Poor Scholarship on Display: Larry Sturdivan's Book "The JFK Myths"

[Michael T. Griffith]

Below are some of the errors and omissions in Larry Sturdivan’s book The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination (Paragon House, 2005). Lone-gunman theorists regard the book as one of the best and most scientific defenses of the lone-shooter scenario in print. However, Sturdivan’s book contains dozens of serious errors and inexcusable omissions, and sometimes offers downright bizarre theories. It is a testament to the sad state of scholarship among lone-gunman theorists.

* In the book’s foreword, which Sturdivan presumably read and approved, Ken Rahn claims that the millions of pages of documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) added “little of substance” to our knowledge of the JFK case, and that nothing in the released documents “pointed the finger at anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald” (p. 9). This is unbelievably erroneous. Rahn either has not read or has chosen to ignore the many scholarly books that discuss the important, historic disclosures from the released documents, not to mention the documents themselves.

Rahn does not even mention the fact that the ARRB also interviewed numerous witnesses, who provided a great deal of new and important information, and that the ARRB arranged for three medical experts to review the JFK autopsy x-rays and photos, and that those experts' findings contradict key parts of the autopsy report (see, for example, https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,2694.msg97711.html#msg97711).

* Sturdivan rejects the scientific acoustical evidence developed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) (pp. 78-85), but he does so by repeating attacks that were refuted years before he wrote his book. The HSCA’s acoustical experts determined that a Dallas police dictabelt recording made by a patrolman’s microphone during the shooting contained at least four gunshot impulses, providing hard scientific proof that two gunmen were involved, since the alleged lone gunman could have fired only three shots.

Sturdivan repeats the arguments against the acoustical evidence made by a National Research Council (NRC) panel. But Sturdivan knew when he wrote his book that Dr. Donald Thomas, a research scientist at the USDA, had written a detailed response to all of the NRC panel’s arguments.

Dr. Thomas’s first defense of the acoustical evidence was published in 2001 in the journal Science and Justice. Before being published, Dr. Thomas’s article was reviewed by acoustical expert Dr. James Barger, who was one of the HSCA’s acoustical experts, and by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, a research scientist at the University of Nebraska.

Sturdivan cites Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article in his endnotes, but he does not mention the article in the body of the book and does not address any of Dr. Thomas observations and arguments. Why not? Here is a link to Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article on the acoustical evidence:

http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Thomas.pdf

Sturdivan appeals to Dale Myers’ 2004 research to argue that Patrolman H. B. McClain was not in the correct location in Dealey Plaza for his mike to have been the source of the sounds recorded on the dictabelt. Myers’ research was summarized in the 2004 ABC News documentary Beyond Conspiracy; however, Myers did not publish his research until 2007, two years after Sturdivan’s book was published. So perhaps Sturdivan can be excused for not knowing that Dr. Thomas demolished Myers’ research in 2008:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_The_Bike_With_the_Mike.html

Here are four more articles on the validity of the acoustical evidence, including the HSCA report on the subject:

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/pdf/HSCA_Vol8_AS_1_Weiss.pdf
http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/courttv.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20091026111324/http://geocities.com/whiskey99a/dbt2002.html
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Acoustics_Overview_and_History.html

The most exhaustive analysis of the acoustical evidence can be found in chapters 16-19 of Dr. Thomas’s 2010 book Hear No Evil: Politics, Science, and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination. The chapters consist of 131 pages and, among other things, answer the attacks on the acoustical evidence and present evidence that there is a fifth gunshot impulse on the dictabelt.

* Surprisingly, regarding the location of the rear head entry wound, Sturdivan sides with the autopsy doctors rather than with the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA’s forensic pathology panel (FPP) (pp. 165-180)! In other words, he chooses the EOP entry site over the cowlick entry site. The two sites are a whopping 4 inches apart, so this is no minor issue. However, in a sad display of pseudo-scholarship, Sturdivan deals with the impossible trajectory posed by the EOP site by theorizing that the bullet, after supposedly entering the skull at a 15-degree downward angle, magically made a sharp right turn and also veered upward to exit the upper-front part of the right parietal bone (p. 180, Figure 54).

Surely Sturdivan knew better. Surely he knew that not one of the bullets in the WC’s ballistics tests veered so markedly. Surely he knew that brain tissue could not have caused such a drastic change in the bullet’s horizontal and vertical trajectory.

Also, Sturdivan says nothing about the fact that the fragment trail described in the autopsy report is nowhere to be seen on the extant x-rays. The autopsy report says this fragment trail started at the EOP and extended to a point just above the right eye. If Sturdivan had addressed this issue, he would have been forced to explain why this low fragment trail does not appear on the extant x-rays. The only fragment trail on the extant x-rays is above the debunked cowlick entry site.

* Sturdivan discusses the 6.5 mm object seen on the autopsy skull x-rays and admits that it cannot be a bullet fragment from an FMJ bullet, but he lamely theorizes that it is an innocent artifact, and that the small fragment in the back of the head on the lateral x-rays is a bone chip (pp. 168-169). Although Sturdivan mentions Dr. Mantik’s section on the 6.5 mm object in Assassination Science, he says nothing about Dr. Mantik’s optical density (OD) measurements, which prove that the small back-of-head fragment inside the 6.5 mm object is metallic. Nor does Sturdivan address the fact that the 6.5 mm object is spatially consistent with the small fragment in the back of the head, a fact that argues powerfully against the idea that the object is an innocent artifact.

Sturdivan makes the odd argument that no forger would have planted the 6.5 mm object because it cannot be mistaken for a bullet; surely, says Sturdivan, a forger would have planted something that “could actually be mistaken for a bullet fragment” (p. 168). This is just silly. Three federal medical panels mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment: the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA FPP. Dr. John Lattimer, an ardent defender of the lone-gunman theory, also mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment. Did these facts just slip Sturdivan’s mind?

Moreover, Sturdivan says nothing about the other small back-of-head fragment, the one that Dr. McDonnel identified for the HSCA FPP. This fragment is slightly to the left of the fragment inside the 6.5 mm image, about 1 cm below the EOP entry site and just underneath the outer table of the skull. Dr. Mantik has confirmed via OD measurements that this fragment is a bullet fragment. It is hard to believe that Sturdivan was not aware of this fragment. I suspect that Sturdivan chose to say nothing about it because he knew he could not explain it within the context of the lone-gunman theory.

* Sturdivan repeats the myth that neutron activation analysis (NAA) has established that all the bullet fragments recovered from the limo and from Connally’s wrist came from the same production lot of WCC/MC ammo (i.e., Oswald’s alleged ammo), and that the Connally wrist fragments match the chemical composition of CE 399, the magic bullet of the Warren Commission’s (WC’s) infamous single-bullet theory (SBT) (pp. 121-125). In repeating this myth, Sturdivan makes the erroneous claim that no one has found “any credible evidence” that the chain of custody of the fragments is suspect.

In 2007, scientists at Texas A&M University reviewed the NAA research done by the WC and the HSCA and determined that the research was markedly flawed, and they argued that the NAA results indicate that more than one gunman could have been involved:

Chemical and Forensic Analysis of JFK Assassination Bullet Lots: Is A Second Shooter Possible?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0712.2150.pdf

Given that Sturdivan wrote his book in 2005, he can be excused for not knowing about the 2007 Texas A&M study. However, he has no excuse for falsely claiming that there are no indications that the bullet-fragment evidence is suspect. The 1998 book Assassination Science, which Sturdivan mentions in his book, presents compelling evidence that the NAA-tested fragments are suspect, but Sturdivan does not address it, and he does not even mention the evidence that many more fragments were recovered from JFK and Connally than are now in evidence. 

* Sturdivan says that Dale Myers’ SBT trajectory research is the best ever done (pp. 128-129). Actually, Myers’ SBT trajectory research is atrocious and has been soundly debunked. Myers commits gaffe after gaffe in his SBT writings and diagrams. It is incredible that Sturdivan did not detect any of them. If you want a good sample of the problems with Myers’ SBT trajectory research, read Pat Speers’ analysis of it:

Search for Truth in Dale Myers’ House of Mirrors
http://www.patspeer.com/chapter12c:animania

* In his discussion on JFK’s back wound and on the alleged path from C7/T1 to the throat wound (pp. 140-143), Sturdivan does not say a single word about the evidence, including evidence from ARRB interviews and released documents, that on the night of the autopsy, the autopsy doctors positively, absolutely determined that the back wound had no exit point. To read Sturdivan’s book, you would never know this evidence existed.

Moreover, although Sturdivan was aware of Dr. David Mantik’s finding that the x-rays show no path from the back wound to the throat wound without smashing through the spine, he does not even mention it, much less address it. Dr. Mantik first discussed this finding in the 1998 book Assassination Science, a book that Sturdivan mentions and cites.

Dr. Mantik also discusses this finding in his online paper “The Medical Evidence Decoded,” https://themantikview.com/pdf/The_Medical_Evidence_Decoded.pdf (pp. 38-40).

* Rather incredibly, Sturdivan supports the jet-effect theory of JFK’s backward movement by citing Dr. John Lattimer’s bogus and discredited head-shot ballistics test (p. 147). Lattimer reported that all the skulls in his test were propelled backward toward the rifle, supposedly proving the jet-effect theory. However, no other test done with FMJ bullets has produced such a result.

Sturdivan mischaracterizes Lattimer’s test by saying that the skulls were propelled backward “from the table.” Actually, Lattimer put the skulls on ladders, not tables. This is an important difference because, as scholars have noted, the ladders absorbed the forward momentum of the bullets and rocked forward, not backward, which in turn caused the skulls to move backward. For more information on Lattimer’s bogus test, see the following article:

http://www.patspeer.com/chapter16:newviewsonthesamescene

For a scientific critique of the jet-effect theory as an explanation of JFK’s head movement, see the following article by mechanical engineer Tony Szamboti:

http://jfklancer.com/pdf/Jet_Effect_Rebuttal_II_(4-17-2012).pdf

Sturdivan makes the curious—and accurate—comment that the dramatic reversal of motion of Kennedy’s head and upper body seen between Z312 and Z314 is “far too soon to be a neuromuscular response” and that “it had to be from the physics” (p. 147). Yet, on the very next page, Sturdivan claims that the “true cause” of Kennedy’s violent backward motion was a neuromuscular reaction!

* As mentioned, Sturdivan, after saying that Kennedy’s backward motion happened too soon to be a neuromuscular response, argues the opposite and claims that the violent motion was caused by a neuro spasm—even worse, he cites the irrelevant 1948 goat film as evidence (pp. 148-152). I will not belabor the problems with the neuro-spasm theory and with the goat film that have been noted by so many other scholars. Suffice it to say that anyone with two functioning eyes can look at the goat film and see that the goat’s reaction is nothing like JFK’s reaction.

For information on some of the problems with the neuro-spasm theory, see Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. Gary Aguilar’s comments on it:

https://kennedysandking.com/images/pdf/AguilarWechtAFTA2016.pdf

* Sturdivan agrees that Jackie Kennedy climbed onto the limo’s trunk in an effort “to rescue a fragment of the President’s shattered skull” (p. 22). How did a skull fragment get blown onto the trunk if the bullet exited above and to the right of the right ear? Sturdivan does not say.

* Sturdivan claims that the package that Oswald brought to work from his house on the morning of the assassination contained the alleged murder weapon, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, not curtain rods (pp. 33-34). Sturdivan admits that the two people who saw the bag, Buell Frazier and his sister, both said it was shorter than the bag that was allegedly found in Oswald’s alleged “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But Sturdivan says they only said the bag was “a bit shorter” than the supposed rifle bag.

“A bit shorter”? It was much more than “a bit shorter.” Frazier and his sister said Oswald’s bag was 27 inches long. The supposed rifle bag was 38 inches long. Frazier added that Oswald’s bag looked like the standard brown grocery bag that grocery stores used. FBI agents asked Frazier to mark the spot on his car’s back seat where the bag reached when it was placed on the seat with one end against the door. The distance that Frazier marked was 27 inches, exactly as he had previously estimated. Sturdivan mentions none of this.

* Sturdivan paints a superficial, misleading picture of the Tippit shooting and, needless to say, identifies Oswald as Tippit’s killer (pp. 35-36). To read Sturdivan’s version of the Tippit shooting, you would never know that Tippit was shot before Oswald could have walked to the scene (Oswald had no car and did not drive), that two witnesses independently placed Oswald at the Texas Theater at least 10 minutes before Tippit was shot, that the shells found at the Tippit scene were initially and firmly identified as shells from an automatic pistol (not Oswald’s pistol), that Oswald’s pistol was determined to be defective (it would not fire), that the fingerprints found where Tippit’s killer touched the front passenger door of Tippit’s patrol car were not Oswald’s fingerprints, and that the shells entered into evidence had no crime-scene initials on them. For more information on the Tippit shooting, see the following article:

“Did Oswald Shoot Tippit? A Review of Dale Myers’ Book With Malice”
https://miketgriffith.com/files/malice.htm

* Sturdivan repeats the long-debunked myth that the Tague curb “was not chipped” but “only had a lead smear on it” (p. 118). Anyone can look at the initial photos of the curb and readily see that the curb was chipped and had a hole in it. When the Dallas Morning News published one of the photos of the curb the day after the assassination, it gave the photo the caption “Concrete Scar,” and the narrative under the photo said,

"A detective points to a chip in the curb. . . .  A bullet strike from the rifle that took President Kennedy’s life apparently caused the hole." (Dallas Morning News, 11/23/1963, in Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, University Press of Kansas, 2015 edition, p. 118)

“Concrete scar,” “chip in the curb, “the hole.” So the editors who viewed the photo did not see a “smear” but a “scar,” “chip,” and “hole.”

* Sturdivan offers a novel, if not comical, explanation for the fact that in the WC’s ballistics tests, bullets fired into cotton wadding emerged with more deformity than CE 399. Sturdivan says this just proves that cotton wadding is “denser than soft tissue” when it is “compressed” by a penetrating bullet (p. 121)! This is beyond silly.

In the many pages of his labored attempt to validate the SBT, Sturdivan says nothing about the 1992 All-American Television wound ballistics test arranged and supervised by Dr. Cyril Wecht, a former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A 6.5 mm WCC/MC FMJ bullet, i.e., Oswald’s alleged ammo, was fired into a gelatin block that contained two chicken bones positioned several inches apart. The bullet emerged markedly deformed, far more deformed than CE 399.

Nor does Sturdivan mention the 1967 CBS ballistics tests, in which none of the bullets were able to penetrate the simulated thigh. This result led CBS’s expert consultant, Dr. W. F. Enos, to conclude that the SBT was “highly improbable.”

Nor does Sturdivan mention that the chief of the Army's Wound Ballistics Board, Dr. Joseph Dolce, told WC attorneys that the SBT was impossible. Indeed, even though Dr. Dolce believed there was only one gunman, he agreed to appear in the 1995 documentary Reasonable Doubt: The Single-Bullet Theory to explain why he viewed the SBT as impossible.

* Sturdivan makes the baffling, erroneous claim that autopsy photo F8 shows a frontal view of JFK’s skull (p. 175, Figure 50). However, we have known for many years that in 1966, John Stringer, the medical photographer who actually took the photo, along with the three autopsy doctors and the autopsy radiologist, said F8 was a photo of the back of the head. Dr. David Mantik has confirmed that F8 was taken from a point behind the head. Dr. Mantik notes that one of the ARRB medical experts noted the presence of fatty tissue in the upper left corner of the photo, and that such tissue would only be visible if the photo were taken from a point behind the head. The fact that F8 is a back-of-head photo means that F8 shows a sizable wound in the back of the head (specifically, in the occipital region), which in turn means that the autopsy photos that show the back of the head intact have been altered.

[Joe Elliott]

* Sturdivan rejects the scientific acoustical evidence developed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) (pp. 78-85), but he does so by repeating attacks that were refuted years before he wrote his book. The HSCA’s acoustical experts determined that a Dallas police dictabelt recording made by a patrolman’s microphone during the shooting contained at least four gunshot impulses, providing hard scientific proof that two gunmen were involved, since the alleged lone gunman could have fired only three shots.

Sturdivan repeats the arguments against the acoustical evidence made by a National Research Council (NRC) panel. But Sturdivan knew when he wrote his book that Dr. Donald Thomas, a research scientist at the USDA, had written a detailed response to all of the NRC panel’s arguments.

Dr. Thomas’s first defense of the acoustical evidence was published in 2001 in the journal Science and Justice. Before being published, Dr. Thomas’s article was reviewed by acoustical expert Dr. James Barger, who was one of the HSCA’s acoustical experts, and by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, a research scientist at the University of Nebraska.

Sturdivan cites Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article in his endnotes, but he does not mention the article in the body of the book and does not address any of Dr. Thomas observations and arguments. Why not? Here is a link to Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article on the acoustical evidence:

http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Thomas.pdf

Sturdivan appeals to Dale Myers’ 2004 research to argue that Patrolman H. B. McClain was not in the correct location in Dealey Plaza for his mike to have been the source of the sounds recorded on the dictabelt. Myers’ research was summarized in the 2004 ABC News documentary Beyond Conspiracy; however, Myers did not publish his research until 2007, two years after Sturdivan’s book was published. So perhaps Sturdivan can be excused for not knowing that Dr. Thomas demolished Myers’ research in 2008:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_The_Bike_With_the_Mike.html

Here are four more articles on the validity of the acoustical evidence, including the HSCA report on the subject:

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/pdf/HSCA_Vol8_AS_1_Weiss.pdf
http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/courttv.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20091026111324/http://geocities.com/whiskey99a/dbt2002.html
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Acoustics_Overview_and_History.html

The most exhaustive analysis of the acoustical evidence can be found in chapter 16 of Dr. Thomas’s 2010 book Hear No Evil: Politics, Science, and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination. The chapter is 79 pages long and, among other things, answers the attacks on the acoustical evidence and presents evidence that there is a fifth gunshot impulse on the dictabelt.

Dr. Thomas is not an acoustics expert but an expert on insects. But his opinion is seconded by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, who is also an expert on insects. But Dr. Thomas’s opinion is also supported by Dr. James Barger who is an acoustic expert. But was also one who supported the original HSCA opinion of there being four shots and is perhaps, still reluctant to admit a mistake.

But I don’t know of any acoustic expert who supports the acoustic work of Dr. Thomas, who was not involved in the 1978 HSCA fiasco, and may just be saying, in effect, “I still stand by my work.”.

And the 1978 HSCA acoustic report is highly questionable, if only because of the failure, of any of those experts to notice the phrase “Hold everything secure”, making it appear that the so called 4 shots occurred a minute too late. Now, yes, after the fact, Dr. Thomas has tried to explain away this failure. But it would have been much better if these acoustic experts had been the ones to discover this, and come up with an explanation back in 1978 in their original report. It makes them look back to have our own Steve Barber be the one who discovered this problem.

* Surprisingly, regarding the location of the rear head entry wound, Sturdivan sides with the autopsy doctors rather than with the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA’s forensic pathology panel (FPP) (pp. 165-180)! In other words, he chooses the EOP entry site over the cowlick entry site. The two sites are a whopping 4 inches apart, so this is no minor issue. However, in a sad display of pseudo-scholarship, Sturdivan deals with the impossible trajectory posed by the EOP site by theorizing that the bullet, after supposedly entering the skull at a 15-degree downward angle, magically made a sharp right turn and also veered upward to exit the upper-front part of the right parietal bone (p. 180, Figure 54).

Surely Sturdivan knew better. Surely he knew that not one of the bullets in the WC’s ballistics tests veered so markedly. Surely he knew that brain tissue could not have caused such a drastic change in the bullet’s horizontal and vertical trajectory.

Also, Sturdivan says nothing about the fact that the fragment trail described in the autopsy report is nowhere to be seen on the extant x-rays. The autopsy report says this fragment trail started at the EOP and extended to a point just above the right eye. If Sturdivan had addressed this issue, he would have been forced to explain why this low fragment trail does not appear on the extant x-rays. The only fragment trail on the extant x-rays is above the debunked cowlick entry site.

But Larry Sturdivan did address this issue.

“The JFK Myths”, Page 201:

Many of the fragments deposited in the president’s brain were flushed out, along with the brain tissue, as the large amount of blood flowed out of the explosive wound, in the car and in Parkland. It is evidently some of these that were deposited on the bone flaps by clotting blood that show as a “trail” of fragments near the top of the lateral view. This “trial” does not show on the frontal view, and is much higher that the FPP’s reconstructed trajectory. In fact, at the apparent location of these fragments, there was no brain matter in which the fragments could be embedded (see figure 39).

If you are going to criticize Larry Sturdivan’s work, at least refrain from making false statements like “If Sturdivan had addressed this issue”.

I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.

By the way, page 173, Figure 38 (the top X-Ray) shows the side X-Ray of JFK’s head. Page 192 shows the X-Ray of JFK’s head taken from the front.

This trail of fragments does not lead to the hypothesized “EOP” entrance wound. But it also does not lead to the hypothesized “cowlick” entrance. This “trail” is too high for either. And no trail at all is to be found in the frontal X-Ray. This leads me to agree with Larry Sturdivan and to conclude that this “trail” is not a trail at all but is simply where some of the small lead fragments got flushed out to, either by the initial explosion, clearly visible in Zapruder frame 313, or by blood, either in the first few seconds or after the large transfusions at Parkland. If this is a trail, I don’t know why it is not also visible in the frontal X-Ray.

* Sturdivan discusses the 6.5 mm object seen on the autopsy skull x-rays and admits that it cannot be a bullet fragment from an FMJ bullet, but he lamely theorizes that it is an innocent artifact, and that the small fragment in the back of the head on the lateral x-rays is a bone chip (pp. 168-169). Although Sturdivan mentions Dr. Mantik’s section on the 6.5 mm object in Assassination Science, he says nothing about Dr. Mantik’s optical density (OD) measurements, which prove that the small back-of-head fragment inside the 6.5 mm object is metallic. Nor does Sturdivan address the fact that the 6.5 mm object is spatially consistent with the small fragment in the back of the head, a fact that argues powerfully against the idea that the object is an innocent artifact.

On page 193, of Larry Sturdivan’s “JFK Myths”:

A metal fragment that cannot be a bullet fragment and appears on only one view of the x-ray would ordinarily be dismissed as an accidental artifact that somehow found its way to the top of the x-ray cassette for that single exposure.

This failure of the side X-Ray to show a “6.5 mm disk” and the failure of the frontal X-Ray to show a “trail of small lead fragments”, indicates that this “object” and “trail” are both bogus. If real, they should appear in both X-rays.

Sturdivan makes the odd argument that no forger would have planted the 6.5 mm object because it cannot be mistaken for a bullet; surely, says Sturdivan, a forger would have planted something that “could actually be mistaken for a bullet fragment” (p. 168). This is just silly. Three federal medical panels mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment: the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA FPP. Dr. John Lattimer, an ardent defender of the lone-gunman theory, also mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment. Did these facts just slip Sturdivan’s mind?

No, these are not odd arguments. These are reasonable arguments. It would be expected that a forger would plant something that looked like a real bullet fragment.

The Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, even Dr. John Lattimer, were not ballistic experts. So, it would seem reasonable that forgers would plant an object that could be mistaken for a bullet fragment, not just by a non-ballistic expert, but by a true ballistic expert as well.

. . .

Sturdivan makes the curious—and accurate—comment that the dramatic reversal of motion of Kennedy’s head and upper body seen between Z312 and Z314 is “far too soon to be a neuromuscular response” and that “it had to be from the physics” (p. 147). Yet, on the very next page, Sturdivan claims that the “true cause” of Kennedy’s violent backward motion was a neuromuscular reaction!

Page 147 is the start of the “No Signs of Distress” chapter, talking about the wound caused by the bullet at z222, not the bullet at z312, that struck the head.

I believe you meant to refer to page 164:

The motion is far too soon to be a neuromuscular response. It had to be from physics.

Here, I think Larry Sturdivan is in error. The motion is not too soon to be a neuromuscular response. The bullet struck about z312.6. The backwards motion could have started by around z313.8. This would give a 65-millisecond gap of time between when the bullet struck and the backward movement started. Clearly, not too soon, because in Larry Sturdivan’s own testimony he says the goat that was shot through the brain in 1948 in the U. S. Army test started to react after 40 milliseconds from being struck by the bullet.

I believe that Larry Sturdivan allowed himself to be too influenced by Dr. Ken Rahn, an intelligent scientist, but who was mistaken about the “Jet Effect”. The truth is that backward movement is not too soon to be caused by a neuromuscular response, and is too late to be caused by the “Jet Effect”.

Page 147? Again, I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.

* Sturdivan repeats the long-debunked myth that the Tague curb “was not chipped” but “only had a lead smear on it” (p. 118). Anyone can look at the initial photos of the curb and readily see that the curb was chipped and had a hole in it. When the Dallas Morning News published one of the photos of the curb the day after the assassination, it gave the photo the caption “Concrete Scar,” and the narrative under the photo said,

Really?



I don’t see a hole. I don’t even see a chip. If there is a chip missing, it is pretty small.

* Sturdivan offers a novel, if not comical, explanation for the fact that in the WC’s ballistics tests, bullets fired into cotton wadding emerged with more deformity than CE 399. Sturdivan says this just proves that cotton wadding is “denser than soft tissue” when it is “compressed” by a penetrating bullet (p. 121)! This is beyond silly.

But Sturdivan is right. A WCC/MC bullet fired into pinewood; the bullet is undamaged. A WCC/MC bullet fired into hardwood; the bullet is still undamaged. But a WCC/MC bullet fired into a barrel full of soft cotton, and the bullet is fragmented. An odd result, to be certain, but that is what happens. And Larry Sturdivan’s explanation makes sense. It is the density of a material, that a bullet strikes, that determines whether it will fragment or not. Pine wood is no compressible, at least by a bullet. Nor is hardwood. And cotton ordinarily has a very low density. But it can be compressed. So, a WCC/MC bullet can, momentarily, compress it to the point that it has a high density. High enough to fragment the bullet.

In any case, I never heard of a ballistic expert who disputes this result. Or disputes Larry Sturdivan’s explanation for it. And neither has Mr. Griffith.

* Sturdivan makes the baffling, erroneous claim that autopsy photo F8 shows a frontal view of JFK’s skull (p. 175, Figure 50). However, we have known for many years that in 1966, John Stringer, the medical photographer who actually took the photo, along with the three autopsy doctors and the autopsy radiologist, said F8 was a photo of the back of the head. Dr. David Mantik has confirmed that F8 was taken from a point behind the head. Dr. Mantik notes that one of the ARRB medical experts noted the presence of fatty tissue in the upper left corner of the photo, and that such tissue would only be visible if the photo were taken from a point behind the head. The fact that F8 is a back-of-head photo means that F8 shows a sizable wound in the back of the head (specifically, in the occipital region), which in turn means that the autopsy photos that show the back of the head intact have been altered.

Larry Sturdivan does not claim that autopsy photo f8 was taken from the front. He says, on page 203 (not page 175):

Figure 50. photograph superimposed on a human skull with the entry projected to the Forensic Pathology Panel’s “cowlick” location.

I think Mr. Griffith is getting confused with his belief that the head shot came from the front, and Mr. Sturdivan’s belief that the head shot came from the rear. So, when Mr. Sturdivan is talking about a photo of the hypothesized entry wound, he is not talking about a photograph from the front. He is talking about a photograph from the rear.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Dr. Thomas is not an acoustics expert but an expert on insects. But his opinion is seconded by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, who is also an expert on insects. But Dr. Thomas’s opinion is also supported by Dr. James Barger who is an acoustic expert. But was also one who supported the original HSCA opinion of there being four shots and is perhaps, still reluctant to admit a mistake.

Phew! You guys were willing to accept the acoustics "research" of a drummer, Steve Barber, who got his copy of the dictabelt recording from an insert in a porn magazine! Yeah, you didn't mind taking input from a non-acoustics expert in that instance!

Now, it just so happened that Barber was correct: there is crosstalk on the dictabelt. This just goes to show that you do not necessarily have to be an acoustics expert, or even a scientist of any kind, to make a valid observation about a scientific issue.

Thomas and Ratcliffe are scientists. Regardless of their field of specialization, they are still trained in scientific methodology. It is curious that you are willing to accept the writings of Dr. Lattimer on forensic and ballistics issues, even though he was a urologist and had no training in forensics or ballistics. But, oh, because Dr. Thomas is an entomologist, you use that as an excuse to ignore his scientific research on the acoustical evidence.

You are willing to accept the fact that a drummer could make a valid observation about the dictabelt but are not willing to accept the fact that a USDA research scientist could discover that the NAS NRC panel made basic math errors in their analysis.

You guys also accept and cite Dale Myers' research on the acoustical evidence, even though he has no training in any relevant field (not to mention that Dr. Thomas has demolished Myers' badly flawed research).

Dr. David Scheim, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from MIT, has also rejected the NAS NRC panel's arguments (see below).

But I don’t know of any acoustic expert who supports the acoustic work of Dr. Thomas, who was not involved in the 1978 HSCA fiasco, and may just be saying, in effect, “I still stand by my work.”.

I'm guessing you don't know that Weiss and Aschkenasy were two of the premier acoustical experts in the world at the time, and that the HSCA chose the firm Bolt-Beranek-Newman (BBN) to do the initial acoustical analysis because it was internationally recognized as a scientific research firm and had experience with doing acoustical analysis for the UN.

But you simply wave aside the fact that all of the HSCA acoustical experts--the four BBN scientists and Weiss and Aschkenasy--said they did not agree with the NAS NRC panel's arguments and that they still stood by their findings.

And the 1978 HSCA acoustic report is highly questionable, if only because of the failure, of any of those experts to notice the phrase “Hold everything secure”, making it appear that the so called 4 shots occurred a minute too late.

Here we go again with your making erroneous statements because you did not bother to read the other side. Aside from the fact that the presence of the crosstalk ("Hold everything secure") has been thoroughly explained, that crosstalk does not, and cannot, cancel out the scientific evidence of the N-wave correlations, the sound fingerprints, and the sound-distance correlations between the dictabelt impulses and the Dealey Plaza reenactment recordings.

Dr. Scheim notes the importance of the N-wave correlations:

Moreover, an "N-wave," characteristic of supersonic gunfire, appeared in each dictabelt impulse for which the police microphone was in an appropriate position to detect it, including the recorded sound of the third shot. The most striking find, however, was the exact location of the grassy knoll gunman. According to the acoustical calculations, this firing position was behind the picket fence, eight feet west of the corner. That was just two to seven feet from where S. M. Holland, a dozen years earlier, had placed the signs observed by himself and fellow railroad workers: the puff of smoke, muddy station wagon bumper, cigarette butts, and a cluster of footprints. (The Mafia Killed President Kennedy, p. 36)

As for the NAS NRC panel's arguments, Dr. Scheim made the following points:

[The panel] . . . introduced complex and controversial assumptions and made several errors of its own. In a letter of February 18, 1983, Dr. Barger noted enigmatic features in a recording upon which the National Academy of Sciences panel relied and pointed out that it "did not examine the several items of evidence that corroborated our original findings." Barger stood by the acoustical determination of a grassy knoll shot as accepted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. . . .

. . . the critical Weiss-Aschkenasy conclusion of a 95-percent probability of a grassy knoll shot was treated only in a sketchy three-page appendix [in the NAS panel's report] that made one outright error--there was only one degree, not two, of freedom associated with the position of the shooter along the grassy knoll fence. This appendix also recalculated the probability by subtracting degrees of freedom adjusted in the Weiss-Aschkenasy analysis from matches obtained, an arbitrary approximation to a complex mathematical calculation, akin to computing the volume of a cube as three by adding its dimensions. The appendix itself included the admission that this critical calculation was "possibly overconservative" and "may be unduly conservative." (pp. 35-36, p. 431 n 120)

Now, yes, after the fact, Dr. Thomas has tried to explain away this failure.  But it would have been much better if these acoustic experts had been the ones to discover this, and come up with an explanation back in 1978 in their original report. It makes them look back to have our own Steve Barber be the one who discovered this problem.

If you had bothered to read any of Dr. Thomas's research, you would have learned that the crosstalk is actually irrelevant, that it has no bearing on the hard scientific correlations between the dictabelt impulses and the impulses from the Dealey Plaza test firings. The crosstalk is a non-issue thrown up by the NRC panel to avoid dealing with the sound fingerprints, the sound-distance correlations, and the N-wave correlations.

But Larry Sturdivan did address this issue.

“The JFK Myths”, Page 201:

"Many of the fragments deposited in the president’s brain were flushed out, along with the brain tissue, as the large amount of blood flowed out of the explosive wound, in the car and in Parkland. It is evidently some of these that were deposited on the bone flaps by clotting blood that show as a “trail” of fragments near the top of the lateral view. This “trial” does not show on the frontal view, and is much higher that the FPP’s reconstructed trajectory. In fact, at the apparent location of these fragments, there was no brain matter in which the fragments could be embedded (see figure 39)."

If you are going to criticize Larry Sturdivan’s work, at least refrain from making false statements like “If Sturdivan had addressed this issue”.

I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.

I'm sorry, but this is just sheer, comical ignorance. If this were a private correspondence, I would not waste time responding to such unbelievably silly arguments. I am led to wonder about your basic reading skills.

Now, exactly where in the above quote does Sturdivan say one blessed word about the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report? Where does he explain how the autopsy doctors, assuming they were looking at the extant x-rays, could have said there was a fragment trail that ran between the EOP and a point just above the right eye? Where does Sturdivan say one word about this? Where?

Not only does Sturdivan say nothing about why the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report does not appear on the extant x-rays, but his argument is a silly, ridiculous attempt to explain how the high fragment trail could have resulted from an EOP bullet entry. I'm guessing you didn't realize that that's what Sturdivan is trying to do here.

Sturdivan is claiming that some of the fragments were flushed and deposited on the bone flaps at some point before the autopsy (he implies this occurred on the way to Parkland). Leaving aside the many problems with this theory, what in the devil does this have to do with the fragment trail that the autopsy doctors said they saw hours later at the autopsy?

However you want to duck and dodge and theorize about how the fragments may have magically moved around before the autopsy, this speculation does not address what the autopsy doctors said they saw in the skull x-rays, nor does it explain why the low fragment trail is nowhere to be seen on the extant x-rays.

In going with the EOP entry site, Sturdivan makes the valid point that it is hard to believe that the autopsy doctors could have mistaken a wound in the cowlick for a wound 4 inches lower, just above the EOP. But he avoids explaining how those same doctors could have mistaken the high fragment trail for a trail that ran between the EOP and the right eye.

By the way, page 173, Figure 38 (the top X-Ray) shows the side X-Ray of JFK’s head. Page 192 shows the X-Ray of JFK’s head taken from the front.

This trail of fragments does not lead to the hypothesized “EOP” entrance wound. But it also does not lead to the hypothesized “cowlick” entrance. This “trail” is too high for either.

No kidding! I pointed out this very fact to you twice in another thread. I pointed out that the high fragment trail does not actually line up with the proposed cowlick entry site because it runs above that site. Remember? Remember when I explained that one of the reasons the forgers moved the rear head entry wound was to try to account for the high fragment trail (because otherwise the trail suggests a frontal shot)? Remember?

And no trail at all is to be found in the frontal X-Ray.

You seem to enjoy making irrelevant observations just to appear as though you know what you're talking about. Nobody has said there is a fragment trail on the AP x-ray. You can't discern a lateral fragment trail on an AP x-ray. There are fragments visible on the AP x-ray, but obviously their lateral spatial relationship cannot be determined from a frontal view.

This leads me to agree with Larry Sturdivan and to conclude that this “trail” is not a trail at all but is simply where some of the small lead fragments got flushed out to, either by the initial explosion, clearly visible in Zapruder frame 313, or by blood, either in the first few seconds or after the large transfusions at Parkland. If this is a trail, I don’t know why it is not also visible in the frontal X-Ray.

LOL! Sturdivan is out to lunch on this issue, but you just blindly follow him because you don't know enough to realize how absurd his argument is. Every forensic expert and radiologist who has examined the lateral x-rays has noted the high fragment trail. All members of the HSCA FPP, along with all of the panel's outside consultants, noted the fragment trail. So did the Clark Panel. So did the Rockefeller Commission's medical panel. So have Dr. Mantik, Dr. Aguilar, Dr. Robertson, Dr. Chessar, and Dr. Riley. Heck, even your good ole Dr. Lattimer noted it.

And, leaving aside Sturdivan's horrible x-ray reading, what does any of this have to do with the fact that the autopsy doctors described a low fragment trail that began at the EOP site and went to a point just above the right eye, and that this fragment trail does not appear on the extant x-rays? Sturdivan ducks this issue, and you are still ducking it.

On page 193, of Larry Sturdivan’s “JFK Myths”:

This failure of the side X-Ray to show a “6.5 mm disk” and the failure of the frontal X-Ray to show a “trail of small lead fragments”, indicates that this “object” and “trail” are both bogus. If real, they should appear in both X-rays.

More embarrassing, raw ignorance. As mentioned, and as should be obvious to anyone with a brain, you're not going to see a lateral-view fragment trail on an AP x-ray. The only fragment trail an AP x-ray will show is a trail that runs between the left and right sides of the skull. But nobody is talking about any such trail. No one has ever said a word about a side-to-side trail. We're talking about the high fragment trail on the lateral x-rays, the trail that everybody but Sturdivan can see.

No, these are not odd arguments. These are reasonable arguments. It would be expected that a forger would plant something that looked like a real bullet fragment.

The Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, even Dr. John Lattimer, were not ballistic experts. So, it would seem reasonable that forgers would plant an object that could be mistaken for a bullet fragment, not just by a non-ballistic expert, but by a true ballistic expert as well.

Gosh, this is a dumb dodge. As I have pointed out to you before, ballistics experts are not trained in radiology. They are not forensic pathologists or radiologists and do not receive extensive training on how to read x-rays. When ballistics experts want information from an x-ray, they usually consult a radiologist or a pathologist.

The 6.5 mm object fooled three federal medical panels, with over a dozen forensic pathologists and four radiologists, into believing it was a bullet fragment.

This error was only corrected in the 1990s when Dr. David Mantik came along and performed OD measurements on the object and determined its actual location. Luckily for the sake of fact about the medical evidence, Dr. Mantik happens to be both a radiation oncologist and a physicist, so he knew that OD measurements could provide crucial information about the 6.5 mm object.

I notice you made no effort to explain Sturdivan's failure to address the other back-of-head fragment identified by Dr. McDonnel and confirmed by several other medical doctors with training in radiology, including Dr. Mantik. Sturdivan surely knew about the fragment when he wrote his book. Why did he say nothing about it? We both know why.

Page 147 is the start of the “No Signs of Distress” chapter, talking about the wound caused by the bullet at z222, not the bullet at z312, that struck the head.

I believe you meant to refer to page 164:

No, the quote comes from page 147. Go back and check it. It's right there. I'm looking at it right now.

Here, I think Larry Sturdivan is in error. The motion is not too soon to be a neuromuscular response. The bullet struck about z312.6. The backwards motion could have started by around z313.8. This would give a 65-millisecond gap of time between when the bullet struck and the backward movement started. Clearly, not too soon, because in Larry Sturdivan’s own testimony he says the goat that was shot through the brain in 1948 in the U. S. Army test started to react after 40 milliseconds from being struck by the bullet.

The goat film nonsense again?! Seriously?! Shall I repeat the self-evident fact that Kennedy was not a goat, and that Kennedy's reaction looks nothing like the goat's reaction? This has been pointed out to you several times, but you just keep ignoring this self-evident fact and keep repeating this silly goop.

I believe that Larry Sturdivan allowed himself to be too influenced by Dr. Ken Rahn, an intelligent scientist, but who was mistaken about the “Jet Effect”. The truth is that backward movement is not too soon to be caused by a neuromuscular response, and is too late to be caused by the “Jet Effect”.

Page 147? Again, I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.

Wrong again. The quote I gave is from page 147. So the poor scholarship here is yours, yet again.

Anyway, so even when your favorite ballistics expert says the motion is too soon to be a neuro response, you refuse to believe it. The only "evidence" you have to the contrary is the irrelevant goat film. I repeat: JFK was not a goat. Really, you can Google it.

Really?

I don’t see a hole. I don’t even see a chip. If there is a chip missing, it is pretty small.

You don't see lots of things, or at least claim you don't, and that's the problem. I mean, I can't force you to admit that you can see what is plainly visible. It is interesting to note, again, that the DMN editors described the curb defect as a "chip," "scar," and "hole." Why do you suppose they could see it but you can't?

But Sturdivan is right. A WCC/MC bullet fired into pinewood; the bullet is undamaged. A WCC/MC bullet fired into hardwood; the bullet is still undamaged. But a WCC/MC bullet fired into a barrel full of soft cotton, and the bullet is fragmented. An odd result, to be certain, but that is what happens. And Larry Sturdivan’s explanation makes sense. It is the density of a material, that a bullet strikes, that determines whether it will fragment or not. Pine wood is no compressible, at least by a bullet. Nor is hardwood. And cotton ordinarily has a very low density. But it can be compressed. So, a WCC/MC bullet can, momentarily, compress it to the point that it has a high density. High enough to fragment the bullet.

LOL! I'm not even going to waste time dealing with such nonsense, except to say that nobody said that a bullet fired into a barrel of cotton wadding "fragmented."

In any case, I never heard of a ballistic expert who disputes this result. Or disputes Larry Sturdivan’s explanation for it. And neither has Mr. Griffith.

Oh, you've never heard a ballistics experts dispute Sturdivan's claim! Well, that settles it then! But, uh, how many ballistics experts do you know who have even read Sturdivan's book? And how about ballistics experts Dr. Joseph Dolce and Dr. Roger McCarthy? I've pointed out to you in other threads that they both rejected the single-bullet theory (SBT); they both said it was impossible.

You don't want to talk about forensic pathologists, because a whole bunch of them have said the SBT is impossible.

You go find me one ballistics expert who will agree that an FMJ bullet fired into a barrel full of cotton wadding is going to fragment. Find me just one. Better yet, find me just one who will say he has seen or heard of an FMJ bullet hitting a skull and exploding into dozens of fragments, depositing two fragments on the rear outer table of the skull, and still ejecting its nose and tail from the skull. I've asked you to do this several times before, but you just keep ignoring the request. I'll save you some time: you will never find a ballistics expert who will agree with the above claims because the claims are ridiculous.

Larry Sturdivan does not claim that autopsy photo f8 was taken from the front. He says, on page 203 (not page 175):

I think Mr. Griffith is getting confused with his belief that the head shot came from the front, and Mr. Sturdivan’s belief that the head shot came from the rear. So, when Mr. Sturdivan is talking about a photo of the hypothesized entry wound, he is not talking about a photograph from the front. He is talking about a photograph from the rear.

Wrong again. I am looking right at page 175, right now, and on that page Sturdivan has a copy of F8 superimposed on the same skull that is immediately above it. The skull above it shows the FPP's cowlick entry site projected onto it. The two photos constitute Figure 50 on page 175, and in the caption Sturdivan says the autopsy photo (F8) is superimposed on the skull shown above it.

Now, look at the bottom photo: Sturdivan has F8 oriented so that the back of the head--the large wound--is superimposed onto the front of the skull. He is assuming in this figure that F8 shows a frontal view of the skull. If he's not assuming this, why in the world does he have F8 superimposed on the skull so that the large opening is in the front of the skull?

I notice you said nothing about Sturdivan's nutty theory that the rear-head-shot bullet magically veered sharply rightward and then upward after supposedly entering the skull at a substantial downward angle (15 degrees). Sturdivan is forced to resort to such nonsense because the EOP site poses an impossible vertical trajectory problem for a shot from the sixth-floor window--unless you assume that JFK was leaning forward by about 60 degrees, which nobody claims. So his only choice, since he won't admit that the shot came from a lower window in another building, is to assume the bullet magically made a sharp right turn and then veered upward to exit at the autopsy report's exit wound. Brain tissue does not cause bullets, especially FMJ bullets, to veer so drastically.

[Jerry Organ]

I am led to wonder about your basic reading skills.

Such condescension. And from a Southern gentleman

Now, exactly where in the above quote does Sturdivan say one blessed word about the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report?

The report doesn't say the trail was "low". It says:

    "Roentgenograms of the skull reveal multiple minute metallic fragments
     along a line corresponding with a line joining the above described small
     occipital wound and the right supra-orbital ridge."

If the "occiptal wound" location is wrong and the "cowlick" entry wound is correct, the level of the fragment trail changes.

Not only does Sturdivan say nothing about why the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report does not appear on the extant x-rays, but his argument is a silly, ridiculous attempt to explain how the high fragment trail could have resulted from an EOP bullet entry. I'm guessing you didn't realize that that's what Sturdivan is trying to do here.

The trail is probably "high" because the "cowlick" wound is correct. Sturdivan supports an EOP entry wound resulting in deflection of the bullet path upward.

How can the trail be "low" if the autopsy report describes damage so high:

• "a large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on
       the right involving chiefly the parietal bone"
• "the anterior parietal margin"
• "the right cerebral hemisphere ... the falx cerebri
       is extensively lacerated
• "the large defect at the vertex"
• "the disrupted right cerebral cortex"
• "exit through the parietal bone on the right"
• "laceration of the superior saggital sinus, and
       of the right cerebral hemisphere"

The right parietal lobe at the "low" level is merely out-folded. The portion of the parietal lobe where matter is missing is higher up.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Such condescension. And from a Southern gentleman

The trail is probably "high" because the "cowlick" wound is correct. Sturdivan supports an EOP entry wound resulting in deflection of the bullet path upward.

How can the trail be "low" if the autopsy report describes damage so high:

• "a large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on
       the right involving chiefly the parietal bone"
• "the anterior parietal margin"
• "the right cerebral hemisphere ... the falx cerebri
       is extensively lacerated
• "the large defect at the vertex"
• "the disrupted right cerebral cortex"
• "exit through the parietal bone on the right"
• "laceration of the superior saggital sinus, and
       of the right cerebral hemisphere"

The right parietal lobe at the "low" level is merely out-folded. The portion of the parietal lobe where matter is missing is higher up.

You really should avoid discussions where the subject matter is clearly way over your head. And you are once again repeating arguments that have been debunked in this very forum. Just a few points:

* No, the cowlick entry point is not correct. In fact, it has been soundly debunked. It was debunked back in the 1990s. But, as usual, you seem to be stuck in a time warp and seem to think we're still in the 1980s.

* The ARRB medical experts all agreed that the x-rays show no entry point in the cowlick. A long list of private experts have confirmed this.

* We now know that two of the HSCA FPP's consultants raised concerns about the cowlick entry point, but Baden ignored their observations.

* The autopsy fragment trail is the low trail of the two trails. A trail that starts slightly above the EOP can certainly be called "low" on the skull anyway.

* The other fragment trail, the one now seen on the extant x-rays, is near the top of the head and is above the debunked cowlick entry site. But the autopsy report describes no such fragment trail.

* The autopsy report says there was a fragment trail that ran from the EOP entry site to a point just above the right eye. No such trail is seen on the extant x-rays.

* As for the brain diagram, again, you are decades behind the information curve. The brain drawing is irrelevant. Dare yourself to read critical research written after 1980:

http://assassinationofjfk.net/most-jfk-medical-evidence-would-not-be-admissible-at-trial-doug-horne/

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=43602

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/10018-doug-horne%E2%80%99s-response-to-the-attacks-on-his-work-in-bugliosi%E2%80%99s-new-book-%E2%80%9Creclaiming-history%E2%80%9D/?tab=comments#comment-103104[/size]

[Joe Elliott]

Phew! You guys were willing to accept the acoustics "research" of a drummer, Steve Barber, who got his copy of the dictabelt recording from an insert in a porn magazine! Yeah, you didn't mind taking input from a non-acoustics expert in that instance!

Now, it just so happened that Barber was correct: there is crosstalk on the dictabelt. This just goes to show that you do not necessarily have to be an acoustics expert, or even a scientist of any kind, to make a valid observation about a scientific issue.

Yes. It turned out Steve Barber was correct. Which is the bottom line. Not the degrees he has versus the degrees held by the acoustic experts and Dr. Thomas. It is who is correct.

The is no explanation as to why these ‘superior’ acoustic experts did not discover this crosstalk before Steve Barber did. They had access to superior quality recordings than Steve did, but it was Steve who discovered it.

The ‘two channels were offset by a minute’ explanation by Dr. Thomas makes no sense to me. If it was true, we should hear phrases like “Hold everything secure” and then a minute later, the same phrase repeated again. Why does this never happen if the two channels can be offset by a minute? If there is such an offset, and crosstalk occurs, wouldn’t we be hearing the same phrase repeated twice?

I'm guessing you don't know that Weiss and Aschkenasy were two of the premier acoustical experts in the world at the time, and that the HSCA chose the firm Bolt-Beranek-Newman (BBN) to do the initial acoustical analysis because it was internationally recognized as a scientific research firm and had experience with doing acoustical analysis for the UN.

But you simply wave aside the fact that all of the HSCA acoustical experts--the four BBN scientists and Weiss and Aschkenasy--said they did not agree with the NAS NRC panel's arguments and that they still stood by their findings.

Yes. The original acoustic experts, who may simply be too embarrassed to admit error, still say they stand behind there work. But where are the other acoustic experts, not insect experts, who rally to their defense and say, yes, they were right and they are still right?

No kidding! I pointed out this very fact to you twice in another thread. I pointed out that the high fragment trail does not actually line up with the proposed cowlick entry site because it runs above that site. Remember? Remember when I explained that one of the reasons the forgers moved the rear head entry wound was to try to account for the high fragment trail (because otherwise the trail suggests a frontal shot)? Remember?

Curiously I have not committed all your previous posts to my memory.

You seem to enjoy making irrelevant observations just to appear as though you know what you're talking about. Nobody has said there is a fragment trail on the AP x-ray. You can't discern a lateral fragment trail on an AP x-ray. There are fragments visible on the AP x-ray, but obviously their lateral spatial relationship cannot be determined from a frontal view.

This “trail”, if it is a trail, should show up in both the frontal and the side X-Ray. In the side X-Ray as a long line of fragments. And in the frontal X-Ray as a short line of fragments. But we don’t see that in the frontal X-Ray. Which leaves me to believe that there was to linear arrangement of the fragments in 3-D space. It’s just that the fragments were blasted, or moved by blood, upward from their original position, so there is no linear arrangement of them in 3-D space.

The goat film nonsense again?! Seriously?! Shall I repeat the self-evident fact that Kennedy was not a goat, and that Kennedy's reaction looks nothing like the goat's reaction? This has been pointed out to you several times, but you just keep ignoring this self-evident fact and keep repeating this silly goop.

The goat film is the best evidence we have. We don’t have 10 films of goats being shot in the head and 10 films of humans being shot in the head. If we had, and it was discovered that goats always start moving 40 milliseconds after the bullet strikes and humans 200 milliseconds after the bullet strikes, then I would say that it appears, for some strange reason, humans react 5 times more slowly than goats. I don’t know why this would be but the evidence shows this to be true. I would then conclude that the backward movement could not be caused by the neuromuscular reaction.

But we don’t have this. We can’t run this experiment on humans. If we had such a film, we could not show it. The JFK assassination, for some strange reason, is the lone exception. So, we have to do the best we can. We are allowed to shoot goats in the head and show film of this, so this is the best way, available to us today, to determine in a neuromuscular reaction could start in one Zapruder frame. So, unless human values change drastically for the worst, the goat film, or films of other animals being shot in the head, is the best experiment we will be allowed to run. And our conclusions of how fast a neuromuscular reaction can occur has to be based on these experiments.

No, the quote comes from page 147. Go back and check it. It's right there. I'm looking at it right now.

Well, it appears you have a different copy of Larry Sturdivan’s “The JFK Myths” then I have. While you say you see the section in question right on page 147, that is not where I see it on my copy. That seems rather curious. I thought all these books were paperbacks that were identical. I guess there were two different print runs. In the future, I will not only show the page number, along with the figure and table number, along with the name of the chapter, like “Chapter 8 – The Laws of Physics Vacated”. This will make it easier for people to find the section I am referring to. I suggest you do the same.

Oh, you've never heard a ballistics experts dispute Sturdivan's claim! Well, that settles it then! But, uh, how many ballistics experts do you know who have even read Sturdivan's book? And how about ballistics experts Dr. Joseph Dolce and Dr. Roger McCarthy? I've pointed out to you in other threads that they both rejected the single-bullet theory (SBT); they both said it was impossible.

Dr. Joseph Dolce was a ballistic expert? He was a medical doctor. A consultant with Edgewood Arsenal. So, he did consult with ballistic experts, but was not one himself. He did not study the what could happen to bullets when they struck humans. He studied what would happen to humans. He objected to the Single Bullet Theory because he did not think that CE 399 would cause the wounds to JFK and Connally and still end up only moderately deformed. He should have stuck to his field of expertise, on the expected effects on humans and not the expected effects on bullets.

Plus, I don’t know if he gave an opinion on the X-Ray of the “fragment trail” in the side X-Ray.

So, try again. Give me the name of a valid ballistic expert who disagrees with Larry Sturdivan.

I notice you said nothing about Sturdivan's nutty theory that the rear-head-shot bullet magically veered sharply rightward and then upward after supposedly entering the skull at a substantial downward angle (15 degrees). Sturdivan is forced to resort to such nonsense because the EOP site poses an impossible vertical trajectory problem for a shot from the sixth-floor window--unless you assume that JFK was leaning forward by about 60 degrees, which nobody claims. So, his only choice, since he won't admit that the shot came from a lower window in another building, is to assume the bullet magically made a sharp right turn and then veered upward to exit at the autopsy report's exit wound. Brain tissue does not cause bullets, especially FMJ bullets, to veer so drastically.

Ballistic tests with ballistic gel show that bullets, while fragmenting, the veer, in an unpredictable direction, while traveling through ballistic gel. This is not a nutty theory, this is not a theory he is forced to resort to, but a well-established fact, maybe not known to medical doctors, even those heavily involved with forensics, but is well known to true ballistic experts who make these observations.

[Michael T. Griffith]

By the way, I should mention that not one of the scientists on the NAS NRC panel was an acoustics expert. Gary Cornwell, the former deputy chief counsel for the HSCA, pointed this out in his book Real Answers. He had quite a bit to say about the NAS NRC attacks on the acoustical evidence:

The findings of Bolt, Beranek and Newman--like almost everything in the Kennedy case--have subsequently been questioned by the FBI, and by a panel assembled by the National Research Council (whose members are drawn from the Councils of the National Academy of Sciences. . . .). According to a "Notice" on the first page of the NRC report, the committee that studied the BBN findings "was chosen for their special competence and with regard for appropriate balance"--not because they were acoustics experts, which they were not.

I personally found it interesting not only that the NRC found that it had conclusively disproved the Select Committee's acoustical report and that there was no need for further study, but also that—remarkably, and just as with the findings of the Warren Commission--there was not a single dissent among any of the panel's members. (It may or may not also be relevant that, among the most vocal of the panel's members was a scientist who, before joining the panel and reviewing the acoustical study in detail, had taken strong positions in support of the Warren Commission's findings. . . .)

The NRC's principal rationale for rejecting the findings of Bolt, Beranek and Mark Weiss was that the Channel I tape contained "cross-talk" from Channel II that indicated that the portion of the Channel I tape containing the four impulse patterns identified as gunfire occurred at least 30 seconds after the actual assassination. The NRC offered possible (plausible) explanations as to various ways that such cross-talk could have gotten onto Channel I, including that the stuck microphone on Channel I was positioned near another microphone that was monitoring Channel II, and that the words being transmitted over Channel II were picked up (very faintly) by the stuck Channel I microphone, and transmitted and recorded on the Channel I Dictabelt in the police station. Subsequent re-recording is another possible explanation. The NRC in the end was not able to definitely state the cause. Nor were they able to verify that the Channel I tape they analyzed was the original DPD tape, and thus could not say for sure that the cross-talk had been recorded on November 22, 1963. Finally, subsequent private analysis as well as further review by Dr. Barger has revealed that the NRC's tests appear to have been conducted with the tapes being run at an improper speed, thus invalidating their calculations of when the impulse patterns at issue actually did occur in relation to the assassination.

And the NRC essentially ignored, and never did explain how, if these impulse patterns were not gunfire, their timing, sequencing, and qualitative characteristics were so extensively corroborated by the other physical and scientific evidence in the case. Was all of the meshing of such evidence simply a coincidence? . . . Several witnesses testified that one shot came from the grassy knoll, just as the acoustics indicated. Just a coincidence? The shock waves and windshield distortions were present on the shots where they should have been, and absent on the others. One more coincidence? Since the NRC described their findings as conclusive and not subject to question, one must wonder why the NRC ignored all of this evidence that corroborated the Barger and Weiss findings, but is totally inconsistent with the NRC findings that these impulses are not the actual sounds of gunfire. One might also wonder why the NRC never addressed, never discussed, and never attempted to explain other "cross talk" on the Channel I tape that is totally inconsistent with the NCR conclusion that impulse patterns evidencing four shots occurred 30 seconds after the actual assassination. (Real Answers: The True Story Told by Gary Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, in Charge of the Investigation of the John F. Kennedy Assassination, 1998, pp. 112-114)

[Joe Elliott]

The “Hold Everything Secure” phrase, which was said about a minute after the assassination, and the “four impulse patterns” occur at about the same time. Dr. Donald Thomas explained this away by saying the two channels could drift apart from each other by a minute.

If this is true, there must be other cases where two events, that happened at about the same time, appear to occur a minute apart on the recording.

Is there a single clear case of this happening on this Dictabelt tape? Is there a case, where we know two phrases were actually spoken about a minute apart, but appear to occur at about the same time on the recording? Or are there no other examples of something like this occurring, except with the “Hold Everything Secure” and the “four impulse patterns”.

If this is the only known example, what fantastic luck that this is the only case of this “Offset” phenomenon happening.