Experts Now Say JFK Bullet Analysis Was Wrong

Spy Handler writes "Researchers analyzing bullet fragments from the 1963 Kennedy assassination using new techniques say that the government's 1976 conclusion that the bullets came from only one gun (Oswald's) is wrong. 'Using new guidelines set forth by the National Academy of Sciences for proper bullet analysis, Tobin and his colleagues at Texas A&M re-analyzed the bullet evidence used by the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded that only one shooter, Oswald, fired the shots that killed Kennedy in Dallas. The committee's finding was based in part on the research of now-deceased University of California at Irvine chemist Vincent P. Guinn. He used bullet lead analysis to conclude that the five bullet fragments recovered from the Kennedy assassination scene came from just two bullets, which were traced to the same batch of bullets Oswald owned.'"

seriously

[Ace905]

Seriously, was there ever any doubt? Did _anybody_ believe the government over all of the eye witnesses, the drawn out court-case, the ridiculous implausible explanation required, or the pristine perfect bullet found OUTSIDE his body?

It's good somebody finally _proved_ they were lying, but we still don't know why they lied - and really, what moron ever thought the case was closed.

---
this moron [douginadress.com]

Slow your horses there, cowboy.

[geekoid]

Based on common analysis at the time, it was reasonable conclusion.

This analysis is full of maybes
example:

"If the assassination fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely, as the additional bullet would not be attributable to the main suspect, Mr. Oswald."

Or he fired another shot.
The guy who claims this has been afer the FBI for years, and what better way to get in the press then dragging this out. Lets see some other groups confirm his analysis.

Even though this post is clearly trollish in nature, and quite frankly doesn't belong on /. there is no reason to exsasorbate the issue with post like yours.

Was there more then one shooter? I don't know.
What I do know is this:
Any moment in time, looked at be enough people begin to show things that dno't make sense. Any event has thing that seem unexplainable 20+ years down the road.
I also watched a man hit a moving target at 1000 yards, repeatably.
I also no that if there was another shooter, that doesn't mean there is a cover up or conspiracy. Just a wrong conclusion based on faulty analysis.

Re:just to be clear

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

They only have shown that it is not statistically certain that all bullet fragments were of similar make-up of to those of Oswald's.

That is not at all what the article says. What it says is that the previous investigation concluded that all bullet fragments came from only 2 bullets. This new study shows that it is possible that the fragments came from three or more bullets . So assuming that now people think that 3 or more bullets were fired, the question is - How many of those bullets could Oswald have fired? My understanding is that some people think he could have gotten off 3 shots within the time allowed. Others say that it would be almost impossible to fire more than 2. So until we seem to come to a conclusion that Oswald could only have fired 2 bullets and not 3, we haven't seen anyone rule out that Oswald could have fired 3 bullets himself.

Re:seriously

[aminorex]

I can tell you one thing that is impossible: That Oswald was the shooter. There's a nice photograph of the front of the TSRB as Kennedy rides by, published in Look magazine immediately after the assassination, which shows Oswald on the sidewalk, street-level, wearing the same shirt he was wearing when Jack Ruby killed him.

The accidental assassin

[steveha]

One interesting theory I heard: there were two shooters, but the second shooter might not have intended to shoot.

There were various Secret Service people around, armed with various weapons. If you are well trained, you carry a weapon with the safety applied, and with your finger off the trigger, and the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. But sometimes people do screw up.

So, according to this theory, Oswald starts shooting at JFK, and someone screws up and fires off an accidental shot from an AR-15 or something. Then the person who screwed up never admitted it, because if you fatally shot the man you were trying to protect, would you be in a hurry to admit it?

The accidental shot could have been while taking the safety off in a hurry with a finger on the trigger, for example. (One of Cooper's famous three laws of firearm safety: keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you have the sights lined up on a target you are willing to shoot.)

http://www.sportshooter.com/safety/safetyrules_ann otated.asp [sportshooter.com]

I heard this theory from Massad Ayoob years ago during a lecture on safety. He felt that JFK's head wound was consistent with the small, fast bullet fired by an AR-15, while JFK's other wounds were consistent with a big, heavy, slow bullet fired by the Carcano rifle used by Oswald.

http://ourworld.cs.com/mikegriffith1/id89.htm [cs.com]

I have not researched this enough to have an opinion on how likely it is, but I do find it interesting.

steveha

Re:seriously

[hcmtnbiker]

Seriously, was there ever any doubt? Did _anybody_ believe the government over all of the eye witnesses, the drawn out court-case, the ridiculous implausible explanation required, or the pristine perfect bullet found OUTSIDE his body?

• Witnesses couldn't have seen anything the TIME tape didn't catch about the shootings. Sure talk about the grassy knoll all you want, but with all the people there(the "witnesses" you where talking about) I would expect at least a fair physical description of a suspect from there or something more then a "it looked like smoke came from there" response.
• Oswald happened to get shot in the middle of it all, that might have messed up the court system maybe?
• What explanation would you have considered plausible given the strange occurance of the entry vs exit wounds? Tell me why there was no bullet found that would have come from the opposite direction(the main conspiracy theory relies on a wound in JFKs back to be an exit wound, but that would mean there's a bullet lying around somewhere).
• Last, what pristine bullet are you talking about? I know of one that ended up in 5 pieces inside JFK, and another that ended up in the car after passing through the original's entry/exit wounds and passing through his I believe right leg before embedding itself in the car(and not in prestine condition either).

I'm no conspiracy theorist...

[TheBearBear]

But when I came across this wiki article [wikipedia.org], I said "HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM, I wonder"

From Wiki Article on JFK Assassination

"The FBI has received added scrutiny by Kennedy assassination researchers due to the actions of FBI agent James Hosty. Hosty appeared in Oswald's address book. The FBI provided to the Warren Commission a typewritten transcription of Oswald's address book, in which Hosty's name and phone number were omitted. Two days before the assassination, Oswald went to the FBI office in Dallas to meet with Hosty, and when he found that Hosty was not in the office at the time, Oswald left an envelope for Hosty with a letter inside. After Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby, Hosty's supervisor ordered Hosty to destroy the letter, and he did so by tearing the letter up and flushing it down the toilet. Months later, when Hosty testified before the Warren Commission, he did not disclose this connection with Oswald. This information became public later and was investigated by the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations.[57]"

Re:Zapruder film

[Col. Klink (retired)]

The bullet (and a bit of brains and other material) left the front right side of his head. That would act as a propellent and have a greater mass than that of the bullet alone. Penn & Teller [everything2.com] debunked this one:

Binding a honeydew mellon with an inch of fiberglass tape to represent Kennedy's skull (on the model proposed by Nobel-laureate physicist Luis Walter Alvarez), Teller puts a shot through it. Slow motion photography shows how the spray of goo exiting the mellon propels it back towards the shooter. Put another way, "back and to the left" is another way to say "shot from the Texas School Book Depository Building."

Re:seriously

[arivanov]

I have no opinion on the authenticity of this photogrpah, but it is clearly very very interesting: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ JFK/postphotos.html [whatreallyhappened.com]

Re:Finally

[Var1abl3]

The truth about 9/11???? WTF are you talking about??? As I stood and looked up at the buildings just before the plane hit I can tell you the truth: "A plane, moving very fast, hit each building causing major damage resulting in an eventual collapse of both buildings. As for Building 7 a fire broke out, caused by damage from the falling debris, (this was the emergency management building with something like 10K gallons of fuel in it for the backup generators) that was all but ignored by the first responders who were left alive partly because with the cloud of dust and smoke it was all but impossible to even see it let alone get new fire trucks there to put the fire out, that eventually weakened the structure causing its collapse."
I know all you tin foil hat folks have a hard time with fire melting steel but look at what happened in California a few weeks ago when a tanker truck loaded with fuel crashed and caught fire causing the collapse of the overpass. Sorry to break the news to you but heat does soften steel long before it actually liquefies. If you do not like this country so much, or do not trust it then move to IRAN or somewhere that you will be more comfortable...... until you can show me proof that it was an "inside" job just shut the fuck up...
BTW with the way all the "leaks" have been coming out of the CIA, FBI, NSA etc. do you really think our government could keep an "inside" job of this scale quite for so long? And if Bush is as dumb as you leftest keep telling me he is how could he have planed such a huge attack without blundering it in the few months he was in office prior to the attacks? Like I said STFU or leave you dumb bastard or should I say Anonymous Coward.... If you want to rant at least have the balls to give us your name!

Troll this all you want!

Does the government put up red flags on purpose?

[jollyreaper]

The whole JFK assassination thing never sat right with me. For the most part I believe that your typical conspiracy theory, the ones that would be called kooky, rely too much on the omniscience of the shadowy "they." We're talking a level of coordination and control that any overt organization would be hard-pressed to match, PLUS the ability to keep it all secret! Your typical Illuminati conspiracies fall apart under analysis. But then there's your more realistic conspiracies, what I call the Mafia-type. They're possible, plausible, and have happened in the past, the only question is whether event X involved one. The Loose Change theory that the Pentagon was not hit by a passenger jet, that's kook. The idea that the WTC was taken down by controlled demlolition charges, that's kook. The idea that the Bush administration was behind the whole thing with detailed involvment in the planning, made it happen on purpose, that's kook. But what about the stuff that really happened? Coverying up Pat Tillman's death? Fact. Lying about Jessica Lynch? Fact. Outright fabrication of evidence to steer the nation towards war? Fact. Shutting down and firing anyone within the administration, military, and government agencies who questioned the war? Fact. Basing selection criteria for who to recruit for the rebuilding of Iraq based on party loyalty rather than professional qualifications? Fact. The textbook definition of a conspiracy: an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot. If I plot to kill my wife and my brother is in on it, this is a conspiracy to commit murder. If I plot to steal money from my employer and my coworker is in on it, that is a conspiracy to steal.

But back to what I was getting at originally, the whole official story for the Kennedy Assassination smells funny. You have passionate people on both sides of the issue arguing about whether this point or that validates or disproves the government's story. If Oswald was not the lone killer, it's a conspiracy. If there were some gigantic lapse in security that let Kennedy be killed and officials moved to coverup that embarassment, it's a conspiracy, but not in the sense that "they" ordered him killed. But who would "they" even be? If there is a "they", why kill him on Dallas? Why the whole fancy shooting from the Schoolbook Depository?

And this all leads around to another explanation, maskirova. That's a russian word for camouflage, deception, or misdirection. Take Area 51 for example. The Air Force wants to play with some crazy toys out in the desert. Seeing as the Western powers were the Soviet's best source for military research, the last thing anyone wanted was to give the game away to their spies. So, the public has a fascination with flying saucers and little green men, right? Well, the new experimental aircraft look pretty odd, especially at night. Why not play up that angle? Everybody assumes the government is hiding something so why not really give them something to talk about? Act mysterious, give ludicrous explanations for what people might have seen in the sky, call it swamp gas or venus low on the horizon, act like you've got something to hide. Pretty soon everybody is talking about flying saucers and nobody is talking about stealth aircraft.

So, is there a real conspiracy there or not? Is the government hamming it up to make us think there's something there to misdirect us from the truth? Or is this just typical government bungling and we're just seeing a pattern of deception that isn't really there?

Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.

*sigh*

[coaxial]

Ahh yes. Someone stokes the consipiracy flames to sell a book, and that makes news. Meanwhile Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutior of Charles Manson, writes a book [iht.com] explaining in excrutiating detail about how the Oswald was the lone gunman and fired the shots from the book depository, and no one says a thing.

All this talk about conspiracy theories is absurd. There's a group of people that that refuse to believe that shit happens. One guy can kill a president. A cult would willingly set themselves on fire rather than be arrested. That 19 guys from the desert can hijack airliners with boxcutters and crash them into buildings. I think it comes from that the need to place some meaning and reason on these acts. They can't fantom the power of a single commited individual, and so they find a vast and all powerful secret conspiracy is behind it all. The Knights Templar. The Illuninati. The Zeta Reticulians. The Water Fluoridation Industrial Complex. The Left Handed People of Borneo. The large underground homosexual population of Des Moines, Iowa. You name it. It's quite absurd.

E. Howard Hunt Confessed on his Deathbed

[MutualDisdain]

I was surprised that no one commented here on E. Howard Hunt's audio tape confession of involvement in the Kennedy assassination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt#Audio- taped_confession [wikipedia.org] Within the audio tape Hunt names Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis, David Sánchez Morales, and David Atlee Phillips as co-conspirators. He also claims Lyndon Johnson approved of the assassination for political gain. "I think that LBJ settled on Meyer as an opportunist, parent--like himself a parent--and a man who had very little left to him in life ever since JFK had taken Cord's wife as one of his mistresses. I would suggest that Cord Meyer welcomed the approach from LBJ, who was after all only the Vice President at that time and of course could not number Cord Meyer among JFK's admirers--quite the contrary." E. Howard Hunt was also famous for organizing the bugging of the DNC in the Watergate scandal.

read

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you missed the recent revelations from e howard hunt's son about his dad's deathbed confession about the assassination conspiracy? Also the now old confessions from LBJs mistress? Or the "most famous wink in the world" picture taken on the plane with the body going back to washington?

The high level shadow government goons had tremendous motive to whack jfk (oil depletion allowance, cutting the fed reserve out and going back to honest treasury money, they wanted a new war for profit, they wanted revenge for cuba and bay of pigs, several more), they certainly had the means(numerous examples of them pulling off forein coups, this is not any sort of hard or new work for themthe list of nations is large and the numbers murdered by the spooks and their proxies is even larger), and they created the opportunity (they ran JFK through a fishbowl killzone at very low speed). Then they offed the main witness, the fall guy, the patsy.

Eisenhower warned the US people about them, in about as clear a language as there is, yet when we see example after example of their handiwork, dudes like you fall into immediate denial, because you are in a a CULT, the cult of statism and cognizant dissonance, you "believe" it couldn't happen because it's so heinous an event so therefore it just couldn't be anything but their cockamammy fairy tale story.

Sorry, I am a natural skeptic, if it comes from official government sources-assume it's a lie until proven otherwise. They've been caught too many times lying about extremely important things. How about the "tonkin gulf attacks"? Never happened, NOW they finally admit it. A complete fabrication. Not one of the assholes involved has gone to jail over it. A couple millions "slopes" and 50 thousand US service people DEAD, based on a lie, for political and economic profit for a few fatcats. How about the USS Liberty, and killing your own guys? It's only because some lived through it and the ship didn't sink that we even found out about it, and it was that same crook LBJ and the zionazis who pulled that stunt.

9-11, the government told their own lower level cops who were investigating matters ahead of the event to SIT DOWN AND SHUTUP about it, several of the cases still magically haven't gone to court yet. Gee, WHY NOT? What ya got to hide, STATIST PIG? What happened to the videotaping "dancing israelis" and their truck and equipment? WHO PROFITS? How about those israeli "art students", huh? Where'd they go to? Start from there and go backwards, you'll see, the guys in charge now are crooks and liars and murderers, and they get away with it because they "decided" to, because they have so many heel clicking MERCENARIES working for them, regular plain dumb and scared order followers who know you follow orders or it gets to be real bad news real quick like, that's why. And congress doesn't investigate because one-they have no guns, a severe oversight with the constitution and two, more practical and direct, none of them want to get WELLSTONED, or have a repeat of the anthrax WARNING they got to NOT question events and to play ball or else. And if you want to see some more of a motive, check out the latest on the *insane* armageddon cult that has infiltrated the DOD and executive branch. These are the fundiest of fundiest who think we NEED a severe huge mideast war to bring about "the rapture". These are guys, an american taliban [militaryre...reedom.org] basically, GIVING ORDERS now. High level, generals, admirals, pentagon chiefs, etc. loons. They DON'T CARE how many folks they kill as long as it brings about their whacked out "end times" scenario.

You want more links, do your own research, there's enough here to find what I am talking about.

As to the pristine bullet, it's the one found on the stretcher magically at the hospital in dallas.

Re:seriously

[jeremyp]

The BBC also did a documentary for the 40th anniversary in which they simulated the scene using a computer model based on camera footage from the assassination and they came to the same conclusion. The magic bullet wasn't magic at all.

It isn't my intent...

[sub67]

...to make claims one way or the other, but even if the original theory was correct, isn't it reasonable to assume that if there were in fact two assassins that they could have simply shared ammo from the same box? I skimmed most of the comments but didn't see anything like this mentioned..

Re:Finally

[Coryoth]

That is true. However, liquid steel was found in the basement of the World Trade Center weeks after 9/11.

Some metal that had been liquified was found in the wreckage; there is no reason to believe it was steel (as opposed to some of the many other metals with lower melting points in the building) -- it was certainly not identified as steel by anyone except those who want to believe in a grand conspiracy.

Re:Zapruder film

[evilviper]

Uhh..I thought that the Zapruder film, the fact that bullet took an upward, not a downward trajectory, and eyewitness testimony have already trounced on the Warren Commission's findings that Oswald was the lone gunman in Dallas that shot Kennedy.

Only to extremely ignorant, non-experts, and conspiracy theorists...

Anyone who has ever seen a high-powered riffle going through a human head, knows that the forces involved are extreme, and difficult to imagine by those who have only seen people hit by slow, weak handguns. Bodies really do explode, in whatever direction is least dense... (closest to the surface)

If anything, the Zapruder film makes the "grassy knoll" conspiracy theory laughable, because non-military weapons like handguns and most riffles don't have nearly that kind of destructive force.

and eyewitness testimony have already trounced on the Warren Commission's findings

People claim they heard more shots... Big deal. Eyewitnesses are often mistaken, and the echo characteristics of cities make such mistakes quite understandable.

Re:Does anyone really care anymore?

[fishbowl]

>It's called history

With as many people who would be in on the conspiracy, we should be getting deathbed confessions already.

I'm interested in the Kennedy Assassination because I was there. Too young to be aware of anything, but there, I'm told, with my mom and the other AT&T operators she worked with, at the AT&T building across Houston Street. They didn't realize what was happening, didn't hear any gunshots, but saw the crowd panicking. As far as they were concerned, the parade ended when the car turned on Elm.

Also, my dad was at work at the Ford Furniture company across the street from the Texas theatre when they arrested Oswald.

I myself have lived in a house that Marina lived in later with her daughters. And I've worked at the Texas theatre, routinely parked my car at the North Tower, and had many a lunch break at the Grassy Knoll.

Should I be worried?

My "conspiracy theory" is a little different. I'd accept the premise that the opportunity to assassinate Kennedy presented itself as so completely obvious, that several people *independently* executed a plan, without knowing about Oswald. Maybe the guy at the fence and the guy on the railroad bridge knew about each other, but totally freaked when they realized somebody *else* was shooting.

Re:seriously

[kalirion]

I can understand watching bits and pieces of a movie that's being broadcast over and over, but how do you explain watching bits and pieces of it when it's ON DEMAND? Do you request the movie and then fast forward to a random segment? Do you constantly fall asleep while watching it?

Re:Finally

[ravenshrike]

? http://newlinks.blogspot.com/2004/10/f4-phantom-je t-hits-concrete-wall-at.html [blogspot.com] Toodles.

who said they were incompetent?

[Anonymous Coward]

They got away with it, even besides the dodgy evidence. They got away with the phony viet nam war for a long time. Shows some competence, lot of billionaires and mutli millionaires made out of that war. They keep getting away with treating sick and wounded vets like utter rubbish-yet still get enough people to "join up" to keep serving them. That shows some competence and leet skills in brainwashing the mass populations. Remember, you only have to keep the bulk of the population under control,not everyone, the rest can be dismissed in any fashion they choose. They keep getting away with ignoring the border and insourcing a lot of serf level labor and outsourcing industries for futher serf level wage scales, in order to drive down the wages of the middle class and increase the profits of the top 1%-, and there's still no mass revolt like there should be, because they have the middle class effectively terrorized, so that shows some criminal competence. They keep getting away with hijacked elections-that shows some competence. They got away with the newest ongoing iraq war, conveniently tied it to 9-11 even though saddam had nothing to do with al queda and OBL and in fact was enemies with the guy and was running a pretty secular modern nation as mid east dictatorships go (they are all dictatorships and certain classes and people are routinely killed and tortured over there), and keep getting away with it. Shows some competence. They keep creating artificial crash and burn bubble economies so they can then "legally" extract wealth from the productive middle class, by inflating the currency supply so much they get people scared they can't just save money, they have to "invest" in wall street ponzi scams, and they keep getting away with that, shows some competence. And so on.

  I think you might be confusing normal lower level bureaucratic bloat incompetence with high level successful geo-economic politics and massive fraud and successful buncoism. Remember, government is a jobs and income and power aggregating *racket*. As with all mobs in the rackets, murder is just one tool in their tool box. And lying is the least of their crimes. And all crooks lie, part of their nature.

Oswald & Hitting The Broad Side Of A Barn

[cmholm]

That show you mention even had a guy pull out Oswald's shooters score book from the marines showing what an incredible shot he was, yet you can find evidence with google proving Oliver Stone's assertion that other marines said he had "maggies drawers" and/or was a poor shooter overall. They had simply pulled out a few instances of good shooting he had for your show.

My dad was at one point a Sergeant stationed at MCAF Santa Ana, and enjoyed the dubious honor of being Oswald's last NCO, escorting him to the front gate the day he was discharged. Neither the old man nor the other NCOs he knew were impressed by Oswald's ability on a firing range, barely good enough to rate the "Marksman" shooting badge. When the nature of JFK's shooting came out, my dad could not believe JHO had the ability to pull it off.

Granted, as my mom used to argue, anyone can have a lucky day. But, with two shots, that's damn lucky.

Re:seriously

[daBass]

That part of the photograph is not only out of focus and grainy, it is also well overexposed. Unless this red was the darkest of dark reds, it is entirely plauslible that they just faded into one white blob on this black and white image.

The misunderstanding of photography and the effects of contrast on film is what makes people come up with rediculous claims that the moon landings were a hoax because "there were no stars in the photographs" and "the crosshairs in the camera seem to dissapear behind the white space suits".

I don't think Mr. Lovelady identified himself by the colour pattern of his shirt; probably probably said it was him because he know where he was at the time of the shooting. That seems much more likely than the FBI telling him to say it was him.

This documentary [wikipedia.org] proved to me there was only one shooter - most likely Oswald.

Actually

[ukemike]

Professor Jones of BYU got a sample of the slag from the discovered molten material. He has analyzed it and found that the component metals match the components of Thermate (not thermite).