Acoustic Evidence

[John Corbett]

Another long winded post by MTG in which he tries to make up with quantity what his posts lack in quality. I have things to do today and I have no intention of spending an hour or more going over the same well trodden ground again. I'll suffice with just a few comments.

I don't claim to be and never have been unbiased regarding the question of whether Oswald acted alone. For most of the past 62+ years I have believed that Oswald acted alone. There were a few years in the 1980s in which my bias had shifted to the conspiracy side, but even during that period, I never doubted that Oswald had fired the kill shot from the TSBD sniper's nest. I soon came to the realization that the evidence for conspiracy was mostly bogus and uncompelling and have firmly believed since the late 1980s that Oswald had indeed acted alone. While I still allow for a sliver of theoretical possibility that Oswald could have had one or a few co-conspirators for which there is no compelling evidence. If he had even a single accomplice, that would constitute a conspiracy. If that con-conspirator had escaped justice, the body of evidence would look pretty much the same as if Oswald had acted alone. I don't believe for a minute that is the case, but logically I cannot rule it out.

There is one exception to my position that there is no evidence of a conspiracy and that is the acoustic findings of BBN. While that evidence is controversial and disputed, it would probably be admissible had the case gone to trial and it had been discovered much earlier than it had been. It wouldn't have helped Oswald's cause much because whether he acted alone or as part of a conspiracy, in the eyes of the law, he would still be guilty of murder one and likely sentenced to death. I doubt very much if that sentence would have been carried out before SCOTUS invalidated all death penalty statutes in the early 1970s and commuted the sentences of all death row inmates to life in prison. Oswald might still be living out his final years in the Texas penitentiary as his 87th birthday approached.

As far as the acoustic evidence goes, there are arguments both for an against its credibility. It comes down to which set of scientists one chooses to believe. I look at that evidence the way a juror would at trial when presented with conflicting expert testimony. A juror does not have to be knowledgeable in highly technical areas to make a judgement about which side has presented the more compelling arguments. Having served on four juries, I know that judges instruct jurors to make up their minds as to which witnesses are more credible. In making such judgements, one of the ways jurors can determine which side has made the more compelling case is to look at the body of evidence as a whole to determine which side's arguments best fits the body of evidence as a whole. In the case of the acoustic evidence, that's an easy call. There simply is no corroborating evidence to support the conclusion that a shot was fired from the GK. No eyewitnesses. No recovered bullets or shells other than those fired by Oswald's rifle. No wounds suffered by either victim which could have been caused by a shot from the front right of them. There are good arguments that the recording is not even from Dealey Plaza during the shooting. There is crosstalk from the other channel which suggests the recording was made about a minute after the shooting. Dale Myers has put together photographic evidence that shows the motorcycle believed to have had the stuck open microphone could not have been where BBN determined it was during the shooting which BBN's own analysis said it needed to be for their findings to be valid. In short, the preponderance of evidence clearly indicates to me the Dictabelt recording does not indicate gunshots fired in Dealey Plaza at the time JFK was assassinated.

[Michael T. Griffith]

There are good arguments that the recording is not even from Dealey Plaza during the shooting. There is crosstalk from the other channel which suggests the recording was made about a minute after the shooting.

Are you kidding? Are you seriously repeating this bogus argument after all the information and sources I've presented to you on the subject? I devoted many paragraphs to explain to you how the crosstalk argument has been debunked and why the crosstalk argument was wrong from its inception because it was based on the scientifically impossible theory that Channel 2 stopped recording for 35-60 seconds.

It is unbelievable that you would repeat this false claim after all the information and sources you have been given on the subject. Why do you suppose that Linsker and his colleagues could offer no evidence that Channel 2 stopped recording for 35 seconds, and why they said nothing in response to Dr. Thomas's 53-page rebuttal to their 2005 article?

Are you going to continue to ignore the new research by BBN scientists that proves that the Decker transmission is not crosstalk but an overdub that wasn't even recorded at the same speed as the acknowledged crosstalk transmissions, and that proves that the Fisher transmission was crosstalk, proving that the impulse patterns were recording the during the assassination in Dealey Plaza? You might read Dr. Barger's and Dr. Mullen's appendices in Thompson's Last Second in Dallas.

Dale Myers has put together photographic evidence that shows the motorcycle believed to have had the stuck open microphone could not have been where BBN determined it was during the shooting which BBN's own analysis said it needed to be for their findings to be valid.

Huh? Did you miss the part in my reply where I noted that Dr. Thomas has refuted Myers' error-filled analysis? I even provided you with a link to Dr. Thomas's response to Myers' article and a lengthy extract from it. But you ignored the extract and obviously didn't bother to read the article.

This is another example of your habit of repeating false claims even after you have been given information and links to scholarly sources that document why they're false.

I ask again: If the dictabelt was not recorded in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, as Myers claims, then how does he explain (1) the fact that the dictabelt contains gunfire N-waves whose locations match two locations of gunfire from the HSCA test firing in Dealey Plaza, (2) the fact that the dictablet contains soundwaves that were slightly distorted by passing through a windshield and only at the precise times when the microphone was in position to record them in Dealey Plaza as established by the test firing, and (3) the fact that the HSCA's acoustical experts identified stunning timing-movement correlations between the microphone movement indicated by the dictabelt's impulse patterns and the microphone movement established by the impulse patterns from the test-firing recording, correlations that were so strong that even the NRC/NAS panel admitted there was a 93% probability they occurred because the dictablet recorded gunfire in Dealey Plaza?

In short, the preponderance of evidence clearly indicates to me the Dictabelt recording does not indicate gunshots fired in Dealey Plaza at the time JFK was assassinated.

In short, you should have stuck with your fallback line of "I'm just a layman and am not qualified to pass judgment on the acoustical evidence."

[John Corbett]

One more reason to doubt the HSCA acoustics team, perhaps the most compelling reason, is that their placement of the shots does not sync with the action in the Zapruder film as their own photographic panel recognized. The HSCA panel placed the shots that struck JFK at Z223-224 and Z313. If there is one thing EVERYONE seems to be agreement on is the headshot striking at Z313, which is pretty obvious. I think the single bullet struck at Z222 but I'm not going to quibble over a frame or two because there is room for debate on precisely when that shot struck. The HSCA placement of the shots based on what their acoustic team's analysis is a first shot miss occurred at Z166. The single bullet struck at Z196. the GK shot missed at Z296, and the headshot of course struck at Z313. Based on the simultaneous reaction of JFK and JBC at Z226 when they simultaneously raised their arms in reaction to having been struck by the single bullet. It is a virtual certainty they were struck 89-91 frames before the head shot but there is no way to sync that to the acoustics team's conclusion which had the shots fired at 30, 100, and 17 frame intervals. It is simply impossible that Oswald could have fired two shots 30 frames apart yet the HSCA determined that is what happened.

Of course, if the proponents of the acoustics evidence disagree with the HSCA's placement of the shots they are free to offer their own placement, but it is pretty much a given that the headshot occurred at Z313. How would they sync the shots to the Zapruder film, given the acoustics teams determination of the intervals between the shots.