Philip Stahl: Exposing JFK Media Propagandists and Warren Commission apologists
Stahl is a prolific Astronomer, Physicist and JFK researcher who has written many Physics texts and The JFK Assassination: Final Analysis. The following posts on his blog illustrate the extent to which the media will go in covering up the truth about the JFK assassination.
Having just started reading Richard Charnin’s new book, Reclaiming Science: The JFK Conspiracy, I can say I am already delighted on seeing the depth of the analyses to come, and the focus on science, making the book a nice complement to Prof. James Fetzer’s Assassination Science. Because science is what we need here to counter the flood of disinformation that first arrived with the Warren Commission Report – not to mention the efforts of all its apologists to defend it.
“Reclaiming Science” is an apt title because it entails reclaiming the content that has hitherto been obfuscated and distorted under the specious science (or what I call pseudo-science) of the Warren Report as well as the apologists like Gerald Posner (‘Case Closed’) and Vince Bugliosi (‘Reclaiming History’) who have sought to reinforce that pseudo-science. I showed much of that in my FAQ (Part 5) addressing the bullets and wounds back in November of last year, e.g.
—————————————————————————————————–
A major section of the Skeptics Society pamphlet I referenced yesterday is headed ‘Top 10 Ways to Test Conspiracy Theories’ – which like the dime store psychology content (on p.4), ends up as just useless The authors could as well ask readers to use tea leaves.
4) The conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep quiet about their secrets.
Dispensed easily, along the lines of dispensing (3). Again, who is to say what constitutes “large numbers of people” ? If 75 was enough to make Iran –Contra work to the extent it did was that too much? Hardly! Was 94-95 too much to make the Kennedy assassination work – as it has for over 50 years now – thanks to the many useful idiots in the media and beyond who make up rationalizations to try to explain it away?
As for keeping secrets, killing witnesses is an excellent way to achieve that end which is why Richard Charnin’s book (analyzing JFK witness deaths) and website material is so important to disabuse those who opt to don the pseudo-skeptic robe. In other words, learn before bloviating about what limits you believe attend to the claim!
—————————————————————————————————–
I asked Stahl if he would comment on a post I had written in response to a blog post by quantum physicist Scott Aaronson. He posted the following four articles:
“How do we know that our own rational rejections of conspiracy theories are not themselves infected with beliefs so strong that they are, in effect, conspiracy theories too?” – Matt Ridley in ‘Maybe We’re All Conspiracy Theorists’, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10-11, 2011
Scott Aaronson seems to believe that because he’s a quantum physicist that he’s also knowledgeable enough to make intelligent comments – in his blog – on the JFK assassination. He isn’t. He comes across as yet another overconfident, under-informed proxy “expert” (using his quantum physics bona fides) but who probably couldn’t tell Oswald’s OS-351- 164 file from his 201- 289 248 CI/SIG file or his 74-500 file. All as reported in the Appendices of Military Science professor John Newman’s book, ‘Oswald and the CIA’ – from freedom of information act documents.
But this is the typical BS that serious assassination researchers have to put up with – because these semi-educated (on the assassination) critics only serve to clutter the blogosphere with yet more disinformation and ignorance when some of us are attempting to educate our countrymen as to what really went down – based on actual documents released on the basis of the JFK Records Act – not half-assed speculations or conjectures.
I now examine Scott Aaronson’s “20 Reasons” to assert Lee Oswald was the lone gunman in the JFK assassination, based on what he calls “general principles” but which I call out as slacker principles: do as little as possible- avoid any details, attend to the worst possible “investigators” (Gerald Posner), and in general let ignorance trump facts at every turn. Basically, Aaronson brings to bear a smug laziness that he’d never use if he wanted to publish a paper, say in the Physical Review (one of its fine journals). He does this because he treats JFK assassination research akin to a kiddie hobby or pastime.
1. Conspiracy theorizing represents a known bug in the human nervous system. Given that, I think our prior should be overwhelmingly against anything that even looks like a conspiracy theory”.
This is not a reason but an assertion, that needs to be proven, demonstrated. Aaronson really ought to know better than to trot such bollocks out for public consumption, as if he’s even an expert in the human nervous system. Where has this been published? (He puts out a link to a cartoon -as if any intelligent person would accept that) In what peer-reviewed journal of neurobiology? Further, the fact this is psycho-babble is patently clear by the fact he puts all possible conspiracy examples under the same umbrella – from faked lunar landings to Joe Klein’s example (in the recent TIME – see Part I) of the feds buying up ammo to raise the prices so gun owners can’t afford it – to the JFK assassination. In this way, he demeans the event and insults the people who’ve done serious research including Peter Dale Scott, James Douglass (‘JFK and the Unspeakable’), Mark Lane and many others. In this way he actually insults the memory of the 35th President.
—————————————————————————————————–
We now continue as I rebut more of quantum physicist Scott Aaronson’s 20 specious reasons that Oswald was the lone gunman in the JFK assassination:
5. A half-century of investigation has failed to link any individual besides Oswald to the crime.
True, but that is because it wasn’t one “individual”. All the evidence amassed so far from the existing files (especially Oswald’s CI/SIG files, the Staff D connection) shows the hit was an executive action masterminded by the CIA probably in collusion with NSA assets. That no individual has been identified isn’t surprising at all to any who have examined the detailed documents in depth – as Peter Dale Scott has published in his most recent book, cited in Part One.
The original plan, gleaned from multiple documents- interviews, was to kill Kennedy, link Oswald to Castro, and use this as a pretext to invade Cuba. Note the parallels here to the October, 1962 Missile crisis- when the Joint Chiefs tried to get Kennedy to invade Cuba on the basis of the Soviet missiles there. JFK refused, and in so doing put another nail in his coffin, while his enemies looked for other ways to achieve their goal- ending up at assassination of Kennedy – by a Castro dupe. Or so the CIA hoped people would believe. Former CIA accountant James Wilcott, however, noted the phony link to Castro could not be established firmly enough to hold and hence the need to brand Oswald as the lone assassin.
In other words, the CIA aimed for a ‘trifecta’ – blaming the USSR as an accomplice, invading Cuba and killing Kennedy, but they ended up with only one of the three – but to be sure a huge one – as it’s distorted this nation’s history ever since. (Along with shattering all confidence and trust in gov’t – given the government still hold to the phony Warrenite story.)
—————————————————————————————————–
We now pick up at Aaronson reason No. 16, as we try to wade through more of his codswallop:
16. JFK was not a liberal Messiah. He moved slowly on civil rights for fear of a conservative backlash, invested heavily in building nukes, signed off on the botched plans to kill Fidel Castro, and helped lay the groundwork for the US’s later involvement in Vietnam.
This one shows glaringly how out of touch Aaronson is with JFK and the politics of the time. It also shows him to be either a know-nothing or troll regarding JFK. As James Douglass has clearly shown (Chapters 1-3, in JFK and the Unspeakable’) the Cold warrior shtick was purely a political ruse to ward off Nixon‘s expected attacks – and it worked! JFK was elected, not Tricky Dick. JFK was, in fact, perhaps the most liberal president of the past 50 plus years. Aside from creating the Peace Corps (which I served in for four years) he also created the Alliance for Progress to deliver low interest loans to South American nations – for which he was pilloried by the financial press. In case Aaronson forgot, he also signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August, 1963 which had all the right winger military types going nutso – including when anti-missile systems were banned as well.
—————————————————————————————————– “Beware Conspiracy Theorists?” No – Beware Those Who Are Part of the Unspeakable!
Media personality Michael Smerconish in his Op-ed in today’s Denver Post, advises one and all (based on his header) to ”Beware Conspiracy Theorists”. We are supposed to be the bane of national existence, sowing paranoia with our every blog post, and hey – we are little different from the generic nuts who fret over UN helicopters and FEMA concentration camps. In this way, lumped in with whackjobs, all manner of conspiracies are instantly consigned to the dumpster of history.
Nevertheless, it appears those like Michael Smerconish are quite happy to go on killing hope for change in the world multiple times over, as they seek to dissuade the citizen from examining the facts of the conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination.
Smerconish begins his sarcastic attack by singling out Jesse Ventura’s book: They Killed Our President: 63 Reasons to Believe There Was A Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK. So Smerconish gets Ventura in an interview and asks the question: “Who is ‘they’?” Ventura, honest as he is, responds that he doesn’t know. The ‘they’ employed was generic, and could apply to any of the conceivable forces – or all – that had it in for Kennedy, but especially his national security state. Besides, Ventura could have told Smerconish if he really knew who ‘they’ were he likely wouldn’t be alive to say so! As per Richard Charnin’s excellent graphical proof of conspiracy based on the death of witnesses at the times of the two main investigations. https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/jfk-witness-deaths-graphical-proof-of-a-conspiracy/
—————————————————————————————————– Frequently Asked Questions on the JFK Assassination:(Pt.7): The HSCA Investigation
Why was the House Select Committee on Assassinations launched and who headed it? What general standards did they apply? Why indeed would such severe impediments be imposed to prevent an honest and forthright investigation as Richard Sprague wanted?
The obvious reason is that there was way too much at stake for the ones that killed Kennedy – a clandestine branch of our own government, embedded in the CIA. Most likely run out of CIA Staff D and the ZR/Rifle program – then mutated into Executive Action against Kennedy. People can toss up hands and put fingers in ears and sing “lalalala’ all they want but there it is! Why else forge such consistent impediments against an open investigation? The only reason would be to protect the interests, people that did it – and who up to now have gotten away with it, including the murder of dozens of key witnesses any time a trail was revived for an investigation. Don’t believe me? Then look at Richard Charnin’s stats of witnesses killed around and at the time of the HSCA investigation. https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/jfk-witness-deaths-7-fbi-officials-due-to-testify-at-hsca/
—————————————————————————————————– Even Liberals Can Be Victims of Conspiracy Phobia
It’s really distressing to the critical thinker to behold the extent to which crappola continues to be spouted on the JFK assassination, particularly the media’s consistent disparaging of the whole notion of conspiracy. And while most Europeans think we’re idiots for believing that one lone nut killed Kennedy, in America that meme is just fine and dandy. After all, it keeps the hoi polloi in their comfort zones so they can tweet, play fantasy football, and watch ‘Survivor’ without being bothered.
Guest Walter Mears, a former AP reporter, and evidently on the verge of Alzheimers is no better, trying to peddle the baloney that “Oswald was the perfect guy for conspiracy theories” then reciting all kinds of idiocy such as “he defects to Russia, went to Mexico City, kicked out of the Marines, etc.” failing to distinguish actual actions from those that emerged from the false defector program I described 3 blogs ago. Mears goes off the beam, trying to be sardonic or sarcastic, as when he blabs: “I covered Washington well enough to know that if you have a conspiracy and three people are involved, one of them is going to blow the whistle.”
To which all the guests laughed like idiots, unable to grasp how many witnesses were taken out one by one, not only at the time of the Warren Commission, but at the Garrison Investigation and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978-79). Indeed, author Richard Charnin has proven – to a mathematical certainty, these witnesses could not have been offed by “coincidence” or some other claptrap. https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/jfk-witness-deaths-graphical-proof-of-a-conspiracy/
Interestingly, Mears did get the key part of the JFK conspiracy right when he blurted: “And if two are involved, it will keep if one of them dies”. But in the JFK “Witness Death project” – likely carried out by CIA contract hit men (such as killed William Bruce Pitzer), it obviously will also “keep” if dozens are killed – one by one as they are called to testify before any given investigation. (See Charnin’s link and proof) Mears actually nailed the reason for the lack of evidence he claimed not to see, but was too dumb to understand how or why. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day!
Even Kornacki, an otherwise intelligent MSNBC host on most issues, fell down here, displaying more ignorance and historical cluelessness than insight. He made the embarrassing remark: “Yeah, that’s the other part here. We talk about the government as this sort of bumbling, bureaucratic mess. To pull off something as wide scale as in the Oliver Stone movie (‘JFK’) you try to reconcile that with the government we know.”
—————————————————————————————————– The Southern Poverty Law Center: Still In Over Its Head On the JFK Assassination
But I could go through the whole list of those killed and make similar points. What has the SPLC got to show for it? Only its naïve acceptance of assorted “official” stories which do not jibe with Richard Charnin’s demonstrated statistics. These, when the false filters are removed, show there were at least 96 unnatural deaths (80 homicides, 5 suicides, 8 accidents, 3 unknown).
Charnin notes on his link: “There are 122 suspicious deaths listed in JFK Calc. Seventy-eight (78) were officially ruled unnatural (34 homicides, 16 suicides, 24 accidents, 4 unknown). Forty-four (44) were ruled natural (heart attacks, cancers, other). But since many accidents, suicides and natural deaths were likely homicides, the number of unnatural deaths was adjusted to 96 (including 80 homicides).”
These adjustments would have taken into account aberrations such as I noted in the case of Pitzer and Ferrie. The attempted SPLC rebuttal (to Richard Belzer) then goes on to state: “In addition, the story pointed out that a large number of people who did testify have had normal life spans”
Of course they did, because their testimonies did not detract from or contradict the false Warrenite narrative of one lone nut! So there’d have been no reason to deal with any of these “witnesses” – many of whom (e.g. Julia Anne Mercer, Jean Hill et al) later admitted that they surrendered to pressure put on them by so-called “authorities”, including the FBI and Secret Service. The ones that had to be dealt with were mainly the material witnesses whose testimonies would have rocked the boat and exposed the Commission for the fraud it was!
Lastly, the SPLC has continued its manifest blindness to Operation Mockingbird assets with this twaddle:“just as many reporters who were skeptical of the Warren commission account were not murdered.”
Again, the contrarian reporters would only have been murdered if they were material witnesses, like Dorothy Kilgallen. There’d be no need at all to go after mere skeptics because anything they wrote could be easily neutralized (or simply ignored for publication) by the entrenched Mockingbird CIA assets. How difficult can this stuff be to grasp? Evidently, it’s like fractal calculus for the good folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who one would have thought would have their hands full with racial animus and hate groups without taking on the Kennedy assassination.
The SPLC piece by Elias – as well as the recent follow-up, also illustrates another irritating aspect of the Left’s conspiracy phobia: running from anything that smacks of “anti-government” sentiment, despite the fact we have reams of documents, files to support the need for a critical wariness of anything government claims (as Edward Snowden’s files have disclosed).
—————————————————————————————————– Rachel Maddow Again LIES About Lee Harvey Oswald and His Rifle
Rachel Maddow appears to be a compulsive liar, at least where Lee Harvey Oswald is concerned. But this ought not be too surprising, given that non-serious, superficial researchers and talking heads (who may only deal with the assassination once or twice a year) are often bound to insert their feet into their foolish mouths. And so Rachel did it again last night, as she did back in March last year,
This was in conjunction with a segment last night on a gun reform law (S. 3714) that JFK had proposed: “to exclude from importation or re-importation into the United States arms or ammunition originally manufactured for military purposes.”
In this context she specifically mentioned the Italian made 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano, and showed an ad for it in the “American Rifleman” magazine along with photostat copies of receipts proving Lee Oswald purchased it. She then added, emulating a Neoliberal know-nothing: “Lee Harvey Oswald bought the gun in March, 1963. He killed President Kennedy with it that November.”
Interested people may also wish to process that, in 1995, after President Clinton ordered release of most of the pertinent files to do with the JFK case (as requested by the Assassinations Archives Review Board) the FBI immediately filed an appeal to prevent the release of any files. One is therefore left to wonder why now, they would be so eager to cooperate – since obviously they’d have had to supply Farid with his source photos for analysis.
In Farid’s case, one is left to wonder what exact photo he has proven genuine- since there were four in all. One of those featured small irregularities including that the telescopic scope was absent, because a technician had accidentally retouched it. WHY has Farid not picked it up with this elite software, when it was openly admitted by the management of LIFE magazine? Or, was Farid not given the retouched photo? If not, why not? Perhaps to prevent him from saying that ONE photo at least was a fake?
Then there is the “Oswald ghost” photo recovered at Dallas PD headquarters some time after the assassination. It is shown above, next to another backyard photo. As one can discern, the “ghost” is a cutout into which another image can be pasted-superposed. The cutout image, many of us conclude, was obtained using a Dallas cop stand –in, which photo was also found in Dallas Police files, along with the ghost image. That photo is also shown (Fig. 2). As noted by researcher Jim Marrs (Crossfire, p. 452) photo specialist Robert Hester was called on 22 November, 1963 to help process assassination -related photos for the FBI and Dallas police. Hester reported (and his wife Patricia confirmed) that he saw an FBI agent with a color transparency of one of the backyard photos with NO figure in the picture. This has to be the same Fig. 2. Was the FBI in on the manipulation of images and photos? We don’t know, but given Farid’s connection to the FBI in funding his lab, can we really trust his work? Can we trust he analyzed the actual source photo? And if so – which?
—————————————————————————————————–
Lastly, for what it’s worth, I reiterate Harrison Livingstone‘s remark that “only an idiot” would accept or believe that the truth or falsity of conspiracy rests exclusively on the acoustic record. (Harrison Edward Livingstone: 1995, Killing Kennedy and the Hoax of the Century, Carroll & Graf Publishers) There is simply too much supplemental supporting evidence, i.e. including from the ballistics, the additional films taken that day, e.g. Nix film, and the actual autopsy photos, as well as skull radiographs and the negative test results from the purported Oswald weapon by a team of sharpshooters appointed by the Warren Commission. Not to mention the inordinately improbable deaths of witnesses, see:https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/a-probability-analysis-of-witness-deaths-within-one-year-of-the-jfk-assassination/
-Badgeman photo: shooting from the Grassy Knoll
-S.M. Holland: eyewitness at the Grassy Knoll
-Tippit Shooting: Witnesses said killed at 1:06; Warren Commission at 1:16
-Oswald photo: standing in the TSBD doorway
-Faked: Oswald Backyard Photos
Medical and Autopsy
-Dr. Charles Crenshaw: JFK Entrance Wounds
-Parkland Doctors: JFK Head wounds
-Autopsy photos: faked to hide gaping head exit wound
-Magic Bullet: Ford moved JFK’s back wound up 5 inches
-JFK Back Wound: No exit, therefore no Magic Bullet
Physical
-7.65 Mauser: three witnesses of rifle on 6th floor of TSBD
-Mac Wallace (LBJ hitman): fingerprint on 6th floor of TSBD
-Acoustics: at least 4 Gunshots, one from the Grassy Knoll
-The Limo: Destruction of the evidence
-Front to Back: Bullet Hole in the Limo Windshield
-Magic Bullet: found on back seat of the Limo
-JFK Witness Deaths: Math Proof of a Conspiracy
Personal Reflections
-Jack Ruby: conspiracy from “top” of the White House
-E.Howard Hunt: it was an LBJ/CIA/FBI “Big Event”
-LBJ mistress: LBJ told her JFK would be killed next day
-Judyth Baker: Oswald girl friend, cancer researcher in New Orleans; “Me and Lee”
********************************************************************************************************* Truthseeker Videos
Acoustic Evidence: Sounds of Silence http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/larry-sabatos-new-book-does-not.html The conclusion of four separate shots coincides with 4 impacts visible in the Z-film. The acoustic impulses were retested in a 2001 investigation (‘Echo Correlation Analysis and the Acoustic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination Revisited’) by D.B. Thomas, published in the Journal Science and Justice, Vol. 41, p. 21. The impulses are shown below, with the four highest amplitude peaks associated with rifle muzzle blasts.
The new film Parkland is just another perpetuation of the 50-year JFK coverup. It fails to cover the most critical fact of all: the Parkland doctors said in press conferences that the shots came from the front. Tom Hanks will forever regret his involvement in promoting a film full of factual omissions – as will its fine actors. Why did they agree to do it? Were they unaware of the facts at Parkland? As professionals, they should have done their homework and voiced their objections to the glaring omissions.
Before Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan decided to make Executive Action in 1973, they first needed to convince themselves that there was in fact a conspiracy. They did so by familiarizing themselves with the evidence. THEY WERE NOT INTIMIDATED. THEY FELT THAT THE FILM HAD TO BE MADE. That was forty years ago. The evidence was overwhelming then; it is even more so now.
Dr. Charles Crenshaw
Parkland doctor Charles Crenshaw was there, trying to save JFK. He was interviewed by ABC years back. But how many Americans are aware of it? It was indeed a Conspiracy of Silence, the title of Crenshaw’s book. The YouTube video must go viral. If it does, the debate will be over. Take 10 minutes to learn the truth. This interview says it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXZ87gOlKkM
The Single Bullet Theory
The Warren Commission claimed that the throat wound was an exit wound. A single bullet hit Kennedy in the back, exited the front of his neck, and then changed direction to hit Governor John Connally (sitting in front of Kennedy) in the back, wrist and leg. WC member Rep. Gerald Ford (R-MI) changed the position of JFK’s back wound to conform to the single-bullet theory.
In July 1997, pages from the original draft of the Warren Report were released, describing the path of the famous single—or magic—bullet. The memo stated: “A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder to the right of the spine.” In pen, Ford changed the report to read, “A bullet had entered the back of his neck at a point slightly to the right of the spine,” thus making the single-bullet theory plausible. http://www.jfklancer.com/Ford-Rankin.html
The Gaping Exit Wound
Parkland surgeon, Robert McClelland, MD. described JFK’s skull exit wound in a drawing first published in the book, “Six Seconds in Dallas” by Josiah Thompson. The image, reprinted from “High Treason” by authors Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone, includes a letter from Parkland professor Paul Peters, MD, corroborating the location Dr. McClelland gave for JFK’s gaping skull wound. It was reproduced in ARRB Medical Document #264. http://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_tabfig.htm
The Small Throat Wound
The throat wound was made by the first of the two (or possibly more) bullets that struck Kennedy. It was not the fatal wound. The physicians who performed the autopsy did not see this wound in its original state, because it was obliterated by one of the Parkland doctors, Dr. Malcolm Perry, when he made a surgical incision over it in order to perform a tracheotomy. Therefore, only the doctors and nurses at Parkland hospital had a view of this wound in its original state. All of the Parkland doctors and the nurse who offered an opinion on the throat wound characterized it as an entrance wound: http://911blogger.com/node/20745
On November 22, 1963, millions of Americans heard radio and TV networks report that Dr. Malcolm Perry, a Dallas Physician who was with the President in the emergency room when he died, said there was a bullet entrance wound situated on the front of Kennedy’s neck. He said “there was an entrance wound below the Adam’s apple.”
Tom Wicker with the New York Times: Dr. Malcolm Perry, an attending surgeon, and Dr. Kemp Clark, chief of neurosurgery at Parkland Hospital, gave more details. Mr. Kennedy was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam’s apple, they said. This wound had the appearance of a bullet’s entry…
Dallas News reporter John Geddie: Dr. Perry said, “in the lower portion of Kennedy’s neck, right in the front, there was a small puncture”.
Dr. Ronald Jones in his Warren Commission deposition explained why the doctors considered the throat wound to be an entrance wound: “The hole was very small and relatively clean-cut as you would see in a bullet that is entering rather than exiting from a patient”.
Dr. Paul Peters testified at the Warren Commission Hearings: “We saw the wound of entry in the throat and noted the large occipital wound, and it is a known fact that high velocity missiles often have a small wound of entrance and a large wound of exit…”
Dr. Charles Baxter noted that such a wound (to have been an exit wound) would be “unusual… ordinarily there would have been a rather large wound of exit.”
Dr. Charles Carrico: On the afternoon of November 22, Dr. Carrico described the throat wound in his medical report as “a small penetrating wound of the ant. (front) neck in the lower 1/3”.
Nurse Margaret Henchliffe testified to the Warren Commission: “It was just a little hole in the middle of his neck… about as big around as the end of my little finger… that looked like an entrance bullet hole…”
Dr. Robert McClelland told the Post-Dispatch: “It certainly did look like an entrance wound.” He explained that a bullet from a low velocity rifle, like the one thought to have been used, characteristically makes a small entrance wound, sets up shock waves inside the body, and tears a big opening when it passes out the other side.
Dr. McClelland conceded that it was possible that the throat wound marked the exit of a bullet fired into the back of the President’s neck… “but we are familiar with bullet wounds,” he said. “We see them every day – sometimes several a day. This did appear to be an entrance wound.”
McClelland noted in the same interview, having been informed that Lee Harvey Oswald had shot the President from behind: “We postulated that if it was a wound of entry, as we thought it was… he would have to have been looking almost completely to the rear”.
McClelland testified to the Warren Commission: “At the moment… it was our impression before we had any other information… that this was one bullet, that perhaps had entered through the front of the neck and then in some peculiar fashion which we really had… to strain to explain to ourselves, had coursed up the front of the vertebra and into the base of the skull and out the rear of the skull”.
Dr. Robert Shaw said that the doctors were “a little baffled” by the throat wound:“The assassin was behind him, yet the bullet entered at the front of his neck. Mr. Kennedy must have turned to his left to talk to Mrs. Kennedy or to wave to someone”.
“Doctor, describe the entrance wound. You think from the front in the throat?”
DR. PERRY — “The wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat; yes, that is correct. The exit wound, I don’t know. It could have been the head or there could have been a second wound of the head. There was not time to determine this at the particular instant.”
The reference Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination contains summaries of 1400+ material witnesses. Based on the national average total mortality rate (0.010193), approximately 214 would be expected to die in the 15 years from 1964-78. Given the national average unnatural mortality rate (0.000822), only 17 unnatural deaths would be expected, but there were 78 officially ruled unnatural deaths (the actual number is probably close to 100). The probability of 78 unnatural deaths in a randomly-selected group is E-27 (ZERO). It’s even lower (E-62) using the JFK-weighted witness rate (0.000247).
Convenient deaths spiked in 1964 (Warren Commission) and 1977 (House Select Committee).
These deaths, categorized as homicides in the database, were officially ruled as suicides (Stockdale, Ferrie, Pitzer, De Morenshildt, Craig, Underhill, Surrey); sudden cancers (Ruby, Martin, Artime, Dyer); illnesses (Smith, Carter); accident (Sherman).
These deaths were officially ruled as accidents (Sullivan, Sherman, Kilgallen, Bowers); heart attacks (Regis Kennedy, Howard) There were many others. But they may very well have been homicides.
It is important to note that the 1964-78 average homicide rate was much lower than accidental deaths and suicides, therefore comparing unnatural deaths to the expected number is not nearly as dramatic as comparing homicides. Nationally, homicides comprised 10% of unnatural deaths, but 34 of 78 officially ruled JFK-related unnatural deaths (44%) were homicides.
Richard Charnin's Blog 
