More Mack Mistakes By David Stager Gary Mack recently responded to my rebuttal to some of Mack's criticisms of Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed." Mr. Mack's reply shows a high degree of deception and misrepresentation of the original rebuttal, and at the same time he admits to none of the errors I pointed out. As is typical of assassination profiteers, Mack must resort to circumlocutions to "answer" or "explain" the flaws in logic and fact I originally pointed out. Mack's response has no basis in fact, and simply re-states the same position as in his original posting in the form of his supposedly more informed opinion. I know a great deal about the assassination, and I know even more about law enforcement and the investigation of crime. For the last 15 years I have been a law enforcement officer and investigated thousands of real crimes and collected and evaluated real evidence from real crimes, testified in real courts on real events, made hundreds of real arrests, interviewed thousands of real witnesses and interrogated hundreds of real suspects, etc. I know how to detect deception and confabulation. I know how the guilty respond to questions, and how defense lawyers operate and how they seek confusion and obfuscation of the issues in question. Mack has used all the techniques of the guilty parties I deal with daily. Mack has no such investigative qualifications. Mack does have a motive to keep the confusion and controversy going: Money. There's money in exploiting the assassination. When the controversy stops, Mack is out of business. When the case is closed, Mack is closed down. 1. Ballistics & Donahue. Mack repeats the contention about Donahue's error regarding the head shot. My original rebuttal clearly states my opinion that Donahue is demonstrably wrong about the head shot. The issue Mr. Mack is the back shot and the single bullet theory. The issue is not the Bronson film showing that everyone was seated. Mack did not really respond to the issue I called him on. This is a circumlocution. Deceptive people use this tactic. 2. Carcano Bullet Velocity Mack again does not address the issue I pointed out in the rebuttal. Mack restates muzzle velocity figures, yet the issue I raised had to do with impact speeds, speed of the bullet upon emergence from JFK's neck and at impact with Connally, etc. As is clear in my rebuttal, the exact speed can not be calculated exactly because of unknown variables. Only a range of possibilities can be posited. Mack demands documentation for specific numbers -- yet no specific numbers can be calculated. As close as I've seen is the US Army Edgewood Arsenal tests where Oswald's actual rifle and identical ammunition were used. The report states the bullet speed at 60 yards was 1829 fps, and the bullet speed at 90 yards was 1746 fps. (Appendix B, Page 47). Guess what? Posner's impact speed approximations are within this range. Does Mack answer this issue? No. He just restates his original position which has nothing to do with the point in question. Deceptive people use this tactic. 3. The Walker Bullet To answer my rebuttal that I personally examined the bullet, and the Nuclear Activation Analysis, and the modern ballistic data about the Walker bullet, Mack resorts to the wild accusation that the bullets have been switched, and all that stuff doesn't matter any more! Any factual data to back up such a wild claim? The DPD can't be trusted to maintain a chain of evidence, yet their opinion in the police report is 100% reliable and precise? In his "reply" Mack just restates that the news reports and the DPD report said it was a .30-06 bullet, relying on their absolute accuracy to "prove" his point. All the police report says is that the bullet "appeared to be" such a caliber. My rebuttal is clear on the point that "steel jacketed" is an imprecise term, used generically in the report. The DPD report does not say the bullet is silver in color, and the DPD report does not state any measurement of size. Nowhere does Mack address the issues in question. All readers are encouraged to look at CE 573 (The Walker Bullet) and tell me whether they think it's a .30-06 or a 6.5mm. Those who believe in a bullet switch theory, never mind. Criminals often spin wild tales to avoid the truth. Even the layman can spot this kind of lie. 4. London to Helsinki Trip Mack's reply doesn't admit that I caught him in the passport stamp error. Mack's reply omits that the date on the Helsinki stamp is also the 10th of October, and that it can be shown that Oswald did make the trip in the course of a day. No book can contain every conceivable fact on the assassination. To criticize "Case Closed" for not including every known fact is unfair. Nothing important was left out. Mack can claim the omission was intentional, but such a claim is untrue. Which is more reasonable: Oswald took a secret plane and had a control agent in place to rush him into a hotel by midnight, or that Oswald or the hotel agent wrote "night of the 10th" in the register, even though Oswald may have arrived after midnight. There is no precise documentation either way of Oswald's exact arrival times and check-in times, etc. What's the point anyway? Mack posits only questions, avoiding the issue raised in my rebuttal. 5. Oswald and the U-2 Mack restates the same point in his original post, again avoiding the issue I raised in the rebuttal. I'm sure many of you saw the 60 Minutes story about other shoot-downs over Russia prior to Powers that were classified, but now known about. The story did not get a lot of follow-up press, but it's a fact Mr. Mack. Just because you're not following the news is no excuse. Mr. Mack admits that we don't know what Oswald revealed. If we don't know what he revealed, how do you know he revealed critical secrets? Mack's contention is just speculative, not factual. No cause and effect can be shown. An extraordinary claim requires some extraordinary proof -- but Mack has no proof, just a guess. Powers was only speculating in his book. Powers was asked about this by the press many times and he always stated he never saw Oswald and was just wondering about the possibility. With so many Cuban Missile Crisis books documenting the scope and depth of the Soviet knowledge about our overflights, I think giving all the credit to Oswald is frankly unbelievable. Besides, Oswald was at Atsugi, Japan, and Powers was flying out of Turkey -- a continent away -- when he was shot down. Oswald had no knowledge of flight operations out of Turkey. Mack also does not explain how it is that the Soviets would wait six months to shoot down a U-2 if Oswald gave them everything they needed to know long before. Deceptive people use circumlocutions. 6. Tippit Timings Mack again avoids the point in the rebuttal, and just repeats his point from the original post that Oswald couldn't have made it to the scene of the Tippit shooting in time, based on Warren Commission timings. Mack probably doesn't remember me walking it with him once and timing it. Yes Mr. Mack I met you once and you've forgotten. In all fairness I must say that you are a very cordial man, and were very generous and hospitable with your time. There are too many variables for any such timing to be so precisely accurate that it would eliminate Oswald as a suspect. The exact time Oswald arrived and left the rooming house is not known, and the exact time of the shooting is not known precisely. How fast Oswald moved is not known either. What is known, and what Posner documents is all the people that saw Oswald do the killing, and the physical evidence linking Oswald to the murder. Timings are a moot point. It's a fact Oswald murdered Tippit beyond any doubt. Suspects deny every day they committed the crime even when caught red handed on video in front of a police officer, holding the gun, etc. Hard evidence proves you wrong on this one Mr. Mack. 7. Helen Markham Mack's thesis strains credulity here. And, as usual, Mack avoids the issue raised in the rebuttal and just re-states his original contention. Establish that the bus was on time and arrived on schedule at 1:12 Mr. Mack. Could traffic have been effected by the assassination? Your argument is the old slippery slope, and proves nothing at all. If the bus arrived on time, Markham would have been on it and never have seen the murder. 8. Oswald's Mexico Money Mack does not address the issue in the rebuttal, and just restates his original position. Posner demonstrates that Oswald probably had no escape plans other than to escape the TSBD. How Oswald planned his escape of course has nothing to do with whether or not he committed the murder now does it? Another distraction from the issue and a circumlocution. 9. Acoustics Okay, Mack says no one recalls hearing a bell in Dealey Plaza in 1963, but admits the bell sound is on the police recording. Seems to prove the opposite of what he's trying to say. Mack says the bell on the 1964 film was at 1:00, not 12:30. If there is supposed to be a 12:30 bell in 1963, then there should be a 12:30 bell in 1964. Mack does not identify the source of the bell either way. Posner does identify the source in his reconstruction. The HSCA heard the bell on the dictabelt and could never locate the source anywhere near Dealey Plaza. Maybe a ice cream truck was driving through the area in 1964 for all you know. I'm aware that the dictabelt recording is a circular disc like a record, rather than a stream of tape. However, Mack misstates that the HSCA did not analyze a magnetic recording. The dictabelt may have been a capacitance recording such as a phonograph record with physical grooves cut into plastic, but the acoustic data used by the HSCA was not from the original, right, so why argue that the original was not magnetic in nature if it is not the source of the data we're debating? The HSCA evaluated a magnetic recording to create the known acoustic data. Also, as everyone who has ever owned a phonograph record knows, records have crosstalk. You can almost always hear the sounds on adjacent grooves when playing such recordings. Another issue Mack does not explain is how exactly the DPD could copy a physical, capacitance recording? Make a mold or casting and press out a copy like a record? Or more likely, if the dictabelt is a copy, a magnetic tape recording must have been made, then played back and copied onto another dictabelt. As a result, all of my arguments concerning magnetic recordings still apply. Explain for us all Mr. Mack if the HSCA did not have the original how the copy was made of the original dictabelt? How could the background hum which was discovered be created if no magnetic recording is involved? You haven't thought this argument through Mr. Mack. 10. Bronson Film I'm not confused. I'm talking about the Bronson film, not the Hughes film. There is no movement in the windows. Any apparent movement is just imagination. Certainly nothing is proven by the Bronson film. Everyone will just have to judge for themselves by looking at it. Better experts than me have opined that there is nothing human visible in the windows. I have seen Groden's latest enhancement and that's what I'm talking about. If there's no tilting, panning, or movement in the original, why would the film have to be rotoscoped to stabilize the image? 10a Carolyn Arnold The issue was your claim Ponser misrepresented Arnold's statement. So now the "agents" are responsible for the change. At least Mr. Posner is off the hook. 11. Hughes Film I've seen the same film you've seen. As is clear in my rebuttal there is no human figure in the window, the movement is just a shimmering from the extreme blow-up revealing variances in the film. There's no sense arguing "is to -- is not" forever. Each person will have to judge for themselves. It takes quite an imagination to see anything resembling people in this film. 12. Frontline Nothing of dispute to reply to. 13. Badgeman The burden of proof is on you. The badgeman figure is a huge stretch of the imagination. 14. I saw Groden's Nix enhancement and I have a copy which came from Mr. Nix's daughter appearing on Geraldo. All that is visible is an undulation of the image. I never said that the "Nix Man" rifleman is the same as the image Groden has enhanced. In fact I was very clear that the images are in different places. It's misleading to say that Groden has an "original" enhanced film. By nature any rotoscoped enhanced film is a copy. Groden never explains exactly how he's enhanced the darn thing, i.e. digitally, or whatever so for all we know Groden animated in what ever it is that is moving up and down. Closing I just don't want the uninitiated to be manipulated by the misleading information you are putting out Mr. Mack. I can't change your opinions, and I'm still considering that the possibility exists you are sincere in your beliefs. Mr. Posner is not "one-sided" in his presentation. There is only one set of true facts. Mr. Posner has done a great job explaining all the important facts of the assassination. Most everything you've brought up to criticize him is just a distraction from the issues Posner resolves. You've not posited anything even close to explaining what happened and why. Can you?