Debunking the "Magic Bullet" theory...

JFK: Jim Garrison, The Warren Report and the end of the “magic bullet” absurdity

by Jim Fetzer (with Larry Rivera)

The crux of The Warren Commission Report (1964) is the claim that the same bullet that hit JFK in the back also hit Gov. John Connally, which the report itself downplays the “magic bullet” theory as “not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission”.

That is complete rubbish, however, since if the same bullet did not both exit JFK’s throat and enter John Connally’s back, then those wounds have to be accounted for on the basis of separate shots and separate shooters, which implies a conspiracy to kill JFK.

A mountain of evidence proves that the shot that hit JFK in the back did not enter at the base of his neck but 5.5″ below the collar to the right of the spinal column, which was a shallow shot at a downward angle, making it all but impossible it should have taken an upward turn to exit his throat.

With a deft verbal sleight-of-hand, the Warren Commission downplayed the significance of the “magic bullet” theory, where no less an authority than Michael Baden, M.D., the one-time medical examiner for New York City and head of the medical panel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) when it reinvestigated the case in 1977-78, has observed, “If the magic bullet theory is false, then there had to have been six shots from three directions”, which makes its tenability of enormous importance.

When we “look inside” The Warren Commission Report (1964), here is how it describes the matter (on page 16) after maintaining that the weight of the evidence “indicates” that only three shots were fired:

3. Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. However, Governor Connally’s testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President’s and Governor Connally’s wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

That Governor Connally’s testimony should have given them pause is unsurprising, since he maintained until his death that he had been struck by a separate bullet and not by the same bullet that hit JFK. Here is a critique of the Warren Commission’s stance by New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, to wit:



So which is correct? Was JFK hit at the base of the back of his neck as the Warren Commission claims? or is Jim Garrison right and the “magic bullet” theory is a fairy tale? It turns out that there is a great deal of evidence that settles the question beyond a reasonable doubt. Just consider the following for yourself.

Where was JFK hit in the back?

I presented a lecture at Cambridge University during an international conference, which was published in an international peer-reviewed journal under the title, “Reasoning about Assassinations”, which I thought had settled the matter. Here is the shirt and the jacket he was wearing, left behind at Parkland:

They both show holes about 5.5″ below the collar and just to the right of the spinal column. During one of his visits to the National Archives, David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., had a member of the staff put them on and determined that the hole in the shirt was slightly lower than the hole in the jacket. While some want to maintain that they were “bunched”, a wound at this location appears on the autopsy diagram:

The autopsy diagram was verified by Admiral George G. Burkley, the President’s personal physician, who also composed a death certificate on JFK, which described his death as the result of a massive wound to the back of the head and a second wound to his back at the level of the third thoracic vertebrae:

It will come as no surprise that the third thoracic vertebra is about 5.5″ below the collar, which confirms the other evidence from the shirt and the jacket he was wearing and the autopsy diagram. So we know where JFK was hit in the back, which was not at the base of back of the neck but 5.5″ below the collar.

The Warren Commission Reenactment

As though that were not proof enough, we also have an FBI Agent by the name of Sibert drew a sketch of the wound to the back in relation to the wound to the throat, which makes it very difficult to believe that a bullet that entered at the location he specifies at a downward angle could possibly have exited his throat:

And we have a great deal more, including Warren Commission staff reconstruction photos. Here is my favorite from the history of research on the assassination, featuring a young Arlene Specter, who is in the process of demonstrating the trajectory that the “magic bullet” would have taken where that theory true:

Since you can look below his hand and see the large patch on the back of the stand-in where the bullet had hit, a photograph intended to illustrate the “magic bullet” instead refutes it. And here the person who spent the most time with the body preparing it for burial describes the wounds that he observed:

Notice, in particular, that, in addition to the massive blow-out at the back of his head, the entry wound at the right temple and the small shrapnel wounds in his face, that the body had a “wound in back (5 to six inches) below shoulder to the right of back bone”. How much more proof do we need about its location?

Read the rest here:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/11/26/jfk-jim-garrison-the-warren-report-and-the-end-of-the-magic-bullet-absurdity/