Figure 2 shows the "magic" bullet's purported trajectory as presented in a diagram from Gerald Posner's CASE CLOSED (1963);
Figure 3 shows the jacket and the shirt that JFK was wearing, which have holes about 5 ½ inces below the collar, the shirt hole slightly lower than the jacket;
Figure 4 shows the autopsy diagram prepared by J. Thornton Boswell, and verified by Admiral Burkely, with a wound about 5 ½ inches below the collar;
Figure 5 shows a diagram prepared by FBI Special Agent James Sibert’s diagram showing the wound to the back well below the wound to the throat;
Figure 6 shows the location of the third thoracic vertebra, which Admiral Burkley identified as the location of the shot to the back, about 5 ½ inches below the collar; and,
Figure 7 shows a re-enactment photograph from The New York Times that shows the location of the back wound about 5 ½ inches below the collar.
Which raises the question, “How could the Warren Commission have gotten its location so wrong?”, the answer to which appears to be multifaceted. The shirt and the jacket were left behind at Parkland Hospital and not transported to Bethesda, in violation of standard autopsy protocols. Humes and Boswell, neither of whom had conducted an autopsy on a gunshot victim before, appear to have been under military control. And, as the Assassination Records Review Board—a five-member committee established by an act of Congress to declassify documents and records held by the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, and other agencies related to the death of JFK—would disclose in one of their first official releases, Gerald Ford (R-MI), then a junior member of the commission, had the wound redescribed from “his uppermost back”, already an exaggeration, to “the base of the back of his neck”, in a transparent effort to make the “magic bullet” theory more plausible, an event that was even reported in The New York Times (July 3, 1997), which was in time for me to include it in ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), p. 177.
As if that were not proof enough that the offical account cannot be sustained, David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., who is board-certified in radiation oncology, took a patient with chest and neck dimensions similar to those of JFK and took a CAT scan of his neck:
Figure 8 shows that, if you plot the alleged trajectory of the “magic bullet”, it is not even anatomically possible, because “bony structures”—cervical vertebrae—intervene.
Cerebrum and cerebellum, of course, could not have been extruding from a non-existent wound. Mantik has visited the National Archives repeatedly and has discovered that the official autopsy X-rays were altered to conceal that massive blow out to the back of his head:
Figure 9 shows the area that was “patched” using material that was far too dense to be human bone in order to conceal the blow-out caused by a shot from the front.
Which means that, if there was also a shot to the back of the head, as Humes and Boswell both maintained, then there had to have been four shots to JFK: the shot to the throat (from in front), the shot to the back (from behind), and two shots to the head (one from behind and the other from in front), which shows that Baden was right: not only is the “magic bullet” provably false but assuming one shot to Connally (from the side) and one shot that missed (injuring Tague), there were at least six shots from three directions. This conclusion, moreover, receives support from Thomas Evan Robinson, who prepared the body for burial and who described the wounds he observed during a phone interview:
Figure 10 shows that the mortician observed the massive blow-out to the back of the head, the small wound to the right temple, and a wound to the back five to six inches below the shoulder, as well as no swelling or discoloration to the face (he died instantly).
Which means that the wound to JFK’s throat and the wounds to Connally have to be accounted for on the basis of other shots and other shooters, which means that THE WARREN REPORT (1964) and other studies based upon the “magic bullet” theory, including THE HSCA FINAL REPORT (1979) and Gerald Posner’s CASE CLOSED (1993) are based upon a false premise, which represents the difference between the official conclusion of a lone, demented shooter and a conspiracy involving multiple shooters who fired a minimum of six shots from at least three locations. And the key player in obfuscating the truth from the American people was Arlen Specter, with a little help from his friends, one of whom would also become President of the United States.
PASSION FOR TRUTH
Specter would publish a book, PASSION FOR TRUTH (2001), in which he discusses his involvement in the investigation of the death of JFK, the Anita Hill hearings, and other controversial events in which he played important roles. On March 4, 2001, he gave an interview to Paul Alexander and John Batchelor on WABC, which lasted just seven minutes, during which he made seven claims about the assassination and the "magic bullet” that are not simply false but actually provably false as follows:
(1) that JFK was standing when he was hit;
