FBI agent James Sibert talks about JFK's wounds and the autopsy

[Joe Bauer]

James Jenkins hardly mentions Paul O'Conner's presence during the autopsy.

From the account above you'd think Jenkins was the only medical tech next to Humes and Boswell during the autopsy.

Did O'Conner "make up" his account of also being right there next to the upper part of JFK's body all during the autopsy from 8:00 pm to early the next morning?

O'Conner describes more aspects of the entire autopsy scene, especially the make up and actions of the amphitheater audience. 

If O'Conner made most of his account up and/or highly exaggerated this, he sure was creative and had to be a pathological xxxx.

O'Conner had much more experience in the Bethesda morgue and autopsy room and with autopsies than Jenkins who I believe had only been in this apparently student learning role for what...two months?

So why would Jenkins portray himself as kind of a "main medical tech" on the scene during the autopsy and barely mention O'Conner, the much more experienced autopsy medical tech?

We know that Jenkins isn't a talker and only focused on his orders and duties that night, but his account without mentioning O'Conner begs some questions such as his memory being less than full capacity.

If O'Conner wasn't as close to JFK's body as Jenkins during the entire evening he sure bamboozled me and I am sure many others in claiming he was.

Jenkins story and description of JFK's brain seems contradictory to me. He says he was handed the brain by Boswell, yet also says he thinks the brain might have been cut from the spinal cord and removed earlier?

He says he felt the brain he saw was smaller than a normal brain? 

He states that Humes said JFK's brain just fell out of JFK's cranium into his hands?

Jenkins describes a brain turning "mushy" upon traumatic bullet caused internal injury?

JFK's obliterated brain must have been an extreme example of this if the entering bullet tore right through it...no?

Jenkins and Boswell weighed each major organ of JFK? Yet, no one weighed the brain? Humes testified he didn't weigh JFK's brain.

Jenkins described the procedure for opening up a skull for brain removal which including some saw cutting and as brain removal experienced O'Conner told us, you have to then pull the frontal skull all the way down and over the face ( the back skull goes the other way) and then you have to pull or cut the duramatter which covers the brain to then make other cuts to free the brain.

Jenkins wasn't clear about the JFK brain removal procedure being done like that or not. 

Of course JFK's skull was blown apart into so many irregular pieces how would you saw it or be able to peel it back in one or two pieces to get to the brain?

Sounds like most of JFK's severely mascerated mushy brain just fell out of the skull cavity on it's own.

I watched Jenkins being interviewed by Patrick Bet-David. In this interview Jenkins holds up a model human brain and uses this to describe what he saw of JFK's brain when he handled it. He said it didn't look too much different than the model brain except for a good sized chunk ( less than a third ) missing from the right back side of JFK's brain.

I don't think Jenkins mentioned Humes saying JFK's brain just fell out and into his hands or mentioned the brain being mushy.

I think Jenkins is an honest good man, but there just seems to be too many gaps and/or less than sure incongruities in his recollection account, imo.

At the end of the Patrick Bet-David interview Jenkins did infer that he felt LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover had something to do with JFK's murder.

 

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Micah Mileto]

37 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

 

 

In Jenkins' original HSCA and Lifton interviews, there is no record of him mentioning anything about seeing a brain in the cranium, or the story about the pre-cut brainstem.

[Ron Bulman]

5 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Transcription of presentation given by Bethesda witness Jim Jenkins with researcher William Law, given at the ‘November in Dallas’ ‘JFK Lancer’ conference at the Adolphus Hotel on Friday 22nd  November  2013. 

 

J.J.:- The sheets from the head were on the floor and my impression was I had to clean that up.  It was picked up along with the sheets that were removed from the torso and placed in the linen room, which was a small room off of the morgue.  The examination of the head started as a precursor to Dr.Finck arriving.  When I asked who Dr.Finck was I was told that he was a specialist in war, I mean in war field wounds. 

At that point in time we proceeded with the autopsy.  Dr.Humes was at the end along with Dr.Finck, Dr.Humes stood on the left side of the body, Dr.Finck was on the right side and I was at Dr.Finck’s right shoulder and at the shoulder of the president’s body and Dr.Boswell was on the other side opposite of me.  When they began to examine the body Dr.Finck and Dr.Humes who were right here with me and as I was observing them, there was a small entry…..exit, anyway a small wound that appeared to be approximately four….right in front of the top of the right ear and slightly above it.  There was a discussion between Dr.Finck and Dr.Humes as to a grey area that actually surrounded the wound and there was speculation by Dr.Finck that maybe that was lead from a bullet.  After that there, it was not really probed or much of a discussion continued after that because at that point in time there was a discussion with Dr.Humes and Admiral Burkley, and that exchange was pretty much the norm for the rest of the night.  Dr.Humes would go to Dr.Burkley because Dr.Burkley would call him over and they would discuss and he would come back and he and Dr.Finck would look at other aspects of the head wounds. 

About the same time Dr.Boswell and I started the autopsy on the torso.  We made the usual autopsy cuts, ours was little different, we went from one shoulder to the other shoulder in a single U shaped incision and we moved this flap, it was caused back up over the face, took the ribcage and then we removed the organs intact.  We did that by tying off the major arteries, severing the trach and the oesophagus and lifting it all out.  We placed it on a cutting board, the cutting board was placed over the chest area, or slightly down toward the mid-section.  The cutting board was pretty much a corp type board with a scale that was mounted on the corner of it.  As Dr.Boswell dissected out the organs as whole organs,  he weighed them and he gave me the weights.  The weights are what you see (referring to projected slide) at the top that’s where the results were added.  Again….to….is significant because that is not my handwriting.  My handwriting doesn’t look that nice.  At that time, you know, we finished the organs, the heart was…at Bethesda we did autopsies a little different.  We did the sources to heart like normal protocols, in other places where I’ve done autopsies we actually went in to the ventricles and we opened up so we could see the walls and so forth and not have to see them in sections.  The heart was examined in that manner.  The intestinal tract, both large and small intestines were taken out and taken to the deep sink.  Now normally in other autopsies, that was my job.  We would open up the intestinal tract, lay it open, clean it with the water and then we would examine it for lesions and things of that nature.  Now, with the residents, we cleaned the intestines.  Paul (referring to O’Conner) and I according to which of us got the task when we were there and the rest would come and check for lesions, tumours, particular things of that nature.  That was done by Dr.Boswell.  He did that personally.  Then there were some controversies about whether to take the testicles or not, and they were taken.  I’m not sure what the controversy was and so forth but the kidneys were also examined.  Due to the fact, I’ve heard, I’m not sure, I didn’t see any of the final results from these organs, just the gross (weight) at the autopsy, but I think they were asked because there was a possibility if there was Addison’s disease involved. 

Moving on.  During the time that we were dissecting and weighing the organs, Dr.Humes was probing the back wound.  On this same sheet that was approximately where the wound was placed and that’s where I remember it being, in the back.  But the significance of this is I watched the operation of Dr.Humes probing that wound with his finger.  He probed it to the depth of that wound with his finger.  I could see the impression on the pleural, on the back of the pleural cavity, the chest cavity, but it never entered the chest cavity.  He and Dr.Finck took a sound.  A sound is for, many of you probably know what a sound is, but I suggest they probably used a sound, because a sound is rounded. (?) Because one of the things that they expressed was the fact that we don’t want to create an entry into the pleural cavity if there’s none there.  Now, moving on to the lungs, this is related to the lungs.  On the right top of the middle lobe, almost….it’s a junction.  The lung has three lobes.  There was a blue, a blueish type of indentation probably about the size of your thumb.  Speculation was that that was caused by the bullet that entered at the point in the back.  I know that this is one of the major controversial points related to the neck wound.  At the point that the back wound is, it is probably, just roughly guessin’, ten, maybe a little more, a little less, centimetres below the wound in the throat.  At no time in the autopsy did we do any examination of the throat trach.  We were told that’s what it was, that it was a trach.  Now, there were questions about it because of how large it was.  It was I think on the face sheet it says it was 6.5cm., that’s a little over 2 inches.  The other thing was that this trach was done, it was horizontal in relation to the neck.  Most trachs were much smaller and in those days they were done in the vertical.  The description of the wound here as you see it was vastly different from what we got from Parkland, as was a lot of other information we got later. 

W.L.:- Have you ever seen a trach like that, that big? 

J.J.:- No.  I’ve never seen a trach that way and I’ve never seen one that large, because the old metal tracheotomy tubes were, my guess would be probably 5mm., 3 to 8mm., something like that.  We never really questioned it.  The only thing we did was when the flap was up, and the flap was up over the face Dr.Boswell kinda lifted the flap and looked up and he stuck his fingers in there.  No comment.  No nothin’ at that point in time, but that wound was never probed.  It was never examined for entry or exit.  Which brings another controversial point.  We did multiple X-rays, before we actually proceeded with the autopsy itself. 

W.L.:- Jim, when you say multiple, take a guess and tell us how many X-rays would you estimate you took? 

J.J.:- I think Custer (referring to Jerrol Custer) and I took, we took the original AP (anteroposterior) and laterals. We took multiple, I would say probably for every one we took, we did five repeats at the request, my impression was, at the request of the gallery.  Nothing seemed to be pleasing the people in the gallery.  Actually, nothing being done in the autopsy seemed to be pleasing to the people in the gallery.  We were directed again, at one time we were directed away from the wound in the neck because the reason we were given was that it would have been too….if we had actually examined it, we would have had to open it into the trach and that would have been too hard for the mortician to conceal it. 

W.L.:- To find the path of the bullet would you need to do that? 

J.J.:- Yes!  Yes you would have to actually do the incisions involved and follow the path in there.  At least you would have probed it to see where it went.  The other thing with the X-rays, we were finding no bullet fragments.  We found no bullet fragments that were in the body itself.  Now, the bullet fragments that people relate to were bullet fragments that were brought in after the autopsy was underway and given to us in a small tie top bag.  It’s similar to a zip lock except it has a tie that runs across the top and is folded over and that type of thing, that was placed on the autopsy table by the right ear. 

W.L.:- Can you estimate the time that you remember that? 

J.J.:- No.  That’s always been a question that I’ve had about time.  It was a military morgue so it had a huge clock, but the clock was at the other end of the morgue over a huge order plate.  My attention was such that I had to be aware of the needs of the pathologist, that was my purpose for being there. So my attention was focussed on that table, on whatever they asked for help with.   At the conclusion of the autopsy my personal ideas of the things that I said, I was sure that the entrance wound was above the right ear and that the large wound in the back (of the head) was an exit wound.  In the wound in the back (of the head) there were some questions by Dr.Boswell to the gallery.  He made a statement, or asked a question really, “was there any surgery done on the head at Parkland?”  What he was referring to is that there seemed to be an incision at one of the points on the large incision that radiated out toward the middle suture, and at that point in time I just looked at it as maybe something he was curious about and so forth, but then I realised that later on when the brain was removed, that incision made it possible for the wound to be spread, where we did not have to do the skull cap.  We did the skull cap.  Normally the way we took the brain out of the cranium, we made an incision from this ear to this ear across.  We spread the scalp back and forward and we took a saw and made a notch at the front of the skull to orientate us when we replaced it, and we took the whole skull cap off and then we removed the brain.  At that time we always attempted to remove the brain intact with the spinal cord.  Sometimes it worked…very rarely did it work.  Most of the time the spinal cord was torn off and we had to go in from the interior of the body.  At autopsy we removed parts of the spinal cord off the spinal column and took that out.  We did not have to do that with the President’s body.  Actually I don’t really remember that we ever removed the cord itself, just the brain. 

W.L.:- Jim, let’s stop you for a minute because this is where the big controversy comes in.  Paul O’Conner is well known, famous for saying that when he saw the head, there was no brain, that it had been blown out.  Yet when we were in New Orleans 15 years ago you told me….you have to understand that Jim did not know me from Adam, and when I finally worked up the courage to be able to come and see him, he agreed.  I didn’t know whether he was going to give me ten minutes or fifteen minutes.  You have to understand that unlike Paul O’Conner, who was a wonderful gregarious person with a great sense of humour, he would tell you anything you wanted to know.  Jim doesn’t do this stuff so that’s why we’re lucky to have him tonight.   He just doesn’t involve himself.  He’s never sought the limelight in this thing.  Anybody that ever wanted to talk to him, they’ve always had to hunt him down and find him, if they were lucky enough to get to talk to him.  So I was very lucky to be in a room, sitting with him asking these questions, and I could tell the look on his face, it was reluctant.  He was reluctant to do it, but he did it and at one point I’m sitting there and Jim said, “one of the doctors made an exclamatory statement, and he was looking right at me when he said, I think what he said o.k., was meaning the brain, ‘the damn thing fell out in my hand.’”  I asked Jim what does that mean to you?  Tell ‘em what you said to me. 

J.J.:- O.k.  That statement was made by Dr.Humes.  To remember that Humes and Finck were actually the people who were working with the head, the head wounds.  That was the statement.  As I said before it was a statement that kinda surprised me, but as they took the brain out he handed it to Dr.Boswell who was actually across the table from me.  Since I had been assisting with Dr.Boswell, I was the only corpsman at that point in time that was working with Dr.Boswell.  I followed Dr.Boswell to the bucket of formalin where we infused the brain.  I told William, I gave him some of the impressions that I had of the brain when I first saw it.  My first impression was, the damage to the brain does not correlate with the extensive damage to the skull.  What I mean with that was the right interior portion of the brain was damaged and there was some tissue missing.  The brain due to the trauma apparently was in that area was kinda gelatinous and that pretty much stands to reason, because when you traumatise the brain, it’s not like traumatising a muscle, or something like that, where you get bruising and so forth.  The brain actually has a large amount of fluid in so it kinda becomes mushy and gelatinous, that was what I saw.  The other thing, I didn’t think that the brain was large enough.  I had an impression that it was smaller than what it should be coming out of the cavity that it came out of.  Now these were just impressions on my part.  That was a first sight, first impression type thing.  Dr.Boswell carried the brain to our bucket where we infused the brain.  How we did it is important, because our normal method was we had a stainless steel bucket, we filled the bucket approximately half full of formalin.  We had created a gauze sling that went over the top of the bucket.  We laid the brain upside down in that sling.  We had a two needle apparatus that came from a supply of formalin that was up on the top of the cabinets.  What we did with it was, we took those needles, we infused the brains through the two internal carotids at the base of the brain.   Those carotids were retracted and it was extremely difficult, and as a matter of fact we had one of the residents come in, which was the chief resident, because Dr.Boswell and Dr.Humes did not do this menial type thing of placing these suture needles in and so forth.  So what we did was, we infused the brain and it was extremely difficult because of the condition of the carotids. 

W.L.:- So what does that mean to you Jim? 

J.J.:- Well, in my experience when vessels are severed for a period of time they retract, especially arteries, because of the way they’re constructed, and over a period of time it’s almost like they begin to close off themselves.  The other thing I noticed was the brain stem, where the brain stem was cut to remove it from the cranium, the brain stem looked like it had been cut from two different sides, from each side met in the middle.  I can relate that because if you’ve ever tried to cut something from the right side and go back and cut it from the left side, it never, almost invariably never is the same level, and this is what the brain stem looked like.  You know, I’ve been asked many times about this, ‘did I think that the brain had been removed prior to the autopsy?’  Taking into consideration the abnormal things that I just described….I feel like it was. 

 

James Curtis Jenkins c1963. 

 

 

 

Thanks for posting this Pete.  I've presented Jenkins claims to others here before.  The depth and detail of his statements given his knowledge and experience gives him credibility, imo.  In another report I've read he says when Hughes and Finck started examining the right temple wound Burkley called Humes to the gallery and told them to stop and examine elsewhere, which the did immedately.

[Pete Mellor]

7 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Thanks for posting this Pete.  I've presented Jenkins claims to others here before.  The depth and detail of his statements given his knowledge and experience gives him credibility, imo.  In another report I've read he says when Hughes and Finck started examining the right temple wound Burkley called Humes to the gallery and told them to stop and examine elsewhere, which the did immedately.

No problem Ron.  I transcribed Jenkins' Lancer presentation which I sent to William Law when he and Jim J. were putting together their book, 'At the Cold Shoulder of History' (2018).

As for my own thoughts on Jenkins' memoir, & the points raised by Joe in his post above....many points are as 'mushy' as JFK's brain.  I also concur with Micah above that there are many additions in that presentation that were not disclosed in earlier interviews with DSL decades before, and I seem to recall Mr Lifton expressing those opinions in previous posts on this Forum.

It would be great if DSL came back into this thread at this point to give his opinions on the many discrepancies of testimonies.

[Micah Mileto]

Jenkins is also the only autopsy witness to claim to remember the entire spinal cord being removed. And the only record of him saying this are his talks with Harrison Livingstons, he didn't even mention it in his book.

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Micah Mileto said:

Jenkins is also the only autopsy witness to claim to remember the entire spinal cord being removed. And the only record of him saying this are his talks with Harrison Livingstons, he didn't even mention it in his book.

 

1:07:52NOW PLAYING

 

JFK Assassination- Untold Stories Of The Autopsy

 

 

 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

Dennis David stated JFK's casket was delivered in a "black Hearse."

Commander James Humes stated in his ARRB testimony that JFK's casket was delivered in a "grey ambulance."

 

The AF1 Tapes and Subsequent Events at Andrews AFB on November 22, 1963

by Douglas Horne

July 8, 2013

 

At my request, a friend of mine, psychologist Steven Kossor of Pennsylvania, recently used the sophisticated audio equipment he employs in his hobby as an audiophile to create an enhanced excerpt for me of the key passages in the Clifton version of the “Air Force One Tapes” (the GPO/NARA version released to the public in 2012, based on the Clifton version of the AF1 conversations, which is about 27 minutes longer than the version previously released by the LBJ Library), pertaining to the selection of JFK’s autopsy site (Walter Reed Hospital vs. Bethesda Naval Hospital); and the mode of transportation to be used to move JFK’s body from Andrews Air Force Base to the autopsy site (a mortuary style ambulance vs. helicopter).

Those portions of the AF1 tapes have always haunted me, since a tug-of-war was clearly going on between major actors onboard Air Force One, and major actors at the White House Situation Room (“Crown”), regarding where JFK’s autopsy would be performed, and how the body would be transported there.  Many people who have studied these conversations have undoubtedly wondered the same things: “What was being planned — and why — and how did those plans change after AF1 landed at Andrews AFB — and why?”  This rather lengthy and detailed essay will share with its readers my considered opinions after ruminating about this subject off and on for 32 years, since 1981 — when I first became aware of the LBJ Library version of the AF1 tapes by reading David Lifton’s forensic thriller about the JFK assassination, Best Evidence.

Context is everything

Everything in this essay is grounded around one basic, undeniable fact: that the heavy, bronze, reddish-brown ceremonial casket from Dallas, in which JFK’s body was taken aboard AF1 at Love Field in Dallas, was empty when the public saw it unloaded from Air Force One on live television shortly after 6:04 PM on November 22, 1963, and placed into a light gray Navy ambulance.  We know this is so because President Kennedy’s body arrived at the Bethesda morgue twenty minutes BEFORE the motorcade from Andrews AFB, transporting the Dallas casket in a light gray Navy Pontiac ambulance, arrived at the front of the Navy hospital.  If the timeline that supports the above conclusion can be trusted, then the only conclusion possible is that JFK’s body had been removed from the Dallas casket onboard the airplane, prior to the arrival of Air Force One at Andrews, and somehow spirited to Bethesda Naval Hospital before the Andrews motorcade arrived.  It is essential that the reader review the basic facts proving that the body’s chain-of-custody was broken enroute the autopsy, before we move on to the principal topic of this essay, which is “What do the AF1 tapes reveal about what was intended that night; what actually transpired; and how did those events deviate from what had been planned, and why?”

The timeline can indeed be trusted, and I shall demonstrate why. Two Navy enlisted men, Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch, were part of the working party that unloaded JFK’s body at 6:35 PM at the Bethesda Naval Hospital loading dock that evening.  Mr. David was a First Class Navy Corpsman serving as “Chief of the Day” at Bethesda, and was instructed by the Secret Service detail (which had literally taken over Bethesda that afternoon) to assemble a working party of sailors, so that the President’s casket could be unloaded, and taken into the morgue, when it arrived in a vehicle at the Bethesda morgue’s loading dock. HM1 Dennis David was the supervisor of the working party, and Donald Rebentisch was a member of this working party.  As reported in Best Evidence, both men, in the early 1980s, had independent and identical recollections of offloading a cheap aluminum shipping casket from a Hearse (a black Cadillac mortuary-style ambulance built specifically for the funeral trade) at the morgue’s loading dock, and of taking the casket into the morgue, and setting it down, before being dismissed.  Dennis David’s best recollection when interviewed by the ARRB staff in 1997 was that this event occurred at about 6:45 PM; the precise time of the event was fixed with precision in 1997 when the ARRB staff acquired the November 26^th, 1963 typed after-action report of USMC Sergeant Roger Boyajian, whose Marine Barracks security detail had provided physical security during the autopsy.  (Mr. Boyajian still had an onionskin carbon copy of the report in 1997, and sent the ARRB a high-quality photocopy, which he authenticated by letter.)  In his after-action report, which pertained only to the physical security provided for President Kennedy’s autopsy, Boyajian wrote: “At approximately 1835 the casket was received at the morgue entrance and taken inside.”  This pins down much more accurately Dennis David’s estimate to the ARRB staff that the shipping casket event had taken place at about 6:45 PM.  The military time of 1835 hours (6:35 PM civilian time) in Boyajian’s report, which was a contemporaneous document typed four days after the autopsy, trumps Dennis David’s estimate in 1997 (very accurate, as it turns out) of 6:45 PM, and can be authoritatively considered the true arrival time of the shipping casket.  Later on, during the night of the autopsy, after the autopsy had been concluded, in response to a question from HM1 Dennis David, Dr. J Thornton Boswell, one of the three pathologists who had conducted JFK’s autopsy, confirmed to David that JFK had indeed been in the shipping casket his working party had unloaded from the Hearse at the morgue loading dock hours earlier.  [David told Lifton in 1979 that both Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell (the two Navy pathologists who participated in the autopsy) had been present on the loading dock, along with their commanding officer, Captain Stover, and what he believed to be the Surgeons General of the Army and Air Force.]

In contrast, both the local newspapers, and a Secret Service report, reported that the light gray Navy ambulance containing the Dallas casket, Jackie Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, had arrived at 6:55 PM in front of Bethesda Naval Hospital, and newspapers the next day reported it had sat there for twelve minutes, before being driven away to the back of the building (its destination at that time — about 7:07 PM — per the two FBI agents who led the way in their own vehicle, was the morgue loading dock).  We have a high degree of certainty, therefore, in both key aspects of this timeline — that is, in the arrival time of both caskets at Bethesda.  The shipping casket (which Boswell confirmed to Dennis David had contained JFK’s body) arrived twenty minutes prior to the Andrews motorcade and the light gray Navy ambulance, and furthermore, the Navy ambulance had then (according to newspaper reports the next day) sat out in front of the hospital for an additional 12 minutes before even moving.  Dennis David also recalled clearly — in 1979, long before he ever knew about the Boyajian report — that after his working party unloaded the shipping casket from the Hearse, he went to the forward part of the hospital and subsequently watched the Andrews motorcade arrive, about 20 or 30 minutes minutes later, from a second floor office window.  As it turns out, his sense of time was quite accurate even many years later in 1979, for the Andrews motorcade arrived exactly 20 minutes after the casket arrival mentioned in the Boyajian report.  This speaks highly to Dennis David’s reliability as a witness.

It gets even worse, as far as the body’s chain-of-custody goes.  The staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) learned in the late 1970s that the two FBI agents sent to Bethesda to obtain any bullets removed from the body, James Sibert and Francis O’Neill, helped two Secret Service agents (Roy Kellerman and William Greer) offload the Dallas casket (which had to be empty) from the light gray Navy ambulance that had just arrived at the morgue loading dock, using a wheeled conveyance (almost certainly what was known as a “church truck”).  This was reconfirmed by the ARRB in 1997 when these two men were deposed; and former FBI agent James Sibert clarified for the ARRB that they set it down in the morgue anteroom.  So this second casket entry was quite distinctive from the first one, in that: (1) it was a different casket than Dennis David’s working party offloaded [a heavy bronze ceremonial coffin, as opposed to a cheap, unadorned, lightweight gray aluminum shipping casket]; (2) it was delivered by a different vehicle [by a light gray Navy Pontiac ambulance, as opposed to a Hearse, which was a black Cadillac mortuary-style ambulance]; and (3) different people, or “actors,” unloaded the casket from the vehicle which delivered it [namely, the second casket delivery was offloaded by four Federal agents wearing suits, whereas the first casket delivery was offloaded by Navy sailors in working uniforms].  Based on inferences in an internal FBI interview report, this second casket entry by the four Federal agents occurred at approximately 7:17 PM.  Unknown by the two FBI agents at the time, the Dallas casket was empty when they moved it into the morgue anteroom.  (The two Secret Service agents had to know otherwise, for they had been onboard Air Force One during the flight back to Washington from Dallas.)

The “French Farce” continued that evening, for there was a second entry of the Dallas casket at 8:00 PM.  The Honor Guard, or Joint Service Casket Team, after chasing a “decoy ambulance” into the darkness and getting lost, finally found the Dallas casket sitting out front in a light gray Navy ambulance (which one of the two present that night is unclear), and performed their intended ceremonial function by following it to the back of the hospital, manhandling the heavy bronze casket up the narrow steps leading to the morgue loading dock platform, and by then taking it into the morgue proper.  The time of this third casket entry (and the second entry for the Dallas casket that night) was recorded in the after-action report of the Military District of Washington (MDW).  So the time of this final casket entry — 8:00 PM — is also unassailable.  And its actors are startlingly different from the other two casket entries that preceded it: the Joint Service Casket Team, hastily assembled at Andrews AFB, consisted of members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard — all wearing the dress uniform of their respective services, and white gloves.  [Unlike the Marine Barracks security detail supervised by USMC Sergeant Boyajian, they carried no weapons.]  Furthermore, after setting the heavy bronze casket down next to one of the morgue examining tables, they witnessed the casket being opened, and saw JFK’s body removed from the heavy, reddish-brown ceremonial coffin.  Those who were playing a “shell game” with President Kennedy’s body that night understood that the mortified and embarrassed Casket Team had to be allowed to perform its ceremonial function — that is, to “find” the casket that they had lost in the darkness; to take it into the morgue; and to see it opened and to be reassured that all was well, and that the slain Commander-in-Chief’s body was inside.  The illusion of an intact chain-of-custody had to be created for this most important audience, and for those supervising its performance, General Phillip Wehle (Commandant, MDW), and his aide, Lt. Richard Lipsey.  The first two casket entries that night — the shipping casket at 6:35 PM and the first Dallas casket entry at about 7:17 PM — remained unknown to the Joint Service Casket Team, and to Wehle and Lipsey.  [Lipsey later freely admitted knowledge of a “decoy ambulance” to the HSCA staff in an interview in the late 1970s, but seemed completely unaware of its implications; presumably, he and General Wehle were given a benign explanation for the “wild goose chase” conducted in the dark by both of them, and by their honor guard that night.  Many of the enlisted Navy personnel on duty the night of the autopsy at Bethesda were aware of a “decoy” Navy ambulance, and its existence was even admitted to them by some of the Secret Service agents at the Naval Hospital.]

 In view of the fact that many autopsy photos known to have been taken are now missing; in view of the fact that the three surviving skull x-rays (at least two are missing) are not originals, but are altered copy films; in view of the fact that some autopsy notes were burned and other notes are missing, that the first draft of the autopsy report was burned, that one signed copy is now missing, and the extant copy in the National Archives is the third written version of the autopsy protocol; in view of the fact that the brain photos in the JFK autopsy collection at the National Archives cannot be photos of JFK’s brain; and in view of the fact that President Kennedy’s brain is now missing—in view of all these facts, all Americans who want to know what really happened to President Kennedy in 1963 surely wish that an honest and honorable professional like Dr. Rose had been allowed to do his job and perform an honest and competent autopsy on John F. Kennedy’s body.  If Dr. Rose had been allowed to do his job, I do not think we would now be faced with the massive cover-up that surrounds the medical evidence in JFK’s assassination.

[Joe Bauer]

Watch the following video of 4 eyewitness Bethesda duty Navy veterans recounting their recollections of JFK's casket and body arriving at Bethesda Naval facility the evening of 11,22,1963.

They all say the same thing regards JFK's body arriving sooner than Jackie Kennedy's arrival in the grey or white hearse  which supposedly contained JFK's body in the large, heavy and ornate bronze casket.

It's very compelling to hear them all recounting hugely contradicting observations of the arrival, the vehicle, the casket, JFK's body and X-rays and photos of such and the only argument one could make in dismissing their claims is that they are all lying. All of them, greatly.

X-Ray ( or photo?) tech Custer says he took pictures of JFK's head area up to "twenty minutes" before Jackie Kennedy arrived.

Dennis David says he saw a "black hearse" type vehicle arrive in the back of the morgue to unload a casket, again earlier than Jackie Kennedy's arrival in the grey vehicle at the front entrance.

Commander Humes himself testified to the ARRB that JFK's body arrived at the morgue 6:30 pm to maybe 6:45 pm that evening. He gave a weak claim that the casket was brought to the loading area in a grey navy vehicle, bolstered by his recollection of seeing a similar grey one later on TV? Probably the footage of the AF 1 landing and casket removing scene at Andrews? Humes needed to convince himself of the grey ambulance ID because he saw one later on TV?

These four verified 11,22,1963 "hands on" Bethesda duty navy veteran eyewitnesses ( navy medical tech Jim Jenkins was another but not in this video ) and Parkland JFK body handling Aubrey Rike contradict the official Bethesda casket arriving and body photo findings so greatly and uniformally, to dismiss them completely or even parse them into insignificance is an exercise of  extremely weak illogical lameness.

Has anyone ever fixed the "exact time" of Jackie Kennedy's arrival to Bethesda?

48:56NOW PLAYING

 

WATCH LATER

ADD TO QUEUE

CLASSICS: KRON's JFK: An Unsolved Murder 1988

 

78 views3 weeks ago

 

Vince Palamara

With Jerrol Custer, Paul O'Connor, Floyd Reibe, Aubrey Rike, Dennis David, David Lifton, Tink Thompson, Robert Groden, etc.

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Joe Bauer]

On 1/31/2021 at 10:38 AM, Vince Palamara said:

FBI agent James Sibert talks about JFK's wounds and the autopsy - YouTube

Vince, I am coming across video presentations you have recently posted on You Tube that are incredibly interesting, provocative and revealing and which are centered on witnesses and researchers of great credibility.

Hence, my reposting of two of them, one being the KRON TV investigative piece with the Bethesda Navy veterans who were "hands on " eye witnesses to JFK's body and casket upon it's arrival to Bethesda the early evening of November 22nd, 1963.

I just came upon another You Tube submission of yours on the 2003 JFK conference at your home town Catholic Duquesne University in 2003.

Just fascinating content and sharing. Had never seen or heard JFK film co-writer Zachary Sclar speak before. 

What really shocked me is the incredibly low number of views of these great You Tube videos. 38 for the Duquesne University JFK conference one? 38!?

A few hundred for the KRON TV Bethesda witness interview one?

Could you provide a link to this new Duquesne JFK conference one here in this thread?

Thanks for these. JB

Edited February 28, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Vince Palamara]

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Vince, I am coming across video presentations you have recently posted on You Tube that are incredibly interesting, provocative and revealing and which are centered on witnesses and researchers of great credibility.

Hence, my reposting of two of them, one being the KRON TV investigative piece with the Bethesda Navy veterans who were "hands on " eye witnesses to JFK's body and casket upon it's arrival to Bethesda the early evening of November 22nd, 1963.

I just came upon another You Tube submission of yours on the 2003 JFK conference at your home town Catholic Duquesne University in 2003.

Just fascinating content and sharing. Had never seen or heard JFK film co-writer Zachary Sclar speak before. 

What really shocked me is the incredibly low number of views of these great You Tube videos. 38 for the Duquesne University JFK conference one? 38!?

A few hundred for the KRON TV Bethesda witness interview one?

Could you provide a link to this new Duquesne JFK conference one here in this thread?

Thanks for these. JB

Thanks a lot! Keep in mind: a lot of the videos have only been very recently posted (the oldies are a few weeks; the newest ones are minutes ago!). Here you go (now up to 63- only a few hours old):

Duquesne University 2003 JFK Assassination Conference - YouTube

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

7 hours ago, Vince Palamara said:

Thanks a lot! Keep in mind: a lot of the videos have only been very recently posted (the oldies are a few weeks; the newest ones are minutes ago!). Here you go (now up to 63- only a few hours old):

Duquesne University 2003 JFK Assassination Conference - YouTube

 

 

Thanks Vince.

[Vince Palamara]

23 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Thanks Vince.

My pleasure! Check out my channel--I have over 600 videos and well over 300 I have uploaded just this year (these past few days and weeks)!

[Joe Bauer]

On 2/11/2021 at 3:39 PM, Pete Mellor said:

Transcription of presentation given by Bethesda witness Jim Jenkins with researcher William Law, given at the ‘November in Dallas’ ‘JFK Lancer’ conference at the Adolphus Hotel on Friday 22nd  November  2013. 

 

J.J.:- The sheets from the head were on the floor and my impression was I had to clean that up.  It was picked up along with the sheets that were removed from the torso and placed in the linen room, which was a small room off of the morgue.  The examination of the head started as a precursor to Dr.Finck arriving.  When I asked who Dr.Finck was I was told that he was a specialist in war, I mean in war field wounds. 

At that point in time we proceeded with the autopsy.  Dr.Humes was at the end along with Dr.Finck, Dr.Humes stood on the left side of the body, Dr.Finck was on the right side and I was at Dr.Finck’s right shoulder and at the shoulder of the president’s body and Dr.Boswell was on the other side opposite of me.  When they began to examine the body Dr.Finck and Dr.Humes who were right here with me and as I was observing them, there was a small entry…..exit, anyway a small wound that appeared to be approximately four….right in front of the top of the right ear and slightly above it.  There was a discussion between Dr.Finck and Dr.Humes as to a grey area that actually surrounded the wound and there was speculation by Dr.Finck that maybe that was lead from a bullet.  After that there, it was not really probed or much of a discussion continued after that because at that point in time there was a discussion with Dr.Humes and Admiral Burkley, and that exchange was pretty much the norm for the rest of the night.  Dr.Humes would go to Dr.Burkley because Dr.Burkley would call him over and they would discuss and he would come back and he and Dr.Finck would look at other aspects of the head wounds. 

About the same time Dr.Boswell and I started the autopsy on the torso.  We made the usual autopsy cuts, ours was little different, we went from one shoulder to the other shoulder in a single U shaped incision and we moved this flap, it was caused back up over the face, took the ribcage and then we removed the organs intact.  We did that by tying off the major arteries, severing the trach and the oesophagus and lifting it all out.  We placed it on a cutting board, the cutting board was placed over the chest area, or slightly down toward the mid-section.  The cutting board was pretty much a corp type board with a scale that was mounted on the corner of it.  As Dr.Boswell dissected out the organs as whole organs,  he weighed them and he gave me the weights.  The weights are what you see (referring to projected slide) at the top that’s where the results were added.  Again….to….is significant because that is not my handwriting.  My handwriting doesn’t look that nice.  At that time, you know, we finished the organs, the heart was…at Bethesda we did autopsies a little different.  We did the sources to heart like normal protocols, in other places where I’ve done autopsies we actually went in to the ventricles and we opened up so we could see the walls and so forth and not have to see them in sections.  The heart was examined in that manner.  The intestinal tract, both large and small intestines were taken out and taken to the deep sink.  Now normally in other autopsies, that was my job.  We would open up the intestinal tract, lay it open, clean it with the water and then we would examine it for lesions and things of that nature.  Now, with the residents, we cleaned the intestines.  Paul (referring to O’Conner) and I according to which of us got the task when we were there and the rest would come and check for lesions, tumours, particular things of that nature.  That was done by Dr.Boswell.  He did that personally.  Then there were some controversies about whether to take the testicles or not, and they were taken.  I’m not sure what the controversy was and so forth but the kidneys were also examined.  Due to the fact, I’ve heard, I’m not sure, I didn’t see any of the final results from these organs, just the gross (weight) at the autopsy, but I think they were asked because there was a possibility if there was Addison’s disease involved. 

Moving on.  During the time that we were dissecting and weighing the organs, Dr.Humes was probing the back wound.  On this same sheet that was approximately where the wound was placed and that’s where I remember it being, in the back.  But the significance of this is I watched the operation of Dr.Humes probing that wound with his finger.  He probed it to the depth of that wound with his finger.  I could see the impression on the pleural, on the back of the pleural cavity, the chest cavity, but it never entered the chest cavity.  He and Dr.Finck took a sound.  A sound is for, many of you probably know what a sound is, but I suggest they probably used a sound, because a sound is rounded. (?) Because one of the things that they expressed was the fact that we don’t want to create an entry into the pleural cavity if there’s none there.  Now, moving on to the lungs, this is related to the lungs.  On the right top of the middle lobe, almost….it’s a junction.  The lung has three lobes.  There was a blue, a blueish type of indentation probably about the size of your thumb.  Speculation was that that was caused by the bullet that entered at the point in the back.  I know that this is one of the major controversial points related to the neck wound.  At the point that the back wound is, it is probably, just roughly guessin’, ten, maybe a little more, a little less, centimetres below the wound in the throat.  At no time in the autopsy did we do any examination of the throat trach.  We were told that’s what it was, that it was a trach.  Now, there were questions about it because of how large it was.  It was I think on the face sheet it says it was 6.5cm., that’s a little over 2 inches.  The other thing was that this trach was done, it was horizontal in relation to the neck.  Most trachs were much smaller and in those days they were done in the vertical.  The description of the wound here as you see it was vastly different from what we got from Parkland, as was a lot of other information we got later. 

W.L.:- Have you ever seen a trach like that, that big? 

J.J.:- No.  I’ve never seen a trach that way and I’ve never seen one that large, because the old metal tracheotomy tubes were, my guess would be probably 5mm., 3 to 8mm., something like that.  We never really questioned it.  The only thing we did was when the flap was up, and the flap was up over the face Dr.Boswell kinda lifted the flap and looked up and he stuck his fingers in there.  No comment.  No nothin’ at that point in time, but that wound was never probed.  It was never examined for entry or exit.  Which brings another controversial point.  We did multiple X-rays, before we actually proceeded with the autopsy itself. 

W.L.:- Jim, when you say multiple, take a guess and tell us how many X-rays would you estimate you took? 

J.J.:- I think Custer (referring to Jerrol Custer) and I took, we took the original AP (anteroposterior) and laterals. We took multiple, I would say probably for every one we took, we did five repeats at the request, my impression was, at the request of the gallery.  Nothing seemed to be pleasing the people in the gallery.  Actually, nothing being done in the autopsy seemed to be pleasing to the people in the gallery.  We were directed again, at one time we were directed away from the wound in the neck because the reason we were given was that it would have been too….if we had actually examined it, we would have had to open it into the trach and that would have been too hard for the mortician to conceal it. 

W.L.:- To find the path of the bullet would you need to do that? 

J.J.:- Yes!  Yes you would have to actually do the incisions involved and follow the path in there.  At least you would have probed it to see where it went. 

 

The other thing with the X-rays, we were finding no bullet fragments. 

 

We found no bullet fragments that were in the body itself.  Now, the bullet fragments that people relate to were bullet fragments that were brought in after the autopsy was underway and given to us in a small tie top bag. 

 

It’s similar to a zip lock except it has a tie that runs across the top and is folded over and that type of thing, that was placed on the autopsy table by the right ear. 

 

W.L.:- Can you estimate the time that you remember that? 

J.J.:- No. 

That’s always been a question that I’ve had about time.  It was a military morgue so it had a huge clock, but the clock was at the other end of the morgue over a huge order plate.  My attention was such that I had to be aware of the needs of the pathologist, that was my purpose for being there. So my attention was focussed on that table, on whatever they asked for help with.   At the conclusion of the autopsy my personal ideas of the things that I said, I was sure that the entrance wound was above the right ear and that the large wound in the back (of the head) was an exit wound.  In the wound in the back (of the head) there were some questions by Dr.Boswell to the gallery.  He made a statement, or asked a question really, “was there any surgery done on the head at Parkland?” 

 

What he was referring to is that there seemed to be an incision at one of the points on the large incision that radiated out toward the middle suture, and at that point in time I just looked at it as maybe something he was curious about and so forth, but then I realised that later on when the brain was removed, that incision made it possible for the wound to be spread, where we did not have to do the skull cap.  We did the skull cap. 

If you didn't have to do the skull cap, why did you do this?

 

Normally the way we took the brain out of the cranium, we made an incision from this ear to this ear across.  We spread the scalp back and forward and we took a saw and made a notch at the front of the skull to orientate us when we replaced it, and we took the whole skull cap off and then we removed the brain.  At that time we always attempted to remove the brain intact with the spinal cord.  Sometimes it worked…very rarely did it work.  Most of the time the spinal cord was torn off and we had to go in from the interior of the body.  At autopsy we removed parts of the spinal cord off the spinal column and took that out.  We did not have to do that with the President’s body.  Actually I don’t really remember that we ever removed the cord itself, just the brain. 

 

W.L.:- Jim, let’s stop you for a minute because this is where the big controversy comes in.  Paul O’Conner is well known, famous for saying that when he saw the head, there was no brain, that it had been blown out.  Yet when we were in New Orleans 15 years ago you told me….you have to understand that Jim did not know me from Adam, and when I finally worked up the courage to be able to come and see him, he agreed.  I didn’t know whether he was going to give me ten minutes or fifteen minutes.  You have to understand that unlike Paul O’Conner, who was a wonderful gregarious person with a great sense of humour, he would tell you anything you wanted to know.  Jim doesn’t do this stuff so that’s why we’re lucky to have him tonight.   He just doesn’t involve himself.  He’s never sought the limelight in this thing.  Anybody that ever wanted to talk to him, they’ve always had to hunt him down and find him, if they were lucky enough to get to talk to him.  So I was very lucky to be in a room, sitting with him asking these questions, and I could tell the look on his face, it was reluctant.  He was reluctant to do it, but he did it and at one point I’m sitting there and Jim said,

“one of the doctors made an exclamatory statement, and he was looking right at me when he said, I think what he said o.k., was meaning the brain,

... ‘the damn thing fell out in my hand.’” ... 

I asked Jim what does that mean to you?  Tell ‘em what you said to me. 

 

J.J.:- O.k.  That statement was made by Dr.Humes. 

 

To remember that Humes and Finck were actually the people who were working with the head, the head wounds.  That was the statement.  As I said before it was a statement that kinda surprised me, but as they took the brain out he handed it to Dr.Boswell who was actually across the table from me.  Since I had been assisting with Dr.Boswell, I was the only corpsman at that point in time that was working with Dr.Boswell.  I followed Dr.Boswell to the bucket of formalin where we infused the brain. 

 

I told William, I gave him some of the impressions that I had of the brain when I first saw it. 

My first impression was, the damage to the brain does not correlate with the extensive damage to the skull. 

 

What I mean with that was the right interior portion of the brain was damaged and there was some tissue missing.  The brain due to the trauma apparently was in that area was kinda gelatinous and that pretty much stands to reason, because when you traumatise the brain, it’s not like traumatising a muscle, or something like that, where you get bruising and so forth.  The brain actually has a large amount of fluid in so it kinda becomes mushy and gelatinous,  ... that was what I saw. 

 

The other thing, I didn’t think that the brain was large enough. !!!

 

I had an impression that it was smaller than what it should be coming out of the cavity that it came out of.  Now these were just impressions on my part.  That was a first sight, first impression type thing.  Dr.Boswell carried the brain to our bucket where we infused the brain.  How we did it is important, because our normal method was we had a stainless steel bucket, we filled the bucket approximately half full of formalin.  We had created a gauze sling that went over the top of the bucket.  We laid the brain upside down in that sling.  We had a two needle apparatus that came from a supply of formalin that was up on the top of the cabinets.  What we did with it was, we took those needles, we infused the brains through the two internal carotids at the base of the brain.   Those carotids were retracted and it was extremely difficult, and as a matter of fact we had one of the residents come in, which was the chief resident, because Dr.Boswell and Dr.Humes did not do this menial type thing of placing these suture needles in and so forth.  So what we did was, we infused the brain and it was extremely difficult because of the condition of the carotids. 

W.L.:- So what does that mean to you Jim? 

J.J.:- Well, in my experience when vessels are severed for a period of time they retract, especially arteries, because of the way they’re constructed, and over a period of time it’s almost like they begin to close off themselves. 

 

The other thing I noticed was the brain stem, where the brain stem was cut to remove it from the cranium, the brain stem looked like it had been cut from two different sides, from each side met in the middle. 

I can relate that because if you’ve ever tried to cut something from the right side and go back and cut it from the left side, it never, almost invariably never is the same level, and this is what the brain stem looked like.  You know, I’ve been asked many times about this,

‘did I think that the brain had been removed prior to the autopsy?’ 

Taking into consideration the abnormal things that I just described….I feel like it was.  !!!

 

 

James Curtis Jenkins c1963. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ron Ecker]

I have a question about the head wounds, specifically something that has never occurred to me before reading this thread.

The S & O report says they thought the bullet exited "the top of the head." I've always thought that the top of the head was where Humes stated, at the start of the autopsy, that he saw evidence of surgery to the head. But in the Sibert YouTube transcript, Sibert refers to the gaping wound in back of the head, and he associates that with Humes' statement about surgery. Which raises the question, is it possible that the gaping wound in back of the head, long considered to be evidence of a shot from the front (that is, an exit wound), was created to search for a bullet or bullets (specifically one that entered from the front but didn't exit)? If this was in fact surgery to the head, it would eliminate an important piece of evidence for conspiracy, a gaping "exit" wound in back of the head.

 

[David Lifton]

On 2/10/2021 at 9:33 AM, Micah Mileto said:

By any chance do you have any new opinions on the passage from The Death of a President that reads:

The call to the seventeenth floor was made by Godfrey McHugh. He said, “Bob, the casket we have is cheap and thin, it’s really shabby. One handle is off, and the ornaments are in bad shape"

Here's the problem (as I see it) and this is the problem with attempting to properly evaluate McHugh's statement (as quoted by Manchester):  When McHugh stated that the casket was "cheap and thin" and "its really shabby" --was he referring to a shipping casket? Yes, that is certainly a possibility, but what McHugh says next would seem to make clear that --in fact--he was referring to the fancy ceremonial casket.  Specifically, McHugh said: "One handle is off, and the ornaments are in bad shape."  Those statements make clear he was referring to the casket that was loaded aboard Air Force One at Love Field.  And that would have been the (ceremonial) casket.  Remember Manchester's description of the onload at Love Field: the coffin (being described)  had to be turned sharply to the right, etc. , and that's when that damaged occurred.  Hence, my conclusion is: because McHugh described the damage in such detail, and because that damage matched what occurred during the Love Field onload of the ceremonial coffin at Love Field, we can safely assume he is describing the Dallas (ceremonial) casket. Had McHugh been called as a witness the simplest form of questioning would have prevented any confusion on this point.  (DSL)