A time to receive and give (CE399)

[John Iacoletti]

Reason says that if it was planted, then it must have been produced in advance of the assassination

False premise.

[Dan O'meara]

Juries are not instructed to find facts using logic.  They are instructed to try to reach findings from the evidence. You may be conflating "reason" with "logic".

Your conclusion that CE399 was planted lacks evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that it was planted.
The evidence is that a bullet was found on a stretcher at Parkland by Tomlinson. The evidence is that this bullet was, within minutes given to Wright and that, again within a few minutes, Wright gave it to Johnsen. A few minutes later Johnsen left Parkland for Washington. Later that evening in Washington Johnsen gave to Rowley the same bullet that he received from Wright. Rowley said he gave the same bullet that he received from Johnsen to Todd. Todd said he marked it and gave it to Frazier. There is unimpeachible evidence that CE 399 was fired from the C2766 rifle.

That is the evidence. It doesn't satisfy you. But it is sufficient to establish that the bullet found at Parkland is CE399. The alternative - that CE399 was not found at Parkland - leads to the many absurditues that you have listed.

Wow!
I'm amazed you've let this post stand.
I can only assume you've had some kind of senior moment.

Juries are not instructed to find facts using logic. They are instructed to try to reach findings from the evidence.You may be conflating "reason" with "logic".

Reason - "The application of Logic to understand and judge something."
Without Logic there is no Reason.
Without Reason there is no Meaning.

Implying juries are not to use Logic to reach their findings based on the evidence is embarrassing.
It's the same as saying juries are not to use Reason to reach their findings.
You seem to have tenuous grasp on the concept of Logic.

Your conclusion that CE399 was planted lacks evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that it was planted.

The unequivocal, categorical insistence of O P Wright that CE399 is NOT the bullet he handed over to SA Johnsen that day is very strong evidence that CE399 was introduced into the chain of custody at a later point.
I am quite surprised that you are unaware this constitutes evidence and I'm also surprised you are unaware of it's significance.
When we look at the rest of the evidence regarding the provenance of CE399 we find that it is full of oddities, contradictions and downright strangeness.
ALL of these abnormalities disappear when we accept the testimonial evidence of O P Wright - the bullet he handed to SA Johnsen that day had a pointed tip and that CE399 was NOT the bullet that was handed into the official chain of custody that day.

After receipt of the bullet from Wright, we are supposed to believe SA Johnsen, an experienced Secret Service agent, destroyed the chain of custody for this piece of evidence by not putting initials on it. This most basic investigative procedure relating to the handling of evidence was ignored. Johnsen would have known he was destroying the chain of custody so we are being asked to believe that Johnsen knowingly destroyed the chain of custody by not putting his initials on CE399.
And let's not forget the significance of this key piece of evidence in the assassination of the President of the United States.
After receiving the bullet from SA Johnsen, James Rowley, Head of the Secret Service, also "forgot" the uphold the chain of custody by not putting his initials on the bullet. We are supposed to believe he, too, knowingly destroyed the chain of custody regarding this critical piece of evidence.
Both of these startling lapses disappear if we acknowledge Wright's testimonial evidence - the bullet both Johnsen and Rowley handled was the pointy-tipped bullet Wright gave to Johnsen meaning both Johnsen and Rowley never had the opportunity to put their initials on CE399.
We can only assume that Rowley handed over the bullet with the pointed tip to FBI agent Elmer Todd but it vanishes, to be replaced by CE399 which is initialed by all those working in the FBI lab.
When asked to identify the bullet he discovered that day, Darrell Tomlinson refuses to identify CE399 as that bullet. Are we supposed to believe Tomlinson forgot what it looked like? That he'd discovered a bullet on a stretcher at the same time doctors in the same hospital were trying to revive JFK, and didn't think it was all that important? Are we supposed to believe he didn't know what the bullet looked like?
Of course he knew what it looked like, it had a pointed tip and looked nothing like CE399.
Wright examines the bullet with Tomlinson and realises it's significance so he looks for someone "official" to hand it to. He realises this bullet may, in some way, be connected to the assassination. But when asked to identify the bullet he handed to Johnsen, he also refuses to identify CE399 as the bullet he handled that day. Because, as we've already heard, Wright is absolutely adamant the bullet he handed over to Johnsen was NOT CE399. And let's remember, Wright was ex-DPD, a man very familiar with various bullets.
When Johnsen is handed the bullet, he also realises it's importance and carries it all the way from Dallas to Washington to hand it over to the Head of the Secret Service. Are we supposed to believe he didn't examine it? That he just slipped it into his pocket and said "thanks"?
And when he is asked to identify the bullet he handled that day, he too refuses to identify CE399 as that bullet. And remember, Johnsen had already destroyed the chain of custody once and has a chance to redeem himself. Instead he destroys the chain of custody twice!
Because CE399 was not the bullet he handled that day.
Like Johnsen, by the time he is asked to identify the bullet he handled that day, Rowley fully understands it's evidentiary value. It is a crucial piece of evidence linking the rifle discovered on the 6th floor to the actual assassination. It's importance cannot be understated. He is presented CE399 by Elmer Todd, the man he handed it over to that day, and asked to identify it. And like Johnsen, he too refuses to identify CE399 as the bullet he handled that day.
The mind truly boggles.
Like Johnsen, it appears that Rowley has destroyed the chain of custody, not once but twice. However, this may not strictly be true because they may well have put their initials on the bullet they handled that day, but they didn't handle CE399 that day so their initials are not on it.

This explains why, after passing through the flesh and bone of two men, CE399 is clean when Frazier examines it - because it never passed through the flesh and bone of two men. This explains how a bullet that is gripped in the flesh of Connally's leg can just fall out - because it never fell out.
And this explains why Tomlinson, when giving his deposition for the Warren Commission, is never asked a single question about the bullet, even though the purpose of the deposition is to determine ALL THE FACTS Tomlinson is aware of surrounding the discovery of the bullet. He is asked to give a deposition because he is the man who discovered the bullet, yet he is not asked a single question about it, let alone identify it as CE399. The obvious reason for this is because he would not identify CE399 as the bullet he found that day! Why else would he be asked to give his deposition is in a room in Parkland Hospital, with only Specter and a court reporter present, and not before the Warren Commission itself as a "star witness" - the man who discovered the bullet that tied the rifle to the assassination.
Tomlinson's deposition is the clearest example of a whitewash you can have.

The evidence is that a bullet was found on a stretcher at Parkland by Tomlinson. The evidence is that this bullet was, within minutes given to Wright and that, again within a few minutes, Wright gave it to Johnsen. A few minutes later Johnsen left Parkland for Washington. Later that evening in Washington Johnsen gave to Rowley the same bullet that he received from Wright. Rowley said he gave the same bullet that he received from Johnsen to Todd. Todd said he marked it and gave it to Frazier. There is unimpeachible evidence that CE 399 was fired from the C2766 rifle.
That is the evidence. It doesn't satisfy you. But it is sufficient to establish that the bullet found at Parkland is CE399.


This is an example of Logic without Reason.
It's almost child-like in it's quality.
A bullet was found at Parkland Hospital, it went from person to person until it became CE399. Therefore the bullet found at Parkland was CE399.
And that's that!
You're right, it doesn't satisfy me, but it clearly satisfies you.

[Mitch Todd]

so I definitely did not have Bentley keys in my pocketses.

This statement is incorrect.
You may conclude from your example that you didn't have Bentley keys in your pocketses ( ) at the time you turned them out.
The Bentley keys may have been removed before you checked your pocketses, so you can't say definitively that you did not have Bentley keys in your pocketses.
What tests have been performed to detect the presence or absence Bentley key in your pocketses prior to you turning them out? We are missing key information (do you see what I did there? "Key" information. Do you get it? "Key" as in...oh, forget it..."

Even in this most basic of all examples there is not complete information.
The simplest criminal case is manifestly more complex than this, so the idea of having "complete information" is a non-starter.

Go back and read again and read the original premise: "I have this theory that I have a set of Bentley keys in my pantses pocketses. So whats does I has in my pocketses"

I stated it in the immediate now ("I have") for a reason. It doesn't leave time between formulating the theory and testing it to make room for unnoticed extrapocketal key excursion without resorting to magical thinking. 

[Martin Weidmann]

Go back and read again and read the original premise: "I have this theory that I have a set of Bentley keys in my pantses pocketses. So whats does I has in my pocketses"

I stated it in the immediate now ("I have") for a reason. It doesn't leave time between formulating the theory and testing it to make room for unnoticed extrapocketal key excursion without resorting to magical thinking.

Arguments for the sake of arguments....

Nobody is interested and still he tries to keep his pathetic argument going. Such a desperate need to "win" that he doesn't understand he has already lost.

I'm pretty sure he's going to argue about this next.... 

[Mitch Todd]

Arguments for the sake of arguments....

Nobody is interested and still he tries to keep his pathetic argument going. Such a desperate need to "win" that he doesn't understand he has already lost.

I'm pretty sure he's going to argue about this next.... 

I guess I shouldn't disappoint you.

You're claiming that I'm somehow trying to create a diversion by pointing out that some old saw you repeated was incorrect. And you think that you're somehow going to fix this by taking the thread further afield by making it about me. I'm not sure how you think that's going to work out, but good luck with it, I guess.

As for "nobody is interested," Alan, Dan, and.....you were interested enough to respond to my arguments, so there must be some interest in what I said. Your last reply is, what, the third time you've chimed in on this particular eddy in the thread? You certainly seem interested! So are you this "nobody" that you mention?

And, finally, here again we see the usual Weidman exit strategy when his arguments invariably fall apart: preemptively declare victory, then use the word "pathetic" liberally. I guess it's easier for you to do that than actually think.

[Dan O'meara]

Did Tomlinson or Wright describe tissue and blood on the bullet they saw at Parkland?

I don't believe any doctor or pathologist has suggested a low-velocity bullet making a shallow wound couldn't have fallen out of soft tissue.

What a stupendously piss-poor response to my post.
You totally ignore the vast bulk of it to make these two watery "points". It's a compliment in a way.

Did Tomlinson or Wright describe tissue and blood on the bullet they saw at Parkland?

I don't know if they did ever describe seeing blood or tissue on the bullet they found. I can't find any detailed description of the bullet by Tomlinson, the man who discovered the bullet. Isn't that strange?
The main reason I can't find a detailed description of the bullet Tomlinson found is because when he is asked to make a deposition about the bullet he found, a deposition in which he is supposed to reveal "all the facts" about his discovery, he is not asked a single question about the bullet he discovered!
He is not asked to describe it, he is not asked what happened to it, and he is not asked to identify it.
He is not asked a single question about it.

But let's say the bullet he found was totally clean - what difference does that make as to whether that bullet was CE399 or not?
What is the point of the "point" you are making.

It must be remembered that Frazier examined at a microscopic level and he described the bullet as "clean".

Firstly, Frazier examined this bullet at a microscopic level:

"...after being observed through the microscope and making the comparison and the identification; were photographed, and this photograph shows a portion of the surface of that bullet, showing parallel lines extending from the left side of the photograph coming up to the hairline and continuing across on the right side of the photo graph, these microscopic marks being very fine grooves and ridges on the surface of the bullet, very coarse ridges on the surface of the bullet, and in between size scratches left on the bullet by the barrel of the weapon."

When asked whether he had to clean the bullet for this microscopic examination, Frazier is adamant:

Mr. Eisenberg: Did you prepare the bullet in any way for examination? That is, did you clean it or in any way alter it?
Mr. Frazier: No, sir; it was not necessary. The bullet was clean and it was not necessary to change it in any way.

On a microscopic level, CE399 was "clean". On a microscopic level there was no blood or tissue on CE399.
It's a pity no-one ever got the chance to examine the bullet Tomlinson discovered that day.

I don't believe any doctor or pathologist has suggested a low-velocity bullet making a shallow wound couldn't have fallen out of soft tissue.

Thanks for letting us all know what you don't believe.

[Martin Weidmann]

You critics sure have adverse reactions to innocent questions.

You mean the ridiculous article where two Conspiracy Kooks prey on the memory of an 82-year-old man who left the Bureau decades before. He's asked to remember some minor request mission from decades ago he was tasked with while maintaining a full workload of pending criminal cases. CE399 wasn't the subject of notoriety it became in the aftermath of the Warren Report.

If Odum is so clear and alert, where are the full transcripts of the two interviews? Why does Odum allow that he might have actually went to Parkland but lost memory of it over the decades?

Just asking an innocent question. Is it some threat to your kooky conspiracy confirmation bias?

So Frazier wasn't surprised there was no blood or tissue on CE399 or seemed to harbour some expectation for such. Same with the HSCA. Is the absurd notion that FMJs always have blood and tissue stick on them something from Dr. Wecht? Or some other CT "medical expert"?

If Odum is so clear and alert, where are the full transcripts of the two interviews?

That's exactly the problem. They don't exist. Odum said that if he had talked to Tomlinson and Wright he would have written a FD-302 report. The non-existence of these reports is a further indication that Odum never showed CE399 to Tomlinson and Wright.

And there is more. Tomlinson is on record saying that he was only shown the bullet once, about a week after the assassination, by SAC Shanklin at Parkland Hospital. He confirmed this on 07/25/66 in an interview with Marcus, the transcript of which is in the HSCA collection at the National Archives. Noteworthy is also that Tomlinson said in the same interview he had been told by the FBI to keep his mouth shut, which by itself is remarkable.

One more final comment about the chain of custody matter. So far it has been argued that SA Todd put his initial in the bullet he received from Secret Service chief Rowley. The impression was that Todd marked the bullet as soon as he received it, but I just came across an FBI report that says that Todd received a bullet from Rowley in a closed envelope with two notes attached. One was written by Johnsen and the other by Rowley. Todd opened the envelope, in the presence of Frazier, at the FBI lab and only then marked the bullet with his initials.