Myths and Errors in ABC's "Truth and Lies" Documentary

[Michael T. Griffith]

Last month ABC aired a documentary on the JFK case titled Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK?. In advertisements for the program, ABC said the documentary would present “new information” on the case. Sadly, the documentary repeats myths that were debunked years ago, among other errors, and ignores the historic disclosures and developments about the case that have occurred since the 1990s.

Just a few examples of the myths and errors in Truth and Lies:

-- Incredibly, the documentary relies on Howard Brennan’s discredited testimony to convict Oswald. Former HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey has noted that the Select Committee ignored Brennan’s waffling identification of Oswald as the sixth-floor shooter because they did not believe he could have identified anyone from where he was standing.

We now know that even the WC attorney who dealt with Brennan, Joseph Ball, doubted Brennan’s story, and that during a WC reenactment Brennan struggled to identify a person in the window. Ball also noted that Brennan claimed the sixth-floor shooter was standing while firing but that this was impossible because photos showed the window was only half open. 

-- The documentary seeks to excuse the severely flawed JFK autopsy by repeating the myth that the three autopsy doctors were rushed because of Bobby Kennedy. One of the autopsy doctors, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, debunked this myth in his ARRB testimony. Boswell noted that he and the other doctors were not rushed and were not in any hurry. Indeed, the autopsy took about four hours.

Furthermore, the commander of Bethesda Naval Hospital, Admiral Galloway, said no orders were coming into the autopsy room from the outside. Additionally, in the autopsy authorization form, Bobby Kennedy listed no restrictions on the autopsy—he left blank the “restrictions” field on the form.

-- The documentary includes discredited research Dale Myers, a darling of the pro-WC camp, making the hilarious claim that the autopsy was not botched and that the autopsy doctors were not amateurs. Myers says, “None of that is true.” Two of the three autopsy doctors (Humes and Boswell) were not forensic pathologists and had never done an autopsy on a gunshot wound victim.

Dr. Finck was a forensic pathologist with considerable experience in gunshot-wound cases, but he was called to the autopsy after it was well underway, was denied permission to examine JFK’s clothing, was not allowed to dissect the back wound to definitively establish its wound path, and was excluded from the second examination of the brain. None other than Dr. Michael Baden, the former head of the HSCA’s forensic pathology panel, said the JFK autopsy was “bungled.”

Is Myers not aware that many of his fellow lone-gunman theorists claim that the autopsy doctors mislocated the rear head entry wound by an astonishing 4 inches, even though they had the hairline, the EOP, and the lambda as reference points? Is Myers not aware that if one believes the autopsy skull x-rays are unaltered, one must believe that the autopsy doctors mislocated the fragment trail by at least 2 inches, and grossly misdescribed its starting and ending points?

-- The documentary excuses Dr. Humes for burning his autopsy notes by repeating Humes’s specious story that he burned the notes because JFK’s blood was on them and he didn’t want to risk seeing them become a gruesome souvenir. The documentary fails to mention the fact that we learned in 1998 that Humes also burned the first draft of the autopsy report, which could not have had any blood on it because it was drafted after the autopsy. The program also fails to mention that Humes did not burn the autopsy face sheet, even though it had blood on it.

Speaking of the autopsy report, we now know that the first two drafts of the autopsy report said nothing about the throat wound being an exit point for the back wound.

-- At some points, Truth and Lies descends into outright silliness. The program brushes aside the Dallas Police Department’s (DPD’s) stunning failure to record any of Oswald’s interrogations, which spanned 12 hours over two days, with the claim that the DPD did not have a tape recorder! The documentary fails to explain why the DPD did not even have a stenographer record at least some of the interrogations.

-- The documentary contends that Officer J. D. Tippit allegedly stopped Oswald on the basis of the police-broadcasted Sawyer/Brennan description of the sixth-floor shooter. The police broadcast said the assassin was “about 30, 5’10”, 165 pounds.” Oswald was 24, 5’9”, and weighed 131 pounds. Thus, Oswald was six years younger, 1 inch shorter, and 34 pounds lighter than the suspect described in the police broadcast.

Needless to say, the ABC program says nothing about the evidence that Tippit was not supposed to be in the Oak Cliff area in the first place and had no valid reason for being there.

-- Embarrassingly but not surprisingly, the documentary defends the thoroughly debunked single-bullet theory (SBT). Among many other omissions, the program fails to mention that every single SBT wound ballistics test ever done has either flatly contradicted the theory’s absurd claims or failed to include the conditions required to validate those claims.

These are just a few of the myths and errors in the ABC documentary. For a more detailed critique of the documentary, see James DiEugenio’s three-part review of the program:

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/truth-and-lies-who-killed-jfk-part-1-1676

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/truth-and-lies-who-killed-jfk-part-2

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/truth-and-lies-who-killed-jfk-part-3
 

[Tom Graves]

[...]

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Do you think Brennan didn't see anyone at all, or he did and the evil, evil Deep State bad guys forced him to say it was Oswald?

-- Tom

[Jarrett Smith]

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Do you think Brennan didn't see anyone at all, or he did and the evil, evil Deep State bad guys forced him to say it was Oswald?

-- Tom

Fame seeker most likely. People will say or do anything for attention.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Fame seeker most likely. People will say or do anything for attention.

Brennan ran up to the police immediately after the shooting and told them he saw a shooter in the window. This was when many were running around the grassy knoll and fence area.

Did he make that all up? He didn't see anything? And then got lucky about a story he made up? Other people also saw a gunman and/or rifle. He lucked out by being right?