Kennedy Videos

[David Von Pein]

 

Edited July 18, 2018 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

Edited July 18, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Jon G. Tidd]

DVP,

Thank you for this diary.

I don't know your view of Walter Cronkite. He was CBS's voice of truth in the 1960s.

In the 1960s as a college student, I grew uncomfortable with Cronkite's role as truth-teller. Yes he was revered as a truth teller, but he appeared to me increasingly as a journalist whose job was to spout the government's story.

He broke with that perceived role in 1968, in the wake of the Tet Offensive. He had a powerful influence on Americans' view of both the Viet Nam war and the JFK assassination.

My take on Walter Cronkite is that he told the truth as he saw it. To that extent, I think he was a good journalist. I don't think he ever delved deep into the JFK assassination.

FWIW, I view the JFK assassination as far more important for this nation's history than the Viet Nam war.

[Ron Ecker]

My take on Walter Cronkite is that he told the truth as he saw it. To that extent, I think he was a good journalist. I don't think he ever delved deep into the JFK assassination.

I remember Cronkite's sage conclusion on some CBS program about the assassination that Oswald was able to make those difficult shots because he was shooting at the president of the United States.

[David Von Pein]

I remember Cronkite's sage conclusion on some CBS program about the assassination that Oswald was able to make those difficult shots because he was shooting at the president of the United States.

But the thing is, Ron -- the shots were not that "difficult".

I don't think he [Cronkite] ever delved deep into the JFK assassination.

This four-hour program would tend to refute your statement (at least to some extent)....

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2011/05/cbs-news-inquiry-the-warren-report-(1967).html

BTW, I liked Walter Cronkite (and his reporting) a great deal. And when he died in 2009, some of the more despicable CTers came out of the woodwork to piss on his grave. So I had to add my 2 cents....

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/walter-cronkite.html

Edited April 18, 2016 by David Von Pein

[Steven Gaal]

A video DVP should see. ,gaal

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http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-af1-tapes-and-subsequent-events-at-andrews-afb-on-november-22-1963-what-was-supposed-to-happen-vs-what-did-happen/

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A helicopter was definitely sent to Andrews AFB to pick up President Kennedy’s body:
In November of 1996, David Lifton gave a remarkable presentation at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas, in which he played a video interview he had just conducted with the former Marine Corps pilot of a military helicopter sent to Andrews AFB to pick up President Kennedy’s body and transport it to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Anyone interested can watch and listen to the video of this interview by obtaining the DVD disc from the 1996 Lancer conference titled: “Medical Evidence.”
Summarizing, the former Marine pilot was a member of the “HMX” helicopter squadron based in Quantico, VA and Anacostia, Maryland. This squadron provided 24-hour, seven days per week “hot team” standby service for the President and high level, VIP Federal officials. Normally they were on duty for 48 hours at a time, and then off duty for the next 48 hours. Lifton’s witness (whose identity he protected) stated in the videotaped interview that he was about to go home and enjoy a rare day off on November 22, 1963 when he was called into a special, surreptitious briefing at the Anacostia base where he was working that day. He was ordered to take a helicopter to Andrews AFB, and to be as unobtrusive as possible (including not using the lights on his helo), to await the arrival of Air Force One, and to take President Kennedy’s body to Bethesda Naval Hospital. He was ordered to use a VIP helicopter, and was told that others would load the body onto his helicopter. His call sign for this mission was to be “Nighthawk One.” He was told to stay out of public view; to taxi up to the tail of Air Force One after it had landed; and to stay out of the lights as much as possible.
The pilot of “Nighthawk One” landed on the west taxiway at Andrews just prior to sunset (he remembered the orange sky) and parked his helicopter behind some trees near the passenger terminal. He kept the engines running, but turned the rotors off. As soon as he saw Air Force One land, he spun his rotors up again.
He then taxied out to Air Force One in the darkness, and stopped about 100 feet from AF1 on the right rear side of SAM 26000—on the starboard aft quarter of the airplane. He could see “Army 1” (the helicopter LBJ used that night to go to the White House) parked in the lighted area of the tarmac “where the action was,” and noted that the entire port side of Air Force One was illuminated by the television lights. He saw a large casket coming down on the scissors lift from the port aft door, then saw the casket loaded into the Navy ambulance and saw Jackie Kennedy get into the ambulance. At this point he realized that either the plans had changed since he was given his mission, or he had merely been a backup, and no one had told him about the ambulance. As soon as he saw the Dallas casket put into the Navy ambulance, he taxied away into the darkness, requested clearance, and flew his helicopter to Quantico, Virginia.
Undoubtedly, “Nighthawk One’s” mission had been requested by Gerald Behn at “Crown,” the one official who had insisted throughout the Air Force One conversations on the Clifton tapes that JFK’s autopsy be conducted at Bethesda, and that his body be moved by helicopter.
The obvious questions, in view of “Nighthawk One’s” departure without President Kennedy’s body onboard, are: (1) Who changed the plan? How did this happen? and (2) How did JFK’s body get to Bethesda Naval Hospital, if “Nighthawk One” did not take it there?
Orders were given by “Crown” to separate Jacqueline Kennedy from the Dallas casket, and to send the casket to Bethesda by helicopter:

Edited August 14, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Ron Ecker]

I remember Cronkite's sage conclusion on some CBS program about the assassination that Oswald was able to make those difficult shots because he was shooting at the president of the United States.

But the thing is, Ron -- the shots were not that "difficult".

Yeah, I heard a guy (Mark Fuhrman?) at the TSBD sniper's nest on TV say that the shots were easy, and Gary Mack nodded in agreement.

[Brian Schmidt]

I recall on the bonus DVD that comes along with the film JFK, there were clips of Walter Cronkite in which he says he dismisses a conspiracy, saying it was too Machiavellian for American, but later contradicts this and leaves the possibility open that more than just Oswald was involved.

Cronkite was the kind of journalist that hung out at Bohemian Grove (he was even the voice of the owl for years). I don't mean this as believing in some grand conspiracy involving everyone in the media, but my point is that he was very much an establishment journalist who stuck to mainstream ideas.

[David Von Pein]

The obvious questions, in view of “Nighthawk One’s” departure without President Kennedy’s body onboard, are: (1) Who changed the plan? How did this happen? and (2) How did JFK’s body get to Bethesda Naval Hospital, if “Nighthawk One” did not take it there?

The original plan was, indeed, to transport JFK's casket to Bethesda via helicopter, as we can hear on the Air Force One tapes (below). But the plan was changed prior to AF1 landing at Andrews, due (no doubt) to the fact that somebody realized the difficulty there would be if they tried to jam JFK's very heavy and cumbersome casket onto a helicopter. So an ambulance/hearse was used instead.

There's certainly nothing conspiratorial or sinister about that change in plans whatsoever. In fact, it was a very sensible and prudent change that almost certainly had to be made.

And the answer to the #2 question above is quite simple --- President Kennedy's body got to Bethesda by way of the gray Navy ambulance. Millions of people watching television saw the casket being placed into that ambulance. (Why was that second question even asked?) ~shrug~

Below are excerpts from the AF1 radio transmissions concerning the "chopper" and the later realization by members of the Kennedy party aboard Air Force One that ground transportation would be needed to replace the chopper:

Air Force One Radio Excerpts (November 22, 1963)

More....

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2011/12/aircraft-radio-transmissions-11-22-63.html

Edited August 13, 2015 by David Von Pein

[David G. Healy]

I remember Cronkite's sage conclusion on some CBS program about the assassination that Oswald was able to make those difficult shots because he was shooting at the president of the United States.

But the thing is, Ron -- the shots were not that "difficult".

...

You haven't a bloody clue, Pal!

[Steven Gaal]

The obvious questions, in view of “Nighthawk One’s” departure without President Kennedy’s body onboard, are: (1) Who changed the plan? How did this happen? and (2) How did JFK’s body get to Bethesda Naval Hospital, if “Nighthawk One” did not take it there?

The original plan was, indeed, to transport JFK's casket to Bethesda via helicopter, as we can hear on the Air Force One tapes (below). But the plan was changed prior to AF1 landing at Andrews, due (no doubt) to the fact that somebody realized the difficulty there would be if they tried to jam JFK's very heavy and cumbersome casket onto a helicopter. So an ambulance/hearse was used instead.

There's certainly nothing conspiratorial or sinister about that change in plans whatsoever. In fact, it was a very sensible and prudent change that almost certainly had to be made.

And the answer to the #2 question above is quite simple --- President Kennedy's body got to Bethesda by way of the gray Navy ambulance. Millions of people watching television saw the casket being placed into that ambulance. (Why was that second question even asked?) ~shrug~

Below are excerpts from the AF1 radio transmissions concerning the "chopper" and the later realization by members of the Kennedy party aboard Air Force One that ground transportation would be needed to replace the chopper:

Air Force One Radio Excerpts (November 22, 1963)

More....

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2011/12/aircraft-radio-transmissions-11-22-63.html

DVP facts are here for you to see. you eems not to want them.,gaal

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http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-af1-tapes-and-subsequent-events-at-andrews-afb-on-november-22-1963-what-was-supposed-to-happen-vs-what-did-happen/

The AF1 tapes reveal unambiguously that Gerald Behn in the White House situation room wanted to separate Mrs. Kennedy (hereafter referred to by her initials, JBK) and all other VIP passengers who were not Secret Service agents from the Dallas casket. Although JFK’s Military Aide, General Ted Clifton (code name “Watchman”), initially insisted on an autopsy at Walter Reed Hospital and the use of a mortuary-type ambulance for transportation, he eventually fell into line with “Crown’s” demands and then actively supported Behn’s orders. Here are some telling quotes from the Clifton tapes:

Digest: Walter Reed ambulance for body that will go to Walter Reed, over?

Duplex: Say again, say again.

Digest (Kellerman): …[we need] an ambulance from Walter Reed to transport body, over?

Duplex (Behn): Arrangements have been made for a helicopter for the Bethesda Naval Medical Center, over.

Digest: Standby, jerry—ah, I’ll have to get Burkley here.

A short time later Behn clarified his intentions:

Duplex: The, everybody aboard Air Force One, everybody aboard Air Force One, with the exception of the body, will be choppered into the South Grounds [of the White House]. The body will be choppered to the Navy Medical Center at Bethesda, over.

Burkley: The body will be choppered or will go by ambulance to the Navy Medical Center?

Duplex: Will be choppered, will be choppered.

Somewhat later, General Clifton on AF1 (apparently unaware that the Secret Service is running the show in Washington) “reads the riot act” to General Heaton, the Surgeon General of the Army:

Clifton: [material appears to be missing here from both the LBJ Library and Clifton version of the AF1 tapes — there is no “point one” on the tape “…two: we do not want a helicopter for Bethesda Naval Medical Center. We do want a [sic] ambulance and a ground return from Andrews to Walter Reed, and we want the regular, ah, post mortem that has to be done by law, under guard, performed at Walter Reed. Is that clear, over?

Heaton: That is clear, General Clifton. You want an ambulance, and another, ah, limousine, at Andrews, and you want the, ah, regular post mortem by law done at Walter Reed.

Clifton: That is correct.

These instructions, given to the Army Surgeon General (who was at Walter Reed, and not at “Crown”), were undoubtedly why the Gawler’s Hearse was originally ordered to go to Andrews AFB by Colonel Miller of the Army’s Military District of Washington. This conversation, apparently, also stimulated Dr. Dick Davis, the acting Head of Neurosurgery at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (the AFIP was co-located with Walter Reed in Washington D.C.), to assemble a team and set up to perform a craniotomy (the surgical skull cap removal performed at autopsies) at Walter Reed. He told me, when I interviewed him in 1997 while on the ARRB staff, that his team was set up and ready to go, but President Kennedy’s body never arrived at Walter Reed.

Then, after the “black Cadillac” conversations overheard at Crown on the Clifton tapes, General Clifton (who now began using his code name, “Watchman”) begins to defer to Behn’s plans for a Bethesda autopsy:

Watchman: Ah, Duplex, this is Watchman. I understand that [you] have arranged [fadeout] … [mor]tuary-type of ambulance [garbled] take President Kennedy to Bethesda. Is this correct, over?

Duplex: Watchman, ah, there’s been [sic] arranged to helicopter, helicopter, the body to Bethesda, over.

After some discussion about whether it is safe to use a helicopter, this ensued:

Watchman: This is Watchman. Ah, don’t take a chance on that. Also, have a mortuary-type ambulance stand by in case the helicopter doesn’t work.

Duplex: That’s affirmative [garbled] That’s affirmative, I received.

Watchman: Now, some other instructions. Listen carefully. Ah, we need a ramp, a normal ramp put at, put at the front of the aircraft, on the right-hand side, just behind the pilot’s cabin, in the galley. We are going to take the First Lady off by that route, over. Do you understand?

Duplex: I receive, affirmative.

Clifton then asked for a large forklift for the casket at the port side rear door, and a normal ramp for passengers at the port forward door. He then summarized:

Watchman: Duplex, this is Watchman, I say again: at the right front, a ramp for Mrs. Ken[nedy]; at the left rear, if possible, a forklift for the casket; and on the left front, near the pilot, [a] normal ramp, [a] normal press arrangement [garbled], over?

Clearly, at this point General Clifton was implementing Jerry Behn’s stated intention to separate JBK from the Dallas casket. Behn had earlier said all passengers were to be choppered to the South Grounds of the White House; and now Ted Clifton was attempting to ensure that this would happen by arranging for her to exit the aircraft secretly, in the darkness, using the forward starboard galley door — a different door than was going to be used for the Dallas casket.

The question is, WHY? I have inferred that among the many conversations that must have been deleted from the AF1 tapes, were undoubtedly conversations between Kellerman and Behn about the body switch — about the removal of JFK’s body from the bronze Dallas casket prior to takeoff, as a “security measure” to keep it out of the hands of the Dallas County Medical Examiner, Earl Rose. This is the context in which the “black Cadillac” discussions overheard at “Crown,” and the blatant attempts by Behn and Clifton to separate JBK from the Dallas casket, best make sense.

Now, just because “Nighthawk One” took off from Andrews AFB without JFK’s body onboard, that does not mean that there weren’t other helicopters available. Please read below this crucial exchange between Kellerman (Digest) and Behn (Duplex), which occurred between time 3:52 and time 6:05 on side 2 of the Clifton tapes (after the Clifton plan to remove JBK from the aircraft in secret was discussed):

Duplex: [after many communications problems]…Go ahead Digest, this is Duplex.

Digest: Again, I repeat, three helicopters [to] transport people to the White House lawn, OK?

Duplex: That is affirmative.

Digest: Roger, OK, White House 102 and 405-X for transportation to, ah, Navy Hospital, OK?

Duplex: That is affirmative.

This is significant. Kellerman is confirming that three helicopters at Andrews were assigned to take AF1’s passengers (largely, the Kennedy entourage, including JBK) to the White House, and that two additional helicopters were assigned to transport JFK’s body to Bethesda. These are designated by Kellerman as White House assets, and are therefore not HMX “hot team” assets. Getting the body of JFK to Bethesda was so important that redundancy was laid in: both “Nighthawk One” had been arranged to perform that function, as well as two other assets controlled by the Secret Service (White House 102 and 405-X). Presumably, one of these two White House assets would be used to take the heavy, ceremonial bronze Dallas casket to Bethesda — an event which was highly likely (indeed, almost certain) to be televised on live TV. The second helicopter mentioned by Kellerman would have been needed to surreptitiously transport the actual body of JFK from the luggage compartment on AF1 where it had been hidden during the flight, to Bethesda, where it could have been reunited with the bronze Dallas casket. If this had taken place as planned — a two helicopter rendezvous on the grounds of Bethesda in the darkness — JFK’s body could have been placed back into the Dallas casket and no one at the morgue would have known otherwise. Once the very public loading of the Dallas casket onto helo # 1 had taken place, the klieg lights would have been turned off, and the Andrews TV coverage would have ceased. (This is exactly what happened once LBJ’s helo, “Army 1,” departed. The TV coverage abruptly ended.) Then, in the ensuing darkness, it would have been easy to offload JFK’s body from its hiding place in an AF1 luggage compartment and place it on helo # 2.

The most significant quote on the Clifton tapes then takes place almost immediately after Kellerman tells Behn about the two helicopters to be used for the Navy Hospital.

Duplex: Digest, this is Duplex. You accompany the body aboard the helicopter.

Digest: Roger…

After all that had gone before in the AF1 conversations, the reader will understand that this is the proof that the light gray Navy Pontiac ambulance was never intended to take JFK’s Dallas casket to Bethesda. In fact, William Manchester makes clear, in two places in his book The Death of a President, that this was a cardiac ambulance (not a hearse), and that it was sent to Andrews by Captain Canada, the commanding officer of the treatment hospital at Bethesda, in case LBJ had experienced any heart trouble. [Rear Admiral Galloway commanded the entire complex; Captain Stover was the C.O. of the medical school at Bethesda; and Captain Canada was the C.O. of the treatment hospital.]

On page 381, Manchester writes:

Captain R.O. Canada, Jr., Bethesda’s commanding officer, wasn’t informed of the role his hospital would play. And Godfrey McHugh’s tart order for an ambulance had been ignored. Captain Canada did send one to Andrews, but that was sheer chance. Because Lyndon Johnson had served in the Navy, he had been Canada’s patient after his massive heart attack on July 2, 1955; the ambulance was dispatched against the possibility that the new President might be stricken again during the flight.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, on impulse, changes the Secret Service/Military plan to separate her from the Dallas casket:

We know from Manchester’s book that Robert F. Kennedy, the slain President’s brother and the U.S. Attorney General, was the first person to board AF1 after touchdown. In fact, he appears to have done so in the darkness, just when the bright television klieg lights were briefly switched off as the aircraft approached its designated parking spot. Air Force One had touched down at 6:00 PM local time, and had been taxiing toward its normal waiting area for about three minutes. Manchester writes on page 387:

The crowd waiting by the chain fence had realized that arrival was imminent because they heard the whining jets. They couldn’t see its silhouette, however; the klieg lights blinded them. At 6:03 PM these were abruptly cut off. The reason was commonplace. The pilot had to see his way… Closer and closer the huge ghost crawled until Swindal [the pilot], looking down, could identify two of the waiting men. Robert McNamara was facing him, looking peculiarly tall. Robert Kennedy had just left the sanctuary of his [pickup] truck [where he had secreted himself] and was posed in a tense half-crouch, ready to spring aboard. Swindal paused momentarily for the croucher. [Did AF1 actually pause momentarily in the darkness to let RFK onboard before any others? The meaning of Manchester’s writing here is unclear.] The eyes of the crowd were on the rear hatch, the President’s. A ramp had been readied for the front entrance, and the Attorney General vaulted on it, unseen; he was pumping up the steps while it was still being rolled into place … the aircraft glided forward once again and parked.” The time “on the blocks” was reported by AF1 as 6:04 PM.

RFK raced to the rear of the aircraft to be with JBK. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy had already displayed a gritty, stubborn frame of mind during the flight back. On page 348, Manchester writes that when Rear Admiral Burkley, JFK’s Military Physician, asked her if she wanted to change her blood-spattered pink Chanel suit:

“No,” she whispered fiercely. “Let them see what they’ve done.”

A similar exchange took place with Malcolm Kilduff, the acting Press Secretary for JFK’s trip to Texas. Manchester, who did not have access to the AF1 tapes, and therefore did not understand the true intent of taking JBK out the forward starboard door, continued on page 348:

The last man to realize that she really meant it was Kilduff. He thought long about how they could offload the coffin at Andrews without pictures being taken. His solution was to open the galley door on the starboard side, opposite the usual exit. That way the great mass of the fuselage would mask both the coffin and the widow; photographers and television cameramen would see nothing. He proposed the plan. She vetoed it. “We’ll go out the regular way [using the Presidential exit on the port aft side of the aircraft],” she said. “I want them to see what they have done.”

Ask yourself what was more likely: was General Clifton taking orders from an assistant Press Secretary, or was the assistant Press Secretary taking orders from the Commander-in-Chief’s Military Aide? It seems obvious to me that Clifton tried to use Kilduff to get Jackie to leave the aircraft in the darkness, via the secret exit ramp previously arranged by Clifton, on the radio circuit to “Crown.” And it was naive for Manchester to fall for this specious after-the-fact explanation for a purported plan to remove both the casket and Jackie Kennedy from the forward starboard galley door, since there was no forklift at the forward starboard galley door to take the casket off. The forklift was at the Presidential door, on the aft port side. Air Force One itself (Clifton) had initiated that arrangement.

On page 390, Manchester writes:

Bob Kennedy explained the transportation choices to his sister-in-law. “There’s a helicopter here to take you to the White House. Don’t you want to do that?”

“No, no, I just want to go to Bethesda.” She saw the gray ambulance, assumed it was the one she had requested, and said, “We’ll go in that.”

And thus, were all the devious plans of the coup plotters to separate the widow (and all other witnesses) from the Dallas casket torn asunder, and rendered moot. In this instant, while looking out the Presidential exit door at the left rear of the aircraft, the determination of President Kennedy’s widow to remain with her husband — she had no idea the Dallas casket was empty, and therefore equated staying with the casket to staying with JFK’s body — threw a giant monkey-wrench into the plans of the Secret Service to surreptitiously reunite his body with the Dallas casket. The failure of this plan led directly to the absurd “French Farce” of the three casket entries discussed earlier, and through this discovery of the body’s broken chain-of-custody — by investigating what it meant — we have uncovered the clandestine post-mortem surgery that was performed on JFK’s body, at Bethesda Naval Hospital, to remove all evidence of frontal shots from his cadaver before the autopsy officially began. No coup plotter in his right mind would have planned the three Bethesda casket entries that actually occurred that night, for the different entries left undeniable evidence of a serious break in the body’s chain-of-custody, and of “missing time” prior to the beginning of the autopsy at 8:00 PM. The investigation of what transpired during that “missing time” (between 6:35 PM and 8:00 PM), and of what the three casket entries implied, has led to a true understanding of why the Parkland Hospital wound observations and the Bethesda Naval Hospital wound observations are so markedly different. (See Chapter 13 of Inside the ARRB, pages 998-1013.)

Manchester’s confirmation that RFK and JBK, with an ad hoc decision, commandeered a cardiac ambulance sent to provide aid to LBJ (and that that vehicle was not the intended mode of transportation for the body) is found on page 391 of The Death of a President, where he writes: “Beside the driver, gaping, were the heart specialist and nurse who had been sent to attend Lyndon Johnson. At Roy Kellerman’s request all three slid out wordlessly and Greer, Kellerman, Landis, and Burkley scrambled in, Burkley on Landis’ lap. The Attorney General entered the back, sitting opposite his sister-in-law; Godfrey perched beside her.”

This is the precise moment when the pilot of “Nighthawk One” took off, without the Dallas Casket, and flew to Quantico to put his bird to bed. Kellerman and Greer had no choice but to modify their plan immediately, and to stay with the Dallas casket, which Kellerman surely knew was empty. (He was in charge of all security for the Dallas trip, and as the reader will recall, blurted out a revealing oral utterance on the radio to Gerald Behn prior to takeoff from Love Field, about something happening with “the, ah, body.”) As soon as the AF1 personnel failed to separate Jackie Kennedy from the Dallas casket, Kellerman’s main task changed from “going with the body on the helicopter” to preventing anyone from opening it while it was still empty. It was for this reason that he stayed with JBK, RFK, and the empty Dallas casket.

Was there enough time to fly JFK’s body to Bethesda to support a 6:35 PM arrival at the morgue loading dock? Do the facts fit the hypothesis?

The answer is YES.

I closely studied the events on the ground at Andrews by watching my DVD of the A&E network’s rebroadcast of the NBC live TV coverage on November 22, 1963, called “As It Happened.”

Using that broadcast and a stopwatch; and the AF1 tapes; and the Chuck Holmes logbook of Andrews AFB activity on 11/22/63; and Manchester’s book, I was able to construct the following timeline:

6:00 PM AF1 Touchdown. [From the AF1 tapes and the Chuck Holmes Andrews AFB logbook]

6:04 PM: AF1 “on the blocks.” [From the AF1 tapes]

6:14 PM: LBJ makes brief televised remarks before microphones. [From the DVD of TV coverage, and Manchester’s book] The Navy ambulance has already departed with the Dallas casket, with RFK and JBK onboard.

6:20 PM: LBJ’s helo, “Army 1,” takes off and the television lights are turned off and the coverage abruptly ends. [From the DVD of TV coverage]

6:26 PM: LBJ and “Army 1” arrives at the South Lawn of the White House [from Manchester’s book]

6:30 PM: Air Force Two (more correctly, SAM 86970, since there was no Vice President onboard) lands at Andrews. It would have taxied for three to four minutes before parking, based on the time required for AF1 to taxi to its resting spot. [from the Chuck Holmes special Andrews logbook for 11/22/63]

The time required for a helicopter flight from Andrews to the White House (6:20 to 6:26 PM) was just 6 minutes, and you can be sure that the pilot of “Army 1” was being very careful that night, and was not trying to set any speed records.

In order for JFK’s body to show up at the Bethesda morgue loading dock at 6:35 PM (per the seminal Boyajian report) I stipulate that it would have had to arrive by helicopter on the grounds of Bethesda five minutes prior to that, by 6:30 PM.

Was there enough time to fly JFK’s body from Air Force One’s parking spot at Andrews to the grounds of Bethesda, and arrive by 6:30 PM? YES. If JFK’s body (wrapped in the two sheets in which it left Parkland) had been loaded onto a helicopter by 6:23 PM — three minutes after LBJ’s helo departed and the TV broadcast was discontinued—it would have had seven minutes to get to Bethesda Naval Hospital. If JFK’s body had been put on a helicopter at 6:21 instead of 6:23, then nine minutes would have been available for the flight to Bethesda. Washington D.C. is a small town, not very large in land area, and Bethesda is immediately northwest of the city limits, not that far from the White House.

My estimated “necessary” arrival time for the helicopter surreptitiously transporting JFK’s body to the Bethesda Naval Hospital complex Officer’s Club parking lot — 6:30 PM — is indirectly corroborated by an entry in an Army log from MDW’s funeral operations center. In a footnote on page 689 of Best Evidence (cloth edition), Lifton wrote that the log indicates that at 5:30 PM word was passed that Kennedy’s body was going to Bethesda. A log entry then notes that one Army official notified Admiral Galloway “advising them to provide a security cordon around the heliport at the Bethesda Naval Center, expecting arrival of the remains at approximately 1830 hours [6:30 PM].” This confirms my own estimate of the possible arrival time of the surreptitious flight with the body from Andrews calculated above, and proves my own calculations of the feasibility of getting there on time (to support a 6:35 PM offload at the morgue loading dock) were “spot on.”

Is there evidence of a helicopter landing on the Bethesda grounds near the morgue?

The answer is YES. On page 35 of William Law’s 2005 book In the Eye of History, from his interview of Paul K. O’Connor (a Navy corpsman who assisted the Navy pathologists with the autopsy on JFK), he quotes O’Connor as follows:

Right after we heard the helicopters come over, I distinctly heard one land in the back of the hospital, which was the Officer’s Club parking lot. There was a big parking lot. I heard one helicopter land there. I heard another helicopter land at the north side of the hospital where there was a normal helicopter-landing pad. Several minutes later, I can’t give you a definite time — maybe five minutes — the back of the morgue opened up and a crew of hospital corpsmen and a higher ranking corpsman brought in a plain, pinkish-gray, what I call a shipping casket. It was not ornate. It was not damaged…. They brought it up front where we were. At that time we opened up the coffin. Inside was the body bag.

Dennis David had first told his story about delivering a plain gray metal casket (from a black Cadillac) to a small town midwestern newspaper in May of 1975. Paul O’Connor corroborated this story about a “pinkish gray” casket to the HSCA staff in 1977, and also told the HSCA staff that the President’s body had been removed nude, from inside a zippered body bag, with a sheet wrapped only around the head. (JFK did not leave Parkland Hospital in a body bag; and his body, when it departed Parkland, was not nude — it was wrapped in a sheet. His head was wrapped in a separate sheet, also.) A third witness to the shipping casket was Navy corpsman Floyd Riebe, who assisted the official photographer at the autopsy that night; he has recalled that the crude shipping casket had ugly turnbuckles on it to seal the lid, and had no prominent side rails for the pallbearers, like the bronze Dallas casket.

Paul O’Connor was interviewed extensively by David Lifton on film in 1980 for his short documentary Best Evidence, and subsequently again by Lifton, a few years later, on video for a TV journalism news show. He was also interviewed extensively by Nigel Turner for his multi-part documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. Although he is now deceased, the reader has ample opportunities to assess Paul O’Connor’s credibility. I find him very credible. His story about the shipping casket never wavered, and his account of a group of Navy corpsmen bringing in the shipping casket dovetails perfectly with Dennis David’s account. His memory of one helicopter landing on the north side of the Bethesda Hospital, at the helipad, concurs with Manchester, who records in his book that the H-21 helicopter carrying the Joint Service Casket Team from Andrews landed at that site, out in front of the main building. His account of a second helo landing at the Officer’s Club parking lot, behind the morgue, is indirectly corroborated by Dennis David. David told Lifton in 1979 that he believed the black Cadillac ambulance (the Hearse) that delivered the shipping casket to the morgue loading dock had come in through “the back gate.” When Lifton asked David to explain why he said that, he explained that the road which brought the black Cadillac to the morgue loading dock wound its way from the back gate, past the Officer’s Club, to the morgue entrance. (See page 573 of Best Evidence, cloth edition.) So the route used by the black Cadillac ambulance met by Dennis David passed directly by the Officer’s Club parking lot, where O’Connor was certain a helicopter had landed, only about five minutes before the shipping casket was delivered to the morgue where O’Connor worked that night, by a working party of Navy corpsmen.

Everything fits.

Including the Hearse. Dennis David has consistently recalled that the two people in the front of the black Cadillac were wearing white operating room smocks, and that it was definitely not a military vehicle. It had to have been the Gawler’s funeral home Hearse that was originally assigned to go to Andrews AFB, but which was recalled by Colonel Miller “at the last minute.” Apparently it was sent to Bethesda instead. Tom Robinson, who in 1963 was a twenty-year-old Gawler’s embalming assistant (whose specialty was applying restorative art to cadavers to prepare them for open-casket funerals), said he was present all night long inside the morgue and had a “50-yardline seat” in the gallery. He witnessed things that were NOT WITNESSED by the large audience to the official autopsy that began at 8:00 PM. [Two examples were: (1) him witnessing JFK’s skull sawed open to remove the brain — something Humes did not have to do before his large audience at 8:00 PM; and (2) he saw about ten metal fragments removed from JFK’s cranium and placed in a vial—this contradicts the official account that there were only two small metal fragments removed from the cranium.] In order to see these events, Robinson must have arrived early, with the body. Therefore, I conclude that he was one of the occupants of the black Cadillac’s front seat (wearing a white smock as one would expect an embalmer to wear), and that the black Cadillac met by Dennis David and his working party at 6:35 PM was the Gawler’s Hearse.

One big loose end

On page 690 of Best Evidence (cloth edition), David Lifton writes that in her handwritten notes, recorded two minutes prior to Air Force One’s touchdown at 6:00 PM, LBJ’s secretary, Marie Fehmer, recorded the following entry: “5:58 Arr Andrews — Body w/Mrs. K to Walter Reed.”

What is of extreme interest to me is that she made this entry just prior to landing, not one hour or more earlier, when the selection of the autopsy site was apparently undecided, and in fact was a subject of controversy between AF1 and “Crown.”

Furthermore, author Craig Roberts, in his book Kill Zone, quoted an official Andrews AFB history that stated JFK’s autopsy had been preformed at Walter Reed Hospital after the body’s arrival at Andrews AFB.

Of course we certainly know today that JFK’s autopsy was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and that his body first arrived there at the morgue loading dock at 6:35 PM (per Dennis David and the Boyajian report). We also know that while there was sufficient time to get JFK’s body to Bethesda by 6:30 PM, using a helicopter, there was no time to spare, either — no time for a diversion.

But in view of all the early talk on AF1 about an autopsy at Walter Reed (begun by Roy Kellerman, and continued for a time by both Dr. Burkley and General Clifton), and in view of the fact that Dr. Dick Davis (the acting head of Neuropathology at AFIP) was set up at Walter Reed and ready to perform a craniotomy on JFK’s cranium, I have to wonder whether at some point that day, there might have been a plan to alter and sanitize JFK’s head wounds surreptitiously at Walter Reed, and then take the altered body to Bethesda, where the damage seen at Bethesda would then be [falsely] represented as “damage done by the assassin’s bullet?”

We might never know that answer to this question. All we know today is that the timeline shows that as events actually unfolded, there was no diversion enroute Bethesda from Andrews — in fact, there was “just enough time” to land at the Officer’s Club parking lot at about 6:30 PM and to get the body to the morgue in the black Cadillac (the Gawler’s Hearse) by 6:35 PM.

Another possibility is proved impossible

Various researchers, at one time or another, have speculated that JFK’s body might really have come back to Washington on Air Force Two. This can now be definitively ruled out, because of the firm time of arrival of JFK’s body provided by the Boyajian report, dated November 26, 1963. Sergeant Boyajian wrote that the casket arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 1835 hours, which equates to 6:35 PM, civilian time. (He was surely talking about the President’s body; no other reasonable interpretation is possible. And of course Dr. Boswell, who was present on the loading dock when the shipping casket arrived, confirmed to Dennis David later that night, that it had indeed been President Kennedy in the shipping casket.) We know from a transmission on the new Clifton tapes that SAM 86970 (otherwise known as AF2) took off from Dallas at 3:15 PM CST (thus confirming the takeoff time listed in the reports of two Secret Service agents), and we know from the Chuck Holmes logbook provided to the ARRB (the special operations log for 11/22/63 made by the 1254^th ATW [Air Transport Wing] Command Post), that SAM 86970 landed at precisely 1830 hours, or 6:30 PM civilian time.

Presumably, the taxi time for AF2 to get to its designated spot on the Andrews tarmac would be similar or identical to that for AF1 — namely, three or four minutes. This would have AF2 rolling to a complete stop and “on the blocks” at about 6:33 PM at the earliest. Secret Service agent Emory Roberts wrote in his after action report that the landing time for AF2 was 6:35 PM — this was probably the actual time “on the blocks.” This allows insufficient time for a helicopter trip from Andrews AFB to Bethesda Naval Hospital. And that’s an understatement; in fact, the landing time recorded by Emory Roberts allows no time at all for a trip from Andrews AFB to Bethesda Naval Hospital. The numbers don’t lie.

So, not only did the pilot and flight engineer on AF2 deny to David Lifton that they ever had JFK’s body (or any other body) onboard their aircraft (as reported in the cloth edition of Best Evidence on page 679), but more importantly, the facts on the ground (the landing time of 86970 — 6:30 PM), combined with the known time for a helicopter flight from Andrews to Bethesda (7 to 9 minutes), make it impossible for Air Force Two (86970) to have delivered JFK’s body to Andrews in time for it to arrive at the Bethesda morgue loading dock at 6:35 PM.

Consider these additional facts. The actual flight time for AF1 from Love Field to Andrews was 2 hours and 13 minutes. The actual flight time for AF2 from Love Field to Andrews was 2 hours and 15 minutes. The “Great Circle Mapper” software which I consulted when writing my book revealed that, at the cruising speed of 535 mph for the military version of the Boeing 707 aircraft reported by William Manchester (who after all, did interview the pilot of AF1), the trip from Love Field to Andrews should have taken 2 hours and 14 minutes. This is only one minute off of the actual flight times for AF1 and AF2! Everything fits, and is consistent with the arrival time for SAM 86970 in the Chuck Holmes logbook—6:30 PM—being accurate. (See pages 1790-1792 of Inside the ARRB for a thorough discussion of the capabilities of the two aircraft.) Therefore, there is every reason to have full confidence in the Chuck Holmes logbook.

In the world of great uncertainty that characterizes much of the JFK assassination evidence, it is comforting and satisfying to be able to rule out one distracting possibility, for this allows us to focus with confidence on what really happened, instead of wasting our time on idle and unfounded speculation.

Summation

This essay, I believe, provides a good lesson in historiography. When one studies a problem, one needs to use as many sources of evidence as are available, and take a holistic approach to the problem; that is, to study it with an open mind, and without making any assumptions or preconceptions, while keeping the “big picture” in mind at all times. In this case the problem was defined by this series of questions: “What can the Air Force One tapes tell us about the autopsy planning while AF1 was enroute Washington, D.C. from Dallas? Was there anything amiss? Did the plans evolve? Was the final plan executed as planned? If not, why not?”

We now know that there was a vehement disagreement within the Federal bureaucracy over whether the autopsy would be at the U.S. Army’s Walter Reed Hospital, or the Navy’s Bethesda National Naval Medical Center. The Secret Service won the argument. We know that the AF1 personnel (especially General Clifton) wanted initially to use a mortuary-type ambulance to move the body, whereas the Secret Service at the White House Situation Room wanted to use a helicopter. The Secret Service won the argument: while the empty Dallas casket was moved in a light gray Navy cardiac ambulance, the actual body of JFK was transported to the grounds of Bethesda Naval Hospital in a White House VIP helicopter. We now know that this helicopter from Andrews (with unnamed escorts onboard — presumably Secret Service agents) arrived at about 6:30 PM in the Officer’s Club parking lot, and that the body of the assassinated Commander-in-Chief was then encased inside a body bag, and that the body bag was then placed inside a plain, unadorned, lightweight aluminum shipping casket, and taken to the morgue loading dock, where it arrived at 6:35 PM and was offloaded by HM1 Dennis David’s working party. The Hearse (the black Cadillac mortuary ambulance) and the shipping casket were undoubtedly provided by the Gawler’s Funeral Home. [something not mentioned above was how “radioactive” any and all questions about the President’s casket, or the time of his arrival at Bethesda, seemed to Joseph Hagan of Gawler’s when he was interviewed by the ARRB in 1996. He would not speak to us voluntarily without a subpoena, and so he received one. He was evasive and non-credible about all questions related to the Gawler’s hearse, his arrival time that night at Bethesda, and the types of caskets he saw at the morgue. However, he did verify that it was his handwriting on the Gawler’s business document called the “First Call Sheet,” in which he wrote the following words: “Body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH at Bethesda.”]

We now know, from the new evidence revealed in Inside the ARRB, that two witnesses, Tom Robinson of Gawler’s funeral home, and Navy enlisted x-ray technologist Ed Reed, both witnessed the illicit, clandestine, post-mortem surgery to President Kennedy’s cranium — surgery whose goal was to “sanitize the crime scene” by removing all evidence of frontal shots from the body — well before the official autopsy began at 8:00 PM. We now know that the series of skull x-rays and photographs taken of President Kennedy’s cranium prior to 8:00 PM (when the autopsy began) represent damage caused by this post-mortem surgery, not by any assassin’s bullet. Based on what we know about the autopsy report today, it would not be admitted in evidence at a trial (since the first two written versions, as well as original autopsy notes, have been destroyed), and each individual autopsy photograph and skull x-ray would be subjected to significant challenges before they could be admitted into evidence. The three surviving skull x-rays would not be admitted into evidence at any trial today, for we now know (thanks to the pioneering work of Dr. David Mantik, MD, PhD) that the three skull x-rays in the Archives are not originals, but are altered copy films. We know today that the brain photographs in the National Archives that reside with the JFK autopsy photographs cannot be photographs of President Kennedy’s brain: they have been disowned by the official photographer, John Stringer (because they are recorded on the wrong types of film), and by one of the FBI agents present at the autopsy, Francis O’Neill (because there is too much mass present, and in the wrong locations). Furthermore, the large amount of mass present in these brain photos is grossly inconsistent not only with the skull x-rays (which show much brain tissue missing in the forebrain, and in the right cerebral hemisphere), but also with the amount of missing mass noted at Parkland Hospital (at least one third of the brain was observed to be missing by Dr. McClelland), where President Kennedy received emergency treatment in an attempt to save his life.

For all these reasons, it is important to study the Air Force One tapes, and how (and when) President Kennedy’s body really arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital — for this is when the medical cover-up began: on the trip back to Washington onboard Air Force One, and on the ground at Andrews AFB.

As libertarian scholar and activist Jacob Hornberger has recently pointed out, there are two general types of people that one observes when studying how Americans react to the JFK assassination evidence. One category is those who have open and inquiring and even critical minds — people who demand logical and rational answers when they encounter things in the evidence, and in the “official explanation,” that do not make sense. Another category of people one encounters are what he calls deferentials, those who tend to blindly defer to authority when they encounter things that don’t make sense. These are the people who want simplistic explanations to mysteries and conflicting evidence, so that they can sleep well at night. These are the people who don’t want to believe that a coup happened in America in 1963, or that there was a massive cover-up by the U.S. government of the medical and forensic evidence in JFK’s assassination. These deferentials include the minority of the U.S. population who still profess to believe in the Warren Report. It is to the first category of people — at least 80 per cent of all Americans today — those who are “empiricists,” who follow evidence wherever it leads them, and who have open and inquiring minds, that this essay is dedicated.

Douglas Horne served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board and is the author of Inside the Assassination Records Review Board.

Edited August 14, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[David Von Pein]

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/doug-horne's-silliness-part-1.html

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2013/07/david-von-pein-vs-david-lifton.html

Edited August 14, 2015 by David Von Pein

[Steven Gaal]

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/doug-horne's-silliness-part-1.html

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2013/07/david-von-pein-vs-david-lifton.html

Doug Horne rebuts John McAdams Doug Horne

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⦁ I began writing this opinion piece in response to one specific John McAdams comment in the thread following Peter Voskamp’s interview of Richard Stolley of LIFE magazine, about his involvement with the Zapruder film the weekend of JFK’s assassination.

⦁ The response I was writing evolved and morphed into something bigger as I was composing it. It is really about much more than just the one specific comment I am rebutting; it is about a much bigger issue — namely, the negative tone and apparent intent to disrupt, and ridicule, that John McAdams too often brings to the JFKFACTS site, and to other JFK chat rooms.

⦁ If John McAdams had truly read any of my work on the Zapruder film — such as the 200-page Z film chapter, number 14 in my book “Inside the ARRB;” or my 19,000-word, footnoted research paper on the 2 NPIC events (posted at LewRockwell.com) — he would know that I have completely discredited David Wrone’s book on the Zapruder film, and have done so with great specificity, quoting Wrone’s incorrect conclusions verbatim, and citing exactly why his major conclusions (that the USG had no interest in the film and did not have the capability to alter it) are incorrect, in light of new evidence. David Wrone’s book misrepresented/failed to report properly on the 2 NPIC events, as I reported in my chapter 14, and that obfuscation, I believe, was intentional. Wrone’s book, when it was published, was widely considered the best defense to date, at that time, of the Z film’s authenticity. But it now reads like a “flat earth” document, following Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe. Citing David Wrone’s book at this point in the Z film debate is about as useful as citing the Warren Report when discussing the medical evidence.

No one who has watched Dino Brugioni’s interview in the Shane O’Sullivan piece titled “The Zapruder Film Mystery” has expressed anything but respect for his excellent memory and his integrity, and this includes the moderator on this site, Jefferson Morley. Dino’s memories, when recorded on video in 2011, were 47 years old, and yet were more truthful, and useful, and reliable, than much of the testimony taken by the Warren Commission just months after JFK’s assassination. The best example of this is Dr. James J. Humes, who perjured himself on many occasions before the Warren Commission (and later before the ARRB). Humes’ testimony in 1964 was not “valid” just because it was “fresh.” And Dino Brugioni’s recollections (and those of Homer McMahon of NPIC in 1997) are not “invalid” just because they were not recorded in 1964. Each witnesses’ testimony and recollections must be evaluated independently, within the context of all known evidence and what they have said previously. Every oral historian and jurist knows this.

On those occasions when he discusses my work, McAdams keeps trotting out his favorite old shibboleth about how no one can trust 30+ year old memories; he attempts to use this rather lame, simplistic dismissal — a standard lawyer’s trick used in adversarial proceedings — whenever he cannot counter any of my specific assertions or conclusions by discussing specific evidence, or by discussing the pattern revealed by a large body of facts (and what those facts mean). On the rare occasions when he does discuss facts, he attempts to use a “reductionist” approach — which entails ignoring the “big picture” and selectively picking out one statement among many made by someone else, in an attempt to destroy a larger argument by nitpicking to death, and casting doubt upon, one small item in a large body of evidence. I find this approach to the JFK assassination counterproductive, for in adopting these methods, Mr. McAdams contributes nothing positive to the JFK debate; his sole object seems to be to cast the maximum doubt possible upon any facts contrary to the Warren Commission’s findings, and to debunk the serious work of dedicated JFK researchers, whose sole goal is to determine what really happened in our country in 1963.

But for the sake of this response, let me on this one occasion, counter his tired old argument that we cannot trust 30+ year old memories — which is demonstrably not true (Dennis David and Dino Brugioni are two good examples of “old” recollections that are rock-solid) — by stating that most of the evidence that causes us to mistrust the Warren Commission’s medical conclusions are NOT 30+ year old memories, but rather, are contemporaneous documents created at or near the time of the assassination, to wit:

(1) The Boyajian Report dated 11/26/63, which records the arrival of JFK’s body at the Bethesda morgue 20 minutes prior to the Andrews AFB motorcade;

(2)The Sibert and O’Neill FBI FD-302 report dated 11/26/63, which quotes Dr. Humes’ statement at the autopsy (when describing the condition of JFK’s body) that there had been “surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull.” The significance of this statement is that there was no cranial surgery in Dallas.

(3) The receipt trail for the JFK autopsy report (from both 1965 and from 1967) which proves that the Secret Service TWICE relinquished “original autopsy reports” on JFK to others. The point here is that you cannot give away an “original” twice, if there was only one original. And we know the first draft of the autopsy report was burned by Dr. Humes in his fireplace after it was revised, because this is what Humes testified to in 1964 before Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission. That was not a 30+ year old memory — it was only about 4 months after the assassination. So we can have no confidence today in the extant autopsy report.

(4) National Archives personnel recorded in a written report on 10/31/66 that all of the paragraph nine materials (see the APR ’65 inventory) given to RFK in 1965 (including the brain and an “original autopsy report”) were not returned to the govt by the Kennedy family; and we have a 1969 memo written by Assistant S.S. Director Tom Kelley which records that the group of USG officials he was meeting with discussed the missing autopsy report, and the incendiary nature of that fact, and decided to do nothing about it.

(5) The Joint Casket Bearer Team’s official report written in 1963 lists the time that the honor guard took the Dallas casket into the morgue as “2000 hours,” or 8:00 PM. This contemporaneous document records the final casket entry (of three) that night at the Bethesda morgue; and when married with the Boyajian report (documenting the first casket entry at 18:35 hours, or 6:35 PM) proves that there was a shell game underway at Bethesda Naval Hospital on 11/22/63 with JFK’s body, and that its chain of custody from Dallas to Bethesda was broken — seriously compromised.

(6) The Gawler’s Funeral Home “first call sheet” prepared on 11/22/63 records that JFK’s body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital in a metal shipping casket, a term which had a specific meaning within the funeral trade. A shipping casket is used for the public transportation of corpses, and is not ornamental in any way. (Three Navy men at Bethesda Naval Hospital — Dennis David, Floyd Riebe, and Paul O’Connor — all recalled that the shipping casket was light gray in color, and was very simple and unadorned. It had no siderails, no viewing lid, and Riebe recalled that it sported ugly turnbuckles. Their testimony years later is to be believed because it is consistent with the Gawler’s document, which they never saw.) But JFK’s body did not leave Dallas in a cheap, lightweight gray aluminum shipping casket; rather, it left Dallas in a heavy, dark brown, bronze ceremonial viewing coffin. The break in the chain of custody of JFK’s body already established by the Boyajian report, and the report of the Casket Bearer Team, is further substantiated by this written record created on 11/22/63 by the Gawler’s funeral home embalming team.

(7) The contemporaneous treatment notes and reports of the Parkland treating physicians written on 11/22/63 — they are certainly not 30+ year old memories — all record a large head wound in the rear, or right rear, of President Kennedy’s head. None of them describe any damage to the top of the head or to the right side. Those are NOT simply my interpretations of what they wrote (as McAdams has claimed in an earlier posting), for if one consults a medical anatomy atlas, there is only ONE possible interpretation to what they wrote: JFK had a large defect in the back of his head, devoid of scalp and skull, extruding cerebral AND CEREBELLAR tissue. Those key observations speak to a fatal shot from the front, and dramatically disagree with the later autopsy conclusions (and the controversial autopsy photos of the back of the head). If one reads the treatment notes of the Parkland physicians, you will note a great uniformity and consistency in their descriptions of JFK’s wounds. If error was at play here, there should be a wide range of responses in their notes — but there is not. Dr. Clark stated that day that the treatment of JFK went on for 40 minutes (implying that the time of death was backdated to 1:00 PM after treatment was concluded). So the Dallas doctors and nurses had plenty of time to observe his wounds, both during treatment and after death; and they were all well trained professionals, so when they used words like “occipital” or “occipital-parietal” in their notes, we can have great confidence that they were making reasonably precise descriptions of what they had plenty of time to observe.

I could go on and on, but by now the readers of this thread surely get the point: you cannot dismiss serious evidence, and the conclusions derived from studying the patterns in that evidence, by refusing to discuss the facts, and by resorting to simplistic techniques to attempt to discount “wholesale” everything someone says. That is an intellectually dishonest approach. END

comments

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Preston Newe November 10, 2014 at 4:19 pm

Doug Horne has a lot of global attention on him & his startling analysis at present. Those who haven’t read his books are certainly aware of his video presentations posted online. He’s been able to get his message out globally without the assistance or blessings from the MSM. The closer he brings the truth to the public, the more intense his detractors will try to pull his audience to their side. It’s the old good vs. evil, Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader thing we’ve seen all our lives. Doug needn’t worry; those convinced he’s got it right won’t jump ship.

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Douglas Horne November 11, 2014 at 6:37 am

Preston,

This is exactly how I see it. I wasn’t worth mentioning in McAdams’ book, in which he trashed the independent JFK research community, but suddenly someone has decided that it is important to attack me now, and to do so vigorously. It seems to me to be a sort of “back-and-to-the-left-handed compliment,” if you get my drift. Only people perceived as a threat are attacked; others are ignored.

A parallel to your wonderful analogy above is that I sometimes feel like one of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s LENSMEN, engaged in mortal combat with the evil forces of Boskone. (Readers of the old classics of science fiction will appreciate this analogy.)

Thanks for your appreciation.

[[[[[[[[[[[===========o0o0o0o=============]]]]]]]]]]]

THE EVER POLITE DVP (?) ,gaal

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http://alt.conspiracy.jfk.narkive.com/LBEE0zce/for-david-von-pain

David Von Pein

"Doug Horne was a Professional Hired & Paid by the HSCA. Da Bug is an Ambulance Chasing Lawyer. Not too tough to figure which has credibility." <<<

To you kooks, anybody who has that "ABO" (Anybody But Oswald) bumper

sticker on their car will always have far greater credibility than

anyone else.

A kook named Rossley probably would pick Garrison's and Fetzer's

"credibility" over that of Vince Bugliosi's or Dale K. Myers'.

Right, Mega-Kook?

Edited August 14, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[David Von Pein]

Re: Doug Horne's fantasies......

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

ON DECEMBER 19, 2009, IN THIS AMAZON.COM POST, DOUGLAS P. HORNE SAID:

>>> "Mr. Von Pein, Dr. Humes performed the post-mortem surgery on JFK's head wounds before the autopsy." <<<


DAVID VON PEIN, IN THIS 12/19/09 AMAZON.COM POST, REPLIED:

The above single sentence penned by Douglas P. Horne should be enough
of a reason all by itself, with nothing more added, for all sensible
and reasonable people to disregard Mr. Horne's theories as pure
hogwash and nonsense (not to mention impossible).


DOUG HORNE SAID:

>>> "Mr. Von Pein, this is in response to your claim that there is nothing wrong with the autopsy x-rays and photos. Many autopsy photos, and two skull x-rays, are missing." <<<


DVP SAID:

Yes, there are indeed apparently some autopsy photos "missing". But I
will once again have to agree with the man who wrote the best book
ever written on the JFK assassination, Vincent Bugliosi, when he said
this in "Reclaiming History":

"For years conspiracy theorists have charged that the "missing"
autopsy photographs are, in their minds, one more indication of a
conspiracy in the assassination. .... But...with literally hundreds of
people from various official investigative agencies...examining and
working with the photos throughout the years, I not only don't find it
suspicious, I find it completely predictable that one or more
photographs ended up missing, misplaced, or expropriated by people
through whose hands they passed." -- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Page 275 of
"Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F.
Kennedy" (Endnotes on CD-ROM)


DOUG HORNE SAID:

>>> "Dr. David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., in 9 visits to the [National] Archives (most of them during the 1990s), has conclusively proven that the three surviving skull x-rays in the National Archives are altered copy films, not original x-rays. The science he used was optical densitometry, a technique not employed by the HSCA's "experts" because they didn't think outside the box." <<<


DVP SAID:

And yet at the end of this day (like all other days since the HSCA
final report was published in early 1979), we're still left with the
conclusions of the TWENTY or so experts who were a part of the HSCA's
Photographic Panel, with those conclusions being:

"The evidence indicates that the autopsy photographs and X-rays
were taken of President Kennedy at the time of his autopsy and that
they had not been altered in any manner." -- 7 HSCA 41


DOUG HORNE SAID:

>>> "Quoting old findings which did not employ optical densitometry as an analytical technique does NOT discredit his [Dr. Mantik's] work, it is simply an intellectually dishonest way of attempting to ignore it." <<<


DVP SAID:

I'm certainly not alone in my disagreements with Dr. Mantik. Many
other people also strongly disagree with Dr. Mantik's conclusions
regarding the photographs and X-rays, and also disagree with his
notion that some conspirator(s) had a desire to "plant" a "6.5-
millimeter object" onto one of JFK's X-rays after the autopsy, which
is a notion that defies logic from all sensible points-of-view (mainly
because it was so utterly UNNECESSARY AND SUPERFLUOUS).

But Dr. David Mantik doesn't care about Occam and his handy (and
usually accurate) razor. Instead of applying some measure of logic and
common sense (and Occam) to the controversial matters surrounding
JFK's murder, Dr. Mantik (and you) would rather peddle impossible-to-
prove theories for years on end.

And, of course, there will always be somebody out there in fantasy-
land who will be ready to listen to the impossible-to-prove theories
of conspiracy theorists like Doug Horne and David Mantik. Such is the
way with the world.


DOUG HORNE SAID:

>>> "Hopefully, your attempts to dissuade people from reading my book will backfire, and badly. All of your concerns are addressed and countered, more than adequately, in my book, for those who are curious and have an open mind." <<<


DVP SAID:

I'm not attempting to "dissuade" anyone from reading your 5 volumes of
nonsense, Doug. Not at all. Hopefully many people will buy your books.
And among those people who buy them there will certainly be a decent-
sized percentage of logical and reasonable folks (like me) who know
beyond any and all doubt that none of the over-the-top theories that
you purport as being true and valid in your book series entitled
"Inside The Assassination Records Review Board" can possibly be
accurate...because the stuff you think happened in November 1963 is
just (to put it bluntly) too ridiculous to consider believing for more
than three seconds.


DOUG HORNE SAID:

>>> "Have a nice day. And thank you for attracting more attention to my book. Surely, anyone reading this debate in the [Amazon.com] comments section will now want to buy it, to see what this is all about---so they can make their own assessments." <<<


DVP SAID:

Yeah, if only for the many belly-laughs that your impossible-to-prove
conspiracy theories will undoubtedly elicit from the people reading
your books.

But good luck selling them anyway.

Have a nice day.


ADDENDUM:

Let's just take a quick (but by no means comprehensive) inventory
of a few of the insane and crazy things that Mr. Douglas P. Horne
believes happened with respect to the death of the 35th U.S. Chief
Executive. [And most of Horne's irrational beliefs are laid out via his
many ARRB memos, located HERE.]

And keep in mind that Mr. Horne thinks that ALL of these things
definitely occurred in connection with JFK's assassination, and this
short list is probably only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
the crazy conspiracy-oriented things that Mr. Horne puts his faith in.

Back in the world of sanity and REALITY, however, in order to believe
that even ONE of the following things is actually true, a person has
no choice but to place his faith in something that is really, really
silly:

1.) Doug Horne believes that President Kennedy's bullet wounds were
"altered" by Dr. James Joseph Humes at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the
night of November 22, 1963, with the President's wounds being altered
by Humes before the start of the official autopsy on JFK's body.

2.) Doug Horne believes that there were TWO separate brain
examinations performed by the autopsists in late November 1963, with
one of these supplementary brain exams being performed on a brain that
was NOT John F. Kennedy's brain. And the second brain exam was
apparently done on a brain that was WAY TOO BIG to even be JFK's own
brain. (The plotters/cover-up agents involved in this silliness
evidently had no brains at all in any of their own heads, because this
craziness is BEYOND silly and stupid. It's utterly insane, as is #1
above, of course.)

3.) Doug Horne believes that the Zapruder Film has been altered. And
Horne believes the film was faked/altered/manipulated despite the fact
that we know that the original film, both BEFORE and immediately AFTER
it was developed and copied in Dallas on 11/22/63, was never out of
the sight of Abraham Zapruder and/or Zapruder's business partner,
Erwin Schwartz. But maybe Mr. Horne would like to pretend that
ordinary Dallas citizens like Zapruder and Schwartz were also part of
the plot to conceal all of the best evidence from the eyes of the
American public immediately after JFK was shot.

4.) Doug Horne believes that multiple X-rays of JFK's head have been
faked/altered.

The above short list, as I mentioned, is probably only a
representative sampling of the ridiculous and impossible things that
Mr. Horne believes regarding the John F. Kennedy murder case, with the
above four items being things that I jotted down after listening to
Horne's appearance on "Black Op Radio" on December 10, 2009.

David Von Pein
December 2009

LINK TO ORIGINAL POST (DECEMBER 20, 2009)

===============================

PART 2


PART 3


PART 4

Edited August 14, 2015 by David Von Pein

[David G. Healy]

What is abundantly clear is this: you, David Von Pein, have never, ever debated anyone face to face concerning any topic regarding JFK's assassination...

You're hot air son, period!

And that ain't fantasy!