Trip to Dallas

This is a contemporary photo of the south side of the overpass from where some think JFK's first wound, in the throat, or maybe even the fatal head wound came.

The lower picture is a screen frame from a recent Discovery Channel program. It shows what a shooter may have seen from the south side of the overpass through the scope of a weapon.

Went to Dallas last weekend and a friend asked me what are the prevailing theories on the JFK Assassination ? I replied:
Thanks for asking.
Prevailing theories is an interesting way to think of the JFK assassination!
Briefly, my interest started back in the eighties when I read a couple books about the assassination and there seemed to be areas that were not clearly answered in my mind.
One of the chief points seemed to be the shot that hit Kennedy in the throat. It is generally assumed by every official theory and every Oswald-did -it book that Kennedy was wounded in the back with a bullet that exited his throat. This so-called magic bullet passed through Kennedy went on to wound Gov Connally, sitting in front of Kennedy, wounded him twice, so the theory goes, and ended up on a stretcher in the hospital to later be identified as the bullet from Oswald's Mannlicher Carcano, rifle.
Anyway, no serious researchers, historians, or lawyers believe this. I am discounting the well-known authors who have perpetuated this impossibility such as Gerald Posner http://www.posner.com/ , Vincent Bugliosi, http://reclaiminghistory.com/?page_id=7 or webmasters like John McAdams. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm As you know, hundreds of books have been written about the assassination, so it is easy to be totally confused, if one has not kept all these writings in context, as a few nuts like me have tried to do.
Before I go further, let me just say that there are excellent books out there- to name a few: Breach of Trust, by History professor Gerald McKnight of Hood College, Pa. Another is The Unspeakable by James Douglass, a Jesuit cleric, I guess you'd call him. Another is Larry Hancock's, Someone Would Have Talked.
Now back to the point: if Kennedy was hit in the throat, while facing forward, by a shot from in front of him, what does this tell us? Well, to me, it says the whole Conspiracy of One that the Warren Commission put over on us is a pipe dream. I won't get into why they did this, or who was the driving force, or forces, behind having a Blue Ribbon Commission sell us a completely bogus story about the wounds to Kennedy, but it is important to address that wound to understand who didn't kill Kennedy.
The throat wound Kennedy had when observed in Dallas at Parkland Hospital was a small, 3 to 5 mm "penetrating" hole, as described by doctors at the time. that is approximately 1/4 inch round. James Carrico, the first doctor to observe this wrote this. The doctor who then operated on his neck to insert a breathing apparatus, Dr. Malcolm Perry also described, at the time, (or actually within an hour or so after Kennedy was pronounced dead) at a news conference that it was a wound of entry. The throat wound was also observed by Nurse Henchcliffe before it was opened up wider to allow the trach tube apparatus to be inserted in his throat. She called it an entry wound. Perry was young, but an experienced hunter and had seen many gunshot wounds.
How that wound came to be known as an exit wound is the stuff for volumes of contemporary American History. But, in a nutshell, the Warren Commission was charged with showing Oswald did it with three shots. And so they did. One member of that Commission a young Philadelphia lawyer named Arlen Specter, now a US Senator form Pa, along with another attorney, David Belin, conceived the idea that since there were only three shots, something only hypothesized since there was not time for Oswald to have gotten off any more!, that since one was known to have missed, and one obviously blew Kennedy's head apart, then the third had to be the one that did all the other damage- two wounds to Kennedy, one in his back, and one in his throat- AND three wounds to Connally- one, in back, one in front, one in his wrist, and even a sliver in his thigh- so actually four to Connally!
I won't bore you with any more, but I am convinced after all this time, and especially after finding original testimony and studying the very inept autopsy, and learning from the disclosures which came from the Assassination Record Review Board ARRB, that Kennedy was hit in the throat with apparently a small calibre bullet from the front. The official autopsy never probed this back to front wound to see if it was what it was claimed to be. Instead, it was simply assumed by the militarily controlled Drs at Bethesda, Drs. Humes and Boswell and Finck, that the bullet went through from the back and out the front. If you reread that sentence you should question my sanity, veracity, and grasp of reality. But, I am not kidding.
Some of the esoteric aspects are , was the shot that hit him in the front of his throat from behind the fence to his right, or from his left on the south side of the overpass, train trestle. Both sites are good for getaway and hidden, or relatively hidden, shooters.
One last point, having gone down that rabbit hole with an open mind and looking for facts and not pre-drawn conclusions, I am quite jaded about information that comes from our government and purports to be either official or accurate. This is especially true about some major events in our time, to wit: RFK's and MLK's murders, the carnage at Waco in 1993, the crash of Flight800 off Long Island in 1996, and the 911 Commission's report.
Thanks for listening.
I can give you citations for all I have said above, if you are interested. I have a theory on why he was killed, and it jives pretty much with James Douglass's, as drawn out in his book, The Unspeakable.

Steal the Bacon Play from 1967

Here is a clip of the Steal The Bacon play we ressurrected from archives!
It's hard to see, but #42 ,(that's me) breaks all the rules and slips between defenders to snatch the football after the punt almost rolls to the goal line. He then runs like hell as fellow teammates realized what happened and threw several key blocks that saved his bacon! We thought this funny play was lost to history until we dug it up at the Principia College archives! Some say it was 97 yds, but, I don't know- might have been 99!
Here it is at Youtube as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1zuoAHUK-0&feature=user

Principia College, 1968
That's me #42 following Alex Smith and Buz Brewster. Principia College is a little Division 3 liberal arts school across the river from St Louis, Mo. Its beautiful campus was almost bought by the US gov't for the Air Force Academy but Colorado Springs was chosen instead. One of the advantages of little schools like this is that guys like me, 165 lbs back then, could play college ball. It was a highlight of my youth and remains a great memory! I hope to put a video up of my famous "steal the bacon" play against Southwestern, Memphis, Tenn in 1967. They are digging it out of archives and I have offered whatever it takes to get it digitized!

Review of James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable
Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll New York Press 2008


We are all jurors in an ongoing trial to find the truth of John Kennedy's murder. Most of us have fallen asleep; some left the chamber, and others don't even care anymore. But a few, a very small few, have been paying attention for the last 45 years as arguments for the prosecution of Lee Harvey Oswald, headed up by government lawyers and their lackeys have been constantly countered by a volunteer and unpaid defense team for the truth made up of laymen, clergymen, historians, teachers, researchers, republicans, democrats, non-affiliates of all ages shapes and sizes. It has been a bewildering experience to have been patted on the head and told to go to sleep by the Warren Commission only to be rudely awakened by a garrulous DA from Louisiana, followed then by a government report which said, well, there might have been two, but go on back to sleep. Dazed and confused we began to leave the room but were called back in by Oliver Stone who told us to take a look at his evidence of Oswald's innocence. We were intrigued, but an impish Gerald Posner convinced Dick Cavett and other icons of American mainstream media that Stone's myth was just that and the case was indeed closed: Oswald did it. But Stone had garnered enough interest to cause Congress to form the ARRB- under George Bush Sr, no less. It took Bill Clinton half his presidency to get the thing going, but we watched with bated breath as the Assassinations Records Review Board began pulling from the FBI, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet bits and pieces of information that left gaping holes in the official story. Most of us didn't believe it anyway, but a few, a small few did notice that there seemed to have been two brains pulled from John Kennedy's head during the so-called autopsy. In fact so many moles began popping up it was difficult for the gatekeepers to bop them in the head fast enough. Distracted as we were by 911 and the war on terror, and the revelation that our government has the capacity to pull off an Operation Northwoods, as the ARRB found out, we continued to keep half an eyeball on the story, those of us who were paying attention. But then just as we were ready to reach a verdict of no true bill, Peter Jennings pops in to save the day for the prosecution. Disregarding all prior logic, evidence and common sense he lulled us back to comfortable numbness as he proved through computer generation, laser beams and some small degree of witch-craft that yes, indeed that was some magic bullet. Nevertheless, while almost dozing off again we heard rumblings of another defense witness about to enter the courtroom. He was David Talbot, an almost Main stream media type who was arguing that John and Robert Kennedy were possibly victims of powerful forces in our own government who wanted and needed them gone. But before he could present his full case a boisterous and bellicose advocate of Governmental Righteousness threw on to the floor, almost breaking it, an objection, claiming his stake in the case with a tome of such immense size and weight that no one, at first, dared to read it or question its obvious Bugliosian authority. When it was finally opened, the muse of Arlen Spector saundered forth speaking in only a language that he could understand. Talk shows raved about Vince's masterpiece; gatekeepers swooned, and the prosecution let out a huge and foul-smelling sigh of relief as they said, There! That ought to put this damn thing to rest finally! Everyone began to pack up and leave, most never having read briefs by Scott, Gerald McKnight, Larry Hancock, etc., defense advocates who had built their arguments on the works of Vince Salandria, Marrs, Howard Roffman, Sheim, Weisberg, etc., and the thousands of pages of released and obscure documents. But just as the courtroom almost emptied, looking like a Senate Chamber with a wobbling old man named Byrd trying to make a point, in comes a Jesuit priest. I'm no Catholic, I thought, as I was getting up to leave with the two or three other jurors who had sat through the whole case so far, trying to pay attention, but this guy seems to know his stuff. He's talking about everything we have already heard but putting it all into context. His summation is actually making sense- reason, logic, truth, honesty, footnotes, primary source interviews, follow-up questions, giving the benefit of the doubt to all sides. I sat back down. As James Douglass presented his case, scales fell from my eyes. Oswald was innocent. I look around. Is anybody there?
David Neal Kitty Hawk, NC

I Dreamed I Saw Toby Keith

By David Neal (c) 2008
(This is a song that came to me while I was thinking about the way we have become so divided since 9/11. Toby Keith's and Natalie Maines' public dispute about our policy in Iraq seems to be representative of the country in general.)

This is me singing the song- (Yes, I am keeping my day job!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLYKylOtLkU

I dreamed I saw Toby Keith
Singing with the Dixie Chicks
They harmonized so beautifully,
it made me feel good for a change.
And the crowd was up on its feet
as the music rose to the roof
And I saw the smile on my brother's face
And it made me feel good for a change
And Tobe he looked down at the girls,
He said,"Hey you all sound pretty good."
And they looked back at him with those big ole grins
And said,"Hey you're not so bad yourself.
But there was a guy in the back of the hall
Trying his best to start a fight,
When another guy came up in a cowboy hat,
And put his hand on his arm-
He said, "Hey what's goin on here?
Where's your love for Tobe and the girls?
Don't you know that after all this time,
We're all in this together?"
So bring on your Red White and Blue-
Bring on the truth that sets you free,
And bring on the hope of all the world,
And make me feel good for a change.
Yes I dreamed I saw Toby Keith,
Singing with the Dixie Chicks
And they harmonized so beautifully,
That it made me feel good for a change.

McCain and Iraq

Somebody made the comment that we should clean house with Congress, kick them all out and grab 535 people off the street to replace them. I thought this was a silly idea until I heard McCain say we need more troops in Iraq, and for an indefinite time.
My point is that the man in the street has got more sense about Iraq than a powerful and important senior Senator.
McCain said if we don’t fight Al Quaeda and Bin Laden over there, then we got to fight them here. Although Fox news and Murdoch may think we re fighting some slippery fanatics like Bin Laden and his recruits around Baghdad, the guy in the street knows his son is actually dodging bullets from the nationalistic factions of a civil war. .He also knows those bullets are stolen from arsenals not protected by us and that the shooters, possibly sympathetic to radical islamofascists like Bin Laden are actually Sunni and Shiite Iraqis who want us the hell out of their country.
But McCain is running for President and his base thinks the demon leaders of Iran and Pakistan are Khruschev or Hitler incarnated and that their only goal in life is to blow us up or have their kids do it after they are fully brainwashed that America is the devil.
McCain and Charlie Rangel may be playing a macabre game of chicken where they plan to run their ideas into each other until one realizes the other is serious. Rangel wants a draft- McCain says we need more troops .The Pentagon has quantified that need- hundreds and hundreds of thousands more- and McCain says maybe for a hundred years! Rangel says you can’t have more troops without a draft- so he is daring McCain to agree with him. Well, here is the problem: he just might do it.
Will Rangel and the Democrats then have to go along because they will look silly or ignorant for pushing for the draft and then saying, “ Hey, we were only trying to make a point!”
This is dangerous stuff and the folks in the street, as well as those in the suburbs and suvs know better than these false sages.
Maybe there should be a school for senators where they are actually taught history and diplomacy instead of jingoism and soundbites. Of course McCain knows better than to repeat blather put out by the white house in 2003,4,5, and 6 that if we don’t fight them there, we got to fight them here. Of course he knows that Iran is not Iraq, that Iran has never attacked anybody, that we encouraged and sold weapons to Saddam so he would attack Iran. And you know he has to know that sending more troops to Iraq will only fan the hate flames even more.
Then , is he being coy or silly? McCain is one of the shrewdest politicians on the block- not the best, since Bush/ Rove beat him in 2000, but still not a dim light. He may be serious that we need a draft and that hundreds of thousands of American kids need to be in the Middle east staving off the inevitable attack of the head choppers. I don’t want to do the math, but that might take a lot more than hundreds of thousands, and it might take a very long time since it is clear that by adding troops to the mix we are increasing the enemy. This is like the sorry carpenter who said, “ I’ve cut this dam piece of wood three times, and it’s still too short!”, repeating his mistakes thinking he’ll get it right eventually.
The fundamental misunderstanding of the Middle East, may not be driven by the simplistic logic that we are just protecting Israel’s hide, is one of ideology. Maybe the senior Senator and many others who think like him believe the stuff we see on Fox tv or the pseudo documentaries on the internet showing what appears to be the entire middle east chanting death to America every day at 5 pm. The blurring of cultures, countries and clans in the minds of Americans is understandable with our limited attention span, but not in the minds of Congressmen who send our kids to war. Sunnis, Shiites, Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Pakistanis, Saudis, Yeminis are not all one common enemy simply because most of them happen to be Muslim. But then I haven’t read the Koran! Maybe I forgot to read the Bible, too, where Joshua was told by Jehovah to slaughter all the people, women and children- leave not one standing. I’m not disparaging anybody’s faith here, but there is a reason intelligent people kept it out of politics a long time ago. It divides us, demonizes an enemy quicker and cuts off all rational debate faster than you can say my God is better than yours.
Unfortunately McCain’s base and too many of the rest of us with limited time and attention span are guilty of confusing faith with facts. The facts are that we invaded a sovereign country, falsely justifying it, killed thousands and thousands of innocent civilians, lost too many of our brave soldiers, some who were supposed to be helping out here after our natural disasters, and now are trying to attain some kind of Nixonian peace with dignity while leaving Iraq burning and bleeding.
Maybe 535 people off the street would be as short-sighted as our powerful Senators and Congressmen, but at least they wouldn’t have to be pandering to a base for a presidential run and thus irresponsibly calling for a continuation and escalation of such costly ideological fantasy.
McCain and Rangel and all the rest should be supporting the inevitable, in deed. What is it? It is a coalition of middle eastern countries with our help, hopefully, joining together to bring law and order to Iraq. That means international troops with a time table to police the streets and villages of Iraq until the violence is contained. It means Maliki, Sadr and Bathists included in this. It means bringing cool heads to the table who represent more than one side. It means a discussion of partitioning which allows for the even sharing of the oil resources. It may mean a reevaluation of our need for huge bases and 110 acre compounds in the middle of Baghdad. It means grownups coming to the table with advisors who are experts on the middle east and the cultures that live there. It means curtailing the rhetoric that blurs and confuses. I say this is the inevitable, because even if we go in another direction toward more war, it will still be the only eventual solution.