[quote=“Mark Renton, post: 866587, member: 1796”]I can buy that, but it is not always the case… but…
You are saying he was shot from behind yet his hole body/head is driven back the same way as the bullet has come from ?[/quote]
Penn and Teller, so this is definitive… case closed.
It certainly is an exit wound, mate.
Also, a select committee on assassinations in the 70s determined that Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll and that Kennedy was murdered as past of a conspiracy.
They didn’t make that finding.
They found that it was Kennedy was probably murdered as a result of a conspiracy and that there was “a high probability” that there was a second gunman, based entirely on evidence which came to light very late in the committee’s hearings. That was the supposed “dictabelt” audio evidence which supposedly came from a police motorcycle. Soon after the House Committee made their finding, that evidence was thoroughly discredited. Thus their finding falls completely apart.
Until this piece of evidence was produced, they were set to endorse the findings of the Warren Commisson.
The findings of the House committee were rejected by the FBI in 1980 and by an independent panel from the US National Academy of Sciences in 1982.
[quote=“farmerinthecity, post: 866534, member: 24”]Sid,
Pardon me if you have already addressed this. What was the story with the fatal shot? The famous ‘back and to the left’? If it was ‘back and to the left’ then surely it couldn’t have come from Oswald? I read somewhere that Kennedy actually went forward intially after the fatal shot (consistent with a shot from Oswald) and the car braked immediately pushing him ‘back and to the left’?[/quote]
An involuntary neuromuscular reaction, I believe.
Kennedy’s head does indeed move forward very briefly and then back. See frames 312-316 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gm-MoQfe7E
The direction in which Kennedy’s head moved is in no way suspicious.
The autopsy, the Ramsey Clark Panel (1968), the Rockefeller Commission (1975) and the House Committee on Assassinations (1979) are all unanimous that both bullets that struck Kennedy entered from the rear, not the front.
[quote=“Sidney, post: 866648, member: 183”]An involuntary neuromuscular reaction, I believe.
Kennedy’s head does indeed move forward very briefly and then back. See frames 312-316 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gm-MoQfe7E
The direction in which Kennedy’s head moved is in no way suspicious.
The autopsy, the Ramsey Clark Panel (1968), the Rockefeller Commission (1975) and the House Committee on Assassinations (1979) are all unanimous that both bullets that struck Kennedy entered from the rear, not the front.[/quote]
The horror that poor woman must have felt as his head exploded like that…
If there was one thing Jackie Kennedy wasn’t it was poor.
Huh?
[quote=“Sidney, post: 866648, member: 183”]An involuntary neuromuscular reaction, I believe.
Kennedy’s head does indeed move forward very briefly and then back. See frames 312-316 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gm-MoQfe7E
The direction in which Kennedy’s head moved is in no way suspicious.
The autopsy, the Ramsey Clark Panel (1968), the Rockefeller Commission (1975) and the House Committee on Assassinations (1979) are all unanimous that both bullets that struck Kennedy entered from the rear, not the front.[/quote]
Ok youve done good work establishing they probably came from the rear, but were oswalds shots not nearly impossible in the time frame given the level of skill required? And why did he call himself a patsy if he achieved his goal, would he not gloat? As for dismissing evidence based on the tellers have other ridiculous beliefs, thats bollox
Thing.
Sorry. One thing.
What about the evidence placing Oswald 4 floors down on the other side of the building???
What evidence mate?
I’ve already explained that Oswald was more than capable of making he shots in the timeframe required, which was 8.3 seconds, not the 6 seconds that many people erroneously believe (largely down to the misinformation peddled in the Oliver Stone movie).
Why would he call himself a patsy? Probably because he wanted to get away with it and not spend the rest of his life in prison, perhaps?
On Feltzer - if somebody has a history of believing and arguing in favour of pretty much every conspiracy theory out there, it’s quite wise not to take much of what they say too seriously, especially when it’s easily disprovable.
You’ll have to come up with a link to the eyewitness that argues that.
Two of those were black fellas, who weren’t supposed to be in white lunchroom to begin with. This was pre civil rights mate, so you couldn’t trust black fellas.
The “single-bullet theory” has been misrepresented over and over again as “the magic bullet theory”. Given that the trajectory of the bullets that hit Kennedy and Connally have been explained conclusively, the “magic bullet theory” in reality is what is being peddled by those who say it came from the grassy knoll, because if a bullet did come from the grassy knoll, it would have had to have been a magic bullet.
@maroonandwhite it’s all here, from the Warren commission evidence. He was an average shot at best.
For the benefit of the Warren Commission, expert riflemen from the US Army and the FBI attempted to duplicate the assassin’s task, using the rifle that had been discovered on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Even after fixing some of the gun’s mechanical problems, and despite firing at stationary targets from an easier vantage point, they failed to achieve the combination of accuracy and speed demanded of the lone gunman: two hits out of three, within about six seconds (see [I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.3, p.446[/URL] and [URL=‘http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=39&relPageId=411’]pp.403–10).
Oswald had served in the Marines[/URL] several years before the [URL=‘http://22november1963.org.uk/’]JFK assassination, and had been trained and tested in rifle shooting. The Warren Commission needed to show that he was a better marksman than the experts from the US Army and the FBI.
Oswald’s Marine Rifle Marksmanship Scores
In the late 1950s, US Marines were categorised at three levels of shooting ability, according to the scores they achieved at a standardised test of their accuracy:
Expert: a score of 220 to 250.
Sharpshooter: 210 to 219.
Marksman: 190 to 209.
According to his Marine score card (Commission Exhibit 239), Oswald was tested twice:
In December 1956, after “a very intensive 3 weeks’ training period” ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.11, p.302), Oswald scored 212: two marks above the minimum for a ‘sharpshooter’.
In May 1959, he scored 191: one mark above the minimum for a ‘marksman’.
Colonel Allison Folsom interpreted the results for the Warren Commission:
The Marine Corps consider that any reasonable application of the instructions given to Marines should permit them to become qualified at least as a marksman. To become qualified as a sharpshooter, the Marine Corps is of the opinion that most Marines with a reasonable amount of adaptability to weapons firing can become so qualified. Consequently, a low marksman qualification indicates a rather poor “shot” and a sharpshooter qualification indicates a fairly good “shot”.
([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.19, pp.17f)
Folsom agreed with his (not her) questioner that Oswald “was not a particularly outstanding shot” ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.8, p.311).
During his tests, Oswald had used “presumably a good to excellent rifle” ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.11, p.304).
The Mannlicher Carcano rifle that was discovered on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, however, was a “cheap old weapon” ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.4, p.29).
It was examined by the FBI’s firearms specialist, who stated that:
Every time we changed the adjusting screws to move the crosshairs in the telescopic sight in one direction it also affected the movement of the impact or the point of impact in the other direction. … We fired several shots and found that the shots were not all landing in the same place, but were gradually moving away from the point of impact.
([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.3, p.405)
Ronald Simmons of the US Army also examined the rifle, and found problems with the bolt and the trigger mechanism:
There were several comments made — particularly with respect to the amount of effort required to open the bolt. … There was also comment made about the trigger pull … in the first stage the trigger is relatively free, and it suddenly required a greater pull to actually fire the weapon. … The pressure to open the bolt was so great that that we tended to move the rifle off the target.
Did Oswald Need to Practise with the Rifle?
Sergeant James Zahm, an expert shooter, considered that a rifle with a telescopic sight, such as the Mannlicher Carcano, needed to be “sighted–in” by firing the rifle about ten times without ammunition shortly before firing it with live ammunition ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.11, p.308).
Ronald Simmons also pointed out the necessity of recent practice “with this weapon [the rifle discovered on the sixth floor], I think also considerable experience with this weapon, because of the amount of effort required to work the bolt” ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.3, p.449).
When Did Oswald Last Use a Rifle?
The last occasion on which Oswald was tested in the Marines was in May 1959, four and a half years before the assassination. In addition to Marine duty, Oswald is known to have fired a weapon on other occasions:
Lee Oswald and his brother Robert went on several hunting trips before Lee’s defection to the Soviet Union[/URL] in 1959 ([URL=‘http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=15337’][I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.1, pp.325ff).
In Russia, Oswald joined a hunting club, and used a shotgun, but not a rifle. There were “a half dozen” shooting expeditions, which appear to have been largely social occasions ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.2, p.466[/URL]) and an excuse for Oswald to get into the countryside ([URL=‘http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=344950’]Commission Document 344, p.21).
Oswald Had Not Practised with the Rifle
In several interviews with the FBI and the Secret Service in December 1963, Marina Oswald was adamant that her husband had not practised with a rifle since his return to the United States. For example:
MARINA said she had never seen OSWALD practice with his rifle or any other firearm and he had never told her that he was going to practice.
([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.22, p.763 [Commission Exhibit 1401])
She cannot recall that he [Oswald] ever practised firing the rifle either in New Orleans or in Dallas. She does not think he did practice in New Orleans because as a rule he stayed home when he was not working. When he did go out, she did not see him take the rifle.
([I]ibid.[/I], p.778 [Commission Exhibit 1403])
The reporting agent interviewed Marina Oswald as to whether she knew of any place or of a rifle range where her husband could do some practicing with a rifle, and whether she ever saw her husband taking the rifle out of the house. She said that she never saw Lee going out or coming in to the house with a rifle and that he never mentioned to her doing any practice with a rifle.
([I]ibid.[/I], p.785 [Commission Exhibit 1404])
Marina Oswald was asked if she ever saw her husband doing any dry practice with the rifle either in their apartments or any place else, and she replied in the negative.
([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.23, p.402 [Commission Exhibit 1789])
Marina Oswald Changes Her Mind
By the time she testified before the Warren Commission in 1964, however, her memory had improved:
Mr Rankin:
Did you ever see him clean the rifle?
Mrs Oswald:
Yes. I said before I had never seen it before. But I think you understand. I want to help you, and that is why there is no reason for concealing anything. I will not be charged with anything.
…
Mr Rankin:
Did you learn at any time that he had been practicing with the rifle?
Mrs Oswald:
I think he went once or twice. I didn’t actually see him take the rifle, but I knew he was practicing.
Mr Rankin:
Could you give us a little help on how you knew?
Mrs Oswald:
He told me. And he would mention that in passing … he would say, “Well, today I will take the rifle along for practice.”
([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.1, pp.14f)
She was equally helpful in an interview with the FBI in February 1964:
MARINA advised that OSWALD had told her after the WALKER incident that he had practiced with his rifle in a field near Dallas. She said further that in the beginning of January, 1963, at the Neely Street address, he on one occasion was cleaning his rifle and he said he had been practicing that day. …
She said [that] on an evening in March, 1963, … OSWALD left the house at about 6:00PM. OSWALD had his rifle wrapped up in a raincoat … When OSWALD returned about 9:00PM, he told her he had practiced with the rifle.
([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.22, p.197 [Commission Exhibit 1156])
Unfortunately, the rifle which Marina Oswald had apparently watched her husband clean early in January 1963 did not come into his possession until more than two months later, toward the end of March ([I]Warren Report[/I], p.119).
Informed of this discrepancy, she changed her story again:
She advised she had been mistaken on February 17, 1964, when she said she had recalled OSWALD cleaning his rifle at Neely Street, at which time he made the statement that he had been practicing. … On the other occasions of his cleaning the rifle … he did not say he had been practicing. MARINA deduced that he might have been practicing with the rifle.
([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], p.785 [Commission Exhibit 1404])
The Warren Commission was aware that many of Marina Oswald’s statements were contradictory and unreliable, and that she was under pressure to tell the authorities what they wanted to hear. According to an internal Warren Commission document, which became public 15 years after it was written, “Marina Oswald has repeatedly lied to the [Secret] Service, the FBI, and this Commission on matters which are of vital concern to the people of this country and the world” ([I]HSCA Report[/I], appendix vol.11, p.126).
Nevertheless, the Warren Report quite dishonestly used only Marina Oswald’s later, incriminating testimony, some of which she herself had repudiated, and ignored her earlier evidence:
Marina Oswald testified that on one occasion she saw him take the rifle, concealed in a raincoat, from the house on Neely Street. Oswald told her he was going to practice with it. …
Marina Oswald testified that in New Orleans in May of 1963, she observed Oswald sitting with the rifle on their screened porch at night, sighting with the telescopic lens and operating the bolt.
Oswald’s Rifle Skill: Begging the Question
In an internal Warren Commission memo, Wesley Liebeler criticised an early draft of the Warren Report, pointing out that “we should be more precise in this area [Oswald’s rifle practice], because the Commission is going to have its work in this area examined very closely”. He tacitly admitted the weakness of the evidence by begging the question: “the best evidence that Oswald could fire his rifle as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so”.
In 1967, following the publication of the earliest books refuting the Warren Commission’s case against Oswald, CBS broadcast a four–part series attempting to revive the lone–gunman hypothesis. Like the Warren Commission, CBS employed professional shooters to try to duplicate Oswald’s alleged feat. Again the experts used better–quality rifles in more favourable circumstances, and again they failed. The narrator of the series, Walter Cronkite, discarded the inconvenient evidence just as Liebeler had done:
There is no pat answer to the question of how fast Oswald’s rifle could be fired. In the first place, we did not test his own rifle. It seemed reasonable to say that an expert could fire that rifle in five seconds. It seems equally reasonable to say that Oswald under normal circumstances would take longer. But the circumstances were not normal. He was shooting at a president. So our answer is: probably fast enough.
In other words: although all the evidence indicates that Oswald could not have done what expert marksmen were unable to do, we will ignore this and conclude that he did it anyway.
Was Oswald a Good Enough Shot?
The Mannlicher Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the TSBD was in an unsatisfactory condition, with an inaccurate telescopic sight and an unpredictable trigger mechanism. To fire the rifle accurately, it was necessary to practise intensively. There is no credible evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald[/URL] had fired a rifle of any sort for several years before the [URL=‘http://22november1963.org.uk/’]JFK assassination.
Even after correcting some of the sixth–floor rifle’s mechanical problems, and in conditions substantially easier than those that would have been faced by a hypothetical lone gunman, expert riflemen from the army and the FBI were unable to fire the rifle as accurately as Oswald was supposed to have done during the assassination (see Oswald’s Rifle and Paraffin Tests).
Even at his best, Oswald had never been as good a shot as the experts from the army and the FBI. Oswald’s most recent test score in the Marines was barely above the minimum qualifying level. He was officially “a rather poor shot” ([I]Warren Commission Hearings[/I], vol.19, p.18) in 1959, and was hardly likely to have improved over the next four years.
Was Oswald the Lone Gunman?
Lee Harvey Oswald was almost certainly not a good enough marksman to fire three shots within six seconds at a moving target, scoring two hits out of three, with a rifle that was inaccurate and unreliable.
If President Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, that gunman can only have been Oswald. The inadequacy of Oswald’s marksmanship, when combined with other evidence, in particular the severe implausibility of the single–bullet theory, demonstrates that the assassination was the work of more than one gunman.
More Information
For a detailed account of Oswald’s shooting ability, and a critical account of the Warren Commission’s interpretation[/URL] of it, see Howard Roffman, [I][URL=‘http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-books-online#roffman-presumed-guilty’]Presumed Guilty[/URL]: How and Why the Warren Commission Framed Lee Harvey Oswald[/I], Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975, pp.225–247 (available online at [url]http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/PG/PGchp9.html).
For a critical account of the CBS TV series, see Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro–Study of the Kennedy Assassination, Bernard Geis Associates, 1967, pp.292–5, from which the Walter Cronkite quotation is taken.
Ah, I didn’t know they were chocolate faces… Overruled.
Vincent Bugliosi (the prosecutor who convicted Charles Manson and the other defendants) wrote the definite book on the case - “Reclaiming History - The Assassination of John F. Kennedy” (2007).
Here he lists 53 pieces of circumstantial and physical evidence that prove Oswald’s guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.
(1) Oswald always visited Marina in Irving on a Friday. Nov 21 was the first Thursday visit ever.
(2) Oswald’s claim to be getting curtain rods in Irving was an implausible lie.
(3) Oswald told Frazier he would NOT be coming back to Irving on Friday night.
(4) That night Oswald avoided Kennedy talk with Marina, a subject it was their custom to discuss.
(5) Friday morning, Oswald left almost all his cash and his wedding ring in Irving.
(6) On Friday morning, Oswald placed a long paper-wrapped package in the back seat of Frazier’s car.
(7) Frazier noticed that for the first time on a return trip from Irving, Oswald brought no lunch.
(8) On arrival at the TSBD, Oswald walked faster and ahead of Frazier for the first time ever.
(9) For the first time ever, Oswald didn’t read the paper in the TSBD domino room.
(10) Oswald’s pretense with a co-worker that he didn’t know JFK’s route
(11) Howard Brennan saw Lee Harvey Oswald fire the third shot that killed the President.
(12) Kennedy’s assassin was at the now-infamous sixth-floor window.
(13) During interrogation, Oswald put himself on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination.
(14) Oswald’s story of getting a Coke after hearing commotion of assassination is not sensible.
(15) It makes no sense that Oswald the “political animal” had no interest in the President’s death.
(16) After the assassination, only Oswald missed a roll call at the TSBD.
(17) Oswald walked past his normal bus stop and walked seven blocks to board a different line.
(18) Oswald left the Marsalis bus when it got caught in traffic.
(19) Oswald’s not speaking to his cab driver about the assassination is striking.
(20) Oswald had the cab drive past his residence, dropping him off down the road.
(21) Oswald’s behavior at his boarding house indicates a flight in progress.
(22) Oswald retrieved his revolver at the rooming house.
(23) In addition to getting a coat and his gun, Oswald changed trousers.
(24) Lee Harvey Oswald murdered J.D. Tippit.
(25) A store manager saw Oswald evading police sirens in front of his store.
(26) Oswald slipped into the Texas Theater without buying a ticket.
(27) When approached by police in the Texas Theater, Oswald said “Well, it is all over now.”
(28) Oswald then fought the police and tried to pull his revolver out.
(29) After arrest, Oswald refused to even give his name to arresting officers.
(30) Oswald made a clenched-fist salute to reporters.
(31) Oswald refused a lie detector test.
(32) After visiting him on Saturday, Marina came away convinced of Oswald’s guilt.
(33) Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was found on the sixth floor of the TSBD.
(34) The mostly intact bullet (CE 399) and two of the fragments were fired from this rifle.
(35) The three expended shells on the sixth floor were “fired in and ejected from” Oswald’s rifle.
(36) A handmade paper bag large enough to carry Oswald’s rifle was found in the sniper’s nest.
(37) Oswald’s prints were found on boxes that comprised the sniper’s nest.
(38) Oswald was the sole owner of the revolver found in his possession on arrest.
(39) The bullets recovered from Tippit’s body were consistent with being fired from Oswald’s .
(40) The four cartridge shells found at the Tippit murder scene were fired from Oswald’s revolver.
(41) A paraffin test on Oswald’s hands showed he’d fired a revolver just before his arrest.
(42) Oswald left his blue jacket behind in the TSBD.
(43) Oswald’s tan jacket was found along the path Tippit’s killer took.
(44) Oswald’s work clipboard was found on the sixth floor of the TSBD.
(45) Oswald lied about owning a rifle, and about owning the Mannlicher-Carcano specifically.
(46) Oswald lied about being in the backyard photo where he was holding his rifle.
(47) Oswald lied about having seen the picture before.
(48) Oswald lied about living at the place where the picture with the rifle was taken.
(49) Oswald lied about telling Wesley Frazier the curtain rod story.
(50) Oswald lied about putting a long package into Frazier’s car that morning.
(51) Oswald told police the only thing he’d brought to work that morning was his lunch.
(52) Oswald lied about having lunch on the first floor with two other employees.
(53) Oswald lied about where he’d bought his revolver.
Sorry sid but thats weak enough, so he basically was a compulsive liar. Is it not almost agreed that he was there, with a rifle, shooting at kennedy. Is the main theory not that he wasnt alone. In my opinion he probably thought he was a lone shooter, but as shown in rentons post above he didnt have the skill or the capability with that rifle to have been the lone killer. And to answer your reply above, just because some nut believes in several conspiracies doesnt mean hes wrong about a particular set of circumstances.