JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

My bad. I meant to say fired from anywhere other than behind. Discovering that Dudman article was one of the prime reasons I came to doubt there was a so-called "blow-out" wound low on the back of the skull, as shown in the so-called "McClelland" drawing. Such a wound would be presumed to be an exit wound and would undoubtedly lead the doctors viewing it to think the shot came from in front of or to the side of the victim. 

PS-

 

Verily, I wondered if you had let a word slip. 

For the record, I am open to JFK being shot only from behind, and the Grassy Knoll gunfire as a diversion. 

It is the too-rapid sequence of shots, as captured on the Z film and confirmed by solid witnesses, that refutes the "lone gunman armed with a single-shot bolt action rifle" explanation of the JFKA. 

As I have said too many times, I wish the JFKA community would highlight the indisputably too-rapid sequencing of shots in the JFKA, rather than go deep into the weeds with sometime dubious side stories. 

[Micah Mileto]

19 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Ok, let's be clear. I've been at two conferences where McClelland was interviewed and even had a short chat with him myself. And I've also watched him interviewed on TV or YouTube a dozen times or so. And he has said two things which run against the narrative holding that the doctors were threatened and/or the autopsy photos were faked. First, he specified that he was never threatened or pressured to change his views in any way. Second, he insisted that the throat wound in the autopsy photos was as he remembered and that there was no sign of tampering with the neck wound. 

There is of course a third thing he said that no one wants to deal with. He told Richard Dudman within a week or so of the shooting that while the small throat wound appeared to be an entrance, the head wound gave NO indication of having been fired from the front.  And that's not all. He later told Weisberg that Jim Garrison was a crank but that Specter was a good guy. 

By his own admission, MClelland was not a CT prior to his viewing the Zapruder film in the 70's. I think it's safe to say his impression of a lot of things changed as a result. 

Dr. McClelland’s approval may have been half-hearted. In a 12/21/1963 article in The New Republic, Richard Dudman added this detail on his meeting with McClelland: “The throat wound puzzled the surgeons who attended Mr. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital when they learned how the Dallas police had reconstructed the shooting. Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the three doctors who worked on the throat wound, told me afterward that they still believed it to be an entry wound, even though the shots were said to have been fired almost directly behind the President. He explained that he and his colleagues at Parkland saw bullet wounds every day, sometimes several a day, and recognized easily the characteristically tiny hole of an entering bullet, in contrast to the larger, tearing hole that an exiting bullet would have left”.

[Pat Speer]

43 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

Dr. McClelland’s approval may have been half-hearted. In a 12/21/1963 article in The New Republic, Richard Dudman added this detail on his meeting with McClelland: “The throat wound puzzled the surgeons who attended Mr. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital when they learned how the Dallas police had reconstructed the shooting. Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the three doctors who worked on the throat wound, told me afterward that they still believed it to be an entry wound, even though the shots were said to have been fired almost directly behind the President. He explained that he and his colleagues at Parkland saw bullet wounds every day, sometimes several a day, and recognized easily the characteristically tiny hole of an entering bullet, in contrast to the larger, tearing hole that an exiting bullet would have left”.

Thanks, Micah, for helping refresh my memory and forcing me to clarify my point. McClelland was initially of the belief the throat wound was an entrance wound, which implies a shot came from the front. And Dudman was initially of the belief the crack he saw on the windshield was a bullet hole, which implies a shot came from the front. Dudman then wrote his New Republic article  (which would have to have been written a week or more before the 12/21 date on the cover) calling the supposed trajectory of the bullets into question. 

The Secret Service then paid the Parkland doctors a visit and showed them the autopsy report. This led McClelland to call Dudman and tell him the following...

Dudman quoting McClelland in a 12-18 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 

That after being told of Kennedy's back wound both "he and Dr. Perry fully accept the Navy Hospital’s explanation of the course of the bullets."

"I am fully satisfied that the two bullets that hit him were from behind." 

"As far as I am concerned, there is no reason to suspect that any shots came from the front."

Now, one could easily conclude McClelland was scared or some such thing, and telling Dudman what he knew the guv'ment wanted him to say. But he denied he was pressured into changing his views, and later admitted he saw nothing at the hospital to convince him a shot came from the front.

He said instead that it was the Z-film that convinced him the fatal shot came from the front, and not the wound itself. 

[Ron Bulman]

22 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Paydirt!

So in his general lecture, this was the first incongruity to the WR anyone had heard?

Mc Lelland and Perry were very close. Perry disclosed to Mc Lelland that he had been threatened  to shut up. At the time Perry was 34. He then moved off to New York state to practice for over 10 years. He told Mc Lelland he left because he didn't feel safe.He  eventually retired in Texas.  At 23:45

 

Thanks for this Kirk, I've never seen it.  His age shows in the latter part confusing questions about the throat shot and back of the head exit wound as well as Oswald's wound vs Kennedy's.  He does seem pretty lucid and focused earlier though.

I'd never read that JFK still had a fairly strong heart beat when he arrived per the EKG monitor, because the bullet(s) had missed the medulla.  Even though he already realized the back of the head wound was fatal.

I'd love to ask him about the commandeering of the gurney answer. It's confusing and intriguing.  I never read JFK was taken to the hospital morgue.  I thought he was cleaned up by the nurses in trauma room 1 then placed in the casket there.  The way he described it the confrontation between the SS and the Medical Examiner about an autopsy occurred while JFK was still on a gurney on the way to the morgue.  Before he was placed in the casket.  Which kind of makes sense.  If an autopsy was supposed to be done, it would have to have been done before his body was placed in a casket.  And it wouldn't have been done in a trauma room, but on a slab in the morgue.  I need to find and re read what the nurses and men from the funeral home delivering the casket said about this.  If it possibly happened this way it opens a can of worms about his body arriving at Bethesda in a shiping casket as well as wound alteration/manipulation.

Dr. McLelland's memories about the Last Rites (hearing if you are alive then whispering in his ear/ rembering it was a Father Huber), and Jackies exchange of rings and the kissing of the toe all seem quite clear.  RIP to both of them.

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

At the end of The Parkland Doctors, it is disclosed that the threats to Perry did not begin that night.

They began right after the press conference.  Someone took him aside and told him, "Don't ever say that again." 

Recall, that press conference began at 2: 15, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 PM.  When i noted this to Bob Tanenbaum, who showed me the film, he said, "Jim, they knew within the hour."

This is  troubling, to say the least.  Because, as Perry said to Martin Steadman, these threats were then reiterated that night to him through the autopsy doctors from Bethesda to his home. 

We put the Bell tape in the film as to Perry being called that night.  But if we had not been ejected from Oliver's office due to CV 19, I would have added both of these other elements. Someone in Dallas apparently knew what was needed, as did certain people in Bethesda. 

[Chris Bristow]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

At the end of The Parkland Doctors, it is disclosed that the threats to Perry did not begin that night.

They began right after the press conference.  Someone took him aside and told him, "

Recall, that press conference began at 2: 15, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 PM.  When i noted this to Bob Tanenbaum, who showed me the film, he said, "Jim, they knew within the hour."

This is  troubling, to say the least.  Because, as Perry said to Martin Steadman, these threats were then reiterated that night to him through the autopsy doctors from Bethesda to his home. 

We put the Bell tape in the film as to Perry being called that night.  But if we had not been ejected from Oliver's office due to CV 19, I would have added both of these other elements. Someone in Dallas apparently knew what was needed, as did certain people in Bethesda. 

McClellend's testimony to the ARRB about seeing an agent grab Perry by the arm and say
"Don't ever say that again." is really something. The fact it happened within a couple hours of the assassination is absolutely dumbfounding. Perry was sitting right there in the deposition when McClellend said it and he did not object to it or refute it.
 Recently saw the first part of you doc and enjoyed it much. Thanks. also just read a bit of a critical review on face book and it was packed with BS. They tried to revive the tumbling bullet theory that was so well disproven by Benjamin Cole. they claimed the evidence supports the tumbling bullet "More or less" then they cited the elongated holes in the FRONT of JC's coat and shirt!!. I had to laugh.

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

McClellend's testimony to the ARRB about seeing an agent grab Perry by the arm and say
"Don't ever say that again." is really something. The fact it happened within a couple hours of the assassination is absolutely dumbfounding. Perry was sitting right there in the deposition when McClellend said it and he did not object to it or refute it.
 Recently saw the first part of you doc and enjoyed it much. Thanks. also just read a bit of a critical review on face book and it was packed with BS. They tried to revive the tumbling bullet theory that was so well disproven by Benjamin Cole. they claimed the evidence supports the tumbling bullet "More or less" then they cited the elongated holes in the FRONT of JC's coat and shirt!!. I had to laugh.

I didn't recall McClelland telling that to the ARRB, Chris. So I went back and skimmed through the ARRB testimony of the Parkland doctors and found that both Perry and McClelland agreed that they had not been pressured to change their views. Perry even specified that he was always encouraged to tell the truth as he saw it. 

There's also this. (It's good to re-read these things because there's always something that you notice the second third and fourth time that you might have missed before.) McClelland claimed he was present when Humes called Perry and found out about the throat wound...and it was on Saturday morning.

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

9 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

At the end of The Parkland Doctors, it is disclosed that the threats to Perry did not begin that night.

They began right after the press conference.  Someone took him aside and told him, "Don't ever say that again." 

Recall, that press conference began at 2: 15, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 PM.  When i noted this to Bob Tanenbaum, who showed me the film, he said, "Jim, they knew within the hour."

This is  troubling, to say the least.  Because, as Perry said to Martin Steadman, these threats were then reiterated that night to him through the autopsy doctors from Bethesda to his home. 

We put the Bell tape in the film as to Perry being called that night.  But if we had not been ejected from Oliver's office due to CV 19, I would have added both of these other elements. Someone in Dallas apparently knew what was needed, as did certain people in Bethesda. 

Years ago I found a post on a newsgroup by David Lifton in which he convincingly argued that Bell was not credible. This led me to go back and read her early statements and compare them with her latter-day statements. And he was absolutely correct. She was not Kennedy's nurse, she was Connally's nurse. Now, some might think, well, she floated back and forth or some such thing, but that's not the way it works. Having spent some time in hospitals, and having three nurses and a bio-med technician in the family, the idea that Connally's nurse would wander over to Kennedy's emergency room and walk up to the front of the table and be shown his head wound by the doctor trying to save Kennedy's life...is LUDICROUS. (Sorry about the all-caps, but I need to stress that Bell was as much as saying the moon is made out of cheese or that alien lizard people are impersonating Joe Biden. it's banana-splits, looney tunes, kind of stuff.) In any event, her latter-day statements, much as the statements of Joe O'Donnell, are simply not reliable and should be avoided. 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Ken Davies]

Are we sure about Biden and the lizard people? I did not see any flies at that  2 hour presser this week. 😢

 

[Micah Mileto]

I thought the Perry intimidation story came from James Gochenaur??? Could it be from both Gochenaur and McClelland?

 

From JFK and the Unspeakable:

 

Dr. Perry's retraction was not only manipulated but given under stress. He had been threatened beforehand by "the men in suits," specifically the Secret Service. As Dallas Secret Service agent Elmer Moore would admit to a friend years later, he "had been ordered to tell Dr. Perry to change his testimony. " Moore said that in threatening Perry, he acted " on orders from Washington and Mr. Kelly of the Secret Service Headquarters. "555

 

Moore confessed his intimidation of Dr. Perry to a University of Washington graduate student, Jim Gochenaur, with whom he became friendly in Seattle in 1970. Moore told Gochenaur he "had badgered Dr. Perry" into "making a flat statement that there was no entry wound in the neck."556 Moore admitted, " I regret what I had to do with Dr. Perry. "557 However, with his fellow agents, he had been given "marching orders from Washington. " He felt he had no choice: "I did everything I was told, we all did everything we were told, or we'd get our heads cut off. "558 In the cover-up, the men in suits were both the intimidators and the intimidated.

 

[...Notes]

 

555 . House Select Committee witness Jim Gochenaur to interviewer Bob Kelley on Gochenaur's conversations with Secret Service agent Elmer Moore. Notes by Bob Kelley on June 6, 1975; pp. 3-4. JFK Record Number 157-10005-10280.

 

556. From transcribed copy by House Select Committee on Assassinations of taperecorded conversation with James Gochenaur, May 10, 1977, p. 22. JFK Record Number 180-10086-10438.

 

557. Author's interview with Jim Gochenaur, April 28, 2007.

 

558. Moore cited by Gochenaur. HSCA conversation with Gochenaur, May 10, 1977, p. 23. Also Jim Gochenaur's letter to the author, October 23, 2007.

[Micah Mileto]

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

 

There's also this. (It's good to re-read these things because there's always something that you notice the second third and fourth time that you might have missed before.) McClelland claimed he was present when Humes called Perry and found out about the throat wound...and it was on Saturday morning.

 

I think the first call came on the day of the assassination!

 

Link, if you haven't seen this yet... all of parts 8-27 deal with the timing of the alleged phone call(s) between Humes and Perry: https://rareddit.com/r/JFKsubmissions/comments/druxc1/discussing_jfks_torso_wounds_part_8_the/

This version of the essay, however, needs an update which will come some month. It's missing some things, like excerpts from Humes' WC testimony, Audrey Bell's story about Perry being kept on the phone all night, and the Martin Steadman 2013 story of his interview with Perry.

Edited January 22, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Micah Mileto]

These quotes on Dr. Charles Baxter show how cover-ups can naturally occur among people who believe they are doing their best:

 

From Crenshaw and Baxter's 4/3/1992 appearance on ABC's 20/20: (Link 1 [link 2]):

 

Q: It seems almost incomprehensible that a team of highly intelligent, highly-trained doctors could be standing over the President of the United States and see wounds that, you say, came from the front, and yet the official government story is it came from the back, and wait this long to break the silence.

 

Crenshaw: Intimidation, fear, and career-mindedness.

 

Q: Those are the factors?

 

Crenshaw: Exactly. But again, you have to understand the time in 1963. The people that were with this country were telling you what to do, how to do it, and I think the feeling was we went along to get along.

 

Narrator: Now semi-retired, Dr. Crenshaw has written a book breaking nearly thirty years of silence.

 

Q: Could these what you call "conspiracy of silence" had been out of plain old fashioned patriotism among the doctors?

 

Crenshaw: No question about that. And Dr. Baxter had wanted no one to say anything because he was worried about commercialization.

 

Dr. Charles Baxter: Well, I made a statement that, any one of us in the school or in the hospital that ever made a dime off of anything they said about the assassination, I would try to see that their medical career was ruined.

 

Q: You felt that strongly?

 

Dr. Baxter: Yes. I don't know how many emotions were in that statement, but I felt like it was one that needed to be said.

 

Dr. Crenshaw: That's the reason I waited so long. I waited until I felt I'm at the end of my career, I don't fear my peers 'cause I think they believe it too.

 

From Crenshaw's appearance on the Larry King Show, April 1992:

 

[...Audio, part 10, 6:00]

 

Caller: Yes, on the show 20/20, one of the head doctors said that he would ruin the career of anyone who tried to make any money off of writing a book, anything like that. Is that one of the reasons why maybe you waited so long to write the book that you did?

 

Crenshaw: Well, yes and no. I think, giving him an honest feeling is that what he was thinking more of commercialism, or like a young physician going out into practice, putting a shingle up, and by saying the worked on Kennedy to give him a leg up so-to-speak over his competition. But it did in fact keep a lot of people quiet for a long time, as far as making any statements.

Edited January 22, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Pat Speer]

7 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

These quotes on Dr. Charles Baxter show how cover-ups can naturally occur among people who believe they are doing their best:

 

From Crenshaw and Baxter's 4/3/1992 appearance on ABC's 20/20: (Link 1 [link 2]):

 

Q: It seems almost incomprehensible that a team of highly intelligent, highly-trained doctors could be standing over the President of the United States and see wounds that, you say, came from the front, and yet the official government story is it came from the back, and wait this long to break the silence.

 

Crenshaw: Intimidation, fear, and career-mindedness.

 

Q: Those are the factors?

 

Crenshaw: Exactly. But again, you have to understand the time in 1963. The people that were with this country were telling you what to do, how to do it, and I think the feeling was we went along to get along.

 

Narrator: Now semi-retired, Dr. Crenshaw has written a book breaking nearly thirty years of silence.

 

Q: Could these what you call "conspiracy of silence" had been out of plain old fashioned patriotism among the doctors?

 

Crenshaw: No question about that. And Dr. Baxter had wanted no one to say anything because he was worried about commercialization.

 

Dr. Charles Baxter: Well, I made a statement that, any one of us in the school or in the hospital that ever made a dime off of anything they said about the assassination, I would try to see that their medical career was ruined.

 

Q: You felt that strongly?

 

Dr. Baxter: Yes. I don't know how many emotions were in that statement, but I felt like it was one that needed to be said.

 

Dr. Crenshaw: That's the reason I waited so long. I waited until I felt I'm at the end of my career, I don't fear my peers 'cause I think they believe it too.

 

From Crenshaw's appearance on the Larry King Show, April 1992:

 

[...Audio, part 10, 6:00]

 

Caller: Yes, on the show 20/20, one of the head doctors said that he would ruin the career of anyone who tried to make any money off of writing a book, anything like that. Is that one of the reasons why maybe you waited so long to write the book that you did?

 

Crenshaw: Well, yes and no. I think, giving him an honest feeling is that what he was thinking more of commercialism, or like a young physician going out into practice, putting a shingle up, and by saying the worked on Kennedy to give him a leg up so-to-speak over his competition. But it did in fact keep a lot of people quiet for a long time, as far as making any statements.

The rest of the Parkland doctors, including McClelland, thought Crenshaw was full of it, and incredibly insulting when he implied they were scared to tell the truth. 

I think he was telling the truth as he saw it, but was not exactly reliable. As shown on my website, when asked to point out the location of the head wound on anatomy drawings showing the skull from behind and from the side, the two locations he picked out didn't come close to overlapping. In other words, he had a poor grasp of anatomy. 

[Pat Speer]

19 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

I think the first call came on the day of the assassination!

 

Link, if you haven't seen this yet... all of parts 8-27 deal with the timing of the alleged phone call(s) between Humes and Perry: https://rareddit.com/r/JFKsubmissions/comments/druxc1/discussing_jfks_torso_wounds_part_8_the/

This version of the essay, however, needs an update which will come some month. It's missing some things, like excerpts from Humes' WC testimony, Audrey Bell's story about Perry being kept on the phone all night, and the Martin Steadman 2013 story of his interview with Perry.

Yikes. I cannot stress to you how unreliable Bell is. Her story about Perry showing her Kennedy's head wound is absolute fruit loops. In any event, even if she was telling the truth as she remembered it, Perry and McClelland make it clear the phone call came in mid-morning on the 23rd. 

[Micah Mileto]

8 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

The rest of the Parkland doctors, including McClelland, thought Crenshaw was full of it, and incredibly insulting when he implied they were scared to tell the truth. 

I think he was telling the truth as he saw it, but was not exactly reliable. As shown on my website, when asked to point out the location of the head wound on anatomy drawings showing the skull from behind and from the side, the two locations he picked out didn't come close to overlapping. In other words, he had a poor grasp of anatomy. 

Crenshaw said that the only "conspiracy of silence" he was directly aware of, was the fact that talking about a conspiracy in the Kennedy case could hurt their medical career. McClelland corroborated Crenshaw being inside of Trauma Room One, and McClelland said, in a 9/24/2013 interview for the Sixth Floor Museum alongside Dr. Ronald Jones "The doctor sitting right there in front of me, I think, has some knowledge of that, don't you? Yeah. So I think that phone call which came from the White House apparently did come through", "All I know is circumstantial, I know nothing directly about what I was told, and what I was told, and again, by my good friend sitting here in front of me who was sitting there in the nurse's station listening to the phone, and someone called from the White House as Lee Harvey Oswald was on the table wanting to find out what condition he was in. That's all just hearsay really from me, but I think that probably did occur" (Link, 31:51).

Edited January 23, 2022 by Micah Mileto