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VICTORY for the credibility of Parkland nurse Audrey Bell


Micah Mileto

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1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

"Somebody had gotten to Dr. Perry?" Really? We know the "truth" but can't prove it because "somebody got" to our best witnesses? 

It's amazing how self-serving that is... I mean, EVERY time a witness coughs up a statement or story indicating the wound was on the back of the head, the back of the head crowd claims they are brave truth-tellers while at the same time EVERY time a witness says he could have been mistaken or supports the authenticity of the evidence they are fibers..."somebody got to them"... ANYTHING but admit the obvious fact that as many or more witnesses have been "gotten" by the CT community than by "them". 

That is why Micah's find is important. It shows how Bell's story, in her own words. differed from her subsequent accounts. 

Now, I've had more experience arguing these points than anyone, so I know what comes next... "How do we know her words weren't changed in the article?" "How do we now she meant fragment and not fragments--maybe it's a typo?" 

Let me be clear. The evidence has always suggested more than one shooter. The FBI spun it to be Oswald. The Warren Commission spun it to be Oswald. And the HSCA spun it to be Oswald. This can be proven. But for the past four decades the bulk of JFK "research" has been spent trying to prove the evidence--the very evidence that demonstrates a conspiracy in which Oswald did not shoot Kennedy--was fake. Ludicrous. 

Just two examples from my 500+ pages of notes on the altered throat wound and coercion of Parkland witnesses:

 

Reporter Martin J. Steadman, in a 2013 article for the website Eve’s Magazine, wrote of being invited to Dr. Perry’s house on the evening of 12/2/1963, along with two other reporters, Fred Ferretti and Stan Redding. Steadman’s article described Perry receiving calls from Bethesda around Friday night 11/22/1963, which would go against the common story of Perry being called in the daylight morning hours of Saturday 11/23/1963. Also, Perry’s calls from Bethesda sounded more hostile than described on other occasions – Allegedly, Perry had his medical career threatened if he didn’t go along with the story of the throat wound being an exit (Link):

 

I spent 11 days in Dallas following the murder of President Kennedy, from November 26 to December 6, and I never wrote a word about my time there, mostly because I came home with no proof of anything conclusive about the unanswered questions-- many of which are still unanswered I came home only with a deep, unsettling feeling that I was leaving Dallas too soon.

 

But as the years go by, I believe I have an obligation to write some things that I feel strongly about, especially as November 22 approaches each year. Every year since 1963, I’ve been left with (a) major grievances against the highest-ranking people in our own government and (b) a haunting memory of a private interview with a doctor who attended the dying President, and (c) some bits and pieces of information that might help historians to a consensus on what was most likely the case. The official finding that Oswald acted alone is believed by almost no one today.

 

[…]

 

SPINNING MY WHEELS IN DALLAS

 

When the FBI quickly leaked its conclusions that Oswald acted alone and Ruby killed Oswald to avenge the murder of the President, much of the air went out of my Dallas assignment to pursue the unanswered questions. But there were still some important stories to cover. Texas Governor John Connally was still in Parkland Memorial Hospital with gunshot wounds. A superb television reporter, Martin Agronsky, was selected as the pool reporter to interview Governor Connally when he was well enough to speak about the shots fired into the Presidential limousine that fateful day. Nellie Connally was present at her husband’s hospital bedside. All the other reporters were gathered in a makeshift hospital press room downstairs and I called my office in New York to tell them to turn on the TV and have a reporter ready with a tape recorder for the Governor Connally interview.

 

Agronsky’s interview remains a classic instruction for young journalism aspirants everywhere. Always sensitive, always conscious of the Governor’s condition and his wife’s concerns, always aware that the Governor and his wife were wounded witnesses to history, Agronsky’s interview nevertheless documented the horrifying moments in the rear seats of an open limousine in Dallas that can never be fully explained or forgotten. Agronsky and the reporters downstairs hanging on every word by Governor Connally, had no idea that the Governor’s recollections of what happened that day would conflict with the conclusions of the Warren Commission a year later. Somehow, Governor Connally’s most critical moments meant nothing at all to the Warren Commission. His recollections didn’t fit their findings.

 

I had been elsewhere scrounging for any scrap of information missed by the first wave of reporters to descend on Dallas and when I got to Parkland Hospital just in time to learn that the Agronsky interview would be taking place upstairs, I missed the briefing that instructed the pool reporters that the TV interview would be embargoed for an hour to give the reporters assembled downstairs time to file. I alerted my newsroom and I took only a few sketchy notes as Agronsky worked his deft touch, believing the interview was going live around the world and I was covered by my newsroom back in New York City, capturing every word.

 

The interview over, I called my office and said, “Okay. Did you get all that?”

 

“Get all what?” was the answer. “We don’t have anything.”

 

Oh, no. My first solid story down there, and all I had was sketchy notes. A Dallas reporter told me what I hadn’t heard sooner--the Connally TV interview was on a one-hour delay. The Herald Tribune City Desk put a rewrite man on the phone with me, and I was bumbling and stumbling through what I could recall when he told me the wire services were beginning to come through with bulletins on the story. Fortunately, we weren’t anywhere near deadline and the wire copy and the delayed TV broadcast bailed me out. The Herald Tribune story for the next day was as complete as could be, with little or no help from me.

 

I felt like a dope, but the paper put my byline on the story and nobody gave me any more grief than I had already taken upon myself.

 

After that incident, I told the City Desk there was too much happening in Dallas and if I was ever going to wrap up some loose ends on the investigative assignment, we needed another guy down there. They gave me the best reporter I could hope for--Fred Ferretti.

 

There were no more glitches, and when Ferretti arrived a day later I was pretty much free to roam again. In fact, there were occasions when I wanted Fred to accompany me. One such memorable evening was an interview with Dr. Malcolm Perry at his home. Dr. Perry was among the team of doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital when a mortally wounded President Kennedy was rushed into Emergency Room One.

 

The meeting with Dr. Perry occurred the evening of December 2. Fred and I were joined by Stan Redding, a first-class crime reporter for the Houston Chronicle. I’d taken a liking to Redding as soon as I met him; he was my kind of reporter. Speculation and suspicion and insinuation were never part of his game. He was interested in facts, only facts. But he was a keen political observer as well as a seasoned police reporter. It was no secret in Texas that the President and the First Lady had come to their state because Texas polls showed Kennedy was in trouble for re-election in 1964. Arizona GOP Senator Barry Goldwater held a comfortable lead, despite the fact Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was a Texan. And the Goldwater edge in the polls also applied to other states in the South and Southwest at that time. Stan Redding spoke softly when he allowed an opinion, but I’ll never forget what he said: “Those three bullets shot Barry Goldwater right out of the saddle.” He was noting that Texan Lyndon Johnson was now the President, and Senator Goldwater would be matched against a man of the South in the new polls. How bright was Redding’s political crystal ball in November 1963? Johnson led Barry Goldwater in the first wave of new national polls, and Johnson buried Goldwater in November 1964, in a landslide.

 

Our meeting with Dr. Perry was after dinnertime at his home, and I remember a little girl playing with her toys on the living room floor as the three reporters and her father talked about how he tried to save a President’s life. She was oblivious to the gravity of the conversation, playing quietly with her toys throughout.

 

Dr. Perry had become a controversial figure in the assassination story--to his dismay. With the President lying on his back on a gurney, fighting for breath in his dying moments, Dr. Perry tried to create an air passage with an incision across what he believed to be an entrance wound at the front of Kennedy’s neck. The President was pronounced dead soon after, but the doctor’s incision at the throat had forever foreclosed a conclusion that the wound was an entrance wound or an exit wound.

 

Late that Friday afternoon, the Parkland Hospital officials held a news conference for the hundreds of reporters who had descended on Dallas. Dr. Perry spoke of his efforts to save the President and his belief that his incision was across an entrance wound. The controversy didn’t erupt until government officials in Washington later said all three shots at the President had been fired from a sixth floor window of a building behind the President’s limousine.

 

So little more than a week later, three reporters were speaking quietly to the surgeon at the center of the dispute. As far as I know, it was the first and only such private interview with Dr. Perry. None of us in his living room that night took out a notebook or a pencil. It was a conversation with a clearly reluctant surgeon who had done his best in a crisis and who had agonized about it since.

 

Dr. Perry said he believed it was an entrance wound because the small circular hole was clean, with no edges. In the course of the conversation, he was asked and answered that he had treated hundreds of gunshot victims in the Emergency Rooms at Parkland Memorial Hospital. At another point he said he was a hunter by hobby, and he was very familiar with guns and ammunition. He said he could tell at a glance the difference between an entrance wound and an exit wound with its ragged edges.

 

But he told us that throughout that night, he received a series of phone calls to his home from irate doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where an autopsy was being conducted, and the doctors there were becoming increasingly frustrated with his belief that it was an entrance wound. He said they asked him if the doctors in Dallas had turned the President over and examined the wounds to his back; he said they had not. They told him he could not be certain of his conclusion if he had not examined the wounds in the President’s back. They said Bethesda had the President’s body and Dallas did not. They told Dr. Perry he must not continue to say he cut across what he believed to be an entrance wound when there was no evidence of shots fired from the front. When he said again he could only say what he believed to be true, one or more of the autopsy doctors told him they would take him before a Medical Board if he continued to insist on what they were certain was otherwise. They threatened his license to practice medicine, Dr. Perry said. When he was finished, there was only one question left. I asked him if he still believed it was an entrance wound. The question hung there for a long moment.

 

“Yes,” he said.

 

Ultimately Dr. Perry appeared as a witness before the Warren Commission. In substance he testified that he realized he had no proof the bullet hole in the President’s neck was an entrance wound, and he conceded that the Bethesda doctors who autopsied the President would know better because they had all of the forensic evidence and he had but a fleeting recollection.

 

I can’t fault Dr. Perry for his testimony before the Warren Commission. Surely it occurred to him there was no point in holding out for a belief that couldn’t be proved. And just as surely, this 34-year-old surgeon with an exemplary record and a brilliant future knew his life would be forever shadowed by conspiracy theories that relied heavily on a bullet fired from the front. He testified only as he most certainly had to testify. But I’ll never forget what he said to three reporters that night in Dallas.

 

[…]

 

As I said before, I never wrote anything about my time in Dallas. The Herald Tribune editors were good about it. I told them I didn’t have anything solid to report--just a whole lot of suspicion--and I didn’t think the Herald Tribune wanted to add to the confusion and conspiracy theories that were already beginning to surface. I also believed then that ultimately the Warren Commission would report every detail of an exhaustive investigation. The reason I’m writing all this now is for my wish for the permanent record to show that the investigation of the crime of the century was sabotaged at its start. We did not get an honest investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy from our vaunted FBI and the Warren Commission. Instead we got a cynical political decision to close the case prematurely.

 

In 2017, David Mantik reported on contact made between his associate Dr. Michael Chesser and a former Parkland employee named Dr. Austin Griner “Just one month before this mock trial, Dr. Austin Griner had told Dr. Chesser that federal agents had threatened Perry (born in Allen, Texas) with deportation if he did not reverse his initial report of an entrance wound (Another Assassination of JFK Research: A Mystified Review by David Mantik, 12/4/2017; JFK Assassination Paradoxes: A Primer for Beginners by David Mantik, 2018 [link 2]). It is not clear what was meant by “deportation” if Perry was born in Texas.

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1 hour ago, Micah Mileto said:

Just two examples from my 500+ pages of notes on the altered throat wound and coercion of Parkland witnesses:

 

Reporter Martin J. Steadman, in a 2013 article for the website Eve’s Magazine, wrote of being invited to Dr. Perry’s house on the evening of 12/2/1963, along with two other reporters, Fred Ferretti and Stan Redding. Steadman’s article described Perry receiving calls from Bethesda around Friday night 11/22/1963, which would go against the common story of Perry being called in the daylight morning hours of Saturday 11/23/1963. Also, Perry’s calls from Bethesda sounded more hostile than described on other occasions – Allegedly, Perry had his medical career threatened if he didn’t go along with the story of the throat wound being an exit (Link):

 

I spent 11 days in Dallas following the murder of President Kennedy, from November 26 to December 6, and I never wrote a word about my time there, mostly because I came home with no proof of anything conclusive about the unanswered questions-- many of which are still unanswered I came home only with a deep, unsettling feeling that I was leaving Dallas too soon.

 

But as the years go by, I believe I have an obligation to write some things that I feel strongly about, especially as November 22 approaches each year. Every year since 1963, I’ve been left with (a) major grievances against the highest-ranking people in our own government and (b) a haunting memory of a private interview with a doctor who attended the dying President, and (c) some bits and pieces of information that might help historians to a consensus on what was most likely the case. The official finding that Oswald acted alone is believed by almost no one today.

 

[…]

 

SPINNING MY WHEELS IN DALLAS

 

When the FBI quickly leaked its conclusions that Oswald acted alone and Ruby killed Oswald to avenge the murder of the President, much of the air went out of my Dallas assignment to pursue the unanswered questions. But there were still some important stories to cover. Texas Governor John Connally was still in Parkland Memorial Hospital with gunshot wounds. A superb television reporter, Martin Agronsky, was selected as the pool reporter to interview Governor Connally when he was well enough to speak about the shots fired into the Presidential limousine that fateful day. Nellie Connally was present at her husband’s hospital bedside. All the other reporters were gathered in a makeshift hospital press room downstairs and I called my office in New York to tell them to turn on the TV and have a reporter ready with a tape recorder for the Governor Connally interview.

 

Agronsky’s interview remains a classic instruction for young journalism aspirants everywhere. Always sensitive, always conscious of the Governor’s condition and his wife’s concerns, always aware that the Governor and his wife were wounded witnesses to history, Agronsky’s interview nevertheless documented the horrifying moments in the rear seats of an open limousine in Dallas that can never be fully explained or forgotten. Agronsky and the reporters downstairs hanging on every word by Governor Connally, had no idea that the Governor’s recollections of what happened that day would conflict with the conclusions of the Warren Commission a year later. Somehow, Governor Connally’s most critical moments meant nothing at all to the Warren Commission. His recollections didn’t fit their findings.

 

I had been elsewhere scrounging for any scrap of information missed by the first wave of reporters to descend on Dallas and when I got to Parkland Hospital just in time to learn that the Agronsky interview would be taking place upstairs, I missed the briefing that instructed the pool reporters that the TV interview would be embargoed for an hour to give the reporters assembled downstairs time to file. I alerted my newsroom and I took only a few sketchy notes as Agronsky worked his deft touch, believing the interview was going live around the world and I was covered by my newsroom back in New York City, capturing every word.

 

The interview over, I called my office and said, “Okay. Did you get all that?”

 

“Get all what?” was the answer. “We don’t have anything.”

 

Oh, no. My first solid story down there, and all I had was sketchy notes. A Dallas reporter told me what I hadn’t heard sooner--the Connally TV interview was on a one-hour delay. The Herald Tribune City Desk put a rewrite man on the phone with me, and I was bumbling and stumbling through what I could recall when he told me the wire services were beginning to come through with bulletins on the story. Fortunately, we weren’t anywhere near deadline and the wire copy and the delayed TV broadcast bailed me out. The Herald Tribune story for the next day was as complete as could be, with little or no help from me.

 

I felt like a dope, but the paper put my byline on the story and nobody gave me any more grief than I had already taken upon myself.

 

After that incident, I told the City Desk there was too much happening in Dallas and if I was ever going to wrap up some loose ends on the investigative assignment, we needed another guy down there. They gave me the best reporter I could hope for--Fred Ferretti.

 

There were no more glitches, and when Ferretti arrived a day later I was pretty much free to roam again. In fact, there were occasions when I wanted Fred to accompany me. One such memorable evening was an interview with Dr. Malcolm Perry at his home. Dr. Perry was among the team of doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital when a mortally wounded President Kennedy was rushed into Emergency Room One.

 

The meeting with Dr. Perry occurred the evening of December 2. Fred and I were joined by Stan Redding, a first-class crime reporter for the Houston Chronicle. I’d taken a liking to Redding as soon as I met him; he was my kind of reporter. Speculation and suspicion and insinuation were never part of his game. He was interested in facts, only facts. But he was a keen political observer as well as a seasoned police reporter. It was no secret in Texas that the President and the First Lady had come to their state because Texas polls showed Kennedy was in trouble for re-election in 1964. Arizona GOP Senator Barry Goldwater held a comfortable lead, despite the fact Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was a Texan. And the Goldwater edge in the polls also applied to other states in the South and Southwest at that time. Stan Redding spoke softly when he allowed an opinion, but I’ll never forget what he said: “Those three bullets shot Barry Goldwater right out of the saddle.” He was noting that Texan Lyndon Johnson was now the President, and Senator Goldwater would be matched against a man of the South in the new polls. How bright was Redding’s political crystal ball in November 1963? Johnson led Barry Goldwater in the first wave of new national polls, and Johnson buried Goldwater in November 1964, in a landslide.

 

Our meeting with Dr. Perry was after dinnertime at his home, and I remember a little girl playing with her toys on the living room floor as the three reporters and her father talked about how he tried to save a President’s life. She was oblivious to the gravity of the conversation, playing quietly with her toys throughout.

 

Dr. Perry had become a controversial figure in the assassination story--to his dismay. With the President lying on his back on a gurney, fighting for breath in his dying moments, Dr. Perry tried to create an air passage with an incision across what he believed to be an entrance wound at the front of Kennedy’s neck. The President was pronounced dead soon after, but the doctor’s incision at the throat had forever foreclosed a conclusion that the wound was an entrance wound or an exit wound.

 

Late that Friday afternoon, the Parkland Hospital officials held a news conference for the hundreds of reporters who had descended on Dallas. Dr. Perry spoke of his efforts to save the President and his belief that his incision was across an entrance wound. The controversy didn’t erupt until government officials in Washington later said all three shots at the President had been fired from a sixth floor window of a building behind the President’s limousine.

 

So little more than a week later, three reporters were speaking quietly to the surgeon at the center of the dispute. As far as I know, it was the first and only such private interview with Dr. Perry. None of us in his living room that night took out a notebook or a pencil. It was a conversation with a clearly reluctant surgeon who had done his best in a crisis and who had agonized about it since.

 

Dr. Perry said he believed it was an entrance wound because the small circular hole was clean, with no edges. In the course of the conversation, he was asked and answered that he had treated hundreds of gunshot victims in the Emergency Rooms at Parkland Memorial Hospital. At another point he said he was a hunter by hobby, and he was very familiar with guns and ammunition. He said he could tell at a glance the difference between an entrance wound and an exit wound with its ragged edges.

 

But he told us that throughout that night, he received a series of phone calls to his home from irate doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where an autopsy was being conducted, and the doctors there were becoming increasingly frustrated with his belief that it was an entrance wound. He said they asked him if the doctors in Dallas had turned the President over and examined the wounds to his back; he said they had not. They told him he could not be certain of his conclusion if he had not examined the wounds in the President’s back. They said Bethesda had the President’s body and Dallas did not. They told Dr. Perry he must not continue to say he cut across what he believed to be an entrance wound when there was no evidence of shots fired from the front. When he said again he could only say what he believed to be true, one or more of the autopsy doctors told him they would take him before a Medical Board if he continued to insist on what they were certain was otherwise. They threatened his license to practice medicine, Dr. Perry said. When he was finished, there was only one question left. I asked him if he still believed it was an entrance wound. The question hung there for a long moment.

 

“Yes,” he said.

 

Ultimately Dr. Perry appeared as a witness before the Warren Commission. In substance he testified that he realized he had no proof the bullet hole in the President’s neck was an entrance wound, and he conceded that the Bethesda doctors who autopsied the President would know better because they had all of the forensic evidence and he had but a fleeting recollection.

 

I can’t fault Dr. Perry for his testimony before the Warren Commission. Surely it occurred to him there was no point in holding out for a belief that couldn’t be proved. And just as surely, this 34-year-old surgeon with an exemplary record and a brilliant future knew his life would be forever shadowed by conspiracy theories that relied heavily on a bullet fired from the front. He testified only as he most certainly had to testify. But I’ll never forget what he said to three reporters that night in Dallas.

 

[…]

 

As I said before, I never wrote anything about my time in Dallas. The Herald Tribune editors were good about it. I told them I didn’t have anything solid to report--just a whole lot of suspicion--and I didn’t think the Herald Tribune wanted to add to the confusion and conspiracy theories that were already beginning to surface. I also believed then that ultimately the Warren Commission would report every detail of an exhaustive investigation. The reason I’m writing all this now is for my wish for the permanent record to show that the investigation of the crime of the century was sabotaged at its start. We did not get an honest investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy from our vaunted FBI and the Warren Commission. Instead we got a cynical political decision to close the case prematurely.

 

In 2017, David Mantik reported on contact made between his associate Dr. Michael Chesser and a former Parkland employee named Dr. Austin Griner “Just one month before this mock trial, Dr. Austin Griner had told Dr. Chesser that federal agents had threatened Perry (born in Allen, Texas) with deportation if he did not reverse his initial report of an entrance wound (Another Assassination of JFK Research: A Mystified Review by David Mantik, 12/4/2017; JFK Assassination Paradoxes: A Primer for Beginners by David Mantik, 2018 [link 2]). It is not clear what was meant by “deportation” if Perry was born in Texas.

Just about all the Parkland witnesses, till their dying days, said the throat wound LOOKED like an entrance. Perry was chief among these. IF anyone ever threatened him, well, it didn't work, because he continued to say the wound LOOKED like an entrance. 

Now, he also said the wound could have been an exit. And that's not surprising. Emergency room doctors are trained to react and save lives. They have no specialized training that will help them remember a wound's location, or even if a wound is an entrance or exit. You probably know this, but it bears repeating. Studies have been performed in which the nature of a bullet wound as described by emergency room doctors is compared to the conclusions on this wound by the forensic pathologist. Well, these studies have shown that emergency room physicians are wrong almost half the time. And most doctors know this. And refuse to second guess the experts. 

To be clear, then, doctors who recall wounds or injuries in a manner different than the subsequent conclusions of a medical examiner, are expected to defer to the medical examiner. It's in their training. They are told, moreover, that they should keep their opinions to themselves if they think another doctor screwed up. I've read the textbooks. This is what they're told. 

So, no, no one "got" to Perry or Clark or anyone else who failed to scream to the rooftops that the autopsy evidence was fake. No one would need to. Doctors are trained to defer to specialists. Believe me, I know. I have a disease related to my cancer treatment that could potentially have been avoided if only my doctor had over-ruled a cardiologist..who repeatedly saw something on images of my heart--that disappeared when he put me through invasive procedures to get a better look. This happened twice in like two months. When I was told I needed this cardiologist to sign off on my being part of a study--and that this meant I would have to undergo some more tests--which would give the cardiologist the opportunity to propose yet another invasive procedure, I passed. And sure enough, I got the disease. The point is this. My doctor deferred to the cardiologist even though the cardiologist had "seen" things on my heart images that no one else saw and that couldn't be located when the doctor pushed a camera into my heart. Because that's what doctors do. What they are trained to do. Defer to experts. Not make waves. 

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4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Rather than correct what Pat is claiming, doctor by doctor, I'm going to summarize here what all the Parkland doctors said:
 

Note 1: "Occipital" and "cerebellar" refers to the lower back of the head. "Temporal" refers to the low area around the ear.

Note 2:  As can be read below, nearly all the Parkland professionals said early on that the gaping wound was at the lower back of the head. But some changed their minds when it came to their attention that that the Warren Commission contradicted them, saying that the gaping wound was at the top of the head.

 

1) KEMP CLARK, MD: Professor and Director of Neurological Surgery at Parkland, in an undated note apparently written contemporaneously at Parkland described the President's skull wound as, "...in the occipital region of the skull... Through the head wound, blood and brain were extruding... There was a large wound in the right occipitoparietal region, from which profuse bleeding was occurring... There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound." (WC--CE#392)

In a hand written note dated 11-22-63, Dr. Clark wrote, "a large 3 x 3 cm remnant of cerebral tissue present....there was a smaller amount of cerebellar tissue present also....There was a large wound beginning in the right occiput extending into the parietal region....Much of the skull appeared gone at the brief examination...." (Exhibit #392: WC V17:9-10)

At a press conference 2&1/2 hours after the shooting Clark said, "The head wound could have been either the exit wound from the neck or it could have been a tangential wound, as it was simply a large, gaping loss of tissue." ("At the White House with Wayne Hawks" news conference, 11/22/63, 3:16 PM, CST, Dallas, Texas) This virtually contemporaneous description is not entirely unequivocal. However, if JFK's skull defect were not rearward, it is impossible to imagine Clark would have conjectured that the skull defect was the possible exit site of the neck wound, for Malcolm Perry, MD, who participated with him in the press conference, and had performed a tracheotomy on JFK, had just claimed three times the neck wound was a wound of entrance.

In a typed summary submitted to Rear Admiral Burkley on 11-23-63, Clark described the head wound as, "a large wound in the right occipito-parietal region... Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound. (Warren Report, p.518, Warren Commission Exhibit #392, Lifton, D. Best Evidence, p. 322)

Under oath and to the Warren Commission's Arlen Specter, Clark described his findings upon arrival to the emergency room, "I then examined the wound in the back of the President's head. This was a large, gaping wound in the right posterior part, with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed." (WC--V6:20) Specter, either inattentive to Dr. Clark's skull wound description or wishing to move the wound more anterior than the eyewitness, neurosurgery professor placed it, later asked Clark, "Now, you described the massive wound at the top of the of the President's head, with brain protruding..." (WC:6:25) Dr. Clark later located the skull wound to Mr. Specter again, "...in the right occipital region of the President's skull, from which considerable blood loss had occurred which stained the back of his head, neck and upper shoulders." (WC--V6:29)

In answer to a question from Specter about the survivability of Kennedy's head wounding, Clark said: "...the loss of cerebellar (sic) tissue wound probably have been of minimal consequence in the performance of his duties. The loss of the right occipital and probably part of the right parietal lobes wound have been of specific importance..." (WC6:26) That Clark, a neurosurgeon, specified that the occipital lobe of the brain was missing cannot suggest anything but a very posterior defect.

On 1/20/94 a steel salesman from Tennessee, David Naro, interviewed Clark, MD. Naro reported Clark said, "The lower right occipital region of the head was blown out and I saw cerebellum." This conveys the same message as the document he prepared on 11/22/63 which read, "There was a large wound in the right occipitoparietal region... Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue was extruding from the wound."

2) ROBERT McCLELLAND, MD: In testimony at Parkland taken before Arlen Specter on 3-21-64, McClelland described the head wound as, "...I could very closely examine the head wound, and I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted. It had been shattered...so that the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its right posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half, and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out...." (WC--V6:33) Later he said, "...unfortunately the loss of blood and the loss of cerebral and cerebellar tissues were so great that the efforts (to save Kennedy's life) were of no avail." (Emphasis added throughout) (WC--V6:34) McClelland made clear that he thought the rear wound in the skull was an exit wound (WC-V6:35,37). McClelland ascribed the cause of death to, "...massive head injuries with loss of large amounts of cerebral and cerebellar tissues and massive blood loss." (WC--V6:34)

McClelland's unwillingness to change his recollection has recently attracted detractors in the aftermath of Charles Crenshaw's book, "Conspiracy of Silence". McClelland told Posner, "I saw a piece of cerebellum fall out on the stretcher." (Posner, G. "CC.", p. 311, paper). To dismiss McClelland, Posner quotes Malcolm Perry, "I am astonished that Bob (McClelland) would say that... It shows such poor judgment, and usually he has such good judgment." (Posner G. "Case Closed". p. 311, paperback edition.) Perry's own inconsistent and unreliable memory lessens the merit of his opinions of others, as we will see.

3) MARION THOMAS JENKINS, MD: In a contemporaneous note dated 11-22-63, Jenkins described "a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital) (sic), causing a great defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the cerebellum had protruded from the wound." (WC--Exhibit #392) To the Warren Commission's Arlen Specter Dr. Jenkins said, "Part of the brain was herniated. I really think part of the cerebellum, as I recognized it, was herniated from the wound..." (WC--V6:48) Jenkins told Specter that the temporal and occipital wound was a wound of exit, "...the wound with the exploded area of the scalp, as I interpreted it being exploded, I would interpret it being a wound of exit..." (WC--V6:51.)

Jenkins described a wound in JFK's left temple to Specter. Jenkins: "...I thought there was a wound on the left temporal area, right in the hairline and right above the zygomatic process." Specter: "The autopsy report discloses no such development, Dr. Jenkins." Jenkins: "Well, I was feeling for--I was palpating here for a pulse to see whether the closed chest cardiac massage was effective or not and this probably was some blood that had come from the other point and so I thought there was a wound there also." A few moments later Jenkins again pursued the possibility that there had been a wound in the left temple: "...I asked you a little bit ago if there was a wound in the left temporal area, right above the zygomatic bone in the hairline, because there was blood there and I thought there might have been a wound there (indicating) (sic). Specter: "Indicating the left temporal area?" Jenkins: "Yes; the left temporal, which could have been a point of entrance and exit here (indicating) (sic-presumably pointing to where he had identified the wound in prior testimony--the right rear of the skull), but you have answered that for me (that 'the autopsy report discloses no such development')." (WC-V6:51)

In an interview with the HSCA's Andy Purdy on 11-10-77 Marion Jenkins was said to have expressed that as an anesthesiologist he (Jenkins) "...was positioned at the head of the table so he had one of the closest views of the head wound...believes he was '...the only one who knew the extent of the head wound.') (sic)...Regarding the head wound, Dr. Jenkins said that only one segment of bone was blown out--it was a segment of occipital or temporal bone. He noted that a portion of the cerebellum (lower rear brain) (sic) was hanging out from a hole in the right--rear of the head." (Emphasis added) (HSCA-V7:286-287) In an interview with the American Medical News published on 11-24-78 Jenkins said, "...(Kennedy) had part of his head blown away and part of his cerebellum was hanging out.".

Amazingly, in an interview with author Gerald Posner on March 3, 1992, Jenkins' recollection had changed dramatically. "The description of the cerebellum was my fault," Jenkins insisted, "When I read my report over I realized there could not be any cerebellum. The autopsy photo, with the rear of the head intact and a protrusion in the parietal region, is the way I remember it. I never did say occipital." (Gerald Posner, Case Closed", p. 312) Jenkins has obviously forgotten that in his own note prepared, typed, and signed on the day of the assassination, Jenkins said, "a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital) (sic)", and HSCA's Purdy reported that Jenkins said "occipital or temporal bone" was blown out.

When told by Posner that Robert McClelland, MD had claimed, "I saw a piece of cerebellum fall out on the stretcher." Jenkins responded, "Bob (McClelland) is an excellent surgeon. He knows anatomy. I hate to say Bob is mistaken, but that is clearly not right...". (Posner G. Case Closed. p. 313) Clearly, Jenkins had forgotten that he himself had claimed that "cerebellum was hanging out" (as had Ronald Coy Jones, MD--see below). [Might this controversy be resolved in Jenkins' and Jones' favors? Possibly Jenkins believes that cerebellum was 'hanging out' but that it had not reached the surface of the gurney despite the close proximity of the skull in the supine position to its surface?]

Jenkins, however, was not through with discrediting McClelland. To Posner, Jenkins explained how McClelland had made an error, which McClelland later corrected, that there was a wound in JFK's left temple. "I'll tell you how that happened," Jenkins explained, "When Bob McClelland came into the room, he asked me, 'Where are his wounds?' And at that time I was operating a breathing bag with my right hand, and was trying to take the President's temporal pulse, and I had my finger on his left temple. Bob thought I pointed to the left temple as the wound." (Gerald Posner, Case Closed". p. 313)Ignoring the absurdity of such a supposition for the moment, Jenkins failed to reveal an important part of the story. Jenkins failed to tell Posner,who was apparently too uninformed to know, that it was Jenkins himself who had most strikingly claimed that there was an entrance wound in the left temple, as Jenkins' Commission testimony (cited above) proves.

As we will see, Dr. Jenkins' faulty, and possibly self-serving memory seems to have frequently plagued him. It is a testament to JAMA's and Posner's laxity in fact-checking that Jenkins' recollections are so unquestioningly reported. Both Breo and Posner quickly attempted to discredit those who, like McClelland, did not share their biases, and ignored many stupendous inconsistencies of "allies", such as Jenkins (see next chapter). Nonetheless, Jenkins' earliest, "un-enhanced" recollections must be given greatest weight and considered the most likely to be reliable, as in any police investigation. Fortunately, they also agree with the earliest recollections of other Parkland witnesses, an important corroborative factor.

4) CHARLES JAMES CARRICO, MD: On the day of the assassination he hand wrote, " (the skull) wound had avulsed the calvarium and shredded brain tissue present with profuse oozing... attempts to control slow oozing from cerebral and cerebellar tissue via packs instituted..." (CE 392--WC V17:4-5)

In is first mention of JFK's skull wound to the Warren Commission on 3/25/64, Carrico said, "There seemed to be a 4 to 5 cm. area of avulsion of the scalp and the skull was fragmented and bleeding cerebral and cerebellar tissue." (6H3) And... "The (skull) wound that I saw was a large gaping wound, located in the right occipitoparietal area. I would estimate to be about 5 to 7 cm. in size, more or less circular, with avulsions of the calvarium and scalp tissue. As I stated before, I believe there was shredded macerated cerebral and cerebellar tissues both in the wounds and on the fragments of the skull attached to the dura." (6H6)

On 3/30/64 Carrico appeared again before the Commission. Arlen Specter asked, "Will you describe as specifically as you can the head wound which you have already mentioned briefly?" Dr. Carrico: "Sure. This was a 5 by 71 cm (sic--the author feels certain that Dr. Carrico must have said "5 by 7 cm) defect in the posterior skull, the occipital region. There was an absence of the calvarium or skull in this area, with shredded tissue, brain tissue present...". Specter: "Was any other wound observed on the head in addition to this large opening where the skull was absent?" Carrico: "No other wound on the head."(WC--V3:361)

In an interview with Andy Purdy for the HSCA on 1-11-78, Dr. Carrico said, "The skull wound" ...was a fairly large wound in the right side of the head, in the parietal, occipital area. (sic) One could see blood and brains, both cerebellum and cerebrum fragments in that wound." (sic) (HSCA-V7:268)

As with several other Parkland witnesses, Carrico's memory seemed to undergo a transformation when confronted by an interviewer who seems to have preferred he recall things differently than he did under oath. In an interview with author Gerald Posner on March 8, 1992, Posner alleges Carrico reported, "We saw a large hole on the right side of his head. I don't believe we saw any occipital bone. It was not there. It was parietal bone...". (Gerald Posner, " Case Closed , New York, Random House, p. 311) The notorious unreliability of recollections so different and so far removedfrom the original event places Carrico's more recent opinions under a cloud. It seems possible that Carrico has been persuaded that the photographs of the back of JFK's head have been "authenticated", a scientific impossibility, and therefore he should adjust accordingly his recollections to agree with this "best evidence".

5) MALCOLM PERRY, MD: In a note written at Parkland Hospital and dated, 11-22-63 Dr., Perry described the head wound as, "A large wound of the right posterior cranium..." (WC--V17:6--CE#392) Describing Kennedy's appearance to the Warren Commission's Arlen Specter Dr. Perry stated, "Yes, there was a large avulsive wound on the right posterior cranium...." (WC- V3:368) Later to Specter: "...I noted a large avulsive wound of the right parietal occipital area, in which both scalp and portions of skull were absent, and there was severe laceration of underlying brain tissue..." (WC--V3:372) In an interview with the HSCA's Andy Purdy in 1-11-78 Mr. Purdy reported that "Dr. Perry... believed the head wound was located on the "occipital parietal" (sic) region of the skull and that the right posterior aspect of the skull was missing..." (HSCA- V7:292-293) Perry told Mr. Purdy: "I looked at the head wound briefly by leaning over the table and noticed that the parietal occipital head wound was largely avulsive and there was visible brain tissue in the macard and some cerebellum seen..." (HSCA-V7:302-interview with Purdy 1-11-78.

Inexplicably, Perry told author Gerald Posner on April 2, 1992, "I did not see any cerebellum." (Gerald Posner, "Case Closed", p. 312) When told that Robert McClelland, MD had claimed "I saw cerebellum fall out on the stretcher", Posner claimed Perry responded, "I am astonished that Bob wound say that... It shows such poor judgment, and usually he has such good judgment."

6) RONALD COY JONES: was a senior General Surgery resident physician at Parkland Hospital. Under oath he told the Warren Commission's Arlen Specter, "...he had a large wound in the right posterior side of the head... There was large defect in the back side of the head as the President lay on the cart with what appeared to be some brain hanging out of this wound with multiple pieces of skull noted next with the brain and with a tremendous amount of clot and blood." (WC-V6:53-54) A few minutes later he described "what appeared to be an exit wound in the posterior portion of the skull". (Emphasis added throughout) (WC-V6:56)

Specter asked Jones to speculate from his observations the nature of JFK's wounding. He asked, "Dr. Jones, did you have any speculative thought as to accounting for the point of wounds (sic) which you observed on the President, as you thought about it when you were treating the President that day, or shortly thereafter?" Jones answered, "With no history as to the number of times that the President had been shot or knowing the direction from which he had been shot, and seeing he wound in the midline of the neck, and what appeared to be an exit wound in the posterior portion of the skull, the only speculation that I could have as far as to how this could occur with a single wound would be that it would enter the anterior neck and possibly strike a vertebral body and then change its course and exit in the region of the posterior portion of the head." (WC.V.6:56) While he then expressed some doubt that a high velocity bullet would so radically change course, JFK's skull wound must have appeared to him quite posterior for him to have advanced such an hypothesis.

It is particularly noteworthy that Jones continued to believe JFK's skull suggested a rear exit of a bullet that entered from anterior. In January, 1983 he told David Lifton, "If you brought him in here today, I'd still say he was shot from the front." (BE, p. 705) Jones told student, Brad Parker, on 8/10/92, again, "...if they brought him in today, I would tend - seeing what I saw, I would say that he was shot from the front." Jones told Parker that he fundamentally agreed with McClelland's drawing of the back of the head as seen in Six Seconds . Jones specifically denied to Parker that hehad seen a right anterior skull defect. He said, "Yeah. I didn't think that there was any wound -- I didn't appreciate any wound, anyway, in the right temporal area or the right side of the upper part of the head, you know, over the -- in front of the ear say, or anything like that ". These description are fully consistent with the autopsy report of a right rear defect. If the defect did extend forward, the anterior portion was quite small. Only Gerald Posner reported Jones described JFK's wound as "a large side wound". Posner made no mention of Jones' Warren Commission testimony, testimony which is incompatible with Posner's thesis, nor did Posner ask about the statements attributed to Jones by Lifton, which Jones repeated to Brad Parker in 1992).

7) GENE AIKIN, MD: an anesthesiologist at Parkland told the Warren Commission under oath, "The back of the right occipitalparietal portion of his head was shattered with brain substance extruding." (WC-V6:65.) He later opined, "I assume the right occipitalparietal region was the exit, so to speak, that he had probably been hit on the other side of the head, or at least tangentially in the back of the head...". (WC-V6:67)

😎 PAUL PETERS, MD: a resident physician at Parkland described the head wound to the Warren Commission's Arlen Specter under oath as, "...I noticed that there was a large defect in the occiput...It seemed to me that in the right occipitalparietal area that there was a large defect." (WC-V6:71)

Peters told author Lifton on 11-12-66, "I was trying to think how he could have had a hole in his neck and a hole in the occiput, and the only answer we could think (of) was perhaps the bullet had gone in through the front, hit the bony spinal column, and exited through the back of the head, since a wound of exit is always bigger than a wound of entry." (David Lifton, Best Evidence. p. 317) Peters repeated this speculation in a speech on the subject on 4/2/92, in a talk entitled, "Who Killed JFK?", given at the 14th annual meeting of the Wilk-Amite Medical Society, at Centreville Academy, Centreville, Mississippi, according to a transcript furnished by Claude B. Slaton, of Zachary, Louisiana.) As if to emphasize the low location of the skull wound, Peters elaborated to Lifton, "I'd be willing to swear that the wound was in the occiput, you know. I could see the occipital lobes clearly, and so I know it was that far back, on the skull. I could look inside the skull, and I thought it looked like the cerebellum was injured, or missing, because the occipital lobes seemed to rest almost on the foramen magnum. Now I didn't put my hand inside his head and lift up the occipital lobes, because I wasn't about to do that under the circumstances... (but it) looked like the occipital lobes were resting on the foramen magnum. It was as if something underneath them, that usually kept them up from that a little ways, namely, the cerebellum and brainstem, might have been injured, or missing." (David Lifton, Best Evidence, p. 324) Author Livingstone read Peters' words of description back to Peters asking for his comment. Peters, after hearing the above quote said, "Well, I would say that's pretty accurate about what I thought at the time. But Dr. Lattimer from New York who was privileged to view the autopsy findings told me that the cerebellum did appear to be intact. So, if I say, what I have reasoned since then is that probably what had happened was that part of the cerebral hemisphere had been shot away, which caused the occipital lobe, you see, to fall down. So rather than the props underneath it being destroyed, part of it was actually destroyed... You have to remember, I've been an American all this time, too. And so I'm subject to what I've learned from reading and looking since." (Transcript of Livingstone interview with Peters)

When shown enlarged Zapruder film frames depicting a right-anterior wound, Peters wrote, "The wound which you marked...I never saw and I don't think there was such a wound. I think that was simply an artifact of copying Zapruder's movie... The only wound I saw on President Kennedy's head was in the occipitoparietal area on the right side." (Personal letter to Wallace Milam 4-14-80, copy, courtesy of Wallace Milam to author Aguilar; also in Lifton, BE: 557)

Peters told author Livingstone that he and others closely examined JFK's skull wound. "...Dr. Jenkins commented that we'd better take a look at the brain before deciding whether to open the chest and to massage the heart with our hands, we stepped up and looked inside the skull and that's how I made note in my own mind of where the wound was in the skull." (Transcript of Livingstone interview with Peters. Peters repeated this assertion in a speech on the subject on 4/2/92, in a talk entitled, "Who Killed JFK?", given at the 14th annual meeting of the Wilk-Amite Medical Society, at Centreville Academy, Centreville, Mississippi, according to a transcript furnished by Claude B. Slaton, of Zachary, Louisiana.)

When shown by author Livingstone the HSCA's Dox drawings of the rear of JFK's skull prepared to precisely replicate the photographs, Peters claimed, "Well, this is an artist's drawing, and I don't think that it's consistent with what I saw... It's to, (sic) in the rear and to the side, that's the parietal area. So it's in the back and the side of the head, I would say in laymen's terms." To eliminate any confusion as to what Peters meant, Livingstone asked, "The way I read it (Lifton's question to Peters regarding the location of the head wound), you're saying that the center of the gaping wound that you did see was 2.5 centimeters to the right of the occipital protuberance." Peters answered, "Well, I wouldn't say that was the center of it (the skull wound he saw). I would say that was about where it began. Yeah." (Transcript of Livingstone interview with Paul Peters)

Author Gerald Posner claimed that on March 10, 1992, Peters told him, "The only thing I would say is that over the last twenty-eight years I now believe the head wound is more forward than I first placed it. More to the side than the rear. I tried to tell Lifton where the wound was, but he did not want to hear." (Posner, Case Closed", p. 310, paperback edition.) On April 2, 1992, Peters said, "...my observations were given earlier but they're still, I think, accurate after 25 years... The wound was occipital-parietal... I saw about a 7 centimeter hole in the occiput...". (Speech by Peters, "Who Killed JFK?", given at the 14th annual meeting of the Wilk-Amite Medical Society, at Centreville Academy, Centreville, Mississippi, according to a transcript furnished by Claude B. Slaton, of Zachary, Louisiana) While Posner seemed to wish to cast doubt on the manner Lifton represented Peters' opinions, it seems that Lifton's account was far more consistent with Peters' other statements than Posner's. Lifton still has a recording of his interview with Peters and told the author the statements Lifton cited were taken from Peters verbatim and in context.

In a speech to a gathering of Urologists in San Francisco in 1992, Peters demonstrated JFK's skull defect as he recalled it, on a human head for author Aguilar, placing the wound at the top rear portion of the skull, which, if the skull were a cube, involved the right rear corner--a location that has no defect in current autopsy photographs.

Peters apparently reported to author Gerald Posner on March 10 1992 that Robert McClelland, MD, who has steadfastly maintained the view that there was a rear skull wound of exit, was in error. "I don't think Bob McClelland was in the best place to see the head wound..." (Posner, Case Closed", p. 313) Robert McClelland, MD had diagramed a skull and indicated JFK's skull wound in the low rear portion of JFK's skull to author Thompson. Peters indicated on that same diagram complete agreement with the McClelland's low placement on 8-7-79 in a letter to author Livingstone. A copy of Peters' letter and diagram was produced in Groden and Livingstone's High Treason ". Peters' letter to author Livingstone reads in full:

"Dear Mr. Livingstone, "I have marked an "X" on the picture which more accurately depicts the wound, although neither is quite accurate in my opinion. There was a large hole in the back of the head through which one could see the brain. Sincerely, Paul C. Peters, MD"

Peters believed that the "X" marked the point of exit for the wound in the head. In an interview with author Livingstone, Peters referred to the "X" in the aforementioned diagram and said, "...the "X" is about where the wound was. The "X" does not imply that that wound is exactly correct. The "X" applies about where I thought the wound of exit was." (transcript of interview with Peters)

The "X" is marked squarely on the right rear portion of the skull parallel with a point just below the top of the ear. (See group of photographs following page 27 in Groden and Livingstone, High Treason", for a copy of the diagram and Peters' letter.) So Peters has done a complete about face after having discussed the case with Lattimer who convinced Peters that he did not see what he had repeatedly said he saw. Moreover, Peters felt confident enough in Latimer's opinion of what Peters had seen that he was willing to reproach McClelland for his refusal to alter his recollection to agree with Lattimer as Peters himself had done. Apparently suggestion from non-witness, Lattimer, has done wonders for Peters' memory of what he saw. It may not, however, have helped his credibility.

9) CHARLES CRENSHAW, MD: a resident physician at Parkland neither wrote his observations contemporaneously or was interviewed by the Warren Commission. He, with co-authors, Jess Hansen and Gary Shaw, recently published a book, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, " (Crenshaw, CA, Hansen, J, Shaw, G. ( JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, 1992, New York, Signet). Crenshaw has claimed both in his book and in public interviews that the President's head wound was posterior on the right side. In JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, he wrote, "I walked to the President's head to get a closer look. His entire right cerebral hemisphere appeared to be gone. It looked like a crater--an empty cavity. All I could see there was mangled, bloody tissue. From the damage I saw, there was no doubt in my mind that the bullet had entered his head through the front, and as it surgically passed through his cranium, the missile obliterated part of the temporal and all the parietal and occipital lobes before it lacerated the cerebellum." ( JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, p. 86)

The FBI interviewed Crenshaw July 22, 1992 and reported Crenshaw apparently did not like his own description of JFK's skull wound in JFK: Conspiracy of Silence Of the skull wound the FBI reported, "(Crenshaw said) The head wound was located at the back of the President's head and was the approximate size of Doctor CRENSHAW's (sic) fist. It extended from the approximate center of the skull in the back to just behind the right ear, utilizing a left to right orientation and from a position a couple of inches above the right ear to the approximate middle of the right ear utilizing a top to bottom orientation." (FBI file # 89A-DL-60165-99) The FBI also reported, "(Crenshaw's) description which indicates that the wound extended from the hairline back behind the ear and to the back of the head was 'poorly worded.' (sic) The correct description indicates that the wound was located entirely at the rear of the head behind the right ear." (FBI file # 89A-DL-60615-100.) While Crenshaw has been roundly criticized for having kept silent for so long, his observations regarding the head wound are consistent with the contemporaneous observations of others, especially those of Kemp Clark, MD, professor of Neurosurgery, who pronounced Kennedy dead. Crenshaw claimed to have kept quiet about his observations out of professional and personal fear of reprisals.

As will be seen Breo took great exception to Crenshaw's account. Author Gerald Posner dismissed Crenshaw with quotations from fellow Parkland physicians: Perry stated, "I feel sorry for him. I had thought of suing him, but when I saw him on television [promoting his book], (sic) my anger melted. He has to know that what he said is false, and he knows the rest of us know that. You have to pity him. What a way to end his career. His story is filled with half-truths and insinuations, and those of us who know him know he is desperate... He is a pitiful sight." Perry's excoriation of Crenshaw must, however, be considered in the context of his own egregious memory, and his own possible perjury before the Warren Commission. Perry, as will be discussed, denied under oath to the Warren Commission that he had made unequivocal statements to the press claiming the neck wound was a wound of entrance. He falsely accused the press of misrepresenting his comments when an exact transcript of his comments revealed that the press had accurately reported his unequivocal comments that the neck wound was a wound of entrance. Perry, to the author's knowledge, has never apologized to the press nor has he explained his untruthful testimony to the Commission. Moreover, as has been demonstrated, Perry seems to have adjusted his recollections to suit his questioner, whether Specter of the Warren Commission, or author, Posner.

10) CHARLES RUFUS BAXTER, MD: a resident physician at Parkland in a hand written note prepared on 11-22-63 and published in the Warren Report (p. 523) Baxter wrote, "...the right temporal and occipital bones were missing (emphasis added) and the brain was lying on the table..." (WR:523). Very oddly, as Wallace Milam pointed out to one of the authors (Aguilar), when asked to read his own hand written report into the record before the Warren Commission's Arlen Specter the words are recorded exactly as he wrote them, except for the above sentence. That sentence was recorded by the Warren Commission and reads "...the right temporal and parietal bones were missing. (emphasis added)...". (WC-V6:44) It is reasonable to assume that Baxter's original description of a more rearward wound is more reliable than his later testimony before Arlen Specter, who on more than one occasion tried to move the skull wound away from the rear. Baxter then described the head wound saying, "...literally the right side of his head had been blown off. With this and the observation that the cerebellum was present...." (WC-V6:41) Thus the wound he saw was more likely to have been "temporo-occipital" than "temporo-parietal", because he also recalled, "cerebellum was present". (WC-V6:41) Shortly later in the same interview he also said, "...the temporal and parietal bones were missing and the brain was lying on the table...." (WC-V6:44) The authors are unaware of any explanation for the discrepancies, and can only speculate that either Baxter was misquoted twice or he adjusted his testimony to conform with what he might have felt was wanted of him. The mystery was confounded when author Livingstone reported that Baxter described the skull wound as "...a large gaping wound in the occipital area." Livingstone also reported that "(Baxter) could not have been more clear when he rejected the official picture (showing the rear scalp intact)."(Groden & Livingstone, High Treason, 1989, New York, Berkley Books, p. 45)

Baxter's reliability has also been called into question for a comment attributed to him by Dennis Breo, staff writer for JAMA, and Gerald Posner. Baxter apparently supported Breo's suggestion that Charles Crenshaw, MD, author of the recent book, "Conspiracy of Silence", (Crenshaw, CA, Hansen, J, Shaw, G. JFK: Conspiracy of Silence. 1992, New York, Signet) was not in JFK's trauma room. JAMA wrote, "Most of those who know the facts express disgust at Crenshaw's actions and question if he was involved in the care of the President at all... None of the four (interviewed by Breo) recalls ever seeing him at the scene." (Breo, D. L., JAMA, 267:2804-2805). This claim was used by JAMA to support the Warren Commission's reconstruction of the event, and call into question Crenshaw's recollections of JFK's wounds published in his book--recollections that flatly contradicted the Commission's findings. In an interview with author Gerald Posner in 1992, Baxter said, "I don't either (remember that Crenshaw was present in JFK's trauma room)." (Posner, G. Case Closed, p. 312, paper version). Embarrassingly, before the Warren Commission's Arlen Specter, however, Baxter, under oath, listed the physicians present with him in the emergency room with JFK. The first physician he named was Charles Crenshaw. (WC- V6:40)

As if Baxter's credibility had not suffered enough, he reported to author Posner on March 12, 1992, "I never even saw the back of (JFK's) head. The wound was on the right side, not the back." (Posner, Case Closed, p. 312) Baxter would do well to read his own hand-written note, prepared on the day of the assassination, and reproduced legibly in the Warren Report, and read the transcripts of interviews he's given authors before allowing further interviews.

This fact will be explored again in the following chapter. In any case it seems that Baxter is either terribly unreliable or is often misquoted, as seem to be all of Breo's and Posner's "allies". McClelland, disparaged by the other Parkland witnesses used by Breo and Posner, is the only one of these witnesses whose opinion has not seemed to change with the wind.

11) ROBERT GROSSMAN, MD: had just joined the staff of Parkland at the time of the assassination as an Instructor in Neurosurgery. He never testified to the Warren Commission or the HSCA. Authors Groden and Livingstone, however, claim, "He (Grossman) said that he saw two large holes in the head, as he told the (Boston) Globe, and he described a large hole squarely in the occiput, far too large for a bullet entry wound...". (HT-I Groden and Livingstone, p. 51)-& also "Duffy & Ricci, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy--A Complete Book of Facts, p. 207-208.)

12) RICHARD BROOKS DULANEY, MD: was a first year general surgery resident at Parkland Hospital on the day of the assassination. He appeared before the Commission and claimed only, "...he had a large head wound---that was the first thing I noticed." Arlen Specter did not ask him to elaborate and Dulaney did not volunteer any additional details.(WC-V:114). As Groden and Livingston reported, however, Dulaney told journalist Ben Bradlee, Jr., "...Somebody lifted up his head and showed me the back of his head. We couldn't see much until they picked up his head. I was standing beside him. The wound was on the back of his head. On the back side" They lifted up the head and "the whole back-side was gone." (Groden R., Livingston, H., High Treason. 1989 New York, Berkley Books, p.460.)

13) ADOLPH GIESECKE, MD: an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Parkland in 1963 authored a typed summary of his care of Governor Connally on 11-25-63, Warren Commission "Gieske Exhibit #1", (WC-V20:5-7) in which he does not mention JFK's wounds. In Warren Commission testimony he described JFK's head wound as: "...from the vertex to the left ear, and from the brow line to the occiput on the left-hand side of the head the cranium was entirely missing." Specter surprised that Giesecke claimed the left side asked: "That's your recollection?" Giesecke answered: "Right, like I say, I was there a very short time--really." (WC-V:6:72-78) This is the only case of any witness mistaking which side the skull injuries were on. However, despite his error on the laterality, he claimed that the skull defect extended from the occiput to the front of the skull.

14) FOUAD BASHOUR, MD: an associate professor of medicine, cardiology, at Parkland at the time of the assassination. Groden and Livingstone reported, "He was most insistent that the official picture was not representative of the wounds, and he continually laid his hand both on the back of Livingstone's head and his own to show where the large hole was. 'Why do they cover it up?' he repeated numerous times. 'This is not the way it was!' he kept repeating, shaking his head no." (Groden & Livingston, H., High Treason. 1989 New York, Berkley Books, p.45)

15) KENNETH EVERETT SALYER, MD: was an intern at Parkland at the time of JFK's death. In a Warren Commission interview with Arlen Specter, Salyer stated, "...(JFK) had a wound of his right temporal region...I came in on the left side of him and noticed that his major wound seemed to be in his right temporal area, at least from the point of view that I could see him, and other than that--nothing other than he did have a gaping scalp wound-- cranial wound" (Warren Commission-V6:81) Salyer reported to author Aguilar that the wound was right sided but extended both posterior to and anterior to the ear. He repeated a claim made to Robert Groden that the photographs appeared to have been tampered with.

Note: Specter asked Salyer, "To what extent did Dr. Crenshaw participate?"

Salyer answered, "Dr. Crenshaw participated about the extent that I did. We were occupied in making sure an I. V. was going and hanging up a bottle of blood." Specter, "Is the--is Dr. Crenshaw a resident?" Salyer: "yes, he is a third-year resident. That's the reason I remember him specifically because we were sort of working there together on that." (Warren Commission, V6:81)

16) PAT HUTTON, RN: a nurse at Parkland who met the limousine and helped to wheel the President into Trauma Room 1 wrote a report soon after claiming, "Mr. Kennedy was bleeding profusely from a wound in the back of his head, and was lying there unresponsive." (Price Exhibit V21 H 216--Emphasis added). While helping with resuscitation efforts a physician asked her to apply a pressure dressing to the head wound, she observed, however, that, "This was no use, however, because of the massive opening in the back of the head." (IBID)

17) DORIS NELSON, RN: was a supervising nurse at Parkland. She was interviewed by Arlen Specter for the Warren Commission and she was neither asked or volunteered information regarding the nature of JFK's wounds. (WC-V6:143-147) As Groden and Livingstone reported, however, journalist Ben Bradlee, Jr. asked her, "Did you get a good look at his head injuries?" Nelson: "A very good look...When we wrapped him up and put him in the coffin. I saw his whole head." Asked about the accuracy of the HSCA autopsy photographs she reacted: "No. It's not true. Because there was no hair back there. There wasn't even hair back there. It was blown away. Some of his head was blown away and his brains were fallen down on the stretcher." (High Treason I. p. 454)

18) SECRET SERVICE AGENT WILLIAM GREER: described the President's wounds upon arrival at Parkland to Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission: "His head was all shot, this whole part was all a matter of blood like he had been hit." Specter, "Indicating the top and right rear side of the head?" Greer: "Yes, sir; it looked like that was all blown off."(WCV2:124)

19) SECRET SERVICE AGENT CLINT HILL: described the wounds he saw at Parkland as, "The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed...There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head." (WC--V2:141)

20) NURSE DIANA HAMILTON BOWRON: greeted the limousine with a stretcher. She claimed, "...the back of his head...well, it was very bad--you know..." Arlen Specter failed to elucidate what she meant by the "back of the head" being very bad. (emphasis added) (WC V6:136:) Within 48 hours of the assassination the British press relayed a second hand account from Bowron through her mother: "...there was blood all over this neck and shoulders. There was a gaping wound in the back of his head." (Livingstone, Killing the Truth , p. 180) Author Livingstone corresponded and spoke by phone with Bowron in 1993. He reported that Bowron claimed, "I first saw the large wound in the back of the head in the car. When we were preparing the body for the coffin I had the opportunity to examine it more closely. It was about five inches in diameter and there was no flap of skin covering it, just a fraction of skin along part of the edges of bone. There was, however, some hair hanging down from the top of the head, which was caked with blood, and most of the brain was missing. The wound was so large I could almost put my whole left fist inside." (Livingstone, Killing the Truth, p. 181) She also said, "...The hole was basically almost the size of a saucer, and sort of from the occiput. So there was quite a reasonable amount missing from the top as well." (Livingstone, Killing the Truth, p. 190) When asked her opinion of the nature of the defect in the rear of the skull, Bowron told Livingstone, "Well, to me it was an exit hole." (Livingstone, Killing the Truth, p. 192) Livingstone asked, "Did you see any entry hole in the back of the head?". "I assumed and I still do that that was an exit wound." Bowron answered. ( Killing the Truth , p. 195). Bowron prepared a drawing depicting the skull wound as she saw it for Livingstone which bears a striking similarity to the diagram of the wound prepared by Robert McClelland, MD and agreed to by Paul Peters, MD ( High Treason in group of images following p. 23 in hard cover edition.) It shows a defect squarely in the occiput on the right side; a second diagram depicting the skull from above shows the right rear quadrant of the skull absent with the notation "missing". (Killing the Truth,in images following p. 368)

21) WILLIAM MIDGETT, MD: an Obstetrics and Gynecology resident at Parkland greeted the President's limousine pushing a stretcher. In an interview with Wallace Milam on February 8, 1993, he described JFK's wound as "right parietal" and said it was behind the right ear.

22) DON T. CURTIS, D.D.S.: an oral surgery resident was mentioned in the Warren Report (p.66), but gave no account to the Commission regarding JFK's wounds. Pre-med student, Brad J. Parker, sent Curtis a copy of McClelland's drawing showing a large right-sided defect in the rear of JFK's skull to ask his opinion about it. On October 25, 1994, Curtis wrote Parker. His letter in full read: Dear Mr. Parker, The drawing by Dr. Robert McClelland is essentially by recollection of the wound suffered by John F. Kennedy. Please let me know if you need any further information. Best regards, Don T. Curtis, D.D.S.

 

Credit: Dr. Gary Aguilar

 

 

I am friends with Gary. Heck, I love the guy. But he is wrong about this, IMO. One of the things that sucked me down this particular rabbit hole was this very list--and John McAdams' response to this list. After careful study, I was shocked to find myself agreeing with McAdams more often than not. 

Ironically, moreover, I found myself in agreement with both Lifton and McAdams. You see, Gary's list was designed to show that NO alteration occurred between Parkland and Bethesda, and that a back-of-the-head blow-out was apparent in both locations. (Do you believe this? Most CTs convinced of a back of the head blow-out do not.) In any event, this runs against Lifton and Horne's theories the body was altered either en route to or at Bethesda Hospital. So Lifton hated this list. When discussing this list on this forum, moreover, I was forced to explain to James Fetzer that Aguilar had used his list to argue against the body alteration proposed by Lifton. Well, he quickly denounced Gary, and called him an unreliable idiot, or some such thing. Which led me to remind Fetzer that Aguliar had claimed as much in a book edited by...James Fetzer Well, this came as news to Fetzer, who apparently never read the articles in books published under his name. 

So, yes, I defended Lifton, in that I think that, absent spin, there is in fact a divide between what was supposedly observed in Dallas vs what was supposedly observed in Bethesda. Now I believe this divide was caused by groupthink on the part of the Parkland doctors, but that can not be proved, IMO. 

What can be proved, however, is that Lifton made some significant errors when coming to his conclusions. Primary among these is that Lifton arbitrarily dismissed ALL the Dealey Plaza witnesses who'd claimed to see a wound on the right side of the head. He refused to accept that Bill Newman's statements 20 minutes after the shooting carried more weight than what some nurse or doctor told David Lifton 25 years later. In fact, he said the Newmans' and Zapruder's statements carried no weight at all. (Keep in mind that Lifton believed the ONLY large head wound was low on the back of the head, and that NO shots were fired from behind.)

Anyhow, sorry about the rant. 

 

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7 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Baxter said he mistakenly wrote occipital, denounced Crenshaw, and never supported conspiracy theories holding that the autopsy photos were fakes and that the wound was on the back of the head. Jones specified numerous times that he didn't get a good look at the wound, and similarly never supported theories that the autopsy photos were fakes and that the wound was on the back of the head. You acknowledge that the doctors' accounts vary. Yes, they do. And yet the majority of them ended up denouncing conspiracy theories in which the autopsy photos were fakes. 

I just don't get it, to be honest. What is this desperation where people NEED the wound to be on the back of the head, when the doctors were inconsistent on this point, and largely deferred to the autopsy photos?

The primary doctors were Carrico, Perry, Clark, McClelland, Jenkins, Peters, Baxter, Salyer, and Jones. Correct? Maybe Midgett and a few others. In any case, despite the frequent claims these guys were all united on there being a blowout wound low on the back of the head, most of them would come to say they were mistaken or didn't get a good look, and that they really saw NOTHING to indicate this shot came from the front. They were not united, after all. In fact, they were far more united on another point--that they thought the autopsy photos were legit--than they were on there being a blow-out wound low on the back of the head. So why do so many people claiming to "support" or "defend" the Parkland witnesses, just ignore everything they had to say after that one report or one comment in which they said something that supported that the wound was low on the back of the head?

And no, it can't be that people believe their first statements are best and their latter-day statements are worthless, (because they are obviously scared or fibbing), because these same people who reject the latter-day statements of Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, and Baxter simultaneously embrace the latter-day statements of McClelland. 

I mean, if one is to engage in any consistency, one would have to realize that you can't have it both ways, and say McClelland made a mistake when he said the wound was "of the left temple" while simultaneously saying Baxter could not have been mistaken about occipital or Carrico could not have been mistaken about cerebellum. 

So, to refresh, we have a large part of the research community devoted to the premise the back of the wound was blown out--no matter what the doctors would later come to say--no matter what the Dealey Plaza witnesses observed--no matter what is shown on the assassination films--no matter what was seen later at Bethesda--no matter what was recorded on the autopsy photos and x-rays. They just know. It has to be. And why? Because they were told all this evidence support a single-assassin solution.

But, guess what, it doesn't. It never did. The vast majority of research into the "medical evidence" has been a red-herring. 

 

You dismiss the idea that they may have kept their mouths shut about the autopsy. That is your opinion. But if they did see the large exit wound it would be human nature to avoid direct accusations about the autopsy. They can still say what they believe they saw, but accusing the government of a coverup is a much greater matter. The fact is the large majority cited the O.C. as the wound location. Whether some recanted does not change the fact that most all of them placed it there. How did around 20 of them make the observation about it being in that area? Some higher and some lower but it is still unexplainable.

 "Baxter said he mistakenly wrote occipital, denounced Crenshaw, and never supported conspiracy theories holding that the autopsy photos were fakes and that the wound was on the back of the head. Jones specified numerous times that he didn't get a good look at the wound, and similarly never supported theories that the autopsy photos were fakes and that the wound was on the back of the head."

 Jones is a good example of a doctor who seems to be avoiding the controversy surrounding
 the autopsy. We can see him demonstrating the O.C. wound location yet he turns around and says he does not dispute the autopsy photos. Those two facts stand in stark contradiction and suggest he was not fully truthful about the autopsy. The wound was so obvious that even a quick look was enough to see the difference between parietal and occipital.  Baxter, the neurosurgeon, said occipital was missing on the same day he observed it. Same day accounts are considered the best evidence, that is widely accepted. Studies of witness accounts have born out that fact. And the fact that it was corroborated by so many staff
  So pointing to later statements in which they walked back some claims can be explained by their unwillingness to take on the government. It is supported by the fact that around 20 of the staff reported the O.C. as the wound location. 
  Carrico wrote O.C. on the same day and then again under oath at the WC, and again, under oath, at the HSCA. Then some 20 years on he flips. But skeptics accept his flipping because it supports their stance. That shows a very strong bias. Clark did not flip and he held the head in his hands as he inspected the wound. Then made the monumental decision to stop resuscitation based on his very close look. It is absurd to discount such opinions. 20+ staff reporting the O.C. wound is overwhelmingly strong evidence with no valid explanation regardless of what some said in latter years. 

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7 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Sorry, Chris. You are simply incorrect. If you study the statements of the doctors you will find that that basically all of them refused to join the evidence is fake bandwagon. Heck, even McClelland said he thought the autopsy photos were legit. (He thought sagging scalp was pulled up to conceal some of the large head wound.) This idea they were united in describing a "back of the head' blow-out at odds with the autopsy evidence is a canard, essentially a hoax. I remember watching Groden at a 2013 conference in which he claimed he now had 89- I think it was--witnesses stating the back of the head was blown out. People (and by people I mean the top experts on the medical evidence) looked around in confusion and/or rolled their eyes. It was a fabrication. A hoax. And most everyone there knew it. 

Now, a much more valid argument has to do with the throat wound. As I recall, every doctor at Parkland who saw the throat wound described a wound too small to be an exit for a high-velocity bullet. A number of them even put this in their testimony. On this point, moreover, JFK's primary physician at Parkland, Perry, never backtracked. 

If THIS had been the focus of the research community, instead of the possibility of a back of the head blow-out, the doctors would have given their unanimous support, IMO, and the single-bullet theory would have been destroyed. I mean, just think of it. In recent years, several members of the Secret Service have broken their silence, and have all said the single-bullet theory was garbage. Yes, even Clint Hill. Well, if you added the Parkland doctors onto this--who we should recall were the only doctors to see the throat wound--then even the mainstream media would have to notice. The single-bullet theory would have been given a public death. But no, the doctors were pestered into hiding by the likes of Livingstone and Lifton. And here we are. 

"Sorry, Chris. You are simply incorrect. If you study the statements of the doctors you will find that that basically all of them refused to join the evidence is fake bandwagon. Heck, even McClelland said he thought the autopsy photos were legit. (He thought sagging scalp was pulled up to conceal some of the large head wound.)"

 So again, there is good reason to consider that they were unwilling to speak directly against the autopsy. It is the majority locating the wound in the O.C. that is the issue.
  Using McClelland's speculation about the scalp being pulled up over the wound is 
disingenuous since he still maintained there was a large defeat in the O.C.. The observation of that large defect is supported by his own words in that clip from the archives.
"
scalp was pulled up to conceal some of the large head wound.)". Some? You mean the large defect in the O.C that the autopsy X-rays don't show. 
  The issue is the 
discrepancy of the autopsy vs the accounts from Parkland, not the throat wound. Those discrepancies have no solid explanation. I don't want to just repeat what others likely addressed in their recent response to your argument. I did not read them prior to my posts today. But we have all been over it many times and the skeptics case is, imo, a house of cards. 

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1 hour ago, Chris Bristow said:

You dismiss the idea that they may have kept their mouths shut about the autopsy. That is your opinion. But if they did see the large exit wound it would be human nature to avoid direct accusations about the autopsy. They can still say what they believe they saw, but accusing the government of a coverup is a much greater matter. The fact is the large majority cited the O.C. as the wound location. Whether some recanted does not change the fact that most all of them placed it there. How did around 20 of them make the observation about it being in that area? Some higher and some lower but it is still unexplainable.

 "Baxter said he mistakenly wrote occipital, denounced Crenshaw, and never supported conspiracy theories holding that the autopsy photos were fakes and that the wound was on the back of the head. Jones specified numerous times that he didn't get a good look at the wound, and similarly never supported theories that the autopsy photos were fakes and that the wound was on the back of the head."

 Jones is a good example of a doctor who seems to be avoiding the controversy surrounding
 the autopsy. We can see him demonstrating the O.C. wound location yet he turns around and says he does not dispute the autopsy photos. Those two facts stand in stark contradiction and suggest he was not fully truthful about the autopsy. The wound was so obvious that even a quick look was enough to see the difference between parietal and occipital.  Baxter, the neurosurgeon, said occipital was missing on the same day he observed it. Same day accounts are considered the best evidence, that is widely accepted. Studies of witness accounts have born out that fact. And the fact that it was corroborated by so many staff
  So pointing to later statements in which they walked back some claims can be explained by their unwillingness to take on the government. It is supported by the fact that around 20 of the staff reported the O.C. as the wound location. 
  Carrico wrote O.C. on the same day and then again under oath at the WC, and again, under oath, at the HSCA. Then some 20 years on he flips. But skeptics accept his flipping because it supports their stance. That shows a very strong bias. Clark did not flip and he held the head in his hands as he inspected the wound. Then made the monumental decision to stop resuscitation based on his very close look. It is absurd to discount such opinions. 20+ staff reporting the O.C. wound is overwhelmingly strong evidence with no valid explanation regardless of what some said in latter years. 

It's not so much a matter of accepting vs not accepting, IMO, as it is supporting vs not supporting. The CT community claims they "support" the Parkland witnesses, but they think the prime witnesses--Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, Baxter, Jones, even Clark--are XXXXX. I admit it, I find this troubling. You can't say you support someone because you liked what they wrote 60 years ago when they have since said what they wrote was in error. 

That is why I asked McClelland the question I asked him. I knew how he would describe the wounds etc, but I wanted to know if he felt his colleagues were lying when they said they were mistaken. He vehemently denied this. He said no one had pressured him to changed his impressions. Period. 

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14 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

I am friends with Gary. Heck, I love the guy. But he is wrong about this, IMO. One of the things that sucked me down this particular rabbit hole was this very list--and John McAdams' response to this list. After careful study, I was shocked to find myself agreeing with McAdams more often than not. 

Ironically, moreover, I found myself in agreement with both Lifton and McAdams. You see, Gary's list was designed to show that NO alteration occurred between Parkland and Bethesda, and that a back-of-the-head blow-out was apparent in both locations. (Do you believe this? Most CTs convinced of a back of the head blow-out do not.) In any event, this runs against Lifton and Horne's theories the body was altered either en route to or at Bethesda Hospital. So Lifton hated this list. When discussing this list on this forum, moreover, I was forced to explain to James Fetzer that Aguilar had used his list to argue against the body alteration proposed by Lifton. Well, he quickly denounced Gary, and called him an unreliable idiot, or some such thing. Which led me to remind Fetzer that Aguliar had claimed as much in a book edited by...James Fetzer Well, this came as news to Fetzer, who apparently never read the articles in books published under his name. 

So, yes, I defended Lifton, in that I think that, absent spin, there is in fact a divide between what was supposedly observed in Dallas vs what was supposedly observed in Bethesda. Now I believe this divide was caused by groupthink on the part of the Parkland doctors, but that can not be proved, IMO. 

What can be proved, however, is that Lifton made some significant errors when coming to his conclusions. Primary among these is that Lifton arbitrarily dismissed ALL the Dealey Plaza witnesses who'd claimed to see a wound on the right side of the head. He refused to accept that Bill Newman's statements 20 minutes after the shooting carried more weight than what some nurse or doctor told David Lifton 25 years later. In fact, he said the Newmans' and Zapruder's statements carried no weight at all. (Keep in mind that Lifton believed the ONLY large head wound was low on the back of the head, and that NO shots were fired from behind.)

Anyhow, sorry about the rant.

 

Nothing in what you write here is relevant to my use of Dr. Aguilar's list to refute what you say regarding the blowout wound on Kennedy's head. What Dr. Aguilar's list shows is that, early on, before doctors had a chance to be influenced by external forces, it was nearly unanimous among the Parkland doctors that there was a large wound of the right side of the BACK of the head.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

It's not so much a matter of accepting vs not accepting, IMO, as it is supporting vs not supporting. The CT community claims they "support" the Parkland witnesses, but they think the prime witnesses--Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, Baxter, Jones, even Clark--are XXXXX. I admit it, I find this troubling. You can't say you support someone because you liked what they wrote 60 years ago when they have since said what they wrote was in error. 

That is why I asked McClelland the question I asked him. I knew how he would describe the wounds etc, but I wanted to know if he felt his colleagues were lying when they said they were mistaken. He vehemently denied this. He said no one had pressured him to changed his impressions. Period. 

As I said earlier neither McClelland nor any others had to be pressured. The writing was on the wall. Claiming there was a coverup pits you against the powers that be. That is enough for any discerning person to decide not to continue talking about what they personally know to be true. Take Dr Crenshaw's case. He was attacked in the Journal of American Medical Associations. They went as far as to say, (paraphrased) "We can't prove a negative but we don't know if Crenshaw was even in the room that day". Who needs that? Anyone would see it could be dangerous to speak out as you might be publicly attacked  and ridiculed on a personal level. Their outlandish claim was easily disproved because 3 staff testified he was in the room. And Baxter was one of them!  Baxter himself confirming Crenshaw's presence  illustrates how boldly they would lie or not bother to research their attacks. That alone is reason to stop talking or maybe even recant.
   Which CT's attacked Clark and why?

  Carrico's recanting is an example of why we might doubt their motives. He waits 20 years and then says he didn't take those reports that seriously in those days. What? It was the president who had been gunned down that day, but he just writes O.C. cause it is not that serious a matter? come on. He says it had been 1/2 hour or an hour since he saw the body. So he just fills in the blanks with a guess. Seriously? He has a chance to correct the story when testifying under oath in 64' but doubles down. He triples down in 78' to the HSCA. The whole thing stinks. But people jump on board when he recants and take his word. He lied under oath twice. His credibility is close to zero! A lawyer on cross would eat him alive but the Parkland apologists eat it up. 

You have talked about McClelland's report and him saying "Left temple". If you accept that other doctors got it wrong on 11/22 is it not possible that McClelland just made a similar mistake?  Can you point me to the report McClelland wrote in which he said "Left temple". Is it still available? 
  And who was the journalist who said McClelland told him he had no reason to believe there was a shot from the front? Can we consider that the journalist's recounting could be wrong?
  Personally I have to consider that "The writing on the wall" is a possible explanation for why she doctors changed their story.   When you have a witness changing their story you have to weigh out both sides and I have yet to see an explanation for the Parkland witnesses that isn't on shaky ground.  It shows that the Parkland apologist's case is, imo, a house of cards.


   

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5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Nothing in what you write here is relevant to my use of Dr. Aguilar's list to refute what you say regarding the blowout wound on Kennedy's head. What Dr. Aguilar's list shows is that, early on, before doctors had a chance to be influenced by external forces, it was nearly unanimous among the Parkland doctors that there was a large wound of the right side of the BACK of the head.

 

 

A point and a question. 

1. Gary's list was cherry-picked to make the case there was a similar blow-out wound viewed at both Parkland and Bethesda. It was essentially a legal brief, designed to both shut down Lifton and his followers and simplify the case for newbies. While provocative, it is by no means authoritative. He avoided a lot of contrary evidence or evidence that should have made him question the credibility of the witness. For example, he failed to mention that McClelland originally claimed the wound was of the left temple. For another example, he presented David Naro's claim he spoke to Clark, without mentioning that Naro--a complete stranger to the research community--appeared and disappeared as quick as lightning and had nothing to back up his claims, and not only that, but that we have reason to doubt his claims. Clark, after all, had become friends with Lattimer, and had assisted Lattimer in his book claiming Oswald acted alone. Well, it's hard to reconcile that with his telling some stranger the back of the head was blown out and the autopsy photos are fakes or whatever. It would be like some guy on the street coming up to you and saying Rudy Giuliani had confided in him that Trump knew for certain the election was on the up and up. It may be true. But should you quote him on that? I think not. 

2. To be clear, do you accept Gary's argument there was no body alteration, or not? And, if not, is it safe to say you cherry-picked his already cherry picked statements to make an argument he would disagree with? 

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4 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

Personally I have to consider that "The writing on the wall" is a possible explanation for why she doctors changed their story.   When you have a witness changing their story you have to weigh out both sides and I have yet to see an explanation for the Parkland witnesses that isn't on shaky ground.  It shows that the Parkland apologist's case is, imo, a house of cards.

I find your logic quite persuasive.  It's the perfect strategy for the doctors to avoid getting caught between their own observations and the overwhelming power of the government's position.  Simply roll over and not dispute them.

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On 9/28/2023 at 6:15 PM, Micah Mileto said:

When Nurse Audrey Bell was interviewed by the HSCA in 1977, the record does not show her mentioning anything about seeing JFK's body. Beginning in the 80's, Bell would proceed to tell researchers that she was in Trauma Room One and that Dr. Perry or another doctor turned Kennedy's head to show her the extent of the large head wound. Many have been under the false impression that Bell never talked about being in Trauma Room One until the 1980's. A lucky Google search from me revealed a November 1967 paper authored by Bell herself, published in the journal of the Association of Operative Registered Nurses. The paper, titled Forty-Eight Hours and Thirty-One Minutes, reads: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001209208700474

Time stood still for us. It is nearly impossible to recall all that took place and all that was done in such a short period. When I reached the emergency elevator, I found that it was in the basement. Still in my street clothes and high heels, which almost sent me sprawling, I took the stairs and cut through the X-ray Department. At the door of the Emergency Suite, the administrator grasped my arm and it was a moment or two before she recognized me in the street clothes. "The President?" I breathed. "Go see what you can do, Audrey," she replied. "In Emergency Room One."  

Three Doctors and two nurses surrounded John F. Kennedy. They were working with mechanical precision. One nurse, Mrs. Hutton, was adjusting the IPPB unit. She asked for assistance. I turned on the oxygen at the wall outlet. The machine started working and was connected to the endotracheal tube.    

I helped cut the President's shirt from his right arm, and positioned the tracheotomy tray for Dr. Perry.   

It was then that I saw the massive head wound. Even though the prospect of surgery-after viewing the proportions of the wound and the general condition of the President-was improbable, I rushed off in search of a telephone to call the Operating Room. [...][...]

ALMOST FOUR YEARS have elapsed since November 22, 1963. In those years I have tried to identify some of the emotions I experienced during the days that followed the tragedy. The first feeling I had is probably one shared by most other Americans: a feeling of disbelief, a refusal to believe that such a thing could happen-only, my feeling was perhaps all the more severe because of my close personal involvement. In fact, the shock was so great that I actually had temporary amnesia during the time. I could remember nothing of what had happened in the weeks prior to the horrible event.      

Even today, my memory of what happened in the hospital during the days ensuing the tragedy, is vague and unclear. Time was a continuum with no stops, no differentiation between hour and hour, day and day. 

The human mind is peculiar in the way it reacts to great stress. When the pressure becomes too great to bear, for a consciousness to focus upon something, the mind invents an escape. It was long after the tragedy that I realized how absurd many of the things I was thinking were, under the conditions.  

Perhaps the first thing that struck me when I saw President Kennedy on the Emergency Room table, fatally wounded, was that he was such a tall man-too tall, I reflected, for his feet were overhanging the end of the table. I was surprised, too, at seeing him wearing a blue and white pinstriped shirt-I had always pictured the President as wearing only white. When I helped cut the shirt away from his arm, I recall trying to cut it up the seams, to save it from further damage. The tragi-comic nature of that notion was far from my feverish mind at the time. Perhaps, too, after seeing the wound , I secretly knew that our efforts would be futile, and I wanted to do something more, anything, to help.        

I also hazily recall seeing a lady in a pink dress-a blood-spattered pink dress-standing close to the President in the Emergency Room. Some moments went by before I realized that she was Jacqueline Kennedy. She seemed quite composed . I know, though, that the composure resulted from shock. She was stunned. Later, in retrospect, I thought Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connally were probably the only two self-contained persons I saw on that day.     

I know that I shall carry the trauma of that experience with me for the rest of my life. I hope and pray no one else will ever have to undergo a similar experience. The intervening years have served to ameliorate the shock. They have not dulled the pain.

And let's remember that Nurse Bell insisted that the fragments removed from Connally's wrist were not merely flakes but were identifiable pieces of metal anywhere from 3 to 4 mm in length by 2 mm wide. She never wavered from this account. 

But WC apologists must reject her testimony because it destroys the single-bullet theory. 

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16 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

 

 

Perry wouldn't need to have directly seen an extra bullet to have knowledge of a cover-up. In Perry's WC testimony, he alluded to the chest tube discrepancy. He actually commented on the chest tubes more than a couple of times through the years. He said that he thought the autopsy report was wrong on the tubes. Although, he probably could've only known that information by 1964, not the hours or days within the event.

Edited by Micah Mileto
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5 hours ago, Paul Bacon said:

I find your logic quite persuasive.  It's the perfect strategy for the doctors to avoid getting caught between their own observations and the overwhelming power of the government's position.  Simply roll over and not dispute them.

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Edited by Michael Crane
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5 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

And let's remember that Nurse Bell insisted that the fragments removed from Connally's wrist were not merely flakes but were identifiable pieces of metal anywhere from 3 to 4 mm in length by 2 mm wide. She never wavered from this account. 

But WC apologists must reject her testimony because it destroys the single-bullet theory. 

I guess you didn't read Bell's article, or my posts in response. It turns out that in a section excised by Micah in his first post (presumably because it didn't deal with the head wounds) Bell mentioned giving a fragment (singular) to a Department of Public Safety officer. I believe this is the official story. Years later she told the HSCA there were multiple fragments and that she gave them to the FBI, which led numerous writers and researchers to  ooh and ahh and assume there was some mass cover-up of the "real" fragments...perhaps because they were too numerous to have come from CE 399. 

This made her a CT darling. 

Well, years after that, she was contacted by the ARRB. And she now shares a story about Perry showing her the head wound, and it's being low on the back of the head. 

While the 1968 article by Bell should cause one to doubt the position first shared with me by Lifton (that she was never even in Trauma Room One) it undoubtedly damages her credibility in other ways. To the extent even that one seriously interested in the truth should avoid listing her among important witnesses. 

I mean, I ended up concluding the back of the head wound described by most researchers is nonsense. But it's not as if there are only a few reasons to believe there was such a wound. We have Clark, first and foremost. And the supporting cast. As has been argued in this thread, one can conclude those stating the wound was not on the far back of the head (Giesecke, Salyer) were mistaken and those claiming they were mistaken when they said it was on the far back of the head  (Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, Baxter, Jones) were pressured to do so. I don't buy it. But one is not insane to do so. 

Adding the likes of Crenshaw and even McClelland into the mix--people who didn't come forward for decades or who changed their stories after their initial reports--and then appeared to revel in the attention, is questionable to begin with. But relying on Bell--who had no support for her story to begin with--and who it now turns out had written an article within a few years of the assassination that was in direct opposition to her subsequent claims regarding the fragments--well, that's just self-defeating, and fodder for a future Litwin article. 

 

 

Edited by Pat Speer
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