The Smoking Gun... Quite Literally

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Hello ATS,

The term "Smoking Gun" is one that is used to indicate that something has now been conclusively proven and is therefore irrefutable - It's also a term that is perhaps used a bit more often than is necessary, especially when it comes to conspiracies and just in general ATS threads/posts etc. You see, all too often people believe they have irrefutable evidence of a claim they're making yet at the same time nothing could be further from the all elusive truth..

This being so, those who've taken the time to look at the JFK Assassination case for example, this being the topic of this thread, will know that almost 50 years on we're still yet to have any conclusive proof or any genuine answers to the difficult questions we pose. And It's a genuine possibility that we'll never see the answers we're searching for also, although of course It's not completely out of the question yet.

This being so, let me firstly explain that the title of this thread isn't to mean that I'm claiming to have genuine evidence of anything really, It's a play on words. The topic of this thread is the JFK Assassination, yes, but expanding on that I'd like to discuss a certain anomaly that sticks out for researchers and gives us a very strong reason to believe the official story is as many suspect it to be - wrong. And if we, as researchers, was to ever find what we would consider to be the smoking gun, or irrefutable proof of a conspiracy if you will, in this particular case, then coincidentally the smoking gun would quite literally be.. a smoking gun. What I'm talking about will be explained in more detail to those who continue to carry on reading through this thread..

Before I continue on let me first explain for those not familiar with this conspiracy and the possibility of what this means exactly: You see, on November 22nd, 1963 at approximately 12:30pm, the then president John F. Kennedy was gunned down by at least 2 shots, at least 3 being fired at him, while riding in his presidential limousine through Dealey Plaza, Texas. Accompanying him in the Limousine was his wife, Jackie, Governor of Texas John Connolly and his wife Nelly and finally 2 secret service agents, both situated at the front of the limousine, driver William Greer and passenger Roy Kellerman.

This was the exact spot where the fatal shot had taken place:

This can be seen today still. Anyway, the Warren Commission, earning Its name from the man spearheading it, Chief Justice Earl Warren, coincidentally the man who swore Kennedy in as president a few years before, was set up by the new President (Johnson) to ascertain the true series of events which had taken place and to determine who the assassin, or assassins, were.

In October of 1964, the assassination itself taking place in November of 1963 remember, the Warren Commission published its findings. Now, one of the claims made by the Commission, which is the primary reason for this thread, was that Lee Harvey Oswald (as seen below), the man arrested shortly after the assassination, was the sole culprit for the murder of the president, and of course for Officer Tippit, firing from the 6th floor of the Texas School Depository according to officials.

I, and many others, have some serious doubts about this conclusion. The first of which, and unrelated to this thread, is that no one, not even the commission, was able to conclusively place him on the 6th floor at the time of the assassination. You see, just after the assassination had taken place, at which point the motorcade was running 5 minutes late anyway, a police officer called Marrion Baker entered the building, met Oswald's Boss, Roy Truly, and the two men then proceeded up the building. With-in around 80 or so seconds after the assassination they reached the second floor employee’s lunchroom situated towards the far side of the building away from Elm Street, which was where they came across none other than Lee Harvey Oswald.

In the film taken by cameraman Malcolm Couch, we can seemingly see Baker running towards the TSDB as shown in these images below:

The full film show here:

Baker told the Warren Commission: "I had it in mind that the shots came from the top of the building..." He continued: As I entered this lobby there were people going in as I entered. And I asked..."where the stairs or the elevator was, and this man, Mr. Truly, spoke up and says to me... "I'm the building manager. Follow me, officer, and I will show you." So we immediately went through the second set of doors, and we ran into the swinging door.

Depository superintendent Roy Truly had followed Baker into the building. He quickly went to the buildings elevators, but could not bring them down since someone had left them locked in position on an upper floor. Truly told the commission:

...Those elevators...were both on the fifth floor, they were both even. And I tried to get one of them... It would have been impossible for [Oswald] to have come down either one of those elevators after the assassination. He had to use the stairway as his only way of getting down - since we did see the elevators in those positions.

Truly Yelled, "Bring that elevator down here!" to no avail and Baker said, "Let's take the stairs." Moving up the stairs trailing Truly, Baker said he noticed a man walking away from him through a glass window in a door near the rear of the second-floor landing. With drawn pistol, Baker confronted the man and ordered him to come to him. In a handwritten report to the FBI on November 23rd, Baker stated: "On the second floor where the lunchroom is located, I saw a man standing in the lunchroom drinking a coke." However, the words "drinking a coke" were scratched out in this report and there was no reference to the coke in his Warren Commission testimony.

Truly said the man, whom he recognized as Oswald, "didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid." He told the Warren Commission he noticed nothing in Oswald's hands, but this was months later, after many discussions with federal authorities.

Baker turned to Truly and asked if the man was an employee and Truly replied he was. Baker then turned and continued his race for the roof.

Oswald apparently simply sauntered down the steps and out the front door of the depository.

On the morning of August 9, 1966, Lee Bowers, now the vice-president of a construction firm, was driving south from Dallas on business. He was two miles from Midlothian when his brand new company car veered from the road and hit a bridge abutment. A farmer who saw it said the car was going 50 miles an hour, a slow speed for that road. There were no skid marks to indicate braking.

Bowers died of his wounds at 1 p.m. in a Dallas hospital. He was 41. There was no autopsy, and he was cremated soon afterward. Doctors saw no evidence that he had suffered a heart attack. A doctor from Midlothian, who rode in the ambulance with Bowers, noticed something peculiar about the victim. "He was in a strange state of shock," the old doctor said, "a different kind of shock than an accident victim experiences. I can't explain it. I've never seen anything like it."

Bowers widow at first insisted to Penn Jones that there was nothing suspicious about her husband's death. Then she became flustered and said: "They told him not to talk."

"And the Motorcade was coming down in this fashion, and the president was waving to the people on this [north] side [of Elm street]... the first report that I heard... was pretty loud... and the car travelled a few yards and governor Connelly turned in this fashion, like that, with his hand out and... another report rang out and he slumped down in his seat... [then Kennedy] was hit again along... in here... I observed it. It knocked him completely down on the floor... just slumped completely over... I heard a third report and I counted four shots... There was a shot, a report. I don't know whether it was a shot. I can't say that. And a puff of smoke came out about six or eight feet above the ground right out from under those trees.".

Gordon Arnold was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1941. After completing his education he joined the United States Army and was based at Fort Wainwright in Alaska.

Arnold was home on leave on 22nd November, 1963, and decided to take his movie camera to Dealey Plaza in order to film the visit of President John F. Kennedy. While walking by the Grassy Knoll he was stopped by a man claiming to be a member of the Secret Service. He later told Jim Marrs: "I was walking along behind this picket fence when a man in a light-colored suit came up to me and said I shouldn't be up there. I was young and cocky and I said, "Why not?" And he showed me a badge and said he was with the Secret Service and that he didn't want anyone up there. I said all right and started walking back along the fence. I could feel that he was following me and we had a few more words. I walked around to the front of the fence and found a little mound of dirt to stand on to see the motorcade."

Arnold claimed that the first shot was fired from behind him. After the firing had finished, Arnold claimed that a policeman with a gun forced him to hand over the film in his camera. Arnold returned to Fort Wainwright and was never interviewed by the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations about what he had seen on 22nd November, 1963.

After leaving the army Arnold became an investigator for the Dallas Department of Consumer Affairs. It was not until the summer of 1978, that Arnold decided to speak about his experiences in Dealey Plaza on 22nd July, 1963. Arnold gave an interview to Earl Goltz, a reporter with the Dallas Morning News. The article appeared on 27th July, 1978. Interviews with Arnold also appeared in Reasonable Doubt (Henry Hurt) and Crossfire (Jim Marrs).

Some researchers have doubted Arnold's testimony but it has been supported by the testimony of Ralph Yarborough who told a newspaper reporter from the Dallas Morning News: "Immediately on the firing of the first shot I saw the man you interviewed throw himself onto the ground. He was down within a second of the time the shot was fired, and I thought to myself, 'There's a combat veteran who knows how to act when weapons start firing.' "

Acoustics analysts Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy, of Queens College, reviewed the BBN data and concluded that "with the probability of 95% or better, there was indeed a shot fired from the grassy knoll."

I for one think that the fatal shots were fired from the Knoll, it just makes much more sense to me

and full of stuff i had no idea about.