An author by the name of Orlando Martin was a guest on Len Osanic's "Black Op Radio" program on June 24, 2010. The interview can be heard below:
Martin has written a new 208-page pro-conspiracy book on the JFK assassination called "JFK: Analysis Of A Shooting: The Ultimate Ballistics Truth Exposed" (published by Dog Ear Publishing on January 21, 2010).
Martin's examination of the ballistics evidence in the case has led him to the "undeniable" conclusion "that three gunmen fired five shots at President Kennedy. These men took their shots from varied distances and heights around Dealey Plaza."
The quoted words above come directly from Orlando Martin, via the Introduction chapter in his book, an excerpt of which can be read here. The main (home) page of Martin's nice-looking website is linked below:
http://JFKAnalysis.com
In the early portion of Mr. Martin's Black Op Radio appearance, he talks about what apparently he deems to be his Number One reason for disbelieving the Warren Commission's single-assassin and Single-Bullet Theory conclusions. And that reason is a real whopper, folks. Get this:
Martin insists that all of the pre-surgery X-rays that were taken of Governor John B. Connally's body (the X-rays of his right wrist, chest, and left thigh) are now "missing" and "have been destroyed" [Martin's quotes from 6/24/10]. Martin also thinks that the Warren Commission "completely ignored the pre-surgery X-rays of Connally" [Martin; 6/24/10].
Now, when I heard Mr. Martin make these ludicrous claims on the Black Op Radio program, I could only stare at my computer screen for a minute or two and say to myself: What the hell is this guy talking about? He must be nuts.
Contrary to Martin's beliefs, Governor Connally's pre-operative X-rays have certainly not been "destroyed" at all. Those X-rays are part of the official Warren Commission records, and were all assigned specific Commission Exhibit numbers, and all of them are available to view in WC Volume 17.
Commission Exhibit numbers 690 and 691 are the pre-operative wrist X-rays; numbers 694, 695, and 696 are the pre-operative X-rays of Connally's left thigh; and number 681 is the chest X-ray which was taken on November 22, 1963 (which is an X-ray that Dr. Robert Shaw told the Warren Commission was actually taken DURING the surgery that was conducted on Connally's chest wounds).
But the lack of a definitive and provable PRE-OPERATIVE X-ray of Connally's chest cannot be used by Martin (or anybody else) to discredit the Single-Bullet Theory or the validity of Stretcher Bullet CE399. And that's because of the testimony provided by Dr. Shaw.
Author Martin suggests that the bullet which went through John Connally "probably left a bunch of fragments in the Governor's chest" [Martin; 6/24/10].
Well, evidently Mr. Martin has decided to totally ignore the testimony of Dr. Robert R. Shaw, who was the Parkland surgeon who operated on Connally's chest.
If Mr. Martin had bothered to look at Page 105 of WC volume #4, he would have found the following words coming from the mouth of Dr. Shaw (and maybe Martin does realize this testimony exists in the WC volumes, but has decided that Dr. Shaw was a liar and a cover-up agent):
ARLEN SPECTER -- "Was any metallic substance from the bullet left in the thoracic cage as a result of the passage of the bullet through the Governor's body?"
DR. ROBERT SHAW -- "No. We saw no evidence of any metallic material in the X-ray that we had of the chest, and we found none during the operation."
Furthermore, the Warren Commission most certainly did not "completely ignore" the two pre-surgery X-rays of Connally's wrist at all. Those X-rays are discussed at great length during the testimony of another one of Connally's Parkland physicians, Dr. Charles Gregory, right here.
So, I guess Orlando Martin must be of the opinion that CE690 and CE691 (the two PRE-operative X-rays that were taken of Connally's fractured right wrist) are faked X-rays. Or, as embarrassing as this option is for Orlando, perhaps Martin is totally unaware that CE690 and CE691 even exist in the Warren Commission's 26 volumes. (They can be found, plain as day, on pages 347 and 348 of Volume 17, linked above and pictured below.)
Moreover, Mr. Martin's assertion that the Warren Commission "completely ignored" the pre-surgery X-rays of Connally's wrist within the text of the 888-page WARREN REPORT itself (vs. the 26 volumes of evidence and testimony) is a false assertion as well. And anybody with access to the Warren Report or the Internet can easily see for themselves that Mr. Martin is all wet when he makes such a silly allegation. Because on Page 95 of the Warren Report, we find these words:
"An X-ray of the Governor’s wrist showed very minute metallic fragments, and two or three of these fragments were removed from his wrist. All these fragments were sufficiently small and light so that the nearly whole bullet found on the stretcher could have deposited those pieces of metal as it tumbled through his wrist." -- WCR; Page 95
And, quite obviously, the above excerpt from the Warren Report is referring to a PRE-OPERATIVE X-RAY of Governor Connally's wrist.
So, it's fairly clear that Orlando Martin doesn't know what he's talking about.
Footnote --- The topic of John Connally's pre-operative X-rays is a topic that I have written about online a few times in the last few years. And as I point out in those articles (linked below), there is ample evidence and testimony to be found in the 26 Warren Commission volumes (including photos of Connally's pre-operative wrist X-rays in Volume 17) to indicate the high likelihood that the total weight of the bullet fragments deposited in Governor Connally's whole body on 11/22/63 most certainly did not exceed the amount of metal/lead that is missing from Commission Exhibit No. 399:
http://JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/Connally Bullet Fragments
http://JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/Errors In Reclaiming History
Are you ready for more crappy research from a conspiracy theorist named Orlando? Here's some more:
Another thing that Orlando Martin has decided the Warren Commission was untruthful about is the subject of the "Missed Shot". Once again, Martin erroneously claims that the Commission has totally ignored something connected to the case, when, in fact, the Commission didn't ignore it at all.
In this instance, Martin said that the WC, within the Warren Report itself, ignored the mark that was found on the Main Street curb just after the assassination. But the Warren Commission did no such thing. The mark on the curb is dealt with on page 117 of the Warren Report. Apparently Martin never bothered to read, or comprehend correctly, these words that we find on page 117:
"Even if it were caused by a bullet fragment, the mark on the south curb of Main Street cannot be identified conclusively with any of the three shots fired. Under the circumstances it might have come from the bullet which hit the President’s head, or it might have been a product of the fragmentation of the missed shot upon hitting some other object in the area. Since he did not observe any of the shots striking the President, [James] Tague’s testimony that the second shot, rather than the third, caused the scratch on his cheek, does not assist in limiting the possibilities. The wide range of possibilities and the existence of conflicting testimony, when coupled with the impossibility of scientific verification, precludes a conclusive finding by the Commission as to which shot missed." -- WCR; Page 117
In other words, conspiracy theorist Orlando Martin, once again, doesn't seem to have the slightest idea what he's talking about.
More? Okay. This one's a lulu, too:
Martin says that Governor Connally was "sitting to the right of the President" in the limousine on 11/22/63. Of course, exactly the opposite is true. Connally was sitting to the LEFT of President Kennedy, as this photograph illustrates:
So, once more, Mr. Martin proves that he doesn't have a clue.
Most conspiracy kooks are happy to distort the true positioning of the limo's victims by telling the lie about Connally sitting directly in front of Kennedy. But Mr. Martin has decided to make the lie even more blatant and outrageous by saying that John Connally was actually sitting to the RIGHT of the President in the car.
I wouldn't be surprised if Martin soon has Jacqueline Kennedy changing places with William Greer, with Jackie driving the limousine and Greer sitting in the back seat next to JFK. Because it would seem as if no distortion of the known facts is too blatant or outrageous for Mr. Martin.
And, according to Martin, there were NO SHOTS fired from the southeast corner window on the sixth floor of the TSBD. None at all. I wonder what it was that Howard Brennan, Amos Euins, James Worrell, Mal Couch, and Robert Jackson saw sticking out of THAT EXACT WINDOW when President Kennedy was being assassinated by rifle fire on 11/22/63?
Maybe those witnesses all lied when they each claimed to see a rifle protruding from a window where Orlando Martin thinks NO SHOTS AT ALL were fired from. Or, perhaps Mr. Martin believes that all of those witnesses just imagined seeing a rifle in that precise window.
Or--maybe Martin wants to pretend that somebody was merely sticking a useless rifle out of the sixth-floor Sniper's Nest window just in order to fool people into thinking that shots were being fired from there.
But how the plotters got Harold Norman to hear the sound of a rifle being fired from that particular window, as well as hearing three bullet shells falling to the floor DURING THE ASSASSINATION, is a real head-scratcher. Isn't it, Mr. Martin?
~shrug~
Martin also claimed that the bullet that hit President Kennedy in the head could
not have come from Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. And one of the main reasons for this conclusion, says Martin, is because the Carcano test bullets fired through mock-up heads during the Discovery Channel's 2008 documentary "JFK: Inside The Target Car" did not break up into pieces.
But what Mr. Martin totally ignores are the detailed tests that were conducted by Dr. Alfred Olivier and Dr. John K. Lattimer, with those tests conclusively proving that a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet can (and will) definitely fragment and break into pieces after striking a human skull at full muzzle velocity, with the fragmented pieces of both Olivier's and Lattimer's test bullets looking very similar to the two large fragments of a bullet from Oswald's C2766 Carcano rifle that were recovered in the front seat of JFK's limousine after the assassination (CE567 and CE569). See the diagram below, which comes from page 219 of John Lattimer's 1980 book, "Kennedy And Lincoln":
More Martin Garbage:
Martin just flat-out lies when he claims that several doctors at Parkland Hospital looked for an exit wound on JFK's body after seeing the wound in Kennedy's throat.
This is pure bullshit, of course, because the Parkland doctors never turned JFK's body over while attempting to save his life at Parkland Hospital. Martin is just pulling crap out of thin air that never happened.
And Martin specifically said that Dr. Robert McClelland was one of the several Parkland physicians who specifically looked for a wound on the back of the President. But when we take a look at Dr. McClelland's Warren Commission testimony [at 6 H 39], we find the following exchange between McClelland and Arlen Specter:
MR. SPECTER -- "Dr. McClelland, why wasn't the President's body turned over?"
DR. McCLELLAND -- "The President's body was not turned over because the initial things that were done as in all such cases of extreme emergency are to first establish an airway and second, to stop hemorrhage and replace blood, so that these were the initial things that were carried out immediately without taking time to do a very thorough physical examination, which of course would have required that these other emergency measures not be done immediately."
MR. SPECTER -- "Did you make any examination of the President's back at all?"
DR. McCLELLAND -- "No."
MR. SPECTER -- "Was any examination of the President's back made to your knowledge?"
DR. McCLELLAND -- "Not here [at Parkland], no."
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And speaking of pulling imaginative crap out of thin air, I saved one of the best hunks of Martin's nonsense for last here. Wait till you hear this one:
Orlando Martin said on 6/24/10 that he thinks a bullet did, indeed, go "right through" President Kennedy, with that same bullet going on to hit Governor Connally (although a separate bullet hit Connally in the right wrist at Zapruder frame 295, per Martin's fantasy theory).
But then--get this--Martin has another bullet striking JFK from the front in the throat.
Martin actually thinks there was an exit wound in President Kennedy's CHEST that nobody at JFK's autopsy noticed at all! And nobody at Parkland Hospital noticed it either.
Yeah, sure, Orlando.
In other words, we have a team of trained medical pathologists at Bethesda Naval Hospital, who made notations in their autopsy report of virtually every scar and defect on President Kennedy's body -- including these notations on Page 3 of the autopsy report [Page 540 of the Warren Report]....
"Situated on the anterior chest wall in the nipple line are bilateral 2 cm. long recent transverse surgical incisions into the subcutaneous tissue. .... A similar clean wound measuring 2 cm. in length is situated on the antero-lateral aspect of the left mid arm. Situated on the antero-lateral aspect of each ankle is a recent 2 cm. transverse incision into the subcutaneous tissue. There is an old well healed 8 cm. McBurney abdominal incision. Over the lumbar spine in the midline is an old, well healed 15 cm. scar. Situated on the upper antero-lateral aspect of the right thigh is an old, well healed 8 cm. scar."
....But, according to Orlando Martin, those same autopsy surgeons who made those extensive comments in the autopsy report concerning all of those old scars and "recent surgical incisions" in the "anterior chest wall" of the President (which were incisions that were made by the doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, of course), were unable to find a bullet hole in JFK's chest.
Orlando, you're a howl!
IN SUMMARY:
After listening to him talk in just a single 1-hour interview, I wouldn't trust Mr. Martin to analyze a piece of Swiss cheese in order to see if it had any holes in it....let alone trust him to analyze any of the evidence associated with President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
I said it previously above, but it's worth a replay to close out this article -- Orlando Martin doesn't have a clue.
David Von Pein
June 26, 2010
Revised July 8, 2010
ORLANDO MARTIN (PART 2)
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