The HSCA Acoustical Evidence: Proof of a Second Gunman in the JFK Assassination

[Joe Elliott]

Errors in the HSCA report, as shown at:

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html

Of the 2,592 comparisons between the six sequences of impulses on the 1963 police dispatch tape and the sequences obtained during the acoustical reconstruction in August 1978, 15 had a sufficient number of matching points (a correlation coefficient of .6 or higher) to be considered significant.(33) The first and sixth sequence of impulses on the dispatch tape had no matches with a correlation coefficient over .5. The second sequence of impulses on the dispatch tape had four significant matches, the third sequence had five, the fourth sequence had three, and the fifth sequence had three.(34) Accordingly, impulses one and six on the dispatch tape did not pass the most rigorous acoustical test and were deemed not to have been caused by gunfire from the Texas School Book Depository or grassy knoll.(35) Additional analysis of the remaining four impulse sequences was still necessary before any of them could be considered as probably representing gunfire from the Texas School Book Depository or the grassy knoll.

This does not seem right. BBN’s Exhibit F-367 lists not six sequences of impulses on the 1963 police dispatch tape, but 7, as seen below:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/infojfk/jfk2/f367.htm

At:
          136.20          low correlation of 0.5
          137.70
          139.27
          140.32          low correlation of 0.6, rejected by BBN, accepted by Thomas
          145.15
          145.61
          146.30          low correlation of 0.5

This causes another change. There were 12 test shots from 1978 that were compared with the 7 impulses from the 1963 recording. Each of the test shots were recorded on 36 microphones. So, all 12 test shots produced 36 * 12 or 432 recordings. This means the number of combinations of 1978 recordings which need to be comparted to the 7 1963 impulses is not 432 * 6 = 2,592 but is 432 * 7 = 3,024.

Plus, there is much confusion over how many correlations were found with the third, fourth, fifth and sixth impulses. I would guess some of this stemmed from their confusing F-367 chart, which should have listed the 139.27 – 3 ( 5 ) correlation with the other three 139.27 correlations.


It seems to me; this paragraph should state:

Of the 3,024 comparisons between the seven sequences of impulses on the 1963 police dispatch tape and the sequences obtained during the acoustical reconstruction in August 1978, 15 had a sufficient number of matching points (a correlation coefficient of .6 or higher) to be considered significant.(33) The first and seven sequence of impulses on the dispatch tape had no matches with a correlation coefficient over .5. The second sequence of impulses on the dispatch tape had four significant matches, the third sequence had four, the fourth sequence had one. the fifth sequence had three, and the sixth sequence had three.(34) Accordingly, impulses one and seven on the dispatch tape did not pass the most rigorous acoustical test and were deemed not to have been caused by gunfire from the Texas School Book Depository or grassy knoll.(35) Additional analysis of the remaining five impulse sequences was still necessary before any of them could be considered as probably representing gunfire from the Texas School Book Depository or the grassy knoll.


It does not seem to be the case that either the first impulse at 136.20 or the last impulse at 146.30 were rejected early and no comparison with any of the 1978 test shots was ever done. Because both show a correlation of 0.5 which shows that some comparisons were done for both the first and seventh impulse with the 1978 test data.


So, throughout the HSCA testimony and reports, all the phrases involving 2,592, like “2,592 comparisons” should have used the number 3,024.

This, of course, makes it even less likely that the BBN completed a thorough check of all 3,024 possible combinations of 1963 Dictabelt impulses with the 1978 test impulses within 10 days.


And finally, so many errors in one paragraph of the final report to the HSCA, does not reflect well on BBN. These errors are not on some minor periphery issue but on the core of their case:

•   The number of impulses on the 1963 Dictabelt tape in the area of interest.
•   The number of combinations of “1963 impulses” with “1978 impulses”
•   Which impulses were rejected due to no correlation above 0.5 being found
•   Number of correlations found with each impulse.

They had over three months to get these details right, which I found and corrected in two hours.

Just retyping the Table on F-367, with each correlation in the proper order, may have caused many of these obvious errors to have been spotted and corrected before the final report was submitted.

[Michael T. Griffith]

There was no grassy knoll shot no matter how many times you attempt to look relevant on this subject. 57 years since the event and no physical evidence for a grassy knoll shot. None. Zero. Zilch. Who exactly is your audience? This is truly bewildering.

You are not to be taken seriously. The dictabelt recording is hard physical evidence of a grassy knoll shot. Even the NRC panel, after monkeying with the calculations as far as they dared, conceded that there was a 78% probability that the third impulse pattern on the police tape was not produced by random/non-gunfire noise. After spending over a year combing through the BBN and WA reports, the NRC panel did not lay a finger on the essential components of the acoustical evidence.

And, to answer someone else's question, yes, Dr. Barger agrees with Dr. Thomas's finding that the odds that random noise caused the grassy knoll gunshot on the police tape are 1 in 100,000. Dr. Thomas first brought this to light in his famous 2001 article in the peer-reviewed criminal science journal Science & Justice, and Dr. Barger proof-read that article (as did several other scholars). In the article, Dr. Thomas devoted two pages to explaining why and how WA's "5% or less" probability of chance was actually far too high. Here is the 2001 article:

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

Dr. Thomas goes into much more detail on this issue in his book Hear No Evil, and he wrote the chapters on the acoustical evidence in close consultation with Dr. Barger. Dr. Thomas spends seven pages explaining the various odds calculations and explaining why the odds that chance caused the gunshot impulses are far more remote than "5% or less" (pp. 625-632).

And, we need to keep in mind that WA specified in their report that their calculation of "5% or less" odds was actually "highly conservative" because they did not factor in the fact that if the gunshot impulse patterns are non-gunshot sounds, they could have also occurred during 190-millisecond timeframe between the two intervals when echoes are seen on the police tape:

The high degree of correlation between the impulse and echo sequences does not preclude the possibility that the impulses were not the sounds of a gunshot. It is conceivable that a sequence of impulse sounds, derived from non-gunshot sources, was generated with time spacings that, by chance, corresponded within one one-thousandth of a second to those of echoes of a gunshot fired from the grassy knoll. However, the probability of such a chance occurrence is about 5 percent. This calculation represents a highly conservative point of view, since it assumes that impulses can occur only in the two intervals in which echoes were observed to occur, these being the echo-delay range from 0 to 85 milliseconds and the range from 275 to 370 milliseconds. However, if the impulses in the DPD recording were not the echoes of a gunshot, they could also have occurred in the 190-millisecond timespan that separated these two intervals. Taking this timespan into account, the probability becomes considerably less than 5 percent that the match between the recorded impulses and the predicted echoes occurred by chance. (8 HSCA 32)

This observation is almost always ignored in articles and books that discuss the acoustical evidence.

[Joe Elliott]

And, to answer someone else's question, yes, Dr. Barger agrees with Dr. Thomas's finding that the odds that random noise caused the grassy knoll gunshot on the police tape are 1 in 100,000. Dr. Thomas first brought this to light in his famous 2001 article in the peer-reviewed criminal science journal Science & Justice, and Dr. Barger proof-read that article (as did several other scholars). In the article, Dr. Thomas devoted two pages to explaining why and how WA's "5% or less" probability of chance was actually far too high. Here is the 2001 article:

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

Yes, but it was Dr. Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy who made the original calculations. Do either of them agree with Dr. Thomas, that an error was made in calculating “p” resulting in a false estimate of the W&A correlation being a result of chance as 1 in 20, when the correct calculation was 1 in 100,000.

And, again, I am skeptical:

•   That W&A could have made such a huge error.
And:
•   It would be possible to make such a strong correlation, even if this is a recording of the Grassy Knoll shooter, given the variables that would be impossible to replicate precisely, like the exact speed of the wind that was between 10 to 15 mph at that moment. Some correlation could be found. But one that matches so perfectly, regardless of how the wind was blowing in 1963 and in 1978? It sounds implausible.

[Joe Elliott]

You are not to be taken seriously. The dictabelt recording is hard physical evidence of a grassy knoll shot. Even the NRC panel, after monkeying with the calculations as far as they dared, conceded that there was a 78% probability that the third impulse pattern on the police tape was not produced by random/non-gunfire noise. After spending over a year combing through the BBN and WA reports, the NRC panel did not lay a finger on the essential components of the acoustical evidence.

And, to answer someone else's question, yes, Dr. Barger agrees with Dr. Thomas's finding that the odds that random noise caused the grassy knoll gunshot on the police tape are 1 in 100,000. Dr. Thomas first brought this to light in his famous 2001 article in the peer-reviewed criminal science journal Science & Justice, and Dr. Barger proof-read that article (as did several other scholars). In the article, Dr. Thomas devoted two pages to explaining why and how WA's "5% or less" probability of chance was actually far too high. Here is the 2001 article:

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

Dr. Thomas goes into much more detail on this issue in his book Hear No Evil, and he wrote the chapters on the acoustical evidence in close consultation with Dr. Barger. Dr. Thomas spends seven pages explaining the various odds calculations and explaining why the odds that chance caused the gunshot impulses are far more remote than "5% or less" (pp. 625-632).

And, we need to keep in mind that WA specified in their report that their calculation of "5% or less" odds was actually "highly conservative" because they did not factor in the fact that if the gunshot impulse patterns are non-gunshot sounds, they could have also occurred during 190-millisecond timeframe between the two intervals when echoes are seen on the police tape:

This observation is almost always ignored in articles and books that discuss the acoustical evidence.

I am mostly interested in the comments of Dr. Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy on Dr. Thomas’s corrections on the probability from 1 in 20 to 1 in 100,000, since it was Weiss and Aschkenasy calculations that he was correcting.

Question:

But where, exactly, is there a link to Dr. Barger approving of Dr. Thomas’s 1 in 100,000 calculations over that of Weiss and Aschkenasy’s 1 in 20?

[Michael T. Griffith]

Below are a few excerpts from Dr. Thomas's book Hear No Evil, from the section on the odds that the gunshot impulses on the dictabelt tape are the result of random/non-gunfire noise:

For the sake of argument let us assume that it really is plausible that within moments of President Kennedy being assassinated a burst of static (perhaps cosmic particles from some supernova, or an eruption on the sun, or a thunderclap in the distance) had occurred, and that these static clusters had given rise to separate patterns that just happened to mimic the echo patterns of three gunshots from the Texas School Book Depository, one gunshot from nearby, and one from the grassy knoll, if recorded over a microphone traveling north on Houston Street then West on Elm Street at 11 mph when the air temperature was 65 degrees F.

Of course the NRC panel never mentioned that there was such order in the data, but accepting that such a scenario is plausible, what are the statistical chances of it happening? The HSCA experts calculated that just the grassy knoll pattern was likely to arise by chance in no more than about five percent of random patterns. The NRC panel claimed that the HSCA consultants had underestimated the odds because of computational errors. One of the computational "errors" alleged by the NRC report in the calculation of the 5 percent odds was as follows:

"The calculation of 0.053 involved some further errors. On page 75, the BRSW calculations claim that 12 of 22 predicted echoes were loud enough to exceed a threshold. It seems that 22 should be 26."

Yes, it should have been 26. The BBN report was written before Weiss and Aschkenasy had completed and written their analysis. At the time of their testimony in December 1979, Weiss and Aschkenasy had identified only 22 echoes.37 They eventually identified 26 echoes from 22 structures. The deception on the part of the NRC panel was that neither value, 22 nor 26, entered into the probability calculations. The NRC panel exploited the different statements by the different laboratories, juxtaposing the discrepancy with their own claim that the 0.053 calculation was wrong, to make it appear that BBN had made a computational error. This was the sort of trickery that the NRC panel engaged in to discredit the acoustical evidence. . . .

Thus, the number set that BBN used to begin their analysis, the numbers that would be plugged into the probability formula, was {45, 14, 12, 9}. The calculated probability of this number set occurring by chance is 3.13 x 10(-4) and was so reported by BBN. . . .

But, because of using the incorrect values for M and i, BBN had grossly overestimated the probability that a random burst of noise could have matched the test pattern. This was obviously an honest mistake because the error worked against their own conclusion by increasing the probability of coincidence by chance. It is interesting that the NRC panel caught this error and knew that the correct number of time slots was 90 and not 45. It proves that they did understand that the 190-millisecond gap between the two 90 millisecond bursts occurred in the middle of the impulse pattern and were not two completely separate patterns as they had asserted in their critique of the HSCA analysis. . . .

The NRC panel eliminated the erroneous adjustment for the M value by BBN, but, failed to recognize that Weiss & Aschkenasy had already made the adjustment for the alignment of the muzzle blast with the first impulse. Just putting back one for the overt error in the deduction for this alignment gives a data set of {84, 6, 5, 2}. The probability of this coincidence set is 3.7 x 10(-2), or about 3.7 percent. Even better than Weiss and Aschkenasy's original five percent!

The most appropriate estimate of the true probability would assign two degrees of freedom for the motorcycle location, one for shooter location, one for the alignment of the muzzle blast, and eliminate one pair of echoes and their coincidence (from pairs 19 and 20), giving a final number set of {86, 10, 8, 6} which calculates to 1.12 x 10(-5), or, 100,000 to one, against. Thus, one must conclude, on statistical grounds, that the Dallas Police tape contains
a sound impulse pattern which resembles the echo delay pattern of a gunshot from the grassy knoll to a degree unlikely to arise from a chance array of radio noises. (Hear No Evil, pp. 625-626, 628-629, 632)

[Joe Elliott]

Below are a few excerpts from Dr. Thomas's book Hear No Evil, from the section on the odds that the gunshot impulses on the dictabelt tape are the result of random/non-gunfire noise:

Quote from Dr. Thomas:

For the sake of argument let us assume that it really is plausible that within moments of President Kennedy being assassinated a burst of static (perhaps cosmic particles from some supernova, or an eruption on the sun, or a thunderclap in the distance) had occurred,

Or perhaps as a result of cross-talk from Channel 2. One of the “shots” (at 145.15, the z304 or z313 “shot”) corresponds with the spoken phrase “Hold everything secure”, with the “shot” occurring at the same instant of the hard “K” of “secure”.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/odell/

Quote from Michael O’Dell:

The "single loud click" near 144 sec. is unmistakable and marks the time when the "hold everything secure" phrase becomes audible. By using the scale on the Fig. 5 spectrogram and measuring the distance between the 144 mark and the click I determined that the click occurs at 144.05. BRSW's suspected grassy knoll shot was found on the same recording at 145.15 (31). WA adjusted the beginning time of the impulse pattern they studied by about 0.2 seconds, putting it at 144.95 (32). The beginning of WA's pattern is therefore about 0.9 seconds after the loud click.  The audio software allows me to place markers and listen to sections between markers. By putting a marker at 0.9 seconds after the click, and listening to regions before and after the marker it is clear that the marker coincides with the "K" sound in the second syllable of the word "secure".

Quote from Dr. Thomas:

and that these static clusters had given rise to separate patterns that just happened to mimic the echo patterns of three gunshots from the Texas School Book Depository, one gunshot from nearby, and one from the grassy knoll, if recorded over a microphone traveling north on Houston Street then West on Elm Street at 11 mph when the air temperature was 65 degrees F.

The problem is that three of the four to five shots mimicked both a shot from the TSBD and a shot from the Grassy Knoll. That is, the same shot mimicked both. Clearly, an example of finding high probability random matchups. Real valid matchups would involve a shot mimicking a shot from either the TSBD or the Grassy Knoll, but not both.



Quote from Dr. Thomas:

Of course the NRC panel never mentioned that there was such order in the data, but accepting that such a scenario is plausible, what are the statistical chances of it happening? The HSCA experts calculated that just the grassy knoll pattern was likely to arise by chance in no more than about five percent of random patterns. The NRC panel claimed that the HSCA consultants had underestimated the odds because of computational errors. One of the computational "errors" alleged by the NRC report in the calculation of the 5 percent odds was as follows:

"The calculation of 0.053 involved some further errors. On page 75, the BRSW calculations claim that 12 of 22 predicted echoes were loud enough to exceed a threshold. It seems that 22 should be 26."

Yes, it should have been 26. The BBN report was written before Weiss and Aschkenasy had completed and written their analysis. At the time of their testimony in December 1979, Weiss and Aschkenasy had identified only 22 echoes.37 They eventually identified 26 echoes from 22 structures. The deception on the part of the NRC panel was that neither value, 22 nor 26, entered into the probability calculations. The NRC panel exploited the different statements by the different laboratories, juxtaposing the discrepancy with their own claim that the 0.053 calculation was wrong, to make it appear that BBN had made a computational error. This was the sort of trickery that the NRC panel engaged in to discredit the acoustical evidence. . . .

Thus, the number set that BBN used to begin their analysis, the numbers that would be plugged into the probability formula, was {45, 14, 12, 9}. The calculated probability of this number set occurring by chance is 3.13 x 10(-4) and was so reported by BBN. . . .

But, because of using the incorrect values for M and i, BBN had grossly overestimated the probability that a random burst of noise could have matched the test pattern. This was obviously an honest mistake because the error worked against their own conclusion by increasing the probability of coincidence by chance. It is interesting that the NRC panel caught this error and knew that the correct number of time slots was 90 and not 45. It proves that they did understand that the 190-millisecond gap between the two 90 millisecond bursts occurred in the middle of the impulse pattern and were not two completely separate patterns as they had asserted in their critique of the HSCA analysis. . . .

The NRC panel eliminated the erroneous adjustment for the M value by BBN, but, failed to recognize that Weiss & Aschkenasy had already made the adjustment for the alignment of the muzzle blast with the first impulse. Just putting back one for the overt error in the deduction for this alignment gives a data set of {84, 6, 5, 2}. The probability of this coincidence set is 3.7 x 10(-2), or about 3.7 percent. Even better than Weiss and Aschkenasy's original five percent!

The most appropriate estimate of the true probability would assign two degrees of freedom for the motorcycle location, one for shooter location, one for the alignment of the muzzle blast, and eliminate one pair of echoes and their coincidence (from pairs 19 and 20), giving a final number set of {86, 10, 8, 6} which calculates to 1.12 x 10(-5), or, 100,000 to one, against. Thus, one must conclude, on statistical grounds, that the Dallas Police tape contains
a sound impulse pattern which resembles the echo delay pattern of a gunshot from the grassy knoll to a degree unlikely to arise from a chance array of radio noises. (Hear No Evil, pp. 625-626, 628-629,

Mr. Griffith claims that this 1 in 100,000 event has been supported by Dr. Barger. But has not provided any citation to support this. Nor does it appear that Dr. Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy has supported the claim that their 1 in 20 event should actually be a 1 in 100,000 event. This claim appears to be Dr. Thomas’s alone.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Quote from Dr. Thomas:
Or perhaps as a result of cross-talk from Channel 2. One of the “shots” (at 145.15, the z304 or z313 “shot”) corresponds with the spoken phrase “Hold everything secure”, with the “shot” occurring at the same instant of the hard “K” of “secure”.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/odell/

Quote from Michael O’Dell:

This stuff again??? If you would read Dr. Thomas's chapters on the acoustical evidence, you would know that Dr. Thomas has refuted O'Dell's arguments.

Again--I keep having to say "again" because you keep ignoring refutations of your arguments--there are five other time indicators on the police tape that show the gunshot impulses were recorded during the assassination, but you keep dismissing them and clinging for dear life onto Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk, even though it has the largest time offset of any crosstalk event.

Anyone who claims that the dictabelt's gunshot impulse patterns are not assassination gunfire needs to explain the powerful and intricate correlations between the dictabelt's gunshot impulse patterns and the patterns of shots fired in the Dealey Plaza test firing. They also need to explain the fact that N-waves and muzzle blasts occur on the dictabelt recording in the correct order and interval, and that these phenomena and windshield distortion occur on the tape when they should and do not occur when they should not. If the tape contains no assassination gunfire, then all of these incredible correlations must be unbelievable, mind-bogglingly improbable coincidences, the odds against which would probably be along the lines of 1 zillion to 1.

Quote from Dr. Thomas:
The problem is that three of the four to five shots mimicked both a shot from the TSBD and a shot from the Grassy Knoll. That is, the same shot mimicked both. Clearly, an example of finding high probability random matchups. Real valid matchups would involve a shot mimicking a shot from either the TSBD or the Grassy Knoll, but not both.

One, your comments show you don't know what you're talking about. Two, due to the placement of the microphones and the shooting locations in the test firing, it is not a bit surprising that some false matches occurred, and Dr. Barger discussed this in his testimony. Three, the WA sonar analysis destroyed the false-match argument for the grassy knoll shot.

Quote from Dr. Thomas:
Mr. Griffith claims that this 1 in 100,000 event has been supported by Dr. Barger. But has not provided any citation to support this. Nor does it appear that Dr. Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy has supported the claim that their 1 in 20 event should actually be a 1 in 100,000 event. This claim appears to be Dr. Thomas’s alone.

This is a good example of how you twist and mislead. As is mentioned in the article itself, Dr. Barger proof-read the article in which Dr. Thomas first discussed the errors that BBN and WA made in some of the values they assigned in their probability calculations, all of which errors caused WA to vastly over-estimate the probability that the grassy knoll gunshot impulse pattern was caused by non-gunfire noise. They did not make any actual calculation errors, but their calculations were overly conservative because some of the values they assigned in the calculations were incorrect.

I repeat: Dr. Barger proof-read Dr. Thomas's article--the fact that he did so is mentioned in the article. And that article explains in some detail why the correct odds against chance for the grassy knoll shot are 100,000 to 1.

Plus, as I've mentioned, Dr. Barger and Dr. Thomas are good friends, and Dr. Thomas consulted with Dr. Barger extensively when he wrote the acoustics chapters in Hear No Evil.

As for Weiss and Aschkenasy, I have no information on their views on Dr. Thomas's calculations, although I am sure they agree with them if they have seen them, since the calculations can be verified by anyone who knows math well enough to do so. I would also note that WA said in their report that their "1 in 20 or less" odds were "highly conservative" and that the actual odds were much lower ("considerably less"). I notice you keep ignoring this fact. 

You guys are still just dancing around the essential components of the acoustical evidence. No amount of obfuscation and diversion can change the fact that there are five impulse patterns on the dictabelt recording that match the impulse patterns of test-firing shots, and match them within windows of 6 milliseconds and 1 millisecond, and match them in the correct locational order. The odds against these impulses matching in the correct locational order by chance are 1 in 125 (i.e., less than 1%). Nor can any amount of evasion change the fact that patterns of N-waves, muzzle blasts, and windshield distortion occur on the dictabelt recording when they should and do not occur when they should not, and the fact that the WA sonar analysis proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the grassy knoll gunshot impulse pattern is in fact gunfire.

[Joe Elliott]

This stuff again??? If you would read Dr. Thomas's chapters on the acoustical evidence, you would know that Dr. Thomas has refuted O'Dell's arguments.

O’Dell has refuted Dr. Thomas’s arguments.

Again--I keep having to say "again" because you keep ignoring refutations of your arguments--there are five other time indicators on the police tape that show the gunshot impulses were recorded during the assassination, but you keep dismissing them and clinging for dear life onto Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk, even though it has the largest time offset of any crosstalk event.

I am bringing up a different subject. Do you deny that “Hold everything secure” occurs at 145.15? Isn’t it possible that the “gunshot” at 145.15 is not a gunshot, or formed from cosmic rays, but is formed from a voice recorded by crosstalk from Channel 2 saying “Hold everything secure”, which the BBN failed to recognize as a voice?

If you deny “Hold everything is secure” is recorded there, where is it recorded? At 50.0? At 200.0? Where?

Anyone who claims that the dictabelt's gunshot impulse patterns are not assassination gunfire needs to explain the powerful and intricate correlations between the dictabelt's gunshot impulse patterns and the patterns of shots fired in the Dealey Plaza test firing. They also need to explain the fact that N-waves and muzzle blasts occur on the dictabelt recording in the correct order and interval, and that these phenomena and windshield distortion occur on the tape when they should and do not occur when they should not. If the tape contains no assassination gunfire, then all of these incredible correlations must be unbelievable, mind-bogglingly improbable coincidences, the odds against which would probably be along the lines of 1 zillion to 1.

The explanation for correct order and interval has been explained by me before and is explained again later in this post.

One, your comments show you don't know what you're talking about. Two, due to the placement of the microphones and the shooting locations in the test firing, it is not a bit surprising that some false matches occurred, and Dr. Barger discussed this in his testimony. Three, the WA sonar analysis destroyed the false-match argument for the grassy knoll shot.

This is a good example of how you twist and mislead. As is mentioned in the article itself, Dr. Barger proof-read the article in which Dr. Thomas first discussed the errors that BBN and WA made in some of the values they assigned in their probability calculations, all of which errors caused WA to vastly over-estimate the probability that the grassy knoll gunshot impulse pattern was caused by non-gunfire noise. They did not make any actual calculation errors, but their calculations were overly conservative because some of the values they assigned in the calculations were incorrect.

I repeat: Dr. Barger proof-read Dr. Thomas's article--the fact that he did so is mentioned in the article. And that article explains in some detail why the correct odds against chance for the grassy knoll shot are 100,000 to 1.

Plus, as I've mentioned, Dr. Barger and Dr. Thomas are good friends, and Dr. Thomas consulted with Dr. Barger extensively when he wrote the acoustics chapters in Hear No Evil.

Dr. Barger has never stated that the correct probability is not 1 in 20, but 1 in 100,000. However, what Dr. Barger has done is:
•   Dr. Barger proof-read the article that Dr. Thomas first discussed the errors that BBN and WA made in some of the values they assigned in their probability calculations,
•   Dr. Thomas and Dr. Barger are good friends
•   Dr. Thomas and Dr. Barger consulted when Dr. Thomas wrote his book

The fact that Dr. Barger proof-read the article of Dr. Thomas’s does not tell us that he agreed with everything in it. He might have agreed with this 1 in 100,000 probability. Or he might disagree with it. And tried to convince Dr. Thomas that this is wrong. But failed to do so. And Dr. Thomas left it in his article. We simply don’t know, on the basis of “Dr. Barger proof-read the article”.

If Dr. Barger agrees with this 1 in 100,000 probability estimate, it is exceedingly strange that he chooses to stay silent on this. Dr. Barger, Dr. Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy got slapped down by the National Academy of Sciences back in 1982. Their work was reviewed and rejected by an elite panel of scientists, including past and future Nobel Prize winners. This is an embarrassing rebuke. Dr. Barger would seize on any strong evidence, any strong argument, to show that he was right all along.

If he agreed with Dr. Thomas on this, he would be making his views known in an unmistakable manner, and not hold these views close to his chest. I think I can infer that while Dr. Barger may be friends with Dr. Thomas, he does hold some serious misgivings about this 1 in 100,000 probability estimate.


This is about as believable as a claim that the original “discovers” of Cold Fusion, who published their work saying that it appeared that Cold Fusion was real, had their work rejected by the Scientific community, subsequently discovered not just new support but proof of Cold Fusion, but decide to say nothing to anyone. Yeah, I can believe a story like that.

As for Weiss and Aschkenasy, I have no information on their views on Dr. Thomas's calculations, although I am sure they agree with them if they have seen them, since the calculations can be verified by anyone who knows math well enough to do so. I would also note that WA said in their report that their "1 in 20 or less" odds were "highly conservative" and that the actual odds were much lower ("considerably less"). I notice you keep ignoring this fact. 

Again, Dr. Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy would not stay silent on this issue, if they thought Dr. Thomas discovered the ultimate vindication of their work in 1978, which was rejected by the National Academy of Sciences.


The bottom line is you cannot site any support from Dr. Barger, Dr. Weiss or Mr. Aschkenasy, that they agree with Dr. Thomas’s 1 in 100,000 claim. You basically figure that because Dr. Barger and Dr. Thomas are such good friends, then surely, he must. But for some strange reason, is totally silent on this question. While still not silent about his standing behind his 1978 Acoustic work.

You guys are still just dancing around the essential components of the acoustical evidence. No amount of obfuscation and diversion can change the fact that there are five impulse patterns on the dictabelt recording that match the impulse patterns of test-firing shots, and match them within windows of 6 milliseconds and 1 millisecond, and match them in the correct locational order. The odds against these impulses matching in the correct locational order by chance are 1 in 125 (i.e., less than 1%). Nor can any amount of evasion change the fact that patterns of N-waves, muzzle blasts, and windshield distortion occur on the dictabelt recording when they should and do not occur when they should not, and the fact that the WA sonar analysis proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the grassy knoll gunshot impulse pattern is in fact gunfire.

1 in 125? We are not calculating the volume of a cube with edge lengths of 5 feet here. Again, as I explained before. The number of ways of ordering all 5 members of a set is not 125 (5 to the third power or 5 ** 3). It is 5 Factorial, which can be expressed as 5!. That is 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 120.

There are 5 candidates to chose as the first number. After it is chosen, there are only 4 candidates for the second. After the first two are chosen, there are 3 candidates for the third. And so on. Hence, the number of ways of ordering all 5 members of a set is 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1. A good high school Algebra 1 student should not miss this.

So, there are not 125 but 120 ways of arranging the shots in “the correct locational order”.

High school got out a long time ago. When are you going to start to get this right?



There is only a 1 in 120 chance that the ‘motorcycle location’ would come up ordered this way. You don’t think this came about through chance. And I don’t either.

I think BBN did something like the following in the last 10 days of August 1978:

Maybe after finding the second shot around microphone 2 ( 6 ) through 3 ( 5  ), which they assumed 2 ( 6 ) was the correct microphone, they didn’t start searching through the microphones at random, but started searching for where the first shot might have been recorded, before microphone 2 ( 6 ).
Maybe after finding the first shot around microphone 2 ( 5 ) through 2 ( 6  ), they didn’t start searching through the microphones at random, but started searching for where the third shot might have been recorded, after microphone 2 ( 6 ).
Maybe after finding the third shot around microphone 2 ( 11 ), they didn’t start searching through the microphones at random, but started searching for where the fourth shot might have been recorded, after microphone 2 ( 11 ).
Maybe after finding the fourth shot around microphone 3 ( 4 ), they didn’t start searching through the microphones at random, but started searching for where the fourth shot might have been recorded, after microphone 3 ( 4 ).

If this method was followed, to avoid searching through all 3,024 test recordings from 1978, which might not have even been possible in ten days, they would naturally find all the shots in the correct order. They’re not going to find the last shot before microphone 2 ( 5 ), because they never searched for it there.

And it was well known that the motorcade speed averaged 11 mph. It was explicitly stated that in the Warren Commission. I don’t care if Dr. Barger’s old memories don’t recall knowing that in August of 1978. He or someone on his team may well have known that. One can get a rough idea of the speed of the limousine just be watching the Zapruder film. And they could use that information on where to look for correlations first. Like for looking for the first shot not anywhere before microphone 2 ( 6 ) but at locations consistent with a 11-mph speed. This would account for the correct order and spacing of all five shots found.

My scenario explains why they got random results for correlations with the source of the shots (TSBD or KNOLL), random results for correlations with the location of the target ( Target 1, 2, 3, 4 )  but non-random results for the location of the motorcycle.

You guys are still just dancing around the essential components of the acoustical evidence. No amount of obfuscation and diversion can change the fact that there are five impulse patterns on the dictabelt recording that match the impulse patterns of test-firing shots, . . .

Yes. The shot at 137.70 matches the impulse pattern of a 1978 test shot from the TSBD. And also matches a 1978 test shot from the Grassy Knoll.

The shot at 139.27 matches the impulse pattern of a 1978 test shot from the TSBD. And also matches a 1978 test shot from the Grassy Knoll.

The shot at 145.15 matches the impulse pattern of a 1978 test shot from the TSBD. And also matches a 1978 test shot from the Grassy Knoll.

So, the fact that the Dictabelt recording “matches up” with the recordings of the 1978 test firings seem meaningless. It is abundantly clear that such a match up can occur through random luck alone, and seems almost inevitable if one checks a for a dozen or so possible correlations.