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Transcript of Parkland Press Conference


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This was new to me, the transcript of the press conference held in Parkland by Dr. Malcolm Perry and Dr. Kemp Clark.

I've had a chance to speak with Dr. Perry's son about this, and he said his father tried to explain his answers to a pretty chaotic room full of press who interrupted him and couldn't understand some of the terminology he used, which is evidenced by this transcript.

The first day immediate observation by Dr. Perry was that the throat wound was an entrance wound and appeared as a wound of entrance.  The other observation by Dr. Clark is the large gaping wound in the back of the head towards the right, as noted by many other medical professionals in Parkland.  

It's also telling that they didn't described a front / top of the head wound that is shown in the Zapruder film - the big orange blob / flap.

Thanks

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Thanks for posting the link Rick. It's been a while since I read it.

I've told this story on the forum a time or two before but it's been a while and a few new commenters have joined since the last time.

Dr. Robert McClelland came to the small school where I work to give a presentation on his experiences of 11/22/63 eight or nine years ago.  When he was done speaking and the Q & A started I felt honored when he pointed to my upraised hand first.  I asked "Dr. McClelland, Dr. Perry stated three time to the press on the afternoon of the assassination that the throat wound was an entrance wound.  He later changed it to allow the possibility that it might have been one of exit.  Do you think his initial expert opinion changed as a result of the influence of others?"  He paused two to three seconds before answering.  When he said "Yes", there was and audible gasp in the room.

Several other Doctor's, Nurses and other witnesses revised initial statements after Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore came to town in early December 1963 and spoke with them.  Then he became Earl Warrens body guard during the Warren Omission.  Kind of an odd sequence of responsibilities. Pretty influential/important fella. 

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Ron, I believe this is the first time that I have heard one of the attending doctors to outright say that a member of his  team was told to change his statement about a wound!

This is an amazing article.  What a shame that  such a talented surgeon, Dr. Malcom Perry,  no doubt very proud of what a career he had built for himself, had been badgered by a man, Secret Service, no less, to change his statement that the president had been shot from behind, instead of how he had believed, based on years of looking at gunshot wounds, that the shot to the throat came from the front.

It is also extremely sad that a person, while holding such a prestigious job title, as Secret Service Agent, Mr. Elmer Moore, simply because of his beliefs that President John F. Kennedy was soft on communism, was okay that the president could be killed and then agree to pressure a person who is a medial doctor to lie about how he was killed (all shots from behind). Mr Moore has admitted to having been ordered by his superiors to badger Dr. Perry into changing his statement.

https://crosscut.com/2017/11/john-f-kennedy-assassination-files-seattle-trump-release-shooters

Edited by Terry Adams
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21 hours ago, Terry Adams said:

Ron, I believe this is the first time that I have heard one of the attending doctors to outright say that one of their team was told to change his statement about a wound!

This is an amazing article.  What a shame that  such a talented surgeon, Dr. Malcom Perry,  no doubt very proud of what a career he had built for himself, had been badgered by a man, Secret Service, no less, to change his statement that the president had been shot from behind, instead of how he had believed, based on years of looking at gunshot wounds, that the shot to the throat came from the front.

It is also extremely sad that a person, while holding such a prestigious job title, as Secret Service Agent, Mr. Elmer Moore, simply because of his beliefs that President John F. Kennedy was soft on communism, was okay that the president could be killed and then agree to pressure a person who is a medial doctor to lie about how he was killed (all shots from behind). Mr Moore has admitted to having been ordered by his superiors to badger Dr. Perry into changing his statement.

https://crosscut.com/2017/11/john-f-kennedy-assassination-files-seattle-trump-release-shooters

Part of the article.

"

Critics questioned how, based on some forensic findings, a bullet fired from the sixth floor to the ground level entered Kennedy’s back and then traveled upward to exit through the throat. Perry apparently wondered, too. Three years after the surgeon’s death, Miller (A fellow surgeon) claimed in a little-noticed 2012 blog post that Perry doubted the scenario. The author of three books and a frequent writer on current medical and political topics, Miller wrote:

“Fifteen years [after the shooting], Dr. Perry told me in a surgeon-to-surgeon private conversation that the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck was, without question, a wound of entrance, irrespective of what he had told the Warren Commission.

“This seasoned attending trauma surgeon had seen a lot of gunshot wounds at Parkland Hospital and knew what he was talking about. Dr. Perry also told this ‘off the record’ truth to another physician, Dr. Robert Artwohl, in 1986.”

Artwhol, an Anchorage surgeon who wrote an online post about their conversation, stated that Perry told him that “[o]ne of the biggest regrets in his life was having to make the incision for the emergency tracheotomy through the bullet wound… Speaking with Dr. Perry that night, one physician to another, Dr. Perry stated he firmly believed the wound to be an entrance wound.”

But, Miller said in his blog that after agent Moore and others pressured Perry to alter his story, “This otherwise bold surgeon backed down and obligingly changed his testimony to suit the politically ordered truth that Oswald did it.”"

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I don't remember reading this before.  "In an atmosphere of bedlam at the subsequent medical briefing, surgeon Malcom Perry was asked if it were possible that one bullet could have struck the president from the front.  Perry said yes.  TIME reporter Hugh Sidney curiously cried out, "Doctor, do you realize what you are doing?  You're confusing us"15.  Pg. 13.  Burying The  Lead, Mal Hyman.  

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This is what I want to know:  Where is the video?  There was at least one TV camera there and you can see it on You Tube.

Specter was looking for this and he could not find it.  According to Horne, the Secret Service had it all the time and would not give it to the WC.

I can see why with the likes of Elmer Moore there.  

To me, this is as important as Tom Alyea's first day evidence about Fritz bouncing the shells off the floor and the DPD creating the sniper's nest.

Edited by James DiEugenio
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Regarding Paul Rigby’s detailed article linked above....

Has anyone actually seen the 11/22/63 Associated Press wire story indicating that “Dr. Perry said the entrance wound—which is the medical description—the entrance wound was in the front of the head”?  If they still exist, reproductions of the report should be available from archives of at least some of the newspapers subscribing to the A.P. at the time.  Newspapers.com or similar archives should have graphics of numerous versions from print dailies, but I let my subscription expire.

Mr. Rigby lists the source(s) as a 1975 Skeptic magazine article and a 1998 Vince Palamara piece.  If it still exists, I’d love to have a graphic of the A.P. story.  I wasn’t able to locate it on the free Google newspaper archive.

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On 4/5/2019 at 11:05 PM, James DiEugenio said:

This is what I want to know:  Where is the video?  There was at least one TV camera there and you can see it on You Tube.

Specter was looking for this and he could not find it.  According to Horne, the Secret Service had it all the time and would not give it to the WC.

I can see why with the likes of Elmer Moore there.  

To me, this is as important as Tom Alyea's first day evidence about Fritz bouncing the shells off the floor and the DPD creating the sniper's nest.

Jim, this is mentioned in Mel Hymans new book Burying The lead on page 21.

"It seems apt to note that Secret Service Chief James Rowley claimed that he could not locate a tape or transcript of the medical press conference where Dr. Perry spoke, yet Joe Long, Dallas KLIF news director, told Marvin Garson (editor of the alternative S F. Express Times) that the Secret Service confiscated the original recordings."

He references this in the end notes to Vince Palamara's Survivors Guilt. page 201.  There it is sourced to Best Evidence page 62.  

Edited by Ron Bulman
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23 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Jim, this is mentioned in Mel Hymans new book Burying The lead on page 21.

"It seems apt to note that Secret Service Chief James Rowley claimed that he could not locate a tape or transcript of the medical press conference where Dr. Perry spoke, yet Joe Long, Dallas KLIF news director, told Marvin Garson (editor of the alternative S F. Express Times) that the Secret Service confiscated the original recordings."

He references this in the end notes to Vince Palamara's Survivors Guilt. page 201.  There it is sourced to Best Evidence page 62.  

I didn't find anything about it on page 62 of Best Evidence.  But I did on page 95.  Virtually the same story as above but it lists Garson as a researcher assisting Mark Lane in 1966 and sources it to pages 53 and 442 in Rush To Judgement.  A book I don't have.

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On 4/6/2019 at 4:35 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Regarding Paul Rigby’s detailed article linked above....

Has anyone actually seen the 11/22/63 Associated Press wire story indicating that “Dr. Perry said the entrance wound—which is the medical description—the entrance wound was in the front of the head”?  If they still exist, reproductions of the report should be available from archives of at least some of the newspapers subscribing to the A.P. at the time.  Newspapers.com or similar archives should have graphics of numerous versions from print dailies, but I let my subscription expire.

Mr. Rigby lists the source(s) as a 1975 Skeptic magazine article and a 1998 Vince Palamara piece.  If it still exists, I’d love to have a graphic of the A.P. story.  I wasn’t able to locate it on the free Google newspaper archive.

"When asked to specify, Perry said the entrance wound was in the front of the head,"

AP, "Treatment Described," Albuquerque Tribune, 22 November 1963, p.58

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From the New York Herald Tribune. (Page 12)

"But Dr Clark said later "It was apparent that the President had sustained a lethal wound". He said that "a missile had gone in and out of the back of his head causing extensive lacerations and loss of brain tissue.""

Edited by Ray Mitcham
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