WHY PAT SPEER OWES THE FAMILY OF DR. ROBERT McCLELLAND AN APOLOGY

[Keven Hofeling]

 

On 12/29/2023 at 7:56 PM, Pat Speer said:

 

 

PAT SPEER WROTE: And then there's McClelland... In his initial report, McClelland described but one wound, a wound of the left temple. When asked in the 80's to show the location of the one wound he'd observed, moreover, he pointed to a location far above his ear, essentially at the top of the head, and inches away from where the wound was placed in the drawing mistakenly attributed to him. So, no, he is not much of an occipital witness, is he?

 

PAT SPEER WROTE: "When asked in the 80's to show the location of the one wound [Dr. Robert McClelland had] observed, moreover, he pointed to a location far above his ear, essentially at the top of the head, and inches away from where the wound was placed in the drawing mistakenly attributed to him. So, no, he is not much of an occipital witness, is he?"

Wait a minute!

The actual footage from the TMWKK episode shows that McClelland is actually just resting his fingers on the top of his head while rubbing his thumb up and down the occipital-parietal region of the right side of the back of his head to indicate the location of the large wound, right where he has ALWAYS maintained that it was located. And you have cherry picked a frame from that segment and have falsely described it as being McClelland indicating that the large wound was instead on the top of JFK's head.

As can be seen in the following clip of McClelland's entire hand gesture, he is running his thumb up and down on the right side of the back of his head as he describes the location of the large head wound to the interviewer. 

Moreover, there is no way you could have merely been confused about what Dr. McClelland was communicating with his hand gesture when you were capturing the screenshot from the segment because at the time, in that video, he was saying the following:

"Almost a fifth or perhaps even a quarter of the right back part of the head in this area here [AT WHICH POINT MCLELLAND RAN HIS THUMB UP AND DOWN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD] had been blasted out along with probably most of the brain tissue in the area."

See SEGMENT ON YOUTUBE, I HAVE CUED IT IN ADVANCE FOR YOU TO :01:

A review of your website indicates that you have used this misrepresentation about Dr. McClelland --  and several other misrepresentations -- as the foundation of your crusade against the voluminous evidence of JFK's large avulsive back-of-the-head wound, meaning that it all comes down like a house of cards upon a showing that your bedrock assumptions are demonstrably false.

Take for example your claim that "McClelland described but one wound, a wound of the left temple," which is in its entirety based upon your flawed assumption that the use by McClelland of the phrase "OF  the left temple" in his initial report of the wounds means that he was unaware of what he and several other doctors believed to be the large exit wound in the back of the head. If you had actually read medical journals, as you relentlessly advise others to do, you would have learned that it was abundantly common in the era of the doctors who taught Robert McClelland in medical school to refer to entrance wounds with the prefix predicate "of" without need to specify an exit wound (as a means of shorthand). Not only that, but your effort to demonize Dr. McClelland by questioning his integrity in this manner is simply unconscionable, and in my view, places in question your entire project.

Insinuating that Dr. McClelland was making money off of the assassination by selling his wound drawings and notes without any evidence that this was so strikes me as being profoundly out of bounds. Dr. McClelland's drawings and notes to researchers were so very prolific and common during his lifetime because of his devotion to the truth, and because of his generous disposition toward researchers -- it is a tribute to him that those items are now considered so valuable after his death.

And sure, the sketch in Josiah Thompson's book was an approximation, as all of the witness sketches are, human memory being what it is, but it surely was not sinister of Dr. McClelland to value it so much as an approximation that he ratified it, and perhaps even considered it as his own; but it is sinister to set that sketch up as a straw man, as you have done, by virtue of insisting that the slightest deviation from it by other differing accounts of the wound constitutes conclusive evidence that the account in question must necessarily be impossible for daring to contradict autopsy evidence that is recognized as  fraudulent by the majority of researchers who are recognizable as honest brokers who lack any vested interest in the government's theory of the case.

You have criticized the sketch of the large avulsive back-of-the-head wound that Dr. McClelland made on TMWKK as contradicting estimations of the wound made by others who lacked first-hand experience with that wound, such as Horne and Mantik, but fail to acknowledge the remarkable similarity it has with the approximations of others who do have first-hand experience, such as Jim Jenkins, as follows:

ABOVE: DR. MCLELLAND'S SKETCH OF LARGE BOH HEAD WOUND ON TMWKK (1988):

ABOVE: JAMES JENKINS'S DRAWINGS OF BOTH OF JFK'S HEAD WOUNDS ON SKULL MODEL (2018):

The remarkable similarities between the sketches of the large avulsive back-of-the-head wounds by the actual hands of both Dr. McClelland and James Jenkins is no mere coincidence. It is the mark of mutual corroboration that defies the cheap sleight of hand parlor tricks that you have thrown at them. It is the mark of authenticity; and accordingly, I think that you owe Jim Jenkins and the family of Dr. McClelland  -- as well as all of the others you have misled -- a long overdue apology.

 For the following is the reality that no amount of hair splitting on your part can diminish...

 

Edited January 11 by Keven Hofeling

[Jonathan Cohen]

Is there a reason you are writing full posts in bold?

[Sandy Larsen]

I agree 100% Kevin.

The amazing thing is that Pat has been corrected numerous times on several things, and yet he continues with his misinformation. Which is damaging to our cause.

 

[James DiEugenio]

41 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Is there a reason you are writing full posts in bold?

Maybe because he wants to make the point as strongly as he can?

[Sandy Larsen]

7 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

49 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Is there a reason you are writing full posts in bold?

Maybe because he wants to make the point as strongly as he can?

 

Yes. And the All-Bold in the body nicely complements the ALL-CAPS in the title.  

 

[Paul Cummings]

Well done.

[Cory Santos]

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Maybe because he wants to make the point as strongly as he can?

lol good one

[Keyvan Shahrdar]

Kevin, do you think this is the best approach to take?

We are here to discuss and debate, not to pit one another against each other.

[Sandy Larsen]

10 minutes ago, Keyvan Shahrdar said:

Kevin, do you think this is the best approach to take?

We are here to discuss and debate, not to pit one another against each other.

 

Having a different opinion is one thing. Saying something that is clearly and demonstrably false, over and over again, despite being corrected, is quite another. I don't think it should be allowed.

 

[Pat Speer]

22 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

PAT SPEER WROTE: "When asked in the 80's to show the location of the one wound [Dr. Robert McClelland had] observed, moreover, he pointed to a location far above his ear, essentially at the top of the head, and inches away from where the wound was placed in the drawing mistakenly attributed to him. So, no, he is not much of an occipital witness, is he?"

Wait a minute!

The actual footage from the TMWKK episode shows that McClelland is actually just resting his fingers on the top of his head while rubbing his thumb up and down the occipital-parietal region of the right side of the back of his head to indicate the location of the large wound, right where he has ALWAYS maintained that it was located. And you have cherry picked a frame from that segment and have falsely described it as being McClelland indicating that the large wound was instead on the top of JFK's head.

As can be seen in the following clip of McClelland's entire hand gesture, he is running his thumb up and down on the right side of the back of his head as he describes the location of the large head wound to the interviewer. 

Moreover, there is no way you could have merely been confused about what Dr. McClelland was communicating with his hand gesture when you were capturing the screenshot from the segment because at the time, in that video, he was saying the following:

"Almost a fifth or perhaps even a quarter of the right back part of the head in this area here [AT WHICH POINT MCLELLAND RAN HIS THUMB UP AND DOWN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD] had been blasted out along with probably most of the brain tissue in the area."

See SEGMENT ON YOUTUBE, I HAVE CUED IT IN ADVANCE FOR YOU TO 26:08:

A review of your website indicates that you have used this misrepresentation about Dr. McClelland --  and several other misrepresentations -- as the foundation of your crusade against the voluminous evidence of JFK's large avulsive back-of-the-head wound, meaning that it all comes down like a house of cards upon a showing that your bedrock assumptions are demonstrably false.

Take for example your claim that "McClelland described but one wound, a wound of the left temple," which is in its entirety based upon your flawed assumption that the use by McClelland of the phrase "OF  the left temple" in his initial report of the wounds means that he was unaware of what he and several other doctors believed to be the large exit wound in the back of the head. If you had actually read medical journals, as you relentlessly advise others to do, you would have learned that it was abundantly common in the era of the doctors who taught Robert McClelland in medical school to refer to entrance wounds with the prefix predicate "of" without need to specify an exit wound (as a means of shorthand). Not only that, but your effort to demonize Dr. McClelland by questioning his integrity in this manner is simply unconscionable, and in my view, places in question your entire project.

Insinuating that Dr. McClelland was making money off of the assassination by selling his wound drawings and notes without any evidence that this was so strikes me as being profoundly out of bounds. Dr. McClelland's drawings and notes to researchers were so very prolific and common during his lifetime because of his devotion to the truth, and because of his generous disposition toward researchers -- it is a tribute to him that those items are now considered so valuable after his death.

And sure, the sketch in Josiah Thompson's book was an approximation, as all of the witness sketches are, human memory being what it is, but it surely was not sinister of Dr. McClelland to value it so much as an approximation that he ratified it, and perhaps even considered it as his own; but it is sinister to set that sketch up as a straw man, as you have done, by virtue of insisting that the slightest deviation from it by other differing accounts of the wound constitutes conclusive evidence that the account in question must necessarily be impossible for daring to contradict autopsy evidence that is recognized as  fraudulent by the majority of researchers who are recognizable as honest brokers who lack any vested interest in the government's theory of the case.

You have criticized the sketch of the large avulsive back-of-the-head wound that Dr. McClelland made on TMWKK as contradicting estimations of the wound made by others who lacked first-hand experience with that wound, such as Horne and Mantik, but fail to acknowledge the remarkable similarity it has with the approximations of others who do have first-hand experience, such as Jim Jenkins, as follows:

ABOVE: DR. MCLELLAND'S SKETCH OF LARGE BOH HEAD WOUND ON TMWKK (1988):

ABOVE: JAMES JENKINS'S DRAWINGS OF BOTH OF JFK'S HEAD WOUNDS ON SKULL MODEL (2018):

The remarkable similarities between the sketches of the large avulsive back-of-the-head wounds by the actual hands of both Dr. McClelland and James Jenkins is no mere coincidence. It is the mark of mutual corroboration that defies the cheap sleight of hand parlor tricks that you have thrown at them. It is the mark of authenticity; and accordingly, I think that you owe Jim Jenkins and the family of Dr. McClelland  -- as well as all of the others you have misled -- a long overdue apology.

 For the following is the reality that no amount of hair splitting on your part can diminish...

 

Boy, you really like that Kool-Aid. 

I've discussed this stuff ad nauseam, for decades now. And you are screaming out long-debunked nonsense as if it's news. But I'll grant you this, you may be right about that one image of McClelland. I don't remember where I got it but it was purported to be a depiction of him pointing out the wound location. I'll double-check it to see if you're right. And pull it from my website if it turns out to be a misrepresentation. 

But that one image has little to do with my problem with McClelland...as a witness. I met the man and he was soft-voiced and pleasant. I said hello and introduced myself, and asked him one question, as I remember. I asked him if he'd ever been pressured to change his impressions of the head wound. And he said no. Which is as I expected seeing as McClelland's early statements on the head wound were not the least bit controversial, and he only got controversial under the questioning of Arlen Specter. In any event, his weakness as a back of the head witness comes not from his putting his hand a bit high on his head. in one image, or having someone screen grab his hand before it moved into position, but from his own statements, from day one.

1. His initial report described but one head wound, a wound "of the left temple". While some silly people wish to believe his latter-day claim he was describing a presumed entrance location, this doesn't pass a smell test, seeing as he failed to see such a wound, failed to say the wound was a presumed entrance, and failed to say anything about cerebellum or occipital which would indicate the fatal wound was on the back of the head. IF he was in fact describing a wound he did not see while failing to describe the wound he did see, he can only be described as grossly incompetent, and throughly unreliable. By assuming he saw a wound by the right temple--which was in keeping with the statements of the witnesses then on TV--and screwed up and wrote left temple as a result of his viewing the body upside down, etc, I am actually showing him a kindness.

2. When journalist Richard Dudman, who had thought he saw a bullet hole through the windshield outside Parkland, approached McClelland a few weeks later, and asked McClelland if he thought any shots came from the front, McClelland assured him that there was NOTHING about the head wound to suggest the bullet had come from the front.

3. When the initial reports of the Parkland staff were published in a Texas medical journal, but a few weeks after that, McClelland's report was slightly revised. The time of JFK's death was revised to match the official story, and McClelland's description of the wound had been changed from left temple to right side of the head. I believe McClelland was behind these changes. He most certainly never denounced the revisions. 

4. In any event, this article was quite the talk at Parkland, and those reading it, including McClelland, would have to have noticed his report was at odds with the others, some of which reported the presence of cerebellum. Well, it's not much of a surprise then that in his WC testimony McClelland's descriptions were much like the others', only more so.

5. After reading his testimony, Josiah Thompson hired an artist to make a sketch demonstrating the wounds as described by McClelland. McClelland was later shown this drawing by the Boston Globe, and the ARRB. Both times he said the drawing was inaccurate, and presented a wound too low on the back of the head. Even so, due in no small part to so many ill-informed people assuming he'd made the drawing, or had supervised the drawing, it came to be called the McClelland drawing. 

6. By the time of Jim Garrison's investigation, McClelland was still convinced all shots came from behind. To such an extent even, that he refused to cooperate with Garrison, and denounced him to Harold Weisberg, whilst simultaneously singing the praises of Arlen Specter. 

7. And then. McClelland saw the Zapruder film on TV. By his own admission, this, and not the nature of the President's wounds, led him down conspiracy road. He was soon tracked down by CT writers, and became pretty much a darling among the CT crowd.

8. And his already questionable memory suffered as a result. Over the next years and decades, he began claiming he'd drawn the "McClelland" drawing, or had signed off on it, or some such thing, anything but admit the truth--that Thompson had had it created without even talking to him. In the end, in fact, he started creating, and presumably selling (as eBay is littered with them) his own hand-drawn facsimiles of the famous drawing, some of which included an entrance wound on the forehead, which he admitted he did not see, and an entrance wound on the back, which he admitted he did not see.

The man gloried in attention. 

Now, one last bit. The most recent chapter in the ongoing back of the head wound hoax is this crappy film, built on interviews of the Parkland doctors When promoting the original version of the film, which failed to arouse interest because it wasn't conspiratorial enough, three of the seven doctors interviewed in the film attended the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas. None of these doctors said the back of the head was blown out, which really angered the crowd. In any event, after their presentation, I went over and chatted with them. And Salyer, in particular, was most adamant that the back of the head was not blown out and that it astounded him that so many people want to believe such a thing. Now, here's the point. Without my bringing it up, he singled out McClelland, and said he respected him and that they were friends, but that he just couldn't understand why McCllelland (I believe he called him Bob)would say the things he was saying. He frowned and shook his head, seemingly puzzled and horrified by the complexities of the human mind. 

 

Edited January 4 by Pat Speer

[Chris Bristow]

12 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

PAT SPEER WROTE: "When asked in the 80's to show the location of the one wound [Dr. Robert McClelland had] observed, moreover, he pointed to a location far above his ear, essentially at the top of the head, and inches away from where the wound was placed in the drawing mistakenly attributed to him. So, no, he is not much of an occipital witness, is he?"

Wait a minute!

The actual footage from the TMWKK episode shows that McClelland is actually just resting his fingers on the top of his head while rubbing his thumb up and down the occipital-parietal region of the right side of the back of his head to indicate the location of the large wound, right where he has ALWAYS maintained that it was located. And you have cherry picked a frame from that segment and have falsely described it as being McClelland indicating that the large wound was instead on the top of JFK's head.

As can be seen in the following clip of McClelland's entire hand gesture, he is running his thumb up and down on the right side of the back of his head as he describes the location of the large head wound to the interviewer. 

Moreover, there is no way you could have merely been confused about what Dr. McClelland was communicating with his hand gesture when you were capturing the screenshot from the segment because at the time, in that video, he was saying the following:

"Almost a fifth or perhaps even a quarter of the right back part of the head in this area here [AT WHICH POINT MCLELLAND RAN HIS THUMB UP AND DOWN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD] had been blasted out along with probably most of the brain tissue in the area."

See SEGMENT ON YOUTUBE, I HAVE CUED IT IN ADVANCE FOR YOU TO 26:08:

A review of your website indicates that you have used this misrepresentation about Dr. McClelland --  and several other misrepresentations -- as the foundation of your crusade against the voluminous evidence of JFK's large avulsive back-of-the-head wound, meaning that it all comes down like a house of cards upon a showing that your bedrock assumptions are demonstrably false.

Take for example your claim that "McClelland described but one wound, a wound of the left temple," which is in its entirety based upon your flawed assumption that the use by McClelland of the phrase "OF  the left temple" in his initial report of the wounds means that he was unaware of what he and several other doctors believed to be the large exit wound in the back of the head. If you had actually read medical journals, as you relentlessly advise others to do, you would have learned that it was abundantly common in the era of the doctors who taught Robert McClelland in medical school to refer to entrance wounds with the prefix predicate "of" without need to specify an exit wound (as a means of shorthand). Not only that, but your effort to demonize Dr. McClelland by questioning his integrity in this manner is simply unconscionable, and in my view, places in question your entire project.

Insinuating that Dr. McClelland was making money off of the assassination by selling his wound drawings and notes without any evidence that this was so strikes me as being profoundly out of bounds. Dr. McClelland's drawings and notes to researchers were so very prolific and common during his lifetime because of his devotion to the truth, and because of his generous disposition toward researchers -- it is a tribute to him that those items are now considered so valuable after his death.

And sure, the sketch in Josiah Thompson's book was an approximation, as all of the witness sketches are, human memory being what it is, but it surely was not sinister of Dr. McClelland to value it so much as an approximation that he ratified it, and perhaps even considered it as his own; but it is sinister to set that sketch up as a straw man, as you have done, by virtue of insisting that the slightest deviation from it by other differing accounts of the wound constitutes conclusive evidence that the account in question must necessarily be impossible for daring to contradict autopsy evidence that is recognized as  fraudulent by the majority of researchers who are recognizable as honest brokers who lack any vested interest in the government's theory of the case.

You have criticized the sketch of the large avulsive back-of-the-head wound that Dr. McClelland made on TMWKK as contradicting estimations of the wound made by others who lacked first-hand experience with that wound, such as Horne and Mantik, but fail to acknowledge the remarkable similarity it has with the approximations of others who do have first-hand experience, such as Jim Jenkins, as follows:

ABOVE: DR. MCLELLAND'S SKETCH OF LARGE BOH HEAD WOUND ON TMWKK (1988):

ABOVE: JAMES JENKINS'S DRAWINGS OF BOTH OF JFK'S HEAD WOUNDS ON SKULL MODEL (2018):

The remarkable similarities between the sketches of the large avulsive back-of-the-head wounds by the actual hands of both Dr. McClelland and James Jenkins is no mere coincidence. It is the mark of mutual corroboration that defies the cheap sleight of hand parlor tricks that you have thrown at them. It is the mark of authenticity; and accordingly, I think that you owe Jim Jenkins and the family of Dr. McClelland  -- as well as all of the others you have misled -- a long overdue apology.

 For the following is the reality that no amount of hair splitting on your part can diminish...

 

I think the skeptics lost the Parkland debate a long time ago. The misrepresentations, cherry picking, and gaslighting have become far too obvious over time.  I assume many researchers see right through it. It is truly a 'House of cards", imo.   

[David Von Pein]

In addition to his appearance in 1988's "The Men Who Killed Kennedy", Dr. Robert McClelland also performed a "hand-on-his-head" demonstration for the PBS-TV camera in another 1988 television program, "Who Shot President Kennedy?", hosted by Walter Cronkite.

In that PBS program, Dr. McClelland twice put his right hand over the upper-right portion of the back of his head to indicate where he said the large wound was located in President Kennedy's head (see the screen captures below).



The late Doctor Robert McClelland, in my opinion, had some very strange beliefs concerning JFK's head wounds and what he was seeing when he viewed the autopsy photographs at the National Archives for that PBS/NOVA program in 1988, which I discuss HERE and HERE.

Here's an excerpt from Vince Bugliosi's book concerning Dr. McClelland:

[Book Quote On:]

“When I spoke over the telephone to Dr. McClelland in late September and early October of 2002, McClelland, a respected Dallas surgeon whom no one accuses of trying to deliberately mislead anyone, only of being completely wrong in what he thought he saw (the most honest people in the world can think they saw the darndest things), said he was positive the president had a "massive hole to the back of his head."

He said at the time of his observation he was holding a metal retractor that was pulling the skin away from the president's trachea so Drs. Perry and Carrico could perform their tracheotomy. "I had nothing else to do or to distract me so I fixated on this large, gaping hole to the back of the president's head for ten to twelve minutes."

When I wondered how he could see the large hole when the president was always lying on his back, he said the wound was so large that he nevertheless could see "most of it." If what he said was true, I asked, how is it possible that on the Zapruder film itself, the explosion is clearly to the right frontal portion of the president's head with a large amount of brain matter spraying out, and the back of his head appears to be completely intact?

Dr. McClelland gave an answer that deserves some type of an award for inventiveness: "What the explanation for this is, I just don't know, but what I believe happened is that the spray of brain matter and blood was kind of like a bloodscreen, similar to a smokescreen, that precluded a clear view of the occipital area."

If, I pursued the matter, the exit wound was to the back of the president's head, where was the entrance wound for this bullet? McClelland, who believes the shot to the head came from the grassy knoll, said he believed the president was struck "around the hairline near the middle of his forehead."

If that was so, I asked, how was it that seventeen pathologists, including Dr. Wecht, all agreed that the president was only struck twice, both times from the rear, and none of them—from photographs, X-rays, and personal observation (by the three autopsy surgeons)—saw any entrance wound to the president's forehead?

Again, McClelland, who acknowledged, "I'm not a pathologist and I've never conducted an autopsy," said, "I don't know the answer to your question." But he remained sincerely inventive in his imagination. "What I believe happened is that none of the pathologists saw the entrance wound because it became a part of the destruction to the whole right side and top of the president's head. In other words, it was no longer a separate hole that could be identified."

(Of course, none of the autopsy photographs show any such massive injury to the president's forehead extending to the right side of his head, and none is referred to in the autopsy report, nor in the reports of the Clark Panel and Rockefeller Commission. As the HSCA said, "There is no evidence that the president was struck by a bullet entering the front of his head.")

"So you do acknowledge," I said, "the explosion to the right front part of the president's head?" "Oh, yes," the doctor said, "but that's not where the bullet exited. It exited in the occipital region of his head, leaving a hole so big I could put my fist in it."

When I pointed out to the doctor again that not only didn't the Zapruder film show any large hole to the back of the president's head but autopsy photographs never showed any large hole there either, he said that although it was pure "supposition" on his part, at the time the photographs were taken, someone "could have pulled a flap of the president's skin, attached to the base of his neck, forward," thereby covering the large defect. When I asked him if he saw any such loose flap of skin at Parkland, he acknowledged, "I did not."

It was getting late in the evening, Dallas time, but before I ended the interview I reminded Dr. McClelland of the fact that in his Parkland Hospital admission note at 4:45 p.m. on the day of the assassination, he had written that the president died "from a gunshot wound of the left temple." "Yes," he said, "that was a mistake. I never saw any wound to the president's left temple. Dr. Jenkins had told me there was a wound there, though he later denied telling me this."

Since there was no bullet wound to the left side of the president's body, and since the conspiracy theorists allege that Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll to his right front, conspiracy author Robert Groden solves the problem and avoids having his star witness, Dr. McClelland, look very confused and non-credible simply by changing McClelland's words "left temple" to "right temple" in his book, The Killing of a President.

When I called Dr. McClelland the following evening to discuss further one of the points he had made, he quickly told me he was glad I had called because "since we hung up last night, I've had some second thoughts about the exact location of the exit wound."

Unlike the many conspiracy theorists who have exploited Dr. McClelland's obvious errors to their benefit, he told me, "I don't question the integrity of all the pathologists who disagree with me" (he wasn't so kind to his colleague, Dr. Charles Crenshaw: "Chuck had a lot of problems and fabricated a lot of things"), saying, for instance, that he and the three autopsy surgeons were "obviously looking at the same head and the same wound," but that the area on the head where they placed the wound differed because of "the different positions from which we viewed it and also because of the different interpretations of what we saw, which is normal."

But he made a major concession in an effort to reconcile his position with theirs. "I have to say that the sketch I first drew for Josiah Thompson's book a few years after the assassination was misleading. Since last night, I've been thinking that I placed the large hole in the president's head farther back than it really was, maybe. It may have been a bit more forward."

When I asked him where he now put it, he said, "Partially in the occipital region and partly in the right back part of the parietal bone" (which I told him was actually consistent with the original position he took in his Warren Commission testimony), but he still insisted that this large exit wound was not to the right frontal area of the president's skull as concluded by all the pathologists.

Dr. McClelland told me he believes there were two gunmen, Oswald and someone else, and further believes that "the CIA and FBI, mostly the CIA, were behind the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, and they brought in the Mafia, who carried out the killing."

He said he didn't know but suspects that "the Warren Commission covered up the conspiracy." On that note, I thanked the good doctor for his time and bid him a good night.” -- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 405-407 of "Reclaiming History"

 

[David Von Pein]

56 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Josiah Thompson hired an artist to make a sketch demonstrating the wounds as described by McClelland. McClelland was later shown this drawing by the Boston Globe, and the ARRB. Both times he said the drawing was inaccurate, and presented a wound too low on the back of the head. Even so, due in no small part to so many ill-informed people assuming he'd made the drawing, or had supervised the drawing, it came to be called the McClelland drawing. 

McClelland himself, in the 2002 interview with Vince Bugliosi that I quoted at length above, said that he himself (McClelland) "drew" the sketch "for Josiah Thompson's book". [Edit: which is something that you, Pat Speer, did indeed note in your last post; i.e., that McClelland in later years started to say that he himself had actually drawn the sketch we see below.]

"I have to say that the sketch I first drew for Josiah Thompson's book a few years after the assassination was misleading. Since last night, I've been thinking that I placed the large hole in the president's head farther back than it really was, maybe. It may have been a bit more forward." -- R.N. McClelland; Oct. 2002

Edited January 4 by David Von Pein

[Miles Massicotte]

17 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

As can be seen in the following clip of McClelland's entire hand gesture, he is running his thumb up and down on the right side of the back of his head as he describes the location of the large head wound to the interviewer. 

I don't know, everyone can judge for themselves. To me, he rubs the back of his head with his thumb, but that is not where he is indicating. His whole gesture, the hand in that position resembling a circle, is where he is outlining the wound. The thumb running the back of the head is just a thumb rubbing the back of the head. Just my honest impression from watching the clip, others may disagree.

[Joe Bauer]

IMO those two pictures of McClelland placing his right hand on the back right side of his head are a depiction of a circumference circle. With his thumb touching the low point of the circle.

The man was inches away from the back of JFK's head for 10 minutes or more. Directly in back of it. Is there any other doctor that was in Trauma Room one that had a better view of the back of head wound?

I have to give him credibility based on that fact.

And like so many other JFK witnesses, those that disagree with McClelland have to search for some subjectively questionable and biased reason to debunk him.

The man was extremely attention seeking? What? 

How about he was so moved by the JFKA he felt a duty to get the record straight in regards to the hugely important head wound findings.

He felt a sense of patriotic duty to speak up.

Other doctors did not.

You don't go on to a stellar long time career in a highly skilled area of medicine like McClelland and at the same time be some type of off base conspiracy kook.

Bugliosi must have labeled 100 people in the JFKA story loons, kooks, crackpots to the point of his overdoing it to the point that he himself was kind of a crackpot in that extreme charge excess.