Tracking Oswald Part 5

[James DiEugenio]

This has turned out to be one of the worst series on JFK ever produced.  Its not just full of holes, its full of Florida sized sinkholes.

This entry, where they try and maintain the WC verdict against Oswald is particularly horrendous, full of ITTC kind of junk science.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/jfk-declassified-tracking-oswald-part-5

Only one more to go of these Bob Baer hosted piles of rubbish.  Thank God.

[Michael Walton]

I'm not saying here that it's impossible for a rear shot to the head to not make a head move backward. But this show is par for the course, meaning it's utter horsexxxx. Ballistics gel in no way mimics the actual human body with gristle, bone, and taunt muscles.  All you have to do is look at the Z film to see that JFK - before 313 - was not a blubbery mass of rubber bouncing here and to. He was actually stunned and looks stiffened...how do we know that? Watch his right arm collapse when the head shot hits.  So he was not a blubbery mass like this xxxxing show portrays it to be.

Meanwhile, how do you explain live human bodies reacting to a shot from the front as well as the back as seen below?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7Hr9Lrku-CxNm9MNTY3UHVrR1k

and

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7Hr9Lrku-CxU0V1ck1GZFN6TWM

[Pat Speer]

Of course, a bullet hitting low on the back of a head will tilt a head backward. But Kennedy's head went forward and downward first, and then tilted backward. This program's re-enactment is thereby yet another nail in the coffin of the single-assassin conclusion.

[David Von Pein]

But, of course, the bullet didn't enter low (near the EOP) on JFK's head. The autopsy BOH pictures prove that fact, IMO. The bullet entered higher than the EOP. (Also see the Clark Panel Report, which verifies the bullet entered JFK's head "approx. 100 millimeters above the EOP".)

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2011/04/index.html#JFK-Head-Wounds

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by David Von Pein

[James DiEugenio]

DVP is always good for a few laughs.

[David Von Pein]

59 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

DVP is always good for a few laughs.

And make sure you laugh in the face of the Clark Panel too, Jim. (Naturally, those 4 people were all idiots and/or crooked cover-up agents as well, correct?)

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-1968-clark-panel-report.html

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by David Von Pein

[James DiEugenio]

Davey, what you are saying, and you want to ignore this, is that all three original autopsy doctors were wrong.  

When, in fact, they had Kennedy's corpse right in front of them for hours on end.  They had the original x rays developed that night.

But they could not tell the top of the skull from the bottom.  Right Davey.  

 

[David Andrews]

13 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Of course, a bullet hitting low on the back of a head will tilt a head backward. But Kennedy's head went forward and downward first, and then tilted backward. This program's re-enactment is thereby yet another nail in the coffin of the single-assassin conclusion.

 

I'm supposing that their brand of empirical science precluded firing a frontal shot through the area above the right temple? 

[Pat Speer]

11 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

And make sure you laugh in the face of the Clark Panel too, Jim. (Naturally, those 4 people were all idiots and/or crooked cover-up agents as well, correct?)

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-1968-clark-panel-report.html

 

If the shoe fits....

From patspeer.com, chapter 13:

While the drawings created for the Warren Commission, consistent with Dr. Humes' testimony that skull fell to the table as he reflected Kennedy's scalp, depicted a large skull wound at the top of the head extending somewhat onto the back of the head, and while a report signed by Dr.s Humes, Boswell, and Finck in January 1967 confirmed the accuracy of these drawings, it wasn't long before someone decided something more supportive of Oswald's sole guilt, and more responsive to the points raised by Lifton, was needed. A May 29, 1967 memo written by Director of Public Information Cliff Sessions--outlining "talking points" that Dr. Humes should touch upon during his upcoming televised interview with Dan Rather--was sent to the Justice Department's Acting Assistant Attorney General Carl Eardley, and forwarded to Dr. Humes. Among these talking points was something new, that had not been previously touched upon; when asked about the bullets striking Kennedy, Dr. Humes was told to say that one of them "entered the back of the skull and exited through the front." The "front." The exit wound was no longer on the top of Kennedy's head, as depicted in CE 388, the drawing created for the Warren Commission under Dr. Humes' direction, but the "front" of the head. Dr. Humes was, in effect, being told to change his testimony.

So, did he follow his orders? You betcha. Loyal soldier to the end, when asked the location of the large exit wound by Rather, Dr. Humes said nothing about a wound on top of the head which could be an exit for a bullet entering from the rear or the front, and instead told the nation that the "exit wound was a large irregular wound to the front and side--right side of the President's head."

This verbal movement of the wound, however, proved too little, too late. With the publication of Josiah Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas in late 1967, and its demonstration that the Zapruder film shows a wound on the top of the head, and not the front of the head, as claimed by Dr. Humes months earlier, the problems with the bullet's trajectory reached an even greater audience.

There was an exhibit in Thompson's book that was particularly problematic. Thompson placed frame 312 of the Zapruder film, the last frame before Kennedy's skull exploded, on the same page with the Warren Commission exhibit depicting the supposed path of the bullet through Kennedy's skull, CE 388. The effect was devastating. From a comparison of these two images it was obvious that Dr. Humes' testimony was inaccurate, and that Kennedy's head was actually bent further forward in the drawing than in the film and that, when the drawing was corrected to the actual forward tilt of Kennedy's head, the path back from his exit wound through his entrance wound led to the rear trunk of the limousine, a long, long way from the supposed sniper's nest. This proved that either the bullet fired from above and striking Kennedy low in the back of his head suddenly and illogically exploded upwards, or that the entrance wound was not as reported.

This led the Justice Department, now functioning as a de facto cover-up department, to take even more drastic measures. Putting Dr. Humes on TV to tell the public what the government thought they should hear would clearly no longer suffice.

In late February 1968, even though it had been but a year since the autopsy doctors had signed a report saying the wounds in the autopsy photos confirmed the accuracy of the drawings they'd created for the Warren Commission, a four-man secret panel supposedly made of random experts but actually made of close colleagues (Dr. Alan Moritz had been a mentor to the panel's leader, Russell Fisher, at Harvard, and Dr. Morgan (and presumably Carnes) had worked with Dr. Fisher at Johns Hopkins University) re-reviewed the photos and x-rays on behalf of Attorney General Ramsey Clark. This was supposedly done at the urging of the autopsy doctors themselves, but there is reason to doubt this is true. (Dr. Boswell's testimony before the ARRB suggests that he was, in fact, manipulated by Clark's assistant Carl Eardley--the same Carl Eardley who'd forwarded the "talking points" to Dr. Humes in anticipation of his appearance on CBS--into making this request).

This panel, commonly called the Clark Panel, then, not only made tremendous mistakes in its assessment of Kennedy's back wound location, which served to support the then-under-fire single-bullet theory, but also solved the problem of the head bullet's trajectory, by "finding" a wound of entrance high on the back of Kennedy's head that had apparently been missed by everyone who saw the President in Dallas and Bethesda, including the autopsy doctors. This new "find," moreover, made Thompson's comparison of CE 388 with Zapruder frame 312 irrelevant.

One might wish to think this a coincidence. 

That this was not a coincidence was confirmed, however, by Clark panel ring-leader Russell S. Fisher when he told the Maryland State Medical Journal in March 1977 that Attorney General Ramsey Clark had seen the proofs of Six Seconds in Dallas, and that the Clark Panel report was released "partly to refute some of the junk" in the book. Apparently, their way of "refuting" Thompson's comparison of CE-388 and Z-312 was by confirming he was right and by declaring instead that their esteemed colleagues, Dr.s Humes, Boswell and Finck, were badly mistaken as to the actual location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's skull, and were off by roughly 4 inches! Even more amazing, Fisher told the Maryland State Medical Journal that this was only a “minor error.” What the??? One ponders what Fisher would consider a "major error" under such circumstances...

 

Agreeance (Def: The false appearance of being in agreement) (a new take on an old word--spread the, well, word)

Or if he was just blowing smoke... When one considers that, in the March 13, 1970 edition of Medical World News, in which it was noted that the Clark Panel was convened "to allay public skepticism over the Warren Report," Fisher ran down a laundry list of excuses for the "errors" made at the autopsy, it seems likely he was more concerned about these "errors" than he would subsequently acknowledge. These excuses, moreover, were not real excuses, but entirely false ones made up from either Fisher's incredible ignorance, or his fertile imagination. He told the medical world that, among the reasons for the "confusion" at the autopsy, were:

• "The original x-rays and photos were not seen by the autopsy team in Washington or even by the Warren Commission until the time that our committee was convened..." (While it's true the doctors were unable to look at the x-rays and photos while writing the autopsy report, they had inspected the x-rays and photos in November 1966 and January 1967, prior to the Clark Panel's inspection, and had publicly proclaimed that these inspections had confirmed both the findings of their report, and the testimony and exhibits provided the Warren Commission. As Warren Commission counsel Arlen Specter had similarly admitted in both U.S. News (in 1966) and the Saturday Evening Post (in 1967) to seeing a photo of Kennedy's back wound on the day of the assassination re-enactment, furthermore, Fisher was doubly in error.) 
• "skull fragments found on the street, which would have permitted a more accurate reconstruction of the skull and hence a clearer notion of the path of the bullet, were not seen by the Washington examiners..." (This claim is equally bogus. The recovered skull fragments seen by Fisher were x-rays taken at the autopsy of fragments studied and handled by the doctors during the autopsy. It was beveling on the largest fragment, moreover, that convinced the autopsy doctors the bullet exited from the top of the head--the exact same conclusion reached by Fisher. While there were two fragments found in Dealey Plaza not returned in time for the autopsy, one being the Harper fragment, neither of these fragments were seen by the Clark Panel, and neither of these could have convinced the autopsy doctors a bullet entered high on the back of Kennedy's head, where Fisher claimed it had entered, as they'd both come from further forward on the skull.)
• "for several hours the local coroner was not told that a tracheostomy had been performed at the place where one bullet emerged, and this helped to cloud the issue of how many bullets had been fired and from what direction." (This claim is just strange. The confusion was not caused by the emergency room doctors' failure to tell Dallas coroner Earl Rose about the tracheostomy, but the autopsy doctors' failure to call the emergency room doctors prior to commencement of the autopsy, and the failure of anyone present at the autopsy to tell the autopsy doctors that, oh yeah, by the way, the emergency room doctors called a press conference this afternoon and told the world the president had a small bullet wound in his throat that appeared to be an entrance.)

In any event, the Clark Panel studied the medical evidence on February 26 and 27, 1968. Although their subsequent report would not be completed and signed by Dr.s Fisher, Morgan, Moritz, and Carnes until March 28, March 28, April 6, and April 9, 1968, respectively, Dr. Fisher admitted, in a March 4, 1970 letter to Harold Weisberg, that they'd actually "drafted" their report on February 27, and that the rest was just editing, and re-editing, and then mailing the report around and about to get signed. They never met, after February 27, to work on the report together.

Well, this suggests that they really studied the evidence ONCE, and only once, on February 26, without studying anything beyond the original autopsy protocol, and that February 27 was mostly taken up with the drafting of their report.

Now, note those dates. There is no record of which I am aware in which the planning for the Clark Panel's inspection is detailed. For all we know, it was put together in a hurry. It is undoubtedly intriguing then that on February 14, 1968--less than 2 weeks before the Clark Panel's inspection--Josiah Thompson's publisher, Bernard Geis, sent former Warren Commissioner John McCloy a copy of Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas, along with some of the reviews it had garnered, and implored "We earnestly hope that you will be moved to urge the formation of a Congressional body or an independent committee of scholars, critics, pathologists, and criminologists empowered to probe these hypotheses, refuting them if additional evidence warrants, or expanding upon the original report if that should prove necessary."

Hmmm. Did McCloy read the book, see its merits, and strong-arm Attorney General Ramsey Clark into setting up a secret panel to inspect the evidence, and "refute some of the junk" in the book? Was Fisher's claim Clark viewed the galleys of Thompson's book just a cover story put out by Clark? To hide that McCloy was really the one behind the inspection?

There is reason to believe so. Consider that barely a year before, McCloy had been asked by CBS to arrange an inspection of the evidence by the autopsists, and that he'd traveled to Washington that very day, and that an inspection had occurred within days. 

Consider also McCloy's response to Geis' letter. Did he ignore it? No, not exactly. On July 15, 1969--almost a year-and-a-half later--he wrote Geis a letter saying he had "not been impressed" with the book's "contents nor its conclusions." He then sent this letter to Chief Justice Warren, asking for his input. Warren then responded by suggesting he not send the letter, as it could only be used to stir up controversy. The letter was not sent. (Geis' letter, and the letters of McCloy and Warren in response, can be found on researcher Denis Morrissette's website, jfkassassinationfiles.com.)

This raises a question, however. Why did McCloy wait so long to respond? Well, the thought occurs that he was waiting for something. Was he waiting for the public release of the Clark Panel's report, so he could cite it in his response? There is reason to suspect so.

Now, admittedly, this is a bit of a stretch... But it's undoubtedly intriguing that, yes indeed, McCloy cited the Panel's report in his response. He wrote Geis "The expert panel which examined the x-rays under the auspices of the Department of Justice last year clearly disprove the main Thompson contentions and certainly the original autopsy report even if it is somewhat less exacting and comprehensive than one might have wished it to be does so as well." 

Note that McCloy is deferential to the Clark Panel's report, yet somewhat critical of the original autopsy report. This suggests he knew the two reports were in conflict, a conflict un-reported in the press at the time. Hmmm... Had McCloy discussed the Panel's report with Clark? Or Fisher?

The timing of the report's release is also intriguing. It was released on January 16, 1969, just in time to throw a monkey wrench in Jim Garrison's trial of Clay Shaw. Garrison had been trying to gain access to the medical evidence for use in the trial, as he thought an independent study of the medical evidence by non-military medical experts might prove shots had been fired from multiple locations, and thus, more than one shooter. It appeared, moreover, that Garrison, and his chosen expert, Dr. Cyril Wecht, were about to succeed in gaining access to these materials. This then led the Justice Department to offer up what could only have appeared to be a compromise--it would release an already-completed top secret study of the medical evidence by non-military medical experts--the Clark Panel's report from the year before. 

That the timing of the report's creation and release was no coincidence was confirmed, moreover, by Ramsey Clark himself. In David Lifton's book Best Evidence he recounts a May, 1969, conversation with Clark. He relates that, when asked about the timing of the February 1968 inspection, Clark readily admitted that he "thought it unwise for the administration to go into an election year without anyone having examined the key evidence."

And that's not the only time Clark admitted the report served a political purpose. Within the HSCA's files is an outside contact report, summarizing a 5-6-78 phone call between Clark and an HSCA investigator. Well, it's right there in black and white. According to this summary, Clark admitted he was "relieved" when his "experts corroborated" the "Warren Commission findings," but that he nevertheless "delayed issuing" their report, only to "use" the "Garrison case" as a "vehicle" for putting their report "in the public record."

And so it came to be: the January 16, 1969 release of the panel's report. The print media’s ineptness and distaste for the whole matter is revealed in their headlines regarding the release of the panel's report, e.g. “JFK Autopsy Facts Bared; Findings Claimed Correct;” “Autopsy Report Backs JFK Data.”  I have yet to find one newspaper article about the release of this report to mention the amazing migration of the entrance wound on Kennedy's head.

This was apparently by design. In Harold Weisberg's 1975 book Post Mortem, he discusses the Clark Panel report in great detail, and re-prints a number of internal government memos he received in response to his many Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. One of these is a Jan 18, 1969 memo from Frank Wozencraft, of the Office of Legal Counsel, to archivist Marion Johnson of the National Archives. It is entitled "Authentication of Autopsy Pictures," and provides Johnson with a statement he is to give any member of the news media inquiring whether the photos and x-rays studied by the Clark Panel have been authenticated by the autopsists. The statement itself is not surprising, as it refers back to the November '66 inventory, and the signed statements by Humes, Boswell, Ebersole, and Stringer, that none of the photos or x-rays are missing. What is surprising, however, is the final paragraph, which reads:

"In addition, requests to see any documents which contain descriptions of the autopsy pictures should be denied on the ground that we agreed with Burke Marshall not to disclose such descriptions, for much the same reasons that the pictures themselves are not available for non-official access at this time."

This statement is quite interesting. There is nothing in the signed agreement between Burke Marshall, the Kennedy family's representative, and the government prohibiting the dissemination of descriptions of the autopsy photos. Such a provision, if actually considered, would have been of questionable legality anyhow. I mean, just think about it. Nellie Connally has testified to Mrs. Kennedy's holding President Kennedy's brains in her hands. Dr. Humes has testified to tearing Kennedy's skull apart in order to remove his brain. The autopsy report, in which the President's wounds are discussed in detail, has been part of the public record for years. So how can Wozencraft justify withholding reports in which mere photos of the President's wounds are described?

I mean, seriously. Burke Marshall has just signed off on the release of the Clark Panel's report, in which the photos and x-rays of Kennedy's wounds are inventoried and discussed in detail. So how could Wozencraft possibly believe he'd have an objection to anyone reading the November, 1966 inventory of the autopsy materials, or the January, 1967 review of those materials?

He couldn't. So what was Wozencraft up to? Well, unfortunately it appears that what he was up to was no good... Here, but a few days before the end of the Johnson Administration, is one of Johnson's top legal advisers pressuring the National Archives to withhold reports from the press in which the autopsy photos are discussed...under the guise that this would somehow be in poor taste. Never mind that these same legal advisers--the Office of Legal Counsel--have just released a new and improved report--the Clark Panel Report, in which these very photos are discussed in gruesome detail.

This, to me, is highly suspicious, and leads me to suspect that Wozencraft, and by extension the Johnson Administration Justice Department, were trying to keep from the press that the earlier descriptions of the photos both claimed a bullet entrance low on the back of the head was readily apparent...and that the Clark Panel reported no such wound, and was now claiming there was a wound high on the back of the head.

And, should one consider it unlikely that a prominent government attorney would do such a thing--would twist or bury the truth for political purposes--one should consider that that is PRECISELY the role of the Office of Legal Counsel. In an ideal world, the Office of Legal Counsel functions as an adviser to the president...telling him when his actions are at odds with the constitution. But the reality is essentially the opposite. Like a good mob attorney, the Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the Office of Legal Counsel finds ways to justify whatever the heck the President wants done and has already decided to do. General Counsel for The President's Commission, commonly known as the Warren Commission, J. Lee Rankin, had run the Office of Legal Counsel for President Eisenhower. The instigator of the Warren Commission, Nicholas Katzenbach, had run the office for President Kennedy. Both men knew how to spin the truth to please a president, and considered it a privilege to do so. In subsequent years, right wing political operatives such as William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Ted Olsen, (three of the main movers and shakers behind the successful assault on democracy known as Bush v. Gore) and Jay Bybee (The author of a notorious memo telling the Bush Administration torture was permissible) would do their duty and spin their truths for their presidents as the Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the Office of Legal Counsel for Nixon, Ford, Bush I, and Bush II, respectively. Wozencraft would serve President Johnson in this role from 1966-1969, a time of great political turmoil. There is no reason to believe he was of stronger stuff than the right-wing operatives that followed him. There is every reason, in fact, to believe his actions regarding the Clark Panel report were of a political nature, and that the Clark Panel Report served a political purpose. 

There's also this: Wozencraft was a senior partner in the Texas law firm Baker & Botts, the family law firm of Bush family adviser James A. Baker III, who not only found time to serve as Reagan's Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Treasury, and Bush I's Secretary of State, but was also the man chosen to run the aftermath of the 2000 election for the Bush family, which led up to the aforementioned successful assault on democracy known as Bush v. Gore. So there's every reason to believe ethics was not Wozencraft's strong suit, and that he would have little problem burying some problematic reports written by some doctors who could very well have been wrong anyway.

I mean, it seems more than a coincidence that, in the aforementioned 1970 article in Medical World News, neither Dr. Fisher, nor his fellow Clark panel member Dr. Moritz, mentioned their re-appraisal of the head wound location. Dr. Moritz's words, in fact, revealed a deliberate caution, as if he knew people would someday realize the location of the entrance wound on Kennedy's head had migrated, and didn't want them to think he was unaware of how disturbing this was. Here are his words: "the findings of the Warren Commission are not inconsistent with the facts as presented to us." I mean, wow, this guy really knew how to conceal while appearing to reveal. Maybe he should have written a book telling doctors how to protect themselves at all costs, even if it means lying to their patients.

Oh, that's right. He did.

In any event, it was more than 3 years before the Clark Panel's drastic re-appraisal of the entrance wound location was reported. This second series of articles was written as a response to an address by Dr. Russell Morgan, the Clark Panel's radiologist, to a conference of fellow radiologists, and indirectly confirm the role of Thompson's book in the formation and conclusions of the panel. The articles below were found in the August 18, 1972 Denver Post and the August 19, 1972 New Orleans States-Item, respectively. This was but a few days before Dr. Cyril Wecht was to become the first Warren Commission critic to view the autopsy materials. Perhaps Morgan wanted to lessen the impact should Wecht come out of the Archives and announce that the autopsy x-rays didn't show what the Clark Panel claimed, by putting on the record that they were over-developed and hard to read. Perhaps not. In a letter to researcher Harold Weisberg, Morgan claimed "I do not know why the press picked up my talk as a news item at this time. Apparently, they have nothing better to print."

(Sections indicating that Morgan in particular, and the Clark Panel in general, were far from unbiased in their analysis and had a clear-cut agenda to refute Thompson and derail Jim Garrison's trial of Clay Shaw are highlighted in bold.)

EXPERT AFFIRMS 1-BULLET VIEW

A radiologist who examined the X-rays of President Kennedy's fatal head wound said in Denver Friday they prove conclusively that only one bullet--fired from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository building in Dallas--caused his death. 

Dr. Russell H. Morgan, dean of the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, said the films--could they be released by the Kennedy family--would effectively remove all doubt and controversy that the assassination may have been the result of shots from more than one direction.

However, because the films haven't been released for publication and because a report on their examination wasn't included in the Warren Commission study, the controversy has continued, Dr. Morgan said.

The medical school dean made his remarks in an interview prior to speaking to some 300 physicians, attending the 34th annual mid-summer meeting of the Rocky Mountain Radiological Society in the Brown Palace Hotel. The meeting, which began Thursday, continues through Saturday.

Dr. Morgan was the only radiologist on a panel of four persons asked by then Attorney Gen. Ramsey Clark to review the X rays because of controversies surrounding the autopsy report.

But because the panel's report, released in April 1968, largely supported the conclusions of the Warren Report. Morgan said, it failed to receive much circulation. His talk here Friday on the subject was the first outside University organizations. The other members of the panel, all pathologists, have never spoken on the matter. 

BULLET'S PATH

He said the X rays in conjunction with an analysis of the movie shot by amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder, show "rather conclusively" that the path of the fatal bullet--because the President's head was bowed and tilted to one side--was consistent with being fired from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository building.

Further, he said, the X rays show the path of the bullet was strewn with thousands of bone fragments and that no other bullets entered from either the right or left sides of the skull, as some critics of the Warren Report have maintained.

Had other bullets entered the right or left side of the skull, they would have left paths of bone fragments, and no such paths were indicated. In addition, the entrance of a bullet is small, the exit point much larger, the doctor added, and both the entrance and the exit of the fatal bullet are characterized by this fact.

THEORY UNSUPPORTED

Morgan said his study of the X rays and the movie film also disprove the theory that another shot struck Kennedy from an overpass under which the president's car was preparing to pass.

The Zapruder film shows Kennedy's body lurching forward from one shot and then lurching backward, as though from a second. 

Morgan said the backward lurch was a reflex action of Kennedy's shattered brain, which caused the president's muscles to tense, and react in a spasm. It was this sudden straightening of the body which was interpreted as being the result of a second shot, he declared. 

The fatal bullet killed Kennedy instantly, Morgan said, and the subsequent emergency action at Parkland Memorial Hospital was in response to purely reflex activity. 

ASSUMPTION CITED

Morgan speculated that the reason the X rays weren't included in the Warren Commission Report is that when doctors first examined Kennedy, they thought the bullet entered lower in Kennedy's head.

Had their assumption been correct, the bullet would have to have been fired from below the level of the presidential limousine, he said.

Morgan said the X rays can now be studied with permission of the Kennedy family, though the photographs of the injury, which he described as "pretty gory," are still closed to examination. He said he feels publication of the X rays has been prohibited because the Kennedy family equates them with the photographs.

SINGLE STUDENT

To date, he said, the X rays have been studied by only one person since being released for study last November, and that was by a urologist from Columbia University interested in the phenomenon of assassination.

Should the X rays ever be released for publication, he explained, great care and special techniques would be required before they would show the conclusive evidence, because they were produced in a hurry under extremely trying conditions and were over-exposed. 

 

EXPERT SAYS 4-INCH ERROR LED TO FALSE SPECULATIONS IN JFK DEATH DENVER  

(AP) — A leading medical expert says a four-inch mistake by a pathologist who examined the body of John F. Kennedy after he was shot to death in Dallas produced a series of false speculations about the assassination.

Dr. Russell H. Morgan said the bullet actually entered the president's skull some four inches higher than initially reported, but the Warren Commission's detailed report on the assassination failed to clarify this point.

Morgan, dean of the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, is the only radiologist to examine the X-ray photographs of the slain president's skull. 

The matter became an issue of great importance in New Orleans between 1967 and 1969 when Dist. Atty. Jim Garrison was attempting to prove that the slaying of Kennedy was plotted here.

Garrison contended that Kennedy was shot from the front, rather than from behind as the Warren Report concluded, and that the X-rays would prove it. He made many legal attempts to gain access to the X-rays examined by Dr. Morgan, but failed.

The D.A.'s probe died after Clay L. Shaw was acquitted  March 1, 1969, of charges of conspiring to kill the president, though legal maneuvering continued long after that and only recently did the U.S. Supreme Court uphold an injunction prohibiting further prosecution of Shaw by Garrison. 

In an address to the 34th midsummer conference of the Rocky Mountain Radiological Society here, he gave X-rays the credit for finally revealing the pathologist's error and disproving many of the more extreme speculations spawned by the mistake, which is included in the Warren Commission report. 

Morgan's four-year investigation of the photographs and the Abraham Zapruder film of the assassination led him to several conclusions, he said. 

The most important finding was that one of the pathologists who examined Kennedy's body in Washington the night of the assassination erred in saying the fatal bullet entered the "occipital protuberance," or the bulge at the lower section of the back of the skull. 

This statement, which Morgan said later proved to be false, was included in the Warren report. Critics of the report immediately noted a major inconsistency between that alleged entry point and several features of the Zapruder film which showed a frame-by-frame sequence of the shooting. Critics said the film showed the president's head in a near vertical position when the bullet hit and also showed him lurching backward, leading to speculation the bullet came from the front.  

The angle of the bullet became controversial. Some contended it couldn't have been fired from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and entered the skull where the pathologist said it did. 

Morgan said Friday the Warren Commission, which named Oswald as the assassin, made no effort to explain the contradiction, allowing it to provide controversy for several years. 

When he was given two days to examine the X-ray photographs, Morgan found them of poor quality, severely over-exposed. Of the 14, he said, only three were of the head wound.  He said one had pencil marks on the negative itself showing "where somebody thought the bullet had gone."  

(The remaining  paragraphs were found in the version of the article published by the Galveston Daily News the next day.)

The penciled line corresponded to the mistaken pathologists' conclusion that the bullet entered the base of the skull and exited at an upward angle out of the right of the forehead. But Morgan said he found the actual entry wound was 120 millimeters away from the penciled line, more than four inches higher on the back of  the head.

The lurching of the president's body backward, he said, was caused by body spasms after the massive wound was inflicted.

Morgan said the Zapruder film, the ballistics tests, the projected line of fire and the angle of entry of the fatal bullet all were consistent with the explanation that a single shot fired from above and behind killed the president.  

"The Warren Commission's diagnosis was correct," he, said, "even though the evidence cited was inconsistent."

 

And it's not as if these articles went unnoticed... On November 22, 1972, (note the date) a UPI article found in the Lodi News-Sentinel announced that the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to review a lower court ruling that Jim Garrison not be allowed to proceed with the prosecution of Clay Shaw for perjury. The article noted further that when interviewed Shaw "waved a newspaper clipping in which Russell H. Morgan, Dean of John Hopkins Medical School, said following an examination of x-rays of Kennedy's body that one of the pathologists who examined Kennedy after the President was killed in Dallas made a four-inch mistake. Morgan said the bullet really entered Kennedy's skull four inches higher than first reported and that the Warren Commission never clarified the point, giving rise to what Morgan contended was false speculation about Kennedy's death."

Now, note the opening line of the article, the focus of the article according to the most basic rule of journalism... "Clay Shaw said Tuesday Jim Garrison's charges he conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President John F. Kennedy may have been due to a pathologist's 'clerical error.'"

So, there you have it. The prosecution of Clay Shaw had nothing to do with Shaw's supposedly using the name of Clay Bertrand to represent Oswald when Oswald needed legal assistance in New Orleans, nor anything to do with the mysterious death of David Ferrie, a man with connections to Shaw, Oswald, the anti-Castro Cuban Community, and the New Orleans underworld. And, oh yeah, let's just forget that a friend of Ferrie's claimed to have seen Shaw at a party with Ferrie and Oswald, in which the assassination of President Kennedy was discussed. No. Those things had nothing to do with the prosecution (and possible persecution) of Clay Shaw. It was all just an innocent misunderstanding... brought about by the incompetence of an unidentified pathologist at Kennedy's autopsy!

I'm joking, of course. But it seems clear I'm not the first to think Shaw's assertion was ludicrous. Or have doubts about the Clark Panel's conclusions...

Such was the Justice Department's own skepticism, for example, that Carl Eardley, who'd been working with the doctors on their reviews and reports for years, and who'd been one of the driving forces behind the Clark Panel, asked Dr. Boswell to participate in the autopsy of Dr. Martin Luther King. This was April 4, 1968, but 5 weeks after the Clark Panel had viewed the autopsy materials, and had questioned the competence of Boswell and his colleagues. Boswell, to his credit, refused. While one could argue that Eardley remained ignorant of the Clark Panel's findings until after it had been written up, reviewed, and signed, and that the last signature on the report was dated April 9, that still doesn't explain why Boswell's equally discredited colleague Dr. Finck was allowed to participate in the autopsy of Senator Robert F. Kennedy two months later, with no objection from the Justice Department. And this also fails to explain why, even after the release of the panel's report, both Finck and Boswell were asked to help the government in the defense of Clay Shaw, and defend the Clark Panel's findings. I mean, unless the government failed to fully trust the Clark Panel, there is a huge question as to why the government would continue to use Boswell and Finck as experts long after the Panel, in an official government report prepared on behalf of the Attorney General, had made them out to be total incompetents. For how else can one describe a doctor who mistakenly records a head wound high on the back of a man's skull as low on the back of his skull, creates a face sheet and autopsy protocol affirming this location, and then confirms this location again after reviewing the man’s autopsy photos...TWICE?   

The possibility that Eardley and the Justice Department thought the autopsy doctors competent, but grossly mistaken on the location of the entrance into the skull, simply makes no sense in light of the doctor's subsequent reports claiming the autopsy photos supported their original findings. That is...unless...Eardley knew the subsequent reports were created for political reasons and not to be taken seriously. Hmmm... 

An article in the 2-24-69 Manchester Union Leader helps shed some light on Eardley's mindset. The article reports that, while representing the government (in a hearing regarding Jim Garrison's quest to gain access to the autopsy materials), in which Dr. Cyril Wecht used the conclusions in the recently released Clark Panel report to question the competence of the original autopsists, Eardley snapped. He reportedly challenged Wecht: "But you weren't at the autopsy, were you? Have you ever attended the autopsy of a famous person like the President? You never have been surrounded by Treasury Agents, FBI agents, Admirals, and doctors, all asking to have this thing over with? It makes a difference, doesn't it?"

I'll give you a second to get over that one. Yep, the Justice Department, which from 1963-1969--the entire span of Lyndon Johnson's presidency--had insisted that Kennedy had received both an adequate and accurate autopsy, IMMEDIATELY changed tone after Johnson left office, and began touting that not only had the original autopsists made mistakes, but that these mistakes WERE NOT THEIR FAULT, but the fault of the Johnson Administration, which had failed to ensure the doctors were allowed the peace, quiet, and solitude necessary to distinguish a bullet entrance near the top of the head from one four inches away. What nonsense!!!

 

[James DiEugenio]

Well, that is the long version which contains some really interesting information.

But, in summary, when you start defending what the Clark Panel did, you are walking on egg shells in every direction.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

18 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

But, of course, the bullet didn't enter low (near the EOP) on JFK's head. The autopsy BOH pictures prove that fact, IMO. The bullet entered higher than the EOP.

David,

In your world... How do explain that the autopsists themselves -- with the body in their hands -- couldn't find the hole that Ida Dox was later instructed to put on her drawing for the HSCA?

Wouldn't it be because Ida Dox was instructed to put put the hole there... later?

It is painfully obvious to most of us why the hole was moved.

(While it is true that the photo shows something in the cowlick area, it also shows something in the EOP area where the autopsists described the hole being. Why was Dox instructed to cover that one up? I doubt she did that on her own.)

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 7/12/2017 at 4:24 PM, Michael Walton said:

Meanwhile, how do you explain live human bodies reacting to a shot from the front as well as the back as seen below?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7Hr9Lrku-CxNm9MNTY3UHVrR1k

Mike,

This is a particularly useful video IMO. Did you make it?

 

[Micah Mileto]

21 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

But, of course, the bullet didn't enter low (near the EOP) on JFK's head. The autopsy BOH pictures prove that fact, IMO. The bullet entered higher than the EOP. (Also see the Clark Panel Report, which verifies the bullet entered JFK's head "approx. 100 millimeters above the EOP".)

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2011/04/index.html#JFK-Head-Wounds

 

DVP, the cowlick entry theory cannot be true. Dr. Finck arrived at the autopsy after the brain had already been removed, and yet he always said that he could see the entry hole undisturbed within the intact, empty cranium (not as a previously-removed fragment). How, then, do you remove Kennedy's brain without first separating the upper cowlick area of the skull? Otherwise the cavity would be too small to fit a brain through. Also consider that the area of the skull around the large defect was so brittle that the doctors barely had to do any sawing to enlarge the skull cavity. So of course the "cowlick" area of the skull had to come off. The lower EOP location allows plenty of room to remove that brain.

This simple slice of common sense also completely debunks the HSCA interpretation of the open-cranium photographs, which implies that the entire brain somehow fit through a five-inch skull cavity.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Micah Mileto

[Micah Mileto]

19 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

And make sure you laugh in the face of the Clark Panel too, Jim. (Naturally, those 4 people were all idiots and/or crooked cover-up agents as well, correct?)

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-1968-clark-panel-report.html

 

Here's a kicker: You could probably count how many qualified experts have studied the JFK X-rays on one hand. That's right, all that is required to be a forensic pathologist is to determine the cause of death at an autopsy. Interpreting gunshot wound X-rays, especially those with so many nuances and artifacts as the inadequate JFK X-rays, is nowhere in the job description of forensic pathology. When Dr. Pierre Finck was shown the JFK X-rays and asked to identify an entry wound, he replied "I always refer to the radiologists on those issues". I would like to see a new team of forensic radiologists examine the X-rays, and use something other than 70's computer technology to enhance their quality.

[Micah Mileto]

19 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Davey, what you are saying, and you want to ignore this, is that all three original autopsy doctors were wrong.  

When, in fact, they had Kennedy's corpse right in front of them for hours on end.  They had the original x rays developed that night.

But they could not tell the top of the skull from the bottom.  Right Davey.  

 

Not just Humes, Boswell, and Finck. John Stringer, Roy Kellerman, Richard Lipsey, Francis X. O'Neil, and Chester Boyers all gave statements supporting an entry near the EOP.