All of those who insist on the lone assassin theory in the murder of President Kennedy, are entirely dependent on the "magic bullet" theory in order to justify their claim that a single assassin committed the deed. This miraculous bullet went through JFK causing only a small tear in the trachea, and a small (2") bruise on the upper right lung; it did so while tumbling through some 300 degrees of arc in his body. Yeah, right.

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"The most dangerous follower is he whose defection would destroy the whole party: that is to say, the best follower."

Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900), German philosopher. The Wanderer and His Shadow, aphorism 290 (1880).

"Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand."

Karl Marx (18181883), German political theorist, social philosopher. Grundrisse, "Notebook 2" (written 185758; first published 1939).

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."

John F. Kennedy (191763), U.S. Democratic politician, president. Commencement address, June 11, 1962, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

"And I shouted out 'Who killed the Kennedy's?'

When after all, it was you and me."

The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil," Beggar's Banquet

My most recent article for OpEdNews, "Into a Thousand Pieces," has drawn an unbelievable, positive response from the readership, for which I am extremely grateful. It is encouraging to know that almost forty-seven years after the last true President of the United States was murdered in Dallas, with the three unconstitutional branches of our government in firm control of our nation, that there are still other people who mourn him and desire some form of justice for him. And for ourselves as well.

A summation of the article is this: the set-up and cover up of John F. Kennedy's assassination precludes any theory that does not include the National Security State apparatus' involvement.

Folks, this includes any theory where Lee Harvey Oswald is the lone gunman.

No, I have not lost my mind, or even misplaced it. What are the three occurrences that made JFK's murder in Dallas possible?

1. Re-routing the parade route to go down Elm Street.

2. Ordering the 112th Military Intelligence Group to "stand down," rather than do its job: which was to make certain that windows in buildings were sealed shut and roofs were clear of possible snipers.

3. Removing the two Secret Service Agents from their position on the rear bumper of the Presidential limousine (much to their surprise and consternation) at the last minute, where they might interfere with the aim of a sniper behind the President, or jump forward after the first shot, and protect the President and First Lady from any remaining shots by shielding JFK and Jackie with their own bodies. Either way, President John F. Kennedy probably leaves Dallas alive. A film of the Secret Service Agents being ordered off the Presidential limousine's back bumper, and the agent's reaction can be seen at the following site:
   

www.brasschecktv.com/page/206.html

People will argue that this is all merely a coincidence, but I agree with Robert A. Heinlein's general assessment regarding coincidence which states that, "Coincidence is a question begging term." In other words, people say something is a coincidence when they are unwilling to investigate the circumstances of an incident with the due diligence it deserves: either because they are lazy, fearful or because it does not fit their preconceived notion of what has occurred.

Even if Lee Harvey Oswald was the "lone gunman," which I personally doubt, he was not the lone person involved in the conspiracy to kill JFK.

First of all, Oswald has the stink of CIA/ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) all over him, from the time he was a kid in New Orleans.

Second, his "defection" to the Soviet Union has the ham-handed paw prints of the CIA all over it, especially in his return to the United States, and the lack of prosecution when he did return.

Third, his actions after his return to the United States, look mostly like a CIA operative who failed in his mission, and is trying to make himself useful to his government by trying to infiltrate pro-Communist pro-Soviet, or pro-Cuban, organizations in the United States--such as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee--as a CIA/FBI informant.

I believe Oswald being set up as a "patsy" for JFK's murder as his final "reward" for the abject failure of his mission as a "sleeper agent" to the Soviet Union. He was in the position to take the blame for the crime whether he actually shot the President or not. He simply had to die before any "outsider," such as defense counsel, had a chance to speak to him, which certainly would have occurred on Monday morning.

This leads us to poor Jack Ruby.

Jack Ruby is possibly the largest single enigma in the assassination of President Kennedy. A Jewish gangster from Chicago, Jack Rubinstein, aka Jack Ruby, operated at organized crime's periphery in Dallas during the 1950's and early 60's. He claimed to have run numbers for Al Capone when he was a boy.

Ruby initially claimed that he shot Oswald so Jackie Kennedy would not have to return to Dallas for a trial. This claim is, on the face of it, so preposterous that it lacks any credibility. He later told Chief Justice Earl Warren in an interview, that the only way that he could tell the Warren Commission the truth about President Kennedy's murder was if the Commission took him to Washington to testify, and placing him first in protective custody. This would seem to automatically disqualify his initially stated reason for shooting Oswald, because if Ruby could only tell the truth to the Warren Commission in Washington, D.C., under protective custody, by logical extension anything he said to authorities in Dallas most likely would be a lie.

I have often wondered what it was that Jack Ruby did to get himself exiled from Chicago to what was then considered the "cow town" of Dallas? I also wonder what the Mob had on Jack Ruby that allowed them to force Jack Ruby to take out Oswald in such a public manner, with no opportunity to escape?

The "rush to judgment" naming Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman, without any real investigation by the Dallas Police, the FBI, the Secret Service, or the Warren Commission into the possibility of a conspiracy involving any one of a myriad of possible suspects both inside and outside of the American Military-Industrial Complex, was one of the greatest disservices ever performed by law enforcement in this country. I would call it a lynch mob mentality, but in this case, the mob was being led by law enforcement and the judiciary, while those who stood the most to gain from JFK's death, cheered from the sidelines.

We have discussed the pre-assassination set-up; now let us consider the post-assassination cover up.

First, is the simple fact that the provenance and chain of custody of much of the evidence presented to the Warren Commission is, at best, questionable. Missing x-rays, photos, and other evidence--including JFK's brain, or what's left of it, sealed in formalin--are nearly as important as the crime scene (the Presidential limousine), which was being scrubbed down by the Secret Service at the hospital. Then there are the mysterious figures at Bethesda instructing the pathologists conducting JFK's autopsy what to do and what not to do during the autopsy. Finally, there is the mysterious and sudden appearance of a nearly pristine bullet, Commission Exhibit 399 (CE 399), whose striations matched those of Oswald's rifle, on one of the stretchers in Parkland's ER that afternoon.

Besides its questionable provenance, CE 399 has a number of problems. First is the small (less than two-and-a-half grains) amount of mass that was lost from this bullet that supposedly had gone through two men, including several large bones.

Second, it appears that the amount of metal left behind by CE 399 as it traversed the two men's bodies probably exceeds the total mass lost by the bullet. The two largest fragments left in Governor Connally's right wrist--and these are not the only fragments that were left--are, according to the Warren Commission, 2x3 mm and 1x2 mm.

With a very conservative estimate of 0.1 mm thickness for each fragment, and a specific gravity of approximately 10.25 g/cc for the lead alloy of the bullet, you get 0.082g or 82 mg for the weight of those two fragments alone, or 1.27 grains of lead alloy in gun speak. This is conservatively of the mass missing from CE 399, and the actual average thickness of those two fragments is more likely to be 0.2 or 0.3 mm, doubling or tripling the mass of the two fragments. There are also a number of smaller fragments in Connally's wrist, chest, and leg according to his x-rays. I think a proper inventory of the lead fragments in John Connally's body would show he had a far greater mass of bullet fragments in his body than the mass of the lead missing from CE 399.

And this does not include whatever lead fragments might be in JFK's body from the passage of that "magic bullet."

That is if CE 399 ever passed through President Kennedy.

The magic performed by this bullet inside of JFK's body is every bit as amazing as that which it is supposed to have performed after it left.

CE 399 supposedly entered the President's body at a 45-60 degree downward angle (affidavit of retired FBI agent Francis X. O'Neill to House Select Committee on Assassinations, p. 4), leaving "a 7 x 4 millimeter oval wound." This wound was "Situated on the upper right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula"This wound is measured to be 14 cm. from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm. below the tip of the right mastoid process." (Warren Report: Appendix IX; Autopsy Report and Supplemental Report; Clinical Record, Autopsy Protocol.)

We are then told that this "magic bullet" tumbled through JFK's upper torso and lower neck, missing blood vessels, bone and muscle; leaving the other organs in that area of the body untouched, except:

"the apex (supra-clavicular portion) of the right pleural cavity. In this region there is contusion of the parietal pleura and of the extreme apical portion of the right upper lobe of the lung. In both instances the diameter of contusion and ecchymosis at the point of maximal involvement measures 5 cm. Both the visceral and parietal pleura are intact overlying these areas of trauma." (Warren Report: Appendix IX; Autopsy Report and Supplemental Report; Clinical Record, Autopsy Protocol.)

In other words, there is a bruise about two inches across in the area of the upper right lung.

After this fantastic journey through JFK's body, CE 399 then exited the President's body, leaving a wound which could be mistaken by the trauma team at Parkland Memorial Hospital--who were experienced with gunshot wounds--to mistake it for an entrance wound when they performed a tracheotomy. Then CE 399 continued on its merry way, making up for the lack of damage it did to JFK internally, with John Connally's horrific wounds.

A miraculous bullet with a sense of balancing the books.

In order to believe the "magic bullet theory," we have to believe that it not only exercised non-bullet like behavior in striking Governor Connally, but that it exhibited non-bullet like behavior as it tumbled through President Kennedy. This amazing projectile tumbled through more than 300 degrees of arc, missing veins, arteries, vital organs, muscles, and bones, and then exited through JFK's throat, causing only a two inch bruise on the upper right lung.

"The missile path through the fascia and musculature cannot be easily proved." (Warren Report: Appendix IX; Autopsy Report and Supplemental Report; Clinical Record, Autopsy Protocol.)

Wrong adverb: it should be "cannot possibly be proved."

The autopsy at Bethesda never undertook a dissection of JFK's throat or back wounds to see if there was a bullet track from one to the other, which is standard procedure for an autopsy involving a suspected through and through bullet wound. It was simply assumed that the bullet hole in the back exited through the wound in the President's throat. In fact, the only examinations of the back wound were when Dr. Humes stuck his gloved pinkie finger in it, and later Dr. Finck, when he initially examined the wound with a metal probe. Both of these examinations indicated that the back wound was quite shallow, penetrating no more than three or four inches.

The pathologists were able to connect the back and throat wounds with a metal probe, only after the lungs had been removed.

The failure to dissect JFK's back and throat wounds to prove that they were made by the same projectile, turns the Warren Commission findings concerning the "magic bullet," as CE 399 has been called, into nothing but wildest speculation, not what a forensic pathologist or a court of law would call "best evidence."

Any defense attorney worth his salt would object to testimony that the back wound was the entrance wound, while the throat wound was the exit wound of the same bullet, as incompetent. The evidence presented by the trauma team at Parkland, and the failure of the pathologists at Bethesda to dissect the wound tracks, would provide absolutely no legal basis, and only wildest speculation, for such a supposition.

But then, the Warren Commission's investigators were dependent on the wildest and most self-serving suppositions possible, suppositions that could not be supported by the evidence: that the wound to the upper back and the wound to the throat were made by the same bullet. The best evidence, because of the failure to properly dissect the wound track, is the testimony of the physicians and nurses at Parkland's Emergency Room, said that they both appeared to be entry wounds. If they were both entry wounds, then we have at least two assassins/teams in Dealey Plaza on that November afternoon.

Even if police and Federal authorities could only find physical evidence for three bullets being fired, it is not proof (or even evidence) that one of those wounds in JFK was an entrance and the other an exit wound; it is at the very most, the evidence of two wounds. This is plainly a case of manipulating the facts to fit your theories.

I'm not an attorney, but I believe that I could object to an attempt to introduce such evidence on the basis of it being incompetent and immaterial, in that it goes to matters outside of the witnesses' direct knowledge.

Yes, I did watch a lot of episodes of Perry Mason when I was younger.

No, in this case, "best evidence" would be the testimony of the doctors and nurses at Parkland Memorial Trauma Room 1; the majority of whom stated that the wound to JFK's throat appeared to be an entrance wound. This wound was then used as the basis for a tracheotomy. It is the tracheotomy that is the cause of the throat wound's larger apparent size, not because it is an exit wound.

This also leads to another conclusion, that there was no single bullet which traversed through JFK's upper back and then out of the notch of his throat, let alone one that continued on to do such massive damage to Governor Connally. The most probable explanation is that the two wounds were made by different gunmen: the back wound from someone firing behind the President; the throat wound from someone firing in front of the President.

This means that there were at least four shots that grim November afternoon. Law enforcement's inability to account for those additional bullets would not mean they do not exist; only that law enforcement cannot account for them.

So, why were no other bullets found?

Actually, parts of several bullets were found. There were large bullet fragments on the floor of the limousine, a bullet found 300 feet down range from the TSBD; evidence for potentially as many as ten different bullets. I believe that some of these indicators, such as the dented chrome above the Presidential limousine's windshield, and the hole in the windshield itself were from bullet fragments.

I believe that only five or six of the indicators were actually caused by independent bullets, the rest were caused by bullet fragments.

I also believe that one or more of the other assassins were probably using some form of frangible or explosivebullet, like the mercury tipped ones described in Frederick Forsyth's book The Day of the Jackal. Or some devilish design out of the CIA's Science and Technology Directorate. With their "explosive" capability, and the fact that they shatter into a thousand unidentifiable pieces on impact, they are the perfect weapon for a sure kill that cannot be traced.

If there were at least four shots, then there had to be (by the Warren Commission's own logic) at least two gunmen. If there are two gunmen, that makes it a conspiracy, something that the National Security State did not (and I suspect even today does not) want properly investigated.

So let us quickly recap:

1. The loss of material in CE 399, the so-called "magic bullet," almost certainly cannot account for all of the bullet fragments in Governor Connally's body, since two of those fragments alone account for more than half the lost material.

2. There is no evidence that CE 399--or any other bullet--ever traversed the interior of President Kennedy's upper torso from the back to the notch of the throat. This is because of the failure of the doctors (at the behest of their superiors) performing the autopsy to fully probe or dissect the wounds in the back and the throat to see if there was a wound track consistent with the theory. In fact the best evidence we have is that they are two completely separate entry wounds.

3. If no bullet passed through President Kennedy, it could not have continued tumbling onward to hit Governor Connally. This means an entirely different bullet hit Governor Connally from the rear. The short period of time between the round that hit Kennedy, and the one that hit Connally, makes it impossible for the shot that hit Connally to have come from the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. This means that there were at least two assassins with rifles behind the President's limousine. This--together with the throat wound--also proves that there had to be at least three assassins/teams in the kill zone at Dealey Plaza that day.

4. The National Security State apparatus had decided JFK must die, and gathered a large group of JFK's enemies to accomplish different parts of the task. All they had to do then was open up JFK's security net, and permit the perpetrators escape.

So let me give you a brief synopsis of what I think happened that grim Friday in November, after the Presidential limousine turned on to Elm.

1. The sniper on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (from this point forward Sniper 1), using Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle fires a shot at JFK and misses. Whether or not this is actually Oswald is a question for someone else to answer, but if this bullet hits and kills President Kennedy, it creates an air tight frame on Lee Harvey Oswald.

2. Sniper 1 takes his second shot at JFK, hitting him in the back, center mass. However, the propellant in that cartridge had degraded over the previous twenty years, so that rather than a kill shot, the bullet only penetrated 3-4 inches into the President's back.

3. A sniper in front of JFK (Sniper 2), whose orders are not to fire unless the first two rounds fail to kill JFK, fires a round using a rifle with a sound suppressor and explosive/frangible ammunition. This round hits JFK in the throat, which the assassin knows (from experience) may or may not kill the President.

4. A third sniper (Sniper 3), who is probably on the roof of the Dallas County Records Building (where a shell casing was found in 1976), fires his first round at almost the same instant. However, the Presidential limousine slows down unexpectedly, and the bullet hits Governor Connally instead of JFK. Sniper 3 is probably not using explosive/frangible bullets. He may however be using sabot rounds: a 6.5 mm bullet in a 7.62mm (.30 caliber) plastic jacket, which it loses as the bullet leaves the barrel. This permits you to take a bullet that has already been fired say from Oswald's rifle), and use it again without adding any striations. The sabots are used to ensure Oswald's patsydom. I believe that Sniper 3's rifle also had a sound suppressor.

5. The Kill Shot. I think that all of the snipers had an order to aim for the head, and make sure JFK is dead at the spot which would become frame 313 of the Zapruder film. I think Sniper 1, with the Mannlicher-Carcano, may have had another misfire. This time the round's primer failed to ignite, which is the reason there are two shell casings and one live round in a photo of the TSBD's sniper's nest. Snipers 2 and 3's bullets hit the President almost simultaneously, killing him, and placing this nation on its current course of a somewhat benevolent dictatorship.

Why do I think that Snipers 2 and 3 were using sound suppressors? Because of the varying number of shots heard by the witnesses in Dealey Plaza that November afternoon.

Misnamed "silencers" in popular fiction, sound suppressors work by slowing the release of the expanding gases created when the primer ignites the powder inside the shell casing to drive the bullet out of the barrel.

Since at least the Second World War, suppressor technology has existed that permitted a semi-automatic pistol to be fired at 98%+ of its normal muzzle velocity, while minimizing the sound output to the gun's mechanical action, plus the sound of the round breaking the sound barrier as it left the barrel. It is for this reason that subsonic weapons and ammunition--such as the .45 ACP--are preferred as candidates for suppressed weapons: no tell tale "crack" as the bullet breaks the sound barrier.

I know that by 1968, the suppressor technology for rifles had improved enough so that a suppressor was optional equipment on the Army's M-21 sniper rifle, a heavily modified variant of the standard M-14. It was reportedly so quiet that--with the suppressor in place--you could not hear its mechanical workings, or the crack of the bullet going supersonic, outside 100 yards. The 7.62 NATO/.308 Winchester round that the M-21 used, reportedly lost less than 1% of its performance with the suppressor in place. (All of this is from some long lost issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine from the late 1980's. I am sorry that I do not have an exact issue to refer to.)

I do not think that I am going out on a limb to assume that the National Security State had equivalent, or near equivalent, suppressors available to them in November, 1963.

The reason that my hypothesis is important is this: if you can only hear the sound of the M-21 with suppressor in place at distances of less than 100 yards; you would logically have to be in just the right place in Dealey Plaza to hear either one or both of the two suppressed rifles that I am hypothesizing here. If you are in one place you hear only three shots; fifty feet to your right, someone else hears five.

The inability of the witnesses in Dealey Plaza to agree on the number of shots fired that grim afternoon is emblematic of this nation, and its struggles, for the last forty-six plus years.

We have become a nation that is so hung up on the minutiae, that we have forgotten the most important facts in our lives.

We worry more about political correctness and the right to bear arms, than we do about freedom of speech and of the press, as our right to know is buried in media mergers, news driven by profit, and mindless gossip.

We worry more about a woman's right to choose and a fetuses' right to live, than we do in caring for that woman before the child is conceived, let alone born, or caring for the child after he or she is born.

We worry about the United States remaining the dominant military power in the world; while as an economic power, which controls its own destiny, we have already fallen into the second tier of nations.

We must never forget the words from President Kennedy's inaugural address, "Ask not, what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

I think its time to go do something.

Authors Bio:

Richard Girard is a polymath and autodidact whose greatest desire in life is to be his generations' Thomas Paine. He is an FDR Democrat, which probably puts him with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the current political spectrum. His answer to all of those who decry Democratic Socialism is that it is a system invented by one of our Founding Fathers--Thomas Paine--and was the inspiration for two of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who the Democrats of today would do well if they would follow in their footsteps. Or to quote Harry Truman, "Out of the great progress of this country, out of our great advances in achieving a better life for all, out of our rise to world leadership, the Republican leaders have learned nothing. Confronted by the great record of this country, and the tremendous promise of its future, all they do is croak, 'socialism.'