JAHS Chapter 19

4-30--5-13

In late April, Chief Justice Warren unexpectedly announces that the commission will not be publishing the testimony and evidence gathered at its hearings. The reason given is that the commission lacks the money to do so. We are relieved to hear, however, that Sen. Russell has convinced congress to appropriate the money, and that the public will thereby get to see some of what the commission has studied before coming to its findings.

(Warren's sudden decision--with the blessing of Commissioners Dulles and McCloy--to not publish the testimony and evidence was first revealed by Edward Epstein in Inquest (1966). He relied upon interviews with commission lawyers Wesley Liebeler, Melvin Eisenberg, and J. Lee Rankin. In 2013. Warren Commission counsel Howard Willens published History Will Prove Us Right, and confirmed Epstein's account, with one major change: Warren came to this decision at the end of April, not May.

In 2014, Willens published his Warren Commission diary online.)

Above: Howard Willens in 1964.

Here is Willens' diary entry for 4-30-64: "Sometime during the day, perhaps the previous day, I learned that the personnel from the Government Printing Office was scheduled to begin work on the transcript Friday, May 1. The Commission met on Thursday and discussed several of the items listed on the agenda, which I prepared after consultation with Mr. Rankin. The meeting lasted for several hours. When the meeting ended at approximately 6 o’clock, I did not immediately confer with Mr. Rankin. About 6:30, however, as I went out I noticed that Mr. Belin and Mr. Liebeler were in the conference room talking with Mr. Rankin. I joined them and was told by Mr. Belin and Mr. Liebeler that there was shocking news awaiting me and to take a seat. After doing so Mr. Rankin, in a very tired and chastened mood looked at me in such a way that I knew the Commission had reached another of their impossible decisions. Such was in fact the case. Mr. Rankin informed me that the Commission had decided not to publish the transcript simultaneously with the Final Report. Apparently the chief consideration was one of expense and there was not extensive consideration of the policy issues between members of the Commission who discussed the matter. I asked him immediately how many of the Commission were present and voted on the issue. He replied that only three were present – The Chief Justice, Mr. Dulles and Mr. McCloy. I indicated to him quite briefly that this was a decision which could not be permitted to stand, and I could see that he felt very much the same way. The Commission members had indicated to Mr. Rankin that they would reverse themselves if the Congressional members of the Commission voted otherwise. Mr. Rankin planned therefore to contact Senator Russell and the other Congressional members as soon as possible on Friday morning."

And here is Willens' diary entry for 5-1-64: "First thing Friday morning I learned that Mr. Rankin was out to see Senator Russell. He returned at approximately quarter to ten. He informed me that the trip had been successful. Senator Russell had indicated very clearly that the entire transcript should be published as soon as possible without regard to expense. Mr. Rankin subsequently contacted all the other Congressional members who agreed with Senator Russell. When he conveyed this information to the Chief Justice, Mr. Dulles and Mr. McCloy they all agreed that the position of the Congressional members should be adopted. As a result, before the noon hour was even reached the decision had been reversed and we were proceeding to supply the Government Printing Office personnel with the transcripts. As a matter of fact I had to tell the GPO at 9 a.m. not to begin work because of some “budgetary” considerations. However, Mr. Rankin later in the afternoon re-contacted them and got them back on the job."

Questions and More Questions

On 5-1-64, Marine Lt. Col. Allison G. Folsom testifies before the Warren Commission on Oswald’s military record. When discussing Oswald’s shooting scores, Folsom is asked if it’s correct that the top level is Expert, the middle level is Sharpshooter, and the bottom level is Marksman, and he agrees. Folsom then leafs through Oswald’s score book, and comments that “at 200 yards slow fire...he got out in the three ring, which is not good…As a matter of fact, at 200 yards people should get a score of between 48 and 50 in the offhand position…he got a score of 34 out of a possible 50 on Tuesday. On Wednesday he got some 38.” When asked if Oswald was a particularly outstanding shot, he responded “No, no, he was not…His scorebook indicates, as a matter of fact—that he did well at one or two ranges in order to achieve the two points over the Marksman score for Sharpshooter.” When asked if that means that Oswald had to have a “good day” to avoid being classified as a Marksman, Folsom responds “I would say so.” Folsom is not asked to comment on Oswald’s subsequent shooting scores, where his skills dropped to 1 point above the lowest level of Marksman.

The 5-9-64 Saturday Evening Post brings more bad news for President Johnson. Republican Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania publishes an article in which he denounces six Democratic Senators on the Rules Committee for obstructing an investigation into the crimes of President Johnson's long-time associate, Bobby Baker, some of which involved Johnson. Scott writes: "in my five months on that unhappy panel I found it increasingly clear that the Democratic majority had fashioned blinders for their own eyes, plugs for their ears, and handcuffs for their wrists. They were hoping against hope that Bobby Baker and all his works would miraculously vanish with a minimum of embarrassment to all concerned...The watchdogs spurned the scent at every chance...many of the most important and disturbing disclosures were never followed up...dissent was firmly discouraged in a variety of unmistakable ways...No Senator could foresee the full consequences of a thorough investigation. In my own case, several thinly veiled threats were transmitted through friends and associates. I was warned that the safest course would be to let the matter sleep. I was told that discretion now could prevent nasty publicity against me later. Suffice it to say that the nasty innuendos have begun to appear in print. Democratic senators must have been under even greater pressure to keep silent, for the reputation of their party was involved...Not a single witness requested by the minority was ever called...The Rules Committee is armed with the staff investigators, subpoena powers and the vast authority of the Senate itself, but it lacks the simple determination to use them fully. The result is an appalling travesty of democratic government."

(Upon reading this article, many Americans would undoubtedly have asked themselves the painful question of how they could possibly trust the Warren Commission--men hand-picked by Lyndon Johnson--to tell them the truth, when men not hand-picked by Johnson so readily covered up for his crony, Baker, and shut down an investigation that had led to testimony--AT THE VERY MOMENT KENNEDY WAS SHOT-- implicating Johnson in a kick-back scheme that would almost certainly have ended his career. In 1978, another Senator from this panel, Carl Curtis of Nebraska, when asked in an oral history "Do you think it was the assassination that changed the nature of this investigation, though, and really slowed it down, because people were reluctant to testify?" supported Scott's claims. He responded "No. No. It was ironclad political control." Curtis asserted as well that he knew who had this control. He said: "Everything would appear as though Lyndon didn't know the investigation was going on. He had the ability to direct things and not be anywhere near the scene." Should one think this was partisan sour grapes, moreover, 1978 saw the confirmation of Scott's and Curtis' claims, and from a most surprising source. In his book Wheeling and Dealing, an expert on the Bobby Baker scandal named...Bobby Baker...asserted that "LBJ had threatened to close down the Philadelphia Navy Yard unless Senator Scott closed his critical mouth.")

It may not be a coincidence, then, that at the very moment Johnson's corruption had once again seeped into the spotlight, his administration/propaganda ministers put out a photo of him congratulating J. Edgar Hoover, once one of the most respected men in America, on his 40 years of service as FBI Director. Here it is.

There was an accompanying story to this photo, moreover, reporting that Johnson had granted Hoover a waiver so he could continue to rule his roost past the age of 70. In light of what had recently transpired, and what was just about to transpire, that also may not have been a coincidence.

Meanwhile, the Warren Express rolls forward. Over the three days of May 7-9, three Commissioners, along with Commission Counsel David Belin, visit Dallas.

In the image below, apparently taken on the evening of May 8, Commissioner John McCloy (third from L) and Commissioner John Sherman Cooper (fourth from L), along with Commission Counsel David Belin (second from L) have a meeting of the minds with Dallas Police Capt. Will Fritz (L) and Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry (R).

In the image below, presumably taken on the morning of May 9, Belin shows the Commissioners the sniper's nest window from a location just in front of assassination witness Howard Brennan's purported location at the time of the shooting. Presumably this was done so they could judge for themselves whether or not Brennan could identify Oswald from such a distance.

Reading the Test Skulls

In order to determine if the rifle found in the school book depository was capable of creating President Kennedy’s wounds, Dr. Alfred Olivier of Edgewood Arsenal was hired by the Warren Commission to perform a series of tests. He testified before the Commission on May 13, 1964. Here is a segment from that testimony...

Mr. SPECTER, Dr. Olivier, in the regular course of your work for the U.S. Army, do you have occasion to perform tests on reconstructed human skulls to determine the effects of bullets on skulls?

Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I do.

Mr. SPECTER. And did you have occasion to conduct such a test in connection with the series which you are now describing?

Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; I did.

Mr. SPECTER. And would you outline briefly the procedures for simulating the human skull?

Dr. OLIVIER. Human skulls, we take these human skulls and they are imbedded and filled with 20 percent gelatin. As I mentioned before, 20 percent gelatin is a pretty good simulant for body tissues. They are in the moisture content. When I say 20 percent, it is 20 percent weight of the dry gelatin, 80 percent moisture. The skull, the cranial cavity, is filled with this and the surface is coated with a gelatin and then it is trimmed down to approximate the thickness of the tissues overlying the skull, the soft tissues of the head.

Mr. SPECTER. And at what distance were these tests performed?

Dr. OLIVIER. These tests were performed at a distance of 90 yards.

Mr. SPECTER. And what gun was used?

Dr. OLIVIER. It was a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano that was marked Commission Exhibit 139.

Mr. SPECTER. What bullets were used?

Dr. OLIVIER. It was the 6.5 millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano Western ammunition lot 6,000.

Mr. SPECTER. What did that examination or test, rather, disclose?

Dr. OLIVIER. It disclosed that the type of head wounds that the President received could be done by this type of bullet. This surprised me very much, because this type of a stable bullet I didn't think would cause a massive head wound, I thought it would go through making a small entrance and exit, but the bones of the skull are enough to deform the end of this bullet causing it to expend a lot of energy and blowing out the side of the skull or blowing out fragments of the skull.

Dr. Oliver then proceeded to discuss the bullet fragments recovered after firing on one of the ten skulls he fired upon, and how these resembled the bullet fragments found in the front section of the Presidential limo. Commission Counsel Arlen Specter then returned to the task at hand...

Mr. SPECTER. Would you give us then the precise location of the wound caused by bullet identified as 857?

Dr. OLIVIER. The entrance wound is 2.9 centimeters to the right and almost horizontal to the occipital protuberance, This is almost exactly where we were aiming. We were aiming 2 centimeters to the right.

Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a photograph marked as Commission Exhibit 861, move its admission into evidence, and ask you to state what that depicts.

Dr. OLIVIER. This is the skull in question, the same one from which the fragments marked Exhibit 857 were recovered.

Mr. SPECTER. And what does that show as to damage done to the skull?

Dr. OLIVIER. It blew the whole side of the cranial cavity away.

Mr. SPECTER. How does that compare, then, with the damage inflicted on President Kennedy?

Dr. OLIVIER. Very similar. I think they stated the length of the defect, the missing skull was 13 centimeters if I remember correctly. This in this case it is greater, but you don't have the limiting scalp holding the pieces in so you would expect it to fly a little more but it is essentially a similar type wound.

Mr. SPECTER. Does the human scalp work to hold in the human skull in such circumstances to a greater extent than the simulated matters used?

Dr. OLIVIER. Yes; we take this into account.

Mr. SPECTER. I hand you Commission Exhibit 862, move its admission into evidence, and ask you what that depicts?

Dr. OLIVIER. This is the same skull. This is just looking at it from the front. You are looking at the exit. You can't see it here because the bone has been blown away, but the bullet exited somewhere around---we reconstructed the skull. In other words, it exited very close to the superorbital ridge, possibly below it.

Mr. SPECTER. Did you formulate any other conclusions or opinions based on the tests on firing at the skull?

Dr. OLIVIER. Well, let's see. We found that this bullet could do exactly--could make the type of wound that the President received.

So let's recap. In his testimony, Olivier admitted he was surprised by the damage created by the 6.5 mm ammunition presumably used to kill Kennedy. He noted that the bullet hitting one of the ten skulls he'd had fired upon broke into pieces and that these pieces resembled the bullet fragments recovered from Kennedy’s limousine. He also acknowledged that the bullet striking this skull missed its mark and hit the back of the skull slightly closer to its side than the reported entrance on Kennedy. He then introduced two photographs of this skull as Exhibits 861 and 862.

Here is a closer look at Exhibits 861 (on the right) and 862 (on the left).

Well, something is awry. Olivier in his testimony, started to say the large size of this wound was probably related to the lack of "limiting scalp" but then backed-off and made out as though this had been taken into account. This was almost certainly because this wound was roughly the same size as Kennedy's measured wound, and an admission that this wound was larger than would be expected should this skull have had scalp was simultaneously an admission Kennedy's wound was larger than expected. Kennedy's skull did have scalp, after all.

And that's not the only problem with this segment of Olivier's testimony.

We have reason to doubt Kennedy's wounds were accurately replicated with this skull. Since, as subsequently acknowledged by Larry Sturdivan, who worked with Olivier, the shooters were trying to make the bullet follow the Warren Commission’s proposed path, entering low in the occipital bone and exiting above the temple, we can only assume the skulls were turned slightly to the left of these shooters. This, in turn, makes it reasonable to assume that the damage to the bullet and skull cited by Olivier came as a result of the bullet’s striking the thick occipital bone almost on edge along the curvature behind the ear. (A bullet striking skull bone on edge meets more resistance and is more likely to explode).

There's also this. When Sturdivan published Exhibit 861 as Figure 36 in his 2005 book, The JFK Myths, he made a surprising admission. He wrote: "A still picture of one of the experimental skulls is shown in Figure 36 after the 'flaps' were removed, but the gelatin still in pace inside the skull." He then provided Figure 36 with the following caption: "Still photograph of an experimental skull after being struck by the bullet from the Oswald rifle, after loose flaps of bone and gelatin 'scalp' were removed."

Oops! While Olivier's testimony suggested the defect depicted in 361 was the size of the defect immediately following the shot, Sturdivan's subsequent acknowledgement that both the gelatin 'scalp' and "loose flaps of bone" were removed before this picture was taken suggests the defect was smaller, perhaps even much smaller, than Kennedy's wound, when first viewed by Olivier.

It seems logical to assume, then, that Olivier was in fact unable to replicate a wound the size of Kennedy's, and that his testimony was deliberately misleading. I mean, if the original defect on this skull was anywhere near the size of Kennedy's, why not show that photo?

When one studies Wound Ballistics of 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano Ammunition, Olivier's report on his tests, issued in March 1965, one finds even more reason to doubt that his tests proved what they were designed to prove. In figure A12 of the report the profiles of three additional skulls are revealed. While the damage is extensive in each one, there is no evidence that a bullet sailed upwards and blew out the top of a skull, the purported course of the bullet striking Kennedy. In fact, even though the skulls were aligned to make the bullet exit the top of the skull (This was admitted by Sturdivan!) all the shots blew out near the right eye socket. It is also intriguing that there is only one picture portraying the bullet’s entrance on the bone in Olivier’s report, and that this small entrance was directly in the middle of the occipital bone. Perhaps this is an indication then that NOT ONE of the bullets striking an inch to the right of the EOP left anything similar to the small oval entrance on the bone observed by the doctors at the autopsy. Hmmm...

When one realizes that this 56 page report, which has 4 pages of cover sheets, 2 pages of temperature readings, and a 7 page distribution list, fails to list the ten test skulls with a break down by entrance location, entrance size, exit location, exit size, and whether or not the bullet broke-up--which was only the most important data obtained by Olivier’s tests--one’s suspicions should only grow stronger. It should be noted here that when Dr. Olivier testified before the Warren Commission, he was asked by Arlen Specter the exact entrance location on the skull displayed in Exhibit 861, and that he’d consulted a notebook he’d brought along, which had been locked up in a safe. Why this data failed to make Olivier's subsequent report, which was classified Confidential and not released to the public until 1973, is a matter of conjecture. When one looks back on Olivier’s testimony of May 13, 1964, and realizes that he testified accurately at that early date on the three tests described in the March 1965 report, and that no further tests were conducted, however, one should rightly suspect that his report was deliberately delayed and not given to the Warren Commission or released among its papers...because it was considered damaging to the Commission's conclusions.

Now, some might have their doubts that the good folks at Edgewood Arsenal, a key unit in the Army's weapons testing center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, would play politics in such a manner. But a quick bit of research on the history of weapons testing in general, and the weapons tests performed at Aberdeen Proving Ground in particular, could make a cynic out of anyone. Just prior to his studying the wound ballistics of the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, Dr. Olivier conducted a similar series of tests on the American M-16 and Russian AK-47. His report on these tests helped the Army choose the M-16 as its standard weapon. And yet, the initial deployment of the M-16 in Vietnam was considered a disaster, with guns jamming in bad weather, and with its unusually small bullets failing to stop the enemy as promised. Young men died, questions were raised and modifications became necessary.

And that wasn't the last time those testing weapons at Aberdeen came under criticism, or were suspected of cuddling up to weapons manufacturers at the expense of the common soldier and tax-payer. In the 1980's, they were right back in the fire, this time for testing and re-testing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, while failing to re-enact anything close to combat situations, and failing to properly assess the casualty rate.

And that's not even to raise the awful specter of Edgewood Arsenal's history. You see, the name Edgewood Arsenal is a bit misleading. It started as a mustard gas producer in WWI, and continues to make and test chemical warfare agents today. From 1955 to 1975, the bulk of Dr. Olivier's career, it conducted chemical warfare tests on soldiers as well as animals.

So it's not out of line to assume Olivier and his bosses colored their tests in order to please their client--in this case, the Johnson Administration.

And it's not out of line to assume someone in the know knew Olivier's tests failed to support the shooting scenario pushed by the Warren Commission.

Howard Donahue, a ballistics expert, had his own doubts that Olivier's tests accurately replicated Kennedy's wounds. In August 1977, Donahue was interviewed on radio station WBAL. He told his interviewer that in the late sixties “I went and visited the laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal and talked to Dr. Olivier himself. Now he had fired ten shots into ten inert skulls from Oswald’s rifle. Now, an inert skull is a human skull which has been filled with gelatin. None of these skulls showed the giant, enormous, macerating effect that Kennedy’s head showed. And then I began to look at the two holes in his head. And I realized it couldn’t have come from Oswald’s rifle. And then a strange pattern of events started to occur that everything that supported the Warren Commission was easily obtainable for evidence and that which contradicted it was not available.”

While the skull presented by Olivier in his Warren Commission testimony was purported to have had its right side blown off, we can presume he conceded to Donahue that this only became apparent upon the removal of the gelatin 'scalp,' and that none of the ten skulls he'd had fired upon had been as "macerated" as Kennedy's skull.

Single-assassin theorist extraordinaire Dr. John Lattimer conducted some skull tests of his own. In a February 1976 article in Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics, and then again in his 1980 book Kennedy and Lincoln, he presented another test skull upon which Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition had shattered. Since Lattimer failed to present a view of the back of this skull, it was at that time impossible to compare the size of the bullet’s entrance to that measured at the autopsy. Still, as there appears to be some sort of wire holding the back of the skull together where the bullet is presumed to have entered (Lattimer was aiming for the cowlick entrance), it appears this (presumably old and dried) skull exploded.There was certainly no small entrance in the back of the head leading to a huge gaping defect in the front.

The suspicion that this skull showed one massive wound, and that Dr. Lattimer had wired the back of the skull together for this photo, moreover, was later proven correct by...Dr. Lattimer. During his appearance at the '93 Chicago conference on the medical evidence Dr. Lattimer presented a second photo of this skull. This photo showed that the skull wound actually started at the back of the head, near the cowlick entrance, and stretched all the way to the forehead. Despite Lattimer’s assertions that the damage to this skull was similar to Kennedy’s, and that it confirmed the Clark Panel's interpretation of the head wound, both the photo he'd used previously and the second photo of this skull showed that the left side of this test skull was blown out nearly as badly as its right.

Conversely, the fragments of the assassin’s bullet, despite supposedly entering Kennedy’s skull less than an inch from its mid-line, were not believed to have crossed the mid-line of his brain.

The JFK Myths

Let us now return’s to Larry Sturdivan’s September 8, 1978 HSCA testimony. As the HSCA didn’t have the budget or the desire to test the wound ballistics of 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, they relied on the tests performed in 1964 by Alfred Olivier and Edgewood Arsenal. Since Sturdivan was actively employed at Edgewood Arsenal, and had assisted in the 1964 tests, he was given the responsibility of explaining wound ballistics to the committee, and how the tests performed in 1964 were still relevant.

In his testimony, Sturdivan presented photos of yet another test skull to the Committee. In order to show that a bullet creating a small entrance could indeed leave a large exit, Sturdivan presented a skull with a small entrance at its back and a blown-out face in front. It was entered into evidence as F-306. This skull had been one of Olivier’s test skulls from 14 years earlier. That the bullet in this test was fired into the thick occipital bone at the back of the skull cut into its value as evidence, however. The HSCA had, after all, relied upon their pathology panel to determine the location of the entrance on the back of Kennedy's skull, and had determined it to have been four inches higher than the entrance on the skull in the photos.

Now look at how Sturdivan evades this issue...

Mr. MATHEWS - I have one final, question for you, Mr. Sturdivan, and in answering that question, let me direct your attention to JFK exhibits F-307 and F-306. Mr. Sturdivan, as you can see of JFK exhibit F-307 (NOTE: this was a drawing created for the committee), which is on my left, the hole location is approximately in the top of the President's skull. As you can see from exhibit F-306, the hole location is at the bottom of the President's skull. F-306 is a skull that was utilized by Edgewood Laboratories for their experiments for the Warren Commission; is that not so?

Mr. STURDIVAN - Yes, it was, that is one of the skulls, probably one of the skulls we saw in the film sequence.

Mr. MATHEWS - My question is this: Would the location of the hole in the President's skull make any change in your testimony as to the explosive effect that occurred within the skull?

Mr. STURDIVAN - Oh, no. Once the bullet enters the soft material within the skull, the radial velocity is imparted and the effect is exactly the same no matter at what point it enters. The only effect might be in which portion of the skull was actually blown out. In other words, it might blow out a little higher and a little more toward the top if the bullet entered a little more toward the top rather than blowing out on the side as is indicated in the second exhibit.

Uhhh... He was blowing smoke. Thick noxious smoke. While the bullet striking Kennedy's skull was purported to have created a large exit defect at the top of his skull after entering the back of the skull, and striking nothing but brain, the bullet creating the large exit defect apparent on Sturdivan's exhibit had undoubtedly struck the bones behind and above the eye sockets (The sella turcica, the sphenoid bone, the perpendicular plate, and the cribriform Plate, as shown below.)

Such an impact would most certainly have led to the creation of secondary missiles, and a much much larger exit defect... (And that's not even to mention that the small bullet entrance on Exhibit 306-A was almost certainly not the bullet entrance correlating with the large exit on Exhibit 306-B, and that the actual entrance correlating to this exit could have been much much larger, and reflective that the bullet broke up upon impact.)

And yet Sturdivan was pretending that the blow-out of the face on 306-B was caused by the radial velocity of the bullet, and that the reason this blow-out was on the face as opposed to the top of the head (as on Kennedy) was that this bullet entered at a lower location.

Hmmm. This is actually quite ironic. Since the bullet striking low on this skull had exited the face, the photos demonstrated that a bullet striking low on the skull would most likely exit low on the skull, and not sail upwards and out the top of the skull, as so many current supporters of the single-assassin theory, including Sturdivan himself, contend.

There is still another problem with HSCA F-306. A big one.

Let's take another look...

In the JFK Myths, Sturdivan expands upon his testimony, and publishes a few frames from one of his skull test films as Figure 33. He dismisses that a large wound on the back of Kennedy’s head would be indicative of a shot fired from the front by claiming: “This argument is predicated on the assumption that the injury was an exit. It was not. The reader might already have noted that Figure 33 shows what actually happened. The bullet entered the back of the skull and exited in a small spray at the front in the space of one frame of the high-speed movie. Only after the bullet was far down-range did the internal pressure generated by its passage split open the skull and relieve the pressure inside by spewing the contents through the cracks. A similar explosion would have taken place if the bullet had gone through in the opposite direction. The only way to distinguish the direction of travel of the bullet is to examine the cratering effect on the inside of the skull at entrance and on the outside of the skull at exit. Thus, whether the explosion was more to the side or back is completely irrelevant.” He then discusses Kennedy’s skull: “Like the simulations at Edgewood Arsenal, the center of the blown-out area of the president’s skull was at the midpoint of the trajectory—not at the exit point. The midpoint is the point at which the bullet has fully deformed and is giving up the energy at the maximum rate—that is, pushing outward with the maximum force. At its actual point of exit toward the front of his head, the fragment had lost half its velocity and a small amount of mass (more than three quarters of its energy). His forehead was not torn open. The pressure inside the skull at the bullet’s exit location was not high enough to cause the front portion of the skull and scalp to rupture, but the x-rays do show that throughout the president’s skull the individual bony plates were separated at the suture lines and fractured between sutures almost as extensively as those in the simulations.”

So there you have it. Sturdivan contends that the large defect at the top of Kennedy’s head did not come as a result of the bullet's actual exit from the skull, but was created instead by the energy it released en route to the exit.

In retrospect, this should not be surprising. The HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, we should recall, concluded that the bullet exited nearly intact from the beveled piece of bone in the "mystery photo," and that the other half of this exit was found on the large bone fragment found on the floor of the limousine. This left no explanation for the explosion of skull visible in frame 313 of the Zapruder film, especially when one considers that the panel concluded that the bone fragment seen exploding upwards came from a location posterior to the large bone fragment found in the limousine, and on the far side of this fragment from the exit defect.

Even more alarming than Sturdivan's simply making an assertion that the temporary cavity made by the bullet exploded the skull, however, is that he presents this as though this is what one would normally expect from the impact of a high-velocity bullet on a skull. Now, is this assertion supported by the simulation films he cites as support for his theory? I don't believe so. Well, what about the writings of others, then? Here, once again, I’m saying no.

One reason to doubt Sturdivan is his contention that at the “actual point of exit” the bullet had lost only “a small amount of mass.” He overlooks that the copper base of this bullet was found in the front seat of the car, empty of all lead, and that the nose of this bullet was found several feet away. As it would be most unusual for a jacketed bullet to enter a skull intact but break up upon exit, it seems obvious the bullet broke up upon impact, and that the lead fragments seen on the x-rays broke off from the middle of the bullet. If Sturdivan fails to appreciate this obvious conclusion, there's no telling what else he's overlooked.

Actually, there is some telling what else he's overlooked, and here it is... The skull test films depict large fractures running from the entrance locations on the backs of the skulls to the coronal sutures near the fronts of the skulls. Such a fracture line does not appear on Kennedy’s skull. Even worse, while the bullets in the skull tests exploded from the forehead, Kennedy's face remained intact. Although Sturdivan has recently proposed that the bullet striking Kennedy curled upwards and exploded out the top of his skull, the exhibits he placed into evidence before congress fail to support this conjecture, and he has offered no subsequent tests as support for this proposition.

While the final skull test frame in the JFK Myth's Figure 33 shows the skull coming apart and might leave one with the impression that the skull blasted apart, this is an inaccurate impression. When one watches the full simulation as HSCA Exhibit F-305, (frames of which are shown above) one sees that the mid-part of the skull regained its form and that the skull, in fact, ended up with a large hole on the back of the head at the entrance and an even larger hole on the front of the head at the exit, with NO hole whatsoever at the top of the head. This is shown below.

Even more surprising, the skull tests were not the only films shown by Larry Sturdivan in his 1978 HSCA testimony that refuted his testimony. To support his statements about the explosion of the president’s skull, he showed the committee Exhibit 304, a slow-motion film of a high-speed bullet piercing a tomato can. He describes this film as follows: “The picture will be much the same as those with the skull. The bullet will be coming in from the left, will strike the can and you will see pieces of the can moving toward the right in the direction of the bullet, but you will also see pieces of the can moving in other directions. Notably the top of the can will be moving back toward the left in the direction from which the bullet came. You notice the backsplash as the bullet has entered the left-hand side of the can. The material is beginning to move back out. This is called the backsplash of the projectile.” Yes, you read that right. Sturdivan pointed out to the committee that a bullet entering a skull would create a backsplash of material from the entrance.

Vincent J.M. DiMaio, in his book Gunshot Wounds, described this phenomena as well. He asserted: “As the bullet enters the body, there is a “tail splash,” or the backward hurling of injured tissue.” This should make one wonder once again why there is no backsplash visible in frame 313 of the Zapruder film.

While one might venture that the backsplash remained visible for but a brief moment, and was already dissipated within the 1/30th or so of a second between the impact of the bullet on Kennedy's head and the exposure of frame 313, Sturdivan's tomato can film proves this unlikely, as the backsplash visible in the Exhibit 304 is still visible long after the amount of forward splash has peaked.

Yes, Sturdivan's tomato can film is something to treasure. It should be put on display like a Warhol. It's of interest not only because of the readily noticeable backsplash in the film, but because it helps debunk the myth that Kennedy's head flew backwards as a consequence of a "jet effect." Notice that, in the frames of Exhibit 304 above, while the top of the can flew back towards the shooter, the larger mass of the can flew forwards in the direction of the bullet. If one were to hold that this movement came from a "jet effect" response to the backsplash, one would then be forced to return to the last question: where is the backsplash in the Zapruder film, and why didn't its "jet effect" thrust Kennedy's skull forwards?

In his testimony before congress, Sturdivan offered his own explanation for the back-and-to the-left movement of the President’s skull in the frames following Z-313. He testified: “Now the extreme radial velocity imparted to the matter in the President’s head, the brain tissue caused mechanical movement of essentially everything inside the skull, including where the cord went through the foramen magnum, that is, the hole that leads out of the skull down to the spinal cord. Motion there, I believe, caused mechanical stimulation of the motor nerves of the President, and since all motor nerves were stimulated at the same time, then every muscle in the body would be activated at the same time. Now in an arm, for instance, this would have activated the biceps muscle but it would also have activated the triceps muscle, which being more powerful, would have straightened the arm out. With leg muscles, the large muscles in the back of the leg are more powerful than those in the front and, therefore, the leg would move backward. The muscles in the back of the trunk are much stronger than the abdominals and, therefore, the body would arch backward. The same phenomena has been observed many times by hunters in the Southwest where I came from.”

To support these statements he showed the committee Exhibit 309, a slow-motion film of a goat being shot in the head. He testified: “First we will observe the neuromuscular reaction, the goat will collapse then, and by the wiggling of his tail and the tenseness of the muscles we will see what I think has been called the decerebrate rigidity, and that takes place about a second after the shot and then slowly dissipates and you will see the goat slump, obviously dead.”

The fracture pattern, or spider-web, is much larger at entrance than upon exit.

This raises a few questions. As the fracture patterns of entrance and exit are created almost simultaneously with the impact of the bullet, and precede the fractures created by the temporary cavity, why are there NO large fractures deriving from the entrance on the back of Kennedy’s head, and why are there ENORMOUS fractures deriving from the supposed exit? The bullet at entrance was of larger mass and traveling at a much greater speed than the fragments believed to have impacted at the supposed exit.

Oh, that's right. Baden and Sturdivan claimed the bullet did not break up until after its exit. So what caused the large fractures at exit? Baden and the FPP's interpretation of the autopsy photos precludes that the bullet exited sideways...

Well, this leads us back to Sturdivan... Would the temporary cavity of a tumbling (but not exploding) bullet explode the skull mid-trajectory? And leave massive fractures in its wake?

Dr. Philip Villanueva, chapter on Cranial Gunshot Wounds, Management of Gunshot Wounds, 1988. “The shape of the cavitation is theoretically conical, with the apex of the cone being farthest away from the entry…In reality, the projectile’s path often varies from a straight track, causing an irregular shaped cavity.”

Well, first of all, the apex is the narrowest point of a cone. So, yes, Villanueva confirms what we've previously suspected--that the temporary cavity of a bullet is greater at entrance than at exit.

But this, alas, is theory. In reality, most bullets are not steel spheres. They tumble. Well, this tumbling changes the shape of the temporary cavity, whereby Sturdivan is essentially correct--that the temporary cavity is greatest where the bullet is traveling sideways--which could very well be mid-skull, halfway between the entrance and exit.

So, ultimately, Villanueva supports Sturdivan’s conjecture that tumbling affects the size of the temporary cavity and that a bullet could in fact curve upwards while crossing the skull. This still fails to explain, however, why no path for a bullet heading upwards in the skull from the supposed entrance near the cerebellum to the supposed exit near the coronal suture has ever been ascertained, either at autopsy or afterward. After all, if the bullet had traveled on such a trajectory, while fragmenting, it would have created a large permanent cavity, and have left small bullet fragments within this cavity, far from the surface of the cerebrum. So where are these fragments? Sturdivan's latter-day assertion that these fragments would have been uniformly flushed upwards with the explosion of the temporary cavity makes little sense, as it seems clear that at least some of these fragments would have been embedded deep within the brain.

Dr. Edward Pechter, chapter on Gunshot Wounds of Soft Tissue and of the Hand, Management of Gunshot Wounds, 1988. “The maximum displacement of the temporary cavity is related to the point of maximum retardation in velocity of the projectile. A missile that loses velocity rapidly will produce a temporary cavity with its maximum dimension near the entrance wound. A pointed bullet will need a longer penetration depth before the maximum size of its temporary cavity is produced unless the bullet is constructed so as to tumble very quickly. As a shaped, elongated bullet tumbles, the maximum energy release will occur near the place where it reaches 90 degrees of yaw.”

So here we have a doctor supporting what we've managed to piece together—that the temporary cavity of a deformed bullet rapidly losing velocity will normally be largest near the entrance, but that the cavity may become larger further from the entrance should the bullet reach 90 degrees of yaw (i.e. travel sideways). Pechter’s statement suggesting that some pointed bullets are designed to tumble very quickly is a pointed (sorry) reference to M-16 bullets, which are designed to tumble and break-up and create the large permanent cavities discussed by Dr. Fackler. Since the bullets used in Oswald’s gun were not designed to tumble, one might take from this that they would tumble at a later point, nearest the exit, and break up at that point. One might even try to use this to defend Sturdivan’s theory. But one would be wrong. Olivier’s tests in 1964 established that the 6.5mm bullets fired in Oswald’s rifle would be unlikely to tumble in soft tissue, and that, furthermore, would not break up if they did tumble. Sturdivan knew this. When testifying about the “magic” bullet, he told the HSCA: “It is slightly deformed which, through my calculations, indicate it must have been deformed on bone since it could not have deformed in soft tissue.”

So really what’s in dispute here? Sturdivan seems to agree that the bullet striking Kennedy at frame 313 fractured upon entrance, but is apparently of the belief it came apart as it tumbled upwards in the skull. Since skull fractures occur almost instantly, and since we can assume copper jacket fractures happen just as fast, I contend, on the other hand, that the purported bullet would be in pieces even before it entered the skull, and would begin tumbling almost immediately, and losing its energy almost immediately. This, if correct, casts great doubt that a temporary cavity from this bullet exploded the skull by the bullet's exit, but failed to push any back spatter out the entrance. The x-ray of the Olivier test skull presented by Sturdivan as Figure 38 in The JFK Myths (and as shown above on The JFK Myths slide) shows that bullet fragments were retained in the middle of the skull. As these bullet fragments would most certainly have continued forward from where they broke off from the bullet, the bullet used in this test undoubtedly broke up on the back half of the skull. So what did the entrance for this bullet look like? Yeah, yeah, I know. We already complained about this, back in the JFK Myths section....

Dr. Gary Ordog, chapter on Wound Ballistics, Management of Gunshot Wounds, 1988. “The bullet loses velocity on passage through the tissues, and the entrance wound tends to be larger than the exit wound if the missile is a perfect sphere. For missiles that are not spheres, the size of the entrance wound depends on the area of presentation of the missile at the moment of impact, as well as the size of the temporary cavity formed. Thus, the size of the entrance and the exit wound of a fully jacketed bullet depends on the bullet’s yaw in flight through the air and the tissues. If the bullet strikes the tissue head-on and tumbles through, and then leaves the body, then the exit wound will be larger than the entrance wound. When the bullet enters and exits head-on, the entrance wound may be larger because of a larger temporary cavity caused by higher-velocity near the entrance.”

So here we have it again. Ordog confirms our suspicion that the temporary cavity makes more of an impact on entrance size than exit size, and that it is the tumbling or break-up of a bullet that creates a larger wound at exit. While an intact bullet that tumbles just before it exits will create a larger temporary cavity nearest the exit, there is no reason to believe the bullet entering the back of Kennedy’s skull remained intact until just before its exit.

Ordog, ibid.“The bullet’s angle of impact on the target can greatly influence the drag coefficient and amount of tissue damage. The more acute the angle is to the skin, the more surface area is presented to the tissue, thus increasing the wounding energy and amount of tissue destruction.” This suggests the possibility that the area with the most tissue damage, the large defect, was in fact the impact location of a bullet traveling at an acute angle to the skin. More on this to come…

Massad Ayoob, The JFK Assassination: A Shooter's Eye View, American Handgunner, March/April 1993. "The explosion of the President's head as seen in frame 313 of the Zapruder film is simply not characteristic of a full metal-jacket rifle bullet traveling at 2,200 fps or less. It is far more consistent with an explosive wound of entry with a small-bore, hyper-velocity rifle bullet traveling between 3,000 and 4,000 fps, and probably toward the higher end of that scale ...An explosive wound of entry occurs when a highly liquid area of the body, such as the brain, is struck by a high velocity round. The tissue swells violently during the microseconds of the bullet's passing, and seeks the line of least resistance. That least resistance is the portal of the entry wound that appeared a microsecond before, and the bullet will not bore an exit hole to relieve the pressure for another microsecond or two--perhaps not at all if the bullet fragments inside the brain. If the cataclysmic cranial injury inflicted on Kennedy was indeed an explosive wound of entry, the source of the shot would have had to be forward of the Presidential limousine, to its right, and slightly above...the area of the grassy knoll."

So here we have a respected gun expert and author laying it all out...Kennedy's large head wound is not at all what one would expect from the ammunition used in Oswald's rifle, should it have impacted as claimed by the likes of Olivier and Sturdivan. His words also suggest that, if the bullet impacted as proposed by Olivier and Sturdivan, and Kennedy's head exploded as a consequence of the temporary cavity created by the bullet, blood and brain matter would most certainly have sprayed back out the entrance. But Ayoob doesn't stop there...

Ayoob, ibid."The evidence does not rule out the possibility that a hyper-velocity rifle bullet evacuated the President's cranial vault without any other bullet hitting him in the head. The 6.5mm Carcano throws a 162 gr. bullet at a bit under 2,300 fps muzzle velocity. The closest commonly used cartridge to it in terms of ballistics is probably the .30/30, which has a .308" diameter. The Carcano round, about a .263" diameter. Ask any homicide detective if he's ever seen a .30/30 round blow a man's head up at 55 to 60 yards, exploding the calvarium up and away from the body proper. Ask any hunter of deer-size game if he's ever seen the same thing at that distance. It happens only at very close range with that ballistic technology. The wound we see happening in frame 313 in the Zapruder film--and see the results of most clearly in frame 337--is simply not consistent with this rifle cartridge, at that distance in living tissue. It is particularly inconsistent with a round-nose full metal-jacket bullet of the type Oswald had in his rifle."

Here Ayoob re-stresses the point. Bullets like those fired in Oswald's rifle just don't do what we've been told they do. They just don't send pieces of skull flying across the sky when fired from a distance. This is so clear to Ayoob in fact that, even in the conclusion to his article, where he postulates that Oswald quite possibly acted alone, he does so only under the proviso that the bullet striking Kennedy at frame 313 "for unexplainable reasons did damage out of all proportion to its ballistic capability as most of us would perceive that to be."

Dr. John Lattimer, speaking at The Second Annual Midwest Symposium on Assassination Politics, Chicago Illinois, April 3, 1993. (While discussing Warren Commission Exhibit 388, a drawing of Kennedy's large head wound.) "And again, the wound here depicted in this type--in the Warren Commission--I was familiar with this kind of wound from World War II, from this kind of bullet. And it was clearly not what I expected. But when I saw the x-rays and photographs, it was exactly as anticipated--a large wound of exit, cracks in all directions..."

Here, Lattimer sticks to his story that the Rydberg drawings were misleading and that Kennedy's wounds were much more severe and exactly as he'd have predicted. In this presentation he also discussed the fact that he didn't think skull fragments exploded upwards like the fragments captured in frame 313 of the Zapruder film. He then showed photos of skulls fired on by him where the fragments did explode upwards, and claimed these tests convinced him that Kennedy's head wound wasn't so unusual after all. He failed to note that these skulls were dead dried skulls without any scalp to hold the fragments in place. He did note, however, that he thought his tests were more successful than Olivier's 1964 tests because he was firing at the top of the skull and not the bottom. This suggests that he knew full well that the Warren Commission scenario of a small bullet entrance low on the skull and an enormous exit at the top of the skull made little sense. (Lattimer, of course, later changed his mind about this entrance location, and thereby nullified the tests he'd found so convincing.)

Dr. John Lattimer, Differences in the Wounding Behavior of the Two Bullets that Struck President Kennedy: an Experimental Study, Wound Ballistics Review, Spring 1995. "The performance of the bullet (WC567-569) that...hit President Kennedy on the back of the skull, at frame 313 of the Zapruder movie, was strikingly different from the behavior of bullet 399. The reason for this marked difference was the fact that bullet 567-569 first hit the hard bone of the back of the skull of President Kennedy and broke up. The greatly increased surface area of the broken bullet and its fragments caused a temporary cavity to occur in the semi-fluid brain, which being confined in the cranial vault exploded upward and forward, out the huge wound of exit on the front-right of the skull caused by diverging bullet fragments...The lead core and the gilding metal separated on contact with the skull, leaving a 6.5 mm fragment sheared off by the sharp edge of the bone at the point of impact...The broken bullet scattered dozens of tiny fragments of lead along the track of the bullet from back to front through the brain."

Well, how about that? While 99 of 100 single-assassin theorists will claim Dr. Lattimer's research supports the findings of the Warren Commission and HSCA, this is actually far from the case. We've already shown how Dr. Lattimer's views on the single-bullet theory were grossly at odds with those of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel. And now we see how their views are equally askew on the fatal bullet. As we've seen, the HSCA's top forensic pathology consultant, Dr. Baden, and its top wound ballistics consultant, Larry Sturdivan, both claimed the fatal bullet exited the skull intact, save a few fragments that "leaked" from the base of the bullet. They needed to do this, let's recall, so they could claim there was but one exit on the skull. Now here, in an article designed to silence Ayoob's questions from two years previous, comes ole Lattimer claiming not only that the fatal bullet exited in pieces, but that the break-up of this bullet upon impact with the back of the skull was a factor in the large size of the temporary cavity within the skull and the large size of the exit defect. Oops. You can't have it both ways. Dr. Baden's re-creation of the skull using the recovered skull fragments allowed him to claim there was but one exit defect--the one noted at autopsy. Accepting Latimer's conclusion the bullet exited in pieces, in such case, means accepting that there were other exits that were not noted at autopsy--and thus, quite possibly other entrances as well. And that's not the only difference between Lattimer, Baden, and Sturdivan. It also should be noted that Lattimer accepts that a 6.5 mm fragment observable on the x-rays was sheared off the bullet and found on the back of the skull, and that neither Dr. Baden (who claimed this fragment rubbed off the base of the bullet) nor Sturdivan (who suspects this fragment was an artifact on the x-rays) is willing to accept such nonsense.

Dr. Vincent J. M. DiMaio, Gunshot Wounds, 1998. "Wounds due to hunting bullets are more destructive to the structure of the head than wounds produced by military ammunition even if the same weapon is used. This is, because, even though both bullets may possess the same amount of energy on impact, the hunting bullet will lose more energy in the head due to its construction."

Yep.

DiMaio, ibid. "The size and shape of the temporary cavity depend on the amount of kinetic energy lost by the bullet in its path through the tissue, how rapidly the energy is lost, and the elasticity and cohesiveness of the tissue. The maximum volume and diameter of this cavity are many times the volume and diameter of the bullet. Maximum expansion of the cavity does not occur until some time after the bullet has passed through the target…The maximum diameter of the cavity occurs at the point at which the maximum rate of loss of kinetic energy occurs."

This supports what we have already discussed.

DiMaio, ibid. On centerfire rifle wounds: "Intermediate range and distant head wounds show a wide range in the degree of severity, depending on the style of bullet and the entrance site in the head. Anything that tends to produce instability, deformation, or breakup of the bullet as it enters the head results in more extensive injuries. Thus, bullets entering through the thick occipital bone cause greater injuries than those entering the temporal area."

DiMaio might not realize it, but this totally undermines Sturdivan and the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel. As we've seen, Sturdivan and Baden tried to claim that the bullet exited intact and only exploded upon hitting the windshield frame. Well, DiMaio's words strongly support what we should already have come to suspect, and suggest that the velocity of a Carcano bullet alone would not lead a skull to explode as Kennedy's exploded, and that the bullet must have broke-up upon impact with the skull.

DiMaio, ibid. "Intermediate and distant range wounds of the head can be just as devastating as contact wounds. This is especially true for hunting ammunition. As the hunting bullet rapidly expands, shedding fragments of core and sometimes jacket, large quantities of kinetic energy are lost in the cranial cavity. This produces a large temporary cavity with resultant high pressure, all within the rigid framework of the skull. The pressure produces extensive fragmentation of bone and brain tissue. Location of entrance and exit wounds may require extensive reconstruction of the skull, with careful realignment of the edges of the scalp and bone. Rarely, the entrance in the skin cannot be determined with absolute certainty. This is more common with exits, however.

Distant and intermediate-range entrance wounds in areas overlying bone--typically the head--may have a stellate appearance suggestive of a contact wound. This is probably due to the temporary cavity ballooning out skin that is tightly stretched over bone, with resultant tearing of the skin."

DiMaio illustrates this point with the photo on the Blasts From the Present slide, above. This photo reveals the massive scalp lacerations created by the impact of a .30 30 hunting bullet upon a human skull. While Oswald's rifle was not as powerful as a .30 30 rifle, and while the bullet striking Kennedy was not in fact a hunting bullet, the bullet's near total deformation upon impact--as noted by both Olivier and Lattimer--would lead it to behave much like a hunting bullet, and release a significant amount of its energy into the skull upon entrance. So why were there no significant tears in the scalp apparent by the "entrance" on the back of Kennedy's head? And why did all the scalp lacerations noted at the autopsy derive from the purported "exit"? And why, when the temporary cavity in this skull exploded back out the entrance, did the temporary cavity in Kennedy's skull, according to Sturdivan, explode from the mid-point of his skull between the bullet's entrance and its exit? While DiMaio's observations raise serious doubts about Sturdivan's theories, they also raise questions about the work performed by Olivier and Sturdivan back in 1964. Why, for instance, were none of the entrances on the animal skin attached to the back of Olivier’s test skulls photographed or measured for his report? Was Olivier trying to hide that there were stellate tears by the entrance?

Ironically, DiMaio's observations also raise doubts about his own objectivity. According to Doug Horne, who interviewed DiMaio for the ARRB in 1998, Dr. DiMaio made it clear even before being shown the autopsy photos that he felt "the Clark Panel and the HSCA panel had gotten everything right," and "declared with great certainty" that the red spot in the cowlick "was a classic bullet entry wound." Well, that's the problem. DiMaio's own writings demonstrate that a high-velocity entrance wound in which the bullet fractures upon impact should not remotely resemble a "classic bullet entry wound."

In 1998, DiMaio also worked as a consultant on a British TV program hosted by Roger Moore. His comments in this program were slightly more illuminating.

Dr. Vincent J.M. DiMaio, The Secret KGB JFK Assassination Files, 1998. "The only type bullet that would produce so extensive a network of fractures in the skull is a bullet traveling at a very high velocity. Okay? A rifle bullet essentially. So when it comes in it makes usually a relatively neat hole and when it comes out it produces a very large exit, especially if the wound is very superficial. Actually, if the wound is deeper, like from here to here (as he says this, he points to the EOP area on the back of his head with his right hand and his forehead with his left), the exit wound is smaller, because the force generated by the bullet going through the brain can be absorbed by the whole head. Here (as he says this, he covers the crown of his head--the site of the HSCA's cowlick entrance, and the entrance used in the program's tests--with his right hand) it's kind of like just ripping off the top of the head. So when we see at the exit--see blood and tissue ejected in a cloud, a veritable cloud, a mist-like cloud, pink in color, and this is vaporized blood, and there are little droplets all over--less than a millimeter, just tiny. And so you have a cloud of blood, and this is what the motorcycle riders drove into. They drove into a cloud of blood."

Thus, DiMaio's belief that the purported cowlick entrance was the actual entrance on Kennedy's head comes not just from this purported entrance's giving the appearance of a "classic bullet entry wound," but from his opinion that a bullet entering low on Kennedy's head and exiting high on his head would not create the massive exit wound seen in the autopsy photos. He thereby disputes Sturdivan's most recent conclusions.

Dr. Mark A. Liker, Dr. Bitzhan Aarabi, and Dr. Michael Levy, chapter on Missile Wounds of the Head, Missile Wounds of the Head and Neck, 1999. "The skull can also increase the bullet's destructive potential by slowing the missile down. Next to teeth, bone is the densest tissue in the body. Therefore, when a bullet strikes the skull, the missile will rapidly decelerate, often fragmenting or deforming in the process. The result is significant energy transfer from the bullet to the head. Deformation helps maximize energy transfer because the bullet's surface area increases, allowing the tissue to exert more drag force on the bullet. As drag increases, the bullet decelerates and more energy is transferred to the tissue. If the collision between bullet and skull results in the bullet's fragmentation, the brain injury is likely to be more severe. This is due not only to multiple missile tracks, but also to the tendency for fragments to behave as slower-velocity bullets that deposit all of their energy into the brain. Thus, if a high-velocity missile does not fragment upon impact with the skull, it may spare the brain some of its energy by exiting the skull; if, on the other hand, the missile breaks into fragments, the likelihood of a complete energy transfer increases dramatically."

Thus, Sturdivan's belief that the bullet lost little mass within the skull, and his concurrent belief that a fragment from this bullet went on to chip concrete more than 200 feet past Kennedy (as measured from the sniper's nest) indicate there was a far from complete transfer of energy from the bullet into the skull. Sturdivan's contention that small fragments were released within the skull and exploded upwards with the rush of blood, moreover, does little to offset this problem, as these fragments, by Sturdivan's own admission, had little mass and thus little energy to impart into the brain. As discussed by Fackler, furthermore, what little energy was released by these fragments would contribute as much to the permanent cavity as to the temporary cavity.

Sturdivan's contention that a bullet struck Kennedy low on the back of his head and that the temporary cavity created by this bullet subsequently exploded his skull is therefore rejected.

So why do people continue to push his nonsense?

Here's why. Cognitive dissonance. Apparently, those who ought to know better just can't seem to accept that Kennedy was killed in a manner other than as claimed by the Warren Commission.

Dr. Martin Fackler, in response to a question in Wound Ballistics Review, Spring 2000. "As a sniper's rifle bullet breaks into the cranial vault and penetrates the brain, it causes the brain tissue to be displaced, away from the projectile path, in forming a tem­porary cavity. Whereas loops of bowel in the easily expand­able abdominal cavity might be displaced up to several inches by the temporary cavity without appreciable damage, the hard and inflexible cranial vault cannot expand in re­sponse to the pressures produced by the temporary cavity. Therefore, the pressure inside the cranial vault rises sharply. The force of this confined pressure often fractures the skull, and sometimes splits the scalp, causing considerable amounts of brain and bone to be expelled from the wound (recall the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination--consid­erable brain was lost)."

So, yikes, Fackler appears to have a blind spot on this issue. He knows full-well that temporary cavities don't explode skulls the way we've been told, but still claims this is what happened to Kennedy.

A study by Dr. W.M. Hammon, and published in the Journal of Neurosurgery in 1971, supports this conclusion--that is, that Fackler is wrong on this point. While this study, entitled "Analysis of 2,187 Consecutive Penetrating Wounds of the Brain from Vietnam" included victims of low-velocity ammunition and shrapnel, the mortality rate of those reaching the hospital was under 30%. This seems unlikely if the mere passage of a bullet through the brain could cause the explosive wounds seen on Kennedy.

A more recent study confirms this conclusion. This study, conducted by the faculty of Ankara University in Turkey, and published in Neurologia Medico-Chirurfica, a Japanese neurology journal, in 2005, described the progress of 80 patients brought into Diyarbakir Military Hospital with high-velocity gunshot wounds to the head. Although the bullets creating these wounds were presumably smaller than the bullet creating Kennedy's head wound, they were purportedly traveling at a much greater speed, as the article defined "high-velocity" as traveling greater than 3,000 fps. They were also created by modern military ammunition, which, although more stable than hunting ammunition, which is designed to expend all its energy in its target, is less stable than the ammunition used in Oswald's gun, and would, as a result, be likely to impart more energy into the brain. If Sturdivan's statements are true, and the temporary cavity of the bullet in Kennedy's brain exploded his skull mid-way between the entrance and the exit, then the wounds observed in this study should have been even more severe than Kennedy's wound.

They were in fact not as bad. According to the doctors writing the article, the wounds observed displayed "huge and distant tissue damage caused by temporary cavitation and shock waves." They observed further that "Such cavitary injury is much more extensive than the track of the missile." And yet they made no mention of any large skull defects caused by these cavities, and no mention at all of defects distant from the passage of the bullet. While the wounds discussed in this article were apparently more survivable than Kennedy's, as these men all lived at least a half-hour after being shot, and 73 of the 80 men survived, the point is that they shouldn't have been, should Sturdivan's theories about the effects of cavitation on the skull have been accurate.

Or even his actual theories... In 2007, Sturdivan wrote an overview on wound ballistics for Mel Ayton's book The Forgotten Terrorist. There, he insisted that the temporary cavity of a bullet passing through the brain "would be all along the track, largest at the highest velocity (the entry)." And, yes, that's a direct quote. Here, when discussing the death of Robert Kennedy, Sturdivan acknowledged what we've discussed throughout this chapter: that the temporary cavity would normally be largest at entry.

Now compare this to what he wrote in his own book The JFK Myths, published but two years earlier. He wrote: “the center of the blown-out area of the president’s skull was at the midpoint of the trajectory—not at the exit point. The midpoint is the point at which the bullet has fully deformed and is giving up the energy at the maximum rate—that is, pushing outward with the maximum force."

Well, oh my! How convenient! When trying to explain how the top of President Kennedy's head blew off, Sturdivan claimed that the deformation of the bullet created a huge temporary cavity at the midpoint of his skull; when trying to explain how the entrance wound on the back of Robert Kennedy's head could be so much larger than the bullet that supposedly entered there, however, Sturdivan suddenly changed gears and offered that the temporary cavity would be greatest at entry.

While one might excuse this inconsistency by noting that the deformation of the bullet caused President Kennedy's skull to explode at the midpoint, and that the bullet killing his brother was comparatively un-deformed, one should be reminded that Dr. Baden presumed the bullet exited President Kennedy's skull intact, and that very little deformation occurred within the skull.

Sturdivan and Baden, the two experts upon whom the HSCA most relied when coming to their conclusions regarding Kennedy's head wounds, were neither consistent nor reliable.

We can hereby commence discussing what actually happened.

Tom Bevel and Ross M. Gardner, Bloodstain Pattern Analysis with an Introduction to Crime Scene Reconstruction, 2008. "Forward spatter patterns when present tend to be more symmetrical than back spatter patterns. This is probably due to the primary force of the impact being transmitted in the direction of the projectile. Back spatter patterns tend to be less defined..."

Note that they write "forward spatter patterns when present" and not "back spatter patterns when present". This confirms what we should already have expected--that back spatter is most always apparent, while forward spatter is not. This suggests--since only one massive spatter is visible on frame 313 of the Zapruder film--that the blood and brain visible is not solely forward spatter. That this explosion appears to be asymmetrical only adds to this probability. (Much thanks to Sherry Fiester for bringing this argument to the attention of the research community.)

Tom Bevel and Ross M. Gardner, ibid. "The cone of spatter is ejected generally perpendicular to a surface and does not specifically align with the bullet path."

(This is demonstrated in a photo on the Blasts From the Present slide, above.)

Well, there it is. Since the large explosion seems to rise from Kennedy's right temple at an angle perpendicular to the surface of the skull at this location, the upward and forward movement of the blood and brain matter at this location is just as suggestive of back spatter as forward spatter. Actually more...since there is only one massive spatter visible on the film, and back spatter is most always present, then we should conclude the bullet impacting at frame 313 of the Zapruder film did so at the supposed exit near Kennedy's temple, and NOT on the back of his head.

So this means the bullet killing Kennedy was fired from the right front, right?

Well, not so fast...

Blasts From The Past

Let's go back to the beginning of all this wound ballistics stuff, with Swiss scientist Theodor Kocher. Kocher was the first to use soap, and gelatin, to simulate tissue, and study the effects of various kinds of ammunition on this simulated tissue. He also helped design the first full-metal jacket ammunition. He later became a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon.

The 1895 edition of Principles of Forensic Medicine, a top British text of its day, while discussing tests performed by Kocher in 1874-1876, reported: "Kocher showed that if a bullet was fired into a skull containing water, not only would the sutures burst, but this bursting would be greatest on the side of the entry of the bullet..."

Now, this is already interesting. Note first that the pressure is most marked on the side of the bullet's entrance into the skull, as opposed to the middle of the bullet's trajectory, a la Sturdivan. Note as well that the skulls burst by Kocher, via a build-up of internal pressure, burst at the skull's sutures, while Sturdivan has Kennedy's skull breaking into pieces mid-bone, and these pieces then flying off into space.

Well, it's happening already. That nagging thought...that the consensus to be derived from the wound ballistics literature...is that first Olivier and then Sturdivan...were blowing smoke...

And it gets worse as we progress. By the early 1890's, a revolution of sorts took place in the field of wound ballistics, where doctors such as Paul Bruns began criticizing the use of Dum-Dum bullets (steel or copper-jacketed bullets with a lead nose designed to break up on impact) and convinced the world that these bullets, due to their velocity and explosiveness, were unnecessarily cruel, and made unnecessarily gruesome wounds.

Here is an example of one such wound, courtesy Dr.s Arthur Keith and Hugh Rigby in their article Modern Military Bullets, published in the Dec. 2, 1899 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet.

Note that this shows a small entrance wound leading to an enormous and gruesome exit wound. Essentially, the top of this man's head was blown off.

The horror created by these wounds led then to the development of full-metal jacket bullets which tended to make less gruesome wounds from a distance but could still explode a skull from up close. This led then to a number of studies of this new ammunition.

In 1894, Romanian professor Dr. A. Demosthen published Etudes Expermentales sur L'Action Du Projectile Cuirasse Du Fusil Mannlicher Nouveau Model Roumain De 6.5 mm. This was a French-language report on the wounds created by 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition. For some of Demosthen's tests, 6.5 mm bullets were fired on human cadavers. For some, human bones.

At left below is the exhibit presented for a typical entrance wound, for which the bullet had been fired from 50 meters (164 feet). At right is the exit wound for this bullet.

And here, then, is the skull of this poor soul. (The entrance wound was measured at 18 by 12 mm, and the exit wound was measured at 20 by 18 mm.)

Well, there it is again. That nagging thought. If the top of this poor guy's head didn't explode into the sky at 164 feet, why did the top of Kennedy's head explode into the sky at 265 feet?

I mean, really. Something's wrong here. Let's remember that the wound ballistics of 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition was subsequently studied by Olivier and Sturdivan, and that Olivier's 1965 report and Sturdivan's 1978 testimony presented an image of a typical wound of exit from 90 yards that was far more extensive than Demosthen's image of a typical wound of exit from 50 meters (164 feet).

Here they are, side by side.

And it wasn't just European doctors who were firing on corpses to test the wound ballistics of what they were now calling "small calibre" ammunition.

The record of the Fifth Annual Proceedings of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States (1895) presents a report written by Brig. Gen. J.D. Griffith on a series of shots fired upon a corpse from 350, 500, and 1,000 yards. The rifle being studied was the new Krag-Jorgensen rifle. It fired a 220 grain bullet at a similar velocity as the 160 grain 6.5 Mannilcher-Carcano rifle studied by Demosthen. In other words, it should have delivered a more significant blow, roughly 35% more significant.

Here are Figures 4 and 5 from this report. This is a skull fired upon from 350 yards. The entrance wound (on the forehead above the nose) is on the left and the exit (on the left side of the back of the head) is on the right.

Keep in mind that the bullet creating these wounds was a more powerful bullet than that fired upon Kennedy, only fired from further away. These factors should have come close to evening out, whereby a similar amount of damage should have been apparent on this corpse's skull as was observed on Kennedy's. And yet the exit wound on Kennedy's skull was more than 50 times larger. (The measurement provided for the exit wound on this skull was 3/4 inch--19 mm! Assuming this was a 19 mm diameter circle--it actually looks much thinner--this stretches out to 284 sq mm. The measurements provided for the supposed exit wound on JFK's skull, in contrast, were 17 cm by 10 cm, on the autopsy face sheet, and 13 cm by 10 cm, in Dr. Humes' testimony. Assuming Dr. Humes' measurement was more accurate, then, we have 13,000 sq mm--45.77 times the presumed area of the exit on the skull above. )

Other blasts from the past only amplify my suspicion Olivier and Sturdivan were blowing smoke in their Warren Commission and HSCA testimony. The 1896 Annual Report of the U.S. Secretary of War, found online, presents the autopsy protocols of three living subjects struck in the skull by bullets fired from the Krag-Jorgensen rifle. It bears repeating that these bullets were larger and more powerful than the bullets fired from the rifle presumed to have killed Kennedy.

The first of these protocols, written by Surgeon L.M. Maus, describes the wound of an apparent suicide victim, with the doctor estimating that the rifle was fired from but one foot away, with the bullet entering the left forehead and exiting from the top of the head. The doctor describes the large wound of both entrance and exit as being 16 cm long by 14 cm wide, which would make it slightly larger than the measured size of Kennedy's wound. He notes, however, that some of this missing bone was still adherent to the lacerated scalp, and that, once this bone was put back into place, the defect was only 6 cm by 6 cm.

Hmmm... This was far smaller than the defect on Kennedy's skull, according to most everyone to see this defect, and roughly 1/3 the size of the four bone fragments discovered in the car or in the plaza, that were subsequently photographed or x-rayed. Hmmm... This was a bullet more powerful than the bullet striking Kennedy, fired from just a foot away...and yet it blasted away far less skull at its entrance and exit combined than the bullet striking Kennedy is purported to have blasted away upon exit.

The second protocol, written by Surgeon Alfred C. Girard, describes the wounds of an escaping prisoner shot in the back of the head from but 90 feet away. (Figure 104, a photo of this prisoner's skull, can be found on the Shattered slide, below.) Girard reports that "a furrow corresponding to the injury to the dura mater was plowed through the right hemisphere, in the region of the superior convolution, about half an inch deep."

Well, this is surprising, as the bullet striking Kennedy, and, according the HSCA panel, traveling on an almost identical trajectory, is widely presumed to have created a laceration 4.5 cm below the vertex of the brain.

Hmmm. 4.5 cm below the vertex of the brain is about 3.2 cm (or 1 1/4 inches) deeper in the brain than a half an inch... That this prisoner's brain received less damage than Kennedy's brain is further demonstrated by Girard's conclusion that "Death was evidently caused by the concussion, as no vital parts of the brain were injured and the hemorrhage was not considerable."

Hmmm. If that doesn't make one doubt that a bullet entering the purported cowlick entrance on JFK would behave as it purportedly did, I don't know what will.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. (No pun intended.) No, what's important here is that we realize that the size of Kennedy's entrance and exit wounds was out of alignment with what one would normally expect for a through and through wound from the presumed assassination rifle. The entrance on the back of this prisoner's skull (1/2 inch above and to the right of the junction of the occipital and right parietal bones) was reported to be a 1 by 1/2 inch oval wound, and the exit on the front of his skull (2 inches forward of the coronal suture and one inch to the right of the midline) was reported to be 1 1/2 inches long by 3/8 inches wide.

Now let's convert and compare. The entrance on this skull was roughly 12 by 25 mm, as opposed to the 6 by 15 mm entrance on Kennedy. This makes it roughly 3.3 times as large. And the exit on this skull was roughly 37 by 9 mm, as opposed to the supposed 170 by 100 mm exit on Kennedy. This makes it about 2% as large. The exit on Kennedy's skull was purported to be around 5% as large as the exit, when the entrance on this skull--which, it should be pointed out, is presented in the early wound ballistics literature as a typical wound for this kind of rifle--was purported to be roughly 90% as large as the exit. Gulp. This suggests the exit on Kennedy's skull was roughly 45 times larger than should be expected, should it have been the exit of a through and through shot from front to back as purported. (Now, to be clear, I suspect the 17 by 10 cm measurement in the autopsy report is an exaggeration, and includes bone that was damaged but remained on the skull prior to autopsy--but that's an argument for another day, and another chapter.)

The third protocol was also written by Girard, and describes the wounds of another suicide victim. The bullet this time left both a small entrance and a small exit, even while badly fracturing the calvarium. Notes Girard: "The enormous distension of the skull was striking; skin intact except a small circular opening 2 inches back and 2 inches above the right orbit; and a similar one at the junction of the left temporal and lower third of the parietal region. The head felt like a bag of detached bones. Blood flowed from the nose and ears." Well, this is already very interesting. The structural damage to this skull was, as expected, considering that this bullet was more powerful than the bullet striking Kennedy and considering that it was fired at point blank range, greater than the damage to Kennedy's skull, but the top of the head did not explode and the exit was much smaller than Kennedy's. Girard notes further "The actual place of entrance could not be distinguished among the debris...The place of exit was a distinct, small round hole one-fourth by five-sixteenths of an inch at the junction of the squamous portion of the temporal bone and the inferior border of the parietal bone, about 2 inches from the posterior inferior angle." Girard goes on to theorize that the small size of the entrance and exit of this bullet and the lack of comminution of the skull came as a result of the "slight resistance offered by the temporal bone." This, of course, suggests that bone offering more resistance, such as the occipital bone, would lead to larger fractures.

So why were the fractures on the back of Kennedy's head so minor in comparison to those by the supposed exit?

In sum, then, the protocols published by the Secretary of War in 1896 provide reasons to doubt the Warren Commission's conclusions in 1964 and the House Select Committee's conclusions in 1979.

And we're just getting going... Read on.

In Wounds in War, published 1897, Dr. William Flack Stevenson reported on a series of tests performed under the guidance of Dr. Alwin Gustav Edmund Coler, at the suggestion of the German Minister of War. These tests were designed to study the wound ballistics of full metal jacket ammunition. This ammunition was designed to not expand and therefore not break up within the body, and thereby create less gruesome wounds on its primary target. The steel or copper-jacketed Mauser bullets fired in these tests were for the most part .311 caliber, and weighed 227 grains. They had an initial velocity of 2,034 fps. These bullets were more powerful than those fired in Oswald's weapon. Nearly 1,000 shootings of animals and dead men were studied, along with the suicidal or accidental shooting of 22 living men. Stevenson reported that "In bullet wounds of the head at very short ranges, the entrance and exit wounds can be defined as such: the roof of the skull is broken up, and the sutures burst open, but the lines of fracture follow no regular order: the scalp for the most part preserves its continuity and shows apertures only at the entrance and exit holes, from which brain matter protrudes. Even at 110 yards diminution of the destruction is observed: the extent of the injury is not so visible outside: but if the skull can be handled, the shattering of its roof and sides can be distinctly felt, and the splinters perceived to crepitate against each other. Brain matter protrudes at the exit wound, but rarely at the entrance side."

Thus, at 88 yards one would not expect an explosion of the skull and scalp at the point of the bullet's greatest release of energy, as subsequently proposed by Larry Sturdivan.

But Stevenson didn't stop there: "From range to range, as distance increases, a regular and steady decrease occurs in the amount of damage to the bony roof. Zones of splintering around the entrance and exit holes continue, but lines of fracture unconnected with these apertures, though present, become less numerous. From 1100 yards the lines of fracture are radial about the entrance and exit holes, and at 1760 yards they begin to cease to be observed, though one line of fracture which joins the apertures is always apparent up to this distance. At 1320 yards splintering around the entrance and exit holes is still fairly extensive: but at 1760 yards a clean-pierced entrance hole was first observed in a full skull, similar in all respects to one seen in a skull from which the brain had been removed."

And Stevenson didn't just report on the findings of others. He also presented the image below as an example of the "complete shattering of the calvarium" one encounters when studying the impact of a "modern bullet" at "short range."

Well, need I say it? This skull was shot at 8 yards range. Why didn't the top of this man's skull fly off into the air, a la Kennedy's?

Stevenson's description of the damage to the brain created by thoroughly "modern" bullets is also intriguing: "The destruction which occurs to the brain itself from bullet hits is, at short ranges, enormous. This is evidenced not only in the immediate neighbourhood of the bullet track, but throughout all the mass of the brain, a considerable quantity of which is driven out through the entrance and exit apertures. As the range increases the injury to the brain diminishes so rapidly that even at 110 yards the bullet may make a small cylindrical channel through it."

Thus, the damage to Kennedy's brain is also unexpected. Why, after being struck from 88 yards, was there still so much damage to the brain?

And its not as if Stevenson's book was out of line with what one will find in other books from this era. It was the rule and not the exception.

In 1901, Dr. George H. Makins published Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900. This was subtitled "Being Mainly a Clinical Study of the Nature and Effects of Injuries Produced by Bullets of Small Calibre." As much of the book was taken up by an extended discussion of the behavior of the new class of smaller, metal-jacketed bullets, of which the 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano round was a member, it was, yessiree, true to its name.

When discussing gunshot fractures to the skull with concurrent brain injury, moreover, Makins separated such fractures into four categories, the severest of these being "1. Extensive sagittal tracks passing deeply through the brain, and vertical wounds passing from base to vertex or vice versa, in the posterior two-thirds of the skull will be referred to as general injuries." He then proceeded to describe "General injuries. Fractures of this class may be treated almost apart. For their production the retention of a considerable degree of velocity on the part of the bullet was always necessary, and the results were consequently both extensive and severe. The aperture of entry was comparatively small, since to take so direct and lengthy a course through the skull the impact of the bullet needed to be at nearly an exact right angle to the surface of the bone. Any disposition to assume the oval form, therefore, depended mainly upon the degree of slope of the actual area of the skull implicated. In size the aperture of entry did not greatly exceed the calibre of the bullet; in outline it was seldom exactly circular, but rather roughly four-sided, with rounded angles, slightly oval, or pear-shaped...In the most severe cases we can only speak of the aperture of exit in a limited sense in so far as the opening in the scalp is concerned; this was often comparatively small, not exceeding 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Beneath this limited opening in the soft parts, the bone of the skull was smashed in a most extensive manner. The portion exactly corresponding to the point of exit of the bullet was carried altogether away, but around this point a number of large irregularly shaped fragments of bone, from 3/4 to 1 inch indiameter, were found loose, and often so displaced as to expose a considerable area of the dura-mater. Beyond the area of these loose fragments, fissures extended into the base and vertex, in the latter case often being limited in their extent by the nearest suture....Injury to the brain more than corresponded in extent to the fractures of the bone. Pulping of its tissue existed over a wide area both at the points of entrance and of exit. In the former position the amount of damage was the less, the gross changes roughly corresponding with the tissue directly implicated by the bullet itself, and the fragments of bone carried forward by it. The degree of splintering of the skull therefore in great part determined the severity of the lesion. At the exit aperture much more widespread destruction existed, while masses of brain tissue, small shreds of the membranes, fragments of bone, and debris from the scalp were found occasionally bound together by coagulated blood and protruding from an exit opening ot some size. The largest masses of such debris were most often seen in instances in which the bullet had entered by the base to escape at the vertex of the skull."

Now this is interesting. Makins studied actual wounds on actual gunshot victims, as opposed to wounds created on cadavers. And his results were much the same as previously reported. He failed to observe wounds of scalp and skull the size of Kennedy's wound. Not at entrance, and not at exit. And he associated the damage to the brain to the bullet itself and bone fragments loosed by the bullet, and not on an explosion caused by the velocity of the bullet.

His words stand in opposition to the subsequent testimony of Olivier and Sturdivan, which made out that it's perfectly routine for bullets of this type to explode a skull to such an extent large fragments fly up to the sky--and land a hundred feet or so away.

Still, it's not as if Makins never heard about such wounds. While listing the various kinds of head wounds he'd observed or heard about in South Africa during the Boer War, Makins comes to: "those in which large portions of the skull and scalp were actually blown away. I never witnessed one of these myself, but I recall two instances described to me by officers who lay near the wounded men on the field. In one the frontal region was carried away so extensively that, to repeat the familiar description given by the officer, 'he could see down into the man's stomach through his head.' In a second case the greater part of the occipital region was blown away in a similar manner, and this was of especial interest as the wounded man was seen to sit up on the buttocks and turn rapidly round three or four times before falling apparently dead. The observation offers interesting evidence of the result of an extensive gross lesion of the cerebellum. In the absence of exact information, it may well be that such injuries as the two latter were produced by some special form of bullet, but as both were produced while the patients were lying on the ground, and therefore especially liable to blows from ricochet bullets, I am inclined to attribute both to this cause."

Well, first of all, Makins is probably wrong when he attributes the severe damage to these skulls to their being hit by ricochets. The severe damage was more likely caused by the bullets' striking these skulls at an angle. Notice that he makes no mention of the small entrance wound he'd previously affiliated with bullets hitting the skull at a right angle. It seems likely, then, that the bullets destroying these skulls hit these skulls from the side on, in the first instance, the very front of the skull, and the second, the very back...and that they essentially blew out a wall.

And, yes, you read that right. Most of the wounds observed by Makins in South Africa came courtesy 7.0 Mauser ammunition. These bullets weighed 173.3 grains and were fired at a muzzle velocity of 2262 fps. This made them about 10% more powerful than the 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition purportedly used to kill Kennedy. And yet Makins NEVER saw a large gaping hole of exit on a skull like the one observed on Kennedy's skull--the one Sturdivan and his ilk would like us to believe is typical for this kind of ammunition. And it's even worse than that. Makins was so surprised by the two wounds similar to Kennedy's observed by others that he assumed they came courtesy "a special bullet" or a"ricochet."

Of course, Makins wasn't the only surgeon returning from South Africa to report on the wound ballistics of the newly-developed full-metal jacket ammunition (which had been made standard by agreement at the Hague Convention of 1899, at which Dum-Dum bullets were banned).

(Note: there were but two votes against this ban--that of England and the United States.)

Let's see what others had to say.

An October 25, 1902 article in The Lancet by Dr. L.G. Irvine proves even more damaging to the subsequent claims of Olivier and Sturdivan. In this article, Irvine, a surgeon with the South African Field Force, noted his "direct personal observations" regarding "30 cases of gunshot wounds of the skull and brain which came under my care or that of several of my colleagues in the military hospitals of South Africa." He then presented two of these cases. Case 1 was a suicide, in which the muzzle of a .303 caliber rifle was held against the skull, and the "explosion of the cordite was superadded to the effect of the bullet." Irvine notes "Practically the whole of the vault of the skull was broken up into six or seven loose fragments, roughly held together by the scalp, and the scalp itself was ripped completely across from the entrance wound in the right anterior temporal region to the exit wound in the left parietal area. From the exit wound a considerable area of bone had been carried out. The vault, indeed, was literally "blown to pieces," although the base of the skull, beyond some fissuring, was practically intact. The brain was utterly destroyed."

Well, this was not unlike Kennedy's wound. More damage to the brain, yes. But the same kind of damage to the skull.

Now consider Case 2. This was the case of a girl killed by the accidental discharge of a Lee-Metford rifle at three paces. The notes on this case reveal: "The entrance wound in the malar bone showed no sigh of fissuring, the bullet having drilled a clean small hole. The skin showed no sign of singeing. The exit wound in the occipital bone, a little to the right of the protuberance, was larger, freely admitting the forefinger, and there was a zone of stellate fissuring around this, but this fissuring did not run into the vault and there were no loose fragments. Some bone debris was found in the track of the bullet through the brain, which was rather more than an inch in diameter. The scalp wounds corresponded in size to those in the bone." Irvine then summarized: "the general integrity of the skull and the scalp was preserved."

He then concluded: "The two cases, it seems to me, are useful as standards and are of value medico-legally. In Case 1 the weapon was discharged in contact with the head and in Case 2 at the short distance of three paces. The size of the bullet and the explosive charge were absolutely alike, the weapons being very nearly identical. The striking difference between the extreme degree of destruction manifested in the one and the comparatively localized character of the injuries in the other must therefore have been due to the fact that while in the first the direct explosive effect of the cordite was superadded to the mechanical effect of the bullet in the second the effect of the bullet alone was present. There has been a good deal of loose talk during the war of heads that have been blown to pieces and of explosive bullets and the like. Hence I think that these cases form a useful basis for discussion. I do not believe that the Mauser or Lee-Metford bullet by itself, even at very close range, will 'blow the top of the head off.'"

So there you have it. From a surgeon who'd witnessed firsthand the destruction brought about by bullets roughly 20% more powerful than the bullet believed to have killed Oswald. Such ammunition would not blow the top of the head off. (The British .303 bullet is presumed to have weighed 174 grains and to have been fired at a muzzle velocity of 2,500 f/s.) Damage to the skull to the extent Kennedy's skull was damaged was only rarely encountered--and only then when encountering a skull which was fired upon with the muzzle of the rifle pressed against the head.

Now, one of the surprises one comes across when sifting through these old books and articles is that some of the doctors studying the wound ballistics of the new ammunition argued for a return to the Dum-dum bullets recently banned. To wit, Dr. John Chalmers Da Costa in Modern Surgery (1903) argued: "It has been found that the modern small bullet, unless it strikes a vital part or large bone, lacks 'stopping power,' and in warfare with savages the bullet must have stopping power, or the wounded man will continue to fight and charge. Civilized men will usually stop when hit, savages often will not; hence, in warfare with barbarous people the ordinary bullet must be modified. In the Dumdum bullet a portion of lead at the apex of the projectile is left uncovered, and the bullet when it strikes spreads out--mushrooms, as it is called--and inflicts an enormous wound which 'stops' the most ferocious and fanatical. German surgeons denounce such bullets as inhumane, but Stevenson and other English surgeons say that the Dumdum bullet is more humane than the Snider or Martini-Henry." (Note that these were lead bullets, not full-metal jacket bullets.)

And no, Da Costa wasn't misrepresenting Stevenson. Here's William Flack Stevenson in Wounds in War (1897): "Stopping power' in a rifle-bullet is only a real necessity in fighting against a fanatical savage enemy, who will advance as long as he is physically capable of doing so; the civilized soldier does not act in a similar manner, and 'stopping power' in Continental warfare is only required against cavalry and artillery horses..."

Yikes.

Germans Shooting Corpses, Part Zwei

In 1904, American doctors William T. Bull and Walton Martin translated and published A System of Practical Surgery, a series of books on surgery put together by the "German surgeons" denounced by Stevenson and Da Costa--Dr.s Ernst Bergmann, Paul Bruns, and Jan Mikulicz. Volume 1 of this series, by Bergmann and Dr. Rudolf Ulrich Kronlein, covered Surgery of the Head. It also reported on the tests performed by Coler and previously reported by Stevenson, as well as tests run by Bruns and others.

Here is Bergmann's summary of the results of these tests:

"The modern projectiles of small firearms that have been introduced into all the larger armies have been characterized by their small calibre, their hard shell (mantle), and their high initial velocity...At the present time the action of projectiles is studied by shooting at the human cadaver and at living animals...In gunshot fired at very short range the skullcap, together with the scalp covering it, is torn into pieces which with the mangled brain are scattered quite a distance. At a range of 50 metres (160 feet) the scalp is preserved and continues to hold the skull together, though the latter is broken into many fragments. The scalp shows two defects, with lacerated edges, from which brain-tissue exudes; the wound of entrance and that of exit. At a range of 100 metres (325 feet) the destruction of the skull is somewhat less, though two zones of comminution can be found grouped about the wounds of entrance and exit. The lines of fracture are in part arranged radially, in part encircling the bullet-hole like a series of bursting and bending fractures. The fissures may become united with one another, forming a network spread over the entire skull. The diameter of the wound of exit in the skin does not exceed 20-30 mm. At increasing range the damage done by the projectile continues to grow less. The zones of comminution do not run into each other, but are more sharply circumscribed. At a range of 800 to 1200 meters (2600 to 4000 feet) the fissures encircling the bullet-holes disappear, and only the radial fissures are present; these disappear at a range of 1600 metres (5200 feet) and upward, except that there is one fissure connecting the wound of entrance with the wound of exit. Even this is no longer present at a range of from 1800 to 2000 metres (5000 to 6500 feet); at this distance there are clean-cut bullet-holes. It was not until a range of 2700 metres (8700 feet) had been reached that the skull was not perforated and the bullet remained embedded in the brain. Naturally, individual injuries do not always bear the same accurate relation to the given distance of range; in the first place, owing to special circumstances as, for example, the varying thickness of the skull in different individuals, and furthermore on account of the fact that the angle at which a projectile strikes an individual is also variable."

Within this chapter, moreover, the authors provided a photograph, Fig. 36, captioned "Gun-shot wounds of the skull." It is presented below. It is presumably a depiction of a wound created from more than 100 meters, but not much more. The entrance is on the back of the skull, and is at the center of a fracture pattern greater than the pattern surrounding the supposed entrances on Kennedy's skull. The exit is above the temple near the coronal suture. The trajectory is thereby quite close to that proposed for Kennedy's head wound by the HSCA. And yet the exit defect is far, far smaller than the defect near the temple on Kennedy's skull.

And, no, photos such as those above were not cherry-picked to mislead. In 1908, Dr. C.G. Spencer presented a similar photo in his manual Gunshot Wounds. This photo was provided during a discussion of the small caliber ammunition then in use--of which Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm ammunition was among the least deadly.

Here it is:

Note that this is another photo provided by Stevenson...of a skull wound created at a "very short"range.

Here's Spencer's discussion of such a wound: "At short ranges, 150 yards or less,the damage may be very severe. The entrance wound in the scalp is still small, and there may be no very extensive injury to the bone about the entrance aperture, or there may be more or less linear fissuring, which is more marked when the entrance is near the base of the skull. The exit wound is large, 3/4 inch or more in diameter...In the worst cases at quite close ranges the sutures are torn open, and sometimes large portions of the skull are blown away."

Well, this is a bit vague. But notice the adjectives. It is only at "quite close" range that a large portion of the skull might be blown away. And the skull presented, of a wound created at "very short" range, gives no indication much skull has been blown away. When discussing wounds created from "short" ranges, moreover (of which Kennedy's wound would have been created from a longer distance than average), Spencer offers that such wounds are 3/4 inches or more in diameter (as opposed to the 4 inches or so claimed of Kennedy's wound).

It seems clear, then, that Kennedy's large head wound was far larger than any of these early wound ballistics experts would have expected, given the purported ammunition, purported range of fire, and purported trajectory.

Let us now consider the words of French physician Dr. Edmond Delorme, in his classic text War Surgery (1915). Of modern day rifle bullets, he observed: "They present circular or oval-shaped apertures of entry...As for the aperture of exit, on the table the bullet first passes through--i.e. on the inner table--it is circular, regular in shape, cut as with a punch, and on the outer table, the last one perforated, it is enlarged, bevelled, splintered..." He then offered "When the velocity of the bullet is excessive, the whole cerebral substance may be dilacerated...The aperture of exit is large, and from it flows a diffluent cerebral mass...With double perforations, survival is only possible when the firing has been from a long range, and the velocity of the bullet has been low."

Ahem. Note that Delorme connected large exits with "excessive" velocity (which is to say... shots made from a short distance), and that the typical exit (i.e. one created by a typical bullet traveling at a typical velocity from a typical distance) he described was merely "enlarged" when compared to the entry wound.

It seems clear, then, that we can add Delorme to the list of those suggesting Kennedy's large head wound was unexpected, and unlikely, under the circumstances described by Olivier and then Sturdivan.

Shattered

This brings us then, to Gunshot Injuries, by Dr. Louis Anatole La Garde (first published in 1911 and revised in 1916). Two photographs from this classic are displayed at the top of this page. The first is of a skull of a man shot in the back of the head, with the bullet exiting his forehead (note: this was the prisoner whose death was first detailed by Girard in 1896), and the other is of a skull of a man shot in the forehead, with the bullet exiting the back of his head. In both photos, the entrance of the bullet on the skull is considerably larger than the entrance on Kennedy's skull, and the exit considerably smaller. In both photos, large skull fractures stretch forward from the entrance location. Neither of these skulls, for that matter, demonstrates a disruption at the center of the skull from the explosion of a temporary cavity, as one would expect from reading Larry Sturdivan's book, The JFK Myths. This is incredibly problematic for those claiming Kennedy's wounds to be pretty much what one would expect should a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet strike someone on the back of the head, from a distance of 88 yards.

Still, one might venture that the bullets striking these men transmitted far less energy, and thus created a much smaller temporary cavity in the brain, than the bullet striking Kennedy.

But this just isn't true. The bullet striking the skull in Figure 104 was reported to be a Krag-Jorgensen .30 caliber, jacketed bullet. This bullet weighed 220 grains, as compared to the 160 grains of the bullets to Oswald's gun, and traveled at an initial velocity of 2000 fps, as compared to the reported 2165 fps of bullets fired by Oswald's rifle. It was also fired at an escaping prisoner from 90 feet away, barely one-third the distance of the sniper's nest from Kennedy at frame 313 of the Zapruder film (which was reported to be 265 feet).

Let that sink in. The bullet in this shooting was 37.5 % heavier than the bullet striking Kennedy, traveling around the same speed, and on a similar trajectory through the skull. So why didn't this bullet burst the prisoner's skull open in the middle, and send large bone fragments sailing across the sky?

The other skull featured in Gunshot Injuries confirms there's a problem. The bullet striking the skull in Figure 105 was a .45 caliber bullet, weighing 500 grains, fired from a Springfield Rifle, with an initial velocity of 1301 fps. This bullet was fired at a cadaver from a simulated 250 yards. A chart found on WWW.frfogspad.com. a webpage devoted to the Springfield Rifle, reports that this bullet would be traveling around 1075 fps at 250 yards. This suggests that the bullet striking the skull in Figure 105, all things being equal, transmitted only about 10% less energy to the brain and skull than the bullet striking Kennedy, while creating a permanent cavity nearly twice as large. Shouldn't this skull also have burst open? Shouldn't this skull have left as large an exit?

The most palatable explanation, of course, is that all things weren't equal, and that the bullet striking Kennedy exploded, and thereby transmitted more of its energy to the brain. One can then contrast that the bullets striking these two men did not explode, and that they in fact continued on to strike other objects. This explanation, however, is undercut by Larry Sturdivan himself and his assurance that at the "actual point of exit" the bullet striking Kennedy had lost only "a small amount of mass."

Hmmm... As it's hard to see how an exploding bullet could lose only "a small amount of mass," it seems clear that Sturdivan, not unlike Dr. Baden and his HSCA colleagues, doesn't actually believe the bullet exploded. As Sturdivan contends that fragments from this bullet cracked the windshield of the limo, and that another dented the metal trim, and that still another chipped concrete more than 200 feet past Kennedy's location at frame 313, for that matter, it seems clear he believes that, not only did the bullet not expend all its energy in the brain, but that it had plenty in reserve.

Well, then, why did Kennedy's skull erupt mid-trajectory, when skulls struck by more powerful bullets on a similar trajectory did not?

The Rise of the Gutter

Or, more to the point, could it be that what Sturdivan thought was mid-trajectory, was not actually mid-trajectory, but the impact point for a bullet creating a "gutter" wound?

Let's go back. While the first articles on the Second Boer War focused on the less severe skull wounds received by those shot with full-metal jacket ammunition, as opposed to lead bullets or dum-dum bullets, the articles written in the years after the Second Boer War began to tell a different story, and relate that full-metal jacket bullets, when striking the skull at a very slight angle, could be every bit as deadly as non-jacketed bullets.

Let's return to Gunshot Injuries, by Dr. Louis Anatole La Gard. La Gard noted that the fractures left behind when a bullet hits the skull at a slight angle (gutter fractures) were "especially common with the use of steel-jacketed bullets" and went so far as to say they were "characteristic of jacketed bullet wounds." He even presented the chart below, created from data supplied by Dr. Stevenson during the Boer War.

Huh... Of the 136 skull wounds studied by Stevenson, 76 of them failed to have a separate exit. Gutter wounds were so commonplace, in fact, that more than half the survivors of gunshot wounds to the head observed by Stevenson had received some sort of gutter wound.

Now note the bias. Most all the early data about gunshot wounds, and the relative frequency of gutters, penetrations, and perforations, etc, comes courtesy military surgeons, who reported on what they saw. In other words, those receiving wounds so terrible they died immediately, or before they could reach a hospital, were not included in the data.

Let's return to Bergman and Kronlein in A System of Practical Surgery Vol. 1 (1904). There, it was admitted that the penetrating wounds described in the book were rarely observed by military surgeons: "Injuries like those produced by the German infantry rifle in experiments at 100 metres...the author has seen only in those left dead on the battlefield or in soldiers brought in a dying condition to the dressing stations..."

It was then noted that "The majority of the solders wounded in the skull showed grooved and gutter-shaped gunshot-wounds, the latter being principally penetrating furrows or elongated losses of substance. These injuries, which were produced by bullets striking more or less at a tangent, showed certain peculiarities. On studying an extensive collection of them, as the author had the opportunity of doing in 20 specimens of this kind, one can always notice that at one point of the gouged-out loss of substance the edge of the defect is more sharply cut or smoothly broken than in the rest of the furrow. This point is always at the end of the groove pointing toward the direction from which the bullet came, and marks therefore the site of impact. Further, there are found about this point one or two concentric circles starting from and coming back to the same point. The mechanism in the occurrence of these circular fissures is the same as in the similar circular fissures occurring in connection with bending fractures produced by blows with blunt instruments, such as hammers and bolts. A bullet entering the skull at an angle at first presses in the skull and then proceeds to produce fracture. The portion of the skull depressed by the forcible impulse of the projectile undergoes the same changes as are produced in connection with less degrees of violence. It is bent in, broken at the periphery of the depressed area, and returns to its normal position. At the point where the bullet having broken out a piece of the skull leaves the same, the changes produced are as constant as those described at the point of impact. At this place there is always an irregular fracture, with comminution, as well as a few or numerous fissures. Some of the detached splinters are forced by the bullet under the edge of the bone or into the brain, other splinters may remain embedded in the soft parts, and still others be torn away with the projectile.

The comminution of the inner table is more extensive at the site of impact than at the wound of exit, where, however, the outer table is more seriously damaged. The outline resulting from comminution of the bone may vary very much. At times the wound of exit is broader than any other part of the loss of substance, at others narrow and elongated.

The illustration Fig. 42 shows the above-described conditions. A bullet struck the skull of a commanding officer in front, in the direction indicated by a. Two fissures, b, and c, extend from the broader end and are joined by a third transverse fissure. At the latter end of the defect the outer table is not so sharply cut as at a, but irregularly fractured. Two large fragments of bone had been forced under the edge of the fracture. This case possesses additional interest owing to the fact that at the same time both orbital plates were fractured. The fissures b and c may therefore be considered beginning bursting fractures, as well as the fissures, and comminution of the orbital plates. The powerful impact of the bullet altered the shape of the skull as a whole, as signifiedby its bursting along the line of the affected meridian. The circular furrow surrounding the anterior end of the loss of substance is a bending fracture, in the same sense that the fissure connecting b and c is, which also follows a circular course. In other cases numerous radial fissures extended in all directions from the site of a projectile that had become embedded in the skull."

So let's be clear. There was a bias in much of the early reporting on the wound ballistics of full-metal jacket ammunition...where the worst head wounds went unreported...and where a large percentage of the head wounds observed were actually tangential wounds.

This point was echoed, moreover, by reports from the first world war.

In Fractures and Dislocations, published 1915, Dr. Miller E. Preston observed: "The completely jacketed high-velocity projectile, such as used in the army, may penetrate the head with a minimum of trauma: the wound of entrance is small and clean-cut; the wound of exit is only a trifle larger." He then warned: "Any projectile either low or high in velocity is likely to produce extensive comminution when the skull is struck a glancing blow."

And Preston wasn't the only one noticing gutter (or tangential) wounds. In 1916's Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Edward A. Archibald noted that the "great majority" of head wounds observed by him at the General Hospital in Paris were "tangential" wounds, and described a "broad shallow gutter" in one such wound, which he attributed to either a high-velocity bullet or shell fragment.

Now, should you be wondering what one of the "great majority" of head wounds observed by Archibald looked like, in living color, you should take a look below. (Image courtesy Craniocerebral Gunshot Injuries, an article in the Bulletin of Emergency and Trauma, 2016.)

Well, think about it. If the worst head wounds went largely unreported, because the victims failed to make it to a hospital, and a majority of the head wounds observed were gutter wounds, then it follows that the worst gutter (or tangential) wounds went unreported.

So...what did the worst of the worst gutter (or tangential) wounds look like?

Well, for that we need to use a little imagination.

The image above comes from Stevenson's Wounds in War (1897). It shows the large entrance hole created by a bullet striking tangentially on the back of the head. Note that the bullet has been split, and that part of the bullet has proceeded along the top of the skull beneath the scalp. This is presumed to have been a non-jacketed bullet. Now imagine if that bullet had been a jacketed bullet. The force impacting on the front ridge of the skull defect would have been an even greater force, and the bone fragment marked by the fracture moving forward of the defect would have exploded upwards from the skull, creating an even larger defect. Now look below.

The image above comes from La Gard's Gunshot Injuries (1916). It was previously published as Figure 72 in Makins' Surgical Experiences in South Africa (1901). It shows the appearance of a bullet that has entered the skull slightly posterior to the location of the large defect on Kennedy and exited the skull slightly posterior to where the fatal bullet is presumed to have exited. The type of bullet and range of fire for this bullet was not listed. But imagine what this skull would have looked like should this bullet have had a bit more energy--and where the lifted sections of roof had met in the middle.

There would have been a giant gaping hole along the top right side of the head, such as was observed on Kennedy, correct?

Hmmm... This metaphorical trip through Google's stacks confirms then that the damage to Kennedy's skull was not what one would expect from a full-metal jacket bullet fired from 88 yards and perforating his parietal bone, and that this was possibly because Kennedy's wound was not a through and through wound, but a tangential wound of both entrance and exit.

If only there wasn't something--say a massive U.S. Government report--that supports as much.

Oh, wait a second... There is.

When Johnny Came Marching Home

Here's the Medical Department of the U.S. Army in its Manual of Neurosurgery (1919): "In his Handbuch der Praktischen Chirurgic, Bergmann gave in full the results of experiments conducted by himself and others upon wounds of the head made by the modern rifle. Briefly, it may be said that at close range the skull and scalp are literally torn to pieces and the brain disorganized; that on penetration at 50 yards the scalp remains intact, though the skull is greatly comminuted and brain tissue oozes from the wound of entrance and exit; at 100 yards there occur zonal fractures which tend to be limited to the area about the wounds of entrance and exit, while meridional fissures radiate from these points, showing that explosive action is still effective; at 1,000 yards the zonal cracks encircling the bullet holes disappear, and only the radial fissures remain; at the distance of 1 mile the fissures largely disappear, leaving the two clean-cut bullet holes; and not until 11/2 miles does the projectile fail to emerge after entering the skull on one side. All this, of course, is merely relative, for there would be great difference, not only in individual skulls, but in the position in which they were struck."

Yes, that's correct. The first world war ended 11-11-18, and the U.S. Army released a manual shortly thereafter relating what it had learned about brain surgery during the war, and quoted a decades-old German study when describing the destructive capabilities of modern ammunition.

Well, this proves two things: 1) performing wound ballistics studies is not an easy task, even during wartime, and 2) the German studies had stood the test of time, and were not at odds with what the American doctors compiling the Army's Manual of Neurosurgery had witnessed during the war.

And the U.S. Army doctors behind its Manual of Neurosurgery weren't the only ones still quoting the studies of the recently-defeated Germans...

Treatise on Fractures in General, Industrial, and Military Practice, published 1921, similarly cites Bergmann, et al. There, Dr.s John Roberts and James Kelley claimed that German scientists had fired a "hard lead, steel-mantled bullet" from a "small calibre arm" that "had an initial velocity of 2,000 feet per second" and that they had found "that with the modern, hard-shell, high velocity bullet at short range, the skull cap, together with the scalp covering it, is torn off. At a range of 50 meters there is a wound of entrance and one of exit, the scalp is preserved, and the skull held together, although the latter was broken into many fragments. At 100 meters there is less destruction of the skull; and the lines of fracture are arranged radially, in part encircling the bullet holes like a bending and bursting fracture. The diameter of the wound of exit is about 20-30 mm..."

In the decade after the war, moreover, raw data was released which further supports the probability Sturdivan's 1978 testimony was nonsense.

In 1927, the U.S. Army published a multi-volume set The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, that was designed to record and pass on what medical knowledge was gained in the first World War (which was at that time the only world war).

Volume XI, Surgery, is of particular interest. Within that volume the Army describes a classification system for head injuries developed by Dr. Harvey Cushing. Grade 1 is a wound to the scalp only. Grade 2 is a wound of the scalp with an underlying fracture of the skull, where there is no penetration of the dura overlying the brain. Grade 3 is a depressed fracture of the skull where the dura is punctured.

This brings us to Grades 4-9. These are depicted below.

This volume also features a chart listing the fatality rate for one hospital for those receiving the 9 grades of head wounds.

A subsequent chapter on a different hospital provides additional data.

Here, then, are the number of mortal wounds in comparison to the total wounds for those treated at this second hospital.

• Grade 1: Wounds of the scalp 1/22. (Total for both hospitals 1/91 1%.)

• Grade 2: Cranial fracture without dural penetration 5/54. (Total for both hospitals 6/87 7%.)

• Grade 3: Cranial fractures with depression and dural penetration, but without extrusion of brain. 2/18. (Total for both hospitals 4/34 12%.)

• Grade 4: Wounds usually of gutter type, with brain extruding and indriven bone fragments 6/25. (Total for both hospitals 23/48 48%.)

• Grade 5: Wounds usually of penetrating type with indriven bone fragments plus metal 15/41. (Total for both hospitals 18/55 33%.)

• Grade 6: Wounds of Type IV and V with penetration of bone or metal opening ventricles (by bone fragments) 6/14, (by metal projectile) 16/16. (Total for both types at both hospitals 27/36 75%.)

• Grade 7: Craniofacial wounds of orbitofrontal or temperopetrosal type in which ethmoid or petrosal sinuses are opened. Primary closure impossible and risk of secondary infection great 11/15. (Total for both hospitals 13/18 72%.)

• Grade 8: Perforating or transversing wounds 4/5. (Total for both hospitals 6/9 67%.)

• Grade 9: Extensive bursting fractures 5/10. (Total for both hospitals 7/12 58%.)

Note that Grades 4, 6, 7, and 8 wounds were the most lethal gunshot wounds.

Now note that the image for Grade 8 wounds depicts a much smaller exit on the skull than the supposed exit on Kennedy's skull. Well, this confirms what we've seen over and over--that the large supposed exit wound on Kennedy's head was either not an exit--and instead a wound of both entrance and exit---or an inexplicably over-sized wound.

As to why Grade 4 wounds were more lethal than Grade 5 wounds, this was explained in Dr. Samuel Harvey's discussion of Grade 4 and Grade 5 wounds.

Grade 4: "The great majority—one might say practically all of these cases—were the result of tangential wounds in which the damage to the brain was not only direct from laceration by the indriven bone, but also in many cases from the concussion and general commotion of the adjacent area of the cerebrum. If one could have a blow of the same intensity delivered without any fracture of the skull, there would undoubtedly be severe concussion and in some instances a fatal issue from the intensity of the intracranial damage by "commotion"; secondly, it is in these cases that the pathway of infection from the scalp to the intracranial contents is most widely open. Almost without exception, they arrived with gutter wounds, funnel-shaped and with cranial contents extruding and overflowing the scalp."

Grade 5: "It is a surprising fact that in this group of cases, where the foreign body was retained within the cranium, the results were distinctly better than in the preceding group. A missile striking the skull at an angle, especially after penetrating the helmet, is frequently deflected and does not penetrate, but by its impact drives bone fragments into the cranium over a large area with great laceration. If, on the other hand, it strikes at an approximate right angle and penetrates, especially if it is of small size, the greater part of the damage is produced by the missile itself, the number of bone fragments is small, and consequently the sum total of the damage done is less than in the tangential blow. Then, too, the penetrating wound frequently produces a punctate wound of entrance with infection; this infection, however, from the scalp surface is not as rapid as through the gutter-shaped wound of the Group IV class."

Now, here's something else to consider.

These photographs show the fracturing and splintering one can find in Grade 4 wounds (gutter wounds). The large defect on Kennedy's skull was a bit bigger, but had a similar pattern of fracture and fragmentation.

Well, all this should lead us to wonder if, yessiree, Kennedy's large head wound wasn't a gutter wound, or tangential wound (whatever you want to call it)--a wound of both entrance and exit.

6.5mm Military Rifle Wounds

As demonstrated over the last few chapters, the wound ballistics of most every rifle known to man has been studied, and has been written up sometime somewhere.

This realization led me to a question, and a quest.

Had anyone besides Dr. Demosthen (in 1894) and Dr. Olivier (in 1964) studied the wound ballistics of a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle? And, if so, where could I find such a study?

This led me, then, back to where so many quests have ended--UCLA. Specifically, the bio-med stacks.

And so one bright day at UCLA I spent hour after hour combing through old Military Surgeon Magazines in search of a report, any report, on any World War II battle between the allied forces and Italy, in hopes of reading first-hand descriptions of Mannlicher-Carcano wounds. And failed.

But my efforts were not in vain. I was able to find studies of wounds caused by similar rifles, and these helped convince me that the Clark Panel and HSCA’s purported wound of entrance near the cowlick was far from the “typical entrance wound” they described in their report, and that the official explanation for Kennedy's large head wound was in fact incorrect. Insultingly so.

Of particular help was a World War II report by Dr.s Ashley Oughterson, Harry Hull, Francis Sutherland, and Daniel Greiner on allied casualties in Bougainville, Fiji. This report was published in Wound Ballistics, by the Medical Department of the Army, and featured more than one hundred summaries of autopsies performed on soldiers. These soldiers were dead upon arrival at the hospital, and were thereby more seriously wounded than those described in previous studies, which dealt almost exclusively with soldiers who'd survived long enough to be treated at a military hospital. Equally important, many of these soldiers died after being shot by Japanese 6.5mm rifles. Other online articles I found revealed that these Japanese Arisaka rifles fired a bullet slightly smaller than the bullets fired by Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano but that their bullets traveled slightly faster, imparting an almost identical amount of energy into the wound. (The articles I found indicated the Arisaka bullet weighed 139 grains and traveled at 2395 fps and the Mannlicher-Carcano bullet weighed 160 grains and traveled at 2200 fps. If any ballistics experts out there disagree with these numbers or with my assumption of a similarity between Arisaka and Carcano wound ballistics, please let me know.)

The doctors summarized their findings regarding the effects of rifle ammunition on the head as follows: "Head.—Head wounds produced by rifle fire were characterized without exception by extensive destruction of the brain and skull. Laceration, massive herniation, or total absence of large portions of the brain were the usual findings. Large areas of bony skull and scalp were frequently avulsed with shattering or widespread comminution of the residual portions of the skull. Ofttimes, bone fragments were driven deep into the brain tissue. Perforating skull wounds were more common than gutter wounds. Frequently, long, stellate fracture lines radiated across the base of the skull. Extensive damage was sometimes observed in one hemisphere of the brain, when the traversing missile track lay entirely in the opposite hemisphere. All these findings were interpreted as additional evidence in support of the modern hypotheses of wound production by high-velocity missiles.

Well, so far, so good. From this summary it sounds like the doctors would have claimed Kennedy's head wound was a typical wound.

Unfortunately, a closer inspection of the autopsy protocols proves this not to be the case.

The summaries of the autopsies in which the deceased had received a 6.5 mm bullet to the head follow. These refer to the bullets as .25 caliber, which wasn't quite true. According to Bolt Action Rifles, by Fred de Haas and Wayne Zwoll, "much erroneous information circulated about that "small caliber Jap rifle" during WWII, with many believing its 6.5 mm bullets, which were .263 caliber, to be only .25 caliber. These protocols have been arranged in order of shot distance. For the sake of brevity, references to wounds other than head wounds have been removed.

• Case 10: A Fijian soldier, peering over the edge of an open foxhole to fire at the enemy, was struck by a .25 caliber Japanese bullet fired from a distance of 15 yards. He was killed instantly at 1400 hours on 1 April 1944. Examination revealed a perforating wound of the head and multiple wounds of the extremities. The head wound of entry (3.7 cm. in diameter) was located at the inner canthus of the left eye and the exit wound (8.7 cm. in diameter) at the vertex of the skull. The skull was comminuted, and there was almost complete destruction of the left half of the brain.

• Case 2: A Fijian soldier, while on patrol, was standing behind a tree when he was struck by a .25 caliber Japanese bullet fired from a distance of 20 yards. He was killed instantly on 31 March 1944. Examination revealed a perforating wound of the head. The entrance wound (0.5 cm. in diameter) was situated over the lateral border of the right supraorbital ridge and the exit wound (1.2 cm. in diameter) over the occipital bone. Stellate fractures of the frontal and occipital bones radiated from both perforations. The frontal and parietal lobes of the brain were perforated, and the cerebellum was grooved.

• Case 11: A soldier of the 129th Infantry was crouching and moving forward in a skirmish line when he was struck by a Japanese .25 caliber bullet fired from a distance of 20 yards. He was killed instantly at 1300 hours on 24 March 1944. Cursory examination revealed an extensive gutter wound 15 x 10 cm. involving the left temporal, occipital, and parietal regions. Large portions of these bones and underlying brain were absent. Extensive comminution of the remaining cranial vault was present.

• Case 8: A soldier of the 129th Infantry, 37th Division, was standing on his bunk in an open tent in battalion headquarters firing at the enemy, when he was struck by a .25 caliber Japanese bullet fired from a distance of 25 yards. He was killed instantly at 0630 hours on 24 March 1944. Examination revealed a gutter wound (5 x 2½ cm.) of the left parietal region. Brain tissue exuded through the perforation in his helmet. Lacerated brain tissue, portions of the frontal and parietal lobes, was herniated through the wound. Marked subgaleal hemorrhage was present. The cranial vault was comminuted by stellate fractures. Both hemispheres of the brain were extensively lacerated. A mushroomed .25 caliber bullet was found in the right anterior fossa.

• Case 20: A soldier of the 129th Infantry was sitting on a log holding a flamethrower when he was struck in the head by a .25 caliber Japanese bullet fired from a distance of 75 yards. His perforated helmet was found lying on the ground. He was killed instantly at 1130 hours on 27 March 1944. Examination revealed a gutter wound 17.5 x 4 cm. involving the right temporal and frontal regions. There were deep lacerations of the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. Disorganized brain tissue filled the wound. Extensive comminution of the cranial vault was found.

• Case 25: A soldier of the 129th Infantry was standing in an open foxhole when he was struck by a .25 caliber Japanese bullet fired by a sniper from a distance of 75 yards. His helmet was perforated. He was wounded in action at 1430 hours on 24 March 1944 and died 5 hours later, despite shock therapy. Examination revealed a gutter wound (15 x 7½ cm.) occupying the right parieto-occipital region. Portions of these bones as well as the underlying cerebral hemisphere were absent. A small metal fragment was recovered from the remaining brain tissue and was identified as part of the jacket of a .25 caliber Japanese bullet. The right lateral ventricle was filled with blood. Petechial hemorrhages were present in the left half of the brain. Stellate fracture lines coursed through the bones of the vault.

• Case 59: A soldier of the 24th Infantry, while running forward in a skirmish line, was struck by .25 caliber Japanese machine gun bullets fired from a distance of 75 yards. He was killed instantly at 1100 hours on 14 April 1944. Examination revealed multiple wounds. (One) bullet struck the left side of the face producing a gutter wound 12.5 x 3.7 x 0.25 cm., which destroyed the left temporomandibular joint.

• Case 17: A soldier of the 129th Infantry, while walking up a jungle trail, was struck by a Japanese .25 caliber bullet fired from a distance of 100 yards. He was killed instantly at 1320 hours on 24 March 1944. Examination revealed a perforating wound of the head. The wound of entrance (2.5 cm. in diameter) traversed the right infraorbital ridge; the exit wound (3 cm. in diameter) was located in the left parieto-occipital region. When the body was received, the helmet had not been removed and brain tissue was extruded over its surface.

• Case 5: A Fijian soldier, while on patrol, peered over a ridge and was struck in the head by a .25 caliber Japanese machine gun bullet fired from a distance of 150 yards. He was killed instantly at 1000 hours on 26 March 1944. Examination revealed a gutter wound (6.5 x 2.5 cm.) in the center of the forehead with a portion of the frontal bone blown away. Fracture lines radiated through the temporal, parietal, and occipital bones. Both frontals and the right temporal lobes were lacerated. A bullet was recovered from the right temporal fossa.

• Case 18: A U.S. soldier was standing in a cleared area digging a foxhole when he was struck in the head by a .25 caliber bullet. The shot was fired by a Japanese sniper at a distance of over 150 yards. The soldier was killed instantly at 1500 hours on 26 March 1944. Examination revealed a perforating wound of the head. The entrance wound (0.6 cm. in diameter) was posterior to the left mastoid process, and the exit wound (1.2 cm. in diameter) was at the outer canthus of the right eye. The bullet coursed in a superior and anterior direction and perforated the atlas; it then crossed the foramen magnum and severed the brain stem at the lower level of the pons. The track continued through the base of the skull, right ethmoid, and right orbit to the point of exit.

• Case 19: A U.S. soldier, while on duty as a sniper in the jungle, peered over a protecting log and was struck in the head by a .25 caliber bullet. The shot was fired by a Japanese sniper from an unknown distance. The soldier was killed instantly on 24 March 1944. Cursory examination revealed a penetrating wound of the skull, with the wound of entrance in the left orbit. A compound comminuted fracture of the skull with marked brain destruction was present. (NOTE: while this entrance wound was not measured, it was photographed, and revealed to be many times the purported size of the entrance on the back of Kennedy's head.)

• President Kennedy: The President of the United States was shot while driving down the street in an open limousine. The shot was believed to have been fired from a distance of 90 yards. The doctors at his autopsy claimed that a 1.5 x .6 cm entrance wound was found low on the back of his head, and that a 17 x 10 cm exit wound was found on the top of his head above his right temple. They also claimed that the right side of his skull was largely fractured.

Notice anything? Surprisingly, 6 of the 11 bullets discussed in the autopsy protocols didn’t leave easily distinguishable entrances and exits on the skull, but left large “gutter” or "tangential" type wounds of both entrance and exit. Even if one were to exclude the "gutter" wounds of cases 8, 20 and 25 under the dubious assumption the perforation of these soldier's helmets led to the creation of the gutter, 3 of the 8 remaining bullets created "gutter" wounds.

Now note the comparative size of the entrance and exit defects. If one excludes the three bullets first striking helmets, the entrance on Kennedy's skull was comparatively small, the third smallest of 8. While the exit in Kennedy's skull wasn’t measured until the scalp was reflected and parts of his skull fell to the table, the autopsy photos taken before the measurements and the size of the skull fragments found outside the body reveal an exit of at least 5 x 10 cm stretching from the top of Kennedy’s head to his temple. This proves that it, too, was unusual. It is, in fact, far larger than any non-gutter wound observed in the Bougainville Campaign, outside the one observed on Case 10, created by a rifle over 200 feet closer to its victim. As we don't know at what point in the autopsy the wound on Case 10 was measured, moreover, it remains quite possible that the 8.7 cm measurement for this wound was also taken after bone fell to the table. If so, then it too was much smaller than the 17 x 10 cm wound measured on Kennedy after his scalp had been reflected.

So why was the exit wound on Kennedy's head so...large?

The thought occurs that the wound on Kennedy's head only appears to be larger than expected, and that the reality is that the wounds attributed to the Japanese 6.5 mm ammunition in the Bougainville Campaign were smaller than expected. No, scratch that. We've already studied some old reports proving Kennedy's wound was far larger than expected. And besides, Dr. James Beyer dispensed with this notion in the first chapter of Wound Ballistics, the book put out by the Army in which the Bougainville Campaign study was first discussed. He wrote:

"The 6.5 mm. (0.256 in.) (fig. 9) bullet, especially one made with a gilding metal (an alloy of copper and zinc) jacket, when it hit a target had an explosive effect and tended to separate, leaving the entire jacket in the wound while the bullet went on through. Small globules of lead scattered through the wound and embedded themselves elsewhere in the flesh. This condition was the result of the fact that the rear-section walls of the bullet jacket, which was filled with a lead core, were thinner than the forward walls. The sudden stoppage of the high-velocity bullet when it hit an object produced a tendency to burst the rear walls causing an "explosion." The lead core, which had a greater specific gravity, penetrated, leaving behind the relatively lighter jacket from which it had been discharged. The bullets made with cupronickel jackets had more of a tendency to retain their lead cores because of the greater tensile strength of the alloy when compared with the strength of the gilding-metal-jacketed bullet.

The unusually large exit wound openings often found with this caliber bullet were due to the natural instability of the bullet and possibly to its being fired from inferior weapons. Similarly, there were elliptic entry wounds, a result of the "keyholing" effect of bullets hitting with their sides."

So, the wounds created by 6.5 mm ammunition in the Bougainville Campaign were "unusually large." And yet still not nearly as large as the wound received in the Dallas Campaign... Hmm...

While some will say that the small entrance/large exit on Kennedy’s skull came as a result of the 6.5 mm bullet’s breaking up, this small entrance/large exit anomaly was not, as near as can be determined, replicated in the tests performed at Edgewood Arsenal in 1964. While it is indeed a characteristic of soft-nosed hunting ammunition to enter a skull and break up while passing through the brain, these 1964 tests showed that bullets like those fired in Oswald’s gun were not likely to break up in the brain. These tests showed that the 6.5 mm bullets fired in Oswald’s gun, moreover, were, unlike their Japanese counterparts, among the most stable ever tested. This means that the bullet striking Kennedy, should it have entered the skull intact, would most probably not have tumbled, and, if it did, would most probably not have fragmented. Ballistics researcher Howard Donahue claimed he'd asked Dr. Alfred Olivier, who'd supervised the 1964 tests, this very question, and that Olivier had told him that most of the bullets he'd tested had broken into but two or three large fragments. That's it.

So why did the bullet striking Kennedy, which would not explode inside the brain and could only have exploded upon impact with his skull, explode into far more pieces than the similar-sized bullets used in Olivier's tests?

And why was no spatter from the back of JFK's head visible in frame 313?

Was it because the wound created at frame 313 did not begin on the back of the head, but exactly where it is shown on the film?

And was it, in fact, a tangential wound of both entrance and exit?

I mean, there's not an absence of evidence here, but the evidence of absence. As we've seen, full-metal jacket ammunition has been, since its development, closely associated with gutter or tangential wounds.

So how is it that Humes, Finck, Olivier, Spitz, Baden, Petty, and Sturdivan et al have failed to discuss gutter or tangential wounds in their testimony before the government?

Something's just wrong.

Here is Figure X-28, from Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death (1980).

The caption to this image reads: "Figure X-28: Shot from a 30-30 rifle fired from a distance of about 60 feet. The wound of entrance is indicated by arrows."

And here is Spitz's discussion of this image: "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. (Fig. X-26) However, internal destruction is usually considered more severe. Soft tissues collapse into a vast temporary cavity produced in the wake of the bullet. The skull, including the base, is often shattered, and in solid organs such as the liver, the wound track may be 2 or 4 in. in diameter (Fig.s X-27 and X-28)."

And that's it. There is no other mention of this image. And this one mention makes no sense. Spitz claims high-powered rifle entrance wounds do not materially differ from those of an "ordinary rifle," and presents Fig. X-26 (a photo of a small entrance wound on the back of a head) to demonstrate as much, but then immediately undermines this claim by presenting a photo of an enormous wound at the top of a head with a beveled edge overlooking this chasm--which he identifies as the wound of entrance, while making no reference to an exit wound. Well, this is almost certainly a tangential wound. A nasty one.

So why didn't Spitz acknowledge this? Was he aware of the similarities between the wound in this photo and the wound he'd observed in Kennedy's autopsy photos just a few years earlier? And were he, and his co-writer, Dr. Russell Fisher, trying to conceal this from those reading their textbook?

Here Spitz is again in 2006, in an updated version of his book (with changes highlighted): ""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. (Fig. XII-43) However, internal destruction is considerably more severe. Due to the high velocity of the missile, the soft tissues collapse into a temporary cavity produced by a vacuum created in the wake of the bullet. This cavity is visible on x-ray and microscopic examination shows disruption of the tissue and hemorrhage in the area of cavitation. The skull, including the base, is often shattered, and in solid organs such as the liver, the wound track may exceed 3 or 4 in. in diameter (Fig.s XII-44 and XII-45)."

Note that Fig. XII-45 was the same image as presented above. While Spitz had updated his book, he still failed to acknowledge what seems obvious from Fig. X-28/XII-45--that it depicts a tangential wound of both entrance and exit in which the top of the victim's head was blown off.

I mean, it's not as if the medical community as a whole forgot about tangential wounds following WWII.

Here's proof. The close identification of gutter or tangential wounds with jacketed ammunition led Dr.s Sherman et al, of the L.A. County-USC Department of Neurosurgery, to note in a 1980 Western Journal of Medicine article on gunshot wounds to the brain involving civilian ammunition that "Our experience did not reflect any tangential wounds to the head with the massive brain guttering and soft tissue loss as described in the military literature."

And it's not as if these wounds are no longer observed. Unfortunately, the rise of the assault weapon in recent decades has led many a forensic pathologist to become familiar with the wounding capabilities of full-metal jacketed bullets. In his popular text Gunshot Wounds (1998), Dr. Vincent J.M. DiMaio notes that in recent years he'd had "extensive experience" with AK-47 ammunition and that this had led him to conclude that "Tangential and shallow (superficial) perforating wounds of the head are extremely mutilating. Evisceration of part or all of the brain is common."

There's also this. On April 28, 1996 a gunman went on a killing spree in Port Arthur, Tasmania. An analysis and comparison of the wounds created by the two types of rifles and bullets used in this assault soon followed. According to this article, published in the Summer 1998 issue of Wound Ballistics Review, a number of the fatalities received bullets that entered or exited the face, or descended or ascended within the neck. And yet, even so, 13 of the 32 fatalities received a shot to the head that both entered and exited the calvarium (the brain case). Now, the bulk of these victims were shot at close range, by rifles firing bullets at a greater velocity than those which struck Kennedy. So, it is important that we note the damage to these skulls. Did the tops of these skulls blow off into space, as suggested by the words of Olivier, Sturdivan, and Lattimer?

No. The authors of the article mention the large size of but one of these wounds. Here is that description: "Body 18 - Male, 69, 81.5kg, 172cm, shot twice, (.223). (i) - Distant tangential impact from bullet to the top of the head, traveling from left to right, causing a large wound and fracturing of the skull. No bullet or fragments recovered."

So there you have it. The size of Kennedy's large head wound makes little sense unless the bullet struck his skull tangentially...at the supposed exit.

Perhaps it should be explained here that while some online medical dictionaries define a "gutter" or "tangential" wound as one where a bullet leaves a furrow in the scalp without actually entering the skull cavity, the "gutter" wounds discussed in older publications are actually quite gruesome. Thankfully, Missile Wounds of the Head and Neck, Vol.1 (1999) clears this up, and reports that these more severe wounds, in which the bullet leaves a gaping hole, have been distinguished from their less destructive cousins, and are now referred to as "class 3" gutter wounds.

War Surgery Vol. 2 (2013, published by the International Committee of the Red Cross) echoes this analysis. It explains that tangential wounds of the skull come in three varieties: one in which the scalp is damaged but the skull is not fractured, a second more severe injury in which the skull is fractured and splinters are sent into the brain, but where the missile itself does not penetrate the brain, and a third extremely severe injury in which a strong blow "creates an open fracture with a single entry-exit wound; the brain suffers direct laceration and the wound is often 'spectacular,' with extrusion of pulped brain substance and haemotoma."

In any event, it's disappointing, to say the least, that none of the government's experts mentioned gutter wounds in their testimony before the Warren Commission or HSCA, if only to offer us a reason to believe Kennedy's large head wound was not such a wound.

Still, that's not to say no one mentioned them.

Tangential Wounds Comparison

Let's revisit the words of the doctor who first inspected Kennedy's large head wound, Dr. William Kemp Clark...

Just hours after the assassination, Dr. Clark told the nation at a press conference that the wound "could have been a tangential wound, as it was simply a large, gaping loss of tissue." And from there his resolve grew stronger. Over the next few weeks, in interview after interview, Dr. Clark repeated such claims and was considered so credible that as late as December 23, 1963, Medical Tribune and Medical News was still reporting that the fatal bullet struck "a tangential blow that avulsed the calvarium and shredded brain tissue as the bullet left the skull on a glancing course."

Dr. Clark was just not one to back down. Months after he'd been told the conclusions reached at autopsy, in fact, Dr. Clark told the Warren Commission that, in his impression, the large head wound was a--drum roll, please--"tangential wound." To his eternal credit, moreover, Dr. Clark also told the Warren Commission why he suspected as much. On March 21, 1964, he testified that if a bullet “strikes the skull at an angle, it must then penetrate much more bone than normal, therefore, it is likely to shed more energy, striking the brain a more powerful blow. Secondly, in striking the bone in this manner, it may cause pieces of the bone to be blown into the brain and thus act as secondary missiles. Finally, the bullet itself may be deformed and deflected so that it would go through or penetrate parts of the brain, not in the usual line it was proceeding.” Dr. Clark had thereby testified that, in his opinion, the injury to Kennedy's brain was more extensive than would be expected if the bullet had simply entered low on the back of the head. As he only inspected the brain at the large defect, moreover, he had testified that, in his opinion, a bullet had transited the skull along the surface of this defect, i.e., that this defect did not appear to be the exit for a bullet entering elsewhere. He'd also voiced his suspicion that splinters of bone had been blown into the brain at this location.

Now, we should probably note here that Dr. Clark never really wavered from his suspicion that the wound was "tangential." While he testified to the Warren Commission that the wound could be other than a tangential wound, he only did so after being asked one of Arlen Specter's infamous leading questions...

Mr. SPECTER - The physicians, surgeons who examined the President at the autopsy specifically, Commander James J. Humes, H-u-m-e-s (spelling); Commander J. Thornton Boswell, B-o-s-w-e-l-l (spelling), and Lt. Col. Pierre A. Finck, F-i-n-c-k (spelling), expressed the Joint opinion that the wound which I have just described as being 15 by 6 mm. and 2.5 cm. to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberant was a point of entrance of a bullet in the President's head at a time when the President's head was moved slightly forward with his chin dropping into his chest, when he was riding in an open car at a slightly downhill position. With those facts being supplied to them in a hypothetical fashion, they concluded that the bullet would have taken a more or less straight course, exiting from the center of the President's skull at a point indicated by an opening from three portions of the skull reconstructed, which had been brought to them---would those findings and those conclusions be consistent with your observations if you assumed the additional facts which I have brought to your attention, in addition to those which you have personally observed?

Dr. CLARK - Yes, sir.

Well, jeez Louise. Specter may as well have asked him "If the doctors said something could be black would you agree it could be black?" As Clark's acceptance of the "official" story was conditional on both Specter's false description of Kennedy's position at the time of the head shot ("with his chin dropping into his his chest") and his false description of the trajectory from the entrance observed at autopsy to the large defect on the top of Kennedy's skull ("a more or less straight course"), it's clear that Clark never really agreed with what Specter was selling.

Unfortunately, he rarely spoke on the subject after his testimony. Perhaps we now know why.

I mean, it's not as if Clark's assessment could be rejected out of hand. In 20th Century Arms and Armor, published 1996, military historian Dr. Stephen Bull, while discussing the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, defends that the rifle was capable of causing Kennedy's wounds. He asserts, not inaccurately, that the rifle was capable of being fired fast enough and with enough accuracy to kill Kennedy as proposed by single-assassin theorists. He also recites a lot of the nonsense spewed by Dr. Baden in his book Unnatural Death, and debunked in chapter 13b of this book. Where Bull really slips up, however, is in his description of the second shot to hit Kennedy. He writes: "A second shot clipped the top of the President's skull, shattering it, and broke against the front windscreen strut." The official story on this bullet, of course, is that it did not clip Kennedy's head, but pierced it, exiting only after traveling four inches or so through the brain. That Bull, having written a number of books on WWI and WWII weaponry and tactics, thinks Kennedy's large head wound was created when a bullet "clipped" the top of his head, is, one can only assume, supportive that such "clippings" do occur.

The Tell-Tale Splinters

Now, let's dig a bit deeper, and discuss one of the over-looked bits of Clark's testimony--that the impact of the fatal bullet, if it did indeed strike tangentially, may have caused "pieces of the bone to be blown into the brain and thus act as secondary missiles."

Now he wasn't just making stuff up. It has long been noted that a tangential impact on the skull can break splinters of bone from the skull's inner table. To wit, the caption to a photograph taken at the Army Medical Museum after the Civil War, and found in a collection of civil war medical reports available from BACM research, relates "The specimen is an excellent illustration of that variety of fracture of the skull, in which the outer table remains intact, and the thinner and more friable vitreous table is splintered: an accident resulting always, it is believed, either from a shock of a projectile striking the cranium very obliquely, or else from a comparatively slight blow from a body with a large plain surface."

So, the question, then, is if splinters of this kind were found in Kennedy's brain (or, rather, would have been found had the autopsists sectioned his brain).

And the answer is...yes. Here's Dr. Finck, in his January 1965 letter to his superior, Gen. Blumberg, reporting on his inspection of the brain: “No metallic fragments are identified but there are numerous small bone fragments, between one and ten millimeters in greatest dimension, in the container where the brain was fixed.”

And this wasn't the last time Finck slipped up and admitted bone fragments were mixed in with the brain.

Here is his 2-24-69 testimony in the trial of Clay Shaw. He has just been asked about a 20 by 13 mm (which he translates as 3/4 inch by 1/2 inch) rectangular object near the base of Kennedy's brain, which the Clark Panel had noticed in their then-recent study of the autopsy photos and had described in their report. (This brown rectangular object would later be dismissed as a blood vessel, but one never knows.)

Q: Now, Colonel, can--You previously testified that you did a lot of work at the autopsy table in the area of this particular head wound. Can you tell me why you can't tell me what this 3/4 inch x 1/2 inch rectangular-shaped whatever it is, what it was in the President's brain?

A: At this time I can't interpret this. There are numerous bone fragments produced by this explosive force in the head leading to many bone fragments and I can't positively identify this structure you are referring to.

Q: Did you find any bone fragments this size?

A: Where?

Q: In the brain.

A: I don't recall.

It seems entirely too much a coincidence then that all the large head wounds affiliated with 6.5 mm ammunition in the Fiji Campaign were tangential wounds, and that the first doctor to inspect Kennedy's large head wound thought it was a tangential wound, and that having skull fragments blown into the brain is symptomatic of a tangential wound, and that numerous bone fragments were found in the bucket with Kennedy's brain.

Now, you might think "So what? Bone fragments are routinely found where gun-shot victims' brains are fixed."

But this isn't exactly true.

In their 1978 Journal of Neurosurgery article Civilian Gunshot Wounds of the Brain, Drs. Vincent DiMaio and Joel B. Kirkpatrick discussed 42 fatal gunshot wounds in which the fatal shot was fired by revolvers and .22 rifles. They also did something fairly unique in the wound ballistics literature--they recorded for each wound whether or not bone splinters had been blown into the brain.

The results were somewhat surprising. Bone splinters were detected in but 16 of the 42 brains (or 38%). Even more revealing, they were detected in but 13 of the 30 brains (43%) in which the revolver or rifle had been held against the skull...which means that bone splinters were blown into but 3 of the 12 brains (25%) in which the weapon was not held against the skull. The weapon and range of fire related to these 3 were as follows: a .32 Smith and Wesson fired from 5 feet, a .38 Special fired from 5 feet, and a .38 Special fired from 10 feet. The most powerful weapon recorded in the study, moreover, was a .45 caliber automatic pistol, which fired a bullet almost 50% larger than the bullet purported to kill Kennedy. This weapon was used in two homicides, from presumed ranges of 15 and 30 feet. And yet no bone splinters were detected in the brains of either of these victims!

Of course, these were civilian gunshot wounds of the brain. A study on penetrating gunshot wounds of the brain by Dr.s J.M. Small and E.A. Turner published in the 1947 British Journal of Surgery found that, quite the opposite, bone splinters were found within the brains of 430 of the 500 soldiers receiving such a wound.

But where were these splinters found?

Almost certainly near the entrance.

This isn't just a hunch. DiMaio and Kirkpatrick's 1978 study of the 42 brains didn't merely report on the existence of bone splinters in the brain, it also reported on where they were found. It revealed: "The direction of impaction of the bone chips does provide conclusive evidence of the direction of the shot, since in no case were bone chips deflected into the brain parenchyma from exit wounds." It then concluded: "Bone chips are frequently impacted into the brain from the entrance wound. The secondary paths produced by bone chips provide conclusive proof of the direction of a fatal shot, since they always originate from the entrance wound."

And it's not as if this was something DiMaio claimed and soon came to regret. As related in his book, he'd studied firsthand the wounds created by assault weapons.

And yet here he is in Gunshot Wounds (1998): "The presence of bone chips at one end of the bullet track through the brain provides conclusive evidence of the direction of the shot; in the author's experience, no bone chips are found in the brain parenchyma adjacent to the exit wound."

Now, this is the ballgame, folks. Or at least oughta be.

The blowing of numerous small bone fragments, or splinters, onto and into the surface of Kennedy's brain would have to have occurred at the large defect by Kennedy's temple, where bone was missing and never recovered. The two suspected entrances at the back of the head, after all, were barely the circumference of the bullet, and far too small to account for "numerous fragments between one and ten millimeters in greatest dimension."

And, yes, I know that it's technically possible for numerous fragments of varying size to have exploded from the small defect on the back of Kennedy's head. A 6 mm by 15 mm entrance on the skull could represent as many as 90 one mm bone fragments, or 9 ten mm fragments, which could be mixed and matched into "numerous fragments between one and ten millimeters in greatest dimension." But let's not be daft. This was a round-nosed bullet after all. It was not a sledge-hammer. Many if not most of the bone fragments dislodged by the bullet's 15 mm wide tunnel along the back of the skull would have been pushed aside of the much smaller hole where the bullet finally entered, and much of that which made it into the skull would have been wiped off upon entrance into the skull on the membranous lining of the skull, or dura--which was not retained, or stored in the bucket inspected by Finck--and some of that which made it past the dura would have been flushed back out of the brain by an initial explosion, and then steady flow, of blood.

And, yeah, I know this is all theoretical. But bear in mind DiMaio's hard data. Thirty guns were held against thirty heads. Thirty triggers were pulled. And thirty bullets tore through thirty skulls. And yet, seventeen of the thirty brains receiving these bullets failed to reveal any bone splinters along the wound track.

This exposes the conjecture that "numerous fragments between one and ten millimeters in greatest dimension" could have derived from an entrance wound but 6 by 15 mm as desperate conjecture, poorly-reasoned conjecture. One might even say grasping at straws.

One can only conclude, then, that Kennedy's fatal wound was, almost certainly, a tangential wound, and that Dr. Clark's first impressions were correct.

Large Defect Analysis

Still more reasons to suspect the fatal bullet struck tangentially come from studying the Zapruder film. When one projects a bullet traveling downwards at 12 degrees (15 degrees from the sniper’s nest minus the 3 degree slope of the street) onto Z-312, one finds that a bullet fired from the sniper’s nest and just missing the back of Kennedy’s head would most logically strike him directly above his ear, where Zapruder frames 313 and 337 reveal the large wound to begin. Since, as we’ve seen, Kennedy’s skull was tilted 25 degrees to its left, this means the presumed impact location above the ear was at the very top of his skull, and directly in the line of fire. Not surprisingly, a nose of a bullet striking Kennedy’s skull and breaking up in this location might continue on to hit the windshield without traversing the right side of his skull. When one looks closely at Zapruder frame 313, moreover, it becomes obvious that there is a large bone fragment (almost undoubtedly the Harper fragment, the largest bone fragment found outside the limousine) flying upwards from the President’s skull at a right angle to a trajectory from the school book depository. As any pool player will tell you, this would be the expected trajectory of a fragment exploding from an impact with a bullet just barely hitting the President on the right top of his head.

It is ironic, then, that the HSCA actually considered the possibility the large head wound was a tangential wound, but rejected it due to the fact such a wound would be unlikely for a shot fired from the grassy knoll. That's right. They were that close. On page 226 of Volume 7 of the HSCA's report is a 12-22-78 letter from radiologist David Davis noting that in light of the HSCA's acceptance of the acoustic evidence suggesting a shot had been fired from the grassy knoll, he and Dr. Michael Baden had considered the possibility the fatal shot had come from the knoll. From their discussions, moreover, they concluded that it was possible the large head wound was a tangential wound inflicted from the side if the top of Kennedy's head was tilted 22 degrees away from the bullet. As the knoll location pondered was in fact 15 degrees above Kennedy at the time of the head shot, however, they were forced to conclude Kennedy would have to have been leaning 37 degrees to his left for a tangential wound to result. And this they could not accept.

While we can agree with them on this point, or agree to disagree, it is nevertheless enlightening that Dr. Baden considered such a thing, as this indicates he felt Kennedy's large head wound was otherwise consistent with a tangential wound.

There is reason, in fact, to suspect that many other forensic experts share this appraisal. In 2009, legendary forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee, along with forensic scientist Elaine Pagliaro, and forensic psychologist Katharine Ramsland, published The Real World of a Forensic Scientist. Rave reviews by forensic experts Cyril Wecht, Michael Baden, Fredric Rieders, James Starrs and Ronald Singer graced its back cover. These reviewers had obviously been provided copies well prior to publication. If they'd noticed any obvious mistakes then, we can only assume, they'd have said so, and these mistakes would subsequently have been corrected. And yet, on page 147, while briefly discussing the Kennedy assassination as an example of a case where forensic examiners disagree in their interpretation of the facts, the writers reported that a "shot entered Kennedy's right temple and exited through his skull."

It "entered Kennedy's right temple!" Not the back of his head. And "exited through his skull!" This strange use of words doesn't specify a separate exit, or even a direction of fire. Hmmm... Are we to assume from this that no one involved in the writing or reviewing of this book noticed this?

I don't know. It seems quite possible, however, that this detour from the official story went right over everyone's head because it sounded so reasonable, and that it sounded so reasonable because it was something they'd secretly suspected was true.

Driven Down

Perhaps then we should take a closer look at the movement of Kennedy’s head after the impact of the head shot. As the skulls in Dr. Olivier's tests always but always moved in the direction of the bullet, perhaps this can tell us from which direction the bullet was fired.

As a measurement of the length of Jackie Kennedy's arm in frames 312 and 313, from her elbow to the back of her husband's head, indicates that more arm was visible in 313, and thus, that her husband's head moved forward, one can safely assume the fatal shot came from behind. But that's only half the story.

While there has been a seemingly endless argument between some old school conspiracy theorists, who insist Kennedy’s head flew back-and-to-the left after the bullet’s impact, and nearly everyone else, who note that his head first flew forwards, both sides of the issue miss an important fact: the primary movement of Kennedy’s head in the first few frames after the bullet’s impact was downward. His head dropped approximately 2 inches in 1 ½ frames of the Zapruder film. As a hard impact low on the back of a man’s head in the location of the bullet entrance described at autopsy would most logically pop the front of his head upwards a bit, I believe this downward movement suggests instead that Kennedy was hit on top of his head just above his right temple.

Here is a gif file, found online, demonstrating this downward movement.

Now, is this proof? Not remotely. But it's undoubtedly helpful that my study of the medical evidence is supported by my study of the Zapruder film, and vice versa.

And it sure is interesting that I'm not the first to suspect Kennedy was hit at the supposed exit...from behind. On March 6, 1975, Robert Groden showed the Zapruder film on TV for the first time. In his subsequent book JFK: The Case For Conspiracy, published January 1976, Groden wrote that at frame 313, "A shot hit Kennedy from behind, by all appearances, in the right temple." And this wasn't a one-time slip-up. The book Government by Gunplay, published March 1976, featured a short essay by Groden entitled A New Look at the Zapruder Film. Here, he claimed that at frame 313 "A shot hits John Kennedy from behind in the right temple."

That's right. Robert Groden, whose analysis of the Zapruder film helped launch a congressional investigation, and whose name has become synonymous with the grassy knoll, initially claimed Kennedy was killed by a shot from the rear... And not only that, but that this shot impacted at the supposed exit...

And no, I'm not kidding. While it's true Groden felt a shot hit Kennedy from the front a split-second later, he saw no evidence for this in frame 313, and assumed the movement of Kennedy's head between frames 312 and 313 and the simultaneous explosion of blood and brain was best explained by a bullet's impacting near Kennedy's right temple...from behind.

This is precisely as has been proposed...here.

Elastic Recoil Revealed

Since the Zapruder film shows Kennedy's head going back and to the left after the fatal head shot, conspiracy theorists have long held this means the shot came from the front. This has not impressed single-assassin theorists, however, who just love to point out that Kennedy's head initially goes forward. These theorists also love to use supposedly scientific explanations, e.g. the "jet effect" and the "neuro-muscular response," to try and explain Kennedy's subsequent movement backward.

When I started suspecting that the head shot hit Kennedy at the supposed exit, on the other hand, one of the first things I did was slap myself at this exit location from behind, to see if this impact would re-create Kennedy's movements. To my surprise, it did.

I subsequently learned that there is a certain elastic recoil in muscle tissue. You stretch it out far enough, and it snaps right back on its own. Some runners learn to use this to their advantage. This led me to believe that Kennedy was struck along the top of his head, his head was driven down, his chin hit his chest and his head sprang back up from the recoil of his neck muscles.

In July 2007, researcher Gil Jesus alerted the Education Forum to a number of videos he found online, depicting head shots. One of these was news footage of a hostage-taker getting killed by a sniper. The shot came in from the man's right. The man's head turned to his left, traveling with the bullet. Then snapped back to his right, facing the sky as he fell to the ground. Not enough fluid was ejected from his head to create the "jet effect." His body failed to stiffen as in a neuro-muscular response. (Stills from this video are on the slide above.)

Kennedy contorts in a similar manner, only more vertically. This is consistent with his getting hit more towards the top of his head, at the supposed exit.

Here, see for yourself....

A longer version of this video, proving that the shot came in from the hostage taker's right, is now available here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGe1zb1wAlY

Well, that was disgusting..and horrifying. And speaking of disgusting...and horrifying, it's time we watch the Zapruder film. In slow motion.

As you watch the film below, ask yourself: is there any evidence the bullet struck Kennedy on the BACK of his head? Is there any evidence it struck him from in FRONT? Just watch the film. If one divorces oneself from what one's been told about the direction of the head shot, I suspect you'll come to agree that the film suggests a shot hit Kennedy on the top of his head above his right temple...from his right, and quite possibly from behind.

(Note: the following gif file was posted by Gerda Dunckel on the JFK Assassination Forum on July 6, 2012. You may want to skip ahead, as it is quite gruesome. But it demonstrates the downward, then back, motion of Kennedy's head better than smaller images.)

Should one continue to doubt such a shot occurred, and insist that the “back-and-to-the-left” movement of Kennedy’s skull could only have come from the front, I suggest a simple test. I’ve done it way too many times. Lean forward 30 degrees…tilt your head 25 degrees to your left… and SLAP the top of your skull above your ear downwards, and see what happens. NO. I'M KIDDING. Don’t do this!!! It hurts a bit. Take my word for it, instead,--your head will bounce right up and throw your body backwards, exactly as Kennedy’s did in the frames after the fatal headshot. (And no, I'm not just making this up. This unique attribute of tangential hits is mentioned in the online paper Wound Ballistic Simulation by Jorma Jusilla, presented at the University of Helsinki: It states “A tangential hit also causes a torsion motion of the head which can cause serious injuries.” According to Funk and Wagnall’s, the word “torsion” means “The act of twisting.” I say that in case you might need to look it up. I did.)

In retrospect, the mystery over the cause of Kennedy’s back-and-to-the-left movement should have been solved a long time ago. All the debate over the “man behind the picket fence,” the “jet effect” and “neuro-muscular response” would have been unnecessary if someone used some common sense back in 1964. People knew the bullet broke up. People knew that bullets normally pierce a body without imparting enough energy into the body to throw it one way or the other. People knew that, on the other hand, a bullet striking tangentially, creating a gutter wound, and breaking up, could impart enough energy upon impact to slap a person one way or the other. People knew as well that the Zapruder film showed Kennedy being slapped back into his seat. The problem, one can only guess, is that the people knowing these things were not the same people.

The movement of Kennedy's head in the Zapruder film, when taken in conjunction with evidence previously discussed, including and especially that no bloody back spatter emanates from the back of Kennedy's head in the film, strongly suggest the bullet striking Kennedy at frame 313 struck his skull at the supposed exit, most probably from behind.

Still skeptical? Then let's take a closer look at the Zapruder film. This gif was also created by Dunckel.

And here's a closer and slower look.

Note that the only spray of blood to cross the back of the head comes from the large defect, and that no spray comes from the back of the head itself.

Still skeptical? Then let's take an even closer look, only slowed way down, and with the large defect cropped off.

The explosion is at the top of the head, and not the back of the head.

And let's not forget there was another film of the head shot, taken from opposite Zapruder...

Here, then, is the head shot as seen in the film of Orville Nix. This clip jostles back and forth, so that one can view the head shot with the head moving backward and when moving back into place. While this creates the illusion of two head shots, it also confirms what already seems obvious: the explosion was at the top right side of the head...exactly where it is in the Zapruder film.

Well I think that proves it. We should have listened to Bobby Hargis. Hargis, who rode a motorcycle in the motorcade to the left of Mrs. Kennedy, not only witnessed the head shot from quite close, but reported within days of the shooting that Kennedy "got hit in the side of his head, spinning it around."

He was on it from the beginning. But no one was paying attention. Some apparently wanted his words to suggest Kennedy was shot from the front, and so ignored the key part of his statement: that the bullet's impact imparted a spinning motion to Kennedy's head. Such a motion, as we've seen, is entirely consistent with the creation of the tangential wound described by Dr. Clark.

But is there any way we can further clear this up, and scientifically determine the direction of the bullet?

Behold the Harper Fragment

Yes. A study of the Harper fragment can help us make such a determination.

On 11-23-63, William Harper found a large skull fragment on the Dealey Plaza infield. He subsequently showed it to his uncle. His uncle, who happened to be a doctor, brought the fragment in to a local hospital the next day and showed it to some of his colleagues. He then gave it to the FBI. Strangely, no one knows for sure what happened to it after this. There is evidence that the FBI, after running some tests, gave the fragment to Kennedy’s personal physician, Dr. Burkley, on 11-27. It is fairly clear as well that even though the autopsy doctors had yet to finish their supplemental autopsy report on 11-27, and even though Dr. Burkley was in contact with the doctors during this time, he somehow failed to tell the doctors of the fragment’s existence. Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, however, in his testimony before the Warren Commission, mentioned that “a medical student or somebody in Dallas” had found a skull fragment in the street on the day after the assassination. As Hill continued on with the Kennedy family after the assassination, this could be an indication that Dr. Burkley did in fact give the fragment to the family. The HSCA concluded that Bobby Kennedy acquired the fragment and either destroyed it or buried it along with his brother’s brain and tissue slides.

It is from the HSCA interview of one of Dr. Harper’s colleagues, Dr. A. B. Cairns, a pathologist, and the photographs Harper’s colleagues made available to researchers, that we’ve come to learn most of what we think we know about the Harper fragment. Dr. Cairns told the HSCA that he believed the fragment came from the occipital bone, down near the spine. There is reason to doubt this, however. The Harper fragment was the largest skull fragment found outside the limousine. While an early FBI report claimed the fragment was found 25 feet behind Kennedy's location at the time of the head shot, this claim was made when Harper would have assumed the wreaths stacked up near the grassy knoll steps marked Kennedy's location when hit. Harper's subsequent actions support that he'd made such an assumption. Going back to the 1960's, he has marked the location where he found the fragment on numerous maps, and has consistently claimed he found the fragment on the grassy infield of Dealey Plaza across from the grassy knoll steps--a location roughly a hundred feet forward of Kennedy’s location at frame 313 of the Zapruder film. Since frame 313 of the Zapruder film shows a large skull fragment flying upwards from the front half of Kennedy’s skull, and heading forwards of the limousine, moreover, we have strong reasons to believe the Harper fragment is this fragment, and that it exploded from the top of Kennedy's skull.

And that's not just my opinion. Dr. Lawrence Angel, Dr. Joseph Riley, and Dr. Randy Robertson, among others, place the bone in the parietal area, above the right ear. This means that the fragment was adjacent to where I suspect the bullet first struck Kennedy. That Dr. Cairns reported “grayish discoloration” indicative of “lead-caused damage” on the outside of the fragment, then, would seem too much a coincidence, particularly in that researcher John Hunt was able to locate an x-ray of the fragment in the National Archives, and identify a small bit of metal (presumably lead) on the fragment, right by the discolored edge. (Hunt showed this to a receptive audience at the 2003 Wecht Conference in Pittsburgh.)

That a bullet broke up at this location should not have come as a surprise, moreover. Dr. Humes' and Dr. Boswell's assistant at the autopsy, James Curtis Jenkins, was interviewed by Andy Purdy for the HSCA on 8-29-77. Purdy's notes on this interview reflect that Jenkins told him that the bullet creating the large head wound "entered the top rear quadrant from the front side." Jenkins would subsequently explain how he came to this suspicion. He told writer Harrison Livingstone in the early 1990's that "just above the right ear there was some discoloration of the skull cavity with the bone area being gray and there was some speculation that it might be lead."

And this wasn't a one-time claim on Jenkins' part. Jenkins told William Law much the same thing in 1993. On November 22, 2013, at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, Jenkins shared his recollections of what happened fifty years before with a small audience. I was in that audience, actually two audiences--one in the afternoon and one late at night--and took notes. When discussing this discoloration, Jenkins said he heard Dr. Pierre Finck tell Dr. Humes "that may be lead from a bullet."And that's not all. Jenkins also said that his impression upon viewing Kennedy's skull and x-rays was that fractures radiated out from the temple. Jenkins said that this impression, fueled by Finck's words, stuck with him throughout the autopsy, to such an extent that after the completion of the autopsy he "went home with the knowledge that the wound (he meant bullet) that killed the President entered here (he pointed to his temple) and exited here (he pointed to the top of his head)." He said he was surprised to find out later that the doctors had concluded that this wound--the one "in front and a little bit above the right ear"--was actually an exit.

Now, some discussion is in order. It seems obvious from Jenkins' statements that he was describing a lead smear adjacent to the large defect, and not a small hole by the temple. If he was describing a small hole, after all, how could he turn around and say the doctors said this was an exit? No such exit was described in the autopsy report!

In any event, his recollections changed. in 2018, a 76 year-old Jenkins released his book At the Cold Shoulder of History, and suddenly began claiming the exit defect was on the far back of the head, and that a small entrance was by the temple. That this is nonsense is perhaps best demonstrated by recalling Jenkins' previous claims to David Lifton, in Best Evidence. There, Lifton summed up his interview with a 38 year-old Jenkins by claiming "Since Jenkins didn't see a frontal entry wound, he assumed that it had been blown away when the bullet struck." So...Jenkins told Lifton he didn't see an entrance...and that he had assumed it was blown away. Well...in such case, the lead-smear by the temple Jenkins presumed marked an entrance would have to have been adjacent to the large hole on Kennedy's head, which would, in turn, have to have been on the top of his head by his temple--and NOT on the far back of his head at the level of his ears, where the elderly Jenkins moved the wound.

We should recall here as well that lead was also observed on the large triangular bone fragment found on the floor of the limousine, and that the outward beveling of the skull at this location helped convince the autopsy doctors the large defect on top of Kennedy's head, from whence this fragment derived, was in fact an exit. In his online review of the autopsy materials, written after his 2004 visit to the National Archives, Larry Sturdivan discussed these deposits in some detail. Sturdivan observed: "The lead fragments on this bone could not have been secondary deposits, stuck by clotted blood. As this fragment was dislodged in the explosion, the fragments had to be deposited into the surface of the bone by the bullet core.” This led him to conclude: “Lead deposits inside the cratered area indicates that the bone had already cratered before the core scraped by. This may mean that the leading surface of the bullet fragments was jacket…” Well, heck. Sturdivan had thereby admitted it was possible the bullet broke up at this location, and not after striking the windshield strut, as purported by Dr. Baden.

It's nice to find there's something on which we agree. That similar lead deposits have been noted on the Harper fragment, moreover, add considerable weight to my suspicion these two bone fragments comprise the vast majority of the large defect the autopsy doctors concluded was an exit.

But there's a problem with their conclusion. The grayish discoloration on the Harper fragment is on the outside of the fragment. This suggests that the bullet broke up while entering the skull above the ear, and not while exiting. That the "lead deposits inside the cratered area" observed by Sturdivan were observed on X-rays, whereby one could not tell whether the fragments were on the inside or outside of the skull, and that NO photographs were taken of the large fragment studied by Sturdivan, moreover, suggests the possibility the large defect determined to be an exit was really an entrance, and that the photographic proof for this was either deliberately not recorded, or subsequently destroyed.

But one needn't go that far, as it seems quite possible, likely even, that the supposed exit on the x-ray studied by Sturdivan was in fact an exit.

As incredible as it may seem, the Harper fragment supports this possibility. It offers compelling evidence that Kennedy’s large head wound was a tangential wound of both entrance and exit. The underside of the fragment reveals internal beveling, indicative of a bullet entrance, towards the back, and external beveling, indicative of an out-shoot, towards the front. (The triangular fragment studied by Sturdivan would presumably represent another portion of this outshoot.)

As the in-shoot and out-shoot run along the bottom edge of the Harper fragment, moreover, an upward lift of bone until it snapped off along its edge, spinning upwards, can easily be imagined... and seen... as such an explosion is forever captured in Z-313.

Keyhole Analysis

So let's go back and nail this down... Gutter wounds, or tangential wounds, are symptomatic of 6.5 mm military ammunition. Dr. Clark thought Kennedy's large head wound was a tangential wound.

So, was there anything about Kennedy's head wound to suggest Clark was right?

Yes. Missile Wounds of the Head and Neck (1999) reports that "class 3" gutter wounds are associated with "keyhole entrance" wounds?

Well, what's a keyhole entrance wound?

Combat Radiology (2010) credits Dr. Werner Spitz (of the Rockefeller Commission Panel and HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel) as the first to call tangential or gutter wounds "keyhole fractures." Sure enough, Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death (1980) reports: “A shot fired at a curved part of the head at a shallow angle often causes a typically inward-beveled entrance hole adjacent to an outward-beveled exit hole, producing a keyhole-shaped defect in the skull. A fragment of the slug shaved off by the bone at the entrance hole may penetrate the brain…Fracture of the orbital roofs…are occasionally seen in the cases of keyhole type wounds involving the top of the head or forehead. Eyelid hemorrhage on the same side may result from the seepage…”

Now this is interesting... The description of the fractured orbits (eye sockets) and hemorrhage on the eyelids could have been taken from Kennedy’s autopsy report. As the shaved off fragment of a bullet hitting tangentially would appear to be the best explanation for the bullet “slice” visible on Kennedy’s x-rays, moreover, it seems quite possible that Fisher and Spitz were writing about Kennedy’s death, whether they realized it or not. And they weren't the last doctors to study the JFK medical evidence to do so...

External Beveling of Entrance Wounds by Handguns, a 1982 article by Dr. John Coe in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, further discusses keyhole entrance wounds. In this article, Dr. Coe wrote “In the grazing wound of the skull showing external beveling, there is an elongated perforation of the bone in which one end of the perforation resembles the usual entry wound, while the opposite end of the defect has the external beveling associated with an exit wound. The most common explanation is the bullet, by penetrating the bone tangentially, is split or shaved. One portion of the bullet proceeds into the cranial vault, while the second portion is deflected outward, exiting the bone almost immediately after its penetration of the outer table. This deflected portion, in leaving the bone, produces external beveling in the usual manner.”

Now, is it just a coincidence that the lower edge of the Harper fragment (in Dr. Angel's orientation) appears to match the characteristics of a “keyhole” lesion representing both entrance and exit? Is it also a coincidence then that this “keyhole” seems to be running 6 degrees from left to right across the skull, which matches the angle leading back to the Texas School Book Depository we’ve already calculated? (The Moorman photo reveals that Kennedy’s head was turned 14 degrees to his left. Since the school book depository was 8 degrees to his right at Z-312, this could indicate the bullet traveled 6 degrees to the right along his skull.)

And, if not, is just a coincidence that Dr. Spitz wrote about keyhole wounds the year after the end of the HSCA seized to exist, and Dr. Coe wrote about them three years after the HSCA seized to exist.

I mean, did their study of Kennedy's photos and x-rays get them thinking, and were they unable to keep these thoughts to themselves?

Although Coe’s article was written specifically about handgun wounds, and Spitz and Fisher were more equipped to write about low-velocity gunshot wounds than high-velocity gunshot wounds, moreover, we have reason to believe that keyhole wounds can be created by both low-velocity ammunition and high-velocity ammunition. Beyond that the early descriptions of gutter wounds matched the descriptions of keyhole wounds offered by Spitz and Coe, we have more recent support for this belief.

Dr. Douglas S. Dixon, for one, associates “keyhole” wounds with rifle ammunition. In Management of Gunshot Wounds (1988), he writes: “In head wounds inflicted by large caliber handguns, rifles, and shotguns especially at closer ranges, the forces which accompany the projectile form a large temporary cavity that causes the skull to expand greatly. Reconstruction of the bony fragments may reveal the previously discussed configurations of beveling, keyhole lesions, or pattern of intersecting fractures; this is often best accomplished at autopsy.”

And he isn't alone. In his 1999 book Gunshot Wounds, to be clear, Dr. Vincent Di Maio discusses keyhole wounds of the bone in much the same language as Spitz and Coe, then adds "In a less common variant of keyhole wounds, the bullet does not split but enters the cranial cavity intact. This type of keyhole wound is common with full-metal jacketed bullets." Well, full-metal jackets are most normally associated with military rifle ammunition, and are not normally associated with low-velocity handgun ammunition.

Now let's circle back to an issue raised by Dixon. Implicit in his words is that, due to the skull’s fragmentation, a keyhole wound resulting from rifle fire can sometimes be discovered through a reconstruction of the skull fragments subsequent to the shooting. Well, he wasn't just blowing smoke. I found an article on such a reconstruction, praise Google, in the book Skeletal Trauma (2008), wherein Peruvian professors Elsa Cagigao and Melissa Lund described the reconstruction of the skull of a Chilean soldier killed over a hundred years before, and their discovery of a keyhole wound of both entrance and exit near the left temple of his skull.

Now, should one worry that my interpretation of the above passages are incorrect, and that my depiction of the beveling on the images above similarly incorrect, it should be noted that The Encyclopedia of Forensic Sciences (2012) contains a sketch depicting a keyhole lesion. And that this sketch mirrors my presentation of beveling.

This makes it clear, then, that the beveling on the Harper fragment is the scientific proof of more than one shooter that some have been waiting for, and that others feared would surface.

Is it just a coincidence, then, that the Harper fragment, which was discovered just one day after Kennedy's demise, was not brought to the attention of the men still writing his autopsy protocol? While the final draft of the autopsy report was turned in on the 24^th, and the fragment not given to the FBI until the 26^th, the doctors’ supplementary examination of the brain and tissue slides was still over a week away. Why weren’t the autopsists shown this fragment, or even told of its existence? The 11-26-63 report of FBI Agents Sibert and O’Neil revealed that Dr. Humes had opted to hold on to the 10 x 6.5 mm beveled bone fragment of the President’s skull, but that he would make it available for further examination. This proves the FBI knew the doctors had an interest in such things. An 11-27-63 memo on Dr. Burkley's receipt of the Harper fragment noted it was to be "turned over to Naval Hospital by Dr. Burkley for examination, analysis, and retention until other disposition is directed."

So why weren't the doctors shown the Harper fragment? Did Burkley realize that the fragment offered proof for more than one shooter, and opt to keep this info to himself?

Perhaps. The photo above was found online. It shows a keyhole wound. It is part of the Civil War Collection at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C. Dr. Finck was, of course, the institute's resident expert on gunshot wounds in 1963. He had almost certainly studied this skull. He almost certainly knew about keyhole wounds. And he may have even recognized the Harper fragment as the upper margin of such a wound, had he been shown the fragment.

Dr. Mantik and Mr. Harper

Ironically, the true importance of the Harper fragment has long been overlooked not through the actions of single-assassin theorists, but conspiracy theorists... They just won't accept that the fragment was dislodged from the top of Kennedy's head and that this wound could represent both an entrance and an exit...

Let me explain...

From dozens of witnesses claiming to have heard shots from west of the depository, and a half dozen or more claiming to have seen smoke on the grassy knoll after the shots, the vast majority of conspiracy researchers have long felt the fatal shot was fired from in front of Kennedy. That suspicion, when coupled with the recollection held by so many witnesses at Parkland Hospital--that Kennedy's large head wound was on the back of his head--has led them to accept that a shot fired from in front of Kennedy blew out the back of his head. As Dr. Cairns believed the Harper fragment was occipital, moreover, it seems totally obvious to them that the Harper fragment was blown out the back of Kennedy's head. It totally adds up. It totally makes sense.

The Harper fragment's exploding from the back of Kennedy's head has become such a tenet of the conspiracy theorist "religion," for that matter, that Don Thomas, in his 2010 book Hear No Evil, was reluctant to dispute it, even though he readily accepted that the Harper fragment was NOT occipital bone. That's right. While presumably under the influence of radiologist Randy Robertson, who has come to conclude the largest fragment x-rayed at autopsy was blown out the back of Kennedy's head (which is, in itself fairly strange, considering this fragment was found on the floor of the limousine), Thomas claimed that the Harper fragment was "a piece of the posterior parietal bone which was driven out the rear of the president's cranium." Now, that's a surprise. Dr. Angel, upon whom Thomas relied for his assessment the fragment was parietal, placed the fragment at the top of Kennedy's head near the front of the parietal bone, and not at the posterior edge of the parietal bone. And then there's this. Kennedy's head was leaning forward at frame 313. Thomas believes the shot was fired from in front of Kennedy. There is simply no way a skull fragment from the top of Kennedy's head where Angel placed it could be driven out the rear of his head, when his head was leaning forward. One can only conclude, then, that Thomas was trying to have it both ways, and had decided to ignore Angel's placement of the bone towards the front of the parietal bone, and to presume instead that it sprang from the top of the back of Kennedy's head in the rear-most part of the parietal bone...where no doctor had claimed it had sprung, and where it clearly did not fit...

And Thomas wasn't the only one to claim the Harper fragment was parietal bone...that was blown out the back of Kennedy's head. Heck, he wasn't even the only one that year to do so...

In 2010, in his book Head Shot, research physicist G. Paul Chambers topped Thomas in the "now ain't that weird" department. On page 94, he proposed that the fragment was parietal bone, and cited the work of Dr. Joseph Riley in support. He then flew off the rails. A few pages later, he claimed "there is a clear and apparent inconsistency with the Zapruder film, taken at the time of the assassination, and the descriptions of the wounds to Kennedy's head provided at the official autopsy. The damaged area shown on the film is consistent, however, with parietal bone (from the side of Kennedy's head) found on the street after the assassination (the Harper fragment). This would be reasonable if the bullet struck Kennedy from the right front side and sheared off part of his skull on the side of his head just forward of his right ear." He then discussed Dr. Clark's belief the large head wound was a tangential wound of both entrance and exit, and concluded "a bullet striking from the front side could shear off the piece of parietal (side) bone, propelling it backward to the rear of the vehicle, and ultimately ending up in the street at Dealey Plaza."

So, yeah. Chambers went along with the fragment's being parietal bone. And added into it what I'd come to believe no one, except possibly Dr. Michael Baden, actually believed--that the Harper fragment derived from a location on the side of the head just forward of the right ear. Well, this made little sense, and the mistakes made by Chambers discounted the possibility we should expect it to make sense. Now, where do I begin? First, there is no inconsistency between the film and the descriptions provided at the autopsy. (This will be discussed in chapter 18c.) Second, the Harper fragment was not found on the street, but on the grass. Third, as supported by Billy Harper, who claimed he'd found the fragment a hundred feet or so ahead of where Kennedy is hit in the Zapruder film, the Harper fragment was not propelled to the rear of the vehicle.

Embarrassingly, Chambers' discussion of the Harper fragment was so riddled with errors that he couldn't even get the date of its discovery correct. He claimed it was found on the day of the assassination, when Harper, who would be in a position to know, said it was found the next day.

But what of the others? Those believing the Harper fragment occipital bone? Well, let's just say they are on firmer ground than Thomas, and Chambers...

Until one looks at the autopsy photos and X-rays... and the assassination films... and studies the statements of those witnessing the shooting... and closely studies the writings of those pushing this scenario...

Let's take, for example, Jim Douglass, in JFK and the Unspeakable (a book I recommend under the proviso one not take the specifics of the crime he describes too seriously):

On page 283, Douglass discusses the research of Dr. David Mantik, who, over nine visits to the National Archives, observed what he called a "patch" toward the back of Kennedy's lateral skull x-rays. (This will be discussed in much greater detail in chapters 18 and 18b.)

Here is how Douglass, and all-too many conspiracy theorists, present Mantik's findings:

"There was far too much bone density being shown in the rear of of JFK's skull relative to the front. The X-ray had to have been a composite. The optical density data indicated a forgery in which a patch had been placed over an original x-ray to cover the rear part of the skull--corresponding to the gap left in part by the Harper fragment, evidence of an exit wound. The obvious purpose was to cover-up evidence of a shot from the front that, judging from the original Parkland observations, had created an exit hole the size of one's fist in the back of the head..."

Douglass later concludes this line of thought: "In the case of the the government's X-rays, their exact duplication of the Harper fragment, as if that bullet-blasted bone were still in the slain president's skull, has turned out to be the revelation of the cover-up."

So there you have it. The Parkland witnesses said there was a hole on the back of Kennedy's head. Dr. Cairns said he thought the Harper fragment came from the back of Kennedy's head. Dr. Mantik shares this conclusion. Dr. Mantik has also concluded there is a white patch on the back of Kennedy's lateral X-rays. ERGO, we can assume the white patch was created to conceal the hole on the back of Kennedy's head from where the Harper fragment was blasted. This is supported, furthermore, by the Harper fragment's being found 25 feet south of the assassination site...which means it landed behind the limousine.

This is how a significant number, perhaps most, conspiracy theorists view the evidence.

The problem is...IT"S JUST NOT TRUE.

Let me repeat something I touched upon awhile back. While the early reports on Harper's finding of the fragment do indeed claim he found the fragment 25 feet south of the assassination location, and while writers such as Mantik have extrapolated from this that the fragment was found "not too far from where Jean Hill had been standing," that is, behind Kennedy's location at the moment of the fatal head shot,Harper was not a witness to the shooting. In fact, he found the fragment the next day. By that time, mourners had gathered opposite the steps in front of Kennedy at the time of head shot. This is shown in numerous photos. This raises the question, then, of whether or not Harper, when first interviewed, had known that Kennedy had actually been shot before reaching this location.

Fortunately, we have an answer to this. In 1969, researcher Howard Roffman contacted Harper and asked him to mark on a map where he found the fragment. Sure enough, Harper marked a location to the south of the steps in a location approximately 100 feet in front and slightly to the left of Kennedy at the time of the actual head shot. And this was no one time thing. He has marked similar maps for others. The evidence, then, suggests the Harper fragment was not blown out the back of Kennedy's head, as pushed by most conspiracy theorists, but was blown forward from the top of his head, as depicted in the Zapruder film.

Well, then what about Mantik...

In the very paper Douglass cites as support for the nice, neat scenario described above, Dr. Mantik refutes much of Douglass' scenario. First, as seen on the slide above, while Dr. Mantik concluded the Harper fragment derived from the back of the skull, he concluded it derived from the central part of the back of the skull, NOT from the location of the wound to the right of mid-line described by the Parkland witnesses, NOR in the location on the right where he'd discovered a white "patch" on the x-rays.

(In a 10-11-10 post on the Education Forum, Dr. Mantik addressed this very point. In comments posted by Dr. James Fetzer, Mantik's biggest supporter, Mantik admitted "I have never demonstrated exactly where on the lateral skull X-ray the Harper would appear, but it would be at the very rear." He had thereby confirmed my claim. Neither the wound described by the Parkland witnesses nor the location covered by the "white patch" are at the very rear.)

Second, while Dr. Mantik, during an 11-18-93 press conference announcing his conclusions regarding the so-called white patch, was reported to have claimed that "someone...put a great white patch on the back of the lateral X-ray to cover up the hole, which is why the area is so extraordinarily white," he claimed a decade later, in the paper cited by Douglass, that the "white patch was almost certainly added in the dark room. Its purpose was to emphasize the resulting dark area in front, which suggested that a bullet had exited from the front."

Read Mantik's 2003 paper, containing his ultimate conclusions, if you don't believe me: http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v2n2/pittsburgh.pdf

(In the 10-11-10 post by Fetzer, Dr. Mantik responded to this point as well. He wrote: "The original lateral X-ray probably showed missing BRAIN in the current area of the WHITE PATCH. It was the missing brain, not missing skull, that likely led to the WHITE PATCH." He'd thereby confirmed my claims a second time.)

Jim Douglass was wrong. Mantik had not concluded that the "white patch" at the rear of the skull corresponded "to the gap left in part by the Harper fragment."

Mantik's observations reveal his own bias, however. While the good doctor, true to the beliefs of most conspiracy theorists, concluded the Harper fragment was occipital bone, the reasons he gives for rejecting Dr. Angel's conclusion it was parietal bone (in the position depicted in the middle of the slide above) are remarkably contrived. First, in the paper at the link above, he claims that Angel "did not know that occipital bone was missing so this site at the top of the head was his only option." Uhhh... Dr. Angel had been provided both the autopsy photos and x-rays, which showed no occipital bone to be missing. So how was Angel to find out it was missing? From the say-so of Dr. Cairns, who only guessed that the Harper fragment was occipital? Second, once again in the paper linked above, he rejects Angel’s conclusion chiefly because Angel’s conclusion would imply “a parietal entry (because the lead smudge is on the outside), an option that virtually no one would support.”

Hmmm... Note the parentheses. Mantik says the lead smudge is on the outside, and that this suggests an entrance. Notice that he makes no mention of beveling. Did he realize that the beveling in the location of the lead smudge was outward beveling, suggesting an exit, and not an entrance? And did he then decide to withhold this from his readers? He had, after all, offered up that, in his orientation for the fragment, this smudge lined up with the entrance location observed at autopsy. He wouldn't withhold from his readers that the beveling at this location suggested an exit, and not an entrance? Would he? I don't know. Perhaps he never noticed the beveling.

Now note the last words. Mantik rejects Angel's orientation for the fragment not because it's unlikely, but because he thinks few would support it.

I hope to have changed that. And hope to have pushed a few researchers to look in...

The Right Direction

Now, to be clear, most of those disagreeing with my identification of the Harper Fragment as part of a keyhole entrance do so because the beveling on the fragment suggests the shot came from the rear. They just can't accept that--and so pretend what I have just shown to be true is mere speculation, etc.

But they fail to see that it's not just the beveling on the Harper fragment that suggests the shot came from behind, but the lacerations of Kennedy's scalp.

Here, from Vincent J. DiMaio's acclaimed text Gunshot Wounds, is the scalp overlying a small tangential wound of entrance on a skull, with an arrow added to show the direction of fire.

(Yes, yes, I know it's upside down. But I wanted it to run left to right. For comparison purposes.)

Note that there are no scalp lacerations at the point of first impact along the left edge of the photo as presented above. Note that the scalp lacerations start near the right edge of the main defect, and extend forward of the main defect.

Now, here are the four major lacerations in Kennedy's scalp, as recorded in the autopsy protocol.

Well, this is something. Three of the four tears extended forward from the large defect. Two of these three were inconsistent with the fatal shot's coming from Kennedy's right-front (i.e. the grassy knoll), moreover.

Here is my attempt to depict these scalp lacerations on a photo of Kennedy.

Note that a bullet fired from the location of the photographer and impacting Kennedy's skull at the front edge of the large defect (near the beginnings of lacerations A and B) would be unlikely to create lacerations in the locations of lacerations A and B. These lacerations are thereby inconsistent with the "tangential wound created by a bullet fired from the grassy knoll theory" currently in vogue.

Now note that a bullet's impacting at the rear edge of the large defect (at the rearmost aspect of the Harper fragment in Dr. Angel's orientation, which is to say, above and slightly behind Kennedy's right ear) is perfectly consistent with these lacerations, and that the upward explosion of the Harper fragment as seen in the Zapruder film can be correlated to laceration D, and the forward explosion of the large triangular fragment onto the floor of the limousine can be correlated to laceration C.

By George, I think we've got it.

Still, how does this laceration pattern compare to the laceration pattern apparent on the scalp of "class 3" tangential wound recipients?

Well, sadly, not much has been written on the scalp laceration pattern of class 3 tangential wounds. But I found an image of a class 3 tangential wound in Color Atlas of Forensic Medicine and Pathology by Charles A. Catanese...that is nevertheless intriguing.

I have placed this photo next to the color right lateral photo of Kennedy, below. It''s a bit stomach-churning, I know. But it's probably worth taking a look.

Now consider that the bullet creating the tangential wound on the victim at right traveled from our left to right. Well, for me, this was a bit counter-intuitive, as I'd originally assumed the bullet skimmed along the skull from our right to left. I then realized...the bullet hit the skull at a shallow angle from left to right...knocking some skull fragments forward. As these skull fragments flew forward, then, they pulled the skin on the far side of the skull defect forward with them, stripping this skin from the bone, and leaving a big red gash, that ended in a point.

Now look at Kennedy's forehead. Could laceration b--the red triangle that dives down toward Kennedy's eyebrow--have been created by a skull fragment's exploding forward from the top of Kennedy's head?

I suspect so. While sifting through The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–65, Part I, Volume II, published 1870, I came across dozens of references to missile impacts in which skin was stripped from the bone.

Here are twelve:

KHALL, CHRISTiAN, Private, Co. K, 130th Pennsylvania Volunteers, was wounded, at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, December 13th, 1862. by a musket ball which caused a contusion of the outer table of the right parietal bone above and behind the protuberance. The concussion was slight, not even knocking him down, or causing any disturbance of his mental faculties... On admission, the wound looked healthy, and discharged normal pus. No fracture could be detected, but the bone was denuded of periosteum...

SNYDER, Joseph, Colonel, 7th West Virginia Volunteers, received, at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, December 13th, 1862, a severe gunshot contusion of the skull. The bone was denuded of periosteum, and slight paralysis of the left arm supervened...

Case.—Private John Anderson, Co. A, 77th Illinois Volunteers, was wounded at the battle of Arkansas Post, January 11th, 1863, by a conoidal musket ball which struck at the junction of the frontal and left parietal bones, and passed backward near the sagittal suture almost as far as the lambdoidal, denuded the bone and grooved the outer table for a length of two and one half inches...

Case.—Private James B. Perkins, Co. H, 20th Connecticut Volunteers, aged 23 years, was wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, May 3rd, 1863, by a musket bail which fractured the frontal bone an inch above the right eye and lodged in the frontal sinus...an examination of the wound revealed the external table denuded and slightly depressed...

Thompson, Kund, Private, Co. I, 82nd Illinois Volunteers, aged 30 years, received, at the battle of Chancellorsville,Virginia, May 3rd, 1863, a wound by a pistol ball, which struck the head and denuded the left parietal of periosteum...

WELD, S., Corporal, Co. K, 19th Maine Volunteers, aged 31 years, was wounded, at the battle of the Po River, Virginia, May 13th, 1864, by a conoidal musket ball, which struck at the vertex of the head producing an open wound three inches in length and one in breadth, and denuding a portion of bone of its periosteum...

Unknown. A soldier, wounded in one of the battles between the Wilderness and Petersburg, in May, 1864, receiving a laceration of the scalp, with contusion of the vault of the cranium, by a musket ball. He was sent to an hospital in Philadelphia. The bone, at the point at which the pericranium was denuded, necrosed and exfoliated, and was removed by operation...

Case.—Private Joseph H. Clouse. Co. H, 20th Indiana Volunteers, was wounded at the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 3rd, 1864, by a conoidal ball, which entered just above the frontal eminence of the left side, and made a large flesh wound... On the 24th, the edges were approximating. About a square inch of the bone was visible, one-half of which was denuded of its periosteum...

Case.—Private George Gold, Co. I, 155th Pennsylvania Volunteers, aged 23 years, was admitted to Harewood Hospital on October 7th, 1864. He had been wounded at Poplar Grove Church, on September 30th, by a musket ball, which struck the scalp, passing from before backwards, tearing up a portion about three inches in length by one inch in breadth, laying bare the skull and denuding it of its pericranium for the space of three inches in length and one inch in breadth, through the middle of which space the sagittal suture passed, meeting the coronal at the anterior border...

Case 13.—Sergeant William H. B--- , Co. K, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, aged 24 years, was wounded at the battle of Cedar Creek, October 19th, 1864. He believed that he was struck on the top of the head by a fragment of shell, but the wound had more the appearance of an injury inflicted by a musket ball...A scalp wound two inches long was found about an inch behind the coronal suture and

parallel to it. It extended further to the left than to the right side. The bone was denuded of periosteum over a space an inch long and half an inch wide. The bone appeared to be otherwise uninjured...

CASE.—Private Reuben Clark, Co. H, 31st Maine Volunteers, aged 21 years, was wounded at the battle of Petersburg, Virginia, April 2nd, 1865, by a fragment of shell, which struck near the anterior superior angle of the right parietal bone, producing a fissure one and one-half inches in length, denuding the bone of the periosteum, and slightly depressing the external table...

Case 17.—Private Denis S, Co. E, 2nd Virginia Cavalry, aged 21 years, was wounded, in an engagement at Harper's Farm, near Appomattox Court House, on April 6th, 1865, by the oblique impact of a musket ball which denuded and contused the frontal bone a little below the coronal suture and to the left of the median line...

Now note the location of the periosteum, or pericranium.

Now, here's the thing. When one sifts through these old medical records, one finds that the denuding of bone was always reported in connection to a sabre cut or a tangential entrance of a missile of one kind or another. Not once was it reported in connection with the exit of a perforating missile from the head. Now, this could be because so few of those receiving a perforating missile of the head survived long enough to make it to a doctor.

But it appears to be that a bullet wound in which denuded bone is displayed is either an entrance or a tangential wound of both entrance and exit, as opposed to being an exit for a bullet entering on the other side of the head.

And this isn't just my assumption.

Nope. When it comes to my impression skin may be missing at the entrance of a bullet on the skull, but would not be missing at the exit of a bullet on the skull, I'm in surprising company. Very surprising.

The “Missing” Scalp

Some things are best defined by what they're missing. Accordingly, the evidence that ultimately convinced me the large head wound was tangential in nature was something that was missing: scalp.

The autopsy protocol describes Kennedy’s large head wound as follows: “There is a large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on the right involving chiefly the parietal bone but extending somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions. In this region there is an actual absence of scalp and bone producing a defect which measures approximately 13 cm in greatest diameter.” And this wasn't a one-time claim. In his 3-16-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, Dr. Humes repeated his claim that scalp was missing. He testified that 1) the large "defect involved both the scalp and the underlying skull...;" 2) "there was a defect in the scalp and some scalp tissue was not available;" and 3) that the largest part of the bullet which broke up on impact "accounted for this very large defect, for the multiple fractures of the skull, and for the loss of brain and scalp tissue..."

There can be no doubt then that Dr. Humes felt scalp was missing, and that Dr.s Boswell and Finck agreed. Or, at least agreed enough to sign the autopsy protocol in which it was described...

But there's more to this missing scalp than one might suspect...

Medicolegal Investigation of Death addresses missing scalp as follows: “A point frequently ignored, or forgotten, in comparing entrance and exit wounds is that approximation of the edges of an entrance wound usually retains a small central defect, a missing area of skin. On the other hand, approximation of the edges of the exit re-establishes the skin’s integrity.” The authors of Medicolegal Investigation of Death were Dr. Russell Fisher, of the Clark Panel, and Dr. Werner Spitz, of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel. The pathology panel’s report was most likely accommodating Spitz, then, when it critiqued the autopsy report’s description as follows: “It is probably misleading in the sense that it describes “an actual absence of skin and bone. The scalp was probably virtually all present, but torn and displaced…”

Uhh, no... This last line, disturbingly, ignores that Dr. William Kemp Clark, the one Parkland doctor to closely inspect Kennedy’s head wound, shared the observations of the autopsists, and independently observed “There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue” in a summary of the reports written by the Parkland staff on the day of the shooting. (Wasn’t this required reading?)

Still, Dr. Clark was but one doctor...

Well, this line in the Panel's report (the one claiming JFK's scalp was "probably virtually all present")also ignores that Dr. Malcolm Perry, the doctor most intimately involved in the efforts to revive Kennedy at Parkland, similarly claimed that "both scalp and portions of skull were absent" when testifying before the Warren Commission on 3-30-64.

And it also ignores that Dr. James Carrico, the first doctor to inspect Kennedy's wounds at Parkland, confirmed Clark's and Perry's accounts to the HSCA's investigators on 1-11-78. He told them that the large head wound "had blood and hair all around it." All around it, and not above it. And should one suppose Carrico thought the scalp attached to this hair could be pulled back over the wound, he clarified his position on this, once and for all, in an 8-2-97 oral history with the Sixth Floor Museum, when he described the right side of Kennedy's head as having "a big chunk of bone and scalp missing."

And that's not even to mention the witnesses claiming to see this hairy scalp on bone left in the limousine...

On 11-30-63, Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, who'd climbed onto the back of Kennedy's limo just after the fatal shot was fired, wrote a report that included an often-overlooked detail. He wrote: "As I lay over the top of the back seat I noticed a portion of the President's head on the right rear side was missing and he was bleeding profusely. Part of his brain was gone. I saw a part of his skull with hair on it lieing in the seat."

And Hill wasn't the only one to see this hairy fragment. Motorcycle Officer Bobby Joe Dale arrived upon the scene just as the President's body was rushed into the emergency room. He failed to get a look at the President. He did, however, get a look at the back seat of the limo. Here's what he told Larry Sneed, as published in No More Silence (1998): "Blood and matter was everywhere inside the car including a bone fragment which was oblong shaped, probably an inch to an inch and a half long by three-quarters of an inch wide. As I turned it over and looked at it, I determined that it came from some part of the forehead because there was hair on it which appeared to be near the hairline."

And Dale wasn't the only motorcycle officer to make such a statement. When interviewed for the 2008 Discovery Channel program Inside the Target Car, H.B. McClain related: "When I raised her up (he means Mrs. Kennedy)...I could see it on the floor. That's pieces of skull with the hair on it."

So what happened to this hairy fragment, you might ask? Well, it's tough to say. Secret Service Agent Sam Kinney retrieved a large skull fragment from the limousine as it was flown back from Dallas, but never described this fragment as being covered with hair.

And there's this. When interviewed for No More Silence (1998), FBI agent Vincent Drain, who arrived at Parkland within a half hour or so of the shooting, told Larry Sneed: "It may have been the security officer or one of the other officers who gave me a portion of the skull which was about the size of a teacup, much larger than a silver dollar. Apparently the explosion had jerked it because the hair was still on it. I carried that back to Washington later that night and turned it over to the FBI laboratory."

(Drain's account is curious,to say the least, as he arrived in Washington after the conclusion of the autopsy and there is no record whatsoever of a relatively large bone fragment arriving at the laboratory on the 23rd.)

In any event... at least one skull fragment had hair on it. This fragment could not have come from the small entrance wound on the back of the head, and must have come from the large defect on the top of the head.

This marked the large defect as an entrance, or more logically, a tangential wound of both entrance and exit.

Now that, by itself, represents one of the most important and OVERLOOKED facts about the case.

But, get this, that's not the only thing to be learned from the missing scalp!

Yep, the “missing” scalp returned to center stage on 1-21-00, when the government released a report on tests conducted on CE 567, comprising both the nose of a bullet found on the driver’s seat of Kennedy’s limousine, and foreign material which had apparently been removed from or fallen from this fragment. Although the FBI's Robert Frazier, in his 3-31-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, claimed that when he inspected CE 567 and 569 on 11-23-63 "there was a very slight residue of blood or some other material adhering" to the fragments that "was wiped off to clean up the bullet for examination," it had long been observed that some foreign material remained within the crumpled ridges of CE 567, and that some additional foreign material had fallen off the fragment, and now resided in the evidence dish as part of the exhibit. An HSCA consultant had even asked that tests be conducted on this material. These tests were not conducted, however, until after the uproar surrounding Oliver Stone’s film JFK brought the ARRB into existence. The results of these tests, initially reported on 9-16-98, were that 3 of the 4 pieces of foreign material that were no longer on the fragment were human SKIN, and that the fourth was human tissue. As CE 567 was linked via the neutron activation analysis to the bullet fragments found in Kennedy’s brain, and as there was little scalp missing at the small entrance near the EOP, this finding essentially confirms the tangential entrance I’ve theorized.

Those wishing to read the complete report on the CE 567 foreign material should go here

http://www.jfklancer.com/LNE/fragments/fragreport.html

The significance of this skin is further amplified when one considers that, according to Dr. Vincent J.M. DiMaio, in his standard text Gunshot Wounds, of all the tissues likely to be found on a bullet, "Skin was the least commonly encountered." DiMaio further specifies that "In regard to gunshot wounds of the head, bone chips, skeletal muscle, connective tissue, and strips of small vessels were commonly identified. Fragments of brain were present but were not readily recognizable as neural in origin." Skin didn't even make the list.

And DiMaio is no outlier, at least not on this subject. Here's Bernd Karger, in his article Forensic Ballistics, published in Forensic Pathology Reviews (2008): "Human trace evidence on bullets has been investigated by routine cytological methods but individualisation is commonly not possible, and cells or even cell layers can be found in the cavities of hollow point bullets but are rarely found on the smooth surfaces of FMJ bullets."

So, there it is. Beyond that not enough skin was missing from either of the proposed entrance wounds on the back of Kennedy's head to support that the skin on CE 567 came from the back of his head, the likelihood of skin becoming attached to the nose of the bullet while it was undeformed, at either its entrance or its exit, is next to nothing.

Now, some would object here and claim that, seeing as the foreign material later determined to be skin and tissue just showed up in the evidence dish, without a paper trail proving it had been removed from the fragment by the FBI, or had previously been observed on the fragment, that it could have been planted in the dish, or added in later by mistake.

But this is nonsense.

1. How and why would someone add four pieces of skin and tissue to the exhibit dish?

2. Since the earliest photos of the bullet fragment in CE 567 reveal a more substantial fragment than that in the subsequent photos, where the fragment is accompanied by the four pieces of skin and tissue in the dish, it seems possible--probable even--that the skin and tissue currently in the dish was part of this original fragment.

Here, see for yourself.

The black and white photo comes from the FBI's 12-9-63 report to President Johnson (CD1) and the color photo is one of the most recent photos of the fragment released by the Archives.

There certainly seems to be more material on the right side of the fragment in the black and white photo than in the color photo.

And, should that not be obvious, here are some stills taken of the 360 degree view of the fragment made available in 2019.

More foreign material is apparent on the fragment in the black and white photo than on the fragment in the color photos. Correct?

And no, this wasn't lead that was subsequently removed from the bullet for testing. The FBI's records on its 1964 neutron activation analysis indicate the fragment initially weighed 44.6 grains, or 2,890 mg, and that they removed 68.87 mg for testing. Of course, CE 567 was tested once again in 1977, by Dr. Vincent Guinn for the HSCA. Well, he was even more conservative. His report reveals that he removed but 50.5 mg for testing. That means but 119.37 mg of lead was removed for testing--this is but 4% of the initial weight of the fragment. Well, it seems clear you would need to remove far more than 4% of the fragment in the black and white photo for it to look like the fragment in the color photos.

Let's sum up, then, what we've recently discussed. From the available forensic literature and eyewitness evidence it is clear that 1) the absence of skin from a bullet wound is a sign it's an entrance wound; 2) skin was missing from the large defect; 3) skin is not normally found on bullets; 4) a significant amount of skin shares an exhibit number with, and presumably once resided upon, a bullet fragment linked to the fragments in Kennedy's brain; and 5) the amount of skin with this fragment is best explained by accepting the proposition this bullet busted up at the site of the large defect after striking the skull at an angle.

It all adds up. It simply makes NO SENSE to believe this skin got attached to the nose of the bullet as it entered the back of Kennedy's head, and then stayed attached to the nose as it tumbled through his brain, as there was very little skin missing from the supposed entrance on the back of the head. Simultaneously, it makes NO SENSE to believe this skin attached itself to the bullet upon exit after transiting the head, as the bullet would have little or no contact with the skin exploding outwards from the head at the exit. No, the realization skin was on this bullet is best explained--no, scratch that, can only be honestly explained--by the bullet's having impacted Kennedy's head at the large defect, where skin was actually missing. Yes, the skin on the bullet nose proves it. The large defect was a tangential wound, precisely as proposed by Dr. Clark on 11-22-63.

Alone Again Orr

It should be noted, however, that, much as with the Harper fragment, where the pet theory of a conspiracy theorist (Dr. David Mantik) has prevented many from understanding its true significance, the same is true of the skin on the bullet nose, where John Orr, a former Justice Dept. employee and the initiator of the FBI's tests, has continued to obscure its true significance...in TV shows such as Fox News' special 50 Years of Questions, broadcast in 2013.

You see, Orr has a theory...that the bullet that became CE 567 entered Kennedy's back at frame 204, and went on to exit his throat, and then explode when it hit the windshield frame. In Orr's mind, this both separates Kennedy's wounds from Connally's wounds and kills the single-bullet theory, and makes available a new explanation for Kennedy's head wound and Connally's wrist wound, whereby they were created by a soft-nosed hunting bullet.

So, yes, Orr is a CT. He holds that three bullets struck the car's occupants: one striking Kennedy's back and exiting his throat; one striking Connally in the back and exiting his chest; and one striking Kennedy in the back of the head which exited at the top of his head and proceeded down through Connally's wrist. He says this last one, for that matter, was fired from the roof of the County Records Building.

But there's a HUGE problem with Orr's theory, that neither he nor his friends at FOX will acknowledge.

For his theory to be true, the skin on 567 would have to have come from Kennedy's back wound or throat wound--unusually small wounds with little missing skin. Since the bullet creating these wounds was--per Orr's theory--yet to strike a hard surface and become deformed, moreover, his theory holds as well that this skin clung to the un-blemished nose of the bullet as it sailed through the air before exploding on impact with the windshield frame.

And that, my friends, is balderdash!

Spin

It was only when reviewing this material in 2019, for that matter, that it hit me: that in my impression the bullet that became CE 567 and CE 569 was still spinning, while in Orr's impression it had stopped spinning.

Now, let me explain. The early books on wound ballistics often theorized that the spin imparted on a rifle bullet as it headed down the barrel was a factor in its wounding capabilities. While this turned out to be a bit of a mirage, it nevertheless appears true that a spinning bullet will react differently to an impact on a hard surface than a bullet that is not spinning.

I mean, think about it. If a bullet fired from the sniper's nest entered Kennedy's back, then exited his throat, then nicked his tie, as per Orr, it would have to have changed directions before proceeding on to strike the windshield frame, and the spin around its axis would undoubtedly have been slowed. In such case, then, the appearance of CE 567 and 569 would reflect that the bullet had not been spinning at a high velocity when it impacted the windshield frame.

But if the bullet first impacted the top of Kennedy's head, well, then, the bullet would have broken up while spinning at a high velocity, and this would be reflected in the twisted nature of the bullet fragments.

Gunshot Injuries by Sir Thomas Longmore (1895) presents the following image:

Here's Longmore's explanation for a series of illustrations, of which this was one: "The projectile shown in the illustrations was fired from a rifle of .30-inch calibre, was 220 grains in weight, had an initial velocity of 2000 foot-seconds, and was composed of a core of compressed lead within an envelope of German silver. After passing through the cadavers the bullets were caught in sawdust placed behind them."

And here is the caption to this particular illustration: "No. 1. (a) The core separated from the envelope and badly mushroomed (b) fragment of the envelope, the only one recovered. The bullet was fired into an arm at 17 yards' distance, with a full charge of powder. The humerus was pulverized 3 inches in extent, and the soft parts showed wide explosive effects."

So this is an illustration of what a rapidly spinning bullet looks like after coming to a sudden stop.

Now here are CE 567 and CE 569, the bullet fragments discovered in the front compartment of Kennedy's limousine.

Hmmm... A (at left in Longmore's illustration) is a piece of lead that has lost its jacket, and CE 569 (at left above) is a piece of jacket that has lost its lead.

But more telling is this... B in Longmore's illustration looks a heckuva lot like CE 567.

It's hard to believe this is a coincidence.

Some Sentences on the Fragments

As we've seen, CE 569, the base of the bullet, was all copper, and completely devoid of the lead it once encompassed.

Well, this is yet another data point that feeds into the possibility the fatal bullet hit on a tangent, and created a tangential wound of both entrance and exit.

This becomes clear, moreover, while reading through Manual of Forensic Emergency Medicine by Ralph Riviello, published 2009. There, in a chapter by Dr.s Ronald F. Sing and J. Michael Sullivan, it is explained that with some tangential wounds "As the bullet strikes the skull, the impact separates the bullet from the jacket." They then proceed to claim that the "lead has greater density and mass as it travels into the skull" and that, at this same time, "the lesser mass of the metal jacket is deflected off the skull..."

Hmmm... IF the bullet whose fragments were found in the front compartment of the limo exited from Kennedy's skull intact and broke up upon hitting the windshield strut, as claimed by Dr. Baden, among others, why oh why was the base of this bullet missing its lead? This bullet is presumed to have broken into pieces upon impact with the windshield strut. It makes little sense that the lead from the base of this bullet would continue forward without its copper jacket. I mean--continue forward where? Only one impact was noted on the windshield strut, and only one impact noted by the rear-view mirror--and that impact, in Baden's scenario, anyhow--was almost certainly caused by the now-empty copper base of the bullet. So what happened to the lead?

Does it not make more sense to assume the lead separated from the outer shell when the bullet struck the skull on a tangent, as described by Dr.s Sing and Sullivan? In such a scenario, the lead could continue onward after slicing across the top of the head and brain...only to be deflected by the skull and end up hitting the curb down by James Tague.

Note that the average wound of exit was many times that of the average wound of entrance, with several more than 10 times as large.

And these weren't the only thoracic wound cases detailed in the book. In none of the cases described, however, was the exit wound smaller than the entrance wound. While these shots were virtually all at closer range than the shots striking Kennedy, and all fatal, and therefore automatically more severe than the one striking Kennedy, the small size of the exit in Kennedy’s throat still seems curiously disproportionate. By way of example, one man shot by a sniper from 150 yards, more than twice the length of the shot from the sniper’s nest to Kennedy at Z-224, was found to have a 3 cm by 1.5 cm exit wound on his chest, more than ten times the size of the small wound observed in Kennedy’s throat.

And it's not as if the Warren Commission was unaware of this situation--that the entrance wound should have been larger than the exit wound. Here's CE 850, entered into evidence during the testimony of Dr. Olivier.

And here's Olivier's testimony regarding this exhibit.

Mr. SPECTER. I now hand you a picture marked Commission Exhibit No. 850 and ask you what that represents?

Dr. OLIVIER. These are pieces of clipped goatskin, clipped very shortly. There is still some hair on it. These were placed, these particular ones were placed over the tissues. This would be placed over the entrance side of the animal.

Mr. SPECTER. When you say "this," you are referring to a piece of goatskin which is marked "enter"?

Dr. OLIVIER. Marked "enter." The one marked "exit" was placed on the far side of the tissues and the bullet passed through that after it came out of the tissues.

Mr. SPECTER. For the record, will you describe the characteristics, which are shown on the goatskin at the point of entry, please?

Dr. OLIVIER. At the point of entry the wound holes through the skin are for all purposes round. On the exit side they are more elongated, two of them in particular are a little more elongated. The bullet had started to become slightly unstable coming out.

Mr. SPECTER. And how about the third or lower bullet on the skin designated exit?

Dr. OLIVIER. That hole appears as more stable than the other two. In all three cases the bullet is still pretty stable. The gelatin blocks, there were gelatin blocks placed behind these things too, and for all practical purposes, the tracks through them still indicated a stable bullet.

Olivier and Specter knew that the presumed exit wound on Kennedy's throat should have been larger than the presumed entrance wound on his back, but failed to offer an explanation why the reverse was true.

And it's not as if the passage of time has offered reason to believe Olivier's tests were anomalous, and that it was not at all unusual that a bullet wound of entrance on Kennedy's back would be smaller than the supposed exit of this bullet from Kennedy's throat.

An article by three Finnish doctors (Rainio, Lalu, and Penttila) in the February 2001 issue of Forensic Science International described the autopsies performed on 10 victims of a 1999 massacre in Kosovo. These 10 victims were all killed by assault weapons, which we can presume used smaller bullets than the bullet killing Kennedy, although traveling at a greater velocity. The wounds of exit on these victims, then, can be presumed to have been larger than the supposed wound of exit on Kennedy's throat, should this wound have truly been an exit of a bullet.

But not this much larger. The 10 victims suffered 82 wounds of entrance, 62 wounds of exit, and 7 tangential wounds of both entrance and exit. Of the wounds of entrance, 58 (71%) were 15 mm or smaller in maximum diameter. Of the wounds of exit, but 10 (16%) were 15 mm or smaller in maximum diameter. Only 7 (9%) of the entrance wounds were larger than 25 mm in maximum diameter. Meanwhile, 23 (37%) of the exit wounds were larger than 30 mm in maximum diameter.

Well, it should be clear from this that the widespread belief exit wounds are normally larger than entrance wounds is no myth, and that some explanation should have been offered as to why Kennedy's throat wound was so damned small.

Above: long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, once one of America's most-respected men, later one of its most-reviled. (Note: no photos were taken during Hoover's testimony before the Warren Commission, but if there had been, you can bet they'd look something like this.)

The Hoover Truth

On 5-14-64, a week after President Johnson waived his impending mandatory retirement, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover testifies before the Commission. (5H96-120) Despite his taking an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he offers up the Hoover truth.

Hoover Truth: “I have read many of the reports that our agents have made and I have been unable to find any scintilla of evidence showing any foreign conspiracy or any domestic conspiracy that culminated in the assassination of President Kennedy.” (Note: Hoover had known for three years or more that organized crime and the anti-Castro elements likely to set up Oswald were linked and were conspiring to murder Fidel Castro, Oswald’s supposed hero. Even though this information could lead one to suspect that Oswald killed Kennedy in retaliation, or that Oswald was indeed set up, Hoover failed to mention anything about this to the Commission.)

Hoover Truth: “There have been publications and books written, the contents of which have been absurd and without a scintilla of foundation of fact." “I, personally, feel that any finding of the Commission will not be accepted by everybody, because there are bound to be some extremists who have very pronounced views, without any foundation for them, who will disagree violently with whatever findings the Commission makes.” (Note: two of the loudest voices to argue against the Commission’s findings were not extremists at all, but former FBI agents William Turner and Jim Garrison. More pointedly, the President for whom the report was written, Lyndon Johnson, never believed its findings. )

Hoover Truth: “I don’t think you can get absolute security without almost establishing a police state, and we don’t want that.” (Note: by 1964 Hoover had long been using the FBI to infiltrate and discredit organizations he found personally despicable. These FBI-trained infiltrators would frequently encourage the targeted organizations to engage in violent activity, in order to help discredit them in the public eye. Curiously, one of the organizations targeted by Hoover under this program (COINTELPRO) was the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization publicly discredited in New Orleans by the actions of Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Hoover Truth: (When asked if he still agreed that Oswald acted alone.) “I subscribe to it even more strongly today than I did at the time the report was written. You see the original idea was that there would be an investigation by the FBI and a report would be prepared in such a form that it could be released to the public… Then a few days later, after further consideration, the President decided to form a commission, which I think was very wise, because I feel that the report of any agency of Government investigating what might be some shortcomings on the part of other agencies of Government ought to be reviewed by an impartial group such as this Commission.” (Note: Hoover failed to admit that he originally told President Johnson the Commission would be a “three-ring circus." Hoover also failed to acknowledge that with the FBI’s report, it was not only investigating the shortcomings of other agencies, i.e. the State department, CIA, Secret Service, and Dallas Police Department, but the potential shortcomings of the FBI itself, as the FBI had failed to add Oswald’s name to the Security Index used by the Secret Service to track possible threats to the President.)

Hoover Truth: (When asked by Congressman Hale Boggs if he had thoughts on Oswald’s motivation.) “My speculation, Mr. Boggs, is that this man was no doubt a dedicated Communist… He stayed in Moscow awhile and he went to Minsk where he worked. There was no indication of any difficulty, personally on his part there, but I haven’t the slightest doubt he was a dedicated Communist.” (Note: Hoover was obsessed with Communism, and saw Communists as evil and everywhere. His domestic intelligence chief William Sullivan later wrote a book admitting that by the early 1960s a large percentage of American communists were in fact FBI informants.)

Hoover Truth: “Now some people have raised the question, why didn’t he shoot the President as the car came toward the storehouse where he was working? The reason for that is, I think, the fact there were some trees between his window on the sixth floor and the cars as they turned and went through the park. So he waited until the car got out from under the trees, and the limbs, and then he had a perfectly clear view of the of the occupants of the car, and I think he took aim, either on the President or Connally, and I personally believe it was the President in view of the twisted mentality the man had.” (Note, as demonstrated by the photos of the assassination scene taken by the Secret Service, and published by the Warren commission as Exhibit 875, there was a clear shot down Houston, should a sniper have been so inclined. The only trees were to the right of the sniper’s nest, blocking its view down Elm.)

Hoover Truth: (When discussing the attitude of the Soviet Government, and the KGB in particular, towards Oswald) “I think they probably looked upon him more as a kind of a queer sort of individual and they didn’t trust him too strongly. But just the day before yesterday information came to me indicating that there is an espionage training school outside of Minsk—I don’t know whether it was true—and that he was trained in that school to come back to this country to become what they call a 'sleeper,' that is a man who will remain dormant for 3 or 4 years and in case of international hostilities rise up and be used.” (Note: this from the man who just swore there was not one “scintilla” of evidence indicating a foreign conspiracy. It seems Hoover couldn’t help but kick a little sand in the direction of Russia when given the opportunity.)

Hoover Truth: “Now, we interviewed Oswald a few days after he arrived…There was nothing up to the time of the assassination that gave any indication that this man was a dangerous character who might do harm to the President or to the Vice-President, so his name was not furnished at the time to the Secret Service. Under the new criteria which we have now put into force and effect, it would have been furnished because we now include all defectors.” (Note: here, Hoover almost certainly commits perjury. Hoover concealed from the commission that on December 10, 1963, he’d censured or placed on probation 17 employees (5 field investigators, 1 field supervisor, 3 special agents in charge, 4 headquarters supervisors, 2 headquarters section chiefs, 1inspector, and 1 assistant director) for what the inspector of the internal investigation, James Gale, termed “shortcomings in connection with the investigation of Oswald prior to the assassination.” When Assistant director Alan Belmont complained about this action, stating that since “all of the supervisors and officials who came into contact with this case…are unanimous in the opinion that Oswald did not meet the criteria for the Security Index…it would appear that the criteria are not sufficiently specific,” Hoover blasted him. On Belmont’s addendum to Gale’s December 10, 1963 memo, Hoover wrote “They were worse than mistaken. Certainly no one in full possession of all his faculties can claim Oswald didn’t fall within this criteria.” On September 24, 1964, the day the Warren Report, which included criticisms of the FBI’s investigation of Oswald prior to the assassination, was released, Hoover pounced again, writing that the employees who failed to properly investigate Oswald “could not have been more stupid.” He then punished these employees a second time. On September 30, 1964, Inspector Gale wrote “It is felt that it is appropriate at this time to consider further administrative action against those primarily culpable for the derelictions in this case which have now had the effect of publicly embarrassing the Bureau.” When a number of top FBI officials reacted angrily to the Warren Report’s criticism of the Bureau, and began planning ways to defend the FBI in the press, Hoover reiterated his position that the FBI was in fact to blame. On a 10-1-64 memo from Alan Belmont to Clyde Tolson, he wrote: “We were wrong. The administrative actions approved by me will stand. I do not intend to palliate actions which have resulted in forever destroying the Bureau as the top level investigative organization.” )

Hoover Truth: “There was very aggressive press coverage at Dallas. I was so concerned that I asked my agent in charge at Dallas, Mr. Shanklin, to personally go to Chief Curry and tell him that I insisted that he not go on the air any more until this case was resolved. Until all the evidence had been examined, I did not want any statements made concerning the progress of the investigation. Because of the fact the President had asked me to take charge of the case I insisted that he and all members of his department refrain from public statements.” (Note: immediately following Oswald’s death, Hoover’s man in Dallas, Mr. Shanklin, listed all the evidence against Oswald for the New York Times. Moreover, the Times’ 11-25 description of the evidence indicates that Shanklin misrepresented the results of the paraffin tests, stating that they showed “particles of gunpowder from a weapon, probably a rifle, on Oswald’s cheek and hands.” While the test results were consistent with Oswald firing a pistol, the test results were negative for his cheek. Therefore, there was nothing whatsoever about the tests that suggested Oswald had fired a rifle.)

Hoover Truth: “Well, I can tell you so far as the FBI is concerned the case will be continued in an open classification for all time. That is, any information coming to us or any report coming to us from any source will be thoroughly investigated, so that we will be able to either prove or disprove the allegation.” (Note: in February 1967, Edward Morgan, a lawyer representing CIA front-man Robert Maheu and mafia strategist Johnny Rosselli, contacted columnist Drew Pearson and told him about the joint CIA/Mafia attempts to kill Castro, and the possibility they’d backfired on Kennedy. Pearson then told Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in turn told Secret Service Chief James Rowley. When Rowley told Hoover about the incident, Alex Rosen drafted the FBI response. Rosen would later testify that he was sick and that an unidentified subordinate wrote this under his name. His response: “no investigation will be conducted regarding the allegations…to Chief Justice Warren.” The letter, which was sent to Chief Rowley under Hoover’s name on 2-15-67, went on to state “The Bureau is not conducting any investigation regarding this matter. However, should Mr. Pearson, (Morgan), or (his) source of information care to volunteer any information to the Bureau, it would be accepted.” The internal memo from Rosen to White House/FBI liaison Cartha Deloach, for that matter, added: “Consideration was given to furnishing this information to the White House, but since this matter does not concern, nor is it pertinent to the present Administration, no letter was being sent.” Hmmm... It follows then, that if Hoover's testimony to the Warren Commission had in fact been truthful, and that the FBI was in fact committed to investigating any leads that would subsequently come their way, well, then Hoover clearly failed to tell as much to the men who would be tasked with conducting such an investigation.)

On 5-15-64, Counsel David Belin writes a memo detailing his trip to Dallas with commissioners Dulles, Cooper, and McCloy. In this memo, he alerts General Counsel Rankin to a conversation he had with Commissioner McCloy, after showing McCloy a report in which he'd presented the evidence regarding the assassin in the window. Belin first observes that McCloy "seemed to misunderstand the basic purpose of the report, for he suggested that we did not point up enough arguments to show why Oswald was the assassin." He then relates: "Commissioner McCloy did state that in the final report he thought that we should be rather complete in developing reasons and affirmative statements why Oswald was the assassin—he did not believe that it should just merely be a factual restatement of what we had found."

Yes, the time for conclusions is at hand.

And the time for questions is rapidly coming to a close. By now, the scenario of a final shot head shot has been repeated so many times by the FBI and the media that two of Kennedy’s closest aides, Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers, who'd been riding in the motorcade in the car behind Kennedy, go along with it. One of them, Kenneth O'Donnell, is so anxious to get along that he fails to put into the record that his immediate impression was that the last shot came from in front of the limousine. (He would later tell Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill that he thought the last shot came from in front of the limousine.) Kenneth O’Donnell (5-18-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H440-457) “My first impression was it was a firecracker. And then either somebody said “He has been hit,” or I noticed the slump—he had been waving out the right side of the car and I noticed him slump over toward Mrs. Kennedy, and I realized then that they had been shots. But as fast as that realization occurred, I saw the third shot hit.” Final shot head shot. David Powers (5-18-64 affidavit, 7H472-474): “the first shot went off and it sounded to me as if it were a firecracker. I noticed then that the President moved quite far to his left after the shot from the extreme right hand side where he had been sitting. There was a second shot and Governor Connally disappeared from sight and then there was a third shot which took off the top of the President’s head and had the sickening sound of a grapefruit splattering against a wall.” Final shot head shot.

Still, the source and order of the shots is not the only question whose answer seems increasingly out of reach. Oswald's capability with a rifle, and his rifle's capability to shoot accurately, are also still in doubt. On May 20, 1964, William Waldman testifies before the Commission as a representative of Klein's Sporting Goods, the company that sold Oswald the rifle. He testifies that the scope had been installed at Kleins's but that it was not sighted-in by Klein's. (7H360-369) This raises the question of whether the scope had EVER been sighted-in prior to the FBI's attempt to sight it in on March 16, 1964. (This question would never be answered.)

JAHS Chapter 18

JAHS Chapter 20