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>From the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed]:
Note: We archive similar "assassination posts" at:
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Mark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Second Gunman Fired at Kennedy
Date: Monday, March 26, 2001 6:37 AM
>From The Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56560-2001Mar25.html
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Study Backs Theory of 'Grassy Knoll'
New Report Says Second Gunman Fired at Kennedy
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 26, 2001; Page A03
The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: There
was
a shot from the grassy knoll.
That was the key finding of the congressional investigation that
concluded
22 years ago that President John F. Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963
was
"probably . . . the result of a conspiracy." A shot from the grassy
knoll
meant that two gunmen must have fired at the president within a
split-second
sequence. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of firing three shots at Kennedy
from a
perch at the Texas School Book Depository, could not have been in two
places
at once.
A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences subsequently
disputed
the evidence of a fourth shot, contained on a police dictabelt of the
sounds
in Dealey Plaza that day. The panel insisted it was simply random noise,
perhaps static, recorded about a minute after the shooting while
Kennedy's
motorcade was en route to Parkland Hospital.
A new, peer-reviewed article in Science and Justice, a quarterly
publication
of Britain's Forensic Science Society, says the NAS panel's study was
seriously flawed. It says the panel failed to take into account the
words of
a Dallas patrolman that show the gunshot-like noises occurred "at the
exact
instant that John F. Kennedy was assassinated."
In fact, the author of the article, D.B. Thomas, a government scientist
and
JFK assassination researcher, said it was more than 96 percent certain
that
there was a shot from the grassy knoll to the right of the president's
limousine, in addition to the three shots from a book depository window
above and behind the president's limousine.
G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel to the House Assassinations
Committee, said the NAS panel's study always bothered him because it
dismissed all four putative shots as random noise -- even though the
three
soundbursts from the book depository matched up precisely with film of
the
assassination and other evidence such as the echo patterns in Dealey
Plaza
and the speed of Kennedy's motorcade.
"This is an honest, careful scientific examination of everything we did,
with all the appropriate statistical checks," Blakey said of Thomas's
work.
"It shows that we made mistakes, too, but minor mistakes. The main thing
is
when push comes to shove, he increased the degree of confidence that the
shot from the grassy knoll was real, not static. We thought there was a
95
percent chance it was a shot. He puts it at 96.3 percent. Either way,
that's
'beyond a reasonable doubt.' "
The sounds of assassination were recorded at Dallas police headquarters
when
a motorcycle patrolman inadvertently left his microphone switch in the
"on"
position, deluging his transmitting channel with what seemed to be
motorcycle noise. Using sophisticated techniques, a team of scientists
enlisted by the House committee filtered out the noise and came up with
"audible events" within a 10-second time frame that it believed might be
gunfire.
The Warren Commission had concluded in 1964 that only three shots, all
from
behind, all from Oswald's rifle, were fired in Dealey Plaza as the
motorcade
passed through. But the House experts, after extensive tests, found 10
echo
patterns that matched sounds emanating from the grassy knoll, traveling
carefully measured distances to nearby buildings and then bouncing off
them
to hit the open motorcycle transmitter.
They also placed the unknown gunman behind a picket fence at the top of
the
grassy knoll, in front of and to the right of the presidential
limousine.
The House committee concluded that this shot missed, and that Kennedy
was
killed by a final bullet from Oswald's rifle. Thomas, by contrast,
believes
it was the shot from the knoll, seven-tenths of a second earlier, that
killed the president.
The NAS panel, assigned to conduct further studies after the committee
closed down, said in 1982 that the noises on the tape previously
identified
as gunshots "were recorded about one minute after the president was
shot."
The NAS experts, headed by physicist Norman F. Ramsey of Harvard,
reached
that conclusion after studying the sounds on the two radio channels
Dallas
police were using that day. Routine transmissions were made on Channel
One
and recorded on a dictabelt at police headquarters. An auxiliary
frequency,
Channel Two, was dedicated to the president's motorcade and used
primarily
