I recently saw a Discovery Channel program “JFK: Inside the Target Car,” first broadcast in November 2008. It contains some very interesting material.
The program set up a simulation in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza, where the assassination took place, using actors, a replica of Kennedy’s presidential limousine, and a video of the Zapruder film to recreate the exact positions of the presidential limousine, its occupants, and a gunman firing from the “grassy knoll,” a spot from where many conspiracy theorists believe a second gunman fired. The grassy knoll is to the front and the right of where the limousine was when the shots that hit President Kennedy were fired.
Looking from the grassy knoll, at the point when the fatal shot was fired, President Kennedy was slumped over, cradled in his wife’s arms, after having been wounded by the first shot. It is perfectly clear, seeing the positions of the actors, that if the shot that killed Kennedy had been fired from the grassy knoll, it would have killed or severely wounded Mrs. Kennedy because she was positioned directly behind her husband.
As we all know, none of the bullets struck Mrs. Kennedy, so the fatal shot could not have come from the grassy knoll. Nor did the first shot that struck President Kennedy come from that direction. It struck him in the upper back and exited the front of his throat. Given the location of the entrance and exit wounds, it could have only come from the back and above – the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald was.
As Vincent Bugliosi writes in Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy:
We know that among other evidence, a gunman was seen in the sixth-floor window [of the Depository], Oswald’s finger and palm prints were found on boxes and a large bag in the sniper’s nest, and his rifle, as well as expended cartridge casings from the rifle, were found on the sixth floor.
Bugliosi adds:
Every one of the pathologists who examined the president’s wounds and/or photographs and X-rays of the wounds … concluded that there was no entrance wound to the front or right front of the president’s body, thereby eliminating not only the grassy knoll as the source of the bullets but also any other position to the president’s front.
Todd Leventhal is the Department’s expert on conspiracy theories and misinformation—stories that are untrue, but widely believed. He enjoys reading obituaries, which tell the personal stories of people who have shaped the fabric of American life.
Todd became interested in international affairs after a four-month trip to the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India in 1972. He worked for Voice of America for seven years and bikes to work year-round.
Comments (5)
Tim Fleming
13 February 2009 at 19:13 EST
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I just got finished watching Discovery Channel’s re-staging of the JFK Assassination, ghoulishly titled “Inside the Death Car,” and it’s filled with so much illogic, distortion, and one-sidedness that its evidentiary value is minimal. It left me wondering what is the purpose of such a program, who really funds it, and why is it being broadcast? If its purpose is to sway the uninformed and uncritical to the “lone-assassin” side, it may have succeeded, but why is this of value? Whose purpose does this serve? Certainly not history’s, because the program left out a ton of known facts and happenstances that, if included, would have contradicted the show’s obviously preconstrued premise. In other words, in 2008, who is still so avidly invested in covering up the truth?
I perused the credits for funding information, but found nothing. Apparently, it’s a Discovery Channel production all the way. I leave it for others to divine why TDC wants so desperately to finger Oswald as the lone assassin, when 80% of America believes he was not.
Anyway, the funny stuff began right away when somebody who contracts with the Australian (did TDC have to go all the way to Australia find an idiot who would agree to do this?) defense industry recreated what was claimed to be an exact replica of JFK’s neck and head. Just one problem with that–the fake head swivels and bounces like one of those bobbleheads they give away at baseball games. The brain matter? Oh, they injected that right before the test firing. That’s right, TDC hired a world-class marksman to shoot at the replica. But get this, they did not do it in Dealey Plaza, though they had Dallas police close down the Plaza for a limousine run-through; they “re-created” the shooting out in the wilderness somewhere, claiming that it was exact duplicate of Dealey Plaza’s dimensions. While the participants admitted it was clear that a shot could have come from behind the picket fence (the most logical locale for the head shot given all the facts) in the Plaza, they had the marksman shoot from what appeared to be a burm in an open field at some undisclosed place. And instead of shooting from the front-right position from which the actual picket fence shooter fired, the marksman shot from a right angle, virtually perpendicular to the JFK dummy. The shot blew a hole through the through the left side of the president’s fake head, and the narrator (one Gary Mack, I’ll get to him later) gleefully exclaimed, “…this does not correspond to any known wound on the president.” Of course it did not, because the marksman shot from the wrong position. Interestingly though, the wound had the exact size and shape as the one Dallas Parkland doctors described the president as having in the back of his head on Nov. 22, 1963! Without realizing it, the TDC bunglers provided substantion for a shot from the front and, thus, a conspiracy.
Other little tidbits that unintentionally prove conspiracy are included. One is the Secret Service agent who wiped off the back seat of the death car at Parkland Hospital. Against all logic, the TDC show tries to convince us that this proves there was only one gunman because the agent wiped away only evidence which would prove that JFK’s brain matter flew forward. The agent inexplicably left only the blood, skull and brain matter which indicated a frontal shot. I guess the Secret Service just wanted to make it harder for the Warren Commission to hang it on Oswald? Wow, not even Arlen Specter would lay claim to that one.
To assimilate the 15-20-mile-an-hour winds in Dallas that day, TDC wheeled out a huge fan to blow on the limousine. That one made me howl. An electrical fan duplicating the winds of a city…how scientific!
But the best was Bobby Hargis, the motorcycle cop who was riding to the left rear of the limousine on November 22. Apparently, he is still alive and still breathlessly exclaiming how he was covered in JFK’s blood, skull and brains when the fatal shot hit. I guess the producers never considered that this is some of the best evidence of a shot from the front right. The exit wound made by a picket-fence shot would have splattered anyone to the immediate left rear of the death car.
Presiding over this whole mess was Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in the old Book Depository Building. Mack was once sure that he saw a rifleman wearing a badge shoot from the shadows on the grassy knoll. Now he’s certain that the kill shot could only have come from behind. I suppose he’ll sway with any wind, even one from a giant electrical fan in the middle of nowhere, to drum up ticket sales for his museum.
Tim Fleming
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/MurderOfAnAmericanNazi.html
http://leftlooking.blogspot.com
Jack Broadnax
6 March 2009 at 05:27 EST
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You cannot argue with true believers in conspiracy theories, since they have a built in defense against actual facts. They think that anybody who denies their theory is either naive of nefarious. The biggest attraction for them is that they have inside information, that makes them more connected or smarter than those benighted folks who believe in the evidence they can see and assess.
Since they are largely immune to facts and logic, and some conspiracy theorist are really too stupid (or vapid in the case of celebrities) to understand anyway, the best way to deal with conspiracy theories, IMO, is to devalue them with humor and ridicule.
This video from “The Onion” is good for that and they are very funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0&NR=1
This one shows Al Qaida representatives trying to debunk the conspiracy theory that they didn’t do 9/11. They say that they didn’t spend weeks in caves plotting to let someone else take credit.
This one is just a guy explaining the various 9/11 conspiracies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeHqsfgB2v8&NR=1
Mike Swanberg
27 April 2009 at 07:34 EDT
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@Tim Fleming
I agree with your assessment. And the thing about the fan… Gary Mack made the comment that the test brain matter held aloft in the air long enough for Hargis to drive through it. Well, first, wasn’t the fan to simulate that movement? If the matter didn’t “blow” to the back of the test limo, then it wouldn’t have been driven through either. And if I’m not mistaken, Hargis testified that he was hit with such force that he himself thought he was shot. Simply driving through a bloody mist at 11 or so mph wouldn’t cause that reaction.
Another thing that bothered me… Gary Mack saying, “that’s a dead Jackie right there.” We can see clearly in the Zapruder film that Jackie is visible to the camera’s right of JFK. If the proposed Grassy Knoll shooter is to Zapruder’s right, then Jackie’s position to the gunman’s eye is even more out of the way.
Finally, you are correct that the resultant wound looks like what the Parkland doctors and other medical personnel saw, just on the wrong side of JFK’s head. Well, whatever made that bullet exit from the right occipital-parietal area of JFK’s head also saved Jackie from any harm.
The program (I unfortunately only caught the last 33 minutes of it, so I missed the setup) continually mentions the “official” autopsy photographs, which are widely held to be altered or faked, but never seems to mention the Parkland staff’s claims, which are far more unanimous and consistent than any of the autopsists’.
I used to have respect for Gary Mack. But you are correct… lately he seems to sway whatever way the giant fan blows him.
@Jack Broadnax
So that’s your retort? “Conspiracies are funny, so they must be wrong”??? That’s all you have?
-Mike
John Sharpe
Location: Norwich, NY
8 October 2009 at 08:05 EDT
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Anybody who can simply read the undisputed facts of this whole case and not shake their head with a bit of disbelief is involved in a conspiracy of their own. No Hollywood writer could come up with a more bizarre scenario than this, ever. If it happened the way the Warren Commission says it did then it is simply the weirdest event in the history of man. I have never witnessed anything remotely this weird so it makes it very hard to accept. To call this “just another conspiracy theory” is a lie. It is the original conspiracy theory. The one conspiracy theory that gave birth to endless others, though none were ever remotely close to being this intricate and compelling. This conspiracy theory gets a lot of its unique power from the fact that so many people see truth in it. Whether one believes the JFK assassination theory or not it is an epic story.
glenn
Location: atlanta
19 October 2009 at 17:12 EDT
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Bugliosi: “Every one of the pathologists who examined the president’s wounds and/or photographs and X-rays of the wounds …”
?
Maybe, but the PRIVATE ER Drs. at Parkland unequivocally disagreed with the ARMY Pathologists (read: government), who weren’t supposed to be doing the post ANYWAY, as to placement of the wounds.
Clearly someone’s addressing the uninformed…