David Von Pein

LOL back at ya! I certainly hope you're not placing me in the category of someone who actually finds the story of the late Dr. Robert McClelland "credible". Because nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I've been ripping McClelland's story to shreds for many years now (particularly his insane "pulled-up scalp" fantasy). And I certainly don't require the assistance of Mr. Bugliosi (or anyone else) when it comes to evaluating the multiple things that Dr. McClelland gets wrong in his initial November 22nd statement. It's all right there on pages 11 and 12 of CE392, including the bizarre conclusion reached by Dr. McClelland about there being "a fragment wound of the trachea". What the heck is that supposed to mean anyway? It would seem as if McClelland was speculating that a "fragment" of some sort [bullet? bone?] had caused the wound in JFK's throat. Where that notion came from is a mystery to me. In the final analysis, Dr. McClelland's conclusion concerning the location of JFK's large head wound (which was very similar to many of the other "Back Of The Head" witnesses) is provably wrong—as discussed in greater detail HERE).

https://dvp-potpourri.blogspot.com/2009/11/single-bullet-theory.html "At that angle, no matter WHERE it came from [the bullet that struck Governor Connally], it had to pass through the President's body first!" -- Albert E. Jenner, Jr. (Warren Commission Assistant Counsel); February 11, 1967

Why not? What rule book did you get that out of? Anyway, you're obviously wrong in your above comment, because that is exactly what Dr. McClelland DID do in his November 22 Admission Note -- i.e., he wrote a report in which he only described the location for where he thought (incorrectly, of course) the bullet had entered the head of President Kennedy, and he did not describe (at all) the location of the large wound of exit. Like it or not, that's precisely what Dr. McClelland did.

It's clear as day (to me) that when Dr. Robert McClelland wrote the following words in this 4:45 PM Admission Note on 11/22/63.... "The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple." ....McClelland was only talking about where he thought at the time the bullet had entered JFK's head (via the erroneous information he had garnered in Trauma Room #1 from Dr. Jenkins). McClelland's "left temple" reference is obviously not meant to convey information concerning where the large wound was located on the President's head. McClelland never even attempts to mention the location of the large exit wound in his 4:45 Admission Note. He never says a word about the large wound at all. So it's a mystery to me as to why on Earth Pat Speer seems to think that Dr. McClelland's initial 4:45 PM report suggests that he (McClelland) actually was implying he saw a huge hole in the "left temple" of President Kennedy. I don't interpret it that way at all. And I don't think very many other people would either.

http://kennedy-photos.blogspot.com / Photos From The 11-22-63 CBS-TV Coverage

But Dr. McClelland never saw any "left temple" wound. He got that erroneous info from Dr. Jenkins. See the quotes from McClelland below (via an interview that Vince Bugliosi had with McClelland in 2002). Quoting from Bugliosi's book, "Reclaiming History" (page 406): ------------------- "It was getting late in the evening, Dallas time, but before I ended the interview I reminded Dr. McClelland of the fact that in his Parkland Hospital admission note at 4:45 p.m. on the day of the assassination, he had written that the president died "from a gunshot wound of the left temple." "Yes," he said, "that was a mistake. I never saw any wound to the president's left temple. Dr. Jenkins had told me there was a wound there, though he later denied telling me this." " ------------------- Many more excerpts from Vincent Bugliosi's 2002 interview with Dr. McClelland can be found HERE. ------------------ Also go to the 14:21 mark in THIS 2009 INTERVIEW WITH DR. McCLELLAND, which is where McClelland talks about the erroneous "left temple" observation (which he, again, attributes to Dr. Jenkins and not to his own observations).

.......

Yikes (again)!! You, Pat, actually said what you just said above even though you know that two of the doctors in '88 did admit they were "mistaken" (or in "error") with respect to seeing the cerebellum. So if they were ready to admit they were "mistaken" on that issue, then why not admit (on camera) that they were mistaken about the location of the wound? Plus..... McClelland's laughable "pulled-up scalp" explanation is the proof right there that he certainly was NOT admitting (in any fashion) that he was mistaken about the big BOH wound he has always said he saw. Because both BEFORE and AFTER he went into the NARA room to view the autopsy photos, McClelland still maintained there was a big hole at the REAR of Kennedy's head/SKULL. And that is a SKULL wound we know he could not possibly have seen....and this X-ray below is the proof he couldn't have seen any such BOH hole, because all of the skull bone in the right-rear of JFK's head is still present and accounted for in this X-ray. (I wonder if the doctors were shown this X-ray at NARA in 1988 for the NOVA show. Anybody know?)

To use one of Pat's favorite expressions here ---- Yikes! You must be joking with that last post of yours, Pat. Because the doctors in the 1988 NOVA/PBS program most certainly did not say they had been "mistaken" when it comes to the location of the large wound they observed in JFK's head. None of them said to the camera something like this: I was mistaken. The large wound was, indeed, to the RIGHT-FRONT of the President's head, just as the autopsy photos show. Therefore, I must have been mistaken. But instead of saying something like the above, the Parkland doctors said things like this: "I don't see evidence of any alteration of his wound in these pictures from what I saw in the emergency room." and.... "Nothing that I've seen would make me think it had been changed from what happened that day." and.... "Looking at these photos, they're pretty much as I remember President Kennedy at the time." and.... "I find no discrepancy between the wounds as they're shown very vividly in these photographs and what I remember very vividly." Crazy! More: http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/The Odd Tales Of The Parkland Doctors

While performing an online newspaper search for "Paul Landis, Secret Service" on the morning of September 11, 2023, I came across the 1983 newspaper article seen below, which contains an interesting passage that totally contradicts Landis' new 2023 claims. The '83 article says: "Landis said that when he got to the Kennedy limousine outside the hospital, the president had already been taken inside, but he helped Mrs. Kennedy out. He said there was a bullet fragment on the top of the back seat that he picked up and gave to somebody." So, in 1983, Mr. Landis was saying it was merely a "bullet fragment" that he picked up in the limo, which he "gave to somebody". But now, forty years later in 2023, it's a whole bullet (not just a fragment) which he didn't give to anyone but which he himself carried into the hospital and placed on JFK's stretcher. Looks like Mr. Landis' credibility issues just got a lot worse. And then there's also this...... Fred Litwin, in this article on his website, posted a quote from The Columbus Dispatch newspaper dated November 20, 1988, which confirms something that is also found in this November 1983 newspaper article that I posted online on September 11th, 2023: The 1988 paper (seen in the pictures below), like the 1983 Associated Press newspaper article that I previously posted, says that Mr. Landis "picked up" a bullet "fragment" (not a whole bullet) and "handed" that fragment "to somebody". So we now have two different newspaper accounts in the 1980s, five years apart, of Paul Landis saying to two different reporters that he had picked up only a "fragment" of a bullet, and that he had given that fragment "to somebody" (vs. Landis himself carrying any type of bullet or fragment into the hospital). Also note that in the 1988 article seen below, the reporter/interviewer has placed quotation marks around these key words: "I distinctly remember there was a bullet fragment on the seat which I picked up and handed to somebody." So the reporter in 1988 is representing those words as having been directly spoken by Paul Landis. It's not being represented as merely something coming from the interviewer's memory of what Landis said, because there are quotation marks around that entire sentence. The fact that we now have access to two different newspaper articles featuring interviews with Paul Landis that include the exact same information, with those articles and interviews being conducted some five years apart, virtually guarantees that Mr. Landis was not "misquoted" in either article concerning those two key "fragment" and "gave it to somebody" issues. And Landis is, indeed, now saying that he was misquoted in at least one publication concerning those two important elements of his story. But the notion that two different interviewers (one in 1983 and another in 1988) both made the same mistakes and misquoted Landis in the exact same manner when it comes to both of those bullet-related issues does not seem to me to be a very credible or believable argument for Mr. Landis to be making. ------------------------------- ------------------------------------- FWIW.... Here's what I think happened.... Paul Landis really did see and pick up a bullet fragment (not a whole bullet) off of the back seat of the Presidential limousine at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963. He then might very well have given that fragment to someone else nearby, with that person never being identified. And, it would seem, that particular bullet fragment which Mr. Landis handled never came to light as evidence either. But we must keep in mind that a lot of tiny fragments from the fatal head shot that were probably scattered all over the car and in Dealey Plaza were never introduced as official evidence either. After all, more than half of the bullet that struck President Kennedy in the head was never found or recovered at all. But now, in 2023, for some unknown reason, that bullet fragment (which he gave to someone else at Parkland on 11/22/63) has now been embellished by Mr. Landis and has morphed into a whole bullet (the CE399 "stretcher bullet" or so-called "magic bullet"), with Landis embellishing things further by also now saying he took that whole bullet into the hospital himself and placed it on JFK's stretcher in the emergency room. So, in my opinion, Mr. Landis' current story probably does contain a layer of truth in it, which is very common among witnesses who have, shall we say, enhanced or added things to their assassination stories over the years (with Jean Hill, Roger Craig, and Buell Wesley Frazier coming to mind as three such examples). I think Paul Landis probably did see (and perhaps also pick up) a small bullet fragment in the limousine. That's the "layer of truth" that exists in his account. And the two newspaper articles from the 1980s cited above tend to confirm that "layer of truth". But the remainder of Landis' current 2023 story just simply cannot be believed, in my opinion. Mr. Landis, IMO, needs to be confronted with BOTH of the above newspaper articles at the same time, which each say the very same thing concerning the matter of the "bullet fragment". I'd be interested to know if Landis thinks he was misquoted in both of those articles, five years apart. Lots More: http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2023/06/paul-landis.html

Just think of all the answers you could be obtaining about this subject if you would just click on the link I provided earlier. (And it's a subject that you and I seem to agree on, 100%.) Oh well.....your loss.

Why not?

You're right. It's a ridiculous story. Here were my thoughts on the day Landis' story broke on September 9th.... ----------------- "I, myself, find it nearly impossible to believe former Secret Service agent Paul Landis' story (which Landis evidently tells in his new 2023 book, "The Final Witness") about finding a bullet "resting on the top of the back of the seat" of the Presidential limousine (which is a quote from this 9/9/2023 Vanity Fair article written by James Robenalt). How on Earth could a whole bullet have managed to have been located in that odd position on 11/22/63? "Resting on the top of the back of the seat"? Without Clint Hill ever noticing it or disturbing it, even though Hill was clinging to the back of the car all the way to Parkland? Highly doubtful. And even more importantly, why wouldn't Agent Landis have told someone else in authority (anyone else!) that he had picked up a bullet and moved it to President Kennedy's stretcher? It makes no sense whatsoever for Landis to have remained totally silent about finding (and moving) such a bullet in the limo on November 22. Did Mr. Landis think that the details about where and how the bullet was first found weren't important details at all, and therefore he felt he didn't even need to tell the Chief of the Secret Service or the FBI or anybody in Trauma Room No. 1 at Parkland about his discovery at all? Such a mindset and behavior for a Secret Service agent is utterly ridiculous—and most certainly unbelievable. Plus.... If Mr. Landis' bullet story is to be believed, we would then have to believe that the bullet he placed on JFK's stretcher was either never noticed by anyone else in the very busy Trauma Room No. 1, or the bullet was deliberately deep-sixed and disposed of, or the bullet was moved to yet another stretcher in the hospital (Governor Connally's). Each of the above choices, in my opinion, also resides in the category marked "unbelievable". A 4th choice would be: The bullet was accidentally lost (after, of course, it was never noticed by a single living soul in Trauma Room No. 1). Yet another unbelievable option." -- DVP; September 9th, 2023

I'm in 100% agreement with you on this point, Richard. Landis' bullet tale is totally unbelievable, as discussed in very great detail at the link below: http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com / Paul Landis Discussion

He didn't say that in the podcast. He never said that the bullet he (allegedly) found in the limo was laying in a pool of blood. Richard Booth has misinterpreted what Landis said in the Reiner podcast.

Rob Reiner's 10-part podcast is most certainly not a "live" podcast. It's obviously been scripted and heavily edited prior to being broadcast. There is nothing "live" about it.

I just listened to Episode 3 of Rob Reiner's new 10-part podcast ("Who Killed JFK?") --- and it's just about what I would expect from conspiracy theorists, with all the usual Conspiracy Myths being recycled and rehashed for a new audience here in November of 2023, including the myth about the Warren Commission being forced to accept the Single-Bullet Theory when the WC found out about James Tague. Mr. Reiner and company, as usual, totally ignore (or failed to read and comprehend) Page 117 of the Warren Report, which clearly states that the Commission had considered multiple possibilities to explain Mr. Tague's slight cheek injury. And then there's the usual CT denial with respect to what can clearly be seen going on with Governor Connally at frames 224 to 230 of the Zapruder Film, with Mr. Reiner assuring his listeners that Connally wasn't reacting to his bullet wounds until well after JFK was reacting to his (which is just a flat-out falsehood). Etc., etc.... So, if you want to listen to this tripe linked below, just be prepared for the usual conspiracy-flavored conjecture and speculation.

Uh-oh! A new conspiracy theory has just been born! Chevy-gate!

The exact OPPOSITE is, of course, the obvious truth with respect to the Z-Film and the SBT, as I discuss in great detail HERE.

Why do all conspiracy theorists insist upon tossing all of their common sense in the trash dumpster when it comes to the topic of the SBT? http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/SBT Common Sense

Video Recommendation.... The "Oral History" interview with Vivian Castleberry linked below is an absolute treat. I watched it for the first time today [November 21st, 2023] after learning that it is one of Stephen Fagin's favorite programs he has ever done for The Sixth Floor Museum's ongoing Oral History project. (Fagin is now the curator of the Museum.) And after just one viewing, this 2004 interview with this remarkable lady (who was 82 years old at the time) now ranks as one of my favorite assassination-related interviews as well: