I am so going to TIVO that!
ngant17, do not post on the SDMB entire copyrighted articles in violation of fair use practices, please.
I have substituted a link to the article for the bulk of your post.
[ /Moderating ]
And Posner’s a journalist and Dr Lattimer was a urologist. Your point is what, exactly? That an expert in one field cannot become, in his spare time, expert in another?
And your tone indicates you are prejudiced against single-bullet skeptics. We all bring our prejudices to the party so don’t dismiss someone because his prejudices don’t match your own.
And, with the feds stealing the body and performing a fucked-up autopsy (Dr Michael Baden’s take is here: http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/autopsy/4.html); an embarassingly shoddy treatment of the “sniper’s nest” crime scene, where a fellow who was handling a “well-oiled” rifle left no fingerprints, the paucity of evidence placing Oswald there (Brennan couldn’t positively ID Oswald in the lineup, and that was after his picture had been shown on TV and in newspapers); the problems the WC had getting Oswald from the sixth floor to the second floor lunchroom, where he was found composed, not winded, and sipping a Coke, ninety seconds (their calculation) after the shooting, including the time needed to completely wipe down and hide the rifle; and showing the film in which there was an apparent (and difficult to explain with the single-bullet theory) pause between Kennedy’s reaction to being shot and Connelly’s, a good defense attorney could’ve created enough doubt in a jury’s mind that, guilty or not, Oswald would’ve walked.
A problem with that is that no boxes of Oswald’s ammo have been found and I’ve been unable to find any reports of him buying a relatively rare cartridge. Even though records of ammo purchases were not kept in 1963, you’d think someone would’ve piped up that he remembered selling a box to a smirking, skinny guy with a big nose.
Really? How many ammo sales took place in Dallas in 1963? In the surrounding suburbs? By mail order? What if Oswald wasn’t smirking? Is he an otherwise memorable guy? He got his rifle on March 25th, nine months before the assassination. Shortly afterward, he briefly moved to New Orleans. He even visited Mexico City in September. If the argument implied by ngant’s post is that the bullets are from different lots (though actually, it looks more like it’s not certain that they’re from the same lot, as was claimed, though the significance of this is unclear to me), Oswald had plenty of opportunity to buy ammo in different places in the interval between getting the rifle and that day in Dallas.
You could try addressing any points brought up by anybody in the thread. This debate is not all about you. This forum is Great Debates, not Everybody Debunk ngant17’s Latest Brainwave.
Specifically, I want an answer to the seeming dichotomy of an all-encompassing conspiracy of evil geniuses that is, at the same time, completely inept and obvious.
If there was supposed to be a well-organized and widely spread conspiracy, capable of planting misleading evidence, finding and recruiting Communist sympathizers, arranging incriminating photographs of Oswald with his rifle, secretly sending sniper teams to a well-defended area and synchronizing their shots so precisely that nobody could tell where they were from, subverting the government’s investigation, commanding changes in the motorcade route, and so forth, then why did they place an inadequate marksman in such an unlikely location to shoot at a moving target beyond his skill? Why couldn’t this conspiracy have arranged for a more believable shooter, an easier vantage, a stationary target, and more witnesses to finger their fall guy? If the police were deliberately mis-handling evidence at the scene to implicate Oswald, why didn’t those conspiracy cops just kill him instead? If Oswald was a patsy and knew it, why didn’t he finger anybody specific for the two days he was in custody?
It’s true that we don’t have the answer to every question. But a conspiracy makes no sense: every reason why Oswald Couldn’t Have Done It is equally valid as Then Why Did The Conspiracy Put Him There?
then why would he go along with it in the first place? I mean, what would that conversation sound like…
“You want me to take my rifle to work, stack some boxes around a window, leave my fingerprints, point the gun out the window while someone else shoots the president, and make sure the police see me when I leave the building? Okay. Where are we gonna meet up, afterwards?”
Well, obviously he was under the influence of CIA mind control.
I mean, duh.
General ammo sales, sure, lots. How many of those dealers carried the 6.5 x 52mm Carcano ammo? Did the WC check? It’s a rather unusual round compared with the usual run of refills for rifles Americans buy. Had his rifle shot the 7.92 x 57mm Mauser or the .30-06 Springfield nobody would remember seeing Lee Oswald, but having someone ask for something odd, even if you carried it, might stand out in someone’s memory, but I guess it didn’t.
I believe it is assumed that all of the rounds in a box are from the same lot, for what that’s worth. Since all the bullets in a particular loading run are, I should think, dumped into a hopper from an assortment of boxes from the manufacturer I don’t think two bullets with different alloys in a box of 20 would be the slightest bit surprising.
Well, he mail-ordered the rifle under an assumed name, he could have mail-ordered the bullets, too. More likely, he casually bought his ammo anonymously at various gun stores in a manner that struck no particular clerk as memorable. Heck, you can still buy Carcano ammo today, so I see no reason to assume it was particularly rare or unusual in 1963.
Could someone address this please? I just bought Bugliosi’s book, so it’ll take a bit of time to get through all of the evidence (what with the need to eat and sleep and all), but this particular allegation is one I’ve never been able to answer.
I think I’ll answer my own question, having found that part of Bugliosi’s book that deals with Oswald’s location on the 2nd floor.
First, the Warren Commission’s estimate of 90 seconds was based on a recreation of Officer Marrion Baker’s movements from a motorcycle trailing JFK’s car to the 2nd floor lunchroom (another test of the trip took 75 seconds). Baker, however, has acknowledged that his actual time was probably a little slower, since he had to deal with the crowd of people, and since he paused at the entrance to the depository to survey the situation before entering the building.
The Commission also recreated Oswald’s descent, and timed that (using a normal walking pace) at 78 seconds. When using a fast walk, the descent took 74 seconds. Both times allowed for Oswald to be on the 2nd floor. The secret service agent who acted Oswald’s part later told Bugliosi that he wasn’t out of breath, even after the fast walk (he was, after all, descending stairs, which is far less taxing then climbing them).
The issue of the coke is a red herring. Both Officer Baker and Roy Truly, who was accompanying him, testified to the Warren Commission that Oswald was empty-handed when they saw him. Although it is true that employee R.A. Reid did see Oswald with a full bottle of Coke, it is reasonable (and was concluded by the commission) that Oswald bought the Coke after the encounter with Baker and Truly.
Excuse me? There were palm and fingerprints left on the rifle: Oswalds’s. (one could not be identified with the technology of the day) Not to mention the bag they found that was likely how he brough it in to work had Oswald’s prints.
Brennan had concerns that he might be a target. At the time there was a concern that this was a conspiracy.
He did not need to wipe down the rifle, and he was hardly ‘calmly sipping a coke’. He was just there, and it doesn’t take long to get down four flights of stairs. Hiding the rifle was a matter of dropping it. He did not have a coke
Pause? Your talking about 4 frames on the Zapruder film
Doubtful. Even if he had, he would have swung for Tippet.
It was not so rare in that day. It was a surplus round and there was still lots of surplus left over. There’d probably still be a decent amount of it around had the rifle not gained such noteriety and become a collectors items.
Pretty weak. A guy walking into a guns store and buying two different boxes of ammo (he also had to get bullets for his pistol, a very common round) is nothing unusual. Its like expecting the guy at the deli to remember someone who bought a sandwich two months ago.
What I think the physicists did, although I don’t have their raw data at hand, but it would seem logical to think that they used an analysis of variance test (ANOVA) to determine whether the variances in lead contaminants of the bullets fall within a reasonable ‘confidence interval’. Their variance tests did not support the hypothesis of the Warren Commission, to a reasonable degree of certainty, that the bullets (which supposedly originated from the MC carbine that Oswald allegedly used) were all part of the same batch of ammo.
IOW, based on that statistical test, yes, it is reasonable to conclude that there were different sources of ammunition which killed JFK. It is NOT reasonable to conclude that Oswald could have or would have used different bullets for making the 3 precise shots in the course of the assassination. Professional snipers would tend to use the same kind of ammo for a consistent MOA (i.e., Minute Of Angle, a mathematical term for measuring accuracy of rifles/ammo).
Besides that, the magic bullet theory always seemed implausible because there were more lead fragments in Connally’s wrist than there are missing fragments from the magic bullet, a single bullet which supposedly bounced back and forth and caused wounds to JFK and Connally.
BTW, I would also encourage readers to become more informed of Bugliosi’s misinformation and falsities contained in his “Reclaiming History” book, a book which is unfortunately considered practically sacred by some of the posters on this forum. Documenting Bugliosi’s (and HBO’s) lies is a great site started by Rex Bradford: http://www.reclaiminghistory.org/
No, I have not contributed personally to this website as I did at prouty.org, but why would the origin of the source that really matter if the information is historically accurate?
What would you consider a “reasonable degree of certainty”, and as has been pointed out, the bullets Oswald had could easily have come from different lots, thrown together randomly. If Oswald took bullet 1 from one box and bullet 2 from another box, how would that constitute exculpatory evidence? What if a box of ammo at the Acme Bullet Wholesalers (or whatever company name was on the box) is put together from piles of bullets in a hopper, collected from various machines?
He was using the same kind of ammo. The individual bullets, though, show some individual antimony variation (assuming this claim is accepted).
There’s nothing magical about it. The second bullet takes some wierd curves as it cuts through the bodies of Kennedy and Connally, but there’s no “back and forth” aspect to it. As for extra fragments, is there is a nice easy-to-read reference that has a record of all the fragments collected and their total mass?
I’d never heard of him before reading this thread, truth be told. I’d just like you to, after you asked for a reasonable explanation, to read the ones we’re giving you and respond, rather than dig up more dubious references and accusations. Please explain, succinctly and in your own words, what an antimony variation says about the single-shooter theory.
Basically, because it’s the standard route that is used by any motorcade that goes thru downtown Dallas.
This is covered in some detail in the Warren Commission Report, including references to various other political motorcades that used that same route.
Are you callin’ Lee Harvey Oswald a liar?
mm
In statistics, the definitions of a ‘confidence interval’ and a ‘reasonable degree of certainty’ are quite clear and precise. Nothing ambiguous. A test which establishes a 95% confidence interval isn’t really some subjective opinion. As long as we have random, independent variables to work with, which the physicists did when they tested the batch of MC bullets.
You’ve just violated Occam’s Razor, i.e., one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. You can not establish with reasonable probability that Oswald had a mixed batch of bullets in his sniper’s arsenal. Therefore, that hypothesis should not even be considered and must be rejected. Likewise with the manufacture supplying mixed batches.
We don’t entertain ‘what if’ scenarios unless they can be supported by a data set which can be tested independently by anyone who wants to do it. I mean, what if a Martian from outer space shot JFK? Occam’s Razor dictates that we minimize our explanations and theories to a logical minimum.
That is why I generally don’t respond to some posts. They carry these “Oswald did it” scenarios to impossible lengths and absurdities. Much like Posner and Bugliosi.
It easier to believe in multiple snipers than Oswald buying bullets from different stores, or boxes of bullets being assembled from different batches with trivial variation in alloys?
What is the logical minimum you have arrived at? A succinct theory of the crime in 300 words or less will suffice.
It’s impossible that in nine months Oswald bought several boxes of rifle bullets, conceivably from different stores and by different manufacturers, or from manufacturers without super-tight tolerances for antimony content?
No need to speculate even on the mixed packing of ammunition boxes by the manufacturer, although that could certainly occur.
Oswald had the rifle for months. He practiced with it (load and unload, dry fire, and firing range) repeatedly. It was his “baby”; his wife testifies to him playing with it on the porch, and there is testimony about him firing it at a range.
He would have expended (fired) some unknown number of cartridges each trip to the range, and presumably purchased more to re-supply himself. Thus he probably had at least several boxes of cartridges, purchased at various places and various times throughout this period. But it is unlikely that any trip to the range used up exactly one (or two, or three) boxes. At least, I never “come out even” like that. Over time I accumulate “partial boxes”, which I consolidate together, thus mixing what might or might not have been “pure” boxes.
Further mixing occurs as I load and then unload a clip or clips. Just because I took these five cartridges out of one box (or partial box) does not mean I’ll return them to the same box (or partial box) in any load and unload cycle.
If I look in my gun cabinet right now, I’ll find anywhere from two to half a dozen boxes of cartridges for each firearm. Some few of those will be brand spankin’ new and factory sealed. Most though will be partial boxes, and re-filled full boxes, created by my own loadings and unloadings. The guns I use most often, my “favorites”, will have a higher number of such open and mixed boxes than the guns I fire rarely.
Frankly I never give thought to trying somehow to keep individual cartridges in their original container. Of course, this is indeed done by match competitors and real snipers. Lot variation can certainly influence a target score, or a sniper kill. But I’m not a match competitor who wins or loses a match by a millimeter or two of “spread” in a grouping. And I’m not a sniper who may extensively practice a kill scenario on a range and then get only a single attempt at the real target at some extreme distance. Modern ammunition manufacturer’s quality control gives me quite adequate groups when I shoot at paper, and sufficient confidence that the bullet will go where I point it when I shoot at something else.
Surely Oswald’s scenario with his rifle was similar to mine. Oswald wasn’t a sniper or a match competitor either. His Marine training made him a middling to decent shot in artificial combat, but there is no evidence that he trained as a sniper or a match competitor. So there was nothing in his background to suggest that he was anal compulsive about the sanctity of any mere box of cartridges.
Some trifling variation between the two recovered bullets? Both within manufacturer’s standards but not necessarily from the same factory lot? Pffui! No issue.
You’re wearing your razor backwards.
It’s almost like you’ve looked up this Occam’s Razor thing since starting this thread, and have the words memorized but don’t yet grasp the concept.
We don’t know the origin of the bullets used. That doesn’t say that they were from different batches, it just says we don’t know, and it’s easily plausible that the bullets he took with him on that day came from different batches. So instead of rejecting the idea that he had a set from a single batch, or from two or three batches, we can ignore that for the purposes of evidence. The neutron activation analysis was a very minor point in the overall large set of evidence that implicated Oswald. Taking it away still leaves a very clear picture of a lone nut gunman.