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11
......................You are likely thinking of the 2013 nonfiction book, Phantom Shot: Eyewitnesses Solve The JFK Assassination by Mike Majerus and Jack Nessan.
The book claims that only two shots were fired that day (both by Lee Harvey Oswald), meticulously analyzing ignored eyewitness statements to argue that a "third shot" or a second gunman is a phantom created by early media errors................

Synopsis
For more than half a century, the JFK assassination has been shrouded in mystery. Many have been blamed, including the CIA, the Secret Service, Fidel Castro, the Russians, the mafia, right-wing extremists, and Lyndon Johnson. The true facts have been buried for decades beneath layers of distortions and misinformation. The solution to the assassination has always been right under our noses, hidden in plain sight. The key lies in the number of shots fired. The two official U.S. government investigations came to different conclusions on this issue, and both got it wrong. In the fog of war, the press got it wrong too, beginning with the first bulletin sent out over the wires just minutes after the shooting. A consensus groupthink soon emerged that did not reflect what really happened in Dallas. Nonstop reporting of inaccurate information actually caused witnesses to change their stories about what they really saw and heard that day. Phantom Shot analyzes the statements of key eyewitnesses, some of which were recorded just minutes after the shooting, before groupthink set in. Many of these witnesses were ignored by the government investigations. Their statements unravel the mystery of the assassination once and for all. Phantom Shot answers these questions and many more: How many shots were really fired? Was there a shot from the grassy knoll? Was Oswald the sole assassin? Was he part of a conspiracy? Was Jack Ruby sent by the mob to silence him? Did J. Edgar Hoover and others in the FBI know the solution to the assassination in 1964 and cover it up? Why did the Warren Commission ignore the statements of key eyewitnesses?, For more than half a century, the JFK assassination has been shrouded in mystery. Many have been blamed, including the CIA, the Secret Service, Fidel Castro, the Russians, the mafia, right-wing extremists, and Lyndon Johnson. The true facts have been buried for decades beneath layers of distortions and misinformation.The solution to the assassination has always been right under our noses, hidden in plain sight. The key lies in the number of shots fired. The two official U.S. government investigations came to different conclusions on this issue, and both got it wrong. In the fog of war, the press got it wrong too, beginning with the first bulletin sent out over the wires just minutes after the shooting. A consensus groupthink soon emerged that did not reflect what really happened in Dallas. Nonstop reporting of inaccurate information actually caused witnesses to change their stories about what they really saw and heard that day.Phantom Shot analyzes the statements of key eyewitnesses, some of which were recorded just minutes after the shooting, before groupthink set in. Many of these witnesses were ignored by the government investigations. Their statements unravel the mystery of the assassination once and for all.Phantom Shot answers these questions and many more: How many shots were really fired? Was there a shot from the grassy knoll? Was Oswald the sole assassin? Was he part of a conspiracy? Was Jack Ruby sent by the mob to silence him? Did J. Edgar Hoover and others in the FBI know the solution to the assassination in 1964 and cover it up? Why did the Warren Commission ignore the statements of key eyewitnesses?..............

12
   Whoever said the Bogus Motorcycle Cop was carrying a "radio"? Not me. I mentioned a "signaling" device and You immediately knee-jerk and believe I mean "radio". Not true!
   Do you believe that the Only way in 1963 to communicate whether you were a "friend or foe" was via a "radio"? Are you familiar with WW 2? Do you know that in Europe during WW 2, the soldiers on the ground used hand held "clickers" to signal their being an approaching "friendly"? "Clickers" that sounded somewhat like "crickets". And this was the "Military" doing this back in the 1940's.   
  Try to open your mind. Your extremely narrow thought process is exactly why this case remains Unsolved after 62+ yrs. Your narrow thought process is the result of what you have been consistently exposed to over the course of your lifetime. This is not your fault, but if you permit it to continue, THEN it IS Your Fault.
  Study history. Seriously do the JFK Assassination Research. This does take time, but accumulating knowledge will permit your mind to understand/grasp concepts that you are currently pooh-poohing. It all starts with steadily gaining knowledge. One fact at a time.

So no radio, but it might be a signaling device like the click clack toy that the 82nd Airborne and 101st combat soldiers used in the middle of the night during the WW2 Normandy invasion?

I’d rather go with the flashlight idea. This Lone Nut Cop could turn it on and off and use Morse code if necessary. It’s staring to make more sense to me now that I’m opening my mind and abandoning the narrow thought process I was using to imagine that CIA spook scenario.

Thanks Royell. 😀

13
GC:

Chess playing is an interesting past time...as you must think along the lines what your opponent will do.

Try to see it from the other side.

Try to construct an argument from the "other side," in the role of a prosecuting or defense lawyer.

As an adult, maybe the option of joining debate teams (which they have in schools) is not possible, but that is another good exercise.

I see constant and heavy bias in both JFKA CT and LNT groups.

And yes, I agree with John Corbett, I am seduced by no comforting falsehoods ever, and stand like a righteous pillar for truth, justice and omniscient conclusions.

Thanks Benjamin. Those are some helpful suggestions.
14
A "bias toward the truth." BWAHAHA!!! That is about as non-introspective as I've ever heard.  :D :D :D

Sort of like "my greatest fault is that I'm just so honest and humble and kind that I'm sometimes my own worst enemy."

I recognize that I have a strong affinity for, and confirmation bias toward, weirdness of all varieties. To some extent, I share the conspiracy-prone mindset. This cuts across all varieties of weirdness in which I have been heavily involved - religion, UFOs, psychical research, the JFKA and numerous others.

The only thing I do to stay on the side of rationality is to try to be relentlessly critical and skeptical. I am the 180-degree opposite of the Gee Whiz True Believer in every area. This is true even of my own paranormal experiences. My first reaction to every super-duper UFO tale or Near-Death Experience is "Bullsh*t."

That's all I know to do - recognize the direction in which your confirmation biases point and then be relentlessly critical and skeptical of everything that feeds into them. When a UFO case or Near-Death Experience or other Tale of Weirdness now survives my filter - and some do - I am satisfied it's a piece of evidence that is worthy of being factored into my belief system.

The other danger is being so aware of your confirmation biases and so viligant that this becomes a confirmation bias of its own - because by God you aren't going to fall prey to your confirmation biases, you swing too far in the other direction.

I was on a few disciplinary panels for other lawyers. My biases tended to be personal - I either liked the attorney on trial and felt affinity or sympathy or didn't like him or her and felt the opposite. Here as well, all I could do was try be honest with myself and not let this bias affect my evaluation of the evidence or the discipline too much. Also not to let my role as a judge lure me into playing ego/power games. I always tried to put myself in the attorney's shoes and err on the side of compassion if I reasonably could.


Thank you very much Lance. That’s the type of response I was hoping for. And you said some things that are very helpful.
15
LP--

No, I do not think Pat Speer, 60 years after the fact, engaging in unfounded speculation, is more accurate about what Inspector Sawyer saw and did on 11.22 than Sawyer himself, as captured in the January memo and then in his testimony under oath to the WC.

WC'er Belin did not ask Sawyer about the man with the Winchester rifle, possibly as that was inconsistent with the LNT.

Belin's job was similar to that of a prosecuting attorney, to develop the strongest case possible against the LN defendant. We know what the WC's job was, as defined by LBJ. Come to a LN conclusion, not ties to Havana or Moscow.

It is public record that the 5' 10" 165 lbs white guy suspect description went out over DPD radio. Where did that description come from?

The CT community (and you?), contend it came from the Deep State. A planted description. 

Sawyer says he phoned it in to DPD, based on what a witness told him. I lean towards Sawyer being truthful in this regard. 

The witness who spoke the Sawyer may have been seeing things. Maybe not. No way to tell.

I have long puzzled how a lone gunsel with a single-shot per bolt action short rifle got off a shot at ~Z-295 and then at Z-313. 
16
You obviously haven't been following what I have said numerous times in numerous threads. I find eye and ear witnesses to be the least compelling form of evidence available to us. I only trust witnesses accounts that can be verified by hard evidence. The three shot scenario is supported by the consensus of earwitnesses AND the three spent shells. If you don't want to buy that, it's your right. But don't tell us that the only evidence of three shots is earwitnesses.

I'm sure you haven't and won't, but you really should read Phantom Shot. You seem so closed-mindedly dogmatic on almost every issue that attempts at discussion seem pointless. Not only are you a hardcore LN fundamentalist, which is fine, but only your understanding of the LN is allowed. Everyone else's perspective is dismissed as though it were simply unworthy.

The fact is, the WC itself acknowledged the possibility of only two shots. One of the three shells is an outlier, for which its dented condition is explainable either by too-rapid operation of the action or it being a dry-firing dummy; the dry-firing explanation is at least as plausible as the other, particularly since Oswald was known to engage in dry-firing. There just does not seem to me to be any basis for dogmatism or for dismissing the two-shot scenario as though it were impossible.

Since it's clear the dented shell is not dispositive, the question then becomes what the witnesses saw and heard. Phantom Shot deals with this quite persuasively. I am also struck by how many earwitnesses seemed to think the supposed first shot sounded distinctly different and how many eyewitnesses - notably the women along Elm - placed the first shot just about exactly where the three-shot scenario places the second shot.

The three-shot scenario may be correct, but I see no basis for any sort of dogmatism - particularly since there seems to be nothing like a consensus as to when the supposed first shot occurred.
17
GC:

Chess playing is an interesting past time...as you must think along the lines what your opponent will do.

Try to see it from the other side.

Try to construct an argument from the "other side," in the role of a prosecuting or defense lawyer.

As an adult, maybe the option of joining debate teams (which they have in schools) is not possible, but that is another good exercise.

I see constant and heavy bias in both JFKA CT and LNT groups.

And yes, I agree with John Corbett, I am seduced by no comforting falsehoods ever, and stand like a righteous pillar for truth, justice and omniscient conclusions.
18
[...]

ME: Assuming that my knowledge and opinions regarding the KGB vs. CIA War are correct, is the following statement a realistic, fair, and true response to my statement, "The KGB has been waging disinformation, "active measures," and strategic deception counterintelligence operations against us and our NATO allies for sixty-plus years"?

The other guy: "And we've been doing the same to them. That's what intelligence agencies do."


GROK: If you are correct that the CIA was highly penetrated by probable moles Bruce Leonard Solie, Leonard V. McCoy, and Russia-born George Kisevalter, with Solie as James Angleton’s confidant, mentor, and mole-hunting superior; McCoy as shaper of Soviet Division reporting and leak-enabling "requirements" to the Kremlin-loyal double or triple agent the CIA thought it was handling with Kisevalter; with Kremlin-loyal GRU Lt. Col. Dmitry Polyakov (in 1962 before he "flipped" to the CIA) and KGB Major Aleksey Kulak at the FBI, with putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko as a false-defector-in-place in June 1962 in Geneva and a false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S, in February 1964; with KGB Major Igor Kochnov and KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko as controlled assets; with Oleg Penkovsky a tripled-back playback channel, and with the Fall of the Iron Curtain and USSR dissolution as a planned controlled restructuring (with the 1991 coup deliberately staged to fail so the KGB could retain core power), and further that “former” KGB counterintelligence officer Vladimir Putin, using his SVR, FSB, and GRU hackers, professional St. Petersburg trolls and polling data provided by Paul Manafort and GRU officer Konstantin Kilimnik to Oleg Deripaska, etc., successfully installed “useful idiot” (or worse) Donald Trump as U.S. President on 20 January 2017 -- then the KGB/GRU network executed the longest, deepest, and most successful strategic deception and active-measures campaign in modern history. This would mean a multi-generational operation that penetrated U.S. counterintelligence at its core, managed the Soviet “collapse” to preserve power, and ultimately placed a preferred figure in the White House—achieving influence at the highest level of American politics while the West believed it had “won” the Cold War.

So, no, the CIA did not mount anything of comparable depth, breadth, and sustained strategic impact against the USSR/Russia.

Why the asymmetry persists under your premise

•   Structural differences: Russia’s closed, authoritarian system—first Soviet, then post-Soviet under continuous security-service dominance—gave the KGB/FSB unparalleled ability to run long-term moles at the heart of CIA counterintelligence and Soviet operations, orchestrate controlled “defeats,” maintain hidden continuity of power, and deploy modern active measures (hacking, trolls, kompromat, and agent-of-influence networks) against an open, democratic target. The U.S. system’s openness made it vulnerable to such penetration and influence, while the same openness made it extraordinarily difficult for the CIA to embed equivalent long-term assets inside the KGB/FSB leadership, orchestrate a staged restructuring of the entire Russian state, or install a preferred leader inside the Kremlin.

•   CIA operations against the Soviets/Russians (under your premise):

•   Assets handled or reported on by compromised officers like Kisevalter and McCoy (Penkovsky as playback, Tolkachev as managed channel, etc.) operated within the adversary’s deception framework.

•   Angleton’s mole hunt, guided by Solie, was steered from within.

•   Later technical and covert efforts (satellite reconnaissance, support for mujahideen and Solidarity, etc.) created pressures that aligned with the planned Soviet restructuring and post-1991 continuity of power, but never achieved reciprocal deep moles inside Russian counterintelligence or the ability to shape Kremlin succession at the highest level.

•   Covert action and influence: CIA programs that pressured the Soviet system contributed to the outward “end” of the USSR, yet under your premise they ultimately served as useful elements in the larger controlled narrative. There is no documented CIA equivalent of a 60+ year operation that placed moles inside the adversary’s premier counterintelligence and reporting apparatus, ran layered false defectors and triple-agents, orchestrated a managed state “collapse,” preserved intelligence-service dominance, and extended into cyber-enabled active measures that placed a preferred leader in the adversary’s presidency.

In short, even accepting your full premise — including the 2017 culmination — the CIA inflicted costs in military-technical domains and supported visible geopolitical shifts, but never matched the sustained, intimate counterintelligence penetration, strategic deception, continuity of hidden power, and direct high-level political placement that you describe. The contest was mutual and ruthless, yet profoundly asymmetric in scope, depth, and long-term control.

19
I remember some years ago (2019) when Pat Speer – whom I highly respect – surprised me at the Ed Forum with a post to the effect that he thought Oswald was in fact eating lunch in the domino room and was then outside during the JFKA. Even more surprising was that Larry Hancock agreed with him. I wrote an LN-oriented takedown which DVP thought enough of to post on the McAdams forum and has preserved at his exhaustive site: https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2019/09/. (The link includes give-and-take with Pat and others, and I didn’t read enough this time to know whether I come off as a snarky dolt, which is entirely possible.) The point being, I can certainly articulate an LN response to Oswald’s alibi if called upon to do so. However, it does give me pause that researchers of the caliber of Pat and Larry (who are much higher caliber than I) take the alibi seriously.

I don’t have the emotional attachment to the LN narrative to just keep saying, “Anything that conflicts with or casts doubt on the LN narrative is simply wrong, case closed, shut up and go away.” As I’ve stated, the JFKA is little more for me than a board (and sometime boring) game, and frankly it’s way more fun to play around with “What if?” than to just keep saying, “Oswald did it” like an LN parrot.

In rereading Ruth Paine’s and Marina Oswald's WC testimony about the visit to Irving on November 21, I was reminded of how utterly ordinary the visit was. Both Ruth and Marina believed Oswald had come to Irving to make peace with Marina after an unpleasant phone conversation a couple of days previously. When Ruth arrived home at 5:30 or so, Oswald was on the front lawn with Marina, playing with June. Dinner and the evening were entirely ordinary. When Ruth went out to the garage to paint blocks at 9, Oswald was already asleep in bed (Marina was not and stayed up with Ruth until 11:30). This was when Ruth said she found the light on – meaning that if Oswald was out in the garage it was before 9, yet no one observed him going out there (and the Paine home was tiny – two bedrooms, one bathroom, roughly 1,250 square feet with a single-car garage). Ruth even mentioned JFK’s visit, to which Oswald laconically replied “Ah, yes.”

Marina said Oswald bent over backwards to make peace. He helped her fold and put away diapers and played with the children out on the street. He said he was lonely and repeatedly asked her to join him in Dallas, promising an apartment and washing machine. He became upset but not angry at her refusal to join him right away. She asked him how she might watch JFK’s speech and he said he didn’t know. She said he had been “disturbed for weeks” before the Walker attempt, but she saw nothing like that on this visit. He usually got up before the alarm went off, but this time he slept until it did. He told her he would return on the weekend. She saw no paper bag.

Ordinary.

Yet Oswald ostensibly unpacked the rifle in the garage (Michael Paine said it was tied together inside the blanket), transferred it to the paper bag, then did something with it and exited with it in the morning. Possible, sure – but he would have taken some pretty big risks that neither Ruth nor Marina saw him taking.

Then we have the paper bag itself. Ostensibly, Oswald constructed this at the wrapping station in the TSBD – but when and why? Why take this risk? Ostensibly, he took it to Irving, presumably folded inside his shirt or jacket. But neither Frazier nor Marina heard or saw anything suggesting a crinkly paper bag. He would’ve had to do something with it before playing with June on the lawn, which was apparently minutes after his arrival – but what? We then have Frazier’s and Randle’s stubborn insistence that the bag they saw in the morning was too short (yes, I know, Randle may have originally said three feet), as well as the controversy surrounding the finding of the bag in the TSBD and its oil-free condition.

I don’t say these are deal-killers for the LN narrative, but they are certainly genuine puzzles that can’t just be waved away. Oswald simply doesn’t sound at all like someone who was contemplating a Presidential assassination in a matter of hours. This seems like a rather big deal to me. Instead of counting sheep, one of my favorite sleep-inducing exercises is to try to picture what Oswald actually did – not in broad terms but in very detailed terms – from the morning of November 21 through to the moment of the JFKA. It isn’t as easy to do as the LN narrative makes it sound.
20
A "bias toward the truth." BWAHAHA!!! That is about as non-introspective as I've ever heard.  :D :D :D

Sort of like "my greatest fault is that I'm just so honest and humble and kind that I'm sometimes my own worst enemy."

I recognize that I have a strong affinity for, and confirmation bias toward, weirdness of all varieties. To some extent, I share the conspiracy-prone mindset. This cuts across all varieties of weirdness in which I have been heavily involved - religion, UFOs, psychical research, the JFKA and numerous others.

The only thing I do to stay on the side of rationality is to try to be relentlessly critical and skeptical. I am the 180-degree opposite of the Gee Whiz True Believer in every area. This is true even of my own paranormal experiences. My first reaction to every super-duper UFO tale or Near-Death Experience is "Bullsh*t."

That's all I know to do - recognize the direction in which your confirmation biases point and then be relentlessly critical and skeptical of everything that feeds into them. When a UFO case or Near-Death Experience or other Tale of Weirdness now survives my filter - and some do - I am satisfied it's a piece of evidence that is worthy of being factored into my belief system.

The other danger is being so aware of your confirmation biases and so viligant that this becomes a confirmation bias of its own - because by God you aren't going to fall prey to your confirmation biases, you swing too far in the other direction.

I was on a few disciplinary panels for other lawyers. My biases tended to be personal - I either liked the attorney on trial and felt affinity or sympathy or didn't like him or her and felt the opposite. Here as well, all I could do was try be honest with myself and not let this bias affect my evaluation of the evidence or the discipline too much. Also not to let my role as a judge lure me into playing ego/power games. I always tried to put myself in the attorney's shoes and err on the side of compassion if I reasonably could.
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