From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Subject: guest posting
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date:  9 APR 92 07:11:48 PDT


I shall attempt to post a file by Mr. David Condon, who
inadvertently sent it to me rather than to the Usenet.
Being a WC defender, and being therefore committed to
truth, justice, and the American Way, I have resisted the
temptation to edit his article to a form resembling:

Thanks to your postings I have seen the light!

And offer it as it came to me.  ;^)

Joel Grant



                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     09-Apr-1992 07:00am PDT
                                        From:     VMSMail User GRANT_JO
                                                  GRANT_JO@RIPPLE@MRGATE
                                        Dept:      
                                        Tel No:    

TO:  GRANT_JO@RIPPLE@MRGATE


Subject: usenet                                                      

From:	DECPA::"dxc4@po.CWRU.Edu" "MAIL-11 Daemon"  8-APR-1992 19:39:10.24
To:	ripple::grant_jo
CC:	
Subj:	Re: mea culpa


>
2


-------------------------------
Date: Wed Apr  8 21:29:55 1992
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Re: mea culpa
Reply-To: dxc4@po.CWRU.Edu (David Condon)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)

In a previous article, grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant) says:

>
>
>re: my own last posting
>
>Obvious brain mixup of my own.  To state it clearly:
>Lifton believes all of JFK's wounds were caused by
>a gunman firing from the front and that his body was
>surgically altered to make it *appear* as if the wounds
>were inflicted from behind.  

I don't have a copy of Lifton's book in front of me right now, but
from what I remember, this is not quite correct. Lifton presents
evidence that the body, specifically the brain, was altered in such a
way as to make it _impossible to determine with certainty_ where the
shots came from -- and that the doctors, although confused and doubtful,
when told that the shots _only came from the rear_, tried as best they
could to produce medical findings consistent with that information.

Eyewitness accounts recorded by Lifton said that a medical attendant at
Bethesda, when he first saw the body -- which was _before the start_ of
the official autopsy -- saw that the President's brain was _gone_. Not
inside his skull. Completely missing. Lifton describes a conversation
with his mentor-cum-adversary, Wesley J. Liebeler, Warren Commission
counsel, in which they called a forensic pathologist and read to him
verbatim the Bethesda doctor's official description of the head wounds.
Lifton said, "What caused the damage?" The pathologist replied, "He was
hit in the head with an axe." The Bethesda description of the brain (which
is back inside the skull by this time), without actually
using the word "sectioned," was consistent with the hypothesis that
the brain had been surgically sectioned _before_ the autopsy. _Cut._ With
a surgical instrument. Not pierced by a bullet. The implication that
Lifton draws is that the brain had been removed and sectioned to remove
one or more bullets and to _obscure_ the wounds they made passing through
the brain. That's not the same thing at all. Similarly, the X rays show
the skull fractured in several places -- so that another doctor's reaction
to the X ray is "What's holding the skull together?"

Nobody disputes that there were shots from the rear. Connally's wounds were
made by shots from the rear, as was Kennedy's back wound. Lifton, early 
in the book, seems to be considering the possibility that both the back wound
and the small rear head wound shown in the Warren Commission's sketch
were created surgically. In the case of the back wound, this contradicts
the testimony of one of the Secret Service agents who witnessed Kennedy's
back shot. The agent also placed this wound where the autopsy rough
drawings put it -- on the right side of the back, below the shoulder
blade -- _not_ in the back of the neck where it is required to support
the magic bullet theory. Later in the book, Lifton seemed to me to 
abandon the idea that the back wound was of surgical origin, or at least
soft-pedals it. The failure to do so definitively is an error on his
part, no question. 

If the small hole in the back of Kennedy's head was 
really a gunshot wound, it could have been in the piece of skull that
was _missing_ at Parkland, was later found in the street by a citizen
and brought into the Bethesda autopsy by the FBI. This would be consistent
with the hypothesis that there two nearly-simultaneous shots, one striking
the rear of the head and lodging in the brain, and the other entering at
the temple and exiting the back of the head.

When the Dallas dictabelt tape is played with the Zapruder film, that's
exactly how the shot noises line up. One shot, with the car hidden behind
the Stemmons freeway sign -- when the car emerges less than a second 
later Kennedy has been hit in the throat. A second shot -- Connally is hit.
Then two shots, very close together and audibly different in sound, at
the instant of the head wound(s).

For the people who think the shots on the dictabelt aren't really shots --
I haven't seen anyone explain the coincidence that they match (to the
satisfaction of some, if not all researchers) with the HSCA test echo
firings in Dealy Plaza _and_ they line up with the Zapruder film. One
coincidence or the other you might be able to get away with, but not both.

Finally, Mr Grant, you consider it implausible that this whole scenario
of alterations to the body was part of the "master plan." Fine, but that
is a straw man. It's entirely unnecessary for that to be true. I would
suggest it is more likely that something, or various things, went wrong
with the "plan," and this was an emergency fixup operation. What went
wrong? Could be that the object was to kill Kennedy, if at all possible,
using only the rear shooter(s), they failed to do so, and the last resort
was to deliver the killing shot from the grassy knoll. In Robert Morrow's
book _The Senator must die_ you may read a blow-by-blow account of the same
procedure being used in the assassination of some Latin American official
by US trained mercenaries -- they had gunmen stationed at three or four
different points. The first one misses, the second one takes his shot, and
so on.

>
>I promise to carefully edit, in a file, my next posting.
>
>Joel
>

--
		Full frontal nudity? Yes, I'd do it if it was
		valid ... er, if the money was valid ... and
		if it were a small part.

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% Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 22:39:57 -0400
% From: dxc4@po.CWRU.Edu (David Condon)
% To: ripple::grant_jo
% Subject: Re: mea culpa
% Reply-To: dxc4@po.CWRU.Edu


Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk