The first senior physician to attend President Kennedy after he was fatally wounded in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was Dr. Robert McClelland of Parkland Hospital. By any standard, he is a credible witness.
In Part 1 of this YouTube feature, a 2009 radio interview, Dr. McClelland talks about treating President Kennedy after he had been shot, including his neck wound. McClelland says he could not tell if it was an entrance or an exit wound.
In Part 2, McClelland talks about how the Dallas doctors missed the bullet wound in JFK’s back.
In Part 3, Dr. McClelland talks about his thinking regarding the causes of the assassination. “I’m reasonably comfortable in my own mind that there was a conspiracy,” he says.
Politically, McClelland describes himself as a “middle of the roader.”
After the Dallas doctors declared Kennedy dead, his body was taken to Washington where doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital conducted an autopsy and took photos of the president’s body.
McClelland recounts when he was shown the JFK autopsy photos in 1988. He agreed the photos showed the president’s wounds as he saw them on November 22, 1963. The only exception, said Dr. McClelland, was the photo that showed the right rear JFK’s head. He said that a flap of scalp had been pulled over Kennedy’s fatal wound changing the appearance of the wound.
“That’s where there was a massive hole in the back of his head,” McClelland said. “I looked at that hole from 18 inches for about 12 minutes.”
Part I
Part 2
Part 3
The one thing that I have yet to hear an explanation for from backers of the WC report is the part of John Connnally’s WC testimony below:
Connally’s testimony: Warren Commission Hearings, vol.4, pp.135f. He was quoted in the Washington Post, 21 November 1966, saying that “there is my absolute knowledge that … one bullet caused the president’s first wound and that an entirely separate shot struck me. It is a certainty. I will never change my mind.” It was Connally’s testimony that persuaded one of the Warren Commissioners, Senator Richard Russell, that the single–bullet theory was untenable; see Richard Russell and the Warren Report.
One would logically think that the person who actually was in the limo and was shot and lived to tell about it would know more about how he was shot than a hand picked group of establishment officials!
After credible evidence arose about the first shot missing, which threw a monkey wrench into their original conclusion, they had to come up with something to account for the fact that Kennedy was only struck with two shots and incorporate that to account for Connally’s wound, so the illogical “magic bullet” theory was concocted!!!
Just wondering could a “brain dead” body be kept on life support for three months ?
“Dr.” Photon
You are dodging the fact that, from your lack of medical knowledge, you confused the meaning of the word “evisceration” with the first thing that popped up on a Google search.
Are you familiar with the Merriam-Webster definition of evisceration? Can you document where you came up with your perception of ceasing CPR for evisceration ( or disembowelment if you prefer)? I question your expertise in this matter simply because you made a claim that is untrue and reveals your ignorance of a subject that you claim to be knowledgable about. Let me refer you to the seppuku of Onishi Takijiro , who survived for hours with his abdominal contents hanging out exposed.As you have never seen anybody with an open abdominal wound it is understandable that you would not know how these wounds are treated, nor their prognoses in a modern medical setting.
After reading the article and the majority of the comments here, I don’t see anyone actually defining what the term “back of the head” means.
This is vague language to simply say, “the back of JFK’s head was blown out”
The doctors at Parkland, each one said “Occipital-Parietal”. None said specifically “Occipital Protuberance”. The placement of their hands in the photos taken show their hands indicating the right occipital-parietal region.
This is in fact the very region shown in the autopsy X-rays and photos: The right occipital-parietal region. Furthermore this is exactly the results one would have from a shot to the front of the head according to modern ballistics science. The instant cavitation caused by a high velocity bullet would cause the skull to fracture – rather like the expansion of an over boiled egg.
See: Sherry Fiester CSI for detailed forensic analysis.
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You are confusing two interpretations of the word “eviscerate”.
While evisceration can mean the unintentional protrusion of underlying tissue or organs through a surgical incision, the meaning intended, when speaking of obvious signs of death, is disembowelment of a sufficient number of internal organs as to make the possibilities for resuscitation non-existent.
I would have expected you to know this, “Dr.” Photon.
Bob, can you tell us what ” a sufficient number of internal organs” actually means and how a layman could decide that number? The fact is that dozens of trauma victims with significant eviscerations have been treated at trauma centers across the U.S. and have survived with no residual problems. Isolated, eviceration is never a criteria for establishing hopelessness of care or termination of CPR. Where did you get that? Maybe that is how you manage it in B.C., but we have world class trauma centers in the neighborhood like Baltimore Shock Trauma that routinely resuscitate patients that you seem to believe are not salvageable .
And I see that you have no idea what AOA is.
Once again, you clearly show you are NOT a doctor, nor are you qualified in any field in the medical world.
CPR shall not be begun, if there are obvious signs of death, such as decapitation, incineration, decomposition, bifurcation, signs of extreme crush or impact, evisceration, etc. Once CPR is begun, it may be stopped after 30 minutes, if there is no return of a pulse, EXCEPT in the case of hypothermia, where the rule of thumb is that the patient is not considered dead until he is warm and dead.
What does that have to do with Curtis being a Dentist, not a physician?
In the U.S. CPR on a pulseless individual is supposed to continue until #1 a pulse is noted, #2 a physician tells you to stop, # 3 you are too exhausted to continue. The 20-30 minute rule is for wilderness situations only; perhaps with the limitations of the Canadian system it has been applied Dominion-wide.
I have done CPR on someone with evisceration,so that claim is bogus. The individual had a surgical wound dehiscence , the consequence of using Chromic to close the fascia following a laparotomy . The patient survived,went back to the OR and ultimately picked up around 700 grand.
Ever heard of AOA?
Physician Discusses JFK Assassination: http://www.myplainview.com/canyon/news/article_f6555d0a-48c4-11e3-bbd1-001a4bcf887a.html#.VIYRCc6sT8U.twitter
Dave,where have you been? This article was discussed months ago.Dr. Curtis is a Dentist, not a Physician. .
Physician discusses JFK assassination http://www.myplainview.com/canyon/news/article_f6555d0a-48c4-11e3-bbd1-001a4bcf887a.html#.VIsrQuQDRsI.twitter via @townnews
It baffles me that anyone nowdays still thinks Kennedy was shot exclusively from the back.
Entry wounds are small, exit wounds are large. Even kids nowdays understand this. Kennedy had a huge hole in the back of his head and no damage to the front. Aside from the “flap of scalp” covering the true nature of the wound.
I’m sorry but the exit wound on the front side of Kennedy’s face would’ve left him missing a large portion of his face dependant on where the bullet exited. He’d be missing a nose, an eye, a significant fist sized hole would be there. The flap of scalp thing covering the true nature of the wounds really doesn’t account for it. I would really love to see some post mortem x-ray, but I guess it’s too late for that.
Magic bullet theory is bunk. They had at least two shooters, perhaps even three. Nobody can cycle a round in a bolt action rifle and fire it that fast. Just listen to the shot speed. After each shot, a new round has to be chambered in by pushing the bolt up, then forwards to eject the shell, pulled backwards, and then the bolt pushed back down into the locking position. That’ll take a shooter perhaps 1.2 seconds. Then he has to reacquire his target and fire again. It’s a little quicker if the rifle has a straight pull installed, and also a little easier to maintain the target with a straight pull, but that’s academic since the rifle didn’t have it. Those shots are impossible for a single shooter. Anyone can test this for themselves.
I’m baffled and suspicious as to why, given the logic of there being more than one shooter (and, if Oswald even fired a shot), that stories persist and books written supporting the Warren Report’s conclusions.
If “the establishment” is so sure it got it right why the motivation to protest more logical alternate views?
Me thinks they dost protest too much.
It also prompts the question, who continues to fund efforts to write, in some cases tomes, i.e., Bugliosi’s book, in support of the establishments Warren Report?
Why bother?
Altruistic duty? I doubt it.
Cynically, is it simply a matter of wanting to participate in the profits associated with this so called mystery (a gift that keeps on giving)?
Are these authors pursuing, as they suggest, the truth wherever it leads them and somehow end up where The Warren Report did?
Why not let those in a real quest for truth and justice continue to do so and simply sit on your hands and do what Mark Lane aptly characterized as a situation where they know(whoever they are)that we know that The Warren Report got it wrong and that other forces were at work, but simply don’t care that we know.
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Lastly, and it’s no small observation — which I’m sure others have mentioned at some point: No one says “I’m just a patsy” in protest of their innocence unless they have knowledge or a sense that they’ve been set up. A reasonable person would expect that the first and normal thing one would say if unjustly accused is “I’m innocent.” The patsy proclamation connotes some foreknowledge or if not, suspicion of a plan or plot gone awry (from the accused’s point of view), in which you may have played a minor role, but was duped or double crossed to take the fall.
This case just wreaks with the obvious and a host contrivances; so much so, that if the event hadn’t happened at all and was simply a Hollywood movie, we would walk out of the theatre en masse for the movie having been too predictable.
Can I have my money back, please?
As a conspiracy buff, I do believe we need to bring some common sense and logic into the argument of was Oswald the lone nut or were there other shooters. Great point about Oswald’s “patsy” statement.
Yes Kevin, I think your point about Oswald claiming that he was just a patsy is a very telling clue here. I have discussed this, the “subtext” of that statement. As you say, someone who was innocent and had no idea there were other animals a’foot, would have simply said, “No I didn’t do it! I’m innocent”.
Our so-called “intuition” is very often, problem solving that has gone on subconsciously, and at the opportune prompt that solution will bubble up to the surface as epiphany.
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For Hill to have seen brain matter explode out the rear of JFK’s head and actually view the hole as he lie in the backseat is all the proof anyone needs to know that the massive exit wound was exactly where it always was, and where it wasn’t supposed to be according to over fifty years of pushing it forward of that posterior area. The proof in this case is found by identifying the biggest lies. The government was apparently not comfortable with saying the entrance and exit wounds were both at the rear because no one would believe such tripe. Forty eyewitnesses, specific Zapruder frames, and the autopsy report support Clint Hill’s description of JFK’s exit wound.
Secret Service Agent Clint Hill wrote a 2012 book, “Mrs. Kennedy and Me,” in which he describes his experience during the JFK assassination.
“I heard the shot. The third shot,” he wrote. “The impact was like the sound of something hard hitting something hollow – like the sound of a melon shattering onto the cement. In the same instant, blood, brain matter, and bone fragments exploded from the back of the president’s head. The president’s blood, parts of his skull, bits of his brain were splattered all over me – on my face, my clothes, in my hair.”
“As I peered into the backseat of the car,” Hill recalled. “I saw the president’s head in [Jackie’s] lap. His eyes were fixed, and I could see inside the back of his head. I could see inside the back of the president’s head.” http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/rare-zapruder-footage-multiple-jfk-assassins/
Dave,
Since debris from JFK’s head wound went in all directions, Clint Hill was splattered, but so were the Connallys and the Secret Service agents in the front seat. (Kellerman testified that “it was all over my coat.”) Debris was reportedly found on the car’s hood and many feet down the street.
If the exit wound was in the rear, how do you account for Zapruder’s same-day placement of the wound on the *side* of Kennedy’s head (about 1:15 minutes into this video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLqOGEBcjnI
Bill Newman also placed the head wound on the side of the head in his 11/22 interview, also on YouTube.
At c. 28 minutes into a video in another thread, Dino Brugioni tells of seeing the head wound in the Zapruder film on 11/22. As he recounts how he “saw portions of his skull fly into the air,” Brugioni uses a gesture to describe it — his hand moves from his right temple area up and forward, very much like Zapruder’s description:
https://jfkfacts.org/assassination/rewinding-the-zapruder-film/
Although Brugioni is presented as a witness showing that the film was altered, it seems to me that the opposite is true, since he describes debris going up and forward, not backward.
From the Warren Commission testimony of Secret Service Agent Clinton J. Hill”
“Mr. SPECTER. What did you observe as to President Kennedy’s condition on arrival at the hospital?
Mr. HILL. The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.”
But how do you account for the 11/22 descriptions of Zapruder, Newman, and Brugioni?
Hill demonstrated where he saw the wound on this page from Pat Speer’s site:
http://www.patspeer.com/_/rsrc/1295481650976/chapter18b%3Areasontobelieve/thefogofwar3.jpg
Hill’s placement of it there isn’t very different from that of the other 3 men, imo.
Spin all you want, Jean. Clint spoke very plainly in his testimony. I think I trust his early testimony far more than anything he might say in his Golden Years.
“Mr. SPECTER. What did you observe as to President Kennedy’s condition on arrival at the hospital?
Mr. HILL. The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.”
I’m still asking for an explanation for the 11/22 descriptions of the head wound location by Zapruder, Newman, and Brugioni.
How is it “spin” to link to videos showing them and to photos of Clint Hill?
Jean,
So let’s see: you embrace the selective descriptions of non-expert witnesses who were not nearly as well situated as those who were. As per the following. Why?
The point of the following head wound descriptions* is that they were written on the day of the assassination, not days, weeks, months or years later. They were written by witnesses who were experienced trauma surgeons working in their normal circs and in their normal capacities. And they included three professors, a a professor of neurosurgery, Kemp Clark, MD, among them. They can’t therefore be dismissed as coming too late, as coming from the uncredentialed, as too imprecise, etc.
From the Warren Report: http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0270b.htm
*P. 518: Kemp Clark, MD: “There was a large wound in the right occipito-parietal region … There was considerable loss of scakp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebrellar tissue was extruding from the wound.” Undated, typed noted.
p. 520: “The other wound had avulsed the calvarium and brain tissue prseent with diffuse oozing … attempt to control slow oozing from cerebral and cerebellar tissue via packs instituted.” – 11.22.63, 16:20, Charles J. Carrico, MD
p. 521: “A large wound of the right posterior cranium was noted … . ” Malcolm. O. Perry, MD, 16:30, 11.22.63.
p. 523: ” … the temporal and occipital bones were missing and the brain was lying on the table.” Charles Baxter, MD, Assistant Prof of Surgery, 11.22.63.
p. 524-525: In a hand-written hospital note: “a large 3 x3 cm remnant of cerebral tissue present….there was a smaller amount of cerebellar tissue present also….There was a large wound beginning in the right occiput extending into the parietal region …. Much of the skull appeared gone at the brief examination….” 11.22.63, 16:15 hrs. Kemp Clark, MD
P. 529 – 30: “There was a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the cerebellum had protruded from the wound.” M. T. Jenkins, MD, 11.22.63, 16:30.
That’s fine, Clint Hill, but you later go on to say that you believe it was Oswald only who fired shots. What’s THAT all about?
Jean,
If you saw the complete interview of Dino Brugioni by Doug Horne, you should also remember that Mr. Brugioni said that he was called in by the head of the CIA’s NPIC Division to make photos from the Zapruder film brought to them by two Secret Service agents. And he also described how the Zapruder film he saw that night was not like the one that has been introduced to the public for viewing.
And you should also remember how Doug Horne told Dino that he had interviewed two other NPIC employees who said they were the ones that worked on making pictures from a copy of the Zapruder film brought to them the next night from one Secret Service agent.
That whole thing with the two separate events all sounds very fishy. And the fact that Dino’s group was not told of the other group and the other group was not told of Dino’s group makes it that much more suspect!
The exit wound was on the right rear. So, unless every WC supporter explains how the bullet also entered the right rear, the shot came from the front.
http://books.google.com/books?id=v7ZFAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=Triage+Nurse+Bertha+Lozano&source=bl&ots=cayr1O5pjp&sig=CHA7zlv_uDHKK43kpRrfBvd2ZPk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gHykU82iFJKoyASx3YKwBw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Triage%20Nurse%20Bertha%20Lozano&f=false
http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,10766.72.html
From Clint Hill’s W.C. testimony
Mr. SPECTER. You say that it appeared that she was reaching as if something was coming over to the rear portion of the car, back in the area where you were coming to?
Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.
Mr. SPECTER. Was there anything back there that you observed, that she might have been reaching for?
Mr. HILL. I thought I saw something come off the back, too, but I cannot say that there was. I do know that the next day we found the portion of the President’s head.
From ‘Mrs Kennedy and Me” by Clint Hill’
In his memoir, Mrs Kennedy And Me, Mr Hill said of the final shot: ‘The impact was like the sound of something hard hitting a melon shattering into cement
‘In the same instant, blood, brain matter and bone fragments exploded from the back of the President’s head… and splattered all over me – on my face, my clothes, in my hair.’
As he moved towards Mrs Kennedy, he watched her reaction: ‘Her eyes were filled with terror,’ he wrote. ‘She was reaching for something. She was reaching for a piece of the President’s head.’
So you think the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films were all faked, right?
And the autopsy photos and x-rays, right?
Were you aware that Hill said the wound was “above the ear?”
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/clinthill.htm
Are you aware that frame 327 and others match the faked x-rays which show the right side of jfk’s face removed? The Zapruder film was definitely altered because no frontal bone was part of the exit wound. The bullet impacted the frontal bone (over the right eye) and exited the Occipital/Parietal regions.
http://i1312.photobucket.com/albums/t528/friscokid71/5626f430-f6a0-427b-8326-8d5db9931c52_zpsa4151e5d.jpg~original
I would say the entrance wound was temporal.
The exit was occipital/parietal.
http://face-and-emotion.com/dataface/anatomy/cranium.jsp
Josiah Thompson also discussed a second shot at Z329 (back to front – you can see sunlight glare blur at Z329-Z330 from windshield bellowing). Here’s his presentation slide at Lancer last November.
http://tinypic.com/r/9td0mq/8
You have chosen one frame where JFK’s head is rotated such that one can’t see the anterior extent of the wound.
The x-rays aren’t faked, and they don’t show the right side of JFK’s face removed.
Buffs show you the digitally enhanced x-rays from the HSCA. The process radically increases contrast, and the relatively thin bone on the temple drops out.
If buffs were honest, they would show you the unenhanced x-rays, that show no defect in the temple area.
The x-rays do not show that the right side of the face is removed. Obviously you have no idea how to read an x-ray, particularly a skull x-ray. It isn’t as simple as you apparently think it is.
The x-rays do show that some right temporal, Parietal, and frontal bone were removed. That’s a visual fact corroborated by frame 327 and others. Obviously you have no idea how to prove a negative. It is as simple as you apparently don’t want it to be. Of course no frontal bone was really missing according to the autopsy report which all by itself proves that Zapruder was altered to match the screwy x-rays.
http://i1312.photobucket.com/albums/t528/friscokid71/e3ee731a-37e4-429e-91b0-d9d3a8debcf3_zps002627d6.jpg~original
@ Dave Jerles,
I don’t know about Zapruder Frame 327 corroborating the removal of frontal bone.
The autopsy photos do show President Kennedy’s forehead, eye socket and front-most temple area intact.
The link you posted is to the digitally enhanced x-rays, not the original autopsy x-rays.
Dave Jerles, it is very apparent that you do not know how to interpret a radiograph. First, to make a conclusion based only on a lateral film is complete folly- any medical student i entering clinical training knows that. The A-P projection clearly shows intact orbits bilaterally, consistent with the “stare of death” photo of JFK’s face.
No forensic pathologist who has reviewed the photos or x-rays agrees with your interpretation of a frontal wound, save possibly Wecht.
So what makes you believe that you know more about this than trained medical professionals with decades of experience? The level of medical ignorance in the conspiracy camp is quite amazing.
Please share with us the testimony from Clint Hill in which he states the wound was “above the ear”, Mr. McAdams.
See the link in my post.
Mr. McAdams
I asked you for the testimony or statement in which Clint Hill says JFK’s head wound was above his ear.
Can’t find it?
If you are unwilling to look up to see my previous post, here it is:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/clinthill.htm
I just wonder how Hill could have written that blood was coming from the back of JFK’s head, and then go on to believe the WC report that no shots came from anywhere but the TSBD. I think Hill was pressured into his belief. Now, hold on Photon, don’t ask me to prove that, but I think it’s time to install some common sense into this whole matter.
“I think Hill was pressured into his belief”. Clint Hill? A man seen by millions attempting to shield Mrs. Kennedy and JFK with his own body? A man who was with Mrs. Kennedy for hours after the assassination and was one of the last people to see JFK before closing the coffin?
You are implying that a man of that caliber could be pressured to support a story he didn’t believe in?
Another clear example of the delusional beliefs of some conspiracy buffs. Wouldn’t a better explanation be that you and others on this blog have simply misinterpreted Mr. Hill’s comments, or his definition of ” back of the head” in an individual lying on his side in a carseat is different from yours? Obviously Mr. Hill thought that his observations of the head wound were compatible with Lee Oswald being the sole assassin of the man he was willing to die for.
To imply otherwise is to accuse the only real hero of Nov. 22, 1963 of being a liar. Is that what conspiracy theory has come to?
What makes Clint Hill a “hero”, Photon? He didn’t “take a bullet for the President”(as we might say). A hero is someone who saves a life, I say. Hill didn’t do his job, as he confessed in so many words in the interview he did with Mike Wallace. Hero? No.
You left out that he said (Clint Hill) “bone fragments exploded from the back of the President’s head.” The official modern day story for those who support the WC have a fictional entry and a REAL exit wound both in the Occipital region of the skull.
“I heard the shot. The third shot,” he wrote. “The impact was like the sound of something hard hitting something hollow – like the sound of a melon shattering onto the cement. In the same instant, blood, brain matter, and bone fragments exploded from the back of the president’s head. The president’s blood, parts of his skull, bits of his brain were splattered all over me – on my face, my clothes, in my hair.”
James Curtis Jenkins- Dr Aguilar, can you describe what Ph.D program in Pathology ever existed at Bethesda for a non-physician-or even a physician for that matter? Jenkins was a low level corpsman without any degree. You well know that the only Ph.D. programs available in pathology are in conjunction with approved residences open only to Medical or Osteopathic school graduates. Surely as a board-certified physician you know how the postgraduate medical training system works.
Are you claiming that brief ER observations by physicians are superior to a formal postmortem necropsy done
by board-certified pathologists, including a world-renowned expert in bullet wound pathology? Are you familiar with the published data dealing with the significant rate of inaccurate bullet wound interpretation in the ER? When is the last time that you evaluated a bullet wound in the ER? When is the last time that you
evaluated a patient in an ER? Do you own a stethoscope?
Why do you ignore the fact that Dr. Clark admitted that he only did a brief exam of the head wound and later stated that a more complete exam was unnecessary, as the patient had an obviously fatal wound? He also stated that a complete, formal evaluation of the head wound would be done at autopsy. Right?
Exactly what was Rudnicki’s role in the autopsy? What was Rudnicki’s rank? What if anything makes Rudnicki’s statements credible?
As JFK’s head was never moved during the resuscitative efforts ( as admitted by the physicians attending to the President) it would have been physically impossible for Dr. McClelland to have seen a head wound as he described.
hey Photon – I was in my local grocery store yesterday and I thought I’d pick up some apples. I stood over one of the bins labelled as “apples”, but I thought: how can I really be sure these are apples? They could be oranges. What do I know – I’m not an expert. So I checked with the produce guy, and he assured me they were apples – but I thought: how does he know? Is he a board-certified agrologist? How long has this person actually worked with apples? Maybe the apples really are oranges and the oranges are apples. What a crazy world this is whereby we assume apples are actually apples, and not oranges, even as the person who arranged the grocery board which states these round objects are apples (and not oranges) is not board-certified or necessarily any kind of expert at all.
You are comparing apples to oranges.Literally.
Maybe you can find an ophthalmologist willing to replace your hip. After all, all doctors are experts in all aspects of Medicine-right?
You don’t have to be a neurosurgeon to be a witness to a hole in the back of a man’s head. A skull does not have to be turned to notice a defect in it, especially one that was described by several witnesses to be to the rear right side of the head.
No one is asking if Jenkins, or McClelland, or any of the Parkland witnesses are qualified to perform a necropsy or skillfully track bullet wounds. What is apparent is that the wounds seen by several qualified witnesses at Parkland (and at Bethesda, FWIW) do not correlate to the wounds as described in the Warren Report.
What I wonder is what you get out of your obfuscation on this issue. Only you can answer that.
I will illustrate how superficial the exam of JFK was aside from resuscitative efforts. If we are to believe the conspiracy viewpoint, every Parkland physician assumed that the throat wound was an entrance wound. As such, any thorough treatment plan would include assuming the presence of cervical damage including the spine and spinal cord. The standard of care would have been to immobilize the spine to prevent further damage. It would have been imperative to do this particularly if the head was moved in any way.
This was not done.
Without stabilizing the spine none of the physicians in the ER would have ever moved the head-at all.
The head was never moved.
Photon, give it up please.
It didn’t take much to notice the back of JFK’s head.
It’s not like it was at his lower back for Pete’s sake.
Even a cursory look would’ve been sufficient.
I am sorry Garry, but you have never done a physical exam.
You have never examined anybody in an emergency room.
You have no comprehension of what examination is possible in a supine individual on a gurney.
You have never seen or participated in an autopsy.
You have never seen or treated gunshot wound.
How could you possibly know what happened in the ER at Parkland, when aside from a claim in a 1981 Boston Globe article there is no evidence whatsoever that anybody moved JFK’s head? An article that had no quotes for the claim, but an article that falsely claimed that one of the doctors that supposedly moved the head had never been interviewed by the Warren Commission.
Kemp Clark admitted he never moved the head. Did he have x-ray vision?
@ Photon, September 15th, 2014 at 10:09 pm
You’re unbelievable Photon.
One need not be a doctor to know this.
Any reasonable person off the street with an objective state of mind is fit to be a juror in order to evaluate the evidence.
They need not be experts. Just have common sense.
But I defer to all of these professional people of medicine (instead of an unknown entity such as yourself), whose comments and illustrations speak for themselves.
http://www.paulseaton.com/jfk/boh/parkland_boh/parkland_wound.htm
http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/16th_issue/peters.html
http://www.assassinationweb.com/ag6.htm
You really don’t understand how selective the stuff buff websites and books have been showing you is, do you?
They don’t show you these, do they?
Grossman:
http://www.jfklancer.com/pub/md/MD185-2.JPG
Carrico:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/images/carrico_skull.GIF
Nelson:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/nelson.jpg
Peters:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/F_-UNrieN4U/0.jpg
Lipsey:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/images/lipsey.gif
Custer:
http://jfklancer.com/pub/md/MD207.JPG
http://www.jfklancer.com/pub/md/MD206.JPG
In reality, the descriptions were all over the place. On how tendentiously Aguilar treats the witnesses, see:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/head.htm#witnesses
I’d like to flip Photon’s expertise argument around and ask how much medical training Arlen Spector had? Shouldn’t the Warren Commission have had someone maybe a bit more expert in pathology and ballistics questioning the Parkland doctors than a Philadelphia lawyer?
The answer is “yes,” and the Warren Commission should have had the equivalent of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel.
And it should have pressed Bobby Kennedy to allow it to to use the autopsy photos and x-rays.
But of course that happened with the HSCA in the 70s, and you folks ignore their findings.
Well, Professor, you ignore the HSCA’s audio experts’ conclusion.
“But of course that happened with the HSCA in the 70s, and you folks ignore their findings.:”
No, we don’t John. We’d like to SEE all of the records though.
http://www.ctka.net/pr1195-class.html
Jeff,
Photon’s response at 5:01 PM illustrates and magnifies the kind of reaction to empirical information that we find throughout much of the lone-gunman crowd. Yes, apples truly always appear to be apples, even to the most common folks, and can be labelled as apples with certainty. It reminds me of others who appear consistently on your website, some of whom are much more crafty and subtle in weaving disinformation into their intellectual attacks on the truth. They simply aren’t willing to look at the axiomatic data that would otherwise lead them to understand (and accept) the terrible truth of what happened from Nov. 22 onward with respect to our government and the media. Maybe it’s just too hard for them to accept. I’ll admit it’s pretty hard to swallow, but that doesn’t change the truth.
McClelland is most often dismissed because his description of a rearward wound was not contemporaneous and because he wasn’t a neurosurgeon.
It’s therefore useful to read what the treating doctors at Parkland wrote on the day of the assassination. The page numbers are where these Parkland Hospital descriptions appear in the Warren Report.
P. 518: Kemp Clark, MD: “There was a large wound in the right occipito-parietal region … There was considerable loss of scakp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebrellar tissue was extruding from the wound.” Undated, typed noted.
p. 520: “The other wound had avulsed the calvarium and brain tissue prseent with diffuse oozing … attempt to control slow oozing from cerebral and cerebellar tissue via packs instituted.” – 11.22.63, 16:20, Charles J. Carrico, MD
p. 521: “A large wound of the right posterior cranium was noted … . ” Malcolm. O. Perry, MD, 16:30, 11.22.63.
p. 523: ” … the temporal and occipital bones were missing and the brain was lying on the table.” Charles Baxter, MD, Assistant Prof of Surgery, 11.22.63.
p. 524-525: In a hand-written hospital note: “a large 3 x3 cm remnant of cerebral tissue present….there was a smaller amount of cerebellar tissue present also….There was a large wound beginning in the right occiput extending into the parietal region …. Much of the skull appeared gone at the brief examination….” 11.22.63, 16:15 hrs. Kemp Clark, MD
P. 529 – 30: “There was a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the cerebellum had protruded from the wound.” M. T. Jenkins, MD, 11.22.63, 16:30.
It seems to me that Dr. McClelland’s desription is a reasonable match to those who wrote down what they saw on the very afternoon of November 22nd. It’s also matches what others said in Warren Commission testimony, in HSCA testimony, etc.
Here are a couple of examples of the latter:
11) JAMES CURTIS JENKINS: the other laboratory technologist who worked with the autopsy team on JFK, Jenkins was at that time in a Ph.D. program in pathology. ( High Treason II , p. 226) The HSCA’s Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy reported that Jenkins “said he saw a head wound in the “…middle temporal region back to the occipital.” (HSCA interview with Curtis Jenkins, Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy, 8-29-77. JFK Collection, RG 233, Document #002193, p.4) He told author, David Lifton, “I would say that parietal and occipital section on the right side of the head–it was a large gaping area…It had just been crushed, and kind of blown apart, toward the rear.” (Lifton, Best Evidence “, p. 616) When Lifton told Jenkins that photographs showed that the back of the head was essentially intact, except for a small bullet entry wound at the top, he responded, “That’s not possible, That is totally–you know, there’s no possible way. Okay? It’s not possible.” ( Best Evidence , p. 617) Jenkins told Livingstone, “Everything from just above the right ear back was fragmented…there was (an absence of scalp and bone) along the midline just above the occipital area….this (wound) would not have been low enough to have gotten into the cerebellum.” ( High Treason II , p. 228). Jenkins’ views, whether as given by the HSCA, Livingstone, or Lifton, are noteworthy by their consistency, and as Jenkins was in a Ph.D. pathology program, his anatomic specificity is of value.
14) JAN GAIL RUDNICKI: Dr. Boswell’s lab assistant on the night of the autopsy, Rudnicki was interviewed by HSCA’s Mark Flanagan on 5/2/78. Flanagan reported Rudnicki said, the “back-right quadrant of the head was missing.” (HSCA rec # 180- 10105-10397, agency file number # 014461, p.2.)He told author Harrison Livingston, “…from the ear back, the scalp was either gone or definitely destroyed in that area…..it would look more like it was an exit than an entrance.” When asked if there was any scalp left in the right rear of the head behind the ear, Rudnicki said, “That was gone.”( High Treason II , p. 207) Rudnicki’s account to the HSCA squares with Livingstone’s.
Thus, there seems to be remarkable agreement between McClelland, contemporaneous accounts by Parkland physician-professors and a neurosurgeon.
In 1994 I put together a list of witness statements. It can be found here: http://www.assassinationweb.com/ag6.htm
Thank you for putting this together, Gary. I always thought the dismissal (or ignoring) these people’s initial statements by defenders of the government’s political commission (Warren Commission) to be the lamest form of denial—like those of global warming deniers, who twist and turn the overwhelming evidence to fit their one-sided agenda.
Are there holes in some of the JFK conspiracy theories? Sure. But these statements by people who were first-hand witnesses, who knew what they were looking at, can’t be dismissed away so easily.
I see the Warren Commission Report as a politically driven hack job, where inconvenient facts got ignored or even deliberately distorted. In a thousand years or more, do you think anyone will care what the politics of the JFK assassination was? No. Just as we wonder how things really happened in the ancient world, future historians will not be constrained by worries over whether they are embarrassing anyone at CIA or FBI, or Lyndon Johnson’s family. These institutions and families will no longer be relevant. What will emerge, when Arlington Cemetery yields JFK’s remains someday will be evidence of a botched cover up. It’s too bad it has to take so long, but the “American Century” of post-WW2 survivors is still incapable of handling the truth. Future historians won’t care about that. They’ll just be looking at facts.
Dr. Aguilar
What surprises me the most about people arguing whether or not Dr. McClelland could have seen into the large rear skull wound when JFK was never moved from a supine position is that no one discusses the shape of the back of the head.
As you are an MD, I am not telling you anything you don’t already know but, the back of the head is round, and, with it resting on the table, a large gaping wound in the right rear of the head would be well off of the table and more than visible to anyone looking at the side of the head.
Further, the tiniest of tilts to the left would have exposed the wound entirely.
Bob,exactly how do you see the back of the head in a supine individual- particularly one with a significant amount of hair?
Any wound such as the one McClelland describes would require lifting the head and neck up off of the stretcher. At that point the back wound ( potentially a fatal wound) would have been identified. Ergo, as this wound was never noted in the ER the head was never lifted up nor was the EOP ever visible.
Have you contacted Dave Emary about your claims that he thinks that the Carcano is not an accurate rifle without ammunition made after 2002? He actually has stated in print that the Carcano was very accurate out to 200 meters, so much so that it was the ideal weapon for soldiers without a great deal of training. Of course the inherent stability of the round made for problems as a military round- too many ” through-and-through” wounds on soft tissue.-exactly like that seen with the single bullet that went through JFK and Connally. You need to pick up a Carcano rifle and fire it a few times before claiming to be an expert in what it can and cannot do. Of course I can ask Dave to discuss it with you.
Puh-lease Photon.
You don’t have to lift someone’s back to see the back of their head. One need only tilt the head to the side while they are flat on their back (or tile their head forward from a horizontal position).
If the BOH is bleeding with even some brain matter protruding or falling to the stretcher, that would be easily detected and be cause for a little attention.
McClelland testified that he examined the wound while he was standing at the head of the gurney assisting with the tracheotomy by holding a medical instrument. He said the skull was blasted open in such a way that while he was in that position “you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself …”
This is the so-called “McClelland drawing.” http://jfklancer.com/pub/md/mcc_draw.gif
Please explain how someone standing over Kennedy as McClelland described could possibly have “looked down into” a wound on the back of his head.
Move the wound up and forward to where it’s seen in the Z film, and it becomes more plausible that he could’ve looked “down into” it.
McClelland’s testimony:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/mcclella.htm
@ Jean Davison, Sep.15, 2014 at 11:37 am
Jean, a picture is worth a thousand words.
http://www.paulseaton.com/jfk/boh/parkland_boh/parkland_wound.htm#mcclelland
McClelland’s esoteric WC testimony is a little vague without any illustrations, but it is clear on this point (with my capitalized emphasis):
…I could CLOSELY EXAMINE the head wound
as well as some of the OCCIPITAL bone being fractured in its lateral half
(I think McClelland’s testimony is wrongly interpreted and/or taken out of context by lone assassin proponents).
In all seriousness, do you realize how ridiculous this sounds?
[quote]”Bob,exactly how do you see the back of the head in a supine individual- particularly one with a significant amount of hair?
Any wound such as the one McClelland describes would require lifting the head and neck up off of the stretcher. At that point the back wound ( potentially a fatal wound) would have been identified. Ergo, as this wound was never noted in the ER the head was never lifted up nor was the EOP ever visible.”[/quote]
If one is to believe, as many of us (on this site, anyway) do, then there would be no hair covering up a hole the size of a baseball in the back right portion of JFK’s head. The hair in that area would be gone, as would the skull and lots of brain matter FWIW.
To suggest that a body would need to be lifted up to the degree you would see his back just to get a look at such a would? That is, to be kind, not logical.
I also am quite certain that, for doctors and medical personnel trying in vain to save JFK’s life, the blood and brain matter coming from such a hole would have been more noticeable than his hair – at least the hair covering areas of the head not blasted out by a bullet.
Absolutely.
Merely turning the head to the side would reveal the avulsion we see in Z-Frame 335. It’s not complicated like Photon claims.
http://tinypic.com/r/tao9kj/8
Paul, if you know what entrance and exit wounds look like, you would know that the exit wound is larger than the entrance wound. I have personally seen various corpses with shots to the head, both from close range and far away, and the entrance wound never showed the damage that the official story claims on Kennedy. From what I have personally seen and been taught, the exit wound in Kennedy’s head is in the back right. That would imply that the bullet came from in front of Kennedy. Also, in court trials and investigations, you CANNOT just throw away what witnesses claim. In the case of JFK, the witness claims were not investigated as well as they should have been. If people said they heard shots from the grassy knoll, it is the responsibility and duty of Dallas police and the FBI to investigate those claims and figure out exactly what happened. That simply did not happen to the extent that it should have.
The subject was supposedly “What did JFK’s doctors think about his wounds?” That’s doctors plural, and then the only doctor you cite is the one who agreed, after some serious pressure, with the official story? Way to cherry pick your evidence! Anyone who wants to know the truth about this subject should read Dr. Crenshaw’s book, not to mention the statements of dozens of other medical witnesses who saw a huge exit wound in the back of the head, as did some non-medical witnesses. And everyone can see for themselves the exit wound in one of the autopsy photos that wasn’t altered. You really have to go way out of your way to avoid the truth to pick the one doctor who contradicts everyone else at Parkland.
No, the book is unreliable.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/crenshaw.htm
None of them were altered.
But which one do you think was not altered?
Dr McLelland said in the early investigations that he (they) did not look at the back of the head. JFK was lying on the back all the time:
Mr. SPECTER – In what position was President Kennedy maintained from the time you saw him until the pronouncement of death?
Dr. McCLELLAND – On his back on the cart.
Mr. SPECTER – On his what?
Dr. McCLELLAND – On his back on the stretcher.
Mr. SPECTER – Was he on the stretcher at all times?
Dr. McCLELLAND – Yes.
Mr. SPECTER – In the trauma room No. 1 you described, is there any table onto which he could be placed from the stretcher?
Dr. McCLELLAND – No; generally we do not move patients from the stretcher until they are ready to go into the operating room and then they are moved onto the operating table.
Mr. SPECTER – Well, in fact, was he left on the stretcher all during the course of these procedures until he was pronounced dead?
Dr. McCLELLAND – That’s right.
Mr. SPECTER – Then, at any time was he positioned in a way where you could have seen the back of his body?
Dr. McCLELLAND – No.
Mr. SPECTER – Did you observe any gunshot wound on his back?
Dr. McCLELLAND – No.
Because the autopsy photographs show no wound in the rear of JFK’s skull, an explanation has been sought for how it was that so many Parkland physicians, including neurosurgeons, said they saw such a wound.
The Boston Globe raised the issue, reporting that, “some [Parkland] doctors doubted the extent to which a wound to the rear of the head would have been visible since the President was lying supine with the back of his head on a hospital cart.”
The Globe immediately refuted that speculation: “But others, like [Dr. Richard] Dulaney and neurosurgeon Dr. Robert] Grossman, said the head at some point was lifted up, thereby exposing the rear wound.”
[Bradlee, Ben. “Dispute on JFK assassination evidence persists.” Boston Globe, 6/21/81, p. A-23.]
Similarly, author David Lifton reported that Parkland emergency nurse Audrey Bell, who couldn’t see JFK’s head wound though she was standing on the right side, asked Dr. Perry, “‘Where was the wound?’ Perry pointed to the back of the President’s head and moved the head slightly in order to show her the wound.”
During sworn interviews with the JFK Review Board in 1998, Dr. Paul Peters reported, “[anesthesiologist Dr. Marion T.] Jenkins said, ‘Boys, before you think about opening the chest, you’d better step up here and look at this brain.’ And so at that point I did step around Dr. Baxter and looked in the President’s head … .”
The ARRB’s Gunn interviewed neurosurgeon Robert Grossman, MD on March 21, 1997, reporting, “[Grossman] and Kemp Clark [Chairman of Neurosurgery at Parkland] [sic] together lifted President Kennedy’s head so as to be able to observe the damage to the President’s head.”
Having been involved in such rescuscitation efforts myself as the admitting General Surgery Resident at UCLA-Harbor General Hospital, it strikes me as absurd to imagine that no one, not even a professor of neurosurgery, would be curious enough to take a look at the fatal wound of his patient. Of course they looked! We always look; we’re a curious bunch. Why wouldn’t we?
Thus it seems reasonable to suppose that not only did they have plenty of time to get a good look at Kennedy’s skull injuries, the Dallas doctors took responsible and appropriate steps to examine the skull wound before pronouncing the President dead. However, their early descriptions don’t square well with the autopsy photographs.
So Gary, do you think the autopsy photos and x-rays are faked, forged or tampered with?
I’ve pressed you on this before, and you’ve said you don’t know.
But either the autopsy photos are fakes, or your analysis of the witness testimony is entirely off base.
And further, if you fail to say the x-rays are faked, you are failing to back up you buddy Mantik.
So, do you believe Mantik, or not?
Peters has put it in different places.
He puts it about where you want it here:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RjepSFJqP-k/UxE71tY5NGI/AAAAAAAAx_c/Hmw-ZPNpgGc/s1600/Paul-Peters-1988.png
But then on the side of the head here:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/F_-UNrieN4U/0.jpg
Dulaney puts it where you don’t want it:
http://i1312.photobucket.com/albums/t528/friscokid71/docs_2_zps137c94ed.jpg
But both Peters and Dulaney viewed the autopsy photos and x-rays in 1988 and said that they show the wound they remember.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/novadocs.htm
Grossman put the “great defect” above the ear in parietal bone:
http://www.jfklancer.com/pub/md/MD185-2.JPG
The evidence that JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy, i.e., not by a lone gunman but by two or more people acting in concert, is so overwhelming that I, for one, find it very difficult to believe that all of the people who still deny it are sincere in that belief. I cannot help but wonder that some or even most of the people who post their lone-nutter opinions online are in the employ of certain persons with an interest in confusing the public about what really happened. It is one thing for people to be skeptical but it is quite another to ignore and distort the evidence in order to maintain the Warren Report fiction. Of course, I am only speculating and I realize that not everyone is capable of even the simplest logical deductions – but after 50 years of debunking the Warren Commission report, it is simply incredible that anyone who takes the time to familiarize themselves with the available evidence can possibly defend it.
Steven, I shared your sentiment after reading Posner’s CASE CLOSED. He was supposed to prove that Oswald was the lone asassin, but all he did was ridicule the conspiracy buffs. I wondered whether Posner believed the words of his own book.
Well…that is PROOF! I mean, everyone knows that one guy experiencing something in a moment of panic is a MUCH more credible witness than dozens of other experts carefully, and methodically examining the same situation!
” It did not need an impossibly intricate web of shadowy power brokers and evil politicians and sinister CEOs. And the entire press. All it needed was a few people in the right places.”
Bill, are you suggesting that David Atlee Phillips and the Cuban exiles alone had motive enough for the assassination? How did they cover it up for so long? Unless of course they had Hal Hendrix in their pocket, along with Henry Luce. But that does not explain the Warren Commission. Unless Dulles, as Phillips’ boss, was privy to the plot. And if Dulles were privy to the plot, I would bet my life that he did not approve the assassination without the imprimatur of that “intricate web of shadowy power brokers and evil politicians and sinister CEOs” you have so well defined.
read: Dulles was
Paul’s questions:
1. What individual or group of individuals set Oswald up?
A: David Phillips and some of the other boys at JM/WAVE.
2. Putting Oswald into a safe house would have been the obvious thing to do from an intelligence standpoint.
A: Oswald didn’t know exactly what was going on.
3. Are you now saying the Paines and the White Russian Community were all in on it?
A: The Paines and DeMohrenshildt had links to the CIA but they were not in on the assassination.
4 Why did the conspirators not pick up Oswald as he left the TSBD, drive him to the desert and kill him?
A: Many of us believe Oswald was on his way to a rendezvous that would have accomplished that goal when he encountered Tippit.
I’m on record as believing Oswald fired 3 shots at JFK.
A: That’s okay. I’ve been at this thing since about 1966 and for thirty-five years I believed that Oswald was one of the shooters. But there isn’t much evidence for it. (The evidence for his likely murder of Tippit is compelling.)
In his book “The Last Investigation”, Gaeton Fonzi provides a clue about how political assassinations work. According to Antonio Veciana, in 1971 ‘Maurice Bishop’ (aka David Phillips) was still trying to kill Castro. The hit was planned for Castro’s visit to Chile. The plot included two shooters, someone to smuggle guns into a conference room where Castro was speaking, and a few within Chile’s military to arrest the assassins before Castro’s bodyguards could kill them. The plot was a little more intricate than I’ve described, but not much. (Apparently the conspirators, without Bishop’s knowledge, devised a piggyback subplot to implicate the Soviets.)
The assassination plot did not include (or require) everyone in Chile’s power structure. It did not need an impossibly intricate web of shadowy power brokers and evil politicians and sinister CEOs. And the entire press. All it needed was a few people in the right places.
Paul/Bill, I’ll stay with Bill’s assessment, with caveats.
(see Aa)
Paul’s questions:
1. What individual or group of individuals set Oswald up?
A: David Phillips and some of the other boys at JM/WAVE.
Aa. see ** below
2. Putting Oswald into a safe house would have been the obvious thing to do from an intelligence standpoint.
A: Oswald didn’t know exactly what was going on.
Aa. I concur. He had been given assignments for a number of years, and his role at TSBD was yet another. He was trained to not ask questions.
3. Are you now saying the Paines and the White Russian Community were all in on it?
A: The Paines and DeMohrenshildt had links to the CIA but they were not in on the assassination.
Aa. I said that Oswald’s family would be supported by these entities, and they were along with the Wynne family and their cohorts. For personal reasons, I believe each of them had knowledge of the operation by degrees.
4 Why did the conspirators not pick up Oswald as he left the TSBD, drive him to the desert and kill him?
A: Many of us believe Oswald was on his way to a rendezvous that would have accomplished that goal when he encountered Tippit.
Aa. I concur, with one caveat. If he thought that Tippit had been sent to kill him, why did he continue on to the rendezvous at the theatre? Could it be, as has been speculated, that he did not kill Tippit – that another operative did and left the wallet to incriminate Oswald further? Remember that Oswald was arraigned for Tippit first.
I’m on record as believing Oswald fired 3 shots at JFK.
A: That’s okay. I’ve been at this thing since about 1966 and for thirty-five years I believed that Oswald was one of the shooters. But there isn’t much evidence for it. (The evidence for his likely murder of Tippit is compelling.)
Aa. I’m not au fait enough with ballistics and forensics to draw conclusions and given this is the central component of the investigation because it involves hard data, I understand the problem it presents for any summation of the case; that having been said, it is plausible that Oswald was in the lunchroom. I believe that the handling of the rifle after the fact should be the greatest cause concern for any serious student of the assassination.
**Because I am convinced that the assassination plot was semi-private, there would need to be some link between David Phillips and industry. His Ft. Worth connections lead one to believe that is highly likely. If indeed Joannides was his field agent, I am comfortable that this would link him to a very deep, very wide, and very powerful cabal.
At the risk of ridicule given that those most influential on this site are convinced Phillips was Bishop based not only on the sketch/photo but testimony, I offer this photo for consideration. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MDcrichton.htm
The problem with Crichton would be that he was relatively high profile and should have been recognized by the Floridians.
Leslie for me the patsy statement speaks for itself. IMO Oswald was claiming he was arrested for being the token American who had lived in Russia. He was being persecuted for that. Were he a patsy within a conspiracy to murder and realizing the difficult position he was in why did he not name names during his captivity?
Regarding your other questions:
1. As far as I’m aware there was no communication between Oswald and any conspirators in the weeks/months leading up to 11/22. What individual or group of individuals set Oswald up?
2. Putting Oswald into a safe house would have been the obvious thing to do from an intelligence standpoint. You’re planning to kill the POTUS and you have the assassin walking the streets knowing the plan? Obviously this opens up a can of worms. Oswald could have told anybody what was about to happen. Intelligence organizations do not work that way.
3. Pure speculation on your part Leslie. Are you now saying the Paines and the White Russian Community were all in on it?
4. Yes, Oswald was murdered two days later. And yet you choose to believe the conspirators would have allowed him to leave the TSBD alive. Walk the streets of Dallas. Shoot a cop and then be held and questioned for some 45 hours. Why did the conspirators not pick up Oswald as he left the TSBD, drive him to the desert and kill him? Again, intelligence organizations do not function this way. Their goal is to eliminate risk, not perpetuate it.
5. Answered.
For me Leslie, Marina summed it. When she visited Lee in the jail he was very passive. She commented “were he innocent he’d have been screaming it from the rafters”. That’s who Lee was. When he felt he had been wronged he railed against it.
I’ve attempted to give you logical answers to your questions. Again, I’m not showing a bias. I’m simply looking at what evidence we have………and don’t have. I’m on record as believing Oswald fired 3 shots at JFK. For me, that’s undeniable. I’m open to the possibility that he was part of a greater plan. However, I’ve seen on hard credible evidence to support this. In many peoples minds the CIA, MIC, Anti-Castro Cubans et al all had motives for wanting Kennedy gone. However, motive is not evidence.
From Leslie:
leslie sharp
April 26, 2013 at 7:46 pm
That’s a bit of a stretch, Paul. Anyone who lies to get a job is capable of assassinating a president?
This brings up a point I need to revisit: in an earlier comment you suggested (correct me if I’m wrong) that Oswald made the decision to kill Kennedy the evening before, and I believe you said that it was predicated on the fact that Marina was not going to reconcile with him? Do you mean that this was a spontaneous assassination?
Also, is it not strange that Truly overlooked these lies?
Certainly not Leslie. It is simply one more example of Oswald’s manipulative personality which is what I was stressing. I did not suggest Oswald made the final decision to kill JFK on 11/21 due to Marina rejecting him. I stated there are researchers who do believe that. Truly had no idea Oswald was lying. Background checks unlike today were not the norm back then. I believe Truly empathized with Oswald and his financial situation as told to him by Ruth Paine. Personally I believe Oswald thought about eliminating Kennedy in early September while living in NO. I agree totally with Jean Davison. Oswald was shocked to have walked out of the TSBD
alive.
Paul, where was Oswald going to have access to Kennedy? Was he relying on the unpredictable possibility that Kennedy would come to Louisiana or Texas? Was he surprised when the trip was announced, and suddenly found himself in the right place at the right time? I see no evidence of him ‘planning or preparing’ the assassination in that scenario, do you? And beyond that, why didn’t he take his hand gun to the street and shoot at Kennedy if he was willing to be caught? If as you say, he was surprised to leave the building a free man, why wouldn’t he have been willing to shoot Kennedy at close range like Sirhan or Hinckley? Why the machinations on the 6th Fl?
Leslie you are asking me to speculate but that is only way for me to respond to you. Oswald was a day dreamer. He fancied himself smarter than most people. He was impetuous and took risks. JFK’s trip to Dallas was announced in June. It was no surprise. Kennedy in Dallas. Oswald in Dallas. IMO only, Oswald would have been along the motorcade route regardless of where it was. No doubt after viewing the route first published on 11/18 he saw the opportunity he had. He considered himself a revolutionary not unlike his idol William Morgan, the former U. S. Army Sergeant now a Major in Castro’s Army. Using a hand gun presented a different set of problems not the least of which was getting close enough to the car without being caught before actually pulling the trigger. Some believe the film “Suddenly” with Frank Sinatra as a presidential assassin with a rifle firing from an elevated position influenced Oswald. It played on TV in Dallas several times leading up to 11/22. Pure speculation but we”ll never know for sure.
Paul,
According to HSCA, the formal confirmation of the visit was not made until September 26th (the Dallas Morning News carried the story), and in my view this supports the suspicion that Oswald was then positioned at TSBD in October for the November assassination.
I’m extremely uneasy with anyone that attempts to subvert inquiry by suggesting “we’ll never know for sure.”
Who positioned Oswald in your opinion? Why was Oswald not tucked away in a safe house in the days/weeks leading to the event? Why did Oswald not leverage his position financially for his family? How could Oswald be sure he himself would not be murdered by the conspirators after the event? How did the conspirators communicate with Oswald? Would conspirators allow Oswald to walk the streets 36 hours before the event ? These are questions conspiracy advocates must reconcile if indeed they believe the patsy scenario.
Who positioned Oswald in your opinion?
Who specifically, or what forces?
Why was Oswald not tucked away in a safe house in the days/weeks leading to the event?
What would be the point of that?
Why did Oswald not leverage his position financially for his family?
His family was being watched over vis a vis Paine, McMillan, deM, and the White Russian community
How could Oswald be sure he himself would not be murdered by the conspirators after the event?
He couldn’t, and he was.
How did the conspirators communicate with Oswald?
That’s a non issue.
Would conspirators allow Oswald to walk the streets 36 hours before the event ?
Again, why not?
These are questions conspiracy advocates must reconcile if indeed they believe the patsy scenario.
Four areas I would look at regarding Oswald (which this blog may feature later on) are:
1) Oswald’s defection and easy reentry back into the USA. Was this part of an ‘on the ground’ intelligence program, and does it fit into a pattern that can be compared to other men doing the same thing in the time period;
2) Oswald’s possible role as an FBI informant and his Camp Street activities where Guy Bannister was in New Orleans;
3) “Maurice Bishop” or David Atlee Phillips, who may have been his handler in Texas—how much do we know about this today?
4) Sylvia Odio, who claimed to have seen a “Leon” at her door with two Cubans in the early autumn of 1963, whom she identified as being Lee Harvey Oswald. This has been a really difficult item for the Warren Commission to reconcile.
One more thing: There definitely were two Oswald voices in Mexico CIty which were on tape, as well as a man said to be ‘Oswald’ who was photographed in Mexico City who was heavy set and had thinning hair, not the same person, but going by the name of ‘Oswald’. This looks highly suspicious and seems to indicate a plot to pin LHO as a man with pro-Castro leanings, when he may or may not have had this political affiliation.
The full “Patsy” declaration from LHO:
“They’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the
Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy!” — Lee Harvey Oswald
Source: David Von Pein.
Paul,
Von Pein is not a source, he is one who quotes sources. Can you possibly clear this up? Mae Brussell, who accessed transcripts or secured direct quotes from those in close proximity of Oswald’s statements, does not include this string of statements – at least not that I can identify.
Leslie the source for the statement is Oswald himself making the statement. It’s on YouTube courtesy of Dave Von Pein. The statements were made within the context of one another.
“Did you shoot the President”?
“No. They arrested me because I lived in Russia. I’m just a patsy”.
Watch the vid Leslie.
Paul, Will do. I was looking for a print version. Thanks.
I still fail to see or hear how Oswald’s statement leads you to believe that he shot Kennedy. He certainly is not basking in the celebrity as one might expect, and he is asking for an attorney. What do you think he meant by “patsy?” Why would a cold blooded murderer use that term?
Seven Days in May was a remarkable film and very entertaining. The writing and acting is superb. What was interesting to me is that the conspiracy began to unravel when a lowly LT(jg) told Kirk Douglas about a phony Preakness betting pool as I recall. I’ve heard that JFK truly enjoyed the film and that he had agreed to leave D.C. while the filmmakers were shooting exteriors outside the White House.
I had the same issue in a post to Leslie. I’m not sure what triggers that unless it’s key words.
Per Paul:
“There are those researchers who believe these actions show Oswald didn’t make the ultimate decision to kill JFK until the evening of 11/21.”
Per Leslie:
That is patently absurd, and given your phrasing, I believe even you agree.
Regarding Oswald simply living out his life – amongst military contractors and family members of government operatives, in a city known for it’s rabid anti-communism and fear and hatred of John Kennedy – hardly the norm for a young guy, and possibly indicative of a perfect target for manipulation.
Leslie we know from Marina that Lee attempted several times to reconcile with her the evening of 11/21. He even suggested they obtain a new apartment on 11/22. What might have happened if Marina had agreed to this scenario is anybody’s guess. Patently absurd? I disagree with that assessment. In today’s jargon it might be said of Oswald that he thought outside the box. What has continually surprised me throughout the years is those endorsing conspiracy at the expense of understanding who Oswald was and what he represented.
Paul,
“What has continually surprised me throughout the years is those endorsing conspiracy at the expense of understanding who Oswald was and what he represented.”
Can you expound: Who was Oswald in your estimation? What did he ‘represent’ in your world view?
Leslie,
Perhaps these Amazon.com reviews by Paul might give you some idea? I think JFK was most likely killed as the result of a conspiracy, but I try to keep an open mind, even if I get a bit snarky at times with some of the posters. Paul is more of a sophisticated gentleman poster than I am, I guess…Still, he seems to have already made up his mind on Oswald and I seriously doubt he’s going to change it. Since I’m a fan of science (evolution, reason, etc.) I never say I’m 100% certain. I just look at the ‘trend lines’:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3GNR9JFS6CRR5/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
JSA, yes, I believe with a very high degree of certainty that Oswald fired the only shots at JFK. I cannot say with as high degree of certainty he did so on his own. Could it have been a conspiracy? Yes, it’s possible. For me, it’s not probable considering the lack of hard, credible evidence.
Leslie, here is the patsy statement:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/patsy.htm
Leslie, let me be clear. I thought you may have omitted the entire patsy statement only because you’re knowledgeable about the case and Oswald’s statement is so very well known. My apologies for my inability to coherently convey what I meant. As far as Oswald himself one can arguably say he was a misanthrope. He was likely sociopathic but not legally insane. He respected nobody and demonstrated narcissistic tendencies. He relied on nobody other than himself no doubt because of the abuse he suffered from his mother as a child. He was a manipulator of other people as demonstrated throughout his life. He manipulated the Russians to remain in Russia. He manipulated his early release from the service. He manipulated Roy Truly to hire him at the TSBD. He would not/could not follow orders in the military as demonstated by his multiple court-martials. To believe one with his personality could be manipulated by others is not in keeping with his type of personality and actions. How did Oswald land up in Russia? Well, his brother Robert had told me in 19999 that Lee was enamored with Ernest Hemmingway and the life Hemmingway lived. He wanted that life of travel and excitement. He was anti-American government considering them a blight on the working class. Who did Oswald admire if anybody? Nelson Delgado, Oswald’s friend in the Marine Corps stated that Oswald’s hero was William Morgan, a former sergeant in the U. S. Army who had become a major in Castro’s army. Morgan got quite a bit of press coverage in 1959 when he lured some anti-Castro rebels into capture by pretending to be a counter-revolutionary. This might too explain some of Oswald’s behavior in New Orleans regarding his encounter with Carlos Bringuier. Oswald was totally dedicated to the revolution and believed guns were available for that purpose. How devoted was he? He had told Marina were she to have a boy, he wanted to name him Fidel. And yet, the KGB files on Oswald turned over to President Clinton in 1993 showed Oswald to be borderline incompetent even at the radio factory where he worked in Minsk. The KGB considered him to be of no value. Was Oswald of value? Yes, in his own mind. Was he laughed and scoffed at by others including Marina? Yes he was. But Oswald in reality was a snarky little character not afraid to use violence as demonstrated by his attempted assassination of General Walker.
I still can’t find any solid evidence linking Oswald to the crime scene. For all I know, Roger Craig could have seen him running down the grass bank to the green Rambler. Anyway, my biggest problem is with the single bullet theory, which I don’t think holds up to serious scientific scrutiny. Growing up around CIA people I also learned some things that they don’t teach you in the school text books about things our government does vs. what it SAYS it does. It doesn’t take a huge ‘leap of faith’ for me at least to imagine some of the things ‘we’ did overseas being turned on our own country, domestically. Since you are an avid dog lover (as am I) I think you can see my analogy of a poorly raised dog (CIA) turning on its owners, being given too much leeway and not being taught to ‘heel’. I realize that this probably won’t satisfy your request that I only submit facts, but I think people have to have the freedom to imagine scenarios, like any good war gamer. I feel your side however when I encounter a holocaust denier, a global warming denier, or a (in my opinion) fool who thinks Bush/Cheney somehow ‘engineered’ the 9/11 attacks. So I’m capable of rejecting conspiracy theories too. The JFK hit however has me thinking there was a conspiracy.
Paul,
Some of your observations are purely subjective as are many of mine, and some seem to be influenced by a sibling of Oswald which must be taken with a grain of salt.
Your other points:
How did Oswald manipulate Truly into giving him a job? I thought that Ruth Paine phoned the depository at the suggestion of Linnie Randle whose brother had only recently gained employment there?
And what is the source of this quote?
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
Question: “Did you shoot the President?”
Answer: No, they’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union…I’M JUST A PATSY!”
The fact Oswald was a voracious reader is not a surprise Leslie. Others who knew him have stated this including Marina who stated he would often go into his bathroom to be alone to read. Robert Oswald was a first person source regarding Lee’s enjoyment of reading Hemingway. Regarding the patsy statement I’m guessing that was McAdams who did that for whatever reason. The patsy statement is available at various sites. Regarding Oswald’s manipulation of Truly: Ruth Paine indeed phoned Truly. She told Truly he needed a job desperately as he was a veteran and had a family to support. She pulled on his heart strings imo. That got Lee the interview. It was during the interview where the manipulation occurred. Truly asked Lee if he graduated high school. Lee said yes. That was a lie. He asked Lee if he’d ever been arrested. Lee said no. That was a lie. He asked Lee if he was honorably discharged. Lee said yes. Another lie. Ultimately Truly gave him a part time position out off pity or sympathy imo.
That’s a bit of a stretch, Paul. Anyone who lies to get a job is capable of assassinating a president?
This brings up a point I need to revisit: in an earlier comment you suggested (correct me if I’m wrong) that Oswald made the decision to kill Kennedy the evening before, and I believe you said that it was predicated on the fact that Marina was not going to reconcile with him? Do you mean that this was a spontaneous assassination?
Also, is it not strange that Truly overlooked these lies?
“The patsy statement is available at various sites.”
Paul, you would not accept this as a response if the argument was reversed. I am somewhat focused on this because I too assumed that he said “I am just a patsy,” and I simply cannot find that precise statement, unless I revert to Stone’s movie?
I’m also unsure why the comment about Russia is critical to your argument, that the two phrases rely on one another?
Jean says:
“McClelland’s testimony is puzzling . . . “, Then asks:
“But how could McC have looked “*down into*” the wound depicted here, while JFK was lying on his back?”
McClelland’s description of the wound is not puzzling at all. It is straight forward. Grossman and Clark said the head was lifted up and moved to expose the wound. What is puzzling is why the three autopsy prosectors were unable to precisely locate an alleged small bullet hole when they had JFK’s skull right in front of them.
You posted the JAMA study to try to discredit McClelland – a legitimate, credible, competent doctor who described JFK’s head wound very precisely, including the loss of cerebellum. He called it a posterior wound. Many others agreed. Perry called it “a large avulsive wound on the right posterior cranium”. Jenkins said, “I really think part of the cerebellum, as I recognized it, was herniated from the wound”. (This has been thoroughly researched and I’m not going to repeat all of it at this forum.)
Since the JAMA study wasn’t particularly persuasive, now you seem to suggest that McClelland was describing the lacerated anterior wound that nobody saw prior to Bethesda. But McClelland described specific skull bone and brain tissue from the rear of the head, so that theory doesn’t work.
As I recall, one of the doctors claimed that cardiac massage resulted in a huge amount of blood being pumped out of the large wound in the back of Kennedy’s head. That’s hardly consistent with Ida Dox’s artist rendition of the small, high bullet hole that even the prosectors failed to see.
McClelland was not hallucinating. He saw a large, complex wound and he described it in detail. No wonder the government’s findings are impossible to believe.
I made no attempt to “discredit” anyone. I think McClelland is honest and truthful, but all witnesses are fallible, just like you and me.
When I said McClelland’s statement is puzzling, I meant *his* testimony, no one else’s. He was asked, “Did you observe the condition of the back of the President’s head?” and he replied,
QUOTE:
Dr. McCLELLAND – Well, partially; not, of course, as I say, we did not lift his head up since it was so greatly damaged. We attempted to avoid moving him any more than it was absolutely necessary, but I could see, of course, all the extent of the wound.
UNQUOTE
He said JFK was on his back the entire time and the head wasn’t lifted, yet the wound he saw was supposedly here:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/head2.gif
That’s not puzzling?
Could you please quote Dr. Clark saying he lifted the head, since I don’t recall that now?
Jean
Jean:
” …. but I could see, of course, all the extent of the wound. ”
What more did the doctor need to say? He is clearly describing a gaping wound. I find his statement to be extremely sensitive and deferential to Kennedy’s family and to the former president as a human.
If McClelland admits to only moving the head partially how would he have seen the wound on the rear of the head? The logic of this for me is that it appears the head may have been moved side to side because in McCllelands own words it was “greatly damaged” which would have prohibited the doctors from physically lifting it from its prone position without causing further damage.
WFAA TV video Nov 20/13: “As we looked at the president, I never saw any evidence of life,” said Dr. Ron Jones, chief resident of surgery at the time. “I didn’t see him breathe, his eyes were open and fixed. But not knowing the extent of his injury, we went ahead and tried to resuscitate him.”
Jones says the room was so crowded he couldn’t even grab a pair of sterile gloves. He worked on the president with his bare hands.
“We knew there was a large hole injury to the back of his head, but we didn’t stop to look at that,” he said. “We were trying to get an airway established and an IV going and get blood.”
A LARGE HOLE INJURY TO THE BACK OF HIS HEAD.
I have wondered why the Warren Commission called Warren Caster as a witness given that he was not working in the TSBD the day of the assassination. But reading the Oswald statements, I see that Oswald brought Caster’s name to the attention of authorities. The WC obviously had to address Oswald’s having recounted that Caster had a rifle in the building on November 20th and that Truly was present when Caster was showing off his new purchase.
Jean,
When you get a chance, you might review statements made by Oswald compiled by Mae Brussell. They’re available on a number of sites.
I’m aware of Oswald’s statements and Mae Brussell’s list.
Jean
Jean,
Have you counted how many times Oswald addresses the issue of an attorney? He does not simply refer to Abt but rather he talks in general about his need for an attorney, for someone to please come forward and help him (paraphrasing). Do you completely discount his statements? Have you analyzed them thoroughly, and if so, could you share your impressions?
Paul,
I acknowledged that the Plame metaphor was a bit silly, but it represents an instance of secret keeping. You can move that metaphor all the way up the food chain and identify examples that might better impress you.
Can you explain to me specifically, why do you not think a group of power-wielding individuals, devoutly aligned to a principle, were not able to keep a secret? Explain to me how their careers, their reputations, their families would have been threatened when they controlled the very apparatus that would have exposed them. The only thing they had to fear were the peasants with the pitchforks, and they took care of them with the cover up.
Leslie I respect you and your point of you but you are speculating with no actual evidence. I’m troubled by something you typed earlier. You brought up the patsy statement yet you omitted the entire statement. You stated Oswald said “I’m’just a patsy”. Yet you chose to omit the rest of his statement: “they only arrested me because I lived in Russia”. It appears you intentionally chose to do this. That is troubling to me on several levels. Firstly I’m sure you’ll agree it changes the meaning of Oswald’s intent completely. Secondly it implies your bias towards Oswald being involved in a conspiracy when indeed Oswald himself was saying he was not. Any given conspirator involved in an assassintation risks detection expotentionally depending on the number of people they know. We know about conspiricies throughout history because they ultimately are revealed. In the JFK case the risks were greater than the reward. The likelihood of getting caught in a public execution involving multiple shooters was high. Murphy’s law applies here. Career bureaucrats and military people would have to much risk in such a shoddy plan. That’s the human element. JFK was up for reelection within a year. There were far less dangerous ways to get him out of office considering the files Hoover held on him. Again I’ll raise the question: were Oswald the designated patsy in the TSBD why was he shot from the front? It’s simply not plausible Leslie.
Paul,
Oswald: “I have been dressed differently than the other three. . . . Don’t you know the difference? I still have on the same clothes I was arrested in. The other two were prisoners, already in jail.” Seth Kantor, reporter, heard Oswald yell, “I am only a patsy.”
I cannot find in Oswald’s statements that he said “they only arrested me because I lived in Russia”. Can you direct me to that source?
I’m curious that you think I might have deliberately omitted something. To What End? There seems to be an undertow in your comment to suggest that I might be a communist sympathizer? Surely not, you would not expose yourself so readily.
I don’t think I have ever speculated on whether or not Oswald knew he was involved in the conspiracy.
How was the plan shoddy? It seems to me it worked perfectly. Oswald is arrested as a lone assassin, Oswald is murdered. Fini.
“Again I’ll raise the question: were Oswald the designated patsy in the TSBD why was he shot from the front? It’s simply not plausible Leslie”
But you see Paul, the nation was told immediately that he WASN’T shot from the front. This is the most insidious aspect of the cover-up. A virtual sleight of hand, and the media and the authorities involved dealt it masterfully.
Is Murphy’s Law admissible in court, Paul?
This April essay presents new and startling evidence about the three assassinations of the 1960’s, and how they have stunted our knowledge of history, and thus our wisdom in governing.
The unseen forces that were at work in the sixties have never been opposed and have been retarding an effective media and citizen response to the facts about climate change.
Part I: http://www.globalresearch.ca/50-years-of-suppressed-history-new-evidence-on-the-assassination-of-john-f-kennedy-martin-luther-king-and-robert-f-kennedy/5329847
As a result, an enormous gulf exists historically between scientific consensus on climate change and public awareness, with the media having for years been influenced by Big Oil to give equal time to believers and deniers. A way ahead is proposed at:
Part II: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-climate-bomb-failures-to-confront-the-unspeakable-and-the-way-ahead/5329875
@Abettervision
Leslie your scenario is entirely possible but hardly plausible.
Paul,
And the reason it lacks plausibility?
It involves to many people. In a conspiracy size does matter. It involves contractors (plural, your word), logistics, scheduling, planning etc. Would this planning include a public venue with multiple shooters in front of thousands of people taking numerous films and photos? Would this planning include shooting JFK from the front when the patsy is behind him? At some point one must ask themselves: is this plausible?
Paul,
The simple response would be to refer you to Vince Salandria’s hypothesis, but it has been quoted so often on this site I feel it is somewhat dismissive of your question to rely solely on his statement.
However, if entities wished to shock our nation, to bring democracy to a stand still and send a distinct message that ‘they’ are in charge, they would choose the time of year – a lovely autumn day, the time of day – mid day, the venue (I won’t get into the theory around the TSBD at this point), and most of all the city – the paragon of patriotism (recall that the American Legion held their national convention in Dallas in 1964),
I have absolutely no difficulty in conceiving that secrets can be held. Families do it all of the time. No one knew Valerie Plame’s identity until someone wanted the world to know. That’s a silly example, but I think it drives home the point. The only people who have ‘talked,’ have been outside of the power circle. And your argument about secrecy falls perfectly in line with the CIA memorandum to the nation’s primary media issued soon after the assassination. I interviewed Dick Stolley, and he argued much the same thing …. how could so many keep the secret.
I can think of an example of a great secret: the atomic bomb project. Many people worked on various aspects of it, from TVA to NM but it didn’t leak out, as far as I know. Only a few people at the top knew of the grand scheme, most of the others only knew a small portion of what they were doing.
It took four years of a concerted effort by the Soviet Union’s top scientists to make an atomic bomb-with the help of German scientists.
It took this long because of the complete secrecy of the Trinity project- Stalin was caught completely unawares by Hiroshima and didn’t even know what it was. They had no blueprint, no conception of atomic energy.
Obviously if the KGB could be kept in the dark the CIA can keep the American public in the dark. So what is so difficult about a conspiracy being secret even today?
People who insist that someone would finally talk, at least when death approaches, assume that arrogance of power can coexist with devotion to democracy in an individual. I believe the traits are incompatible, and that those who wanted Kennedy dead (and their descendants) continue to thrive in our midst.
I have read Vince’s work Leslie. He’s an impressive individual. That being said I personally have much difficulty with theories or ideas that begin with “if”. The “if” scenario can be played throughout time. “If” a meteor hadn’t hit the Yucatan Peninsula would dinosaurs still be roaming the earth? It’s an extreme way of thinking unless one has a bias or an anti-government viewpoint. You mentioned Valerie Plame. Valerie was a low level operative at best. We’re discussing the POTUS. As an example, sitting presidents haven’t been capable of concealing secrets in Washington. Nixon-Watergate. Reagan-IranContra. Clinton-Lewinsky and travelgate. Is it possible for a group of conspirators to have concealed this for 50 years? Yes, it’s possible. Plausible? Highly unlikely considering the event is arguably the most investigated murder in history. Then we might ask the question: would a group of individuals risk their careers, their reputations, their families in a broad daylight assassination within view of thousands plus TV coverage on a plan with a high probability of being caught? That to me Leslie is not probable.
JSA, so you’re aware. I do not accept all postings by LN’s as the Bible of authority. While I believe Oswald pulled the trigger and all shots originated from behind I have some difficulties with the SBT. For me, the question that remains unanswered is: did Oswald act alone or was somebody pulling the strings? Although I cannot state with 100% certainty that he was the sole planner and executioner, I have spent a lot of my years in researching Oswald, his friends, his family, his military background, as a child etc. I’ve read his 201 file and have had the opportunity to speak with his friends and family. One reaches certain conclusions. This is why I’ve also maintained that if hard credible proof came forward I would accept it as a conspiracy and have no problem moving on.
Did you get a chance to talk to Sylvia Odio? I think her testimony was truthful, but obviously it can’t be proven.
Also, regarding this original post, which featured audio interviews with Dr. McClelland, there have been some claims over the years that the doctor couldn’t be trusted to see the back of JFK’s head as he claims, and John McAdams claims that McClelland just had a mistaken memory, not that he was lying. However, I find myself in agreement with Brad Parker, who reviewed what McClelland said and found that it “holds up pretty well.” Here is a link to the article, which raises some detail about how the events unfolded in Trauma Room One:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=388472
For me Mcllenland is an anomaly. I do not believe Mcllenland ever saw the back of JFK’s head. This is a personal belief. Although the announced time of death was 1:00 PM, in reality the POTUS expired at 12:50 PM. He wasn’t in the ER room very long. Pat Speer who is an exceptional researcher and CT I’ll point out, did some fascinating work several years ago. He suggested that how we view a human being laying in a horizontal position can confuse ones mind. In viewing the body from the head down we often believe we’re looking at the back of the head but in reality we’re seeing the top of the head. Pat went so far as to contact some experts at Stanford U. to see if this was possible. Although no studies had been done on this one of the scientists Pat spoke with said medically it’s about how the human mind perceives different things and it’s entirely possible. I have emails from Pat on this subject if you’d care to see them. I am not endorsing this position, however it’s interesting considering how many people endorse a rear blowout on the back of the head despite authenticated photo’s and x-rays. In reality, outside of exhuming the body (which will never happen)the debate will continue to rage.
Since we’re free to express our opinions here, my opinion is that this doctor may have forgotten some of the minor details, but I think if he didn’t actually see the back of Kennedy’s head he probably wouldn’t have said that he did. He wasn’t selling any books (like Crenshaw was) and he describes his stance politically as being a ‘middle of the roader.’ Plus, he’s received lots of grief by the critics of his position. I don’t find Dr. McClelland’s testimony to be such an anomaly, because there were others involved in the medical trail of the body who spoke about discrepancies. You can find them here:
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/ARRB_Medical_Testimony
At the foot of this article, the author states that these are merely the tip of the iceberg. It’s certainly food for thought.
Paul,
Is it logical to focus solely on Oswald? And even if one becomes an expert on him as a young man, doesn’t it require that he be placed in context of the overall investigation? I respect specialists and believe you/they are essential to uncovering the truth. But all evidence must be considered in context. That is why this endless debate stalls the process. You have now clearly stated that you are uncertain that Oswald acted alone. That is common ground. From there, can we take what you believe – that he fired shots – and move to who might have manipulated him, or who else might have fired shots. The rest of this argument is distracting you from contributing further because it is consuming your intellectual skills.
And if I could add: this, or something similar, is what the moderator(s) of this site should be doing if they are earnest in their endeavor. Otherwise they are acting outside of integrity. We do not need babysitters, but if we are guests in their house, they have an obligation to be respectful of our time, energy and information, and of course, vice versa.
Well said Leslie. A conspiracy researcher I have tremendous respect for was Harold Weisberg. His feats regarding FOI are legendary. Before his death in 2002 I had the honor of speaking with Harold numerous times. He was a mean old guy (I say that tenderly). Harold was always candid and direct. He has stated that his “greatest disappointment in 40 years of investigating the case was his inability to tie Oswald to any intelligence organizations”. So, one has to ask why? Well, either that information is hidden or destroyed or Oswald acted alone. You state Leslie “all evidence must be considered within context”. What context would that be?
Paul,
I defined one context in my previous post.
I propose that Weisberg’s frustration may have been the result of assuming that 1) there would ever be paper ‘evidence’ tying Oswald to intelligence and 2) that any definition of intelligence was skewed in those years, unless it considered the possibility that there were agents functioning outside of government control.
Government control are interesting words. They infer a nefarious entity ruthless to the core. Suggesting there were rogue (my word) agents (your word) is certainly possible although this for me is anti-establishment embellishment. I say this Leslie in light of the fact that nothing hard nor credible has surfaced over 50 years. I’m uncertain of who said “3 people in Washington can keep a secret if 2 of them are dead”.
Paul,
My phrase was agents “outside of government control.” And I do not use the term “rogue.” I do not believe the people who authorized the assassination would rely on ‘rogue’ employees of the government for the precise reason that they would have had files, background data, etc. Independent contractors would solve that dilemma. Division of duties and responsibilities, coupled with mutually shared ideology locked in the secret.
If you want a good place to start, and to look at where I’m getting what I consider some good research, you can go here:
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Featured_Medical_Evidence
I still have MAJOR problems as a layman understanding the Single Bullet Theory. So, you’re the expert—YOU EXPLAIN IT.
In this documentary by Chip Selby, he uses the official record and test results to discredit the SBT.
http://www.amazon.com/Reasonable-Doubt-Single-Bullet-Theory/dp/6301815866/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
Jean Davison cites JAMA, 1993:
>>THE ODDS that a trauma specialist will correctly interpret certain fatal gunshot wounds are no better than the flip of a coin, according to a recent study at a level 1 trauma center.<<
Jean, I think all us can visualize certain situations that would be very hard to interpret. For example the direction of a glancing shotgun blast would be difficult to discern.
But, as you know, in this specific case the official version of the rear entry head wound (whether high or low) asserts that the wound was a small, precise hole in an otherwise undamaged part of JFK's head. Ida Dox's rendition of the cowlick photo supposedly shows the little bullet hole in the back/top of JFK's neatly groomed head.
If this were true, then McClelland and a bunch of other credible witnesses were insane. Here's McClelland, "the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted . . . and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so , at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out."
What in the world was he looking at? His is a very specific description. It would be quite impossible for McClelland to have seen the supposed wound depicted in Ida Dox's drawing and then describe the wound as above.
Citing the JAMA study doesn't clarify this in any way.
Hear Hear.
McClelland’s testimony is puzzling because he said that JFK’s head was not lifted by anybody and that he observed the head wound while he was standing at the end of the stretcher assisting with the trach procedure. Picture that, JFK on his back and McClelland, as he said, standing over him and looking “*down into* the skull cavity.” That’s possible, if the wound was where the autopsy photos show it (graphic photo):
http://static.environmentalgraffiti.com/sites/default/files/images/Jfkautopsy.jpg
But how could McC have looked “*down into*” the wound depicted here, while JFK was lying on his back?
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sgDa9FdAHtw/0.jpg
I’m not sure how to explain that, but I think Pat Speer’s theory, mentioned by Paul May in this thread, is a good possibility.
Jean
JSA:
Photon, I have fired guns, not an Italian surplus ww2 rifle, but many rifles similar. That doesn’t make me an expert, any more than it might make you one if you fired one (you’re a woman who got divorced, right ; D ? ). The discrepancy I’ve brought up is that Connelly had fragments in his body, more than the bullet pulled from the stretcher that was supposed to make the path through JFK and Connelly. You don’t have to be a forensics expert to ask how that can be. So again I ask, your point?
This is but one more example of shoddy research. There is no way possible to know the specific weight of the bullet at the time it was fired. Even bullets in the same lots have different weights. Duncan MacPherson, author of “Bullet Penetration” and considered the father of wound ballistics stated about the JFK case: “The major frustrating feature of the Kennedy assassination phenomenon is the willingness of people to pretend to talk authoritatively on subjects they know absolutely nothing about, especially things related to firearms.”
Would someone please declare a victory on this issue? If one can prove the Warren Commission was accurate in their assessment of the forensic/ballistic evidence, then Oswald acted alone and there was no conspiracy. How many years does it take to define this? Some one is obviously obfuscating the truth and causing this site in particular to disintegrate. Who is orchestrating this? That should be the debate.
Leslie, Jeff Morley has asked posters to be factual. Doesn’t matter if the poster is CT or LN. Simply state facts. Unfortunately that is not the case. Hence, this blog is deteriorating. I enjoy your comments and their depth. Unfortunately, many posters post opinion as fact. I challenge these people and I’m attacked for it. One then has to question whether these folks want intelligent and challenging discourse or not.
Paul ignores the facts or witness testimony that he considers to be inconvenient to his case, that Oswald acted alone. Somehow I’m to blame for pointing out contradictory evidence and testimony, actually the same stuff that Jefferson Morley is doing. But since he cannot attack the blog administrator, who allows him to post here, he goes after the other posters. I call bullsh*t on that! He’s being an antagonist.
JSA, you again have the facts wrong. I have stated on this blog I do not consider witness testimony, whether pro CT or pro LN to be that relevant. I take it out of the equation. You again bend what I say due to your own biases. When you are challenged to support statements (as I’ve done several times) you choose not to support your statements and attack. Just as you’re doing right now. On another thread you say I attacked your long list of “celebrities” who support conspiracy. I never did such a thing. When I asked you to post the thread….you disappeared. As per Jeff Morley’s request…..that is a fact.
Point taken. You didn’t attack my thread of political people (not just celebrities) who didn’t believe in the Warren Commission’s findings. I’m not too small to admit an error. And I’m not running away.
Isn’t it interesting that both Paul and myself think that we are being victimized?
Like the Palestinians and the Israelis. And so it goes…
Speak for yourself. I never consider myself a victim. The early pioneers take the most arrows.
“I challenge these people and I’m attacked for it.”
The early pioneers take the most arrows most likely because someone already lived there first. ; )
Gerry,
Any thoughts on Dick Russell’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much?” Wasn’t Nagell alleged to have had a similar assignment?
Paul,
Not to put words in anyone’s mouth, but in order to understand the position of those who believe that Oswald acted alone – beyond the subject of ballistics and events in the Emergency Room at Parkland:
Oswald was hired by the TSBD operation as a result of introduction by Ruth Paine only weeks before Kennedy was going to Dallas; the building was along the parade route devised by Dallas attorneys in conjunction with the secret service; the day Kennedy was scheduled to pass the building, Oswald brought a concealed rifle – a Manlicher Carcano – to the 6th Floor where he fired at Kennedy X number of times, hitting both the President and John Connally; he placed the rifle in view of the simplest of searches and descended the stairs – calmly encountering a policeman and the manager of the business, Roy Truly; he left the building, past police officers and through the crowds and walked in the opposite direction of an obvious hiding area (to the North of the building); then within minutes of killing the President of the United States, he shot and killed a Dallas police officer and dropped his wallet at the site of that murder; he then went to his boarding house – because of course Truly would not have given the authorities his address so he believed it would be safe to drop by to change clothes (a serious point of controversy in the Warren Commission testimony btw), went to a movie theatre (because he was either bored and needed some entertainment or he thought it would be the perfect hiding place after two murders), where he was arrested by dozens of Dallas officers. Etc. Etc.
Are those the facts that citizens who believe Oswald acted alone rely upon?
Leslie, criminal cases are built around evidence. Direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, preponderance of evidence. Investigators also look at the individuals background and behavior leading up to the crime and after the crime. That’s consciouness of guilt. The facts you provided are evidence of guilt in addition to the paper trails for both weapons. At no time after capture did Oswald ever scream “you’ve got the wrong guy”. Indeed, Oswald told lie after lie as he had done throughout his life. Innocent people do not have to lie. As an example, he ommitted the Neeley street adress when asked to give adresses where he had previously lived. He realized Marina had taken the backyard photos there. The lying alone was consciousness of guilt. Together, the preponderance of evidence he was the shooter is overwhelming.
I agree that Oswald’s behavior looks suspicious, but that could be evidence that he had been used/recruited, he knew he was tangled up in something and it hadn’t gone as he had been told, so he was in a state of shock after capture and after being charged with killing the president. I don’t have facts here, but I think there’s a good thesis that can be made that he was as he said, “a patsy.” I would like someone to show us the facts about what we know about Oswald’s ties to intelligence, and what parts are just conjecture. That’s my honest feeling about Oswald—that he’s guilty by association with a broader conspiracy, but was set up to take the fall as the lone assassin.
Paul,
Conversely, there is at the very least circumstantial evidence to suggest that Oswald was ‘just a patsy,’ precisely his words. To discount the Hyde-Paine history as it related to Oswald, to discount deMohrenschildt’s role in his life and the connection Oswald had with the Dallas White Russian and/or Magnolia-Mobil Oil community, to disregard the fact that the Wynne dynasty secured Marina at Six Flags (the list is lengthy) is to contradict your own position – that all evidence, be it direct or circumstantial must be considered. This is only a partial recap of the context of Oswald’s adult life.
What Oswald said to reporters: I don’t know what information you people have been given, but I emphatically deny these charges.
And, moments later, I’ve not committed any acts of violence.
Here’s a couple of items that I’ve never been able to figure out. 1. Supposedly Oswald’s wallet, a brown bifold was found at the Tippet scene, it contained two seperste forms of identification, one was a drivers license, and another was some type of identification card that had a photo on it, but genuine cards of the same type never had a photo on them. Then going a step further on the same thing, when Oswald was brought to the Dallas police headquarters, he was searched and his wallet was found in his pocket.It was a black leather bifold with a couple of photos and a photoless identity card in the name of Alex Hidell.. No drivers license, because Oswald did not drive anywhere, he either took the bus, cab, or rode with friends. When he and Marina returned from New Orleans,Oswald went job hunting on foot and walked to several places that had adds for help wanted. I have been job hunting several times in my life, and have yet to find; even in small towns of less than 5,000 population with two places in walking distance of each other that were advertising for help wanted. And to go on foot and look for places would require having a street map which for Dallas Texas would most likely be about the size of a sheet of plywood , 4X8 feet. 2. Although Oswald was reportedly being paid $200.00 a month by the FBI,he had no bank account and supposedly got cash through his P.O. Box, and also got the rifle and Pistol at the P.O. Box . Now here comes the tricky part. The DPD first got the rifle and could not find any readable prints on it; then sent it to the FBI crime lab, which also could not find any prints on it. Then it’s sent back to the DPD who within hours found a palm print . But since Oswald was only initially finger printed, and was dead when the DPD found a palm print, they sent 2 cops to the funeral home to palm print Oswald,then the next day reported that the FBI lab must have overlooked the palm print ?? Altho the rifle was found to be ” Well oiled ” the paper it was supposedly wrapped in had no oil on it, and I can’t find anything indicating that the paper was checked for prints. Probably just an oversight !!
Leslie, What is the evidence that Dallas attorneys helped “devise the parade route” (which was selected, btw, after Oswald got the job)?
Oswald went to the boarding house before he shot Tippit, and Truly didn’t have that address.
Jean
Leslie the patsy statement in totality is harmless. Oswald himself said so. He believed he was a patsy only because he had lived in Russia. The other items you suggest was an individual living his life. Let’s assume for a moment Oswald was a patsy being manipulated by intelligence operatives. Oswald was destitute. Logically one could surmise he would have leveraged his position for Marina and family. Most likely Oswald would have been in a “safe house” so as not to spill the plan to others. Yet two weeks before he waited impatiently in line to get his drivers license before leaving without it. 36 hours before the killing he was in a wash-o-Rama doing laundry. There are those researchers who believe these actions show Oswald didn’t make the ultimate decision to kill JFK until the evening of 11/21.
Excellent points Jean, and thank you. I should have prefaced my comment with ‘metaphorically speaking’ because my issue was once again, context. However, whether or not Oswald shot Tippit before or after the boarding house quick change does not alter the fact that his actions were not those of a man fleeing the murder of the President but rather those of a very confused patsy. Why did he go into the theatre? Why did he go home at all? Why didn’t he hide? Why did he take a bus? And the ONLY reason Oswald immediately became a suspect was Truly’s confirmation that he was not present at roll call.
The parade route was influenced by Locke, Purnell. The fact that Osward had already been positioned with the depository company is all the more reason to question the parade route, not less of a reason.
“There are those researchers who believe these actions show Oswald didn’t make the ultimate decision to kill JFK until the evening of 11/21.”
That is patently absurd, and given your phrasing, I believe even you agree.
Regarding Oswald simply living out his life – amongst military contractors and family members of government operatives, in a city known for it’s rabid anti-communism and fear and hatred of John Kennedy – hardly the norm for a young guy, and possibly indicative of a perfect target for manipulation.
I’d like to repeat that quote, Paul:
>>
Duncan MacPherson, author of “Bullet Penetration” and considered the father of wound ballistics stated about the JFK case: “The major frustrating feature of the Kennedy assassination phenomenon is the willingness of people to pretend to talk authoritatively on subjects they know absolutely nothing about, especially things related to firearms.”
>>
MacPherson and other experts I’ve read (Martin Fackler, e.g.) seem to have no problem at all with the Single Bullet Theory, the condition of CE 399, or JFK’s backward movement on the Z film.
Jean
Jean,
I have not read your book. Will you briefly comment on your view of facts which reside outside of the ballistics evidence? Do you believe that Oswald acted alone, or could he have acted in tandem with other shooters, or could he have been a patsy? My apologies for not being familiar with your stance.
My book is long out of print, no reason you should be familiar with it. IMO, Oswald was guilty and never expected to get out of the TSBD alive; thus his actions afterward were improvised and disorganized. He went home to get his revolver, later ducked into the theater to avoid the police. He was arrested because Johnny Brewer spotted him acting suspiciously, not because of anything Truly did.
I’m still wondering what Locke and Purnell had to do with the parade route, but I’ll stop asking. Jean
Actually Jean, I knew about your book when it appeared on the scene.
It is my understanding that a meeting was held in their firm’s offices to discuss the route with the Secret Service. I also believe that former FBI agent Robert Strauss was involved all of whom would most certainly put a legitimate stamp on the route. I also know that firm partner Raine Talbot sat on the board of Dorchester Gas along with DH Byrd and Jack Crichton among others. If you know of any facts that contradict the allegation, please advise?
Leslie, You ask if I “know of any facts that contradict the allegation” that various people “discussed the route” or were somehow “involved.” I don’t even know what the specific allegation IS. Besides, I think the person who makes an allegation should back it up, not the other way around. The HSCA investigated the selection of the motorcade route. Its staff report starts here:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=83&relPageId=511
Jean
I’m Japanese assassination resercher.
In past,I write few books about U.S origin conspiracy theory.
I read your book few years before.
Very good book as “Conspracy of one”,
,”Disinormation,Misinformation and the “Conspiracy” to kill JFK”,”Live by sword” and many books.
Your comment about “BEST EVIDENCE” is especially humourous.
I read many gunshot wound book,but I can’t find “JFK case” parts from “Bullet Penetration”(second printing).
Please inform me a his comment article.
I see so many execution film by ISIS,backward movement are not a rare pattern.
But always conspiracy-beilever can’t find good example.
[Repeating prof. McAdams, word by word:]
“Oswald was guilty and never expected to get out of the TSBD alive”
==================
Care to explain in detail, how that was supposed to happen? In the mind of Lee?
I will get the ball rolling.
[Lee:] “I shoot the president with my 3 bullets and a SS from the ground spots me and kills me. I am sure those agents are trained to react, shooting into buildings from streets”.
or:
“Tully -as any good Texan- probably carries concealed, will run the stairs furious and kill me”.
“Yeah, those people are really good shooters (plus: they will not give a damn about interrogating me) and therefore I will not even bother to carry my revolver!!”
Jean, I have scoured the report – and thank you for the reference as I was most interested to read the section involving the controversy over the luncheon site once again. I had forgotten how specific the issues were between the conservative and liberal wings of the Democratic party, particularly in Dallas, and how adamant Connally was that the venue be geared toward a successful representation from the conservative business community as Kennedy was accused of being anti-business. That really says it all in my view. As to meetings held to discuss the route, I see no reference to meetings, at all. In fact I read uncertainty as to who actually made the final decisions, so for me there is little evidence to disprove the influence of Dallas business and their representatives on the route. I’m sorry, this source does not satisfy me but thank you for the attempt.
The Warren Commission fired ten M-C bullets into skulls to try to duplicate the damage in the President’s head and the fragmentation.
They failed.
Naturally they kept the results, except for one photo, from public view for years.
Howard Roffman discusses these tests in Presumed Guilty with video of his slide presentation at the Weisberg Digital Archive.
The SBT was tested for the Commission by Joseph Dolce. Another fail with the photos of the bullets withheld for years. McKnight recounts this history in Breach of Trust. Dolce discusses these results in the documentary, Reasonable Doubt.
The head itself is missing. Yep Heather you really got your facts straight, like so many of your conspiracy allies.
It appears to me that most of these posters have no real concept of the facts in this case, nor any desire to learn them. We have a well documented study on ER wound interpretation that proves that ” what did JFK’s doctors think about his wounds” is unreliable about wound specifics.
Then,when inconvenient facts are brought up some posters fall back on totally unrelated topics like Climate Change and public opinion. Now it has gotten to the point where it is racist to believe that Lee Oswald shot JFK- when after 50 years no CREDIBLE evidence has been proven to the contrary. NONE.
So Jeff I shall leave your conspiracy circle-jerk and leave it to the posters here who apparently have no other life, who will probably end up like Groden, a sad old man who sits on the Grassy Knoll pushing old and forgotten books to the uninformed, having wasted his life on a fantasy.
Photon will be back. [Cue the violins please…] Photon, I’m sorry if I offended you with comparisons of JFK conspiracy deniers to global warming deniers. Hey, if the suit fits, right? Also, for the record, I am not a racist. I was making a comparison to being IN the civil rights movement, at a lunch counter sit-in, as a black person being taunted with the n-word by rednecks, NOT as a redneck. Go back and read my analogy. Anyway, good luck to you sir–er, I mean madam. Whatever you are. I look forward to your new name in the posts to come.
PS—Although I disagree with your Warren Commission fairy tale beliefs, I enjoyed sparring with you, which is more than I can say for Paul May’s posts. Take care.
I assure you I take that as a compliment.
Good for you.
Yep all standard procedure in a murder investigation. Nothing to see here. Hilarious.
Yep a 1st year law student could have had this case booted.
1. So at first there were three shots but then you discovered that a bystander was wounded so there were still 3 shots but the caused how many wounds?
2. So you had 3 shots in how many seconds? And one missed wildly bit stilhe was able to hit a moving target. Wonder if the defence attorney hires his own sharpshooters to try to recreate that one. Also gets expert testimony to talk about the
odds of that miracle shot.
3. Did you offer my client the right to an attorney? Where is the documentation that he waived those rights. Oh, you destroyed all those notes?
4. Can I get all the x-rays, notes etc. No, much is missing. In fact the head itself is missing.
5. Can we examine the limo where the president was murdered. No, we had that cleaned while the president was still in the hospital and then completely rebuilt.
Heather,
I LOVE it! The point about the car, being “cleaned and rebuilt”—that’s another very telling example of destruction of evidence hinting at cover up.
Keep the posts coming,
JSA
In a court case Oswald would NEVER have been convicted. Missing evidence, being interviewed with no lawyer present. No evidence he ever waived his right to an attorney. In fact the police officer destroyed his notes!
But we will never know, but that has to be the worst murder investigation in history.
So then you had the HCSA who says that there was one shot from the grassy knoll that missed. Numerous witnesses who heard shots and saw smoke from the Knoll but they were all wrong. I laugh that this is even a debate.
The SBT is a fairy tale. Only invented when they were finally pressured to admit that mister sharp shooter not only missed the car but the whole street. Oh, let us invent a new theory then.
And amazingly some Americans still believe that fairy tale. It amuses me.
That’s right Heather….the WC was put under a great deal of pressure to do their SBT. And the pressure came from John Edgar Hoover at the FBI, because suddenly Hoover saw that the coverup wasn’t going his way.
Oh please Photon May so a doctor who said he looked at a head wound for 12 minutes could not tell if it
was an entrance wound or an entrance wound? Ridiculous.
Abstract, “Clinicians’ Forensic Interpretations of Fatal Gunshot Wounds Often Miss the Mark,” JAMA, 1993
QUOTE:
THE ODDS that a trauma specialist will correctly interpret certain fatal gunshot wounds are no better than the flip of a coin, according to a recent study at a level 1 trauma center. The study, which looked at single, perforating (exiting) gunshot wounds and multiple gunshot wounds, found that trauma specialists made errors in 52% of the cases, either in differentiating the entrance and exit wound, or in determining the number of bullets that struck the victim.
Investigators at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, compared the postmortem findings of a board-certified forensic pathologist with the medical records of emergency medicine physicians, trauma surgeons, and neurosurgeons. The study is the first to quantify the forensic acumen of these specialists, says Vincent DiMaio, MD, a forensic pathologist and editor of The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology.
UNQUOTE
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=405624
Jean
Jean,
So JAMA is in effect saying that the Parkland doctors couldn’t locate their own asses from a hole in the ground. Hilarious!
“The study, which looked at single, perforating (exiting) gunshot wounds and multiple gunshot wounds, found that trauma specialists made errors in 52% of the cases, . . .”
Does this mean that 48% did NOT make errors? and could the doctors in ER at Parkland fall into that category? This is a silly argument in my view.
I wonder if that report differentiated between wounds in different parts of the body? I could see confusion over wounds to the trunk. It just makes no sense to me that a bullet would make a huge entrance wound and a relatively small exit wound.
Question – what are the odds of a trauma specialist correctly interpreting the wound when the victim gets shot in the throat from the front? How about for a wound directly under the Adam’s apple?
That seems like a pretty simple wound to figure out. A bit different than, say, a wound to the midsection of the body where entry and exit wounds might be confused.
Side question: what are the odds of pathologists screwing up an autopsy when the murderers are telling them what to say? Have there ever been any studies done on this except in the JFK assassination?
In this thread I mentioned Governor Connally (I misspelled his name prior) being hit but as he stated for years afterward, not by the same bullet that hit President Kennedy.
At MaryFerrell.org you can read more about this, yet another weak link that poses a problem for Warren Commission (and by extension) Lyndon Johnson apologists, who backed the lone gunman story.
Here’s an excerpt from the webpage (http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Connally_Wounding):
“Among the many problems with the single bullet theory and Connally’s wounds in particular, there is also the issue of whether the metal fragments taken from Connally’s wrist and left in his leg could possibly have come from the nearly intact bullet CE 399. JFK autopsy surgeon Commander Humes told the Commission “I can’t conceive of where they came from this missile.” There is also some doubt about whether the fragments now in evidence (CE 842) comprise all that was removed from Governor Connally’s wrist.”
It’s pretty obvious, to me at least, that Connally and not Kennedy was hit because Greer hit the brakes. Another example of less than professional sniping. I think the shot came somewhere from the left of the limousine.
God forbid should I have a hole in my head that I’m not attended by a physician of my own political stripe.
What did the neurosurgeon say? “My God, the whole right side of his head is shot off,” Clark said. “We’ve nothing to work with.”
http://www.parklandhospital.com/whoweare/kennedy.html
Even putting the controversial back of the head blowout aside of a moment, there’s still a major problem for Warren Commission defenders. There is no doctor (including those in Dallas and Bethesda) or any witness who agrees with the “official” autopsy photos of the back of JFK’s head which shows an alleged bullet entry hole high on the back of his head. Autopsy doctors Humes and Boswell had placed the entry wound four inches lower. The high entry wound make a downward shot from the 6th floor of the TSBD at least plausible. But a low entry wound would actually be a back to front upward trajectory which could not have come from the 6th floor (as noted by comparing Z-313 with the inaccurate Rydberg drawing depiction of the position of the president’s head at time of fatal shot). The House Assassinations Committee “resolved” the issue” by getting Humes to admit he made “a mistake” in locating the wound lower–thus supporting a higher wound entry and fatal head shot shot from the TSBD. However, during his AARB testimony years later, Humes STUCK TO HIS ORIGINAL STORY, about most firmly believing the wound of entrance was in the lower skull where the autopsy doctors originally placed it. It would be a critical point for the defense in a trial, the mismatch between the doctors and photos. To my knowledge doctor Boswell never changed his mind from the original low entrance wound. The other point is the alleged chunk of 6.5 millimeter bullet fragment high up on the back of the head on the x-rays. In their 1996 AARB testimony, all 3 autopsy doctors denied seeing the alleged large bullet fragment on the x-rays in 1963. Dr. David Mantik has raised questions about the authenticity of some of this material.
5 mm is not a “large fragment”. David Mantik is neither a pathologist or a radiologist.
He gives radiation therapy and unsubstantiated conjecture.
Great, then consult the testimony of radiologist John Ebersole, who was present at the autopsy and said the back of JFKs head was missing when he testified to the House Assassinations Committee in 1978.
Ebersole has previously described the wound as being on the right side of the head.
Please document your claim of “the back side of the head was missing” and the context in which it was given.
A case study done by one of the top Medical Centers in the country published in a refereed journal found that ER doctor perception of gunshot wounds was wrong 52% of the time.
What more can be said?
Why go with percentages now, Photon? You just posted above that in your opinion, even if 100% of America thinks JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy, they’d be wrong. Show some consistency for God’s sake!
If 100% of Americans thought that Jews invented AIDS would that make it true?
Logic courses should be available at your local community college- try NOVA.
Why, because you graduated from Liberty College?
ER doctors are not forensic pathologists.
No, they’re just trained to look at gunshot wounds. They know what the back of a head blown out means, which is more than I can say for you.
Once again you use rhetoric which means nothing. Can you or can you not ever provide actual facts for anything at all?
Paul,
It’s clear from your equally sarcastic posts that you’re no angel either. So quit with the holier than thou b.s. I’m just shoving yours right back in your face.
They still can’t accept that published studies have shown that not just ER docs but Fellowship trained trauma surgeons are as likely to miss and mistake wound location and characteristics as they are to correctly identify them. Ergo, the whole question of what the Parkland doctors thought they saw is moot.
Photon,
I’m curious. Aside from the events and eye witnesses in ER at Parkland. how do you argue your position? Do you rely on the testimony of eye witnesses called before the Warren Commission?
For instance, do you rely on Howard Brennan’s testimony to support your argument that Oswald and Oswald alone murdered President Kennedy?
Brennan testified that he saw a man shooting from the 6th floor of the TSBD. He gave a description that matched the physical characteristics of the man who disappeared from the TSBD, namely Oswald.
It doesn’t stand alone, but confirms that someone was shooting from the window.
The Parkland docs have confirmed that the autopsy pictures agreed with what they saw,with the exception of McClelland, who changed his mind years after he agreed that the pictures confirmed his initial impression, and Crenshaw, who has admitted that his role in the ER was “minor”
Either way, studies have shown that ER physicians interpretations of wounds is often incorrect. That is why an autopsy is necessary to confirm the true nature of fatal wounds.
Photon,
You do not question Brennan’s testimony, a man who was at least 75 feet from the TSBD building, but you do question doctors who were with President Kennedy in the emergency room?
Jeff,
You must be the Wizard of Oz. Looking on this interchange.
I’m sure he’s not happy with the kids in his sandbox right now.
I agree with his initial statement: “by any standard, he [Dr. McClelland] is a credible witness.” I haven’t seen Photon or Mr. May refute that.
Jonathon says: “My advice: don’t feed the strays.”
Agree.
It is futile to respond to the silly games being played by Photon and Paul May. A few weeks ago I tried to answer one of Photon’s questions and received a ‘gotcha’ response that obfuscated the issue. Today I tried to address one of Paul’s issues, and got a dismissive reply from Photon and a glib non-response from Paul.
I’ll try once, then that’s it. Frankly, I’m open to an honest discussion of the low and high rear head wounds and how they reconcile with the large blowout that everyone saw. In five decades, I’ve never heard or read anything that credibly explained why three prosectors were unable to precisely locate a small bullet hole in the rear of JFK’s skull. After all, one of the photos shows the rear of Kennedy’s head to be neatly combed and completely intact.
The two posters mentioned above add nothing to the discussion. Morley should block them.
I’ve posted this several times. Jeff Morley has asked posters for factual information. The conspiracy advocates, as a group on this blog revel in speculation, conjecture and innuendo but rarely facts. As an example: disbelieving the SBT does not make it untrue. And yet nobody has posited an intelligent alternative. Why?
“…And yet nobody has posited an intelligent alternative. Why?”
Because even if we found a film showing Kennedy shot in the front of the head, you’d find some way to disbelieve it. Face it—you’re in love with Lyndon Johnson and you just can’t bear to see his political legacy dragged through the reality.
Firstly you have yet to post for this blogs members those you claimed in your list I attacked. I’m still waiting. You claimed I love Bugliosi. Now you claim I love LBJ. While I realize you are seeking confirmation bias from other CT’s, you’re embarrassing yourself and bringing down this blog. On the contrary, if hard credible proof of conspiracy existed I would accept it. Can you provide what hasn’t been revealed in 50 years and produce that?
I don’t embarrass easily, sport. Nice try.
I agree with Dr. McClelland, that JFK’s head was blown out from the rear. This indicates a shot from the front to his head. Can you accept that?
Show me YOUR proof that JFK was hit only from behind. It goes both ways.
This is the central problem with many posters here. They are ignorant of many central facts of forensics,intelligence agencies, ballistics and medical facts.
A film showing ” Kennedy shot in the front of the head” would show a wound to the front of the head, but not its trajectory,not its source, not its caliber, nor its path,nor its fate. To try to infer those things from a movie is to imply that you have no idea why an autopsy is necessary.
When evidence contrary to the conspiracy viewpoint is posted the same folks ignore it, demonize it, claim the poster is unfair or “attacking” them- but never with a clear fact in rebuttal. To this day I have yet to get a clear answer to the first question I brought up: why did Oswald leave the TSBD before anybody in the building knew that anybody had been shot.
As for the SBT the claims seem to be” it’s impossible”, ” no bullet could do that and be pristine” , ” the bullet could never hit Connolly”, etc,etc-all posted by people who have never fired a weapon, let alone a rifle firing a fully jacketed round. The bottom line is that firing tests HAVE been done that duplicate the path the SBT would have taken and have shown that the same 6.5 mm round could survive with minimal damage. The conspiracy side simply can’t accept proven facts. They remind me of the suckers who followed Peter Popov and Earnest Angley. Even when people revealed how these charlatans were doing fake healings and similar magic shows they still would come up with the” well you still haven’t proved that at least one of them could be real” nonsense.
Photon, I have fired guns, not an Italian surplus ww2 rifle, but many rifles similar. That doesn’t make me an expert, any more than it might make you one if you fired one (you’re a woman who got divorced, right ; D ? ). The discrepancy I’ve brought up is that Connelly had fragments in his body, more than the bullet pulled from the stretcher that was supposed to make the path through JFK and Connelly. You don’t have to be a forensics expert to ask how that can be. So again I ask, your point?
Bit of a chauvinist, aren’t we? You have no idea what the weight of the bullet fragments in Connolly’s wrist are. Radio graphically it is impossible to tell their weight. The consensus has been that they are postage-stamp weight.
Yeah, I’m Archie Bunker and you’re a pants suit wearing Gloria Steinham. har har
Connelly stated that he wasn’t hit by the same bullet that hit Kennedy. It’s on YouTube if you care to look for it. (Hey, don’t say I don’t offer first hand information).
I’d say to disbelieve the SBT is to show respect for the art and law of physics. What is the alterntive to THAT? Physics is Physics. The SBT was, and is, silly.
McClelland says here the throat wound depicted in the death stare photo is an accurate depiction. I’d question the doc.
Malcolm Perry made the trach incision. My personal observation of surgeons (on my own body and on others) is that they are minimalists. They seek to do the least damage. They are, in a sense, artists.
From what I’ve read, Malcolm Perry made a clean incision across the anterior neck wound. A tube was inserted into that incision to vacuum blood and other fluid out of JFK’s trachea. When the tube was retracted, Perry’s incision closed back upon itself.
Collins and Lantz.
Jonathan,
Parkland Doctors press conference here:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/press.htm
Perry thought the head wound could have been caused by a varminting round (interview with Weisberg, 1971).
In the November 22 press conference to which you link, Dr. Perry, who attended to the neck wound and did the trach, was unequivocal that it was a wound of entrance.
Conspiracy.
One more Jonathan: the WC tested their theory that Oswald’s rifle and M-C bullets could cause the head wounds and leave the many, tiny fragments found in JFK’s brain.
The results were negative so they were withheld from public view for years, as Howard Roffman discusses here:
http://jfk.hood.edu/multimedia.shtml#10
Speaking of doctors:
Kemp Clark, head of neurosurgery for Parkland Hospital, who declared JFK dead, wrote a summary of Parkland doctors’ observations. It’s printed in the Warren Report.
His typed report describes a large wound in the right parietal and occiputal region. Translation: right and back of the head.
It’s really too bad when a little blog where posters of the same stripe can come together and share views and information on the JFK assassination becomes infested with disruptive proponents of a different stripe.
My advice: don’t feed the strays. Jeff may not chase them away; but let’s not nourish them.
It is tempting to feed strays. They meow and ask for food.
Jonathan,
I probably wouldn’t make a very good civil rights demonstrator in the South, in the early sixties. If I were sitting at a lunch counter and a Photon or a Paul May came up to me and said: “Hey N—ger” get off the stool.” I’d probably punch them in the mouth.
And they would win, because I would be ejected from the movement.
I’ll try my damndest to ignore them. They seem to be like “common sense” as Jeff Morely said, just here to draw fire.
I’m a lousy pacifist, I admit.
Why the racist crap? If you don’t believe in a conspiracy you’re racist? What a pathetic insult.
Well,there you have it. If you can’t use logic or facts,call ’em a racist. Well, I guess I should make Aliyah and go after the Beta Israel.
Are you lonely after that divorce, Photon?
Don’t get your pants suit in a twist, Ms.
So 34 renowned forensic pathologists are wrong? And you are right? What credible witnesses saw his brain and actually examined it? The only people who actually fully examined his brain were the pathologists who removed it. The bullet entry wound is clearly visible on the autopsy picture of the back of JFK’s head. Nobody in Dallas even examined the back of JFK’s head because they never turned him over.
It is interesting how many autopsy experts there are here who claim to know what the procedures are for autopsy documentation and the significance of written schematic notes. If everybody is an expert why do pathologists have to go to medical school? Why do they have to do residences? I can accept and respect an opinion in this matter from Cyril Wecht. But his opinion as a forensic pathologist is a distinct minority in this matter.
“Nobody in Dallas even examined the back of JFK’s head because they never turned him over.”
Completely false. Doctor McClelland said he saw the back of the President’s head. They missed the back entry wound, but saw the throat and head wounds.
Why do you continue to spread this lie about the head wound Photon?
So a complete examination of the head is possible without turning the body over?
When is the last time that you ever heard of somebody with a neck injury not having a complete examination of the head and neck? He wasn’t even stabilized with a neck brace. Why? Probably because he was DOA and everybody knew it. Aside from a chest tube, the trach and a cutdown nothing surgical was done. Not even stabilization of the cervical spine.
And you expect us to believe that one physician examined JFK with anything more than a cursory look? Again I refer you to Collins and Lantz- an article that shows that ER perceptions of wounds are incorrect over 50% of the time. This study renders this whole topic moot- even trauma surgeons at one of best hospitals in the U.S. were as correct about the actual wound characteristics as would someone flipping a coin.
Now you’re just making obtuse inferences regarding what Drs. Crenshaw, McClelland, Perry and others at Parkland saw. Only in the JFK case can trained surgeons get attacked for stating the obvious, which is that the back of JFK’s head was blown off. ER perceptions??? Are you kidding me?
Photon, if you go to the hospital for a head injury, you should wait until you die, because only a pathologist can determine the extent of your wounds, not a doctor operating in the ER. You must die first for a proper diagnosis.
If a doctor would be operating on my head in the ER I would have grounds for malpractice-neurosurgery in the ER?
But to get to the point-if I or you or anybody else would show up in the ER in the condition that JFK was in we would have been declared dead on arrival .Even now if you get your BCLS certification you are told to keep doing CPR until told otherwise unless the subject is decapitated or has a massive head wound. If you don’t like the results of the quoted study,take it up with Duke. As that place is one of the top medical schools in the country I trust their results. Shouldn’t you?
But if you got shot in the head, don’t you think the docs in the ER would know which part of your head was blown out, and remember that before you went to the pathologist for an autopsy?
Or are you saying that the docs don’t know sh*t about gunshot wounds?
And why did the brain go missing, along with some of the autopsy photos?
As to your charge, Photon, that it was Jacqueline Kennedy’s request to move JFK’s body quickly out of Dallas. Can you show me where your proof is? I’m not sure either way on that charge, so you could be right, but I need to see your evidence of her saying this.
Vincent Bugliosi has stated it’s not surprising autopsy photos are missing. He said he’d be surprised if any weren’t. People involved in famous cases often take for souvenirs many items from the case. Hardly sinister. As for JFK’s brain, here is what the HSCA stated:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/brain.txt
http://www.reclaiminghistory.org/
Here you can balance your love for Bugliosi with a good criticism of his findings and methodology.
I like the following paragraph, because it shows that many well informed people seem to think there’s weight to the conspiracy thesis, which you rush to attack so consistently:
“Washington Post journalist Jefferson Morley, one-time BBC correspondent Anthony Summers, Norman Mailer, and the aforementioned David Talbot wrote: “The following people to one degree or another suspected that President Kennedy was killed as a result of a conspiracy, and said so either publicly or privately: Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon; Attorney General Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy’s widow, Jackie; his special advisor dealing with Cuba at the United Nations, William Attwood; FBI director J. Edgar Hoover [!]; Senators Richard Russell (a Warren Commission member), and Richard Schweiker and Gary Hart (both of the Senate Intelligence Committee), seven of the eight congressmen on the House Assassinations Committee and its chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey; the Kennedy associates Joe Dolan, Fred Dutton, Richard Goodwin, Pete Hamill, Frank Mankiewicz, Larry O’Brien, Kenneth O’Donnell and Walter Sheridan; the Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who rode with the president in the limousine; the presidential physician, Dr. George Burkley; Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago; Frank Sinatra; and ‘60 Minutes’ producer Don Hewitt.” One could assemble a list of thoughtful and well-known skeptics that is several times as long as this one.”
Are any of them trained in forensic science? How many of those thought that Oswald killed JFK?
What percentage of physicists at the turn of the 20th century believed in the ether in regards to light propagation?
The point is that it doesn’t matter how many people believe a falsehood; they can never make a falsehood true.
Again you engage in hyperbole. Quoting one of the most revered and successful DA’s in America who does know something about evidence means a lot. It’s admiration, not love. So, let’s see how honest you are. Show the members of this blog where I attacked (your word) any individual on the list you provided.
Paul,
Show me how the magic bullet worked, because unless you can show all of us here how it worked, your basic premise, that Oswald shot the president alone, is BOGUS.
“So 34 renowned forensic pathologists are wrong?” Yep. In fact, a million of them could get in wrong under the right conditions.
The JFK assassination cover up is not about degrees, credentials & expertise, rather it is a about the tyranny of power warping white into black, up into down, right into wrong. Highly educated people, masters in their professions, credentialed and acclaimed in their chosen fields will get down on their knees and lick the jackboots of fascism if the Tyrant in Power and the accompanying peer pressures tell them to. Think of the story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” to understand the appropriate psychology.
Then read “HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG Gary L. Aguilar, MD and Kathy Cunningham
May 2003”
Link: http://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong.htm
Photon, I need the names of those 34 forensic pathologists, please.
Paul May says:
>>Gerry, 34 of 35 renowned forensic pathologists on 4 separate investigations agreed 2 shots from above and behind hit JFK. That’s damn consistent.<<
But it's not quite that simple. Their conclusions were based on evidence that's controversial. For example, credible witnesses who saw JFK's brain said that the rear, right portion was extremely blasted (and missing). But the forensic pathologists based their findings (in part) on the characteristics of a brain that had sustained very little damage . . . to the right front. Thousands of pages have been written about this, and credible witnesses have disclaimed the 'official' version of the brain damage.
It is also troubling that the autopsy doctors apparently were unable to correctly locate the 'entry' wound in the back of JFK's head when they had the skull right in front of them. It isn't remotely conceivable that a small, distinct bullet hole in part of the skull that was supposedly undamaged would be difficult to locate. But the Clark Panel and HSCA had to move the wound approximately four inches higher to make the shot align more closely to the 'necessary' trajectory.
(We could also talk about the "damn consistent" consensus for the Gulf of Tonkin Lie and the Iraq WMD Lie, but that would be off topic.)
Nor is it that complicated Bill.
It’s NOT complicated. The president was struck from the front and the back in a crossfire. The doctors at Dallas saw the head wound, which was massive and in the back of his head, indicating a bullet hitting from the front. The body was then flown to Washington, where a secret autopsy was performed, and the chief pathologist, under military orders barked at him, was told what to look at and what not to. He later burned his notes. A lawyer was hired to try to persuade everyone that a single bullet magically did all of the damage to Governor Connelly after it had exited through the President, yet it emerged almost completely intact, yet fragments of it still remained in Governor Connelly. Connelly said this a number of times, what he knew of his own wounds. Warren Commission apologists don’t like discussing the single bullet or the conflicting testimony of Dallas doctors, because it’s “inconvenient” for them. So they try to smear the doctors instead.
Yes, JSA, and Humes himself told the Warren Commission that C.E. 399 could not have wounded Connally, because there were too many fragments left in Connally’s body.
Humes himself, lead autopsy prosector, flat out told Arlen Specter the SBT was B.S.
when did Boswell examine Connolly?
When did Humes weigh the bullet?
I’m glad Humes said that to Specter.
JSA,
Please do not feed the strays.
Please don’t ask questions that you may not like the answers to.
Speculation, conjecture. Assumes facts not in evidence.
“Speculation, conjecture. Assumes facts not in evidence.”
Yeah, that pretty much sums up your position, Paul. The first step is awareness. The next step is a reevaluation of your flawed bias.
Re JFK head wounds:
I’ve been studying Humes’s and Boswell’s autopsy testimonies and materials. It appears to me Humes was trying, best as he could, to tell the truth. Before the Warren Commission, before his testimony becomes muddled, he tells Specter there were two head wounds: a wound of entrance in the occiput and a 13 cm diameter hole in the right lateral vertex (top and back of head). He does not characterize the hole as either a wound of entrance or a wound of exit; nor does Specter ask him to do so. The extant autopsy report description by Humes is consistent with his W.C. testimony.
Oh, and BTW. This testimony blows the SBT out of the water.
It establishes three shots to JFK (back shot, two head shots) + the Tague-wounding shot. The SBT becomes irrelevant.
Agreed. The SBT no longer holds up to objective, rational fact-based analysis. It’s a myth that just doesn’t hold water any longer. It’s frankly laughable how the WC apologists have tried to make the SBT bend to their agenda of one lone gunman.
James Tague is INSISTENT that he heard an early “firecracker” shot – the one that missed everyone & another shot almost hit him. That is 2 missed shots in addition to everything else.
The interviewer doesn’t correct the doctor when he repeatedly says that the “missile crisis was in ’61”. It was in 1962. Also, I find it interesting that he characterized Dr. Crenshaw as having a “creative imagination.” I’m thinking Crenshaw may have embellished a bit, with the help of Shaw in his book. But the bottom line is, these doctors saw the back of the head blasted out, which directly contradicts the Warren Commission story. Despite some closed-minded dissenters (deniers) like Paul May, who seems to believe in the Commission findings, I find this testimony to bolster further the conspiracy angle.
I remember in 1992 when JAMA attacked Dr. Crenshaw, which he subsequently went on to winning a substantial lawsuit against, anyway he was featured on an ABC program & I distinctly recall the interviewer asking Dr. Charles Baxter one of the half dozen main Doctors at the time treating JFK, about the throat wound, and Baxter said ” it could have been either an entrance or exit”, not much of a refutation of Crenshaw.
I don’t think Dr. Crenshaw LIED. I think he may have embellished, or his co-author may have. But the fact of the matter is, Kennedy had a large part of the back of his head blown out (from a shot coming through his right front temple), the doctors saw this, Perry pointed to it on TV in a press conference that day, etc. You can’t erase that as the Warren Commission apologists have been attempting (but failing) to do. In this sense, I also find Crenshaw’s account to be valuable. I own and have read his book, and I remember the night he was interviewed on ABC TV, in 1992. I had it videotaped.
JSA- I agree with what you say & this is where we’ve got most of the lone nutters over a barrel. They can argue that the DP ear witnesses could be mistaken, or the ZFilm is some sort of neurospasm(which I certainly don’t believe)& produce someone with big time credentials to say so, but common sense(did I actually use that term) tells you anyone or two people no matter their level of professionalism could be wrong, but the nurses, FBI Agents, Doctors that all corroborate each other and especially the 2 afforementioned Doctors just can’t all be wrong on a wound extending into the right rear of the head. No way period.
When one has that many witnesses of such variety and all saying the same thing, that is when one should legitimately consider that the x-rays and photographs were forged, faked or manipulated in some way.
Especially, if one considers that the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson were having a sub rosa war in the fall of 1963. Not to mention the rotten character of both LBJ & Hoover and their hatred of the Kennedys.
I do keep coming back to LBJ & Hoover because they were so close & the were the 2 queens on the chessboard orchestrating the cover up of JFK’s murder.
Collins KA, Lantz PE
J Forensic Sci 1994 Jan; 39(1) 94-9
I think that is one of the strongest indications of conspiracy we have. Dr. McClelland’s credentials as well as Dr. Crenshaw’s are impeccable. When he says he looked at the back of the head wound for some ” 12 minutes from 18 inches away” How could he possibly be wrong? In his famous sketch for Josiah Thompson’s Six Seconds In Dallas from 1966, even if you were to say the drawing was an inch too large, high or low, we still don’t see that wound in the extant autopsy pictures.
“How could he possibly be wrong?”
Exactly. Anyone telling me or you that the doctor’s professional observation of something so blatantly OBVIOUS means that they are either lying to you and me or that they are not capable of processing reality.
Collins KA, Lantz PE
J Forensic Sci 1994 Jan;39(1) 94-9
If eyewitness medical testimony so valid why are autopsies legally mandated in every homicide?
If Texas law states that for murders in the state, an autopsy must be done on the body before it can leave the state. Why wasn’t the autopsy done in Dallas?
Because Jackie Kennedy and JFK’s closest advisors needed to get the body out of Dallas so they could cover up the fact that they all conspired to kill him. They also needed to get out of Dallas so they didn’t have to pick up the tab for the casket Oneal brought in.
Photon, your fictional comedy writing surpasses any kind of non fictional intelligent analysis. The problem is, fictional comedy doesn’t bolster your case in favor of the Warren Commission.
Your first sentence is…yes, a “factoid” Photon. You need some cream with that coffee.
Well, you wanted a reason why an autopsy wasn’t done in Dallas. Since the body was removed at the insistence of Mrs. Kennedy and his closest advisors they are responsible for sabotaging Dr Rose’s plans for an autopsy in Dallas- nobody else.
But tell me,what exactly does that have to do with validity of eyewitness ER bullet wound interpretation versus autopsy results?
“Since the body was removed at the insistence of Mrs. Kennedy and his closest advisors they are responsible for sabotaging Dr Rose’s plans for an autopsy in Dallas- nobody else.”
Did Mrs. Kennedy pull out a semi-automatic and threaten to shoot if necessary to get the body out of Parkland? When did she find the time to learn how to shoot, what with her duties as First Lady, her horseback riding, and her historical restoration work?
She didn’t need to learn to shoot or hold a gun. The Secrect Service removed the body displaying both pistols and automatic weapons.
Dr. McClelland sounds as if he was being very cautious, trying to stay out of the red hot politics of the assassination, but unwilling to lie about what he saw firsthand. So he says “I know what I saw.” He won’t speculate about who or why, just keep his professional medical viewpoint on the record. Really however, that is all researchers need to make the case that the Warren Commission line doesn’t hold up to the facts, especially regarding the rear of Kennedy’s head being blown out, according to this doctor’s (and for the record, Dr. Charles Crenshaw’s) testimony. Dr. Perry pointed to his right temple at the press conference that day, seeming to indicate a shot that struck the President from the front, exiting the back as well.
I think Dr. Crenshaw hit the nail on the head when he said that because of outside pressure from above (the new president, Lyndon Johnson, who called the ER after Oswald was shot to get a deathbed confession), the Parkland doctors were strongly advised (if they wanted to keep their careers) to keep their mouths shut and not contradict the Warren Commission’s findings the following year. This is consistent with a political conspiracy. It doesn’t get much clearer than that!
Consistent with a political conspiracy? No idea what that means. There is nothing consistent within political assassination. Unfortunately we again have a witness (albeit a doctor) whose testimony is at odd with the scientific and ballistic evidence. Authenticated x-rays and photos dispute McClelland’s version of events. Same old story for 50 years now. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Explain to me your ballistic and scientific evidence. And can you elaborate on how you think the ‘magic bullet’ did it’s fantasy damage?
The doctor was just trying to tell the truth. It sounds like you don’t find his eyewitness testimony to be credible. Denial ain’t just a river.
There is absolutely no point in again reviewing the physical evidence on this thread. It’s all about interpretation and bias. Regarding witness testimony, I find none of it reliable pro or con. In criminal cases, medical and ballistic evidence trumps witness testimony every single time. There’s a reason for that.
Except that a doctor’s eyewitness account holds considerable weight in this case. Answer this, and be honest: Doesn’t your reluctance to even consider Dr. McClelland’s testimony (regarding the back of Kennedy’s head blasted out) mean that perhaps it is YOU who are biased?
The doctors at Parkland saw the wounds before the autopsy teams. With all the secrecy involved in Bethesda and at Walter Reed, and with two caskets, how can you be certain that the wounds of the President, if not tampered with, weren’t at least photographed and sketched in such a way later to conceal the massive wound in the back of the head that the Dallas doctors said that they saw? Again, were these doctors mistaken or lying? I find that hard to believe.
Lol. How convenient.
Not if the authenticity of the physical evidence is called into question.
Not if the opinions of experts have been challenged or debated by other experts.
Not if any evidence has never been subject to cross-examination in a REAL trial by a competent defense attorney or evaluated by an objective jury.
Hello Paul
We might like to think that medical and ballistic evidence trumps witness testimony every single time but it’s not actually the case. Research has shown that juries make decisions based on which side, prosecution or defence has the most consistent narrative to tell. And the reasons for a juror believing in one particular narrative over another will be based on their own individual bias.
http://www.unc.edu/courses/2010spring/psyc/433/001/tutorials/obrien.html
So care to tell us what your underlying bias might be?
This is a very reasonable request…and I find closed minded statement, such as those of Paul May’s to be infuriating. We have known for some fifty years that there was something “rotten in Denmark” about the WC conclusions, and–by now–know quite a bit about the nefarious developments on that horrific day in Dealey Plaza.
“Authenticated x-rays and photos” … the x-rays were probably forged and there are many missing autopsy photos, probably because they show a huge blow out wound in the back of JFK’s head (and that would imply a shot from the front).
Read Doug Horne’s books on the medical evidence in the JFK assassination: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_sabc?url=search-alias%3Daps&pageMinusResults=1&suo=1366735943948#/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=doug%20horne&sprefix=doug+hor%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Adoug%20horne
Probably forged is NOT hard, credible proof of forgery. When will you learn that making accusations is not evidence? You, more than most have this inane habit of using words such as “probably”. As for Horne, not only is he not a medical professional but as his own boss on the ARRB, one Jeremy Gunn has said when asked if he’s read Horne’s analysis: “I read very little of what Doug Horne writes.” Personally, I don’t bother with those endorsing body alteration. I read Assimov for science fiction.
Paul,
You don’t have to hurl insults. In fact, please don’t.
“Probably” in the mind of any juror is enough to raise reasonable doubt.
(Jerry Custer testified to the ARRB that he taped three fragments to the back of the head for an x-ray at the request of SSA – this was shown on a recent documentary, JFK: The Smoking Gun. It also confirms Dr. David Mantik’s analysis of the head X-Ray using a densimeter).
The Burden of Proof is on the prosecution, not on those proposing reasonable doubt. All of the ‘credible’ evidence that you site is problematic at least. O.J. Simpson was acquitted over the gloves and mishandling of ONE BLOOD DROP. Charles Manson (who had NO credible evidence against him) was convicted on the testimony of ONE WITNESS (who if she had been silenced, he would be on the streets a free man). Hundreds of witnesses have been murdered and intimidated in this case and hundreds of pieces of evidence are questionable in this case. as Captain Fritz said “we never could put Oswald in that window firing the gun”. Give it up, the Government CANNOT prove it’s case against LHO.
“Authenticated x-rays and photos”
Right-O. Check with ARRB testimony of:
— Saundra Kay Spencer (photos)
— Jerrol Custer (x-rays)
— John Stringer (photos)
Presidents autopsy should have been performed at the Hodpital he eas prnounced dead.This is in keeping with State and Federal law then and now.The fact that the president was moved rapidly away from Parkland suggest some firm of cover up.The liability of the hospital is at risk when a coroners case expires death inless than 24hours in that same hospital the patient received treatment. THE ARGUMENT ITSELF SUGGEST A COVER UP. FROM THE BEGINNING PROTOCOL IS BROKEN,.This question of direction of the bullet is clear if you listen to the treating physcians then deny their credibility by denial of the autopsy at this same hospital.If protocal had not been broken the results of treatmen and conclusion of the autopsy findings would not be an issue.LBJ got in way over his head.by making outrageous decisions.
Gerry, 34 of 35 renowned forensic pathologists on 4 separate investigations agreed 2 shots from above and behind hit JFK. That’s damn consistent. One cannot honestly state “all of the so-called evidence is blurred”. It’s blurred depending on ones personal biases and world view of how events occur.
No, it is blurred depending on how blind your faith is in the magic bullet, and in somehow reconciling that Governor Connelly had traces of bullet in his arm from supposedly the same shot (magic bullet shot necessary for your case) that remained relatively pristine. You want to talk about blurry vision or Asimov science fiction? Give me a break.
Are you a Cass Sunstein shill? No one with a brain to study the facts buys the government propaganda.
The CIA killed JFK with “trickery and deception”. THEY DID IT WITH “POLY-METHAL METHA-CRYLITE”,…BETTER KNOWN AS “PLEXI-GLASS”. I . My book (TROJAN HORSE: the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy) will show you how it was done. I rest my theory on 21 years of research. CIA’s a pretty slick bunch!!
For a compilation of errors these august experts made, errors no one needs the MD I have to understand, see my essay, “HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG.” http://www.history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_tabfig.htm
The prism through which these credentialed authorities looked at the evidence is the best explanation for how and why they made so many errors. And while error tends to be random, sometimes going one way, sometimes the other, the med-autopsy errors of the Justice Dept, the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission and the HSCA tended to all fall on the anti-conspiracy side. That speaks to that “prism.”
Gary
Dr. McClelland seemed to indicate he had more to say about a conspiracy (when he was talking about Oswald he said he wanted to get back to that) but not much was said later. I had the impression he had quite a bit on his mind that wasn’t explored. The interview ends abruptly, has he elaborated elsewhere on his conspiracy thoughts?
The time at which it took the throat shot to hit Gov. Connolly is perplexing. 2.5 seconds or so. It would have had to hit him in the same or, at the most, the next frame of the film, which it doesn’t, and that alone blows the Warren commission report out of the water. Because the Warren Com. even said it would have taken too much time to be 2 shots from one gun. It took about 40 frames to see evidence of the Gov. being hit. In a different video, Gov Connoly, recovering in the hospital said, “I was not hit with that bullet. I turned when I heard shots and saw JFK grabbing his throat before being hit myself”. Which the film corroborates. Never mind all the other facts.
The radio recordings and witness reports seem to correlate with video and Connoly’s report. First shot probably hit Kennedy’s neck, second hit Connoly and right after that one another blasted Kennedy’s head. Two things that doesnt fit are Kennedy’s lower back wound (not a shockwave crack because Kennedy’s shirt in the back also had a hole in the same place) and Tague being hit by a bullet shrapnel or ricochet. That would make at least two more shots, with the third one, the loudest one a set of shots in the same time simultaneously. Now the medical first responder reports were not only destroyed but later also “recreated” differing from the previous. Which didn’t happen later during the autopsy there were already lots of military and internal security officials on the place and the autopsy was guided by unidentified personnel from the gov. During Clay shaw trial one of the colonels pushed had to admit that he was forbidden dissecting the neck wound. That would imply that the neck would came from the front, just as gov Connaly reported. Conally offered the most bright and detailed recollection of events that occured on that day.
Hmmm? The throat shot was obviously from the front, so any connection with the governor makes no sense. But, then, most folks have their throat in the anterior aspect of their necks. Trying to move the “back” wound up to the neck (done by Gerry Ford) was a criminal act–obstruction of justice–as far as I’m concerned.
DrTCH, I fully agree with you about what Ford did. Damn shame he would go on to become VEEP and POTUS.
JSA,
I share your view of McClelland. He is cautious; and I think in large part it’s because of his role as physician. He says over and again, he didn’t think about his thoughts or feelings in Trauma Room 1; he just reacted — because that’s what he was trained to do. He wasn’t there to do some sort of analysis.
Jonathan,
That’s why I find Dr. McClelland’s testimony to be so credible. He saw what he saw from a professional trained to see wounds. He didn’t have any agenda. He’s just telling the truth.
Insults? Exactly what insults have I hurled? Jeff Morley made the following statements about this blog:
In seeking to expand the range of informed debate about the events of 1963 and its aftermath, JFKFacts.org welcomes comments that are factual, engaging, and civil.
I believe Mr. Morley is requesting that this blog not be turned into what virtually every forum on line has become.
“You, more than most have this inane habit of using words such as “probably”.”
And beyond that, why is the use of the word “probably” inane? Seems a like a good call to me, as in the x-rays were probably forged, altered or tampered with, especially in light of about 20-30 direct eyewitnesses who saw a large gaping wound in the back of JFK’s head and the x-rays don’t show that.
“Inane” or perhaps “insane” would be sucking your thumb and believing what Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, John McCloy, Gerald Ford, David Belin and Arlen Specter told you about who murdered John Kennedy and why.
every forum on line has turned to people seeking the truth? There are many people that seek the truth and not necessarily what the government feeds them.
Let this talk by Doc. Mclelland and how he saw Parry being pressured to switch his testimony be added to the record.
http://www.colonyleader.com/articles/2012/01/28/news_update/7891.txt
The Parkland physicians clearly saw cerebellar tissue when they looked at the large gaping head wound. A first year medical student can easily tell the difference between cerebellar tissue and hemispheric cortex. This is only one of several things which tell me that something was amiss in the final WC report.
An entrance wound in the right occipital area could not account for this.
In addition, there is a trail of bullet debris in the superior aspect of the right hemisphere – which could in no way account for the identification of cerebellar tissue, because the cerebellum is far inferior to the trail of debris.
I think that there had to have been at least two shots to the cranium, one from anterior and one posterior.
I’ll differ with some about the movement to the left – I think that this was indeed a “neuromuscular” reaction. A seizure emanating from the right frontal lobe will cause the right arm to abduct and the body will turn to the left – you can clearly see JFK’s right arm abduct (elevate at the shoulder, with the elbow flexed). But this cannot be used to tell from which direction any of the shots came – whether anterior or posterior. It could happen with any sudden trauma to the right frontal lobe.
I think that Mantik may be right that there is evidence of 3 shots – but I’m convinced that there were at least 2.
Read William Matson Law’s interviews with the autopsy personnel if you have any doubts.