Good Defense of Doug Horne's Documentary "The Three Bethesda Casket Entries"

[Michael T. Griffith]

Jacob Hornberger (B.A., J.D.), a former professor law and economics at the University of Dallas and now the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, has written a spirited defense of Doug Horne's recent documentary The Three Bethesda Casket Entries:

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/dominick-armentanos-fallacious-disagreement-with-doug-hornes-new-jfk-documentary/

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In response to JFK assassination researcher Doug Horne’s remarkable achievement with his new JFK documentary “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries,” longtime author Dominick Armentano has written an article stating that notwithstanding Horne’s excellent documentary, he still doesn’t believe that President Kennedy’s body was brought into the Bethesda military morgue in the first casket entry detailed in Horne’s documentary. Given that Armentano has in previous articles expressed a high degree of skepticism regarding the three casket entries detailed in Horne’s documentary, Armentano’s recent article provides a good opportunity to revisit this topic in considerable detail.

It’s worth emphasizing another powerful point about Horne’s documentary—that there were definitely three separate groups of people who were involved in the three casket entries into the morgue. . . .

To be sure, in his recent article Armentano does recognize the high quality of Horne’s documentary. He wrote, “Doug Horne has recently produced a fascinating documentary about multiple casket entries into the Bethesda morgue on the evening of November 22, 1963. It is well done and I urge everyone to watch it on YouTube.” But he concluded his piece with his skepticism regarding the first casket entry, writing, “In short, while Horne is to be applauded for producing a thoroughly engaging video (his cinematic skills are substantial) his major proposition – that JFK’s corpse arrived in a shipping casket at 6:35 – has NOT (in my judgment) been substantiated by any “best evidence.” (His capitalization.)

Before addressing the points that Armentano made in his article, I believe it’s important to put the controversy into an overall context. Doing that will, I believe, help us to better understand Armentano’s points and why his points are faulty and fallacious. . . .

The following were the three casket entries and the time for each casket entry:

First casket entry: 6:35 p.m. This involved a cheap, lightweight shipping casket containing JFK’s body, which was inside a body bag (rather than wrapped in the two white sheets from Parkland Hospital — one around his body and one around his head). The casket was carried into the morgue anteroom by a team of Navy sailors. Humes and Boswell then conducted clandestine pre-autopsy surgery to remove evidence of shots having been fired from the front. This was followed by x-rays that were taken of the skull. (Thus, the skull x-rays in the record today are invalid as evidence because they do not accurately record the condition of President Kennedy’s body after he was assassinated.)

Second casket entry: 7:17 p.m. The heavy, ornate Dallas casket, which was empty, was carried into the morgue so that JFK’s body could be put back into it. The casket was carried into the morgue by four federal agents — Secret Service agents Roy Kellerman and William Greer and FBI agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert. The time of this casket entry was established by an FBI report known as the Rosen Report, which recounted an interview that Warren Commission attorney Arlen Specter had conducted of FBI agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert, as follows:

Question: What was the time of the preparation for the autopsy at the hospital?

Answer: Approximately 7:17 p.m.

Question: What time did the autopsy begin?

Answer: Approximately 8:15 p.m.

The Dallas casket, with Kennedy’s body now reintroduced into it, was then carried out to a Navy vehicle and placed into the vehicle. The vehicle was then driven to the front of the Bethesda Hospital, where it was united with the Joint Service Casket Team or Honor Guard. The JSCT consisted of a 6-man military team of representatives from the four branches of the armed forces, plus one member of the Coast Guard. The team was headed by Army Lt. Sam https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,2006.0.html The vehicle, followed by a truck containing the JSCT, drove to the morgue, which was located in the back of the hospital.

[Lance Payette]

I have read lots of Hornberger's stuff. His defense of Horne is the equivalent of the UFO True Believer who thinks the bug-eyed aliens are from Zeta Reticuli coming to the defense of a fellow UFO True Believer who thinks the bug-eyed aliens are from inside the Hollow Earth.

Let's take just one of Hornberger's nuggets of conspiracy gospel:

Gawler’s Funeral Home

Gawler’s Funeral Home was the most prestigious funeral home in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Army chose Gawler’s to do the embalming of the president’s body and then handle the funeral.

The ARRB discovered a Gawler’s working memorandum that was prepared during the autopsy that stated, “Body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH at Bethesda.” There is no doubt that that Gawler’s memorandum is referring to the body of President Kennedy.

And then we have Little Old Lance's clarification of the same bombshell from two months ago on the thread I started about Horne's documentary:

I will close here by asking folks to look at Horne's discussion of the Gawler's Funeral Home "First Call Sheet" beginning at roughly 18:20 of the video. Horne notes the "metal shipping casket" statement on the Call Sheet and explains that Hagan confirmed this term meant a cheap, basic transit casket. WOW!

Horne DOESN'T tell us that Hagan, in two separate interviews, told Horne that he had never seen the casket, had only been told JFK arrived in a "metal" casket, had merely assumed it was a transit casket, and had no idea JFK had actually arrived in a "ceremonial" bronze casket costing $3000 ($31,546 today).

In short, the "First Call Sheet" is irrelevant to the shipping casket issue and Horne is a fundamentally dishonest con artist.

Hornberger is likewise a fundamentally dishonest con artist, at least insofar as this issue is concerned. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes. For God's sake, Hagan's clarification is part of the same ARRB package as the Call Sheet. I guess Horne just "conveniently forgot" about it and Hornberger foolishly trusted Horne - because that's how it works in Conspiracy Factoid World.

Do you folks EVER get tired of being conned? (BTW, the bug-eyed aliens are, in fact, coming from inside the Hollow Earth.)

[Michael T. Griffith]

I have read lots of Hornberger's stuff. His defense of Horne is the equivalent of the UFO True Believer who thinks the bug-eyed aliens are from Zeta Reticuli coming to the defense of a fellow UFO True Believer who thinks the bug-eyed aliens are from inside the Hollow Earth.

Oh, wow. Me thinks "thou dost protest too much." Your tactic is to paint anyone who disagrees with you as a quack and/or a liar and to pretend that all arguments against the lone-gunman theory are nutty, fringe assertions, and then you proceed to present lame arguments to defend your viewpoint, a viewpoint that is rejected by 2/3 to 3/4 of the Western world.

I'm tempted to ask how your credentials compare to Hornberger's, but I won't.

Let's take just one of Hornberger's nuggets of conspiracy gospel:

Gawler’s Funeral Home

Gawler’s Funeral Home was the most prestigious funeral home in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Army chose Gawler’s to do the embalming of the president’s body and then handle the funeral.

The ARRB discovered a Gawler’s working memorandum that was prepared during the autopsy that stated, “Body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH at Bethesda.” There is no doubt that that Gawler’s memorandum is referring to the body of President Kennedy.

And then we have Little Old Lance's clarification of the same bombshell from two months ago on the thread I started about Horne's documentary:

I will close here by asking folks to look at Horne's discussion of the Gawler's Funeral Home "First Call Sheet" beginning at roughly 18:20 of the video. Horne notes the "metal shipping casket" statement on the Call Sheet and explains that Hagan confirmed this term meant a cheap, basic transit casket. WOW!

Horne DOESN'T tell us that Hagan, in two separate interviews, told Horne that he had never seen the casket, had only been told JFK arrived in a "metal" casket, had merely assumed it was a transit casket, and had no idea JFK had actually arrived in a "ceremonial" bronze casket costing $3000 ($31,546 today).

In short, the "First Call Sheet" is irrelevant to the shipping casket issue and Horne is a fundamentally dishonest con artist.

Your argument is what is fundamentally dishonest. I note that you fail to explain why anyone at Gawler's would have described the ornate ceremonial Dallas casket as a "metal shipping casket." As you say, Gawler's was a respected funeral firm. They not only said the body arrived in a metal shipping casket but that it was also removed from that same casket.  No one at Gawler's would have mistaken the fancy Dallas casket for a "metal shipping casket."

Hornberger is likewise a fundamentally dishonest con artist, at least insofar as this issue is concerned. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes. For God's sake, Hagan's clarification is part of the same ARRB package as the Call Sheet. I guess Horne just "conveniently forgot" about it and Hornberger foolishly trusted Horne - because that's how it works in Conspiracy Factoid World. Do you folks EVER get tired of being conned? (BTW, the bug-eyed aliens are, in fact, coming from inside the Hollow Earth.)

As you so often do, you've once again ignored key contrary evidence, pronounced yourself the winner, and labeled your opponents as fringe idiots and/or liars and frauds. I've lost count of how many times I've caught you omitting or ignoring important evidence and then acting like you've proved your point.

Speaking of conveniently forgetting evidence, I note that you also fail to mention that other witnesses likewise said that JFK's body arrived in a military shipping casket or a metal shipping casket (the two terms were synonyms). For example, former Bethesda x-ray technician Edward Reed told the ARRB that Kennedy's body arrived at the hospital in a "typical military, aluminum casket." When counsel followed up and asked Reed if he would describe the casket as a ceremonial casket, Reed replied, "No."

Did you "conveniently forget" this fact? Hey?

Or how about Dennis David? Dennis David was one of the Navy corpsmen who carried the military shipping casket into the Bethesda morgue. He reported that Dr. Boswell confirmed to him later that night after the autopsy that JFK’s body had been in the shipping casket that he had offloaded.

Did you "conveniently forget" this fact, too? Hey?

How about Paul O'Connor, James Jenkins, Floyd Riebe, and Jerrol Custer? All of them said JFK's body arrived in a military/military shipping casket. Riebe told the ARRB the casket was a "gun-metal gray casket." Jenkins said the casket was not a ceremonial one and that it was so plain that it was "not something you'd expect a president to be in." O'Connor said the casket was a "gray shipping casket" and a “pinkish gray, nondescript, cheap, shipping casket.”

Did you "conveniently forget" these facts, too? Hey? (Of course, your explanation is that all these men were either "lying" or "mistaken." Every single one of them.)

It is hard to have substantive, productive discussions when one side insists that anyone who disagrees with them must be frauds or idiots, or both. And it is odd when the people who adopt this attitude are doing so in defense of a theory that is rejected by 2/3 to 3/4 of the Western world.

[Royell Storing]

 After Jackie Kennedy got out of the Navy Ambulance carrying the Ceremonial Casket, that ambulance/casket just sat there at the curb for 10 minutes. There is No Way if the body of a dead POTUS is inside that casket, that it just sits there at the curb for 10 minutes.
  I still have Not heard a single reasonable scenario regarding the shifting of the JFK body. For starters, SPECIFICALLY how/when was JFK's body shifted into that metal shipping casket? 

[Tommy Shanks]

Doug Horne? Really? I am astonished anybody takes him seriously in 2025.

[Lance Payette]

Oh, wow. Me thinks "thou dost protest too much." Your tactic is to paint anyone who disagrees with you as a quack and/or a liar and to pretend that all arguments against the lone-gunman theory are nutty, fringe assertions, and then you proceed to present lame arguments to defend your viewpoint, a viewpoint that is rejected by 2/3 to 3/4 of the Western world.

I'm tempted to ask how your credentials compare to Hornberger's, but I won't.

Oh, please, ask my credentials! I love to strut them. A fairly diligent search did not find that Hornberger has any of the academic credentials or honors that we lawyers who have them love to strut.

I was simply being silly, making the point that Hornberger, like Horne, is at the absolute extreme, nothing-is-too-wild, True Believer fringe of the conspiracy community - which he most certainly is.

Your argument is what is fundamentally dishonest. I note that you fail to explain why anyone at Gawler's would have described the ornate ceremonial Dallas casket as a "metal shipping casket." As you say, Gawler's was a respected funeral firm. They not only said the body arrived in a metal shipping casket but that it was also removed from that same casket.  No one at Gawler's would have mistaken the fancy Dallas casket for a "metal shipping casket."

Come on, it's RIGHT IN THE ARRB DOCUMENTS! Let us quote from HORNE'S OWN MEMORANDA, HIS OWN NOTES ...

In the portion of the document titled “Casket Order,” the handwritten entry found on the Remarks line which reads: “Body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH at Bethesda” was indeed his [Hagan's[ handwriting, but explained that he never did himself sight the object described here - he said he wrote this down simply because he was told the President’s body had arrived in a metal casket, and did not know at the time that it was a bronze ceremonial casket, so simply described it as a shipping casket without having seen it because he was told it was “metal.”

Hagan then calls Horne back to emphasize that no one at Gawler's had seen a shipping casket:

Mr. Hagan brought up the subject of the shipping casket statement in his business document, and reminded me that that statement on the Gawler’s “first call” sheet did not reflect any observation personally made by anyone at Gawler’s. I then asked him if the term “shipping casket” had a specific meaning within the funeral trade, and he confirmed that it did: namely, that the terms “accommodation case, shipping case, air-tray, and/or shipping casket” were interchangeably used to refer to cheap, unadorned lightweight metal containers which were used to ship cadavers from one location to another by air (or sometimes by train).

See: https://www.washingtondecoded.com/files/md182-1.pdf

That sound you hear is the air going out of the Gawler's Factoid balloon. There is no way to characterize what Horne and Hornberger have done as anything but fundamentally dishonest.

Even lawyers without my credentials - and I'll bet even Jacob Hornberger - know that misrepresentations such as this absolutely KILL a lawyer's credibility with judges and his (or her) peers. This is schlock fraud of the first magnitude.

[Royell Storing]

    You're afraid of what a judge thinks of you? What? Like that judge that sneaked an illegal alien out of the side door of her court room? This is exactly why single judges are not afraid to issue decisions impacting the entire USA. Their courtrooms are filled with people worried about what the judge thinks of them. Forget the law, and just CYA.