Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK- Part 2

One of the worst sections of Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? is the manner in which it deals with Kennedy’s autopsy. This is one of the most vulnerable parts of the Warren Commission Report, and also the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) report. In fact, according to Doug Horne of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), HSCA chairman Louis Stokes asked the Board to review that aspect, since no one was happy with what the HSCA did with it.

The producers seem to know they have a serious problem here. So they decide to make excuses for what happened at Bethesda Medical Center. Chris Connelly says the procedure was rushed due to Bobby Kennedy. This was denied by Kennedy’s pathologist, Thornton Boswell, under oath before the ARRB. He specifically said they were not rushed or in any hurry. The hospital Commander Calvin Galloway said that no orders were coming into the autopsy room from outside. Third, Bobby Kennedy “left blank the space marked ‘restrictions’ in the permit he signed for his brother’s autopsy.” (Trauma Room One, by Charles A. Crenshaw, pp. 179-180)

One of the most serious problems with the autopsy was the fact that chief pathologist James Humes burned his notes. ABC understands what a violation of procedure this is, so they go with Humes’s excuse that Kennedy’s blood was on the notes and he did not want them to fall into the wrong hands and become a souvenir.

The problem with this is that Humes did not just burn his notes. He also burned the first draft of his autopsy report, which he made at home and therefore could not have had Kennedy’s blood on it. (AP report of 8/2/98, by Mike Feinsalber) Further, Humes had lied about this act in November of 1963. Then he certified in writing that he had only destroyed preliminary draft notes, but not any other working papers. (Harold Weisberg, Post Mortem, p. 525)

Third, Humes was asked about this excuse by the Review Board’s attorney, Jeremy Gunn. Gunn astutely asked him about the Boswell notes and face sheet. They also had blood on them. Humes took possession of them, so why did he not burn these also? Humes could not think of any reason for the inconsistency except that Boswell’s notes were not his. But the blood was Kennedy’s on both; no souvenir hunters for Boswell’s notes? (ARRB deposition, 2/13/96) We will never know for certain why Humes burned the notes and his report. But as we will see, and the program tries to conceal, there does appear to be more malignant reasons than just blood drops.

Humes did his incinerating shortly after Oswald was killed, knowing there would be no trial. (Russell Kent, JFK Medical Betrayal, p. 31) And that is just the beginning.

II

Dale Myers says that conspiracy theorists claim the autopsy was completely botched and you had amateurs performing it. He then says, “None of that is true.” Well, Dale, let us quote from a forensic pathologist who is not a conspiracy theorist: “Where bungled autopsies are concerned, President Kennedy’s is the exemplar.” That is from Dr. Michael Baden, who defended the Oswald did it story for the HSCA. Exemplar? Does it get much more categorical than that? (Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, p. 5)

As per the medical qualifications of doctors Humes and Boswell, neither of them was a certified forensic pathologist. And they knew this, since they themselves wanted civilian forensic pathologists there. That request was denied. (John Lattimer, Kennedy and Lincoln, p. 155) Milton Halpern, the most illustrious forensic pathologist of that era, said that choosing Humes, who had taken one course on forensic pathology as the lead autopsist, was “…like sending a 7 year old boy who had taken 3 lessons on the violin over to the New York Philharmonic and expecting him to perform a Tchaikovsky symphony.” (Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. 384; Myers was the ghostwriter for this book)

Humes told the Warren Commission that his type of practice had largely been done in peacetime. Therefore, it had mostly been in the field of natural disease and not violent death. The violent deaths he dealt with were accidents and suicides. His only exposure to forensic pathology was a one-week course completed 10 years prior to 1963. (Kent, p. 26) Boswell was Chief of Pathology at the National Naval Medical School, but he was not an active pathologist at the time of JFK’s autopsy. (ibid., p. 27)

The one doctor who was a forensic pathologist, Pierre Finck, was 30 minutes late and took notes and made suggestions but ”…mostly watched while Humes and Boswell did the manual work.” And we should note, Finck’s notes went missing after. (Crenshaw, p. 177)

One of the weirdest parts of ABC’s weird special then ensues. Someone named Dr. Michelle Dupre comes forth. She is a retired Medical Examiner and a forensic pathologist. She makes some comments about the JFK medical case. She talks about the difference between entrance and exit wounds; exits should be much larger. She says that when bullets strike hard surfaces, they should be deformed. She then says that one of the bullets came in at the back of the neck. Which is wrong. We know from the autopsy photos that Kennedy’s wound entered in his back.

Further, her comments on exits and entrances are stunningly problematic in this case. And it is hard to believe that no one involved with the program noticed it. Why? Because, as almost every commentator on the medical aspect of this case knows, the back wound was larger than the neck wound. Before Dr. Malcolm Perry cut a tracheotomy over that neck wound, he said it was very small, with neat edges, clearly a wound of entrance; other doctors at Parkland Hospital thought so also. (Kent, pp. 21-22) The wound in the back was measured at 7 x 4 millimeters. (ibid., p. 28). Further, the wounds in the clothing, the jacket and shirt, are 15 and 10 mm long, respectively. The back wound was 7 mm wide, and the throat wound was about 3-5 mm originally. (Stewart Galanor, Cover-Up, p. 26) Therefore, going by DuPre’s logic and those measurements, the front neck wound would be an entrance, and the back wound would be an exit.

Let us never forget the following, which ABC left out of this program. In 1965, Pierre Finck himself revealed that, “I was denied the opportunity to examine the clothing of Kennedy. One officer who outranked me told me that my request was only of academic interest.” (Memo from Finck to General Joe Blumberg, 2/1/65) This is one of the many procedural failures in this autopsy caused by interference--not from the Kennedys--as Mr. Connelly wants us to think, but by the military presence at the autopsy. Did Dale Myers forget about this?

III

DuPre is pictured reading the autopsy report and saying that it’s correct, two bullets from behind. Which is kind of shocking. Why? Due to another matter that neither Myers, Connelly, DuPre, nor anyone else brings up: neither wound in Kennedy was dissected. If you do not do this fundamental practice, how can you determine directionality, or even if a bullet transited the body? Dr. Henry Lee, the leading criminalist in America, told Oliver Stone and myself that it should have been done in this case. Does DuPre know about this failure?

Now we will see even more interference, and again, it’s not from Bobby Kennedy. At the New Orleans trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, Dr. Finck made a remarkable disclosure. He said that Humes was not actually in charge of the autopsy. Humes was being so badgered that he stopped and asked, “Who’s in charge here?” An Army General replied with: “I am.” Finck then added:

You must understand that in those circumstances, there were law enforcement officials, military people with various ranks, and you have to coordinate the operations according to directions. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 300; italics added)

This directly relates to another point brought up at the Shaw trial. Finck had to be asked 8 times why he did not dissect the back wound. The judge had to order him to answer. Again, Finck replied that he was told not to do so. (ibid., p. 302) Another point should be added about Finck’s trial testimony: he tried to imply that he had seen the autopsy photos before he signed the report. He had to take this back at trial; he had not. Again, does DuPre know any of this?

But that is not all. Kennedy’s brain was not sectioned. Again, because JFK died due to a head wound, this should have been done. For the same reason that the back wound should have been dissected: for purposes of transit and directionality. And this directly relates to another matter that DuPre glides over: the nature of the rear skull wound. She simply describes where the doctors located it. ABC decided to ignore the facts of its size and characteristics. It was about the size of a baseball, and it was an avulsive wound. Meaning it appeared to be an exit. (Crenshaw, pp. 196-98; 200-202)

The HSCA lied about this key point. (Vol. 7, p. 37) They said that there was a disagreement between the doctors who saw the body at Parkland vs the ones who saw it at Bethesda. They said the Bethesda set failed to observe this massive, gaping wound. When the ARRB declassified the HSCA files, this was exposed as a deception. Because just as many witnesses saw this wound at Bethesda as at Parkland. (See the essay by Gary Aguilar in Murder in Dealey Plaza, pp. 197-200) About 21 witnesses in each location saw the hole in the right rear of the skull. And it was avulsive, some even saw cerebellar tissue extended out. In other words, with over 40 witnesses in unison, that rear skull wound was a textbook demonstration that a bullet came in the front.

IV

Incredibly, there is no mention that not only was the brain not sectioned, but it was also not weighed the night of the autopsy. Again, these are both grievous violations of usual protocol, which Myers and everyone else on the program ignore. The excuse for not sectioning, as given in the supplementary autopsy report, was to preserve the specimen. As the late Dr. Cyril Wecht commented, “For whom? For Jacqueline Kennedy’s mantelpiece? For the president’s grandchildren? For a museum? Preserve it for whom?” (James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited, p. 161)

When the entry weight was finally entered, it was 1500 grams. Which is about 140 grams above the norm. (DiEugenio, JFK Revisited, pp. 160-61) With as much damage done by the projectile to Kennedy’s head as we see, this is very hard to comprehend. What makes it more difficult to buy is this. The official photographer of JFK’s autopsy was John Stringer. When he was examined by Jeremy Gunn of the ARRB, he ended up denying that he took the photographs of Kennedy’s brain that are in the National Archives. It was the wrong film and the wrong photographic technique, among other points. (See Stringer’s deposition of 7/16/96, pp 219-26)

Again, if the brain was not sectioned and forensically examined, if it weighs more than it should, and if the official photographer denies he took the pictures, how can DuPre make a declarative statement? Should she not be asking: Then who took the official pictures? And why was someone else needed?

Both DuPre and Brad Garrett, their former FBI investigator, mention problems with the condition of CE 399, popularly called the Magic Bullet. Garrett says you would have thought it would have fragmented more, and that makes it an interesting aspect of the case. Well, I guess so: if it went through two people, seven layers of skin, and smashed two bones. And the show more or less leaves it at that. It shouldn’t have.

For instance, Dr. Milton Halpern found it incomprehensible that CE 399 could have thrashed around in “all that bony tissue and lost only 1.4 to 2.4 grains.” (Marshall Houts, Where Death Delights, pp. 62-63) Dr. Robert Shaw, who operated on Governor Connally, thought the same. He thought there was more than three grains still in John Connally’s wrist. (Warren Commission, Vol. 4, p. 113) Dr. Joseph Dolce, who worked for the Warren Commission and was a distinguished battlefield surgeon, agreed. Except he went further and said that the bullet should have been significantly deformed—it is pretty much intact-- since it smashed two bones in Connally. (JFK Revisited, p. 30, p. 140)

The other question to ask is this: why did the bullet that hit Kennedy’s head fragment, yet CE 399 did not? That bullet split into three parts, leaving a 6.5 mm fragment in the rear of Kennedy’s skull, and plentiful dust-like fragments in the front of the brain. (Ibid., p. 169) Yet nothing like that happened with CE 399.

All of this, and much more, has led many to believe that there is a serious chain of custody problem with CE 399.

V

Chain of custody, as explained by Brian Edwards and Henry Lee in the film JFK Revisited, refers to the integrity and credibility of evidence. Evidence must remain consistent and identifiable from the crime scene to the police headquarters to the courtroom. If not, then the defense can successfully challenge its admittance before a jury. We have already seen how the pictures of Kennedy’s brain would not be admissible since John Stringer denied taking them. The same test would apply with the Magic Bullet.

First, as author Josiah Thompson demonstrated with his 1967 book, Six Seconds in Dallas, there is a serious question about whether or not the projectile was discovered on Connally’s stretcher. And it would have to have been if the Single Bullet Theory is to have any validity. After a long, illustrated analysis, Thompson clearly demonstrates that the distinct probability—not possibility-- is that the Magic Bullet was really found on the child Ronald Fuller’s stretcher, not Connally’s. (Thompson, pp. 154-66)

Then there was Thompson’s interview with the security supervisor at Parkland Hospital, O. P. Wright. Wright was the witness who passed off the bullet to the Secret Service. There is no record of Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission interviewing him. Therefore, Thompson was the first person to show him a photo of CE 399. Wright said this was not the projectile he gave to the Secret Service. (ibid., pp. 175-76) And he took out a sharp-nosed projectile—CE 399 is rounded at its tip-- from his desk as an example of what his bullet looked like.

Once the exhibit arrived in Washington, it was given to James Rowley, head of the Secret Service. Rowley gave it to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd. Todd wrote a note that said he was in receipt of the bullet at 8:50 PM. (Warren Commission Vol. 3, p. 428; Commission Document 320) Here is another problem. Because in FBI technician Robert Frazier’s journal, he lists that he got the bullet from Todd at 7:30 PM. And he did the same on another inventory list. (How could he be in receipt of CE 399 before it got there? (John Hunt, ‘The Mystery of the 7:30 Bullet” at JFK Lancer.com)

Finally, there was an FBI document contained within Commission Exhibit 2011. It stayed that on June 12, 1964, FBI agent Bardwell Odum showed the projectile to Wright, and he said it appeared to be the same bullet. But there was no FBI field report, termed a 302, to certify this. This puzzled Gary Aguilar and Thompson. They decided they should look for and talk to Bardwell Odum. When they did, it was a shocker. He denied ever taking any bullet around for Parkland Hospital employees. And since he knew Wright, he would have recalled doing so. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 284) Therefore, it appears the FBI fabricated an identification. Like Specter, did they know that Wright would not back their story? With a chain of custody like this, CE 399 would never be admitted into court.

And Specter knew this. In a belatedly revealed interview that writer Edward Epstein did with Specter, the writer asked the lawyer why the Secret Service reconstruction did not conclude with the Single Bullet Theory. Specter replied, “They had no idea at the time that unless one bullet had hit Kennedy and Connally, there had to be a second assassin.” When Epstein asked how he convinced the Commission to go along with that idea, he said: “I showed the Zapruder film, frame by frame, and explained they could either accept the single bullet theory, or begin looking for a second assassin.” (James DiEugenio review of Assume Nothing, at Kennedys and king.com)

It was never a matter of evidence. It was one of necessity. And there is not a word about this said by ABC.