Chapter 13b: Attack of the Clones

Chapter 13b: Attack of the Clones

Behind the Scenes of the HSCA's Investigation

Fox Autopsy Photo/HSCA Figure 25 Comparison

Since the photograph taken from behind the President’s skull showing the empty cranium seems to confirm the autopsy doctors' description of an entrance wound in the hairline, it’s important that we not only decide for ourselves if it's fake, as we did in the last chapter, but do our best to find out who else has studied this photo, and why they failed to see the bullet hole in the photo, right where the doctors claimed it was.

Unfortunately, there is no record of a photo of the brain cavity taken from behind in the report of the Clark Panel, nor in the report of the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel. There is, however, a reference to photos taken of the President’s brainless skull from the front and from above in these reports.

When one looks at HSCA Figure 25, a blow-up of one of these photos purportedly depicting the “exit defect in the margin of the fracture fragment of the right parietal region,” which in the HSCA's opinion resided on the front part of Kennedy's head, by the coronal suture, however, one realizes that an awful mistake has been made, as this blow-up was quite clearly blown-up from one of the photos taken from behind.

What’s going on here? 

Only adding to this strangeness is that Figure 25 was blown up from photo #44, which the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel Report describes (along with black and white photo #17) as “close-ups of the margins of the fracture line in the right front-parietal region after reflection of scalp.”

Hmmm... Beyond that this confirms that the HSCA panel had, indeed, mistaken the back of Kennedy's head for the front of his head, the listing of photo 44 in tandem with photo 17 is a bit odd. Since elsewhere in the HSCA Report, and in several earlier government reports, it was acknowledged that photographs 17 and 18 were the black and white photos depicting an open cranium, and photos 44 and 45 the color photos depicting the same, this raises the question of whether photos 18 and 45 were even shown to the Forensic Pathology Panel. When the Panel discussed the photos with Dr.s Boswell and Humes in 1977, they only showed them photos 17 and 44. Upon discovery of this fact, I at first questioned if photos 18 and 45 were withheld for some reason. It appears, however, that the answer is no, as the panel’s Dr. Petty, when discussing the beveling on the skull with Humes and Boswell, informed them that “this is shown more clearly on the black and white photographs Nos. 17 and 18, probably best in No. 17.”  Well, then why did they use #44 in their final report?  I must admit I’m perplexed.

When one looks closely at the supposed exit defect in Figure 25, one can’t help but be even more perplexed. This exit defect doesn’t appear as round and beveled as the defect in the Fox photos available online. So why wouldn’t the photo available online, which would presumably be either #17 or #18, have been used instead of photo #44? Why did the HSCA use an inferior photograph? Was there something in #17 or #18 that the doctors were trying to hide from the committee? Or was it simply a matter of the pathology panel screwing up and picking the wrong photo to demonstrate the beveling?

Even more to the point, how could the Forensic Pathology Panel possibly believe this photo was taken of Kennedy’s “right frontal-parietal region”--his forehead? Are we through the looking glass here or what? 

Baden Testimony Comparison

To answer that last question--that of whether or not we are through the looking glass here--let me be concise: yes.

On September 7, 1978, Dr. Michael Baden testified before the HSCA and presented the findings of the Forensic Pathology Panel. His testimony was long and thorough, and frequently mind-boggling. Incredibly, his panel had concluded that the mystery photo almost certainly showing skull at the back of Kennedy's head, had instead showed his forehead.

This wasn't even buried in his testimony. At one point in his testimony, he presented Exhibit F-60, explaining “the semicircular defect that I am pointing to corresponds with the black dot present on the previous exhibit” (which was F-58). A quick look at F-60, however, reveals that it is a close-up of the beveled bone at the back of the head in the open cranium photo (previously discussed as Figure 15) What is suspicious, however, is that it was presented in the report not turned the way Baden purports to interpret it, but sideways from his interpretation, as if it was indeed a picture of the back of the head and not the forehead. It’s also a bit odd that, even though this blow-up was taken from one of four photographs--two black and white and two color--that demonstrate the open cranium, Baden made a point of telling the commission it was taken from “the only photograph that shows any internal structure of the President.” When one compares the open-cranium photo to F-58, and follows Baden’s interpretation of the outshoot, moreover, one can easily discern something is wrong. When one lifts the exit defect in the photo to the level of the defect in the drawing, and makes the size of the defects match, one can see that there is entirely too much forehead in the photograph above the defect, and that it clearly is not angled the way the skull would be near the defect in the drawing. There is also the problem, and it's a BIG one, in my opinion, that in this orientation the obvious bullet entrance in the photo is now on Kennedy's left forehead, and unexplained.

While the autopsy doctors have never voiced their disagreement with Baden's interpretation of the photo, it is nevertheless enlightening that they have repeatedly made statements indicating they remembered taking photographs depicting the bullet entrance on the back of the head, both from the outside and from the inside. Not once in all their statements, moreover, have they stated they took a photograph of a beveled outshoot at or near the President’s forehead. In Dr. Humes’ testimony before the Warren Commission, for that matter, he specifically denied there was such an outshoot, and said the only beveling indicating an outshoot discovered at the autopsy was on a large bone fragment discovered in the limousine by the Secret Service. He testified “A careful examination of the margins of the large bone defect at this point failed to disclose a portion of the skull bearing again a wound of--a point of impact on the skull of this fragment of the missile, remembering, of course, that this area was devoid of any scalp or skull at this present time. We did not have the bone” and stressed “the thing which we considered of importance about these three fragments of bone (the ones brought in by the Secret Service towards the end of the autopsy) was that at the margins of one of them which was roughly pyramidal in shape, there was a portion of the circumference of what we interpreted as a missile wound.”

Now compare Dr. Humes' testimony before the Warren Commission to what Dr. Baden told the House Select Committee fourteen years later. He told a new and improved story, a story that, not surprisingly, supported his contention the beveled bone apparent in the mystery photo was part of his proposed exit defect. He testified: “The doctors looked at the bone fragments, took x-rays of the bone fragments, inserted this particular bone fragment against this semi-circle and concluded that they matched and fitted together.”

Now, I used to assume Baden just made this up. But I later realized he got this from Dr. Boswell. Six members of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel including Dr. Baden interviewed Dr.s Humes and Boswell on 9-16-77, a year before Baden testified before the HSCA. During this interview Boswell and Humes were discussing how far they had to cut to get to the small entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head. Then Boswell said: "not much, because this bone was all gone and actually the smaller fragment (of the fragments x-rayed on the night of the autopsy) fit this piece down here--there was a hole here, only half of which was present in the bone that was intact, and this small piece then fit right on there and the beveling on those was on the interior surface."

Now I don't know where this came from... There was no mention of this prior to this interview. But what's important to realize is that Boswell was talking about matching up a fragment other than the largest fragment to a beveled entrance on the intact skull, and Baden later testified that they'd matched up the largest bone fragment to a beveled exit on the intact skull.

It seems likely, moreover, that the rest of Baden's panel knew his testimony was nonsense. When discussing the autopsy protocol’s description of the large exit, the report of Baden's panel claims: “The description of the bone fails to recognize either the semi-circular defect or any beveling in the bone fragments still attached to the head.” The panel's report then quotes a February 1965 letter by Dr. Finck to his superior General Blumberg. It records Finck's thoughts as he first inspected the large defect, and relates “No exit wound is identifiable at this time in the skull, but close to midnight portions of cranial vault are received from Dallas, Texas. X-ray films of these bone specimens reveal numerous metallic fragments. Two of the bone specimens, 50 millimeters in diameter, reveal beveling when viewed from the external aspect, thus indicating a wound of exit.” Thus, both Humes and Finck claimed there was no apparent beveling on the intact part of the skull. 

Now, as we've seen, Dr. Boswell was less clear on this matter. We've seen how he told Baden in '77 that the autopsy doctors (of which he was the third fiddle) matched up a bone fragment showing entrance beveling with the presumed bullet entrance on the intact skull. But that wasn't actually the first time he'd claimed they'd matched up the beveling on a fragment with beveling on intact bone. In Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), Josiah Thompson relates that he spoke to Boswell on 1-11-67 and that Boswell told him they'd matched up a bone fragment showing exit beveling with an edge of skull showing exit beveling, and that this placed this late-arriving fragment at the crown of the skull. 

So, yeah, Boswell was all over the map--or should I say all over the skull--in his recollections about the autopsy, and what fragment showed what beveling. 

But even he never said what Baden told congress--that the doctors had matched up the exit beveling apparent on the largest fragment with an exit defect along the coronal suture. 

So, yeah. Baden fudged the facts in his testimony... And the exhibits he'd had created were, well, of a similar fudgy nature...

HSCA Outshoot/Autopsy Photos Comparison

Exhibit F-58 is yet another example...of Baden's fudginess.  When one watches Baden's testimony and compares Exhibit F-58 with the autopsy photos one finds that Baden's Panel was claiming the beveled outshoot in the mystery photo corresponded to a spot on the President’s right forehead between his eye and his ear and just above his temple. Well, one not insignificant problem with this is that this location is visible within the v-shaped tear in Kennedy’s scalp apparent in the right lateral autopsy photo..and that there is no hole, or beveled exit on the edge of a large hole, in this location. Just bone.  To be clear, then, while there was no shortage of missing skull  to the rear of the entrance location marked on F-58, the right lateral photo proves the entrance location marked on F-58 was not the location of the beveled exit apparent in the mystery photo.

Oh, No!

Only adding to my suspicion Baden's panel got it wrong, and that he was blowing smoke, is that while the autopsy doctors have never been able to identify the photo they claimed was taken to show the internal aspect of a bullet's entrance on Kennedy's skull, the pathology panel's report claimed, “Stereoscopic visualization of the inside of the cranial cavity at its depth, after removal of the brain, reveals a semi-circular beveled defect in the posterior parietal area to the right of the midline, from which fracture lines radiate corresponding to the entrance perforation indicated in the skull x-rays.” Since Dr. Baden testified that F-60 was a detail of the “only photograph that shows any internal structures of the President at the time of the autopsy” and since there is no photograph showing the entrance wound from the inside listed in any of the photographic reports of the HSCA, it’s clear that this reference to stereographic visualization is a reference to looking at photos 44 and 45 at the same time. Well, where is this entrance? More pointedly, why didn't Dr. Baden point this entrance out in his testimony? Or his panel in their report?  They had exhibit F-60 to work with. The entrance would have to be in there somewhere. Why didn't they show it to the committee?

When one dives further in the report, and reads the section entitled "Course of the Missile Through the Head," it becomes clear the panel didn't spend much time on this photo because they lacked confidence it was really as claimed. While discussing photos 17, 18, 44, and 45, the report reads "The lens was focused on the interior-posterior deepest portion of the wound, apparently in an attempt to depict the interior of the bullet perforation of the posterior region of the skull. In the photograph prepared from color transparency No. 45, the exterior bone fragment with the semicircular defect is more in focus than the base of the skull in the depth of the picture which is out of focus. In the photographs prepared from positive color transparency No. 45, the exterior fragment is out of focus, but the depth of the photograph is in sharper focus. The photographs, also studied using the computer-assisted enhancement technique, show a possible portion of the beveled inner table corresponding to the semicircular margin of the entrance wound at the back of the head in the right posterior parietal bone." What was formerly a revelation was now just a possibility.

Now, the only way I can make sense of this is that the panel thought the photo was shot from directly in front of the beveled exit on the forehead, and that the roundish shape in the background (which I presume to be on the base of the skull) was the interior aspect of the entrance wound in the cowlick. But the angles are wrong, And the description makes no sense. IF that is what they thought, after all, then how could they simultaneously claim that the base of the skull is apparent in the photograph? Well, the thought occurs then that they were flailing--pointing out what they hoped was true under the assumption no one would ever review this photograph--while actually  having no idea what they were talking about. 

But it gets stranger. In April 2006, I was able to obtain some footage of Dr. Baden’s testimony. What I saw made my jaw drop. When the blow-up of the purported exit on Kennedy’s skull, HSCA Exhibit F-60, was brought out and placed on the exhibit stand, it was placed the same way it was printed in the HSCA report, with the bone stretching vertically. Dr. Baden, however, immediately sought to correct this “mistake.” With the photo in his hand displaying the ridge of bone horizontally, and with the defect at the top of this ridge, he grabbed the exhibit and began to turn it to match the photo in his hand. This is demonstrated above.

A World Upside Down

After beginning to turn the blow-up of the small beveled exit to match the photo in his hand, however, something led Dr. Baden to stop and turn it back the other way, so that the large skull defect was now beneath the small beveled exit, which was, in turn, beneath some intact bone.  Since this large defect was the opening through which Kennedy’s brain had been removed, it made no sense to portray this defect as one strictly on Kennedy’s right side.  (That this is, in fact, an error, is demonstrated by Exhibit F-66, presented only moments after Exhibit F-60.  F-66 portrays the large defect as above and behind a beveled exit on the frontal bone, with NO bone directly above the exit.)

Unfortunately, Dr. Baden’s testimony compounded his error: (Image 1, Baden pointing at the skull above the defect in the photos): “This is the front part of the skull of the President (Image 2) in this area” (Image 3)

“and this semi-circular defect that I’m pointing to corresponds (Image 4) with the black dot on the previous exhibit and shows a portion of a gunshot wound of exit as determined by the panel, by viewing, by being able to see beveling, that is the breaking of bone away in a certain pattern as a BB does when it goes through plate glass, causing a beveling on the glass in the direction to which the BB would proceed. This happens when a bullet enters and exits skull bones and other bones and this was a conclusion of the panel that this was an exit perforation.”

Now compare this to the published transcript (with notable changes highlighted): “The photograph shows the front right part of the skull of the President and the semi-circular defect that I am pointing to corresponds with the black dot present on the previous exhibit. This is a portion of a gunshot wound of exit as determined by the panel because of the beveling of the outer layer of bone visible in the photographs, which is also described in the autopsy report. Beveling refers to the breaking away of bone in a concave pattern as when a BB goes through plate glass causing a concavity in the glass in the direction in which the BB is proceeding. This also happens when a bullet enters and exits skull bone and other bones. It is the conclusion of the panel that this is unquestionably an exit perforation.”  

After noticing the changes in Dr. Baden’s testimony, and commenting online, I received word from someone who testified before the HSCA (Jack White) that everyone who testified was given a transcript of their testimony and given the opportunity to change their public testimony. While I was well aware that witnesses are allowed to change their statements and depositions in the pre-trial phase of court proceedings it was news to me that anyone could go back and change the transcripts of their public testimony. Since not all of Dr. Baden’s changes were grammatical—the first highlighted section conceals that he pointed to the skull before pointing out the defect, the second highlighted section is new and misleading testimony (as discussed, the autopsy report made no reference whatsoever to a beveled exit on the intact skull, and Dr. Humes' testimony specifically dismissed that such an exit was apparent), and the third highlighted section reflects a degree of certainty not communicated in Baden's actual testimony—one should rightly wonder to what degree the testimony of other witnesses has been changed. 

(If anyone has all the public hearings on tape, and is willing to sit down and record the changes made in the transcripts, it would undoubtedly prove fascinating. While I would like to think Committee members were informed whenever testimony was changed, I don’t think we should make such an assumption. Accordingly, if anyone knows the standard procedures involved in changing public testimony before congress, and whether the HSCA staff followed these procedures, I will include their comments in my next update.)

In any event, it seems clear from Baden's testimony that 1) he was confused as heck by the mystery photo, and 2) he nevertheless used it to make a case for a single-shooter, firing from behind.

And yet this obvious fact is beyond the grasp of some seeking to prop up the single-assassin conclusion...  On November 22, 2006, while discussing Baden's testimony on the alt.assassination.JFK newsgroup, Marquette University Professor John McAdams claimed: “Baden clearly knows how the photo is oriented, since he correctly says that the top of the photo is the front of Kennedy’s head.” Well, this was like saying that a captain commanding a ship from Cannes to Cairo who washed ashore in Capetown clearly knew what he was doing since he came to port in Africa.

And from there it only got weirder. By 2010, McAdams, apparently incapable of admitting any error by anyone whose "expertise" he needs to rely upon to shore up his single-assassin conclusion, had taken to claiming my observations about Baden's testimony were incorrect, and that Baden had in fact properly oriented the open cranium photo during his testimony. On 10-1-10, on his alt.assassination.JFK newsgroup, he claimed:

No, he put the photo up with the forehead upward, and then used his

pointer to *correctly* point to the forehead.

This is just a silly factoid.

The orientation that Baden used is the one that Stringer would have

seen through his viewfinder.

John

Well, this was just nonsense. Anyone who'd actually watched part 1 of my video series, in which Dr. Baden's testimony is shown, would know that Baden pointed to an area ABOVE the purported exit on the photo, and said it corresponded to an area ABOVE the purported exit on the drawing of Kennedy. This PROVES he thought he put the photo right-side up on the easel. 

And yet McAdams just couldn't accept this. On January 30, 2014, after single-assassin theorist John Fiorentino stepped up on the alt.assassination.JFK newsgroup and told McAdams he was just wrong on this issue, and I made the case that the orientation of the autopsy photo on the easel was inconsistent with the orientation of the drawing Baden showed the committee, McAdams sunk to a new low, and announced: "You are not talking about how Baden oriented the *photo,* you are quarreling with how the drawing was oriented...For some reason, you have this wacky theory of how the drawing was upside down."

McAdams' invention of the ridiculous "factoid" that Baden was trying to show the committee the photographer's viewpoint when he placed the photo upside down, and that he actually placed the drawing of Kennedy upside down on the easel, is just embarrassing, and reveals both the irrational nature of many JFK "researchers"... and that the "cult of expertise" lives on.

Angel/Baden Comparison

Still, Baden wasn't the only "expert" confused by the photo, or willing to say it helped sell the single-assassin conclusion...when it did anything but...

Let's start by noting that the 1968 secret panel to study the medical evidence, the Clark Panel, led by Dr. Russell Fisher, a close colleague of a number of men on Baden's panel, including Baden himself, failed to note that a beveled exit defect was visible in the photos, and described the open-cranium photographs as follows: “Due to lack of contrast of structures portrayed and lack of clarity of detail in these photographs, the only conclusion reached by The Panel from study of this series was that there was no existing bullet defect in the supra-orbital region of the skull.” Well, my God, the supra-orbital region is the region above the eyes--the forehead!!! And no, this wasn't a typo. As if to stress this point, the Clark Panel's report later repeated "The photographs do not disclose where this bullet emerged from the head although those showing the interior of the cranium with the brain removed indicate that it did not emerge from the supra-orbital region." Well, this is mighty curious, isn't it?

Now jump forward to 8-19-77. Dr. Baden has just reviewed the autopsy materials for the HSCA, and has written a memo to HSCA staffer Kenneth Klein detailing his preliminary conclusions regarding the medical evidence. After propping up the single-bullet theory, he reports: "Another bullet struck the President in the back of the head four inches above and about one inch to the right of the external occipital protuberance causing extensive fractures of the skull and damage to the brain exiting near the coronal suture line about three inches to right of the midline." Now this is even more curious. He purports to have observed an exit wound three inches to the right of the midline of the skull, which is essentially the side of the head. 

Now check out what the forensic anthropology consultant to Dr. Baden's pathology panel, Dr. Lawrence Angel, had to say about all this. His 10-24-77 report to the panel asserts "The exit area through the right frontal above the boss can account for the small semi-circular notch 35 mm above the right orbit, the radiopaque mark near this, and at the upper right part of the track can explain the radiopaque markings on the triangular frontal fragment just in front of the coronal suture above stephanion." While his words might seem confusing Dr. Angel created a drawing to depict this conclusion, and it is not at all confusing. It is clearly taken directly from the "mystery photo" of our discussion. And it clearly shows the exit defect to be exactly where Russell Fisher and the Clark Panel said it was not, 35 mm (about 1 1/2 inches) above the eye socket in the supra-orbital region.

Now let's inject that Dr. Angel was Curator of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute, and a noted lecturer on Anatomy, Anthropology, and Forensic Science at George Washington University and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Based upon his resume, one would think Angel's interpretation of the photo would trump that of all others.

And yet, the Baden-piloted HSCA pathology panel rejected Angel's findings. It agreed that the photo showed an exit, as claimed by Angel--but concluded that this exit was not remotely close to where Angel said it was.

And they weren't the only HSCA panel to do so. In keeping with the testimony of Dr. Baden, the HSCA trajectory panel (led by Thomas Canning) depicted the beveled outshoot on the skull at the coronal suture, inches above and to the right of the exit defect in Angel’s drawing.

So why did the HSCA pathology panel reject Angel's findings? Were they concerned for the reputation of their colleagues on the Clark Panel--who had repeatedly claimed no exit on the forehead was apparent in the photos?

Or were they just doing their jobs, and, God forbid, trying to get things right? Not one witness observed an exit wound on Kennedy’s forehead. Such an obvious wound, in a location observed by dozens of witnesses, could not have gone unnoticed. Also problematic is that when one matches the beveled outshoot and nearby fractures of the open-cranium photograph to Angel’s drawing, it seems clear that Kennedy’s eye sockets should be apparent in the photograph. But they are not.

So, yes, it's clear that there was something wrong with Angel's interpretation. And that this was apparent even to the HSCA panel. And that they then opted to find their own location for the bullet's exit--one hidden by Kennedy's hair. Assuming this is so, well, one can then muse that the HSCA Panel found a political solution to a scientific question, and failed to uncover the cause of Angel's error--his unjustified belief the open-cranium photo was taken from the front.

Still, that's just speculation. Is there anything to firm this up? Is there any additional evidence the panel would reject the findings of the clearly-qualified Angel...for political reasons?

Mind the Gap

I believe there is. For when one closely compares the findings of Dr. Angel and the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel to whom he served as a consultant, one finds that the precise location of the exit wound apparent in the mystery photo was not the only conclusion of Angel's with which the panel came to disagree...for reasons all its own.

In his report to the committee, Dr. Angel included several drawings he'd made of Kennedy's damaged skull. In these drawings he demonstrated where he believed the two largest bone fragments found outside Kennedy's skull--the large triangular fragment found in the limousine on the afternoon of the shooting, and the "Harper fragment" found by William Harper in Dealey Plaza the next day--had originally been located.

This seemingly innocent gesture on his part would come to be a huge problem for the committee, however. Dr. Angel proposed that there had been a gap between these two fragments. Well, the HSCA's Pathology Panel, in their own analysis, had concluded that these fragments included portions of a beveled exit of a bullet. If there was a gap between them, as per Angel, then, there would have to have been TWO exits for a bullet on Kennedy's skull.

No, scratch that. THREE exits for a bullet on Kennedy's skull. Dr. Angel had, after all, identified a beveled exit on the mystery photo, which he took to have been an exit on Kennedy's forehead, inches away from the exit locations identified by the HSCA's panel on the triangular fragment and Harper fragment.

Well, this would not do. As we shall see, the HSCA's Panel believed the fractures emanating from the primary bullet defect by Kennedy's temple too large to have been created by the exit of a small fragment. The impact creating this defect, they concluded, must have come from a sizable bullet fragment--something much larger than any of the fragments later recovered. (This led Dr. Michael Baden, the panel's spokesman, to claim in time that the bullet exited Kennedy's skull intact and only broke up after hitting the windshield strut.)

In any event, the multiple exits suggested by Angel's analysis were quite clearly unacceptable to the panel. They had to find a way around his findings. They needed a miracle-worker.

Flip-Flop

Well, maybe not a miracle-worker, but a holy trinity of sorts: a three-in-one. 

Yes, in one of its most questionable actions--and that's saying a lot--the pathology panel concluded that the three separate exits on Kennedy's skull suggested by Dr. Angel's study of the triangular skull fragment, the Harper skull fragment, and the mystery photo, were really one exit.

And this three-in-one exit wasn't even where Dr. Angel claimed there was an exit... Yep, to get around Angel's problematic placement of a bullet exit on Kennedy's forehead, the panel also decided that the exit in the mystery photo was not on Kennedy's forehead, as claimed by Angel, but at the top of Kennedy's head on the coronal suture.

But this created a new problem. Angel's interpretation of the autopsy photos and x-rays had led him to conclude that the large triangular fragment purportedly found in the limousine was "clearly frontal bone," from the right side of Kennedy's head, from just forward of the coronal suture. The pathology panel's new and improved location for the beveled exit in the mystery photo, however, was, yeah, you guessed it, on the frontal bone, just forward of the coronal suture. 

The two interpretations were thereby at odds. If Angel was correct about the large fragment, then the panel was wrong and the beveled exit apparent on the mystery photo could not reside on the frontal bone. And if the panel was correct about the beveled exit apparent on the mystery photo, then Angel was wrong and the large fragment could not be frontal bone. 

Now one might consider this a draw, and side with the pathology panel.

But it's not as if Angel was alone on this issue...a Don Quixote tilting at windmills...

He had both the Zapruder film and the HSCA's radiology consultant backing his interpretation.

Let us first discuss the Zapruder film. 

Look back up at the slide above. Now note that in F-66, the pathology panel's depiction of the skull's explosion, the large triangular fragment on the right of the drawing explodes upwards...as well it should considering that, in their estiimation, a bullet exited below it, and exploded it into the air. 

Now consider that the fragment was not found in the street or on the trunk of the limo, but on the floor of the limo. Well, this suggests it exploded downwards, correct? And that a bullet exited above its location on the skull, right? 

And now realize that Frame 314 of the Zapruder film shows a large fragment exploding downwards from the skull, and that subsequent frames appear to show it bouncing back up off Kennedy's leg or the floor, or both. 

Don't believe me? Well, then, see for yourself. 

So the Zapruder film supports that the fragment was frontal bone, as opposed to parietal bone. 

Let us now discuss the radiology consultant.

The 8-4-78 report of the HSCA's chief radiology consultant, Dr. G.M. McDonnel, in which he offered his conclusions, asserts that "a portion of the posterior aspect of the right frontal bone" was missing. Well, this supports Dr. Angel. The HSCA panel had claimed, after all, that not only was no frontal bone missing, but that the posterior aspect of the frontal bone was visible in the mystery photo.

And that's not even to mention the eyewitness evidence suggesting the triangular fragment was frontal bone. Not that the panel looked for such evidence, but General Godfrey McHugh, Kennedy's military aide, would certainly have offered some, if asked. As recounted in David Lifton's 1980 best-seller Best Evidence, Lifton performed a taped interview of McHugh on 11-19-67, in which McHugh claimed he'd helped move Kennedy's body into position for the autopsy pictures, and had a close-up view of the autopsy. Well, McHugh told Lifton that he saw "the bone of the forehead...The front. The top...not completely the top, the forehead" put back into place, and that "as soon as they put back that bone there, it was just like his face had never been hurt..." And that wasn't all. When then asked from where this bone had come, McHugh's answer was even more helpful. He told Lifton "It was brought back. They found it in the car."

So, what did HSCA chief medical consultant Dr. Baden and HSCA staff member Mark Flanagan do to resolve this issue? Their forensic anthropology consultant--an expert on skull anatomy--said the triangular fragment was frontal bone...and their chief radiology consultant said frontal bone was missing...but they couldn't agree the fragment was frontal bone without admitting the beveled defect apparent in the mystery photo was not on the frontal bone, and that there was thereby more than one exit defect on the skull. 

Well, they did what doctors do. They got a second opinion more to their liking. Yep, at the last minute--just weeks before Dr. Baden was to testify--they approached radiologist Dr. David O. Davis and asked him to consult on the x-rays. On 8-23-78, at George Washington University, he was shown the x-rays. Not surprisingly, in retrospect, he concluded "There is absence of a part of the calvarium, beginning near the impact point and extending anteriorly to the coronal suture." 

Now, again, in plain English. The absence of calvarium (i.e. the hole on the top of the head) extended anteriorly to the coronal suture (i.e. it stretched forward towards the front of the head, but failed to extend past the coronal suture, onto the frontal bone)... 

Davis had thereby told Baden (and one can only assume Flanagan) exactly what they were hoping to hear so they could disregard Angel and McDonnel.

Davis' opinion, then, was just what the doctor ordered! Oh my, what a coinky-dink! 

That Davis' opinion was ill-founded, moreover, was confirmed by the next radiologist contacted by the government to comment on the x-rays. On 2-6-96 representatives of the Assassination Records Review Board met with forensic radiologist John J. Fitzpatrick and asked him his impressions of Kennedy's x-rays. The report on this meeting reveals: 

So Fitzpatrick backed up Angel, and McDonnel. And shot down Baden and Davis. (One can only wonder, then, the official reason Davis was consulted, and who put his name forth as the one they should consult.)

In any event, Baden and Flanagan's campaign to make things fit was far from over. A 9-1-78 outside contact report by Flanagan reveals that Dr. Angel has met with Dr. Baden and the HSCA staff "to review skull reconstruction drawings" and now agrees that the drawings are "fair and accurate representations" of his conclusions, as his "original report stating that the largest fragment depicted in original autopsy x-ray #6 was frontal bone was in error." (RIF# 180-10083-10106)

Bingo! To refresh, as of 8-22-78, the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel's forensic anthropology consultant had told them the large triangular fragment found on the floor of the limo was frontal bone, and their chief radiology consultant had told them frontal bone was missing. As the panel had concluded the beveled exit apparent on the mystery photo resided on the frontal bone--and precisely where their consultants had said there was no bone, moreover--this was a problem. A big freaking problem. Unless the panel developed reasons to doubt their consultants, they would be forced to conclude there were two exit defects on the front of the President's skull. Well, then, on 8-23-78, HSCA staff member Mark Flanagan met with radiologist Dr. David O. Davis, and showed him the x-rays, whereby Davis reported no frontal bone was missing. And that cut the legs off the panel's previous radiology consultant, Dr. McDonnel. And then, on 9-1-78, Flanagan and Dr. Baden met with the panel's forensic anthropology consultant, Dr. Angel, to show him how Dr. Baden planned to testify regarding the president's head wounds, i.e. that no frontal bone was missing, and, (at least supposedly) got Dr. Angel to concur. They'd thereby cut his legs off, as well.

And let's not forget that, according to HSCA Assistant Chief Counsel Gary Cornwell, Dr. Baden took Dr. Humes to lunch on 9-7-78, the day of their testimony, and convinced Humes to admit his "mistake" regarding the location of the entrance wound, in exchange for Cornwell's not pressing him too hard on his numerous other "mistakes." So, yikes, that's another set of legs collected by Dr. Baden and the house select committee in the furtherance of Chief Counsel Robert Blakey's agenda--to make the evidence fit (or more specifically--to make the evidence conform to the conclusions of the committee's chief medical advisor, Dr. Michael Baden). 

Well, that's political science, folks. That is, science as practiced in Washington, D.C.  

Now, as we've seen, these events culminated in the 9-7-78 testimony of Dr. Baden, in which he entered Exhibit F-66 (shown on the slide above) as a depiction of the large defect on the top of the President's skull, along with the skull fragments blown from this defect. The large fragment in this depiction was, as one might expect, depicted just above its presumed former home along the coronal suture. 

It was, for that matter, on the opposite side of the suture from where Dr. Angel had initially claimed it had been. 

Yes, it's incredible, but true. Dr. Baden had flipped the triangular fragment over the coronal suture, so that the jagged edge Angel concluded lay in front of the suture, now lay behind the coronal suture. 

Well, how could he do that? To do that he would have to have re-interpreted the fragment as a mirror image of Angel's interpretation of the fragment, right? He couldn't just do that, could he?

Well, actually...yeah, he could. There were no photos taken of the fragment at autopsy, just x-rays. X-rays taken of a bone do not discriminate between top side and underside; they show both at once. Only through careful study can one conclude which side is up on an x-ray, and Baden claimed his panel couldn't tell which side was up on this particular x-ray. So, yeah, he ignored the initial and presumably real conclusions of the HSCA's top forensic anthropology consultant and top radiology consultant, claimed the large triangular fragment was parietal bone, and not frontal bone, and performed a flip-flop of epic proportions.

Now, there was a jaw-dropping problem with Baden's flip-flop. The bottom margin of this fragment in the drawing--that is, the margin of this fragment running along the coronal suture--has a slight curve to it. Well, get this, if one assumes this fragment was where Baden said it was, it curves the wrong way!

Here is an exhibit created by the researcher John Hunt, which was to be a featured exhibit in a book he, tragically, never finished. It demonstrates beyond any doubt that the triangular fragment failed to fit where Dr. Baden claimed it fit. 

Now, Dr. Baden is purported to have attached life-sized paper cut-outs of the skull fragments onto a skull so he could see how they fit together. Well, if this is so, it should have been readily apparent to him that the large fragment only fit forward of the coronal suture, and was frontal bone, not parietal bone. 

Right?

Odd Fragment Out

Yep, 'fraid so...

As first suggested by Dr. Joseph Riley in his presentation at the 1996 JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas (in which he concurred with Dr. Angel's original conclusions re the large triangular fragment and Harper fragment), and as further demonstrated by researcher John Hunt in his ground-breaking article A Demonstrable Impossibility (2007), Baden L-I-E-D about the skull fragments. He just flat-out L-I-E-D. (I'm not sure why I'm spelling this out--perhaps I'm doing it for dramatic effect. But the truth is it still shocks me when I think about a prominent doctor's telling such a whopper in such an important case.)

On the reconstruction of the skull using the paper cutouts, the report of Baden's pathology panel claimed: "The largest of the X-ray fragments—that on which outer beveling and tiny metal fragments are evident—completes a portion of the exit perforation, with the suture line fitting into the coronal suture; the Harper bone fragment completes the circular perforation in the suture line immediately superior to the temporal bone. No other exit or entrance perforation is identified."

Well, we've already demonstrated that the largest fragment did not fit where Baden claimed it fit. But this line about the "Harper bone fragment" is even worse. Take a look at the slide above and see if there is any way to fit the Harper fragment between the purported location of the exit perforation, and the temporal bone, the top of which is marked by Baden himself on Exhibit 58 as residing less than halfway between the exit perforation and the ear. (While the size of the Harper fragment on the slide above is an approximate, the sides of the Harper fragment are indisputably more than 2 inches long. Well, heck. This is roughly twice the distance between the purported exit perforation and the lateral suture line--which designates the top of the temporal bone--in Exhibit 58.)  

I mean, there's just no way it could fit, right? As seen on the previous slide, Exhibit F-66--another drawing made under Dr. Baden's direction--shows the triangular fragment fitting into the forward-most part of the skull defect. There is no room for the Harper fragment to fit BELOW this location. There is, in fact, only intact skull below this location on the side of the head. But even if one is to assume Baden decided he was wrong about this, and that he'd decided there was a hole on the side of the head, there is simply no way the notch believed to show a bullet defect on the Harper fragment (the uppermost corner of the Harper fragment in F-66) abutted the beveled notch on the triangular fragment. NOT without the other corners of the Harper fragment crossing over onto the temporal bone (the bone surrounding the ear), and the sphenoid bone (the bone just forward of the temporal bone, and below the purported bullet defect).

So why did Baden pretend that it fit? Well, that's a good question, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that the only doctor to study the actual fragment and put his thoughts on record (Dr. Cairns) thought it to have been occipital bone (the thickest bone in the skull) and the most qualified doctor to study the photos of the bone (Dr. Angel) thought it to have been parietal bone (a moderately thick bone). Perhaps Baden felt that, in the face of such opposition, he couldn't just turn around and claim this bone was temporal bone, the thinnest bone in the skull.

And besides, even if the Harper fragment could fit into the location proposed by Baden, there was no reason to believe it did. Angel--the skull expert--concluded that near the "short upper edge" of the fragment "vascular foramina on the inside and a faint irregular line on the outside indicate sagittal suture." (Note: the sagittal suture runs from front to back down the middle of the top of the skull.) Angel had thereby concluded that the fragment came from the top of Kennedy's skull, and not from the side, where Baden claimed it had originated. And the side made no sense to begin with. The Harper fragment was found eighty feet or so in front and to the left of where Kennedy was sitting at the time of the impact. It is almost certainly the large fragment seen flying upwards in the Zapruder film. Well, why would a bone fragment entirely on the right side of Kennedy's head, believed to have been BELOW the passage of a bullet from the crown of his head down to his temple, rocket upwards in such a manner?  

The Harper fragment was odd fragment out. Evidently, Baden, or someone working with his panel, realized that placing the Harper fragment towards the back of the head a la Angel in his drawings, and a la Baden himself in F-66, meant the exit on the Harper fragment was a separate exit from the presumed exit on the coronal suture. And this wouldn't do. They wanted there to be one exit. Period.

So they lied about it, and made out that the Harper fragment--supposedly parietal bone--came from a part of the parietal bone where they didn't even think there was missing bone. And where it couldn't even fit if there had been missing bone...and still be parietal bone.

I mean, it's really quite clear here that someone was blowing smoke. And Hunt, in his article, makes it quite clear that this someone was Baden. Hunt reported that, despite his persistent inquiries, the National Archives was unable to locate the skull on which Baden had supposedly matched up the cutouts, or even the cutouts. And worse, far worse, Hunt revealed that Figure 32 of the December 1978 final draft of the report of the pathology panel, which, in the report's own words, showed Baden's Exhibit F-66 "with the attached bone fragments replaced in approximate anatomic position and the four separately received bone fragments replaced in the remaining defect" was nowhere to be found in the report as published in March, 1979.

A 12-20-78 memo from HSCA staffer Andy Purdy to Chief Counsel Robert Blakey shines more light on these shenanigans. This memo (RIF #180-10129-10023) reveals: "Dr. Baden and I reviewed the Committee's exhibits which dealt with the JFK medical evidence and discussed the evidentiary significance of these materials with regard origin of missile causing the damage." Purdy then moved on to discuss the x-ray showing the three skull fragments found in the limo and the plaza and brought to the autopsy by the Secret Service. Purdy then reveals: "Dr. Baden said he and the Forensic Pathology Panel worked with Dr. John Ebersole (who took original x-rays) to determine which side of the bone fragments is which. They were unable to make this determination. From this x-ray the panel cannot see beveling at all, much less which direction it is. The panel had to rely upon the autopsy doctors description of their reconstruction of the head which they said enabled them to determine that there was beveling evident on the largest of these three fragments in the area of the metal fragments visible on the x-ray." Purdy then proclaims: "The autopsy doctors also indicated that this beveling lined up on reconstruction with the semi-circular defect which our doctors say is the exit of the bullet because of the beveling they say they see on the enlarged, somewhat unclear photograph of the margin of the excavated skull cavity."

Well, first of all, as we've seen, the autopsy doctors did no such thing. Dr. Boswell made a single mention of matching up beveling, but Dr. HUMES never said that, and, in fact, testified that no beveling was found on the intact skull. 

And, second of all, well, let's recall that first line. Purdy and Baden "reviewed the Committee's exhibits which dealt with the JFK medical evidence and discussed the evidentiary significance of these materials with regard origin of missile causing the damage." It seems likely then, that Figure 32, which presumably showed the Harper fragment in a location incompatible with its sharing an exit with the triangular fragment, and was not revised to show Baden's purported discovery of its actual location along the coronal suture, failed its review and was made to disappear...

Along with the skull and the paper cut-outs of the fragments...

Now, this conflict between Angel and the panel's conclusions, and the panel's inability to get its conclusions to add up, supports that something was just plain wrong with their interpretations of the evidence. The Clark Panel's insistence there was no exit on the forehead apparent in the mystery photo, and Angel's subsequent assertion that the mystery photo shows precisely that, is also curious, and can be taken as an indication that the Clark Panel knew the photo, when interpreted as showing the forehead, suggested as much, but were reluctant to either 1) come to yet another conclusion in clear conflict with the statements of the autopsy doctors, or 2) conclude the mystery photo did not show forehead, but the back of the head. If the photo showed the back of the head, after all, it would mean there was what appeared to be the beveled exit of a bullet on the back half of Kennedy's head. And this just would not do.  

The mystery photo--and the belief among these doctors that it was taken from the front--was quite clearly at the center of this chaos.

Now, that doesn't prove it was wrongly interpreted as showing the front of the skull, as I have come to believe, but it sure supports that possibility...

The V-Shaped Irregularity

As does the fact the panel's other consultants were equally confused by the photo...

Let us now discuss the Authentication Report of Dr.s Ellis L. Kerley and Clyde C. Snow, forensic anthropology consultants to the HSCA. Kerley and Snow were given a specific task--to determine the authenticity and consistency of the Kennedy autopsy photos and x-rays, in other words, to determine whether or not the body in the photos and x-rays was that of President Kennedy. In this light, then, it is not surprising that Kerley and Snow admitted that "we did not concern ourselves with the description and location of the wounds or of their nature and significance, since this was clearly the responsibility of the forensic pathology consultants." Nice dodge. This as much as admits that, IF they thought it possible (or even probable) the "mystery photo" showed the back of the head, they wouldn't say as much, as that would be stepping on the toes of the Pathology Panel.

But did they think it possible? I suspect so. It's subtle, but it's in there. In their discussion of "The Issue," Kerley and Snow relate that some of the autopsy photos, "particularly close-ups, were taken in such a manner that it is nearly impossible to anatomically orient the direction of view." Well, that's clearly a reference to the "mystery photo." They then relate that, if these materials were offered for use in a trial, "even the prosecution might have second thoughts about using certain of these photographs since they are more confusing than informative." Hmmm... I read this as a warning to the pathology panel and the house select committee in general. They're saying "you shouldn't claim this photo shows the front of the head, because many are bound to think it does not, and you'll lose them if they come to think you've pulled a switcheroo."

Even so, Kerley and Snow's report concludes “The photographs of group 5 (Note: group 5 is described as “Anterior-superior”--from the front and from above), which show the cranial cavity with the brain removed, are somewhat more difficult to evaluate. One feature of interest is the outline of the fractured margin of the frontal bone that is partially visible in the foreground of these photographs. A deep V-shaped irregularity in this margin is also visible in photographs of group 1 in which the scalp is partially reflected to expose the underlying bone.” (Note: they can't even get the group numbers right. Group 1 is the left lateral view, which shows no defect. They clearly mean group 2, the right lateral view.)

Amazingly, Kerley and Snow's impression of the "mystery photo" was in disagreement with both Dr. Baden's and their fellow forensic anthropologist Dr. Angel's impressions of the photo. In Dr. Baden's viewpoint, after all--or at least in the viewpoint he was supposed to present to the committee--the skull in the background of the bone in the foreground was the right back of Kennedy's skull. Now compare this to Kerley's and Snow's impression, in which the v-shapes in group 5 and group 1 align. In their impression, the background of the bone in the foreground is most obviously the left back of Kennedy's skull! (This is shown on the slide above).

When one looks closer, in fact, it becomes clear that the photos of group 5 and group 2 don't align at all. The angles of the foreheads and the locations of the eye sockets are all wrong.

So what were Kerley and Snow thinking?

While it's hard to say for sure, it seems perfectly reasonable--given the disclaimers they'd included in their report--to assume that Kerley and Snow had been pushed, and pushed hard, to shore up the pathology panel's claim the mystery photo showed forehead. If so, well then it follows that they made up some crap, and just threw it out there, under the belief nobody would read it anyhow. (If so, well, they were almost right.)

That they were just writing what they thought they were supposed to write is supported, moreover, by what they wrote next. After writing that the v-shapes in groups 5  and 1, I mean 2, match, they wrote: "The anterior margin of the cranial defects also corresponds in shape to the fractures observed in the cranial x-rays." Uhhh... The jagged edge of the defect across the frontal bone in Kerley and Snow's interpretation of the mystery photo is not apparent on Kennedy's x-rays. No radiologist has said as much, anyhow. And no one else, of whom I am aware, has either. While some laymen, such as Harrison Livingstone, and one "expert", Dr. John Lattimer, have at one time or another claimed the forehead is missing on the x-rays, the consensus among those viewing the x-rays in the archives, including conspiracy theorists such as Dr. David Mantik, is that the forehead is intact on the x-rays. 

Back to the Forehead

As the years passed, moreover, yet another consultant to the HSCA pathology panel presented an interpretation of the mystery photo...that was at odds with the pathology panel's interpretation of the photo.

Yes, in the build-up to the release of his book, the JFK Myths (2005), HSCA wound ballistics consultant Larry Sturdivan shared his most recent interpretations of Kennedy's wounds with the assassination research community. And--you can't make this stuff up, or rather, you can, but the truth is so much more ludicrous--he not only claimed the open cranium photograph (aka the "mystery photo") depicted a presumably beveled exit on Kennedy's forehead, a la Dr. Angel, but an entrance wound by the EOP, a la the autopsy doctors.

This was most surprising. The autopsy doctors, whose impression of the entrance wound is now shared by Sturdivan, were most adamant that there was no missile exit in the frontal bone. This is demonstrated by the following exchange between Dr. Humes and Dr. Angel before the HSCA pathology panel.  

Dr. Humes: “This is not frontal bone where that semi-circle is—it’s either temporal or parietal bone, Dr. Angel.

Dr. Angel: "I don't see how it can be. That's what it looks like to me."

Dr. Humes: "That's exactly what it is."

And might I also insert that Dr. Angel, who first described the beveled exit on the forehead, supported the Clark Panel's analysis, and concluded there was no entrance wound by the EOP?

So, yeah, Sturdivan's interpretation of the photo and wounds is a hybrid of something old (the bullet entered by the EOP) with something relatively new (the beveled bone in the mystery photo is on the forehead).

Arrggh!

Now, to be clear, Sturdivan has retreated from the HSCA's position the beveled bone on this photo represents an exit. 

And he may not be wrong. Surprisingly, one can find support for Sturdivan's current belief the beveled piece of bone in the foreground of the mystery photo, while appearing to reflect the passage of a bullet, does no such thing. During the 1992 ABA mock trial of Oswald, Dr. Roger McCarthy, who'd been conducting test firings on human skulls in anticipation of his appearance, testified: "Skulls are very inhomogeneous--by that I mean they've got different layers and they've got different form and they are not a homogeneous material that is all the same, that always responds to the same impact. In fact, some of the skulls we shot--and this is another one that I shot--actually developed a beveled wound, with a knockout, and it wasn't anywhere near the bullet."

And yet... Arggh!

Let's be clear. With the JFK Myths, Sturdivan was presenting yet another interpretation of the mystery photo... I mean, the final report of the HSCA's pathology panel claimed one could see the internal aspect of a bullet hole in the cowlick in the background of this photo, and here Sturdivan comes along, decades later, and writes a report in which he claims both that "The HSCA FPP entry site on the crown of the head appears to be a pale reddish patch on the scalp" in the back of the head photo, and one can see the internal aspect of the bullet hole on the back of the head by the EOP in the background of the mystery photo. 

It was like Humes' switcheroo, where he suddenly claimed the wound he said was low on the back of the head was actually high on the back of the head. Only in reverse...

And not really... Humes, after all, had been pressured into reversing course, and then immediately reversed back, once the pressure had abated. 

And Sturdivan, well, he never reversed course after visiting the archives on 9-23-04. 

So Arggh! Again!

For here was the HSCA’s own wound ballistics expert rejecting their conclusions regarding both the entrance location of the fatal bullet on the back of Kennedy’s head, and the exit location of this bullet toward the front of his head. And yet, even so, no one in the national media apparently noticed this change of opinion or thought it worthy of bringing to the public’s attention...

So, what's up with that? Are the findings of Dr. Baden and his HSCA pathology panel sacrosanct, whereby doubts among their consultants are not to be acknowledged in the national press?

And, if so, what does that say about my own findings? If Sturdivan can express doubt about the panel's conclusions and have it go unreported, well, then, what chance do I have in gaining national attention for the facts I've already presented? Slim? None?

l mean, I'm not clueless. I understand why the media relies on experts. It's not often, after all, that a layman looks at some photos and reads some books on a field and then points out error after error made by those who work in that field, and have devoted their lives to that field.

But there are three ways to skin this cat. One is to try to impress you with what I know. And the other is to show you how little they (the supposed experts to whom the government and media defer) know.

And the third is to show you how these supposed experts are simply not credible (and perhaps even flat-out liars.)

Well...that brings us back to this guy...Dr. Russell Fisher...

The Fisher King

As Dr. Fisher was the leader of the Clark Panel--the Secret Panel convened by Attorney General Ramsey Clark in 1968 to explain away the problems with the medical evidence...and as Dr. Fisher was a mentor and colleague to the bulk of the Rockefeller Commission panel and HSCA panel, tasked with reviewing his findings, it only makes sense that we begin our investigation of the competence and/or integrity of these panels with him. 

Now, we've already seen, in our discussion of the single-bullet theory, how Fisher and his panel made strikingly incorrect claims about the location of the back wound in relation to the throat wound, and had made out that the back wound was well above the throat wound, anatomically speaking, when it was actually at the same level or below the level of the throat wound. So it only makes sense that we see if similarly questionable claims were made about the trajctory of the bullet striking Kennedy's head. 

Well, we've already done so, and have demonstrated that Dr. Fisher, along with the radiologist for the Clark Panel, Dr. Russell Morgan, "discovered" a new and improved location for the entrance wound on the back of the Kennedy's head, that was in better alignment with  a bullet's entering the back of the head and exiting from the top of the head, the trajectory proposed by the Warren Commission. 

But what of the passage through the brain? Was Dr. Fisher's proposed hole in the cowlick in keeping with the damage observed in Kennedy's brain? 

Here then is the discussion of this matter in his report. First, he describes what can be seen in the autopsy photos of Kennedy's brain: "The right cerebral hemisphere is extensively lacerated. It is transected by a broad canal running generally in a postero-antero direction and to the right of the midline. Much of the roof of this canal is missing." Now, this canal was described by the autopsy doctors in their own report. Unlike Fisher, however, they gave a measurement for this canal--that its base was 4.5 cm beneath the vertex of the brain. Well, this puts it well below the red splotch on the cowlick--which Fisher and his panel were claiming marked the entrance of a bullet on the back of Kennedy's skull. So we can only hope Fisher isn't pretending this canal lines up with his proposed entrance. And, no, he is not. But he does go on to claim the damage to the brain suggests a bullet fired from the rear, etc...while never mentioning that, oh yeah, the damage to the brain is inconsistent with my proposed entrance...

But it gets worse.  The Clark Panel's report proceeds to describe what can be seen on the x-rays. (We can presume this section was written with the help of Dr. Morgan, the panel's radiologist.) It relates: "The metallic fragments visualized within the right cerebral hemisphere fall into two groups. One group consists of relatively large fragments, more or less randomly distributed. The second group consists of finely divided fragments, distributed in a postero-anterior direction in a region 45 mm long and 8 mm wide. ..its long axis if extended posteriorly passes through the above-mentioned hole. It appears to end anteriorly immediately below the badly fragmented frontal and parietal bones just anterior to the region of the coronal suture." Well, this "above-mentioned hole" is, no surprise, Fisher's presumed hole in the cowlick.  Fisher (and his panel) had thereby claimed there was an entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head in a location where no one viewing Kennedy's body had said there was an entrance wound, AND that the accuracy of their claim was supported by the x-rays, which showed a trail of fragments in alignment with their proposed entrance location and their presumed exit on Kennedy's skull. 

Now, at the time they made this claim, NO ONE outside of the autopsy team had ever glimpsed at the x-rays, let alone studied them. So Fisher and his pals may have felt safe in claiming such a thing...

So let us take a look at the lateral x-ray of Kennedy's skull (which was subsequently published by the HSCA)...and see for ourselves if these men were truth-tellers, or smoke-blowers...

Above: The exhibit that never was, but should have been. By super-imposing the enhanced lateral x-ray of President Kennedy's skull, which was published by the HSCA, over a tracing of this x-ray marking the HSCA Pathology Panel's proposed entrance and exit on President Kennedy's skull, which was published by the HSCA, and then placing a red oval over the supposed trail of fragments on this x-ray, and adding a blue line marking the approximate location of the bottom of the "canal" apparent on the photographs of Kennedy's brain, a tracing of which was published by the HSCA, it becomes INCREDIBLY CLEAR that the bullet trajectory proposed by the HSCA Pathology Panel (the line connecting the inshoot and outshoot), which was first proposed by Dr. Russell Fisher and the Clark Panel, was well above the line of damage to Kennedy's brain, and well below the supposed trail of fragments through his brain.

In short, the answer is "smoke-blowers." 

And it gets worse. As discussed, the Rockefeller Commission consulted with some doctors in 1975, as to whether a new and more thorough investigation of the Kennedy assassination medical evidence was warranted. And by golly two of these doctors just so happened to be among Dr. Russell Fisher's closest colleagues. 

So let's see what they had to say about the trajectory of the bullet within Kennedy's brain. Did they get in line with Fisher, or did they admit his trajectory fell flat?

The first of Fisher's colleagues to come under our microscope is Dr. Richard Lindenberg. Lindenberg was a recognized expert on traumatic brain injury. Well, in his 1975 report to the commission Lindenberg not only doubled-down on most everything claimed by Fisher in 1968, he acknowledged what someone like myself might otherwise only realize after careful study of the many reports written in the aftermath of Fisher's movement of the entrance wound in 1968: that no wound tract was apparent within the brain connecting Fisher's proposed entrance and exit. He claimed: "Instead of leaving a distinct wound canal through the brain, the bullet produced a severe injury in the right cerebral hemisphere commencing in the right parietal region near the border of the occipital lobe, becoming larger anteriorly...The explosive destruction of brain and skull was not caused by the bullet per se but by its after effect of cavitation within the brain...As regards the examination of the brain, the photographs showing the fixed brain from above and below demonstrate all that is necessary to exclude the possibility of a second bullet with certainty. Sectioniing of the brain is not expected to yield information which would...change this opinion."  Well, first, note that Lindenberg claimed the beginning of the wound track within the brain is well below the entrance location proposed by Fisher. And, second, note that Lindenberg claimed or appeared to claim this doesn't really matter, because the cavitation within the brain destroyed the original bullet track. And, third, huh, note that Lindenberg claimed further examination of the brain was unnecessary.

So, yeah, let this sink in. The impression given by Lindenberg in 1975 is that the lack of a "distinct wound canal through the brain" is no big deal and that the location of the severe injury within the brain was "close enough" to Fisher's proposed entrance location for horseshoes, or hand grenades, or forensic "science," or however that old expression goes... AND that further examination of the brain was unnecessary..

Now, it's not as if he claimed there was no scientific evidence for the bullet trajectory proclaimed by Fisher. We mustn't forget the x-rays! Lindenberg sure didn't. He claimed: "As evidenced by the x-ray films of the skull, the bullet became somewhat deformed when it entered the skull and lead was squeezed out of its base. One larger fragment lies outside and next to the lower margin of the entrance wound. Within the skull, a great number of tiny lead particles, embedded in remaining brain and meninges, are distributed along an axis extending from the entrance hole to the frontal region, most of them being located in the lateral portion of the cranial cavity."

So, yeah, Lindenberg repeated a lie first told by Russell Fisher, which supported Fisher's claim about the entrance location. And then claimed no further examination of the brain--which would disprove their lie, was necessary. 

Now let's compare Lindenberg's findings to the findings of a second consultant to the Rockefeller Commission, and an even closer colleague of Fisher's, Dr. Werner Spitz. Dr. Spitz testified before the commission on 4-18-75. When discussing the head wound, he asserted: (The bullet) "struck the back of the head on the right side, where I saw a bullet wound of entrance on the skin." Note that he is clearly referring to Fisher's proposed entrance in the cowlick... (The bullet wound by the EOP was in the hair.) Spitz continued: "That slug penetrated the right side of the brain, exploded that part of the skull, and left a pathway of metal along the pathway of the slug, with a somewhat larger piece of metal located on the bone at what I believe is the location in the bone underlying the bullet wound of entrance which I saw in the skin." 

Well, hold it right there! Both Lindenberg and Spitz have claimed a large fragment was apparent on the x-rays...underlying Fisher and Morgan's proposed bullet entrance. Fisher and Morgan claimed this same thing. Such a fragment makes little sense! Fragments entering a skull have lots of momentum, and the larger the fragment the more momentum. Well, what are the odds a large fragment would end up on the bone by a bullet's entrance? 

 But that's getting ahead of ourselves... Much much more on this stuff later...

Spitz continued: "The pathway of the bullet is from back to front, and possibly slightly upward or horizontal within the head...The appearance of the brain tends to support this...And this is based on what the brain looks like on the photographs of that organ...I do not think that seeing the actual brain and examining the inside of the brain would add to this to the extent that it would change my opinion, because the appearance of the internal organs is not very significant with regard to the direction of fire anyway. And what I do expect from the appearance of the brain with regard to this question I have seen on the pictures."  He later returned to this topic: "I would have to add that I would have probably cut the the President's brain if I had had it and looked at it. But I can tell you right now that I would not have expected to find anything in there. I would have done it because it is routine to do that. I would not expect that you would find anything at all on microscopic examination except for other bruising and damage which I can see on the picture without doing microscopics. It is not at all my practice to do microscopics on brains of homicide victims when the injuries are such as the ones in this case. because I consider it a waste of time, unless I look for gun powder. And forensic pathologists usually don't have too much time to play around with. Coronal dissection of the brain would in my opinion not add materially to what I have by looking at the brain on the picture. The picture shows the destruction of the right hemisphere, of the right half of the brain. What else would I want to see? I can already practically see through the brain on that side, because there practically isn't any tissue left, because the tissue has been scattered all over, due to the explosion inside the skull. So there isn't much brain tissue to cut coronally to begin with...On the right side."  

Spitz also wrote a report to the commission. In this report, Spitz asserted: "I do not believe that an examination of the President's brain would contribute significantly to a clarification of the circumstances. The pictures of the President's brain show the vastly destroyed right hemisphere. The damage is especially marked in the front while the right occipital pole is relatively well preserved, tending to support that the shot came from the rear. The bullet wound entrance was definitely located in the back of the head."

So, yeah, incredibly, or perhaps not so incredibly, Lindenberg and Spitz both made out that 1) there was a fragment on the back of the head by the entrance location proposed by Fisher and Morgan, 2) there was no distinct bullet track within the brain but the trajectory of the bullet could nevertheless be determined by the trail of fragments apparent on the x-rays, which led from the entrance location proposed by Fisher and Morgan to the exit, and 3) that a sectioning of the brain and thorough examination of the brain would not be worth the effort. 

Now let's recall something easily forgotten from the last chapter...and thats that Russell Fisher had similarly announced in 1975 that further investigation of the medical evidence would be “a waste of time and taxpayers’ money.” So, yeah, it would appear that both Spitz and Lindenberg, when telling the Rockefeller Commission that they knew all they needed to know about the brain from looking at the photographs and that no further examination/sectioning of the brain was necessary...were taking their cue from Fisher!

Well...what about the HSCA pathology panel, then...were they similarly taking their cues from Fisher? 

It would appear so... When discussing the lateral x-ray, the report of this panel claimed: "Within the right side of the head are randomly distributed, irregularly shaped, radiopaque shadows which are missile fragments. These shadows, measuring from 0.2 to 0.6 centimeter in diameter, extend from the back to the front; the largest one is present beneath the skin in front. Another group of smaller,, more uniform, shadows, 0.1 centimeter less in diameter, so-called missile dust, forms a cylindrical pattern, with the axis directed anterior-posterior, approximately paralleling the sagittal plane, and extending toward the large bony defect in the right temporal-parietal region on the right side of the head. The long axis of this grouping, if extended backward, approaches the entrance defect and missile fragment in the right side of the back of the head."

Well, this was Fisher and Morgan's lie, which had already been rubber-stamped by Lindenberg and Spitz. 

Now, it warrants our attention that the HSCA Panel consulted with 4 different radiologists. The reports of two of these--Dr.s Chase and Seaman (both composed on 2-27-78) failed to mention the supposed trail of fragments. The 3-8-78 report of Dr. McDonnel similarly failed to mention this supposed trail. The x-rays were then enhanced. On 8-4-78 Dr. McDonnel wrote a report on his impressions of the enhanced images. He now noted "A linear alignment of tiny metallic fragments is associated with the entry, path of travel, and exit in the posterior aspect of the right frontal bone." Now, this is a curious choice of words..."associated." He doesn't exactly claim this line of fragments extends from the presumed entrance location on the back of the head (the Fisher location) to the presumed exit, now does he? In any event, for reasons to be discussed later, Dr. Baden, the leader of the HSCA panel, then sought the services of another radiologist, Dr. David Davis. Dr. Davis wrote a report on 8-23-78. Within this report, he claimed: "There are a number of metallic fragments extending anteriorly from the inner table of the skull at a point approximately 6cm anterosuperiorly from the previously described imbedded metallic fragment. These fragments extend inferoanteriorly across the entire skull and actually project (on other images that I have seen) in a fashion that suggests that the the large fragment is outside the intracranial space. Presumably this represents a metallic fragment in the scalp, although this cannot be accurately determined from this particular examination...It is not possible to totally explain the metallic fragment pattern that is present from some of the metallic fragments located superiorly in the region of the parietal bone, or at least projecting on the parietal bone, are actually in the scalp. The frontal view does not give much help in this regard and it is impossible to work this out completely."

GULP. Davis, who would be the sole radiology consultant for the HSCA panel over its closing months, not only told the HSCA panel the supposed trail of fragments began 6cm (almost 2 1/2 inches!!!)  anterosuperiorly (above and in front) of the supposed fragment on the back of the head supposedly just below the bullet's entrance, but that some of the fragments appeared to be in the scalp! 

So, yeah, the panel was told, warned essentially, that the supposed trail of fragments supposedly connecting the new and improved entrance location for the bullet on the back of Kennedy's head with the panel's proposed exit location along the coronal suture, was an urban legend.

And they repeated it anyway. 

What's that they say? When the legend becomes "fact," print the legend. 

They printed the legend. And protected the legacy of the un-crowned King of Forensics: Dr. Russell Fisher. 

(Note: the rest of this chapter consists of my analysis of HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel honcho Dr. Michael Baden's statements regarding the Kennedy assassination, and his resultant lack of credibility. I then discuss his fellow HSCA panelist Dr. Werner Spitz's similar lack of credibility, and the lack of credibility for the HSCA's forensic pathology panel as a whole. This is done in great detail. It will be tedious to some, if not most. If you've already come to question the credibility of this panel, or more specifically their credibility when they interpret the open cranium photograph as depicting Kennedy's forehead, well, then you just might want to skip ahead to the next chapter. If you choose to read on, however, well, I hope you find it worthwhile.)

Above: Dr. Michael Baden, in his prime, testifying before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, 1978. 

Baden's Reign of Error

Once one realizes that the head of the HSCA's forensic pathology panel testified with one of his key exhibits upside down, and lied about his orientation for the skull fragments, well, one should wonder why. I mean, was Dr. Baden completely befuddled by Kennedy's head wounds, and blinded by confirmation bias? Or did he know that much of what he was claiming was untrue? 

Now, in some ways it doesn't really matter, because in either case, we shouldn’t place much stock in his claims about the medical evidence. But call me curious. Was Baden thick as a brick? Or were he and the Fisher gang thick as thieves? 

On 7-16-07, researcher Barb Junkkarinen related something on the alt.assassination.jfk newsgroup that supports the possibility Baden was simply confused by the evidence--the mystery photograph in particular. She comforted single-assassin theorist extraordinaire David Von Pein, who'd been honest enough to admit he couldn't make sense of the photograph, by telling him "Baden by the way, turned my 8x10 glossy of that photo round and round then thrust his hand holding the pic in the air and shrugged his shoulders when I asked him to orient it for me at a little private lunch meeting 6 or 7 of us were able to have with Wecht and Baden in Monterey, Calif a few years ago. He didn't have a clue how it should be either."

But for me it's not as simple as that. If the photograph was so difficult for Baden to understand, then why did he testify about it, and use it as evidence the shots came from behind? And why did he hide that he couldn't get the pieces of Kennedy's skull to fit?

Perhaps he answers this himself. In his 2001 book Dead Reckoning, he writes: "Physicians may be the worst witnesses. They are often swayed by whoever asked them to be an expert. If that lawyer is smart enough to ask their advice, they conclude, he must know what he is doing. That being the case, physicians therefore adopt whatever the lawyer tells them as the facts of the case and become, if only subconsciously, an advocate for the lawyer rather than an independent adviser."

Of course, Baden considers himself beyond such seduction. In his 1989 book Unnatural Death, he recounts how disgusted he was with HSCA chief counsel Robert Blakey when Blakey came to him at the last minute and asked for his help in finding medical evidence for a conspiracy. Naturally, he told Blakey he couldn’t do such a thing. This pillar of decency, of course, also disapproves of the widespread availability of the autopsy photos. In his book Dead Reckoning, he writes: “It is a shame. This is not a procedure that should be viewed by anyone other than those who need to know the details in the pursuit of truth.” In light of this statement, one might think he'd shy from using the photos for his own profit. But one would be wrong. On January 9, 2008, Dr. Baden broadcast a number of Kennedy's autopsy photos on his HBO program, Autopsy. Some of these were in full color. Presumably, Baden thought that placing black lines over Kennedy's eyes made the photos fit for broadcast, and that it was better for him to make money off these slightly edited photos than have somebody else put them up on the internet for educational purposes...for free.

If it sounds like I'm angry with Baden, it's only cause I am. Beyond his testifying with his exhibit upside down, he's spread more misinformation about the Kennedy assassination than just about anyone alive. It's my strong belief that someone so out of touch with the case should not be permitted to pass himself off as an expert on the case. But he has, and has probably made millions off his pretending to be an expert on this case, while knowing less than the average participant in an online JFK forum, and performing little or no research. 

And so, yes, I have a bias aganst the man. 

And this bias colors my judgement. I mean, every time I hear him speak about the case, my skin crawls, and a voice inside my head screams "LiAR!!! LIAR!!! LIAR!!!)

Which is undoubtedly unfair. I mean, he could just be mistaken on this stuff. 

In any event, in 2025, I decided to review the bulk of Baden's statements on this webpage, and highlight which ones we could presume to be deliberate lies, as opposed to the typical  blitherings of a mis-informed person. Now, to do this, I first took some time to figure out what I thought would be the things Baden might lie about. And I realized that while he might lie about Oswald'd guilt, or evidence for Oswald's guilt, he was far more likely to lie to protect his own reputation, and the reputation of his colleagues. 

And this led me to focus on the following facts. 

1. The autopsy photos clearly demonstrate the inaccuracy of Baden's claims about the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head and the orientation of the mystery photo. Baden might thereby lie about the quality of the photos and the competence of the photographer. (Lies of this type will from hereon be designated Baden's Big Lie #1.)

2.  Dr. Pierre Finck, a Forensic Pathologist and an expert on gunshot wounds, confirmed that the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head was as described in the autopsy report. This made him enemy #1 in the minds of men, such as Baden, who'd taken to claiming it was really four inches higher on the skull. Baden might thereby lie about Finck's competence, or simply pretend he didn't exist. (Lies of this type will from hereon be designated Baden's Big Lie #2.)

3. The entrance wound which Baden contends was really four inches higher on the skull was first described in a report written by Dr. Humes, built on notes made during the autopsy. Baden might thereby lie about the writing of this report, and claim it was actually built on Humes' faulty memory or good old-fashioned guesswork. (Lies of this type will from hereon be designated Baden's Big Lie #3.)

Ready. Steady. Go...

Baden's Reign of Error 1980

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

1. 1. When discussing Abraham Zapruder and his film, he stated: "He's retired on the proceeds of the few seconds of film taking." (While Zapruder made a nice sum from the selling of his film to Time/Life, he was already a successful businessman before selling his film. and had been dead for ten years when Baden made this claim.  It should be noted, for that matter, that this was the kind of fact that was common knowledge to those with a genuine interest in the assassination of President Kennedy.) 

   2. When discussing the President's movements during the shooting, he stated "Interestingly, the Secret Service people indicate that immediately, as soon as they heard the first shot, they speeded up the car. This became a problem because in the whole analysis, it did appear that if he did speed up his car immediately, it had significance." (Well, first of all,  the limo's driver never said he sped up after the first shot. He said he looked back after what he thought was the second shot. And sped up afterwards. And second of all... HOW did it have significance? I sure hope Baden wasn't suggesting that the back and to the left motion of Kennedy after he was struck in the head was caused by the acceleration of the limo. This was a myth. The films reveal that the car slowed as the driver looked back, and only accelerated after Kennedy's head  was struck and had finished its backwards movement.)

   3. He then complained about the performance of the autopsy. He started by complaining that the neck was not dissected, and that this left some unanswered questions as to what the bullet struck while passing through the neck. He then assured his audience: "The head injury did go from this spot here toward the right and caused extensive damage to the brain, which was not described." Now, we can presume he pointed to the cowlick when saying "this spot here." So that's not really a problem. No, the problem is that he claimed the damage to the brain was not described. Well, what was he talking about? While the brain was not sectioned, the autopsy doctors described the damage to the surface of the brain in both the autopsy report and a supplemental report written two weeks later. These descriptions, no surprise, were at odds with Dr. Baden's claim the bullet entered at the cowlick and exited at the coronal suture. Well, huh, was Baden trying to hide this from his audience? Baden's Big Lie #4? 

   4. Baden then attacked the lack of specificity in the autopsy report, noting: "The doctors who attended the President made a note that 'the injuries to the skull and brain are so complex that they defy description and we will rely on photographs taken to better describe the injury and further dissection of the brain.'" (Wait. What? The statement to which he refers makes NO mention of the brain at all. It reads "The complexity of these fractures and the fragments thus produced tax satisfactory verbal description and are better appreciated in photographs and roentgenograms which are prepared." So, yeah... Could Baden really have forgotten that the doctors, while failing to section the brain and inspect the missile paths within the brain, nevertheless described in detail the apparent damage to the surface of the brain in their Supplementary Autopsy Report of 12-6-63? Or was he trying to conceal this inconvenient fact from his audience?) Baden's Big Lie #4?

   5. He then explained why the doctors' reliance on the photographs made his job so much harder. He claimed: "It turns out the photographs taken were out of focus and are of little value because they were not done by medical photographers but by government officials who had never taken autopsy photographs before." (Holy smokes! Baden's inability to grasp or admit that the pictures were taken by John Stringer, the Navy's top autopsy photographer in 1963--and a man interviewed for the HSCA on August 17, 1977 by HSCA counsel Andy Purdy, Baden's contact with the committee--demonstrates beyond any doubt that he either never got a handle on the evidence he was tasked with studying, or was more than willing to lie about it.) Baden's Big Lie #1.

   6. He then added: "And the brain disappeared! So that the brain was never analyzed and was lost some place, which became an annoying issue." Well holy smokes again! This was less than TWO YEARS after Baden's panel had issued a report which quoted the 12-6-63 Supplementary Report on Kennedy's brain. And here Baden was making out that no examination of the brain was performed and no such report existed! I mean, what the heck was he up to?) Baden's Big Lie #4?

   7. In any event, after telling his mind-numbing lie holding that the brain was not examined, Baden then explained that it's not a doctors' job to decide who did it. And then proceeded to tell his audience who did it. He insisted: "Oswald had the gun, it was his, there were his fingerprints on it, he pulled the trigger." (Of course, there had been but one identifiable print found on the rifle--Oswald's palm print--and it was found on the barrel of the rifle, in a part that was only exposed when the rifle was disassembled. Furthermore, the only man to see this print on the rifle, Dallas detective J.C. Day, felt sure that this print was an old print. So, no, there was no scientific evidence proving Oswald had pulled the trigger. In fact, it was just the opposite, as the scientifc evidence actually suggested he had not pulled the trigger. Lest we forget...the nitrate test performed to see if Oswald had fired a rifle came up negative...and the neutron activation analysis of the cheek cast created for this nitrate test supported this conclusion...)

   8. Baden's lecture then came to a close--but not before he ranted some more about the disappearance of the brain...before it could be studied.. He bitched: "Once the autopsy is done they save the brain in a container. Then there's a series of receipts, but it's not in the same kind of possession that you would consider valid from a law enforcement point of view. The brain is kept by the doctor. Two weeks later, it's looked at by the doctor and photographed by the doctor who decides he's not going to section it because it's too important to be sectioned. Which becomes important later on, because of the possibility of two tracks and another bullet coming in the head, all of which could have been neatly excluded by sectioning the brain which wasn't done. One unique unfortunate situation here--there was a feeling all along that the body belonged to the next of kin. The Kennedy family controlled the movement of the body, in part, the x-rays, the specimens--all remained in custody of the family. Like somebody is shot in Toronto or New York and the next of kin, who may be the perpetrator, says, "I want my pathologist to come in and do the autopsy. You take the pictures but give me the pictures so I can hold onto them." And they kept the whole thing. This was done with good intent and all that, but it wound up that the brain had a series of transfers to the National Archives in a steamer trunk with other materials and there were paper transfers but it's hard to say if anybody looked in, and finally someone opens up the trunk at one point and there's no brain in it. And there's no histologic slides, no paraffin blocks. It has been virtually impossible to determine what happened." (Now, okay. Here, at the end of his talk, Baden finally admitted that Dr. Humes viewed the brain two weeks after the shooting. But look what he left out! He failed to acknowledge that 1) Humes viewed the brain with Dr.s Boswell and Finck, 2) they wrote a detailed report on their observations, and 3) they analyzed as well the microscopic slides. And that's not even the worst of it! He makes out that the disappearance of the brain is an ongoing mystery, and that one day a steamer trunk was opened and there was no brain in it! Well, hell, this conceals that the autopsy materials were not handed over to the Kennedy family until 1965, and that when the Johnson Administration asked for their return the next year, they asked for the autopsy photos and x-rays, but said nothing of the brain or tissue slides. So, yeah, the facts suggest that the brain and slides were destroyed or re-interred with the body between 1965 and the death of Robert Kennedy in 1968. Well. why wouldn't Baden admit this? Was he trying to fool his audience into thinking the brain disappeared much earlier, before anyone besides the doctors could study it?) Baden's Big Lie #4?

So, yeah, it appears that Baden was already, by 1980, subconsciously and/or consciously altering some inconvenient facts about the Kennedy case, and propagating a myth of his own making--one in which the autopsy doctors never studied the brain, and where the photographs of the President's body were blurry and difficult to make out, etc.

Well, the thought occurs that he just didn't come up with this in 1980, and that he'd actually been pushing such nonsense for several years, going back to his days with the committee.

I re-read the transcript to Dr. Baden's 9-8-78 testimony to find out. When describing the injuries to Kennedy's brain, as apparent in the autopsy photos and x-rays, he claimed: "There is present evidence of a bullet track only in the upper portion of the skull; these metal fragments have moved a bit because some of the fragments are in the loose scalp tissues and soft tissues that are movable. There is no evidence of any metal fragments in the lower portion of the skull in the X-rays, nor in the photographs. Now, the brain, as was mentioned, is not available for our examination and was not thoroughly examined, nor examined even in the normal fashion, in 1963. However, it was described externally and many photographs were taken of the brain. Miss Dox has prepared a diagram of the brain as seen here, which shows how the brain looked when it was examined and before it was misplaced or lost. This fairly and accurately represents the extensive damage, and injury to the right top of the brain, that I am pointing to, that is apparent in the photographs. This, on the left side, is what the normal brain looks like and what the appearance would be on the right side if it were not injured by the bullet track. We do see some of the lower portion of the brain here, the cerebellum area. This area would have to be injured, in the unanimous opinion of the medical panel, if a bullet entered in the lower scalp area near the external occipital protuberance which is the area of discussion relative to a second lower bullet in the back of the head. We did not see any photographic or X-ray evidence of, and there is no description indicating any injury of, the brain other than the extensive damage to the right upper part of the brain consistent with the upper track which the panel agrees to." 

I then re-read the 1979 report of Baden's panel. I figured that if Baden's panel accurately reported on the contents of the Supplementary Report within their own report, Dr. Baden would deserve the benefit of the doubt--and I would assume he had a convenient memory, and was unaware in 1980 that he was propagating a myth. But that if Baden's panel had misrepresented the contents of the Supplementary Report in their report? Well, then I would be forced to conclude Dr. Baden was a willful liar who was actively concealing evidence and telling lies about the autopsy and autopsy doctors. Now, the Supplementary Report begins with a description of the brain, including that "There is a longitudinal laceration of the right hemisphere which is para-sagittal in position approximately 2.5 cm to the right of the midline which extends from the tip of the occipital lobe posteriorly to the tip of the frontal lobe anteriorly. The base of the laceration is situated approximately 4.5 cm below the vertex in the white matter."  Now, this right here was a problem for Baden and his panel, as this laceration was a half-inch to the right and an inch or more below where Dr. Baden's panel claimed the bullet had traveled. But it's worse than that. The autopsy doctors, after inspecting Kennedy's brain, were hereby claiming there was a laceration from back to front within the brain, which was at odds with Baden's panel's contention this bullet entered  an inch or so forward of the back of the brain, and exited two inches or so rearward of the front of the brain. So, yeah, the description of this laceration within the 1963 Supplementary Report was toxic to the conclusions of Baden's panel, and to the reputations of its members, should people with a basic knowledge of anatomy, such as the people in attendance at this 1980 conference, become aware of it. And the location of the laceration wasn't the only problem, or perhaps even the biggest problem, for Baden and his panel. After providing this description the Supplementary Report listed seven sections or slices taken from the brain. These were "a. From the margin of the laceration of the right parietal lobe, b. From the margin of the laceration of the corpus callosum, c. From the anterior portion of the laceration of the right frontal lobe, d. From the contused left fronto-parietal cortex, e. From the line of transection of the spinal cord, f.  From the right cerebellar cortex, g. From the superficial laceration of the basilar aspect of the left temporal lobe." Note that five of these were from areas of the brain which were presumed to have been damaged by the impact and passage of the bullet, with four of these sections coming from lacerations and a fifth from a contusion. Now note the two exceptions: the right cerebellar cortex, and the line of transection of the spinal cord. One would not expect these areas to have been damaged by a bullet passing on the trajectory proposed by Baden and his panel. Now note the results provided by the doctors after an examination of these slides: "Microscopic Examination: Brain: Multiple sections from representative  areas as noted above are examined. All sections are essentially similar and show extensive disruption of brain tissue with associated hemorrhage. In none of the sections examined are there significant abnormalities other than those directly related to the recent trauma." GULP. As one would not expect there to have been "extensive disruption of brain tissue with associated hemorrhage" along the right cerebellar cortex (the underside of the brain nearest the entrance wound proposed at autopsy) if the bullet had passed from back to front across the top of the skull (as proposed by Dr. Baden and his panel) and as the line of transection of the spinal cord would not have shown signs of hemorrhage unless it had been damaged prior to the transection, this report strongly suggests a bullet entered low on the back of Kennedy's head, as described by the autopsy doctors, and that a missile of some kind (perhaps a small bullet fragment or bone fragment) had struck Kennedy's spinal cord.

Let's pause here to inject that it is not just my conjecture these slides were taken exclusively from areas the doctors believed had suffered damage, but the recollection of Dr. Humes. Now, to be clear, when asked by the ARRB in 1996 why he took a section from the right cerebellar cortex, Dr. Humes initially mused that it was "to have normal tissue to compare with the other side." But he quickly nullified this answer after re-examining the photographs and concluding that the right side was in fact damaged. More convincing, moreover, was his comment about the brain stem. When asked if the brain stem had been damaged before he cut through it and removed the brain, he said "It was my impression that it had, yes." He then pointed out on a photo of the brain the damage he'd observed prior to cutting the stem, and stated: "the basilar view shows this disrupted-looking area right here."  Well, hell, that gives us yet another reason to doubt the trustworthiness of Dr. Baden. Dr. Baden had a tracing of the photo of the superior view of the brain entered into evidence and published by the house committee in 1978, but had no similar tracing created for the basilar view. Well, why? Was he attempting to hide the damage apparent on the basilar view? We can suspect so. Towards the end of his testimony, he blubbered: "It is the opinion of the panel, further, after studying the photographs of the undersurface of the brain, that that area of discoloration is most probably caused by blood vessels on the undersurface of the brain that have been exposed because of the damage to the top of the brain. We feel it is not foreign material and that it is most probably blood vessels and thin membrane that have been sheered away by the bullet damage. There is, incidentally, in the actual photograph what appears to be small toothpick-like objects, used to illustrate certain points and placed there by the doctors taking the pictures; that is not at issue. That is foreign material added for purposes of picture taking." Well, hell, again. Here within this short sweet passage Dr. Baden admitted both that there was discoloration on the underside of the brain that his panel had decided to attribute to the passage of a bullet four inches above, and that the autopsy doctors had placed small toothpick-like objects on the undersurface of the brain for purposes of a photo. Well, jeez, where were these toothpick-like objects located? Did they designate areas that were damaged? And WHY THE HELL were the doctors never asked to explain their placement of toothpick-like objects in this photo?

So let's sum this up, shall we?

1. Dr. Baden testified that there was damage to the upper part of the brain and no damage to the lower part of the brain, and that that was one of the reasons the panel had concluded the bullet entered the upper part of the skull.

2. He placed a tracing of an autopsy photo into the record demonstrating this damage to the upper part of the brain. 

3. He later admitted that there was damage to the lower part of the brain, but that his panel had concluded this damage was "because of the damage to the top of the brain."

4. He also admitted that the photo of the undersurface of the brain revealed that toothpick-like objects had been added by the autopsy doctors to the undersurface of the brain "to illustrate certain points."

5. But he failed to provide the committee with a tracing of this photo so they could see this for themselves.

6. And he failed to ask the autopsy doctors what "points" they were illustrating, and present this to the committee.

In short, then, he was blowing smoke, and presenting his "case" for a bullet entering high on the skull, while concealing from the committee evidence that may have led them to doubt his "case."

Let's return then to our discussion of the report of Baden's panel. Well, they first present their own conclusions regarding the brain's injuries, based upon their examination of photos taken during the Supplementary Examination Dr. Baden would later pretend never occurred. And then take this opportunity to dismiss that a bullet entered low on the back of the head. They assert "The panel notes that the posterior-inferior portion of the cerebellum virtually intact. It certainly does not demonstrate the degree of laceration, fragmentation, or contusion (as appears subsequently on the superior aspect of the brain) that would be expected in this location if the bullet wound of entrance were as described in the autopsy report." Now that would appear to be a slam dunk. But look again. They wrote "virtually" intact. So they were acknowledging it was damaged. And they then claimed this damage was insufficient to presume a bullet's passage, seeing as this damage was so minor in comparison to the damage at the presumed exit on the top of the head. Well, this gives away the game, right? Their rejection of an entrance wound low on the back of the head was related to, and perhaps contingent upon, their presumption a bullet entering this location would proceed to cause the damage at the top of the brain and exit from the top of the head. IOW, they were dismissing the existence of a wound in a location identified by multiple witnesses, which they knew to overlay some damage to the brain, because it did not support their notion, their bias, their blind belief, or perhaps even their instruction, that a bullet entering this location would have to have exited the top of the head. Apparently, the possibility of two headshots was not to be considered, not even on the table. 

Now, okay, this could be a simple case of confirmation bias. But the HSCA panel, in its reporting on the damage to the brain apparent in these photos, failed to make a case in support of its own conclusions. No, it used these photos to argue against the conclusions of those who'd actually viewed the body, and brain, while failing to acknowledge that these photos were equally toxic to their own conclusions. I mean, from its very beginnings. the field of Forensic Pathology has held that bullets fired from the distance the fatal head bullet was presumed to have been fired would create a permanent cavity as it passed through the brain, and leave an identifiable entrance and exit on the brain. Dr. Loquvam, a member of the HSCA's panel, had even confronted Dr. Finck along this line, and had essentialy urged him to abandon his claim the bullet entered low on the back of the head, seeing as no subarachnoid hemorrhage could be observed at that location. 

Now witness the hypocrisy... While Loquvam and the panel did ultimately reject Finck's claim of seeing an entrance wound low on the back of the skull, seeing as  Finck had failed to find a bullet's entry into the brain in this location, they failed to apply this standard to Dr. Fisher and themselves, and concluded the bullet entered in a location with no observable bullet entry on the brain. I mean, just think of it... THEY NEVER EVEN PRETENDED there was evidence for an entrance on the brain at this alternative location, AND never even pretended that their new and improved trajectory for a bullet passing through the victim's brain was consistent with the damage to the victim's brain. It's BAD science, at best. And much more likely, IMO, transparently hypocritical bullshit.

In any event, the panel's report then proceeds to discuss the x-rays, etc. And then finally comes to the moment we've been waiting for: its discussion of previous reports. Well, it begins by repeating the description of the brain provided in the Supplementary Report, and it does so accurately. Okay. But it then adds: "The panel notes that the brain was not coronally sectioned, a standard pathological practice which permits examination of the inside of the brain. Rather, as evidenced in the autopsy report, supplemental report, and Dr. Humes testimony before the Warren Commission, the brain was preserved intact without a complete examination. Only very limited microscopic sections were taken. The panel stresses that coronal sectioning is the most acceptable and accurate method of determining precisely the effects of a missile on the brain, as well as the angle of a bullet track on the head. The failure to section the brain also precluded collection of interior samples for microscopic study. The panel members do not concur with the rationale for having limited the examination in this way. The brain should have been scientifically examined, with sectioning and discussion of the interior injuries." WAIT. WHAT? The panel's report had just discussed the damage to the brain apparent in the photos taken during the Supplementary autopsy. And then presented the autopsy doctors' own descriptions of this damage in the Supplementary Autopsy Report of 12-6-63. But instead of providing a discussion of the significance of this damage--damage described and photographed in 1963 and then confirmed through the panel's study of the photos in 1977--the writers of the report had chosen to complain that the brain had not been cut into pieces, and had made out that any conclusions as to the trajectory of the bullet within the head was hampered by the autopsy doctors' failure to cut the brain into pieces. Well, hello? THIS IS SMOKE, PEOPLE.

 Let's think about what they're really saying. The panel was tasked with determining what really happened to Kennedy--that is, how many shots hit Kennedy, and from what direction, and if a bullet entered low on his head, and then proceeded to exit from the top of this head, as proposed by the doctors who'd studied his body, or entered high on his head, and proceeded to exit from the top of his head, as proposed by their colleague, Dr. Russell Fisher...or neither of the above? They then studied photos of Kennedy's brain--showing no obvious entrance or exit from the brain, and a laceration running from front to back inches above where the doctors had descibed an entrance, and an inch or more below where Dr. Fisher had claimed there was an entrance...that was also much longer than the bullet trajectory described by the autopsy doctors or Fisher. So the proper answer may have been "neither of the above." But no, Baden's panel had instead claimed the damage low on the back of the head was dissimilar to the damage high on the head, that the doctors who'd studied the body were thereby incorrect, and then suggested that the actual trajectory through the brain could not be determined because the brain had not been sliced into pieces. 

THIS TOTALLY CONCEALED THAT THE DAMAGE APPARENT TO BOTH THE DOCTORS VIEWING THE BODY DURING THE SUPPLEMENTARY EXAMINATION IN 1963 AND THE DOCTORS REVIEWING THE PHOTOS TAKEN DURING THIS EXAMINATION IN 1977 (THAT IS, BADEN'S OWN PANEL) WAS AT ODDS WITH THE CONCLUSIONS OF DR. RUSSELL FISHER AND THE 1968 CLARK PANEL!!!

And this allowed them (the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel) to claim Dr. Fisher had been correct...

Now, okay, this could still be a case of confirmation bias. They liked Fisher and were hoping he was correct, and saw that the trajectory proposed by the autopsy doctors was obviously in error, and then leapt from that to assuming Fisher must therefore have been correct. It's possible. 

Now, the thought occurs that there was an easy offramp for the HSCA Panel--that they could have taken Fisher, Lindenberg, and Spitz's cue and made out that the laceration observed by the doctors in 1963 and apparent on the autopsy photos was yessirree "close enough" to the expected trajectory through the brain of a bullet entering Fisher's proposed entrance in the cowlick and exiting at his proposed exit on the coronal suture. 

So why did they not avail themselves of this easy offramp? And, instead, avoid any discussion of the presumed trajectory of the bullet based upon the photos by making out that the only way to determine the trajectory of a bullet through brain tissue is to cut the brain into slices? 

Well, I think we can assume they knew Lindenberg's claim there was "no distinct wound canal" within the brain to be unlikely.  In 1967, Milton Helpbern, a legendary forensic pathologist, presented his thoughts on bullet trajectories in a book, Where Death Delights. And he did not support Lindenberg's apparent belief bullets could just pass through a brain without leaving a distinct wound canal. No, he claimed that, while wound tracks through most areas of the body will collapse (and only be re-expanded through probing), the "original dimension" of a wound track "is more or less fixed if it passes through brain tissue." 

So, yeah, we can assume Baden's panel knew full well that the damage to Kennedy's brain as reported by the autopsy doctors and recorded in the autopsy photos was not suggestive of the bullet trajectory proposed by Fisher. And that they were reluctant to pretend as much... 

Now here's another fun fact... Dr. Spitz was a member of Baden's panel. YEP, that's right!!! Dr. Spitz told the Rockefeller Commission in 1975 that no further examination of the brain was necessary, and then turned around as a member of Baden's panel in 1979 and complained that the bullet track could not be accurately determined because the brain was unavailable and the brain was never sectioned. 

Well, what changed? Well, in 1975, at the time of Lindenberg's and Spitz's reports to the Rockefeller Commission, it was believed the President's brain was not hopelessly lost, but could be retrieved from the Kennedy family, or discovered somewhere in the Archives. And, well, by 1979, an unsuccessful search had been conducted for the brain.

So, yes, I kid you not, once it became clear no further examination/sectioning of the brain was forthcoming--Spitz (who was a close colleague of Fisher's) changed his opinion that further examination of the brain was unnecessary and joined in with those claiming they could not establish the bullet trajectory through the brain because the brain had not been further examined/sectioned...

Well, hell, this suggests that Spitz, a protege of Fisher's, was concerned about what a sectioning of the brain would reveal. And this feeds into the possibility his pal Baden, another protege of Fisher's, was similarly concerned about the damage to the brain described in the Supplementary Autopsy Report, and that he was consciously concealing this damage from his audience in 1980. 

Now, this is still a bit vague... I mean, it could be that these supposed experts had no idea that the descriptions of the wound they spent their lives ignoring were so damaging to their legacy.

So let's continue to go through the panel's report to see if there's anything that reeks of a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. 

The panel then discusses the sections of the brain removed for examination during the Supplementary Autopsy. It then presents the Supplementary Autopsy Report's description of the results of this examination."Microscopic Examination: Brain. Multiple sections from representative areas as noted above are examined. All sections examined are there significant abnormalities other brain tissue with associated hemorrhage. In none of the sections examined are there significant abnormalities other than those directly related to the recent trauma." Wait! What??? What??? Well, this is incoherent gibberish, isn't it? Read that  second line again. And again. And take into account that this report was approved by nine prominent pathologists BUT that these pathologists were, aside from Dr. Baden, no longer working with the committee at the time of the issuance of their report. Well, I think we can assume that at least one of these doctors would have caught such an error should it have been in the report as originally written and approved. And I think we can assume as well that this garbling of the words occurred when Baden was working with the committee and preparing the panel's report for publication. Now take into account that the original line was "All sections are essentially similar and show extensive disruption of brain tissue with associated hemorrhage." Well, heck... it appears then that someone (almost certainly Dr. Baden) had re-arranged the words to the Supplementary Report in the HSCA panel's report--a re-arrangment that, conveniently, concealed that the autopsy doctors had examined Kennedy's brain in 1963 and had concluded there was a disruption to the right cerebellar cortex, and hemorrhage along the spinal column...DAMAGE WHICH WAS INCONSISTENT WITH THE BULLET TRAJECTORY PROPOSED BY BADEN'S PANEL!!! And, OH YEAH, totally at odds with Baden's sworn testimony that "there is no description indicating any injury of, the brain other than the extensive damage to the right upper part of the brain consistent with the upper track which the panel agrees to."

Now, huh, shall we continue to give Baden the benefit of the doubt on these matters? I don't see how... So, yeah, I think we need to add a fourth fact to our list of facts about which Dr. Baden might flat-out lie.

4. A Supplementary examination of Kennedy's brain was performed a week after the shooting, and a report on this examination, in which damage to areas inconsistent with the entrance wound proposed by Dr. Baden was described, was signed by the doctors on 12-6-63. Baden might thereby lie about this examination, or pretend no such examination was performed. (Lies of this type will from hereon be designated Baden's BIg Lie #4.)

P.S. Numbered paragraphs 3, 4, 6 and 8 above can thereby be considered examples of Baden's Big Lie #4.

Above: Dr. Michael Baden in 1989. (Would you buy a used car from this man? I, for one, would not.)

Baden's Reign of Error 1989 

In his first book, Unnatural Death, published 1989, a 55 year-old Dr. Baden presented a chapter on the Kennedy assassination. One might think that Dr. Baden, concerned about his reputation, would be sure to make his book as accurate as possible, and review the reports and findings of the House Select Committee before committing his thoughts for posterity. But one would be wrong. Among Baden’s claims: 

• p.6 The back-and-to-the-left movement of Kennedy's head after it was struck does not suggest it was shot from the front, and those believing it does are mistaken because "They left out of their calculations the acceleration of the car Kennedy was riding in. Beyond that, the body simply does not react that way. The force of the bullet would just as likely cause Kennedy's head to move forward as backward. It's not predictable." (A quick look at the Zapruder and Nix films shows that the acceleration of the limousine came after the back-and-to the-left movement of the President’s head. This is not just the opinion of conspiracy theorists. Dr. John Lattimer noted as much in his 1976 article in Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics. And this was acknowledged, even, in the report of Baden's panel, which included a section on what they believed caused back-and-to-the-left movement of Kennedy's head after it was struck, and never even considered the acceleration of the limousine. In addition, Baden's claim that the movement of a head is unpredictable is either something he just made up because it sounded good...or a misrepresentation of Dr. Olivier's testimony for the Rockefeller Commission, in which he claimed that the direction in which a goat's body fell after being shot in the head is unpredictable.)

• p.7 "No forensic pathologist has ever examined the body of the President." (Uhh, no, One of the three doctors performing Kennedy's autopsy, Colonel Pierre Finck, was a licensed forensic pathologist on November 22, 1963. He told Baden as much in his testimony, and this was acknowledged in the report of Baden's panel.) Baden's Big Lie #2.

• p. 9 "As the archive gave up its secrets, we realized that everything wasn't there. Kennedy's brain, which was removed during the autopsy and placed in the archive, was missing, and so were the microscopic slides of tissues, and the paraffin blocks in which tissue is hardened. They had simply disappeared." (As stated, these materials were turned over to the Kennedy family in 1965 along with other materials. Some of these other materials, such as the autopsy photos and x-rays, were returned to the contol of the archives the next year at the request of Johnson Administration, but no such request was made for the so-called "missing" materials. It should be noted, moreover, that nowhere in this passage or elsewhere in his book does Baden admit the brain was examined by the autopsy doctors a week or so after the initial autopsy, and that their report on this examination described damage to the brain that was inconsistent with Baden's subsequent conclusions. I believe we can conclude then that this passage was designed to conceal this fact.) Baden's Big Lie #4. 

• p. 10 "(Dr.) Humes...had been assured that Colonel Pierre Finck, the head of wound ballistics at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, was coming to assist and observe. Finck, he figured, knew about bullet holes. Colonel Finck, it turned out, had never done an autopsy involving a gunshot wound, either...Finck didn't offer guidance because it never occurred to him that Humes needed any." (No, again. Dr. Finck testified about his prior experience on 3-11-78. As a direct response to a question from Dr. Baden, Finck said he'd performed autopsies on gunshot wound victims prior to 1959. Even worse, Humes had told the Warren Commission back in 1964 that "on several occasions in various places where I have been employed, I have had to deal with violent death, accidents, suicides, and so forth. Also I have had training at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, I have completed a course in forensic pathology there as part of my training in the overall field of pathology." So he, too, was no maroon.)  Badens' Big Lie #2.

• p. 10 Humes "felt it was beyond his powers to describe the wounds and decided to rely on the photographs." (Well, this hid that the wounds were described in detail in both the autopsy report and the subsequent supplementary report, and that these descriptions were at odds with the conclusions of Baden's panel.) Baden's Big Lie #4. 

• p.10-11 "The photographer was there, the corpsman who usually took pictures of damaged hearts and cirrhotic livers and other diseases. He was snapping away when he caught the attention of an FBI agent, who came up to him and asked for his clearance. 'Clearance?', said the corpsman, this is my job. The agent took away his camera and exposed all the film and threw him out...'We've got our own man taking pictures,' the FBI agent said. The FBI photographer, who had clearance, was in the same quandary as Humes. He had never taken autopsy pictures before and was untrained in photographing gunshot wounds. His pictures showed it...None of his pictures clearly defined the entrance or exit wounds." (First of all, Floyd Riebe, the photographer who had his film confiscated, was not thrown out, but permitted to stay and assist his boss, John Stringer. Second of all, Stringer, the man who actually took the autopsy photographs, was a civilian working for the Navy, and had been Bethesda Naval Hospital’s chief autopsy photographer for years. And third, well, there was no FBI photographer present at the autopsy. ) Baden's Big Lie #1. 

• p. 12 "Humes took x-rays to see if the bullet (creating the back wound) was still inside the body. Nothing showed up on the x-rays, and he told the FBI the bullet had entered the back, gone in a few inches, and then fallen out the same hole it entered. But bullets don't do that. As a bullet passes through the body, the track it makes collapses on itself. The bullet can't back out." (Well, this is an obvious and contemptuous assault on Humes' credibility. Humes testified that he could find no passage for this bullet beyond the skin. If he told the FBI the bullet may have fallen from this wound, then, he was not claiming that it had slid backwards through inches of tissue, as proposed by Baden. And what's with Baden's claim bullet tracks collapse upon themselves? This hides that bullets traveling through muscle tissue, such as that on Kennedy's back, leave permanent cavities through such tissue, which are routinely probed by Forensic Pathologists such as himself. So what's up with that? Was Baden trying to hide that the doctors' attempts at probing this wound had been unsuccessful?)

• p. 12 "The Kennedy head bullet was found on the floor of Kennedy's car in front. It had struck the windshield strut and broken in two." (Since bullet fragments are smaller and lose their energy much more rapidly than intact bullets, it seems doubtful that two fragments of a bullet breaking up upon impact on the back of a skull would traverse the skull and exit with the force necessary to crack a windshield and dent a windshield strut. This was recognized in the report of Baden's pathology panel, moreover, when it observed that the fractures emanating from the presumed exit defect suggested the exit of a fragment the combined size of the recovered fragments. So it's not exactly surprising that Baden would try and claim the bullet exited intact and broke up after striking the windshield strut. The problem, however, is that he should have known this wasn't true. Not only does his claim the bullet exited intact conceal that a fragment struck and cracked the windshield in addition to the strut, but it ignores that the two fragments found in the front seat area were the nose and base of the bullet, and that they comprised but half of the bullet. Assuming, then, that the fragments in the brain came from this missing middle, along with the “slice” of bullet seen on the x-rays and interpreted by Baden and his panel to be embedded on the back of Kennedy's head by the bullet's entrance, well, it follows then like night from day that the two fragments found in the front section of the limo exited separately and did not break in two upon impact with the windshield strut. Now, Baden has an "explanation" for this as well--that the bullet didn't actually break up upon entrance, but simply leaked lead out of its tail like a poopy baby with a full diaper, but we'll dig into that later... Baden's bs, and not the baby's poop, that is...)

• p. 12-13 Dr. Humes burned his notes on November 23, the day after the shooting, before talking to Dr. Perry and finding out the tracheotomy incision had been cut through a bullet wound, and before starting work on the autopsy report. (Wow. This claim is an embarrassment. Its existence proves that as early as 1989 Baden was looking for ways to explain to his readers how Humes could be so mistaken about the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head--and that he was willing to make stuff up to do this. There is simply no evidence supporting Baden's version of these events. Humes testified before the Warren Commission that he called Dr. Perry on the morning of the 23rd, began working on the autopsy report later that evening, and burned his notes the next day. He repeated this testimony, moreover, to Baden himself, when meeting with members of Baden's panel on 9-16-77. Shame, shame, shame.) Baden's Big Lie #3. That Baden was just making this up and not honestly mistaken is supported, moreover, by the fact his mentor Russell Fisher addressed the supposed four-inch mistake by Dr. Humes in the March, 1977 issue of the Maryland State Medical Journal by concocting a similar fabrication. No, he didn't claim Humes and the boys simply burned their notes and forgot where they saw the wound...but what he claimed was equally ludicrous and self-serving. He claimed: "There are two knots on the back of your head--one is the external occipital protuberance, and another,  considerably above it, is where the bones fuse. What I'm sure the original autopsist thought was the EOP was, in fact, the upper most of the two..." Well, geez, one shouldn't be sure of such bullshit. Here Fisher wrote the playbook for Baden. 1. Pretend it was just Humes who claimed the wound was low on the head when there were in fact numerous witnesses. 2. Come up with some reason he could have made such a mistake. 3. Ignore that a forensic pathologist, Pierre Finck, signed off on this wound location, and even claimed he'd probed this wound and viewed this wound from the inside of the skull.

• p. 13 "The result was an autopsy report filled with errors, sins of omission and commission. Bullets weren't tracked, the brain wasn't sectioned, the measurements were inaccurate, the head wound wasn't described." (WOW!!! This conceals that the skull wounds were described in the autopsy report and that the injuries to the brain were described in both the original autopsy report and supplementary report, and that these descriptions are toxic to Baden's panel's conclusion the fatal bullet entered high on Kennedy's head in a location four inches above where an entrance wound was observed (and described) by the autopsy doctors.) Baden's Big Lie #4

• p. 14 The Cortisone that Kennedy was taking for his Addison’s disease "causes odd fat deposits--an  upper back hump, full cheeks. Kennedy had them both, but Addison's disease is not mentioned in the autopsy report." (Now, let's be clear. The "back hump" or "hunchback" story is a disgusting fairy tale started by Dr. Lattimer to help explain how a descending bullet could enter Kennedy’s shirt and jacket inches below his shirt collar and still exit from his throat. Baden didn't believe this, or shouldn't have, seeing as his panel had concluded that the bullet had ascended within the neck, but we can presume he couldn't help himself, and availed himself of this mythical back hump so he could further criticize Dr.s Humes, Boswell, and Finck.)

• p. 15 Perhaps the most egregious error was the four-inch miscalculation. The head is only five inches long from crown to neck, but Humes was confused by a little piece of brain tissue that had adhered to the scalp. He placed the head wound four inches lower than it actually was, near the neck instead of the cowlick.” (This, of course, is nonsense. Baden must have known that Dr.s Humes and Boswell didn't just observe this wound on the scalp, but on the skull after the scalp had been peeled back. He also would have to have known their observation was confirmed by Dr. Pierre Finck, arriving after the beginning of the autopsy. He also should have known their "too low" location was confirmed by several other witnesses to the autopsy, including autopsy photographer John Stringer. His attempt, then, to make this "egregious error" appear to be the error of one man, and not many, and his failure to tell his readers that these witnesses verified this location numerous times, can only be viewed as deceptive, and as intended to conceal that Baden's own conclusions regarding the location of this wound were unsupported by every witness to view this wound.)

• p. 15 "For the head wound, we enhanced the x-rays and saw the entrance perforation on top of the cowlick." (Oh my. This would be news to the HSCA's radiology consultants, Dr.s McDonnell and Davis, neither of whom noted such an entrance in their reports. To be clear, while they both concluded there WAS an entrance in this location, they did so based upon their observation of fractures and fragments in the area, and NOT because they saw an entrance perforation.)

• p. 15 That when inspecting the photos of the head wound "Pictures of the wound yielded more when viewed through a stereopticon. In three dimensions they showed the oblique lines (beveling) on the bone in the back of the skull that an entering bullet makes." (Although this was mentioned in his panel's report--that "stereoscopic visualization of the inside of the cranial cavity" had revealed a "semicircular beveled defect," this defect was presented elsewhere in the report as "a possible portion of the beveled inner table."  It would appear, then, that a number of Baden's panel were not quite convinced about this. Well, if so, they had good reason. HSCA wound ballistics consultant Larry Sturdivan, among a number of other prominent LNs, would come to conclude that the only way for the round shape in the depths of the photo to be an entrance wound, would be for it to be an entrance wound by the EOP.)

• p. 16 That they "reconstructed the exit wound at the throat (Note: he means skull) from X rays of the skull and skull fragments and photographs of a single piece of bone which came to be called the Nieman-Marcus fragment. Three skull fragments had been retrieved from the limousine, brought to Washington, X-rayed, and later vanished. The fourth, measuring about two by one and a half inches, was found a few days after the autopsy by a premed student walking his dog in Dealey Plaza, where the shots were fired. He took it home to his father, a doctor, who knew what it was and had it photographed. At a party the photographer couldn't resist talking about it, and the story got back to the FBI. Agents swooped down on the premed student, who was saving the fragment as a souvenir. He had it wrapped in a piece of cotton in a Nieman-Marcus box. It later disappeared from the archive, along with the other fragments, but the photographs of it were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." (Wow. This is just embarrassing. It shows both how little Baden knows about the assassination, and how willing he is to spew the nonsense he thinks he knows. First of all, of the three skull fragments x-rayed in Washington, only one was found in the limousine, the other two were found in the street. Second of all, no one called the fourth fragment the "Nieman-Marcus fragment"; it was called the Harper fragment, after Billy Harper, the student who found it while taking photographs in Dealey Plaza--not when walking his dog as claimed by Baden, and not a few days after the shooting as claimed by Baden, but the day after. Third of all, the doctor to whom Harper gave the fragment, and who had it photographed, was his uncle, not his dad. Fourth, after visiting the hospital on November 25, Harper visited the FBI, and gave them the fragment; he did not try to hold onto the fragment as a souvenir, and no one swooped in to grab the box containing the fragment from him. Fifth, none of the four fragments Baden mentions disappeared from the archives. The three fragments x-rayed in Washington are believed to have been buried with the body, and the Harper fragment was last known to have been in the possession of Kennedy's doctor, Dr. George Burkley.)

• p. 16 That the photos of the "Nieman-Marcus" fragment "were good enough for purposes of reconstructing the skull." ( Well, if this was true, why didn't he? Why did he, instead, pretend this over 2 inch long fragment fit into a gap on the side of the head that was not discussed in his testimony, or depicted on any of his exhibits?)

• p. 18 "The trace metal content in the bullet found on the stretcher and the fragment from Connally's wrist match perfectly. It was a copper-jacketed military bullet with a core of 99 percent lead and insignificant amounts of strontium, arsenic, nickel, platinum, and silver. As small as they are, these traces are like fingerprints." (Oh my. The magic bullet and the wrist fragment failed to match on copper, and barely matched on antimony. They also matched on silver, along with half the bullets tested. Protocols of the time dictated that, if a sample failed to match on but one of these three, well, the samples did not match. Therefore there was no match, let alone a perfect match. And, oh yeah, none of the other elements listed by Baden were even tested.)

• p. 19 That when he inspected Governor Connally's back wound he saw "a two-inch long sideways entrance on his back. He had not been shot by a second shooter but by the same flattened bullet that went through Kennedy." (Dr. Baden wrote a memo on this inspection for the HSCA. At that time he reported Connally's scar as 1 1/8 inches long. His description of CE 399 as "flattened" is another exaggeration. Only the base of the bullet was slightly flattened.)

Wow. As you can see, this trip down the lane of Baden's memory reveals that, by 1989, he'd latched onto a lot of myths, forgotten a lot of evidence, and was already telling lies of the kind one might predict he would make.. 

And it only gets worse from here.

Baden's Reign of Error 1992 Part 1

While I have not viewed the actual newsclip, the NBC Universal website lists a summary of a newsclip from May 20, 1992, in which a nearly 58 year-old Dr. Baden's comments on the autopsy of President Kennedy were pitted against author Mark Lane's comments on the autopsy. This summary makes a specific reference to the then-recent articles in JAMA, in which Dr.s Humes and Boswell defended the integrity of the original autopsy, and heavily criticized Dr. Baden for his comments on the autopsy. This criticism of Baden goes unreported, of course. No, this summary presents Baden and Lane as opposites, when they were actually both attacking the competence of the original autopsists, for very different reasons. While the summary is sparse, moreover, it gives just enough detail to suggest that Dr. Baden was once again shooting from the hip, and essentially making stuff up. The summary reports:"BADEN SAYS AUTOPSY ON JFK WASN'T PERFORMED BY TRAINED PATHOLOGIST BUT DISCREPANCY DOESN'T REMOVE FACT THAT 2 BULLETS FROM REAR KILLED JFK. HE SAYS INITIALLY DOCTORS THOUGHT BULLETS ENTERED FROM FRONT BUT FINAL CONCLUSION OF AUTOPSY REPORT IS CORRECT."

While unclear, we can probably assume that in saying "no trained pathologist" the summary means to relate that Baden claimed no trained forensic pathologist was involved with the autopsy. This, as we've seen, was not true; Dr. Finck was a trained forensic pathologist. Baden's Big Lie #2.

The next line is also problematic. We can probably assume that in saying "Doctors thought bullets entered from front" the summary means to relate that Dr. Baden said the autopsy doctors initially thought bullets entered from the front. They have never admitted such a thing, of course. Perhaps, then, Dr. Baden was thinking of the emergency room doctors. If so, well, he made an embarrassing mistake--one he'd be destined to repeat... If not, well... He was misrepresenting the actions of the autopsy doctors...and not for the last time...

Baden's Reign of Error 1992 Part 2

Now, late in 1992, Dr. Baden made a brief appearance in the CBS Reports special "Who Killed JFK? Facts, Not Fiction." This gave him just enough time to spew some more nonsense. And he did not disappoint. First, he dismissed the back-and-to-the-left movement of Kennedy's head in the Zapruder film by pronouncing "In real life, we have lots of films, lots of people shot on film...Sometimes the body goes toward the bullet; sometimes it goes away from the bullet." He then tried to explain the movement of Kennedy's head: "He does move backwards towards the bullet, for a number of reasons. One, he becomes limp and the car is moving forward--so, a limp body will fall backwards if the car is moving forward." And, finally, he added: "There's a reverse jet-effect where brain tissue and blood coming out from the right side of the head can cause the brain to go backwards. The bottom line is you cannot predict how a person is gonna react when shot."

Well, by golly, which is it? That the car leaped forward just as Kennedy got shot in the head, which isn't true, or that an explosion of brain and blood caused his head to leap backward, which isn't true, or that, gadzooks, you just can't predict how a person is gonna react when shot, which...you guessed it...also isn't true? (While one can't always predict which way a body will fall when shot, one can with great confidence predict that a smaller object like a head when receiving a blow will move, however slightly, in the direction of that blow.)

Baden's Reign of Error 1993

A January 24, 1993 AP article (found in the New York Daily Gazette) reports that a then 58 year-old Dr. Baden had just made an appearance at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and had decided to take this opportunity to publicly denounce Oliver Stone's film JFK. He is quoted as saying "The bottom line is: the Warren Commission got it right...It was two bullets from behind, and only two bullets that struck the President. Oliver Stone got it wrong." He also, however, took this opportunity to once again trounce the autopsy doctors. The article continued: "Baden said the congressional panel found that the doctors who did the autopsy of Kennedy had never done a gunshot autopsy before." Well, this, as we've seen, wasn't true. Baden's Big Lie #2. But it gets worse. The article continued "'A lot of things were done wrong' in the Kennedy autopsy, Baden said. 'They made a lot of foolish mistakes.' Those mistakes included inaccurate measurements and drawings and initial confusion over whether the bullet wounds were exit wounds or entrance wounds. That confusion fueled much of the speculation that the president had to have been shot by more than one gunman, Baden said."

Well, this was just hooey. The autopsists' initial appraisal of the wounds as to entrance and exit were the same as Baden's final conclusions. Perhaps, then, as we've previously speculated, he was confusing the autopsists at Bethesda with the emergency room doctors at Parkland Hospital. And that's not the only oddity in this article. I mean, what "measurements and drawings" was he talking about? If he meant those regarding the head wound, well, then, he was at least being consistent with the findings of his panel. But, if he was alluding to the government's former position holding that the location of the back wound on the face sheet had been in error, and had innocently contributed to the belief there was a conspiracy, well, then, he was repeating a factoid long pushed by men like Fisher and Lattimer...and had in the process disputed his own finding supporting that the location of the mark on the face sheet was accurate.

That Baden was more interested in pushing his own agenda, and selling his own wares, than in making accurate statements, moreover, is suggested by another passage in the article: "Baden said he doesn't believe that the incompetence of the original medical examination of Kennedy was part of a cover-up. 'As much error as there was, that's still what's going on in this country in most murder cases,' he said. 'The tragedy to me about JFK isn't that this was a sinister plot that's been covered over, but that the way the investigation was done is the usual way murder investigations are done in this country.'" 

Baden's Reign of Error 1994

A January 16, 1994 column in the Schenectady New York Daily Gazette on the premiere of Dr. Baden's upcoming HBO program "Autopsy" offers a few choice comments by the then 59 year-old Dr. Baden on his experience with the HSCA. Amazingly, the good doctor claims that although numerous mistakes marred Kennedy's autopsy, "what we found was that the mistakes made in the Kennedy autopsy were ones that were commonly made in all autopsies in 1963." 

Now, first, note that he has backtracked from his complaint made the previous year--"that the way the investigation was done is the usual way murder investigations are done in this country."--and was now claiming "that the mistakes made in the Kennedy autopsy were ones that were commonly made in all autopsies in 1963." Well, what do you think happened? Did someone have a talk with him? Or did he have a change of heart?

And second, well, his attempt at making out that the "mistakes" in this investigation were not unusual is just ridiculous. Baden couldn't possibly believe it was "common" for a team of doctors, including a forensic pathologist, to claim a bullet entered low on the skull, when it really entered 4 inches higher, and then repeat this claim TWICE after reviewing the autopsy photos and x-rays. He couldn't possibly believe, furthermore, that it was "common" for such an incorrect claim to be confirmed by a number of other witnesses to the autopsy, and for not one witness to recall seeing a bullet entrance where those hired by the government to double-check their findings (including himself)claim it to have actually been located. Now, it's also hard to believe Baden honestly believed it was "common" for pathologists to describe a wound as an exit in their autopsy report that they never even probed, or recognized as a bullet wound--as was done with Kennedy's throat wound. Perhaps then Dr. Baden was thinking of the autopsists' errors of omission--such as their not removing the neck organs,  or their failure to weigh the brain before the supplementary autopsy--when he said the mistakes at Kennedy's autopsy were "common." If he was really trying to push that it was "common" for a team of doctors to misrepresent a wound's location to the extent he believes the entrance on the back of Kennedy's head was misrepresented, after all, one is left with the unsettling probability Dr. Baden was blowing smoke and trying to deceive the public.

Above: Dr. Baden at the height of his fame. 

Baden's Reign of Error 1995

On October 21, 1995--almost certainly as a favor to his long-time friend Dr. Wecht,--a 61 year-old Dr. Baden participated in a discussion of the JFK assassination medical evidence at the COPA conference in Washington. Although he dominated the discussion, he was at the same time the most dominant speaker, and the least coherent. Much of what he said was wrong. While defending the Clark Panel's re-interpretation of the head wound location, and his own panel's confirmation of this higher location, for example, he claimed that, "Pierre Finck had never done an autopsy on a gunshot wound before." As we've seen this wasn't true. Baden's Big Lie #2. But he was just getting started. Shortly thereafter, he alibied his own panel's difficulty understanding the evidence by admitting they hadn't seen a lot of wounds made by military ammunition. This was true. But he claimed the bullet killing Martin Luther King was military ammunition as well. This was not.

Dr. Baden's incoherence during this discussion is probably best demonstrated in the passages transcribed below. He had been asked about the single-bullet theory, and, more specifically, whether or not Dr. Humes was aware of Kennedy's throat wound on the night of the autopsy:

"When Dr. Humes did that autopsy he did not know that there was a bullet wound in the neck...As many of you will recall--when they found--they turned the body over and they found a bullet wound in the back, and they couldn't understand where that bullet went. Remember, somebody stuck a finger in and pulled it out to the doc--the bullet must have turned around and come out. Remember that? I'm not making this up. You can't make that--this stuff up. The reason--reason he did that is because they couldn't understand what happened to the bullet in the back because they didn't realize that the bullet in the neck was an exit wound. And, whether everybody else in that autopsy room knew about it or not it was Dr. Humes who was doing the autopsy. Dr. Finck was up there but he didn't contribute to the autopsy at all. He was just observing. And Finck thought that if he did anything wrong--this is what, uh Boswell, what Humes said--is if I did anything wrong then Finck would have said something, but since he didn't say anything I thought I was doing the right job. It wasn't until 24 or 36 hours later that Boswell--that Humes--spoke with--Perry?--Perry on the telephone and found out that there was a bullet wound in the neck and that's how he reconstructed the trajectory, going from the back to the neck. And that's--after which he--and that's why he got the measurements wrong--because then he made up some of the measure--he approximated the measurements and then he burnt his own papers. His own--the own papers he had are destroyed. I'm strongly--it was my impression then and it is now--whatever telephone calls were made--that Humes--the nature and the way he did the autopsy--and his description of how he then changed the measurements a couple--a day or two later after speaking to Perry--that he didn't know that there was an exit wound in the front of the neck." This was Baden's Big Lie #2, followed up by Baden's Big Lie #3.

Hmmm... The highlighted passages above are all nonsense. No one ever said the bullet initially suspected of having fallen back out the back wound actually turned around before coming back out. That's an invention. (So yes, he could make this stuff up... and was just getting started.) He is also wrong about the participation of Dr. Finck in the autopsy. Dr. Finck arrived late--after the opening of the body and the removal of the brain--but largely took over after that point, when they were trying to establish the direction of fire. And Baden is also wrong about the time elapsed before Dr. Humes called Dr. Perry. Dr. Humes called Dr. Perry first thing Saturday morning--which means he called Dr. Perry roughly 8 hours after the conclusion of the autopsy, after they both had received some sleep. That's a far cry from the the full day's delay claimed by Dr. Baden. And, finally, Dr. Baden is flat-out wrong about Dr. Humes and the measurements. Dr. Humes claimed the measurements used in the final autopsy report were all measurements made during the autopsy. He didn't make them up. Nor did he "approximate" them a day or two later. Dr. Baden's claim he did so is unfair, and is clearly designed to discredit Humes' contention there was an entrance wound low on the back of the head, and no entrance wound near the top of back of the head, where Baden and his colleagues--none of whom viewed the body, ever--had imagined up a wound. 

Baden's Reign of Error 2000

On 2-20-2000, a 65 year-old Dr. Baden met with a number of JFK assassination researchers, including Dr. Gary Aguilar and Dr. David Mantik, for an extended lunch and discussion of the case. While this was designed as an informal discussion, Dr. Baden has, both prior to this meeting, and after, presented himself as an expert on the case. As a result, the mistakes he made in this discussion are worth noting and his bogus claims worth quoting.

• 1. First of all, it's important to note that, during the discussion of the autopsy photos, Dr. Baden repeatedly cited the story of Floyd Riebe, as assistant photographer at the autopsy whose photos were exposed to light by the Secret Service, and that he used this to suggest the photos  in the archives had been taken by a Secret Service agent or FBI agent with no experience. He was corrected on this point, also repeatedly, by Dr. Gary Aguilar, and told the photos on the archives were taken by John Stringer, the Navy's top autopsy photographer, and Riebe's boss. Baden's Big Lie #1.

  2. Second of all, it's important to note that, during the discussion of the x-rays, Dr. Baden refused to argue with Dr. Mantik over the location of the supposed 6.5 mm bullet fragment supposedly found on the back of Kennedy's head. He insisted, first, that you couldn't tell where the large fragment on the A-P x-ray was located on the lateral x-ray. After being told by Mantik that the HSCA's radiologists--the radiologists whose reports Dr. Baden had placed into evidence--had claimed that, yes, indeed, this fragment was on the back of Kennedy's head, Baden then backed down, insisting he had no recollection of their claiming as much in their reports, and no explanation for a fragment on the back of Kennedy's head. This, of course, is in opposition to his testimony, where he claimed that a part of the bullet had rubbed off upon entrance to the skull, and had embedded itself by this entrance.

  3. Baden's contempt for the original autopsists was also apparent. Here, he claimed yet again that Dr. Humes destroyed the notes containing the autopsy measurements before writing the autopsy protocol, and that Humes just guessed at the measurements in the protocol. As discussed, Humes testified to writing the autopsy protocol on Saturday. He testified to burning his blood-stained notes on Sunday. Baden's claim was thereby without merit. In keeping with the subtext of his many previous discussions of the case, moreover, Baden then used this total fabrication about Humes' purported fabrication to explain how Humes could be so wrong about the entrance wound location. Baden's Big Lie #3.

  4. There is a problem with this, of course. Dr. Finck, a forensic pathologist with years of experience with gunshot wounds, repeatedly confirmed that the entrance wound was by the EOP, where Dr. Humes claimed it was, and not 10 cm higher on the skull, where Dr. Baden's mentor Dr. Fisher had claimed it to have been located, and where Dr. Baden and other Fisher-acolytes had taken to claiming it had been. This made Dr. Finck an obstacle to be overcome. It's disappointing but not surprising, then, that in this discussion, Dr. Baden repeatedly misrepresented Dr. Finck's 1978 testimony to Dr. Baden's panel. To wit, Dr. Baden claimed Finck had told him "I'd never done a God damn autopsy!" and that Finck "just stood and watched. That's what he testified to. He said 'I had no expertise to tell anybody what to do.' He had never done a gunshot wound autopsy before. He didn't know what to do." Well, as we've seen, this was a monstrous lie. But Baden was just getting started with his character assassination. Dr. Baden then asserted that the blood in Kennedy's hair had confused poor Finck, and had led him to believe the entrance wound was 4 inches lower on Kennedy's head than it really was. A transcript exists, of course, of Dr. Finck's testimony before the HSCA. He said nothing remotely similar to what Dr. Baden told the researchers Finck had told him. In fact, the transcript proves Baden to be mistaken on most every point. Not only had Finck told Baden he'd performed gunshot wound autopsies before, he'd told him he'd arrived at the autopsy after Kennedy's scalp and hair had been reflected from Kennedy's skull. So much, then, for Baden's claim he'd been confused by Kennedy's hair. Finck told Baden, moreover, that he then stepped up and inspected Kennedy's wounds and made sure certain photos were taken of the entrance wound low on Kennedy's skull. Well, this completely destroys Dr. Baden's claim Finck told him he'd "just watched" as well.  Baden's Big Lie #2.

It seems more than a coincidence, for that matter, that the recording of Dr. Baden's interview of Finck proves both that Finck held his ground with Baden--by refusing to concede that the entrance wound was really in the cowlick--and that Dr. Baden subsequently misrepresented Finck's statements in a manner suggesting Finck had acquiesced and admitted his incompetence. Dr. Baden's "mistakes" in this discussion, then, suggest that he is either a brazen liar, or capable of believing whatever he'd like to believe.

Or maybe he was just old... He was, as reported, 65 in January, 2000, scarcely a dinosaur but most definitely a senior...

Nope, not going for it. A quick review of Baden's 9-7-78 HSCA testimony shows that he'd told the House Committee: "Some people assume authority and upon others authority is thrust as happened to Dr. Humes. He was later to become president of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists. A well experienced hospital pathologist in the scheme of things, he had not been exposed to many gunshot wounds and had not performed autopsies in deaths due to shooting previously: neither had the other autopsy pathologists present. So they were required to do an autopsy that by experience and by the way our society is structured in the United States, is reserved for forensic pathologists and coroner's pathologists. As a result of that, certain things didn't happen."

He had thereby testified before Congress that Dr. Finck had never performed an autopsy for a death due to shooting, and that Finck was not a forensic pathologist on 11-22-63. Well, as we've seen, this just wasn't true. Even worse, Baden knew this wasn't true when taking Finck's testimony on 3-12-78, less than 6 months before testifying before congress and telling them the opposite. Hmmm... Could it be that Baden's latter-day mistakes are not just reflections of his having a bad long-term memory, but are, instead, reflections of his never having grasped the facts in the first place? Or, even worse, his propensity for claming whatever he wants to be true?

Baden's Reign of Error 2003 Part 1

An AP article on the then 68 year-old Dr. Baden found in the 4-20-03 Ketchikan Daily News briefly quotes Baden on the Kennedy assassination, and shows him to be as full of stuff as ever. It relates: '''With Kennedy the people who did the autopsy didn't know the difference between an exit wound and entrance wound,'' he said. 'It was a conspiracy of ignorance.''' Well, this, as we have seen, was just not true. Dr. Finck knew the difference between entrance wounds and exit wounds. Heck, he even drew diagrams for the Warren Commission demonstrating as much. And, besides, Baden's panel shared the conclusions of the "people who did the autopsy" as to which wounds were of entrance and exit, and that it was the location of these wounds that were in dispute, with not a single eye-witness supporting his own interpretation of the entrance location on the back of Kennedy's skull.  Baden's Big Lie #2.

So...was Baden blowing smoke? Or was he simply confusing, and not for the first time, the conclusions of the autopsy doctors with the statements of the Parkland doctors ?

Baden's Reign of Error 2003 Part 2

On November 21, 2003, a 69 year-old Dr. Baden spoke at the Wecht Conference at Duquesne University. In attendance at this conference, and in his audience, were a number of his fellow forensic pathologists. There were also dozens of amateur experts on the Kennedy medical evidence. While one might think that Baden did a little studying before his appearance, in order to avoid embarrassment, one would be wrong. Here, once again, he appears to be "winging" it.

• 1. When discussing the autopsy report, he stated: "Dr. Humes also took notes and he destroyed the notes before he wrote his report, which is one of the reasons his measurements were off." (As previously discussed, this is nonsense. Dr. Humes clarified this issue in 1996 by asserting he destroyed his notes only after writing his preliminary report. While Dr. Baden may wish to believe Humes burned his notes before copying them, as that offers him an explanation for what he believes to be Humes' mistaken impression of the entrance location on the the back of Kennedy's head, there is really nothing to support this. ) Baden's Big Lie #3.

  2. After telling the story of Floyd Riebe, the Navy cameraman whose camera was confiscated by the Secret Service, Baden asserted: "Other, somebody else, took the photographs for the Secret Service, for the FBI, who had not taken such photos before. We have those photos. They are blurry. They are not the proper photos." (As previously discussed, the photographs were taken by Riebe's boss, John Stringer, the Navy's top autopsy photographer, who'd taken thousands of "such photos" before.) Baden's Big Lie #1.

  3. Baden then discussed the autopsy photo of the empty cranium (the mystery photo). He stated: "There is enough to show in the bullet wound of the inside of the cranial cavity an entrance perforation through bone in the back of the head..." He then asks them to put an x-ray on screen. He points out the level of the EOP entrance. He points out the level of the cowlick entrance. He then stated: "Clearly when we look into the cavity on the photograph, the internal beveling is here." A bit later, when he returned to a discussion of the entry wound described at autopsy, he re-affirmed his assertion that an entry wound is visible on the interior aspect of the mystery photo. He said: "They described it as four inches too low, and it doesn't match the x-rays; it doesn't match the one interior view of the skull that's useful." Still later, when confronted on this point during a panel discussion, he claimed: "There was inward beveling that we could see in one of the photographs--in fact the one that you showed up there. When you look at it closely, we all 8 of us--I think Cyril agreed also--that there was inward beveling on the upper portion of the back of the skull. There was no occipital bone entrance." (This is quite interesting. While the pathology panel's report did indeed assert there was "a semicircular beveled defect in the posterior parietal area to the right of the midline, from which fracture lines radiate corresponding to the entrance perforation indicated in the skull" there is no exhibit in the report to demonstrate this entrance, and Dr. Baden never mentioned  such a defect in his testimony. So...this was Baden's opportunity to show the world this defect.. And yet he opted not to do so... Well, we can suspect then that Baden never really had any confidence that what he saw was an entrance, and was only pretending he was confident, hoping no one would call him on his bluff. We can be sure it was a bluff, moreover, as the only members of the Oswald-did-it club to study this photo--people like John Canal, Larry Sturdivan, and Chad Zimmerman--all came to conclude that the only way for the round shape in the depths of the photo to have been the internal aspect of an entrance wound was for this wound to have been an entrance wound by the EOP.)

  4. While trying to explain the autopsists' mistakes, Baden then cited the March 1978 testimony of Pierre Finck. He said: "Pierre Finck says to us, when he testified, 'For 20 years I've been looking at autopsy reports; I never did an autopsy in a gunshot wound case.'" (This is, as we've seen, 100% wrong. When Dr. Finck testified before Baden's pathology panel on 3-11-78, Baden asked him if he'd ever personally performed an autopsy on a gunshot victim. Finck's job in 1963 was reviewing autopsies performed by others on behalf of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Finck responded "Well, I was not always at the AFIP. I had duties as well where I performed autopsies of gunshot wounds before 1959.") Baden's Big Lie #2.

  5. When discussing Dr. Humes' original impression of the back wound, he stated: "Humes looks in the back, sees the wound in the back, doesn't appreciate there's an exit wound in the front, so he says, and then later denies, but the Secret Service guys have it in writing while they're taking down every word he says, that uh, the bullet must have gone in, stopped, turned around, and came out the same entrance." (Ouch.. This passage includes a number of mistakes. First of all, no one took down Dr. Humes' every word at the autopsy. Second of all, it was FBI agents Sibert and O'Neil who wrote the report to which Dr. Baden refers. Third of all, there is nothing in their report indicating that Dr. Humes felt the bullet turned around inside Kennedy. It asserts instead that Humes felt "the bullet had worked its way back out of the point of entry" during external cardiac massage.)

  6. When proposing that the single-bullet theory still works, even though his panel found that the back wound was below the throat wound, he described Kennedy's position at the time of the shot: "He's leaning forward enough to make a 20 degree angle or so." (As he said this Baden leaned far further forward than Kennedy appears to be leaning during the period Baden proposes Kennedy was shot.)

  7. He then threw in "And remember he has Addison's disease--he's taking steroids for the Addison's disease. He has a little hump on his back from the fat that steroids cause." (This is a clear reference to Dr. Lattimer and his somewhat deranged suggestion Kennedy was a hunchback, and that his hunch deflected the bullet down his neck. Dr. Baden doesn't seem to realize that this explanation was offered by Lattimer to explain why the back entrance appeared to be below the throat wound, when it was not. As Dr. Baden believes the back wound really was below the throat wound, and traveled upwards in the neck, the hump is completely irrelevant to his point. That he cannot see this, then, demonstrates his basic confusion. Well, that and his apparently fervent desire to fling stuff at the wall, whether or not it makes sense...)

  8. He then repeated another Lattimer myth. While discussing Connally's back wound, he claimed: "The bullet entered sideways, not straight on. It had to have hit something first--an intermediary target. The intermediary target was the President." (As discussed ad nauseum throughout this website, Connally's doctor, Robert Shaw, insisted that the bullet was not traveling sideways upon contact with the skin, nor in its approach to his rib...and his impression is supported by both the measurements he provided for the wound before it was enlarged, and the measurments for the holes on Connally's coat and shirt. )

  9. Later, under questioning, when asked about the single-bullet theory, he asserted: "Mrs Connally states in her new book that Governor Connally heard the first shot--that's the one that we concluded hit the curbside--you can see that in the Zapruder film." (Wow. First of all, his panel made no conclusions regarding a bullet striking a curbside. Second of all, the location of the curb struck by a bullet during the shooting was well down the street from Kennedy at the time of the first shot, and was hundreds of feet to Zapruder's right and back at the time, and not in front of him. So, yikes, Baden's claim we can see a bullet hit the curb in the film is batshit.)

  10. He then discussed the shot at frame 313 of the Zapruder film: "That bullet then strikes the President in the head, narrowly missing Mrs. Kennedy, and breaks apart when it strikes the strut in the windshield, and is found in the windshield." Later, when asked how he could explain the different behaviors of the two bullets--one that goes through both Kennedy and Connally, and is barely damaged, and another that breaks apart upon impact with Kennedy's skull, he repeated: "The bullet striking President Kennedy in the back of the head, causes this tremendous explosion in the right side, when that bullet leaves...it then strikes the metal frame in the center of the windshield, and that's when it breaks apart. It doesn't break apart (upon impact with the skull)--and that's why both pieces are found right underneath the metal strut in the front of the vehicle." (Oh my. This ignores that there were two impacts on the front the limo, one on the inside of the windshield and one on the inside of the windshield strut, and that this suggests the two pieces-- one the nose of the bullet, and the other the base of the bullet--exited separately from the skull. By suggesting that the fatal bullet passed through the skull intact, for that matter, Baden was exposing himself as a single-assassin theorist unconcerned with the available evidence. The Warren Commission's wound ballistics expert Dr. Olivier, after all, had not only testified that the bones of the skull were "enough to deform the end of this bullet," but had presented bullet fragments recovered from the cotton waste behind his test skulls that were "quite similar" to the fragments found in the front seat of the limo. His report and subsequent statements, moreover, specified that the "nose of the bullet erupted on" the back of nine of the ten skulls fired upon. And he wasn't the only one to note this tendency. Dr. Lattimer, after performing his own tests of the ammunition, similarly reported, in a 1976 article in Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics, that the bullets in his test firings "always broke up on striking the skull and then diverged, making a larger wound of exit." That the bullet broke up on impact with the skull, and not after its exit, is so clear, in fact, that Dr. Russell Fisher had no problem saying as much in the Clark Panel's report, writing "The projectile fragmented on entering the skull, one major section leaving a trail of fine metallic debris as it passed forward and laterally to explosively fracture the right frontal and parietal bones...")

  11. While this marked the end of Baden's presentation, he received an opportunity to explain this last point further during a subsequent panel discussion. When asked why the bullets behaved so differently, Dr. Baden said of the bullet striking Kennedy's skull: "It doesn't fragment. It strikes the strut in the window, and the two portions..." Now, Dr. Randy Robertson interrupted him here and pointed out that there were bullet fragments within the brain on the x-rays. , Which led Baden to respond: "It's lead coming out from the back of the bullet, back of that bullet, and when it strikes the strut in the window is when it breaks apart. And the two portions are collected from the vehicle." But Robinson wasn't having it. He insisted that the bullet would have to have fragmented to leave that trail. Which led Baden to insist: "It squeezed out the back, what happens with full-metal jacket bullets." 

Now, this was no ordinary lie, it was a whopper so big it would explode the walls of a Burger King. According to Baden's close colleague Dr. Vincent DiMaio, in his book Gunshot Wounds, the trail of lead symptomatic of hunting ammunition "is not seen with handgun bullets, nor, with rare exception, with full metal-jacketed rifle bullets."  Although DiMaio did report that blunt nosed bullets break up from the tip, and added that "the lead core can be squeezed out the base if the bullet is exposed to severe stress, due to tumbling" this would not explain the closely-grouped trail of fragments on Kennedy's x-rays, as fragments squeezed out the base of a tumbling bullet would not be closely-grouped. Apparently, Baden also failed to realize that--according to Larry Sturdivan, the wound ballistics consultant to Baden's panel--a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet would need to tumble at better than 2,000 fps before it could deform, and start shedding fragments within a soft substance like brain. Presumably, Baden could not comprehend that the bullet shedding fragments in Kennedy's brain was traveling slower than 2,000 fps, and that it thereby must have broken into pieces upon impact. Apparently, he'd forgotten that his panel had come to conclude that a circular fragment of the bullet striking Kennedy in the skull had come to rest on or in the back of Kennedy's skull. Apparently, he'd similarly forgotten that this fragment was purported to have been 6.5 mm wide--the width of the rifle's ammunition--and was presumably a slice from the middle of the bullet. So, yeah, Baden's assertion that the fragments in the skull were nothing but lead that had squeezed out the back of the bullet was bizarre, to say the least. SO...had he simply forgotten the facts of the case...over the 25 years since his testimony.  Uhhh...NO... Incredibly, Baden's bizarre claim at this conference was consistent with not only some of his previous statements but with his 1978 testimony before congress, when he told them that the supposedly 6.5 mm fragment supposedly found on the back of the head was a piece of metal that had "rubbed off from the bullet on entering the skull and was deposited at the entrance site." And...NO...this was not the conclusion of Baden's panel, but something he cooked up by himself. And we know this because...when discusssing this supposedly 6.5 mm fragment in their final report, they claimed not that this fragment had been but lead squeezed out the back of the bullet, but that:  "The small missile fragment present at the margin of the entrance wound was probably a portion of the missile jacket..." Well, HOW can you squeeze a portion of a copper missile jacket out the back of a lead-filled bullet? Without breaking up the bullet??? That the panel outside of Baden believed the bullet broke up upon entrance is suggested, moreover, by Dr. Charles Petty in his testimony during the 1986 mock trial subsequently broadcast on Showtime. When asked as a representative of the panel by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi what happened when the bullet entered Kennedy's head, Petty responded "The bullet began to break up into smaller fragments, broke the skull up into fragments, and blasted out through the right frontal part of the head." But that Baden wouldn't let the panel claim the bullet broke into pieces upon impact is suggested by this segment of the panel's report: "The x-ray evidence indicates that the missile fragmented on impact, produced a number of outwardly radiating fractures, and proceeded in an essentially straight and forward path and to the right, paralleling the upper surface of the head. This type of missile fragmentation is consistent with a jacketed missile. The main core mass probably existed in a single fragment that remained intact until striking the automobile, causing it to fragment into several pieces." 

Well, HELLO!!! You can't claim a bullet fragmented upon entrance and then exited as a single fragment, fellows. One or the other. One or the other. And seeing as Baden was the only member of the panel to ever repeat such nonsense subsequent to their time together on the panel, we can feel pretty darned certain he was the one who insisted on such fuzziness, and perhaps, yes, perhaps, even added such language into the panel's report without approval from the rest of the panel.

So, YIKES, why was Baden so insistent that the bullet didn't break up upon impact with the skull, when all the evidence suggested that it had indeed broken up, and when his own panel had suggested as much in their report? (For a possible answer to this question, see my chapter on the x-rays.)

Baden's Reign of Error 2004

On November 22, 2004, a 70 year-old Dr. Baden made a brief appearance on the History Channel program Investigating History: The JFK Assassination. This afforded him just enough time to make two false statements.

• 1. When discussing the flaws in the autopsy, Baden claimed "The autopsy had not been done by pathologists who'd been trained in gunshot wounds. It was done by hospital pathologists." (This, as we've seen, was not true. Dr. Pierre Finck was a forensic pathologist and an expert in gunshot wounds employed by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in 1963. When testifying before the Warren Commission on 3-16-64, he asserted "I was certified in pathology anatomy by the American Board of Pathology in 1956, and by the same American Board of Pathology in the field of forensic pathology in 1961." When questioned by Baden and his forensic pathology panel on 3-12-78, moreover, Finck actually expanded on this point. He asserted: "being in charge of the Wound Ballistics Pathology Branch I reviewed most missile wounds sent to the AFIP for several years so I must have -- I did not keep track by weapon or the number of injuries that I have reviewed but in my experience I have (studied) a great variety of injuries produced by a great variety of missiles from a great variety of weapons.") Baden's Big Lie #2.

  2. Shortly thereafter, Baden added "There was the regular autopsy photographer there, taking pictures, and he was confronted, I believe, by an FBI person...They kicked him out. they opened up his camera and exposed all the film." (Oy Vey. Here it is again. For this program, anyhow, Baden stopped short and did not make the related claim that the photos in the archives were taken instead by an FBI agent, or Secret Service agent, and that that is why these photos lack clarity. But that's clearly where he was headed...) Baden's Big Lie #1.

Above: Dr. Michael Baden on HBO, 2008. Only in America...

Baden's Reign of Error 2008 Part 1

In the 1-09-08 episode of Autopsy, Dr. Baden's program on HBO, a 73 year-old Dr. Baden reviewed the evidence in the Kennedy assassination, and--big surprise--made a number of inaccurate claims. What follows is but a healthy sample.

• 1. When discussing the initial press conference given by Kennedy's emergency room doctors. Dr. Baden proclaimed "In fact, the doctors down in Texas, where the shooting occurred, indicated he'd been shot in the back and in the front." (Uhh. no. The doctors, as we've seen, indicated no such thing. They described a wound presumably of entrance in Kennedy's throat and a large wound on the back of his head. They suspected this second wound to be an exit for the bullet entering his throat, but thought it may have been a separate wound of both entrance and exit. So, yeah, they said nothing to indicate the bullet causing this wound came from behind Kennedy.)

  2. When discussing the initial autopsy, the program's narrator asserted: "Because the pathologist's notes were stained with blood, he burned them. After he found out that a tracheotomy had been performed in Dallas, he tried to reconstitute his notes, based on what he could remember." (Yes, this is the same old nonsense. Dr. Humes, the pathologist in question, testified in 1996 that he burned his notes only after copying them, and that he burned these notes the day after he found out about the tracheotomy. He'd made similar claims to Dr. Baden and the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel in 1977, and the Warren Commission in 1964. The implication that the initial autopsy report was in error because Dr. Humes couldn't remember what he saw is thus unjustified and deceptive. Is it a coincidence, then, that this misrepresentation feeds Dr. Baden's supposed conclusion that the autopsy report was riddled with errors, but that these errors were somehow "innocent?") Baden's Big Lie #3.

  3. Shortly thereafter, when discussing the autopsy photos, Dr. Baden repeated the story of Floyd Riebe, a navy photographer whose camera was confiscated by the Secret Service. He then explained what he considers to be the poor quality of the photos by stating "The only one who was taking photographs was a Secret Service person who'd never taken autopsy photos before." (As we've seen, this is frighteningly inaccurate. The remaining autopsy photographer was John Stringer, the Navy's top autopsy photographer, and Riebe's superior. In Unnatural Death, published nearly 20 years before making this statement, Baden claimed the lone photographer was an FBI photographer. This incensed the original autopsists, Dr. James Humes and Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, so much that they made a point of debunking Baden's claim in a 1992 interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association. One would have thought that Dr. Baden would remember his getting schooled in such a fashion, and have not repeated this mistake. But no, he kept on spewing this nonsense, even after being repeatly corrected by Dr. Aguilar in 2000. So, yeah, I guess Dr. Baden is correction-proof.) Baden's Big Lie #1.

  4. When complaining about the autopsy report, Dr. Baden claimed the autopsy doctors "did not make proper measurements of the bullet holes, did not properly describe the bullet holes as to entrance and exit." ( Now, he's made this claim before. But he just won't stop. Well, I think we can only conclude then he's confusing the Parkland doctors, who'd believed and claimed the throat wound was an entrance, and not the autopsy doctors, whose conclusions as to entrance and exit were confimred by Baden's own panel.)

  5. Later, Baden pronounced his support for the conclusion that Oswald acted alone and that the timing problems raised by the Zapruder film could be explained by the "fact" that the first shot missed. He said: "There was only one shooter, Oswald. The Zapruder film on close analysis shows the first bullet miss and hit the curb of the road that the car was traveling." (Well, here it is again. This is probably the most ill-informed position ever pushed by a supposed expert on the case. Not one analysis of the film, including those performed by the most zealous single-assassin theorists proposing Oswald acted alone, has claimed that a bullet strike on the curb is visible. Those holding that a first shot miss is detectable base their claims upon blurs on the film thought to coincide with rifle shots, and the behavior of a few of the witnesses. None have insinuated they could see the bullet strike a curb. Baden's contention one can see such a thing thereby becomes a dead giveaway that he was making this stuff up as he went along, based upon what little he could remember, and that NO ONE at HBO thought to run this show by anyone with the slightest smidgen of genuine knowledge about the case.)

  6. But Baden wasn't done. To combat the argument that Kennedy's back-and-to-the-left motion after the head shot indicated a shot was fired from the front, Baden argued: "Subsequent experiments show, and subsequent experience with people being shot do show that when someone is shot from the front they can go front or back--sometimes front, sometimes back. It isn't predictable what way the body is gonna go." (If anyone knows what "experiments" he is talking about, please bring these "experiments" to my attention. In the meantime, however, we can suspect that Dr. Baden was thinking of the tests performed by Dr. Olivier, and discussed in his testimony for the Rockefeller Commission. Olivier related that in tests where goats were shot in the head, the bodies of the goats fell to the ground in an almost random pattern. Baden overlooked that Dr. Olivier also related that when he'd fired upon human skulls, "The skulls that we shot invariably rolled away from the gun." This, of course, suggests that the back-and-to-the-left motion of a head would not be so random.)

Baden's Reign of Error 2008 Part 2

On 8-18-08, a 74 year-old Dr. Baden made an appearance on the Opie and Anthony Radio Show. This show was later put up on youtube.

• 1. In the program Baden said that the only case that made him cry was his review of the Kennedy assassination medical evidence for the HSCA. He then explained:"When I looked at that autopsy and the photographs, and it was such a terrible kind of autopsy and photographs where there wasn't a proper cleaning of the body and the proper attention paid. Y'know, to show our President, who had been killed, and to show what I would consider not proper respect for the remains really upset me. Apart from the fact that they got the entrance and the exit and the trajectory wrong, y'know on our President, when that autopsy was done by hospital pathologists who never had any experience doing gunshot wounds." (Now, a look through most any forensic textbook will show you that the establishing shots of an autopsy are supposed to show the body as received, and not as it appears after being cleaned up. So it would appear from this that Baden had not actually made a point, but had tried to use the nature of the photos as a means of discrediting the autopsy. And sure enough, he followed up on his complaint about the photos by complaining about the participation of Dr.s Humes and Boswell in the autopsy, and ignored or concealed the participation of Dr. Finck. Finck was, let's recall, a wound ballistics expert, and recoignized as such by Baden's panel. Dr. Charles Petty, a member of the panel, was actually asked about Finck in the 1986 mock trial televised on Showtime. After defense counsel Gerry Spence said something he thought had maligned Finck's reputation, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi defended Fincks' competence to the jury, and asked Petty to tell the jury what he thought of Dr. Finck. While under oath, he replied: "Dr. Finck was, and may still be, the most qualified man in wound ballistics in the Army, and has studied many high velocity rifle wounds.") Baden's Big Lie #2. 

  2. When then asked from where the shots were fired, he claimed: "He was shot twice and only twice from the back, and one missed. The first one misses, and the second one hits him in the back and goes into John F. Kennedy, uhh, Connally. Governor Connally said he hears a shot and starts turning around. That shot he thinks hit the President but it missed, it hit the curb. When the second shot comes in he's partially turned to look at what happened and that's why that gunshot wound is thought to be curved around. Because he's turned it's a straight line through his back into his left thigh...But the third shot is the one that killed him. That's in In the Line of Fire with, the movie about that..." (Well, here he goes again... He has the first bullet hit the curb, when single-assassin authors Lattimer and Posner claim the curb was hit, in opposition to James Tague, the man hit with the piece of curb. And he has Connally's wounds all in alignment, without telling us when this was...)

  3. When asked about the HSCA's conclusion regarding the acoustics, he complained: "The Policeman whose car it was, whose motorcycle it was, whose mike it was that was presumably open, he denies that it was his radio that was on. He consistently denied it. And I think that the noise--I've listened to that--it's just a lot of static...There was a nice little professor from Queen's College who said it was a fourth shot, but there's no evidence, no other evidence, no evidence on the body..." (While I agree with Baden about the acoustics, his description of Dr. Mark Weiss as a "nice little professor" is pretty darned insulting and pretty darned arrogant, and indicative of hostility on Baden's part to the one expert consulting with the HSCA who suggested a conspiracy. This is telling, IMO.)

  4. When asked if he had any doubts that Oswald did it, he responded: "No question. His fingerprints, hand print, is on the weapon. He purchased the weapon under a false name. No, no, and the trajectory lines up--to where, if you assume that Connally is sitting, turning slightly to look at...He was a hunter and he heard the first shot and he recognized it as a shot. It didn't hit anybody except you can see on one of the Zapruder films where it struck the curb. And then the second shot hit the President and Connally." (Wait! What? You can see the first bullet strike the curb on "one" of the Zapruder films? What absolute nonsense! The curb down by Tague which was presumed to have been struck was not shown in the Zapruder film until well after the end of the shooting, and then way way off in the distance. So what can we take from this? Well, I suppose what we've taken from most all of Baden's statements--that he was not above making stuff up.)

  5. When asked about the trajectory as presented by conspiracy theorists, he claimed: "The thing about it is that Connally was on a jump seat in front, so it was lower down and to the left, a little bit to the left of Kennedy sitting behind him. If you take it all into account, it's clear, and we concluded almost unanimously, that that bullet, that the second bullet that Oswald shot struck Kennedy in the back, went through his chest, went through his neck, sorry, and into Connally's chest and into his thigh. That's the so-called magic bullet." (Now, his saying the bullet striking JFK's back went into his chest, and then correcting himself, is almost funny. But, beyond that, there's that other problem: the trajectory. As stated, the HSCA claimed Connally's wounds were in alignment at Z-190. If Baden never believed that, well, he should have said so at the time. And if he did believe that, well, is he really still claiming as much nearly two decades after, years after those subscribing to the single-bullet theory on books and on TV have taken to claiming the shot occurred when Kennedy and Connally were well past that location, and had changed their positions within the limo?)

  6. When complaining about the performance of the autopsy, he blasted: "I interviewed Dr. Humes. In Washington, we interviewed him and I said "Have you ever done an autopsy on a gunshot victim before?" "No." (While Dr. Baden may have asked Dr. Humes this question in private, this question and answer are not in the transcript of their official interview. Even worse, Dr. Humes was asked this question by the Warren Commission and had replied in the affirmative.)

  7. When discussing the disappearance of Kennedy's brain, he claimed that "We found out there was a midnight vigil when the body was removed from the temporary grave to the eternal light where it is now around midnight, where a number of people including Bobby Kennedy came--no grave diggers were there--and he put these materials next to the casket. And that's where the brain probably is, next to the casket in Arlington Cemetery." (Now, there was at one time a widespread belief RFK placed the brain and tissue slides into JFK's grave when the grave was opened up years after JFK's death to place the small coffin of one of his children by his coffin. But that's not what Baden is talking about. He would subsequently make out that this possible placement of the brain and tissue materials into the grave took place shortly after JFK's death, and prevented the study of these materials by the autopsy doctors. So we can assume that's is where he was headed back here in '08.) Baden's Big Lie #4. 

  8. Now this next claim is a doozy.... To explain why the HSCA Pathology Panel--his panel--failed to request that Kennedy's body be exhumed, he reported that they independently decided "If the family doesn't want it, and since we have all the information we need to explain the bullet trajectories and the cause of death, that we shouldn't press for it." (Well, first, it's hard to see how an opporunity to end the ongoing dispute over the head wound locations would not trump the concerns of the Kennedy family and Dr. Baden's own personal feeling we have all the information we need. And second, well, he appears to have been of the belief the brain and tissue slides were in the tomb, and that the study of these materials could have been accomplished without conducting an autopsy on the President. So why did he fail to ask for access to these materials? Was he really so "uncurious"? ) 

  9. When asked his greatest case, he replied "I think the one that was the most important to me was the John F. Kennedy case. I think we got it all right." (Why, of course he does!)

Baden's Reign of Error 2009

The 6-28-09 Houston Chronicle featured an interview with a 75 year-old Baden in which he briefly discussed the Kennedy assassination. It reported: “In 1977, Baden reviewed forensic pathology reports from the John F. Kennedy assassination for the U.S. Congress. 'Two and only two bullets struck Kennedy from behind, from the area where Lee Harvey Oswald was seated,' he says. 'The first bullet missed, hit the curb. The second struck him in the back and came out his neck. Five seconds later, he was shot in the head.'" Well, hold it right there. This is succinct, but nevertheless deceptive. These were not the findings of the forensic pathology reports studied by Baden, the findings of Baden's own panel, or even the findings of the House Select Committee. His panel made no judgments as to which shot missed, and where it landed. His panel's conclusion a shot hit Kennedy in the back and exited his neck, for that matter, was related to their belief he was leaning forward when hit--and was unsupported by the evidence before them. And the HSCA concluded that the fatal head shot followed Kennedy's first being hit by 6.7 seconds, not 5. So...what was up? Did Baden really ditch the conclusions of the House Select Committee and embrace the subsequent findings of authors Lattimer, Posner, and Bugliosi? Had he become not a spokesman for the congressional committee, but an advocate for the Oswald did-it crowd?

Baden's Reign of Error 2013 Part 1

Dr. Baden is quoted several times in The Day Kennedy Died, a book put out by Life Magazine for the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. In a section of the book devoted to reasons people suspect a conspiracy, in a sub-section on the disappearance of Kennedy's brain, a 79 year-old Dr. Baden is called upon to explain why the disappearance of the brain isn't a legitimate cause for concern. He offered: "Some people have said 'Oh, there was another bullet in the brain,' but x-rays were taken to show this wasn't true." Well, this was totally deceptive, a strawman argument if ever there was one. The problem with the disappearance of Kennedy's brain isn't that people thought there was "another bullet" in it, but that some, including Kennedy's personal physician, who viewed his body and his brain, suspected there may have been more than one bullet trajectory through it. And that, strangely, it was never sectioned to see if there was such a trajectory. Baden almost certainly knew this, and his pretending otherwise is pretty suspicious.  

Baden's Reign of Error 2013 Part 2

On 11-9-13, Dr. Baden made a few brief appearances in a Fox News Special on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination entitled 50 Years of Questions. His appearances were brief but filled with errors. When discussing the bullet fragments on the x-rays, he shared: "Whether it's soft-nosed or hard-nosed, fragments will develop if the bullet strikes hard bone, skull, and be left behind. That's typical for military ammunition." (While it's true that military ammunition will at times break up when striking bone, Baden's theory about the shooting holds that the bullet leaked a trail of lead from its base as it traversed the skull, and didn't actually break-up.) Later, Baden told a story intended to explain the confusion regarding Kennedy's autopsy. Interviewer John Hemmer started the story "There was a naval photographer." Baden then finished his thought: "who was trained to take autopsy photos. And then a Secret Service person comes up to him and asks him if he has authorization to be there, confiscates the camera, exposes the film, and chases him out of the autopsy room. They have somebody else from the Secret Service who had never taken photos of a dead body, and he doesn't take the right photos." (Uhh, yikes. Baden is just wrong about this. The naval photographer whose film was exposed was an assistant autopsy photographer. His boss, the top autopsy photographer for the Navy, John Stringer, remained throughout the autopsy and took numerous photos at the direction of the autopsy doctors.) Baden's Big Lie #1.

Baden's Reign of Error 2013 Part 3

On 11-22-13, Dr. Baden appeared on the Opie and Anthony radio show to debate the Kennedy assassination with his long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Cyril Wecht. When first discussing the single-bullet theory, Dr. Baden bragged "It's not a theory; it's a fact." He then offered up some highly dubious theories in support of this "fact." He related that "The first bullet misses and hits a curb" and that at the time of the second bullet, Connally "is in a straight line for the bullet going through the back, chest, arm, and thigh." As to the first bullet's striking a curb, well, It would appear Baden was thinking of James Tague, who was presumed to have been injured by a chip of concrete sent flying when a bullet or bullet fragment struck a curb in the plaza well in front of Kennedy. But, if so, Baden should have thought some more. You see, Tague insisted, from the very beginning, that he'd heard a shot seconds before he felt a sting on his cheek, and that the bullet or bullet fragment striking the curb nearby him was not the first bullet fired, or a fragment of the first bullet fired. Now, as to Baden's claims about the second shot, well, it's intriguing that Baden failed to say WHEN this second bullet hit Connally. The HSCA, for which Baden served as chief medical consultant, we should recall, claimed the single-bullet was fired circa frame 190 of the Zapruder film, and that Connally's wounds aligned at that time. Well, it was subsequently decided by most subscribing to the single-bullet theory, that the bullet striking Kennedy and Connally actually struck circa 224 of the Zapruder film 224, nearly two seconds later. Now, the angles between Kennedy and Connally had changed between frames 190 and 224, far too much for one to claim the HSCA's analysis of this issue was still viable. SO...by claiming, here in 2013, that the second bullet went straight through Connally and accounted for all his injuries, Baden was almost certainly making one of these three claims: 1) that the HSCA analysis for the single-bullet theory still applies, and that the shot was fired circa Z-190; 2) that the HSCA analysis for the single--bullet theory still applies, even though the shot was fired at Z-224, and the angles have changed dramatically from Z-190; or 3) that he'd watched some cartoons on TV and these had convinced him Connally's wounds aligned at Z-224, and that the shot was fired at Z-224. 

Now, all of these are a problem for him, correct? If he is making the first claim, then he is actually claiming something that will alienate the majority of his fellow single-assassin theorists. And if he is making the second claim, then he is being unscientific and deliberately deceptive. And if he is making the third claim, well, he is revealing himself to be just another joe who can be easily duped by the crap shown on TV. 

Oh, wait. There's a fourth option, isn't there? And this option is that Baden wasn't even thinking through his response, and reflecting on why he believed Connally's wounds were in alignment. But that he was, instead, just SPEWING, and saying they were in alignment, because he thought it sounded good. 

We have reason to believe this was the case... When Dr. Wecht argued that the Warren Commission's own tests prove the single-bullet theory is nonsense, and pointed out that the bullet the commission had fired into a goat's rib sustained far more damage than the bullet purported to have struck Governor Connally in both his rib and wrist, Dr. Baden responded not by following the usual trail, and claiming the bullet striking Connally's rib and then wrist had been slowed before doing so, but by insisting "When a bullet hits dry bone, it deforms more than when it hits clothing, skin, blood, and living bullet (sic, he means bone), so that the testing of a bullet against dry goat bone will damage a bullet much greater than a bullet going through a body." Well, this was Grade A obfuscation. Pure syrup. Everything you will ever read on wound ballistics will tell you that living bone is more resistant than dry, brittle bone. 

And besides, the goat rib fired upon for the commission was attached to a goat at the time--a LIVE goat!

Above: Michael Baden blithers on at CrimeCon, 2024.

Baden's Reign of Error 2024

On June 2, 2024, a nearly 90-year-old Dr. Baden made a paid appearance at CrimeCon, a convention for true crime buffs. It was, judging by the video of his appearance subsequently placed online, an embarrassment to all, as he stammered and blithered and pulled non-fact after non-fact from his rectum. These non-facts, furthermore, showed a peculiar uniformity, in that they all seemed designed to convince the true-crime buff audience there was really nothing peculiar about the assassination of JFK, at least when it comes to the medical evidence. Here, then, is a breakdown of but a few of the lowlights.

Near the beginning of his presentation, while looking at footage from the Zapruder film, he asserted: "There were three shots fired by Oswald, and the first misses and hits the curb--never recovered." Well this exposes his bias right there. His panel made no conclusions as to who fired the shots, and he most certainly had no personal expertise on this matter. While continuing to narrate the film, he then added "The second shot is fired while he was going behind the screen." Now, okay, by 2024, Baden was quite old. He said "screen" instead of "sign." But that's not the problem. The HSCA committee found that the second shot was fired before JFK went behind the sign, and the single-assassin theorist community holds that it was fired as he came out from behind the sign. So it appears Baden is either unsure of what to say or has come to an independent conclusion which he has failed to explain to his audience.  In any event, he then moved on to discuss the single-bullet theory, and how this second bullet traversed both Kennedy and Connally while receiving but minor damage. He showed his audience the x-ray of Connally's wrist, and spewed: "This is the only bone that was struck. It went through President Kennedy without hitting a bone. It went through Connally's chest. It only struck this." He then presented this bullet's only striking  one bone as the source of all confusion about this bullet. He asked "How can a bullet go through two people without more deformity? It's because the only bone struck was a thin bone--a radius in Connally's wrist." 

Well, HOLY MOLY!!! This was not just nonsense, but sickening nonsense!!! Baden was a long-time friend and colleague of Dr. Cyril Wecht, who had drawn attention to the lack of damage apparent on the bullet Baden claims traversed both Kennedy and Connally, and had convinced many of their colleagues to question Baden's claims, due to the fact this bullet was purported to not just strike Connally's wrist, but fracture a vertebra in Kennedy's neck, and blast FIVE inches off Connallly's fifth rib. Now, Wecht had died but months before. And here was Baden trying to win their long-time argument by, so it would seem, flat-out lying about the nature of their long-time argument, and hiding from his audience that this bullet was purported to have struck or damaged Kennedy's neck and Connally's rib, as well as Connally's wrist.. 

In any event, Baden wasn't finished misrepresenting the nature of his long-time beef with Wecht. He then showed his audience a photo of the bullet he claims created all this damage. This photo showed CE 399, a nearly pristine bullet. He then claimed: "This is the magic bullet. It looks good and intact here but when one sees that bullet it doesn't roll over because the other side is flat...It doesn't roll. It's not magic. It's damaged. But it looks pretty good." Well, yikes, this grossly exaggerated the damage to the bullet and hid that the bullet was only slightly flattened at one end, and not flattened along the length of the other side. So, yeah, this too, would appear to be an FU to Wecht, who had challenged men like Baden to find one bullet purported to have caused as much damage as the one Baden claimed traversed both Kennedy and Connally, while suffering so little damage...and had had NO takers. 

Baden then moved on to the head wounds. He showed his audience a drawing he'd had created for the HSCA. It was essentially a tracing of a photo showing the back of Kennedy's head as it appeared at the beginning of the autopsy, but cannot rightly be called a tracing because, as was subsequently exposed, Baden had ordered the artist, Ida Dox, to alter and darken an oval shape (that Dr. Humes, Kennedy's autopsist, had dismissed as a smear of blood when viewing the original photo) to make it look like a bullet wound. So this was already problematic. Here was Baden, more than 45 years after he'd ordered the creation of this drawing, and long after the autopsy photos had become available to the public, and shown on TV, using this drawing to push his interpretation of the head wounds. It was like a warning bell, of sorts: "Here comes some serious bullcrap!" And well, he didn't disappoint. Without really explaining what they were, he then dismissed all controversy about the head wounds by claiming Kennedy was laying on his back at Parkland Hospital and that a lot of blood got into his hair. He then claimed that, as a result, people viewing the photos (we can presume he meant people viewing the body itself at Parkland) were confused by "the blood around the hair" and continued "but the bullet hole was only seen during the autopsy when all the blood was removed and the head carefully washed. And it was just a small typical entrance wound through the head." 

Well, HOLY MOLY-ER!!! This was a complete betrayal to his audience, which one can only assume was hoping to hear him address some actual issues, and not just spew. First of all, this hid that the Parkland witnesses--the ones he made out were confused by all the blood--never even claimed to see the "small typical entrance wound", and had insisted instead that they'd identified a large head wound (of perhaps both entrance and exit)--which they believed to have been in a location different than the one in Baden's tracing--not by the blood in Kennedy's hair, but by an actual absence of scalp and skull on his head! And, second of all, this hid that the doctors viewing the bullet hole "only seen during the autopsy" insisted until their dying days that this wound was low on the back of the head, four inches or so away from the location Dr. Baden had doctored up to look like an entrance wound on the tracing of the back of the head photo. Baden had thereby evaded both controversies--the contoversy over the  large wound location and the controversy over the small wound location--by chalking it all up to confusion due to too much blood in the hair. 

And still, he blithered on. He then explained what he purported were mistakes made during the autopsy (including, apparently, that these doctors claimed to see an entrance wound inches away from where Baden--who never saw the body--claims there was a wound) by insisting: "These were hospital doctors at Bethesda. None of them had performed an autopsy on a gunshot victim." Well, this hid that the "hospital doctors" had performed autopsies on gunshot wounds before but knew their limitations and had asked for and received the assistance of Dr. Pierre Finck, who had not only performed autopsies on gunshot victims, but had become a recognized expert expert on gunshot wounds. Baden's Big Lie #2.

Baden then discussed the disappearance of Kennedy's brain. Well, tried to, anyhow. (The ellipses in the passage to follow reflect where repetitive or grammatically incorrect words have been removed for the purposes of clarity.) Baden claimed: "At the time that President Kennedy's casket was moved from its temporary location at Arlington Cemetery (to) its permanent place in Arlington Cemetery, there was a midnight meeting of some of the family members, the Kennedy family, and a couple lawyers...at which time Bobby Kennedy...brought the brain and all other tissues that were taken at autopsy--the microscopic slides, the paraffin blocks, the tissues that are kept in formaldehyde for further examination...and placed them in the gravesite...where they are today...." He then explained why this was significant. "One of the problems was that Dr. Humes did not further examine the brain after the autopsy--because there were issues as to whether--if there was more than one gunshot wound --that had been raised--and it would normally have been examined." 

Well, HOLY-MOLIEST!!! This was Baden's Big Lie #4. First of all, the President's casket was not opened up when it was moved in 1967. No one saw such a thing. No one said such a thing. Second, the brain and other tissues were included in an inventory of items present at the National Archives in 1965, when they were transferred to the Kennedy family. Now, the Archives later requested the return of the autopsy photos and x-rays, but, alas, they did not request a return of the brain and tissues. So it is indeed possible Robert Kennedy disposed of or placed these items within the President's casket at some time before his own death in 1968. But that's not what Baden is claiming, is it? Going on back decades, he's been claiming these items were given to or taken by Robert Kennedy BEFORE Dr. Humes had a chance to examine them, and that's just horseshit. Dr.s Humes, Boswell, and Finck performed a supplementary examination of the brain and slides a week or so after the assassination, and signed a report on this examination on 12-6-63, which was mentioned in the report of Dr. Baden's panel in 1979, and of which Dr. Baden was at one time well aware. 

So...was Dr. Baden trying to conceal from his audience the results of this examination? I suspect so. Let's recall that among the conclusions drawn by the doctors after performing this examination was that the tissues on their slides, including slides taken from their presumed entrance wound low on the back of the head, the underside of the right cerebellum, and spinal column, revealed pre-mortem damage, that is, damage related to the impact of the bullet, and not the subsequent removal of the brain. Well, howdy! This challenged if not destroyed the claim of Baden and his colleagues that no bullet entered low on the back of the head, and that the only bullet entering on the back of the head was the one high up on the back of the head by the cowlick, in the location he'd had doctored up on the tracing of the back of the head photo. 

So, yeah, near 90 year-old Baden's lies formed a pattern....the same pattern his lies had been forming for nearly 45 years. 

These were, let's recall. 

1. Lies about the quality of the photographs and the competence of the photographer. CHECK.

2. Lies about the quality of the autopsy and the competence of the autopsists, in particular his fellow forensic pathologist, Dr. Pierre Finck. CHECK. 

3. Lies about the autopsy report and whether it was written based on notes or on the recollections of the doctors. CHECK

4. A concealment of the existence of a Supplementary Report on the President's brain, in which damage inconsistent with the entrance wound proposed by Dr. Fisher and seconded by Baden's panel was described. CHECK. 

So, yes, these lies all served a purpose--to make the autopsy team out to be incompetent fools, and thereby make Dr. Baden and his colleagues' claims these doctors botched the autopsy--and mistakenly concluded a bullet wound near the top of the head was actually near the bottom of the head--seem credible...

And, yeah, it seems clear that Baden has engaged in a near 50-YEAR assault on the truth, perhaps to keep the public in the dark as to who killed Kennedy, but more likely, IMO, to preserve the reputations of his fellow...prevaricators--including Dr. Russell Fisher, who we can presume came up with the idea the government should find a new home for the entrance wound...

Now, I suppose it's possible Baden is unaware he is lying, but the garbling of the original autopsist's conclusions about the brain in his own panel's report suggests deliberation--and a conscious desire to deceive...

as does the fact...he was not the only member of his panel to engage in such behavior...

The Remarkable Dr. Spitz

Let's take, for example, Dr. Werner Spitz. Dr. Spitz had not only co-authored a prominent forensic pathology textbook, Medicolegal Investigation of Death, with Dr. Fisher of the Clark Panel, but he'd been Dr. Fisher's protege at the Maryland State Medical Examiner's office, and had been a colleague of the Clark Panel's Dr. Morgan at Johns Hopkins University. He'd also been a member of the Rockefeller Commission's medical panel, and had confirmed Fisher and Morgan's findings. His subsequent show of support for the Clark Panel's findings through the conclusions of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, and through his subsequent comments, should then come as no surprise. 

His appearance on the HSCA Panel, however, was a bit of a surprise at the time. According to an extensive article on the HSCA's investigation, published in the July 1979 issue of Gallery, the HSCA had specifically requested that members of the pathology panel be "noncontroversial." This was almost certainly a dig at Dr. Thomas Noguchi, a "coroner to the stars" in Los Angeles, who'd been heavily criticized and investigated. But this should also have meant Spitz's banishment, seeing as he'd spent much of the 2 years between his stints on the Rockefeller Commission Panel and HSCA Panel at the center of a criminal investigation, which, while not leading to an indictment, nevertheless confirmed that he'd 1) set up a private medical institute while working as Wayne County, Michigan's Chief Medical Examiner, which operated from the county's morgue, and used county employees and equipment, without reimbursement to the county; 2) removed 7,000 pituitary glands from cadavers passing through the county's morgue, and sold these at a profit to his institute; 3) collected blood, brains, and urine from a number of cadavers in the morgue, and sold these at a profit to his institute, 4) conducted autopsies on infants as part of a state-wide study on crib death, which were reimbursed by the state to his institute, even though county employees and equipment were used; and 5) fired weapons on cadavers in the county morgue in order to test their wounding patterns, without receiving permission from the families of the cadavers, or the county. 

It is presumed then that someone, almost certainly Dr. Baden, intervened on his behalf.

They certainly appear to be birds of a feather. Since his stint on the HSCA panel, Spitz, as Baden, has made numerous suspicious and inaccurate statements about the Kennedy assassination medical evidence. These mistakes, moreover, suggest that Spitz, as Fisher, was less than forthcoming on what the evidence suggests, and that Spitz, as Baden, never took the time to study the case.

Spitz's strange comments on high-powered rifle wounds

In his book's chapter on gunshot wounds, Spitz claims "In the case of a high-powered rifle, the external appearance of the entrance wound does not materially differ from that of a gunshot wound inflicted with a handgun or an ordinary rifle." To demonstrate this point, he makes reference to a photo showing a small entrance wound on the back of a head, closely resembling the supposed entrance near the cowlick on the back of Kennedy's head. Notably, he does not identify the type of rifle fired nor the distance from which it was fired. He then proceeds to describe the massive internal damage created by such a bullet. For this he makes reference to another photo. Only this one shows a massive wound on the top of the head, closely resembling what is supposedly the exit on Kennedy's head. The caption for this photo, however, explains "Shot from a .30-.30 rifle fired from about 60 feet. The wound of entrance is indicated by arrows." The large size of this entrance, of course, DOES "materially differ" from that of a gunshot wound inflicted by a handgun, and this, in turn, raises the question of why the distance of the shot in the first photo was not noted.

Spitz's caginess on this issue is no one-time thing, mind you. On 11-17-88 Dr. Spitz defended the Warren Commission's findings on Detroit radio station WXYT. When asked about the President's head wounds, he was most forthcoming. He asserted: "The right upper quadrant of the head was more or less demolished. It is not unusual for a high-powered rifle to do this. A mistake was made insofar that the the back of the head was never shaved. There is every reason to believe that the entrance wound was up toward the top of the head namely in the area of the cowlick. The hair in that area, due to the peculiar way in which the hair turned like in a whirlpool--the skin is a little bit more visible in that area than in other parts where the hair is combed over. That bullet hole--if it is a bullet hole--looked very very suggestive of a regular usual bullet wound of entrance like we see thousands of. It is known--and we have seen this many many times--that high-powered rifles, whereas they cause lots of damage at the exit, cause a bullet wound of entrance which does not look any different from any other bullet wound of entrance, even from a small caliber handgun."  

Well, my gosh, by gosh... This is utter hogwash! Spitz's suggestion that the entrance wounds created by high-velocity rifle bullets on the skull at distances as short as 100 yards are identical in appearance to the entrance wounds created by low-velocity small-caliber handgun bullets on the skull is only refuted by most every book or article on wound ballistics ever written (save his own). 

I mean, something is just strange here. Spitz does not designate "high-powered rifles when firing military ammunition" or any such thing. He says simply "high-powered rifles." The explosive effects of hunting ammunition at both entrance and at exit when fired by high-powered rifles has long been noted. Spitz, furthermore, would have been far more familiar with this kind of high-velocity rifle wound than he would have been with the wounds normally created by Oswald's rifle. There is simply no way he could have forgotten the nastiness of such a wound, or be of the belief that small-caliber handguns when fired from a distance could create wounds equally as nasty. The high-powered rifle firing soft-nosed hunting ammunition tested in The Discovery Channel's 2008 program JFK: Inside the Target Car, we should remember, completely exploded the first simulated human head fired upon in the program, and severed it from its neck.

Let's reflect... Handbook of Legal Medicine, by Dr. Alan R. Moritz, the mentor to Dr. Spitz's mentor, Dr. Fisher, and a member of the Clark Panel, reports: "Rifles or carbines manufactured for big game hunting or as military weapons ordinarily use ammunition with a large powder charge to ensure high velocity and long carrying distance. The kinetic energy of such a projectile may be so great as to have an explosive effect on impact quite different than that produced by most pistols or revolvers or by rifles designed for small game hunting. Regardless of the range of fire, the explosive effect of such a bullet at the site of entrance may be great enough to make it difficult to recognize just where the bullet struck and whether it was entering or leaving the body at that place."  

And Dr. Moritz was far from alone. Forensic Pathology, a Handbook for Pathologists, edited by Spitz's close colleagues Dr. Fisher and Dr. Petty, confirms: "Wounds from revolvers, pistols, and rifles will have characteristics which vary depending on the velocity of the bullet (which is the largest factor determining the destructive energy)...Increasing the velocity of projectiles increases geometrically the quantity of energy produced and this produces perforating wounds with unusual features: bone may literally be pulverized, soft tissue laceration may be widespread and at considerable distance from the track of the projectile, lacerations may be observed within the intima of arteries; exit wounds may be unusually large."

As these "unusual features" are related to the velocity of the bullet, and the velocity of the bullet is greatest at entrance, it makes no sense whatsoever for Spitz to imply these features would go unnoticed at entrance.

There's also this... The HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, of which Spitz was a senior member, concluded that a high-velocity bullet had struck Kennedy high on the back of his skull. To this end, when discussing Kennedy's x-rays and an obviously displaced section of the rear of his skull, the panel's report described: "embedded in the skull in the lower region of this defect is a radiopaque shadow which, in the opinion of the panel, is a fragment of the missile." As the nose and base of this bullet were found on the front seat of the limousine, moreover, it is logical to assume that this fragment came from the middle of the bullet, and that the bullet broke up upon entrance. But even if one assumes this fragment somehow leaked out of the back of the bullet, a la Baden, it still follows that this bullet was deformed upon entrance.

If a high-velocity bullet had broken up upon entrance, (or merely become so deformed that a large fragment would be forced out of its base), of course, the appearance of this entrance would not be that of a "regular usual wound of entrance." I mean, that's not exactly a stretch.

That Spitz believed the bullet broke up upon entrance is confirmed, moreover, by an unexpected source. In 1992, writer Bonar Menninger published Mortal Error; this was built upon the research of a Maryland gunsmith named Howard Donahue. Donahue contended that the explosion of the bullet striking Kennedy's skull was inconsistent with 6.5 mm ammunition. Donahue's discussion of the fatal bullet's behavior with members of the HSCA Panel was especially intriguing. According to Menninger, when Donahue asked Spitz about the break-up of the bullet, Spitz "suggested that the bullet's impact with the skull would have caused the slug to disintegrate explosively in the manner in which it did." 

Well, okay, this is consistent with the findings of the Warren Commission.

Now compare this to what Dr. Baden is reported to have told Donahue. Baden is reported to have said that the bullet striking Kennedy didn't explode at all, and that "Most bullets, not all, when they hit bone, will cause some lead to come out sort of like fine sand on the x-ray. It doesn't fragment."

Well, GEEZ, fellas, make up your minds, will ya? Did the bullet somehow not fragment while leaving a slice from the bullet on the back of Kennedy's head--and a trail of fragments across the top of his brain--as per Baden? Or did the bullet fragment like all bullets of its type do when striking skulls, and leave no signs of this fragmentation at the bullet entrance, and large fractures at the exit more consistent with the exit of an intact bullet--as per Spitz? 

Both explanations are unsatisfactory and at odds with the wound ballistics literature, not to mention common sense. (This is discussed in more detail in chapter 16b.)

So why did Spitz, regularly and repeatedly, imply that the entrance of a rifle bullet on the skull looks like the entrance of a handgun bullet on the skull? Was he trying to cover up that the supposed entrance to Kennedy's skull in the cowlick could pass for being a handgun wound, but bore scant resemblance to the kind of massive wound one would expect from a high-velocity bullet, fired from less than a hundred yards away, and fragmenting on the skull?

Perhaps Spitz was just confused. Perhaps he had remembered that, under certain circumstances, a handgun wound can give the appearance of a rifle wound. According to Moritz, "If the muzzle of the gun was in close contact with the skin at the moment of firing, a large entrance wound may be produced by the explosive effects of the expanding gases in the tissues. Similar destructive effects may result from the impact of a high velocity bullet such as those fired from most military rifles, machine guns, and some sporting guns." Unfortunately for Spitz, though, this is a one-way street. While holding a muzzle to the body can make a handgun wound look like a rifle wound, there is no reason, outside the bullet's having been fired from hundreds (or in some circumstances, thousands) of yards away, that a high-velocity rifle wound of the skull would look like the "regular usual" wound made by a handgun of small caliber. 

Or perhaps Spitz was ill-informed. By the 1980's, much had been made of the M-16's mechanism of wounding, whereby it left small wounds at entrance on the body but created massive internal damage as a consequence of the bullet's tumbling and breaking up inside the body. Perhaps Spitz was of the misguided belief then that the impact of a 160 grain bullet on a skull would bear the same resemblance to a small caliber handgun bullet on a skull as the impact of a 55 grain M-16 bullet would on a body to a small caliber handgun bullet on a body. Perhaps Spitz, who in daily life had seen far more handgun wounds and shotgun wounds than rifle wounds--by a ratio of more than 100 to 1--had simply failed to realize that the bullet striking Kennedy was far larger, and would have behaved much differently, than the M-16 bullet of so much discussion.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, Dr. Spitz was being deliberately deceptive about the nature of high-powered rifle wounds to conceal that the entrance wound proposed by his friend Fisher, and confirmed by not one but two panels on which he himself resided, was most certainly not the entrance of a high-velocity bullet fragmenting on the back of the head. Dr. Spitz had, after all, told the Rockefeller Commission in 1975 that he'd performed "high velocity rifle test firings for the sake of learning their effect," but that he had never published his results. The possibility that Dr. Spitz was being deliberately deceptive is supported as well by the strange fact that he subsequently published a drawing of the autopsy photo of the back of the head in his book, and that this drawing not only failed to depict the small dark shape present in the entrance location described by Dr. Humes, but the surprising wing of scalp apparent by Kennedy's temple, signifying the supposed exit of the bullet.   

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

But Spitz's apparent failure to appreciate or acknowledge that the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's head should not have appeared to be a "regular usual wound" was not his only "mistake." Nor his strangest...

Spitz's strange comments on Kennedy's hair

As hard as it may be to believe, in recent editions of Medicolegal Investigation of Death, Spitz makes an even stranger mistake. He writes "One of the gravest errors made in the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy was the fact that the back of the head was never shaved. Thus, to this day, speculation and innuendos persist regarding the exact location of the wound, and some even claim that this shot came from the front or the grassy knoll, at the right side of the President's motorcade, suggesting a conspiracy by at least two assassins."

Well, this is, as promised, strange. The "speculation and innuendos" holding that Kennedy was shot from the front have nothing to do with the failure of the autopsy doctors to shave the back of Kennedy's head, and have everything to do with the statements of the emergency room doctors in Dallas. I mean, does Spitz really mean to imply that the autopsy doctors might have found the wound on the back of the head described by the emergency room doctors, if only they'd shaved Kennedy's head? The only doctor in Dallas to inspect the head wound, Dr. Clark, specified that there was no scalp over this large gaping wound, so how could there be hair? 

The thought occurs then that Dr. Spitz knew full well that the failure to shave Kennedy's head had nothing to do with the widespread belief the head shot was fired from the front, but was being cute about it. Was he trying to avoid mentioning that the descriptions of the head wound by the doctors in Dallas placed it in a different location than the descriptions of the head wound by the doctors in Bethesda, and that the panel on which he served concluded that each of these groups of doctors incorrectly recalled the location of the wounds they observed?

Perhaps. An article on Spitz found on the Wayne State University website confirms his feeling that the failure to cut JFK's hair led to some major mistakes. The author of this article, Amy DiCresce, explains "Part of the confusion and chaos over Kennedy's death was the inaccurate original autopsy report, but Dr. Spitz says there's a simple explanation for that. Kennedy was autopsied by a pathologist who had never done a gunshot autopsy before. (Note: this is Baden's Big Lie #2.) Furthermore, he points to his head saying, 'To this day, we don’t know if the bullet entered exactly here or here. The wound was never shaven. You should never make a determination on a bullet wound without cleaning it and photographing it properly. It’s the only way you can see the details.'" 

Well, this is better, but still not good. While in his book Spitz insinuated that the failure to shave Kennedy's head had prevented the autopsy doctors from convincing others there was no exit on the back of the head, he at least now acknowledges that this failure, if anything, led to Dr. Humes inaccurately measuring the entrance wound location. But who is he kidding? The failure to shave Kennedy's hair could never in a million years have led Dr. Humes--and his entire autopsy team--to think the top of Kennedy's skull--where Spitz claims the wound was actually located--was the BOTTOM of Kennedy's skull--where Humes and his entire autopsy team claimed the wound was located. No, the only ones actually confused by Humes' failure to shave Kennedy's head were those tasked with subsequently studying the autopsy photos--men like Dr. Fisher...and Dr. Spitz.  

And Spitz is well aware of this... Let's recall that he told his radio audience in 1988 that "There is every reason to believe that the entrance wound was up toward the top of the head namely in the area of the cowlick. The hair in that area, due to the peculiar way in which the hair turned like in a whirlpool--the skin is a little bit more visible in that area than in other parts where the hair is combed over. That bullet hole--if it is a bullet hole--looked very very suggestive of a regular usual bullet wound of entrance like we see thousands of."

"That bullet hole--if it is a bullet hole..." Spitz had thereby let it slip that he wasn't exactly sure about the so-called cowlick entrance and, in the process, had suggested that his anger toward the autopsists for not shaving JFK's head was related as much to his own difficulty in interpreting the autopsy photos as anything else.

An April 3, 2005 article in the Macomb Daily, based on an interview with Spitz, supports this speculation, and suggests that Dr. Spitz continues to search for someone--anyone--to blame for his frustration. The article quotes him as follows: "Jackie was upstairs in the hospital and sent down an order not to cut any hair."

Hmm, this detail about the First Lady is quite a revelation... but is apparently untrue.

A subsequent interview published in the November 21, 2013 Macomb Daily found Spitz adding to this story. Here he related that at some point in time he contacted Dr. Humes and asked him, personally, "'‘Why didn’t you shave the skin around the bullet wound in the head? What happened to the President’s brain? Where are your notes from the autopsy?” The article then continued: "One of the gravest errors made during the president’s autopsy, in Spitz’s opinion, was that the back of the head was never shaved. It left speculation and innuendo regarding the exact location of the wound. “Jackie was upstairs in the hospital and sent down an order not to cut any hair,” Spitz was told. Those orders were passed on to Humes who, as a military man, followed them."

Well, this is interesting. For two reasons. One is that it implicates Dr. Humes as the source of the "Jackie wouldn't let me" excuse. In 1992, when interviewed in the Journal of the American Medical Association and given the chance to explain all the shortcomings of Kennedy's autopsy, head autopsist Dr. James Humes proclaimed "The wounds were so obvious that there was no need to shave the hair before photographs were taken." As far as can be determined, Humes never wavered on this point. As a result, we can only suspect the story about Mrs. Kennedy ordering the hair not be shaved was someone's invention. Someone named Dr. Werner Spitz...

Which brings us to point two... Two is that Spitz's ongoing complaints about the hair suggest what he will not just come out and say--that he was never sure the red spot in the cowlick was the entrance wound noted at autopsy, and that he continues to have his doubts.

And yet, Spitz proceeded to tell the Macomb Daily: "This was not a complicated case.”

Other strange comments by Spitz

As if to show us just how un-complicated, then, the 2013 Macomb Daily article gave Spitz some rope, and allowed him to explain two of the supposedly un-complicated issues surrounding the case. As to how and why Kennedy's brain disappeared, "Spitz said it could be something as simple as it was lost in the craziness of the moment or misplaced among the other brains in the morgue." (Now, that would be interesting, seeing as the brain was last seen in the National Archives, years after being taken from the morgue.) According to the article, Spitz then took on "JFK’s 'rearward jerk” after the fatal shot. That brief movement had long convinced skeptics that the fatal shot had come from in front of Kennedy. Spitz, however, explained it away by saying it took a moment for the driver to comprehend the tragedy that was unfolding behind him, and that when he did, he accelerated, sending what was at that point a lifeless body backwards."

Well, this malarkey was disproved decades before. Apparently, Spitz, the supposed man of science, refuses to do the homework necessary to understand this case.

And it's not just when speaking off the cuff that Spitz spews nonsense. In the three editions of Medicolegal Investigation of Death released subsequent to his stint with the HSCA, (in 1980, 1993, and 2006) Spitz has claimed "The wound in the front of JFK's neck was circumferentially abraded, resembling an entrance wound to inexperienced examiners at the autopsy."

Yikes. Feel free to read that again... Could Spitz really be suggesting that the autopsy doctors mistakenly concluded the throat wound was an entrance?

Amazingly, yes. A May 13, 2006 article in The Journal Gazette reports that Spitz, while explaining why so many people are of the mistaken belief shots came from the front, "contended that the original autopsy – done under extreme pressure – erroneously concluded an exit wound in Kennedy’s neck was an entry wound because of an abrasion around the wound. That abrasion was likely caused by the knot of the former president’s tie, Spitz said, adding that it is not uncommon for clothes pressed tightly against the skin to cause such an abrasion." 

And Spitz apparently repeated this claim to WXYZ-TV on 11-21-13. An 11-22-13 article on the station's website presented a brief newsclip of Spitz, and further reported on Spitz's claims regarding the autopsy. It repeated: "The pathologist who performed the autopsy also was inexperienced in analyzing gunshot wounds. He saw an abrasion around the wound on the front of Kennedy's neck, at the collar of his shirt. The pathologist knew abrasions formed around entry wounds. He didn't realize abrasions also form at exit wounds covered by fitted clothing. His initial belief that there was an entry wound on both sides of Kennedy's body led people to believe shots were fired from two locations."

And Spitz was just getting started. On 11-22-13, the 50th anniversary of the assassination, Dr. Spitz made an appearance on the Fouts Forum, an online video program hosted by the Mayor of Warren, Michigan. There, he once again claimed: "The pathologists who did the autopsy did not recognize that the bullet wound in the neck was an exit wound, not an entrance wound. Consequently, the president was not shot in a cross fire, but was shot from the back only, from the sixth floor of the book depository. And the bullet wound of exit in the neck looked like an entrance bullet wound because it had an abrasion, a scraping all the way around, like a bullet wound of entrance. And that that is an exit with the scraping because as the skin was moved outwards by the bullet as it exited it scraped on the neck tie and shirt of the president." He then proceeded to claim that when Dr. Perry cut through the small wound in Dallas while making the tracheotomy incision it made it even harder for the autopsy doctors to tell that this wound was an exit not an entrance.

He then told the whopper of all whoppers. He claimed that after he'd inspected the autopsy evidence for the Rockefeller Commission that he personally confronted Dr. Humes at his office at St. Johns Hospital and asked him how he could have concluded both the back wound and the neck wound were entrance wounds, when no bullets were discovered in the body, and that Humes told him why he screwed it up (presumably, Spitz means by this that Humes told him he saw an abrasion collar on the neck wound) and that he then hung his head and said "'You're right' and then became very emotional, very upset, and said "I'm sorry, I messed it up." (In his zeal, Spitz repeated this story about 20 minutes later, only this time adding in that Humes almost cried.)

Uhhh, WOW. There's just a few huge problems with this. One is that the original autopsy did not conclude Kennedy's throat wound was an entrance wound. That Spitz not only makes this mistake, but has repeatedly and consistently made this mistake since 1980, furthermore, suggests that HE HAS NEVER ACTUALLY READ THE AUTOPSY REPORT. Two is that there was no abrasion ring around the throat wound noted at autopsy. The autopsy doctors saw only a tracheotomy incision during the autopsy, and thought it was just that, a tracheotomy incision. This suggests, furthermore, that Spitz HAS NEVER EVEN READ THE TESTIMONY OF THE AUTOPSY DOCTORS.

Even worse, the doctors at Parkland Hospital, who did think the wound resembled an entrance before cutting through it with a tracheotomy incision, thought so primarily because of its extremely small size, and never mentioned an abrasion ring in their testimony. This suggests again that Spitz HAS NEVER EVEN READ THE TESTIMONY OF THE PARKLAND HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM DOCTORS.

And then there's the whopper of all whoppers, in which Spitz claimed he told Humes he should have been wondering what happened to the bullet creating the back wound, and Humes told him he was right, when everyone present at the autopsy testified that a large percentage of the autopsy was taken up with a search for this bullet. Well, this indicates that Spitz was not only ignorant of the most basic facts about the autopsy, but was...making stuff up.

Above: Dr. Werner Spitz, in one of his many court appearances, arguing with the evidence.

Spitz in Fantasyland

Should one not believe me, well, there are more golden nuggets from Spitz's Fouts Forum interview. For one, Spitz also claimed that the reason Kennedy's brain wasn't sectioned was because it had been thrown out by an over-eager orderly who was trying to make room by throwing out all the brains in buckets that had been sitting against the wall. (This avoids that the brain was studied after fixation, and then placed into the National Archives. And, well, hell--this is another variation on Baden's Big Lie #4.) He then denied that anyone would have a reason to make Kennedy's brain disappear! For two, Spitz claimed Jackie Kennedy testified that she climbed out onto the trunk of the car to get away from the bullets and that Clint Hill's claim she was reaching for a piece of her husband's brain was "ridiculous." Now, on a rant, he then claimed the back wound presented in the HSCA's report was inaccurately drawn by Ida Dox and that the bullet hole really looked just like the nearly perfectly round bullet holes in forensic texts. He then topped things off by claiming CE 399 barely grazed Connally's thigh bone, and was then found on the floor of the limo. (Officially, nothing grazed the thigh bone, and the bullet was found on a stretcher.)

(Yes, yes, he said all this stuff. Check it out yourself, here: Spitz Spewing Nonsense.)

That Spitz refused to actually study the evidence, and preferred to make stuff up, is suggested, furthermore, by his earliest interviews on the subject. The June 2, 1975 edition of Medical World News, written just after Spitz first viewed the evidence for the Rockefeller Commission, boasts an article on the medical evidence, with input from Dr.s Fisher, Spitz, and Wecht. While discussing the fatal head shot, Dr. Spitz claims: "One bullet entered from the rear of his skull and exited near his right eye." Near his right eye? As the exit location later identified by the HSCA's Panel is at least three inches from the right eye, this suggests Dr. Spitz was so ill-informed regarding the specifics of the assassination in 1975 that he, as Dr. Angel a few years later, just ASSUMED the "mystery photo" was taken directly from the front, and that the beveled exit in the photo was therefore directly above the eye. He never realized that none of the doctors inspecting Kennedy's body on the day of his death noticed such a wound. And he never realized this because HE NEVER READ THE REPORTS AND TESTIMONY OF THE AUTOPSY DOCTORS AND NEVER READ THE REPORTS AND TESTIMONY OF THE PARKLAND HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM DOCTORS. (Sorry about the all caps...)

One might rightly suspect then that Spitz, as Baden, is simply unreliable, and equally as likely as Baden to repeat half-baked nonsense when discussing the assassination...and assassinations....

Manufacturing Consensus 

If Spitz and Baden were simply wrong about Kennedy, for that matter, it should not be surprising. There is simply no evidence the doctors on the HSCA panel ever thought of themselves as anything but consultants. A consultant will tell you, for a price, what he knows or thinks he knows. An investigator, which is what the committee needed, will tell you what he's discovered after reading everything relevant to the case, and conducting actual research.

A brief study of the events leading up to Baden's testimony suggests that the members of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel were just consultants, and low-paid consultants at that. In an article available on the Wayne University website, in which Dr. Spitz discusses his work for the HSCA, he complains "You know how much I got for that opinion? I got $121, which paid for the airplane ticket to Washington and back. Otherwise, they didn’t give me anything."

If he was understating his pay, it wasn't by much. On 9-28-78, in the statements of Chairman Louis Stokes before the HSCA (found in the FBI files on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website), at the close of their public hearings, he discussed the finances of the committee. He noted that they'd paid $25,000 for 101 man-days to their pathology consultants. That's total. For nine top pathologists and a number of radiologists. 101 man-days. That's less than 10 days apiece. This pales in comparison to the $75,850 and 198 man-days devoted to studying the dicta-belt evidence, and re-enacting the shooting in Dealey Plaza. This is less than half the $50,000 and 270 man-days spent studying and enhancing the photographs. To put this small number of man-days in proper perspective, one need only consider that, by Stokes' own account, the creation of medical illustrations for the committee  took 78 man-days. Since by quick count only seven illustrations were created, this means that the pathology consultants spent approximately as much time evaluating, discussing, and writing about the evidence, per person, as it took the committee's medical illustrator, Ida Dox, to create one drawing. 

And what did the pathology consultants do on their 101 man-days, less than 10 days apiece?

Well, they were good enough to tell us in their report. The doctors who'd never seen the autopsy photos and x-rays before, including Dr. Baden, got together at a House of Representatives office on 9-15-77. At this meeting, a number of documents related to the assassination, including official reports, Warren Commission testimony, and articles on the assassination were "made available."  These documents, mind you, which are listed in the report's addendum A, and which would take a normal person at least a week to read and comprehend, should have been required reading BEFORE the panelists had even set foot in Washington. And yet, they were only "made available." There's no mention of photo-copies being passed out for home study. Not that there was much time for home study. They re-convened at the National Archives the next day to inspect the autopsy evidence. During this session, they met with Dr.s Humes, Boswell, and Angel as well. This is the meeting where Dr. Humes said the "cowlick" entry appeared to be dried blood. This is the meeting where Dr. Angel said the exit was on the frontal bone. (Both of these statements were ignored by the Panel.) On the 17th, they once again visited the archives. (The panel's report says they met with the autopsy doctors during this session, but the transcript for the interview with the autopsy doctors says it took place on the 16th. Go figure.) On the 18th, this panel re-convened at the House Office Building, to "discuss the individual findings and commit to writing its opinions relative to the evidence viewed." Their report explains: "At that meeting, it became apparent that the members were in substantial agreement with respect to the interpretation to the evidence." Note that there was no radiologist present to help them analyze the x-rays. Note also that these doctors were civilians and that none of them had studied military rifle wounds, let alone the wounds caused by Mannlicher-Carcano rifles. Note further that the Warren Commission testimony of Dr. Alfred Olivier, who'd studied the wound ballistics of the rifle, and the 1965 report he'd written on his studies, were not included in addendum A, although "Rockefeller panel reports", presumably including Dr. Olivier's own brief report to the Rockefeller Commission in 1975, were included. While Dr. Baden, in his 1980 Toronto speech, would admit that his panel "knew very little about" Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition (a fact confirmed in 1986 by panel member Charles Petty, who admitted during testimony in a televised mock trial that he'd never inspected a single wound of its making), and while Baden would later admit to the 2003 Wecht conference audience that "medical examiners as well as neurosurgeons and trauma surgeons, we don't see much in the way of military rifle ammunition" and illustrate this by admitting that a New York City coroner inspecting "1200 gunshot murder victims" would probably find that "none of them" were by military rifles, he didn't see fit to bring a doctor familiar with this ammunition onto his panel.

Now, this is quite an oversight. It would seem apparent that forensic pathologists unfamiliar with the wound ballistics of military ammunition are as under-qualified to comment on the wounds created by such ammunition as trauma room surgeons are under-qualified to comment on the entrance/exit nature of the wounds they seek to heal. In other words, it's not their specialty; they're out of their depth.

Still, it's not as if there were dozens of doctors in the forensic science community who were familiar with the wound ballistics of military ammunition, and could offer valuable insight as to the nature of Kennedy's head wound. A perforating rifle wound of the brain, created by military ammunition, was, in fact, quite the rarity. To wit, Tables 252 and 254 of the U.S. Army text Wound Ballistics (1962) show just how rare. Of 7,773 wounds treated at a military hospital in Korea, but 1275 (16.4%) were head wounds. Now that may not be much of a surprise. But this is. Of these 1275, only 4 (1 in every 319) were rifle wounds of the brain, and but 2 (at most) were perforating rifle wounds of the brain. 

Now let's put this in context. Let's say a military doctor treats 10 wounds a day, 6 days a week. That's 60 a week, 3,000 a year. Let's say he serves 2 years. That's 6,000 wounds. That's a lot of blood. A lot of stitches. But not a lot of rifle bullets in the brain. Maybe 4. 

And this wasn't a recent development. The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, Vol. 11 (1927) notes that the department treated 174,296 battle injuries, 10,452 (5.99%) of which were gunshot wounds to the head. It then notes that 1,106 (10.58%) of these head wounds proved fatal. It then presents the following chart. 

Well, how about that? The fatal wound as presented by the HSCA Pathology Panel was a perforating wound (Classification VIII) of the parietal region. There were but 7 such wounds observed by the Medical Department of the United States Army during WWI! Of 174,296 wounds! 

Now, yes, of course, that's a bit nit-picky. So let's include ALL fatal perforating bullet wounds. That's but 24...of 174,296 wounds! 

Well, wait, this excludes Classification VII (perforating wounds involving the orbitonasal region--the eyes and middle of the face--or the auripetrosal region--the bone in back of the ear.) Now, there's a reason these are separated from Classification 8, and that's that the bullets creating these wounds only traveled along the surface of the brain. Still, okay, that's another 163--bringing the grand total to 187. Of 174,296 wounds!

So, yes, Dr. Baden and his panel were at a disadvantage. Not only was their extensive experience inadequate when it came to interpreting Kennedy's wounds, but those with real experience with wounds like Kennedy's head wound were few and far between. Wounds such as Kennedy's head wound were rarely received. And those receiving them rarely survived long enough for a doctor to inspect them, or report on them. 

So how did Dr. Baden try to cover this inadequacy? Did his panel hit the books and/or call up military doctors with the experience necessary to interpret Kennedy's wounds? No. Of course not. Forensic Pathologists such as Milton Helpern and Cyril Wecht had made great hay of the fact Kennedy's autopsy had been performed--and botched--by the military. Now it was the civilians' turn. Baden's panel of civilian Forensic Pathologists were gonna set the matter straight without the help of the military. 

So what did Baden do?

Above: an unidentified person crouches over the body of Bernard McGuigan, an unarmed Irishman shot in the head by a British soldier on Bloody Sunday, 1-30-72. McGuigan had been trying to help Patrick Doherty, a similarly unarmed Irishman shot down like a dog by a British soldier. Eleven unarmed protesters were killed in total. In a cruel twist of fate, moreover, the lies and incompetence that helped the killers of these Irishmen escape justice would infect the HSCA's 1978 investigation of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, a man notoriously proud of his Irish heritage. 

The Marshall Plan 

Well, as admitted in his 1980 Toronto speech, and repeated in his appearance at the 1995 COPA conference in Washington, Dr. Baden contacted Dr. Tom Marshall. Here is a direct quote from his 1995 COPA appearance: "Even though in New York City we may have 2,00 homicides a year, none of them are military rifles--or very few are. I, in fact, called up Tom Marshall at the time--who is the medical examiner of Northern Ireland--to discuss the nature of the wounds he was finding in Northern Ireland, which were all rifle wounds."

There is no record, alas, of what was said in this phone call.

So who was Tom Marshall? Marshall had been the State Pathologist for Derry, Northern Ireland, on January 30, 1972. As such, he'd been charged with performing and supervising the autopsies of 14 civilians slaughtered by the British Military in the infamous "Bloody Sunday" massacre. Although Baden told his Toronto audience he'd contacted Marshall to determine if full-jacketed ammunition could pass through Kennedy and Connally, and suffer little damage, he said this was only "part of the reason."

We can only assume, then, that another "part of the reason" was to ask about the head wounds suffered in the "Bloody Sunday" massacre. Articles and reports found online reflect that three of the "Bloody Sunday" victims were shot in the head. The bullet striking one of these victims, Michael McDaid, was reported to have entered his left cheek, leaving an 8 mm by 5 mm wound, and to have exited below his right scapula, 9 inches lower on his body, leaving a 2 cm by 1.5 cm wound. The bullet striking a second victim, John Pius Young, was reported to have traveled on a similar trajectory, entering just below his left eye, leaving an 8 mm by 5 mm wound, and exiting from the left side of his back, 12 inches lower on his body, leaving a 2 cm by 1 cm wound. These wounds, it's clear, bore little resemblance to the large explosive wound on Kennedy's skull. This leaves us with but one victim whose wounds might support Baden's interpretation of Kennedy's wounds. The autopsy report of Bernard McGuigan, written by Dr. Marshall, claims the bullet striking McGuigan had "entered the left side of the head about three inches behind the left ear and had made its exit through the right orbit having produced extensive fractures of the skull and laceration of the lower parts of the brain." The entrance wound was reportedly 8 mm by 4 mm, the exit wound reportedly 5 cm by 3 cm.

So what could Baden have learned from this? While McGuigan's skull was badly damaged, a la Kennedy's, it did not have the large gaping hole of Kennedy's. And this even though it had been hit by a more powerful weapon. The British Military's shooters had used 7.62 mm ammunition during this shooting. This ammunition is approximately 15% more powerful than 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition. Well, then, it seems possible Baden found the confirmation he'd been looking for in the small size of the entrance wound on the back of McGuigan's skull, in comparison to the exit wound.

It would subsequently be revealed, however, that Dr. Raymond McLean had attended the post-mortem exams of the Bloody Sunday victims at the request of the Catholic Primate of Ireland, and had studied McGuigan's x-rays, and had observed that there there was "gross pathological damage" to McGuigan's skull, and had noted "several fragmented pieces of metal (about forty in number) throughout the interior" of his skull. Well, this led some to wonder if McGuigan hadn't in fact been shot by a dum-dum bullet, a question the Bloody Sunday Inquiry was unable to rule out some 30 years after the shooting, in part because one of the paratroopers involved in the massacre, Paratrooper AA, had come to allege that two of his comrades, Paratroopers BB and CC, had fired 10 and 22 dum-dum rounds into the crowd, respectively.

Well...perhaps that's it. Perhaps Marshall thought McGuigan had been killed by standard military ammunition, when he'd actually been killed by a dum-dum bullet. Perhaps this error had led Marshall to tell Baden that full-metal jacketed military ammunition would break up within the skull, and completely shatter the skull in the process. Although, this does little to explain how the bullet killing Kennedy was able to strike a more formidable blow upon his skull than the more powerful bullet striking McGuigan's skull, such an assertion by Marshall may have been enough for Baden to conclude that the so-called "trail of fragments" through Kennedy's brain was not atypical, and that there was nothing particularly strange about Kennedy's head wound. 

But it's not as simple as that... In his report on McGuigan's wounds, Dr. Marshall made no mention of any metal fragments within McGuigan's skull, and instead reported: "There is extensive laceration of the cerebellum, medulla, pons, mid-brain, and the undersurface of the cerebral hemispheres, the tissue containing a number of bone fragments." He then tried to stick to his guns. In 2002, when viewing the x-rays, he told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, "It is most likely that these are the bone fragments I found in the brain and mentioned in my report. Had any metal fragments of any useful size been present in the skull, I would have extracted them during the course of the autopsy examination and mentioned them in my autopsy report." After a more thorough inspection of the x-rays, he then backed down, if only a bit, and acknowledged that the fragments may have been metal fragments, but insisted that: 1) he had no recollection of the fragments, nor of Dr. McLean's studying the x-ray and noting the fragments during the autopsy; and 2) if he had noticed the fragments, and had failed to report them in the autopsy report, it was because "when I cut the brain the predominant feature was bone fragments. Now amongst those dozens, hundreds of bone fragments there were, presumably, 10, 20 very, very small pieces of metal, very small, apart from that little bit there, and so I reported what was the predominant feature, and that is the bone fragments. The metal fragments were so small as to not be of any significance and that little piece there, which is also very small, was, presumably, of no help." Under more heated questioning, he further offered that the existence of these fragments failed to suggest that a dum-dum bullet had been used, as the bullet "ploughed through the base of the skull and was thereby slowed down, and in that slowing process it gave up energy and it gave up energy to such an extent that the head blew up" and that "Under those circumstances it is not surprising that some bits of metal came off and that is what we are seeing there."

Well, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry's Forensic Experts, Dr. R T Shepherd and Kevin O'Callaghan, didn't buy what Marshall was selling. They concluded that the fragments were in fact bullet fragments, and that the 7.62 mm bullet striking McGuigan (assuming it was a 7.62 mm bullet) had either been defective, weakened through an impact with a previous target (which they thought unlikely, due to the small size of the bullet's entrance), or deliberately weakened (a la a dum-dum bullet). 

Well, I'll be... It follows, then, that they considered the bullet fragments in McGuigan's skull atypical, and not what one would expect from a stable 7.62 mm bullet. And it follows as well that they suspected Marshall had either lied in his initial autopsy report to hide that McGuigan was quite possibly killed by an explosive bullet, or was not nearly the expert Baden assumed he was.

And no, I'm not flailiing here. Bloody Sunday Inquiry Exhibit E.19 is a brief report written by Dr.s Shepherd and O'Callaghan, in which they grapple with this issue. As a response to Dr. Marshall's claim before the inquiry that he'd seen "dozens of military high-velocity bullet head injuries" and that the bullets in many of these cases had fragmented, Dr.s Shepherd and O'Callaghan reviewed Dr. Marshall's records to see if this was true. Well, it was, and it wasn't. They ended up reviewing 302 gunshot wounds to the head which had been reported by Dr. Marshall. They found 24 cases in which fragments were mentioned but where the bullets were non-military bullets (e.g. hunting ammunition). And they found but 8 in which the bullets were military bullets. (Now, to be clear, there were 31 reports of gunshot wounds to the head involving military bullets, with only 8 of these reports noting a fragmentation of the bullet.) But here's where it gets bad, real bad...for Dr. Marhall. 

The table below comes from the report of Dr.s Shepherd and O'Callaghan. It presents the raw data of the 8 cases overseen by Dr. Marhall involving military ammunition in which fragmentation of the bullet was noted, and contrasts this data with the raw data of the case of Barney McGuigan (a case in which no fragmentation was noted). 

Notice anything? The 8 head wound cases in which Marshall had noted fragmentation of military ammunition ALL had two things in common--extremely large entrance wounds in comparision to the entrance wound on McGuigan, and the conclusion the bullet had struck sideways or been compromised as a result of its passage through a wall or an automobile. Well, this fed into Shepherd and O'Callaghan's conclusion there was something unusual about the bullet striking McGuigan. And raises the question as to why Dr. Marshall claimed to be oblivious to its uniqueness. 

There's also this. The report of Dr.s Shepherd and O'Callaghan noted further that no x-rays were available for these 8 cases, and that apparently none were taken. 

And no, I'm not cherry-picking a couple of cases from among hundreds to discredit poor Tom Marshall. An Irish researcher has sent me links to numerous other cases in which his findings have been questioned and/or overturned. In one such case, Dr. Marshall determined that the explosion of Gary English's heart was caused by his getting hit by a speeding military vehicle, and not by his getting crushed under the vehicle when it backed up over him. This conveniently disguised what was almost certainly cold-blooded murder as an acident. In another such case, Dr. Marshall concluded a gunshot victim, Marian Brown, was killed by a rebel shooter firing a low-velocity projectile and not an Army shooter firing a high-velocity projectile. In another such case, Dr. Marshall concluded a gunshot victim, Joseph Parker, was killed by a military round, but failed to remove the bullet fragments from the victim's thigh or even retain the x-rays so the weapon used in the shooting, and even the identity of the shooter, could be determined. 

So, yeah, that's right. The HSCA pathology panel, while excoriating the doctors who'd performed Kennedy's autopsy for their failure to be thorough, turned around and took advice from a doctor who rountinely failed to document the fragmentation of bullets as they passed through his subjects. Such an oversight would be of a magnitude much greater than the mistakes attributed to the Bethesda doctors. But, apparently, Dr. Baden knew nothing of this because he trusted Marshall's expertise.

Let's consider a related possibility, then, if only to give Marshall the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume he believed the bullet killing McGuigan was undamaged, and that McGuigan's wounds were  typical wounds of entrance and exit for a high-velocty missile, and that he told Baden as much, and that Baden took from this that 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition was capable of the wounds observed on Kennedy. Well, under the circumstances, was this a reasonable conclusion on Baden's part? 

Actually, no. The rifle firing the fatal shots on McGuigan was a FAL rifle, firing a 7.62 cartridge, at relatively close range. A bullet fired from such a rifle is presumed to travel around 2,700 feet per second, so we can assume it was traveling 2,500 feet per second upon impact with McGuigan. The bullet striking Kennedy's skull, on the other hand, is presumed to have been traveling around 1,800 feet per second. 

So what's the difference? As discussed in a May 1967 article in the British Journal of Surgery, "With very high velocities, for example over 2500 feet per sec, the expansion of the temporary cavity might be so violent that the elasticity of the surrounding tissue is no longer able to contain it and the damage becomes explosive in character." Well, this is exactly what was claimed for the bullet killing Kennedy by the HSCA Pathology Panel and its Wound Ballistic consultants Larry Sturdivan. According to this article, such an explosion "might" have occurred should the bullet have been traveling 2,500 feet per second or greater. But the bullet presumed to kill Kennedy wasn't. It was traveling around 1,800 feet per second. 

Now here's the fun part. The co-author of the article suggesting the bullet killing Kennedy was not traveling fast enough to create a wound that was "explosive in character"? Dr. Tom Marshall, State Pathologist for Northern Ireland.  

Leave it to George

In any event, having done little or nothing to shore up their inadequate knowledge on military rifle wounds, beyond contacting the quite possibly ill-informed Marshall, Dr. Baden and his panel selected Dr. George Loquvam to write a report on their findings.

The other sub-panel, made-up of Dr.s Wecht, Spitz, and Weston, who had previously viewed the autopsy materials, met at the House Office Building on 9-22-77, went to the Archives on 9-23, and re-convened at the House Office Building on the 24th. The panel's report notes that "The material listed in addendum A was made available to this sub-panel at this initial meeting. The material listed in addendum B was made available at the  second meeting at the National Archives. All members of both sub-panels were allowed unlimited access to these materials for individual examination." This confirms that the materials in addendum A, which should  have been required reading, were merely present in the room, and not handed out for study. On the 24th, Dr. Wecht offered a dissenting opinion on the evidence to this panel. As with the other sub-panel, no radiologists or military wounds experts were present during their analysis and discussion. This panel selected Dr. Weston to write a report, reflecting their views. 

In retrospect, it certainly seems more than a little suspicious that Dr. Wecht, whose disagreement with the single-bullet theory had long been established, was disenfranchised by the structure of the panel. By having 6 doctors meet and come to a conclusion without Wecht's being present, and then having him meet as one of a trio of doctors--where the other two had already committed themselves to supporting the single-bullet theory and the proposition there was but one gunman--Wecht's influence on the panel's conclusions had undoubtedly been minimized. This structure also prevented him from meeting Dr.s Humes and Boswell on 9-17-77, and asking them the questions he'd felt needed to be asked.  

And that's but the half of it. On October 18, 2013, at the Wecht Conference in Pittsburgh, I spoke to Robert Tannenbaum, an assistant on the House Select Committee, who'd hired Dr. Baden as its chief medical consultant. I asked Tannenbaum how the members of the forensic pathology panel were selected, and how it came to be that a nine-member panel purportedly convened to give an impartial and independent appraisal of the medical evidence included the former Dallas County medical examiner, the current Dallas County medical examiner, two former assistants to the Clark Panel's Dr. Russell Fisher, another who'd trained under a former assistant to Dr. Fisher, six who'd published in anthologies edited by Dr. Fisher, and only one, Dr. Cyril Wecht, who, while having once studied under Fisher, had no recent ties to Dr. Fisher, or the city of Dallas. His answer was surprising. He told me that 1) he thought Dr. Baden was open-minded about the assassination, and gave him the authority to corral the best and brightest forensic pathologists in the country onto the panel, and 2) he told Dr. Baden there was just one guy who had to--really had to--be on the panel, and that was Dr. Cyril Wecht.

So, yeah, Wecht was Tannenbaum's choice, not Baden's. It seems way more than a coincidence, then, that Dr. Baden set up the panel in a manner isolating Wecht, and cutting off his influence.

Now back to our timeline. On 3-10-78, Dr.s Loquvam, Weston, and Baden met at the Archives to look at some photographic evidence, after which all panel members met with the photographic panel. The next day, the full panel deposed Dr.s Ebersole and Finck, and met with members of other panels to compare findings. Apparently, this was the first time they met with Larry Sturdivan, the HSCA's wound ballistics expert, who just so happened to have been a subordinate to Dr. Alfred Olivier, the Warren Commission's wound ballistics expert. The next day, 3-12-78, they again talked with Dr. Finck. This is the meeting in which Dr. Baden tried to pressure Dr. Finck to agree that the entrance on the skull was in the cowlick. Afterwards, the panel discussed their findings. In Dr. Wecht's dissenting opinion, contained within volume 7 of the HSCA report, he notes that although the report of the first sub-panel claimed they were in "substantial agreement with respect to the interpretation to the evidence" after their first inspection of the evidence the previous September, that, during this subsequent meeting, with Wecht in attendance, "other members of the overall FPP expressed strong differences of opinion." If so, these differences of opinion were not reflected anywhere in the final report. Instead, the final report holds that the panel came to a number of agreements during this discussion: they agreed that either Dr. Coe or Dr. Petty would continue to work with with the photography panel; they agreed that Dr. Weston would represent the panel at a preliminary review of the enhanced photographs and x-rays; and they agreed that Dr. Weston would combine his and Loquvam's reports into a final report. (HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey would later admit to Vincent Bugliosi that Weston's final report was in fact far from final, and that Weston's report was reviewed and re-written by Dr. Baden and HSCA staff members Andy Purdy and Mark Flanagan before undergoing further review and re-writing by Blakey and Dick Billings, a long-time Life Magazine employee hired by Blakey to assist in the writing of the report.)

That's it. This confirms that the bulk of the panel never saw the enhanced photos or x-rays before coming to their conclusions. This confirms that the bulk of the panel never saw the reports of the HSCA's radiology consultants, Dr.s McDonnel (dated 8-4-78) and Davis (dated 8-23-78 and 12-22-78) before coming to their conclusions. This confirms as well that, when Dr. Baden testified in September 1978, it had been six months since he'd discussed the evidence with the bulk of the forensic pathology panel.

While Baden's lack of familiarity with the case is not a crime, one should expect a lot more from the HSCA's top medical expert, and the man to whom Vincent Bugliosi turned to answer his questions about the medical evidence. One might hold that Baden is a nice man. But his work on the Kennedy assassination has been, in many a man's opinion, an embarrassment to his profession.

Trust Us, We're The Experts

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

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

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

Above: Dr. Michael Baden testifying in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Dr. Baden has embarrassed his profession in other ways as well. At times, Dr. Baden has collected exorbitant fees from defendants of widely-presumed guilt, and offered extremely speculative testimony in return. This has helped create the impression that his testimony--and the testimony of other celebrity pathologists, as well--was for sale, and could be obtained by the highest bidder. In the most notorious example, Dr. Baden collected approximately $165,000 for his assistance to O.J. Simpson during his trial. This culminated in his telling jurors that in his expert opinion either more than one knife was used to kill Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown, or that a specially constructed double-edged knife had been used. He also claimed it would have taken Ron Goldman 15 minutes to die, which stretched out the time of the killings, and cast doubt on Simpson's guilt. He then suggested that Nicole Brown Simpson had had a late snack, and that this was why the amount of food in her stomach at autopsy suggested she'd been killed closer to the prosecution's estimated time of death of 10:15-10:30 than the defense's proposed time for her death, 11:00, when Mr. Simpson had an alibi. At one point in his testimony, things grew so heated between prosecutor Brian Kelberg and Baden that Kelberg demanded to know if Baden's opinions could be backed up by any scientific studies, and Baden replied that people can't be studied "like worms" and that "We can't do control studies of feeding somebody and killing them."

Baden also received a reported $110,000 from Phil Spector during his first trial (in which Baden's wife functioned as Spector's attorney). In a dramatic and controversial twist to the case, Baden told jurors that the blood spatter on Spector's jacket didn't necessarily mean he was near his purported victim at the moment she was shot, but perhaps only reflected that she'd coughed blood on him after she'd shot herself, with her last breath. He even got his old HSCA colleague, Dr. Werner Spitz, to back him up on this.

The precise exchange between prosecutor Alan Jackson and Spitz on 7-26-07 (found in an online blog, which I'm assuming is reasonably accurate) is most informative, as it reveals not only the depths to which Baden and Spitz would go for a paying client, but the contempt they hold for those with expertise they do not share, and whose opinions are in opposition to their own.

Jackson: “So, and you are not an expert in blood spatter, but in your opinion, even if there was no blood found anywhere beyond the hem of Lana Clarkson’s skirt -there was no blood on her thighs, no blood on her calves, no blood on her feet or her shoes or the carpet underneath her – even so, the jacket can still be six feet away and have blood on the left side of it?”

Spitz: “Yes, that’s what I am saying, because the velocity of the blood – you wouldn’t expect to have it close by the source – you would expect it to be farther away.”

Jackson: “So, the spray came out of Lana Clarkson’s mouth, and Phillip Spector was just so unlucky that here he was, 6 feet away from her, and all of this spray ended up on his jacket – but nowhere else – not behind him or in front of him or below him or above him – Just on Him??”

Spitz: “Well, when you say all of it – you make it sound like you have a bucket full – he has all of 18 spots on him, which includes some spots that have been described as transfers.”

Jackson: “So in your opinion , doctor, and you agree that all of the experts – even the defense experts – they all say that Lana has spatter on her dress – and what you are telling this jury is that when the gun went off, spatter came out her mouth, and some landed on her dress, but the rest of this spatter – it jumped and skipped her thighs and her knees and her calves and her shoes and jumped and missed the carpet and all of this spatter landed on Phillip Spector’s jacket?”

Spitz: “You are probably correct in that description – but it didn’t have to jump, the amount of spray she had was quite small – it came out of her mouth and a little dripped down some spray onto the hem of her dress…”

Jackson: “So it changed trajectory? It went down on her dress and then completely made a 180 degree turn and flew across the room 6 feet to get onto the jacket?”

Spitz: “Well, now you are making it sound like those people who criticized the so called magic bullet theory in the Kennedy assassination …”

(So here we have Spitz trying to hide behind his purported expertise, and insinuate that those questioning his and Baden's new nonsense are as out to lunch as those questioning their old nonsense. The irony of his response seems lost on him. He seems totally unaware that the majority of Americans--and thus the majority of jurors on the panel--who've looked into the Kennedy assassination for more than a moment have come to dismiss the "magic bullet" theory he finds so compelling. And this was no momentary brain fart, mind you. While testifying for the prosecution in a hearing regarding convicted murderer Larry Swearingen in March 2012, and recounting his vast experience, Spitz defended his findings on the JFK case by claiming that "By far, the majority of Americans today believe" that Kennedy was not shot at from two directions, but shot from behind by "Mr. Oswald." I mean, really, where does he get this stuff?)

Jackson: “You are aware, doctor, are you not, that Stuart James, a paid defense expert, a man highly regarded in his field, completely disagrees with you. He says, in fact, that the spatter pattern on the jacket, which is millimeter and sub millimeter in size, is consistent with a high velocity spatter. Are you aware of that?”

Spitz: “I did not discuss that with him”.

Jackson: “Doctor, I don’t care what you discussed with other witnesses outside of this courtroom – are you aware that this was his testimony before the jury?”

Spitz: “No, I am not aware of that.”

Jackson: “Would you defer to those experts in other areas and sciences that have more expertise than you?”

Spitz: “At this point, I don’t know what I’m deferring and not deferring – all I know is that if I saw something for myself, I would not defer, and I know that this can happen.”

Jackson: “Really? How many times have you seen blood spatter come out and then skip all these targets and find another target and then change trajectory and find another target?”

Spitz: “Not spray that deliberately as you put it changes trajectory – you are assigning volition to something that has no volition…”

Jackson: “Doctor, isn’t it a more reasonable inference just that simply put Phillip Spector’s jacket was closer in proximity to the blood letting event?”

Spitz: “No – because he would have more than 18 little spots on him – you would have a different density – you would have a large amount of tissue…:”

Jackson: “Doctor, didn’t you say yesterday that there was very little blood spatter in this case?”

Spitz: “I don’t remember saying that.”

Jackson: “Well, wouldn’t you agree that the blood spatter in this case would be limited?”

Spitz: “It would be limited to that which would occur from a wound by a .38 caliber missile into an area that is highly vasculated and under arterial pressure – and this is like a garden hose, these arteries, and when these arteries are cut, the blood can be like a garden hose under pressure and the blood can easily reach a ceiling 12 feet high.”

Jackson: ”Well Doctor, she didn’t cut an artery, so that is irrelevant.”

Spitz: “It is not irrelevant at all – no, she didn’t cut the jugular or the carotid, but every artery is under the same pressure.”

Jackson: “So where is all the blood on the ceiling? Where is the blood on the carpet?”

Spitz: “Her head wasn’t pointing at the ceiling.”

Yes, you read that right. Spitz contradicted himself. In the beginning of his testimony he'd pushed that a fine spray of blood could have been coughed up by the victim, or splashed back from the victim, only to land on Spector's jacket six feet away. Under intense questioning, however, he'd changed course and suddenly started claiming that a bullet passing a bunch of arteries--even if it missed the jugular and carotid arteries--would create a wound in which blood spewed out like a garden hose. He then used the small amount of spray found on Spector's jacket to suggest Spector was across the room from Clarkson when she was shot. Only he, OOPS, overlooked that there was no evidence this garden hose-like spray of blood occurred outside his highly-paid imagination. I mean, really, have you ever seen water squirt from a garden hose with such velocity and precision that nothing lands between the nozzle and the plant being watered, six feet away? It bears noting, moreover, that Spitz readily accepted that a high-velocity bullet passed through Kennedy's neck, within millimeters of his arteries, and that blood did not spew from Kennedy's neck like a garden hose.

Exchanges like the one above, in which it is readily obvious Spitz was presenting a defense for his client (a man he admitted was paying him 5,000 dollars a day), whether the evidence supported him or not, makes me wonder if the term "pathological liar" is a reference to someone who can't help but lie, for pathological reasons, or a reference to someone who lies so readily they could have a successful career as a pathologist. I'm serious. 

Above: Dr. Michael Baden testifying in the Phil Spector murder trial.

When one studies the Spector case, in fact, it's hard to come to any conclusion other than that Baden and Spitz knowingly lied for money. At another point in the case, a former member of the defense team testified that Dr. Baden had been handed a piece of the victim's tooth at the crime scene, and that he'd failed to present this evidence to the authorities. Dr. Baden, of course, vehemently denied these charges. Even if one assumes Dr. Baden was telling the truth on this matter, however, and assumes further that Dr.s Baden and Spitz both sincerely believed their testimony in the Spector trial, it's impossible to believe they would have testified as they did if they'd been hired by the prosecution. 

Spitz, for that matter, would outdo himself in his defense of suspected child-killer Casey Anthony. To offset that duct tape was found across Anthony's daughter's skull, and that the little girl was murdered, Dr. Spitz claimed that his examination of the little girl's skull contents indicated that the skull had changed positions after the brain had decomposed, and that, therefore, someone could have removed the skull and planted the duct tape on the face to frame her mother. He then faulted the original medical examiner for not opening up the girl's skull. When confronted with the fact his own textbook said nothing about opening up the skull of a skeletonized body to examine the "brain dust," and that he was unaware of any textbook in which such an act was discussed, the tide began to turn. When Prosecutor Jeff Ashton then pointed out the difficulty involved in replacing the duct-taped skull in its original position, with strands of hair draped over it, etc, Dr. Spitz claimed the medical examiner could have staged the autopsy photos. According to news reports, when then asked "So your testimony is the medical examiner's personnel took the hair that wasn't on the skull, placed it there?” Spitz testified: ”The person who took this picture, the person who prepared this, put the hair there." When then shown the crime scene photos showing the hair and duct tape etc in the same position as they were in the autopsy photos, Spitz, according to Ashton's book Imperfect Justice, grew belligerent, and insisted the crime scene photos may also have been staged...by the police.

So, wow. Spitz (and presumably Baden, whose wife was briefly Anthony's attorney) were not above proposing a massive cover-up involving medical examiners and law enforcement officers when the evidence suggested the guilt of a paying client whose crime was killing, perhaps even accidentally, her daughter...

Hmmm... We can only imagine then what kind of a conspiracy they'd have dreamt up should their paying client in 1978 have been Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist-sympathizer accused of murdering the President.

The Repetition of History...

On 12-27-2007, seven Pakistani doctors examined the body of their country's former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, who'd been assassinated only hours before. Their report on her wounds reads as follows:

• Details OF THE WOUND AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

• There was wound in right Temporoparietal region. Shape was irregularly oval, measuring about 5 x 3 cms, just above the pinna of right ear. Edges were irregular. No surrounding wounds or blackening was seen. There was a big boggy swelling around the wound. Blood was continuously trickling down and whitish material that looked like brain matter was seen in the wound and in the surrounding hair. Sharp bone edges were felt in wound. No foreign body was felt in the wound.

• Wound was not further explored. Generate aseptic dressing was used to cover the wound.

• Bleeding from both the ears was seen, more so from the right ear. Slight trickle of Blood was seen from right nostril also. Blood mixed with secretions was seen in the oral cavity also.

• Detailed external examination of the body did not reveal any other external injury.

• X-rays of the skull AP and Lateral views were done after she had been declared dead. Findings are as below:-

• Comminuted depressed skull fracture involving right temoroparietal bone is observed with inwards depressed fracture fragment measuring approx. 35 mm (on-X-ray measurement). Depressed fracture fragment distant from intact bony skull measures 12 mm from outer to outer skull table & 12 mm from inner to inner skull table. Two to three tiny radio-densities underneath fracture segment are observed on both projections. Associated scalp soft tissue swelling & moderate degree of pneumocephalus is observed. Rest of the bony skull is intact. Radio-opaque dental fillings are evident.

• CAUSE OF DEATH

• Open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to Cardiopulmonary arrest.

A Pakistani government spokesman took from this that Ms. Bhutto had hit her head on a handle of her open-topped security vehicle while reacting to the explosion of a nearby suicide bomber. This explanation satisfied almost no one, however. Within days, a number of top American forensic pathologists had joined a growing chorus of doubt and dismay. They couldn't understand why no autopsy had been performed on Ms. Bhutto. They couldn't understand how Ms. Bhutto could incur such a wound, simply by bumping her head. On 12-31-2007, an article appeared in the New York Times, expressing both the doubts of these doctors, and their own theories on the cause of Ms. Bhutto's death. It read, in part:

• • "Dr. Baden said he suspected that Ms. Bhutto died from a bullet that left two or three tiny fragments seen on X-rays before it exited the skull through a wound that the Pakistani doctors did not notice in part because they apparently did not shave the bloodied thick scalp hair." (Note: by conjuring up an imaginary wound of exit, Dr. Baden was acknowledging that he felt the 5 cm by 3 cm wound described by the doctors was most logically an entrance. As it would make little sense for a bullet entrance of such dimension to lead to a bullet exit so small it could be hidden in the hair, moreover, he was giving us yet another reason to doubt his common sense.)

  • "Dr. Werner U. Spitz, former chief medical examiner in Detroit, said he could not understand why the government did not try to quench “the thirst of the Pakistani people to know the facts, because they are all angry, and if you confronted them with the facts, maybe the anger” would disappear." (Note: this is quite a line coming from a man who participated in not one but two highly-secretive forensic pathology panels investigating the death of President Kennedy.)

  • "Dr. Spitz said he suspected that Ms. Bhutto died after being hit by a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle." (Note: you've got to be kidding. In 1988, when discussing JFK's head wounds, Spitz suggested that the small oval shape by the cowlick in the autopsy photos was precisely the kind of wound one would expect from a high-powered rifle. Now, here, with a wound ONE HUNDRED TIMES as large as the entrance wound measured at the autopsy of JFK, he immediately jumps to "hmm, looks like a high-powered rifle wound to me..."Perhaps, then, he was assuming, as Baden, that the exit wound had gone unobserved at autopsy. Or perhaps he'd used some common sense, and was assuming it was the entrance wound that had gone unnoticed, or, even better, that the one measured wound was a wound of both entrance and exit. But, if so, how does that make him any better than the conspiracy theorists he loves to complain about?)

  • "Dr. Vincent J. DiMaio, a former chief medical examiner in San Antonio, who also deplored the lack of an autopsy in Ms. Bhutto’s case, said he suspected that a fragment that was propelled against her head was a more likely explanation for her death than a bullet wound." (Note: while not himself a member of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, Dr. DiMaio, along with Dr. Henry Lee, was asked by the ARRB in 1998 to review the newly digitized autopsy photos and determine if there was anything that could be seen in the photos that would lead them to think forming a new pathology panel might prove useful. As Dr. DiMaio had studied under the Clark Panel's Dr. Russell Fisher, and had been a long-time colleague of both Dr. Werner Spitz and Dr. Charles Petty of the HSCA Panel, and had co-written articles with Dr. Spitz and Dr. Petty going back to 1972, if not earlier, and as he had also publicly praised the work of single-assassin theorist Dr. Lattimer as far back as 1973, his selection for this task was highly questionable. Doug Horne, who interviewed Dr. DiMaio for the ARRB, has reported that even before looking at the autopsy photos Dr. DiMaio was asserting that the Clark, Rockefeller, and HSCA panels had gotten it right, and that Dr. DiMaio had "declared with great certainty" that the red spot in the cowlick "was a classic bullet entry wound." Well, hell. It should come as no surprise then that Horne's notes on his meeting with Dr.s Lee and DiMaio reflect that Lee, who, alongside Dr. Baden, had been a well-paid member of O.J. Simpson's defense team, and DiMaio, a long-time friend of Dr. Spitz's, "felt any visual information now available was not sufficient that a panel would be able to reach any conclusions with a sufficient degree of scientific certainty." In other words, they refused to second guess--or let anyone else second-guess--their friends and colleagues, Dr.s Baden and Spitz. Flash forward to 2007. Dr. Baden's wife is one of Phil Spector's attorneys. Dr. Baden is a highly-paid witness for his defense. Dr.s Lee and DiMaio (charging $400 an hour for his efforts) join him on the gravy train, and Dr. Spitz jumps on board for the second trial.)

A video of Bhutto's assassination soon surfaced. It showed a man firing a pistol at Ms. Bhutto as she fell into the car, and a violent explosion after she'd already fallen inside. It indicated she was not shot by a rifle, or hit by any shrapnel. Most watching the film believe she is in fact shot by the pistol. Some even go further and speculate that this bullet entered the back of her neck before exiting from the 5 cm by 3 cm defect described in the report of the doctors. A study performed by Scotland Yard, however, failed to support this. It claimed instead that the shots fired at Ms. Bhutto had missed and that, as originally surmised by the Pakistani officials, Ms. Bhutto had died after hitting her head. The controversy continues.

The controversy over Ms. Bhutto's death is nevertheless informative. It shows that you can get a report signed by seven doctors that many experts will believe is wrong. It shows as well that you can get three opinions, from three experts, in which the conclusions of these doctors are disputed, and that these three experts can also be wrong. And, finally, it shows that some experts, particularly those affiliated with the HSCA forensic pathology panel, are more than willing to offer up their opinions on controversial cases before obtaining the relevant evidence.

PatSpeer.com 

Chapter 14: Demystifying the Mystery Photo