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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.'"

10 of 550 comments (clear)

  1. Re:just to be clear by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    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.

  2. Re:seriously by aminorex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can tell you one thing that is impossible: That Oswald was the shooter. There's a nice photograph of the front of the TSRB as Kennedy rides by, published in Look magazine immediately after the assassination, which shows Oswald on the sidewalk, street-level, wearing the same shirt he was wearing when Jack Ruby killed him.

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    -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
  3. The accidental assassin by steveha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One interesting theory I heard: there were two shooters, but the second shooter might not have intended to shoot.

    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_ann otated.asp

    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

    I have not researched this enough to have an opinion on how likely it is, but I do find it interesting.

    steveha

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  4. I'm no conspiracy theorist... by TheBearBear · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But when I came across this wiki article, I said "HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM, I wonder"

    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]"

  5. Re:Zapruder film by Col.+Klink+(retired) · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The bullet (and a bit of brains and other material) left the front right side of his head. That would act as a propellent and have a greater mass than that of the bullet alone. Penn & Teller debunked this one:

    Binding a honeydew mellon with an inch of fiberglass tape to represent Kennedy's skull (on the model proposed by Nobel-laureate physicist Luis Walter Alvarez), Teller puts a shot through it. Slow motion photography shows how the spray of goo exiting the mellon propels it back towards the shooter. Put another way, "back and to the left" is another way to say "shot from the Texas School Book Depository Building."
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    -- Don't Tase me, bro!

  6. Re:seriously by arivanov · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have no opinion on the authenticity of this photogrpah, but it is clearly very very interesting: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ JFK/postphotos.html

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    Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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  7. Re:Finally by Var1abl3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The truth about 9/11???? WTF are you talking about??? As I stood and looked up at the buildings just before the plane hit I can tell you the truth: "A plane, moving very fast, hit each building causing major damage resulting in an eventual collapse of both buildings. As for Building 7 a fire broke out, caused by damage from the falling debris, (this was the emergency management building with something like 10K gallons of fuel in it for the backup generators) that was all but ignored by the first responders who were left alive partly because with the cloud of dust and smoke it was all but impossible to even see it let alone get new fire trucks there to put the fire out, that eventually weakened the structure causing its collapse."
    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!

  8. *sigh* by coaxial · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ahh yes. Someone stokes the consipiracy flames to sell a book, and that makes news. Meanwhile Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutior of Charles Manson, writes a book explaining in excrutiating detail about how the Oswald was the lone gunman and fired the shots from the book depository, and no one says a thing.

    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.

  9. E. Howard Hunt Confessed on his Deathbed by MutualDisdain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was surprised that no one commented here on E. Howard Hunt's audio tape confession of involvement in the Kennedy assassination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Howard_Hunt#Audio- taped_confession Within the audio tape Hunt names Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis, David Sánchez Morales, and David Atlee Phillips as co-conspirators. He also claims Lyndon Johnson approved of the assassination for political gain. "I think that LBJ settled on Meyer as an opportunist, parent--like himself a parent--and a man who had very little left to him in life ever since JFK had taken Cord's wife as one of his mistresses. I would suggest that Cord Meyer welcomed the approach from LBJ, who was after all only the Vice President at that time and of course could not number Cord Meyer among JFK's admirers--quite the contrary." E. Howard Hunt was also famous for organizing the bugging of the DNC in the Watergate scandal.

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  10. Re:Finally by Coryoth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That is true. However, liquid steel was found in the basement of the World Trade Center weeks after 9/11. Some metal that had been liquified was found in the wreckage; there is no reason to believe it was steel (as opposed to some of the many other metals with lower melting points in the building) -- it was certainly not identified as steel by anyone except those who want to believe in a grand conspiracy.