Dr. Robert McClelland, the surgeon who oversaw the effort to save President Kennedy’s life in 1963, died earlier this month at age 89. In his interviews, you sense a man of considerable dignity, humility, and integrity. It comes as no surprise that he self-published an anthology of writings on surgery to which thousands of doctors subscribed. He was both a teacher and doctor, an instructor and a healer. And it is those qualities that make McClelland one of the most important witnesses to JFK’s assassination.
In 1963, McClelland was 34 years old. He had just become the chief of surgery at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital. When the mortally wounded JFK was brought to Trauma Room One, McClelland stood over the dying president and participated in the efforts to save him. He observed the president’s fatal head wound for about 10 minutes from a distance of less than two feet.
“My God,” he recalled saying to his colleagues. “Have you seen the back of his head. There’s a wound in the back of his head that’s about five inches in diameter.”
After about ten minutes, Kennedy’s breathing and heartbeat ceased. The Secret Service came and took the body away.
‘From the grassy knoll’
McClelland concluded, on the basis of what he saw that day, and what he saw in a home movie of the assassination taken by a bystander, that Kennedy had been struck by a gunshot fired from in front, not behind.
“That bullet came from the grassy knoll, the picket fence,” McClelland said of the fatal shot, referring to the area in front of the presidential motorcade at the moment the shots rang out.
How the New York Times handled McClelland’s eye-witness testimony is a textbook case of the journalism profession’s strange approach to the JFK assassination story. McClelland was a superb witness. Only one trained medical professional (his friend and colleague Dr. Kemp Clark) had a close a view of Kennedy’s head wound so soon after he was shot. McClelland went on to a distinguished career.
Yet the Times did not report what he saw and what he said about JFK’s head wound until he was dead. For some reason, McClelland’s testimony, contradicting the Warren Commission, was not regarded as news. The Times obituary gingerly avoids any suggestion that McClelland might have been right or that his testimony was unique. In the headline, the Times reported that McClelland saw the “gravity” of the President’s wound, not that he expressed a judgment about the shot from the front. In fact, he was a credible eyewitness whose well-informed account undermined the government’s much-disputed version of events
McClelland didn’t believe in “wild conspiracy theories,” the Times assures us. The rather more relevant point, of course, is that he did not believe in the equally implausible anti-conspiracy theories of the Warren Commission, the CIA, the FBI, and Dallas Police Department, which hold that Lee Harvey Oswald–whose travels, politics and foreign contacts were known to certain senior CIA officers–– shot JFK for no discernible reason.
McClelland’s account is consistent with the accounts of 21 police officers at the crime scene who also thought gunfire had come from in front of JFK’s limousine.
[Here is a 2013 video of McClelland explaining the nature of JKF’s wounds. to another doctor. He describes the wound at 5:50. He talks about the effect of treating JFK on his life at 15:50. He talks about the wound in JFK’s neck at 17:00. He talks about the meaning of Abraham Zapruder’s film at 19:30. ]
Was he right?
McClelland was mistaken, say defenders of the official theory. Pay him no mind, they say. Just look at the JFK autopsy photos in the National Archives. But the autopsy photos cannot disprove McClelland’s account if they do not depict the wounds that he saw. And there is sworn testimony that they do not.
Navy doctors conducted an autopsy on JFK about eight hours after Dr. McClelland saw him. The Secret Service had transported the president’s body from Parkland to Air Force One, which then flew from Dallas to Washington where the body was taken to Bethesda Medical Center. The autopsy was conducted around 8 pm Eastern time in the evening.
One of the pathologists who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Pierre Finck, came to very different conclusion than McClelland. “It was very obvious that it [the fatal shot] came from the back and exited the front,” Finck told a reporter in 1992.
Do the autopsy photographs resolve the two doctor’s differences? Do they prove Finck right?
Not really. Photographs of the autopsy were developed on Sunday, November 24, 1963, by Sandra Spencer, the chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy’s photography lab in Washington. Spencer was interviewed under oath by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board in June 1997. With the crisp, detail-oriented style of a career military officer, she described in detail how the photographs were made, what they showed, and how they were developed.
When shown the JFK autopsy photos now held in the National Archives, Spencer said, flatly and unequivocally, they were not the photographs she developed after JFK’s death. The head wound she saw on the photographs she developed was much larger than the National Archives photo, she said. The photographic paper was different too.
Then she said this:
“Between those photographs and the ones we did, there had to be some massive cosmetic things done to the President’s body.”
If Spencer is right–and she was testifying under oath–the autopsy photos don’t refute McClelland because they show “massive cosmetic things done to the President’s body” after it was removed from Dallas.
The accounts of McClelland and Sandra Spencer tell a disturbing story that cannot be wished away. Their accounts undermine the official story and demonstrate that we still do not have the full story of JFK’s death 56 years after the fact.
McClelland believed his eyes, not the theories of people who were not there, and he wasn’t afraid to state the truth as saw it. No doubt there will be posthumous efforts by critics to discredit him, which are doomed to failure given his experience and integrity. He is one of the most important and credible JFK witnesses. Anyone who wants to know the truth about JFK’s assassination is indebted to him.
RIP Dr. Robert McClelland.
Source: Dr. Robert McClelland, Who Tried to Save President Kennedy, Dies at 89 – The New York Times
Mr. Lynford Turner thank you so very much for making a very salient point.
Yes LBJ certainly must be a the top of the list being commander and chief and all.
And yes so many of those who were involved are dead, so what?
Would you not argue that prosecuting the reputations of the evil doers is in no way productive to a just, free and proud society?
And if Trump were to be next should we ignore the act?
You see Lynford the evil doers have not been deterred in any way have they?
I personally think as a direct result of the lawless practices of the CIA and others, our country is much worse off that it might have been.
With an unlimited secret budget the intelligence community needs to be held accountable for their actions. Period. Full STOP.
These people have no deterrent facing them and absolute power corrupts.
I’m thinking that is about where we are at currently.
Dr. McClelland had plenty to lose potentially, but he simply told the truth. The truth is the easiest bearing to maintain. Efforts to obscure or otherwise hide that truth caught him and still he held strong to his story. Mainly because no one could disprove what he said he saw.
On the other side of this equation stands an agency that demands that it’s agents take an oath to defend and up hold the constitution. They have made a mockery of that pledge.
Members of this group have lied repeatedly to cover their tracks and the courts in the U.S. still refuse to make all the remaining files available to public consumption. Why?
A simple look to the circus being conducted in Washington by our leaders reveals where these actions have led us.
The long held claim that America is the home of the free and the land of the brave is being severely tested by what appears to Robert to be a legal system compromised to the point it backs the lie.
In the absence of truth the liar is king.
It is what it is and to make excuses for these poor souls who have lost their way on purpose by design is an affront to every American who cherishes the truth and their freedom and most of all justice.
Keep after them all Jeff and thanks again.
Who are you going to believe? McClelland was in the Trauma Room, observed the fatal wound shortly after it had occurred. What did he have to gain by lying? It seems all too obvious that the evidence points to cover-up of the truth. It all began, evidently, somewhere between Dallas and the actual government autopsy that took place 8 hours after the fact.
One needn’t know a lot about this case to realize a conspiracy, a very large conspiracy. First, LHO passed a paraffin test. Highly unlikely that he fired a rifle that day. Second, up to 65 witnesses saw a baseball or fist sized hole in the right rear of JFK’s skull. As for the size of the conspiracy that becomes apparent with the highly ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL military autopsy. That was a gross and obviously criminal violation of the 10th amendment of the constitution. Further, the released autopsy photos do not show what was obvious. That established one must go to the important question. WHY!! For that we go to JFK’s record in office, the record of a SANE man. What went before and after him was pure INSANITY. Mr. DiEugenio, amongst others, is doing a commendable job on informing us of that. Those four political murders of the 1960’s are still the number one problem for this country and probably the world. Keep up the struggle. Al
O.K. Now that we know about the shot from the front, what are we going to do about it? It is almost a certainty that Johnson was the person who gave the go-ahead for the killing. All of those people are now dead. Who are going to dig up and prosecute? Is Trump destined to be next? If so, what will do about that?
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No doubt that the fatal shot did not come from the back. The whole situation reeks of cover-up.
Dr McClelland was one of the only honest folks who saw anything. RIP, Sir.
Meanwhile – what’s with the utterly moronic comment above by the Japanese dude?! Incredibly pathetic! I’ll bet, for instance, he probably thinks Fukushima was likely a non-event, or other such nonsense distractions. These CIA trolls really get nowhere, here..
AND – if you watch the 10-part series “The Men Who Killed Kennedy”, one particularly “revealing moment” is in episode 5, the Tom Wilson segment. Tom, in his work, used special equipment – PHOTONICS – to analyze the quality of steel in an almost MRI-like analysis by layering the thickness, and allowing for hundreds of “slices” of an object in order to look for defects. In the 1980s, he casually decided to use the equipment on Kennedy’s head. He was able to determine the exact angle the bullet entered JFK’s head. It was from the front, and it was from below. Wow! So the kill-shot actually came from the – then, in 1963, bigger opening then it currently has – storm drain! Wow! “Photonics”! Who knew?… Too bad this couldn’t be completely looked into, but of course, then the US gov’t would be recognized as an illegitimate and criminal organization – and we can’t have that!
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Bless the dear doctor’s soul but he was a doctor – not an expert in guns and rifles. And certainly not in technology. Newer tech has shown that JFK’s wounds were exactly consistent with shots that came from the 6th floor and BEHIND!
Amazingly the MOTIVES for the 2 Major Crimes 9/11 & the JFK Assassination were NEVER investigated adequately or discussed in the Main Street Media.
The facts are that Israel benefitted probably the most from both.
JFK was putting heavy pressure on Israel’s Ben Gurion to come clean & cease Israel’s determination to develop their Nuclear capability .
The JFK assassination gave Israel the “green light” to become a Nuclear Power All this was (as usual ) never reported in the US Media & the CIA OVERALL CONNECTION was under James Jesus Angleton the top CIA suspect in the JFK assassination as he was instrumental in the creation of the MOSSAD that was protecting Israel’s secret DIMONA nuclear plant , which was very close to producing its first nuclear weapon.There were many other extra advantages to Israel resulting from the Assassination.
9/11 became the “New Pearl Harbor” to start all those Middle East “Regime change Wars” called for by Israel & the US neocons on Israel’s behalf as in the PNAC project.
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I got to this page searching for the AARB Sandra Spencer interview and found it. I thought it might pertain to a web page I have been working on. It seems that it is or almost is. The page claims that the back of the head photo which was used for the Warren Commission drawing and its sister photo, the Fox photo that was Best Evidence 4, are a simple hoax. After the head was reconstructed, some skull fragments were stacked on JFK’s head, with him probably positioned on his side. The photo was then rotated 90 degrees clockwise to put JFK in the “dorsal recumbent position” and cropped. Those two photos show no shredded scalp or blood, as Spencer said, but they do have those fragments on the head. Is that what she took to be a brain?
http://www.joliraja.com/BOH/GManInDorsalRecumbantPos.html
Could someone explain why the 5-inch hole in the back of his head that Dr. McClelland spoke of isn’t visible in the Z film or Moorman Polaroid?
https://www.today.com/news/jfk-grassy-knoll-photo-fails-sell-auction-2D11599940
https://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z317.jpg
Dr. McClelland was standing at the head of the gurney helping with the tracheotomy, with JFK on his back. McClelland said that JFK’s head was never lifted, yet he testified that he was able to look “down into” the head wound. How is that possible if the wound was literally on the back of his head? Isn’t it more likely that he was looking down at the wound we see in the Zapruder film?
…and the Z film shows Jackie with her white glove contacting the point where the massive defect is supposed to be. Surely she would not touch her husband in this area if there was a massive injury. Norman.
Nix and Muchmore film not shows JFK’s back of head big wound.
“Murder from within” explain body and Zapruder film alternation theory.
This author insist “Real film” shows big spatter from JFK’s
back of the head.
Absurd!
I always thought that Jackie’s action of climbing to he rear/ trunk of the limo to gather JFK’s brain matter was clear evidence of a shot from the front. And obviously consistent with what “Dr Mac” saw. Some great reporting here by J Morley.
Why you can’t see and realiize forward spatter? And I recommended you,you research “Back spatter” from google.
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I’m Japanese assassination researcher. Oh! His explanation about JFK’s head entry wound position changed again and again.I think he is worst witness. JFK’s research world is so bad! With Jacob Cater interview,he said he is only witness who can see JFK’s back of head wound.Except him,parkland witness are all liar?
Mr.Morley please update my comment.I see your interview from Japanese TV documentary(With Mr.Posner,Mr.McAdams),in past,my interview on-air this document.
When Dr McClelland’s issues with the official version of wounding got mentioned at all (the Economist saw no reason to go there) it focused on his belief that the throat wound best fit a wound of entrance. That he concluded that the medical evidence of the head wound he saw before him dovetails with the physics of what the Zapruder film shows (and together they mean the fatal blow had to have come from the knoll) was, and is, news. Thanks for pointing this out Jeff.
Had the autopsy been conducted by the Coroner, Dr. Rose, in Dallas think of all the controversy that we could have been spared.
Contained in Dr. Randolph Robertson’s report, “A Review at the National Archives of the ARRB enhancements of the exposed roll of 120 Ektachrome E3 film from the JFK autopsy” are three photos that Kodak was able to recover and print in 1998. The third photo, designated A1.02, and titled “Right Superior Profile” on page 6/9 of the report shows an abnormality at the forehead which correlates with the location of Dr. McClelland’s entry wound as indicated in the photo in this post. AMAZING1 In the 20,063 nights since the assassination,, I have revisited the events of that day and the days that followed at least 100 times. Today, I am 99.99 percent certain that the bullet in Frame 313 did not come from the Texas School Depository Building and so many articles and videos released since 2000 solidify that position. How Dr. McClelland could remain a beacon of truth in the avalanche of obfuscation and not succumb to sinister forces is astounding. Dr. McClelland’s proximity to this tragic event is only superseded by Jacqueline Kennedy and Abraham Zapruder.
Jeff, your link to the Dr McClelland interview video in this article leads to a “Dead End” ironically, an error message reads this video is no longer available. I searched YouTube and found what I believe is a different version of the same 2013 interview. The interview is in three parts. The portion about the neck wound is in the first video, with different time code.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q1lYifmUXA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VxC7YduICBY
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7HyoitsPlnk
Thanks Willy! I will post.
Kennedy’s autopsy photographs have been the subject of considerable controversy. Whereas in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1992, JFK’s chief autopsy surgeon, James Humes, MD, praised the senior autopsy photographer, John Stringer, as “one of the best medical photographers in the world,” not a single acceptable image of the President’s fatal skull wound is to be found anywhere in the official inventory. And yet Dr. Humes and Dr. Finck testified that they took such images, including the inside and outside of JFK’s skull wound to show the telltale signs of a bullet entrance, “beveling.”
ARRB-declassified documents hint at a possible explanation: evidence destruction. All three of JFK’s pathologists, both autopsy photographers, a White House photographer Robert Knudsen, and, as Jeff mentioned, National Photographic Center employee Sandra Spencer, have all testified that photographs taken at JFK’s autopsy are missing.
Add the terrific Spencer material, and Mantik’s contribution, and you have one of the most solid contributions on this indispensable site
McClelland spent a good part of his retirement telling anyone who would listen what he saw. Again, the mainstream media doesn’t report even the simplest of truths around the JFK assassination, starting with Dan Rather and his “mistake” about JFK being thrown violently forward from the head shot.
It’s just incredible. Who or what do they think they are protecting? It ain’t democracy or free speech, I guarantee you that.
James Files killed JFK from the grassy knoll read his book and all the evidence ,, James Files was just doing his job conducted by the CIA the FBI the mafia and others ,,, we are living in a totally controlled environment ,,, (corrupt evil power The ruling elite ) .. The gun that killed the president was a fireball XP 100 made by Remington arms ,to think that the president was killed with a varmint gun.. shout out from many angles Oswald is a Patsy and I announce his innocence … God bless America and may the truth heal all of us and set us free ,,,rest in peace Mr. President …..
His interviewer Late Jim Marrs insist he is a liar.
You not read “Cross Fire” 2013 ver?
Overall this is a great obituary of Dr. McClelland, but I need to correct a misstatement in the article.
In reference to Navy Photographer’s Mate Saundra Spencer (a Navy E-6 non-commissioned officer, or NCO), the article makes a misstatement about Saundra Spencer’s work, as follows: “…they were not the photographs she took the day after JFK’s death.”
I’m going to offer a friendly correction below to Jeff Morley, someone whose work in service to the cause of truth in the JFK assassination I respect: Saundra Spencer did not TAKE any post mortem photos of JFK’s body; instead, she DEVELOPED post mortem photos of JFK’s body taken by someone else. She was not present at the autopsy.
But this correction aside, the importance of what she developed on Sunday, November 24th, 1963 is undeniable, and is important for two reasons: (1) they were post-embalming photos, taken after restorative work and reconstruction of his cranium and his body, which showed the President’s body “cleaned-up,” with no blood visible anymore and no longer with any open body cavities; and (2) the fact that she developed a key photo of the back of JFK’s head—after cranial reconstruction—nevertheless showing a 2-2.5 inch open cavity in the occipital bone in the skull (what she called a “blown-out chunk”), blatantly contradicts the so-called “intact” back-of-the-head photos presently in the official autopsy collection.
Summarizing, Saundra Spencer provided testimony to the ARRB about the post mortem photos of JFK she developed, following reconstruction of JFK’s cranium by Gawler’s Funeral Home personnel, stating that there was STILL a defect in the back of his skull entirely consistent with an exit wound, i.e., evidence of a shot from the front. This not only contradicts the Warren Commission’s conclusions, but contradicts the so-called “official autopsy photos” showing the back of JFK’s head to apparently be intact at the autopsy.
Thus, Spencer’s initial telephone interview with the ARRB late in 1996 and her sworn testimony to the ARRB in 1997 both corroborated Dr. McClelland’s clear recollection, under oath in 1964, of what could only have been a large wound of exit in the back of JFK’s head. Put simply, even after reconstruction of JFK’s cranium by the embalmers, there was still a significant hole in the back of his head—unambiguous evidence of a fatal shot from the front (not from the rear, where the accused assassin was located in the TSBD).
The General Counsel at the ARRB, T. Jeremy Gunn—my boss on the ARRB staff—told me he considered Saundra Spencer the most credible of all of the ARRB’s medical witnesses.
What Spencer’s testimony provides is not only evidence of a fatal shot from the front, but it identifies a serious problem with some of the extant photos in the official autopsy collection that resides today in the National Archives. [The 6 to 8 color negatives developed by Spencer, and the two color prints made from each of the negatives Spencer developed, never made it into the official collection.]
I’m glad that Jeff Morley wrote about the importance of Dr. McClelland’s observations in Trauma Room One at Parkland, and that he wrote about how Saundra Spencer’s testimony before the ARRB in 1997 corroborated McClelland’s testimony before the Warren Commission in 1964.
The key thing to understand here is that both Spencer and McClelland recalled a large wound (entirely consistent with a wound of exit and not with a wound of entry) in the back of JFK’s skull.
In fact, McClelland told Arlen Specter under oath in 1964 that he estimated that about one third of JFK’s brain tissue was missing from the posterior portion of his brain—both cerebral and cerebellar tissue. This was overwhelming evidence of an exit wound in the back of JFK’s skull which blatantly contradicted the Warren Commission’s conclusions of a lone assassin shooting from behind. Instead of publishing McClelland’s testimony in the Warren Commission Report itself, the Commission unsuccessfully tried to bury it in the 26 volumes of supporting evidence.
That did not work, and throughout the remainder of his life, McClelland courageously stuck to his story: it was obvious to him that President Kennedy was shot from the front, and that the wound he observed in the back of President Kennedy’s head was the exit wound from that shot. END
Douglas Horne,
Former Chief Analyst for Military Records, ARRB
Dr.McClelland supported conspiracy version’ “Magic Bullet Trajectory”.
He insisted JFK’s head exit wound position is back of the right head.
He insisted Grassy knoll shooter shot JFK.
Knoll is not a JFK’s right front,but between the front and right,slightly upward、almost right side.
He questioned this point from Jacob Cater.
“If knoll shooter shot JFK,why his head exit wound not a left position?”.
Dr.McClelland answer is “This is a unleaned opinion about wound ballistics”.
And Mr.Horne,I read your books,you insisted JFK’s back of head wound is not a exit wound,but parallel gunshot wound from Badgeman’s position shot.
Why you admire Dr’s testimony?
I read and analyzed “BEST EVIDENCE”.
This book is worst one.
Lifton insisted official version wound ballistic is strange.
Right!
Lifton insisted conspiracy version wound ballistic is more strange.
Right!
But he is not analyze this matter.
Where is the entry wound located exactly? Where is the exit wound exact location? I think every one has argued and guessed for decades due to the reason there was no entry or exit because the brain had imploded from within and caused enough damage that it was almost impossible to tell where the bullet entered or had exited!
Bravo, Jeff!
Even Humes told the ARRB that, even after embalming, JFK’s scalp failed to cover 3-4 cm of the hole. Humes’s statement is a near perfect match to Spencer’s depiction—but you will never find this corroboration in the New York Times, so save your pennies.
Of course McClelland was accurate. His statement (and video) is nakedly unimpeachable eyewitness recollection. Who would know more than Mac?
David Mantik
He was truly an an unimpeachable witness as you termed it years ago thanks Jeff
Very nice Jeff, wonderful you quoted Spencer. Neither the WC nor the HSCA called her
Mr.DiEugenio,I recommended you read his interview with Jacob Cater’.
He supported conspiracy version’ “Magic Bullet Trajectory”.
His interview with D-magazine(2008 Nov),he insisted he remembered JFK’s Back of head wound in 1975(ABC TV on-aired Zapruder Film). But JFK’s big head wound position in this film is near the right ear,not back of the head?
I think he is worst witness,his testimony is almost lie,fantasy,day dream.