From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: RE: LHO MYSTERY ID
Date: 22 DEC 92 07:18:31 PDT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
NNTP-Posting-Host: RIPPLE


In article <1992Dec18.121931.1@cc.newcastle.edu.au> ::ccasm@cc writes:

>I asked a question of Joel Grant last week that he didn't answer:
>One of the Pacifica transcripts mentioned several witnesses that saw a bullet
>hit the ground and told the FBI. However their report was modified so that the
>furrow lined up with the TSBD, rather than the Grassy Knoll as they had said.
>Apparently they were not aware of this until shown years later.

	I thought I responded to your comments about as thoroughly as
	could be reasonably expected, considering the Hartmans' comments
	are merely one aspect of the old, old, `bullet in the grass' 
	myth.

	If your big concern in this is the allegation that the FBI
	"doctored" their report and/or Marrs's statement that this
	proves the FBI was cooking the books, then I can only say that
	assuming the Hartmans' memory 14 years later is better than the
	data taken down at the time by the FBI (a distinct possibility)
	it is no more than yet another example of the FBI making a 
	mistake.  They made quite a few mistakes.  Some of the mistakes
	they made are featured by conspiracy theorists as proof that 
	something rotten was going on.  Other mistakes, cutting in
	the other direction, tend to be ignored by the same writers.

	The FBI field agents were understaffed and overworked during
	the entire history of the Warren Commission.  The FBI didn't
	even want the Warren Commission around, feeling that they were
	a bunch of amateur investigators out to muck around with their
	professional investigation.  And Hoover was pissed that Rankin
	and Co. were making so many demands on his troops.  Keep in
	mind that the Hartmans didn't file their report on the day
	of the assassination; they filed it several months later. 
	And I don't mention this to try to impeach their testimony,
	only to point out that they did it at the height of the 
	demands made upon the FBI's investigative personnel.

	Since the FBI already had a number of such reports about the
	same furrow in the grass I'm not sure just what purpose would
	have been served by a deliberate falsification. 


>A second question for Joel Grant:
>In another Pacifica transcript an ex-CIA officer described a 3-car "caravan" to
>Dallas, that he was part of. It also included a hit team. The officer now
>claims he was in charge of the assassination.

>How do you, Joel, regard these reports?

	Over 400 people "confessed" to various of the Ted Bundy
	murders.  I am surprised so few have stepped forward
	to "confess" to the Kennedy assassination, although there
	are several, and taken as a whole, mutually exclusive.

	I am sure you know that an uncorroborated confession isn't
	good enough in a court of law.  One who confesses to a crime
	has to be able to prove he/she in fact was guilty of that
	crime.  Since the scenario in the CIA hit-team story does
	not jibe with the facts of the crime scene, we are quite
	safe in dismissing it as the fiction it is.

	So let me ask you a couple of questions:

1. How come the people on and near the triple overpass who looked over
at the grassy knoll/picket fence area *during the shooting* in order
to see if anyone was firing a gun from that location, did not see
anyone with a gun?  See, for instance, the testimony and statements
of Austin L. Miller, James Altgens, J.W. Foster, Lee Bowers.

2. How come only one gunman from one location was seen firing a
rifle in Dealy Plaza, that location being the SE corner of the
6th floor of the TSBD?  Do you really think that assassins, 
*desirous of not being noticed*, pick crowded parade routes in broad
daylight to assault their victims with firearms?  And fire from
a place potentially under the direct observation of numerous
witnesses?  Far from being a place of concealment, the area behind
the picket fence was in the direct line of sight of around 18
people on the triple overpass, all of whom were within less than
50 yards of the alleged sniper locations.  The little trees there
have leaves that are, at their lowest, four and a half to five
feet above the ground, leaving that much of an assassin in totally
plain view.

And if you were hiding from someone, in the middle of a sunny day,
how much concealment would you expect to find standing next to a
small elm tree?

The area behind the picket fence was also in the very plain view of
Zapruder and Sitzman who were about 15 feet away from the "badgeman"
location and about 45-50 feet away from the sniper location identified
by the HSCA and others.  Anyone looking west from the south side of
the TSBD could see behind the fence clearly.  And we could go on and
on.

That place was not some secret, hidden cavern from which one could
fire unobserved.  I could see a suicidal assassin taking a shot
from there, but not someone who wants to avoid being noticed.

And no one, not one single person on that day, saw anyone with a gun
anywhere other than on the 6th floor of the TSBD.  That a number of
people thought they heard shots from the knoll only indicates the
complexity, not only of the echo patterns in Dealy, but of human
perception, with such phenomena as the front/back reversal effect,
undoubtedly accounting for the misperception of such witnesses as
the Newmans.  Even so, more people in the grassy knoll area heard
shots from the TSBD than from the knoll.  And as the HSCA 
psychoacoustic scientists pointed out, after closely listening
to and charting the effects of shots from the TSBD and from the
knoll, unlike a shot from the TSBD, a shot from the knoll is 
very distinctive and not likely mistaken.  

And only four people that day thought shots came from more than
one location.


Joel Grant (speaking on his own behalf)



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