Posted on 06/30/2007 4:36:50 PM PDT by 1066AD
Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets' By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:30am BST 01/07/2007
Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.
The new findings will encourage conspiracy theorists In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough.
The findings will fuel continuing theories that Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy to murder the 35th American president on 22 November 1963.
The official Warren Commission inquiry into the shooting concluded the following year that Oswald was a lone gunman who fired three shots with a Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 8.3 seconds.
But when the Italian team test-fired the identical model of gun, they were unable to load and fire three shots in less than 19 seconds - suggesting that a second gunman must have been present in Dealey Plaza, central Dallas, that day.
Two of the bullets hit Kennedy, with the first - the so called "magic bullet", ridiculed by conspiracy theorists - also wounding the governor of Texas, John B Connally, after it had struck the president.
In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940.
They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact.
The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.
The findings will encourage conspiracy theorists who hold that Oswald could not have fired three shots in time. For each shot, he would have had to push up the gun's bolt handle, pull the bolt backwards to eject the spent cartridge case and then forward to slide the next round into the chamber, before turning down the bolt handle to lock it in place.
Nearly seven out of 10 Americans believe that Kennedy was murdered as a result of a plot. Depending on which theory they back, the participants supposedly included any or all of the CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans, the FBI chief J Edgar Hoover, the military-industrial complex and Vice-President Lyndon B Johnson.
It is the second challenge in two months to the view of the Warren Commission that Oswald acted alone. In May, researchers at Texas A&M University argued that the ballistics evidence used to rule out a second gunman had been misinterpreted.
The findings will be a frustration to Vincent Bugliosi, the author of a 1,600-page book, also published in May, which claimed to put to rest all the conspiracy theories of the past 44 years.
The Italian findings will be hotly contested by those who believe that Oswald was a lone gunman - not least because they contradict firing tests previously conducted, using Oswald's actual rifle, by the FBI and the US Marines, and another study by Washington police marksmen using an identical gun.
Oswald would only have needed to reload the weapon twice in the eight seconds to get off all three shots, since the time was measured only from the moment he fired the first shot. The FBI concluded that a marksman could have fired a shot at least every 2.3 seconds.
In his book, Mr Bugliosi details how after just two or three minutes' practice with the gun in 1979, three police marksmen aiming at three targets representing Kennedy at the same distance from Oswald, got away three shots in less than eight seconds.
One marksman hit the targets twice and missed the third shot by an inch. A second shooter scored a "kill" with his second shot.
Mr Bugliosi recounts three separate ballistics tests that found that the magic bullet could have wounded Kennedy and Connally and emerged in similar condition to the real bullet. But that is unlikely to stop the Italian research fuelling another generation of conspiracy writers.
Well, that settles it. It sounds like the lone gunman scenario has been proved to be true.
......hosted by Peter Jennings.
Well, that settles it. It sounds like the lone gunman scenario cannot possibly be true.
It was the vast right wing conspiracy.
All righty, then, I'm an idiot because i believe the available evidence, while you have no evidence to the contrary. Uh huh. There has to be a conspiracy. There just has to !! I WANT TO BELIEVE!!!!!1!
Your words: As far as I am concerned, anyone who is willing to buy that garbage, is seriously suspect when it comes to free thinking.
But you can provide no evidence to the contrary. So I should believe you because ... you said so. Please.
The "Best Evidence" book which I read a long while ago might give you some insight to the mysteries of the handling of the situation way back in 1963.
It also might give me insight into the conspiracy loopiness of David Lifton. Been there, done that. David Lane, too.
You're obviously new to this discussion. I'm not. The debate has gone one for almost 44 years, and I was involved in it for more than a dozen before I lost the energy. Don't bring the weak stuff to the table.
I have read a few other books on the subject as well, but that fact I supose will clearly/likely not carry much weight in your view.
I bet all of them came down on the pro-conspiracy side. I've read "Case Closed" by Gerald Posner, and I recommend it. I haven't read -- but I plan to -- "Reclaiming history" by Vincent Bugliosi, The Los Angeles County DA who, among other accomplishments, got Charles Manson convicted.
So, no, the fact that you've read a few books doesn't carry a lot of weight with me. I've read a few more.
Jim Garrison
was a hack, a charlatan, and a self-promoting fraud. A few years after the failed prosecution of Clay Shaw, Garrison faced and was acquitted of corruption charges.
He was later defeated for re-election by an attorney named Harry Connick. Connick's son, Harry Jr., was a prodigy who took after-school piano lessons from a N'awlins pianist named Ellis Marsalis. After the lessons, he played -- played music, played games -- with Marsalis' sons, Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason.
Oliver Stone's fantasy flick was based on Garrison's made-up theory. It doesn't merit more commentary than that.
Whatever, as long as there are mindless ones such as yourself who find "free thinking" to be somehow an insult
I don't think "free thinking" is an insult. I think your use of the phrase is a joke. I am not opposed to free thinking -- I'm a practitioner. I'm not mocking free thinking. I'm mocking you.
the perpetrators will continue to move among us all unabated.
The murderer of President John F. Kennedy was Lee Harvey Oswald, who was shot dead in November 1963. If you know of other perpetrators who "continue to walk among us unabated," name them.
“Some of my friends are for coyote hunting and some of my friends are against coyote hunting. I want you to know, I’m for my friends”- Unknown Politician.
As excellent a refutation of an argument as I have ever read! Well Done, Sir!!
You have a lot invested in your theories. Ruby was pictured up on Dealy Plaza that afternoon also. What about the three tramps? Charles Harrison, the CIA guy and one other known assassin. I could go on and on.
I am still going to turn them out, but I wanted to say before I tuck myself in that you are willfully blind in my opinion.
If you are so feeble minded that you believe that hogwash of a cover up concerning Oswald and Kennedy, then likely you and I really do not have a whole lot to talk about at all.
“Ruby was pictured up on Dealy Plaza that afternoon also.”
Can you please refer me to where you saw this?
“What about the three tramps? Charles Harrison, the CIA guy and one other known assassin.”
Can you please refer me to WTF you’re talking about?
“I could go on and on.”
Please do. You’re making me curious as to what it is you think you know.
If the driver collapsed, the president would have been pushed to the floor with a pile of Secret Service agents on top of him.
The way to pick off the president is to pick off the president. Try to get clever, leave a few seconds' delay, and everyone moves to protect the president, and you just wind up braining Jim Brady.
“And the willingly stupid will sleep peacefully.”
REDWOOD99 6-30-07
But of course.
The DVR description claims that it's narrated by Peter Jennings, but the voice of the narrator is clearly not Peter Jennings. I think he died before he could track the narration. I'm about 95% certain that the voice is that of Frank Sesno, formerly of CNN.
Strange - caught a few minutes of a special on the Kennedy assassination on the History Channel (during a commercial break in “Das Boot” on AMC) - showed marksman having no trouble getting off three shots in eight seconds while taking time to aim with the same type of rifle used by Oswald - depends on what you’re trying to prove or disprove apparently.....
One more point, sometimes I think people are willing to believe a conspiracy theory (sometimes even outlandish ones) rather than accepting things at face value such as the “lone gunman theories”, as psychologically, it’s more comforting to believe in a conspiracy rather than deal with a world where evil can happen anywhere, at any time. IOW, there is no reason, or plan, but rather random chaos.
Not to contradict myself, per se, but I don’t think we will ever really know what happened with JFK.
At this point, who cares?
Kennedy was a rotten President anyway.
This will never go away - like John Wilkes Booth and whether or not the guy killed was REALLY him, or whether or not his diary had secret information in it that the War Department removed.
Talk all you want if you have real information to bring. If all you have is more insults and speculation, then it’s probably best that you save your tim and mine.
Harrelson has declared that he was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination. [3] Some think he was one of the three tramps photographed after being arrested on November 22, 1963, in a boxcar in the railyard near Dealey Plaza. [4] Harrelson’s arresting officer, Marvin L. Wise, claims that the three men in his custody were released after a few hours of questioning. The other arresting officer, David V. Harkness, testified that there were several individuals removed from the train that day other than the three individuals in the photograph. Dallas Police Department documents presented to the public in 1992 indicate that three transients arrested by Dallas officer W.E. Chambers with no connection to the assassination were jailed for six days for vagrancy, and that one of those men was named John Gedney.
You’ve thrown a vagarie at the Charles Harrelson question. Let’s accept it as truth. At 23 years old, what idiot would hire him to assassinate the President. Or was he the spotter for “the CIA guy and the one other known assassin.”?
So did Penn and Teller on their series Bull$hit
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