CHAPTER 3

EXAMINING THE "FIREARMS EXAMINER"

We have faced the question, does Donahue read the sources he cites. As we read further in what he wrote about me, using Menninger to voice his beliefs, we face, to begin with, the added question, when he does read what he says are his sources, does he understand them?

Other questions arise as we quote most of what he has about me in his chapter, Hope Dies Hard. He just cannot resist the temptation the temptation to try to get even with those who did not agree with his fabrication. That requires, Donahue being Donahue, that he add to his lies that appear in his book. No response, no refutation to a printed book is possible.

Donahue begins this part1 with his usual making of cracks at those who do not regard him as what he thinks he is, as few people in their right minds could. He begins this part with cracks about John Davis, the cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Davis has successfully commercialized that relationship for years. He dreamed up a "solution" just as Donahue did. And as I'd offered to help Donahue and Reppert much as I disagreed with them, just as I'd offered them access to all my records, when Davis phoned me and asked for help. I gave him that same offer. He knew from the first I did not agree with his concoction that Carlos Marcello of the Mafia JFK killed. Davis did have full access unsupervised and unlimited access to all my records, I even got him a student to do his research for him, as I would have for Donahue if he had had any serious research in mind, and she also had the unsupervised use of our copier.

She spent all her free time in her senior year doing this work for Davis.

What use Davis could have had in what he made up is not apparent. The Davis fabrication is that Carlos Marcello had the President killed. In what Donahue made up Marcello does not figure at all. There is no apparent use Davis could have had for anything he could have gotten from Donahue who, in addition to the conflict in their made-up "solutions," is also pretty much of a subject-matter ignoramus. Nonetheless, Davis thanked Donahue and Donahue resents how Davis thanked him, even though it is apparent that Davis's thanks could not have been for anything he could have used in his book.2

There was no need for Donahue to mention Davis at all. He could have ignored this, and had he not been Donahue he would have. But he believes that all others should glorify him and for those who do not he can usually contrive some nastiness. Which, in a book, I repeat, makes a response or a refutation impossible.

He used Davis to lead into one of his contrived criticisms of me. As we saw this is contrived because as soon as those Reppert articles appeared I wrote and offered him and Donahue full access to all I have, without cost of any kind. It clearly was not from Davis that Donahue first heard from me or first got the suggestion that he should speak to me and look at the vast amount of information I have. Many years earlier he had that invitation from me, the invitation I extend to all writing in the field.

Still again, this is Donahue being less than fully truthful:

Davis presented his scenario in compelling fashion and drew from a wide variety of sources, including evidence assembled by Jim Garrison over the course of his 1967-69 Ferrie-Shaw probe.

But aside from the habitual, vague suggestions of a gunman on the Grassy knoll, the author made no attempt to present any ballistic evidence that could conceivably support the idea that more than one gunman had fired on the President. Adding insult to injury, from Donahue's perspective, was the fact that the only mention the gunsmith received in the book was in the back-page acknowledgments, where Davis thanked one "Harold Donahue" and a host of others for supplying important documents on an informal nonremunerative basis."3

Once again, Donahue does not cite the original source for this. He cites the later reprint, not the original hardback. In the original hardback this appears on page 555.

Continuing this quotation from Donahue, nothing here omitted:

And yet there was one revealing encounter that emerged as a result of Donahue's involvement with Davis. Early on, Davis had recommended Donahue pay a visit to Harold Weisberg, a fellow Marylander and the well-known shaman of assassination theorists. Davis figured the veteran Warren Commission critic might be able to offer some insight or evidence that could help substantiate Donahue's theory. But Howard was skeptical. He'd read several of Weisberg's books and had long marveled at the author's lack of knowledge about firearms and ballistics — ignorance that allowed Weisberg to conjure up a hail of bullets from the grassy knoll and elsewhere in Dealey Plaza. Donahue was likewise put off by the shrill, excoriating tone of Weisberg's writings. Weisberg spoke at nearly every turn about the black hand of a government conspiracy, yet he never seemed able to develop any logical arguments about who specifically was behind this treachery or why.

Even so, Donahue in late 1985 had been willing to do whatever he could to advance the book project with Davis. And he had to admit that Weisberg did provide key information to Ralph Reppert back in 1977 concerning the government's neutron activation testing of bullet fragments removed from Kennedy's brain. Just maybe the cantankerous critic had something else of value in his files. With nothing to lose, Donahue dropped Weisberg a note. Weisberg responded several days later and said he'd be happy to have lunch with the gunsmith and his wife.

He added that he was aware of the Sun article but didn't know of any evidence that justified the gunsmith's conclusions. Every photograph from Dealey Plaza appeared to disprove the accident scenario, Weisberg said.4

Whatever Davis may have told Donahue about me, and if he told Donahue the truth he had to have said that in the hours of my time Davis took by phone I made it clear that I agree with none of the so-called theories about the assassination. This is what Donahue himself said when he was not looking for some kind of vengeance. Under the of September 21, 1985, or eight years after I invited him and Reppert to come and see whatever they wanted, he told me, "I have your excellent Whitewash II."5 ("Excellent" is not quite the same as ignorant, "lack of knowledge," and Donahue says both about me and my books.)

In that letter he also ordered my Photographic Whitewash and Post Mortem. They were, as usual, sent in the next day's mail. He also said, "I would like to have a personal meeting with you in the near future." He then said what is not possible, "Since our theories have appeared in publications literally side-by-side, I know you are familiar with my own particular conclusions." What is "literally" true is that again he lied because I have never published any theory about the assassination, so it simply is not possible that "our" theories appeared together in any publication.

Under date of September 25 I invited Donahue and his wife. I gave him my phone number. I told him I was familiar with what he calls his "theory" from the time of those Reppert stories "and I know of nothing factual to support it." Particularly no picture in which Donahue said he had special interest. "All of them (the pictures) of which I know tend to refute it." What Donahue calls his "theory" is a complete fabrication.

I then referred to government information I had that I believed he should study which had to do with the shooting. This included reference to the spectrographic analysis, to the alteration of evidence of the shooting and even to the disappearance of some of the evidence.

I also referred to some pictures I believed disproved his argument.

The Donahues soon were our guests at lunch.

The rest of what was just quoted ranges from deliberate exaggerations and misrepresentations to deliberate lies.

I did not, in any book or any statement of any kind or under any circumstances ever "conjure up a hail of bullets from the grassy knoll and elsewhere in Dealey Plaza."

Because my writing was about the government's investigation, if it can be called that, of the assassination, I not only did not — had no occasion to — "develop any logical arguments about who specifically was behind the treachery or why." (My Never Again!6 begins summarizing the government's once-suppressed evidence that as soon as Oswald was killed there was a de facto conspiracy not to investigate the crime so there are no official records that can be used to "solve" the crime and I have never said anything other than this, no matter what lies appeal to the sick mind of any Donahue seeking vengeance for no rational reason at all.)

The nature of my writing, which is in a series of books, is in the subtitle of the first, "The Report on the Warren Report." I did not, like Donahue, imagine my self Sherlock Holmes or Perry Mason. I was a reporter reporting the government's own official evidence, which also includes official evidence not in the Warren Report.

As even a ninny reading any of my books, particularly any one who spoke of them as "excellent," would know.

According to the ego-dominated Donahue I suffer a "lack of knowledge" of this case but according to the FBI, as its lawyers said in federal district court, as I quote again, I am "more familiar with events surrounding the investigation" of the assassination "than anyone now employed by the F.B.I."

Donahue, who has a clear record of saying anything that he may think serves his interest at any time at all, says what makes no sense at all, not a rarity for him. He says that he eventually decided to get in touch with me because he was "willing to do whatever he could to advance the book project with Davis." Neither he nor Menninger explain or even try to explain this because their is no connection of any kind between Donahue coming to see me and the Davis book. Which Donahue could not "advance" in any way with his myth despite the sincerity of his belief in the myth he alone made up,

The best part is, to me at least, that he would come to see if "the cantankerous old critic had something of value in his files."

He was so determined to do this he refused to look at a single one of them -- and I then had about sixty file cabinets with more than a third of a million pages of records I obtained from the government by all those FOIA lawsuits in addition to my own work.

I took him down to the basement where most of those records are and he did not open a single file drawer!

He did not make the trip from Towson to Frederick to see if I had something of "value" in my files.

Which he just refused to look at.

All he wanted to do was convert me to his impossible fabrication of totally impossible myth he regards as a "solution."

There is a considerable record in the lawsuit I filed for the results of the FBI's scientific testing (of which he says I am ignorant) in a separate and clearly identified file cabinet. In that lawsuit, I deposed four of those FBI lab agents. Omniscient Donahue did not take the tiniest peek at that cabinet despite all he writes the shooting and about my alleged ignorance of it -- or about my winning that lawsuit against the FBI despite that alleged ignorance of it.

The irrepressible liar in Donahue surfaced still again when he says that I had said that: "every photograph from Dealey Plaza appeared to disprove the accident scenario [still another Donahue reference to his complete fabrication] Weisberg said.,"7

Fortunately, I said it in writing and have a copy of what I wrote him. I quote all I said about it I my letter of September 25, 1985: "I am familiar with your theory from the time the Sun did the Sunday pieces on it and I know of nothing factual to support it. Particularly pictures. All of them of which I know refute it. I've never collected pictures of the motorcade as such but I probably have a few. You can see anything I have."

This is not anything at all like Donahue says I said, that "Every photograph from Dealey Plaza appeared to disprove" what he made up." The fact is that of the Dealey Plaza photos I have, most have nothing to do with the shooting.

Knowing that what is in a book, particularly one with an advance hard back printing of more than a hundred thousand copies, permits no refutation of any lies in that book. Uninhibited, Donahue lies his ego-dominated head off.

And in this he almost immediately gets even nastier with as big a lie as he could have made up with his clear intention of trying to harm me because I did not agree with his made-up "solution" that is refuted by the official evidence of which he is ignorant and that he misrepresented;

This vote of no confidence notwithstanding, Howard and Katie drove to Weisberg's farm in western Maryland and spent the afternoon with the king of the critics. Through lunch, Weisberg complained bitterly about the University of Maryland's refusal to accept his donation of the thousands of assassination-related documents he'd collected over the years. When the subject of Donahue's theory finally came up, Weisberg dismissed it out of hand. But despite his earlier claim, he could provide no photographs that refuted the thesis. He did point out that in the Altgens picture, taken just after the first shot was fired, no crack was visible on the limousine windshield. Ergo, Weisberg said, Donahue's belief that the first shot had missed, ricocheted, and struck the windshield with a fragment was unsupported by the photographic record.8

It takes an exceptional amount of intellectual depravity to make up all this absolutely baseless cock-and-bull story about my allegedly being bitter about the University of Maryland allegedly not being willing to accept the donation of my records. I never spoke to it about that and never had any interest in having the depository there. Not by the greatest indirection did anything like this happen and it is without question that I never said any such thing as this diligently-lying liar says I did!

I not only had no interest in having my records there, I had and long had had arrangements for them that I wanted and preferred.

I did not know a single member of the Maryland history or political science faculty and never spoke to any one of them for any reason or under any circumstances.

For that matter, I also had no interest in the deposit being at the University of Delaware, which I attended and which had a course supposedly on the assassination of the President.

In addition, I turned down requests for possession of them for which I would have been paid, for which my wife in one offer would have been given an annuity, and I also declined the request of a major university for copies of my manuscripts.

It takes a particular kind of intellectual depravity and degeneracy to make this kind of slander up merely because anyone refuses to accept what he made up, as Donahue made up his defamation of innocent George Hickey.

As my letter to him, quoted above, states, it was not for the first time that this Donahue hokum came up when he was here, when he says, implying for the first time, that I "dismissed it out of hand." I told him in advance that I knew of nothing to support it and that remains true because it is a fabrication and no more than that. If we discussed it, as I suppose we did, I told him why I could not accept it. With regard to the pictures, it is another of his endless lies that I "could provide no photographs that refuted" Donahue's baseless concoction. He did not ask to see them. I did tell him which photographs do refute it. I told him that then and since then I have stated that under oath in Hickey's lawsuit against him and St. Martin's.

It is true that I "did point out the Altgens picture" but not as Donahue makes up out of nothing at all. That one of the series of photographs the late Ike Altgens of the Associated Press took is disproof enough of the Donahue's fabrication. In his book Donahue lies about it saying it was taken five seconds before the fatal shots. It was taken at about frame 255 of the Zapruder movie film, according to the FBI. That film exposed eighteen frames per second. The fatal shot was at frame 312. Or, there was but about three seconds between Altgens taking that picture and the fatal shot. We come to the reason Donahue lied to give himself a few seconds. It was to make his impossibility appear to be more possible.

I never had any interest in that crack in the limousine windshield, never spent any time on it in my research, investigation or writing. It is still another of these endless Donahue lies that he says I even discussed his baseless theorizing about the first shot and any damage to that windshield from it. I had no interest in it before then, then or since then and, in addition, what he says about it coming from what he refers to as a ricochet, is highly improbable if not impossible, according to records disclosed since his campaign to see if he could set a record for lying in his book:

Donahue responded by noting that the bright sunlight that day may have made the crack invisible from the front. As well, a bystander wearing white was visible through the windshield at exactly the place where the crack was later found. This likely further masked the presence of the broken glass in the Altgens photo.

Weisberg nonetheless remained adamant in his belief that the head shot came from the front, from the grassy knoll. At one point he leaned forward conspiratorially and told Howard, "I have proof the bullet entered from the front. The wound was surrounded by fragments." Donahue smiled wanly to himself. Weisberg's understanding of the fragments was exactly backward. An M-16 bullet -- or any thin jacketed, high-velocity round — enters the skull, disintegrates, and then deposits fragments on the side opposite from where it enters.9

I have no recollection of our talking about the direction from which any head shot came or could have come. However, I wrote about that ten years before Donahue was here. He knew what I said about it in Post Mortem10, which he has. He knows I never said or believed anything like this lie of his, that the direction from which a shot came is determined by how "the wound was surrounded by fragments." What I wrote was attributed to the expert I cited, the late Dr. Richard Bernabei, and it bears no resemblance to this additional lie in Donahue's endless manufacture of them.

A this point in his diatribe Donahue has two paragraphs relating to work he says was done by the House assassins committee. It has no relationship with Hickey or with me so we skip that propaganda, which is how Donahue sought to use it. With no further interruption, this follows:

Of course, the gunsmith mentioned none of these troublesome technicalities to Weisberg as the old man held court that afternoon. Donahue did point out that in his opinion, the bullet's trajectory, explosive disintegration and the size of the entrance wound proved Hickey had fired the last shot. He did not, however, belabor the point. It was obvious Weisberg knew absolutely nothing about firearms and ballistics. And it was equally obvious the critic had no desire to begin learning now.11

None of this is true. Besides, it is obvious that the size of an entrance wound does not prove who fired that bullet. There could have been assassins firing from elsewhere and they could have used different bullets that created the same size hole. There are a number of places behind where the President was when struck from which unseen shooters could have fired at him.

We have no way of knowing. But the possibility eliminates what Donahue pretends is proof that Hickey and he alone did or could have fired that shot:

And so the day faded and Howard and Katie bid the venerable critic good-bye. More than anything else, the Donahues felt sorry for Weisberg as they drove home that evening. Here was a man over seventy years old who'd given a good part of his life to studying the Kennedy assassination. Now his health was failing, the state university couldn't care less about his painstakingly amassed collection of assassination documents and, to top it off, his conclusions about how Kennedy died was flat wrong.12

As we saw above, not a word of the foregoing is true and there was no legitimate basis for imagining it to be. It is a phony line of pretended even-handedness Donahue used in his book to make out that he did other than defame poor Hickey for all of history. He used such childish devices as saying that merely because Hickey picked up the rifle he was a brave man. There is nothing brave in picking up a rifle per se.

Donahue is not only a deliberate liar, he can't be trusted as a casual observer. This raises questions about how much confidence, if any, can be placed in anything he says, that is other than a deliberate lie.

As we saw above, he wrote that he and his wife "drove to Weisberg's farm in Western Maryland."13 It is not a farm and it is not in western Maryland. We have five acres, mostly of woodland, at the base of Gambrill Mountain. It is in central, not western Maryland. Aside from the fact that our home is in the country, there is no reason for even suspecting that we are on a farm. There was and there is not a single farm building on it. Not an animal, not even a vegetable garden as of then.

What Donahue wrote me is not at all like what he put in his book in his effort to defame me for refusing to be conned into believing his made-up impossibility.

The first sentence in his letter of October 30 is "My wife Katie joins me in thanking you for a most enjoyable and informative day."

This alone is quite opposite of his lies about it in his book.

He follows this with, "I am returning your excellent photo of JFK's shirt showing the exit point of the second(?) Carcano (?) bullet," (sic).

What may seem like a digression here is not that at all.

In his book Donahue says he spent most of his life as a salesman and then he decided to open his gun shop, pushed a bit by his wife. He then started signing his letters as "firearms examiner." That is a job description usually reserved for the police and professionals. It also is generally regarded as a skill for which one is trained as FBI agents who are firearms examiners are trained before signing themselves or referring to themselves as "firearms examiner." Donahue took that title and uses it on his letterhead and in writing me. He had much firearms experience but he was not a professionally trained firearms examiner in the usual sense.

He was not in any sense an authentic firearms examiner from the last sentence quote from his letter above, that he was returning the picture I loaned him of what he does not really describe. It was not just a picture of the President's shirt. It was an FBI lab picture limited to the collar area of the front of that shirt. Donahue had that in Post Mortem.14 Donahue says this picture shows "the exit point of" a bullet.

Saying that would not even qualify him for firearms examiner kindergarten!

That picture does not show a bullet hole! Not any bullet hole!

It shows two slits made by a scalpel made by the nurses during the emergency procedures at Parkland Hospital! This is clear with quotations from each and every person who had any knowledge and is quoted in Post Mortem - which Donahue had.

Post Mortem's preceding page15 has a contrived FBI picture made by taking the knot of the President's tie apart to make it appear that there is a hole in the middle of what is made to look like a knot and isn't.

The official — and Donahue's — malarkey about that shot is that the bullet entered the President's neck in the back and exited the front of his neck, going through the shirt collar and the tie in allegedly doing that.

Only contrary to what this "firearms examiner" who is so critical of what he refers to as the lack of knowledge of others says, there is no bullet hole in the collar and there is no hole at all in the necktie!

Dr. Charles Carrico, the first to see the President in the emergency room, testified to the Commission that under his direction the President's clothes were removed in the usual manner, which the two nurses who did that also testified.

All this also is quoted in Post Mortem, which Donahue had.

Carrico was the only doctor in the world who saw the President with his clothes on and before they were removed, which they were under his direction, as he described to me graphically and as is also in detailed Post Mortem. He testified to the Warren Commission twice, again, as is also in Post Mortem,16 when asked by Allen Dulles, that the bullet hole in the front of the President's neck was above his collar!

So of course no bullet made hole in the front of the President's shirt or in his tie!

Which is the above-quoted Donahue lie in his letter to me.

But without that lie he has no book, and the official assassination explanation, to which he subscribes, other than in claiming that Hickey fired the shot that was fatal and to the head, comes apart.

We had walked around our place after lunch and I showed Donahue an apple tree nobody could identify but which provide delicious apples, He refers to that at the close of his letter, "Incidentally, those apples are delicious. I ate two of them on the way home."

Katie added a handwritten note. It reads, "Thanks again for the apples, I ate the last one at noon today. Looking forward to our next visit at which time I would be interested in looking through the F.B.I. files."

That was the supposed reason for the visit on which they took those apples home with them.

In any event, they did not return and neither of then ever looked at a single page of the hundreds of thousands of pages of official records that were freely available to them here.

As we have seen and see again, this superman of a "firearms examiner" made reference to what he says is the lack of any value in what I got from the FBI relating to the spectrographic analysis. Well, this is what that FBI information says about the spectrographic examinations of the tiny samples taken from the collar area and the knot of the President's tie: "There are no traces of metal on either of them as there would be if struck by a bullet!"

As there is everywhere elsewhere in the official story, a bullet allegedly struck, including the back of the shirt and jacket.

This the kind of scientific evidence that this self-styled "firearms examiner" Howard Donahue says has no value. If he doesn't say it and believe it all, all he says about the shooting comes apart, is false! (As it is anyway.)

Donahue's concluding paragraph quoted above is possible only because he knew those who read it would not know of what I had written him before he came, that I knew of nothing that supported the fabrication he calls a theory, that Hickey fired the fatal shot. Thus in his book he can say that when he left here he "realized he would have to finish the investigation on his own."

It is pathetic that a man can lower himself to write this way — and what Menninger wrote he got from Donahue and he wrote for Donahue.

The endless lies are bad enough, serious enough if anyone has any decency, any self- respect. But Donahue makes it even worse with what he refers to as his "investigation."

As we have seen, with the official evidence he was and he remained a determined ignoramus:

Following the encounter with Weisberg, Howard realized he would have to finish the investigation on his own. He knew there was an important subject that needed to be reexamined in greater detail: the Secret Service in general and, in particular, their actions in Dallas. What more could he learn?17

He says he continued what he refers to as an investigation himself . We take a look at some of that in what follows.

But here I want to emphasize that this self-described "firearms examiner" actually held that a bullet can go through cloth and deposit traces of metal selectively, leaving then on part of a shirt and not on another part, and not leaving them at all on the tie when he and the Commission says the bullet went through the skirt and the tie, from back to front.

So, too, did the House assassins committee whose propaganda as repeated by Donahue we skipped above.

It is not easy to envision a more shameful — and shameless — demonstration than this of Donahue's. Excuse me, of "firearms examiner," Donahue.

If this were not such disgustingly bad behavior I'd feel sorry for the man who from ignorance, ego and evil intent made so great a fool of himself in his country's history as Donahue does in his book.

By any standard it is a disgrace.

Nobody did it to him.

He insisted on doing it to himself and he disgraced himself as no enemy could disgrace him.