Why transcript 1327C is a fraud

[Paul Rigby]

“As the official solution to Dallas was being assembled over the first weekend after the assassination, one major snag required immediate attention. An inconvenient obstacle to Katzenbach’s November 24 imperative that the public be satisfied that Dallas was the act of a lone assassin was the fast-breaking news stories. The one that captured the most national attention was the televised news conference with Drs. Malcolm Perry and Kemp Clark at Dallas’s Parkland Memorial Hospital that took place several hours after Kennedy was pronounced dead,”

Gerald D. McKnight. Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (University of Kansas Press, 2005), p.166.

It emerged, ostensibly, from the LBJ presidential library, in 1976 (1), and was received by pro-conspiratorialists like manna from heaven. It is not hard to see why. The hitherto elusive transcript, running to nine pages, of the first press conference conducted by Drs. Perry and Clark (2) – the former the attending surgeon responsible for the tracheotomy, the latter Parkland’s chief neurosurgeon - offered first-hand, expert evidence that the anterior, non-fatal throat wound was indeed a wound of entrance.

Question: Can you describe his neck wound?...

Perry: The neck wound, as visible on the patient, revealed a bullet hole almost in the mid-line (p.4).

Question: Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At Him?

Perry: It appeared to be coming at him (p.5).

Question: Doctor, describe the entrance wound. You think from the front in the throat?

Perry: The wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat; yes, that is correct (p.6).

Amid the widespread conspiratorialist delight at finding confirmation of what much of the US electronic media had reported at the time – and thus confirming their belief in one (or more) frontal shooter(s) - two inconvenient details were ignored and/or overlooked.

The first and least important of the pair concerned timing. The transcript bore the commencement time, near the head of its first page, of “3:16 P.M. CST.” That timing should have attracted scepticism from the outset because, according to Clark’s testimony before the Presidential Commission, the same first press conference had actually begun at least 45 minutes earlier at “approximately 2.30” (3); while Perry made offered an even earlier starting point, telling Specter that it “must have been within the hour” of the President’s death (4). The doctors, it turns out, were right: The transcript commencement time is at best a mistake, and at worst the product of intentional deceit. The utility of such an “apparent error”(5) to the conspirators is self-evident: It created doubt about the direct correlation between the press conference and the contemporaneous media reports of it, accounts which contained Perry’s repeated insistence that the wound in the front of Kennedy’s throat was one of entrance.

Photographic evidence corroborates the earlier start time offered by the Parkland doctors before the Warren Commission. In the unpaginated photographic section at the heart of Lifton’s Best Evidence, we find snap 14, capturing Clark and Perry – together with White House staff members Wayne Hawkes and “Chick” Reynolds (stenographer) – in the course of the first press conference above a caption-commentary that concluded: “Watch on Perry’s left hand indicates 2:18 P.M.” In the main body of Best Evidence’s text, though not in the Chronology at the book’s rear (6), Lifton was unable – or unwilling – to follow the logic of the evidence he had mustered. We need not be so timid.

The clincher, however, lies in the contemporaneous news reports. As Newcomb and Adams noted in Murder From Within’s fifth chapter, Parkland, citing among other sources, William Manchester’s Death of a President, the Associated Press was reporting Perry’s press conference remarks “just after two o’clock” (CST); and NBC, as confirmed in the company’s own log, no later than 2:36 (CST) (7).

So much, then, for the first, and least serious, of the pair of problems attending transcript 1327C. The second is much more fundamental in nature: It is not a true and accurate record of what Perry had to say. More specifically, it entirely misrepresents what Perry and Clark said at the press conference about the number and locations of the wounds.

According to 1327C, Perry and Clark described only two wounds, the entrance wound in the front of the throat (8), and “a large, gaping loss of tissue” (9) at “the back of his head” (10), “principally on his right side” (11). The questions attributed to the unnamed reporters present reinforces this two-wound scenario, for example, when one of them supposedly asked of Perry, following his pointing to this own throat to show where the bullet had entered, “Doctor, is it the assumption that it went through the head?” (12). So much for 1327C. Now let us turn to the contemporaneous news reports.

Here we find something very different. The Associated Press reported, shortly after 2 pm, CST, that ‘Dr. Perry said the entrance wound—which is the medical description—the entrance wound was in the front of the head’” (13); while WOR Radio, New York, quoted Perry to this effect at 2:43 pm, CST, (14). So, instead of just two wounds, the Parkland duo actually described three – there was, in addition to the entrance wound just below the Adam’s apple on the front of the throat, also an entrance wound “in the front of the head” (15). It is thus not merely a matter of altering a word or two, but, necessarily, considerable portions of transcript 1327C, including the questions attributed to the anonymous reporters.

The mistiming of the press conference’s commencement, together with the removal of the wound in the front of the head, are not the only examples of conspiratorial jiggery pokery with respect to 1327C. Visitors to Rex Bradford’s History Matters website may perhaps be surprised to find that the version of the transcript offered there comprises not nine pages, but ten. And what an interesting tenth page it is, too. It is blank except for an official-looking stamp purportedly representing the Office of the Chief of the U.S. Secret Service, and “1963 Nov 25 AM 11 40” (16). The addition of this tenth page and the stamp it bears is plainly intended to provide legitimacy to the fraudulent 1327C, by dating its production to near the time of the assassination.

An additional measure of the stamp’s legitimacy can be gauged from the failure of the Secret Service to furnish a copy to the Presidential Commission (17). The same organisation, of course, also failed to find a single newsreel or sound recording from among the many cameras and news organisations present in rooms 101-2 at the time of the press conference. This was particularly odd for according to one Dallas source, it was the Secret Service that rounded up as much of that footage as it could find (18).

(1) David Lifton. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (NY: Signet, Nov 1992), pp.70-71: Cronkite’s narration in the CBS assassination four-parter, shown in June 1967, revealed the existence of a transcript. The script claimed the manuscript refuted claims that Perry had stated the throat wound was one of entry. For subsequent developments & further background on Lifton’s part in the emergence of 1327C, together with that of CBS researcher Roger Feinman, follow this link: http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/the_critics/fei...Feinmanbio.html

(2) According to Perry’s comments to the Presidential Commission, another Parkland doctor, Baxter, entered the combined classrooms 101-2, the scene of the press conference, but did not participate (6WCH12).

(3) 6WCH20: 21 March 1964.

(4) 6WCH12: 25 March 1964.

(5) The phrase is from McAdam’s website, where the transcript of the press conference is offered with the correct timing, accompanied by the following explanation: “This transcript was typed by former JFK researcher Kathleen Cunningham and given to Barb Junkkarinen in late 1994. It is posted here courtesy of Barb Junkkarinen. An apparent error regarding the time of the news conference has been corrected in the version published above.” The new commencement time of the press conference is held to have been “2:16 P.M. CST.”

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/press.htm

(6) Lifton follows the erroneous official timing of 3:16 pm in the main text - see p.71 (“shortly after 3 pm”) in the Signet paperback, first edition, 1992 – but follows the evidence in the Chronology at the book’s rear (p.828: 2:20 approx).

(7) Fred T. Newcomb & Perry Adams. Murder From Within (Santa Barbara: Probe, 1974), p.153 n54, citing NBC Log, Nov. 22, 1963, p. 8, 2:36 p.m., CST.

Sylvia Meagher, by contrast, times the NBC report to 2:40 (CST) – see Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities and The Report (NY: Vintage Books, June 1992 reprint), pp.153-4: “…the edited transcript of television broadcasts from November 22 to 26, 1963, issued by NBC nearly two years after the Warren Report in the book Seventy Hours and Thirty Minutes*…contains a telephone report from NBC newsman Robert MacNeil at about 2:40pm Dallas time on November 22: ‘Dr. Malcolm Perry reported that the President arrived at Parkland Hospital in critical condition with neck and head injuries…A bullet struck him in the front as he faced the assailant…’” [*NBC News, Seventy Hours and Thirty Minutes (NY: Random House, 1966).]

(8) According to 1327C, Perry stated there were just two wounds on p.1.

(9) Ibid., Clark, p.5.

(10) Ibid., Clark, p.3.

(11) Ibid, Clark, p.4.

(12) Ibid., p.4.

(13) Fred T. Newcomb and Perry Adams, “Did Someone Alter the Medical Evidence?,” Skeptic, Issue No. 9, September/October 1975, pages 24 ff:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/issues_and_ev...perry_text.html

See also Vince Palamara’s The Earliest Reports (The Medical Evidence), excepted from JFK: The Medical Evidence (1998), entry 2b:

http://www.jfk-assassination.net/palamara/excerpt_book2.html

(14) Fred T. Newcomb & Perry Adams. Murder From Within (Santa Barbara: Probe, 1974), p.154. WOR Radio: Predominantly talk station: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOR_(AM)

(15) This is very close to the location offered by James Chaney, the Dallas police motorcycle outrider, who insisted in interviews given to reporters immediately after the event, that Kennedy had been hit “in the face.” (See Anthony Summers’ The Kennedy Conspiracy (London: Sphere, 1992), p.23 – “when the second shot came, I looked back in time to see the President struck in the face by the second bullet” – citing, p.543, an “unidentified film interview in police station and taped interview for KLIF, Dallas, on record ‘The Fateful Hours,’ Capitol Records.”)

(16) http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk...et/contents.htm

(17) David Lifton. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (NY: Signet, Nov 1992), p.70: “During the Warren Commission investigation, Arlen Specter requested the Secret Service to obtain videotapes and transcripts of the Parkland press conference. Secret Service Chief James Rowley reported back that after reviewing the material at all the Dallas radio and TV stations, as well as the records of NBC, ABC, and CBS in New York City, ‘no video tape or transcript could be found of a television interview with Doctor Malcolm Perry.” If only he had looked in his own in-tray.

(18) David Lifton. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (NY: Signet, Nov 1992), p.72, footnote: “Although Secret Service Chief James Rowley claimed that he could locate no tape or transcript of the Parkland Memorial Hospital press conference, Marvin Garson, a researched assisting Mark Lane in preparing Rush to Judgment, was told Dallas television executive Joe Long, of radio station KLIF, that the original recordings had been seized by Secret Service agents.”

[Myra Bronstein]

Excellent write-up Paul.

I need to look into this more, confirm things for myself.

Thanks for providing the road map.

[Ashton Gray]

My rather comprehensive response to at least the throat-shot aspect of this is not a response, per se, but an article that I have just posted in a veritable miracle of synchronicity, There Was No Bullet Wound in John F. Kennedy's Throat.

Ashton

[Paul Rigby]

Amid the widespread conspiratorialist delight at finding confirmation of what much of the US electronic media had reported at the time...

With regard to the entrance wound “in the front of the head” described by Perry, the print media handling of the story was very different. Inspection reveals the fix to have gone in early. Consider the the report on the Perry-Clark press conference, attributed to Richard Dudman, which appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, City edition, on Saturday, 23 November.

Here we find all mention of the entrance wound “in the front of the head” obliterated. Note, however, the tell-tale opening line of the relevant paragraph. It begs the very obvious question, why, if neither Perry or Clark had made any reference to any such wound in the course of the press conference, was it necessary to deny they had done so? The question, happily, is rhetorical:

Two Wounds Mentioned

“Physicians who attended the President at Parkland hospital said nothing about injuries to the President’s face. They mentioned only two wounds – a bullet hole in the front, below the Adam’s apple, and a massive wound on the right side of the back of the head.

Richard Dudman, “Man Charged With Killing Kennedy,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Saturday, 23 November 1963, p.2.

This was no one-shot aberration for Dudman. His best-known piece on the assassination, “Commentary of an Eyewitness,” which appeared in the New Republic’s edition dated 21 December 1963 (p.18) also consigned the entrance wound "in the front of the head” to historical oblivion (1).

(1) Available on line from The New Republic’s archives: http://www.tnr.com/arch/hs/

[Paul Rigby]

The doctors, it turns out, were right: The transcript commencement time is at best a mistake, and at worst the product of intentional deceit. The utility of such an “apparent error”(5) to the conspirators is self-evident: It created doubt about the direct correlation between the press conference and the contemporaneous media reports of it, accounts which contained Perry’s repeated insistence that the wound in the front of Kennedy’s throat was one of entrance.

The history of the cover-up is, at one level, a series of sustained and inter-connected assaults upon certain key chains of causality. Fraudulent chronologies – filmic, text-narrative, and the tabular - are, like denied or decontextualised attributions, weapons to be wielded in the war against popular comprehension of what really happened and when.

In the case of the entrance wound in the front of the head, as described by Perry early in the Parkland press conference, the locus classicus of the conspirators' attack is to be found in William Manchester’s monumental Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963, a work which enjoyed a considerable succes de scandale upon serialisation (1) and publication in 1967 (2), but which is today nothing more than a staple of the charity shop. Lack of attention to this vast undertaking is a mistake, for as we shall see, the book, rightly decoded, is of considerable utility in understanding how the cover-up functioned then, and proceeds to this day. All the quotations to follow are from the Pan Books Ltd., paperback edition published in London in 1968.

Manchester’s carefully crafted attack begins with the omission of the Parkland press conference from all three of the book's chronological pillars. The absence is excusable from the shortest and least substantial of these, that which appears nears the book's end and seeks to correlate the events of Kennedy’s funeral with Oswald’s last hours alive (3). The same can not be said of the other two, both of which are substantial constructions offering abundant scope for its incorporation.

The first of these - appropriately, near the book’s opening, sandwiched between the Glossary and the Prologue - offers a broad overview, in Eastern Standard Time, of supposedly key events over the course of 22-25 November. It finds room, by way of illustrating the point, for the AP report at 15:14hrs that a Secret Service man had been killed in Dallas (4); and the 14:25hrs announcement by the networks, on Sunday, 24 November, of Oswald’s expiration (5) – but not a word on the timing and content of the Perry-Clark press conference.

The second substantial chron appears near the book’s midpoint, and is dedicated to Oswald’s movements, in both Central and Eastern Standard Time. It also boasts a column given over to “Developments Elsewhere” (6). In the latter, there is room for both a 1:18 pm, CST, AP report which proclaimed “LBJ wounded” (7) and a 1:35pm, CST, UPI “flash confirming JFK’s death” (8) but, again, not the Perry-Clark press conference. This is no accident.

In the main body of the text, Manchester first divides Perry from the entrance wound at the front of the head - and makes it disappear, temporarily, at least, down the memory hole - then resurrects it, sans attribution to Perry, in order to turn his guns on the AP reporter who faithfully and accurately reported that statement in the early part of the Perry-Clark press conference. In the first extended extract, note how Manchester confines the wounds described by Perry purely to the entrance wound in the throat and dismisses it; and how, in both the first and second extracts, he utilises that old stand-by for dismissing inconvenient testimony, the fevered atmosphere. The possibility that the none of the Parkland doctors noticed a back wound because it did not yet exist is, of course, just too outré for consideration:

pp.320-321: “Three other physicians later joined Perry in 101-102, but he bore the brunt of the briefing, and it was harrowing. The scene was bedlam. Several correspondents were hysterical. A question would be asked, and the doctor would be half-way through his answer when another reporter broke in with an entirely different question. Misquotations were inevitable. Had the scene been calm and orderly, the results would still have been unfortunate, however, for none of the doctors, Perry included, had thoroughly examined the President. Because they had failed to turn him over – in Carrico's later words, 'Nobody really had the heart to do it' – they hadn't seen his back. To them the throat wound suggested that one of the shots had come from the front. Reporters who drew that conclusion weren't to blame. They hadn't seen the body, Perry, who had, was their source.

Under any circumstances the possibilities for muddle in gunshot cases are almost infinite. Abraham Lincoln, like John Kennedy, was shot in the posterior part of the head. Because Booth's nineteenth century weapon was low-powered his victim survived for nine hours and the .44 calibre derringer ball of Britannia metal did not shatter his head; a one-inch disc of bone was driven three inches into the brain, and the ball lodged in his skull. In other respects the fatal wounds of the two Presidents are similar though, and the medical reports of April 1865, like Perry's, were baffling. Lincoln's assassin had approached him from the right side, yet the derringer ball entered his head from the left. Perplexity and unfounded rumour persisted until the conspirators' trial, when one of the witnesses testified that the President, attracted by something in the pit of the theatre, had twisted his head sharply leftward and downward at the last moment. Medical briefings are supposed to quash such misunderstandings. The one at Parkland did exactly the opposite. Perry was asked whether one bullet could have struck the President from the front. He replied, 'Yes, it is conceivable.' Sidey, realizing the implications, cried, 'Doctor, do you realize what you're doing? You're confusing us.' It was too late. By the following morning millions were convinced that a rifleman had fired from the top of the underpass, and in many parts of the world the conviction is established truth today.”

Over one hundred and seventy pages later, the chain of cause and effect sundered - to his own satisfaction and, presumably, that of his masters – Manchester returns to the itch sensible only to the conspirators themselves. Yes, it’s that damn “entrance at the front of the head” described by Perry. With the latter out of the picture, the messenger gets both barrels:

pp.493-4: “A certain amount of distortion was inevitable. Erratic individuals are eager to credit the incredible. A century after Lincoln's death his assassination is still being laid at the door of a member of his Cabinet, and years after Kennedy's death there would be those who would reject any information which did not fit their preconceived theories about the crime. These people did not want facts; they merely wanted to feed their own ravaged emotions. But that Friday stable persons were being misled, too. The erratic performance of the Associated Press was responsible for much of the confusion. The AP was an American institution. Deservedly, it was regarded as a pillar of accuracy. When it followed its twelve-bell confirmation of the assassination with the report that an unnamed Secret Service man had been killed and added cryptically that 'no other information was immediately available', Bill Greer's wife, in suburban Washington, believed the worst. She knew that Bill always drove the Lincoln, and although a denial of the rumour from the Treasury Department was on the printer two hours later, she assumed throughout the flight that her husband was dead.

There were other lapses during the afternoon. Most were inconsequential. Over an hour after 26000's departure from Love Field, NCB [sic] was broadcasting that 'LBJ is remaining in Dallas'. The flash that a red-shirted man with black curly hair had been arrested 'in the Riverside section of Fort Worth in the shooting of a Dallas policeman' was quickly forgotten when the truth about Oswald began to pour in an hour later. An entirely inaccurate story of how the President's parents had learned of his death from a Hyannis Port workman scarcely mattered; neither did a description of 'the President...struck in the right temple by the bullet' or of the weapon as a 'German Mauser'. But one account was to cause real mischief later. The AP flatly declared that Kennedy had been shot 'in the front of the head'. It was this report, put out scarcely an hour after the President had been pronounced dead, which became the chief source for the conviction of millions that all subsequent investigations of the tragedy were fraudulent.”

The AP reporter responsible was almost certainly Jack Bell. Why Manchester's coyness about identifying him? After all, it was hardly as if he was unaware of Bell's presence at Parkland that afternoon (9). Partly, I suspect, because named men can answer back. But a more important reason was surely to preserve consistency: In stripping the entrance wound in the front of the head of both specific source and identified transmitter, Manchester sought to deny it legitimacy. It was, we were to be persuaded, just one more emanation, ephemeral and weightless, arising from the miasma of confusion that was Dallas on 22 November 1963 (10).

(1) In the USA, inLook magazine in four instalments, running from January to March 1967: 24 January, pp.36-50; 7 February, pp.40-56; 21 February, pp.42-58; 7 March, pp.50-66.

For background on the very public row between the Kennedys and Manchester, see:

Lawrence Van Gelder. The Untold Story: Why The Kennedys Lost the Book Battle (NY: Award Books, 1967).

Arnold Bennett. Jackie, Bobby, and Manchester (NY: Bee Line Books, 1967).

John Corry. The Manchester Affair (NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1967).

DeLloyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone offer a very useful section, entitled Manchester v. Kennedys Book, pp. 197-204, in The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical & Legal Bibliography, 1963-1979 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980).

(2) The Death of a President was first published in book form by Harper & Row, an old CIA friend.

(3) William Manchester. The Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963 (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1968), p.719.

(4) Ibid., p.20.

(5) Ibid., p.21.

(6) Ibid., p.397-402.

(7) Ibid., p.400.

(8) Ibid, p.401.

(9) Ibid., p.318-9.

(10) A good rejoinder to this nonsense is to be found in Mordecai Brienberg’s “The Riddle of Dallas,” The Spectator, 6 March 1964, pp.305-306: “It might be argued in defence of the investigating agencies that in the atmosphere of excitement that followed Kennedy’s assassination contradictions and imprecisions were due to ‘honest’ confusion. Granted that confusion existed, why then should the officials be continuously certain of one thing, Oswald’s guilt? Why is Oswald’s presumed guilt the constant in this sea of incomplete and conflicting evidence?”

Follow this link for the text of the whole article: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;hl=Brienberg

[Paul Rigby]

The doctors, it turns out, were right: The transcript commencement time is at best a mistake, and at worst the product of intentional deceit. The utility of such an “apparent error”(5) to the conspirators is self-evident: It created doubt about the direct correlation between the press conference and the contemporaneous media reports of it, accounts which contained Perry’s repeated insistence that the wound in the front of Kennedy’s throat was one of entrance.

The history of the cover-up is, at one level, a series of sustained and inter-connected assaults upon certain key chains of causality. Fraudulent chronologies – filmic, text-narrative, and the tabular - are, like denied or decontextualised attributions, weapons to be wielded in the war against popular comprehension of what really happened and when.

In the case of the entrance wound in the front of the head, as described by Perry early in the Parkland press conference, the locus classicus of the conspirators' attack is to be found in William Manchester’s monumental Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963, a work which enjoyed a considerable succes de scandale upon serialisation (1) and publication in 1967 (2), but which is today nothing more than a staple of the charity shop. Lack of attention to this vast undertaking is a mistake, for as we shall see, the book, rightly decoded, is of considerable utility in understanding how the cover-up functioned then, and proceeds to this day. All the quotations to follow are from the Pan Books Ltd., paperback edition published in London in 1968.

Manchester’s carefully crafted attack begins with the omission of the Parkland press conference from all three of the book's chronological pillars. The absence is excusable from the shortest and least substantial of these, that which appears nears the book's end and seeks to correlate the events of Kennedy’s funeral with Oswald’s last hours alive (3). The same can not be said of the other two, both of which are substantial constructions offering abundant scope for its incorporation.

The first of these - appropriately, near the book’s opening, sandwiched between the Glossary and the Prologue - offers a broad overview, in Eastern Standard Time, of supposedly key events over the course of 22-25 November. It finds room, by way of illustrating the point, for the AP report at 15:14hrs that a Secret Service man had been killed in Dallas (4); and the 14:25hrs announcement by the networks, on Sunday, 24 November, of Oswald’s expiration (5) – but not a word on the timing and content of the Perry-Clark press conference.

The second substantial chron appears near the book’s midpoint, and is dedicated to Oswald’s movements, in both Central and Eastern Standard Time. It also boasts a column given over to “Developments Elsewhere” (6). In the latter, there is room for both a 1:18 pm, CST, AP report which proclaimed “LBJ wounded” (7) and a 1:35pm, CST, UPI “flash confirming JFK’s death” (8) but, again, not the Perry-Clark press conference. This is no accident.

In the main body of the text, Manchester first divides Perry from the entrance wound at the front of the head - and makes it disappear, temporarily, at least, down the memory hole - then resurrects it, sans attribution to Perry, in order to turn his guns on the AP reporter who faithfully and accurately reported that statement in the early part of the Perry-Clark press conference. In the first extended extract, note how Manchester confines the wounds described by Perry purely to the entrance wound in the throat and dismisses it; and how, in both the first and second extracts, he utilises that old stand-by for dismissing inconvenient testimony, the fevered atmosphere. The possibility that the none of the Parkland doctors noticed a back wound because it did not yet exist is, of course, just too outré for consideration:

pp.320-321: “Three other physicians later joined Perry in 101-102, but he bore the brunt of the briefing, and it was harrowing. The scene was bedlam. Several correspondents were hysterical. A question would be asked, and the doctor would be half-way through his answer when another reporter broke in with an entirely different question. Misquotations were inevitable. Had the scene been calm and orderly, the results would still have been unfortunate, however, for none of the doctors, Perry included, had thoroughly examined the President. Because they had failed to turn him over – in Carrico's later words, 'Nobody really had the heart to do it' – they hadn't seen his back. To them the throat wound suggested that one of the shots had come from the front. Reporters who drew that conclusion weren't to blame. They hadn't seen the body, Perry, who had, was their source.

Under any circumstances the possibilities for muddle in gunshot cases are almost infinite. Abraham Lincoln, like John Kennedy, was shot in the posterior part of the head. Because Booth's nineteenth century weapon was low-powered his victim survived for nine hours and the .44 calibre derringer ball of Britannia metal did not shatter his head; a one-inch disc of bone was driven three inches into the brain, and the ball lodged in his skull. In other respects the fatal wounds of the two Presidents are similar though, and the medical reports of April 1865, like Perry's, were baffling. Lincoln's assassin had approached him from the right side, yet the derringer ball entered his head from the left. Perplexity and unfounded rumour persisted until the conspirators' trial, when one of the witnesses testified that the President, attracted by something in the pit of the theatre, had twisted his head sharply leftward and downward at the last moment. Medical briefings are supposed to quash such misunderstandings. The one at Parkland did exactly the opposite. Perry was asked whether one bullet could have struck the President from the front. He replied, 'Yes, it is conceivable.' Sidey, realizing the implications, cried, 'Doctor, do you realize what you're doing? You're confusing us.' It was too late. By the following morning millions were convinced that a rifleman had fired from the top of the underpass, and in many parts of the world the conviction is established truth today.”

Over one hundred and seventy pages later, the chain of cause and effect sundered - to his own satisfaction and, presumably, that of his masters – Manchester returns to the itch sensible only to the conspirators themselves. Yes, it’s that damn “entrance at the front of the head” described by Perry. With the latter out of the picture, the messenger gets both barrels:

pp.493-4: “A certain amount of distortion was inevitable. Erratic individuals are eager to credit the incredible. A century after Lincoln's death his assassination is still being laid at the door of a member of his Cabinet, and years after Kennedy's death there would be those who would reject any information which did not fit their preconceived theories about the crime. These people did not want facts; they merely wanted to feed their own ravaged emotions. But that Friday stable persons were being misled, too. The erratic performance of the Associated Press was responsible for much of the confusion. The AP was an American institution. Deservedly, it was regarded as a pillar of accuracy. When it followed its twelve-bell confirmation of the assassination with the report that an unnamed Secret Service man had been killed and added cryptically that 'no other information was immediately available', Bill Greer's wife, in suburban Washington, believed the worst. She knew that Bill always drove the Lincoln, and although a denial of the rumour from the Treasury Department was on the printer two hours later, she assumed throughout the flight that her husband was dead.

There were other lapses during the afternoon. Most were inconsequential. Over an hour after 26000's departure from Love Field, NCB [sic] was broadcasting that 'LBJ is remaining in Dallas'. The flash that a red-shirted man with black curly hair had been arrested 'in the Riverside section of Fort Worth in the shooting of a Dallas policeman' was quickly forgotten when the truth about Oswald began to pour in an hour later. An entirely inaccurate story of how the President's parents had learned of his death from a Hyannis Port workman scarcely mattered; neither did a description of 'the President...struck in the right temple by the bullet' or of the weapon as a 'German Mauser'. But one account was to cause real mischief later. The AP flatly declared that Kennedy had been shot 'in the front of the head'. It was this report, put out scarcely an hour after the President had been pronounced dead, which became the chief source for the conviction of millions that all subsequent investigations of the tragedy were fraudulent.”

The AP reporter responsible was almost certainly Jack Bell. Why Manchester's coyness about identifying him? After all, it was hardly as if he was unaware of Bell's presence at Parkland that afternoon (9). Partly, I suspect, because named men can answer back. But a more important reason was surely to preserve consistency: In stripping the entrance wound in the front of the head of both specific source and identified transmitter, Manchester sought to deny it legitimacy. It was, we were to be persuaded, just one more emanation, ephemeral and weightless, arising from the miasma of confusion that was Dallas on 22 November 1963 (10).

(1) In the USA, inLook magazine in four instalments, running from January to March 1967: 24 January, pp.36-50; 7 February, pp.40-56; 21 February, pp.42-58; 7 March, pp.50-66.

For background on the very public row between the Kennedys and Manchester, see:

Lawrence Van Gelder. The Untold Story: Why The Kennedys Lost the Book Battle (NY: Award Books, 1967).

Arnold Bennett. Jackie, Bobby, and Manchester (NY: Bee Line Books, 1967).

John Corry. The Manchester Affair (NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1967).

DeLloyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone offer a very useful section, entitled Manchester v. Kennedys Book, pp. 197-204, in The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical & Legal Bibliography, 1963-1979 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980).

(2) The Death of a President was first published in book form by Harper & Row, an old CIA friend.

(3) William Manchester. The Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963 (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1968), p.719.

(4) Ibid., p.20.

(5) Ibid., p.21.

(6) Ibid., p.397-402.

(7) Ibid., p.400.

(8) Ibid, p.401.

(9) Ibid., p.318-9.

(10) A good rejoinder to this nonsense is to be found in Mordecai Brienberg’s “The Riddle of Dallas,” The Spectator, 6 March 1964, pp.305-306: “It might be argued in defence of the investigating agencies that in the atmosphere of excitement that followed Kennedy’s assassination contradictions and imprecisions were due to ‘honest’ confusion. Granted that confusion existed, why then should the officials be continuously certain of one thing, Oswald’s guilt? Why is Oswald’s presumed guilt the constant in this sea of incomplete and conflicting evidence?”

Follow this link for the text of the whole article: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;hl=Brienberg

[Lee Forman]

Fantastic work and write-up Paul.

- lee

[Paul Rigby]

In the main body of the text, Manchester first divides Perry from the entrance wound at the front of the head - and makes it disappear, temporarily, at least, down the memory hole - then resurrects it, sans attribution to Perry, in order to turn his guns on the AP reporter who faithfully and accurately reported that statement in the early part of the Perry-Clark press conference.

A paired example, a la Chomsky, but minus the CIA-serving spin, has long suggested itself.

There were of course two press conferences at Parkland in the two hours following the confirmation of Kennedy’s death shortly after 1300hrs, CST. (The time of 1300hrs was a convenient rounding back.) The first, that featuring Malcolm Kilduff, acting presidential press spokesman, began at just after 1330hrs. Here’s what Kilduff said according to Manchester's Death of a President:

Version 1:

p.318: “Quiet! Quiet!”; “Excuse me, let me catch my breath”;

p.319: “President John F. Kennedy died at approximately one o'clock Central Standard Time today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound in the brain. I have no other details regarding the assassination of the President. Mrs. Kennedy was not hit. Governor Connally was hit. The Vice President was not hit.”

Version 2:

p.493: “An entirely inaccurate story of how the President's parents had learned of his death from a Hyannis Port workman scarcely mattered; neither did a description of 'the President...struck in the right temple by the bullet' or of the weapon as a 'German Mauser'.

Demonstrably, then, the same technique - of divide, censor, dismiss, and subsequently resurrect without attribution, as applied to Perry and the “entrance wound at the front of the head” - is utilised by Manchester on Kilduff’s brief official announcement of Kennedy’s death. For what Kilduff actually said included the following:

”The President was shot once, in the head…Dr. Burkley told me it is a simple matter of a bullet through the head…It is my understanding that it entered in the temple, the right temple.”

David Lifton adds: “As Kilduff spoke the last words, he raised his right hand and pointed with his index finger at his right temple,”

Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (NY: Signet, Nov 1992), p.387.

As Lifton notes in the above book, NBC broadcast a UPI despatch citing Burkley on the right temple entrance on the afternoon of 22 November (Ibid.).

This seems clear enough: Both Burkley (via Kilduff) and Perry, in the early afternoon of 22 November, uttered heresy to the pre-planned scenario of a lone gunman firing from high to the right rear. Their treatment, and that of their respective testimonies, therefore, first at the hands of the Presidential Commission, then at the hands of William Manchester, should have been similar, if not necessarily identical.

But it wasn't, as will be made clear. Why?

[Ashton Gray]

Both Burkley (via Kilduff) and Perry, in the early afternoon of 22 November, uttered heresy to the pre-planned scenario of a lone gunman firing from high to the right rear.

And it's no surprise at all to me that Burkley and Perry would be the precise two people to deliver the "shot from the front" hypnotic implant at the height of confusion as the precise black CIA psy op it was, to set up an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing "scenarios". It's straight text-book. I've thoroughly covered exactly why it's no surprise to me at all that the messengers of just such a fraud would be Burkley and Perry in the thread There Was No Bullet Wound in John F. Kennedy's Throat, particularly in this linked post in that thread.

But I've waited for you to get around to your major premise in this thread you've started, and after five rather lengthy messages you've posted, you still haven't gotten around to saying what your major premise is. What is it? Why is transcript 1327C a fraud, according to your model?

You seem (although I'll be the first to admit that it's difficult to tell) to be building a case that Perry and Burkley were the shining messengers of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, that John F. Kennedy was, indeed, shot from the front, and that the Blue Meanies or the CIA or the Warren Commission (same difference) fiddle-faddled with the transcript of a press conference that was witnessed by Gawd knows how many press members and public (in the age of recording devices) in order to eradicate or diminish or twist one purported mention of a frontal wound—while leaving in another!

I can't even figure out where you're going with it. What could be the point?

So while I certainly will wait with bated breath for you to get to your elusive point, I'm going jump right to mine: there was no bullet wound in John F. Kennedy's throat, period. It's not possible, as I've made clear with copious visual evidence in the thread I've just linked to.

And Malcolm O. Perry is the very person who destroyed all evidence of the wound that was in Kennedy's throat (which could not have been a wound made by a projectile of any description), then marched right out and told the world the grand lie that there had been a projectile wound in Kennedy's throat, and that it had been a projectile wound of entrance. It was, and is, and forever will be a lie.

That's the fraud of transcript 1327C. It's one of the biggest fraud's ever run on the world. And guess what: that CIA fraud made it into transcript 1327C.

Ashton

Edited October 29, 2007 by Ashton Gray

[Charles Drago]

[set up an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing "scenarios"

You could not be more precisely on target.

Pun intended.

Such is the sine qua non for the perpetuation of needless uncertainty, debate, and internecine conflict -- the guarantors of security for the killers.

Argue though we might about frontal shots, we remain in profound agreement on the origins and purposes of the by-design cognitive dissonance that befuddles the vast majority of well-meaning researchers.

Charles

[Paul Rigby]

And it's no surprise at all to me that Burkley and Perry would be the precise two people to deliver the "shot from the front" hypnotic implant at the height of confusion as the precise black CIA psy op it was, to set up an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing "scenarios". It's straight text-book.

A very useful concept, “an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing ‘scenarios,’”* but not, alas, in this instance: a true diametric opposition would have Burkley informing Kilduff that the entrance wound was in the back of the head ie at the other end of the diameter, as opposed to Perry’s insistence – suppressed by 1327C – that there was an entrance wound in the front of the head.

It is “straight text book,” agreed, but from a very different, and more subtle, manual: You don’t begin by butchering the truth, you shave it. This is precisely what Burkley did when he fed Kilduff that guff about an entrance wound in the right temple. The consensus among the Parkland doctors on the afternoon of 22 November was that there was a matching pair of head wounds – a small entry in the left temple, and a correspondingly large exit at the right rear.

I've thoroughly covered exactly why it's no surprise to me at all that the messengers of just such a fraud would be Burkley and Perry in the thread There Was No Bullet Wound in John F. Kennedy's Throat, particularly in this linked post in that thread.

“Thoroughly”? No, you haven’t. With regard to Perry, you’ve simply kept asserting he was a conspirator. Repeated assertion is just that, assertion.

But I've waited for you to get around to your major premise in this thread you've started, and after five rather lengthy messages you've posted, you still haven't gotten around to saying what your major premise is. What is it? Why is transcript 1327C a fraud, according to your model?

What you rather grandly call my “major premise” couldn’t be more obvious, and is contained in the thread’s opening piece: contemporaneous new reports v. a manuscript which surfaced publicly only in 1976. Your incomprehension is thus feigned, and born of an ulterior motive. To illustrate the perversity of your interpretation, let’s revisit that alleged failure of mine to venture my, yes, “major premise”:

According to 1327C, Perry and Clark described only two wounds, the entrance wound in the front of the throat (8), and “a large, gaping loss of tissue” (9) at “the back of his head” (10), “principally on his right side” (11). The questions attributed to the unnamed reporters present reinforces this two-wound scenario, for example, when one of them supposedly asked of Perry, following his pointing to this own throat to show where the bullet had entered, “Doctor, is it the assumption that it went through the head?” (12). So much for 1327C. Now let us turn to the contemporaneous news reports.

Here we find something very different. The Associated Press reported, shortly after 2 pm, CST, that ‘Dr. Perry said the entrance wound—which is the medical description—the entrance wound was in the front of the head’” (13); while WOR Radio, New York, quoted Perry to this effect at 2:43 pm, CST, (14). So, instead of just two wounds, the Parkland duo actually described three – there was, in addition to the entrance wound just below the Adam’s apple on the front of the throat, also an entrance wound “in the front of the head” (15). It is thus not merely a matter of altering a word or two, but, necessarily, considerable portions of transcript 1327C, including the questions attributed to the anonymous reporters.

Very opaque, I must say.

End of part 1.

[Paul Rigby]

You seem (although I'll be the first to admit that it's difficult to tell) to be building a case that Perry and Burkley were the shining messengers of Truth, Justice, and the American Way…

Nope, nothing of the sort. And had your remote viewing been up to scratch, you’d have known as much from the scrawls in my notebook.

Still, and for the record, I agree with you (and many others) that Burkley was indeed a witting conspirator.

… that John F. Kennedy was, indeed, shot from the front…

That’s twice from the front, please…

…and that the Blue Meanies or the CIA or the Warren Commission (same difference) fiddle-faddled with the transcript of a press conference that was witnessed by Gawd knows how many press members and public (in the age of recording devices) in order to eradicate or diminish or twist one purported mention of a frontal wound—while leaving in another!

So let me see if I have your logic right: Perry, a CIA plant among the Parkland doctors, goes before the afternoon press conference primed with a rank piece of CIA disinformation - to the effect that Kennedy had an entrance wound in the front of the head – delivers said piece of rank disinfo, only for the CIA to suppress its own corker of a piece of disinformation from that day forth?

Er, why? Surely it was in the interest of the CIA to disseminate newsreel and tape recordings of that press conference as widely and frequently as possible? Instead, nada, for, what, 44 years?

I can't even figure out where you're going with it. What could be the point?

You said it.

But wait, I did have it right:

And Malcolm O. Perry is the very person who destroyed all evidence of the wound that was in Kennedy's throat..

Hyperbolic tosh. Perry did no such thing. He pragmatically utilised a small, existing wound in the throat – instead of puncturing an unnecessary duplicate – after slightly extending, by horizontal slits, the existing wound to facilitate the entrance of a tube. Here’s Humes, courtesy of Weisberg (Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report, p.320, citing 2H371) on Perry’s wholesale destruction of “all evidence of the wound that was in Kennedy’s throat”:

”To ascertain the point, I called on the telephone Dr. Malcolm Perry and discussed with him the situation of the President’s neck when he first examined the President and asked him had he in fact done a tracheotomy which was somewhat redundant because I was somewhat certain he had.” Perry confirmed that he had made the incision at the point of the wound.”

You conclude, with characteristic restraint:

…(which could not have been a wound made by a projectile of any description), then marched right out and told the world the grand lie that there had been a projectile wound in Kennedy's throat, and that it had been a projectile wound of entrance. It was, and is, and forever will be a lie.

You have it the entirely the wrong way round, diametrically speaking, naturally.

*I think it was Plutarch who it put it best: “Our minds are confused by the close proximity of opposites.”

[Paul Rigby]

[set up an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing "scenarios"

You could not be more precisely on target.

Pun intended.

Such is the sine qua non for the perpetuation of needless uncertainty, debate, and internecine conflict -- the guarantors of security for the killers.

Argue though we might about frontal shots, we remain in profound agreement on the origins and purposes of the by-design cognitive dissonance that befuddles the vast majority of well-meaning researchers.

Charles

The Old Music Master by Hoagy Carmichael?

[Ashton Gray]

And it's no surprise at all to me that Burkley and Perry would be the precise two people to deliver the "shot from the front" hypnotic implant at the height of confusion as the precise black CIA psy op it was, to set up an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing "scenarios". It's straight text-book.

A very useful concept, “an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing ‘scenarios,’”* but not, alas, in this instance:

It is precisely an unresolvable dichotomy of diametrically opposing "scenarios": claims and evidence of a shot or shots from the rear, standing in direct opposition to claims and purported "evidence" of a shot or shots from the front. If you want to seek comfort in slicing and dicing degrees of an arc, be my guest. It is the last refuge of the Front Shot Faithful.

a true diametric opposition would have Burkley informing Kilduff that the entrance wound was in the back of the head ie at the other end of the diameter, as opposed to Perry’s insistence – suppressed by 1327C – that there was an entrance wound in the front of the head.

This desperation in clutching at the fervidly flawed proclamation of a breathless AP reporter hammering out his assininely afflicted description of the press conference certainly is worthy of unshakable Faith (with a capital "F") and the credulity that attends it, but I'm frankly surprised to find someone of your scholarship preaching it.

The moron at AP got it wrong, that's all. You solved it yourself in your first post when you reported correctly that after Perry pointed to his own throat and lied and said that the wound in the throat was an entrance bullet wound, a reporter asked, "Doctor, is it the assumption that it went through the head?" If only you had stopped there!

Bell ran off to his typewriter to describe what he understood from the press conference to be a single head wound with a single entrance hole (in the throat) with a single exit hole (that he understood to be a gaping hole in the back of the head on the right side), and so idiotically shorthanded his description of this purported bullet shot that exploded the head by saying "the entrance wound was in the front of the head." And it can go even further: for all you or I know, all Bell actually wrote was "the entrance wound was in the front," and an editor at AP added "of the head" thinking he was clarifying the report, when in fact he was confusing it all to hell.

Then some local-yokel papers picked the the AP garbage and propagated it, as always happens.

But whether Bell himself wrote the utterly perverse description, or some greenhorn AP stringer, or whether it was "enhanced" by an AP desk editor, it's completely immaterial and irrelevant.

As recently as 27 August 1998—long after the transcript was available—Ronald Coy Jones, M.D., Robert M. Mcclelland, M.D., Malcolm O. Perry, M.D., and Paul C. Peters, M.D.—all doctors who were there in Trauma Room One that day—were gathered for questioning as a group by Jeremy Gunn, general counsel of the Assassination Records Review Board. During that questioning, Paul Peters summated the exact frame of mind that was the consensus view at the time of the press conference (based on the patently false idea that there had been a bullet wound to the throat):

DR. PETERS:

I think most of us thought at first that day in the first few minutes that, boy, it might have one in through the neck and out the back of the head, which would have been a big exit wound and a small entrance wound.

That was the consensus. That is what was stated at the press conference.

In the same group questioning of the doctors by Jeremy Gunn, Ronald Coy Jones erased any possibility of doubt on this entire non-issue (italic emphasis added):

DR. JONES:

Yes, I would agree there was

no facial injury whatsoever

.

And that is entirely consistent with SS Agent Kellerman's description of JFK's face inside Trauma Room One, which I've posted in pertinent part in the thread There Was No Bullet Wound in John F. Kennedy's Throat.

The AP idiots mischaracterized it. It's that simple.

If I were armed with a steam shovel, I could not possibly heap enough praise on Richard Dudman for relegating the mythical "entrance wound in the front of the head" to historical oblivion, and the only criticism I have is that he did not burn it in the fires of Hell.

I've thoroughly covered exactly why it's no surprise to me at all that the messengers of just such a fraud would be Burkley and Perry in the thread There Was No Bullet Wound in John F. Kennedy's Throat, particularly in this linked post in that thread.

“Thoroughly”? No, you haven’t. With regard to Perry, you’ve simply kept asserting he was a conspirator.

I notice you don't quote even one instance of my asserting that Perry was a conspirator, much less the multiplicity of such assertions that you assert. Lest any gentle reader have a twitching urge to run off to the search function to find out why you haven't quoted me making any such assertion, I'll save them the trouble: you can't.

What I have done is post incontrovertible facts about Perry's actions and statements, and you—yes, that is you—have synthesized those facts yourself into a conclusion that Perry was a conspirator, and have falsely attributed your own conclusions to me.

At least have the integrity to take responsibility for your own conclusions from facts, and don't try to pin them on me.

Repeated assertion is just that, assertion.

I couldn't agree more. Maybe next time you'll quote me instead of falsely asserting that I have asserted things that I never asserted.

But I've waited for you to get around to your major premise in this thread you've started, and after five rather lengthy messages you've posted, you still haven't gotten around to saying what your major premise is. What is it? Why is transcript 1327C a fraud, according to your model?

What you rather grandly call my “major premise” couldn’t be more obvious, and is contained in the thread’s opening piece: contemporaneous new reports v. a manuscript which surfaced publicly only in 1976. Your incomprehension is thus feigned, and born of an ulterior motive. To illustrate the perversity of your interpretation, let’s revisit that alleged failure of mine to venture my, yes, “major premise”:

According to 1327C, Perry and Clark described only two wounds, the entrance wound in the front of the throat (8), and “a large, gaping loss of tissue” (9) at “the back of his head” (10), “principally on his right side” (11). The questions attributed to the unnamed reporters present reinforces this two-wound scenario, for example, when one of them supposedly asked of Perry, following his pointing to this own throat to show where the bullet had entered, “Doctor, is it the assumption that it went through the head?” (12). So much for 1327C. Now let us turn to the contemporaneous news reports.

Here we find something very different. The Associated Press reported, shortly after 2 pm, CST, that ‘Dr. Perry said the entrance wound—which is the medical description—the entrance wound was in the front of the head’” (13); while WOR Radio, New York, quoted Perry to this effect at 2:43 pm, CST, (14). So, instead of just two wounds, the Parkland duo actually described three – there was, in addition to the entrance wound just below the Adam’s apple on the front of the throat, also an entrance wound “in the front of the head” (15). It is thus not merely a matter of altering a word or two, but, necessarily, considerable portions of transcript 1327C, including the questions attributed to the anonymous reporters.

Very opaque, I must say.

I couldn't agree more.

You still haven't made a simple statement of what you are trying to build a case for.

If it is that there actually was "an entrance wound 'in the front of the head'" and that there was a grand conspiracy to cover it up by tweaking the transcript of the Parkland press conference way back in 1976 (and I still can't tell for certain, because you won't just say so), I humbly suggest that you would have better luck resurrecting Lazarus a second time. Or maybe even Kennedy himself.

Ashton

Edited October 30, 2007 by Ashton Gray

[Ashton Gray]

...for the record, I agree with you (and many others) that Burkley was indeed a witting conspirator.

In fact I think you'll find in my own record no such overt statement of conclusion, but I'll go on the record here saying that I now believe he was, indeed, a witting conspirator, and will rejoice in our having found a point of agreement.

…and that the Blue Meanies or the CIA or the Warren Commission (same difference) fiddle-faddled with the transcript of a press conference that was witnessed by Gawd knows how many press members and public (in the age of recording devices) in order to eradicate or diminish or twist one purported mention of a frontal wound—while leaving in another!

So let me see if I have your logic right: Perry, a CIA plant among the Parkland doctors, goes before the afternoon press conference primed with a rank piece of CIA disinformation - to the effect that Kennedy had an entrance wound in the front of the head – delivers said piece of rank disinfo, only for the CIA to suppress its own corker of a piece of disinformation from that day forth?

No, you have twisted my logic until it is unrecognizable.

The disinformation that Perry planted in the press conference, and that remained in the record, was the falsehood that there was a bullet entrance wound in the front (anterior) of John F. Kennedy's throat (neck).

There Was No Bullet Wound in John F. Kennedy's Throat. Period.

The source of the original falsehood that a bullet caused a wound in John F. Kennedy's throat, which falsehood is still in the record, was Malcolm O. Perry. It is inarguable. It is by Perry's own admission. It is in the press conference transcript to this day. It is an incontrovertible fact of record that it was Perry who first planted the lie in the public mind.

And Malcolm O. Perry is the very person who destroyed all evidence of the wound that was in Kennedy's throat...

Hyperbolic tosh. Perry did no such thing.

Oh, yes, it is exactly what Perry did.

From Perry's testimony before the Warren Commission, bold emphasis added:

DR. PERRY:

I made an incision

right through the wound

which was present in the neck... .I made a transverse incision

right through this wound

... .

From Perry's testimony to Jeremy Gunn of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), bold emphasis added:

DR. PERRY:

It was

bigger than I would make for an elective situation

. In a patient that's not in extremis where you're doing an elective tracheostomy you make a nice tiny skin line incision in order to minimize the subsequent scarring.

From Perry's initial interview with Specter, bold emphasis added:

DR. PERRY:

I...began the tracheotomy making a transverse incision

right through the wound in the neck

. ...Once the trachea had been exposed I took the knife and incised the windpipe

at the point of the...injury

. ...Since I had made the incision

directly through the wound in the neck

, it made it

difficult for them

[Humes and the autopsy personnel]

to ascertain the exact nature of this wound

.

Of course Perry is being inordinately modest when he says that it was "difficult...to ascertain the exact nature of this wound" as a result of his carving: the autopsy personnel didn't know there had been any throat wound at all until Humes called Perry the next morning!

That is incontrovertible fact, and if you feel an itch to argue it with me, it is a measure of my esteem that I adjure you to restudy the record with great care before succumbing to any such reckless urge.

Ashton

Edited October 30, 2007 by Ashton Gray