JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Michael T. Griffith on September 04, 2020, 12:18:10 AM
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Below are some of the errors and omissions in Larry Sturdivan’s book The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination (Paragon House, 2005). Lone-gunman theorists regard the book as one of the best and most scientific defenses of the lone-shooter scenario in print. However, Sturdivan’s book contains dozens of serious errors and inexcusable omissions, and sometimes offers downright bizarre theories. It is a testament to the sad state of scholarship among lone-gunman theorists.
* In the book’s foreword, which Sturdivan presumably read and approved, Ken Rahn claims that the millions of pages of documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) added “little of substance” to our knowledge of the JFK case, and that nothing in the released documents “pointed the finger at anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald” (p. 9). This is unbelievably erroneous. Rahn either has not read or has chosen to ignore the many scholarly books that discuss the important, historic disclosures from the released documents, not to mention the documents themselves.
Rahn does not even mention the fact that the ARRB also interviewed numerous witnesses, who provided a great deal of new and important information, and that the ARRB arranged for three medical experts to review the JFK autopsy x-rays and photos, and that those experts' findings contradict key parts of the autopsy report (see, for example, https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,2694.msg97711.html#msg97711).
* Sturdivan rejects the scientific acoustical evidence developed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) (pp. 78-85), but he does so by repeating attacks that were refuted years before he wrote his book. The HSCA’s acoustical experts determined that a Dallas police dictabelt recording made by a patrolman’s microphone during the shooting contained at least four gunshot impulses, providing hard scientific proof that two gunmen were involved, since the alleged lone gunman could have fired only three shots.
Sturdivan repeats the arguments against the acoustical evidence made by a National Research Council (NRC) panel. But Sturdivan knew when he wrote his book that Dr. Donald Thomas, a research scientist at the USDA, had written a detailed response to all of the NRC panel’s arguments.
Dr. Thomas’s first defense of the acoustical evidence was published in 2001 in the journal Science and Justice. Before being published, Dr. Thomas’s article was reviewed by acoustical expert Dr. James Barger, who was one of the HSCA’s acoustical experts, and by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, a research scientist at the University of Nebraska.
Sturdivan cites Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article in his endnotes, but he does not mention the article in the body of the book and does not address any of Dr. Thomas observations and arguments. Why not? Here is a link to Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article on the acoustical evidence:
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Thomas.pdf
Sturdivan appeals to Dale Myers’ 2004 research to argue that Patrolman H. B. McClain was not in the correct location in Dealey Plaza for his mike to have been the source of the sounds recorded on the dictabelt. Myers’ research was summarized in the 2004 ABC News documentary Beyond Conspiracy; however, Myers did not publish his research until 2007, two years after Sturdivan’s book was published. So perhaps Sturdivan can be excused for not knowing that Dr. Thomas demolished Myers’ research in 2008:
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_The_Bike_With_the_Mike.html
Here are four more articles on the validity of the acoustical evidence, including the HSCA report on the subject:
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/pdf/HSCA_Vol8_AS_1_Weiss.pdf
http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/courttv.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20091026111324/http://geocities.com/whiskey99a/dbt2002.html
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Acoustics_Overview_and_History.html
The most exhaustive analysis of the acoustical evidence can be found in chapters 16-19 of Dr. Thomas’s 2010 book Hear No Evil: Politics, Science, and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination. The chapters consist of 131 pages and, among other things, answer the attacks on the acoustical evidence and present evidence that there is a fifth gunshot impulse on the dictabelt.
* Surprisingly, regarding the location of the rear head entry wound, Sturdivan sides with the autopsy doctors rather than with the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA’s forensic pathology panel (FPP) (pp. 165-180)! In other words, he chooses the EOP entry site over the cowlick entry site. The two sites are a whopping 4 inches apart, so this is no minor issue. However, in a sad display of pseudo-scholarship, Sturdivan deals with the impossible trajectory posed by the EOP site by theorizing that the bullet, after supposedly entering the skull at a 15-degree downward angle, magically made a sharp right turn and also veered upward to exit the upper-front part of the right parietal bone (p. 180, Figure 54).
Surely Sturdivan knew better. Surely he knew that not one of the bullets in the WC’s ballistics tests veered so markedly. Surely he knew that brain tissue could not have caused such a drastic change in the bullet’s horizontal and vertical trajectory.
Also, Sturdivan says nothing about the fact that the fragment trail described in the autopsy report is nowhere to be seen on the extant x-rays. The autopsy report says this fragment trail started at the EOP and extended to a point just above the right eye. If Sturdivan had addressed this issue, he would have been forced to explain why this low fragment trail does not appear on the extant x-rays. The only fragment trail on the extant x-rays is above the debunked cowlick entry site.
* Sturdivan discusses the 6.5 mm object seen on the autopsy skull x-rays and admits that it cannot be a bullet fragment from an FMJ bullet, but he lamely theorizes that it is an innocent artifact, and that the small fragment in the back of the head on the lateral x-rays is a bone chip (pp. 168-169). Although Sturdivan mentions Dr. Mantik’s section on the 6.5 mm object in Assassination Science, he says nothing about Dr. Mantik’s optical density (OD) measurements, which prove that the small back-of-head fragment inside the 6.5 mm object is metallic. Nor does Sturdivan address the fact that the 6.5 mm object is spatially consistent with the small fragment in the back of the head, a fact that argues powerfully against the idea that the object is an innocent artifact.
Sturdivan makes the odd argument that no forger would have planted the 6.5 mm object because it cannot be mistaken for a bullet; surely, says Sturdivan, a forger would have planted something that “could actually be mistaken for a bullet fragment” (p. 168). This is just silly. Three federal medical panels mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment: the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA FPP. Dr. John Lattimer, an ardent defender of the lone-gunman theory, also mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment. Did these facts just slip Sturdivan’s mind?
Moreover, Sturdivan says nothing about the other small back-of-head fragment, the one that Dr. McDonnel identified for the HSCA FPP. This fragment is slightly to the left of the fragment inside the 6.5 mm image, about 1 cm below the EOP entry site and just underneath the outer table of the skull. Dr. Mantik has confirmed via OD measurements that this fragment is a bullet fragment. It is hard to believe that Sturdivan was not aware of this fragment. I suspect that Sturdivan chose to say nothing about it because he knew he could not explain it within the context of the lone-gunman theory.
* Sturdivan repeats the myth that neutron activation analysis (NAA) has established that all the bullet fragments recovered from the limo and from Connally’s wrist came from the same production lot of WCC/MC ammo (i.e., Oswald’s alleged ammo), and that the Connally wrist fragments match the chemical composition of CE 399, the magic bullet of the Warren Commission’s (WC’s) infamous single-bullet theory (SBT) (pp. 121-125). In repeating this myth, Sturdivan makes the erroneous claim that no one has found “any credible evidence” that the chain of custody of the fragments is suspect.
In 2007, scientists at Texas A&M University reviewed the NAA research done by the WC and the HSCA and determined that the research was markedly flawed, and they argued that the NAA results indicate that more than one gunman could have been involved:
Chemical and Forensic Analysis of JFK Assassination Bullet Lots: Is A Second Shooter Possible?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0712.2150.pdf
Given that Sturdivan wrote his book in 2005, he can be excused for not knowing about the 2007 Texas A&M study. However, he has no excuse for falsely claiming that there are no indications that the bullet-fragment evidence is suspect. The 1998 book Assassination Science, which Sturdivan mentions in his book, presents compelling evidence that the NAA-tested fragments are suspect, but Sturdivan does not address it, and he does not even mention the evidence that many more fragments were recovered from JFK and Connally than are now in evidence.
* Sturdivan says that Dale Myers’ SBT trajectory research is the best ever done (pp. 128-129). Actually, Myers’ SBT trajectory research is atrocious and has been soundly debunked. Myers commits gaffe after gaffe in his SBT writings and diagrams. It is incredible that Sturdivan did not detect any of them. If you want a good sample of the problems with Myers’ SBT trajectory research, read Pat Speers’ analysis of it:
Search for Truth in Dale Myers’ House of Mirrors
http://www.patspeer.com/chapter12c:animania
* In his discussion on JFK’s back wound and on the alleged path from C7/T1 to the throat wound (pp. 140-143), Sturdivan does not say a single word about the evidence, including evidence from ARRB interviews and released documents, that on the night of the autopsy, the autopsy doctors positively, absolutely determined that the back wound had no exit point. To read Sturdivan’s book, you would never know this evidence existed.
Moreover, although Sturdivan was aware of Dr. David Mantik’s finding that the x-rays show no path from the back wound to the throat wound without smashing through the spine, he does not even mention it, much less address it. Dr. Mantik first discussed this finding in the 1998 book Assassination Science, a book that Sturdivan mentions and cites.
Dr. Mantik also discusses this finding in his online paper “The Medical Evidence Decoded,” https://themantikview.com/pdf/The_Medical_Evidence_Decoded.pdf (pp. 38-40).
* Rather incredibly, Sturdivan supports the jet-effect theory of JFK’s backward movement by citing Dr. John Lattimer’s bogus and discredited head-shot ballistics test (p. 147). Lattimer reported that all the skulls in his test were propelled backward toward the rifle, supposedly proving the jet-effect theory. However, no other test done with FMJ bullets has produced such a result.
Sturdivan mischaracterizes Lattimer’s test by saying that the skulls were propelled backward “from the table.” Actually, Lattimer put the skulls on ladders, not tables. This is an important difference because, as scholars have noted, the ladders absorbed the forward momentum of the bullets and rocked forward, not backward, which in turn caused the skulls to move backward. For more information on Lattimer’s bogus test, see the following article:
http://www.patspeer.com/chapter16:newviewsonthesamescene
For a scientific critique of the jet-effect theory as an explanation of JFK’s head movement, see the following article by mechanical engineer Tony Szamboti:
http://jfklancer.com/pdf/Jet_Effect_Rebuttal_II_(4-17-2012).pdf
Sturdivan makes the curious—and accurate—comment that the dramatic reversal of motion of Kennedy’s head and upper body seen between Z312 and Z314 is “far too soon to be a neuromuscular response” and that “it had to be from the physics” (p. 147). Yet, on the very next page, Sturdivan claims that the “true cause” of Kennedy’s violent backward motion was a neuromuscular reaction!
* As mentioned, Sturdivan, after saying that Kennedy’s backward motion happened too soon to be a neuromuscular response, argues the opposite and claims that the violent motion was caused by a neuro spasm—even worse, he cites the irrelevant 1948 goat film as evidence (pp. 148-152). I will not belabor the problems with the neuro-spasm theory and with the goat film that have been noted by so many other scholars. Suffice it to say that anyone with two functioning eyes can look at the goat film and see that the goat’s reaction is nothing like JFK’s reaction.
For information on some of the problems with the neuro-spasm theory, see Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. Gary Aguilar’s comments on it:
https://kennedysandking.com/images/pdf/AguilarWechtAFTA2016.pdf
* Sturdivan agrees that Jackie Kennedy climbed onto the limo’s trunk in an effort “to rescue a fragment of the President’s shattered skull” (p. 22). How did a skull fragment get blown onto the trunk if the bullet exited above and to the right of the right ear? Sturdivan does not say.
* Sturdivan claims that the package that Oswald brought to work from his house on the morning of the assassination contained the alleged murder weapon, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, not curtain rods (pp. 33-34). Sturdivan admits that the two people who saw the bag, Buell Frazier and his sister, both said it was shorter than the bag that was allegedly found in Oswald’s alleged “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But Sturdivan says they only said the bag was “a bit shorter” than the supposed rifle bag.
“A bit shorter”? It was much more than “a bit shorter.” Frazier and his sister said Oswald’s bag was 27 inches long. The supposed rifle bag was 38 inches long. Frazier added that Oswald’s bag looked like the standard brown grocery bag that grocery stores used. FBI agents asked Frazier to mark the spot on his car’s back seat where the bag reached when it was placed on the seat with one end against the door. The distance that Frazier marked was 27 inches, exactly as he had previously estimated. Sturdivan mentions none of this.
* Sturdivan paints a superficial, misleading picture of the Tippit shooting and, needless to say, identifies Oswald as Tippit’s killer (pp. 35-36). To read Sturdivan’s version of the Tippit shooting, you would never know that Tippit was shot before Oswald could have walked to the scene (Oswald had no car and did not drive), that two witnesses independently placed Oswald at the Texas Theater at least 10 minutes before Tippit was shot, that the shells found at the Tippit scene were initially and firmly identified as shells from an automatic pistol (not Oswald’s pistol), that Oswald’s pistol was determined to be defective (it would not fire), that the fingerprints found where Tippit’s killer touched the front passenger door of Tippit’s patrol car were not Oswald’s fingerprints, and that the shells entered into evidence had no crime-scene initials on them. For more information on the Tippit shooting, see the following article:
“Did Oswald Shoot Tippit? A Review of Dale Myers’ Book With Malice”
https://miketgriffith.com/files/malice.htm
* Sturdivan repeats the long-debunked myth that the Tague curb “was not chipped” but “only had a lead smear on it” (p. 118). Anyone can look at the initial photos of the curb and readily see that the curb was chipped and had a hole in it. When the Dallas Morning News published one of the photos of the curb the day after the assassination, it gave the photo the caption “Concrete Scar,” and the narrative under the photo said,
"A detective points to a chip in the curb. . . . A bullet strike from the rifle that took President Kennedy’s life apparently caused the hole." (Dallas Morning News, 11/23/1963, in Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, University Press of Kansas, 2015 edition, p. 118)
“Concrete scar,” “chip in the curb, “the hole.” So the editors who viewed the photo did not see a “smear” but a “scar,” “chip,” and “hole.”
* Sturdivan offers a novel, if not comical, explanation for the fact that in the WC’s ballistics tests, bullets fired into cotton wadding emerged with more deformity than CE 399. Sturdivan says this just proves that cotton wadding is “denser than soft tissue” when it is “compressed” by a penetrating bullet (p. 121)! This is beyond silly.
In the many pages of his labored attempt to validate the SBT, Sturdivan says nothing about the 1992 All-American Television wound ballistics test arranged and supervised by Dr. Cyril Wecht, a former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A 6.5 mm WCC/MC FMJ bullet, i.e., Oswald’s alleged ammo, was fired into a gelatin block that contained two chicken bones positioned several inches apart. The bullet emerged markedly deformed, far more deformed than CE 399.
Nor does Sturdivan mention the 1967 CBS ballistics tests, in which none of the bullets were able to penetrate the simulated thigh. This result led CBS’s expert consultant, Dr. W. F. Enos, to conclude that the SBT was “highly improbable.”
Nor does Sturdivan mention that the chief of the Army's Wound Ballistics Board, Dr. Joseph Dolce, told WC attorneys that the SBT was impossible. Indeed, even though Dr. Dolce believed there was only one gunman, he agreed to appear in the 1995 documentary Reasonable Doubt: The Single-Bullet Theory to explain why he viewed the SBT as impossible.
* Sturdivan makes the baffling, erroneous claim that autopsy photo F8 shows a frontal view of JFK’s skull (p. 175, Figure 50). However, we have known for many years that in 1966, John Stringer, the medical photographer who actually took the photo, along with the three autopsy doctors and the autopsy radiologist, said F8 was a photo of the back of the head. Dr. David Mantik has confirmed that F8 was taken from a point behind the head. Dr. Mantik notes that one of the ARRB medical experts noted the presence of fatty tissue in the upper left corner of the photo, and that such tissue would only be visible if the photo were taken from a point behind the head. The fact that F8 is a back-of-head photo means that F8 shows a sizable wound in the back of the head (specifically, in the occipital region), which in turn means that the autopsy photos that show the back of the head intact have been altered.
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* Sturdivan rejects the scientific acoustical evidence developed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) (pp. 78-85), but he does so by repeating attacks that were refuted years before he wrote his book. The HSCA’s acoustical experts determined that a Dallas police dictabelt recording made by a patrolman’s microphone during the shooting contained at least four gunshot impulses, providing hard scientific proof that two gunmen were involved, since the alleged lone gunman could have fired only three shots.
Sturdivan repeats the arguments against the acoustical evidence made by a National Research Council (NRC) panel. But Sturdivan knew when he wrote his book that Dr. Donald Thomas, a research scientist at the USDA, had written a detailed response to all of the NRC panel’s arguments.
Dr. Thomas’s first defense of the acoustical evidence was published in 2001 in the journal Science and Justice. Before being published, Dr. Thomas’s article was reviewed by acoustical expert Dr. James Barger, who was one of the HSCA’s acoustical experts, and by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, a research scientist at the University of Nebraska.
Sturdivan cites Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article in his endnotes, but he does not mention the article in the body of the book and does not address any of Dr. Thomas observations and arguments. Why not? Here is a link to Dr. Thomas’s 2001 article on the acoustical evidence:
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Thomas.pdf
Sturdivan appeals to Dale Myers’ 2004 research to argue that Patrolman H. B. McClain was not in the correct location in Dealey Plaza for his mike to have been the source of the sounds recorded on the dictabelt. Myers’ research was summarized in the 2004 ABC News documentary Beyond Conspiracy; however, Myers did not publish his research until 2007, two years after Sturdivan’s book was published. So perhaps Sturdivan can be excused for not knowing that Dr. Thomas demolished Myers’ research in 2008:
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_The_Bike_With_the_Mike.html
Here are four more articles on the validity of the acoustical evidence, including the HSCA report on the subject:
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/pdf/HSCA_Vol8_AS_1_Weiss.pdf
http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/courttv.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20091026111324/http://geocities.com/whiskey99a/dbt2002.html
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Acoustics_Overview_and_History.html
The most exhaustive analysis of the acoustical evidence can be found in chapter 16 of Dr. Thomas’s 2010 book Hear No Evil: Politics, Science, and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination. The chapter is 79 pages long and, among other things, answers the attacks on the acoustical evidence and presents evidence that there is a fifth gunshot impulse on the dictabelt.
Dr. Thomas is not an acoustics expert but an expert on insects. But his opinion is seconded by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, who is also an expert on insects. But Dr. Thomas’s opinion is also supported by Dr. James Barger who is an acoustic expert. But was also one who supported the original HSCA opinion of there being four shots and is perhaps, still reluctant to admit a mistake.
But I don’t know of any acoustic expert who supports the acoustic work of Dr. Thomas, who was not involved in the 1978 HSCA fiasco, and may just be saying, in effect, “I still stand by my work.”.
And the 1978 HSCA acoustic report is highly questionable, if only because of the failure, of any of those experts to notice the phrase “Hold everything secure”, making it appear that the so called 4 shots occurred a minute too late. Now, yes, after the fact, Dr. Thomas has tried to explain away this failure. But it would have been much better if these acoustic experts had been the ones to discover this, and come up with an explanation back in 1978 in their original report. It makes them look back to have our own Steve Barber be the one who discovered this problem.
* Surprisingly, regarding the location of the rear head entry wound, Sturdivan sides with the autopsy doctors rather than with the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA’s forensic pathology panel (FPP) (pp. 165-180)! In other words, he chooses the EOP entry site over the cowlick entry site. The two sites are a whopping 4 inches apart, so this is no minor issue. However, in a sad display of pseudo-scholarship, Sturdivan deals with the impossible trajectory posed by the EOP site by theorizing that the bullet, after supposedly entering the skull at a 15-degree downward angle, magically made a sharp right turn and also veered upward to exit the upper-front part of the right parietal bone (p. 180, Figure 54).
Surely Sturdivan knew better. Surely he knew that not one of the bullets in the WC’s ballistics tests veered so markedly. Surely he knew that brain tissue could not have caused such a drastic change in the bullet’s horizontal and vertical trajectory.
Also, Sturdivan says nothing about the fact that the fragment trail described in the autopsy report is nowhere to be seen on the extant x-rays. The autopsy report says this fragment trail started at the EOP and extended to a point just above the right eye. If Sturdivan had addressed this issue, he would have been forced to explain why this low fragment trail does not appear on the extant x-rays. The only fragment trail on the extant x-rays is above the debunked cowlick entry site.
But Larry Sturdivan did address this issue.
“The JFK Myths”, Page 201:
Many of the fragments deposited in the president’s brain were flushed out, along with the brain tissue, as the large amount of blood flowed out of the explosive wound, in the car and in Parkland. It is evidently some of these that were deposited on the bone flaps by clotting blood that show as a “trail” of fragments near the top of the lateral view. This “trial” does not show on the frontal view, and is much higher that the FPP’s reconstructed trajectory. In fact, at the apparent location of these fragments, there was no brain matter in which the fragments could be embedded (see figure 39).
If you are going to criticize Larry Sturdivan’s work, at least refrain from making false statements like “If Sturdivan had addressed this issue”.
I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.
By the way, page 173, Figure 38 (the top X-Ray) shows the side X-Ray of JFK’s head. Page 192 shows the X-Ray of JFK’s head taken from the front.
This trail of fragments does not lead to the hypothesized “EOP” entrance wound. But it also does not lead to the hypothesized “cowlick” entrance. This “trail” is too high for either. And no trail at all is to be found in the frontal X-Ray. This leads me to agree with Larry Sturdivan and to conclude that this “trail” is not a trail at all but is simply where some of the small lead fragments got flushed out to, either by the initial explosion, clearly visible in Zapruder frame 313, or by blood, either in the first few seconds or after the large transfusions at Parkland. If this is a trail, I don’t know why it is not also visible in the frontal X-Ray.
* Sturdivan discusses the 6.5 mm object seen on the autopsy skull x-rays and admits that it cannot be a bullet fragment from an FMJ bullet, but he lamely theorizes that it is an innocent artifact, and that the small fragment in the back of the head on the lateral x-rays is a bone chip (pp. 168-169). Although Sturdivan mentions Dr. Mantik’s section on the 6.5 mm object in Assassination Science, he says nothing about Dr. Mantik’s optical density (OD) measurements, which prove that the small back-of-head fragment inside the 6.5 mm object is metallic. Nor does Sturdivan address the fact that the 6.5 mm object is spatially consistent with the small fragment in the back of the head, a fact that argues powerfully against the idea that the object is an innocent artifact.
On page 193, of Larry Sturdivan’s “JFK Myths”:
A metal fragment that cannot be a bullet fragment and appears on only one view of the x-ray would ordinarily be dismissed as an accidental artifact that somehow found its way to the top of the x-ray cassette for that single exposure.
This failure of the side X-Ray to show a “6.5 mm disk” and the failure of the frontal X-Ray to show a “trail of small lead fragments”, indicates that this “object” and “trail” are both bogus. If real, they should appear in both X-rays.
Sturdivan makes the odd argument that no forger would have planted the 6.5 mm object because it cannot be mistaken for a bullet; surely, says Sturdivan, a forger would have planted something that “could actually be mistaken for a bullet fragment” (p. 168). This is just silly. Three federal medical panels mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment: the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, and the HSCA FPP. Dr. John Lattimer, an ardent defender of the lone-gunman theory, also mistook the 6.5 mm object for a bullet fragment. Did these facts just slip Sturdivan’s mind?
No, these are not odd arguments. These are reasonable arguments. It would be expected that a forger would plant something that looked like a real bullet fragment.
The Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, even Dr. John Lattimer, were not ballistic experts. So, it would seem reasonable that forgers would plant an object that could be mistaken for a bullet fragment, not just by a non-ballistic expert, but by a true ballistic expert as well.
. . .
Sturdivan makes the curious—and accurate—comment that the dramatic reversal of motion of Kennedy’s head and upper body seen between Z312 and Z314 is “far too soon to be a neuromuscular response” and that “it had to be from the physics” (p. 147). Yet, on the very next page, Sturdivan claims that the “true cause” of Kennedy’s violent backward motion was a neuromuscular reaction!
Page 147 is the start of the “No Signs of Distress” chapter, talking about the wound caused by the bullet at z222, not the bullet at z312, that struck the head.
I believe you meant to refer to page 164:
The motion is far too soon to be a neuromuscular response. It had to be from physics.
Here, I think Larry Sturdivan is in error. The motion is not too soon to be a neuromuscular response. The bullet struck about z312.6. The backwards motion could have started by around z313.8. This would give a 65-millisecond gap of time between when the bullet struck and the backward movement started. Clearly, not too soon, because in Larry Sturdivan’s own testimony he says the goat that was shot through the brain in 1948 in the U. S. Army test started to react after 40 milliseconds from being struck by the bullet.
I believe that Larry Sturdivan allowed himself to be too influenced by Dr. Ken Rahn, an intelligent scientist, but who was mistaken about the “Jet Effect”. The truth is that backward movement is not too soon to be caused by a neuromuscular response, and is too late to be caused by the “Jet Effect”.
Page 147? Again, I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.
* Sturdivan repeats the long-debunked myth that the Tague curb “was not chipped” but “only had a lead smear on it” (p. 118). Anyone can look at the initial photos of the curb and readily see that the curb was chipped and had a hole in it. When the Dallas Morning News published one of the photos of the curb the day after the assassination, it gave the photo the caption “Concrete Scar,” and the narrative under the photo said,
Really?
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6kYzhJGqq2M/TEV9xliiOdI/AAAAAAAAE0E/R79eTS0K1Pg/s1600/Main-St.-Curb.jpg)
I don’t see a hole. I don’t even see a chip. If there is a chip missing, it is pretty small.
* Sturdivan offers a novel, if not comical, explanation for the fact that in the WC’s ballistics tests, bullets fired into cotton wadding emerged with more deformity than CE 399. Sturdivan says this just proves that cotton wadding is “denser than soft tissue” when it is “compressed” by a penetrating bullet (p. 121)! This is beyond silly.
But Sturdivan is right. A WCC/MC bullet fired into pinewood; the bullet is undamaged. A WCC/MC bullet fired into hardwood; the bullet is still undamaged. But a WCC/MC bullet fired into a barrel full of soft cotton, and the bullet is fragmented. An odd result, to be certain, but that is what happens. And Larry Sturdivan’s explanation makes sense. It is the density of a material, that a bullet strikes, that determines whether it will fragment or not. Pine wood is no compressible, at least by a bullet. Nor is hardwood. And cotton ordinarily has a very low density. But it can be compressed. So, a WCC/MC bullet can, momentarily, compress it to the point that it has a high density. High enough to fragment the bullet.
In any case, I never heard of a ballistic expert who disputes this result. Or disputes Larry Sturdivan’s explanation for it. And neither has Mr. Griffith.
* Sturdivan makes the baffling, erroneous claim that autopsy photo F8 shows a frontal view of JFK’s skull (p. 175, Figure 50). However, we have known for many years that in 1966, John Stringer, the medical photographer who actually took the photo, along with the three autopsy doctors and the autopsy radiologist, said F8 was a photo of the back of the head. Dr. David Mantik has confirmed that F8 was taken from a point behind the head. Dr. Mantik notes that one of the ARRB medical experts noted the presence of fatty tissue in the upper left corner of the photo, and that such tissue would only be visible if the photo were taken from a point behind the head. The fact that F8 is a back-of-head photo means that F8 shows a sizable wound in the back of the head (specifically, in the occipital region), which in turn means that the autopsy photos that show the back of the head intact have been altered.
Larry Sturdivan does not claim that autopsy photo f8 was taken from the front. He says, on page 203 (not page 175):
Figure 50. photograph superimposed on a human skull with the entry projected to the Forensic Pathology Panel’s “cowlick” location.
I think Mr. Griffith is getting confused with his belief that the head shot came from the front, and Mr. Sturdivan’s belief that the head shot came from the rear. So, when Mr. Sturdivan is talking about a photo of the hypothesized entry wound, he is not talking about a photograph from the front. He is talking about a photograph from the rear.
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Dr. Thomas is not an acoustics expert but an expert on insects. But his opinion is seconded by Dr. Brett Ratcliffe, who is also an expert on insects. But Dr. Thomas’s opinion is also supported by Dr. James Barger who is an acoustic expert. But was also one who supported the original HSCA opinion of there being four shots and is perhaps, still reluctant to admit a mistake.
Phew! You guys were willing to accept the acoustics "research" of a drummer, Steve Barber, who got his copy of the dictabelt recording from an insert in a porn magazine! Yeah, you didn't mind taking input from a non-acoustics expert in that instance!
Now, it just so happened that Barber was correct: there is crosstalk on the dictabelt. This just goes to show that you do not necessarily have to be an acoustics expert, or even a scientist of any kind, to make a valid observation about a scientific issue.
Thomas and Ratcliffe are scientists. Regardless of their field of specialization, they are still trained in scientific methodology. It is curious that you are willing to accept the writings of Dr. Lattimer on forensic and ballistics issues, even though he was a urologist and had no training in forensics or ballistics. But, oh, because Dr. Thomas is an entomologist, you use that as an excuse to ignore his scientific research on the acoustical evidence.
You are willing to accept the fact that a drummer could make a valid observation about the dictabelt but are not willing to accept the fact that a USDA research scientist could discover that the NAS NRC panel made basic math errors in their analysis.
You guys also accept and cite Dale Myers' research on the acoustical evidence, even though he has no training in any relevant field (not to mention that Dr. Thomas has demolished Myers' badly flawed research).
Dr. David Scheim, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from MIT, has also rejected the NAS NRC panel's arguments (see below).
But I don’t know of any acoustic expert who supports the acoustic work of Dr. Thomas, who was not involved in the 1978 HSCA fiasco, and may just be saying, in effect, “I still stand by my work.”.
I'm guessing you don't know that Weiss and Aschkenasy were two of the premier acoustical experts in the world at the time, and that the HSCA chose the firm Bolt-Beranek-Newman (BBN) to do the initial acoustical analysis because it was internationally recognized as a scientific research firm and had experience with doing acoustical analysis for the UN.
But you simply wave aside the fact that all of the HSCA acoustical experts--the four BBN scientists and Weiss and Aschkenasy--said they did not agree with the NAS NRC panel's arguments and that they still stood by their findings.
And the 1978 HSCA acoustic report is highly questionable, if only because of the failure, of any of those experts to notice the phrase “Hold everything secure”, making it appear that the so called 4 shots occurred a minute too late.
Here we go again with your making erroneous statements because you did not bother to read the other side. Aside from the fact that the presence of the crosstalk ("Hold everything secure") has been thoroughly explained, that crosstalk does not, and cannot, cancel out the scientific evidence of the N-wave correlations, the sound fingerprints, and the sound-distance correlations between the dictabelt impulses and the Dealey Plaza reenactment recordings.
Dr. Scheim notes the importance of the N-wave correlations:
Moreover, an "N-wave," characteristic of supersonic gunfire, appeared in each dictabelt impulse for which the police microphone was in an appropriate position to detect it, including the recorded sound of the third shot. The most striking find, however, was the exact location of the grassy knoll gunman. According to the acoustical calculations, this firing position was behind the picket fence, eight feet west of the corner. That was just two to seven feet from where S. M. Holland, a dozen years earlier, had placed the signs observed by himself and fellow railroad workers: the puff of smoke, muddy station wagon bumper, cigarette butts, and a cluster of footprints. (The Mafia Killed President Kennedy, p. 36)
As for the NAS NRC panel's arguments, Dr. Scheim made the following points:
[The panel] . . . introduced complex and controversial assumptions and made several errors of its own. In a letter of February 18, 1983, Dr. Barger noted enigmatic features in a recording upon which the National Academy of Sciences panel relied and pointed out that it "did not examine the several items of evidence that corroborated our original findings." Barger stood by the acoustical determination of a grassy knoll shot as accepted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. . . .
. . . the critical Weiss-Aschkenasy conclusion of a 95-percent probability of a grassy knoll shot was treated only in a sketchy three-page appendix [in the NAS panel's report] that made one outright error--there was only one degree, not two, of freedom associated with the position of the shooter along the grassy knoll fence. This appendix also recalculated the probability by subtracting degrees of freedom adjusted in the Weiss-Aschkenasy analysis from matches obtained, an arbitrary approximation to a complex mathematical calculation, akin to computing the volume of a cube as three by adding its dimensions. The appendix itself included the admission that this critical calculation was "possibly overconservative" and "may be unduly conservative." (pp. 35-36, p. 431 n 120)
Now, yes, after the fact, Dr. Thomas has tried to explain away this failure. But it would have been much better if these acoustic experts had been the ones to discover this, and come up with an explanation back in 1978 in their original report. It makes them look back to have our own Steve Barber be the one who discovered this problem.
If you had bothered to read any of Dr. Thomas's research, you would have learned that the crosstalk is actually irrelevant, that it has no bearing on the hard scientific correlations between the dictabelt impulses and the impulses from the Dealey Plaza test firings. The crosstalk is a non-issue thrown up by the NRC panel to avoid dealing with the sound fingerprints, the sound-distance correlations, and the N-wave correlations.
But Larry Sturdivan did address this issue.
“The JFK Myths”, Page 201:
"Many of the fragments deposited in the president’s brain were flushed out, along with the brain tissue, as the large amount of blood flowed out of the explosive wound, in the car and in Parkland. It is evidently some of these that were deposited on the bone flaps by clotting blood that show as a “trail” of fragments near the top of the lateral view. This “trial” does not show on the frontal view, and is much higher that the FPP’s reconstructed trajectory. In fact, at the apparent location of these fragments, there was no brain matter in which the fragments could be embedded (see figure 39)."
If you are going to criticize Larry Sturdivan’s work, at least refrain from making false statements like “If Sturdivan had addressed this issue”.
I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.
I'm sorry, but this is just sheer, comical ignorance. If this were a private correspondence, I would not waste time responding to such unbelievably silly arguments. I am led to wonder about your basic reading skills.
Now, exactly where in the above quote does Sturdivan say one blessed word about the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report? Where does he explain how the autopsy doctors, assuming they were looking at the extant x-rays, could have said there was a fragment trail that ran between the EOP and a point just above the right eye? Where does Sturdivan say one word about this? Where?
Not only does Sturdivan say nothing about why the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report does not appear on the extant x-rays, but his argument is a silly, ridiculous attempt to explain how the high fragment trail could have resulted from an EOP bullet entry. I'm guessing you didn't realize that that's what Sturdivan is trying to do here.
Sturdivan is claiming that some of the fragments were flushed and deposited on the bone flaps at some point before the autopsy (he implies this occurred on the way to Parkland). Leaving aside the many problems with this theory, what in the devil does this have to do with the fragment trail that the autopsy doctors said they saw hours later at the autopsy?
However you want to duck and dodge and theorize about how the fragments may have magically moved around before the autopsy, this speculation does not address what the autopsy doctors said they saw in the skull x-rays, nor does it explain why the low fragment trail is nowhere to be seen on the extant x-rays.
In going with the EOP entry site, Sturdivan makes the valid point that it is hard to believe that the autopsy doctors could have mistaken a wound in the cowlick for a wound 4 inches lower, just above the EOP. But he avoids explaining how those same doctors could have mistaken the high fragment trail for a trail that ran between the EOP and the right eye.
By the way, page 173, Figure 38 (the top X-Ray) shows the side X-Ray of JFK’s head. Page 192 shows the X-Ray of JFK’s head taken from the front.
This trail of fragments does not lead to the hypothesized “EOP” entrance wound. But it also does not lead to the hypothesized “cowlick” entrance. This “trail” is too high for either.
No kidding! I pointed out this very fact to you twice in another thread. I pointed out that the high fragment trail does not actually line up with the proposed cowlick entry site because it runs above that site. Remember? Remember when I explained that one of the reasons the forgers moved the rear head entry wound was to try to account for the high fragment trail (because otherwise the trail suggests a frontal shot)? Remember?
And no trail at all is to be found in the frontal X-Ray.
You seem to enjoy making irrelevant observations just to appear as though you know what you're talking about. Nobody has said there is a fragment trail on the AP x-ray. You can't discern a lateral fragment trail on an AP x-ray. There are fragments visible on the AP x-ray, but obviously their lateral spatial relationship cannot be determined from a frontal view.
This leads me to agree with Larry Sturdivan and to conclude that this “trail” is not a trail at all but is simply where some of the small lead fragments got flushed out to, either by the initial explosion, clearly visible in Zapruder frame 313, or by blood, either in the first few seconds or after the large transfusions at Parkland. If this is a trail, I don’t know why it is not also visible in the frontal X-Ray.
LOL! Sturdivan is out to lunch on this issue, but you just blindly follow him because you don't know enough to realize how absurd his argument is. Every forensic expert and radiologist who has examined the lateral x-rays has noted the high fragment trail. All members of the HSCA FPP, along with all of the panel's outside consultants, noted the fragment trail. So did the Clark Panel. So did the Rockefeller Commission's medical panel. So have Dr. Mantik, Dr. Aguilar, Dr. Robertson, Dr. Chessar, and Dr. Riley. Heck, even your good ole Dr. Lattimer noted it.
And, leaving aside Sturdivan's horrible x-ray reading, what does any of this have to do with the fact that the autopsy doctors described a low fragment trail that began at the EOP site and went to a point just above the right eye, and that this fragment trail does not appear on the extant x-rays? Sturdivan ducks this issue, and you are still ducking it.
On page 193, of Larry Sturdivan’s “JFK Myths”:
This failure of the side X-Ray to show a “6.5 mm disk” and the failure of the frontal X-Ray to show a “trail of small lead fragments”, indicates that this “object” and “trail” are both bogus. If real, they should appear in both X-rays.
More embarrassing, raw ignorance. As mentioned, and as should be obvious to anyone with a brain, you're not going to see a lateral-view fragment trail on an AP x-ray. The only fragment trail an AP x-ray will show is a trail that runs between the left and right sides of the skull. But nobody is talking about any such trail. No one has ever said a word about a side-to-side trail. We're talking about the high fragment trail on the lateral x-rays, the trail that everybody but Sturdivan can see.
No, these are not odd arguments. These are reasonable arguments. It would be expected that a forger would plant something that looked like a real bullet fragment.
The Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission’s medical panel, even Dr. John Lattimer, were not ballistic experts. So, it would seem reasonable that forgers would plant an object that could be mistaken for a bullet fragment, not just by a non-ballistic expert, but by a true ballistic expert as well.
Gosh, this is a dumb dodge. As I have pointed out to you before, ballistics experts are not trained in radiology. They are not forensic pathologists or radiologists and do not receive extensive training on how to read x-rays. When ballistics experts want information from an x-ray, they usually consult a radiologist or a pathologist.
The 6.5 mm object fooled three federal medical panels, with over a dozen forensic pathologists and four radiologists, into believing it was a bullet fragment.
This error was only corrected in the 1990s when Dr. David Mantik came along and performed OD measurements on the object and determined its actual location. Luckily for the sake of fact about the medical evidence, Dr. Mantik happens to be both a radiation oncologist and a physicist, so he knew that OD measurements could provide crucial information about the 6.5 mm object.
I notice you made no effort to explain Sturdivan's failure to address the other back-of-head fragment identified by Dr. McDonnel and confirmed by several other medical doctors with training in radiology, including Dr. Mantik. Sturdivan surely knew about the fragment when he wrote his book. Why did he say nothing about it? We both know why.
Page 147 is the start of the “No Signs of Distress” chapter, talking about the wound caused by the bullet at z222, not the bullet at z312, that struck the head.
I believe you meant to refer to page 164:
No, the quote comes from page 147. Go back and check it. It's right there. I'm looking at it right now.
Here, I think Larry Sturdivan is in error. The motion is not too soon to be a neuromuscular response. The bullet struck about z312.6. The backwards motion could have started by around z313.8. This would give a 65-millisecond gap of time between when the bullet struck and the backward movement started. Clearly, not too soon, because in Larry Sturdivan’s own testimony he says the goat that was shot through the brain in 1948 in the U. S. Army test started to react after 40 milliseconds from being struck by the bullet.
The goat film nonsense again?! Seriously?! Shall I repeat the self-evident fact that Kennedy was not a goat, and that Kennedy's reaction looks nothing like the goat's reaction? This has been pointed out to you several times, but you just keep ignoring this self-evident fact and keep repeating this silly goop.
I believe that Larry Sturdivan allowed himself to be too influenced by Dr. Ken Rahn, an intelligent scientist, but who was mistaken about the “Jet Effect”. The truth is that backward movement is not too soon to be caused by a neuromuscular response, and is too late to be caused by the “Jet Effect”.
Page 147? Again, I think the “Poor Scholarship on Display” is from you, not from Larry Sturdivan.
Wrong again. The quote I gave is from page 147. So the poor scholarship here is yours, yet again.
Anyway, so even when your favorite ballistics expert says the motion is too soon to be a neuro response, you refuse to believe it. The only "evidence" you have to the contrary is the irrelevant goat film. I repeat: JFK was not a goat. Really, you can Google it.
Really?
I don’t see a hole. I don’t even see a chip. If there is a chip missing, it is pretty small.
You don't see lots of things, or at least claim you don't, and that's the problem. I mean, I can't force you to admit that you can see what is plainly visible. It is interesting to note, again, that the DMN editors described the curb defect as a "chip," "scar," and "hole." Why do you suppose they could see it but you can't?
But Sturdivan is right. A WCC/MC bullet fired into pinewood; the bullet is undamaged. A WCC/MC bullet fired into hardwood; the bullet is still undamaged. But a WCC/MC bullet fired into a barrel full of soft cotton, and the bullet is fragmented. An odd result, to be certain, but that is what happens. And Larry Sturdivan’s explanation makes sense. It is the density of a material, that a bullet strikes, that determines whether it will fragment or not. Pine wood is no compressible, at least by a bullet. Nor is hardwood. And cotton ordinarily has a very low density. But it can be compressed. So, a WCC/MC bullet can, momentarily, compress it to the point that it has a high density. High enough to fragment the bullet.
LOL! I'm not even going to waste time dealing with such nonsense, except to say that nobody said that a bullet fired into a barrel of cotton wadding "fragmented."
In any case, I never heard of a ballistic expert who disputes this result. Or disputes Larry Sturdivan’s explanation for it. And neither has Mr. Griffith.
Oh, you've never heard a ballistics experts dispute Sturdivan's claim! Well, that settles it then! But, uh, how many ballistics experts do you know who have even read Sturdivan's book? And how about ballistics experts Dr. Joseph Dolce and Dr. Roger McCarthy? I've pointed out to you in other threads that they both rejected the single-bullet theory (SBT); they both said it was impossible.
You don't want to talk about forensic pathologists, because a whole bunch of them have said the SBT is impossible.
You go find me one ballistics expert who will agree that an FMJ bullet fired into a barrel full of cotton wadding is going to fragment. Find me just one. Better yet, find me just one who will say he has seen or heard of an FMJ bullet hitting a skull and exploding into dozens of fragments, depositing two fragments on the rear outer table of the skull, and still ejecting its nose and tail from the skull. I've asked you to do this several times before, but you just keep ignoring the request. I'll save you some time: you will never find a ballistics expert who will agree with the above claims because the claims are ridiculous.
Larry Sturdivan does not claim that autopsy photo f8 was taken from the front. He says, on page 203 (not page 175):
I think Mr. Griffith is getting confused with his belief that the head shot came from the front, and Mr. Sturdivan’s belief that the head shot came from the rear. So, when Mr. Sturdivan is talking about a photo of the hypothesized entry wound, he is not talking about a photograph from the front. He is talking about a photograph from the rear.
Wrong again. I am looking right at page 175, right now, and on that page Sturdivan has a copy of F8 superimposed on the same skull that is immediately above it. The skull above it shows the FPP's cowlick entry site projected onto it. The two photos constitute Figure 50 on page 175, and in the caption Sturdivan says the autopsy photo (F8) is superimposed on the skull shown above it.
Now, look at the bottom photo: Sturdivan has F8 oriented so that the back of the head--the large wound--is superimposed onto the front of the skull. He is assuming in this figure that F8 shows a frontal view of the skull. If he's not assuming this, why in the world does he have F8 superimposed on the skull so that the large opening is in the front of the skull?
I notice you said nothing about Sturdivan's nutty theory that the rear-head-shot bullet magically veered sharply rightward and then upward after supposedly entering the skull at a substantial downward angle (15 degrees). Sturdivan is forced to resort to such nonsense because the EOP site poses an impossible vertical trajectory problem for a shot from the sixth-floor window--unless you assume that JFK was leaning forward by about 60 degrees, which nobody claims. So his only choice, since he won't admit that the shot came from a lower window in another building, is to assume the bullet magically made a sharp right turn and then veered upward to exit at the autopsy report's exit wound. Brain tissue does not cause bullets, especially FMJ bullets, to veer so drastically.
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Such condescension. And from a Southern gentleman :-[
The trail is probably "high" because the "cowlick" wound is correct. Sturdivan supports an EOP entry wound resulting in deflection of the bullet path upward.
How can the trail be "low" if the autopsy report describes damage so high:
- "a large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on
the right involving chiefly the parietal bone" - "the anterior parietal margin"
- "the right cerebral hemisphere ... the falx cerebri
is extensively lacerated - "the large defect at the vertex"
- "the disrupted right cerebral cortex"
- "exit through the parietal bone on the right"
- "laceration of the superior saggital sinus, and
of the right cerebral hemisphere"
The right parietal lobe at the "low" level is merely out-folded. The portion of the parietal lobe where matter is missing is higher up.
You really should avoid discussions where the subject matter is clearly way over your head. And you are once again repeating arguments that have been debunked in this very forum. Just a few points:
* No, the cowlick entry point is not correct. In fact, it has been soundly debunked. It was debunked back in the 1990s. But, as usual, you seem to be stuck in a time warp and seem to think we're still in the 1980s.
* The ARRB medical experts all agreed that the x-rays show no entry point in the cowlick. A long list of private experts have confirmed this.
* We now know that two of the HSCA FPP's consultants raised concerns about the cowlick entry point, but Baden ignored their observations.
* The autopsy fragment trail is the low trail of the two trails. A trail that starts slightly above the EOP can certainly be called "low" on the skull anyway.
* The other fragment trail, the one now seen on the extant x-rays, is near the top of the head and is above the debunked cowlick entry site. But the autopsy report describes no such fragment trail.
* The autopsy report says there was a fragment trail that ran from the EOP entry site to a point just above the right eye. No such trail is seen on the extant x-rays.
* As for the brain diagram, again, you are decades behind the information curve. The brain drawing is irrelevant. Dare yourself to read critical research written after 1980:
http://assassinationofjfk.net/most-jfk-medical-evidence-would-not-be-admissible-at-trial-doug-horne/
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=43602
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/10018-doug-horne%E2%80%99s-response-to-the-attacks-on-his-work-in-bugliosi%E2%80%99s-new-book-%E2%80%9Creclaiming-history%E2%80%9D/?tab=comments#comment-103104[/size]
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Phew! You guys were willing to accept the acoustics "research" of a drummer, Steve Barber, who got his copy of the dictabelt recording from an insert in a porn magazine! Yeah, you didn't mind taking input from a non-acoustics expert in that instance!
Now, it just so happened that Barber was correct: there is crosstalk on the dictabelt. This just goes to show that you do not necessarily have to be an acoustics expert, or even a scientist of any kind, to make a valid observation about a scientific issue.
Yes. It turned out Steve Barber was correct. Which is the bottom line. Not the degrees he has versus the degrees held by the acoustic experts and Dr. Thomas. It is who is correct.
The is no explanation as to why these ‘superior’ acoustic experts did not discover this crosstalk before Steve Barber did. They had access to superior quality recordings than Steve did, but it was Steve who discovered it.
The ‘two channels were offset by a minute’ explanation by Dr. Thomas makes no sense to me. If it was true, we should hear phrases like “Hold everything secure” and then a minute later, the same phrase repeated again. Why does this never happen if the two channels can be offset by a minute? If there is such an offset, and crosstalk occurs, wouldn’t we be hearing the same phrase repeated twice?
I'm guessing you don't know that Weiss and Aschkenasy were two of the premier acoustical experts in the world at the time, and that the HSCA chose the firm Bolt-Beranek-Newman (BBN) to do the initial acoustical analysis because it was internationally recognized as a scientific research firm and had experience with doing acoustical analysis for the UN.
But you simply wave aside the fact that all of the HSCA acoustical experts--the four BBN scientists and Weiss and Aschkenasy--said they did not agree with the NAS NRC panel's arguments and that they still stood by their findings.
Yes. The original acoustic experts, who may simply be too embarrassed to admit error, still say they stand behind there work. But where are the other acoustic experts, not insect experts, who rally to their defense and say, yes, they were right and they are still right?
No kidding! I pointed out this very fact to you twice in another thread. I pointed out that the high fragment trail does not actually line up with the proposed cowlick entry site because it runs above that site. Remember? Remember when I explained that one of the reasons the forgers moved the rear head entry wound was to try to account for the high fragment trail (because otherwise the trail suggests a frontal shot)? Remember?
Curiously I have not committed all your previous posts to my memory.
You seem to enjoy making irrelevant observations just to appear as though you know what you're talking about. Nobody has said there is a fragment trail on the AP x-ray. You can't discern a lateral fragment trail on an AP x-ray. There are fragments visible on the AP x-ray, but obviously their lateral spatial relationship cannot be determined from a frontal view.
This “trail”, if it is a trail, should show up in both the frontal and the side X-Ray. In the side X-Ray as a long line of fragments. And in the frontal X-Ray as a short line of fragments. But we don’t see that in the frontal X-Ray. Which leaves me to believe that there was to linear arrangement of the fragments in 3-D space. It’s just that the fragments were blasted, or moved by blood, upward from their original position, so there is no linear arrangement of them in 3-D space.
The goat film nonsense again?! Seriously?! Shall I repeat the self-evident fact that Kennedy was not a goat, and that Kennedy's reaction looks nothing like the goat's reaction? This has been pointed out to you several times, but you just keep ignoring this self-evident fact and keep repeating this silly goop.
The goat film is the best evidence we have. We don’t have 10 films of goats being shot in the head and 10 films of humans being shot in the head. If we had, and it was discovered that goats always start moving 40 milliseconds after the bullet strikes and humans 200 milliseconds after the bullet strikes, then I would say that it appears, for some strange reason, humans react 5 times more slowly than goats. I don’t know why this would be but the evidence shows this to be true. I would then conclude that the backward movement could not be caused by the neuromuscular reaction.
But we don’t have this. We can’t run this experiment on humans. If we had such a film, we could not show it. The JFK assassination, for some strange reason, is the lone exception. So, we have to do the best we can. We are allowed to shoot goats in the head and show film of this, so this is the best way, available to us today, to determine in a neuromuscular reaction could start in one Zapruder frame. So, unless human values change drastically for the worst, the goat film, or films of other animals being shot in the head, is the best experiment we will be allowed to run. And our conclusions of how fast a neuromuscular reaction can occur has to be based on these experiments.
No, the quote comes from page 147. Go back and check it. It's right there. I'm looking at it right now.
Well, it appears you have a different copy of Larry Sturdivan’s “The JFK Myths” then I have. While you say you see the section in question right on page 147, that is not where I see it on my copy. That seems rather curious. I thought all these books were paperbacks that were identical. I guess there were two different print runs. In the future, I will not only show the page number, along with the figure and table number, along with the name of the chapter, like “Chapter 8 – The Laws of Physics Vacated”. This will make it easier for people to find the section I am referring to. I suggest you do the same.
Oh, you've never heard a ballistics experts dispute Sturdivan's claim! Well, that settles it then! But, uh, how many ballistics experts do you know who have even read Sturdivan's book? And how about ballistics experts Dr. Joseph Dolce and Dr. Roger McCarthy? I've pointed out to you in other threads that they both rejected the single-bullet theory (SBT); they both said it was impossible.
Dr. Joseph Dolce was a ballistic expert? He was a medical doctor. A consultant with Edgewood Arsenal. So, he did consult with ballistic experts, but was not one himself. He did not study the what could happen to bullets when they struck humans. He studied what would happen to humans. He objected to the Single Bullet Theory because he did not think that CE 399 would cause the wounds to JFK and Connally and still end up only moderately deformed. He should have stuck to his field of expertise, on the expected effects on humans and not the expected effects on bullets.
Plus, I don’t know if he gave an opinion on the X-Ray of the “fragment trail” in the side X-Ray.
So, try again. Give me the name of a valid ballistic expert who disagrees with Larry Sturdivan.
I notice you said nothing about Sturdivan's nutty theory that the rear-head-shot bullet magically veered sharply rightward and then upward after supposedly entering the skull at a substantial downward angle (15 degrees). Sturdivan is forced to resort to such nonsense because the EOP site poses an impossible vertical trajectory problem for a shot from the sixth-floor window--unless you assume that JFK was leaning forward by about 60 degrees, which nobody claims. So, his only choice, since he won't admit that the shot came from a lower window in another building, is to assume the bullet magically made a sharp right turn and then veered upward to exit at the autopsy report's exit wound. Brain tissue does not cause bullets, especially FMJ bullets, to veer so drastically.
Ballistic tests with ballistic gel show that bullets, while fragmenting, the veer, in an unpredictable direction, while traveling through ballistic gel. This is not a nutty theory, this is not a theory he is forced to resort to, but a well-established fact, maybe not known to medical doctors, even those heavily involved with forensics, but is well known to true ballistic experts who make these observations.
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By the way, I should mention that not one of the scientists on the NAS NRC panel was an acoustics expert. Gary Cornwell, the former deputy chief counsel for the HSCA, pointed this out in his book Real Answers. He had quite a bit to say about the NAS NRC attacks on the acoustical evidence:
The findings of Bolt, Beranek and Newman--like almost everything in the Kennedy case--have subsequently been questioned by the FBI, and by a panel assembled by the National Research Council (whose members are drawn from the Councils of the National Academy of Sciences. . . .). According to a "Notice" on the first page of the NRC report, the committee that studied the BBN findings "was chosen for their special competence and with regard for appropriate balance"--not because they were acoustics experts, which they were not.
I personally found it interesting not only that the NRC found that it had conclusively disproved the Select Committee's acoustical report and that there was no need for further study, but also that—remarkably, and just as with the findings of the Warren Commission--there was not a single dissent among any of the panel's members. (It may or may not also be relevant that, among the most vocal of the panel's members was a scientist who, before joining the panel and reviewing the acoustical study in detail, had taken strong positions in support of the Warren Commission's findings. . . .)
The NRC's principal rationale for rejecting the findings of Bolt, Beranek and Mark Weiss was that the Channel I tape contained "cross-talk" from Channel II that indicated that the portion of the Channel I tape containing the four impulse patterns identified as gunfire occurred at least 30 seconds after the actual assassination. The NRC offered possible (plausible) explanations as to various ways that such cross-talk could have gotten onto Channel I, including that the stuck microphone on Channel I was positioned near another microphone that was monitoring Channel II, and that the words being transmitted over Channel II were picked up (very faintly) by the stuck Channel I microphone, and transmitted and recorded on the Channel I Dictabelt in the police station. Subsequent re-recording is another possible explanation. The NRC in the end was not able to definitely state the cause. Nor were they able to verify that the Channel I tape they analyzed was the original DPD tape, and thus could not say for sure that the cross-talk had been recorded on November 22, 1963. Finally, subsequent private analysis as well as further review by Dr. Barger has revealed that the NRC's tests appear to have been conducted with the tapes being run at an improper speed, thus invalidating their calculations of when the impulse patterns at issue actually did occur in relation to the assassination.
And the NRC essentially ignored, and never did explain how, if these impulse patterns were not gunfire, their timing, sequencing, and qualitative characteristics were so extensively corroborated by the other physical and scientific evidence in the case. Was all of the meshing of such evidence simply a coincidence? . . . Several witnesses testified that one shot came from the grassy knoll, just as the acoustics indicated. Just a coincidence? The shock waves and windshield distortions were present on the shots where they should have been, and absent on the others. One more coincidence? Since the NRC described their findings as conclusive and not subject to question, one must wonder why the NRC ignored all of this evidence that corroborated the Barger and Weiss findings, but is totally inconsistent with the NRC findings that these impulses are not the actual sounds of gunfire. One might also wonder why the NRC never addressed, never discussed, and never attempted to explain other "cross talk" on the Channel I tape that is totally inconsistent with the NCR conclusion that impulse patterns evidencing four shots occurred 30 seconds after the actual assassination. (Real Answers: The True Story Told by Gary Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, in Charge of the Investigation of the John F. Kennedy Assassination, 1998, pp. 112-114)
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The “Hold Everything Secure” phrase, which was said about a minute after the assassination, and the “four impulse patterns” occur at about the same time. Dr. Donald Thomas explained this away by saying the two channels could drift apart from each other by a minute.
If this is true, there must be other cases where two events, that happened at about the same time, appear to occur a minute apart on the recording.
Is there a single clear case of this happening on this Dictabelt tape? Is there a case, where we know two phrases were actually spoken about a minute apart, but appear to occur at about the same time on the recording? Or are there no other examples of something like this occurring, except with the “Hold Everything Secure” and the “four impulse patterns”.
If this is the only known example, what fantastic luck that this is the only case of this “Offset” phenomenon happening.
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By the way, I should mention that not one of the scientists on the NAS NRC panel was an acoustics expert.
But that doesn’t prevent other scientists, who really are acoustic experts, and had no involvement with the original HSCA report, from stepping up and saying that they think the HSCA had it right about the four shots. But so far, the only scientists who do this are insect experts.
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One of the best responses to the NAS-NRC panel (aka the Ramsey Panel) was written years ago by W. Anthony Marsh, a computer programmer and a long-time JFK assassination researcher. Titled "Rebuttal to Ramsey," Marsh's response answers every argument raised by the NAS-NRC panel and points out several of the panel's serious errors. Here's the URL to Marsh's rebuttal:
https://the-puzzle-palace.com/rebuttal.htm
And here are some excerpts from Marsh's article:
The NAS committee worked in total secrecy without dialogue with critics. I had written to them on December 1, 1980 suggesting several solutions and points that had to be addressed. Not only did they ignore them, they didn't even acknowledge my letter. Phone calls went unanswered. If this treatment was typical, it shows a bias that is unmistakable. Many of their glaringly obvious errors could have been avoided simply by accepting help from outside researchers. . . .
However, the most important error to me was that Bowles left out and Ramsey did not correctly include a message which I feel is the most important on the tape. In my letter of Dec. 1, 1980, I pointed out that there was a transmission on the ch. 1 tape which proves that it was McLain's cycle with the open mike. About two minutes after the shots, a fellow officer yells to the cyclist with the open mike, "Take off, Buddy.", whereupon the cyclist turns on his siren and speeds off to catch up with the motorcade. I did not expect Bowles to include that, given the fact that the DPD has been a leader in anti-conspiracy propaganda and many of its officers have destroyed or manufactured evidence over the years. Yet, Bowles does include a highly doubtful identification of the message, "hold everything", which confirms the NAS thesis of a cross-talk, when that message is not at all clear. In his report, Ramsey ignored the message completely. A simple examination of the tape at that point would have shown that the voice was speaking directly into the open mike, confirmed by the lack of a heterodyne, which results from interference, and that the siren was on the open mike, confirmed by the presence of an interference arc. H.B. McLain was the only DPD cyclist named Buddy in the motorcade. . . .
Ramsey's major thesis rests on the conclusion that Curry's message, "Go to the hospital," occurred before the purported shots. On this basis he concluded that there was no reason to look for shots. It's ironic that the NAS panel was called a "Committee on Ballistic Acoustics" when they didn't perform one such test or deal with the topic. They went to great lengths of propaganda to just avoid having to do any ballistic acoustics. . . .
As I pointed out previously, Ramsey failed to deduct time for 2 repeats on ch. 2, amounting to app. 6.8 seconds. Further he based the timing on tapes which he and the government have kept secret. My Canadian tapes show marked differences. The timing between ch. 1 and ch. 2 can be compared by identifying any messages broadcast simultaneously over both channels. Ramsey spent a great deal of effort and money trying to do this for uncertain messages, but ignored an obvious one, Henslee's simultaneous broadcast to all emergency equipment. This one is unmistakable, well documented in transcripts, and needs no elaborate tests to confirm. Comparing ch. 1 to ch. 2 based on that message as the benchmark and making the necessary adjustments for known factors produces the following results: Henslee's ch. 2 message at 324.5 minus Curry's at 32.7 = 291.8 secs. between messages. Deducting 31.1 secs. for the 8 repeats = 260.7 secs. corrected. Two corrections must be made for ch. 1. First, 6 secs. representing a break in recording must be deducted from the 432.5 yielding 426.5. Then the time must be corrected by .99 for the difference in recording speeds (confirmed by a comparison of the frequencies of Henslee's voice during
the simulcast), yielding 422.2. The grassy knoll shot at 143.2 corrected by .99 yields 141.8. Then 422.2-141.8 = 280.4. Then comparing the corrected times, 260.7-280.4 = -19.7. This would tend to confirm that Curry's message came almost 20 seconds after the shots, rather than a minute before as Ramsey has concluded. . . .
Ramsey tried to pad the earlier part of ch. 2 with supposed silences. One of the criteria he used in establishing the existence of the silences was that the strip charts showed periods where the signal stayed below his arbitrarily imposed threshold of 10 decibels below peak voltage for more than 4 seconds. He based that on the word of DPD Capt. Bowles, with no hard evidence. But even granting the possibility that there were hold relays of approximately 4 seconds, there is no firm evidence about the threshold at which they operated or that in fact that they were operating properly on Nov. 22, 1963. Moreover, the fact that repeat 5 has a period of duration less that the estimated hold duration and the fact that its decibel level was much lower than the estimated hold threshold would suggest that such mistracking could be mistaken for a silence. Thus it is possible that none of the silences identified by Ramsey were in fact silences. Further, it seems that the signal in every supposed silence remains higher than at repeat 5. Ramsey then goes on to arbitrarily add 46 seconds to ch. 2 to account for his silences, justified by the specious argument that perhaps ch. 2 wasn't used much at that time. This can easily be refuted by pointing to the fact that many officers were trying and unable to use ch. I and switched to ch. 2 to report that fact, get orders, or try to find out what was happening. Also, BBN's study showed that ch. 2 was running "nearly continuously" during that time.
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One of the best responses to the NAS-NRC panel (aka the Ramsey Panel) was written years ago by W. Anthony Marsh, a computer programmer and a long-time JFK assassination researcher. Titled "Rebuttal to Ramsey," Marsh's response answers every argument raised by the NAS-NRC panel and points out several of the panel's serious errors. Here's the URL to Marsh's rebuttal:
https://the-puzzle-palace.com/rebuttal.htm
And here are some excerpts from Marsh's article:
We old posters here at this forum all know Anthony Marsh. Anthony Marsh was not an acoustic expert. He wasn’t a scientist. Heck, he wasn’t even an insect expert. As I understand it, Dr. Thomas, and the 1978 HSCA acoustic experts, accept that the 4 “gunshots” were recorded out of order, about a minute after they really occurred. They now all accept Steve Barber’s observation that they were recorded one minute too late. They explain this by claiming the “gunshots” were somehow recorded out of order.
Do any of these “experts” accept Marsh’s hypothesis that they really weren’t?
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We old posters here at this forum all know Anthony Marsh. Anthony Marsh was not an acoustic expert. He wasn’t a scientist. Heck, he wasn’t even an insect expert. As I understand it, Dr. Thomas, and the 1978 HSCA acoustic experts, accept that the 4 “gunshots” were recorded out of order, about a minute after they really occurred. They now all accept Steve Barber’s observation that they were recorded one minute too late. They explain this by claiming the “gunshots” were somehow recorded out of order.
Do any of these “experts” accept Marsh’s hypothesis that they really weren’t?
Can you explain what Marsh got wrong?
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We old posters here at this forum all know Anthony Marsh. Anthony Marsh was not an acoustic expert. He wasn’t a scientist. Heck, he wasn’t even an insect expert.
More of your dishonest strawman arguments to avoid dealing with the fact that every single acoustical expert who has analyzed the dictabelt has concluded it contains at least four gunshot impulses on it.
It's interesting to see you belittle an entomologist whose acoustical research was favorably reviewed by Dr. James Barger, a recognized and leading acoustical expert, and was published in a peer-reviewed criminal science journal, yet you guys continue to peddle the attacks on the acoustical evidence offered by the NRC panel, which did not include a single acoustical experts, and by Dale Myers, who has no scientific training whatsoever.
By the way, one member of the NRC panel was a diehard WC apologist, Luis Alvarez, who was later caught rigging his ballistics tests and misrepresenting the results.
As I understand it, Dr. Thomas, and the 1978 HSCA acoustic experts, accept that the 4 “gunshots” were recorded out of order, about a minute after they really occurred. They now all accept Steve Barber’s observation that they were recorded one minute too late. They explain this by claiming the “gunshots” were somehow recorded out of order. Do any of these “experts” accept Marsh’s hypothesis that they really weren’t?
Once again you're fishing and stumbling because you haven't bothered to read the necessary research. Just the way you frame the issue here shows you don't understand the basics about the acoustical evidence. You didn't even address Marsh's points about the outright, demonstrable errors that the NRC panel made.
And you continue to dance around the core issues of the sound-distance correlations, the sound fingerprints, and the N-wave correlations. Supersonic N-waves do not just magically appear on an audio recording out of thin air. The sound-distance correlations between the dictabelt impulses and the Dealey Plaza test-firing impulses cannot be explained as coincidence--the odds that the two sets of impulses would correlate are astronomically remote, even leaving aside the presence of the N-wave.
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British JFK assassination scholar Martin Hay does a good job of summarizing Dr. Thomas's research on the HSCA acoustical evidence:
Over the past decade, no single researcher has worked as hard as Don Thomas at bringing the acoustics evidence back into the assassination debate and, as would be expected, it is a focal point of Hear No Evil. Many of the details involved in an analysis of the dictabelt recording are highly technical in nature and the average reader will, like myself, find this section of the book a little hard to absorb at times. Thankfully, as he has done in previous papers and lectures, the author shows that the most compelling reason to accept the acoustics is not particularly technical at all. This Thomas refers to as “the order in the data.”
On the day of the assassination, the microphone on a police motorcycle travelling in the Presidential motorcade had become stuck in the “on” position and the sounds had been recorded on a dictabelt machine at Dallas police headquarters. When the dictabelt was brought to the attention of the HSCA in 1978, it asked the top acoustics experts in the country to analyze the recording to see if it had captured the sounds of the assassination gunfire. James Barger and his colleagues at Bolt, Baranek & Newman (BBN) discovered six suspect impulses on the tape that occurred at approximately 12:30 p.m.—the time of the assassination—and reported that on-site testing needed to be conducted at Dealey Plaza. There, microphones were placed along the parade route on Houston and Elm Streets and test shots were fired from the two locations witnesses had reported hearing shots; the Texas School Book Depository and the grassy knoll. BBN found that five of the impulses on the dictabelt were found to acoustically match the echo patterns of test shots fired in Dealey Plaza. One of these, the fourth in sequence, matched to a shot fired from the grassy knoll. As Thomas explains, “the mere fact that the suspect sounds had matched to some of the test shots is not particularly significant. However, the order and spacing of the matching microphone positions followed the same order as the sounds on the police tape.” (p. 583)
If the sounds on the dictabelt were not the assassination gunshots, “a match would be as likely to appear at the first microphone as the last...And if all five happened to match, as these had, they would fall in some random order...But the matches were not random. They fell in the exact same 1-2-3-4-5 topographic order as they appear chronologically on the police recording.” (ibid)
The first impulse matched to a test shot recorded on a microphone on Houston Street near the intersection with Elm.
The second to a microphone 18 ft north on Houston.
The third to a microphone at the intersection.
The fourth to a microphone on Elm.
And the fifth to the next microphone to the west.
On top of all this, the distance from the first matching microphone to the last was 143 feet and the time between the first and last suspect impulse on the tape was 8.3 seconds. In order for the motorcycle with the stuck microphone to cover 143 feet in 8.3 seconds it would need to be travelling at a speed of approximately 11.7 mph which fits almost perfectly with the FBI's conclusion that the Presidential limousine was averaging 11.3 mph on Elm Street. (ibid)
Finally, the gunshots on the dictabelt synchronize perfectly with the visual evidence of the Zapruder film. There are two visible reactions to gunshots on the Zapruder film. One of these occurs at Z-frame 313 with the blatantly obvious explosion of President Kennedy's head. The other occurs between fames 225 and 230 when the Stetson hat in Connally's hand flips up and down, presumably as a result of the missile passing through his wrist. This is preceded at Z-224 by the flipping of Connally's lapel which has been cited by many as pinpointing the exact moment the bullet passed through his chest. When the fourth shot on the dictabelt, the grassy knoll shot, is aligned with Z-frame 313, the third shot falls at precisely Z-224! (p. 604) This perfect synchronization of audio and visual evidence is either one heck of a coincidence or the final proof that the suspect impulses on the dictabelt really are what the HSCA experts claimed there were. Unfortunately, this remarkable concordance was hidden from the public when HSCA chief counsel, Robert Blakey, in a “socially constructive” move, convinced the experts to label the third shot as a “false alarm.” (https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/thomas-donald-byron-hear-no-evil-social-constructivism-and-the-forensic-evidence-in-the-kennedy-assassination-two-reviews-1)
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Yes. It turned out Steve Barber was correct. Which is the bottom line. Not the degrees he has versus the degrees held by the acoustic experts and Dr. Thomas. It is who is correct.
The is no explanation as to why these ‘superior’ acoustic experts did not discover this crosstalk before Steve Barber did. They had access to superior quality recordings than Steve did, but it was Steve who discovered it.
They were focused on the gunshot impulses and the N-waves on the dictabelt, and on comparing them with the gunshot impulses and N-waves from the Dealey Plaza test firings. You still can’t seem to understand the basic point that the crosstalk really means nothing, given the dictabelt’s features and the way it was recorded. Again, supersonic N-waves do not just magically appear on an audio recording unless the recording contains gunfire.
The ‘two channels were offset by a minute’ explanation by Dr. Thomas makes no sense to me. If it was true, we should hear phrases like “Hold everything secure” and then a minute later, the same phrase repeated again. Why does this never happen if the two channels can be offset by a minute? If there is such an offset, and crosstalk occurs, wouldn’t we be hearing the same phrase repeated twice?
Since Dr. Thomas’s explanation of the crosstalk seems to be too technical for you to grasp, let’s try posing these questions, which might help you understand Dr. Thomas’s explanation:
* How did the N-waves get on the dictabelt, if the dictabelt did not record gunfire?
* How could it be that an N-wave appears in each dictabelt gunshot impulse for which the police microphone was in an appropriate position to detect it, including the recorded sound of the grassy knoll shot?
* How could it be that the sound fingerprints on the dictabelt match some of the sound fingerprints from the Dealey Plaza test firings, if the dictabelt did not record gunfire in Dealey Plaza?
* How could it be that the sound-distance data of the identified gunshot impulses on the dictabelt match the sound-distance data of some of the gunshot impulses from the Dealey Plaza test firings, if the dictabelt did not record gunfire in the plaza?
* How could it be that even the windshield distortions are present on the shots when they should be, and absent on the others when they should be, when compared to the Dealey Plaza test firings? Can you fathom the odds that such specific correlations are all just a coincidence?
Yes. The original acoustic experts, who may simply be too embarrassed to admit error, still say they stand behind there work.
Or maybe they still stand by their work because the NRC panel failed to explain the evidence relating to the N-waves, the sound fingerprint correlations, and the sound-distance correlations. Maybe they stand by their work because the NRC panel, not having a single acoustics expert, committed numerous blunders and used specious criteria to discount the gunshot impulses. Maybe they stand by their work because the cold, hard scientific evidence shows that the dictabelt contains at least four gunshot impulses that were recorded in Dealey Plaza during the assassination.
But where are the other acoustic experts, not insect experts, who rally to their defense and say, yes, they were right and they are still right?
Let’s ask a different question: Has a single acoustics expert disputed the BBN and WA acoustical analysis? The answer to that would be NO. Could that be because BBN (now a part of Raytheon) is an internationally recognized acoustics authority with top-notch acoustical scientists? Could that be because Weiss and Aschkenasy were recognized as two of the leading acoustical experts in the world, which is why they were asked to evaluate the BBN findings?
This “trail”, if it is a trail, should show up in both the frontal and the side X-Ray. In the side X-Ray as a long line of fragments. And in the frontal X-Ray as a short line of fragments. But we don’t see that in the frontal X-Ray. Which leaves me to believe that there was to linear arrangement of the fragments in 3-D space. It’s just that the fragments were blasted, or moved by blood, upward from their original position, so there is no linear arrangement of them in 3-D space.
You really should just stop with this nonsense and concede the point. Here we have another case where, obviously, I can’t force you to admit an obvious, universally acknowledged fact.
Every single radiologist, forensic pathologist, and medical doctor who has examined the autopsy skull x-rays has noted the high fragment trail on the lateral x-rays, including everyone from Dr. Lattimer to Dr. Fitzpatrick, the ARRB’s forensic radiologist. If you want to continue to embarrass yourself by standing by Sturdivan’s horrible x-ray reading, no one can stop you from doing so, but in so doing, you will make it clear that you are not credible.
And I notice that you have, once again, ignored the fact that the autopsy doctors described a low fragment trail, that the autopsy doctors said nothing about a fragment trail near the top of the head, and that the low fragment trail described in the autopsy report is nowhere to be seen on the extant x-rays. Let’s be honest: You keep ducking these facts because you have no rational, believable explanation for them. Sturdivan ducks them as well, probably for the same reason.
The goat film is the best evidence we have. We don’t have 10 films of goats being shot in the head and 10 films of humans being shot in the head. If we had, and it was discovered that goats always start moving 40 milliseconds after the bullet strikes and humans 200 milliseconds after the bullet strikes, then I would say that it appears, for some strange reason, humans react 5 times more slowly than goats. I don’t know why this would be. . . .
You don’t know why this would be?! Really? Uh, well, maybe because goats and humans have very different neuro anatomy, because the necks of goats and humans are constructed differently, and because goats are much smaller than humans. Again, if you want to keep embarrassing yourself rather than admit an obvious point, no one can stop you from doing so.
This but the evidence shows this to be true. I would then conclude that the backward movement could not be caused by the neuromuscular reaction.
But we don’t have this. We can’t run this experiment on humans. If we had such a film, we could not show it. The JFK assassination, for some strange reason, is the lone exception. So, we have to do the best we can. We are allowed to shoot goats in the head and show film of this, so this is the best way, available to us today, to determine in a neuromuscular reaction could start in one Zapruder frame. So, unless human values change drastically for the worst, the goat film, or films of other animals being shot in the head, is the best experiment we will be allowed to run. And our conclusions of how fast a neuromuscular reaction can occur has to be based on these experiments.
You just can’t help yourself, can you? I have already given you the facts about the known speeds of human neuromuscular reactions in my thread on the jet-effect and neuro-spasm theories. The reaction time required for a human head and torso to be propelled violently backward is not going to be the same as the reaction time required for two human fingers to grab an object, because obviously a lot more weight, bones, and muscles are involved to move a head and torso.
And I notice that you have, once again, simply ducked the fact that JFK’s reaction is nothing like the goat’s reaction, as many scholars have pointed out, and as I have personally pointed out to you several times.
This Dr. Joseph Dolce was a ballistic expert? He was a medical doctor. A consultant with Edgewood Arsenal. So, he did consult with ballistic experts, but was not one himself. He did not study the what could happen to bullets when they struck humans. He studied what would happen to humans.
This lie again? To repeat what I’ve told you three times now, Dr. Dolce was the chief of the Army’s Wound Ballistics Board. When the Warren Commission (WC) asked the Army to provide their top wound ballistics expert, the Army selected Dr. Dolce. Maybe the Army just didn't know what a wound ballistics expert was, hey?
Before becoming the chief of the Army’s Wound Ballistics Board, Dr. Dolce was a battlefield surgeon in the Pacific, for three years, so, needless to say, he dealt with hundreds of gunshot cases. Dr. Dolce's experience and expertise were so highly regarded that if a VIP or member of Congress were injured, Dr. Dolce was asked to review the case.
He objected to the Single Bullet Theory because he did not think that CE 399 would cause the wounds to JFK and Connally and still end up only moderately deformed. He should have stuck to his field of expertise, on the expected effects on humans and not the expected effects on bullets.
No, but you should stop lying and stick to your field of expertise, whatever that might be. You never even bothered to watch Dolce’s segment in the Reasonable Doubt documentary, did you? If you had gathered up the courage to watch that segment, you would have learned that Dr. Dolce said he based his rejection of the SBT on the WC’s own wound ballistics tests, which he supervised.
Plus, I don’t know if he gave an opinion on the X-Ray of the “fragment trail” in the side X-Ray.
He was never asked about this issue. However, since he was a surgeon before he became a wound ballistics expert, he would have had some training and experience in reading x-rays, so he would have been qualified to render a credible opinion on the matter. (By the early 1900s, doctors routinely used x-rays as a diagnostic tool.)
So, try again. Give me the name of a valid ballistic expert who disagrees with Larry Sturdivan.
I already gave you the names of two ballistics experts who disagree with Larry Sturdivan: Dr. Dolce and Dr. Roger McCarthy. Plus, I reject your silly attempt to limit the experts to ballistics experts. You don’t want to expand the fields of expertise into forensics and radiology. We both know why.
I’ll try again to get you to tell me the name of a ballistics expert or forensic pathologist who has ever heard of an FMJ bullet striking a skull and exploding into dozens of fragments, leaving two fragments on the rear outer table of the skull below the entry point, and still ejecting its nose and tail from the skull.
Ballistic tests with ballistic gel show that bullets, while fragmenting, the veer, in an unpredictable direction, while traveling through ballistic gel. This is not a nutty theory, this is not a theory he is forced to resort to, but a well-established fact, maybe not known to medical doctors, even those heavily involved with forensics, but is well known to true ballistic experts who make these observations.
So you are doubling down on this stupid theory. Wow. Just wow.
Yes, it is a nutty theory because neither brain tissue nor ballistics gel can cause a bullet to veer to the drastic degree that Sturdivan theorizes. Sturdivan knows he cannot cite a single ballistics test where a bullet fired into gelatin veered so drastically horizontally and then veered upward in the space of 3-5 inches of gel. That is total hogwash. It is nutty nonsense. Bullets do veer in soft tissue and in ballistics gel, but not to that degree, not even close, and Sturdivan surely knows it.
Sturdivan also knows, or should know, that none of the bullets fired into the gelatin-filled skulls in the WC’s ballistics tests veered so drastically. Not one of them performed this magical feat. None of them did so because bullets do not veer that markedly in brain tissue or in ballistics gel or in any other soft-tissue-like substance.
You should contact some ballistics experts and ask them if they have ever seen a bullet veer so drastically in the space of 3-5 inches while transiting a gelatin block. In fact, when you ask them about this, show them Sturdivan’s diagram to ensure they understand just how sharp of a turn and an upward veer we’re talking about.
Here, again, I can’t compel you to abandon another ridiculous theory. No one can stop you from continuing to claim that a bullet entering a skull just above the EOP at a 15-degree downward angle could suddenly make a sharp right turn in brain tissue and then veer upward, all in the space of a few inches, and could even do this while supposedly exploding into dozens of fragments and somehow depositing fragments near the top of the head, several inches above the EOP. I find it hard to believe that deep down you really believe such a ludicrous theory. But, if you do, this is another indication that you are not to be taken seriously.
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Quote from: Joe Elliott on September 09, 2020, 10:41:10 PM
We old posters here at this forum all know Anthony Marsh. Anthony Marsh was not an acoustic expert. He wasn’t a scientist. Heck, he wasn’t even an insect expert. As I understand it, Dr. Thomas, and the 1978 HSCA acoustic experts, accept that the 4 “gunshots” were recorded out of order, about a minute after they really occurred. They now all accept Steve Barber’s observation that they were recorded one minute too late. They explain this by claiming the “gunshots” were somehow recorded out of order.
Do any of these “experts” accept Marsh’s hypothesis that they really weren’t?
Can you explain what Marsh got wrong?
No, he can't explain what Marsh got wrong because he does not even understand the basic facts about the HSCA's acoustical evidence. He only knows what he's read in articles that attack the acoustical evidence. He doesn't even seem to have read the NAS-NRC-Ramsey report.
I don't know where in the world he gets his claim that the HSCA acoustical experts and Dr. Thomas believe that the gunshots were "somehow recorded out of order." That is the exact opposite of what they have said. But Elliott doesn't know this because he relies on pro-WC websites such as McAdams' propaganda site. If he had bothered to read any of the links I've provided, much less Dr. Thomas's book, he would have learned that one of the evidences of the gunshot impulses is that they match the Dealey Plaza test shots in the correct order, would could not happen if the matches were invalid.
After numerous replies, he still has not explained the several lines of evidence of gunfire on the dictabelt. He has not explained this evidence because the pro-WC sources that he's using don't explain it either. O'Dell doesn't explain it. The FBI attack did not explain it. And the NAS-NRC-Ramsey panel did not explain it. They don't even mention some of the evidence, such as the fact that BBN proved that the gunshot echo patterns have the amplitude, duration, and number of impulses typical of gunfire. So he just keeps going round and round about the crosstalk.
Anyone who would reject the acoustical evidence must explain the powerful correlations between the dictabelt and the Dealey Plaza test firings regarding the timing and nature of the echo patterns (e.g., they have the amplitude, duration, and impulses typical of gunfire), the appearance of the N-waves and the fact that they occur at the correct time (milliseconds before their succeeding sound impulse), the speed of the microphone's movement, and the windshield distortions that occur and do not occur exactly as they should for gunfire recorded in Dealey Plaza.
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As I understand it, Dr. Thomas, and the 1978 HSCA acoustic experts, accept that the 4 “gunshots” were recorded out of order, about a minute after they really occurred.r.
This does not help the acoustics evidence. You can't just change evidence and say it was recorded out of order.
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As I understand it, Dr. Thomas, and the 1978 HSCA acoustic experts, accept that the 4 “gunshots” were recorded out of order, about a minute after they really occurred.
This does not help the acoustics evidence. You can't just change evidence and say it was recorded out of order.
I agree. It is my belief that the alleged gunshots occurring on the tape at about the same time as the phrase “Hold everything secure” means the “gunshots” occur too late, about a minute too late, to have been real gunshots. I was just pointing out that Dr. Thomas believed that somehow, the phrase “Hold everything secure” was recorded on the wrong place. I disagree with Dr. Thomas’s claim which is, at best, unproven.
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I agree. It is my belief that the alleged gunshots occurring on the tape at about the same time as the phrase “Hold everything secure” means the “gunshots” occur too late, about a minute too late, to have been real gunshots. I was just pointing out that Dr. Thomas believed that somehow, the phrase “Hold everything secure” was recorded on the wrong place. I disagree with Dr. Thomas’s claim which is, at best, unproven.
Actually, Dr. Thomas's claim fits the evidence far better than the claim that the gunshot patterns appear between 30 and 90 seconds after the shooting. Read and learn, just this once:
The NRC’s conclusion that the acoustical evidence was invalid, is based on the assertion that the sounds identified as gunfire were not synchronous with the time of the shooting. On the day that Kennedy was assassinated, the Dallas police were using two radio channels. Ch-1 was used for routine police communications. An auxiliary frequency, Ch-2 was used for special events, in this case, for the police escort of the president’s motorcade. Events on the separate channels can be synchronized because there are simulcasts, that is, broadcasts that are common to both channels. One is a deliberate simulcast by the dispatcher which begins with the phrase, “Attention all emergency vehicles…”. The dispatcher had a switch on his console that allowed him to make simulcasts. But most of the simulcasts were accidental due to a phenomenon called crosstalk. Basically, if two police units are close together, but tuned to opposite channels, and one opens a microphone, it can capture broadcasts from one channel and instantly simulcast them over the other. This happened four times just during the 5-1/2 min sequence when the motorcycle microphone was open.
The NRC panel’s synchronization was based on the juxtaposition of the suspect gunfire to one of the simulcasts, a crosstalk of a broadcast on Ch-2 by Sheriff Decker about a minute after the assassination, ordering his men to go to the grassy knoll area and, “Hold everything secure.” The same broadcast occurs on Ch-1 at the end of the sequence of sounds identified as the gunshots. The NRC panel concluded that the juxtaposition of the sounds to a broadcast a full minute after the shooting was proof that the sounds, whatever they are, cannot be the assassination gunfire. The NRC redux (Linsker et al., 2006) repeats this assertion. The problem, as I pointed out in my 2001 paper, is that it depends on which instance of crosstalk one chooses as the tie point between the channels. A deliberate error of omission on the part of the NRC and the NRC redux was the failure to consider the fact that there are five instances of crosstalk and that in every single instance, the time between them is different on the two channels (Table 3).
Very simply, the data in this table proves that playback time on these recordings is not real time. One of the problems is the sound actuation function which stopped the recorders during dead air. In theory, this should not have been a problem on Ch-1 because the constant motorcycle noise would have kept the recorder running. But this was clearly not the only problem. Consider the 3 sec displacement between the two consecutive simulcasts from Sergeant Bellah who was searching for the motorcycle with the stuck microphone. If this discrepancy had been caused by recorder stoppage, then there should be four sec of dead air between the two broadcasts, but there isn’t. But inasmuch as the rotation time of the audograph disc is around 3 sec, the simplest explanation is that the stylus skipped a groove at this point. Because both recorders were stylus in groove arrangements, they were prone to displacements, a problem which is very obvious on Ch-2 which is studded with repeats. Moreover, if it is true that the recordings are not the originals, but only copies, then the possibilities of artifacts causing offsets in time multiplies. Regardless of what has caused the time offsets documented in Table 3, the fact is that the juxtaposition of events to the crosstalks is not a reliable indicator of synchronization, or lack thereof, because even the crosstalks themselves do not synchronize with one another. Neither NRC report reveals, let alone deals, with the data in Table 3, because it directly contravenes the basis for their position.
It should be obvious however, that whatever phenomena is imposing the time offsets on the recordings, that the amount and likelihood of an imposition of a time offset between any particular recorded event and a corresponding crosstalk will be the amount of time between them. The farther apart they are, the greater the possibility that an offset has been imposed. Hence, if one is going to use the crosstalks to synchronize events, one should use the crosstalk closest to the incident in question. The NRC panel knew this (because I pointed it out to them) which led to their next major error of omission. In spite of their argument that the suspect sounds are not synchronous with the assassination, at no point in their report do they ever identify the actual time of the assassination. The actual time of the assassination can be fixed by the context of the broadcasts from the motorcade on Ch-2. These broadcasts emanated from Police Chief Jesse Curry who was with the first car in the motorcade. The Weaver photo shows the motorcade in Dealey Plaza with the lead car, in accordance with Secret Service rules, about 120 to 150 ft ahead of the President’s limousine. The transcript of the Ch-2 broadcasts (Table 1) shows that the last broadcast by Curry just 20 sec before the crucial “Go to the Hospital” broadcast, was an announcement that he was at or approaching “… the triple underpass.” The triple underpass is the railroad bridge at the western edge of Dealey Plaza. When the lead car was at or near the underpass the presidential limousine must have been in the mid-section of Elm Street, the position where the shooting occurred. In his September 2003 account for the oral history project at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza, Winston Lawson, the Secret Service Agent who was in the lead car, recalled that he heard the shots and recognized them as gunfire, just as the lead car was arriving at the Triple Underpass. Hence, Curry’s broadcast that he was at the triple underpass is a marker for the time of the assassination.
The crosstalk closest to this event is the broadcast just two sec earlier by Deputy Chief Fisher saying the words, “Naw, that’s all right, I’ll check it.” The last three words, “I’ll check it” occur on Ch-1 just two sec before the first acoustically identified gunshot. Thus, the Fisher crosstalk establishes exact synchrony between the assassination and the acoustically identified gunfire. Neither the NRC report or the NRC redux acknowledges this fact. (https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Acoustics_Overview_and_History_-_part_3.html)
To believe that the "hold everything" crosstalk is the determinative timing factor would require us to label as mere coincidence all the evidence that the dictabelt contains assassination gunfire. Some of this evidence is as follows:
* When the HSCA acoustical experts performed an oscilloscope screening on the 5.5 minutes of graphed sounds from the dictabelt recording, they located a sequence of sounds that met the acoustical criteria for gunfire. The sequence was 10 seconds long, occurred almost exactly two minutes into the motorcycle segment (i.e., 12:30, when the assassination occurred), and contained five candidate impulse patterns.
* The five candidate, or suspect, impulse patterns were grouped into a sequence that would be expected from the circumstances of the shooting, which the HSCA experts realized was either one heck of a coincidence or a strong indication that the impulse patterns were gunfire recorded during the assassination.
* In August 1978, a test firing was conducted in Dealey Plaza. Gunshots were fired and recorded on microphones placed along the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza. When these test patterns were compared to the suspect sound patterns on the dictabelt, all five of the suspect sound patterns were found to match the echo patterns of shots fired in the Dealey Plaza test firing.
The odds are remote that all five suspect impulse patterns would match the echo patterns of test-firing shots. If the suspect impulses had been merely random noise patterns, perhaps one of them would have matched one of the sounds from the test firing, but the odds that five random noise patterns would match sounds from the test firing, and in the correct order, are fantastically remote, zero for all intents and purposes.
* The fact that the five suspect impulse patterns on the dictabelt matched the echo patterns of shots from the test firing in the correct topographic order is powerful evidence that the suspect patterns are assassination gunfire. The odds of this happening by chance are 125 to 1. Dr. Thomas explains:
The first suspect sound on the DPD recording matched to a test shot that was recorded on a test microphone on Houston Street near the intersection with Elm Street. The very next suspect sound on the dictabelt matched to a test shot recorded at the very next microphone, 18 ft to the north on Houston Street. The third suspect sound matched to a test shot recorded on a microphone in the intersection of Houston and Elm Street. The fourth sound matched to a test shot recorded on a microphone on Elm Street, and the fifth suspect sound matched to a test shot recorded on the next microphone to the west. Thus, rather than in a random pattern, the chronological order of the suspect sounds had matched to the topological order of the microphones that produced matches to the test shots. To a scientist this sort of orderliness is very significant because there are 125 ways to sequence five events, only one of which is 1-2-3-4-5.
If the sounds on the dictabelt are anything but Dealey Plaza echo patterns, then the matches are purely by chance, having nothing to do with the geometry of Dealey Plaza. And that being the case, any spurious match was as likely to occur at any one microphone as at any other. And if the five matches achieved were truly spurious then the sequence of matches relative to the test microphone locations would have nothing to do with the location of the motorcycle with the open microphone. They would be in nonsense, random sequence. But the results are not scattered at random. The matches are precisely in the order that would be expected of a motorcycle traveling with the motorcade. (https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Acoustics_Overview_and_History_-_part_2.html)
* Not only did the suspect echo patterns from the dictabelt match the sequence of the corresponding test-firing shots, but they also matched the spacing and distance of the test microphones. Dr. Thomas:
But it is not just the sequence that was ordered. The spacing on the sounds on the dictabelt matched the spacing of the test microphones in Dealey Plaza. The first three suspect sounds are each separated by a little more than a second. The first and second are 1.6 sec apart, while the second and third are 1.1 second apart. Then there is a 4.8 second gap before the fourth putative shot which is only a fraction of a second (7/10ths of a second) before the final suspect sound. The test microphones that recorded the matching echo patterns were three in a row at the intersection of Houston and Elm. The test microphones that matched the last two sounds were at two consecutive positions about 80 ft west of the intersection, skipping four microphones between.
But it wasn’t just the sequence and the spacing that matched. The distance from the first test microphone that achieved a match on Houston Street was 130 ft away from the microphone on Elm street where the last match occurred. The time lapse between the first suspect sound and the fifth suspect sound was 8.3 seconds. In order to travel 130 ft in 8.3 sec an object would require an average speed of around 12 mph. In 1964 the FBI using the Zapruder film, calculated that the President’s limousine was traveling at an average speed of 11.3 mph on Elm Street. (https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Acoustics_Overview_and_History_-_part_2.html)
* Each of the three suspect impulse patterns on the dictabelt that were recorded when the microphone was in a position to record the shockwaves of gunfire contain a shockwave followed by a muzzle blast, and the shockwaves and the muzzle blasts occur in the right order and in the right interval. An N-wave (shockwave) comes 10-30 milliseconds before the muzzle blast, and the muzzle blast is followed by muzzle-blast echoes. This is the same pattern we see in the dictabelt gunfire impulses that were recorded when the microphone was in a position to recorded N-waves.
Incredibly, the NAS-NRC-Ramsey panel did not even attempt to explain the presence of the N-waves, much less the fact that they come at the correct time. The NRC's entire case was that a crosstalk episode proved that the suspect impulse patterns came after the assassination and that therefore they could not be gunfire but had to be random noise.
A few HSCA critics even claim that human speech can cause an N-wave-like noise on a recording, and that the N-wave of the dictabelt's grassy knoll shot was caused by Decker's crosstalk. Leaving aside the ludicrous nature of the claim that human speech can mimic supersonic shockwaves, what about the other N-waves and their succeeding muzzle blasts? There is no crosstalk that can explain those other N-waves.
* The HSCA experts discovered that windshield distortions were present in each of the suspect impulse patterns and absent in all the other sound impulses on the dictabelt. The HSCA experts realized that a motorcycle windshield would somewhat distort a soundwave and its echo pattern, so they determined just how much distortion would occur. And, lo and behold, they found that no other sound impulses on the dictabelt included this kind of distortion; they found that only the suspect impulse patterns contained such distortion. I keep asking the question, but so far no HSCA critic has ventured to answer it, Can you fathom the odds that this is just a coincidence? This is another piece of evidence that the NAS-NRC-Ramsey panel simply ignored.
Just to clarify something, I have been referring to five gunshot/suspect sound impulse patterns on the dictabelt. There are five such impulse patterns on the dictabelt, but the HSCA's chief counsel, Robert Blakey, would not accept all four of the rear-shot impulses because four rear-shot impulses so close together would have required two gunmen; so, Blakey pressured the acoustical scientists to label one of them as a false alarm, even though there is no acoustical basis for doing so, as Dr. Thomas has documented.
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RE above post by Griffith, our copy-paste jockey at work again, hilarious.
The majority of what you just posted is irrelevant to the synchronization issue.
Huh?! Uh, actually, it has everything to do with the synchronization issue. What an amazingly erroneous statement. What on earth are you talking about? Were there just too many big words for you? I mean, every point I made and every fact I cited had to do with the synchronization issue, either directly or by implication.
And, umm, I notice that you once again punted on dealing with the intricate correlations between the gunshot impulse patterns on the dictabelt and the corresponding gunshot impulse patterns from the Dealey Plaza test firing. They won't go away just because you can't explain them.
Or, maybe you're still searching the NAS-NRC-Ramsey report and McAdams' website for explanations for those correlations. Again, just to save you some time: no attack on the acoustical evidence has ever gotten around to dealing with those correlations. The NRC took over a year to comb through the acoustical evidence and still did not offer a single, solitary explanation for any of the gunfire-confirming correlations.
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The odds are remote that all five suspect impulse patterns would match the echo patterns of test-firing shots. If the suspect impulses had been merely random noise patterns, perhaps one of them would have matched one of the sounds from the test firing, but the odds that five random noise patterns would match sounds from the test firing, and in the correct order, are fantastically remote, zero for all intents and purposes.
Maybe the impulse sounds they heard were echoes and not the actual gunshots themselves. In which case, they would be comparing echoes to echoes. And echoes tend to all sound alike whether the echo is from a rifle shot or a motorcycle backfire.
This might explain why the impulses all sound alike. Simply comparing echoes to echoes.
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Let me try to explain in plain terms why the Decker crosstalk is a bogus, lame excuse for rejecting the acoustical evidence.
There are five gunshot impulse patterns on the Dallas police (DPD) dictabelt. The HSCA acoustical experts determined that the gunshots were recorded during the time of the assassination. Scholars have found additional evidence that the gunshot patterns were recorded during the assassination. Consider:
* According to the DPD dispatcher’s “12:30” time notation, the gunshots were recorded during the assassination. Yes, the dispatcher on each channel periodically gave time notations, and on the dictabelt the Channel 2 dispatcher voices the time notation “12:30” at virtually the same time the gunshots occur on the dictabelt (Channel 1).
* The first gunshot on the dictabelt occurs just 2 seconds after the Fisher “I’ll check it” crosstalk, and the Fisher transmission occurs just before the dispatcher notes “12:30” on Channel 2.
* The first gunshot on the dictabelt occurs just after Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission. This transmission comes right after Fisher’s “I’ll check it” transmission and just before the dispatcher’s “12:30” time notation. Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission was made to note that the motorcade was on Elm Street and that his car was approaching the triple underpass (his car was ahead of the presidential limo).
* The final gunshot on the dictabelt, which comes 8.3 seconds after the first one, occurs about 10 seconds before Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission, and we know Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission was made 18 seconds after his “triple underpass” transmission.
* Thus, it is very clear that the gunshots on the dictabelt were recorded during the 18 seconds between Fisher’s “I’ll check it” transmission and Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission. Curry yelled “go to the hospital” after he saw that JFK had been wounded, after Curry’s car slowed down to let the limo catch up with it and pass it, and we know when this happened because the event is captured on the Zapruder film.
You might be wondering, “Well, then how in the devil can anyone claim that the gunshots on the dictabelt were recorded 60-80 seconds after the assassination?” That is a very good question indeed.
Those who make this claim discard all of the above evidence. They claim that the dispatcher’s time notation, the Fisher transmission, Curry’s “triple underpass transmission,” and Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission are all somehow overruled by Decker’s “hold everything” crosstalk. Decker’s crosstalk occurs on Channel 2 sixty seconds after Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission, and it occurs on Channel 1 just after the last gunshot on the dictabelt. Therefore, they claim that the gunfire sound patterns on the dictabelt were recorded about 80 seconds after the assassination, and that therefore they cannot be gunshots but must be random noise.
You might be saying to yourself, “Well, wait a minute. Isn’t it much more logical to believe that Decker’s crosstalk on Channel 1 is simply an anomaly and is not a reliable time indicator, given that three other transmissions and the dispatcher’s time notation establish that the dictabelt gunshots were recorded during the assassination? How can this one Decker transmission overrule the dispatcher’s time notation and the Fisher and Curry transmissions?”
Lone-gunman theorists claim that Decker’s “hold everything” transmission is the overruling/determinative time indicator because that is the only way they can avoid dealing with the powerful, intricate evidence that the dictabelt contains at least four gunshots that were recorded in Dealey Plaza during the assassination.
If lone-gunman theorists admitted that the suspect sound impulse patterns on the dictabelt were recorded in Dealey Plaza during the assassination, they would have to address the HSCA evidence that those impulse patterns are assassination gunfire; they desperately want to avoid this because they cannot explain that evidence.
This is why the NRC panel, after spending over a year studying the HSCA acoustical evidence, never got around to dealing with the compelling correlations between the impulse patterns of the suspected gunshots on the dictabelt and the impulse patterns of gunshots from the Dealey Plaza test firing.
This is also why the HSCA acoustical experts have been so dismissive of the NRC panel’s report. They noticed that the NRC did not lay a finger on any of the evidence they presented. They also noted, and several scholars have since noted, that the Decker crosstalk on Channel 1 could have been placed there, out of chronological order, by phenomena known to have been possible with the kind of dictabelt machine used by the Dallas police in 1963, namely, recorder stoppage, stylus displacement, over-recording, and speed warps.
The NRC panel did not even try to explain the presence of supersonic N-waves on the dictabelt. N-waves are characteristic of supersonic gunfire from rifles. Each of the three suspect impulse patterns on the dictabelt that were recorded when the microphone was in a position to record the shockwaves of gunfire contain a shockwave followed by a muzzle blast, and the shockwaves and the muzzle blasts occur in the right order and in the right interval. An N-wave (shockwave) comes 10-30 milliseconds before the muzzle blast, and the muzzle blast is followed by muzzle-blast echoes. This is the same pattern we see in the dictabelt gunfire impulses that were recorded when the microphone was in a position to recorded N-waves.
The NRC panel also ignored the amazing windshield distortion correlations. Windshield distortions consistent with the sound of gunfire bouncing off a motorcycle windshield occur with each shot when the indicated positions of the motorcycle would have placed the windshield between the shooter and the microphone. Impressively, there are no windshield distortions with the shot when the motorcycle's windshield was not in position to cause them.
The N-waves and the windshield distortion correlations are just two of the lines of evidence that the dictabelt contains assassination gunshots.
But critics of the acoustical evidence wave aside this and all other evidence with the argument that the Decker crosstalk proves that the suspect sound impulse patterns on the dictabelt were recorded after the assassination, and that therefore the N-waves and all the gunfire correlations between the dictabelt and the test firing must be coincidences and sound impulse patterns on the dictabelt must have been caused by random noise.
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I agree. It is my belief that the alleged gunshots occurring on the tape at about the same time as the phrase “Hold everything secure” means the “gunshots” occur too late, about a minute too late, to have been real gunshots. I was just pointing out that Dr. Thomas believed that somehow, the phrase “Hold everything secure” was recorded on the wrong place. I disagree with Dr. Thomas’s claim which is, at best, unproven.
Can you quote Thomas claiming that the phrase “Hold everything secure” was recorded on the wrong place?
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Quote from: Joe Elliott on September 15, 2020, 09:08:27 AM
I agree. It is my belief that the alleged gunshots occurring on the tape at about the same time as the phrase “Hold everything secure” means the “gunshots” occur too late, about a minute too late, to have been real gunshots. I was just pointing out that Dr. Thomas believed that somehow, the phrase “Hold everything secure” was recorded on the wrong place. I disagree with Dr. Thomas’s claim which is, at best, unproven.
Can you quote Thomas claiming that the phrase “Hold everything secure” was recorded on the wrong place?
Decker's "hold everything" transmission was recorded on the wrong place on Channel 1. It is crosstalk on Channel 1, and it occurs at a different time on Channel 1 than it occurs on the channel on which it was broadcast, i.e., Channel 2.
Decker's crosstalk is the most out-of-sync of all the crosstalk episodes on the dictabelt, yet critics ignore this fact and choose it as their time indicator.
The Fisher crosstalk is crucial because we know from several facts when it occurred on Channel 2 and because it occurs on Channel 1 just two seconds before the first gunshot impulse on the dictabelt. and just before Curry's "triple underpass" transmission and before the dispatcher's "12:30" time notation on Channel 2.
Two seconds after the Fisher phrase on Channel 1, the gunfire sequence begins. Two seconds after the Fisher phrase on Channel 2, Curry broadcasts that he is "at the triple underpass." So the first gunshot sound was recorded at the same time Curry's car was near the underpass.
Furthermore, if we use the Bellah crosstalk to synchronize events on the two channels, the gunshot impulse patterns occur shortly before Curry's "to the hospital" transmission, and obviously Curry's transmission was broadcast very soon, a matter of seconds, after the assassination.
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Doesn't work, Mike. The “Hold everything secure” cross talk Mr. Elliot is referring to, whether his belief or claim is true or false, is evidently about where on the timeline the shots appear, not whether shots were detected.
You really should avoid commenting until you have at least read the HSCA materials, which you clearly have not done. You know less than Elliott knows. I addressed the Decker "hold everything" crosstalk a few replies ago.
The Decker crosstalk only shows "where on the timeline the shots appear" if you ignore the Channel 2 dispatcher's 12:30 time notation, ignore Fisher's "I'll check" crosstalk, ignore Curry's "triple underpass" transmission, and ignore Curry's "to the hospital" transmission. Do you understand that?
I'll tell you what: Why don't you take a stab at explaining why we should pick Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as the time indicator instead of (1) the Channel 2 dispatcher's 12:30 time notation, (2) the Fisher crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes just *before* the 12:30 time notation, (3) Curry's "triple underpass" transmission, which we know also comes before the 12:30 time notation, and (4) Curry's "to the hospital" crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes 18 seconds after his "triple underpass" transmission?
You were not able to form a single meaningful sentence on your own dealing with that possible issue.
No, it's just that you were unable understand my plain English because you know next to nothing about the acoustical evidence. You only know what you've skimmed over on pro-WC websites. Because those sites do not explain the dictabelt-test firing correlations, you have no answer for those correlations.
Instead you crank out rehashed quotes you already posted a dozen times to cover up that you can't deal with the possible issue posted by Mr. Elliot.
This ignorant comment only shows that you know as little as Elliott knows on the subject, possibly less. You spew this nonsense to try to obscure the fact that you still have not addressed a single one of the correlations between the dictabelt shots and the test firing shots. I've asked going on a dozen times for you folks to address those correlations. The problem is you can't explain because your garbage pro-WC mythology sites don't explain them either.
By now you're fooling no one here with your science-babble, except maybe Mr. van de Wiel, and it's been fun exposing you.
You're talking like a teenager who's trying to one-up his dad with ignorant, rude polemic. If my arguments seem like "science-babble" to you, it's because you don't know enough to understand them, much less answer them.
So prove me wrong. Tell me why we should use Decker's crosstalk as the time indicator and ignore the dispatcher's time notation, Fisher's "I'll check" crosstalk, Curry's "triple underpass" crosstalk, and Curry's "to the hospital" transmission. Here's your chance. I'll be waiting.
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Slow down, Mike.....
We can now quote Mike:
First you need to explain why "hold everything" was recorded on the wrong place if Channel-1 was recorded continuously.
Sorry, but I'm not gonna let you duck and dodge. I posed a straightforward question to you, and you ducked it. Not only does your statement avoid the question I posed, but it shows you have no business discussing the acoustical evidence because you obviously have not read a fraction of the relevant research. Your statement is nothing but a paraphrase of the debunked argument that the "hold everything" crosstalk proves that the suspect impulse patterns were recorded after the assassination.
So, I ask you, again: Why should we pick Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as the time indicator instead of (1) the Channel 2 dispatcher's 12:30 time notation, (2) Fisher's "I'll check" simultaneous crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes just *before* the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, (3) Curry's "triple underpass" transmission on Channel 2, which we know also comes before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, and (4) Curry's "to the hospital" crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes 18 seconds after his "triple underpass" transmission on Channel 2?
I should have added a clause to that question, but I won't do so now. However, I'll mention it, just so you can have it mind for later: Why should we pick the Decker crosstalk as the time anchor when doing so misaligns *all* of the events on the two channels? As several scholars have noted, the Decker crosstalk is the most out-of-sync of all the crosstalk, yet the NRC and you NRC clones choose it as the time indicator--only because doing so puts the suspect impulse patterns after the assassination.
You see, the problem for you guys is that if we use the four abovementioned transmissions to identify the time when the suspect impulse patterns were recorded, instead of the single cherry-picked Decker transmission, we see that the gunshots were clearly, undeniably recorded during the assassination.
Just a reminder: Answer the question about why we should pick Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as the time indicator and not the four abovementioned transmissions.
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Don't worry, I'm going nowhere.
Your question is based on the false premise that you can cherry-pick your cross talk, that's why you flunked right off the bat.
The question to be answered remains: Why is "hold everything" out-of-place if CH-1 was recorded in real time?
LOL! I should save your reply as an all-time howler.
YOU are the one cherry-picking your crosstalk! You are picking one lone crosstalk event, Decker's "hold everything" transmission, the most anomalous of all the crosstalk events, and you are ignoring the fact that (1) choosing Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as your anchor point throws *all* of the events on both channels out of alignment, (2) the Fisher and Curry crosstalk/transmissions and the dispatcher's 12:30 time notation not only synchronize with each other but show that the gunshot impulses were recorded during the assassination.
Soooo, I ask you, yet again: Why should we pick Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as the time indicator instead of (1) the Channel 2 dispatcher's 12:30 time notation, (2) Fisher's "I'll check" simultaneous crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes just *before* the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, (3) Curry's "triple underpass" transmission on Channel 2, which we know also comes before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, and (4) Curry's "to the hospital" crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes 18 seconds after his "triple underpass" transmission on Channel 2?
I am not assuming that you cherry-pick anything. I am asking you to simply explain why you choose Decker's crosstalk as your time indicator over the four transmissions that synchronize with each other and that put the gunshot impulses during the assassination.
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More Dr. Thomas fanboy babble, and your assumptions are entirely wrong.
You claim the Decker cross talk is "out-of-place".
Now you need to explain exactly what you mean by "out-of-place" and how it ended up there, Mr. Science.
Ok, only for the sake of others, I'm going to answer this, again. I say "again" because I have already addressed, several times, the issue of how Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk ended up on Channel 1 at a point just after the final gunshot on the dictabelt. This issue has been covered, like, a zillion times in the research. There are several ways that crosstalk can occur on dictabelt recordings, not just the DPD dictabelt: recorder stoppage, stylus displacement, over-recording during copying, and speed warps.
Do you really need me to explain what "out of place" means? Seriously? Well, ok. The "hold everything" crosstalk is out of place on Channel 1 because it occurs at a different time than it does on Channel 2; its broadcast time on Channel 2 is 60 seconds after Curry's "to the hospital" transmission, but its broadcast time on Channel 1 is over 60 seconds earlier.
The gunshots occur on Channel 1. They occur right around 140 seconds after the 12:28 time notation on Channel 1, which means they occur at 12:30, just as they should.
As I've discussed several times, we can check this timing via the simultaneous Fisher crosstalk, Curry's "triple underpass" transmission, Curry's "to the hospital" transmission, and the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2. The first gunshot pattern occurs just after the Fisher crosstalk and Curry's "triple underpass" transmission, and both of those transmissions occur *before* the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2.
The fact that Fisher's crosstalk is simultaneous is important because it gives us a two-channel time correlation, and it comes just before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2 and about 138 seconds after the 12:28 time notation on Channel 1. Furthermore, the dictabelt gunfire ends just before Curry's "to the hospital" transmission, which comes about 12 seconds after the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2. A perfect, powerful fit that shows clearly that the dictabelt gunfire was recorded during the assassination.
So if you are going to continue to insist on using Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as your time indicator, you need to explain how you can do so in the face of the clear evidence that his crosstalk is totally unreliable as a time anchor, and in the face of the powerful synchronization between the gunfire, the Fisher crosstalk, the time notation on Channel 1, the time notation on Channel 2, and Curry's two transmissions.
The BBN scientists knew better than to use unreliable crosstalk events as time indicators. Instead, logically enough, they used the time notations on Channel 1 and Channel 2. The NRC panel members, not being acoustical experts, apparently did not realize they were committing an egregious error by using the most anomalous crosstalk event as their time indicator. (Or, perhaps they knew this was a bogus approach, but it was the only one that enabled them to claim that the gunfire impulses on the dictabelt were recorded after the assassination and thus "had to be" something other than gunfire.)
I have not even mentioned the Bellah crosstalk yet, which is another indicator that the dispatcher time notations are accurate and that the gunshots were recorded during the assassination.
Now, I ask you, yet again: Why should we pick Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as the time indicator instead of (1) the Channel 2 dispatcher's 12:30 time notation, (2) Fisher's "I'll check" simultaneous crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes just *before* the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, (3) Curry's "triple underpass" transmission on Channel 2, which we know also comes before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, and (4) Curry's "to the hospital" crosstalk on Channel 1, which we know comes 18 seconds after his "triple underpass" transmission on Channel 2?
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More Dr. Thomas fanboy babble, and your assumptions are entirely wrong.
You claim the Decker cross talk is "out-of-place".
Now you need to explain exactly what you mean by "out-of-place" and how it ended up there, Mr. Science.
Evidence can't be out of place. Its either in place or its not evidence.
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Right on.
So now it's termed "unreliable" -- LOL. The continued desperate attempts to make unpleasant evidence go away have been duly noted.
Umm, so does this mean you're never going to explain why you insist on using the Decker crosstalk as the time indicator instead of the dispatcher time notations, Fisher's simultaneous crosstalk, and Curry's two transmissions on Channel 2?
For the sake of others who are viewing this thread, let me explain why Mr. Beck keeps ducking this straightforward question.
Beck and others use Decker's crosstalk as their time indicator because if we time the dictabelt gunshots according to Decker's crosstalk, this means the gunshots were recorded about 60 seconds after the assassination and therefore cannot be gunshots but must be random noise. But this timing is refuted by considerable evidence.
For starters, Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk, which occurs simultaneously on both channels, occurs 2 seconds before the first dictabelt gunshot on Channel 1, and about 8 seconds before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2. All five gunshot impulse patterns occur on Channel 1.
Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission occurs 6 seconds before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2 and 2 seconds after Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk.
Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission occurs 12 seconds after the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2 and 18 seconds after his “triple underpass” transmission. This is key evidence because we know that Curry made the “to the hospital” transmission while still in Dealey Plaza, just after he heard gunfire. We also know that after the first hit on JFK, Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, riding in JFK’s limo, radioed Secret Service agent Winston Lawson, who was sitting next to Curry in the lead car, and told Lawson that Kennedy was hit and ordered Lawson to go to the hospital. Thus, it is no surprise that Curry quickly gave his “to the hospital” order.
The final gunshot on the dictabelt occurs 2-3 seconds after the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2. All the dictabelt gunshots occur between Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission and his “to the hospital” transmission on Channel 2. The gunshots begin almost simultaneously with Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission.
Decker’s “hold everything” crosstalk occurs on Channel 1 a split-second after the last dictabelt gunshot, but it was originally broadcast on Channel 2 about 60 seconds later. This is where we need to talk about time offsets, because the offsets prove that Decker's crosstalk is a very unreliable time indicator.
There are four crosstalk time offsets between Channel 1 and Channel 2:
-- An 89-second offset between Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk and Decker’s “hold everything” crosstalk.
-- A 31-second offset between Decker’s “hold everything” crosstalk and Bellah’s “you want me” crosstalk.
-- A 3-second offset between Bellah’s “you want me” crosstalk and the dispatcher’s “attention all” crosstalk.
-- A 24-second offset between Bellah’s “you want me” crosstalk and the dispatcher’s “attention all” crosstalk.
Notice that the Decker crosstalk is the most offset of the crosstalk events, that its offsets are larger than the others. Its offsets are 89 seconds and 31 seconds, whereas the Bellah offsets are 24 seconds and 3 seconds.
To explain the Decker-Bellah offset, the NRC panel erroneously theorized that Channel 2’s recorder must have stopped for 31 seconds between the 12:30 and 12:32 time notations. But this is impossible because Channel 2 was, understandably, very busy from 12:30 onward, for several minutes, and Channel 2’s recording machine only stopped during dead spaces (i.e., when no one was talking).
If we assume that the 31-second time offset was caused by stylus displacement on Channel 1, instead of recorder stoppage on Channel 2, this would explain why the “hold everything” crosstalk was recorded on Channel 1 earlier than it was recorded on Channel 2. Simply put, this would mean that the “hold everything” crosstalk is worthless as a time indicator because stylus displacement on Channel 1 put it on Channel 1 earlier than it should have been placed there. The stylus-displacement theory also fits the time notations.
But if we go with the recorder-stoppage theory, this throws the 12:30-12:33 transmissions out of alignment and does not fit the time notations. The 12:32 time notation occurs almost exactly 2 minutes after the 12:30 time notation, and the 12:36 time notation comes almost exactly 6 minutes after the 12:30 time notation. But if we accept the recorder-stoppage theory, this severely skews the time notations, but we know the time notations are consistent with each other to within a few seconds.
Suffice it to say that the time offsets alone prove that Decker’s crosstalk is not a reliable time indicator. But those who reject the acoustical evidence dismiss the gunfire timeframe indicated by the Fisher crosstalk, the time notations, and the two assassination-period Curry transmissions. Instead, they insist on using Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as their time indicator because it gives them a basis, albeit a bogus one, to claim that the dictabelt gunshots occurred about 60 seconds after the assassination. It also serves as their excuse for not explaining the powerful, intricate correlations between the dictabelt gunshots and the gunshots from the Dealey Plaza test firing.
Importantly, as mentioned earlier, the Fisher crosstalk is simultaneous, i.e., it occurs at the same time on Channel 1 that it does on Channel 2. This is crucial because Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk comes 2 seconds before the first dictabelt shot, 2 seconds before Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission, 8 seconds before the 12:30 time notation, and 20 seconds before Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission. Thus, Fisher’s crosstalk serves as an excellent time indicator and as a way to correlate the timing of key transmission on the two channels. It also establishes when the shots occurred in relation to (1) the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, (2) Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission on Channel 2, and (3) Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission on Channel 2.
Impressively, if we use the Bellah crosstalk to establish a time correlation between the two channels and track backward to Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission, then we again find that the gunfire begins on Channel 1 at virtually the same time that Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission occurs on Channel 2, and that the gunfire ends about 10 seconds before Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission on Channel 2. This is telling because this timing agrees with the timing established by the Fisher crosstalk.
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Humm, still no answer from the acoustical evidence deniers.
Umm, so does this mean you're never going to explain why you insist on using the Decker crosstalk as the time indicator instead of the dispatcher time notations, Fisher's simultaneous crosstalk, and Curry's two transmissions on Channel 2?
For the sake of others who are viewing this thread, let me explain why Mr. Beck keeps ducking this straightforward question.
Beck and others use Decker's crosstalk as their time indicator because if we time the dictabelt gunshots according to Decker's crosstalk, this means the gunshots were recorded about 60 seconds after the assassination and therefore cannot be gunshots but must be random noise. But this timing is refuted by considerable evidence.
For starters, Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk, which occurs simultaneously on both channels, occurs 2 seconds before the first dictabelt gunshot on Channel 1, and about 8 seconds before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2. All five gunshot impulse patterns occur on Channel 1.
Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission occurs 6 seconds before the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2 and 2 seconds after Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk.
Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission occurs 12 seconds after the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2 and 18 seconds after his “triple underpass” transmission. This is key evidence because we know that Curry made the “to the hospital” transmission while still in Dealey Plaza, just after he heard gunfire. We also know that after the first hit on JFK, Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, riding in JFK’s limo, radioed Secret Service agent Winston Lawson, who was sitting next to Curry in the lead car, and told Lawson that Kennedy was hit and ordered Lawson to go to the hospital. Thus, it is no surprise that Curry quickly gave his “to the hospital” order.
The final gunshot on the dictabelt occurs 2-3 seconds after the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2. All the dictabelt gunshots occur between Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission and his “to the hospital” transmission on Channel 2. The gunshots begin almost simultaneously with Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission.
Decker’s “hold everything” crosstalk occurs on Channel 1 a split-second after the last dictabelt gunshot, but it was originally broadcast on Channel 2 about 60 seconds later. This is where we need to talk about time offsets, because the offsets prove that Decker's crosstalk is a very unreliable time indicator.
There are four crosstalk time offsets between Channel 1 and Channel 2:
-- An 89-second offset between Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk and Decker’s “hold everything” crosstalk.
-- A 31-second offset between Decker’s “hold everything” crosstalk and Bellah’s “you want me” crosstalk.
-- A 3-second offset between Bellah’s “you want me” crosstalk and the dispatcher’s “attention all” crosstalk.
-- A 24-second offset between Bellah’s “you want me” crosstalk and the dispatcher’s “attention all” crosstalk.
Notice that the Decker crosstalk is the most offset of the crosstalk events, that its offsets are larger than the others. Its offsets are 89 seconds and 31 seconds, whereas the Bellah offsets are 24 seconds and 3 seconds.
To explain the Decker-Bellah offset, the NRC panel erroneously theorized that Channel 2’s recorder must have stopped for 31 seconds between the 12:30 and 12:32 time notations. But this is impossible because Channel 2 was, understandably, very busy from 12:30 onward, for several minutes, and Channel 2’s recording machine only stopped during dead spaces (i.e., when no one was talking).
If we assume that the 31-second time offset was caused by stylus displacement on Channel 1, instead of recorder stoppage on Channel 2, this would explain why the “hold everything” crosstalk was recorded on Channel 1 earlier than it was recorded on Channel 2. Simply put, this would mean that the “hold everything” crosstalk is worthless as a time indicator because stylus displacement on Channel 1 put it on Channel 1 earlier than it should have been placed there. The stylus-displacement theory also fits the time notations.
But if we go with the recorder-stoppage theory, this throws the 12:30-12:33 transmissions out of alignment and does not fit the time notations. The 12:32 time notation occurs almost exactly 2 minutes after the 12:30 time notation, and the 12:36 time notation comes almost exactly 6 minutes after the 12:30 time notation. But if we accept the recorder-stoppage theory, this severely skews the time notations, but we know the time notations are consistent with each other to within a few seconds.
Suffice it to say that the time offsets alone prove that Decker’s crosstalk is not a reliable time indicator. But those who reject the acoustical evidence dismiss the gunfire timeframe indicated by the Fisher crosstalk, the time notations, and the two assassination-period Curry transmissions. Instead, they insist on using Decker's "hold everything" crosstalk as their time indicator because it gives them a basis, albeit a bogus one, to claim that the dictabelt gunshots occurred about 60 seconds after the assassination. It also serves as their excuse for not explaining the powerful, intricate correlations between the dictabelt gunshots and the gunshots from the Dealey Plaza test firing.
Importantly, as mentioned earlier, the Fisher crosstalk is simultaneous, i.e., it occurs at the same time on Channel 1 that it does on Channel 2. This is crucial because Fisher’s “I’ll check” crosstalk comes 2 seconds before the first dictabelt shot, 2 seconds before Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission, 8 seconds before the 12:30 time notation, and 20 seconds before Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission. Thus, Fisher’s crosstalk serves as an excellent time indicator and as a way to correlate the timing of key transmission on the two channels. It also establishes when the shots occurred in relation to (1) the 12:30 time notation on Channel 2, (2) Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission on Channel 2, and (3) Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission on Channel 2.
Impressively, if we use the Bellah crosstalk to establish a time correlation between the two channels and track backward to Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission, then we again find that the gunfire begins on Channel 1 at virtually the same time that Curry’s “triple underpass” transmission occurs on Channel 2, and that the gunfire ends about 10 seconds before Curry’s “to the hospital” transmission on Channel 2. This is telling because this timing agrees with the timing established by the Fisher crosstalk.
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No more replies here, I refer you to the Elliott thread.
His thread is a total joke. He did nothing more than cobble together false claims made by the NRC panel, Bowles, Elliott, etc., etc., all of which were refuted years ago. Some of his arguments are patently silly and were answered by the HSCA 30 years ago.
Incredibly (but not surprisingly), he does not even address the core of the acoustical evidence, namely, the fact that the echo-pattern correlations occur in the correct topographic order, the fact that the N-waves and their succeeding muzzle blasts and echoes all occur in the correct order and timespan, the fact that the shooting timespan is correct, and the fact that windshield distortions among the identified gunshots occur when they should and do not occur when they should not.
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Oh my goodness! Until about half an hour ago, I had forgotten about Dr. G. Paul Chambers' fantastic chapter on the acoustical evidence in his book Head Shot: The Science Behind the JFK Assassination (New York: Prometheus Books, 2012), chapter 6.
Dr. Chambers is an internationally recognized expert in the field of shock physics and has performed extensive high-speed photographic studies of high-velocity impacts and deformations of solids as well as computer modeling of shock wave and matter interactions. He has worked as a research scientist/research director at NASA, with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, and with the Naval Research Laboratory.
Chapter 6 is one of the best explanations and defenses of the acoustical evidence you will find in print.
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Books that Mr. Griffith considers to be poor scholarship on display.
1. Larry Sturdivan’s “The JFK Myths”.
2. Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”
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His thread is a total joke. He did nothing more than cobble together false claims made by the NRC panel, Bowles, Elliott, etc., etc., all of which were refuted years ago. Some of his arguments are patently silly and were answered by the HSCA 30 years ago.
Incredibly (but not surprisingly), he does not even address the core of the acoustical evidence, namely, the fact that the echo-pattern correlations occur in the correct topographic order, the fact that the N-waves and their succeeding muzzle blasts and echoes all occur in the correct order and timespan, the fact that the shooting timespan is correct, and the fact that windshield distortions among the identified gunshots occur when they should and do not occur when they should not.
I have addressed that. So, here we go again.
To be considered good, the acoustic evidence must predict:
1. The location of the shooter.
2. The location that the shooter was aiming at, that is, where the bullet struck.
3. The position of the motorcycle.
It must get all 3 correct for all the shots in order to get a passing grade. How will did they do?
1. Using the Acoustic data, what was the location of the shooter?
Shot 1: At z176, within 10 milliseconds, there was a shot fired form the TSBD and another from the Grassy Knoll.
Shot 2: At z205, within 10 milliseconds, there was a shot fired from the TSBD and another from the Grassy Knoll.
Shot 3: At z224, there was a shot fired from the TSBD.
Shot 4: At z304, within 10 milliseconds, there was a shot fired from the Grassy Knoll and the TSBD.
Shot 5: At z313, there was a shot fired from the TSBD.
Note: I’m not making this up. Check my initial post of the following thread to look at BBN’s Exhibit F-367 where in this table they list the “Rifle Location” for each test shot that matched the 1978 Dealey Plaza tests.
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,2717.0.html (https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,2717.0.html)
This correlation is atrocious. Dr. Barger’s solution? Just consider some of the correlations they found to be “False Alarms” and let’s just ignore them. And just pick the correlations that work out best as good.
2. Using the Acoustic data, what was the location that the shooter was aiming at, that is, where did the bullet struck.
Shot 1: At z176, within 10 milliseconds, there was a shot that struck near where the limousine was at z155 (miss limousine by 21 feet),
and another shot at where the limousine would be at z313 (miss limousine by 100 feet),
and another shot near Mr. Tague (miss limousine by 360 feet)
Shot 2: At z205, both shots struck near where the limousine would be at z313, missing the limousine by 95 feet.
Shot 3: At z224, there was one shot that struck within the limousine (they are starting to get the range).
Shot 4: At z304, within 10 milliseconds, there was a shot that struck near where the limousine was at z224 (miss limousine by 70 feet)
and at near z313 (a hit within the limousine).
Shot 5: At z313, there was a shot that struck near where the limousine was at z224 (miss limousine by 90 feet)
and another shot at z313 (a hit within the limousine)
and another shot at Mr. Tague again (miss limousine by 240 feet)
Note: Again, I am not making this up. Look at the table I talk of before BBN Exhibit F-367 and the map I found at:
www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/pdf/HSCA_Vol8_AS_2_BBN.pdf (http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol8/pdf/HSCA_Vol8_AS_2_BBN.pdf)
And go about half way down, to Page 49 of 95 in the pdf document, labeled as Page 81 (listed at top of page) and Page 41 (listed at the bottom on the page).
This map shows the location of Target 1, Target 2, Target 3 and Target 4, the four targets they fired at in the 1978 Dealey Plaza shooting tests.
Again, this correlation is atrocious. Dr. Barger’s solution? Just consider some of the correlations they found to be “False Alarms” and let’s just ignore them. And just pick the correlations that work out best as good.
3. The position of the motorcycle.
The Acoustic data found that the motorcycle was behind the limousine by 120 to 160 feet during the shooting. Finally, a result that is not totally ridiculous.
But would making a good prediction on just 1 out of 3 (position of shooter, position of target, position of motorcycle) be a good a grade?
We have a theory about how to predict the path of an asteroid. But every time it predicts the asteroid is going to hit the Earth in two-week’s time, and where an asteroid is going to hit the Earth. And at what angle it is going to hit the Earth. And the velocity of the asteroid. We always find it misses the Earth, misses the location it’s going to hit the Earth, misses the angle it is going to hit the Earth, but predicts the velocity of the asteroid pretty accurately, do we have a good theory or a garbage theory?
Mr. Griffith makes a great deal about this “success” of predicting the location of the motorcycle. But let’s remember, they expected the motorcycle to be moving around 11 mph.
And that are two factors that should bring up suspicions:
1. Given the two-week time limit to do the work, to make 2,596 comparisons and the associated calculations, is it possible they only checked the recordings where the motorcycle would have been 120 to 160 feet behind the President. That is, not check, for the “shot” at z313 at the locations the motorcycle would be predicted at z152, because of the lack of time to check all combinations. And besides, your not going to find a valid correlation there anyway. But to only look for the “shot” at z313 near where the motorcycle would be around z313. If this is the case, naturally all the correlations found would be consistent with a motorcycle trailing by 120 to 160 feet.
2. The tired workers doing the tedious checking, might miss seeing correlations on stretches where the motorcycle “cannot be” because the motorcycle was already “found” in a previous stretch of the data.
And, this “success” is not much of a success. We know from the Hughes film and Mr. Altgens photograph at z255 that no motorcycle was not 120 to 160 feet behind the limousine, the closest was Officer McLain who was about 275 feet behind.
So, again, the consistent speed of the motorcycle, as found in the BBN’s Exhibit F-367 Table, may be an artifact of where they searched for correlations. If they only searched for correlations with the “first shot” at locations corresponding to a location 150 feet behind the limousine, and did the same with the “second shot”, and did the same with the “third”, and “fourth”, and “fifth”, then the resulting data would fit perfectly with a motorcycle trailing the limousine by 150 at an average speed of 11 mph. They won’t find any random data outside of these parameters. This conjecture explains how the data could be so bad for indicating the source of the shots, so bad for the location of where the shot struck, but so go at giving a consistent picture of a motorcycle moving at 11 mph 150 feet behind the limousine.
So yes, I do address the “core” of the acoustical evidence, namely, the fact that the echo-pattern correlations occur in the correct topographic order. My conjecture may or may not be accurate. I, and apparently you don’t know how many of the combinations of the “6 Dictabelt shots” with the “432 waveforms from the 1978 tests” were actually made. But I have addressed this issue.
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Books that Mr. Griffith considers to be poor scholarship on display.
1. Larry Sturdivan’s “The JFK Myths”.
2. Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”
You wouldn’t be poisoning the well again, would you?