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

[Pat Speer]

17 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I DEMAND THAT YOU QUIT MISREPRESENTING ARGUMENTS I MAKE!!!!!

I said that I qualify witnesses based on the QUALITY of their observation, NOT by whether I "liked what they said."

This is yet one more example of how you misrepresent things. Shame on you!

 

Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "quality". I thought you meant quality as in quality ice cream or quality movie. If you had something less subjective in mind, and have a precise criteria for the witnesses you find credible, please let us know. 

Perhaps you should start a thread on what you call "quality" witnesses. You can present them, one by one, and I will add information to help the readers assess their quality, And the readers can decided for themselves. 

 

 

Edited January 7 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

Gary Aguilar chimes on on What the Doctors Saw, finally broadcast on Paramount Plus.

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-what-the-doctors-saw-an-important-addition-and-a-missed-opportunity

[Sandy Larsen]

11 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

You think the decades-after Parkland employees are "quality" witnesses?

Says who? Says you? Because you want to believe them?

 

I never said that!

I have ALWAYS used the EARLY Parkland doctors' and nurses' statements in my arguments with you on this issue.

And I specifically said earlier in this thread that early statements should generally be given greater weight than later statements.

Sheesh.

 

11 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

You think the decades-after Parkland employees are "quality" witnesses?

 

Hey, you're the one who uses the late Parkland witnesses! You do so because some of them changed their minds about seeing the gaping wound on the back of the head -- when they discovered that the BOH autopsy photos showed no such wound.

Of course, you cherry-pick and use only the ones who changed their minds.

So not only do you choose the decades old Parkland witnesses to back your argument, but you cherry pick them because they didn't all change their minds.

You are the hypocrite here.

 

 

 

[Pat Speer]

7 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I never said that!

I have ALWAYS used the EARLY Parkland doctors' and nurses' statements in my arguments with you on this issue.

And I specifically said earlier in this thread that early statements should generally be given greater weight than later statements.

Sheesh.

 

 

Hey, you're the one who uses the late Parkland witnesses! You do so because some of them changed their minds about seeing the gaping wound on the back of the head -- when they discovered that the BOH autopsy photos showed no such wound.

Of course, you cherry-pick and use only the ones who changed their minds.

So not only do you choose the decades old Parkland witnesses to back your argument, but you cherry pick them because they didn't all change their minds.

You are the hypocrite here.

 

 

 

Are you okay? I ask because you claim you've read my chapters on the head wounds. If you actually had done so, you'd know that I provided a much more extensive list than Gary, and actually discussed what they said. Despite your assertion, I do not rely upon the witnesses who changed their minds. The conclusion spelled out in my chapter, and repeated ad nauseam on this website, is that the statements of the Parkland doctors are not as consistent as some would have you believe, and that when one takes into account the Dealey Plaza witnesses and Bethesda witnesses, it seems clear the head wound was not as depicted in the "McClelland" drawing. 

I have never claimed the witnesses taken as a whole prove the authenticity of the photos. Never have. Never will. 

I have concluded the photos are legit, however, but not because of what witnesses have said. They are legit because they don't show what we've been told they show--by both sides in the LN/CT divide. They absolutely do not reflect the  wounds of someone receiving a full-metal jacketed bullet to the head, that enters near the EOP and exits from the top of the head. Now, does it make sense that the "guvment" would go to great lengths to fake something that doesn't depict what it is purported to depict? No. It does not. 

 

[Keven Hofeling]

18 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I would apologize to McClellland's family if they felt I'd done him a disservice by questioning his memory. I can do that. No problem, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. No big deal. But the hypocrisy of people like yourself is monumental, in that you go bananas when I question the accuracy of McClelland's recollections, but have no problem assuming men like Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, and Baxter, were flat-out XXXXX. Well, these were McClelland's friends. He would never have said that about them, and would not have wanted people defending his honor (or whatever you think you're defending) to attack them in such a manner. 

So, there, the tables are turned. I am now the one defending McClelland's honor. 

Now you are claiming to be defending Dr. McClelland's honor, are you? The truth is that you have accused him of affirmatively lying about his professional observations as a doctor, being guilty of medical malpractice, and of profiteering from one of the most terrible events in this nation's history by exploiting President Kennedy's untimely death by selling souvenir drawings and notes derived from his experience as a witness. By so grievously understating your persistent and ongoing libelous and unconscionable attacks against Dr. McClelland's integrity and professionalism, you reveal your self-awareness (guilty knowledge) of the egregiousness of your actions, making insult into injury. 

Did you ever look at this man as a human being rather than as an obstacle to your mission of defending the authenticity of JFK's autopsy photographs? To you he was just a means to an end, and a corrupt end at that. Dr. McLelland deserved better than to be relentlessly targeted and maligned by the likes of Pat Speer.

The McClelland family is entitled to a public apology from you.

Dr. Robert McClelland, a surgeon who tried to help revive a mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy in 1963 after he was shot in Dallas, died on Sept. 10 in an assisted living facility in that city. He was 89.

His granddaughter Megan Moss said the cause was kidney failure.

Dr. McClelland was in an operating room at Parkland Memorial Hospital on Nov. 22, 1963, showing surgical residents a film about hernia repair when a colleague, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, knocked on the door to tell him that Kennedy had been shot.

As the two men rushed to the emergency room, they saw Secret Service agents, nurses, doctors, reporters and other people crowded there shoulder to shoulder.

“I’d never seen anything like this before, and just as I stood there and took it in, the crowd spontaneously parted and made a little corridor down to the emergency operating rooms,” he told the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in 2013 during a joint interview with Dr. Ronald Jones, another former member of the trauma team. “There, sitting outside Trauma Room 1, on a folding chair, was Mrs. Kennedy, in her bloody clothing.”

Inside, as doctors began lifesaving measures, it was clear that Kennedy’s condition was grave. His face was swollen, his skin bluish-black and his eyes protuberant, suggesting great pressure on his brain, Dr. McClelland told the Warren Commission in 1964 during its investigation of the assassination.

The lead surgeon, Dr. Malcolm O. Perry II, asked Dr. McClelland to assist in an emergency tracheotomy, and Dr. McClelland inserted a retractor into the incision that Dr. Perry had made in Kennedy’s neck to help accommodate a breathing tube.

Image

Secret Service agents and Dallas police officers examined President Kennedy’s limousine on Nov. 22, 1963, outside the hospital where the president was being treated.Credit...Cecil Stoughton/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, via Reuters

Dr. McClelland’s position at the head of the gurney on which Kennedy lay gave him a close look at the severe wound at the back of the president’s head that had been caused by a second bullet.

The “posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted,” he told the commission. About a third of the president’s brain tissue was gone, he said.

At 1 p.m. Central time, Kennedy was pronounced dead.

Two days later, Dr. McClelland returned to Parkland, where he tried to save the life of Lee Harvey Oswald after Oswald, under arrest as the president’s assassin, was gunned down in the basement of a Dallas police station by the nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The bullet struck Oswald’s aorta and a large torso vein known as the inferior vena cava, Dr. McClelland said, causing extensive blood loss.

Dr. Perry opened Oswald’s chest, and he and Dr. McClelland massaged his heart.

“You pumped Oswald’s heart?” a medical student asked Dr. McClelland in a meeting described by the Dallas magazine D in 2008. (Dr. Perry died in 2009.)

“We took turns, each going until we got tired,” he said. “We went for, oh, about 40 minutes.”

Robert Nelson McClelland was born on Nov. 20, 1929, in the East Texas city of Gilmer. His father, Robert, was a butcher, and his mother, Verna (Nelson) McClelland, was a federal relief agent.

Dr. McClelland graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, and received his medical degree from its medical branch in Galveston in 1954. He did his internship at the University of Kansas Medical Center and served as a medical officer in the Air Force for two years.

He returned to Texas in 1957 to become a surgical resident at Parkland and entered private practice two years later. But soon after, he went back to Parkland to complete his training and in 1962 joined what is now called the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Its doctors and surgeons staff Parkland.

The Kennedy assassination occurred early in Dr. McClelland’s career as a general surgeon; his specialty was liver resections. He was also a professor and scholar of medicine who helped train hundreds of surgeons at the University of Texas Southwestern.

For about 30 years starting in the 1970s, he self-published “Selected Readings in General Surgery,” a regular compendium of journal articles — accompanied by his critiques — that had as many as 5,000 subscribers.

“They were classic articles and new ones in the literature, often arranged around a topic, that almost every surgical resident in the United States used for their surgical boards,” Dr. Robert Rege, a professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern, said in a phone interview. “And surgeons with experience read it as part of their continuing medical education.”

In addition to Ms. Moss, Dr. McClelland is survived by his wife, Connie (Logan) McClelland, who was the head nurse at Parkland when they met; his daughters, Alison McClelland and Julie Barrett; his son, Chris; and six other grandchildren.

In the decades after the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had been the lone gunman, Dr. McClelland became a skeptic. In interviews, he said that the location of Kennedy’s head wound suggested that the bullet had come from the grassy knoll in front of the presidential motorcade, not from Oswald’s perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, high above and behind Kennedy.

Then, more than a decade later, Dr. McClelland watched the 8-millimeter film of the assassination shot by Abraham Zapruder, a dress manufacturer. The film showed Kennedy’s head being thrown back violently and to his left. Dr. McClelland said the film validated the possibility that a second gunman had shot Kennedy from the grassy knoll as the president’s open limousine approached.

“Did I see an entrance wound consistent with that big wound?” he said in the Sixth Floor Museum interview. “I did not.”

He said that the entrance wound for the fatal shot might have been hidden by blood and Kennedy’s hairline, an area, he said, that the trauma team did not inspect as it tried to save the president’s life.

Through the years Dr. McClelland kept the shirt, stained with Kennedy’s blood, that he had worn that afternoon in the Parkland trauma room.

He came to believe that Kennedy’s death had resulted from a conspiracy, but he did not subscribe to wild assassination theories. He told a television station in Philadelphia in 2013 that he had once heard from a group that asked him to test the DNA of the blood on his preserved shirt to prove that it was not Kennedy who had been shot.

“I didn’t even respond to them after that,” he said.

Richard Sandomir is an obituaries writer. He previously wrote about sports media and sports business. He is also the author of several books, including “The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic.” More about Richard Sandomir

 

[Sandy Larsen]

29 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Are you okay? I ask because you claim you've read my chapters on the head wounds.

 

I have never claimed to have read your chapters on the head wounds. I've argued only with what you post on the forum.

 

29 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Despite your assertion, I do not rely upon the witnesses who changed their minds.

 

You have done so on the forum.

 

29 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

... the statements of the Parkland doctors are not as consistent as some would have you believe...

 

Only because you misrepresent what they say. And because you say that, since their drawing aren't identical, that means that they aren't consistent. Which is nonsense since witness-to-witness testimony always has a small amount of variation.

The fact remains that the Parkland witnesses ARE consistent that the gaping wound was on the back of the head. Nearly all of them (~20) said that early on. NONE of the Parkland witnesses stated EARLY ON that the gaping wound was on top of the head.

 

29 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

I have concluded the photos are legit, however, but not because of what witnesses have said. They are legit because they don't show what we've been told they show--by both sides in the LN/CT divide.

They absolutely do not reflect the  wounds of someone receiving a full-metal jacketed bullet to the head, that enters near the EOP and exits from the top of the head. Now, does it make sense that the "guvment" would go to great lengths to fake something that doesn't depict what it is purported to depict? No. It does not.

 

The type of bullet used has no relevance in determining the location of the gaping wound.

 

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Keven Hofeling said:

Now you are claiming to be defending Dr. McClelland's honor, are you? The truth is that you have accused him of affirmatively lying about his professional observations as a doctor, being guilty of medical malpractice, and of profiteering from one of the most terrible events in this nation's history by exploiting President Kennedy's untimely death by selling souvenir drawings and notes derived from his experience as a witness. By so grievously understating your persistent and ongoing libelous and unconscionable attacks against Dr. McClelland's integrity and professionalism, you reveal your self-awareness (guilty knowledge) of the egregiousness of your actions, making insult into injury. 

Did you ever look at this man as a human being rather than as an obstacle to your mission of defending the authenticity of JFK's autopsy photographs? To you he was just a means to an end, and a corrupt end at that. Dr. McLelland deserved better than to be relentlessly targeted and maligned by the likes of Pat Speer.

The McClelland family is entitled to a public apology from you.

Dr. Robert McClelland, a surgeon who tried to help revive a mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy in 1963 after he was shot in Dallas, died on Sept. 10 in an assisted living facility in that city. He was 89.

His granddaughter Megan Moss said the cause was kidney failure.

Dr. McClelland was in an operating room at Parkland Memorial Hospital on Nov. 22, 1963, showing surgical residents a film about hernia repair when a colleague, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, knocked on the door to tell him that Kennedy had been shot.

As the two men rushed to the emergency room, they saw Secret Service agents, nurses, doctors, reporters and other people crowded there shoulder to shoulder.

“I’d never seen anything like this before, and just as I stood there and took it in, the crowd spontaneously parted and made a little corridor down to the emergency operating rooms,” he told the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in 2013 during a joint interview with Dr. Ronald Jones, another former member of the trauma team. “There, sitting outside Trauma Room 1, on a folding chair, was Mrs. Kennedy, in her bloody clothing.”

Inside, as doctors began lifesaving measures, it was clear that Kennedy’s condition was grave. His face was swollen, his skin bluish-black and his eyes protuberant, suggesting great pressure on his brain, Dr. McClelland told the Warren Commission in 1964 during its investigation of the assassination.

The lead surgeon, Dr. Malcolm O. Perry II, asked Dr. McClelland to assist in an emergency tracheotomy, and Dr. McClelland inserted a retractor into the incision that Dr. Perry had made in Kennedy’s neck to help accommodate a breathing tube.

Image

Secret Service agents and Dallas police officers examined President Kennedy’s limousine on Nov. 22, 1963, outside the hospital where the president was being treated.Credit...Cecil Stoughton/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, via Reuters

Dr. McClelland’s position at the head of the gurney on which Kennedy lay gave him a close look at the severe wound at the back of the president’s head that had been caused by a second bullet.

The “posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted,” he told the commission. About a third of the president’s brain tissue was gone, he said.

At 1 p.m. Central time, Kennedy was pronounced dead.

Two days later, Dr. McClelland returned to Parkland, where he tried to save the life of Lee Harvey Oswald after Oswald, under arrest as the president’s assassin, was gunned down in the basement of a Dallas police station by the nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The bullet struck Oswald’s aorta and a large torso vein known as the inferior vena cava, Dr. McClelland said, causing extensive blood loss.

Dr. Perry opened Oswald’s chest, and he and Dr. McClelland massaged his heart.

“You pumped Oswald’s heart?” a medical student asked Dr. McClelland in a meeting described by the Dallas magazine D in 2008. (Dr. Perry died in 2009.)

“We took turns, each going until we got tired,” he said. “We went for, oh, about 40 minutes.”

Robert Nelson McClelland was born on Nov. 20, 1929, in the East Texas city of Gilmer. His father, Robert, was a butcher, and his mother, Verna (Nelson) McClelland, was a federal relief agent.

Dr. McClelland graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, and received his medical degree from its medical branch in Galveston in 1954. He did his internship at the University of Kansas Medical Center and served as a medical officer in the Air Force for two years.

He returned to Texas in 1957 to become a surgical resident at Parkland and entered private practice two years later. But soon after, he went back to Parkland to complete his training and in 1962 joined what is now called the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Its doctors and surgeons staff Parkland.

The Kennedy assassination occurred early in Dr. McClelland’s career as a general surgeon; his specialty was liver resections. He was also a professor and scholar of medicine who helped train hundreds of surgeons at the University of Texas Southwestern.

For about 30 years starting in the 1970s, he self-published “Selected Readings in General Surgery,” a regular compendium of journal articles — accompanied by his critiques — that had as many as 5,000 subscribers.

“They were classic articles and new ones in the literature, often arranged around a topic, that almost every surgical resident in the United States used for their surgical boards,” Dr. Robert Rege, a professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern, said in a phone interview. “And surgeons with experience read it as part of their continuing medical education.”

In addition to Ms. Moss, Dr. McClelland is survived by his wife, Connie (Logan) McClelland, who was the head nurse at Parkland when they met; his daughters, Alison McClelland and Julie Barrett; his son, Chris; and six other grandchildren.

In the decades after the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had been the lone gunman, Dr. McClelland became a skeptic. In interviews, he said that the location of Kennedy’s head wound suggested that the bullet had come from the grassy knoll in front of the presidential motorcade, not from Oswald’s perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, high above and behind Kennedy.

Then, more than a decade later, Dr. McClelland watched the 8-millimeter film of the assassination shot by Abraham Zapruder, a dress manufacturer. The film showed Kennedy’s head being thrown back violently and to his left. Dr. McClelland said the film validated the possibility that a second gunman had shot Kennedy from the grassy knoll as the president’s open limousine approached.

“Did I see an entrance wound consistent with that big wound?” he said in the Sixth Floor Museum interview. “I did not.”

He said that the entrance wound for the fatal shot might have been hidden by blood and Kennedy’s hairline, an area, he said, that the trauma team did not inspect as it tried to save the president’s life.

Through the years Dr. McClelland kept the shirt, stained with Kennedy’s blood, that he had worn that afternoon in the Parkland trauma room.

He came to believe that Kennedy’s death had resulted from a conspiracy, but he did not subscribe to wild assassination theories. He told a television station in Philadelphia in 2013 that he had once heard from a group that asked him to test the DNA of the blood on his preserved shirt to prove that it was not Kennedy who had been shot.

“I didn’t even respond to them after that,” he said.

Richard Sandomir is an obituaries writer. He previously wrote about sports media and sports business. He is also the author of several books, including “The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic.” More about Richard Sandomir

 

What the??? I have never attacked McClelland as a person, nor as a doctor. In fact, I have said mostly nice things about him. By all accounts he was a nice guy, a pleasant person. 

Now contrast that to what some prominent writers and members of this forum have said of McClelland's friends: Perry, Carrico, Jenkins, and Baxter. These men have been vilified as gutless XXXXX, or even as participants in the assassination, One prominent member on this website, who left after I exposed him as a fraud, even started a thread in which he garnered substantial support, in which he made out that Perry had actually finished JFK off or some such thing. 

I have pointed out, since I first joined this forum, that experts of all kinds are humans, and prone to mistakes. I discuss the possible motives of those who are clearly wrong on my website, and almost always assume they are just mistaken, and not part of some plot. I remain one of the few if not the only researcher to study human cognition as well as the assassination, to help evaluate the value of eyewitness statements, and to understand why witness recollections evolve.

So what have I done...to earn such hatred?

Does pointing out that McClelland mentions but one wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report, explode your world or something? If so, I'm not sure why. 

It's very simple.

Many if not most will say the initial reports are the most important.

McClelland mentioned but one head wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report. 

A few days later, moreover, he assured Richard Dudman, who suspected shots had been fired from the front, that there was nothing about the head wound to indicate a shot had come from the front.

A few weeks after that, a magazine article was published which quoted the Parkland Doctors' reports. For this article, McClelland's description of the one wound he mentioned was changed from being of the left temple to being of the right side of the head. He was almost certainly behind this change.

But then, months later, in his testimony, he began echoing the statements of others, and described a wound on the far back of the head. 

Now some would have us believe that his months-after-the-fact testimony is the most reliable. But that reveals their hypocrisy. They reject Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, and Baxter's latter-day statements because they changed their impressions after being exposed to the photographic record. But refuse to reject McClelland's secondary statements after he was exposed to the reports of his fellow doctors. 

That's a double-standard, and a clear sign of cognitive dissonance, IMO. 

 

[Denny Zartman]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I do not rely upon the witnesses who changed their minds.

When I told you eight doctors saw cerebellum, your response was that four of them changed their minds. When I told you Dr. Clark said he saw cerebellum, your response was that Clark changed his story and was aligned with Lattimer.

[Denny Zartman]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I do not rely upon the witnesses who changed their minds.

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29935-proof-that-pat-speer-is-wrong-about-dr-mcclelland-initially-saying-the-gaping-wound-was-near-the-temple/page/6/#comment-522443

On 12/8/2023 at 4:47 PM, Pat Speer said:

Well then you believe all the witnesses placing the wound entirely above the ear must be wrong, and that the Parkland doctors thinking they saw cerebellum were lying or having a brain fart when they later said they were mistaken.

[Pat Speer]

9 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29935-proof-that-pat-speer-is-wrong-about-dr-mcclelland-initially-saying-the-gaping-wound-was-near-the-temple/page/6/#comment-522443

On 12/8/2023 at 4:47 PM, Pat Speer said:

Well then you believe all the witnesses placing the wound entirely above the ear must be wrong, and that the Parkland doctors thinking they saw cerebellum were lying or having a brain fart when they later said they were mistaken.

So???

When saying I don't rely upon someone, it is implicit that I don't rely on them when coming to conclusions.

But do I rely upon them when making arguments that prove the hypocrisy of others? Of course, I do. 

Certain someones have been using the statements of the Parkland witnesses, which are admittedly at odds with the statements of other witnesses, as well as the photographic evidence, to claim the low back of the head was blown out. And this is a con. The majority of these witnesses did not place the wound low on the back of the head.

And it's bizarre that I should have be subjected to these attacks, year after year, for saying what most everyone knows is true. 

Let's go back to kindergarten. The teacher asks "How many of you kids would like me to read The Cat in the Hat?" Five kids say yes. She then asks "How many of you would like me to read Goodnight Moon?" Five kids say yes. And then asks "How many of you would like me to read "Hippos Go Berserk!"? Five kids say yes. She then says since you voted for Hippos Go Berserk? by a score of 10 to 5, I'm gonna read Hippos Go Berserk!" Three of the five kids who'd voted for "Hippos Go Berserk then say, but no, we've changed our minds! Please read the Cat in the Hat!" Only she then wakes up five kids from their nap and says "Well, what do you think? You want me to read Hippos Go Berserk!, right?" And they say "sure". And she then says "By a score of 15 to 5, Hippos Go Berserk! wins!" And begins reading the book.

It's a con. And you don't have to be a fan of The Cat in the Hat or Goodnight Moon to see it. 

 

Edited January 8 by Pat Speer

[Keven Hofeling]

43 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

What the??? I have never attacked McClelland as a person, nor as a doctor. In fact, I have said mostly nice things about him. By all accounts he was a nice guy, a pleasant person. 

Now contrast that to what some prominent writers and members of this forum have said of McClelland's friends: Perry, Carrico, Jenkins, and Baxter. These men have been vilified as gutless XXXXX, or even as participants in the assassination, One prominent member on this website, who left after I exposed him as a fraud, even started a thread in which he garnered substantial support, in which he made out that Perry had actually finished JFK off or some such thing. 

I have pointed out, since I first joined this forum, that experts of all kinds are humans, and prone to mistakes. I discuss the possible motives of those who are clearly wrong on my website, and almost always assume they are just mistaken, and not part of some plot. I remain one of the few if not the only researcher to study human cognition as well as the assassination, to help evaluate the value of eyewitness statements, and to understand why witness recollections evolve.

So what have I done...to earn such hatred?

Does pointing out that McClelland mentions but one wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report, explode your world or something? If so, I'm not sure why. 

It's very simple.

Many if not most will say the initial reports are the most important.

McClelland mentioned but one head wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report. 

A few days later, moreover, he assured Richard Dudman, who suspected shots had been fired from the front, that there was nothing about the head wound to indicate a shot had come from the front.

A few weeks after that, a magazine article was published which quoted the Parkland Doctors' reports. For this article, McClelland's description of the one wound he mentioned was changed from being of the left temple to being of the right side of the head. He was almost certainly behind this change.

But then, months later, in his testimony, he began echoing the statements of others, and described a wound on the far back of the head. 

Now some would have us believe that his months-after-the-fact testimony is the most reliable. But that reveals their hypocrisy. They reject Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, and Baxter's latter-day statements because they changed their impressions after being exposed to the photographic record. But refuse to reject McClelland's secondary statements after he was exposed to the reports of his fellow doctors. 

That's a double-standard, and a clear sign of cognitive dissonance, IMO. 

 

Quote

 

Does pointing out that McClelland mentions but one wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report, explode your world or something? If so, I'm not sure why. 

It's very simple.

Many if not most will say the initial reports are the most important.

McClelland mentioned but one head wound, a wound of the left temple, in his initial report. 

A few days later, moreover, he assured Richard Dudman, who suspected shots had been fired from the front, that there was nothing about the head wound to indicate a shot had come from the front.

A few weeks after that, a magazine article was published which quoted the Parkland Doctors' reports. For this article, McClelland's description of the one wound he mentioned was changed from being of the left temple to being of the right side of the head. He was almost certainly behind this change.

But then, months later, in his testimony, he began echoing the statements of others, and described a wound on the far back of the head. 

Now some would have us believe that his months-after-the-fact testimony is the most reliable. But that reveals their hypocrisy. They reject Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, and Baxter's latter-day statements because they changed their impressions after being exposed to the photographic record. But refuse to reject McClelland's secondary statements after he was exposed to the reports of his fellow doctors. 

That's a double-standard, and a clear sign of cognitive dissonance, IMO. 

 

You are just regurgitating your accusations that Dr. McClelland did not mention the massive back of the head wound in his first day Admission Note because he did not actually see the wound, and that he later lied under oath in his testimony to the Warren Commission by saying that he had. But he did in fact mention the large BOH wound in his Admission Note, and you come up with your perjury allegation only by taking it completely out of context as I -- and many other researchers over the last decade -- have repeatedly demonstrated. But as is your standard practice when you cannot refute these facts, you just regurgitate your misrepresentations about McClelland ad nauseum instead of addressing the actual facts about his 11/22/1963 Admission Note. 

Here again, for the second time, is a link to the post in which I comprehensively set forth all of the facts about the true context of the Admission Note which you refuse to address. I again challenge you to demonstrate how all of these contextual facts are erroneous. Either put up or cease and desist from your slanderous allegations that Dr. McClelland committed malpractice and perjury.

 The truth is that you have accused Dr. McClelland of affirmatively lying about his professional observations as a doctor, being guilty of medical malpractice, of committing perjury before the Warren Commission, and of profiteering from one of the most terrible events in this nation's history by selling exploitive souvenir drawings and notes derived from his experience as a witness, and I am forced to wonder why you have omitted this from your most recent post.

By so grievously understating your persistent and ongoing libelous and unconscionable attacks against Dr. McClelland's integrity and professionalism, you reveal your self-awareness (guilty knowledge) of the egregiousness of your actions and turn insult into injury. 

The McClelland family is entitled to a public apology from you.

 

[Michael Griffith]

And then there was Parkland Hospital nurse Patricia Hutton. She said nothing about seeing a large wound above the right ear, but she did see a large wound in the back of the head.

Nurse Hutton saw JFK's body moved from the limo onto a hospital cart, and then she helped to wheel the cart into the ER and witnessed the efforts to save JFK's life. She was asked to place a dressing on the head wound, but she said this did no good "because of the massive opening on the back of the head" (Price Exhibit No. 21: Activities of Pat Hutton on Friday, November 22, 1963, MD 99, p. 2). She added that the President was "bleeding profusely from a wound on the back of his head."

Are we to believe that she could not tell the difference between a large wound above the right ear and a large wound on the back of the head?

How did all the morticians fail to see the obvious wound above the right ear that we see in the autopsy photos?

Mortician Tom Robinson said nothing about a large wound above the right ear. Robinson said he saw "a large, open wound in the back of the President's head" (ARRB meeting report, 6/211/96, MD 180, p. 2). He provided a diagram of the wound and put it in the occiput (MD 88, p. 5). Robinson gave the same description to the HSCA in 1977 (HSCA interview transcript, 1/12/1977, MD 63, p. 2).

Mortician John VanHoesen said nothing about a large wound above the right ear. VanHoesen said there was a hole "roughly the size of a small orange (estimated by gesturing with his hands) in the centerline of the back of the head" even after the skull was reconstructed (ARRB meeting report, 9/25/96, MD 181, p. 4). He explained that the hole was covered with a sheet of plastic "to prevent leakage."

Mortician Joe Hagan said nothing about a large wound above the right ear. Hagan said that JFK's head was "open in the back." Gesturing to the back of his head, he said that "all of this was open in the back." The ARRB meeting report notes that he gestured "to the area between both of his own ears on the back of his head" (ARRB meeting report, 5/17/96, MD 182, p. 5).

Were all these medical personnel legally blind and/or astonishingly ignorant of basic anatomy? Are we to believe that they looked at a large wound above the right ear and somehow imagined that it was 3-4 inches farther back on the head? Is it just an amazing coincidence that after getting a close-up, prolonged look at JFK's large head wound en route to Parkland, and after seeing the wound twice more that day, Agent Clint Hill said the wound was in the right-rear part of the head? 

And is it an even more amazing coincidence that the Parkland nurse who cleaned JFK's head and packed the large head wound with gauze, Diana Bowron, said the wound was in the back of the head? Could she not distinguish between the right ear and the back of the head while she was cleaning the wound and packing it with gauze?

Edited January 9 by Michael Griffith

[Keven Hofeling]

On 1/6/2024 at 11:46 AM, Pat Speer said:

Well, what about the Newmans, and Zapruder? Are you with Lifton on this? Do you believe their recollections should be ignored because they weren't doctors? Because only doctors can tell the location of a hole on someone's head? 

Or should we ignore them because they only saw the wound for a few seconds? 

Actually, there is good Dealey Plaza witness testimony that is highly probative of JFK's back-of-the head wound. Mostly Secret Service agents...

This meme is disseminated in the JFK research groups by Warren Commission apologists as a slightly more sophisticated proof that there was no back-of-the-head wound than the utterly absurd argument that the members of the Parkland Trauma Team did not bother to inspect the back of the President's head and therefore could not possibly know of the existence of the large wound in the occipital-parietal region.

The Pat Speer.com version of this tactic throws photos of Gail Newman and Malcolm Kilduff into the mix in support of the baseless claim -- which you repeat in your comment -- that all of the Dealey Plaza witnesses referred only to one large head wound, and that they all located that large head wound at JFK's right temple. Like your claims about the Parkland Hospital and Bethesda Autopsy witnesses, your assertions about the Dealey Plaza witnesses do not withstand scrutiny. Practically the entire Secret Service Detail and multiple lay witnesses describe the same blown out right side of the back of JFK's head that the Parkland doctors and nurses would later report; and contrary to your claims, the accounts of some of these witnesses do indeed demonstrate recognition of a frontal entrance wound AND a large rear exit wound from which blood, brain and skull was rearwardly ejected at high velocity.

Pat Speer.com attempts to contend with the historical abundance of back-of-the-head wound evidence and testimony through a combination of hair-splitting, parlor trick sleights of hand, and outright character assassination and demonization -- all tactics that would be unnecessary but for the absence of supporting evidence and common sense for your positions. Take, for example, your treatment of Dealey Plaza witness Charles Brehm: it is implied that by 1966 Brehm was embellishing his memories to include a back-of-the-head wound and rearward flying biological debris; it is presumed that his lack of expertise in ballistics impugns his credibility rather than enhances it; and  attempts are made to impute sinister implications to an inconsequential pause in Brehm's speech, and to gaslight readers into believing that Brehm has a finger in the palm of his hand pointing to his right ear when, in fact, his actual fingers are resting upon the occipital-parietal region of the back of his head. Unfortunately, with PatSpeer.com, such tactics are the rule rather than the exception. Accordingly, it is respectfully requested that another cut and paste job from PatSpeer.com is not employed to respond to this post, particularly considering that same would be unresponsive to the information in this post that your site is calculated to evade.

CHARLES BREHM HIT PIECE EXCERPTED FROM PATSPEER.COM

_________

SECRET SERVICE AGENT WILLIAM GREER was asked by Arlen Specter for the Warren Commission to describe the head wound he saw at Bethesda. Greer said, "I would--to the best of my recollection it was in this part of the head right here." Specter immediately asked, "Upper right?" Greer: "Upper right side." Specter: "Upper right side, going toward the rear. and what was the condition of the skull at that point?" Greer: "The skull was completely--this part was completely gone." [Warren Comm-- V2:127]

I wish there was a photograph of Greer's hand gesture, but nevertheless, in the context of the aggregate of all of the Dealey Plaza testimony it is clear the Greer is referring to the right side of the back of JFK's head.

_________

SECRET SERVICE AGENT ROY KELLERMAN under oath before the Warren Commission explained the head wound he saw to Arlen Specter, "He had a large wound this size." Specter: "Indicating a circle with your finger of the diameter of 5 inches would that be approximately correct?" (sic) Kellerman: "Yes, circular; yes, on this part of the head." Specter: "Indicating the rear portion of the head." Kellerman: "Yes." Specter: "More to the right side of the head." Kellerman: "Right. This was removed." Specter: "When you say, "This was removed", what do you mean by this?" Kellerman: "The skull part was removed." Specter: "All right." Kellerman: "To the left of the (right) ear, sir, and a little high; yes...(I recall that this portion of the rear portion of the skull) was absent when I saw him." [WC-V2:80- 81]

Kellerman's 8/24/1977 HSCA sketch of JFK's wounds is somewhat confusing because he has reversed the locations of the wounds (putting the back wound of the right side rather than the left and likewise reversing the large occipital-parietal wound from the right side to the left), but his sketch confirms that he remembered the large avulsive wound was on the back of JFK's head rather than on the top or side of JFK's head. Furthermore, his sketch and corresponding WC testimony tends to confirm the existence of the second gunshot wound to the back of JFK's head:

Any doubt about the actual location of the large back-of-the-head wound Kellerman observed is resolved by his testimony about viewing the wound in the morgue:

Mr. SPECTER. I would like to develop your understanding and your observations
of the four wounds on President Kennedy.
Mr. KELLERMAN. OK. This all transpired in the morgue of the Naval Hospital
in Bethesda, sir. He had a large wound this size.
Mr. SPECTER. Indicating a circle with your finger of the diameter of 5 inches;
would that be approximately correct?
Mr. KELLERMAN. Yes, circular; yes, on this part of the head.
Mr. SPECTER. Indicating the rear portion of the head.
Mr. KELLERMAN. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. More to the right side of the head?
Mr. KELLERMAN. Right. This was removed.
Mr. SPECTER. When you say, "This was removed," what do you mean by this?
Mr. KELLERMAN. The skull part was removed. [2 H 80-81]

Despite the confusion caused by the HSCA sketch, this testimony of Kellerman's observations about the large back-of the-head-wound in the morgue is powerful corroboration that it was located at the "rear portion of the head" on the right (and not on the left as in his HSCA sketch).
_________

SECRET SERVICE AGENT SAM KINNEY, who was driving the follow up car: “I saw one shot strike the President in the right side of the head. The President then fell to the seat to the left toward Mrs. Kennedy.” [11/30/1963 Statement: CE1024: 18H731] 

Kinney is referring to the right side of the back of JFK's head. We can be certain of this due to statements Kinney made when interviewed by Vince Palamara on 3/5/1994, as follows:

"...I had brain matter all over my windshield and left arm, that's how close we were to it ... It was the right rear part of his head ... Because that's the part I saw blow out. I saw hair come out, the pieces blow out, then the skin went back in -- an explosion in and out..." [3/5/1994 interview by Vince Palamara]

 

EXCERPT FROM VINCE PALAMARA INTERVIEW OF SAM KINNEY IN WHICH HE CONFIRMS THE BACK-OF-THE-HEAD WOUND:

_________

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]

“As I lay over the top of the back seat I noticed a portion of the President’s head on the right rear side was missing and he was bleeding profusely. Part of his brain was gone. I saw a part of his skull with hair on it lying in the seat.” [Statement: CE1024: 18H742] 

After seeing the President's skull wound in Dealey Plaza, and after returning with the body to Bethesda Clint Hill was "summoned...down to the morgue to view the body (again) and to witness the damage of the gunshot wounds."--as agent Kellerman put it in his 11-29-63 report. (WC--CE #1024, Kellerman report of 11-29-63. In: WC--V18:26-27) Hill reported, "When I arrived the autopsy had been completed and...I observed another wound (in addition to the throat wound) on the right rear portion of the skull." [WC--CE#1024, V18:744]

"...Blood, brain matter, and bone fragments exploded from the back of the President's head. The President's blood, parts of his skull, bits of his brain were splattered all over me -- on my face, my clothes, in my hair..." [in his 2012 book "Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir"] 

SECRET SERVICE AGENT PAUL LANDIS (Secret Service agent, on the right running-board of the follow up car), November 30, 1963: “I glanced towards the President and he still appeared to be fairly upright in his seat, leaning slightly towards Mrs. Kennedy with his head tilted slightly back. I think Mrs. Kennedy had her right arm around the President’s shoulders at this time. I also remember Special Agent Clinton Hill attempting to climb onto the back of the President’s car. It was at this moment that I heard a second report and it appeared that the President’s head split open with a muffled exploding sound. I can best describe the sound as I heard it, as the sound you would get by shooting a high powered bullet into a five gallon can of water or shooting into a mellon [sic]. I saw pieces of flesh and blood flying through the air ….” [Statement: CE1024: 18H755]

Landis's statement to the WC was not very revealing as to the location of the head wound. However, in the context of the publicity surrounding the release of his 2023 book, Landis was asked about the location of the large head wound and he demonstrated with his hand that the large wound was in the occipital-parietal region on the right side of the back of JFK's head, as seen in the video below:

_________

SECRET SERVICE AGENT GEORGE HICKEY (Secret Service agent, in the follow-up car), November 30, 1963: “It looked to me as if the President was struck in the right upper rear of his head. The first shot of the second two seemed as if it missed because the hair on the right side of his head flew forward and there didn’t seem to be any impact against his head. The last shot seemed to hit his head and cause a noise at the point of impact which made him fall forward and to his left again.” [Statement sent to Special Agent in Charge of White House Detail, Gerald A. Behn: 18H762] 

“Nothing was observed and I turned and looked at the President’s car. The President was slumped to the left in the car and I observed him come up. I heard what appeared to be two shots and it seemed as if the right side of his head was hit and his hair flew forward.” [Statement: 18H765]  

Clearly, Hickey is another back-of-the-head witness...

_________

SECRET SERVICE AGENT EMORY ROBERTS (Secret Service agent, in the follow-up car), November 29, 1963: “I do not know if it was the next shot or the third shot that hit the President in the head, but I saw what appeared to be a small explosion on the right side of the President’s head ….” [Statement: CE1024: 18H734] 

Considering that all of the Secret Service Agents above were referring to the right side of the back of JFK's head when referencing "the right side," there is no reason not to assume that Robert's was also referring to the right side of the back of JFK's head, and this Roberts is also a back-of-the-head witness.

_________

DALLAS MOTORCYCLE PATROLMAN BOBBY HARGIS: "...When President Kennedy straightened back up in the car the bullet hit him in the head, the one that killed him and it seemed like his head exploded, and I was splattered with blood and brain, and a kind of bloody water..." [4/8/1964 Warren Commission testimony]

"... As the President straightened back up, Mrs. Kennedy turned toward him, and that was when he got hit in the side of his head, spinning it around. I was splattered with blood. Then I felt something hit me. It could have been concrete or something, but I thought at first I might have been hit...." [11/24/1963 article in the New York Daily News]

The biological debris that impacted Hargis at such a velocity that he thought he'd been shot is consistent with Secret Service Agent Sam Kinney's description of seeing the biological debris ejected from the back of JFK's head, and thus Hargis is a back-of-the-head witness as well.

_________

FIRST LADY JACQUELINE KENNEDY: "I was trying to hold his hair on. From the front there was nothing -- I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on. .... I could see a piece of his skull sort of wedge-shaped, like that, and I remember that it was flesh colored with little ridges at the top." [June 5, 1964 Warren Commission Testimony]

_________

DEALEY PLAZA WITNESS BILL NEWMAN: "...I can remember seeing the side of the President's ear and head come off. I remember a flash of white and the red and just bit and pieces of flesh exploding from the President's head..." [Bill Newman interviewed about the JFK assassination -- 0:13-0:27 -- https://youtu.be/EEhlbAwI7Zg?t=14]

As Bill Newman demonstrated in the interview above, in addition to the right temple entry wound that he famously pointed out on the day of the assassination, he was also conscious of the biological debris being ejected from the back of JFK's head, thus making him a Dealey Plaza witness who reported two wounds to JFK's head.

_________

DEALEY PLAZA WITNESS CHARLES BREHM:

Mark Lane: 0:15 Did you see the effects of the bullets upon the President?

Charles Brehm: 0:21 When the second bullet hit there was a [Brehm puts his hand on the right side of the back of his head to demonstrate], hair seemed to go flying, uh it was very definite then that he was struck in the head with the second bullet, and uh, yes I very definitely saw the effects of the second bullet.

Mark Lane: 0:38 Did you see any particles of the President's skull fly when the bullet struck him in the head?

Charles Brehm: 0:46 I saw a piece fly over in the area of the curb where I was standing.

Mark Lane: 0:53 In which direction did that fly?

Charles Brehm: 0:56 It seemed to have come left and back...."

[Charles Brehm interviewed about JFK assassination by Mark Lane for the 1967 documentary "Rush to Judgment": https://youtu.be/RsnHXywKIKs]

DEALEY PLAZA WITNESS MARILYN WILLIS: "...The head shot seemed to come from the right front. It seemed to strike him here [gesturing to her upper right forehead, up high at the hairline], and his head went back, and all of the brain matter went out the back of the head. It was like a red halo, a red circle, with bright matter in the middle of it -- It just went like that..." [Marilyn Willis from 24:26-24:58 of TMWKK, Episode 1, at following link cued in advance for you https://youtu.be/BW98fHkbuD8?t=1466]

Marilyn Willis appears to be another Dealey Plaza witness who was conscious of both the small entry wound in the front of JFK's head and the large exit wound in the back of his head.

_________

DEALEY PLAZA WITNESS JEAN HILL (on the south side of Elm Street, near the Presidential limousine at the time of the shots), March 13, 1964: “Mrs. Hill heard more shots ring out and saw the hair on the back of President Kennedy’s head fly up.” [FBI report: 25H853–4]  

Jean Hill reported effects of the ejection of biological debris from the back of JFK's head and this is a back-of-the-head witness as well.

Edited January 9 by Keven Hofeling

[Keven Hofeling]

And there are indications that both Bill Newman and Abraham Zapruder DID see the blood, brains and skull that was blown out of the back of JFK's head.

Bill Newman described the biological debris as follows:

BILL NEWMAN: "...I can remember seeing the side of the President's ear and head come off. I remember a flash of white and the red and just bit and pieces of flesh exploding from the President's head..." [Bill Newman interviewed about the JFK assassination -- 0:13-0:27 -- https://youtu.be/EEhlbAwI7Zg?t=14] NOTE THAT VIDEO IS CUED IN ADVANCE FOR YOU.

 

Bill Newman, while describing the biological debris being blown out of JFK's head, makes a hand gesture over the lower right hand side of the back of his head, denoting the location where he saw the biological debris exiting JFK's head:

And Abraham Zapruder mentioned seeing the blood, brains and skull that was blown out of the back of JFK's head both in his Warren Commission testimony and in his Clay Shaw trial testimony:

Abraham Zapruder's Warren Commission testimony:

https://www.jfk-info.com/wc-zapr.htm

 

"...Mr. LIEBELER. He was sitting upright in the car and you heard the shot and
you saw the President slump over?
Mr. ZAPRUDER. Leaning-leaning toward the side of Jacqueline. For a moment
I thought it was. you know, like you say, “Oh, he got me,” when you hear a
shot - you’ve heard these expressions and then I saw - I don’t believe the Presi-
dent is going to make jokes like this, but before I had a chance to organize my
mind, I heard a second shot and then I saw his head opened up and the blood
and everything came out and I started - I cani hardly talk about it [the witness
crying].
Mr. LIEBELER. That’s all right, Mr. Zapruder, would you like a drink of water?
Why don’t you step out and have a drink of water?
Mr. ZAPRUDER. I’m sorry-I’m ashamed of myself really but I couldn't help it..."

 

Obviously, Zapruder was very traumatized by what he had seen through his viewfinder at the time of the headshot -- which certainly wasn't just the red mist cloud that appears in one frame for 1/18 of one second in the extant Zapruder film of today [more on this below].

 

Liebler didn't return to the topic, but Zapruder did near the end of the questioning:

"...Mr. ZAPRUDER. I am only sorry I broke down-1 didn’t know I was going to do it.
Mr.  LIEBELER. Mr. Zapruder, I want to thank you very much, for the Com-
mission, for coming down. It has been very helpful.
Mr. ZAPRUDER. Well, I am ashamed of myself. I didn’t know I was going
to break down and for a man to - but it was a tragic thing, and when you
started asking me that, and I saw the thing all over again, and it was an awful
thing-I know very few people who had seen it like that - it was an awful
thing and I loved the President, and to see that happen before my eyes - his
head just opened up and shot down like a dog - it leaves a very, very deep
sentimental impression with you; it’s terrible.
Mr. LIEBELEB. Well, you don’t have to feel ashamed about that at all, and
thank you very much. I enjoyed meeting you very much...."
 

Abraham Zapruder's Clay Shaw Trial Testimony:

https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/zapruder_shaw2.htm

 

In Abraham Zapruder's Clay Shaw trial testimony,  Zapruder recounts that JFK's "head practically opened up and a lot of blood and many more things came out", which is something many other witnesses attested to, but we don't see it in the extant Zapruder film of today:

 

"...Q: What did you see as you took your films in Dealey Plaza that day? Explain to the Jury.

A: ...As they were approaching where I was standing I heard a shot and noticed where the President leaned towards Jackie. Then I heard another shot which hit him right in the head, over here, and his head practically opened up and a lot of blood and many more things came out...."

 

A follow up question then results in Abraham Zapruder even more explicitly describing "the head practically open[ed] up and blood and many more things, whatever it was, just came out of his head." This confirms for us that Abraham Zapruder at the time of the Clay Shaw trial -- exactly like his business partner Erwin Schwartz -- remembered imagery from the camera-original Zapruder film from their repeated viewings during the weekend of the assassination, depicting blood, brain and skull being ejected from the back of JFK's head; imagery that has been completely excised from the extant Zapruder film:

 

"...Q: As you saw it, what happened at the time the second shot went off in regard to President Kennedy? What did you see?

A: I thought I just described what I saw. You mean where it hit him?

Q: Yes.

A: I saw the head practically open up and blood and many more things, whatever it was, brains, just came out of his head...."

 

Abraham Zapruder's Clay Shaw trial testimony, as recited above, is further supported by the fact that Zapruder's business partner, Erwin Schwartz, who accompanied Zapruder on the day of the assassination to the Kodak and Jamieson lab as he developed his camera original film, and viewed the camera-original film at least 15 times during that weekend, on November 21, 1994 reported to Noel Twyman, author of Bloody Treason, that he recalled seeing bloody exit debris leaving the back of President Kennedy's head and traveling to the left rear when he viewed the original film at Kodak. Noel Twyman wrote in Bloody Treason:

 

"...When I interviewed Erwin Swartz, I asked him several questions about what he saw on the film when he first viewed it in its original state at Eastman Kodak. [In a footnote, Twyman made clear that Schwartz was referring to first viewing the film in its 16 mm wide, unslit state at the Kodak plant in Dallas.] ... I also asked him to describe what he saw at the instant of the fatal head shot. His answer was very descriptive. He said he saw Kennedy's head suddenly whip around to the left (counter-clockwise). I also asked him if he saw the explosion of blood and brains out of the head. He replied that he did. I asked him if he noticed which direction the eruption went. He pointed back over his left shoulder. He said, "It went this way." I said, "You mean it went to the left and rear?" He said, "Yes." Bartholomew then asked him, "Are you sure that you didn't see the blood and brains going up and to the front?" Schwartz said, "No; it was to the left and rear." We went over this several times with him to be certain he was clear on this point. He was very clear. Of course. Schwartz's statement that the blood and brains went back to the rear and left was completely consistent with all of the eyewitnesses who said they saw the rear of Kennedy's head blow out and brain and blood go to the rear. It was also consistent with Dallas motorcycle policeman Bobby Hargis's testimony that he was riding to the rear and the left of limousine and was splattered with blood and brains...So here we have testimony from a man who first saw the original Zapruder film (he said he looked- at it at least fifteen times over the weekend)...who...saw the eruption of blood and brains in a direction opposite [to] what we now see on the Zapruder film...."

 

Note that there are no pieces of skull or brain being "blasted out" of the back of JFK's head at Z-313 of the Zapruder film as there should be (See slow motion clip of Zapruder film headshot sequence  below). Visible in the extant "original" Zapruder film is only a fine red mist suspended in the air for 1/18 of one second (frame Z-313 only), while all of the witnesses in real time on the ground in Dealey Plaza described an entirely different debris trail consisting of voluminous blood, brain and skull that was blown out of the back of JFK's head (Charles Brehm: "IT SEEMED TO HAVE COME LEFT AND BACK"), not the front, as you can see from the witness accounts directly below.

--------------------------------------------------------
WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF BLOOD AND BRAINS EXITING THE BACK OF JFK'S HEAD:

Clint Hill, Samuel Kinney, Bobby Hargis, Bill Newman, Marilyn Willis, Harry Holmes, Charles Brehm, Abraham Zapruder, Erwin Schwartz and Dino Brugioni.
__________
"...BLOOD, BRAIN MATTER, AND BONE FRAGMENTS EXPLODED FROM THE BACK OF THE PRESIDENT'S HEAD. THE PRESIDENT'S BLOOD, PARTS OF HIS SKULL, BITS OF HIS BRAIN WERE SPLATTERED ALL OVER ME -- ON MY FACE, MY CLOTHES, IN MY HAIR..."

Secret Service Agent Clint Hill (in his 2012 book "Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir").
__________
"...I HAD BRAIN MATTER ALL OVER MY WINDSHIELD AND LEFT ARM, THAT'S HOW CLOSE WE WERE TO IT ... IT WAS THE RIGHT REAR PART OF HIS HEAD ... BECAUSE THAT'S THE PART I SAW BLOW OUT. I SAW HAIR COME OUT, THE PIECES BLOW OUT, THEN THE SKIN WENT BACK IN -- AN EXPLOSION IN AND OUT..."

Secret Service Agent Samuel Kinney (3/5/1994 interview by Vince Palamara).
__________
"...WHEN PRESIDENT KENNEDY STRAIGHTENED BACK UP IN THE CAR THE BULLET HIT HIM IN THE HEAD, THE ONE THAT KILLED HIM AND IT SEEMED LIKE HIS HEAD EXPLODED, AND I WAS SPLATTERED WITH BLOOD AND BRAIN, AND KIND OF A BLOODY WATER...."

Dallas Motorcycle Patrolman Bobby Hargis (4/8/1964 Warren Commission testimony).
__________
"...I CAN REMEMBER SEEING THE SIDE OF THE PRESIDENT'S EAR AND HEAD COME OFF. I REMEMBER A FLASH OF WHITE AND THE RED AND JUST BITS AND PIECES OF FLESH EXPLODING FROM THE PRESIDENT'S HEAD..."

Dealey Plaza witness Bill Newman interviewed about the JFK assassination -- 0:13-0:27 -- https://youtu.be/EEhlbAwI7Zg?t=13
__________
"...THE HEAD SHOT SEEMED TO COME FROM THE RIGHT FRONT. IT SEEMED TO STRIKE HIM HERE [gesturing to her upper right forehead, up high at the hairline], AND HIS HEAD WENT BACK, AND ALL OF THE BRAIN MATTER WENT OUT THE BACK OF THE HEAD. IT WAS LIKE A RED HALO, A RED CIRCLE, WITH BRIGHT MATTER IN THE MIDDLE OF IT - IT JUST WENT LIKE THAT...."

Dealey Plaza witness Marilyn Willis from 24:26-24:58 of TMWKK, Episode 1, at following link cued in advance for you https://youtu.be/BW98fHkbuD8?t=1466 ).
__________
"...THERE WAS JUST A CONE OF BLOOD AND CORRUPTION THAT WENT RIGHT IN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD AND NECK. I THOUGHT IT WAS RED PAPER ON A FIRECRACKER. IT LOOKED LIKE A FIRECRACKER LIT UP WHICH LOOKS LIKE LITTLE BITS OF RED PAPER AS IT GOES UP. BUT IN REALITY IT WAS HIS SKULL AND BRAINS AND EVERYTHING ELSE THAT WENT PERHAPS AS MUCH AS SIX OR EIGHT FEET. JUST LIKE THAT!..."

Dealey Plaza witness and Postal Inspector Harry Holmes. Murder from Within (1974), Fred Newcomb and Perry Adams, p. 213. 
__________
"...Charles Brehm: 0:21 WHEN THE SECOND BULLET HIT, THERE WAS, THE HAIR SEEMED TO GO FLYING. IT WAS VERY DEFINITE THEN THAT HE WAS STRUCK IN THE HEAD WITH THE SECOND BULLET, AND, UH, YES, I VERY DEFINITELY SAW THE EFFECT OF THE SECOND BULLET.

Mark Lane: 0:38 Did you see any particles of the President's skull fly when the bullet struck him in the head?

Charles Brehm: 0:46 I SAW A PIECE FLY OVER OH IN THE AREA OF THE CURB WHERE I WAS STANDING.

Mark Lane: 0:53 In which direction did that fly?

Charles Brehm: 0:56 IT SEEMED TO HAVE COME LEFT AND BACK...."

Dealey Plaza witness Charles Brehm interviewed about JFK assassination by Mark Lane for the 1967 documentary "Rush to Judgment": https://youtu.be/RsnHXywKIKs
__________
"...I SAW THE HEAD PRACTICALLY OPEN UP AND BLOOD AND MANY MORE THINGS, WHATEVER IT WAS, BRAINS, JUST CAME OUT OF HIS HEAD...."

Testimony of Dealey Plaza witness Abraham Zapruder -- who filmed the assassination -- at the Clay Shaw trial -- https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/zapruder_shaw2.htm
__________
"...I also asked him if he saw the explosion of blood and brains out of the head. He replied that he did. I asked him if he noticed which direction the eruption went. He pointed back over his left shoulder. He said, "IT WENT THIS WAY." I said, "You mean it went to the left and rear?" He said, "YES." Bartholomew then asked him, "Are you sure that you didn't see the blood and brains going up and to the front?" Schwartz said, "NO; IT WAS TO THE LEFT AND REAR...."

Excerpt from interview of Erwin Schwartz -- Abraham Zapruder's business partner -- who accompanied Zapruder to develop the camera-original Zapruder film, and saw the camera-original projected more than a dozen times. Bloody Treason by Noel Twyman.
__________
"...Brugioni's most vivid recollection of the Zapruder film was "...OF JFK'S BRAINS FLYING THROUGH THE AIR." He did not use the term 'head explosion,' but rather referred to apparent exit debris seen on the film the night he viewed it. "...AND WHAT I'LL NEVER FORGET WAS -- I KNEW THAT HE HAD BEEN ASSASSINATED -- BUT WHEN WE ROLLED THE FILM AND I SAW A GOOD PORTION OF HIS HEAD FLYING THROUGH THE AIR, THAT SHOCKED ME, AND THAT SHOCKED EVERYBODY WHO WAS THERE..."

Excerpt from interview of Dino Brugioni -- Photoanalyst at the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center -- who viewed the camera-original Zapruder film the evening of 11/23/1963. Douglas Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board" , 2009, Volume IV, Chapter 14, page 1329.

__________

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

Do you honestly expect anyone here to be able to read, much less understand, your posts filled with different-sized and colored fonts and bold type for no apparent reason? Why you can't provide links rather than copying and pasting the same enormous blocks of text over and over again? You are giving people a headache.