JAHS Chapter 26

Above: one of the great ironies of American political history is that Lyndon Johnson, the one-time "Master of the Senate," spent his presidency largely on the phone.

"Clearing the Air"

An October 6, 1966 phone call between President Johnson and his most trusted adviser Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas has Johnson instructing Fortas to have a talk with FBI Assistant Director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach, whom Fortas claims is a "very close friend" to Johnson, and enlist him in their campaign to prop up the Warren Commission's conclusions.

It seems Johnson wanted Hoover to write a book on the subject. And no, I'm not kidding.

Here's an internal FBI memo freed from the archives by researcher Harold Weisberg, which eventually became the subject of a 4-1-85 column by Jack Anderson.

Now, that's quite a brain-bomb, yes? A Supreme Court Justice, acting on behalf of the President of the United States, has pressured the Director of the FBI to write a book or issue a statement to help clear the President's name, and the Director of the FBI has responded by telling him he should instead ask the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court!

One line in the memo is of particular interest--(Fortas) "had argued with the president that it was not logical for the director to prepare this book inasmuch as the director in doing so would necessarily have to substantiate the investigative efforts of many other agencies."

An internal FBI memo dated 11-22-66 (Rosen to DeLoach, 11/22/1966, FBI HQ JFK Assassination File, 62-109060-4267), for that matter, specified just what it was that Hoover was so reluctant to "substantiate." At the bottom of this memo Director Hoover added “We don’t agree with the Commission as it says one shot missed entirely & we contend all three shots hit.”

And yet, the times-they-were-a-changin'.

An 11-25-66 memo from DeLoach to Tolson recounts that DeLoach had called Chief Justice Earl Warren on 11-23-66 on an apparently unrelated matter, but that Warren had brought up some of the recent problems surrounding the commission during the phone call. According to DeLoach, Warren complained about former commission counsel Wesley Liebeler, and noted that Liebeler was a '"beatnik' type of individual who had proved to be very unethical." According to DeLoach, Warren was displeased that Liebeler had kept detailed notes on his disagreements with the commission, and that Liebeler's notes had formed the "basis" of Epstein's book. In closing, however, DeLoach revealed more about himself than about Warren and his obvious dislike of Liebeler. He wrote: "I informed the Chief Justice... that the Director, in the near future, planned to issue a statement defending the FBI's phase of the assassination investigation. The Chief Justice said he was glad to hear this and that the Director's name and prestige would be a great help in clearing the air."

Now, let's connect the dots. DeLoach told Warren on the 23rd--the day after Hoover claimed the FBI did not agree with the commission--that Hoover was about to issue a statement defending the FBI's phase of the assassination investigation. And Warren was pleased with this and felt this statement would help "clear the air." Well, seeing as a statement from Hoover defending the FBI in which he voiced his disagreement with the single-bullet theory would not be good news to Warren, it seems fairly obvious DeLoach knew Hoover was about to offer his support for the single-bullet theory...

And then it happened. On 11-26-66, Hoover issued a statement claiming "There is no conflict" between the FBI's position and that of the commission. He then explained the confusion, attributing it to the fact that the FBI agents at the autopsy had been told no exit wound could be associated with the entrance wound on the back, but that, unknown to these agents, "the physicians eventually were able to trace the path of the bullet through the body." (This, of course, never happened.) He then related "Meanwhile, the clothing worn by the President when he was shot was examined in the FBI Laboratory. This examination revealed a small hole in the back of his coat and shirt and a slit characteristic of an exit hole for a projectile in the front of the shirt one inch below the collar button. A nick on the left side of the tie knot, possibly caused by the same projectile which passed through the shirt, also was noted. These findings clearly indicated the examining physician's early observation that the bullet penetrated only a short distance into the president's back probably was in error." (Except this wasn't true! While the FBI lab did make note of the wound on Kennedy's throat in its 1-13-64 report, and describe this wound as an exit, it suggested this wound was caused by a fragment from the head wound. It did not connect the throat wound to the back wound at that time, nor for months after. To wit, the FBIcontinued to tell newsmen that the bullet striking Kennedy in the back fell out onto his gurney for months and months after the shooting.)

Hoover's statement then sunk knee-deep in some bullshit. It offered an explanation for the FBI's months-long delay in accurately reporting the medical evidence, that couldn't pass even the most forgiving of smell tests. Here it comes: "Since this observation" (that the bullet creating the back wound had only penetrated a short distance) "had been included in the FBI Report of December 9, 1963, another reference was made to it in the report of January 13, 1964, in conjunction with the laboratory findings to point up this probability."

Well, what the heck does that mean? Was it routine for the FBI to repeat inaccurate information? And, if so, how would accurate information ever come to replace it? More to the point, was the recitation of conclusions at odds with the autopsy report three weeks after the FBI received a copy of the autopsy report a mistake, or not? And, if so, why wouldn't they admit as much?

But, wait, it gets worse. Hoover's statement continued: "The FBI and the Warren Commission each received a copy of the official autopsy report on December 23, 1963, from Secret Service following a specific request for this document. Since the FBI knew the Commission had a copy of the official autopsy, its contents were not repeated in an FBI report." Wait... WHAT? This suggests that the FBI KNEW their 1-13-64 report was in error when they wrote it, but didn't want to bring it in line with the official autopsy report because...because...they were respecting the Kennedy family's privacy, and not wanting to have the contents of an official autopsy report (a public document) reported in an FBI report (a secret document). I mean, really. Are we to assume that within the FBI's files on murder after murder after murder there are FBI reports on what their agents were told about autopsy after autopsy after autopsy--that deliberately exclude information gathered from the official autopsy reports on the victims because, y'know, there might be something in these reports that might prove embarrassing to someone?

OF COURSE NOT!!! That would be stupid beyond belief.

Well, this is mighty suspicious, wouldn't you say? On 11-22-66, Hoover noted that the FBI and Warren Commission were in disagreement on the single-bullet theory. Four days later, a press release was issued in which it was claimed Hoover had received a letter from an unnamed newsman asking about this disagreement on the 21st, and that he had responded to this letter on the 23rd, and that his letter had explained that there was NO disagreement between the FBI and Warren Commission on the single-bullet theory. Well, heck, why couldn't Hoover have told this to the press in a press conference? Why issue a written statement? And why hide the identity of the newsman?

And, oh yeah, while we're asking, does it make any sense whatsoever that Hoover would change his mind about this extremely important issue...overnight?

I think not. It's just speculation, but it seems likely DeLoach and his men prepared "Hoover's" statement at Johnson's urging, and arranged for one of the FBI's contacts in the media to ask Hoover for a statement, so that Hoover could make a public statement supporting the Warren Commission without acknowledging he was doing so at Johnson's urging, or having to say the words himself.

No, scratch that. It's not just speculation. In his book Post Mortem (published 1975), Harold Weisberg recounts how he asked the FBI for a copy of the 11-26-66 statement Hoover provided the press, and how it took them nine years, and a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, to comply. He also presents the full statement sent the press.

But the story doesn't end there. Through his efforts, Weisberg was able to round up numerous FBI internal documents regarding Hoover's 11-26 press release, (including the 10-10-66 document shown above, which he provided Jack Anderson). These documents prove that the FBI worked on "Hoover's" statement for weeks before approaching Washington Star editor Sid Epstein and asking him to sign off on an FBI-penned request for information... to which Hoover then "responded."

Here are two of the FBI's memos on this transaction.

Well, this is another brain-bomb, right? Not only did the FBI compose the supposedly journalist-written letter to which Hoover responded, the letter and response had been "cleared" by Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, acting as the eyes and ears of President Johnson.

I mean, this was such a total crock...they even lied about the date! On 11-23-66, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover responded to a letter from Washington Star editor Sid Epstein dated 11-21-66, which was not actually transposed onto Washington Star stationery and signed by Epstein until that afternoon, AFTER Epstein had received Hoover's response.

And that's not even to mention that, oh yeah, the documents received by Weisberg prove Hoover's "11-23" response to Epstein's "11-21" letter was originally drafted on 10-20.

Now... Note also that the author of the 11-23 memo to DeLoach, R.E. Wick, (one of DeLoach's underlings), used the same words as DeLoach's 11-25 memo to Tolson--that is, that a statement from Hoover supporting the Warren Commission would be of great help in "clearing the air."

Let's think about this... President Johnson has pressured the FBI into creating a fake news story with a fake paper trail in order to hide his involvement in a public statement issued by the Director of the FBI, and those involved or benefiting from this action have justified it under the belief it will help "clear the air."

Of what, exactly? Certainly not the stench of cover-up!

Now, it should be noted that Weisberg wasn't the only one to blow the whistle on this dirty smelly affair.

Here's Jack Anderson, in his 4-1-85 column, on DeLoach's 10-10-66 memo on Johnson and Fortas:

"Johnson had a fallback positlion, which Fortas then presented. He asked that Hoover at least issue a statement on one point the critics had raised: the discrepancies between FBI reports and the Warren Commission concerning the Kennedy autopsy. DeLoach told Fortas he "felt certain" Hoover would agree to this modest proposal and immediately set to work drafting such a statement...DeLoach, now retired, told my associate Les Whitten that the matter was resolved by issuing a Hoover-approved statement in response to an inquiry from the Washington Star..."

(Note: one can take from this that Whitten had spoken to DeLoach about the memo, and that this had led him to believe it was Johnson's preference that Hoover write a book defending the Warren Commission. As Hoover had written, or at least put his name on, several best-selling books on communism while serving as FBI Director--and as these books had actually been written by FBI employees--and as Hoover had pocketed the profits from these books, this was, in effect, an attempt at a bribe... er, not so much a bribe as an "I know you don't want to do this, but if you do it, and feel you need to make some money off it, at the expense of the American taxpayer even, don't worry, I won't mind." Oh, for crying out loud, let's call a spade a spade...a bribe...)

So, yeah, by 1985, DeLoach was willing to acknowledge the 1966 pressure campaign on Hoover.

And that wasn't the first time he talked about it.

When testifying before the Church Committee, on 11-25-75, DeLoach was asked if he could recall any conversations he may have had with President Johnson regarding the Kennedy assassination, beyond one in which President Johnson asked him to investigate the critics of the Warren Commission. Here is his response: "To the best of my recollection, Mr. Seidel, and I previously testified to this just a minute ago, the only other conversations I recall was when President Johnson called either Mr. Hoover or me, or it was Mr. Watson (Johnson's assistant) who called Mr. Hoover or me, and indicated that he wanted the FBI to issue a statement reflecting the findings of the FBI and the Warren Commission that it was Oswald and Oswald alone that committed the assassination. I think the Bureau files would reflect not only the call from the White House to either Mr. Hoover or me and will also reflect that a press release was written under Mr. Hoover's instruction and issued shortly thereafter in this connection."

While DeLoach insisted he couldn't recall the date of his or Hoover's conversation with Johnson or Watson, the 11-26-66 press release on Hoover's 11-23 letter to Epstein is the only press release in which FBI Director Hoover defended the findings of the Warren Commission. DeLoach had thereby revealed that this press release was written at President Johnson's request...er, command.

And that Hoover was displeased by this... As questioning continued, DeLoach revealed further that "I distinctly recall that Mr. Hoover, as he often did, was unhappy about the fact that the President of the United States was calling on the FBI to issue such a release. And while he had disagreements with the request, he buckled under and issued such a release." When then asked how he knew this, DeLoach replied "either Mr. Hoover told me this or Mr. Clyde Tolson, the Associate Director, who was my superior, told me this." He then continued "as I seem to recall, Mr. Hoover or Mr. Tolson or someone felt that we were being used and we had already submitted our findings and the FBI should not be used as a public sounding board in issuing such a release." He then clarified "The FBI had no dissatisfaction ...with the findings that Oswald and Oswald alone committed the assassination. But at the same time, our findings had been submitted some years previously and we felt that it was wrong for us to be used as a public relations sounding board at that time."

So...there it is. The Johnson Administration pressured J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI into publicly supporting the Warren Commission.

Well, if it would do as much to J. Edgar Hoover, it would have done as much to J. Thornton Boswell. Correct?

Manchester Dissected

That Dr. Boswell's interviews contained deliberate disinformation, and came about as a result of a united effort to mislead the public about the location of Kennedy's back wound, finds support, moreover, in an unexpected place. By November 1966, when Boswell gave his interviews, Washington D.C. was humming with chatter on the upcoming release of William Manchester's The Death of a President, a book written at the request of the Kennedy family, for which Manchester had been granted unparalleled access to Kennedy's Secret Service detail. Much of this chatter, moreover, revolved around President Johnson's concern the book would make him look bad. (After finally giving in and reading the book, Jacqueline Kennedy came to agree that the book was indeed unfair to Johnson, and fought successfully for a number of edits.)

In any event, the book, when serialized in the 1-24-67 issue of Look Magazine, included the following description of the first shot's trajectory: "The President was wounded, but not fatally. A 6.5 millimeter bullet had entered the back of his neck, bruised his right lung, ripped his windpipe, and exited at his throat, nicking the knot of his tie." Now, from this, one might assume Manchester was simply regurgitating Dr. Humes' Warren Commission testimony. But there's more to this than at first meets the eye.

It then explains:

"In the summer of 1966, a former Cornell graduate student published a dissertation that suggested that this first bullet followed a different trajectory. The implication was that a second assassin had aided Oswald. The issue is resolved by the X-rays and photographs which were taken from every conceivable angle during the autopsy on the President's body. Robert Kennedy has decided that this material is too unsightly to be shown to anyone, including qualified scholars, until 1971. He has turned it over to the National Archives with that restriction. Although this writer has not seen the material, he interviewed three people with special qualifications who examined it before it was put under seal. None of them knew the other two, but all three gave identical accounts of what they had seen in the photographs and X-rays. The X-rays show no entry wound 'below the shoulder,' as argued by the graduate student. Admittedly, X-rays of active projectiles passing through soft tissue are difficult to read. However, the photographs support them in this case--and clearly reveal that the wound was in the neck. Finally, the recollections of all doctors present during the autopsy, including the President's personal physician, agree unanimously with this overwhelming evidence."

When published in book form, three months later, moreover, the words in bold above had been re-written. This paragraph was now just a footnote, and read:

"In the summer of 1966, a former Cornell graduate student published a book which suggested that this first bullet followed a different trajectory. The implication was that a second assassin had aided Oswald. The issue is resolved by the X-rays and photographs which were taken from every conceivable angle during the autopsy on the President's body. Because the material is unsightly it will be unavailable until 1971. However, the author has discussed it with three men who examined it before it was placed under seal. All three carried special professional qualifications. Each was a stranger to the other two. Nevertheless their accounts were identical. The X-rays show no entry wound 'below the shoulder,' as argued by the graduate student. Admittedly, X-rays of active projectiles passing through soft tissue are difficult to read. Yet, the photographs support them in this case--and reveal that the wound was in the neck. Finally, the recollections of all doctors present during the autopsy, including the President's personal physician, agree unanimously with this overwhelming evidence. Thus the account in the above text is correct."

Well, I'll be. Who were these three "professionals?" While one might at first assume they were three of the four members of Kennedy's autopsy team (the four being Humes, Boswell, Stringer, and Ebersole), who'd just inventoried the evidence for the archives, Manchester specifies both that the men conducting this examination were strangers to each other, and that they'd examined the evidence before it was returned to the government and placed under seal by the Kennedy family on October 31, 1966. He also lists no interviews with these men in the Sources sections of his book.

He does list a 7-11-66 interview with Dr. George Burkley, Kennedy's physician, however. This lends support that he spoke to Burkley on this issue, and that Burkley had, yes indeed, confirmed that the wound was on the neck, as reported. There's a HUGE problem with this, however. The death certificate for Kennedy made out by Burkley on 11-23-63 described the wound Manchester describes as a wound on the "back of his neck" as a wound "in the posterior back at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra." Back, not neck. And the third thoracic vertebra--not remotely on the neck.

So who could get to Burkley, and get him to mislead Manchester about the location of the back wound? Well, it seems a bit of a coincidence that Burkley was retained by President Johnson, and was Johnson's personal physician when Manchester asked him about the back wound. It's also quite intriguing that the only known inspection of the autopsy materials prior to their being placed "under seal" was on April 26, 1965, when they were inventoried upon transfer to the Kennedy family, and that this inventory was performed by Dr. Burkley, along with Robert Bouck, Special Agent in Charge of the Protective Research Division of the Secret Service, Edith Duncan, administrative assistant to Bouck, Secret Service agent Chester Miller, and, according to some sources, Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley.

And yet...not only were these people not strangers to each other, they, (with the possible exception of Dr. Burkley), failed to have the "special professional qualifications" described by Manchester.

This, then, leads to the uncomfortable possibility the "examination" cited by Manchester took place while the autopsy materials were in possession of the Kennedy family, and that three trusted "professionals," purported strangers to each other, lied to Manchester. If so, no word of this "examination" has ever surfaced.

If it even happened... Yes, it seems probable no examination of this type actually took place, and that Manchester was exaggerating both the precision of the examination he described, and the qualifications of those performing this examination.

This probability is supported by a letter published in The Manchester Affair, a book on the difficulties Manchester faced getting his book published. This letter was written by Manchester on 7-17-66, shortly after the publication of Edward Epstein's Inquest, the book by the "former Cornell graduate student"causing Manchester so much concern. This letter was written to Robert Kennedy, and brags: "Epstein's Inquest, a really poisonous job, needn't trouble us any longer. With the help of Dr. Burkley and Howard Willens I think I've knocked out what, at first reading, appears to be one strong point in Epstein's version." (The importance of this letter was first noted by Howard Roffman.)

As we've seen, in the Sources section of his book, Manchester lists an interview with Burkley on 7-11-66. Well, he also lists an interview with Willens on 7-8-66. These are the last of the hundreds of interviews listed in the Sources section. There is no record of him interviewing three men with "special professional qualifications" at any time this month. In fact, it had been months since Manchester had interviewed anyone prior to his interviews of Willens, and then Burkley. The probability exists then, that Burkley and Willens supplied Manchester with the identities of the three strangers with "special professional qualifications," mentioned by Manchester. Burkley, was, of course, a doctor. He saw the photos and X-rays. He was almost certainly one of the three "strangers."

But who were the other two?

A close look at Willens provides us an answer. Well, at least a possible answer. Willens had, of course, served as counsel for the Warren Commission, working as an assistant to General Counsel J. Lee Rankin. But what is little appreciated about Willens is that, unlike the rest of the lawyers working for the commission, Willens did not come to the Commission from outside Washington, but inside. He was a lawyer for the Justice Department, strategically placed within the Commission by acting Attorney General Katzenbach, supposedly to work as a liaison between the Commission and the Justice Department.

But his actual role went further, much further.

According to Epstein's Inquest, for which Willens was interviewed, Willens was responsible for selecting most of the junior counsel working for the Commission. While some of these men, the work-horses of the Commission, were recommended by others, at least two were Willens' personal picks--David Belin, an old school chum from the University of Michigan, and Arlen Specter, an old school chum from Yale, with whom he'd edited the Yale Law Journal. As Willens was also tasked with assigning these men their duties, it follows from Epstein's book that Willens was far and away the man most responsible for the strange circumstance that Arlen Specter, of all the lawyers in America, would end up being the chief investigator for the Commission on the specifics of the shooting, i.e. the man tasked with determining how many shots were fired, and from where they were fired.

Specter's 2000 autobiography, Passion for Truth, in fact, supports this analysis. There, Specter admits both that Willens offered him a job on the Commission and was involved in the discussions leading Specter to become the junior counsel investigating the actual shooting. Specter does clarify, however, that Willens and Rankin offered him his choice of areas to investigate, with the exception of Area 2, which looked into the identity of the assassin (because Specter was a well-known prosecutor), and Area 4, which looked into Oswald's possible connections to Russia and Cuba (because the senior counsel for this area was also from Philadelphia), and that Specter himself made the decision to investigate Area 1 after a discussion with his law partner, Marvin Katz.

There is a strange element in Specter's account, however. He describes the area of his investigation, Area 1, as President Kennedy's activities from the moment he left the White House en route to Texas until his return to the White House after the autopsy. Well, this hides from his readers that he was also ultimately responsible for establishing the facts surrounding the shooting--how many shots were fired, how fast they were fired, and where they hit--and that this led him to orchestrate the May 24, 1964 re-enactment of the shooting, take the testimony of the FBI and Secret Service agents involved in this re-enactment, and take the testimony of two representatives of the U.S. Military on July 24, 1964, in which they played word games in order to assure the Commission Oswald was capable of performing the shooting.

And that's not all that's discomforting about the Willens/Specter nexxus. Willens was also responsible for disseminating the thousands of FBI, CIA, and Secret Service Reports provided the Warren Commission to the lawyers responsible for the related areas of investigation. This put Willens, an employee of President Johnson's Justice Department, in the driver's seat of the Commission's investigation.

And this didn't go unnoticed. When interviewed for Inquest, Commissioner John McCloy let his distrust of Willens known. He told Epstein that Willens "was one of Katzenbach's boys. Katzenbach put him in there to keep us on the right track. There was already an independent investigator (Redlich) and there were some clashes. Willens was a bureaucrat and had a different perspective. Willens had to be reprimanded several times by the chief justice. Once he kept material from us--evidence-- he locked it in his top drawer, afraid we weren't ready for it. He wanted to be the star-- thought this case would make him. He is ambitious, and will probably write a book. We finally forced him to give us the evidence. He also reported to Katzenbach, gave him a different story."

And McCloy was not alone in his criticism of Willens. In his final interview, a March 26, 1974 interview with Warren Commission historian Alfred Goldberg, Chief Justice Warren acknowledged he'd had difficulties with Willens. In a section slated to be edited from the typed-up interview, but viewable on jfkassassinationfiles.com, Warren noted the difficulties General Counsel Rankin had in dealing with the FBI, CIA, and State Department. He then added: "There was another factor--the Department of Justice sent a young man over to the Commission to act as liaison with them. He was very critical of me from the time he came over to us. Lee Rankin as Chief Counsel was in a very delicate position."

And this wasn't the last time Willens' loyalty to the commission was called into doubt...by a supposed colleague. In 1975, a June 3, 1960 memo in which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned the State Department that someone might be impersonating Oswald bubbled to the surface. A 2-23-75 article in the Sacramento Bee on this discovery notes that "Neither J. Lee Rankin, the former general counsel of the commission, nor any of his former staff aides who were most involved in investigating Oswald's background, said they could remember seeing it. However, Howard P. Willens, now a private lawyer here, identified himself in an interview Saturday as the commission lawyer who had reviewed the F.B.I. file. Willens, who was then the special liaison officer to the Justice Department, said that 'while I do not think that anyone can state now with the necessary precision whether or not he saw the Hoover memo, it is my best recollection that I did, in fact, see that memo. I do not want to be in a public debate with my old colleagues,' Willens said, 'but I know that there was discussion of this among others on the staff concerned with the activities of Oswald abroad. I am concerned with continued public references to the notion that the commission overlooked obvious facts."

Well, yeah, of course he was concerned. If he'd seen the memo, but no one else had, it meant that he, as the reviewer of the files tasked with making sure they reached the appropriate counsel, screwed up, OR made it disappear.

The article then quotes W. David Slawson, one of the 'old colleagues' Willens didn't want to debate: "'We were the rumor runner-downers, and we certainly should have seen this material, as we did a great deal of other stuff that we showed to be unfounded,' he said. 'It may be more significant that we did not see it, in terms of a possible cover-up and the reasons for it, than if we had seen it. I mean, I don't know where the imposter notion would have led us--perhaps nowhere, like a lot of other leads. But the point is, we didn't know about it. And why not?' Slawson said in an interview that the investigation should be reopened also 'because the interposition of an impostor, if it happened, is a political act. And, after all, this (the assassination) was not just another murder,' he said. 'It was, by definition, a political murder.'" (Slawson later clarified that his call for a new investigation of the assassination was a call for a new investigation limited to the actions of the FBI and CIA.)

There's also this. G. Robert Blakey, the Chief Counsel to the HSCA who would subsequently come to claim that, while mobsters were behind the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots, told William F. Buckley in a 9-10-81 interview that Willens was a "good friend" of his, and that, as a consequence, he had been pre-disposed to accepting the findings of the Warren Commission.

So, yeah, Willens was right in the middle of it. He was clearly ambitious and close to Specter, and was quite possibly told by Specter that Specter and Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley had viewed the back wound photo on May 24, 1964, the day of the re-enactment in Dallas.

Perhaps, then, Willens told Manchester that they'd viewed the photo and that it confirmed for them that the wound was in the neck. Perhaps, then, Manchester either briefly talked to them himself, or made out like he had personally spoken to them, in order to sell what he wanted his readers to believe: that there was but one shooter, Oswald. (Note: while Willens has claimed, in an October 2013 email to yours truly, that he did not know of Specter's viewing the autopsy photo at the time of his discussion with Manchester, he also claimed to have no recollection of a 1966 discussion with Manchester, or ever discussing Kennedy's back wound with Manchester. So he's clearly forgotten something...)

In any event, I have come to suspect that Willens did discuss the back wound with Manchester and that this discussion did in fact lead Manchester to conclude the location of Kennedy's back wound was no longer an issue of concern. In March 2012, I contacted Wesleyan University, where Manchester's papers are stored. It had occurred to me that the restrictions placed on Manchester's many interviews applied only to interviews conducted between March 26, 1964 and April 15, 1966, and that his July 1966 interviews with Willens and Burkley were not covered. I asked an archivist if she could help me find the notes for these interviews. Alas, she told me that a thorough search through the archives' data base turned up no record for these interviews. Hmmm... This raises the possibility no notes were created, and that they weren't created because these "interviews" were little more than short phone calls in which Manchester asked, point blank, if the wound was on the back or the neck, and was told it was on the neck.

In August 2012, moreover, I found further reason to doubt Manchester's scholarship on this issue. While browsing through the Weisberg Archives, I came across a July 1967 article by Edward Epstein--the writer whom Manchester sought to discredit with his claim the back wound was on the neck--in Commentary Magazine. Incredibly, someone (almost certainly Richard Goodwin, who'd published a positive review of Epstein's book on 7-23-66, but who was nevertheless drafted by Robert Kennedy into serving as the Kennedy family's editor of Manchester's book over the tendentious months that followed) had provided Epstein an August 1966 version of Manchester's original draft, then entitled "The Death of Lancer." Included in this draft were many references to President Johnson's weakness and lack of character. It also included the earliest version of the footnote designed to discredit Epstein's book, written before the Kennedy family had released the photos and x-rays back into the hands of the Johnson Administration. It read:

"The issue is resolved by the X-rays and photographs which were taken from every conceivable angle during the autopsy on the President's body. This material is widely believed to be in the hands of the Secret Service. In fact, it is the property of Robert Kennedy, who decided that it was too unsightly to be shown to the public, or even to members of the Warren Commission staff. However, this writer is in a position to comment upon it. The X-rays show no entry wound "below the shoulder," as argued by the graduate student. Admittedly X-rays of active projectiles passing through soft tissue are difficult to read. However, the photographs support them in this case—and clearly reveal that the wound was in the neck."

Epstein then reveals that "When asked about this footnote by Richard N. Goodwin, who was then acting as a consultant on the book, Manchester let it be understood that he had personally studied both the X-rays and the photographs of the autopsy. Yet, as Goodwin later learned to his dismay, permission had never been granted Manchester to examine the photographs. When presented with this fact, Manchester admitted that he had actually never seen either the X-rays or photographs, but was reluctant to change the text which was then being rushed to publication by Look. Finally, under editorial pressure, he inserted a statement in the final version to the effect that he had not personally seen the autopsy pictures, but had discussed them with three men, each a stranger to the others, who carried "special professional qualification" and who had examined the evidence. Each gave, according to Manchester, accounts "identical" to the one he had reported in his August footnote."

While Epstein went on to suggest that these three unnamed strangers were not real, and were invented by Manchester to cover his tracks, it seems probable, based upon Manchester's interviews of Willens and Burkley, and subsequent letter to Robert Kennedy, that Manchester was merely trying to hide the identities of the men he'd spoken to, and had decided to let Goodwin think he'd personally viewed the autopsy materials. If this is so (that Willens and Burkley had only spoken to Manchester under the condition their identities not be made public, and Manchester had sought to hide their identities from Goodwin and others), well, then, this might explain why Manchester left behind no notes on his interviews with Willens and Burkley: he'd destroyed them.

The Real War

It seems clear, for that matter, that the pronouncements of Boswell and Manchester in an effort to shoot down Epstein were but mild skirmishes in a much wider and wilder war: one held not between the Johnson Administration and conspiracy theorists but between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy.

October 3, 1966, October 6, 1966, and January 11, 1967 taped telephone conversations between Johnson and his Supreme Court appointee and confidante Abe Fortas reveal what Johnson's friend Connally meant when he said he suspected there were "political overtones" behind the books and articles criticizing the Warren Commission. These calls make clear, moreover, that Johnson himself was a conspiracy theorist of the highest order, and that he suspected Robert Kennedy (big surprise)--along with pollster Lou Harris, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Look Magazine, and forty one employees of The Kennedy Foundation--of conspiring against him at every turn. He proposed that Kennedy was somehow behind: 1) an attempt to tie Johnson to the crimes of convicted felon Billie Sol Estes in 1962; 2) the public exposure of corruption and the subsequent loss of power of Johnson crony Bobby Baker in 1963; 3) the public disgrace and resignation of Johnson aide Walter Jenkins in 1964; 4) the current attacks on the Warren Commission; 5) the concurrent creation of "great doubt" about whether he, Johnson, "really killed the President;" 6) the forthcoming resignation of Johnson aide Bill Moyers; 7) the forthcoming release of William Manchester's The Death of a President in 1967, while Johnson was still in office, and 8) the recent exposure of corruption and the subsequent loss of power of both Democratic Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York and Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut. Apparently, Johnson felt "Bobby" was out to get him from even before the assassination, and was trying to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency, so that he ("Bobby") could retake the presidency in his brother's name.

Now, with that understanding, we can view a few other incidents as aspects of this hidden war.

First, in the eyes of Johnson, what was "Bobby's" response to Boswell's claim the autopsy photos proved the accuracy of the Rydberg drawings, and supported the Warren Commission's conclusions?

On 11-27-66, during a televised appearance on Face the Nation, former Warren Commissioner Hale Boggs offered up a solution to the problems raised by the recent books and articles. When asked if there should be a new investigation, Boggs, according the next day's New York Times, replied "If the objective of the investigation is to pursue new evidence, that is one thing. If the objective is to answer some of the things that have been raised up to the present, I would say that I would have grave questions about it--except for the autopsy or x-rays. The only thing that I have seen that has been presented in all these books, essays, speeches, comments, has been the fact that the commission did not look at the x-rays of the President's body at the autopsy...Of course, the members of the commission themselves are not doctors. Looking at them, just looking at x-rays, would not prove anything for me. I don't know how to read medical x-rays. We brought before the commission the man who performed the autopsy. We examined him in great detail. Now, if it would please anyone, if it would help to clarify any doubts that may exist in the minds of objective people, then I would say that if the Attorney General or some appropriate authority wants to appoint a totally objective group--of doctors and others--to look into these x-rays, maybe it should be done. But I would try to disassociate myself from those who are making these comments for gain, for notoriety, for profit, rather than those who have legitimate suspicions in their minds."

So what was the Johnson response to Boggs' (and presumably Bobby's) reasonable proposal? A thinly-veiled threat. A 12-5-66 column by Drew Pearson, Washington D.C.'s most influential muckraker, was devoted to the proposition that much of the secrecy surrounding President Kennedy's autopsy was the fault not of the Johnson Administration, but the Kennedy family, which sought to hide President Kennedy's Addison's disease from the public. This column, built around an article in a German publication, repeated and proposed a number of cruel lies, including "that the Kennedys hid the X rays, even from the Warren Commission," because the "X rays could have revealed the Addison's disease."The truth, of course, was that the x-rays were controlled by the Secret Service at Johnson's beck and call, and that Robert Kennedy had had nothing to do with keeping the x-rays from the Warren Commission. It seems likely, then, that this article was a warning shot to Robert Kennedy--"don't mess with Johnson's legacy--the Warren Commission--unless you want your brother's reputation to take a beating."

(Pearson, it should be noted, often worked as a hatchet-man for Johnson. In his oral history interview for the Johnson Library he admitted that he was scheduled to meet with Johnson at Johnson's ranch on the night of the assassination. About what it is not clear. But it seems more than a coincidence that within weeks of the assassination Pearson published a blistering attack on Don Reynolds, the insurance salesman who'd testified before congress on 11-22-63 regarding Johnson's corrupt business practices...)

And that's not remotely as fishy as what was soon to come. On March 1, 1967, after a months-long investigation performed by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's office, in which Garrison suggested President Johnson's involvement in the murder of President Kennedy, local business leader Clay Shaw was arrested as a conspirator in the murder of President Kennedy. This cast a dark shadow over the Johnson Administration. The next day, Robert Kennedy made a speech in which he implored President Johnson to stop bombing North Vietnam and give peace a chance. This cast an even darker shadow. That afternoon, a disgusted President Johnson called up men such as Senator Richard Russell, Senator Scoop Jackson, House Majority Leader Carl Albert, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk to complain about Kennedy's speech, and to ask them to help get the message out that he'd tried a bombing halt, but it hadn't worked. Still later that night, President Johnson received a phone call from Texas Governor John Connally, of all people, who had heard a story going round that President Kennedy was killed by Cubans who'd been turned against him by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, as a response to Robert Kennedy's attempts at killing Castro. Johnson told Connally he'd already heard about this from Drew Pearson, and that there was almost certainly nothing to it.

But then on March 3, 1967, the very next day, Pearson and his colleague Jack Anderson published a column regarding a story they'd known about for months, and had personally discussed with President Johnson on January 16. Its opening line read: "President Johnson is sitting on a political H-bomb, an unconfirmed report that Senator Robert Kennedy may have approved an assassination plot which then possibly backfired against his late brother." Yep, you got it. In December 1966, just after Life Magazine, the New York Times, and Kennedy family friend Arthur Schlesinger called for a new investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Pearson published a column blaming the Kennedy family for the secrecy regarding President Kennedy's autopsy, and then, in March 1967, just after Robert Kennedy started criticizing Johnson's policy regarding Vietnam, Pearson published a column blaming Robert Kennedy for his brother's murder.

And I'm not the first to suspect Johnson was behind all this. Nope. Not at all. A 6-20-77 column by Pearson's colleague and successor, Jack Anderson, found in the Spokane Daily Chronicle, reveals that "Former aides of the late Robert Kennedy have now confided that he was furious over our (March 3, 1967) column. It was published at a time of strained relations between Kennedy and then-President Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy thought Johnson had leaked the story to us."

It's a lot to chew on, I admit. And there's more to chew on than I'd originally believed. In 2013, Philip Shenon published his book on the Warren Commission, A Cruel and Shocking Act. Although his book dealt primarily with the 1964 investigation of Kennedy's assassination, Shenon shined a light on this point as well. While reading Pearson's unpublished diaries (strangely stored at the LBJ Library), Shenon discovered both that Pearson was unhappy with the March 3, 1967 story as published and that the decision to publish the story was not made by Pearson, but by his younger colleague, Anderson, who was fearful the story was about to be outed by Jim Garrison, and that he and Pearson would thereby lose their scoop.

So why didn't Pearson make the decision, you might ask? Well, get this, he was out of the country, in South America, traveling across the Andes with Chief Justice Earl Warren. And what was Warren doing in South America, you might ask? Well, isn't it obvious? He was on an official visit promoting America in general and the conclusions of the Warren Commission in particular.

You know, the way Chief Justices of the United States always do...

Justice is Served

The November '66 Boswell interviews were, for that matter, not the last time the autopsy doctors talked to the news media and deliberately misrepresented the back wound location.

On January 20, 1967, the Justice Department asked the doctors to re-examine the autopsy photos. For this inspection, Dr. Finck was rushed back from Viet Nam.

The urgency of this review, moreover, appears to have been linked to an upcoming CBS News program re-investigating the assassination.

That CBS’ over-all conclusions were pre-determined and were designed to re-sell the Warren Report to the American people (CBS had run a special supporting the Warren Report when it was first released) is suggested, moreover, by a January 11, 1967 memorandum from Les Midgley, Executive Producer of the upcoming program, to former Warren Commissioner John McCloy. There, Midgley cites a need for “a statement—if possible—from Humes, Boswell and Finck that examination of the x-rays and color pictures does not change their findings, and we certainly would appreciate your assistance in obtaining same.” This memo, for that matter, may have been written in response to a 1-14-67 Saturday Evening Post article already on the street claiming “no single element of the commission’s version of the assassination is more suspect than the official account of the President’s autopsy.”

In any event, the memo appears to have reaped some rapid rewards. According to McCloy’s biographer, Kai Bird, McCloy traveled to Washington THAT VERY SAME DAY and met privately with a number of top government officials including Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and Henry Fowler. That Archivist Robert Bahmer wrote researcher Harold Weisberg on 1-16-67 and told him that no examinations of the autopsy photos and x-rays were pending, and that Dr. Finck received a phone call on 1-17-67--the VERY NEXT DAY--telling him to come to Washington and conduct the examination proposed by Midgley but 6 days before, then, suggests that McCloy, who had been advising CBS News President Richard Salant on the creation of their upcoming program since early December, and whose daughter was Salant’s assistant, may have talked to someone in the Justice Department as well.

That Midgley’s memo also mentions his hopes of obtaining Dr. Humes’ help in resolving “forever the discussion about back versus neck wound,” and that Humes not only made an appearance on the program, but flat-out lied about the “back versus neck wound” to Dan Rather, is suggestive as well that McCloy’s visit may have been not only the impetus for the doctors' January review of the autopsy materials, but the determinant of their written conclusions.

Something is just wrong. When one looks at the report of the so-called “military review,” dated January 26, 1967, one can see that the photographs were not merely cataloged by the doctors, but re-interpreted to show that they did indeed confirm the findings of the Warren Commission. One of the autopsy photos determined to have been taken from behind Kennedy on the November inventory list was now determined to have been taken from in front of Kennedy. And that's not the worst of it. Amazingly, the photos determined on November 1, 1966 to represent a wound in the “right superior posterior shoulder” were now described as representing a wound “low in the back of the neck.” Even worse, the report asserts that the original autopsy reports’ description of this same wound as residing in “the upper right posterior thorax,” meant that, in layman terms, it was low in the back of the neck.Since the thorax ends when it reaches neck, this would be the same as saying that Governor Connally’s wrist wound was in layman’s terms a hand wound, or that the City of Las Vegas is, in layman’s terms, in California. No doctor would make this mistake. The report goes on to say “No one photograph shows both the wound at the back of the neck and the wound in the throat, but by comparing Photographs 11, 12, 38, and 39 with the side views shown in photographs 1-4, inclusive, it is clear that Warren Commission Exhibits 385 and 386, which also depict the location of the neck wound, are accurate.”

Dr. Humes told this same tale on CBS six months later.

Well, this goes too far. There is no way one can say that CE 385 and CE 386 are accurate, as they portray a bullet hole at the base of the neck, inches above and to the right of the wound on the autopsy photo. In fact, since the Dox drawing of the back wound taken directly from the autopsy photos was published by the HSCA, one can state unequivocally that this is a damned lie. Not one defender of the Warren Report will defend this statement.

Is it simply a coincidence then that the doctors claimed to have no memory of this report when asked about it by the ARRB?

Owing to their suspicious memory loss, and the suspicious change of the description of the autopsy photos, and the outright lie that the photos confirmed the accuracy of CE 385 and 386, I believe it’s logical to conclude this report was created for political purposes...and that the doctors were forced to sign their names to it.

Dr. Finck’s notes on his urgent trip to Washington support this contention. There, he refers to the wound described in the report as a “neck wound” as simply “Entry, back.” There, rather than describe in detail the process by which the doctors composed their report, he declares that a “statement had been prepared by the Justice Department. We signed the statement.”

Call me overly sensitive if you like, but the rank odor rising from this review only adds to the rankness of Earl Warren’s earlier decision not to allow an inspection of the autopsy photos, after telling General Counsel Rankin it would be fine. Something was rotten in Washington.

A 1-21-67 phone call from Attorney General Ramsey Clark to President Johnson supports that something was rotten, and that the autopsists were pressured into changing their interpretation of the wounds for this report. The tapes of this phone call, as transcribed by Warren Commission defender Max Holland, reveal that Clark told Johnson that the doctors “feel their professional reputations are at stake" and that "they’re so reticent about signin’ anything, that it’s fairly difficult to work with ‘em.”

Well, reticence implies resistance, does it not? What were they resisting? On January 26, 1967, Clark adds more fuel to this fire by telling Johnson “we have the three pathologists and the photographer signed up now on the autopsy review.” When used in this context, the words “signed up now” would indicate the doctors were under pressure to go along with something, would it not? And why, after the doctors had inspected the photos on the night of January 20^th and had stayed in the archives till midnight preparing a “statement comparing the illustrations with our autopsy report,” according to Dr. Finck’s notes, did it take Clark almost another week to get them to sign a 5 page report “prepared by the Justice Department?” Was the doctors' original statement re-written by the Justice Department? What was in this re-written report that made the doctors so reticent? And what if anything, changed their minds? Could the doctors have been given direct orders to cooperate? And if the doctors had came to their conclusions purely on their own, why couldn’t they remember their decisions years later or stand by them?

Intriguingly, Johnson is reported to have contemplated re-opening the investigation at this time. This was but a few months after Johnson had asked the FBI to figure out the Soviet Union's position on the assassination--and if it was responsible for the widespread criticism of the Warren Report--only to be told that the Soviets had long believed Kennedy was killed by the "ultraright," but had recently concluded Johnson himself was "responsible." This was within days, moreover, of Johnson's finding out about the CIA's assassination plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and the possibility these plots had backfired, and had led to the bloodshed in Dallas.

While Johnson is purported to have decided that such an investigation was not in the best interests of the nation--or for the Kennedy family--there is reason to doubt this was true. As we've seen, Johnson thought Robert Kennedy was out to destroy him, and was out to destroy him in turn. This, then, undercuts any notion that Johnson was protecting the Kennedys. One can only wonder then if the problems with the doctors and autopsy photos was a bigger factor in his decision not to re-open the case.

As for Clark, I have been unable to find a single reference by him to the January 1967 review of the autopsy photos and x-rays, subsequent to his conversations with Johnson. In his 1978 interview with the HSCA’s Andy Purdy, he said the 1968 Clark Panel was formed after the autopsy photos and x-rays became available and after Finck, Boswell, Humes and Ebersole’s review proved inadequate. (Inadequate at what, one wonders—shutting down the critics?) Anyhow, this statement is confusing on its face because it makes it sound like there was but one review and that these four men worked together on this review, when, in fact, Ebersole was only involved in the 1966 inspection and Finck was only involved in the 1967 inspection.

A 1998 interview with researcher James Douglass proved equally unsatisfying. Here, Clark told Douglass of obtaining the materials and calling in the doctors to make their initial inspection and then jumped to the creation of the Clark Panel in 1968. Either Clark had forgotten there were two separate reviews in 66 and 67 or he found discussion of the second review uncomfortable.

As for McCloy, his motivation for helping CBS debunk the conspiracy theorists and defend his work with the Warren Commission seems obvious. In a mid-70's letter to Warren Commission counsel David Belin, quoted in an 11-20-88 New York Times piece by Belin, McCloy complained: “I never cease to be amazed at the willingness of so much of the public to accept the statements of the charlatans and sensationalists rather than the facts and the record.” He then recalled the political climate in the mid-sixties: “It was actually thought 'liberal' to be convinced that President Kennedy had been shot as a result of a conspiracy by a group of Texas millionaires or chauvinists and that it was quite 'illiberal' to think that he has been assassinated solely by a little 'punk' who perhaps had some communistic leanings.”

How far McCloy was willing to go while assisting CBS in their quest to re-assert “the facts and the record” is made clear, moreover, by contrasting his video-taped response on the CBS program against his private correspondence with Belin years later. On the CBS special he said “It was our own choice that we didn’t subpoena the photographs, which were then in the hands of the Kennedy family.” (This was not true; throughout the entire duration of the Warren Commission the autopsy photos were in the sole possession of the Secret Service. The Kennedy family and the Justice Department not only didn’t control them, they never even saw them.) He then proclaimed “Mr. Justice Warren was talking to the Kennedy family about that at that time. I thought he was really going to see them, but it turned out that he hadn’t.”

Now compare this to McCloy’s mid-70's letter to Belin: “I agree wholeheartedly with your criticism of the Commission itself for failure to demand the original x-rays and photographs. I agreed to having the Chief Justice’s viewing them alone if he would do so and I understand he was to do this.The argument against their being viewed by the commission as part of the record was that the X-rays and photographs of the President's body did not in themselves carry as much weight as the interpretation of them by the experts. This together with what I thought to be the oversensitivity of the Chief Justice to the attitude of the family, resulted in a good bit of just criticism of the commission which in my judgment could have been avoided...” Notice that he doesn’t say “I mistakenly believed he would do this” or “he led me to believe he would do this.” No, McCloy says that he agreed to let Warren inspect them alone and that it was his understanding that Warren did indeed inspect them alone. This, then, suggests that he knew Warren had seen the photos, and this, in turn, suggests he'd lied to CBS and the world when he said that Warren had not.

Note also that, according to Belin, this letter was written in the mid-70's. On 9-21-78 (the late '70's), McCloy testified before the HSCA, and admitted: "I think we were a little lax in the Commission in connection with the use of those X-rays. I was rather critical of Justice Warren at that time. I thought he was a little too sensitive of the sensibilities of the family. He didn't want to have put into the record some of the photographs and some of the X-rays taken at the time. We took the testimony of course, of the doctors and probably with the X-rays--we wouldn't have been able to read the X-rays if we hadn't had the doctors' testimony." Note that he failed to mention Warren's looking at the photos and x-rays all by his lonesome, and the ridiculousness of Warren's not allowing the doctors who'd created these materials to inspect the photos and x-rays to verify the accuracy of their testimony. I mean, if Warren could look at the autopsy materials without putting them into the record--why the hell couldn't the men who'd actually created the materials, who'd seen Kennedy's body with their own eyes?

There's yet another intriguing aspect to McCloy's letter to Belin... The sentence in bold appears in the version of McCloy's letter published in Belin's November, 1988 book Full Disclosure, but was edited out of Belin's 11-20-88 article in the New York Times. Now, this could have been done for a number of reasons--perhaps Belin was trying to conceal that Warren had seen the photos...11 years after the publication of Warren's autobiography in which he admitted seeing the photos. I mean, it is a bit suspicious that Belin, in a book entitled Final Disclosure, failed to disclose that both one of his closest associates on the commission's staff, Arlen Specter, and Chief Justice Warren himself, had viewed the back wound photo, and had failed to warn the commission that, oh yeah, the drawings they'd requested, and then entered into evidence, were seriously deceptive. It seems possible, then, that, subsequent to his publishing McCloy's letter in his book, Belin had decided to keep mum on this issue.

He may have done so at McCloy's request, for that matter. McCloy was 93 at the time of Belin's article. He would die early the next year... Perhaps he or someone close to him had given Belin a call...

If Belin was lying about this, years after the cat was already out of the bag, moreover, he was far from alone. Four years later, in a 3-9-82 article defending the Warren Commission published in The Nation, Belin's co-counsel J. Wesley Liebeler claimed the Commission didn't have access to the autopsy photos and x-rays because "Warren didn't want to press Bobby Kennedy, who controlled them, for their release." He then complained "Without these materials the autopsy surgeons described to the commission their recollection of the wounds, and their medical artist drew the diagrams showing the entrance wounds in the wrong place." Well, this concealed that 1) Specter and Warren had long-since admitted they'd viewed the back wound photo, 2) Warren had admitted to also viewing the head wound photos, 3) that neither of them had ever noted the entrance wounds being in the wrong place, and 4), the autopsy surgeons had had access to their measurements as well as their recollections when instructing their medical artist on the creation of the "diagrams" used by the commission. In short, then, Liebeler had provided an "innocent" excuse where there actually was none. He was either lying, or woefully misinformed. Take your pick.

On 11-16-13, furthermore, I received yet another indication McCloy (and Belin, and Liebeler) were liars. When discussing Warren's viewing of the autopsy materials, former Warren Commission Counsel Howard Willens told me that "I do have the specific recollection, which might be reflected in my journal, that the Chief Justice had the materials brought to his chambers at the Court and looked at them in the presence of the custodian." Well, if Willens was in the loop and knew Warren had viewed the materials, wouldn't McCloy have been privy as well?

In any event, it seems likely McCloy lied when he told CBS Warren had not seen the photos. Well, why would he have done this? To protect Warren? Well, if he was willing to lie to protect Warren on such a minor matter then what reason do we have to believe anything he had to say?

(If McCloy was flat-out lying to the country in 1967, when he indicated Warren had not viewed the autopsy photos, moreover, it appears that he was not the only former commissioner telling fabrications at the time. 1967 also saw the release of the LP record The Controversy, a roughly hour-long program on the assassination. Former Commissioner (and future president) Congressman Gerald Ford was interviewed for this LP. Here is his defense of the commission for its failure to view the autopsy materials: "The seven members of the Warren Commission are laymen. We are not medical men. Therefore, we were not qualified to take an x-ray, look at it and analyze it. and come to any sound conclusion...We did the best thing, in my judgment. We got the technically-trained people to come and testify under oath as to their opinion on what the x-rays and photographs meant." Wait! What? Ford would have to have known the commission forbade the "technically-trained people" from reviewing the x-rays and autopsy photos before their testimony, and his statements on this LP reek of a deliberate deception.)

And what about CBS? Since when do news divisions tell members of government commissions what types of reports will help shut down political rumors? And since when do they ask that such reports then be created? I mean, isn’t that crossing a line between reporting the news and orchestrating the news? And why did CBS consider it their job to shut down rumors anyhow?

Perhaps as an acknowledgement that his behavior was not quite kosher, Les Midgley fails to mention McCloy’s “help” on the special in a book he co-wrote about the special entitled "Should We Now Believe The Warren Report?" He also fails to mention it in his memoirs, entitled "How Many Words Do You Want?" (Clearly, Midgley was fan of using questions as titles.) While in this latter work Midgley does mention McCloy's appearance on the program, he downplays McCloy’s crucial role, and even says “McCloy was doubtful about participation, although he did, in the end, agree.” Throughout both books, for that matter, Midgley staunchly defends his program: “the avid critics and attackers thrive in a mental climate such that most of them undoubtedly believe CBS, its News Division, and its staff to be part of a vast conspiracy to conceal the “facts” about the assassination…They are wrong but nothing can be done about it…The people who wrote, filmed, produced, and appeared on these broadcasts would have been the happiest journalists of this or almost any other century if they could have come up with a sensational “solution” to the Kennedy murder…But it didn’t happen.”

Well, never mind believing the Warren Report. Based upon what we now know of Midgley’s behind the scenes dealings with McCloy, should we remotely believe him? I’m undecided. Since Midgley’s memoirs were written when he was in his seventies, it’s possible he left out his indiscreet contact with McCloy for the same reasons he said that Connally was riding beside Kennedy at the time of the assassination and the magic bullet was found on the floor of the limousine…perhaps he was simply an old man who could no longer remember the facts.

On the other hand, it seems a bit of a coincidence that Associated Press writers Sid Moody and Bernard Gavzer conducted a seven-month long investigation into the issues raised by critics such as Epstein, Lane, and Weisberg, and published their series the same week as the CBS telecasts, with nearly identical conclusions!

This coincidence becomes even more intriguing, moreover, when one realizes that Moody and Gavzer were granted interviews with 11 of the 15 Warren Commission counsel and 4 of the 10 staff for their investigation. Many of these men had spoken to Edward Epstein for his book Inquest, and had been embarrassed when Epstein used their words to expose the limitations of the commission's investigation. As one should have real doubts these men would turn around and allow such access to an investigation whose outcome was uncertain, one might reasonably conclude then that the AP's investigation was designed as a Warren Commission defense from the beginning.

Perhaps it was even coordinated with CBS through the “Justice Department.”

Incredible? Read on.

Eye on CBS

On May 27, 1967, Acting Assistant Attorney General Carl Eardley wrote a letter to Dr. James J. Humes telling him that CBS News had requested permission to interview him for a television special and that the attorney general had no objection to his appearance. As Dr. Humes was under an order of silence from the military since the day of the autopsy, and as the White House renewed this directive right before the Warren Report was published, Dr. Humes could only speak to CBS News by permission. Two days later, Cliff Sessions, the Director of Public Information, wrote a memo to Eardley which included talking points for Humes to follow when questioned by Dan Rather on this special. Humes, to his credit, gave this memo, complete with talking points, to the ARRB.

Among the talking points provided Humes was that one bullet “entered the back of the neck and exited through the throat,” that the autopsy face sheet depicted this wound lower than it really was, and that“the location of the wound was accurately described in a notation on the margin of the drawing.” It ended by stating that Humes had “thoroughly examined” the photographs and x-rays at the National Archives and that they supported in “every detail” the “autopsy findings which were reported to the Warren Commission.”

Soon thereafter came the time for Capt. Humes' close-up.

Here he is, in a taped interview first broadcast June 26, 1967. (Note that he's in his full Navy ensemble, even though he worked in civilian clothing. And if you think that's because he so loved the Navy, well, think again. Within weeks he would retire--at the grand old age of 42.)

While it's not entirely clear that the Justice Department’s providing Humes with a script was intended to communicate that he should not waver from this script, it is entirely clear that he followed the script provided. When asked about the locations of Kennedy’s wounds by Rather, Humes described the back wound as “in the base of the neck on the right.” When Rather followed up by asking about the conflicting locations of the back wound on the autopsy face sheet and Rydberg drawing CE 385, Dr. Humes inspected CE 385 and contended that the face sheet was never meant to be precise but that “the second drawing which you have mentioned (CE 385) was prepared as we were preparing to testify before the Warren Commission, to rather schematically and as accurately as we possibly could, depict the story for the members of the Warren Commission... We were trying to be precise and referred back to our measurements made in the margins of the other drawing….since this time we have had opportunity to review the photographs which we made at that time. And these photographs show very clearly that the wound was exactly where we stated it to be in our testimony before the Warren Commission, and as it is shown in this drawing.” Rather then re-asked:“Your re-examination of the photographs verify that the wounds are as shown here?” To which Humes replied “Yes sir, they do.”

This was simply not true. Humes was not only being deceptive about the accuracy of the Rydberg drawings, but about the inaccuracy of the face sheet. He told Rather "we feel that the measurements which are noted here at the margins of the drawing are the precise measurements we took...we drew two lines, points of reference-from bony points of reference...the wound was fourteen centimeters from the tip of the right acromion, and fourteen centimeters below the tip of the right mastoid. Now the acromion is the extreme outermost portion of the shoulder. The tip of the mastoid is the bony prominence just behind the ear. And where these two lines intersect was, in actuality, where this wound was situated. And if we would try and draw that to scale, which we weren’t trying to do as this mark was made, this, I think, would appear a little bit higher."

Here, moreover, is where Humes pointed as he said this.

As demonstrated earlier in this chapter, Humes was telling the truth in this instance. The back wound location on the face sheet had been marked in accordance with the measurements. Even so, the talking points provided Humes by the Justice Department had dismissed the accuracy of the face sheet by stating, simply, that "this free hand drawing shows the wound to be lower than it was." Note that Humes, in his response to Rather, had, in keeping with his instructions, said "I think" that the proper location of the wound on the sheet would be but a "little bit higher." But note the way he hedges his statement..."a little bit." This suggests then that Humes knew full well that the mark on the face sheet was a relatively accurate depiction of the measurements. And this suggests as well that Humes was lying when he subsequently supported the accuracy of the Rydberg drawings, which showed the wound he knew to have been on the back (at the level of the acromion) about two inches higher, at the base of the neck (and two inches or so above the acromion).

If Humes had been following--or trying to follow--a script presented to him by the Justice Department, moreover, he may not have been the only one. In its 6-27-67 article on Humes' interview with CBS, the New York Times made a curious mistake that suggests the possibility they'd been provided a script of what Humes was supposed to say, and had incorrectly quoted it as what he'd actually said on the program. When dispensing with the problems raised by the face sheet, the Times reported: "Captain Humes said the diagram was a prepared outline 'routinely used to mark in general where certain marks or scars or wounds may be in conducting a post-mortem examination.' He said 'it was never meant to be accurate or precisely to scale.'" Well, so far, so good. True or not, the Times was reporting what Humes actually said on the program. But then something strange occurred. The Times continued: "If the wound had been as low as the diagram mark, Captain Humes said. 'this missile would have to have had penetrated the shoulder blade of the President, which it did not.' Instead, he said, 'the missile was above the shoulder blade, and struck no bony structures whatsoever.' 'The X-rays show that it did not,' he said."

Well, geez...this is weird. As far as I can tell, Humes NEVER actually said such a thing. Not in videos of the interview available on youtube... Not in the transcript of the interview sent Harold Weisberg in 1967... Not even in the transcript published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1992... Humes said the autopsy photos confirmed the accuracy of the Rydberg drawings--which was totally untrue and subsequently refuted by the HSCA's exhibits--but never said the x-rays showed that the bullet struck no bony structures--which was equally untrue and subsequently refuted by the HSCA's exhibits. Now, it was something he MIGHT have said--he had, after all, said something quite similar to the Warren Commission--but it's something he did not say, at least not in the interview as broadcast and transcribed.

So how did the Times come to make such a mistake? It's hard to believe they'd just make up some quotes, particularly when the interview from which these quotes had supposedly been taken had been broadcast just the night before. Well, this leads me to suspect that the anonymous writer of the article had made an embarrassing mistake, and had either: 1) been shown a more extensive interview than that shown the public, and incorrectly assumed the segment on the x-rays was going to be broadcast; or 2) been given a transcript of what Humes was supposed to say, and failed to realize he'd failed to say these things in the interview as broadcast. That this wasn't just a typo is supported, moreover, by the curious coincidence that this misquote of Humes about the x-rays was not only reported in the body of the article...but was the LEAD. That's right. The article began "The chief surgeon at the autopsy of President Kennedy says that X-rays prove an assassin's bullet that hit the President 'in the base of the neck did not strike any bony structures.' He says this refutes challenges to the Warren Report suggesting a lower location for the wound." Well, my God... Humes never even discussed the X-rays in the broadcast. OOPS!

There is yet another reason to suspect Humes lied to Rather and CBS, and that this lie was orchestrated by the Justice Department. And that's that Humes wasn't the only one misrepresenting the back wound location on the program. Yep. While Humes was the only member of the autopsy team to comment on the autopsy photos in the program, he was not the only person to have seen an autopsy photo to misrepresent the location of the back wound in CBS' 4-part special. The other person was--you guessed it--Arlen Specter, the man most responsible for the development of the single-bullet theory. Specter, whose viewing of the back wound photo in 1964 had been discussed at least three times (anonymously in the 8-28-66 Philadelphia Bulletin, but by name in the 10-10-66 U.S. News & World Report and 1-14-67 Saturday Evening Post) within a year of his appearance on the program, had, we should remember, been hired for his job with the commission by Howard Willens, the Justice Department's point man on the commission.

So what did Specter say? Well, while discussing the President's wounds with--you guessed it--Dan Rather, Specter twice referred to the back wound as a "wound on the President's neck." Now, some might say "Ugggh, it was a wound on his neck, stupid--did you forget that the bullet supposedly exited from the throat?" and want to give Specter a break on this, I firmly believe such a break is unjustified, as people--at least the people I know--just don't speak in that manner. I mean, no one I know would describe a bullet entering the back and exiting the throat as a bullet "inflicting" a "wound on the President's neck." And I assume your friends are no different.

And it's not as if Dr. Humes' interview with Rather was the last time the autopsy doctors misrepresented the back wound location...under pressure from the "Justice" Department.

Above: New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, with his unfortunate buggy eyes.

Clark nearly admitted as much. In his book Crime in America, published 1970, Clark questioned Garrison's mental health. He claimed Garrison's conduct during his investigation of Shaw was "abusive,"and that his "charges of conspiracy reaching even into the Federal Government" were "bizarre." Such a man, in Clark's mind, would no doubt be capable of stretching the slightest inconsistency into the appearance of a vast conspiracy.

Well, it only makes sense then that Clark--with or without the support of President Johnson, whether he was involved in the assassination or not--would endeavor to find out just what the photos showed before Garrison did, and would want to make sure there was nothing in them that Garrison could use to question the legitimacy of Johnson's presidency.

It's also worth noting that, by February, 1968, Johnson had decided not to seek another term in office. It seems possible then that he wanted to be sure the photos showed no evidence for a conspiracy, lest the next President, who in his worst nightmares would be Robert Kennedy, the deceased President’s younger brother, use the photos to re-open the investigation into President Kennedy's murder and damage his--Johnson's--prized legacy.

But no matter the precise reasons for the panel's creation, it's clear it served a political purpose. Although the panel was conducted in secret on February 26, 1968, its report was not released until January 16, 1969, the day Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw finally went to trial. This was but four days before Johnson left office.

Should one assume the panel was set up to rubber stamp the findings of the autopsists, however, one would be wrong. In what remains one of the most shocking findings in medical history, the Clark panel disagreed with the findings of those actually viewing Kennedy's body on a central point. Instead of supporting the autopsists' claim of an entrance wound low on the back of Kennedy’s head, the secret panel concluded that this entrance hole was actually 4 inches higher than described in the autopsy report, at a point often described as the cowlick. While the skull photographs and x-rays were certainly influential in their decision, another factor apparently was that the photos of the President’s brain revealed no path of destruction linking the cerebellum (the point nearest the entrance in the President’s hairline displayed in the Rydberg drawing) with the clearly devastated upper right lobe of the President’s brain (where the bullet was presumed to have made its exit).

While much has been made of this movement of the head wound--mostly by conspiracy theorists delighted that Dr.s Humes and Boswell were made to look foolish--these same theorists miss that the Clark Panel itself made as many or more substantive mistakes as Dr.s Humes and Boswell.

Some of these mistakes, in fact, cast doubt upon the integrity of the panel. To begin with, even though the Clark Panel determined the head wound in the photos to have been four inches higher on Kennedy's skull than the one described in the autopsy report, they stuck by the measurements of the wound, only transposing the numbers. This 6 by 15 measurement, however, was not anywhere near the proportions of the mark in the cowlick in the autopsy photo they claimed as the entrance.

Even stranger, the Clark Panel claimed the back wound was 7 by 10, longer than wide, when the close-up photo subsequently released by the HSCA proves it to have been wider than long.

This suggests then that these doctors were following in the footsteps of Humes and Specter, and describing the wounds as longer than wide to help create the illusion the shots came from above.

And that's not the only reason to dis-believe...

• • Let's start with something simple. The Clark Panel, in concurrence with the autopsy report, concluded that the back wound was 14 cm below the mastoid process of Kennedy's skull. It also claimed, however, that the back wound was "5.5 cm below a transverse fold in the skin of the neck," also visible in the back wound photo. It follows, then, that this fold was 8.5 cm (over 3 1/2 inches) below the mastoid (which is at the approximate level of the bottom tip of the ear)...and much closer to the back wound than to the mastoid. Now look at the lateral autopsy photo on the slide above. Is it remotely possible that this fold was much closer to the back wound location shown in Fig. 24 than to the base of the skull? I think not. This suggests then, that the Clark Panel has somehow inserted extra space between the mastoid and the skin fold (perhaps in order to pretend their findings were consistent with the autopsy measurements) whilst simultaneously moving the back wound up the neck.

  • Beyond concluding that the back wound "lies approximately 5.5 cm below a transverse fold in the skin of the neck," the Clark Panel also asserted that the bullet wound in the throat was "above the trachea incision" and "situated approximately 9 cm below the transverse fold in the skin of the neck described in the last paragraph." They were thereby presenting the throat wound as 3 1/2 cm below the back wound.

  • The HSCA medical panel, conversely, proposed that the throat wound was 1 cm above the back wound. This means the two panels were 4 1/2 cm apart on their interpretation of the relative placement of these wounds.

  • Actually, more. The HSCA medical panel also proposed that the throat wound was on the bottom margin of the trachea incision, which was 1 1/2 cm wide. This means that, from the perspective of the HSCA, the Clark Panel's throat wound location was not 1 cm above the HSCA's back wound location, but 2 1/2 cm.

  • So let's do the math: the Clark Panel placed the throat wound 4 1/2 cm lower on the body in comparison to the back wound than the HSCA medical panel. The location they'd chosen for the throat wound (at the top of the trachea incision), however, was 1 1/2 cm above where the HSCA thought the throat wound was located (at the bottom of the trachea incision). If the measurements of these panels for the back wound location are identical, then, the Clark Panel's location for the bottom of the trachea incision ought to be 6 cm lower than the HSCA's location for the bottom of the trachea incision.

  • But the measurements for the back wound location aren't identical. As stated, the Clark Panel concurred with the measurements taken at autopsy and concluded that the back wound was 14 cm below the mastoid process. The HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel claimed instead that this wound was about 13 1/2 cm below the mastoid process. Now, that's not much of a difference. If the Clark panel was right, and the throat wound was 3 1/2 cm below this location, and the bottom of the trachea incision (where the HSCA claimed the wound to be) another 1 1/2 cm below this location, then the Clark Panel believed the bottom of this incision to be about 19 cm below the mastoid process.

  • This proves then that the Clark Panel's measurements are nonsense. If the Clark Panel's measurements were accurate, the bottom margin of the tracheotomy incision would be about 19 cm below the mastoid process. The measurements of the HSCA medical panel, on the other hand, place the bottom margin of the tracheotomy incision (1 cm above the back wound 13 1/2 cm below the mastoid) about 12 1/2 cm below the mastoid process. I have measured this location on myself and others and the HSCA's measurement is far more accurate. A wound 12 1/2 cm below the mastoid would be between the Adam's Apple and sternal notch. This is, not coincidentally, where Kennedy's wound was located. A wound 19 cm below the mastoid would, in contrast, be a wound overlying the sternum, about the level of the top of the heart.

This suggests then that, for the Clark Panel's measurements, they'd somehow added an extra 6 1/2 cm (over 2 1/2 inches) onto the front of Kennedy's throat, basically doubling its length. Now why would they have done this, other than to lower the throat wound location, and help sell the single-bullet theory they'd been asked to review? Were they deliberate liars? Or simply incompetent?

Only adding to the likelihood the Clark Panel lied is that they re-measured the hole in the back of Kennedy's jacket, and claimed it was 12 cm below the upper edge of the coat collar. The FBI had previously measured this distance and found it to be 5 3/8 inches, or 13.6 cm. The HSCA would subsequently measure this distance and find it to be 13.5 cm. It seems more than a coincidence then that the FBI and HSCA measurements were off by but 1 mm, and the Clark Panel's measurement was off by 15 times as much, particularly when this "mistake" by the Clark Panel helped them sell the single-bullet theory already supported by their clearly inaccurate wound location measurements.

And then there's this... As the nose of CE 399, the so-called "magic bullet", was undamaged, the single-bullet theory embraced by the Johnson Administration rested on the unlikely presumption no bones had been damaged via direct impact with this bullet as it traversed the neck. It's not exactly a surprise, then, that in its section on the x-rays, the Clark Panel reported "There is no evidence of fracture of either scapula or of the clavicles, or of the ribs or of any of the cervical or thoracic vertebrae," then later concluded "the X-ray films show no bony damage in the thorax or neck."

Now let's look at how rapidly this lie fell apart. Dr. Fred C. Hodges, the lone radiologist consulted by the Rockefeller Commission, concluded both that the transverse process of the seventh cervical vertebra was fractured, and that the transverse process of the first thoracic vertebra was probably fractured. The HSCA consulted four radiologists, all of whom mentioned possible fractures of these very same transverse processes (the small fingers of bone that jut out from the spine). Dr. G.M. McDonnel, the HSCA's number one go-to guy on the x-rays, moreover, declared that there was "an undisplaced fracture of the proximal portion of the right transverse process of T1..."

Well, how about that? Where the Clark Panel had seen "no evidence" those who studied the x-rays after them saw conclusive evidence.

One is tempted to conclude, therefore, that the Clark Panel was the fully-orchestrated cover-up many believed the Warren Commission to have been. This suspicion is only heightened, moreover, by the peculiar fact that the Clark Panel is the only review of the autopsy evidence to have a representative of the American Bar Association along to serve as “legal counsel to the panel," and to “collaborate” with the panel in the “preparation” of its report. Such an overt conspiracy is made doubtful, however, by the Clark Panel report’s acknowledgment that the Warren Commission’s wound in the “back of the neck” in fact entered in the “back” and its description of several strange things that were never even noticed by the doctors on the night of the autopsy, including metal fragments in the President’s neck, a large round fragment at the back of the President’s skull, and a strange shape in the President’s brain. If they were deliberately covering up, after all, it seems doubtful they would have opened fresh doors to such previously unexamined mysteries. The possibility remains, then, that on some of its findings the Clark Panel was well-intentioned, but just horribly, horribly wrong.

But you really gotta wonder. When one compares Warren Commission CE 386 with HSCA Figure 24, and adjusts their size based upon the measurements contained within their respective reports, one can see that the skull in the Warren Commission drawing is roughly 27 ½ cm from ear to ear, the skull of a giant, while the skull in the HSCA drawing is 19 cm, much more in line with a normal human skull. When one sizes a photo of Kennedy using the Clark Panel's measurements, moreover, one finds it to be in line with the clearly inaccurate CE 386. This is a bit shocking. That the Clark Panel's measurements reflect a body as large as the one in the Rydberg drawings, approximately 50% larger than life--and that these mistakes help support the single-bullet theory--should make one suspect that the members of the Clark Panel, as with the military doctors before them, were pressured by the Justice Department into supporting the single-bullet theory.

Russell, Harold, and John

Researcher Harold Weisberg sure smelled a rat. He attempted to gain access to the working papers of the Clark Panel, and, after being told that the working papers had been destroyed, personally contacted the various members of the panel. In his book Post Mortem Weisberg includes a small section on his correspondence with these men. He relates that Dr. Russell Fisher was the leader and spokesman for the panel. In a letter to Weisberg, Fisher claimed that “quite some time after the panel report had been submitted” he conducted tests on cadavers to see if a bullet could go through a human neck as proposed by the single-bullet theory. Fisher explained, moreover, that this was “purely to satisfy my own interest,” and that he'd made no effort to file a report on these tests, or share his results with his fellow forensic pathologists.

It may seem strange, then, that Fisher was all too happy to share his results with Weisberg. He told him “we were convinced it was possible for a bullet tract to connect the entrance and exit wounds without being deflected by, or hitting the bony vertebrae.”

There's a problem with Fisher's story, however. Fisher also told Weisberg that “The measurements… can be assumed to be accurate. They were measured by scale. We had photographs which showed a scale.We were able, therefore, to confirm the measurements…”

As we’ve seen, however, this last assertion is incorrect. The Clark Panels’ measurements for the relative positions of the back wound and throat wound were embarrassingly inaccurate. The inaccuracy of these measurements, moreover, should make us question the accuracy of whatever tests Fisher performed on the entrance and exit wounds.

I mean, seriously, did he shoot the cadavers on a downward trajectory, as theorized in his report? If he did then he should have realized that either the entrance wound was much higher than the entrance wound on Kennedy’s back depicted in the autopsy photos, or the exit wound much lower than the location of the tracheotomy incision.

Perhaps, then, Fisher simply lied to Weisberg to get him off his own back...

That Fisher lied is supported, moreover, by a series of photos found at the archives by researcher John Hunt, and posted online in his 2014 article The Warren Commission Skeleton. While not identified as photos taken by or for Fisher, these photos were found in a folder dated JAN 1969, and sent to the archives in 1993 by the Justice Dept., the instigators of the Clark Panel to whom Fisher would have supplied any materials related to the Clark Panel. The RIF number for this folder was, for that matter, but a few dozen numbers from the number provided the report of the Clark Panel. In any event, these photos prove that someone--almost certainly Fisher--tested the single-bullet theory on skeletons, and found it would only work if the bullet headed downwards from a location inches to the right and above the location of Kennedy's back wound.

The first photo was taken of the skeleton sans trajectory rod. The second photo, however, showed the skeleton with a trajectory rod to the side of the spine and its processes, and exiting from the center of the throat. Here it is:

Well, I'll be. A bullet on such a trajectory would have impacted the back far further from the spine than the bullet creating Kennedy's back wound, (purportedly 14 cm from the right shoulder tip). That bullet impacted the back around no more than two inches from the spine. A bullet on the trajectory depicted in this photo, however, would have impacted what? around four inches from the spine. Big problem.

And we're just getting started. Photo three showed the skeleton with the bones identified. But here are the next two photos...depicting the vertical trajectory for this rod.

Note that for photo 5 the trajectory rod has been placed beneath the first rib, and heads right through the lung. This shows how desperate the creators of these photos were to find something/anything that worked, whereby they could say to people like Weinberg (and myself) that, gee golly, we tested this, and found that the SBT trajectory was possible.

Now here are the next two photos from the series discovered by Hunt. (I have matched up the size of the ruler in the photos and placed them side by side for comparison purposes).

T-3 or Not T-3?

But before we go on to complain about the horrendous mistakes/deceptions of the HSCA, let me congratulate them for getting at least one thing right. They resolved the location of Kennedy's back wound! In both the testimony of Dr. Baden and in their exhibits they made it clear they believed the bullet entered at the level of the first thoracic vertebra, roughly 2 inches lower than the entrance depicted in the Warren Commission's drawings.

While my acceptance that the bullet entered at T-1 has led to at least one conspiracy theorist trumpeting that I'm intellectually dishonest, it would be intellectually dishonest for me to pretend I disagree with the HSCA on this point. I have looked through dozens of anatomy books and measured dozens of medical drawings, and am convinced that T-3, where many conspiracy theorists place the wound, is an inch or two lower than the back wound apparent in the photos. While some point out that Kennedy's personal physician, Dr. George Burkley, placed the wound at T-3 on Kennedy's death certificate, they fail to appreciate that Burkley was far from certain about this and had, in fact, stated "a second wound occurred in the posterior back at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra." They also fail to appreciate that there is no indication Burkley did anything more than glimpse at Kennedy's body and did anything to establish the back wound's location beyond glimpsing at the confusing face sheet.

While some note a small mark in the back wound photo near the T-3 level, and propose that this mark was the "real" back wound, I find this also has little foundation, as the size of this mark (roughly 3 mm x 4 mm, or 12 mm) is less than 1/2 the size of the bullet wound measured at autopsy (7 mm x 4 mm, or 28 mm), and the wound at T-1 is, no surprise, a much better fit (roughly 8 mm x 5 mm).

And should one not trust my measurements...one should at least consider the statements of James Curtis Jenkins. On November 22, 2013, Jenkins, Dr. Boswell's assistant at the autopsy, made his first ever appearance regarding the assassination at the JFK/Lancer conference in Dallas. While looking at a photo of the back wound (or wounds), he told the audience that the uppermost and larger of the supposed holes on Kennedy's back in the photo was the entrance wound examined at the autopsy. Period.

BTW, I am far from alone in my rejection of the claim the back wound on the face sheet and photos was at T-3. While Dr. David Mantik and myself have many disagreements about the Kennedy assassination medical evidence, this isn't one of them. In his 2011 review of Don Thomas' Hear No Evil, available on the CTKA website, Mantik made this more than clear, stating that "both the autopsy photo (Galanor 1998, Document 12) and the autopsy diagram (the descriptive sheet—see Galanor 1998, Document 5) place the wound...close to the level of T1 or T2." He thereby adopted the T1 location as the location for the purposes of discussion, a discussion which led him to reject the single-bullet theory even if the wound was at T1.

Sometimes we think alike...

Avoiding the Obvious

Unfortunately, yes. On Exhibit F-58, for instance, the back wound was shifted slightly further from the spine than was indicated by the autopsy photos or by the measurements. The entrance was measured as being 4.5 cm from the mid-line of Kennedy’s spine. If the entrance on this drawing is 4.5 cm from his mid-line, however, then Kennedy measured only 13.6 cm to his shoulder. The Clark Panel measured 16 cm to his shoulder, which is as one should expect for a man of his size. If Kennedy was indeed 16 cm to his shoulder, the wound in exhibit F-58 is 5.4 cm from his spine, not 4.5. In addition, if one uses the width of the ruler in the photo (which appears to be a centimeter ruler), 37 mm or 1.46 inches, to measure the distance from Kennedy’s spine to the location of the bullet entrance in the photo, one finds that the distance from Kennedy's spine to the bullet entrance was actually more like 3.9 cm. from his spine, not 4.5. If the entrance was really 3.9 cm from the spine but presented in F-58 as 5.4 cm from the spine, it follows that the wound was moved almost 40% further from the spine.

This convenient movement of the back wound, courtesy Dr. Baden, who worked on the drawings with medical illustrator Ida Dox, created the illusion the proposed bullet path passed outside the width of Kennedy’s spine.

This is indeed suspicious.

The Problematic First Rib

That the bullet entrance on Exhibit F-307 (Figure 24 in the subsequent report) was at the level of the first rib, and the first rib was not depicted--on this or on any other of the exhibits created for the medical panel--is even more suspicious.

The 9-7-78 testimony of Dr. Cyril Wecht only adds to my concern. About the single-bullet theory, Wecht testified: "How does a bullet that is moving slightly upward in the President proceed then to move downward 25 degrees in John Connally. This is what I cannot understand. My colleagues on the panel are aware of this. We discussed it, and what we keep coming back to is, "well, don't know how the two men were seated in relationship to each other." I don't care what happened behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, there is no way in the world that they can put that together, and likewise on the horizontal plane, the bullet, please keep in mind, entered in the President's right back, I agree, exited in the anterior midline of the President's neck, I agree, and was moving thence by definition, by known facts, on a straight line from entrance to exit, from right to left. And so with that bullet moving in a leftward fashion, it then somehow made an acute angular turn, came back almost two feet, stopped, made a second turn, and slammed into Gov. John Connally behind the right armpit, referred to medically as the right posterior axillary area. The vertical and horizontal trajectory of this bullet, 399, under the single bullet theory is absolutely unfathomable, indefensible, and incredible."

Wecht's testimony indicates that some members of the panel supported the single-bullet theory under the belief the shot was fired when Kennedy and Connally's positions were unclear. Earlier and subsequent statements by four of the panel's leading lights, Dr. Werner Spitz, Dr. James Weston, Dr. Charles Petty, and Dr. Michael Baden, moreover, prove this to be true.

Let's start with Spitz. An article in the 6-2-75 Medical World News--written shortly after Spitz had first studied the medical evidence and Zapruder film on behalf the Rockefeller Commission--quoted him as follows: "Kennedy obviously was first hit while behind a sign in the Zapruder film."

Well, that's pretty clear. A May 25, 1975 appearance by Spitz on the Lou Gordon Show, however, revealed the confusion within Spitz's reasoning. While discussing the single-bullet theory, Spitz told Gordon that the shoulders of someone sitting in a "normal relaxed position" in a chair "hunched down"and that, as a result "the level of where the exit wound was becomes down...from the level of the entrance wound." Now, this more than suggests that Spitz believed Kennedy's back wound to have been below his throat wound when the body was placed in the anatomic position. But he gets it backwards. I mean, if Kennedy had leaned back in his seat, as most do in a "normal relaxed position," it would have served to lift the throat wound in comparison to the back wound. It seems probable, then, that Spitz felt that somehow someway Kennedy's throat wound ended up below his back wound at the moment he was shot, and that Spitz hadn't even taken the time to figure out that Kennedy would have to have been slouched forward, not backward, to bring his wounds into alignment with the sniper's nest.

And that's not all. Spitz similarly declared that no one could say Kennedy and Connally were not in position to have a single-bullet create all their non-fatal wounds "since you don't really know what had happened behind the sign when the President's motorcade was behind the sign which is noted on the Zapruder film. Since you don't really know what happened there, that the Governor may have turned around..."

So, yeah, Spitz not only thought Kennedy's wounds inconsistent with the single-bullet theory unless they'd come into alignment while behind the sign in the Zapruder film, but Connally's inconsistent with the theory unless he'd turned in some manner while behind the sign in the Zapruder film. It seems probable, then, that he thought Connally too close to the right door of the limousine (when last seen in the film, before going behind the sign) to be in line with a bullet fired from the sniper's nest, and exiting Kennedy's throat. I mean, why else muse that he turned around?

And the HSCA did little to change Spitz's mind on this issue. By 1988, he was still pushing that an imaginary act was needed to bring Kennedy's and Connally's wounds into alignment. In a 1988 interview on radio station WXYT, Dr. Spitz insisted that we didn't know the position of Kennedy when he was shot because "The first shot, when Kennedy is hit, is when he is passing behind a road sign which indicates the upcoming freeway and you really don't know when at exactly the point when Kennedy was hit in the shoulder. You think you know because of the echo, but we know very well that the echo follows the sound." (What echo? What is he talking about?) Spitz then revealed that he--and by extension the entire pathology panel--had never been told that the photography panel had determined Kennedy to have been hit before he went behind the sign. When told that photographs indicate Kennedy was hit before he went behind the sign, he thundered: "No, that's not true. You see him with a distorted face when he comes out from the sign. When he goes behind the sign, he's smiling and waving to the people on the right." (The photography panel had rejected this argument, and had determined that Kennedy was in fact in distress when he went behind the sign.)

Dr. Weston shared Spitz's thinking. After viewing the autopsy materials in 1975, at the request of CBS News, he emerged with a similar attitude as Spitz. According to a November 28, 1975 AP article (found in the Bangor Daily News), Weston claimed that while a better autopsy and a photo of Kennedy when the bullets struck could have helped "determine the bullet's point of origin," the "president's car is hidden by a roadside sign in the only films of the crucial seconds when he was hit."

Dr. Petty apparently concurred. While he never said anything, from what I have found, about the shot's impacting while Kennedy was hidden behind the sign in the Zapruder film, he did make some statements suggesting that he believed Kennedy's appearance in the frames when he was not behind the sign incompatible with the single-bullet theory. In his 1978 HSCA testimony, taken right after Dr. Wecht's testimony (perhaps to dull its impact), he defended the single-bullet theory's viability. After acknowledging that he believed the bullet trajectory to have been upward in Kennedy's body, he asserted, "But the President was not upright at the time he was shot, he was certainly not in the anatomic position." Shrewdly, he failed to mention when this was. If there had been a frame in which Kennedy had been leaning forward enough to support Petty's claim, one can only assume, Petty would have mentioned it.

That Petty had problems locating a frame in which Kennedy and Connally's wounds were in alignment is supported, moreover, by his statements a few moments later. When discussing the horizontal trajectory, and Dr. Wecht's claim Kennedy's throat wound was not aligned with Connally's back wound for a shot from the sniper's nest, Petty asserted "the apparent relative positions of the President and the Governor are somewhat misleading, that is, that one cannot determine by looking at a flat two dimensional view of one side of the limousine and the contained individuals precisely what relationship they had one to another." By saying the apparent relative position of the two men in the film was somewhat misleading, of course, Petty was as much as admitting that the film suggested, even to him, that Kennedy and Connally were never aligned in a manner supporting that they were struck by one bullet fired from behind. One can only assume, then, that he, as his colleagues, felt comfortable with the assumption they were hit when their exact positions could not be observed.

In 2003, at a conference sponsored by Dr. Wecht, Dr. Baden, the pathology panel's spokesman, revealed himself to be yet another more comfortable with the blinders on. When asked to point out the moment in the Zapruder film that Kennedy is first hit, he asserted: "My impression is that he is shot behind the Stemmons Freeway sign; that's why we don't see it." When Wecht correctly pointed out that Kennedy was only behind the sign for .9 seconds, hardly enough to lean forward and then back, Baden then explained: "I think Kennedy's neck has to be leaning forward a little bit, waving to somebody as you do, and that would put him in position."

And, should one wish to pretend the belief among Spitz, Weston, Baden and (probably) Petty that Kennedy was hit while behind the sign in the film did not reflect the thinking of others on the panel, one needs to stop this wishing and face the facts. Now.

First, there is a section in the panel's final report that discusses whether or not the president's body should be exhumed to more accurately determine his wound locations. It relates "The majority of the panel concurs, however, that in the absence of photographic documentation of the body's precise position at the moment the missile struck the back, more accurate wound locations would be of limited value in determining the bullet's origin."

Second, there is a footnote on the bottom of page 47 of the HSCA's Final Report. It is in a section on the findings of the Forensic Pathology Panel. It reads:

"The panel used both the location of the wounds and Zapruder frame 312 to determine the "downward" slope of the fatal head shot. It did not attempt to determine the slope of the bullet that struck the President's back because the moment of impact was not thought to be visible in the film. This decision by the forensic pathology panel was made well before the photographic panel reached its conclusion regarding the President's and Governor Connally's reactions as shown in the Zapruder film."

So why weren't they consulted afterwards?

Now, let's see. The Forensic Pathology Panel's belief the Zapruder film failed to show Kennedy in the position required for the single-bullet theory to make sense was a big problem for those running the HSCA's investigation. It cast doubt on the HSCA's findings. The men running the investigation undoubtedly knew this. This, then, raises the possibility that someone (perhaps Robert Blakey) knew the Pathology Panel could not be persuaded to accept that the Zapruder film showed Kennedy to be in the right position, and decided to bring in someone less concerned with his reputation to claim just the opposite. That way, when confronted with the fact that Kennedy never was in such a position, the doctors could raise their hands and do their best Freddie Prinze impression, protesting, "It's not my yob, mang!"

Well, then whose job was it? Whose job was it to determine Kennedy's actual position when struck by the magic bullet? And show how this bullet managed to avoid hitting bone?

As the job was virtually impossible, they gave it to another 70's television icon, a man who regularly did the impossible: Mr. Phelps.

Etch-A-Sketch

No, not quite Mr. Phelps of Mission Impossible fame, but close. They called NASA, and NASA sent them a trajectory expert named Thomas Canning. To their eternal shame, the HSCA then gave Canning the ability to move the wounds as he saw fit, in order to better align the trajectories and, one can only assume, make sure they all pointed back to the sniper's nest.

Since this last assertion is really hard to swallow, let me quote the part of the HSCA report that makes this clear. On page 33 of HSCA Appendix Vol. 6, in the report on the trajectory analysis, when describing the procedures used to establish the bullet trajectories, it declares "The Forensic Pathology Panel was responsible for providing, to the extent possible, the precise locations of the wounds sustained by Kennedy and Connally." But there is an asterisk after this. At the bottom of the page, in an explanation of this asterisk, the report acknowledges "While the Forensic Pathology Panel did provide this information, the actual measurements related to wound locations were determined by the NASA scientist who was responsible for supervising the trajectory project. He was in frequent consultation with members of the Forensic Pathology Panel and with forensic anthropologists from both the FAA's Civil Aeromedical Institute, and the Smithsonian Institute." How frequent he consulted with these unidentified panel members isn't stated. But if any of the members disagreed with Baden's testimony regarding the back wound location, and disagreed with the exhibits he presented to the committee, they were free to testify and voice their dissent. None did.

In any case, under the encouragement of others or not, when Canning testified on 9-12-78, it became clear he'd taken liberties with the wound locations. Despite the fact that HSCA Pathology Panel spokesman Dr. Michael Baden had testified but 5 days before, and wound ballistics consultant Larry Sturdivan had testified but four days before, and had presented a number of exhibits, including exhibits 46, 58, and 65, in which the bullet entered at the T-1 level, Canning boldly dragged Exhibit 376, which showed this same bullet entering considerably above the T-1 level and the problematic first rib, before the committee.

And it was actually worse than that. In his testimony, but 5 days before, Dr. Baden had specified that the back wound location in Warren Commission Exhibit CE 385 was two inches higher than its actual location. He had even entered CE 385 into evidence as an example of an incorrect depiction of the wound. And here was Canning, five days later, presenting F-376 to the committee, with the back wound up at the base of the neck, in the location presented in CE 385.

Government Transparency

So yes, it's true. By presenting F-376 to the house select committee, Canning had boldly presented an exhibit to the committee re-affirming the wound location depicted in an exhibit already presented to the committee as an example of an inaccurate exhibit! Whew!

And, unbelievably, it was even worse than that. At the top of F-376, Canning claimed the wound locations in his own exhibit had come from the pathology panel--the panel previously claiming the wound locations in F-47 were inaccurate!

The final report of Canning's trajectory panel adds another layer to the mess. In the report, Kennedy's back and throat wound locations are presented in Figure II-13. The drawing on the right of Figure II-13 was previously published as part of Exhibit F-376. This depicts a small wound on the back and a significantly larger wound on the throat. This is as one would normally expect. This avoids, of course, that the Forensic Pathology Panel had concluded that the back wound was 9 mm in diameter, and that the throat wound was roughly half its size, and was about 6-7 mm in diameter.

The measurements provided for the wound locations were also problematic. As we've seen, Exhibit 376 depicts a bullet entrance above Kennedy's first rib, and an exit slightly below it but still above the level of the first rib. In the text of Canning's report, however, he tells a different story. When discussing the back wound, he writes "the back wound was located at a point 4.4 cm to the right of and 1.1 cm above Kennedy's neck wound at the time of the shot. The bullet was moving from right to left by 18 degrees and downward by 4 degrees relative to Kennedy if he were sitting erect". When discussing the single-bullet theory, moreover, he explains "Kennedy's neck wound was 1.1 cm below the first thoracic vertebra; his forward inclination lowered the wound an additional 2.4 centimeters."

Wait... What? What's going on here? Was Canning trying to pull a fast one? I mean, why else would he depict the bullet entrance above the rib (which is at the level of the first thoracic vertebrae) on his exhibit, and then admit it was actually at the same level as the rib (which is at the level of the first thoracic vertebrae) in the text? And why else would he depict the exit just above the level of this rib in the exhibit, and then claim it was 1.1 cm below this level in the text? And how did he get that the back wound was 1.1 cm above the neck wound, when the pathology panel had indicated it was 1 cm below the neck wound?

Well, this last question is actually answered in the report. It notes that "Independent determinations by the Photographic Evidence Panel showed the entrance wound to be from 4 to 5 centimeters from Kennedy's center plane and the exit wound to be on the center plane or as much as 0.5 centimeters to its left. When seen in the autopsy position, the outshoot wound was described as being at about the same height (or slightly higher) relative to the in shoot wound." The report further describes how Forensic Anthropologist Clyde Snow had performed some studies for the committee, and had concluded that the position of Kennedy's head and shoulders at frame 190 of the Zapruder film would move the back wound 1.1 cm higher in comparison to the throat wound and 0.1 cm closer to the midline.

So, yeah, Canning's report claims that the wound on Kennedy's back which the pathology panel claimed was 1 cm below his throat wound when he was sitting in the anatomic position, was 3.5 cm above his throat wound at the moment he was shot. The proposed wound track was but 14 cm long. It thereby dropped 4.5 cm over the course of its 14 cm, a drop of 1 cm every 3.1 cm, an angle of descent of over 20 degrees. If one sits up straight in one's seat and emulates the anatomic position, and puts a right finger on the back of one's shoulder and a left finger on one's throat a cm higher than the finger on the back, it's impossible to lower the area of throat touching the left finger to a point 3.5 cm lower than the back wound without crouching over into a position totally at odds with Kennedy's position at the time he is believed to have been shot.

Of course, Canning's report claims the Photographic Evidence Panel suggested the back wound was at the level of the throat wound when in the anatomic position, and not 1 cm below, a la the Forensic Pathology Panel. This in itself is curious. The exhibits already entered into evidence by Canning claimed the wound locations were deduced from the report of the pathology panel, and the footnote added to Canning's report by the HSCA's staff claimed he was personally responsible for the movement of the wounds.

Was Canning trying to hide that he'd moved the back wound to accommodate the single-bullet theory?

Was the rocket scientist pulling a fast one?