Conservative Revolutionary American Party III: Another Attempted Reenactment of the Death of JFK

November 21, 2008 at 16:54:36

Another Attempted Reenactment of the Death of JFK

by Jim Fetzer Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., and James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.

On Sunday, November 16, 2008, the Discovery Channel broadcast a documentary entitled, "JFK: Inside the Target Car. The protagonists include Gary Mack, Curator of The Sixth Floor Museum, Adelaide T&E Systems, two JFK witnesses, two forensic experts, and a marksman (Michael Yardley). The evidence the program purported to analyze included five possible shot locations and blood spatter patterns, which were alleged to support the official Warren Commission opinion that Lee Oswald was the lone shooter and fired from the sixth floor of The Texas School Book Depository. Careful consideration of what was actually shown, however, suggests that this demonstration falls far short of its intended objective.

The study was based upon a set of assumptions, namely: that a single shot hit JFK in the head; this shot struck at Zapruder frame 313; that the limousine was traveling at 7-8.5 mph at that instant; this shot entered at the posterior head site selected by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979), not the site--four inches lower-- identified by THE WARREN COMMISSION REPORT (1964); that the Zapruder film has not been altered; that the only sites that deserved to be tested by firing test shots were the grassy knoll and the sixth floor window. Studies published in DEATH IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000) and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003), however, suggest that most of them are false.

Another set of possibilities lay beyond the domain of this experiment, namely: a head shot from anywhere else (three specific possibilities having been excluded from further consideration); any other shots to JFK's body or to John Connally; any shots that missed (apart from the grassy knoll shot); a second head shot; or other evidence, including medical studies of the X-rays and the autopsy record, from other witnesses, no matter how expert, or from multiple other sources, such as those documented in ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998) or the books previously cited here.

The conclusions that were supported by the documentary included that JFK was hit only once in the head (from the rear), this shot came from the sixth floor window, that Oswald fired this shot, and that the Warren Commission got it right. It excluded any consideration of the fact that JFK was killed by the impact of high-velocity bullets, while the Mannlicher-Carcano that Oswald is alleged to have used is not a high-velocity weapon; that co-workers placed Oswald at or near the first floor at 11:50 AM, at Noon, at 12:15 PM, and as late as 12:25 PM, before the shooting took place at 12:30 PM; and that Marion Bakker, a motorcycle patrolman, confronted Oswald in the lunchroom within 90 seconds of the shooting and held him in his sites until Roy Truly, Oswald's supervisor, assured him that Oswald belonged there (MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA).

The narrator begins by implying that the program will prove that the Warren Commission was correct, namely, that a lone gunman did it, with the clear insinuation that Oswald was the man. Of course, that is logically impossible: Oswald was not firing at the test site. No shooting at a range could ever determine who fired at JFK. The most that this experiment could justifiably claim instead is the simple one that the blood spatter pattern matched a posterior head shot. Hardly any serious critic of the WC would disagree with this conclusion--on the assumption that the blood spray is authentic--especially no one who has examined JFK's skull X-rays. Once this claim is accepted, the program can only follow a downhill trajectory, which it promptly proceeds to do.

Mack and Michael Yardley, the designated marksman, first inspect three possible sites in Dealey Plaza for frontal gunmen. The grassy knoll on the south side was ruled out because only two to three inches of JFK's head were visible above the windshield. They had previously positioned a similar vehicle with riders at the supposed kill site on Elm Street. The south side of the overpass was next eliminated because a shot from there would have pierced the windshield. But that multiple eyewitnesses reported that the windshield had been completely pierced or the Ford Motor Company employee who said he received the windshield at the Ford plant with just such a hole is not mentioned (MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA).

The north side of the overpass--the same side as the traditional grassy knoll--moreover, was greeted with genuine interest by the marksman: "Not a difficult shot. I would keep an open mind on this position." Mack's solitary objection to this site was that nearby witnesses should have heard such a shot. So no test shots were fired from any of the first three potential locations they jointly considered.

Under Mack's guidance, a stationary limousine mock-up was positioned on a shooting range in Sylmar, CA, to match the conditions of Elm Street. Even a huge fan was employed to simulate a 25 mph breeze. This was intended to take into account a head wind of 15-20 mph, superimposed on a limousine speed of 7-8.5 mph. The dummy was inserted to mimic JFK's position and orientation. For the traditional grassy knoll shot (while in Dealey Plaza), Yardley had noted that it was a possible shot and that there was just enough time to track the limousine.

At the Sylmar range, Yardley fired two shots, the first with a Winchester(soft point round). This bullet exploded the entire skull. By contrast, a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet (full metal jacket) created a large exit hole on the left side of the skull, leaving the rest of the skull largely intact. The program notes that Jackie would have been struck by such a bullet. They conclude, therefore, that no grassy knoll shot was fired. Toward the end of the program, however, Mack allows the possibility that no shot had been fired--unless it had missed!

For the posterior head shot, Mack marked the target site on the skull. Oddly enough, despite all of the homage paid to the Warren Commission throughout the show, Mack did not choose the Warren Commission site. Instead he chose the site selected by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which is much higher. This higher site was adamantly denounced by the pathologists. But no one on the program commented on either of these paradoxes.

The simulated posterior shot blows off the top right of the skull and widely scatters debris. Some even falls on the front of the windshield and a large chunk falls on the trunk. Simulated brain seems to scatter widely around the limousine interior, though little was apparent on the inside of the right rear door or on the back of the right front seat--the two sites that the show had emphasized as prominent blood scatter sites in real limousine. Of course, no one notices that the head snap--back and to the left, a striking feature of the Zapruder film--is absent at the shooting range, even though this was supposed to be the best model used to date.

Two JFK witnesses who had observed the actual limousine viewed this test evidence (in photographs) and agreed that the spatter pattern matched what they had seen on November 22, 1963. It would have been admirable if they had first been shown a wrong blood spatter pattern, just to see how flexible they were; curiously, the experiment shows debris going in nearly all directions. It is therefore not at all clear just what a wrong pattern would look like. Photos of the limousine in the garage in Washington, DC, just after midnight, were also shown. Blood stains were chiefly seen on the seat and the narrator admits that blood spatter evidence is hard to see in these images. This means that the two eye witnesses now become the key argument of the entire program. If their recollections are wrong, the entire argument collapses.

Two forensic experts are then invited to view the simulated blood spatter evidence in the mock-up. During the interval while they agree that the spatter pattern indicates a shot from the rear, the graphics shown extends a trajectory to an image of the sixth floor window--even though the experts in fact said nothing about this. The experts then identify a hole in the dashboard, in front of the driver's seat--a bullet would have had to have passed through the body of the driver, but no one comments on this. Likewise, no one asks about the appearance of the bullet after the shooting.

The forensic experts then suggest that the bullet's path could, in principle, be traced backward in a straight line through this dashboard hole and the entry in JFK's head. The trajectory would have been different for the actual Warren Commission entry site, namely, the one that Mack did not choose to use, another crucial point that was left unsaid. And no one considered whether the bullet might have been diverted from a straight line by its impact with the skull. Mack then asks if they could reach this same conclusion without the hole in the dashboard. The experts merely reply that the forward scattering of debris is consistent with a shot from the rear.

Neither of them ever mentions the sixth floor window, or Oswald for that matter, despite the overlying graphics. The narrator concludes that the Warren Commission was right all along--it was Oswald from the sixth floor window. This implication recurs with clocklike precision throughout the program--remarkably, even before the experiment is shown! Mack's final comment, though, was a surprising hedge: "The shot that killed President Kennedy did come from behind and apparently from the sixth floor window". He then adds a totally gratuitous comment that does not follow from this specific experiment at all: "I haven't seen anything that counters the official story--that Kennedy was shot from behind from above."