of the head that exits the back of the head. Remember that JFK's head was determined by Thomas Canning of the HSCA's photographic analysis panel to be canted 17 degrees to the left of center of the centerline of the limo. That means the back of JFK's head is approximately facing the source of the shots as marked by Newman.

 

[HSienzant]

You keep saying that, but the fact is, there have been just four challenges (Crenshaw, Akin, Newman, Willis) , all unsuccessful.

No, that is just a continuing falsehood on your part.
If you disagree, please point to where you responded to the below.
As far as I can see, you've never responded.

Note further that the below post contains links to a number of individual posts. When I posted the individual ones - to fit your 'one-at-a-time' mantra - you ignored them all.

You now continue to ignore the below one.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8221707&postcount=6190
This has been pointed out to you previously. On several occasions.

Most recently here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8230123&postcount=6364

and here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8224651&postcount=6254

For you to then claim that you've answered all the challenges to your list of 40+ medical witnesses (many of whom weren't medical witnesses at all) is not the most honest thing you could do.