I think some follow-up to these points will be helpful.
I think you had already posted plenty of nonsense. You didn't need to add on.
Howard Donahue, a court-certified ballistics and firearms expert, met with Dr. Alfred Olivier in the spring of 1969. Donahue wanted to talk with Olivier about the head-shot wound ballistics test that Olivier conducted for the Warren Commission (WC) in 1964. In that test, 10 FMJ bullets were fired into human skulls. The skulls were wrapped and filled with ballistics gelatin to simulate both the scalp on the skull and the brain matter inside the skull. The gelatin on the outer surface of the skull was "trimmed down to approximate the thickness of the tissues overlying the skull, the soft tissues of the head" (5 H 87).
Olivier told Donahue that "in each case" the bullets broke into "only two or three large fragments," and that the bullets did not "disintegrate or explode." Olivier even showed Donahue the skulls from the test, and Donahue noted that the resulting exit wounds were "nowhere close to where Kennedy's exit wound was located." I quote from Bonar Menninger's book Mortal Error, which Menninger wrote with Donahue to tell the story of how Donahue came to formulate the mortal-error theory of the assassination:
Donahue needed more data. He'd already concluded that the slug [the head-shot bullet] -- by virtue of its disintegration on impact -- showed all the characteristics of a small-caliber, high-velocity, soft-nosed round. But what about the Warren Commission's test firings? Did the Carcano test bullets disintegrate in a similar fashion? Donahue didn't think so. The doctor who'd conducted the flawed analysis of the single-bullet theory -- the shots through goat meat and cadavers -- Dr. Alfred Olivier up at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal, had done the head-shot tests as well. What could be learned from Olivier?
In the spring of 1969, Donahue made a phone call to Edgewood. Luckily, Olivier was still employed there. Donahue got Olivier on the line and, without going into detail, explained that he was a weapons expert who'd been investigating the assassination. He said he'd be very interested in seeing the results of Olivier's head-shot test firings firsthand. Would it be possible to come and visit him? Olivier said he didn't see why not, and the two set an appointment for the following week.
Edgewood is located an hour or so north of Baltimore on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. The compound is part of the Army's Aberdeen Proving Grounds, a sprawling facility where in the 1960s the instruments of war -- everything from artillery rounds to napalm -- were tested and refined.
Olivier was a veterinarian by training and responsible for studying the effects of gunshots on animals in the arsenal's wound ballistics lab. Donahue found Olivier to be a friendly man with graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses. The men exchanged pleasantries. Donahue asked about the doctor's attempts to duplicate the President's head wounds. Olivier explained he had test-fired Carcano rounds into ten human skulls filled with gelatin. The gelatin simulated the human brain.
"Did the bullets break up?" Donahue asked.
"Yes, they did," Olivier replied.
"How big were the fragments? I mean. . . . How many were there?"
"Well, in each case, I could find only two or three large fragments, but together they seemed to account for the bulk of the bullet's mass."
"So the bullets didn't disintegrate or explode, as far as you could see?" Donahue asked.
"No," Olivier replied, "they did not."
Donahue asked if any of these fragments had somehow been deposited on the outside table of the skull.
"No," Olivier said. "Actually, I have the skulls here. I brought them out in anticipation of your visit. Would you like to see them?"
Olivier began pulling human skulls out of two plastic bags. Donahue quickly made a mental note. Olivier had obviously fired his shots into the skulls slightly above and to the right of the external occipital protuberance. . . .
Predictably, the resulting exit wounds were nowhere close to where Kennedy's exit wound was located. Most were in the face of the skull, shattering the bones in the forehead area. (Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, St. Martin's Press, 1992, pp. 83-84).
Yet, the transcript of Olivier's WC testimony has Olivier saying that all the bullet fragments in CE 857 came from one bullet and were recovered from a single skull from the head-shot test, which is a physical impossibility for an FMJ bullet and which contradicts what Olivier told Donahue about his test.
Furthermore, CE 857 shows 19-21 fragments plus two large fragments. Even if we assume that all those fragments came from a single bullet, this would not duplicate the behavior of the ammo that hit JFK's head. The JFK head-shot ammo deposited over 30 tiny fragments in the right-frontal region, deposited several fragments to the left (viewer's left) of the right-frontal fragment cluster, deposited two fragments slightly behind and above the right orbit at least 1 inch from any other fragment, deposited a lone fragment in the left side of the skull, and deposited several fragments and a few particles on the rear outer table of the skull.
It gets worse, and more suspicious. CE 857 and CE 859 are supposed to show the same fragments from the same bullet recovered from the same skull, but they clearly do not show this. CE 859 shows 32-35 fragments, at least five of which are 10-20 mm wide and 10-20 mm long, but the two large fragments seen in CE 857 are not shown.
Even WC counsel Arlen Specter noticed this obvious discrepancy and asked Olivier about it. Olivier said the two exhibits were supposed to contain the same fragments, and then suggested that some of the fragments may have "dropped out," presumably before the exhibits were photographed. At that point, Specter felt compelled to hold an off-the-record discussion with Olivier. When they came back on the record, nothing more was said about the obvious conflict between the two exhibits:
Mr. SPECTER. Are all of the fragments on 859 contained within 857?
Dr. OLIVIER. They are supposed to be, photographed and placed in the box. If they dropped out, they are supposed to be all there.
(Discussion off the record.) (5 H 88)
We should keep in mind that Olivier worked for the Army, so he could have been ordered to misrepresent his test results. If he had refused, he could have been fired. Notice that not one word was said about the fragmentation of the nine other bullets in Olivier's test, a very odd and suspicious omission, especially since Olivier was never asked if the supposed fragmentation of the one test bullet was representative of the behavior of the other test bullets.
Physicist Howard Roffman noted way back in 1976 that the released skull x-rays from Oliver's head-shot test show bullet fragmentation that is very different from the fragmentation seen in the JFK autopsy skull x-rays:
These x-rays depict gelatin-filled human skulls shot with ammunition of the type allegedly used by Oswald. They were classified by the government and remained suppressed until recently; they are printed here for the first time ever. What they reveal is that Oswald1s rifle could not have produced the head wounds suffered by President Kennedy. The bullet that hit the president in the head exploded into a multitude of minuscule fragments. One Secret Service agent described the appearance of these metal fragments on the X rays: "The whole head looked like a little mass of stars." The fragmentation depicted on these test x-rays obviously differs from that described in the president's head. The upper x-ray reveals only relatively large fragments concentrated at the point of entrance; the lower reveals only a few tiny fragments altogether. This gives dramatic suppressed proof that Oswald did not fire the shot that killed President Kennedy.(Presumed Guilty, A. S. Barnes, 1976, pp. 155-157; pp. 156-157 show the released skull x-rays from Olivier's test)
Roffman also noted that the bullet fragmentation seen in the JFK autopsy skull x-rays is not the type fragmentation that would be caused by an FMJ bullet:
The only solid observation that can be made on the basis of fragmentation depicted in the head x-rays is that a bullet striking the head fragmented extensively, leaving pieces of metal, for the most part "the size of dust particles," concentrated toward the frontal portion of the brain. This type of fragmentation is not consistent with the type of full-jacketed military ammunition that the Commission says was used. The construction and composition of full-jacketed bullets obviates any such massive break-up. As noted previously, when military ammunition fragments, it is usually in such a manner that the core separates from the jacket. The core may undergo further break-up, although its metallic composition does not permit the creation of numerous dust-like particles. (Presumed Guilty, pp. 117-118.)
All of the above is rendered moot by the fact that a fragmented FMJ bullet was found in the limo with two large fragments being positively matched to Oswald's rifle and a number of smaller fragments were also found. These fragments were less than the material contained by a FMJ Carcano bullet so we can safely say some of the fragments flew out of the limo. MTG would have us believe that a bullet struck JFK's head and disappeared without a trace. MTG apparently believes in several Magic Bullets that struck both JFK and JBC and then disappeared into thin air. The WCR scenario has none of these problems. It fully explains all the wounds to the two men with just two bullets fired from the sniper's nest, both of which are accounted for. The single bullet which struck JFK in the back, yawed upon exiting from his throat, making an elongated wound into JBC's back who was lined up perfectly to be struck by that bullet. That bullet exited from the right side of JBC's and wrist, flattening it at the base and depositing small lead fragments from the base. We know those fragments came from the base because that is the only place the lead core was exposed. That bullet then went on to make a shallow entry into JBC's thigh before working it's way out and being discovered later that day at Parkland. MTG rejects that scenario even though he has no evidence or explanation for other bullets fired from other locations, which wounds they caused, nor where they ended up. He's not alone, however. No other CT has been able to provide such an explanation over 62 years.
