chapter12c:animania Chapter 12c: Animania

Searching for Truth in Dale Myers' House of Mirrors





Blinded by the Light







We'll start by examining an apparent contradiction. On the 2003 version of his website, before he decided to single-handedly turn the single-bullet theory into what he has since called the single-bullet fact, Myers portrayed the back wound above his animated figure’s shoulder line, in the discredited location of the Rydberg drawings. He even acknowledged he derived this location by projecting Connally’s wounds back through Kennedy’s throat wound, and that this entrance didn’t match the location of Kennedy’s back wound on the autopsy photos.



As of 9-20-2003, he offered: "The minimal discrepancies between the renderings and the photographs are anticipated in a model of this type and are due to (a) the use of generic humanoid models that do not necessarily match the muscular physique of the victims, and (b) the potential errors (up to 2 degrees at Z223) inherent in positioning computer models based on the Zapruder film."



In the run-up to the 11-20-2003, broadcast of Myers' animation on ABC's Beyond Conspiracy special, however, Myers’ website was changed to state that the back wound location used in his animation had been established through exact measurements, etc.



As of 12-01-2003, he bragged: "Analysis of the computer recreation found that Governor John B. Connally received his chest wound during the 1/18th of a second interval between Zapruder frames 223-224. Using medical data surrounding President Kennedy and Governor Connally's wounds, and Zapruder frame 223 (demonstrating their relative positions less than 1/18th of a second before impact), a trajectory was plotted to determine the source of the shot...To determine the source of the shots, the point of entrance on the President's upper-right back was connected to the exit wound in his throat with a straight line to represent the trajectory path of the bullet through JFK's upper body. Extending that trajectory line forward shows that a bullet passing through the President's upper-right back and throat, at the equivalent of Zapruder frame 223, would go on to strike Governor Connally in the right shoulder just behind the armpit -- the precise location where the entrance wound in JBC's body was located...To determine the firing source of the bullet that passed between Kennedy and Connally, the entrance wound on JBC's back was connected to the exit wound on the front of the President's throat at the equivalent of Zapruder frame 223 using a straight line. That trajectory line was then projected rearward 200 feet to its source. The result shows the bullet moving at a 10 degree angle, right to left, relative to the midline of the limousine. The angle of declination is about 20.5 degrees. Accounting for the 3 degree slope in the road, the bullet is moving downward at an angle of about 17.5 degrees below true horizontal. These figures are comparable to those determined in previous trajectory analysis conducted by the FBI in 1964 (WR106) and the HSCA's Photographic Panel in 1978. (6HSCA46) When this trajectory path is projected rearward, it is found to intersect the front face of the Texas School Book Depository at the southeast corner of the sixth floor. The trajectory line passes through the half open window located at that position, over a stack of boxes believed to have been used as a gun rest, and into the area referred to as the "sniper's nest."



Over the past few decades, the work of digital animator Dale Myers has become quite the lightning rod, with many (perhaps millions) believing it proves the feasibility of the single-bullet theory. The problem: his work is deliberately deceptive at best, and an absolute fraud at worst. In this chapter, then, we will take a closer look at his work, and clearly demonstrate its deceptiveness.We'll start by examining an apparent contradiction. On the 2003 version of his website, before he decided to single-handedly turn the single-bullet theory into what he has since called the single-bullet fact, Myers portrayed the back wound above his animated figure’s shoulder line, in the discredited location of the Rydberg drawings. He even acknowledged he derived this location by projecting Connally’s wounds back through Kennedy’s throat wound, and that this entrance didn’t match the location of Kennedy’s back wound on the autopsy photos.As of 9-20-2003, he offered:In the run-up to the 11-20-2003, broadcast of Myers' animation on ABC's Beyond Conspiracy special, however, Myers’ website was changed to state that the back wound location used in his animation had been established through exact measurements, etc.As of 12-01-2003, he bragged: Well, this sounds pretty impressive, right? He figured out the precise positions of Kennedy and Connally when shot, and then lined up their wound locations, and they pointed to the sniper's nest window!



There was just one problem: a huge freaking problem, IMO...



As shown on the slide above, the back wound location on Kennedy Myers admitted was inaccurate (which had been determined by pointing back to the sniper's nest from the back wound location on Connally) in September 2003, was identical to the back wound location supposedly determined from the "medical data" in December 2003!



Myers had fudged his data!

There was just one problem: a huge freaking problem, IMO...As shown on the slide above, the back wound location on Kennedy Myers admitted was inaccurate (which had been determined by pointing back to the sniper's nest from the back wound location on Connally) in September 2003, was identical to the back wound location supposedly determined from thein December 2003!Myers had fudged his data! The Defense of Dale Myers Part 1

On Myers' website, he asks himself a question, and then responds by discussing how such awful questions get asked in the first place. In February 2008, I came to realize he'd addressed some of my concerns and complaints in this manner. In the interest of fair play, then, I include his response to my complaints. In the interest of what I perceive to be the truth, I then provide a response to his response.



Myers responds by asking: "Isn't it true that you admitted a key flaw in your recreation: the incorrect positioning of the president's back wound?



Myers answers: "No. One critic has repeatedly made this false claim on a number of Internet newsgroups. The charge stems from a preliminary 1995 version of my computer recreation which employed generic humanoid figures to represent Kennedy and Connally and determine the locations of their bullet wounds. When a trajectory line was connected from the entrance wound at the back of Connally's right armpit with the exit wound on the front of Kennedy's throat, and projected rearward, that line passed a bit high of the presumed location of the entrance wound on Kennedy's upper-right back. I explained that the generic nature of the humanoid figures, which were not exact matches of either man's physique, was probably responsible for this visual effect. I also pointed out that because the medical evidence shows that Kennedy had only one bullet wound in his upper-right back, and the projected trajectory nearly intersected that exact location, there could be little doubt that the discrepancy was attributable to slight inaccuracies in the generic models.



In the recreation broadcast on ABC Television in the fall of 2003, I used new human skeleton models to more accurately pinpoint the wound locations in both men and also used new high resolution human models, though still generic in physique, to "skin" the underlying skeletons. Both of these model upgrades resulted in more accurate wound placement and improved trajectory analysis which effectively demonstrated that the earlier inaccuracies were in fact due to the generic models, as I surmised."



My My My My Rebuttal: nonsense. As demonstrated on the slide above, Myers placed the back wound well above the back wound shown in the autopsy photos, both before he started using the new and purportedly improved models, and after. His assertion that his ABC cartoon characters are based on high resolution human models, and that this improvement in technology led to a more accurate determination of the back wound location--which just so happened to be exactly where he'd previously acknowledged it needed to be to support the single-bullet theory--is garbage of the smelliest kind. Don't you believe it!





On Myers' website, he asks himself a question, and then responds by discussing how such awful questions get asked in the first place. In February 2008, I came to realize he'd addressed some of my concerns and complaints in this manner. In the interest of fair play, then, I include his response to my complaints. In the interest of what I perceive to be the truth, I then provide a response to his response.nonsense. As demonstrated on the slide above, Myers placed the back wound well above the back wound shown in the autopsy photos, both before he started using the new and purportedly improved models, and after. His assertion that his ABC cartoon characters are based on high resolution human models, and that this improvement in technology led to a more accurate determination of the back wound location--which just so happened to be exactly where he'd previously acknowledged it needed to be to support the single-bullet theory--is garbage of the smelliest kind. Don't you believe it! Murder by Cartoon: Old Crone Analysis

Now, Myers' gamesmanship regarding the back wound location went unnoticed by many if not most people following the development of Myers' animation. And there was a reason for this. The location of the back wound on Myers' Kennedy model was not shown in Beyond Conspiracy, and the location of the entrance on the clothing seemed to match the entrance on Kennedy's clothing. Kennedy's coat collar was way up by his hairline, much as it was shown to be in films of Kennedy in the motorcade. But the coat collar on Myers' animation looked odd. Instead of angling across Kennedy's neck at a roughly 45 degree angle, as shown in the Towner photo, above, it stretched almost straight up, at an 80 degree angle or so. And this was because the neck on Myers' model was angled sharply forward, whereby the top of the neck was almost directly above the base of the front of the neck. Well, this gave Kennedy the appearance of an old crone.

And this odd appearance of Myers' Kennedy model was not the only problem with Myers' animation. When one compares the animation of the moment of the single-bullet's impact created by Myers for 2003's Beyond Conspiracy, with the animation of this moment he created for 2004's Beyond the Magic Bullet, there is a surprise. In 2003’s Beyond Conspiracy on ABC, a program which, horrifyingly, received an Edward R. Murrow Award for best documentary, Myers’ animation depicted Kennedy’s collar bunched up at his hairline. In 2004’s Beyond the Magic Bullet on the Discovery Channel however the collar was well below the hairline and not bunched up at all. Even more surprising, in 2004’s Beyond the Magic Bullet, Myers depicted the bullet entering well down from the collar in one segment and just below the collar in another.



It's the Shirt, Stupid!

When one re-watches Beyond Conspiracy, moreover, a possible reason behind Myers' back and forth with the collar becomes apparent. When showing the single-bullet trajectory from a point in front of Kennedy, the animation briefly becomes see-through, so that one can see the bullet trajectory in Kennedy's neck. The bullet on this trajectory impacts well below Kennedy's jacket collar. The problem is that Kennedy's jacket collar is depicted well above Kennedy's shirt collar, and the bullet appears to have entered just below Kennedy's shirt collar. This should give one pause.



The hole on Kennedy's jacket, as testified to by FBI agent Robert Frazier before the Warren Commission, was 5 3/8 inches below the top of his jacket collar. The hole on Kennedy's shirt, as testified to by Frazier, however, was 5 3/4 inches below the collar. This means there was more shirt above the bullet hole than jacket. Which means Myers' animation is clearly inaccurate on this point.



Let's put ourselves in Myers' position. By having the jacket creep up the back of "Kennedy's" neck to almost the level of his nose, Myers had successfully lifted the bullet hole on the jacket to align with his proposed trajectory. But how could he do this with the shirt? The Willis photo on the slide above, and the Towner photo on the slide before that, show the white shirt collar cutting across Kennedy's neck at a roughly 45 degree angle to the top of the back of Kennedy's neck, at the level of the top of his chin. But to keep the shirt consistent with the jacket on Myers' model would mean placing the shirt collar an inch or more higher, at the level of Kennedy's nose.



Well, the thought occurs that having a white line of collar pointing almost straight up would have been readily obvious to Myers' viewers, and that he decided to avoid this issue altogether by returning the jacket collar to the bottom of the neck. Better to have the jacket and shirt collars together and in the wrong place than have the coat collar in the wrong place and looking ridiculous...



When one re-watches Beyond Conspiracy, moreover, a possible reason behind Myers' back and forth with the collar becomes apparent. When showing the single-bullet trajectory from a point in front of Kennedy, the animation briefly becomes see-through, so that one can see the bullet trajectory in Kennedy's neck. The bullet on this trajectory impacts well below Kennedy's jacket collar. The problem is that Kennedy's jacket collar is depicted well above Kennedy's shirt collar, and the bullet appears to have entered just below Kennedy's shirt collar. This should give one pause.The hole on Kennedy's jacket, as testified to by FBI agent Robert Frazier before the Warren Commission, was 5 3/8 inches below the top of his jacket collar. The hole on Kennedy's shirt, as testified to by Frazier, however, was 5 3/4 inches below the collar. This means there was more shirt above the bullet hole than jacket. Which means Myers' animation is clearly inaccurate on this point.Let's put ourselves in Myers' position. By having the jacket creep up the back of "Kennedy's" neck to almost the level of his nose, Myers had successfully lifted the bullet hole on the jacket to align with his proposed trajectory. But how could he do this with the shirt? The Willis photo on the slide above, and the Towner photo on the slide before that, show the white shirt collar cutting across Kennedy's neck at a roughly 45 degree angle to the top of the back of Kennedy's neck, at the level of the top of his chin. But to keep the shirt consistent with the jacket on Myers' model would mean placing the shirt collar an inch or more higher, at the level of Kennedy's nose.Well, the thought occurs that having a white line of collar pointing almost straight up would have been readily obvious to Myers' viewers, and that he decided to avoid this issue altogether by returning the jacket collar to the bottom of the neck. Better to have the jacket and shirt collars together and in the wrong place than have the coat collar in the wrong place and looking ridiculous... Murder by Cartoon: Birth of the Crone Now, that explains why the clothing on Myers' Kennedy model changed so much from year to year. But what about the posture of his model? Why did Myers stretch out its neck and make Kennedy look like an old crone? Well, there is a surprising aspect to Myers' animation that helps us understand why he depicts Kennedy as an old crone. Unlike the majority of neo-single-bullet theorists, Myers acknowledges that the back wound was at the same level or lower than the throat wound, and that the bullet did not descend within the body. He even depicts this on his animated model of Kennedy.

So how does Myers get around this? How does he have a bullet descending twenty degrees or more through the air enter Kennedy’s back and exit his throat at the same level? As this bullet is, in Myers’ estimation, the near-pristine CE399, it couldn’t have struck bone. Furthermore, as the Zapruder film showed Kennedy’s head to be upright within a tenth of a second of the moment Myers believes Kennedy was shot, Myers can’t just pretend Kennedy was simply leaning forward at the moment of the shot. So how does he make it work?

Well, one way for him to get around this (and the way I believe he chose) is to distort Kennedy’s body into the body of a crone, so that Kennedy’s neck is leaning forward, but not his head. (This distortion becomes obvious when one compares a photo of Kennedy in Dealey Plaza with Myers’ figure of Kennedy, and is demonstrated on the Old Crone Analysis slide above.) The angled neck of Myers' Kennedy figure is not apparent in any photo of Kennedy that I am aware of, nor is it seen in the Zapruder film. This Myers invention, not surprisingly, lifts the location of Kennedy’s back wound considerably above his throat wound, and makes it appear possible for a shot to hit Kennedy in the shoulder line from the sniper’s nest and still come out somewhere near his throat. The Defense of Dale Myers Part 2

Myers asks: "Isn't it true that you blatantly misrepresented the shape of Kennedy's back to get the single bullet theory to work?"



Myers responds: "No. Several critics have pointed out that Kennedy's posture appears distorted in the animation. One critic wrote, "I still cannot figure out why Myers made JFK a hunchback. Was that the only way to achieve a downward trajectory projection between the back injury and the neck wound?" Another critic wrote, "The blatant misrepresentation of the shape of the back is the sort of thing which makes me dismiss everything that Myers tries to 'prove' with his animation. If he's willing to lie to his audience to make his point, then he deserves no consideration whatsoever."



This criticism stems from some modeling and animation issues that were not fully resolved at the time of the ABC Television broadcast. The issue is ultimately a cosmetic one and has nothing to do with the trajectory analysis or its conclusions, as these critics falsely suggest.



Photographs and films taken during the course of the motorcade show that the president's suit jacket had ridden or bunched up, making his shoulder line appear to be higher than it actually was. When shot, the president's elbows rose dramatically, increasing the effect. While animating the shooting sequence, the shoulders and collar of the president's computer generated "clothing" was raised off the shoulder line of the human model beneath to mimic what is seen in the film. Due to modeling constraints, the collar could not be returned to its proper position without affecting the shoulder line. To get the clothing to "look right," the model would have to be redone, a luxury I did not have time to complete given the production schedule. That's showbiz. While the position of the collar was not a perfect match with the film (in fact, it is too high in its current position), the shoulders, as defined by the "clothing," did fit better with what is seen in the Zapruder film. In the end, because of time constraints, it was decided to leave the "clothing," including the collar, in the raised position throughout the animated sequence. Contrary to the criticism levied by my detractors, the position of the president's clothing in the recreation has nothing to do with the validity of the single bullet theory. That's because the human model representing Kennedy, which is positioned beneath the "clothing," and therefore hidden from view, has not been moved. Only the "clothing" has been tugged around. As explained elsewhere on this page, it is the location of the wounds on the body, not the "clothing," that is the basis for defining the trajectory path of the bullets."



Note that Myers' doesn't even bother to pretend the entrance holes on the clothes of his Kennedy model are accurate.



Since Myers' 2004 animation in Beyond the Magic Bullet failed, for the most part, to depict the clothing in the "raised position," it seems apparent, moreover, that he realized the futility of his situation and decided to just ignore the hole on the shirt and the uncomfortable fact it casts doubt upon his theories.



But this was not the end of Myers' deceptions.



Note that Myers' doesn't even bother to pretend the entrance holes on the clothes of his Kennedy model are accurate.Since Myers' 2004 animation in Beyond the Magic Bullet failed, for the most part, to depict the clothing in theit seems apparent, moreover, that he realized the futility of his situation and decided to just ignore the hole on the shirt and the uncomfortable fact it casts doubt upon his theories.But this was not the end of Myers' deceptions. Murder by Cartoon: Midget Analysis No, sorry to say, I'm just getting going. As Dale Myers’ animation depicts Kennedy stooped forward at the moment of the magic bullet’s impact, in the approximate posture of an old crone, one would think an overhead shot of this pivotal moment would show his head out in front of his body. But here, once again, Myers’ animation fails the consistency test. The overhead view of Kennedy in 2004’s Beyond the Magic Bullet shows him to be sitting straight up, with his head barely forward of his back. What me, consistency? When one looks closer at this overhead view, the integrity of Myers’ work is once again called into question. When viewed from above his characters seem to have entirely different proportions than the real Kennedy and Connally. Clearly, Myers uses different measurements for his animated figures depending on how he wants them to be seen. How else can he explain the fact that Connally, who was 6’2” 205 lb.s to Kennedy’s 6’0” 170 lb.s, is depicted as a much smaller man than Kennedy? It certainly appears to be more than a coincidence that by depicting Connally as a midget Myers was able to place Connally’s armpit, the site of the bullet entry, several inches further in from the side of the car, and more in line with the pre-determined trajectory from the sniper’s nest through JFK. While Myers has done some valuable research, particularly when it comes to the head wound trajectories and the Tippit shooting, his deception regarding the single-bullet theory is simply inexcusable. He would have to know that when people see computer simulations they believe the proportions are consistent from angle to angle—otherwise it’s just a cartoon. By changing the body shape of Kennedy to accommodate the bullet trajectory through his body, and by shrinking Connally 20% or more to accommodate the bullet trajectory in the car, Myers moved on up to the high rent neighborhood of Thomas Canning: deliberate deceptionville.

His depiction of Kennedy’s position in the car is also in error. While the Zapruder film shows Kennedy’s arms inside the car, as there’s no shadow on the side of the car, Myers’ animation always depicts Kennedy’s right elbow hanging over the side, a position Kennedy had abandoned seconds before. Not surprisingly, this misrepresentation by Myers puts Kennedy more in line with the pre-determined sniper’s nest—JFK--Connally trajectory. In sum, while it was purportedly created to accurately depict a murder, the only murder accurately depicted in Myers’ cartoon is the murder of the truth. (NOTE: so that no one stopping here is deceived. As we progress in this chapter, I include several more responses by Myers, in which he offers explanations for the diminutive Connally. He eventually offers one that makes sense (well, sorta). He admits the images used in Beyond the Magic Bullet were distorted, but insists this was done inadvertently. He insists as well that this has no bearing on the feasibility of the single-bullet theory. Read on and decide for yourself.)

Murder by Cartoon: Birth of the Midget

In June 2006, while looking through a website devoted to debunking the film JFK, I noticed yet another inaccuracy in Myers’ animation. In a section of the website in which Oliver Stone is held up as a liar, I found an early Myers depiction of the single bullet theory, that left me holding a similar impression of Myers.

Now, I'd seen this depiction before, as it was featured in Gus Russo’s 1998 book, Live by the Sword. This was, as one might guess, a book devoted to the "Oswald-did-it" theory. Still, I'd forgotten the central role this depiction played in the book. Pre-cursing ABC News and the Discovery Channel by a full 5 years, Russo grossly overstated the value of Myers’ work, and grossly oversold its accuracy. The caption to Myers' depiction reads: “when the car blueprints, body sizes, surveyor’s maps, and exact measurements are considered, it is clear that Connally’s wounds track back through JFK to Lee Harvey Oswald’s perch in the Book Depository, as the Myers computer renderings clearly demonstrate.”

There was a problem with this, of course. When one looks closely at this early “computer rendering,” two things are abundantly clear: 1) the bullet goes from Kennedy to Connally in a straight line within the car; and 2) the car is driving directly away from the school book depository! Well, a close look at the surveyor’s plat of Dealey Plaza that Myers is purported to have studied will show you that this did not happen. Elm Street has not curved that far to the left by frame 223, when Myers claims the shot was fired.

As a consequence, I decided to see if Myers had corrected this mistake on his website. Sure enough, when discussing his analysis of the limousine’s location at frame 223 of the Zapruder film, Myers confirms “The result shows the bullet moving at a 10 degree angle, right to left, relative to the middle of the limousine.” When I double-checked Myers’ words against the overhead view he created in 2004 for the Discovery Channel, however, I discovered that his words were rather hollow. On the overhead view, already deceptive due to its “shrinking” of Connally and the resultant moving of his armpit closer to the middle of the car, the right to left angle within the car was but 6 degrees! I also noticed at this time that the car itself was angled 2 degrees in the overhead view, creating the appearance the bullet trajectory was coming in at 8 degrees. Well, it seemed obvious from this that Myers, aware that his early depictions were incorrect, tried to straighten the car up on Elm Street, so that a bullet heading into the car at a 10 degree angle would hit Connally in the armpit. Apparently unwilling to simply slide Connally over in his seat, a la Thomas Canning when performing the HSCA trajectory analysis, moreover, Myers instead began to tweak things a little. First, he down-sized Connally to move his armpit in a little. Then, he minimized the angle of the bullet coming into the car so that the bullet could strike paydirt in Connally’s newly pint-sized armpit. If I’m reading too much into this, I apologize to Mr. Myers. It’s certainly possible I am mistaken or that his mistakes were honest mistakes. It's just that it seems obvious to me that an honest depiction of Connally’s size, when coupled with an honest projection from the wound in his armpit back through Kennedy’s wounds, would point back to the Dal-Tex Building, and not the sniper’s nest. Based upon the behavior of Arlen Specter, the Warren Commission, and the HSCA, moreover, it seems that acknowledging this fact is verboten.

This makes me a little paranoid. Is Myers but one in a long line of deceivers, many of whom have been honored and rewarded for their deceptions?

The Defense of Dale Myers Part 3 Myers responds by asking: "Isn't it true that you distorted the size and position of your models of President Kennedy and Governor Connally in order to fit your simulation to the single bullet theory?"



Myers answers: "No. One critic charged that "Myers depicts Governor Connally’s body as considerably smaller than JFK’s body" - 25% according to one of this critic's measurements, and later 15% smaller, after a second measurement - and that "by depicting Connally as a midget it allowed Myers to place Connally’s armpit, site of the bullet entry, at a point several inches further in from the side of the car, and more in line with the predetermined trajectory from the sniper’s nest through JFK." According to this critic I also distorted Kennedy's size and position, writing "In order to make the trajectory work, however, Myers had to distort Kennedy’s body shape. Kennedy suddenly had a crookneck, which curves forward and then up, like the neck of an old crone. This is not apparent in any photo of Kennedy. This Myers invention made it possible for a shot to hit Kennedy in the shoulder line and still come out his throat. When viewed from above, however, this distortion should have been obvious, with Kennedy’s head a half-foot forward of his shoulder. In the Discovery Channel program Beyond the Magic Bullet Myers’ animation was shown both from behind and above, and the two depictions of Kennedy’s shoulders and his back wound were completely at odds with one another. Clearly, Myers uses different measurements for his animated figures depending on how he wants them to be seen."



The critic also charged that "While the Zapruder film shows Kennedy’s arms inside the car, as there’s no shadow on the side of the car, Myers' animation always depicts Kennedy’s right elbow hanging over the side...Not surprising, this misrepresentation by Myers puts Kennedy more in line with the pre-determined [single bullet theory]. When JFK is put in his proper position the trajectory traces back to the Dal-Tex Building."



What does the critic conclude from all of this? "While Myers has done some valuable research...this deception regarding the single-bullet theory is inexcusable...He lures you into thinking that because he's using a computer the proportions and angles are the same from frame to frame and shot to shot when they're not...I've come across three different depictions by [Myers] of the single-bullet shot which move the President's position and the wound itself depending on what would look plausible to the viewer from that angle...It's all smoke and mirrors...[H]is animation is blatantly dishonest and demonstrably inaccurate...The bottom line: it's okay to misrepresent the evidence as long as you do it to PROTECT the government."



Hogwash. This is a common refrain from critics of my computer work. The truth, of course, is that my computer reconstruction of the Kennedy assassination is based on a single model put in motion. The mistakes this particular critic made in his analysis of my work are numerous.



First, his claim that the relative sizes of Kennedy and Connally change according to the angle at which they are presented is apparently based on the critic's measurement of the final rendered image. Performing an analysis in this manner fails to take into account photogrammetric effects as well as the size distortions produced by the computer's virtual camera. Photogrammetry describes how three-dimensional spatial relationships can be extracted from two-dimensional photographs or images. Without taking into account these relationships, accurate interpretations of two-dimensional images are impossible. In short, you cannot simply draw or overlay lines on a two-dimensional image (as this theorist has claimed) and extract three-dimensional measurements. This is a common amateur blunder. In addition, each rendered viewpoint is generated by a virtual camera whose focal length characteristics are akin to real-world cameras. For instance, a wide angle focal length in both virtual and real-world cameras will produce images in which identical-sized objects appear at different sizes depending on their relationship to the camera. In the case of my computer reconstruction, wide angle overhead-view renderings of Kennedy and Connally in the limousine will produce images in which the model of Kennedy appears slightly larger than the model of Connally if the virtual camera is positioned closer to the Kennedy model. Clearly, this was the case in the rendered images used by this critic for his "analysis".



Second, the critic's claim that I distorted Kennedy's neck in order to produce a position favorable to the single bullet theory is equally invalid. The computer model of Kennedy was matched to the position dictated by the Zapruder film - the only complete filmed record of the event. This filmed record records the three-dimensional position of Kennedy's head, neck, shoulders, upper torso, arms and hands relative to his surroundings. The computer reconstruction tracks the dimensional changes of Kennedy's body as recorded by Zapruder's camera. Those positional changes are not "inventions" created by me in order to validate the single bullet theory. Rather, the Zapruder film, and consequently my computer reconstruction based upon it, are a definitive record of what actually occurred in Dealey Plaza.



Third, the critic's charge that my computer reconstruction falsely depicts Kennedy's right elbow hanging over the right side of the car, while the Zapruder film shows Kennedy's arm inside the car, and that this "misrepresentation" puts Kennedy more in line with the single bullet theory is also invalid. The critic apparently bases his claim on the fact that the Zapruder film doesn't show Kennedy's arm casting a shadow on the car. The critic fails to consider whether a shadow from Kennedy's arm would even be visible on the limousine's surface given the quality of the film and the highly reflective nature of the limousine body. More importantly, despite the critic's claim, the position of Kennedy's torso, as determined by the shoulder-line, and the length of his upper arm, make it a certainty that Kennedy's right arm would have extended over the side of the limousine. In fact, numerous photographs of the Kennedy motorcade show this to be true. Incidently, the critic never offers any facts to support his claim that positioning Kennedy properly in the limousine would result in a trajectory that traced back to the Dal-Tex building.



Finally, the overall charge that I re-positioned Kennedy and Connally and the location of their wounds from rendered sequence-to-sequence in order to validate the single bullet theory and/or hide the truth about their actual positions during the shooting is completely false and without foundation. I find it quite entertaining that critics of my computer work are perfectly comfortable embracing the portions of my work that support their own theories (this particular critic agrees with my reconstruction of the trajectory of the fatal head shot), while rejecting those portions they disagree with. Evidently, it's okay to use the work of a "blatantly dishonest" individual as long as you can pick and choose your own truth."



My My My My Rebuttal: I'm sorry. I'll try to disagree with Myers about everything if it makes him feel better. Geez... But seriously, Myers makes a valid point in that it's best to criticize the integrity of someone's work without passing judgment on their character. It's just hard for me to do so under these circumstances, when his depiction of the single-bullet theory is so incredibly misleading. As for his assertion that I "use" his work, he should get over himself. When his findings correspond with my own, I pass this information on to the reader, so that the reader can better judge what is evident to researchers on both sides of the fence. I fail to see how this amounts to my "using" his work. If the reader disagrees, please let me know.



As for his excuse regarding the positioning of President Kennedy...it's smoke and mirrors, folks. One needn't rely on shadows to understand that Kennedy was not leaning over the side of the limo at the time Myers presents him hanging over the side of the limo. Here are two screen grabs from the Andrej Leche film of the motorcade in which Governor Connally is talking to President Kennedy, and Kennedy is draped over the side of the limo a la Myers' animation. I'm sorry. I'll try to disagree with Myers about everything if it makes him feel better. Geez... But seriously, Myers makes a valid point in that it's best to criticize the integrity of someone's work without passing judgment on their character. It's just hard for me to do so under these circumstances, when his depiction of the single-bullet theory is so incredibly misleading. As for his assertion that I "use" his work, he should get over himself. When his findings correspond with my own, I pass this information on to the reader, so that the reader can better judge what is evident to researchers on both sides of the fence. I fail to see how this amounts to my "using" his work. If the reader disagrees, please let me know.As for his excuse regarding the positioning of President Kennedy...it's smoke and mirrors, folks. One needn't rely on shadows to understand that Kennedy was not leaning over the side of the limo at the time Myers presents him hanging over the side of the limo. Here are two screen grabs from the Andrej Leche film of the motorcade in which Governor Connally is talking to President Kennedy, and Kennedy is draped over the side of the limo a la Myers' animation.



Now, here is Connally's testimony regarding the shooting: " We had just made the turn, well, when I heard what I thought was a shot. I heard this noise which I immediately took to be a rifle shot. I instinctively turned to my right because the sound appeared to come from over my right shoulder, so I turned to look back over my right shoulder, and I saw nothing unusual except just people in the crowd, but I did not catch the President in the corner of my eye, and I was interested…the only thought that crossed my mind was that this is an assassination attempt. So I looked, failing to see him, I was turning to look back over my left shoulder into the back seat, but I never got that far in my turn. I got about the position I am in now facing you, looking a little bit left of center, and then I felt like someone had hit me in the back."

So, sorry Dale. We don't need shadows on the limousine or lack of shadows blah blah blah to understand that Kennedy was not draped over the side of the limousine when Connally was hit. We have Connally's testimony. Yes, Connally, the man whose testimony has been twisted into a pretzel suggesting a first shot miss by single-bullet theorists, was actually quite definitive in his statements regarding Kennedy's position at the time he (Connally) was shot--he was not visible in the corner of Connally's eye--where Connally had seen him but minutes before. Now, Myers would have to have known Connally claimed he couldn't see Kennedy when he looked for him after the first shot...but that didn't stop from from pretending Connally could, and did. In his 1995 video in which he first used his animation to defend the single-bullet theory, Myers presented an animated depiction of Connally's point-of-view during the shooting, and presented Connally looking JFK right in the face before turning back to his left. And no, I'm not kidding, here it is. (Thanks to Matt Douthit for grabbing this off a monitor.)

The man (Connally) swore he couldn't see Kennedy when he turned to his right after the first shot. So, hmm, maybe Connally wasn't as far over on his seat as Myers assumes he was... Or, failing that, maybe Kennedy wasn't hanging over the side of the limo at this time? Or, how about both? That Connally wasn't sliding off his seat to his left, and Kennedy wasn't draped over the side of the limo to his right, when Connally turned his head? Or is that too logical?



As for Myers' explanation on why Connally appears to be under-sized, it leaves a lot to be desired--chiefly, the truth. By stating that Connally only appeared to be a midget due to blah blah blah photogrammetry blah blah blah, he is as much as admitting that his overhead depiction of the left-right trajectory between Kennedy and Connally was deceptive. Did he forget that I didn't cherry-pick an image from his animation, and claim he used this image to say Kennedy and Connally were in alignment, but instead analyzed the image HE chose to "demonstrate" the alignment between Kennedy and Connally? And why, if as he states, "you cannot simply draw or overlay lines on a two-dimensional image (as this theorist has claimed) and extract three-dimensional measurements. This is a common amateur blunder" did he use a three-dimensional image to demonstrate the bullet trajectory? I mean, why not just use a schematic, free of distortion? He was using a computer. How hard could it have been? And is it really possible that he fails to realize that by asserting his image was distorted by his use of a wide-angle "virtual" camera, he was as much as admitting that his demonstration was a charade? And does he really expect us to believe that his use of a "virtual" camera would distort the size of Connally's head, less than 2 inches below Kennedy's head, but not Kennedy's feet, several feet below? I mean, why are Kennedy's feet not only proportional to his head but so much larger than Connally's, when they're on the same floor as Connally's feet, and are the same distance from this ultra-high-tech "virtual" camera? Methinks he's blowing smoke.



The uncomfortable feeling of having smoke blown in my direction, led me to take an even closer look at the smoke-blower. And I didn't like what I saw. The man (Connally) swore he couldn't see Kennedy when he turned to his right after the first shot. So, hmm, maybe Connally wasn't as far over on his seat as Myers assumes he was... Or, failing that, maybe Kennedy wasn't hanging over the side of the limo at this time? Or, how about both? That Connally wasn't sliding off his seat to his left, and Kennedy wasn't draped over the side of the limo to his right, when Connally turned his head? Or is that too logical?As for Myers' explanation on why Connally appears to be under-sized, it leaves a lot to be desired--chiefly, the truth. By stating that Connally only appeared to be a midget due to blah blah blah photogrammetry blah blah blah, he is as much as admitting that his overhead depiction of the left-right trajectory between Kennedy and Connally was deceptive. Did he forget that I didn't cherry-pick an image from his animation, and claim he used this image to say Kennedy and Connally were in alignment, but instead analyzed the image HE chose to "demonstrate" the alignment between Kennedy and Connally? And why, if as he states, "you cannot simply draw or overlay lines on a two-dimensional image (as this theorist has claimed) and extract three-dimensional measurements. This is a common amateur blunder" did he use a three-dimensional image to demonstrate the bullet trajectory? I mean, why not just use a schematic, free of distortion? He was using a computer. How hard could it have been? And is it really possible that he fails to realize that by asserting his image was distorted by his use of a wide-angle "virtual" camera, he was as much as admitting that his demonstration was a charade? And does he really expect us to believe that his use of a "virtual" camera would distort the size of Connally's head, less than 2 inches below Kennedy's head, but not Kennedy's feet, several feet below? I mean, why are Kennedy's feet not only proportional to his head but so much larger than Connally's, when they're on the same floor as Connally's feet, and are the same distance from this ultra-high-tech "virtual" camera? Methinks he's blowing smoke.The uncomfortable feeling of having smoke blown in my direction, led me to take an even closer look at the smoke-blower. And I didn't like what I saw. Shadows and a Doubt

When I looked back at Myers' animation, I found he was right about one of my criticisms. I had thought shadows should be apparent on the side of the limousine should Kennedy's arm be extended over the side of the limousine. Myers stated "The critic fails to consider whether a shadow from Kennedy's arm would even be visible on the limousine's surface given the quality of the film and the highly reflective nature of the limousine body." What Myers failed to understand, however, is that it was his animation that made me believe the shadows should be apparent in the first place. That's right, Myers' animation invariably depicts the shadow of Kennedy's arm on the side of the limousine. Since Myers, by his response, now acknowledges that he didn't see these shadows, one can't help but wonder why he decided to include them in his animation. As many objects in the films are not depicted in Myers' animation (including Jacqueline Kennedy), one can't help but wonder why Myers decided to include something he admits he could not see.



Hmmm...could it be that a depiction of shadows corresponding to Kennedy's right arm on the side of the limousine helped sell that Kennedy was hanging over the side of the limousine?



When I looked back at Myers' animation, I found he was right about one of my criticisms. I had thought shadows should be apparent on the side of the limousine should Kennedy's arm be extended over the side of the limousine. Myers statedWhat Myers failed to understand, however, is that it was his animation that made me believe the shadows should be apparent in the first place. That's right, Myers' animation invariably depicts the shadow of Kennedy's arm on the side of the limousine. Since Myers, by his response, now acknowledges that he didn't see these shadows, one can't help but wonder why he decided to include them in his animation. As many objects in the films are not depicted in Myers' animation (including Jacqueline Kennedy), one can't help but wonder why Myers decided to include something he admits he could not see.Hmmm...could it be that a depiction of shadows corresponding to Kennedy's right arm on the side of the limousine helped sell that Kennedy was hanging over the side of the limousine? Have a Cigar!

Myers is correct on another point as well. In earlier versions of this webpage, when I discussed the overhead "midget" view, I asserted that Connally was not a midget on the lateral view, but only became one when the angle changed to looking straight down on the limousine. This was incorrect. Myers, in fact, depicts Connally as a midget on the lateral view as well.



Now, at first, I thought his depiction of a lateral midget was designed to lift the wound from the Connally figure's back up to its armpit. The sniper's nest view at frame 225 published by the Warren Commission, and the trajectory of the bullet in Beyond the Magic Bullet, after all, demonstrated that a bullet leaving Kennedy's neck at the moment of Myers' proposed single-bullet event would go on to strike Connally's middle to lower back, and not his armpit. Ultimately, however, after correcting the size and position of the Connally model, I found that the bullet still hit Connally in the armpit.



If this is so, I wondered, why did Myers shrink his Connally model on the lateral view? If, as Myers asserts, Connally appeared to be smaller than Kennedy on the overhead view because he used a wide-angle "virtual" camera and Connally was 2-3 inches further from this lens, then why doesn't Connally appear even smaller on the lateral view, when he was six inches further from the side of the limousine than Kennedy? Did Myers "change lenses" deliberately as the cyber camera panned from the lateral shot to the overhead shot? If so, why?



The thought occurred that Myers had picked his cyber lenses and "virtual" camera locations to create the illusion of consistency, without their actually being consistent.



I asked my girlfriend, a photographer well-familiar with the effects of wide-angle lenses on an image, if it was possible that Myers had used wide angle "lenses" to create this illusion and she immediately responded in the negative. She said that a lens so distorting the size of Kennedy in comparison to Connally, when Kennedy was at best 2-3 inches closer to the lens in one view, and 6 inches closer to the lens in the other, would have grossly distorted other elements of the image as well. She disputed that such a "lens" was used in either the overhead view or lateral view and suggested instead what I'd already surmised--that Connally was deliberately down-sized in both images. (Input from other photographers welcome.)





Myers is correct on another point as well. In earlier versions of this webpage, when I discussed the overhead "midget" view, I asserted that Connally was not a midget on the lateral view, but only became one when the angle changed to looking straight down on the limousine. This was incorrect. Myers, in fact, depicts Connally as a midget on the lateral view as well.Now, at first, I thought his depiction of a lateral midget was designed to lift the wound from the Connally figure's back up to its armpit. The sniper's nest view at frame 225 published by the Warren Commission, and the trajectory of the bullet in Beyond the Magic Bullet, after all, demonstrated that a bullet leaving Kennedy's neck at the moment of Myers' proposed single-bullet event would go on to strike Connally's middle to lower back, and not his armpit. Ultimately, however, after correcting the size and position of the Connally model, I found that the bullet still hit Connally in the armpit.If this is so, I wondered, why did Myers shrink his Connally model on the lateral view? If, as Myers asserts, Connally appeared to be smaller than Kennedy on the overhead view because he used a wide-angle "virtual" camera and Connally was 2-3 inches further from this lens, then why doesn't Connally appear even smaller on the lateral view, when he was six inches further from the side of the limousine than Kennedy? Did Myers "change lenses" deliberately as the cyber camera panned from the lateral shot to the overhead shot? If so, why?The thought occurred that Myers had picked his cyber lenses and "virtual" camera locations to create the illusion of consistency, without their actually being consistent.I asked my girlfriend, a photographer well-familiar with the effects of wide-angle lenses on an image, if it was possible that Myers had used wide angle "lenses" to create this illusion and she immediately responded in the negative. She said that a lens so distorting the size of Kennedy in comparison to Connally, when Kennedy was at best 2-3 inches closer to the lens in one view, and 6 inches closer to the lens in the other, would have grossly distorted other elements of the image as well. She disputed that such a "lens" was used in either the overhead view or lateral view and suggested instead what I'd already surmised--that Connally was deliberately down-sized in both images. (Input from other photographers welcome.) The Anatomy of Illusion

It then occurred to me that one could lift the the bullet trajectory hitting Kennedy and Connally from the middle of Connally's back (where it impacted in the WC and Discovery re-enactments) up to Connally's armpit simply by having Kennedy lean forward off the back of his seat. A close look at Myers' animation confirmed that, yes, indeed, he has Kennedy leaning forward, with his back off the seat, at the moment of impact. As the films and photos taken just before Kennedy went behind the sign in the Zapruder film show him leaning back in his seat, one must ask Myers at what point did Kennedy lean forwards?



While looking at Myers' depiction of Kennedy's forward lean, I once again grew suspicious that his overhead view fails to depict this lean. On the slide above, I attempt a comparison of the overhead and lateral views of the single-bullet theory presented by Myers in Beyond the Magic Bullet.



While performing this comparison, I decided to correct the size of Connally on the overhead view and see if this confirmed my earlier suspicions. Sure enough, I found that making Connally's shoulders full-sized brought the entrance on his back several inches further to his right than the trajectory through Kennedy. This trajectory now entered Connally squarely on his back, probably on his shoulder blade, and headed straight for his heart.



Also intriguing was that, by correcting the size of Connally's shoulders to match Kennedy's, one made his head far larger than Kennedy's. This demonstrated that the head on the Connally midget was disproportionately large in comparison to the rest of his body, but that the head on the Kennedy model was not. One can only suspect that this was done to conceal that Connally's body width had been down-sized.



At this point it occurred to me that, even though the Connally figure had been down-sized, it still appeared to fill up its seat. This meant the seat had similarly been down-sized.



And yet Myers' animation had a series of straight lines on the floor of the limo, suggesting that all was in perfect alignment with the back seat.



It then occurred to me that one could lift the the bullet trajectory hitting Kennedy and Connally from the middle of Connally's back (where it impacted in the WC and Discovery re-enactments) up to Connally's armpit simply by having Kennedy lean forward off the back of his seat. A close look at Myers' animation confirmed that, yes, indeed, he has Kennedy leaning forward, with his back off the seat, at the moment of impact. As the films and photos taken just before Kennedy went behind the sign in the Zapruder film show him leaning back in his seat, one must ask Myers at what point did Kennedy lean forwards?While looking at Myers' depiction of Kennedy's forward lean, I once again grew suspicious that his overhead view fails to depict this lean. On the slide above, I attempt a comparison of the overhead and lateral views of the single-bullet theory presented by Myers in Beyond the Magic Bullet.While performing this comparison, I decided to correct the size of Connally on the overhead view and see if this confirmed my earlier suspicions. Sure enough, I found that making Connally's shoulders full-sized brought the entrance on his back several inches further to his right than the trajectory through Kennedy. This trajectory now entered Connally squarely on his back, probably on his shoulder blade, and headed straight for his heart.Also intriguing was that, by correcting the size of Connally's shoulders to match Kennedy's, one made his head far larger than Kennedy's. This demonstrated that the head on the Connally midget was disproportionately large in comparison to the rest of his body, but that the head on the Kennedy model was not. One can only suspect that this was done to conceal that Connally's body width had been down-sized.At this point it occurred to me that, even though the Connally figure had been down-sized, it still appeared to fill up its seat. This meant the seat had similarly been down-sized.And yet Myers' animation had a series of straight lines on the floor of the limo, suggesting that all was in perfect alignment with the back seat. Seat of Government At this point I went back to Myers' website, to see what he'd used to determine the size of Connally's seat. Myers claims "The original body draft of the modified 1961 Lincoln convertible, prepared by The Hess & Eisenhardt Company, served as a guide in modeling the presidential limousine." He later claims "The presidential limousine began as a digitized model of a 1961 Lincoln convertible. The resulting computer model was then modified to match the dimensions of the presidential limousine's original body draft, provided by Hess and Eisenhardt. Details were created based on a multitude of photographs taken during the 1963 Dallas motorcade. Particular attention was paid to the seating arrangement as depicted in photographs taken by the Secret Service and FBI in the White House garage the night of November 22, 1963."



The problem is that the HSCA printed this "body draft" as Exhibit II-19, and a close comparison of this exhibit with Myers' overhead view reveals that the actual jump seats occupied by John and Nellie Connally on 11-22-63 were approximately twice as large as the seats depicted by Myers. This supports the possibility Myers shrunk the seats to disguise that he'd shrunk Connally. This comparison also reveals that the Governor's seat is slightly closer to Kennedy's seat in Myers view than on the "body draft." Along with the forward lean of Kennedy depicted by Myers, this helps explain why Myers' proposed bullet trajectory through Kennedy aligns with Connally's armpit when the Warren Commission re-enactment photo of the alignment a split second later shows it aligning with his lower back.



Even worse, a close look at Exhibit II-19 reveals that Connally's seat was but 2.5 inches in from the right door. This short distance is confirmed by the Secret Service photos purportedly relied upon by Myers. Now this is where things get crazy. In both Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet, Myers shifts the seat inboard 6 inches from directly in front of Kennedy, in order to put it into its "actual" location.



Wait. What's going on? Does Myers' animation present the seat in the wrong location? At this point I went back to Myers' website, to see what he'd used to determine the size of Connally's seat. Myers claimsHe later claimsThe problem is that the HSCA printed thisas Exhibit II-19, and a close comparison of this exhibit with Myers' overhead view reveals that the actual jump seats occupied by John and Nellie Connally on 11-22-63 were approximately twice as large as the seats depicted by Myers. This supports the possibility Myers shrunk the seats to disguise that he'd shrunk Connally. This comparison also reveals that the Governor's seat is slightly closer to Kennedy's seat in Myers view than on theAlong with the forward lean of Kennedy depicted by Myers, this helps explain why Myers' proposed bullet trajectory through Kennedy aligns with Connally's armpit when the Warren Commission re-enactment photo of the alignment a split second later shows it aligning with his lower back.Even worse, a close look at Exhibit II-19 reveals that Connally's seat was but 2.5 inches in from the right door. This short distance is confirmed by the Secret Service photos purportedly relied upon by Myers. Now this is where things get crazy. In both Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet, Myers shifts the seat inboard 6 inches from directly in front of Kennedy, in order to put it into its "actual" location.Wait. What's going on? Does Myers' animation present the seat in the wrong location? A Tale of 2 1/2 Inches

I decided to put this to a test. Since Myers depicts the impact location on Connally about 20% across the width of his seat, and since Myers claims this seat was 20.5 inches wide, we can assume Myers believes the bullet struck Connally 4 inches in from the edge of his seat. If the seat on Myers' model was actually 2 1/2 inches in from the right door, as on the HSCA schematic, then, the bullet would have to have hit Connally 6 1/2 inches in from the door.



Now let's see where this takes us. If we project back 29.36 inches (74 cm...the HSCA's 14 cm distance through Kennedy's back/neck plus the HSCA's 60 cm distance from Kennedy's throat to Connally's back) at 10 degrees (Myers' accepted horizontal angle of trajectory from the sniper's nest to the limo at Z-224) from 6 1/2 inches from the door, we can see where this would impact on Kennedy. While the Dave Powers film of Kennedy in the motorcade suggests the impact on Kennedy was 8-10 inches in from the side of the limo, and Myers' own animation suggests the impact on Kennedy's back was about 4 3/4 inches in from the inside of the door (the 5 1/2 inches from his shoulder tip to the back wound minus the 3/4 of an inch or so that the shoulder tip resides to the right of the inside of the door) the impact on Kennedy, if Connally was hit but 6 1/2 inches inside the door, would have to have been about 1 1/4 inches in from the side of the door. Well, heck. This confirms that in Myers' animation Connally's seat is 6 inches in from the door, and not 2 1/2 inches, as on the HSCA schematic.



So how does Myers explain this mistake?



I decided to put this to a test. Since Myers depicts the impact location on Connally about 20% across the width of his seat, and since Myers claims this seat was 20.5 inches wide, we can assume Myers believes the bullet struck Connally 4 inches in from the edge of his seat. If the seat on Myers' model was actually 2 1/2 inches in from the right door, as on the HSCA schematic, then, the bullet would have to have hit Connally 6 1/2 inches in from the door.Now let's see where this takes us. If we project back 29.36 inches (74 cm...the HSCA's 14 cm distance through Kennedy's back/neck plus the HSCA's 60 cm distance from Kennedy's throat to Connally's back) at 10 degrees (Myers' accepted horizontal angle of trajectory from the sniper's nest to the limo at Z-224) from 6 1/2 inches from the door, we can see where this would impact on Kennedy. While the Dave Powers film of Kennedy in the motorcade suggests the impact on Kennedy was 8-10 inches in from the side of the limo, and Myers' own animation suggests the impact on Kennedy's back was about 4 3/4 inches in from the inside of the door (the 5 1/2 inches from his shoulder tip to the back wound minus the 3/4 of an inch or so that the shoulder tip resides to the right of the inside of the door) the impact on Kennedy, if Connally was hit but 6 1/2 inches inside the door, would have to have been about 1 1/4 inches in from the side of the door. Well, heck. This confirms that in Myers' animation Connally's seat is 6 inches in from the door, and not 2 1/2 inches, as on the HSCA schematic.So how does Myers explain this mistake? The Defense of Dale Myers Part 4 On his website, Dale Myers asks: "Isn't it true that you incorrectly modeled the presidential limousine, positioning Connally's jump seat six inches from the inside of the door rather than the actual distance of 2.5 inches?"



Myers answers: "No. One critic claimed that I "used the incorrect limo measurement of a 6 inches clearance between JBC jump seat and door. The actual measurement was 2.5 inches. So whatever trajectory [Myers] thought he proved was not what 'a single bullet' could have taken."



"This particular criticism stems from a comment made during the ABC News broadcast. At one point in the program, a computer animated sequence compares a diagram of how conspiracy theorists believe Kennedy and Connally were seated in the limousine with how they actually were seated as seen in the Zapruder film. Peter Jennings notes in voiceover narration that Connally was not seated directly in front of Kennedy, as some conspiracy theorists believe, but was "six inches" to Kennedy's left. However, the six inch figure mentioned in narration did not refer to the distance between the jump seat and the inside of the limousine door, as presumed by this critic, but instead referred to the distance between the center of Kennedy and Connally's body. Kennedy was seated to the extreme right side of the limousine. Connally was turned to his right and had shifted left on the jump seat in front of Kennedy. Projecting an imaginary line forward from the center of the both men shows that the difference between their two center points is six inches. Connally's jump seat, which was about 20.5 inches wide, was correctly located 2.5 inches from the inside of the right-hand door."





If 6 Were 2 1/2

Godzilla! I'd accepted the possibility Myers felt his animation was "close enough" and had, step by step, made it more and more convincing--without fully realizing it was now yards if not miles away from an accurate depiction of the shooting. But I hadn't fully expected him to LIE in such a manner. I figured he would say he'd mistakenly trusted the Warren Commission testimony of Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley, but that this mistake was of no importance.



Godzilla! I'd accepted the possibility Myers felt his animation was "close enough" and had, step by step, made it more and more convincing--without fully realizing it was now yards if not miles away from an accurate depiction of the shooting. But I hadn't fully expected him to LIE in such a manner. I figured he would say he'd mistakenly trusted the Warren Commission testimony of Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley, but that this mistake was of no importance.



Mr. SPECTER. On the President's car itself, what is the distance on the right edge of the right jump seat, that is to say from the right edge of the right jump seat to the door on the right side?

Mr. KELLEY: There is 6 inches of clearance between the jump seat and the door. (5H129-134)



When blaming his mistake on Kelley, moreover, Myers could also have pointed to the 1979 HSCA trajectory report, in which Thomas Canning claimed: "Connally, on the other hand, was seated well within the car on the jump seat ahead of Kennedy; a gap of slightly less than 15 centimeters separated this seat from the car door." (As Canning was a NASA scientist, and meticulous in the presentation of his findings, his representation of a gap of 2.5 inches (roughly 6.25 cm) as only "slightly less" than 15 cm (roughly 6 inches) is thoroughly out-of-character and suggestive that he, or the committee itself, was trying to hide that Kelley had testified incorrectly to the Warren Commission.)



But no, Myers never even mentions these deceptive assertions in his response. Apparently, we're to believe it's just a coincidence that Kelley falsely testified that the seat was six inches in from the door, Canning helped cover up that Kelley falsely testified, and that Myers' animation just so happened to shift Connally's seat inboard 6 inches to its "actual" location.Even more troublesome is Myers' own deceptive assertion that he bears no responsibility for the inaccurate perception that he placed the seat six inches from the door. No, he claims, it stems not from anything he'd said or done but from a misinterpreted voice-over by the now-deceased Peter Jennings on 2003's Beyond Conspiracy.



Nothing could be further from the truth. When discussing Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Jennings says: "In the Stone film diagrams have Governor Connally sitting directly in front of the President, facing forward at the time of the second shot. Not true. Governor Connally was sitting 6 inches inboard of the President, and turned sharply to his right." (During this pronouncement we see an animated Governor Connally siting in front of an animated President, then slid inboard, and turned to his right.) Now compare this to Myers' exact words from Beyond the Magic Bullet, a year later. (Note: he's looking at the overhead view on the slide above): "Here's the position that most critics believed they were occupied at the time of the single bullet, with Connally directly in front of Kennedy. But that's not true. Actually, Connally's seated about six inches inboards (Here, he slides Connally over, as depicted on the second image in the slide up above). And turned to his right."



It is therefore Myers who is responsible for the mis-perception his animated jump seat was six inches inboard of the door, and not Jennings!



And that's not the worst of it. As shown on the last slide, it is not actually a mis-perception! When one compares the edge of the jump seat in in Myers' overhead views of the seat before and after he slides it inwards, it's absolutely and devastatingly clear that he slides the SEAT inwards six inches in both Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet. He does not slide the middle of Connally's body over six inches on the seat. He slides the seat. Unless one is to believe that Connally's seat, in Myers' first image, is actually 3 1/2 inches outside the interior of the limousine, it is strikingly clear that Myers moves the seat 6 inches in from the door, and not 2 1/2. This fabrication by Myers--blaming his own deception on a dead man--in my opinion, marks a new low and reveals the depths that he will travel before he will admit the obvious--that his animation deceptively depicts an under-sized Connally model on a seat 3.5 inches further from the door than the seat occupied by the flesh and bone Connally, and that, when these mistakes are corrected, the bullet exiting Kennedy's neck strikes Connally in the middle of his back.



In Myers' defense ( I can't believe I'm doing this) it's clear he's in a trap. He can't admit his "mistake" without risking all he's worked for. He sold his animation to large entertainment corporations under the assurance it was accurate. He then snowballed this success to become a semi-visible ghost writer for Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History. In the acknowledgments section, in fact, Bugliosi writes "no one helped me as much as Dale Myers, the Emmy Award-winning computer animation specialist...Dale helped me in the writing of several sections of Book One." Included in Book One is Bugliosi's section on the single-bullet theory. Not surprisingly, he (or Myers) condemns conspiracy theorists for assuming that Connally was sitting directly in front of Kennedy by writing "In fact, Connally's jump seat not only was situated a half foot inside and to the left of the right door, but also was three inches lower than the backseat." This assertion has a footnote. As one might guess, it refers back to the inaccurate testimony of Thomas Kelley on June 4, 1964.



Such a mistake would be bad enough, but Bugliosi ended up compounding this mistake during the 2007 promotional tour for his book. In appearance after appearance, from a video interview put online in April 2007 through the many interviews that followed, Bugliosi accused conspiracy theorists of telling an "unbelievable lie" when they depicted Connally sitting directly in front of Kennedy on drawings designed to discredit the single-bullet theory, and then told his audience, over and over, the all-too believable lie that Connally was actually "seated on a jump seat 6 inches in from the door."



By 8-20-07, Bugliosi was still engaging in this embarrassing regurgitation of misinformation. On that day, he echoed his earlier statements and told George Mason University's History News Network:



"If you start with an erroneous premise, everything that follows makes a heck of a lot of sense. The only problem is that it is wrong. There’s no question that Connally was not seated directly in front of Kennedy in the presidential limousine. He was seated to his left front. I have a photograph in Reclaiming History showing exactly where they were seated, and right along side of it I show sketches that they put in conspiracy books, [with Connally] right in front and the bullet is making a right turn and a left turn. But he was seated to [JFK’s] left front in a jump seat a half-foot in so the orientation of Connally’s body vis a vis Kennedy’s was such that a bullet passing on a straight line, through Kennedy, would have no where else to go, except to hit Governor Connally."



Bugliosi died in 2015. One can only wonder then if anyone ever told him his defense of the single-bullet theory was based in large part on the "erroneous premise" the jump seat was 6 inches inboard of the door.





Such a mistake, after all, would almost be excusable. On June 4, 1964, the sworn testimony of Thomas Kelley was taken, and the following exchange took place: (Notably, this was the same Arlen Specter-orchestrated testimony in which Kelley falsely stated that CE 386 was used to mark the back wound during the re-enactment).When blaming his mistake on Kelley, moreover, Myers could also have pointed to the 1979 HSCA trajectory report, in which Thomas Canning claimed:(As Canning was a NASA scientist, and meticulous in the presentation of his findings, his representation of a gap of 2.5 inches (roughly 6.25 cm) as onlythan 15 cm (roughly 6 inches) is thoroughly out-of-character and suggestive that he, or the committee itself, was trying to hide that Kelley had testified incorrectly to the Warren Commission.)But no, Myers never even mentions these deceptive assertions in his response. Apparently, we're to believe it's just a coincidence that Kelley falsely testified that the seat was six inches in from the door, Canning helped cover up that Kelley falsely testified, and that Myers' animation just so happened to shift Connally's seat inboard 6 inches to its "actual" location.Even more troublesome is Myers' own deceptive assertion that he bears no responsibility for the inaccurate perception that he placed the seat six inches from the door. No, he claims, it stems not from anything he'd said or done but from a misinterpreted voice-over by the now-deceased Peter Jennings on 2003's Beyond Conspiracy.Nothing could be further from the truth. When discussing Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Jennings says: "(During this pronouncement we see an animated Governor Connally siting in front of an animated President, then slid inboard, and turned to his right.) Now compare this to Myers' exact words from Beyond the Magic Bullet, a year later. (Note: he's looking at the overhead view on the slide above):(Here, he slides Connally over, as depicted on the second image in the slide up above).It is therefore Myers who is responsible for the mis-perception his animated jump seat was six inches inboard of the door, and not Jennings!And that's not the worst of it. As shown on the last slide, it is not actually a mis-perception! When one compares the edge of the jump seat in in Myers' overhead views of the seat before and after he slides it inwards, it's absolutely and devastatingly clear that he slides the SEAT inwards six inches in both Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet. He does not slide the middle of Connally's body over six inches on the seat. He slides the seat. Unless one is to believe that Connally's seat, in Myers' first image, is actually 3 1/2 inches outside the interior of the limousine, it is strikingly clear that Myers moves the seat 6 inches in from the door, and not 2 1/2. This fabrication by Myers--blaming his own deception on a dead man--in my opinion, marks a new low and reveals the depths that he will travel before he will admit the obvious--that his animation deceptively depicts an under-sized Connally model on a seat 3.5 inches further from the door than the seat occupied by the flesh and bone Connally, and that, when these mistakes are corrected, the bullet exiting Kennedy's neck strikes Connally in the middle of his back.In Myers' defense ( I can't believe I'm doing this) it's clear he's in a trap. He can't admit his "mistake" without risking all he's worked for. He sold his animation to large entertainment corporations under the assurance it was accurate. He then snowballed this success to become a semi-visible ghost writer for Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History. In the acknowledgments section, in fact, Bugliosi writes "no one helped me as much as Dale Myers, the Emmy Award-winning computer animation specialist...Dale helped me in the writing of several sections of Book One." Included in Book One is Bugliosi's section on the single-bullet theory. Not surprisingly, he (or Myers) condemns conspiracy theorists for assuming that Connally was sitting directly in front of Kennedy by writing "In fact, Connally's jump seat not only was situated a half foot inside and to the left of the right door, but also was three inches lower than the backseat." This assertion has a footnote. As one might guess, it refers back to the inaccurate testimony of Thomas Kelley on June 4, 1964.Such a mistake would be bad enough, but Bugliosi ended up compounding this mistake during the 2007 promotional tour for his book. In appearance after appearance, from a video interview put online in April 2007 through the many interviews that followed, Bugliosi accused conspiracy theorists of telling an "unbelievable lie" when they depicted Connally sitting directly in front of Kennedy on drawings designed to discredit the single-bullet theory, and then told his audience, over and over, the all-too believable lie that Connally was actuallyBy 8-20-07, Bugliosi was still engaging in this embarrassing regurgitation of misinformation. On that day, he echoed his earlier statements and told George Mason University's History News Network:Bugliosi died in 2015. One can only wonder then if anyone ever told him his defense of the single-bullet theory was based in large part on thethe jump seat was 6 inches inboard of the door. Bugliosi Vs. Myers

And that's not the only curiosity regarding Myers, Bugliosi and the single-bullet theory.



When looking back through Reclaiming History, in order to learn more about Myers' role its creation, I came across yet another depiction of the single-bullet theory, this one courtesy Animation of Arizona. Well, guess what? This depiction differed from both Bugliosi's semi-visible ghost-writer and "Emmy Award-winning computer animation specialist" Dale Myers' animation, and the text of Bugliosi's book, in that it presented the jump seat in its proper location, 2 1/2 inches from the door.



It differed in other ways as well. While the first part of Bugliosi's book describes a 4.9 second gap between the second and third shots, roughly 90 frames, and this indicates the second shot came around frame 223, 90 frames before the head shot at frame 313, a caption in the illustration section declares: "No one knows the exact Zapruder frame at which the president and Governor Connally were hit by Oswald's second bullet, but it was somewhere within a split second of frame 210. This is a three-dimensional overhead rendering of Kennedy and Connally as they were seated in the limousine at approximately frame 210, with the single-bullet's trajectory." This image, as demonstrated on the slide above, depicts Kennedy hanging over the side of the limo. This is, in my opinion, totally inconsistent with the motorcade photos depicting Kennedy's position in the limo. These show his elbow to be resting on the side of the limo but his shoulder to be well inside. And it's not just my opinion that Kennedy jerked to the left by 210. Let's recall that the HSCA photographic panel concluded:



70) At approximately Zapruder frame 200 , Kennedy's movements suddenly freeze; his right hand abruptly stops in the midst of a waving motion and his head moves rapidly from right to his left in the direction of his wife. Based on these movements, it appears that by the time the President goes behind the sign at frame 207 he is evidencing some kind of reaction to a severe external stimulus.



So where does Bugliosi get off pretending that Kennedy's draped over the side of the limo at 210? First, Kennedy's behind the sign and no one can tell exactly where he is, and second, when last seen his head was moving from right to left. There's absolutely no reason to believe he's in the position depicted.



Which brings me to a related point. In Dale Myers' TV appearances, and on his website, he preaches the gospel of Connally reacting to a shot at frame Z-224. (I pretty much agree.) He even claims Kennedy and Connally were in a position to receive their wounds for but a split second, between frames 217 to 224. So how could he have sat by while Bugliosi dismissed or ignored his evidence for this hit, and pretended instead that the shot could have come as early as frame 210? It must have been extremely frustrating for him.



Something tells me it was. In the acknowledgments section of Reclaiming History, where Bugliosi lavishes praise upon Myers and thanks him for all his help, he writes "Even though he worked with me for a relatively short part of my long journey, no one helped me as much as Dale Myers." David Lifton, whom Bugliosi praises in Reclaiming History for his thorough research, while at the same time criticizing him for his unorthodox conclusions, decided to do some digging on this previously secret Bugliosi/Myers connection.





On March 11 2008, on historian John Simkin's Education Forum, Lifton reported:



With the 1998 ARRB releases, and the advent of the Internet, Bugliosi needed assistance to complete his project. This brings us to the second phase.



ENTER Ghostwriter #2 –DALE MYERS



Bugliosi (and/or his publisher) hired another writer--this time, one with expertise in the area of the shots, the medical evidence, and the acoustics. Dale Myers—the JFK researcher who appeared with Bugliosi on a Discovery Channel documentary—was solicited, and agreed. Once again, as was the case with Haines, a formal contract was drawn up. Furthermore, it was agreed that the credit for the book would now read "by Vincent Bugliosi," but "with Dale Myers."



Unfortunately for Bugliosi (and perhaps because both of these fellows have outsized egos), the collaboration between Dale Myers and Bugliosi didn't work out. Consequently, and similar to a marriage that doesn't work, a "literary divorce" now had to be arranged (i.e., another contract had to be drawn up—this one spelling out the terms of their "separation.) One of the provisions of this second contract was that Myers agreed that he would never divulge the existence of the original arrangement, or its dissolution. In other words, Myers is bound by contract not to talk about the writing he did for Bugliosi, what he contributed, how much he was paid for his contribution, or the circumstances of their "divorce."



Consequently, Dale Myers has TWO contracts with publisher W. W. Norton:



--the first, when his writing deal was originally formalized, and the book was to be published with the authorial credit reading by Vincent Bugliosi "with Dale Myers";



-- the second, when their collaboration didn't work as planned and their separation had to be formalized.



So now, addressing the issue of ghostwriting and counting up the signed contracts for ghostwriting, here's where we stand: there's one (and probably two) with Fred Haines (one for the original arrangement, and one for the separation); similarly, there were two contracts with Dale Myers—one for the original arrangement, the second for the "literary divorce."



Since single-assassin theorists routinely criticize conspiracy theorists for 1) trying to make money off the assassination, and 2) not having a uniform theory, it's more than a little ironic that Bugliosi and Myers, possibly the two highest-profile single-assassin theorists of recent times, couldn't see eye to eye and develop a uniform theory, and had to get Bugliosi's publisher to pay Myers off. And that's not the only curiosity regarding Myers, Bugliosi and the single-bullet theory.When looking back through Reclaiming History, in order to learn more about Myers' role its creation, I came across yet another depiction of the single-bullet theory, this one courtesy Animation of Arizona. Well, guess what? This depiction differed from both Bugliosi's semi-visible ghost-writer andDale Myers' animation, and the text of Bugliosi's book, in that it presented the jump seat in its proper location, 2 1/2 inches from the door.It differed in other ways as well. While the first part of Bugliosi's book describes a 4.9 second gap between the second and third shots, roughly 90 frames, and this indicates the second shot came around frame 223, 90 frames before the head shot at frame 313, a caption in the illustration section declares: "No one knows the exact Zapruder frame at which the president and Governor Connally were hit by Oswald's second bullet, but it was somewhere within a split second of frame 210. This is a three-dimensional overhead rendering of Kennedy and Connally as they were seated in the limousine at approximately frame 210, with the single-bullet's trajectory." This image, as demonstrated on the slide above, depicts Kennedy hanging over the side of the limo. This is, in my opinion, totally inconsistent with the motorcade photos depicting Kennedy's position in the limo. These show his elbow to be resting on the side of the limo but his shoulder to be well inside. And it's not just my opinion that Kennedy jerked to the left by 210. Let's recall that the HSCA photographic panel concluded:70) At approximately Zapruder frame 200 , Kennedy's movements suddenly freeze; his right hand abruptly stops in the midst of a waving motion and his head moves rapidly from right to his left in the direction of his wife. Based on these movements, it appears that by the time the President goes behind the sign at frame 207 he is evidencing some kind of reaction to a severe external stimulus.So where does Bugliosi get off pretending that Kennedy's draped over the side of the limo at 210? First, Kennedy's behind the sign and no one can tell exactly where he is, and second, when last seen his head was moving from right to left. There's absolutely no reason to believe he's in the position depicted.Which brings me to a related point. In Dale Myers' TV appearances, and on his website, he preaches the gospel of Connally reacting to a shot at frame Z-224. (I pretty much agree.) He even claims Kennedy and Connally were in a position to receive their wounds for but a split second, between frames 217 to 224. So how could he have sat by while Bugliosi dismissed or ignored his evidence for this hit, and pretended instead that the shot could have come as early as frame 210? It must have been extremely frustrating for him.Something tells me it was. In the acknowledgments section of Reclaiming History, where Bugliosi lavishes praise upon Myers and thanks him for all his help, he writes "Even though he worked with me for a relatively short part of my long journey, no one helped me as much as Dale Myers." David Lifton, whom Bugliosi praises in Reclaiming History for his thorough research, while at the same time criticizing him for his unorthodox conclusions, decided to do some digging on this previously secret Bugliosi/Myers connection.On March 11 2008, on historian John Simkin's Education Forum, Lifton reported:With the 1998 ARRB releases, and the advent of the Internet, Bugliosi needed assistance to complete his project. This brings us to the second phase.ENTER Ghostwriter #2 –DALE MYERSBugliosi (and/or his publisher) hired another writer--this time, one with expertise in the area of the shots, the medical evidence, and the acoustics. Dale Myers—the JFK researcher who appeared with Bugliosi on a Discovery Channel documentary—was solicited, and agreed. Once again, as was the case with Haines, a formal contract was drawn up. Furthermore, it was agreed that the credit for the book would now read "by Vincent Bugliosi," but "with Dale Myers."Unfortunately for Bugliosi (and perhaps because both of these fellows have outsized egos), the collaboration between Dale Myers and Bugliosi didn't work out. Consequently, and similar to a marriage that doesn't work, a "literary divorce" now had to be arranged (i.e., another contract had to be drawn up—this one spelling out the terms of their "separation.) One of the provisions of this second contract was that Myers agreed that he would never divulge the existence of the original arrangement, or its dissolution. In other words, Myers is bound by contract not to talk about the writing he did for Bugliosi, what he contributed, how much he was paid for his contribution, or the circumstances of their "divorce."Consequently, Dale Myers has TWO contracts with publisher W. W. Norton:--the first, when his writing deal was originally formalized, and the book was to be published with the authorial credit reading by Vincent Bugliosi "with Dale Myers";-- the second, when their collaboration didn't work as planned and their separation had to be formalized.So now, addressing the issue of ghostwriting and counting up the signed contracts for ghostwriting, here's where we stand: there's one (and probably two) with Fred Haines (one for the original arrangement, and one for the separation); similarly, there were two contracts with Dale Myers—one for the original arrangement, the second for the "literary divorce."Since single-assassin theorists routinely criticize conspiracy theorists for 1) trying to make money off the assassination, and 2) not having a uniform theory, it's more than a little ironic that Bugliosi and Myers, possibly the two highest-profile single-assassin theorists of recent times, couldn't see eye to eye and develop a uniform theory, and had to get Bugliosi's publisher to pay Myers off. Modeling 101 When I looked back at Myers' website, to see what else I'd missed, I noticed that he illustrated his schpiel about the construction of his limousine model, quoted back in the Seat of Government section, with an early version of his limousine model. When I compared this early version of his model with the completed model used in Beyond the Magic Bullet, it confirmed once again that he had shrunk Connally's seat for his single-bullet theory depiction. When I compared this early model to the schematic purportedly used in its creation, however, it held a surprise. This surprise was that the schematic was not drawn to scale, as the space between the seat and the door purported to be 2.5 inches, was much larger than that when compared to the seat, which was purportedly 20.5 inches wide.

This brings up the question: if Myers' early limousine model depicted the seat (almost) in the right place, why'd he move it for his finished animation? Well, when one puts Beyond the Magic Bullet's Connally model on the jump seat of Myers' early limo model (as on the slide above), one can see the probable answer. The bullet hits Connally in the back, and not his armpit. While this was already demonstrated on The Anatomy of Illusion slide, it has to be considered more than significant that Myers' early models demonstrate that this is true, and not just my correction of his finished model.

It's hard not to conclude from this then that Myers deliberately fudged his animation to portray what he knew to be untrue. (NOTE: so that no one stopping here is deceived. As we progress in this chapter, I include a number of responses by Myers, in which he offers explanations for the diminutive Connally. He eventually offers one that makes sense (well, sorta). He admits the images used in Beyond the Magic Bullet were distorted, but insists this was done inadvertently. He insists as well that this has no bearing on the feasibility of the single-bullet theory. Read on and decide for yourself.)

Squeezing Out the Truth

On this visit to Myers' website I also found a small overhead image depicting the single-bullet shot. Not surprisingly, this early depiction had a full-sized Connally sitting on a full-sized seat, and the bullet heading into the middle of his back. This gave foundation to my suspicion Myers created his simulation using an incorrect seat location, saw that it still didn't support the single-bullet theory, and then "fine-tuned" it by shrinking his Connally model, and tapering the side of the limo to make an 8 degree trajectory look like a 10 degree trajectory, etc. A few days later, while watching Myers' animation on Youtube, I came to an even more surprising realization. When one compares his single-bullet theory over-views on Beyond Conspiracy, from 2003, and Beyond the Magic Bullet, from 2004, it becomes clear that it was not until the latter program that he changed the impact location from Connally's back to his armpit, and that, to do so, he had moved the bullet trajectory coming out of Kennedy's neck a few inches to its right, and compressed the overall image, bringing Connally closer to Kennedy. Assuming that Myers "squeezed" his image to make the bullet trajectory he believes is true more palatable to the public, we should ask ourselves, at what point does making the truth more believable become an outright lie? At what point does squeezing out the truth become an exercise in deception, with no truth left to squeeze? These questions finally squeezed some "truth" out of Myers...



Of Fast Food and Emmy Awards

On May 1, 2008, in an email posted on a newsgroup, Myers responded to some more of my criticisms. He attempted to cut off my criticism of his squeezing his image by explaining that the image in Beyond the Magic Bullet was filmed on a monitor at an angle. This took me by surprise. Before, Myers had explained that the distortion of the images was caused by photogrammetry blah blah blah but now he was saying it was the fault of the Beyond the Magic Production team. Here, then, is his explanation...

The Defense of Dale Myers Part 5

You're obviously referring to the website and rantings of Pat Speer, one of many conspiracy theorists who pretend to know the truth about my reconstruction work on the Kennedy assassination. The only thing obvious about these folks is their distain for the truth and honest research. As you noted, Mr. Speer has made no attempt to contact me and get answers about my work from the only source who could answer him - which should tell you all you need to know.

As Mr. Speer himself has noted on his website, I pointed out the fallacy of his arguments on my FAQ page. He has failed to address those fallacies and continues promoting falsehoods about my work which include the newly minted, ridiculous assertions you mentioned. For instance, he continues to claim that the Connally (JBC) figure was shrunk (as was the jumpseat) to accomodate the SBT. He now uses images of my work culled from the Discovery Channel program "Beyond the Magic Bullet" to promote this nonsense. Even a cursory look at the images should tell anyone with a brain that the images used by Mr. Speer are at an angle to the viewer (i..e, the right side of the image is falling away from the viewer). This is due to the fact that the images are being filmed directly off my computer monitor and that the camera filming these images is viewing the monitor at a considerable angle. This can be seen in any of the wide angle shots in which I am visible alongside the monitor (none of which, BTW, are included in Speer's presentation). If Mr. Speer had shown his viewers those wide angle views, it would be obvious that the reason JBC (and the jumpseat) appears smaller is because of the camera/monitor relationship.

Mr. Speer compounds this nonsense by overlaying the images from the Discovery program with those culled from the ABC/History Channel program and claiming that because they do not align I have made wholesale changes on a frame-by-frame level in order to sell a "lie" to the networks and the American public. This is obviously false.

Mr. Speer also attempts to demonstrate his theories about my work by drawing lines on two-dimensional images I have produced and pretending that these lines of "alignment" can be projected into three dimensional space. This is false, as I have already demonstrated on FAQ page when addressing equally silly accusations made by self- proclaimed photo expert Bill Miller, another conspiracy theorist who's concept of photo interpretation is equally bankrupt.

None of these self-proclaimed experts have retracted their false accusations about my work (on the contrary, they act as if their methods haven't been shown to be false and irrational), nor do I expect them to in the near future. If it isn't Mr. Speer or Miller perpetuating these myths, it would be someone else. Who has time for all this nonsense?

Mr. Speer's claims about the jump seat location have no bearing on the issue at hand - again, as I have already answered and addressed in my FAQ page. The figures of JFK and JBC were matched to the Zapruder film perspective, not to the location of the jumpseat. Frankly, you could eliminate the entire limousine from the reconstruction and the alignments of JFK and JBC would still be valid since their position in space is based on Zapruder's view of the scene and the relationship of JFK to JBC and their combined relationship to the TSBD and the surrounding buildings. In short, the position/size of the jumpseat has no bearing on the SBT. Mr. Speer might as well be arguing that the side mirror is misplaced, therefore, the reconstruction is invalid. How much sillier are all these accusations going to get?

The movements of JBC and the jumpseat (as shown in the ABC/ History Channel program and the Discovery Channel program), demonstrating the differences between prominent conspiracy-based illustrations and reality, were done in unison for clarity. Any charges to the contrary are false.

The differences in the height of the JFK and JBC were accounted for in the reconstruction. Again, any charges to the contrary are false.

The location of JBC relative to JFK (i.e. approximately 6 inches to the left of JFK's midline) and JBC's rotational position relative to the midline of the limousine (i.e. turned approximately 37 degrees to the right) as reported on my website at www.jfkfiles.com is correct. Any charges to the contrary are false.

The locations of the wounds of both JFK and JBC were marked according to medical data culled from the WC and HSCA (including photographs and X-rays) as reported on my website at www.jfkfiles.com. Any charges to the contrary are false.

Anyone who wants to pretend my reconstruction work is false or doesn't matter is free to do so. In the final analysis, the truth doesn't require anyone's belief.

I don't respond to posts on the many newsgroups because of the sophomoric nature of the vast majority of the postings (and I know many respected experts on the assassination who feel the same way). It is the insipid name-calling and disrespect for honest research that I (and others) find the most appalling. It is worse than a kindergarten sandbox. Too bad. The Internet promised to bring people of common interests together. Instead, it gives a global soap box and a megaphone to those who have the least to say.

I appreciate your thoughtful question - it is rare - and hope this answers your question. Feel free to post my response, if you think it will help. Personally, I think you'll only see the nuts come out of the woodwork again. It's a never ending cycle of lunacy; one argument after another to

see who can be the top fool. "Best regards, Dale K. Myers" [April 2008]

Well, Dale, in the words of that old fast food commercial--have it your way. On the slide above, I've placed the "wide-angle" views of you from Beyond the Magic Bullet next to the close-ups of your animation. That mission accomplished, I must admit I did not realize the close-up footage on Beyond the Magic Bullet was shot at an angle. I mean, why would they do that? Filming the trajectory from the side would both bring Connally closer to Kennedy and move him slightly inboard. While the interview portion with Myers was filmed at an obvious angle, I assumed this was so they could get his Emmy Award in the picture (real subtle, by the way). When they then moved in for the close-up, they cropped off the top and bottom of the screen. This made it hard to discern that one side of the monitor was taller than the other, and that the rectangular monitor was still being filmed at an angle. They also showed both Myers' left and right hands against the image. This gave the illusion the camera was over his left shoulder. As a result, there was little reason to suspect they were showing us a grossly distorted image taken from a "considerable angle". Still, when one looks closely at Myers' hands, it's clear the camera was slightly to his left. But was this enough to grossly distort the image? I'm not sure. What I am sure about is if, as Myers contends, the image viewed in Beyond the Magic Bulle