Let's review the invalid claims that WC apologists have provided so far in this thread.
-- One WC apologist has made the baffling claim that the HSCA FPP did not place the back wound below the throat wound, even though the FPP said the bullet hit the back at an upward angle (7 HSCA 175), even though the FPP's SBT diagram clearly shows the back wound below the throat wound and shows the bullet traveling upward through the neck (slightly upward, but upward) (
7 HSCA 100, Figure 12), and even though the FPP chairman, Dr. Baden, stated and even demonstrated with a wooden pointer stick that the alleged magic bullet hit the back at a point below the throat wound and that its trajectory was upward through the neck (see
"Dr. Baden Refuted the Single-Bullet Theory").
-- This same WC apologist, incredibly, has argued that Humes's placement of the back wound is correct and that the HSCA FPP's placement is wrong! In conjunction with this jaw-dropper, he has said that the alleged trajectory through the neck was in fact downward! If you think I'm kidding, allow me to quote him:
Every single pro-SBT trajectory illustration has the single bullet traveling downward through JFK's neck because Humes said that it did in his sworn WC testimony.
This WC apologist is not the first lone-gunman theorist to reject the HSCA FPP's version of the SBT, because most of them realize that the FPP's SBT actually destroys the SBT. This is why every single pro-SBT trajectory illustration ignores the FPP's upward angle of impact and the upward trajectory through the neck. Most SBT believers realize there is no way to make the FPP's SBT trajectory align with the sixth-floor window without making the demonstrably false assumption that JFK was leaning markedly forward when the bullet struck.
-- This same WC apologist has even repeated the long-debunked myth that the rear JFK clothing holes, which were over 5 inches below the collar, align with Humes's placement of the back wound because JFK's coat was bunched when the bullet struck. There is no excuse in 2026 for repeating this demonstrable falsehood, which was exposed as erroneous decades ago.
This WC apologist provides a picture of JFK in the motorcade that shows his coat substantially bunched toward the top, and asks us to make the fanciful assumption that the shirt magically bunched in nearly perfect correspondence with the coat. Leaving aside this specious assumption for now, this apologist surely knows, or should know, (1) that the image he has provided was taken before JFK's limo even entered Dealey Plaza, and (2) that
Croft 3, taken at around Z160, shows a lower and more modest coat bunch that could not possibly have caused the rear clothing holes to have been made by a bullet striking above the throat wound.
Moreover, as the apologist should also know, in Willis Slide 5, taken almost immediately after Z190, JFK’s coat is seen to be lying virtually flat on his back. Dr. Josiah Thompson confirmed this by studying the original color slide under a microscope:
I have studied the original slide under a microscope. Although it is not apparent on black-and-white copies, the original color slide shows clearly that the President's clothing was not bunched at the time. . . . (Six Seconds in Dallas, 1967, p. 223)Yes, this information has been available since 1967, but WC apologists simply refuse to admit it and continue to peddle the ridiculous bunched-clothing theory to explain the fact that the bullet holes in the back of JFK's coat and shirt were over 5 inches below the collar.
I should add that one WC defender, Jim Moore, has been objective enough to admit that the bunched-clothing theory is nonsense. He correctly observes that the shirt and coat would have had to bunch in nearly perfect “millimeter-for-millimeter correspondence” and that the odds against such bunching “boggle the imagination” (
Conspiracy of One, 1991, p. 155). Moore also acknowledges that the photographic evidence refutes the idea that JFK’s coat was markedly bunched during the timeframe the SBT supposedly occurred (
Conspiracy of One, pp. 154-155).
It is worth noting that the rear clothing holes agree with the T3 location stated in the death certificate (marked "verified"), with the T3 location marked on Dr. Boswell's autopsy face sheet (also marked "verified"), with autopsy radiologist Dr. John Ebersole's description of the wound as being at T3 or T4, with SS agent Glen Bennett's testimony that he saw a bullet hit JFK in the back "about four inches down from the right shoulder," and with FBI agents James Sibert and Francis O'Neill's wound diagrams that place the wound in the area of T3 or T4 (I show their diagrams and the autopsy face sheet in
"JFK's Clothing Proves the Single-Bullet Theory Is Impossible").
Humes was not responsible for the drawings. His placement of the wound on the drawings was too high.
This is a good example of the fact that WC apologists here frequently blunder over basic information that has been known literally for decades. Humes himself said that he and Boswell "supervised directly" the making of "these drawings," i.e., CE 385, CE 386, and CE 388:
These drawings were made under my supervision and that of Dr. Boswell by Mr. Rydberg, whose initials are H. A. He is a hospital corpsman, second class, and a medical illustrator in our command at Naval Medical School.
We had made certain physical measurements of the wounds, and of their position on the body of the late President, and we provided these and supervised directly Mr. Rydberg in making these drawings. (2 H 350)Boswell also present during the drawing, but Humes did most of the directing. Rydberg confirmed this in his recorded interview with William Matson Law. Rydberg also confirmed that after he finished the drawings, Humes, Boswell, and Admiral Galloway reviewed the drawings and agreed that they were a "good representation of what they had seen":
Law: You’re now sitting in the room with your drawing equipment and you have these two doctors in there.
Rydberg: Mainly Dr. Humes. Boswell was always mousy. He was quiet. . . .
He [Humes] was giving me anatomical landmarks, like the head wound – so many centimeters towards the right side. There was an oval entrance to the gunshot wound, and it exited in the parietal and the temporal lobe area. And there was this much of a space in centimeters. And the neck wound was explained the same way. . . .
Law: As he was giving the instructions?
Rydberg: And he was kind of conferring with Boswell: “This is right. This would be about right here,” and Boswell would do his "Yes". . . .
Law: So you just continued to draw?
Rydberg: This was done over two days – a Saturday and a Sunday. On Monday morning they were taken out of the safe and brought up to Admiral Galloway’s office, who is the commanding officer of the whole ball of wax, and we looked at all the drawings, then all three concurred that they were what they needed to go before the Commission. These were all a good representation of what they had seen. (William Matson Law, In the Eye of History: History Disclosures in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence, 2015, pp. 416-417)Just to remind everyone, CE 385 places the back wound above the throat wound and shows the bullet traveling downward through the neck, a falsehood that the HSCA FPP refuted.
-- This same WC apologist has just argued that the Connally wrist fragments and thigh fragment could have come from CE 399 because they supposedly had a combined weight of only 2.3 grains, citing Robert Frazier's suspiciously light weight of 0.5 grains for the four wrist fragments, which would mean they were nothing but flakes. 0.5 grains is the weight of two particles of dust, a human eyelash, or a pinch of powder.
This tale ignores the suspicious conflict between Dr. Gregory's testimony about the number of wrist fragments he removed and CE 842. It ignores the fact that Dr. Robert Shaw, one of Connally's surgeons, said there were more than 3 grains of bullet fragments in the governor's wrist alone (4 H 113). It ignores the fact that the description of the wrist fragments given by the Parkland nurse who handled them (Audrey Bell) debunks the specious weight of 0.5 grains and refutes the claim that they came from CE 399. It ignores the fact that the fragments in CE 842 plainly appear to be too large to have come from CE 399 (which was only missing substance from the bottom of its lead core when it was received by the FBI lab). And it ignores the fact that before they knew what they were supposed to say, both Humes and Finck acknowledged that Dr. Gregory's 11/22/63 operative report described too many bullet fragments to have from CE 399 (2 H 374-375; 2 H 382).
Nurse Bell insisted the wrist fragments were not merely flakes but were identifiable pieces of metal anywhere from 3 to 4 millimeters in length by 2 millimeters wide. When shown CE 842 by the ARRB, she said the fragments in the container were too small and too few in number to represent what she handled on 11/22/63 (Meeting Report, ARRB, 4/14/97, p.2). When the HSCA interviewed Nurse Bell 20 years earlier, in March 1977, she said her best recollection was that there were "four or five" wrist fragments, and she even drew a picture of the
smallest of the fragments. (
Nurse Audrey: HSCA interview; you can read the transcript of the interview by clicking the "Show transcript" button in the YouTube description field of the audio).
This squares with the recollection of Dr. Shaw. Interviewed for the award-winning 1988 documentary
Reasonable Doubt: The Single-Bullet Theory, he said, "I am sure that the bullet that inflicted these wounds on Governor Connally was fragmented much more than this bullet [CE 399] shows." And, again, Dr. Shaw told the WC the same thing, noting that there were more than 3 grains of metal fragments in Connally's wrist alone:
As far as the wounds of the chest are concerned, I feel that this bullet could have inflicted those wounds. But the examination of the wrist both by X-ray and at the time of surgery showed some fragments of metal that make it difficult to believe that the same missile could have caused these two wounds. There seems to be more than three grains of metal missing as far as the -- I mean in the wrist. (4 H 113)This is a subject for a separate thread, but Nurse Bell's disclosure constitutes just one example of the fact that some documents were falsified by FBI personnel to create false accounts of the handling of evidence and false descriptions of evidence (for more info on this point, see, for starters,
LINK,
LINK -- Another WC apologist made the erroneous claim that the HSCA FPP determined the downward angle through Connally to be 45 degrees, even though the FPP's report says the downward angle was 10 degrees. Dr. Shaw measured the downward angle on Connally himself as being 25 degrees, and the WC agreed with this measurement, as I pointed in a previous reply.
Even when I proved to this WC apologist that the HSCA FPP corrected the obvious misstatement in Dr. Baden's report that put the downward angle at an impossible 45 degrees, he still refused to admit his error. Just for the record, let's read once again what the FPP's report says on this matter and see that the downward angle was put at 10 degrees:
Dr. Baden's report comments on the angle of the trajectory:
Positioning the Governor while erect in the anatomic posture shows the missile track to proceed from back to front
downwards at approximately a 10-degree angle for a distance of 12 1/2 inches through the body. (7 HSCA 150)Personally, I think Dr. Shaw was closer to the mark, but in any case the claim that the downward angle through Connally was 45 degrees is simply absurd.
