As I've mentioned, one of the things that makes Dr. Young's account so compelling, aside from the fact that it was confirmed by Chief Mills,
Correction. Young claimed it was corroborated by Mills. There is no record of what Mills actually said.
is that Young devoutly believed in the Warren Commission's (WC's) version of the shooting. Young was so trusting and naive about the WC that he called Arlen Specter to try to get answers about the deformed limo bullet!
And Specter, like Ford, had no idea what he was talking about.
Let us read Dr. Young's complete answer from the interview transcript when he was asked if the limo bullet was a copper-jacketed bullet, instead of the slightly edited answer that appears in Milicent Cranor's article:
Question: So the bullet, again, was a copper-jacketed bullet like a military bullet?
Answer: No, it was a brass jacket. That's what I've described it as, a brass-jacketed bullet. It didn't look like it. I don't know, maybe it's copper, I couldn't tell. But it was that color of brass and it was slightly bent on the end. It was not a straight bullet. In other words, it had hit something and it bent. . . . ("Oral History with CAPT (ret) James Morningstar Young, MC, USN," Interview 3, p. 54, emphasis added, https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Capt_James_Young_Interview.pdf)
A perfect description of CE399.
Notice that Dr. Young said the bullet "didn't look like" a copper-jacketed bullet, so he obviously saw the bullet.
Notice that Dr. Young also said that he "couldn't tell" if "maybe" the bullet had a copper jacket, that it was "that color of brass," and that it was was "slightly bent on the end." These statements are further clear proof that he saw the bullet.
How is that proof. A 72 year old man's recollection of an event 38 years prior is hardly compelling proof.
A note of clarification about the interview transcript: There were actually six interviews. They occurred on December 4, 7, and 17, 2001, and on January 7, 14, and 23, 2002. Interviews 1, 2, and 3 were the 2001 interviews. Interviews 4, 5, and 6 were the 2002 interviews. The interview transcript, produced by the U.S. Navy Medical Department Oral History Program, combines all six interviews into one 114-page transcript, although it identifies each interview by number.
Interview 3 was the interview in which Dr. Young made the above-quoted statements "it didn't look like it"; "maybe it's copper, I couldn't tell"; "it was slightly bent"; "it was not a straight bullet"; and "it had hit something."
Which CE399 had done.
The Office of Medical History's 12-page 2013 article was based on the 2001 interviews. It did not include the above-quoted paragraph, although it did include the statements that a deformed bullet was found in the back of the limo and that Dr. Young called Chief Mills to verify his recollection before sending Specter information on the bullet (“Navy Medicine and President Kennedy’s Autopsy: Recollections from a former White House Physician,” pp. 8, 10-11, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Navy_Medicine_and_President_Kennedy%E2%80%99s_Autopsy-_Recollections_from_a_former_White_House_Physician_(IA_NMAndTheKennedyAssassination).pdf).
Again, the recollection is Young's version of what Mills said. No record of what Mills actually said.
The Office of Medical History's 2013 article is 12 pages long, but the three 2001 interviews occupy 55 pages in the Oral History Program's 114-page transcript. So the Office of Medical History's 12-page 2013 article is a markedly condensed version of what Dr. Young said in his three 2001 interviews, and the 11/21/2013 Navy Medicine article that Corbett blunderingly cited is a highly condensed version of the 12-page article.
Why is citing that source a blunder? I found a source and I quoted it verbatim.
It is worth noting that during the interviews, Dr. Young defended the WC's version of the shooting. For example:
Well, it's an interesting commentary and there's no question, well there's no question in my mind but the President was shot from behind. . . .
And, of course, the thing that I've said in here about Bill Greer, who was driving the Queen Mary was that [he] had brain tissue and blood spattered over his right posterior shoulder. Which, in my estimation could only have made that bullet come from behind, not from the grassy knoll, not from the side, not from the air or whatever. It had to come from behind and spray forward onto his right shoulder. ("Oral History with CAPT (ret) James Morningstar Young, MC, USN," Interview 3, pp. 54-55)
Dr. Young also criticized the conspiracy claim that JFK's body arrived in a body bag:
Doctor Humes, in his article that he wrote for JAMA back in '92 states clearly when the body was brought into the hospital it was not in a body bag, but it was draped in apparently a sheet or something. He said there was no body bag at all.
No problem then. I have no difficulty with that description whatsoever. ("Oral History with CAPT (ret) James Morningstar Young, MC, USN," Interview 3, p. 44)
I note these facts to show that Dr. Young was not some "conspiracy theorist" who was trying to take advantage of his status as an eyewitness at the autopsy to spin a tale to discredit the lone-gunman scenario.
The fact that Dr. Young was no naively trusting of the WC as to expect Arlen Specter to give him straight answers about the deformed limo bullet, not to mention that he defended the WC's version of the shooting and attacked a well-known conspiracy claim, shows that he is the textbook example of a hostile witness. This makes his account all the more credible and devastating.
Dr. Young's version of what happened demonstrates perfectly what I have consistently said about witnesses in general. They tend to get some things right and some things wrong. It's not an all or nothing proposition. There is no record of anybody, other than Young, saying a bullet that was recovered from the limo was delivered to Bethesda during the autopsy. Nothing to corroborate Young's memory of an event that had happened 38 years earlier. Humes, Boswell, and Finck never mentioned such a bullet. There is no record of Mills saying that. Only Young claiming Mills had said that.
I found this excerpt from Boswell's ARRB testimony:
Q. Do you recall there being any requests being made by you or anyone else to other people who were there regarding shell fragments, bullets, anything else that would have been useful to see during the course of the autopsy?
A. I know there was discussion because there were some security people in the morgue and on the telephone--the telephone was on the wall right at the head of the morgue table where we were working. And I remember them telling us that a bullet had been found, that bone fragments had been found, and I believe that they were being transported to Washington separately. And the bone fragments eventually came into the morgue that night. The bullet may. I'm not sure about that.
Q. Do you remember seeing any bullets during the course of the autopsy?
Page 29
A. Fragments. In the autopsy we found very minute fragments, mostly on the X-rays.
This confirms my suspicion that the medical team at Bethesda had been told that a bullet and bone fragments had been found in the limo and they were being sent to Bethesda. This could well have planted the seed in Young's mind that they were receiving both a bullet and bone fragments. When asked directly if he had seen a bullet, he said he had only seen fragments of bullets.
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