Robert Groden has investigated the JFK assassination since his 18th birthday on Nov.22, 1963. He has done some good work, releasing the Zapruder film and many other pictures and films that had been previously hidden from the public, thus helping to get another investigation going in 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). He has released lots more pictures in his latest book JFK: Absolute Proof: The Killing of a President. He worked with the House committee too, though he didn’t get some of his opinions into its report. He moved to Dallas in the 1990s so he could hang out in Dealey Plaza and promote his views and sell his books on the Grassy Knoll there, especially on special occasions like anniversaries, and to help lead memorial ceremonies there, and he has courageously stuck to his mission to support "the truth" despite threats, injuries and arrests for trespassing on the knoll through the years. His books include best-sellers like High Treason.
In 2021 Groden recorded a lecture on his latest book at the Allen Public Library, available on youtube (click on "watch on you tube" inside the picture to see, or click on the link).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEWLrJjr270
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEWLrJjr270
He also appeared in the NewsNation youtube video Unsolved: The JFK Assassination, released on the same day I myself arrived in Dallas on Nov.20, 2023 for the 60th anniversary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYxWVgSZPc8
I shook his hand on the Grassy Knoll on Nov.22, 2023, so he may be the only JFK investigator, whether a "conspiracy buff" like him or a "lone nutter" like me, whom I have actually met. He is a well-known and diligent conspiracy theorist, and as such needs my review. I find that his claims mostly result from a mixture of out-of-date and discredited ideas and invalid, exaggerated interpretations of what he shows in drawings, photographs and films.
In the "JFK: Absolute Proof" video, Groden begins by showing films of JFK on Nov.22, 1963, climaxing with the assassination. After the shooting he shows "everybody running to the grassy knoll" since he believes that’s where the fatal shot that killed JFK came from. He says most people heard that shot come from there, and that people heard many shots. That’s not true; even Josiah Thompson once admitted that almost 80% of the people in Dealey Plaza thought there were 3 shots that came from the Texas School Book Depository. Many people ran west not only to "chase the assassin" up the grassy knoll, but they ran that way because the president had moved in that direction after getting shot. He shows a suppressed picture of LBJ "winking" at his friend in congress after getting sworn in as the new president on Air Force One, but this is not clear in the photo. As we will see, although he does not charge LBJ with the JFK murder, he says JFK was killed because the CIA and others wanted to expand the war in Vietnam, as LBJ ultimately did. Like Josiah Thompson, Oliver Stone and many others, he bases his conspiracy theory on this attributed motive. The theory thus descends from and was largely initially motivated by opposition to the Vietnam War and other US militarist projects and policies, which I also opposed at the time, and was one reason I agreed with the conspiracy theories for many years.
Groden’s main argument against the official account concerns the "single bullet theory", which states that one bullet hit Kennedy in the upper right back, exited his throat and went on to hit Governor John Connally of Texas who was sitting in front of him, even though many other investigators have pretty well validated this theory. He says he has another name for this theory, but won’t speak it at this lecture "in mixed company". "It sounds like ‘single bullet theory", he assures us. A few minutes later he says his name for it anyway, calling it the "single bullshit theory". He shows a phony drawing (vaguely resembling the earlier "Groden picture" drawn by Mr. Cutler which Groden made famous on the 1975 Good Night America show with Geraldo Rivera), showing the same impossible mid-air S-curve which conspiracy buffs claim the single bullet had to make in order for it to hit both the president and the governor, which is why it is also called the "magic bullet." He shows a picture looking north toward the knoll that he claims shows the moment the first shot hit from behind. It is not from the Zapruder film; it is not a picture of when the "magic bullet" hit, it is not the moment of the first shot, and despite Groden’s claims, it does not show how Kennedy and Connally were sitting when the single bullet actually hit them. Kennedy was hit lower in the throat than where his arrow is pointing, and it hit his back higher than he shows, as we’ll see.
He also shows the discredited Warren Commission picture of the "pristine bullet", which appears undamaged, but he does not show the later HSCA end-view picture (below) that shows that the bullet has been severely flattened after hitting Governor Connally’s bones sideways. Groden ignores this sideways tumble or yaw made by the bullet after it emerged from Kennedy’s throat.
He pictures Arlen Specter who invented the single bullet theory for the Warren Commission in 1964. Groden is one of those who "can’t let go of the magic bullet", as commentators like Sean Munger mention. He shows Arlen Specter’s correct view of the trajectory of the single bullet, but he says it’s not correct.
Groden shows Specter’s incorrect, un-artistic, distorted drawing of Kennedy with the arrow piercing his neck, but I don’t think anyone today says this is a correct picture. Groden goes on to show his even-more exaggerated drawing of how Connally was sitting right in front of JFK in the limo, showing a bullet trajectory that is much more slanted toward the left (south). Then he shows his overblown view of how far further left Connally is sitting in the official view. He calls it "ridiculous", and of course it is, but it is his own picture that is ridiculous. He next shows seating of the car, which seems a correct view, but it can be seen there that Connally’s seat was not quite directly in front of JFK’s back seat, but about 1 or 2 inches to the left of it. The picture and the bogus drawings also obscure the fact that Connally’s jump seat is several inches lower in elevation than the back seat. Below is a more accurate, more-recent version of how the 2 men were sitting in their seats. Notice that, as the Zapruder film and other pictures show, JFK is seated in the right corner of his back seat, while Connally is seated in the middle of his jump seat, with his body turned toward the right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sbt2.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sbt2.jpg
He does not agree with the time given by "lone nutters" (we who contend that the "nut" Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK acting alone) for the first shot from behind. Groden instead claims that the first shot hit Kennedy’s throat from the front, well before the presidential limo went behind the Stemmons Freeway sign in the Zapruder film. He shows Zapruder film pictures, claiming JFK was hit in the throat when in fact he was still waving to the crowd as the film shows. He even says the president heard the throat shot before it hit, even though shots travel far too fast for that to have happened. He obviously has no idea when this phony "first shot, one that hit JFK’s throat" happened. He does not say where this shot was fired from, and he doesn’t seem to claim, as some do, that this bullet went through the front windshield (later he claims the windshield damage came from "a shot that missed"). Groden shows an autopsy photo of Kennedy, with his head hanging back a bit on a ledge, showing the tracheotomy obscuring the throat wound. Then he shows another photo altered to show where he estimates the original wound was. It seems correct-- just where others such as Myers say the wound was; but that makes it below where his back entry wound really was.
He shows the autopsy photo of JFK’s back wound, but he confused the actual wound, the large hole shown in the photo, with a small blood splatter below and left of it (too far left for it to have been the back entry wound), which looks just like other splatters on his back nearby and below. He calls the actual entry wound in the upper back "the exit wound of the first throat shot from the front", and calls the small splatter below it "the entry wound in the back".
Then he shows Zapruder film pictures, claiming JFK was hit from behind in the back before the car went behind the sign, when in fact he was still waving to the crowd as the film shows. He shows the president reacting to the shot after emerging from the sign, but he claims this shot to his upper back came 2 seconds earlier, as well as after the throat shot that hit before that. His timing for the back wound allows him to claim a different bullet hit Connally "later". Then soon afterward he claims, while showing more Zapruder frames, that Connally was not reacting yet when Kennedy came out from behind the sign, but only later in about frame 238 when he turned again to the right. This in spite of the film actually showing that the two men reacted simultaneously, as Posner and Myers have shown. Myers shows Connally’s coat flap at frame 224 which proves when he was hit. https://youtu.be/8AlKUJHXYxQ?si=SS8i8osSsqyeynLN&t=136 https://youtu.be/8AlKUJHXYxQ?si=SS8i8osSsqyeynLN&t=136 Groden has apparently put two later frames close together to show Connally suddenly snapping his head to the right somewhere near frame 238, but I see a continuous movement through frames 224 to well past frame 270. It seems that his own distortion of the Zapruder film is the "joke" instead of the "single bullet theory".
He claims that if he had been shot earlier at frame 224, that Connally would have had to drop his hat due to his wrist injury then, although he is still holding it at frame 238. But that is not true; in fact he hung onto his hat all the way to the hospital even while he was unconscious. The bullet hitting his wrist did not impair his ability to hold his hat at all. This is Nellie Connally’s account of the event, saying he held his hat over his chest. https://web.archive.org/web/20001013092436/http://www.texasmonthly.com/mag/1998/nov/extra/transcripts.3.html Groden then says the Zapruder film shows Connally’s wrist and that it showed no blood, but there is red shown in the picture and it is too blurry to tell just what is being shown. Amazingly, Groden conjures up yet another bullet that hit Connally's wrist.
Groden shows what he claims is Kennedy’s jacket, torn well below where it actually hit JFK’s back, but then amazingly he shows JFK’s bloody shirt with the hole closer to the same position as the large hole shown in the autopsy photo-- that he claims is the exit wound from a shot from the front that hit JFK’s throat. "The bullet hole in the shirt worn by Kennedy and the bullet hole in the suit jacket worn by Kennedy both show bullet holes between 5 and 6 inches (13 and 15 cm) below the top of Kennedy's collar. These do not necessarily correspond with bullet wounds, since multiple photos taken of the President during the motorcade show that his jacket was bunched in the rear below his collar" Mcadams.posc.mu.edu
Groden shows autopsy doctor Boswell’s famous inaccurate drawing of where the entrance shot in the back hit, drawn a bit lower than the autopsy photo shows. It was not "the exact point", as
Boswell later admitted to the Warren Commission https://barringerlit.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/6/13263242/jfk_thought_control_and_thought_crimes.pdf page 14. And the drawing is not a picture of JFK’s body. But its hole is still closer to the autopsy photo’s hole than to Groden’s little splatter that HE claims is the entrance wound, instead of the actual entrance hole above it. Kennedy’s physician Dr. Burkley evidently used the Boswell drawing as evidence for signing the autopsy report that Groden shows. Burkley said Kennedy was struck at thoracic spine bone #3 (T-3), but the House Committee said it was just below thoracic bone #1 (T-1), and doctors found that his lowest neck vertebra C-6 was somehow grazed and wounded by the bullet---
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1807339/pdf/bullnyacadmed00139-0044.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1807339/pdf/bullnyacadmed00139-0044.pdf
"The other missile entered the right superior posterior thorax above the scapula" according to the signed statement given to the Warren Commission by the autopsy doctors Humes, Boswell and Finck-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1807339/pdf/bullnyacadmed00139-0044.pdf page 6. Wikipedia documented and referenced that JFK’s back entry wound was reported by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) as located at the "first thoracic vertebra". They showed a careful drawing based on the autopsy photo shown by Groden, without the blood splatters, which shows the same back entrance wound that he calls the throat shot’s exit wound. "The conclusion of bullet entry specifically at the first thoracic vertebra was made in a 1979 report on the Kennedy assassination by the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel. The HSCA examined the autopsy photographs and X-rays before rendering its opinions as to bullet entry and exit locations, and obtained testimony from autopsy physicians that these were the correct photographs and X-rays taken during the autopsy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory -- see Location of Back Wound. The "single bullet" exited at the "lower anterior neck", as the autopsy doctors stated on page 3 of the Warren Commission appendix linked above.
Myers shows the back wound location:
Myers shows the throat wound location:
The HSCA’s circa 1979 extensive study of the single bullet’s trajectory is found here:
https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/html/HSCA_Vol6_0020a.htm
https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol6/html/HSCA_Vol6_0020a.htm
The downward trajectory angle is said to be about 21 degrees, minus 3 degrees to account for the downward angle on Elm Street. The trajectory of the back and neck shot was determined to come from the Texas School Book Depository by the Warren Commission (based on Specter’s theory) in 1964, the HSCA in 1979,
Failure Analysis Associates in 1993,
https://youtu.be/PYI4PqtIyE0?si=jnOAz5xPGZrgUrNh&t=5140 and
Dale Meyers in 2003,
https://youtu.be/8AlKUJHXYxQ?si=4HFGH2CMJswDqruM&t=255 The 1988 Nova Documentary showed it was possible. https://youtu.be/5kXU72RN4-M?si=ZjM-372uaxXpyWss&t=1504
Two FBI agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert apparently signed a receipt Groden shows us, acknowledging receipt of a "missile" removed by Commander Humes at the autopsy. But Sibert testified, "In as much as no complete bullet of any size could be located in the brain area and likewise no bullet could be located in the back or any other area of the body as determined by total body X-Rays and inspection revealing there was no point of exit, the individuals performing the autopsy were at a loss to explain why they could find no bullets". And from William Matson Law https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKlawW.htm, In the Eye of History (2005) (scrolldown to see his interviews) Law: "Here's a piece I don't know what to think of. He said- Custer again - he's talking about finding a bullet fragment in the autopsy room. I've talked to quite a few people and no one else remembers this: "I called one of the pathologists over and said, 'Hey, we have a bullet here.' As soon as they heard that, they came down off the raised platform, they ran over and then picked it up. Then Sibert and O'Neill also came over and said, `Well, we want that.' Sibert: 'We never... the only thing we took position of, William, was a little jar with bullet fragments that had been removed from the brain. You know, metal particles? Law: 'That's the only thing I've ever had reported to me...' " So this "receipt" document is either a forgery, or the "missile" they referred to in it was the jar in which fragments were kept. Both Sibert statements are quoted from https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsibertW.htm https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsibertW.htm
Groden claims the fragments removed from Connally’s wrist weighed more than the bullet CE399, the single bullet, without supplying any legible evidence, but most accounts say they weighed less. "It would appear that the combined weight of all of the above (fragments) would not even come close to weighing, much less exceeding, the 2.4 grains missing from the stretcher bullet" said Bugliosi in Reclaiming History (quoted from a google summary).
Dr. Shaw did say the single bullet was still in Connally’s thigh in the operating room, after Connally was taken off the stretcher where a bullet was claimed to be found, as Groden says, but Shaw didn’t actually say he saw the bullet. He said there was no significant injury to the left thigh, and the bullet "will be removed". Dr. Shaw said it was one bullet who hit Connally. https://youtu.be/D-CDLl82n-E?si=xvG7z3G4_ka_6VZC I can find no document that says he found the bullet later when he said it "will be removed". We know that the stretcher bullet was fired by Oswald’s rifle according to ballistic evidence, so it could not have been planted on the Connally stretcher at Parkland unless some conspirator recovered a flattened bullet fired from Oswald’s rifle and brought it to Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital within a couple of hours after the shooting. We know there were three bullets fired from Oswald’s gun, and three cartridges from them on the floor. Did someone find his bullet that hit the Main Street curb and then bring it to the Parkland stretcher? That’s some bit of luck and cleverness. Did the curb flatten the bullet? And what happened to the bullet Dr. Shaw supposedly recovered? Was he part of the cover-up too? Did he hide it so it could not be traced to some other unknown assassin with an unknown rifle, which Dr. Shaw still says was fired from the rear?
The Zapruder film did not show JFK hit in the front temple, and his head did not initially move "back and to the left", but forward-- in the first couple of frames 313 and 314. Those who look carefully can see this movement even without seeing the frames. Conspiracy theories do not look at the film closely. They are hypnotized by the phrase from the Geraldo Rivera show. Also, a human head is not just a physical object; it is sensitive and alive. So being pushed in the direction of the bullet is not a sufficient explanation. JFK’s back nerves reacted to this shot. His back brace restricted his movement forward. Many tests have been done on objects being shot, and fragments move in many ways after an object is shot. What’s more, there was a jet propulsion effect on JFK’s head from tissue and blood pushed forward, pushing his head backward. That jet of tissue and blood being pushed forward from his head is what we see on the film in Zapruder frame 313.
Conspiracy theory dogma says "entrance wounds are small, exit wounds are large". But JFK’s horrific right-back head wound was too large to be just an exit wound. What Groden’s witnesses saw was the explosion of the full-metal-jacketed military bullet hitting hard skull and bone and brain tissue at twice the speed of sound. But that was not the entrance wound either. The entrance wound was shown by the autopsy photo and drawings as a small hole in the middle-back of the head. The bullet exploded the back of his head and drove most of the tissue and blood forward through the exit wound in the right top of his head. Autopsy doctors confirmed that the square-like shape of the large wound in the back of JFK’s head was near the entry wound, and the beveled shape of the wounds to his upper right head was the exit wound. The bullet fragments from the fatal bullet were also driven forward out of the exit wound into the front seat area of the limo. Windshield and chrome frame damages happening after the first shots were caused by bullet and skull fragments from the head shot, not from a shot that missed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/05/20/2-jfk-autopsy-pathologists-defend-conclusion-on-fatal-bullet/83e63cf2-ef0b-4dbe-9b27-8da7bbd3fedb/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/05/20/2-jfk-autopsy-pathologists-defend-conclusion-on-fatal-bullet/83e63cf2-ef0b-4dbe-9b27-8da7bbd3fedb/
The autopsy photos and Xrays of the president’s head are what are accurate, as the HSCA confirmed; not witnesses in Dealey Plaza including agent Clint Hill who were nowhere near where the bullets struck. There is also no reason to expect that all skull fragments would be driven in any particular direction after the top-back of JFK’s head exploded, despite claims by Groden and others. Some pieces of exploded skull from the back of JFK’s head would have been pushed forward against other parts of the skull and brain and propelled up and backwards. As Walter Chronkite in the 1988 PBS Nova program showed, 4 doctors at Parkland including McClelland confirmed that the autopsy photos were correct that the shots came from behind-- https://youtu.be/5kXU72RN4-M?si=oaFnowPg-NjpNcDk&t=2782 https://youtu.be/5kXU72RN4-M?si=oaFnowPg-NjpNcDk&t=2782 Doctors treating JFK at Parkland were focusing on saving JFK’s life if they could, not closely examining the body for an autopsy. They did not see the upper back wound and most did not see the explosive wound in the back of the head, since his body was not turned over.
The autopsy doctors Humes and Boswell confirmed that the autopsy photos were correct. A report from the New York Times in a 1992 about their interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association:
"The pathologists, who retired from the Navy in the late 1960's, said the bullets were fired by a high-velocity weapon.
"We documented our findings in spades," Dr. Boswell said. "It's all there in the records," which include X-rays from head to toe and 52 photographs.
Dr. Humes said, "No significant aspect of the autopsy was left unphotographed." "In 1963, we proved at the autopsy table that President Kennedy was struck from above and behind by the fatal shot," Dr. Humes said, adding, "I am tired of being beaten upon by people who are supremely ignorant of the scientific facts of the President's death."
The autopsy results have been independently confirmed several times."
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/20/us/doctors-affirm-kennedy-autopsy-report.html https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/20/us/doctors-affirm-kennedy-autopsy-report.html
The only indication that Robert Knudson took any autopsy pictures comes from Douglas Horne in 2009, as this conspiracy-oriented report says-- https://barringerlit.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/6/13263242/jfk_thought_control_and_thought_crimes.pdf https://barringerlit.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/6/13263242/jfk_thought_control_and_thought_crimes.pdfpage 12. The HSCA confirmed that the autopsy photos and Xrays at the National Archives are legitimate. Those who say they are not, are saying so just so they can alter history and claim that the fatal head shot came from the front. The autopsy doctors declared that their observations and all their photos and Xrays confirmed that the shot came from the rear.
Groden points out a nick in Elm Street in front of the motorcycle escort, allegedly made right after the fatal head shot according to pictures he shows. It is a mystery where it came from. But for one thing, the crowds in the picture were too large for where the nick was for it to have been further down where Kennedy was shot. He quotes Jean Newman saying the residue from the shot was behind the car, and saying therefore the shot came from the front; but since residue went all over everywhere, her account means nothing. The street nick could have been the result of fragments from the first bullet that missed, broken off when the bullet hit a tree branch or a light pole. Groden claims that a small nick near a manhole cover was made by a bullet, and aligns it with the Dallas Records Building instead of the Depository. He shows pictures of someone ("an FBI agent") picking up what he says is the bullet nearby in the grass and putting it in his pocket. But we don’t actually see the bullet, and the man who picked it up is said to be blond, but the man who put something in his pocket was dark-haired. There is no way to confirm that Groden’s various pictures in sidewalks were made by bullets, or what someone picked up from the grass. The nicks and scrapes in the concrete he shows indicate by their direction that, if anything, they were mostly shots from behind, but most people near the Depository only heard 3 shots, not a whole bunch of extra ones. There was no physical evidence of a shooter at the far-west TSBD windows, from which a scrape on the north Elm Street sidewalk he shows must have come from. The nick in the manhole cover and the bullet in the grass could have been made by the first bullet that missed, having been deflected by a tree branch, and fragments from that same bullet could have hit the curb on Main Street and dislodged the concrete that hit James Tague. More about these missed shots here: https://michaelgriffith1.tripod.com/extras.htm https://michaelgriffith1.tripod.com/extras.htm
Groden shows a picture taken by James Powell 30 seconds after the shooting of the TSBD 6th floor southeast window and the boxes there, and it says it shows that Oswald was not there, but he had probably left a few seconds before. The picture does not show someone else there, as he claims, or any "shape of a leg" there. The position of the boxes were moved during the investigation and afterward, so none of the pictures he shows necessarily show where the boxes were when Oswald was shooting.
Mrs. Reid did not see Oswald and "his coke bottle" until 2 minutes after the shooting, according to Anthony Summers and other accounts. Oswald was seen 90 seconds later on the second floor by Baker and Truly, probably not 72 seconds later already in the lunch room as Oswald claimed. The latter number may also be from one of Baker's re-enactments, but the timing of those varied, and Baker said it probably took him longer. See The Escape and The Stairway from Inside the Book Depository by LEMMiNO, a popular video source from Sweden, from 2023. Oswald having started down the stairs more than 30 seconds after shooting JFK, Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles would have already been exiting the back door, if indeed they came down when they said they did. There is doubt about this timing since they misidentified where Billy Lovelady was at the time they went out, and later denied seeing him. See "The Stairway" at the above link. There was plenty of room in the sniper’s nest, contrary to what Groden says. But did he find a picture of someone in a window further west on the 6th floor? Was this the shooter who made the big scrape on the north Elm Street sidewalk? Possibly, but contrary to what Groden claims, boxes next to the windows prevented anyone from seeing the sniper’s nest to the east/left, as Bonnie Ray Williams said about the time when he ate lunch there some minutes before the shooting. If this was someone else pictured so vaguely in that western window on the 6th floor, where did this person go, and if this person shot at JFK, where is the rifle? A good account of all the witnesses in the Depository is here at "Inside the Book Depository": https://youtu.be/5u7euN1HTuU
Groden buys Oswald’s story that his face was pasted on someone else’s body in the photographs of Oswald holding his rifle in the backyard at his home on Neely Street in late March 1963. I see no reason to think the body is not Oswald’s, or that the rifle which this body is holding is not Oswald’s. The rest of the face looks like Oswald too, unless the kooky story about him having a double is correct and somebody brought him to Oswald’s house and photographed him with Oswald’s camera. And Marina stated that she took the pictures, despite what she might have said much later. The photos were matched to Oswald’s camera by the particular markings made by it. The HSCA examined the photographs under the direction of C.S. McCamy and Cecil Kirk, with the assistance of David Eisendrath. "Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt, an FBI photographic expert, ". said the backyard photographs CE 133-A and B are authentic. Shaneyfelt examined them under magnification and found no characteristics of compositing or retouching." The horizontal line above the chin, which actually appears wider in one photo than the other, was not due to "facial acme" but the HSCA investigators wrote: "Although the cause of these lines has not been definitely established, there is no evidence to indicate that they are the result of an attempt to fake the photograph. This is because similar although less pronounced lines were found using the same digital enhancement technique on a known authentic photographic negative. Therefore, those lines may have been a product of the enhancement process.... They could have been introduced during the film drying process. Particulate and dissolved material in the film wash water can leave a so-called water stain on film. As the water evaporates, the particulate and dissolved material is deposited on the emulsion...." If this line was where the Oswald backyard pictures were cut, why are the lines in the pictures so fuzzy? The HSCA also found that Oswald’s chin, which appeared straighter on the bottom compared to other pictures of him, was partly obscured by shadows, as his eyes were. No fake photographic "chin transplant" was necessary. The fake ID Oswald made about the same time the backyard photos were taken shows the same "transplant". https://youtu.be/PYI4PqtIyE0?si=G2W-wKPh1SzWkoSD&t=2086 See this link for details on all these issues. https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/infojfk/jfk6/hscbkyd.htm
Accounts by Josiah Thompson, Gerald Posner and others say that well over 70% of witnesses in Dealey Plaza said the shots sounded like they came from the School Book Depository, just as John Connally said. 80% did not say they came from the grassy knoll, as Groden claims. In any case, accounts about this vary greatly. The shape in the famous photo that Groden shows taken by Mary Moorman has been analyzed and shown to be trees and shadows. The HSCA found no evidence of any human form after enhancement of the picture https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html#other https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html#other page 84. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badge_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badge_Man There is no reason to think that the Zapruder film shows two shots to the back of JFK’s head either, as Groden claims, just because JFK is still moving down smoothly into his seat 14 frames after the fatal head shot.
Groden defends the motorcycle recording from which the HSCA concluded that a second gunman fired a shot from the grassy knoll. Of course this recording is not claimed by Groden as evidence for all the other shots Groden asserts. There were in fact no such "sounds" that anyone could hear on the tape at all that could be synchronized with anything. And different investigations vary on what the Zapruder film indicates about when shots occurred, so matching them with computer blips is not valid. Since the Zapruder film has no sound, we can only infer when shots were fired based on reactions of people shown in the film, and accounts vary about this. He says in the NewsNation video that the "chime" he referred to, and said to be heard on the recording, can be heard in Dealey Plaza, and maybe it sounded once at 12:30. But in 1982, 12 scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, including Nobel laureates Norman Ramsey and Luis Alvarez, unanimously concluded that the acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed", was recorded after the shots, and did not indicate additional gunshots. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/10264/report-of-the-committee-on-ballistic-acoustics D.B. Thomas defends the original HSCA conclusion, while Ralph Linsker and the NAS continue to refute it. So does Officer H.B. McLain, who says he and his motorcycle dictabelt recorder which the HSCA studied were not even in Dealey Plaza yet when the assassination happened. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald#House_Select_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald#House_Select_Committee Maybe the chime could have been recorded when McLain was nearby but still on Main St.
Groden wraps up his lecture with a few further claims from beyond Dealey Plaza. The document 1035-960 outlines how CIA people should respond to critics of the Warren Commission. It seems a valid reference to me, so far. But it does not prove that the CIA masterminded the assassination. They just want the Warren Commission’s view defended and probably were concerned about people blaming the CIA. Groden claims that fake documentaries he calls "mockumentaries" were made, and maybe they were, but the ones I have linked to my site have no such distortions as Groden claims for mockumentaries. The "smoking gun" McCone-Rowley document from the CIA to the Secret Service is a fake. According to researcher Anthony Marsh, "When I looked at it I knew instantly that it was a fake. How? It is not written in the proper format using the proper CIA style. One tip off is the marking "CO-2-34,030." That is actually from a Secret Service report. How would I know? Because I had obtained and used on my Website some of the pages from that SS report, so the notation jumped out as a fabrication. What someone did was take a page from the SS report, maybe even downloaded it from my Web page, removed the original text and wrote their own. Also the wording is not how the CIA would word a document of that type at that time. They would not refer to Hoover by name or agencies by common names." Archivist Heather MacRae could not find a copy of this document in the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. http://mccone-rowley.blogspot.com/
A National Archives document on the CIA files confirms Oswald had no association with the CIA https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/180-10142-10413.pdf
In the question and answer period, Groden claims that Dr. Malcolm Perry said he didn’t do the tracheotomy and that the shot came from the front. But he didn’t say that. "He said he thought the small hole in Kennedy’s throat looked like an entrance wound. Right after his entrance-wound statement, Dr Perry said: "Neither Dr Clark nor I know how many bullets there were or where they came from." Right away, so many took the entrance wound at the throat to mean the shot had come from the front, not the rear, which was the Texas School Book Depository building where Lee Harvey Oswald fired out of a sixth-floor window. "I shouldn’t have said anything," Malcolm Perry remembers today. "I was naive. I didn’t know how much trouble I could get into. "I shouldn’t have surmised. If I hadn’t said that, there wouldn’t have been a conspiracy theory." The exams later showed it was an exit wound. No matter now. The conspiracy theories clutched the throat wound. For the conference after Oswald’s death, Perry had his statements typed out and this time there was no dangerous confusion. Dr Perry testified for a day at the Warren Commission. He wonders if any reporters read the report. For the cry of conspiracy was raised by the jackals."-- https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-10037146.html https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-10037146.html The conspiracy theory source referenced earlier (jfk_thought_control_and_thought_crimes.pdf) said that Perry later told some people privately that he still thought the shot came from the front.
To his credit, Groden refutes some other conspiracy theories. No-one could even see the president where he would have been shot from the sewer. The secret service man didn’t shoot JFK. He said not a lot more can be learned from documents redacted to prevent damages to people mentioned in them; any smoking gun government document saying "we did it" would have been destroyed long ago. But he seems to have no problem with Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, in which he himself portrayed Dr. McClelland and had several other roles.
Groden says Oswald was denied counsel when held at the police station and was denied his civil rights. In fact, Oswald refused the offer from the president of the Dallas Bar Association to represent him and held out instead for a New York communist attorney named Abt whom he was unable to reach in time. This was reported by the Dallas Morning News. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Louis_Nichols The Bar Association monitored his treatment while in custody to make sure his rights were respected, and they were.
Groden cannot say who killed President Kennedy. But he does not refrain from attributing the assassination to the covert actions department of the CIA and to organized crime. The CIA wanted to continue the war in Vietnam because they were making a fortune off of it, he says. But I don’t think salaried government employees can make such fortunes. And he says it was because this war gave the CIA a lot of power, and that it was their war. But I can’t attribute the entire war in Vietnam to the CIA. It was the habitual containment policy against communism that was the main motive, and it was the military industrial complex that profited. And Kennedy was an old cold warrior, and although he expressed some doubts about continuing his incipient US intervention in Vietnam in an interview with Walter Chronkite, and there was a document that suggested he might withdraw, we don’t really know what Kennedy would have decided.
It’s true the Kennedys were waging a war on organized crime. The HSCA expert on the mob said there was no talk of killing JFK, however. But he and his associates did not do direct surveillance on New Orleans and Dallas mob boss Carlos Marcello. I am not clear on what Carlos Marcello was saying then. According to the documentary Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald, RFK had tried to deport him, and he hired investigators David Ferry and Guy Banister to help his lawyer successfully defend him. Now a reporter on that documentary Guy Russo says that Marcello didn’t say anything about JFK (probably referring to what Blakey said he said), and even liked him. On the other hand, author Edward Becker said that Marcello was mad at the Kennedys, and that he talked of killing JFK so he’d be rid of Bobby who had deported and investigated him. A mob museum article says Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald ("to silence him", say many conspiracy theorists), was an associate of both Marcello and Chicago boss Sam Giancana, but gives no details. The Giancana association was probably from many years before when Ruby was a young man in Chicago. In the weeks before the assassination Ruby made many phone calls to Marcello and other crime figures-- to find strippers for his club, at least, or to get legal help about labor issues. I’m not sure how Groden connects this mob theory to the CIA, except that many rightly suspect that the CIA hired Mafia men to help try to kill Fidel Castro in the days and months before (and after) the Kennedy assassination.
This article goes into the strange story of Gordon Arnold, whom Groden mentions as having his film taken away. https://www.jfk-assassination.net/arnold2.htm
Groden says that Johnny Brewer could not have seen Oswald enter the Texas Theater from inside the shoe store where he was manager. But it is well known that Johnny Brewer went out of the store onto Jefferson Blvd and followed Oswald down the street, saw him go into the theater without buying a ticket, told the clerk to call the police, went into the theater, and told the police where he was sitting.
Robert Groden has collected many previously-hidden pictures. He raises good questions about the JFK murder, but most of them can’t be answered or have been answered by others. He is an historic figure and a successful author, but I conclude that his observational methods in this lecture are often both logically and scientifically sloppy. Groden still has a ways to go to arrive at "the truth", but it's never too late.
More on the case at https://philosopherswheel.com/thereasonforconspiracies.html#The JFK conspiracy theory https://philosopherswheel.com/thereasonforconspiracies.html#The JFK conspiracy theory