I'm really starting to hate Oliver Stone. Notice there are no deviations. No strange angles. Notice the conspiracy theorists havn't link to anything yet.
Posted on 08/04/2004 5:09:23 AM PDT by BluegrassScholar
WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 - About a year from now, one of the most vexing mysteries in American history may finally be solved: Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?
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.
The federal government's official inquiry into the assassination, the Warren Commission, concluded in 1964 that Oswald was a lone gunman, firing three shots from the Texas Book Depository building high above the plaza. But a House committee that investigated the shooting 15 years later concluded that four shots were fired, including three from the book depository and one from another location, giving rise to all manner of conspiracy theories.
Like old 78 r.p.m. records, the Dictaphone belt became worn and damaged through constant replay for analysis using a stylus. When it became property of the National Archives in 1990, the technical staff recommended that no further efforts be made to replicate its sounds through mechanical means.
That left preservationists with a daunting and historically important challenge: How could the sounds on the old plastic belt be captured for posterity, and if they could, would they provide unequivocal evidence of how many shots were fired?
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."
After a June meeting of the National Archives Advisory Committee on Preservation, the job was left to Carl Haber and Vitaliy Fadeyev of the Berkeley laboratory, who have used a digital optical camera to replicate sounds on fragile Edison cylinders and long-play records. The process involves scanning the grooves of the Dictaphone belt electronically to create a digital image of the sound patterns.
Once that is achieved, Mr. Waffen said, the scientists could "clean it up, like peeling layers off an onion to get down to the sound floor" of the recording. And that, he said, could reveal how many shots were fired.
It is a question that has bedeviled government officials, law enforcement agents and historians since the actual event, leading to an array of conspiracy theories involving the mob, Fidel Castro, Lyndon B. Johnson, Russians or, as the film director, Oliver Stone, would have audiences believe, the "military industrial complex."
Among the strongest and most persistent alternative theories to the Warren Commission report has been the involvement of a second gunman on a sweep of land above the motorcade route that came to be known as the grassy knoll. It gained widespread currency after the 1979 Congressional investigation, which relied, in part, on a graphic comparison of the sounds on the Dictaphone belt and a test of gunshots in Dealey Plaza.
They produced evidence that four shots were fired, with indications that the first, second and fourth shots came from the book depository and the third came from the grassy knoll.
But three years later, in a subsequent acoustical analysis, the National Academy of Science concluded that the noise that others ascribed to gun shots was merely static or something else. That was the last time the belt was played.
Once it became the belt's custodian, the National Archives was faced with two questions: What should be done with it? And how could its evidence be accurately captured and made public?
For years, the questions were unanswered, until it became clear that new technologies might produce evidence that was unreachable through older, less sophisticated analytical methods that risked further damaging the belt.
The advisory commission concluded that the National Archives had a responsibility to provide a true copy of the sound, if not enhance it. That, the panel members said, could be left to the researchers.
"People want to know," said Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which opened in the book depository building in 1989. "The Warren Commission said it was one guy. The House Committee said it was Oswald and someone else. There hasn't been any resolution."
Mr. Waffen said it was about time to get one.
"Scientists have studied these sounds for 25 or 30 years and have still reached different conclusions," he said. "But with today's technology, we can get a better reading and answer the question, one way or the other."
The Dictaphone evidence was thoroughly discussed (and debunked) in Gerald Posner's "Case Closed."
If the bullet had actually behaved in the manner you described, I would agree. But it didn't. See Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" (still in print, with a new preface), the best book on the JFK assassination.
This is the only "conspiracy theory" I've ever given any weight to. I have always felt the "magic bullet" was unbelievable simply because there is no damage to the tip, and because of the House Assasination Committee's report stating the high percentage that four shots, not three, were in fact fired that day.
I'll be watching for this when it comes out. If you hear anything else on the subject, please ping me if its no trouble.
Thanks
""Six Seconds in Dallas"; "Best Evidence" "
Lifton's book is the best of the lot, still holds up after twenty years.
I can't accept the "magic bullet" because you could reload it today and fire it. No way it caused seven seperate wounds in my opinion, and remain undeformed on the tip.
The "pristine bullet" was not pristine, it was somewhat deformed. But it's condition was consistent with the condition of test bullets fired into cadavers in efforts to replicate the assassination.
Oh good God! Would everyone just let the kooks rest in peace?
Sorry, you lose. The tip was damaged. And the bullet did exactly what it was designed to do. Go through multitudes of men massed in an attack based on early 20th Century technology.
Excellent link. The diagram from "High Treason" totally misrepesents the angle of the bullet and the relative positions of Kennedy and Connelly. If the bullet had hit Kennedy from that angle, it would have to have been fired by someone standing in full view, or suspended in mid-air, about 30 feet south of the Texas School Book Depository.
If they ever come clean about who called off the air strikes which were essential to the 'Bay of Pigs' invasion, maybe they could add a few other people to the list.
Kennedy Assassination Home Page
Lee Harvey Oswald's Paper Bag
Guinn’s neutron-activation Analysis
Warren Report: Table of Contents
One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK
The Academic JFK Assassination Web Site
HSCA (House Select Committee on Assassinations) Final Assassinations Report
A Critique of The Warren Report
Attempted assassination of General Walker
Oswald interviews, Acoustic studies and other information relating to the assassination of JFK
Queen of Diamonds
Zapruder 313
Head Wound
Photos and Illustrations of the JFK Assassination
Zapruder Head Shot
A Conspiracy Too Big? Intellectual Dishonesty in the JFK Assassination
The Single Bullet Strikes John Connally
Changed Motorcade Route in Dallas?
Zapruder frames 312-314 animated
Frame by Frame breakdown of the Zapruder Film
The Zapruder Film is Authentic
New Orleans, and the Garrison Investigation
Close up of crack in limo windshield
The Bullet Fragments In Governor Connally: Were There Too Many To Have Come From CE 399?
Body Snatchers at Love Field?
The Case for a Bunched Jacket
The Case of the Bunched Jacket (Not the same as the link above)
X-ray Wound Comparison
Zapruder Film in its entirety
Dallas Motorcycle Police Eyewitness Accounts
Free Republic threads on the Kennedy Assassination:
Spy claims Israel assassinated JFK
Ex-Presidents, Johnson Widow Call for JFK Film Probe
Running down a footnote to assassination
The man who solved the Kennedy assassination
Case Closed: a letter to Gerald Posner (re: Kennedy assassination)
Warren (Commission) Was Right - The JFK case should be closed
Kennedy assassination solved!
Peter Jennings "JFK" Report: Oswald acted alone, go back to sleep...
Some Relevant Facts About the JFK Assassination
Who Killed JFK?
New Evidence in Kennedy Killing (Dallas not Mass)
Nellie Connally Disputes Warren Commission
JFK's fatal head wound: The truth for those who want to know (very graphic)
The Mystery of Marina Oswald
LBJ was behind JFK's assassination, upcoming book contends (I like this one best)
Thirty-nine years after JFK's assassination...
***New study of JFK assassination backs theory of "grassy knoll" Thread 2***
New study of JFK assassination backs....... Thread 3
New study of JFK assassination backs....... Thread 4
New study of JFK assassination ---- Thread 5
New study of JFK assassination ---- Thread 6
Echo correlation analysis and acoustic evidence in the Kennedy assassination
Let me know of any others not on the list.
"Sorry, you lose. The tip was damaged. And the bullet did exactly what it was designed to do. Go through multitudes of men massed in an attack based on early 20th Century technology."
Sorry, we disagree. Look at the picture of this bullet from the Warren Commission Report. The base is slightly deformed, but the tip is pristine.
Either way, its going to be looked at again.
Uh..., read Posner's book; didn't think much of it.
The thing that's always struck me about the Kennedy assassination is how bass-ackwards the Warren Commission was in its investigation. In any murder, the authorities look at the facts and allow the facts to lead to the truth. But the Warren Commission seemed to start with a premise (Oswald- single lone assassin) and tailored the facts to fit their preconceived notion.
I'm really starting to hate Oliver Stone. Notice there are no deviations. No strange angles. Notice the conspiracy theorists havn't link to anything yet.
Holy Crap. I thought the same thing and I thought it was because I didn't have coffee yet!
Look again.
What's that damage on the tip? Do you see it? Do you also understand by the time the bullet hit bone it was keyholing and traveling sideways causing the damage to the rear?
Slightly?
Good stuff. Thanks for the post.
Oswald acted alone.
He could make the shots and did make the shots. As a matter of fact, the last shot, the death shot, was the easiest one of all due to the window Oswald was shooting out of...The first two shots he had to contort his body in order to get the shots off...The last one was further away but easier because it had better and much easier line of site.
I like ghost and ufo stuff, but I don't really believe any of it. This JFK conspiracy crap should be looked at in the exact same light.
"8 shots"??? Please...
8 people couldn't keep their mouths shut about this if they were dead.
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