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Experts Now Say JFK Bullet Analysis Was Wrong
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 17, 2007 02:22 PM
from the just-ask-oliver-stone dept.
from the just-ask-oliver-stone dept.
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.'"
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Get your tinfoil shelters out. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Get your tinfoil shelters out. (Score:5, Funny)
You are the conspiracy! (Score:4, Funny)
JFK IS NOT DEAD. The CIA cloned him and that was what was really shot. He faked his death so that he could live with Marylon Monroe, who also faked her death, and they are currently living on Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro with their good friend Jimmy Hoffa.
A fake conspiracy of who really killed JFK was drawn up to give the nut jobs who think everything is a conspiracy something to chew on, leaving just enough evidence to keep them going. To manufacture the evidence the Borg brought back a federation replicator which is powered by a V8 with a 500 mile per gallon carbarator with those tablets that convert water into fuel.
If it seems like Deja-vu, its just another gliche in the Matrix.
JFK, blown away. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:JFK, blown away. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:JFK, blown away. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh good grief (Score:4, Funny)
Get over it.
Re:Oh good grief (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
What I want to know is, if they're so good at maintaining the cover story for all these years, how come they're so frickin' incompetent at everything else?
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Cmon Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
I can hear it now (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I can hear it now (Score:5, Funny)
- Bill Hicks
just to be clear (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:just to be clear (Score:5, Interesting)
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:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Funny)
We're Slashdot: we already know everything we need to know. We're just waiting for everybody else to find it out.
This casts doubt how? (Score:4, Informative)
Every been to Dealey Plaza? In person? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a nutshell, the location is **small**. Everything is very close together, distances are modest and the shooting was very, very easy from the window to the traveling automobile. The angle was just about ideal for Oswald. The "grassy knoll" is a joke, and the angle from the "knoll" was much less favorable for an assassination attempt.
Seriously folks, go visit the Book Repository yourself. All the conspiracy FUD is just anger and disappointment that something exciting and pretty was destroyed by something ugly and small.
Oblig Full Metal Jacket Quote (Score:4, Funny)
No response
HARTMAN: None of you dumbasses knows?
COWBOY raises his hand.
HARTMAN: Private Cowboy?
COWBOY: Sir, he was that guy who shot all those people from that tower in Austin, Texas, sir!
HARTMAN: That's affirmative. Charles Whitman killed twenty people from a twenty-eight-storey observation tower at the University of Texas from distances up to four hundred yards.
HARTMAN looks around.
HARTMAN: Anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was?
Almost everybody raises his hand.
HARTMAN: Private Snowball?
SNOWBALL: Sir, he shot Kennedy, sir!
HARTMAN: That's right, and do you know how far away he was?
SNOWBALL: Sir, it was pretty far! From that book suppository building, sir!
The recruits laugh at "suppository. "
HARTMAN: All right, knock it off! Two hundred and fifty feet! He was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target. Oswald got off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action rifle in only six seconds and scored two hits, including a head shot! Do any of you people know where these individuals learned to shoot?
JOKER raises his hand.
HARTMAN: Private Joker?
JOKER: Sir, in the Marines, sir!
HARTMAN: In the Marines! Outstanding! Those individuals showed what one motivated marine and his rifle can do! And before you ladies leave my island, you will be able to do the same thing!
The accidental assassin (Score:5, Interesting)
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_an
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
I'm no conspiracy theorist... (Score:5, Interesting)
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]"
*sigh* (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Why was Kennedy in Dealy Plaza anyway? OT (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, his assasination was the biggest boon to his legacy ever.
He was actually a horrible president with a self-centered high school mentality, put in place by the political mechanations of his father and the Daley's in Chicago. Lyndon and Kennedy actually hated each other, and he was only brought onto the ticket to deliver Texas- fraudulently. JFK's only real gift was charisma, and that's all he needed to win given his father, the Daleys, and Johnson.
If he wasn't assisinated his presidency would have been nothing more than a painful, distant memory by now.
Two things I learned from TV. (Score:5, Insightful)
The first is how to find the suspect the Murder She Wrote way. You walk around investigating the suspects and then tell all of them that you know who did it and are going to reveal it tomorrow. The one who turns up that night to kill you, is the murderer. For the JFK assasination we need to go to the twist on that plot. Namely that the person who turns up is the one who wants to protect the person they think really did it.
How does this relate? What is most intresting about the whole JFK thing is NOT who actually pulled the trigger, but the sheer number of people that turned up at night to kill Angela Lansbury. An awfull lot of people/groups/institutions reacted as if they feared that "they" had done it. Not they themselves but perhaps some over ambitious underling, some group they supported and could be traced back.
Since plotting to kill the president of US of A is not what organisations like the FBI and CIA should be doing, just having them react guiltily is enough condemnation.
Think of it like this. I am thinking of killing CowboyNeal and have talked about this with various people. Then all of a sudden CowboyNeal turns up death. I will then offcourse panic, what if someone I talked too actually did it, it could be traced back to me and so I start covering my tracks even though in reality there may be nothing to cover up.
But for me to plot to kill CowboyNeal is not a crime in itself. If it was, millions of lovers of the english language would be in jail right now. It is not quite the same if a security agency plots to kill the president. It does not matter if Oswald worked for them, or even if he was the actuall shooter, that fact that they reacted as if they thought he might have is enough.
The SECOND thing I learned from TV is that conspiracy people are dreamers. They like to believe that the world is run by someone with some degree of competence. Not someone they agree with offcourse but at least that someone is in control.
Sorry. Nope. Unless someone out there is a truly amazing human with skill far beyond any know living being in all of history it just doesn't seem that likely that anyone could pull a shadow goverment type thing off for so long.
People just ain't clever enough. If you look for instance at the 9/11 conspiracies you get the idea that these people desperately wish for a world in wich someone is in control. To set all this up would require a lot of skill that I have never seen displayed before.
In a way conspiracy theorists HELP the powers that be. By looking for order they allow chaos to thrive.
Again the JFK shooting and the Murder She Wrote method. By focusing on trying to find out who DID it, the conspiracy theorists are leaving in the clear everyone who THOUGHT they did it. Who has there been no investigation of the known facts that goverments officials had formed plans to kill the president? These are not disputed, they are know and well documented. BUT because they did not actually do it they get off because everyone wants to find some non-existant secret organisation.
Same with 9/11 by wishing to find that the US goverment planned it all they are ignoring the facts that someone in the US goverment made some really bad choices. Those bad choices did NOT plan the attack but also did nothing to stop it. For some people, charged with the protection of the US, this is a crime itself. Just as plotting to kill the president is.
In my darkest hours I fear that conspiracy theorists are the wetdream of every conspirator. By focussing on the outlandish they are letting the mundane go unnoticed.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Funny)
You'd be really blue after 44 years even if we did find out the truth then.
Not "wrong"... Just "not proven" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not "wrong"... Just "not proven" (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you could say it was misleading, but it's not the way I took it. I took it to mean the analysis was wrong, as in not correct.
If any step in a proof is wrong, then the entire proof is wrong, even if the conclusion is actually a true statement.
Of course it's all the other problems with the official story that naturally push my mind in the direction of there being multiple shooters upon finding out that the proof of the single shooter was incorrect. But I still didn't take the summary as implying that this was now proven.
Re:Not "wrong"... Just "not proven" (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe now, FINALLY, the truth will come out!!
That Oswald was really trying to be a hero, and shot only at the sniper he saw hiding in the grassy knoll!!
(with apologies to Family Guy)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, we've all seen the alleged "proof" (which is laughable at best).
A decent compendium debunking most of the more common little tidbits is here:
http://www.loosechangeguide.com/ [loosechangeguide.com]
(Yes, it's related to Loose Change, but since Loose Change is a collection of some of the more popular conspiracy theories/doubts/etc. about 9/11, it's a good place to start.)
There might be a lot of corrupt politicians, ulterior motives, and evil deeds in the world, but the US executing 9/11 on itself, and all that is implicit in that from technical, personnel, logistics, military, and numerous other perspectives, simply doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny.
You can say the US invited the attacks because of mideast policy. You can even say that some people might have not shed a tear in terms of the ability to then use 9/11 as a "Pearl Harbor"-type incident. But unfortunately, it was 19 mostly Saudi radical Islamic extremists - even if one believes they are monsters of the United States' own creation - that attacked the US on 9/11.
Not the US government or military itself. Not the shadow government. Not the Illuminati.
It's actually quite incredible what some conspiracy loons believe about 9/11. It simply does not stand up to any logic at all, or even common sense. Buildings weren't wired with explosives. It wasn't a drone or missile that hit the Pentagon. It wasn't remote control military aircraft that hit the towers. Voice changing technology wasn't used to make fake cell phone calls from Flight 93. Cell phones *do* work on planes (in various circumstances). The FCC/FAA cell phone "ban" isn't a trick so that people will "find out" that cell phones "don't work" under Flight 93-like conditions. Saying that something falls at "free fall speeds" (e.g., in reference to WTC 7) is meaningless and has no bearing on the discussion. Bringing up things like some NORAD exercise or Operation Northwoods or all kinds of tenuous, ridiculous, and (co)incidental information about some pilot who worked some particular place 25 years ago is irrelevant and meaningless. All/some of the planes weren't secretly landed safely at a military installation and then the occupants murdered. Hundreds/thousands of people haven't been "bought off" or "disappeared" to "cover up" the "truth" about 9/11.
I could go on and on and on and on. But ultimately, the people who want to believe 9/11 was an inside job will keep believing it, and any amount of proof otherwise won't sway them, and can indeed just be explained away as part of the conspiracy. Kind of like rabid Creationists, almost, frankly...
If you want to hate policy and a political view, go for it. But just realize that lunacy takes away any legitimacy from your debate, and getting other people to believe this tripe will eventually be the entire movement's undoing, or the end of *actual* truth (as opposed to your "truth") in any debate on this topic. And frankly, I think that may be what some people want.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
And for people who point out holes and mistakes in the Commission's report, they apparently don't understand how commissions like this - and their reports - work. They're not living documents or someone's blog. They're painstakingly compiled with all of the information available at the time, and then written, edited, and frozen. And when they are frozen, they stay that way. Errors and all. Except that doesn't make the other 95% of the factual information in the report any less true.
Not to mention that all of the convoluted theories people have, a mere fraction of a fraction of some of the most common I rattled off in my reply, just utterly defy any kind of logic or common sense and usually both.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:seriously (Score:5, Funny)
Re:seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth noting that they did not prove that they were lying. Rather, they simply proved that they were wrong in their original analysis.
This reminds me of a particular xkcd comic [xkcd.com].
Re:seriously (Score:5, Informative)
Re:seriously (Score:5, Funny)
You'll have to pardon me for that, the X Files movie is available On Demand on my cable system and I keep watching bits and pieces of it.
Re:seriously (as in "heart attack") (Score:5, Funny)
Re:seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:seriously (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:seriously (Score:4, Funny)
For every documentatary and book stating it was Oswald only there are opposite documentaries and books stating otherwise. Don't believe everything you see, read and hear on one source alone. Come on now, you are the post 9/11 crowd. Use your head.
John F., Bobby, MLK, all of those shootings were too convenient, too easy and too mysterious to be so cut and dry.
Stone made a movie, and he made one hell of a one. It still stirs up controversy. That documentary you saw was meant totally to discredit the movie, JFK, and Stone. It appears to have one at least one convert....
Re:seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
The united states government can't cover up a blow job from a 21 year old intern in the privacy of the oval office. What makes you think they can cover up an assassination on a crowded street at noon?
Slow your horses there, cowboy. (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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:seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have watched or read any recent documentary you will know that the "magic bullet theory" isn't magical at all. You would also know that JFK being shot from anywhere besides the book depository is basically an impossibility.
This revelation is interesting only because there is a possibility of a second gunmen. Most of the places where people claim a second gunmen to be have been heavily debunked in recent documentaries. I would speculate that the bullets are from the same gun (and are actually two bullets). Just because the methodology of the test isn't correct doesn't mean that the results of the test were completely false.
There is no need for a second gunmen to prove that there was a conspiracy or that Lee acted alone, it is just the easiest way to do so. Lee had such a weird life and there are plenty of holes in his life, especially after he joined the Marines.
I really don't see any other tests coming up with anything other than the fragments are from two bullets that came from Lee's gun. It would be much more correct to say that "Experts Now Say JFK Bullet Analysis MIGHT Be Wrong." And it is still a very big MIGHT.
Re:Does anyone really care anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
You nailed by italicizing the "why." Mysteries always intrigue the human animal. We read books to find out what happens. Women chase men who are
Why do people care about JFK's death? Because he was the president of the United States. He was mysteriously killed. A very important person dying a very mysterious death builds tons of who, what and why. Yes, in a sense, it builds that mechanism in us that craves knowing. How many of us wouldn't pay all our money to have a true, clear answer to a question that's pained us in our lives? We see that answer as something joyful, fulfilling. Some call it closure. Some call it joy....
Re:"Experts", huh? (Score:5, Informative)
From the article, the main guy is William A. Tobin "the FBI lab's chief metallurgy expert for more than two decades". Sounds like an expert to me. He could be wrong, of course, but I would think his say-so would be enough to warrant another review of the evidence, with the improved techniques that he already got the FBI to adopt.
Huey Long shot by own body guard (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, Oswald was up in his sniper's nest in the Book Repository building and popped off some shots, and his was the "magic bullet" that wounded the President and Governer Connely. As to the bullet being pristine, there is this thing about full-metal jacket military bullets that are supposed to go through you instead of fragment or mushroom, and it was not pristine but rather deformed, and high-energy 22 cal bullets can take strange paths through body tissue.
The big mystery is how Oswald could have popped off the "single bullet" and then the kill shot -- was he that good a marksman at a moving target or was he lucky and the rest of the world so unlucky? The theory is no, the kill shot came from somewhere else -- the commotion of the shooting, a Secret Service agent dropped what was at that time an experimental AR-15, the thing discharged (in front and below the President), and the peculiar ammo inflicted the horrific, fatal wound on the President.
Government coverup? You bet! How could the government admit to the President being killed by his own bodyguards, althought that is what happened to Huey Long -- also an accident. Oswald the lone killer? Also true -- that the fatal shot was an accident in response to someone trying to kill the President doesn't let Oswald off the hood.
Re:Zapruder film (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What a surprise!...NOT (Score:5, Informative)
#1: you say the evidence isn't good enough to know? What kind of proof do you require? Videotape? eyewitness? Since there's no such thing as a time machine, the best evidence in criminal cases comes down to either eyewitness accounts, circumstantial accounts, or evidentary. There were people who identified Oswald as eyewitnesses. There was plenty of circumstances that led one to believe Oswald committed the crime.
#2 You come to the 'one in a million' account through no known reasoning. Explain where that number comes from.
#3 This is just incorrect. There were THREE seperate investigations. The reason why the police didn't pursue heavily a full criminal investigation? They had a suspect in custody, who had been murdered. Did you view the records from the investigation at all? Do you know what processes the police, FBI, and federal agents went through?
#4 Even if this were true, motive does not prove guilt. The same statement you made could apply to Kruschev, Castro, etc. You also state that he was opposed to any investigation. If that's the case, why were there investigations during his presidency? He was the one that declared the Warren Comission.
You wrote that anyone who takes enough time looking at the evidence against Oswald. He's evidence. He worked at the schoolbook depository, a fellow employee DROVE HIM INTO WORK THAT DAY WITH A LARGE LONG PACKAGE WRAPPED IN BROWN PAPER. He was in the vicinity at the time of the shooting, Eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter in the window, Eyewitnesses identified him as the shooter of the cop afterwards. Also, Oswald attempted to assassinate General Walker a few months before he killed Kennedy.
People take comfort in comspiracy theories because it makes them think a larger force is at work (same principle religion offers), and therefore that people can't just 'snap' and kill a lot of people, like what happened in 9/11 or the Virginia Tech massacres. But people can just snap, and kill people. This victim just happened to be the president. Its not hard to believe, Regan was shot, Lincoln was shot. No Conspiracy there.