From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Subject: Husky Fever
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: 10 SEP 92 12:23:21 PDT


re: 3232 (Tom Warner)

>>	My point in asking why Bruce Schuck chose the particular
>>	word `deliberately' in discussing Lattimer's lack of
>>	attention to the horizontal trajectory analysis of the
>>	first shot to hit JFK was to determine whether or not
>>	Bruce was trying to imply that Lattimer wrote something
>>	he believed to be wrong.  I have gotten and expect 
>>	no clarification.

>No, you did get a clarification, I read it. You're dodging the real issue,
>which is...

	You are deliberately blowing smoke.  ;^)

>>	This is a malleable angle, depending upon JFK's exact position
>>	in the car, the car's exact position on the street and distance
>>	from the window, and so on.  

>Obviously. That's why you end up with a range of possibilities, that gets
>broader as the range of times you are willing to accept a shot occuring
>within broadens. 

	I quite agree.

>>	I agree that trajectory analysis presents a range of
>>	possibilities and that that range can be quite broad.
>>	In fact, I have been trying to make that point.  And
>>	we'll get to the SBT.

>Yes, you'll have to, if you want to stick with the lone gunman with a
>Mannlicher Carcano.

	A crime scene is a puzzle and the pieces need to be
	put together.  Must we re-hash the evidence placing
	a gunman in the 6th floor window firing three shots,
	two of which were recovered and matched to a rifle
	found on the 6th floor?  And the lack of any other
	gunman or rifle in any other buildings or Dealy
	Plaza locations?

	What trajectory analysis will show us is whether
	or not the place where the guy with the rifle was
	seen, the rifle was found, etc., is *consistent* 
	with the other evidence.  Does the 6th floor, TSBD
	fall within that range?  The answer, clearly, is
	yes it does.

>>	150 feet is a generous estimation of the distance from
>>	the car to the 6th floor window at the time the second
>>	bullet was fired.  I suspect it was closer to about
>>	180-185 feet.

>Kennedy's neck isn't 180-185 feet wide either. Again, it's the angle, not
>the distance, that's at issue. It's a comparison of the angle from the
>throat wound to the back wound, to the angle from the throat wound to the
>6th floor TSBD. If you work out the geometry on paper, you'll see that your
>"angel on the head of a pin" criticism is silly and wrong. You might even
>ask yourself, how could anyone possibly suggest that a 2-dimensional
>analysis is worth any more to your case than a pile of bat feces?

	Note the "angle from the throat wound to the 6th floor TSBD"
	phrase there.  The 6th floor TSBD was between 150 and 190
	feet away from JFK's neck.  I am suggesting that, all things
	considered, trying to nail down that angle to a degree of
	accuracy equal to two inches is not a feasible enterprise.
	Guano argue with that one?  Since the measurements of the
	horizontal angle vary by at least 12 degrees, I'd say
	no 100% accurate results have as yet been developed.

>>	By "Dallas police" do you mean E. R. Walthers, who was a
>>	deputy sheriff of Dallas County?  He has denied finding
>>	any such bullet.  No photo exists of him or anyone else
>>	finding a bullet in the grass, though there is a photo
>>	of people *looking* for a bullet.  They just didn't
>>	find one.

>J. W. Foster, who guarded the bullet and watched the "agent" pick it up.
>The photo and story, like I said, is in Marrs. The bullet isn't visible
>in the photo, just Foster and another man standing in the background as
>another man fingers the ground.

	And this you regard as, somehow, a tighter chain of
	custody?

>>	Should I ever get a law degree and decide to practice
>>	criminal law, and should I get the definitive version of
>>	the history of all the physical evidence in the JFK
>>	assassination, I will be better able to judge what would
>>	or would not be admissable due to a loose chain of
>>	possession.  Interestingly, you reject the limo fragments
>>	and CE399 because the chain of possession isn't tight
>>	enough for you, but accept the existence of a bullet
>>	that is apparently possessed by no one and which nobody
>>	actually claims to have found.  Rather startlingly different
>>	standards, what?

>Not at all. First, we are talking about a murder case in which there
>is a high probability of political motive. We also have Oswald, who
>several suspicously obvious pieces of evidence point to but other
>evidence proves could not have been in the suspiciously obvious
>"assassins lair" at the time of the shooting, failed a paraffin test,
>could not have fired all the shots with the supiciously obvious weapon,
>and shortly after the assassination, was taken out by the mafia with
>apparent cooperation from someone within the Dallas police.
>Furthermore, CE399 is just too damn pristine to have caused *any* of
>Connally's wounds, and the man who found the bullet just laying there on
>a stretcher did not recognize it as the bullet he found, not to mention
>that two witnesses claim to have seen Oswald's assassin at the hospital.
>Is this not enough to make you think maybe, just maybe, someone
>was planting evidence? Given all the circumstantial evidence of a frame-up
>is the fact that the chain of possession is not only "not tight" but gaping
>a mile wide of note? Puh-lease!

	Your basic method of argument here is that you assume, in
	your premise, that which you seek to demonstrate for your
	conclusion.  This is known as begging the question. 
	You ignore the physical evidence that ties limo frags and
	CE399 to Oswald's rifle, wrist frags to CE399 and head
	frags to limo frags.  This is a chain of custody tight to
	the atomic level.  And you prefer as an alternative a
	bullet that was not claimed to have been found by the
	man Foster says found it and is now nowhere in existence.
	This is the mile-wide gap, Husky.

>I'm not resting the whole case on Foster's statements, the way you are resting
>your entire case on the authenticity of CE399 and the fragments. I was just
>responding to something inaccurate (as best is known, I have no reason to
>doubt Foster -- especially since such vital evidence as the "babushka lady"s
>film has definitely disappeared) that you posted.

	It is not true that I rest the "entire case" on CE399 and
	frags.  Each piece of evidence serves its own purpose.

>Also, I'm not interested in the issue of whether or not Oswald would have
>been convicted, or could be now. I'd guess a yes and a no, but who cares?
>The issue is, who done it?

	The ABA recently staged a mock trial of LHO but I never
	heard the "verdict."  Anyone see that?  Bugliosi "won"
	his "case" against Oswald, but I don't regard that as
	significant in determining guilt.

>>	As for the impossibility of Oswald slipping off three
>>	shots in the approximately eight seconds of the firing
>>	sequence, I suggest this is a feat that can and has
>>	been easily duplicated.

>You'll first have to show that your figure of eight seconds is plausible,
>and that the gaps in between the 1st and 2nd and 2nd and 3rd shots were
>long enough, and that there were no more than 3 shots. Good luck.

	Short version: 

	Shot one - approximately Z-film 162
	Shot two - approximately Z-film 220 (3.17 sec)
	Shot three -             Z-film 313 (5.08 sec)

	Total time elapsed: 8.25 seconds.

	Why I would have to "prove" there were no more than three
	shots is unclear.  Three shells were found near Oswald's
	rifle, and three shots can be accounted for by the evidence.
	
>Only if you get past those three tests will I discuss Oswald's firing
>skill, which I consider an irrelevant point.

	If you consider it an irrelevant point, consider yourself
	excused from discussing it.

>>	Why would Charles Guiteau walk up and, in plain sight of
>>	everyone, pull the trigger?  Why do any crimes leave
>>	evidence?

>You don't get it. If Oswald didn't do it, which the evidence proves he didn't,
>then there had to be a sophisticated frame up. Such conspirators would not
>have left their rifles laying around in the Dal-Tex building.

	It is you that doesn't get it.  Your logic here is tangled
	beyond all hope of retrieval.  The evidence proves a negative,
	namely that Oswald didn't do it.  But the sophisticated
	frame-up has planted evidence that proves Oswald did do it.
	Mind readers, we know what these sophisticated conspirators
	would not have done.  And what they would have done.
	And they weren't sophisticated enough to fool you, eh?
	
	Now why don't you present your actual theory of the
	assassination?  Please include your conjectures of how
	many people might have been involved, what sort of
	planning needed to have taken place, how they chose
	Oswald as the patsy, when they chose Oswald as the
	patsy, how they managed to plant all that evidence,
	including the death of Officer Tippit.  I mean - none
	of this vague stuff here.  The Oswald-did-it scenario
	is detailed to the nth degree.  Conspiracy scenarios
	prosper to the extent they are vague, with some noteworthy
	exceptions.  So let's hear yours.  Expecting 100% airtight
	perfection in the case against Oswald while delivering
	murky innuendo is the epitome of the double-standard.

	I know you can do it.

>>	Why are you extracting Bruce Schuck's statements and 
>>	shoving them at me?  Take it up with Bruce.

>Gee, I thought this was a public forum.
>I was taking it up with Bruce, and everybody. I just think its important
>to keep in mind that most of the evidence points to a non-traversing
>back wound, which would allow for a sixth floor TSBD shooter to have
>hit Kennedy at the point that the Z film appears to show him first
>taking a hit.

	Perhaps Bruce will address your point.  As for "most
	of the evidence" I presume you exclude the autopsy?

>>	The limo fragments were positively identified as having
>>	been fired from LHO's rifle, and no other rifle.

>Wrong. The fragments are too small to rule out all other rifles. To the
>extent that they show anything, they do show a match to Oswald's rifle.
>I think most likely they were shot from Oswald's MC, but the possibility
>they were shot from a nearly identical MC is still a possibility.

	They were too small to be matched via rifling to MC in
	general, but large enough to be matched to a particular
	rifle via microscopic analysis.  See Frazier's analyis.

>>       Apparently,
>>	Conspiracy Central did a good job in planting them in the
>>	limo, but a poor job in establishing (to your satisfaction)
>>	chain of custody.

>I'm not accusing the handlers of the bullets of being part of the conspiacy.
>They did, however, completely fail to document the chain of possession.
>Any step of the way, the fragments could have been switched. Or perhaps they
>are the real thing. The point is, planted evidence is all over this case and
>there's no way of knowing where those fragments actually came from for certain.

	Please explain how they managed to have the fragment recovered
	from JFK's head match the fragments found in the limo.

>>	No witnesses on that day came forward with any stories of
>>	anyone else with a rifle.  All such stories have been
>>	uncovered well after the fact.

>First, who said "anyone else"? Other than who? I'm talking about the Rowlands,
>who told the FBI that day they saw a man with a rifle on the other side of the
>building. They also claim to have told the FBI about a Black man being with
>this man, but this is not in the records.

	You mean Arnold Rowland, singular.  His wife did not support
	his statements, indeed even made a comment to the effect that
	her husband had a tendency to tell tales.

>It may be true that no record of someone claiming on 1//22/63 to have seen
>a rifle in a location in a different area altogether, I don't know. However,
>the number of witnesses who, like the Rowlands, claim to have told more to
>the FBI than is reflected in the records opens up some doubt.

	Rowland actually first testified about seeing the black
	man when he was in front of the WC.  The WC took his
	statements seriously enough that they decided to interview
	each and every employee of the TSBD to see if they could
	substantiate Rowland's claim.  They found no such
	substantiation.

>>	Ah, you set up a strawman and complain it catches fire
>>	easily.  Even little Dorothy wouldn't do something like
>>	that, now would she?

>You set up the strawman. Those were the reasons you gave for a 3-dimensional
>trajectory analysis being unnecessary. Are you asking me to respond to
>something other than what you wrote? 

>Not to mention the patent absurdity of it all when *you* were the one touting
>the value of the 2-dimensional analysis.

	I have said not one word about 2 or 3 or even 4 dimensional
	trajectory analysis.  All I have said about the horizontal
	TA is that analyses vary by as much as 12 degrees; that we
	don't know *exactly* where the limo was and what position
	JFK's body was in when he was struck by that bullet, and
	that therefore I am skeptical of *all* such analysis that
	attempts to be 100% accurate.

	As for the trajectory of the bullet path through JFK's
	back/neck, I have said I believe Lattimer was in error
	on this point.  But I will address that in more detail
	when I get to that point in my Lattimer presentation.

Joel Grant (speaking on his own behalf)