A large snip from “History Will Prove Us Right” by Howard Willens, page 273-278:
The Autopsy Photographs and X-rays
Securing testimony from Mrs. Kennedy had been difficult, but getting our hands on the autopsy photographs and X-rays proved even more so. Although the public might accept our delicate handling of Mrs. Kennedy, we doubted they would be as sympathetic to our failure to get the hard evidence that the autopsy materials represented. The Kennedy family had deep, long-term, emotional interests at stake but, for us, it was much more difficult to take a pass on this issue. We all believed we could not back down.
Most of the staff was convinced that the commission’s failure to consider these materials carefully in its report would be used to attack our competence and integrity. Specter had taken the testimony of the three autopsy doctors three months earlier, at a time when neither he nor the doctors had access to the autopsy X-rays and photographs. He and others were satisfied that the testimony of the doctors did accurately reflect the trajectory of the bullets and the nature of the wounds suffered by both Kennedy and Connally. However, the corpsman’s sketch introduced during this testimony was inaccurate as to the location of the wounds and to that extent inconsistent with that testimony.
Specter and other lawyers pressed Rankin hard on this issue, emphasizing the need for these materials in order to make more definitive judgments regarding key issues in the investigation. Specter believed that Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelley, who had reportedly talked to the attorney general about this matter, might not have fully appreciated why these materials were necessary and that the commission should present its own reasons to Robert Kennedy. At the commission meeting of April 30, Rankin obtained Warren’s approval to try and obtain access to the X-rays and photos.26
Specter thought that the autopsy records were “indispensable” in determining with certainty the origin of the shots and identifying any major variations between the autopsy images and the artist’s drawings used by the doctors in their testimony. He was convinced that James Humes, one of the autopsy doctors, could use the photographs and X-rays to pinpoint the exact location of the entrance wound on the president’s upper back, the exact location of the entrance wound on the back of the president’s head, and the exact area of his skull that was hit by the second bullet. In addition, Specter proposed that the specifics of Kennedy’s wounds be examined closely in the photographs and X-rays to determine whether they were characteristic of entrance wounds under the criteria used by the autopsy doctors and by the Dallas doctors who examined the president after he was shot. Specter proposed that Humes, after examining these materials, indicate whether he needed to make any changes in his earlier testimony. Unknown to Specter, the question of the commission’s access to these materials was still unresolved when I met with Katzenbach on June 17.27
I understood at this time that the attorney general had agreed to let Warren and Rankin see the autopsy materials. I urged Katzenbach to get Kennedy’s approval for Specter rather than Rankin to examine them. I told him that it was very important to have the most knowledgeable lawyer on the staff assume this responsibility and that Specter was known to the attorney general as the prosecutor who had successfully won the Roy Cohn Teamster case in Philadelphia.28
Katzenbach raised the question a few days later with Kennedy, who decided that Warren could view these materials on behalf of the commission, but that no one else could be present and the X-rays and photographs would remain in the possession of the custodian who brought them. Kennedy was understandably wary of any opportunity to copy them.
Warren promptly arranged to have the materials brought to his chambers at the Supreme Court. He looked at them reluctantly and only briefly. He reported back to Rankin, and presumably the other commission members, that the photographs were so gruesome that he did not believe that they should be included among the commission’s records. Due to Warren’s extreme distaste for these materials and his previous public commitment to publishing everything relied on by the commission, Rankin concluded that there was no possibility of Specter being permitted to view these materials to confirm the accuracy of Humes’s earlier testimony.
With the exception of Rankin, the commission’s lawyers considered this decision by Warren to be a serious mistake. I agreed. Without the autopsy photos, we had to deal only with a medical corpsman’s sketch made several months later based on a doctor’s memory of his examination of the patient. The sketch opened the door to all kinds of speculation about the wounds, and therefore the shots that caused the wounds, that could have been avoided easily if we had the X-rays and photos. We were right in the conclusions we drew from the corpsman’s sketches and the testimony of the doctors, but we could have supported our conclusions better if we had the documentary evidence as well as the medical testimony.
As it happened, our fears were realized and critics eagerly embraced the corpsman’s inaccurate sketch to question the commission’s conclusions about the nature of the wounds and the single-bullet analysis. David Belin later characterized it as “a disastrous decision” which “gave rise to wild speculation and rumor.” Belin attributed the decision to the Kennedy family, and especially Robert Kennedy, claiming that they “did not want these pictures and X-rays to become a matter of public display.” Belin believed passionately that the family’s “desire for privacy was outweighed by the need for public knowledge on what actually happened in Dallas on Nov. 22.” He worried that such deference to the Kennedy family was indicative of “a dangerous trend toward preferred treatment for high governmental officials.”29
Specter shared Belin’s assessment. He also attributed the decision to the Kennedy family and their worries that “those ghastly images might reach the public.” Specter believed this concern could have been met by including “an analysis of the autopsy materials in the commission report without including the images as a commission exhibit. That approach should have satisfied the Kennedy family.” Specter did not learn that Warren had examined the autopsy materials until long after the commission report was filed. He recalled that he and Belin had dinner together “after the commission nixed the photos and X-rays” and discussed resigning from the commission staff. But neither of them seriously considered doing that.30
It is clear that the Kennedy family’s objections to releasing the images found a sympathetic ear in Warren. As Redlich later recalled:
My impression, and I cannot be more precise than that, my impression was that the Kennedy family was concerned about the publicity, about a public display of the President’s skull in those pictures. The Chief Justice was very sensitive to that. He felt that that family had undergone just tremendous trauma, and he was very sensitive to that, perhaps by retrospect overly sensitive. But he was very sensitive to it. Now, I don’t believe that it would be fair to the Kennedys, at least on the basis of anything I know of, to conclude that it was because of their directly saying to the Chief Justice that we want it this way, that it was done this way. I have no information of that kind.31
I do not have any information of that kind either. Based on my conversations with Robert Kennedy, I believe that he might have been persuaded to let the autopsy materials be used for the forensic purposes described by Specter so long as they did not become part of the commission’s records. Because Warren responded so negatively to any commission use of the materials—with no apparent challenge from other members—Rankin and the staff never had the opportunity to develop such a proposal and present it to Robert Kennedy, with the strong endorsement that I believe Katzenbach and Miller would have provided.
Rankin, however, later defended Warren’s position on this question:
We thought we had good evidence from the doctors who were involved at the hospital in Dallas and also at the autopsy, and we did not want the President’s memory to be presented in that manner, and we had already promised the American people that the investigation, that everything that we obtained, except for such matters as involved national security, would be made available to them, so we would have had to publish it, if we used it ourselves.32
I did not find this explanation acceptable—and still don’t. It invited further questioning by the critics as to what else the commission may have excluded from its records to avoid embarrassing individuals or agencies. Once the commission had decided to suppress anything from its published records, including documents withheld in the name of national security, the withholding of the X-rays and photographs could have been explained in a way that I believe would have been accepted by the vast majority of the American public. Whatever criticism the commission might have received for such withholding would have been trivial compared with the criticism it did receive (and deserve) for not letting these materials be used by the testifying doctors to make certain that their testimony was accurate.
Willens was in a great position to witness and be an integral part of a tremendous amount of the Warren Commission’s work. His book is highly recommended reading if you really want to know how these things happened.
