Rick Hunter
Celestial
Probably so. It wouldn't surprise me if lots of people had a hand in making sure that Oswald pulled the trigger on Kennedy.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
One thing the Trump and Biden administrations seem to be in agreement on is that it is 'not in the national interest' to see that information released for another 30 years. They'll wait until the 100th anniversary. Hopefully the files in the Akashic Record haven't been redacted, only way I'll ever know.
nivek
As Above So Below
Classified JFK assassination files are FINALLY released: Lee Harvey Oswald was in contact with member of KGB two months before shooting and anonymous phone calls said Russia was behind it, trove of 1,500 documents reveal
More than 1,500 previously classified JFK assassination files have today been made public, including documents about killer Lee Harvey Oswald's contact with a KGB agent two months before the shooting. The files were released at noon on Wednesday by the National Archives, after months of delays by Biden who had promised to make them public but then stalled, claiming COVID backlogs was the reason. Not all of them are now public - some are still being held back for further review by the NSA until next December, a move that has been slammed by members of Kennedy's family. The documents released on Wednesday include memos detailing anonymous phone calls to the US embassy in Canberra, Australia, a year before the shooting, where the caller said the Soviet Government was plotting to kill Kennedy, and details of Oswald's meeting with a KGB agent at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City two months before the shooting. Another call was placed on November 24, two days after the shooting, claiming the Russians were behind it.
.
More than 1,500 previously classified JFK assassination files have today been made public, including documents about killer Lee Harvey Oswald's contact with a KGB agent two months before the shooting. The files were released at noon on Wednesday by the National Archives, after months of delays by Biden who had promised to make them public but then stalled, claiming COVID backlogs was the reason. Not all of them are now public - some are still being held back for further review by the NSA until next December, a move that has been slammed by members of Kennedy's family. The documents released on Wednesday include memos detailing anonymous phone calls to the US embassy in Canberra, Australia, a year before the shooting, where the caller said the Soviet Government was plotting to kill Kennedy, and details of Oswald's meeting with a KGB agent at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City two months before the shooting. Another call was placed on November 24, two days after the shooting, claiming the Russians were behind it.
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pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
I wonder what the hell that's all about. It's no secret he visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City not long before the assassination. They handled him with kid gloves seeing he was a whack job.
A Soviet plot to assassinate our President in 1963. Wouldn't surprise me in the wake of the missile crisis; Khrushchev had his own internal power struggles. They all did in that position. Four years later a plot got hatched by the most senior elements of their government to launch a goddamned nuke at Honolulu and blame it on the Chinese. Important to remember that Leonid Brezhnev was Head Commie at that point and not necessarily in complete control of their government. Kind of like ours now .....
A Soviet plot to assassinate our President in 1963. Wouldn't surprise me in the wake of the missile crisis; Khrushchev had his own internal power struggles. They all did in that position. Four years later a plot got hatched by the most senior elements of their government to launch a goddamned nuke at Honolulu and blame it on the Chinese. Important to remember that Leonid Brezhnev was Head Commie at that point and not necessarily in complete control of their government. Kind of like ours now .....
Dejan Corovic
As above, so bellow
It's plain and simple. After the fiasco in Bay of Pigs Kennedy was hell bent to reduce CIA's influence and funding. And it wasn't just Kennedy, military intelligence wanted everything that can be taken from CIA. It might sound funny, at that point CIA fell on hard times. So to divert the oncoming hardship CIA killed the guy. It's easier to replace president than whole government agency with years of experience and hundreds of important projects.
What is the point for KGB to kill one guy who can immediately be replaced by dosen of other guys?
What is the point for KGB to kill one guy who can immediately be replaced by dosen of other guys?
Rick Hunter
Celestial
Joe after signing the order to declassify the Kennedy documents: "Wait, I thought that was a permission slip for Hunter's field trip next week!"
Rick Hunter
Celestial
I wonder if Jack Ruby was in contact with the KGB as well? He was the perfect choice to dispose of Oswald. Lifelong wannabe wiseguy who was a frequent visitor to the Dallas PD and no one would question him being there. Also, unimportant enough to have any real secrets to share and had a reputation for tall tales so no one would believe him. Nor would anyone care when he was disposed of.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
He's got a weird back story. Left his dog in the car when he went off to go shoot Oswald.
Rick Hunter
Celestial
The dog in the car may be the strongest evidence to suggest it was a crime of opportunity.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
JFK assassination expert: Lone gunman theory is still ‘bulls--t’
JFK assassination expert: Lee Harvey Oswald lone gunman theory is ‘bulls–t’
By Heather Robinson
February 5, 2022 7:57am
Updated
Dr. Cyril Wecht was the first non-governmental forensic pathologist to gain access to the National Archives to examine the assassination materials on JFK in 1972. He discovered that Kennedy's brain was missing as well as many shocking lapses in the official probe into his death.NY Post photo composite
Dr. Cyril Wecht distrusts the US government. And he’s proud of it.
The forensic pathologist — who declared in 1978 that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy — is now 90 and still sticking to his story.
Wecht’s latest book, “The JFK Assassination Dissected” (Exposit Books), summarizes his six decades of research into the subject, and pokes holes in the conclusion made by the seven-man Warren Commission that Oswald, without any help, shot and killed Kennedy when his motorcade drove past the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
“Young people are still being taught that the 35th president was murdered by a lone gunman, and that is simply bulls–t,” Wecht boomed during an interview at his modest office in downtown Pittsburgh last month.
Nearly 60 years ago, the commission concluded that Oswald killed Kennedy because he was a disaffected, profoundly maladjusted loner with communist sympathies. But Wecht still believes the shooter may have been a hired gun committing murder for the CIA.
Wecht (in 1975) believes the CIA ordered JFK’s death and covered it up.
Bettmann Archive
Oswald “had almost certainly been a CIA agent of some kind,” says Wecht, but the directive to kill may have come from higher up. Allen Dulles, director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, had overseen the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion to oust Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and had reason to be disgruntled. Dulles also ended up in prime position to participate in a coverup, Wecht conjectured.
“Kennedy had fired Allen Dulles because he was really pissed off about what the CIA was doing,” said Wecht. “Then who gets appointed to the Warren Commission? Dulles. It stinks to high heaven.”
Tanned, vigorous and dressed sharply in a black jacket and red necktie, Wecht said he wrote his book now for the sake of the truth — and his advancing age.
Wecht claims Kennedy was shot twice in the head — from the back and the front — which would necessitate two gunmen.
Zapruder
“I don’t intend to live forever, just for a long time,” said Wecht, who has a wife, Sigrid Wecht, and four children. “I felt I wanted to lay out all the things I’ve experienced and done and the people I’ve met, and it was time. I’ve been working on the book for six years.”
The former coroner of Allegheny County, Pa., Wecht is both a trained lawyer and doctor who has conducted more than 17,000 autopsies and also provided expert testimony on high-profile cases including the deaths of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey and Laci Peterson.
The first non-governmental forensic pathologist to gain access to the National Archives to examine the assassination materials in 1972, Wecht discovered and exposed the ghastly fact that the 35th president’s brain had vanished.
“As we sit and talk today, the president’s brain remains missing. Unaccounted for,” he said.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a trained marksman, easily returned to the US from the USSR with a high-ranking KGB officer’s niece as a wife — raising questions about his “friends in high places.”
Alamy
Interest in the assassination — and speculation about a conspiracy — has simmered for decades, gaining steam after Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “JFK” disputed the belief that Oswald acted alone. (Wecht consulted on Stone’s film and dedicated a chapter to his experience on the movie set. Stone, in turn, wrote the book’s foreword).
In 1992, after a public outcry, Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act requiring release of all JFK assassination files by 2017. The deadline has come and gone with US presidents citing national security concerns; Biden has scheduled release of the final documents for December 2022.
Wecht is dubious that all the relevant documents will be released but predicts that if they are, it could be revelatory.
“There might be something supporting more than one gunman, evidence of witness manipulation, or failure to call key witnesses,” he said.
In the decades since the assassination, most Americans have continued to believe that Oswald did not act alone. In 1976, one year after the public release of the Zapruder film, a 1963 home movie made by Dallas clothier Abraham Zapruder capturing the moment JFK was shot, 81 percent said they believed more than one gunman was involved.
By 2017, that figure was still high at 60 percent.
‘Young people are still being taught the 35th president was murdered by a lone gunman. That is simply bulls–t.’
Dr. Cyril Wecht
Wecht’s book contains never-before published details of his meetings with Oswald’s widow, Marina, who, although unhappily married to Oswald, validated her husband’s claim that he was “just a patsy,” as well as of Wecht’s meeting with George de Mohrenschildt, a shadowy CIA-connected figure who befriended the Oswalds prior to the assassination and, before committing suicide himself in 1977, corroborated Marina’s assessment of Oswald as a fall guy.
The book describes the defection of Oswald, a trained marksman, Marine, and fluent Russian speaker, to the USSR for two-and-a-half years, and his trouble-free return to the US with bride Marina, niece of a high-ranking KGB officer, at the height of the Cold War. (The implication is that Oswald had friends in high places).
CIA-connected George de Mohrenschildt (left) met with the Oswalds prior to the assassination. Allen Dulles (right), director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, had reason to be disgruntled and order Kennedy’s murder, Wecht claims.
Bettmann Archive; Getty Images
After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald fired three times. One shot missed, another hit Kennedy in the back, and the third hit him in the head. Rather than explain the sequence of the hits, the commission presented three slightly different scenarios, but each scenario ended with the conclusion that just one gunman killed the president.
In 1978, Wecht, as a member of the forensic pathology panel assembled by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), testified in favor of a second gunman. He was the lone dissenter.
“I really stood alone,” he said.
For one, the gunshot wound in Kennedy’s back — which the Warren Commission said had an upward trajectory — couldn’t have been caused by Oswald as the sole assassin firing from above, Wecht said.
Oswald’s wife, Marina (left), insisted her husband was the fall guy in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Getty Images
“Under the single bullet theory, Oswald is the sole assassin, he’s firing from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building, so the bullet is moving from up, downward, right? So how the hell could it go upward?”
Wecht believes an additional shot, from a second gunman, was “fired from the front, behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll” and that “two bullets hit Kennedy . . . one from the rear, one from the front.”
Wecht, in his office in downtown Pittsburgh, summarizes his six decades of research into the JFK assassination in his new book.
Rob Larson
He also recounts that the chief medical examiner for the Dallas Coroner’s office, Dr. Earl Rose, whose office was located at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas where JFK received treatment and died, was manhandled by the Secret Service to prevent him from conducting the autopsy.
“The agent . . . put his arms under Rose’s armpits, lifted him into the air, and set him down gently against a wall. It wasn’t an action designed to hurt Dr. Rose but to show him who was boss,” Wecht writes.
“They swore, they put Dr. Rose up against the wall,” he added.
Wecht writes that Lyndon Johnson ordered the exterior of Kennedy’s limo washed before it could be investigated.
Getty Images
Instead, JFK’s corpse was flown to Washington, DC, where an autopsy was done by two physicians, neither of whom was board certified in forensic pathology, and neither of whom “had ever done a gunshot wound autopsy in their entire careers,” he said.
The autopsy materials, “including clothing, X-rays, bullet,” “amazingly, belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy,” who donated them to the National Archives in Washington, DC, with the proviso that nobody could see those effects for 75 years, except that after five years, a “recognized expert in the field of pathology with a serious historic purpose” could apply to examine them, Wecht said.
Wecht fought to fill that slot and was given permission to conduct the probe in 1972. That’s when he discovered that JFK’s brain, despite being listed in the inventory of assassination materials, was “no longer available.”
Oswald fired from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building. But Wecht maintains that another shooter also fired from a grassy knoll.
Getty Images
“If they had dissected the brain, they would’ve seen there were two bullets that hit Kennedy in the brain, one from the rear, and one from the front,” said Wecht. His theory that the president was hit in the head twice is “based on witness testimony, the Zapruder film, and medical evidence.”
Critics argue that professionals like Wecht questioning the Warren Commission’s findings have contributed to a general erosion of trust in authority and spawned an industry of conspiracy-theorizing, prompting potentially harmful doubts about everything from vaccines to elections.
But Wecht doesn’t mind the term “conspiracy theorist.”
“I am amused by the audacity and hypocrisy of people calling me a conspiratorialist,” he said. “I have always had a majority of Americans on my side. How many things are there that maintain a majority consensus?
“Go back and talk with older people, before Watergate and Vietnam,” he says. “Pretty much what the government said, that was it, you did not question.
“We are still learning things the government covered up.”
JFK assassination expert: Lee Harvey Oswald lone gunman theory is ‘bulls–t’
By Heather Robinson
February 5, 2022 7:57am
Updated
Dr. Cyril Wecht was the first non-governmental forensic pathologist to gain access to the National Archives to examine the assassination materials on JFK in 1972. He discovered that Kennedy's brain was missing as well as many shocking lapses in the official probe into his death.NY Post photo composite
Dr. Cyril Wecht distrusts the US government. And he’s proud of it.
The forensic pathologist — who declared in 1978 that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy — is now 90 and still sticking to his story.
Wecht’s latest book, “The JFK Assassination Dissected” (Exposit Books), summarizes his six decades of research into the subject, and pokes holes in the conclusion made by the seven-man Warren Commission that Oswald, without any help, shot and killed Kennedy when his motorcade drove past the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
“Young people are still being taught that the 35th president was murdered by a lone gunman, and that is simply bulls–t,” Wecht boomed during an interview at his modest office in downtown Pittsburgh last month.
Nearly 60 years ago, the commission concluded that Oswald killed Kennedy because he was a disaffected, profoundly maladjusted loner with communist sympathies. But Wecht still believes the shooter may have been a hired gun committing murder for the CIA.
Wecht (in 1975) believes the CIA ordered JFK’s death and covered it up.
Bettmann Archive
Oswald “had almost certainly been a CIA agent of some kind,” says Wecht, but the directive to kill may have come from higher up. Allen Dulles, director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, had overseen the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion to oust Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and had reason to be disgruntled. Dulles also ended up in prime position to participate in a coverup, Wecht conjectured.
“Kennedy had fired Allen Dulles because he was really pissed off about what the CIA was doing,” said Wecht. “Then who gets appointed to the Warren Commission? Dulles. It stinks to high heaven.”
Tanned, vigorous and dressed sharply in a black jacket and red necktie, Wecht said he wrote his book now for the sake of the truth — and his advancing age.
Wecht claims Kennedy was shot twice in the head — from the back and the front — which would necessitate two gunmen.
Zapruder
“I don’t intend to live forever, just for a long time,” said Wecht, who has a wife, Sigrid Wecht, and four children. “I felt I wanted to lay out all the things I’ve experienced and done and the people I’ve met, and it was time. I’ve been working on the book for six years.”
The former coroner of Allegheny County, Pa., Wecht is both a trained lawyer and doctor who has conducted more than 17,000 autopsies and also provided expert testimony on high-profile cases including the deaths of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey and Laci Peterson.
The first non-governmental forensic pathologist to gain access to the National Archives to examine the assassination materials in 1972, Wecht discovered and exposed the ghastly fact that the 35th president’s brain had vanished.
“As we sit and talk today, the president’s brain remains missing. Unaccounted for,” he said.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a trained marksman, easily returned to the US from the USSR with a high-ranking KGB officer’s niece as a wife — raising questions about his “friends in high places.”
Alamy
Interest in the assassination — and speculation about a conspiracy — has simmered for decades, gaining steam after Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “JFK” disputed the belief that Oswald acted alone. (Wecht consulted on Stone’s film and dedicated a chapter to his experience on the movie set. Stone, in turn, wrote the book’s foreword).
In 1992, after a public outcry, Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act requiring release of all JFK assassination files by 2017. The deadline has come and gone with US presidents citing national security concerns; Biden has scheduled release of the final documents for December 2022.
Wecht is dubious that all the relevant documents will be released but predicts that if they are, it could be revelatory.
“There might be something supporting more than one gunman, evidence of witness manipulation, or failure to call key witnesses,” he said.
In the decades since the assassination, most Americans have continued to believe that Oswald did not act alone. In 1976, one year after the public release of the Zapruder film, a 1963 home movie made by Dallas clothier Abraham Zapruder capturing the moment JFK was shot, 81 percent said they believed more than one gunman was involved.
By 2017, that figure was still high at 60 percent.
‘Young people are still being taught the 35th president was murdered by a lone gunman. That is simply bulls–t.’
Dr. Cyril Wecht
Wecht’s book contains never-before published details of his meetings with Oswald’s widow, Marina, who, although unhappily married to Oswald, validated her husband’s claim that he was “just a patsy,” as well as of Wecht’s meeting with George de Mohrenschildt, a shadowy CIA-connected figure who befriended the Oswalds prior to the assassination and, before committing suicide himself in 1977, corroborated Marina’s assessment of Oswald as a fall guy.
The book describes the defection of Oswald, a trained marksman, Marine, and fluent Russian speaker, to the USSR for two-and-a-half years, and his trouble-free return to the US with bride Marina, niece of a high-ranking KGB officer, at the height of the Cold War. (The implication is that Oswald had friends in high places).
CIA-connected George de Mohrenschildt (left) met with the Oswalds prior to the assassination. Allen Dulles (right), director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, had reason to be disgruntled and order Kennedy’s murder, Wecht claims.
Bettmann Archive; Getty Images
After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald fired three times. One shot missed, another hit Kennedy in the back, and the third hit him in the head. Rather than explain the sequence of the hits, the commission presented three slightly different scenarios, but each scenario ended with the conclusion that just one gunman killed the president.
In 1978, Wecht, as a member of the forensic pathology panel assembled by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), testified in favor of a second gunman. He was the lone dissenter.
“I really stood alone,” he said.
For one, the gunshot wound in Kennedy’s back — which the Warren Commission said had an upward trajectory — couldn’t have been caused by Oswald as the sole assassin firing from above, Wecht said.
Oswald’s wife, Marina (left), insisted her husband was the fall guy in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Getty Images
“Under the single bullet theory, Oswald is the sole assassin, he’s firing from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building, so the bullet is moving from up, downward, right? So how the hell could it go upward?”
Wecht believes an additional shot, from a second gunman, was “fired from the front, behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll” and that “two bullets hit Kennedy . . . one from the rear, one from the front.”
Wecht, in his office in downtown Pittsburgh, summarizes his six decades of research into the JFK assassination in his new book.
Rob Larson
He also recounts that the chief medical examiner for the Dallas Coroner’s office, Dr. Earl Rose, whose office was located at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas where JFK received treatment and died, was manhandled by the Secret Service to prevent him from conducting the autopsy.
“The agent . . . put his arms under Rose’s armpits, lifted him into the air, and set him down gently against a wall. It wasn’t an action designed to hurt Dr. Rose but to show him who was boss,” Wecht writes.
“They swore, they put Dr. Rose up against the wall,” he added.
Wecht writes that Lyndon Johnson ordered the exterior of Kennedy’s limo washed before it could be investigated.
Getty Images
Instead, JFK’s corpse was flown to Washington, DC, where an autopsy was done by two physicians, neither of whom was board certified in forensic pathology, and neither of whom “had ever done a gunshot wound autopsy in their entire careers,” he said.
The autopsy materials, “including clothing, X-rays, bullet,” “amazingly, belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy,” who donated them to the National Archives in Washington, DC, with the proviso that nobody could see those effects for 75 years, except that after five years, a “recognized expert in the field of pathology with a serious historic purpose” could apply to examine them, Wecht said.
Wecht fought to fill that slot and was given permission to conduct the probe in 1972. That’s when he discovered that JFK’s brain, despite being listed in the inventory of assassination materials, was “no longer available.”
Oswald fired from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building. But Wecht maintains that another shooter also fired from a grassy knoll.
Getty Images
“If they had dissected the brain, they would’ve seen there were two bullets that hit Kennedy in the brain, one from the rear, and one from the front,” said Wecht. His theory that the president was hit in the head twice is “based on witness testimony, the Zapruder film, and medical evidence.”
Critics argue that professionals like Wecht questioning the Warren Commission’s findings have contributed to a general erosion of trust in authority and spawned an industry of conspiracy-theorizing, prompting potentially harmful doubts about everything from vaccines to elections.
But Wecht doesn’t mind the term “conspiracy theorist.”
“I am amused by the audacity and hypocrisy of people calling me a conspiratorialist,” he said. “I have always had a majority of Americans on my side. How many things are there that maintain a majority consensus?
“Go back and talk with older people, before Watergate and Vietnam,” he says. “Pretty much what the government said, that was it, you did not question.
“We are still learning things the government covered up.”
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
JFK Assassination Calculations
Mr. Rogers' AP Physics C: Projectile motion Problems
JFK Problem
President John F. Kennedy, was fatally wounded when a bullet struck the back of his head on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. CST. At the time, he was riding in an open limousine moving away from the gunman at a horizontal velocity of 11.2 mph (5 m/s). According to the official story put out by the Warren Commission, the fatal shot was one of three fired by lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The first shot apparently missed, the second struck Kennedy in the back at the base of his neck, and the third in the head from a distance of 81 m.
The Warren Commission findings were immediately rejected by various conspiracy theorists who have frequently claimed that the required level of marksmanship would have been virtually unattainable and the required firing rate (5.6 to 8.3 seconds from first to third shot, depending on whose estimate one believes) impossible for the World War II surplus bolt-action rifle* Oswald supposedly used.
While a simple projectile motion analysis cannot rule out a conspiracy, it can shed light on the difficulty of the shot. Movement of the target and bullet drop due to gravity would both make a head shot more difficult.
Calculate the time required for the bullet to reach its target. Assume Kennedy is stationary, the bullet travels in a straight line from the point where it's fired to the target, and that there is no air resistance. Admittedly, the path of the bullet will not be in a straight line, but if the time is short the assumption will introduce only a small error.
Next calculate the amount the bullet would drop below a straight line path during the time of flight calculated above, as well as the horizontal distance Kennedy would have moved. From this distance calculate how far below the aiming point the bullet would impact. Add the bullet drop to this distance. This total gives an idea of the possible errors in the vertical dimension between the point of impact and point of aim.
Is the error described above likely to produce a complete miss? Keep in mind that Oswald was an ex-marine with marksmanship training and had practiced shooting his WWII surplus rifle at a local shooting range. He steadied the rifle on a large box as he fired at Kennedy and would have known to aim a little high.
As for the firing rate, numerous tests by various groups have demonstrated that when starting the clock on the first shot, two additional shots can easily be fired within even shorter 5.6 second time estimate. Entertainers Penn and Teller have made a popular video demonstrating the it.
* 6.5 x 52 mm caliber Carcano rifle with a 4x telescopic gun site firing Western Cartridge Co. ammunition with a 160 grain (10.37 g) round nose bullet with a muzzle velocity = 700 m/s and a velocity at 100 yards of 550 m/s. The estimated average velocity would be about 625 m/s.
Solution
Assuming constant velocity over a straight line path yields:
t = d / v
= (81 m) / (625 m/s)
= 0.13 s
If the bullet were dropped, it would fall a distance y as follows:
y = 1/2ayt2
= 1/2 (9.8 m/s2) (0.13 s)2
= 0.083 m
During the time the bullet traveled, the limousine would move xL as follows:
xL = v t
= (5 m/s) (0.13 s)
= 0.65 m
The motion of the limousine would cause the bullet to strike below the original aiming point by Dy as follows:
Dy = xLsin (17�)
= (0.65 m) (.294)
= 0.19 m
Combining both the bullet drop and limo movement errors indicates that the bullet would have dropped about 27 cm or about 11 inches. Assuming that the rifle sights were not adjusted to compensate for bullet drop and that Oswald had aimed near the top of JFK's head, the bullet would have struck JFK in the back near the base of the neck. Most likely, the rifle sights would have been adjusted to hit the target at 100 yards (91 m). In this case, only the motion of the car would have significantly mattered. It would have caused the bullet to strike low by about 7.5 inches.
Conclusion and Significance
Neither the bullet drop due to gravity or the motion of the limousine would have been likely to cause a shooter to miss the target. Hitting a slow moving target 81 meter away would have well within the skill level of an ex marine or for that matter a deer hunter.
Mr. Rogers' AP Physics C: Projectile motion Problems
JFK Problem
President John F. Kennedy, was fatally wounded when a bullet struck the back of his head on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. CST. At the time, he was riding in an open limousine moving away from the gunman at a horizontal velocity of 11.2 mph (5 m/s). According to the official story put out by the Warren Commission, the fatal shot was one of three fired by lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The first shot apparently missed, the second struck Kennedy in the back at the base of his neck, and the third in the head from a distance of 81 m.
The Warren Commission findings were immediately rejected by various conspiracy theorists who have frequently claimed that the required level of marksmanship would have been virtually unattainable and the required firing rate (5.6 to 8.3 seconds from first to third shot, depending on whose estimate one believes) impossible for the World War II surplus bolt-action rifle* Oswald supposedly used.
While a simple projectile motion analysis cannot rule out a conspiracy, it can shed light on the difficulty of the shot. Movement of the target and bullet drop due to gravity would both make a head shot more difficult.
Calculate the time required for the bullet to reach its target. Assume Kennedy is stationary, the bullet travels in a straight line from the point where it's fired to the target, and that there is no air resistance. Admittedly, the path of the bullet will not be in a straight line, but if the time is short the assumption will introduce only a small error.
Next calculate the amount the bullet would drop below a straight line path during the time of flight calculated above, as well as the horizontal distance Kennedy would have moved. From this distance calculate how far below the aiming point the bullet would impact. Add the bullet drop to this distance. This total gives an idea of the possible errors in the vertical dimension between the point of impact and point of aim.
Is the error described above likely to produce a complete miss? Keep in mind that Oswald was an ex-marine with marksmanship training and had practiced shooting his WWII surplus rifle at a local shooting range. He steadied the rifle on a large box as he fired at Kennedy and would have known to aim a little high.
As for the firing rate, numerous tests by various groups have demonstrated that when starting the clock on the first shot, two additional shots can easily be fired within even shorter 5.6 second time estimate. Entertainers Penn and Teller have made a popular video demonstrating the it.
* 6.5 x 52 mm caliber Carcano rifle with a 4x telescopic gun site firing Western Cartridge Co. ammunition with a 160 grain (10.37 g) round nose bullet with a muzzle velocity = 700 m/s and a velocity at 100 yards of 550 m/s. The estimated average velocity would be about 625 m/s.
Solution
Assuming constant velocity over a straight line path yields:
t = d / v
= (81 m) / (625 m/s)
= 0.13 s
If the bullet were dropped, it would fall a distance y as follows:
y = 1/2ayt2
= 1/2 (9.8 m/s2) (0.13 s)2
= 0.083 m
During the time the bullet traveled, the limousine would move xL as follows:
xL = v t
= (5 m/s) (0.13 s)
= 0.65 m
The motion of the limousine would cause the bullet to strike below the original aiming point by Dy as follows:
Dy = xLsin (17�)
= (0.65 m) (.294)
= 0.19 m
Combining both the bullet drop and limo movement errors indicates that the bullet would have dropped about 27 cm or about 11 inches. Assuming that the rifle sights were not adjusted to compensate for bullet drop and that Oswald had aimed near the top of JFK's head, the bullet would have struck JFK in the back near the base of the neck. Most likely, the rifle sights would have been adjusted to hit the target at 100 yards (91 m). In this case, only the motion of the car would have significantly mattered. It would have caused the bullet to strike low by about 7.5 inches.
Conclusion and Significance
Neither the bullet drop due to gravity or the motion of the limousine would have been likely to cause a shooter to miss the target. Hitting a slow moving target 81 meter away would have well within the skill level of an ex marine or for that matter a deer hunter.
Rick Hunter
Celestial
I think that Oswald was the assassin and had the ability to make the shot. I also think it is more probable than not that others were involved. The Dulles connection is particularly tantalizing. It seems odd to me that Oswald would have just been allowed to come home to the USA with his new Russian wife no problemo, even though he was a citizen. I mean, the dude was an avowed communist and tried really hard to become a Russian citizen, so much so that the Soviets didn't want him. During the height of the Cold War, I figured the government would have really put him through the wringer upon arrival for fear he was acting on behalf of the USSR.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
I think appeared as a whack job to the State Dept, the CIA and even the KGB he spoke to in Mexico City just before the assassination.
It's true that assassins like John Wilkes Booth and Gavrilo Princip were part of larger conspiracies, others like the one that shot McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt we just loons. TR who was one tough bastard who made a snap and accurate medical assessment of himself and finished his speech.
Occam's Razor says he was just a lose cannon on deck. I would have to have someone explain to me exactly why an intelligence agency would take any risk with Oswald. Taking out an American president during that period was definitely a risk. I just get tired of people like (the late) Jim Maars talking about how impossible the shot was.
@Rick Hunter I saw that buck you got. You could make the Dealey Plaza shot easily, especially with a scoped rifle.
It's true that assassins like John Wilkes Booth and Gavrilo Princip were part of larger conspiracies, others like the one that shot McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt we just loons. TR who was one tough bastard who made a snap and accurate medical assessment of himself and finished his speech.
Occam's Razor says he was just a lose cannon on deck. I would have to have someone explain to me exactly why an intelligence agency would take any risk with Oswald. Taking out an American president during that period was definitely a risk. I just get tired of people like (the late) Jim Maars talking about how impossible the shot was.
@Rick Hunter I saw that buck you got. You could make the Dealey Plaza shot easily, especially with a scoped rifle.
Rick Hunter
Celestial
Your assessment of my marksmanship is too kind! Thing is, a human head is a fairly large target, and a rifle bullet to any part of it will probably be fatal. So, if the rifle can put at least one shot in something like a 6-8" circle then its lights out. The Warren Commission found that Oswald fired three shots, and one missed. The Carcano would have had to be a smooth bore with an undersized bullet for Oswald, who had an interest in firearms and military marksmanship training, not to have struck Kennedy with at least one of the three shots. The limo was moving very slowly, some say that it had nearly stopped when the first shot came. Even if Oswald's aim was good but he miscalculated holdover due to the speed of the limo the bullets would have struck the President's neck or back, still likely causing fatal wounds.
I definitely can't see a large conspiracy within a public agency hatching a plan to kill the President, and then every player keeping perfectly quiet about it for the last 58 years. Now, a very small number of people who made sure that nothing could be traced back to the agency, sure. We have to remember that alot of folks in the CIA and DOD already had considerable experience running clandestine operations that would be difficult to trace back to any part of the U.S. Government. There were certainly people who had the knowledge and resources to pull it off, even if there is no way to pin it on them now.
I definitely can't see a large conspiracy within a public agency hatching a plan to kill the President, and then every player keeping perfectly quiet about it for the last 58 years. Now, a very small number of people who made sure that nothing could be traced back to the agency, sure. We have to remember that alot of folks in the CIA and DOD already had considerable experience running clandestine operations that would be difficult to trace back to any part of the U.S. Government. There were certainly people who had the knowledge and resources to pull it off, even if there is no way to pin it on them now.
Dejan Corovic
As above, so bellow
AlienView
Noble
This book, which I never heard of is currently selling on Amazon for "3 Used from $1,349.37"!!! Why???
Carlos Marcello: The Man Behind the JFK Assassination Hardcover – December 31, 2013
by Stefano Vaccara Robert Miller (Translator)
I used to deal in used books and occasionally you would find a newer book that was collectible and valuable
but $1,349.37 for a relatively recent book on the Kennedy assassination where there are literally hundreds of different titles is still unusual.
Brief description from Amazon website:
""Like getting a pebble out my shoe."
New Orleans is the true birthplace of the Sicilian mafia in America. Carlos Marcello controlled organized crime in Louisiana and across the Southeast in the 1950s and '60s. He was untouchable until he met the Kennedy Brothers. Once Robert Kennedy became attorney general, Marcello was deported to Guatemala and swore to seek revenge. It became a duel to the death. Marcello found his "patsy," a former marine with a Russian wife. Lee Harvey Oswald was the perfect fall guy but he never pulled the trigger."
At any rate if you have a copy you might try throwing it on Amazon or eBay and see what happens.
- some books can go real high and suddenly drop when a bunch become available.
Carlos Marcello: The Man Behind the JFK Assassination Hardcover – December 31, 2013
by Stefano Vaccara Robert Miller (Translator)
I used to deal in used books and occasionally you would find a newer book that was collectible and valuable
but $1,349.37 for a relatively recent book on the Kennedy assassination where there are literally hundreds of different titles is still unusual.
Brief description from Amazon website:
""Like getting a pebble out my shoe."
New Orleans is the true birthplace of the Sicilian mafia in America. Carlos Marcello controlled organized crime in Louisiana and across the Southeast in the 1950s and '60s. He was untouchable until he met the Kennedy Brothers. Once Robert Kennedy became attorney general, Marcello was deported to Guatemala and swore to seek revenge. It became a duel to the death. Marcello found his "patsy," a former marine with a Russian wife. Lee Harvey Oswald was the perfect fall guy but he never pulled the trigger."
At any rate if you have a copy you might try throwing it on Amazon or eBay and see what happens.
- some books can go real high and suddenly drop when a bunch become available.
wwkirk
Divine
Peculiar that such a recent book would be so expensive. There are some videos out there related to the book.
A short one.
And a long one.
nivek
As Above So Below
I've been considering that there was not any government directly involved in his death...I think it may have been by those who hold the purse strings, the financial elites, and maybe those who control the federal reserve, also in cahoots...
...
nivek
As Above So Below
Research Group Sues Federal Government Over Unreleased JFK Assassination Records
A research group has filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the hopes of forcing the release of a slew of files related to the JFK assassination which have been maddeningly kept secret for decades. Spearheading the legal action, which was reportedly launched on Wednesday, is an organization known as the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which serves as a massive online clearinghouse for materials related to "the assassinations of the 1960s, the Watergate scandal, and post-Watergate intelligence abuse investigations." At issue for the group is what they see as a frustrating refusal by the federal government to follow through on a 1992 law which should have seen all remaining records concerning the JFK assassination released to the public by October of 2017.When the appointed time finally arrived, however, then-President Trump issued an order to withhold a sizeable portion of the materials due to national security concerns. The release of the files was further delayed last October when President Biden put forward a similar decree which called for the remaining 16,000 files to undergo an "intensive one year review" to determine what, if any, redactions to the documents might be warranted. Although the order indicated that the approved materials should ultimately be released to the public no later than December 15th of this yea, the Mary Ferrell Foundation's lawsuit argues that the process has dragged on far too long and that the two presidential actions are not in compliance with the 1992 law.
Specifically suing President Biden and the National Archives, the group is asking a judge to strike down the 2021 executive order and immediately release the remaining files. The organization's action is seemingly an attempt to get ahead of what they suspect will be further delays from the government agencies who possess these materials and will, again, cite national security concerns for keeping the information hidden. Intriguingly, the lawsuit also requests that the National Archives procure additional tangential assassination files that are "known to exist but that are not part of the JFK Collection," which may be of interest to historians.
While it is widely believed that these remaining materials do not contain a proverbial 'smoking gun' which will solve the JFK assassination once and for all, researchers believe that they may feature nuggets of information that could reveal more about the circumstances surrounding the tragic event. They also posit that the need for secrecy surrounding these files has decreased considerably since the assassination so long ago. Lending his support to the lawsuit, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mused that "the law requires the records be released. It's bizarre. It's been almost 60 years since my uncle's death. What are they hiding?"
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