Mortal Error: The Accidental Shot

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The AR-15 theory: JFK killed by friendly fire
http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=3341.0;wap2

Ross Lidell:
Ballistics expert Howard Donahue theorized an accidental shot by an SS
Agent killing Kennedy.
The book written by Bonar Menninger was Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed
JFK.
It did not exonerate Oswald. He was supposed to have fired the back/neck
shot that injured the President.
Before I get howled down, consider this --

This is the only conspiracy theory that has "physical evidence" as its basis.
Donahue was the only one who:

(1.) Identified a second gun that was purported to be fired in Dealey Plaza.
The AR-15 carried in the follow-up car.
(2.) Named the supposed shooter - SS Agent George Hickey.
(3.) Identified a picture of the agent with the gun in his hands (not in
Dealey Plaza but on the Stemmons freeway).

It's a wild "friendly - fire" theory for sure. But given those three points,
worthy of examination.
The HSCA treated Donahue as "a crank".
Even if they thought so, they should have investigated the claim, to
demonstrate thoroughness.
Hickey should have been called to testify and refute Donahue's theory.

I'm aware that the Bronson Film is supposed to disprove the theory.
I'd sure like to see how the Bronson Film demonstrates that Donahue was
wrong.
Anyone have a link?




JFK-Donahue Theory - Home
The Donahue theory of the accidental firing of the Secret Service AR-15 as
the ..
http://jfk-donahue.weebly.com

The remainder of this website is primarily dedicated to supporting the
Donahue theory of the accidental firing of the Secret Service AR-15 as the
explosive head shot. I provide source support for some of the information
presented by Bonar Menninger in Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK and
by Colin McLaren in JFK: The Smoking Gun. I also provide additional
observations and evidence in support of the Donahue theory and address the
so-called "rebuttals" to the theory.Conspiracy theorists are quick to
point out the fallacies and weaknesses of the Warren Report. They point
out the sloppiness of the police work and the inconsistencies of the
evidence. They point out Oswald’s “involvement”
with the FBI and the assassination of Oswald himself. They point out
timelines and puffs of smoke “from the grassy knoll.” They
point all these things out as evidence of a conspiracy to kill JFK.

They’re right, and they’re wrong. There was a conspiracy,
but not one of premeditated murder. It was a conspiracy after the fact, to
cover up what really happened in the death of the 35th president of the
United States. And all the evidence points to a theory that was first
proposed by the late ballistics expert Howard Donahue. This theory was
first published in 1977 in a two-part article by Ralph Reppert, then later
written up in a book entitled Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK by
Bonar Menninger, and recently supported by the work of a highly respected
retired Australian detective named Colin McLaren, in a Reelz Channel
documentary entitled JFK: The Smoking Gun and in McLaren’s book by
the same name.



President JFK documentary alleges there WAS a second shooter in ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380691/President-JFK-documentary-alleges-WAS-second-shooter-assassination--Secret-Service-agent.html
Jul 29, 2013 - His theories are based on the work of Howard Donahue, who spent two ... Mr McLaren said he believes Agent Hickey's AR-15 was loaded with ...

JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theory: Secret Service Agent Kill President?
Government Cover Up To Protect Agent George Hickey?
By Staff Writer on July 30, 2013 12:33 PM EDT

The JFK assassination is one of the most impactful moments in U.S.
history. On November 22, 1963, a presidential motorcade escorted John F.
Kennedy, his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and the
Governor's wife Nellie by the Dealey Plaza, of Dallas, Texas. Multiple
gunshots struck President JFK, Governor John Connally, and bystander James
Tague. President JFK was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. CST after resuscitation
efforts failed in Parkland Hospital Trauma Room #1. Connally and Tague
survived the JFK assassination incident.

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For the past 50 years, reports claim that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sniper
responsible for the JFK assassination. However, a new documentary, "JFK:
The Smoking Gun," investigates evidence that suggests that the president
was shot from two different directions. More specifically, "JFK: The
Smoking Gun" claims that trajectory forensics indicate that the bullet
that mortally wounded JFK was fired from the gun of a Secret Service
agent, not Oswald.

For years, retired Australian police Detective Colin McLaren extensively
researched the evidence and conspiracy theories revolving around the JFK
assassination. According to McLaren's findings, which are built upon
investigatons formerly conducted by ballistics expert Howard Donahue, the
bullet that killed President John F. Kennedy was fired by George Hickey, a
Secret Service agent that was travelling in the car behind Kennedy when
the assassination occurred.

Further evidence also indicates that the bullet found in the back of JFK's
skull was a hollow point round, which does not match the bullets from Lee
Harvey Oswald's weapon.

Is this a conspiracy? Colin McLaren is quick to insist that the JFK
assassination is less mysterious than it seems.

"We don't suggest that he was in any way involved in a conspiracy,"
McLaren said of Hickey.

According to the documentary, chaos took over after Lee Harvey Oswald
fired his first shot. Secret Service agent Hickey was readying his AR-15
assault rifle to protect the president when the car came to an abrupt
stop, the movement caused Hickey to squeeze his rifle, which fired a
bullet into the back of John F Kennedy's head.

"It was his first time in the follow car, his first time holding the
assault weapon he was using," McLaren said at a press event to promote the
documentary film on Sunday. "What we're saying is that we believe it was a
tragic accident in the heat of that moment."

However, the Daily Mail reports that the documentary also raises a
shocking claim -- the government was aware that the Secret Service agent
was responsible for the President's death and moved quickly to cover up
the evidence in an effort to save the agency from embarrassment.

Intrigued? Don't miss McLaren's documentary, "JFK: The Smoking Gun," which
airs on ReelzChannel on November 3.

"Our documentary is going to be the only one that has opened the case
forensically and looked at the evidence from the beginning and examined
everything that happened that day in Dealey Plaza," said the documentary's
executive director, Michael Prupas.

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Accidental assassin: JFK theory alleges Secret Service agent fumbled ...
Nov 21, 2013 - But when his car stopped suddenly, the theory holds, Agent
George ... And none of the seven other people riding in the follow-up
vehicle — five ...
Missing: bodyguards
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/accidental-assassin-jfk-theory-alleges-secret-service-agent-fumbled-gun-f2D11634276

Accidental assassin: JFK theory alleges Secret Service agent fumbled gun
by DANIEL ARKIN, STAFF WRITER, NBC NEWS

Many of the most popular Kennedy assassination theories have the trappings
of a Cold War spy novel: political intrigue, colorful villains and
labyrinthine twists and turns.

But at least one theory that has gained traction in recent years has a
relatively straightforward storyline: The assassination of President John
F. Kennedy was a tragic accident — not the work of a sinister
gunman or a conspiracy to topple the king of Camelot.

There are no Mafia dons or Soviet pawns at the center of the so-called
"accident theory" — just an ordinary Secret Service agent with a
bad case of butterfingers.

"It's not sexy. It's not rife with intrigue," said Bonar Menninger, a
Kansas City journalist and a leading proponent of the theory. "But for
that reason, in my mind, it's extremely compelling — because it's
the only theory that hews tightly to the available evidence."

Menninger is part of a small but vocal group of theorists who hold that
after Lee Harvey Oswald rattled off multiple shots at the motorcade
carrying Kennedy past the Texas School Book Depository, a Secret Service
agent riding in a car immediately behind the presidential limousine
grabbed his Colt AR-15 high-velocity rifle to return fire.

But when his car stopped suddenly, the theory holds, Agent George Hickey
lost his balance and accidentally discharged his weapon, sending a
.223-caliber round rocketing into Kennedy's head — the wound that
later killed the 35th president.

"It was entirely accidental," Menninger said. "Unfortunately, fate
intervened as this agent was attempting to do his job."

New polling shows that nearly two in three Americans believe JFK's death
was the product of a criminal conspiracy. As the nation remembers Kennedy
on the 50th anniversary of his death, NBC News is exploring some of the
most compelling conspiracy theories that have lingered over the last
half-century.

INTERACTIVE: ‘Everything changed’: Remembering JFK, 50 years past

Friendly fire

Nearly 20 years ago, Menninger laid out the theory in "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK," a book premised on the work of Howard Donahue, a Baltimore firearms expert who in 1967 began probing ballistic and forensic evidence, and concluded that Hickey was the elusive second gunman whose "friendly fire" from street level killed Kennedy.

Over nearly a quarter-century, Donahue reportedly pored over reams of evidence — including the locations and diameter of the entrance and exit wounds in Kennedy's skull; the trajectory and explosive impact of the fatal bullet; and a small handful of testimonies from witnesses who smelled gun smoke near the motorcade.

And on nearly all fronts, according to Menninger, the evidence pointed squarely at Hickey and an inadvertent inside job.

No eye witnesses have gone on-record claiming to have seen Hickey firing an accidental shot and the Secret Serviceman denied firing his weapon. And none of the seven other people riding in the follow-up vehicle — five Secret Service agents and two presidential aides — reported a bullet whistling past their heads.

But the theory nonetheless struck a nerve. After Menninger's book was published in 1992, Australian homicide detective Colin McLaren, convinced by Donahue's scientific approach, embarked on his own cold case investigation of Warren Commission materials.

McLaren eventually reached the conclusion that the Kennedy assassination was strictly a tragedy of physics.

"What we're saying is that we believe it was a tragic accident in the heat of that moment," McLaren told reporters in July, days before the U.S. premiere of "JFK: The Smoking Gun," a cable television special based on his findings and Menninger's book.

Hickey, who died in 2011, filed a libel suit against Menninger, Donahue and St. Martin's Press, the publisher of Menninger's book, in 1995. But a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had run out, and the case was dismissed.

St. Martin's Press later settled with Hickey to preclude an appeal of the dismissal, according to Menninger.

A footnote in history

The second chapter of the Warren Commission's report on the Kennedy assassination includes a brief mention of Hickey:

"Special Agent George W. Hickey, Jr., in the rear seat of the Presidential follow-up car, picked up and cocked an automatic rifle as he heard the last shot. At this point the cars were speeding through the underpass and had left the scene of the shooting, but Hickey kept the automatic weapon ready as the car raced to the hospital."

As for Oswald, Menninger has no idea what motivated the man officially held responsible for Kennedy's assassination to fire a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from the sixth floor of the book depository, adding that "it's not germane to the ballistics analysis of the shooting" conducted by Donahue, who died in 1999 of complications of pneumonia.

"Was he a low-level intelligence operative? Perhaps. Was he set up? Perhaps," Menninger said. "But I don't know. There's questions there, but if you believe that the third and fatal shot was fired accidentally, it certainly diminishes the likelihood of a conspiracy."

The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted alone.

Related:

'So consequential an act': 50 years later, JFK conspiracy theories endure
Convinced by Communists? Some theorize Soviets or Castro inspired Oswald to kill JFK
An inside job: CIA a suspect for some in JFK's killing

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The 'JFK' theory that's too simple for Americans to believe
James H.Bready
February 27, 1992|By James H. Bready

WILL THE WORLD accept the idea that John F. Kennedy's death was an unintentional homicide? That the bullet hitting him in the back of the skull came from the gun fired, inadvertently, by a Secret Service bodyguard riding in the car immediately behind the presidential limousine?

Such is the thesis advanced by Howard Donahue, a Towson gun expert, in the new book "Mortal Error," by Bonar Menninger (St. Martin's Press, $23.95). On logic -- that is, consistency with the known facts in the case -- Mr. Donahue's explanation is without rival.

The many other circulating theories, which have Lee Harvey Oswald firing three shots from a bolt-action rifle in less than six seconds, or which have various conspirators firing from various directions, have a huge flaw in common. They do not account for the ballistic evidence; Mr. Donahue does. An open-minded reader will find "Mortal Error" not just persuasive but highly persuasive.

But who still has an open mind? From film-makers to other authors to site-visitors to fantasists generally, the public likes suspense. It likes heroes and villains. If there has to be a killing, then it wants murky-background assassination, not fumble-fingered accident.

And the sum of Howard Donahue's long, studious labor is lacking in all ideology, in all blame, in all meaning.

All meaning except that sometimes when the worst can happen, it will happen, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way. And from the loaded gun comes, sometimes, the unexpected bullet.

The public has, after all, considered Mr. Donahue's findings once before -- and rejected them. In 1977, Harold A. Williams, editor of the old Sunday Sun Magazine, started reading, with a sigh, a Kennedy-in-Dallas story turned in by his senior staff writer, Ralph Reppert. Instead of one more time-wasting speculation, Mr. Reppert's account, based on interviews with Mr. Donahue, was both absorbing and credible. The story appeared in installments, May 1 and 8. The Associated Press compressed them into a single dispatch, published in this country and abroad.

That was that. Readers soon put Mr. Donahue out of mind, preferring to think, luridly, about the grassy knoll, the high-level cabal. Interest now rose, now sank, but stayed high. Book followed book, some by other Marylanders. Harrison E. Livingstone of Baltimore, in particular, has hit the best-seller list with his book "High Treason." A sequel, "High Treason 2," is due out from Carroll and Graf in a few days. And "JFK and Vietnam," already in bookstores, is by John M. Newman of Odenton.

Mr. Menninger, then a Washington-area writer, heard a talk by Mr. Donahue and proposed turning his story into a book. The resulting manuscript (which went straight to St. Martin's Press, without agent) offers much greater detail than the magazine had space for, and profits from many small discoveries by Mr. Donahue since 1977.

The book, for the first time, names the Secret Service agent, whose last known address was in Maryland. (The New York Daily News published his name last Sunday.)

The agent, it seems, went on afterward carrying out White House bodyguard assignments and later retired. Never commenting publicly on Kennedy/Dallas, he never denied lurching to his feet that noontime at the sound of gunfire from the nearby Texas Book Depository and, gun in hand, finger on trigger, firing a shot.

Now a denial may be forthcoming. The retired agent may enter the spotlight. Or someone from the media may find him.

He may have convinced himself long ago that his gun, when it went off, was pointed upward, that its unusual projectile -- designed to penetrate and explode, not penetrate and traverse like the one fired by Mr. Oswald -- flew harmlessly off into the distance.

It may also be that the Secret Service knows much more about the assassination than it has ever let on. Its reason for silence is obvious enough. For one of its own men to have shot the chief executive whose life he was there to protect would constitute far and away the worst moment in the long record of the Secret Service.

Whatever follows, the public, as it assimilates this drastic rescaling of Nov. 22, 1963, will have one comfort to fall back on:

Nothing about Mr. Oswald's status has changed. His presence, with that sniperscope mail-order rifle, may still represent the fruition of the most elaborate, most sinister conspiracy since Rasputin was poisoned, shot and drowned.

Let everyone remember: Had the man in the window overhead not fired those two shots, one of them a miss, the other ballistically proven to have hit President Kennedy between neck and shoulder, exiting from the throat, the man in the left rear seat of the car directly behind, the man holding his own loaded weapon, would not have been impelled to struggle to his feet.

James H. Bready is a retired editorial writer of The Evening Sun.


http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1992-02-27/news/1992058163_1_donahue-high-treason-mortal-error

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John F. Kennedy assassination: Did the Secret Service agent do it ...
Jul 29, 2013 - ... the book "Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK" by Bonar Menninger. ... Clinton administration have added credibility to Menninger's theory.
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/TV/2013/0729/John-F.-Kennedy-assassination-Did-the-Secret-Service-agent-do-it

THE CULTURE TV
John F. Kennedy assassination: Did the Secret Service agent do it?
John F. Kennedy assassination: A TV show claims one of John F. Kennedy's own Secret Service agent's fired the fatal shot. The two-hour JFK assassination docudrama airs Nov. 3.
By Beth Harris, Associated Press JULY 29, 2013

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. — Weeks before the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy 's assassination this fall, a TV network will take another look at the killing in a docudrama that suggests a Secret Service agent accidentally fired one of the bullets that felled Kennedy.

ReelzChannel's "JFK: The Smoking Gun " is based on the work of retired Australian police Detective Colin McLaren and the book "Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK" by Bonar Menninger.

McLaren spent four years combing through evidence from Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. He and Menninger also relied on ballistics evidence from an earlier book by Howard Donahue.

The two-hour docudrama airs Nov. 3 in the U.S., Canada and Australia. It suggests that agent George Hickey fired one of the bullets that hit Kennedy. Hickey, who is now dead, was riding in the car behind Kennedy's limo that day.

"What we're saying is that we believe it was a tragic accident in the heat of that moment," McLaren told the Television Critics Association on Sunday.

When Lee Harvey Oswald fired his first shot, McLaren said Hickey responded by trying to fire back on Oswald's position using his Secret Service-issued rifle. But because he was inexperienced with the weapon and the car lurched forward, McLaren said the shot went awry and accidentally hit Kennedy, who was struck in the neck but quite possibly not fatally wounded by Oswald's second shot.

"We don't suggest that he was in any way involved in a conspiracy," McLaren said of Hickey.

The Warren Commission report in the 1960s concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman in officially explaining the assassination.

And here's what Hickey said happened :

'At the end of the last report I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear.

'At this point the cars were passing under the over-pass and as a result we had left the scene of the shooting. I kept the AR 15 rifle ready as we proceeded at a high rate of speed to the hospital.'
After Menninger's book was published in 1992 – making a similar claim about Hickey – he sued Menninger in 1995. But a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had run out.

The show's producers say that advances in forensic science and documents released during the Clinton administration have added credibility to Menninger's theory.

"Our documentary is going to be the only one that has opened the case forensically and looked at the evidence from the beginning and examined everything that happened that day in Dealey Plaza," Michael Prupas, the film's executive director, said, according to the Huffington Post .

The program is ReelzChannel's second Kennedy-related offering. In 2011, the cable channel aired "The Kennedys" after History Channel dropped the miniseries amid reports that the real-life Kennedy family was unhappy about the project.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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Did a Secret Service Agent Kill JFK by Accident? - JFK Assassination
22november1963.org.uk › Further Reading › JFK Assassination FAQs
But the 'Secret Service agent shot JFK by accident' theory is most certainly wrong: there is actually a film of the agent not shooting JFK. In short, President Kennedy was not killed by a Secret Service agent, deliberately or accidentally.
http://22november1963.org.uk/did-a-secret-service-agent-kill-jfk-by-accident

Did a Secret Service Agent Kill JFK by Accident?

SummaryA TV show in 2013 repeated a claim from 1992 that had been thoroughly debunked. The agent, George Hickey, sued the publisher and author and received an out of court payment.22 November 1963: A Brief Guide to the JFK Assassination

Three Secret Service Theories

The Secret Service, which spectacularly failed to perform its task of protecting President Kennedy in Dallas, was accused of active participation in the assassination:

One of the earliest conspiracy theories suggested that the driver of the presidential limousine, a Secret Service agent named William Greer, shot JFK.

Later theorists pointed to the many witnesses who stated that the car stopped momentarily during the motorcade. It was claimed that the driver stopped the car deliberately to allow the fatal head shot to be fired by another conspirator, and that the Zapruder film was altered to conceal this event.

Both theories were ludicrous, and were easily disproved. Another theory emerged, however, which suggested that a Secret Service agent in the car immediately behind President Kennedy fired his rifle by accident, hitting JFK in the head.

Howard Donahue and the Ballistics Evidence.

The theory was proposed by a firearms expert, Howard Donahue, whose interest in the ballistics aspects of the JFK assassination led him to point out several problems with the official account.

Two Types of Bullet Were Fired

As far as can be deduced from the poor state of the medical evidence, the damage to President Kennedy’s head appears to have been caused by a soft–nosed bullet, a type designed to break into fragments on impact. The wounds to Kennedy’s and Governor Connally’s torsos, however, were caused by metal–jacketed bullets, a type designed to remain intact on impact. The bullet and bullet shells that were discovered on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository were of the latter type.

President Kennedy’s head wound cannot, therefore, have been caused by the rifle that was also discovered on the sixth floor. The nature of the head wound implies that more than one gunman took part in the assassination.

The Location of the Entrance Wound

The pathologists who conducted President Kennedy’s autopsy claimed that there was a bullet entrance wound low down on the back of the president’s head. The Warren Commission accepted their evidence, but failed to recognise that an entrance wound in this location, when combined with the much larger wound high on the skull that was presumed to be the point of exit, is incompatible with a shot from Lee Harvey Oswald’s supposed location, sixty feet (18 metres) above the road. Again, the implication is that the head wound was not caused by a shot from the sixth floor, and more than one gunman was involved.

The Revised Bullet Trajectory

The House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s arbitrarily moved the entrance wound up by four inches or ten centimetres, against the strong objections of the pathologists, so that the two wounds could now line up with the sixth floor of the TSBD. Donahue examined the work of Thomas Canning, the scientist who devised the new trajectory, and found that Canning’s assumptions about the angle of JFK’s head were poorly supported, and that the revised trajectory of the bullet was almost certainly incorrect.

The Secret Service Agent with the Rifle

Donahue looked around for a possible source of a bullet of the correct type that could have entered the back of President Kennedy’s head at a suitable angle. His solution was that the bullet had been fired by a Secret Service agent, George Hickey, who was riding on the back seat of the car immediately behind the presidential limousine.
Between Hickey and his colleague, Glen Bennett, lay an automatic rifle, a Colt AR–15, which was loaded with thin–metal–jacketed bullets. A photograph of the car, taken on Stemmons Freeway less than a minute after the assassination, shows Hickey standing up and holding the rifle. Donahue was impressed by the statement of a witness, Sam Holland, who claimed that a Secret Service agent in the car had stood up and raised his gun at about the time of the fatal shot.

Howard Donahue and Mortal Error

Donahue’s story was taken up by a journalist, Bonar Menninger, who published his account in a book, Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK (St. Martin’s Press, 1992).
Menninger gives his narrative a sense of drama by using short paragraphs and reconstructed conversations. Here is the passage describing our hero’s realisation that he has discovered the secret to the assassination:

God, Donahue thought. The left–rear seat! Here was the missing piece.…“Find something interesting?” Minetree asked as he browsed amid the gun cases.“Yeah, I did,” Donahue replied, numb inside. “Thanks a lot, Warner. This looks like a really good book.”(Mortal Error, pp.101f)
Although the majority of Mortal Error is written in a superficial, tabloid style, it also contains a postscript by the publisher, which discusses the technical aspects of Donahue’s work in detail and is worth reading.

Problems with Mortal Error

With the publication of Menninger’s book, several problems with Donahue’s account became apparent. Although Donahue was knowledgeable about ballistics, he appeared to be unfamiliar with much of the fundamental evidence to do with the JFK assassination. For example, he assumed that Oswald had been on the sixth floor of the TSBD during the assassination, that Oswald had fired three shots, and that the single–bullet theory was credible. All three assumptions are contradicted by the balance of the evidence and are accepted these days by very few specialists, although they still feature in media accounts of the assassination.
Two serious problems were pointed out with the book’s central claim:
Dozens of witnesses were able to see George Hickey when the fatal shot was fired. None of the witnesses claimed that Hickey had fired the shot.

A home movie by a spectator, Charles Bronson, shows that Hickey was neither standing up nor pointing his rifle at President Kennedy at the instant of the fatal shot.

Charles Bronson’s Home Movie

Charles Bronson had been standing on the concrete peristyle at the south–western corner of the junction of Houston Street and Main Street. When Bronson captured the head shot on film, he was about 60 yards from Kennedy, and almost directly opposite Abraham Zapruder. This portion of Bronson’s film lasts only two seconds, and is of inferior quality to the Zapruder film.
George Hickey is visible, on the third row of seats at the back of the Secret Service car. His gun is not visible. Immediately in front of Hickey was President Kennedy’s political associate, Kenneth O’Donnell. In front of O’Donnell was the driver, Sam Kinney. In front of Kinney, and extending beyond the top of Kinney’s head, was the car’s windscreen, with both visors raised. To shoot President Kennedy, Hickey would have had to stand up or raise his gun to at least the level of his head, and the film shows that he does neither.

The film is consistent with Hickey’s own account:
At the end of the last report [i.e. the final shot] I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear. At this point the cars were passing under the over–pass and as a result we had left the scene of the shooting. I kept the AR 15 rifle ready as we proceeded at a high rate of speed to the hospital.(Warren Commission Hearings, vol.18, p.763 [Commission Exhibit 1024])

The real significance of Bronson’s film is not that it disproves a far–fetched theory, but that another portion of the film depicts the sixth–floor window from which at least one shot appears to have been fired. This portion of film was taken about five minutes earlier, when the motorcade had been due to arrive and when Lee Oswald was seen on the first (i.e. ground) floor of the building. There is some debate about whether or not the film shows a moving figure, presumably a gunman, behind the window. For more about Charles Bronson’s film and his experience of the assassination, see Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain, Yeoman Press, 1994, pp.278–304. Selections from Bronson’s film, including an animated GIF (1.9 MB) of the head–shot sequence, can be found at http://www.jfkassassinationgallery.com/thumbnails.php?album=15. The Mary Ferrell Foundation website gives links to online versions of all the known home movies of the assassination.

A Useful Coincidence

Even if Charles Bronson’s film did not exist, the notion that George Hickey killed President Kennedy accidentally could be dismissed simply on the grounds of its implausibility. As Professor Donald Gibson put it:
Were it not for the significance of the events, some discussions would just be funny (like Bonar Menninger’s 1992 book arguing that a Secret Service agent just happened to accidentally shoot Kennedy in the head while Oswald was coincidentally shooting at him, i.e., the only accidental discharge of a Secret Service weapon around a President in one hundred years would by chance hit the President in the head and would by chance occur in the six or so seconds during which someone else was shooting at the President).(Donald Gibson, The Kennedy Assassination Cover–up, Nova Science Publishers, 2000, pp.229–230)

Gibson might have added a further coincidence: the fact that the accidental discharge just happened to cause a wound that could not have been caused by a lone gunman. By 1992, the lone–assassin hypothesis had been undermined by nearly three decades of criticism, culminating in Oliver Stone’s film, JFK, which had just been released. A politically acceptable non–conspiratorial explanation was required, and Mortal Error just happened to provide it.

A Discredited Theory

It is rare for any JFK assassination theory, no matter how outlandish, to be conclusively disproved. Even the theory that Lee Oswald played an active part in the assassination, which these days is believed by few serious researchers, and the theory that Kennedy was hit by a dart fired from a spectator’s umbrella, which is believed by almost no–one, have not been conclusively disproved. But the ‘Secret Service agent shot JFK by accident’ theory is most certainly wrong: there is actually a film of the agent not shooting JFK.
In short, President Kennedy was not killed by a Secret Service agent, deliberately or accidentally.

Legal Action by George Hickey

George Hickey, the Secret Service agent named as President Kennedy’s unwitting assassin, began a law suit against Donahue, Menninger, and St. Martin’s Press. Hickey claimed that they had been shown Bronson’s film several months before the publication of the book, and that they were aware that the film conclusively disproved their theory.

Hickey’s case was rejected by the judge on a technicality, but he was reported to have accepted an out–of–court payment for damages (see e.g. Michael James, ‘Lawsuit is settled in favor of former Secret Service agent; book claimed man accidentally fired bullet that killed Kennedy,’ Baltimore Sun, 3 February 1998).

The Media and the Secret Service ‘Assassin’

The Promotion of Mortal Error

Not only did publication of Bonar Menninger’s Mortal Error go ahead, but the book was widely and sympathetically reviewed in the press. As is usually the case with books about the JFK assassination, almost none of the reviewers had sufficient knowledge of the assassination to identify the book’s fundamental weakness.

JFK: The Smoking Gun

Two decades later, and just a couple of years after George Hickey’s death removed the threat of another legal challenge, a film company decided to cash in by reviving Howard Donahue’s discredited theory.

JFK: The Smoking Gun was one of many pot–boiler films released in time for the fiftieth anniversary in 2013. The film is at least partly fictional, using CGI animations that are based on incorrect data, and features the work of a police detective whose powerful investigative skills allow him to solve the crime of the century. Our master sleuth deduces that … wait for it … JFK was shot accidentally by a Secret Service agent in the car behind him!
Again, wide–eyed newspaper commentators treated it as though it were a credible explanation of the assassination. Few journalists seemed to be aware that the theory had been suggested and debunked twenty years earlier. Nor was any comment made about the well–supported observations that led Donahue to propose his theory:
the presence of two types of bullet, which implied that at least two gunmen were involved;
and the nature of President Kennedy’s head wounds, which implied that the fatal shot came from somewhere other than the sixth floor of the TSBD.

JFK’s Secret Killer

The same thoroughly discredited theory popped up again in a television programme called JFK’s Secret Killer, which apparently dealt with the inconvenient evidence of Charles Bronson’s home movie in the safest way possible, by simply ignoring it.
JFK’s Secret Killer was the only programme on British television during the week of the fiftieth anniversary which offered any analysis of the shooting. Observers who are familiar with the media’s coverage of the JFK assassination were, as usual, appalled but not surprised. Viewers who are unfamiliar with the facts of the assassination were, as usual, misled.

The Media’s Message

Much of the early PR puff about JFK: The Smoking Gun repeated a line that had been used when Mortal Error came out, and which acknowledged that the news media’s promotion of the lone–nut hypothesis has failed to convince a large majority of the general public:
Forget about those silly conspiracy theories! Even if you suspect that the lone–nut theory is nonsense, there is now a perfectly good non–conspiratorial explanation for the assassination. It was just an accident!

The narrator of JFK: The Smoking Gun gave its viewers the same message: “Maybe it’s time … to quietly close the door behind history’s most talked–about and debated crime scene.” The comedian, Bill Hicks, made the same point more succinctly: “Go back to bed, America.”
The media’s institutional subservience to power is surely the fundamental reason why it has repeatedly promoted this particular discredited theory. To the average newspaper editor or television scheduler, the ‘Secret Service agent killed JFK’ theory is an acceptable explanation for the assassination because:
it does not challenge the official doctrine that Lee Harvey Oswald played a part in the assassination and did not have accomplices;
it provides a plausible explanation for the Warren Commission’s inability to make a convincing case against Oswald as a lone assassin;
and it allows the media to continue to ignore the evidence of Oswald’s impersonation in Mexico City, the event which prompted the adoption of the lone–nut hypothesis.

Further Information

For a comprehensive demolition of JFK: The Smoking Gun, see http://www.patspeer.com/the–smoking–gun–that–lied, which details the film’s misuse of witness testimony and its misrepresentation of the medical evidence. Speer also covers the rest of the media’s 50th anniversary output.

For more about the media’s uncritical reporting of JFK: The Smoking Gun, see http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/stupidity–goes–viral–lame–jfk–conspiracy–theory–spreads–around–the–world/. The wording of the URL is mistaken: the lame stupidity in question has gone viral precisely because it is not a conspiracy theory. The article includes a splendid remark by Mark Zaid, who represented Hickey in court:
I have been involved in research and issues involving the JFK assassination for almost 40 years …. I have represented numerous JFK authors/researchers, given numerous speeches and media appearances, and helped secure the declassification of thousands of records. This is one of the most BS theories that has ever been promoted and anyone who believes it is a complete moron.
For a discussion of Mortal Error’s place in the JFK literature, see Fiction, Propaganda and the Media.

[claviger]

JFK Assassination: is George Hickey a credible suspect? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/JFK-Assassination-is-George-Hickey-a-credible-suspect
No. George Hickey was an agent who served in John F. Kennedy's Secret Service detail on the ... In this sense, Mortal Error's theory about George Hickey's magically disappearing AR-15 ammunition is just as "consistent" with the ballistics ..

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JFK Assassination (November 1963)
John F. Kennedy
Assassinations
JFK Assassination: is George Hickey a credible suspect?
The theory that the secret service agent George Hickey may have accidentally fired the 2nd shot that entered JFK's skull doesn't seem to received much analysis. It seems consistent with ballistics, explains the bungling attempts at a cover up. Is it credible?

3 Answers

Jon Pennington
Jon Pennington, fighting the good fight against credulous conspiracy theorists
Written Jan 16

No.

George Hickey was an agent who served in John F. Kennedy's Secret Service detail on the day of JFK's assassination. In 1992, the writer Bonar Menninger published the book Mortal Error, which publicized the theories of Baltimore gunsmith Howard Donahue to argue that JFK had been killed by a stray bullet fired from an AR-15 rifle carried by Agent Hickey. According to this theory, JFK had been shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the Texas Schoolbook Depository but the fatal bullet through JFK's skull came out of an accidentally discharged AR-15 rifle that had been jostled during the chaos that developed after Oswald started shooting.

One problem with this theory is that, when Mortal Error came out in 1992, Agent George Hickey was still alive to defend himself. Hickey hired a lawyer, Mark Zaid, who filed a libel suit against the publisher of the book, St. Martin's Press, in 1996. At first, St. Martin's Press got the libel suit dismissed on technical grounds, because Hickey had filed after the statute of limitations for defamation claims in his home state of Maryland. Zaid then appealed the dismissal, which eventually convinced St. Martin's Press to award an undisclosed cash settlement to Mr. Hickey in 1998. As a former government employee who probably wasn't exceedingly wealthy, it is doubtful that Hickey would have risked spending the money on a libel lawsuit blaming him for killing JFK if he wasn't actually innocent of the charge. Certainly, there are guilty men who have the chutzpah to insist that they didn't do what the evidence says they did, but they typically aren't willing to bankrupt themselves to do it.

The question details claim that George Hickey's status as a suspect in the murder of John F. Kennedy is "consistent with ballistics," but that's a trivial statement at best. The theory put forward in the book Mortal Error is only "consistent" with the ballistic evidence in the JFK case, because Mortal Error argues that any ammunition from the AR-15 disintegrated while penetrating JFK's skull and left no physical traces of its existence behind. In this sense, Mortal Error's theory about George Hickey's magically disappearing AR-15 ammunition is just as "consistent" with the ballistics evidence as conspiracy theories that JFK was killed by invisible space lasers that exploded his brain or that JFK's skull was penetrated by a bullet made of ice that melted upon impact. There is no reason to explain JFK's assassination with theories that rely on disappeared, absent evidence, when there was actual ballistic evidence at the scene consistent with the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle fired by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Last but not least, how was it possible for George Hickey to have discharged an AR-15 rifle in a crowded public area and nobody saw or heard him do it? Mortal Error came out in 1992, 29 years after the assassination. Are you expecting me to believe that a Secret Service agent shot and killed John F. Kennedy with an AR-15 and not only didn't get caught, but didn't even get noticed for 29 years? For one thing, Kennedy's aide David Powers was riding in the car behind JFK, but he never heard George Hickey or anybody else in the motorcade discharge a weapon. According to Dave Powers, as he was quoted in the book Mortal Error itself, “Someone a foot away from me or two feet away from me couldn’t fire a gun without me hearing it.” Since George Hickey was positioned within two feet of Dave Powers, it is obvious that Hickey could not have fired the weapon.

In conclusion, Mark Zaid, George Hickey's lawyer, had some choice words about this theory in a recent Facebook post:

I wish George Hickey, Jr. was still alive. I would have filed a lawsuit against this theorist and film company, as well as any media entity that gave his story any play.

I became Hickey's attorney after Mortal Error was published and we sued Donohue, St. Martin's Press and Simon & Shuster. Settlements were reached in each case and the publisher apologized.

I also represented Secret Service Agent Tim McIntyre who was standing right next to Hickey at the time. I assure everyone he did not witness - nor did any of the several hundred people in Dealey Plaza - any such shot.

I have been involved in research and issues involving the JFK assassination for almost 40 years, since I was seven years old. I have represented numerous JFK authors/researches, given numerous speeches and media appearances, and helped secure the declassification of thousands of records. This is one of the most BS theories that has ever been promoted and anyone who believes it is a complete moron (and I never use that word on a public message board so that should tell you something).

1.6k Views · View Upvotes · Answer requested by Michael Price
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Steve Harris
Steve Harris, I remember it, and have been reading books on it ever since.
Written Jan 11
This is a guy who is supposed to have fired an AR-15 right next to the ears of the people in the front seat of his limo. What, they didn't notice?

Then there is the Altgens photo, taken 1.8 sec before the final shot, and after the throat shot (JFK has hands in front of him, and is being helped by his wife). But no AR-15 raised in the rear car do we see. Hickey's gunna have to hurry!

The Altgens photo also shows a lot of people, including secret service men, looking back and up. They are looking for the origin of the throat shot. The Hickey theory is that somebody shot JFK from behind through the throat, and then Hickey shot him again from behind, in the head. Talk about your annoying day from Hell.

There's a last problem with Hickey, and that's that it cannot put a 6.5 mm circular metal tab in JFK's skull, and it cannot put two beat up Carcano bullet pieces next to the front seat and door, where they were found.
555 Views · View Upvotes · Answer requested by Michael Price

Jon Mixon
Jon Mixon, Wrote a book report about him and have studied his life and death extensively.
Updated Jan 16
"Credible" to whom?

Given that all of the shots occurred within a 10-15 second and given the damage done to President Kennedy's skull by the final and fatal bullet, it seems improbable that the mortal wound was inflicted by a handgun. In the 1960s, hollow point ammunition was not used by law enforcement, meaning that ball ammunition or wadcutters were the only rounds available. Neither cause the wounds seen inflicted upon Kennedy in the Zapruder film of the events.

Frankly, for Kennedy to have been wounded by a Secret Service seems improbable. Any competent bodyguard would not point his/her weapon at the principal (the person being guarded) they would point it in the direction of the perceived threat. If an accidental discharge was posited, the round would strike the roadway or headed away from the limousine , not towards it. It would have no struck Kennedy and it would have caused the damage seen.

[claviger]

Shooting holes in theory that a Secret Service agent killed President ...
Nov 13, 2013 - The theory got little notice, despite a 1977 write-up in the Baltimore Sun and a 1992 book, Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, by Bonar ...
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Shooting_holes_in_theory_that_a_Secret_Service_agent_killed_President_Kennedy.html

News
Shooting holes in theory that a Secret Service agent killed President Kennedy
Updated: NOVEMBER 13, 2013 — 10:20 AM EST

http://media.philly.com/images/800*533/jfk-hickey-with-rifle.jpg
Secret Service agent George Hickey is seen brandishing a rifle as the limousine carrying a wounded President Kennedy, with agent Clint Hill on the back, speeds away from Dealey Plaza in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. One theory is that Hickey accidentally shot JFK.

by Peter Mucha, Philly.com
A Secret Service agent accidentally shot President Kennedy in the head?

This seemingly incredible theory was revived last week by JFK: The Smoking Gun, a two-hour Reelz special that’s scheduled to run again Friday at 5 and 8 p.m. Among many programs remembering Kennedy around the 50th anniversary of his Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, it stands out for focusing on a suspect besides Lee Harvey Oswald.

Despite some cheesy reenactments – that actor’s supposed to look like Arlen Specter? – JFK: The Smoking Gun builds a seemingly plausible case based on ballistics and suspicious behavior by government officials.

“I believe,” Americans have overwhelmingly voted, according to a poll at the show’s companion website. Critical media reports are tough to find.

The main evidence in favor of the theory, proposed in the 1970s by Baltimore gunsmith Howard Donahue and newly resurrected by Australian detective Colin McLaren, focuses on the third shot at President Kennedy, tearing apart the upper right side of his skull.

JFK’s head wounds suggested to Donahue that the third shot was not fired by the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Most investigators, including Donahue, believe that weapon, linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, fired the first two shots, if not all three.

The way the bullet produced as many as 40 tiny fragments inside Kennedy’s brain, and the reported 6mm diameter of the entry wound in the back of the skull, were inconsistent with 6.5 mm Carcano bullets, Donahue contended. His analysis did agree with Specter’s “single bullet theory” that such a full metal jacket projectile was capable of drilling through Kennedy’s upper back and throat, and Texas Gov. John Connelly’s back, rib and wrist before lodging in his thigh. But Donahue couldn’t comprehend such a bullet disintegrating inside a brain.

His calculations put the trajectory over the left side of the trailing car, which was full of Secret Service agents, including one who at some point picked up an AR-15 rifle. Donahue concluded the agent, George Hickey, accidentally shot the president when the car suddenly lurched.

The theory got little notice, despite a 1977 write-up in the Baltimore Sun and a 1992 book, Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, by Bonar Menninger. Donahue died in 1999.

In the Reelz report , McLaren extends the case to argue that there was a coverup, because the Secret Service was mortified that the president was killed by a man who was assigned to that car only because other agents allegedly had been partying and drinking till early that morning.

It all makes for an intriguing case. But it has some major holes.

Accidents don’t get any freakier. Think about it. A stationary marksman aiming a rifle misses with his first shot, but a federal agent in a lurching car just happens to fire at the perfect up-down, left-right angle to hit Kennedy in the head? Isn’t it much more likely that at least one of Donahue’s estimations was off-target?

No solid witnesses. McLaren makes a big deal of trusting witnesses, but more than 100 people there that day thought shots came from the Book Depository or the infamous grassy knoll. No one claimed to see Hickey discharge his weapon directly at the president.

Yet JFK: The Smoking Gun discredits the grassy knoll idea (as does Cold Case JFK, Nova’s reexamination of the scientific evidence that debuts at 9 tonight on PBS), while giving credibility to those who smelled gun smoke at street level, who thought the third shot was louder or came from near the presidential limousine, or who thought Hickey may have picked up his rifle after the first shot (Hickey testified it was after the third shot).

Hickey’s car had two administration officials inside, and seven other Secret Service agents aboard, counting four on the running boards, while at least two Dallas motorcycle cops rode alongside. Behind them were more cars full of agents and officials. Yet no one was sure that Hickey's AR-15 was fired in Dealey Plaza? Kennedy aide Dave Powers said, “Someone a foot away from me or two feet away from me couldn’t fire a gun without me hearing it,” according to Mortal Error. A coverup might produce such post-event denials, but what explains a lack of immediate reaction in the followup car? Wouldn’t a trained agent have snatched the gun, or knocked Hickey down, in case he was a real assassin? Or to prevent this klutz from killing someone else?

http://media.philly.com/images/jfk-first-shot-motorcade-400.jpg

One photograph (above) is said to show Hickey without the rifle at the time of first shot, and the only photograph of him with it shows it pointing skyward well beyond the assassination scene. Hickey’s lawsuit over Menninger’s book resulted in a settlement.

It’s dubious to use a gaping hole to calculate a trajectory. If Donahue’s trajectory is wrong, his whole theory falls apart.

Did the bullet enter near the base of Kennedy's skull (as the autopsy report suggested) or four inches higher (as the House Selection Committee on Assassinations concluded)? Then, did it travel toward the middle of the area with missing skull, or travel more toward the top, bottom, front or rear?

Even Donahue, according to Mortal Error, believed the bullet curved to the right and upward, disagreeing with the House Select Assassination Committee’s contention it curled to the right and downward. The science is revisited in Nova’s Cold Case JFK. During experiments firing Carcano bullets at skulls filled with ballistics gel, the bullets “did not follow a straight path inside the skull, because they were deformed on impact,” the narrator explains.

Scientist Larry Sturdivan said the bullets would yaw, or wobble, and develop lift. If the bullet rose, it could have been fired from an angle over Hickey’s head. Add in disagreements about how much JFK’s head was leaning forward or turned toward the left, as seen below in a frame from the Zapruder film, and the trajectory further resembles guesswork.

http://media.philly.com/images/jfk-head-angles-400.jpg

A “completely disintegrated” bullet also confuses the trajectory. A big part of Donahue’s theory was that the third bullet “explosively disintegrated into dozens of tiny fragments.” That would fit the kind of bullets used by Hickey’s AR-15. Mortal Error quotes Russell Fisher, a Maryland medical examiner, as telling Donahue that “the bullet that hit him [Kennedy] in the head disintegrated completely,” judging from autopsy x-rays.

http://media.philly.com/images/jfk-trajectories-400.jpg

So which is it? Did the bullet shatter to smithereens, or did it leave enough evidence to pinpoint a path? JFK: The Smoking Gun gives both impressions, poking a dowel through two holes in a model of a skull (above), and blowing up a cantaloupe with an AR-15 bullet. Forget about threading any dowel through that melon. And forget about the Carcano bullet piercing the cantaloupe neatly. Nova’s Cold Case JFK shows footage of skulls fracturing apart when struck by Carcano bullets.

http://media.philly.com/images/jfk-bullet-fragments-400.jpg

Carcano bullets did break apart in tests on skulls. Kennedy’s brain went missing after the autopsy, so no one knows if bullet fragments seen in x-rays from the autopsy add up to an AR-15 bullet or the lead core and other bits of a Carcano bullet. Two sizeable Carcano bullet fragments (above) were found in the presidential limo, and the Warren Commission concluded they were from the bullet that caused the head wound and that they damaged the windshield and its chrome before dropping to the floor. The missing middle section might account for the dozens of tiny fragments seen on the x-rays. And the aforementioned tests on human skulls did produce deformed pieces resembling those found in the limousine. Donahue’s explanation is that the first shot missed, hit pavement and ricocheted, with three fragments winding up in the limousine, including one that strikes Kennedy’s head, causing him to react before he and Connelly got hit by the second bullet. Donahue examined the two found fragments, and eliminated them as coming from the third shot, because he saw no brain-tissue residue, according to Mortal Error.

The entry wound’s diameter isn’t clear. Again, JFK: The Smoking Gun tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, it plays up how botched the autopsy was, and on the other hand, wants to use an autopsy estimate as hard evidence. Donahue decided the autopsy was four inches too low in locating the entrance wound in the back of the head, and that’s plausible since it was Dr. Fisher’s conclusion after viewing x-rays at the National Archives, according to Mortal Error. (The Nova special leans toward the lower location, based on skull fracture patterns.)

And yet Donahue assumes the autopsy was precise about the entry wound diameter down to one-fiftieth of an inch. Further, it’s unclear if the 6 mm measurement applied to the bone itself, since it was clearly given for a “lacerated wound” “in the posterior scalp.” When the report then notes “a corresponding wound through the skull,” is that a declaration it was exactly the same size, or just in the same location? As Menninger notes, “Certainly, the scalp tissue may have shrunk.” The wound in Kennedy’s back and throat, agreed to have been from a Carcano bullet, was measured as only 4 mm wide in the autopsy report. The Warren Report said “elastic recoil of the skull” could explain the seeming discrepancy.

Cover-ups can have many reasons. The autopsy was dubious and evidence was lost, but that doesn’t make fatal friendly fire the only possible explanation. Losing the president was embarrassing enough to the Secret Service, and it’s widely suspected the FBI and CIA were covering up how much they really knew about Oswald. The way the medical evidence was "rushed and bungled" allowed all sorts of conspiracy theories to arise, said New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.

There’s a saying about quantum physics, that if you think you understand it, you probably don’t.

Ditto for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in Dallas 50 years ago this month.

Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmu...@phillynews.com. Follow @petemucha on Twitter.

Published: November 13, 2013 — 11:06 AM EST

[claviger]

Griffith Review of MORTAL ERROR - Assassination Research
Donahue's theory and his supporting arguments are the subject of a book by Bonar Menninger, MORTAL ERROR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). The work ...
http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n1/griffith1.html

Book Reviews / MORTAL ERROR

MORTAL ERROR:
Did a Secret Service Agent Accidentally Shoot JFK in the Head?

Michael T. Griffith

[Editor's Note: Michael Griffith, who has a strong background in applied
science and training from the Defense Language Institute at Monterey,
CA, has authored many articles and a book, COMPELLING EVIDENCE (1996),
on the assassination of JFK. He maintains an award-winning web site
Griffith Review of MORTAL ERROR - Assassination Research
www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n1/griffith1.html
Donahue's theory and his supporting arguments are the subject of a book by Bonar Menninger, MORTAL ERROR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). The work ...

devoted to controversial issues at http://ourworld.cs.com/mikegriffith1/.]

The late ballistics and firearms expert Howard Donahue believed that one of the Secret Service (SS) agents in the follow-up car accidentally shot President Kennedy. Donahue's theory and his supporting arguments are the subject of a book by Bonar Menninger, MORTAL ERROR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). The work includes an excellent "Publisher's Note" that summarizes the findings of a St. Martin's Press research team regarding the flawed trajectory analysis done by NASA scientist Thomas Canning for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

According to Donahue, Oswald did indeed fire at Kennedy, but only got off two shots. Oswald's first shot, says Donahue, hit the road near the limousine and showered the car with fragments, some of which lightly injured Kennedy in the head. Oswald's second shot, according to Donahue, struck the President in the back of the neck and then went on to cause all of Governor John Connally's wounds. (This, of course, isthe single bullet theory (SBT), which Donahue believed.) Moments later, Donahue maintains, the fatal shot was fired, accidentally, from the follow-up car by SS agent George Hickey.

Menninger presents the following arguments in favor of Donahue's reconstruction:

* The trajectory given for the alleged rear entrance head wound is incompatible with a shot from the alleged sniper's nest, i.e., from the location from which Oswald supposedly fired, the southeast corner window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building;

* The bullet that mortally wounded Kennedy in the head behaved like a high-velocity, frangible missile, whereas Oswald supposedly used medium-velocity, non-frangible ammunition;

* SSA Hickey, however, was seen with an AR-15 rifle at around the same time the head shot was fired, where the AR-15 fires high-velocity, frangible ammo;

* The reported width of the rear entry wound on the head was 6.0 mm, but Oswald allegedly used 6.5 mm Carcano bullets;

* The damage to the limousine's windshield was too high to have been caused by a bullet coming down into the car from the sixth-floor sniper's nest, as even Canning conceded to the HSCA;

* Several witnesses in Dealey Plaza said two of the shots came in very rapid succession, nearly simultaneously, much too quickly to have been fired from the bolt-action Italian carbine that Oswald supposedly used;

* Connally's wife and one of the SS agents in the limo both heard Kennedy cry out that he had been hit well BEFORE Gov. Connally was wounded;

* There were no traces of blood or human tissue on the bullet fragments found in the limousine when Donahue examined them at the National Archives, yet the Warren Commission claimed these fragments came from the bullet that plowed through the President's head;

* The 6.5 mm fragment that is seen on the back of Kennedy's head in the autopsy skull X-rays almost certainly did not come from the kind of ammunition that Oswald allegedly used.

In fact, forensic science knows of no case where a fully metal-jacketed bullet (or a FMJ bullet) deposited a sizable fragment on the outer table of the skull as it penetrated the skull. That fragment most likely was a ricochet fragment that came from a bullet that struck the pavement behind the limousine. These arguments are perfectly valid and relevant. However, they also lend themselves to more than one conclusion. Each could be construed, quite logically and plausibly, as equally strong evidence of conspiracy.

There are three major problems with Donahue's theory, in my opinion. For one thing, it fails to explain many indications that President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. For instance, it does not account for the credible reports of phony SS agents in Dealey Plaza, the disturbing and suspicious Oswald impersonations, the problematic backyard rifle photos (which Donahue accepted as genuine), or the Joseph Milteer case (in which a wealthy, militant right-wing leader connected to the anti-Castro movement was recorded on tape by a Miami police informant--about two weeks before the shooting, saying that a hit on Kennedy was already "in the working").

Second, Donahue relied heavily on the SBT, which was the only way Donahue could explain Connally's wounds. However, physicist and radiologist Dr. David Mantik, who was permitted to examine the original autopsy materials at the National Archives, has discovered that the SBT appears to be a physical impossibility. Dr. Mantik, by making a simple but crucial experiment that should have been made years ago, found that no bullet could have gone from the back wound to the throat wound without smashing straight through the spine. [Editor's note: See "The Lone Nutter Refutation" above.]

In attempting to salvage the SBT from the results of the Warren Commission's own ballistics tests, in which the exit wounds in simulated human necks were torn-out wounds at least 10 mm in diameter, Donahue cited urologist John Lattimer, M.D.,'s specious theory that Kennedy's collar band "restrained" the neck and thus prevented the alleged exiting bullet from markedly pushing out the skin and from breaking through in a tearing fashion (Menninger 1992, p. 35). This hypothesis, according to Donahue, could explain why Kennedy's neck wound was small (about 4-5 mm in diameter), neat, and circular, even though it was supposedly the exit point for a 6.5 mm missile.

As Donahue should have realized, the slits in the front of the shirt are visibly below the collar band. According to the SBT, the "magic bullet" made those slits as it exited the throat. However, if those slits were made by a bullet, there would have been nothing to restrain the skin of the neck from stretching, since the slits are clearly lower than the collar band (Harold Weisberg, NEVER AGAIN 1995, pp. 244-245). Thus there would have been nothing to prevent the bullet from breaking through the skin in a tearing fashion.

Again, in the Commission's own ballistics tests, every single bullet fired into the simulated human necks created a torn-out, gaping exit wound of at least 10 mm in diameter, whereas JFK's throat wound was small, neat, and not punched out. What's more, according to Dr. Charles Carrico, the only doctor to see the throat wound before the shirt was removed, the throat wound was above the collar (specifically, he said it was above the knot of the tie). Indeed, Dr. Carrico said he did not see any slits in the front of the shirt nor a nick on the tie know before the nurses began to cut away Kennedy's clothing. Those slits and the nick on the tie knot were very likely made by the nurses as they removed JFK's shirt and tie.

The third problem I see with Donahue's theory is that it is foundationally dependent on the assumption that the alleged autopsy photos and X-rays are genuine and that the interpretations of them given by the Clark Panel and by the HSCA's medical panel are accurate. [Editor's note: See ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998) and MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000).] Thus, Donahue accepted the placement of Kennedy's back wound near the base of the neck, yet evidence from the released files make it more clear than ever that the wound was actually farther down on the back, about five to six inches below the neck.

Similarly, Donahue accepted the claim that there was only one head shot and that it came from behind. Donahue rejected the massive eyewitness testimony that there was a large, exit-type defect in the right rear part of JFK's head, primarily because the X-rays reportedly do not show such a defect and because photos of the back of the head show the region to be intact. [Editor's note: See the study by Gary Aguilar,M.D., in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000).] Two private experts who have examined the X-rays at the National Archives, however, have found that one of the radiographs does in fact suggest a sizeable defect in the rear area of the skull.

Furthermore, several private experts have concluded the skull x-rays show clear, undeniable evidence that at least two bullets struck the president in the head. As for the photos of the back of the head, these pictures have been labeled as fraudulent by medical technicians who attended the autopsy, as well as by medical personnel who saw the President's body at Parkland Hospital in Dallas right after the shooting.

Additionally, we now know from released files that one of the autopsy pathologists, Dr. Pierre Finck, in one of his HSCA interviews, went so far as to question how one of the photos of the head been established as having been taken at the autopsy! We also have the previously sealed testimony of the mortician who reassembled JFK's skull after the autopsy, Tom Robinson. Robinson reported that there was still a visibledefect in the back of the head even after the inclusion of late-arriving skull fragments from Dallas.

And Dr. Boswell, another one of the autopsists, told the HSCA that half of the rear entry wound in the back of the head was contained in a piece of missing skull fragment, and that this fragment did not arrive to Bethesda Naval Hospital until very late that night, whereas the alleged autopsy photos were taken hours earlier.Since Donahue accepted the findings of the Clark Panel and the HSCA medical panel, he believed there was a large, 6.5 mm bullet fragment in the outer table of Kennedy's skull, just beneath the "revised" rear entrance wound in the back of the head. David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., however, has discovered from his study of the X-rays that the 6.5 mm "fragment" is actually a man-made image that was superimposed over a smaller genuine fragment. Dr. Mantik was even able to duplicate how the 6.5 mm image could have been produced on the X-rays. He has published his findings on these matters in ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998) and MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000).

Somewhat surprisingly, Donahue accepted the "revised" location for the rear head entry wound put forth by the Clark Panel and by the HSCA medical panel, which is a staggering four inches higher than where the autopsy doctors located it. Donahue speculates that the autopsy pathologists simply mislocated the wound. But this would require us to believe that all three of the autopsists "erred" by a whopping four inches in describing and diagramming the wound's location. This seems to be extremely unlikely and hard to believe, especially since they carefully measured the wound's location.

Indeed, Dr. Boswell even prepared a medical diagram in which he had, in effect,triangulated the wound to the vicinity of external occipital protuberance. (Why was the wound "moved"? Because the entry wound as described by the autopsy doctors could not have been caused by a bullet fired from the alleged sniper's nest.The revised location doesn't fit all that well either, but it lines much better than the location described in the autopsy report.)

There are other problems with Donahue's theory. Donahue allowed for no more than three shots, but credible reports of additional bullets striking in Dealey Plaza and a substantial amount of eyewitness testimony indicate there were at least four shots were fired, and quite possibly as many as six or eight. In addition, the Zapruder film seems to show reactions to six shots.

Donahue assumed that Oswald fired two shots from the sixth-floor sniper's nest, but there is good evidence that Oswald was on the second floor at the time of the shooting. [Editor's note: Griffith discusses this evidence in detail in "The Baker-Oswald Encounter: Proof That Oswald Did Not Shoot JFK?", which may be found on his web site given above.]

Donahue cited journalist Jim Bishop's claim that SSA Clint Hill phoned Robert Kennedy from Parkland Hospital and told him there had been an "accident." (Menning 1992, p. 110). But Hill did not actually say "accident", but instead said that there had been an "incident" and then went on to explain that the President and Governor Connally had been shot.

In order to explain the violent rearward movement of Kennedy's head and upper body in response to the head shot, Donahue accepted the neuro-spasm and jet-effect theories. Both theories, however, are of doubtful credibility. Ballistics expert and physicist Dr. Larry Sturdivan implicitly rejected the jet-effect theory when he testified before the HSCA. The theory is based on disputed, improbable, assumptions anyway. As for the neuro-spasm theory, the neuromuscular reaction posited in this hypothesis seems to be much too fast given the speed of the backward snap and the mass involved, as Josiah Thompson observed years ago (SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS 1967, pp. 93-95; see also Harrison Edward Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH 1993, pp. 151-152).

Howard Donahue was a decent, honorable man, and he did a great deal of valuable, credible research. Unfortunately, his theory rested on a number of doubtful arguments and is incompatible with, or simply fails to explain, much too much of the evidence.


(c) 2002 Michael T. Griffith

[claviger]

Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK is a 1992 non-fiction book by Bonar
Menninger outlining a theory by sharpshooter, gunsmith and ballistics expert
Howard Donahue that a Secret Service agent accidentally fired the shot
that actually killed President John F. Kennedy.
Mortal Error - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Error


Mortal Error - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Error

Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK is a 1992 non-fiction book by Bonar
Menninger outlining a theory by sharpshooter, gunsmith and ballistics
expert Howard Donahue that a Secret Service agent accidentally fired the
shot that actually killed President John F. Kennedy.

Author‎: ‎Bonar Menninger Publication date‎: ‎May 1992
Publisher‎: ‎St Martin's Press Pages‎: ‎361 pp (first edition, hardback or paper...

[claviger]

Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, A ballistics expert's astonishing ...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/276333.Mortal_Error
Mortal Error has 274 ratings and 33 reviews. ... I have not (nor would I attempt) to every say one book or theory is “definitive” – but the analysis does provide ...

Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, A ballistics expert's astonishing discovery of the fatal bullet that Oswald did not fire
by Bonar Menninger

In 1967, a Baltimore man named Howard Donahue began investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Like countless Americans, Donahue was fascinated by the events in Dallas. But what separated him from other amateur sleuths, and even the Warren Commission experts, was a lifetime's experience with guns and ballistics. In the years ahead, these two attributes, plus bulldoglike tenacity, would carry Donahue on a spellbinding journey back to that tragic day in 1963. Thanks to his understanding of ballistics--and some remarkable luck--Donahue was able to spot discrepancies in the evidence that had been missed both by the Warren Commission experts and by critics of the Commission's Report. So he kept digging, trying to understand. And finally Donahue pieced together the facts and came to a shocking conclusion: Lee Harvey Oswald could not have fired the shot that shattered Kennedy's skull, and, in Donahue's judgment, only one other person could have. He was convinced he knew who pulled the trigger, and why this savage irony had remained buried for so long. In Mortal Error, Bonar Menninger chronicles Donahue's twenty-five-year investigation of President Kennedy's death and the stunning revelation it led him to. In crisp, rapid-fire prose, Menninger relates one of the greatest true-life detective stories ever told. More important, he offers solutions to questions that have haunted America for nearly thirty years.

Hardcover, 361 pages
Published March 1st 1992 by St Martins Pr

[claviger]

Mortal Error - Daily Kos
Nov 8, 2013 - No CT: "Smoking Gun," "Mortal Error," Friendly Fire, &, Finally, Who ... On first hearing this theory, almost no one believes that it could be right.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/8/1254058/-No-CT-Smoking-Gun-Mortal-Error-Friendly-Fire-Finally-Who-Killed-JFK-50-Years-Later

No CT: "Smoking Gun," "Mortal Error," Friendly Fire, &, Finally, Who Killed JFK 50 Years Later.

By David B
2013/11/08

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY. I don't want to see any comments claiming that it is. It is not. A conspiracy involves premeditated planning. There was none in this case.

We are in the month of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. And, conspiracy theories abound, because many people believe that the official story is flawed. When any "official" story appears to have logical inconsistencies, conspiracy theories sprout up to attempt to explain the discrepancies.

There is a movie now out on the Reelz network, called, JFK: The Smoking Gun, based on the book Mortal Error, by Howard Donahue and Bonar Menninger (St. Martin’s Press, 1992), which asserts that Oswald acted alone, without help, - but - that the bullet that actually killed the President came from an AR-15 held by a Secret Service Agent, George Hickey, in the car behind him.

David Hinkley wrote in his review:

McLaren doesn’t come off as a conspiracy theorist or an agenda-crazed obsessive. He comes off as a detective building a case.

Here is McLaren making his case, on KTLA-5. Before you dismiss this, take a look at this video.
Bill James, of baseball fame, wrote a terrific book, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence (Scribner, 2011). One of the many crimes he looked at was the assassination. He, too, dismisses the craziness of the CT's that claim that Oswald had help:

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Obviously it is beyond the scope of this little book to sort out the facts of the Kennedy assassination. If you were to read one book a month about the Kennedy assassination, you could read them all in about twenty years—you could, at least, if the assassination buffs would stop writing them. The two books that I would recommend to you—not having read them all, obviously—are Case Closed, by Gerald Posner (Anchor Books, 1993) and Mortal Error, by Howard Donahue and Bonar Menninger (St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

Citing Posner's definitive book, which James calls "a systematic rebuttal of the specious material which forms the bulk of the other 200-plus books," James convincingly argues that Oswald acted without help. There was NO conspiracy. After summarizing Posner's main points, James writes:

I think it’s a wonderful book, and I feel that Gerald Posner has accomplished a public service in putting it together, granting that in my case he is preaching to the choir. But although I have the highest regard for Case Closed, and a genuine appreciation for Posner’s effort in writing it, that book ultimately does not win the contest to convince me. It finishes a strong second. The winner is Mortal Error, by Bonar Menninger, which is based on the work of Howard Donahue. [emphasis mine]

After meticulously going over the material that McLaren has made into this movie, James continues:

On first hearing this theory, almost no one believes that it could be right. It sounds like just another helium balloon by someone who watched too many Mission: Impossible re-runs as a child. But I have read Mortal Error carefully, and I have to tell you, if there’s a flaw in his argument, I don’t see it. Unlike the conspiracy theories, which are almost universally based on conversations which took place in Russia in 1961, in New Orleans in 1962, or in Tampa in 1972, the Donahue analysis is based primarily upon a detailed, careful study of what happened in Dealey Plaza on November 22.

The key points of his argument can be sorted into three classes:

1) Ballistics.
2) Circumstantial observations of the critical ten seconds.
3) Circumstantial observations after the fact.Donahue is a ballistics expert who has testified in many criminal cases in that role.

James notes that when he first read Mortal Error,

"Well, he could be right, he could be wrong, I’m not a ballistics expert, and I don’t see how anybody can really claim to know.” Later, however, after reading Posner’s book, after watching a couple of documentaries which include copies of the Zapruder film, I returned to the analysis, and my reaction was different: not merely that Donahue could be right, but that he actually was.The situation is not as complicated as the language in which it must be stated. If you can wade through the math until you get an intuitive feel for what the argument is about, you can figure things out.

You may not agree with this, but it does explain a lot. It would explain why a call to Washington to report the assassination called it an "accident." It would explain why within seconds, people at street level smelled gunpowder, when Oswald fired from 4 floors up. It would explain why Oswald is recorded as having said "I did not kill the President," and "I'm a patsy." Why? Because, if this is correct, he was looking through his telescopic sight, attempting to line up a shot, when he saw the President's head blow open.

You, the reader, are welcome to roll your eyes, and dismiss this all as yet another CT, when, in fact it is not. I will just add that the 3 most dangerous words in the English language are "I know that." When we say "I know that," we cut ourselves off from any learning.

As Wallace Baine notes:

The Hickey theory is not a conspiracy theory. It is the opposite. And, on a larger scale, it tells us something entirely different about how the world works. That sometimes, stuff just happens for no good reason, and unspeakable tragedy is a result, that there is no grand design, for good or ill. Most of the things that happen to us, good and bad, are the function of random dumb luck and cosmic accidents.

[claviger]

10 Reasons JFK's Death Might Have Been An Accident - Listverse
Jun 8, 2014 - The assassination of John F. Kennedy remains one of the most ... In the aftermath of the shooting, Hickey seized the AR-15 but, ..... Not that I mind the debate, people should question things rather than just ..... I don't comment on someone else's comments when clearly its an OPINION-based social forum.
http://listverse.com/2014/06/08/10-reasons-jfks-death-might-have-been-an-accident/

MYSTERIES
10 Reasons JFK’s Death Might Have Been An Accident
FLAMEHORSE JUNE 8, 2014
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The assassination of John F. Kennedy remains one of the most controversial events of the 20th century. While the most widely accepted theory is that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, a huge number of conspiracy theories have arisen about that fateful day in Dealey Plaza. But what if the President’s death was actually a terrible accident? First popularized by the ballistics expert Howard Donahue, an intriguing theory holds that after Oswald opened fire on the motorcade, a panicking Secret Service agent accidentally discharged his rifle, firing the shot that killed Kennedy.

This list is not intended to accuse anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald of having anything to do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Donahue’s theory is just that—a theory. The following is merely an examination of the evidence for (and against) one of the most fascinating “What Ifs” in American history.

10 Multiple Witnesses Described the Last Two Shots As Very Close Together

Oswald used a bolt-action Carcano rifle, which requires the shooter to make four movements after each shot in order to cycle the spent case and chamber the next round. The Warren Commission found that the minimum time required to fire the rifle, cycle the bolt once, and fire a second shot was 2.3 seconds. The most commonly accepted theory is that Oswald fired three shots, one of which missed, requiring him to cycle the bolt twice. Based on footage from the Zapruder Film, the Commission concluded that the two shots that hit Kennedy were fired 4.8–5.6 seconds apart.

If the second shot missed, then all three bullets must have been fired in that time. If, however, the first or third shot missed, then the minimum timespan increases to 7.1–7.9 seconds for all three shots. Neither scenario is impossible, although 4.8–5.6 seconds would be a remarkably short time to fire accurately on a moving vehicle.

But the Warren Commission’s calculations are only important if the shots are assumed to have occurred at equal intervals. If, instead, the last two shots were to occur almost simultaneously, then a single bolt-action rifle could not fire them both. Interestingly, some witness testimony seems to support that scenario. Notable is the testimony of Secret Service agent Bill Greer, who drove the Presidential limousine, when asked: “How much time elapsed, to the best of your ability to estimate and recollect, between the time of the second noise and the time of the third noise?”

Greer answered: “The last two seemed to be just simultaneously, one behind the other, but I don’t recollect just how much, how many seconds were between the two. I couldn’t really say.”

District Clerk James Crawford, who was standing at the intersection of Elm and Houston streets during the shooting, stated: “As I observed the parade, I believe there was a car leading the President’s car, followed by the President’s car and followed, I suppose, by the Vice President’s car and, in turn, by the Secret Service in a yellow closed sedan. The doors of the sedan were open. It was after the Secret Service sedan had gone around the corner that I heard the first report and at that time I thought it was a backfire of a car but, in analyzing the situation, it could not have been a backfire of a car because it would have had to have been the President’s car or some car in the cavalcade there. The second shot followed some seconds, a little time elapsed after the first one, and followed very quickly by the third one. I could not see the President’s car.”

Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig was standing in front of the Sheriff’s Office on Houston Street, having watched the motorcade pass and turn onto Elm. Once it was out of sight, Craig heard three shots and started running toward the scene. Here is part of his testimony, as taken by Commission staffer David Belin:

BELIN: About how far were these noises apart?
CRAIG: The first one was—uh—about three seconds—two or three seconds.
BELIN: Two or three seconds between the first and the second?
CRAIG: It was quite a pause between there. It could have been a little longer.
BELIN: And what about between the second and third?
CRAIG: Not more than two seconds. It was—they were real rapid.

None of this conclusively disproves that Oswald was the sole shooter. But it does raise an interesting possibility—if the second and third shots were fired so close together, is it conceivable that one of them wasn’t fired by Oswald at all?
Kennedy’s assassination is still one of the greatest sources of contention in American history. Read the whole story in The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination at Amazon.com!


9 George Hickey Was The Only Secret Service Agent Armed With A Rifle

There were 12 Secret Service agents assigned to guard Kennedy on the day of the assassination. Special Agent in Charge Roy Kellerman rode in the front passenger seat of the Presidential limousine, with Special Agent Bill Greer driving. Win Lawson and Verne Sorrels rode in the lead vehicle and Agent Sam Kinney drove the rear vehicle, with the President’s limousine in the middle. Also in the rear vehicle were Special Agent Emory Roberts in the front passenger seat, George Hickey in the left rear seat, and Glen Bennett in the right rear seat. Special Agents Clint Hill, Tim Mcintyre, Jack Ready, and Paul Landis stood on the rear car’s running boards.

The lead vehicle was a hardtop, the other two were convertibles with their tops down. All of the agents were armed with 4-inch-barreled revolvers. As per standard procedure, one agent, Hickey, was also armed with an AR-15 rifle. Thus, assuming Oswald did not fire the headshot, then Hickey’s rifle was the only other one available.


8 Hickey Did Produce The Rifle During The Shooting

Hugh W. Betzner, Jr., an eyewitness who had been standing at the intersection of Elm and Houston when the motorcade turned left onto Elm, reported that: “I also saw a man in either the President’s car or the car behind his and someone down in one of those cars pull out what looked like a rifle.” Betzner also described seeing a “flash of pink” somewhere in the motorcade, which has occasionally been interpreted as a muzzle flash. This flash could have come from Hickey’s rifle, or any of the agents’ handguns, although an AR-15 creates a much more noticeable flash. However, it is much more likely that the “flash of pink” referred to Jackie Kennedy, who was dressed in pink, reaching out to Special Agent Clint Hill, who had jumped from the rear car onto the back of the Presidential limo. Betzner actually specifically describes the flash as resembling “someone standing up and then sitting back down,” so the muzzle flash theory seems relatively dubious.

However, Hickey himself confirmed Betzner’s report that he did “pull out” the rifle during the shooting, testifying: “At the end of the last report I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR-15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear. At this point the cars were passing under the overpass and as a result we had left the scene of the shooting. I kept the AR-15 rifle ready as we proceeded at a high rate of speed to the hospital.”


7 Hickey’s Rifle, But Possibly Not Oswald’s, Could Have Created JFK’s Head Wound

Oswald used a 6.5 x 52mm Carcano M91/38 rifle with full metal jacket ammunition. This is standard military ammunition, designed for penetration, but not massive wound cavitation. The Hague Convention outlawed the use of hollow-point or expanding ammunition in warfare, although it remains used for hunting, and by police and civilians for self-defense. Because the bullet will “mushroom” or expand as it strikes any moderately hard surface, hollow-point bullets generally cause much more severe wounds inside the target than a full metal jacket can.

In his study of the assassination, Howard Donahue argued that the explosive second impact seen in the Zapruder film could not have been caused by Oswald’s full metal jacket bullets. However, the hollow-point bullets from Hickey’s AR-15, behind and to the left of the President, could have. Donahue also claimed that a bullet fragment seen in X-rays of Kennedy’s skull was unlikely to have come from Oswald’s rifle, since full metal jacket bullets generally do not have fragments shear off on impact. Instead, Donahue suggested that Kennedy’s death might actually have been a terrible accident. According to his theory, Oswald’s first bullet hit the President, causing severe but nonfatal wounds. In the aftermath of the shooting, Hickey seized the AR-15 but, inexperienced with the weapon and jolted by the car’s sudden halt, accidentally discharged the rifle, causing Kennedy’s fatal head wound. The shorter distance between Hickey and Kennedy meant that the bullet would have struck the President at a much higher velocity than a bullet from Oswald’s Carcano, making up for the AR-15’s lighter bullet weight.


6 Eyewitness Jean Hill Saw Men In The Motorcade Return Fire

Jean Hill is easily identifiable in the Zapruder Film as a woman in a body-length red suit, standing just off Elm Street as Kennedy’s limousine passes. The vehicle then briefly vanishes behind a road sign. Just as Kennedy emerges, he is shot in the upper back and raises his arms to his throat, then leans left into Jackie. Texas Governor John Connally jolts slightly at being struck by the same bullet and turns to the left to see Kennedy. Here, the vehicle passes Jean Hill and a woman in a dark dress, Mary Moorman, standing to her left. Almost immediately after the film pans them out, Kennedy is struck in the head.

According to Hill’s written testimony: “Just as the President looked up toward us two shots rang out and I saw the President grab his chest and fall forward across Jackies [sic] lap and she fell across his back and said ‘My God he has been shot.’ There was an instant pause between the first two shots and the motorcade seemingly halted for an instant and three or four more shots rang out and the motorcade sped away. I thought I saw some men in plain clothes shooting back but everything was such a blur and Mary was pulling on my leg saying ‘Get down thery [sic] are shooting.'”

It has been argued that the returned fire Hill thought she saw could have been George Hickey accidentally discharging his rifle.


5 The Secret Service Detail Were Rumored To Have Been Drinking The Night Before

The night before the assassination, several of the Secret Service personnel guarding the President went out to a Fort Worth nightclub called the Cellar Coffee House. The club did not have a license to serve alcohol and the agents apparently consumed nothing stronger than fruit drinks, some with “non-alcoholic rum flavoring.” Nine Secret Service agents also attended a Fort Worth Press Club reception which did serve drinks. However, according to later testimony, none of the agents consumed more than one mixed drink or three beers.

The columnist Drew Pearson later claimed that at least one of the Secret Service agents had been visibly inebriated at the Press Club reception. In his syndicated column, Pearson alleged that the agents had been drinking until 3:00 AM at the Press Club before heading on to the Cellar Coffee House, which he characterized as a “beatnik joint.” This was strongly denied by the Secret Service and by Calvin Sutton, an editor at the Morning Star-Telegram and the host of the reception. Sutton did admit to keeping the Press Club open several hours later than the scheduled 12:00 PM closing time. At 2:00 AM, as the last guests were leaving, a party of four Secret Service agents entered. Sutton asked his bartender to serve them one drink each, after which they left. Sutton insisted that he was not aware of any agent having more than one or two drinks in total, although he acknowledged he could not necessarily tell Secret Service personnel apart from other White House staffers attending the reception. Several other witnesses also testified that they did not see any agent who appeared noticeably intoxicated.

Pearson’s article has occasionally been used to argue that some Secret Service agents may have been hungover on the day of the assassination, and that this may have impaired their judgement. However, while Pearson’s claims cannot conclusively be ruled out, they have proven impossible to corroborate and seem relatively unlikely. As with many details of the assassination, we may never know for sure.


4 The Mysterious Autopsy

After the shooting, Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. According to Texas state law, the President’s body was not allowed to be taken from the hospital until after an autopsy had been entirely performed. However, the Secret Service chose to ignore this, taking the body straight to the airport and securing it on board Air Force One. According to Charles Crenshaw, a doctor at Parkland, this led to a heated confrontation between Secret Service agents and Dallas Chief of Forensic Pathology Earl Rose, during which the agents displayed their guns menacingly. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Summers has claimed that the sidearms were actually drawn and Dr. Rose and others forced against a wall while the body was taken away, although Crenshaw does not mention this.

The body was flown to Maryland’s Bethesda Naval Hospital, where an autopsy was finally carried out. Secret Service agents Roy Kellerman, William Greer, and John O’Leary were all present during the autopsy. According to proponents of the accident theory, the Secret Service might have been desperately trying to hide something, and it might have been the trajectory of the bullet through the head. An autopsy performed in Texas, not under their auspices, could easily have determined whether the bullet struck from right to left or left to right, and whether it came from an elevation of 16 degrees or the same elevation.

Why would the Secret Service, of all organizations, refuse to let the Parkland Memorial Hospital’s professional surgeons perform the autopsy? What is the difference between an autopsy performed by expert professionals in Dallas, and one performed by expert professionals elsewhere?

Was it an accident after all? Get all the facts in Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination at Amazon.com!


3 Kennedy’s Wounds

A fact much beloved by conspiracy theorists is that the entrance wound to the back of Kennedy’s head measured six millimeters wide—significantly less than the width of Oswald’s 6.5mm Carcano bullets, which were actually 6.8 millimeters across. How can a bullet make a hole smaller than itself? According to the Warren Commission: “The dimension of 6 millimeters, somewhat smaller than the diameter of a 6.5-millimeter bullet, was caused by the elastic recoil of the skull, which shrinks the size of an opening after a missile passes through it.”

This is actually quite plausible, since the scalp itself, containing fluid, will indent slightly as the bullet strikes it. If it is pressed against a hard, unyielding object like bone, then the entrance wound can appear to have a smaller diameter than the bullet, because the skin will bend inward around the entrance. Furthermore, the skull itself does have elasticity on the order of 15–25 gigapascals of pressure. This measurement indicates the extent to which a human skull will deform before shattering. Pressure of 10 GPa would deform a skull, but probably not break it.

When a bullet penetrates it at high speed, thus exerting more pressure, the skull usually shatters into fragments. The inside will be blasted into the brain, while the scalp may hold the outside of the skull intact. The Warren Commission’s explanation for the size of the wound is perfectly reasonable, however it is worth noting that the wound would have been measured from the exterior of the scalp. There is no information on whether the interior of Kennedy’s skull was measured.

Hickey’s rifle was an AR-15 in 5.56mm NATO caliber. The 5.56mm bullet is actually 5.7 millimeters in diameter, and could very easily have caused a wound only slightly wider than itself in a human head. This does not prove that Hickey was the shooter, but does not disprove the theory any more than it proves Oswald was the shooter.


2 Multiple Witnesses Smelled Gunpowder At Street Level

At least seven witnesses testified that they smelled gunpowder at street level immediately after the shooting.

Billy Martin was a Dallas police officer who was driving his motorcycle just behind the Presidential limousine’s left rear fender at the time of the shooting. He is on record as stating: “You could smell the gunpowder . . .you knew he wasn’t far away. When you’re that close, you can smell the powder burning . . .you could smell the gunpowder . . .right there in the street.”

Senator Ralph Yarborough, riding with Vice President Johnson in the second convertible, claimed to be able to: “smell the gunpowder from the assassin’s murder weapon.”

Elizabeth Cabell testified that she was riding in the third or fourth car behind the President’s limousine when the shooting occurred. She had this to say: “It was in just a fleeting second that I jerked my head up and I saw something in that window, and I turned around to say to Earle, ‘Earle, it is a shot,’ and before I got the words out, just as I got the words out, he said, “Oh, no; it must have been a . . .’ [then] the second two shots rang out. After that, there is a certain amount of confusion in my mind. I was acutely aware of the odor of gunpowder.”

Tom Dillard was a press photographer riding well behind the Presidential limousine. At the time of the shooting, Dillard’s vehicle was still approaching the Texas School Book Depository Building, facing Oswald’s sniper position. He stated: “I very definitely smelled gunpowder when the car moved up at the corner.”

Virgie Rackley was a bystander close to the street in front of the Depository Building who, after the second shot, smelled gunsmoke.

Earle Brown was a police officer stationed on top of the overpass under which the motorcade passed after the shooting. At the time of the shooting, Brown was looking north toward Dealey Plaza and the Depository Building. In his testimony he stated: “I heard these shots and then I smelled this gunpowder . . .It come on it would be maybe a couple minutes later so—at least it smelled like it to me.” Officer Joe Smith also reported, “a distinctive smell of gun smoke cordite,’ as he rode along Elm Street.

According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), measurements taken at Love Field , 8.5 kilometers (5.3 mi) by road from Dealey Plaza, found that the wind on the day of the assassination was blowing at around 24–32 kilometers per hour (15–20 mph) from the west-northwest.


1 Oswald’s Position And The Path Of The Headshot

The Warren Commission estimated the distances from Oswald’s firing position in the Book Depository to Kennedy’s seat in the limousine as 53 meters (175 ft), 75 meters (240 ft), and 80 meters (265 feet) for each of the three shots heard. The last shot is generally accepted as the headshot, but the HSCA gives the placement of Kennedy’s head entrance wound as 10 centimeters (3.9 in) above the external occipital protuberance and 1.8 cm (0.7 in) to the right of the midline. The exit wound was found to be 11 cm (4.3 in) in front of the entrance wound, 1 cm (0.4 in) below it, and 5.6 cm (2.2 in) right of midline, near the right temple. Given his position from the 6th floor corner window of the Texas School Book Depository, this casts some doubt on Oswald firing the headshot. A computer rendering of a line drawn through the two head wounds and extending behind the target intersects the Dal-Tex Building, behind the Depository.

This does not necessarily prove or disprove anything, since the position of the President’s head is very difficult to determine. But it does allow the possibility that Hickey’s rifle was the source of the shot. Oswald’s rifle might also have been the source. A gunman on the famous grassy knoll does seem unlikely, since the wound in the rear of Kennedy’s head would have been larger and less neat if it were the exit wound.


FlameHorse is a writer for Listverse.

[Anthony Marsh]

On 11/25/2016 11:04 PM, claviger wrote:
> The AR-15 theory: JFK killed by friendly fire
> http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=3341.0;wap2
>
> Ross Lidell:
> Ballistics expert Howard Donahue theorized an accidental shot by an SS
> Agent killing Kennedy.
> The book written by Bonar Menninger was Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed
> JFK.
> It did not exonerate Oswald. He was supposed to have fired the back/neck
> shot that injured the President.
> Before I get howled down, consider this --
>
> This is the only conspiracy theory that has "physical evidence" as its basis.
> Donahue was the only one who:
>

Physically impossible. Hardened lead. Antimony. Wake up.

[Anthony Marsh]

On 11/26/2016 9:15 PM, claviger wrote:
>
> Mortal Error - Daily Kos
> Nov 8, 2013 - No CT: "Smoking Gun," "Mortal Error," Friendly Fire, &, Finally, Who ... On first hearing this theory, almost no one believes that it could be right.
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/8/1254058/-No-CT-Smoking-Gun-Mortal-Error-Friendly-Fire-Finally-Who-Killed-JFK-50-Years-Later
>
> No CT: "Smoking Gun," "Mortal Error," Friendly Fire, &, Finally, Who Killed JFK 50 Years Later.
>
> By David B
> 2013/11/08
>
> Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY. I don't want to see any comments claiming that it is. It is not. A conspiracy involves premeditated planning. There was none in this case.
>

Then Who's writing this? David B? He doesn't exit and he is a conspiracy
kook.

[Anthony Marsh]

Why does McAdams let you spam the newsgroup with your drivel?

[Robert Harris]

claviger wrote:
> The AR-15 theory: JFK killed by friendly fire
> http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=3341.0;wap2
>
> Ross Lidell:
> Ballistics expert Howard Donahue theorized an accidental shot by an SS
> Agent killing Kennedy.
> The book written by Bonar Menninger was Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed
> JFK.
> It did not exonerate Oswald. He was supposed to have fired the back/neck
> shot that injured the President.

But he couldn't have, could he?

The WC confirmed that MOST witnesses only heard one of the early shots.
The same is true of the limo passengers, including John Connally, who
heard one shot but only FELT the next one, which wounded him.

It is easy to prove that many people, including the surviving limo
passengers, heard the 150-160 shot, but not the one at 223, which
wounded JFK and Connally.

That shot could not have come from Oswald's or any other high powered,
unsuppressed rifle.

You need to take that fact off of your taboo list Claviger.





Robert Harris

[claviger]

Because it is not spam. All this info is relevant to the topic. I'm not
the first to do this and got the idea from previous posters. I've done it
for a long time to gather information in one place to assist Professor
McAdam's students when they have research to do for writing papers in his
class and for all other researchers around the world who write papers and
books. This newsgroup archive is the best resource on the internet for
information about the most controversial case in US history. It has an
international audience some who frequently post here. Included in this
outstanding resource is debate, discussion, and raw data. This debate
forum is a compilation of research done by each and every participant.
Unlike other discussion groups all this info has to pass through the
gauntlet of peer group challenge and criticism. It is the most robust
discussion of this topic anywhere on the internet with international
participation.

[Anthony Marsh]

On 11/28/2016 10:37 PM, claviger wrote:
> On Sunday, November 27, 2016 at 7:19:11 PM UTC-6, Anthony Marsh wrote:
>> On 11/26/2016 9:13 PM, claviger wrote:
>>> John F. Kennedy assassination: Did the Secret Service agent do it ...
>>> Jul 29, 2013 - ... the book "Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK" by Bonar Menninger. ... Clinton administration have added credibility to Menninger's theory.
>>> http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/TV/2013/0729/John-F.-Kennedy-assassination-Did-the-Secret-Service-agent-do-it
>>>
>>> THE CULTURE TV
>>> John F. Kennedy assassination: Did the Secret Service agent do it?
>>> John F. Kennedy assassination: A TV show claims one of John F. Kennedy's own Secret Service agent's fired the fatal shot. The two-hour JFK assassination docudrama airs Nov. 3.
>>> By Beth Harris, Associated Press JULY 29, 2013
>>>

>>> BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. ??? Weeks before the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy 's assassination this fall, a TV network will take another look at the killing in a docudrama that suggests a Secret Service agent accidentally fired one of the bullets that felled Kennedy.

>>>
>>> ReelzChannel's "JFK: The Smoking Gun " is based on the work of retired Australian police Detective Colin McLaren and the book "Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK" by Bonar Menninger.
>>>
>>> McLaren spent four years combing through evidence from Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. He and Menninger also relied on ballistics evidence from an earlier book by Howard Donahue.
>>>
>>> The two-hour docudrama airs Nov. 3 in the U.S., Canada and Australia. It suggests that agent George Hickey fired one of the bullets that hit Kennedy. Hickey, who is now dead, was riding in the car behind Kennedy's limo that day.
>>>
>>> "What we're saying is that we believe it was a tragic accident in the heat of that moment," McLaren told the Television Critics Association on Sunday.
>>>
>>> When Lee Harvey Oswald fired his first shot, McLaren said Hickey responded by trying to fire back on Oswald's position using his Secret Service-issued rifle. But because he was inexperienced with the weapon and the car lurched forward, McLaren said the shot went awry and accidentally hit Kennedy, who was struck in the neck but quite possibly not fatally wounded by Oswald's second shot.
>>>
>>> "We don't suggest that he was in any way involved in a conspiracy," McLaren said of Hickey.
>>>
>>> The Warren Commission report in the 1960s concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman in officially explaining the assassination.
>>>
>>> And here's what Hickey said happened :
>>>
>>> 'At the end of the last report I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear.
>>>
>>> 'At this point the cars were passing under the over-pass and as a result we had left the scene of the shooting. I kept the AR 15 rifle ready as we proceeded at a high rate of speed to the hospital.'

>>> After Menninger's book was published in 1992 ??? making a similar claim about Hickey ??? he sued Menninger in 1995. But a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had run out.

>>>
>>> The show's producers say that advances in forensic science and documents released during the Clinton administration have added credibility to Menninger's theory.
>>>
>>> "Our documentary is going to be the only one that has opened the case forensically and looked at the evidence from the beginning and examined everything that happened that day in Dealey Plaza," Michael Prupas, the film's executive director, said, according to the Huffington Post .
>>>
>>> The program is ReelzChannel's second Kennedy-related offering. In 2011, the cable channel aired "The Kennedys" after History Channel dropped the miniseries amid reports that the real-life Kennedy family was unhappy about the project.
>>>
>>> Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
>>
>> Why does McAdams let you spam the newsgroup with your drivel?
>
> Because it is not spam. All this info is relevant to the topic. I'm not

The fact that you think it is relevant does not make it not spam. The fact
that you repeat exactly the same message hundreds of times like a Harris
makes it spam.

> the first to do this and got the idea from previous posters. I've done it
> for a long time to gather information in one place to assist Professor
> McAdam's students when they have research to do for writing papers in his
> class and for all other researchers around the world who write papers and
> books. This newsgroup archive is the best resource on the internet for
> information about the most controversial case in US history. It has an

Not really. It is also a great source of misinformation which you
contribute to.

> international audience some who frequently post here. Included in this

Frequently? Have you ever counted the number of posters here? Probably
less than 20 some of those are just one person with multiple names. You
are delusional.

> outstanding resource is debate, discussion, and raw data. This debate
> forum is a compilation of research done by each and every participant.

EACH and EVERY? But you don't include the almost half which you call
kooks.

> Unlike other discussion groups all this info has to pass through the
> gauntlet of peer group challenge and criticism. It is the most robust

Garbage. There is no peer group here. They are no peers here. The only
difference is that it is a censored newsgroup so the WC defenders can go
unchallenged.

> discussion of this topic anywhere on the internet with international
> participation.
>

Garbage. You can't count Harris's Czech remailer as being international.

[claviger]

JFKMotorcade
Discover The Truth

Information on The JFK assassination JFK Motorcade
http://www.jfkmotorcade.com/more-info.html

Howard Donahue's
Ballistic Work & Theory

The late American ballistics and firearms expert Howard Donahue believed
that while Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin and he did indeed fire at
President John F. Kennedy, the shot that mortally wounded Kennedy was
accidentally fired by one of the Secret Service agents riding in the
follow-up car behind the presidential limousine. Donahue also maintained
that there was no conspiracy to kill the president. Donahue's theory and

his supporting arguments are the subject of a book by Bonar Menninger,

MORTAL ERROR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992) and of JFK MOTORCADE
(Newtown Square, Harrowood Books, 2013) and are the basis for the film
“The Smoking Gun” produced by Muse Entertainment,
broadcast on Reelz Channel on November 3, 2013.

According to Donahue, Oswald fired only two shots. His first shot, from a
WWII Carcano rifle, hit the pavement to the right-rear of the limousine
and showered the car with fragments. Two ricochet fragments hit Kennedy in
the right cheek. Oswald's second shot struck the President in the back of
the neck and passed right through him striking Texas Governor John
Connally’s back, ribs, wrist and thigh and was found virtually
intact on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. Seconds later, Secret Service
agent George Hickey accidentally discharged his AR 15 assault rifle in the
follow-up car. This bullet hit Kennedy in the back of the head.

Donahue discovered the following key pieces of evidence:
1) The bullet from the AR 15 rifle that mortally wounded Kennedy was a
high-velocity, frangible .223 round designed to explode on impact.
2) The ammunition in Oswald’s Carcano rifle was medium velocity,
full metal jacket, designed to pass through a target.
3) The bullet that struck Kennedy in the head caused a massive,
5-inch-wide wound and fragmented into 30-40 minute particles, according to
the autopsy report and published by the Warren Commission.
4) The second bullet, fired by Oswald, did not disintegrate as it passed
neatly through Kennedy and Connally and exited virtually intact.
5) When Donahue traced the trajectory of the Head Shot—using the
location of the entrance and exit wounds as his guide—he concluded
that the bullet came from the left and at a very slight downward angle from
behind Kennedy’s limousine, almost in line with street level.
6) As a result, Donahue did not believe the Head Shot bullet could have
been fired by Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository
Building.​This bullet would have required a trajectory coming from
the right and down at an 13-degree angle.
7) At President Kennedy’s autopsy, pathologists reported that
the diameter of the entry wound of the Head Shot was 6 millimeters. The
diameter of Oswald’s Carcano full-metal jacket bullet was 6.82
millimeters. The diameter of the bullet used by the AR-15 was 5.5
millimeters. Using common sense and his knowledge of ballistics, Donahue
concluded that a bullet cannot create a hole smaller than its own diameter.

Supporting facts by retired detective Colin McLaren that bolster
Donahue’s theory include:
8) Ten witnesses who were questioned by the Dallas Sheriff’s
office, some testifying to the Warren Commission, said they smelled gun smoke
on the street. One, Senator Ralph Yarborough, was in the car following the
Secret Service car. On that day, the wind was blowing at 17 mph toward the
school book depository and into Oswald’s face. Therefore, gunpowder
smoke from 6 floors up could not have been smelled at ground level.
9) Some of the Secret Service agents were not in good physical shape,
having been out drinking in bars the night before until 5:00 a.m.
10) The Secret Service detail changed its personnel on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, the day of the assassination.
11) Agent George Hickey, who was normally a driver, was put into the back seat of the follow-up car to act as sniper. Hickey had recently joined the team of Agents but had not been drinking the night before and was in fine shape.
12) During the Dallas motorcade, the follow- up car followed immediately behind the president’s limousine at a distance of approximately five feet from its bumper. The AR-15 was stored at the feet of George Hickey, loaded and “ready to go.” Hickey sat on the rear seat head roll, high above the other agents.
13) George Hickey reacted correctly at the time of the second shot and looked back towards the book depository. This required him to turn from his forward-facing position approximately 135 degrees, in a moving vehicle. Witness testimony states Agent George Hickey was seen with the AR-15 rifle at, or immediately after the fatal head shot.
Eleven witnesses gave testimony that an assault rifle was seen in George Hickey’s hands, 7 of whom were fellow Secret Service agents.
One eyewitness reported seeing an agent lose his balance and fall backwards when the car lurched suddenly. One senior Agent thought Hickey had fired his AR-15 rifle.
Another senior Agent told George Hickey to be careful with the AR-15,
​14) The minute bullet fragments seen in the back of Kennedy's head in the autopsy skull X-rays could not have come from the kind of ammunition that Oswald used—full metal-jacketed bullets. Kennedy’s brain held the clues of the fragmented bullet that caused his head to explode. His brain went missing after the autopsy, never to be seen again.

[claviger]

INQUISITR
News Worth Sharing



July 29, 2013
JFK Assassination: New Documentary
Dan Evon

A new documentary about the JFK assassination claims that the president
was shot twice by two different shooters.

Conspiracy theorists have long believed that there was a second shooter on
November 22, 1963, but the official story claims that John F. Kennedy was
killed by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald. The new documentary,
called The Smoking Gun, claims that Kennedy was also shot by Secret
Service agent George Hickey.

The Daily Mail reports that Hickey was one of the Secret Service agents
riding behind Kennedy on the day of his assassination. The documentary
claims that Hickey accidentally fired his gun and hit the president.

The government has reportedly knew about Hickey’s accidental
discharge but decided to cover it up in order to save the reputation of
the secret service.

Do you think there is any truth to the new JFK Assassination documentary?
Was the president killed by Secret Service agent George Hickey?

The new documentary is primarily based on the investigative work of
Australian police officer Colin McLaren.

McLaren claims that Hickey and the rest of the agency were out partying
the night before they assassination. McLaren also says that Hickey was not
properly trained on the AR-15.

McLaren said:

“It was his first time in the follow car, his first time holding
the assault weapon he was using.”

McLaren believes that Hickey accidentally pulled the trigger when his car
came to an abrupt stop after Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire on the
president. McLaren, as well as author Bonar Menninger, believe that the
ballistic profiles show that two different types of bullets hit JFK. One
of the bullets, 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano, came from Lee Harvey Oswalt. The
other alleged bullet hole was caused by an AR-15.

Hickey passed away a few years ago and obviously can’t comment on
Mclaren’s theory. His original statement from 1963, however, is
still available.

Hickey said:

“At the end of the last report I reached to the bottom of the car

and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the
rear. At this point the cars were passing under the over-pass and as a
result we had left the scene of the shooting. I kept the AR 15 rifle ready

as we proceeded at a high rate of speed to the hospital.”

JFK: The Smoking Gun will air on the Reelz Channel on November 3. Do you
think there were two shooters during the JFK assassination? Did George
Hickey accidentally fire his gun?

Here’s a video about some of the conspiracy theories about the JFK
assassination. This video has nothing to do with the JFK: The Smoking Gun
documentary but it does feature a few interesting theories and a lot of
dramatic music.

JFK: The Smoking Gun Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn97UF_kfYo

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/876998/jfk-assassination-new-documentary-claims-president-was-shot-by-secret-service-agent-george-hickey/#buqQ2FqtMS7FSQvi.99

[claviger]

YAHOO! TV

ReelzChannel CEO Defends Controversial JFK Documentary Theory: President
Was Killed by Accidental Secret Service Shot
kimp
Yahoo! TV•July 30, 2013
https://www.yahoo.com/tv/bp/reelzchannel-ceo-defends-controversial-jfk-documentary-theory--president-was-killed-by-accidental-secret-service-shot-220053275.html


ReelzChannel is getting back into the Kennedy family business, and once
again likely to make some waves. In November, the network that aired the
Emmy-winning 2011 miniseries "The Kennedys" will debut "JFK: The Smoking
Gun," a new documentary offering the theory that John F. Kennedy was
killed, not by Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle, but by the friendly-fire
bullet of an inexperienced Secret Service agent. It is a theory that has
been around awhile and has had a difficult track record and the news that
Reelz is airing a show based on it has already ignited anger in this hotly
disputed stretch of history.

But despite the controversy and the theory's troubled past, Reelz is
defending its decision to air the documentary.

"There's been lots of theories about the grassy knoll and everything else,
but a bullet came from behind the car [Kennedy was in]," ReelzChannel CEO
Stan Hubbard tells Yahoo! TV of the evidence that will be presented in the
Nov. 3 special. "The only possible gun that could have been in that area
is that Secret Service gun. So the finding is that it was an accidental
discharge. Nobody's claiming anybody did anything wrong. But at the time,
in the middle of the Cold War ... remember, it wasn't a time that the U.S.
government would have liked to admit a botched security detail in the most
important mission they had."

According to Hubbard's explanation of the docudrama, the timeline of the
events of Nov. 22, 1963, will go something like this:

After Lee Harvey Oswald fired an initial shot at the Kennedy motorcade in
Dealey Plaza in Dallas, a Secret Service agent named George Hickey
responded. Hickey, an inexperienced agent who had never been on follow-up
car duty, grabbed his AR-15 Secret Service rifle and, while standing in
the back of the car that was behind the Kennedy vehicle in the motorcade,
fired a shot, he hoped, towards the enemy fire. But the car he was riding
in suddenly lurched forward, and, the theory suggests, Hickey's hand
faltered, sending his bullet towards the president’s head. Oswald
had fired a second shot that also hit Kennedy, but it was not necessarily
the shot that fatally wounded JFK, according to the theory.

While sure to provoke strong reactions when it airs during the lead-up to
the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, the theory is not a new
one.

"The Smoking Gun" revolves around the work of author Bonar Menninger and
detective-turned-author Colin McLaren. Menninger wrote the 1992 book
"Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK," which included the theory.

Presented by Menninger, the theory draws on the work of a Maryland
ballistics expert named Howard Donahue, who for a 1967 CBS special
re-created the three shots captured in the famous Zapruder film of the
assassination. Donahue, who died in 1999, agreed with the Warren report
conclusion that Oswald acted alone, but he also believed, until he died,
that the shot that killed Kennedy came from "a position behind and to the
left of the president," he told the Baltimore Sun in 1977.

[claviger]

CoverUps.com

President John F. Kennedy's Assassination: Overview - CoverUps.com
http://www.coverups.com/jfk-death/president-kennedy-coverup.htm


The Accidental Assassination - CoverUps.com
http://coverups.com/jfk-death/jfk-assassination-accident.htm

Perhaps the most controversial JFK assassination theory comes from Howard
Donahue, a ballistics and firearms expert. Hired by CBS in 1967 to help
test and assess theories about the JFK shooting, Donahue came away with
strong misgivings about the Warren Commission's work and began his own
research, the findings of which are documented in "Mortal Error: The Shot
That Killed JFK" by Bonar Menninger, and reinforced in a second book,
"JFK: The Smoking Gun" by Colin McLaren, an Australian police detective.
The McLaren book was made into a television documentary of the same name
aired by a small cable network, Reelz, on the 50th anniversary of
Kennedy's death.

The theory is shockingly radical and non-ideological. Instead of
conspiracies revolving around the CIA, the mafia, Fidel Castro, or shadowy
military cabals in high places, Donahue claims that Kennedy was killed by
a bullet fired accidentally from an AR-15 rifle held by one of his own
Secret Service men, riding in a chase car directly behind the Presidential
car. That man, George Hickey, was sitting precariously atop the seat back
in the left rear passenger seat when Oswald's first shot rang out. Hickey
reached down for the AR-15 stored at his feet and was releasing the safety
when the second shot came. As he started to look over his right shoulder
to identify the source of the shots the driver of the chase car, also
alerted by the shots and aware of the President's peril, abruptly changed
speed and direction. The car lurched. Hickey accidently pulled the
trigger, discharging his weapon. It was this shot that killed the
President.

http://coverups.com/jfk-death/photos-jfk-assassination/hickey-ar-15.jpg

Hickey (partially obscured), in the Secret Service chase car, with the
AR-15, moments after accidentally shooting President Kennedy?

Hickey sued Bonar Menninger over his book, but a court ruled he'd waited
too long to do so and "Mortal Error" remained on bookstore shelves,
unrevised. Much to the puzzlement of its author, it did not sell well, and
has languished in relative obscurity until now. It will be interesting to
see if the documentary based on McLaren's book sparks public interest. In
addition to McLaren's ballistics calculations, his allegations that
Kennedy's Secret Service detail was in poor shape after a late night of
drinking and carousing is damning.

The docudrama is a superior work, steering clear of the sort of
second-rate dramatizations you typically find in these productions, and
hewing tightly to its detailed ballistics analysis.

Viewers enamored of Oliver Stone-style grand conspiracies will be
disappointed. There are no arch-villains in this version of that dreadful
November day in Dallas. Only forensic mathematics and human error.

[claviger]

P O L I T I C A L
BLIND SPOT
http://politicalblindspot.com/

By MBD August 2, 2013 1 Comments

ReelzChannel JFK Documentary Says JFK Was Killed by Accidental Secret Service Shot
By Kimberly Potts
http://politicalblindspot.com/reelzchannel-jfk-documentary-says-jfk-was-killed-by-accidental-secret-service-shot/

ReelzChannel is getting back into the Kennedy family business, and once
again likely to make some waves. In November, the network that aired the
Emmy-winning 2011 miniseries “The Kennedys” will debut
“JFK: The Smoking Gun,” a new documentary offering the
theory that John F. Kennedy was killed, not by Lee Harvey Oswald’s
rifle, but by the friendly-fire bullet of an inexperienced Secret Service
agent. It is a theory that has been around awhile and has had a difficult
track record and the news that Reelz is airing a show based on it has
already ignited anger in this hotly disputed stretch of history.

But despite the controversy and the theory’s troubled past, Reelz
is defending its decision to air the documentary.

“There’s been lots of theories about the grassy knoll and
everything else, but a bullet came from behind the car [Kennedy was
in],” ReelzChannel CEO Stan Hubbard tells Yahoo! TV of the
evidence that will be presented in the Nov. 3 special. “The only
possible gun that could have been in that area is that Secret Service gun.
So the finding is that it was an accidental discharge. Nobody’s
claiming anybody did anything wrong. But at the time, in the middle of the

Cold War … remember, it wasn’t a time that the U.S.

government would have liked to admit a botched security detail in the most
important mission they had.”

According to Hubbard’s explanation of the docudrama, the timeline
of the events of Nov. 22, 1963, will go something like this:

After Lee Harvey Oswald fired an initial shot at the Kennedy motorcade in
Dealey Plaza in Dallas, a Secret Service agent named George Hickey
responded. Hickey, an inexperienced agent who had never been on follow-up
car duty, grabbed his AR-15 Secret Service rifle and, while standing in
the back of the car that was behind the Kennedy vehicle in the motorcade,
fired a shot, he hoped, towards the enemy fire. But the car he was riding
in suddenly lurched forward, and, the theory suggests, Hickey’s
hand faltered, sending his bullet towards the president’s head.
Oswald had fired a second shot that also hit Kennedy, but it was not
necessarily the shot that fatally wounded JFK, according to the theory.

While sure to provoke strong reactions when it airs during the lead-up to

the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, the theory is not

a new one.

“The Smoking Gun” revolves around the work of author Bonar
Menninger and detective-turned-author Colin McLaren. Menninger wrote the

1992 book “Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK,” which

included the theory.

Presented by Menninger, the theory draws on the work of a Maryland
ballistics expert named Howard Donahue, who for a 1967 CBS special
re-created the three shots captured in the famous Zapruder film of the
assassination. Donahue, who died in 1999, agreed with the Warren report
conclusion that Oswald acted alone, but he also believed, until he died,
that the shot that killed Kennedy came from “a position behind and
to the left of the president,” he told the Baltimore Sun in 1977.

Menninger and McLaren told TV critics at the ReelzChannel Television Critics Association summer press tour in Beverly Hills on Sunday that the “Smoking Gun” documentary will lay out, in scientific detail, the decades-old theory of Hickey’s accidental shooting of JFK, including information that the bullet sizes of Oswald’s and Hickey’s guns were different (and that the bullet in the fatal shot was too small to have come from Oswald’s gun). Pouring gasoline on the fires, the documentary will also allege that the Secret Service agents assigned to protect JFK had been drinking the night before the assassination, and that Robert Kennedy — JFK’s brother and the U.S. attorney general at the time — knew about the alleged Hickey shot and helped cover it up to shield the Secret Service.

“[‘JFK: The Smoking Gun’] isn’t setting out to damage, to point fingers at, George Hickey,” Reelz’ President Hubbard states. “George Hickey had an accident take place when a gun discharged in his hands. Anybody who’s around firearms at all knows that guns do accidentally go off.”

Hickey filed a defamation suit against Menninger and “Mortal Error” publishers St. Martin’s Press and Simon & Schuster in April 1995. But “Mortal Error” was published in 1992, and Hickey’s lawsuit, filed in Maryland, was dismissed because it was filed well beyond Maryland’s one-year statute of limitations for defamation claims.

In 1998, however, Hickey received an undisclosed settlement in the case. Menninger said at the TCA panel that St. Martin’s only offered him a “nominal” amount to try to prevent him from appealing the dismissal of his previous suit, so they wouldn’t be caught up in a lengthy and expensive legal battle. But Hickey’s attorney, Mark S. Zaid, told the Baltimore Sun that Hickey was “very satisfied” with the settlement.

“To think that someone could have fired an AR-15 rifle on that day and that no one would have noticed, of the hundreds of people that were watching on either side of the street, just bends the imagination,” Zaid said of Hickey, who retired from the Secret Service, in good standing, in 1971.

Hickey died two years ago, according to McLaren, leaving theorists free to present their case without fear of further lawsuits.

Not surprisingly in what is the most famous and polarizing ongoing crime investigation in history, critics have poked holes in the Hickey premise since Menninger published his book more than 20 years ago.

Debunkers have dismissed the Hickey theory as just one of many flimsy JFK conspiracy theories. Others have echoed attorney Mark Zaid’s belief that if Hickey had fired his gun that day in Dallas, witnesses would have reported it.

Author David Pietrusza, in his 1996 book “Mysterious Deaths: John F. Kennedy,” points out that “elastic recoil of the skull” could account for the discrepancy between the size of the bullet that hit Kennedy’s head and the size of the wound it produced.

Representatives of the Kennedy family did not respond to requests for comment.

McLaren, during the TCA presentation, offered a broad response to these assertions: “We’re talking about 1963. It was the black and white era. It was ‘Leave It to Beaver.’ It was ‘I Love Lucy.’ And whatever you rolled out to the public, generally speaking, was acceptable. The Warren Commission rolled out a ‘lone gunman’ theory. It was nonsense, because they didn’t apply the crime-scene principles and procedures of today, of 2013. They didn’t apply a forensic analysis, as we do today, as we expect today.”

“I came to this as a skeptic,” Hubbard says. “From day one, the American public has not believed that there was a lone gunman. The story just didn’t make sense. And there have been hundreds of conspiracy theories on how to explain it. ‘JFK: The Smoking Gun’ explains it ballistically and through what would be considered rules of evidence in a criminal investigation.

“I don’t expect anybody to take this as the end-all, definitive answer, but I do hope [‘JFK: The Smoking Gun’] will at least kick off a discussion that can put some finality to the assassination of a great president in 1963.”

With tempers still raw about this matter fifty years later, and charges such as those made in this documentary still inflaming them wildly, that civilized discussion may have to wait a decade or two more.





1 Comment on "ReelzChannel JFK Documentary Says JFK Was Killed by Accidental Secret Service Shot"
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Youngdude says:
August 3, 2013 at 4:31 pm

Read the book, the agent fired off a shot while picking up the rifle which was on the back seat (out of view). His butt was on the trunk of the car, his feet were on the backseat; if he was 1) leaning over to pick up the rifle, 2) lifting his butt off the trunk (which means only his feet were on a surface (soft car seat) AND the car began to accelerate (which it did) then it is totally plausible that he could have lost his balance backwards as he picked up the rifle and accidentally fired off one round. This seems such as easy thing to illustrate. Put yourself in that position; there’s no way you don’t fall back if you lift your butt off the trunk and the car speeds up. 100% reasonable. Plus Dallas police were never allowed to examine the rifle after the shooting to see if it had been discharged.

The theory answers a lot of unanswered ?’s. The smell of gun powder at ground level in the Plaza that many witnesses stated. The bullets trajectory on entry and exit. The car the agent was in had it’s windshield destroyed before it could be examined for a bullet hole. The SS denied a rifle was in the 2nd car but a picture taken after the car went under the bridge clearly shows the rifle present. The agents rifle matches bullet type and resulting entry and exit wounds. Why cover it up? I can totally understand that and partially agree with covering it up. What nation (especially the US at the time) would want to get on the TV and announce OOPS we shot the leader of our country by mistake today now over to Jim for the weather forecast. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been for those “in the circle” who knew what happened. They had a patsy (Oswald) so why make matters worse?

[claviger]

Viable Opposition
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/


Viable Opposition: The Kennedy Assassination - A Friendly Fire Theory
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-kennedy-assassination-friendly-fire.html

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2013
The Kennedy Assassination - A Friendly Fire Theory
Fifty years ago today, the world came to a standstill while it digested the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. As a young lad, I can quite clearly remember much of the news coverage of that day and the following days, largely because I was absent from school because of an illness. I can still remember walking through K-Mart and seeing the coverage by the major television networks. Since that time, one of my "hobbies" has been researching the Kennedy assassination and trying to understand what alternative scenarios are plausible, given that the scenario presented by the Warren Commission seems, in hind sight, to be rather unlikely.

One of the most interesting but little discussed scenarios involves a "friendly fire" incident. In this scenario, one does not have to invoke a "foil hat conspiracy" that involves the Chicago Mafia or the military-industrial complex, rather, a simple accident could explain the untimely death of President Kennedy.

Decades ago, ballistics and firearms expert Howard Donahue proposed a theory that Secret Service agents in the car following the Presidential limousine may have accidentally shot the President. According to Mr. Donahue's theory, Lee Harvey Oswald was able to fire twice at the President with the first shot showering the car with fragments that slightly wounded Kennedy. Owald's second shot then struck Kennedy in the back of the neck, passed through the front of his neck and then went on to injure Texas Governor John Connally (the Single Bullet Theory). Seconds later, the shot that killed the President was fired from the follow-up Secret Service vehicle. This shot was fired by 40 year old Secret Service Agent George Hickey Jr. after he picked up and cocked his automatic Colt AR-15 from the floor of the car in response to the sound of gunfire. When the motorcade came to a sudden halt, Agent Hickey accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet at the back of Kennedy's head.

Here is a photograph showing the Secret Service follow-up vehicle immediately behind the President's limousine just before it enters Dealey Plaza:



Here are several of the arguments for this theory:

1.) The bullet that caused Kennedy's fatal head wound behaved like a high-velocity frangible bullet. Oswald used medium-velocity, non-frangible ammunition. Secret Service Agent Hickey was seen with an AR-15 rifle around the time that the head shot was fired; the AR-15 fires high-velocity, frangible ammunition.

2.) Witnesses in Dealey Plaza reported that there were two shots fired nearly simultaneously, far too fast to have been fired from Oswald's bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

3.) The reported diameter of the bullet wound on the back of Kennedy's head was 6.0 millimetres compared to the 6.5 millimetre ammunition used in Oswald's Carcano rifle.

4.) The damage to the windshield on the President's limousine was too high to have been caused by a projectile fired from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository.

5.) Witnesses at street level reported the smell of gunpowder, particularly in the northwest corner of Dealey Plaza. Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough who was riding in the second car behind the Presidential limousine reported that he smelled gunpowder in the street and that it clung to the car throughout the race to Parkland Hospital. One of the accompanying motorcycle policemen, Officer B. J. Martin also recalled " ... you could smell the gunpowder ... you knew he wasn't that far away. When you're that close you can smell the powder burning ... Why, you can smell the gunpowder ... right there in the street."

Interestingly, in 1995 Secret Service Agent George Hickey sued Bonar Menninger, the author of the 1992 book "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK", a book about the "friendly fire" accidental shooting of the President but the case was dismissed because the judge in the case ruled that the time between the filing of the suit and the publication of the book was beyond the one-year statute of limitations. After an appeal, the publishers of the book, St. Martin's, paid Agent Hickey an undisclosed sum of money. In case you are interested, here is a link to the Hickey suit against St. Martin's with a detailed list of the erroneous claims made in Menninger's book.

George Hickey passed away in 2011.

While I think that this theory is more than a bit of a stretch, it is unique in its complete lack of a conspiracy, a rather rare commodity in the world of JFK assassination theories. That, however, does not necessarily make it more plausible. Unfortunately, as shown here, fifty years on, the majority of Americans still believe that President Kennedy's death was a conspiracy:

It is our skepticism about government openness that has kept the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists in business for five long decades. With the current level of mistrust in government now, one can only imagine how many conspiracy theories would exist if there were another high profile political assassination today.

[Anthony Marsh]

On 11/30/2016 10:58 AM, claviger wrote:
> INQUISITR
> News Worth Sharing
>

Yeah, like that's a reliable source. Like all the Alt Right citing Info
Wars.

>
>
> July 29, 2013
> JFK Assassination: New Documentary
> Dan Evon
>
> A new documentary about the JFK assassination claims that the president
> was shot twice by two different shooters.
>
> Conspiracy theorists have long believed that there was a second shooter on
> November 22, 1963, but the official story claims that John F. Kennedy was
> killed by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald. The new documentary,
> called The Smoking Gun, claims that Kennedy was also shot by Secret
> Service agent George Hickey.
>
> The Daily Mail reports that Hickey was one of the Secret Service agents
> riding behind Kennedy on the day of his assassination. The documentary
> claims that Hickey accidentally fired his gun and hit the president.
>
> The government has reportedly knew about Hickey’s accidental
> discharge but decided to cover it up in order to save the reputation of
> the secret service.
>

False. Never reported. Just made up.

> Do you think there is any truth to the new JFK Assassination documentary?
> Was the president killed by Secret Service agent George Hickey?
>

No. Physically impossible.

> The new documentary is primarily based on the investigative work of
> Australian police officer Colin McLaren.
>
> McLaren claims that Hickey and the rest of the agency were out partying
> the night before they assassination. McLaren also says that Hickey was not
> properly trained on the AR-15.
>
> McLaren said:
>
> “It was his first time in the follow car, his first time holding
> the assault weapon he was using.”
>
> McLaren believes that Hickey accidentally pulled the trigger when his car
> came to an abrupt stop after Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire on the
> president. McLaren, as well as author Bonar Menninger, believe that the
> ballistic profiles show that two different types of bullets hit JFK. One
> of the bullets, 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano, came from Lee Harvey Oswalt. The
> other alleged bullet hole was caused by an AR-15.
>

He's very stupid. The SS car never came to a stop before the head shot.
It's kook talk. Is he a mainframe tech?

> Hickey passed away a few years ago and obviously can’t comment on
> Mclaren’s theory. His original statement from 1963, however, is
> still available.
>

He did, and he said it was stupid. What kind of stupid people believe a
stupid theory like that?

> Hickey said:
>
> “At the end of the last report I reached to the bottom of the car
> and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the
> rear. At this point the cars were passing under the over-pass and as a
> result we had left the scene of the shooting. I kept the AR 15 rifle ready
> as we proceeded at a high rate of speed to the hospital.”
>
> JFK: The Smoking Gun will air on the Reelz Channel on November 3. Do you
> think there were two shooters during the JFK assassination? Did George
> Hickey accidentally fire his gun?
>
> Here’s a video about some of the conspiracy theories about the JFK
> assassination. This video has nothing to do with the JFK: The Smoking Gun
> documentary but it does feature a few interesting theories and a lot of
> dramatic music.
>
> JFK: The Smoking Gun Trailer
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn97UF_kfYo
>
> Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/876998/jfk-assassination-new-documentary-claims-president-was-shot-by-secret-service-agent-george-hickey/#buqQ2FqtMS7FSQvi.99
>

SPAM
Allowed by McAdams.

[claviger]

Ethics Alarms
https://ethicsalarms.com/


JFK’s Death, Hanlon’s Razor, And How Truth Gets Buried Forever
https://ethicsalarms.com/2015/09/03/jfks-death-hanlons-razor-and-how-truth-gets-buried-forever/
September 3, 2015

I am a student of Presidential assassinations (as you might guess by the posts on McKinley and Garfield), and have been most of my life, ever since I saw a TV special called “Web of Conspiracy” when I was 10, about the Lincoln murder. That led me to read the best-selling book the special was based on, an 800 page, sensational analysis of the mysteries behind Lincoln’s death, by mystery writer Theodore Roscoe, who dabbled in history. The book’s theories and insinuating style are more convincing to a ten-year-old than an adult (I read the book many years later, and it drove me crazy), but the book still has a lot of fascinating tales and theories in it. I was hooked.

Oddly, the one Presidential assassination that has interested me least in recent years is the one I lived through, the assassination of President Kennedy. Blame Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner and Jim Garrison: “JFK” was the most dishonest movie I had ever watched (still is) and I walked out of it when its lies and distortions got too much for me about a third of the way through. Even before Stone’s brilliantly directed piece of crap. I was sick of the conspiracy theories, though Stone manufacturing a link to Lyndon Johnson was the final straw. Yes, the bitter Vietnam veteran really got back at LBJ; I hope it made him feel better. I, however, was soured on the whole topic.

I should have been paying more attention. Netflix is showing a documentary with the generic conspiracy theory title of “JFK: The Smoking Gun,” which was shown on cable two years ago. I missed it; if I had been aware of the film, the title and the subject matter—Oh, who’s behind it now? The Mafia? Nixon? Woody Harrelson’s father?—would have kept me away. But while I was on the road for a couple days doing ethics seminars for VACLE, my wife watched the documentary, and when I returned, sleep deprived, weak and submissive, she made me watch it.

Fascinating. And troubling.

Colin McLaren, a retired and well-credentialed Australian detective, decided to review the evidence, testimony and forensics in the now cold case. He was drawn to the theories of the late ballistics and firearms expert Howard Donahue, who was one of the marksmen challenged by CBS news to fire three shots and hit a moving target like Kennedy in the motorcade from Oswald’s distance using Oswald’s archaic, bolt-action rifle. Donohue was the only one who could do it, and that after two unsuccessful tries. Ironically, while his shots proved that it was possible for Oswald to fire off three shots in 5.6 seconds, the difficulty of the challenge convinced him that Oswald couldn’t have done it. (In the revolting “JFK,” a test proves that nobody could fire off the shots. Yes, my hatred for this film, and its director, is deep.) That set Donohue on a quest to discover what the Warren Report and subsequent theories have missed. From the documentary’s website:

“The late American ballistics and firearms expert Howard Donahue believed that while Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin and he did indeed fire at President John F. Kennedy, the shot that mortally wounded Kennedy was accidentally fired by one of the Secret Service agents riding in the follow-up car behind the presidential limousine. Donahue also maintained that there was no conspiracy to kill the president. Donahue’s theory and his supporting arguments are the subject of a book by Bonar Menninger, MORTAL ERROR (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992). According to Donahue, Oswald only got off two shots. Oswald’s first shot, from a WWII Carcano rifle, hit the road near the limousine and showered the car with fragments, a ricochet hit Kennedy lightly in the head. Oswald’s second shot (the “Neck Shot”) struck the President in the back of the neck and passed right through him striking Texas Governor John Connally’s back, ribs, wrist and thigh and was found virtually intact on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. Seconds later, Secret Service agent George Hickey accidentally discharged his AR 15 assault rifle in the follow-up car. This bullet hit Kennedy in the back of the head.”

What followed this horrible accident, as pieced together by Donahue and supported by McClaren (and lots of interviews, depositions and testimony), was an epic cover-up by the Secret Service and perhaps others (such as Senator Arlen Spector, not an Ethics Alarms favorite) to keep the facts of this massive botch from the American public. I don’t think the public was ready to accept how incompetent the Secret Service could be in 2013: now, this theory seems almost too plausible. Hickey, we learn, was an inexperienced agent whose main assignment was the motor pool. The President’s main detail, already exhausted, had decided to drink and party the night of November 21st, 1963 rather than sleep. Hungover agents recruited Hickey , for the first time, to be in the car behind the President, and made him responsible for the loaded and cocked semi-automatic weapon on the floor of the vehicle. When the first two shots came (Donahue’s work proved that the Warren Commission got the so-called “magic bullet” theory right, incidentally), a green, panicked agent reached for the gun, took off the safety, stood, and when the car lurched forward, fell back, firing off the fatal shot by mistake.

Witnesses interviewed in Dallas but never called by the Warren Commission described seeing a scene consistent with this scenario. Hickey’s description to the Commission of what he did with the gun didn’t match other testimony. Only some of the agents in the car with Hickey ever testified (this makes no sense at all). The Secret Service interfered with the autopsy, and Kennedy’s brain was even taken and “lost.” An X-ray technician involved with the autopsy told Donohue that he was told to fabricate evidence, and did. The most suspicious revelation in the documentary is that when President Clinton, in part because of the doubts planted by “JFK,” formed a commission to review the files, take new testimony, and analyze newly declassified documents and evidence, all the agencies involved turned over their materials, except one. The Secret Service had destroyed its files relating to Kennedy’s assassination and the aftermath, just a week before the new inquiry was to commence.

That’s spoliation.

Or just a coincidence.

Do I believe the McLaren-Donahue theory? There are problems with it. I don’t think this is the explanation people want to be true, and that accounts in part for the failure of Donohue’s book and the 2013 documentary to spark public interest. Conspiracy theories are fun: government incompetence and cover-ups are just unsettling. It would be a useful lesson, however, if we learned that the most history-altering crime of the 20th Century was an epic example of Hanlon’s Razor, that incompetence, not malice, explains more wrongdoing than we tend to believe.

What the Kennedy assassination inquiry already shows, however, is how the confluence of conflicts of interest, ineptitude, exploitation, incompetence, and dishonesty can so poison public trust that the truth can be obscured forever. So many shady, venal people, like Stone, have lied and tried to cash in on this tragedy with false theories and personal agendas that it is now impossible to believe any theory, even sincere and thoughtful ones. If they happened upon the truth, both Donahue and McClaren got to it too late. The press and the public had lost interest, and now have entrenched biases that cannot be dislodged. If you believed that Oswald was the lone gunman, you don’t want to hear that a young, vital Chief Executive was killed because Secret Service agents got drunk and handed a AR 15 assault rifle to a novice. (The Secret Service director at the time told the Warren Commission that a “new weapon” was in the car that day, but was no longer being used. As Theodore Roscoe would put it, “Was the AR-47 pulled to avoid a repeat of the tragedy that haunts the Secret Service? This possibility…or is it probable?… cannot be ruled out). If you are determined to find a conspiracy by the Mafia or the Cubans, or the Russians, this resolution is similarly unwelcome. For everyone else, it is now, “Yeah, yeah, another crackpot theory about JFK. I’m sick of hearing them.”)

That one was me.

George Hickey, we learn, was alive when “Mortal Error” was published, and never responded to the author’s letters and invitations to discuss what happened that November day. He waited two years, after the book had failed and the statute of limitations had run, to sue, then sued again when the book was released in paperback. The publisher, reluctant to lose any more money, settled out of court. Nobody noticed, and Hickey left this earth without ever talking to a journalist, or explaining why his Warren Commission testimony had him reaching for the gun after the fatal shot was fired, while photos and eye-witness testimony show him raising it seconds before that shot.

I don’t know if he was the real shooter. I do know, thanks to what I have learned from recent fence jumpers, drunk agents and wild parties, that Donahue’s theory seems plausible to me now, and once would not have.

[Anthony Marsh]

On 11/30/2016 9:17 PM, claviger wrote:
> Viable Opposition
> http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/
>
>
> Viable Opposition: The Kennedy Assassination - A Friendly Fire Theory
> http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-kennedy-assassination-friendly-fire.html
>
> FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2013
> The Kennedy Assassination - A Friendly Fire Theory
> Fifty years ago today, the world came to a standstill while it digested the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. As a young lad, I can quite clearly remember much of the news coverage of that day and the following days, largely because I was absent from school because of an illness. I can still remember walking through K-Mart and seeing the coverage by the major television networks. Since that time, one of my "hobbies" has been researching the Kennedy assassination and trying to understand what alternative scenarios are plausible, given that the scenario presented by the Warren Commission seems, in hind sight, to be rather unlikely.
>
> One of the most interesting but little discussed scenarios involves a "friendly fire" incident. In this scenario, one does not have to invoke a "foil hat conspiracy" that involves the Chicago Mafia or the military-industrial complex, rather, a simple accident could explain the untimely death of President Kennedy.
>
> Decades ago, ballistics and firearms expert Howard Donahue proposed a theory that Secret Service agents in the car following the Presidential limousine may have accidentally shot the President. According to Mr. Donahue's theory, Lee Harvey Oswald was able to fire twice at the President with the first shot showering the car with fragments that slightly wounded Kennedy. Owald's second shot then struck Kennedy in the back of the neck, passed through the front of his neck and then went on to injure Texas Governor John Connally (the Single Bullet Theory). Seconds later, the shot that killed the President was fired from the follow-up Secret Service vehicle. This shot was fired by 40 year old Secret Service Agent George Hickey Jr. after he picked up and cocked his automatic Colt AR-15 from the floor of the car in response to the sound of gunfire. When the motorcade came to a sudden halt, Agent Hickey accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet at the back of Kennedy's head.
>
> Here is a photograph showing the Secret Service follow-up vehicle immediately behind the President's limousine just before it enters Dealey Plaza:
>
>
>
> Here are several of the arguments for this theory:
>
> 1.) The bullet that caused Kennedy's fatal head wound behaved like a high-velocity frangible bullet. Oswald used medium-velocity, non-frangible ammunition. Secret Service Agent Hickey was seen with an AR-15 rifle around the time that the head shot was fired; the AR-15 fires high-velocity, frangible ammunition.
>
> 2.) Witnesses in Dealey Plaza reported that there were two shots fired nearly simultaneously, far too fast to have been fired from Oswald's bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
>
> 3.) The reported diameter of the bullet wound on the back of Kennedy's head was 6.0 millimetres compared to the 6.5 millimetre ammunition used in Oswald's Carcano rifle.
>

Not true. It did not say 6.0. It was rounded out to 6.
And that was only a guess.

> 4.) The damage to the windshield on the President's limousine was too high to have been caused by a projectile fired from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository.
>

You can't prove that.

> 5.) Witnesses at street level reported the smell of gunpowder, particularly in the northwest corner of Dealey Plaza. Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough who was riding in the second car behind the Presidential limousine reported that he smelled gunpowder in the street and that it clung to the car throughout the race to Parkland Hospital. One of the accompanying motorcycle policemen, Officer B. J. Martin also recalled " ... you could smell the gunpowder ... you knew he wasn't that far away. When you're that close you can smell the powder burning ... Why, you can smell the gunpowder ... right there in the street."
>

Especially near the grassy knoll. No one smelled gun powder in the SS
car. No one heard any shots from the SS car.

[claviger]

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 10:00:08 PM UTC-6, Anthony Marsh wrote:
> On 11/28/2016 10:37 PM, claviger wrote:
>
> >> Why does McAdams let you spam the newsgroup with your drivel?
> > Because it is not spam. All this info is relevant to the topic. I'm not
> The fact that you think it is relevant does not make it not spam. The fact
> that you repeat exactly the same message hundreds of times like a Harris
> makes it spam.

Spam is repeating the same exact message time after time. All these
messages are by different authors and all relevant to the topic. Some are
supportive of this theory, some find it curious, and some argue against
it. This theory based on ballistic science and gaining more interest as
time goes by.

> > the first to do this and got the idea from previous posters. I've done it
> > for a long time to gather information in one place to assist Professor
> > McAdam's students when they have research to do for writing papers in his
> > class and for all other researchers around the world who write papers and
> > books. This newsgroup archive is the best resource on the internet for
> > information about the most controversial case in US history. It has an
> Not really. It is also a great source of misinformation which you
> contribute to.

That is all part of the ongoing debate. This newsgroup does a good job of
correcting misinformation. You have been corrected many times.

> > international audience some who frequently post here. Included in this
> Frequently? Have you ever counted the number of posters here? Probably
> less than 20 some of those are just one person with multiple names. You
> are delusional.

You are paranoid.

> > outstanding resource is debate, discussion, and raw data. This debate
> > forum is a compilation of research done by each and every participant.
> EACH and EVERY? But you don't include the almost half which you call
> kooks.

I don't call anyone a kook. That is one of your favorite words.

> > Unlike other discussion groups all this info has to pass through the
> > gauntlet of peer group challenge and criticism. It is the most robust
> Garbage. There is no peer group here. They are no peers here. The only
> difference is that it is a censored newsgroup so the WC defenders can go
> unchallenged.

What an arrogant condescending remark.

> > discussion of this topic anywhere on the internet with international
> > participation.
> Garbage. You can't count Harris's Czech remailer as being international.

We have a few newsgroup regulars from Australia, Canada, France, UK and
occasional participation from various countries in Europe. Seems like a
couple of people from South America participated for awhile.

[claviger]

Articles about Mortal Error - tribunedigital-baltimoresun - Collections
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/keyword/mortal-error
IN THE NEWS
Mortal Error


FEATURED ARTICLES
NEWS
Libel suit filed over JFK shooting theory Former agent assails book's claim that he fired the fatal shot
By Scott Higham and Scott Higham,SUN STAFF | August 22, 1996
Time to bring back those memories of the Dealey Plaza motorcade. Rent a copy of "JFK." Re-read the Warren Commission Report. And get ready to rekindle the never-ending conspiracy theories surrounding the death of President John F. Kennedy.Only this time, one of those theories will be played out in federal court in Baltimore, where a former U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to protect the president on the day of his death nearly 33 years ago is suing for libel.A little-known book called "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK" claims that the agent from Cecil County slipped and accidentally pulled the trigger of his high-powered AR-15 rifle, striking Kennedy in the head on Nov. 22, 1963.


ARTICLES BY DATE

NEWS
Defamation suit involving book on JFK dismissed Judge notes time limit
By Dennis O'Brien and Dennis O'Brien,SUN STAFF | September 30, 1997
A U.S. District Court judge in Baltimore yesterday dismissed a defamation suit filed by a retired Secret Service agent against the publishers of a book accusing him of accidentally shooting and killing President John F. Kennedy in 1963.Judge Alexander Harvey II yesterday dismissed the suit filed by George W. Hickey Jr. of Abingdon against St. Martin's Press, Simon & Shuster and the book's author, ruling that he waited too long to sue for defamation on the basis of the book "Mortal Error."The book by Bonar Menninger of Kansas City, Mo., claimed that Hickey, who as a 40-year-old Secret Service agent was assigned to Kennedy's Dallas motorcade, accidentally shot and killed the president.


NEWS
The 'JFK' theory that's too simple for Americans to believe
By James H. Bready | February 27, 1992
WILL THE WORLD accept the idea that John F. Kennedy's death was an unintentional homicide? That the bullet hitting him in the back of the skull came from the gun fired, inadvertently, by a Secret Service bodyguard riding in the car immediately behind the presidential limousine?Such is the thesis advanced by Howard Donahue, a Towson gun expert, in the new book "Mortal Error," by Bonar Menninger (St. Martin's Press, $23.95). On logic -- that is, consistency with the known facts in the case -- Mr. Donahue's explanation is without rival.


NEWS
Libel suit filed over JFK shooting theory Former agent assails book's claim that he fired the fatal shot
By Scott Higham and Scott Higham,SUN STAFF | August 22, 1996
Time to bring back those memories of the Dealey Plaza motorcade. Rent a copy of "JFK." Re-read the Warren Commission Report. And get ready to rekindle the never-ending conspiracy theories surrounding the death of President John F. Kennedy.Only this time, one of those theories will be played out in federal court in Baltimore, where a former U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to protect the president on the day of his death nearly 33 years ago is suing for libel.A little-known book called "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK" claims that the agent from Cecil County slipped and accidentally pulled the trigger of his high-powered AR-15 rifle, striking Kennedy in the head on Nov. 22, 1963.


NEWS
Decision to name agent was publisher's dilemma Book contains note explaining process
By Tim Warren and Tim Warren,Book Editor | February 23, 1992
As chairman and chief executive officer of St. Martin's Press, Thomas McCormack was well aware of the ramifications of naming the Secret Service agent who Howard Donahue says accidentally shot the third bullet at John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.So when, after several months of researching Mr. Donahue's thesis, Mr. McCormack was considering publishing "Mortal Error," he drafted a letter in November to the agent."I figured the allegation was very distressing to the man," Mr. McCormack told The Sun. "Basically, I said [in the letter]


NEWS
Defamation suit involving book on JFK dismissed Judge notes time limit
By Dennis O'Brien and Dennis O'Brien,SUN STAFF | September 30, 1997
A U.S. District Court judge in Baltimore yesterday dismissed a defamation suit filed by a retired Secret Service agent against the publishers of a book accusing him of accidentally shooting and killing President John F. Kennedy in 1963.Judge Alexander Harvey II yesterday dismissed the suit filed by George W. Hickey Jr. of Abingdon against St. Martin's Press, Simon & Shuster and the book's author, ruling that he waited too long to sue for defamation on the basis of the book "Mortal Error."The book by Bonar Menninger of Kansas City, Mo., claimed that Hickey, who as a 40-year-old Secret Service agent was assigned to Kennedy's Dallas motorcade, accidentally shot and killed the president.


FEATURES
Towson gun expert going on TV to discuss theory of JFK murder
By Tim Warren and Tim Warren,Book Editor | February 25, 1992
Howard Donahue, the Towson resident whose theory about the shooting of John F. Kennedy is the basis for the soon-to-be-published book "Mortal Error," will be a guest on "Good Morning, America" on Thursday.Mr. Donahue, a gun expert, theorizes that the third bullet to hit the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, was fired accidentally by a Secret Service bodyguard, whom he names in the book. (The Secret Service has called the assertion "ridiculous.") "Mortal Error," written by journalist Bonar Menninger, is to be in bookstores tomorrow, and the publisher, St. Martin's Press, says advance orders have exceeded 100,000.


NEWS
Accident is the sensible answer
By James H. Bready | November 22, 1993
WHEN the Kennedy assassination theorists convened in Dallas this past weekend, Bonar Menninger wasn't there. Howard Donahue, equally uninvited, stayed home, too. Nobody, it seems, stood up in all the noise about CIA conspiracy, Mafia conspiracy, pro-or-anti-Castro conspiracy, Texas politics conspiracy (and others) to remind the gathering that murder still isn't the likeliest explanation for the president's death. Accident is still the most sensible answer.Mr. Menninger, who lives in Kansas City, is the author of "Mortal Error," published early last year.


FEATURES
Three JFK assassination books by Maryland residents are being published
By Tim Warren and Tim Warren,Book Editor N | February 25, 1992
Howard Donahue, the Towson resident whose theory about the shooting of John F. Kennedy is the basis for the soon-to-be-published book "Mortal Error," will be a guest on "Good Morning, America" on Thursday.Mr. Donahue, a gun expert, theorizes that the third bullet to hit the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, was fired accidentally by a Secret Service bodyguard, whom he names in the book. (The Secret Service has called the assertion "ridiculous.") "Mortal Error," written by journalist Bonar Menninger, is to be in bookstores tomorrow, and the publisher, St. Martin's Press, says advance orders have exceeded 100,000.


NEWS
Lawsuit is settled in favor of former Secret Service agent Book claimed man accidentally fired bullet that killed Kennedy
By Michael James and Michael James,SUN STAFF | February 3, 1998
A retired U.S. Secret Service agent has been paid an undisclosed sum of money by the publishers of a book that claimed he fired the bullet that killed President John F. Kennedy, an allegation that prompted the agent to sue.The obscure book, "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK," claimed that George W. Hickey Jr. slipped during the confusion on Nov. 22, 1963, and accidentally pulled the trigger of his high-powered AR-15 rifle. Kennedy, according to Missouri-based author Bonar Menninger, was hit in the head by the bullet.


NEWS
Accident is the sensible answer
By James H. Bready | November 22, 1993
WHEN the Kennedy assassination theorists convened in Dallas this past weekend, Bonar Menninger wasn't there. Howard Donahue, equally uninvited, stayed home, too. Nobody, it seems, stood up in all the noise about CIA conspiracy, Mafia conspiracy, pro-or-anti-Castro conspiracy, Texas politics conspiracy (and others) to remind the gathering that murder still isn't the likeliest explanation for the president's death. Accident is still the most sensible answer.Mr. Menninger, who lives in Kansas City, is the author of "Mortal Error," published early last year.


NEWS
The 'JFK' theory that's too simple for Americans to believe
By James H. Bready | February 27, 1992
WILL THE WORLD accept the idea that John F. Kennedy's death was an unintentional homicide? That the bullet hitting him in the back of the skull came from the gun fired, inadvertently, by a Secret Service bodyguard riding in the car immediately behind the presidential limousine?Such is the thesis advanced by Howard Donahue, a Towson gun expert, in the new book "Mortal Error," by Bonar Menninger (St. Martin's Press, $23.95). On logic -- that is, consistency with the known facts in the case -- Mr. Donahue's explanation is without rival.


FEATURES
Three JFK assassination books by Maryland residents are being published
By Tim Warren and Tim Warren,Book Editor N | February 25, 1992
Howard Donahue, the Towson resident whose theory about the shooting of John F. Kennedy is the basis for the soon-to-be-published book "Mortal Error," will be a guest on "Good Morning, America" on Thursday.Mr. Donahue, a gun expert, theorizes that the third bullet to hit the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, was fired accidentally by a Secret Service bodyguard, whom he names in the book. (The Secret Service has called the assertion "ridiculous.") "Mortal Error," written by journalist Bonar Menninger, is to be in bookstores tomorrow, and the publisher, St. Martin's Press, says advance orders have exceeded 100,000.


FEATURES
Towson gun expert going on TV to discuss theory of JFK murder
By Tim Warren and Tim Warren,Book Editor | February 25, 1992
Howard Donahue, the Towson resident whose theory about the shooting of John F. Kennedy is the basis for the soon-to-be-published book "Mortal Error," will be a guest on "Good Morning, America" on Thursday.Mr. Donahue, a gun expert, theorizes that the third bullet to hit the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, was fired accidentally by a Secret Service bodyguard, whom he names in the book. (The Secret Service has called the assertion "ridiculous.") "Mortal Error," written by journalist Bonar Menninger, is to be in bookstores tomorrow, and the publisher, St. Martin's Press, says advance orders have exceeded 100,000.


NEWS
Decision to name agent was publisher's dilemma Book contains note explaining process
By Tim Warren and Tim Warren,Book Editor | February 23, 1992
As chairman and chief executive officer of St. Martin's Press, Thomas McCormack was well aware of the ramifications of naming the Secret Service agent who Howard Donahue says accidentally shot the third bullet at John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.So when, after several months of researching Mr. Donahue's thesis, Mr. McCormack was considering publishing "Mortal Error," he drafted a letter in November to the agent."I figured the allegation was very distressing to the man," Mr. McCormack told The Sun. "Basically, I said [in the letter]



NEWS
Howard C. H. Donahue, 77, ballistics expert, studied Kennedy's death
By Frederick N. Rasmussen and Frederick N. Rasmussen,SUN STAFF | December 21, 1999
Howard Charles Hinman Donahue, a retired gunsmith and nationally known ballistics expert who concluded that a Secret Service agent fired the bullet that killed President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday of complications of pneumonia at his Towson home. He was 77.Mr. Donahue first came to national attention in 1967 when CBS television investigated the Warren Commission report and had several gunning experts test-fire the same make and model of the Mannlicher-Carcano Italian rifle that was used by Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot at Mr. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.


NEWS
Author says friendly fire killed JFK
By Stephen Hunter and Stephen Hunter,Staff Writer | February 23, 1992
It's a tale of two rifles.It's a tale of three bullets.It's a tale of a dead president, a still-grieving nation and a thousand unanswered questions.But most of all it's a tale of a Towson man's obsession with finding the truth.It's Howard Donahue's tale, contained in a soon-to-be published book titled "Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK," by Bonar Menninger, which chronicles Mr. Donahue's long odyssey through the thickets of ballistic evidence, governmental obstructionism and what he views as media indifference.





NEWS
Antietam Review turns 10 more theories on JFK death
By James H. Bready | January 30, 1994
With its latest -- and biggest -- issue, Antietam Review enters its second decade. Based in Hagerstown, the Review is Maryland's only serious, nationally circulated literary magazine.This time it publishes eight short stories, the work of 16 poets (one by a Romanian, Iona Ieronim, in translation) and 21 black-and-white photographs. There are interviews with Diane Wolkstein, storyteller, and Joyce Riser Kornblatt, professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland College Park.Still basking in the glow of its inclusion in a recent "Best 50 Litmags From 50 States" listing, Antietam Review has received close to 500 verbal and photographic works from the United States and abroad for its 1994 issue.


FEATURES
Sweeps month produced a frenzy of JFK programs
By Ray Richmond and Ray Richmond,Orange County Register | March 3, 1992
Here it is better than 28 years later, and news surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy continues to gush forth.But from the flood of JFK reports that surfaced on television in February, a composite conspiracy murder suspect has finally emerged: He's a Mafia-connected CIA agent of Cuban ancestry who befriended and then framed Lee Harvey Oswald.Shocked? Don't be. It's just a theory. And the only certainty we have come to learn about JFK conspiracy plots is that tomorrow there will be another.

[Anthony Marsh]

Make up your mind, fence sitter.

[claviger]

Do always talk to quotations that can't talk back?

[Anthony Marsh]

On 12/1/2016 11:47 PM, claviger wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 10:00:08 PM UTC-6, Anthony Marsh wrote:
>> On 11/28/2016 10:37 PM, claviger wrote:
>>
>>>> Why does McAdams let you spam the newsgroup with your drivel?
>>> Because it is not spam. All this info is relevant to the topic. I'm not
>> The fact that you think it is relevant does not make it not spam. The fact
>> that you repeat exactly the same message hundreds of times like a Harris
>> makes it spam.
>
> Spam is repeating the same exact message time after time. All these
> messages are by different authors and all relevant to the topic. Some are
> supportive of this theory, some find it curious, and some argue against
> it. This theory based on ballistic science and gaining more interest as
> time goes by.
>

There is no ballistic science. Stop being silly.

>>> the first to do this and got the idea from previous posters. I've done it
>>> for a long time to gather information in one place to assist Professor
>>> McAdam's students when they have research to do for writing papers in his
>>> class and for all other researchers around the world who write papers and
>>> books. This newsgroup archive is the best resource on the internet for
>>> information about the most controversial case in US history. It has an
>> Not really. It is also a great source of misinformation which you
>> contribute to.
>
> That is all part of the ongoing debate. This newsgroup does a good job of
> correcting misinformation. You have been corrected many times.
>
>>> international audience some who frequently post here. Included in this
>> Frequently? Have you ever counted the number of posters here? Probably
>> less than 20 some of those are just one person with multiple names. You
>> are delusional.
>
> You are paranoid.
>

My statement stands.

>>> outstanding resource is debate, discussion, and raw data. This debate
>>> forum is a compilation of research done by each and every participant.
>> EACH and EVERY? But you don't include the almost half which you call
>> kooks.
>
> I don't call anyone a kook. That is one of your favorite words.
>
>>> Unlike other discussion groups all this info has to pass through the
>>> gauntlet of peer group challenge and criticism. It is the most robust
>> Garbage. There is no peer group here. They are no peers here. The only
>> difference is that it is a censored newsgroup so the WC defenders can go
>> unchallenged.
>
> What an arrogant condescending remark.
>

It's just a fact.

>>> discussion of this topic anywhere on the internet with international
>>> participation.
>> Garbage. You can't count Harris's Czech remailer as being international.
>
> We have a few newsgroup regulars from Australia, Canada, France, UK and
> occasional participation from various countries in Europe. Seems like a
> couple of people from South America participated for awhile.
>
>

No.

[claviger]

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 10:00:08 PM UTC-6, Anthony Marsh wrote:
> On 11/28/2016 10:37 PM, claviger wrote:
>
> >> Why does McAdams let you spam the newsgroup with your drivel?
> >
> > Because it is not spam. All this info is relevant to the topic. I'm not
>
> The fact that you think it is relevant does not make it not spam. The fact
> that you repeat exactly the same message hundreds of times like a Harris
> makes it spam.

By your own definition it's not spam. Not "exactly the same message"
being repeated at all. This thread is a collection of various articles
and opinions on the same topic, just like this newsgroup does everyday.
If you take the time to read a number of these essays before posting a
knee-jerk response it will be obvious there is a variety of differing
opinions as to this subject matter. The whole point is to academically
examine numerous reactions concerning the two most prominent theories
about a possible accidental discharge of a weapon during the motorcade
through Dealey Plaza. If a professor assigns this subject to a college
class then this one thread can help all the students whether pro, con, or
agnostic to write a paper about this historic case. Wish someone would
have done something like this when I was a college student.

[claviger]

The Smoking Gun That Lied: a Review of JFK: The Smoking Gun
By Pat Speer

To capitalize on the attention given the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 2013, television networks pumped out an unprecedented number of new programs. Most of these were fairly bad, and went unnoticed. For some reason, however, one of them, JFK: The Smoking Gun, seemed to rise above the crop, and catch the attention of the public.

Now, I have no idea how many watched the show, and how many came to accept the show's premise: that Secret Service agent George Hickey accidentally fired the shot that killed Kennedy while trying to stand up in the back seat of the follow-up car and return fire upon his wanna-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. But I do know that a half-dozen or more non-JFK buffs I've spoken to since the airing of the program on the ReelzChannel on November 3, 2013 have asked me if I believe Hickey did it, and no one has asked me about any of the other programs. And I do know they weren't joking--that viewing this program really got them thinking about the assassination, and wondering...

Now, I'll be the first to admit this is a good thing. People should wonder about the assassination. But I'm also of the firm mind that this is a bad thing. People shouldn't wonder if Hickey killed Kennedy, because we know--as much as we can know anything about the assassination--that he did not.

Well, how do we know? Well, the best way to "know" this is to examine what the program left out or deliberately omitted.

Now, this is the tricky part. The program was built upon the recent research of an Australian celebrity/ex-cop named Colin McLaren, which built upon the decades-old research of American gunsmith Howard Donahue. So, how is this tricky? Well, when the program is on shaky ground, the program's creators often fall back on "Donahue concluded this" and "Donahue concluded that." By doing so, they are simply reporting, you see, and not actually pushing these conclusions.

Except they ultimately do push these conclusions... At the end of the program, they use digital animation to demonstrate what Donahue, and McLaren, came to conclude actually happened, and allow McLaren to assert that his study of the assassination was ultimately "about the truth, and supplying the American people an answer no more complex than a tragic accident coupled with a foolhardy assassination attempt."

He then suggests "Maybe it's time to see the smoking gun, and then to quietly close the door behind history's most talked about and debated crime scene."

Well, nice try. I'm sure many would love to conclude Kennedy's assassination was some sort of tragic accident, and then quietly shut the door. It's just that McLaren's "solution" to the crime is riddled with so many holes--and that some of them are big enough to hold both Ayers Rock and the Sydney Opera House, with plenty of room to spare.

I shall now illuminate these holes.

One of the less-noticeable holes in the program is its unfair treatment of not only George Hickey, but his boss that day on the Kennedy detail, Roy Kellerman. The program suggests that Kellerman knew Hickey killed Kennedy, and slipped immediately into CYA mode. It suggests that Kellerman was instrumental in both abducting Kennedy's body from Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and absconding with all the medical evidence, including the President's brain, after the autopsy of the President in Bethesda, Maryland. This is just not true. The Kennedy detail forcefully removed Kennedy's body from the hospital at the request of the Kennedy entourage, with the blessing of the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Kellerman's taking control of the medical evidence was performed under orders from the President's physician, George Burkley, almost certainly at the request of the Kennedy family.

And besides... The President's brain was kept at Bethesda until it could be further studied, after which Dr. Burkley, now working for President Johnson, gave it to the Secret Service Protective Research Section, where it remained until 1965. So yes, McLaren was unfair in accusing Kellerman of running off with the President's brain. Kellerman never had it in his possession.

If the program was unfair in its treatment of Hickey and Kellerman, however, this was far from an isolated incident.

Throughout the program, McLaren repeats like a mantra that if you study the statements of the eyewitnesses they will lead you to the truth. He even attacks the Warren Commission for its "unsummoned witnesses, unheard testimonies, unanswered questions, and unpresented evidence."

He then cherry-picks the statements of these witnesses to present a shooting scenario totally at odds with what they actually said.


The First Shot Miss

To support that the first shot missed and hit the pavement, with a fragment then proceeding to hit Kennedy in the back of the head, McLaren relies upon the testimony of bystander Virgie "Rachey" and Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman. He has "Rachey" say she saw something hit the street and Kellerman say he heard Kennedy yell out "My God, I'm hit" after the first shot.

Well, this is misleading. Virgie Rackley, who testified before the Warren Commission as Mrs. Donald Baker, first spoke on the assassination to the FBI on 11-24-63, the Sunday after the shooting. The FBI report on their interview with her reflects that she told them "after the first shot she saw something bounce from the roadway in front of the Presidential automobile and now presumes it was a bullet bouncing off the pavement.” (CD5, p66-67) Yes, you got that right. The FBI claimed she originally said the bullet bounced in front of the limousine, and not behind. And this wasn't just a typo. She also told them she'd originally thought it was a firecracker thrown by some boys "close to the underpass." And this wasn't a mis-statement. She later testified that it “sounded like it was coming from—there was a railroad track…so I guess it would be by the underpass.” (7H507-515) She was then asked to mark Commission Exhibit CE 354, a photograph of Dealey Plaza, to show where she saw this firecracker or bullet ricochet. This mark is 70 feet or more further down the street than Kennedy at the time of the first shot proposed by McLaren.
And then there's Kellerman. While McLaren accepts that Kellerman, riding in the front seat of Kennedy's limo, heard Kennedy yell out "My God, I'm hit" and deduces from this that Kennedy was not hit in the throat by the first shot, this is just silly. No one else in the limousine heard Kennedy make such a remark. Governor Connally, after being hit by a shot he did not hear, but which came after he (and quite clearly Kellerman, who said the last shots came in in a flurry) had heard but one shot, yelled out, "My God, they're going to kill us all." Kellerman, no coincidence, failed to remember Connally making such a statement.

But as silly as McLaren's claims are about the first shot, they positively pale compared to what he pulls out next...


The Second Shot Miss

You see, McLaren, as Donahue before him, believes the second shot was a shot hitting both Kennedy and Connally, and accounting for all their non-fatal wounds. Yep, that's right. The program was yet another in what is by now a long line of programs "investigating" the Kennedy assassination and reappraising the Warren Commission's conclusions to both buy and sell what has got to be the weakest of the Warren Commission's conclusions: the single-bullet theory.

It does this through stealth, which is a nice way of saying that the program pushes what its creators ought to know is not true. When discussing the single-bullet theory, they re-enact Donahue's amazement at discovering Kennedy and Connally were really in alignment to receive their wounds from one bullet, once one takes into account their "actual" location in the limousine. Well, this conceals that Connally's "actual" location in the limousine, as "discovered" by Donahue in the 1960's, came courtesy Secret Service agent Thomas Kelley's testimony before the Warren Commission that Connally's seat was 6 inches inboard of the right door of the limousine. Kelley was wrong and quite possibly lying. The schematics for the limo published by the HSCA in 1978 proved it was but 2 1/2 inches inboard of the door.

And that's not the only problem with the single-bullet theory as pushed by Donahue. The trajectory through Kennedy's neck, as presented by the Warren Commission and accepted by Donahue in the 1960's, ran from the base of his neck out through his throat, when the actual trajectory, as concluded by the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel in 1978, and supported by the tracing of an autopsy photo published by the committee, ran from a location on Kennedy's back at the level of his first rib, and somehow made it around or over this rib, while exiting at a location on Kennedy's throat at the level of his first rib.

That this more recent update of the theory was not just problematic for Donahue's, and McLaren's conclusions, but fatal, was demonstrated, moreover, by the animation the program presents to support the theory. This shows the bullet hitting Kennedy at the base of his neck, where they ought to have known it didn't hit, an inch or so below his collar, where they ought to have known it didn't hit. I mean, McLaren supposedly studied this case for four years. How could he not know the holes on Kennedy's shirt and jacket were more than 4 inches below the base of his collar?

So, yeah, chalk up yet another score for the animators. In the past two decades or so, they have made millions off the selling of the single-bullet theory, without once using the location of Kennedy's wounds as concluded by the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel. (If you have a problem with this, please show me where I'm wrong.)


The Third Shot Miss

This brings us, finally, to the third shot presented in the program. Here, in order to sell what is incredibly far-fetched, McLaren makes quite a stretch.

He takes two pieces of evidence: that some witnesses saw Hickey with an AR-15 rifle, and that some witnesses thought they smelled gunpowder at ground level, and pretends this is evidence Hickey fired the shot that killed Kennedy.

He avoids (or hides, let's be honest) much to pull off this trick.

First, there's the eyewitnesses. McLaren cites witness after witness as support for Donahue's theory, when an honest presentation of the witness statements would have, at the very least, called Donahue's theory into question.

He cites S.M. Holland's initial statement that "After the first shot the secret service man raised up in the seat with a machine gun and then dropped back down in the seat" as evidence Hickey shot Kennedy. He fails to tell his viewers that Holland also claimed to see "a puff of smoke come from the trees" after this first shot, and no other puff of smoke. That's right. The smoke observed by Holland and others while standing atop the railroad bridge came from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll. So how can McLaren cite them as support a rifle was fired in the middle of the plaza? He can't. So he doesn't. He claims ten witnesses "at ground level" smelled gunpowder, but never lists them.

He cites Jean Hill's statements as evidence a member of the Secret Service fired a weapon. He fails to tell his viewers that Hill thought the first shot hit Kennedy in the head, and that she thought some or all of the shots she heard after he was hit in the head may have been fired by the Secret Service in retaliation.
He wonders whether Hugh Betzner's recollection he saw "a flash of pink" wasn't a reference to the muzzle blast from Hickey's rifle. He fails to read the whole sentence in Betzner's statement. It reads like this: "Then I saw a flash of pink like someone standing up and then sitting back down in the car." McLaren's cherry-picking of Betzner's words avoids the obvious: that the flash of pink which Betzner observed, while standing 200 feet or so back behind the limousine at the moment of the head shot, was the pink-suited Mrs. Kennedy climbing out onto the back of the limousine, and then crawling back to her seat.

He also wonders about the statement of Mrs. John Chism, in which she said "the two men in the front of the car stood up, and then when the second shot was fired, they all fell down and the car took off just like that." Strangely, he wonders whether she meant to say that it was two men in the back of the follow-up car that fell down. He even complains that the Warren Commission never questioned her to find out if she was really talking about the follow-up car. He says "We'll never know." Uhh, yes we will know. And do. There's no basis whatsoever to "wonder" if someone describing activity in the front of one car was really describing activity in the back of another car, particularly when no one else noticed this activity in the back of this second car. Mrs. Chism is alive, by the way, and would almost certainly have talked to McLaren should he have tracked her down. But he didn't even try.

There's no evidence, in fact, that McLaren tried to talk to even one witness in his supposed four year investigation of the shooting. He could have talked to Bill and Gayle Newman, who witnessed the shooting from 20 feet or so behind and to the right of Kennedy, and were about the same distance to the right of Hickey. The sound of a shot from Hickey's position would have come straight to their left ears. And yet they thought this shot came from behind.

He could also have talked to Dave Powers, or at least to people who knew Powers, who passed away between the time McLaren first took an interest in the case and the advent of his four year investigation. Powers was a good friend of Kennedy's. He was sitting less than two feet from the muzzle of the AR-15 at the time Donahue claimed it was fired. Powers was consulted for the book Mortal Error, the book on Donahue's research McLaren found so inspiring. In the book, Powers is quoted as follows: “Someone a foot away from me or two feet away from me couldn’t fire a gun without me hearing it.” This, no surprise, is never mentioned by Colin McLaren in JFK: The Smoking Gun.

And then, of course, there's the ultimate witness: the Bronson film. This film shows Hickey and the members of the back-up car at the time of the fatal head shot. The film was taken from across the plaza, and lacks clear detail. And yet, no sudden movement on Hickey's part is noted in the film. More clearly, he appears to be sitting down. An honest presentation of Donahue's theory would have shown the film, and studied the film. But no, this is a program not just examining Donahue's belief Hickey shot Kennedy, but pushing it. The film is never mentioned.

http://www.patspeer.com/the-smoking-gun-that-lied/Thencamebronson2.jpg?attredirects=0

So, yes, it's true. Colin McLaren, the man who criticized the Warren Commission for its "unsummoned witnesses, unheard testimonies, unanswered questions, and unpresented evidence" made them look good when given the chance. The program on his "investigation" out-"un"ed the Warren Commission by a mile, and actually presented him dismissing that a shot came from the overpass by noting that there were twelve witnesses on the overpass and none of them thought a shot came from there, while pushing a theory in which George Hickey shot Kennedy from the follow-up car, without noting that there were DOZENS of witnesses in the area, and NONE of them thought the fatal shot came from the car behind Kennedy.

Oh, the irony... Oh, the waste of money, and public attention...

The Whole Program Miss

In sum, then, the program was deceptive and embarrassing--the information in it was often outdated, and just as often biased. Beyond that the Bronson film strongly suggests Hickey didn't fire the fatal shot and that Howard Donahue's theory was wrong, Donahue's theories were built on long-discredited information regarding the back wound, and more recently called into question information about the head wound. His Hickey did it theory is reliant upon the bullet entering Kennedy's cowlick, 4 inches higher than where the entrance wound was measured at autopsy. He relied upon the word of Dr. Russell Fisher to come to this conclusion. Well, that was part of the problem. As Fisher would later admit, he was hired by the Justice Department to re-examine the medical evidence and see if there was a way to refute some of the "junk" in the conspiracy books--including that the trajectory for the head wound made little sense. This led him to find a new location for the bullet entrance--a location where those actually seeing Kennedy's body swore there was no entrance wound.

Now, for several years, Fisher's "find" had some support in the medical community, but that day has long-since passed. Of those viewing the original autopsy materials since late 1993--Dr. David Mantik, Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Douglas Ubelaker, Dr. John Fitzpatrick, Dr. Robert Kirschner, Dr. James Humes, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, Dr. Pierre Finck, Dr. Chad Zimmerman, Larry Sturdivan, and Dr. Peter Cummings--only one has supported Fisher's finding the entrance wound was in the cowlick, where Donahue's theory needs it to be.

While trying to impress the government, Fisher made a bad call--that can now be revealed as a politically-influenced bad call. Howard Donahue's reputation was but collateral damage.

And now we can add Colin McLaren to the list of Fisher's victims...

Shall we tell him?



Post Script:

On December 10, 2013, I received a nice friendly email from Colin McLaren. Here it is:

I doubt whether you will post this comment on your website, however I will continue. First of all I have to say your website is a disgrace. Anyone looking, searching for real answers to who or how JFK was killed will find an empty vessel in your site. It's obviously a site run by an angry man. You seem to spit vitriol to all and sundry. Why? Do you have a self righteous complex? You have obviously not read my book, nor have you taken the time to understand my argument, my conclusion. Instead, you just launch into a diatribe of insults and attacks. An odd way to conduct a cyberspace debate.

I come to the study of JFK execution with years of law and detective studies, years of crime scene analyses. Years of working as an investigator; in search of the truth. I follow well honed crime crime principals and procedures, I understand the rules of evidence and follow them closely. My analyses is underpinned with such protocols. Yet, you select your own snippets, your own 'cherry picking' of facts to cast criticism. Such as the 'smoke' witnesses. There are 22 witnesses that either see or smell gunsmoke / smoke / cordite at street level, either near to the follow up car or close by. That's the forensic point! You might not be able to grasp that point but if you assume the 22 don't know each other, never been 'together' before, not collaborated on this fact and.....they saw or smell the same smoke in the same 5.6 seconds, then isn't that amazing? It would be amazing if the total number of witnesses were only ten.

And whether the smoke is actually around the follow up car, or the 19 kilometres-an-hour wind had pushed it towards the grassy verge, known as the grassy knoll, is irrelevant. It's at street level. Being pushed around by the strong wind, until it dissipates, into the atmosphere. That means, there has to be one other shooter! Get it? Mr Hard-nose.

And when you study the testimonies or affidavits of the 48 witnesses that heard two shots simultaneous, that's a salient point in establishing whether we have one or two shooters. Clearly, using the 48 ear witnesses testimonies is crucial to confirm the existence of a second shooter.

And on the evidence goes. Overwhelming. But, you need to read over 10,000 pages. And you won't.

Yet, conspiracy theorists, particularly in the USA, doggedly proffer their own silly theories that are blatantly remiss of any evidence, any principals of any kind. With you, you just lambast, to the point that you lose all credibility. You take on a superior position, judging the earnest endevours of others. Yet, you can't pull together an articulate argument yourself. There are so many like you, cyberspace pests that have either made a living from the the death of a great Statesman of the 20th century or denigrated those that have genuinely tried to bring an articulate position to the table, to help those searching for the truth, the reason behind the killing of the 35th president of the United States. It's shameful that such pests are allowed to exist. It's ABSOLUTELY why the doubt still prevails over who killed JFK.

I feel saddened by this mess. It could only happened in the USA. Where the assassination of a president becomes cannon fodder for nutzos. Feel embarrassed Pat Speer.



http://www.patspeer.com/the-smoking-gun-that-lied