From: david@cats.ucsc.edu (David Wright)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Re: Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
Date: 17 Apr 92 20:16:38 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz


Instead of point by point refutations of previous articles on various weak
points of the WR-HSCA version of the Kennedy assassination, in article 
1992Apr17.143041.3566@PA.dec.com> grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant) 
writes: 

|It is astonishing that the very clear and decisive results of
|the autopsy and all subsequent examinations of the autopsy materials
|has not stopped the speculations about the sources of the
|bullets that hit President Kennedy. 

What am I to make of this? Why has Joel refused to answer various articles
pointing to the exact opposite. Does he whish to waste pro-conspiracy people's
time? There are a thousand reasons why the autopsy results were not clear and
certainly not decisive. As to the autopsy material, there is really no way to
guess what they show, since we can't see them. The photographs we did see,
concerning the back wound, the throat wound and the back of the head wound
all show different things than what was reported in the autopsy. After all, the
autopsiests were not allowed to even look at the photos and xrays while they
were writing their report. 

| But the beat goes on, with two major (and intertwined) premises:
|
|1. The autopsy materials (suit, shirt, X-rays, photos) were
|faked.
|
|2. The President's body was, at some point, snatched, and
|the wounds were (in Lifton's phrase) "altered."
|
|We are asked to place ourselves in the odd position of using
|eyewitness testimony to impugn static, physical evidence.

That is very observant. A constant theme running through Lifton's book, for
example, is that the Kennedy case can be considerd a debate betwen two types of
evidence: witness testimony and phyisical evidence.

The reason to reject the physical evidence are many, and a great deal should
not stand up in court:

1) There is no chain of possesion. Most of the physical evidence has a lost
   chain of possession. Items were not marked or identified or kept clean. For
   example, all the phyisical evidence from the sniper's nest was thrown
   into a box, and not kept seperate. Daly holds the M-C by his hand.

2) Materials that were part of group disapeard. This could lead one to believe
   in the opposite of what went on. For example, what if all the photos save
   one, the back of the head re-composed, were gone. That would lead to a 
   totally misleading interpretation. 

3) Phyisical evidence requires the interpretation of expert witness testimony,
   by usual expert evaluation. There was no vivisection of the wound, for
   example. Oswald's gun was never tested if it was fired that day, it was 
   unclear what condition it was in etc...

The degragation of the phyisical evidence was the first thing siezed by
critics. Read Meagher's Asseories after the fact. Virtutally no piece of
phyisical evidence was not lost, misplaced, mistreated, or questioned some way.

|The headwaters of this rather poisonous stream consists almost
|entirely of eyewitness testimony that conflicts with physical
|evidence.  People saw Oswald get into a Rambler (though Oswald
|himself admitted to taking the bus/cab route, and had a bus
|transfer in his pocket when he was arrested)

Once again, since there was no record kept of Oswald's interogation and he 
had no representation  (an act which left Clay Shaw go free in the Garrison 
case!) we don't know for sure what Oswald said. Nor can we be sure what he had
in his possession at the time of his arrest. However, most people think that it
was someone who looked like Oswald that got into the Rambler, not Oswald 
himself.

 people see the
|Z-film and are convinced the head shot must have come from
|the front (I haven't yet seen anyone demonstrate that the force
|of a through and through bullet is sufficient, in and
|of itself, to move a body in the way JFK's body appears
|to move)

Then you haven't been paying too much attention. There was certainly enough
force to move both Kennedy's head and body back by a bullet going as slow
as 1800 feet per second.

|Governor Connally's wounds are not consistent with a bullet
|hitting his body without first having interacted with something
|en route, since the bullet entered his body yawed at almost
|180 degrees - the entrance wound is about as long as the
|bullet itself. 

The angle of the bullet wound could come from the close end of the TSBD. That
is exactly where Connally's wound lines up, according to the Nova simulation. 

| The autopsy and subsequent examinations of
|the autopsy materials reveal, without any room for doubt,
|that all of JFK's wounds were caused by bullets moving
|from posterior to anterior.

The evidence that the path of the bullet went from back to front or front to
back is nill with respect to the back/throat wound. It is arguable with the
head wound, although one of the experts of the HSCA said it was consistent with
a dum dum bullet entering the front. There is no way Lattimer is qualified to
make a judgement like this.

|  Lattimer's detailed analysis,
|his repeatable tests reveal not only what happened, but
|why it happened.

His tests were not scientific, he is not expert, nor his book as indepth
analysis of the Kennedy assassination. His findings are suggestive, but often
lack theoretical content, and do not go into any detail whatsoever.

|Lee Harvey Oswald was up there in the window with a
|rifle and he only missed once.

To frame Oswald, all one had to do is get his gun, and stash it in the TSBD.

On the other hand, if Oswald did do it, then to set himself free he just had to
throw away the Hiddell card in his wallet. To me, it looks like he was 
framed. Which is another reason to be skeptical of the phyisical evidence.
-- 
   |^^^^^^|      _______________________________________________________
   |      |      |                                                     | 
   |      |      | "Be Prepared for Enormous Fustrations"              |
   | (o)(o)      O         --Kreps, A course in Micro theory, p. 352   | 
   @      _)    o|_____________________________________________________|  
    |  ____\ o o
    |     /   
   /     \                              All comments  are mine---(David Wright)