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Micah Mileto

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Posts posted by Micah Mileto

  1. 21 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

    Exactly, Pat. .....

    "The next time some conspiracy buff brings up the "gaping" nature of JFK's trach wound, show them the video on this webpage of Dr. Robert McClelland saying on PBS-TV in 1988 that the trach incision in the autopsy pictures looks "exactly the same size and the same configuration" as it was when he saw it at Parkland. .... And even though I think Dr. McClelland is as kooky as a 9-dollar bill with regard to his comments concerning the location of JFK's large head wound, I certainly don't have any reason to think he's kooky about his comments regarding the trach wound -- and that's because I don't believe for a single second that anybody "altered" any of JFK's wounds between Parkland and Bethesda." -- David Von Pein; November 2013

    ~~~~~~~~~

    "Some people have even said 'Oh, that tracheostomy has been altered; it's too big a wound'. Well, I can speak for that -- no, it had not been altered. That's exactly the way it was made at Parkland. It's just that people expected it to be smaller." -- Dr. R.N. McClelland; Via This Excellent 2009 Interview

    ~~~~~~~~~

    Related Discussion:

    DR. PERRY, DAVID LIFTON, & THE TRACH WOUND

     

    One of the primary pieces of evidence for an altered throat wound is Lifton’s reported 1966 interviews with Parkland doctors, where they were each asked to recall the length of the tracheostomy incision. Drs. Charles Carrico, Charles Baxter, Marion Jenkins, and Gene Akin were reportedly interviewed on 1/8/1966, Robert McClelland on 11/9/1966, Ronald Jones on 11/10/1966, and Paul Peters on 11/12/1966. It reads in Best Evidence, starting with Carrico (Link):

     

    […Part III. A Search for New Evidence, Chapter 11: The Tracheotomy Incision: Dallas vs. Bethesda]

     

    On November 8, 1966, I telephoned him, introducing myself as a UCLA graduate student attending a legal seminar held by "Professor Wesley Liebeler, who was on the Warren Commission." I told him I was doing a paper on the tracheotomy operation.


    "Dr. Perry testified that he made this incision in the neck... you were there when this happened, correct?"
     

    "Right."
     

    "Could you tell me approximately the length of the tracheotomy incision that was made?"
     

    "Gee. It's been a while. Probably-it would just be a guess-between two and three centimeters, which is close to an inch."
     

    "Between two and three centimeters?"
     

    "Yes."
     

    I asked: "Do you think the incision that Dr. Perry made might have been, let's say, four centimeters?"
     

    Replied Carrico: "Oh, I really don't know. But it, that would probably be the upper limit. I doubt if it was that large."


    As with Perry, the confident tone of Dr. Carrico carried the message that he did not need more than an inch to insert the tracheotomy tube.
     

    The next doctor was Charles Baxter, who assisted Perry with the tracheotomy.
     

    I posed the question:

    LIFTON: Now, about what was the length of the incision?

     

    BAXTER: Oh, it's roughly an inch and a half.
     

    LIFTON: ...you could see the incision before they placed the tracheotomy tube into the incision?
     

    BAXTER: Oh, yes. Yes.
     

    LIFTON: So at that time you remember it as being an inch and a half [3.8cm]?
     

    BAXTER: Yeah, roughly.1

     

    The assassination, I commented, was three years before. How sure was he of the details? "It's pretty vivid," replied Baxter, adding: "It's such a common operation that it's just standard. I think he probably had the most standard of standard operations . .. you do exactly what you're trained to do . . . if it wasn't standard, I don't know what it would have been."

     

    Besides asking each doctor about the incision length, I also sought his reaction to an 8cm (3.2in) incision.

     

    I asked Jenkins: "Do you think the incision could have been three and a quarter inches?" "No, I don't think so," he replied.2

     

    Dr. Carrico responded: "Jiminy Christmas. How big is eight centimeters?" "Three and a quarter inches," I replied (actually it is 3.2 inches). Replied Carrico: "It would be certainly the exception. It would have to be an unusual circumstance."3

     

    Carrico asked me if the autopsy report gave the incision length, but I dodged the question.

     

    I asked Baxter if he ever made tracheotomy incisions that were three inches long: "No, we seldom do. You don't need that much."4

     

    Dr. Peters told me of his most vivid recollection. The incision had been made when he walked into the room, and Dr. Perry had one, possibly two, fingers in it. Quantifying his recollection of length was difficult. Dr. Peters estimated: "With two fingers, there's about, well, an inch and three quarters . . . at most, it was two inches."5

     

    In the course of my inquiries about length, I developed some contrary data, and evidence that doctors at Parkland were discussing my calls.

     

    The problem first arose with McClelland. I had trouble reaching him, and had to leave my name. When I did reach him, I had the feeling he was anticipating what I was going to ask. When I came to the question of incision length, his reply agreed exactly with Dr. Humes' testimony: "In centimeters, that would be something like eight centimeters, seven or eight centimeters."6 I asked McClelland whether he thought that was the usual length of a tracheotomy. McClelland, a professor of surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital, replied: "That's about the usual length, uh huh."7 McClelland then admitted he had heard about Liebeler and his course. Curious to see just how far McClelland would go to allay my suspicions, I asked: "Would you say that if eight [centimeters] is the normal size, would you say they sometimes run up to, let's say, ten to twelve centimeters?" (Twelve centimeters is 4.8 inches.)

     

    "Oh, they might. They might," replied Professor McClelland. "You just make whatever's necessary to get into the neck. And it's conceivable that in certain people with rather short stocky necks, that you might have to make an incision that large a size."8

     

    Try as I might, I found it difficult to imagine having to make a tracheotomy incision nearly five inches long to get into someone's neck. I concluded that Dr. McClelland, whose statements about the throat wound being an entry had received such widespread publicity, did not wish to become further embroiled in the assassination controversy.

     

    Dr. Jones was the only other doctor who gave me an answer that agreed with Humes' testimony: "Probably two and a half or three inches, somewhere along in there. . . "9 He also told me that Dr. McClelland had told him I had called and asked about the length of the incision.

     

    During these interviews, another criterion for estimating the incision length arose. Dr. Carrico explained that a tracheotomy tube had a flange—a piece of material perpendicular to the tube, that permits the tube to "sit" on the patient's neck. To keep the tube in place, straps from the flange are often tied around the neck. Carrico suggested that I determine what kind of tracheotomy tube was used and measure the flange. If the incision didn't extend beyond the flange, that would provide at least an upper limit. Dr. Carrico said he had no recollection of whether this particular incision extended beyond the flanges, but that normally it didn't. I decided to ask this question of the remaining doctors on my list.

     

    Dr. Baxter said he didn't think the incision could be seen beyond the flange, whose width he estimated at 1 1/4 inches, at most."10 Jenkins didn't know.11 McClelland said the incision did extend from the flange.12 Jones, who had talked with McClelland, said the same thing.13 Dr. Akin, who had given me a 2 1/2-inch incision estimate, was nevertheless emphatic that the incision would not show beyond the flange. "Tracheotomy tubes are far too wide for an incision to be showing beyond that, unless an unreasonably large incision has been made."14

     

    What, then, was the flange size on the tracheotomy tube used on President Kennedy? The tube was not saved, but Dr. Baxter told me it was definitely a plastic one, and it was either a number seven, eight, or nine. I checked a medical catalog and found the maximum width was 4cm. *

     

    My flange-length research corroborated the estimates I received from Drs. Perry and Carrico that the tracheotomy incision was "2-3cm" long.

     

    [...]

     

    * In 1973, Parkland Memorial Hospital was renovating the emergency room area, and offered to sell the National Archives implements used in the emergency room—not the implements used on November 22, 1963. One item provided was a plastic tracheotomy tube. At my request, the Archivist measured the flange length. It was 1 1/4 inches long (1 1/4 inches is 3.1 centimeters).

     

    [...]

     

    Dr. McClelland goaded me into asking the question with his talk of a 7-8cm incision as being “usual.” I asked him about the edges:

     

    LIFTON: . . . Could you tell me, if you were going to describe the edges of the incision, do you have any idea . . . were they smooth edges? Was it a smooth incision?

     

    MCCLELLAND: Well ... as I say, when I got there, the incision had been made; and according to Dr. Perry's statement to me as I walked in the room, the first thing he said to me was that there was a wound in the neck, through which he had made the incision. Just as an extension of this wound . . . So I actually did not see the edges of the tracheotomy where it had extended it. And it was smooth, uh, since it was made, of course, with a knife [emphasis added].17

     

    A few days later, I talked with Dr. Peters:

     

    LIFTON: In what words would you best describe the edges of that incision?

     

    PETERS: Oh, I guess "sharp."

     

    LIFTON: Sharp?

     

    PETERS: Yeah.

     

    LIFTON: In other words, because it was made with a knife by a surgeon?

     

    PETERS: That's right. It was a fairly neat incision, pretty close to the midline.18

     

    Dr. Jones used the same word: “sharp.”19

     

  2. 1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

    I stand corrected.

    Can you update your website to have an all-encompassing essay about the T3 back wound and the experimental evidence against clothing bunching? Your website as it exists today is rather short. I know this video tried talking about it and also tried showing a history of experimental evidence:

     

    https://youtu.be/bmSYwBAfzZw?feature=shared

     

    We also had Boswell telling the Baltimore Sun that he thought he might've written down somewhere which vertibre the back wound was next to.

  3. Beginning in 1970, James Gochenaur exchanged letters with researcher Harold Weisberg (Archive.org, Weisberg Collection on the JFK Assassination, Gochenauer James; Harold Weisberg Archive, jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/G Disk/Gochenauer James). In a letter to dated 5/10/1971, Gochenaur wrote of Elmer Moore showing him his personal briefcase of pictures and documents on the assassination, which included “Rough handwritten notes on interviews” with, among others, Dr. Perry and Dr. Humes. Humes’ name has an asterisk after it, noted as “means he wouldn't let me read them” Gochenaur wrote of Moore meeting Perry “A. No date on notes: (Moore said it was the 28th or 29th of Nov.) B. Moore brought with him Humes report. C. Moore told me several times he did not "twist Perry's arm", which leads me to believe he might have. D. Perry said he did not see a back wound. E. Perry did not observe a hole near the top, front of right ear. F ) Moore drew "rough renderings" of discription of head wounds”, then on the letter is a drawing of a right-profile view of a head, and among other labels, is one pointing above the eye and reading “"wound" near left eye. Right eye swollen”. Below the drawing it reads “Moore showed Perry drawings and "other visual aids" the back wound from Humes work. Moore wrote up a long memo to the Commission. The basic summary of which was: 1. The wound can not indicate conclusively the angles of the shots. 2. The direction of the shots are above and behind. 3. The photos of wounds likewise can not conclusively give angles - (he left out direction). according to Moore, Warren told him that its best just not to talk conspiracy: we just don't have anything”... “Moore doesn't know, of course, i'm writing to you. His motives for letting me peek into his horror chest is unknown. I sense a guilt thing"”. (Harold Weisberg Archive, jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/G Disk/Gochenauer James/Item 12 [link 2]).

     

     

    SfYPizQ.png

     

     

    Has Gochenaur been asked about this in more recent times?

  4. 8 hours ago, Joseph Backes said:

     

    Try this - http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/McKnight Working Folders/Part 2/JFKs Collar Folder 5/JFKs Collar Folder 5 19.pdf

    I can see the doc, it's from Vince Palamara.  ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 4 No. 2 © Copyright 2006 Vincent M. Palamara

    Can you work from here? - http://jfk.hood.edu/browse.php?&Sl=.%2FMcKnight Working Folders

    I can access it all, I could send you a .pdf of whatever you're looking for.  PM me.

    Joe

    It depends on your operating system, browser, or IP address. I guess the Hood college of Maryland wants to spy on their students? Or maybe it's some kind of way to subvert hacking?

  5. On 10/18/2023 at 6:53 AM, Jonathan Cohen said:

    Not sure why you created a new thread when I already updated the original discussion last night with the new information about Barry Levinson joining the film …

     

    I think it goes without saying that Development Hell has created a Frankenstein monetser which bears no resemblance to it's original form.

     

    I smell a hot mess incoming, just like Charlie Sheen's 9/11 movie.

  6. 16 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

     

     

    Perry wouldn't need to have directly seen an extra bullet to have knowledge of a cover-up. In Perry's WC testimony, he alluded to the chest tube discrepancy. He actually commented on the chest tubes more than a couple of times through the years. He said that he thought the autopsy report was wrong on the tubes. Although, he probably could've only known that information by 1964, not the hours or days within the event.

  7. 1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

    "Somebody had gotten to Dr. Perry?" Really? We know the "truth" but can't prove it because "somebody got" to our best witnesses? 

    It's amazing how self-serving that is... I mean, EVERY time a witness coughs up a statement or story indicating the wound was on the back of the head, the back of the head crowd claims they are brave truth-tellers while at the same time EVERY time a witness says he could have been mistaken or supports the authenticity of the evidence they are fibers..."somebody got to them"... ANYTHING but admit the obvious fact that as many or more witnesses have been "gotten" by the CT community than by "them". 

    That is why Micah's find is important. It shows how Bell's story, in her own words. differed from her subsequent accounts. 

    Now, I've had more experience arguing these points than anyone, so I know what comes next... "How do we know her words weren't changed in the article?" "How do we now she meant fragment and not fragments--maybe it's a typo?" 

    Let me be clear. The evidence has always suggested more than one shooter. The FBI spun it to be Oswald. The Warren Commission spun it to be Oswald. And the HSCA spun it to be Oswald. This can be proven. But for the past four decades the bulk of JFK "research" has been spent trying to prove the evidence--the very evidence that demonstrates a conspiracy in which Oswald did not shoot Kennedy--was fake. Ludicrous. 

    Just two examples from my 500+ pages of notes on the altered throat wound and coercion of Parkland witnesses:

     

    Reporter Martin J. Steadman, in a 2013 article for the website Eve’s Magazine, wrote of being invited to Dr. Perry’s house on the evening of 12/2/1963, along with two other reporters, Fred Ferretti and Stan Redding. Steadman’s article described Perry receiving calls from Bethesda around Friday night 11/22/1963, which would go against the common story of Perry being called in the daylight morning hours of Saturday 11/23/1963. Also, Perry’s calls from Bethesda sounded more hostile than described on other occasions – Allegedly, Perry had his medical career threatened if he didn’t go along with the story of the throat wound being an exit (Link):

     

    I spent 11 days in Dallas following the murder of President Kennedy, from November 26 to December 6, and I never wrote a word about my time there, mostly because I came home with no proof of anything conclusive about the unanswered questions-- many of which are still unanswered I came home only with a deep, unsettling feeling that I was leaving Dallas too soon.

     

    But as the years go by, I believe I have an obligation to write some things that I feel strongly about, especially as November 22 approaches each year. Every year since 1963, I’ve been left with (a) major grievances against the highest-ranking people in our own government and (b) a haunting memory of a private interview with a doctor who attended the dying President, and (c) some bits and pieces of information that might help historians to a consensus on what was most likely the case. The official finding that Oswald acted alone is believed by almost no one today.

     

    […]

     

    SPINNING MY WHEELS IN DALLAS

     

    When the FBI quickly leaked its conclusions that Oswald acted alone and Ruby killed Oswald to avenge the murder of the President, much of the air went out of my Dallas assignment to pursue the unanswered questions. But there were still some important stories to cover. Texas Governor John Connally was still in Parkland Memorial Hospital with gunshot wounds. A superb television reporter, Martin Agronsky, was selected as the pool reporter to interview Governor Connally when he was well enough to speak about the shots fired into the Presidential limousine that fateful day. Nellie Connally was present at her husband’s hospital bedside. All the other reporters were gathered in a makeshift hospital press room downstairs and I called my office in New York to tell them to turn on the TV and have a reporter ready with a tape recorder for the Governor Connally interview.

     

    Agronsky’s interview remains a classic instruction for young journalism aspirants everywhere. Always sensitive, always conscious of the Governor’s condition and his wife’s concerns, always aware that the Governor and his wife were wounded witnesses to history, Agronsky’s interview nevertheless documented the horrifying moments in the rear seats of an open limousine in Dallas that can never be fully explained or forgotten. Agronsky and the reporters downstairs hanging on every word by Governor Connally, had no idea that the Governor’s recollections of what happened that day would conflict with the conclusions of the Warren Commission a year later. Somehow, Governor Connally’s most critical moments meant nothing at all to the Warren Commission. His recollections didn’t fit their findings.

     

    I had been elsewhere scrounging for any scrap of information missed by the first wave of reporters to descend on Dallas and when I got to Parkland Hospital just in time to learn that the Agronsky interview would be taking place upstairs, I missed the briefing that instructed the pool reporters that the TV interview would be embargoed for an hour to give the reporters assembled downstairs time to file. I alerted my newsroom and I took only a few sketchy notes as Agronsky worked his deft touch, believing the interview was going live around the world and I was covered by my newsroom back in New York City, capturing every word.

     

    The interview over, I called my office and said, “Okay. Did you get all that?”

     

    “Get all what?” was the answer. “We don’t have anything.”

     

    Oh, no. My first solid story down there, and all I had was sketchy notes. A Dallas reporter told me what I hadn’t heard sooner--the Connally TV interview was on a one-hour delay. The Herald Tribune City Desk put a rewrite man on the phone with me, and I was bumbling and stumbling through what I could recall when he told me the wire services were beginning to come through with bulletins on the story. Fortunately, we weren’t anywhere near deadline and the wire copy and the delayed TV broadcast bailed me out. The Herald Tribune story for the next day was as complete as could be, with little or no help from me.

     

    I felt like a dope, but the paper put my byline on the story and nobody gave me any more grief than I had already taken upon myself.

     

    After that incident, I told the City Desk there was too much happening in Dallas and if I was ever going to wrap up some loose ends on the investigative assignment, we needed another guy down there. They gave me the best reporter I could hope for--Fred Ferretti.

     

    There were no more glitches, and when Ferretti arrived a day later I was pretty much free to roam again. In fact, there were occasions when I wanted Fred to accompany me. One such memorable evening was an interview with Dr. Malcolm Perry at his home. Dr. Perry was among the team of doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital when a mortally wounded President Kennedy was rushed into Emergency Room One.

     

    The meeting with Dr. Perry occurred the evening of December 2. Fred and I were joined by Stan Redding, a first-class crime reporter for the Houston Chronicle. I’d taken a liking to Redding as soon as I met him; he was my kind of reporter. Speculation and suspicion and insinuation were never part of his game. He was interested in facts, only facts. But he was a keen political observer as well as a seasoned police reporter. It was no secret in Texas that the President and the First Lady had come to their state because Texas polls showed Kennedy was in trouble for re-election in 1964. Arizona GOP Senator Barry Goldwater held a comfortable lead, despite the fact Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was a Texan. And the Goldwater edge in the polls also applied to other states in the South and Southwest at that time. Stan Redding spoke softly when he allowed an opinion, but I’ll never forget what he said: “Those three bullets shot Barry Goldwater right out of the saddle.” He was noting that Texan Lyndon Johnson was now the President, and Senator Goldwater would be matched against a man of the South in the new polls. How bright was Redding’s political crystal ball in November 1963? Johnson led Barry Goldwater in the first wave of new national polls, and Johnson buried Goldwater in November 1964, in a landslide.

     

    Our meeting with Dr. Perry was after dinnertime at his home, and I remember a little girl playing with her toys on the living room floor as the three reporters and her father talked about how he tried to save a President’s life. She was oblivious to the gravity of the conversation, playing quietly with her toys throughout.

     

    Dr. Perry had become a controversial figure in the assassination story--to his dismay. With the President lying on his back on a gurney, fighting for breath in his dying moments, Dr. Perry tried to create an air passage with an incision across what he believed to be an entrance wound at the front of Kennedy’s neck. The President was pronounced dead soon after, but the doctor’s incision at the throat had forever foreclosed a conclusion that the wound was an entrance wound or an exit wound.

     

    Late that Friday afternoon, the Parkland Hospital officials held a news conference for the hundreds of reporters who had descended on Dallas. Dr. Perry spoke of his efforts to save the President and his belief that his incision was across an entrance wound. The controversy didn’t erupt until government officials in Washington later said all three shots at the President had been fired from a sixth floor window of a building behind the President’s limousine.

     

    So little more than a week later, three reporters were speaking quietly to the surgeon at the center of the dispute. As far as I know, it was the first and only such private interview with Dr. Perry. None of us in his living room that night took out a notebook or a pencil. It was a conversation with a clearly reluctant surgeon who had done his best in a crisis and who had agonized about it since.

     

    Dr. Perry said he believed it was an entrance wound because the small circular hole was clean, with no edges. In the course of the conversation, he was asked and answered that he had treated hundreds of gunshot victims in the Emergency Rooms at Parkland Memorial Hospital. At another point he said he was a hunter by hobby, and he was very familiar with guns and ammunition. He said he could tell at a glance the difference between an entrance wound and an exit wound with its ragged edges.

     

    But he told us that throughout that night, he received a series of phone calls to his home from irate doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where an autopsy was being conducted, and the doctors there were becoming increasingly frustrated with his belief that it was an entrance wound. He said they asked him if the doctors in Dallas had turned the President over and examined the wounds to his back; he said they had not. They told him he could not be certain of his conclusion if he had not examined the wounds in the President’s back. They said Bethesda had the President’s body and Dallas did not. They told Dr. Perry he must not continue to say he cut across what he believed to be an entrance wound when there was no evidence of shots fired from the front. When he said again he could only say what he believed to be true, one or more of the autopsy doctors told him they would take him before a Medical Board if he continued to insist on what they were certain was otherwise. They threatened his license to practice medicine, Dr. Perry said. When he was finished, there was only one question left. I asked him if he still believed it was an entrance wound. The question hung there for a long moment.

     

    “Yes,” he said.

     

    Ultimately Dr. Perry appeared as a witness before the Warren Commission. In substance he testified that he realized he had no proof the bullet hole in the President’s neck was an entrance wound, and he conceded that the Bethesda doctors who autopsied the President would know better because they had all of the forensic evidence and he had but a fleeting recollection.

     

    I can’t fault Dr. Perry for his testimony before the Warren Commission. Surely it occurred to him there was no point in holding out for a belief that couldn’t be proved. And just as surely, this 34-year-old surgeon with an exemplary record and a brilliant future knew his life would be forever shadowed by conspiracy theories that relied heavily on a bullet fired from the front. He testified only as he most certainly had to testify. But I’ll never forget what he said to three reporters that night in Dallas.

     

    […]

     

    As I said before, I never wrote anything about my time in Dallas. The Herald Tribune editors were good about it. I told them I didn’t have anything solid to report--just a whole lot of suspicion--and I didn’t think the Herald Tribune wanted to add to the confusion and conspiracy theories that were already beginning to surface. I also believed then that ultimately the Warren Commission would report every detail of an exhaustive investigation. The reason I’m writing all this now is for my wish for the permanent record to show that the investigation of the crime of the century was sabotaged at its start. We did not get an honest investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy from our vaunted FBI and the Warren Commission. Instead we got a cynical political decision to close the case prematurely.

     

    In 2017, David Mantik reported on contact made between his associate Dr. Michael Chesser and a former Parkland employee named Dr. Austin Griner “Just one month before this mock trial, Dr. Austin Griner had told Dr. Chesser that federal agents had threatened Perry (born in Allen, Texas) with deportation if he did not reverse his initial report of an entrance wound (Another Assassination of JFK Research: A Mystified Review by David Mantik, 12/4/2017; JFK Assassination Paradoxes: A Primer for Beginners by David Mantik, 2018 [link 2]). It is not clear what was meant by “deportation” if Perry was born in Texas.

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