The Dallas Police Department in action.
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."
You know I have seen tha the picture before that you have shown. And I must agree with you on this point.
And I dan't need to "Try" to understand. I have the ability to completly understand.
And just being wrong on this point doesn't change the other information concerning LHO.
read later bump
Ah yes. In Seinfeld parlance - The magic loogie!
When the shots were fired, photos show a lone man with an umbrella open on the grass by the limo. His umbrella was open and he was standing. Everyone around him are laying on the ground. Photos show that as the car neared him he opened the umbrella, that is when the shots were fired. It is not that hard. You have 1 shooter and 1 spotter. They have never been able to locate this "umbrella man" to speak to him.
The last time they examined the tape it showed I believe 4 shots and that some were only blanks with no bullet.
No it was a motocycle policeman's open mic in Dealy Plaza at the time of the shooting.
Neither the autopsy nor any theory of the case that I've ever heard of posulates this scenario. If you're intrested in the known and verifiable facts, here they are:
There are three verified shots. One missed. One hit Kennedy in the upper back/throat. One hit Kennedy in the head.
Gov. and Mrs. Connolly were sitting in what were known at the time as jump seats. These were smaller fold-up seats that were somewhat lower than the rear seat in that model of limousine. They were also somewhat to the center of the car. In other words, if you were able to go back to Dallas on that day, and look directly down at the car from above, you would see that Connolly was sitting in front of and a few inches lower than the president, as well as a little to JFK's left.
There was an entry wound in the upper part of JFK's back, a little to the right of his spine. There was no exit wound in the chest — in fact, no external wound in the chest at all.
There was an exit wound in his throat just under the Adams apple approximately where the knot of the tie would be located. This wound was enlarged by the tracheotomy performed at Parkland.
Although I have never seen a photograph to confirm it (and this is when the car was behind the freeway sign in the Zapruder film), the Warren Commission postulated that JFK had his right hand up, waving to the crowd, and that he was leaning foward when the first shot struck him in the back, exiting his throat, then continuing on to strike Gov. Connolly.
I have seen computer animations on TV which conclusively demonstrate that, if Kennedy had been leaning foward, it would have been a straight trajectory from the sniper's nest in the schoolbook depository to the wound in his back, the wound in his throat, and the wound in Connolly's armpit.
[I should note here that my problem with these animations is that they reveal Kennedy would have had to be leaning quite a bit forward. I am unaware of any photographic evidence or witness testimony that shows this to be the case. When JFK is last seen on the Zapruder film before the car goes behind the freeway sign, he is sitting upright. He is shot in the back/neck as he is behind that sign, and is already reacting when he emerges.]
The last known shot was the fatal one to the president's head. That one is conclusively proven by the Zapruder film to have come from the rear. Why? The Zapruder film shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that the exit wound in the head was at upper right front — roughly an inch or two above and to the front of the right ear. That portion of his head literally explodes. You can see blood and tissue fly straight up as well as forward and downward. The force of that explosion threw JFK's body backward and to his left.
From the known physical evidence, I am left with two questions:
(1) In order for the trajectory of the back/throat shot to line up straight from the building through JFK to Connolly, JFK would had to have been leaning foward in the car at the moment that shot hit him. Why is there no evidence (at least none that I've ever seen) to show that he was, in fact, leaning forward? If he remained upright, as he was when the car went behind the sign from the Zapruder perspective, then how did he get a wound in his back and in his throat?
(2) The shot or shots that hit Kennedy in the back/throat and caused Connolly's wounds did not explode the way the one that his JFK's head did. Why? Was the explosive effect due to use of a different type of round or to the different physics/mass of the head vs. other body areas known to have been hit in the two men?
I believe fully that Oswald was involved in the assassination. Did he act alone? To me, lacking any other evidence (such as might be produced through digitizing the audio), I would need the above questions answered in an honest and believable way before I could reach my own conclusion that he acted alone.
"Best Evidence" is a good book. I've read it. However, he misstates certain evidence, and leaves out some other. There is another book on the market, "Triangle of Death", I have not yet read, but it purports to cover any and all inconsistencies in the Warren Report. (Well, they all do that anyway.) I, too, never though LHO shot the President alone. Never could understand why we are to believe that he just walked away from the gun, leaving it setting there. Didn't even try to HIDE it in one of those boxes up there? Never made any sense to me. But, there are those who are convinced it was LHO and nobody else. I don't think they'll EVER tell us the truth. Not until everybody is dead. Maybe the next generation, but not before.
2. Go back and read my first post again. I said the Zapruder film shows Kennedy sitting straight up, and that I have never seen any evidence indicating he was leaning forward. However, I have seen computer animations on TV that show a straight-line trajectory IF he was leaning forward.
3. I also have read a great deal about the Kennedy assassination. I read the book you reference, as well as a whole plethora of conspiracy books that contradict each other. My interest is not in anyone else's theories. Rather, I look at the known hard evidence and try to come to my own decisions based on fact, not fantasy.
I also do not hold to any one theory. I do however, with all the information I have read do not believe that LHO acted alone and that he was the only shooter. And I am not sure he even fired any shots.
The problem with people like you is you throw out some theory that is so easily proven wrong and then you go on to the next. It's almost impossible to convince people like you without spending literally months disproving every bit of information.
I'm not even going to bother with it. I can tell you the reason no one of the Conspiracy theorists have ever faked what is in the Zapruder film is because people like you don't understand it. Since you don't know what is there, you make up as you go along.
I'll leave you with this tidbit. If the third shot came from the grassy knoll which is something no CT ever claims, why didn't the bullet exit the left side of his head?
Over the years I have hit about everything worth hunting in North America on four legs and even bagged some two leggers for Uncle Sugar.
Almost every bullet out of ANY high powered weapon used travels a straight line through bone and flesh in the subject. Many are found on the far side of the animal just under the skin - spent. In the service of US FMJ usually travel right through humans and onto (or into) the next thing. I for one have, and have always had a problem with the magic bullet. Two to three shooters makes way more sense to me.
You refer to "people like you". Perhaps you should look at yourself! The whole Warren Report is a theory.
"The Single Bullet Theory". Is what the Warren Report is based on. And it just could not do the magic that the Warren Report states.
The one book "Six Seconds in Dallas" disproves that there was only one shooter.
That diagram is as much a lie as Specter's 'Magic Bullet'. Connally's seat was NINE INCHES LOWER than JFK's.
As to Connally's injuries, if you watch the Zapruder film, Connally turns to his left at the first shot, then turns to his right just before he is struck by the the third or fourth shot. The 'Grassy Knoll' was on his right -- no way can you tell me that he heard a reflection of a shot from that direction; there is nothing there to reflect any sound waves, indeed the shrubbery and trees would have deadened them. He heard a shot, and turned toward it.
The Warren Commission lied.
If this is the police radio that was supposedly left on; I thought they had already proved the sounds were not from bullets because the radio was left on after the assasination.
I've been to Dealey Plaza twice and have read two books on the subject of JFK's assassination.
Guess what? I'm not an expert.
What I do believe in is a theory by Robert Grodin, one of the guys hanging out at Dealey Plaza.
He bases where the shooters were located on (a) where bullets struck the pavement (b) based on the Zapruder film and (c) and witness accounts.
Admittedly, none of these are absolute but here's how he sees it:
1 Shooter on the Grassy Knoll
1 Shooter in the Book Depository
1 Shooter on the second (or third) floor of the Dal-Tex building
1 Shooter on the roof of the Dallas County Courts Annex building
I wish I could scan the diagrams from Groden's book "The Killing Of A President" so you can see 'em. To me, it makes sense that there were multiple shooters.
The question of "Who did it?"...well, I'm not sure about that. But Groden's theory on the locations of the multiple shooters seems as reasonable as anyone I've read.
(2) I thought we didn't trust the New York Slimes. Now we do? How come I didn't get the memo?
The Dallas Police Department in action.
First, the neck shot hit only soft tissue (skin, fat, muscle) It did exactly what it was designed to do as military round, it penetrated. It altered course minimally, which would have been to slightly flatten its trajectory (experimentally proven, which also goes to your question #1; physics explanation available, but its bedtime). The head shot struck hard bone almost directly perpendicular. This overcame the strength of the round (at 2100 feet/sec) and it disintigrated, leaving multiple fragment in the head (see x-rays), and 2 other fragments found in the limo.
But more to the point, the skull is a rigid "box" of a fixed size. As the bullet's shockwave rapidly expands the intracranial tissue (brain) and fluid (cerebrospinal fluid), the skull is unable to accommodate the expansion and (already weakened by fractures) blows out. The soft tissues around the shoulder/base of neck are much more pliable, and will expand and contract rapidly, with essentially no noticible deformity to the naked eye. They will of course be injured by that rapid expansion and contraction, which is how a high-velocity round does much or most of its damage, leaving small entry wound and small exit wound.
Incidentally, the neck shot's shockwave injured (essentially severed) the President's spinal cord at the C6-7 level. We know this because the victim's hands up to the chin with the elbows up and out is a neurologic reflex in response to this injury. (This reflex was described in the medical literature about a hundred years ago.)
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