JFK Conference: David Talbot named Allen Dulles as 'the Chairman of the Board of the Assassination'

[Spider Jerusalem]

130. Nope.

R. PETTY -- "Yes, sir, I believe that they were struck by the same bullet and I have so previously stated in the preliminary report of the panel."

MR. PREYER -- "Would you summarize briefly your reasons why you believe this to be the case?"

DR. PETTY -- "Yes, sir, I will be very glad to, Mr. Preyer. I think it is necessary at this point to sum up, in a sense, the flight of the bullet and its effect on those it struck. The bullet that struck the late President in the upper right back area and then went on to penetrate the soft structures of the neck and to exit in the front of the neck was, as has been indicated already, traveling in a somewhat upward direction, anatomically speaking.

"Anatomists many years ago decided--the better to understand each other--to place a body in a specific position and to relate all of the descriptions of the landmarks of the body to the body in that position. That position actually is a person standing erect facing forward with both palms turned forward. This is the anatomic position and in tracing the inshoot wound on the back of the late President and connecting it with a more-or-less straight line with the outshoot wound on the front of the neck, the bullet will have followed a slightly upward direction.

"But the President was not upright at the time he was shot, he was certainly not in the anatomic position, and this explains, I believe, the objection that Dr. Wecht had and his argument that he could not understand how the bullet pursued a downward track from where it was discharged, then an upward track in the President and then a downward track into Mr. Connally.

"A second point that must be mentioned--the bullet that penetrated the back of the President exited the front, struck no bone. If it did strike any bone, the bone that it struck was fragile and certainly not markedly disrupted. It did not go through his spinal column. It did not go through bone that was solid and hard and offered great resistance to passage. In effect, it went through several inches of very soft tissue.

"There is no evidence on the X-rays that the bullet broke up in passing from the back to the front. There was no deformity, in my opinion, of the bullet as it went through the President.

"Now, the second object that this single bullet struck was Mr. Connally sitting somewhere in front of the President, and this is another point that Dr. Wecht has brought up repeatedly, and that is that there was no way to join, by means of a straight line, the bullet exiting from the President and striking the Governor.

"Indeed, there was one diagram yesterday that was showing the bullet making more-or-less right angle turns, which I am certain did not happen. As a matter of fact, I would suggest that from looking at the films taken of the actual assassination that the apparent relative positions of the President and the Governor are somewhat misleading, that is, that one cannot determine by looking at a flat two-dimensional view of one side of the limousine and the contained individuals precisely what relationship they had one to another."

DR. PETTY -- "Next, the bullet in striking Mr. Connally did not penetrate the chest in the usual sense of the word. The bullet did indeed enter the back and side of the chest near the armpit, and it did follow the course of the rib on its lateral or outer aspect, and it did indeed exit beneath the right nipple, but there is no evidence that that bullet actually penetrated the rib.

"Indeed, one of the surgeons who cared for the Governor, Dr. Shaw, stated to me that the bullet did not penetrate the lung but that the rib was shattered, and it is my opinion that this bullet in slapping against the rib shattered it in a place that the rib is quite vulnerable, and then proceeded to follow rather closely the slope of the rib and then finally to exit in the front of the chest.

"The X-rays fail to show any evidence of particles of metal in the chest. Therefore, in my opinion, the bullet was not significantly deformed during its passage in the chest of the Governor.

"Next, The bullet did indeed enter the wrist, and although the reports are somewhat difficult to understand, it apparently entered more on the back of the wrist and then exited more on the front of the wrist, and again as in the chest wound, this was a tangentially placed shot which shattered the bone--there is no question of that--it shattered and caused a comminuted fracture of the radius, and then went on to exit.

"Here for the first time, fragments of bullet substance are found, and it is here, in my opinion, that the bullet first significantly deformed. Then having exhausted itself, and at a very low velocity, it continued on to bounce in and out of the thigh of the Governor.

"Now, let me recapitulate this. The bullet penetrated one individual without deformity, leaving none of its metal behind. In the second person it penetrated the chest, slapping in a tangential manner against the rib, fracturing the rib, and damaging incidentally the underlying lung, because the rib was thrown against the lung, and then went on again without leaving any of its substance so as to enter the wrist where it finally left off a portion of its substance, not much, but some.

"There is nothing here that is unusual or spectacular or unexpected. This is the behavior of a full metal jacketed bullet, a bullet covered in all areas except the base by means of the firm, hard, tough, not easy to deform jacket.

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol1/pdf/HSCA_Vol1_0908_1_Petty.pdf

And here is a Carcano bullet fired through a human wrist at a velocity of 1100fps. It's deformed less than CE399; is hardly deformed at all.

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