Weisberg: It was standard military procedure to send an empty shipping casket to the President's autopsy.

[Micah Mileto]

 

From a 5/30/1990 letter from Harold Weisberg to Harrison Livingstone: https://ia601304.us.archive.org/3/items/nsia-LivingstoneHarrisonEdward/nsia-LivingstoneHarrisonEdward/Livingstone Harrison Edward 075.pdf

 

There is no doubt at all that a shipping casket was delivered. There also is no doubt about why. It was shipped by the Military District of Washington, acting normally and automatically. When Lifton's fabrications appeared or I first heard of them, I'm not taking the time to check but you are welcome to, I filed a simple FOIA request of the MDW. I asked only for copies of what it had provided Lifton. I have them as I got them and you are welcome to read or copy them.

 

What is Weisberg talking about here? Is there something that should be in his archives that I can't find?

Edited August 16, 2023 by Micah Mileto

[Adam Johnson]

Hi Micah,

Weisburg is saying that an empty grey plain shipping casket would be sent to the autopsy anti chamber room as standard procedure when a military autopsy was being conducted at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963. My assumption is that many bodies may have arrived there for autopsy on a stretcher or in a body bag, so a casket was required at the completion of the autopsy so the person could be sent onto families of the deceased for burial. 

So naturally 2 caskets would have gone into the autopsy anti chamber on the evening of Nov 22nd 1963, an empty shipping casket and then the Dallas casket. So nothing extraordinary took place that evening.  The Maryland(Washington)Medical District files (FOIA) He speaks of that were given to DL possibly showed delivery of 1 empty shipping casket....HW is saying Lifton had paperwork showing an empty shipping casket was sent for JFK’S  autopsy and DL used that info for backup support of his jfk body grab and alteration theory, know the shipping casket arrival was just standard procedure. 

I think.

 

Regards,

AJ.

[Paul Jolliffe]

Thanks Adam and Micah. 

Fascinating stuff.

For what it's worth, I myself had several phone conversations with Harold Weisberg back in the 1990's, and his question to me always revolved around "Why would any conspirator fake pictures when the pictures we do have show evidence of a conspiracy?" (He was certain that the extant record of the pictures taken at the autopsy is incomplete. Some pictures from that night have never seen the light of day.)

I don't remember discussing two ambulances at Bethesda with him, but this makes sense: any autopsy at Bethesda would automatically mean the Navy would send an ambulance with a shipping casket, regardless of whether it was actually used later.

Weisberg's seminal work on the autopsy, his 1975 "Post Mortem", remains an absolute classic. 

 I have a first edition of it, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the medical evidence. It is the starting point. 

Post Mortem: The Classic Investigation of the JFK Assassination Medical and Ballistics Evidence and Cover-Up: Weisberg, Harold: 9781626360617: Amazon.com: Books

 

[Micah Mileto]

55 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

 

Post Mortem is available to read and search to anybody who has an account on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/postmortemjfkass0000weis

 

[Matthew Koch]

On 8/17/2023 at 10:10 AM, Adam Johnson said:

Hi Micah,

Weisburg is saying that an empty grey plain shipping casket would be sent to the autopsy anti chamber room as standard procedure when a military autopsy was being conducted at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963. My assumption is that many bodies may have arrived there for autopsy on a stretcher or in a body bag, so a casket was required at the completion of the autopsy so the person could be sent onto families of the deceased for burial. 

So naturally 2 caskets would have gone into the autopsy anti chamber on the evening of Nov 22nd 1963, an empty shipping casket and then the Dallas casket. So nothing extraordinary took place that evening.  The Maryland(Washington)Medical District files (FOIA) He speaks of that were given to DL possibly showed delivery of 1 empty shipping casket....HW is saying Lifton had paperwork showing an empty shipping casket was sent for JFK’S  autopsy and DL used that info for backup support of his jfk body grab and alteration theory, know the shipping casket arrival was just standard procedure. 

I think.

 

Regards,

AJ.

That's misrepresenting Lifton's thesis IMO. JFK was taken out of a body bag in a shipping casket when he supposedly arrived in a Bronze casket wrapped in sheets. He had on camera interviews with witnesses from Bethesda and Dallas that had conflicting information. It's not based off of just a document.