Mike Sylwester, 1 June 1993 710-B Caroline Street, Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5904 (703) 373-9807 [title] Why Are There Two Bullet Tracks in the Fake Head X-Rays? I am writing in response to Joseph Riley's article titled "The Head Wounds of John Kennedy: One Bullet Cannot Account for the Injuries," published in the March 1993 issue of The Third Decade. This article demonstrated that two different bullets passed through the head that was depicted on the x-rays. Riley explicitly stated his assumption that the head was John Kennedy's, but I say he should have left that assumption out. The authenticity of the x-rays are seriously disputed, and all his arguments would have been just as valid if he had written in terms of the alleged x-rays of Kennedy's head. Researchers should not leap to embrace the x-rays as authentic just because the two bullet tracks blatantly contradict the government's fraudulent explanations. The head x-rays still show massive damage on the right side of Kennedy's face that is contradicted by the autopsy photographs. The head x-rays still fail to show the large, blasted hole in the back of the head that were described by many witnesses, including medical specialists. The x-rays still belong to a realm of physical evidence that has been systematically falsified by government agents. The history of the x-rays is still inadequately documented and is still shrouded in confusion and mystery. I still say the x-rays are fake. Riley is correct about the two bullet tracks, so our question should be why the government agents shot two bullets into the anonymous head instead of just one bullet. I suggest the following explanation. It was impossible to shoot one bullet into a head to obtain the desired result. How were the agents supposed to shoot one bullet into the back of a head from a relatively close distance without creating a large exit hole somewhere in the front of the head? A straight-forward fraud was doomed to be contradicted by the autopsy photographs. Of course, the autopsy photographs could be faked some more to match the new x-rays, but a believable, false wound would have to be created on the photographs. This would be much more difficult than it had been, for example, to "remove" the hole on the back of the head by concealing it with a hair montage. The conspirators knew the real answers to the riddles and would be particularly sensitive to anyone anywhere who raised potentially devastating objections to the official story, even if those objections initially attracted little attention in the community of conspiracy researchers. By early 1968, some unusual objections were raised by Howard Donahue, a Maryland gun expert who had participated in the original shooting tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano and who had many friends in law enforcement. Donahue managed to swallow much of the official explanation of the shooting, but he gagged at the following absurdities: According to the Warren Report, the bullet entered the back of Kennedy's head and disintegrated, blowing out the upper right portion of the skull from about an inch and a half above his ear upward to within two inches of the top of his head. .... The bullet's trajectory made no sense. A slug coming in at a 6-degree angle from right to left and down at 16 degrees should have exited through the President's face--somewhere in the area of the right eye, forehead or nose. Yet the actual [according to the Warren Report] exit wound was in the upper right portion of the skull.(1) What did seem improbable was the apparent fact that no one else had picked up so massive a fault in the Warren Report. .... If he [Donahue] had figured out something all these experts had missed, it was, he thought, because they had simply not done the nuts and bolts work of analyzing the head shot's trajectory. Even if [autopsist Dr. James] Humes had mistakenly located the entrance wound, and it looked as if that was the case, still unresolved was the larger question of how a bullet coming down from the right rear could have blown out the right upper top of the skull.(2) As Donahue pondered this problem, he was struck by another subtle, but equally stark, inconsistency in the government's explanation of the head wound. The problem was this: If one was to believe the [Warren] Commission, the first bullet to hit Kennedy pierced his neck and went on to inflict extensive damage to the bone and flesh of Governor Connally. For all that, the bullet (CE 399) remained essentially intact. Donahue already accepted his explanation, given that the Carcano round was a full-jacketed bullet specifically designed not to fragment or expand. But precisely for this reason he could not understand how exactly the same kind of bullet, fired from exactly the same weapon six seconds later, could have exploded in a hail of lead that shattered the President's skull and left an exit portal the size of a small plate. .... The second round appeared to have acted not as a bullet encased in a thick metal jacket would have, but more like a frangible, soft or hollow-nosed missile with a thin metal jacket traveling at extremely high velocity. Unlike full metal-jacketed bullets, soft or hollow-nose missiles are specifically designed to flatten and disintegrate in order to inflict the kind of shattering wounds the Geneva Convention sought to outlaw in the 1920s.(3) .... So far [by early 1968,] his inquiry had uncovered two crippling problems in the government's claim that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shot that struck Kennedy in the head: 1) the apparent trajectory of the bullet did not seem to match the location of the Oswald's sniper's nest, and 2) the type of bullet fired was totally at odds with the rounds Oswald was known to have used.(4) During this same period, Jim Garrison had opened his investigation and was demanding access to the autopsy photographs and x-rays, which had remained secret from the public and even from the Warren Commission. In response to the public pressure, on January 26, 1968, Dr. Boswell wrote a letter to Attorney General Ramsey Clark and formally requested that a panel review and verify that evidence. Clark agreed, and the panel convened to look at the evidence on February 26-27. One of the panel members appointed was Dr. Russell Fisher, the Maryland chief medical examiner.(5) According to the book about Donahue's story, he then happened to be introduced to Fisher in March. The book notes this wonderful coincidence: "That Donahue would now be privy to what this panel had found, just weeks after their work had finished, was a great stroke of good luck."(6) Donahue then met with Fisher, who described the panel's findings as follows: Well, for one thing, that bullet that hit him in the head disintegrated completely. We saw nearly forty fragments throughout the right cerebral hemisphere and embedded in the interior of the skull. .... Another thing was that the entrance wound on the back of the skull wasn't where it was supposed to be. Humes placed it an inch to the right and somewhat above the external occipital protuberance, but we measured it from the X rays and found it was actually four inches above the occipital protuberance and an inch to the right of the midline. Donahue was flabbergasted. Here was the confirmation he'd been looking for. The bullet had indeed explosively disintegrated in dozens of tiny fragments. And Humes had in fact mislocated the entrance wound. Humes had also failed to report precisely the shape and extent of the exit wound. Moreover, according to Fisher, the panel had agreed that at least one major fragment of bullet had exited much farther forward than the Warren Report's sketches had suggested. Fisher went on to say the panel had observed a curious metal fragment embedded on the outer table of the skull just beneath the entrance wound. He described it as round and about .6.5 millimeters in diameter, and noted there had been no mention of this fragment in the original autopsy report. .... "We [the panel members] thought it looked like a ricochet fragment," Fisher replied. Donahue tried to digest what he was hearing. .... According to the Warren Report, one of Oswald's three shots had missed. Yet investigators hadn't been able to determine which one it was or exactly where it had gone. Could this unreported fragment be evidence of that miss?(7) You get the idea. Apparently, the x-rays were fabricated before the Clark Panel convened, and provided the basis for Donahue's new explanation of the shooting. The x-rays eventually enabled Donahue to prove that Kennedy was hit twice in the head. The first of these missiles was part of a full-jacketed bullet fired by Oswald, which had hit the pavement behind the limousine, bouncing up to hit the back of Kennedy's head. The second missile was a soft bullet accidentally shot by a Secret Service guard riding in the following car. The x-rays prove Donahue's theory, and therefore the two inexplicable problems of the trajectory and the fragmentation of the bullet that hit the hear are now explained. The circle is closed. 1 Bonar Menninger Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFKJ(New York: St. Martin's Press 1992) pp43-44. The book cites pp 501-502 of the Warren Report for this description of the head wound. 2 Ibid, pg 47. Emphasis in original. 3 Ibid, pg 49. 4 Ibid, pg 56. 5 The other members were Doctors Russell Morgan, William Carnes, and Alan Moritz. Ibid, pp 63-64. 6 Ibid, pg 64. 7 Ibid pg 64.