Pat Speer

OMG. Sandy and I agree. I have an extremely long (book-length?) chapter on the various accounts of the plane ride back and it's clear LBJ was told to leave but instead refused to leave until the body and Mrs. K were aboard. It also seems clear that in the Irish tradition Mrs. K got drunk with JFK's buddies while they sat around the casket, and that LBJ disapproved of this. As I recall, there was a rift between the JFK and LBJ loyalists, in that the JFK people wanted to mourn and the LBJ people wanted to get down to business. But there was most certainly not a party atmosphere among the LBJ crowd on Air Force One. As far as the pilots being ordered to leave, I think it was Gen. McHugh who, upon Mrs. K's arrival with the body, ordered the immediate departure of the plane. He was then told they would only take orders from the President, at such time he said the President was dead. When then told they meant LBJ, he said that he was "not my President" or some such thing. In any event, LBJ did not order the plane to leave but actually ordered it not to leave before Sarah Hughes could arrive and swear him in.

The large wound Custer pointed out to Groden was clearly the wound as seen after the scalp was pulled back and the brain was removed. It seems obvious that Custer and O'Connor and other Bethesda witnesses mentioning a gigantic wound from front to back were describing the wound THEY saw, after scalp was pulled to the side and skull fell to the table. Ironically, this was something on which Lifton and Horne and Fetzer and myself agreed. FWIW, Hill has been consistent in that the large head wound was above the right ear since at least 2004. As he continued to dispute the single-bullet theory, it's far-fetched to assume he was lying to sell the single-assassin theory. In his books and interviews, moreover, he has claimed he looked down in the wound and thought it looked like an ice cream scoop had removed a big chunk of brain. This is not a normal exit, and is far more descriptive of a tangential wound of both entrance and exit than a separate exit wound. So, to my way of thinking Hill is a hell of a witness for conspiracy, whether he knows it or not.

You are absolutely correct. The DPD and DA's office were leaking all sorts of stuff. If I recall someone fed the Diary to Hugh Aynsworth, but Aynsworth wouldn't give up his source. The FBI thought it was Bill Alexander and tried to get Alexander to confess, but he told them to kiss his patootie. After which it got dropped. The details are bit foggy now but we actually aded a piece to the puzzle right here on this forum. A young man had joined the forum and had asked if there was anything he could do to help. I mentioned that I'd come to realize that even before Marina had sold the backyard photos to Life magazine, that a Detroit newspaper had published one in an article by a legendary journalist, who was still alive. My bad--I can't think of his name at this moment. In any event, I told the eager beaver that if he could reach out to this legend, and maybe juice it up a bit by saying he was interested in history and journalism, he might get this man to say how he got the photo. Well, heck, the kid was a natural. The journalist admitted to him that for a fee you could get someone on the night shift at the DA's office to give you access to just about anything, and that that is how he got his copy of a backyard photo. From Chapter 3b: In its 7-10-64 issue, Life Magazine resumes its campaign to convict Oswald in the public eye and bolster the by-now certain conclusions of the Commission. Its introduction to Oswald's diary from his time in Russia claims that the diary "is one of the most important pieces of evidence studied by the Warren Commission in its effort to unravel the character and motives of President Kennedy's assassin." No "accused" No "presumed." Assassin. Singular. Period. Now, the commission had been leaking for months. But there is a problem with this leak. The Commission did not want Oswald's diary leaked to the press. This led the commission, then, to ask the FBI to find out who was behind this leak, and this, in turn, led the FBI to contact the Dallas District Attorney's office, and to focus in on one suspect in particular--Assistant District Attorney Bill Alexander. Alexander, we should recall, had discussed charging Oswald as part of a communist conspiracy, but had been shot down. Apparently, this had annoyed him a bit, and had led him to leak info to the press suggesting Oswald was the shooter, and was under the influence of Russia. Well, this led the FBI to question Alexander on 7-10, and write up a report on 7-11. This report was written as a response to the specific claim Alexander had released evidence to the Dallas Morning News. According to the report, Alexander denied releasing this information, and claimed further that the Dallas Times-Herald had contacted him and told him they'd reveal him as the source if he wouldn't provide them with similar information, and that he told their messenger 'kiss my a--, tell your bosses that." The FBI report continues: "Alexander also advised he made a statement that Lyndon B. Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and the 'Warren Commission could kiss my a--." Knowing full well this would get back to Hoover, the writers of the report, agents Barrett and Lee, then added "Alexander was strongly admonished by interviewing agents concerning his making such remarks about Director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and President Johnson." But, apparently, this had no effect on Alexander other than to further ruffle his feathers. Alexander proceed to blame the leak on others, and claim "that if 'someone puts a blowtorch to my a--, we'll go on from here." The report concludes: "Alexander then made a statement that he conducts his affairs very similarly to the way that the FBI 'works,' and that he, too, keeps a 'little black book.' Alexander stated that if any pressure were ever put on him in any investigation by anyone, he would 'break an egg off in someone.' Alexander was advised that the agents were conducting an objective investigation in the matter and that there were no personal grievances involved. The interview was terminated at 11:32." So, yikes, the Assistant DA of Dallas threatened the FBI, Hoover, and President Johnson that they would regret it if they pressured him, and the FBI backed down. One can only wonder, then, what would have come out if they had not backed down.

From chapter 18c: While radiology tech Jerrol Custer made many statements over the years indicating that he thought the autopsy photos and X-rays were faked, he actually told the ARRB, after having finally been shown the original X-rays, that they were indeed the ones he took on 11-22-63, and that he had been in error. He even specified that the x-rays showed an absence of bone in the parietal region and the temporal region behind the right eye, but a presence of bone in the occipital region. Now, some will say "But of course he caved, he was scared to death" but they really haven't done their homework. Custer told the ARRB a number of things which defied the official story of the assassination. He just didn't tell them what so many conspiracy theorists wanted him to say. And it's not as if he changed his statements for the ARRB. Custer was interviewed by Tom Wilson in 1995. As quoted in Donald Phillips' book on Wilson's research, A Deeper, Darker Truth (2009), Custer told Wilson there was a "King-sized hole" in the top right region of Kennedy's head, and that Kennedy's skull was like "somebody took a hardboiled egg and just rolled it around until it was thoroughly cracked...Part of the head would bulge out, another part would sink in. The only thing that held it together was the skin. And even that was loose." It should come as no surprise, then, that Custer pretty much repeated this in his 1997 testimony before the ARRB. He recalled: "The head was so unstable, due to the fractures. The fractures were extremely numerous. It was like somebody took a hardboiled egg, and just rolled it in their hand. And that's exactly what the head was like...This part of the head would come out. This part of the head would be in...The only thing that held it together was the skin. And even that was loose." He then described "a gaping hole in the right parietal region" and specified that "none" of the "missing" bone was occipital bone. Don't believe me? When testifying before the ARRB, Custer added lines to an anatomy drawing of the rear view of the skull. The slanted lines represented the area of the skull that was unstable but extant beneath the scalp when he first viewed the body. Here it is: The occipital bone was intact beneath the skin. To wit, when asked by Jeremy Gunn if the wound on the back of the head stretched into the occipital bone (where Gunn's assistant Doug Horne and Horne's close associate David Mantik, among others, place the wound), Custer replied "The hole doesn't" and then clarified that the occipital region from the lambdoid suture to the occipital protuberance (basically the upper half of the occipital bone which Horne and Dr. Mantik claim was missing) "was all unstable material. I mean, completely." "Unstable" isn't "missing." And this wasn't just a short-lived thing--a quick retreat before, and during questioning, by the government. In 1998, Custer was interviewed by William Law for his book In The Eye of History. When asked about the supposed wound on the back of the head, Custer corrected: "Here's where a lot of researchers screw up. Not the back of the head. Here's the back of the head (Custer then pointed to the area of the head in contact with the head holder in the left lateral autopsy photo). The occipital region. The defect was in the frontal-temporal region. Now, when you have the body lying like that, everybody points to it and says, 'That’s the back of the head.' No! That’s not the back of the head." He then pointed to the top of the head on the left lateral autopsy photo: "That’s the top of the head!" Law then asked Custer how, if the wound was where researchers claim it was, the head could have rested on the head holder used in the autopsy. Custer then specified: "Because the back of the head wasn’t blown out. This was still intact." (As he said this, he pointed to the lower portion of the back of the head in the left lateral autopsy photo). He continued: "It may not have been perfectly intact, there were fractures in there of course with all the destruction. If the back of the head was gone, there would be nothing there to hold the head up...The (head holder) would have been all inside." Now this, of course, was years after the publication of Groden's book. Even so, when one watches Groden's video, JFK: The Case For Conspiracy, one can see that Custer was never really a "back of the head" witness, as he does not point out a wound on the back of Kennedy's head, as suggested by the frame used in Groden's book, but drags his hand across the entire top of his head while claiming the wound he saw stretched "From the top of the head almost to the base of the skull..." He was thereby describing the wound's appearance after the scalp was reflected, and the brain was removed. (In support of this proposition, it should be noted that he'd also claimed there was no brain in the skull that he could remember.) Now I know this comes as a shock to many readers. Custer is a hero to those claiming the back of Kennedy's head was missing. Even though he is actually one of the strongest witnesses supporting that it was not missing. Just think of it. When preparing to take the A-P x-ray, Custer lifted Kennedy's head up to place it on the cassette holding the x-ray film. IF the back of Kennedy's head was missing, Kennedy's brain would have rested directly on this cassette. Custer would undoubtedly have noticed such a thing, and almost certainly have remembered such a thing. And yet Custer not only never mentioned such a thing, he actively disputed that such a thing occurred. Not a back of the head witness. Defers to the accuracy of the autopsy photos and x-rays. (It's unfortunate, in retrospect, that Custer died before he got the chance to shoot down some renegade theories. Custer died in 2000. The 2003 book The Assassinations featured an article by Dr. David Mantik and Dr. Cyril Wecht in which they discussed the ramifications of the optical density data accumulated by Mantik while Custer was still alive and answering questions. They concluded from the lateral x-rays that Kennedy's brain was torn loose from the dura--and that it had settled down onto the back of the head. They then used the optical density of a "dark band on the frontal x-ray just below the right orbit, where posterior bone appeared to be absent" to approximate the amount of brain remaining on the right side. Well, heck, if this posterior bone was indeed absent, as subsequently claimed by Mantik, this puts the brain directly on the cassette, at worst, or on inexplicably intact scalp, at best. Nope, not going for it.) So let's be clear. Neither Jerrol Custer nor Edward Reed, the radiology tech who assisted Custer on the night of the autopsy, saw a big ole hole low on the back of Kennedy's head at the beginning of the autopsy. Custer, as we've seen, denied seeing such a hole in his 1997 ARRB testimony. And Reed did the same. When asked about the head wound by Jeremy Gunn, Reed testified that it was in the "temporal parietal region, right side...slightly anterior" to the ear. In other words...just where it is shown in the autopsy photos.

"The extent of damage is entirely dependent on how much kinetic energy is transferred from the bullet, not the type of round." You are correct in the narrow sense, in that the velocity of FMJ bullets has been increased within the last 70 years, to the extent they are now in violation of their raison d'être, and are actually designed to fragment. But I was using the term FMJ bullets as a reference to the bullets developed in the late 1800's, of which the Mannlicher/Carcano is one. These bullets at 90 yards do not create massive temporary cavities that blast the top of a head into the air. But don't trust me. Trust the dozens of books and articles cited in Chapter 16b. "If an FMJ bullet tumbles and/or fragments on impact it can cause massive wounds similar to that observed in JFK." Hypothetically, yes. But we're talking about a specific rifle and cartridge fired from a specific range. To which the answer is no. That's not what happened. To begin with, the lack of metal by the EOP should lead us to suspect nothing fragmented at that location. Now, some have conflated hunting ammo with FMJ ammo and assumed the bullet entered in one piece and intact, but then broke up while tumbling through the brain. But that's bs. That doesn't happen unless the bullet is already fractured, and bullets don't fracture unless they first deform and the small size of the entrance by the EOP suggests the bullet wasn't deformed upon entry. And, besides, there was no trail of fragments through the brain. None were found by the doctors within the skull outside the two behind the eye. And the fragments on the x-rays were in the scalp. And, yes, I know, Spitz claimed the right side of the skull was out of alignment and that this made the fragments appear higher than the cowlick entrance, and Sturdivan claimed they uniformly slid upwards within the skull, but I think we can agree they were grasping at straws. Furthermore, an FMJ bullet could create a wound as large as JFK's, yes, but not an M/C bullet, not at 90 yards. Unless it struck tangentially... Now, Olivier did present one test skull in his testimony and report that had a large exit wound. But it was on the face. Well, a bullet from behind exiting the face would have encountered bone along the way--the back of the eye sockets--and this would have created secondary projectiles and a much larger wound of exit than expected if the bullet exited from the top of the head. So his presenting this image was a deliberate deception, IMO, designed to disguise that none of the exit wounds they observed resembled JFK's. As far as tumbling... While Larry Sturdivan and others have claimed the bullet tumbled and that a tumbling bullet creates a large temporary cavity and large temporary cavities can explode the head, etc... this is hypothetical silliness, IMO. There is no record of the top of the head exploding high into the sky in any test performed on cadavers, etc. (The Disco Channel, on the other hand, accidentally re-created such a journey when striking their simulated JFK in the head...tangentially.) But, more to the point, there is NO sign of such a cavity within JFK's brain. NO bullet track was found connecting the EOP entrance to the top of the head exit, let alone a large track suggestive of the bullet's tumbling. And no bullet track was found connecting the supposed cowlick entrance to the supposed exit either. The brain injuries only make sense if the bullet impacted at the top of the head, at the supposed exit.

I think he was badly damaged when he came out from behind the sign. From chapter 17: Since a bullet shooting down the neck at Z-224 would have brushed past the cerebellum, I decided to look back through the literature to see if there was any indication something like this occurred. I found that when discussing the brain photos with the ARRB in 1996, Dr. Humes acknowledged, “the right cerebellum has been partially disrupted, yes.” I also found that Dr. Peters, one of the President’s doctors in Dallas, was shown the autopsy photos in 1988 and shared Humes’ appraisal. He wrote writer Harry Livingstone that “the cerebellum was indeed depressed on the right side compared to the left.” I then recalled the HSCA’s declaration that “the posterior-inferior portion of the cerebellum” was “virtually intact…It certainly does not demonstrate the degree of laceration, fragmentation, or contusion (as appears subsequently on the superior aspect of the brain) that would be expected in this location if the bullet wound of entrance were as described in the autopsy report.” This time, however, I noticed the qualifiers. They said “virtually intact,” which indicates some damage. They also said there was certainly not the degree of damage necessary to be consistent with the autopsy report. Well, this makes sense. The bullet trajectory suggested by the autopsy report, after all, has the bullet heading straight into the cerebellum. These statements by the HSCA Pathology Panel, then, led me to believe the damage apparent on the cerebellum is consistent with a bullet’s having headed down into the neck. Dr. Humes certainly thought a bullet caused this damage. When interviewed by the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel on 9-16-77, and asked by Dr. Coe if he thought the "destruction" apparent on the underside of the brain was a "post-mortem artifact" from the removal of the brain, or was caused by the bullet, Humes responded "I think it was partly caused by the bullet." And it appears that he wasn't the only doctor present at the autopsy, to subsequently study the autopsy photos, to say as much. On page 159 of his book The Death of a President, published 1967, William Manchester reports: "The last bullet has torn through John Kennedy's cerebellum, the lower part of his brain." Well, so what? Who the heck is Manchester? He could just be repeating nonsense he read in the paper. Well, this is what. Manchester's book was authorized by the Kennedy family. It was supposed to answer a lot of the questions. As a result, Manchester was given unparalleled access. Including access to doctors speaking with nobody, and I mean nobody, else. The Sources section of his book lists 5 interviews with Kennedy's physician, Dr. Burkley, between October 1964 and July 1966. Burkley inspected the autopsy photos in 1965. Did Burkley tell Manchester the cerebellum was damaged? We can assume so. Upon re-reading the supplementary autopsy report from 12-6-63, moreover, I noticed that there were seven slices of tissue removed from the brain for microscopic examination, including one from the “right cerebellar cortex.” I then noticed that the other six were all from areas reported to be damaged. When I re-read the report I realized that a line I had read many times meant something completely different than I’d previously believed. The report states “When viewed from the basilar aspect the disruption of the right cortex is again obvious.” As “the basilar aspect” means “underneath” and “cortex” means “outer layer,” this is quite possibly a reference to the cerebellum as well as the cerebrum. The results of the microscopic examination of the brain confirm, furthermore, that the cerebellum was damaged: “Multiple sections from representative areas as noted above are examined. All sections are essentially similar and show extensive disruption of brain tissue with associated hemorrhage.” Later, during his March 16, 1964 testimony before the Warren Commission, Humes confirmed yet again that the cerebellum was damaged. He noted that "the flocculus cerebri was extensively lacerated." There is no flocculus cerebri. There is however, a flocculus cerebelli. It is on the underside of the cerebellum. While some researchers insist Humes meant to say the "falx cerebri," a covering of the brain, was extensively lacerated, it seems obvious that he would be much more likely to say (or have mis-recorded by a court reporter) "cerebri" instead of "cerebelli" than he would be to say (or have mis-recorded) "flocculus" instead of "falx". There's also this. In Dr. Michael Chesser's appearance at the 2018 JFK Lancer Conference--an appearance designed to raise questions about the authenticity of the brain handled by autopsy assistant James Jenkins on November 22, 1963, and the brain photos currently in the archives--he nevertheless admitted that the photos he'd viewed at the archives revealed a "tiny sliver hanging loose" from the underside of the right cerebellum. Now, Chesser knew this observation did nothing to help sell his theory the brain photos are fakes, so we can probably presume it was accurate. At the risk of pulling a Lattimer--who foolishly tried to link Kennedy’s movements after first struck to something he described as a Thorburn’s response--let's examine, then, the possibility the President’s behavior after frame 224 in the Zapruder film can be explained by his suffering damage to the flocculus in particular, and the cerebellum in general. Neuroanatomy: An Atlas of Structures, Sections, and Systems (2004) holds that lesions involving the flocconobular lobe result in "truncular ataxia (an impairment of the ability to perform smoothly coordinated voluntary movements), nystagmus (a condition in which the patient suffers involuntary eye movements) and head tilting." Similarly, Neuroscience in Medicine (2008), holds that "damage to the flocculus, nodulus, and uvula result in a pronounced loss in equilibrium, including truncal ataxia..." The description continues: "There is an inability to incorporate vestibular information with body and eye movements." Well, thankfully, Wisegeek.com helps put this in layman's terms: "Damage to the flocculus can cause jerky eye movements and difficulty maintaining balance." Now this is quite interesting. Kennedy appears to reach for his neck, but miss, and then lean to his left in the frames after Zapruder frame 224. Here is a Gif put together by Robert Harris, in which the awkward actions of Kennedy's arms are revealed. An observation by Dr. William Kemp Clark contained in Warren Commission Exhibit 392 becomes relevant at this point. When describing Kennedy's appearance upon treatment at Parkland Hospital, he noted: "His eyes were divergent, being deviated outward; a skew deviation from the horizontal was present." Well, it seems more than a coincidence then that numerous scientific articles cite a correlation between damage to the flocculus and downbeat nystagmus, in which the eyes drift slowly upward, before returning to their target. Neurological Differential Diagnosis, 2005, goes even further, moreover, and notes both that the "flocculo-occulomotor tract" has "the only direct cerebellar connection with the eye muscle nuclei" and that "clinical lesions and stimulation experiments" of the cerebellum may "result in a divergence of the eyes." Well, let's put it together. Damage to the flocculus can cause a divergence of the eyes. Well, then what about damage to the cerebellum in general, as opposed to damage specific to the flocculus? According to multiple sources, including Dr. Gordon Holmes in the December 1917 issue of Brain, the symptoms of cerebellar damage include a weakness to the side of the body suffering the damage (ipsilateral hypotonia), a tendency to not stop a movement at its proper point (dysmetria), an inability to grasp objects (ataxia), an abnormal head attitude, and disturbances in speech, eye movement, and equilibrium. Between Zapruder frame 224, when the President seems to suffer a wound on his throat, and 313, when he is obviously hit in the head, the President reached in the direction of his throat without grabbing anything, lifted his arms past his throat, slumped to his left (perhaps as over-compensation for the sudden weakness on his right), and stared down without letting out so much as a scream.Ironically, a November 24, 1963 article in the New York Times by Dr. Howard Rusk described this very phenomenon. Mistakenly believing the theory proposed by the Dallas doctors on the afternoon of the 22nd, that one shot hit Kennedy in the throat and exploded out the back of his head, Dr. Rusk explained brain injuries as follows: “If the injury is in the posterior portion of the brain, where the bullet that killed the President made its exit, the cerebellum is damaged. Then the individual is left with ataxia, evidenced by severe intention type of tremors that occur when one tries to perform a basic act or grasp an object. Damage to the cerebellum is also usually accompanied by a loss of equilibrium." Should one not be entirely satisfied with the explanation that Kennedy's strange movements were brought about by damage to his cerebellum, however, there is an additional explanation for his movements that can be added into the mix. This explanation, moreover, is equally suggestive he was struck in the skull before frame 313 of the Zapruder film. Since Brock’s Injuries of the Brain and Spinal Cord (1974) made note that “Posterior basilar fractures tend to gravitate towards the large foramina”, I decided to see if there were any behavioral symptoms for a fracture in this area. And I found something which again dropped my jaw. (My jaw has been dropped so many times during this investigation that it's a wonder it hasn't been broken.) Jugular Foramen Syndrome is described by Blakiston’s Pocket Medical Dictionary as “Paralysis of the ipsilateral glossopharyngeal, vagus, and spinal accessory nerves, caused by a lesion involving the jugular foramen, usually a basilar skull fracture.” According to the online article Craniofacial and Skull Base Trauma by Dr. Harry Shahinian and the Skull Base Institute the paralysis of the vagus nerve would manifest itself through a paralysis of the vocal cords, and a paralysis of the spinal accessory nerves would manifest itself through a paralysis of the neck muscle that flexes the head (the sternocleidomastoid) as well as a weakness of the trapezius muscle, which rotates it. The result is a “weakness in contralateral head rotation and shoulder elevation.” Contralateral, of course, means affecting the opposite side of the body. As we know all too well, Kennedy turned toward his left and dipped his left shoulder in his final silent moments. So, yeah, I'd say there's good reason to suspect Kennedy's cerebellum and/or posterior skull was damaged even before he'd received his fatal wound.

Geez, Bill. I have written books on this stuff, in which I go through these and other conclusions and show why 1) why we shouldn't trust them, and 2) why they are wrong. Your first paragraph is correct except for the fact it was 1966, not 1967. You also leave out the context. This review was conducted after members of the media realized that the back wound was a back wound and not a neck wound, and that the single-bullet theory was suspect. Days after this review was performed Boswell was pressured? into claiming that after reviewing the photos he could state that the drawings showing the wound to be on the neck were accurate. Early the next year, at the request of CBS, another review was performed, this one without Ebersole and Stringer, but with Finch. This review reached similar conclusions, and formed an intro to Humes' appearance on CBS that June in which he claimed that the drawings showing the wound to be on the neck were accurate...something he would have to have know was false after viewing the photos. Your second paragraph leaves even more out. The Clark Panel was convened in secret to "debunk" the "junk" in Tink Thompson's book, most certainly including that the head wound trajectory proposed by the WC made no sense in light of JFK's position at Z-312/Z-313. To do this they needed to "find" a wound higher up on the head, and voila! they did so! Never mind that no such wound was reported by anyone who'd seen the body. They needed this smudge to be the entrance wound described at autopsy or they would have to admit that both the trajectory and lack of damage within the brain suggested there were in fact two head wounds. So...the two head wound theory was narrowly avoided via the fabrication of a make-believe bullet hole higher-up on the body. And the doctors knew this was a problem because...unique among the "reviews' of the medical evidence, they had a lawyer along for their protection. Your third paragraph is also misleading. The Rockefeller Commission's consultants issued no report. They issued separate papers or were simply asked to testify. In any event they were not as consistent as you seem to believe. Dr. Wecht was not convinced of a single headshot, and Dr. Fred Hodges said the entrance wound was as described in the autopsy report (and thus not where the Clark Panel claimed it to have been). Well, this brings us to the HSCA. For this panel, Dr. Baden selected almost entirely colleagues of the Clark Panel's Dr. Fisher, so it should not be a surprise they pretty much rubber-stamped his findings. The exception was Dr. Wecht, who was included on the panel at the insistence of Robert Tanenbaum, but who was sidelined by Baden to minimize his influence on the others. (E.G. He was not allowed to attend the session attended by Dr.s Humes and Boswel.) In any event, they relied upon the experience of Tom Marshall, an Irish doctor they thought was familiar with full-metal jacket ammunition head wounds, vis his study of the wounds received in the Bloody Sunday massacre, but who it turns out had been duped by the British military, as the fatal wounds had actually been created by dum-dum bullets. And that's not even to mention that they placed the head wound entrance and head wound exit at the same level within the skull, which led the HSCA's trajectory analysis to pretend JFK was actually sitting fairly upright at the moment of the fatal headshot, instead of sharply forward (which even Dale Myers knows is nonsense.) Well, it follows then that their conclusions were based on hoo-ha, and probably more suggestive of multiple shots than one.

Good catch. I was in a hurry and wasn't thinking. JFK suffers the BACK WOUND around 190 or so before he went behind the sign, and receives the EOP bullet around Z-224, which is why he and Connally appear to be reacting at the same time. He then receives another shot to the head at 313. I have a step by step explanation of my "theory" in chapter 20, but am honestly more interested in facts than theories, even my own.

I suspect that a low-velocity bullet struck JFK near the EOP as he went behind the sign in the Z-film, and that a high-velocity bullet struck JFK above the ear at 313. I would propose as well that these were fired from two different locations, with the first being fired from the Dal-Tex roof and the second from the SN window. But I remain open to other ideas.

Well, it would mean the fragments found in the front seat of the limo were planted there. Some will claim, to be clear, that the "trail of fragments" observed on the x-rays is proof a hunting round was used. But I have my doubts. The fragments on the x-rays from Olivier's tests appear similar enough to the fragments on JFK's x-rays for me to believe a similar round was used.

Actually, no. Peter Cummings went on Fox in 2013 claiming the autopsy doctors were right about the EOP entrance. He is correct about that. But he also made out that the bullet entering by the EOP passed upwards in the skull and exited out the large defect. And that's just nonsense. First of all, the brain shows no such passage. And second of all, the size of the defect above the ear is much greater than one would expect from a full-metal jacket bullet passing through brain. (That's the point of the image above... 120 years of wound ballistics literature tells us that full metal jacket bullets passing through brain don't blow the top of the head off, particularly at 90 yards, as proposed by the WC. Such a wound, moreover, is only seen when a bullet strikes tangentially, releasing most all its energy upon impact.)

Thanks, Robert.

It's not actually a trail as much as it's a splat of fragments by the large defect created when the bullet erupted on the skull. These fragments are presumably in the torn scalp, but some may even be in the hair. They most certainly are not within the brain, as that part of the brain was missing. As the largest fragment found within the skull is actually behind the right eye, the frequent argument the largest fragments were all on the back, and that this designates this splat as a trail from front to back, is nonsense. (Note that due to magnification the face on the A-P x-ray was roughly 20% larger in comparison to the back of the head, and that this places the fragments above the ear at the top of the head, where now-missing skull would normally slope up to the middle, and not an inch or more within the skull itself.)

While a careful study of the eyewitness evidence suggests the wound was further towards the back of the head than shown in the autopsy photos, the autopsy photos and x-rays are clear-cut proof for more than one shooter, and are most certainly accurate. Here's another one.... The widespread belief that the recollections of the Parkland doctors prove the back of the head was a blow-out exit for a bullet entering on the front of the head is both a misrepresentation of what many if not most of them believed, and a misrepresentation of the reliability of eyewitness recollections. Here's a third... This widespread belief became so prominent within the JFK research community that people hounding old people as to what they remembered about a seconds-long incident from 30, 40, 50 years earlier were considered experts on the medical evidence, despite their never picking up a textbook or reading a forensics journal which would have shed far more light upon the nature of JFK's wounds. And a fourth... This distraction essentially sucked all the air out of the room, and allowed those with an interest in propagating the single-assassin fantasy to continue to do so while arguing against a belief in ghouls and boogie-men, instead of what they should have been forced to argue against: hard science

It's become clear to me that very few are aware of or have bothered to read my research regarding wound ballistics and brain injury. This material is available in Chapters 16b and 16c at patspeer.com. Should one be able to separate oneself from the body alteration distraction for a moment and actually read this material, one will find that the body as reported by the autopsy doctors, and as recorded in the autopsy photos and x-rays, is clear-cut evidence for two head shots, and by extension two shooters. Here is a taste of what is there: This is the skull of a prisoner shot while escaping, from a distance of 90 feet, by a guard using a rifle and cartridge more powerful than the rifle and carriage purported to kill Kennedy. It comes from Louis Anatole La Garde's book Gunshot Wounds, in which LaGarde also described the brain injury suffered by this prisoner. Keep in mind that the bullet through this skull traveled a trajectory almost identical to what the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel claimed for the bullet killing Kennedy. Here's La Garde: "On the calvarium being removed the surface of the dura mater presented a state of intense congestion. To the right of the longitudinal fissure it was torn through for a distance of about 4 inches, about one inch from and parallel to it. A furrow corresponding to the injury of the dura was ploughed through the right hemisphere in the region of the superior frontal convolution about 1/2 inch deep." Well, how about that? The Supplementary Autopsy Report of President Kennedy claimed a "longitudinal laceration" (which has long been presumed to be a bullet track, and is often described as a furrow) through Kennedy's brain ran "approximately 4.5 cm. below the vertex in the white matter." A half-inch deep is about 12 mm. 4.5 cm is 45 mm. The furrow through Kennedy's brain was almost 4 times as deep as the furrow through the dead prisoner's brain, even though the bullets creating these furrows, according the HSCA FPP, sped along a nearly identical trajectory. The HSCA's trajectory is nonsense.

I can only recommend, David, that you (and anyone with an interest) read chapter 16c on my website. The descriptions of the brain from the supplementary autopsy are the descriptions of a brain that has received a tremendous blow at the top of the head. It's not really subjective, even. It's just a scientific fact that the scalp, skull, and brain injuries all suggest an impact at the supposed exit location.

I'm sorry, David, but your exhibit is misleading. 1. Groden dishonestly picked out images of O'Connor and Custer--these are images from video-taped interviews in which they were clearly describing the condition of the head after the brain had been removed, and pointed out a large defect from the forehead to the back of the head. Groden took frames with their hands at the furthest back and made out that they were describing a wound only in that region. They should not be included on the list. 2. Rike did not see the wound but was merely describing where he touched the President's head through a sheet and felt it give way. He told me he couldn't rule out that there was broken bone in that area and he never presumed that that was the full extent of the wound. He should not be included on the list. 3. Jones has long said that he didn't really get a look at the wound, and simply saw blood and brain-matted hair on the back part of the head. He should not be included on the list. 4. Salyer is on the wrong location. This mistake reveals a problem with your method. By only showing one view. You give the illusion a number of these witnesses localized the wound on the back of the head, as opposed to the side of the head. Create a similar image using an anatomical drawing of the lateral view of the head, and you will find that the placement of the wound by a number of these witnesses had zero overlap with the wound as depicted in the McClelland drawing. 5. This rear view depiction could also be improved by the use of an anatomy drawing, with the location of the occipital bone marked. if done it would become clear that the recollections of these witnesses are a strong argument against, and not for, the ridiculous claim the Harper fragment was occipital bone.

And here I thought we were getting somewhere. Please name the "twenty doctors", when they first described the president's wounds to the public, where they placed the wound, and whether they disavowed the autopsy photos after viewing them. If you did that you would find it's just a few, and that in fact the only doctor to get a good look at the body and say the far back of the head was blown out, and disavow the boh photo was McClelland. And yet even he said the boh photo looked legit, and that scalp was pulled up to conceal the wound. And you know what, he's not entirely out to lunch. I pointed out years ago that the boh photos PROVE there was a flap at the crown of the head. When viewed at Parkland, for that matter, the flap by the ear would have been closed up, concealing the forward aspect of the wound, and the rear flap would have opened up, giving the impression the gaping hole was further back than it was. So it's right there in the photographic record that the wound would appear more rearward at Parkland and more forward at Bethesda. But no one wants to see this because they've been duped, and no one ever wants to admit they've been duped....

The Harper fragment has some sagittal suture on it so I assume the large head wound crossed a little bit onto the left side of the top of the head. As far as the location of the wound, Boswell is not a so-called back of the head witness. Never was one. From Chapter 18C: Now, to be clear, Lifton never claimed Boswell as a "back of the head" witness... Lifton holds, to this day, that the hole on the back of Kennedy's head observed at Parkland had somehow been repaired by the time Dr. Boswell saw his head at Bethesda, and that a wound in front of Kennedy's ear had been added. In postings found online, in fact, he's made it more than clear he has little respect for researchers, such as Robert Groden and Dr. Gary Aguilar, who cite a number of Bethesda "back of the head" witnesses as evidence the wounds were unaltered between Parkland and Bethesda. And he actually has good reason to be angry. As we shall see, the descriptions of the Parkland "back of the head" witnesses differ from those of the Bethesda "back of the head" witnesses on a number of key points. But that's getting ahead of ourselves... For now, we need only realize that the use of Dr. Boswell as a "back of the head" witness is a bit bizarre on its face, seeing as he signed off on the autopsy report in which no substantial scalp lacerations on the back of the head were noted, and seeing as he never ever said anything indicating he'd seen an entrance wound on the front of the head. But when one looks at his statements to the ARRB--the statements usually quoted by those claiming him as a "back of the head" witness--it becomes even more bizarre. Here is one of the key statements used by back-of-the-head wound theorists to sell Boswell as a "back of the head" witness: BOSWELL: There was a big wound sort of transverse up like this from left posterior to right anterior. The scalp was separated, but it was folded over, and you could fold the scalp over and almost hide the wound. When you lifted the scalp up, you could really lay it back posteriorally, and there was a lot of bone still attached to the scalp but detached from the remainder of the skull. And I think these parts back here probably reflect that. And here is Boswell's response to a follow-up question by Jeremy Gunn: GUNN: When you say the left posterior, what do you mean? BOSWELL: The left occipital area, and that wound extends to the right frontal area. And what I meant was that the wound in the scalp could be closed from side to side so that it didn't appear that there was any scalp actually--scalp missing. Yep. That's right. Those pushing Boswell as a witness for the wound described by the Parkland witnesses--a gaping EXIT wound of both scalp and skull on the RIGHT back of the head--are using Boswell's latter-day recollection of a scalp LACERATION on the LEFT side of the head as evidence. Now, even if one were to accept the ridiculous notion that his statements support there was a gaping wound missing both scalp and skull on the right back side of the head, how reliable are Boswell's recollections to the ARRB? Not remotely reliable, as it turns out. As we've seen, Boswell claimed the scalp laceration stretching from left back to right front could be closed from side to side so that one could not tell any scalp was missing. Well, this is totally at odds with the autopsy protocol signed by Boswell two days after the shooting in which he claimed the large defect was of both scalp and skull. And there's also this: GUNN: Do you recall whether there were tears or lacerations in the scalp? BOSWELL: Right across here and-- GUNN: Approximately across the midline? BOSWELL: What I previously described, post-occipital, and on the left, across the top, and then down to the right frontal area, and then the laceration extended into the right eye. GUNN: Okay. Could you make another drawing--and we'll put Line No. 2 on this--to show the approximate direction of the large laceration that you just referred to? BOSWELL: Well, it's not a--I can't say what direction, but--and then this came on down like so, and--actually, I think it came right into here. GUNN: Okay. I'm going to put a 2 in a circle right next to that line, and the 2 will signify the approximate direction and shape of the large laceration. Would that be fair? BOSWELL: Mm-hmm. GUNN: Just so I'm clear--and we'll be looking at the photographs in a few minutes, and you can maybe clarify it there. But at least with some of the photographs, is it your testimony that the scalp was pulled in a way different from how it was when you first saw it in order to better illustrate either wound of entry or exit? BOSWELL: Yes. The scalp was essentially loose. In the usual autopsy, you have to cut underneath the scalp in order to reflect it. In this case, the scalp was mobile so that you could pull it forward to obscure the wound or pull it back to make the wound completely lucid. GUNN: Okay. Was the hair cleaned in any way for purposes of the photographs? BOSWELL: No, I don't think so. There was not a lot of blood, as I remember, and I think he had been pretty well cleaned up in the operating--in the emergency room. And I don't think we had to do much in the way of cleansing before we took photographs. Well, wait right there. Boswell spoke to the ARRB in 1996. When asked the preceding questions by Jeremy Gunn he had not been shown the autopsy photos since 1977, and had not been shown the establishing shots taken at the autopsy--the photos showing Kennedy lying on the table before an inspection of his wounds had begun--since 1967. Clearly, he had forgotten that these first shots show the President's hair to be matted with blood and brain. His response then shows that he lacked a clear recollection of Kennedy's original appearance when interviewed by the ARRB. He was in his seventies, after all, discussing something he'd seen more than 30 years before. So why should we believe his latter-day recollections are accurate? We shouldn't. The scalp laceration stretching to the left occipital region suddenly recalled by Boswell 33 years after performing the autopsy was not only not mentioned in the autopsy protocol, it was specifically ruled out by Boswell in his 9-16-77 interview with the HSCA pathology panel. When asked about the red spot the HSCA panel presumed to be the bullet entrance, and which Dr. Humes presumed was dried blood, Boswell replied: "It's the posterior-inferior margin of the lacerated scalp." When one of the HSCA panel, Dr. Petty, expressed doubt about this, Boswell then repeated: "It tore right down to that point. And then we just folded that back and this back and an anterior flap forward and this exposed almost the entire--I guess we did have to dissect a little bit to get to." If, in Boswell's mind, the scalp laceration ended at the red spot, high on the back of the head on the parietal bone, in 1977, there was no way it could possibly have stretched all the way to the occipital bone 19 years later. It seems clear, then, that Dr. Boswell was seriously confused. But those pushing Boswell as a back of the head witness will never admit this. Let's take, for example, Doug Horne. In an April 15, 1999 letter to the Chicago Reader, Dr. David Mantik boasted that he'd helped prepare the questions asked the autopsy doctors by the ARRB. Presumably, he gave these to Doug Horne, (who by his own admission had pursued a job with the ARRB in hopes of proving fraud in the medical evidence). In any event, Horne then fed these questions to ARRB chief counsel Jeremy Gunn, who may or may not have known the questions came from Mantik. We have reason to suspect the latter. On 2-10-17, David Lifton told the Education Forum that, during the ARRB, he was "working very closely with the ARRB, and with Doug Horne, speaking to Horne multiple times per week (and recording all of our conversations, with full permission) and speaking with Gunn, too." Well, if Gunn was taking questions from Lifton we can only presume he'd extend this courtesy to Mantik. In any event, on page 111 of his opus, Inside the ARRB, Horne quotes Boswell's response after being asked if his 17 by 10 measurement for the large skull defect reflected missing bone or fractured skull. Boswell responded: "Most of that space, the bone was missing. There were a lot of small skull fragments attached to the scalp as it was reflected, but most of that space, the bone was missing, some of which--I think two of which we subsequently retrieved." Now look what Horne writes but four pages later, when discussing Dr. Boswell's approximation of the borders of this defect on a skull model: "The 3-D skull drawing by Boswell was critical, because his autopsy sketch of the top of the skull had by its very nature not shown the condition of the rear of the head. Boswell's 3-D skull diagram completed the rest of the picture. And he wasn't depicting fragmentation or areas of broken bone, he was depicting areas of the skull denuded of bone. It was electrifying." What? Where does Horne get that Boswell wasn't depicting fragmentation? Boswell had just told him that part of the area depicted was where small skull fragments remained attached to the scalp. He had previously told him that upon the reflection of the scalp "there was a lot of bone still attached to the scalp but detached from the remainder of the skull."He had told writer Harrison Livingstone on 9-1-91, furthermore, that "a pretty good size piece of the frontal and right occipital portion of the skull had separated and were stuck to the under-surface of the scalp. So when that was reflected, then it was true; there was a big bony defect in the right side of the skull. And with the (removal of these) fragments--I think the brain was largely removed through that defect. But, the scalp was somewhat intact overlying that, so that, that just superficially, externally, you couldn't tell that there was a big hole in the skull." And should that not be clear, Boswell soon followed that up with "His head just--the bullet exploded inside his skull, and just sort of blew the top of his head off..." Boswell had thereby made it clear: while the skull was badly fractured at the back of the head, there was no blow out wound on the back of the head. Why does Horne ignore this? Here's why: GUNN: Just one last point that I would like to just clarify in my one mind is: On the piece for the markings for the 10 by 17 centimeters that were missing, would it be fair to say that when you first examined the body prior to any arrival of fragments from Dallas, the skull was missing from approximately those dimensions of 10 by 17? BOSWELL: Yes. Yikes! The word "approximately" is, in this instance, tragically vague. It allowed Horne to presume the back of Kennedy's skull was missing--as in gone--when the bulk of Boswell's statements over the years make clear it was badly fragmented and attached to the underside of the scalp. It bears repeating that NONE of the other back of the head witnesses described so much skull missing. Clearly Boswell had no idea how big the hole on the skull was before the scalp was peeled back. Clearly he measured the skull defect after the scalp had been pulled back and skull had fallen to the table. Clearly, the best indicator of the size of the hole on the back of the head, then, would be the x-rays, which fail to depict a large hole on the back of the head where Horne and others presume there was a hole...where the Parkland witnesses purportedly told them there was a hole... But, wait, some of those believing Boswell to be a back of the head witness have found a novel way to undermine the credibility of the x-rays...provided, not surprisingly, by Gunn's questioning of Boswell: GUNN: Were any skull fragments put back into place before photographs or before X-rays? BOSWELL: I think before we took the--the ones that came from Dallas were never put back in except to try and approximate them to the ones that were present. But I think all the others were left intact. GUNN: So, for example, was there a fragment that had fallen out at any point that you then put back into its place before a photograph or X-ray was taken? BOSWELL: Yes. GUNN: What size fragments and where did you place them at the-- BOSWELL: Well, the one that's in the diagram on Exhibit 1, that 10-centimeter piece I'm sure was out at one time or another. And I think maybe some of these smaller fragments down at the base of that diagram also were out at one time or another. But those were all put back. So, from leading the clearly elderly and confused Boswell through a series of strange questions designed to support or refute the body alteration theory of David Lifton, Gunn got Horne the answer some conspiracy theorists were looking for...that bone was put back in the skull BEFORE an x-ray or photograph was taken. Never mind that Boswell at first specified that the large pieces of missing bone were not put back in the skull, and only said so after being asked the same question a second time. Never mind that the bone Boswell thinks they are talking about did not arrive until near the end of the autopsy, and that NOT ONE witness to the autopsy--let alone, x-ray tech or radiologist--recalled a skull x-ray being taken after the beginning of the autopsy. And never mind that x-ray tech Jerrol Custer told Gunn (in his own ARRB testimony) that he took the x-ray machine and all the cassettes with him when the morticians took over, and began the reconstruction of Kennedy's skull. And, oh yeah, never mind that Horne himself dismisses this possibility... That's right, in Volume 2 of his 5 volume opus Inside the ARRB, Horne concludes that by the time the skull was reconstructed, the only men able to operate the portable x-ray machine had been sent home, and that no x-rays were taken during or after the reconstruction of Kennedy's skull. Even worse for those trying to twist Boswell's ARRB testimony into something it was not...Horne also concludes the skull x-rays were taken as a series at the beginning of the autopsy. And it's no wonder. In The Assassinations, an anthology published in 2003, Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. David Mantik jointly confirmed that the brain, although badly damaged, is nevertheless apparent on the skull x-rays. This means the x-rays were taken at the beginning of the autopsy, not the end. Dr. Mantik, to whom many, including Doug Horne, defer on all matters x-ray, has also concluded in his many papers and articles that the bone at the back of JFK's head in his post-mortem x-rays is consistent with the bone at the back of his head in his pre-mortem x-rays. As a result, one can not reasonably propose, a la some of the wilder conspiracy theorists, that Boswell's confused testimony suggests that the 10cm fragment recovered from the floor of the limousine was placed back into Kennedy's skull to hide a hole on the back of his head on the x-rays and autopsy photographs. The presumed hole was, after all, in the occipital region. The 10cm fragment was, on the other hand, parietal bone (according to the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel), or frontal bone (according to Dr.s Angel and Mantik). So why play with Boswell's words to suggest such a thing? Let's be clear. Mantik has concluded that the skull in the lateral x-ray is JFK's, but that a white patch has been super-imposed on the right side of the skull on the x-rays. Horne accepts this conclusion. Horne also accepts that the back of the head photos are unaltered, and that the hole he believes should be shown in the photos was obscured through some clever manipulation of the scalp by the autopsy doctors. Neither Mantik nor Horne, then, believe, nor indicate in any of their writings, that a hole on the back of the head was disguised through the insertion of a piece of recovered bone, nor that doing so would create the white patch apparent on the x-rays. It should be pointed out, for that matter, that Mantik believes the hole on the back of the head was the former home of the Harper fragment, and that the Harper fragment wasn't discovered until the next day in Dallas. So why do some theorists, purportedly impressed with Mantik's research, Horne's analysis, and Wecht's credentials, suggest that the intact skull on the back of the head on the x-rays and back of the head photos reflects not that the back of the head was intact, or even made to look intact via manipulation of the scalp, but that the x-rays and back of the head photos were taken towards the end of the autopsy, after the recovered bone fragments provided by the Secret Service were stuffed back into the skull? I mean, that's not only silly, it's in opposition to the findings of the most prominent members of the "hole-in-the-back-of-the-head" gang. It is, in other words, too out there for men not remotely scared of being out there. But there's a reason for this silliness. And that's that Boswell himself provided the fodder for this silliness. In his 1977 interview with the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, Dr. Boswell revealed that he now remembered the story told the Warren Commission of the doctors' pairing up the internal beveling on the small wound on the back of the head with the external beveling on the largest fragment found in the limousine to conclude the bullet traveled from back to front, as them matching up a beveled semi-circle of entrance on the largest fragment with beveling on the intact skull. While discussing the back of Kennedy's head and the bone fragments brought in during the autopsy, he said: "this bone was all gone and actually the smaller fragment fit this piece down here-there was a hole here, only half of which was present in the bone that was intact. and this small piece then fit right on there and the beveling on those was on the interior surface." In 1994, when asked by Dr. Gary Aguilar if Rydberg drawing CE-388 shows the largest of the late-arriving fragments (the one with the beveling) placed back on the skull, moreover, he said: "Yeah, the eh -- that fragment -- the defect -- the wound of entrance was at the base of that defect and, eh, the shelving on the inner surface of the bone was half on the intact portion of the skull and half on that fragment that we received from Dallas and replaced." Well, heck. Boswell had thereby revealed the source of much of his (and subsequently our) confusion: in his old age he'd come to believe the beveling on the largest fragment was entrance beveling--which was at odds with the autopsy report he swears by--and this, in turn, led him to think the largest fragment x-rayed at autopsy--which even CTs like Mantik agree derived from the front of the head--derived from the back of the head. There is no corresponding blow-out on the back of the head on the x-rays, of course. And this, in turn, led Boswell to muse that the x-rays were taken with the largest skull fragment flown in from Dallas placed back into the head. By the end of his 1996 ARRB testimony, for that matter, Boswell had confirmed this explanation for his confusion. GUNN: In your answer to a previous question, you made reference to the exit wound in the skull. Did you ever see any evidence of any beveling in the skull at the point where you determined there was an exit wound? BOSWELL: At the time of autopsy we didn't. But then when we reviewed the photographs, some of that beveling in the skull is equivocal, and obviously we weren't able to tell. GUNN: So would it be fair, then, to say that you determined during the course of the autopsy where the beveling was at the entrance wound, but you could not determine any beveling at the exit wound? BOSWELL: That's true. So there you have it. Over time, Boswell had come to remember the beveling discovered on the late-arriving fragment as entrance beveling, not exit beveling. And this was refuted by the autopsy protocol both signed by Boswell and upheld by Boswell as the only document related to the medical evidence worth spit. If ONLY someone had stepped in and reminded Boswell that the beveling on this largest fragment was, according to both the autopsy report he swears by, and his colleagues, EXIT beveling, not entrance beveling, a lot of confusion could have been avoided. But, alas, most interviewers see their job as recording the recollections of aged observers, and not correcting them (or giving them the chance to correct themselves) when they've strayed far far far from the well-worn path. Still, Boswell is not the only purported back of the head witness whose muddy recollections have been further muddied up and then spun into conspiracy gold.

Here are some of the people not included on Gary's list, FWIW. From Chapter 18d: The recollections of Dr. Joe Goldstrich are similarly problematic. Goldstrich's observations were first reported in Breaking the Silence, by Bill Sloane, in 1993. He said he was in Trauma Room One for a minute and saw Kennedy lying on his back, He said he saw Kennedy's face, but "didn't have a clear view of the back of his head," but nevertheless had "a vague recollection of seeing a portion of his brain exposed." Well, think about it. This suggests the exposed brain was elsewhere on the head, almost certainly the top of the head. The wound described by Dr. Donald Seldin was also not the one true wound purported by Lifton and others. When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Seldin is reported to have claimed that the bullet exploded the skull, and that the "frontal, parietal, and temporal bones were shattered." He did not mention the occipital bone. While Seldin's recollections were at odds with both those claiming the bullet entered from the front and those claiming it entered on the back of the head--he told Palamara the bullet struck Kennedy in the forehead--he was nevertheless most adamant that his recollections not be used to spread doubts. He is reported to have told Palamara "I believe that the official story is accurate in all details." And what about Zedlitz? When contacted by Vince Palamara in 1998, Dr. William Zedlitz reported that he arrived in Trauma Room One just before the tracheotomy was performed. He said he noted "a massive head injury to the right occipito-parietal area (right posterior-lateral) of the cranium." He said the wound covered an area approximately 10-12 centimeters in diameter. Well, this is too big to be the wound in the McClelland drawing, but is in the approximate location of that wound. Zedlitz spoke in public at the 2003 Lancer Conference in Dallas, however, and further detailed his observations. He said Kennedy was supine (flat on his back) when he (Zedlitz) came in the room. He then said the head wound was "massive--the entire posterior and right side of the head was nothing but matted hair and clots, and pieces of bone and tissue, and it was a mess. I gently palpated the area and it felt like somebody had boiled an egg and then dropped it. And then picked it up. The bones were just in crinkly pieces." He was asked about this again and added: "There was an area, I'd say, 8 by 12 centimeters in the back of the head on the right hand side on the occipito-parietal area, that was gone. And it was filled with blood, tissue, hair, bone fragments, and brain fragments, and that's all you could see." Well, this is not the gaping hole behind the ear depicted in the McClelland drawing. Zedlitz was then asked to depict the location of Kennedy's head wound on his own head. He placed his hand on the back of his head, with his fingers stretching from above his right ear on back to just below the top of his ear. He then admitted that beyond this area one "couldn't really tell the depth of it, or the extent of it." He was then asked if he had to rotate Kennedy's head to get a good look at the wound, and responded "No, no, there was enough of it there." He was then asked if he'd placed his hand under the head to palpate the skull, and said "No, it was in the back, and to the side." When then asked if he'd felt the extent of the wound, he admitted "No, I didn't see all of the wound. I couldn't see all of it because he was laying on that." (He then pointed to the back of his head)." He was then asked about the wound again. He put his hand back where the wound is in the McClelland drawing, and responded "It wasn't strictly straight back." He then moved his hand up to the top of his head with his fingers stretching above his right ear, and continued "It was top, back, and side." When then asked if the skull in this area was gone, he replied "It was in pieces." When then asked if the shattered skull in this area was still attached to the scalp, he continued "I could not tell. It was covered with blood and hair and other stuff. I could feel the bones but they felt like they were (he wiggled his fingers) loose." He expanded: "The bony fragments that were there were loose. And there was a spongy mass in the center of that, most obvious without bone, so I guess part of the bone was gone, but still there were fragments of bone still there." When then asked the million dollar question if he felt the autopsy photos showing the back of the head to be intact were altered, he clarified "The back of the head was not intact, but it was covered, as again I mention, with hair, blood, tissue, y'know, it was all there so you couldn't tell whether it was intact underneath that or not." So, yeah... Zedlitz had placed the wound about half-way between the location of the wound in the autopsy photos and the location of the wound in the McClelland drawing. His extended description of the wound, and insistence he could see it without rotating Kennedy's head, moreover, supported that the wound was not as depicted in the McClelland drawing. And that's not the end of the Parkland witnesses claiming the wound was NOT on the far back of the head. Should one choose to look beyond Zedlitz, one can find Sharon Calloway. Calloway, an x-ray intern at Parkland on the day of the shooting, performed an oral history interview for the Sixth Floor Museum on 1-27-02, and claimed she saw the back of Kennedy's head in the hallway before he was moved into Trauma Room One. She claimed: "The top of his head was gone... One of the doctors came down the hall shaking his head and he said it looked like someone had dropped a ripe watermelon on the floor. This is what the top of his head looked like. And we could see that. We could see his head. It wasn't draped yet." And, no, Calloway was not the last such witness to come forward. On 11-21-15, the producers of a film on the Parkland doctors presented three of these doctors before the audience at the JFK Lancer Conference. Two of these three claimed the wound was not on the back of the head, and the third, Dr. Joe Goldstrich, never commented on the head wounds. One of the two claiming the wound was not on the back of the head, Dr. Kenneth Salyer, has already been discussed. But the other, Dr. Peter M. Loeb, had not previously spoken on this issue, as far as I know. In any event, Loeb said that he got a quick glimpse of Kennedy in the hospital and that "When I looked at Kennedy, the top of his head was blown off." Top, not back. So, there it is, yet another Parkland witness claiming to have observed an opening on the top of Kennedy's skull, inches away from its location in the McClelland drawing.

Why do you keep repeating this nonsense? Salyer has always said the wound was on the side of the head, and says so in the film, and Loeb has repeatedly said it was on the top of the head., and says so in the film. I have met these men, and they don't buy into the back of the head stuff. As far as the others, Jones has long stated that there was a lot of blood and brain towards the back of the head and that he didn't think he got a good enough look to say for sure where the defect was on the skull. Now, I don't think any of the other four really got a look outside McClelland, and he originally claimed the wound was of the temple and that there was nothing about it to indicate a shot from the front. The Parkland doctors all agree the back of the head was blown out is a hoax started by Lifton, Livingstone, and Groden, and perpetuated by many others. But it's just not true, and was never true. What is true is that some doctors originally claimed they saw cerebellum, and then later claimed they were mistaken. And that most of those who've indicated the location of the wound on their own skull have placed it further back than it appears to be in the back of the head autopsy photo. But the PROOF of cognitive dissonance is this: many, including yourself, claim the pointing out of a location further back on the skull than shown in the photo proves the photo is a fake, but refuse to accept that the pointing out a location much higher than shown in the McClelland drawing proves the drawing is inaccurate. And that's just blithering. So why do they refuse to do so? Because, as I wrote, it's a hoax. Livingstone and Groden claimed ALL the witnesses said the McClelland drawing (which he didn't draw, supervise, or approve) was accurate, and it's been repeated as a tenet of a religion ever since. Quit drinking the kool-aid, Sandy. The truth will set you free. From Chapter 18C: When one looks at the history of the controversy, that is, the history of the purported Parkland/Bethesda divide on the location of Kennedy's large head wound, one finds that much of it was stirred up by writer Harrison Livingstone in the years 1979-1981. In 1979, on a trip expensed to the Baltimore Sun, Livingstone went to Dallas and asked a number of witnesses to Kennedy's wounds a series of questions about them, and showed them the HSCA's tracing of the back of the head photo--the photo illicitly copied by Livingstone's soon-to-be-partner Robert Groden. While the Sun never published a detailed article on these encounters, Livingstone did publish his version of such an article in the 11-22-81 issue of The Continuing Inquiry newsletter. Here are the sections of the article on the witnesses: "'That's not the way I remember it,' said Dr. Richard Dulany, a medical resident who was on duty in the emergency room when Kennedy was brought in, after looking at a copy of an offical autopsy photograph. According to Dr. Dulany, there is a 'definite conflict' between the wounds as portrayed in the photo and the wounds which he observed in the emergency room. There were at least 22 witnesses in Dallas who have described a 'large hole in the back of the head.' Dr. Dulany insists that the photo does not show the large, gaping wound which had blown out the back of the president's head." (Note that Livingstone fails to reveal the degree of this 'conflict'--was Dulaney told that the autopsy photo he was shown was genuine? Was he willing to sign an affidavit saying the photo was a fake? Or did he simply assume he was mistaken?) "Dr. Paul Peters, professor and chairman of the Urology Department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Parkland, also questions the accuracy of the disputed photograph. Dr. Peters told the Warren Commission: 'We saw the wound of entry in the throat and noted the large occipital wound.'' After seeing the pictures, he said, 'I don't think it's consistent with what I saw. There was a large hole in the back of the head through which one could see the brain. But that hole does not appear, in the photograph.'" (Note the lack of certainty. Peters 'questions.' Peters doesn't 'think' it's consistent. In other words, Peters, as Dulaney, was unwilling to say he thought the photo was a fake.) "The president's widow also described a severe wound at the back of the head to the Commission: 'But from the back, you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair and his skull on...''' (This, as we've seen, was a misrepresentation of her statements, which in fact suggested the wound was at the top of the head, and more readily viewed from behind.) "Doris Nelson, a Dallas nurse who was the supervisor of the emergency room when Kennedy was brought there, and who helped to treat the dying president, said that government autopsy photos of the skull are 'not true. There was no hair.' She said, while disputing the most controversial photograph, which merely shows a small entry wound in the cowlick area, which is four inches from where the autopsy report itself describes it, 'There wasn't even any hair back there, on the back of the head. It was blown away. All that area was blown out.'" (Well, here's a decent witness. Of course, she later showed Life Magazine where she thought the wound had been--and it was what most of us would call the top of the head.) "Claiming that the Photographs were too 'gory,'...the (HSCA) actually published exact tracings of them. It was these tracings, which are described as being accurate down to the last detail, which the Dallas medical witnesses recently evaluated for this report. (One witness, however. Dr. Malcolm Perry of the Cornell Medical Center, was shown prints of the actual photographs by Sun reporters in 1979, and also strongly denounced them as being inaccurate.)" (Hmmm...Perry was Kennedy's primary physician in the ER, why not quote him directly? Could it be that Perry was not shown the photo by the reporters, as claimed, but by Robert Groden, who kept no notes?) "The list of medical witnesses who have challenged the autopsy photos includes Dr. Robert McClelland, professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical School in Dallas. Seventeen years ago, he told the Warren Commission that he stood at the head of the operating table in the emergency room 'in such a position that I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot...in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity.'' Recently, after viewing a sketch of the gaping head wound which had been drawn by an independent investigator, Dr. McClelland said that it accurately portrays what he 'vividly remembers' seeing on the operating table after the president was rushed into emergency. He firmly rejected the autopsy photos." (Livingstone failed to reveal that McClelland's initial report on his 'vivid' recollections of the wound on the back of the head...placed the wound in the left temple.) "Margaret Hood (Margaret Henchllffe at the time) had been an emergency room nurse for 12 years prior to the assassination. The nurse, who helped wheel the wounded president into the room and later prepared his body for the coffin, recently drew a sketch of the wound on a skull model provided by reporters. That sketch also showed a large wound at the back of the head. 'You couldn't see much of the wound,' said Ms. Hood. 'It didn't affect his face or ears at all. it was more to the back.' Ms. Hood also strongly disavowed the photographs." (Well, once again, what does that mean-- 'disavowed'? Did she say they weren't consistent with what she remembered? Or did she accuse the government of misconduct?) "Dr. Ronald C. Jones, a professor of surgery who was Parkland Hospital's chief resident in surgery at the time of the murder, originally described for the Warren Commission 'what appeared to be an exit wound in the posterior portion of the skull.' He also rejected the autopsy photos, and drew an outline with his finger of a large hole at the back of an imaginary head. In addition, he described the drawing which Dr. McClelland had approved as 'close.'" (Once again, this was too vague. Is it really a story when someone remembers something a bit differently than it is depicted in some photographs? No, I don't think so. The story comes when that person is willing to swear on a stack of Bibles their recollections are correct, and publicly accuse someone of faking the photographs. None of Livingstone's witnesses have gone that far.) "Patricia Gustafson (then Patricia Hutton), another emergency room nurse at the time of the shooting, helped to wheel the president from the limousine into treatment. Ms. Gustafson, testifying before the Warren Commission, outlined a 'massive opening on the back of the head.' Recently, describing an effort to place a pressure bandage on the head wound, she said: 'I tried to do so, but there was really nothing to put a pressure bandage on. It was too massive. So he told me just to leave it be.' Asked if she was sure about the location of the wound, she said yes: ''It was the back of the head,' she said, while rejecting the autopsy photos." ("Rejecting"? What does that mean? I reject what looks back at me in the mirror each morning, but that doesn't mean I think it's fake, and part of some massive conspiracy.) "Fouad Bashour was an associate professor of medicine in cardiology at the time of the shooting. Interviewed by this reporter at his office in 1979, Dr. Bashour insisted that the official photo which he was being shown did not accurately depict the location of the major wound. 'Why do they cover it up?' he asked several times. 'This is not the way it was.'"(Livingstone hid that Bashour only saw Kennedy's wound for a few seconds.) "Dr. Charles Baxter, interviewed the same day, who had earlier told the Warren Commission 'There was a large, gaping wound in the back of the skull,' also questioned the autopsy photos." (Well, wait a minute. Baxter had told the Warren Commission "There was a large gaping wound in the skull." He had said nothing about the "back of the skull." In fact, it's worse than that. Baxter at first exclaimed "literally, the right side of his head had been blown off," but then later specified that the wound was in the "temporal parietal plate of bone laid outward to the side." This was a wound on the side of the head, and not the back of the head, as claimed by Livingstone. And "questioned?" What's that mean? And why not quote Baxter from his most recent interview? It seems likely from this that Baxter was mostly supportive of the photos in his interview with Livingstone, and that Livingstone didn't want to admit as much in his article.) "After being shown the most controversial photo. Dr. Marion Jenkins (he told the Warren Commission, 'There was a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital) . . . even to the extent that the cerebellum had protruded from the wound'), blurted: 'No, not like that. Not like that, because... No, you want to know what it really looked, like? Well, that picture doesn't look like it from the back.' Dr. Jenkins demonstrated several times, on his own and a reporter's head, that the large exit wound had been located on the back of the skull: 'You could tell at this point with your fingers that it was scored out (that the edges were blasted out).'" (It seems likely from this that Jenkins didn't trust Livingstone's assertion the photo was an official photo, and was simply trying to show them what he remembered. He was certainly much more cautious in his subsequent interviews. This highlights the problem with the article--it shows that the memories of Kennedy's wounds of some witnesses are inconsistent with what is shown in the autopsy photos, but fails to explore the strength of their recollections, or even what this means...if this is in fact unusual for people trying to remember the specifics of something that happened 16 years prior.) "Dr. Charles Carrico, now a professor of surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle, was a general surgeon in residency at Parkland when the president was shot--and the first doctor to reach him. He told the Warren Commission about a large gaping wound, a five-by-seven-centimeter defect in the posterior skull, which he observed in the occipital region. But he has not been interviewed since." (Is it a coincidence that Livingstone failed to interview Carrico, and that Carrico would come to totally reject Livingstone's claims?) "In addition to these medical figures, three other physicians who were involved in treating the , stricken president-Doctors Gene C. Akin, Jackie Hunt, and Adolph Giesecke, have not fully endorsed the autopsy pictures." (In other words, they partially endorsed the autopsy pictures. Well, what part? Since, if they'd said the head wound was wrong, Livingstone would most certainly have let his readers know about it, it seems likely they said they thought the photos of the head wound looked pretty good to them...and that Livingstone didn't want us to know about this.) "Two crucial medical witnesses, meanwhile, have not yet been interviewed about the case. Dr. Kemp Clark, who was the senior physician on duty in the Parkland 'trauma room' when the wounded president was brought in, refuses to comment--although he described for the Warren Commission '... a large wound in the right occiput, extending into the parietal region.'' (Livingstone hid from his readers that Clark accepted the conclusions of the autopsy report and Warren Commission.) "Diana H. Bowron, a British nurse who worked in the Parkland emergency room in 1963, could not be located as of this writing. However, Ms. Bowron did tell the Warren Commission: 'the president was moribund. He was lying across Mrs. Kennedy's knee, and there seemed to be blood everywhere. When I went around to the other side of car, I saw the condition of his head...the back of his head...it was very bad; I just saw one large hole.''' (Aha! A good, credible witness...whom Livingstone hadn't even spoken to...or shown the autopsy photo...) It seems clear from this, then, that Livingstone was pushing an agenda in his article, and that he wasn't particularly interested in telling his readers the whole story. I mean, why else short-change the recollections of those "not fully" endorsing the photos, and emphasize the recollections of several others--including Mrs. Kennedy--whom he didn't even interview? And here are some more reasons to believe he cherry-picked his quotes to push a fantastic theory he knew few would buy if he was more forthcoming... First of all, he claimed, in the article, that "According to the recently interviewed medical witnesses, the president had been shot in the throat, from in front, in addition to the head shot." Well, this was just not true. Few of the witnesses interviewed by Livingstone even saw the throat wound before it was expanded by Dr. Perry, and those that did never told anyone else that the throat wound they saw WAS in fact an entrance wound...only that it appeared to be one. Now, this is an important distinction. These witnesses made observations, and formed recollections, and may or may not have formed opinions based upon these recollections. But Livingstone claimed they'd both presented these opinions as facts, which would have been thoroughly unprofessional, and universally shared the same opinion. It seems clear, then, that he was putting words in their mouths, and that he was exaggerating, or worse. Secondly, a 6-11-80 article on Livingstone by Maureen Williams found in the Bangor Daily News suggests Livingstone was not a healthy camper. I know this seems a cheap shot, but stick with me here. This article was on Livingstone at a time virtually no one knew who he was, written in his local paper. The article, it follows, was his idea, or at least written with his full cooperation. And yet, look what it reveals: "The federal government has stipulated that certain sensitive material concerning the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 cannot be released to the public and media until the year 2039. One man who claims to be living in secrecy and fear for his life in eastern Maine, claims to have gotten some of that material through an underground source with connections in the Pentagon. Harrison Edward Livingstone, one of hundreds of private citizens who are involved in researching the assassination, carries his completed but rough manuscript of his book with him wherever he goes...He has kept on the move in recent years in several states, because he said he believes he's a 'hunted man.' In one of those states, he says, his car was fitted with an explosive device. In July 1979, a plane was to carry a team of reporters of the Baltimore Sun to Dallas, where they were to rendezvous with Livingstone. The plane was accidentally rammed by a jet fuel delivery truck on the airport apron. Livingstone says this was no accident. The incident caused the occupants to be confined in the plane for three hours, but what is stranger is that neither the newspaper or Livingstone could locate the investigative team for two days. In July and November 1979, the Baltimore Sun published two stories, containing purported new information and a lot of speculation, which Livingstone claims to have stimulated. 'But nobody read it...the wire services probably didn't pick it up, and one of the stories ran on a Sunday features page,' Livingstone said. Livingstone is convinced that some of the government's official autopsy photographs have been forged by an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency so they would be consistent with the so-called 'single-bullet, single-gunman' theory. Livingstone said that on July 30, 1979, he traveled to Dallas where he interviewed various physicians who attended the dying president at Parkland Hospital. In tape-recorded and transcribed interviews, Livingstone said, medical doctors Adolph Giesecke, Robert McClelland, Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, Fouad Bashour, Jacqueline Hunt, and Marion Jenkins, indicate that the official government photo shown them may have been fake, because it shows an entrance wound in the occipital-parietal section of the president's head. Livingstone says they all told him that when the president was wheeled into Parkland's emergency room for initial medical treatment, the wound they saw in the back of his head looked like an exit wound...Robert Groden of Hopelawn, N.J., a photographic consultant to the House Assassinations Committee, said 'My visual inspection of the autopsy photos and X-rays reveals evidence of forgery in four of the photographs..." The article then proceeded to quote Jack White on the possibility the photos had been faked, and Dr. Cyril Wecht on the probability there was more than one shooter. It then reported: "On the other hand, Dr. Paul C. Peters, professor and chairman of the Division of Urology, University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas, told the NEWS that he has never seen any of the official government autopsy photos. He was one of the many doctors and nurses who tried to revive the dying President 17 years ago. But after studying the forensic observations of Dr. John Lattimer, a retired Columbia professor, he believes that the gaping hole he saw in the right rear of the felled President's head should not be considered a true exit wound, but a 'tangential' wound, caused by a shallow bullet entry at the back of his neck." Well, where do we begin? Hmmm... Livingstone had either presented himself, or had allowed himself to be presented, as a man on the run from dark forces--all because he had copies of the autopsy photos. He then hid that he'd received these copies from Robert Groden, by claiming he'd gotten them from some mysterious figure in the Pentagon. This allowed, as well, for Groden to serve as an additional source for the reporter. Well, this was pretty sneaky, no? And then there's the matter of Peters, who shot down the possibility the Parkland doctors' disagreement with the photos suggests a second shooter, by claiming single-assassin theorist Dr. John Lattimer had convinced him otherwise. Pretty wacky. And from there it only got wackier. By June of 1981, Livingstone had convinced Ben Bradlee, Jr. of the Boston Globe to pick up where he'd left off, and interview the Parkland witnesses for himself. Bradlee's summary of these interviews can be found in the Weisberg Archives. They reveal that Bradlee focused on the recollections of 16 witnesses, and that 8 of the 14 he interviewed for the story cast doubt on the authenticity of the photos, and 6 largely supported their authenticity. This was a journalist at work, and not a theorist. And he believed barely more than half the witnesses suggested the photos were at odds with the wounds. This was far from the ALL claimed by Livingstone. The witnesses Bradlee thought disagreed with the official description of the head wound were: Dr. Robert McClelland, who is reported to have claimed that the drawing he approved for book publication is still how he "vividly remembers" the wound appearing. Dr. Richard Dulany, who is reported to have "told the Globe that he recalled seeing a wound four to six inches in diameter squarely in the back of the head, in a location quite distinct from that depicted in the official autopsy report and photograph." Patricia Gustafson, who repeated what she'd earlier told Livingston, that the wound she'd observed was at the "back of the head." Doris M. Nelson, who "drew an illustration of the head wound that placed it high on the back, right side. The wound she drew was in the parietal area, but it extended well toward the rear of the head and appears to conflict with the autopsy photograph. Shown the tracing of that photo, Nelson immediately said: 'It isn't true.' Specifically, she objected to the photograph showing hair in the back of the head. 'There was no hair,' she said. 'There wasn't even hair back there. It was blown away. All that area was blown out.'" (Note: Bradlee was more specific than Livingstone regarding Nelson's recollections, and reveals that, while disputing the accuracy of the autopsy photos, she nevertheless felt the wound was at the top of Kennedy's head, and not on the far back of the head, where Livingstone and others placed the wound.) Margaret Hood, who "sketched a gaping hole in the occipital region which extended only slightly into the parietal area." Dr. Ronald Jones, who "refused to make a drawing of the wound on a plastic skull model, saying he never had an opportunity to define the wound's margins. With his finger, however, he outlined the wound as being in the very rear of the head. He said the official autopsy photograph of the back of the head did not square with his recollection, but that the McClelland drawing was 'close.'" (Well, this is interesting. Jones clearly saw where this was headed, and tried to make clear that his recollection wasn't worth all that much.) Dr. Paul Peters, who "made a drawing that appeared to place the head wound entirely in the parietal region, but he insisted that he meant for it to overlap into the occipital region as well. 'I think occipital–parietal describes it pretty well,' he remarked. He said he had a good opportunity to examine the head wound. Shown the official tracing of the autopsy photograph, Peters remarked: 'I don't think it's consistent with what I saw.' Of the McClelland drawing, Peters said: 'It's not too far off. It's a little bit (too far) down in the occipital area, is what I would say...But it's not too bad. It's a large wound, and that's what we saw at the time.'" (Well, this is also quite intriguing. Peters placed the wound in the parietal area, but, one can only presume, recalled Clark's description of it as occipito-parietal, and thought better of it. Note also that two of the witnesses disputing the accuracy of the autopsy photos--Nelson and Peters--had disputed the accuracy of the McClelland drawing as well.) Diana H. Bowron: A British registered nurse. Bradlee couldn't find her but quoted her testimony before the Warren Commission. Dr. William Kemp Clark. Clark refused to be interviewed but Bradlee quoted his previous reports and testimony. Dr. Gene C. Akin, who "at first recalled that the head wound was 'more parietal than occipital'" but who equivocated after being shown the McClelland drawing, and said "Well, in my judgment at the time, what I saw was more parietal. But on the basis of this sketch, if this is what Bob McClelland saw, then it's more occipital.'" (Holy smokes. This confirms that at least one back of the head witness deferred to the accuracy of McClelland's drawing, without realizing the drawing had not been made by McClelland, and without the foresight to realize McClelland himself would come to dispute its accuracy. There's also this. Of the 8 witnesses disputing the accuracy of the autopsy photos, three--Nelson, Peters, and Akin--also initially disputed the accuracy of the McClelland drawing.) This, then brings us to the six witnesses Bradlee spoke to who "tended to agree with the official description of the head wound that emerged from the autopsy and Warren Report." Dr. Charles Baxter, who, despite his earlier statements and testimony, drew "a large wound in the parietal region" on a model skull, and "said the official autopsy photo of the back of the head did not conflict with his memory." Dr. Adolph Giesecke, who "placed the head wound in the right parietal region, saying it extended about three or four centimeters into the occiput. Though this would appear to make the wound visible in a rear-view photo, Giesecke said the official autopsy photograph was nonetheless 'very compatible' with what he remembered. He explained this by saying that in the photograph it appeared to him that a flap of scalp blown loose by a billet was being held in such a way as to cover the rear-most portion of the skull wound. Giesecke said the McClelland drawing did not reflect what he remembered of the wound." (So Giesecke was being reasonable; the photo didn't reflect exactly what he remembered but it was close enough for him to assume it was legitimate. Meanwhile, he totally dismissed the McClelland drawing.) Dr. Charles Carrico, who was not interviewed, but answered questions by letter, and said in his first letter "that the official autopsy photograph showed 'nothing incompatible' with what he remembered of the back of the head. But he conceded that 'we never saw, and did not look for, any posterior wound.' In his second letter, Carrico said he agreed with the size of the wound shown in the McClelland drawing, but not its location, since '...we were able to see the majority. if not all of this wound, with the patient laying on his back in a hospital gurney.'" Dr. Malcolm Perry, who, like Carrico, declined to be interviewed, but responded by letter. "In the first letter. Perry said that while he gave only a 'cursory glance at the head wound...not sufficient for accurate descriptions,' the autopsy photograph 'seems to be consistent with what I saw.' In his second letter, Perry simply-reiterated that he had not made a careful examination of the head wound. and that in his opinion, the only person qualified to give a good description of the wound was Dr. Clark." Dr. Marion T. Jenkins, whose earlier claims he'd observed cerebellum had been widely quoted "told The Globe he had been mistaken in his statements on this. 'I thought it was cerebellum, but I didn't examine it,' he said. Jenkins refused to draw a picture of the head wound on a plastic skull model, insisting instead that a reporter play the part of the supine Kennedy so he could demonstrate what he saw and did. Asked to locate the large head wound, Jenkins pointed to the parietal area above the right ear. He said he had never looked at the back of the head." Dr. Robert G. Grossman, who "said he took up a position next to Dr. Clark at the right of Kennedy's head. In contrast to Jenkins, Grossman said the president's head was picked up by Clark. 'It was clear to me that the right parietal bone had been lifted up by a bullet which had exited,' Grossman said. Besides this large parietal wound, Grossman went on to say that he had noted another separate wound. measuring about one—and—a-quarter inches in diameter, located squarely in the occiput. Grossman was the only doctor interviewed who made such a reference to two distinct wounds. Though no occipital wound such as he described is apparent in the official autopsy photograph, Grossman nevertheless said 'it seems consistent' with what he remembered. He said the large wound depicted in the McClelland drawing 'is in the wrong place.'" Let's reflect. Ben Bradlee and the Boston Globe interviewed 14 Parkland witnesses in 1981. Of these 14, 8 strongly questioned or rejected the accuracy of the autopsy photo showing the back of Kennedy's head, and 6 supported or failed to question the accuracy of the photo. This is indeed interesting. But what's just as interesting, and just as telling in the long run, is that NINE of these 14 rejected the accuracy of the McClelland drawing, which those focusing on this issue nevertheless propped up as a depiction of the one true wound. Feel free to scream. And let's reflect that when ultimately reporting on these interviews, in his 1989 best seller High Treason, Livingstone and his co-author Robert Groden claimed that the "McClelland" drawing "was verified by every doctor, nurse, and eyewitness as accurate."

There are different kinds of music and creativity. There is the workman-like attention to detail trying to get everything right kind of creativity that produces great pop songs and symphonic music, etc. But then there's the wild, semi-improvised, surprising music that might not eve make sense, but somehow works. The former is difficult to do while high. The latter is easier to do while high. Now, intriguingly, while many assume one can't remember stuff while high, Bob Dylan has long claimed he took drugs to help him focus while trying to remember verse after verse in his songs. I can kinda see that. A lot of entertainers take drugs before they get on stage, and a lot take drugs when they get offstage. I've known some that do both. They need to relax before they perform, and need to come back down afterwards. I have also read an interview with (McCartney, or some other icon, I can't remember) where he claimed that he thought smoking weed had improved his creativity, and felt he'd gone stagnant when he quit, but then went back and listened to the outtakes of his pot years, and realized most of it was terrible. SO...for some, the verdict is still out. But I find it hard to imagine jazz music in the fifties without the influence of heroin, and rock music in the late sixties/early seventies without the influence of marijuana and LSD. Now, I don't think cocaine or meth did anyone any good, except maybe inspiring some metal musicians to play faster. But, all things considered, I think Hicks was right. Some great art was made while under the influence of drugs. Heck, this was even acknowledged in my college poetry classes... "in Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree" didn't spring forth from a sober mind...

I was a buyer in the record biz when Hicks was cooking. He started his own label to release his performances. I think he put two out, and was gonna perform, and the label called to ask me if I wanted to meet him. (I was one of the few buyers who knew who he was.) In any event, I said yep but he never performed in L.A. again. The label told me he was ill and his performance would be delayed. He died like a month later. I still have a VHS they sent me of one of his performances. I thought he was a Carlin in the making. Clever and obnoxious at the same time. It's funny. In retrospect, his bravest material was not his material on JFK, but his libertarian approach to smoking and drug use. It's been what 25 years but I think his observation that the best songs were written by people who were high still rings true.

When I was researching the HSCA's medical panel, I found an interview with Spitz in which he complained about how little they were paid. Baden, as the honcho, was certainly paid a lot more, but still not a lot. He did use his role as a launching pad for a career as a gun for hire and TV personality. So in the long run he must have made millions from his exposure on the HSCA. P.S. I have a section on Baden in Chapter 13b, in which I critique a dozen or so of his interviews and articles on the assassination. Here is the section regarding his book: Unnatural Death. Baden's Reign of Error 1989 In his first book, Unnatural Death, published 1989, Dr. Baden presented a chapter on the Kennedy assassination. One might think that Dr. Baden, concerned about his reputation, would be sure to make his book as accurate as possible, and review the reports and findings of the House Select Committee before committing his thoughts for posterity. But one would be wrong.Among Baden’s claims: Those who believe the back-and-to-the-left movement of Kennedy's head after frame 313 indicates the shot came from the front are mistaken because "They left out of their calculations the acceleration of the car Kennedy was riding in. Beyond that, the body simply does not react that way. The force of the bullet would just as likely cause Kennedy's head to move forward as backward. It's not predictable." (A quick look at the Zapruder and Nix films shows that the acceleration of the limousine came after the back-and-to the-left movement of the President’s head. This is not just the opinion of conspiracy theorists. Dr. John Lattimer noted as much in his 1976 article in Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics. In addition, Baden's claim that the movement of a head is unpredictable is either something he just made up because it sounded good...or was a misrepresentation of Dr. Olivier's testimony for the Rockefeller Commission, in which he claimed that the direction in which a goat's body fell after being shot in the head is unpredictable.) "No forensic pathologist has ever examined the body of the President." (As we've seen, one of the three doctors performing Kennedy's autopsy, Colonel Pierre Finck, was a licensed forensic pathologist on November 22, 1963.) "Colonel Finck, it turned out, had never done an autopsy involving a gunshot wound, either." (As we've seen, Dr. Finck testified about his prior experience on 3-11-78. As a direct response to a question from Dr. Baden, Finck said he'd performed autopsies on gunshot wound victims prior to 1959. Apparently, Dr. Baden didn't note his answer.) "The FBI photographer, who had clearance, was in the same quandary as Humes. He had never taken autopsy pictures before and was untrained in photographing gunshot wounds." (As previously discussed, John Stringer, the actual photographer, was a civilian working for the Navy, and had been Bethesda Naval Hospital’s chief autopsy photographer for years. His work had been featured in textbooks.) "The Kennedy head bullet was found on the floor of Kennedy's car in front. It had struck the windshield strut and broken in two." (Since bullet fragments are smaller and lose their energy much more rapidly than intact bullets, it seems doubtful that two fragments of a bullet breaking up upon entrance on the back of the skull would traverse the skull and exit with the force necessary to crack a windshield and dent a windshield strut. This is in keeping, moreover, with the report of Baden's pathology panel, which observed that the large defect apparent at the supposed exit suggested the exit of a fragment the combined size of the recovered fragments. So it's not exactly surprising that Baden would try and claim the bullet exited intact and broke up after striking the windshield strut. The problem, as discussed above, is that HE SHOULD KNOW THIS ISN'T TRUE. Not only does he overlook that a fragment struck and cracked the windshield in addition to the strut, but he ignores that the two fragments found in the front seat were the nose and base of the bullet, and that they comprised only about half of the bullet. As much of the middle of this bullet was supposedly left in the skull, including the “slice” of bullet seen on the x-rays and interpreted by Baden and his panel to be on the back of the head by the bullet's entrance, it follows then like night from day that these fragments exited separately and did not break in two upon impact with the windshield strut. Baden's pretending that it did and that the "slice" just fell out the back of the bullet and clung to the back of the skull is bizarre beyond belief.) Dr. Humes burned his notes on November 23, the day after the shooting, before talking to Dr. Perry and finding out the tracheotomy incision had been cut through a bullet wound, and before starting work on the autopsy report. (This may be Baden's most egregious "mistake." Its existence reveals that as early as 1989 he was looking for ways to explain to his readers how Humes could be so mistaken about the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head--and that he was willing to make stuff up to do this. There is simply no evidence supporting Baden's version of these events. Humes testified before the Warren Commission that he called Dr. Perry on the morning of the 23rd, began working on the autopsy report later that evening, and burned his notes the next day. He repeated this testimony, moreover, to Baden himself, when meeting with members of Baden's panel on 9-16-77. Shame, shame, shame.) The Cortisone that Kennedy was taking for his Addison’s disease "causes odd fat deposits--an upper back hump, full cheeks. Kennedy had them both, but Addison's disease is not mentioned in the autopsy report." (As discussed, the "back hump" or "hunchback" story is a disgusting fairy tale started by Dr. Lattimer to help explain how a descending bullet could enter Kennedy’s shirt and jacket inches below his shirt collar and still exit from his throat.) “Perhaps the most egregious error was the four-inch miscalculation. The head is only five inches long from crown to neck, but Humes was confused by a little piece of brain tissue that had adhered to the scalp. He placed the head wound four inches lower than it actually was, near the neck instead of the cowlick.” (This, of course, is nonsense. Baden must have known that Dr.s Humes and Boswell didn't just observe this wound on the scalp, but on the skull after the scalp had been peeled back. He also would have to have known their observation was confirmed by Dr. Pierre Finck, arriving after the beginning of the autopsy. He also should have known their "too low" location was confirmed by several other witnesses to the autopsy, including autopsy photographer John Stringer. His attempt, then, to make this "egregious error" appear to be the error of one man, and not many, and his failure to tell his readers that these witnesses verified this location numerous times, can only be viewed as deceptive.) "For the head wound, we enhanced the x-rays and saw the entrance perforation on top of the cowlick." (This would be news to the HSCA's radiology consultants, Dr.s McDonnell and Davis. Neither of them noted such an entrance in their reports. While they both concluded there was an entrance in this location, they did so based upon their observation of fractures and fragments in the area, NOT because they saw an entrance perforation. This distinction is an important one that Baden should not have forgotten.) That when inspecting the photos of the head wound "Pictures of the wound yielded more when viewed through a stereopticon. In three dimensions they showed the oblique lines (beveling) on the bone in the back of the skull that an entering bullet makes." (As discussed, this was never mentioned in Baden's testimony before the HSCA. It was mentioned but not demonstrated in his panel's report. Despite plentiful opportunities, no one has demonstrated it in all the years since. It is probably nonsense.) That they "reconstructed the exit wound at the throat (Note: he means skull) from X rays of the skull and skull fragments and photographs of a single piece of bone which came to be called the Nieman-Marcus fragment. Three skull fragments had been retrieved from the limousine, brought to Washington, X-rayed, and later vanished. The fourth, measuring about two by one and a half inches, was found a few days after the autopsy by a premed student walking his dog in Dealey Plaza, where the shots were fired. He took it home to his father, a doctor, who knew what it was and had it photographed. At a party the photographer couldn't resist talking about it, and the story got back to the FBI. Agents swooped down on the premed student, who was saving the fragment as a souvenir. He had it wrapped in a piece of cotton in a Nieman-Marcus box. It later disappeared from the archive, along with the other fragments, but the photographs of it were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." (This is just embarrassing. It shows both how little Baden knows about the assassination, and how willing he is to spew the nonsense he thinks he knows. First of all, of the three skull fragments x-rayed in Washington, only one was found in the limousine, the other two were found in the street. Second of all, no one called the fourth fragment the "Nieman-Marcus fragment"; it was called the Harper fragment, after Billy Harper, the student who found it while taking photographs in Dealey Plaza, not walking his dog as claimed by Baden, and not a few days after the shooting as claimed by Baden, but the day after. Third of all, the doctor to whom Harper gave the fragment, and who had it photographed, was his uncle, not his dad. Fourth, after visiting the hospital on November 25, Harper visited the FBI, and gave them the fragment; he did not try to hold onto the fragment as a souvenir, and no one swooped in to grab the box containing the fragment from him. Fifth, none of the four fragments Baden mentions disappeared from the archives. The three fragments x-rayed in Washington are believed to have been buried with the body, and the Harper fragment was last known to have been in the possession of Kennedy's doctor, Dr. George Burkley. And, finally, sixth, Baden claims the photos of the fragment "were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." Presumably, he means accurately reconstructing the skull. Well, in such case, why didn't he? Why did he, instead, pretend this over 2 inch long fragment fit into a gap on the side of the head that was not discussed in his testimony, or depicted on any of his exhibits?) "The trace metal content in the bullet found on the stretcher and the fragment from Connally's wrist match perfectly. It was a copper-jacketed military bullet with a core of 99 percent lead and insignificant amounts of strontium, arsenic, nickel, platinum, and silver. As small as they are, these traces are like fingerprints." (The magic bullet and the wrist fragment failed to match on copper, and barely matched on antimony. It also matched on silver, as did half the bullets tested. Protocols of the time dictated that, if a sample failed to match on one of these three, the samples did not match. Therefore there was no match, let alone a perfect match. None of the other elements listed by Baden were even tested.) That when he inspected Governor Connally's back wound he saw "a two-inch long sideways entrance on his back. He had not been shot by a second shooter but by the same flattened bullet that went through Kennedy." (Dr. Baden wrote a memo on this inspection for the HSCA. At that time he reported Connally's scar as 1 1/8 inches long. His description of CE 399 as "flattened" is another exaggeration. Only the base of the bullet was slightly flattened.)

A couple of points. Baden wrote a memo on Connally's scar. But when he wrote about it in his book he increased the size of the scar from the size recorded in his own memo. It seems clear then he was all in on the SBT, and was willing to tell bald-faced lies to support it. Blakey, on the other hand... Blakey was determined to use science to solve the case. Among the first "sciency" tests performed for the HSCA was Guinn's NAA analysis. Tellingly, Baden and the FPP went into the archives just a few days after Guinn gave Blakey his results. It seems obvious then that Guinn's analysis fooled Blakey into thinking he had hard evidence to support the SBT, and that the FPP was asked to confirm Guinn's analysis. (Baden even cites Guinn in his book.)