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Molly Cruz Comments
Admittedly, there is at least one area in my book/theory for which I wish I had greater support. That is the statements made by MOLLYCRUZ in the comments at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-dad-believed-warren-commission-shoddy/. I don't agree with everything in Ms. Cruz's assessment, but there are a couple of interesting items. Her total comment says:
Right after JFK was shot in the neck from behind, the chauffeur turned and shot toward what he thought was the source of the gunfire, but Kennedy had risen and tilted forward from the impact, and the shot hit him in the head, clearly blowing his brains backward, and unfortunately amounted to the coup de grace of the incidet. A careful perusal of the famous film by Zapruder shows the quick turn and shot just after the car passes the billboard that obstructed the view, and another CBS film shot from above, presumably from a news blimp, shows the flash of the shot, doubtless the reason for the 'grassy knoll' theory, though of course there was no damage to the windshield of the limousine and the shell was found in the car or on the stretcher with Kennedy. The first radio report I heard of the event stated clearly "A secret service man has accidentally shot President Kennedy," but that was the only time I heard it. I believe this man was sheltered from publicity due to the inadvertent nature of the event and his innocense. As for Oswald and his associates, it was obviously more complicated than anyone was told.
I think Ms. Cruz was projecting the accident of the explosive head shot onto the "chauffeur," whom she saw turning in the extant Zapruder film (not in the live "blimp" footage). Nevertheless, I find very interesting her comment about the "CBS film shot from above, presumably from a news blimp" (the "flash" perhaps being "sun glare" in the Zapruder film visible a split second after Z-313, which I believe was of Oswald's missed shot ricochet penetrating the windshield). But the fact that she remembered seeing an overhead view of the limousine (as I believe I saw in my first view of the Parkland movie, mixed in with archival footage) is very interesting, and of course her description of the original Sam Pate radio broadcast saying that, "A Secret Service agent accidentally shot President Kennedy," is right in line with what I think happened.
As I said in my book, I would love to have more corroborating accounts for both the "blimp" and the original radio broadcast that "A secret service man has accidentally shot President Kennedy." I did some Internet searches for "JFK Assassination & blimp" and other related terms in separate searches, and I didn't come up with much, but I did come up with an odd reference to a "blimp," which I'll share below.
I also posted a question on a forum site, asking if there were any corroborating accounts of a news blimp over Dealey Plaza during the assassination or other news footage (http://forum.assassinationofjfk.net/index.php/topic/2026-blimp-over-dealey-plaza/). I also got a couple of interesting replies on that, which I'll share below.
But there are a few points I want to make before going farther: 1) The evidence of splices in the dictabelt and the recreation of the Sam Pate broadcast tell me that something was removed from each of them, agreeing with the late Sixth Floor Museum curator Gary Mack's assessment of the dictabelt evidence (See "Also of Interest: A Split Personality" at the bottom of the left-side menu for a discussion on Mr. Mack) and the evidence of splices in the police recordings; 2) Ms. Cruz's statements offer the only explanation for radio broadcast recreation (and the dictabelt editing) that has so far cropped up in my research; and 3) there actually is some corroboration (albeit not as strong as I would like) for news footage of the assassination.
Interestingly, almost immediately after posting my question on the forum site about the news blimp, there was an off-topic response asking if I was the author of The JFK Cut-N-Paste Assassination, and if I stood by the description written on the back cover. I replied that I am, and I do. After a few days of off-topic nonsense, mostly attacking my theory without even reading it (e.g., I was accused of supporting the SBT), and in order to get back to the topic at hand, I promised to respond to their comments on my website. (See "Reader's Comments"--though I'm not sure that these posters read any of my work.) But when discussion got back to the topic at hand, a couple of researchers noted that they had spoken to people who "saw the assassination live on TV." One recalled "seeing an interview of a lady saying she knew what happened to JFK because she happened to be home at the time of the assassination and 'saw it all on TV.'" Another said that although he never heard of a blimp filming the assassination, he does "know a few people in the Dallas area who say they saw it live on TV." Much to my frustration, there isn't much else these two researchers can offer. However, it seems that Ms. Cruz might not be alone in seeing the assassination on TV, whether or not it was an overhead view from a news blimp. (And I do remember seeing the limousine turn onto Elm Street from overhead in the version of the Parkland movie that I first saw, though not on the DVD.)
And, also interestingly, my own Internet searches turned up another reference to a "blimp" in Dealey Plaza. Buried in the comments of another article (found at
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1225302) was this strange post (by "zappaman") referring to someone who said "she saw a gunman in a blimp":
blah blah blah.
you can nitpick all you want.
'WHAAAA...he didn't deal with this one witness who said she saw a gunman in a blimp'.
The evidence all points to one human being and has held up for close to 50 years.
There is no evidence pointing to anything else unless you COMPLETELY ignore the physical evidence from the crime scene, which every CTer does.
It's a tired argument.
Call me when you have the evidence that could stand up in a court of law that convicts the CIA, or FBI, or secret service, or doctors, or Cuba, or Johnson, or Dallas PD, or Russia, or the mafia, or the military industrial complex, or big oil, or my grandma.
I'm more than willing to listen.
Que? The post apparently responds to a comment about an article by Jim DiEugenio containing a "10-Part Point-by-Point Obliteration of everything in Bugliosi's (book)." Unfortunately, the link to the DiEugenio article doesn't work. But somewhere there seems to be a reference to a witness and a "blimp." Granted, I may be suffering from "confirmation bias" in reading these comments, but a "blimp" is so specific, and I remember seeing an overhead view of the limousine turning in my first view of Parkland. At least I have made an honest effort to explore the presence of a news blimp during the assassination. And although I cannot confirm the "blimp," there are a few scattered references to viewers who "saw the assassination live, on TV."
In addition to a question about the "blimp," I also posted the question of whether there were any other witnesses to Sam Pate's original broadcast "live, as it happened" (not the "recreation" later recorded onto the record album Four Days), at http://forum.assassinationofjfk.net/index.php/topic/2029-sam-pate-original-kbox-radio-broadcast/ . If so, what did these people report? If any relevant responses pop up, I'll post them here.
And in the meantime, there is no other explanation for what may have been edited out of the Sam Pate broadcasts and police radio recordings, so the Molly Cruz description of the broadcast stating that "A Secret Service agent accidentally shot President Kennedy" is as good an explanation as any.
Warren Taylor as "Fake" Secret Service Agent
Another admitted "weakness" in my work, albeit a minor one, is my hypothesis that SA Warren Taylor was one of the "fake" Secret Service agents running around Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination. After all, there are memos by Chief Rowley (who wasn't in Dallas during the assassination) and agents Youngblood, Kivett, and Johns (who were in the motorcade during the assassination), and of course Taylor, himself. These memos describe Taylor at Parkland Hospital immediately after the motorcade arrived, and are all part of Commission Exhibit 1026.
However, these memos also describe Youngblood covering Johnson with his body. Senator Ralph Yarborough (one of the gunpowder nose witnesses, in the same car as Johnson) said in a 1992 interview that it simply didn't happen:
Somebody--one of the Lyndon Johnson men--was trying to discredit me; he said I was so excited I thought I smelled gunsmoke. I told the Dallas police later--I was by there later and saw them--and they said, "We all smelled that gunsmoke." Let me tell you one thing that didn't happen: that cock and bull story he (Johnson) told about Youngblood pushing him down and jumping over and sitting on him. It's just plain--a fabrication. It didn't happen at all. Youngblood turned around. He had a little box--I guess it was an information box from the radio--and he leaned over. See, we had a small car; you couldn't have pushed big old Lyndon down there. So Youngblood leaned over and looked right in Johnson's eyes, and Johnson looked straight ahead and didn't look at anything. (http://www.patspeer.com/chapter6%3Apiecesontheroad)
My own observations have already shown SA George Hickey's memo to be a fabrication (the third-person "Hickey" reference showing that Hickey didn't write it). Consider Yarborough's statements contradicting the official version of events according to the memos. Consider witnesses (like the Newman's, like Altgens) who saw Secret Service men run up the knoll. Consider patrolman Seymour Weitzman's statement that he "later found out that (the bone piece he gave to one of the Secret Service men) was supposedly a portion of the President's skull"--how would he have found out later unless he actually had given it to a Secret Service man? And consider how Taylor's memo makes it sound like he opened his car door after turning onto Elm Street, with a shot coming from behind him, when the Muchmore film clearly shows that he opened his car door after turning onto Houston Street, when a shot from the TSBD clearly would have come from in front of him.
Considering all that, can we trust the CE 1024 memos to be truthful? Remember that these memos were not sworn testimonies. And the content of the memos does not match witness accounts. Either the memos are wrong, or the witness accounts were wrong. And I don't think the witnesses were wrong.
To be sure, my assumption that Warren Taylor remained behind in Dealey Plaza collecting evidence is based primarily upon his open car door seen in the Altgens photo and in the Muchmore film, and the "dirty fingers" (gun shot residue?) reported to belong one of the agents in Dealey Plaza (remembering that it is Warren Taylor's hand holding the "phantom revolver" in the Altgens photo). I could easily be wrong about Taylor staying behind. It could be that Thomas "Lem" Johns' stayed in Dealey Plaza longer than a few minutes (in fact, if he didn't arrive at Parkland until 12:45 or 12:50, as he stated in his memo, he would have had 10-15 minutes in Dealey Plaza), and that Weitzman gave his piece of skull to Johns. It could also be that Weitzman gave his piece of skull to Forrest Sorrells, who went to Dealey Plaza later (about 12:55). No agent, of course, admitted to being the recipient of Weitzman's piece of skull.
In any case, there is evidence that the Secret Service memos in CE 1024 contain fabrications.
So while I acknowledge that Taylor wasn't necessarily the agent Weitzman gave his piece of skull to, or that Taylor didn't necessarily stay behind in Dealey Plaza while other agents proceded to Parkland Hospital, I do not trust the Secret Service memos in CE 1024.
However, the exact identity of the agent/s who stayed in Dealey Plaza collecting evidence is a very minor issue, and does not affect the rest of my theory of what happened. The bigger issue is that the CE 1024 memos contain fabrications. And when some of the memos can be shown to contain fabrications, none of them can be trusted.
Weakest Links
Molly Cruz Comments
Admittedly, there is at least one area in my book/theory for which I wish I had greater support. That is the statements made by MOLLYCRUZ in the comments at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-dad-believed-warren-commission-shoddy/. I don't agree with everything in Ms. Cruz's assessment, but there are a couple of interesting items. Her total comment says:
Right after JFK was shot in the neck from behind, the chauffeur turned and shot toward what he thought was the source of the gunfire, but Kennedy had risen and tilted forward from the impact, and the shot hit him in the head, clearly blowing his brains backward, and unfortunately amounted to the coup de grace of the incidet. A careful perusal of the famous film by Zapruder shows the quick turn and shot just after the car passes the billboard that obstructed the view, and another CBS film shot from above, presumably from a news blimp, shows the flash of the shot, doubtless the reason for the 'grassy knoll' theory, though of course there was no damage to the windshield of the limousine and the shell was found in the car or on the stretcher with Kennedy. The first radio report I heard of the event stated clearly "A secret service man has accidentally shot President Kennedy," but that was the only time I heard it. I believe this man was sheltered from publicity due to the inadvertent nature of the event and his innocense. As for Oswald and his associates, it was obviously more complicated than anyone was told.
I think Ms. Cruz was projecting the accident of the explosive head shot onto the "chauffeur," whom she saw turning in the extant Zapruder film (not in the live "blimp" footage). Nevertheless, I find very interesting her comment about the "CBS film shot from above, presumably from a news blimp" (the "flash" perhaps being "sun glare" in the Zapruder film visible a split second after Z-313, which I believe was of Oswald's missed shot ricochet penetrating the windshield). But the fact that she remembered seeing an overhead view of the limousine (as I believe I saw in my first view of the Parkland movie, mixed in with archival footage) is very interesting, and of course her description of the original Sam Pate radio broadcast saying that, "A Secret Service agent accidentally shot President Kennedy," is right in line with what I think happened.
As I said in my book, I would love to have more corroborating accounts for both the "blimp" and the original radio broadcast that "A secret service man has accidentally shot President Kennedy." I did some Internet searches for "JFK Assassination & blimp" and other related terms in separate searches, and I didn't come up with much, but I did come up with an odd reference to a "blimp," which I'll share below.
I also posted a question on a forum site, asking if there were any corroborating accounts of a news blimp over Dealey Plaza during the assassination or other news footage (http://forum.assassinationofjfk.net/index.php/topic/2026-blimp-over-dealey-plaza/). I also got a couple of interesting replies on that, which I'll share below.
But there are a few points I want to make before going farther: 1) The evidence of splices in the dictabelt and the recreation of the Sam Pate broadcast tell me that something was removed from each of them, agreeing with the late Sixth Floor Museum curator Gary Mack's assessment of the dictabelt evidence (See "Also of Interest: A Split Personality" at the bottom of the left-side menu for a discussion on Mr. Mack) and the evidence of splices in the police recordings; 2) Ms. Cruz's statements offer the only explanation for radio broadcast recreation (and the dictabelt editing) that has so far cropped up in my research; and 3) there actually is some corroboration (albeit not as strong as I would like) for news footage of the assassination.
Interestingly, almost immediately after posting my question on the forum site about the news blimp, there was an off-topic response asking if I was the author of The JFK Cut-N-Paste Assassination, and if I stood by the description written on the back cover. I replied that I am, and I do. After a few days of off-topic nonsense, mostly attacking my theory without even reading it (e.g., I was accused of supporting the SBT), and in order to get back to the topic at hand, I promised to respond to their comments on my website. (See "Reader's Comments"--though I'm not sure that these posters read any of my work.) But when discussion got back to the topic at hand, a couple of researchers noted that they had spoken to people who "saw the assassination live on TV." One recalled "seeing an interview of a lady saying she knew what happened to JFK because she happened to be home at the time of the assassination and 'saw it all on TV.'" Another said that although he never heard of a blimp filming the assassination, he does "know a few people in the Dallas area who say they saw it live on TV." Much to my frustration, there isn't much else these two researchers can offer. However, it seems that Ms. Cruz might not be alone in seeing the assassination on TV, whether or not it was an overhead view from a news blimp. (And I do remember seeing the limousine turn onto Elm Street from overhead in the version of the Parkland movie that I first saw, though not on the DVD.)
And, also interestingly, my own Internet searches turned up another reference to a "blimp" in Dealey Plaza. Buried in the comments of another article (found at
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1225302) was this strange post (by "zappaman") referring to someone who said "she saw a gunman in a blimp":
blah blah blah.
you can nitpick all you want.
'WHAAAA...he didn't deal with this one witness who said she saw a gunman in a blimp'.
The evidence all points to one human being and has held up for close to 50 years.
There is no evidence pointing to anything else unless you COMPLETELY ignore the physical evidence from the crime scene, which every CTer does.
It's a tired argument.
Call me when you have the evidence that could stand up in a court of law that convicts the CIA, or FBI, or secret service, or doctors, or Cuba, or Johnson, or Dallas PD, or Russia, or the mafia, or the military industrial complex, or big oil, or my grandma.
I'm more than willing to listen.
Que? The post apparently responds to a comment about an article by Jim DiEugenio containing a "10-Part Point-by-Point Obliteration of everything in Bugliosi's (book)." Unfortunately, the link to the DiEugenio article doesn't work. But somewhere there seems to be a reference to a witness and a "blimp." Granted, I may be suffering from "confirmation bias" in reading these comments, but a "blimp" is so specific, and I remember seeing an overhead view of the limousine turning in my first view of Parkland. At least I have made an honest effort to explore the presence of a news blimp during the assassination. And although I cannot confirm the "blimp," there are a few scattered references to viewers who "saw the assassination live, on TV."
In addition to a question about the "blimp," I also posted the question of whether there were any other witnesses to Sam Pate's original broadcast "live, as it happened" (not the "recreation" later recorded onto the record album Four Days), at http://forum.assassinationofjfk.net/index.php/topic/2029-sam-pate-original-kbox-radio-broadcast/ . If so, what did these people report? If any relevant responses pop up, I'll post them here.
And in the meantime, there is no other explanation for what may have been edited out of the Sam Pate broadcasts and police radio recordings, so the Molly Cruz description of the broadcast stating that "A Secret Service agent accidentally shot President Kennedy" is as good an explanation as any.
Warren Taylor as "Fake" Secret Service Agent
Another admitted "weakness" in my work, albeit a minor one, is my hypothesis that SA Warren Taylor was one of the "fake" Secret Service agents running around Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination. After all, there are memos by Chief Rowley (who wasn't in Dallas during the assassination) and agents Youngblood, Kivett, and Johns (who were in the motorcade during the assassination), and of course Taylor, himself. These memos describe Taylor at Parkland Hospital immediately after the motorcade arrived, and are all part of Commission Exhibit 1026.
However, these memos also describe Youngblood covering Johnson with his body. Senator Ralph Yarborough (one of the gunpowder nose witnesses, in the same car as Johnson) said in a 1992 interview that it simply didn't happen:
Somebody--one of the Lyndon Johnson men--was trying to discredit me; he said I was so excited I thought I smelled gunsmoke. I told the Dallas police later--I was by there later and saw them--and they said, "We all smelled that gunsmoke." Let me tell you one thing that didn't happen: that cock and bull story he (Johnson) told about Youngblood pushing him down and jumping over and sitting on him. It's just plain--a fabrication. It didn't happen at all. Youngblood turned around. He had a little box--I guess it was an information box from the radio--and he leaned over. See, we had a small car; you couldn't have pushed big old Lyndon down there. So Youngblood leaned over and looked right in Johnson's eyes, and Johnson looked straight ahead and didn't look at anything. (http://www.patspeer.com/chapter6%3Apiecesontheroad)
My own observations have already shown SA George Hickey's memo to be a fabrication (the third-person "Hickey" reference showing that Hickey didn't write it). Consider Yarborough's statements contradicting the official version of events according to the memos. Consider witnesses (like the Newman's, like Altgens) who saw Secret Service men run up the knoll. Consider patrolman Seymour Weitzman's statement that he "later found out that (the bone piece he gave to one of the Secret Service men) was supposedly a portion of the President's skull"--how would he have found out later unless he actually had given it to a Secret Service man? And consider how Taylor's memo makes it sound like he opened his car door after turning onto Elm Street, with a shot coming from behind him, when the Muchmore film clearly shows that he opened his car door after turning onto Houston Street, when a shot from the TSBD clearly would have come from in front of him.
Considering all that, can we trust the CE 1024 memos to be truthful? Remember that these memos were not sworn testimonies. And the content of the memos does not match witness accounts. Either the memos are wrong, or the witness accounts were wrong. And I don't think the witnesses were wrong.
To be sure, my assumption that Warren Taylor remained behind in Dealey Plaza collecting evidence is based primarily upon his open car door seen in the Altgens photo and in the Muchmore film, and the "dirty fingers" (gun shot residue?) reported to belong one of the agents in Dealey Plaza (remembering that it is Warren Taylor's hand holding the "phantom revolver" in the Altgens photo). I could easily be wrong about Taylor staying behind. It could be that Thomas "Lem" Johns' stayed in Dealey Plaza longer than a few minutes (in fact, if he didn't arrive at Parkland until 12:45 or 12:50, as he stated in his memo, he would have had 10-15 minutes in Dealey Plaza), and that Weitzman gave his piece of skull to Johns. It could also be that Weitzman gave his piece of skull to Forrest Sorrells, who went to Dealey Plaza later (about 12:55). No agent, of course, admitted to being the recipient of Weitzman's piece of skull.
In any case, there is evidence that the Secret Service memos in CE 1024 contain fabrications.
So while I acknowledge that Taylor wasn't necessarily the agent Weitzman gave his piece of skull to, or that Taylor didn't necessarily stay behind in Dealey Plaza while other agents proceded to Parkland Hospital, I do not trust the Secret Service memos in CE 1024.
However, the exact identity of the agent/s who stayed in Dealey Plaza collecting evidence is a very minor issue, and does not affect the rest of my theory of what happened. The bigger issue is that the CE 1024 memos contain fabrications. And when some of the memos can be shown to contain fabrications, none of them can be trusted.