Quick take of Ms. Feister's "Enemy of the Truth"

[Mitch C.]

Just finished it. I agree with all of you that this is landmark work. Although I am sure at some point someone will attempt it; it's difficult to argue with the blood spatter analysis, and where that leads. As a fairly committed Grassy Knoll guy, I must admit I always wondered why the massive damage to Kennedy's head was limited almost exclusively to the the right side. Logically, from that angle, the trajectory would have had the bullet cause more cross damage, at least to the back of the President's left side. The author very methodically, logically, explains why: using simple (or for this layman, not so simple...but understandable) mathematics, the 35 degree "trajectory cone", eliminates any shot landing from the Grassy Knoll.

I do have some (very) minor criticisms. The author goes a long way to discount the reliability of Dealey Plaza "ear witnesses", at least to the extent of determining the direction of the shots. Due to different elevations, reverberation and shock waves, echoes, etc...she concludes: "basing the locations of possible shooters solely on the statements of ear witnesses is categorically unreliable." Yet, at the end of the chapter "The Grassy Knoll Headshot", after convincingly arguing that the kill shot likely came from the SOUTH knoll area, she still felt the need to buttress her argument with ear witness testimony of hearing shots from that area. A devils's advocate would say she is trying to have it both ways.

Finally, I do hope in any future editions correct errors such as: repeated sentences, two or three sentences incorrect grammar wise, due to a missing word, etc. These are minor in themselves, but tend to take away ever slightly from the scholarly nature of this work.

That being said, Feister has once and for all put the lie to the single shooter from the rear myth; using unemotional, unarguable science. Facts are stubborn things....

[Cutty]

Nice review, Mitch. I am in agreement with all of it.

As for the earwitness testimony, my interest and study in audio & acoustics have led me to post links to articles on the level of reliability in the past. The fact is, though, that I've always thought you have to sift through it all, consider the technical aspects that Sherry has brought up, then also consider the source, which could be a witness who worked in and around Dealey Plaza as opposed to a witness who never spent any time there and only came to view the motorcade.  This is a good discussion in itself, IMO, to continue in a thread on the board created for that chapter. I believe all previous acoustic trial results can't be relied upon today because, to name just a couple of factors, all possible shooter locations weren't covered and you would also need to be confident of an accurate placement in Dealey of the microphone on the motorcycle which transmitted the signal to the dictabelt recorder.

On the trajectory for the head shot and where the "blood spatter analysis leads" I will remind that there are 5 factors generally used to determine this. The collective recognition of these factors as evidence coroborates the back spatter analysis. This is another interesting discussion that we could continue in its own thread.

[TLR]

I do have some (very) minor criticisms. The author goes a long way to discount the reliability of Dealey Plaza "ear witnesses", at least to the extent of determining the direction of the shots. Due to different elevations, reverberation and shock waves, echoes, etc...she concludes: "basing the locations of possible shooters solely on the statements of ear witnesses is categorically unreliable." Yet, at the end of the chapter "The Grassy Knoll Headshot", after convincingly arguing that the kill shot likely came from the SOUTH knoll area, she still felt the need to buttress her argument with ear witness testimony of hearing shots from that area. A devils's advocate would say she is trying to have it both ways.

Another reviewer on Amazon said the same thing.

And yes, editors and proof-readers are getting lazy these days (books, magazines, newspapers).

[Phil Dragoo]

Mitch

In the South Knoll section I put up two views of the South Knoll.  In the 'fifties both knolls had shrubbery down to the curb

Looking at the views you can imagine the echoes as visual returns absorbed by the grass, reflected by the facades

Anthony DeFiore cites on page 228 of his 297-page version the figure of eighty witnesses who heard firecrackers

He lists them, and their description, and goes on to refer to the 2004 attempt on the president and vice president of Taiwan when they were riding in a Jeep--the bullets coming through the windshield sounded like firecrackers

Sherry is very good at setting the testimony of directionality in context--because the wounds didn't come from the source(s) most frequently named

We will recall from repeated references in Waldron and Hartmann Ultimate Sacrifice Rolando Cubela asked Bill Harvey for a scoped, silenced FAL

Such a weapon on the South Knoll in the hands of a world-class shooter could've made the throat shot at Z-225 per DeFiore and the temple-to-occipitoparietal right-side shots without giving away location

Mitch WerBell would go on to found Sionics making the world's best suppressors; just as the U-2 and the F-117 were operational a dozen years before the public was aware, so, too, might we see in Dealey Plaza that day a similar black technological leap

Regarding proofing, I have thirty-four (34) carets in my copy, corrections which would enhance the flow--but I find I have so many more underlinings, brackets, exclamation points--for this is a break-through book

We have not had in fifty years a satori, enlightenment, epiphany, insight like this

You've got Johnson forecasting the luncheon in Dallas in the Fall on April 23 per Horne, and Connally insists on the Trade Mart which determines the Plaza

The Thomas dinner in Houston the 21st insures the party will stay over and fly to Love Field in the morning for the fateful, fatal motorcade

They had a long, long time to establish the best hide; to zero in the weapon; dry runs as needed

The blood spatter wasn't known until 1982, nothing in the literature to prompt the NPIC/Hawkeyeworks wizards to remove the backspatter which appears and disappears in milliseconds

It would be good to get a copy in the hands of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who told Charlie Rose how moved by Douglass' Unspeakable he was and wrote an endorsement for the publisher to that effect

[TLR]

An interesting site that incorporates Sherry's work:

http://theshotsindealeyplaza.com/?page_id=12

[Cutty]

^ Well, this presentation posits an 8 shot scenario based on one scientific fact buried among the other 87.5% worth of circumstantial evidence and speculation. IMHO, it is counterproductive to do this and focus should be placed solely on what we do know, or shall I say "now know," so that a new perspective can be established for examining the rest of the case.

I find that researchers, in general, are reluctant to give up their long held theories & will do either of 2 things. Of the proponents, some will find that Sherry's work has merit and support it on its own and some find that it fits in with their theories and will embrace it, maybe thinking that it reinforces the rest of their theory. Again, I think this can be counterproductive. Yellowbirch1 has long theorized that the throat shot came from the south knoll and Sherry's work proves that a shooter was, indeed, at that location but, beyond that, the rest is still left to speculation based on cicumstantial evidence. Others (like a former forum admin that many of us supported for a few years) realize that it debunks their position and either ignore it or baselessly trash it. I honestly can say that the last example is the only one of that kind that I've seen and ..........

Erroneously, some have suggested that prominent researchers were not endorsing the revelation in "Enemy Of The Truth" and you have found yet another example of support, TLR. Sherry and I, in tandem, have confronted some of these statements by requesting a citing and have still received nothing but chirping crickets as a response. The book was released in November, 2012 and to date we know of no formidable dissension among her peers or otherwise.

[echelon]

The book was released in November, 2012 and to date we know of no formidable dissension among her peers or otherwise.

As you probably know, I am not really interested in the precise mechanics of what happened in DP and therefore I have not read Sherry's book.  Consequently, I will neither criticise it nor promote it.  But it is factually incorrect to claim that nobody who is qualified to criticise it has does so.  You need only to read David Mantik's review over at CTKA to see a very formidable dissension.

http://www.ctka.net/2013/eot_review.html

I believed that this board was supposed to be dedicated to a detailed reading of Sherry's book but it all seems to have gone very quiet.  I would have thought that a discussion and/or rebuttal of the points raised by Mantik would be very germane to our search for the truth.

[Mitch C.]

Quick review of above ^review. Thanks echelon, for posting the link. Required reading if you have read "Enemy of the Truth".

First of all, the review author, Mantik (as interesting as it is), spends way too much time refuting Feister's use of the word "myth". Yes, I already knew that "myth" in it's full (college literature type) meaning is actually a story that reveals a truth. Feister uses it in the more pedestrian understanding: a fallacy. But Mantik drones on a little too long about it, making a mountain out of a molehill. I agree, perhaps Feister should have used "fallacy", but a sentence or two would have sufficed, not a fifth of a very, very long review.

Mantik obviously is a big proponent of an altered Z-Film, so he will have none of Feister's dismissing of it. He makes some interesting arguments, but the two biggest areas of discussion that applies to Z-Film altered or not: Limo stopping (or not as Z-Film suggests), the bloody mist, as Z-Film shows (or not, if painted in: altered), in the end; I still feel that Feister has the best of that argument.

I agree with Mantik that the author needs a better copy editor (lots of errors), and that Feister, after poo-pooing ear witness accuracy, uses ear witness's to bolster her South Knoll shooter theory. Both of these points I made above, before Mantik published his review.

In the end, Mantik agrees with much more than he disagrees with in "Enemy of the Truth"; except for the altered Z-Film which seems to be near and dear in his belief system.

[Phil Dragoo]

I had corresponded with William Orchard a couple of years ago; I know his work was meticulous.  It isn't my focus, but he had the head shot coming from the railroad overpass toward the South Knoll, within Sherry Fiester's trajectory cone.  He referenced her book.

Patrick Schannes in his JFK Le Complot site states he finished his work and put it online 2009-2010 and found he was agreeing with Sherry Fiester's book which he cites.

Anthony Fiester has done a great deal of work on his 300-page pdf available free through his blog site.

I've seen some amazing versions of Zapruder frames which seem to show the zipper wound from the temple to the occipitoparietal leaving large flaps, appearing in agreement with Robert Groden's eighty-one (81) witnesses to that large rear exit wound.

I saw that Mantik was frantic over semantics, and used Nicholson the non-CSI, and of course Fetzer who, with Cinque, developed OCD with the TSBD doorway.

I am occasionally very weary of those who critique yet do not create, thinking of Harry Truman's, "Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one."

It has taken months and much back and forth, but in the not-too-distant future ctka.net will have up the LeBlanc-Dragoo review of Enemy of the Truth.

I am interested in the details to the degree that they lead to a unified comprehension.

I stipulate that removal of the 35th president was a brazen expression of the power of the cabal and its impatience with obstructionists, an object lesson for future temporary inhabitants of the White House.

To that end I find the throat shot and head/kill shot coming from the same secreted never-before-suspected professionally-competent mechanic very much in line with a sponsor-facilitator-mechanic model.

Sherry plugs in the keystone of the forensics into the overarching malignant magnificence of the Caesarian daggers.

The miasma of hatred described in Douglass' Unspeakable presents in all the assassinations, MX, MLK, RFK, and serves in the false flags from Reichstag to the Towers.

To be sure when I told our radiologist of Mantik's radiodensitometry analysis of the Archive lateral and AP skull x-rays she was instantly convinced, having known "there was more to it than we were told."

Of greater weight than myth/fallacy and Zapruder alteration/not are a) the best sourcing of the kill shot; b) the most thorough destruction-in-detail of the Single Bullet Theory; c) the description of backspatter in Zapruder; d) the much-needed, long-awaited criticism of Dallas Police Department dereliction vis-a-vis crime scene protocol.

The popularity of the CSI genre should've made the public more suspicious of the propaganda--but we must bear in mind they've had a fifty-year head start with a mass air force of media winged monkeys.

Mantik should have a book by now.  He's in six places of Horne and two in Fetzer compilations, and often on ctka.net, but he could do a book of his breakthrough work rather than review another's.

His placement of the Harper Fragment in Murder in Dealey Plaza for example.  Groden's eighty-one (81) saw the wound; Mantik put it back together--despite the FBI having lost it and Baden playing Mickey the Dope.

FBI has tried very hard to be Enemy of the Truth Number One.

We might have been suspicious at the Katzenbach memo the day the limo (crime scene) was getting sanitized.

Presumed guilty--another deviation from protocol.

I'd like to see a seminar of the South Knoll researchers availing themselves of such witnesses as Tosh Plumlee recreate the darkest two seconds of the latter half of the Twentieth Century.

In which we would have Dr. Mantik inside the tent.

Detente, entente, justice.

[Cutty]

I believed that this board was supposed to be dedicated to a detailed reading of Sherry's book but it all seems to have gone very quiet.  I would have thought that a discussion and/or rebuttal of the points raised by Mantik would be very germane to our search for the truth.

Thank you echelon, you are correct, this is just the type of challenge needed but to have a proper discussion one would be best prepared after reading the book. It was Alan's intent that a group discussion would include folks who have done so. To understand that decades of lab trials replicating ballistic skull wounds have proven beyond hypothesis that a skull moves toward the entering bullet debunks the crux of Mantic's 2 headshot scenario.

I can't add much at the moment to the last 2 posts which I am in agreement with. One key word, however, from Phil"s post is semantics. Mantic (wow, his name is even in the word!) gets us mired in it on a long walk through the forrest, which I would love to view more clearly, but all of those damn trees are in the way. I'm looking forward to Sherry's take on the review ...... she always welcomes the challenge and is quite formidable.

Sorry, but I just can't get away from quoting Mitch here also because when you get down to the back and forth you just can't ignore that:

"facts are stubborn things"

[TLR]

In some of Weisberg's late 1960s letters (in his archives), he speculated about a shooter being in a vehicle on Commerce St near the Underpass. That person would be at street level, though, and wouldn't have a clear view of JFK.

It's really a shame there were no photos or films taken of the area during the actual shooting.

[Cutty]

In some of Weisberg's late 1960s letters (in his archives), he speculated about a shooter being in a vehicle on Commerce St near the Underpass. That person would be at street level, though, and wouldn't have a clear view of JFK.

It's really a shame there were no photos or films taken of the area during the actual shooting.

Agreed, I believe the elevation from the south end of the overpass and along over to the south knoll parking lot is essential to make that/those shot/shots. It certainly makes sense that the limo, immediately after the hairpin turn onto Elm, was now already in the kill zone, directly facing the south knoll area and beginning a decent straight toward  the sniper. We can only speculate, for now, that the shooter may have had to get one off as early as possible to allow time for a second shot once the limo decended far enough so he could take his time and comfortably make the shot without the windshield in the way. I don't know whether a sniper would take a shot intentionally through a windshield but I'm thinking that the type of round might be a factor. We know that the fatal headshot was not a metal jacketed round.

TLR, I believe we were studying some photos together which were taken immediately after and spotting all kinds of men with rifles etc. weren't we?  I can't remember at the moment how far back but I'm thinkin' some thread over in our archives?

[TLR]

Karl, there's only the Cancellare photo, taken about 15-30 seconds after the assassination, that shows part of that area.

[Cutty]

Yup, that one is eerie enough. Altgens has come over to the north side and the Newmans are still lying on the ground. You can see figures over there along the fence to the parking lot but they're not identifiable, to me anyway. James Tague is identified near the underpass. I remember our coversation including someone saying something to the effect, "well weren't any of those folks checked out over there? That's the only photo, eh?

[Alan Dale]

From Robin Unger's JFK Assassination Research Photo Galleries