RARE: HSCA Testimony of JFK autopsy Dr. James J. Humes 1978

[Micah Mileto]

On 5/6/2022 at 10:46 AM, Pat Speer said:

I contacted the archives about its videotapes of the HSCA testimony some time ago. I mentioned this earlier but they told me the only way they would provide copies of these tapes (or any tapes in their possession) was if I were to pay an authorized company to do so. This would have been something like 50 bucks per tape as I recall. I then shopped around and found Jack White's VHS copies at the Poage Library. They made me copies of two of the videos for I think it was 10 bucks apiece.

As far as Lifton, I believe he thought he was being transparent in providing his tapes to the archives. Like a lot of us, he's moved around, and he didn't want to lose his copies over time. But the reality is that in sending his materials to the archives, he placed them behind a very expensive and for the most part prohibitive paywall.

He is not alone in this. Warren Commission attorney Howard Willens put a ton of internal WC documents online to help promote his 2013 book on the Warren Commission. Many of these were not in the archives. I combed through this stuff and found some juicy tidbits questioning the "official" story Willens was defending. One of these was reported on Jeff Morley's site. Willens then removed these documents from the internet, and claimed he'd sent the original copies to the archives. The problem was that this once again put these documents behind a very expensive paywall. And it's worse than that. A few years after Willens "disappeared" these documents, I asked Malcolm Blunt if they had in fact been sent to the archives. He said they had been and that he'd seen them. As I recall he saw some boxes waiting to be processed and asked what they were when someone told him they were the Willens documents. As I recall this was something he'd noticed only recently. IOW, the Willens documents were not only "disappeared" by Willens, the archives was taking its sweet time making them available to the public. (It wouldn't surprise me, moreover, if there had been an agreement they would drag their feet on this until after Willens had passed. Stranger things have happened. In fact, one of the tidbits I'd uncovered while browsing Willens' website was that Warren had asked the archives to withhold the release of troublesome documents for a period after the end of the WC, so that the WC's story could become accepted before any questions could arise.)

Can a random person go into the National Archives II building with some tape machines and make copies then? (I don't know how they would prevent somebody from "accidentally" erasing a tape).

[Pat Speer]

11 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Can a random person go into the National Archives II building with some tape machines and make copies then? (I don't know how they would prevent somebody from "accidentally" erasing a tape).

My understanding is no. When I contacted the archives they told me I would have to use an authorized company to make copies of audio or video materials. And they were quite pricey. 

Written materials and (non-medical) photographic materials are available for copy. My understanding is that most of the materials on the Mary Ferrell site were scanned on site. The John Hunt materials were also complied via his scanner, which he was allowed to bring into the facility on multiple occasions.

I'm not sure if they're so agreeable today. 

[Micah Mileto]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

My understanding is no. When I contacted the archives they told me I would have to use an authorized company to make copies of audio or video materials. And they were quite pricey. 

Written materials and (non-medical) photographic materials are available for copy. My understanding is that most of the materials on the Mary Ferrell site were scanned on site. The John Hunt materials were also complied via his scanner, which he was allowed to bring into the facility on multiple occasions.

I'm not sure if they're so agreeable today. 

Would not very many people in this forum donate to a kickstarter to fulfill a research wishlist?

[Larry Hancock]

Micah,  MFF volunteers have worked scanning documents at NARA for some years now - however a great number of the MFF documents were actually scanned out of the ARRC collections...tens of thousands of pages, actually more like hundreds of thousands.  Not all are even loaded into MFF yet. Normally much easier and quicker to work there.  However NARA is still quite cooperative, Rex was there last week hand scanning a few documents....you do have to have your own scanner and follow their rules....which include not removing staples.  That is a pain with corner stapled documents but last week he began running into side stapled documents and that is a major obstacle.

[Denis Morissette]

I was at Nara II for 3 days in 2018 making copies of several audio cassettes using their equipment and mine. If I lived to Washington, I would have recorded all the tapes they have a long time ago. 🥺

[Micah Mileto]

15 minutes ago, Denis Morissette said:

I was at Nara II for 3 days in 2018 making copies of several audio cassettes using their equipment and mine. If I lived to Washington, I would have recorded all the tapes they have a long time ago. 🥺

Which witnesses? Did you digitize the tapes?

 

BTW I am a long bus ride away from Washington, but going those days without work would involve a price. Going to Wesleyan university library could also be possible for me.

[Denis Morissette]

Micah, Marina, Marguerite, Robert Oswald, David Phillips and many more. You can browse through my YouTube channel.

https://youtube.com/user/DenisMorissetteJFK

 

[David Lifton]

On 4/8/2022 at 9:25 AM, Vince Palamara said:

David- you were there with Sanford Unger and a reporter, right? I saw that a while ago.

Yes, I believe so. I'd like to see any recorded record.

[David Lifton]

On 5/11/2022 at 9:39 PM, Micah Mileto said:

Which witnesses? Did you digitize the tapes?

 

BTW I am a long bus ride away from Washington, but going those days without work would involve a price. Going to Wesleyan university library could also be possible for me.

Please remind me:  What tapes (or other records) are at Wesleyan library? DSL

[David Lifton]

On 5/11/2022 at 9:39 PM, Micah Mileto said:

Which witnesses? Did you digitize the tapes?

 

BTW I am a long bus ride away from Washington, but going those days without work would involve a price. Going to Wesleyan university library could also be possible for me.

In 1971 (as I recall) I spent two weeks (or more) at NARA.  On one visit, I stayed at the home of Bernard ("Bud") Fensterwald, who worked with Jim Lesar in filing many important FOIA requests.  On another. I was accommodated by a friend in Maryland. On a third, I stayed at the Harrington Hotel.   Today, decades later, I still remember the moment I made a most bizarre discovery while seated in he main room at NARA: I was perusing the "Office Files" of the Warren Commission's office staff and came across an internal memo in which the following "bragging" statement was made by one of the WC attorneys:  "I have fudged the footnote" (to conceal some situation.  I forget the details.)  I let out a highly vocal sound, expressing the equivalent of "WTF!" Heads turned, and I lowered my voice.  DSL 

[David Lifton]

Just now, David Lifton said:

In 1971 (as I recall) I spent two weeks (or more) at NARA.  On one visit, I stayed at the home of Bernard ("Bud") Fensterwald, who worked with Jim Lesar in filing many important FOIA requests.  On another. I was accommodated by a friend in Maryland. On a third, I stayed at the Harrington Hotel.   Today, decades later, I still remember the moment I made a most bizarre discovery while seated in he main room at NARA: I was perusing the "Office Files" of the Warren Commission's office staff and came across an internal memo in which the following "bragging" statement was made by one of the WC attorneys:  "I have fudged the footnote" (to conceal some situation.  I forget the details.)  I let out a highly vocal sound, expressing the equivalent of "WTF!" Heads turned, and I lowered my voice.  DSL 

Responding to your question ("Which witnesses? Did you digitize the tapes?"...I made 5 0r 10 hours of "best excerpts", mostly from KRLD audio; also, WRR).  DSL

[Micah Mileto]

4 hours ago, David Lifton said:

Please remind me:  What tapes (or other records) are at Wesleyan library? DSL

Many papers on interviews William Manchester did with autopsy witnesses like George Burkley and the Gawler's funeral home team. Some papers have been sealed until 2067, but many are available now to anybody who shows up, and they can be copied by anyone. Valuable stuff.

 

https://archives.wesleyan.edu/repositories/2/resources/80

Edited May 13, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Pat Speer]

14 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

Many papers on interviews William Manchester did with autopsy witnesses like George Burkley and the Gawler's funeral home team. Some papers have been sealed until 2067, but many are available now to anybody who shows up, and they can be copied by anyone. Valuable stuff.

 

https://archives.wesleyan.edu/repositories/2/resources/80

An interesting sidenote. At one point I realized that the Manchester/Wesleyan agreement for withholding the interviews covered interviews conducted up to a certain date, and that a Burkley (and I think Willens) interview came after that date, after the release of Epstein's book in which the back wound was discussed (as opposed to the back of the neck wound). Well, Manchester claimed he spoke to some people who'd observed the body and the photos and that they said the wound was indeed on the back of the neck. And this made me really really want to read Manchester's notes to see if they lied to him or if he lied to his readers (to help shut down that upstart Epstein, and, of course, Mark Lane.)

In any event, the Librarian told me they had been provided NO notes for these interviews, i.e. that they were not being withheld, because they did not exist. 

Well, this makes me suspect that some or all of the more problematic interviews given Epstein were filed in his circular filing cabinet. 

[Michael Crane]

1 hour ago, Micah Mileto said:

Many papers on interviews William Manchester did with autopsy witnesses like George Burkley and the Gawler's funeral home team. Some papers have been sealed until 2067, but many are available now to anybody who shows up, and they can be copied by anyone. Valuable stuff.

 

https://archives.wesleyan.edu/repositories/2/resources/80

Man oh man,those interviews with Burkley & Gawler's would be explosive.I have a feeling that the driver or passenger in the white smocks was indeed Thomas Robinson.Not that he did anything sinister.Burkley probably held back on orders or fear for his life.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Michael Crane

[Vince Palamara]

3 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Many papers on interviews William Manchester did with autopsy witnesses like George Burkley and the Gawler's funeral home team. Some papers have been sealed until 2067, but many are available now to anybody who shows up, and they can be copied by anyone. Valuable stuff.

 

https://archives.wesleyan.edu/repositories/2/resources/80

What is truly troubling is the fact that Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine (years later, author of THE KENNEDY DETAIL, a book I have a lot of trouble with, as I have noted many times) was interviewed by William Manchester for THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT on 5/12/1965, as the source notes of the book confirm. Blaine confirmed to me that he was indeed interviewed by Manchester when I spoke to him in 2005. Yet, the index does not list anything he said in the actual book, as Blaine does not exist in either the actual text or the index; his comments are invisible to the reader, unlike the other agents who were interviewed and sourced accordingly. More importantly, Blaine NOW denies that he ever spoke to Manchester. Why? Because I realized a famous quote attributed to fellow Secret Service agent Floyd Boring that allegedly originated from JFK on 11/18/63 ("Keep those Ivy League charlatans off the back of the car") was not true. Boring was not interviewed for the book, as there is no interviewed sourced AND Boring was adamant to me that he never spoke to Manchester and that THIS WAS NOT TRUE. Also, on video, Blaine confirms that Boring was not interviewed for the book! In fact, during the 28-mile motorcade (far longer than the 11-mile Dallas motorcade), JFK's longest domestic motorcade, agents Don Lawton and Chuck Zboril were on the back of the limo for the grand majority of the trip and were only not on the back of the car during the final stretch of the motorcade when they were heading back to the airport at high speeds. This had 0.0 to do with any alleged order.

I strongly believe Blaine was THE SOURCE for this fairy tale and a) the lack of a transcript and b) his later-day denials are troubling, to put it mildly:

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by Vince Palamara