Brown/Weidmann, Mini-Debate?

[John Iacoletti]

Not to mention leaving it unattended on a desk in the personnel office.

[Mitch Todd]

MT:Bowles wrote: " When clocks were as much as a minute or so out of synchronization it was normal procedure to make the needed adjustments. Somehow, Bowles' "a minute or so" became "a minute or two" in your post. And yet you are the one who claims that I am misrepresenting witnesses. Good job, Kid!

Good job indeed, “kid”. Direct quote from Bowles:

“Therefore, it was not uncommon for the time stamped on calls to be a minute to two ahead or behind the "official" time shown on the master clock. Accordingly, at "exactly" 10:10, various clocks could be stamping from 10:08 to 10:12, for example.”

And you chide Martin for “not understanding” what he reads…

Well what I understand is that I originally said this:

"Bowles does not say that the dispatcher's clocks could differ by two minutes. He said that the dispatcher clocks were kept to within a minute of each other."

As I made clear later, this was a reference to this sentence from Bowles' manuscript:

"When clocks were as much as a minute or so out of synchronization it was normal procedure to make the needed adjustments"

So when you replied to my post, starting off with this:

"By the way, just because it was 'normal procedure' to reset the clocks when they were..."

It's pretty clear that you are paraphrasing the statement that I'd quoted. But then your sentence went on:

"By the way, just because it was “normal procedure” to reset the clocks when they were “a minute or two” apart..." (I'll get to the rest shortly)

So now you have Bowles saying something here that wasn't in the original sentence. I figure it was due to some memory lapse or bit of inattention on your part. But your latest response kinda implies that you deliberately took a piece of one sentence and spliced it into another with the intent to change the meaning of that sentence. I hope this is not the case. After all, people are liable to understand that kind of behavior to be dishonest.

No, as to the end of your sentence:

"...[that] doesn’t mean that the maximum they could ever be off is two minutes."

You are technically correct. The problem is, if the radio dispatcher clocks were that far off, we'd see it in the data. We don't. So far, you have presented no evidence whatsoever that any of the dispatcher clocks were out of the spec Bowles described. 

MT:Anyway, once Bowles established that the standard was to keep the dispatcher clocks within a minute of each other, then you need to come up with an actual reason to believe such an exception was in play that afternoon. Good luck. Bowles himself couldn't manage it.

You got it. “During busy periods this was not readily done.”

This would presume that one of the clocks was running out of spec. Since you haven't shown that to be the case, the quote you proffer is not an answer.

By the way, nobody (apparently) ever described how “city hall time” was set or calibrated.

None of the analyses I've performed so far require that anything be known about the City Hall clock system. That question seems to be moot.

MT: Bowles noted that the radio recording system didn't stop recording until there was 4 seconds of silence. Therefore, if there is a place where the recording shuts of and loses time, there should be at least 4 consecutive seconds of silence. If you listen to the channel one recording during this time, that doesn't happen from the beginning of the Bowley transmission until after the Callaway one. This includes the section where both 1:19 timestamps are located

How would you know that? The recording you are listening to has been dubbed, spliced, and edited. Incidentally, the transcript at https://www.jfk-assassination.net/dpdtapes/tapes2.htm shows “(Long pause, 15 seconds)” right before the Benavides/Bowley “hello police operator” call.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that the channel one recordings have been "edited" or "dubbed" outside of where consecutive recordings have been spliced together. There are a handful of splice points between 12:20 and 1:20, but any hope that channel one is some massive spliceapalooza is badly misplaced.

What I wrote about the beginning of Bowley's transmission doesn't count on any of the recording before Bowley's transmission starts...or on any of the recording after the second "1:19" timestamp. Therefore, those 15 quiet seconds don't apply here. BTW, Bowles notes that the system was activated by sound on the channel, and points out that transients could start the recorder. If the transient is short enough, it can be come and gone before the Dictabelt machine has time to get the recording head up to speed, and will either be minimally audible or not audible at all. Multiple such instances that are not interrupted by an actual voice transmission would easily account for a 15 second long stretch of silence. 

[Mitch Todd]

There are those weasel words again. “Usually”.

"Usually" is what usually happens.
Therefore, we usually expect
that the usual thing usually happens.

When unusual things happen,
they are usually unexpected,
since if we usually expect the usual,
then we don't expect the unusual.
And the unusual is the unexpected.

So then, the higher burden of proof
falls upon the unexpected
rather than the expected

Thus, the higher burden of proof
falls on the unusual
rather than the usual

[Mitch Todd]

What goes straight over Todd's head is the fact that both Bowles and Cason talk about clocks that need to be adjusted because they were not running correctly.

How Todd can claim (as he clearly does) that, despite these remarks, the time stamps on the DPD recording are not only correct but also reflect real time is the real conundrum.

I have said from the beginning --a couple of years ago-- that we can't assume that any of the clocks in general use in those days could be assumed to be running right on standard time. I have also stated that it can be determined from the record derived from channel one and channel two [and also from the recordings themselves] that the channel one and channel two clocks were running to within a minute of each other, and other evidence (the McIntire photo, Greer/Kellerman, Rowley, Powers) shows that channel two was within a minute of standard time that afternoon.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I thought about it differently.

[John Iacoletti]

"...[that] doesn’t mean that the maximum they could ever be off is two minutes."

You are technically correct.

Thank you. That invalidates your entire claim that he said that the dispatcher clocks were kept to within a minute of each other." You omitted “or so” and “normal procedure” in your dishonest summary.

The problem is, if the radio dispatcher clocks were that far off, we'd see it in the data.

What data? You can’t use the time announcements to validate the time announcements. There is no “data” that tells you how far apart they were that day.

We don't. So far, you have presented no evidence whatsoever that any of the dispatcher clocks were out of the spec Bowles described. 

You’ve presented no evidence that they were at most a minute apart that day. Which is your claim.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that the channel one recordings have been "edited" or "dubbed" outside of where consecutive recordings have been spliced together. There are a handful of splice points between 12:20 and 1:20, but any hope that channel one is some massive spliceapalooza is badly misplaced.

Ignoring your “massive spliceapalooza” strawman, a splice IS an edit. And of course they were dubbed. Multiple times. None of us are listening to the original Dictabelt and Audograph. And they had a tendency to skip and repeat sections. Those (at least) were edited as well.

[John Iacoletti]

"Usually" is what usually happens.
Therefore, we usually expect
that the usual thing usually happens.

When unusual things happen,
they are usually unexpected,
since if we usually expect the usual,
then we don't expect the unusual.
And the unusual is the unexpected.

So then, the higher burden of proof
falls upon the unexpected
rather than the expected

Thus, the higher burden of proof
falls on the unusual
rather than the usual

No, the burden of proof lies on the person claiming that “usually” really means always.

[John Iacoletti]

I have also stated that it can be determined from the record derived from channel one and channel two [and also from the recordings themselves] that the channel one and channel two clocks were running to within a minute of each other,

You stated that but provided no evidence for it.

and other evidence (the McIntire photo, Greer/Kellerman, Rowley, Powers) shows that channel two was within a minute of standard time that afternoon.

No, because none of those things have any known association with “standard time”.