The JFK War: CBS endorses the "magic bullet" absurdity

By Jim Fetzer

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”–Sherlock Holmes

The latest defense of the “magic bullet” absurdity comes from CBS, which featured a father and son combination who claim to have used “new forensic technology” to demonstrate that The Warren Report (1964) had it right when it posited the “magic bullet” scenario, where one bullet passes through JFK’s neck and exits his throat to enter the back of Texas Gov. John Connally.

The distinctive feature of this “reenactment” may be its emphasis on the three feet between JFK and Connally as though what happened from the time it hit the back of his neck and exited his throat did not matter. But the fact of the matter is that the “magic bullet” scenario is a fantasy: the hit to JFK’s back was 5.5″ below the collar to the right of the spinal column, as J. Thorton Boswell’s autopsy diagram (above) displays.

And if a bullet had hit at the base of the back of his neck, it could not possibly have transited his neck without hitting any bony structures, because cervical vertebrea intervene. The “magic bullet” theory is not even anatomically possible. So when we follow Sherlock’s maxim, then we are going to have to look elsewhere, because once we have eliminate the impossible, the theory is no longer tenable–no matter how many times it is reasserted.

The CBS interview

A father and son team, Luke and Michael Haag, were featured on “CBS This Morning”, maintaining that they proven that the “magic bullet” theory was tenable, after all. Here they are discussing it:

You can click here to watch “Single bullet theory probed using latest forensic techniques”

The most important claim that they make, of course, is that a single bullet could “absolutely: have inflicted all the damage to the neck and throat of JFK and to the body of John Connally as follows:

The claim that “These are not really tough shots” is ridiculous, of course, since no one has been able to replicate them, including Gunny Carlos Hathcock, who was the best sniper in the US Marine Corps.

Jesse Ventura’s reenactment

In fact, Jesse Ventura flew me out to California to set up a reenactment of the alleged shot sequence, where Jesse was using a far superior Mannlicher-Carcano and is a far better shot than Lee Oswald:

YouTube – Veterans Today –

Not only was Jesse unable to replicate the shots–where, as I recall, he scored one hit in three three-shot replications, all of which consumed far more time than the “official account” requires.

So how were the father and son able to show that the “magic bullet” theory was tenable, after all? It was relatively simple: they use a block of soap to represent the human neck! Here’s the block itself:

The difference, of course, is that a block of soap does not include any cervical vertebrae. So their fantasy reenactment simply omits the anatomical consideration that JFK’s neck had a backbone:

As I have explained before–and, most recently, in “The JFK War: The two Cyril Wechts, the ‘magic’ bullet and the HSCA”, David W. Mantik has demonstrated that the alleged trajectory is impossible.

The substitute Mannlicher-Carcano

During the CBS presentation, they showed the alleged assassination weapon–known during WWII as “the humanitarian rifle” for never actually harming anyone on purpose–booked in Washington:

But they do not also show the weapon that was retrieved from the Texas School Book Depository and used to frame an innocent man, which was booked in Dallas (deliberately posed up-side down):

where the reason becomes obvious when they are compared, as Jack White did here, because they are not the same: the substitution was made when the evidence was moved from Dallas to D.C.

As in the case of the .22 handgun in the shooting of RFK, the weapon was originally booked was replaced by one that was actually used to do the shooting to support a comparison of ballistics.

The missing shell casings

Another glaring problem that they do not address is that only two spent shell casings were found at the purported scene of the crime, the alleged “assassins” lair, as this Dallas evidence photo displays:

This comes from Jesse Curry’s JFK Assassination File (1969), published in a paperback and distributed by 7/11 Stores, where he was hired as Head of Security after he retired as Chief of the DPD. As if that were not sufficient proof that only two spent casings were found, here’s another taken by the FBI:

This demonstrates the clumsy way in which the Dallas Police Department attempted to frame the alleged assassin, but produced evidence that–by itself!– contradicts the “three shot” scenario.

The Attempted Reconstruction

Endless repetitions of a false theory cannot salvage The Warren Report (1964) or the “magic bullet” theory on which it is based. The father and son ignore the most basic relevant evidence, including that there were two “assassination rifles”, only two spent casings and that JFK had a spinal column:

We know that JFK was hit four times, none of which appear to have been fired from the 6th floor of the Book Depository, as I have explained in many places. There was a time when the mass media, especially CBS, NBC and ABC, were responsible in their reporting, exemplified by Walter Cronkite:

YouTube – Veterans Today –

Some of us believe that 50 years of lies is enough and that the American people are entitled to know the truth about their own history. As this feature illustrates, that view does not appear to be held by “CBS This Morning”, whose executives are either completely incompetent or else complicit in the cover-up.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth. [NOTE: This is one in a series of articles being republished since veterans today.com deleted them in a dispute with its Senior Editor, Gordon Duff, about which I have since written several articles.]

Please follow and like us: