Bonus: PBS Nova - JFK Cold Case Review

We are currently in the middle of a series examining the Soviet Union as a potential culprit in the murder of President John F. Kennedy.

In the remaining two episodes, we'll be looking at Cold War spy games and what they reveal about Lee Harvey Oswald,

and then we'll turn to the straightforward case against the Soviet Union based on the Warren Commission evidence as set forth by former CIA director James Woolsey.

We'll also review the new Soviet documents on the JFK assassination from the Congressional Committee headed up by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna.

Look, I hate to break up a series right in the middle.

But the reality is that I had to choose between working on writing and editing and making music for a script all week or being a human father and hanging out with my family on my kid's spring break.

I chose to go full dad mode and I figured you all would understand.

We'll get back to the Soviet Union next week and then we'll wrap up with the recap and rebuttals on the USSR with my friend Joe Barrelli from the Lone Gunman podcast.

But today, I've got a throwback bonus episode that was previously a YouTube slash Patreon-only video.

It's my review of PBS Nova's Cold Case JFK documentary, which argues that Oswald was the lone assassin and it's in response to an email that I got from a listener.

On solving JFK, we've been zoomed in to the who-done-it aspect of the case in season three.

But it's good to remember the reason why we're looking at potential culprits.

That's because it's clear that Oswald could not have acted alone.

Without further delay, here it is.

Welcome back to another edition of Mailbag with solving JFK where I go through emails that I've gotten and not yet had a chance to respond to.

And we have one today from John T and it is about the famous PBS Nova Cold Case documentary.

Let's go ahead and read John's email.

John says, hello and thanks for your podcasts. Very well done. Thank you, John.

I listened to episode 19 today. I saw a fascinating recreation of the single bullet shot done by Nova, I think.

With great effort to body mass and accurate seating positions, they came extremely close to recreating the shot that passed through the president and Governor Connolly.

I was left saying one thing, close enough, I'm forever sold upon the single bullet theory based upon that recreation.

Sidebar, my college professor was on the Warren Commission as a minor contributor, Dr. Charles Nelson.

He was proud of contributing one thing to the commission, it concerned the pristine bullet.

Wish I could remember more as he told me this personally in his office at Drake University in 1979.

He was a staunch defender of the Warren Commission, but encouraged everyone to continue to challenge their findings.

Also, I remember another recreation by perhaps the Warren Commission. It was a shot from behind into a watermelon which exploded backwards towards the Texas Schoolbook depository.

I believe once a bullet enters the head, it's anyone's guess how the head will react to such an assault.

Sincerely, John T.

Thanks, John. I appreciate your points about PBS Nova. You know, you make some fair points if everything that they say in that documentary is true, and certainly that's an extremely persuasive documentary.

So really, we have three questions. One, is the PBS Nova film Cold Case JFK accurate? Are there any counterpoints to it that need to be addressed?

Two, what's the story of the assassination test where a watermelon was hit from behind and then went backwards?

And three, the bonus question of what did Charles Nelson do on the Warren Commission?

So let's start with the PBS Nova Cold Case Film. I've had a lot of people tell me that this film is why they believe Oswald acted alone, almost the same number as people who say they went to the Schoolbook depository museum and look how close it is.

So someone could have shot him. It's like, yes, someone could have shot him, but there's a lot more details. Anyway, this PBS Nova Cold Case Film is certainly a big feather in the cap of folks who believe the official story.

And you want to know how you can reasonably believe the official story, only watch PBS Nova Cold Case. Don't watch anything else, and then you'll definitely believe the official story.

But anyway, the problem is that there are rebuttals and counterpoints to this film that the people who are so persuaded by it never end up finding out about.

So that's what I'm here to do. I'm kind of here to be the bummer and be like, actually, the bummer to those who believe the Warren report. Let's get into it.

Just a few counterpoints to JFK. What's the word they call it? Cold Case JFK.

First, the documentary focuses solely on ballistics. You know, we're not talking about most of the things I cover and the episodes in the podcast.

We're really talking about zoomed in to just, you know, the question of where were the shots fired from? Could a bullet have done what it was said to have been done?

Could a bullet have done what the magic bullet was said to have done?

The focus on ballistics is with expert shooters Luke Hogg and Mike Hogg, the father and son team.

And they were longstanding official story defenders before creating the documentary.

So we know that, you know, these guys, they are experts, but they're starting up from a position of supporting their theory as opposed to just going where the evidence leads.

They're not disinterested experts here. So, you know, that's something they don't say at the outset, like, you know, here's the side I fall on.

So that's just worth noting. Second, about seven minutes in.

Clint Hill, the famous Secret Service agent who jumped on the back of the presidential limo to try to keep Jackie from falling out as she was reaching for a piece of the president's head, which went backwards, by the way.

But at any rate, about seven minutes in, Clint Hill talks about jumping on the back of the car.

But what he says in the Nova documentary is not consistent with what Hill's written statement says just a few days after the assassination.

In that written statement, Clint Hill said, quote, as I lay over the top of the back seat, I noticed a portion of the president's head on the right rear side was missing.

That's a huge omission for this documentary to make when the whole point is, you know, trying to figure out was there a shot from the front or not?

That's really kind of the core question of this documentary. And you've got this the most famous Secret Service agent related to the case, who has this huge observation, and he's a material fact witness, and you don't have him say the main thing.

So worth noting that that footnote needs to be added. Third, the experts say that the weapon is awkward to use they admit it.

You know, it's a bolt action rifle. And as far as the awkwardness of it, practice.

But they say the awkwardness of trying to figure out how to operate the bolt action rifle can be overcome by practice. And that sounds reasonable.

Sounds like a reasonable point.

The challenge for their position is that Oswald was not even alleged to have practiced anywhere close in time to the assassination.

The last time on the record where he fired a shot according to the Warren Commission was the general Walker shooting according to Marina's testimony.

Now, of course, that whole thing is disputed completely. There are a whole lot of sub issues on the general Walker case.

But the point is they're saying, oh, it's a bolt action rifle. And he would have been good at it because he would have practiced a lot, but no one alleges he practiced.

So then they fall back position as, yeah, but you know what, he was just he could just sit in his room and just practice the bolt action only and just practice, you know, dry firing with no ammo.

But that's not practice. That's not the same thing. And somebody needs to answer the question of how he could have done this when all these experts really struggled when he's not even alleged to have practiced.

All right, fourth hog says that the case was soed up within two days of the incident. So within two days, they had all the evidence and it was all good to go.

Yet on the day after the assassination, Hoover told President Johnson that the evidence was, quote, not very, very strong against Oswald.

He says two days after the incident. So that's what the end of the day, as he's saying, Sunday afternoon, geez, that's the exact moment when Oswald was killed.

I'm not aware of a specific thing that, you know, specific details that were confirmed that, you know, would have changed anything in between Hoover's call and what would have been, you know, the end of a two day period.

So the point is, this is just a nonsense statement that the case was soed up. That's, that's clearly patently not true.

Fifth, this notion that the shirt collar and tie shows evidence of an exit wound in JFK's throat is intensely disputed. Also witnesses at Parkland Hospital say that the throat wound was above the tie and JFK's collar.

Sixth, and this is really a core issue with anybody who's pushing the single bullet theory.

The recreation that they used falsely shows the entrance point of the single bullet to be the top of JFK's neck, which yes, on that trajectory would line up with a throat shot that makes a ton of sense.

Again, if it's what they say it is, then that makes a lot of sense.

But the overwhelming evidence as we've covered shows that the wound was really at T3, which is what it says on the death certificate that's consistent with the holes in the president's shirt.

That's what the picture looks like. That's what, you know, so many witnesses said. That's what the cyberdoneal report says.

So again, the single bullet theory is not possible if the bullet is down low where it actually was. It only becomes possible if you move it up.

You know, and there's all these arguments. He was leaning forward all these things. You go look at it. Was he, you know, was he leaning that far forward? I don't think so.

So this incorrect placement of the entrance wound. It's crucial to the entire conversation. It's at the heart of the case.

And if you move the wound, then yes, you can make the recreation show whatever you want, but that's not what the evidence shows.

Seventh. The documentary refers to neutron activation analysis and claims that the bullet fragments recovered from Connelly's wrist matched the portion of CE-399 that was tested.

The little part of CE-399 where there's like a little dent on the nose where I was thought, oh, see, look, it actually does have some small damage to it.

No, no, that wasn't even damaged to CE-399. That's where they cut out a portion of it to test it.

Anyway, the problem is that neutron activation analysis in AA is also known as comparative bullet lead analysis is not reliable. It was abandoned by the FBI in 2005.

Presumably, the creators of the show, which was made after 2005, were aware of this, but they just chose not to address it because it undermined their claim.

There's a really well thought out letter to the editor of the journal of the association of firearm and toolmark examiners by Dr. Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompson that lays out this whole argument regarding how neutron activation analysis is no longer valid in extreme detail.

Highly recommend checking that out if you have time and you're interested in this topic.

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The eighth issue I have with the cold case JFK documentary is, you know, that it claims Governor Connelly's back wound had to have passed through JFK first,

because Connelly's wound was a large oval shaped wound, which meant that the bullet would have been tumbling through the air or that it was in yaw as the lone gunman defending experts argue,

because Connelly's wound was three centimeters, which would mean that the bullet struck sideways.

So the whole idea is the bullet comes in. It comes out of JFK's body and now because it's hit all the stuff inside of his body,

it's wobbling and it's tumbling. It's like a wound to duck football throw instead of a perfect spiral.

And what they're saying is it was tumbling and that's why it's a three centimeter wound because you're not going to have the bullet coming in and striking.

Instead, you're going to have it coming in and hitting sideways, right? And if that's true, that makes a lot of sense.

But the problem is that Dr. Shaw's reference, Dr. Shaw, the one who operated on Governor Connelly, his reference to a three centimeter wound was after he had surgically cleaned up the wound.

The wound itself, the original wound was actually 1.5 centimeters as the HSCA medical panel would would later state and would later sort of clean up the record.

Was the bullet tumbling? I don't know, but it certainly wasn't full blown flipping over and it certainly is not a three centimeter wound. It's a 1.5 centimeter wound.

Number 9, and this is a point that was not covered in the Nova documentary, but it was something in Luke Hogg's corresponding journal article that I did want to address.

The idea that the Edgewood Arsenal tests for the Warren Commission, the Warren Commission's tests that they did during the commission to try to see what was possible with these shots.

The idea that that was an accurate recreation of what actually happened has no relationship to the truth. That's just not what happened.

Okay, so Dr. Alfred Olivier performed test shots on human skulls from approximately the same distance and height as where the sniper's nest would have been to the presidential limo.

Olivier presented commission exhibit 861 and 862 to the Warren Commission as being the same wound that the president would have received from a shot from the rear.

But when we look at those images of these skulls, they look nothing like the president's autopsy photos, the right frontal bone, the right eye socket, right cheekbone, they're all completely missing in the photos.

If you believe that Kennedy was killed from a shot from the rear, and that's the thing that made his head explode, you got to answer, where's the entrance point, and why does it not blow out the right side of his face, because it doesn't.

And that's a challenge that you would have.

You are literally believing what Dr. Olivier and the Warren Commission is arguing, you know, so there's some people who a popular position among folks who believe Oswald acted alone as to say that they don't actually defend the Warren Commission, they think Oswald acted alone for other reasons, and then they'll back away from the bad evidence, which, hey, you know, I get it.

So that could also just be learning, but at any rate, and look, they would say the same thing about me. I know there's a Facebook group somewhere, people going, can you believe this guy?

I just laid out nine points for why this cold case JFK documentary should not be taken at face value.

I don't believe they were operating with intellectual honesty, because again, they're just giving their sides, they're not giving any counter points, they're not giving any balance on the other side.

And, you know, this remains a very, very disputed matter, but for all of the reasons set forth here today and for all the reasons set forth in the season one of the podcast, I still believe there was a shot from the front.

And Oswald was not likely even on the sixth floor at the time.

The second part of John's mail bag question has to do with watermelon tests, and specifically the ones that were conducted by Lewis Albarez.

Now Albarez was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and as we all know, Kennedy's head went back into the left after it was hit with the bullet, so back into the left, right?

Grassy Knowles up here, his head, he goes like this, okay?

So, the details of this question are central to the issue of whether there was a headshot from the front or whether it was from the back.

Remember, it's also possible that there was a headshot from the front and from the back.

The obvious answer to what is happening for most people is that Kennedy was hit by something from his right front.

As Josiah Thompson puts it, it looks like he was hit in the head with a baseball bat from the right front.

That's what it looks like to me, too.

Lewis Albarez did test to see if this was true, so his theory was that if Kennedy was shot in the head from the rear,

in the place where Oswald is alleged to have been, that his head would go back into the left, even though the shot came from the back.

This theory from Albarez came to be known as the Jet Effect Theory.

So, his basic argument is that the explosion of blood and brain matter that's exiting from the right side of Kennedy's skull

pushed his head in the opposite direction.

So, everything's pushing coming out this way because of the bullet and the energy of things coming out this way pushed his body back, even though the bullet was from the back.

In 1976, Albarez published his findings in the American Journal of Physics.

Albarez claimed in that paper that a watermelon with tape around it, quote, showed retrograde recoil.

In other words, the watermelon was shot from the back and it rolled backwards towards where the shot came from, which, you know, that was what Albarez's theory was.

And for a long time, Louis Albarez's Jet Effect Theory went unchallenged.

But in the early 2000s, first-generation author and researcher, Josiah Thompson, this guy pops up everywhere, he's the man, obtained a copy of the raw test results.

And it turns out, after Thompson got these results, that Albarez actually tested many different scenarios that did not give him his desired result.

For example, as laid out by Josiah Thompson in his book last second in Dallas, quote,

Albarez had his rifleman fire into taped and untaped green and white melons of varying sizes, coconuts filled with jello, one gallon plastic jugs filled with jello and water,

an 11-pound watermelon, taped and untaped pineapples, plastic bottles filled with water, and rubber balls filled with gelatin.

The majority of these items were unsurprisingly sent hurtling down range. Only after Albarez reduced the size of his melons from one's weighing 4 to 7 pounds to one's weighing just 1.1 to 3.5 pounds,

did he get 6 out of 7 melons to exhibit some retrograde motion.

What makes this finding so bad for Albarez is that he admitted that his work could have been criticized if he used what he called the Edison technique of shooting a large assortment of objects

until he found one that fit his theory. But the reality now that we know how the test was actually conducted is that that's exactly what Albarez did.

He tested all of these different things to see which things he could get to fit his theory, he included the things that fit,

and he didn't tell anybody about all of the ways that his theory was proven wrong. So this is called scientific gas lighting.

There were also core issues with the test itself. As Thompson pointed out, whether a melon is taped or not, a bullet will cut through its outside like butter,

a human skull is completely different. Penetrating the thick skull bone requires considerable force, and that force is deposited in the skull as momentum.

Also, Albarez used soft nose bullets in his test instead of the full metal jacket ones that Oswald used allegedly.

In summary, the idea that Luis Albarez proved the jet effect theory is complete and absolute nonsense that is only believed by people who start from the premise that they know Oswald must have done it.

So that's the story of Albarez. So we've covered the JFK cold case, we covered the watermelons, so we've found that they're both nonsense.

And I want to give a shout out to my co-author and my friend Jim Deugenio, his great website KennedysandKing.com.

That is where I find many of these scholarly papers that counter some of the scholarly work on the other side.

And by the way, when I say the other side, let's look at everything. It's all good to digest information.

But the point is KennedysandKing is providing a very valuable resource and appreciate Jim for that.

Last part of the question, I just wanted to be thorough here. So what about Charles Nelson? So this guy's professor, I was able to find an obituary for Charles Nelson who taught American history at Drake University in 1979.

So that makes sense. And with this guy, John, the guy who emailed in, I believe him that this guy told him that he was somehow involved in the commission.

But the problem for me is the obituary for Charles Nelson doesn't say anything about him working on the Warren commission.

It does say that the JFK assassination was one of his specialties as a teacher. So I think I found the right guy.

But Nelson also does not show up on the official list of staffers for the commission.

So my guess is that maybe Nelson had some tangential outside involvement, but not on a major level, not on an official level.

And if he was a staffer, then his name would be on the list. So I don't know.

Sounds like your professor may have overrepresented the extent to which he was involved with the commission.

Thanks again everybody, and we'll talk to you soon. Appreciate your support.