Thompson's New Book Powerfully Confirms the HSCA Acoustical Evidence

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Fair enough.
Personally, I don't believe CE 399 has anything to do with the actual shooting.
If the argument is the bullet couldn't have hit the spine because CE 399 was unblemished then I'm more inclined to think the bullet did pass between the C-7 and T-1 process, and this caused the fracture and that he bullet that did this fragmented on JBC's wrist.
The Magic Bullet is garbage because it relies on CE 399
The Single Bullet is just a bullet - not CE 399. A bullet passing through both men is not really that big a stretch. It is if you believe that bullet was CE 399

If CE 399 was planted then how could the planters know beforehand how many other bullets (or fragments) would be recovered? How could they have known that CE 399 would not be the "one bullet too many" that would blow the whole plot? And they planted it on a hospital gurney? They were awfully lucky that it was found.

This entire aspect of their plan (if there was one) is an enormous risk. One that makes no sense to me. Too many things to easily go wrong; too many things to have to control; too many moving parts. That doesn't prove it didn't happen; it just makes it seem very odd to me.

Second: I don't see how a bullet could strike JC in the location that it did and at (roughly) the time on the Z film that I think it did and not go through JFK. Kennedy is blocking the view for a sniper. It's impossible, as I see it, for a sniper to hit JC in the back. A sniper's view is blocked. Even if there was a second sniper then where could he have been located? It seems to me that the evidence tracing a bullet backwards would have two men in the sniper's nest? Or very close by.

If you look at the alternative explanations for the wounds on JC they make no sense to me (the bullet that struck JC's thigh, according to his doctor, barely penetrated the skin: so what happened to it?). Which leaves us with the best explanation available: one bullet hitting both men.

[Dan O'meara]

If CE 399 was planted then how could the planters know beforehand how many other bullets (or fragments) would be recovered? How could they have known that CE 399 would not be the "one bullet too many" that would blow the whole plot? And they planted it on a hospital gurney? They were awfully lucky that it was found.

This entire aspect of their plan (if there was one) is an enormous risk. One that makes no sense to me. Too many things to easily go wrong; too many things to have to control; too many moving parts. That doesn't prove it didn't happen; it just makes it seem very odd to me.

Second: I don't see how a bullet could strike JC in the location that it did and at (roughly) the time on the Z film that I think it did and not go through JFK. Kennedy is blocking the view for a sniper. It's impossible, as I see it, for a sniper to hit JC in the back. A sniper's view is blocked. Even if there was a second sniper then where could he have been located? It seems to me that the evidence tracing a bullet backwards would have two men in the sniper's nest? Or very close by.

If you look at the alternative explanations for the wounds on JC they make no sense to me (the bullet that struck JC's thigh, according to his doctor, barely penetrated the skin: so what happened to it?). Which leaves us with the best explanation available: one bullet hitting both men.

I agree a single bullet went through both men, I just don't believe CE 399 nicked JFK's spine, crushed JBC's rib then shattered his wrist (at which point I believe it fragmented.)

"If CE 399 was planted then how could the planters know beforehand how many other bullets (or fragments) would be recovered?"
This is just pure speculation but clean out the limo while it's parked outside Parkland and have people scouring Dealey Plaza picking up any evidence of bullets they might find.
On his website, Pat relates an amusing story about a nurse complaining about how she wished people would stop leaving bullets lying around.

[Michael T. Griffith]

To put the NRC panel's admission about the locational correlations into perspective, the panel's 7% probability that the correlations resulted from chance means the odds that they did not result from chance are greater than 13 out of 14.

Then, couple this with the fantastically remote odds that chance caused the correlations between the dictabelt's grassy knoll gunshot impulse pattern and the test-firing grassy knoll gunshot impulse patterns.  Dr. Thomas has proved that those odds are 1 in 100,000.

[Mitch Todd]

To put the NRC panel's admission about the locational correlations into perspective, the panel's 7% probability that the correlations resulted from chance means the odds that they did not result from chance are greater than 13 out of 14.

Then, couple this with the fantastically remote odds that chance caused the correlations between the dictabelt's grassy knoll gunshot impulse pattern and the test-firing grassy knoll gunshot impulse patterns.  Dr. Thomas has proved that those odds are 1 in 100,000.

Both the NRC "7%" and Dr Thomas' calculations involve the comparison of an abstracted and simplified extract from the dictabelt against the results of a pen-and-paper simulation of the echos of a gunshot from the grassy knoll. An old friend of mine, who wound up with a PhD in experimental physics, once called this sort of thing "lab reality." It works well in a physics lab where experimenters filter out extraneous inputs and other noise long before the the experiment begins. It doesn't work quite as neatly given real world data where variables aren't so easily isolated.  The work of Weiss & Aschkenazi, Thomas, and the NRC on this particular subject are best thought of with that reality in mind.

The bigger issue is the timing of the "hold everything" crosstalk, which invalidates any probability calculations that W&A, Thomas, and the NRC came up with.

[Martin Weidmann]

If CE 399 was planted then how could the planters know beforehand how many other bullets (or fragments) would be recovered? How could they have known that CE 399 would not be the "one bullet too many" that would blow the whole plot? And they planted it on a hospital gurney? They were awfully lucky that it was found.

This entire aspect of their plan (if there was one) is an enormous risk. One that makes no sense to me. Too many things to easily go wrong; too many things to have to control; too many moving parts. That doesn't prove it didn't happen; it just makes it seem very odd to me.

Second: I don't see how a bullet could strike JC in the location that it did and at (roughly) the time on the Z film that I think it did and not go through JFK. Kennedy is blocking the view for a sniper. It's impossible, as I see it, for a sniper to hit JC in the back. A sniper's view is blocked. Even if there was a second sniper then where could he have been located? It seems to me that the evidence tracing a bullet backwards would have two men in the sniper's nest? Or very close by.

If you look at the alternative explanations for the wounds on JC they make no sense to me (the bullet that struck JC's thigh, according to his doctor, barely penetrated the skin: so what happened to it?). Which leaves us with the best explanation available: one bullet hitting both men.

If CE 399 was planted then how could the planters know beforehand how many other bullets (or fragments) would be recovered? How could they have known that CE 399 would not be the "one bullet too many" that would blow the whole plot? And they planted it on a hospital gurney? They were awfully lucky that it was found.

What makes you think the bullet now in evidence as CE 399 was ever at Parkland Hospital?

[Michael T. Griffith]

Josiah Thompson's long-awaited new book Last Second in Dallas (University Press of Kansas, 2021), published last week, presents powerful evidence in support of the HSCA acoustical evidence, which proved there were at least two gunmen and at least four shots. Thompson's chapters on the acoustical evidence account for 98 pages of the book and include separate contributions by BBN scientists James Barger and Richard Mullen.

Actually, the chapters on the acoustical evidence total 114 pages, not 98 pages. I failed to count chapter 11. Chapter 11 reviews the basics of the acoustics evidence: the initial screening tests done on the dictabelt impulse patterns, the subsequent screening tests, the WA analysis of the BBN screening test data, the Dealey Plaza test firing, the BBN analysis of the test firing data, and the WA analysis of the test firing data relating to the grassy knoll shot.

Chapters 12-16 focus on the Zapruder film but spend a few paragraphs here and there on the correlations between the film and the dictabelt gunshot impulse patterns.

Thompson then resumes his discussion of the acoustics evidence in chapter 17.

[Michael ODell]

Josiah Thompson's long-awaited new book Last Second in Dallas (University Press of Kansas, 2021), published last week, presents powerful evidence in support of the HSCA acoustical evidence, which proved there were at least two gunmen and at least four shots. Thompson's chapters on the acoustical evidence account for 98 pages of the book and include separate contributions by BBN scientists James Barger and Richard Mullen. Some highlights:

You've gotten a little over excited.  Thompson has made claims.  They are subject to error, and are mostly wrong.

* Thompson utterly, totally, and completely destroys the NRC panel's report. Among other things, Thompson presents evidence that the panel rigged their PCC test to avoid confirming the acoustical evidence.

No, Thompson generally misrepresents what the NRC report says, and there was no rigging of the PCC test.  The PCC test showed CHECK was not crosstalk.  It still does.

* Thompson demolishes the claim that the Fisher "I'll check it" transmission is not crosstalk. He proves, partly via a PCC test done by Mullen, that it most certainly is crosstalk, and that it proves that the dictabelt's gunfire impulses occurred during the assassination. Interestingly, Thompson notes that years ago Jim Bowles himself recognized the Fisher "I'll check it" transmission as a crosstalk transmission, and that the NRC panel attempted to conceal this fact in its report.

He has not proven the CHECK is crosstalk.  He acts like he has, but doesn't actually have the goods there.  Mullen's PCC test actually proves the opposite, for reasons that will be explained later.  There is no proof anywhere in the book that the impulses occurred during the assassination.

Bowles noted CHECK as a crosstalk, and the NRC panel tested the possibility and found that it was not.  There was no concealment.  There was no reason to knowingly include Bowles' error in their transcript, and the transcript wasn't the evidence.  The recordings are the evidence.

* Thompson once and for all resolves the problem of the Decker "hold everything" transmission, proving that it is irrelevant, that it is not time synchronous, and that it must be the result of an overdub that was produced during the copying process. Thompson, summarizing Barger's new research on the subject, presents evidence that Decker's "hold everything" transmission and the two Bellah transmissions were recorded during a separate recording session and not during the session that recorded the three scientifically established crosstalk transmissions, and that, crucially, they were recorded at a different recording speed.

Again, these are claims.  They are wrong.  Provably so, and that will be shown.

* Thompson establishes that neither the HSCA nor the NRC panel used the original dictabelt recording, and that the extant recording is a second- or third-generation copy.

He does no such thing.  He wants to think so, and tries to cast doubt on it, but no such proof is in the book.

* Interestingly, Thompson reveals that when the NRC panel sent Dr. Barger a draft of their report, Barger replied with an 8-page critique, and that the panel declined to publish Barger's critique and did not address his objections in their report.

There was no expectation that they would publish Barger's letter in their report, and Barger's letter didn't contain anything that would debunk what the panel found.