The JFK Assassination: The Medical Evidence, Cover-up & the 2004 Election

[Time for change]

I presented this information in more detail to the Preventive and Occupational Medicine faculty at the Medical College of Wisconsin when I worked there. The opinion was unanimous: The bullet that killed Kennedy (as well as the one that went through his throat) entered him from the FRONT (in the direction of the grassy knoll). There may have been one or two additional bullets coming from the book depository (in BACK of him), these may or may not have been shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald may or may not have been in the book depository at the time. Those issues don’t interest me as much as the bullet that killed JFK.

Most of the evidence I discuss here comes from James Lifton’s “Best Evidence”, one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read.


Evidence at the scene of the crime

Movement of the head
There is no controversy over the fact (since it is preserved on film) that immediately following the shots Kennedy’s head was propelled backwards and slammed against the seat of the car. Those who maintain that all shots came from the back explain the backward movement of the head either as a jet propulsion phenomenon (from brain material coming out of the front of the head) or as due to a neuromuscular reaction. The jet propulsion explanation makes little sense because (among other reasons) all witnesses who observed brain material leaving the head observed it coming from the back, NOT the front of the head. With regard to the neuromuscular reaction explanation, has anyone ever seen a person’s head move forward after being punched in the front of the head?

Eye-witness accounts of the movement of brain material
Three persons have offered eye-witness accounts of the movement of brain material. All three say that the brain material and blood exited the President’s head to the left and rear of the head. Two of them were motorcycle police officers and were actually splattered with the material. One account was obtained from a contemporary newspaper article, one was obtained from Warren Commission testimony, and one was obtained from a book author.


Evidence from the doctors who treated the President at Parkland Hospital

The throat (non-fatal) wound
Dr. Malcolm Perry made the tracheotomy incision, which was very close to the bullet wound of the throat. Transcripts of a news conference later that day quote Perry as repeatedly characterizing that bullet wound as an entrance wound (meaning it came from the front). Later that weekend, when told by reporters that it had officially been decided that the bullets came from the book depository in back of the President, Perry deduced that the President must have had his head turned (which the Zapruder film shows not to be the case).

Perry completely changed his views on this matter after being “visited” by Secret Service agents. However, the other five medical personnel who saw this wound are on record as having commented on it (one to a newspaper, one in an official medical report, and three in testimony before the Warren Commission), including four physicians and a nurse, all described the throat wound as being an entrance wound.

The fatal head wound
Nine physicians and a nurse who treated the President at the hospital are quoted (four in Warren Commission testimony, three in their official medical reports, one in a contemporary newspaper account, and Lifton doesn’t provide the source for the other two) as saying that the fatal wound produced a large hole (5-7 centimeters by one account) in the back right side of the head. The skull at the back of the head was noted to have “exploded outwards”. All of the physicians characterized this wound as an exit wound, largely because exit wounds are almost always considerably larger and more destructive than entrance wounds.


Discrepancy between hospital and autopsy findings

There were numerous and glaring discrepancies between the findings noted by the physicians at Parkland Hospital, compared to the autopsy report, performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, later on the day of Kennedy’s death. I will mention only the most glaring and important of these here: Instead of a 5-7 centimeter hole in the back right side of the head, as noted at the hospital, the autopsy report indicated a hole more than four times as large and extending around to the front of the head. This is the report that the Warren Commission used to justify its conclusion that Kennedy was shot from behind (though such a large wound wouldn’t much distinguish between a shot from the back versus a shot from the front). Why the huge discrepancy between the autopsy findings versus the hospital findings? Were all the doctors at the hospital who thought they saw an exit wound at the back of the head wrong? Or was the body altered prior to the autopsy?


Secret Service agents make damn sure that they have control of the body prior to the autopsy

If the body was altered prior to the autopsy, that would mean that the conspirators had to have control of the body prior to its arrival at the morgue. How could they manage that?

Getting the body out of Dallas
The first step was to make sure that the autopsy was not performed in Texas, as required by state law. In trying to do this, a vicious argument ensued between Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman and Dr. Earl Rose, the Dallas County Medical Examiner. Rose tried to explain that state law required the body to be autopsied in Texas, and that removing the body to Washington would interrupt the chain of evidence. But to no avail.

Here is an account of the “argument” by Aubrey Rike, a Dallas official who was responsible for staying with the casket:

I was scared to death... I was scared all the time I was there... You know, we'd start pushing, and somebody would grab us, and push us back, and pull the casket back. You'd have to see it to believe it... it was the most unorganized, scary type situation I have ever been in in my life. I'm a policeman now, and I've been up against all kinds of stuff.

Arrival of the body at Bethesda Naval Hospital in a DIFFERENT casket
Skip forward a bit: Lifton quotes seven persons who noted Kennedy’s body brought into the morgue in a plain gray coffin, very different than the fancy bronze coffin into which Kennedy’s body was placed in Dallas after he was pronounced dead, and which was televised being unloaded from the plane that carried the body from Dallas to Washington. The time that the body arrived at the morgue in the gray coffin was about 6:45 p.m. This was well before the arrival of the bronze casket that supposedly contained Kennedy’s body. But how did Kennedy’s body arrive at the morgue in a different casket than the one into which his body was initially placed, and which was televised being carried off of Air Force One after landing at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington? Consider this:

Hiding the fact that the bronze casket unloaded from Air Force One did NOT contain the body
The Army provided a “casket team” of six soldiers who were supposed to obtain the casket for transportation to Bethesda Naval Hospital as it was unloaded off of Air Force One After landing at Andrews AFB. When they tried to obtain the casket (which unbeknownst to them obviously did not contain the body), however, they were pushed out of the way by Secret Service agents, who loaded the casket into an ambulance, which then proceeded by motorcade to Bethesda Naval Hospital. The Army Casket team then proceeded by helicopter to Bethesda to await the body.

Preventing access to the empty casket after arrival at Bethesda Naval
The motorcade with the coffin (supposedly containing the body) arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:55 p.m. (AFTER the arrival of the plain grey casket which contained the body). But the Army casket team was still not allowed to obtain the casket. There are a number of similar accounts by members of the casket team as to how this happened, but here is a portion of the one that I find the most revealing – a taped interview of Army casket team member Hubert Clark, by David Lifton:

“I think there was a decoy, supposedly to get the people away from the hospital... And we went around to the back I remember driving some distance ... before we actually came in contact with the real casket ..."

Lifton asked if he remembered losing the ambulance. Clark responded:

“I ... we lost it ... We were saying, 'Now where the hell is he?... Why is he speeding?' And we were trying to figure out, 'Well, why is he going so fast? We're going to lose him.' ... and we were saying to each other ... 'What, is he trying to lose us?'..."

Clark said that he thought the ride lasted 10-15 minutes and that the truck got up to speeds of 45 or 50:

”We followed the ambulance until we lost it .. And then it was ... another fifteen minutes trying to find ... to get back to where we started from.”

So what happened with the body?
What is clear from all this is that the conspirators were absolutely determined to keep control of the body prior to the autopsy, so that they could make the necessary alterations to make it appear that JFK was shot from the back, not the front of the head. What this means is that the body must have been switched from the fancy bronze coffin into the plain gray coffin while on Air Force One. The empty bronze coffin was televised leaving the plane in the hands of the Secret Service agents (the conspirators). They could not allow the Army Casket team to gain control of the coffin because it would be obvious to anyone who carried it that it was empty. So while the Secret Service agents were maintaining control of the empty bronze coffin, JFK’s body, in the plain gray coffin, was being transported by other conspirators to a place where the necessary alterations could be made. After managing to elude the Army Casket team for about two hours, the Secret Service agents managed to bring the empty bronze coffin into the morgue, where it met up with the body after being unloaded from the gray casket, and was re-loaded into the bronze casket, so that a show could be made of unloading it from the casket which it was supposed to be in.


Control of the autopsy

Lifton quotes witnesses to the autopsy saying that there were numerous civilians in the autopsy room who seemed to be intimidating the three military physicians who were performing the autopsy, even to the extent of dictating their conclusions. This is corroborated by a book written by James Garrison, “On the Trail of Assassins”, several years after the appearance of Lifton’s book, in which Garrison recounts testimony at a trial. A Dr. Finck, one of the three autopsy physicians, testifies at this trial that he was ordered by civilians at the autopsy on various aspects of how to perform the autopsy.


Control of witnesses

The tight control with which the conspirators managed the whole scenario is exemplified by the fact that all potential witnesses to whatever happened at Bethesda Naval Hospital that day were ordered, upon threat of court martial, not to divulge anything that they saw or heard that day. So frightening was this order that several years later, as the House Select Committee met to re-investigate the JFK assassination (largely because of widespread public dissatisfaction with the Warren Commission Report), an official order from President Carter, rescinding the initial order, was required in order to obtain testimony from people who witnessed the events that occurred at Bethesda Naval Hospital on November 22, 1963.


Parallels between the JFK assassination and the 2004 Presidential election

The most important similarities are that both events were right wing coups, with earth shattering implications, masterminded by an extremely powerful group of people, and our government wants us to know as little as possible about these events. The powerful guardians of the status quo in 1963 (and now) did not want us to know that the assassination of our popular President was NOT the result of a simple act by a lone crazy person, because that would raise all sorts of possibilities in our minds regarding the potential role of our own government. Nor do our current guardians want us to know how poorly equipped our current election system is to express the will of the American people. That is why right wing media whores such as Tucker Carlson refer to those who question the results of the 2004 election as “grassy knoll conspiracy theorists” – which I proudly admit that I am. Furthermore, the failure of our government to ever acknowledge the truth about the JFK assassination helps to discourage doubts about our current election system, because this failure contributes to a general atmosphere that facilitates the belief that our democracy is in better shape than it really is.

In the following thread I discuss in much more detail what I see as the similarities between these two awful events (in the interest of avoiding making this thread too long, I placed the bulk of this discussion in another thread):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x402631

[TallahasseeGrannie]

1. Very interesting coup but I have one

question. If JFK was an inside job, how do we know it was rw? What about LBJ? The Dems were in power...

I'm no expert, so I'm looking forward to hearing your take on this.

[Dying Eagle]

2. Some believe

LBJ made a deal with the higher command in the Pentagon and the IMC. Remove JFK and they get there war (Veitnam).

The Joint Chiefs would then most likely used CIA or Top Secret military teams. The only problem with that is a paper trail. So they may have enlisted the Mafia to do the dirty work. The Mafia then would get RFK off there back.

Many Theory's. My fear is we will never know.

[Time for change]

5. That's a good point - there are a number of potential answers to your

question, but nothing definitive.

I feel much more sure of the fact that JFK was shot from the front (because of the medical evidence) that of what the reasons were for doing it.

Perhaps I should have said "probable right wing coup" instead of just "right wing coup".

For one thing, Johnson at the time was considered to be a lot more conservative than he turned out to be. It was believed by many that Kennedy was going to pull us out of Viet Nam, and so one theory was that that was why he was assassinated.

Another issue was the oil depletion allowance that Kennedy was probably going to try to do away with. This would have cut deeply into the pockets of the big oil interests, whom Johnson had strong ties with.

I think that the bottom line is that a lot of right wing interests were at stake and they thought that Johnson would probably be a lot more friendly to their interests (and in some respects he probably was) than Kennedy. And besides that, Kennedy was extremely popular, thought to be almost certain to be re-elected, and perhaps would have been very good for the Democratic party in general in the long run. I think that the right wing was a lot more fearful of Kennedy than they were of Johnson.

[DemonFighterLives]

3. I never quite figured out Johnson's role, but it is said that he attended

the meeting with the boys and Nixon. I don't trust him too far.

Great job on this thread
Kicked and Recommended
:dem:

[Time for change]

6. Sorry, I responded to your question to another person

Please see my response # 5.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

7. The LBJ tapes

He believed there was a conspiracy, possibly with Cuban ties and disbelieved the single-bullet theory. He was also unaware of the plans to assassinate Castro, so he wasn't exactly clued in as VP. (He's also believed to have begun to suspect the CIA when he left office, per remarks made to a journalist whose name I can't remember.)

There are some (IMO very flaky) people who claim that LBJ had foreknowledge / was an active participant - the most recent to float this theory was Barr McLellan (Scotty's father) who argues that LBJ had even killed people before. There's also the Stone/Prouty/et al Vietnam theory FWIW (the theory put forth in the film "JFK").

[Media_Lies_Daily]

37. LBJ had that phonecall recording system installed. Therefore,....

...I suspect that he used that phone system to make himself look good on a variety of subjects to include JFK's assassination. He knew that researchers would always consider the JFK assassination as grounds for close examination. IMHO, LBJ wanted to leave something behind that would allow LBJ to be seen in a "Simon-pure" light.

As to how LBJ conducted himself in Texas and in Washington, D. C. prior to becoming VP, he was known to be completely ruthless, a man capable of doing ANYTHING to achieve his political goals. The story concerning LBJ's role in the death of one or more Texans goes much farther back than Barr McClellan's book.

A fellow by the name of J. Evetts Haley wrote a book entitled "A Texan Looks at Lyndon" in 1964, a book which was heavily read the next couple of years. This book documented election fraud by LBJ's organization in one of his earlier elections which resulted in the well-earned nickname "Landslide Lyndon".

Haley also discussed the death of an agricultural agent who was investigating some of LBJ's agricultural holdings. The agent supposedly "committed suicide" by allegedly shooting himself several times in the abdomen with a rifle.

While VP, LBJ became involved in a number of scandals. IMHO, LBJ would have ended up in prison if JFK had not been killed in Dallas.

In the months leading up to his assassination, JFK told his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, that he was going to remove LBJ from the Democratic Party ticket. JFK's most likely choice to replace LBJ would have been George Smathers, the senator from Florida.

Additionally, Nixon made a speech claiming he knew LBJ was going to be replaced. Robert Kennedy appeared to confirm this by comments he made that suggested that LBJ would be prosecuted for political corruption.

LBJ actually told close friends in 1963 that he expected to end up in prison. The reason for this was LBJ was embroiled in a serious political scandal.

In the summer of 1963, the activities of Bobby Baker, Fred Black and Billie Sol Estes began to surface in the media. Baker was LBJ’s political secretary, and Black was one of LBJ’s political advisers. Both these men were involved in the business activities of Billie Sol Estes.

In 1962, Baker had established the Serve-U-Corporation with Fred Black and mobsters Ed Levenson and Benny Sigelbaum. The company was to provide vending machines for companies working on federally granted programs. The machines were manufactured by a company secretly owned by Sam Giancana and other mobsters based in Chicago. It was claimed that LBJ was getting a rake-off from Serve-U-Corporation in return for arranging for vending machines to be placed in these company’s offices and factories.

Evidence also emerged that LBJ was also involved in political corruption involving the placing of arms contracts. This included the award of a $7 billion contract for a fighter plane, the TFX, to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas. Fred Korth, the Navy Secretary, and a close friend of LBJ, had been involved in negotiating this contract. Additionally, although documents no longer exist to prove this, Lady Bird Johnson invested heavily in General Dynamics and Bell about six months prior to the JFK assassination. Those were the major defense contractors for the jet aircraft and helicoptors used in Vietnam. The Johnsons entered the White House with a net worth of about $200,000, and left there with a net worth of about $6,000,000.

In October 1963, Baker was forced to leave his post as LBJ’s secretary. Early in November 1963, Korth was forced to resign over the TFX contract.

Don B. Reynolds, a close friend of Bobby Baker, claimed that for many years he had a business relationship with LBJ. Reynolds testified before a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee on November 22, 1963. On returning from Dallas, the newly sworn-in President Johnson discovered that Reynolds had told B. Everett Jordan and his Senate Rules Committee that he had seen a suitcase full of money which Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract". LBJ persuaded B. Everett Jordan to stop Reynolds' secret testimony from being published.

Abe Fortas, a man that I believe LBJ later tried to nominate for the Supreme Court, was a lawyer who represented both Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Baker. He worked tirelessly to suppress any negative information on LBJ from reaching the public.

Author Edward Jay Epstein wrote an article in December 1966 for Esquire Magazine where he claimed that Reynolds had given the Warren Commission information on the death of John F. Kennedy. Reynolds said that Bobby Baker had told him that Kennedy "would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death." Baker had also said that "the FBI knew that Johnson was behind the assassination". If the FBI knew this, LBJ knew that his good personal friend, J. Edgar Hoover, could be counted on to suppress any negative information about LBJ. The two men had been friends for quite some time, and talked often about the derogatory information they each had on a large number of political figures.

[MADem]

40. LBJ was NOT the first President to record his phone conversations

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/notebook.html

FDR started it, with a primitive system.

Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower also dabbled with taping, but John F. Kennedy was the first president to make the practice a genuine tool of his presidency. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon followed suit, secretly taping many of their phone calls and meetings. JFK, LBJ and Nixon never thought we would get to eavesdrop. But we can.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

53. I didn't state that LBJ was the first...all I stated was that LBJ...

...had his phone system installed as a way to develop historical cover stories on a variety of topics.

[RandomKoolzip]

12. Gaeton Fonzi's 'The Last Investigation" is my personal favorite

book on the JFK assassination and it's aftermath. Fonzi's theory, that the JFK hit was a joint operation planned by rogue elements of the CIA and Cuban anti-Castro exiles, seems the most plausible.

In any case, in my mind, there's no way guys like David Atlee Philips, E. Howard Hunt, George Bush, and James Jesus Angleton could be considered anything but RW.

[Hapameli]

20. LBJ was a TEXAS OILMAN- how many times do we have to be warned about them?

They worked together then and they're still in it together now.

Gore was an oilman too... which is one reason why Clinton never picked up where Jimmy Carter's energy policy left off.

[RagAss]

36. I never heard he was an oilman....school teacher is what I heard

[Media_Lies_Daily]

44. Dead wrong on all counts....

...LBJ was in education originally. He had absolutely no connection to the oil industry except what he may have gotten under the table as a Congressman, and later as President, to protect Big Oil from any checks/balances.

The last time I checked, there is very little oil to be found in Gore's home state of Tennessee. He was the son of Albert A. Gore Sr. and Pauline LaFon Gore, neither of which came from families involved in the oil business. Additionally, I doubt seriously that Al Gore would have written about becoming more involved in alternative energies if he had been involved in Big Oil.

Jimmy Carter left the White House in 1980...any policies he had in regards to energy were effectively killed by the presidencies of Reagan and Bush41 from 1980-1992. By the time Clinton came into office, Carter's energy policies had been long-buried.

[Festivito]

38. Dixiecrats left Dems after JFK/LBJ initiated voting rights for blacks.

The once (shhhh)racist southern Dems shifted to the .... ResnubliCON party and the south went with them. Now we call them the Right wing because if someone doesn't tell them they're right, they cry like elephant sized babies. And that's the truth..Thbbbbbbbbt

[Media_Lies_Daily]

49. LBJ was a conservative Democrat of the same ilk as John Connally....

...who later switched parties to the GOP.

Anyone that believes that LBJ was a liberal needs to look much deeper into his policies other than Civil Rights. Nearly every single social program that became law under LBJ were originally developed under JFK. LBJ was clearly a hawk when it came to the use of the military, and in regards to foreign policy.

LBJ was an extremely driven man who wanted to be President in the worst way. He was also a completely ruthless individual, capable of doing just about anything you could think of to further his own agenda.

Among LBJ's political allies were the right-leaning conservative Southern Democrats in Congress...that's why JFK chose him as VP.

[papau]

4. Interesting - the fact that the oil folks new of the plan - per testimony

to the Warren commission by the mistress of one of the Hunts(?), and because that lead was never followed up, I have always assumed it was not Oswald all alone.

But beyond RW oil tycoons, and Corporate anti-Castro combined with anti Castro mob types wanting back into Cuba, I see no real proof of an answer to the who did it question to this day. All that can be said is monied nuts. VietNam offshore oil that was talked about at the time gives motive to the nuts.

Rational political thinking does not lead me to believe any RW political would come to the conclusion that killing Kennedy would help the politics of the GOP.

And the only arrogant types - we have a right to having our way just as the Bush types today - at the time were some in the Military, United Fruit, Oil and a few other corporations, and to a lesser extent the Mob (the Mob was then an interesting combination of killers plus religious folks - Al Capone had established soup kitchens for the poor in Chicago long before the politicians were permitted to spend tax dollars on such ideas). The very, very rich know the answers - and they are not talking.

But ir does seem clear the Secret Service folks were not part of what happened.

[Time for change]

10. I think you must be wrong about the Secret Service not being involved

Not that I know anything about what motivation they might have had. But there are some crucial points of evidence that point to their involvement.

One is the the evidence that they were involved in the cover-up to alter the body so as to obliterate the clear evidence that Kennedy was shot from the front. This is what I discuss extensively in my OP. It does not seem plausible that they could have been so intimately involved in the cover-up within minutes of Kennedy's death if they were not also involved in the assassination itself.

The other line of evidence is that they were responsible for protecting Kennedy that day, and there are a whole lot of facts, not discussed in this post, that indicate that they botched up their protection role so badly that they must have been in on the conspiracy. I have the book here, so if you're interested I can share that information with you.

[papau]

16. The Secret Service takes orders from the Pres - if LBJ says jump

they jump and they do not question.

As to botched up the protection, I am curious what they did beyond normal screw-ups.

The two gun man on the knoll behind the fence with gov credentials, the oil fellows mistress, the mafia wanting to help, are all reasonable.

Small cells in the military and the CIA were indeed into saving folks by killing folks and the response to authority back then was amazing (an Admiral or General was God to those under his command or just in the Service even after his retirement - and the Ike folks being on speaking terms with the mafia was shown by the Under Sec of Commerce Olmstead contracts with the Mafia for the land purchase at 1701 Penn Street, Wash DC. And back then CIA wet work went down in DC with no challenge by locals back then.)

All I am saying is that I did not see that attitude in the Secret Service - and indeed Secret Service being in on the game was not necessary for the game plan. I like to assume simplicity when the evidence is not overwhelming that there were complications, and the complications were not needed for the event to have happened as a conspiracy.

The Warren Commission not following up on the Oil fellow's mistress's testimony stank to high heaven.

I know the atmosphere and indeed some of the actions of some of the - perhaps - players - back then. But I am blissfully unaware of real facts not in the public domain - beyond the GOP and Mafia love fest in DC at the time that seems to have been missed by our investigators. So without any real facts, I fearlessly say, I don't think the Secret Service was involved!

But Feel free to post or PM me with the facts in the book you are reading that backs the book's claim that it was otherwise!

:toast:

:-)

[Time for change]

21. I respect your skeptical attitude regarding this

With regard to the botched up protection, I can't find at this time what I remember as extremely incriminating information on that. Lifton's book primarily dealt with the medical evidence. But I did find this from Jim Garrison's "On the Trail of Assassins". On page 328:

"The protective bubble for the President's limousine had been left off by the Secret Service. The windows and roofs of buildings along the parade route had not been secured. And the parade route had been changed at the last minute so that the motorcade would have to make a sharp turn, thus slowing it to less than ten miles per hour. All of this added up, essentially, to the withdrawal of the President's protection by the modern-day Praetorian Guard, leaving him vulnerable to the rifel fire coming at him from the grassy knoll in front of him and from at least two locations in buildings behind him."

And on page 329:

"Meanwhile, the cover-up was progressing. The Secret Service sent Governor John Conally's clothing, along with all the evidence it contained, to be laundered and then proceeded to scrub down the presidential limousine, againd washing away crucial traces of blood, bone, and bullets."

But what I find to be the most crucial part of the evidence implicating the Secret Service is what I discuss in my OP, and it is this:

1. The statements on the state of the body by physicians attending the President at Parkland Hospital are vastly different than what the official autopsy report says.

2. That means that, unless the statements of nine physicians who attended the President at Parkland Hospital are wrong, the body must have been severely altered prior to the autopsy.

3. Whichever version one accepts, the Secret Service had the body in its possess until it arrived at the morgue at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Therefore, if it was altered prior to autopsy they must have known about it and arranged for that to happen.

4. Furthermore, the Secret Service went to great extremes to ensure that it retained control of the body. In grabbing it away from the Medical Examiner at Parkland Hospitals, witnesses were afraid that the situation would become violent. Also, look at the ambulence chase scene in the OP.

[librechik]

19. exactly right (sadly) see video here

it's a big taboo to overcome in puzzling out the assasination scenarios. As Americans we want to trust the Secret Service above all others, perhaps. But they had to be involved, or at least some of them were. maybe they were moles.

In fact there is examination of Zapruder film which suggests the agent in the right front seat actually shot Kennedy from the front. see it here:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/JFK/Drv-kennedy.mov

keep your eye on the front seat, suddenly a gun appears and fires. It was somebody in the car.

[ClassWarrior]

8. Thanks former fellow Sconnie.

That rekindles an old interest of mine - nice job paralleling it to recent RW crimes.

NGU.

[Time for change]

13. Thank you - I like your sig regarding Bill Moyers

I recently posted a summary of one of his articles:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5414880&mesg_id=5414880

[Zynx]

9. Don't bring JFK tinfoil crap into the 2004 election.

Anyone who says Kennedy was shot from the front has no understanding of ballistics, is blind, hasn't actually seen the Zapruder film, or is just flat out lying to serve their own agenda.

310: Kennedy slumped, note the face and back of his head - most certainly facing forward.



312: Kennedy slumped, head facing forward prior to fatal gunshot.



313: Kennedy has the contents of his skull blasted forward.



314: Wound visible, back of head intact.



Enough of this BS. The head shot did not come from in front. That damage profile is simply impossible without using weapons that would take his entire head off - as entrance wounds are only as big as the diameter of the projectile. Creating a wound that large would take a bazooka with solid shot or a shotgun at point-blank range.

[Time for change]

11. Contents of his skull blasted forward?

There were three witnesses that I mention in my OP who were behind Kennedy at the time and who note the contents of the skull blasted backwards. Two of them were police officers and say they were splattered by bits of his brain and blood. There were also several other witnesses, not mentioned in the OP, who say that he was hit from the front.

So if you think that this is "tinfoil crap", what do you say about the nine doctors and the nurse who I note in my OP who said that the fatal head wound was an entrance wound? Would you like me to give you the quotes?

And I'm afraid that I can't decipher the film that you provide.

[H2O Man]

14. "Man of the House"

by Tip O'Neill, on page 211, tells of Kenny O'Donnell and Dave Power's impressions. They were there. They knew the final shot came from the Grassy Knoll. The FBI convinced them both to give false testimony.

I've hunted most of my life. I've used shotguns and rifles. I am 100% sure the final shot hit him from in front.

[Time for change]

23. Thank you H2O Man - Lifton notes in his book that

(not covered in my OP) 64 of 90 witnesses who had anything to say about where the shots came from said that at least one of them came from the grassy knowl. Maybe O'Donnell and Power were included in that sample.

I have to say that I'm surprised to hear that Tip O'Neill discusses this in his book. I have never heard, as far as I can remember, any official of the U.S. government giving credence to the "grassy knoll conspiracy theory".

[H2O Man]

27. They would not be

among the witnesses who are listed at the time as saying from the grassy knoll. It would be five years later that they told Tip the truth. He was shocked, because up until that time, he belived the oswald story. (Of course, five years later was 1968, and Tip was a smart man.) He questioned them about the reasons they lied for the Warren Commission. It's a disturbing page of one of the great politival memoirs.

[Zynx]

26. WTF do you hunt with? RPG's?

Your argument is ballistic nonsense. Bullets *DO NOT* make entry wounds larger than they are.

[H2O Man]

28. You are confusing me

with someone who found your opinion worth responding to. You should take the time to direct your response to that person.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[H2O Man]

31. Honey, I must not

have made this clear: you are entitled to your opinion, but I have zero interest in it. You should not confuse that with a lie.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Zynx]

48. Thanks for getting my posts pulled

[A-Schwarzenegger]

51. You got your own posts pulled

for calling him a liar.

[Zynx]

52. Plenty of people here have called me a liar. Their posts are fine.

What gives?

DU is now endorsing ignorant conspiracy theories and deleting posts that present factual information? That's just wonderful.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

54. "Plenty of people here have called me a liar."

Whatever for? I can't imagine!

[Zynx]

55. Tinfoil brigade loves its own echo chamber.

There is absolutely nothing posted by the conspiricy crowd on this subject that hasn't been debunked 10 times before - especially the ballistic garbage.

But my post gets deleted. Go figure.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

59. Calm down, breathe, don't accuse people of lying.

You'll be fine.

[Time for change]

57. I think I missed that

Can you point out which post calls you a liar?

You called me a liar too in your first post on this thread, and that wasn't pulled -- I guess that's because you offered some other possibilities for my statements, such as being blind.

[Zynx]

61. Dicksteele, post #15. That's a flame and unsupported counter-claim

I supported my comments on H20 making stuff up and my post was still pulled. That's garbage, I'm sorry.

[Zynx]

33. That's the Zapruder film. I hope you know what it is.

Eyewitnesses can be mistaken. Photographic evidence generally is not.

Kennedy is facing forward and the mess comes out of the front of his head. Case closed on the theory of that shot coming from in front and blowing out the back of his head - that simply isn't what is on film.

[Time for change]

41. Your interpretation of the Zapruder film indicating that the

contents of Kennedy's brain are bursting out in a forward direction is one that I have NEVER heard before, anywhere. Even Gerald Posner, in his book, "Case Closed", which purports to offer the definitive proof of the lone assassin from behind theory (and which is one of the most poorly argued books that I've ever read) doesn't make that claim, I'm pretty sure, because I took plenty of notes on the whole book.

What I was saying in my last post which you are responding to here is that I do not see what you claim to see in the film, regarding the brain contents moving forward. That doesn't mean much because I have no experience in interpreting such films. But as I said, I have never seen anyone but you make that claim, nor have I ever heard anyone but you make the claim that the head wound was inconsistent with a shot from the grassy knoll.

I wonder if anyone else sees what you claim to see on that film?

[H2O Man]

46. It's interesting to note

that while one normally associates Bill O'Reilly with emotional outbursts where logic fails, page 530 of Jim Marrs' classic "Crossfire" notes:

"And -- more ominously -- some material given to the Committee also turned up missing. Bill O'Reilly was a news reporter for WFAA-TV in Dallas. He recalled, ' ... a guy who was (in Dealey Plaza), I can't remember his name .... But he wanted to remain anonymous .... He gave me a little cylinder. He said that his son had found it on the ground that day....' ..."

The cylinder got lost in the investigation.

[Time for change]

50. Do you mean that

O'Reilly was given a cylinder from someone who wanted to remain anonymous, and then the cylinder became missing? Do you know anything about what was in the cylinder, or what Marr's implications were.

[H2O Man]

56. Yes.

A kid who was there found the cylinder, and gave it to his father. The father gave it to a news reporter he trusted.

The implication, as I understand it, is that there were more shots fired in Dealey Plaza than the official investigations allow for. I would recommend Marrs' book as a worthwhile read.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

60. Not the same Bill O'Reilly.

The NoSpin idgit was born in 1949, making him 14 or so in 1963.

[H2O Man]

63. Thanks.

O'Reilly wasn't the man in DP in 1963. He got the cylinder in the mid-1970s. Still, it may not be the same O'Reilly.

[Richard Steele]

15. Simply not so, Zynx. Almost every single sentence is WRONG.

Most notably, this little factoid:
"entrance wounds are only as big as the diameter of the projectile"
is simply untrue in many cases,
particularly with high-velocity frangible projectiles.

You make it very clear that you have no
genuine knowledge of Terminal Ballistics, Zynx.

Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed for you.

[Zynx]

29. Um, no. You're making stuff up.

"High velocity frangible projectiles" - these do not fragment until after they meet resistance and are pulled apart. Flesh is what causes them to fragment.

The initial hole is still going to be quite small indeed, even with crazy things like M-16 fragmentation rounds used at point-blank range. Blood splatter effects off the entrance are strictly for the movies.

Unless you are using a shotgun with pellets or a cannon, you won't get an inital wound the size of a saucer. It just will not happen. The ONLY thing that creates the entrance wound is the bullet diameter - because it hasn't interacted with anything else to cause expansion yet.

I've seen my brother use a .338 magnum with custom ammo - softpoint rounds light for caliber fired by a powder charge meant for bullets 50 grains heavier - to create velocity and expansion that's well beyond factory spec. It's meant for "explosive" stopping against deer, boar and theoretically something like a leopard.

Tissue and shock damage is quite extreme, but there is no backblast of material that rips open the skin on the entry side.

Look up as many ballistics gel test shots as you like - the entrance wound is *always* extremely small, no matter what crazy stuff the bullet is designed to do.

[papau]

17. Thanks for posting that - I remembered the Knoll shot was not a necessary

event for the oil folks conspiracy to kill JFK to have happened, but I had forgotten why folks discounted the possibility of a Knoll shot.

Thanks for the reminder of the likelhood that there was at least one shot from Oswald's angle.

But I still like at least one Knoll shot.

[guruoo]

45. Autopsy photos

[Time for change]

47. Of course the autopsy photos occurred after

the conspirators had altered the body. The autopsy photos would be expected to differ from what the Dallas physicians said they saw for the same reason that what the Dallas physicians saw differed from the autopsy report.

[T Town Jake]

62. You're right, but the tinfoiler's won't listen to troublesome things...

...like FACTS.

What's most disgusting, however, is that Lyndon Johnson is consistently implicated by tinfoil intellectual pygmies in one of the worst crimes of the 20th century without a shred of legitimate evidence.

President Johnson gave this nation the Voting Rights Act, the first Civil Rights Act with real enforcement teeth this nation had ever seen up to that time, the War on Poverty, Highway Beautification, National Endowment of the Arts, trailblazing environmental laws, and on and on and on: he was the best liberal president this country had in the 20th century, surpassing even FDR's accomplishments. And yet he's somehow complicit in a "right-wing coup."

The premise of this thread is an embarrassment to genuine liberals and progressives everywhere.

[H2O Man]

64. One need not

think that if there was a gunman on the Grassy Knoll, that LBJ was somehow involved. Again, I suggest reading Tip O'Neill's book. He did not accuse LBJ or Nixon of any involvement. I also think that people can be sincere in their belief that there was not a gunman on the Grassy Knoll.

[poverlay]

18. I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but there are some very

interesting questions and facts surrounding George * sr's whereabouts and connections to the JFK assassination.

If he were involved it would answer all sorts of questions.

If anybody has any info regarding this, I'd love to hear about it...

[shance]

22. I watched JFK II - The Bush connection last night.

Creative choices aside, it provided a solid case that put all the pieces and the people together and a pretty picture perfect equation.

I think it's important because JFK was the plot that I believe was the green light for the militarization of this country. JFK tried to disempower the MIC, the Republican establishment and some of the rich Yale Skull and Bones boys at that. He paid with his life and his legacy has been assaulted, attacked, and assasinated as well.

If the CIA could such an event off by killing are very own president in broad daylight, they would pull off more. And they have, and they did.

That is why it is so important for Americans to revisit now and search and demand the truth. Our future depends upon it. It also gives us more power and understanding to deal with those abusing power and privilege today.

All of the corruption and terrorism against America is apparently woven from the same tapestry of corrupt powers that have worked in secrecy for years. Their secrecy has been their most powerful weapon.

[Time for change]

24. Wow, I guess that I missed a pretty important parallel of the JFK

assassination to the 2004 election before I posted this.

I've read a lot about the JFK assassination, but very little about any Bush connection. I'll have to try to dig that up.

[shance]

35. It's amazing. I believe every American should see it.

For whatever conclusions people come up with in the end, JFK II will change the way one has previously looked at the murder of the president.

It certainly asks the right questions imo.

[Time for change]

25. Here's a recent thread that talks about that in some detail

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5432794

I had never heard much about it either.

[BamaBecky]

58. Read Robert Gaylon Ross's book

The Elite Serial Killers of Lincoln, JFK, RFK,& MLK
By Robert Gaylon Ross

Bama

[A-Schwarzenegger]

34. DAVID Lifton, not James.

Friend of mine.

[Time for change]

42. Thank you - I hope that's the worst mistake I made n/t

[guruoo]

39. Photo: Jackie reaches to retrieve....

'Jackie Kennedy reaching for a
piece of her husband's scalp
in the wake of the JFK
Assassination'

[Time for change]

43. That link comes up, but it doesn't provide an image n/t

[Moderator]

65. Locking

This has become a flame war.