Cont: JFK Conspiracy Theories V: Five for Fighting

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MicahJava,

You repeatedly make indefensible claims, and when called on them, simply ignore the questions and change the subject.

Here's two examples from the same post within the same sentence.

MicahJava said:
1. There were three loud noises in Dealey Palza [sic], contrary to the medical evidence which indicates more than three shots were fired.
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Have it your way, "loud noises" vs "heard three shots". I don't see the difference, except you are changing the witness testimony. It was they, not I, that characterized the three loud noises they heard as shots. If they called it "shots", shouldn't we call it "shots"? You are back to ignoring the testimony and arguing with the witnesses perceptions, after telling us the witnesses who picked the grassy knoll as the source of ALL the shots were reliable in picking the grassy knoll as the source of SOME of the shots. Are they reliable or not? Can we trust their perceptions or not? Why are your ignoring what they said when it suits your purposes? How come you contradict your own arguments so frequently?

PREDICTION: You will ignore all the above.

The assertion "contrary to the medical evidence which indicates more than three shots were fired" is false. No pathologist who examined the extant autopsy evidence ever concluded there were more than three shots. Nor did the three autopsists who examined the body on the night of the assassination. This is simply an assertion by you backed by nothing except your own opinion.

You won't be able to cite any medical evidence that indicates four or more shots. NONE. You just made up that claim.

Hank

PS: Why don't you enumerate the four shots (or more) and what damage they did, and the medical evidence supporting the claim?
 
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MicahJava said:
What "logical conclusion" do you want if the shooting must have involved more than three gunshots?
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This must be more of your "going to work". When will you stop running away, MicahJava? How many people must point out that you fail to answer questions?

Answer the questions asked, MicahJave.
 
This is an article on the BBC website about the forthcoming release of the JFK documents.

It contains the following information, of which I at least was previously unaware:
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations largely supported the Warren Commission - but said there was a "high probability that two gunmen fired at President Kennedy".
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There's a link to the report:
I.B. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations
I.C. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy
I.D. Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of their duties. President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination was conducted. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. the conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive.
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This appears to contradict the idea that Oswald acted alone.
I have nowhere near the knowledge and experience of the more regular posters on this thread, so I was wondering what you made of it?
 
They based that on the recording of the open microphone, that has been roundly and completely debunked.
 
As usual, Wikipedia is a good starting point; there's a page on the United States House Select Committee on AssassinationsWP that outlines the evidence that led them to that conclusion, as well as the later reassessments of it. The conclusion of two shooters was based entirely on a dictaphone recording submitted to the HSCA after they'd drafted their report and concluded that there was only a single shooter; there's a broad consensus based on subsequent analysis that they didn't consider it carefully enough and that it wasn't actually recorded at the time and place of the shooting.

Hank can probably provide some more comprehensive details, and MJ can make some of his own up for you too.

Dave
 
Tomtomkent said:
I have a question.

If Micha Java has a point, and his "EOP" wound is valid, why has he not posted a single definitive location.

Think about the "evidence" he has posted, from the photographs, the x-rays, the bullet fragments, and such forth, and even the model marked by doctors based on their memories... If that added up to what Micha Java thinks, he should have been able to provide a definitive location. He should be able to identify it on the photographs of the back of JFK's head, on the x-rays, and to tell us which of the doctors remembered right.

But when I look back through this thread, I see that when I asked him to show us the actual wound, he drew several circles on the back of JFKs head photo, identifying potential locations.

Now, I don't want to suggest I have unreasonable expectations of other's ability to read x-rays, or what have you, but if the x-ray evidence did indeed suggest a lower entry wound, and if Micha could say for certain that it discredited the received wound, would it not follow that one could use the x-ray to definitively mark the actual wound?

If I'm missing a post where Micha achieves exactly this, I am sorry, but I can't see one, where Micha can point to a place on the photograph of the back of the head, and show us a more convincing wound than the "splotch".
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Ahem; Micah, not Micha.
 
Dave Rogers said:
As usual, Wikipedia is a good starting point; there's a page on the United States House Select Committee on AssassinationsWP that outlines the evidence that led them to that conclusion, as well as the later reassessments of it. The conclusion of two shooters was based entirely on a dictaphone recording submitted to the HSCA after they'd drafted their report and concluded that there was only a single shooter; there's a broad consensus based on subsequent analysis that they didn't consider it carefully enough and that it wasn't actually recorded at the time and place of the shooting.

Hank can probably provide some more comprehensive details, and MJ can make some of his own up for you too.

Dave
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The only thing I know about the dictabelt evidence is that JFK author Don Thomas commissioned a re-examination, which re-affirmed the HSCA. I don't have any stake in it being real, though. Here is Don Thomas' book Hear No Evil: http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=1DA6FADA97B37A90837311D5D3709599
 
Here is what you need to know about the dictabelt recording:

1) The film footage and photographic record show that the motorcycles can not be 120feet away from the limo at the point the HSCA believed the recording was taken, as the HSCA believed.

2) The recording includes identifiable dialogue, "Hold everything secure until the homicide and other investigators can get there", at the time that the HSCA believed magnetic pulses they put down to shots being fired, appeared. These words can be identified as an order given by Sheriff Decker, about 90 seconds later.

3) The analysis is shaky, and there is, in several attempts to replicate the pulses, a confirmation bias. Those that the HSCA claimed to represent rifle shots were not the only pulses on the recording, and there has never been a good enough explanation of why these pulses are more significant than others. It is true (to an extent) to say that such pulses can be replicated with a high powered rifle, but this is not the complete picture. There is no evidence to eliminate the more mundane causes of the other pulses, nor is there any indication the other pulses could not also be replicated by the same rifles. Many of the experiments to "prove" the HSCA's extra shot, have only made efforts to show the results they want, and not the full range of possibilities.

To conclude: The dictabelt does not record the timeframe that the HSCA believed, and the science is not as conclusive or as useful, as was believed at the time.
 
Tomtomkent said:
Here is what you need to know about the dictabelt recording:

1) The film footage and photographic record show that the motorcycles can not be 120feet away from the limo at the point the HSCA believed the recording was taken, as the HSCA believed.

2) The recording includes identifiable dialogue, "Hold everything secure until the homicide and other investigators can get there", at the time that the HSCA believed magnetic pulses they put down to shots being fired, appeared. These words can be identified as an order given by Sheriff Decker, about 90 seconds later.

3) The analysis is shaky, and there is, in several attempts to replicate the pulses, a confirmation bias. Those that the HSCA claimed to represent rifle shots were not the only pulses on the recording, and there has never been a good enough explanation of why these pulses are more significant than others. It is true (to an extent) to say that such pulses can be replicated with a high powered rifle, but this is not the complete picture. There is no evidence to eliminate the more mundane causes of the other pulses, nor is there any indication the other pulses could not also be replicated by the same rifles. Many of the experiments to "prove" the HSCA's extra shot, have only made efforts to show the results they want, and not the full range of possibilities.

To conclude: The dictabelt does not record the timeframe that the HSCA believed, and the science is not as conclusive or as useful, as was believed at the time.
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I am not so sure on that "Hold everything secure until the homicide and other investigators can get there" part is true. Check page 660 of the PDF I linked above, it has an explanation.
 
MicahJava said:
I am not so sure on that "Hold everything secure until the homicide and other investigators can get there" part is true. Check page 660 of the PDF I linked above, it has an explanation.
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No thank you. I've read enough suggestions and explanations, to be bored with pointing out that the order being given, when it can be verified by other records, is the best fit for the evidence.

ETA: If the explanation is too long for you to summarise in your own post, I wont be inclined to go looking for it myself.
 
If the book is based on Thomas' 2001 article in the British Forensic Sciences Society journal, then his "explanation" will be about using different moments of crosstalk to sync the recordings to a time stamp. This has been largely debunked for fifteen years, when it was peer reviewed. It got some press coverage at the time, but that doesn't prove it is valid.

Thomas relied on the timing reports of the NRC, but these have since been shown to be flawed, by a number of measures. The short version is that by comparing the audio of the dictabelt recordings to recordings of the "Bowels recording" to the FBI's record of channel two, there were jumps in the NRC's copy of the dictabelt, that skipped sequences in the FBI's recording of channel two.

The recordings were susceptible to forward jumps and repeats, and there have been suggestions that the impulses might be misplaced because of a repeat, but this doesn't play out.

The timing could be verified by comparison to the FBI recording, looking at echoes, at the background hum, and so forth, and Thomas' timings just don't hold up.

See for example:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/odell/

with specific attention paid to:
The NRC panel made a reasonable, but wrong, assumption about how the Audograph machine worked (13). The tape recording made from the Audograph by Bowles contained numerous repeated sections. On playback the needle would sometimes get stuck in a groove and repeat that groove, sometimes twice. Table C-1 of the NRC report subtracted the time that these repeats took from the elapsed time. This seems to make sense, but due to the mechanical construction of the Audograph machine it was the wrong thing to do.
The needle assembly on the Audograph doesn't move at all. The disc is mounted on a spindle and moves horizontally under the needle as recording progresses. The horizontal motion of the spindle is a result of being mechanically geared to a worm gear, such that, as the spindle rotates, the center of the disc moves away from the needle assembly. There is no freedom of motion in this mechanical system, except for the tip of the needle. The repeats happen because the needle tip has some flexibility and may get stuck for an additional rotation or two, but the horizontal movement of the disc never stops and the needle must eventually catch up to where it should be.* When the needle does catch up it will skip over sections of the recording. In the long run any repeats will be roughly matched by forward skips where the needle jumps over grooves.* (See Audograph photos.)
It was a simple matter to notice the repeats but forward skips were not noticed. It would have been more accurate if the repeats were not subtracted at all. When the NRC subtracted the time for repeats they reported the elapsed time as shorter than what it really was.* There are certain other uncertainties in Table C-1, involving the speed correction factor, the "gap", and the choice of event markers. All of these factors combined made reproducing the prior time studies very difficult. Because of these uncertainties, and with the problem of the overlooked skips, I looked for a reliable way to accurately time events on channel II.
Another copy of channel II was made by the FBI on a high-quality phonograph, instead of using the Audograph machine. The tape of channel II made by the FBI for the NRC panel appears to be a complete recording without skips or repeats in the period in question. The NRC report states, "[the original Gray Audograph was] transcribed, as described in Appendix C, onto tape, with care taken to minimize the 60 Hz hum that was added to the signal and to ensure that no skips or repeats were introduced in the tape recording of either channel. No break interrupted the Channel II recordings as was the case for the Bowles tapes."
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And:
Thomas has said that we should be able to use any instance of crosstalk to align the channels (21), implying that we can use any instance to locate the impulses. This is not correct. We should naturally want to use a tie-point nearest the event we are interested in. The Audograph was transmission activated and would stop after a period of silence. Since any stoppage would compress the apparent time between events on channel II, the further away from the impulses we select a synchronization point the more compression there is likely to be from the machine stoppage. The effect on the synchronization from using points later on the timeline is to artificially move the impulses on channel I to earlier times relative to channel II.
Using later synchronization points would only be justified if we knew that channel II did not stop
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bknight said:
Yes that occurred, but others debunked the "fourth" shot recorded the latest that I know of was Dale Myers.

http://www.jfkfiles.com/jfk/html/acoustics.htm
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Something worth noting about the two science and justice articles mentioned in your link.

Donald B Thomas is an entomologist, who (apparently) became convinced of a conspiracy by the Oliver Stone film.

The 2006 rebuttal published in the same journal was by Chernoff, Horowitz, Garwin, Linsker and Ramsey, phycisists (three of whom were members of the 1982 Committee of Ballistic Accoustics).

That alone does not mean the later paper will be inherently more accurate, but physicists working within their field is a better foundation than an entomologist working outside his specialty.
 
Tomtomkent said:
Something worth noting about the two science and justice articles mentioned in your link.

Donald B Thomas is an entomologist, who (apparently) became convinced of a conspiracy by the Oliver Stone film.

The 2006 rebuttal published in the same journal was by Chernoff, Horowitz, Garwin, Linsker and Ramsey, phycisists (three of whom were members of the 1982 Committee of Ballistic Accoustics).

That alone does not mean the later paper will be inherently more accurate, but physicists working within their field is a better foundation than an entomologist working outside his specialty.
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I was trying to link the Myers video proving that the open mike on H.B. McLain's motorcycle could not have been in the position the earlier HSCA experts placed him. Just another debunk of the "fourth" shot that never occurred. I suppose it could occur in the imaginations of CTs but not in reality.
 
bknight said:
Yes that occurred, but others debunked the "fourth" shot recorded the latest that I know of was Dale Myers.

http://www.jfkfiles.com/jfk/html/acoustics.htm
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There is a great take down of the dictabelt recording somewhere (and I apologize that I always have trouble finding it - it is linked somewhere in McAdams site, but I can't find it deliberately). The short answer is that by using engine sounds on the recording, you can deduce that the "open mike" was on a three-wheeler. You can even use the rep rates to correlate with speed, so you can tell he is moving and when he is stopped.

The implication is that the writer knows whose it was, but won't name them. However, he does say that the person admitted to having a mic stuck open on that day, even. The timing also works, because you can hear, for example, the clang of the bell at a specified location, and the bike was there at the time. And you can hear the sirens go past when the bike (motortrike?) was parked at the Trade Mart, where JFK was supposed to be going for lunch. You can hear it coming and going, as expected.

In order to make it work (I forget the Motorcycle cop they attribute it to), you have to do things like put him in a position where he swears he wasn't at the time of the shooting (he was at the beginning of the block; in order for the acoustics to work, he had to be at the end of the block; see the link above). Also, in order to explain the sirens mentioned above, they claim that he must have caught up and passed the motorcade. He denies it, which is good because in order for him to do it, he would have had to have averaged more than 100 mph (it's not like the motorcade was driving leisurely).

The piece describing the recording as from the three-wheeler is very compelling
 
bknight said:
I was trying to link the Myers video proving that the open mike on H.B. McLain's motorcycle could not have been in the position the earlier HSCA experts placed him. Just another debunk of the "fourth" shot that never occurred. I suppose it could occur in the imaginations of CTs but not in reality.
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Of course this is all just a distraction from his earlier claim at the top of this page -- and a moving of the goalposts -- that the medical evidence indicated a fourth shot. As expected, he hasn't provided one iota of evidence supporting that claim. Because there is none. There is medical evidence for two wounds on JFK and only two wounds.

At best, Connally's wounds would indicate a third bullet. But not a fourth.

Hank
 
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