What's wrong with Dr. Michael Baden?

[Sandy Larsen]

 

 

Dr.  Michael Baden says that he believes the Magic Bullet Theory, and that Oswald was the lone assassin, among other nonsense.

Why does he believe or say such obvious nonsense?

Is he simply not too bright? Or is he participating in the coverup? Or is a CIA limited hangout? Something else?

Something is wrong with him.

Any opinions?

 

Edited Thursday at 02:54 PM by Sandy Larsen

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

 

Dr.  Michael Baden says that he believes the Magic Bullet Theory, and that Oswald was the lone assassin, among other nonsense.

Why does he believe or say such obvious nonsense?

Is he simply not too bright? Or is he participating in the coverup? Or is a CIA limited hangout? Something else?

Something is wrong with him.

Any opinions?

 

I present a detailed study of his statements and actions in chapter 13b. My conclusion is that he and his buddies are all suck-ups to whoever is paying them. Here is a sample. 

 

 

Baden's Reign of Error 1989 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As you can see, this trip down the lane of Baden's memory reveals that, over time, he's latched onto a lot of myths, and forgotten a lot of evidence. He repeats the same old canards over and over. "So what?" you might say. "By 2013 Baden was an old man. By 1989, when Unnatural Death was published, he'd already been away from the case for ten years. Of course, he made some mistakes.  What does that have to do with the accuracy or inaccuracy of his initial investigation for the HSCA?" Well, what if the evidence suggests that Baden didn't forget all that much about the case, and that the real problem is that he never KNEW that much about the case? That's right. Beyond his testifying with his autopsy photo upside down, beyond his falsely testifying that Dr. Humes had testified to finding a beveled exit on the intact skull, beyond his falsely testifying that Dr. Finck was not a forensic pathologist and had never performed an autopsy on a gunshot victim, there's additional evidence that he was simply ignorant of the basic facts he was charged with investigating.

Baden's Reign of Error 1980 

In January 2008, on the JFK Lancer website, researcher Randy Owen posted a transcript of a seminar conducted by Dr. Baden in Toronto, Ontario, in November, 1980. November 1980 was but 2 years after Dr. Baden testified before the HSCA, and but a year and some months after the printing of his panel's report. He was but 46 years old, discussing a case he had worked on from when he was 42 until he was 44. And yet...he was already making tremendous mistakes.

• 1. When discussing Abraham Zapruder and his film, he stated: "He's retired on the proceeds of the few seconds of film taking." (While Zapruder made a nice sum from the selling of his film to Time/Life, he was already a successful businessman before selling his film. Furthermore, he'd been dead since 1970. This was the kind of fact that was common knowledge to those with a genuine interest in the case.)

  2. When discussing the President's movements after the head shot, he stated "Interestingly, the Secret Service people indicate that immediately, as soon as they heard the first shot, they speeded up the car. This became a problem because in the whole analysis, it did appear that if he did speed up his car immediately, it had significance." (The limo's driver never said he sped up after the first shot. He said he looked back after what he thought was the second shot. The films reveal that the car slowed as he looked back, and only accelerated after Kennedy had been hit by the head shot.)

  3. Baden then attacked the lack of specificity in the autopsy report, noting: "The doctors who attended the President made a note that 'the injuries to the skull and brain are so complex that they defy description and we will rely on photographs taken to better describe the injury.'"  (The statement to which he refers makes NO mention of the brain at all. It reads "The complexity of these fractures and the fragments thus produced tax satisfactory verbal description and are better appreciated in photographs and roentgenograms which are prepared." Could Baden really have forgotten that the doctors, while failing to section the brain and inspect the missile paths within the brain, nevertheless described in detail the apparent damage to the surface of the brain in their Supplemental Autopsy Report of 12-6-63?  If not, was it a coincidence that Baden failed to acknowledge that the damage described in this report was inconsistent with his re-interpretation of the President's wounds?)

  4. He then explained why the doctors' reliance on the photographs made his job so much harder. He claimed: "It turns out the photographs taken were out of focus and are of little value because they were not done by medical photographers but by government officials who had never taken autopsy photographs before." (Holy smokes! The autopsy photographer was, according to Baden, a "government official" in 1980, an FBI photographer in 1989, "somebody else" in 2003, and a Secret Service photographer in 2008. What will he be in 10 more years, an IRS agent performing an audit? Baden's inability to grasp or admit that the pictures were taken by John Stringer, the Navy's top autopsy photographer in 1963 and a man interviewed for the HSCA on August 17, 1977 by HSCA counsel Andy Purdy, Baden's contact with the committee, demonstrates beyond any doubt that he never quite got a handle on the evidence he was tasked with studying.)

  5. Baden then explained that it's not a doctors' job to decide who did it. He then told the audience who did it, injecting: "Oswald had the gun, it was his, there were his fingerprints on it, he pulled the trigger." (Of course, there had been but one identifiable print found on the rifle--Oswald's palm print--and it was found on the barrel of the rifle, in a part that was only exposed when the rifle was disassembled. Furthermore, the only man to see this print on the rifle, Dallas detective J.C. Day, felt sure that this print was an old print. Thus, there was no scientific evidence that Oswald had "pulled the trigger".)

  6. Baden finally ended his presentation by pointing out the convergence of factors leading to the disappearance of Kennedy's brain before it could be studied. Not surprisingly, he found a way to blame it on the Kennedy family. He asserted "the x-rays, the specimens, all remained in custody of the Kennedy family. Like somebody is shot in Toronto or New York and the next of kin, who may be the perpetrator, says 'I want my pathologist to come in and do the autopsy. You take the pictures but give me the pictures so I can hold onto them.' And they kept the whole thing. This was done with good intent and all that..." (He completely left out, if he even knew, that the autopsy materials were not given to the Kennedy family until 1965, long after the Warren Commission had completed its investigation. He also omitted that the Johnson Administration, when it asked for the return of the materials in 1966, only asked for the autopsy photos and x-rays, and never requested the return of the brain for study.)

From all these mistakes it seems clear that Baden was never truly an expert on the case. Not even close.

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

My conclusion is that he and his buddies are all suck-ups to whoever is paying them.

 

Thank you for your valuable contribution, Pat.

Does anybody know who hired Dr. Baden?

 

[Ron Bulman]

Your work on Baden is excellent Pat.  Much I didn't know.  

I've read another article or something in a book but can't remember by who or where at the moment.  It complements your work I think but was not exclusively about Baden from what I do remember.  It was about the HSCA.  As Chief Forensic Pathologist of the nine-member panel he was featured.  

It was about the panel's members, all except Wecht, having government affiliations.  E.G research grants.  That they towed the line (except Wecht).  That they actually met very few times, did little to no research.  Under Baden's leadership.

I thought maybe Wecht's last book, The JFK Assassination Dissected, nope, two unrelated brief references.  Reclaiming Parkland maybe, a half dozen references I've not re-read yet.  IDK, maybe an article on K & K by a guest? 

Edited 15 hours ago by Ron Bulman

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Thank you for your valuable contribution, Pat.

Does anybody know who hired Dr. Baden?

 

Baden was hired by his fellow New-Yorker Robert Tanenbaum, who was under the impression Baden would be open-minded. He gave Baden the leeway to hire the rest of the panel, but insisted he include one man who he thought would challenge the official story: Cyril Wecht. When Wecht began working with the panel, moreover, he was surprised to find he'd been isolated from the bulk of the panel, by nature of Baden's separating the panel into two sub panels, a sub-panel of six including Baden who'd never viewed the autopsy materials, and a sub-panel of three who had previously viewed the autopsy materials. This served no real purpose, IMO, beyond minimizing Wecht's contact and influence over the panel. For example, the sub-panel which included Wecht was not invited to the archives on the day the panel of six met with Dr. Humes, Boswell, and Angel. And the construction of two panels meant Wecht had little contact beyond his contact with Weston and Spitz--two avowed Oswald did it types who were certain to over-rule any of his criticisms. It was such a problem, in fact, that Wecht realized what was going on and insisted he be allowed to testify separately, and was granted that wish. A taste for what could have been comes, moreover, from listening to the audio of the panel's interview with Finck. Finck was concerned about the panel's rubber-stamping of the Clark Panel's fabricated cowlick entrance, and agreed to meet with the panel, which, due to scheduling, meant the entire panel. Well, the bulk of the questions came from Baden and Weston, who were trying to pressure Finck into admitting he could be wrong and that the bullet wound could have been at the top of the head and not the bottom. Finck resisted, over and over again. But they kept pushing, to the point that Wecht (a lawyer as well as a doctor) eventually stepped in and told them they were badgering the man.  Now, this was something I myself discovered. The transcript cuts off and says something like last page of transcript damaged or some such thing. Which I think was something Baden had done to save himself from criticism. Because I listened to the tape and read along with the transcript and found that the tape went on for I think it was ten minutes after the end of the transcript. (When I first brought this up twelve years ago or so DVP didn't believe it but double-checked it and told McAdams et al I was correct.) In any event, I had the opportunity to ask Wecht about this at a conference, and he said he found all this upsetting because he considered Baden to be a close friend and colleague. And when I pushed a little bit harder by asking if he believed Baden had deliberately minimized his influence over the panel, he said yes but that he didn't think this was because Baden was trying to cover anything up, and that he believed Baden and Spitz etc all believed Oswald did it and that their reputations would be harmed if they put their names on anything suggesting a conspiracy. He summed it up In two words: confirmation bias. 

Now, this didn't come as a surprise because I'd already discussed this on my website, and had actually looked into the backgrounds of the members of the HSCA Panel and Clark Panel. And had found one thing in common: Dr. Russell Fisher. Fisher was kinda like a T-Rex hovering over the world of Forensic Pathology in the sixties and seventies. He worked out of Maryland but was essentially the Forensic Pathologist for Washington, D.C., responsible for overseeing the handing out of government grants, etc. In fact, one of the things I discovered, which subsequently got reported on Max Holland's site by a lone-nutter named John Canal, was that in the months leading up to the HSCA, Fisher had put together a handbook on Forensic Pathology which had included (presumably paid) contributions from most of the HSCA panel, and that the whole thing was funded by the Justice Department. So, yeah, that's right. In 1968 the Justice Department convened a secret panel led by Russell Fisher to make the medical evidence more compatible with the single-assassin solution (a panel which ended up moving the location of his head wound without consulting with any actual witnesses to the head wound), and in 1977 this same Russell Fisher oversaw a project funded by the Justice Department which hired a number of prominent pathologists, who were then asked to double-check the findings Fisher supplied the Justice Department.

Now, not a one of them recused himself. And I don't believe this was a coincidence. But Cyril felt sure they were all caught up in a web of confirmation bias. So I have to accept he may have been right.

But I'm not sure it even matters. They all worked together to protect Fisher and the Justice Department, and shut up Humes, Boswell, and Finck. 

And history has suffered as a result. 

 

Edited yesterday at 02:30 AM by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

5 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Your work on Baden is excellent Pat.  Much I didn't know.  

I've read another article or something in a book but can't remember by who or where at the moment.  It complements your work I think but was not exclusively about Baden from what I do remember.  It was about the HSCA.  As Chief Forensic Pathologist of the nine-member panel he was featured.  

It was about the panel's members, all except Wecht, having government affiliations.  E.G research grants.  That they towed the line (except Wecht).  That they actually met very few times, did little to no research.  Under Baden's leadership.

I thought maybe Wecht's last book, The JFK Assassination Dissected, nope, two unrelated brief references.  Reclaiming Parkland maybe, a half dozen references I've not read yet.  IDK, maybe an article on K & K by a guest? 

Russell Kent got into this as well in his recent book. 

[Michael Griffith]

As chairman of the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel, Baden buried or ignored evidence of a frontal head shot and came up with a new version of the single-bullet theory that is just as problematic as the WC's version. I suspect he played a role in formulating the false statement in the HSCA report that the autopsy witnesses and the Dallas witnesses described the same large head wound. 

[Benjamin Cole]

Michael Baden made some lulus in his life, and was widely thought to have been "rented" when he tried and succeeded in helping to get OJ Simpson off the hook. More on that later. 

But Baden's silliest and most important "mistake" was when, as chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations' Forensic Pathology Panel, he stated that Gov. John Connally had been struck by a tumbling bullet, a slug that created a large scar on Connally's back by virtue of its tumbling. The slug was tumbling, as it had passed through JFK's throat first, and that was conclusive evidence in support of the SBT.  

Well, you can see this is the bullet hole in the back of JBC's assassination day shirt, and this is after cloth has been removed twice from the hole...once after the JFKA, and once during the HSCA follies, both times to test for metal residue. Even so, the hole is 3/8ths by 3/8ths, or just large enough for straight shot from a Western Cartridge 6.5 slug, the type fired by LHO's purported Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. 

Evidently, Baden never bothered to look at JBC's clothes, in a review of the most important murder case to the century. Or if he did, it did not matter.

Why?

Well, this is what Wikipedia says about Baden's testimony in the OJ trail:

Baden testified in the O.J. Simpson trial on August 10 and 11, 1995, and made two claims that he later disowned.^[29][30] First, he claimed that Nicole Brown was still standing and conscious when her throat was slashed.^[31] The purpose of this claim was to dispute the theory that Brown was the intended target. The prosecution argued that Brown was murdered first and the intended target because the soles of her feet didn't have any blood on them despite the large amount of blood at the crime scene and that she was unconscious when her throat was cut because she had very few defensive wounds.^[32][33] At the subsequent civil trial the following year he disowned that claim and admitted it was absurd to think that someone would stand still without moving their feet while their throat is being slashed and not fight back.^[34][35][36]

Baden then claimed that Ron Goldman remained conscious^[37] and fought with his assailant for at least ten minutes^[38] with a severed jugular vein.^[30][29] The purpose of this testimony was to extend the length of time it took the murders to happen to the point where Simpson had an alibi.^[39] At the subsequent civil trial he initially denied making that claim and then after being confronted with a video clip of him saying it at the criminal trial, he disowned it. Baden claimed he misunderstood the question but the Goldman's attorney alleged he said it because the defense paid him to do so. He also alleged that Baden knowingly gave false testimony because he knew that Ron Goldman's blood was found inside Simpson's Bronco despite Goldman never having an opportunity within his lifetime to be in Simpson's car.^{[40][41][35][36]}

After the trial, Baden said that testifying for Simpson was a mistake as his reputation and credibility never recovered and his clientele for his consulting practice all but vanished.^[42] Because of the negative reaction to the acquittal by the public,^[43] the jurors stating they believed his two aforementioned claims that he later disowned,^[44] and the trial being televised making his testimony widely known,^[3] he was constantly being made to rehash his testimony from the Simpson case during cross-examination in other cases and constantly being discredited for allegedly being a "rented expert" who sold himself to Simpson and deliberately gave misleading testimony in order to collect a $165,000 retainer.^[45][10]

---30---

In other words, Baden would say whatever his clients wanted said. 

Pat Speer has a catalogue of Baden's incredibly bad conclusions, at Pat's website.   

The upshot:  The HSCA's top lawyer was a Mob-hunter who trusted the CIA (Blakey), and its top pathologist was a quack.. 

Edited 15 hours ago by Benjamin Cole

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

As chairman of the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel, Baden buried or ignored evidence of a frontal head shot and came up with a new version of the single-bullet theory that is just as problematic as the WC's version. I suspect he played a role in formulating the false statement in the HSCA report that the autopsy witnesses and the Dallas witnesses described the same large head wound. 

While Baden claimed he was unaware of the outside contact interviews in which some of the Bethesda witnesses said things he didn't want them to say about the head wound, he continued to work with the committee up until the end, and worked in lockstep with Cornwell to make sure Humes pretended to agree with the cowlick entrance, as well as the editing of the report. So it only makes sense that he would react to the head wound problem as he had other bits of contrary information in a similar manner: conceal, deny, bury.

It is unfortunate, IMO, that people became so focused on the one deception about the head wound that they overlooked a number of other deceptions within Baden's testimony and the report of his panel. I was a relative newbie, and yet I uncovered a pattern of deception within the report that went largely over-looked by previous researchers of the medical evidence. Now, personally, it worked out, because my discoveries and presentations led to my embrace if you will by people whom I respect. But it would have been a lot better for history, IMO, if someone like Thompson had gained access to the FPP report in 1979, and had went through it point by point, and then exposed its numerous problems within a year or two. This, IMO, could have prevented a schism within the research community, that sadly persists to this day. 

 

Edited yesterday at 11:02 AM by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Michael Baden made some lulus in his life, and was widely thought to have been "rented" when he tried and succeeded in helping to get OJ Simpson off the hook. More on that later. 

But Baden's silliest and most important "mistake" was when, as chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations' Forensic Pathology Panel, he stated that Gov. John Connally had been struck by a tumbling bullet, a slug that created a large scar on Connally's back by virtue of its tumbling. The slug was tumbling, as it had passed through JFK's throat first, and that was conclusive evidence in support of the SBT.  

Well, you can see this is the bullet hole in the back of JBC's assassination day shirt, and this is after cloth has been removed twice from the hole...once after the JFKA, and once during the HSCA follies, both times to test for metal residue. Even so, the hole is 3/8ths by 3/8ths, or just large enough for straight shot from a Western Cartridge 6.5 slug, the type fired by LHO's purported Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. 

Evidently, Baden never bothered to look at JBC's clothes, in a review of the most important murder case to the century. Or if he did, it did not matter.

Why?

Well, this is what Wikipedia says about Baden's testimony in the OJ trail:

Baden testified in the O.J. Simpson trial on August 10 and 11, 1995, and made two claims that he later disowned.^[29][30] First, he claimed that Nicole Brown was still standing and conscious when her throat was slashed.^[31] The purpose of this claim was to dispute the theory that Brown was the intended target. The prosecution argued that Brown was murdered first and the intended target because the soles of her feet didn't have any blood on them despite the large amount of blood at the crime scene and that she was unconscious when her throat was cut because she had very few defensive wounds.^[32][33] At the subsequent civil trial the following year he disowned that claim and admitted it was absurd to think that someone would stand still without moving their feet while their throat is being slashed and not fight back.^[34][35][36]

Baden then claimed that Ron Goldman remained conscious^[37] and fought with his assailant for at least ten minutes^[38] with a severed jugular vein.^[30][29] The purpose of this testimony was to extend the length of time it took the murders to happen to the point where Simpson had an alibi.^[39] At the subsequent civil trial he initially denied making that claim and then after being confronted with a video clip of him saying it at the criminal trial, he disowned it. Baden claimed he misunderstood the question but the Goldman's attorney alleged he said it because the defense paid him to do so. He also alleged that Baden knowingly gave false testimony because he knew that Ron Goldman's blood was found inside Simpson's Bronco despite Goldman never having an opportunity within his lifetime to be in Simpson's car.^{[40][41][35][36]}

After the trial, Baden said that testifying for Simpson was a mistake as his reputation and credibility never recovered and his clientele for his consulting practice all but vanished.^[42] Because of the negative reaction to the acquittal by the public,^[43] the jurors stating they believed his two aforementioned claims that he later disowned,^[44] and the trial being televised making his testimony widely known,^[3] he was constantly being made to rehash his testimony from the Simpson case during cross-examination in other cases and constantly being discredited for allegedly being a "rented expert" who sold himself to Simpson and deliberately gave misleading testimony in order to collect a $165,000 retainer.^[45][10]

---30---

In other words, Baden would say whatever he clients wanted said. 

Pat Speer has a catalogue of Baden's incredibly bad conclusions, at Pat's website.   

The upshot:  The HSCA's top lawyer was a Mob-hunter who trusted the CIA (Blakey), and its top pathologist was a fraud. 

More from Chapter 13b:

 

Dr. Baden was asked to head the HSCA panel in 1977. At that time he was but a deputy medical examiner. In August 1978, just before his testimony, however, he was appointed Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York. He held on to this position all through the hearings. By the next summer, however, around the time the HSCA's report was published, Mayor Ed Koch decided to relieve him of his duty. Early articles on this action reflect that Dr. Baden was accused of, among other things, presenting sordid details on the death of former Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller during a February 3, 1979 lecture at a local hospital. (Baden was reported to have claimed that Rocky had died while fornicating with an aide.) Baden was also accused of losing evidence and being impolite to assistant district attorneys. One early article, in the August 1, 1979 L.A. Times, reflects that Baden conceded that there had been "personality" problems on four cases, and that "In two, evidence problems of a minor nature developed." Baden then turned around and sued both Mayor Koch and the City of New York for his reinstatement. This fight went all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals, with the Court deciding that Baden's demotion was within his probationary period, and that he was thus not entitled to a hearing before his dismissal. While the ruling on his appeal, available online, makes note of Baden's claim that he was "removed from his position because of the exercise, by him and members of his family, of their right of free speech," a 10-30-87 New York Times article, also found online, claims only that Koch removed Baden "after receiving negative reports from Dr. Reinaldo A. Ferrer, then the city's Health Commissioner, and from Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney" and that they "contended, among other things, that Dr. Baden had lost important evidence in homicide cases and had been unresponsive to requests from superiors." A July 9, 1982, New York Times article on Dr. Baden's trial, furthermore, affirms that this was the official reason for his dismissal and quotes Baden's own assessment of his reputation following the revelation of these charges: ''I became overnight almost a pariah in my profession because of the nature of the charges against me,'' he said. He added that the charges had damaged his credibility and ''immediately affected my ability to testify in court'' as an expert in major homicide cases."

In the interests of fairness, it should be noted here that Dr. Baden, in his 1989 book Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, offers a defense against these charges. He does so, however, at the cost of his profession, and the credibility of his work with the HSCA Pathology Panel. When discussing the difficulties he had getting along with a big city DA like Morgenthau, he writes "What is really wanted is an elastic man, one who will stretch and bend his findings to suit the DA's needs and the political climate. Truth and excellence play no part in this arrangement. Numbers are what count, getting convictions for the DA, and the ME's office exists for that purpose. Its own purposes are always subordinate to somebody else's agenda." He then describes the specific pressure put on Medical Examiners (ME's) to twist the evidence and say that murdered women have also been raped; he reports, to the detriment of the credibility of his fellow pathologists, that "Most ME's do it." He then discusses a number of cases where political pressure influenced the findings of the ME. He later concludes, to the detriment of his profession, that: "In murder, medical examiners who can't figure out the cause of death tend to go along with the police theory. Instead of arriving at their own independent conclusions, ME's just become rubber stamps. There is nothing deliberately dishonest about this. The police want to solve the murder, and the ME, mistakenly thinking he is there to serve them, adopts their theory." Baden offers no compelling reason for his readers to believe the investigation of a president's murder would be less pressure-packed than the investigation of a possible rape, and no compelling reason to believe the pathologists on the HSCA panel would be less eager to please the powers that be than the ME's described in his book. Perhaps, then, he was trying to tell us something.

Dr. Baden's subsequent career has been no less controversial. The 2006 book Postmortem, by Stefan Timmermans, explores the sociology of medical examiners. It received a rave review from the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a chapter on the importance of witness credibility, Timmermans discusses Baden's 1997 testimony in defense of Louise Woodward, a nanny accused of shaking an 8-month-old to death. Timmermans recounts how Baden testified on behalf of Woodward that the infant's injuries were not necessarily caused by shaking and may have been older fractures caused by a fall or impact. He testified: "Shaken doesn't explain anything about the autopsy or pathology. That is just speculation. An impact would cause all those injuries." The prosecution was prepared for this, however, and countered Baden's testimony by reading into the record Baden's testimony from a previous trial before the very same judge. When representing the prosecution at this earlier trial, Baden had claimed "from a medical examiner-pathology point of view, it was the hemorrhaging about the brain and eyes that are characteristic and pathognomonic of shaken-baby syndrome." By claiming there were injuries characteristic of shaken-baby syndrome when testifying on behalf of the prosecution in the earlier case, and then claiming there were no injuries characteristic of shaken-baby syndrome when testifying in defense of Woodward, Baden had demonstrated that his opinions lacked substance and changed with the weather. Having thus damaged Baden's credibility, the prosecutor then pressured him on every element of his testimony, gaining Baden's admission that he'd not reached his "expert" opinions independently, but had followed the interpretive lead of other doctors involved in the case. In the end, according to Timmermans, the prosecutor "not only managed to show that Dr. Baden might be expressing opinions about evidence he did not completely grasp but also allowed him to contradict himself and others" and had "so reduced his credibility that any difference of opinion he might have with a colleague would reflect not superior knowledge but idiosyncrasy."

[Benjamin Cole]

7 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

More from Chapter 13b:

 

Dr. Baden was asked to head the HSCA panel in 1977. At that time he was but a deputy medical examiner. In August 1978, just before his testimony, however, he was appointed Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York. He held on to this position all through the hearings. By the next summer, however, around the time the HSCA's report was published, Mayor Ed Koch decided to relieve him of his duty. Early articles on this action reflect that Dr. Baden was accused of, among other things, presenting sordid details on the death of former Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller during a February 3, 1979 lecture at a local hospital. (Baden was reported to have claimed that Rocky had died while fornicating with an aide.) Baden was also accused of losing evidence and being impolite to assistant district attorneys. One early article, in the August 1, 1979 L.A. Times, reflects that Baden conceded that there had been "personality" problems on four cases, and that "In two, evidence problems of a minor nature developed." Baden then turned around and sued both Mayor Koch and the City of New York for his reinstatement. This fight went all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals, with the Court deciding that Baden's demotion was within his probationary period, and that he was thus not entitled to a hearing before his dismissal. While the ruling on his appeal, available online, makes note of Baden's claim that he was "removed from his position because of the exercise, by him and members of his family, of their right of free speech," a 10-30-87 New York Times article, also found online, claims only that Koch removed Baden "after receiving negative reports from Dr. Reinaldo A. Ferrer, then the city's Health Commissioner, and from Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney" and that they "contended, among other things, that Dr. Baden had lost important evidence in homicide cases and had been unresponsive to requests from superiors." A July 9, 1982, New York Times article on Dr. Baden's trial, furthermore, affirms that this was the official reason for his dismissal and quotes Baden's own assessment of his reputation following the revelation of these charges: ''I became overnight almost a pariah in my profession because of the nature of the charges against me,'' he said. He added that the charges had damaged his credibility and ''immediately affected my ability to testify in court'' as an expert in major homicide cases."

In the interests of fairness, it should be noted here that Dr. Baden, in his 1989 book Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, offers a defense against these charges. He does so, however, at the cost of his profession, and the credibility of his work with the HSCA Pathology Panel. When discussing the difficulties he had getting along with a big city DA like Morgenthau, he writes "What is really wanted is an elastic man, one who will stretch and bend his findings to suit the DA's needs and the political climate. Truth and excellence play no part in this arrangement. Numbers are what count, getting convictions for the DA, and the ME's office exists for that purpose. Its own purposes are always subordinate to somebody else's agenda." He then describes the specific pressure put on Medical Examiners (ME's) to twist the evidence and say that murdered women have also been raped; he reports, to the detriment of the credibility of his fellow pathologists, that "Most ME's do it." He then discusses a number of cases where political pressure influenced the findings of the ME. He later concludes, to the detriment of his profession, that: "In murder, medical examiners who can't figure out the cause of death tend to go along with the police theory. Instead of arriving at their own independent conclusions, ME's just become rubber stamps. There is nothing deliberately dishonest about this. The police want to solve the murder, and the ME, mistakenly thinking he is there to serve them, adopts their theory." Baden offers no compelling reason for his readers to believe the investigation of a president's murder would be less pressure-packed than the investigation of a possible rape, and no compelling reason to believe the pathologists on the HSCA panel would be less eager to please the powers that be than the ME's described in his book. Perhaps, then, he was trying to tell us something.

Dr. Baden's subsequent career has been no less controversial. The 2006 book Postmortem, by Stefan Timmermans, explores the sociology of medical examiners. It received a rave review from the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a chapter on the importance of witness credibility, Timmermans discusses Baden's 1997 testimony in defense of Louise Woodward, a nanny accused of shaking an 8-month-old to death. Timmermans recounts how Baden testified on behalf of Woodward that the infant's injuries were not necessarily caused by shaking and may have been older fractures caused by a fall or impact. He testified: "Shaken doesn't explain anything about the autopsy or pathology. That is just speculation. An impact would cause all those injuries." The prosecution was prepared for this, however, and countered Baden's testimony by reading into the record Baden's testimony from a previous trial before the very same judge. When representing the prosecution at this earlier trial, Baden had claimed "from a medical examiner-pathology point of view, it was the hemorrhaging about the brain and eyes that are characteristic and pathognomonic of shaken-baby syndrome." By claiming there were injuries characteristic of shaken-baby syndrome when testifying on behalf of the prosecution in the earlier case, and then claiming there were no injuries characteristic of shaken-baby syndrome when testifying in defense of Woodward, Baden had demonstrated that his opinions lacked substance and changed with the weather. Having thus damaged Baden's credibility, the prosecutor then pressured him on every element of his testimony, gaining Baden's admission that he'd not reached his "expert" opinions independently, but had followed the interpretive lead of other doctors involved in the case. In the end, according to Timmermans, the prosecutor "not only managed to show that Dr. Baden might be expressing opinions about evidence he did not completely grasp but also allowed him to contradict himself and others" and had "so reduced his credibility that any difference of opinion he might have with a colleague would reflect not superior knowledge but idiosyncrasy."

Baden surely appears to be a credentialed quack. Not a rarity, in the EF-JFKA or in real life.

[James DiEugenio]

There are two rather little known facts that tell you a lot about Baden on the JFK case.

First, Bob Tanenbaum brought him down from New York to team with Wecht, and that was going to be the Sprague/Tanenbaum pathology panel.

At that time, in his interview with me for Probe Magazine Tanenbaum said that Baden and he had proved conspiracy due to the timing of the Z film.

Yes, you read that correctly. Baden was in the critics' camp.

But then the sea change took place when Sprague was forced out and Tanenbaum then resigned.

Now he went so far as to instruct Ida Dox to alter a photograph of the rear of Kennedy's head to make the spot of blood at the top of the skull look more like a bullet puncture. he even sent her pictures as a model.

And she did illustrations to make that drop of blood look like it was cratered. People who have seen the original and compared it to the Dox drawing have said the original does not have those ridges on it.

That is how far Baden turned in order to stay on as the HSCA's Kennedy medical expert and advance his career. 

Edited 16 hours ago by James DiEugenio

[Benjamin Cole]

35 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

There are two rather little known facts that tell you a lot about Baden on the JFK case.

First, Bob Tanenbaum brought him down from New York to team with Wecht, and that was going to be the Sprague/Tanenbaum pathology panel.

At that time, in his interview with me for Probe Magazine Tanenbaum said that Baden and he had proved conspiracy due to the timing of the Z film.

Yes, you read that correctly. Baden was in the critics' camp.

But then the sea change took place when Sprague was forced out and Tanenbaum then resigned.

Now he went so far as to instruct Ida Dox to alter a photograph of the rear of Kennedy's head to make the spot of blood at the top of the skull look more like a bullet puncture. he even sent her pictures as a model.

And she did illustrations to make that drop of blood look like it was cratered. People who have seen the original and compared it to the Dox drawing have said the original does not have those ridges on it.

That is how far Baden turned in order to stay on as the HSCA's Kennedy medical expert and advance his career. 

When Sprague was sabotaged and then booted from the HSCA...oooof. 

That might have been the last chance for the truth on the JFKA, or something close to it, to come out. 

Yes, the ARRB has been great. The JFKA research community has performed wonders with primary document research. 

But Sprague was planning to subpoena participants and witnesses, put them under oath, and put them in prison if they perjured themselves. And demand documents. 

My guess is that is why Sprague was torpedoed. 

 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

There are two rather little known facts that tell you a lot about Baden on the JFK case.

First, Bob Tanenbaum brought him down from New York to team with Wecht, and that was going to be the Sprague/Tanenbaum pathology panel.

At that time, in his interview with me for Probe Magazine Tanenbaum said that Baden and he had proved conspiracy due to the timing of the Z film.

Yes, you read that correctly. Baden was in the critics' camp.

But then the sea change took place when Sprague was forced out and Tanenbaum then resigned.

Now he went so far as to instruct Ida Dox to alter a photograph of the rear of Kennedy's head to make the spot of blood at the top of the skull look more like a bullet puncture. he even sent her pictures as a model.

And she did illustrations to make that drop of blood look like it was cratered. People who have seen the original and compared it to the Dox drawing have said the original does not have those ridges on it.

That is how far Baden turned in order to stay on as the HSCA's Kennedy medical expert and advance his career. 

Thanks Jim. This relates to Sandy's original thread on the subject.  Why a new one is needed I'm not sure.

[James DiEugenio]

  Ben:

That is accurate, Sprague was the last best hope for a real inquiry.

Ed Lopez told me how the sea change happened.

After Tanenbaum left, Blakey called Baden into his office.  After a few minutes, Baden came out and Andy Purdy went in.

When Purdy came out, he told Ed, "We're going with the single bullet theory."

This is almost Jamesian in its irony because Purdy was the guy who got Groden to show the Z film in a private session to congressman Tom Downing, and that is how the HSCA got started. And how Purdy got on it.

Ed told me he argued with Andy about this.  He even took off his sport coat and started raising his arms upward and said, "Andy you cannot move this shirt up 4 1/2 inches even with my arms up, and Kennedy's arms were not up."

But Eddie told me it was hopeless.  He said, "Jim, from that moment on, Andy Purdy had religion about the Single Bullet Theory."

Baden helmed the pathology panel and Purdy was his chief investigator. And that was that.