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.'"

Comments

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about damn time. Maybe in another 44 years we'll also learn the truth about 9/11?

Re:Finally

[daveschroeder]

It wasn't done by the US, as much as people like you seem to believe/wish it were.

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/

(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

[daveschroeder]

Yeah. Because we do already know the "truth" about 9/11, and nearly all of the mechanics and particulars of the attack, holes and omissions and mistakes aside, is quite nicely, thoroughly, and comprehensively covered in the 9/11 Commission Report, which conspiracy theorists think is the biggest whitewash in US history to throw people off the "truth" of what "really happened" on 9/11.

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

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Backing you up on this, one of the conspiracys I had seen mentioned the impossibility of steel in the twin towers melting from the kind of heat generated by the planes crashing into them.

Just last week or so, a tanker truck caught fire and burned on a california highway system, and the heat generated from that, melted the steel support structure and the roadways collapsed.

So yes, fire can melt steel and cause large buildings to collapse, so it's one more conspiracy de-bunked

Re:seriously

[MankyD]

It's good somebody finally _proved_ they were lying, but we still don't know why they lied...

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.

just to be clear

[mzs]

"They reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved"

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

[Syberghost]

Not to mention the fact that they didn't reach the conclusion there were three bullets; they just reached the conclusion that it wasn't PROVEN to be two. It is still possible that there were only two, and it is still possible that it will be proven to be two. It is also possible that there were only two, but that it will never be proven that there only two.

None of this will have any material bearing on what 99% of the people who have an opinion on this matter think.

Not "wrong"... Just "not proven"

[Anonymous Coward]

Misleading summary on Slashdot? Who would have thought? They didn't say it was wrong (meaning that there was more than one gunmen), they said the analysis was not correct. This means it could have been one gun, it could have been several - the analysis that supposedly proved one gunman actually did not. But, it didn't disprove one gunman either. Of course, "analysis not statistically significant" is a far cry from "multiple gunman proven", but which gets more clicks?

Every been to Dealey Plaza? In person?

[Syncerus]

I used to believe a bunch of the conspiracy bs until I actually visited the site of the shooting in person. Once you've been to the Book Repository and seen the location in person, it becomes painfully obvious that it was almost trivially easy for Oswald to have done the shooting. Quite frankly, the conditions make it very easy (almost convenient) for Oswald to kill Kennedy.

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.

Re:seriously

[megamerican]

Have you ever read or watched anything about the JFK assassination other than the movie JFK?

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?

[Himring]

"I don't understand, why are people concerned with this?"

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 ... mysterious. "Who is he?" She wonders. We want what we can't have. What we do have, we want to get rid of. Why? We want something new, someone new, new experiences. Lewis called this true joy. Joy, true joy, he explained, is never in the having, but always in the desiring. Never is a thing more perfect than when we don't have it. Never is someone more lovely than when we lose them and can no longer have them. Psychologists tell us that people dumped in a relationship tend to only remember the good things about the one who dumped them. Even the dumper, in time, feels this way. Why? It rebuilds mystery. It rebuilds joy. It rebuilds the what, who and why of it all.

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:Oh good grief

[Gospodin]

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?

Re:Not "wrong"... Just "not proven"

[Chris Burke]

They didn't say it was wrong (meaning that there was more than one gunmen), they said the analysis was not correct.

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:seriously

[CaffeineAddict2001]

You guys are total nut jobs.

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?

Why was Kennedy in Dealy Plaza anyway? OT

[dfenstrate]

From what I understand, it was because the voters of Texas outright hated him and not even Johnson's voting fraud buddies could be counted on to keep things in line. He was there to try to gin up some good will.

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.

Re:Not "wrong"... Just "not proven"

[nwbvt]

First, there never was a "proof", at least not in the way you are thinking. Such proofs only exist in the world of mathematics, and there they are only possible because mathematics is a completely abstract field that does not involve perceptions of the real world (which always have some degree of intrinsic doubt). You cannot mathematically prove that Oswald did or did not do it, because Oswald is not a mathematical construct. Its been said many times before, but it bears repeating because people still for some reason try to do it; NEVER interpret real world arguments as mathematical proofs.

Second, here is the exact quote from the article summary:

"Researchers... say that the government's 1976 conclusion that the bullets came from only one gun (Oswald's) is wrong".

The summary is clearly saying that the conclusion was shown to be false (meaning Oswald didn't do it), not the argument itself. Which of course is not what the article says at all. If you read it differently, you need to work on your reading comprehension skills.

Third, how the hell is this news anyways? Experts (or rather, people calling themselves experts) have been disagreeing with the lone gunman theory since the day Kennedy was shot. This can only be considered "news" if mainstream scientists can back up the lone research team.

Two things I learned from TV.

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.