It has
recently been shown that a great deal of FBI testimony in murder cases
concerning the similarities and differences between bullets coming from
different batches from a manufacturer.... was utterly unfounded. One
of the reasons Oswald was held to be guilty was that the bullets found in
the limousine and in Connelly were allegedly from the same batch as bullets
found in Oswald's possession, at his house.
The FBI now admits that this "proof" was based on junk
science, with no grounding in fact whatsoever.
We also know that most people will
continue to believe that the FBI "proved" that the bullets were from the
same batch. It takes a long time for the truth to upend an embedded
lie.
I do call it a lie because this untrue belief was not
a disinterested belief-- it was used over and over again in many U.S. courts
to prove guilt. It was virtually never used to prove innocence.
Defenders of the Warren Commission have long argued that there was no
evidence that Oswald knew David Ferrie, the pilot for the anti-Castro Cubans
operating in Florida with links to the CIA. Eureka: a photograph
surfaced just a few years ago showing
Oswald and Ferrie at the same
gathering of Cadets in Florida, I believe.
It is one thing for defenders of the Warren Commission to assert that the
evidence of a connection was thin and unreliable-- it was quite another for
them to insist that there was no relationship, and then be proven wrong.
May 3, 2008
Dale Myers does not
understand that you cannot prove a negative. He can prove that a certain
conspiracy theory has not been proven-- but he can't prove, therefore, that all
other conspiracy theories are false.
There are about 20 or so
good reasons to believe that John F. Kennedy was killed as the result of a
conspiracy, and about a thousand reasons to believe that the conspirators
should be comforted by the plethora of crack pot conspiracy theories out
there dedicated to discrediting the whole idea of a conspiracy. These
are straw men just waiting for reasonable, logical men like Dale Myers to
come along and demolish them. Here he demolishes a theory he
attributes to conspiracy buffs, but which, in fact, was actually the result
of the government's own errors in it's initial investigation. (The
government initially said that the first shot hit Kennedy in the neck, the
second Connelly, the third Kennedy in the head. Then it tried to
explain the entrance wound in the neck by a claim that Kennedy had turned
around to see where the shots were coming from.... )
Why or why oh why are people like Dale Myers not content to do their good
work and then leave it alone. Oh no-- Myers tackles one particular
detail of the conspiracy theory, solves it to his own personal satisfaction,
and then concludes that there must not have been a conspiracy.
He attacks one small aspect of the many conspiracy theories and then
concludes that all aspects of all theories are, therefore, false. He
doesn't even address the issue of the "pristine" (stretcher) bullet that
allegedly did all the damage he describes. In fact, that bullet had to
have done all that damage or his theory collapses.
What he has demonstrated with some weight is that Kennedy and Connelly
were probably hit about the same time by a bullet or bullets fired by
somebody. Well, no, he actually can't really demonstrate that either
because Kennedy is already reacting to a shot by the time he emerges from
behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. We don't know when he began to
react, so we don't know when exactly he was shot. It's quite possible,
given the evidence Myers shows us, that Kennedy and Connelly were hit by two
different shots fired at about the same time by two different gunman.
He succeeds in making the theory of multiple gunmen less plausible, but it doesn't rule
it out.
Myers doesn't explain here the Teague fragment-- the shot that missed the
car and hit the over-pass, sending a fragment of concrete into the face of
Mr. James Teague-- a shot ridiculously wide of the car. A shot
ridiculously inaccurate for a shooter who was able to hit Kennedy in the
head on his third try.
Myers doesn't prove that Oswald fired any shots at all. Only that a
shot came from behind and above. Myers claims that his reconstruction
shows that the shots had to come from the sixth floor window-- that's an
amazing conclusion given the variables involved. It is impossible to
believe that Myers arrived at that conclusion from the objective evidence he
puts before you. It is impossible to believe that he is justified in
asserting anything more than that the shots came from that approximate
location. It is impossible to believe that he has not already
assumed the shots came from exactly that windows because he already knows
that that is where Oswald was supposed to be. Then he acts as if he has uncovered
an amazing fact in support of the lone gunman theory.
A little less
smugness is called for. He has helped disprove the theory that there
had to be two gunman. But he hasn't solved the murder.
He hasn't proven that the shots came from Oswald. He hasn't even
proven that Oswald at the window at the moment the motorcade drove by.
What Myers does not prove:
that the bullets came from Oswald's rifle: the ridiculous
pristine bullet found on the stretcher is a very weak connection,
especially (but not only) because of the controversy of which stretcher
the bullet actually came from. Furthermore, the FBI now admits
that it's "scientific" analysis of bullets has always been flawed and
unreliable, and will no longer provide that service to law enforcement.
that Oswald fired the shots: the FBI found no usable finger prints
on the rifle at all. The Dallas Police later claimed to find a
fragment of a palm print on the disassembled rifle. That's a
little weird and dubious at best.
that there was actually an entry wound on the back of the head-- the
autopsy was botched so badly that there will never be a satisfactory
answer to this question, especially given that none of the Parkland
doctors saw this entry wound.
that the wound in the throat came from a bullet exiting Kennedy's
body. Most of the Parkland doctors initially identified this wound
as an entry wound. Myers explains how it might have been a bullet
exiting, but, again, the autopsy was botched and that remains
questionable.
And a whole lot of other things, including the strange stories about
Oswald's relationships in New Orleans (including his contacts with David
Ferrie), his adventures in Russia, the speed with which he was
identified as the prime suspect, and so on and so on.
The state of conspiracy theory about Kennedy's assassination is in a
hopeless mess. That doesn't mean all the conspiracy theories are wrong, and
it certainly doesn't mean that the Warren Commission was right, or even that
the Warren Commission was not ridiculous. (Just look at who was on the
Warren Commission: a bunch of fat old white politicians and judges who
represented, exquisitely, the class of politician the Kennedys had just
elbowed aside in John's drive to the presidency.)
