From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Subject: Smoke and Mirrors
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date:  6 APR 92 14:46:02 PDT


re: 776 (David Wright)

Interestingly enough, you chose not to answer the very specific
questions I asked in the posting to which you responded.  Such as,
what evidence do you have linking any of the Clark Panel doctors
to any criminal or conspiratorial elements?  In your posting,
as is typical for pro-conspiracy buffs, there is an awful lot
of unproven "they(s)" responsible for various amazing things.

"They" forged a photo of the President's head.  They must have,
because the autopsy material represents the best sort of criminal
evidence - static, forensic evidence - and it contradicts the
worst sort of evidence, namely, heat-of-the moment eyewitness
testimony.  When you sort through the mess, such eyewitness 
testimony represents the basis for most pro-conspiracy claims.

You assert the photograph "showing the rear head of the president
is a forgery, or a composition."  Well, who did it?  How did they
manage to insert their forgery into materials delivered first
to the Kennedy family, and from them to the National Archives?

For years the pro-conspiracy types (among whose number I
used to count myself) shouted `foul' when the autopsy materials
couldn't be found.  (The Kennedy family had the materials)
"Give us the autopsy materials and we will *prove* the second
gunman theory!"  They got the autopsy materials, it proved nothing
of the sort, and we now must put up with Son of Autopsy: forgery.

The evidence doesn't fit the theory, so it must be doctored evidence.

I have read and interpreted the points you have been making, but
it really isn't anything new or interesting.  The same points
have been made many times.  They have never been proven.  No one
has come forward to tell us who did these things and how they did
them, no one can tell us just how such people as the doctors on
the Clark Panel could be either corrupted or so easily fooled -
and so it goes.

But to answer your questions: "...why [I] think that the photos
and X-rays should be as untainted as anything else in the Kennedy
assassination."

First, I do not accept the planted axiom, namely that the investigation
in Kennedy's assassination is somehow tainted.  Second, aside from whether
or not other aspects of the assassination are or are not tainted, the
question of the autopsy materials must be judged for itself.  Given
the lack of proof that the materials *are* tainted, and given
the inherent unlikeliness of such a conspiracy happening the way
the critics insist it must have happened, I conclude it is the
critics whose work is tainted.  

"What piece of evidence has *not* been misleading?"

The vast majority of the evidence is not misleading.  The ballistics
matching of LHO's pistol to the shells and to the slugs in Officer
Tippitt are not misleading.  LHO's possession of that gun at the
time of his arrest is not misleading.  The ballistics match of
CE399 to Oswald's gun is not misleading.  Howard Brennan's testimony
is not misleading.  Arnold Rowland's and Robert Edwards and Ronald
Fischer's testimony is not misleading.  

What is misleading is the fact that in any real-world event,
particularly of something so unexpected and spectacular,
different people are going to see and hear different things.
So what else is new?

I do not read the Clark Panel as being skeptical of the
photos.  You are reading a different Clark Panel report
than I am.  I would estimate the size of an entry wound
created by a 6.6MM slug to be in the neighborhood of
6.5MM, rather smaller than a typical finger.  Since the
concluded it was an entrance wound, indeed firmly concluded
that both wounds were entry wounds, it is rather a secondary
point.

I don't know why the House hired radiologist testify as he
did.  Perhaps he believes in truly magic bullets, bullets
that, upon exiting skulls, simply disappear.

Humes's findings were that both missiles traversed the
President's body from back to front.  The Clark Panel
and the HSCA medical experts came to the same conslusions,
though in somewhat different words.  Trying to pick nits
or create controversy cannot hide this very obvious fact.

No, the contours of the head being grossly distorted by
the "extensive fragmentation of the underlying calvarium"
does not contradict the Panel's (not my) "assertion"
that the exit wound was in the front.

The FBI report was filed by two agents, neither of whom
had any more than first aid medical training.  Various
incisions are made, as a matter of course, in the 
performance of an autopsy.  One of the incisions I 
highligted when I posted extracts from the Clark Panel.
The fact that two agents noticed that autopsy doctors
cut the body during autopsies is hardly startling.

What is startling is the great leap from that to: post-mortem,
wound-altering surgery was performed.  And since when do you
trust FBI reports anyway?  ;^)

I think Lattimer noticed at least one thing the Clark Panel
missed, namely, cervical damage.  But they got the basics
right, and denying a syllable or two or their addition
hardly discredits their findings.

Various theories exist about the bullet and its characteristics.
I have not often heard that a bullet with a muzzle velocity
high enough to kill elephants with one shot is "low velocity."
Donahue makes the same point and believes Agent Hickey accidentally
fired the fatal shot.  I regard this analysis as inconclusive
either way.  

What point is there to argue with the President's body being
operated upon between the plane and the autopsy?  The body
was tracked continuously from the time is was put into the
coffin in Dallas to the time it was interred at the cemetery.
Unless you happen to believe that people like Dave Powers are
part of the conspiracy, that is.  The post-mortem wound scenario
is a last-ditch (and decidedly hysterical) attempt to shore
up the increasingly weak second gunman case.

I did not intend to cite all the evidence of the case by
citing portions of the Clark Panel.  Which is why I said:
"The evidence of this crime..." rather than "The evidence
developed by the Clark Panel..."  No doubt over time more
of this evidence will be placed into this file.

For the nonce, it should be clear to those not a priori
committed to Rube Goldbergian conspiracy theories that
the case (taken as a whole) against LHO is open and
shut.  Not unlike cash registers, opening and shutting,
as they ring up book sales by such ghouls as Lifton and
Groden, as well as (apparently) more honest souls
like poor Dr. Crenshaw.

Finally, as noted above, virtually the entire second gunman/
conspiracy theories rest upon a willful disregard of very
clear evidence.  The typical ploy: the witness is now
dead, the diary/letters/papers are now missing, the evidence
is forged, whatever.  The second gunman theory is falsifiable
and has in fact been falsified.  Conspiracy in general
can never be disproved, so it is infinitely malleable and
a never-ending source of book, video, lecture $$$$....

Joel Grant

(usual disclaimer: speaking on his own behalf)