Transcripts of Doug Horne on Jim Fetzer's podcasts

[Pat Speer]

(When asked if she remembered Secret Service Agent Clint Hill's climbing onto the limo after she climbed out the back.) "I don't remember anything.....I was just down and holding him. I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on.”

There is nothing in this to say the wound was on the back of Kennedy's skull; it merely implied the wound was not visible when looking at his face. It could just as easily have been on the top of his head.

In fact, that's where Mrs. Kennedy said it was a week after the shooting, months prior to her WC testimony.

11-29-63 interview with Theodore White, notes released 5-26-95) ..... "All the ride to the hospital, I kept bending over him saying, "Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you, Jack." I kept holding the top of his head down trying to keep the..." (When describing her husband's condition upon arrival at the hospital) "From here down"--and here she made a gesture indicating her husband's forehead--"his head was so beautiful. I'd tried to hold the top of his head down, maybe I could keep it in...I knew he was dead."

Hi Pat,

Why do you think she would hold the top of the head *down* if she was trying to keep something *in* his head from spilling out of a wound in the top of his head? Holding the top of the head down could keep the rear of the head *up* ... so no more could spill out of a wound on the rear of the head. No? That's the way I see it anyway.

We know there was damage to the top of the head .... and hair matted with blood and clot kept that pretty well stuck down, perhaps in part due to Jackie's efforts. We know he had a terrible wound on the right side of his head, forward of the ear, because the Z film shows it and it is corroborated by multiple witnesses .... some of whom I have cited recently and I see you have dome a thorough job of citing several in a post lower in this thread.

Given that Clint Hill in DP and multiple Parkland personnel reported a terrible gaping wound in the rear of his head ... and that area being part of what was drawn, measured and noted as "missing" at the autopsy .... isn't it more likely, that what Jackie was doing was holding his hair and skull on (closed the flap and put pressure on the top of his head, which is why Parkland didn't see that wound, but that bone flap was seen at autopsy and there are photos of it open) and held that downward on the way to Parkland to keep more brains, etc from spilling out of the gaping wound on the rear of his head? Don't mean to sound disrespectful here, but think, in a way, "I'm a Little Teapot." She put the lid on and kept the spout upward ... because if his head tipped the other way, brain and blood, etc would pour out.

Am curious ... you cite several of the witnesses who had seconds or fractions thereof to note the terrible wound that opened on the side of his head, yet you don't believe there was a gaping wound in the rear of his head despite all the witnesses in the only 3 places in the world where his head was seen after the shooting up close and personal like.... DP (Hill), Parkland, and the autopsy ... and all of them reported bone defect in that same rear of the head area.

Granted, the Z film corroborates the witnesses to the bone flap on the right side opening up, but the autopsy drawing, measurements and notes really do corroborate Parkland ... and Hill too.

I am interested in your thinking on that?

Bests,

Barb :-)

Barb, unfortunately I've concluded that this "back-of-the-head" business is a giant red herring that has led people down the road to body alteration, autopsy photo alteration, and film alteration. It is built upon the idea that the Parkland witnesses couldn't be wrong.

Well, as I've shown, the first witnesses to Kennedy's head wound all placed it on the right side of his head, where it is seen in the films. So why should we base our entire understanding of the wound location on the words of people--most of whom only specified the location 20-30 years later after witnessing or reading about Dr. Clark's pronouncement that the wound was on the back of the head, and who knows how much coffee talk--when the first witnesses, the Zapruder film, and the autopsy photos are all in agreement that it was further forward, and above the ear?

I know you are one of those who want it both ways, and want both the Parkland witnesses to be right, and the autopsy photos to be legit, but, as I see it, you can't. Dr. Clark--the only Parkland witness to truly inspect the head wound--said it was a large wound missing scalp and bone, on the back part of the head. This is not shown on the autopsy photos, nor reported in the autopsy protocol. The measurements of the wound size on the face sheet are clearly the measurements of the wound AFTER the scalp was reflected and--according to Humes--bone fell to the table. As a result, the description of the scalp lacerations is a better guide to the wound's appearance before reflection. And none of these lacerations stretch down on the back of the head into the occipital region. Instead, they all derive from one large gaping hole on top of the head by the ear--where the witnesses in position to note an explosion from the back of the head saw an impact, and where there was apparently a gray discoloration of the skull along the edge of the hole, signaling lead and the break-up of a bullet.

As far as the Parkland witnesses, outside of Clark, only a handful of them got a real look at the wound. For the others it was a brief glimpse lasting but a second or two at a wound surrounded by blood and brain-soaked hair on a patient lying on his back in critical condition. They had a job to do, and staring at the head wound wasn't it.

Which leads us to McClelland--apparently the most ardent witness for the wound on the back of the head. He has little credibility, IMO. First of all, he originally said there was an entrance wound on the left temple. He later admitted he never saw this wound, but included it in his report based on what he thought he heard and speculation. He then helped create the drawing in Thompson's book, showing a wound LOW on the back of the head. This allowed people to correlate the Harper fragment--which they'd been led to believe was occipital--into the equation, and BINGO!, they thought they'd solved the riddle. Problem is, that if you look at all the back-of-the head witnesses in Groden's book and Lifton's video, none of them placed the wound over enough occipital bone whereby the Harper fragment could be occipital, and McClelland himself now admits the drawing depicts the wound too low.

(That all too many CTs are misguided about the medical evidence can be demonstrated by the simple fact that they will say the large head wound must have been on the back of the head because the Parkland witnesses said so, and then disregard everything else these witnesses said or described--including that the wound was chiefly parietal and that the Harper fragment therefore could not have been occipital bone.)

As far as Mrs. K, when she says she held the top down, I don't think she meant down in the car, but down on the skull, to keep the brains inside.

As far as Hill, you are aware that he only mentioned a wound in the "right rear portion" months after the shooting and that he later described a gaping hole above the ear, aren't you? How do you take that? Was he lying? Doesn't it make more sense for us to assume that the words he used in his testimony were vague, and misleading, than that he later told a whopper?

[Jack White]

I do not know whether Speer is witting or unwitting, but messages like this are

very damaging to the search for truth because they are seemingly authoritative,

which means the unwary should view them with skepticism.

[David G. Healy]

...

As far as the Parkland witnesses, outside of Clark, only a handful of them got a real look at the wound. For the others it was a brief glimpse lasting but a second or two at a wound surrounded by blood and brain-soaked hair on a patient lying on his back in critical condition. They had a job to do, and staring at the head wound wasn't it.

...

WOW! Obvious you've never spent time in any ER, Pat! Especially when a gunshot victim arrives...

[Jack White]

...

As far as the Parkland witnesses, outside of Clark, only a handful of them got a real look at the wound. For the others it was a brief glimpse lasting but a second or two at a wound surrounded by blood and brain-soaked hair on a patient lying on his back in critical condition. They had a job to do, and staring at the head wound wasn't it.

...

WOW! Obvious you've never spent time in any ER, Pat! Especially when a gunshot victim arrives...

I have seen two persons drop dead from heart attacks. So traumatic that I can close my eyes and

still see them falling. FAR from being traumatized by things like this, witnesses tend to have an

indelible image burned into their mind forever.

Nineteen years after the nude man attacked me with an icepick, I can still visualize his face well

enough to recognize him immediately if I were to see him. You do not forget trauma...you magnify

its image and burn it into your memory.

[Paul Rigby]

Which leads us to McClelland--apparently the most ardent witness for the wound on the back of the head. He has little credibility, IMO. First of all, he originally said there was an entrance wound on the left temple. He later admitted he never saw this wound, but included it in his report based on what he thought he heard and speculation.

Specter: "Did you observe any wound on the left side of the president's head?"

Perry: "No, sir." 3WH382

“When asked to specify the nature of the wound, Dr. Perry said that the entrance wound was in the front of the head,” Post-Dispatch News Services, “Priest Who Gave Last Rites ‘Didn’t See Any Sign of Life,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 24 November 1963, p.23A

1) Elm St eyewitness:

Norman Similas: “I could see a hole in the President's left temple...” [Jack Bell, “10 Feet from the President,” NYT, 23 November 1963, p.5, citing Toronto Star.]

2) Parkland medical staff:

Dr. Robert McClelland: "The cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple," Commission Exhibit 392. [‘Admission Note,’ written 22 Nov 1963 at 4.45 pm, reproduced in WCR572, & 17WCH11-12: cited in Lifton’s Best Evidence, p.55; and Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, pp.159-160.]

Dr. Marion Jenkins: "I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process," 6WH48. [Cited by Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After The Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities, & The Report (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 40.]

Dr. Robert Shaw: "The third bullet struck the President on the left side of the head in the region of the left temporal region and made a large wound of exit on the right side of the head" [Letter from Dr. Shaw to Larry Ross, "Did Two Gunmen Cut Down Kennedy?", Today (British magazine), 15 February 1964, p.4]

Dr. David Stewart: “This was the finding of all the physicians who were in attendance. There was a small wound in the left front of the President’s head and there was a quite massive wound of exit at the right back side of the head, and it was felt by all the physicians at the time to be a wound of entry which went in the front,” The Joe Dolan (Radio) Show, KNEW (Oakland, California), at 08:15hrs on 10 April 1967. [Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.]

Stewart’s comments on the Joe Dolan show are also referenced by Harrison Edward Livingstone and Robert J. Groden in High Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and The New Evidence of Conspiracy (New York: Berkley Books, November 1990), pp.51-52:

p.51: Dr. David Steward wrote Livingstone on December 11, 1981: "I enjoyed our phone conversation and I appreciate your sending the material. I'll try to answer your questions as well as I can.

p.52: On the Joe Dolan radio show, I meant to indicate that there was no controversy concerning the wounds between the doctors in attendance. I was with them either separately or in groups on many occasions over a long period of time. Concerning exhibit F-48, there is no way the wound described to me by Dr. Perry and others could be the wound shown in this picture. The massive destructive wound could not remotely be pulled together well enough to give a normal contour to the head that is present in this picture." We would have to say that if Dr. Stewart did not actually see the wound then this hearsay evidence insofar as what he saw or did not see. What is admissible in evidence here is what he was told by Dr. Perry, the wound described to him.

3. Non-medical staff at Parkland:

Father Oscar Huber: “terrible wound” over Kennedy's left eye [AP despatch, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 24 November 1963]*

4) Bethesda:

i) Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities and the Report (NY: Random House, 1992 reprint), p.161:

“The autopsy documents also provide some cryptic indications of damage to the left side of the head. The notorious face-sheet on which Dr. J. Thornton Boswell committed his unfortunate ‘diagram error’ consists of front and back outlines of a male figure. On the front figure, the autopsy surgeons entered the tracheotomy incision (6.5 cm.), the four cut-downs made in the Parkland emergency room for administration of infusions (2 cms. each), and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation ‘0.8 cm.,’ apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm. and 3 by 1 mm. respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at the site, labelled ‘0.4 cm.’ (CE397, Vol XVII, p.45). Neither Arlen Specter, who conducted the questioning of the autopsy surgeons, nor the Commission members and lawyers present asked any questions about this indication on the diagram of damage to the left eye.

Small dot, labelled "0.4cm," above left eye on autopsy face-sheet, Dr. Hume: Hume’s diagram, CE397, Vol. XVII, p.45. “Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled ‘0.4 cm.’ [sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & the Report (NY: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 161]

ii) Dr. Boswell: Best Evidence, unpaginated photographic section at book's centre, photo 27, “Boswell diagram of skull. The sketch, made at autopsy, is a top view of Kennedy's skull...The record contains no amplification of the area on the forward left side of the skull marked '3 cm.'” The authors of High Treason, p.232, observe: Boswell’s drawing shows a “3 cm wound in the left temple area.”

[Pat Speer]

...

As far as the Parkland witnesses, outside of Clark, only a handful of them got a real look at the wound. For the others it was a brief glimpse lasting but a second or two at a wound surrounded by blood and brain-soaked hair on a patient lying on his back in critical condition. They had a job to do, and staring at the head wound wasn't it.

...

WOW! Obvious you've never spent time in any ER, Pat! Especially when a gunshot victim arrives...

I have seen two persons drop dead from heart attacks. So traumatic that I can close my eyes and

still see them falling. FAR from being traumatized by things like this, witnesses tend to have an

indelible image burned into their mind forever.

Nineteen years after the nude man attacked me with an icepick, I can still visualize his face well

enough to recognize him immediately if I were to see him. You do not forget trauma...you magnify

its image and burn it into your memory.

Right. The PERCEPTION of the memory of a traumatic event is often that it is 100% accurate. But study after study after study has shown that the strength of a memory has little or no relation to its accuracy. Another key factor can be whether the inaccurate recollection received positive reinforcement. One test on the accuracy of line-up identifications found that witnesses not only identified the person who looked MOST like the suspect, whether or not it was the suspect himself, but that their perception of the strength of their recollection came not from some internal mechanism but external. In situations where witnesses identified someone they'd seen for just a second they were something like 5 times more likely to say they'd got a good look at the suspect if the police gave them an indication that they'd picked the right guy--whether it was or not.

The implications of this are a bit damaging to those citing the Parkland witnesses as proof of anything. When approached by researchers, and asked the head wound location, they say the wound was on the back of the head, where their superiors at the hospital initially said it was. When shown the autopsy photos showing no such wound, however, and asked if they think they are fake, however, they say "no." It's sloppy sloppy sloppy.

Fortunately, the witnesses to the shooting itself did so before they knew what the "right" answer was supposed to be. Or are the Newmans--who were in a position to see a bullet explode from the back of the head and yet failed to do so, and instead insisted the bullet impacted by Kennedy's right ear--now part of the plot, a la Zapruder?

Newman's Oral History

Edited February 11, 2010 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

Which leads us to McClelland--apparently the most ardent witness for the wound on the back of the head. He has little credibility, IMO. First of all, he originally said there was an entrance wound on the left temple. He later admitted he never saw this wound, but included it in his report based on what he thought he heard and speculation.

Specter: "Did you observe any wound on the left side of the president's head?"

Perry: "No, sir." 3WH382

“When asked to specify the nature of the wound, Dr. Perry said that the entrance wound was in the front of the head,” Post-Dispatch News Services, “Priest Who Gave Last Rites ‘Didn’t See Any Sign of Life,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 24 November 1963, p.23A

1) Elm St eyewitness:

Norman Similas: “I could see a hole in the President's left temple...” [Jack Bell, “10 Feet from the President,” NYT, 23 November 1963, p.5, citing Toronto Star.]

2) Parkland medical staff:

Dr. Robert McClelland: "The cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple," Commission Exhibit 392. [‘Admission Note,’ written 22 Nov 1963 at 4.45 pm, reproduced in WCR572, & 17WCH11-12: cited in Lifton’s Best Evidence, p.55; and Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, pp.159-160.]

Dr. Marion Jenkins: "I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process," 6WH48. [Cited by Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After The Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities, & The Report (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 40.]

Dr. Robert Shaw: "The third bullet struck the President on the left side of the head in the region of the left temporal region and made a large wound of exit on the right side of the head" [Letter from Dr. Shaw to Larry Ross, "Did Two Gunmen Cut Down Kennedy?", Today (British magazine), 15 February 1964, p.4]

Dr. David Stewart: “This was the finding of all the physicians who were in attendance. There was a small wound in the left front of the President’s head and there was a quite massive wound of exit at the right back side of the head, and it was felt by all the physicians at the time to be a wound of entry which went in the front,” The Joe Dolan (Radio) Show, KNEW (Oakland, California), at 08:15hrs on 10 April 1967. [Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.]

Stewart’s comments on the Joe Dolan show are also referenced by Harrison Edward Livingstone and Robert J. Groden in High Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and The New Evidence of Conspiracy (New York: Berkley Books, November 1990), pp.51-52:

p.51: Dr. David Steward wrote Livingstone on December 11, 1981: "I enjoyed our phone conversation and I appreciate your sending the material. I'll try to answer your questions as well as I can.

p.52: On the Joe Dolan radio show, I meant to indicate that there was no controversy concerning the wounds between the doctors in attendance. I was with them either separately or in groups on many occasions over a long period of time. Concerning exhibit F-48, there is no way the wound described to me by Dr. Perry and others could be the wound shown in this picture. The massive destructive wound could not remotely be pulled together well enough to give a normal contour to the head that is present in this picture." We would have to say that if Dr. Stewart did not actually see the wound then this hearsay evidence insofar as what he saw or did not see. What is admissible in evidence here is what he was told by Dr. Perry, the wound described to him.

3. Non-medical staff at Parkland:

Father Oscar Huber: “terrible wound” over Kennedy's left eye [AP despatch, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 24 November 1963]*

4) Bethesda:

i) Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities and the Report (NY: Random House, 1992 reprint), p.161:

“The autopsy documents also provide some cryptic indications of damage to the left side of the head. The notorious face-sheet on which Dr. J. Thornton Boswell committed his unfortunate ‘diagram error’ consists of front and back outlines of a male figure. On the front figure, the autopsy surgeons entered the tracheotomy incision (6.5 cm.), the four cut-downs made in the Parkland emergency room for administration of infusions (2 cms. each), and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation ‘0.8 cm.,’ apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm. and 3 by 1 mm. respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at the site, labelled ‘0.4 cm.’ (CE397, Vol XVII, p.45). Neither Arlen Specter, who conducted the questioning of the autopsy surgeons, nor the Commission members and lawyers present asked any questions about this indication on the diagram of damage to the left eye.

Small dot, labelled "0.4cm," above left eye on autopsy face-sheet, Dr. Hume: Hume’s diagram, CE397, Vol. XVII, p.45. “Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled ‘0.4 cm.’ [sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & the Report (NY: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 161]

ii) Dr. Boswell: Best Evidence, unpaginated photographic section at book's centre, photo 27, “Boswell diagram of skull. The sketch, made at autopsy, is a top view of Kennedy's skull...The record contains no amplification of the area on the forward left side of the skull marked '3 cm.'” The authors of High Treason, p.232, observe: Boswell’s drawing shows a “3 cm wound in the left temple area.”

Very good, Paul. This list shows just how erratic the statements of the Parkland witnesses are, and that they DON'T prove a shot came from the knoll, as all too many would have us believe.

[Jack White]

...

As far as the Parkland witnesses, outside of Clark, only a handful of them got a real look at the wound. For the others it was a brief glimpse lasting but a second or two at a wound surrounded by blood and brain-soaked hair on a patient lying on his back in critical condition. They had a job to do, and staring at the head wound wasn't it.

...

WOW! Obvious you've never spent time in any ER, Pat! Especially when a gunshot victim arrives...

I have seen two persons drop dead from heart attacks. So traumatic that I can close my eyes and

still see them falling. FAR from being traumatized by things like this, witnesses tend to have an

indelible image burned into their mind forever.

Nineteen years after the nude man attacked me with an icepick, I can still visualize his face well

enough to recognize him immediately if I were to see him. You do not forget trauma...you magnify

its image and burn it into your memory.

Right. The PERCEPTION of the memory of a traumatic event is often that it is 100% accurate. But study after study after study has shown that the strength of a memory has little or no relation to its accuracy. Another key factor can be whether the inaccurate recollection received positive reinforcement. One test on the accuracy of line-up identifications found that witnesses not only identified the person who looked MOST like the suspect, whether or not it was the suspect himself, but that their perception of the strength of their recollection came not from some internal mechanism but external. In situations where witnesses identified someone they'd seen for just a second they were something like 5 times more likely to say they'd got a good look at the suspect if the police gave them an indication that they'd picked the right guy--whether it was or not.

The implications of this are a bit damaging to those citing the Parkland witnesses as proof of anything. When approached by researchers, and asked the head wound location, they say the wound was on the back of the head, where their superiors at the hospital initially said it was. When shown the autopsy photos showing no such wound, however, and asked if they think they are fake, however, they say "no." It's sloppy sloppy sloppy.

Fortunately, the witnesses to the shooting itself did so before they knew what the "right" answer was supposed to be. Or are the Newmans--who were in a position to see a bullet explode from the back of the head and yet failed to do so, and instead insisted the bullet impacted by Kennedy's right ear--now part of the plot, a la Zapruder?

Newman's Oral History

The Newmans were looking at the right side of JFK's head, NOT THE REAR.

EVERY TIME Bill Newman told his story to me, he always used a BASEBALL BAT analogy.

"It looked like a baseball bat hit him in the right temple, and his head exploded like a

watermelon." His view was of the right ear area, NOT THE REAR OF THE HEAD. He always

added "I saw his right ear fly off"...but was possibly misled by a piece of bone flying

airward from that area.

Edited February 11, 2010 by Jack White

[Barb Junkkarinen]

As far as Hill, you are aware that he only mentioned a wound in the "right rear portion" months after the shooting and that he later described a gaping hole above the ear, aren't you? How do you take that? Was he lying? Doesn't it make more sense for us to assume that the words he used in his testimony were vague, and misleading, than that he later told a whopper?

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the thorough response. I want to address it more thoroughly, but have to leave in an hour and will be gone all evening, so for now, I just want to address this statement you made about Hill ... as it is incorrect.

In a lengthy signed statement written on 11-30-63, Hill wrote:

As I lay over the top of the back seat I noticed a portion of the President's head on the right rear side was missing and he was bleeding profusely.

That's not months later.

Am hoping to play catchup tomorrow.

Bests,

Barb :-)

Edited February 11, 2010 by Barb Junkkarinen

[Jack White]

As far as Hill, you are aware that he only mentioned a wound in the "right rear portion" months after the shooting and that he later described a gaping hole above the ear, aren't you? How do you take that? Was he lying? Doesn't it make more sense for us to assume that the words he used in his testimony were vague, and misleading, than that he later told a whopper?

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the thorough response. I want to address it more thoroughly, but have to leave in an hour and will be gone all evening, so for now, I just want to address this statement you made about Hill ... as it is incorrect.

In a lengthy signed statement written on 11-30-63, Hill wrote:

As I lay over the top of the back seat I noticed a portion of the President's head on the right rear side was missing and he was bleeding profusely.

That's not months later.

Am hoping to play catchup tomorrow.

Bests,

Barb :-)

For once, Bests Barbs says something totally factual and accurate and unequivocal. When SHE protests a Speer

opinion, HE MUST BE WRONG.

[Pat Speer]

As far as Hill, you are aware that he only mentioned a wound in the "right rear portion" months after the shooting and that he later described a gaping hole above the ear, aren't you? How do you take that? Was he lying? Doesn't it make more sense for us to assume that the words he used in his testimony were vague, and misleading, than that he later told a whopper?

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the thorough response. I want to address it more thoroughly, but have to leave in an hour and will be gone all evening, so for now, I just want to address this statement you made about Hill ... as it is incorrect.

In a lengthy signed statement written on 11-30-63, Hill wrote:

As I lay over the top of the back seat I noticed a portion of the President's head on the right rear side was missing and he was bleeding profusely.

That's not months later.

Am hoping to play catchup tomorrow.

Bests,

Barb :-)

Thanks, Barb, that proves my point. Hill originally wrote that it was A portion on the right rear, which could be anywhere in back of the face. He testified however that it was THE right rear portion, which would presumably include the back of the head. His subsequent statement that this portion was a gaping hole over the ear clears it up--he mis-spoke in his testimony.

[Pat Speer]

The Newmans were looking at the right side of JFK's head, NOT THE REAR.

EVERY TIME Bill Newman told his story to me, he always used a BASEBALL BAT analogy.

"It looked like a baseball bat hit him in the right temple, and his head exploded like a

watermelon." His view was of the right ear area, NOT THE REAR OF THE HEAD. He always

added "I saw his right ear fly off"...but was possibly misled by a piece of bone flying

airward from that area.

Wow. I know you think the films are all fake, but if you look at the Nix film you'll see that the limo was slightly past Newman at the time of the head shot. If you look at the Moorman photo and Zapruder film, furthermore, you'll see that Kennedy's head was turned slightly to his left. This means that the Newmans were actually looking at the BACK of Kennedy's head at the time of the head shot, and that their clear and consistent recollections that the bullet exploded from the vicinity of Kennedy's right ear should be taken seriously, and not just dismissed because you find them inconvenient.

So how does one take them seriously? By checking with other nearby witnesses to see what they saw.... Zapruder--Temple. Sitzman--between the ear and the eye or side of the face. Hudson--above and just back of the ear. Hargis--side of the head. Chaney--face. Jackson--just above the right ear.

So why is it that NONE of the closest witnesses, including those directly behind Kennedy, saw an explosion from the back of the head, and instead saw it explode from the side of his head? Just a thought...could it be that that's where the wound was located?

Edited February 12, 2010 by Pat Speer

[Todd W. Vaughan]

Which leads us to McClelland--apparently the most ardent witness for the wound on the back of the head. He has little credibility, IMO. First of all, he originally said there was an entrance wound on the left temple. He later admitted he never saw this wound, but included it in his report based on what he thought he heard and speculation.

Specter: "Did you observe any wound on the left side of the president's head?"

Perry: "No, sir." 3WH382

“When asked to specify the nature of the wound, Dr. Perry said that the entrance wound was in the front of the head,” Post-Dispatch News Services, “Priest Who Gave Last Rites ‘Didn’t See Any Sign of Life,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 24 November 1963, p.23A

1) Elm St eyewitness:

Norman Similas: “I could see a hole in the President's left temple...” [Jack Bell, “10 Feet from the President,” NYT, 23 November 1963, p.5, citing Toronto Star.]

2) Parkland medical staff:

Dr. Robert McClelland: "The cause of death was due to a massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple," Commission Exhibit 392. [‘Admission Note,’ written 22 Nov 1963 at 4.45 pm, reproduced in WCR572, & 17WCH11-12: cited in Lifton’s Best Evidence, p.55; and Meagher’s Accessories After the Fact, pp.159-160.]

Dr. Marion Jenkins: "I don't know whether this is right or not, but I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process," 6WH48. [Cited by Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After The Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities, & The Report (New York: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 40.]

Dr. Robert Shaw: "The third bullet struck the President on the left side of the head in the region of the left temporal region and made a large wound of exit on the right side of the head" [Letter from Dr. Shaw to Larry Ross, "Did Two Gunmen Cut Down Kennedy?", Today (British magazine), 15 February 1964, p.4]

Dr. David Stewart: “This was the finding of all the physicians who were in attendance. There was a small wound in the left front of the President’s head and there was a quite massive wound of exit at the right back side of the head, and it was felt by all the physicians at the time to be a wound of entry which went in the front,” The Joe Dolan (Radio) Show, KNEW (Oakland, California), at 08:15hrs on 10 April 1967. [Harold Weisberg. Selections from Whitewash (NY: Carroll & Graf/Richard Gallen, 1994), pp.331-2.]

Stewart’s comments on the Joe Dolan show are also referenced by Harrison Edward Livingstone and Robert J. Groden in High Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and The New Evidence of Conspiracy (New York: Berkley Books, November 1990), pp.51-52:

p.51: Dr. David Steward wrote Livingstone on December 11, 1981: "I enjoyed our phone conversation and I appreciate your sending the material. I'll try to answer your questions as well as I can.

p.52: On the Joe Dolan radio show, I meant to indicate that there was no controversy concerning the wounds between the doctors in attendance. I was with them either separately or in groups on many occasions over a long period of time. Concerning exhibit F-48, there is no way the wound described to me by Dr. Perry and others could be the wound shown in this picture. The massive destructive wound could not remotely be pulled together well enough to give a normal contour to the head that is present in this picture." We would have to say that if Dr. Stewart did not actually see the wound then this hearsay evidence insofar as what he saw or did not see. What is admissible in evidence here is what he was told by Dr. Perry, the wound described to him.

3. Non-medical staff at Parkland:

Father Oscar Huber: “terrible wound” over Kennedy's left eye [AP despatch, Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin, 24 November 1963]*

4) Bethesda:

i) Sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities and the Report (NY: Random House, 1992 reprint), p.161:

“The autopsy documents also provide some cryptic indications of damage to the left side of the head. The notorious face-sheet on which Dr. J. Thornton Boswell committed his unfortunate ‘diagram error’ consists of front and back outlines of a male figure. On the front figure, the autopsy surgeons entered the tracheotomy incision (6.5 cm.), the four cut-downs made in the Parkland emergency room for administration of infusions (2 cms. each), and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation ‘0.8 cm.,’ apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm. and 3 by 1 mm. respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at the site, labelled ‘0.4 cm.’ (CE397, Vol XVII, p.45). Neither Arlen Specter, who conducted the questioning of the autopsy surgeons, nor the Commission members and lawyers present asked any questions about this indication on the diagram of damage to the left eye.

Small dot, labelled "0.4cm," above left eye on autopsy face-sheet, Dr. Hume: Hume’s diagram, CE397, Vol. XVII, p.45. “Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at that site, labeled ‘0.4 cm.’ [sylvia Meagher. Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & the Report (NY: Vintage Books, 1992 reprint), p. 161]

ii) Dr. Boswell: Best Evidence, unpaginated photographic section at book's centre, photo 27, “Boswell diagram of skull. The sketch, made at autopsy, is a top view of Kennedy's skull...The record contains no amplification of the area on the forward left side of the skull marked '3 cm.'” The authors of High Treason, p.232, observe: Boswell’s drawing shows a “3 cm wound in the left temple area.”

"and a small circle at the right eye, with the marginal notation ‘0.8 cm.,’ apparently representing damage produced by the two bullet fragments that lodged there. Dr. Humes testified that the fragments measured 7 by 2 mm. and 3 by 1 mm. respectively (2H354). Although he said nothing about damage at the left eye, the diagram shows a small dot at the site, labelled ‘0.4 cm.’ (CE397, Vol XVII, p.45). "

Those are likely the pupil diameters of each eye.

[Todd W. Vaughan]

...

As far as the Parkland witnesses, outside of Clark, only a handful of them got a real look at the wound. For the others it was a brief glimpse lasting but a second or two at a wound surrounded by blood and brain-soaked hair on a patient lying on his back in critical condition. They had a job to do, and staring at the head wound wasn't it.

...

WOW! Obvious you've never spent time in any ER, Pat! Especially when a gunshot victim arrives...

I have seen two persons drop dead from heart attacks. So traumatic that I can close my eyes and

still see them falling. FAR from being traumatized by things like this, witnesses tend to have an

indelible image burned into their mind forever.

Nineteen years after the nude man attacked me with an icepick, I can still visualize his face well

enough to recognize him immediately if I were to see him. You do not forget trauma...you magnify

its image and burn it into your memory.

Right. The PERCEPTION of the memory of a traumatic event is often that it is 100% accurate. But study after study after study has shown that the strength of a memory has little or no relation to its accuracy. Another key factor can be whether the inaccurate recollection received positive reinforcement. One test on the accuracy of line-up identifications found that witnesses not only identified the person who looked MOST like the suspect, whether or not it was the suspect himself, but that their perception of the strength of their recollection came not from some internal mechanism but external. In situations where witnesses identified someone they'd seen for just a second they were something like 5 times more likely to say they'd got a good look at the suspect if the police gave them an indication that they'd picked the right guy--whether it was or not.

The implications of this are a bit damaging to those citing the Parkland witnesses as proof of anything. When approached by researchers, and asked the head wound location, they say the wound was on the back of the head, where their superiors at the hospital initially said it was. When shown the autopsy photos showing no such wound, however, and asked if they think they are fake, however, they say "no." It's sloppy sloppy sloppy.

Fortunately, the witnesses to the shooting itself did so before they knew what the "right" answer was supposed to be. Or are the Newmans--who were in a position to see a bullet explode from the back of the head and yet failed to do so, and instead insisted the bullet impacted by Kennedy's right ear--now part of the plot, a la Zapruder?

Newman's Oral History

The Newmans were looking at the right side of JFK's head, NOT THE REAR.

EVERY TIME Bill Newman told his story to me, he always used a BASEBALL BAT analogy.

"It looked like a baseball bat hit him in the right temple, and his head exploded like a

watermelon." His view was of the right ear area, NOT THE REAR OF THE HEAD. He always

added "I saw his right ear fly off"...but was possibly misled by a piece of bone flying

airward from that area.

Ridiculous.

This is akin to saying that because the Newmans were looking at the right side of the limousine, they wouldn't have noticed if the back end caught on fire.

The Newmans were close enough to have seen the back of the head blow had, had it done so.

Besides, if you think the Z film is altered and the limousine was actually further down Elm street then where we see it in Z-313 when the headshot(s) took place, Newman WOULD have been looking at some of the back of the head.

[William Kelly]

Fetzer - ….eliminate all of this they had to reconstruct the film which it turns out we now know based upon Doug Horne's masterful work was done at Hawkeye works at Rochester labs, home of KODAK.

Horne - And this is a great segue for me Jim to make one final point about Hawkeye works. In 1997 the only witness we had that had ever talked about a secret CIA lab at KODAK HQ was Homer McMahon, the head of the color lab at NPIC. But this year, (2009/2010) and this just tickles me to death, it is so wonderful, Dino Brugioni, who was at "Event Number One," at NPIC, the night before Homer McMahon got the film to make briefing boards from, Dino Brugioni, who was basically the number two imaging guy at NPIC for decades told Peter Janney in Massachusetts in one of the, in several of the seven interviews, that, oh yeah, he says Hawkeye Works, yeah, I know all about it, I visited the place, several times, and he says you know you had to put on a hat and cover up your hair, and a white coat and sticky shoes, it was a clean room, and, oh yes, they could process motion picture film, and in fact, he literally said when Peter Janney asked him from our list of questions could they process motion picture film, Dino said, "They could do anything." And that was in the context of answering the question about could they process motion pictures. So, we now have two very credible people, formerly employed at NPIC, the CIA's photo analysis lab that -

Horne - not only attest that Hawkeye Works existed, but that it could process motion picture film and could literally do anything.

Fetzer - corroborated by John Costello that there are all of these serious flaws in the MPI set. But even more-

Horne - Yeah, it's even worse. We all know that, for the listening audience the Zapruder family knowing that their film was about to be taken commissioned MPI, a video company, to photograph on large format film four by five inch color positive transparencies each frame of the Zapruder film in 1997. I was present in the Archives when that occurred. It took three and a half days to do the job. I witnessed a lot of confusion during the process which would explain the frames that are reversed and missing from their product. But, it's worse than that, they manipulated these images digitally before re-creating it as a movie. So, the images on their DVD and their videotape from 1998 are dark, they are muddy, they are not in good focus, and there are aspect ratio problems as well.

Horne - Yeah, in a sense that's what my book is about. It's about identifying where there is fraud in the evidence, explaining that that's why the case has never come together like a normal homicide case, and then sorting out, examining what we have left, after we throw out the fraud.

Horne - Chapter 15 and 16 of my book both make the case very strongly that while I don't believe those two men (Hover, Dulles) were the masterminds of this plot they were necessary enablers. They were absolutley essential to its success. So, I believe they both had foreknowledge and they both are just as guilty as the people who actually dreamed up the operation and-

Horne - Yep. And some critics have asked me, "Well, what are you up to? What are you trying to accomplish here?" Well, what I am trying to accomplish here is to educate the American people about their real history. You can't have a democracy that works if you have people that have swallowed a fairytale. Or that are still having one rammed down their throats, rather unsucessfully I might ad. And so if you love our democacy and you love our Constitution and [if] you want to protect it the way to protect it is to explain the ways it was subverted in the very recent past so that it doesn't happen again. That is what this is all about.

Fetzer - ….we cannot base our findings about the assassination of the President of the United States on fabricated evidence.

Horne - No we can't, and that applies to the autopsy report, and that applies to the dishonest photos of the back of the head taken at the autopsy, that applies to the altered skull X-rays, and that applies to the Zapruder film, that's right.

Horne - Well, you know, that's really the only thing in his (Thompson's) book that still stands up. He gave the most eloquent description of the impact debris travelling to the left rear with great force in his book. That's the one part of his book that still stands up and yet he never connected the dots right, he never questioned in his book, if this is so if all of the debris travelled to the left rear, if 90% of the debris with great force, then he should have pointed out that that's inconsistent with the film being authentic and not showing damage to the back of the head, but he didn't point that out and I find that unbelievable.

Horne - Well, let me, if I can just take one or two minutes-

Fetzer - You got it.

Horne - Along that same line, let me talk about something else that can't be denied, you mentioned that David Mantik had examined the MPI color transparencies at The Sixth Floor Museum of the Zapruder film frames on November 20th, that's correct, of just the last year.

Fetzer - (as if clarifying, or answering to someone in the room he's in) David Mantik.

Horne - And I want to point out that David, David Mantik, has seen, who has seen the high definition scans, examined by the Hollywood research group, he verified to me, in no uncertain terms, that in terms of the blacking out of the back of the president's head that those features, present in the dup negative that the Hollywood group is studying, they are not only present on the MPI slides [transparencies] but they are even more startlingly clear. So, yes, yes, in that one respect the transparencies at The Sixth Floor Museum are important but they are important in a different way than they are being discussed on the internet, I mean they verify the accuracy and the viability of the dup negative that is being used as a research tool, they verify that the anomolies in the dup negative obtained from the Archives are valid, because they are also present on a first generation set of color transparencies. So, I say, bring it on! Yeah, let's, I would love to see The Sixth Floor Museum let those things be digitally scanned, and everyone will see that, they will not only see the same blacking out of the back of the head they will see that it looks even more clear!

</H3>http://religionandmorality.net/Doug-Horne/3-DHorne(13an2010)mp3

Horne - And if I can interject here Jim, that's very generous of you to have done that, and I too, I am truly impressed with her work. She has put some of the really important data tables and charts from my book, and some of the conclusions at the end of a couple of chapters in there, and she has just made it extremely visually appealing, so kudos to her.

Horne - She got it done though, she did it!

Fetzer - ….Josiah Thompson has been particulalry [out in] the forefront making the claim that all of the films are completely and utterly consistent that no one has shown any discrepency between any of the assassination films. And if you were going to alter one you would have to alter them all. And he has implied that's impossible-

Horne - It is impossible, and they don't agree today.

Fetzer -….The question he poses, "If the Zapruder film is an alteration doesn't this mean that other films of the assassination must have been altered also? And are there inconsistencies between other films and the Zapruder film?"

Doug's answer, "Absolutely - alteration of the Zapruder film does indeed imply that in a perfect conspiracy that other films must have been altered also and in the same way as the Zapruder film. If they were not altered, and the Zapruder film was this would have left undeniable evidence in the photographic record that "the" pre-eminent record of the assassination is indeed an alteration. In fact, what we do find in the evidence is one suggestion of identical alteration, and numerous instances of disagreement between various Dealey Plaza films, and the Zapruder [film.]"

Horne - Yeah. I mean Thompson's point that if you alter one film you have to alter the other ones or you give away the store is correct. And the store has been given away. You know, Jim, if this wasn't such a serious subject this whole cover-up of the JFK assassination would be laughable. It's almost like a Keystone Cops operation it was so badly done. But, when you don't have a trial and the investigators only present a prosecutorial brief, and then you compartmentalize the evidence, and you don't let witnesses speak to each other, you don't let the autopsy witnesses speak to the Dallas doctors, that's how you get away with something like this. So this film, this issue of films not matching each other it is symptomatic of the whole case.

- (Laughs) Touche! And maybe it's time to segue into the next topic which is the fact that although the Review Board did not ask Rollie Zavada to examine the image content of the Zapruder film there are some other people now in the process of doing that, that's what I call the Hollywood story.

Fetzer - That's absolutley right, and I think that's a wonderful appendix. And why don't you tell us about Cyndi Wilkerson and how you encountered her?

Horne - Sure. Just at the time, Jim, when I thought I had finished writing this chapter on the Z film. I was contacted through third parties by someone who had been looking for me for over six monthss. And that was a wonderful woman named Cyndi Wilkerson. And she's had a lifetime in marketing in the motion picture industry, marketing, and post-production film services And she on her own initiative had purchased a duplicate negative of the extant Zapruder film in the Archives. Now she purchased this from the National Archives, from its authorized contractor, and, so it's provenance cannot be questioned. And when she contacted me she had already conducted, she and her research group had already conducted two sets of scans of each frame of this 35mm dupe negative. The first scan was a high def, HD scan what I would call a 1080p, everybody that has a High Def televsion, they know what 1080p means. The 1080p is the number of pixels on the vertical axis of your TV screen and, of course, on the upper axis it's even more pixels. [? Isn't "vertical" and "upper" the same thing?] it's 1920 on the top axis. But, if you say 1080p to somebody they know what that means. It means a high def picture. So, she conducted a HD 1080p scan of every frame, a flat neutral scan, which actually captured more information than you would normally see in a picture that has been doctored to make it look better for the human eye, and then she also had scanned a 6K scan, which, actually I need to make a correction here of what I had said previously. I had previously described a 6K scan incorrectly, a 6K doesn't mean 6,000 pixels per frame which is what I have said in other interviews, that's not the right way to explain it 6K is the number of pixels on the long horizontal access. So, a 6K scan is really, is an image that is 6,000 pixels on one axis and about, roughly, roughly 3,500 or 4,000 on the other-

Horne - (continuing) so it would have about 24,000 pixels.

.

Horne - So, what we have here are two sets of high quality, high definition digital scans of the extant film in the Archives from an authorized source, from the U.S. government, which cannot be questioned, it is not a bootleg copy of the film. And this is what she would then and is now doing is gathering up professionals in the motion picture industry in the Hollywood industry, to study the image content of these frames and to ask these people do you see evidence of anything amiss? Do you see anything wrong with the image content? And the neat thing about her concept is that these people are disinterested observers. They are not JFK assassination researchers with strong biases one way or the other. These are people that really haven't paid much attention to the ongoing debate about the assassination, much less the debate about the film. So, they don't have any axe to grind. And I was priviedged to be present in August when she had her first panel of experts examine the image content, that was three people. Since then she has shown it to four additional people. And there is a strong consensus, Jim, of all seven of these people that the image content in the area of the back of JFK's head, the area behind the right ear, the entire back of his head had been blacked out, and very crudely blacked out. In all of the frames subsequent to the head shot I would say from, definitely from frame 314, certainly at a minimum through frame 337 and a few frames beyond that. And it's really a heck of a story. Now the national media has not awakened yet and become aware of this story, or they have and they don't want to report it, or their editors won't let them report it. This is really a big story that you've got seven out of seven professionals in the motion picture industry who know what visual effects look like.

Fetzer - these are all artifacts of the recreation of the film and they were done using, what is it called, aerial?

Horne - Aerial imaging.

Fetzer - Aerial imaging, which actually turns out to be painting, (laughs) painting them into the film. And I guess it may be done the way David Healy has described [see - http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n1/healy1.html] using a piece of glass, you do the paint on the glass, and then you put it over the frame, and then, you know, to alter it, and then you photograph.

Horne - Right, you paint on an acetate cell, a clear piece of plastic which has been used by animators for fifty years, and you paint the artwork, for example if you are going to black out a wound, you place the acetate cell over the animation stand in the optical printer, you are projecting the real image from below you are going to paint what you want to change on the acetate cell, and you re-photograph each frame from above with a process camera, and you are photographing a composite image and you do it in one pass of the camera so you maintain high fidelity and high resolution.

So you have seven people so far who's professional judgement is that we are looking at artwork blacking out the back of the head, where the Dallas doctors all saw a wound, and you have Dr. Ryan who also had a very long and distinguished career in the motion picture industry. Ironically, Dr. Ryan of KODAK who said that he thought that the large so called exit wound in the right front of the head seen in the Z film was a painting, was also artwork. So, that's a heck of a story, and for the listening audience I would just say this research is just in it's beginning phases it's continuing as I speak, all kinds of scans are going to be done on the film-

Fetzer - Oh, I think you've initiated something Doug that is going to have an enormous payoff. And I have longed believed by the way that exposing the deception in the film is much more effective and convincing to the American public than esoteric arguments about weapons and locations and all that as they pertain to the purported assassin because we live in a visual society-

Horne - Yes

Fetzer - we are used to seeing deception in films all the time, and suspending our disbelief, and yet it's going to be so easy, so intelligible when they explain the massiveness of the deception and the crudity with which it was executed.

Horne - And Jim let me tell you, when you see, and one day you will, one day everyone will, it might be late this year, it might be early the following year, but soon in the near future there will be a public roll out of these images that clearly show alteration of the Zapruder film image content. And the world and the nation will be stunned, because in some cases seeing is deception, but in some cases seeing is believing, and when people see how crude these alterations were at the high resolution which they were scanned, they are self explanatory, I mean the people will say oh my god, no wonder LIFE magazine wouldn't project this as a motion picture for 12 years until Robert Groden showed his bootleg copy on national TV. And I'm just here to tell that although I did publish a couple of black and white frames of the film which show some of these anamolies that are being studied in Hollywood they don't do, they don't do the scans justice. When you publish a black and white book you are dealing with 300 dots per inch printing on non-glossy paper and when it's black and white it doesn't show the same contrast of the image that you would see in a color image. So, if people will just be a little patient, the images in my book which are certainly tantalizing and provocative when they see the color HD scans, rolled out at the appropriate time when the research is much more fully developed, when they see those scans, they will be stunned.

Fetzer - I think that's absolutley right, and you also have reported that there are at least two frames in which the blob is not evident.

Horne - That is correct, sir.

Fetzer - And that the absence of the blob from those two frames is also proof positive that they were added, that "the blob," was added in to all the successive frames that show it.

Horne - That's right, it's frame 456 and 466 now that, that may be too much inside baseball for an audience that's not familiar with the film, but those two frames which are, as the car is well down the street, the limousine is well down the street, about to go under the overpass, what happened was apparently Jackie propped her husband up for about two seconds, or two and a half seconds, she just propped him up to look at him for a moment, and during that brief period of time when she propped him up there are many frames captured of him suddenly sitting upright in the back of the seat and then you get a view of the back of his head in which I see, and those are the two frames that are in focus, where many of the others are out of focus, those two frames where it is in focus, and when you look at it on a high definition monitor you can see what appears to be a wound behind the right ear, a large black spot, or defect behind the right ear and absolutely no damage whatsoever on the top of the head, or on the right side of the head, or the right front of the head. And I think they are pretty damning images

Edited February 12, 2010 by William Kelly