ROBERT HARRIS SAID:
[Darrell] Tomlinson was stating that the bullet was on a different stretcher than the one he brought down on the elevator. Nonetheless, [Arlen] Specter repeatedly badgered him to change his story, but could only manage to get his inconvenient witness to say that he wasn't sure.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Bob, you start out in a great-big hole right off the bat when you insist that Darrell Tomlinson positively found the bullet on a stretcher other than Connally's.
Tomlinson's 1964 Warren Commission testimony shows just how confused and uncertain he was about the stretchers. There can be no doubt about the fact that Tomlinson, during his WC session (which is testimony that he provided within just a few months of the assassination), just flat-out couldn't remember which stretcher was Connally's. Did his memory improve drastically 25 years later for the 1988 PBS-TV program?:
ARLEN SPECTER -- "What did you tell the Secret Service man about which stretcher you took off of the elevator?"
DARRELL TOMLINSON -- "I told him that I was not sure, and I am not--I'm not sure of it, but as I said, I would be going against the oath which I took a while ago, because I am definitely not sure."
MR. SPECTER -- "Do you remember if you told the Secret Service man which stretcher you thought you took off of the elevator?"
MR. TOMLINSON -- "Well, we talked about taking a stretcher off of the elevator, but then when it comes down on an oath, I wouldn't say for sure, I really don't remember."
[...]
MR. SPECTER -- "You say you can't really take an oath today to be sure whether it was stretcher A or stretcher B that you took off the elevator?"
MR. TOMLINSON -- "Well, today or any other day, I'm just not sure of it, whether it was A or B that I took off."
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AN INSTANT REPLAY (JUST FOR EMPHASIS):
"I am definitely not sure." -- Darrell Tomlinson; 1964
"I really don't remember." -- Darrell Tomlinson; 1964
"I'm just not sure of it." -- Darrell Tomlinson; 1964
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TO SUMMARIZE:
The people who want to believe that CE399 never touched JFK or Governor Connally are living in a dream world. Simple as that.
And those same people like to ignore multiple things that very much favor the likelihood of CE399 being the "real" stretcher bullet that went through both victims. Such as:
1.) This Mannlicher-Carcano test bullet (pictured below), which was fired through a human wrist bone at a reduced muzzle velocity of 1,100fps, ended up in near-perfect condition:
2.) CE399 was positively fired in Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (CE139), which is a fact that makes it MUCH more likely that the conspiracy theorists are wrong when they contend that CE399 is a fraud, because of the fact that 399 is a bullet that aligns with and corroborates OTHER ballistics evidence in the JFK case that ALSO is tied irrevocably to that SAME Carcano rifle -- e.g., the three bullet shells found in the TSBD Sniper's Nest and the two bullet fragments found in the limousine.
3.) Despite the constant incorrect claims made by CTers in this regard, CE399 just happens to have just about the right amount of lead missing from its total unfired weight (of approx. 160 to 161 grains) to account very nicely for the very small bullet fragments that were deposited in Governor John Connally's body.
And I can make a very good case for there probably having been less than 1.0 TOTAL grains of lead deposited in the two victims by CE399 on 11/22/63. And I make that case in this article.
Plus, via the testimony of Dr. Charles Gregory (and by taking a good look at all of the X-rays of Governor Connally's wrist, chest, and thigh), I can also make a very good case for there having been very, very few metallic fragments left inside Connally's body on the day they buried him in 1993 (possibly as few as two tiny fragments).
4.) If Darrell Tomlinson had really found a "pointy-tipped" bullet on a Parkland stretcher, then this must mean that the bullet that struck Connally did a lot of damage to his body and then emerged on a stretcher with its POINTY tip still POINTY! And if that can happen, then why can't CE399 have a similar "near pristine" look to it after doing the same damage to Connally?
And surely the CTers don't want to think that some plotters planted a POINTY bullet on a stretcher at Parkland in order to frame ONLY OSWALD....right?
But it seems that Bob Harris, incredibly, DOES advocate such a loony theory -- i.e., some conspirator planted a bullet that was obviously NOT from Oswald's Carcano rifle on the WRONG STRETCHER at Parkland Hospital!
Talk about incompetent plotters! This takes the prize (and the cake)!
5.) Governor Connally didn't SEE any bullet fall to the floor in the operating room on November 22nd. He said he heard the sound of something made of metal hitting the floor. That's all.
How could Connally know for certain that what he heard was a bullet? Answer: He couldn't. It could have been any number of "metallic" things that hit the floor at that particular moment in time when Governor Connally was in the operating room.
But in light of all the evidence that indicates that Connally was hit by just ONE single bullet on 11/22/63--with that one bullet being stretcher bullet CE399--it becomes quite clear that the metal object that Connally heard falling to the floor that day could not possibly have been the bullet that struck him in Dealey Plaza.
6.) Both the Warren Commission and the HSCA determined to their overall satisfaction that Bullet CE399 WAS, indeed, the exact bullet that struck both President Kennedy and Governor Connally.
Now, I ask this -- Since BOTH of those official Government bodies came to the same conclusion regarding this key piece of evidence (and the Warren Commission and HSCA were, after all, responsible for officially investigating this case--not Robert Harris or other anti-399 conspiracists) -- then why do so many people still want to claim that CE399 didn't get within a country mile of Kennedy or Connally on November 22, 1963?
Is it merely a distrust of all "U.S. Government" agencies perhaps? Probably so, huh? After all, the Government ALWAYS lies to its people, doesn't it? Even TOTALLY DIFFERENT Government entities who investigated JFK's murder some 14 to 15 years apart.
In my opinion, however, that type of argument is just a cop-out. Simple as that.
I'd advise Robert Harris to take another look at the TOTALITY of evidence surrounding Warren Commission Exhibit 399....and then add a little common sense to that totality, as I have tried to do in my list above (and at my SBT Blog linked below).
David Von Pein
September 9, 2009
