…AND SPEAKING OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION…

Yesterday I brushed up against the JFK assassination in my blog about the FDA's decision to try to withhold Pfizer's covid "vaccine" data for ... oh lessee... another 55 years because the poor dears are just understaff and can't handle more than 500 pages  per day, in spite of having reviewed the same data and approving the injection for use in a mere 108 days.  I noted that if the JFK documents "releases" are any guide as to what might be "released" in 2076 regarding the injections, then we can expect the usual bobbing and weaving from Swampington DC.

Turning from that to the actual assassination itself, there's a new and fascinating article by Benjamin Cole on an interesting, and seldom-mentioned, bit of evidence against the "magic bullet" theory of the Warren Report, the ludicrous theory that a 6.5 caliber bullet struck the President from behind, exited his through, then executed a few nifty gymnastic tumbles and zig-zags, to enter governor John Connally's body (still tumbling) and tumbled around inside him only to emerge, strike his wrist, and then somehow ended up in more or less pristine condition on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital where is was later recovered.

To this day, we've no idea how it got there nor who put it there  (or perhaps teleported it there, or waved a wand and made it magically appear there). The bullet performed in mere seconds more tricks than a Penn and Teller Show, but it had to in order to make the "lone nut gunman" (Oswald) on the sixth floor in the schoolbook depository work.

With that in mind, ponder this article:

The Strange, Strange Story of Governor Connally’s Shirt & Coat and Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez

Not only does the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 remain a riddle in terms of the actual perpetrators, but innumerable aspects of the case defy explanation or are simply inexplicable. As JFK researchers know, there is seemingly not a single straight line in the entire saga and that includes the confounding topic of the Arrow-brand dress shirt and the suit-jacket worn on November 22 by Governor John B. Connally.

As reported here, it was 50 years after the assassination that Connally’s shirt and suit were put on display by the Texas State Library & Archives Commission on mannequins inside a large glass enclosure.

Fortunately for researchers, the physical display in Austin in 2013 was supplemented by an extensive online photograph collection of the clothing, including a picture of the rear bullet-hole in the fabric of Connally’s shirt. The hole was helpfully measured by commission staff and labelled at “3/8^th by 3/8^th inches.”[1]

Longtime JFK researcher and Connally-wounding specialist Gary Murr has provided an even better photo, one that he personally authorized the shooting of, which illustrates similar measurements for the bullet-hole. It even more clearly reveals the mysterious straight lines of cloth above and below the hole.

To this introduction, there is a picture in the article of the actual hole in Governor Connally's shirt worn that day, which even after evident cutting around the hole for an assumed analysis, the hole measures only about 1/2 an inch wide.

There's a huge problem with this, or more aptly, a huge hole in the Warren Commission's Report:

In any event, the Archive and Murr photographs alone are a near death-blow to the “tumbling” or single bullet theory (SBT) theory of the JFK assassination.

Why? The large slug from a Mannlicher Carcano rifle, of Western ammo manufacture, measured a little more than a ¼ inch in diameter and 1¼ inches in length.

The Warren Commission Single Bullet Theory (SBT) posits that the slug, after first passing through JFK’s neck, then tumbled and plunked Gov. Connally sideways, on its long side.

But the bullet hole in Connally’s shirt, as measured by the Archives or in the Murr photograph, is scarcely larger than the diameter of the Western ammo slug, and moreover, is no larger, and in some respects smaller, than the bullet hole in the rear of JFK’s shirt.

Now, frankly, I'm not aware that the Warren Report did or did not say that the tumbling Magic Bullet hit Governor Connally side-on, but whether it did or did not, the main point is taken: if the bullet was tumbling at all, it would have left a much larger hole than the 3/8 inch circumference stated by the report. And with that, exit the magic bullet theory.

One would think that Governor Connally's clothing that day would have attracted some attention long before now, they being key pieces of forensic evidence in the case.  But perhaps the ... uhm... ahhh... rather unusual chain of custody has something to do with it:

Long before Connally’s Arrow shirt and suit jacket ended up on display in Texas, they first, of course, visited the Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas on Nov. 22 1963.

The timeline thereafter appears to be:

1. Connally’s suit jacket and shirt, but evidently not the trousers, were then mysteriously hand-carried in bloody paper bags to Washington, D.C. by Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, who stored them in his office closet for an estimated two weeks.
2. Two Secret Service agents then took the garments, but not to the FBI. Evidently on orders from the White House, the clothes were sent back to Texas and Mrs. Connally. The Governor’s wife might have washed the shirt in a tub of cold water, but more likely sent the clothes to professional cleaning service.
3. Then, possibly, the shirt and coat and other garments, were sent to the Texas Archives in Austin, Texas, although this is not verified.
4. The Governor’s clothes were then sent back to Washington and to the Warren Commission offices on April Fool’s Day 1964, where they were examined.
5. The Connally assassination-day clothes were then finally sent on eight days later to the FBI lab, also in Washington.

Yes, the above journey is what happened to primary evidence—Connally’s shirt and suit jacket—in the assassination of a US President and serious wounding of a Texas Governor.

But wait, it gets much better. The article observes that researcher Gary Murr found a receipt for Connally's clothing made out by a Parkland Hospital nurse to Cliff Carter, an associate of then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson.  Carter in turn turned Connally's clothes over to Texas Congressman Henry Gonzales. Gonzales maintained that he had attempted to turn the clothes over to the local Texas authorities, but had been rebuffed, and so according to his story, he carried Connally's clothes inside the bloody paper bags that they had been put in at Parkland Hospital all the way back on his flight on Air Force Two to Washington DC. Back in Washington, Gonzales maintains that he put the clothes in a closet in his office, and attempted to contact the FBI.

At this juncture, sometime later while Gonzales was back in Texas, two secret service men allegedly picked up the clothing at his office, but left no receipt. Then it becomes even stranger, and remember, this is primary forensic evidence(!):

Researcher Murr has unearthed documents that reveal the governor’s wife had contacted the FBI on Nov. 28. Working through the authority of the governor’s office, she had asked about the location of her husband’s shirt, jacket, and other items.

Mrs. Connally recounted one version regarding Connally’s clothes to Life magazine in 1966, “We finally located John’s shirt and suit coat, which we were concerned about because the wallet and personal papers in his breast pocket, in Congressman Henry Gonzalez’ clothes closet in Washington.” In Mrs. Connally’s 1966 account, persons unknown then delivered the Governor’s blood-soaked garments to Mrs. Connally, then residing in the Texas Governor’s Mansion.[5]

In any event, as Mrs. Connally related to Life magazine, she had the shirt and suit jacket in her possession for “seven weeks.” Then she decided to dip the shirt into cold water several times, remove flesh and blood, and to “preserve it.”

Investigators were not concerned about Connally’s clothes, as she recalled, in her interview with Life magazine. “I told the Secret Service, and I guess the FBI, that I had the clothes, but nobody seemed interested.” After that, she related, “someone finally came to pick up his clothes.”

By Mrs. Connally’s 1966 account, she did not have the clothes or jacket laundered or dry-cleaned.

And so, for decades, there was something of a mystery of who had professionally cleaned and pressed Connally’s shirt and jacket before their arrival at the Commission in Washington. Maybe there still is.

But four decades later, and further confusing matters, Mrs. Connally also provided a second version of what happened to Connally’s assassination-day clothes. This was on the 40^th anniversary of her husband’s shooting, in her book, From Love Field, published in 2003:

Much later (after November 22), I received his clothes in the mail, unpressed and uncleaned, in exactly the same condition as when they had been cut from him at Parkland. I couldn’t bear to look at the blood, nor did I feel right about destroying them, so I told the cleaner to remove the stains as best he could but do nothing to alter the holes or other damage, which is exactly what he did.[6]

Oddly, in her 2003 rendition of events, Mrs. Connally does not say why she wanted her husband’s clothes back.

And then, as the article goes on to note,

There is another puzzler: Photos commissioned by researcher Murr show the inside breast pocket of John Connally’s Oxxford Clothes-brand jacket as having been pierced by the same bullet that passed through him.

If there had been a billfold or wallet in that breast pocket it likely would have been pierced by a bullet—and thus would also be important evidence.

To further confound the chain of custody, there is a question of how Connally's clothes made it to the Texas state archives, and then from there, five months later, to the Warren Commission:

After Mrs. Connally had the clothes professionally cleaned and pressed, it appears the shirt and suit and other items were then sent to the Texas State Archives, although Murr says this bit of the garment’s itinerary has not been verified.

In any event, on March 30, 1964, the Warren Commission (WC) asked the Secret Service to bring Connally’s jacket and shirt to Washington for examination. By March 1964, nearly five months had passed since the assassination and no investigative body had examined Connally’s clothing. The shirt and jacket arrived at the WC on the suitable date of April 1^st.

When the WC asked Governor Connally about the condition of the clothes on April 21, 1964, he responded, “They, the Archives of the State of Texas, asked for the clothing, and I have given the clothing to them. That is where they were sent from, I believe, here, to this Commission.” Researcher Murr is dubious about Connally’s answer, noting the Governor’s lawyerly use of the qualifying word “believe.” However, there are no hard records from what location the garments were sent to the WC.

...

In any event, Robert Frazier, the FBI’s lead firearms and ballistics examiner at the time, told the WC that Connally’s shirt and jacket had been subjected to “cleaning and pressing.” Thus, no trajectories could be divined from the bullet holes in the items. More importantly, the cleaning and pressing of Connally’s shirt and coat were remarkably effective and evidently removed metallic traces from the bullet holes, effectively enough that the technology of the day, spectrographic analysis, could find nothing.[7]

Later the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) would also subject Connally’s assassination-day clothes—including his shirt—to testing and would find traces of copper, iron, and lead.

As for Lyndon Johnson's close associate Cliff Carter and his role in the initial stages of the chain-of-custody, the article's rehearsal of Carter's role in Johnson's circle of close associates is worth citing:

Cliff Carter, the LBJ aide who put the two bloody sacks of clothing into Congressman’s Gonzalez’s hands on November 22, is also worth pondering. Carter was regarded as a “bagman,” who would collect cash for LBJ’s campaigns, or for other expenses, and handled other dark areas for LBJ.

According to Billy Sol Estes, Carter was also aware of the planning for the murder of Henry Marshall, a U.S. Department of Agriculture investigator who learned of Estes’ illegal scheme to illegally buy certain cotton allotments from smaller farmers. Agriculture agent Marshall was found dead in 1961 of five gunshots from a single-shot bolt-action rifle, and carbon monoxide poisoning to boot, but Texas authorities deemed the death to be a suicide. That ruling stood for decades, until a Grand Jury in 1985 reviewed the case and almost certainly corrected the ruling to murder.

In later years, Estes, who graced the cover of Time magazine 1962, would tell unverifiable tales regarding a clutch of murders of people in LBJ’s orbit.

But for the purposes of this story, the inquiry would be: Did Carter, even within two hours of the JFK hit, and in Parkland hospital, have presence of mind to recognize that controlling evidence could be important to the outcome of the JFK investigation?

Did Carter actually advise Gonzalez to take the two bloody paper sacks containing Connally’s clothes and then to sit tight until further instructions were received? Thus, Gonzalez became an unwitting “cut out” man in the sequestering of primary evidence.

Indeed, was “controlling the evidence” second nature for Carter, after having been involved in various and serious LBJ scrapes with the law, up to and including murder? In other words, gain control over evidence first and always in every untoward event, then later determine if there are advantages to withholding or releasing evidence?

As for Congressman Gonzales, lest we forget - and as the article itself points out - he ended up as the eventual chairman of (you guessed it) the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The author of the article himself says it all: "As I said, you can't make this stuff up."

So why did I go to all this length?

Well, I have a teensy tiny question, given the weird and at times threadbare chain of custody of the clothing. Imagine going to trial in an actual criminal case, and trying to argue to the judge over the defense attorney's objections as to the admissibility of the evidence, that there was nothing wrong with the chain-of-custody. The only clear portion of it happens to be at the very beginning, with the first link in the chain from Parkland Hospital to Cliff Carter. From there it's a tale of if's and but's. No one knows how the clothing got from Gonzales back to the Texas State Archives, Mrs. Connally's different versions do not help matters, the two secret service agents who picked up the clothes from Gonzales' office disappear from the narrative completely, and no one can quite recall how they made it back to the Warren Commission, and so on.  In fact, we don't even know if they're really Connally's clothes.

There is a way, of course, to find out: if there is enough human tissue still left in them to do a DNA analysis, and compare the results with surviving members of the Connally family.

Until then, we're left with more questions than answers...

See you on the flip side...