GARRY PUFFER SAID:
From Vincent Salandria:
"Arlen Specter, Esq., stated that Senator Ralph W. Yarborough said he smelled gunpowder at the assassination site. Mr. Specter dismissed this as the function of "an overly active olfactory sense." He admitted that a Dallas police officer was reported to have smelled gunpowder 350 to 400 feet from the Depository Building immediately following the assassination shots. Mr. Specter did not comment on this. If the smell of gunpowder was detectable at street level immediately after the assassination, then this would indicate a source of shots other than the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building."
[End Salandria Quote.]
"An overly active olfactory sense." You can't make this stuff up, ladies and gentlemen. The smell of gunpowder at street level was reported by several people, and that alone is enough to conclude that shots were fired that did not come from the TSBD. The Nutters will have no explanation for this that is any better than "an overly active olfactory sense."
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Now tell me why the smell of Oswald's gunpowder couldn't have drifted down to street level after just a few seconds? Any reason why conspiracy theorists totally disregard that possibility altogether?
[...]
Dealey Plaza is a very small place. I can easily envision Oswald's gun producing odors that would be noticeable within the entire Plaza a few seconds after the shots were fired from the sixth floor. Has such a thing ever been disproved? I think not.
[...]
I think some witnesses did smell gunpowder. But a gun was being fired in the small Plaza that day. So, in my opinion, the gunpowder they smelled was from the ONE GUN that was KNOWN to have been fired that day---i.e., Oswald's Carcano from the sixth floor. I see nothing so impossible about people smelling OSWALD'S gunpowder. And Yarborough was certainly not ON THE GRASSY KNOLL when he smelled the gunpowder. He was in a car in the middle of Elm Street.
[...]
BTW / FWIW....
"I heard three shots and no more. All seemed to
come from my right rear." -- Ralph W. Yarborough; July 1964
GARRY PUFFER SAID:
I guess the smell must have gone straight out the sixth floor window, over the heads of everyone close to the building, and then began to settle to the ground only after reaching the Grassy Knoll area.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And why would that be totally impossible, Garry?
Please, Oh Great Puffer, set this Internet Troll straight with respect to your vast expertise on the flight patterns of gunpowder odors in a swirling Texas breeze.
JOHN M. LANE SAID:
Where do you think the hot gases and powder residue go when a rifle is fired, Garry Puffer? Do they linger around the muzzle, descend the floor below, or do they go downrange?
NICK SAID:
According to DVP, they travel *against* the wind and settle in EXACTLY one spot.
Then, according to McAdams, anyone who smells it was actually smelling car exhaust.
Your move.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Did Yarborough (or others) pinpoint "one exact spot" where they smelled the gunpowder?
NICK SAID:
Yet just a few posts ago you cited Yarborough as an extended argument for your claim that the gunpowder came from the TSBD.
Now you're saying he can't pinpoint "one exact spot" where it came from.
Embarrassing.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And yet you love the idea that WHEREVER Yarborough smelled the gunpowder, it MUST absolutely positively mean the gunfire came from the Knoll and not the Depository.
Embarrassing indeed.
DAVID VON PEIN LATER SAID:
Here's what Vincent Bugliosi had to say about the "Witnesses Smelled Gunpowder" topic:
[Quote On:]
"To bolster his case that George Hickey fired his weapon, Howard Donahue points out that several people smelled gunpowder at the time of the shots. If Oswald was sixty feet above the street, how, Donahue asked, could people on the street smell gunpowder? (Menninger, 'Mortal Error', pp.89–90)
One person he cites is Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was in the car behind Hickey’s car. His source is William Manchester’s book 'The Death of a President', where Manchester writes, “Yarborough thought he smelled gunpowder” (Manchester, 'Death of a President', p.156). Manchester cites no source for this, and in Yarborough’s only statement to the Warren Commission, an affidavit on July 10, 1964 (7 H 439–440), he makes no reference to this.
However, a few people in Dealey Plaza did testify they smelled gunpowder: Mrs. Earle Cabell (7 H 486–487), Tom Dillard (6 H 165), and Mrs. Donald Baker
(7 H 512).
Donahue’s statement that if people on the street smelled gunpowder it could not have emanated from sixty feet above is an assumption for which he provides no support. There was a strong wind at the time of the shooting, and it could have carried the smell downward since wind doesn’t travel only laterally, as anyone who has watched a tennis match at any of the big stadiums, such as Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City, well knows. (Even though the court is at the very bottom of the stadium, completely protected on all sides, on a windy day, the wind passing high above the stadium invariably reaches the court, making play difficult.)
One also has to wonder if there was any smell of gunpowder at all, a few people perhaps only imagining they smelled it. After all, only a small handful of the hundreds of people in the plaza reported smelling gunpowder. I mean, how in the world would Dallas police officer Earle Brown, standing atop the bridge over the Stemmons Freeway (not the Triple Overpass on Elm), well over a hundred yards away from the shooting, smell gunpowder? But he claims he did (6 H 233)."
-- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Pages 516-517 of Endnotes in "Reclaiming History"
[End Quote.]
Let's have a look at what Tom Dillard said about the gunpowder he smelled:
JOSEPH BALL -- "Do you have any idea or an impression as to the source of the explosions--what direction it was coming from?"
TOM DILLARD -- "Yes, I felt that, at the time, I felt like it was coming from a north area and quite close, and I might qualify I have a great deal of experience. I am a gun nut and have a great number of high-powered rifles at home, so I know a little bit about guns."
MR. BALL -- "You have had experience with rifles?"
MR. DILLARD -- "Yes, I have shot a great deal, so I am familiar with the noise they made in that area. We were getting sort of reverberation which made it difficult to pinpoint the actual direction, but my feeling was that it was coming into my face and, in that I was facing north toward the School Depository, I might add that I very definitely smelled gunpowder when the car moved up at the corner."
MR. BALL -- "You did?"
MR. DILLARD -- "I very definitely smelled it."
MR. BALL -- "By that, you mean when you moved up to the corner of Elm and Houston?"
MR. DILLARD -- "Yes. Now, there developed a very brisk north wind."
MR. BALL -- "That was in front of the Texas School Book Depository?"
MR. DILLARD -- "Yes, it was very close -- the corner is rather close. I mentioned it, I believe, that it was rather surprising to me."
------------
So, as we can see, Tom Dillard said he smelled the odor of gunpowder while he was right "at the corner" of Elm and Houston Streets during the time the assassination was occurring or very shortly after the shots were fired.
David Von Pein
March 22-23, 2016
[Note -- The Amazon.com link above is no longer available. All of the Amazon forums were discontinued and completely deleted on October 6, 2017.]
