Until John F. Kennedy’s murder is solved, America will continue to be curious about how many people were (are?) responsible for his public demise. Will a digital analysis of his murder prove what we conspiracy theorists (I confess) already know? From the Herald Tribune:
Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have begun work on a digital scanning apparatus that they believe will be able to reproduce sound from the only known audio recording of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.The recording was made through an open microphone on a police motorcycle during Kennedy’s motorcade into Dealey Plaza, where the president was shot to death. The sounds were captured onto a Dictaphone belt at police headquarters, but scientific analyses of them over decades proved anything but conclusive, fueling arguments about how many people were actually involved in killing the president….
Leslie C. Waffen, an archivist with the National Archives, said he believed not only that the sound could be captured but also that, using digital analysis to map the sounds, scientists could remove extraneous noise like static and distant voices to reveal gun shots.
“This is big,” said Mr. Waffen, whose unit has custody of the belt as well as the original 8-millimeter home movie by Abraham Zapruder, which showed the assassination in color but utter silence. “That’s why we called the experts in. They came up with a recommendation to do this.”
While I believe Lee Harvey Oswald pulled a trigger from the book depository, he didn’t act alone.
I’m just a patsy.
According to the Zapruder film and my own eyes, the head shot came from the right front of JFK. If Oswald shot from the rear, that means at least one other person was shooting in Dealey Plaza that day. If two people were involved, we have a conspiracy. I guess I’m writing about this stuff as if I’m telling you something new. 
I have another confession: I love the movie JFK. It’s one of those films I can watch over and over again. I even read the script from time to time. I’m no Oliver Stone fan, however. Well, not really.
If you have nothing better to do, check out these sites:
Warren Report (Yeah, right!)
The Definitive Kennedy Assassination Resource
JFK Lancer
Famous Texans
History Matters
{ 15 comments }
Hi La Shawn
Just by coincidence I read this article on the Kennedy assassination not long ago when I was doing some research on “Occam’s Razor”. I thought it was *excellent*.
Pardon the very long url
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:QEKGKL4lxvkJ:www.boston.quik.com/amarsh/Ken_Rahn.doc+conspiracy+film+components&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Very illuminating post, La Shawn. I never figured you for either a conspiracy theorist or fan of a film made by a far left movie director. Lol.
I have seen coverage of that audio recording which supposedly captures the “gun shots.” It came out that the popping sounds were just the motorcylce and never matched up, time-wise, with the actual shootings.
It is fun to talk about the conspiracy theories, especially because a young, vibrant president was cut down during heady times but one miserable, pathetic man killed President Kennedy.
I’ll confess, too. I am also a conspiracy theorist when it comes to JFK’s assassination. My current ‘totally off the wall theories’ are thus:
Joe Dimaggio hired the mob because RFK took out Marilyn
JFK had a debilitating disease and paid someone to shoot him (ie suicide) so that he’d go down in a ‘blaze of glory’.
Okay, okay, I don’t really believe either of those things, but there really are so many possibilities. I’ve been to the site in Dallas, and I have looked out the book despository. The leftist whacko that he is, I think Oliver Stone got the logistics of the assassination quite right. Ain’t no way Oswald did it alone.
Having been a resident of Dallas at the time of the assination as well as having worked at Parkland Hospital shirtly afterwards and having known many of the medical and police personnel directly involved with the JFK affair, I too am a conspiracy theorist…lots of interesting stories out there that have never been made public.
Apparently you’re not a Red Dwarf fan, La Shawn. If you were, you’d know from the episode “Tikka To Ride” who shot JFK.
)
By the way, I found your blog via link from Hog On Ice. I like it, and have added you to my “must-read” list.
)
Great Blog La Shawn. I will have to disagree with one of your points though. The head shot did not come from the right front.
I had a physics teacher my frshman year in college actually use this as a basis for an example for class. It’s all a matter of momentum and equal and opposite reactions.
You notice that JFK’s head snaps back during the head shot. This is the reason people think that, since the hard snaps back, the shot must have come from the front. This is wrong.
You notice that large chunks, sorry but I can’t think of any other term, of JFK’s head fly forward. Those pieces of flesh and bone are just like the exhaust of a rocket. Their mass flying forward causes and equal and opposite reaction to the rear. Since the head is connected to the body via the neck, JFK’s head snaps to the rear.
The professor showed movies were he shot the head of pigs that were placed in similar positions and their heads snapped back just like JFK.
La Shawn, Michael is right. I have seen the Zapruder film and can tell you that the shot came from the rear.As a member of the International Wound Ballistics Association which is made up of police, medical and forensic experts who conduct wound ballistic research, analysis and commentary, the physical reaction of the President’s head to the shot is consistent with a high velocity projectile entrance from the back of his head. In autopsy photos of the wounds, the entrance and exit are consistent with the behavior of the 6.5 Carcano round that Oswald was using.
Regardless of whether you cling to a theory of “more than one shooter” or not, the wound is such that it COULD have been fired by Oswald, thus not proving anything one way or another, other than if not fired by Oswald, it would have to have been fired by someone with close to the same angle of fire and the same caliber rifle, or one that fired a cartridge with similar ballistic properties.
No, no, no! It was a conspiracy, I tell you!
La Shawn,
As eloquent as you are at articulating an argument, it is quite possible that you could convince me to ignore what I know of forensic science and just go with your theory. That is, given a lengthy and persuasive post by you on it
I know.
I tend to be about as anti-conspiracy as they come, so one book that I thought offered a pretty fascinating possibility for the “kill-shot’s” having come from someone other than Oswald was one called Mortal Error, by a guy named Bonar Menninger. He’s a ballistics expert who believes that, although Oswald was, indeed, the only person on-site that day who intentionally shot at JFK, the more explosive of the President’s wounds was the result of a round fired, not by Oswald’s rifle, but rather the AR-15 of one of the Secret Service agents riding behind Kennedy’s limo. Early AR models had very sensitive triggers, and it’s possible that, when the motorcade began to accelerate after Oswald’s first shot, the agent in the car directly behind Kennedy was thrown backward, causing him to fire his gun inadvertently. Menninger does a great deal of homework in the book. He states that Oswald’s shot (to the neck) would likely have killed Kennedy anyway, but the hit from the AR-15 caused the massive head wound. Is it true? Who knows, but it makes for a very interesting read.
I used to believe that there was more than one gunman there in Dealey Plaza until I actually visited the site of the assasination. I had the impression that the area was a lot bigger. I realized that the shot (even from the second story window) would have been pretty easy even for an amateur (Oswald was in the Marines after all). Plus, the second shot from the rear could make the head snap back making it look like it came from the frnot (as stated in earlier comments).
Since my visit, I’ve believed that it was one gunman. Whether or not there was a conspiracy…that’s a different story. I’m not sure what to believe there.
Who knows though…maybe there were two gunmen. Maybe CancerMan was down in the sewer drain with the other rifle (obligatory X-Files reference). We may never know.
The idea of a conspiracy has existed since the Warren commision. In the piece done by Peter Jennings he relates the magnitude of the assination of President Kennedy to the halocaust, where the whole Nazi regime was responsible for the halocaust. As if to imply magnitude of evil to the magnitude of the number of lives lost in the halocaust.
Here is where the difference comes in, the magnitude of the assination of a President to the ‘lone gunman’ idea, the magnitudes are not balanced therefore there must be a conspiracy, there must be something out there to balance the magnitude of what happened.
The idea that one man, Oswald could have caused all this trouble, all the grief, all the heartache, is just inconceivable to some, but then again it is still possible.
When it happened the first suspects were the communists and Cuba was a prime suspect, that whole weekend had to be one of the worst ever the fear of not knowing what had happened, were we going to be attacked or were we going to attack some country, know one knew for sure. I was in the service at the time and our division was on alert all Leaves and Liberties were cancelled, everyone had to stay in the barracks except for musters or chow and the uncertainity was the worst. For that one weekend the whole world stood still.
hello there my name is suzan grey and i love your web site it gave me an excuse to hate white people thank you
Comments on this entry are closed.