Dr. Michael Chesser Documents JFK's Right Forehead Entry Wound

[Denise Hazelwood]

On 8/26/2024 at 3:19 AM, Pat Speer said:

He probably WANTED to believe Jenkins said he saw a hole on the forehead, and ended up saying Jenkins when he was thinking of Robinson. 

Of course, Robinson never said it, either. . 

But in Robinson’s testimony he indicated Jenkins’ temporal wound in his drawing, and when his interviewers said “forehead,” he didn’t argue. He said “temple” but to many people that could indicate the forehead. If he had pointed to his forehead when he said “temple,” it would explain why the interviewers said “forehead”—to clarify the record. The drawing came later, after the verbal testimony was done. Unfortunately the testimony was not filmed, which would have been very helpful.

There is a lot of confusion about what “temple” means. Temporal bone is not the same as “temple.”

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

But in Robinson’s testimony he indicated Jenkins’ temporal wound in his drawing, and when his interviewers said “forehead,” he didn’t argue. He said “temple” but to many people that could indicate the forehead. If he had pointed to his forehead when he said “temple,” it would explain why the interviewers said “forehead”—to clarify the record. The drawing came later, after the verbal testimony was done. Unfortunately the testimony was not filmed, which would have been very helpful.

There is a lot of confusion about what “temple” means. Temporal bone is not the same as “temple.”

Robinson was later asked about this by Livingstone and Horne, and both times he said the tiny wound or wounds he saw were on the cheek. 

It is folly, IMO, to twist Purdy's words into being Robinson's words, when Robinson quickly corrected Purdy and was asked about this other times and said no such thing...

Here is the next bit from the interview with Purdy...

Purdy: You say it was in the forehead region up near the hairline?

Robinson: Yes.

Purdy: Would you say it was closer to the top of the hair?

Robinson: SOMEWHERE AROUND THE TEMPLES. 

 

Robinson had thereby specified that the wound was NOT where Mantik and Horne have long claimed it was, and NOT where Chesser claims he found a hole on the lateral x-ray. 

This whole line of silliness gets worse, moreover, when you take a step back and realize that Robinson never got a close look at the body until the re-construction. And yet Horne uses him as a witness for a hole in the forehead Horne claims was somehow cut away BEFORE the beginning of the official autopsy. 

To recap...

Horne claims Robinson delivered the body to the autopsy and witnessed the pre-autopsy surgery, when Robinson's actual words make clear he did not deliver the body and arrived around the beginning of the official autopsy. Horne would later support his claim by citing Robinson's recollection of the body being brought in and out, or some such thing, when, as we've seen, Robinson had actually mentioned this as something that DID NOT happen. 

Horne claims Reed as an additional witness to the pre-autopsy surgery. But Reed said he saw Humes cut on the head AFTER the taking of the official x-rays, and that he was asked to leave and never returned to the morgue after performing the x-rays and seeing Humes begin the cutting. Well this won't do. So Horne claims Reed saw the cutting, was asked to leave, and then brought back to perform the x-rays after the skull had been altered. 

So it's not really a surprise to see that Horne has recently claimed Jenkins saw a bullet hole where he has long claimed Robinson saw a hole. It's just a continuation of his pattern of taking people's statements and claiming they said something different than they said, and then citing these imaginary statements as proof of his otherwise unsupportable theory. 

It's all smoke.

Now, if someone wants to take the divergent descriptions of the wounds at Parkland and Bethesda and take from this that the body was altered somewhere in between (a la Lifton), that's a separate discussion.

But Horne's claim the body was altered by Humes at Bethesda falls apart upon close inspection. 

Edited August 28 by Pat Speer

[Micah Mileto]

On 8/26/2024 at 3:19 AM, Pat Speer said:

Doug Horne is not a member of this forum. We are as free to call him a liar as we are to call Arlen Specter a liar, or Gerald Posner a liar. 

As it stands, however, I suspect he simply screwed up when he said Jenkins saw a bullet hole on the forehead. Jenkins is the neutron bomb to his theory, and he knows it. He probably WANTED to believe Jenkins said he saw a hole on the forehead, and ended up saying Jenkins when he was thinking of Robinson. 

Of course, Robinson never said it, either. . 

 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/profile/1013-doug-horne/

 

Doug actually did make an account here once upon a time, ha

[Denise Hazelwood]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Purdy: You say it was in the forehead region up near the hairline?

Robinson: Yes.

Purdy: Would you say it was closer to the top of the hair?

Robinson: SOMEWHERE AROUND THE TEMPLES. 

Again, some people think “temple/s” means the forehead area. Note how Robinson answered “Yes” to “forehead region up near the hairline.”
 

the tiny cheek perforations have been noted by Mantik and theorized as having been caused by glass shards from the windshield strike. They are separate wounds.

[Pat Speer]

20 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

Again, some people think “temple/s” means the forehead area. Note how Robinson answered “Yes” to “forehead region up near the hairline.”
 

the tiny cheek perforations have been noted by Mantik and theorized as having been caused by glass shards from the windshield strike. They are separate wounds.

The "temples" are not high on the forehead above the eyes and no amount of twisting can make it so. 

It is also important to note that Livingstone and Horne were both no doubt familiar with Robinson's HSCA interview and talked to Robinson separately--and that he told both of them the "wounds" he saw were on the cheek. The cheek is next to the temple. As he failed to mention to either of them anything about a wound anywhere else it is clear this was the wound he was thinking of when talking to Purdy--he just used slightly different verbiage. 

As far as his seeing two different wounds...this is nonsense cooked up by Mantik so he won't have to admit he was wrong on this issue. 

A little dialogue to demonstrate the situation...

Purdy: "What did your mom wear to your graduation?"

Robinson: "A blue dress."

Purdy: "Was there a pattern on this green dress?"

Robinson: "Yes... There was a pattern on the blue dress."

Mantik, 25 years later: "Aha! His mom was wearing a green dress! This proves the photos of the graduation ceremony have been faked, quite obviously by the deep state!"

Reasonable person: "Well, no, David, he said it was a blue dress... And he later said it was a Navy blue skirt."

Mantik: "But he said 'yes' when asked about a green dress! This proves that there were two dresses! One Navy blue skirt and one green! And that she must have changed dresses mid-ceremony...a change mot reflected in the official photos of the graduation..."

EGADS!!!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 29 by Pat Speer

[Keven Hofeling]

On 8/19/2024 at 2:27 PM, Pat Speer said:

McClelland said something like this towards the end of his life. But I think he was conflating Elmer Moore's coming to the hospital and showing the doctors the autopsy report--a move designed to get them to stop saying they thought the throat wound was an entrance--and someone's threatening Perry. If I recall he said Perry was threatened just after the press conference, which makes little sense, seeing as no one had a real grasp of where Kennedy was when the shots were fired and where the shots came from etc. In any event, if Perry was threatened, it didn't work, as he testified the wound looked like an entrance wound and continued to say as much for the rest of his life. 

On 8/19/2024 at 2:27 PM, Pat Speer said:

McClelland said something like this towards the end of his life. But I think he was conflating Elmer Moore's coming to the hospital and showing the doctors the autopsy report--a move designed to get them to stop saying they thought the throat wound was an entrance--and someone's threatening Perry.

You seem to be unaware, or are failing to divulge, that it is well established by virtue of Secret Service agent Elmer Moore's confession to James Gochenaur that he had indeed pressured Dr. Perry, and had been ORDERED to do so by Inspector Kelly, as we can see Gochenaur describe in the following video at timemark 3:09, cued for you in advance via the following link: https://youtu.be/QRBaiNiyyqM?si=UO-V_pqn_7dJu4G_&t=189

 

Here's a summary of the transcript in 5 bullet points with timestamps:

• (00:00) During the evening of the assassination, Dr. Malcolm Perry was pressured by calls from Bethesda to change his opinion about JFK's throat wound from an entrance to an exit wound.
• (00:35) In his Warren Commission testimony, Dr. Perry retracted his original statement and was intimidated into changing his opinion.
• (01:09) Dr. Donald Miller, who later worked with Dr. Perry, recalls Perry privately admitting the wound was "unquestionably an entrance wound."
• (02:31) Secret Service agent Elmer Moore was reportedly responsible for pressuring Parkland doctors, including Perry, to change their testimonies about JFK's wounds.
• (03:13) In 1970, Moore admitted to a graduate student that he was ordered by SSA Inspector Kelly to convince Perry that the wound could be either an exit or entry wound, not just an entry wound.

______________

On 8/19/2024 at 2:27 PM, Pat Speer said:

If I recall he said Perry was threatened just after the press conference, which makes little sense, seeing as no one had a real grasp of where Kennedy was when the shots were fired and where the shots came from etc.

It only makes little sense to somebody who denies that there was a well-coordinated high level government conspiracy in motion from the very start...

 

On 8/19/2024 at 2:27 PM, Pat Speer said:

In any event, if Perry was threatened, it didn't work, as he testified the wound looked like an entrance wound and continued to say as much for the rest of his life.

No, Perry always testified that it was an exit wound, to the Warren Commission, and to the HSCA, contradicting his first day reports that it was an entrance wound, while privately affirming, on several occasions over the years, that it was indeed an entrance wound. See the video above.

 

Edited Saturday at 07:43 PM by Keven Hofeling

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Keven Hofeling said:

You seem to be unaware, or are failing to divulge, that it is well established by virtue of Secret Service agent Elmer Moore's confession to James Gochenaur that he had indeed pressured Dr. Perry, and had been ORDERED to do so by Inspector Kelly, as we can see Gochenaur describe in the following video at timemark 3:09, cued for you in advance via the following link: https://youtu.be/QRBaiNiyyqM?si=UO-V_pqn_7dJu4G_&t=189

 

Here's a summary of the transcript in 5 bullet points with timestamps:

• (00:00) During the evening of the assassination, Dr. Malcolm Perry was pressured by calls from Bethesda to change his opinion about JFK's throat wound from an entrance to an exit wound.
• (00:35) In his Warren Commission testimony, Dr. Perry retracted his original statement and was intimidated into changing his opinion.
• (01:09) Dr. Donald Miller, who later worked with Dr. Perry, recalls Perry privately admitting the wound was "unquestionably an entrance wound."
• (02:31) Secret Service agent Elmer Moore was reportedly responsible for pressuring Parkland doctors, including Perry, to change their testimonies about JFK's wounds.
• (03:13) In 1970, Moore admitted to a graduate student that he was ordered by SSA Inspector Kelly to convince Perry that the wound could be either an exit or entry wound, not just an entry wound.

______________

It only makes little sense to somebody who denies that there was a well-coordinated high level government conspiracy in motion from the very start...

 

No, Perry always testified that it was an exit wound, to the Warren Commission, and to the HSCA, contradicting his first day reports that it was an entrance wound, while privately affirming, on several occasions over the years, that it was indeed an entrance wound. See the video above.

 

A couple of points. 

1. I was one of the first to write about Elmer Moore and am to some extent responsible for bringing what we know about Moore to this forum, and to the research community in general.

2. You seem to miss the nuance. ER doctors DO NOT make positive determinations as to entrance and exit. They have no specialized training to do so and their impressions are not considered trustworthy. Studies have been done in which ER doctors are as likely to be wrong as they are right when it comes to determining entrance and exit wounds in bodies with more than one wound. As a consequence, dedicated professionals do not insist wounds they observed were entrances and exits, but will instead insist that these wounds looked like entrances or exits. 

So, yes, Perry said he was willing to accept that the wound was an exit wound, but always maintained that it looked like an entrance wound. 

This is as one would expect from a doctor with his training. All the Parkland witnesses, including McClelland, initially did the same. 

I give props to McClelland, however, for specifying in his WC testimony that the tiny throat wound could only have been an exit for a projectile traveling much slower than the presumed bullet. 

My years-long study of the wound ballistics literature proves he was correct. 

P.S. Here's what I have on Moore. Almost none of this was widely known when I first shared this with this forum. 

From chapter 3c:

Should the Warren Commission's refusal to reach a conclusion on the number and timing of the shots, and its deliberate and ongoing efforts to deceive the public regarding Oswald's ability with a rifle not cause one to wonder if their entire investigation wasn't a political charade, and should Gerald Ford's misrepresentations of the evidence against Oswald not confirm these suspicions, then one needs to learn more about...Moore. Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore, that is...

After seeing Moore's name pop up numerous times in the most suspicious of circumstances, I asked researcher Gary Murr if he’d ever looked into Moore, and it turned out that he'd shared my curiosity. He sent me some of what he’d compiled on Moore. I then matched this up with Moore’s 1-6-76 testimony before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (aka the Church Committee). Some years later, moreover, I discovered the following photo of Moore online, where it had been posted by researcher Vincent Palamara. 

(This photo once accompanied a newspaper article in which Moore discussed his service for four U.S. Presidents. One might note, moreover, that he's placed LBJ at the top and JFK at the bottom.)

Here, then, is what we know about Moore...

At the time of the assassination, Elmer Moore was a Secret Service investigator assigned to their San Francisco office. A week after the assassination, 11-29-63, he was instructed to go to Dallas and assist Inspector Thomas Kelley with his investigation of the assassination. Once there, he conducted the Secret Service’s investigation of Jack Ruby, in order to establish the connection or lack thereof between Ruby and Oswald. Not surprisingly, he found no connection. On 12-5-63, he oversaw the Secret Service Survey of Dealey Plaza. The survey plat of this re-enactment, published by the Warren Commission as CE 585, and Moore’s subsequent reports, reveals that he concluded, after studying the Zapruder film, that the fatal head shot at frame 313 occurred when Kennedy was 34 feet further down the street than his fellow Agent Howlett concluded only the week before, and 29 feet further down the street than the Warren Commission would conclude 6 months later. This is a bit suspicious. Is it a coincidence that Kennedy’s traveling this extra distance would give the presumed sniper more time to aim, and make Oswald’s purported shooting feat less fantastic? The next week, on 12-11, Moore engaged in more mysterious activity. He visited the doctors at Parkland hospital who’d worked on Kennedy, and showed them the official autopsy report stating that the throat wound was an exit. This came as a surprise to some of these doctors, who’d initially believed and stated that the throat wound was an entrance, and repeated this speculation to reporter Jimmy Breslin, whose article on their treatment of Kennedy was in that week’s Saturday Evening Post. Since the doctors were giving interviews and repeating what was believed to be incorrect information, it only makes sense then that someone in the government would want to set them straight. Evidently, it was Moore’s job to set them straight.

Now here’s where things get weird. Moore’s 1976 testimony reflects that on 12-19, he was ordered to contact Chief Justice Earl Warren and request that he accept Secret Service protection.He had known Warren for over 20 years. But he had never worked in the protective detail of the Secret Service beyond temporary assignments. Nevertheless, he successfully convinced Warren he needed protection, and was Warren’s near-constant companion and bodyguard from that day until after the Warren Report was issued the next September. In this role, as bodyguard, he accompanied Warren to Warren’s questioning of Jack Ruby. But Moore was more than just a bodyguard. He admitted to the Senate Committee in 1976 that he had “discussions daily” with Warren. The obvious and vital question of whether or not Moore kept anyone informed of these discussions was not asked. The equally obvious question of whether anyone thought it was a conflict of interest to have one of the Secret Service’s chief investigators act as Warren’s personal security, when Warren was supposed to be reviewing the Secret Service’s investigation, also was not asked.  (A Church Committee document listing the names of 27 "Secret Service Agents investigating the Assassination of President Kennedy" lists Moore as one of three "supervisors," with 24 subordinates.)

What was discussed in 1976 was Moore’s relationship with James Gochenaur. Gochenaur had come forward with the allegation he’d met Moore in 1970, and that Moore had told him about some of his experiences investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. More to the point, Gochenaur said that Moore had guiltily admitted he’d badgered Dr. Malcolm Perry into changing his testimony about the President's throat wound. 

So how did Moore respond to this allegation? Well, Moore admitted meeting Gochenaur, and discussing the assassination with him, but denied telling Gochenaur he'd pressured Dr. Perry. Moore’s behavior, however, reveals he was greatly concerned about Gochenaur’s allegation, perhaps concerned enough to lie. He'd arrived for questioning with a personal attorney. He expressed the opinion that “to induce any witness to change his testimony, of course that’s a felony.”

So far, so good. Moore’s testimony fell apart, however, when he tried to explain what DID happen when he talked to Dr. Perry and the other Parkland doctors. Moore testified: “I was given a copy of the Bethesda autopsy. A mimeographed copy. There were numerous copies sent to the Dallas office and it was assigned to attempt to determine the trajectory of the bullets, the missiles, from the wound, and the report I referred to covers this…Well, what happened here, when I received the autopsy reports, there were medical terms and measurements that I was not familiar with one. I recall it was the acromion which is a process of the shoulder blade, I learned through Dr. Perry. And I think the description of the neck strap wound, the first bullet in the President’s neck, was determined about 14 centimeters from the acromion process arc, and another arc from the mastoid of 14 centimeters... They’re exactly the same measurements. And I was not sure of these in medical terms. The logical thing I thought at the time was to go out to talk to these people and also to let them see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all. They had never turned the body over at Parkland. They were engaged in respiratory and circulatory, you know, the trauma actions rather than examining wounds. So I had talked to Dr. Perry and he was, as I recall, 34 years old, a very personable man. He was very disturbed, as he had been quoted, where he had performed the tracheotomy through the exit wound, which is right over the Adam’s Apple, it went by part of the tie. He was quite disturbed that he had been quoted in the press as having said that is an entrance wound, and he had denied that consistently, that he ever said that, that what he said was there was a wound there and it could have been an entrance or an exit…And then when he saw the autopsy report, which was the first occasion, they got a copy, I think, the following day or so, was sent down from Bethesda, and they had been in contact with the doctors by phone, I believe…but they were quite interested in the autopsy report. And after reading it I think it was Dr. Perry first and then Dr. Carrico came in. And after they read it they asked if there would be any objection to other staff doctors seeing it who had attended the President in some manner or another and were interested in it. And I saw no objection. So they went into a little conference room—I would say six or seven doctors—and discussed it for possibly ten or fifteen minutes, and I left.” (When asked why he went to Parkland) “(To see) If it could be determined from the wounds the trajectory of the bullets. Did they come from the sixth floor of this and could this be proven by the—(When asked what Perry told him) “Well, that was not actually for him to answer, but what he was doing for me was  determining where this wound was on the body and what direction it went.”

The problem with Moore's testimony is it’s just not credible. I mean, really, Moore just so happens to show Perry the autopsy report, telling him the throat wound is officially an exit, to let him "see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all...They had never turned the body over at Parkland"? It was all just for Perry's general information, mind you, and not to get him to shut up? And really, Moore just so happens to pick Perry, the guy who told the nation in a press conference the throat wound was an entrance, as the guy to teach him a little anatomy? 

Moore's contention he consulted with Perry about the relative locations of the wounds, as opposed to his telling Perry the official conclusion about the relative positions of the wounds, is also suspect. The measurements for the back wound on the autopsy report, 14 cm from acromion and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process, as we shall see, place the back wound in the back, at the same level as the throat wound. Moore’s 12-11 report, after his meeting with Perry, however, asserts that the missile path of the first bullet to strike the President “is from the upper right posterior thorax to the exit position in the low anterior cervical region and is in slight general downward direction.” I doubt a doctor would say such a thing. The upper thorax is, by definition, below the lower cervical region, unless the body is leaning forward. And the Zapruder film studied by Moore demonstrated that Kennedy was not leaning forward before the shots were fired. The probability, then, is that Moore went to Parkland at least in part to bring Perry into line, and let him know that the throat wound was officially an exit., and below the back wound. 

Now let's be fair. As Moore, in his testimony, expressed skepticism wound locations could effectively establish a bullet’s trajectory, he may honestly have figured the entrance on Kennedy’s back was close enough. This doesn’t explain, however, his reporting that the back wound was above the throat wound--something the measurements shown to Perry proved false. One should wonder, furthermore, if Moore noticed that the location of the back wound in the drawings created by the autopsy doctors in March was far higher than the wound location he’d mapped out with Perry, and if he told Chief Warren about this problem... Or even if the apathetic attitude towards the wound locations and trajectories revealed by Moore in his work for the Secret Service infected the Commission’s re-enactment in May...

If that's it, moreover, that Moore was apathetic to the extreme, well, that may have been just what qualified him for the job. A 1-7-64 Treasury Department memorandum for the file reflects that Moore, who’d been traveling with Earl Warren since 12-19, was asked by Warren on 12-2 if “he could be available to the Commission for an indefinite period to assist in its work.” A 12-8 memo from Secret Service Chief Rowley reflects that Moore was assigned to “furnish any service, assistance, and cooperation the Commission considers necessary.” Hmmm... These memos fail to mention Moore’s purported role as Warren’s bodyguard. This raises the question, then, of whether Moore was protecting Warren or helping him run the investigation. In Professor Gerald McKnight’s book Breach of Trust, he discusses a document found in the voluminous archives of researcher Harold Weisberg, now held at Hood College. Among the documents recovered via Weisberg’s numerous Freedom of Information Act lawsuits was a February 7. 1964 letter from General Counsel Rankin’s Secretary, Julia Eide. This letter reflects that “all the waste material” (that is, notes, carbons, tapes) of the 1-22-64 meeting of the Warren Commission, in which they discussed the possibility Oswald was working for the FBI, was to be turned over to Secret Service Inspector Elmer Moore and burned. 

Huh? Doesn’t sound like straight guard duty to me...

That Moore was more...than Warren’s guard dog... is undoubtedly intriguing. In the years following the assassination of President Kennedy, it would be revealed that the Secret Service has been used at times as a private intelligence unit answering only to the President. Richard Nixon used them to spy on his own brother, and, according to Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield, spy on other political candidates as well. Huh... This raises the uncomfortable possibility that Moore was President Johnson’s eyes and ears on the Commission, put in place, with Warren's acquiescence, to help keep the commission "in line." Huh... This might explain why Moore, a long time Warren acquaintance, was brought into the Secret Service’s investigation on the same day Warren agreed to chair a Presidential Commission reviewing the Secret Service’s findings. 

And that's not all... This might explain as well how Anthony Lewis, a writer for the New York Times, while working on a book with Johnson's close associate Abe Fortas, became privy to information that could only have come from within the Commission. And it might also explain Moore’s seemingly exaggerated concerns about Gochenaur’s statements, and his willingness to lie about his visit to Perry. And, while we're at it, it might also explain why Moore, the only one working with the Commission to admit measuring out 14 cms from the tip of the mastoid process on a body, failed to alert Warren that this put the wound on Kennedy’s back, inches below the location on the drawings entered into evidence on March 16, 1964 as the official representations of the President’s wounds.  

And, oh yeah, before I forget... it might also explain why an HSCA contact sheet (brought to my attention by Vince Palamara) reveals that Moore called HSCA staff member Eileen Dinneen on 3-9-78 to tell her that "a young lawyer" on the Schweicker Committee (sic--he meant Church Committee) "had been ready to send him to jail for perjury" and that, as a consequence, "he would refuse to answer questions about matters he was already questioned about." 

I mean, that's some balls, right? He called the HSCA to tell them he'd refuse to answer any question he'd ever been asked before, seeing as his answer to such a question might reveal an inconsistency in his story, and the possibility/probability he'd been lying. 

Now that's some public servant!

There’s also this… On November 22nd 2003, Senator Arlen Specter addressed a crowd at an assassination conference held at Duquesne University. He told the crowd about his work for the Warren Commission and of being shown an autopsy photo of the President’s back wound on May 24, 1964. This autopsy photo, as we have seen, should have convinced Specter that the wound on Kennedy's back was inches below the level depicted in the commission's exhibits, and that it was therefore doubtful the shooting had occurred as purported. Instead, Specter stuck by his belief the bullet causing this wound, after striking Kennedy's back on a sharply downward trajectory, had somehow exited from his throat. Now, in his 2000 book Passion for Truth, and in previous interviews, Specter had said that Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley had shown him this photo. On this day, the 40th anniversary of the assassination, however, he told the audience it was “Elmer Moore, who was the Chief’s bodyguard.” 

Yikes. If it was in fact Moore, well, that would suggest Specter was shown the photo with Warren’s blessing. And this, in turn, would suggest that Warren, Moore and Specter all knew the wound was on the back and inches lower on the body than as shown in the commission's exhibits...and that they'd conspired to hide this from the public... 

Edited Saturday at 08:48 PM by Pat Speer

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

A couple of points. 

1. I was one of the first to write about Elmer Moore and am to some extent responsible for bringing what we know about Moore to this forum, and to the research community in general.

2. You seem to miss the nuance. ER doctors DO NOT make positive determinations as to entrance and exit. They have no specialized training to do so and their impressions are not considered trustworthy. Studies have been done in which ER doctors are as likely to be wrong as they are right when it comes to determining entrance and exit wounds in bodies with more than one wound. As a consequence, dedicated professionals do not insist wounds they observed were entrances and exits, but will instead insist that these wounds looked like entrances or exits. 

So, yes, Perry said he was willing to accept that the wound was an exit wound, but always maintained that it looked like an entrance wound. 

This is as one would expect from a doctor with his training. All the Parkland witnesses, including McClelland, initially did the same. 

I give props to McClelland, however, for specifying in his WC testimony that the tiny throat wound could only have been an exit for a projectile traveling much slower than the presumed bullet. 

My years-long study of the wound ballistics literature proves he was correct. 

P.S. Here's what I have on Moore. Almost none of this was widely known when I first shared this with this forum. 

From chapter 3c:

Should the Warren Commission's refusal to reach a conclusion on the number and timing of the shots, and its deliberate and ongoing efforts to deceive the public regarding Oswald's ability with a rifle not cause one to wonder if their entire investigation wasn't a political charade, and should Gerald Ford's misrepresentations of the evidence against Oswald not confirm these suspicions, then one needs to learn more about...Moore. Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore, that is...

After seeing Moore's name pop up numerous times in the most suspicious of circumstances, I asked researcher Gary Murr if he’d ever looked into Moore, and it turned out that he'd shared my curiosity. He sent me some of what he’d compiled on Moore. I then matched this up with Moore’s 1-6-76 testimony before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (aka the Church Committee). Some years later, moreover, I discovered the following photo of Moore online, where it had been posted by researcher Vincent Palamara. 

(This photo once accompanied a newspaper article in which Moore discussed his service for four U.S. Presidents. One might note, moreover, that he's placed LBJ at the top and JFK at the bottom.)

Here, then, is what we know about Moore...

At the time of the assassination, Elmer Moore was a Secret Service investigator assigned to their San Francisco office. A week after the assassination, 11-29-63, he was instructed to go to Dallas and assist Inspector Thomas Kelley with his investigation of the assassination. Once there, he conducted the Secret Service’s investigation of Jack Ruby, in order to establish the connection or lack thereof between Ruby and Oswald. Not surprisingly, he found no connection. On 12-5-63, he oversaw the Secret Service Survey of Dealey Plaza. The survey plat of this re-enactment, published by the Warren Commission as CE 585, and Moore’s subsequent reports, reveals that he concluded, after studying the Zapruder film, that the fatal head shot at frame 313 occurred when Kennedy was 34 feet further down the street than his fellow Agent Howlett concluded only the week before, and 29 feet further down the street than the Warren Commission would conclude 6 months later. This is a bit suspicious. Is it a coincidence that Kennedy’s traveling this extra distance would give the presumed sniper more time to aim, and make Oswald’s purported shooting feat less fantastic? The next week, on 12-11, Moore engaged in more mysterious activity. He visited the doctors at Parkland hospital who’d worked on Kennedy, and showed them the official autopsy report stating that the throat wound was an exit. This came as a surprise to some of these doctors, who’d initially believed and stated that the throat wound was an entrance, and repeated this speculation to reporter Jimmy Breslin, whose article on their treatment of Kennedy was in that week’s Saturday Evening Post. Since the doctors were giving interviews and repeating what was believed to be incorrect information, it only makes sense then that someone in the government would want to set them straight. Evidently, it was Moore’s job to set them straight.

Now here’s where things get weird. Moore’s 1976 testimony reflects that on 12-19, he was ordered to contact Chief Justice Earl Warren and request that he accept Secret Service protection.He had known Warren for over 20 years. But he had never worked in the protective detail of the Secret Service beyond temporary assignments. Nevertheless, he successfully convinced Warren he needed protection, and was Warren’s near-constant companion and bodyguard from that day until after the Warren Report was issued the next September. In this role, as bodyguard, he accompanied Warren to Warren’s questioning of Jack Ruby. But Moore was more than just a bodyguard. He admitted to the Senate Committee in 1976 that he had “discussions daily” with Warren. The obvious and vital question of whether or not Moore kept anyone informed of these discussions was not asked. The equally obvious question of whether anyone thought it was a conflict of interest to have one of the Secret Service’s chief investigators act as Warren’s personal security, when Warren was supposed to be reviewing the Secret Service’s investigation, also was not asked.  (A Church Committee document listing the names of 27 "Secret Service Agents investigating the Assassination of President Kennedy" lists Moore as one of three "supervisors," with 24 subordinates.)

What was discussed in 1976 was Moore’s relationship with James Gochenaur. Gochenaur had come forward with the allegation he’d met Moore in 1970, and that Moore had told him about some of his experiences investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. More to the point, Gochenaur said that Moore had guiltily admitted he’d badgered Dr. Malcolm Perry into changing his testimony about the President's throat wound. 

So how did Moore respond to this allegation? Well, Moore admitted meeting Gochenaur, and discussing the assassination with him, but denied telling Gochenaur he'd pressured Dr. Perry. Moore’s behavior, however, reveals he was greatly concerned about Gochenaur’s allegation, perhaps concerned enough to lie. He'd arrived for questioning with a personal attorney. He expressed the opinion that “to induce any witness to change his testimony, of course that’s a felony.”

So far, so good. Moore’s testimony fell apart, however, when he tried to explain what DID happen when he talked to Dr. Perry and the other Parkland doctors. Moore testified: “I was given a copy of the Bethesda autopsy. A mimeographed copy. There were numerous copies sent to the Dallas office and it was assigned to attempt to determine the trajectory of the bullets, the missiles, from the wound, and the report I referred to covers this…Well, what happened here, when I received the autopsy reports, there were medical terms and measurements that I was not familiar with one. I recall it was the acromion which is a process of the shoulder blade, I learned through Dr. Perry. And I think the description of the neck strap wound, the first bullet in the President’s neck, was determined about 14 centimeters from the acromion process arc, and another arc from the mastoid of 14 centimeters... They’re exactly the same measurements. And I was not sure of these in medical terms. The logical thing I thought at the time was to go out to talk to these people and also to let them see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all. They had never turned the body over at Parkland. They were engaged in respiratory and circulatory, you know, the trauma actions rather than examining wounds. So I had talked to Dr. Perry and he was, as I recall, 34 years old, a very personable man. He was very disturbed, as he had been quoted, where he had performed the tracheotomy through the exit wound, which is right over the Adam’s Apple, it went by part of the tie. He was quite disturbed that he had been quoted in the press as having said that is an entrance wound, and he had denied that consistently, that he ever said that, that what he said was there was a wound there and it could have been an entrance or an exit…And then when he saw the autopsy report, which was the first occasion, they got a copy, I think, the following day or so, was sent down from Bethesda, and they had been in contact with the doctors by phone, I believe…but they were quite interested in the autopsy report. And after reading it I think it was Dr. Perry first and then Dr. Carrico came in. And after they read it they asked if there would be any objection to other staff doctors seeing it who had attended the President in some manner or another and were interested in it. And I saw no objection. So they went into a little conference room—I would say six or seven doctors—and discussed it for possibly ten or fifteen minutes, and I left.” (When asked why he went to Parkland) “(To see) If it could be determined from the wounds the trajectory of the bullets. Did they come from the sixth floor of this and could this be proven by the—(When asked what Perry told him) “Well, that was not actually for him to answer, but what he was doing for me was  determining where this wound was on the body and what direction it went.”

The problem with Moore's testimony is it’s just not credible. I mean, really, Moore just so happens to show Perry the autopsy report, telling him the throat wound is officially an exit, to let him "see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all...They had never turned the body over at Parkland"? It was all just for Perry's general information, mind you, and not to get him to shut up? And really, Moore just so happens to pick Perry, the guy who told the nation in a press conference the throat wound was an entrance, as the guy to teach him a little anatomy? 

Moore's contention he consulted with Perry about the relative locations of the wounds, as opposed to his telling Perry the official conclusion about the relative positions of the wounds, is also suspect. The measurements for the back wound on the autopsy report, 14 cm from acromion and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process, as we shall see, place the back wound in the back, at the same level as the throat wound. Moore’s 12-11 report, after his meeting with Perry, however, asserts that the missile path of the first bullet to strike the President “is from the upper right posterior thorax to the exit position in the low anterior cervical region and is in slight general downward direction.” I doubt a doctor would say such a thing. The upper thorax is, by definition, below the lower cervical region, unless the body is leaning forward. And the Zapruder film studied by Moore demonstrated that Kennedy was not leaning forward before the shots were fired. The probability, then, is that Moore went to Parkland at least in part to bring Perry into line, and let him know that the throat wound was officially an exit., and below the back wound. 

Now let's be fair. As Moore, in his testimony, expressed skepticism wound locations could effectively establish a bullet’s trajectory, he may honestly have figured the entrance on Kennedy’s back was close enough. This doesn’t explain, however, his reporting that the back wound was above the throat wound--something the measurements shown to Perry proved false. One should wonder, furthermore, if Moore noticed that the location of the back wound in the drawings created by the autopsy doctors in March was far higher than the wound location he’d mapped out with Perry, and if he told Chief Warren about this problem... Or even if the apathetic attitude towards the wound locations and trajectories revealed by Moore in his work for the Secret Service infected the Commission’s re-enactment in May...

If that's it, moreover, that Moore was apathetic to the extreme, well, that may have been just what qualified him for the job. A 1-7-64 Treasury Department memorandum for the file reflects that Moore, who’d been traveling with Earl Warren since 12-19, was asked by Warren on 12-2 if “he could be available to the Commission for an indefinite period to assist in its work.” A 12-8 memo from Secret Service Chief Rowley reflects that Moore was assigned to “furnish any service, assistance, and cooperation the Commission considers necessary.” Hmmm... These memos fail to mention Moore’s purported role as Warren’s bodyguard. This raises the question, then, of whether Moore was protecting Warren or helping him run the investigation. In Professor Gerald McKnight’s book Breach of Trust, he discusses a document found in the voluminous archives of researcher Harold Weisberg, now held at Hood College. Among the documents recovered via Weisberg’s numerous Freedom of Information Act lawsuits was a February 7. 1964 letter from General Counsel Rankin’s Secretary, Julia Eide. This letter reflects that “all the waste material” (that is, notes, carbons, tapes) of the 1-22-64 meeting of the Warren Commission, in which they discussed the possibility Oswald was working for the FBI, was to be turned over to Secret Service Inspector Elmer Moore and burned. 

Huh? Doesn’t sound like straight guard duty to me...

That Moore was more...than Warren’s guard dog... is undoubtedly intriguing. In the years following the assassination of President Kennedy, it would be revealed that the Secret Service has been used at times as a private intelligence unit answering only to the President. Richard Nixon used them to spy on his own brother, and, according to Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield, spy on other political candidates as well. Huh... This raises the uncomfortable possibility that Moore was President Johnson’s eyes and ears on the Commission, put in place, with Warren's acquiescence, to help keep the commission "in line." Huh... This might explain why Moore, a long time Warren acquaintance, was brought into the Secret Service’s investigation on the same day Warren agreed to chair a Presidential Commission reviewing the Secret Service’s findings. 

And that's not all... This might explain as well how Anthony Lewis, a writer for the New York Times, while working on a book with Johnson's close associate Abe Fortas, became privy to information that could only have come from within the Commission. And it might also explain Moore’s seemingly exaggerated concerns about Gochenaur’s statements, and his willingness to lie about his visit to Perry. And, while we're at it, it might also explain why Moore, the only one working with the Commission to admit measuring out 14 cms from the tip of the mastoid process on a body, failed to alert Warren that this put the wound on Kennedy’s back, inches below the location on the drawings entered into evidence on March 16, 1964 as the official representations of the President’s wounds.  

And, oh yeah, before I forget... it might also explain why an HSCA contact sheet (brought to my attention by Vince Palamara) reveals that Moore called HSCA staff member Eileen Dinneen on 3-9-78 to tell her that "a young lawyer" on the Schweicker Committee (sic--he meant Church Committee) "had been ready to send him to jail for perjury" and that, as a consequence, "he would refuse to answer questions about matters he was already questioned about." 

I mean, that's some balls, right? He called the HSCA to tell them he'd refuse to answer any question he'd ever been asked before, seeing as his answer to such a question might reveal an inconsistency in his story, and the possibility/probability he'd been lying. 

Now that's some public servant!

There’s also this… On November 22nd 2003, Senator Arlen Specter addressed a crowd at an assassination conference held at Duquesne University. He told the crowd about his work for the Warren Commission and of being shown an autopsy photo of the President’s back wound on May 24, 1964. This autopsy photo, as we have seen, should have convinced Specter that the wound on Kennedy's back was inches below the level depicted in the commission's exhibits, and that it was therefore doubtful the shooting had occurred as purported. Instead, Specter stuck by his belief the bullet causing this wound, after striking Kennedy's back on a sharply downward trajectory, had somehow exited from his throat. Now, in his 2000 book Passion for Truth, and in previous interviews, Specter had said that Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley had shown him this photo. On this day, the 40th anniversary of the assassination, however, he told the audience it was “Elmer Moore, who was the Chief’s bodyguard.” 

Yikes. If it was in fact Moore, well, that would suggest Specter was shown the photo with Warren’s blessing. And this, in turn, would suggest that Warren, Moore and Specter all knew the wound was on the back and inches lower on the body than as shown in the commission's exhibits...and that they'd conspired to hide this from the public... 

This is amazing stuff Pat, thanks for your research. Secret Service agent Moore, active in the investigation, was Earl Warren's bodyguard? 

To inform on what Warren was doing, and advise and counsel Warren on what he should do?

Sure sounds like that would be a mechanism. 

Its always been a puzzle to me why Warren did not take more seriously Jack Ruby's pleadings to be questioned outside of the Dallas County Sheriff's custody. Warren did not even minimally ask that they be given a separate private room, everyone else cleared, and Warren talk one on one with Ruby and attempt to find out the nature of what Ruby wanted to tell that Ruby kept telling Warren he feared for his life to tell there. 

Moore at Warren's side through all this, all the time, taking everything in, probably more knowledgeable on what Warren needed to know than Warren.  

[W. Niederhut]

10 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

This is amazing stuff Pat, thanks for your research. Secret Service agent Moore, active in the investigation, was Earl Warren's bodyguard? 

To inform on what Warren was doing, and advise and counsel Warren on what he should do?

Sure sounds like that would be a mechanism. 

Its always been a puzzle to me why Warren did not take more seriously Jack Ruby's pleadings to be questioned outside of the Dallas County Sheriff's custody. Warren did not even minimally ask that they be given a separate private room, everyone else cleared, and Warren talk one on one with Ruby and attempt to find out the nature of what Ruby wanted to tell that Ruby kept telling Warren he feared for his life to tell there. 

Moore at Warren's side through all this, all the time, taking everything in, probably more knowledgeable on what Warren needed to know than Warren.  

Greg,

    I have often wondered if LBJ and Hoover had some sort of kompromat on Earl Warren.

    Purely speculative.  But the narrative about LBJ convincing Warren that he needed to help prevent a nuclear war never rang true, IMO.

     I wonder if Pat Speer, Robert Morrow, or others, have explored that subject in any detail.

[Pat Speer]

13 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Greg,

    I have often wondered if LBJ and Hoover had some sort of kompromat on Earl Warren.

    Purely speculative.  But the narrative about LBJ convincing Warren that he needed to help prevent a nuclear war never rang true, IMO.

     I wonder if Pat Speer, Robert Morrow, or others, have explored that subject in any detail.

I discuss Johnson's bending of Warren's arm in the first section of Chapter 1 on my website...

Here it is...

 

While Chief Justice Earl Warren, the chairman of the Warren Commission, and the man tasked with overseeing its investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is reported to have told his staff that "the truth was their only client," much evidence has arisen over the years to indicate that this simply was not so. The available record, in fact, now suggests that the Commission had another client, one whose interests were to be placed above and beyond the Commission's search for truth. This client was called... "national security" or, more specifically, President Lyndon Johnson.

One need look no further than the memoirs of Warren, for that matter, to see that this is true. There, in the final pages written at the end of his long successful life, Warren admitted that he was strong-armed into chairing the Commission only after Johnson, Kennedy's successor, told him that if people came to believe there was foreign involvement in the assassination it could lead to a war that would kill 40 million. This, one can only assume, gave Warren the clear signal he was NOT to find for a conspiracy involving a foreign power.

But when one reads between the lines--and reads other lines--a fuller picture emerges. Warren was also told he was NOT to find for a domestic conspiracy, or at least anything that could point back to Johnson.

There were signs for this from the get-go. The Voice of America, the U.S. Information Agency's worldwide radio network, had initially reported, in the moments after the shooting, that Dallas, Texas, the scene of the crime, was also "the scene of the extreme right wing movement." It soon stopped doing so. This suggests then that someone in the government was particularly sensitive to the idea that the right wing would be blamed for the shooting, and had ordered the Voice of America to downplay the possibility of a domestic conspiracy. 

 

 

 

 

 

Above: a decidedly cold part of the mostly warm reception greeting President Kennedy at Love Field, Dallas, Texas, 11-22-63.

This "sensitivity," moreover, was in the air and spreading. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, whose discussions in the days after the shooting sparked the creation of the Warren Commission, testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the "HSCA") on 8-4-78  that he sensed that the rest of the world would suspect Johnson's involvement, and that this in effect "disqualified" Johnson from leading an investigation into Kennedy's death. Katzenbach then explained that this feeling had led him to believe that "some other people of enormous prestige and above political in-fighting, political objectives, ought to review the matter and take the responsibility" of identifying Kennedy's assassin.

He said much the same thing in subsequent testimony. On 9-21-78 he told the HSCA that his primary concern in the aftermath of the assassination was "the amount of speculation both here and abroad as to what was going on, whether there was a conspiracy of the left or a lone assassin or even in its wildest stages, a conspiracy by the then vice president to achieve the presidency, the sort of thing you have speculation about in some countries abroad where that kind of condition is normal." 

Egads. These words suggest that Katzenbach, who was only running the Justice Department in the aftermath of the assassination, considered Johnson's involvement unthinkable, and not really worth investigating.

And this wasn't the last time Katzenbach suggested as much. In his 2008 memoir Some of It Was Fun, Katzenbach wrote that in the days after the assassination: "Among the many conspiracy theories floating around were those that put conservative Texas racists in the picture and even some that saw LBJ as the moving force."

That Katzenbach's concern about these theories influenced the Warren Commission's investigation, moreover, seems obvious. Howard Willens, a Justice Department attorney reporting to Katzenbach, was made an assistant to Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, and was tasked with 1) hiring the commission's junior counsel (the men tasked with performing the bulk of the commission's investigation), 2) assigning these men specific areas of investigation, 3) supplying these men with the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA reports pertinent to their areas of investigation, 4) working as a liaison between these men and the agencies creating these reports, and 5) helping to re-write the commission's own report. On 7-28-78, in Executive Session, Willens testified before the HSCA; he admitted: "there were some allegations involving President Johnson that were before the Commission and there was understandably among all persons associated with this effort a desire to investigate those allegations and satisfy the public, if possible, that these allegations were without merit."

But these allegations weren't investigated, not really. The Commission's final report amounted to a prosecutor's brief against a lone assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald, and the 26 volumes of supporting data published by the Commission contained next to nothing on Johnson or other possible suspects.

That this "clearing" of Johnson's name was a major factor in the commission's creation is confirmed, moreover, by a 2-17-64 memo written by Warren Commission Counsel Melvin A. Eisenberg. While reporting on the Warren Commission's first staff conference of 1-20-64, Eisenberg recalled that Chief Justice Warren had discussed "the circumstances under which he had accepted the chairmanship of the Commission," and had claimed he'd resisted pressure from Johnson until "The President stated that the rumors of the most exaggerated kind were circulating in this country and overseas. Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the Government wishing to see the Presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched, could conceivably lead the country into a war which could cost 40 million lives."

Eisenberg's account of Warren's statements was supported, furthermore, by Warren Commission Counsel--and subsequent Senator--Arlen Specter in his 2000 memoir Passion for Truth. In Specter's account, Warren claimed that Johnson had told him "only he could lend the credibility the country and the world so desperately needed as the people tried to understand why their heroic young president had been slain. Conspiracy theories involving communists, the U.S.S.R., Cuba, the military-industrial complex, and even the new president were already swirling. The Kennedy assassination could lead America into a nuclear war that could kill 40 million people..."

 

 

 

 

Above: Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (L) and his new best-buddy, Premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khruschev (R). Cuba's embrace of Russia and Communism scared the bejeesus out of many Americans, and Lyndon Johnson used this fear to scare Chief Justice Warren into chairing the Commission that would thereafter bear his name. 

Now this, apparently, wasn't the only time Warren admitted Johnson's worries extended both beyond and closer to home than the possible thermo-nuclear war mentioned in his autobiography. In his biography of Warren, Ed Cray reported that Warren once confided to a friend that "There was great pressure on us to prove, first, that President Johnson was not involved, and, second, that the Russians were not involved."

And yet Warren refused to put Johnson's fears he'd be implicated on the record. While Warren was interviewed a number of times in his final years about the creation of the Commission, he never admitted in these interviews what he'd readily told his friends and the commission's staff--that Johnson had railroaded him onto the commission in part to clear himself. 

In fact, Warren claimed the opposite. When interviewed by Warren Commission historian Alfred Goldberg on March 28, 1974, Warren told Goldberg the opposite of what he'd told Eisenberg and Specter (and presumably Goldberg) in 1964. Instead of claiming Johnson told him "Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the Government wishing to see the Presidency assumed by President Johnson," Warren now related "There were of course two theories of conspiracy. One was the theory about the communists. The other was that LBJ's friends did it as a coup d'etat. Johnson didn't talk about that."

It seems likely, then, that even Warren thought it improper for the President, the head of the Executive Branch of Government, to pressure the Chief Justice of the United States, the head of the Judicial Branch of Government, to head a Commission to help clear the President's name.

 

 

Above: a photograph showing the Warren/Johnson dynamic. Warren was older, receding, settled. Johnson, was younger, forward-leaning, and absolutely determined to have his way. 

Now, it's not as if Warren's fellow commissioners had a problem with serving this higher purpose--that of clearing their new President. John McCloy, Wall Street's man on the Commission, told writer Edward Epstein on June 7, 1965 that one of the commission's objectives was "to show foreign governments we weren't a South American Banana Republic."Well, seeing as the expression "Banana Republic" is not a reference to countries whose leaders have been killed by foreign enemies, but to countries whose leaders have been killed by domestic enemies, who then assume power, this is most certainly a reference to Johnson.

And it's not as if this was all a big secret. The December 5, 1963, transcripts of the Warren Commission's first meeting reflect that Senator Richard Russell, Johnson's long-time friend and mentor, admitted "I told the President the other day, fifty years from today people will be saying he had something to do with it so he could be President."

And it's not as if Washington insiders were unaware of this non-secret secret. In 1966, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak published Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power. There, they discussed the creation of the Warren Commission as follows: "There was first the question of the assassination itself. Inevitably, irresponsible demagogues of the left and right spread the notion that not one assassin but a conspiracy had killed John Kennedy. That it occurred in Johnson's own state on a political mission urgently requested and promoted by Johnson only embellished rancid conspiratorial theories. If he were to gain the confidence of the people, the ghost of Dallas must be shrugged off."

Now, should one still doubt that Johnson was at least as concerned with suspicions of himself as of the Soviets, there is confirmation from an even better source: Johnson himself. In a rarely-cited interview with columnist Drew Pearson, cited in a November 14th, 1993 article in The Washington Post, Johnson admitted that, in his conversation with Warren, in which he convinced Warren to head his commission, Johnson brought up the assassination of President Lincoln, and that rumors still lingered about the conspiracy behind his murder 100 years after the fact. According to Pearson, Johnson admitted telling Warren that "The nation cannot afford to have any doubt this time." 

Well, that says it all. The doubt, according to Johnson, the nation could not afford to have, was doubt about Southern and/or military involvement in the assassination. The rumors about Lincoln's death, after all, revolved largely around his being murdered by The Confederate Army as revenge for his successful campaign to re-unite the States, or his being murdered by his own Secretary of War, or his being murdered by his Vice-President, a Southerner named JOHNSON.

And Johnson acknowledged this was his concern in his presidential memoir, The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency 1963-1969, published 1971. Of the national mood on 11-24-63, after the man accused of killing President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, a purported communist-sympathizer, was shot down while in police custody, by Jack Ruby, a man with connections to organized crime, Johnson wrote: "The atmosphere was poisonous and had to be cleared. I was aware of some of the implications that grew out of that skepticism and doubt. Russia was not immune to them. Neither was Cuba. Neither was the State of Texas. Neither was the new President of the United States."

[W. Niederhut]

Thanks for the information, Pat.

But I still wonder if LBJ and Hoover had some sort of behind-the-scenes kompromat on Earl Warren.

Didn't Hoover have dirt on a lot of prominent people in D.C., including Gerald Ford?

[Ron Bulman]

Yes, from what I've read Hoover collected dirt.  Like reportedly Ford in a Wahington hotel room with someone other than his wife.  (Thus, his complicity on informing the FBI of the ongoing WC proceedings?) Then again there were reportedly accusations of CIA or Mafia possession of photos of Hoover and top aide Clyde Tolson together in a compromising position.  They were certainly friendly acquaintances living across the street from each other during LBJ's time as the Senate Majority Leader in the 1950's.  LBJ overseeing approval of the FBI budget.

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Yes, from what I've read Hoover collected dirt.  Like reportedly Ford in a Wahington hotel room with someone other than his wife.  (Thus, his complicity on informing the FBI of the ongoing WC proceedings?) Then again there were reportedly accusations of CIA or Mafia possession of photos of Hoover and top aide Clyde Tolson together in a compromising position.  They were certainly friendly acquaintances living across the street from each other during LBJ's time as the Senate Majority Leader in the 1950's.  LBJ overseeing approval of the FBI budget.

When I created a timeline for my website I noticed something I think others had overlooked...

 

From chapter 3:

On 5-14-64, a week after President Johnson waived his impending mandatory retirement, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover testifies before the Commission. (5H96-120) Despite his taking an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he offers up the Hoover truth.

Hoover Truth: “I have read many of the reports that our agents have made and I have been unable to find any scintilla of evidence showing any foreign conspiracy or any domestic conspiracy that culminated in the assassination of President Kennedy.” (Note: Hoover had known for three years or more that organized crime and the anti-Castro elements likely to set up Oswald were linked and were conspiring to murder Fidel Castro, Oswald’s supposed hero. Even though this information could lead one to suspect that Oswald killed Kennedy in retaliation, or that Oswald was indeed set up, Hoover failed to mention anything about this to the Commission.)

Hoover Truth: “There have been publications and books written, the contents of which have been absurd and without a scintilla of foundation of fact." “I, personally, feel that any finding of the Commission will not be accepted by everybody, because there are bound to be some extremists who have very pronounced views, without any foundation for them, who will disagree violently with whatever findings the Commission makes.” (Note: two of the loudest voices to argue against the Commission’s findings were not extremists at all, but former FBI agents William Turner and Jim Garrison. More pointedly, the President for whom the report was written, Lyndon Johnson, never believed its findings. )

Hoover Truth: “I don’t think you can get absolute security without almost establishing a police state, and we don’t want that.” (Note: by 1964 Hoover had long been using the FBI to infiltrate and discredit organizations he found personally despicable. These FBI-trained infiltrators would frequently encourage the targeted organizations to engage in violent activity, in order to help discredit them in the public eye. Curiously, one of the organizations targeted by Hoover under this program (COINTELPRO) was the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization publicly discredited in New Orleans by the actions of Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Hoover Truth: (When asked if he still agreed that Oswald acted alone.) “I subscribe to it even more strongly today than I did at the time the report was written. You see the original idea was that there would be an investigation by the FBI and a report would be prepared in such a form that it could be released to the public… Then a few days later, after further consideration, the President decided to form a commission, which I think was very wise, because I feel that the report of any agency of Government investigating what might be some shortcomings on the part of other agencies of Government ought to be reviewed by an impartial group such as this Commission.” (Note: Hoover failed to admit that he originally told President Johnson the Commission would be a “three-ring circus." Hoover also failed to acknowledge that the FBI had been tasked not only with investigating the shortcomings of other agencies, i.e. the State department, CIA, Secret Service, and Dallas Police Department, but the potential shortcomings of the FBI itself, as the FBI had failed to add Oswald’s name to the Security Index used by the Secret Service to track possible threats to the President.)

Hoover Truth: (When asked by Congressman Hale Boggs if he had thoughts on Oswald’s motivation.) “My speculation, Mr. Boggs, is that this man was no doubt a dedicated Communist… He stayed in Moscow awhile and he went to Minsk where he worked. There was no indication of any difficulty, personally on his part there, but I haven’t the slightest doubt he was a dedicated Communist.” (Note: Hoover was obsessed with Communism, and saw Communists as evil and everywhere. His domestic intelligence chief William Sullivan later wrote a book admitting that by the early 1960s a large percentage of American communists were in fact FBI informants.)

Hoover Truth: “Now some people have raised the question, why didn’t he shoot the President as the car came toward the storehouse where he was working? The reason for that is, I think, the fact there were some trees between his window on the sixth floor and the cars as they turned and went through the park. So he waited until the car got out from under the trees, and the limbs, and then he had a perfectly clear view of the of the occupants of the car, and I think he took aim, either on the President or Connally, and I personally believe it was the President in view of the twisted mentality the man had.” (Note, as demonstrated by the photos of the assassination scene taken by the Secret Service, and published by the Warren Commission as Exhibit 875, there was a clear shot down Houston, should a sniper have been so inclined. The only trees were to the right of the sniper’s nest, blocking its view down Elm.)

No, I'm not joking. Here's a photo taken from the sniper's nest during the Secret Service's 11-27-63 re-enactment. There are no trees to the left of the window. As a result, the sniper would have had a clear shot at the limo as it approached the corner. Hoover was full of beans, or blowing smoke, or both (the conditions seem to be related).

 

 

 

 

Hoover Truth: (When discussing the attitude of the Soviet Government, and the KGB in particular, towards Oswald) “I think they probably looked upon him more as a kind of a queer sort of individual and they didn’t trust him too strongly. But just the day before yesterday information came to me indicating that there is an espionage training school outside of Minsk—I don’t know whether it was true—and that he was trained in that school to come back to this country to become what they call a 'sleeper,' that is a man who will remain dormant for 3 or 4 years and in case of international hostilities rise up and be used.” (Note: this from the man who just swore there was not one “scintilla” of evidence indicating a foreign conspiracy. It seems Hoover couldn’t help but kick a little sand in the direction of Russia when given the opportunity.)

Hoover Truth: “Now, we interviewed Oswald a few days after he arrived…There was nothing up to the time of the assassination that gave any indication that this man was a dangerous character who might do harm to the President or to the Vice-President, so his name was not furnished at the time to the Secret Service. Under the new criteria which we have now put into force and effect, it would have been furnished because we now include all defectors.” (Note: here, Hoover almost certainly commits perjury. Hoover concealed from the commission that on December 10, 1963, he’d censured or placed on probation 17 employees (5 field investigators, 1 field supervisor, 3 special agents in charge, 4 headquarters supervisors, 2 headquarters section chiefs, 1inspector, and 1 assistant director) for what the inspector of the internal investigation, James Gale, termed “shortcomings in connection with the investigation of Oswald prior to the assassination.” When Assistant director Alan Belmont complained about this action, stating that since “all of the supervisors and officials who came into contact with this case…are unanimous in the opinion that Oswald did not meet the criteria for the Security Index…it would appear that the criteria are not sufficiently specific,” Hoover blasted him. On Belmont’s addendum to Gale’s December 10, 1963 memo, Hoover wrote “They were worse than mistaken. Certainly no one in full possession of all his faculties can claim Oswald didn’t fall within this criteria.” On September 24, 1964, the day the Warren Report, which included criticisms of the FBI’s investigation of Oswald prior to the assassination, was released, Hoover pounced again, writing that the employees who failed to properly investigate Oswald “could not have been more stupid.” He then punished these employees a second time. On September 30, 1964, Inspector Gale wrote “It is felt that it is appropriate at this time to consider further administrative action against those primarily culpable for the derelictions in this case which have now had the effect of publicly embarrassing the Bureau.” When a number of top FBI officials reacted angrily to the Warren Report’s criticism of the Bureau, and began planning ways to defend the FBI in the press, Hoover reiterated his position that the FBI was in fact to blame. On a 10-1-64 memo from Alan Belmont to Clyde Tolson, he wrote: “We were wrong. The administrative actions approved by me will stand. I do not intend to palliate actions which have resulted in forever destroying the Bureau as the top level investigative organization.” )

Hoover Truth: “There was very aggressive press coverage at Dallas. I was so concerned that I asked my agent in charge at Dallas, Mr. Shanklin, to personally go to Chief Curry and tell him that I insisted that he not go on the air any more until this case was resolved. Until all the evidence had been examined, I did not want any statements made concerning the progress of the investigation. Because of the fact the President had asked me to take charge of the case I insisted that he and all members of his department refrain from public statements.” (Note: immediately following Oswald’s death, Hoover’s man in Dallas, Mr. Shanklin, listed all the evidence against Oswald for the New York Times. Moreover, the Times’ 11-25 description of the evidence indicates that Shanklin misrepresented the results of the paraffin tests, stating that they showed “particles of gunpowder from a weapon, probably a rifle, on Oswald’s cheek and hands.” While the test results were consistent with Oswald firing a pistol, the test results were negative for his cheek. Therefore, there was nothing whatsoever about the tests that suggested Oswald had fired a rifle.)

Hoover Truth: “Well, I can tell you so far as the FBI is concerned the case will be continued in an open classification for all time. That is, any information coming to us or any report coming to us from any source will be thoroughly investigated, so that we will be able to either prove or disprove the allegation.” (Note: in February 1967, Edward Morgan, a lawyer representing CIA front-man Robert Maheu and mafia strategist Johnny Rosselli, contacted columnist Drew Pearson and told him about the joint CIA/Mafia attempts to kill Castro, and the possibility they’d backfired on Kennedy. Pearson then told Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in turn told Secret Service Chief James Rowley. When Rowley told Hoover about the incident, Alex Rosen drafted the FBI response. Rosen would later testify that he was sick and that an unidentified subordinate wrote this under his name. His response: “no investigation will be conducted regarding the allegations…to Chief Justice Warren.” The letter, which was sent to Chief Rowley under Hoover’s name on 2-15-67, went on to state “The Bureau is not conducting any investigation regarding this matter. However, should Mr. Pearson, (Morgan), or (his) source of information care to volunteer any information to the Bureau, it would be accepted.” The internal memo from Rosen to White House/FBI liaison Cartha Deloach, for that matter, added: “Consideration was given to furnishing this information to the White House, but since this matter does not concern, nor is it pertinent to the present Administration, no letter was being sent.” Hmmm... It follows then, that if Hoover's testimony to the Warren Commission had in fact been truthful, and that the FBI was in fact committed to investigating any leads that would subsequently come their way, well, then Hoover clearly failed to tell as much to the men who would be tasked with conducting such an investigation.)

Edited Sunday at 06:23 AM by Pat Speer

[Keven Hofeling]

17 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

A couple of points. 

1. I was one of the first to write about Elmer Moore and am to some extent responsible for bringing what we know about Moore to this forum, and to the research community in general.

2. You seem to miss the nuance. ER doctors DO NOT make positive determinations as to entrance and exit. They have no specialized training to do so and their impressions are not considered trustworthy. Studies have been done in which ER doctors are as likely to be wrong as they are right when it comes to determining entrance and exit wounds in bodies with more than one wound. As a consequence, dedicated professionals do not insist wounds they observed were entrances and exits, but will instead insist that these wounds looked like entrances or exits. 

So, yes, Perry said he was willing to accept that the wound was an exit wound, but always maintained that it looked like an entrance wound. 

This is as one would expect from a doctor with his training. All the Parkland witnesses, including McClelland, initially did the same. 

I give props to McClelland, however, for specifying in his WC testimony that the tiny throat wound could only have been an exit for a projectile traveling much slower than the presumed bullet. 

My years-long study of the wound ballistics literature proves he was correct. 

P.S. Here's what I have on Moore. Almost none of this was widely known when I first shared this with this forum. 

From chapter 3c:

Should the Warren Commission's refusal to reach a conclusion on the number and timing of the shots, and its deliberate and ongoing efforts to deceive the public regarding Oswald's ability with a rifle not cause one to wonder if their entire investigation wasn't a political charade, and should Gerald Ford's misrepresentations of the evidence against Oswald not confirm these suspicions, then one needs to learn more about...Moore. Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore, that is...

After seeing Moore's name pop up numerous times in the most suspicious of circumstances, I asked researcher Gary Murr if he’d ever looked into Moore, and it turned out that he'd shared my curiosity. He sent me some of what he’d compiled on Moore. I then matched this up with Moore’s 1-6-76 testimony before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (aka the Church Committee). Some years later, moreover, I discovered the following photo of Moore online, where it had been posted by researcher Vincent Palamara. 

(This photo once accompanied a newspaper article in which Moore discussed his service for four U.S. Presidents. One might note, moreover, that he's placed LBJ at the top and JFK at the bottom.)

Here, then, is what we know about Moore...

At the time of the assassination, Elmer Moore was a Secret Service investigator assigned to their San Francisco office. A week after the assassination, 11-29-63, he was instructed to go to Dallas and assist Inspector Thomas Kelley with his investigation of the assassination. Once there, he conducted the Secret Service’s investigation of Jack Ruby, in order to establish the connection or lack thereof between Ruby and Oswald. Not surprisingly, he found no connection. On 12-5-63, he oversaw the Secret Service Survey of Dealey Plaza. The survey plat of this re-enactment, published by the Warren Commission as CE 585, and Moore’s subsequent reports, reveals that he concluded, after studying the Zapruder film, that the fatal head shot at frame 313 occurred when Kennedy was 34 feet further down the street than his fellow Agent Howlett concluded only the week before, and 29 feet further down the street than the Warren Commission would conclude 6 months later. This is a bit suspicious. Is it a coincidence that Kennedy’s traveling this extra distance would give the presumed sniper more time to aim, and make Oswald’s purported shooting feat less fantastic? The next week, on 12-11, Moore engaged in more mysterious activity. He visited the doctors at Parkland hospital who’d worked on Kennedy, and showed them the official autopsy report stating that the throat wound was an exit. This came as a surprise to some of these doctors, who’d initially believed and stated that the throat wound was an entrance, and repeated this speculation to reporter Jimmy Breslin, whose article on their treatment of Kennedy was in that week’s Saturday Evening Post. Since the doctors were giving interviews and repeating what was believed to be incorrect information, it only makes sense then that someone in the government would want to set them straight. Evidently, it was Moore’s job to set them straight.

Now here’s where things get weird. Moore’s 1976 testimony reflects that on 12-19, he was ordered to contact Chief Justice Earl Warren and request that he accept Secret Service protection.He had known Warren for over 20 years. But he had never worked in the protective detail of the Secret Service beyond temporary assignments. Nevertheless, he successfully convinced Warren he needed protection, and was Warren’s near-constant companion and bodyguard from that day until after the Warren Report was issued the next September. In this role, as bodyguard, he accompanied Warren to Warren’s questioning of Jack Ruby. But Moore was more than just a bodyguard. He admitted to the Senate Committee in 1976 that he had “discussions daily” with Warren. The obvious and vital question of whether or not Moore kept anyone informed of these discussions was not asked. The equally obvious question of whether anyone thought it was a conflict of interest to have one of the Secret Service’s chief investigators act as Warren’s personal security, when Warren was supposed to be reviewing the Secret Service’s investigation, also was not asked.  (A Church Committee document listing the names of 27 "Secret Service Agents investigating the Assassination of President Kennedy" lists Moore as one of three "supervisors," with 24 subordinates.)

What was discussed in 1976 was Moore’s relationship with James Gochenaur. Gochenaur had come forward with the allegation he’d met Moore in 1970, and that Moore had told him about some of his experiences investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. More to the point, Gochenaur said that Moore had guiltily admitted he’d badgered Dr. Malcolm Perry into changing his testimony about the President's throat wound. 

So how did Moore respond to this allegation? Well, Moore admitted meeting Gochenaur, and discussing the assassination with him, but denied telling Gochenaur he'd pressured Dr. Perry. Moore’s behavior, however, reveals he was greatly concerned about Gochenaur’s allegation, perhaps concerned enough to lie. He'd arrived for questioning with a personal attorney. He expressed the opinion that “to induce any witness to change his testimony, of course that’s a felony.”

So far, so good. Moore’s testimony fell apart, however, when he tried to explain what DID happen when he talked to Dr. Perry and the other Parkland doctors. Moore testified: “I was given a copy of the Bethesda autopsy. A mimeographed copy. There were numerous copies sent to the Dallas office and it was assigned to attempt to determine the trajectory of the bullets, the missiles, from the wound, and the report I referred to covers this…Well, what happened here, when I received the autopsy reports, there were medical terms and measurements that I was not familiar with one. I recall it was the acromion which is a process of the shoulder blade, I learned through Dr. Perry. And I think the description of the neck strap wound, the first bullet in the President’s neck, was determined about 14 centimeters from the acromion process arc, and another arc from the mastoid of 14 centimeters... They’re exactly the same measurements. And I was not sure of these in medical terms. The logical thing I thought at the time was to go out to talk to these people and also to let them see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all. They had never turned the body over at Parkland. They were engaged in respiratory and circulatory, you know, the trauma actions rather than examining wounds. So I had talked to Dr. Perry and he was, as I recall, 34 years old, a very personable man. He was very disturbed, as he had been quoted, where he had performed the tracheotomy through the exit wound, which is right over the Adam’s Apple, it went by part of the tie. He was quite disturbed that he had been quoted in the press as having said that is an entrance wound, and he had denied that consistently, that he ever said that, that what he said was there was a wound there and it could have been an entrance or an exit…And then when he saw the autopsy report, which was the first occasion, they got a copy, I think, the following day or so, was sent down from Bethesda, and they had been in contact with the doctors by phone, I believe…but they were quite interested in the autopsy report. And after reading it I think it was Dr. Perry first and then Dr. Carrico came in. And after they read it they asked if there would be any objection to other staff doctors seeing it who had attended the President in some manner or another and were interested in it. And I saw no objection. So they went into a little conference room—I would say six or seven doctors—and discussed it for possibly ten or fifteen minutes, and I left.” (When asked why he went to Parkland) “(To see) If it could be determined from the wounds the trajectory of the bullets. Did they come from the sixth floor of this and could this be proven by the—(When asked what Perry told him) “Well, that was not actually for him to answer, but what he was doing for me was  determining where this wound was on the body and what direction it went.”

The problem with Moore's testimony is it’s just not credible. I mean, really, Moore just so happens to show Perry the autopsy report, telling him the throat wound is officially an exit, to let him "see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all...They had never turned the body over at Parkland"? It was all just for Perry's general information, mind you, and not to get him to shut up? And really, Moore just so happens to pick Perry, the guy who told the nation in a press conference the throat wound was an entrance, as the guy to teach him a little anatomy? 

Moore's contention he consulted with Perry about the relative locations of the wounds, as opposed to his telling Perry the official conclusion about the relative positions of the wounds, is also suspect. The measurements for the back wound on the autopsy report, 14 cm from acromion and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process, as we shall see, place the back wound in the back, at the same level as the throat wound. Moore’s 12-11 report, after his meeting with Perry, however, asserts that the missile path of the first bullet to strike the President “is from the upper right posterior thorax to the exit position in the low anterior cervical region and is in slight general downward direction.” I doubt a doctor would say such a thing. The upper thorax is, by definition, below the lower cervical region, unless the body is leaning forward. And the Zapruder film studied by Moore demonstrated that Kennedy was not leaning forward before the shots were fired. The probability, then, is that Moore went to Parkland at least in part to bring Perry into line, and let him know that the throat wound was officially an exit., and below the back wound. 

Now let's be fair. As Moore, in his testimony, expressed skepticism wound locations could effectively establish a bullet’s trajectory, he may honestly have figured the entrance on Kennedy’s back was close enough. This doesn’t explain, however, his reporting that the back wound was above the throat wound--something the measurements shown to Perry proved false. One should wonder, furthermore, if Moore noticed that the location of the back wound in the drawings created by the autopsy doctors in March was far higher than the wound location he’d mapped out with Perry, and if he told Chief Warren about this problem... Or even if the apathetic attitude towards the wound locations and trajectories revealed by Moore in his work for the Secret Service infected the Commission’s re-enactment in May...

If that's it, moreover, that Moore was apathetic to the extreme, well, that may have been just what qualified him for the job. A 1-7-64 Treasury Department memorandum for the file reflects that Moore, who’d been traveling with Earl Warren since 12-19, was asked by Warren on 12-2 if “he could be available to the Commission for an indefinite period to assist in its work.” A 12-8 memo from Secret Service Chief Rowley reflects that Moore was assigned to “furnish any service, assistance, and cooperation the Commission considers necessary.” Hmmm... These memos fail to mention Moore’s purported role as Warren’s bodyguard. This raises the question, then, of whether Moore was protecting Warren or helping him run the investigation. In Professor Gerald McKnight’s book Breach of Trust, he discusses a document found in the voluminous archives of researcher Harold Weisberg, now held at Hood College. Among the documents recovered via Weisberg’s numerous Freedom of Information Act lawsuits was a February 7. 1964 letter from General Counsel Rankin’s Secretary, Julia Eide. This letter reflects that “all the waste material” (that is, notes, carbons, tapes) of the 1-22-64 meeting of the Warren Commission, in which they discussed the possibility Oswald was working for the FBI, was to be turned over to Secret Service Inspector Elmer Moore and burned. 

Huh? Doesn’t sound like straight guard duty to me...

That Moore was more...than Warren’s guard dog... is undoubtedly intriguing. In the years following the assassination of President Kennedy, it would be revealed that the Secret Service has been used at times as a private intelligence unit answering only to the President. Richard Nixon used them to spy on his own brother, and, according to Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield, spy on other political candidates as well. Huh... This raises the uncomfortable possibility that Moore was President Johnson’s eyes and ears on the Commission, put in place, with Warren's acquiescence, to help keep the commission "in line." Huh... This might explain why Moore, a long time Warren acquaintance, was brought into the Secret Service’s investigation on the same day Warren agreed to chair a Presidential Commission reviewing the Secret Service’s findings. 

And that's not all... This might explain as well how Anthony Lewis, a writer for the New York Times, while working on a book with Johnson's close associate Abe Fortas, became privy to information that could only have come from within the Commission. And it might also explain Moore’s seemingly exaggerated concerns about Gochenaur’s statements, and his willingness to lie about his visit to Perry. And, while we're at it, it might also explain why Moore, the only one working with the Commission to admit measuring out 14 cms from the tip of the mastoid process on a body, failed to alert Warren that this put the wound on Kennedy’s back, inches below the location on the drawings entered into evidence on March 16, 1964 as the official representations of the President’s wounds.  

And, oh yeah, before I forget... it might also explain why an HSCA contact sheet (brought to my attention by Vince Palamara) reveals that Moore called HSCA staff member Eileen Dinneen on 3-9-78 to tell her that "a young lawyer" on the Schweicker Committee (sic--he meant Church Committee) "had been ready to send him to jail for perjury" and that, as a consequence, "he would refuse to answer questions about matters he was already questioned about." 

I mean, that's some balls, right? He called the HSCA to tell them he'd refuse to answer any question he'd ever been asked before, seeing as his answer to such a question might reveal an inconsistency in his story, and the possibility/probability he'd been lying. 

Now that's some public servant!

There’s also this… On November 22nd 2003, Senator Arlen Specter addressed a crowd at an assassination conference held at Duquesne University. He told the crowd about his work for the Warren Commission and of being shown an autopsy photo of the President’s back wound on May 24, 1964. This autopsy photo, as we have seen, should have convinced Specter that the wound on Kennedy's back was inches below the level depicted in the commission's exhibits, and that it was therefore doubtful the shooting had occurred as purported. Instead, Specter stuck by his belief the bullet causing this wound, after striking Kennedy's back on a sharply downward trajectory, had somehow exited from his throat. Now, in his 2000 book Passion for Truth, and in previous interviews, Specter had said that Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley had shown him this photo. On this day, the 40th anniversary of the assassination, however, he told the audience it was “Elmer Moore, who was the Chief’s bodyguard.” 

Yikes. If it was in fact Moore, well, that would suggest Specter was shown the photo with Warren’s blessing. And this, in turn, would suggest that Warren, Moore and Specter all knew the wound was on the back and inches lower on the body than as shown in the commission's exhibits...and that they'd conspired to hide this from the public... 

17 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

A couple of points. 

1. I was one of the first to write about Elmer Moore and am to some extent responsible for bringing what we know about Moore to this forum, and to the research community in general.

Your response to my post exacerbates rather than ameliorates the issue I was raising. The post to which I was responding is the following in which you were attempting to dismiss Dr. McClelland's observation of Dr. Malcolm Perry being threatened by Elmer Moore, or another government agent, to never repeat again that JFK's throat wound was an entry wound, and you claimed that if he were threatened it didn't work "as he testified the wound looked like an entrance would and continued to say as much for the rest of his life."

Your self-aggrandizing response that you pioneered the research about Elmer Moore is completely unresponsive to my post, which I here present to you yet again:

You seem to be unaware, or are failing to divulge, that it is well established by virtue of Secret Service agent Elmer Moore's confession to James Gochenaur that he had indeed pressured Dr. Perry, and had been ORDERED to do so by Inspector Kelly, as we can see Gochenaur describe in the following video at timemark 3:09, cued for you in advance via the following link: https://youtu.be/QRBaiNiyyqM?si=UO-V_pqn_7dJu4G_&t=189

 

And I now add to that Dr. McCLelland's description of the government harassment of Dr. Malcolm Perry from "What the Doctors Saw" in the following video at timemark 0:48, cued for you in advance via the following link:   https://youtu.be/IN895BOvC3U?si=4N9b_8tBxfqI2rb_&t=48

 

It makes no sense to me why you presented that material from your website about Elmer Moore in defense of your dismissive comments about the threats Moore is said to have made to Dr. Perry when the material you presented appears to show that Moore's denials about the incident weren't credible. Don't you even read the passages from your website that you paste on these posts, or do you just assume that others will not read them to discover that they undercut your stated positions?

As I have brought to your attention before, and you have denied, Dr. Perry was also threatened by the Bethesda pathologists who told him they would report him to the medical board if he continued to describe the throat wound as a wound of entry.  New York Herald Tribune investigative reporter Martin J. Steadman wrote the following in his account of his December 2, 1963 interview of Dr. Malcolm Perry:

http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm

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

'50 YEARS FROM THAT FATEFUL DAY IN DALLAS...' | By Martin J. Steadman |   http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm

Elsewhere on the forum, you have responded to this account of Dr. Perry's statements about being threatened published by Martin J. Steadman and the New York Herald Tribune on December 2, 1963 as follows:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30318-new-112263-video-of-dr-malcolm-perry/?do=findComment&comment=533279

"1. No one involved in the autopsy called Perry during the autopsy. They should have but they didn't. The official story is that Humes--by his lonesome--called Perry the next morning.  And this makes the most sense. IF they had called Perry during the autopsy and told him he was to say the throat wound was an entrance, not exit, well, wouldn't they have told the FBI--the Federal Agency responsible--that there was a throat wound? That they believed was an exit? Of course they would..."

No, Mr. Speer, the government cover-up story does not "make the most sense."  The fingerprints of "cover-up" are all over the autopsy and the question of whether or not the pathologists had contemporaneous knowledge of the throat wound, and whether or not the pathologists communicated with Dr. Malcolm Perry about the throat wound the evening of the assassination and threatened to report him to the medical board.

For example, Parkland Nurse Audrey Bell told Harrison Livingstone in 1991 that “Dr. Perry was up all night. He came into my office the next day and sat down and looked terrible, having not slept. I never saw anybody look so dejected! They called him from Bethesda two or three times in the middle of the night to try to get him to change the entrance wound in the throat to an exit wound,” and in a 2009 blog entry by Doug Horne, Horne wrote the following:

"...What most of the public does not know---and what is detailed in my book, "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board," is that late on the night of President Kennedy's autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital, Federal officials located at Bethesda began harrassing Dr. Perry on the telephone in an attempt to get him to change his mind about having seen an entry wound in the President's throat earlier in the day. Nurse Audrey Bell told me in 1997 that Dr. Perry complained to her the next morning (on Saturday, November 23, 1963) that he had gotten almost no sleep the night before, because unnamed persons at Bethesda had been pressuring him on the telephone all night long to get him to change his opinion about the nature of the bullet wound in the throat, and to redescribe it as an exit, rather than an entrance.

In his 1981 book "Best Evidence," David Lifton documented that the Secret Service confiscated videotapes of the Parkland hospital press conference from at least one local television station, and that Secret Service Chief James Rowley had informed the Warren Commission in 1964 that no videotapes or transcripts of the press conference could be found. But as Lifton revealed, a White House verbatim transcript of the press conference (White House Transcript 1327-C) later surfaced. In my own book, "Inside the ARRB," I reveal that Chief Rowley lied to the Warren Commission when he said no transcripts could be found, for on the last page of transcript 1327-C, the document is stamped as received by Rowley's office on November 26, 1963. His statement to the Warren Commission was therefore false.

A graduate student, James Gochenaur, revealed to both the Church Committee and to the HSCA in the mid-1970s that Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore had confessed to him in 1970 that he had "leaned on Dr. Perry" shortly after the Bethesda autopsy to get him to stop describing the bullet wound in President Kennedy's throat as an entrance wound. (The Bethesda autopsy report concluded it was an exit wound.) According to Gochenaur, Moore also told him that the Secret Service had to investigate the assassination in an expected, predetermined way or they would "get their heads chopped off." Moore, unfortunately, also told Gochenaur that sometimes he thought President Kennedy was "a traitor" because he was "giving things away to the Russians."

[According to Arlen Specter, this same Elmer Moore was present when Chief Justice Warren, Gerald Ford, and he interviewed Jack Ruby in Dallas; and Arlen Specter also revealed in 2003 (at a conference in Pittsburgh) that Elmer Moore was the Secret Service Agent who showed him an undocumented photograph of President Kennedy's back wound during the May 1964 re-enactment of the Dallas motorcade conducted by the Warren Commission.]

Unfortunately, after Federal officials at Bethesda (on November 22-23, 1963) and Elmer Moore (between November 29-December 11, 1963) "leaned on" Dr. Perry, he spent the remainder of his life straddling the fence and saying that the bullet wound in JFK's throat "could have been either" an entrance or an exit wound.

But that is not what he said on the afternoon of the assassination, before there was an official explanation for the crime to fall in line with. White House Transcript 1327-C makes that very clear, as I reveal in my book, in Chapters 7 and 9.

Former Chief Operating Room nurse Audrey Bell related to me in 1997 that Dr. Perry was in a state of torment on November 23, 1963, after being pressured by Federal officials all night long to change his mind, because, as he put it, "my professional credibility is at stake." Sadly, he appears to have decided for the remainder of his life that discretion was the better part of valor.

The story does not end here. The chief prosector at the President's autopsy, Dr. James J. Humes, described the throat wound in the autopsy report as having "widely gaping, irregular edges," and in his Warren Commission testimony, Humes said the gaping wound in the throat was 7 to 8 cm wide. In contrast, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, a third year resident at Parkland in 1963, told ABC's "20/20" news magazine in 1992 that after the tracheostomy tube and flange were removed from the President's neck following his death, that the very small incision made by Dr. Perry closed of its own volition, and that the bullet wound had NOT been obliterated and was still clearly visible. When Dr. Crenshaw viewed the widely published bootleg autopsy photo (from Bethesda Naval hospital) showing the incision in JFK's neck, he expressed the opinion to ABC's "20/20" that the incision in that photograph was DOUBLE the width of the incision Dr. Perry originally made on the President's body.

The descriptions of the incision in the anterior neck, provided by Dr. Humes and Dr. Crenshaw, together constitute de facto evidence that JFK's throat wound was tampered with prior to the start of the Navy autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital. President Kennedy's body was in the custody of the U.S. Secret Service while enroute Washington D.C. from Dallas, Texas..." 

'Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, Key Parkland Hospital Witness to JFK's Wounds, Dies'

InsideTheARRB | By Doug Horne | December 8, 2009 | https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2370.html

And in the following extremely well documented excerpt from Dr. Gary Aguilar's "HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG," Dr. Aguilar chronicled accounts of contemporaneous knowledge of the throat wound at the Bethesda autopsy -- and in several cases, the 11/22/1963 phone calls from Bethesda to Malcolm Perry -- by pathologist James Humes, pathologist J. Thornton Boswell, historian William Manchester, Parkland doctor Paul Peters, pathologist Robert Karnei, radiologist John Ebersole, Coast Guardsman George Barnum, General Philip C. Wehle's personal aide, Richard A. Lipsey, and Dr. Malcolm Perry himself:

"...The  Case for the Autopsists Not Being Ignorant of Kennedy’s Throat Wound During the Autopsy

The absence of word about Kennedy’s throat wound in the FBI report is far from proof of the surgeons’ ignorance. It only proves the doctors either didn’t know about the throat wound before the agents left, or that the surgeons kept quiet, and perhaps with good reason. Given their manifest lack of expertise in this sort of work, the surgeons might have wanted kept to their own counsels, lest they later be forced to confront an accurate, federal accounting of their errors and misjudgments. Moreover, the agents didn’t stick it out the entire night; they left the morgue at about 1:00 AM. And although by then the morticians were busy at work, there is evidence the autopsists were still engaged.

Internal CBS memorandum reporting on Dr. Humes' admission that a path had been traced from back wound to throat wound during the autopsy. (see ARRB MD #16)

In the mid 1960’s, Humes confided to a personal friend that, as a once-secret, internal Columbia  Broadcasting System memo put it, “Although initially in the autopsy procedure the back wound could only be penetrated to finger length, a probe later was made – when no FBI men were present – that traced the path of the bullet from the back going downwards, then upwards slightly, then downwards again exiting at the throat. One X-ray photo taken, Humes said, clearly shows the above, as it was apparently taken with a mental probe stick of some kind that was left in the body to show the wound’s path.”[39]

While several tantalizing details in this account will be explored in more detail later, its relevance here is that the agents didn’t see everything the surgeons saw or did. Moreover, unless they’d had some word about a bullet wound in the throat, Humes would hardly have passed a probe from the back to JFK’s throat if he’d had no reason to believe a wound lay there.

What, then, about the report of the President’s physician? If he actually knew, why is Burkley also silent on the throat wound? It turns out that Burkley is silent about all of JFK’s wounds; his report concerns itself more with what Burkley did than what he saw. For example, regarding Kennedy’s injuries, Burkley speaks only about what he witnessed at Parkland: “I immediately entered the room, went to the head of the table and viewed the President. It was evident that death was imminent and that he was in a hopeless condition.”[40] It is scarcely a surprise Burkley is mum about the throat wound when he says nothing about JFK’s huge skull injuries.

And, finally, what about Boswell’s technician, Jenkins? Boswell was never asked whether he confided in Jenkins during the autopsy. So, in light of the tenseness of the situation, it is quite possible that Boswell could have known of the wound, or strongly suspected it, without telling Jenkins about it. In fact, Boswell’s subsequent statements seem to bear that out.

A reasonable case can be also made for the opposite conclusion: that knowledge of the throat wound had indeed seeped into JFK’s morgue. Perhaps the earliest evidence comes from a respected outsider. Although as per his custom he does not name his source, the famously well-connected historian William Manchester may have been the first to come up with it in his 1967 book, The Death of a President.

Manchester discovered that the course of events that makes the most sense to us today is in fact what actually happened: that the autopsy team had indeed heard Perry’s comments on the afternoon of the murder, and that they had dutifully communicated with Dallas during the post mortem.

“They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheotomy. Unlike the physicians at Parkland, they had turned the President over and seen the smaller hole in the back of his neck. They were positive that Perry had seen an exit wound. The deleterious effects of confusion were already evident. Commander James J. Humes, Bethesda’s chief of pathology, telephoned Perry in Dallas shortly after midnight, and clinical photographs were taken to satisfy all the Texas doctors who had been in Trauma Room No. 1.”[41] (authors’ emphasis). One imagines that Manchester intended to convey that the autopsists hoped the pictures would satisfy the Texas doctors that the throat wound Perry had called an entrance wound was instead an exit wound.)

Transcript of Nov. 22 afternoon press conference given by Parkland Hospital physicians Dr. Malcolm Perry and Dr. Kemp Clark. (see ARRB MD #41)

Manchester gave a compelling reason for the autopsists’ concern about comments emanating from the doctors in Dallas: “Bethesda’s physicians anticipated that their findings would later be subjected to the most.”[42] Ironically, Dallas was generous with reasons for a searching scrutiny of the autopsists’ claimed ignorance of the throat wound.

Parkland witness, Paul Peters, MD, told Boston Globe journalist, Ben Bradlee, that “We did find out almost immediately (sic) after President Kennedy was taken to Bethesda that there was a hole in the neck that we had not seen a the time … But it was only a few (sic) hours later when we began to get calls back to (sic) from Bethesda … See it was only, it was only going to be a few (sic) hours before I would know that the bullets were fired from behind.”[43]

Author Harrison Livingstone reported another Parkland source for nighttime contact between the morgue and Dallas. In a 1991 interview, Livingstone said that Parkland Hospital nurse Audrey Bell told him, “Dr. Perry was up all night. He came into my office the next day and sat down and looked terrible, having not slept. I never saw anybody look so dejected! They called him from Bethesda two or three times in the middle of the night to try to get him to change the entrance wound in the throat to an exit wound.”[44]

In 1966 even Dr. Boswell himself weighed in, echoing Manchester by apparently disgorging to a stringer for the Baltimore Sun, who reported that, “before the autopsy had began, the pathologists had been apprised of JFK's wounds and what had been done to him at Parkland. In particular, Boswell said: ‘We concluded that night that the bullet had, in fact, entered the back of the neck, traversed the neck and exited anteriorly.’”[45] (author’s emphasis) Under oath in 1996, Boswell told the ARRB much the same thing. “Did you reach the conclusion that there had been a transit wound through the neck during the course of the autopsy itself?”, he was asked. “Oh, yes,” Boswell answered.[46] [On the other hand, Pierre Finck told the ARRB that at the end of the evening they had not concluded a throat transit.[47]]

But regarding what they knew before they plunged in, Boswell seemed to give a slightly different version to the ARRB than he had the Baltimore Sun. He was asked, “Prior to the time you first saw the President Kennedy’s body, had you heard any communications about the nature of the wounds that he had suffered?” “I don’t think specifically. I think just the fact that he had a head wound,” Boswell responded.[48]

Boswell kept to Humes’ claim the calls to Dallas happened the next day. “When was the first conversation with doctors in Dallas?” he was asked in 1996 by the ARRB.

“Saturday morning,” Boswell answered.[49] 

Boswell’s account seems to contradict the comments of another pathologist who was present during the autopsy, though not as a member of the surgical team, Robert Karnei, MD.

During an interview, author Harrison Livingstone clumsily commented to Karnei about the autopsists’ alleged ignorance: “They didn’t know there was a bullet hole in the throat. All they saw was the trach (sic) incision.”

Karnei: “Right. Once they talked to the doctors in Dallas, this is around midnight, I think.”

Livingstone: “No, it was the next day when he called Perry.”

Karnei: “Next day?”

Livingstone: “Yes. The body was already gone.”

Karnei: “I was convinced they talked to somebody that night, and finally decided that had to be the exit wound. Pierre Finck, I think, talked to somebody … For some reason I thought they had discovered that around midnight. Maybe it was the next day.”[50]

Karnei was not the only morgue physician who was confused about information from Dallas and when the team had decided there had been a bullet wound in JFK’s throat.

In the suppressed HSCA interview of autopsy radiologist Dr. John Ebersole, Ebersole told the medical panel that Humes was in telephone contact with Dallas doctors during the autopsy. (see ARRB MD #60. p. 64)

After a telephone interview with the autopsy radiologist, John Ebersole, MD, David Mantik, MD, Ph.D. reported that, “Ebersole had told me during our first conversation that they had learned about the throat wound from Dallas that night. In prior conversations, he had also stated that he had learned of the projectile wound to the throat during the autopsy – that, in fact, he had stopped taking X-rays after that intelligence had arrived, because the mystery of the exit wound – corresponding to the back entrance wound – was solved.”[51] Moreover, Ebersole told the HSCA that the two hospitals had communicated by phone during the autopsy.[52]

By the later stages of the autopsy, Admiral Burkley was apparently talking to others about a wound in JFK’s throat, according to a Bethesda witness reported by author David Lifton. On 11/29/63, Coast Guardsman George Barnum wrote up a memo that concerned a conversation he had had with Admiral Burkley at Bethesda Hospital on the night of the autopsy. Barnum reported that Burkley had told him Kennedy had been hit twice, “The first striking him in the lower neck and coming out near the throat … .”[53] Barnum’s account is incomprehensible without accepting that Burkley’s remark suggests that either there was knowledge of the throat wound or, as per Boswell and Karnei, that a throat wound had been inferred by the autopsy team. Either way, Humes’ assertion to the Warren Commission to the effect a throat wound only dawned on him the next day, after a call to Dallas, seems open to dispute. Other witnesses add to the doubts.

General Philip C. Wehle's personal aide,[54] Richard A. Lipsey, a witness to the autopsy, told the HSCA that sometime during the autopsy the prosectors concluded that three bullets had struck the President. “Lipsey said that one bullet entered the upper back of the President and did not exit,” the HSCA reported, and that, “one entered in the rear of the head and exited the throat; and one entered and exited in the right, top portion of the head, causing a massive head wound.”[55] Although this is not what finally made it into the autopsy report, it is hard to understand how a non-physician would recall linking the head wound to the throat wound unless he’d heard of a wound in the throat from the surgeons.

Then there is the odd answer of tracheotomist, Malcolm Perry, MD, one that called to mind Dr. Peters’ previously cited comment that, “it was only a few (sic) hours later when we began to get calls back to (sic) from Bethesda”:

Arlen Specter asked: “And will you relate the circumstances of the calls indicating first the time when they occurred.”

Perry: “Dr. Humes called me twice on Friday afternoon, separated by about 30-minute intervals, as I recall.  The first one, I, somehow think I recall the first one must have been around 1500 hours, but I'm not real sure about that; I'm not positive of that at all, actually.”

Specter hastened to correct Perry, following up with:

Specter: “Could it have been Saturday morning?”

Perry: “Saturday morning – was it?  It's possible.  I remember talking with him twice.  I was thinking it was shortly thereafter.”[56]

While Perry’s turnabout may have come completely from the heart, that his instantaneous recall of a contact on Friday happened to match the recollections of so many others is surely quite a coincidence...."

[39] CBS Memorandum from Bob Richer to Les Midgley, 1/10/67. Reproduced in: The Effectiveness of Public Law 102-526, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, Hearing Before the Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, November 17, 1993, p. 233. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document # 16.

[40] Affidavit of Admiral George Burkley. In: Warren Commission Exhibit # 1126. 22H93-97.

[41] William Manchester. The Death of a President. New York: Penguin Books, 1977, p. 432 – 433.

[42] William Manchester. The Death of a President. New York: Penguin Books, 1977, p. 432 – 433.

[43] Tape recorded interview of 1 May 1981; transcript supplied by Harrison Livingstone.

[44] Harrison Livingstone. High Treason 2. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 121.

[45] Richard H. Levine, 25 November 1966, page 1.

[46] ARRB interview with J. Thornton Boswell, p. 34.

[47] ARRB interview with Pierre Finck, p. 91 “miniscript,” or p. 18 of published text.

[48] ARRB interview with J. Thornton Boswell, p. 30.

[49] ARRB interview with J. Thornton Boswell, p. 27.

[50] Harrison Livingstone. High Treason 2. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992, p. 186.

[51] See transcript of David Mantik’s interview with John Ebersole in: James Fetzer, ed., Murder in Dealey Plaza. Chicago: Catfeet Press 2000, p. 437.

[52] HSCA Agency File # 013617. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document # 60.

[53] David Lifton. Best Evidence. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1980, p. 671.

[54] HSCA-V7:9.

[55] HSCA-V7:20, footnote #95. See also a now-declassified audio recording of the HSCA's interview with Lipsey from 1-18-78.

[56] 6H16. [Mr. SPECTER. And did you and I sit down and talk about the purpose of this deposition and the questions which I would be asking you on the record, before this deposition started?

'HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG'

By Gary L. Aguilar, MD and Kathy Cunningham | May 2003 |                    https://history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_1a.htm

And as for the false claims that you made in your previous post about Dr. Perry in subsequent years not behaving as if he had been threatened, are you pretending not to know about the turnarounds that Dr. Perry did in his Warren Commission and HSCA testimony, and about Dr. Perry's well-known reluctance to be interviewed and to participate in JFKA conferences and other related activities?

Malcolm Perry's colleague and friend, Dr. Donald W. Miller, in 2013 wrote about the intimidation that Dr. Perry had undergone, about Perry's revisions of his position on the throat wound before the Warren Commission and HSCA, and about Perry's well-known reluctance to speak of the matter as follows:

"...I have had the unique experience of personally knowing ... the Texas surgeon who performed a tracheotomy on Kennedy after he was shot, Dr. Malcolm Perry....

Dr. Perry was the first physician to speak publicly about the President’s injuries in a televised news conference an hour after his death. A newsman asked him, “Where was the entrance wound?” Dr. Perry informed the American public and the world that “There was an entrance wound in the neck…It [the bullet] appeared to be coming at him…,” which he repeated two more times at the news conference.

This did not sit well with the Warren Commission. The bullet hole in Kennedy’s neck had to be an exit wound for Oswald to be the assassin. Presented with its single bullet theory when testifying before the Commission several months later, Dr. Perry obligingly changed his view of the matter and said that the bullet wound he observed in the neck “certainly would be consistent with an exit wound.”...

...Dr. Perry publicly changed his view of the neck wound for the Warren Commission after a Secret Service Agent came to Dallas, threatened him, and coerced him to testify that it was an exit wound. In 1970, that Agent, Elmer Moore, confessed to a friend that he had acted “on orders from Washington.” He regretted that he had “badgered Dr. Perry into making a flat statement that there was no entry wound in the neck.” As ordered, he said, “I did everything I was told, we all did everything we were told, or we’d get our heads cut off.” The friend he admitted this to was (appropriately enough) a University of Washington graduate student named Jim Gochenaur.

Thirteen years later, Dr. Perry and I performed surgery on a patient with a thoracoabdominal aneurysm. I removed the thoracic, or chest part of the aneurysm, and Dr. Perry, the abdominal part. When the residents were closing the incisions Malcolm and I sat together alone in the surgeons’ lounge drinking coffee. Dr. Perry had always refused to discuss the Kennedy assassination, but that night, after we had been operating together for many hours on a complex case, I once again asked him about it. This time, however, Dr. Perry told me that the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck was, in fact, unquestionably a wound of entrance.

A year later, when called to testify to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Dr. Perry once again publicly supported the government’s single-bullet-theory official truth and agreed with the committee that the bullet wound in the neck must be an exit wound, explaining that the wound was so small that he had initially mistaken it for an entrance wound. But in 1986, Dr. Perry told another physician, Dr. Robert Artwohl, that it was in fact an entrance wound...."

'Reflections on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 50 Years Later'
By Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD | November 16, 2013 | 
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/11/donald-w-miller-jr-md/jfk-thought-control-and-thought-crimes/

I know, due to my familiarity with your website, that you are well aware of all of the information I presented above, and yet you still deny the bulk of the evidence showing the massive cover up of the fact that the throat wound was a wound of entrance. Well I think I have a pretty good guess about why that is.

My suspicion is that it had to do with the fact that the information above all leads to the alteration of President Kennedy's throat wound that took place between the time that the body left Parkland Hospital and the start of the "official" autopsy at Bethesda, as explained by Doug Horne, as follows:

"...The story does not end here. The chief prosector at the President's autopsy, Dr. James J. Humes, described the throat wound in the autopsy report as having "widely gaping, irregular edges," and in his Warren Commission testimony, Humes said the gaping wound in the throat was 7 to 8 cm wide. In contrast, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, a third year resident at Parkland in 1963, told ABC's "20/20" news magazine in 1992 that after the tracheostomy tube and flange were removed from the President's neck following his death, that the very small incision made by Dr. Perry closed of its own volition, and that the bullet wound had NOT been obliterated and was still clearly visible. When Dr. Crenshaw viewed the widely published bootleg autopsy photo (from Bethesda Naval hospital) showing the incision in JFK's neck, he expressed the opinion to ABC's "20/20" that the incision in that photograph was DOUBLE the width of the incision Dr. Perry originally made on the President's body.

The descriptions of the incision in the anterior neck, provided by Dr. Humes and Dr. Crenshaw, together constitute de facto evidence that JFK's throat wound was tampered with prior to the start of the Navy autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital. President Kennedy's body was in the custody of the U.S. Secret Service while enroute Washington D.C. from Dallas, Texas..." 

'Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, Key Parkland Hospital Witness to JFK's Wounds, Dies'

InsideTheARRB | By Doug Horne | December 8, 2009 | https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2370.html

And when Robert Groden first showed the autopsy photographs to Dr. Malcolm Perry, Perry had a similar reaction, saying "I didn't do that. That's a butcher job."

From Robert Groden’s appearance at a 2003 conference:

[…]

As far as alteration of the body goes, the only evidence of that is the fact that when I interviewed Dr. Perry, he told me that he did not create that wound, he said- he stood up shocked and he pointed- pointed at the photograph, which I- again, I had shown him for the first time, he said I didn't do that. He said that's a butcher job. A tracheotomy hole is the size of a pencil to put a tube down there. If it leaks, it defeats the purpose. This hole is large enough to stick a fire hose down. It didn't work that way at all. It- it's sad but that's the case. […]

From another conference with Robert Groden, undated, uploaded to Youtube 9/28/2021 by the Lone Gunman channel UCAG--Ai7Xh56gr6nxnX-24A:

As far as alteration of the President's body goes, I believe that there’s there's- it's unquestionable that something was done to the president's throat. I interviewed Dr. Perry in 1978 and I showed him the autopsy photographs which he had never seen before, and he took a look at the throat wound in the photographs and he stood up at his desk and he was just shocked. He was silent for a moment, then he said ‘I didn't do that’, he said ‘that's a butchered job’. He said ‘I didn't do that’, and then he relived the entire tracheotomy, he stood up and he had his- what was supposed to be a- a scalpel in his hand and he showed doing it- doing the- the incision and said it was only about a little over an inch long he says- he just went on and on about why that couldn't have been what he had done.

[...]

PARKLAND DOCTOR MALCOLM PERRY DISAVOWS JAGGED THROAT WOUND

 

The short and simple of this is that you are ignoring, and most often distorting, a helluva lot of evidence in order to maintain your confirmation bias that there was no body alteration, and that the autopsy (and especially the X-rays and photographs) are legit.

 

17 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

2. You seem to miss the nuance. ER doctors DO NOT make positive determinations as to entrance and exit. They have no specialized training to do so and their impressions are not considered trustworthy. Studies have been done in which ER doctors are as likely to be wrong as they are right when it comes to determining entrance and exit wounds in bodies with more than one wound. As a consequence, dedicated professionals do not insist wounds they observed were entrances and exits, but will instead insist that these wounds looked like entrances or exits. 

So, yes, Perry said he was willing to accept that the wound was an exit wound, but always maintained that it looked like an entrance wound. 

This is as one would expect from a doctor with his training. All the Parkland witnesses, including McClelland, initially did the same. 

I give props to McClelland, however, for specifying in his WC testimony that the tiny throat wound could only have been an exit for a projectile traveling much slower than the presumed bullet. 

My years-long study of the wound ballistics literature proves he was correct. 

I have seen ER doctors testify as to whether wounds were of entrance or exit during trials, particularly when the victim survived, and there was no need for an autopsy or pathologists. ER physicians qualify as expert witnesses and do in fact testify on these matters. Perhaps you have read studies that suggest this should not be the case, and perhaps you have not. We don't know because you have cited none, and as the result of finding many distortions, omissions, and falsifications in your research, I do not believe your claims about anything are credible.

What we do know is that the Parkland doctors and nurses were seasoned professionals who worked in a busy metropolitan hospital and dealt with gunshot wounds on a daily basis, and such professionals acquire a great deal of expertise on these matters, which is not meaningless, as you are attempting to suggest.

In particular, Dr. Malcom Perry was a highly respected surgeon, whom Dr. Charles Crenshaw in the following 1992 interview characterized as "an artist with a blade." You want to dismiss the expertise of the Parkland physicians because of your agenda dedicated to dismiss all of their testimony and reports in order to prove the existence of wounds they never saw, and to argue that the wounds they did see and report were just the product of a mass hallucination. It's just a modified version of the cover-up of the head wounds that the HSCA perpetrated, and it is unconscionable.

 

Edited Sunday at 02:27 PM by Keven Hofeling

[Pat Speer]

5 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

Your response to my post exacerbates rather than ameliorates the issue I was raising. The post to which I was responding is the following in which you were attempting to dismiss Dr. McClelland's observation of Dr. Malcolm Perry being threatened by Elmer Moore, or another government agent, to never repeat again that JFK's throat wound was an entry wound, and you claimed that if he were threatened it didn't work "as he testified the wound looked like an entrance would and continued to say as much for the rest of his life."

Your self-aggrandizing response that you pioneered the research about Elmer Moore is completely unresponsive to my post, which I here present to you yet again:

You seem to be unaware, or are failing to divulge, that it is well established by virtue of Secret Service agent Elmer Moore's confession to James Gochenaur that he had indeed pressured Dr. Perry, and had been ORDERED to do so by Inspector Kelly, as we can see Gochenaur describe in the following video at timemark 3:09, cued for you in advance via the following link: https://youtu.be/QRBaiNiyyqM?si=UO-V_pqn_7dJu4G_&t=189

 

And I now add to that Dr. McCLelland's description of the government harassment of Dr. Malcolm Perry from "What the Doctors Saw" in the following video at timemark 0:48, cued for you in advance via the following link:   https://youtu.be/IN895BOvC3U?si=4N9b_8tBxfqI2rb_&t=48

 

It makes no sense to me why you presented that material from your website about Elmer Moore in defense of your dismissive comments about the threats Moore is said to have made to Dr. Perry when the material you presented appears to show that Moore's denials about the incident weren't credible. Don't you even read the passages from your website that you paste on these posts, or do you just assume that others will not read them to discover that they undercut your stated positions?

As I have brought to your attention before, and you have denied, Dr. Perry was also threatened by the Bethesda pathologists who told him they would report him to the medical board if he continued to describe the throat wound as a wound of entry.  New York Herald Tribune investigative reporter Martin J. Steadman wrote the following in his account of his December 2, 1963 interview of Dr. Malcolm Perry:

http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm

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

'50 YEARS FROM THAT FATEFUL DAY IN DALLAS...' | By Martin J. Steadman |   http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm

Elsewhere on the forum, you have responded to this account of Dr. Perry's statements about being threatened published by Martin J. Steadman and the New York Herald Tribune on December 2, 1963 as follows:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30318-new-112263-video-of-dr-malcolm-perry/?do=findComment&comment=533279

"1. No one involved in the autopsy called Perry during the autopsy. They should have but they didn't. The official story is that Humes--by his lonesome--called Perry the next morning.  And this makes the most sense. IF they had called Perry during the autopsy and told him he was to say the throat wound was an entrance, not exit, well, wouldn't they have told the FBI--the Federal Agency responsible--that there was a throat wound? That they believed was an exit? Of course they would..."

No, Mr. Speer, the government cover-up story does not "make the most sense."  The fingerprints of "cover-up" are all over the autopsy and the question of whether or not the pathologists had contemporaneous knowledge of the throat wound, and whether or not the pathologists communicated with Dr. Malcolm Perry about the throat wound the evening of the assassination and threatened to report him to the medical board.

For example, Parkland Nurse Audrey Bell told Harrison Livingstone in 1991 that “Dr. Perry was up all night. He came into my office the next day and sat down and looked terrible, having not slept. I never saw anybody look so dejected! They called him from Bethesda two or three times in the middle of the night to try to get him to change the entrance wound in the throat to an exit wound,” and in a 2009 blog entry by Doug Horne, Horne wrote the following:

"...What most of the public does not know---and what is detailed in my book, "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board," is that late on the night of President Kennedy's autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital, Federal officials located at Bethesda began harrassing Dr. Perry on the telephone in an attempt to get him to change his mind about having seen an entry wound in the President's throat earlier in the day. Nurse Audrey Bell told me in 1997 that Dr. Perry complained to her the next morning (on Saturday, November 23, 1963) that he had gotten almost no sleep the night before, because unnamed persons at Bethesda had been pressuring him on the telephone all night long to get him to change his opinion about the nature of the bullet wound in the throat, and to redescribe it as an exit, rather than an entrance.

In his 1981 book "Best Evidence," David Lifton documented that the Secret Service confiscated videotapes of the Parkland hospital press conference from at least one local television station, and that Secret Service Chief James Rowley had informed the Warren Commission in 1964 that no videotapes or transcripts of the press conference could be found. But as Lifton revealed, a White House verbatim transcript of the press conference (White House Transcript 1327-C) later surfaced. In my own book, "Inside the ARRB," I reveal that Chief Rowley lied to the Warren Commission when he said no transcripts could be found, for on the last page of transcript 1327-C, the document is stamped as received by Rowley's office on November 26, 1963. His statement to the Warren Commission was therefore false.

A graduate student, James Gochenaur, revealed to both the Church Committee and to the HSCA in the mid-1970s that Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore had confessed to him in 1970 that he had "leaned on Dr. Perry" shortly after the Bethesda autopsy to get him to stop describing the bullet wound in President Kennedy's throat as an entrance wound. (The Bethesda autopsy report concluded it was an exit wound.) According to Gochenaur, Moore also told him that the Secret Service had to investigate the assassination in an expected, predetermined way or they would "get their heads chopped off." Moore, unfortunately, also told Gochenaur that sometimes he thought President Kennedy was "a traitor" because he was "giving things away to the Russians."

[According to Arlen Specter, this same Elmer Moore was present when Chief Justice Warren, Gerald Ford, and he interviewed Jack Ruby in Dallas; and Arlen Specter also revealed in 2003 (at a conference in Pittsburgh) that Elmer Moore was the Secret Service Agent who showed him an undocumented photograph of President Kennedy's back wound during the May 1964 re-enactment of the Dallas motorcade conducted by the Warren Commission.]

Unfortunately, after Federal officials at Bethesda (on November 22-23, 1963) and Elmer Moore (between November 29-December 11, 1963) "leaned on" Dr. Perry, he spent the remainder of his life straddling the fence and saying that the bullet wound in JFK's throat "could have been either" an entrance or an exit wound.

But that is not what he said on the afternoon of the assassination, before there was an official explanation for the crime to fall in line with. White House Transcript 1327-C makes that very clear, as I reveal in my book, in Chapters 7 and 9.

Former Chief Operating Room nurse Audrey Bell related to me in 1997 that Dr. Perry was in a state of torment on November 23, 1963, after being pressured by Federal officials all night long to change his mind, because, as he put it, "my professional credibility is at stake." Sadly, he appears to have decided for the remainder of his life that discretion was the better part of valor.

The story does not end here. The chief prosector at the President's autopsy, Dr. James J. Humes, described the throat wound in the autopsy report as having "widely gaping, irregular edges," and in his Warren Commission testimony, Humes said the gaping wound in the throat was 7 to 8 cm wide. In contrast, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, a third year resident at Parkland in 1963, told ABC's "20/20" news magazine in 1992 that after the tracheostomy tube and flange were removed from the President's neck following his death, that the very small incision made by Dr. Perry closed of its own volition, and that the bullet wound had NOT been obliterated and was still clearly visible. When Dr. Crenshaw viewed the widely published bootleg autopsy photo (from Bethesda Naval hospital) showing the incision in JFK's neck, he expressed the opinion to ABC's "20/20" that the incision in that photograph was DOUBLE the width of the incision Dr. Perry originally made on the President's body.

The descriptions of the incision in the anterior neck, provided by Dr. Humes and Dr. Crenshaw, together constitute de facto evidence that JFK's throat wound was tampered with prior to the start of the Navy autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital. President Kennedy's body was in the custody of the U.S. Secret Service while enroute Washington D.C. from Dallas, Texas..." 

'Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, Key Parkland Hospital Witness to JFK's Wounds, Dies'

InsideTheARRB | By Doug Horne | December 8, 2009 | https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2370.html

And in the following extremely well documented excerpt from Dr. Gary Aguilar's "HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG," Dr. Aguilar chronicled accounts of contemporaneous knowledge of the throat wound at the Bethesda autopsy -- and in several cases, the 11/22/1963 phone calls from Bethesda to Malcolm Perry -- by pathologist James Humes, pathologist J. Thornton Boswell, historian William Manchester, Parkland doctor Paul Peters, pathologist Robert Karnei, radiologist John Ebersole, Coast Guardsman George Barnum, General Philip C. Wehle's personal aide, Richard A. Lipsey, and Dr. Malcolm Perry himself:

"...The  Case for the Autopsists Not Being Ignorant of Kennedy’s Throat Wound During the Autopsy

The absence of word about Kennedy’s throat wound in the FBI report is far from proof of the surgeons’ ignorance. It only proves the doctors either didn’t know about the throat wound before the agents left, or that the surgeons kept quiet, and perhaps with good reason. Given their manifest lack of expertise in this sort of work, the surgeons might have wanted kept to their own counsels, lest they later be forced to confront an accurate, federal accounting of their errors and misjudgments. Moreover, the agents didn’t stick it out the entire night; they left the morgue at about 1:00 AM. And although by then the morticians were busy at work, there is evidence the autopsists were still engaged.

Internal CBS memorandum reporting on Dr. Humes' admission that a path had been traced from back wound to throat wound during the autopsy. (see ARRB MD #16)

In the mid 1960’s, Humes confided to a personal friend that, as a once-secret, internal Columbia  Broadcasting System memo put it, “Although initially in the autopsy procedure the back wound could only be penetrated to finger length, a probe later was made – when no FBI men were present – that traced the path of the bullet from the back going downwards, then upwards slightly, then downwards again exiting at the throat. One X-ray photo taken, Humes said, clearly shows the above, as it was apparently taken with a mental probe stick of some kind that was left in the body to show the wound’s path.”[39]

While several tantalizing details in this account will be explored in more detail later, its relevance here is that the agents didn’t see everything the surgeons saw or did. Moreover, unless they’d had some word about a bullet wound in the throat, Humes would hardly have passed a probe from the back to JFK’s throat if he’d had no reason to believe a wound lay there.

What, then, about the report of the President’s physician? If he actually knew, why is Burkley also silent on the throat wound? It turns out that Burkley is silent about all of JFK’s wounds; his report concerns itself more with what Burkley did than what he saw. For example, regarding Kennedy’s injuries, Burkley speaks only about what he witnessed at Parkland: “I immediately entered the room, went to the head of the table and viewed the President. It was evident that death was imminent and that he was in a hopeless condition.”[40] It is scarcely a surprise Burkley is mum about the throat wound when he says nothing about JFK’s huge skull injuries.

And, finally, what about Boswell’s technician, Jenkins? Boswell was never asked whether he confided in Jenkins during the autopsy. So, in light of the tenseness of the situation, it is quite possible that Boswell could have known of the wound, or strongly suspected it, without telling Jenkins about it. In fact, Boswell’s subsequent statements seem to bear that out.

A reasonable case can be also made for the opposite conclusion: that knowledge of the throat wound had indeed seeped into JFK’s morgue. Perhaps the earliest evidence comes from a respected outsider. Although as per his custom he does not name his source, the famously well-connected historian William Manchester may have been the first to come up with it in his 1967 book, The Death of a President.

Manchester discovered that the course of events that makes the most sense to us today is in fact what actually happened: that the autopsy team had indeed heard Perry’s comments on the afternoon of the murder, and that they had dutifully communicated with Dallas during the post mortem.

“They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheotomy. Unlike the physicians at Parkland, they had turned the President over and seen the smaller hole in the back of his neck. They were positive that Perry had seen an exit wound. The deleterious effects of confusion were already evident. Commander James J. Humes, Bethesda’s chief of pathology, telephoned Perry in Dallas shortly after midnight, and clinical photographs were taken to satisfy all the Texas doctors who had been in Trauma Room No. 1.”[41] (authors’ emphasis). One imagines that Manchester intended to convey that the autopsists hoped the pictures would satisfy the Texas doctors that the throat wound Perry had called an entrance wound was instead an exit wound.)

Transcript of Nov. 22 afternoon press conference given by Parkland Hospital physicians Dr. Malcolm Perry and Dr. Kemp Clark. (see ARRB MD #41)

Manchester gave a compelling reason for the autopsists’ concern about comments emanating from the doctors in Dallas: “Bethesda’s physicians anticipated that their findings would later be subjected to the most.”[42] Ironically, Dallas was generous with reasons for a searching scrutiny of the autopsists’ claimed ignorance of the throat wound.

Parkland witness, Paul Peters, MD, told Boston Globe journalist, Ben Bradlee, that “We did find out almost immediately (sic) after President Kennedy was taken to Bethesda that there was a hole in the neck that we had not seen a the time … But it was only a few (sic) hours later when we began to get calls back to (sic) from Bethesda … See it was only, it was only going to be a few (sic) hours before I would know that the bullets were fired from behind.”[43]

Author Harrison Livingstone reported another Parkland source for nighttime contact between the morgue and Dallas. In a 1991 interview, Livingstone said that Parkland Hospital nurse Audrey Bell told him, “Dr. Perry was up all night. He came into my office the next day and sat down and looked terrible, having not slept. I never saw anybody look so dejected! They called him from Bethesda two or three times in the middle of the night to try to get him to change the entrance wound in the throat to an exit wound.”[44]

In 1966 even Dr. Boswell himself weighed in, echoing Manchester by apparently disgorging to a stringer for the Baltimore Sun, who reported that, “before the autopsy had began, the pathologists had been apprised of JFK's wounds and what had been done to him at Parkland. In particular, Boswell said: ‘We concluded that night that the bullet had, in fact, entered the back of the neck, traversed the neck and exited anteriorly.’”[45] (author’s emphasis) Under oath in 1996, Boswell told the ARRB much the same thing. “Did you reach the conclusion that there had been a transit wound through the neck during the course of the autopsy itself?”, he was asked. “Oh, yes,” Boswell answered.[46] [On the other hand, Pierre Finck told the ARRB that at the end of the evening they had not concluded a throat transit.[47]]

But regarding what they knew before they plunged in, Boswell seemed to give a slightly different version to the ARRB than he had the Baltimore Sun. He was asked, “Prior to the time you first saw the President Kennedy’s body, had you heard any communications about the nature of the wounds that he had suffered?” “I don’t think specifically. I think just the fact that he had a head wound,” Boswell responded.[48]

Boswell kept to Humes’ claim the calls to Dallas happened the next day. “When was the first conversation with doctors in Dallas?” he was asked in 1996 by the ARRB.

“Saturday morning,” Boswell answered.[49] 

Boswell’s account seems to contradict the comments of another pathologist who was present during the autopsy, though not as a member of the surgical team, Robert Karnei, MD.

During an interview, author Harrison Livingstone clumsily commented to Karnei about the autopsists’ alleged ignorance: “They didn’t know there was a bullet hole in the throat. All they saw was the trach (sic) incision.”

Karnei: “Right. Once they talked to the doctors in Dallas, this is around midnight, I think.”

Livingstone: “No, it was the next day when he called Perry.”

Karnei: “Next day?”

Livingstone: “Yes. The body was already gone.”

Karnei: “I was convinced they talked to somebody that night, and finally decided that had to be the exit wound. Pierre Finck, I think, talked to somebody … For some reason I thought they had discovered that around midnight. Maybe it was the next day.”[50]

Karnei was not the only morgue physician who was confused about information from Dallas and when the team had decided there had been a bullet wound in JFK’s throat.

In the suppressed HSCA interview of autopsy radiologist Dr. John Ebersole, Ebersole told the medical panel that Humes was in telephone contact with Dallas doctors during the autopsy. (see ARRB MD #60. p. 64)

After a telephone interview with the autopsy radiologist, John Ebersole, MD, David Mantik, MD, Ph.D. reported that, “Ebersole had told me during our first conversation that they had learned about the throat wound from Dallas that night. In prior conversations, he had also stated that he had learned of the projectile wound to the throat during the autopsy – that, in fact, he had stopped taking X-rays after that intelligence had arrived, because the mystery of the exit wound – corresponding to the back entrance wound – was solved.”[51] Moreover, Ebersole told the HSCA that the two hospitals had communicated by phone during the autopsy.[52]

By the later stages of the autopsy, Admiral Burkley was apparently talking to others about a wound in JFK’s throat, according to a Bethesda witness reported by author David Lifton. On 11/29/63, Coast Guardsman George Barnum wrote up a memo that concerned a conversation he had had with Admiral Burkley at Bethesda Hospital on the night of the autopsy. Barnum reported that Burkley had told him Kennedy had been hit twice, “The first striking him in the lower neck and coming out near the throat … .”[53] Barnum’s account is incomprehensible without accepting that Burkley’s remark suggests that either there was knowledge of the throat wound or, as per Boswell and Karnei, that a throat wound had been inferred by the autopsy team. Either way, Humes’ assertion to the Warren Commission to the effect a throat wound only dawned on him the next day, after a call to Dallas, seems open to dispute. Other witnesses add to the doubts.

General Philip C. Wehle's personal aide,[54] Richard A. Lipsey, a witness to the autopsy, told the HSCA that sometime during the autopsy the prosectors concluded that three bullets had struck the President. “Lipsey said that one bullet entered the upper back of the President and did not exit,” the HSCA reported, and that, “one entered in the rear of the head and exited the throat; and one entered and exited in the right, top portion of the head, causing a massive head wound.”[55] Although this is not what finally made it into the autopsy report, it is hard to understand how a non-physician would recall linking the head wound to the throat wound unless he’d heard of a wound in the throat from the surgeons.

Then there is the odd answer of tracheotomist, Malcolm Perry, MD, one that called to mind Dr. Peters’ previously cited comment that, “it was only a few (sic) hours later when we began to get calls back to (sic) from Bethesda”:

Arlen Specter asked: “And will you relate the circumstances of the calls indicating first the time when they occurred.”

Perry: “Dr. Humes called me twice on Friday afternoon, separated by about 30-minute intervals, as I recall.  The first one, I, somehow think I recall the first one must have been around 1500 hours, but I'm not real sure about that; I'm not positive of that at all, actually.”

Specter hastened to correct Perry, following up with:

Specter: “Could it have been Saturday morning?”

Perry: “Saturday morning – was it?  It's possible.  I remember talking with him twice.  I was thinking it was shortly thereafter.”[56]

While Perry’s turnabout may have come completely from the heart, that his instantaneous recall of a contact on Friday happened to match the recollections of so many others is surely quite a coincidence...."

[39] CBS Memorandum from Bob Richer to Les Midgley, 1/10/67. Reproduced in: The Effectiveness of Public Law 102-526, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, Hearing Before the Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, November 17, 1993, p. 233. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document # 16.

[40] Affidavit of Admiral George Burkley. In: Warren Commission Exhibit # 1126. 22H93-97.

[41] William Manchester. The Death of a President. New York: Penguin Books, 1977, p. 432 – 433.

[42] William Manchester. The Death of a President. New York: Penguin Books, 1977, p. 432 – 433.

[43] Tape recorded interview of 1 May 1981; transcript supplied by Harrison Livingstone.

[44] Harrison Livingstone. High Treason 2. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 121.

[45] Richard H. Levine, 25 November 1966, page 1.

[46] ARRB interview with J. Thornton Boswell, p. 34.

[47] ARRB interview with Pierre Finck, p. 91 “miniscript,” or p. 18 of published text.

[48] ARRB interview with J. Thornton Boswell, p. 30.

[49] ARRB interview with J. Thornton Boswell, p. 27.

[50] Harrison Livingstone. High Treason 2. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992, p. 186.

[51] See transcript of David Mantik’s interview with John Ebersole in: James Fetzer, ed., Murder in Dealey Plaza. Chicago: Catfeet Press 2000, p. 437.

[52] HSCA Agency File # 013617. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document # 60.

[53] David Lifton. Best Evidence. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1980, p. 671.

[54] HSCA-V7:9.

[55] HSCA-V7:20, footnote #95. See also a now-declassified audio recording of the HSCA's interview with Lipsey from 1-18-78.

[56] 6H16. [Mr. SPECTER. And did you and I sit down and talk about the purpose of this deposition and the questions which I would be asking you on the record, before this deposition started?

'HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG'

By Gary L. Aguilar, MD and Kathy Cunningham | May 2003 |                    https://history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_1a.htm

And as for the false claims that you made in your previous post about Dr. Perry in subsequent years not behaving as if he had been threatened, are you pretending not to know about the turnarounds that Dr. Perry did in his Warren Commission and HSCA testimony, and about Dr. Perry's well-known reluctance to be interviewed and to participate in JFKA conferences and other related activities?

Malcolm Perry's colleague and friend, Dr. Donald W. Miller, in 2013 wrote about the intimidation that Dr. Perry had undergone, about Perry's revisions of his position on the throat wound before the Warren Commission and HSCA, and about Perry's well-known reluctance to speak of the matter as follows:

"...I have had the unique experience of personally knowing ... the Texas surgeon who performed a tracheotomy on Kennedy after he was shot, Dr. Malcolm Perry....

Dr. Perry was the first physician to speak publicly about the President’s injuries in a televised news conference an hour after his death. A newsman asked him, “Where was the entrance wound?” Dr. Perry informed the American public and the world that “There was an entrance wound in the neck…It [the bullet] appeared to be coming at him…,” which he repeated two more times at the news conference.

This did not sit well with the Warren Commission. The bullet hole in Kennedy’s neck had to be an exit wound for Oswald to be the assassin. Presented with its single bullet theory when testifying before the Commission several months later, Dr. Perry obligingly changed his view of the matter and said that the bullet wound he observed in the neck “certainly would be consistent with an exit wound.”...

...Dr. Perry publicly changed his view of the neck wound for the Warren Commission after a Secret Service Agent came to Dallas, threatened him, and coerced him to testify that it was an exit wound. In 1970, that Agent, Elmer Moore, confessed to a friend that he had acted “on orders from Washington.” He regretted that he had “badgered Dr. Perry into making a flat statement that there was no entry wound in the neck.” As ordered, he said, “I did everything I was told, we all did everything we were told, or we’d get our heads cut off.” The friend he admitted this to was (appropriately enough) a University of Washington graduate student named Jim Gochenaur.

Thirteen years later, Dr. Perry and I performed surgery on a patient with a thoracoabdominal aneurysm. I removed the thoracic, or chest part of the aneurysm, and Dr. Perry, the abdominal part. When the residents were closing the incisions Malcolm and I sat together alone in the surgeons’ lounge drinking coffee. Dr. Perry had always refused to discuss the Kennedy assassination, but that night, after we had been operating together for many hours on a complex case, I once again asked him about it. This time, however, Dr. Perry told me that the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck was, in fact, unquestionably a wound of entrance.

A year later, when called to testify to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Dr. Perry once again publicly supported the government’s single-bullet-theory official truth and agreed with the committee that the bullet wound in the neck must be an exit wound, explaining that the wound was so small that he had initially mistaken it for an entrance wound. But in 1986, Dr. Perry told another physician, Dr. Robert Artwohl, that it was in fact an entrance wound...."

'Reflections on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 50 Years Later'
By Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD | November 16, 2013 | 
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/11/donald-w-miller-jr-md/jfk-thought-control-and-thought-crimes/

I know, due to my familiarity with your website, that you are well aware of all of the information I presented above, and yet you still deny the bulk of the evidence showing the massive cover up of the fact that the throat wound was a wound of entrance. Well I think I have a pretty good guess about why that is.

My suspicion is that it had to do with the fact that the information above all leads to the alteration of President Kennedy's throat wound that took place between the time that the body left Parkland Hospital and the start of the "official" autopsy at Bethesda, as explained by Doug Horne, as follows:

"...The story does not end here. The chief prosector at the President's autopsy, Dr. James J. Humes, described the throat wound in the autopsy report as having "widely gaping, irregular edges," and in his Warren Commission testimony, Humes said the gaping wound in the throat was 7 to 8 cm wide. In contrast, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, a third year resident at Parkland in 1963, told ABC's "20/20" news magazine in 1992 that after the tracheostomy tube and flange were removed from the President's neck following his death, that the very small incision made by Dr. Perry closed of its own volition, and that the bullet wound had NOT been obliterated and was still clearly visible. When Dr. Crenshaw viewed the widely published bootleg autopsy photo (from Bethesda Naval hospital) showing the incision in JFK's neck, he expressed the opinion to ABC's "20/20" that the incision in that photograph was DOUBLE the width of the incision Dr. Perry originally made on the President's body.

The descriptions of the incision in the anterior neck, provided by Dr. Humes and Dr. Crenshaw, together constitute de facto evidence that JFK's throat wound was tampered with prior to the start of the Navy autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital. President Kennedy's body was in the custody of the U.S. Secret Service while enroute Washington D.C. from Dallas, Texas..." 

'Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, Key Parkland Hospital Witness to JFK's Wounds, Dies'

InsideTheARRB | By Doug Horne | December 8, 2009 | https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2370.html

And when Robert Groden first showed the autopsy photographs to Dr. Malcolm Perry, Perry had a similar reaction, saying "I didn't do that. That's a butcher job."

From Robert Groden’s appearance at a 2003 conference:

[…]

As far as alteration of the body goes, the only evidence of that is the fact that when I interviewed Dr. Perry, he told me that he did not create that wound, he said- he stood up shocked and he pointed- pointed at the photograph, which I- again, I had shown him for the first time, he said I didn't do that. He said that's a butcher job. A tracheotomy hole is the size of a pencil to put a tube down there. If it leaks, it defeats the purpose. This hole is large enough to stick a fire hose down. It didn't work that way at all. It- it's sad but that's the case. […]

From another conference with Robert Groden, undated, uploaded to Youtube 9/28/2021 by the Lone Gunman channel UCAG--Ai7Xh56gr6nxnX-24A:

As far as alteration of the President's body goes, I believe that there’s there's- it's unquestionable that something was done to the president's throat. I interviewed Dr. Perry in 1978 and I showed him the autopsy photographs which he had never seen before, and he took a look at the throat wound in the photographs and he stood up at his desk and he was just shocked. He was silent for a moment, then he said ‘I didn't do that’, he said ‘that's a butchered job’. He said ‘I didn't do that’, and then he relived the entire tracheotomy, he stood up and he had his- what was supposed to be a- a scalpel in his hand and he showed doing it- doing the- the incision and said it was only about a little over an inch long he says- he just went on and on about why that couldn't have been what he had done.

[...]

PARKLAND DOCTOR MALCOLM PERRY DISAVOWS JAGGED THROAT WOUND

 

The short and simple of this is that you are ignoring, and most often distorting, a helluva lot of evidence in order to maintain your confirmation bias that there was no body alteration, and that the autopsy (and especially the X-rays and photographs) are legit.

 

I have seen ER doctors testify as to whether wounds were of entrance or exit during trials, particularly when the victim survived, and there was no need for an autopsy or pathologists. ER physicians qualify as expert witnesses and do in fact testify on these matters. Perhaps you have read studies that suggest this should not be the case, and perhaps you have not. We don't know because you have cited none, and as the result of finding many distortions, omissions, and falsifications in your research, I do not believe your claims about anything are credible.

What we do know is that the Parkland doctors and nurses were seasoned professionals who worked in a busy metropolitan hospital and dealt with gunshot wounds on a daily basis, and such professionals acquire a great deal of expertise on these matters, which is not meaningless, as you are attempting to suggest.

In particular, Dr. Malcom Perry was a highly respected surgeon, whom Dr. Charles Crenshaw in the following 1992 interview characterized as "an artist with a blade." You want to dismiss the expertise of the Parkland physicians because of your agenda dedicated to dismiss all of their testimony and reports in order to prove the existence of wounds they never saw, and to argue that the wounds they did see and report were just the product of a mass hallucination. It's just a modified version of the cover-up of the head wounds that the HSCA perpetrated, and it is unconscionable.

 

1. McClelland said the trach incision he witnessed is the trach incision in the photos. Perry testified to expanding the wound so he could look inside to see the nature of the damage. That is as should be expected. Milicent Cranor--a researcher to whom all your heroes defer--looked into this and concluded that the large incision is as expected--under these circumstances--and that the claims of Lifton and others that the throat wound must have been altered--because it doesn't look like a typical trach incision--is jibber-jabber. 

2. While it wouldn't surprise me if ER doctors when testifying sometimes refer to a wound as an entrance or an exit, I was unable to find instances where ER doctors have been presented as witnesses to counter the conclusions of a pathologist. IOW, I am fairly certain they are not presented as equal authorities on these matters. I mean, as a lawyer you would have to know there is a difference between a cop saying a man pulled out a machete and a crime scene investigator saying a butter knife was found on the scene, right?  The first reported what he believed he saw, and the second reported on what he observed through careful study, and concluded as an official result. 

IF you have come across examples of ER doctors testifying as experts on gunshot wounds to dispute the findings of a coroner or pathologist, I would appreciate your sharing links to reports on these cases. 

 

As to your request for more info...from chapter 19h...

 

In the early 1990's, now Associate Professor Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana created a video of six people passing basketballs back and forth, while moving around in a circle. Simons played this video to unsuspecting subjects, asking them how many passes were made, or whether the women in the video made more passes than the men. No matter. The passing was just a distraction. During the middle of the short video-taped passing demonstration, a man in a gorilla suit walked into frame and stood in the middle of the basketball players. What Simons really wanted to know was if anyone counting the number of passes would notice this man in the gorilla suit. He got his answer, which continues to confound people to this day. He found that, upon first viewing, only about 50% of those looking straight at--no, actually studying--a video of a man in a gorilla suit, had any recollection of seeing him, when their attention was drawn to unrelated details. One can view this video, here.http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php

The application of Simons' experiment to the Kennedy case should be obvious. From the failure of so many to note the gorilla in the room one can easily extrapolate that the team trying to save Kennedy's life was so focused on trying to save his life that the exact location of his head wound was only a fuzzy afterthought...subject to confusion...

And should this explanation not suffice, and should one still refuse to believe that the excitement of a trauma room can lead to mistakes in bullet wound identification (and/or that trauma room physicians are not properly trained to judge the direction of bullet wounds) one should know that Wake Forest University indirectly studied this from 1987-1992, by comparing the reports of trauma specialists with the corresponding reports of forensic pathologists. This study, as described in an April 28, 1993 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that, with multiple gunshot wound victims, trauma specialists mistakenly identified the number of shots or the direction of fire 74% of the time, and that, even with single shot victims with through and through wounds, they were mistaken 37% of the time.

And, no, this wasn't an aberration. It may even have been an understatement. In Forensic Science, An Introduction to Scientific and Investigative Techniques (2003), long-time forensic pathologist Dr. Ronald Wright notes that emergency room physicians without forensic training tend to rely on the general rule that exit wounds are larger than entrance wounds, and fail to understand that this rule doesn't apply to contact wounds of the head (wounds in which the gun is held against the head). As a result, writes Wright, "the error rate of emergency room physicians without forensic training in determining directionality of suicidal contact gunshot wounds to the head is almost 100%."

Doctors make mistakes. Lots of 'em...