Fourth Reich Archaeology - The Warren Commission Decided 8: Specter's Spectre (Side B)

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Continuing our exploration into Arlen Specter, in this episode we focus on Specter’s work on the Commission, and his claim to fame: the infamous single bullet theory.  We examine how Specter built out the case against Oswald as any crooked prosecutor might, fitting the evidence into his theory, and not the other way around. Drawing from a vast array of prime source audio material, we hear from several of the players themselves: eyewitnesses, doctors, ballistics experts, and pathologists. They all have one thing in common: their lived experiences and expert analyses run contrary to Specter’s theory. We systematically dismantle the theory by reference to some of the best evidence, including evidence of Specter’s self-interested, abusive relationship with the truth.

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of the science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America.

America. Ever, I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information, which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small one. For example, we're the CIA. He has a mom. He knows so long as a guy, afraid of we'd never be secure.

It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? This is the United. I'm not going to see. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology.

and I'm Don. Welcome back to the second part of our two-part excavation into Arlen Specter, the man behind the infamous magic bullet theory that essentially carried the Warren Commission's conclusion that President John F. Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin. Now, at risk of stating the obvious, if you haven't already, you should definitely go back and listen to part one of this episode before continuing. And one last point before we get started today, I want to thank everyone once again for all of the positive feedback on the podcast. We love you. We appreciate you. We do it all for you. We are always grateful to receive

messages via email. You can reach us at forthrightepod at gmail.com. And we're also on social media, on Twitter and Instagram at Fourth Reich Pod. Now, if you really believe in our program, I would like to remind you once again that we are actively accepting donations on Patreon. Okay, without further ado, let's pick up where we left off and get digging. Over the years, especially after the Zapruder film becomes public and the House Select Committee on Assassinations does their investigation into everything, there has been no shortage of criticism about Spector's Magic Bullet Theory. One of the most vocal opponents of this theory is the famed pathologist,

Cyril Wecht. Wecht is the basis for Oliver Stone's portrayal of the magic bullet. Wecht also testified before the H.SCA to dissent to what he called an incomplete and distorted testimony from the four-person medical panel retained by the H.SCA. Now, Weck's perspective, his position, there's really three components to it. So in Cyril Wex, view, there are three major problems with the magic bullet theory. The first one, which is two elements, is this idea of the trajectory of the bullet. When we're talking about trajectory, we're going to talk about the timing and the angle of the bullet. The first one is pretty basic, and it's basically it's something that you can do by looking at the Zapruder film. and you're looking at when JFK is hit versus when Connolly gets hit. When they're visibly, you could see that they've each gotten hit. And what you see is that JFK is already hit by the time Connolly gets hit one and a half seconds later.

Yeah, the way that you see it is JFK puts both of his hands up to his neck and you can see that in the Zapruder film and at the same time you see Connolly sort of looking around his shoulder because according to Connolly's testimony Connolly already heard a shot and in reaction to hearing the shot he turned around and as he was turning around as he describes it he feels a bullet hit him right we should point out here that connolly himself never believed the single bullet theory and this disparity between when jfk is hit and when connolly gets hit you'll recall it's a major point of dissent among the commissioners so you know dick russell hale boggs and

John Sherman Cooper all latch on to this point because, I mean, if you, the listener's invited to look at the film, if you look at the film, it's really hard to accept the notion that it's one bullet that hit these two individuals. Right. And we can hear it from John Connolly himself. I heard this shot and I say shot because I immediately thought it was a shot. I immediately thought it was a rifle shot. I've hunted a great deal in my life. I fired a rifle many times and and I thought it was a rifle shot. Why? I don't know, but I immediately thought of an assassination attempt. It's the only thing it crossed my mind. Fear just swept through me and I immediately thought of him, of course. I was sitting on the jump seat in the

sudden passenger car immediately in front of him. And I turned, thinking that the shot had come from back over my right shoulder. And I turned to look in that direction. I think motivated by two things. First, to see if I could see where the shot came from, see if I could see anything unusual, but equally or more important to me at that moment in my thought processes was a desire to see him, see if anything had happened, see if he was all right. So I turned and I obviously saw nothing but a tremendous crowd of people from where we had just come. And I saw nothing unusual, nothing out of the way, except people also had startled looks on their faces. They were turning, they were looking, and I didn't catch him in the corner of my eye. So I was in the process of

turning to my left, to look back over my left shoulder, to see if I could see him in the back seat. And that's when I felt the impact of the bullet that hit me. There was no great pain associated with the bullet that hit me, notwithstanding one in my back shoulder and came out my chest right here. I felt as if someone had just hit me in the back, a sharp blow with a doubled-up fist. It was an impact rather than any sort of a searing pain. It more or less knocked me over at least enough to where I looked down,

and of course I was I was covered with blood and frankly thought that I had been fatally hit I I said as I recall my God they're gonna kill us all so there was no there was no thought in my mind really but what this was an assassination of tip I did not hear the second shot the one that hit me I understand there's some some question in the minds of the experts about whether or not we could both have been hit for the same bullet, and that was the first bullet. I just don't happen to believe that. I don't believe it and I will believe it. Because, again, I heard the first shot. I recognized it for what I thought it was.

I had time to turn, to try to see what had happened. I was in the process of turning again before I felt the impact of a bullet. Now, obviously, if the bullet that hit me, hit me before I could hear it. I was never conscious of the sound of the second bullet at all. I never heard the second bullet. After I said, my God, they're going to kill us all, I of course didn't know that they'd actually hit the president because I'd not seen him. He had not said a word. And about that time, Nelly pulled me down into, I had turned again in reaction to this bullet and had turned facing my right. She pulled me over into her lap. and put her head down on top of mine, and just kept talking to me and saying,

you're going to be all right, you're going to be all right. I was conscious the whole time. I never lost consciousness, and I was lying there and heard the third shot. Now, it takes a long time to tell this, Eddie, but this all happened, as you well know, in a matter of seconds. I heard the third shot very distinctly. I heard it hit. I assumed that it hit the president. But I did not see it hit him, but I heard it hit.

And you obviously, again, if you ever done any firing, even at 200 or 300 yards, when you fire a rifle at a deer, you know from the sound of that shell, the whine of it, whether or not it hit its target or whether it didn't. It makes a different sound. Well, obviously, the bullet, the third shot, hit something. And it was very obvious after that because the evidence was splattered all over the car and all over my clothes and all over Nelly

and so there was no question about what had happened. I, my eyes were open, I was conscious. I saw the two secret servicemen in the front seat. I heard what they said. And even LB.J in conversation with Russell

concedes that he also doesn't believe the single bullet theory. Well, I've just warned us fighting over that damn report. Well, they were trying to prove at the same bullet that hit Kennedy first was the one that hit Connolly, and went to him and through his hand, his bone, and then to his leg, and everything else. There's a lot of stuff there.

I couldn't, couldn't yell, evidence and tried to examine all of them. But I didn't read the record. Well, what difference did make which bullet got Connolly? Well, it don't make much difference, but they said that they believed it. They believed, the commission believed at the same bullet that hit Kennedy hit Connolly. Well, I don't believe it. I don't either. And so I couldn't sign it.

And I said the government contest by the direct to the contrary. And I'm not going to approve of that. And there's so much evidence that it's bogus. Edgar Hoover, remember, already said two bullets hit Kennedy and one hit Connolly. so he's relying on a separate bullet theory. When the president got hit, second one? No, the president wasn't hit with the second one. I'll say if Connolly had bet on his wife.

Oh, yes, yes. The president of no doubt would have been hit. He'd been hit three times. He'd been hit three times. And that is borne out in a lot more evidence that we'll get into a little bit later on. But suffice it to say that I think, you almost need go no further than the fact that John Connolly himself, a better witness you could not have, says in no uncertain terms,

JFK was hit with one shot, and then I was hit with another shot. And the commission just twists itself into a pretzel to try and get out of this inevitable and inescapable fact by saying things like oh john connolly went into shock and he didn't feel the bullet hit him until one and a half seconds after it had already entered him or some other such and as a number of the commission members were very uh very uh scrob very great way to Connolly's testimony on these points. But he didn't persuade me. But as we'll see, we don't need John Connolly alone

to prove that there were more shots. But it's a great starting point to bear in mind that both John Connolly and his wife as well, who is sitting right there next to him, were both of the firm and unshakable belief, unshakable, because it was not for lack of trying to get Connolly to admit that maybe he was wrong, but he never did. And they held fast in their assertion that there's no way it was the same bullet.

and it's absolutely outrageous in light of what we just said about the single bullet being synonymous with the lone assassin theory that what LBJ and Russell say on their phone call that it doesn't make much of a difference if it was the same bullet or not that is hoarse pucky of a stinky variety oh yeah it makes all the difference difference in the world, Dick Russell. What the fuck? All right. So that's the timing question.

And there's more that we could say, listener, please appreciate that this is going to be an episode on the longer side. We are releasing it in two waves on the free feed. And for all the information that we are including, we've filtered out reams and reams more. so we invite you to just bear with us because there's so much that could be said about this and really this is brass tax and so much that has been said about it yes yeah but this is it's true it's brass tax and i think without further ado let's just get on to the more complex

but probably more convincing point about trajectory once you figure it out and that is the angle of the bullet so trajectory is both angle and speed right so the angle of the bullet's trajectory is simply not consistent with the location of the wounds as well as lee harvey oswald's purported position on the sixth floor and on a hill right so oswald's sniper's layer is in the building on the 6th floor, but that building is above ground uphill from where the president is driving. So for the magic bullet theory to work, the Warren Commission placed the initial entrance of the bullet at the base of JFK's neck, which is pretty implausible, Don, right? Oh yeah, it's definitely implausible. I mean, if you are at a computer right now, you know,

I encourage the listener to look up some video representation of the single bullet theory. On YouTube, there's a very good one from the Oliver Stone documentary, Destiny Betrayed, which you can find. That's kind of a trailer for that documentary that shows a slow motion vision of what it would have looked like. But essentially, the bullets come in. at quite a downward angle by necessity, so in order for it to traverse Kennedy and still have enough height to enter John Connolly's body at the sort of armpit level, it would have to have a pretty high entrance point. It would also have to have a high entrance point if indeed it exited

as the commission claims, out JFK's throat. And so here I think it's helpful to talk about the holes in JFK's clothing. So what we know, the hole in the back of JFK's shirt was five and three quarters inches below the top of the collar. and about one and a half to two inches to the right of the middle of the inseam, okay? So even if JFK were waving to the crowd, and that is the excuse that the Warren Commission has for placing the wound at the base of JFK's neck, that his shirt was so elevated because he was waving to the crowd. But I think, listener, if you try this yourself with a collared shirt, try waving your hand

above your head and see, does your shirt bunch up so that it raises almost six inches up your neck? I doubt it. I try this myself. I don't know if you've tried a dick, but it doesn't work like that. Okay. Yeah, it really doesn't. The other clothing observation from the evidence is that a bullet nicked the knot in JFK's necktie in the front.

And so if you line up normally where is the point five and three quarters inches below the top of a collar to where the knot of a necktie would be, that would be in an upward angle, not a downward angle, not a downward. angle. So that's a big problem right there. Because of course, there was a hole in the front of Kennedy's throat. This is the hole that you can see JFK grab at in the Zapruder film. This is the hole that the doctors at Parkland Hospital used to perform a tracheostomy and insert a breathing tube for JFK. Now, it bears mentioning here that the doctors at Parkland Hospital, who performed that tracheostomy characterized the hole in the throat as an entrance wound, not as an exit wound.

As Parkland Dr. Robert McClellan describes it, the thing that had caused some confusion was this wound in the neck and whether it was an entrance wound. on exit wound. And of course, when we saw the president, we had no knowledge of what went on in Dealey Plaza. And Dr. Perry, when he saw it, and this is what he basically told Dr. Boswell, that he thought it was an entrance wound from the size of the hole. And he told, in fact, all the newsmen gathered upstairs at Parkland right after the assassination

or right after the president died, and Dr. Perry said, apparently this was an entrance wound. into the neck. And of course, as it turns out, it may have been, I say may, because we still don't really know, from a bullet that went in through his back, almost whether it was near the junction of the neck in the back or lower, that's an uncertainty. But even setting that aside, we're talking now just about the angle of the magic bullets trajectory. So, kind of, kind of Common sense says if there's a hole five and three quarters inches below the top of the collar in the back, and there's a hole in the knot of the necktie that is either caused by two different bullets, or it's caused by a bullet that's traveling upward from the back to the front.

and an upward trajectory simply is not consistent with a bullet that leaves Kennedy's throat and then enters Connolly's armpit because Connolly's armpit, of course, would have been well above the point of exit. And in connection with his work for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 70s, Cyril Wecht, the pathologist we mentioned earlier, testified in a very clear and animated detail just why that trajectory is implausible. The panel, the last of my recollection, was in unanimous agreement that there was a slightly upward trajectory of the bullet. through President John F. Kennedy.

That is to say that the bullet wound of entrance on the President's back lined up with the bullet wound of exit in the front of the President's neck, drawing a straight line, showed that vertically the bullet had moved slightly upward. Slightly but upward. That is extremely important for two reasons. One, under the single bullet theory, and Oswald is a sole assassin or anybody else in the six-floor window, southeast corner of the Texas School Book depository building.

You got the bullet coming down at a downward angle of around 20, 25 degrees, something like that, maybe a little bit less. It had originally been postulated, I think, by the autopsy team and initial investigators at considerably more. How in the world can a bullet be fired from the six-floor window, the president's in the back and yet have a slightly upward direction. There's nothing there to cause it to change its course. And then, with the slightly upward direction outside the president's neck, that bullet then embarked upon a roller coaster ride with a major dip because it then proceeds under the single bullet theory through Governor John Connolly

at a 25 degree angle of declination. To my knowledge, there has never been any disagreement among the proponents and defendants of the Warren Fifth Report or the critics about the angle of declination in John Conley, maybe a degree or two. But we've got that bullet going through the governor at about 25 degrees downward. How does a bullet that is moving slightly upward in the president proceed then to move downward, 25 degrees in John Conley? This is what I cannot understand. And the evidence that links the entry wound in JFK's back goes well beyond just the hole in his shirt. For example, two Secret Service agents were situated behind JFK. One was Clint Hill.

You see him in the Zapruder film as the fellow who climbs onto the back of the limo, pushes Jackie back into the car before it speeds off under the triple underpass, right? This is the guy who maybe he saved Jackie Kennedy's life because she could have just fallen off of the back of that car and been run over. Right, right. Well, he gave testimony, and in his testimony, he placed JFK's back wound six inches below the neckline. bingo okay that's exactly where it would be consistent with his hole in his shirt and who was present dick at clint hills testimony none other than arlin specter that's right and another secret service agent who was also behind the limo likewise placed

the wound, I think he said, four inches below the shoulder or something like that. And so those are eyewitness testimony that are consistent with the placement of the wound on the shirt and they are consistent with the other evidence that we're going to go through here. So one of those other pieces of corroborating evidence was the autopsy sketch by Dr. Boswell. He was present at the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. And Dr. Boswell's sketch also shows a dot where the back wound was. And wouldn't you know it? It's not in the neck. No, sir. It's in the back. And then, of course, there's the December 9, 1963 FBI report that the Warren commissioners found so dissatisfying. Hopefully our listeners can remember that.

This was that report that Edgar Hoover was hoping would be the one that, you know, the commissioners would ultimately rubber stamp. But one of the problems with that report, you'll recall our man John McCloy, pointed this out. One of the problems with that report was that it didn't account for Connolly's injuries at all. And it stated, medical examination of the president's body had revealed that one of the bullets had entered just below his shoulder to the right of the spinal column at an angle of 45 to 60 degrees downward that there was no point of exit and that the bullet was not in the body. Tough.

That's tough. If you're Arlen Specter. Got to figure out a way to come. And a follow-up report from January 13th, 1964, echoed this finding stating, medical examination of the president's body had revealed that the bullet

which entered his back had penetrated to a distance of less than a finger length. Even tougher. Yeah, just can't catch a break. that's a big yikes I'll say this I have been

studying JFK stuff read probably dozens of books have seen all the documentaries have you know watched endless hours of YouTube videos of interviews with the witnesses blah blah blah blah blah blah okay preparing for this episode

I have deepened my understanding of the actual ballistic and medical evidence far beyond anything before, and it has emerged in my mind as such an unavoidable choke point to borrow the title of a great book, actually, by a group of different researchers, including Jim Deugenio, Paul Blow, Matt Crumpton, the host of the Solving JFK podcast, and others, sorry, choke holds is the name of the book, but it's an unavoidable choke point because everybody concedes that single bullet yes is an essential ingredient for the single shooter theory. And the minute that the single bullet theory falls apart, the rest of the

Warren Commission collapses like a house of cards. And this is what we're trying to convey in this episode that you just cannot take this theory seriously. And so at the risk of piling on, I'll just mention that the official White House death certificate signed by JFK's physician admiral George Berkeley also places the back wound at, quote, about the level of the third thoracic vertebra. That's, you know, halfway down the rib cage, let's say. Or a third of the way down the rip cage. And what's especially telling to me is that this document was not cited in the Warren Commission, and it wasn't even included among the 26 volumes of exhibits. And it wasn't even declassified until the 1990s. It's just not only is the evidence that's already cited by the

Warren Commission so clear on its own face that the single bullet theory doesn't hold up to scrutiny but where there was evidence that contradicted it too much for whatever reason that evidence was excluded and that's not the only thing that was excluded and we're going to talk about some more but all this stuff it's really fired me up to bring the heat to Arlen Specter dead in his grave for perpetuating a fraud on the American people that it boggles the mind to think that the likes of Gerald Posner and these absolute charlatan, Warren Commission defenders, shills, are out there defending to this day. Yeah.

it's offensive to the intellect yeah so in some taken together all of this evidence it if not proves beyond a doubt it suggests so strongly that the back shot did not enter at the base of jfk's neck and exit through his throat and like i said there's a lot more that we're we could say here, but there's a lot of other great books that explore this stuff in extreme detail. David Lifton's Best Evidence, it's a very oldie but a goody. The articles of Dr. Gary Aguilar, which you can find online and are very up to date with the latest state of the evidence. The same goes for Russell Kent's book, JFK Medical Betrayal, and the documentary, in addition to the Oliver Stone documentary, there's another documentary called JFK What the Doctors Saw, that also gets into

a lot of this stuff and do not just take our word for it. Go look for yourself. It's overwhelming. And with all that stuff about trajectory, Dick, I think maybe you could take us quickly through the other two avenues of criticism. Yeah, so all of that talk was, we were still in the world of trajectory, right? So it's speed and angle. Wecht had two other major criticisms of the magic bullet theory. And these two are much more straightforward. They are the weight and condition.

of the bullet that was found. Remember, the incredible thing about the magic bullet theory is that, not just the trajectory and all of that stuff, but it was found, right? It was found in Parkland Hospital. The actual bullet is, the alleged bullet,

is recovered. And when it's recovered, the bullet that they're holding out to be the bullet that went through, both President Kennedy and Governor Connolly's bodies causing seven wounds breaking at least two bones

breaking like major bones like not just bones but like breaking major bones in the body going through hefty portions of flesh you know going through the thigh through the ribs you know this isn't just it's not like it's hit your finger and then went into another guy

It's like it went well into, you know, the hefty parts of your body. Yeah, look at John Connolly's wrist x-ray. Cyril Wecht makes the point repeatedly. John Connolly was six foot four. He's a meaty Texas, boy. Right. He's a big guy. He's long-horn fed, boy.

As this distinguished committee and members of the staff saw yesterday, Governor John Connolly, I think, is about six foot four. I don't know his exact one. weight, 200 pounds to give a take. He's a big man. This is the distal end of the radius. Well, you can see the bone begins to fan out. It indeed is a heavy bone. To dismiss it as if it were a phalanx, a finger bone, a 10-year-old child is not fair. It is not an accurate representation. I say that a bullet that struck that wrist bone, the radius, above the small wrist bones. It's one of the two large bones coming down from the elbow to the wrist

that a bullet that struck and caused that damage and which had previously damaged and destroyed pulverized five inches of the right fifth ribs could not have emerged in the near tristine condition of condition exhibit 399. So the other two criticism of this bullet are that the weight and condition of the bullet, right? So the weight loss of the bullet that was found When you buy this bullet in the store, the store-bought weight is 161 grains. A grain is a unit of measurement. It's 165,000th of one gram. So store-bought, this bullet is 161 grains.

The bullet that they find in Parkland Hospital is 158.6 grains. That means that the bullet suffered just 1.4.5. 5% of weight loss. This is simply not plausible because you have radiographically demarkable pieces of the bullet found in Governor Connolly's chest, arm, and leg. So this bullet, which, you know, there's pieces of it in Governor Connolly's body, the bullet that's recovered is near pristine. So the weight and condition of the bullet

just do not support this notion that it was responsible for smashing into and breaking apart all that flesh and bone. Yeah, I think by comparison, listener, if you sneeze, the mucus that you expel from your nasal cavity is bound to weigh more than the 2.4 grains that the exhibit 399, right?

The famous magic bullet in the Warren Commission's evidence was alleged to have lost. The surgeon who operated on Governor Connolly's chest wounds at Parkland Hospital was Dr. Robert Shaw. The bullet struck lateral to the shoulder blade, stripped out approximately 10 centimeters of the fifth rib, driving fragments of the rib into his chest, went on and struck the radius bone of his lower arm at this point,

and a small fragment of bullet entered the inner aspect of the lower left thigh. I have never seen a bullet that had caused as much bony damage as you found in the case of Governor Connolly remain as a pristine bullet. I couldn't quite understand why a bullet going through the president's neck coming from the right and above exiting out through his throat would then zig and zagged. to strike the governor who was sitting directly in front of the president. It would seem to me that that bullet would have struck the governor in the left side of his chest rather than the right side of his chest. Yeah, so in some, it's basically this idea of the trajectory, the weight, and condition of the magic bullet do not support

the conclusion that this one bullet was responsible. for seven wounds. That, nevertheless, did not stop our man, Arlen Specter, who was hell-bent on fitting the evidence that was available into the theory of his case. That's right. So, when we ask ourselves, how could the Warren report possibly voice its, it's conclusions that a single shooter fired all of these shots and that in turn these three bullets did all the damage to the two men inside that limo that day. How could they say that with a straight

face and actually expect to be believed? Well, for one, Arlen Spector himself, acknowledged that he made the theory up. Life is so strange when it's changing, yes indeed. To deliberately avoid finding a conspiracy. We're going back where they belong. It ain't fooling around because I've done had my fun. It ain't going to see no more damage done. It's back my bully.

We've mentioned the name on the podcast before of Edward J. Epstein. This was one of the early critics of the Warren report, but a guy who essentially agreed with the thrust of the Warren report's conclusions that there was no broader conspiracy. He thought that maybe if there was a conspiracy, it was a Russian conspiracy. He was a very establishment-friendly author who nevertheless played a critical role in bringing to light some of the inconsistencies and blind spots of the Warren Commission report. And Edward Epstein asked Arlen Specter, why, when the Secret Service and FBI were running

ballistics tests and were recreating the scene of the crime, why didn't either of those law enforcement and specialized agencies come up with the single bullet theory. As Dick read earlier, the FBI believed that Kennedy's back wound was caused by a bullet that went in and didn't come out. Well, Spector's reply was incredible. What he said was, quote, They had no idea at the time that unless one bullet had hit Kennedy and Connolly, there had to be a second assassin.

Spector then goes on to admit that he convinced the commission to adopt his single bullet theory this way. I showed them the Zapruder film, frame by frame, and explained that they could either accept the single bullet theory, or begin looking for a second assassin end quote it's right fucking there yeah and this is like I think a prime example of how Ireland Spector's prosecutorial training comes into play right because he is basically taking a case theory and sort of thinking two or three steps ahead and framing up his case to fit his theory. So in the ordinary course, right, a prosecutor might have persons of interest

and might have certain facts surrounding those persons of interest. And at a certain point, that prosecutor is going to have to make a decision of naming a suspect, right? All of this is done basically on theory and inference. sort of what's available and then putting together a reasonable case, right? Once the prosecutor has done that and says, okay, this is our guy, let's put all our chips behind him.

Everything after that point, basically from the prosecutor's view, they are building a case, right? Every fact that they get, they have to make fit into their case. So whatever comes down, Pike has to be thought of like, okay, how is this going to ultimately serve my goal or conclusion with the prosecutor? It's going to be a guilty verdict. With the commission, of course, it's no evidence of a conspiracy. So with that in mind, you could see Spector's basically taking you know, what he wants, which is to pin this thing on Oswald and only Oswald. And that

then using the facts to put together essentially the most plausible, the most plausible sort of events, set of events that would support that finding that Oswald was the sole assassin. Yeah, and I imagine that he must have been thankful that having a blue ribbon presidential commission that was not subject to the rules of evidence that was not subject to the standard of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, right? He must have been just giddy that the bar was lowered to such a degree for his work on the commission compared to his work as a Philly prosecutor. and I'd encourage the listener, Dick, I'm sure that you have had a similar experience to mine. But listener, take a day off, or if you have a day off, you know, go to criminal court in your hometown. Go and watch a trial for a crime.

If you live in a major city, the chances are there will be no shortage. And for me, during law school, court watching and having the experience of actually sitting in watching the prosecutor make their case thusly in the exact way you just described, Dick, and watching them orchestrate their evidence using some combination of friendly witnesses and police, right? and then watch their case be picked apart, and hopefully, listener, there's a competent public defender service in your area, because in my experience, you can really see, and it's quite alarming to see it. Just how flimsy these cases often are and how confident the prosecutor nevertheless remains in their case, which, to the spectator, is so obviously built on a shoddy foundation. I had an extremely formative experience one time during law school, I saw a murder trial. And the key witness for the prosecution was a jailhouse informant. And the defense just so happened to have, and the prosecution

knew that the defense had it, and they knew the contents of it, a call between this jailhouse informant and that person's significant other, where the jailhouse informant essentially said, I'm being pressured to testify against this guy and they're going to give me something in return. The whole thing falls apart before your very eyes. But nevertheless, the prosecutor proceeds as though that doesn't poke a hole in their case at all. And I go to the length of describing this anecdote

to paint the picture of not only, aren't, But of a mentality that is rampant in the legal profession and in the American criminal legal system, I would not call it a justice system, that does not care first and foremost about the facts, but cares about the win. And that's what Spector was up to. As we discussed the last time, when we were talking about the bigger structure of the commission and the hierarchy therein, it's not hard to see that Spector, being a junior prosecutor in the Philly DA's office, he knew that he had to get his bread buttered by the higher-ups.

And on the Warren Commission, because Frank Adams had already long since fucked off, his sort of boss figure, well, it was none other than Alan Dulles. And Spector, there are these little glimpses within the records from the executive sessions of the Warren Commission that make it abundantly clear that Spector knew whom he had to appeal to and from whom he should look for his cues. And that person was Alan Welsh Dulles, the master of evil on the commission. And how did he carry out those orders? That's, I think, the next question for us to look to.

So this is what I was going to say is that in the same vein of the prosecutor that you witnessed, Don, who was pressuring witnesses for testimony, so too was Arlen Specter, pressuring witnesses. And he wasn't shy about shaping up testimony, interrogating folks. you know some of his tactics could be characterized fairly characterized as straight up bullying witnesses in some cases to the point of suborning perjury right that's so that's legalese for basically getting a witness to lie but you know he put pressure on witnesses he put pressure on testimony manipulated testimony, and there are a couple of pretty good examples of this. For example, Arlen Spector put a whole hell of a lot of pressure on the medical evidence. There are two Parkland doctors, Ronald Jones and Robert McClelland, who report having been told by Spector what

the evidence establish, right, as though it was a fait accompli. When Arlen Specter, who came down here, six months after the assassination, represented the Warren Commission, was a junior counsel. He was one that quizzed me. After it was over with, he came out in the hall at Parkland because he was quizzing me about the entrance wound. I initially, no question about it, thought it was an entrance wound. That the witnesses who saw shots fired from the front

were not credible and don't say anything about it. He said, I want to tell you, we have people who will testify they saw him shot from the overpass, but we do not believe they're credible witnesses, and I don't want you saying anything about it. Arlen Specter told you there. Yes. Do you not think that that's a suggestion

of how to conduct your testimony? Basically telling these medical professionals, like, this is what it establishes, and now basically you all, don't get it, right? Yeah, conform to this version of shots from the back, or you, like these other cooks that we've discredited, will fall out of respect. Now, listen to how strongly Spector denies having done exactly this, and see what you think

of whether maybe he's protesting a little bit too much. extremely careful when I went to talk to the mouth of the pair of the one word in this matter. I didn't, I didn't talk to any of those guys before I took their depositions. I took their depositions cold. But I never had it. I never sent a word to that guy before asking those questions on the records of what he said, he said. And this next part, I think, is an amazing example and a great poll, because it just shows how testimony is manipulated. And it's a tactic that I can...

bet dollars to donuts, something that Spector and the other lawyers on the commission learned from their professional careers, right? So interviewing FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier, Spector spent a long time telling Frazier about all the hypotheticals about the angle of the magic bullet as it exited Kennedy's body before then asking Frazier to opine on whether the same bullet could have entered Connolly's back. Of course, Fraser refuses the bait, and he responds, quote, There are a lot of probabilities in that. I mean, I myself don't have any technical evidence which would support it as far as my

rendering an opinion as an expert. I would certainly say it was possible, but I don't say that it probably occurred because I don't have the evidence on which to base a statement like that. We're dealing with the hypothetical situation here. So when you say, would it probably have occurred, then you're asking me for opinion to base my opinion on a whole series of hypothetical facts, which I can't substantiate. End quote.

So basically, Frazier is, you know, waffling, not really going to give an answer. And it doesn't really say much of anything, except for a lot of conditional statements. How does the Warren report go and characterize this testimony? Quote, Frazier testified that it, the magic bullet, probably struck Governor Connolly. end quote i mean this is classic like cherry picking testimony from a transcript right like mischaracterizing testimony but yeah that's kind of what fraser said he also said i can't really tell you one way or the other well and that's the distinction between the warren report process where the warren commission is supposed to be the fact finder not

not an advocate for a given scenario. They're supposed to play the role of the judge in the trial of sorts that they're putting on. But if this were submitted in a court of law by the prosecution, the defense would have a field day with that assertion. And they would logically say, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what Frazier testified. In fact, Frazier refused to have words put into his mouth by Specter. Well, luckily for Spector at this time, there was no one on the other side of the adversarial process.

Yeah. And talking about establishing a pattern of behavior, the examples of this abound. so maybe I'll do this next one dick this is regarding the condition of the bullet which you discussed earlier so specter asked the autopsy doctor dr. Humes who again was present at Bethesda where the autopsy was conducted not Parkland that's a whole can of worms that we won't open up right now as to why that whole moving the body and doing the autopsy and Bethesda happened but even taking as a given that Dr. Humes was the

autopsy doctor on hand specter asks him could that missile again we're talking about the magic bullet, have made the wound on Governor Connolly's right wrist? Easy question, okay? Hume's replies, quote, I think that is most unlikely. The reason I believe it is most unlikely is that this missile is basically intact. Its jacket appears to me to be left intact, and I do not understand how it possibly could have left fragments in either of the... these locations. As we mentioned before, there were fragments left in both Connolly's thigh and his wrist that were visible on the x-rays. So Humes had seen those, and that was the basis

for his testimony. And so in some, he testified, he, quote, can't conceive of where they came from this missile. It's not exactly a slam dunk for the magic bullet theory, but nevertheless, this is what Arlen Spector had to say in an oral history he did in 2011. Whose testimony do you think was most useful in developing the single bullet theory? Commander Hams? Yeah, I mean, he also asked another witness, Dr. Pierre Fink, if the magic bullet in evidence could have caused Connolly's wrist injury, to which Fink replied, No, for the reason that there are too many fragments described in the wrist. Another one, Dr. Shaw, who examined John Connolly at Parkland.

Remember, we heard from him earlier, said he had, quote, no firm opinion, end quote, on whether the bullet could have caused Connolly's wounds. Shaw said that he thought the bullet could have caused the chest wounds on Connolly, quote, But the examination of the wrist, both by x-ray and at the time of surgery, showed some fragments of metal in the wrist, and I feel that there would be some difficulty in explaining all the wounds as being inflicted by, end quote, the magic bullet.

Right, Exhibit 399. And Dick, why don't you tell the listener, ha, ha, ha, ha, this is it, right. So, listener, how, let's see how the Warren report makes sense of all this, right? So what does the Warren report ultimately say about all this? Quote, all the evidence indicated that the bullet found on the governor's stretcher, could have caused all his wounds. In their testimony, the three doctors who attended Governor Connolly at Parkland Hospital

expressed independently their opinion that a single bullet had passed through his chest, tumbled through his wrist, punctured his left thigh, and had fallen out of the thigh wound. End quote. In perfect condition. Wow I know My God And that's even assuming

Which we are assuming here For the sake of Not making this into a five-hour episode That that bullet 399 was indeed recovered from Connolly's stretcher in the first place. And that fact itself is extremely disputed and it's not supported by the evidence. And once again, it was Arlen Spector who badgered the selected witness to establish that chain of custody into giving him the testimony that he needed.

So he, yeah, he basically, so he bullies this hospital engineer, right, Daryl Tomlinson, so much that Tomlinson finally bursts out. I'm not going to tell you something I can't lay down and sleep at night with either. You can't guess. what Spector reports back, right? He goes back to Alan Dulles. In an executive session and says that the bullet came from Connolly's structure.

Yeah. And it's good that you mentioned this because this is one of these key points that points back to the Dulles Spector. tag team, because even before Spector interrogated and badgered Daryl Tomlinson, Alan Dulles had already basically as much as given him the assignment of placing that bullet on Connolly's stretcher and expressing his doubt that the evidence as it then was days before the Tomlinson testimony was taken that, in fact, they could establish that $3.99 was the bullet that came out of John Connolly.

So it's like, boys doing his homework. What can you say? Spector, he's a good soldier, and he is on the mother fucking march. And he kept that message discipline all the way until 2011, the year that he died, even though it made less and less sense as he tried to articulate it. There was speculation that the bullet found on the stretcher was thought to have been the one that went through the speculation that it may have lodged in the president's neck, and then on the external heart massage, which he had been pushed out onto the stretcher. It was later determined, as best we could tell, that it was on Conley

Stretcher, some very confusing testimony given by a fellow named Jimison, as I recall it. And as much as the evidence that he did create through these tactics says about, about the moral bankruptcy of his approach, that doesn't even touch the surface of all the ballistics and medical evidence that the commission and that Arlen Spector as the person in charge of that aspect of the investigation chose to omit in the first place. So famously, for example, the commission did not look at the x-rays or the autopsy photos that were taken after the assassination. Did you ask to see the x-rays of photographs? Did I ask to see the x-rays and photographs?

That question was considered by me and the The commission decided not the press for the x-rays and photogrammed. Have I dodged your question? Yes, I've dodged your question. Purportedly, this was out of respect for the Kennedy family, although it really beggars belief when you have one of the great crimes of the century, and you're apparently trying to solve that crime, that the uncomfortable feelings of a widow who has no standing to actually interfere in the investigation itself can just say, uh, you know what? It would make me too sad if you look at these pictures. Yeah. It also, it's like, what are they saying? Look, out of respect to the family,

we're not going to look at his autopsy photos. We're just going to watch in slow moments. on this film, his brain's getting blowed out over and over and over again, frame by frame. Out of respect for the family. And talk about Spector's lies. So this is something that I also want to pull some clips throughout the episode from these interviews that Spector gave to Philadelphia journalist Gayton Fonzie in 16. where they're quite telling because you mentioned the Zepruder film showing Kennedy's brains blasted out, but I believe you mentioned this earlier in the episode, Dick,

the Zepruder film was not a matter of public consumption until the mid to late 70s when it was broadcast by Geraldo Rivera on television. And prior to that, it was under lock and key except for select frames, which were published as still images in Life magazine. And dear listener, it should not surprise you to hear that Life magazine was one of the principal media outlets for use by the CIA at the time. Its publisher was C.D. Jackson, a close personal friend and associate, not only of Warren commissioners, Alan Dulles, and John J. McCloy, but also, bringing you way back to the early episodes in the series, he was a close associate as well of Frank Wisner, of Dean Atchison, and of Joseph Alsup. In short, Jackson and Life magazine were major conduits for Operation Mockingbird and were a full octave, let's say, on Frank Wisner's Mighty Wurlitzer. Life bought the Zapruder film for an extremely hefty some allowed access to the Warren Commission and basically locked the film up, notwithstanding its

major investment in purchasing the thing, apparently hoping that it would never see the light of day as a moving picture. And those frames paint a very different picture in isolation than does the moving picture. And the frames allow Spector to sit there with a straight face and tell Gaet and Fonzie, look, look how his head goes forward, is propelled forward. And we could actually see the top toward the front portion of the head explode. So see in the film?

Yeah, you could just see that front part of the head explode. There's no doubt. You can even see it on the reproduced slides. When we focus on 3.13, we'll see the bullet exiting at that point. There's no question. Watch this Pruder film, listener. Don't think any of you would agree that his head is propelled forward. Yeah, I mean, the evidence about, right?

Right on you go forward? Well, if you look at the frame by frame, I'm just getting my best recollection of it. He's riding along there and he gets a shot in the neck and he raises himself. His head goes down. He's got a back brace on. He's starting to lurch. He can't fall to the right. The car's there.

And he lurched. Let's look at the pictures. It's not speculated. It lurches and then he falls over onto his large lap. Well, there was a lot of testimony describing the head hit as coming from the right. from the right right no i don't recollect it what were your thoughts when you were looking at this and did you uh take this was this a major factor in coming to your conclusion's direction of this uh head turn did we take it into account

in judging the i don't think that the position of his head has any significance on the point of entry so but let's get into the acoustic evidence because this is the thing that also it comes up in the H.SCA, where ultimately the H.SCA disagrees with the number of shots. But from the New York Times, a November 24th, 1964 article has the testimony of Special Agent R.H. Kellerman of the Secret Service, who was in the president's car the day of his assassination, and Kellerman stated he heard a flurry of shots. with shells that came in all together. He said it was like double, bang, bang, bang, right? In answer to a question of Ireland Spectors on behalf of the commission

as to whether he heard two shots in that flurry, in addition to the headshot, he said, yes, sir, yes, sir, at least. Yeah, then that's what the New York Times reports from the exchange. Of course, if you look at the transcript from the hearing, when Kellerman is providing this testimony about a flurry of shots, Spector just changes the subject. And this, again, it's another pattern that recurs over and over and over again when he's questioning witnesses that where there is something inconvenient,

instead of following up, as any pursuer of the truth would obviously do instinctively, specter does the exact opposite and he changes the subject he goes to something else unless it's one of those instances where he decides to dig in and attack the witness and neutralize their testimony by badgering and bullying them into changing it but with somebody like secret service agent Kellerman, Specter, you could see why he wouldn't want to get into a war of words with a Secret Service agent because he can just say, you know, whatever, I'm just going to ignore the flurry of shots. I'm not going to mention it in my chapter. And it will be buried there in the 26 volumes published with the report. And as Alan Dulles said, nobody's going to read those anyways. And we're lucky that it was included because there was other witness testimony that was simply omitted altogether. So one of my favorite examples of this is the testimony of Dr. Joseph

Dolce, who was retained by the commission as a battlefield surgeon with deep experience to opine on the ballistics evidence and Dolce in order to provide and inform his opinion conducted a series of experiments as one pursuing the scientific method does and his experiments involved shooting the man-licker carcano rifle that Oswald allegedly used to shoot the wrists of human cadavers and he did that about a hundred times and dick would you guess how many of those hundred bullets and we are just talking about wrist wounds here not wrist plus chest plus thigh plus soft tissue okay yeah just risk yeah you want to place a guess on how many of those wrist hit bullets emerged with the immaculate

appearance of exhibit 399? Well, I wouldn't think that Arlen Specter would say that the magic bullet was what it was if there wasn't any evidence that supported that, right? So surely a good number of those 100 came out intact, right?

Zero. Zero. Not a single one. I want a goddamn bullet, not a single one. I don't remember that from the Warren report. Well, you know what? You could control F it, all you will. You could control F the name of Dr. Joseph Dolce,

and unfortunately, you will not find it. But luckily, you know, the subsequent investigators who took it upon themselves to look at, into this stuff, the people who have been demeaned, degraded, and dragged through the mud as conspiracy theorists actually found this decorated veteran Dr. Joseph Dolce and took his testimony and published it themselves because he was just as pissed off as any member of the public would be that his evidence, his testimony was suppressed. It's impossible for a bullet to strike a bone, even at low velocity, and still come

with a perfectly normal tip. The tip of this bullet was absolutely not deformed in no instance whatsoever, in no amount. Under no circumstances, do I feel that this bullet could hit the wrist and still not be the form. We proved that by experiments. And yet it was. Form, how did you explain that after having gone through Kennedy and Connolly and he's smashing his wrist

and going into his knee? Going into a thigh, yeah. Well, no problem on the factor that it went through the president's neck. There'd be no change in the bullet there. The likelihood is that the bullet might be deformed going through the governor's back, but not necessarily. And the way it went through the governor's wrist, it really tumbled through his wrist. The bullets which hit our cadaver wrist head on were flattened, if I have any question.

They had trouble on the entry and exit as to which was which on Connolly's wrist because it was unusual and the whole thing was finally decided that the wrist was made by a bullet of relatively low velocity at that point. And I think it was unusual for the bullet to come out in such a perfect shape, but very plausible. And back to the acoustics, I mean, he was bullying these eyewitnesses, too, right? Like the passerbyes, the civilians that were there at Dealey Plaza, who testified that they heard between four and six shots fired that day, which, if true, of course, would prove that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't. the only shooter. You know, I'm talking about Jean Hill, Mary Mormon, of course. Just as Mary started to take the picture and the president came right even with us,

two shots rang out and he grabbed his chest and a look of pain on his face and fell across toward Jackie and she fell over on him and said, my God, he's shot. And there was an interval and then three or four more shots rang out, but that time the motorcade it sped away. Before her testimony, Spector accused Jean Hill of engaging in a, quote, shabby extramarital affair and said that she would be, quote, very, very sorry if she didn't adjust her testimony to fit the official narrative of three shots fired. I dashed out to the edge of the street and I started to touch the car and you just don't do things like that. And I yelled, hey, Mr. President. And your friend had a Polaroid camera and she wanted to take pictures.

Right. So when you yelled to the president, hey, Mr. President, we're over here. Yeah. She's taking pictures. She's taking pictures. And then what happened? And just as he started to turn and look at me and his hand came. up I thought to wave and all of a sudden the shots ring out and he grabbed his

throat and it was just horrible there was a series of shots and I saw this flash a line in the puff of smoke from the no in front of us where by the way the Warren Commission says place oh I see you saw that puffy's oh I did you know something happened I know someone was shooting from there and at that instant his head was blown off and the blood and the brains and all this just made a red cloud around President Kennedy's. It was something you never forget and I just saw this look in his eyes and his head was gone and you've got to realize that it was like a freeze frame and deep nothing was moving. Everything was

was so still, it's like, well, we were all in shock. It was such a traumatic event. And I looked up and I saw this man right in front of me at the top of the hill, and he was walking very fast back to where I had seen the gun, seen someone shooting. And I thought he's getting away. And there were so many, the shots were ringing out. I said at least four to six.

And the water commission says no more than three. No, no more than three. And when I'd heard that many, but I thought it was just the good guys and the bad guy shooting back. And I thought, you must be a bad guy because you're running away, and we're not. And I thought, I've got to catch him. Somebody's got to catch him. So you ran up? I ran across the motorcade and ran up on the hill back into the parking lot looking for him.

And when I got up there, a man grabbed me from behind on my shoulder in an extremely painful grip and said, you're coming with me. And I said, I can't. I've got to catch this man, help me. And he had shown me some ID secret service. Did he say secret service? Yes, sir. And in fact, there was no secret service agent in that whole area except on the motorcade. That's what I've been told later. But at that time, I just want to say what's been said.

There was no secret service agent in that area if it wasn't on the motorcade itself. Well, I jerked away from him twice, but about the time I jerked away the second time, another man came and grabbed this side. And they had me held me held, and it was so painful. And back in those days, you didn't run your hands in a warm. And he just said, I want your pictures, and I said, I don't know. I don't know. I was putting him in my pocket so we could keep shooting.

And he wanted them, and I said, I don't have any. And he just ran his hand in the correct pocket and came up with my pictures and grabbed. So it looks like he was watching the whole time, which is that's what you're referring. Sounds like it. You see, the government never did tell us it was a conspiracy. We had the government's point of view. Well, what did you think? You were nuts?

I mean, did you think... Oh, they told me I was. Oh, I saw it. It was something you never forget, and I just saw this look in his eyes. you got to realize that it was like a freeze frame to be me yeah i mean that is really the reason why we thought it was important to cover the anita hill and what a happy accident of fate that they share a surname to uh cherry on the cake that arlin specter would have approach Gene Hill with the same misogynistic, sexist browbeating approach that he later approached

Anita Hill with. And indeed, Gene Hill went ahead and wrote a whole book about her experience being marginalized as an eyewitness to the Kennedy assassination and was treated. very badly by Arlen Spector, and she writes in her book that when she went and looked at her testimony at the write-up of her interview with Spector, that it didn't reflect what she had said at all. And yet, nevertheless, not only did Arlen Spector deem it sufficient to put all of the made-up testimony attributed to Gene Hill into the record. But in the Fonzie interview, he cites Gene Hill's testimony that he himself had made up to support his theory.

We are talking about a fucking scumbag. In case it's not clear by now, fuck this guy. Yeah, a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel. Literally, morally bankrupt scumbag. The auditory perceptors are just not reliable indicators as to source a shot under low circumstances with all the individual noises which the shot makes in the context of an area like Daly Plaza,

which has high buildings on three sides. Really puts beyond, the pale, I think, when it comes to what you would expect from a scumbag prosecutor. Like, right there with the likes of Roy Cohn, you know, right there with the likes of all these other guys essentially, right? But beyond the pale, because this guy, and maybe it is, maybe it was Spector's inexperienced that led him to be so bold. You know what I mean? because he was so junior maybe he felt emboldened to do the things and go the distance that others maybe wouldn't but he definitely knowingly lied yeah you you actually raise a very good

point because as it goes in the legal profession again just a general observation sometimes the lower downs will have that license for creative thinking that could either be rewarded or shot down or whatever but you know a junior person will come up with some theory that's kind of out there it's a roll of the dice and the way that the pyramid is structured the assumption is that the most outlandish shit will come out in the wash. It will get sorted out and smoothed out and whittled down to some more plausible narrative. And for all the reasons that we have described in the course of this long discussion, this system was set up here to achieve the opposite outcome,

to promote that most out there and implausible of theories given the fact that it was either that or, as Arlen Specter said, go find the other shooter. And nobody wanted to do that. I think I, so we've covered in-depth his work on this magic bullet theory

I think I just want to point out that Spector was also present during the Jack Ruby interview and polygraph and I'm sure we are going to delve deep into that when we cover the Ruby interview we intend to do an entire episode on Ruby

and so I'm sure at that time we will go in deep about Spector's involvement there. but it's just another point, right, which goes beyond the scope of today's episode, but it's like Spector quickly rose to the ranks and was, you know, very involved with the key sort of investigative points in the Warren Commission's investigation. Yeah, and the ones that Spector wasn't involved, in, you know, whatever, right? Think about Oswald's biography. It's not mission critical.

There's a lot more that could be said about Oswald's fishy connections based on material that was withheld from the Warren Commission than on the material that was shared with the Warren Commission. But just to take a random other chapter besides Spector's contribution, nothing in the entire report, so much of which centers on Oswald's biography, is nearly the same consequence as the single-bullet theory and the support advanced in favor of that theory, which just makes it all the more dishonest to hear Spector saying, whether it's to Gaten Fonzie or later in his life, that, oh, in fact, the single-bullet theory is not necessary to conclude that there's only one assassin.

Like, give me a break, dude. The single-bullet hypothesis just wasn't the central point, a la Epstein's reconstruction of the situation. It just wasn't. And that's perhaps why it just wasn't crucial to the sequence of events or the identification of the assassinate. The commission had so considered it, they might have focused on a little differently. Because naturally, they spend more time and give more consideration to the factors that they

consider that they'd be the most crucial factors of all. The double hit was not essential to explain, as Epstein would claim, necessary to reconstruct a single assassin proposition, not at all. How would the misses be explained if you count all three bullets hitting? If you have all three bullets hitting, then none missed. One way that it could conceivably have happened would be the way that the FBI first thought it happened and the way life reported it

the first few days after the assassination which shot one with the president's neck shot two with the governor shot three hit the president's hit those are the three shots they all then you have the hit on top of the chrome to hit in the windshield you have the tag hit well you don't know

what the tag get was a hit or what it wasn't a hit the evidence is totally inconclusive on that and I think we can close by giving the listener a bit of a snapshot of the degree to which Spector willfully and knowingly peddled the lies that he had promulgated during his stint on the Warren Commission throughout the rest of his life, right? So we already talked about his interviews with Gaetan Fonzi. Fonzie came away from those interviews really shaken.

I don't think he entered the process as a skeptic. He had read Epstein's book and therefore was open to the idea that the Warren report fudged the truth a little bit, but he left the experience of interviewing Spector much more skeptical. and then Spector stays on the case, basically the rest of his life, right? So when the House Select Committee on Assassinations comes into existence, not too surprisingly, they call up Arlen Spector, and Arlen Specter lobbies to get his son, Shannon Specter, onto the staff. and he defended Daddy very valiantly and indeed the HSCA as I encourage listeners to check out on YouTube the full video of Cyril Wex dissenting opinion before the HSCA where he points out all of the

unexplored avenues and the evidentiary shortcomings of that investigation as well. And now we know, looking back on it, that the HSCA relied in great deal on George Joannidis from the CIA as their liaison. And Joe Anidis, in turn, basically whitewashed the record. once again and steered the process from his position in the CIA. What ensues in the decades after is all of these shills come out of the woodwork, presumably, I guess, on their own volition to put out books and analyses that support Spector's findings. One of the most famous characters in this cast is, is Gerald Posner, who writes the book, Case Closed.

What a title. And Posner doesn't have a background in forensic science. He's not a forensic scientist. He is, like, by and large, just the shill. And in his book, he sets out a diagram and an alternate theory to, It's essentially what I view Posner as is this rebuttal to Cyril Wecht, right? To sort of discredit Cyril Wecht. But you should take a look at Gerald Posner in his diagram that sort of supports Spector's single bullet theory but makes it seem not so wacky, right?

So in the original single bullet theory trajectory, you know, map, it looks crazy the trajectory of this bullet, how it turns and twists. and goes upways and sideways and downways. And what Posner does is he basically adjusts the way that the individual's Connolly and Kennedy are sitting, you know, they're positioning in the car, and sort of sets out the diagram so that the angle of the bullet becomes more plausible. Yeah, if the listener wants to look up a picture of Gerald Posner, you'll see that perhaps given his experience under the knife of plastic surgeons to deform his dark crystal-looking ass into a human freak than anything is possible.

Fucking low-rent, fucking, fucking low-rent Dr. Strange-looking motherfucker. Trying to look like, you know that famous picture of Bob Dylan with like the mustache and the scarf and the beanie hat that Timothy Shalameh reproduced? He looks like a guy who tried to get plastic surgery to become a goyisha version of Bob Dylan during that, during that case. He looks like one of these guys that goes down on Hollywood, you know, the Hollywood Boulevard actors that nobody really pays them to go out and sort of impersonate. He looks like a Hollywood bad impersonator of Chris Cornell, lead singer of Sound Garden. He's the kind of guy, in addition to his pencil thin mustache, he often maintains a soul patch under his lower leg. lip. And he seems like the kind of guy who would refer to that piece of ungodly facial hair as a flavor saver.

In closing, in closing, at the end of the life of Arlen Specter, he finally came face to face with that Philadelphia lawyer, Vince Salandria, who had been on his case dogging him about his work and ill deeds on the Warren Commission for decades in the year 2012, the same year that Spector would eventually pass away. And at that meeting, apparently, Spector sat there and listened to salandria over the course of a long lunch and salandria laid out his case piece by piece and at the conclusion of their conversation specter repeated something that he had actually said way back in 1966 to gaiton fonsie which was if you want to point the finger at me at least say that i've been

incompetent and not dishonest. Ben Salandry came in this. Just a few days after the report was out, and he was asking questions and good questions, too. Salandry, he was a smart fellow, and he really, really went through this one. The report hadn't been out of very long. His book looked like he'd been reading it for five years,

and it was all marked up, and he was asking the doggone's questions. And the final one, I said, well, Slandry, when it'd be sufficient for you to conclude that we were stupid instead of dishonest, you know? All these things you say we didn't do isn't an equally plausible explanation that it wasn't a conspiracy was all to hide the fact which is dumb you know he wasn't satisfied with that it had to be a governmental conspiracy and i'm

so happy that the now deceased vince salandria had the satisfaction while he was still alive to deny arlen specter of that relief and he told him no sir you were lying back in 1964. And we, obviously, here on Fourth Reich Archaeology, agree with Vince Salandria. And we wish that Arlenzpector would have done what he did at the very end of his life, namely pursuing a career in stand-up comedy, that he would have done that a lot sooner because his work on the Warren Commission

was a sick fucking joke but we're not laughing at that what we are laughing at is the literal fact that at the very end of his life Arlen Specter started doing stand-up comedy and you got to listen to these I mean what a great way to end this episode what a nutcase

he was doing fat jokes about Ted Kennedy he was doing lewd sexually charged jokes about Clinton and Herman Kane jokes about how corrupt Joe Biden was I mean he really was pushing the boat out in his final years

doing stand-up. Yeah. If he would have had another year, who knows, maybe he would have even taken aim at himself. Yeah. What do you say, Don? This seems like a good spot as any to drop in some Arlen Specter jokes

and leave our listener until next week. when we'll have plenty more to say about the commission's work. For now, I'm Dick. I'm done. Saying farewell. And keep digging. Congress tells a joke that becomes a law.

Whenever Congress passes a law, it turns out to be a joke. So I've been in comedy now for a law. for 30 years. The only difference is it's not stand up. We all have comfortable chair. So I was in this hot tub, when varying. Then counts Ted Kennedy.

283 pounds. In his finest, his birthday seat. And like a wall, He plops into the hot tub. And you know the old story about rising tide lifts, old moods? My head is the seal. Newt Gingrich, I've known nude a long time.

In fact, I've known nude so long. I do him when he was skinny. I've known nude so long, I knew his first lie. That's John Thurman, who said in his deep South Carolina accent. Nancy and I have sex almost every night. We almost have sex on Monday. We almost have sex on Tuesday. I don't know if this is fit for CNN.

There's a picture of Joe Biden to be over here. How much it costs to buy a seat in the United States Senate? $30 million. So when you pay $30 million for a seat, you like to sit in that. Thank you.