30-10-2010, 08:05 AM
(This post was last modified: 30-10-2010, 08:12 AM by James H. Fetzer.)
The notes about the neck/throat wound do not appear to provide an entirely adequate analysis, so I am appending this article as an addendum thereto. The photographs and diagrams that accompany the article are accessible via the link to INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES 3 (2005/2006) at http://www.assassinationscience.com/Reas...ations.pdf
Reasoning about Assassinations
Critical Thinking in Political Contexts
James Fetzer, University of Minnesota Duluth, United States of America
Abstract: The application of logic, critical thinking, and principles of scientific reasoning, involving collaboration between
physicians, scientists, photographic analysts, and philosophers has transformed our knowledge of the death of JFK. Since
1992, a research group I organized has discovered that the autopsy X-rays have been altered, that someone else's brain
has been substituted, that a home movie of the assassination has been recreated, and that the alleged assassin, Lee Oswald,
was framed using manufactured evidence. This approach, which may be called "assassination science", benefits from ap-
plying the pattern of reasoning known as "inference to the best explanation" to important and controversial deaths, where
political motivation may have contributing to bringing them about. By focusing on the "best evidence" — the autopsy X-
rays, the autopsy report and photographs, the physical evidence (including the alleged assassination weapon), and other
crucial evidence — we have undertaken a reconstruction of the case from the most basic evidence up, with special consid-
eration for separating the authentic from the inauthentic evidence. When that has been accomplished, it becomes relatively
straightforward to draw appropriate inferences, since the Mafia, for example, would not have been able to extend its reach
into Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays under control of the Secret Service, medical officers of the US Navy, or the
President's personal physician; neither pro- nor anti-Castro Cubans could have substituted someone else's brain for that
of JFK; even though the KGB might have had the same ability to recreate a film as the CIA, it could not have gained its
possession; nor could any of these things have been done by Lee Oswald, who was either incarcerated or already dead. As
a novel area of application that might be viewed as "applied philosophical research", assassination science is establishing
that the humanities in this new guise can make more than an incidental contribution to the solution of important mysteries
in history.
Keywords: logic, critical thinking, scientific reasoning, philosophy of science, applied philosophical research, the death of JFK,
resolving mysteries in history, historical research, "assassination science"
Historical Background
DURING 1992, in response to the controversy ignited
by the release of Oliver Stone's film, "JFK", I organized
a research group of physicians, physicists, photo-ana-
lysts, and attorneys to investigate the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy (Fetzer 1998). Some,
like Jack White, had been long-time students of the
case. Others, such as David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.,
were, like myself, relatively new. Our objective was
to take rumor, speculation, and politics out of the
case and place its study on an objective and scientific
foundation. Eventually, this would lead to a recon-
struction of the case from the ground up, where the
medical evidence, especially, turned out to hold the
key to a meticulous cover-up that was intended to
conceal the true causes of the death of JFK. It would
include the fabrication and alteration of evidence of
several different kinds. Exposing the cover-up would
implicate elements of the U.S. government in the
crime.
It was surprising to me to discover that there was
a superabundance of evidence in this case, much of
which was inconsistent and contradictory (Fetzer
2000, 2003) The task would not be easy, since it
would require distinguishing the authentic from the
inauthentic evidence, something that even official
"reinvestigations" of the case, such as the inquiry by
the House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA), held during 1977-78, had not adequately
undertaken. Indeed, confronted with inconsistencies
between the testimony of a massive blow-out to the
back of the head from more than forty eyewit-
nesses—from Dealey Plaza, where the shooting oc-
curred; from Parkland Hospital, where President was
first treated; and from Bethesda Naval Hospital,
where his autopsy was performed—and the govern-
ment's official account, the HSCA deferred to the
autopsy X-rays, which did not show one. It would
turn out, however, that the X-rays themselves had
been altered to conceal the blow-out to the head
(Fetzer 1998).
My background as philosopher of science who
was also a former commissioned officer in the Mar-
ine Corps may have placed me in an appropriate
position to pursue a case of this kind. My research
had led me to the elaboration of the principles of in-
ference to the best explanation as the most defensible
conception of scientific method, where an hypothesis
hi is preferable to an alternative hj, given the avail-
able evidence e, when hi affords "a better explana-
tion" for e than does hj. Likelihood measures are
used to evaluate explanatory power, where the likeli-
hood of an hypothesis, given evidence e, is equal to
the probability of e if h were true (Fetzer 1981, 1990,
2002a). Those that are inconsistent with the evidence
are tentatively excluded, with the understanding that
they may subsequently be revived with changes in
the available evidence. The preferable explanation
becomes acceptable as the evidence becomes stable
or "settles down". Our discoveries about the medical
evidence illustrate the application of this approach
and the importance of basing conclusions upon all
the available evidence.
The Official Account
According to the FBI and the Secret Service, JFK
was killed by three shots fired from above and behind
by a lone, demented gunman named Lee Harvey
Oswald. One shot hit JFK in the back, another hit
Governor John Connally in the back, and the third
hit JFK in the head and killed him. That scenario
was the government's official position until it turned
out that a distant bystander, James Tague, had been
hit by a fragment from a shot that had missed. Since
the evidence of Tague's injury was indisputable, the
investigative board that President Lyndon Johnson
had created, commonly called "The Warren Commis-
sion", had to account for all the wounds in JFK and
Connally on the basis of just two shots. A solution
to this problem was devised by Arlen Specter, a
commission staff member, which has come to be
known as the "magic bullet" theory.
JFK had a wound to the throat and another to his
back and at least one wound to his head. Connally
had an entry wound in his back, a broken rib, an exit
wound in his chest, a wound to his right wrist, and
a bullet fragment embedded in his left thigh. Accord-
ing to what would become "the official account",
most of these wounds were caused by a single bullet
that entered the base of the back of the President's
neck, transited his neck without hitting any bony
structures, exited his throat right at the knot of his
tie, entered John Connally's back, shattering a rib,
exiting from his chest, damaging his right wrist and
then entering his left thigh, where the bullet alleged
to have performed these feats was nevertheless found
in virtually pristine condition. The other shot that
found its mark was said to have hit JFK's head and
killed him.
When the official account, which is usually re-
ferred to as The Warren Report (1964), appeared,
many readers were fascinated to discover that, no
matter how implausible it might appear, the "magic
bullet" hypothesis was the core of the government's
case. And that has remained true through subsequent
reinvestigations of the assassination by the House
Select Committee on Assassinations during 1976-
78, and in more recent books, such as Gerald Posner,
Case Closed (1993). So if the "magic bullet" hypo-
thesis is false, then there had to be other shots and
other shooters and The Warren Report (1964), The
HSCA Final Report (1979), and Case Closed (1963)
cannot be true. One of our tasks would be to evaluate
evidence for and against the "magic bullet" hypothes-
is, some of which had been known from the very
early stages of investigation of the case but whose
logical force deserved further analysis and consider-
ation (Fetzer 2002b)
Figure 1: Warren Commission Diagrams of JFK's Wounds
The "Magic Bullet" Hypothesis
The Warren Report (1964) published diagrams of
the injuries that the President had purportedly sus-
tained, which displayed a hit to the base of the back
of the neck and a hit to the back of the head, which
is the wound that allegedly killed him (Figure 1).
The "magic bullet" theory would be false if the bullet
had not entered the base of the back of the President's
neck, if it had not transited his neck without hitting
any bony structures, or if it had not exited from his
neck at the level of the knot of his tie, as the official
account maintains. The Navy physicians who con-
ducted the autopsy at Bethesda did not actually dis-
sect the neck to determine the trajectory this bullet
is supposed to have taken but ascertained it as a
matter of "inference". Thus, page 4 of the autopsy
report includes following claim (Assassination Sci-
ence 1998, page 433):
The second wound presumably of entry is that
described above in the upper right posterior
thorax. . . . The missile path through the fascia
and musculature cannot be easily probed. The
wound presumably of exit was that described
by Dr. Malcolm Perry in the low anterior cer-
vical region.
Notice, in particular, that the entry and exit locations
were matters of "presumption", which Commander
James Humes, U.S. Navy Medical Corps, defended
on the basis of an "inference" drawn after the body
had been removed from the morgue for preparation
for burial and the official state funeral. Based upon
conversations with Parkland that allegedly only took
place on Saturday, after the body had been removed,
he (Humes) belatedly realized that the wound to the
back must have been the entry point for the wound
to the throat as its point of exit! Notice too that the
description of "the upper right posterior thorax",
which is the upper-right portion of the chest cavity,
does not quite place the wound where it has to be if
the "magic bullet" hypothesis were true. Posner's
diagram from Case Closed (Figure 2) likewise does
not accord with Figure 1.
Figure 2: Gerald Posner's Depiction of the "Magic Bullet" Theory
Contradictory Evidence
There turns out to be extensive evidence that bears
upon the question of where the bullet that hit JFK in
the back actually impacted with his body, including
damage to the shirt and the jacket he was wearing at
the time. Many books, including Josiah Thompson,
Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), and Gary Shaw and
Larry Harris, Cover-Up (1976/1992), have noted that
holes in the shirt and the jacket suggest that the entry
point was actually about 5 1/2 inches below the col-
lar. Photographs of the shirt and jacket may be found,
for example, in Thompson (1967), page 48, and in
Shaw and Harris (1976/ 1992), page 64, as well as
in other sources, including Stewart Galanor, Cover-
Up (1998), Documents 6 and 7 (Figure 3). That the
shirt and the jacket might have been "bunched" has
been proposed to explain away this anomaly. (See
Figure 6 below.)
Figure 3: Photographs of the President's Shirt and Jacket
That holes in his clothing at a location 5 1/2 inches
below the collar could have been caused by "bunch-
ing" becomes less and less plausible as more and
more evidence of the wound on the body becomes
available. Neither Humes himself, who conducted
the autopsy, nor Lt. Commander J. Thornton
Boswell, USNMC, who assisted him, had ever per-
formed an autopsy on a gunshot victim before.
Boswell, however, prepared a diagram of various
wounds they observed on the body during the
autopsy, which was subsequently verified by Admiral
George G. Burkley, USNMC, the President's person-
al physician. Copies of Boswell's diagram can be
found in Shaw and Harris (1976/1992), page 62, and
in Galanor (1998), Document 5, and Fetzer (2000),
page 230 (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Boswell's Autopsy Diagram, Verified by Burkley
A different diagram was prepared by FBI Agent
James W. Sibert, who observed the autopsy at Beth-
esda, which may be found in Noel Twyman, Bloody
Treason (1997), page 100. It plainly demonstrates
the difficulties confronted by the "magic bullet" hy-
pothesis, even in relation to its most elementary as-
sumptions, since the wound to the back is too low
to be the entry point for a wound that exited from
the throat, if the bullet was fired from above and be-
hind, as the official account claims (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Agent Sibert's Diagram of the Location of the Wounds
Evaluating the Evidence
The application of inference to the best explanation
tends to clarify and illuminate the significance of the
available evidence in relation to alternative hypo-
theses. According to the official account, h1, the
bullet hit the President at the base of the back of the
neck, as the "magic bullet" hypothesis requires. If
h1 were true, then probability of holes in the shirt
and jacket about 5 1/2 inches below the collar would
be low, but not impossible if, for example, they had
been "bunched". But the probability that the shirt
and jacket were "bunched", when diagrams of the
wounds on the body also show the wound about 5
1/2 inches below the collar, is extremely low. Inter-
estingly, the artist who prepared the official diagrams
(Figure 1) was not even allowed to actually view the
body. And the shirt and the jacket, which were re-
moved from the body at Parkland, were not transpor-
ted to Bethesda for the autopsy physicians to study
them.
The probability that there would be holes in the
shirt and the jacket corresponding to the location of
the wounds described in the Boswell and the Sibert
diagrams would be very high, if the hypothesis, h2,
that JFK was hit about 5 1/2 inches below the collar,
were true. The bunching conjecture tends to be dis-
confirmed by these two diagrams. Indeed, as more
and more evidence is taken into account, support for
h1 diminishes and support for h2 increases. The
President's physician, Admiral Burkley, executed a
death certificate, which may be found in Shaw and
Harris (1976/1992), page 65, in Galanor (1998),
Document 8, and in Fetzer (1998), page 439. Accord-
ing to Burkley, he was killed by a shot to the head,
but "a second wound occurred in the posterior back
at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra." The
third thoracic vertebra turns out to be much too low
to have been the entry for any bullet fired from above
and behind that could possibly have exited from the
President's throat at the level of the knot of his tie,
as Shaw and Harris (1976/1992), page 65, have ex-
plained (Figure 6).
Figure 6: The Location of the Third Thoracic Vertebra
Moreover, Sibert attended the autopsy with a second
FBI agent, Francis X. O'Neill, subsequently submit-
ting a report of their observations at the time on 9
December 1963, which reads, in part, as follows:
"Medical examination of the President's body re-
vealed 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." An excerpt of their report, including this
passage, may be found in Mark Lane, Rush to Judg-
ment (1966), Appendix IV, and is also discussed by
Robert Groden, The Killing of a President (1993),
pages 78-79. Sibert and O'Neill substantiate that the
wound was at a downward angle, that there was no
point of exit, and that the bullet was not in the body,
which decreases the likelihood of the "magic bullet"
hypothesis, h1, and increases the likelihood of h2.
Acceptance and Rejection
That h2 is preferable to h1, given the available
evidence, does not imply that it is also acceptable.
That depends on whether the evidence available is
sufficient to support it, which requires that it has
"settled down". Other evidence supports the inference
that the evidence has settled down, including recon-
struction photographs that were taken during the re-
enactment conducted by the Warren Commission
staff. A photograph of the re-enactment, for example,
that may be found in Galanor (1997), as Document
4, shows a small round patch at the base of the back
of the head marking the location of the head shot and
a larger round white patch about 5 1/2 inches below
the collar to mark the back shot. A similar
photograph appears on the inside front cover of
The New York Times paperback (1964), that contra-
dicts the official account (Figure 7).
Figure 7: New York Times' Re-Enactment Photographs
Readers who are unfamiliar with this case may
wonder how in the world, given all of this evidence,
The Warren Report (1964) could have concluded
that JFK was hit at the base of the back of the neck.
Thanks to the good work of the Assassination Re-
cords Review Board (ARRB), a five-member civilian
board authorized to declassify records and documents
held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and
other agencies, we know the answer to that question.
Gerald Ford, a member of the commission, had the
description of the wound changed from "his upper-
most back", which was already an exaggeration, to
"the back of his neck", a discovery that was among
the very first of the ARRB's important releases,
which came in time for me to include an article about
it from The New York Times (3 July 1997), page 8A,
in Fetzer (1998), on page 177.
Under these circumstances, it almost appears to
be "piling on" to note that David W. Mantik, M.D.,
Ph.D., has recently demonstrated that no bullet could
have entered the President's neck at the location al-
leged and exited at the location alleged without im-
pacting cervical vertebrae, as Galanor (1998), Docu-
ment 45, and as Fetzer (2000), pages 3-4, explain
(Figure 8). Nor does it even seem necessary to add
that Malcolm Perry, M.D., who performed a
tracheostomy in a vain attempt to save the President's
life, described the wound to the throat not as an exit
wound, but as an entry wound, three times during a
press conference at Parkland that began at 3:16 PM,
a report widely broadcast over radio and television
that day. No transcript would be given to the Warren
Commission on the ground that it was too difficult
to locate, but a copy of the complete press conference
transcript now appears in Fetzer (1998) as Appendix C.
Figure 8: Mantik Plotted the Trajectory on a CAT Scan
Logical Ramifications
It may come as some surprise that the seemingly
simple question, "Where did the bullet that hit the
President in the back enter?", should hold the key to
exposing the cover-up in the assassination of JFK.
Because if it was not at the base of the back of the
neck as the "magic bullet" hypothesis requires, then
The Warren Report (1964), The HSCA Report (1979),
Case Closed (1993), and every other work that takes
it for granted cannot possibly be true. The probability
of the evidence we have reviewed here—including
the holes in the shirt and jacket, the wounds depicted
in the Boswell and Sibert diagrams, Burkley's and
Sibert and O'Neill's descriptions of the wound, and
the reenactment photographs—has a value that is
approximately zero, relative to the official account.
Indeed, Mantik has proven that it is not even anatom-
ically possible. The probability of the same evidence,
assuming that JFK was hit about 5 1/2 inches below
the collar, by comparison, is very, very high. The
evidence has "settled down".
Given the discovery by the ARRB that Gerald Ford
had the wound redescribed in The Warren Report
(1964)—no doubt to make the "magic bullet" theory
more plausible— and that Mantik has determined
that no bullet could have taken such a trajectory, it
turns out that the core of the official account is not
only false but provably false and not even anatomic-
ally possible! It follows that JFK's throat wound and
the wounds to John Connally had to have been
caused by separate shots and separate shooters and
could not have been inflicted by a lone assassin firing
from above and behind. The truth would have been
glaring but for suppressing evidence by not sending
the shirt and jacket to Bethesda for the physicians to
study, by not providing transcripts of the Parkland
Press Conference to the Warren Commission and
using similar techniques. Indeed, the process of se-
lection and elimination—selecting evidence that
supports a predetermined conclusion and eliminating
the rest—is well-known to all of those who practice
propaganda and specialize in misleading the public in
the search for truth.
Figure 9: Mantik's Study of the Lateral Cranial Autopsy X-ray
Our research has not only falsified the "magic bullet"
hypothesis and thereby exposed the fraud at the
foundation of the government's official account but
has also led to the discovery of complementary de-
ceptions in the death of JFK. The most important are
that the autopsy X-rays have been fabricated (a) to
conceal the massive blow-out to the back of the head
that more than forty eyewitnesses reported and (b)
to add a 6.5 mm metallic slice in an apparent effort
to implicate an obscure World War II Italian Mann-
licher-Carcano as the weapon used (Figure 9). A
world authority on the human brain, Robert B. Liv-
ingston, M.D., has concluded that the brain shown
in diagrams and photographs held in the National
Archives cannot possibly be the brain of JFK. These
discoveries had already been made by 1993 (Fetzer
1998). In spite of our repeated efforts to bring these
findings to the attention of the American people
(through "ABC Nightly News" and "Nightline") and
the Department of Justice, we had slight success.
Where We Stand Today
On the basis of our extended research, we have estab-
lished that JFK was hit at least four times: once in
the throat from in front; once in the back from be-
hind; and twice in the head, once from the back and
once from in front; and that Connally was hit from
one to three times, where at least three shots seem
to have missed. A total of eight, nine, or ten shots
appear to have been fired from six different locations
(Fetzer 2000, 2003). As a striking example of how
official inquiries by the government have suppressed
or overlooked important evidence, Thomas Evan
Robinson, the mortician who prepared the body for
burial after the Bethesda autopsy, told Joe West, a
private investigator, that JFK had a large gaping hole
in the back of his head, a smaller wound in the right
temple (which was the entry wound for the blow-out
to the back of the head), and a wound to the back
about five to six inches below the shoulder and to
the right of the back bone. He provided this inform-
ation to West on 26 May 1992, but it obviously could
have been available to the Warren Commission if it
had wanted it (Figure 10).
Figure 10: Summary of Interview with Thomas Evan Robinson
In collaboration with other experts, including John
P. Costella, Ph.D., we have also discovered that the
home movie of the assassination, known as "the
Zapruder film", has been recreated using sophistic-
ated techniques of optical printing and special effects.
Because of "ghost images" that link successive
frames, it was necessary to reshoot the film in order
that the deception not be easily exposed (Fetzer
2003). We have also discovered more than fifteen
indications of Secret Service complicity in setting
JFK up for the hit, including failing to weld manhole
covers, failure to cover open windows, allowing the
crowd to spill over into the street, adopting an im-
proper motorcade route, ordering the vehicles in the
wrong sequence, keeping motorcycle patrolmen to
the rear of the limousine, bringing the limousine to
a halt after bullets began to be fired, washing blood
and brains from the limousine at Parkland, taking
the autopsy photographs and X-rays from the physi-
cians prior to completing their work, having the
limousine stripped down and completely rebuilt. The
probability that these things happened "by chance"
is vanishingly small (Fetzer 2000, 2002a).
The conclusions that can be drawn from the au-
thentic evidence are rather profound. The Mafia,
which may have put up some of the shooters for the
assassination, could not have extended its reach into
Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays under the
control of U.S. Navy medical officers, agents of the
Secret Service, or the President's personal physician.
Neither pro- nor anti-Castro Cubans could have
substituted the brain of someone else for that of JFK
during a supplemental autopsy. And even if the KGB,
like the CIA, had the ability to recreate a film, it
could not have obtained a copy of the Zapruder film
to alter it. Nor could any of these things have been
done by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was incarcerated
or already dead. Similar reasoning based upon the
application of inference to the best explanation, alas!,
leaves no reasonable doubt that setting up JFK for
the hit and altering the evidence to conceal the true
causes of his death must have involved elements at
the highest levels of the U.S. government.
References
Fetzer, James H. Scientific Knowledge: Causation, Explanation, and Corroboration. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1981.
———. Philosophy of Science. New York, NY: Paragon House, 1993.
———, ed. Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1998.
———. Murder in Dealey Plaza: What we Know Now that we Didn't Know Then about the Death of JFK. Chicago, IL:
Open Court, 2000.
——— "Propensities and Frequencies: Inference to the Best Explanation". Synthese 132/1-2 (July/August 2002a), pp. 27-
61.
———. "The 'Lone-Nutter' Refutation" (2002b). This electronic piece appears on-line at
http://assassinationresearch.com/v1n1/lonenutter.html.
——— The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.
Galanor, S. Cover-Up. New York, NY: Kestrel Books, 1998.
Groden, R. The Killing of a President. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1993.
Lane, M. Rush to Judgment. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1966.
Posner, G. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. New York, NY: Random House, 1993.
Shaw, G., and L. Harris. Cover-Up.: The Governmental Conspiracy to Conceal the Facts about the Public Execution of John
Kennedy. Thomas Investigative, 1976/2nd ed., 1992.
Stokes L., et al. Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1979.
Thompson, J. Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination. New York, NY: Bernard Geis Associates,
1967.
Twyman, N. Bloody Treason: On Solving History's Greatest Murder Mystery. Rancho Santa Fe, CA: Laurel Publishing,
1997.
Warren, E., et al. Report of the President's Commission on the Death of President Kennedy. New York, NY: St. Martin's
Press, 1964.
Warren, E., et al. Report of the President's Commission on the Death of President Kennedy. New York, NY: New York
Times/Bantam Books, 1964.
Reasoning about Assassinations
Critical Thinking in Political Contexts
James Fetzer, University of Minnesota Duluth, United States of America
Abstract: The application of logic, critical thinking, and principles of scientific reasoning, involving collaboration between
physicians, scientists, photographic analysts, and philosophers has transformed our knowledge of the death of JFK. Since
1992, a research group I organized has discovered that the autopsy X-rays have been altered, that someone else's brain
has been substituted, that a home movie of the assassination has been recreated, and that the alleged assassin, Lee Oswald,
was framed using manufactured evidence. This approach, which may be called "assassination science", benefits from ap-
plying the pattern of reasoning known as "inference to the best explanation" to important and controversial deaths, where
political motivation may have contributing to bringing them about. By focusing on the "best evidence" — the autopsy X-
rays, the autopsy report and photographs, the physical evidence (including the alleged assassination weapon), and other
crucial evidence — we have undertaken a reconstruction of the case from the most basic evidence up, with special consid-
eration for separating the authentic from the inauthentic evidence. When that has been accomplished, it becomes relatively
straightforward to draw appropriate inferences, since the Mafia, for example, would not have been able to extend its reach
into Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays under control of the Secret Service, medical officers of the US Navy, or the
President's personal physician; neither pro- nor anti-Castro Cubans could have substituted someone else's brain for that
of JFK; even though the KGB might have had the same ability to recreate a film as the CIA, it could not have gained its
possession; nor could any of these things have been done by Lee Oswald, who was either incarcerated or already dead. As
a novel area of application that might be viewed as "applied philosophical research", assassination science is establishing
that the humanities in this new guise can make more than an incidental contribution to the solution of important mysteries
in history.
Keywords: logic, critical thinking, scientific reasoning, philosophy of science, applied philosophical research, the death of JFK,
resolving mysteries in history, historical research, "assassination science"
Historical Background
DURING 1992, in response to the controversy ignited
by the release of Oliver Stone's film, "JFK", I organized
a research group of physicians, physicists, photo-ana-
lysts, and attorneys to investigate the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy (Fetzer 1998). Some,
like Jack White, had been long-time students of the
case. Others, such as David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.,
were, like myself, relatively new. Our objective was
to take rumor, speculation, and politics out of the
case and place its study on an objective and scientific
foundation. Eventually, this would lead to a recon-
struction of the case from the ground up, where the
medical evidence, especially, turned out to hold the
key to a meticulous cover-up that was intended to
conceal the true causes of the death of JFK. It would
include the fabrication and alteration of evidence of
several different kinds. Exposing the cover-up would
implicate elements of the U.S. government in the
crime.
It was surprising to me to discover that there was
a superabundance of evidence in this case, much of
which was inconsistent and contradictory (Fetzer
2000, 2003) The task would not be easy, since it
would require distinguishing the authentic from the
inauthentic evidence, something that even official
"reinvestigations" of the case, such as the inquiry by
the House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA), held during 1977-78, had not adequately
undertaken. Indeed, confronted with inconsistencies
between the testimony of a massive blow-out to the
back of the head from more than forty eyewit-
nesses—from Dealey Plaza, where the shooting oc-
curred; from Parkland Hospital, where President was
first treated; and from Bethesda Naval Hospital,
where his autopsy was performed—and the govern-
ment's official account, the HSCA deferred to the
autopsy X-rays, which did not show one. It would
turn out, however, that the X-rays themselves had
been altered to conceal the blow-out to the head
(Fetzer 1998).
My background as philosopher of science who
was also a former commissioned officer in the Mar-
ine Corps may have placed me in an appropriate
position to pursue a case of this kind. My research
had led me to the elaboration of the principles of in-
ference to the best explanation as the most defensible
conception of scientific method, where an hypothesis
hi is preferable to an alternative hj, given the avail-
able evidence e, when hi affords "a better explana-
tion" for e than does hj. Likelihood measures are
used to evaluate explanatory power, where the likeli-
hood of an hypothesis, given evidence e, is equal to
the probability of e if h were true (Fetzer 1981, 1990,
2002a). Those that are inconsistent with the evidence
are tentatively excluded, with the understanding that
they may subsequently be revived with changes in
the available evidence. The preferable explanation
becomes acceptable as the evidence becomes stable
or "settles down". Our discoveries about the medical
evidence illustrate the application of this approach
and the importance of basing conclusions upon all
the available evidence.
The Official Account
According to the FBI and the Secret Service, JFK
was killed by three shots fired from above and behind
by a lone, demented gunman named Lee Harvey
Oswald. One shot hit JFK in the back, another hit
Governor John Connally in the back, and the third
hit JFK in the head and killed him. That scenario
was the government's official position until it turned
out that a distant bystander, James Tague, had been
hit by a fragment from a shot that had missed. Since
the evidence of Tague's injury was indisputable, the
investigative board that President Lyndon Johnson
had created, commonly called "The Warren Commis-
sion", had to account for all the wounds in JFK and
Connally on the basis of just two shots. A solution
to this problem was devised by Arlen Specter, a
commission staff member, which has come to be
known as the "magic bullet" theory.
JFK had a wound to the throat and another to his
back and at least one wound to his head. Connally
had an entry wound in his back, a broken rib, an exit
wound in his chest, a wound to his right wrist, and
a bullet fragment embedded in his left thigh. Accord-
ing to what would become "the official account",
most of these wounds were caused by a single bullet
that entered the base of the back of the President's
neck, transited his neck without hitting any bony
structures, exited his throat right at the knot of his
tie, entered John Connally's back, shattering a rib,
exiting from his chest, damaging his right wrist and
then entering his left thigh, where the bullet alleged
to have performed these feats was nevertheless found
in virtually pristine condition. The other shot that
found its mark was said to have hit JFK's head and
killed him.
When the official account, which is usually re-
ferred to as The Warren Report (1964), appeared,
many readers were fascinated to discover that, no
matter how implausible it might appear, the "magic
bullet" hypothesis was the core of the government's
case. And that has remained true through subsequent
reinvestigations of the assassination by the House
Select Committee on Assassinations during 1976-
78, and in more recent books, such as Gerald Posner,
Case Closed (1993). So if the "magic bullet" hypo-
thesis is false, then there had to be other shots and
other shooters and The Warren Report (1964), The
HSCA Final Report (1979), and Case Closed (1963)
cannot be true. One of our tasks would be to evaluate
evidence for and against the "magic bullet" hypothes-
is, some of which had been known from the very
early stages of investigation of the case but whose
logical force deserved further analysis and consider-
ation (Fetzer 2002b)
Figure 1: Warren Commission Diagrams of JFK's Wounds
The "Magic Bullet" Hypothesis
The Warren Report (1964) published diagrams of
the injuries that the President had purportedly sus-
tained, which displayed a hit to the base of the back
of the neck and a hit to the back of the head, which
is the wound that allegedly killed him (Figure 1).
The "magic bullet" theory would be false if the bullet
had not entered the base of the back of the President's
neck, if it had not transited his neck without hitting
any bony structures, or if it had not exited from his
neck at the level of the knot of his tie, as the official
account maintains. The Navy physicians who con-
ducted the autopsy at Bethesda did not actually dis-
sect the neck to determine the trajectory this bullet
is supposed to have taken but ascertained it as a
matter of "inference". Thus, page 4 of the autopsy
report includes following claim (Assassination Sci-
ence 1998, page 433):
The second wound presumably of entry is that
described above in the upper right posterior
thorax. . . . The missile path through the fascia
and musculature cannot be easily probed. The
wound presumably of exit was that described
by Dr. Malcolm Perry in the low anterior cer-
vical region.
Notice, in particular, that the entry and exit locations
were matters of "presumption", which Commander
James Humes, U.S. Navy Medical Corps, defended
on the basis of an "inference" drawn after the body
had been removed from the morgue for preparation
for burial and the official state funeral. Based upon
conversations with Parkland that allegedly only took
place on Saturday, after the body had been removed,
he (Humes) belatedly realized that the wound to the
back must have been the entry point for the wound
to the throat as its point of exit! Notice too that the
description of "the upper right posterior thorax",
which is the upper-right portion of the chest cavity,
does not quite place the wound where it has to be if
the "magic bullet" hypothesis were true. Posner's
diagram from Case Closed (Figure 2) likewise does
not accord with Figure 1.
Figure 2: Gerald Posner's Depiction of the "Magic Bullet" Theory
Contradictory Evidence
There turns out to be extensive evidence that bears
upon the question of where the bullet that hit JFK in
the back actually impacted with his body, including
damage to the shirt and the jacket he was wearing at
the time. Many books, including Josiah Thompson,
Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), and Gary Shaw and
Larry Harris, Cover-Up (1976/1992), have noted that
holes in the shirt and the jacket suggest that the entry
point was actually about 5 1/2 inches below the col-
lar. Photographs of the shirt and jacket may be found,
for example, in Thompson (1967), page 48, and in
Shaw and Harris (1976/ 1992), page 64, as well as
in other sources, including Stewart Galanor, Cover-
Up (1998), Documents 6 and 7 (Figure 3). That the
shirt and the jacket might have been "bunched" has
been proposed to explain away this anomaly. (See
Figure 6 below.)
Figure 3: Photographs of the President's Shirt and Jacket
That holes in his clothing at a location 5 1/2 inches
below the collar could have been caused by "bunch-
ing" becomes less and less plausible as more and
more evidence of the wound on the body becomes
available. Neither Humes himself, who conducted
the autopsy, nor Lt. Commander J. Thornton
Boswell, USNMC, who assisted him, had ever per-
formed an autopsy on a gunshot victim before.
Boswell, however, prepared a diagram of various
wounds they observed on the body during the
autopsy, which was subsequently verified by Admiral
George G. Burkley, USNMC, the President's person-
al physician. Copies of Boswell's diagram can be
found in Shaw and Harris (1976/1992), page 62, and
in Galanor (1998), Document 5, and Fetzer (2000),
page 230 (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Boswell's Autopsy Diagram, Verified by Burkley
A different diagram was prepared by FBI Agent
James W. Sibert, who observed the autopsy at Beth-
esda, which may be found in Noel Twyman, Bloody
Treason (1997), page 100. It plainly demonstrates
the difficulties confronted by the "magic bullet" hy-
pothesis, even in relation to its most elementary as-
sumptions, since the wound to the back is too low
to be the entry point for a wound that exited from
the throat, if the bullet was fired from above and be-
hind, as the official account claims (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Agent Sibert's Diagram of the Location of the Wounds
Evaluating the Evidence
The application of inference to the best explanation
tends to clarify and illuminate the significance of the
available evidence in relation to alternative hypo-
theses. According to the official account, h1, the
bullet hit the President at the base of the back of the
neck, as the "magic bullet" hypothesis requires. If
h1 were true, then probability of holes in the shirt
and jacket about 5 1/2 inches below the collar would
be low, but not impossible if, for example, they had
been "bunched". But the probability that the shirt
and jacket were "bunched", when diagrams of the
wounds on the body also show the wound about 5
1/2 inches below the collar, is extremely low. Inter-
estingly, the artist who prepared the official diagrams
(Figure 1) was not even allowed to actually view the
body. And the shirt and the jacket, which were re-
moved from the body at Parkland, were not transpor-
ted to Bethesda for the autopsy physicians to study
them.
The probability that there would be holes in the
shirt and the jacket corresponding to the location of
the wounds described in the Boswell and the Sibert
diagrams would be very high, if the hypothesis, h2,
that JFK was hit about 5 1/2 inches below the collar,
were true. The bunching conjecture tends to be dis-
confirmed by these two diagrams. Indeed, as more
and more evidence is taken into account, support for
h1 diminishes and support for h2 increases. The
President's physician, Admiral Burkley, executed a
death certificate, which may be found in Shaw and
Harris (1976/1992), page 65, in Galanor (1998),
Document 8, and in Fetzer (1998), page 439. Accord-
ing to Burkley, he was killed by a shot to the head,
but "a second wound occurred in the posterior back
at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra." The
third thoracic vertebra turns out to be much too low
to have been the entry for any bullet fired from above
and behind that could possibly have exited from the
President's throat at the level of the knot of his tie,
as Shaw and Harris (1976/1992), page 65, have ex-
plained (Figure 6).
Figure 6: The Location of the Third Thoracic Vertebra
Moreover, Sibert attended the autopsy with a second
FBI agent, Francis X. O'Neill, subsequently submit-
ting a report of their observations at the time on 9
December 1963, which reads, in part, as follows:
"Medical examination of the President's body re-
vealed 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." An excerpt of their report, including this
passage, may be found in Mark Lane, Rush to Judg-
ment (1966), Appendix IV, and is also discussed by
Robert Groden, The Killing of a President (1993),
pages 78-79. Sibert and O'Neill substantiate that the
wound was at a downward angle, that there was no
point of exit, and that the bullet was not in the body,
which decreases the likelihood of the "magic bullet"
hypothesis, h1, and increases the likelihood of h2.
Acceptance and Rejection
That h2 is preferable to h1, given the available
evidence, does not imply that it is also acceptable.
That depends on whether the evidence available is
sufficient to support it, which requires that it has
"settled down". Other evidence supports the inference
that the evidence has settled down, including recon-
struction photographs that were taken during the re-
enactment conducted by the Warren Commission
staff. A photograph of the re-enactment, for example,
that may be found in Galanor (1997), as Document
4, shows a small round patch at the base of the back
of the head marking the location of the head shot and
a larger round white patch about 5 1/2 inches below
the collar to mark the back shot. A similar
photograph appears on the inside front cover of
The New York Times paperback (1964), that contra-
dicts the official account (Figure 7).
Figure 7: New York Times' Re-Enactment Photographs
Readers who are unfamiliar with this case may
wonder how in the world, given all of this evidence,
The Warren Report (1964) could have concluded
that JFK was hit at the base of the back of the neck.
Thanks to the good work of the Assassination Re-
cords Review Board (ARRB), a five-member civilian
board authorized to declassify records and documents
held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and
other agencies, we know the answer to that question.
Gerald Ford, a member of the commission, had the
description of the wound changed from "his upper-
most back", which was already an exaggeration, to
"the back of his neck", a discovery that was among
the very first of the ARRB's important releases,
which came in time for me to include an article about
it from The New York Times (3 July 1997), page 8A,
in Fetzer (1998), on page 177.
Under these circumstances, it almost appears to
be "piling on" to note that David W. Mantik, M.D.,
Ph.D., has recently demonstrated that no bullet could
have entered the President's neck at the location al-
leged and exited at the location alleged without im-
pacting cervical vertebrae, as Galanor (1998), Docu-
ment 45, and as Fetzer (2000), pages 3-4, explain
(Figure 8). Nor does it even seem necessary to add
that Malcolm Perry, M.D., who performed a
tracheostomy in a vain attempt to save the President's
life, described the wound to the throat not as an exit
wound, but as an entry wound, three times during a
press conference at Parkland that began at 3:16 PM,
a report widely broadcast over radio and television
that day. No transcript would be given to the Warren
Commission on the ground that it was too difficult
to locate, but a copy of the complete press conference
transcript now appears in Fetzer (1998) as Appendix C.
Figure 8: Mantik Plotted the Trajectory on a CAT Scan
Logical Ramifications
It may come as some surprise that the seemingly
simple question, "Where did the bullet that hit the
President in the back enter?", should hold the key to
exposing the cover-up in the assassination of JFK.
Because if it was not at the base of the back of the
neck as the "magic bullet" hypothesis requires, then
The Warren Report (1964), The HSCA Report (1979),
Case Closed (1993), and every other work that takes
it for granted cannot possibly be true. The probability
of the evidence we have reviewed here—including
the holes in the shirt and jacket, the wounds depicted
in the Boswell and Sibert diagrams, Burkley's and
Sibert and O'Neill's descriptions of the wound, and
the reenactment photographs—has a value that is
approximately zero, relative to the official account.
Indeed, Mantik has proven that it is not even anatom-
ically possible. The probability of the same evidence,
assuming that JFK was hit about 5 1/2 inches below
the collar, by comparison, is very, very high. The
evidence has "settled down".
Given the discovery by the ARRB that Gerald Ford
had the wound redescribed in The Warren Report
(1964)—no doubt to make the "magic bullet" theory
more plausible— and that Mantik has determined
that no bullet could have taken such a trajectory, it
turns out that the core of the official account is not
only false but provably false and not even anatomic-
ally possible! It follows that JFK's throat wound and
the wounds to John Connally had to have been
caused by separate shots and separate shooters and
could not have been inflicted by a lone assassin firing
from above and behind. The truth would have been
glaring but for suppressing evidence by not sending
the shirt and jacket to Bethesda for the physicians to
study, by not providing transcripts of the Parkland
Press Conference to the Warren Commission and
using similar techniques. Indeed, the process of se-
lection and elimination—selecting evidence that
supports a predetermined conclusion and eliminating
the rest—is well-known to all of those who practice
propaganda and specialize in misleading the public in
the search for truth.
Figure 9: Mantik's Study of the Lateral Cranial Autopsy X-ray
Our research has not only falsified the "magic bullet"
hypothesis and thereby exposed the fraud at the
foundation of the government's official account but
has also led to the discovery of complementary de-
ceptions in the death of JFK. The most important are
that the autopsy X-rays have been fabricated (a) to
conceal the massive blow-out to the back of the head
that more than forty eyewitnesses reported and (b)
to add a 6.5 mm metallic slice in an apparent effort
to implicate an obscure World War II Italian Mann-
licher-Carcano as the weapon used (Figure 9). A
world authority on the human brain, Robert B. Liv-
ingston, M.D., has concluded that the brain shown
in diagrams and photographs held in the National
Archives cannot possibly be the brain of JFK. These
discoveries had already been made by 1993 (Fetzer
1998). In spite of our repeated efforts to bring these
findings to the attention of the American people
(through "ABC Nightly News" and "Nightline") and
the Department of Justice, we had slight success.
Where We Stand Today
On the basis of our extended research, we have estab-
lished that JFK was hit at least four times: once in
the throat from in front; once in the back from be-
hind; and twice in the head, once from the back and
once from in front; and that Connally was hit from
one to three times, where at least three shots seem
to have missed. A total of eight, nine, or ten shots
appear to have been fired from six different locations
(Fetzer 2000, 2003). As a striking example of how
official inquiries by the government have suppressed
or overlooked important evidence, Thomas Evan
Robinson, the mortician who prepared the body for
burial after the Bethesda autopsy, told Joe West, a
private investigator, that JFK had a large gaping hole
in the back of his head, a smaller wound in the right
temple (which was the entry wound for the blow-out
to the back of the head), and a wound to the back
about five to six inches below the shoulder and to
the right of the back bone. He provided this inform-
ation to West on 26 May 1992, but it obviously could
have been available to the Warren Commission if it
had wanted it (Figure 10).
Figure 10: Summary of Interview with Thomas Evan Robinson
In collaboration with other experts, including John
P. Costella, Ph.D., we have also discovered that the
home movie of the assassination, known as "the
Zapruder film", has been recreated using sophistic-
ated techniques of optical printing and special effects.
Because of "ghost images" that link successive
frames, it was necessary to reshoot the film in order
that the deception not be easily exposed (Fetzer
2003). We have also discovered more than fifteen
indications of Secret Service complicity in setting
JFK up for the hit, including failing to weld manhole
covers, failure to cover open windows, allowing the
crowd to spill over into the street, adopting an im-
proper motorcade route, ordering the vehicles in the
wrong sequence, keeping motorcycle patrolmen to
the rear of the limousine, bringing the limousine to
a halt after bullets began to be fired, washing blood
and brains from the limousine at Parkland, taking
the autopsy photographs and X-rays from the physi-
cians prior to completing their work, having the
limousine stripped down and completely rebuilt. The
probability that these things happened "by chance"
is vanishingly small (Fetzer 2000, 2002a).
The conclusions that can be drawn from the au-
thentic evidence are rather profound. The Mafia,
which may have put up some of the shooters for the
assassination, could not have extended its reach into
Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays under the
control of U.S. Navy medical officers, agents of the
Secret Service, or the President's personal physician.
Neither pro- nor anti-Castro Cubans could have
substituted the brain of someone else for that of JFK
during a supplemental autopsy. And even if the KGB,
like the CIA, had the ability to recreate a film, it
could not have obtained a copy of the Zapruder film
to alter it. Nor could any of these things have been
done by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was incarcerated
or already dead. Similar reasoning based upon the
application of inference to the best explanation, alas!,
leaves no reasonable doubt that setting up JFK for
the hit and altering the evidence to conceal the true
causes of his death must have involved elements at
the highest levels of the U.S. government.
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