Can this really be true?

[Pat Speer]

1 minute ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Well, as long as we are talking...

 

Blakey also asked to Connally's scar on his back, which was large, and concluded that was because the bullet that struck Connally had tumbled. 

1. The bullet hole in JBC's assassination-day shirt is small and round, just large enough for a direct hit, non-tumbling hit.

2. JBC's surgeon told everyone he "debrided" or enlarged the wound to cut away dead flesh, standard procedure. Hence a larger wound, as would be expected. 

3. JBC's surgeon thought the original oval wound resulted from a straight shot from above. 

4. JBC's surgeon also thought JBC's wrist wound was unlikely to have been caused by the same bullet that passed through JBC. The bullet entered JBC's wrist from the wristwatch side. It hard to hold your wrist so your wristwatch can face your chest. 

BTW, Shaw, JBC's surgeon, had handled something like 700 wartime bullet wounds in WWII. 

I have never been able to reason why Blakey was so wrong on this. 

I do not sense he was corrupt. Neither does he seem a dullard. 

My weak explanation is that at that time and place, to be a JFKA buff or CT'er was akin to believing in UFOs or astrology. 

Establishment Washington has very strong conventions or orthodoxy, to this day. 

 

A couple of points. 

Baden wrote a memo on Connally's scar. But when he wrote about it in his book he increased the size of the scar from the size recorded in his own memo. It seems clear then he was all in on the SBT, and was willing to tell bald-faced lies to support it.

Blakey, on the other hand... Blakey was determined to use science to solve the case. Among the first "sciency" tests performed for the HSCA was Guinn's NAA analysis. Tellingly, Baden and the FPP went into the archives just a few days after Guinn gave Blakey his results. It seems obvious then that Guinn's analysis fooled Blakey into thinking he had hard evidence to support the SBT, and that the FPP was asked to confirm Guinn's analysis. (Baden even cites Guinn in his book.)

[Benjamin Cole]

47 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

A couple of points. 

Baden wrote a memo on Connally's scar. But when he wrote about it in his book he increased the size of the scar from the size recorded in his own memo. It seems clear then he was all in on the SBT, and was willing to tell bald-faced lies to support it.

Blakey, on the other hand... Blakey was determined to use science to solve the case. Among the first "sciency" tests performed for the HSCA was Guinn's NAA analysis. Tellingly, Baden and the FPP went into the archives just a few days after Guinn gave Blakey his results. It seems obvious then that Guinn's analysis fooled Blakey into thinking he had hard evidence to support the SBT, and that the FPP was asked to confirm Guinn's analysis. (Baden even cites Guinn in his book.)

Baden is another one with jaw-dropping mistakes, with even less justification.  

A lawyer is a lawyer, but this was supposed to be Baden's bailiwick. 

A forensic pathologist who does not check bullet holes in clothing---and thus does not realize there is small round entry bullet hole in the rear of JBC's suit and shirt?

Who then (as you say) casually expands the reported size of even the debrided wound? 

How to explain? Corruption? Fear? 

Were HSCA fees low or this was pro bono work, so Baden just phoned it in? 

 

 

 

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Baden is another one with jaw-dropping mistakes, with even less justification.  

A lawyer is a lawyer, but this was supposed to be Baden's bailiwick. 

A forensic pathologist who does not check bullet holes in clothing---and thus does not realize there is small round entry bullet hole in the rear of JBC's suit and shirt?

Who then (as you say) casually expands the reported size of even the debrided wound? 

How to explain? Corruption? Fear? 

Were HSCA fees low or this was pro bono work, so Baden just phoned it in? 

 

 

 

When I was researching the HSCA's medical panel, I found an interview with Spitz in which he complained about how little they were paid. Baden, as the honcho, was certainly paid a lot more, but still not a lot. He did use his role as a launching pad for a career as a gun for hire and TV personality. So in the long run he must have made millions from his exposure on the HSCA. 

P.S. I have a section on Baden in Chapter 13b, in which I critique a dozen or so of his interviews and articles on the assassination. Here is the section regarding his book: Unnatural Death. 

Baden's Reign of Error 1989

In his first book, Unnatural Death, published 1989, Dr. Baden presented a chapter on the Kennedy assassination. One might think that Dr. Baden, concerned about his reputation, would be sure to make his book as accurate as possible, and review the reports and findings of the House Select Committee before committing his thoughts for posterity. But one would be wrong.Among Baden’s claims:

• 1. Those who believe the back-and-to-the-left movement of Kennedy's head after frame 313 indicates the shot came from the front are mistaken because "They left out of their calculations the acceleration of the car Kennedy was riding in. Beyond that, the body simply does not react that way. The force of the bullet would just as likely cause Kennedy's head to move forward as backward. It's not predictable." (A quick look at the Zapruder and Nix films shows that the acceleration of the limousine came after the back-and-to the-left movement of the President’s head. This is not just the opinion of conspiracy theorists. Dr. John Lattimer noted as much in his 1976 article in Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics. In addition, Baden's claim that the movement of a head is unpredictable is either something he just made up because it sounded good...or was a misrepresentation of Dr. Olivier's testimony for the Rockefeller Commission, in which he claimed that the direction in which a goat's body fell after being shot in the head is unpredictable.)

  2. "No forensic pathologist has ever examined the body of the President." (As we've seen, one of the three doctors performing Kennedy's autopsy, Colonel Pierre Finck, was a licensed forensic pathologist on November 22, 1963.)

  3. "Colonel Finck, it turned out, had never done an autopsy involving a gunshot wound, either." (As we've seen, Dr. Finck testified about his prior experience on 3-11-78. As a direct response to a question from Dr. Baden, Finck said he'd performed autopsies on gunshot wound victims prior to 1959. Apparently, Dr. Baden didn't note his answer.)

  4. "The FBI photographer, who had clearance, was in the same quandary as Humes. He had never taken autopsy pictures before and was untrained in photographing gunshot wounds." (As previously discussed, John Stringer, the actual photographer, was a civilian working for the Navy, and had been Bethesda Naval Hospital’s chief autopsy photographer for years. His work had been featured in textbooks.)

1. "The Kennedy head bullet was found on the floor of Kennedy's car in front. It had struck the windshield strut and broken in two." (Since bullet fragments are smaller and lose their energy much more rapidly than intact bullets, it seems doubtful that two fragments of a bullet breaking up upon entrance on the back of the skull would traverse the skull and exit with the force necessary to crack a windshield and dent a windshield strut. This is in keeping, moreover, with the report of Baden's pathology panel, which observed that the large defect apparent at the supposed exit suggested the exit of a fragment the combined size of the recovered fragments. So it's not exactly surprising that Baden would try and claim the bullet exited intact and broke up after striking the windshield strut. The problem, as discussed above, is that HE SHOULD KNOW THIS ISN'T TRUE. Not only does he overlook that a fragment struck and cracked the windshield in addition to the strut, but he ignores that the two fragments found in the front seat were the nose and base of the bullet, and that they comprised only about half of the bullet. As much of the middle of this bullet was supposedly left in the skull, including the “slice” of bullet seen on the x-rays and interpreted by Baden and his panel to be on the back of the head by the bullet's entrance, it follows then like night from day that these fragments exited separately and did not break in two upon impact with the windshield strut. Baden's pretending that it did and that the "slice" just fell out the back of the bullet and clung to the back of the skull is bizarre beyond belief.)

2. Dr. Humes burned his notes on November 23, the day after the shooting, before talking to Dr. Perry and finding out the tracheotomy incision had been cut through a bullet wound, and before starting work on the autopsy report. (This may be Baden's most egregious "mistake." Its existence reveals that as early as 1989 he was looking for ways to explain to his readers how Humes could be so mistaken about the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head--and that he was willing to make stuff up to do this. There is simply no evidence supporting Baden's version of these events. Humes testified before the Warren Commission that he called Dr. Perry on the morning of the 23rd, began working on the autopsy report later that evening, and burned his notes the next day. He repeated this testimony, moreover, to Baden himself, when meeting with members of Baden's panel on 9-16-77. Shame, shame, shame.)

   1. The Cortisone that Kennedy was taking for his Addison’s disease "causes odd fat deposits--an upper back hump, full cheeks. Kennedy had them both, but Addison's disease is not mentioned in the autopsy report." (As discussed, the "back hump" or "hunchback" story is a disgusting fairy tale started by Dr. Lattimer to help explain how a descending bullet could enter Kennedy’s shirt and jacket inches below his shirt collar and still exit from his throat.)

   2. “Perhaps the most egregious error was the four-inch miscalculation. The head is only five inches long from crown to neck, but Humes was confused by a little piece of brain tissue that had adhered to the scalp. He placed the head wound four inches lower than it actually was, near the neck instead of the cowlick.” (This, of course, is nonsense. Baden must have known that Dr.s Humes and Boswell didn't just observe this wound on the scalp, but on the skull after the scalp had been peeled back. He also would have to have known their observation was confirmed by Dr. Pierre Finck, arriving after the beginning of the autopsy. He also should have known their "too low" location was confirmed by several other witnesses to the autopsy, including autopsy photographer John Stringer. His attempt, then, to make this "egregious error" appear to be the error of one man, and not many, and his failure to tell his readers that these witnesses verified this location numerous times, can only be viewed as deceptive.)

   3. "For the head wound, we enhanced the x-rays and saw the entrance perforation on top of the cowlick." (This would be news to the HSCA's radiology consultants, Dr.s McDonnell and Davis. Neither of them noted such an entrance in their reports. While they both concluded there was an entrance in this location, they did so based upon their observation of fractures and fragments in the area, NOT because they saw an entrance perforation. This distinction is an important one that Baden should not have forgotten.)

   4. That when inspecting the photos of the head wound "Pictures of the wound yielded more when viewed through a stereopticon. In three dimensions they showed the oblique lines (beveling) on the bone in the back of the skull that an entering bullet makes." (As discussed, this was never mentioned in Baden's testimony before the HSCA. It was mentioned but not demonstrated in his panel's report. Despite plentiful opportunities, no one has demonstrated it in all the years since. It is probably nonsense.)

   5. That they "reconstructed the exit wound at the throat (Note: he means skull) from X rays of the skull and skull fragments and photographs of a single piece of bone which came to be called the Nieman-Marcus fragment. Three skull fragments had been retrieved from the limousine, brought to Washington, X-rayed, and later vanished. The fourth, measuring about two by one and a half inches, was found a few days after the autopsy by a premed student walking his dog in Dealey Plaza, where the shots were fired. He took it home to his father, a doctor, who knew what it was and had it photographed. At a party the photographer couldn't resist talking about it, and the story got back to the FBI. Agents swooped down on the premed student, who was saving the fragment as a souvenir. He had it wrapped in a piece of cotton in a Nieman-Marcus box. It later disappeared from the archive, along with the other fragments, but the photographs of it were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." (This is just embarrassing. It shows both how little Baden knows about the assassination, and how willing he is to spew the nonsense he thinks he knows. First of all, of the three skull fragments x-rayed in Washington, only one was found in the limousine, the other two were found in the street. Second of all, no one called the fourth fragment the "Nieman-Marcus fragment"; it was called the Harper fragment, after Billy Harper, the student who found it while taking photographs in Dealey Plaza, not walking his dog as claimed by Baden, and not a few days after the shooting as claimed by Baden, but the day after. Third of all, the doctor to whom Harper gave the fragment, and who had it photographed, was his uncle, not his dad. Fourth, after visiting the hospital on November 25, Harper visited the FBI, and gave them the fragment; he did not try to hold onto the fragment as a souvenir, and no one swooped in to grab the box containing the fragment from him. Fifth, none of the four fragments Baden mentions disappeared from the archives. The three fragments x-rayed in Washington are believed to have been buried with the body, and the Harper fragment was last known to have been in the possession of Kennedy's doctor, Dr. George Burkley. And, finally, sixth, Baden claims the photos of the fragment "were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." Presumably, he means accurately reconstructing the skull. Well, in such case, why didn't he? Why did he, instead, pretend this over 2 inch long fragment fit into a gap on the side of the head that was not discussed in his testimony, or depicted on any of his exhibits?)

   6. "The trace metal content in the bullet found on the stretcher and the fragment from Connally's wrist match perfectly. It was a copper-jacketed military bullet with a core of 99 percent lead and insignificant amounts of strontium, arsenic, nickel, platinum, and silver. As small as they are, these traces are like fingerprints." (The magic bullet and the wrist fragment failed to match on copper, and barely matched on antimony. It also matched on silver, as did half the bullets tested. Protocols of the time dictated that, if a sample failed to match on one of these three, the samples did not match. Therefore there was no match, let alone a perfect match. None of the other elements listed by Baden were even tested.)

   7. That when he inspected Governor Connally's back wound he saw "a two-inch long sideways entrance on his back. He had not been shot by a second shooter but by the same flattened bullet that went through Kennedy." (Dr. Baden wrote a memo on this inspection for the HSCA. At that time he reported Connally's scar as 1 1/8 inches long. His description of CE 399 as "flattened" is another exaggeration. Only the base of the bullet was slightly flattened.)

 

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

When I was researching the HSCA's medical panel, I found an interview with Spitz in which he complained about how little they were paid. Baden, as the honcho, was certainly paid a lot more, but still not a lot. He did use his role as a launching pad for a career as a gun for hire and TV personality. So in the long run he must have made millions from his exposure on the HSCA. 

P.S. I have a section on Baden in Chapter 13b, in which I critique a dozen or so of his interviews and articles on the assassination. Here is the section regarding his book: Unnatural Death. 

Baden's Reign of Error 1989

In his first book, Unnatural Death, published 1989, Dr. Baden presented a chapter on the Kennedy assassination. One might think that Dr. Baden, concerned about his reputation, would be sure to make his book as accurate as possible, and review the reports and findings of the House Select Committee before committing his thoughts for posterity. But one would be wrong.Among Baden’s claims:

• 1. Those who believe the back-and-to-the-left movement of Kennedy's head after frame 313 indicates the shot came from the front are mistaken because "They left out of their calculations the acceleration of the car Kennedy was riding in. Beyond that, the body simply does not react that way. The force of the bullet would just as likely cause Kennedy's head to move forward as backward. It's not predictable." (A quick look at the Zapruder and Nix films shows that the acceleration of the limousine came after the back-and-to the-left movement of the President’s head. This is not just the opinion of conspiracy theorists. Dr. John Lattimer noted as much in his 1976 article in Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics. In addition, Baden's claim that the movement of a head is unpredictable is either something he just made up because it sounded good...or was a misrepresentation of Dr. Olivier's testimony for the Rockefeller Commission, in which he claimed that the direction in which a goat's body fell after being shot in the head is unpredictable.)

  2. "No forensic pathologist has ever examined the body of the President." (As we've seen, one of the three doctors performing Kennedy's autopsy, Colonel Pierre Finck, was a licensed forensic pathologist on November 22, 1963.)

  3. "Colonel Finck, it turned out, had never done an autopsy involving a gunshot wound, either." (As we've seen, Dr. Finck testified about his prior experience on 3-11-78. As a direct response to a question from Dr. Baden, Finck said he'd performed autopsies on gunshot wound victims prior to 1959. Apparently, Dr. Baden didn't note his answer.)

  4. "The FBI photographer, who had clearance, was in the same quandary as Humes. He had never taken autopsy pictures before and was untrained in photographing gunshot wounds." (As previously discussed, John Stringer, the actual photographer, was a civilian working for the Navy, and had been Bethesda Naval Hospital’s chief autopsy photographer for years. His work had been featured in textbooks.)

1. "The Kennedy head bullet was found on the floor of Kennedy's car in front. It had struck the windshield strut and broken in two." (Since bullet fragments are smaller and lose their energy much more rapidly than intact bullets, it seems doubtful that two fragments of a bullet breaking up upon entrance on the back of the skull would traverse the skull and exit with the force necessary to crack a windshield and dent a windshield strut. This is in keeping, moreover, with the report of Baden's pathology panel, which observed that the large defect apparent at the supposed exit suggested the exit of a fragment the combined size of the recovered fragments. So it's not exactly surprising that Baden would try and claim the bullet exited intact and broke up after striking the windshield strut. The problem, as discussed above, is that HE SHOULD KNOW THIS ISN'T TRUE. Not only does he overlook that a fragment struck and cracked the windshield in addition to the strut, but he ignores that the two fragments found in the front seat were the nose and base of the bullet, and that they comprised only about half of the bullet. As much of the middle of this bullet was supposedly left in the skull, including the “slice” of bullet seen on the x-rays and interpreted by Baden and his panel to be on the back of the head by the bullet's entrance, it follows then like night from day that these fragments exited separately and did not break in two upon impact with the windshield strut. Baden's pretending that it did and that the "slice" just fell out the back of the bullet and clung to the back of the skull is bizarre beyond belief.)

2. Dr. Humes burned his notes on November 23, the day after the shooting, before talking to Dr. Perry and finding out the tracheotomy incision had been cut through a bullet wound, and before starting work on the autopsy report. (This may be Baden's most egregious "mistake." Its existence reveals that as early as 1989 he was looking for ways to explain to his readers how Humes could be so mistaken about the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head--and that he was willing to make stuff up to do this. There is simply no evidence supporting Baden's version of these events. Humes testified before the Warren Commission that he called Dr. Perry on the morning of the 23rd, began working on the autopsy report later that evening, and burned his notes the next day. He repeated this testimony, moreover, to Baden himself, when meeting with members of Baden's panel on 9-16-77. Shame, shame, shame.)

   1. The Cortisone that Kennedy was taking for his Addison’s disease "causes odd fat deposits--an upper back hump, full cheeks. Kennedy had them both, but Addison's disease is not mentioned in the autopsy report." (As discussed, the "back hump" or "hunchback" story is a disgusting fairy tale started by Dr. Lattimer to help explain how a descending bullet could enter Kennedy’s shirt and jacket inches below his shirt collar and still exit from his throat.)

   2. “Perhaps the most egregious error was the four-inch miscalculation. The head is only five inches long from crown to neck, but Humes was confused by a little piece of brain tissue that had adhered to the scalp. He placed the head wound four inches lower than it actually was, near the neck instead of the cowlick.” (This, of course, is nonsense. Baden must have known that Dr.s Humes and Boswell didn't just observe this wound on the scalp, but on the skull after the scalp had been peeled back. He also would have to have known their observation was confirmed by Dr. Pierre Finck, arriving after the beginning of the autopsy. He also should have known their "too low" location was confirmed by several other witnesses to the autopsy, including autopsy photographer John Stringer. His attempt, then, to make this "egregious error" appear to be the error of one man, and not many, and his failure to tell his readers that these witnesses verified this location numerous times, can only be viewed as deceptive.)

   3. "For the head wound, we enhanced the x-rays and saw the entrance perforation on top of the cowlick." (This would be news to the HSCA's radiology consultants, Dr.s McDonnell and Davis. Neither of them noted such an entrance in their reports. While they both concluded there was an entrance in this location, they did so based upon their observation of fractures and fragments in the area, NOT because they saw an entrance perforation. This distinction is an important one that Baden should not have forgotten.)

   4. That when inspecting the photos of the head wound "Pictures of the wound yielded more when viewed through a stereopticon. In three dimensions they showed the oblique lines (beveling) on the bone in the back of the skull that an entering bullet makes." (As discussed, this was never mentioned in Baden's testimony before the HSCA. It was mentioned but not demonstrated in his panel's report. Despite plentiful opportunities, no one has demonstrated it in all the years since. It is probably nonsense.)

   5. That they "reconstructed the exit wound at the throat (Note: he means skull) from X rays of the skull and skull fragments and photographs of a single piece of bone which came to be called the Nieman-Marcus fragment. Three skull fragments had been retrieved from the limousine, brought to Washington, X-rayed, and later vanished. The fourth, measuring about two by one and a half inches, was found a few days after the autopsy by a premed student walking his dog in Dealey Plaza, where the shots were fired. He took it home to his father, a doctor, who knew what it was and had it photographed. At a party the photographer couldn't resist talking about it, and the story got back to the FBI. Agents swooped down on the premed student, who was saving the fragment as a souvenir. He had it wrapped in a piece of cotton in a Nieman-Marcus box. It later disappeared from the archive, along with the other fragments, but the photographs of it were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." (This is just embarrassing. It shows both how little Baden knows about the assassination, and how willing he is to spew the nonsense he thinks he knows. First of all, of the three skull fragments x-rayed in Washington, only one was found in the limousine, the other two were found in the street. Second of all, no one called the fourth fragment the "Nieman-Marcus fragment"; it was called the Harper fragment, after Billy Harper, the student who found it while taking photographs in Dealey Plaza, not walking his dog as claimed by Baden, and not a few days after the shooting as claimed by Baden, but the day after. Third of all, the doctor to whom Harper gave the fragment, and who had it photographed, was his uncle, not his dad. Fourth, after visiting the hospital on November 25, Harper visited the FBI, and gave them the fragment; he did not try to hold onto the fragment as a souvenir, and no one swooped in to grab the box containing the fragment from him. Fifth, none of the four fragments Baden mentions disappeared from the archives. The three fragments x-rayed in Washington are believed to have been buried with the body, and the Harper fragment was last known to have been in the possession of Kennedy's doctor, Dr. George Burkley. And, finally, sixth, Baden claims the photos of the fragment "were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." Presumably, he means accurately reconstructing the skull. Well, in such case, why didn't he? Why did he, instead, pretend this over 2 inch long fragment fit into a gap on the side of the head that was not discussed in his testimony, or depicted on any of his exhibits?)

   6. "The trace metal content in the bullet found on the stretcher and the fragment from Connally's wrist match perfectly. It was a copper-jacketed military bullet with a core of 99 percent lead and insignificant amounts of strontium, arsenic, nickel, platinum, and silver. As small as they are, these traces are like fingerprints." (The magic bullet and the wrist fragment failed to match on copper, and barely matched on antimony. It also matched on silver, as did half the bullets tested. Protocols of the time dictated that, if a sample failed to match on one of these three, the samples did not match. Therefore there was no match, let alone a perfect match. None of the other elements listed by Baden were even tested.)

   7. That when he inspected Governor Connally's back wound he saw "a two-inch long sideways entrance on his back. He had not been shot by a second shooter but by the same flattened bullet that went through Kennedy." (Dr. Baden wrote a memo on this inspection for the HSCA. At that time he reported Connally's scar as 1 1/8 inches long. His description of CE 399 as "flattened" is another exaggeration. Only the base of the bullet was slightly flattened.)

 

Hard to imagine what Baden was up to. Excellent review. 

The whole HSCA is...strange The deposing of Sprague, regarded as tough-guy no-nonsense type, then bringing in Blakey, and then a character like Baden. 

Add in Joannides acting aa CIA-HSCA liaison. 

And the HSCA was probably the last, best shot at finding out what really happened. People still alive then. 

Now, 60 years later, President Biden does a snuff job on the JFK Records. 

You can't make this stuff up.