MARK LANE HAS PASSED AWAY

[Pat Speer]

One of

Funny, so Specter was having the bullet exit the instant it entered.

Only with the WC could such a thing happen.

And Warren, with visions of mushroom clouds going off in his head, didn't make a peep.

One of the more interesting aspects of all this, for me, is Specter's relationship with Warren. Specter admits giving Warren a long talk in which he explained the necessity of the SBT, and convinced Warren to push it on the commission. I'd love to have a transcript to that one.

A U.S. News article on the commission, moreover, makes reference to a letter between Specter and Warren circa 1966, if I recall. This has never been made public, to my knowledge. But I suspect it would prove quite interesting, with Warren asking Specter to not discuss the autopsy photos or express any doubts about the SBT, or some such thing.

[David Von Pein]

In my CBS article that Davey said (for good reasons) he only skimmed, Humes told a representative from the network that yes, he was limited from doing a proper autopsy on JFK. He did not want to reveal who gave him those instructions except to say that it was not Bobby Kennedy.

And just exactly how would Dr. Humes have known whether or not such an order (or request) had originally come from the Kennedys on the 17th floor, with that order (request) then being relayed to Humes by way of a high-ranking member of the military (with possibly more people in-between who communicated the Kennedys' request)?

Do you think that if Bobby Kennedy HAD made such a request, that it would have been Bobby himself who would have marched into the autopsy room and told Dr. Humes personally what his request was?

Hilarious.

Edited May 20, 2016 by David Von Pein

[James DiEugenio]

You cannot be serious Davey.

I mean the above shows just what a lousy researcher you are. And also how incredibly biased you are.

The HSCA, a very long time ago, discovered a document which RFK signed that night about the autopsy. RFK left blank the space marked "restrictions" in the permit he signed before the autopsy began. Based upon that, and other interviews, the HSCA concluded that the family did not interfere with the autopsy.

What other interviews? In an affidavit for the HSCA, Burkley stated, "I directed the autopsy surgeon to do a complete autopsy and to take the time necessary for completion."

In an interview with the HSCA, the commander of the Bethesda Medical Center, Galloway, stated that he was present throughout the examination, and no orders were being sent in from outside the autopsy room by phone or person.

Humes told the ARRB that Burkley never told him what to do that night and said it in no uncertain terms, "as far as telling me what to do or how to do it, absolutely , irrevocably, no."

This not only blows you up, but also Dan Rather, who in 1975 told America that yes, the autopsy was botched, but blamed it on RFK through Burkley. This was undoubtedly conveyed to him via that Pentagon suck up Latimer, who was a consultant on the show. Rather said this on TV, even though he had Humes' denial of this conveyed to him already; and FInck's testimony about the General saying he was in charge was in the record from six years earlier: in New Orleans at the Shaw trial. That's good journalism isn't it?

Davey, do you like being a punching bag?

But that is still not the main point. The main point is that none of this came close to the surface via Specter's examination of the pathologists, which we can see now was a complete cover up.

Edited May 21, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Sandy Larsen]

DVP doesn't care that Oswald was given no legal representation. And was convicted of the crime by the Warren Commission rather than in a court of law. He doesn't care that there were no checks and balances in place to make sure the investigation and hearings were conducted properly.

I wonder if he'd feel the same way if this happened to one of his kids.

Edited May 21, 2016 by Sandy Larsen

[David Von Pein]

Humes told the ARRB that Burkley never told him what to do that night and said it in no uncertain terms, "as far as telling me what to do or how to do it, absolutely, irrevocably, no."

Isn't it nice of DiEugenio to use something supplied by Dr. Humes when it serves Jimmy's purpose? Most of the time, though, Humes is nothing but a rotten lying SOB. Right, Jimmy?

Emphasis is my own:

"All three of the pathologists know from experience that bullets can do crazy things when they enter the human body and might end up anywhere. The only way to be sure they haven't missed it is to x-ray the entire body. Finck's decision doesn't set well with Admiral Burkley, who can see his idea of a quick recovery of evidence giving way to hour after hour of difficulties and delays. Burkley says that Mrs. Kennedy had only granted permission for a limited autopsy, and questions the feasibility of finding the bullet that entered the president's back without conducting a complete autopsy."

-- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 162 of "Reclaiming History"

Bugliosi's source for the above information about Jackie Kennedy wanting only a "limited autopsy" is ARRB document MD156, which is a memo written by FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill:

"Following arrival at the Naval Medical Center...Admiral Burkley, the President's personal physician, advised that Mrs. Kennedy had granted permission for a limited autopsy and he questioned any feasibility for a complete autopsy to obtain the bullet which had entered the President's back." -- Sibert/O'Neill Internal Memo, dated 11/26/63 (ARRB MD156)

But even if it wasn't Jackie Kennedy or Bobby Kennedy who specifically requested no dissection of JFK's neck, as I said before, the notion that ANYONE would have made such a request solely because they wanted to hide evidence of a conspiracy and a frontal shot to JFK's body is a notion that only a desperate conspiracy theorist could possibly embrace.

But, Jimmy DiEugenio, being a charter member of the Anybody But Oswald and Virtually Everybody In Officialdom Lied Societies, embraces such a notion with open arms.

Edited May 21, 2016 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

There's also this....

"Dr. Humes told JAMA in 1992, "I was in charge from start to finish and there was no [military] interference—zero . . . Nobody made any decision in the morgue except me. Nobody . . . influenced me in any way, shape, or form."

Dr. Finck agreed. "I will repeat this. There was no military interference with the autopsy. There were many people in the morgue—all very upset—and this made it difficult for us. But there was no military interference."

Although the military did not interfere with the autopsy, it is clear that the Kennedy family did. FBI agent Francis O'Neill wrote that as he understood it, "Mrs . Jackie Kennedy gave permission for a partial autopsy and Dr. George Burkley, the president's personal physician, reiterated her remarks," and that "there was no question that Burkley was conveying the wishes of the Kennedy family."

The family's request for a "partial autopsy" was not, however, an attempt to circumvent the investigation, as some have claimed. Dr. Humes explained to the HSCA that "initially, Admiral Burkley said that they had caught Oswald and that they needed the bullet to complete the case, and we were told initially that's what we should do, . . . find the bullet.""

-- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 386 of "Reclaiming History"

Edited May 21, 2016 by David Von Pein

[James DiEugenio]

Why did you skip the rest of that document?

What clearly happened is that Jackie was grief stricken and wanted to get it over with.

She was then overruled by the others involved that a complete autopsy must be done.

RFK then signed the permit.

As it proceeded, it was the military that then interfered.

Geez, anything goes with you, doesn't it.

[Pat Speer]

You're missing the timing and context, David. The Kennedys initially asked that the autopsy be limited, but RFK granted approval for a complete autopsy when the importance of it was explained to him. As I recall, there is even a signed document from him approving a complete autopsy.

As far as context, i think you're failing to acknowledge that the WC hid behind the Kennedy family, and tried to blame them for their own failure to review the autopsy materials. In the hearings which led to the ARRB, Arlen Specter, a sitting Senator, testified and tried to blame the WC's failure on the Kennedy family, only to have Senator John Glenn (who was no doubt tipped off by a knowledgeable staffer) come back an hour later and ask if the commission did not, in fact, have access to all the materials. To which Specter answered in the affirmative. So the "Kennedys wouldn't let us" excuse was bogus from day one, but was nevertheless pushed by Specter et al in his conversations with Humes etc. Anything but admit that the Chief Justice of the United States had made a reversible error in the most important murder "trial" of his life.

[James DiEugenio]

As per your next installment in your ludicrous defense of the worst autopsy in history, Davey, you don't understand do you?

I mean do you have any insight into human behavior at all?

FInck let the cat out of the bag at the Shaw trial. Everyone in Washington went crazy. Especially the Justice Department, which was monitoring the trial. They were completely blindisided by the deftness of Garrison's cross examination, how Finck was on the defensive, giving more and more ground. I write about the sensational disclosures made there for seven pages in the second edition of Destiny Betrayed. (pgs. 299-306)

It was such a disaster that the cover up guy at Justice, Eardley, summoned Boswell to Washington and told him: Pierre is on the stand at the Shaw trial and is screwing everything up. He was going to--get this:

SEND BOSWELL TO NEW ORLEANS TO DISCREDIT FINCK!

That is how bad it got. (​Have you ever told your readers about this? Its all in the ARRB documents that you say are devoid of any new info.)

In fact, Boswell did fly to New Orleans, where he was supposed to meet with Harry Connick, the future DA. But it was aborted at the last minute since, as Gary Aguilar thinks, it would be difficult to discredit Finck with Boswell, since FInck had much more experience with actually doing autopsies than Boswell did.

Humes understood how bad this was for him. I mean, heck, FInck told the truth! Can it get any worse?

So he constructed another of his phony cover stories (the guy had several of them.) Which is from the very source you use, JAMA. But like with the FBI memo above, you fail to use all the info. You choose and select that which fits your agenda, and leave out the rest, which negatively impacts it. Let me fill in what you leave out--again.

Humes told another story to the accommodating JAMA. He said that, before the autopsy, he accosted a man he did not know who had a camera on a loading dock outside the morgue. Humes said that he told those assembled on the dock, "Who's in charge here?" A man in full military dress two feet away answered with, "I am. Who wants to know?"

Now, any idiot can see that Humes is trying to deflate Pierre's credibility by conflating two incidents: the real one at the autopsy room, and this newly created one on the loading dock. But they cannot be the same. Because the one Humes confabulated years later, happened before Finck arrived in the morgue, and before the autopsy began. Finck stated under oath that Humes said,, "Who's in charge here?" while the autopsy was in process. Finck was not there to hear anything, if anything happened, at the loading dock.

As Gary Aguilar wrote in Trauma Room One, this odd story "has contributed to other suspicions about Humes' trustworthiness on the question of interference during JFK's autopsy." (p. 182) And he adds, the HSCA did not buy this one.

Keep them coming Davey. Good batting practice.

Edited May 21, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[David Von Pein]

Jim / Pat,

But don't you think that Jackie Kennedy's desire to, as Jim D. said above, "get it over with", and her initial request that a "partial autopsy" be done, just might have played a part in the decision of the pathologists to not dissect President Kennedy's neck/back wound?

In hindsight, it would have been much better, of course, if Dr. Humes and company had, indeed, dissected the neck wound. But, Pat, let me ask you specifically --- do you think the decision to not dissect that wound was made in order to hide a conspiracy from the world? And do you think that whoever it was who made that final decision to not dissect the path of that bullet already KNEW that JFK had been shot from the front by a bullet?

[James DiEugenio]

Davey:

Have you ever read Jeremy Gunn's cross examination of Humes on this point? As to why he did not dissect the back wound.

[David Von Pein]

Davey:

Have you ever read Jeremy Gunn's cross examination of Humes on this point? As to why he did not dissect the back wound.

Oh, yes. I definitely have. I read all of Humes' ARRB testimony when I was arguing a few years ago with John Canal about his unique theories regarding JFK's head wounds. But it's been a while since I read that testimony. I haven't memorized it.

I'll go refresh my memory on it now. Thanks.

--------------------------

EDIT----

Here's what Dr. James J. Humes said in his 1996 ARRB testimony about probing/dissecting the neck wound (emphasis is my own):

QUESTION: Did you ever receive any orders or instructions about limiting the scope of the examination of the brain?

DR. HUMES: Never.

QUESTION: Did you receive any instructions or orders regarding limitations on dissection of the organs of the neck?

DR. HUMES: No. .... My problem is, very simply stated, we had an entrance wound high in the posterior back above the scapula. We didn't know where the exit wound was at that point. I'd be the first one to admit it. We knew in general in the past that we should have been more prescient than we were, I must confess, because when we removed the breast plate and examined the thoracic cavity, we saw a contusion on the upper lobe of the lung. There was no defect in the pleura anyplace. So it's obvious that the missile had gone over that top of the lung. Of course, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had to go out from the neck. It was the only place it could go, after it was not found anywhere in the X-rays. So early the next morning, I called Parkland Hospital and talked with Malcolm Perry, I guess it was. And he said, Oh, yeah, there was a wound right in the middle of the neck by the tie, and we used that for the tracheotomy. Well, they obliterated, literally obliterated--when we went back to the photographs, we thought we might have seen some indication of the edge of that wound in the gaping skin where the--but it wouldn't make a great deal of sense to go slashing open the neck. What would we learn? Nothing, you know. So I didn't--I don't know if anybody said don't do this or don't do that.

I wouldn't have done it no matter what anybody said. That was not important. I mean, that's--

QUESTION: Do you know what the standard autopsy protocol is for gunshot wounds and autopsy of the neck?

DR. HUMES: Well, no. I haven't seen that in--what you say, standard, I mean, many times if you have a track of a missile, it's helpful to take a long probe and put it in the position. It can tell you a lot of things. If you know where the point of entrance and the point of exit are, it's duck soup. But for me to start probing around in this man's neck, all I would make was false passages. There wouldn't be any track that I could put a probe through or anything of that nature. It just doesn't work that way.

Edited May 21, 2016 by David Von Pein

[John Simkin]

I never met Mark Lane but I had communications with him by email. In the last few years it was with his assistant Sue Herndon. It is worth remembering the extreme difficulty he had publishing material on the case following the assassination. In fact, it might not have happened if it was not for his British contacts.

Lane later recalled: "In the weeks following the assassination I analyzed the case, setting my analysis alongside what was then known about the case as I had done a hundred times before for clients I had represented. The difference was that there was no client… When I completed my analysis of the evidence and the charges, I had written a ten-thousand-word evaluation." A copy of the article was sent to Earl Warren. In a letter sent with the article, Lane wrote: "It would be appropriate that Mr. Oswald, from whom every legal right was stripped, be accorded counsel who may participate with the single purpose of representing the rights of the accused."

For the first three weeks the mainstream media consistently reported that Oswald had been the lone gunman responsible for the death of Kennedy. However, James Aronson, the editor of the left-wing, National Guardian, had considerable doubts about this story. In the first edition of the newspaper after the assassination, he used the headline: "The Assassination Mystery: Kennedy and Oswald Killings Puzzle the Nation". (9)

Meanwhile, Mark Lane also tried to find a magazine to publish the article of the assassination. He approached Carey McWilliams: "The obvious choice, I thought, was the Nation. Its editor, Carey McWilliams, was an acquaintance. He had often asked me to write a piece for him… McWilliams seemed pleased to hear from me and delighted when I told him I had written something I wished to give to the Nation . When he learned of the subject matter, however, his manner approached panic." McWilliams told Lane: "We cannot take it. We don't want it. I am sorry but we have decided not to touch that subject." Lane was unaware that McWilliams had also rejected a proposal by Fred J. Cook to write an article on the assassination.

Mark Lane also got the same response from the editors of Fact Magazine who said the subject matter was too controversial. It was also rejected by Life Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, The Reporter, and Look Magazine. However, Cedric Belfrage, a British journalist, who had been deported from America because of his socialist beliefs, was also exploring this story and told his friend, James Aronson about Lane. "I heard that a maverick New York lawyer named Mark Lane had done some careful leg and brain work to produce a thesis casting doubt on the lone-assassin theory – and even whether Oswald had actually been involved in the crime." Aronson contacted Lane who told him that the article had been rejected by thirteen publications. Aronson offered to publish the article. Lane told him that "I would send it to him but I would not authorize him to publish it. He asked why. I said that I was seeking a broader, non-political publisher and that if the piece originated on the left, the subject would likely never receive the debate that it required."

Lane now took the article James Wechsler, an editor of the New York Post. He also rejected it and said that Lane would never find a publisher and "urged him to forget about it". Lane now told him about Aronson's offer. Wechsler, according to Lane was "furious" when he heard this news. "Don't let them publish it… They'll turn it into a political issue." By this time the article had been turned down by seventeen publications and so Lane decided to let Aronson to publish the article in the National Guardian.

The 10,000 word article, published on 19th December, 1963, was the longest story in its fifteen-year history. It was presented as a lawyer's report to the Warren Commission and titled A Brief for Lee Harvey Oswald. Aronson argued in the introduction: "The Guardian's publication of Lane's brief presumes only one thing: a man's innocence, under US. Law, unless or until proved guilty. It is the right of any accused. A presumption of innocence is the rock upon which American jurisprudence rests… We ask all our readers to study this document… Any information or analysis based on fact that can assist the Warren Commission is in the public interest – an interest which demands that everything possible be done to establish the facts in this case."

Mark Lane argued: "In all likelihood there does not exist a single American community where reside 12 men or women, good and true, who presume that Lee Harvey Oswald did not assassinate President Kennedy. No more savage comment can be made in reference to the breakdown of the Anglo–Saxon system of jurisprudence. At the very foundation of our judicial operation lies a cornerstone which shelters the innocent and guilty alike against group hysteria, manufactured evidence, overzealous law enforcement officials, in short, against those factors which militate for an automated, prejudged, neatly packaged verdict of guilty. It is the sacred right of every citizen accused of committing a crime to the presumption of innocence."

Aronson later admitted: "Few issues of the Guardian created such a stir. Anticipating greater interest we had increased the press run by 5,000, but an article in the New York Times about our story brought a heavy demand at the news-stands and dealers were calling for additional copies. Before the month was out we had orders for 50,000 reprints."

After reading the article Bertrand Russell met Mark Lane. "I was greatly impressed, not only by the energy and astuteness with which Mark Lane pursued the relevant facts, but by the scrupulous objectivity with which he presented them, never inferring or implying meanings not inherent in the facts themselves." As a result of the meeting, Russell established a “Who Killed Kennedy Committee” in the UK, which consisted of John Arden, Caroline Benn, Lord Boyd-Orr, John Calder, William Empson, Victor Gollancz, Michael Foot, Kingsley Martin, Compton Mackenzie, J. B. Priestley, Herbert Read, Tony Richardson, Mervyn Stockwood, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and Kenneth Tynan.

Aronson offered the article to both the United Press International and the Associated Press but both agencies rejected it. In January, 1964, Walter Winchell made a vicious attack on Mark Lane and the National Guardian in his regular newspaper column. He described the newspaper as "a virtual propaganda arm of the Soviet Union " and called Lane an "agitator" seeking to abolish the Un-American Activities Committee. Russell responded with a letter to the newspaper arguing that "Lane is no more a left-winger than was President Kennedy. He attempted to publish his evidence... in virtually every established American but was unsuccessful."

Mark Lane continued to carry out his research into the assassination. He later recalled: "Had I known at the outset, when I wrote that article for the National Guardian, that I was going to be so involved that I would close my law practice, abandon my work, abandon my political career, be attacked by the very newspapers in New York City which used to hail my election to the state legislature; had I known that - had I known that I was going to be placed in the lookout books, so that when I come back into the country, I'm stopped by the immigration authorities – only in America, but no other country in the world – that my phones would be tapped, that not only would the FBI follow me around at lecture engagements, but present to the Warren Commission extracts of what I said at various lectures - I am not sure, if I knew all that, that I ever would have written that article in the first place."

However, Lane did continue and by February 1965 he had completed the first draft of Rush to Judgment. However, he could not find an American company willing to publish the book. Eventually, Bertrand Russell found him a British publisher: "Virtually every publisher in the United States refused to print it. Years passed before we learned of the pressure that had been exerted by the FBI and the CIA against those who considered permitting the publication of a dissenting view in this affair. A British firm with offices in London, The Bodley Head, agreed to publish the book. Subsequently Holt, Rinehart and Winston in the United States agreed as well."

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKlaneM.htm

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for that John.

BTW, of Lane's books on the JFK case, A Citizen's Dissent is really underrated.

In fact, it was the first book to expose how the media refused to countenance any serious dissent on the Warren Report.

Edited May 21, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Davey:

This will be the last time I reply to you about this on this thread. And perhaps on this board. I should have not started replying at all., Its simply a waste of time.

Look, FInck blew up the autopsy at the trial of Clay Shaw. By saying (among other things) that the military had stopped Humes from dissecting the back wound. You can get that also from Jenkins. Who at the JFK Lancer conference in 2013 said that the gallery was overloaded with the brass and they were hindering Humes, Boswell and FInck from doing a proper autopsy. I mean, they did not even weigh the brain that night--in a case of a gunshot wound to the skull! When Gunn asked Humes about this, this is what happened:

Q: Was the fresh brain weighed?

A: I don't recall. I don't recall. Its as simple as that.

Q: Would it be standard practice for a gunshot wound in the head to have the brain weighed?

A: Yeah...Normally, we weigh the brain when we remove it....(Pgs. 74-75)

So, the brain was not weighed, the back wound was not dissected, and the brain was not sectioned. Gunn was so full of disdain for the lack of professionalism that he even asked Humes if there was not some kind of standard guide or manual to do autopsies at Bethesda. Humes actually tried to dance around this one, he hemmed and hawed. But experienced lawyer that Gunn was, he was prepared for the tap dance. He pulled out a military issued manual for autopsies from 1960. (p. 41)

Now, Humes tries to deny LeMay was there. (p. 65) But O'Coonor saw him there that night, as he revealed in an interview with me many years ago in Dallas.

He even tries to deny there was a probe entered into the back! (p. 37) He even says if there is a standard protocol about that, he was not aware of it!

For God's sakes, he admitted to CBS that there was a probe in the back and there was an x ray of it. As I showed above, there are about ten witnesses who saw the same thing and say there was a photo of it.

Now, with Humes' unreliability and lack of candor established, let us get to the issue of the back dissection. Humes says that there was no need to go ahead and slash open the body because he may have created false passages.

LOL

What he would have done was found out if the back wound was a through and through wound. That is SOP in a gunshot wound case. The transit of this wound was very much discussed that night in the morgue. (As it has been for over fifty years.) It was quite puzzling to them, as it is to us. Now, the official story has it that Humes did not find out about the anterior neck wound until the next day. (I think that is BS, but let it pass.) To Gunn, he said he was not aware the anterior neck slit was a wound. (p. 76) Therefore, the dissection would have solved the problem in two ways:

1. They would have found if the back wound transited.

2. They would have found out if the throat and back wound connected.

They did not do it, and FInck testified that Humes was stopped from doing it. The Justice Dept was absolutely bonkers about this testimony at at the Shaw trial, as I demonstrated above. So Humes had to fabricate another of his BS stories about the loading dock. Which not even Baden could buy. (Which tells you a lot about Humes.)

In my opinion, Jim Humes was one of the several witnesses who a lawyer like Sprague would have indicted for perjury.

And that is that for me on this. The thread is supposed to be about one Mark Lane.

Edited May 21, 2016 by James DiEugenio