31
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / For what it's worth
« Last post by John Corbett on Today at 03:17:02 PM »I asked my AI app a simple question. Who killed JFK? Below is its response:
According to official investigations, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository
.
Official Findings
Multiple authoritative investigations concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted as the gunman:
The Warren Commission determined in 1964 that Oswald alone fired the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor John Connally
.
The FBI also found that Oswald acted alone after conducting thousands of interviews and leads
.
Britannica confirms that Oswald, a former Marine, was the accused assassin and that he was later killed before trial
5 Sources
What Happened on November 22, 1963
President Kennedy was riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas when he was struck by two bullets—one in the upper back and one fatally in the head
.
Oswald fired from a sixth‑floor window using a mail‑order rifle
.
Aftermath
Oswald was arrested the same day but was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later while in police custody
.
Later Investigations and Public Debate
Although the official conclusion identifies Oswald as the lone assassin, later reviews—such as the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations—suggested the possibility of a conspiracy, though they did not identify any other gunman and their acoustic evidence was later challenged
.
Summary
The official and most widely accepted answer is that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, based on extensive federal investigations and historical documentation
According to official investigations, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository
.
Official Findings
Multiple authoritative investigations concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted as the gunman:
The Warren Commission determined in 1964 that Oswald alone fired the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor John Connally
.
The FBI also found that Oswald acted alone after conducting thousands of interviews and leads
.
Britannica confirms that Oswald, a former Marine, was the accused assassin and that he was later killed before trial
5 Sources
What Happened on November 22, 1963
President Kennedy was riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas when he was struck by two bullets—one in the upper back and one fatally in the head
.
Oswald fired from a sixth‑floor window using a mail‑order rifle
.
Aftermath
Oswald was arrested the same day but was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later while in police custody
.
Later Investigations and Public Debate
Although the official conclusion identifies Oswald as the lone assassin, later reviews—such as the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations—suggested the possibility of a conspiracy, though they did not identify any other gunman and their acoustic evidence was later challenged
.
Summary
The official and most widely accepted answer is that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, based on extensive federal investigations and historical documentation
32
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: New: "Faulty Evidence: Problems with the Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald"
« Last post by Michael T. Griffith on Today at 03:11:31 PM »MG: Sigh. . . . Seriously? I address this tale in my article as well. It's seriously like you guys are stuck in a time warp and that you are oblivious to research that has been done since the 1960s.
Isn't it incredibly suspicious and unbelievable that Lt. Day failed to take a single, solitary photo of the most important print he would ever process? He took photos of the worthless trigger-guard prints, but not a single photo of the palm print. Why did the FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona say that when he examined the rifle less than 24 hours after Day claimed he found and lifted the print, the barrel contained no prints and did not even look like it had been processed for prints. Yet, Day claimed the print was still visible on the barrel after he allegedly lifted it.
The WC was so suspicious of the palm print's origin that they asked Lt. Day to sign a sworn statement affirming how he obtained it, but Day refused to do so. Humm, why was what?
Typical Griffith Clown crap show. Having proven nothing except his own mindless idiotic babble seems important to him. Unable to process the little things that matter the most. Spell it out, if the rifle was not his why was his palm print on the rifle?
You guys really are a bitter, angry, and rude bunch of people, aren't you? You become furious when anyone presents you with evidence that contradicts what you want to believe, and, like insolent teenagers, you try to shout it down with insults and summary rejections.
Now, the problems with the palm print may seem like "mindless idiotic babble" to you, or you may desperately wish they were such babble, but we know for a fact that the WC did not see them that way, because we know that the WC was so suspicious of how and when the palm print was obtained that they asked Lt. Day to sign a sworn statement affirming his story.
I notice that in your emphatic, insolent, loud-mouthed dismissal of the problems with the palm print, you declined to explain why Latona observed that the barrel did not even look like it had been processed for prints, even though Lt. Day said the print was still visible on the barrel after he supposedly lifted it.
I notice you declined to explain why in the world Lt. Day, in violation of standard procedure and all common sense, did not take a single evidence photo of the most important print he had ever processed in his entire career. Here's a clue for you: He didn't photograph it because it was not on the barrel when he examined the rifle. That's why he took photos of the worthless trigger-guard prints but took no photos of the palm print. It wasn't there yet. That's why he said nothing about the palm print when he turned the rifle over to the FBI. That's why the DPD didn't tell the FBI they had "found" the palm print until several days later. That's why police sources were still telling newsmen on 11/24 that they still had not found Oswald's prints on the rifle.
One reason the WC was so suspicious of the palm print's origin was that Lt. Day offered an utterly flimsy, unbelievable excuse for failing to photograph the print. He said he was just about to photograph the print when he received a call from Chief Curry's office telling him to stop all work on the rifle so the FBI could finish what he had started. He said this call came at around 8:00 or 8:30 PM. However, by his own admission, he took another photograph of the rifle at least half an hour later, at 9:00 or 9:30 PM (4 H 273). Humm, well then, so why, why, why did he not take a picture of the print on the barrel at the same time, especially since he said he believed the print offered the best chance for identification?!
Furthermore, even assuming Lt. Day was told to stop processing the rifle so it could be handed over to the FBI, if there had actually been a print on the barrel, Day would have informed the caller that he needed to take just a minute to take some photos of the print because he had not done so yet and because this was vital to establish the print's chain of evidence, and the caller surely would have agreed and would have said, "Oh, absolutely. If you haven't photographed the print yet, be sure to do this before you hand over the rifle to the FBI."
Heck, if anything, the caller would have chastised Lt. Day for not having already taken a single photo of such a crucial piece of evidence, and would have ordered him to be sure to photograph the print before turning over the rifle to the FBI, in order to establish a legal, valid chain of evidence for the print.
The palm print was authenticated by the FBI as having been LHO’s palm print and was lifted from the barrel of the rifle. Griffith cannot explain it away and it remains a key fact in the possession of the rifle by LHO.
You guys are so rabid and blindly biased that you can't see past your own theories to even understand an opposing view and to comprehend the evidence that supports that opposing view. Now, no one is denying that the palm print was Oswald's. No one. No one has ever denied that. The issue is the evidence that Lt. Day did not even process the barrel for prints, much less find and lift a print from the barrel, and the evidence that the print was placed on the barrel after Oswald was killed.
For readers who want to know more about the evidence that the palm print was planted on the rifle after Oswald was dead, I discuss this evidence at length in my article "Was Oswald's Palm Print Planted on the Alleged Murder Weapon?".
33
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: Ballistic Testing, Inconclusive Results Vs. Negative Results
« Last post by John Corbett on Today at 02:47:01 PM »Just one minor point. The revolver was originally chambered for the British .38-200 round, very similar to the S&W .38 also known as the S&W .38 Short. The 200 indicates the number of grains in the bullet. It was made for the Lend Lease program prior to the US entering WWII. It was called the S&W Victory model, a variant of the popular S&W Model 10 which was introduced in 1898 in .38 Special. The Model 10 was chosen by many police departments throughout the country. The Victory models were returned to the US after the war and rechambered for 38 Special, which was the preferred cartridge in the US. Oswald's also received a snub nose 2" barrel. I'm guessing the original barrels were just sawed down to create a snub nosed revolver, which were preferred by plain clothes officers who carried their weapons concealed.
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/v-is-for-victory-the-smith-wesson-victory-model-revolver/
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/v-is-for-victory-the-smith-wesson-victory-model-revolver/
34
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: 11.22 FBI Memo About an Secret Service Agent Finding a Bullet in the Limo
« Last post by John Corbett on Today at 02:21:44 PM »https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29948-re-paul-landis-112263-fbi-memo-confirms-for-schnapf/
Also see
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62266#relPageId=143&search=Rifle
I am afraid to put a copy of memo here---not sure about postimg and the new rules.
So, according to the FBI memo, there was word in the FBI that a Secret Service agent had found a bullet in the limo on 11.22.
That sounds like Landis.
No it sounds like the Secret Service search of the limo in Washington that night, a search that discovered the fragmented bullet that had struck JFK in the head. The memo specifically stated the Secret Service had searched the limo for bullets. Do you really think Landis did that?
35
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: CD 298 and CD 107: Overlooked Evidence
« Last post by John Corbett on Today at 02:16:59 PM »What a total joke. The FBI's analysis of the timing of the shots was based on many hours of analyzing the Zapruder film, and it agreed with the conclusion of both of the WC's April evidence-analysis conferences that JFK and Connally were not hit by the same bullet.
And they still f-ed it up. Their analysis isn't remotely compatible with the Z-film. It would have been malpractice for the WC to have accepted it.
36
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: JFK's Throat Wound Was an Entrance Wound: Refuting the Shored-Wound Theory
« Last post by John Corbett on Today at 02:14:29 PM »No, what is "completely absurd" and "defies credulity" is that you are still pretending to know enough to talk about these issues, and that you still expect people to believe that you have the candor and objectivity to discuss these issues with any sincerity and credibility. People who read our previous exchanges will see that you keep ignoring a massive body of evidence that refutes your claims and that you repeatedly commit one blunder and gaffe after another because your research has been so deficient and one-sided.
Let me refresh your memory and give other readers some idea of the evidence I have presented to you on these issues and of how you have ducked this evidence:
------------------
Two of the biggest things the autopsy doctors had to cover up were (1) that they had determined for an absolute fact, through prolonged and careful probing, that the back wound had no exit point; and (2) that they were aware of the throat wound before and during the autopsy. This is why the Sibert and O'Neill report on the autopsy, which revealed the back wound had no exit point, was not published with the Warren Commission (WC) volumes but was sealed (and keep in mind that it was supposed to stay sealed for 75 years -- it was not released until the 1990s when the ARRB released it).
The Back Wound Had No Exit Point
To his great credit, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, one of the three autopsy pathologists, admitted to the ARRB that although they were initially unable to probe the back wound because the muscles had closed the path, they were able to probe the wound after they opened the chest, and that they then saw that the bullet "had not pierced through the lung cavity" but had caused bleeding "just outside the pleura," i.e., just outside the lining of the chest cavity:
We probed this hole . . . 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 [chest cavity lining]. (ARRB interview: Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, 2/26/96, pp. 75-76)
When Boswell said "opened the chest," he was referring to the fact that they removed the chest organs in order to be able to probe the back wound and to see where the probe was going.
We know this from the testimony of Dr. Robert Karnei. Dr. Karnei was a resident surgeon at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963 and witnessed the autopsy. In his 8/27/77 HSCA interview, Dr. Karnei told the HSCA that he saw "the chest cavity opened and watched the removal of the organs," and that after this he saw F-i-n-c-k "working with a probe and arranging for photographs" (HSCA interview: Dr. Robert Karnei, 8/27/77, p. 6). This is one of many references from the autopsy witnesses to the fact that photos were taken of the probing, but no such photos made it into the official record and have disappeared.
In a 1991 recorded interview, Dr. 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”:
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.
(Livingstone interview transcript, p. 10)
James Jenkins confirmed this crucial fact in his HSCA interview nearly 20 years earlier and in his 1979 filmed interview. Jenkins, a medical technician who assisted Dr. Boswell during the autopsy, stated in his 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” (HSCA interview: James Jenkins, 8/29/77, 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 never made it into the official collection of the autopsy materials and have disappeared.
In his 1979 filmed interview, Jenkins explained that he could see the end of the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity:
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.
Dr. John Ebersole, the radiologist at the autopsy, stated in his testimony to the HSCA’s medical panel that the autopsy doctors determined 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 not 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. ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/78, p. 57)
FBI agent James Sibert confirmed this in his ARRB interview, and added that the autopsy doctors -- "F-i-n-c-k, in particular" -- said during the autopsy, after probing the wound, that the back wound had no exit point, and that the pathologists also said they could feel the end of the back wound:
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. . . .
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.” xxxx, 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. (ARRB interview: James Sibert, 9/11/97, pp. 59, 111)
FBI agent Francis O'Neill told the ARRB the same thing:
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. (ARRB interview: Francis O'Neill, 9/12/97, pp. 30-31)
Let's read what Sibert and O'Neill said about this in their 11/26/63 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. . . . 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.[/i] ("Autopsy of Body of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy," 11/26/1963, p. 4)
As many here know, we have known for years that the first two drafts of the autopsy report said nothing about the throat wound being an exit point for the back wound. One draft said the back wound had no exit point and said nothing about the throat wound, while the other draft said a fragment from the head shot exited the throat. In both drafts, the back wound had no exit point. This was first revealed with the release of the transcript of the 1/27/64 WC executive session.
The Autopsy Doctors Knew About the Throat Wound Before the Autopsy, and Humes Talked with Perry by No Later Than 10:30 During the Autopsy
It has become clear that the autopsy doctors were aware of the throat wound before and that Humes talked with Dr. Perry well before the autopsy ended. But, after Oswald was killed, everything changed and along came the lie that Humes had no idea there was a throat wound until the morning after the autopsy, that Humes did not talk with Perry until the morning after the autopsy, and that only then did Humes "realize" the back-wound bullet "must" have exited the throat, hence the phrase "presumably of exit" to describe the throat wound in the final draft of the autopsy report.
Historian William Manchester, in his famous book The Death of a President, based on dozens of interviews with autopsy personnel and with others at the autopsy or in the hospital, acknowledged that the autopsy doctors heard about Dr. Malcolm Perry's comments about the throat wound that Perry made in the Parkland press conference several hours before the autopsy:
They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheotomy. . . ." [Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 432-433)
Yes, of course the autopsy doctors heard about the throat wound before the autopsy. Perry's comments at the Parkland press conference were all over the news that afternoon and evening.
I should add that on 11/24/1966, Richard Levine of the Baltimore Sun conducted an extensive interview with Dr. J. Thornton Boswell. In Levine's article on the interview published the next day, he noted that, before the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were made aware of JFK's wounds and what the Dallas doctors had done:
The pathologists had already been told the probable extent of the injuries and what had been done by the physicians in Dallas ("Pathologist Who Made Examination Defends Commission's Version," Baltimore Sun, November 25, 1966, p. 3; see also Harold Weisberg, Post Mortem, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1975 edition, p. 37; Never Again, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1995 edition, p. 217).
One of the many historic disclosures from the ARRB materials is Dr. Ebersole's statement to the HSCA FPP that by around 10:00 or 10:30, Humes knew about the throat wound from communications with Dallas. Ebersole said he recalled that "by ten or ten thirty . . . communication had been established with Dallas and it was learned" that "there had been a wound . . . in the lower neck" ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/1978, pp. 4-5.)
Journalist Martin Steadman and two other journalists spoke with Dr. Perry about a week after the assassination. Steadman knew that Perry had identified the throat wound as an entrance wound at the 11/22 press conference. Steadman wrote that Dr. Perry said he thought the throat wound was an entrance wound because the hole was small, circular, and clean (not ragged). Perry added that he had treated hundreds of patients with gunshot wounds and knew the difference between an exit wound and entrance wound.
Steadman reported that Dr. Perry then told him that during the night of the assassination, he got several phone calls from the doctors at Bethesda. He said they were very upset about his statement that the neck wound was an entry wound. Steadman also reported that Perry said that the autopsy doctors asked him if he or another Parkland doctor had turned over the body to see the wound in Kennedy’s back. Perry said they had not. They then argued that he could not therefore be certain about the throat wound, that there was no evidence of a shot from the front, and that he should stop saying the throat wound was an entrance wound.
Moreover, Steadman said that Dr. Perry told him that when he insisted he could only say what he believed to be true, one or more of the autopsy doctors told him he would be brought before a medical board if he continued to insist on his story. Perry said they even threatened that he would lose his medical license. I quote from Steadman's article:
But [Dr. Malcolm Perry] told us that throughout that night, he received a series of phone calls to his home from irate doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where an autopsy was being conducted, and the doctors there were becoming increasingly frustrated with his belief that it was an entrance wound. He said they asked him if the doctors in Dallas had turned the President over and examined the wounds to his back; he said they had not. They told him he could not be certain of his conclusion if he had not examined the wounds in the President’s back. They said Bethesda had the President’s body and Dallas did not. They told Dr. Perry he must not continue to say he cut across what he believed to be an entrance wound when there was no evidence of shots fired from the front. When he said again he could only say what he believed to be true, one or more of the autopsy doctors told him they would take him before a Medical Board if he continued to insist on what they were certain was otherwise. They threatened his license to practice medicine, Dr. Perry said....(https://web.archive.org/web/20241006184009/http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm; http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm; https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-ordeal-of-malcolm-perry)
Crucially, Parkland supervisory nurse Audrey Bell confirmed in her 1997 ARRB interview that Dr. Perry told her that he received several calls on the night of the assassination from Bethesda Naval Hospital pressuring him to change his story about the throat wound:
Saturday morning, when I got over there, Dr. Perry came up to the office. I said, "You look awful. Did you get any sleep last night?"
He said, "Well, not too much, between the calls from Bethesda that came in during the night." ["Bethesda" refers to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the autopsy was performed.]
I said, "What about?"
He said, "Oh, whether that was an entrance wound or an exit wound in the throat."
He said, "They were wanting me to change my mind." (https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/medical_interviews/audio/ARRB_Bell.htm)
Nurse Bell told the HSCA the same thing in 1977 (http://www.stickam.com/member/viewMedia.do?mId=184850325&mediaowner=true).
-----------------------
Can you read? You have totally misread what Boswell said. He said nothing about his "initial impression" or "first impression." He said that initially they were unable to probe the back wound because the muscles blocked the wound path, but that after they opened the chest, they were able to probe the wound and determine that the bullet did not enter the lung cavity but merely caused bruising outside the pleura.
As I documented, Dr. Karnei explained that after they removed the chest organs and resumed the probing, the men around the autopsy table could see the end of the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity. Dr. Ebersole said that "further probing" and "inspection" revealed "there was no point of exit." It was this point, explained Sibert and O'Neill, that the autopsy doctors, particularly F-i-n-c-k, announced that the back wound had no exit point.
People are going to easily see through your dishonest, phony argument that this was just a "first impression." No, this was the final, definitive, visually confirmed finding by the end of the autopsy. That's why Sibert and O'Neill, the two FBI agents at the autopsy, included the "no exit" finding in their report on the autopsy. That's why they told the ARRB that at the end of the autopsy, there was no doubt whatsoever that the back wound had no exit point.
LOL! I again ask, can you read? Do you understand English beyond a grade-school level? How can you make this argument with a straight face?
In a previous reply, you repeated the long-debunked lone-gunman lie that Humes did not know about the throat wound until the morning after the autopsy. I just proved to you that this is false, that Humes talked to Perry at least 90 minutes before the autopsy ended. So there was no "more and better information" to be gathered.
At the end of the autopsy, at least 90 minutes after Humes had talked to Perry about the throat wound, the autopsy doctors were absolutely certain that the back wound had no exit point -- they knew this because they had been able to probe the wound to its end after they removed the chest organs and had seen with their own eyes that the wound path did not enter the lining of the chest cavity.
That's why Dr. Karnei explained that after the doctors opened the chest, removed the chest organs, and resumed the probing, the men around the autopsy table could see the end of the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity. That's why Dr. Ebersole said that "further probing" and "inspection" revealed "there was no point of exit." That's why Navy medical technician James Jenkins, serving as Dr. Boswell's assistant during the autopsy, observed that he and others around the autopsy table could see the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity and that "there was no entry into the chest cavity." That's why Dr. Boswell himself told the ARRB that the bullet "had not pierced through into the lung cavity." That's why Sibert and O'Neill observed in their 11/26/63 report on the autopsy that "further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance." That's why Sibert and O'Neill confirmed this fact in the plainest possible English to the ARRB, stressing that the autopsy doctors had no doubt whatsoever about this.
It was only after Oswald was murdered that the no-exit finding was suppressed and replaced by the fiction that the back-wound bullet exited the throat. In order to make that tale even theoretically possible, Humes had to relocate the back wound some 2 inches upward so as to put it above the throat wound and to enable a downward trajectory through the neck, a falsehood that the HSCA FPP corrected, to their credit.
----------------
Do you need to be reminded that Boswell stated that initially they were unable to probe the back wound but that they were later able to probe it after they opened the chest and saw that it did not go into the lung cavity? Do you need to be reminded that not a single person who gave an account of the probing said the doctors had any doubt whatsoever about the no-exit finding? Do you need to be reminded that the no-exit finding came toward the end of the autopsy, after Humes had talked to Perry, and was the final finding on the subject, which is why it was documented in Sibert and O'Neill's report on the autopsy, and which is why it was stated in the first two drafts of the autopsy report, which Humes wrote hours after the autopsy?
I find it hard to believe that you are so uneducated and incompetent that you simply cannot grasp the evidence here, but this is exactly how you are acting.
You know this is false. One, it was not an "impression." It was a visible fact that was observed by everyone around the autopsy table, as Dr. Karnei confirmed. Two, this happened very late in the autopsy, only after the doctors decided to open the chest and remove the chest organs. Sibert and O'Neill emphatically confirmed that at the end of the autopsy, the pathologists had no doubt whatsoever that the back-wound bullet had no exit point. I've quoted some of their statements that prove this. But, you just keep ignoring them and repeating your fictional version of events.
Two, the final autopsy report only emerged after Oswald was killed. There was not a shred of "new information" that supported the changed finding regarding the throat wound. By the end of the autopsy, Humes et al were certain that the back wound had no exit point because they had seen with their own eyes the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity. The no-exit finding was confirmed by Dr. Ebersole, Dr. Karnei, Jenkins, O'Neill, and Sibert, and by the first two drafts of the autopsy report (as proved by the transcript of the 1/27/64 WC executive session).
What??!! Well, this is historic news!! What "clear bullet path leading from the back entrance to the throat exit"?! Where do you get that?! If they discovered a clear path from the back wound to the throat wound, why did Humes say the throat wound was only "presumably" an exit wound? Huh?
Please cite a single source that documents that this alleged clear path was supposedly discovered and described. Let's see it. You will make history, because no one has ever claimed that the autopsy doctors observed "a clear path" from the back wound to the throat wound. They could have only seen such a path if they had dissected the throat wound.
BTW, are you aware that we know from the ARRB materials that the throat wound was probed? Why didn't Humes ever mention this? Obviously, because it would have exposed his lie that he knew nothing about the throat wound until the morning after the autopsy.
LOL! They detected the bruised pleura after they removed the chest organs and were able to probe to the end of the back wound, as I've already documented for you! Sheesh, again, is there just no end to your blundering?
LOL! This is the damage that Dr. Perry identified in Dallas! Good gravy, man! Again, you have no business pretending to know anything about the JFK case. You constantly grasp at any item of information that you erroneously believe supports your view, only to find out that you've blundered yet again.
If you want to educate yourself on the damage that Perry identified, I document it in my article "Research Notes on the Shored-Wound Theory to Explain JFK’s Throat Wound,", which I linked earlier in this very thread.
You see, the problem is that you didn't know enough to realize how badly you were blundering in citing that damage as evidence of a back-to-throat wound path.
If you read the descriptions that Dr. Perry and Dr. Kemp gave of that damage, you'll discover that it was below and to the right (viewer's left) of the throat wound, which does not fit with any back-to-throat trajectory from the back wound. If your alleged magic bullet supposedly exited the throat after traveling downward and leftward through the neck, the damage would have been above or parallel with/to the left of the resulting throat wound, not below and to the right of the wound.
And, again, you are once more ignoring the fact that the throat wound was punched inward and was only about 5 mm in diameter. You're also ignoring the fact that we've known for years now that there was no hole through the tie and no nick on either edge of the tie knot, proving that no bullet exited the throat because we have ample photographic evidence that the tie knot was neatly centered in the middle of the collar band and directly over the shirt slits.
Umm, yes, we do know this -- and you know it, but won't admit it. I've documented for you that Manchester and Levine found that the autopsy doctors were aware of the throat wound before the autopsy, and that Dr. Ebersole revealed to the HSCA that Humes was in contact with Dallas and talked about the throat wound with Dallas by no later than 10:30 PM, at least 90 minutes before the autopsy ended. Let me refresh your memory:
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Another key fact that Humes withheld in his WC and HSCA testimony was that there were multiple drafts of the autopsy report. Humes claimed he burned the “rough first draft” because it had blood on it, but he said there was no substantive difference between the first draft and the final draft. This lie was exposed with the release of the transcript of the 1/27/64 WC executive session, which reveals that Rankin discussed two early drafts of the autopsy report, both of which said the back wound had no exit point.
For a detailed discussion on the drafts of the autopsy report, I would refer interested readers to Doug Horne’s 64-minute video presentation The Evolving JFK Autopsy Report..
As mentioned, the autopsy doctors were careful to conceal the fact that after the chest organs were removed, they were able to probe the back wound to its end point and could see that the wound path did not enter the chest cavity. Their later cover story was that the contracted back muscles prevented them from probing the back wound.
Only Boswell eventually abandoned this story, but he did not do so until his ARRB interview in 1996, when he said that initially the muscles prevented them from probing the back wound but that after they opened the chest, they were able to “get at” it and see that the bullet did not pierce the “lung cavity” but merely caused bleeding “outside the pleura” (the lining of the chest cavity).
In his HSCA interview, Boswell said that he and the other doctors thought the tracheotomy “was a wound.” The interviewer, Andy Purdy, added that Boswell “meant to convey the impression that that the doctors thought it was a bullet wound” (HSCA interview: J. Thornton Boswell, 8/17/77, p. 3).
Later in the interview, Boswell said he remembered “seeing part of the perimeter of a bullet wound in the anterior neck” (p. 8 ).
This brings up the crucial point that the bottom half of a round small bullet hole can be seen fairly easily in the bottom of the throat wound in autopsy photo F1. So, it is not a bit surprising that Boswell spotted this during the autopsy.
But, still later in the interview, perhaps realizing he had said too much, Boswell began to vacillate about knowledge of the throat wound during the autopsy and about when the autopsy doctors concluded that a bullet had fallen out of the back wound (which Boswell usually referred to as a “neck" wound). Toward the very end of the interview, Boswell said that “in the later courses of the autopsy” the doctors thought the tracheotomy “may have included the exit wound of a bullet” (p. 12).
Yet, we know that the first two drafts of the autopsy report said nothing about the throat wound being an exit point for a bullet. The second draft said the throat wound was an exit point for a fragment from the head shot. Both drafts said the back wound had no exit point.
In a very revealing comment, Boswell said the doctors got themselves into trouble (“in dutch”) with the Secret Service over the "neck" (back) and throat wounds:
We had gotten ourselves in dutch with the neck and throat wounds with regard to the Secret Service” (p. 4).
For some reason, the interviewer did not ask Boswell to expand on this statement, and Boswell did not volunteer why they were in trouble with the Secret Service agents over the “neck” and throat wounds.
Boswell added that one of the Secret Service agents was “on the phone most of the time” during the autopsy (p. 4).
Boswell noted that during the autopsy, Dr. Robert Karnei “served in effect as the chief assistant of the autopsy doctors” and that Dr. Karnei assisted with the post-autopsy brain exam (pp. 5, 11).
In his ARRB interview, Boswell said the doctors concluded during the autopsy that the throat wound was the exit point for the back wound! He said their first impression of the throat wound was that it was just a tracheostomy but that after they found the back wound and after they opened the chest and saw blood outside the pleura “we had a track” (i.e., they inferred a track, not that they actually saw it):
Q. When you referred to the wound in the anterior neck, what was your first impression as to what that wound was?
A. I'm not sure what our first impression -- oh, we thought that they had done a tracheostomy, and whether or not that was a bullet wound, we weren't sure, initially. It was after we found an entrance wound and then the blood external to the pleura that we had a track, and that proved to be the exit wound; but it was so distorted by the incision, initially we just assumed it to be a tracheostomy.
Q. Did you reach the conclusion that there had been a transit wound through the neck during the course of the autopsy itself?
A. Oh, yes. (ARRB interview: J. Thornton Boswell, 2/26/96, p. 34)
In other words, Boswell claimed that the autopsy doctors deduced/inferred a back-to-throat track during the autopsy based on the bleeding outside the pleura. At no point did he ever claim they actually saw this alleged track. The only way they could have actually seen such a track would have been to dissect the wound, but they did no dissection because an Army general refused to let F-i-n-c-k dissect the wound, as F-i-n-c-k reluctantly admitted under cross-examination at the Clay Shaw trial.
So we see that on two occasions Boswell contradicted Humes’s tale that they were unaware of the throat wound until the following morning.
A major problem with Boswell’s statements about the back-to-throat conclusion being reached during the autopsy is that they are contradicted by the first two drafts of the autopsy report, by Dr. Karnei’s statements, by Dr. Ebersole’s statements, by med-tech Jenkins’ statements, by FBI agent O’Neill’s statements, by FBI agent Sibert’s statements, and by the Sibert and O’Neill report on the autopsy, not to mention by Humes’s WC and HSCA testimony.
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Historian William Manchester, in his famous book The Death of a President, based on dozens of interviews with autopsy personnel and with others at the autopsy or in the hospital, acknowledged that the autopsy doctors heard about Dr. Malcolm Perry's comments about the throat wound that Perry made in the Parkland press conference several hours before the autopsy:
They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheotomy. . . ." [Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 432-433)
I should add that on 11/24/1966, Richard Levine of the Baltimore Sun conducted an extensive interview with Dr. J. Thornton Boswell. In Levine's article on the interview published the next day, he noted that, before the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were made aware of JFK's wounds and what the Dallas doctors had done:
The pathologists had already been told the probable extent of the injuries and what had been done by the physicians in Dallas ("Pathologist Who Made Examination Defends Commission's Version," Baltimore Sun, November 25, 1966, p. 3; see also Harold Weisberg, Post Mortem, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1975 edition, p. 37; Never Again, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1995 edition, p. 217).
One of the many historic disclosures from the ARRB materials is Dr. Ebersole's statement to the HSCA FPP that by around 10:00 or 10:30, Humes knew about the throat wound from communications with Dallas. Ebersole said he recalled that "by ten or ten thirty . . . communication had been established with Dallas and it was learned" that "there had been a wound . . . in the lower neck" ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/1978, pp. 4-5.)
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Why don't you stop lying about this and at least admit that Humes positively knew about the throat wound at least 90 minutes before the autopsy ended? Answer: Because this admission alone would destroy your farcical version of events.
This false talking point is why you keep lying about when Humes learned of the throat wound. The SBT tale says that Humes didn't know the throat wound existed until the following morning, that he only learned of the wound during his phone call with Dr. Perry that morning, and that he didn't talk with Dr. Perry until after he'd written the first two drafts of the autopsy report. The ARRB disclosures alone destroy this tale.
You can repeat this lie until the Sun burns out, as I'm sure you will, but that won't make it come true. Part of me is almost glad that you are oblivious to how bad and unserious you make yourself look by ignoring Dr. Karnei's statements, Dr. Ebersole's statements, med-tech Jenkins' statements, the Sibert and O'Neill report on the autopsy, and Sibert and O'Neill's ARRB testimony.
This is a good point to discuss Sibert and O'Neill's HSCA interviews, which I haven't yet mentioned.
Sibert said "they probed the wound with a finger and Dr. F-i-n-c-k probed it with a metal probe" and that "the doctors concluded it only went so far" (HSCA interview: James W. Sibert, 8/25/77, p. 3). Sibert added that "nothing was ever mentioned about the anterior neck wound being a possible bullet exit wound" and that "xxxx and Humes agreed there was no exit wound of the bullet through the back" (pp. 4, 6).
Furthermore, as part of his HSCA interview, Sibert was asked to do wound diagrams on two face sheets with generic male figures printed on them. On both sheets/both diagrams, Sibert put the back wound about 5 inches below the collar band and clearly below the throat wound, almost exactly where the rear clothing holes place the wound (pp. 8-9).
In O'Neill's HSCA affidavit, O'Neill said, "I do not see how the bullet that entered below the shoulder in the back could have come out the front of the throat" (O'Neill Affidavit for HSCA, 11/8/78, p. 5). He also said this:
"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" (p. 3).
Why? Because "Humes and Boswell couldn't locate an outlet for the bullet that entered the back" (p. 3).
And notice that O'Neill said the certainty about the back wound was "when the autopsy was complete."
To put it simply, by the end of the autopsy, the doctors were certain that the bullet that was found on a stretcher in Dallas must have been the bullet that made the shallow back wound. This was after Agent Killion had heard from Dallas about the stretcher bullet, and at least 90 minutes after Humes had learned of the throat wound from Dr. Perry[/i], as Dr. Ebersole revealed to the HSCA.
O'Neill explained this in more detail in his ARRB interview:
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. (ARRB interview: Francis O'Neill, 9/12/97, pp. 30-31)
"Bystanders"?! Umm, Dr. Ebersole was the autopsy radiologist. Dr. Karnei was a resident surgeon at Bethesda and helped supervise security for the autopsy before it began, and then watched much of the autopsy from close range. James Jenkins assisted with the autopsy; indeed, he was Boswell's assistant during the autopsy. Sibert and O'Neill were the FBI's official observers at the autopsy; their job was to observe the autopsy and then submit a report on it.
You lie about these witnesses because you know their accounts destroy your farcical version of events.
You know this is false. I've documented for you that historian William Manchester and journalist Richard Levine found that the autopsy doctors knew about the throat wound before the autopsy. Manchester interviewed dozens of autopsy witnesses and others at the hospital in researching his famous book -- that's when he learned that the autopsy pathologists heard reports about the throat wound before the autopsy. Boswell indicated the same thing to Levine.
But, you just ignore all this and keep falsely pretending there's no evidence the doctors knew about the throat wound before the autopsy.
Let me refresh your memory, yet again:
One of the many historic disclosures from the ARRB materials is Dr. Ebersole's statement to the HSCA FPP that by around 10:00 or 10:30, Humes knew about the throat wound from communications with Dallas. Ebersole said he recalled that "by ten or ten thirty . . . communication had been established with Dallas and it was learned" that "there had been a wound . . . in the lower neck" ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/1978, pp. 4-5.)
------------------
Even the WC acknowledged that the tie knot was positioned directly over the shirt slits. So, if a bullet exited the shirt slits, as claimed by the SBT, it would have had to tear through the tie knot. This is why the FBI produced an evidence photo of the tie knot that gave the false impression that there was a hole in the knot.
If this bullet did not tear through the tie knot, then it would have had to at least nick the knot's left edge, which is what the WC claimed, but (1) the nick was not on the knot's left edge, and (2) the knot was centered squarely in the middle of the shirt's collar band before and during the motorcade, as we know from numerous photos.
I've documented all of these facts in "JFK's Clothing Proves the Single-Bullet Theory Is Impossible":
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MAgWA0frOLVeWY6ok9nzdrgpRN4Wv1AL/view?usp=sharing
It's interesting: You claim that the WC gave us "the definitive account" of the assassination, but you contradict what the WC said on this issue because you've done so little reading on the JFK case.
Also, it cannot be emphasized enough that the SBT collapsed the moment we learned that the tie had no hole through it, not through the knot and not through any other part of the tie. The FBI doggedly resisted allowing researchers to view or obtain high-quality images of the tie.
As mentioned, at one point the FBI produced a misleading evidence photo that showed the knot twisted in such a way as to make it appear that the nick was in the middle of the knot in order to lead the viewer to think that a bullet had gone through the knot and had exited in the middle of it.
As my above-linked article proves, abundant photographic evidence shows that Kennedy's tie knot was squarely centered in the middle of the collar band before and during the motorcade. Thus, any bullet that exited the shirt slits could not have avoided tearing through the middle part of the knot.
The SBT also collapsed when it was established that the nick on the tie knot was not on the edge of the knot but was visibly inward from the knot's left edge. This makes perfect sense because we have known for years that the nick was made by one of the Parkland ER nurses while the nurses hurriedly cut away JFK's clothing. Dr. Carrico noted that he saw no nick in the tie or slits in the shirt below the collar band when the nurses began to cut away Kennedy's clothing.
Of course, the fact that no bullet could have exited the shirt slits without tearing a hole through the tie also makes perfect sense in light of the ARRB and other disclosures that reveal that the autopsy doctors determined for an absolute fact that the back wound had no exit point and that men around the autopsy table could see the back-wound probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity.
Dr. F-i-n-c-k, a board-certified forensic pathologist, did the probing. The idea that he ram-rodded the probe so hard and so ineptly that he tore a false passage to the lining of the chest cavity, as one WC apologist has speculated, is beyond absurd. The probe had a blunt end, a rounded end. It was not sharp at all. Even if F-i-n-c-k had blunderingly pushed the probe with all of his strength, it is doubtful he could have torn such a passage, even if he had been trying to do so. Moreover, as James Jenkins noted, the probe was pushing up against the chest-cavity lining at a point well below the throat wound.
Another massive epistle from MTG in which he tries to make up for in quantity what his posts lack in quality. I could literally spend hours addressing all the horse$hit in this post. My time is far too valuable to do that so I'll just make a few brief remark.
MTG tells me I don't know enough to discuss these issues. His problem is he knows so many things that just aren't true. You could fill a book with them. Apparently, he already has as well as his massive collection crap filled articles. He's been posting this crap for at least 35 years going back to 1991 when I first started to argue this case in online forums. I was a newbie back then but even I could see through his Mickey Mouse arguments.
He continues to cling to his preposterous position that the bullet that entered JFK's back only penetrated a few inches as if such a thing was possible. Even the pipsqueak .22 that John Hinckley fired at Ronald Reagan went in his right side below his armpit and ended up inches from his heart. The .38 Special Jack Ruby fired into Oswald's gut entered on the left side of his abdomen and bulged out his right side without breaking the skin. MTG would have us believe his imaginary conspirators would try to assassinate the POTUS with round so weak it would only penetrate an inch or two into soft tissue. How insane is that?
Yes, the autopsy team's initial impression was the bullet had only penetrated an inch or two into JFK's back. MTG has this weird idea that people should stick with their initial opinions and not revise them when new and better information becomes available to the. He recently demonstrated that when wanted an explanation for why the WC did not stick with an FBI report made about a month into the investigation. Never mind that that initial assessment by the FBI wasn't remotely possible once they got farther along in the investigation. In his silly mind, once that report was made, it was chiseled in stone, the WC should have stuck with it no matter what they determined later on in the process.
The autopsy team did probe the wound with a finger that only went a short distance into the bullet channel. They were understandably perplexed because there was no bullet in the body and no apparent exit wound. This led to some goofy hypothesis that the bullet had only penetrated a short distance and worked its way out. Then they eviscerated the organs and made some eye opening discoveries. There was a contusion on the top of the pleura which is a membrane that wraps around the lungs. They discovered the perforation of the strap muscles. The discovered the rings around the trachea. Who, other than MTG, would be dumb enough to stick with their initial judgement that the bullet had only penetrated an inch or two.
Once they realized there was damage to the trachea, it would have been pretty obvious the bullet had exited his throat and that the tracheostomy had been performed over the exit wound. That was confirmed in one of the phone conversations between Humes and Perry.
Earlier, the autopsy team had tried to pass a probe into the bullet channel and was unable to do so. xxxx explained why that was at the Clay Shaw trial.
Q: Did you attempt to probe this wound in the back of the neck?
A: I did.
Q: With what?
A: With an autopsy room probe, and I did not succeed in probing from the entry in the back of the neck in any direction and I can explain this. This was due to the contraction of muscles preventing the passage of an instrument, and if I had forced the probe through the neck I may have created a false passage.
Q: Isn't this good enough reason to you as a pathologist to go further and dissect this area in an attempt to ascertain whether or not there is a passageway here as a result of a bullet?
A: I did not consider a dissection of the path.
Q: How far did the probe go into the back of the neck?
A: Repeat the question.
Q: How far did the probe go into this wound?
A: I couldn't introduce this probe for any extended depth. I tried and I can give explanations why. At times you cannot probe a path, this is because of the contraction of muscles and different layers. It is not like a pipe, like a channel. It may be extremely difficult to probe a wound through muscle.
Q: Can you give me approximately how far in this probe went?
A: The first fraction of an inch.
Despite all this, MTG continues to insist the bullet that entered JFK's back only penetrated a very short distance. I wonder how he explains the contusion to the pleura, the perforated strap muscles, and the damage to the trachea rings. I will have to continue to wonder because MTG is not into explanations. He relies entirely at trying to poke holes in the WC narrative. His efforts are like throwing spitballs and a tank.
MTG has chastises me when I don't provide a response he likes to one of his questions. Yet he ducks just about every question I pose to him. In recent days I have made the several challenges to him which he has yet to respond to.
I challenged him to provide an alternative explanation to the SBT that would explain the non-fatal wounds to JFK and all of JBC's wounds. I've asked him to explain from where the shots originated, which wounds the caused, and where the bullets went causing the wounds. The SBT explains all that. MTG never will. Even though he won't admit it, he knows no such plausible explanation is possible. If it was, some CT would have figured on out by now.
I've challenged MTG to name the shooters, their locations, and their weapons. The WC did that for their narrative. MTG is unable to do likewise. If he can't do that, what has been the purpose for his decades long snipe hunt? The evidence in the JFKA is out there for all to see. There is almost no chance any new and game-changing discoveries are going to be made. If MTG can't make his case with what is known now, how is he ever going to do that? It's not going to happen. Like all CTs who have gone before him, he will reach the end of his days without ever being able to provide a plausible narrative of the JFKA. There is only one plausible narrative and the WC took that lane. Unfortunately for MTG and his cohorts, the truth is a one lane road and the WC already took that one.
37
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: Paul Landis And What He Said
« Last post by Michael Capasse on Today at 01:34:41 PM »A solid guy would not have kept a secret like that for over 60 years.
This kind of
makes me laugh nutters lol
38
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: Paul Landis And What He Said
« Last post by John Corbett on Today at 01:18:58 PM »JC-
There is no record of Landis fabricating tales, or being delusional.
Landis seems like a solid guy, but also a team player. He may not have wanted to say anything that went against the official line, post JFKA.
In time, the truth outs.
Landis was in fact in and around limo and the JFK operating room on 11.22. No one disputes that.
There is more...a confirming FBI memo. I will post soon.
A solid guy would not have kept a secret like that for over 60 years. How the hell would a bullet end up in the backseat. It makes no sense.
ex-Secret Service agents are not immune from cognitive decline. False memories happen to lots of people and Secret Service agents are people. No way I believe this cockamamie story.
39
JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: JFK's Throat Wound Was an Entrance Wound: Refuting the Shored-Wound Theory
« Last post by Michael T. Griffith on Today at 01:14:52 PM »What the hell difference does it make when the autopsy team figured out there had been an exit wound in the throat. They eventually got there. I suspect it was a gradual process. At first they were confused because they had an entrance wound with no apparent exit and no bullet in the body. That fostered the preposterous hypothesis that the bullet had only gone a few inches into the back and then somehow worked its way out. It is completely absurd to think that a bullet would only penetrate a short distance into soft tissue, but they apparently were groping for an answer early on in the process. As they continued to examine the body, they discovered further tissue damage, the contusion of the pleura, the perforation of the strap muscles, and the damage to the rings of the trachea, there must have been a moment when the thought hit them that, "Holy crap, this leads us right to the tracheostomy incision". That discovery would naturally lead them to at least consider the possibility that the exit wound had been used to perform the tracheostomy. Naturally, they would want to confirm that with the ER team at Parkland. There were several phone calls from Bethesda to Dr. Perry that night and the next morning. Who knows during which conversation Perry confirmed to Humes that the tracheostomy had been performed over the exit wound. Again, what the hell difference does it make when that confirmation was given. The Bethesda team arrived at the correct answer.
It defies credulity that both the back wound and throat wound were entrance wounds in which a bullet penetrated only a short distance into soft tissue so that it could work its way out or be dug out of JFK's body. Only really silly people would believe such a thing was remotely possible.
No, what is "completely absurd" and "defies credulity" is that you are still pretending to know enough to talk about these issues, and that you still expect people to believe that you have the candor and objectivity to discuss these issues with any sincerity and credibility. People who read our previous exchanges will see that you keep ignoring a massive body of evidence that refutes your claims and that you repeatedly commit one blunder and gaffe after another because your research has been so deficient and one-sided.
Let me refresh your memory and give other readers some idea of the evidence I have presented to you on these issues and of how you have ducked this evidence:
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Two of the biggest things the autopsy doctors had to cover up were (1) that they had determined for an absolute fact, through prolonged and careful probing, that the back wound had no exit point; and (2) that they were aware of the throat wound before and during the autopsy. This is why the Sibert and O'Neill report on the autopsy, which revealed the back wound had no exit point, was not published with the Warren Commission (WC) volumes but was sealed (and keep in mind that it was supposed to stay sealed for 75 years -- it was not released until the 1990s when the ARRB released it).
The Back Wound Had No Exit Point
To his great credit, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, one of the three autopsy pathologists, admitted to the ARRB that although they were initially unable to probe the back wound because the muscles had closed the path, they were able to probe the wound after they opened the chest, and that they then saw that the bullet "had not pierced through the lung cavity" but had caused bleeding "just outside the pleura," i.e., just outside the lining of the chest cavity:
We probed this hole . . . 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 [chest cavity lining]. (ARRB interview: Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, 2/26/96, pp. 75-76)
When Boswell said "opened the chest," he was referring to the fact that they removed the chest organs in order to be able to probe the back wound and to see where the probe was going.
We know this from the testimony of Dr. Robert Karnei. Dr. Karnei was a resident surgeon at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963 and witnessed the autopsy. In his 8/27/77 HSCA interview, Dr. Karnei told the HSCA that he saw "the chest cavity opened and watched the removal of the organs," and that after this he saw F-i-n-c-k "working with a probe and arranging for photographs" (HSCA interview: Dr. Robert Karnei, 8/27/77, p. 6). This is one of many references from the autopsy witnesses to the fact that photos were taken of the probing, but no such photos made it into the official record and have disappeared.
In a 1991 recorded interview, Dr. 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”:
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.
(Livingstone interview transcript, p. 10)
James Jenkins confirmed this crucial fact in his HSCA interview nearly 20 years earlier and in his 1979 filmed interview. Jenkins, a medical technician who assisted Dr. Boswell during the autopsy, stated in his 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” (HSCA interview: James Jenkins, 8/29/77, 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 never made it into the official collection of the autopsy materials and have disappeared.
In his 1979 filmed interview, Jenkins explained that he could see the end of the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity:
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.
Dr. John Ebersole, the radiologist at the autopsy, stated in his testimony to the HSCA’s medical panel that the autopsy doctors determined 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 not 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. ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/78, p. 57)
FBI agent James Sibert confirmed this in his ARRB interview, and added that the autopsy doctors -- "F-i-n-c-k, in particular" -- said during the autopsy, after probing the wound, that the back wound had no exit point, and that the pathologists also said they could feel the end of the back wound:
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. . . .
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.” xxxx, 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. (ARRB interview: James Sibert, 9/11/97, pp. 59, 111)
FBI agent Francis O'Neill told the ARRB the same thing:
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. (ARRB interview: Francis O'Neill, 9/12/97, pp. 30-31)
Let's read what Sibert and O'Neill said about this in their 11/26/63 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. . . . 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.[/i] ("Autopsy of Body of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy," 11/26/1963, p. 4)
As many here know, we have known for years that the first two drafts of the autopsy report said nothing about the throat wound being an exit point for the back wound. One draft said the back wound had no exit point and said nothing about the throat wound, while the other draft said a fragment from the head shot exited the throat. In both drafts, the back wound had no exit point. This was first revealed with the release of the transcript of the 1/27/64 WC executive session.
The Autopsy Doctors Knew About the Throat Wound Before the Autopsy, and Humes Talked with Perry by No Later Than 10:30 During the Autopsy
It has become clear that the autopsy doctors were aware of the throat wound before and that Humes talked with Dr. Perry well before the autopsy ended. But, after Oswald was killed, everything changed and along came the lie that Humes had no idea there was a throat wound until the morning after the autopsy, that Humes did not talk with Perry until the morning after the autopsy, and that only then did Humes "realize" the back-wound bullet "must" have exited the throat, hence the phrase "presumably of exit" to describe the throat wound in the final draft of the autopsy report.
Historian William Manchester, in his famous book The Death of a President, based on dozens of interviews with autopsy personnel and with others at the autopsy or in the hospital, acknowledged that the autopsy doctors heard about Dr. Malcolm Perry's comments about the throat wound that Perry made in the Parkland press conference several hours before the autopsy:
They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheotomy. . . ." [Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 432-433)
Yes, of course the autopsy doctors heard about the throat wound before the autopsy. Perry's comments at the Parkland press conference were all over the news that afternoon and evening.
I should add that on 11/24/1966, Richard Levine of the Baltimore Sun conducted an extensive interview with Dr. J. Thornton Boswell. In Levine's article on the interview published the next day, he noted that, before the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were made aware of JFK's wounds and what the Dallas doctors had done:
The pathologists had already been told the probable extent of the injuries and what had been done by the physicians in Dallas ("Pathologist Who Made Examination Defends Commission's Version," Baltimore Sun, November 25, 1966, p. 3; see also Harold Weisberg, Post Mortem, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1975 edition, p. 37; Never Again, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1995 edition, p. 217).
One of the many historic disclosures from the ARRB materials is Dr. Ebersole's statement to the HSCA FPP that by around 10:00 or 10:30, Humes knew about the throat wound from communications with Dallas. Ebersole said he recalled that "by ten or ten thirty . . . communication had been established with Dallas and it was learned" that "there had been a wound . . . in the lower neck" ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/1978, pp. 4-5.)
Journalist Martin Steadman and two other journalists spoke with Dr. Perry about a week after the assassination. Steadman knew that Perry had identified the throat wound as an entrance wound at the 11/22 press conference. Steadman wrote that Dr. Perry said he thought the throat wound was an entrance wound because the hole was small, circular, and clean (not ragged). Perry added that he had treated hundreds of patients with gunshot wounds and knew the difference between an exit wound and entrance wound.
Steadman reported that Dr. Perry then told him that during the night of the assassination, he got several phone calls from the doctors at Bethesda. He said they were very upset about his statement that the neck wound was an entry wound. Steadman also reported that Perry said that the autopsy doctors asked him if he or another Parkland doctor had turned over the body to see the wound in Kennedy’s back. Perry said they had not. They then argued that he could not therefore be certain about the throat wound, that there was no evidence of a shot from the front, and that he should stop saying the throat wound was an entrance wound.
Moreover, Steadman said that Dr. Perry told him that when he insisted he could only say what he believed to be true, one or more of the autopsy doctors told him he would be brought before a medical board if he continued to insist on his story. Perry said they even threatened that he would lose his medical license. I quote from Steadman's article:
But [Dr. Malcolm Perry] told us that throughout that night, he received a series of phone calls to his home from irate doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where an autopsy was being conducted, and the doctors there were becoming increasingly frustrated with his belief that it was an entrance wound. He said they asked him if the doctors in Dallas had turned the President over and examined the wounds to his back; he said they had not. They told him he could not be certain of his conclusion if he had not examined the wounds in the President’s back. They said Bethesda had the President’s body and Dallas did not. They told Dr. Perry he must not continue to say he cut across what he believed to be an entrance wound when there was no evidence of shots fired from the front. When he said again he could only say what he believed to be true, one or more of the autopsy doctors told him they would take him before a Medical Board if he continued to insist on what they were certain was otherwise. They threatened his license to practice medicine, Dr. Perry said....(https://web.archive.org/web/20241006184009/http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm; http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm; https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-ordeal-of-malcolm-perry)
Crucially, Parkland supervisory nurse Audrey Bell confirmed in her 1997 ARRB interview that Dr. Perry told her that he received several calls on the night of the assassination from Bethesda Naval Hospital pressuring him to change his story about the throat wound:
Saturday morning, when I got over there, Dr. Perry came up to the office. I said, "You look awful. Did you get any sleep last night?"
He said, "Well, not too much, between the calls from Bethesda that came in during the night." ["Bethesda" refers to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the autopsy was performed.]
I said, "What about?"
He said, "Oh, whether that was an entrance wound or an exit wound in the throat."
He said, "They were wanting me to change my mind." (https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/medical_interviews/audio/ARRB_Bell.htm)
Nurse Bell told the HSCA the same thing in 1977 (http://www.stickam.com/member/viewMedia.do?mId=184850325&mediaowner=true).
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MG:
To his great credit, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, one of the three autopsy pathologists, admitted to the ARRB that although they were initially unable to probe the back wound because the muscles had closed the path, they were able to probe the wound after they opened the chest, and that they then saw that the bullet "had not pierced through the lung cavity" but had caused bleeding "just outside the pleura," i.e., just outside the lining of the chest cavity:[/size]
We probed this hole . . . 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 [chest cavity lining]. (ARRB interview: Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, 2/26/96, pp. 75-76)
When Boswell said "opened the chest," he was referring to the fact that they removed the chest organs in order to be able to probe the back wound and to see where the probe was going.[/size]
JC: Yes, a perfectly logical approach which explains why the dismissed their initial impression. For some strange reason, MTG wants to cling to that erroneous first impression.
Can you read? You have totally misread what Boswell said. He said nothing about his "initial impression" or "first impression." He said that initially they were unable to probe the back wound because the muscles blocked the wound path, but that after they opened the chest, they were able to probe the wound and determine that the bullet did not enter the lung cavity but merely caused bruising outside the pleura.
As I documented, Dr. Karnei explained that after they removed the chest organs and resumed the probing, the men around the autopsy table could see the end of the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity. Dr. Ebersole said that "further probing" and "inspection" revealed "there was no point of exit." It was this point, explained Sibert and O'Neill, that the autopsy doctors, particularly F-i-n-c-k, announced that the back wound had no exit point.
People are going to easily see through your dishonest, phony argument that this was just a "first impression." No, this was the final, definitive, visually confirmed finding by the end of the autopsy. That's why Sibert and O'Neill, the two FBI agents at the autopsy, included the "no exit" finding in their report on the autopsy. That's why they told the ARRB that at the end of the autopsy, there was no doubt whatsoever that the back wound had no exit point.
He won't allow the autopsy team to abandon that early belief once they gathered more and better information.
LOL! I again ask, can you read? Do you understand English beyond a grade-school level? How can you make this argument with a straight face?
In a previous reply, you repeated the long-debunked lone-gunman lie that Humes did not know about the throat wound until the morning after the autopsy. I just proved to you that this is false, that Humes talked to Perry at least 90 minutes before the autopsy ended. So there was no "more and better information" to be gathered.
At the end of the autopsy, at least 90 minutes after Humes had talked to Perry about the throat wound, the autopsy doctors were absolutely certain that the back wound had no exit point -- they knew this because they had been able to probe the wound to its end after they removed the chest organs and had seen with their own eyes that the wound path did not enter the lining of the chest cavity.
That's why Dr. Karnei explained that after the doctors opened the chest, removed the chest organs, and resumed the probing, the men around the autopsy table could see the end of the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity. That's why Dr. Ebersole said that "further probing" and "inspection" revealed "there was no point of exit." That's why Navy medical technician James Jenkins, serving as Dr. Boswell's assistant during the autopsy, observed that he and others around the autopsy table could see the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity and that "there was no entry into the chest cavity." That's why Dr. Boswell himself told the ARRB that the bullet "had not pierced through into the lung cavity." That's why Sibert and O'Neill observed in their 11/26/63 report on the autopsy that "further probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a short distance." That's why Sibert and O'Neill confirmed this fact in the plainest possible English to the ARRB, stressing that the autopsy doctors had no doubt whatsoever about this.
It was only after Oswald was murdered that the no-exit finding was suppressed and replaced by the fiction that the back-wound bullet exited the throat. In order to make that tale even theoretically possible, Humes had to relocate the back wound some 2 inches upward so as to put it above the throat wound and to enable a downward trajectory through the neck, a falsehood that the HSCA FPP corrected, to their credit.
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Do you really need to be told that was Boswell's initial impression.
Do you need to be reminded that Boswell stated that initially they were unable to probe the back wound but that they were later able to probe it after they opened the chest and saw that it did not go into the lung cavity? Do you need to be reminded that not a single person who gave an account of the probing said the doctors had any doubt whatsoever about the no-exit finding? Do you need to be reminded that the no-exit finding came toward the end of the autopsy, after Humes had talked to Perry, and was the final finding on the subject, which is why it was documented in Sibert and O'Neill's report on the autopsy, and which is why it was stated in the first two drafts of the autopsy report, which Humes wrote hours after the autopsy?
I find it hard to believe that you are so uneducated and incompetent that you simply cannot grasp the evidence here, but this is exactly how you are acting.
That impression was made early in the process and is at odds with the final conclusion which all three members of the autopsy team signed.
You know this is false. One, it was not an "impression." It was a visible fact that was observed by everyone around the autopsy table, as Dr. Karnei confirmed. Two, this happened very late in the autopsy, only after the doctors decided to open the chest and remove the chest organs. Sibert and O'Neill emphatically confirmed that at the end of the autopsy, the pathologists had no doubt whatsoever that the back-wound bullet had no exit point. I've quoted some of their statements that prove this. But, you just keep ignoring them and repeating your fictional version of events.
Two, the final autopsy report only emerged after Oswald was killed. There was not a shred of "new information" that supported the changed finding regarding the throat wound. By the end of the autopsy, Humes et al were certain that the back wound had no exit point because they had seen with their own eyes the probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity. The no-exit finding was confirmed by Dr. Ebersole, Dr. Karnei, Jenkins, O'Neill, and Sibert, and by the first two drafts of the autopsy report (as proved by the transcript of the 1/27/64 WC executive session).
Unlike you, Boswell understood the earlier impression that the bullet had no exit was an erroneous one as they discovered there was a clear bullet path leading from the back entrance to the throat exit.
What??!! Well, this is historic news!! What "clear bullet path leading from the back entrance to the throat exit"?! Where do you get that?! If they discovered a clear path from the back wound to the throat wound, why did Humes say the throat wound was only "presumably" an exit wound? Huh?
Please cite a single source that documents that this alleged clear path was supposedly discovered and described. Let's see it. You will make history, because no one has ever claimed that the autopsy doctors observed "a clear path" from the back wound to the throat wound. They could have only seen such a path if they had dissected the throat wound.
BTW, are you aware that we know from the ARRB materials that the throat wound was probed? Why didn't Humes ever mention this? Obviously, because it would have exposed his lie that he knew nothing about the throat wound until the morning after the autopsy.
How do you suppose they were able to document the bruised pleura. . . . Do you think they just made that up after the autopsy was over? They discovered the bruised pleura,
LOL! They detected the bruised pleura after they removed the chest organs and were able to probe to the end of the back wound, as I've already documented for you! Sheesh, again, is there just no end to your blundering?
. . . the perforated strap muscles, the damaged trachea rings? . . . the perforation of the strap muscles, the grazing of the rings of the trachea, which led them to the tracheostomy.
LOL! This is the damage that Dr. Perry identified in Dallas! Good gravy, man! Again, you have no business pretending to know anything about the JFK case. You constantly grasp at any item of information that you erroneously believe supports your view, only to find out that you've blundered yet again.
If you want to educate yourself on the damage that Perry identified, I document it in my article "Research Notes on the Shored-Wound Theory to Explain JFK’s Throat Wound,", which I linked earlier in this very thread.
You see, the problem is that you didn't know enough to realize how badly you were blundering in citing that damage as evidence of a back-to-throat wound path.
If you read the descriptions that Dr. Perry and Dr. Kemp gave of that damage, you'll discover that it was below and to the right (viewer's left) of the throat wound, which does not fit with any back-to-throat trajectory from the back wound. If your alleged magic bullet supposedly exited the throat after traveling downward and leftward through the neck, the damage would have been above or parallel with/to the left of the resulting throat wound, not below and to the right of the wound.
And, again, you are once more ignoring the fact that the throat wound was punched inward and was only about 5 mm in diameter. You're also ignoring the fact that we've known for years now that there was no hole through the tie and no nick on either edge of the tie knot, proving that no bullet exited the throat because we have ample photographic evidence that the tie knot was neatly centered in the middle of the collar band and directly over the shirt slits.
We don't know at one point in the process they began to suspect the tracheostomy had been performed over the exit wound but they were able to confirm that suspicion when Humes talked to Perry.
Umm, yes, we do know this -- and you know it, but won't admit it. I've documented for you that Manchester and Levine found that the autopsy doctors were aware of the throat wound before the autopsy, and that Dr. Ebersole revealed to the HSCA that Humes was in contact with Dallas and talked about the throat wound with Dallas by no later than 10:30 PM, at least 90 minutes before the autopsy ended. Let me refresh your memory:
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Another key fact that Humes withheld in his WC and HSCA testimony was that there were multiple drafts of the autopsy report. Humes claimed he burned the “rough first draft” because it had blood on it, but he said there was no substantive difference between the first draft and the final draft. This lie was exposed with the release of the transcript of the 1/27/64 WC executive session, which reveals that Rankin discussed two early drafts of the autopsy report, both of which said the back wound had no exit point.
For a detailed discussion on the drafts of the autopsy report, I would refer interested readers to Doug Horne’s 64-minute video presentation The Evolving JFK Autopsy Report..
As mentioned, the autopsy doctors were careful to conceal the fact that after the chest organs were removed, they were able to probe the back wound to its end point and could see that the wound path did not enter the chest cavity. Their later cover story was that the contracted back muscles prevented them from probing the back wound.
Only Boswell eventually abandoned this story, but he did not do so until his ARRB interview in 1996, when he said that initially the muscles prevented them from probing the back wound but that after they opened the chest, they were able to “get at” it and see that the bullet did not pierce the “lung cavity” but merely caused bleeding “outside the pleura” (the lining of the chest cavity).
In his HSCA interview, Boswell said that he and the other doctors thought the tracheotomy “was a wound.” The interviewer, Andy Purdy, added that Boswell “meant to convey the impression that that the doctors thought it was a bullet wound” (HSCA interview: J. Thornton Boswell, 8/17/77, p. 3).
Later in the interview, Boswell said he remembered “seeing part of the perimeter of a bullet wound in the anterior neck” (p. 8 ).
This brings up the crucial point that the bottom half of a round small bullet hole can be seen fairly easily in the bottom of the throat wound in autopsy photo F1. So, it is not a bit surprising that Boswell spotted this during the autopsy.
But, still later in the interview, perhaps realizing he had said too much, Boswell began to vacillate about knowledge of the throat wound during the autopsy and about when the autopsy doctors concluded that a bullet had fallen out of the back wound (which Boswell usually referred to as a “neck" wound). Toward the very end of the interview, Boswell said that “in the later courses of the autopsy” the doctors thought the tracheotomy “may have included the exit wound of a bullet” (p. 12).
Yet, we know that the first two drafts of the autopsy report said nothing about the throat wound being an exit point for a bullet. The second draft said the throat wound was an exit point for a fragment from the head shot. Both drafts said the back wound had no exit point.
In a very revealing comment, Boswell said the doctors got themselves into trouble (“in dutch”) with the Secret Service over the "neck" (back) and throat wounds:
We had gotten ourselves in dutch with the neck and throat wounds with regard to the Secret Service” (p. 4).
For some reason, the interviewer did not ask Boswell to expand on this statement, and Boswell did not volunteer why they were in trouble with the Secret Service agents over the “neck” and throat wounds.
Boswell added that one of the Secret Service agents was “on the phone most of the time” during the autopsy (p. 4).
Boswell noted that during the autopsy, Dr. Robert Karnei “served in effect as the chief assistant of the autopsy doctors” and that Dr. Karnei assisted with the post-autopsy brain exam (pp. 5, 11).
In his ARRB interview, Boswell said the doctors concluded during the autopsy that the throat wound was the exit point for the back wound! He said their first impression of the throat wound was that it was just a tracheostomy but that after they found the back wound and after they opened the chest and saw blood outside the pleura “we had a track” (i.e., they inferred a track, not that they actually saw it):
Q. When you referred to the wound in the anterior neck, what was your first impression as to what that wound was?
A. I'm not sure what our first impression -- oh, we thought that they had done a tracheostomy, and whether or not that was a bullet wound, we weren't sure, initially. It was after we found an entrance wound and then the blood external to the pleura that we had a track, and that proved to be the exit wound; but it was so distorted by the incision, initially we just assumed it to be a tracheostomy.
Q. Did you reach the conclusion that there had been a transit wound through the neck during the course of the autopsy itself?
A. Oh, yes. (ARRB interview: J. Thornton Boswell, 2/26/96, p. 34)
In other words, Boswell claimed that the autopsy doctors deduced/inferred a back-to-throat track during the autopsy based on the bleeding outside the pleura. At no point did he ever claim they actually saw this alleged track. The only way they could have actually seen such a track would have been to dissect the wound, but they did no dissection because an Army general refused to let F-i-n-c-k dissect the wound, as F-i-n-c-k reluctantly admitted under cross-examination at the Clay Shaw trial.
So we see that on two occasions Boswell contradicted Humes’s tale that they were unaware of the throat wound until the following morning.
A major problem with Boswell’s statements about the back-to-throat conclusion being reached during the autopsy is that they are contradicted by the first two drafts of the autopsy report, by Dr. Karnei’s statements, by Dr. Ebersole’s statements, by med-tech Jenkins’ statements, by FBI agent O’Neill’s statements, by FBI agent Sibert’s statements, and by the Sibert and O’Neill report on the autopsy, not to mention by Humes’s WC and HSCA testimony.
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Historian William Manchester, in his famous book The Death of a President, based on dozens of interviews with autopsy personnel and with others at the autopsy or in the hospital, acknowledged that the autopsy doctors heard about Dr. Malcolm Perry's comments about the throat wound that Perry made in the Parkland press conference several hours before the autopsy:
They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheotomy. . . ." [Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 432-433)
I should add that on 11/24/1966, Richard Levine of the Baltimore Sun conducted an extensive interview with Dr. J. Thornton Boswell. In Levine's article on the interview published the next day, he noted that, before the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were made aware of JFK's wounds and what the Dallas doctors had done:
The pathologists had already been told the probable extent of the injuries and what had been done by the physicians in Dallas ("Pathologist Who Made Examination Defends Commission's Version," Baltimore Sun, November 25, 1966, p. 3; see also Harold Weisberg, Post Mortem, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1975 edition, p. 37; Never Again, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, reprint of 1995 edition, p. 217).
One of the many historic disclosures from the ARRB materials is Dr. Ebersole's statement to the HSCA FPP that by around 10:00 or 10:30, Humes knew about the throat wound from communications with Dallas. Ebersole said he recalled that "by ten or ten thirty . . . communication had been established with Dallas and it was learned" that "there had been a wound . . . in the lower neck" ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/1978, pp. 4-5.)
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Why don't you stop lying about this and at least admit that Humes positively knew about the throat wound at least 90 minutes before the autopsy ended? Answer: Because this admission alone would destroy your farcical version of events.
You, being a silly CT, think the autopsy team should have stuck with that first erroneous impression that there was no exit for the back wound no matter what they learned later in the fact finding process. Somebody on the autopsy teams said early on there was "no exit" and by God, they were stuck with that no matter what they learned afterwards.
This false talking point is why you keep lying about when Humes learned of the throat wound. The SBT tale says that Humes didn't know the throat wound existed until the following morning, that he only learned of the wound during his phone call with Dr. Perry that morning, and that he didn't talk with Dr. Perry until after he'd written the first two drafts of the autopsy report. The ARRB disclosures alone destroy this tale.
They thought there was no exit until they discovered the trail of tissue damage leading to the tracheostomy in the throat. Then they understood why there was no bullet in the body. It had exited from JFK's throat.
You can repeat this lie until the Sun burns out, as I'm sure you will, but that won't make it come true. Part of me is almost glad that you are oblivious to how bad and unserious you make yourself look by ignoring Dr. Karnei's statements, Dr. Ebersole's statements, med-tech Jenkins' statements, the Sibert and O'Neill report on the autopsy, and Sibert and O'Neill's ARRB testimony.
This is a good point to discuss Sibert and O'Neill's HSCA interviews, which I haven't yet mentioned.
Sibert said "they probed the wound with a finger and Dr. F-i-n-c-k probed it with a metal probe" and that "the doctors concluded it only went so far" (HSCA interview: James W. Sibert, 8/25/77, p. 3). Sibert added that "nothing was ever mentioned about the anterior neck wound being a possible bullet exit wound" and that "xxxx and Humes agreed there was no exit wound of the bullet through the back" (pp. 4, 6).
Furthermore, as part of his HSCA interview, Sibert was asked to do wound diagrams on two face sheets with generic male figures printed on them. On both sheets/both diagrams, Sibert put the back wound about 5 inches below the collar band and clearly below the throat wound, almost exactly where the rear clothing holes place the wound (pp. 8-9).
In O'Neill's HSCA affidavit, O'Neill said, "I do not see how the bullet that entered below the shoulder in the back could have come out the front of the throat" (O'Neill Affidavit for HSCA, 11/8/78, p. 5). He also said this:
"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" (p. 3).
Why? Because "Humes and Boswell couldn't locate an outlet for the bullet that entered the back" (p. 3).
And notice that O'Neill said the certainty about the back wound was "when the autopsy was complete."
To put it simply, by the end of the autopsy, the doctors were certain that the bullet that was found on a stretcher in Dallas must have been the bullet that made the shallow back wound. This was after Agent Killion had heard from Dallas about the stretcher bullet, and at least 90 minutes after Humes had learned of the throat wound from Dr. Perry[/i], as Dr. Ebersole revealed to the HSCA.
O'Neill explained this in more detail in his ARRB interview:
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. (ARRB interview: Francis O'Neill, 9/12/97, pp. 30-31)
You are a damn liar. You get no respect because you deserve no respect. Moronic. Cite the bystanders instead of the people actually conducting the autopsy.
"Bystanders"?! Umm, Dr. Ebersole was the autopsy radiologist. Dr. Karnei was a resident surgeon at Bethesda and helped supervise security for the autopsy before it began, and then watched much of the autopsy from close range. James Jenkins assisted with the autopsy; indeed, he was Boswell's assistant during the autopsy. Sibert and O'Neill were the FBI's official observers at the autopsy; their job was to observe the autopsy and then submit a report on it.
You lie about these witnesses because you know their accounts destroy your farcical version of events.
You have never shown any evidence anyone on the autopsy team knew that. You have shown that Perry said it. There is no evidence any of them saw Perry's presser.
You know this is false. I've documented for you that historian William Manchester and journalist Richard Levine found that the autopsy doctors knew about the throat wound before the autopsy. Manchester interviewed dozens of autopsy witnesses and others at the hospital in researching his famous book -- that's when he learned that the autopsy pathologists heard reports about the throat wound before the autopsy. Boswell indicated the same thing to Levine.
But, you just ignore all this and keep falsely pretending there's no evidence the doctors knew about the throat wound before the autopsy.
MG: At the end of the autopsy, at least 90 minutes after Humes had talked to Perry about the throat wound, the autopsy doctors were absolutely certain that the back wound had no exit point.
JC: More lies. Have you no shame?
Let me refresh your memory, yet again:
One of the many historic disclosures from the ARRB materials is Dr. Ebersole's statement to the HSCA FPP that by around 10:00 or 10:30, Humes knew about the throat wound from communications with Dallas. Ebersole said he recalled that "by ten or ten thirty . . . communication had been established with Dallas and it was learned" that "there had been a wound . . . in the lower neck" ("Testimony of John H. Ebersole," HSCA, 3/11/1978, pp. 4-5.)
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Even the WC acknowledged that the tie knot was positioned directly over the shirt slits. So, if a bullet exited the shirt slits, as claimed by the SBT, it would have had to tear through the tie knot. This is why the FBI produced an evidence photo of the tie knot that gave the false impression that there was a hole in the knot.
If this bullet did not tear through the tie knot, then it would have had to at least nick the knot's left edge, which is what the WC claimed, but (1) the nick was not on the knot's left edge, and (2) the knot was centered squarely in the middle of the shirt's collar band before and during the motorcade, as we know from numerous photos.
I've documented all of these facts in "JFK's Clothing Proves the Single-Bullet Theory Is Impossible":
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MAgWA0frOLVeWY6ok9nzdrgpRN4Wv1AL/view?usp=sharing
It's interesting: You claim that the WC gave us "the definitive account" of the assassination, but you contradict what the WC said on this issue because you've done so little reading on the JFK case.[/font]
Also, it cannot be emphasized enough that the SBT collapsed the moment we learned that the tie had no hole through it, not through the knot and not through any other part of the tie. The FBI doggedly resisted allowing researchers to view or obtain high-quality images of the tie.
As mentioned, at one point the FBI produced a misleading evidence photo that showed the knot twisted in such a way as to make it appear that the nick was in the middle of the knot in order to lead the viewer to think that a bullet had gone through the knot and had exited in the middle of it.
As my above-linked article proves, abundant photographic evidence shows that Kennedy's tie knot was squarely centered in the middle of the collar band before and during the motorcade. Thus, any bullet that exited the shirt slits could not have avoided tearing through the middle part of the knot.
The SBT also collapsed when it was established that the nick on the tie knot was not on the edge of the knot but was visibly inward from the knot's left edge. This makes perfect sense because we have known for years that the nick was made by one of the Parkland ER nurses while the nurses hurriedly cut away JFK's clothing. Dr. Carrico noted that he saw no nick in the tie or slits in the shirt below the collar band when the nurses began to cut away Kennedy's clothing.
Of course, the fact that no bullet could have exited the shirt slits without tearing a hole through the tie also makes perfect sense in light of the ARRB and other disclosures that reveal that the autopsy doctors determined for an absolute fact that the back wound had no exit point and that men around the autopsy table could see the back-wound probe pushing up against the lining of the chest cavity.
Dr. F-i-n-c-k, a board-certified forensic pathologist, did the probing. The idea that he ram-rodded the probe so hard and so ineptly that he tore a false passage to the lining of the chest cavity, as one WC apologist has speculated, is beyond absurd. The probe had a blunt end, a rounded end. It was not sharp at all. Even if F-i-n-c-k had blunderingly pushed the probe with all of his strength, it is doubtful he could have torn such a passage, even if he had been trying to do so. Moreover, as James Jenkins noted, the probe was pushing up against the chest-cavity lining at a point well below the throat wound.
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JFK Assassination Discussion & Debate / Re: Paul Landis And What He Said
« Last post by Benjamin Cole on Today at 01:11:12 PM »TG-
I think the KGB, and G2 and DGI, had much to do with LHO.
Likely Bruce Solie too.
That is what President LBJ did a snuff job on.
I think the KGB, and G2 and DGI, had much to do with LHO.
Likely Bruce Solie too.
That is what President LBJ did a snuff job on.
Yeah, like Major I mean Lt. Col. I mean Captain Yuri Nosenko's saying he read the KGB file on Oswald four times -- twice before and twice after the assassination -- and that he therefore knew for a fact that the KGB had absolutely nothing to do with the "abnormal" former marine sharpshooter and U-2 radar operator during the two-and-a-half years he lived half-a-mile from a KGB school in Minsk.
Isn't that right, Steve M.?
LOL!
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