No doubt, you know Specter would know what Standridge
was thinking due to your highly developed powers of
retrotemporal clairvoyance....well, no, we all know
that you're just back to doing a long march through
the bullshit trough in order to force your brontosaurus
theory on reality. Well, no, not that either. You're
trying to cover up your embarrassment for messing up
your "He didn't ask if she 'saw' it" comment.
In reality, Specter was asking her in order to get
her testimony on the record, whether or not he had
any idea what she was going to say. That was the
whole point of bringing her in for a formal deposition
and generating a transcript for it. His question was,
however, perfectly logical, if not expected, given
the circumstances of the bullets discovery.
>>> Specter was not stupid. Only a bullet falling to the floor would have
>>> been audible.
>>
>> So says you, based on you years of expertise in bullet-
>> dropping.
>
> We all know what a piece of lead falling two or three inches sounds like.
How do you know it only fell 2-3 inches? It could
have come out of the clothes as they were pulled
up and way from Connally's body, or at any other
time they were being handled.
That being said, I grabbed a few machine screws
about the size, shape and mass of a bullet and
tested your drop assertion on a number of different
surfaces from different heights. From 3 inches
above a padded vinyl surface made a clearly
audible sound. Not as loud as, say, a gunshot,
but easily heard. One of the things I noticed is
that the difference in apparent loudness between
a fall to a table or desk and a fall all the way
to the floor isn't a stark as you might think,
at least if you're standing over the proceedings
as Standridge would have been. I figure that's
because the amount of energy available to create
noise is linearly dependent on the height above
the floor (PE=mgh, and all that), while the
resulting sound is subject to the inverse square
law.
>>>> What is not logical:
>>>> Assuming, arguendo (Gawd I love that word!) Connally said that
>>>> the bullet fell out in the OR, then it makes no sense to ask
>>>> Standridge if she heard it, since she wasn't there.
>>>
>>> Yes, but she didn't tell him that she left Connally before he was moved
>>> to an operating table, until AFTER he asked her that. He didn't realize
>>> she wasn't there when the bullet fell to the floor.
>>>
>>>
>>>> And you still have to prove that Connally really said what you
>>>> claim he did.
>>>
>>> Of course I proved it. I cited him verbatim, from his autobiography.
>>
>> You quoted Herskowitz, who actually wrote the "autobiography".
>> It remains to be seen how much of it, if any, came out of John
>> Connally's memories.
>
> Herskowitz cited Connally's first hand statement. When you call even the
> most impeccable witnesses, liars, with no evidence or justification
> whatsoever, you are adopting the tactics of the worst of the conspiracy
> buffs.
So, you've seen Connally's first-hand statement
as given to Herskowitz?
> Had he lied, Connally and his wife would have been all over him. His
> reputation would have been destroyed, because no one would ever trust
> him to write their autobiography again.
John Connally was dead and buried by the time
the book came out, so I'm not sure that he'd
react as strongly as you seem to think. Unless
you believe the rumors that Connally is a well-
known zombie. Also, did Nellie ever really
read the finished product?
> This is a pathetically lame argument. It insults the most highly
> respected writer of his kind, in the world.
Where did you get this statement from, Hershkowitz'
publisher? Or did you decide top pile it on
thicker, deeper and stinkier all by yourself?
>>>> So far, all you've shown is something written by
>>>> a someone else.
>>>
>>> So, are you are accusing Herskowitz of being a liar? On what grounds?
>>> Can you prove he EVER lied in a nonfiction work?
>>
>> False dilemma. He could easily be wrong without actually
>> lying.
>
> No he couldn't. He cited a verbatim statement.
I have a "verbatim statement," or two, or a few,
for you:
"It is no longer possible to say with certitude
how much of the race to Parkland Memorial Hospital
I remember and how much I have been told by Nellie,
or picked up from watching the news films or reading
the official reports."
"Many of my memories are secondhand. I am missing
the most historic minutes of my life."
"This is what I missed, what I would put together
from the accounts of those who survived that day
Dallas."
Of course, you know that those sentences come from
the first chapter of Connally's book. Its
take on the assassination includes any number
of narrative events that Connally could not have
seen, or where his the book's take is completely
wrong, like the SS agents jumping out of the
Queen Mary and heading for the entrance of the
TSBD, or Perry taknig the call for Shires before
the motorcade got to Parkland.
So how can anyone know how to separate what the
governor actually remembered experiencing from
what he'd gathered elsewhere? The test, it turns
out, is pretty easy. Match up his earlier
testimony (to the WC, HSCA, etc) with corresponding
sections of the book's narrative, and you notice
that he writes directly in first person what he was
doing and experiencing at a given moment when he
relates things that we independently know he
experienced and remembered:
"I heard..."
"I turned my head"
"I turned to my left"
"I felt a thud"
"I doubled over"
"I could see blood"
"I blurted out the words..."
"We were all smiling and waving to the crowds"
"I was, frankly, relieved, pleased..."
"...I heard the first shot..."
"...and [I] felt the second"
"I was vaguely aware..."
"I felt frozen"
"I saw President Kennedy..."
"I said I did"
"I knew,"
"I turned, and felt the blow against my back"
"I came to..."
"I thought..."
"I realized..."
"I struggled to raise myself"
"I half stood"
"I had been unaware of any pain up to that moment"
"I was revived by a pain..."
"I cried out..."
"I heard someone say.."
"I spoke up again"
Now, in contrast, look at your favorite passage:
"But the most curious discovery of all took place
when they rolled me off of the stretcher, and on
to the examining table. A metal object fell to the
floor, and with a click no louder than a wedding
band. The nurse picked it up and slipped it into
her pocket. It was the bullet from my body, the one
that passed from through my back, chest and wrist,
and worked itself loose from my thigh."
There is no "I saw" or "I heard" or "I felt" or
anything else like that. It's stated passively,
like he's relating something that he didn't
experience firsthand, but came to after the fact
from some other source. Even when he refers to
himself, it's the object of a phrase rather than
the subject of a sentence. Even if the "verbatim"
quote is 100% correct, you're screwed, Bob.
>> He might have misunderstood where Connally was
>> speculating, or he might have added it to
>
> His "understanding" was irrelevant. He cited Connally's own words -
> verbatim. This was not an error. There was too much detail and repeated
> references to that bullet.
You have no real idea how verbatim verbatim
really is in this case, do you?
> You either have to call him a liar, or Connally, or do what we all know
> you are unable to do.
Again, you're pushing a false dilemma. In my
humble experience, those tend pop up when
bullshitters start running out of excuses.
> But we don't have to trust either of them on this. Connally was 100%
> corroborated by DA Wade and officer Nolan.
The only way that could happen is if Nolan
and Wade saw the bullet fall off and get
picked up by a nurse. You're spreading it
thicker and deeper as you go
>> I've actually had a thoracotomy, and I have the 4" long
>> surgical scar to prove it. I also have two smaller scars
>> where the chest tubes were inserted. What I don't have
>> are much in the way of memories of the period before the
>> surgery. I definitely have no memory of being transferred
>> to the OR, and only bits and pieces of my time waiting in
>> preop. I asked the surgeon about it, and he told me that
>> my experience would be expected due to the effects of the
>> anesthesia. I doubt Connally's memory fared any better.
>> When I read Connally talking to the WC about his experiences
>> after the shooting, and how he remembers some things but
>> not others, it sounds exactly like the way I remember what
>> I went through.
>
> It's one thing to forget events. It's quite another to suffer detailed
> delusions. Did you suffer any delusions like that, Todd?
>
> Neither did Connally.
Actually, sedation and anesthesia are known to cause
hallucinations and delusions, but that's not the point.
If I had any, the anesthesia took care of keeping
me from actually being able to remember them. In fact,
I remember very little from the morning of surgery,
and nothing at all from some point in the pre-op area
until they work me up after surgery. I definitely
don't remember anything in detail. What I do remember is
vague, and generally only those occasions where I was
interacting with someone. That was four years ago.
Connally was looking back 30 years. You want me to
believe that Connally remembered a bullet falling out
and a nurse picking it up when my own experience tells
me that he wouldn't remember bo or diddly.
What gets me is that Connally comes out and says
directly that he doesn't remember very much and that
much of his narrative is composed of things that
he'd read after the fact or someone else told him or
it came from from somewhere other than his own memory.
You had to have seen that, and it should have tempered
your, uh, enthusiastic take on the bullet story.
but you pressed right on, hoping no one else would
look into it.
>> I should mention again that Connally never said anything
>> about this in any other interview. Ever.
>
> I have cited Connally in the past, stating that he believed this was a
> conspiracy but that the nation needed to move on.
>
> If he had told the WC about this incident, it would have created a
> firestorm of controversy.
You've never cited Connally. You've cited some guy that
said (many years after the fact) that Connally said
something. And this is a guy best known for having to
eat his own bullshit.
>>> And what puts your desperate accusation to rest Mitch, are the
>>> corroborations by Wade and Nolan. Wade either saw the bullet in that
>>> nurse hand or she told him it was a whole bullet from Connally's
>>> "gurney". Officer Nolan provided another corroboration. He heard the
>>> nurse say exactly the same thing.
>>>
>>> How do you explain that, Mitch?
>>
>> The CE842 envelope is filled out in Audrey Bell's
>> handwriting, as she positively identified it to Gunn
>> and Horne.
>
> You are presuming that Bell had the skills to dismiss the possibility of
> forgery, looking at something she allegedly wrote decades earlier.
>
> And the FBI had the actual envelope that she filled out, so it would
> have been easy to copy her writing.
I'm certain that Audrey Bell is one million times
--make that one billion times, with pinky extended--
better at distinguishing her writing from a forgery
than you are.
>> It also has Bobby Nolan's handwritten
>> initials, which I suspect he verified to you were
>> indeed in his hand.
>
> Yes, I mailed him a printout of CE842 and he confirmed it was his
> initials. For a multitude of reason, think he was correct.
!
>> CE842 trumps whatever you try
>> to make out of Nolan's, Bell's, Stinson's, and
>> Wade's statements.
>
> When presented with contradictory evidence, one must consider, which, if
> either, is vulnerable to deception. Forging and copying the header
> information which was on her actual envelope, was a fairly trivial task.
>
> But there are much better reasons to conclude that Bell didn't fill out
> CE-842. This was an old envelope, which bore the marks of having been
> crumpled and containing multiple erasures.
>
>
http://jfkhistory.com/ce842x.jpg
!!!!!!
Nothing says "Champeen Document Examiner" like a
pixelated B&W jpeg with circles drawn on it, eh,
Bob!? I'll be you're expecting the Officer Obie
award for your all your hard work on it.
It carried a number of small irregular objects, and
was handled no telling how many times before that
particular photograph was taken. I would be more
surprised if it lacked any wear. As for your assertion
of "erasures," well, Vince Clarke has quite an
imagination, too.
> The nurse Wade encountered, had been carrying that bullet around all
> afternoon. Wade stated that he told her to get it to the police, and it
> makes sense that he was more than a little bit angry about the delay in
> her doing so.
>
> In her haste, she grabbed what appears to have been, a used envelope and
> did her best to erase whatever scribblings had been on it, and then
> placed the bullet in it and gave it to Wade.
Once again, you bring up the phantasmic "newbie
nurse". The one you can't ever seem to find
or name. The one who only exists in febrile
imagination because you absolutely need her
to make your theory work. I should mention
again, as I have before, that there were only
so many nurses in the O.R. suite at the time
Connally was wheeled in. It can't be that hard
to find out who she would have been, Bob.
Of course, you know that Wade was angry because...
he said so? Oh, well, no, he didn't say that, or
anything like it. Wade's anger is another mirage
created whole cloth by your own make believe
because you need to.
> Bell would have used a fresh envelope.
The one in evidence was fresh n' new
at some point. Nov 22 seems like a good
date for that.
> But this nurse either didn't have
> access to one or she was panicked by the DA, and just grabbed whatever
> was within reach.
>
> Bell was very specific about giving her envelope to two plained clothed
> agents in her office and she was certain that she gave them to no one in
> uniform.
That's how she remembered it years and years later.
But it was years and years later. Let's say, arguendo
[that word again!], that Wade was standing with
Stinson and Nolan when she walked up to them. She
talks to Stinson and/or Wade, who have her give the
envelope to Nolan. Over time, Nolan fades from her
memory for whatever reason, but remembers the two
men not in uniform. And it doesn't have to be Wade;
it could be any other dude in a suit. She might also
have subconsciously folded in part of FBI interview
the next day.
> AND SHE CERTAINLY WOULD NOT HAVE TOLD WADE AND NOLAN THAT SHE HAD A
> WHOLE BULLET IN HER HAND, FROM CONNALLY'S "GURNEY".
Now your special retroclairvoyance has developed
super-Jedi ALL CAPS POWERS all it's own!!!! I've
alerted Rossley to this new exciting development.
If nothing else, Bob, you never fail to amuse.
You don't know what she would have said or done
any more than I would. We can assume, but it's
only assumption. You are aware, by the way, that
the operating table Connally was placed on was
a wheeled, mobile contraption...like [drum roll]
a gurney.
>> Bell has to be the nurse who
>> gave Nolan the envelope,
>
> Bullshit! The evidence proves that is not possible.
What evidence? The envelope is the only bit of
evidence that isn't subject to the vagaries of
time or invention, and your attempts to impeach
it don't even rise to the level of pathetic, even
with Viagra. I guess that I could bring up the
11/23/63 summary FBI reports of their interviews
with Nolan and Bell, but I'm sure you'll just
blow those off.
>> and the nurse that Stinson
>> saw. Further, CE 842 carried the fragments removed
>> from Connally's wrist, not a bullet.
>
> Of course it did. THAT envelope was initialed by her, as she stated.
> CE-842 does not bear her initials, for obvious reasons.
>
> Also, she had a receipt for her envelope, which was signed off by the
> agent who received it. She passed it, to her supervisor, after which, it
> had to have been confiscated by the FBI, in order to maintain the chain
> of custody. But it evaporated. Even the ARRB people were unable to
> locate it. Gosh, how surprising is that :-)
30 years later, she remembered getting a receipt.
But that was 30 years later. She may well have.
Maybe she didn't. But her writing is on that
envelope along with Nolan's initials, as she's
said on the record. There are also the 11/23/63
FBI FD302s for Nolan and Bell.
BTW, what about Joe Freeman's memorandum that Gunn &
Horne quote during the Bell interview describing what
appears to be a receipt executed between Nolan and
Bell. It's even described as being filled out in
what appears to be Bell's writing. They had to have
found at least a copy or photo of it.
>> As for Wade, well, I'd keep whatever he said at
>> arm's length,
>
> Well of course! What's one more liar, when you're a nutter?
>
> Lucky for me I guess, that all of their lies match so perfectly:-)
You really think that he told her to go to the
Po-leece, and she then took the bullet to
a political aide? For that matter, what are the
chances that she would have known Wade just by
his appearance.
>> since the Dallas DA's office has a
>> history of what some like to call "colorful
>> characters".
>
> It doesn't get any lamer than this Todd. I expected better of you.
>
>> The current incumbent is a real hoot
>> --at least when she comes up for air-- and her
>> immediate predecessor was only slightly less
>> entertaining. Now, I'm not implying that everything
>> Wade said was a lie
>
> Of course not. He's a saint unless he says something that's devastating
> to your favorite theory.
Can't say that I've ever said Wade was a saint.
Or thought it. But you need me to think that for
some bizzare psychological reason, you you
conjure it up and assert it.
> So what about Nolan? Another liar, I suppose?
I think Nolan related what he remembered as
completely and honestly as he could. Including
volunteering that he didn't know whether the
envelope he was given contained a bullet or
fragments thereof.
>> but the guy was both a
>> politician and a lawyer. At least, we can be sure
>> that "a," "an," and "the" are truthful when he
>> says them. BTW, can you tell me, if Wade told the
>> nurse to give the "bullet" to the Police, why did
>> she then go to Stinson with it and not directly to
>> Nolan?
>
> She knew Stinson. He had been authorized to sit in on surgery. She
> obviously wanted to know who she should give it to. Giving it to a
> security cop was a really bad idea, that violated all kinds of rules,
> but this was obviously, not a nurse who had dealt with forensic evidence.
If she knew Stinson, then she would have known he
wasn't with the police, so it still makes no sense
that she would've gone to him after talking to
Wade. Especially if Nolan --a State Trooper and
not a "security cop"-- was standing there.
> Bell wouldn't have had to ask and she would have processed it through
> proper channels, as she did her own envelope.
Ah, but there's a rub. The proper channel would be the DPD,
not the FBI or SS, who she said she gave the fragments to.
>> Or why she would even have asked, since
>> (per Bell, ARRB) they already had an established
>> policy with regard to dealing with "foreign
>> bodies"?
>
> As I said before, that wasn't Bell. Bell would never have asked and she
> would have process it through proper channels, as she had a thousand
> times before.
Again with Newbie Nursey Theory. There aren't
too many nurses who could have been your newbie.
But I don't think you've been looking.