In this reply, I will present evidence that supports two key points:
One, it may just be that the missile receipt has nothing to do with the bullet seen by Dr. Young, Captain Stover, and Captain Osborne. The missile-receipt incident may have been solely about the suppression of bullet fragments recovered from the skull.
Two, it may also well be that the bullet that Dr. Young saw was not the same bullet that Captain Osborne saw, since Osborne said the bullet he saw and handled fell out of the sheets that were wrapped around JFK's body. However, there is a good chance that Captain Stover saw the same bullet that Dr. Young saw, since Stover said he recalled the bullet was brought to the autopsy in an envelope, just as Dr. Young stated -- that is too specific a correlation to be a coincidence.
Let us begin by stating some essential facts about, and problems with, the cover story that emerged to explain the Sibert and O'Neill receipt for a missile:
-- When the receipt first surfaced, internal FBI documents said that Sibert and O'Neill were referring to the two fragments that Humes removed from the skull. Sibert and O'Neill were likely pressured to say this, and they were never willing to retract the story, although they did contradict key parts of it (see below).
-- In 1978, along came Chester Boyers, the Chief Petty Officer at Bethesda who typed the receipt that Sibert and O'Neill signed. Boyers threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the cover story.
Boyers told the HSCA that he "submitted several missile fragments, probably three or four, all of which came from President Kennedy's head" (Investigation Interview, HSCA, 4/25/1978, p. 4, ARRB document MD 62).
He also said that "even though the receipt only stated that 'a' missile was given to Sibert and O'Neill, several fragments of a missile were submitted and that he only prepared one receipt" (p. 4).
But Humes said that he only removed two bullet fragments from the skull (from the right orbit), the 7x1 mm and 3x1 mm fragments, whose combined weight was only 180 grains, a small fraction of the mass of a bullet.
Boyers did not explain, and was not asked, why he would have used the term "missile" to describe several bullet fragments instead of just writing "three missile fragments" or "four missile fragments."
-- When Sibert was interviewed by the HSCA in 1977, he made a number of statements that contradict the cover story. He referred to more than just two fragments, saying "a lot of the metal fragments were tiny," that "all that were removed" were put in a "jar with a black top," and that they signed a receipt for those fragments (Memorandum: Interview with James W. Sibert, HSCA, 8/29/1977, p. 4, ARRB document MD 85).
So clearly we have a major conflict in the record. Both Boyers and Sibert said there were more than two fragments.
-- When Sibert's HSCA interviewers (Jim Kelly and Andy Purdy) specifically him asked about the receipt for a "missile," he actually criticized the receipt's author and its wording, saying that the receipt "was prepared by someone else," that he "would have listed the items as metal fragments," and that to him "a single 'missile' means quite a bit of substance -- more of a whole bullet" (pp. 4-5)!
We are left to wonder why the HSCA interviewers did not ask him the obvious follow-up question:
"If you thought the receipt was so inaccurate, why did you sign it? Why didn't you just tell the guy to retype it so that it read 'fragments' instead of 'missile,' since this would have only taken a few minutes?"
-- Things get even more curious and suspicious when we consider O'Neill HSCA affidavit.
O'Neill said the "saw" the autopsy doctors remove a fragment from "further back in the head" (O'Neill Affidavit for HSCA, 11/8/78 p. 4, ARRB document MD 47).
This was undoubtedly the back-of-head fragment that Sibert and O'Neill mentioned in their report on the autopsy; they said this fragment was the second-largest fragment in the skull (p. 4). This is surely, unquestionably the very thin 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment that Dr. David Mantik discovered inside the ghosted image of the 6.5 mm object on the AP skull x-ray via optical-density measurements and high-magnification viewing. This fragment also appears on the right lateral skull x-ray (but it is -- impossibly -- much smaller than the 6.5 mm object).
But Dr. Humes never admitted that he removed a bullet fragment from the back of the skull. He said the only two fragments he removed were the 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm fragments that were very near and slightly above the right orbit.
-- O'Neill added that "a Navy man" made the receipt for the back-of-head fragment and for a fragment that was removed "from just behind the eye," that he and Sibert signed the receipt, and that the doctors did not remove a "full missile" (pp. 4-5).
O'Neill knew that the autopsy doctors removed two fragments from the right orbit -- this is mentioned in his and Sibert's report on the autopsy (p. 4). I suspect O'Neill knew what he was doing when he informed the HSCA that he saw a bullet fragment removed from the back of the head and that it was one of the fragments for which he and Sibert signed.
If the HSCA medical-evidence investigators had been doing their jobs, O'Neill's disclosure should have raised some huge red flags about Humes's version of events at the autopsy.
I think all of this suggests that Sibert and O'Neill were pressured to go along with the cover story. They were never willing to repudiate it, but they were willing to reveal information that raised serious doubts about it.
-- When Sibert and O'Neill were interviewed by the ARRB, they disclosed a lot of important information that destroys the single-bullet theory and the WC/HSCA claims about JFK's head wounds. But, they were unwilling to contradict the story that the receipt they signed referred only to the two fragments that Humes removed from the right orbit of the skull, even though they had previously revealed information that contradicted the story.
O'Neill offered a particularly lame excuse for signing a receipt that used the term "missile" to describe fragments:
Now I know there's been some controversy also about. Because we saw them put into a jar, and Jim and I signed for that jar. We signed for a missile. That was exactly what the Navy terminology is for a bullet -- anything which flies through the air is a missile.
It's changed since then because they now have the guided missiles and things such as that. But at that time anything which went through the air was a missile. And that's the way they wrote it up and that's the way we signed for it. (Deposition of Francis X. O'Neill, ARRB, 9/12/1997, p. 78)
Now, I'm sorry, but that's pure poppycock. If we were only talking about a single fragment, O'Neill's excuse would at least be minimally plausible, but neither the Navy nor any other government entity ever used the term "missile" to describe multiple bullet fragments or even multiple projectiles of any kind. Yes, the word "missile" was indeed Navy terminology "for a bullet," but we're not talking about a bullet, and O'Neill was not signing for a bullet.
The excuse Sibert offered was not much better:
I'd like to elaborate a little further on this. Here we get to this term "missile."
Now some things I've read about the agents giving a receipt. This receipt was prepared by Navy personnel. I think a Navy corpsman typed it up.
And this terminology is U.S Navy about the "missile." Now had I been preparing or making out a receipt and giving it to them, I would have said "fragments" here. (Deposition of James W. Sibert, ARRB, 9/11/1997, pp. 89-90)
At least Sibert once again admitted that he would have used the word "fragments" in the receipt, and not "missile," but he repeated O'Neill's specious suggestion that the Navy would use "missile" to describe multiple fragments of any kind.
Sibert and O'Neill offered no explanation to the ARRB for why they would have signed such a markedly inaccurate receipt in the most important murder case of the century. Their answers smack of guilt and excuse-making. They obviously proved in their 11/26/63 report on the autopsy that they knew that "missile" was not a synonym for "fragments." They themselves distinguished between "missile/bullet" and "fragments."
It is hard to imagine that two FBI agents would have signed a receipt that said "missile" when they could see that the evidence bottle only contained two small fragments, especially when the fragments constituted only a tiny fraction of a bullet's mass.
Now, it may just be that the missile receipt has nothing to do with the bullet seen by Dr. Young, Captain Stover, and Captain Osborne. The missile-receipt incident may have been solely about the suppression of bullet fragments recovered from the skull. Assuming they were telling the whole truth, when Sibert and O'Neill saw the evidence bottle, it likely contained more than two fragments, as their accounts and Boyers' account clearly indicate. This would mean that some of the fragments were later removed from the bottle before the bottle's contents were formally entered into evidence.
Perhaps the evidence bottle initially contained enough fragments to persuade Sibert and O'Neill to sign the receipt, although Sibert's statements, assuming they are true, clearly suggest he was uneasy about signing the receipt. Yet, Sibert's statements, again assuming they are true, pointedly suggest that the fragments in the bottle, though more than two in number, did not come close to constituting the mass of a bullet.
As also mentioned, it may also well be that the bullet that Dr. Young saw was not the same bullet that Captain Osborne saw, since Osborne said the bullet he saw and handled fell out of the sheets that were wrapped around JFK's body, indicating the bullet was found very early in the autopsy (whereas the deformed bullet that Chiefs Mills and Martinell found in the limo and that Dr. Young saw was given to Humes much later that night). However, there is a good chance that Captain Stover saw the same bullet that Dr. Young saw, since Stover said he recalled the bullet was brought to the autopsy in an envelope, just as Dr. Young stated -- again, that is too specific a correlation to be a coincidence.
Osborne's account receives some support from autopsy x-ray technician Jerrol Custer's ARRB testimony. Custer said he saw a "king-size fragment" or "bullet" fall from the back when he lifted the body to take x-rays of the torso (Deposition of Jerrol Francis Custer, ARRB, 10/28/1997, pp. 53, 90). Custer's memory proved accurate on point after point in his ARRB testimony -- not on every single point, but on nearly all key points. And Custer was no robotic mouthpiece for the conspiracy position. For example, based on his assumption that the autopsy x-rays and photos were pristine, Custer even repudiated his original description of the large head wound as being in the right occipital-parietal part of the skull; however, he did agree with Dr. Boswell's important observation that about half of the right lambdoid suture was destroyed, which is further proof that the autopsy brain photos are fraudulent, since a blast that took out half of the right lambdoid suture would have done significant damage to the right occipital lobe (that lobe is completely undamaged in the brain photos).
Finally, I have a theory about former Secret Service agent Paul Landis's account that he found a bullet in the rear of the limo while the limo was parked outside Parkland Hospital. Landis said he took the bullet from the car and put it on JFK's stretcher in the emergency room. It seems hard to believe that a Secret Service agent would handle key evidence so casually and unilaterally, instead of handing it over to a supervisor so it could be logged as evidence to maintain the bullet's chain of evidence. What if Landis really did see a bullet in the rear of the limo, but instead of taking it he left it in place, where it was later found by Mills and Martinell? Just a thought.
I think Landis may have actually been trying to come clean about seeing a bullet in the rear of the limo but that he may have also been trying to help the single-bullet theory by fabricating the story about putting it on a stretcher in order to provide an explanation for how CE 399 ended up on a stretcher in the hospital. Gerald Posner actually cites Landis's account as evidence of the SBT.
