Museum curator seeks to solve JFK mystery

Knight Ridder Newspapers ^ | 11/21/2002 | MIKE COCHRAN

[mlo]

	Posted on Thu, Nov. 21, 2002
	Museum curator seeks to solve JFK mystery BY MIKE COCHRAN Knight Ridder Newspapers DALLAS - (KRT) - It was 39 years ago today, a Friday, in fact, that President John F. Kennedy was slain on the streets of Dallas. For researchers such as Gary Mack, the echoes of gunfire in Dealey Plaza remain as haunting as ever. Maybe more so. "There's crazy stuff going on," Mack says. "It's so screwy, now, that there are people out there who are actually confessing to having a role in the crime. "There are people who claim they were on the grassy knoll firing away." It's little wonder then, Mack says, that polls conducted by Gallup and Zogby International over the years show that a vast majority of Americans believe Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy. Mack, 56, is curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, located in the old Texas School Book Depository overlooking Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was fatally shot on Nov. 22, 1963. For 27 years, Mack - with relentless curiosity, an academic's eye and an investigator's skepticism - has sought answers to the JFK mystery. He joined the Sixth Floor Museum as an archivist in 1994. Founded by the Dallas County Historical Foundation and funded by visitor fees, the nonprofit museum is one of the most popular historic sites in North Texas with 450,000 visitors a year. "My role as curator is to be able to put this story in context and to present it objectively and accurately," Mack says. "Whatever history records is what the museum exhibits eventually will include. "The museum's role is to educate and inform its visitors in a way that does not push any one point of view or any particular theory." But one widely known conspiracy theorist sings Mack's praises. "Gary is an excellent researcher," says Jim Marrs, whose book "Crossfire" was the basis in part for Oliver Stone's controversial movie, "JFK." Today, Marrs teaches a class on the assassination at UT-Arlington. Says Mack, with a humorless laugh, "The important thing is President Kennedy's life and legacy ... but Oliver Stone's movie is what most people think of first." It was in 1975 in Wichita, Kan., where he worked at a radio station, that Mack first saw Abraham Zapruder's film of the assassination. "It changed my life," he says. He's been hooked ever since. "I don't know that (Lee Harvey) Oswald did anything that day, but I know the Warren Commission decided he killed President Kennedy," he says. "I know that the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late seventies also said he killed President Kennedy, but that he had a second shooter working with him. "So there are two official versions of history, and I don't know which one's right." He's hardly alone. Almost four decades later, after numerous books, movies, TV documentaries, independent investigative efforts, scattered "confessions" and two formal governmental investigations, including the Warren Commission in the 1960s, millions of Americans still ask: "Who killed JFK?" Mack believes that new information on the assassination still could surface. "There were people in Dealey Plaza with cameras whose pictures have never been seen. Maybe one of those pictures will turn up and you can see the face of a guy who can answer some of the questions raised through the years," he says. But, he adds, "I'm not even sure if the truth came out today that people would believe it." Conflicting medical evidence, the location of the fatal head wound and the so-called "single-bullet theory"_ the Warren Commission's proposal that the same bullet killed Kennedy and struck Texas Gov. John Connally - are among the most familiar areas of dispute. But Mack says acoustical evidence - sound recordings from that day in Dealey Plaza - gathered in the late 1970s by the House Assassinations Committee offers the greatest potential of resolving the conspiracy puzzle. In November 1994, when testifying before the Assassination Records Review Board, Mack stressed that the acoustics issue, "despite its difficulties," was far from dead. He praised review board members for their efforts in obtaining the release of secret, JFK-related information and documents, then told them: "I don't think (the information and documents) is going to tell us whether there was or was not a conspiracy to kill the president," he testified, "but the acoustics evidence can certainly do that." Nothing has happened to change his mind, Mack says. "Based on everything I know about this subject," he says, acoustics could provide a breakthrough. "Unless there's something totally new out there that no one knows about, the acoustics evidence is the only hard evidence that has the potential to answer "the" question: "How many shots were fired that day and where did they come from?" The acoustics came from a motorcycle officer's radio microphone, which clicked on a few minutes before the assassination and may have inadvertently allowed the sound of the shots to be recorded by police dispatchers. "Along with the motorcycle noise, you can hear some pops and clicks that may or may not be shots," Mack says. "The House Assassinations Committee found some acoustics experts to analyze the recordings ... and they concluded there were four shots. They could tell from the data that the third of the four came from the grassy knoll and the other three came from the window of the Texas School Book Depository. "Because that information was so convincing, and the people who did the work were so well-respected in their fields, the committee concluded there was a conspiracy because there were two shooters." Three years later, after a follow-up study, another group of scientists decided there were no shots on that recording. Thus, Mack says, the potential key to a great puzzle remains in limbo because of the conflicting interpretations. Marrs describes the dispute over the acoustics as part of the "continuing pattern of cover-up by obfuscation" of the assassination. But Mack acknowledges that the intricacies of the acoustics evidence are difficult for the public to grasp and that the Assassination Committee's findings are not definitive and remain in dispute. Of course, conspiracy theorists have said the same thing for years about the Warren Report, which concluded that Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy. " ... It seems to me, as one who's studied this long before the Sixth Floor Museum was ever dreamed of, that if there's some solid evidence out there, then reasonable efforts ought to be made to find the answer," Mack says. The annual JFK "November in Dallas" research conference, which is open to the public, begins Friday at the Dallas Radisson and includes a keynote address by Texas researcher Don Thomas, who has conducted his own detailed study of "echo correlation" in Dealey Plaza. Thomas' findings would tend to support Mack, who says: "I personally believe the original acoustics study was correct, that there are shots on there and the original scientists came to the right conclusion. "But I can't prove it either way." Marrs, meanwhile, has labeled the assassination "one of the world's greatest murder mysteries" and argues that there were two conspiracies. "One was the conspiracy to kill the president," he said during an appearance before the same Assassinations Records and Review Board that heard Mack in 1994. "Who did it, who committed it, how many gunmen, from which trajectory, how many shots, we don't know," he said. "But the second conspiracy was the conspiracy to cover up the first conspiracy, and this one was not quite so successful." Marrs insists that "officials high within the U.S. government committed acts designed not to find truthful answers but rather to hide the truth from the American public." Mack is less cynical, and is concerned that many Americans formed their concept of the assassination from Stone's "JFK." "What it's come down to now is, the Oliver Stone film has made it very easy for people to think they, too, can solve the crime of the century," he said. History, he says, will probably record that the movie was one of the best and one of the worst things to happen to the Kennedy assassination story. "The best thing about it is it made the subject legitimate again," he said. "Stone gave people a reason to reconsider." On the other hand, Mack says, Stone based his story on a flawed theory. "To read the Oliver Stone version of history, you get ... the opinion that nothing was investigated. Or what was investigated was not investigated properly. That's not true. They dug up a mountain of information, some of which is relevant." Recalling that government investigators have collected millions of pages of assassination-related documents over the years, Mack poses this question: "If there's just one guy, how come there's so many pages?" ---

---

[BlueMondaySkipper]

At this late date, the biggest mystery I now see about the event is why ~anyone~ would be so adamant that the government version be accepted as gospel. Some of you 'Oswald as lone gunman' guys are becoming bigger FReaks about the issues than the conspiracy buffs.

Amen to that...

[metesky]

The SOB is still dead and that's all that counts.

[mlo]

Read the report. It is full of explanations on timing, sequence, correlation to the Z film, medical effects, -- on & on. None of it adds up, as is well documented by hundreds of researchers.

I have. You've made a claim, back it up. What are your referring to? Cite it. I don't know what you mean.

"Hundreds of researchers" have spent their time trying to prove a conspiracy any way they could, and usually have done so by misunderstanding the basic facts. Such "documentation" is worthless, as are your claims until you back them up.

[Shooter 2.5]

"the Parkland doctors and the morticians both reported a gaping hole in the BACK of his head; some X-rays show a blown out eye-orbit, while others don't, meanwhile, in the "stare of death" photo his face is intact; etc; etc; etc

None of that is true. Show me a picture or the autopsy report where it says any of that. The guy in the doorway is a guy named Lovelady. He's surrounded by people who knew him, who identified him from the picture and it isn't Oswald. If you have ever shot a gun before, you should know about small entrance holes and large exit holes. In the Zapruder film there isn't any action of debris at the rear of the head. The car was moving at 11 MPH. Throw something up in the air at that speed and see what happens to it. Military rifle at that time could be removed from the stock by using a dime for the barrel band screws or the screws at the trigger group. Where did the curtain rods go if that was what was in the paper?

[Shooter 2.5]

This is the moment of impact. Where on earth do you claim to see a large hole in the back of the head? All of the debris was carrying by the bullet and the bullet split in two with one fragment cracking the windshield.

[mlo]

Can't have it both ways.

Not trying to. There is no comparison between the small forward motion of the head upon being struck and the backwards motion of the whole body afterwards.

I've personally shot thousands of rounds of ammunition, and can't recall a single time where the item being hit moved toward the rifle.

You failed to note that I made no claim that the backwards motion was caused by the bullet.

The HSCA said there was more than 3 shots;

Based solely on the later invalidated acoustics evidence. The HSCA also said that Oswald fired three shots from the rear, hitting JFK twice and causing all the wounds.

the scope from Oswald's rifle had to be adjusted before the re-enactment;

Which is evidence of nothing because the scope could have been damaged when he threw the rifle between some boxes to hide it, or he may not have used it. The target was close enough to use the iron sights.

the Parkland doctors and the morticians both reported a gaping hole in the BACK of his head;

There was a hole in the back, and the side, and the front. Nearly the entire right side of his head was blown out. Large peices of skull were still attached to flaps of skin and the large front flap was put back into place before the Parkland doctors saw him. Leaving a visible hole only in the rear. The emergency room doctors did not do a thorough examination. They were trying to save his life.

some X-rays show a blown out eye-orbit, while others don't,

None have a blown out eye-orbit. Some conspriacy writers said it did, but forgot that an x-ray of the face also shows the skull in the back. It's an x-ray

Actually. he was photographed in the doorway.

Oswald was not in the doorway. That was Bill Lovelady.

The package Oswald was seen carrying was reported as 2 feet in length. The rifle doesn't break down that small.

A witness said he carried the package cupped in his palm. He saw it from the back. This imposes no length limits because it didn't have to be IN the armpit, it could have been in front of the shoulder. The witness also said he didn't pay much attention.

Also, there was no traces of oil on the paper wrapping that the rifle was alledged to have been brought in, while the rifle did have oil on it.

The rifle had oil IN it. The moving parts were maintained. It was not covered with oil.

[tpaine]

Read the report. It is full of explanations on timing, sequence, correlation to the Z film, medical effects, -- on & on. None of it adds up, as is well documented by hundreds of researchers.
We've went thru this all ad nausem on FR. - The government 'lone gunman' scenario is exactly that, one barely possible 'scene' among many.
57 by tpaine

I have.
You've made a claim, back it up. What are your referring to? Cite it. I don't know what you mean.

You know what I mean from the many detailed threads we both participated on from a year ago, or more.
-- Find them - And refute my last concluding posts on them, if you must.
You fellas never did so then, what makes you think anything has changed now?

"Hundreds of researchers" have spent their time trying to prove a conspiracy any way they could, and usually have done so by misunderstanding the basic facts. Such "documentation" is worthless, as are your claims until you back them up.

Just as you claim "documentation" is worthless because of misunderstood facts. - Back up your own claims. -- You never have. - Do it in context, on those posts where the details in question have already been posted. Rehashing the whole issue here again is redundant.

[Shooter 2.5]

Did you notice not one of the conspiracy theorists ever site a photography, interview or autopsy report?

It's alway: I read, I heard, hundreds of reports...etc. Every single Conspiracy theorist has never reported finding any of the bullets that were to have been fired by the half dozen shooters they claim were in the area. I say half dozen because I heard a guy at Dealy Plaza Friday actually claim there were seven shooters.

[tpaine]

At this late date, the biggest mystery I now see about the event is why ~anyone~ would be so adamant that the government version be accepted as gospel. Some of you 'Oswald as lone gunman' guys are becoming bigger FReaks about the issues than the conspiracy buffs.

Amen to that... -61- BMS

And, as we see from a few of the more recent posts, it needs repeating already.
It may be that some personality types, having once taken a position on an issue, are compelled to defend that narrow view, regardless of all rational evidence. - Its a wonder as to why.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Your post, I'm afraid, is typical of those who doubt the Warren Report. Throw out all the eyewitness testimony, all the medical and ballistic evidence, the fact that Oswald fled the scene and fought with police, all of that, because one conclusion you make does not square with the facts of the case. The actual interpretation of Oswald's performance shooting in the Marines has been debated, but the fact remains that he received training beyond that of the typical civilian, and achieved above the lowest acceptable score. As others have pointed out, contrary to the conspiracy peddlers, the shot was not all that difficult and was duplicated more than once in recreations, again contrary to the lies put out by the conspiracy industry.

Even if Oswald's shooting skill are in doubt, the fact that he MIGHT not have been able to does not mean he COULD not have. All of us at times do things we might not ordinary be able to do, or repeat with consistency. I can give you a couple of examples in my own life. The last time I went golfing, which I think was the third time in my life, I went with two buddies. I was the last two tee off. My friends each sent mediocre shots down the fairway, slicing or hooking to the side. I addressed the ball, pulled back the club, and swung through. The ball rose, straight and long, bounding down the center of the fairway. It was the only such tee shot I made all day. It might have been the only one if I tried one hundred times, and it was the first one!

Another time, many years before, I went to an Angels game. My friends were bigger baseball fans than I, and I did not even bring a glove. They wanted to get closer to the field for batting practice to try and shag some fly balls hit into the stands. Suddenly one rose toward our location and landed on the grass. It obviously was going to bounce into the stands and everyone went for it. I just leaned, and as the base landed in my palm I close my fingers and caught it bare handed, in my left hand, and I'm right handed. How many times do you think, if we wanted to, that the guy pitching the ball, and the batter, and myself could duplicate that? How many times would it take? But it did happen, and just the same Oswald may have exceeded his normal ability just that one time. it is not impossible, and there is no evidence to that anyone else did it.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I too was once convinced that there had to be a conspiracy. After reading Best Evidence, I became a voracious consumer of any information I could find, starting with Rush to Judgement. I finally realized that not all the competing theories could be true, and after reading a bit more understood that the truth was known from day one.

[mlo]

It may be that some personality types, having once taken a position on an issue, are compelled to defend that narrow view, regardless of all rational evidence. - Its a wonder as to why.

You are describing yourself.

[mlo]

Back up your own claims. -- You never have.

That is an absolute lie. I have consistently posted links and documentation for the things I've said when I've been asked. You are a liar.

Just as you claim "documentation" is worthless because of misunderstood facts. - Back up your own claims. -- You never have. - Do it in context, on those posts where the details in question have already been posted. Rehashing the whole issue here again is redundant.

tpaine, you are notorious for your insulting posts, as this thread continues to demonstrate. Insults are your stock in trade. I will gladly debate the issues with you, I will not play your stupid games. You made a claim. Cite it and we can talk about it. Otherwise be ignored.

[Steve Eisenberg]

I was just a kid when JFK was assassinated. It always puzzled the heck out of me that everybody was scratching their heads wondering "who did it?" In my kid's mind it was the easiest thing in the world to descern - all one had to do was see who the next President is.

Hmm. One staunchly anti-communist Democrat is replaced by another staunchly anti-communist Democrat. That sure wraps up the case.

If anyone is interested in the real no-tin-hat story, I recommend reading "Marina and Lee" by Pricilla McMillan.

[tpaine]

I have never had a fixed, narrow view of JFKs murder. There is no doubt that Oswald was the major player, and may have shot Kennedy.
There is also honest doubt, imo, that he could have done it exactly as the 'Report' claimed. - Far too many valid discrepancies in the report itself lead me to that conclusion.
- You fellas have faith in the report to the point where you ignore rationality. - I don't. - Case closed.

[orfisher]

Ever try shooting a M-1 at a watermellon? I did. No way that sucker moved backward.

[tpaine]

Back up your own claims. -- You never have.

That is an absolute lie. I have consistently posted links and documentation for the things I've said when I've been asked. You are a liar.

Not at all. Your links/documentation are based on 'misunderstood facts' just as you claim mine, or any others to be.

-----------------------------

Just as you claim "documentation" is worthless because of misunderstood facts. - Back up your own claims. -- You never have. - Do it in context, on those posts where the details in question have already been posted. Rehashing the whole issue here again is redundant.

tpaine, you are notorious for your insulting posts, as this thread continues to demonstrate.

You attack me, because you cannot refute my logic.

Insults are your stock in trade. I will gladly debate the issues with you, I will not play your stupid games.

Nor I your 'stupid games', as I opened this thread saying. You are just as kooky on this issue as the worse of the conspiracy nuts. - Live with the fact that you just made that even more evident with your 'insults' charge.

You made a claim. Cite it and we can talk about it. Otherwise be ignored.

Back your own claims, - I'll back mine as I wish. -- But I will not ignore your efforts to whitewash a flawed 'report'.

[null and void]

Just a thought here. We still don't have diplomatic relations with Castro's Cuba....

[Steve Eisenberg]

At this late date, the biggest mystery I now see about the event is why ~anyone~ would be so adamant that the government version be accepted as gospel

I'll tell you why:

1. Evidence is strong that Communist Kennedy-hater Lee Harvey Oswald started work at the Texas School Book Depository long before it was known that Kennedy would be driving past. On the fateful day, Kennedy did not take the usual route for a Preisdent visiting Dallas, so Oswald could not have possibly taken that job hoping Kennedy would drive past.

2. Evidence is strong that Oswald shot from his workplace, at the Presdent, at a distance and with a weapon that one could reasonably expect to kill the President. And then the President died.

3. After the President's death, vast numbers of liberals just could not accept that a Communist, whether acting alone or with a moderate amount of Cuban government help, had killed the President. So they tried like defense attorneys to poke holes in the case against Oswald. Most of these conspiracy theorist just cannot accept that the Communist threat was real, so that had to look for holes in the obvious explanation for Kennedy's death.

As a conservative, it is easy for me to believe that this assasination was a communist hit. Then I read the story of Oswald's life, and it all comes together. The liberals don't want to believe the truth about what communism did at Daly Plaza. And a few conservatives have been taken in by an anti-government gloss being put on an essentially liberal attempt to blur the motive for Kennedy's death. Kennedy was killed because he asked us to "bear any burden" in fighting the ideology to which Mr. Osward and millions of other evil ones were committed (and, in North Korea, are committed. This is what should be remembered first when one remembers the Kennedy assasination.

[Hildy]

My Dad was an authority on the assassination. He wrote many articles on this subject and was in the middle of writing a book about Jack Ruby when he died. I grew up with the Warren Report front and center in our library. Now, that being said, he did not believe in a conspiracy and said the same thing as Valenti. Do you realize how many people would have had to keep their mouths shut all these years? Think about it.