SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS: Truth or Obfuscation?

[David Lifton]

Tink,

You write, QUOTE: The medical evidence in this case is an unbelievable mess. I don't claim to this day to understand it. UNQUOTE

Well, let's try harder, shall we?

"An unbelievable mess"--you say--in the sense that it is all so incomprehensible? Sorry, but I disagree. The medical evidence is certainly not "an unbelievable mess." In fact, the basics are quite easy to comprehend, and are laid out very clearly in Best Evidence. That is why the book became a best seller, was in print for seventeen years (via four publishers), and was a Book of the Month selection. Any high school student can understand it.

What is difficult to understand is your apparent inability to understand what appears so evident: that there was alteration and interception of President Kennedy's body. Here are some of the basics from Best Evidence, and please do feel free to ask me just what is so difficult to understand.

1) The throat wound --dealt with at length in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence.

The Dallas throat wound was described as a small puncture, and through that puncture Dr. Perry made a horizontal trach incision. Dr. Perry told me the trach incision was "2-3 cm." Dr. Carrico confirmed that the very next day. Both confirmed that the edges of the trach incision were smooth. By the time of the body arrived at Bethesda, Dr. Humes reported that the horizontal trach wound was "7 - 8 cm" wide, and had "widely gaping irregular edges." Now what is so difficult to understand about that? Obviously, the wound was enlarged.

In Dallas, it looked like an entry; at Bethesda, it had the appearance of (and was so designated, in the Bethesda autopsy) as an exit. These details are all laid out very clearly in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence: "The Tracheotomy Incision: Dallas vs. Bethesda."

Further corroborating the fact that someone seriously messed with the throat wound comes from the observation of world famous forensic pathologist Milton Halpern. He said that he could not understand the confusion about the throat wound--even if there had been a trach incision--because one could simply press the edges together and visibly see the wound. But, at the Shaw trial, Dr. Finck testified on this subject, and noted that there was no trace of any wound there. "I examined this surgical wound. . and I did not see the small wound described by the Dallas surgeons along that surgical incision. I did not see it . . . .I don't know why it is not there." (See Best Evidence, Chapter 11, p. 278 in the hardcover edition, or the identically paginated Carrol and Graf edition).

Why is this difficult to understand? Obviously, someone messed with the throat wound before the start of the official autopsy--and one does not have to be an M.D., Ph.D. or J.D. to comprehend it.

2) The head wound (dealt with at length, in Chapter 13 of Best Evidence, titled "The Head Wound: Dallas vs Bethesda."

Its pretty obvious, from the measurements, and by simply comparing Dallas versus Bethesda, that the head wound was enlarged by some 400%. In Dallas, according to the testimony of Carrico, its size was 5 by 7 cm (or 35 sq cm). At Bethesda, the measured size of the defect, according to the Boswell diagram, was 10 x 17 cm, or 170 sq. cm. Just read Doug Horne's Epiphanies chapter, and the experience he had when he and Jeremy Gunn questioned Boswell, and asked him to draw the full extent of the wound on a model skull. Obviously, the wound was much larger than what was reported at Dallas. (And please do remember how one of the Dallas doctors --Dr. Peters, I beleive--described it to me in Dallas: the size of a hen's egg. At Bethesda, it was 400 - 500% larger.

Now what's so hard to understand about that?

3) What was said at the outset of the autopsy (dealt with at length in Chapter 12, "An Oral Utterance")

Dr. Humes spoke aloud at the start of the official autopsy, and what he said was recorded by FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill: according to the two agents, and based on what he said, it was "apparent" that there had been "surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull." As it turns out, the FBI agents reported back to headquarters--after they were specifically queried by Hoover, as to the basis for that statement--that those words in their report were there because they were spoken aloud by Dr. Humes.

Again, what's so hard to understand about that?

4) The Liebeler Memorandum of November 8, 1966 --Dealt with at Length in Chapter 10 of Best Evidence, titled "The Liebeler Memorandum"

This chapter reports my experiences with Liebeler, and his reaction to this evidence. Specifically, I report how he was constantly in touch with Guthman, RFK's assistant, about many of these matters; and then how he sent out a 12 (or 13) page memorandum about this entire situation, to Chief Justice Warren, every member of the Warren Commission, and the entire legal staff--plus RFK, and President Johnson. Apparently, Professor Liebeler wasn't as confused by the evidence as you seeme to be. His memo---now available at the National Archives in the JFK records collection-- quotes the passage in the Sibert and O'Neill report stating that there had been pre-autopsy surgery on JFK's body prior to autopsy. Then the memo states: "In this connection, it should be noted that no surgery was performed at Parkland Hospital in the area of the President's head."

Is that so difficult to understand--that a former Warren Commission attorney found it astonishing that such evidence existed in the files, and had not been recognized or pursued? I was present when Liebeler called Specter about this discovery, on October 24, 1966. When Liebeler finished with the phone call, and I asked him what Specter had said, he then told me--and here I'm quoting from page 224 of Best Evidence: "Arlen hopes he gets through this with his balls intact." (B.E., Chapter 9, "October 24, 1966--A Confrontation With Liebeler")

5) Then there is the matter of the account of Paul O'Connor (and others), who reports that the President's body arrived in a body bag--inside a shipping casket--and that at the time he opened the body bag, the cranium was empty.

Now what's so difficult to understand about that? The man had years of experience working at autopsies, and understood that normally the brain was removed by sawing open the skull. But in this case, the normal procedure didn't have to be followed, he said, because the cranium was empty.

And, in a memorable quote, in a 1989 filmed interview we had (with Pat Valentino present), O'Connor expressed his own puzzlement at the idea that a tracheotomy had been done in Dallas. Said O'Connor: "You wouldn't do a tracheotomy on a man without a brain." In other words, O'Connor found the whole situation incomprehensible: a putative tracheotomy, and an empty cranium!

6) The Pre-Autopsy Autopsy -- Chapter 18 of Best Evidence

This chapter sets forth the evidence that Commander Humes own testimony and autopsy report reports a pattern of damage that is remarkably similar to the standard procedure for removing the brain--only he claims to have found the body that way. When I called Humes on November 3, 1966, and confronted him with the statement in the Sibert and O'Neill report, he blurted out, "I'd like to know by whom it was done, and when, and where!"

All of this is laid out in crystal clear prose.

Now what, pray tell, is so difficult about these concepts?

Do you seriously suggest we should defer to Dr. Wecht, in view of the above data?

And what is so difficult about understanding the evidence of interception--one does not have to be a forensic pathologist to understand that. All one has to be is an intelligent high school student who can draw a time line.

The evidence clearly shows that there are THREE --yes three--independently recorded entrances of a coffin at Bethesda Naval Hospital:

1) At 6:35 pm, according to the USMC security detail --this was the shipping casket, with the body bag containing the body

2) At 7:17 --when the FBI agents arrived with the Dallas casket (which, unbeknownst to them) was empty

3) At 8PM --when the tri-service casket team brought in the Dallas casket (for a second time, the casket body now having been returned to it, and this entry being arranged so there would be an official record that the body arrived in the casket in which it began its journey, and there was no intercept.

Is this a mess? No, it is not. It is very easy to understand, and one does not have to scurry off and seek Dr. Cyril Wecht's opinion to comprehend the basic facts. In my opinion, that is nothing less than an excuse to avoid facing the evidence,and its implications.

Let's turn for a moment to what your focus seems to be, i.e., your priorities.

I know, Josiah, that you are very concerned about pursuing the matter of whether there was were one or two men lurking behind the fence on the grassy knoll.

May I gently suggest that the issues raised by the above are far more significant than the number of shooters, possibly hidden behind the fence on the knoll?

What's at stake in Best Evidence--and in Doug Horne's book, too--is a covert operation at the heart of a coup to operate the line of succession of the U.S. government, the purpose being to make the Vice President, the President, under circumstances that appear accidental. That, too, is spelled out at the very end of my book--See Chapter 32, "The Assassination as A Covert Operation"--and that, too, I believe is very easy for any intelligent reader to comprehend.

You were an underwater frogman, Josiah Thompson.

Now's the time to don your flippers, put on those goggles, take a deep breath, and stop swimming in the shallow end of the kiddie pool!

Very truly yours. .

DSL

1/2/10, 8:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

[Josiah Thompson]

As I said, I'm not informed enough about this tangle of evidence to say anything. I look forward to reading Doug Horne's four volumes on this to learn. If I finish that in the next few weeks or months I'll get back to you. You know it's not required of any of us that we know everything about everything. I hope you'll find my modesty here refreshing.

Tink

Tink,

You write, QUOTE: The medical evidence in this case is an unbelievable mess. I don't claim to this day to understand it. UNQUOTE

Well, let's try harder, shall we?

"An unbelievable mess"--you say--in the sense that it is all so incomprehensible? Sorry, but I disagree. The medical evidence is certainly not "an unbelievable mess." In fact, the basics are quite easy to comprehend, and are laid out very clearly in Best Evidence. That is why the book became a best seller, was in print for seventeen years (via four publishers), and was a Book of the Month selection. Any high school student can understand it.

What is difficult to understand is your apparent inability to understand what appears so evident: that there was alteration and interception of President Kennedy's body. Here are some of the basics from Best Evidence, and please do feel free to ask me just what is so difficult to understand.

1) The throat wound --dealt with at length in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence.

The Dallas throat wound was described as a small puncture, and through that puncture Dr. Perry made a horizontal trach incision. Dr. Perry told me the trach incision was "2-3 cm." Dr. Carrico confirmed that the very next day. Both confirmed that the edges of the trach incision were smooth. By the time of the body arrived at Bethesda, Dr. Humes reported that the horizontal trach wound was "7 - 8 cm" wide, and had "widely gaping irregular edges." Now what is so difficult to understand about that? Obviously, the wound was enlarged.

In Dallas, it looked like an entry; at Bethesda, it had the appearance of (and was so designated, in the Bethesda autopsy) as an exit. These details are all laid out very clearly in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence: "The Tracheotomy Incision: Dallas vs. Bethesda."

Further corroborating the fact that someone seriously messed with the throat wound comes from the observation of world famous forensic pathologist Milton Halpern. He said that he could not understand the confusion about the throat wound--even if there had been a trach incision--because one could simply press the edges together and visibly see the wound. But, at the Shaw trial, Dr. Finck testified on this subject, and noted that there was no trace of any wound there. "I examined this surgical wound. . and I did not see the small wound described by the Dallas surgeons along that surgical incision. I did not see it . . . .I don't know why it is not there." (See Best Evidence, Chapter 11, p. 278 in the hardcover edition, or the identically paginated Carrol and Graf edition).

Why is this difficult to understand? Obviously, someone messed with the throat wound before the start of the official autopsy--and one does not have to be an M.D., Ph.D. or J.D. to comprehend it.

2) The head wound (dealt with at length, in Chapter 13 of Best Evidence, titled "The Head Wound: Dallas vs Bethesda."

Its pretty obvious, from the measurements, and by simply comparing Dallas versus Bethesda, that the head wound was enlarged by some 400%. In Dallas, according to the testimony of Carrico, its size was 5 by 7 cm (or 35 sq cm). At Bethesda, the measured size of the defect, according to the Boswell diagram, was 10 x 17 cm, or 170 sq. cm. Just read Doug Horne's Epiphanies chapter, and the experience he had when he and Jeremy Gunn questioned Boswell, and asked him to draw the full extent of the wound on a model skull. Obviously, the wound was much larger than what was reported at Dallas. (And please do remember how one of the Dallas doctors --Dr. Peters, I beleive--described it to me in Dallas: the size of a hen's egg. At Bethesda, it was 400 - 500% larger.

Now what's so hard to understand about that?

3) What was said at the outset of the autopsy (dealt with at length in Chapter 12, "An Oral Utterance")

Dr. Humes spoke aloud at the start of the official autopsy, and what he said was recorded by FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill: according to the two agents, and based on what he said, it was "apparent" that there had been "surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull." As it turns out, the FBI agents reported back to headquarters--after they were specifically queried by Hoover, as to the basis for that statement--that those words in their report were there because they were spoken aloud by Dr. Humes.

Again, what's so hard to understand about that?

4) The Liebeler Memorandum of November 8, 1966 --Dealt with at Length in Chapter 10 of Best Evidence, titled "The Liebeler Memorandum"

This chapter reports my experiences with Liebeler, and his reaction to this evidence. Specifically, I report how he was constantly in touch with Guthman, RFK's assistant, about many of these matters; and then how he sent out a 12 (or 13) page memorandum about this entire situation, to Chief Justice Warren, every member of the Warren Commission, and the entire legal staff--plus RFK, and President Johnson. Apparently, Professor Liebeler wasn't as confused by the evidence as you seeme to be. His memo---now available at the National Archives in the JFK records collection-- quotes the passage in the Sibert and O'Neill report stating that there had been pre-autopsy surgery on JFK's body prior to autopsy. Then the memo states: "In this connection, it should be noted that no surgery was performed at Parkland Hospital in the area of the President's head."

Is that so difficult to understand--that a former Warren Commission attorney found it astonishing that such evidence existed in the files, and had not been recognized or pursued? I was present when Liebeler called Specter about this discovery, on October 24, 1966. When Liebeler finished with the phone call, and I asked him what Specter had said, he then told me--and here I'm quoting from page 224 of Best Evidence: "Arlen hopes he gets through this with his balls intact." (B.E., Chapter 9, "October 24, 1966--A Confrontation With Liebeler")

5) Then there is the matter of the account of Paul O'Connor (and others), who reports that the President's body arrived in a body bag--inside a shipping casket--and that at the time he opened the body bag, the cranium was empty.

Now what's so difficult to understand about that? The man had years of experience working at autopsies, and understood that normally the brain was removed by sawing open the skull. But in this case, the normal procedure didn't have to be followed, he said, because the cranium was empty.

And, in a memorable quote, in a 1989 filmed interview we had (with Pat Valentino present), O'Connor expressed his own puzzlement at the idea that a tracheotomy had been done in Dallas. Said O'Connor: "You wouldn't do a tracheotomy on a man without a brain." In other words, O'Connor found the whole situation incomprehensible: a putative tracheotomy, and an empty cranium!

6) The Pre-Autopsy Autopsy -- Chapter 18 of Best Evidence

This chapter sets forth the evidence that Commander Humes own testimony and autopsy report reports a pattern of damage that is remarkably similar to the standard procedure for removing the brain--only he claims to have found the body that way. When I called Humes on November 3, 1966, and confronted him with the statement in the Sibert and O'Neill report, he blurted out, "I'd like to know by whom it was done, and when, and where!"

All of this is laid out in crystal clear prose.

Now what, pray tell, is so difficult about these concepts?

Do you seriously suggest we should defer to Dr. Wecht, in view of the above data?

And what is so difficult about understanding the evidence of interception--one does not have to be a forensic pathologist to understand that. All one has to be is an intelligent high school student who can draw a time line.

The evidence clearly shows that there are THREE --yes three--independently recorded entrances of a coffin at Bethesda Naval Hospital:

1) At 6:35 pm, according to the USMC security detail --this was the shipping casket, with the body bag containing the body

2) At 7:17 --when the FBI agents arrived with the Dallas casket (which, unbeknownst to them) was empty

3) At 8PM --when the tri-service casket team brought in the Dallas casket (for a second time, the casket body now having been returned to it, and this entry being arranged so there would be an official record that the body arrived in the casket in which it began its journey, and there was no intercept.

Is this a mess? No, it is not. It is very easy to understand, and one does not have to scurry off and seek Dr. Cyril Wecht's opinion to comprehend the basic facts. In my opinion, that is nothing less than an excuse to avoid facing the evidence,and its implications.

Let's turn for a moment to what your focus seems to be, i.e., your priorities.

I know, Josiah, that you are very concerned about pursuing the matter of whether there was were one or two men lurking behind the fence on the grassy knoll.

May I gently suggest that the issues raised by the above are far more significant than the number of shooters, possibly hidden behind the fence on the knoll?

What's at stake in Best Evidence--and in Doug Horne's book, too--is a covert operation at the heart of a coup to operate the line of succession of the U.S. government, the purpose being to make the Vice President, the President, under circumstances that appear accidental. That, too, is spelled out at the very end of my book--See Chapter 32, "The Assassination as A Covert Operation"--and that, too, I believe is very easy for any intelligent reader to comprehend.

You were an underwater frogman, Josiah Thompson.

Now's the time to don your flippers, put on those goggles, take a deep breath, and stop swimming in the shallow end of the kiddie pool!

Very truly yours. .

DSL

1/2/10, 8:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

Bernice, Could you scan in one of the copies from the color section of HOAX? Thanks very much. Jim

Michael, Sure. One way is to go to http://www.und.edu/org/jfkconference/ and download Chapter 30,

"Revisiting Dealey Plaza: What Happened to JFK?", where you will find it following David Mantik's study

of the X-rays. It is also accessible via my blog at jamesfetzer.blogspot.com and, of course, as part of

the "Costella Combined Cut", which is archived at assassinationscience.com. Perhaps Jack White may

be inclined to contribute a blow-up. Thanks for asking.

James,

I happen to own a copy of "Murder in Dealey Plaza",but unfortunately do not own a copy of "The Great Zapruder Film Hoax".Is there any chance of producing an enlargement of Zapruder frame 374 for the forum? It would be very much appreciated.

for Michael...b..zapruder frame 374

[Michael Crane]

I swear this forum is so helpful.I can`t thank the members enough!

Did you hear that Bernice? ;-)

[Jack White]

Tink,

You write, QUOTE: The medical evidence in this case is an unbelievable mess. I don't claim to this day to understand it. UNQUOTE

Well, let's try harder, shall we?

"An unbelievable mess"--you say--in the sense that it is all so incomprehensible? Sorry, but I disagree. The medical evidence is certainly not "an unbelievable mess." In fact, the basics are quite easy to comprehend, and are laid out very clearly in Best Evidence. That is why the book became a best seller, was in print for seventeen years (via four publishers), and was a Book of the Month selection. Any high school student can understand it.

What is difficult to understand is your apparent inability to understand what appears so evident: that there was alteration and interception of President Kennedy's body. Here are some of the basics from Best Evidence, and please do feel free to ask me just what is so difficult to understand.

1) The throat wound --dealt with at length in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence.

The Dallas throat wound was described as a small puncture, and through that puncture Dr. Perry made a horizontal trach incision. Dr. Perry told me the trach incision was "2-3 cm." Dr. Carrico confirmed that the very next day. Both confirmed that the edges of the trach incision were smooth. By the time of the body arrived at Bethesda, Dr. Humes reported that the horizontal trach wound was "7 - 8 cm" wide, and had "widely gaping irregular edges." Now what is so difficult to understand about that? Obviously, the wound was enlarged.

In Dallas, it looked like an entry; at Bethesda, it had the appearance of (and was so designated, in the Bethesda autopsy) as an exit. These details are all laid out very clearly in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence: "The Tracheotomy Incision: Dallas vs. Bethesda."

Further corroborating the fact that someone seriously messed with the throat wound comes from the observation of world famous forensic pathologist Milton Halpern. He said that he could not understand the confusion about the throat wound--even if there had been a trach incision--because one could simply press the edges together and visibly see the wound. But, at the Shaw trial, Dr. Finck testified on this subject, and noted that there was no trace of any wound there. "I examined this surgical wound. . and I did not see the small wound described by the Dallas surgeons along that surgical incision. I did not see it . . . .I don't know why it is not there." (See Best Evidence, Chapter 11, p. 278 in the hardcover edition, or the identically paginated Carrol and Graf edition).

Why is this difficult to understand? Obviously, someone messed with the throat wound before the start of the official autopsy--and one does not have to be an M.D., Ph.D. or J.D. to comprehend it.

2) The head wound (dealt with at length, in Chapter 13 of Best Evidence, titled "The Head Wound: Dallas vs Bethesda."

Its pretty obvious, from the measurements, and by simply comparing Dallas versus Bethesda, that the head wound was enlarged by some 400%. In Dallas, according to the testimony of Carrico, its size was 5 by 7 cm (or 35 sq cm). At Bethesda, the measured size of the defect, according to the Boswell diagram, was 10 x 17 cm, or 170 sq. cm. Just read Doug Horne's Epiphanies chapter, and the experience he had when he and Jeremy Gunn questioned Boswell, and asked him to draw the full extent of the wound on a model skull. Obviously, the wound was much larger than what was reported at Dallas. (And please do remember how one of the Dallas doctors --Dr. Peters, I beleive--described it to me in Dallas: the size of a hen's egg. At Bethesda, it was 400 - 500% larger.

Now what's so hard to understand about that?

3) What was said at the outset of the autopsy (dealt with at length in Chapter 12, "An Oral Utterance")

Dr. Humes spoke aloud at the start of the official autopsy, and what he said was recorded by FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill: according to the two agents, and based on what he said, it was "apparent" that there had been "surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull." As it turns out, the FBI agents reported back to headquarters--after they were specifically queried by Hoover, as to the basis for that statement--that those words in their report were there because they were spoken aloud by Dr. Humes.

Again, what's so hard to understand about that?

4) The Liebeler Memorandum of November 8, 1966 --Dealt with at Length in Chapter 10 of Best Evidence, titled "The Liebeler Memorandum"

This chapter reports my experiences with Liebeler, and his reaction to this evidence. Specifically, I report how he was constantly in touch with Guthman, RFK's assistant, about many of these matters; and then how he sent out a 12 (or 13) page memorandum about this entire situation, to Chief Justice Warren, every member of the Warren Commission, and the entire legal staff--plus RFK, and President Johnson. Apparently, Professor Liebeler wasn't as confused by the evidence as you seeme to be. His memo---now available at the National Archives in the JFK records collection-- quotes the passage in the Sibert and O'Neill report stating that there had been pre-autopsy surgery on JFK's body prior to autopsy. Then the memo states: "In this connection, it should be noted that no surgery was performed at Parkland Hospital in the area of the President's head."

Is that so difficult to understand--that a former Warren Commission attorney found it astonishing that such evidence existed in the files, and had not been recognized or pursued? I was present when Liebeler called Specter about this discovery, on October 24, 1966. When Liebeler finished with the phone call, and I asked him what Specter had said, he then told me--and here I'm quoting from page 224 of Best Evidence: "Arlen hopes he gets through this with his balls intact." (B.E., Chapter 9, "October 24, 1966--A Confrontation With Liebeler")

5) Then there is the matter of the account of Paul O'Connor (and others), who reports that the President's body arrived in a body bag--inside a shipping casket--and that at the time he opened the body bag, the cranium was empty.

Now what's so difficult to understand about that? The man had years of experience working at autopsies, and understood that normally the brain was removed by sawing open the skull. But in this case, the normal procedure didn't have to be followed, he said, because the cranium was empty.

And, in a memorable quote, in a 1989 filmed interview we had (with Pat Valentino present), O'Connor expressed his own puzzlement at the idea that a tracheotomy had been done in Dallas. Said O'Connor: "You wouldn't do a tracheotomy on a man without a brain." In other words, O'Connor found the whole situation incomprehensible: a putative tracheotomy, and an empty cranium!

6) The Pre-Autopsy Autopsy -- Chapter 18 of Best Evidence

This chapter sets forth the evidence that Commander Humes own testimony and autopsy report reports a pattern of damage that is remarkably similar to the standard procedure for removing the brain--only he claims to have found the body that way. When I called Humes on November 3, 1966, and confronted him with the statement in the Sibert and O'Neill report, he blurted out, "I'd like to know by whom it was done, and when, and where!"

All of this is laid out in crystal clear prose.

Now what, pray tell, is so difficult about these concepts?

Do you seriously suggest we should defer to Dr. Wecht, in view of the above data?

And what is so difficult about understanding the evidence of interception--one does not have to be a forensic pathologist to understand that. All one has to be is an intelligent high school student who can draw a time line.

The evidence clearly shows that there are THREE --yes three--independently recorded entrances of a coffin at Bethesda Naval Hospital:

1) At 6:35 pm, according to the USMC security detail --this was the shipping casket, with the body bag containing the body

2) At 7:17 --when the FBI agents arrived with the Dallas casket (which, unbeknownst to them) was empty

3) At 8PM --when the tri-service casket team brought in the Dallas casket (for a second time, the casket body now having been returned to it, and this entry being arranged so there would be an official record that the body arrived in the casket in which it began its journey, and there was no intercept.

Is this a mess? No, it is not. It is very easy to understand, and one does not have to scurry off and seek Dr. Cyril Wecht's opinion to comprehend the basic facts. In my opinion, that is nothing less than an excuse to avoid facing the evidence,and its implications.

Let's turn for a moment to what your focus seems to be, i.e., your priorities.

I know, Josiah, that you are very concerned about pursuing the matter of whether there was were one or two men lurking behind the fence on the grassy knoll.

May I gently suggest that the issues raised by the above are far more significant than the number of shooters, possibly hidden behind the fence on the knoll?

What's at stake in Best Evidence--and in Doug Horne's book, too--is a covert operation at the heart of a coup to operate the line of succession of the U.S. government, the purpose being to make the Vice President, the President, under circumstances that appear accidental. That, too, is spelled out at the very end of my book--See Chapter 32, "The Assassination as A Covert Operation"--and that, too, I believe is very easy for any intelligent reader to comprehend.

You were an underwater frogman, Josiah Thompson.

Now's the time to don your flippers, put on those goggles, take a deep breath, and stop swimming in the shallow end of the kiddie pool!

Very truly yours. .

DSL

1/2/10, 8:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

David is correct, of course, that he laid out all of this with great clarity in BEST EVIDENCE.

Additionally, Doug Horne not only goes repeats the same material, BUT ADDS FURTHER DETAILS

with copious documentation. Plus, Doug makes additional strides in what happened at Bethesda

by showing that ONLY Dr. Humes had the opportunity to do the SURGERY OF THE HEAD brought

to our attention by David.

Both David and Doug write with great clarity. Nobody should be able to claim CONFUSION. It

is all very clear. Read Doug's Volume IV if you can; if not, reread BEST EVIDENCE.

Jack

[Jack White]

Bernice, Could you scan in one of the copies from the color section of HOAX? Thanks very much. Jim

Michael, Sure. One way is to go to http://www.und.edu/org/jfkconference/ and download Chapter 30,

"Revisiting Dealey Plaza: What Happened to JFK?", where you will find it following David Mantik's study

of the X-rays. It is also accessible via my blog at jamesfetzer.blogspot.com and, of course, as part of

the "Costella Combined Cut", which is archived at assassinationscience.com. Perhaps Jack White may

be inclined to contribute a blow-up. Thanks for asking.

James,

I happen to own a copy of "Murder in Dealey Plaza",but unfortunately do not own a copy of "The Great Zapruder Film Hoax".Is there any chance of producing an enlargement of Zapruder frame 374 for the forum? It would be very much appreciated.

for Michael...b..zapruder frame 374

Jim...can you specify EXACTLY which illustration you want? Perhaps I can send the original

instead of a scan from the printed page. It would help to know why you want it.

Jack

[Michael Crane]

Jack,

I believe that in the spirit of sharing....James was asking on my behalf/benefit.

Edited January 3, 2010 by Michael Crane

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

There is nothing "modest" about Josiah's evasions and obfuscations. The conflict between the medical evidence and the film is blatant. Tink does not want to confront it because it exposes his work as an elaborate charade. You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Zapruder-...-090324-48.html

March 28, 2009

Zapruder JFK Film Impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid

By Jim Fetzer

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't need to worry about answers". -- Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW (1973).

Madison, WI (OpEdNews) March 27, 2009 -- A debate has been raging just off the radar of the main stream media over the significance of a Polaroid photograph by Mary Moorman, which appears to impeach the famous Zapruder film of the assassination. Although most attention has focused on an argument initiated by legendary photo-analyst Jack White--that the photo reflects a line-of-sight that places Mary in the street, while the film shows her on the grass--a more serious threat emerges from its photographic content, which shows JFK's head tilted downward and slightly to the left. Surprisingly, this removes the final resistance to impeaching the film based upon the medical evidence.

The features of the film that are the center of this latest controversy have been explored by an Australian physicist, John P. Costella, Ph.D., who has a specialty in electromagnetism, including the properties of light and the physics of moving bodies, who is the leading expert on the Zapruder film in the world today. Some of his studies may be found on my public issue web site at http://assassinationscience.com and are archived there as "The JFK Assassination Film Hoax: An Introduction". Indeed, Roderick Ryan, an expert on cinematic special effects, told Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1997), p. 160, that the bulging brains (sometimes called "the blob") had been painted in. Ryan would receive a 2000 Academy Award for lifetime achievement. But Costella's studies and Ryan's observations have not brought an end to the controversy for those dedicated to Zapruder authenticity.

The principal protagonists in the debate occurring on several of the leading JFK research forums has pitted Josiah Thompson, author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), an early study largely based upon the Zapruder film, against me, editor of ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), of MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and of THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). Most of our arguments in the past have been directed to the line of sight argument advanced by Jack White and to the validity of an experiment conducted by David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., the leading expert on the medical evidence in the world today, and me, using a transit in Dealey Plaza, which I summarized in an recent article, "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", at http://JFKresearch.com/Moorman which has as now appeared in a British journal, THE DEALEY PLAZA ECHO 13/1 (March 2009), pp. 6-33.

In that article, I observed that, while there are many indications that the film is a fabrication, the most important proof is the inconsistency between the impact damage to the cranium, which is the film's most stunning feature, showing brains and gore bulging out to JFK's right-front, and the medical evidence, which shows a massive defect at the back of his head just to the right of center. Indeed, Escort Motorcycle Officer Bobby Hargis, who was riding to the left-rear, was hit so hard by the blown-out brains and debris that he though he himself had been shot. Thus, the question has become how such a massive blow-out of brains and gore at the back of the head could appear to be to the right-front in the film.

In an earlier article, "New Proof of JFK Film Fakery" that appeared in OpEdNews (February 5, 2008), I laid out multiple indications that the Zapruder film is a fabrication. But none of those proofs even reaches to the mutually reinforcing deceptions of (i) the blow out to the right-front in the Zapruder film, (ii) the missing right-front in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and (iii) the publication of 313 in LIFE magazine with a caption saying that the bullet had entered the back of his head and blown out the right-front--a caption rewritten twice after breaking the plates. And it implicates Abraham Zapruder in the deception, when (iv) he described a blow-out to the right-front during a televised interview that that night (HOAX, page 435)!

None of it was true. Jackie herself reported that, from the front, he looked just fine but that she had a hard time holding his skull and brains together at the back of his head. None of the witnesses or doctors reported it. Not even the mortician! Indeed, the massive defect can even be seen in late frames of the film, including 374. During a phone interview with Joe West, a private investigator, the man who had prepared the body for burial, Thomas Evan Robinson, described the wounds on May 26, 1992, as follows (MURDER, p. 116; HOAX, p. 9):

* large gaping hole in back of head patched by stretching piece of rubber over it.

Thinks skull full of Plaster of Paris.

* smaller wound in right temple. Crescent shape, flapped down (3")

* (approx 2) small shrapnel wounds in face. Packed with wax.

* wound in back (5 to six inches) below shoulder. To the right of back bone.

* adrenal gland and brain removed.

* other organs removed and then put back.

* no swelling or discoloration to face. (died instantly)

Those who want to persist in defense of the film, however, observe that Bill and Gayle Newman, Abraham Zapruder and his secretary, Marilyn Sitzman, had reported wounds to the right side of JFK's head. These observations are consistent with the entry wound to the right temple, which caused the massive defect to the back of his skull, but probably also resulted from observing the brains when the flap that the mortician describes was briefly opened when the frangible (or exploding) bullet entered his right temple, creating the flap (which promptly closed) and apparently damaging his right ear.

Indeed, according to E. Z. Friedel, M.D., THE JFK CONSPIRACY (2007), his ear was so badly destroyed that those who wanted to conceal the truth causes of his death brought in an expert to perform a reconstruction. Friedel characterizes his book as a work of “fiction”, but what he has to tell us about these wounds appears to coincide with what witnesses have had to say in describing them. Rich DellaRosa, who founded and moderates JFKresearch.com, has been communicating with him for over a year and believes he has had access to inside information.

Barb Junkkarinen, arguing the other side of the question, recently observed on the JFK forum, jfk-research@yahoogroups.com, that the Newmans, a couple who were on the knoll side of Elm Street at the time of the shooting, had described damage to the right side of his head. Bill, for example, reported,

"By this time he was directly in front of us and I was looking directly at him when he was hit in the side of the head" [Affidavit 11-22-63] and

"At that time he heard the bullet strike the President and saw flesh fly from the President's head." .... "He said the president was hit on the right side of the head with the third shot ..."[FBI report 11-23-63]

Similarly, his wife, Gayle, reported,

"Just about the time President Kennedy was right in front of us, I heard another shot ring out, and the President put his hands up to his head. I saw blood all over the side of his head." [Affidavit 11-22-63]

During the trial of Clay Shaw by Jim Garrison in New Orleans, they both reported seeing him hit in the right temple, but she elaborated in the following way:

"Q: Now what was the effect of this shot upon the President's head if you were able to observe?

A: The President, his head just seemed to explode, just bits of his skull flew in the air and he fell to the side."

Her husband offered additional observations tha were also dramatic:

"I caught a glimpse of his eyes, just looked like a cold stare, he just looked through me, and then when the car was directly in front of me, well, that is when the third shot was fired and it hit him in the side of the head right above the ear and his ear came off. "

None of this, of course, could salvage the authenticity of the film unless it could explain how a blow out of brains and gore from the back of his skull could appear to have been blown out to the right-front in the Zapruder film. I was so puzzled by the argument that the Newmans, Sitzman and Zapruder had observed such effects that I wrote to leading experts with whom I have collaborated in the past.

Mantik confirmed that, "Of course!", the medical evidence falsifies the film, which I found highly reassuring. Costella, who has demonstrated that the Zapruder is a fabrication at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro had a telling observation about why there may have been so much controversy over the Moorman from scratch. Ironically, Costella had been in agreement with Thompson ("Tink") about the line of sight argument, which placed him on Tink's side on that question against Mantik, White, and me. So what he had to add on March 19, 2009, was especially striking:

Jim,

I still sit on Tink's side when it comes to the extant Moorman and what camera position it implies, so make sure that the issues are disentangled.

Re the head wound being inconsistent with the Z film, I think it's beyond doubt. The explanation I like best is David Lifton's in BEST EVIDENCE about the time they got hold of the clear frames in the early '70s. The GIF sequences of deblurred frames on my website make it clear for the newcomer, but it really goes back to DSL.

The only argument that Tink and Miller and the others put forward against this is that somehow JFK's head is massively rotated to the left in 313 and 314, and that we are seeing the part of his head above his right ear. Ironically, the Moorman polaroid itself dismisses this idea (if these were all genuine), as it lines up at about Z-315 or Z-316, and shows that JFK's head is tilted but not spun around as would be required-as you can see from Clip G on my website, his head starts to lift from 314 through to 318 but does not rotate left or right.

Indeed, maybe that's the point of all this Moorman guff. Forget about the pedestal for the moment, and look at JFK. Place the Moorman next to Zapruder frame 315 or 316, and you have two (allegedly genuine) different views of the same instant of time. That shows you that the "red blob" that explodes out the front of his head in the Z-toon is indeed supposed to be coming out of his right temple. If his head had been rotated massively to the left, we'd be able to see his face in the Moorman-but we don't.

John

John's observation--that the Moorman contradicts that explanation and exposes it as a sham, because JFK's head was not dramatically turned to the left--means that the blow out of brains and gore to the right front cannot be attributed to JFK's having turned his head to the left, which means the authenticity of the film has indeed been impeached by the medical evidence. Such a claim was implausible to begin with, but it still left the smallest degree of uncertainty. So the indirect proof provided by the medical evidence combined with the Moorman turns out to be at least as powerful as the direct proof. And this refutation of the film appears definitive, because there is no remaining line of defense.

Author's Website: www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/

Author's Bio: McKnight Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Duluth; Founder, Scholars for 9/11 Truth; Editor, Assassination Research.

As I said, I'm not informed enough about this tangle of evidence to say anything. I look forward to reading Doug Horne's four volumes on this to learn. If I finish that in the next few weeks or months I'll get back to you. You know it's not required of any of us that we know everything about everything. I hope you'll find my modesty here refreshing.

Tink

Tink,

You write, QUOTE: The medical evidence in this case is an unbelievable mess. I don't claim to this day to understand it. UNQUOTE

Well, let's try harder, shall we?

"An unbelievable mess"--you say--in the sense that it is all so incomprehensible? Sorry, but I disagree. The medical evidence is certainly not "an unbelievable mess." In fact, the basics are quite easy to comprehend, and are laid out very clearly in Best Evidence. That is why the book became a best seller, was in print for seventeen years (via four publishers), and was a Book of the Month selection. Any high school student can understand it.

What is difficult to understand is your apparent inability to understand what appears so evident: that there was alteration and interception of President Kennedy's body. Here are some of the basics from Best Evidence, and please do feel free to ask me just what is so difficult to understand.

1) The throat wound --dealt with at length in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence.

The Dallas throat wound was described as a small puncture, and through that puncture Dr. Perry made a horizontal trach incision. Dr. Perry told me the trach incision was "2-3 cm." Dr. Carrico confirmed that the very next day. Both confirmed that the edges of the trach incision were smooth. By the time of the body arrived at Bethesda, Dr. Humes reported that the horizontal trach wound was "7 - 8 cm" wide, and had "widely gaping irregular edges." Now what is so difficult to understand about that? Obviously, the wound was enlarged.

In Dallas, it looked like an entry; at Bethesda, it had the appearance of (and was so designated, in the Bethesda autopsy) as an exit. These details are all laid out very clearly in Chapter 11 of Best Evidence: "The Tracheotomy Incision: Dallas vs. Bethesda."

Further corroborating the fact that someone seriously messed with the throat wound comes from the observation of world famous forensic pathologist Milton Halpern. He said that he could not understand the confusion about the throat wound--even if there had been a trach incision--because one could simply press the edges together and visibly see the wound. But, at the Shaw trial, Dr. Finck testified on this subject, and noted that there was no trace of any wound there. "I examined this surgical wound. . and I did not see the small wound described by the Dallas surgeons along that surgical incision. I did not see it . . . .I don't know why it is not there." (See Best Evidence, Chapter 11, p. 278 in the hardcover edition, or the identically paginated Carrol and Graf edition).

Why is this difficult to understand? Obviously, someone messed with the throat wound before the start of the official autopsy--and one does not have to be an M.D., Ph.D. or J.D. to comprehend it.

2) The head wound (dealt with at length, in Chapter 13 of Best Evidence, titled "The Head Wound: Dallas vs Bethesda."

Its pretty obvious, from the measurements, and by simply comparing Dallas versus Bethesda, that the head wound was enlarged by some 400%. In Dallas, according to the testimony of Carrico, its size was 5 by 7 cm (or 35 sq cm). At Bethesda, the measured size of the defect, according to the Boswell diagram, was 10 x 17 cm, or 170 sq. cm. Just read Doug Horne's Epiphanies chapter, and the experience he had when he and Jeremy Gunn questioned Boswell, and asked him to draw the full extent of the wound on a model skull. Obviously, the wound was much larger than what was reported at Dallas. (And please do remember how one of the Dallas doctors --Dr. Peters, I beleive--described it to me in Dallas: the size of a hen's egg. At Bethesda, it was 400 - 500% larger.

Now what's so hard to understand about that?

3) What was said at the outset of the autopsy (dealt with at length in Chapter 12, "An Oral Utterance")

Dr. Humes spoke aloud at the start of the official autopsy, and what he said was recorded by FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill: according to the two agents, and based on what he said, it was "apparent" that there had been "surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull." As it turns out, the FBI agents reported back to headquarters--after they were specifically queried by Hoover, as to the basis for that statement--that those words in their report were there because they were spoken aloud by Dr. Humes.

Again, what's so hard to understand about that?

4) The Liebeler Memorandum of November 8, 1966 --Dealt with at Length in Chapter 10 of Best Evidence, titled "The Liebeler Memorandum"

This chapter reports my experiences with Liebeler, and his reaction to this evidence. Specifically, I report how he was constantly in touch with Guthman, RFK's assistant, about many of these matters; and then how he sent out a 12 (or 13) page memorandum about this entire situation, to Chief Justice Warren, every member of the Warren Commission, and the entire legal staff--plus RFK, and President Johnson. Apparently, Professor Liebeler wasn't as confused by the evidence as you seeme to be. His memo---now available at the National Archives in the JFK records collection-- quotes the passage in the Sibert and O'Neill report stating that there had been pre-autopsy surgery on JFK's body prior to autopsy. Then the memo states: "In this connection, it should be noted that no surgery was performed at Parkland Hospital in the area of the President's head."

Is that so difficult to understand--that a former Warren Commission attorney found it astonishing that such evidence existed in the files, and had not been recognized or pursued? I was present when Liebeler called Specter about this discovery, on October 24, 1966. When Liebeler finished with the phone call, and I asked him what Specter had said, he then told me--and here I'm quoting from page 224 of Best Evidence: "Arlen hopes he gets through this with his balls intact." (B.E., Chapter 9, "October 24, 1966--A Confrontation With Liebeler")

5) Then there is the matter of the account of Paul O'Connor (and others), who reports that the President's body arrived in a body bag--inside a shipping casket--and that at the time he opened the body bag, the cranium was empty.

Now what's so difficult to understand about that? The man had years of experience working at autopsies, and understood that normally the brain was removed by sawing open the skull. But in this case, the normal procedure didn't have to be followed, he said, because the cranium was empty.

And, in a memorable quote, in a 1989 filmed interview we had (with Pat Valentino present), O'Connor expressed his own puzzlement at the idea that a tracheotomy had been done in Dallas. Said O'Connor: "You wouldn't do a tracheotomy on a man without a brain." In other words, O'Connor found the whole situation incomprehensible: a putative tracheotomy, and an empty cranium!

6) The Pre-Autopsy Autopsy -- Chapter 18 of Best Evidence

This chapter sets forth the evidence that Commander Humes own testimony and autopsy report reports a pattern of damage that is remarkably similar to the standard procedure for removing the brain--only he claims to have found the body that way. When I called Humes on November 3, 1966, and confronted him with the statement in the Sibert and O'Neill report, he blurted out, "I'd like to know by whom it was done, and when, and where!"

All of this is laid out in crystal clear prose.

Now what, pray tell, is so difficult about these concepts?

Do you seriously suggest we should defer to Dr. Wecht, in view of the above data?

And what is so difficult about understanding the evidence of interception--one does not have to be a forensic pathologist to understand that. All one has to be is an intelligent high school student who can draw a time line.

The evidence clearly shows that there are THREE --yes three--independently recorded entrances of a coffin at Bethesda Naval Hospital:

1) At 6:35 pm, according to the USMC security detail --this was the shipping casket, with the body bag containing the body

2) At 7:17 --when the FBI agents arrived with the Dallas casket (which, unbeknownst to them) was empty

3) At 8PM --when the tri-service casket team brought in the Dallas casket (for a second time, the casket body now having been returned to it, and this entry being arranged so there would be an official record that the body arrived in the casket in which it began its journey, and there was no intercept.

Is this a mess? No, it is not. It is very easy to understand, and one does not have to scurry off and seek Dr. Cyril Wecht's opinion to comprehend the basic facts. In my opinion, that is nothing less than an excuse to avoid facing the evidence,and its implications.

Let's turn for a moment to what your focus seems to be, i.e., your priorities.

I know, Josiah, that you are very concerned about pursuing the matter of whether there was were one or two men lurking behind the fence on the grassy knoll.

May I gently suggest that the issues raised by the above are far more significant than the number of shooters, possibly hidden behind the fence on the knoll?

What's at stake in Best Evidence--and in Doug Horne's book, too--is a covert operation at the heart of a coup to operate the line of succession of the U.S. government, the purpose being to make the Vice President, the President, under circumstances that appear accidental. That, too, is spelled out at the very end of my book--See Chapter 32, "The Assassination as A Covert Operation"--and that, too, I believe is very easy for any intelligent reader to comprehend.

You were an underwater frogman, Josiah Thompson.

Now's the time to don your flippers, put on those goggles, take a deep breath, and stop swimming in the shallow end of the kiddie pool!

Very truly yours. .

DSL

1/2/10, 8:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

Edited January 3, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[J. Raymond Carroll]

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied. I have summarized my views for your consideration, which I shall repost here for convenience:

Raymond,

Perhaps you can help me to find the words. I regard him as a prevaricator, an obfuscationist, and a dissembler. Let me offer a few reasons why:

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

(9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

(11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

He is extending his efforts by disavowing or minimizing indications of conspiracy that were included in SIX SECONDS, while he attempts to perpetrate the fraud that the film is authentic. It should not be difficult, even for one as kindly as you, to see though his obvious hypocrisy.

If you prefer to place propriety and manners ahead of distortions and perversions about evidence and truth in the assassination of JFK, that is your prerogative. But that, in my view, is simply one more form of apology for betraying the trust of you, me, and the American people.

Jim

You can stick a fork in him! He's done.

Fantasies of sticking forks in opponents now?

Let's hope Dr. Fetzer doesn't get his hands on a gun.

Edited January 3, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[Pat Speer]

Tink,

You write, QUOTE: The medical evidence in this case is an unbelievable mess. I don't claim to this day to understand it. UNQUOTE

Well, let's try harder, shall we?

"An unbelievable mess"--you say--in the sense that it is all so incomprehensible? Sorry, but I disagree. The medical evidence is certainly not "an unbelievable mess." In fact, the basics are quite easy to comprehend, and are laid out very clearly in Best Evidence. That is why the book became a best seller, was in print for seventeen years (via four publishers), and was a Book of the Month selection. Any high school student can understand it.

What is difficult to understand is your apparent inability to understand what appears so evident: that there was alteration and interception of President Kennedy's body. Here are some of the basics from Best Evidence, and please do feel free to ask me just what is so difficult to understand.

2) The head wound (dealt with at length, in Chapter 13 of Best Evidence, titled "The Head Wound: Dallas vs Bethesda."

Its pretty obvious, from the measurements, and by simply comparing Dallas versus Bethesda, that the head wound was enlarged by some 400%. In Dallas, according to the testimony of Carrico, its size was 5 by 7 cm (or 35 sq cm). At Bethesda, the measured size of the defect, according to the Boswell diagram, was 10 x 17 cm, or 170 sq. cm. Just read Doug Horne's Epiphanies chapter, and the experience he had when he and Jeremy Gunn questioned Boswell, and asked him to draw the full extent of the wound on a model skull. Obviously, the wound was much larger than what was reported at Dallas. (And please do remember how one of the Dallas doctors --Dr. Peters, I beleive--described it to me in Dallas: the size of a hen's egg. At Bethesda, it was 400 - 500% larger.

Now what's so hard to understand about that?

Very truly yours. .

DSL

1/2/10, 8:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

David, while I could go through your post, point by point, and show you why there are other ways to interpret the medical evidence, I'll focus on this one for now. You either miss, or ignore, that Humes acknowledged that the wound changed between the time Carrico saw it at Parkland and the time he measured it at Bethesda. He consistently testified that as he reflected the scalp large chunks of bone fell to the table. He testified as well that he pulled out a few other bits of bone before removing the brain.

So...Carrico's impression of the wound size was most certainly the large hole in the scalp and bone described by Clark etc. And Humes' impression of the wound was most certainly the much larger wound on the skull after the scalp had been peeled back. So, of course it was much larger.

Now, you could argue that Humes and Boswell measured the wound at the beginning of the autopsy when the tangled scalp and bloody hair were obscuring the size of the skull defect. but that would be silly. They were inexperienced in such things, but approximating the size of an explosive wound before reflecting the scalp is not something one would expect from even an intern.

As far as Humes and Boswell's slightly different measurements...it seems quite likely Humes approximated the size of the wound before he pulled off chunks of skull to remove the brain, and that Boswell's measurements reflect the size of the skull wound after the brain had been removed.

It is entirely illogical, after all, to assume Humes removed chunks of skull after Boswell made his measurements. Boswell's measurements suggest a wound involving most of the right side of the skull.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied.

Glad to hear it, James, but on the question of malice and the alleged absence thereof, see below.

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

OK so far we have fair criticism, whether anyone agrees with the criticism or not.

(

9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

I think Josiah abandoned the double hit theory based on more than the smear. He pointed out, as I recall, that the film shows the limo's ABRUPT SLOWDOWN causing all the rear occupants, including JFK, to be seen moving forward in the frames leading up to Z313.

11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

Maybe we agree on something. My own view is that using the startle response as a basis for JIGGLE ANALYSIS has never been shown to have scientific validity.

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

No. He has given a valid reason for abandoning the double hit theory.

David Lifton also abandoned the double hit theory, as I recall, so why pick on THompson?

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

By all means plug your theories, that's what the forum is for.

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

As far as I know, Doug Horne has no EVIDENCE that another copy was developed at Rochester. Hearsay is not EVIDENCE.

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

Now here's where I DRAW THE LINE, and ask the moderators to intervene.

[William Kelly]

Doug Horne writes in IARRB:

Josiah Thompson Sums It All Up in 1988—And A New Research Paradigm Takes Over in theMid-1990s

In 1967, when his book Six Seconds in Dallas was published, Josiah Thompson, a former Navy

'frogman' who had spent two years in the Navy (and had commanded the UDT detachment charged with beach reconnaissance when U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon in 1958), was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. His book was the first attempt at a scientific overview of all of the principal forensic and crime scene evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and its publication was preceded by a dramatic Saturday Evening Post condensation of the major points in his book which was published under the bold declaration on that issue's cover: "Three Assassins Killed Kennedy." His book still holds a special fascination for me because its approach—a no-nonsense, empirical study of the entire universe of physical evidence—is the one which is still the proper model to emulate today, in my view: it does not begin with a theory of "who killed the President," but instead focuses on what the wounds on the body, the ballistics and firearms evidence, the eyewitness and earwitness testimony, and the film evidence from Dealey Plaza all tell us about the crime. In short, Thompson was an empiricist who was willing to follow the evidence wherever it lead him in his search for a compelling explanation for how the President was killed.

In subsequent years he became a private investigator, such was his passion for crime-solving, and

for examining the story told by physical evidence after the commission of a crime. If he focused

much more on the crime scene evidence in 1967 than on the medical evidence, that is

understandable, since the autopsy photographs and x-rays had not yet been seen by any members of the general public; his primary focus was on Dealey Plaza, but so was that of the American public.

Thompson was still one of the most respected voices in the research community in 1988 when

former CBS employee Robert Richter assembled his independent documentary "Who Shot President Kennedy?", which was to be narrated by Walter Cronkite and would air on the PBS NOVA weekly documentary slot, in prime time. The documentary film—written, produced, and directed by Richter — was laudable in that it raised the most contentious issues within the universe of physical evidence which challenged the Warren Commission's findings, and which pointed toward a possible conspiracy to kill the President. However, it was extremely frustrating to watch, and ultimately an exercise in futility, because its final editorial conclusions (read by narrator Walter Cronkite) seemed to suggest that the ultimate answers to what happened in Dealey Plaza were essentially 'unknowable.' It presented several plausible arguments for conspiracy offered up by both the critical research community and the HSCA, and then attempted to dash cold water on each one of them. The film featured Robert Blakey discussing the HSCA's acoustic evidence of a shot from the grassy knoll, and then attempted to debunk it using an unsophisticated argument that ignored all of the scientific methodology that had gone into the HSCA's acoustic analysis. David Lifton was shown discussing his hypothesis in Best Evidence that the wounds inflicted on President Kennedy's body by gunfire in Dallas had been altered by post mortem surgery prior to his autopsy; and was followed by a nervous group of four equivocating Parkland treatment physicians who sketched their best recollections of the head wound seen on the President in Dallas—sketches not shown on the air—before viewing the autopsy photographs and x-rays in the National Archives (which also could not be shown on the air, because of the proscriptions of the Kennedy family deed-of-gift), and whose remarks after viewing the autopsy photographs in private had been carefully edited afterwards so that they appeared to disagree with Lifton. An eloquent Cyril Wecht debunked the single bullet

p. 1133

theory by comparing the lack of any serious damage to CE 399 with the wide range of damage and deformity inflicted upon various test bullets by the U.S. Army's wound ballistics tests; this was

followed by the apparent, but inconclusive support offered to the single bullet theory by Dr. Vincent Guinn's neutron activation analysis experiments for the HSCA, and by the strange and unlikely explanations offered up by the HSCA's resident contortionist, Michael Baden, in his attempt to explain how the trajectory necessary for the single bullet theory could have occurred, if only the President and the Governor had been positioned in the car in unlikely and unnatural postures (which dispositive photographic evidence shows was not the case). Richter actually commenced his documentary about the conflicts in the evidence in the Kennedy assassination by featuring Josiah Thompson discussing the timing problem that study of the Zapruder film presented to the Warren Commission—the apparent wounding of Kennedy and Connally by two separate bullets in less time than Oswald's rifle could be mechanically fired a second time—but failed to directly address how this timing problem resulted in the Warren Commission's adoption of a very unlikely hypothesis (i.e., the single bullet theory) to solve a political problem: the need to salvage the lone assassin conclusion, at any cost, to please its political master, the new President.

As the 50 minute documentary prepared on the 25th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination wound up, Josiah Thompson summarized the frustrating state of the evidence in the JFK case on the 25th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, and his words apply equally well today, over 45 years after the assassination, as they did some 20 years ago:

In a homicide case, you get a convergence of the evidence after a while. There may be

discrepancies in detail; but on the whole, things come together. With this case—it's now 25

years—things haven't gotten any simpler. They haven't come together. If anything, they've

become more problematical, more and more mysterious. That just isn't the way a homicide

case develops.

I agree with what Thompson said in 1988: the evidence hasn't "come together" in the Kennedy

assassination, and has become "more and more problematical." I believe that is the case because

there has been significant suppression of evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and because

immediately after the assassination, massive fraud was introduced into the evidence wherever

something was suppressed. After reading Best Evidence, I certainly realized on a logical plane that this was the likely explanation for why so much of the evidence in the JFK assassination didn't

present a coherent picture of what had happened; but I did not really believe it, on an emotional level in my gut, until I went to work for the ARRB in 1995 and swam in that sea of conflicting evidence for three full years. And it was Josiah Thompson who gave me much of the inspiration to attempt that journey in a keynote address he gave to the attendees at an awards dinner, at the conclusion of the Chicago Midwest Symposium on the JFK assassination, early in 1993.

Josiah Thompson announced in a rather perplexing way at the beginning of his speech that he was

there to speak about the agnosticism of which he had been accused, and to which he was now openly confessing. He also announced a rather sobering disclaimer, saying at the beginning of his remarks that people usually expect to hear inspirational remarks at the end of such conferences, but that he was not going to be able to offer any. Instead, he shared with us his profound sense of frustration and disquiet about the Kennedy assassination, just prior to the 30th anniversary of the event. He

1134

began as follows:

I submit that we know less now about what happened in those six seconds than we thought

we did a quarter of a century ago [referring to the 1966-67 time period when the first spate

of critical books had been published]. The profile of what happened has not gotten any

clearer in the intervening years, but more confused. Why? Because the evidence itself has

grown more confused, and confusing.

In 1966, he said, "I tried to put together all the evidence into a plausible account as to what

happened. It made sense to try that in 1966—I'm not sure it does now. The contradictions in the

evidence are so many and so profound that any attempt to offer a single convincing account of what happened may be impossible."

Thompson then launched into a detailed listing of the many improbabilities in the U.S. government's

single bullet theory, and explained that that theory was born not out of good science, or out of an

honest attempt to employ Occam's Razor in an attempt to provide a logical and likely explanation

for what happened in Dallas (my phraseology, not his), but rather out of political necessity—as the

only way to salvage the U.S. government's desired lone assassin conclusion in 1964. Calling the

single bullet theory the reductio ad absurdum of the government's attempts to sell a lone assassin

to the American people, Thompson discussed in detail the disturbing improbability of the HSCA's

desperate attempts to resuscitate a moribund patient, namely:

• Michael Baden's explanation on television that although the hypothetical bullet

which supposedly transited JFK's body from back to front had an 11 degree upward

trajectory anatomically speaking, that it could still have hit Governor Connally

providing President Kennedy had been leaning forward significantly in the limousine,

and providing Connally had moved well to his left in the bucket seat in which he was

sitting.

• The fact that HSCA General Counsel Robert Blakey hired four District of Columbia

policemen while the HSCA was in session to test fire a Mannlicher Carcano in an

attempt to demonstrate that it could be fired in less than the minimum mechanical

firing time (i.e., without aiming) of 2.3 seconds, which had been determined by the

FBI shortly after the assassination; and that when all four policemen abjectly failed

to beat the FBI's minimum mechanical firing time of 2.3 seconds, two lawyers—G.

Robert Blakey himself, and his deputy, Gary Cornwell—blithely claimed to have

accomplished the feat of firing the rifle in 1.6 seconds all by themselves. Apparently

they had to literally 'shoot from the hip' to accomplish this, a technique they termed

'point aiming,' in an Orwellian use of the English language.

• The fact that the HSCA re-endorsed the single bullet theory of Arlen Specter, even

though its acoustic analysis of the dictabelt tape led the Committee to adopt a shot

scenario which claimed that the first two shots came from the Book Depository, and

were fired within 1.66 seconds of each other. The HSCA concluded that the first

shot missed (since no human reactions to being hit could be seen in the Zapruder film

1135

between frames 157-161), and improbably decided that not only could Oswald fire

the next shot only 1.66 seconds later (in spite of the FBI's minimum mechanical

firing time of 2.3 seconds), but that he was able to do so between Zapruder frames

188-191 by firing through a tree which would have blocked his view between frames

160-210—and that in doing so, Oswald miraculously plugged both John Kennedy

and John Connally with that 'blind shot.'

After the audience finished laughing, Thompson soberly reminded everyone: "It's much easier to

destroy the single bullet theory than it is to come up with a plausible alternative." For example, he

reminded the audience, if CE 399 is a planted bullet, then what happened to the real bullet which

caused JFK's back wound? He concluded his remarks as follows:

From the beginning, critics of the official story have been faced with a conundrum. Since

nearly all the evidence in the case has been in governmental possession from the beginning,

except for such notable exceptions as the Zapruder film and the Dallas police dictabelt tape,

we have had to accept the authenticity of all the evidence, or abandon the attempt to try to

deduce from it what happened. Was the magic bullet the result of a switch made after 'a

bullet' came into government possession? Are the Connally wrist fragments authentic? Has

the autopsy and medical evidence been falsified and rigged? As soon as we even begin

asking such questions we abandon the attempt to solve the mystery, since we lack a criterion

for determining what evidence is genuine and what is not. To put it another way, you can't

begin solving a puzzle if you keep doubting whether a particular piece belongs in the puzzle!

But it should not escape our attention how extraordinary the present situation is.

Thompson wrapped up his remarks by admitting that when he wrote Six Seconds in Dallas he was a college philosophy professor who "knew literally nothing" about the investigation of homicides.

Since that time, he said, he had changed careers and had become a private investigator, and in this

capacity had investigated "several hundred" homicides since 1976. He concluded:

I know, for example, the more a case is investigated, the more coherent becomes the

evidence; I know that doubts may remain as to who did it, or why they did it, but hardly ever

about what actually happened. Yet here, in the most thoroughly investigated homicide in

human history, the evidence falls into deeper and deeper contradiction, so riven by

contradiction [that] the fact pattern of the case—what happened, when, and how?—begins

to unravel.

There was only one thing I disagreed with in his speech, and that was his assertion that if we do not

accept the authenticity of all of the government's evidence at face value, that we must abandon our

attempts to deduce what happened. Surely, accepting the possibility that some (or even much)

evidence was 'tainted' would make reconstructing what had really happened in Dealey Plaza much

more difficult, but I refused to throw my hands up in despair and simply give up on my attempts to

understand the 'mystery of the century' just because it was proving difficult.

This speech really lit a fire under my ass. [i didn't attend that conference, but I obtained his dinner[/font]

speech on videotape and watched it over and over again, and found I was as frustrated as he was

1136

about the state of the evidence.] I viewed Josiah Thompson's comments as a clarion call for

someone to "do something" about what seemed to him an 'unspeakable problem'—namely, how

does one go about honestly separating 'tainted' evidence from 'trustworthy' evidence? I didn't have any magic answers, any epistemological 'silver bullets' to throw at the problem, but one year later I did hear Jack Tunheim speak to the COPA conference organized by John Judge in Washington, D.C. about the new Assassination Records Review Board. I saw possibilities here—and unknown to me, Congressman Stokes of Ohio, former Chair of the HSCA, had told the Board Members the same thing in private—for attempting to clarify the medical evidence, for attempting to separate the 'wheat' from the 'chaff,' particularly in regard to the autopsy photos and x-rays, and in understanding what really happened at the President's autopsy. Like Thompson, I did not want to see American citizens sitting around at research conferences twenty years hence, endlessly debating the same, seemingly insoluble conflicts in the evidence. The thought of the same frustrating and inconclusive series of debates about the evidence in the JFK assassination continuing ad nauseum and ad infinitum reminded me too much of an overly excited dog chasing its tail in the summer heat—not a pleasant mental image, I can assure you. If David Lifton's research had gotten me 'hooked' on the assassination, then Josiah Thompson's discussion of the larger problem, the state of the evidence, and why it didn't come together, served as my continuing inspiration to do something. Figuring out what had happened to President Kennedy in Dallas was not a parlor game to me, a trivial pursuit or a hobby—it went to the very root of what seemed to have gone wrong with our country since 1963. The American people had been robbed of a democratically elected leader in this country when power had changed hands through violence in 1963. Following the death of Jack Kennedy, America's optimism and spirit of renewal, which had been on the rise, had seemed to dissipate, and to have been replaced with a sense that our best days as a society were perhaps behind us. The American people had been lied to—repeatedly—about what had happened in Dallas, and about a host of other national issues since that time, and had been fighting one war after another overseas, ever since. Had all of our governments since that time been illegitimate? This was a serious question for a people who truly loved and believed in democracy, and it was unsatisfactory to me that these questions should remain unanswered. For me, the whole question of whether or not I could trust the nation state in which I lived—whether I could have faith in the institutions of government—was at stake here. I knew I had been lied to about the Kennedy assassination, but I didn't know what had really happened in 1963, and why—and that remained unsatisfactory to me.

Two Bone Fragments Found in Dealey Plaza Are Consistent with a Fatal Shot from the Right Front

The first of these two fragments was found by Seymour Weitzman on the afternoon of the

assassination. As Thompson explains in Six Seconds in Dallas It was found some 8 to 12 inches from the south curb of Elm Street, a location some 10-15 feet left of the car's path (7H107). This was probably what both Charles Brehm and Clint Hill saw driven over the left rear of the Presidential car.

I disagree slightly here. I believe Clint Hill saw exit debris bouncing across the trunk lid, with Jackie

chasing after it, as revealed in the Nix film. What Charles Brehm saw was a piece of airborne debrisflying through the air for quite a distance, and landing near the curb. Therefore, I believe Weitzman probably found the piece of bone seen by Charles Brehm flying to the left and rear of the limousine after the fatal shot(s). We can never be sure, because Weitzman never marked the location on the street where he found it. This bone fragment, like all others found, is missing today.

The second and much more famous of the two fragments I mention here is the 'Harper' fragment,

which was found by pre-med student Billy Harper in the grass of Dealey Plaza on Saturday,

November 23rd. (Clint Hill was incorrect in his testimony—it was not found in the street.) The

Harper fragment was discussed previously in this book, and I explained at that time that in 1977 the HSCA staff had interviewed Dr. A.B. Cairns, who had been chief pathologist at Methodist hospital

1145

in 1963 when he identified it as occipital bone. (See Figures 41 and 42.) FBI agent A. Raymond

Switzer interviewed both Billy Harper's uncle, Dr. Jack Harper, and Dr. Cairns, on July 10, 1964,

and a typewritten report was completed on July 13, 1964. In the report it states that the chief medical photographer at Methodist hospital, Wayne Bolleter, is the individual who took two 35 mm color slides of the Harper Fragment next to a ruler for purposes of scale. [We should all be thankful for the professionalism of this individual, and for the foresight of Dr. Jack Harper in asking him to photograph it. The two slides of the Harper fragment are everything that good medical macrophotography should be, unlike the autopsy photographs of the 35th President: they are in perfect focus, are perfectly illuminated, and the ruler placed in the images for scale is in focus also, and can be read.] Dr. Harper had first been interviewed by the FBI in 1963 when he had voluntarily turned the fragment over to Hoover's men; the FBI apparently recontacted him in July of 1964 to obtain the photographs that had been taken—which of course were not published by the Warren Commission.

The FBI faithfully retained the two 35 mm slides, and also x-rayed the bone fragment after it came

into their possession the week following the assassination. The slides and the x-rays of the Harper

fragment are in the JFK Collection in the National Archives today, but the bone fragment, like

another called the 'Burros' fragment (found in unknown circumstances by David Burros), is missing today. (The last person to sign a receipt for the two bone fragments was George G. Burkley.) The HSCA interview of Cairns in 1977 did not reveal any information that conflicted with that reported by the FBI in 1964, only a bit more detail about how Dr. Cairns decided the bone was occipital; he told the HSCA that he came to that conclusion based primarily upon the imprint of the blood vessels on the inside surface of the bone.

The identification of the Harper fragment as occipital bone was cavalierly ignored by the HSCA

Forensic Pathology Panel, even though Drs. Harper and Cairns both held it in their hands and both

concurred, in 1963, that it was definitely from the occipital region of the skull. Finding occipital

bone from President Kennedy's skull in the grass on the south side of Elm Street is consistent with

the major pattern of impact debris discussed in this section—namely, exit debris from the rear of

President Kennedy's skull which was caused by a shot from the right front.

What It All Means

Summing up, the importance of our impact debris study is clear and incontrovertible: HSCA Staff

Director and General Counsel G. Robert Blakey was wrong when he concluded that the shot from the grassy knoll, revealed by the HSCA acoustical study, had missed the occupants of the limousine, and that the fatal shot that killed President Kennedy was fired from the Texas School Book Depository. Not only was Blakey wrong, but I submit to you that since he had most of the impact debris information cited above available to him—except for the Willis family interview and the Floyd Boring revelation—he knew he was likely wrong, and proceeded to knowingly trumpet the wrong conclusion anyway. Why? Because to accept that the grassy knoll shot had killed the President, based upon a study of the impact debris and the motion of President Kennedy's head and upper body in the Zapruder film (violently back and to the left), would have meant that he had no faith in the medical evidence from the autopsy. [The autopsy report and the photos and x-rays, remember, provide no clear evidence of a shot from the front, and only support shots from behind.]

To have admitted this, after all the investigating and interviewing done by the HSCA staff and its

Forensic Pathology Panel, would have been to publicly admit failure. Formally concluding that the grassy knoll shot killed President Kennedy would have meant, essentially, that the HSCA not only had no faith in the autopsy medical evidence, but that it could also not explain exactly what was wrong with that evidence. Rather than do this, Blakey 'buried' as much of the medical evidence that conflicted with the autopsy report as he could—namely, the Ebersole, Finck, and Knudsen depositions; and the staff interviews of the 'little people' at the autopsy—by sequestering (sealing) this material for 50 years; and then he lied about the extent to which the autopsy witnesses agreed with the autopsy photographs on page 37 of volume VII of his report. Thanks to the JFK Records Act, which opened up the HSCA files, the chicanery of Blakey and Baden has been exposed. It was this 'big lie' about the autopsy photographs—the brazen, dishonest statement that none of the autopsy witnesses disagreed with the location of the wounds in the autopsy images—that will forever damn the HSCA's conclusions as intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt. Rather than admit to the American public that the Committee had an insoluble puzzle where the evidence refused to some together—and explain why it did not come together and either continue the investigation until the matter was resolved, or turn it over to the Justice Department—Blakey and Baden cynically chose to endorse suspect medical evidence from the autopsy, and ignore and discount:

• the Parkland hospital medical witnesses to a blowout in the back of the head;

• the testimony of Secret Service agent Clint Hill that verified the Parkland

observations; and

• the clear pattern of the preponderance of the impact debris evidence (Hill, Hargis,

Martin, and the Harper fragment) pointing to a fatal shot from the right front.

Apparently, it was politically much easier for Blakey and his gang to announce the unpalatable

conclusion that the Warren Commission had come to the right conclusion about Lee Harvey Oswald after all—that he had really and truly killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally all

1147

by himself—than to admit that there were irreconcilable conflicts in the evidence that could not be

resolved. To do that would have taken considerable courage, and integrity.

The HSCA's fence-sitting provided the American people with a 'modified limited hangout' which satisfied no one: it gave us a 'probable' conspiracy supported only by an acoustics study, and yetnthe same unlikely murderer offered up by the Warren Commission; a presumed conspiracy with no names named, or motives explained; and a conclusion that all of the shots that struck Kennedy and Connally were fired from behind by Oswald, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the Zapruder film, in eyewitness testimony from Dealey Plaza and Parkland hospital, and in the ballistics evidence from the Edgewood Arsenal Firing Tests, published by the Army in 1965.

If the HSCA had possessed any cajones it would have stated up front that the irreconcilable conflicts within the forensic and crime scene evidence suggested that a major coverup had taken place in 1963, and that it suspected much of the evidence in the case may have been 'tainted' in ways not yet detected, meriting further investigation by the Justice Department. Instead, Blakey and Baden took the easier road of arrogantly pronouncing that they had solved the case, and bailed out of their burning airplane as quickly as possible. Blakey's golden parachute landed him a lifetime job as Professor of Law at Notre Dame. I'm not impressed. "For what hath a man gained, if he loses his own soul?

Equally important as the conclusion that the 35th President was killed by a conspiracy, is the

knowledge that the U.S. government attempted to cover up that fact, and that the coverup was

implemented immediately after his assassination. The immediate implementation of this coverup

in both Dealey Plaza (the theft of the .45 caliber slug by a Federal agent), and at Parkland hospital

(the theft of the body by the Secret Service in order to prevent an honest autopsy), was followed by radio conversations onboard Air Force One which reveal an attempt to separate the President's widow from the Dallas casket upon arrival in Washington. (This failed, resulting in an absurd shell game at the Bethesda morgue designed to conceal the fact that the President's body had been stolen and his throat and back wounds had been tampered with enroute Washington.) The performance of clandestine, post mortem surgery on the President's skull at the Bethesda morgue, prior to the formal commencement of the autopsy, permitted: (1) the removal of evidence of shots from the front, and the suppression of the fact that there was a crossfire in Dealey Plaza; (2) the alteration of JFK's head wounds so that they more closely resembled damage caused by shots from behind; and (3) the creation of a dishonest and intentionally deceptive photographic and x-ray record of his skull 'wounds.' This brazen attempt to manipulate American history, and hide the fact that a duly elected democratic head of state had been 'fired' by the secret vote of a national security 'star chamber,' should concern us as much as the murder itself. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, those who designed and managed the coverup were clearly among the cabal who murdered Jack Kennedy; their guilt is revealed by the speed with which they acted. The coverup was implemented with ruthless determination, if not efficiency, and was executed immediately by elements of the national security establishment (i.e., the Secret Service, the U.S. Navy, and unidentified civilians at Bethesda NNMC).

This basic fact is the biggest clue to the identity of the cabal that planned the assassination. The

likely membership of the cabal, and its motivations, will be the subject of Chapter 16.

THE NATURE OF THE MEDICAL COVERUP

This book has proven—conclusively—that there was a medical coverup of the true facts in President Kennedy's death. Let's take a step back from the trees, and look at the forest one more time.

1163

In my view the medical coverup could not have been uncovered without the evidence provided by

the following six key people: James J. Humes, Edward F. Reed, Tom Robinson, Robert Knudsen,

Roger Boyajian, and Dr. David W. Mantik. A nervous Dr. Humes, with his own big mouth, attracted attention to the fact that surgery had been performed on the President's skull. We can be verynthankful today that FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill wrote that quotation down in their notes, and that an alert David Lifton realized the true significance of that statement in 1966, and spent almost 15 years pursuing its meaning before publishing Best Evidence in 1981. Dr. Mantik, in nine visits to the National Archives, used optical densitometry to gather empirical data proving that the 3 existing skull x-rays of President Kennedy are altered copy films that display dishonest, inaccurate images of the condition of the President's skull at the Bethesda morgue on November 22, 1963. Without this proof that the skull x-rays have been altered, they could have been used in perpetuity by Warren Commission and HSCA apologists to 'prove' that the autopsy photos showing the back of the head intact are 'authentic;' but now that we know for a fact that an occipital-parietal blowout was masked by an optical patch in the two lateral skull films, this evidence focuses our attention on the fact that the autopsy photos of the seemingly intact back of the head show something that cannot be. (In other words, the Dallas witnesses who have insisted for decades that there was a large exit defect in the right rear of President Kennedy's head were right all along.) Robert Knudsen's consistent, lifelong claim that he photographed the President's autopsy has provided an answer to the "who" and "when" questions regarding how the misleading autopsy photos were created, and also accounts for their generally substandard quality—as noted by both the HSCA and professionally trained medical photographer Earl McDonald—for Knudsen was not trained to engage in macro-photography of cadavers, and was normally a social photographer, at the White House, of ceremonies and public events. Marine sergeant Roger Boyajian made a contemporaneous record of the fact that the President's body arrived at the Bethesda morgue prior to the Andrews AFB motorcade containing the Dallas casket, thus documenting, in an indisputable way, the broken chain-of-custody for the President's body, and proving that there was sufficient time to conduct the clandestine craniotomy witnessed by Reed and Robinson. (Boyajian's report stating that the President's casket arrived at 6:35 PM means that we have every reason to believe all of the shipping casket and body bag witnesses, because his report proves that the bronze Dallas casket driven to Bethesda from Andrews AFB in a gray Navy ambulance, and delivered to the morgue anteroom by the FBI and Secret Service just prior to 7:17 PM, had to be empty.) Finally, the priceless recollections of Ed Reed and Tom Robinson have revealed to us the exact nature of the "surgery of the head area" that Dr. Humes alluded to in his oral utterance; their testimony is the 'clincher,' the true basis of our new understanding of the monstrous and brazen coverup perpetrated inside the Bethesda morgue the night

President Kennedy was assassinated. The meaning of the activity witnessed by Robinson and Reed is indisputably clear, and is so important that it is worth revisiting one last time.

Robinson and Reed Provide Proof That A Clandestine, Modified Craniotomy Was Performed at the Bethesda Morgue Prior to the Autopsy on President Kennedy

Tom Robinson's recollections were dealt with in depth in Chapter 6 of this book, and are

unambiguous. He told both the HSCA and the ARRB, respectively, during his 1977 and 1996

interviews, that he had a clear recollection of a pathologist sawing open President Kennedy's skull

in order to remove the brain. The diagram of the damage to the back of President Kennedy's head

that he executed for the ARRB (Figure 28) makes clear just how extensive this post mortem surgery

1164

was—a large portion of the back of the skull was removed in order to gain access to the brain.

Furthermore, his comment to his ARRB interviewers that the extensive trauma seen in the autopsy

images of the top of the skull (see Figure 61) "was what the doctors did," and was not caused by a bullet, is a damning indictment of those photographs, and of the false testimony of Humes and

Boswell, who clearly committed perjury before both the Warren Commission, and the ARRB, when they described their ability to remove the brain without first performing a craniotomy.

Ed Reed's gift to history required a bit more sifting—more detective work—than did Tom

Robinson's revelation, but it is equally persuasive, in my view, and equally important.

First, both Ed Reed and Jerrol Custer stated that the skull x-rays were the first ones taken; it was one of the few things about the duties they performed the night of the autopsy where their recollections were in agreement. Second, both Jerrol Custer and Ed Reed testified to the ARRB in 1997 that they were required to leave the morgue shortly after President Kennedy's body was placed on the examining table. Jerrol Custer testified as follows on page 75 of his deposition transcript:

Custer: ...they took the body out of this casket, and we put it on the table. Then I left. I

came back later—came back later, took the first set of films...[Author's emphasis]

And then on page 78, he continued:

Custer: ...I did not see the second casket until after the first set of films...I saw the first

casket. I left for at least an hour. When I come back, I come in, took films. After

I took the films, I left again. This is when I saw the second casket.

This means Custer saw the Dallas casket only after he took the skull x-rays, which means that he

started taking the head films before the bronze viewing coffin was brought to the morgue anteroom

by Sibert, O'Neill, Kellerman, and Greer (at about 7:17 PM), and that he must have departed with

the five skull x-rays in his arms after 7:17 PM. His memory of only seeing the 'second casket' after

he had completed taking the first set of x-rays confirms that he started taking those x-rays before the

Dallas casket was brought into the morgue anteroom. We know with a fair amount of precision

when Sibert and O'Neill were barred from the morgue—7:17 PM. This also serves as a marker for the time the Dallas casket was set down on the floor in the anteroom.

Gunn: Were you present at the time of the first incision?

Reed: Yes.

Gunn: What was the first incision?

Reed: The cranium. The scalp, right here [gesturing to a wide area high up at the top of

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his forehead, from left to right]. [author's emphasis]

Gunn: And can you describe how that procedure—

Reed: Commander Humes made an incision. After we brought all the x-rays back, we

were allowed to sit in the podium and observe. And Commander Humes made an

incision—that I could see from my vantage point—an incision in the forehead, and

brought back the scalp. [author's emphasis]

Gunn: Okay. [Jeremy and I were quite tense at this moment, and made a point of not

looking at each other; our focus was riveted on the witness.]

Reed: Like this [gesturing].

Gunn: And you were making a line first across the top of your forehead, roughly along

the hairline—[author's emphasis]

Reed: With a scalpel.

Gunn: —and then pulling the scalp back.

Reed: That's correct. Just like this.

Gunn: And were you able to see the size of the wound when the scalp—

Reed: Not from my—not from where I was, no. The podium [sic] was a good 20 feet away.

Gunn: What else did you observe from where you were with regard to any incisions or

operations on the head?

Reed: Well, after about 20 minutes, Commander Humes took out a saw, and started to cut

the forehead with the bone—with the saw. Mechanical saw. Circular, small,

mechanical—almost like a cast saw, but it's made—[author's emphasis]

Gunn: Sure—

Reed: —specifically for bone.

Gunn: And what did you see next?

Reed: We were asked to leave at that time. Jerry Custer and myself were asked to leave.

[author's emphasis]

Although Reed recalled this post mortem surgery on the skull as occurring after he and Custer had

exposed all of the x-rays taken that night, this cannot be true. He provided his testimony about

1169

cranial surgery in response to the question, "what was the first incision?" The first incision recorded

by Sibert and O'Neill in their report was the Y-incision on the thorax at 8:15 PM; and yet, Reed

never recalled seeing a Y-incision on the body. This is strongly suggestive that the cranial surgery

he witnessed was prior to the Y-incision. Reed witnessed the arrival of a shipping casket, which

verifies that he witnessed the 6:35 PM casket arrival; 15 minutes after that casket arrived, there had.not been any Y-incision, and there would still not be one for another hour and twenty-five minutes.

Additionally, Reed's testimony that he and Custer were asked to leave as soon as Humes commence cranial surgery sounds exactly like what he had said earlier (on pages 32-33) about he and Custer being asked to sit in the podium, and then being asked to leave the morgue; Reed's first mention of being asked to sit in the 'podium' (gallery) was given in response to the question about what he did immediately after placing the President's body on the examining table. Therefore, I believe, it is reasonable to infer that the surgery to the head area that Reed recalled witnessing from the gallery really occurred right after the body arrived, when Reed and Custer sat briefly in the gallery before being sent upstairs for 15 minutes, and well before the Y-incision had been made.

Analyzing the testimony of Reed and Custer is a cautionary tale about how memories, particularly

memories about the duration of specific events, and sometimes about the sequencing of different

events, are clouded by the passage of time. My experience with the morticians, and with the x-ray

technicians, taught me that memories of what wounds looked like, or about where an incision was

made on the body, seemed much more reliable than memories about the duration of a given event,

or the sequencing of multiple events. Having said that, I believe I have made a persuasive case that

Reed and Custer witnessed the commencement of illicit, post mortem cranial surgery very soon after the President's body arrived; were then sent upstairs for about a quarter of an hour; and were then recalled to the morgue by Dr. Ebersole to take the skull x-rays. Witnesses to the same events often remember different aspects of that event, with one witness not recalling part of an event that another witness remembers clearly—and different witnesses to the same event may recall identical aspects of the event with varying precision. Reed remembered the details of the cranial surgery, and Custer did not. Custer accurately remembered taking five skull x-rays in one series, at the same time, and Reed inaccurately remembered taking only two skull x-rays, and taking them one at a time, and not in a series. Custer accurately remembered taking each series of x-rays upstairs accompanied by Reed and a Federal agent; Reed inaccurately recalled running each individual x-ray taken at the autopsy upstairs all by himself, to be developed one at a time, without any security escort. Reed's recollection of cranial surgery in the frontal bone just behind the hairline, above the top of the forehead, is highly credible to me because that is exactly where the scalp looks incised and bone is seen to be missing from the skull cap in the autopsy photos (see Figures 61 and 62), and where part of the cranium is missing in the 3 surviving skull x-rays. Professional interpretation of the three cranial x-rays by Dr. Fitzpatrick, Dr. Kirschner, Dr. Mantik, and even by the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, reveals that much of the frontal bone is missing just behind the hairline, especially on the right side of the skull. It is not just "unlikely" that Reed would have seen Humes perform this surgery late in the autopsy, after the brain had already been removed—it is a reductio ad absurdum to suggest that a pathologist—even Dr. Humes—would perform surgery on an area of the cranium where the bone is already missing! It is nonsense, therefore, to suggest that Reed's recollection that he witnessed this cranial surgery after all of the x-rays had been taken that night is worthy of belief.

He recalled the cranial surgery when asked where on the body the first incision was made—thus

1170

satisfying me as to when he saw it that night.

The surgery recalled by both Ed Reed and Tom Robinson, when considered as a whole, could bes be described as a modified craniotomy, because it removed skull cap from the rear, top, and right side of the skull, and created a defect large enough to gain ready access to the brain. I say 'modified' because the entire skull cap was not sawed off symmetrically and removed in one piece, all the way around the skull; rather, an existing exit wound in the rear of the skull was radically expanded from a surface area of about 35 square centimeters, to a defect about five times larger, of about 170 square centimeters. Ed Reed's graphic description of watching Humes making a transverse incision in the scalp above the forehead with a scalpel, cutting the frontal bone directly below that incision with a circular saw, and then pulling the scalp forward, is exactly what happens during a craniotomy.

The context that makes the observation of clandestine cranial surgery at Bethesda shortly after the

body arrived so important, is the fact that Dr. Humes did not have to perform a craniotomy when he removed the brain from the cranium sometime after 8:00 PM (when the Dallas casket was opened) and prior to 8:30 PM (when Finck arrived and noticed that the brain had been removed from the cranium). As Dr. Finck wrote in the Blumberg report (see page 5 of Appendix 29), "Cdr. Humes told me that he only had to prolong the lacerations of the scalp before removing the brain. No sawing of the skull was necessary. The opening of the large head wound, in the right frontoparieto- occipital region, is 130 millimeters in diameter." [Author's emphasis added] James J.

Humes is revealed here as the great prevaricator that Jeremy Gunn and I also found him to be. He

had just been observed 90 minutes earlier by Ed Reed and Tom Robinson performing major post

mortem surgery on the President's skull, yet when Dr. Finck arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 8:30 PM, Humes blithely told him that "no sawing of the skull" had been necessary to remove the brain.

No doubt what Humes meant was that no sawing of the skull had been necessary after 8:00 PM when the brain was publicly removed before the morgue audience, and James Jenkins. Clearly, when Humes said this to Finck, he was engaging in obfuscation, and concealing the fact that he did indeed have to saw off major portions of the skull earlier that evening; but since that had been clandestine activity, part of a covert operation to alter the President's wounds and remove evidence from the cranium, Humes could not reveal it to Dr. Finck. Humes was speaking to Finck at about 8:30 PM in front of the morgue audience, the same audience that had seen Humes remove the brain so effortlessly just moments before. It is obvious from what Humes told Finck, as recorded by Dr. Finck in the Blumberg report, that Lt.Col. Pierre A. Finck, an Army outsider in a Navy setting, had not yet been 'read in' on any coverup when he arrived at the Bethesda morgue, and that even long after the fact, in early 1965, he remained unaware that Humes had performed post mortem surgery on the cranium before he arrived at the morgue.

I have taken great pains to revisit how I arrived at my conclusion that illicit cranial surgery was

performed at Bethesda Naval hospital before President Kennedy's autopsy began, because it is such an essential finding to my hypothesis about the medical coverup. The post mortem surgery on the skull witnessed and independently remembered by Tom Robinson and Ed Reed is the key to

explaining when the skull x-rays were taken and why they show damage to the temporal, parietal,

and frontal bone that was not seen at Parkland hospital by the highly trained medical staff; and

likewise, explains when many of the autopsy photographs (Figures 59-62) were taken, and why theyalso show so much more damage to the head than was seen at Parkland hospital. [The surgery

1171

described by Robinson and Reed also allows us to place Dr. Boswell's autopsy sketch (Figure 11)

in its proper context, and to understand it for what it really is: a 'con-job' designed to sell the results

of clandestine surgery by Dr. Humes—a modified craniotomy—as the damage caused by an

assassin's bullet.]

…It is my contention that President Kennedy's assassination was the result of a domestic conspiracy,and that the conspirators implemented an immediate, effective, and wide-ranging coverup as soon as he was killed. The medical coverup was just a part of this effort, but it had to go into effect immediately, and did. An honest autopsy was prevented from taking place by the Secret Service's removal of the body from Dallas, and a dishonest autopsy was performed by persons who knowingly participated in that charade because they had been "gaslighted"—they had fallen for the World War III cover story, and with that justification in the forefront of their minds, they could all comfort themselves with the knowledge that they were 'just following orders' in a time of national crisis.

And it was a time of national crisis: fear and uncertainty ruled, and just 13 months after the Cuban

Missile Crisis, the fear of nuclear war was palpable because of the 'legend' carefully constructed

around the accused assassin…..

…No one ever came forward to officially acknowledge the coverup of the JFK assassination because of shame, as much as fear. The shame on the part of major players in the medical coverup—Burkley and Galloway, for example—was probably driven by suspicion that they had been hoodwinked by the World War III cover story in 1963, and literally suckered into aiding and abetting obstruction of justice. Mid-level players in the medical coverup such as Humes, Boswell, Finck, and Knudsen were not about to admit to covering up the true facts in JFK's death because it would have destroyed their professional credibility, and with it, their careers. Low-level participants like Dennis David and the duty sailors who carried in the shipping casket at 6:35 PM, the two x-ray technicians (Custer and Reed), the two autopsy technologists (O'Connor and Jenkins), and the two official photographers (Stringer and Riebe); outsiders like the guards from the Marine Barracks and the Joint Service Casket Team; and innocent witnesses like the two FBI agents (Sibert and O'Neill) and the morticians (Robinson and VanHoesen), were true victims of the coverup who were simply exposed to many strange things the night of the President's death, and who were really and truly 'in the dark,' and just innocently following the orders they had been given, without knowing a coverup was underway.

Neither Dennis David, Custer, Reed, O'Connor, Jenkins, Stringer, Riebe, Robinson, VanHoesen,

the U.S. Marine guards from Marine Barracks, the Joint Service Casket Team working for Lt. Bird, General Wehle, nor his aide, Richard Lipsey, fully understood what was going on around them because of compartmentalization and the suppression of evidence. By now, those who gave the cynical and deceitful orders to carry out the medical coverup are all deceased, and many of the midlevel participants have died or are close to death. And the American people are left today with a fraudulent visual record of the autopsy (which is still being suppressed); a dishonest, third-generation autopsy report; and the long-delayed, but reasonably accurate accounts of low-level participants to the strange events surrounding the autopsy—people like Tom Robinson and John VanHoesen, Jerrol Custer and Ed Reed, John Stringer and Floyd Riebe, Paul O'Connor and James Jenkins, Jim Sibert and Frank O'Neill, and Dennis David and Roger Boyajian—who have provided us with enough of the truth to allow us to ascertain that we have been lied to about a seminal event in our nation's history.

Studying the assassination and the coverup is a journey through darkness, and that journey will only lead into bright, sunlit uplands if the student of the assassination gains a proper overview of the deep politics, and the macro forces behind the crime, because with that knowledge comes a full and proper understanding of what a uniquely special politician and leader John F. Kennedy truly was.

Edited January 3, 2010 by William Kelly

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

Except that the dramatic slow-down took place when Greer was bringing the vehicle to a halt BEFORE the head sots and then shifted to appear to occur AFTER the merged "doubt hit", so you are really buying a pig in a poke and not on a leash! I invite you read Rich DellaRosa's observations of the other film--which included the abrupt stop BEFORE the two hits to the head, which were separated in time--which is published in HOAX (2003). You appear to be ignoring relevant evidence. Of course, if you are going to treat Doug Horne's reports about the testimony of Homer McMahon when he presented his testimony to the ARRB--a summary of which is also published in MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000)--as though it were "hearsay", then we certainly have different standards of credibility. Maybe I am missing something. A second copy of the film was delivered to the NPIC by "William Smith", who said he had brought it from Rochester. That makes sense, since Kodak has its headquarters there and the secret "Hawkeyeworks" was located there. Is the question of whether or not it actually came from Kodak what inhibits you from accepting Horne's reports about the events at the NPIC? Do you, J. Raymond Carroll, still believe that the film is authentic? And, if you do, have you read the relevant studies, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery", and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid", not to mention the new findings by film restoration experts, which confirms Roderic Ryan's report to Noel Twyman that the massive defect at the back of the head had been painted out in black and that the "blob" and the blood spray had been painted in? Have you studied frame 374, where the blow-out--and the skull flap--are both clearly visible? How much evidence are you willing to disregard in your search for truth about the death of JFK, where, up to this point, I have assumed that you, unlike Josiah, are sincere in your interest in this case? Your tolerance for deceit and deception about the death of JFK clearly exceeds mine. The question this raises is which of us is displaying greater intellectual acumen and moral responsibility. Hint: It's not you.

Raymond, that is a familiar saying--though perhaps not to you!--of a turkey when its done baking: "You can stick a fork in it--it's done!"

No malice or malicious intent is thereby implied.

Glad to hear it, James, but on the question of malice and the alleged absence thereof, see below.

(1) in composing SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), Josiah Thompson had unprecedented access to the highest quality versions of the Zapruder film;

(2) that film, as you must know for yourself, displays a massive bulging out of brains to the right-front, which has long since come to be known as "the blob";

(3) this massive bulging-out to the right front is inconsistent with the medical evidence, typified by the McClelland drawing, and by the testimony of Officer Hargis;

(4) it follows that, even from consideration of the most elementary evidence in this case, that there is a stunning and inescapable conflict between the medical evidence and the film;

(5) SIX SECONDS would have created a sensation and blown the cover-up out of the water had Josiah Thompson used his knowledge to expose the inconsistency between the medical evidence and the film;

(6) however, in his book, he only provides an opaque sketch of frame 313 and none but the most abstract outline of any of the frames 314, 315, and 316, which meant they were inaccessible for study;

(7) since he published the McClelland diargram and even quotes Officer Hargis, Josiah Thompson had to have been aware of the conflict, yet he tacitly, implicity, and by omitting discussion minimized it;

(8) this meant that, no matter how blatant the contradiction, the existence of this conflict--in spite of its immense importance--was very difficult to discern based upon Josiah Thompson's book;

OK so far we have fair criticism, whether anyone agrees with the criticism or not.

(

9) he also introduced a "doubt hit" theory, where JFK was hit in the back of the head 1/9th of a second before he was hit in the right temple by a fangile (or exploding) bullet;

(10) he now maintains that he was wrong, claiming Zapruder experienced a "startle response" that caused a smear on the film at exactly the same moment that the bullet hit;

I think Josiah abandoned the double hit theory based on more than the smear. He pointed out, as I recall, that the film shows the limo's ABRUPT SLOWDOWN causing all the rear occupants, including JFK, to be seen moving forward in the frames leading up to Z313.

11) that, however, is a neurological impossibility, because the bullet travels far faster than sound and it would have taken time for any such "startle reponse" to occur;

Maybe we agree on something. My own view is that using the startle response as a basis for JIGGLE ANALYSIS has never been shown to have scientific validity.

(12) Josiah is therefore offering an excuse for having been mistaken about his "double hit" hypothesis--which was one of the most striking features of his book--by invoking a phony explanation;

No. He has given a valid reason for abandoning the double hit theory.

David Lifton also abandoned the double hit theory, as I recall, so why pick on THompson?

(13) there is overwhelming proof that the film is a fabrication, including HOAX (2003), "More Proof of JFK Film Fakery" (2008) and "Zapruder JFK Film impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid" (2009);

(14) film restoration experts have now viewed a 6k version of the film and expressed astonishment at the amateurish quaity of the fakery, which inclides painting over the massive defect at the back of the head in black and painting in the "blob" and the blood spray;

(15) today at least seven film experts have concurred in this opinion, thereby agreeing with Roderick Ryan, an expect on special effects, who received the academic award in 2000, who explained these things to Noel Twyam, BLOODY TREASON (1998); and,

By all means plug your theories, that's what the forum is for.

(16) the chain of custody argument that Josiah has long advanced to defend his claim that the film cannot have been faked--in spite of massive evidence to the contrary--has been shattered by Doug Horne's discover of another copy have been developed in Rochester.

As far as I know, Doug Horne has no EVIDENCE that another copy was developed at Rochester. Hearsay is not EVIDENCE.

I don't like being played for a sucker, yet Tink has been playing the world--including you, Mr. Carroll--for saps since his book appeared in 1967. His conduct is utterly disgusting and completely reprehensible with a pattern of deceit and deception that extends back to 1967.

Now here's where I DRAW THE LINE, and ask the moderators to intervene.

[William Kelly]

I'd like to hear what TT has to say about what Doug Horne writes here:

Doug Horne writes in IARRB:

Josiah Thompson Sums It All Up in 1988—And A New Research Paradigm Takes Over in theMid-1990s

In 1967, when his book Six Seconds in Dallas was published, Josiah Thompson, a former Navy

'frogman' who had spent two years in the Navy (and had commanded the UDT detachment charged with beach reconnaissance when U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon in 1958), was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. His book was the first attempt at a scientific overview of all of the principal forensic and crime scene evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and its publication was preceded by a dramatic Saturday Evening Post condensation of the major points in his book which was published under the bold declaration on that issue's cover: "Three Assassins Killed Kennedy." His book still holds a special fascination for me because its approach—a no-nonsense, empirical study of the entire universe of physical evidence—is the one which is still the proper model to emulate today, in my view: it does not begin with a theory of "who killed the President," but instead focuses on what the wounds on the body, the ballistics and firearms evidence, the eyewitness and earwitness testimony, and the film evidence from Dealey Plaza all tell us about the crime. In short, Thompson was an empiricist who was willing to follow the evidence wherever it lead him in his search for a compelling explanation for how the President was killed.

In subsequent years he became a private investigator, such was his passion for crime-solving, and

for examining the story told by physical evidence after the commission of a crime. If he focused

much more on the crime scene evidence in 1967 than on the medical evidence, that is

understandable, since the autopsy photographs and x-rays had not yet been seen by any members of the general public; his primary focus was on Dealey Plaza, but so was that of the American public.

Thompson was still one of the most respected voices in the research community in 1988 when

former CBS employee Robert Richter assembled his independent documentary "Who Shot President Kennedy?", which was to be narrated by Walter Cronkite and would air on the PBS NOVA weekly documentary slot, in prime time. The documentary film—written, produced, and directed by Richter — was laudable in that it raised the most contentious issues within the universe of physical evidence which challenged the Warren Commission's findings, and which pointed toward a possible conspiracy to kill the President. However, it was extremely frustrating to watch, and ultimately an exercise in futility, because its final editorial conclusions (read by narrator Walter Cronkite) seemed to suggest that the ultimate answers to what happened in Dealey Plaza were essentially 'unknowable.' It presented several plausible arguments for conspiracy offered up by both the critical research community and the HSCA, and then attempted to dash cold water on each one of them. The film featured Robert Blakey discussing the HSCA's acoustic evidence of a shot from the grassy knoll, and then attempted to debunk it using an unsophisticated argument that ignored all of the scientific methodology that had gone into the HSCA's acoustic analysis. David Lifton was shown discussing his hypothesis in Best Evidence that the wounds inflicted on President Kennedy's body by gunfire in Dallas had been altered by post mortem surgery prior to his autopsy; and was followed by a nervous group of four equivocating Parkland treatment physicians who sketched their best recollections of the head wound seen on the President in Dallas—sketches not shown on the air—before viewing the autopsy photographs and x-rays in the National Archives (which also could not be shown on the air, because of the proscriptions of the Kennedy family deed-of-gift), and whose remarks after viewing the autopsy photographs in private had been carefully edited afterwards so that they appeared to disagree with Lifton. An eloquent Cyril Wecht debunked the single bullet

p. 1133

theory by comparing the lack of any serious damage to CE 399 with the wide range of damage and deformity inflicted upon various test bullets by the U.S. Army's wound ballistics tests; this was

followed by the apparent, but inconclusive support offered to the single bullet theory by Dr. Vincent Guinn's neutron activation analysis experiments for the HSCA, and by the strange and unlikely explanations offered up by the HSCA's resident contortionist, Michael Baden, in his attempt to explain how the trajectory necessary for the single bullet theory could have occurred, if only the President and the Governor had been positioned in the car in unlikely and unnatural postures (which dispositive photographic evidence shows was not the case). Richter actually commenced his documentary about the conflicts in the evidence in the Kennedy assassination by featuring Josiah Thompson discussing the timing problem that study of the Zapruder film presented to the Warren Commission—the apparent wounding of Kennedy and Connally by two separate bullets in less time than Oswald's rifle could be mechanically fired a second time—but failed to directly address how this timing problem resulted in the Warren Commission's adoption of a very unlikely hypothesis (i.e., the single bullet theory) to solve a political problem: the need to salvage the lone assassin conclusion, at any cost, to please its political master, the new President.

As the 50 minute documentary prepared on the 25th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination wound up, Josiah Thompson summarized the frustrating state of the evidence in the JFK case on the 25th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, and his words apply equally well today, over 45 years after the assassination, as they did some 20 years ago:

In a homicide case, you get a convergence of the evidence after a while. There may be

discrepancies in detail; but on the whole, things come together. With this case—it's now 25

years—things haven't gotten any simpler. They haven't come together. If anything, they've

become more problematical, more and more mysterious. That just isn't the way a homicide

case develops.

I agree with what Thompson said in 1988: the evidence hasn't "come together" in the Kennedy

assassination, and has become "more and more problematical." I believe that is the case because

there has been significant suppression of evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and because

immediately after the assassination, massive fraud was introduced into the evidence wherever

something was suppressed. After reading Best Evidence, I certainly realized on a logical plane that this was the likely explanation for why so much of the evidence in the JFK assassination didn't

present a coherent picture of what had happened; but I did not really believe it, on an emotional level in my gut, until I went to work for the ARRB in 1995 and swam in that sea of conflicting evidence for three full years. And it was Josiah Thompson who gave me much of the inspiration to attempt that journey in a keynote address he gave to the attendees at an awards dinner, at the conclusion of the Chicago Midwest Symposium on the JFK assassination, early in 1993.

Josiah Thompson announced in a rather perplexing way at the beginning of his speech that he was

there to speak about the agnosticism of which he had been accused, and to which he was now openly confessing. He also announced a rather sobering disclaimer, saying at the beginning of his remarks that people usually expect to hear inspirational remarks at the end of such conferences, but that he was not going to be able to offer any. Instead, he shared with us his profound sense of frustration and disquiet about the Kennedy assassination, just prior to the 30th anniversary of the event. He

1134

began as follows:

I submit that we know less now about what happened in those six seconds than we thought

we did a quarter of a century ago [referring to the 1966-67 time period when the first spate

of critical books had been published]. The profile of what happened has not gotten any

clearer in the intervening years, but more confused. Why? Because the evidence itself has

grown more confused, and confusing.

In 1966, he said, "I tried to put together all the evidence into a plausible account as to what

happened. It made sense to try that in 1966—I'm not sure it does now. The contradictions in the

evidence are so many and so profound that any attempt to offer a single convincing account of what happened may be impossible."

Thompson then launched into a detailed listing of the many improbabilities in the U.S. government's

single bullet theory, and explained that that theory was born not out of good science, or out of an

honest attempt to employ Occam's Razor in an attempt to provide a logical and likely explanation

for what happened in Dallas (my phraseology, not his), but rather out of political necessity—as the

only way to salvage the U.S. government's desired lone assassin conclusion in 1964. Calling the

single bullet theory the reductio ad absurdum of the government's attempts to sell a lone assassin

to the American people, Thompson discussed in detail the disturbing improbability of the HSCA's

desperate attempts to resuscitate a moribund patient, namely:

• Michael Baden's explanation on television that although the hypothetical bullet

which supposedly transited JFK's body from back to front had an 11 degree upward

trajectory anatomically speaking, that it could still have hit Governor Connally

providing President Kennedy had been leaning forward significantly in the limousine,

and providing Connally had moved well to his left in the bucket seat in which he was

sitting.

• The fact that HSCA General Counsel Robert Blakey hired four District of Columbia

policemen while the HSCA was in session to test fire a Mannlicher Carcano in an

attempt to demonstrate that it could be fired in less than the minimum mechanical

firing time (i.e., without aiming) of 2.3 seconds, which had been determined by the

FBI shortly after the assassination; and that when all four policemen abjectly failed

to beat the FBI's minimum mechanical firing time of 2.3 seconds, two lawyers—G.

Robert Blakey himself, and his deputy, Gary Cornwell—blithely claimed to have

accomplished the feat of firing the rifle in 1.6 seconds all by themselves. Apparently

they had to literally 'shoot from the hip' to accomplish this, a technique they termed

'point aiming,' in an Orwellian use of the English language.

• The fact that the HSCA re-endorsed the single bullet theory of Arlen Specter, even

though its acoustic analysis of the dictabelt tape led the Committee to adopt a shot

scenario which claimed that the first two shots came from the Book Depository, and

were fired within 1.66 seconds of each other. The HSCA concluded that the first

shot missed (since no human reactions to being hit could be seen in the Zapruder film

1135

between frames 157-161), and improbably decided that not only could Oswald fire

the next shot only 1.66 seconds later (in spite of the FBI's minimum mechanical

firing time of 2.3 seconds), but that he was able to do so between Zapruder frames

188-191 by firing through a tree which would have blocked his view between frames

160-210—and that in doing so, Oswald miraculously plugged both John Kennedy

and John Connally with that 'blind shot.'

After the audience finished laughing, Thompson soberly reminded everyone: "It's much easier to

destroy the single bullet theory than it is to come up with a plausible alternative." For example, he

reminded the audience, if CE 399 is a planted bullet, then what happened to the real bullet which

caused JFK's back wound? He concluded his remarks as follows:

From the beginning, critics of the official story have been faced with a conundrum. Since

nearly all the evidence in the case has been in governmental possession from the beginning,

except for such notable exceptions as the Zapruder film and the Dallas police dictabelt tape,

we have had to accept the authenticity of all the evidence, or abandon the attempt to try to

deduce from it what happened. Was the magic bullet the result of a switch made after 'a

bullet' came into government possession? Are the Connally wrist fragments authentic? Has

the autopsy and medical evidence been falsified and rigged? As soon as we even begin

asking such questions we abandon the attempt to solve the mystery, since we lack a criterion

for determining what evidence is genuine and what is not. To put it another way, you can't

begin solving a puzzle if you keep doubting whether a particular piece belongs in the puzzle!

But it should not escape our attention how extraordinary the present situation is.

Thompson wrapped up his remarks by admitting that when he wrote Six Seconds in Dallas he was a college philosophy professor who "knew literally nothing" about the investigation of homicides.

Since that time, he said, he had changed careers and had become a private investigator, and in this

capacity had investigated "several hundred" homicides since 1976. He concluded:

I know, for example, the more a case is investigated, the more coherent becomes the

evidence; I know that doubts may remain as to who did it, or why they did it, but hardly ever

about what actually happened. Yet here, in the most thoroughly investigated homicide in

human history, the evidence falls into deeper and deeper contradiction, so riven by

contradiction [that] the fact pattern of the case—what happened, when, and how?—begins

to unravel.

There was only one thing I disagreed with in his speech, and that was his assertion that if we do not

accept the authenticity of all of the government's evidence at face value, that we must abandon our

attempts to deduce what happened. Surely, accepting the possibility that some (or even much)

evidence was 'tainted' would make reconstructing what had really happened in Dealey Plaza much

more difficult, but I refused to throw my hands up in despair and simply give up on my attempts to

understand the 'mystery of the century' just because it was proving difficult.

This speech really lit a fire under my ass. [i didn't attend that conference, but I obtained his dinner[/font]

speech on videotape and watched it over and over again, and found I was as frustrated as he was

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about the state of the evidence.] I viewed Josiah Thompson's comments as a clarion call for

someone to "do something" about what seemed to him an 'unspeakable problem'—namely, how

does one go about honestly separating 'tainted' evidence from 'trustworthy' evidence? I didn't have any magic answers, any epistemological 'silver bullets' to throw at the problem, but one year later I did hear Jack Tunheim speak to the COPA conference organized by John Judge in Washington, D.C. about the new Assassination Records Review Board. I saw possibilities here—and unknown to me, Congressman Stokes of Ohio, former Chair of the HSCA, had told the Board Members the same thing in private—for attempting to clarify the medical evidence, for attempting to separate the 'wheat' from the 'chaff,' particularly in regard to the autopsy photos and x-rays, and in understanding what really happened at the President's autopsy. Like Thompson, I did not want to see American citizens sitting around at research conferences twenty years hence, endlessly debating the same, seemingly insoluble conflicts in the evidence. The thought of the same frustrating and inconclusive series of debates about the evidence in the JFK assassination continuing ad nauseum and ad infinitum reminded me too much of an overly excited dog chasing its tail in the summer heat—not a pleasant mental image, I can assure you. If David Lifton's research had gotten me 'hooked' on the assassination, then Josiah Thompson's discussion of the larger problem, the state of the evidence, and why it didn't come together, served as my continuing inspiration to do something. Figuring out what had happened to President Kennedy in Dallas was not a parlor game to me, a trivial pursuit or a hobby—it went to the very root of what seemed to have gone wrong with our country since 1963. The American people had been robbed of a democratically elected leader in this country when power had changed hands through violence in 1963. Following the death of Jack Kennedy, America's optimism and spirit of renewal, which had been on the rise, had seemed to dissipate, and to have been replaced with a sense that our best days as a society were perhaps behind us. The American people had been lied to—repeatedly—about what had happened in Dallas, and about a host of other national issues since that time, and had been fighting one war after another overseas, ever since. Had all of our governments since that time been illegitimate? This was a serious question for a people who truly loved and believed in democracy, and it was unsatisfactory to me that these questions should remain unanswered. For me, the whole question of whether or not I could trust the nation state in which I lived—whether I could have faith in the institutions of government—was at stake here. I knew I had been lied to about the Kennedy assassination, but I didn't know what had really happened in 1963, and why—and that remained unsatisfactory to me.

Two Bone Fragments Found in Dealey Plaza Are Consistent with a Fatal Shot from the Right Front

The first of these two fragments was found by Seymour Weitzman on the afternoon of the

assassination. As Thompson explains in Six Seconds in Dallas It was found some 8 to 12 inches from the south curb of Elm Street, a location some 10-15 feet left of the car's path (7H107). This was probably what both Charles Brehm and Clint Hill saw driven over the left rear of the Presidential car.

I disagree slightly here. I believe Clint Hill saw exit debris bouncing across the trunk lid, with Jackie

chasing after it, as revealed in the Nix film. What Charles Brehm saw was a piece of airborne debrisflying through the air for quite a distance, and landing near the curb. Therefore, I believe Weitzman probably found the piece of bone seen by Charles Brehm flying to the left and rear of the limousine after the fatal shot(s). We can never be sure, because Weitzman never marked the location on the street where he found it. This bone fragment, like all others found, is missing today.

The second and much more famous of the two fragments I mention here is the 'Harper' fragment,

which was found by pre-med student Billy Harper in the grass of Dealey Plaza on Saturday,

November 23rd. (Clint Hill was incorrect in his testimony—it was not found in the street.) The

Harper fragment was discussed previously in this book, and I explained at that time that in 1977 the HSCA staff had interviewed Dr. A.B. Cairns, who had been chief pathologist at Methodist hospital

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in 1963 when he identified it as occipital bone. (See Figures 41 and 42.) FBI agent A. Raymond

Switzer interviewed both Billy Harper's uncle, Dr. Jack Harper, and Dr. Cairns, on July 10, 1964,

and a typewritten report was completed on July 13, 1964. In the report it states that the chief medical photographer at Methodist hospital, Wayne Bolleter, is the individual who took two 35 mm color slides of the Harper Fragment next to a ruler for purposes of scale. [We should all be thankful for the professionalism of this individual, and for the foresight of Dr. Jack Harper in asking him to photograph it. The two slides of the Harper fragment are everything that good medical macrophotography should be, unlike the autopsy photographs of the 35th President: they are in perfect focus, are perfectly illuminated, and the ruler placed in the images for scale is in focus also, and can be read.] Dr. Harper had first been interviewed by the FBI in 1963 when he had voluntarily turned the fragment over to Hoover's men; the FBI apparently recontacted him in July of 1964 to obtain the photographs that had been taken—which of course were not published by the Warren Commission.

The FBI faithfully retained the two 35 mm slides, and also x-rayed the bone fragment after it came

into their possession the week following the assassination. The slides and the x-rays of the Harper

fragment are in the JFK Collection in the National Archives today, but the bone fragment, like

another called the 'Burros' fragment (found in unknown circumstances by David Burros), is missing today. (The last person to sign a receipt for the two bone fragments was George G. Burkley.) The HSCA interview of Cairns in 1977 did not reveal any information that conflicted with that reported by the FBI in 1964, only a bit more detail about how Dr. Cairns decided the bone was occipital; he told the HSCA that he came to that conclusion based primarily upon the imprint of the blood vessels on the inside surface of the bone.

The identification of the Harper fragment as occipital bone was cavalierly ignored by the HSCA

Forensic Pathology Panel, even though Drs. Harper and Cairns both held it in their hands and both

concurred, in 1963, that it was definitely from the occipital region of the skull. Finding occipital

bone from President Kennedy's skull in the grass on the south side of Elm Street is consistent with

the major pattern of impact debris discussed in this section—namely, exit debris from the rear of

President Kennedy's skull which was caused by a shot from the right front.

What It All Means

Summing up, the importance of our impact debris study is clear and incontrovertible: HSCA Staff

Director and General Counsel G. Robert Blakey was wrong when he concluded that the shot from the grassy knoll, revealed by the HSCA acoustical study, had missed the occupants of the limousine, and that the fatal shot that killed President Kennedy was fired from the Texas School Book Depository. Not only was Blakey wrong, but I submit to you that since he had most of the impact debris information cited above available to him—except for the Willis family interview and the Floyd Boring revelation—he knew he was likely wrong, and proceeded to knowingly trumpet the wrong conclusion anyway. Why? Because to accept that the grassy knoll shot had killed the President, based upon a study of the impact debris and the motion of President Kennedy's head and upper body in the Zapruder film (violently back and to the left), would have meant that he had no faith in the medical evidence from the autopsy. [The autopsy report and the photos and x-rays, remember, provide no clear evidence of a shot from the front, and only support shots from behind.]

To have admitted this, after all the investigating and interviewing done by the HSCA staff and its

Forensic Pathology Panel, would have been to publicly admit failure. Formally concluding that the grassy knoll shot killed President Kennedy would have meant, essentially, that the HSCA not only had no faith in the autopsy medical evidence, but that it could also not explain exactly what was wrong with that evidence. Rather than do this, Blakey 'buried' as much of the medical evidence that conflicted with the autopsy report as he could—namely, the Ebersole, Finck, and Knudsen depositions; and the staff interviews of the 'little people' at the autopsy—by sequestering (sealing) this material for 50 years; and then he lied about the extent to which the autopsy witnesses agreed with the autopsy photographs on page 37 of volume VII of his report. Thanks to the JFK Records Act, which opened up the HSCA files, the chicanery of Blakey and Baden has been exposed. It was this 'big lie' about the autopsy photographs—the brazen, dishonest statement that none of the autopsy witnesses disagreed with the location of the wounds in the autopsy images—that will forever damn the HSCA's conclusions as intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt. Rather than admit to the American public that the Committee had an insoluble puzzle where the evidence refused to some together—and explain why it did not come together and either continue the investigation until the matter was resolved, or turn it over to the Justice Department—Blakey and Baden cynically chose to endorse suspect medical evidence from the autopsy, and ignore and discount:

• the Parkland hospital medical witnesses to a blowout in the back of the head;

• the testimony of Secret Service agent Clint Hill that verified the Parkland

observations; and

• the clear pattern of the preponderance of the impact debris evidence (Hill, Hargis,

Martin, and the Harper fragment) pointing to a fatal shot from the right front.

Apparently, it was politically much easier for Blakey and his gang to announce the unpalatable

conclusion that the Warren Commission had come to the right conclusion about Lee Harvey Oswald after all—that he had really and truly killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally all

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by himself—than to admit that there were irreconcilable conflicts in the evidence that could not be

resolved. To do that would have taken considerable courage, and integrity.

The HSCA's fence-sitting provided the American people with a 'modified limited hangout' which satisfied no one: it gave us a 'probable' conspiracy supported only by an acoustics study, and yetnthe same unlikely murderer offered up by the Warren Commission; a presumed conspiracy with no names named, or motives explained; and a conclusion that all of the shots that struck Kennedy and Connally were fired from behind by Oswald, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the Zapruder film, in eyewitness testimony from Dealey Plaza and Parkland hospital, and in the ballistics evidence from the Edgewood Arsenal Firing Tests, published by the Army in 1965.

If the HSCA had possessed any cajones it would have stated up front that the irreconcilable conflicts within the forensic and crime scene evidence suggested that a major coverup had taken place in 1963, and that it suspected much of the evidence in the case may have been 'tainted' in ways not yet detected, meriting further investigation by the Justice Department. Instead, Blakey and Baden took the easier road of arrogantly pronouncing that they had solved the case, and bailed out of their burning airplane as quickly as possible. Blakey's golden parachute landed him a lifetime job as Professor of Law at Notre Dame. I'm not impressed. "For what hath a man gained, if he loses his own soul?

Equally important as the conclusion that the 35th President was killed by a conspiracy, is the

knowledge that the U.S. government attempted to cover up that fact, and that the coverup was

implemented immediately after his assassination. The immediate implementation of this coverup

in both Dealey Plaza (the theft of the .45 caliber slug by a Federal agent), and at Parkland hospital

(the theft of the body by the Secret Service in order to prevent an honest autopsy), was followed by radio conversations onboard Air Force One which reveal an attempt to separate the President's widow from the Dallas casket upon arrival in Washington. (This failed, resulting in an absurd shell game at the Bethesda morgue designed to conceal the fact that the President's body had been stolen and his throat and back wounds had been tampered with enroute Washington.) The performance of clandestine, post mortem surgery on the President's skull at the Bethesda morgue, prior to the formal commencement of the autopsy, permitted: (1) the removal of evidence of shots from the front, and the suppression of the fact that there was a crossfire in Dealey Plaza; (2) the alteration of JFK's head wounds so that they more closely resembled damage caused by shots from behind; and (3) the creation of a dishonest and intentionally deceptive photographic and x-ray record of his skull 'wounds.' This brazen attempt to manipulate American history, and hide the fact that a duly elected democratic head of state had been 'fired' by the secret vote of a national security 'star chamber,' should concern us as much as the murder itself. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, those who designed and managed the coverup were clearly among the cabal who murdered Jack Kennedy; their guilt is revealed by the speed with which they acted. The coverup was implemented with ruthless determination, if not efficiency, and was executed immediately by elements of the national security establishment (i.e., the Secret Service, the U.S. Navy, and unidentified civilians at Bethesda NNMC).

This basic fact is the biggest clue to the identity of the cabal that planned the assassination. The

likely membership of the cabal, and its motivations, will be the subject of Chapter 16.

THE NATURE OF THE MEDICAL COVERUP

This book has proven—conclusively—that there was a medical coverup of the true facts in President Kennedy's death. Let's take a step back from the trees, and look at the forest one more time.

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In my view the medical coverup could not have been uncovered without the evidence provided by

the following six key people: James J. Humes, Edward F. Reed, Tom Robinson, Robert Knudsen,

Roger Boyajian, and Dr. David W. Mantik. A nervous Dr. Humes, with his own big mouth, attracted attention to the fact that surgery had been performed on the President's skull. We can be verynthankful today that FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill wrote that quotation down in their notes, and that an alert David Lifton realized the true significance of that statement in 1966, and spent almost 15 years pursuing its meaning before publishing Best Evidence in 1981. Dr. Mantik, in nine visits to the National Archives, used optical densitometry to gather empirical data proving that the 3 existing skull x-rays of President Kennedy are altered copy films that display dishonest, inaccurate images of the condition of the President's skull at the Bethesda morgue on November 22, 1963. Without this proof that the skull x-rays have been altered, they could have been used in perpetuity by Warren Commission and HSCA apologists to 'prove' that the autopsy photos showing the back of the head intact are 'authentic;' but now that we know for a fact that an occipital-parietal blowout was masked by an optical patch in the two lateral skull films, this evidence focuses our attention on the fact that the autopsy photos of the seemingly intact back of the head show something that cannot be. (In other words, the Dallas witnesses who have insisted for decades that there was a large exit defect in the right rear of President Kennedy's head were right all along.) Robert Knudsen's consistent, lifelong claim that he photographed the President's autopsy has provided an answer to the "who" and "when" questions regarding how the misleading autopsy photos were created, and also accounts for their generally substandard quality—as noted by both the HSCA and professionally trained medical photographer Earl McDonald—for Knudsen was not trained to engage in macro-photography of cadavers, and was normally a social photographer, at the White House, of ceremonies and public events. Marine sergeant Roger Boyajian made a contemporaneous record of the fact that the President's body arrived at the Bethesda morgue prior to the Andrews AFB motorcade containing the Dallas casket, thus documenting, in an indisputable way, the broken chain-of-custody for the President's body, and proving that there was sufficient time to conduct the clandestine craniotomy witnessed by Reed and Robinson. (Boyajian's report stating that the President's casket arrived at 6:35 PM means that we have every reason to believe all of the shipping casket and body bag witnesses, because his report proves that the bronze Dallas casket driven to Bethesda from Andrews AFB in a gray Navy ambulance, and delivered to the morgue anteroom by the FBI and Secret Service just prior to 7:17 PM, had to be empty.) Finally, the priceless recollections of Ed Reed and Tom Robinson have revealed to us the exact nature of the "surgery of the head area" that Dr. Humes alluded to in his oral utterance; their testimony is the 'clincher,' the true basis of our new understanding of the monstrous and brazen coverup perpetrated inside the Bethesda morgue the night

President Kennedy was assassinated. The meaning of the activity witnessed by Robinson and Reed is indisputably clear, and is so important that it is worth revisiting one last time.

Robinson and Reed Provide Proof That A Clandestine, Modified Craniotomy Was Performed at the Bethesda Morgue Prior to the Autopsy on President Kennedy

Tom Robinson's recollections were dealt with in depth in Chapter 6 of this book, and are

unambiguous. He told both the HSCA and the ARRB, respectively, during his 1977 and 1996

interviews, that he had a clear recollection of a pathologist sawing open President Kennedy's skull

in order to remove the brain. The diagram of the damage to the back of President Kennedy's head

that he executed for the ARRB (Figure 28) makes clear just how extensive this post mortem surgery

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was—a large portion of the back of the skull was removed in order to gain access to the brain.

Furthermore, his comment to his ARRB interviewers that the extensive trauma seen in the autopsy

images of the top of the skull (see Figure 61) "was what the doctors did," and was not caused by a bullet, is a damning indictment of those photographs, and of the false testimony of Humes and

Boswell, who clearly committed perjury before both the Warren Commission, and the ARRB, when they described their ability to remove the brain without first performing a craniotomy.

Ed Reed's gift to history required a bit more sifting—more detective work—than did Tom

Robinson's revelation, but it is equally persuasive, in my view, and equally important.

First, both Ed Reed and Jerrol Custer stated that the skull x-rays were the first ones taken; it was one of the few things about the duties they performed the night of the autopsy where their recollections were in agreement. Second, both Jerrol Custer and Ed Reed testified to the ARRB in 1997 that they were required to leave the morgue shortly after President Kennedy's body was placed on the examining table. Jerrol Custer testified as follows on page 75 of his deposition transcript:

Custer: ...they took the body out of this casket, and we put it on the table. Then I left. I

came back later—came back later, took the first set of films...[Author's emphasis]

And then on page 78, he continued:

Custer: ...I did not see the second casket until after the first set of films...I saw the first

casket. I left for at least an hour. When I come back, I come in, took films. After

I took the films, I left again. This is when I saw the second casket.

This means Custer saw the Dallas casket only after he took the skull x-rays, which means that he

started taking the head films before the bronze viewing coffin was brought to the morgue anteroom

by Sibert, O'Neill, Kellerman, and Greer (at about 7:17 PM), and that he must have departed with

the five skull x-rays in his arms after 7:17 PM. His memory of only seeing the 'second casket' after

he had completed taking the first set of x-rays confirms that he started taking those x-rays before the

Dallas casket was brought into the morgue anteroom. We know with a fair amount of precision

when Sibert and O'Neill were barred from the morgue—7:17 PM. This also serves as a marker for the time the Dallas casket was set down on the floor in the anteroom.

Gunn: Were you present at the time of the first incision?

Reed: Yes.

Gunn: What was the first incision?

Reed: The cranium. The scalp, right here [gesturing to a wide area high up at the top of

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his forehead, from left to right]. [author's emphasis]

Gunn: And can you describe how that procedure—

Reed: Commander Humes made an incision. After we brought all the x-rays back, we

were allowed to sit in the podium and observe. And Commander Humes made an

incision—that I could see from my vantage point—an incision in the forehead, and

brought back the scalp. [author's emphasis]

Gunn: Okay. [Jeremy and I were quite tense at this moment, and made a point of not

looking at each other; our focus was riveted on the witness.]

Reed: Like this [gesturing].

Gunn: And you were making a line first across the top of your forehead, roughly along

the hairline—[author's emphasis]

Reed: With a scalpel.

Gunn: —and then pulling the scalp back.

Reed: That's correct. Just like this.

Gunn: And were you able to see the size of the wound when the scalp—

Reed: Not from my—not from where I was, no. The podium [sic] was a good 20 feet away.

Gunn: What else did you observe from where you were with regard to any incisions or

operations on the head?

Reed: Well, after about 20 minutes, Commander Humes took out a saw, and started to cut

the forehead with the bone—with the saw. Mechanical saw. Circular, small,

mechanical—almost like a cast saw, but it's made—[author's emphasis]

Gunn: Sure—

Reed: —specifically for bone.

Gunn: And what did you see next?

Reed: We were asked to leave at that time. Jerry Custer and myself were asked to leave.

[author's emphasis]

Although Reed recalled this post mortem surgery on the skull as occurring after he and Custer had

exposed all of the x-rays taken that night, this cannot be true. He provided his testimony about

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cranial surgery in response to the question, "what was the first incision?" The first incision recorded

by Sibert and O'Neill in their report was the Y-incision on the thorax at 8:15 PM; and yet, Reed

never recalled seeing a Y-incision on the body. This is strongly suggestive that the cranial surgery

he witnessed was prior to the Y-incision. Reed witnessed the arrival of a shipping casket, which

verifies that he witnessed the 6:35 PM casket arrival; 15 minutes after that casket arrived, there had.not been any Y-incision, and there would still not be one for another hour and twenty-five minutes.

Additionally, Reed's testimony that he and Custer were asked to leave as soon as Humes commence cranial surgery sounds exactly like what he had said earlier (on pages 32-33) about he and Custer being asked to sit in the podium, and then being asked to leave the morgue; Reed's first mention of being asked to sit in the 'podium' (gallery) was given in response to the question about what he did immediately after placing the President's body on the examining table. Therefore, I believe, it is reasonable to infer that the surgery to the head area that Reed recalled witnessing from the gallery really occurred right after the body arrived, when Reed and Custer sat briefly in the gallery before being sent upstairs for 15 minutes, and well before the Y-incision had been made.

Analyzing the testimony of Reed and Custer is a cautionary tale about how memories, particularly

memories about the duration of specific events, and sometimes about the sequencing of different

events, are clouded by the passage of time. My experience with the morticians, and with the x-ray

technicians, taught me that memories of what wounds looked like, or about where an incision was

made on the body, seemed much more reliable than memories about the duration of a given event,

or the sequencing of multiple events. Having said that, I believe I have made a persuasive case that

Reed and Custer witnessed the commencement of illicit, post mortem cranial surgery very soon after the President's body arrived; were then sent upstairs for about a quarter of an hour; and were then recalled to the morgue by Dr. Ebersole to take the skull x-rays. Witnesses to the same events often remember different aspects of that event, with one witness not recalling part of an event that another witness remembers clearly—and different witnesses to the same event may recall identical aspects of the event with varying precision. Reed remembered the details of the cranial surgery, and Custer did not. Custer accurately remembered taking five skull x-rays in one series, at the same time, and Reed inaccurately remembered taking only two skull x-rays, and taking them one at a time, and not in a series. Custer accurately remembered taking each series of x-rays upstairs accompanied by Reed and a Federal agent; Reed inaccurately recalled running each individual x-ray taken at the autopsy upstairs all by himself, to be developed one at a time, without any security escort. Reed's recollection of cranial surgery in the frontal bone just behind the hairline, above the top of the forehead, is highly credible to me because that is exactly where the scalp looks incised and bone is seen to be missing from the skull cap in the autopsy photos (see Figures 61 and 62), and where part of the cranium is missing in the 3 surviving skull x-rays. Professional interpretation of the three cranial x-rays by Dr. Fitzpatrick, Dr. Kirschner, Dr. Mantik, and even by the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, reveals that much of the frontal bone is missing just behind the hairline, especially on the right side of the skull. It is not just "unlikely" that Reed would have seen Humes perform this surgery late in the autopsy, after the brain had already been removed—it is a reductio ad absurdum to suggest that a pathologist—even Dr. Humes—would perform surgery on an area of the cranium where the bone is already missing! It is nonsense, therefore, to suggest that Reed's recollection that he witnessed this cranial surgery after all of the x-rays had been taken that night is worthy of belief.

He recalled the cranial surgery when asked where on the body the first incision was made—thus

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satisfying me as to when he saw it that night.

The surgery recalled by both Ed Reed and Tom Robinson, when considered as a whole, could bes be described as a modified craniotomy, because it removed skull cap from the rear, top, and right side of the skull, and created a defect large enough to gain ready access to the brain. I say 'modified' because the entire skull cap was not sawed off symmetrically and removed in one piece, all the way around the skull; rather, an existing exit wound in the rear of the skull was radically expanded from a surface area of about 35 square centimeters, to a defect about five times larger, of about 170 square centimeters. Ed Reed's graphic description of watching Humes making a transverse incision in the scalp above the forehead with a scalpel, cutting the frontal bone directly below that incision with a circular saw, and then pulling the scalp forward, is exactly what happens during a craniotomy.

The context that makes the observation of clandestine cranial surgery at Bethesda shortly after the

body arrived so important, is the fact that Dr. Humes did not have to perform a craniotomy when he removed the brain from the cranium sometime after 8:00 PM (when the Dallas casket was opened) and prior to 8:30 PM (when Finck arrived and noticed that the brain had been removed from the cranium). As Dr. Finck wrote in the Blumberg report (see page 5 of Appendix 29), "Cdr. Humes told me that he only had to prolong the lacerations of the scalp before removing the brain. No sawing of the skull was necessary. The opening of the large head wound, in the right frontoparieto- occipital region, is 130 millimeters in diameter." [Author's emphasis added] James J.

Humes is revealed here as the great prevaricator that Jeremy Gunn and I also found him to be. He

had just been observed 90 minutes earlier by Ed Reed and Tom Robinson performing major post

mortem surgery on the President's skull, yet when Dr. Finck arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 8:30 PM, Humes blithely told him that "no sawing of the skull" had been necessary to remove the brain.

No doubt what Humes meant was that no sawing of the skull had been necessary after 8:00 PM when the brain was publicly removed before the morgue audience, and James Jenkins. Clearly, when Humes said this to Finck, he was engaging in obfuscation, and concealing the fact that he did indeed have to saw off major portions of the skull earlier that evening; but since that had been clandestine activity, part of a covert operation to alter the President's wounds and remove evidence from the cranium, Humes could not reveal it to Dr. Finck. Humes was speaking to Finck at about 8:30 PM in front of the morgue audience, the same audience that had seen Humes remove the brain so effortlessly just moments before. It is obvious from what Humes told Finck, as recorded by Dr. Finck in the Blumberg report, that Lt.Col. Pierre A. Finck, an Army outsider in a Navy setting, had not yet been 'read in' on any coverup when he arrived at the Bethesda morgue, and that even long after the fact, in early 1965, he remained unaware that Humes had performed post mortem surgery on the cranium before he arrived at the morgue.

I have taken great pains to revisit how I arrived at my conclusion that illicit cranial surgery was

performed at Bethesda Naval hospital before President Kennedy's autopsy began, because it is such an essential finding to my hypothesis about the medical coverup. The post mortem surgery on the skull witnessed and independently remembered by Tom Robinson and Ed Reed is the key to

explaining when the skull x-rays were taken and why they show damage to the temporal, parietal,

and frontal bone that was not seen at Parkland hospital by the highly trained medical staff; and

likewise, explains when many of the autopsy photographs (Figures 59-62) were taken, and why theyalso show so much more damage to the head than was seen at Parkland hospital. [The surgery

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described by Robinson and Reed also allows us to place Dr. Boswell's autopsy sketch (Figure 11)

in its proper context, and to understand it for what it really is: a 'con-job' designed to sell the results

of clandestine surgery by Dr. Humes—a modified craniotomy—as the damage caused by an

assassin's bullet.]

…It is my contention that President Kennedy's assassination was the result of a domestic conspiracy,and that the conspirators implemented an immediate, effective, and wide-ranging coverup as soon as he was killed. The medical coverup was just a part of this effort, but it had to go into effect immediately, and did. An honest autopsy was prevented from taking place by the Secret Service's removal of the body from Dallas, and a dishonest autopsy was performed by persons who knowingly participated in that charade because they had been "gaslighted"—they had fallen for the World War III cover story, and with that justification in the forefront of their minds, they could all comfort themselves with the knowledge that they were 'just following orders' in a time of national crisis.

And it was a time of national crisis: fear and uncertainty ruled, and just 13 months after the Cuban

Missile Crisis, the fear of nuclear war was palpable because of the 'legend' carefully constructed

around the accused assassin…..

…No one ever came forward to officially acknowledge the coverup of the JFK assassination because of shame, as much as fear. The shame on the part of major players in the medical coverup—Burkley and Galloway, for example—was probably driven by suspicion that they had been hoodwinked by the World War III cover story in 1963, and literally suckered into aiding and abetting obstruction of justice. Mid-level players in the medical coverup such as Humes, Boswell, Finck, and Knudsen were not about to admit to covering up the true facts in JFK's death because it would have destroyed their professional credibility, and with it, their careers. Low-level participants like Dennis David and the duty sailors who carried in the shipping casket at 6:35 PM, the two x-ray technicians (Custer and Reed), the two autopsy technologists (O'Connor and Jenkins), and the two official photographers (Stringer and Riebe); outsiders like the guards from the Marine Barracks and the Joint Service Casket Team; and innocent witnesses like the two FBI agents (Sibert and O'Neill) and the morticians (Robinson and VanHoesen), were true victims of the coverup who were simply exposed to many strange things the night of the President's death, and who were really and truly 'in the dark,' and just innocently following the orders they had been given, without knowing a coverup was underway.

Neither Dennis David, Custer, Reed, O'Connor, Jenkins, Stringer, Riebe, Robinson, VanHoesen,

the U.S. Marine guards from Marine Barracks, the Joint Service Casket Team working for Lt. Bird, General Wehle, nor his aide, Richard Lipsey, fully understood what was going on around them because of compartmentalization and the suppression of evidence. By now, those who gave the cynical and deceitful orders to carry out the medical coverup are all deceased, and many of the midlevel participants have died or are close to death. And the American people are left today with a fraudulent visual record of the autopsy (which is still being suppressed); a dishonest, third-generation autopsy report; and the long-delayed, but reasonably accurate accounts of low-level participants to the strange events surrounding the autopsy—people like Tom Robinson and John VanHoesen, Jerrol Custer and Ed Reed, John Stringer and Floyd Riebe, Paul O'Connor and James Jenkins, Jim Sibert and Frank O'Neill, and Dennis David and Roger Boyajian—who have provided us with enough of the truth to allow us to ascertain that we have been lied to about a seminal event in our nation's history.

Studying the assassination and the coverup is a journey through darkness, and that journey will only lead into bright, sunlit uplands if the student of the assassination gains a proper overview of the deep politics, and the macro forces behind the crime, because with that knowledge comes a full and proper understanding of what a uniquely special politician and leader John F. Kennedy truly was.