JFK Assassination Forum

This is small potatoes, I know, but I was intrigued by the Danish angle in this blog post by Fred Litwin. The post consists entirely of a 3/31/67 Reuters story that, under the headline “Author Lane Says He Knows Who Killed JFK (But Won’t Tell),” summarizes a Danish newspaper article by Lane. The implication is that Lane’s supposed knowledge stemmed from privileged access to extensive evidence amassed by Jim Garrison and his staff.

That is, however, slightly misleading. The Danish article (see below) does indeed run under the headline “HE KNOWS WHO SHOT KENNEDY,” but the “HE” plainly refers to Garrison, not Lane. And the headline was almost certainly the work of a copy editor, not Lane himself. According to the article, Lane had a candid conversation with Garrison (in a wine cellar in New Orleans) and left convinced that Garrison was the real deal. It offers no indication what, if any, concrete evidence was presented. Lane appears to have been shrewd enough to climb aboard the Garrison bandwagon while preserving just enough plausible deniability should it later go sideways.

Ekstra Bladet, March 30, 1967, pp. 22-3:

[SUMMARY] The truth about the assassination is so explosive that no government would ever risk making it public, Mark Lane writes from New Orleans. He says that District Attorney Jim Garrison, in private conversation, shared with him what he knows about a conspiracy to commit the murder.

A REPORT BY MARK LANE FOR EKSTRA BLADET

*** HE KNOWS WHO SHOT KENNEDY ***

NEW ORLEANS (Ekstra Bladet) — The flight from San Francisco stopped briefly in Dallas before heading straight on to New Orleans. And just like the plane, the investigation into the Kennedy assassination has now shifted from Dallas to New Orleans.

While I was in Dallas, I found myself thinking back to my first arrival at Love Field more than three years earlier. The mood back then had been openly hostile. The authorities were intent on persuading the country that Lee Harvey Oswald had killed President Kennedy. And that he had acted entirely on his own.

When I first arrived in Dallas, I brought nothing more than a cheap Japanese tape recorder, hoping to uncover the facts. Henry Wade, the Dallas district attorney, had gone on television to present what he claimed was conclusive evidence that Oswald was the killer, acting entirely on his own.

I left Dallas, only to keep coming back, each visit leaving me more skeptical of the official story.

Now, however, I had arrived in New Orleans, where District Attorney Jim Garrison was saying very little to the press about the case he was pursuing. He and his small team were fully occupied tracking down witnesses and digging through files and records.

The atmosphere was nothing like Dallas. The mayor had even announced that he intended to present Garrison with the city’s golden key and eventually name him an honorary citizen. Reporters armed with notebooks, tape recorders, and TV cameras bombarded me with questions the moment I arrived. And unlike in Dallas, I received so many invitations to speak at public events and on television in New Orleans that I couldn’t possibly have handled them all in a single week.

When I told the reporters that I was there to meet Jim Garrison, they insisted it couldn’t be done. —Garrison hasn’t spoken to anyone outside his own staff for weeks, they said. He won’t even pick up the phone.

Yet despite this, much of the American press has accused Garrison of being a publicity seeker.

When I arrived at my hotel, I phoned the DA’s office and was told that Mr. Garrison couldn’t be reached. Ten minutes later, however, he called me himself, saying he was very eager to meet.

—I’ve read that you’ve called me the most important man in America, he said. —That’s not true. You’re the one who set all of this in motion. Your book opened the doors. You’re the one who deserves to be called the most important man in the United States.

At 5 p.m. Garrison arrived at my hotel, and we were given a quiet room in the wine cellar where no one would interrupt us. We exchanged a few pleasantries, talked about the American media’s dishonest handling of the case, and before long we were deep into the tragedy that has shaped our lives so profoundly.

—I’m going to tell you everything I know, Garrison said. —Who organized the assassination, who planned it, and who killed Jack Kennedy. Dallas is the starting point. You saw that right away. And anyone with average intelligence who has read your book knows that the Warren Commission’s report has nothing to do with the real facts. Of course the shot was fired from the fence along the route.

—Who fired the shot? Who planned the assassination? I asked Garrison if he could answer those two questions.

He looked at me for a moment, as though weighing whether he could be completely candid with me.

—Yes, I know who planned it. I know how it was done. And I know who was standing behind the fence, Garrison said.

I listened as he laid out the case in detail — one astonishing event after another, a story so shocking that it could shake America to its core like nothing before it.

It soon became obvious to me why the Warren Commission had kept the truth hidden. It is the kind of truth no government would ever willingly expose.

But the truth will come out. Jim Garrison is a brave and determined man who refuses to believe that anything good can come from concealing it.

For as long as he lives, no one will be able to stop him from telling a New Orleans jury who stood behind the fence with the rifle that fired the fatal shot. And, above all, which powerful forces were behind the assassination of the president.

That is why Jim Garrison is the most important man in America today.

Dented neck was to hold wadding for a blank round.

You did ask me which witnesses said the first shot came before Z180. Just to refresh your memory you wrote:

"Give us the witnesses who said the first shot missed and the witnesses who said the first shot occurred at a time before z180"

It is not rocket science, but perhaps you need someone to explain the basic concept for you in crayon:

• A human can give evidence of when a sound event occurred in relation to when a visual event occurred.
• Humans can do this because, unlike the zfilm, humans are capable of sensing both sound and light.
• We can see the visual event in the zfilm and relate the frame in which the visual event appears to the time of the sound event.
  

In this way, the witness provides evidence of the time of the sound event in relation to an event that they saw and which was also recorded on the zfilm.

For example, Hurchel Jacks was driving the VP car. He said “ My car had just straightened up from making the left turn. I was looking directly at the President's car at that time. At that time I heard
a shot ring out which appeared to come from the right rear of the Vice President's car.”. That statement relates the time of the first shot to the time that the VP car completed the turn.  We can see in the zfilm that at z180 the VP car had not yet completed the turn.

In that way Hurchel Jacks is a “witness who said the first shot occurred at a time after z180”.

"just after they completed the turn" That sure nails it down to within 30-40 frames.

Yes. But it provides a ‘before bracket’ to the first shot ie z180 is before the first shot..

You are taking Bennett's statement out of context.

No.  I was not interpreting it. I was simply quoting exactly what he said. 

He said he heard a shot while he was scanning the crowd to the right(#1). He then turned toward JFK and saw a shot strike JFK high on his back (#2).

He said upon hearing that sound he “immediately” looked at the President’s car and “at that exact time” saw “a shot that hit” JFK in the upper back. You seem to be ignoring those words.

What he did not say is that he waited 4 seconds to look at the Boss’ car after hearing the first loud firecracker noise. He did not say that the there was another loud noise at the time he saw a shot that hit JFK in the upper back. He saw it at the exact time that he first looked, which was “immediately upon hearing” the first loud firecracker noise. He described only two loud sounds.[/list][/list]

What is silly is you thinking that I ever suggested that witnesses could.

You did ask me which witnesses said the first shot came before Z180. Just to refresh your memory you wrote:

"Give us the witnesses who said the first shot missed and the witnesses who said the first shot occurred at a time before z180"

Are you now acknowledging the silliness of your challenge?

But we can certainly relate what they said they observed at the time of the first shot to specific zframes.  For example, occupants of the VP car said that the first shot occurred just after they completed the turn and were going down Elm St. toward the triple underpass.  We can see that at z180 when the car is last seen in the zfilm that it has not quite finished that turn.

"just after they completed the turn" That sure nails it down to within 30-40 frames.

Ok. That’s one witness.  Just another 40 or so to go. Unfortunately, Bennett was not called so he never explained why his notes made on the airplane that afternoon refer to only two shots.  He wrote that he heard a loud noise and “immediately, upon hearing” it, he “looked at the Boss’ car”. He said “Immediately, at that exact time” he “saw a shot that hit the Boss” in the upper back.

You are taking Bennett's statement out of context. He said he heard a shot while he was scanning the crowd to the right(#1). He then turned toward JFK and saw a shot strike JFK high on his back (#2). He then said he saw a "second" shot strike JFK in the head(#3). He was clearly describing the second of the two shots which he saw strike JFK. Bennett could not have seen the shot that hit JFK in the back if he was scanning the crowd to the right. He was clearly describing two separate shots, the one he heard and then the one he saw hit JFK in the back.

Here is Glen Bennett's description of the shooting:
https://www.jfk-online.com/bennett.html

No witness can tell us at what frame of the Z-film they saw or heard something. Your request is silly.

What is silly is you thinking that I ever suggested that witnesses could.  But we can certainly relate what they said they observed at the time of the first shot to specific zframes.  For example, occupants of the VP car said that the first shot occurred just after they completed the turn and were going down Elm St. toward the triple underpass.  We can see that at z180 when the car is last seen in the zfilm that it has not quite finished that turn.

SS Agent Glen Bennett who heard the first shot, then turned to look at JFK and SAW the second shot strike him high on his back. To believe that the first shot was not a miss by Bennett's account, one would have to believe only JBC was hit by the first shot, something JBC adamantly refuted.

Ok. That’s one witness.  Just another 40 or so to go. Unfortunately, Bennett was not called so he never explained why his notes made on the airplane that afternoon refer to only two shots.  He wrote that he heard a loud noise and “immediately, upon hearing” it, he “looked at the Boss’ car”. He said “Immediately, at that exact time” he “saw a shot that hit the Boss” in the upper back.