The Lone-Gunman Theory: An Extremely Fragile House of Cards

[Mitch Todd]

And here a few more examples:

-- If Arnold Rowland was telling the truth when he insisted he saw two men with rifles on the TSBD’s sixth floor 5-15 minutes before the shooting, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

The WC bent over backward to accept Howard Brennan’s problematic, contradictory testimony, but they looked for any excuse, no matter how lame or petty, to reject Rowland’s testimony, even though Rowland’s wife confirmed that he had immediately told her about seeing a man holding a rifle on the west end of the sixth floor (i.e., the opposite end of the building from the sniper’s nest). In a display of glaring bias, the WC not only rejected Rowland’s testimony but went to great lengths to discredit him as a witness and as a person.

By any reasonable standard, Rowland was a credible witness who had no reason to lie about seeing two men with rifles on the sixth floor shortly before the shooting. See chapter 4, pp. 19-21, in Hasty Judgment: Why the JFK Case Is Not Closed, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JuHmh8_AXyoKFyCt0RPXEUoHDPy-qakz/view.

Several men who were in the county jail in the Criminal Courts Building also saw two men on the TSBD’s sixth floor shortly before the shooting. One of them was Johnny Powell. He said the men were handling a scope on a rifle. Powell logically assumed the men were security officers.

Ruby Henderson was another person in the plaza who saw two men on the Depository’s sixth floor shortly before the shooting. In agreement with Rowland, she said one of the men had a dark complexion.

Carolyn Walthers was another witness who saw two men on the TSBD’s sixth floor shortly before the shooting. She said one of the men had a rifle. In agreement with four other witnesses, she said one of the men was wearing a light-colored shirt (but Oswald wore a brown, rust-colored shirt to work that day, and was seen wearing that shirt in the second-floor lunchroom less than 90 seconds after the shooting). It is instructive to note that Walthers reported that FBI agents tried to get her to change her story.

Powell’s, Henderson’s, and Walthers’ accounts are discussed in “Overlooked Witnesses,” https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth339748/.

-- If Secret Service agent Paul Landis was telling the truth when he reported, shortly before he died, that he found a virtually undamaged bullet in the back seat of JFK’s limo and placed it on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

Dr. James Robenalt, a historian who worked with Landis to prepare him for the publication of his disclosure, believes the disclosure “is really the most significant news in the assassination since 1963.”

When Landis came forward with his disclosure, he knew he was dying. He had no reason to fabricate such an account.

-- If the three pathologists at Methodist Hospital in Dallas who actually handled and examined the Harper Fragment were correct in identifying it as occipital bone, the lone-gunman theory collapses. Occipital bone is located only in the back of the skull.

One of those pathologists, Dr. A. B. Cairns, was the chief of pathology at Methodist Hospital. The two other pathologists were Dr. Jack Harper and Dr. Gerard Noteboom. All three identified the fragment as occipital bone. Their identification confirms the dozens of eyewitness accounts of a large hole in the right-rear part of JFK’s skull.

When Dr. David Mantik interviewed Dr. Noteboom in a recorded interview in November 1992, Dr. Noteboom confirmed that the Harper Fragment was occipital bone and that he actually held the fragment in his hands as he examined it.

Predictably, the Harper Fragment disappeared after the FBI gave it to Dr. George Burkley. We have the two FBI photos of the fragment, but not the fragment itself. Drs. Cairns, Harper, and Noteboom were the only pathologists who actually held the fragment in their hands and examined it, and all three said it was occipital bone.

Dr. David Mantik has confirmed that the fragment was occipital bone. See his detailed analyses of the Harper Fragment in his book JFK Assassination Paradoxes and The Final Analysis. See also the segments on the Harper Fragment in Dr. Mantik’s online articles “The JFK Autopsy Materials,” https://themantikview.org/pdf/The_JFK_Autopsy_Materials.pdf, and “The Medical Evidence Decoded,” https://themantikview.org/pdf/The_Medical_Evidence_Decoded.pdf.

By the way, Dr. John Ebersole, the radiologist at the autopsy, told the HSCA that one of the skull fragments that arrived late at the autopsy was “a large fragment of the occipital bone” (Testimony of John H. Ebersole, Medical Panel Meeting, HSCA, 3/11/78, p. 5).

MG: If Arnold Rowland was telling the truth when he insisted he saw two men with rifles on the TSBD’s sixth floor 5-15 minutes before the shooting, the lone-gunman theory collapses.[...]By any reasonable standard, Rowland was a credible witness

In his testimony, Rowland makes a number of claims about himself that are, shall we say...interesting. These claims were interesting enough that it triggered a Secret Service background check. The Secret Service found that Rowland's extraordinary claims about himself were BS, and that he had a reputation as being habitually untruthful.


MG: Ruby Henderson was another person in the plaza who saw two men on the Depository’s sixth floor shortly before the shooting

Ruby Henderson said "she saw two men on one of the upper floors of the building." IIRC she never said exactly what floor.


MG: Carolyn Walthers was another witness who saw two men on the TSBD’s sixth floor shortly before the shooting.

She said that the two men she saw were on the fourth or fifth floor. She was "positive this window was not as high as the sixth floor."


If the three pathologists at Methodist Hospital in Dallas who actually handled and examined the Harper Fragment were correct in identifying it as occipital bone, the lone-gunman theory collapses. Occipital bone is located only in the back of the skull.

If the Harper fragment were part of the occipital bone, then we should see a substantial portion of the cruciform eminence on its inner surface. But there is no trace of cruciform eminence to be found on the Harper fragment. Further, the inner surface of the Harper fragment features two prominent vascular grooves. The Parietal and Temporal bone have such grooves, but the  Occipital bone does not. Dr Joseph Riley, a neuroanatomist, summed it up this way: "simply put, occipital bone doesn't look like the [Harper Fragment], but parietal bone does."

[Michael T. Griffith]

Here is a fourth set of examples:

-- The problem of Oswald’s documented presence in the Depository’s second-floor lunchroom, with or without a Coke, within 90 seconds after the shooting is compounded by accounts that someone was in the sixth-floor window long after Oswald could not have been there.

Lillian Mooneyham, a clerk of the 95th District Court, watched the motorcade from windows in the Dallas Criminal Courts Building. She told the FBI that about four to five minutes after the shooting, “she looked up towards the sixth floor of the TSBD and observed the figure of a man standing in the sixth-floor window behind some cardboard boxes. This man appeared to Mrs. Mooneyham to be looking out of the window; however, the man was not close up to the window but was standing slightly back from it, so that Mrs. Mooneyham could not make out his features.”

Obviously, this man could not have been Oswald, and no policeman was in the sniper’s nest until at least 30 minutes later.

If Lillian Mooneyham wasn’t seeing things or wildly mistaken about when she saw the man in the sixth-floor window, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

The HSCA Photographic Evidence Panel (PEP) confirmed from the Dillard and Powell photos that boxes were being rearranged in the sixth-floor window “within two minutes after the last shot was fired” (6 HSCA 109-115; 4 HSCA 422-423). This is key photographic evidence that someone other than Oswald was in the sixth-floor window within two minutes after the shooting.

The few WC apologists who have addressed this crucial HSCA finding have floated the amateurish argument that the apparent movement of boxes is an optical illusion caused by a difference in perspective and sunlight in the two photos, specifically, that because the line of sight and sunlight are different in the photos, we are seeing different boxes in one photo than are visible in the other photo. However, the HSCA photographic experts specifically considered this explanation and rejected it (4 HSCA 422-423).

The most detailed analysis of the HSCA PEP’s historic finding on the post-assassination movement of boxes in the sniper’s nest is Barry Krusch’s 55-page analysis in his book Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald, Volume 3, pp. 25-70. Krusch shows beyond any doubt that the HSCA PEP experts were correct. He also shows that WC counsel David Belin recognized that the boxes in CE 482 (the Dillard photo) were not in the same position as the boxes in the police evidence photo of the sniper’s nest taken after 1:12 PM (CE 715).

-- If all the experts, including the HSCA PEP experts, who’ve concluded that the Zapruder film shows JFK reacting to a wound starting at right around Z200 and that this shot was fired at around Z186-190, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

Anyone who knows the basics of the JFK case knows that a gunman in the sixth-floor window would have had his view of JFK obstructed from Z166-207 by the intervening oak tree on the north side of Elm Street. This is one reason that the fiercest debate among the HSCA PEP members was over the conclusion that a shot was fired at Z186-190, but a solid majority of the PEP experts supported the finding, to their great credit.

Another indication that JFK was hit at around Z190 and began to react at around Z200 is that Jackie Kennedy, starting at about Z202, clearly notices that something is wrong with JFK. By Z202-204, Jackie has made a sudden sharp turn to the right, toward
her husband. When she reemerges into view at Z223, she is looking intently at
JFK. Obviously, her attention was drawn to him because the reaction that
he had begun at around Z200 had become more noticeable while the car was
behind the freeway sign.

Also, the HSCA PEP experts noted that a strong blur episode begins at around Z189.

Some Oswald-was-the-shooter researchers, recognizing the validity of the Z186-190 shot and JFK’s Z200-207 reaction to it, have suggested that the sixth-floor gunman fired this shot at Z186, during the split-second break in the oak tree's foliage. However, the gunman would have had only 1/18th of a second to aim and fire this shot, but the human eye requires 1/6th of a second to register and react to data. Even the WC admitted it was unlikely the alleged single assassin would have fired during the 56-millisecond break in the foliage at Z186.

For more information on the Z186-190 shot, see “Reactions to Six Shots in the Zapruder Film,” https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nnp3Vch_KMOB_qufAhlQOCLTTS9jqNV0/view.

See also Don Olson and Ralph Turner, “Photographic Evidence and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” Journal of Forensic Sciences, 16:4, October 1971, pp. 399-419, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/J%20Disk/Journal%20of%20Forensic%20Science/Item%2001.pdf

BTW, all three volumes of Barry Krusch's book Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald are available online in PDF format. He has combined all three volumes into a single PDF file online. In the PDF version, his analysis of the HSCA PEP's conclusion that boxes were rearranged within two minutes after the shooting is on pp. 657-690. Here's the link:

https://krusch.com/books/Impossible_Case_Against_Lee_Harvey_Oswald.pdf

[Tom Graves]

[...]

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Is this a full-time job for you, or just part-time?

-- Tom

[Lance Payette]

Michael, like myself, is a veritable Rennaissance man of Weirdness, to wit:

https://sites.google.com/view/realissueshomepage/home?authuser=0

We share interests in Theology, Intelligent Design, the Shroud of Turin and, apparently, UFOs. We differ in his enthusiasm for Joseph Smith and Mormonism (although this is likewise one of my areas of intensive study just because it is indeed Weird), his conspiratorial views on the Civil War and Lincoln assassination (no interest, sorry), of Pearl Harbor as a false flag operation (I've read about it but remain unconvinced) and, of course, of the JFKA. I see no evidence on Michael's part of what is probably my overarching interest - i.e., anomalous phenomena, particularly those relating to the possible survival of consciousness after death and, indeed, the nature of consciousness itself.

Michael, like moi, is clearly highly intellgent and highly educated. His writings in our overlapping areas of interest are nothing goofy even if I'm not always in complete agreement.

Over the course of my 60+ year journey through the halls of Weirdness, I have at various times held what I call Gee-Whiz True Believer positions. Always, however, as I have become better-informed and more adept at critical thinking, my True Believerism has melted away. This is true even of the spiritual beliefs that are the foundation of my life. I still hold many Believer positions with which an arch-debunker like Michael Shermer (with whom I've corresponded) would disagree, but I don't hold any that he would dismiss as flat-out irrational or completely lacking in evidence.

This is true of my JFKA journey like everything else: From "Gee-Whiz True Believer CTer" to "No Way Jose LNer" to "Oh, probably it was Oswald alone, but he may well have been encouraged by fellow Castroites and possibly could have been an unwitting participant in a Mafia hit." As in all areas of Weirdness, I can live with the inevitable uncertainty and ambiguity. I even retain a kernel of doubt about my own most startling anomalous experiences.

Which is what befuddles me with MTG's voluminous work on the JFKA: It's self-evidently silly, Gee-Whiz True Believer-level stuff at its worst. It isn't going to resonate with anyone this side of a fellow Gee-Whiz True Believer CTer. Instead of his journey paralleling my own, at least a bit in the direction of rationality, Michael just seems to descend deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and to be completely oblivious of this reality.

How do we explain this? Truly, I have no idea. It's like some Conspiracy Virus takes hold and cannot be cured. But then, how did I cure it? Not through any conscious effort, but simply by becoming better-informed about the JFKA itself, about critical-thinking and epistemology in general, and about the fallacies to which a conspiracy-oriented mindset like my own and Michael's is prone. The same applies to my evolution from Gee-Whiz True Believer to Slightly Skeptical Believer (or in some cases Non-Believer) across many areas of Weirdness. My decades as a lawyer certainly helped, but they are surely not the sole explanation.

[Charles Collins]

Michael, like myself, is a veritable Rennaissance man of Weirdness, to wit:

https://sites.google.com/view/realissueshomepage/home?authuser=0

We share interests in Theology, Intelligent Design, the Shroud of Turin and, apparently, UFOs. We differ in his enthusiasm for Joseph Smith and Mormonism (although this is likewise one of my areas of intensive study just because it is indeed Weird), his conspiratorial views on the Civil War and Lincoln assassination (no interest, sorry), of Pearl Harbor as a false flag operation (I've read about it but remain unconvinced) and, of course, of the JFKA. I see no evidence on Michael's part of what is probably my overarching interest - i.e., anomalous phenomena, particularly those relating to the possible survival of consciousness after death and, indeed, the nature of consciousness itself.

Michael, like moi, is clearly highly intellgent and highly educated. His writings in our overlapping areas of interest are nothing goofy even if I'm not always in complete agreement.

Over the course of my 60+ year journey through the halls of Weirdness, I have at various times held what I call Gee-Whiz True Believer positions. Always, however, as I have become better-informed and more adept at critical thinking, my True Believerism has melted away. This is true even of the spiritual beliefs that are the foundation of my life. I still hold many Believer positions with which an arch-debunker like Michael Shermer (with whom I've corresponded) would disagree, but I don't hold any that he would dismiss as flat-out irrational or completely lacking in evidence.

This is true of my JFKA journey like everything else: From "Gee-Whiz True Believer CTer" to "No Way Jose LNer" to "Oh, probably it was Oswald alone, but he may well have been encouraged by fellow Castroites and possibly could have been an unwitting participant in a Mafia hit." As in all areas of Weirdness, I can live with the inevitable uncertainty and ambiguity. I even retain a kernel of doubt about my own most startling anomalous experiences.

Which is what befuddles me with MTG's voluminous work on the JFKA: It's self-evidently silly, Gee-Whiz True Believer-level stuff at its worst. It isn't going to resonate with anyone this side of a fellow Gee-Whiz True Believer CTer. Instead of his journey paralleling my own, at least a bit in the direction of rationality, Michael just seems to descend deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and to be completely oblivious of this reality.

How do we explain this? Truly, I have no idea. It's like some Conspiracy Virus takes hold and cannot be cured. But then, how did I cure it? Not through any conscious effort, but simply by becoming better-informed about the JFKA itself, about critical-thinking and epistemology in general, and about the fallacies to which a conspiracy-oriented mindset like my own and Michael's is prone. The same applies to my evolution from Gee-Whiz True Believer to Slightly Skeptical Believer (or in some cases Non-Believer) across many areas of Weirdness. My decades as a lawyer certainly helped, but they are surely not the sole explanation.

I think the difference is that an open-minded attitude allows some of us to evolve; while others have closed their minds to anything other than what they want to believe in…

[Lance Payette]

I think what Charles says is on the right track. Across the entire spectrum of Weirdness, as well as political and religious beliefs (both being their own species of Weirdness!), confirmation bias is surely the most difficult pitfall to avoid.

In many areas - the JFKA, UFOs, crop circles, poltergeists, whatever - I don't think I have any confirmation bias at all. I merely find these subjects interesting, but I don't particularly care what the explanation turns out to be or have any great need for a particular explanation to be true.

With something like the survival of consciousness after death, or the existence of a deity - well, yes, I do have much more of a visceral or emotional involvement and thus a stronger confirmation bias. I try to be doubly careful in reaching convictions in these areas, which is why in discussions and debates with Gee-Whiz True Believer fanatics I am often accused of being a skeptic or debunker when this is not true at all (except in the sense in which everyone should remain a bit skeptical of his own most cherished beliefs). Based on truly vast amounts of study and a fair amount of experience, I have arrived at quite strong convictions in these areas - but not to the point of losing rationality or being unable to see the countervailing arguments.

It's really difficult for me to see how someone would have a strong confirmation bias insofar as the JFKA is concerned. But people clearly do - on both sides of the debate, LN and CT alike. What would be the deep need for the LN narrative or any conspiracy theory to be true, to the extent of this need overwhelming the ability to think rationally? The answer has to be that the JFKA is a critical cog in one's worldview. The explanation for the JFKA must to be "X," and "X" will inevitably mesh with one's overarching worldview. It is in fact the overarching worldview that is determining what "X" will be. I think this has to be the explanation when we see a fanatical LNer or CTer who is wedded to his position like a religious fundie and who regards anything to the contrary as practically a personal insult. You're not just challenging his position on the JFKA; you're challenging who he is, what he thinks the world is all about.

And yet ... can confirmation bias really be the explanation when we see someone as intelligent and educated as Michael say the preposterous things he says in regard to the JFKA? As far as I can tell, he says nothing comparably preposterous in his writings about Mormonism, Intellgent Design, the Civil War or the Shroud of Turin. He has to know at some level that the conspiracy he posits is a complete fantasy, impossible in the real world.

I'm thoroughly puzzled. If I were to give him and those like him more credit than "they simply lose the ability to think rationally when it comes to the JFKA," I would say that making these preposterous claims must serve some agenda that isn't clear to me. "I'm just going to shovel so much conspiracy sh*t that sooner or later they'll have to reopen the investigation." Maybe, but this seems a stretch as an explanation for the amount of time and effort that Michael puts into his conspiracy sh*t.

It's a puzzle! Michael, of course, would say he simply follows the evidence and applies the same critical-thinking skills to the JFKA that he applies to his other interests and that the LNers and even I are the ones being ruled by our confirmation biases. He even categorizes me as a fanatical LNer because there can be no shades of gray in the war of Good (CT) versus Evil (LN) in which he sees himself as being engaged.

I remember a debate on some religion forum where atheists made the argument that only magical-thinking dolts believe in a deity. Wait, I said, many of the greatest philosophers, scientists and other academics who have ever lived, right up to the level of Nobel Laureates, have been and are devout theists. Do you seriously think they abandon the critical-thinking skills that have carried them to the pinnacles of their fields and turn into magical-thinking dolts when it comes to their assessment of theism versus atheism? "Yes, we do," came the predictable answer. "They are victims of their confirmation biases." (But the atheists, you see, are not! They are immune to confirmation biases! And on it goes ...)

[Tim Nickerson]

BTW, all three volumes of Barry Krusch's book Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald are available online in PDF format. He has combined all three volumes into a single PDF file online. In the PDF version, his analysis of the HSCA PEP's conclusion that boxes were rearranged within two minutes after the shooting is on pp. 657-690. Here's the link:

https://krusch.com/books/Impossible_Case_Against_Lee_Harvey_Oswald.pdf

Barry Krusch used to post here in this forum. He was able to get staff at the National Archives to take photographs of the three WCC shells that were found in the sniper's nest and then send them to him. He asked them to examine the shells and to point out any marks or initials scribed on them. Mr. Krusch made a big deal out of the fact that the shells were apparently missing marks of some those who he maintained should have marked it, including those of Carl Day. The NARA staff never saw Day's mark on any of them and neither did Krusch. Mr Krusch was kind enough to make those images available to anyone who wished to download them off his site. Carl Day himself was unable to find his mark on one of the shells during his WC testimony. He was successful in doing so in June 1964, But he needed to use magnification under enhanced lighting to do so. In the images that Krusch received from NARA, George Doughty's mark is visible on one of the shells and FBI Agent Doyle's is visible on two. That's what I recall anyway. Day's can be made out on one of them. That fact threw a wrench into the gears of Krusch's machine.