NEW ARTICLE: JFK's Clothing Proves the Single-Bullet Theory Is Impossible

[Michael T. Griffith]

The fact that JFK's tie proves that no bullet exited the throat and shirt slits also explains the fact that the throat wound was too small to have been an exit wound for a 6.5 mm bullet. Dr. Finck wrote that the throat wound was approximately 5 mm in diameter. Dr. Perry, who obviously saw the throat wound before he did the tracheotomy over it, told Dr. Humes that the throat wound was "only a few mm in size, 3-5 mm.” The alleged lone gunman supposedly used 6.5 mm bullets. A missile of this diameter would have made a much larger wound if it had exited the throat, as the WC's own wound ballistics proved.

In the WC's own wound ballistics test, the smallest exit wound that was created in the simulated human necks was 10 mm in diameter. The exit wounds in the WC's test were also punched-out, whereas JFK's throat wound was punched-in.

Reaching and straining, WC supporters attempt to explain the WC test results and the throat wound's contrastingly small size and punched-in feature by speculating that JFK's collar band restrained the skin of the neck as the bullet transited the neck, thereby enabling the bullet to cause a small punched-in wound. This makes no sense. How would the skin, even if tightly restrained by the collar band, not have been punched outward by an exiting bullet? The edges of the wound might not have been as pronounced, but they would still have been pushed outward. They certainly wouldn't have been punched inward.

Moreover, the restrained-skin argument ignores the fact that the shirt slits, supposedly made by an exiting bullet, were below the inside collar band, so the skin behind the slits would not have been restrained.

Furthermore, it seems very doubtful that even the skin directly behind the collar band would have had time to become significantly restrained. Why? Because the bullet would have transited the neck in no more than 55 milliseconds. To get some idea of just how fast this would have been, consider that an eyeblink takes 100 to 150 milliseconds. What little degree of restraint that the bullet's alleged transit through the neck would have caused in such a microscopic amount of time would have been negligible.

All of this, in turn, helps us appreciate the explanatory power and importance of Dr. Carrico's key information that the throat wound was above the tie knot. Sadly, SBT believers pretend that Carrico's testimony was "unclear," "ambiguous," etc. No, it was not. WC member Allen Dulles specifically asked Carrico to "show" him where the wound was, then asked him to confirm that he was putting his hand just above his tie, and then Carrico said yes. So Carrico was demonstrating where the wound was with his hand; he put his hand just above his tie, and then he confirmed this placement when Dulles asked him to confirm it. Carrico's testimony is only "unclear" and "ambiguous" to those who are so emotionally/ideologically attached to the lone-gunman theory that they refuse to accept evidence that destroys it.

In addition, as has been mentioned several times, when Carrico was interviewed by Harold Weisberg and was asked specifically about his exchange with Dulles, he confirmed that he demonstrated the location of the wound by putting his hand right above his tie knot. See Weisberg's book Never Again, pp. 241-242.

Finally, the throat wound's location just above the tie knot was corroborated by Dr. Ronald Jones, who independently and in two separate interviews, said the wound was above the tie knot.

[Jack Nessan]

The fact that JFK's tie proves that no bullet exited the throat and shirt slits also explains the fact that the throat wound was too small to have been an exit wound for a 6.5 mm bullet. Dr. Finck wrote that the throat wound was approximately 5 mm in diameter. Dr. Perry, who obviously saw the throat wound before he did the tracheotomy over it, told Dr. Humes that the throat wound was "only a few mm in size, 3-5 mm.” The alleged lone gunman supposedly used 6.5 mm bullets. A missile of this diameter would have made a much larger wound if it had exited the throat, as the WC's own wound ballistics proved.

In the WC's own wound ballistics test, the smallest exit wound that was created in the simulated human necks was 10 mm in diameter. The exit wounds in the WC's test were also punched-out, whereas JFK's throat wound was punched-in.

Reaching and straining, WC supporters attempt to explain the WC test results and the throat wound's contrastingly small size and punched-in feature by speculating that JFK's collar band restrained the skin of the neck as the bullet transited the neck, thereby enabling the bullet to cause a small punched-in wound. This makes no sense. How would the skin, even if tightly restrained by the collar band, not have been punched outward by an exiting bullet? The edges of the wound might not have been as pronounced, but they would still have been pushed outward. They certainly wouldn't have been punched inward.

Moreover, the restrained-skin argument ignores the fact that the shirt slits, supposedly made by an exiting bullet, were below the inside collar band, so the skin behind the slits would not have been restrained.

Furthermore, it seems very doubtful that even the skin directly behind the collar band would have had time to become significantly restrained. Why? Because the bullet would have transited the neck in no more than 55 milliseconds. To get some idea of just how fast this would have been, consider that an eyeblink takes 100 to 150 milliseconds. What little degree of restraint that the bullet's alleged transit through the neck would have caused in such a microscopic amount of time would have been negligible.

All of this, in turn, helps us appreciate the explanatory power and importance of Dr. Carrico's key information that the throat wound was above the tie knot. Sadly, SBT believers pretend that Carrico's testimony was "unclear," "ambiguous," etc. No, it was not. WC member Allen Dulles specifically asked Carrico to "show" him where the wound was, then asked him to confirm that he was putting his hand just above his tie, and then Carrico said yes. So Carrico was demonstrating where the wound was with his hand; he put his hand just above his tie, and then he confirmed this placement when Dulles asked him to confirm it. Carrico's testimony is only "unclear" and "ambiguous" to those who are so emotionally/ideologically attached to the lone-gunman theory that they refuse to accept evidence that destroys it.

In addition, as has been mentioned several times, when Carrico was interviewed by Harold Weisberg and was asked specifically about his exchange with Dulles, he confirmed that he demonstrated the location of the wound by putting his hand right above his tie knot. See Weisberg's book Never Again, pp. 241-242.

Finally, the throat wound's location just above the tie knot was corroborated by Dr. Ronald Jones, who independently and in two separate interviews, said the wound was above the tie knot.

Dr. Carrico's key information that the throat wound was above the tie knot.

It is not complicated. Apparently, you go dumb and blind when you look at the autopsy photo.

[Jake Maxwell]

Clint Hill seems very credible in this interview...
Disavows the SBT...
Check out the interview... at 35:44
Note how his wife, Lisa (at 37:50), refuses leading questions of the interviewer, and insists that Clint Hill be heard on the SBT and etc... love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdRrcvvAhps

[Michael T. Griffith]

Clint Hill seems very credible in this interview...
Disavows the SBT...
Check out the interview... at 35:44
Note how his wife, Lisa (at 37:50), refuses leading questions of the interviewer, and insists that Clint Hill be heard on the SBT and etc... love it!

This is not a bit surprising, since Clint Hill was at the autopsy and knew that the back wound had no exit point.

Secret Service agent Bill Greer, who was also present for the entire autopsy, is yet another witness who heard nothing about the back wound having an exit point during the autopsy:

Specter: Was anything said about any channel being present in the body for the bullet to have gone on through the back?

Greer: No, sir; I hadn't heard anything like that, any trace of it going on through. (2 H 127) 

In a moment, I'll quote Sibert and O'Neill's ARRB testimony and O'Neill's HSCA interview, but let's see what they said just four days after the autopsy in their report on the autopsy:

During the latter stages of this autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening which appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the shoulders. . . . This opening was probed by Dr. Humes with the finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had entered at a downward position of 45 to 60 degrees. Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger. (Francis O'Neill and James Sibert, "Autopsy of Body of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy," 11/26/1963, p. 4, http://22november1963.org.uk/sibert-and-oneill-report#sibert-oneill-report)

Well, no wonder the WC ignored this report, did not include it in the published hearings and exhibits, and buried it in the National Archives, where Harold Weisberg discovered it in 1966. 

But let's get even closer to the time of the autopsy. Sibert and O'Neill sent a telegram to FBI Director Hoover at 2:00 AM on 11/23/1963, just hours after the autopsy, and therein they said the back wound was located below the shoulder and was a shallow wound that had no exit point:

One bullet hole located just below shoulders to right of spinal column, and hand probing indicated trajectory at angle of 45 to 60 degrees downward and hole of short depth with no point of exit. (O'Neill and Sibert, FBI teletype: Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 11/23/1963, p. 1, ARRB document MD 149)

Dr. Robert Karnei was a resident surgeon at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963 and witnessed the autopsy. In a 1991 recorded interview, Karnei said the autopsy doctors positioned the body in multiple ways to facilitate the probing of the back wound, and that “the men” who saw the probing commented that they could see the end of the finger and then the end of the probe “from inside the empty chest”! He added that the pathologists worked “all night long with the probes” to find the bullet’s path through the body:

A: They did have the body--trying to sit it up and trying to get that probe to go. . . .
Q: Why didn't they turn the body over?
A: Well, they did. They tried every which way to go ahead, and try to move it around. . . .
Q: But this was after the Y incision?
A: Yes. The men described being able to see the end of the finger and the probe from inside the empty chest.
They were working all night long with probes trying to make out where that bullet was going on the back there. (p. 10) 


In his 3/10/97 ARRB interview, Karnei said that by around midnight the autopsy doctors "had not found a bullet track through the body, nor had they found an exit wound for the entry in the shoulder" (p. 001476).

In his 8/27/77 HSCA interview, Karnei said that he recalled the autopsy doctors "putting the probe in and taking pictures" (p. 5). Karnei was not the only witness who saw pictures taken of the probing, but those pictures were never included in the official collection of the autopsy materials. I think we all know why.

Karnei also told the HSCA that he saw "the chest cavity opened and watched the removal of the organs," and that after this he saw Finck "working with a probe and arranging for photographs" (p. 6). This is another reference that indicates photos were taken of the probing.

-- Dr. Robert Canada was the commanding officer of the treatment hospital at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963, and he witnessed the autopsy. In a 1968 interview with Dr. Michael Kurtz, Canada said that the back wound was at around T3, that the bullet “did not exit,” and that its wound tract ended in the chest near the stomach ((Kurtz, The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy, University Press of Kansas, 2006, p. 91; see also https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/altered-history-exposing-deciet-and-deception-in-the-jfk-assassination-medical-evidence-part-1/, segment on Dr. Canada begins at 1:08:20). Dr. Canada asked Dr. Kurtz not to reveal his account until 25 years after he died, so Kurtz did not write about it until 2006.

-- James Jenkins, a medical technician who assisted Dr. Boswell during the autopsy, stated in his 8/29/1977 HSCA interview that Dr. James Humes, the chief autopsy pathologist, found that the bullet tract had not "penetrated into the chest" and that Humes had been able to "reach the end of the wound." Jenkins specified that the back wound "was very shallow" and that "it didn't enter the peritoneal cavity [the chest cavity]. He noted that there was quite a “controversy” because the doctors “couldn’t prove the bullet came into the chest cavity” even though they probed the back wound “extensively” (pp. 5, 7, 10-11, 13).

Jenkins added that at around the time of the probing "they repeatedly took x-rays of the area” (p. 8 ). For obvious reasons, those x-rays were not included in the official collection of the autopsy materials.

In a 1979 filmed interview, Jenkins said the following:

Commander Humes put his finger in it, and, you know, said that ... he could probe the bottom of it with his finger. . . . I remember looking inside the chest cavity and I could see the probe . . . through the pleura. You could actually see where it was making an indentation. . . . It was pushing the skin up. . . . There was no entry into the chest cavity.

-- In his 7/16/96 ARRB interview, autopsy photographer John Stringer said that the back wound was probed and that the probe did not come out of the neck:

Q: Was the probe put into the neck, or did it come of the neck?
A: It was put into the back part.
Q: The back of the body. And then did the probe come out the neck?
A: No. (p. 73)

-- O'Neill revealed in his 9/12/97 ARRB interview that at the end of the autopsy, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the bullet that was found in Dallas had fallen out of the back wound:

There was not the slightest doubt when we left there that the bullet found on the stretcher in Dallas was the bullet which worked its way out through external cardiac massage. And the doctor said, since the body had not been turned over in Dallas, “External cardiac massage was conducted on the president, and the bullet worked its way out."

There was not the slightest doubt, not a scintilla of doubt whatsoever, that this is what occurred. . . .

Because I was closer to the President’s body than I am to you, and you’re only about a foot and a half away or two feet away. And viewing them with the surgical probe and with their fingers, there was absolutely no point of exit and they couldn’t go any further. And that presented a problem, one heck of a problem. . . .

Q: You previously made reference to attempts to probe that wound. Did you ever see any kind of metal object used to probe that wound?

A: Yes. They used a metal probe, in addition to their fingers. . . . In the back, they probed it to a point where they could not probe any further. In other words, it did not go any further. (pp. 30-31)

O'Neill stated in his 11/8/78 HSCA affidavit that "Humes and Boswell couldn't locate an outlet for the bullet that entered the back." He added, "I know for a fact that when the autopsy was complete, there was no doubt in anyone's mind in attendance at the autopsy that the bullet found on the stretcher in Dallas came out of JFK's body," i.e., out of the back wound (p. 000573).

O’Neill also offered this gem of an observation: "I do not see how the bullet that entered below the shoulder could have come out the front of the throat" (p. 000575).

-- Sibert echoed O’Neill in his 9/11/97 ARRB interview. Sibert said he called Killion to see if any bullets had been found because the autopsy doctors said the back wound had no exit point:

Q: Can you tell me, was the phone call made to Mr. Killion before or after the body was unloaded from the casket?

A: Oh, that was after the body was removed; it was on the autopsy table, and the autopsy was in progress. Because the reason I made that call was that the pathologists said, "There’s no exit to this back wound,” and probed it with rubber glove and a chrome probe. (p. 59)

Sibert explained more about the probing and the fact that the autopsy doctors--"Finck, in particular"--said they could feel the end of the back wound:
 
But when they raised him up, then they found this back wound. And that’s when they started probing with the rubber glove and the finger, and also with the chrome probe.

And that’s just before, of course, I made this call, because they were at a loss to explain what had happened to this bullet. They couldn’t find any bullet.

And they said, "There's no exit.” Finck, in particular, said, "There's no exit.” And they said that you could feel it with the end of the finger. I mean, the depth of this wound. (p. 111)

-- Dr. John Ebersole, the radiologist at the autopsy, stated in his 3/11/78 testimony to the HSCA’s medical panel that the autopsy doctors determined that the back wound had no exit point:

Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger, inasmuch as a complete bullet of any size could be located in the brain area and likewise no bullet could be located in the back or any other areas. An inspection revealed there was no point of exit. The individuals performing the autopsy were at a loss to explain why they could find no bullets. (p. 57)

-- In discussing the probing of the back wound, autopsy doctor J. Thornton Boswell admitted in his 2/26/96 ARRB interview that after they "opened the chest" they could see that "the bullet had not pierced through into the lung cavity but had caused hemorrhage just outside the pleura”:

We probed this hole which was in his neck with all sorts of probes and everything, and it was such a small hole, basically, and the muscles were so big and strong and had closed the hole and you couldn't get a finger or a probe through it.

But when we opened the chest and we got at—the lung extends up under the clavicle and high just beneath the neck here, and the bullet had not pierced through into the lung cavity but had caused hemorrhage just outside the pleura. (pp. 75-76)

All of this explains why the first two drafts of the autopsy report said nothing about the throat wound being an exit point for the back wound. That story only came after Oswald was killed and they knew there would be no trial.