For reasons beyond my grasp, the first image in each chapter sometimes
fails to appear. If there's nothing up above, don't despair; you can still see the image here
Warren Commission Exhibit 388/Zapruder Frame 312 Comparison
While the early critics of the Warren Commission focused on discrediting the single-bullet theory, and using the location of the back wound on the clothing and face sheet to achieve this goal, Josiah Thompson exploded on the scene in 1967 and questioned the official interpretations of the head wounds as well. Among the many arguments in Thompson's breakthrough work Six Seconds in Dallas was one that was particularly convincing. Thompson placed frame 312 of the Zapruder film, the last frame before Kennedy's skull exploded, on the same page with the Warren Commission exhibit depicting the supposed path of the bullet through Kennedy's skull, CE 388. The effect was devastating. From a comparison of these two images it was obvious that Kennedy's head was bent further forward in the drawing than in the film and that, when the drawing was corrected to the actual forward tilt of Kennedy's head, the path back from his exit wound through his entrance wound led to the rear trunk of the limousine, a long, long way from the supposed sniper's nest. This proved that either the bullet fired from above and striking Kennedy low in the back of his head suddenly and illogically exploded upwards, or that the entrance wound was not as reported.
With perspective, it’s easy to see that there was something suspicious about the head wounds from the beginning. To prepare for their testimony before the Warren Commission, the doctors were told to prepare drawings depicting the trajectory of the bullet through the President’s skull. They did this by verbally describing the locations of the entrance and exit on the skull to medical illustrator Skip Rydberg, who then drew Kennedy bent over in the manner required so that his wounds could be connected by a straight line from above and behind. This drawing became Exhibit 388. What is wrong with this scenario is that the Warren Commission had blown up prints from the Zapruder film at their disposal, and Rydberg could have been given these in order to make his drawing as accurate as possible. Instead, the ever-wiley Specter flashed Dr. Humes the prints of Zapruder 312 and 313 in the middle of his testimony, after 388 was already entered into evidence, and asked him if the prints depicted Kennedy’s head in “approximately the same position” as it had been in 388, to which Dr. Humes replied “yes, sir.” As if to drive home the Commission’s lack of concern for accuracy, Commissioner Dulles continued in this vein moments later by asking Humes, who was never swore in as a photographic expert, by the way, if the posture of Kennedy’s head was “roughly the inclination that you think the President’s head had at the time,” to which Humes responded, again, with a “yes, sir.” Amazingly, there is no evidence anyone on the Commission thought to compare the drawing to the photos themselves.
Dr. Finck’s Warren Commission testimony was also a bit strange in this regard. As the wound ballistics expert on the autopsy team, his testimony was needed to shore up that the bullets came from above and behind. As the drawings presented by the doctors depicted the back wound much higher than the exit in the throat, it was not hard for him to say as much regarding those wounds. As the skull entrance was, by the doctors’ own admission, lower than the exit at the top of the skull, however, there was no way he could reasonably assert that the fatal bullet would have to have come from above. When Finck testified that the exit wound was “so large that we can only give an approximate angle. In my opinion, the angle was within 45 degrees from the horizontal plane,” Specter immediately saw that this opened the door for a shot from someplace other than the sniper’s nest, even someplace on the ground. He immediately interjected “Is that to say that there was a 45 degree of declination from the point of origin…” to which Finck ultimately responded “I think I can only state, sir, that he was shot from above and behind.” This echoed the autopsy protocol’s over-zealous statement that “the projectiles were fired from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased.” On what purely medical basis could these claims be made? If one ignores the eyewitnesses, the Zapruder film, and the rifle found in the school book depository, none of which belonged in the testimony of a doctor unfamiliar with such evidence, there was no reason for Finck to say the fatal bullet came from above. That Finck himself was uncomfortable with his testimony on this point can be inferred from the fact his report to his superior officer General Blumberg stated simply “I testified that Kennedy was shot from behind.”
But the lack of evidence indicating that the shot came from above didn't stop it from becoming part of the official myth, mind you, or the script repeated ad nauseum by Warren Commission defenders. In late 1966, as a response to Mark Lane's best seller Rush to Judgment, former Warren Commission Counsel Wesley J. Liebeler took to the lecture circuit, defending its work. An October 19, 1966 article in the L.A. Times, however, suggests that, in its defense, Liebeler, a UCLA Law Professor, was willing to assault the truth. Liebeler was reported to have told 650 students at a Stanford University law forum that "autopsy X rays of assassinated President John F. Kennedy showed 'all shots' fired at him were 'from behind and above.'" Well, this was utter malarkey. The X rays gave no indication whatsoever that the shots were fired from above. No one testified to as much; in fact, Dr. Humes discussed a trail of fragments leading from low on the back of the head to high on the head, suggesting the exact opposite. So what was Liebeler talking about? Not only had the radiologist present at the autopsy. Dr. John Ebersole, not been asked to testify before the commission, but the doctors who were asked to testify were prevented from reviewing the X rays beforehand. Such was the secrecy regarding these X rays, in fact, that the doctors were not even allowed to study them while writing the autopsy report. By October, 1966, moreover, NO ONE had studied the X rays beyond looking at them in hopes of finding missing bullet fragments. One can only conclude then that Liebeler was either grossly misquoted, or desperately making stuff up. I propose we suspect the latter.
Still, until Thompson’s book came out few people noticed
that the head wound trajectory was as questionable as the single-bullet
theory. Afterward however, even the government
noticed. Even though it had been barely
a year since the autopsy doctors had signed a report saying the wounds in the
drawings matched the wounds in the autopsy photos, a secret panel put together
by Attorney General Ramsey Clark Panel re-reviewed the photos and x-rays,
supposedly at the urging of the autopsy doctors themselves. (Dr. Boswell's
testimony before the ARRB suggests he was manipulated into making the request).
This panel, which made tremendous mistakes in the placement of Kennedy's wounds while confirming the single-bullet theory, also "found" a wound of
entrance high on the back of Kennedy's head that had apparently been missed by
everyone who saw the President in Dallas
and Bethesda, including the autopsy
doctors. This new "find" made Thompson's comparison irrelevant. That
this was not just a coincidence is confirmed by the words of Clark panelist
Russell S. Fisher, who told the Maryland State Medical Journal in 1977 that
Attorney General Ramsey Clark had seen the proofs of Six Seconds in Dallas,
which included a comparison of Warren Commission Exhibit 388 and Zapruder frame
312, and that the Clark panel report was released "partly to refute some
of the junk" in the book. Ironically, their way of refuting
Thompson's comparison of CE-388 and Z-312 was by confirming he was right and by
declaring instead that their esteemed colleagues, Humes, Boswell and Finck were
badly mistaken as to the actual location and measurements of the entrance wound
on the back of Kennedy's skull, and were off by almost 4 inches! Even more
amazing, Fisher told the Maryland State Medical Journal that this was only a
“minor error.” What the??? One ponders what Fisher would consider a "major error" in such circumstances.
In any event, the Clark Panel's findings were written on February 26 and 27, 1968, but not made public until January 16 of the next year. The print media’s ineptness and distaste for the whole matter is revealed in their headlines regarding the release of the new report, e.g. “JFK Autopsy Facts Bared; Findings Claimed Correct;” “Autopsy Report Backs JFK Data.” I have yet to find one newspaper article about the release of this report that mentioned the amazing migration of the head wound.
Incredibly, it was more than 3 years before this news was reported. This second series of articles was written as a response to an address by Dr. Russell Morgan, the Clark Panel's radiologist, to a conference of fellow radiologists, and indirectly confirm the role of Thompson's book in the formation and conclusions of the panel. The article below was found
in the August 20, 1972 Galveston Daily
News. This was but a few days before Dr. Cyril Wecht was to become the first Warren Commission critic to view the autopsy materials. Perhaps someone wanted to beat him to the punch.
EXPERT SAYS 4-INCH ERROR LED TO FALSE SPECULATIONS IN JFK DEATH DENVER
(AP) — A leading medical expert says a four-inch mistake by a
pathologist who examined the body of John F. Kennedy after he was shot
to death in Dallas produced a series of false speculations about the
assassination.
Dr. Russell H.Morgan
said the bullet actually entered the president's skull some four inches
higher than initially reported, but the Warren Commission's detailed
report on the assassination failed to clarify that point.
Morgan, dean of the
medical school at Johns Hopkins University, is the only radiologist to
examine the X-ray photographs of the slain president's skull. In an address to the
34th midsummer conference of the Rocky Mountain Radiological Society
here, he gave X-rays the credit for finally revealing the pathologist's
error and disproving many of the more extreme speculations spawned by
the mistake, which is included in the Warren Commission report.
(NOTE: MORGAN, AS THE LONE RADIOLOGIST ON THE CLARK PANEL, IS HEREBY TAKING CREDIT FOR THE PANEL'S RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE HEAD WOUND.)
Morgan's four-year investigation of the photographs and the Abraham Zapruder film of the assassination
led him to several conclusions, he said.
(NOTE: MORGAN LOOKED AT THE X-RAYS IN EARLY 1968. THIS RAISES THE QUESTION OF WHETHER HIS "FOUR-YEAR INVESTIGATION" BEGAN WHEN HE LOOKED AT THE X-RAYS, OR BEGAN DURING THE TIME OF THE WARREN COMMISSION, AND CULMINATED WITH HIS INSPECTION OF THE X-RAYS.)
The most important finding was that one of the pathologists who examined Kennedy's body in Washington the night of the assassination erred in saying the fatal bullet entered the "occipital protuberance," or the bulge at the lower section of the back of the skull.
(MORGAN SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT THIS LOCATION WAS CONFIRMED BY ALL THREE DOCTORS AT THE AUTOPSY, AS WELL AS THE AUTOPSY RADIOLOGIST AND PHOTOGRAPHER. HIS BLAMING IT ON ONE DOCTOR IS INACCURATE BUT POSSIBLY INNOCENT. HIS PANEL, AFTER ALL, WAS NOT FURNISHED ANY REPORTS ON THE AUTOPSY MATERIALS BEYOND THE ORIGINAL AUTOPSY REPORT, AND CHOSE NOT TO CONFER WITH THE AUTOPSY DOCTORS, WHO WERE EXPECTING THEIR CALL.)
This statement, which Morgan said later proved to be false, was included in the Warren report. Critics of
the report immediately noted a major inconsistency between that alleged entry point and several features
of the Zapruder film which showed a frame-by-frame sequence of the shooting. Critics said the film showed
the president's head in a near vertical position when the bullet hit and also showed him lurching backward,
leading to speculation the bullet came from the front.
(THIS IS A REFERENCE TO JOSIAH THOMPSON'S COMPARISON OF Z-312 WITH CE-388, WITH Z-312 SHOWING KENNEDY TO BE MORE VERTICAL.)
The angle of the bullet became controversial. Some contended it couldn't have been fired from Lee Harvey
Oswald's rifle in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and entered the skull where the
pathologist said it did. Morgan said Friday the Warren Commission, which named Oswald as the assassin, made no effort to explain the
contradiction, allowing it to provide controversy for several years. When he was given two days to examine the X-ray photographs, Morgan
found them of poor quality, severely over-exposed. Of the 14, he said, only three were of the head wound. He said one had pencil marks on the negative itself showing "where somebody thought the bullet had gone."
(THIS IS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE ARTICLE. HERE, MORGAN COMPLAINS ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE X-RAYS. THIS IS QUITE SURPRISING IN THAT THE CLARK PANEL'S REPORT DESCRIBED THE PURPORTED ENTRANCE WOUND IN THE COWLICK IN FAR MORE DETAIL THAN ANY OF THE SUBSEQUENT REPORTS ON THE X-RAYS, INCLUDING THOSE WRITTEN AFTER THE X-RAYS HAD BEEN ENHANCED BY A COMPUTER.)
The penciled line
corresponded to the mistaken pathologists' conclusion that the bullet
entered the base of the skull and exited at an upward angle out of the
right of the forehead. But Morgan said he found the actual entry, wound was 120 millimeters away from the penciled line, more
than four inches
higher on the back of the head.
(THIS CONFIRMS THAT MORGAN NEVER DISCUSSED THESE LINES WITH DR. EBERSOLE. EBERSOLE LATER TESTIFIED THAT THESE LINES HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BULLET'S TRAJECTORY, BUT WERE IN FACT CREATED WHEN HE MEASURED THE PROPORTIONS OF THE PRESIDENT'S SKULL, SO THAT AN ACCURATE BUST COULD BE MADE.)
The lurching of the president's body backward, he said, was caused by
body spasms after the massive
wound was inflicted.
(THIS IS PURE SPECULATION ON MORGAN'S PART, AND SUGGESTS THAT BY 1972, AND PERHAPS EVEN BEFORE, HE WAS NOT A DISINTERESTED DOCTOR STUDYING THE EVIDENCE, BUT A SINGLE-ASSASSIN THEORIST OUT TO ARGUE THAT OSWALD ACTED ALONE.)
Morgan said the Zapruder film, the ballistics tests, the projected line of fire and the angle of entry of the fatal bullet all were consistent with the explanation that a single shot fired from above and behind killed the president.
(THIS SUGGESTS AGAIN THAT THE PANEL'S OBJECTIVE WAS TO REFUTE THOMPSON, WHO PROPOSED THAT THERE WERE TWO NEARLY-SIMULTANEOUS HEAD SHOTS, ONE FROM BEHIND AND ONE FROM THE FRONT.)
"The Warren Commission's diagnosis was correct," he, said, "even though the evidence cited was inconsistent."
Wounds of Contention
Such was the Justice Department's own skepticism of the accuracy of the
Clark Panel's report (and its not-so-quiet assertion of incompetence on the part of the autopsy
doctors), however, that Carl Eardley, who'd been working with the doctors on their
reviews and reports for years, and who'd been one of the driving forces behind
the Clark Panel, and who almost certainly knew its findings, asked Dr.
Boswell to participate in the autopsy of Dr. Martin Luther King. This was April 4, 1968, but 5 weeks after the Clark Panel had viewed the autopsy materials, and had questioned the competence of Boswell and his colleagues. Boswell, to his credit, refused. While one could make the argument that Eardley remained ignorant of the Clark Panel's findings until after it had been written up, reviewed, and signed, and that the last signature on the report was dated April 9, that still doesn't explain why Boswell's equally discredited colleague Dr. Finck was allowed to participate in the autopsy of Senator Robert F. Kennedy two months later, with no objection from the Justice Department. This also fails to explain why, even after the release
of the panel's report, both Finck and Boswell were asked to help the government
in the defense of Clay Shaw, and defend the Clark Panel's findings. Unless the government failed to fully trust the Clark Panel, there is a huge question as to why the government
would continue to use Boswell and Finck as experts long after the Panel, in an official government
report prepared on behalf of the Attorney General, had made them out to be total incompetents. For how else can one describe a doctor who mistakenly records a head wound high
on the back of a man's skull as low on the back of his skull, creates a face
sheet and autopsy protocol affirming this location, and then confirms this
location again after reviewing the man’s autopsy photos...TWICE?
Of course, the Justice Department was not alone in pretending that one could both claim the original autopsy was authoritative and that the head wound location was incorrectly recorded, and off by 4 inches. They had plenty of support from an unsurprising source...former counsel for the Warren Commission. In May 1975, former Warren Commission counsel W. David Slawson and Richard M. Mosk wrote an article for the L.A. Times arguing that any re-investigation of the assassination be restricted to the behavior of the FBI and CIA, and that there was no need to re-investigate the actual crime. In this article they made the amazing claim that "The evidence concerning the wounds conclusively dispels the idea of shots from the front...The wounds both slanted downward from Kennedy's back. This is clear beyond doubt from the autopsy and from the photographs and X rays of the body...to doubt the evidence of the wounds is to label as liars the doctors who examined the body, the pictures and the X rays for the commission."
Well, this was disgusting nonsense. Pure horseshit... 1) The wounds did not both slant downward. The head wound, as originally interpreted, slanted upwards. The wound was then re-interpreted, and re-located. 2) Claiming that doubting the medical evidence is to label the autopsy doctors as liars is hypocrisy at its worst. Did Slawson and Mosk forget that the government itself doubted the interpretations of the autopsy doctors, and embraced a review of their work in which it was declared they incorrectly located the fatal head wound? If not, then why did they not only not denounce this outrage, but embrace the review themselves, by claiming the head wound slanted downward? Or were they so deluded they believed the head wound had always slanted downward? 3) Slawson and Mosk knew DAMN WELL that the doctors were forbidden from examining the pictures and X rays for the commission, and their pretending they were not is offensive. No, more than offensive. The rapid fire assault on the truth by these men, in fact, leads me to label them as liars...and Big Fat liars at that.
While one might assume from all this that the Clark Panel, in their zeal to refute Thompson, made a BIG mistake in moving the head wound, and that the Justice Department believed them to have made a BIG mistake, the HSCA, which corrected the Clark Panel's misrepresentation of the back wound when compared to the neck wound, nevertheless confirmed the Clark Panel's new and improved location for the head wound.
This movement of the head wound is still largely hidden from the general public. In 2006, former detective Mark Fuhrman wrote a much-publicized book, A Simple Act of Murder, in which he investigated and dismissed the single-bullet theory using arguments similar to those provided in the previous chapters. He concluded, nevertheless, that Oswald acted alone. Fuhrman mentioned in passing that the HSCA forensic medical panel, after viewing the autopsy photos and x-rays, concluded that the entrance wound was “four inches higher than originally believed by the Warren Commission,” but offered the excuse that the Warren Commission had not actually seen the autopsy materials. This disguised both that Justice Warren admitted viewing the materials and that the entrance wound used by the Warren Commission had been measured on the body and repeatedly confirmed by the autopsy doctors after viewing the autopsy materials. Fuhrman’s treatment of the head wounds was thus shallow and deceptive.
HSCA Ida Dox Drawings
With the re-opening of the investigation by the HSCA, there was great optimism that this time the medical experts would get things right and not present the American people with anything as misleading as the Rydberg drawings. But this was not to be. When one compares the HSCA’s drawings of the damage to the President’s skull with the HSCA’s drawing of the back of the President’s head taken from what is purported to be an actual autopsy photo, it is easy to discern that something is wrong. While the first depicts an explosion of bone fragments from the back of the head, the drawing from the autopsy photo depicts this portion of the head as intact, with the only area missing bone a line of fracture from the top of the President’s head down towards his right temple. While the argument could be made that the first drawing depicted bones from the back of the head blown out of the hole by the temple, the testimony of the autopsy surgeons reflected that the skull high on the back of the head near the new Clark Panel-determined in-shoot, although badly fractured, remained beneath the scalp. It makes little sense then that the skull fragments exploding from just in front of the entrance in the cowlick in the first drawing represent fragments which the second drawing demonstrates came from the front half of Kennedy's skull. That the drawing depicting the fragments fails to depict the blown-out “wing” of bone near Kennedy’s temple, which is clearly evident on the autopsy drawing, is yet further testament to its inaccuracy.
So how did this inaccurate drawing come to be? Helpfully, HSCA medical illustrator Ida Dox testified “a skull was used that had the dimensions of the President’s and the photographs of the retrieved bone fragments were traced to get the outline. This paper was cut out along the outline and taped on the skull in the position that the x-rays indicated there was bone missing, and from this paper and skull reconstruction I made my drawing.” Sounds pretty scientific. Unfortunately, the aforementioned x-rays in fact showed there was plenty of skull left towards the back of the head, and that the recovered fragments must have come from somewhere closer to the wound of exit near the President’s right ear.
This is no simple mistake, mind you. This is a real whopper. From this one can only conclude that the HSCA medical panel, and its chief spokesman Dr. Michael Baden, were fairly clueless, that they were deliberately trying to deceive, or that they were both fairly clueless and deliberately trying to deceive.
I'm leaning to the last one. While it’s true that soft-nosed bullets are designed to gradually peel back as the bullet traverses flesh, as this gives the bullet more stopping power, full metal jacket bullets like the ones purportedly fired from Oswald’s rifle are designed not to break-up at all. As a result, it takes a tremendous impact to break-up such a bullet. The bullet striking Kennedy was shattered and scattered. While many have argued that this break-up could have occurred as the bullet crossed the brain, they ignore the fact there was minimal damage to Kennedy’s mid-brain, and no reported bullet fragments along the Warren Commission's proposed path from the entrance observed at autopsy to the large defect presumably of exit. This pretty much destroys the bullet trajectory as outlined by the Warren Commission, and suggests that the Clark Panel and HSCA were correct in searching for a higher entrance.
But not so fast. There are also problems with their new proposed entrance location. Since the damage to the upper brain started just left of the newfound entrance in the cowlick and led straight across the skull to the forehead, and since the expected trajectory through Kennedy would have been an ever-widening cone of fragments centered around an outshoot above the temple, the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel should have suspected that something was not quite right. I mean, why didn't any of the fragments from this ever-widening cone embed within the brain on a level below the trajectory from the sniper's nest?
Apparently, someone asked this question. And had no answer. It seems more than a coincidence that not one HSCA exhibit depicts the break-up of the bullet as it traversed the skull from its entrance near the cowlick. Curiously, the drawings used by the HSCA to depict beveling on the skull, the analysis of which led both the autopsy doctors and the HSCA to conclude the fatal bullet was fired from behind, depicted an intact bullet like those used in Oswald’s rifle entering and exiting a skull, even though, according to the HSCA’s own findings, no such thing occurred. This is undoubtedly confusing.
There is reason to suspect, then, that Exhibit F-66, made to the specifications of Dr. Michael Baden, was a deliberate deception. But what about the tracing of the autopsy photo? Was that a deception as well?
Now You See it! Now You Don't!
When the HSCA forensic pathology panel showed Dr. James Humes a photo displaying what they believed was the actual entrance hole on the back of the head, the small oval shape in the cowlick, Dr. Humes, who’d led the autopsy of President Kennedy and had repeatedly asserted that the hole was near the President’s hairline, responded “I don’t know what that is. Number one, I can assure you that as we reflected the scalp to get to this point, there was no defect corresponding to this in the skull at any point. I don’t know what that is. It could be to me clotted blood…it certainly was not any wound of entrance.” While Dr. Humes’ irritation was spurred no doubt by the Clark Panel’s decision to change the location of the entrance hole, when one compares the HSCA drawing of the autopsy photo to the original autopsy photo, there’s reason for us all to be irritated, even outraged.
One source of anger comes from looking at the mark in the cowlick, which was repeatedly re-drawn to look more like a bullet entrance by medical artist Ida Dox, at the request of pathology panel spokesman Dr. Michael Baden. At a 2003 conference on the assassination, Dr. Randy Robertson showed the audience a 5-9-78 memo from Baden to Dox found in the National Archives. This memo was a photocopy of a page from Dr. Spitz's book Medicolegal Investigation of Death, with a drawing of a typical entrance wound. Beside the drawing, Dr. Baden had written "Ida, you can do much better." Apparently, Dox's early versions of the "bullet hole" were still too close to the original photo, and made the "bullet hole" appear more like the “clotted blood” Dr. Humes described, than the bullet hole Dr. Baden wanted to be there.
This proved to be a big problem..for Humes. HSCA counsel Andy Purdy told the ARRB that, after Humes made his comments, Dr. Charles Petty took him outside and yelled at him. And that was just the beginning. In his book Real Answers, HSCA Counsel Gary Cornwell admits that, as a result of Humes' failure to agree with the new and improved entrance location, he was all set to treat Humes as a hostile witness and aggressively question him on the witness stand about his many mistakes and inconsistencies. Cornwell explains that a still unnamed doctor warned Humes of this plan. Still, his plan was susccessful. A year after Dr. Humes called the supposed entrance in the cowlick "clotted blood" he testified that he had been mistaken and that he now thought it was the entrance wound described in the autopsy report.
That Humes was pressured into acting as though he'd changed his opinion, when he never really had, is demonstrated by the strange fact that by 1992 he’d changed his mind back.
The other two autopsists never even pretended to change their minds. Humes’ colleague
from the autopsy, Dr. Boswell, never wavered in his opinion
that the entrance location was in the general area of the brain matter low on
the skull. Not surprisingly, he was never called before the committee. The third autopsist, Dr. Finck, was interviewed by the medical panel on March 11 and 12, 1978 and put under tremendous pressure to change his interpretation of the entrance wound's location and agree with the panel that the real wound was in the cowlick. Apparently they felt that Finck, as a forensic pathologist, would be more understanding of their plight, and more agreeable to their points of view. In any event, in a section of the interview conveniently left of the official transcript, and only found on the tape, Dr. Weston kept asking Finck if it was possible there'd been some sort of transcription error when the autopsists reported that the wound was near the EOP. Finck admitted that yes, it was possible. Dr. Baden then pounced and told Finck that the wound in the cowlick in the photos was determined to be 15 mm by 6 mm--the same size of the wound measured at autopsy. He also told Finck that the x-rays showed an entrance wound exactly where the mark is in the cowlick. (Neither of these assertions was true or repeated in the the panel's final report.) Baden then remarked that everything mentioned in the autopsy report pointed to the wound being in the cowlick. (This is absolute nonsense.) At this point, Dr. Wecht and Dr. Petty disavowed Weston's and Baden's "cross-examination" and "badgering" of Finck. Ultimately, Finck held firm and said he believed the wound was as measured
at autopsy, and beneath the white glob of matter in the autopsy photos. No surprise, he was also never called before the committee. Radiologist John Ebersole, autopsy photographer John Stringer, and Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman, who also claimed to have seen the small wound low on Kennedy's skull, were also not called before the committee. This means that Dr. Humes was the ONLY autopsy witness or participant to say the cowlick mark in the photos was the entrance wound, and he said so exactly ONCE, while under duress, in the ONLY testimony of an autopsy witness before the committee, and rapidly retracted it afterward.
But that's not the only reason to believe the autopsy's description of the entrance wound was correct, and that the Clark Panel and HSCA's proposed entrance "dried blood" of some sort. When one considers that the hole described in the autopsy report is 15 mm x 6 mm, a proportion of 2 ½ x 1, and that Humes' handwritten version of the report further notes that this entrance was "tangential to the surface of the scalp", and then considers that the hole or clotted blood in the cowlick is almost round, and is, at most, 1 x 1 ½, and a through and through hole, then it should be clear that the shape in the cowlick is not the entrance wound described by the doctors. When one considers further that NOT ONE witness of the dozens interviewed who saw the President after the assassination in Dallas and Bethesda recalled seeing an entrance wound in this cowlick location, moreover, this fact should be startlingly clear. Crystal.
So what happened to the wound described by the doctors? While in the Dox Drawing there seems to be no trace of a bullet entrance anywhere near the splash of gray matter (where the autopsy doctors placed the entrance), on the original photograph there appears to be a small hole just above and to the right of this matter. I suspect this is the entrance hole observed at the autopsy. That this hole was added to this never-officially released photo by someone from the research community is refuted by the simple fact that no one from the research community has ever acknowledged its existence, and that this shape is indeed apparent on the Dox drawing, once one notices it in the autopsy photo.
Well, why hasn't anyone noticed this before? That an entrance hole in the hairline vindicating Humes’ testimony runs counter to three of the most widely held conspiracy theories on the assassination, i.e. that the bullet striking the President in the head came from the front and exited from the back of his head, that the autopsy doctors were, of necessity, party to the conspiracy, and that the autopsy photos were altered to hide an exit hole in the back of the head, could very well be a factor in many a conspiracy theorist's failure to notice the hole. But there are many single-assassin theorists out there on the constant lookout for anything that will support the findings of the original autopsy. Why can't they see it?
Well, perhaps they haven't spent as much time looking at these photos as I. I studied the photos for a year or more before I noticed the hole.
And there's also the possibility that--dare I say it--I have a heightened ability when it comes to interpreting certain kinds of images. I recall a gator watch on the bayou during a vacation in New Orleans. There were roughly 25 people on the boat. Out of the roughly 20 gators spotted by this group, I was the first to spot 12-15 of them. I have no idea why. People on the boat were laughing, and accusing me of being some sort of ringer, or of having Superman's eyes.
Above or Below?
Only adding to my suspicion that the dark shape on the autopsy photo is the entrance observed at autopsy is that when one compares the dark shape with the entrance location marked on a skull by the autopsy doctors, they nearly overlap. While the autopsy report and the marked skull depict the wound as being slightly above the EOP—the external occipital protuberance, the bump at the back of Kennedy’s head--and the photos indicate it was slightly below, the doctors were inconsistent in their testimony as to whether the entrance was above or below. During Dr. Humes’ discussion with the HSCA, for example, he told them that after looking at the autopsy photos he now believed the wound was slightly below the EOP.
So why couldn’t the doctors from the autopsy successfully point out the low entrance wound when shown the autopsy photos by the HSCA in 1978 and The Assassinations Records Review Board (The ARRB) in 1996? After all, they’d found it twice before. Twice…
As already discussed, when the Kennedys turned the autopsy materials photos over to the National Archives, the Archives arranged for Dr. Humes, Dr. Boswell, the autopsy radiologist John Ebersole, and the autopsy photographer John Stringer to catalogue the photographs and x-rays and create a Report of Inspection on November 1, 1966. This was the first time the autopsists had been allowed to see the photographs. Their report, signed November 10, 1966, describes photos 15 and 16 as “depicting a wound of entrance in right posterior occipital region” and transparencies 42 and 43 as “color prints of the missile wound in right occipital region.”
Similarly, on the January 26, 1967 report prepared for the Justice Department, Humes, Boswell, and (a rushed-back-from Vietnam ) Finck assert that “the autopsy report states that a lacerated entry wound measuring 15 by 6mm (.59 by 0.24 inches) is situated in the posterior scalp approximately 2.5 cm (1 inch) laterally to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberance” and that “Photographs No.s 15, 16, 42, and 43 show the location and size of the wound.”
Were they lying when they said they saw the entrance wound?
Were they scared to point it out after the Clark Panel and the government “officially” decided this entrance didn’t exist?
Or were the photos in the archives “doctored” between 1967 and 1977?
If so, it would most probably have taken place after 1975. The April, 1975 report of Dr. Fred Hodges to the Rockefeller Commission
reflects that in his interpretation a colored autopsy photo (presumably the one
above) showed “a large compound comminuted injury to the right frontal
region, and a small round soft tissue wound to the right occipital region” which was "in keeping" with the wound "described in the autopsy report in the right occipital bone." The Clark Panel and HSCA's "cowlick" entrance is, of course, in the parietal bone.
And then there's this little morsel... Doug Horne, a member of the ARRB staff, is reported to have told a crowd at a 1998 assassination conference that he witnessed both Humes and Boswell point out where they believed the entrance to be during their ARRB testimony, and that this entrance was the same for each man. According to Joe Backes’ notes on the conference, Horne then said the spot they selected was a spot behind the right ear “that seemed dark and intact in the photo.” While this could be a reference to the entrance proposed above, the transcripts of the doctors’ testimony do not reflect they ever pointed out such a spot to their interviewer Jeremy Gunn. Hmmm. If Backes’ notes and Horne’s words are to be trusted, this suggests that either Gunn failed to make a note of where the doctors pointed (which seems strange considering that that they were interviewed, in no small part, so that he could record their impressions of the wound locations) or that even the ARRB transcripts haves been “doctored.”
HSCA Figure 15/Fox Autopsy Photo Comparison
As a result of the autopsy doctors’ failure to point out a hole in the hairline, outside of vague comments that it was near the splash of mysterious gray matter, the HSCA’s pathology panel opted to confirm the findings of the Clark Panel and assert that the three doctors who actually inspected the President on the night of the autopsy, Humes, Boswell, and Finck, were all incredibly mistaken and had even recorded his head wound in the wrong bone. Suspiciously, in the pathology panel’s report, they mentioned that they searched the area around the splash of gray matter near the hairline but were convinced there was no wound at that location. What was not stated was that the close-up of the gray matter they placed in their report was a close-up of gray matter taken from a different photo than the one they had Ida Dox copy. The photo they took the close-up from can be found on the internet, however. While the bullet hole is less apparent in this photo, it is still visible, which makes me suspect that it is indeed a bullet entrance and not just an aberration on the other autopsy photo. In fact, the only aberration seems to be that the HSCA medical panel cropped this photo just below the possible bullet hole. Or was this just another coincidence?
That this hole near the EOP was deliberately ignored because it was inconsistent with the damage done to the President’s brain and skull, and would therefore necessitate an additional shot, is lent credence by the testimony of Dr. Humes before the HSCA. Oddly, it is the testimony where he admits he was wrong and confirms that the hole in the cowlick was the real entrance. He says: “We described the wound of entrance in the posterior scalp as being above and to the right of the external occipital protuberance…it is obvious to me as I sit here how…the upper defect to which you pointed or the upper object is clearly in the location of where we said approximately where it was, above the external occipital protuberance; therefore, I believe that is the wound of entry…By the same token, the object in the lower portion, which I apparently and I believe now erroneously identified before the most recent panel, is far below the external occipital protuberance and would not fit with the original autopsy findings..” Humes’ contention that the gray matter’s location was ruled out because it was a centimeter or so below the original measured position by the EOP, and that therefore the wound in the cowlick 10 centimeters above the EOP must be the real location, is one of the strangest statements of all time. It’s akin to someone viewing a police line-up where the perpetrator was believed to look like Mel Torme, and choosing Shaquille O’Neal because Mickey Rooney was just too damned short. Humes’ focus on the EOP is nevertheless a red flag indicating there was great concern if an entrance wound was acknowledged below the EOP then the medical panel’s findings indicating there was one shooter firing from behind would come into question. Notice the way he says “clearly in the location of where we said approximately where it was” when it was four inches away on a different bone. Clearly, wrongly admitting a colossal error in order to help perpetuate a lie didn’t come easy to the man. According to author David Lifton, who spoke to Humes afterwards, Humes’ hands were trembling. According to Dr. Boswell, when he confronted Humes with the rumor that Humes had agreed that their autopsy report was wrong and that the entrance was near the top of the head, Humes flatly denied it.
When asked about his twists and turns regarding the position of this entrance wound by Jeremy Gunn of the ARRB, Humes only got himself in deeper, stating “I experienced great difficulty in interpreting the location of the wound of entrance in the posterior scalp from the photograph. This may be because of the angle from which it was taken, or the position of the head, etc. It is obvious that the location of the external occipital protuberance cannot be ascertained from the photograph. I most firmly believe that the location of the wound was exactly where I measured it to be.” Could it really have been that difficult to distinguish between the position of the EOP, near the middle of Kennedy’s head, in the occipital bone, and the purported in-shoot in the cowlick, 4 inches away near the top of Kennedy’s head in his parietal bone, when you have a photograph of his entire head and neck???
Eye of the Beholder
When I compare the photos of the back of Kennedy's head, I find it remarkable that what appears to be a small hole appears in each photo slightly above and to the right of the gray matter, Even more remarkable is that this hole is in the exact same spot in each photo, and precisely where the doctors said there was a bullet hole. To me, this is clearly the wound described at autopsy. But that's just me. Now years after I first came forward to promote this round shape as the long-lost entrance on the back of Kennedy's head, I've found few theorists of any stripe willing to abandon their pre-conceptions.
But the wound is there, nevertheless, plain as day. It really makes me wonder if truth, much as beauty, is purely in the eye of the beholder.
When I compare the cowlick entrance in the photos, I find something else to shake my head about. For here, it seems equally clear that the purported hole in the cowlick is much fainter on the black and white photo, and almost certainly not a bullet entrance. I'm not the first to notice this. Dr. Humes noticed this as well, and pointed this out in his discussion with the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel. He explained that he rejected the mark in the cowlick as an entrance because: “despite the fact that this upper point that has been the source of some discussion here this afternoon is excessively obvious in the color photograph, I almost defy you to find it in that magnification in the black and white.”
That the mark seen on the black and white photo is so clearly not a bullet hole, unfortunately, has led some conspiracy writers to place this photo next to the Ida Dox drawing of the entrance in the cowlick and create the illusion that the entrance wound on the drawing was completely fabricated. This is undoubtedly deceiving, and is yet another reminder that conspiracy theorists are every bit as capable of deception as single-assassin theorists. Incredibly, in two separate articles in the collection Murder in Dealey Plaza, Dr.s Gary Aguilar and David Mantik place the Ida Dox drawing by the black and white photo for comparison. Dr. Aguilar’s caption reads: “…The small spot towards the top of the skull, which appears red in color photographs, was said to be an entrance location…The wound described is not evident in the actual photo.” By his use of the phrase “actual photo,” Aguilar had implied that the color photo was but a color version of the black and white. This was not true.
Fortunately, he tried to correct this mistake. In September 2006, when challenged online by an irate single-assassin theorist about this caption, Dr. Aguilar readily admitted his error, stating “it appears that I did indeed use the wrong image of the back of JFK's head. The only one I had was from a high quality black and white, 8x10 set that I'd gotten from Tink Thompson and used for this image. My error was in not realizing that there was a tiny change in perspective in the correct image vs. the one I showed.” Dr. Aguilar has in fact used the color photo in subsequent comparisons. He has also disavowed his use of the term “actual photo”. He related “I never noticed that phrasing before and I don't think I'd write it that way today, if I actually wrote it originally, as opposed to the editor's having written it. I simply don't now recall.” Intriguingly, this last statement suggests that the misleading caption was written by the editor of Murder in Dealey Plaza, Dr. James Fetzer. If true, this might help explain why a nearly identical mistake was made in Dr. Mantik’s article in the same book. Dr. Mantik’s caption reads: “Ida Dox inexplicably enhanced the red spot in her drawing. The actual entry is not visible; no other photograph shows it either." Dr. Fetzer, however, was later to insist that both captions were written by the authors.
But whenever one points out the mistakes of researchers such as Aguilar, Mantik, and Fetzer, one should also inject some perspective, and note that, while their mistakes may mislead a few unsuspecting readers, they positively pale in comparison to the mistakes made by the mainstream media most every time they write a bout the assassination. In a May 20, 1992, AP article reporting on a press conference held by Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell, for example, the AP printed drawings of an entrance wound on the back of a head and beveling of the skull. Hundreds of thousands of readers were fooled into thinking these drawings supported the statements of the doctors, who, in an effort to combat some of the assertions in Oliver Stone’s film JFK, had asserted “The second, fatal shot entered the back of this head and exploded the right side of the skull.” The problem was that the drawing provided by the AP depicted the bullet entering near the top of Kennedy’s skull, in the HSCA entrance, when the doctors were describing the wound as measured at autopsy, 4 inches below this entrance. This “mistake” by the mainstream press hid from the public that the doctors were not only arguing against Oliver Stone, but also EVERY government panel to look at the assassination since 1968. Apparently, the AP didn't consider that news worth reporting.
Hypocritical Thinking 101
In late 2009 and early 2010, Dr. Fetzer and I had a number of heated exchanges on the Education Forum, an online discussion group in which we both are members. He kept attacking me for being closed-minded and not subscribing to his and Jack White's claims the autopsy photos, x-rays and assassination films are fake. He also kept accusing me of never having read any of his books. On January 4, 2010, after I posted the slide and text above to demonstrate that 1) I had read at least one of his books, and 2) he had never read my webpage or else he'd have known that, he responded in a changed manner. He suddenly acknowledged:
"Pat,
You have made an extraordinary discovery here, by which I am referring to the apparent second entry wound at the back of the head in the HSCA photographs, which simply stuns me. To the best of my knowledge, you are the first and only person to have made this observation." He then quoted references to the back of the head photo in Murder in Dealey Plaza. He then continued "I shall have more to say about this, but Speer appears to have noticed something that has escaped the rest of us. These captions were the author's own. Notice that Gary's captions tend to be rather longer and more detailed than my captions in the Prologue, for example, where only rarely do I offer more complex ones. I have no doubt the captions weer authored by Gary and by David themselves. If they were missing from the original manuscripts, I may have called them to compose them.
At the very least, this means that a photograph that the HSCA used to justify its shift in the entry location by four inches was actually contradicted by the lower entry location shown on the the same photograph. I am fairly astonished that no one has noticed this before. I would compare it to the photo showing Arlen Specter illustrating the path of the 'magic bullet' had to have taken, while the circular patch showing the actual entry is visible well-below his hand, which means that a photo intended to illustrate the 'magic bullet' theory actually refutes it."
Well, this is it, I thought, finally an acknowledgment from Fetzer and his colleagues that I am not just a nay-sayer to their wild theories, but am actually pushing the investigation forward in new and revealing directions. But no such luck. Three hours later, he added:
"I don't know what to say, Pat, because Jack has taken a look and says that the hole you have 'discovered' isn't there. This will take some sorting out. I will invite David Mantik, David Lifton, and John Costella to take a look, too. Something is not right."
Well, we can agree on that. Something is not right when a supposedly independent thinker such as Fetzer, who taught critical thinking at the university level, has to check with his colleagues--all of whom have embraced theories which I have publicly rejected--before allowing himself to acknowledge what he has already admitted he sees. Something is especially not right, moreover, when his admitted reason for doing so is that Jack White, an octogenarian who believes not only that the Kennedy autopsy photos, x-rays and assassination films are all fake, but that no astronauts landed on the moon, and no jet hit the Pentagon on 9/11, has told him that we are mistaken.
Or does that sound too harsh? Well, here is Jack's response to a January 20, 2010 post on the Education Forum in which I pointed out that his harshest critics are not the single-assassin theorists who write him off as a hopeless crackpot, but his fellow conspiracy theorists, who think the prism through which he sees the world is too far out there.
Your prism on things is too narrow. There ARE conspiracies. Vast conspiracies. Not "far out," as you have been led to believe. Politicians faked going to the moon. Exotic weaponry tested in Oklahoma City was then used to bring down the twin towers. The war on "terrorism" is a fake. "Presidents" past and present have been elected unconstitutionally and illegally. Agencies of the government fake evidence to suit their purposes...as far back as the JFK assassination.
It is YOU who need to learn how FAR OUT conspiracies have become. WAKE UP and smell the fakery...from Zfilms to fake presidents.
Fetzer's deference to White is particularly ironic in that his presence on the forum was in large part fueled by his desire to push the then recent release of Doug Horne's 5 volume set Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. The irony is that Horne has sought to distance himself from both Fetzer and White, and would most certainly question Fetzer's rejection of what he sees based upon what Jack White claims not to see. From the very book Fetzer was in the process of defending...
Another pet peeve I have is the false association by many in academia and the media of all JFK assassination researchers with persons who don't believe we landed on the moon six times (from 1969-1972); or with persons who believe that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were really 'controlled demolitions' set off by the government, and were not caused by fanatics flying airplanes into buildings.
I think the principal lesson of the JFK assassination is that we should not defer to arguments about major historical events (such as assassinations, and how wars begin) based on authority—we should study the primary evidence ourselves and reach our own conclusions. If people don't learn to do a better job of this in the United States, our democracy will remain in peril, and our society will continue to just 'muddle through,' rather than excel in tackling its many challenges.
FWIW, Fetzer never got back to me...
Back of the Head Comparison
An additional reason to believe our proposed hole in the hairline is Dr. Humes’ long-lost entrance near the EOP comes from the fact that, when one looks at the gruesome autopsy photo of the back of the President’s head once his brain was removed, the hole is once again right where you’d expect it to be, showing signs of the “tunneling’ described by the doctors.
Significantly, if one matches the open-cranium photograph and the back of the head photo one can use the ruler in the latter to measure the size of the wound in the former. If one estimates that the camera was 12 inches from the ruler, and that the wound was 1 inch beyond that, and assumes the camera was not using a zoom lens, then one can guesstimate that the wound was 8 percent larger in reality than measured on the ruler. This makes the wound approximately 16 mm wide. The entrance wound measured by the doctors was 15 mm wide. I firmly believe this is that wound.
Of course, since the autopsy photo with the President’s brain removed has never been officially acknowledged or released, the possibility exists that it is a fake. Still, the possibility of it being a fake seems unlikely due to the fact that no one in the research community until recently acknowledged the existence of this bullet hole. While the photo taken after the President’s brain was removed has been published in the books of David Lifton, Robert Groden, Harrison Livingstone, and Walt Brown, none of these books mentioned the bullet hole. Noel Twyman, in his book, Bloody Treason, does acknowledge that something is there, but his drawing explaining the photo implies the hole is the external occipital protuberance, the bump on the back of Kennedy’s head.
On November 20, 2004, I met Robert Groden in Dealey Plaza and asked him about the autopsy photographs’ depiction of a hole in the hairline. Surprisingly, he readily agreed that the hole near the hairline was an entrance wound. Even more surprising, he insisted that he’d always acknowledged it as so. In The Killing of a President, in which Groden summarized his views on the assassination, Groden described 8 likely shots, none of which entered low on the President’s skull from behind. One hopes this was just a misunderstanding.
On January 25, 2006, via personal correspondence, David Lifton acknowledged this bullet hole as well. Consistent with his theory that the body was changed between Dallas and Bethesda, Lifton explained that in his opinion the men who faked the bullet entries on Kennedy’s body created two false entries on the back of Kennedy’s head. He theorized that Dr. Humes was pressured into acknowledging only one of them in his autopsy report. From this it appears that Lifton has made some subtle changes to the theory he first presented in his best-seller Best Evidence.
And, oh yeah, FWIW, everything-is-fake theorist Jack White has acknowledged multiple times that he believes the presumed bullet hole in the black and white photo above is the bullet hole described at autopsy. This makes his refusal to acknowledge the bullet hole on the scalp visible in the color photo and directly overlaying this hole even more perplexing.
And Left is Right?
Or maybe not so perplexing... When one considers that White has staked his entire reputation on his belief the autopsy photos, x-rays, and Zapruder film are all fake, one can understand how unlikely it would be for him to suddenly embrace what is shown in this evidence as a key to understanding the assassination.
In 2010, when I tried to reason with White and get him to at least acknowledge the bullet hole I see on the back of the head photo overlays the bullet hole he sees on the open cranium photo, he balked, and posted an image depicting his assessment of the open cranium or "mystery" photo. This image was bizarre, with the bullet hole on the back of the head enveloped in darkness, and supposedly on the left side of the head, but with a caption acknowledging it was in fact to the right of the EOP (which is at the middle of the head). I can think of no logical reason for him to use this obviously false depiction to refute me other than that he himself is deeply confused, or that he wishes to refute me no matter what it takes, including deceiving others.
But if White was being deliberately deceptive in his depiction of this photo, he was only following the lead of the agencies of the government he so despises.