From: cortez@milton.u.washington.edu (Tom Warner)
Subject: Re: Part One, Lattimer
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 07:58:54 GMT

grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant) writes:


>In the past we have discussed some aspects of Dr. John K. Lattimer's
>analysis of the medical and ballistics evidence of the assassination.
>But it has been sporadic and un-systematic.  I intend, over the
>next couple of weeks or so, to set forth Dr. Lattimer's principal
>research results, point by point.  I don't expect the usual
>pro-conspiracy suspects in here to do other than yawn.  But as
>I know from my e-mail when I post in here, there are plenty
>of people out there who, though pro-conspiracy, have never
>been made aware of the fact that the medical and ballistics
>aspects of this case have been formulated into testable hypotheses
>and that those hypotheses have been tested.

>Across the board, the single-assassin scenario has been confirmed.

Gee, what a surprise. For someone who shows that melons can be made to
fall toward the direction they are shot from and then announces he has
shown how Kennedy's whole body was made to fly backward and toward the left
by a shot from the back and right, this must have been SO difficult to ...
.... contrive.

>The HSCA's work was excellent in many respects.

Oh really.
A
>Their medical
>panel, for instance, included forensic anthropologists who
>determined conclusively that the individual seen in the
>autopsy x-rays and photographs was John F. Kennedy and no other
>person.

What is a forensic anthropologist and why would anyone go to such a person
to authenticate x-rays and photographs?

Dr. Lowell Levine, a forensic dentist, was the man hired by the House committee
to authenticate the x-rays. He verified that the jaw shown in the x-ray matches
Kennedy's dental records. He also 
compared a sinus chamber and found a match, but his report is unclear: he
writes about a "frontal sinus," which is not visible in any JFK x-ray, and
probably meant the maxillary sinus.

Other than that, all that was done were basic authentication tests that would
uncover common methods of forgery that could be done by any amateur. The
panel did admit that it was possible at the time of the assassination to
make forgeries their tests would not have detected.

What is being overlooked here is that the House panel was nothing more than
an excuse not to make the essential material available to the public. By
assembling a panel of noted experts, having them look at the material for
only the most obvious types of forgery, and then announcing to the world
that these experts found nothing suspicious, the House committee deflected
attention and diffused public outrage over the continuing stonewall. This
was, after all, the House committee's primary agenda.
  
>The photo experts determined conclusively that none
>of the material had been tampered with; the photos and x-rays
>are not phonies or composites.  They are the genuine article.

Unfortunately, they cannot all be, because the photographs and x-rays
are mutually contradictory. The x-rays show the right front of Kennedy's
skull missing, but the photographs show that portion of his unblemished.
In this instance, the photographs match with all other credible evidence,
including the testimony of every witness to the assassination, including
the Dallas and Baltimore doctors and medical staff. At most, Kennedy may
have had some damage to the back of his right eye socket, and yet the x-ray
clearly shows the entire area completely blown away. The mismatch of the
x-ray to the rest of the evidence was not addressed by anyone working for
the House committee and remains a central issue for any investigation into
the assassination and ensuing coverup.

>But I don't have this research material at hand and cannot
>quote chapter and verse.  I do have Lattimer - it is out of
>print - and would like to present his analysis.

Hmmm. I don't have a Bible to quote from but I have a book by Pat Robertson
about the Bible, and would like to present his analysis ;)

>As I say, I
>know that there are "read-only" folks out there whose interest
>was piqued by the movie "JFK" (or perhaps some book like
>"Best Evidence" or "HTII" or "Crossfire" or whatever) but who
>have never really delved deeply into the case.  I myself supported
>2nd gunman and pro-conspiracy views until around the time the
>NRC's Committee on Ballistic Acoustics blew the HSCA's dictabelt
>tape analysis out of the water in late '82. 

Ah, yes of course, your one exception to "excellent in most respects" and
my one of several exceptions to political whitewash in most respects.

The NAS committee came out with a report in '82 that confirmed that a
spoken phrase heard at the same time as the "shots" tested by the HSCA
could be dated to roughly a minute after the assassination. This would
seem to show that the HSCA's "shots" had to be something else.

However, the reason the spoken phrase can be dated is that it exists on
another recording. That recording has no shot sounds or anything similar
to the shot sounds tested by the HSCA on it. The channel that it originated
on was recorded by the dictabelt discontinuously, by the use of a switch, and
so can't be expected to synchronize with anything else recorded.

This is another area that demands further study. If the shot sounds aren't
shots, that's unfortunate, because if they are then the recording is an
invaluable tool, not just for determining the location of the gunmen but
for timing the shots, which is also still very tenuous.
 
>But one finally
>realizes that the 2nd gunman theories ultimately rest on the
>(practically speaking) impossible happening.

Oh boy, I can't wait to realize that. Do I need any pills or anything?

>One ultimately learns
>that while anyone can *say* anything, there are limits to the
>manipulation of physical matter.  And that one really must look
>at what nature does and does not allow in order to cut through
>all the crapola and get to the truth of the medical and
>ballistics evidence.
A
Yeah, which is why there is still no plausible official explanation for
the motion of Kennedy's body immediately after the final gunshot.

>Dr. Lattimer does as good a job of this as any one individual.
>So let's look at Lattimer's book, _Kennedy and Lincoln, Medical
>and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations_ and find out
>what can be learned through the device of physically testing
>hypotheses.

>Lattimer's book was published in 1980, though major portions were
>first printed in refereed medical journals such as "International
>Surgery", "The Forensic Science Gazette" and "Surgery, Gynecology
>and Obstetrics."  Lattimer has been dismissed as "only a
>urologist" by people like Dr. Wecht, but this is a silly objection
>to his work.  First, Lattimer's initial expertise stems from
>his experiences as a WWII army surgeon treating bullet wounds
>caused by German and Italian army rifles.  Second, he was able
>to call upon, during the course of his 15+ years of research,
>experts relating to many aspects of the case.

>Like any other non-fiction writer, Lattimer is not perfect.
>But I would suggest that truly disputing his findings requires
>doing better tests than he did, and I have seen nothing in 
>that area from any second gunman theorists.  (as we shall
>see, it was Lattimer himself who did experiments to determine
>what might happen to a skull if hit by a bullet fired from
>the grassy knoll; where are the experiments from the grassy
>knoll theorists disupting his discoveries?)

>And what are his findings?

Such suspense. I just can't bear it.
I also like the use of "we." Makes me feel almost like I thought for myself. :)

>I think we should start with those areas of the Warren
>Commission Report in which he had doubts.  In subsequent
>days and weeks we'll look closely at how he resolved those
>doubts and answered the questions that he and others had
>raised about the WCR.  Some of his questions were more
>amenable to testing than others and it is those questions on
>which we will chiefly focus.  But in the interest of fairness
>and completeness we'll look at how Dr. Lattimer approached
>the following questions, which questions he poses between
>pp. 179- 183 of his book: (pp. 180-181 = a diagram)

>1. Why had the X-rays and photographs been taken away from
>Drs Humes, Boswell and Finck prior to their final report?

uhhh... because Humes, Boswell and Finck never had them in the first place?

>2. Why wasn't this material included in the final WCR?

Because the Dallas doctors could have taken one look and known they were fakes?

>3. Why had Dr. Humes burned his orignal autopsy notes?

Because his original draft was too explicit about the non-transiting back wound?

>4. Did the bullet holes in JFK's clothing indicate a bullet
>passed of back-to-front?

Inasmuch as clothing can be relied upon to indicate either way, front-to-back.

>5. Why were the bullet holes in JFK's jacket and shirt lower
>than the corresponding hole in JFK's upper back?

You mean, lower than in the photos, lower than in the autopsy report, or
lower than where witnesses described the wound?
If you mean the first of the three, because he is being lifted and his skin
is being stretched, and the camera angle is funny? If you mean the second or
third, they weren't.

>6. Was there definite evidence of a bullet track running
>through and through JFK's body in this area?

Well, the autopsy doctors spent quite some time trying to
find a path, to no avail. Their final autopsy report clearly states that no
fragments or other obvious sign of travel could be found by x-ray or other
means. But the x-rays in evidence clearly show fragments in an obvious path!

Yup, sounds pretty definite to me.

>7. If so, in what direction did the bullet travel?

You mean the Magic Bullet? Every single damn direction it needed to, of course!

>8. Was the angle of the bullet track consistent with the
>twenty-degree (approx) angle required by shots from the
>6th floor of the TSBD?

At what Z-frame was it twenty degrees?

Before you work too hard, don't worry, the answer's still no!B

>9. How come when government ballistics experts tried to reproduce
>JFK's skull wound they didn't get a closer match, if indeed the
>bullet had entered in the lower right/rear portion of JFK's skull?

Because they weren't willing to blatantly prostitute themselves in the
name of pseudo-science?

>10. How come the official drawings of the head wound showed relatively
>little skull shattering?

Because the portion of the skull that was visible in the photos was pretty
much just plain gone, not shattered. Some fracturing was concealed by the scalp
also.

>11. Was there any evidence of a bullet traveling through JFK's body
>from any direction other than from the rear?

Uh, gee, you mean like the fact that the motion of Kennedy's body after
the final hit is completely irreconcilable with a shot from the rear according
to the basic laws of physics? Or that the throat wound was too neat to be
an exit? Nah, that's not evidence, that's just conjecture.

Is there any evidence of a bullet traveling through JFK's body from the rear?
If not, conecture will do just fine.

>12. What about the state of JFK's adrenal glands?

Who cares?

>13. Was CE399 really the same bullet that went through JFK's
>neck?

Ha ha ha ha. Yup. And through Connally's upper torso, fracturing a rib along
the way, and his wrist, hitting another bone, and then into his thigh, leaving
several fragments described by the nurse that helped remove them as far
bigger than the total missing weight of CE 399.

Was there *anything* in the presidential limo that a bullet could have hit
from 50 yards on a downward trajectory and come out that intact? *Anything*
at all?
A
>14. Was this bullet in fact pristine; or, if not, in what way
>was it deformed?

It was nearly pristine; it's tip was almost perfectly intact but its base
was flattened.

>15. Could Kennedy have survived this first wound?

Who cares?

>16. Why did his elbows jerk up in response to the first bullet
>wound in such an odd manner?

Got me.
What was so odd about it?

>17. Why, if his first wound was so serious, did JFK not 
>crumple out of sight?

"crumple out of sight"? Do you mean, collapse, or duck?

Gee, I don't kow, why don't you ask John Connally?

>18. Why was the hole in the front of JFK's neck so small if it
>was in fact an exit wound?

Because you are very loose with the expression, "in fact" ?

>We shall see how Lattimer approached these (and other) questions
>in subsequent postings.

Oh ... but I spent so long responding to this one ...  

>Joel Grant  (speaking on his own behalf)

Oh, we are then .... well, that's nice :)

Tom Warner

Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk