From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: RE: PBS Special
Date: 16 Dec 92 19:57:26 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
NNTP-Posting-Host: RIPPLE


In article <schuck.723834930@sfu.ca> Bruce Schuck writes:


[My time to do Usenet lately is severely limited; thus the
very delayed response.]

>The testing in Dealey Plaza confirmed that the sound impulses were in
>fact the echo pattern of a rifle fired in Dealey Plaza.

	I am still anxiously awaiting your explanation for the
	disruption caused by a microphone button stuck on `transmit'
	and the channel 1 dispatcher's placement of the microphone
	on the  Stemmons.

>The Chimes were heard in Dealey Plaza during a 1964 memorial
>to the assassination. [High Treason]

	Interesting Mr. Groden didn't happen to bring this up
	when he was dealing with the HSCA investigators.  But
	are you suggesting that the chimes magically appeared
	for one day in 1964?  Because there were no buildings
	within shouting distance of Dealy, as of 1963, from which
	chimes could be heard.  Under the right cicumstances
	I suppose some noises can be heard over fairly large
	distances; but hardly likely over the noise of a cheering
	crowd, and a moving motorcycle surrounded by other
	motorcycles and vehicles.

>All the bullet had to do was hit the street first to expend the
>energy. Of course, for it to the hit the street near Tague, it
>couldn't have been fired from the TSBD because it would have had to
>miss JFK by 20 feet to the right and 30 feet high. On the other hand,
>if fired from the Dal-Tex, it only had to miss JFK by a couple of feet
>high, since a line draw from the Dal-Tex to the curb intersects the
>Limo path several times.

	So your thesis is that a rifle bullet hit at point A then
	bounced over to point B (curb near Tague) and that this
	rifle bullet was fired from somewhere in the Dal Tex
	building.  Is that the latest version?  

	Naturally, the Dal Tex gunman, like all the other gunmen
	other than Oswald simply wasn't noticed by anyone standing
	nearby.  

>Non starter? It establishes that 4th shot was fired. Too bad the FBI
>waited 9 months to analyze it.

	Yes, it is a non starter.  It does not establish a fourth
	shot.  But it does serve as a reminder that speculation
	thrives on even the weakest diet.

>>	What do you mean, please post them? 

>Ok...you don't know of any. Why didn't you say so?

	Actually I did, and I notice you chopped them from
	the extract above.  I just didn't pore through several
	thousand pages of text to give page numbers.  But I
	suspect you are being just a tad disingenous here, as
	anyone who has studied the voluminous medical evidence
	knows quite well that opinions about the reaction time
	to a wound like Governor Connally's varies from person
	to person.  As far as I know, actual testing of wound
	reaction times would essentially require the ethics
	of the Nazi death camp doctor/sadists, so hard data
	are scarce.  Gunshot wounds resulting in some types
	of neurological trauma are easier to calculate, not
	because such gunshot wounds have been studied more
	extensively, but because such trauma has been studied
	more extensively.

>>	Both Connally and Kennedy were stuck at the same time, at
>>	approximately frame 222-225.

>225? Kennedy was already reacting to being shot before 210, before
>going behind the Stemmons sign, according to Zapruder.
>At 225 JFK's hands are already near his throat, and it's damned
>unlikely he could have reacted instantaneously!

	Zapruder Zaschmuder.  I have a copy of his testimony.
	You have to strain real hard to interpret his words
	as intending to establish reactions timed by frames.
	The first thing he noticed was JFK grabbing the left
	side of his chest, something he in fact never did.
	If anyone wants to see what Zapruder saw, why, watch
	the Zapruder film.

	If you want to claim an early strike there are better
	sources to cite than Zapruder, like the HSCA photo
	panel who said that JFK was reacting to "an extreme
	external stimulus" by 207.  Of course they said the
	same thing about Connally at 162 and again at 223.
	

>>	As for the shot at 190 or so hitting Kennedy, that is 
>>	unlikely in the extreme.  The first shot to hit him 
>>	fractured his vertebrae in the area of C6 or T1.  This
>>	causes an almost immediate neurological reaction.  

>If his vertebrae was fractured it's much more likely he would have
>gone limp immediately, just as paralysis victims go. Remember the
>football player who broke his neck a week or so ago? He hardly started
>reaching around with his arms over his head. He dropped, and stayed down.

	I am not a neurosurgeon but I think it is safe to say that
	different fractures of different types in different vertebrae
	cause different reactions.  It happens that fractures at
	the extremities of the lower cervical or upper thoracic
	vertebrae can cause an involuntary flexing of the arms
	in the manner illustrated by Dr. Thorburn 100 years ago
	and by President Kennedy 29 years ago.  Kennedy's arms
	are still basically in this position until 312; at no point
	does he clutch his throat.  I rather doubt anyone clutching
	their throat would feel obliged to splay their arms 90
	degrees and neglect to actually clutch the throat.  

>>	None of the bullets fired into cotton by anyone have anything
>>	but a perfectly round base.  They are not at all flattened,
>>	they are not bent on the long axis, they haven't lost any
>>	weight and they do not extrude as much lead as Lattimer's
>>	bullets.  

>Who cares about Lattimer. He was using a vise not a gun. The bullets
>fired into cotton were bent -- more than CE399. And lead was visibly
>extruded from the base, more than CE399. Check out the picture
>yourself.

	Whether the force comes from the use of a vise or a strike
	of a bone the point is that it takes alot of it to flatten
	one of those bullets at all.  Test bullets fired into water
	or cotton waste material do not flatten.  The test bullets
	have a slight extrusion of lead.  Most of CE399's lead
	extrusion wound up in Governor Connally.  

>>       Most of CE399's extruding lead wound up in
>>	Governor Connally.  But a portion of the extrusion is still
>>	visible, and microscopic examination reveals that the
>>	scooped-out base of CE399 is scooped out in a direction
>>	running towards the remaining small extrusion of lead.

>Scooped out. That was Frazier of the FBI. He scooped it out for
>spectrographic and NAA testing!

	Frazier took a little chunk from the nose and dug a little
	hole in the base for testing.  The scooping and scraping
	of the lead at the base terminates at the point where the
	extruding lead still remains.  And speaking of the NAA testing,
	it demonstrated that the fragments removed from Connally's
	wrist came from CE399, though not to the exclusion of every
	possible bullet on planet earth.  But within the statistical
	framework of WCC 6.5 cartridges the match is perfect.

>>	Tomlinson didn't find the bullet *on* any stretcher; it rolled
>>	off one of the stretchers in the hallway.  

>Did someone see or hear it roll off a stretcher? No! 

	Yes, Tomlinson heard it hit the floor.  That's how he
	happened to notice it.  But I understand the late breaking
	news on this is that there was a dictabelt tape recording
	the sounds of bouncing bullets at Parkland and the tape
	proves the bullet rolled off Conally's stretcher.

>>       Since Kennedy's
>>	stretcher wasn't in the hallway and Connally's stetcher was
>>	right there you don't have to be Hercule Poirot to figure out
>>	what happened.

>Right. It was on the floor already or dropped on the floor by someone.
>Since the bullet had *no* blood or human flesh on it, it certainly
>never went through a human being.

	Now you keep making the claim that it had no blood or flesh
	on it.  It is up to you to do more than assert this is true.
	Would a bullet doing what this one did inevitably have
	blood and/or flesh on it?  If so, how much?  What effect would the
	clothing have on removing foreign material?  What effect would
	the stretcher and medical linen have?  The floor?  The pockets
	of the people who carried it?  What sort of cleaning was done
	to the bullet to prepare it for analysis?  Do ballistics
	professionals tend to use bullets that do or do not have
	foreign material like blood or flesh when trying to match
	little microscopic scratches?

	Let's get a little detail here.  CE399 as the source of
	Connally's wrist wound is proved to the atomic level.
	Some professional analysis on the subject by yourself
	would be appreciated.  Nothing vague will do.  We require the
	same kind of exhaustive analysis done by FBI, WC, HSCA,
	Lattimer, Drs. Guinn and Nichols, and on and on - from you.

>>	The wrist wound could not have been caused by a mushroomed
>>	bullet or else the exit wound would have been much larger.
>>	You might want to read Gregory's testimony on this point;
>>	he goes into great detail about the entrance wound and he
>>	says that the butt end of CE399 looks about like the missile
>>	causing this wound should have looked.  

>Shaw is clear on this. It was caused by a deformed bullet because of
>the raggedness of the wounds.

	Shaw has always deferred professional analysis of the wrist
	wound to Dr. Gregory, and rightly so.  Dr. Gregory says the
	wound of entry to the wrist was caused by something other
	than a pristine bullet - such as the butt end of CE399.

>>        As for the rib wound,
>>	as Shaw has always said, the bullet traveled along the fifth
>>	rib and did not penetrate the pleura.  It was a glancing
>>	blow.  

>Glancing? It pulverized 10cm into bone fragments!

	Shaw, on the other hand, is a pretty good source for
	analysis of the chest wound.  He has always described it
	as a glancing blow and he has always says the missile did
	not penetrate the pleura.  He compared the break to grabbing
	the end of a tree branch and pulling.  The bullet traveled
	along the path of the fifth rib and, no doubt about it,
	put one hell of a hurt on it.  This is an illustration of the
	strength and power of a military rifle bullet.  Fortunately
	for Connally's wrist and leg, the bullet was somewhat slowed
	and rather tumbling when it entered.

>>	I have never said I thought the entrance wound was 5 cm;
>>	I have quoted Dr. Baden, from his book _Unnatural Death_
>>	to the effect that Connally's scar was 2 inches (5 cm)
>>	long.  But I have just received the HSCA hearings and
>>	exhibits and I turned right to the volume that contains
>>	the bulk of the medical testimony.  Baden there explains
>>	that the scar was 1 1/8" long, i.e., about 3 cm.  Thus,
>>	Dr. Shaw's testimony to the WC - entrance wound was about
>>	1.5 cm - is undoubtedly correct.

>>	Not that it particularly matters.  Shaw and Wecht believe
>>	it can be accounted for by a tangential strike.  But note
>>	that the wound is elliptical and off-center on the long
>>	axis.  It is almost vertical.  See Larry Sturdivan's 
>>	comment on this.  He rightly points out that such an entrance
>>	wound would require a strike from a point roughly 60 degrees
>>	above a horizontal line drawn through Gov. Connally.  In which
>>	case we are dealing, perhaps, with an invisible CIA	
>>	helicopter.  

>How about the top of the County Records Building?

	How about it?  If the sixth floor of the TSBD is about
	20 degrees above horizontal relative to the limo I rather
	doubt the top of the County Records building is 60 degrees.
	But I thought you were placing a gunman in the Dal Tex
	building.  In fact - is there any building (or manhole
	cover) in Dealy Plaza that did not have a rifle squad
	firing away that day?  

>>	Suggesting that memory fades rather than improves with time
>>	is hardly a smear.   Although it seems that his memory
>>	lapses have caused his wound diagrams to become more rather
>>	than less vertical.  (see his HSCA wound diagram)

>>	Dr. Shaw does not believe that Connally's wounds were caused
>>	by a tumbling bullet because he does not believe a tumbling
>>	bullet could have caused so much damage.  This in spite of
>>	his repeated statements that he is a chest surgeon, not a
>>	ballistics expert.  That CE399 could have passed through 
>>	Kennedy and gone on to cause all of Governor Connally's
>>	wounds isn't speculation, it is a demonstrated phenomenon.

>By who? Lattimer? Ha ha ha ha.

	By Light, Dzieman, Olivier, Lattimer, Col. McMeekin,
	Larry Sturdivan, and by the laws of physics.

>>	No test firings and no experience with WC ammo shows it
>>	to separate jacket and core without hitting a very tough
>>	bone, head on, at about top speed.  The bullet that hit 
>>	Connally's rib was hitting a fairly soft bone and was hitting
>>	it with a "glancing blow."   

>It pulverized 10cm of rib. It then went on to smash Connally's wrist
>into pieces. The bones in the wrist are big and strong.

	CE399 is approximately four times stronger than Connally's
	radial bone.  This means there is a range of velocity in
	which striking the bone with the bullet will cause deformation
	to the bone but not to the bullet.  The threshold is at about
	1000 fps.  Since CE399 was in fact deformed it must have hit
	the wrist going a bit faster than that.

>>	It was perfectly round, as if made by the butt end of
>>	a bullet - or so said Dr. Gregory.  

>The fragments on the Limo floor include a round section of the end of
>a bullet that had the core spearated from the jacket.

	Not only was Connally's wrist not even remotely in line
	to be wounded by a fragment of the head shot, but the
	fragments on the limo floor came from a different bullet
	than the fragments in the wrist.  

>Of course none of those pieces had blood or human flesh or brain
>tissue on them, so they could be from the bullet that hit the bar
>above the windshield, leaving no pieces from the Kennedy head shot
>which were from a soft nosed bullet.

	I suppose one can speculate anything one wants.  But when
	people tire of this and want to know what actually happened
	they turn to forensic scientists.  The questions about the
	actual events in Dealy Plaza have been answered long since,
	and in spades.  Forensic scientists cannot prove the negative
	about conspiracies or riflemen firing shots that missed the
	limo.  But other than that, the party has been over for
	a long time...

Joel Grant (speaking on his own behalf)