doug hornedoug horne
DOUG
HORNE BOOK
JFKcountercoup
Saturday,
November 28, 2009
IARRB
Vol. IV Now At Amazon.com
IARRB Volume IV Now Available at Amazon.Com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984314431/ref=cm_cr_error
Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final
Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of
JFK (Volume 4) (Paperback)
~ Douglas P. Horne (Author)
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Product Description
VOLUME 4 of 5: Douglas Horne served on the staff of the President John F.
Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) during the final three years
of its four-year lifespan, from 1995 to 1998, and is the first U.S. government
official involved with the medical evidence to allege a coverup in President
Kennedy's autopsy, and in the creation of the autopsy photographs and x-rays.
This book, the product of over 13 years of writing and research, provides the
best explanation yet offered of the true nature of the medical coverup in the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, and does so in meticulous detail, with
scrupulous use of primary source material. It incorporates the latest
information-much of it new evidence not revealed elsewhere-gleaned from the
ARRB's depositions and interviews of medical witnesses, conducted from 1996 to
1998. With precise accuracy, and with a relentless focus on the massive fraud
uncovered in the official records of the 35th President's assassination, Horne
presents a persuasive case that the assassination of JFK was an "inside
job," a true coup d'etat in America, that was ruthlessly and brazenly
covered up by those who 'broke the back of the American century' in Dallas on
November 22, 1963.
About the Author
Douglas Horne served on the staff of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination
Records Review Board (ARRB) during the final three years of its four-year
lifespan, from 1995 to 1998, and is the first
Product Details
Paperback: 402 pages
Publisher: Douglas P. Horne (November 24, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0984314431
ISBN-13: 978-0984314430
Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
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OKAY -
Bill Kelly's Preview - 11/29/09
Doug Horne’s Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (IARRB) is the most
important book to be published on the assassination of President Kennedy in
decades, not only because it changes the way we look at that murder, but in
showing how the remaining issues can be resolved by determining the truth.
All the debates end here, and the arguments are replaced with questions that
were posed but not answered when the Assassination Records Review Board was
alive and ostensibly overseeing the declassification and release of the
government's JFK assassination records. Many of the questions weren't even asked
because the ARRB failed to fully use its power to subpoena witnesses and take
the sworn testimony of witness.
As Horne, the chief analyst for military records explains, "While the
Review Board had the power to subpoena witnesses and grant immunity, the
subpoena power was used sparingly (with a limited number of medical and CIA
witnesses), and the immunity power was never exercised. The reason: none of the
Board Members were convinced there was any conspiracy or coverup, and therefore
were only interested in clarifying the record in a few areas. At least the staff
of the ARRB was permitted to conduct unsworn witness interviews without seeking
permission from the Board Members. Sadly, senior staff members often elected not
to even tape record witness interviews, which make the staff's written interview
reports incredibly important as historical tools."
To its credit, the ARRB did manage to release millions of pages of documents,
identified important records that are missing and others that have been
destroyed, and they’ve called attention to those records that they deemed
necessary to withhold until 2017, when the last classified secret JFK
assassination record is scheduled to be released.
Now however, over a decade after the ARRB shut down, and years before the last
record is released, we have a real good idea of what happened in Dallas, and in
DC in the aftermath of the President’s murder. And with Doug Horne’s
extremely detailed analysis of the military records, his conclusions are hard to
avoid.
Supporting the general consensus that there was a conspiracy behind what
happened at Dealey Plaza, Horne takes it a step further, and calls it straight
and unambiguous – it was a coup d’etat, with those responsible for the
murder taking over the government and changing policy. And lying all the way,
but hey, after multiple homicides, the lying part is easy.
Building on the recent evaluations of the assassination that are in line with
the Cold War history, crediting David Talbot’s “Brothers,” Jeff Morley’s
“Our Man In Mexico” and Jim Douglas’ “JFK & the Unspeakable,”
Horne surrounds JFK's story with the proper social frame work, and details how
the evidence of a Dealey Plaza coup fits like a glove with the overall
historical record.
Not only concluding there was a conspiracy, through his own personal journey,
Horne takes the reader on a tour of the intestines of the coup and cover-up,
from Dealey Plaza and Parkland Hospital, aboard AF1, from Andrews to Bethesda,
and a few back alleys we haven't been down before. Along the way he consistently
refers to important records and corresponding eye witness accounts, pointing out
the contradictions and discrepancies, and sometimes resolving them. Thank God
for small victories, and belittling the idea that "We'll never know."
Now we can know.
While matching the volume of the work of his nemesis Vincent Bugliosi (at 2,000
plus pages), Horne’s IARRB basically dismisses Bugliosi’s only suspect,
mentioning Lee Harvey Oswald only a few times throughout the five volumes, and
each time only referring to him as the patsy who was framed for the crime.
Rather than follow Ozzie the rabbit, Horne sticks close to the body, what one of
his mentors, David Lifton refers to as the "best evidence."
A non-fictional forensic documentary "CSI Dealey Plaza," based on
Horne’s book, will certainly make a most definitive and fascinating rebuttal
to Bugliosi’s upcoming and lame "Distorting History" HBO series with
Tom Hanks, but who will have the courage to make "Inside JFK's Forensic
Autopsy and Coup?" It isn't pretty, and its hard to say which is more ugly
- the gore of the brain and guts or the betrayal of the Constitution by those
behind the coup.
Although Horne’s doesn’t know who shot John F. Kennedy in the back and in
the head, he’s quite confident that the shot that killed the President entered
the right front temple and blew out the back of his skull. This shot blew apart
half the brain and created the Harper fragment and the wounds described by the
Dallas doctors before the head wound was surgically altered, removing bullet
fragments and enlarging the entrance would to appear as an exit, before the
official autopsy began.
It must have been earlier in the day, after Oswald was captured but before Air
Force One landed at Andrews, when it was strategically decided not to follow the
original Castro Commie cover-story, and go with the lone-nut scenario, a
specific decision that precluded an assassin from the front and required the
altering of wounds at Bethesda and all other evidence of a second gunman,
including the Z-film.
It is from this attempt to disavow the existence of a shooter from the front,
that the other lies had to be created, including the Lone-Nut lie to replace the
Cuban Commie Rat cover-story that was supposed to have led to an invasion of
Cuba, and the Z-film alteration that failed to uphold the first lie.
Horne nicely weaves the details of the crime and the cover-up with the overall
historical situation, as well as his personal quest for the truth, one that most
people can identify with, and follow, and reluctantly, but eventually coming to
agree with his acute and well reasoned analysis, and in the end, his terrifying
conclusions.
Volume IV, the first book to be released, contains two chapters - 13, "What
Really Happened at the Bethesda Morgue (And in Dealey Plaza?)" and the
nearly 200 page Chapter 14, "The Zapruder Film Mystery," which is
probably the most controversial, but also contains the convincer.
Besides offering documentary proof and corresponding witness testimony to
support this scenario, Horne also demonstrates conclusively that the Zapruder
film was tampered with, constituting clear obstruction of justice for tampering
with evidence. Unlike previous attempts to brand the Z-film a fake by
unexplained anomalies, Horne takes a different approach, and utilizing the
recollections of honorable and reputable CIA officials whose reputations cannot
be impeached, he demonstrates how the chain of possession was lost and the film
altered. While he doesn't know exactly who did it, Horne tells you when and
where it was done (KODAK’s Hawkeye Works, Rochester, New York) and how and why
they did it.
Because the chain-of-evidence is broken and the provenance of the body and the
Zapruder film are no longer certain, as Douglas Horne so conclusively
demonstrates, a new legal mandate kicks in, and the rules of the game change.
Just as Oliver Stone’s “JFK” forced Congress to pass the JFK Act, Doug
Horne’s book "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board" should
embarrass Congress into holding JFK Act Oversight Hearings, force the convening
of a Special Federal Grand Jury to investigate crimes related to the
assassination, and require a new and proper forensic autopsy of the victim and
our national security.
No fewer words could accomplish as much.
[ William E. Kelly, Jr. is co-founder of the Committee for an Open Archvies (COA)
and COPA – the Coalition on Political Assassinations. He can be reached at
bkjfk3@yahoo.com or at http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/ ]
Bill Kelly0
comments
Sunday,
November 15, 2009
Doug
Horne Interview with Dick Russell
Photo: Doug Horne - November, 2009
Dick Russell's Interview with Doug Horne
"Opening a new window through which the truth might emerge." - Dick
Russell
From: On the Trail of the Assassins - A Revealing Look at America’s Most
Infamous Unsolved Crime – by Dick Russell (Skyhoruse Publishing, 2008),
Chapter 41, (p. 363-389).
“Contained within our deposition transcripts and interview reports is
unequivocal evidence that there was a
– Douglas P. Horne
Former Chief Analyst for Military Records,
Assassination Records Review Board.
In my many years on the assassination trail, I had never been especially
interested in the questions raised by a number of researchers about the physical
evidence indicating that someone other than Oswald must have been involved.
I’d perused books like David Lifton’s Best Evidence, but always found the
subject a bit too esoteric (and perhaps a little too grisly) for my taste.
My attitude changed, in the course of preparing this book, when it was suggested
that I speak with Douglas Horne. He had been an integral part of the third, and
last, government body to take witness testimony about the assassination.
Established by President Clinton in the wake of Oliver Stone’s controversial
movie, JFK, the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) was chartered to
locate and declassify records still being kept secret by the CIA, FBI, and other
government agencies, and to make them publicly available in a new “JFK Records
Collection” in the National Archives. Although Congress did not want the ARRB
to reinvestigate or even draw conclusions about the assassination, the staff did
take depositions under oath from certain key individuals.
Analysis of the sworn testimony before the ARRB of ten people involved in the
autopsy, and others interviewed previously by the HSCA, have led Horne to the
inescapable conclusion that a high-level government cover-up was in place from
the very afternoon of the president’s death. We spoke for more than two hours,
in an interview tape-recorded with his permission over the phone. Horne’s
revelations proved so stunning that I came to believe they should end this book
– hopefully opening a new window through which the truth might finally emerge.
DICK RUSSELL: HOW DID YOU END UP GETTING ON THE REVIEW BOARD STAFF?
DOUG HORNE: I’d been with the Navy for twenty years, first as a surface
warfare officer on active duty with the Pacific Fleet for ten years – those
are the professionals who drive and manage our Navy’s surface ships – and
after that served the Navy for ten more years in a civil service capacity in
Hawaii.
I happened to be in
(I should point out here that the Board appointed by President Clinton consisted
of five VIPs who set matters of broad policy, but worked part-time and only
convened about 3 days every month. The staff of 25-28 people hired to support
the Board did the lion’s share of the work.).
The very next day, I submitted a letter to the staff’s executive director,
David Marwell, saying I’d like to apply for a job. Getting that job turned out
to be a very time-consuming process. Most of the people hired were living in the
local area and were able to do in-person interviews, so living in
There were four groups of analysts that comprised the majority of the Review
Board staff – teams that examined and worked to declassify military records,
CIA records, FBI records, and finally, records of the Secret Service and all the
remaining agencies. I was hired as a senior analyst on the military records
team. About a year-and-a-half later, after my boss quit, they kicked me upstairs
to take his job as chief analyst, or team leader for the military records team.
D.R.: HOW DID YOU THEN GET INVOLVED IN THE WHOLE MEDICAL RECORDS SIDE OF THINGS?
DOUG HORNE: The short answer is because the autopsy was performed by the Navy,
and the autopsy report was therefore a ‘military record’ that came under the
purview of my records team.
But that’s not the real answer. During the interview process, I learned that
Jeremy Gunn – at the time the staff’s head of research and analysis (and
destined to become its general counsel) – shared a common interest: a
fascination with all the medical evidence, and specifically the conflicts within
the medical evidence that seemed un-resolvable. Then, not long after I came
onboard, the Board granted permission to take the first two medical depositions:
sworn interviews of James J. Humes and “J” Thornton Boswell, the two Navy
pathologists who conducted the autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital. I became the
research assistant to Jeremy Gunn, and helped him prepare questions for all ten
medical evidence depositions related to the autopsy. I also prepared all the
exhibits and assisted Jeremy with them during the questioning of each witness.
DR: WHEN DID THE LIGHT FIRST GO ON THAT SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT WITH WHAT THESE
DOCTORS WERE TELLING YOU?
DOUG HORNE: It’s long been known that Dr. Humes, who was the chief pathologist
at the autopsy, prepared a typed statement two days after the assassination
saying that he’d burned his preliminary autopsy notes. He had repeated this
several times in the years since, each time claiming he’s thrown the notes
into his fireplace because they had on them the blood of the president, which he
deemed unseemly. Jeremy had reason to suspect that an early draft of the autopsy
report had also been destroyed, based upon an analysis of inconsistencies
between Dr. Humes’ previous testimony about when he wrote the draft, and
existing records documenting its transmission to higher authority. Humes had
never admitted this before but, under persistent questioning by Jeremy in
February 1996, he finally did so.
Jeremy and I were left with the conclusion at the end of the Humes deposition
that he was a great liar. The question was, what was he lying about? There were
so many times when he would try to deflect our questions with either arrogance
or bluff, and other times he would try to play dumb, saying, “I’m an old man
and I can’t remember.” We didn’t find that convincing.
The second pathologist deposed was Dr. Boswell. After that, there was no doubt
about a major medical cover-up. (Boswell was much more forthcoming than Humes,
and inadvertently, I think, “gave the store away” on a number of occasions.)
It was my idea to use an anatomically correct model of the human skull, which I
was allowed to purchase and construct myself, in an attempt to get Boswell to
visually identify the true extent of the damage to President Kennedy’s skull.
(There shouldn’t have been any doubt this 33 years after the autopsy, but
unfortunately much eyewitness testimony disagreed with the autopsy photographs
and x-rays, and many of the autopsy photos seemed intended to conceal, rather
than to reveal the true nature of the head wounds.)
When Boswell had executed a famous two-dimensional sketch of the damage to the
skull on the reverse side of the autopsy body chart on November 22, 1963, he’d
indicated that a large area of bone was missing from the top of the
president’s skull, but his diagram left unanswered whether any bone was
missing from the back of the head. While he was still under oath, we asked
Boswell to define where there was bone missing, in three dimensions, on the
skull model with a marking pen. We wanted to know how much skull bone might have
been missing in the back of the head, if any. Of course, we didn’t tell him
that.
And when he soberly, but matter-of-factly marked the area of missing bone on the
skull model, it included the entire right rear of the skull behind the ear.
Jeremy and I almost fell out of our chairs. Now the autopsy photographs, which
show the back of the head to be intact, made no sense whatsoever. Boswell’s
annotated skull model implied that three must have been a shot that struck
Kennedy from the front, a bullet that exited from the back of his skull. (Exit
wounds are large and avulsive; entrance wounds are small and penetrating.)
So following these first two depositions, Jeremy and I knew that the medical
evidence was suddenly of tremendous interest. We then pursued the third
pathologist involved in the autopsy, Army pathologist Pierre Finck. Dr. Finck
used forgetfulness as his defense, which was not convincing, because in a social
context, he relayed to us vivid memories of what he was doing in 1938 and the
early 1950s – but when it came to the Kennedy assassination, he couldn’t
remember anything. Even when we showed him a document that he had signed or
written and say, “Do you remember this?” he’s respond, “I don’t
know.” We’d say, “Well, is this your signature?” And he’d respond,
“Well, it looks like my signature.” He was really slippery. But on a couple
of answers, Finck provided useful information.
DR: WHAT DID YOU ULTIMATELY CONCLUDE THESE THREE DOCTORS WERE UP TO?
DOUG HORNE: I am now convinced – and this insight didn’t really come to me
until 2006, when I did much of the writing on the manuscript I’m putting
together about all this – that Humes and Boswell, who were there at the morgue
with the president’s body well before the autopsy started and prior to Dr.
Finck’s arrival, were involved in a covert deception operation from the very
beginning. I believe they were told, for national security reasons, to destroy
or suppress any evidence that the president was shot from the front and to
record only evidence that he was shot form the rear – even if they had to
manufacture some of it.
I don’t think Finck was initially a part of the deception; the great irony is
that even though he was a board-certified forensic pathologist, I believe he was
a victim of the Humes-Boswell covert operation. At some point, after the fact, I
believe Finck suspected this, but felt he was in so deep by this time, and
realized he was so compromised, that he decided not to blow the whistle
officially; instead he left a few clues in the record over the years for
“CYA” purposes.
He was certainly timid and scared when we took his deposition; this was
surprising at the time, since the 1992 interview published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA) portrayed him as a “lion,” and a person
with a good memory and great certitude about the autopsy’s events and
conclusions. The main point I am trying to make here is that Humes and Boswell
had possession of the president’s body much earlier in the evening than the
official record indicates, and undertook activities to alter the evidentiary
record that they did not reveal to Finck.
DR: CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT FURTHER?
DOUG HORNE: Let me jump ahead to someone we interviewed later. We were led by a
researcher, Kathleen Cunningham, to an ex-Marine who was the sergeant in charge
of the security detail at the morgue. Kathleen made clear to us that he was not
someone who’d been part of the honor guard, with the white gloves and dress
uniforms, whom we read about in William Manchester’s book Death of a
President. The group this person supervised was not the joint service casket
team, but was a physical security detail from the Marine Barracks in
We had an ‘ace’ investigator on our staff, Dave Montague, who specialized in
locating people, and he and I interviewed this person. The sergeant’s name was
Roger Boyajian, pronounced ‘Boy-gen.’ He had retained an original onion-skin
carbon copy of the after-action report that he wrote on November 26, 1963, the
day after JFK’s funeral, and had shared its contents with Ms. Cunningham. A
document like this one that is contemporaneous is priceless, because it’s not
distorted by fading memories, by time – or by anyone’s subsequent theories
about the assassination.
So I interviewed Boyajian on the phone, and he then mailed me a photocopy of
that document, and authenticated it with a letter written above his signature.
He’d gotten to
Now, back in 1979, Dennis David – a Navy petty officer who was standing duty
that night at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center as “Chief of the Day”
for the medical school – had told author David Lifton that he’d gathered up
a group of sailors at the request of the Secret Service, gone to the back of the
hospital to the morgue loading dock, and carried in a cheap, lightweight,
unadorned gray (or dull silver-colored) aluminum shipping casket from a black
hearse. (Not the four-hundred-pound formal bronze viewing casket delivered to
After lobbying Jeremy Gunn for months, I was finally allowed to conduct an
unsworn interview of Dennis David on the phone. He told the whole story again to
me, and nothing had changed form what he’d originally told Lifton seventeen
years previously. He also said that he’d asked Dr Boswell early the next
morning, after the autopsy was over, if the president had been in the casket
that he and the sailors had helped carry in that night; he asked the question
because although the Secret Service had told him to carry it into the morgue, he
and his sailors were not permitted to stay in the morgue and see it opened.
Boswell confirmed to Dennis David that he and his sailors had indeed carried the
president’s body into the morgue that evening.
All of this corroborates the Lifton hypothesis that the heavy bronze casket that
arrived about 45 minutes later that evening at the morgue loading dock, and was
quietly carried into the hospital by the FBI and Secret Service at about 7:17
PM, had to be empty.
It also tells us that we should pay attention to the many people in the morgue
who remembered the president’s body arriving in a zippered body bag, because
those observations are consistent with, and in fact corroborate, the broken
chain-of-custody demonstrated by the impossibly early casket entry. Jermey and I
located one additional body bag witness. We interviewed one of the morticians,
John Van Hoesen, and he independently recalled – we didn’t ask him – that
the president’s body was in a black zippered pouch. He joins several other,
previously known body-bag witnesses: Paul O’Conner, Floyd Riebe, Jerrol
Custer, and Captain John Stover. This is extremely significant because when the
president’s body left
Here’s what this all means: Every time we have a witness who says they saw the
president removed from a body-bag, or arrive in a shipping casket, they are in
audience one, the early arrival audience that was present during, or immediately
after, the ‘early’ 6:35 PM arrival of the President’ body documented by
Sergeant Boyajian’s report.
Every time a witness says the president’s body arrived wrapped only in sheets,
in an expensive bronze casket, they are in audience two, which witnessed JFK
reintroduced into the morgue at 8:00 PM by the joint service casket team. I know
this sounds strange, but none of those people were making these stories up; they
are all credible witnesses who simply saw different events at different times
that evening.
The Secret Service, specifically Roy Kellerman, who had been the agent in charge
of the Texas trip, was stage-managing these shenanigans as best he could, and
attempting to keep the two audiences apart – with the exception of Humes,
Boswell, and their Navy superiors, who clearly all knew what was afoot. There
was a “shell game” going on with the president’s body between its initial
arrival at 6:35 PM and the commencement of the official “autopsy-of-record”
at 8:15 PM, when the y-incision was made in the chest. A preliminary medical
examination and other manipulations – what Lifton had speculatively called the
pre-autopsy autopsy – began about an hour-and-a-half before the official one.
Afterwards, the president’s body was then reintroduced into the bronze casket
wrapped in the sheets that it had left Dallas in, was placed in a light gray
Navy ambulance (for there was more than one in use that night), and was allowed
to be ‘found’ by the joint service casket team. (The casket team, or honor
guard, had admittedly lost track of the Dallas casket after its arrival at
Bethesda, tearing off in chase of an apparent ‘decoy’ and getting lost in
the darkness, on the unfamiliar grounds of the Navy medical complex). After
finding the Dallas casket in front of the hospital in a light gray ambulance, it
was formally and very publicly taken into the morgue by them at 8:00 PM – by
these military men from all of the different armed services in their dress
uniforms and white gloves – as recorded in the after-action report of the
Military District of Washington.
It really happened that way. The evidence for three separate casket entries into
the morgue (at 6:35 the aluminum shipping casket brought in by the Navy sailors,
at 7:17 the bronze casket’s surreptitious entry by the FBI and Secret Service,
and at 8:00 PM the official “ceremony” or delivery of the bronze casket by
the military honor guard) is overwhelming and unimpeachable, and the honest
researcher cannot simply be in denial about these events if he takes a
scientific, empirical approach to the evidence.
So why was this necessary? Why the shell game?
Because the chain-of-custody of the body has been broken, and it had arrived in
the wrong casket and in the wrong wrapping, in order that a clandestine
examination (prior to the autopsy proper) and clandestine manipulations
(unbeknownst to most autopsy witnesses) could be performed. This covert
operation had to be successful completed, and then covered up, if the country
was to buy the simplistic story of the assassination that the government was
selling, and so to effectuate the cover-up, the president’s body had to be
seen publicly arriving at the morgue in the Dallas casket and the Dallas
wrappings.
Hence the 8:00 PM casket entry, performed by the joint service casket team –
whose job it was to stay with the body and carry the casket – and dutifully
record in the after-action report written by the Army. The size of audience
number one, which witnessed the early entry and/or the first casket opening, was
small and it was composed of either conspirators (Humes, Boswell, and their
superiors), or very low level enlisted people who were muzzled after the fact by
threat of court martial.
The varying casket and ambulance descriptions, and the serious timeline
discrepancies about when the two caskets entered the morgue, prove there was a
serious break in the chain-of-custody of the president’s body, which in any
medico legal setting (such as a trial or inquest) would invalidate most, if not
all, of the autopsy results.
I am absolutely convinced that Humes and Boswell were engaged in a deception
that centered around getting the body early and performing certain manipulations
on it. The two FBI agents on the scene – O’Neill and Sibert, wrote that they
were initially barred from entering the morgue, and it is apparent that hence
they recorded in their report dated November 26 that what they sincerely
believed to be the first autopsy incision – the Y incision in the chest –
happened at 8:15 PM. Dr. Finck didn’t arrive until about 8:30 at night (after
the brain, lungs, and heart had been removed) and was also unaware of the Navy
manipulations performed on the body between the 6:35 PM arrival of the shipping
casket, and the 8:00 PM reintroduction of the body to the morgue in the bronze
Dallas casket.
D.R.: WHAT SPECIFIC MANIPULATIONS ARE YOU REFERING TO?
DOUG HORNE: Well, here we go – this is the heart of my book, and it is where I
differ significantly with the scenario laid out by David Lifton in best
Evidence. Lifton believed at the time his book was published that the reason the
Dallas wound descriptions by the treatment physicians at Parkland hospital (of a
localized exit wound in the back of the head and an entrance wound in the throat
below the Adam’s apple) are so different from the Bethesda wound descriptions
( of a much larger head wound encompassing additional, and massive damage to the
top and the right side of the head, and of an exit wound in the throat and an
entry wound in the high shoulder not seen in Dallas) is because the wounds on
the body were tampered with – altered – while the body was in transit
between Parkland hospital and the Bethesda complex in Maryland. He wrote in his
book that he alteration of the wounds on the body – post-mortem surgery –
was performed not only to remove bullets, but to reverse the apparent
trajectories first noted in the throat wound and the head wound at Parkland
hospital, and thus ‘fool’ the autopsy pathologists into believing that all
of the shots came from behind, rather than from in front. Lifton’s view in his
1981 book was that the body of the president, the road map of the shooting, was
altered to deceive the pathologists. He posited that the back of the head was
also reconstructed prior to arrival at Bethesda and that its condition not only
fooled the Navy pathologists, but also fooled the camera, resulting in the
autopsy photos we have today of an intact back of the head.
I have reinterpreted the same body of evidence he examined, and married that
body of evidence with certain key HSCA interviews (which are now open-in-full
and available to the public), and new findings gleaned from the ARRB interviews
and depositions, and have concluded that while the throat wound may possibly
have been tampered with in transit, that it was the Navy pathologists, Drs.
Humes and Boswell, and possibly one of their superiors, who performed the
post-mortem surgery that so drastically altered the head wound – enlarging it
to four or five times its original size in an attempt to make it appear more or
less consistent with a large exit wound caused by a shot fired from behind.
In altering the head wound they not only dramatically expanded the size of the
rather localized exit wound in the rear of the head seen in Dallas, to encompass
the top of the skull and part of the right side, but also surgically removed
from the body evidence of an entry wound in the right front of the head.
In doing so, they obliterated forensic evidence of a shot fired from the
‘grassy knoll.’
Numerous small bullet fragments – many more than the two mentioned in the
record today – were removed from the brain, and disposed of, never to be seen
again.
I also conclude, from a key HSCA staff interview report of an autopsy
technician, that they removed a large bullet fragment from the president’s
back – a significant portion of a bullet found lodged between two of his ribs.
The evidence for these claims will be presented in great detail in my
forthcoming book.
Furthermore, whereas Lifton believed that the autopsy photos we have today of an
intact back of the head were taken immediately after the body’s arrival, I am
now of the belief that the partial cranial reconstruction seen in these images
was performed after the conclusion of the autopsy and that the deceptive
photographic record of the back of the head that is in the archives today was
photographed after midnight, after the conclusion of the autopsy, by a different
photographer from the one who photographed the autopsy proper.
This is how we end up with “autopsy” photographs showing the back of the
head intact, which are in stark disagreement with both the
Most witnesses from the autopsy recall a very large area of missing bone at the
back of the head – confirmed fro us by the skull diagram Dr. Boswell drew in
three dimensions on a model skull. Because this damage does not appear in the
autopsy photographs on file in the National Archives, most researchers have
believed for many years that the discrepancy is explained by photographic
forgery, “special effects” to make the unsworn ARRB medical witness
interviews conducted by Jeremy and me, I no longer believe that photographic
forgery is an explanation for the perplexing back of the head images.
The alternative possibilities – namely, major manipulation of loose and
previously reflected scalp from elsewhere on the head, or partial reconstruction
of the head by the morticians, a the direction of the pathologists – seem to
be a much more likely explanation for these anomalous photos. To be sure, the
photos are a lie – for they do create the false impression that the back of
the head was intact when the body arrived from
I was steered toward this opinion by the testimony of the two FBI agents, Sibert
and O’Neill. We would never have deposed them if I hadn’t insisted on it and
persevered. This was about two years into our medical effort, and Jeremy was
beginning to doubt the value of the exercise, because the memories were so old
and many witnesses’ stories kept changing over time. I mean, I was confused,
too, but I knew these differing recollections were important. My attitude was,
‘once these guys are dead, they can’t be interviewed by anybody.’ So
Jeremy finally gave the okay to make initial contact with the two FBI agents who
had been present at the autopsy. And, to my pleasant surprise, the agents were
not only willing to be deposed, they couldn’t wait. They were still offended
by not having been deposed by either the
Both men found the images of the intact back of the head troubling, and
inconsistent with the posterior head wound they vividly remembered. O’Neill
opined under oath that the images appeared “doctored,” by which he meant
that the head had been put back together by the doctors. Sibert testified that
the head looked “reconstructed” – he actually used that word!
D.R.: CAN YOU EXPAND UPON WHY YOU ARE SO CERTAIN THE BACK OF THE HEAD IMAGES ARE
NOT PHOTOGRAPHIC FORGERIES?
DOUG HORNE: I am virtually certain they are not photographic forgeries because
I’ve looked at them in extremely close detail, and by this I mean I have
studied the so-called camera-original color positive transparencies for hours at
a time in Rochester, after they were magnified by enhancing software in the
Kodak lab where we took them for digital preservation. We didn’t see any matte
lines, or any discontinuities in the hair. We could see individual pores in the
skin in between the strands of hair, and all of the grain and resolution seemed
consistent across the board in the areas were looking at.
However, I’m convinced that, while not “special effects” forgeries, they
are fraudulent and dishonest. They official Navy photographer, John Stringer,
and his assistant Floyd Riebe, left the morgue after the conclusion of the
autopsy at about 11:45 PM or midnight. Then a second photographer – Robert
Knudsen, who was not a trained medical photographer, but a Navy chief
photographer’s mate who was a social photographer at the White House – was
employed to take the pictures of the head after its reconstruction.
And these photographs were later used to misrepresent the condition of the
president’s head when the body arrived at
Shortly after the assassination, on two separate occasions, Knudsen showed
another government photographer, Joe O’Donnell, two sets of photographs, one
with the back of the head intact (which must have been taken by himself, after
midnight, following partial reconstruction of the cranium). So I believe Knudsen
knew what hew as doing and what the intent was, but I do not believe he thought
he was doing it for sinister reasons. His family described him to us as a very
patriotic American who loved President Kennedy, so I conclude that he, too, like
Humes and Boswell, was no doubt given a national security cover story to explain
why he was engaged in subterfuge.
D.R.: YOU HAVE BEEN QUOTED AS COMING TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THE AUTOPSY REPORT
IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES IS NOT THE ORIGINAL VERSION. CAN YOU COMMENT ON THAT?
DOUG HORNE: I’m positive the autopsy report in evidence today,
First, Humes and Boswell met about mid-day on Saturday, November 23 (the day
after the autopsy) and reviewed a draft of the autopsy report. It is both
interesting, and significant, I think, that Dr. Finck was not present. The draft
was also reviewed that day by the C.O. of the Naval hospital, Captain Robert
Canada. Humes then destroyed both his own autopsy notes, and that first draft,
in the fireplace of his home early in the morning of Sunday, November 24. He may
have also destroyed the notes of Dr. Finck at that same time. (David Lifton led
the ARRB to a very credible witness who signed an affidavit stating that he
overheard Finck complaining in 1963 that his notes had disappeared the night of
the autopsy, and that he had to reconstruct them from memory afterwards.)
So the first autopsy report – a draft that Finck did not see but which was
reviewed by Humes, Boswell, and Captain
We also know that the three pathologists met, reviewed, and signed an autopsy
report during the daylight hours on Sunday, November 24. But I do not believe
the autopsy report signed November 24 – the second version – is the one in
the archives today. I say this because Warren Commission staff director J. Lee
Rankin is quoted in an executive session transcript from late in January 1964 as
saying that the autopsy [report] sows a bullet fragment (by implication, from
the headshot) came out the front of President Kennedy’s neck – a conclusion
that is most definitely not in the autopsy report in the record today. So where
is this second version of the autopsy report?
Apparently, the Kennedy family got a hold of it in 1965 and it has never been
seen since. The evidence for this is a receipt prepared by Vice Admiral Burkley,
the president’s military physician, on April 26, 1965 which transfers the
original autopsy report and seven copies from the Secret Service to Evelyn
Lincoln, in compliance with Senator Robert Kennedy’s orders to transfer all of
the autopsy materials to his custody. So far, so good, but wait! Incredibly,
there is a second receipt transferring shat is described as the ‘original’
autopsy report, only this time it is transferred from the Secret Service to the
national archives on October 3, 1967. How could an original document be
transferred from the Secret Service to Evelyn Lincoln, and then a second time
from the Secret Service to someone else? This can only happen if there are two
documents, two autopsy reports.
The first autopsy report transferred, the one passed to the Kennedy family in
April, 1965, has disappeared along with various tissue samples and a brain
specimen; it is almost certainly the version J. Lee Rankin refers to in the then
– Top Secret Warren Commission executive session transcript. The second signed
version of the autopsy report transferred by the Secret Service, the one they
transmitted to the archives in October 1967, is the item in evidence today;
therefore, counting the draft that Humes burned on November 24 in his fireplace,
it is (at least) the third version of the autopsy report, overall.
Instead of describing a fragment of the head shot exiting the front of the neck,
the report in the archives instead describes a bullet – what came to be known
later as the so-called ‘magic bullet’ – transiting the body, from the rear
to the front, entering high in the shoulder and exiting the front of the neck
below the Adam’s apple. The autopsy report in the archives today is an undated
document. Only the transmission letter is dated November 24, and if the report
was rewritten as the receipt trail shows it must have been, then the new report
could have been substituted in the official record without changing the
transmission letter, giving the false impression that it was prepared on
November 24.
All we know for sure is that the version in evidence today, CE# 387, was shown
to Parkland hospital doctors in
D. R.: IN NOVEMBER 1998 THERE WERE TWO NEWSPAPER STORIES, ONE PUT OUT BY THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS, AND THE OTHER BY THE WASHINGTON POST, WHICH QUOTED YOUR ARRB
RESEARCH MEMO THAT CONCLUDED THERE WERE TWO SEPARATE BRAIN EXAMINATIONS AFTER
THE AUTOPSY ONTEH BODY, INSTEAD OF ONY ONE, AS THERE NORMALLY SHOULD BE. THAT
SOUNDS INCREDIBLE. HOW DID YOU ARRIVE AT THAT CONCLUSION?
DOUG HORNE: That insight, or rather epiphany, came to me fairly early in our
investigation, in May 1996, right before the Finck deposition. Jeremy and I were
working on the weekend to get ready for it. He asked me to do a study of all
events surrounding the brain exam. (In cases of death due to head trauma, the
brain is always examined separately after it has been removed from the body and
has been fixed to some extent in formaldehyde).
I sat down and pulled out every piece of testimony and every document I could
find. After I finished, I walked into his office and said, “Jeremy, if you
just do a time-line analysis, it’s clear there were two events. This is really
big, and it’s also frustrating because we’ve already deposed Humes and
Boswell.”
He looked at me and said, “I also think there were two brain exams.” I was
stunned, and asked how he’d come to the same conclusion. “By reading the
descriptions of the damage,” he said, “and comparing those descriptions to
the pattern of damage evident in the brain photographs in the archives. In my
opinion, they don’t match.”
So when we deposed Finck a few days later, we focused in on this one subject,
and this is where we got our one big answer from him. The examination of the
president’s brain clearly took place on November 25, 1963, based upon the
consistent testimony of Dr. Boswell and autopsy photographer John Stringer over
the years, furthermore, a lab technician at Bethesda, Leland Benson, told the
HSCA that he processed brain tissue on Monday, November 25, on the dame date
identified independently by both Boswell and Stringer as the date of the brain
exam. (Humes’ answers on this were all over the map, and veried, when he was
pressed on the subject.) Finck was known to have been at a brain exam, and wrote
in a 1965 report to his boss that he was first contacted about a brain exam by
Humes on November 29. When we asked Finck at his ARRB deposition whether the
exam he attended had transpired two or three days after the autopsy, or about a
week later, he was emphatic in his belief that it occurred at least a week after
the autopsy, and as I recall it was just about the only answer he was adamant
about. This was consistent with the memorandum he’d written to Brigadier
General J. M. Blumberg, his military superior, in February 1965.
We called the Navy photographer, John Stringer, to testify. To our amazement, he
disowned the brain photographs in the Archives, for three reasons. First, they
were taken on a type of film that he did not use. They also depicted
“inferior” views of the underside of the brain that he was certain he did
not shoot. And, finally, the photographs of several individual sections of brain
tissue that he did photograph – brain tissue that he insisted had been
serially sectioned – were not present.
FBI agent O’Neill also swore to us that the brain photos in the Archives could
not possibly be of the president’s brain, because there was too much tissue
present. O’Neill remembered clearly that more than half of President
Kennedy’s brain was missing when he saw it at the autopsy, following its
removal from the cranium. Both O’Niell and Tom Robinson, one of the
morticians, told us that they recalled that a large portion of the rear of the
president’s brain was missing, when they saw it outside the body at the morgue
during the autopsy. And each man unequivocally demonstrated the location of the
absent brain tissue in my presence, by dramatically placing his right hand on
the back of the right side of his own head, behind the right ear. By contrast,
in the brain depicted in the archives photographs, the right cerebellum is
completely intact. Both John Stringer and many of the Dallas treating physicians
recalled severe damage to the cerebellum, the structure low in the rear of the
human brain.
There is absolutely no doubt that the second brain exam – on a brain not
belonging to John F. Kennedy – occurred sometime between November 29 (when
Humes contacted Finck) and December 2, because a Navy chief hospital corpsman
named Chester Boyers told the HSCA that he prepared brain tissue slides on
December 2. It’s also my firm belief that Dr. Finck – who had arrived late
at the autopsy on November 22 – was used as a “dupe” so that he could
“authenticate” the photographs of the second brain specimen, in the event
that was ever required. I think Finck knew something was wrong by this time,
because he engaged in very clever “CYA” by writing, in his report to
Brigadier General Blumberg in February 1965, that the brain he subsequently
examined looked different than it had looked at the autopsy – although he
benignly attributed the change in its appearance in his written report to an
arcane “fixation artifact.”
Summarizing, the photographs of President Kennedy’s brain, exposed by John
Stringer on November 25, were never introduced into the official record because
they showed a pattern of damage – missing tissue from the rear of the brain
– consistent with a fatal shot form the front, and that evidence had to be
suppressed. The photographs of a second brain, taken sometime between November
29 – December 2, 1963 by an unknown Navy photographer, were introduced into
the official record because the brain employed in that exercise exhibited a
pattern of damage – to the top-right-side of the brain – generally
consistent with a shot from above and behind.
So where did that brain come from? I can only remind you that Bethesda was a
teaching facility with a medical school alongside the treatment hospital, and
specimens would have been on hand at the medical school for teaching purposes;
furthermore, there were regular “brain cuttings” about once per week in the
D.C. area that were attended by both Navy personnel at Bethesda and Army
personnel stationed at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, or AFIP. So
fixed brains would have been available, one way or another.
An accomplished forensic pathologist who viewed the brain photos in the archives
at the request of the ARRB told us in 1996 that the brain in these photographs,
which appears very gray in the color transparencies, was “very well fixed,”
and that it had been in a formalin solution for at least 2 weeks before being
photographed, since it showed no traces whatsoever of pink coloration. That
ensures it cannot possibly be President Kennedy’s brain, which was examined
only 3 days after his death.
Finally, the supplementary autopsy report indicates that the brain depicted in
the photographs in the archives weighted 1,500 grams when weighted at the brain
exam, which exceeds the weight of an average, normal male brain. This is
completely incompatible with a brain that was missing over half its tissue when
observed at the autopsy by FBI agent O’Neill, or a brain that was missing most
of the right occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex and much of the right
cerebellum, as observed by Dr. McClennand at Parkland hospital.
A short discussion on the autopsy x-rays of the skull is imperative here. I
believe that independent researcher David Mantik, who is both an MD (a radiation
oncologist) and who is also a Ph.D. in physics, has conclusively proven, with
his exhaustive optical density measurements of the x-ray materials in the
archives, that the three head x-rays in the autopsy collection are not originals
but are forged complete copy films that are simply modifications of the
authentic skull x-rays.
My own hypothesis and reinterpretation of the medical evidence necessitates that
the original x-rays were exposed only after Humes and Boswell had completed
their clandestine post-mortem surgery on the skull to remove bullet fragments
form the brain and enlarge the head wound. The two lateral skull x-rays, Mantik
has demonstrated, had a very dense optical patch superimposed on the copy films
over the occipital-parietal area behind the ear to mask the blow-out or exit
wound seen in Dallas in the back of the head. Mantik also claims that the single
anterior-posterior (or “A-P”) skull x-ray has had a 6.5-millimeter wide
artifact, which is intended to represent a bullet fragment – a ‘cross
section’ of the ‘assassin’s bullet’ – imposed on the copy film as a
special effect, to implicate the Oswald rife as the supposed murder weapon.
To reiterate, the skull depicted in each of the three head x-rays is that of JFK,
but artifacts were added to the images during the copying process – through a
relatively simple procedure involving applying additional light to specific
areas on each film while other areas were masked off – which can now be easily
detected using new technology, optical densitometry. I will be offering quite
detailed explanation of Mantik’s findings in my forthcoming book.
In short: the autopsy photos are not altered photographically (and yet because
of the manipulation of the scalp after completion of the autopsy, some of them
present false and deceptive images of the head wounds). Many authentic autopsy
images that are known to have been exposed at the autopsy are not in the
collection today – they are missing and presumed destroyed. But Mantik’s
work has persuaded me that the three skull x-rays are forgeries – altered copy
films created from the original skull x-rays. Both sets of images together –
the autopsy photographs and x-rays – present a distorted and intentionally
dishonest depiction of how the primacy (in 1963, anyway if not today) – of
photographs and image technology in our culture, and the assumption in those
years that they always reflected ‘reality,’ these fraudulent collections
have been used to fool three official investigations (the Clark Panel, the
Rockefeller Commission, and the HSCA forensic pathology panel), and continue to
present an enduring lie about what happened to President Kennedy in 1963.
D.R.: I UNDERSTAND YOU ALSO DID SOME WORK IN ANALYZING THE ZAPRUDER FILM. DID
THAT TEND TO CONFIRM ANY OF THIS?
DOUG HORNE: We asked Roland Zavada of Kodak, a retired film chemist and a
self-taught home movie expert, to do a major authenticity study of the Zapruder
film, and he did a very professional job and put a lot of work into it. My own
conclusions today about the Zapruder film are in opposition to Zavada’s; he
thinks it is authentic and I do not.
My conclusion is the ‘minority position’ within the research community, and
is very controversial, and a lot of people think I’m wrong. But I just don’t
think his study is conclusive. All of the external indicators on the film are
indeed consistent with authenticity – like the date code of when the film came
out of the factory, the type of film used, and the processing markings from the
lab in Dallas. Well, of course they are. Any conspirator who’s going to change
a movie and screw up that kind of stuff isn’t worth two cents. But I don’t
think that’s the end of the story, because we uncovered two crucial witnesses
from a CIA photo lab who cast serious doubt on the provenance of the film in the
archives today.
Here’s how it came about. The Review Board held a public hearing on the
Zapruder film, which was televised by C-Span. One of the people watching
happened to be one of the two people who actually magnified individual frames
from the Zapruder film the weekend of the assassination and made prints for
three briefing boards intended for use in briefing high officials in the
government The individual who watched the Z-film hearing on C-Span was named
Morgan Bennett Hunter, and his supervisor in 1963 was Homer McMahon: both were
the CIA employees at NPIC, the National Photo Interpretation Center.
Homer McMahon was then head of the still photography color lab at NPIC, and Ben
Hunter was his assistant. After Hunter contacted us and told us he had a story
to tell us about the Z-film, we asked the CIA to proved clearance for the two
men to speak with us and we then interviewed them multiple times.
The story that Homer and his assistant Ben told us was that, on the weekend of
the assassination, they had a film brought to them by the Secret Service. The
agent said his name was Bill Smith, which I firmly believe is a pseudonym
because we ascertained from a roster of employees that the Secret Service had no
special agent named ‘Bill Smith’ onboard in 1963.
The Z-film was brought to them at NPIC on either Saturday night or Sunday night
after the assassination, because they were positive it was before the
president’s funeral, which was on Monday. They said that Bill Smith brought
what he represented to them as being the original Zapruder film. He did not come
from Dallas. He came from Rochester, New York, where he said the film had been
developed. And he used a code word for a classified film laboratory that the CIA
had paid Kodak to set up and run in Rochester, their headquarters and main
industrial facility.
The implications of this are off-scale. This assertion by the Secret Service to
two CIA film professionals that the original Z-film was developed in Rochester
at a secret CIA-sponsored facility, instead of in Dallas, runs contrary to the
paper trail that had traditionally been accepted as ground truth since 1967. We
therefore now have an almost-too-good paper trail of typed and signed affidavits
prepared by Abraham Zapruder – signed by all the processing personnel involved
with the film on the day of the assassination – which can no longer guarantee
the authenticity of the film in the archives.
Let me explain what I mean by that. The processing affidavits which attempt to
establish the film’s chain-of-custody are all dated November 22, the day of
the assassination, when Zapruder was running around helter-skelter trying to get
his film developed. He went first to a TV station and then some other place,
where he was told that since the film’s chemistry was proprietary, it had to
go to a Kodak lab to be developed. So, yes, these affidavits still do mean that
the Kodak lab in Dallas developed the original film, they establish that Mr.
Zapruder exposed three contact prints at the Jamieson film lab in Dallas; and
they further establish that he then returned to the Kodak processing plant where
the three copies were immediately developed. All of these things happened on
November 22 – I don’t doubt that for one minute.
But I think the affidavits recording these events were probably really executed
on Monday, November 25, and back-dated to the 22. (No one I am aware of saw
Abraham Zapruder running around Dallas on November 22 with a manual typewriter
under his arm.)
On Saturday, Zapruder signed a contract with Life Magazine for $50,000 for print
rights only, permitting them to keep the materials for only one week. Then, on
Monday, a new contract was signed for print and motion picture rights, and Life
was to keep the materials forever. Zapruder got a lot more money - $150,000
total now, instead of $50,000 – when he renegotiated his deal on Monday. In
support of his new contract, I believe he then had to prove the provenance of
the film, so he created the appropriate paper trail in the form of the
back-dated affidavits.
At the same time this was going on, you have the two men in the NPIC lab being
told over that weekend that the original film came from Rochester. I’ll tell
you why that’s important. If Kodak lab technicians in Dallas have developed
the original film on the day of the assassination, which they surely did, you
can’t take them another, altered and reconstructed film two days later and ask
them to develop it again.
If someone had reconstructed a new, altered Zapruder film on an optical printer
in a sophisticated lab, they could not blow their cover by taking the new film
back to the same developing lab. So, if someone was involved in creating an
altered film, they’d have to develop it at some other Kodak facility. And you
didn’t have many choices. One choice was the Kodak plant in Chicago, and
another was the main plant in Rochester, the choice for developing would be
obvious.
If the authentic, original film was really shot in slow motion, at 48 frames per
second, instead of using the normal speed setting on the camera of 16 fps, and
you wanted to remove certain events such as the car stop on Elm Street that over
50 Dealey Plaza eyewitnesses testified to, you would need to remove several
frames, and then recreate a film that runs at normal speed, and that is much
shorter than the original in terms of total number of frames. Furthermore, if
you wanted to eliminate evidence of shots from the front you would need to black
out the exit wound in the back of the head in some frames, and even remove some
frames showing exit debris in mid-air; and if you wanted the new Z-film to
roughly correspond with the pattern damage in the autopsy photos, you would need
to paint on large wounds at the top and the right side of the head in the
appropriate frames. The image alteration in these frames would be done using the
techniques called aerial imaging at a facility that possessed a sophisticated
optical printer.
I know I’m speculating – I don’t know what equipment was in that Rochester
photo lab – but this new chain-of-custody for what was represented by the
Secret Service to be the original Z-film is very suspicious. All I’m saying is
that anyone who believes that the so-called original film in the archives today
may be an altered, reconstructed product, and not the true original mentioned in
the Zapruder affidavit trail, has valid grounds to be suspicious of it. There
are sound reasons, based upon the McMahon/Hunter interviews, to support this
possibility.
Those who would create a false legend of the shooting by culling the autopsy
photo collection and inserting manipulated photos that told a false story of the
wounds and the shooting, would of necessity also have to either destroy, or
alter, any motion picture evidence of the assassination that was inconsistent
with the officially promulgated version of the assassination.
And if an original and seven copies of an autopsy report can be successfully
switched out and substituted, then so can an original and three copies of a
motion picture film.
Perhaps a “film switch” is even why Zapruder was allowed to renegotiate his
contract with Life Magazine, perhaps that additional $150,000 (which was
pro-rated over a six year period) bought his silence and future cooperation.
After all, he did see the true original in the Kodak lab the day of the
assassination, and did screen it for others (such as Dan Rather) on Saturday,
November 23. (Perhaps this is why Dan Rather’s contemporaneous account of what
he saw in the film that weekend, broadcast on the radio, differs from what we
see in the film in the archives today!). It would have been imperative to
reliably obtain Zapruder’s silence over the weekend. This scenario would also
explain the accounts we have all heard over the years of others either seeing or
possessing different versions of the Zapruder film from the one we know today,
if the true original and the three true first-generation copies were not all
immediately destroyed.
The reason so many people resist this idea is because the Zapruder film has long
been used as a time-clock of the assassination, and considered to be the one
thing we can count on in the evidence trail. Based upon the McMahon/Hunter
interviews, that approach could now be meaningless.
When I study the film on DVD, and concentrate on the still frames associated
with the head shot, and see the enormous head wound on the top of the head and
the right side that looks ‘kind of like’ the autopsy photos but not exactly
the same, and which seems to float and jump around a bit on the skull as you
view the film, I wonder if the scenario I have laid out above could be true.
D.R.: WHAT YOU’RE IMPLYING, OF COURSE, IS THAT HIGH-LEVEL OFFICIALS WITHIN THE
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT KNEW, RIGHT FROM THE FRONT, THAT THERE WAS ANOTHER GUNMAN
BESIDES OSWALD.
DOUG HORNE: ‘Shots from multiple directions’ is how I would put it. Because
of the voice stress analysis work of George O’Toole in the mid-1970s,
suggesting that Oswald was not lying when he said he was just a patsy and that
he did not shoot anyone, I am not yet convinced that Oswald shot anyone in
Dealey Plaza. He was certainly involved in something – up to his neck – and
was probably being ‘run’ by intelligence operatives, and perhaps even
engaging in a charade by posing as a leftist Castro sympathizer, but I am not
convinced that he shot anyone himself. His shooting skills were below average by
the time he was discharged from the Marine Corps, and the murder weapon of
record – the war surplus carbine he ordered under an alias – was a terrible
weapon in general, and the one he owned was in particularly bad condition, as
the FBI later revealed.
D.R.: WHAT DOES THIS INDICATE TO YOU ABOUT THE FORCES BEHIND THE ASSASSINATION?
DOUG HORNE: Well, you can go two ways. If you accept a government cover-up as a
given, then it’s either a benigh one or a sinster one. If it’s benign, then
the people engineering the cover-up weren’t part of the murder plot, but they
think that for one reason or another, they can’t tell the truth – the truth
might endanger the country because it might trigger World War Three if it
appears, rightly or wrongly, that there was foreign involvement in the
assassination.
Or, there might be a real fear that he public would lose faith in our
institutions, if we have to admit to our citizenry that ‘multiple people shot
the president and we don’t know who they are and we can’t catch them.’
The other alternative, the sinister one, posits that the people performing the
cover-up actions – lets say the actors on the ground, Humes and Boswell and
the photographers involved – believe that they are doing a benign cover-up for
national security reasons. But the people giving them their orders know better,
and are part of the assassination plot.
I believe that the latter scenario detailed above is the most likely one. I’m
sure as I can be that Humes went to his grave thinking that, ‘Yes, I lied and
I obstructed justice, but I did it for the good of national security, and I’m
not going to tell anybody because to do so would open the biggest can of worms
in history and turn me into a target, so I did my duty and I’m a patriot and
that’s the way it is.’ James J. Humes often acted and spoke over the years
as if he was harboring some great secrets about the assassination that no one
else was smart enough to figure out, and that he was not going to tell any of us
what those secrets were because none of us had a need to know – that only he
(and “J” Thorton Boswell) did.
D. R.: ARE THERE RECORDS THAT EXIST ANYWHERE OF WHO COULD HAVE CONTACTED DRS.
HUMES AND BOSWELL AT BETHESDA AND TOLD THEM TO DO THIS?
DOUG HORNE: Yeah, several records, and they’ve been around a long time. The
FBI agents, Sibert and O’Neill, made a list of who was present at the autopsy,
at least the people who chose to voluntarily write down their names.
One of those is the surgeon general of the Navy, Vice Admiral Edward Kenney, the
head of the Medical Corps. During the Clay Shaw trial in 1969, Finck revealed
that Kenney had told everybody, “you will not discuss these events with
anyone.” (Finck also testified at the Shaw trial that an unnamed Army general
was in charge of the events in the morgue.)
So, in my view, the candidates for directing sinister activities, by name, are
Admiral Kinney and Admiral Calvin Galloway, the head of Bethesda NNMC, as well
as Captain John Stover, who was the head of the medical school and forced the
Navy’s autopsy participants to sign those “letters of silence” after the
autopsy which were so onerous, and which blatantly and openly threatened the
Navy personnel with court martial if they were to discuss the events of the
autopsy with anyone.
The people we deposed who testified about Stover’s attitude and demeanor, like
the x-ray technicians and the photographer Stringer, were clearly still scared
of this man over thirty years later.
And last, but not least, Rear Admiral George Burkley, the president’s military
physician, tried all night long to limit the scope of the autopsy, and
furthermore, appears to have been in charge of coordinating the development of
all post-mortem photography. Burkley is almost certainly the person who was
responsible for making the many bone fragments from the skull disappear: the 3
fragments brought into the morgue late in the autopsy by the Secret Service, and
the Harper fragment and Burros fragment, from Dallas.
I don’t see any of these people as the masterminds of an assassination plot,
but I believe some of them were knowing participants at the mid-level of the
conspiracy, and others had probably been given a national security cover story
to justify the cover-up they were involved in.
D.R.: IT’S STRANGE, IN ITS FINAL REPORT, THE HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON
ASSASSINATIONS CLAIMED THAT NONE OF THE TWENTY-SIX PEOPLE PRESENT AT THE AUTOPSY
HAD DIFFERING ACCOUNTS FROM THE GENERAL DEPICTIONS OF THE WOUNDS SEEN IN THE
PHOTOGRAPHS AND X-RAYS.
DOUG HORNE: That statement in Volume 7 is a big lie. That was a major
interpretive find by Dr. Gary Aguilar immediately following the release in 1993
of the HSCA’s own interview reports and depositions, and he’s ‘spot-on’
with his criticism. The House Select Committee’s own medical witness interview
reports, and its transcript of the deposition of Dr. John Ebersole, the autopsy
radiologist, reveal this statement to be untrue, but no one knew this until
these reports were released in 1993 by the JFK Act.
Robert Blakey suppressed these reports by sealing them for 50 years, and we
still would not know about this ‘big lie’ even today, if it had not been for
Oliver Stone’s movie and the resulting JFK Records Act. This falsehood
actually led David Lifton down the wrong path in 1979 and 1980 and caused him to
believe that the back of the head was intact when the body was received at
Bethesda, simply because he was told by the HSCA in Volume 7 that the photos
were ground truth and that all of the autopsy witnesses agreed with what they
showed.
So I say, “shame on you, Robert Blakey,” with the utmost invective I can
muster, and ask the rhetorical question: “What were you up to in 1978 and
1979?” Your principal medical staff investigator, Andy Purdy, told the ARRB in
1996 that he did not know who was responsible for the statement in Volume 7 that
none of the autopsy witnesses disagreed with the autopsy photos and x-rays, and
he freely acknowledged that the statement was incorrect. He also told us that he
had expected all of the HSCA staff’s medical witness interview reports and
depositions to be published, and was surprised when most of them were instead,
sequestered for 50 years.
By the way, Robert Blakey also suppressed a key August 1978 deposition
transcript of photographer Robert Knudsen for 50 years because it presented
recollections and assertions incompatible with the HSCA’s conclusions about
the autopsy photographs; furthermore, no one mentioned anywhere in Volume 7 of
the HSCA’s report that the deposition was even conducted! In my opinion,
Blakey is someone who cannot be trusted to comment accurately or truthfully on
the Kennedy assassination. It appears tat he was pursuing an agenda in 1978-79
that may have been incompatible with the truth, and if that assessment is
correct, then he is undoubtedly still covering his ass today.
D.R.: AT THIS LATE DATE, DO YOU THINK WE WILL EVER KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
THAT DAY IN DALLAS?
DOUG HORNE: I think we can prove, based on the medical cover-up, that the
official story is not true, and that the government knew that and suppressed
what was true. Everything else then becomes speculation.
D.R.: WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING SINCE
DOUG HORNE: I’m now at the State Department, in a very non-glamorous,
nose-to-the-grindstone job as a passport specialist. I review and approve
thousands of passport applications every year. It is a way to pay the rent as I
work my way toward retirement in about 10 years, and to simply keep me afloat
while I try to complete my manuscript in my spare time. I have about 750
manuscript pages written already, and that represents only about 60% or so of
the text.
It is my magnum opus, a book that will be so massive, and so detailed, that for
me to get my message out unfiltered and in an unabridged fashion, it will have
to be made available as a “publish on demand” specialty type item sold on
the internet, and printed one copy at a time, as each customer pays for it. I
will not submit my work to the arbitrary restrictions on length that are imposed
by mainstream publishers, nor will I permit an editor to ‘tone down’ the
political content of my manuscript.
I would rather say exactly what I want to say, in the way that I want to say it,
and only sell a thousand copies, for example, than water down my life’s work
into a three-hundred-page puff piece with inadequate detail and inadequate
supporting documentation.
My goal is to tell the truth as I know it, without anyone watering it down –
not to make money. My manuscript is a labor of love, and will be the sharing of
an intellectual journey with those who are captivated by the medical evidence,
and who have a love of detail.
With any luck I will finish the manuscript by the end of 2008, and I hope it
will be available to purchase on-line, as “print on demand” item, by
November 2009.
Dick Russell’s On the Trail of the Assassins – Buy it:
http://www.amazon.com/Trail-JFK-Assassins-Revealing-Americas/dp/1602393222
My review of DR’s OTTOTA:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=13575
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Friday,
November 13, 2009
Inside
ARRB Vol. 1 Cover Jacket
A MESSAGE FROM DOUG HORNE ABOUT HIS FORTHCOMING BOOK
I’m pleased to report that my book about the medical coverup in the Kennedy
assassination, Inside the ARRB, is finally completed, and will be published in
the near future, hopefully in December of 2009.
The only real certainty we are left with about the events in Dallas in 1963 is
that there was a massive coverup, and that the two official explanations about
what happened --- offered up by the Warren Commission and the HSCA --- cannot be
true. So much physical evidence was destroyed, and so much tainted evidence was
introduced into the official record, that I am convinced the reason the evidence
in the Kennedy assassination “doesn’t come together” like a normal
homicide case is because there is fraud in the evidence. To continue to assume
that all of the evidence held by the U.S. government is sacrosanct, and should
be accepted at face value, will only guarantee that there will never be a
consensus about what happened. Much of the evidence processed by the Federal
government is suspect, and tainted.
If the tainted evidence can be identified, and separated from the more
trustworthy evidence, we stand a much better chance of understanding the nature
of both the murder, and more importantly, the coverup. The coverup tells us more
about the assassination than endless arguments about how many shooters there
were, or where they were located in Dealey Plaza.
I felt compelled to attempt to unravel the mystery surrounding the medical
evidence by taking a serious look at how much evidence was destroyed in 1963,
and which evidence in the official record is likely tainted, and cannot be
trusted (and why). It was no easy task; but neither was it an impossible
endeavor.
Additionally, I closely examined the statements and testimony of key Parkland
hospital and Bethesda autopsy witnesses over the years to see who had been
consistent in describing events, and who had changed his testimony as time
passed. I acted as a very curious citizen-detective, and made no starting
assumptions about the presumed authenticity of any particular item of evidence.
What one believes about JFK’s assassination depends upon which data base one
relies upon; there is so much conflicted evidence that one can “cherry pick”
the evidence in the official record and come to almost any conclusion about the
facts of the shooting. I attempted to examine the broad range of virtually all
of the medical evidence, and tried very hard to avoid the limited and selective
use of evidence, a mistake made by both the Warren Commission and the HSCA.
My conclusions are that neither the autopsy report (a document rewritten at
least twice), nor the autopsy photographs and x-rays (which present dishonest
and intentionally misleading images of the head wounds), can be relied upon to
determine the reality of the event in Dealey Plaza, and that the original
observations of the treating physicians and nurses at Parkland hospital remain
the best single guide to the actual wounds sustained by President Kennedy ---
but that they still must be judiciously married to certain other key facts, to
ascertain what likely happened.
Once one accepts that JFK was killed by a crossfire, the focus shifts to the who
and the why, and my book attempts to deal with this subject as well, for the
assassination can only be understood in terms of the context in which it took
place: at the height of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
For more information on my book, please reference my blog:
insidethearrb.livejournal.com.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Inside the Assassinations Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final
Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of
JFK
By Douglas P. Horne
Chief Analyst for Military Records, Assassinations Records Review Board
Table of Contents
Volume 1
Preface: Why Do I Care?
Acknowledgements
Part I: The ARRB Medical Witnesses
Introduction: Beginning My ARRB Journey p. 3
Prologue: The Culture of the ARRB p. 9
Chapter 1: Epiphanies p. 25
Chapter 2: The ARRB Medical Evidence Depositions and Unsworn Interviews p. 59
Chapter 3: The Autopsy Pathologists p. 69
Illustration Section (Details Below)
Chapter 4: Autopsy Photography (Part One) p. 131
Volume II
Chapter 4: Autopsy Photography (Part Two) p. 255
Chapter 5: The Autopsy X-Rays p. 389
Chapter 6: The Morticians p. 589
Chapter 7: A Short Trip to Texas p. 641
Volume III
Chapter 8: FBI Agents Sibert and O’Neill p 667
Chapter 9: The Dallas Doctors Depositions – A Government FUBAR of Major
Proportions p. 741
Part II: Fraud in the Evidence – A Pattern of Deception
Chapter 10: Two Brain Examinations – Coverup Confirmed p. 777
Chapter 11: Three Autopsy Reports – A Botched Coverup p. 845
Chapter 12: The Autopsy Photographs and X-Rays Explained p. 883
Volume IV
Chapter 13: What Really Happened at the Bethesda Morgue (And in Dealey Plaza?)
p.987
Chapter 14: The Zapruder Film Mystery p. 1185
Volume V
Part III: The Political Context of the Assassination
Chapter 15: The Setup – Planning the Texas Trip and the Dallas Motorcade
p.1379
Chapter 16: Inconvenient Truths p. 1469
Epilogue p. 1777
Afterword p. 1797
About the Author p. 1805
Illustrations
The illustrations are located at the end of Chapter Three
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Castro
with sniper rifle 1957
Bill Kelly0
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John
Judge & COPA at Dealey Plaza
Thanks to Tom Blackwell for the tape of John Judge at Dealey Plaza on the 46th
anniversary of JFK's assassination.
John Judge at the Grassy Knoll – November 22, 2009 – 12:30 PM CST Dallas
My name is John Judge. I’m here with the Coalition on Political
Assassinations.
I was asked by researcher Penn Jones to continue the tradition of carrying on
the moment of silence here on he grassy knoll.
I also hold a conference ever year, right down there at the Hotel Lawrence, of
the real researchers, the serious research into the ballistic, acoustic and
medical evidence into the assassination of President Kennedy, and the
assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and the assassination of Martin Luther King,
and the assassination of Malcolm X, and many other people who are murdered and
continue to be murdered to this day by political assassination under this state.
I don’t come out here to commemorate the glory of the United States. The
United States is in serous trouble. It is not a democracy any longer, as long as
we let these murders go on unsolved and as long as we refuse to take back our
own history and let the national security state bury it. We are in serious
trouble in this country; we are being lied to and we are lying to ourselves if
we don’t take a moment and understand that what happened here on November
22nd, 1963 was not a lone gunman in a window, it was a military coup d’etat
and the rise of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about his
final speech.
It was a military coup d’etat that removed the cryptonomic books from all the
SAC bombers that day, that shut off the telephones at the Pentagon through all
other federal agencies, and reversed the course of Kennedy’s detente with the
Soviet Union to end the Cold War, to stop the arms race, to quit nuclear
testing, to pullout of Vietnam, to promote racial integration in this country,
to get rid of the oil tax depletion allowance for the oil rich Southern Rim, to
scatter the CIA to the four winds – these are the reasons why Kennedy was
killed, not by a lone-nut, but by a well organized conspiracy and coverup that
went to the top of the power systems of this country.
Penn Jones was (a newspaperman) and independent investigative researcher who
knew these facts, he tracked the witness deaths in the cases. He asked me to
come out here every year because I came out here with him since the 1970s
forward.
We always get a legal permit to have this space to hold the moment of silence
from the parks department. We are glad to be here and to have people come out.
This is a larger crowd than came for many, many years. But since Oliver
Stone’s film more and more of you have been coming out.
We are about to getting at the truth of these assassinations, and looking at the
serious evidence that’s come out in these cases, not about speculations, not
about theories, not about conspiracy theories, which is a new term for any
criticism we do of the official lies. You can call us conspiracy theorists if
you call everyone else a coincidence theorists.
LAUGHTER
But we are talking about historic realities, and medical evidence, ballistics,
and hard facts. So I want to take a moment to have a moment of silence, but a
moment of contemplation, a moment of realization of its import.
The Dallas Morning News came ten years after we started doing this, they finally
came out and they said why we are doing out here after all these many years
later?
I said the same reason we are here for the same reason your editor told you to
come down here and ask us. Because we know and the system knows these murders
matter and they’ve lied about them since then.
So take a moment and think about that.
MOMENT OF SILENCE - 1 minute.
John Judge: John F. Kennedy was someone who stood up to this system and where it
was going in those critical years. He refused to go to nuclear war against the
advice of all of his generals during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he refused to
kill Castro, he refused to get into an extended military carpet bombing of the
Soviet Union, which Curtis LeMay wanted to do. And he refused to continue to
pour American troops and money into a fruitless war in Vietnam. He understood
that other nations needed sovereignty and determine their own futures, and he
wanted to help them to do that, not fight them. He refused to participate in
plots to kill foreign leaders that were going on from the administration that
preceded him. And he refused to cooperate with the national security state.
Not far from my house in Anacosta, a few miles down the road in Sutland,
Maryland, is the national archive and records center for the military history
records of the United States from World War II until now. These records are for
the most part classified. They have a reading room where you can read some of
them, but most of them are classified.
They are stored in underground buildings at that site in Sutland, Maryland. Each
of those buildings are an acre in size. There are 27 of those buildings in
Sutland, Maryland, 27 acres of papers and classified documents of your military
history since the end of World War II. Do you think you own America? (If) you
don’t own your own history, you are a conquered people. You let this national
security state scare you away from finding your history, you are a conquered
people, because that’s what conquers do, they take the history away from us.
Now history is passé. We are post literate, post historical, and we’re
becoming post scientific and even post logical in this country. We’re like
Winston in 1984 having a conversation with Simms at the Ministry of Truth.
Simms’ job is to reduce the number of words in the dictionary, so that there
won’t be concepts. If there isn’t a word for it there wouldn’t be a
concept for thought crime. You know, he said, in a few years, Winston, you and I
won’t even be able to have this conversation. Well I can barely have this
conversation cross generationally at this point, because of the history is lost.
I just talked to the DC correspondent for the Nation, 20 year old Eric Lang. I
said I was going to Dallas for a conference on November 22nd. He gave me a blank
stair. I said you don’t know why we go on that date? Do you know the date
April 6th, or the date June 4th, the date February 21st. He didn’t know any of
those dates, the dates on which the other political leaders were killed.…
…And I think it’s important if you want to think you live in a democracy and
be a citizen, you have to be an informed citizen. That’s the way you make
decisions. If you’re not going to be informed you’re in trouble.
We got the JFK Records Act passed, we got 6.5 million pages out, the largest
release in history except for the Nazi (records). We are now pushing for a
Martin Luther King Act, for the life and death of Dr. Martin Luther King, to get
those files lose. But it’s just a pittance, 15.5 million records, not pages,
records, so multiply by at least ten, are buried by the national security state
every year. Bush put over a million records back under classification that had
already been released, while he was in office, and he increased the secrecy and
Obama hasn’t reversed that. And so they continue to bury history at a rate
that we are barely able to reverse.
The Freedom of Information Act changes are like plugging a hole in a rusty
bucket with which you are trying to drain a spring fed lake.
But that’s the core of the problem here.
Jefferson knew that. He said that if given the choice of a government without a
newspaper or a newspaper without a government, he would choose the latter. Why?
Because he knew that information flow was more central to democratic process
than the machinery of government to carry out the people’s will. He knew that
an informed decision was the only thing that meant democracy. And as long as you
can’t be informed, and you can’t know, and this is what Martin Schotz says.
He says the political paralysis in America is due to the fact that we are
allowed to believe everything. Because as long as we can’t know, we can not
act.
But I believe we can know. The truth is not that arcane.
We can’t go back on the excuse that we’ll never know what happened.
We’ll never know who did it. People study it and they study it like a regular
crime, and they can figure it out. You can figure it out if you want to know.
Perhaps you don’t want to know.
Some people say, Oh, you’re John Judge who gives everybody nightmares.
I said, No, I’m the guy who wakes you up and tells you you’re in one. And
you got to get out of that nightmare.
APPLAUSE
It’s our country, it belongs to us. And there’s more of us and we can think.
And that’s the bottom line. They have us divided against each other. They have
us pulling against each other. They have us not trusting or talking to each
other. But in the end it’s because they fear us. They tap our phones because
they’re afraid of us. People ask if I think they tap my phone and I say I hope
so because maybe they’ll learn something.
LAUGHTER APPLAUSE
I wish they’d listen to me.
But this is what America is about. It’s not about mourning or weeping over
these things for 46 years, it’s about saying, no, we don’t accept this, we
aren’t going to live this way, we want to change, and we can change it. They
aren’t going to change it for us. We have to change it from the bottom up. But
if we decide to live with each other, to trust each other, to cross those lines
with each other, and to now, survival with each other because there’s no money
left for those poppers to take care of us obviously. But we have to survive with
each other, but we can because we are in the last stage of monopoly capitalism.
We are at the stage where the corporations merge with the state. This is what
Mussolini called fascism. And it is, only now it is on a global, corporate scale
of fascism.
One aspect of fascism in monopoly capital is that all the resources are
monopolized and all the technology makes labor unnecessary, but in their view,
because they want to hoard that surplus, it also makes all of us expendable to
them. And that is an objective drive towards genocide. They don’t care now
whether labor survives, they don’t need it. By the 1930s miners were told that
if the mine starts to collapse, push the mules out first; it costs money to
replace a mule. That’s the position that we are in on a global scale now. And
they don’t care if any of us survive. In their view, we are dead already. Our
choice is to die on our knees or our feet, to stand up to them or not, to live
or to die. But we can live with each other and cooperate with each other.
Money is nothing but paper. My bank gives me a piece of paper, I give somebody
else a piece of paper at the store, you know, they put the paper in the bank,
they give the paper to the next guy. Let’s just print some paper and get on
with it. We have a lot of things we have to do in the human community.
You know, they can withdraw the credit, and withdraw the money, but there were
communities that prospered in the depression because they got off credit and
money, they issued their own local script, produced their own local need, and
they survived and prospered during that period. We don’t have to be dependent
on this system. And this system can no longer take care of us, nor does it want
to. But we can decide we want to live, we can decide that we want to stand up,
we can decide that we want the truth and we can decide to exercise the rights
that make them real.
They would like us to think that as long as we are told that we have these
rights, we should be so glad that we have them we shouldn’t sully them by
using them. In other words, I should be so happy that I have free speech that I
should sit down and shut up about it.
LAUGHTER
But that’s not what I think. I think you only have the rights that you use.
And the rights that you exercise, that’s how you get rights and that’s how
you keep them. And if you stop exercising them you won’t have them.
Turn off the television. Get a little bit of vitamin D and something called
Sambathol (?) M1N1, an elderberry extract. There’s ways to survive in this
society. And there’s ways for us to have solidarity, and trust and community.
But monopoly capital has now alienated us to the point where our primary
relations with each other are primarily financial instead of human. And it’s
alienated us from every aspect of our human community and sold it back to us in
its most distorted form.
I turned the television off in 1970. I still read. I know it’s subversive
because they keep track of who goes to the library now. But I think it’s a
good idea.
I still try to think. I still have hope. I still believe in people, and I still
want to get at the truth, and I hope you do to.
APPLAUSE
The Coalition on Political Assassinations presents:
OPEN SECRETS: THE ASSASSINATIONS OF THE ‘60s
15th Annual Regional Conference, November 20-22, Dallas, TX
Latest evidence and research, authors, medical and ballistic experts, academics
and researchers into modern political assassinations, including Malcolm X, John
F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Resource room with
books, DVDs and digital collections. Films and presentations. Join us.
Speakers:
Dr. Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., former president American Academy of Forensic
Sciences
Jim Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable
Walt Brown, author of Master Analytic Chronology: The Death of President Kennedy
Russ Baker, author of Family of Secrets
Ronnie Dugger, former editor of The Texas Observer
John Armstrong, author of Harvey & Lee will be available to sign his book
Randy Benson, award-winning filmmaker, showing excerpts from The Searchers
T Carter, author of an upcoming book Jerry Ray: A Memoir of Injustice
Ben Rogers, curator of the Penn Jones collection at Baylor University
Jim DiEugenio, author of Destiny Betrayed and editor of Probe
Lisa Pease, co-author of The Assassinations and editor of Probe
Robert Groden, author of The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald and Absolute Proof
Doug Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program and The Strength of the Pack
Ed Haslam, author of Dr. Mary’s Monkey and Mary, Ferrie and the Money Virus
Pat Speer, producer of "The Mysterious Death of Number 35”
Chris Pike, researcher into Operation Northwoods and critic Penn Jones, Jr.
Schedule:
Friday, November 20
Early Bird Lunch, 12:00 pm Founder’s Grill, lobby, Hotel Lawrence (214)
761-9090
Dinner, 5:30 pm, Rodeo Grill, Adolphus Hotel, 1321 Commerce Street, (214)
651-3588
COPA keynote speaker, 7:00 pm, Mezzanine level, Adolphus Hotel
Movies, 10:00 pm, Second floor Rear, Hotel Lawrence, Houston & Jackson Sts.
Resource room open on 2nd floor rear Friday to Sunday, books and DVDs, authors
Saturday, November 21
Speakers 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, Second floor Rear, Hotel Lawrence
Movies 10:00 pm, Second floor Rear
Hotel Lawrence, Houston & Jackson Sts.
Sunday, November 22 46th anniversary
Speakers and discussions 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, Second floor Rear
Hotel Lawrence, Houston & Jackson Sts.
12:30 pm Moment of Silence
Commemorating the Assassination of President Kennedy
Grassy Knoll, Dealey Plaza, speakers following
Union Station and West End stations on DART rail. All events open to public.
Registration at door - $60 for all events, $25 Saturday, $20 Friday and Sunday
Coalition on Political Assassinations, PO Box 772, Washington, DC 20044
copa@starpower.net
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Friday,
October 2, 2009
Were
Castro Plots Hatched at Glen Ora?
Were
Castro Plots Hatched at Glen Ora? – By William Kelly
In his Washingtonian article on RFK and the plots to kill Castro, Evan Thomas
wrote “…. ‘Please don't expect that any one of these things is going to be
a catalyst'," recalled Ted Shackley, the Miami station chief, quoting the
CIA’s Cuban covert operations chief Desmond Fitzgerald, “But FitzGerald felt
under pressure to make these things work, and the pressure came from Robert
Kennedy. He'd say, ‘I saw Bobby,' or ‘I ran into Bobby. I saw him in
Middleburg. Here's what we got to crank up for next month.' We would say,
tactfully. We can make it work. But the question is, will these events bring
Castro down?’” (1)
“I saw him in Middleburg. Here’s what we got to crank up for next month,”
is what Fitzgerald is quoted as saying about where the plans were drawn up for
the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba. Middleburg.
Middleburg, Virginia, is an old and historic town a few hours drive west of
Washington, in upper crust Virginia horse country, where you need two hundred
acres to build a house, and the location of Glen Ora, a large horse farm, leased
by the President elect Kennedy as a weekend retreat. But is it where the plots
against Castro were hatched before they backfired at Dealey Plaza?
Des Fitz is quoted as telling Halpern that it was RFK who was ratcheting up the
anti-Castro plots, that “I ran into Bobby. I saw him at Middleburg. Here’s
what we got to crank up for next month….”
Looking at the official Presidential schedule, Glen Ora was a frequent
destination for President Kennedy, both by helicopter, approximately 25 minutes
from the White House lawn, or by car, a two hour drive. (2)
Middleburg and Glen Ora were JFK’s concession to his wife Jackie, a horse
women who fit nicely into the stiff, reserved, blue blood upper crust Middleburg
hunt club society. (3)
The Kennedys spent weekends in the fall and winter at Glen Ora, even during the
Cuban Missile Crisis when Kennedy tried to maintain his normal agenda, and he
continued to the run nation’s business from Glen Ora up until his death, and
if these reports are correct, he may have planned the operations there that
ultimately led to his murder. (4)
Glen Ora was owned by Mrs. Gladys Raymond Tartiere, who it is said, was
persuaded to lease her estate to Kennedy by William Walton, a mutual friend, and
former Time-Life war correspondent. (5)
The Kennedys seemed to like Glen Ora and Middleburg, and wanted to own a home
there, rather than lease one, but as Clark Clifford mentions in his memoirs,
Mrs. Tartiere “did not wish to sell.” (6)
So they purchased some land nearby and lived at Glen Ora during the construction
of their own home, which they called Wexford, named after the town of
Kennedy’s Irish roots. While at Glen Ora, they tried to enjoy life outside of
the Washington limelight. As Sally B. Smith wrote “…For Jack’s
forty-fourth birthday on May 29, Jackie conspired with Paul Fout to create a
three-hold golf course at Glen Ora – ‘rather long & difficult ones –
so it will be a challenge to play and not just so easy that one gets tired of
it.’ To further amuse Jack, she asked that the holes have Confederate flags
that would ‘not be visible from the road.’ The Bradlees visited Glen Ora on
May 20 for a birthday celebration, and Ben and JFK inaugurated the course, which
had grown to four holes ‘9,000 square yards of pasture, filled with small
hills, big rocks, and even a swamp,’ Bradlee recalled. JFK ‘shot the course
record, a thirty-seven for four holes.’” (7)
Glen Ora had an interesting history, especially the background of its owners. As
Tom Scully notes, “Gladys Rosenthal Byfield Tartiere. Aka Mrs. Raymond
Tartiere, had been the JFK family's ‘landlady’ since late 1960, when she
leased her 400 acres, Middleburg, VA estate, ‘Glen Ora’, to JFK and
Jackie.” Her son Byfield, Jr. “was a US Army Captain in WWII, a member of
OSS S1, according to the memoirs of David KE Bruce. In 1943, Byfield was the
best man in the wedding of William H.G. Fitzgerald, Lt. Cmdr, USN, and later a
philanthropist and US Ambassador to Ireland.” (8)
William Henry Gerald Fitzgerald is husband of Mary Ellen and the father of
Desmond Fitzgerald, who is still living in Connecticut, and not the CIA officer.
It would be interesting if it could be determined if the two Desmond FitzGeralds
are related, and if Desmond FitzGerald of the CIA was indeed a cousin of JFK,
related through the FitzGerald side (See: The Kennedys & the Fitzgeralds).
Desmond FitzGerald of the CIA is the son of Harold and Eleanor FitzGearld. He
was the CIA officer assigned to run the Cuban operations, and was close to RFK.
The son of JFK’s landlady, Gladys Rosenthal Byfield Tartiere, Ernest Byfield,
Jr. was an OSS hand under David Bruce and the best man at the wedding of William
H. G. Fitzgerald. (9)
Byfield, Jr. was also associated with Henry Crown and the General Dynamics
contract for the F-111, and may have had something to do with Bobby and Billy
Hale’s breaking into the apartment of Judith Campbell Exner’s Los Angeles
apartment. Exner, who had married golf pro Dan Exner, had previously been the
cut-out between JFK and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana before the election, and
it was Giancana who was involved with John Rosselli and Carlos Marcello in the
early CIA plots to kill Castro. Bobby and Billy Hale’s father, I. B. Hale, was
a former pro football player and FBI agent who was head of security at General
Dynamics.
The Hale twins reportedly broke into Exner’s apartment and placed a
wiretapping bug while it was under surveillance by the FBI, but when the FBI ran
a trace on the Hale’s car, and discovered their father was I.B. Hale, friend
of J. Edgar Hover, they never acted on it, though there’s records of this
incident in the official files.
[For more on the Hale Twins, see:
http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200812/robert-allen-hale-papa-pilgrim-4.html]
Joseph Califano, the assistant to the Secretary of the Army who worked with the
Army support for the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba, said that the
military had bugged the White House and overheard all of JFK’s private
conversations about Cuba, which makes one wonder if they also bugged Glen Ora
and knew what plans were made there as well.
Then, in a final irony, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who awarded
the contract to General Dynamics, married Diana Masieri Byfield in 2004, when he
was 92 and she was 74. (10)
There’s also the current owner of Glen Ora, Gladys Tartiere’s daughter
Elaine Broadhead, who has used the estate in order to promote some of her
radical enterprises, including the founding of the Green Party in the USA. (11).
But most significant, I think, is the allegations by Evan Thomas, that Desmond
Fitzgerald, when he was head of the Cuban operations at the CIA, met with RFK at
Glen Ora and planned attacks against Castro and Cuba while there. (12)
Thomas writes, “…The last of the CIA's plots to kill Castro is a truly weird
tale. Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy deputized his brother
(also his attorney general) Robert Kennedy to personally oversee the CIA's
campaign against Castro. Typical of the Kennedy administration's highly informal
style, Bobby Kennedy bypassed CIA Director John McCone and demanded regular
progress reports from Desmond FitzGerald, a dashing CIA officer who became head
of the CIA Special Affairs Staff (SAS) at the beginning of 1963, charged with
doing whatever he could to eliminate the Cuban leader. The bizarre events that
were to unfold have fueled generations of Kennedy assassination conspiracy
theorists.”
“The winter FitzGerald took over the Cuban operation, he made clear to his
troops that he wanted results. FitzGerald's executive officer, Sam Halpern,
tried to show him an organizational chart of the Special Affairs Staff, but
FitzGerald said he didn't want to see it; he didn't want to be bothered with
bureaucratic detail. ‘But Des. . .,’ Halpern protested. ‘You do it,’
said FitzGerald. He refused to sign the chart or even look at it.”
“During the summer and early fall, five commando raids were launched against
Castro's economic infrastructure, in the hopes of "destabilizing" the
regime. The raids were costly: Twenty-five CIA agents, Cuban exiles recruited as
commandos, were killed or captured. Though it was doubtful that the commandos
would bring down Castro by knocking down some telephone poles or by petty acts
of sabotage (the negligible Cuban underground was instructed to leave faucets
running and light bulbs burning to waste energy), FitzGerald was determined to
keep trying.”
“We were saying, ‘Please don't expect that any one of these things is going
to be a catalyst’,’ recalled Ted Shackley, the Miami station chief. ‘But
FitzGerald felt under pressure to make these things work, and the pressure came
from Robert Kennedy. He'd say, ‘I saw Bobby,’ or ‘I ran into Bobby. I saw
him in Middleburg. Here's what we got to crank up for next month.’ We would
say, tactfully. We can make it work. But the question is, will these events
bring Castro down?’”
“Halpern said he began to ‘dread coming in to work in the morning,’
especially Monday mornings after FitzGerald had all weekend to “run into”
Kennedy and think up his own schemes—‘all these harebrained ideas,’ as
Halpern described a series of plots that would seem like black comedy when they
surfaced later during the Church Committee hearings. ‘[Bobby],’ said Halpern
bluntly, ‘reinforced [FitzGerald's] worst instincts.’”
“By the time FitzGerald took over the Cuba operation, the CIA had pretty well
given up on using the mob. The plots of Bill Harvey, FitzGerald's predecessor as
head of the Cuba group, to enlist the Mafia had gone nowhere.”
Indeed, it was no longer William Harvey, Johnny Rosselli, the mob and the CIA,
it was the Des Fits of the CIA and the Department of Defense, the United States
Army, specifically Joe Califano and General Krulak who were coordinating covert
operations against Cuba with the CIA.
And one of their “contingency plans for a coup in Cuba” was being based on a
study of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler and take over the Third Reich that
failed, a plan that included revising the continuity of government plans and
blaming the assassination on Communists.
If this was one of the plans discussed at Glen Ora, it wasn’t Bobby Kennedy
telling Des Fitz what the next operation was to be, it was Des Fitz telling RFK
and JFK what they were going to do to get rid of Castro, the Valkyrie
contingency that was ultimately flipped and resulted not in the death of Castro,
but what happened at Dealey Plaza.
- William Kelly bkjfk3@yahoo.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/08/AR2006010801019.html
Footnotes
(1) Evan Thomas, Washington Monthly, Dec., 1995 Bobby Kennedy’s war on Castro
– CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n12_v27/ai_17828366/
(2) Timeline of Glen Ora History:
http://www.google.com/search?q=glen+ora+history&hl=en&sa=G&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=bsCgSt3gCd_JlQflv5zEDg&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11
Jan 20, 1963 - Kennedy from going Saturday to Glen Ora, their leased near
Middleburg. Va. The Kennedys had planned lo eave by helicopter early in the for
Glen Ora but finally gave up the trip around 4 pm of the Cog. ' Malcolm Kilduff,
an assistant White Rouse press secretary, said,…From Kennedys Call Off Trip to
Glen Ora
pqasb.pqarchiver.com/courant/access/938155732 ...
3) Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life By Donald Spoto, p. 169
“…Walton went out to see his old friend Gladys Tartiere, who owned Glen Ora,
a four-hundred-acre estate near Middleburg, Virginia, about an hour from the
White House. Jackie, who saw photos while she was in the hospital, liked the
French-style mansion, the gardens, lawns, woods and pastures and the expansive
acres for riding. She judged the place even more appealing than Merrywood and
convinced her husband to apply for the lease. But Mrs. Tartiere was not at all
enchanted with the idea of the First Family as tenants: she foresaw the Secret
Service, the press and vast numbers of visitors roaming all over, and hence all
sorts of potential damage to her estate. Already, wherever the Kennedys went,
the Secret Service was sure to go, sending messages back and
forth….Eventually, after considerable coaxing from Walton and Clark Clifford,
one of Kennedy’s attorneys and advisors, Mrs. Tartiere agreed – but only to
a one-year lease. The Kennedys took it sight unseen and furnished. At Glen Ora,
Jackie escaped the pressures of Washington; there, she trained Caroline to ride,
too, and there she was, as nearby residents said, “Just one of the fox
hunters.”
4) The former wife of Hoy's late employer, Gladys Rosenthal Byfield Tartiere
(Mrs. Raymond F. Tartiere) supposedly leased, with great reluctance, her 400
acre Middleburg, VA estate, "Glen Ora", to serve as the JFK family's
"week end White House", from late 1960 until March, 1963. JFK shut
down the 1961 Bay of Pigs CIA "Op", from Glen Ora.
5) Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life - Page 169 by Donald Spoto
- Biography & Autobiography - 2000 - 416 pages
http://books.google.com/books?ei=fR9fSd71E...nG=Search+Books
"Eventually, after considerable coaxing from Walton and Clark Clifford, one
of
Kennedy's attorneys and advisers, Mrs. Tartiere agreed — but only to a
..."; also see:
America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - Page 203
by Sarah Bradford - Biography & Autobiography - 2000 - 640 pages
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&q=...sa=N&tab=wp
"Bill Walton came up with Glen Ora, the property of his friend Gladys
Tartiere,
... her photographs of the place; she liked it and rented it sight unseen.
..."
(6) Counsel to the President: A Memoir - Page 362 by Clark M. Clifford,
Richard C. Holbrooke - Biography & Autobiography - 1991 - 709 pages
“Walton soon located a beautiful four-hundred- acre estate called Glen Ora,
...There was only one problem: its owner, Gladys Tartiere, did not wish to sell
..."
(7) Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House By Sally
Bedell Smith. P. 201
(8) Tom Scully: Byfield Jr. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=w...mp;aq=f&oq=
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:5kxVli3ktc0J:educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php%3Fshowtopic%3D6550+Mrs.+raymond+tartiere&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
(9) Philanthropist William H.G. FitzGerald Monday, January 9, 2006
William H.G. FitzGerald, 96, a Washington-based private investor who was active
in philanthropies and served as ambassador to Ireland from 1992 to 1993, died
Jan. 5 at George Washington University Hospital. He had an aortic aneurysm.
Mr. FitzGerald, a District resident, was involved in housing projects in the
Washington area starting around 1940 and later was chairman of North American
Housing Corp., which made modular homes.
He also was a senior partner at the investment firm of Hornblower, Weeks,
Hemphill & Noyes and vice chairman of Financial General Bankshares, a
multistate bank holding company.
William Henry Gerald FitzGerald was a Boston native and a 1931 graduate of the
U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he played baseball. After brief Navy
service, he attended Harvard Law School before embarking on a business career.
He returned to the Navy during World War II. From 1958 to 1960, he was deputy
director for management of the International Cooperation Administration, which
became the U.S. Agency for International Development.
In 1987, he started high school scholarships for inner-city children in the
Catholic archdiocese of Washington. At the Washington Tennis Foundation, he
established a program to mentor inner-city children. The William H.G. FitzGerald
Tennis Center is named in his honor.
He also was a benefactor of the Naval Academy, where he and his wife started a
program to send midshipmen to Oxford University for postgraduate study.
He was a former vice chairman of the congressionally mandated African
Development Foundation, trustee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, chairman of the
White House Preservation Fund and treasurer of the Atlantic Council of the
United States, an international affairs group. He was the senior member of the
Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Catholic church.
He was a member of the University Club in Washington for 71 years.
In 1949, he founded the FitzGerald Cup, an annual squash tournament between
Baltimore and Washington.
He was an active tennis player until age 93.
Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Annelise Petschek FitzGerald of
Washington; two children, Desmond FitzGerald of Greenwich, Conn., and Anne F.
Slichter of Champaign, Ill.; and five grandchildren.
(10) The Overlooked Irony of JFK Defense Secretary Robert S McNamara's 2004
marriage to Diana Masieri Byfield. 78232, Posted by T James Scully, Wed
Dec-31-69 05:00 PM
http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=3&topic_id=78232&mesg_id=78232
It's been 4 years since the September/December marriage of former US Secretary
of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, now 92, to Diana Masieri Byfield, 74.
The irony is the fact that McNamara himself may not even be aware of his recent
bride's proximity to one of the controversies of the 1960's that McNamara is
forever tainted by. McNamara claimed in 1963 to have been responsible,
ultimately, for the decision to award the (at the time) $6 billion, TFX
"joint fighter" defense contract to the financially distressed, at
that time, General Dynamics.
The contract award was questioned because Boeing had underbid the General
Dynamics/Grumman bid by $1 billion, and a consequence was the forced
resignation, of Navy Secretary, Fred Korth, on November 1, 1963. Just a year
earlier, Korth had been the president of a Texas bank that was exposed to $200
million in outstanding loans to General Dynamics. General Dynamics had merged in
1959 with Chicago financier Henry Crown's Material Service Corp. After the
merger, Crown (late father of an early and principal Obama presidential campaign
supporter, Lester Crown, listed on Forbes 400 in 2008 with $4.8 billion net
worth....) was the largest General Dynamic's stockholder, owning 20 percent of
total shares, and by 1963, he was also chairman.
(11) George Archibald - Christmas in Middleburg - December 16, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-archibald/christmas-in-middleburg_b_36517.html
The prelude to Christmas in this historic small Virginia foxhunting and
racehorse town near Washington, D.C. has been a panorama of exciting visual and
musical events….
….Middleburg is the town where President John F. Kennedy and First Lady
Jacqueline Kennedy rented Glen Ora Farm to get away from the Nation´s Capital
an hour away by car so Mrs. Kennedy could ride and go hunting in the nation's
premiere foxhunting community -- which People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
folks don´t mention in their trampling of people´s rights to hunt for sport.
It´s ironic that Elaine Broadhead, daughter of Mrs. Raymond Tartiere, who
rented Glen Ora Farm to JFK and Jackie in 1961, has used the farm she inherited
from her parents over the past several years to host a guerilla warfare training
center for the Ruckus Society folks who show up at all the World Bank meetings
everywhere to stage violent demonstrations and protests against free enterprise
and economic capitalism.
The Ruckus folks are intolerant of free enterprise and business generally, even
though their wine-sipping leftist sponsors and supporters (such as Elaine
Broadhead) are rich and live in luxury because of free enterprise and capitalist
business success…..
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n12_v27/ai_17828366/
The last of the CIA's plots to kill Castro is a truly weird tale. Following the
Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy deputized his brother (also his attorney
general) Robert Kennedy to personally oversee the CIA's campaign against Castro.
Typical of the Kennedy administration's highly informal style, Bobby Kennedy
bypassed CIA Director John McCone and demanded regular progress reports from
Desmond FitzGerald, a dashing CIA officer who became head of the CIA Special
Affairs Staff (SAS) at the begining of 1963, charged with doing whatever he
could to eliminate the Cuban leader. The bizarre events that were to unfold have
fueled generations of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.
The winter FitzGerald took over the Cuban operation, he made clear to his troops
that he wanted results. FitzGerald's executive officer, Sam Halpern, tried to
show him an organizational chart of the Special Affairs Staff, but FitzGerald
said he didn't want to see it; he didn't want to be bothered with bureaucratic
detail. "But Des. . .," Halpern protested. "You do it," said
FitzGerald. He refused to sign the chart or even look at it.
During the summer and early fall, five commando raids were launched against
Castro's economic infrastructure, in the hopes of "destabilizing" the
regime. The raids were costly: Twenty-five CIA agents, Cuban exiles recruited as
commandos, were killed or captured. Though it was doubtful that the commandos
would bring down Castro by knocking down some telephone poles or by petty acts
of sabotage (the negligible Cuban underground was instructed to leave faucets
running and light bulbs burning to waste energy), FitzGerald was determined to
keep trying.
"We were saying, `Please don't expect that any one of these things is going
to be a catalyst'," recalled Ted Shackley, the Miami station chief.
"But FitzGerald felt under pressure to make these things work, and the
pressure came from Robert Kennedy. He'd say, `I saw Bobby,' or `I ran into
Bobby. I saw him in Middleburg. Here's what we got to crank up for next month.'
We would say, tactfully. We can make it work. But the question is, will these
events bring Castro down?'"
Halpern said he began to "dread coming in to work in the morning,"
especially Monday mornings after FitzGerald had all weekend to "run
into" Kennedy and think up his own schemes--"all these harebrained
ideas," as Halpern described a series of plots that would seem like black
comedy when they surfaced later during the Church Committee hearings.
"[Bobby]," said Halpern bluntly, "reinforced [FitzGerald's] worst
instincts."
By the time FitzGerald took over the Cuba operation, the CIA had pretty well
given up on using the mob. The plots of Bill Harvey, FitzGerald's predecessor as
head of the Cuba group, to enlist the Mafia had gone nowhere.
Bill Kelly2
comments
Saturday,
August 22, 2009
The
Divine Skein at Dealey Plaza
This
is the introduction to the unpublished manuscript I wrote with the grant from
the Fund for Constitutional Government Investigative Journalism Project (circa
1994), with the addition of Gibson and a few other items. I will continue to
expand on this theme, and would appreciate any corrections, critiques or
feedback. - BK
THE DIVINE SKEIN AT DEALEY PLAZA
PSYCHO or PSYOP? FREUD verses SUN TZU
By William Kelly
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains a Watershed event in
modern American history, the ramifications of which have yet to be fully
realized. The details of the crime, the acoustics, ballistics, autopsy and
medical evidence are covered elsewhere. This report and the ones that follow
concern the covert intelligence operations that resulted in the murder of the
president and the black propaganda operations that continue to this day,
manipulating the news and judicial system to shield those responsible.
The time and the place – 12:30 p.m., Friday, November 22, 1963, Houston and
Elm streets, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, are notched in our national
subconscious, and the picture of that square acre of time and place are etched
in our collective memories.
If Dealey Plaza were pictured as a giant mosaic wall mural, broken into pieces
like a puzzle, we would have a pretty good idea of what occurred there. Only a
few pieces are still missing – the faces in the shadows, the names of the
mangers pulling the strings of the puppets and pawns, details unnecessary to
understand the nature of the plot.
Although there are many theories as to what happened in Dealey Plaza on that
day, the e
vents as they actually occurred only happened one way, and it is the responsibility of the
independent researchers, journalists, professors and historians to determine that truth as
close
as possible.
Some people might consider the crime ancient history, even though it is such a
current
event that indictments can still be brought down for those responsible for crimes, if not
homicide and conspiracy, then obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence and perjury.
Besides the issues concerning the accuracy of our historical perspective, truth and the
pursuit of justice, it is important to know for oneself whether the death of the president
was an unplanned, spontaneous act of a lone madman or a very well planned and executed
coup
d’etat.
John F. Kennedy was either killed by a deranged lone-nut, as the official Warren
Commission
concluded, or he was the victim of a covert action team of clandestine agents, as much of
the
evidence suggests. The truth is either one way or the other, but cannot be both.
If the assassination of JFK was the work of a lone-nut madman, the lessons to be
learned
from the tragedy are far less significant than if Kennedy was killed as part of a coup, as the
ramifications
stem into the realms of truth, justice, responsibility and national security.
Not for the sake of argument, but for the sake of analysis, a competent homicide
investigation
would proceed first by assuming that JFK was killed as an act of elimination. An understanding
of current events and the details of the crime also suggest that what happened at Dealey Plaza
was not only the product of a conspiracy, but by a much more clearly defined MO – Modus
Operandi
– that of a covert intelligence operation.
Although anyone with the training and knowledge can conduct such operations, the
murder
of the president, because of the extensive cover-up that occurred after the fact, must have had
its origin in the very heart of the U.S. government. If it was an independent operation, a renegade
group or the work of foreigners, those responsible would have been pursued to the ends
of the earth. Instead, the evidence leads directly inside the government itself. Those responsible
for what happened at Dealey Plaza took over the government and controlled the investigation
of
the crime.
But because the modus-operandi MO – is that of a covert operation, by its very
name and
nature is meant to be hidden and concealed, so as to protect the real sponsors, in order to
see it you must look at it through a special spectrum. This ‘crystal ball’ is similar to an onion,
an analogy John Judge likes to use, as it has layers of deception that must be pealed off, r
evealing layers of truth, and can only be understood if you are educated in the history and
trained
in the crafts and techniques covert intelligence operations.
Allen Dulles' book The Craft of Intelligence was published in 1963, and
was the book that he
was promoting when he visited Dallas shortly before the assassination. In it Dulles notes that
the
biographical method of study is a good way to learn and understand practically
any subject. Pick a person and learn everything you can possibly know about
them. Note 1.
And he suggests that Sun Tsu’s book The Art of War is very special and
worthy of attention.
2.
As for biographies, Lee Harvey Oswald is one of the first characters you have to
come to know
in order to understand the assassination. The primary, but not first suspect, Oswald “is your
man,” as LBJ told the Dallas authorities, and no conspiracy, so the official investigators pretty
much
handed the American public the head of Oswald on a platter.
While a typical homicide investigator on the street may not have the historical
background or
training in intelligence operations, and may not have the investigative resources federal
governmental agencies have at their disposal, a common man’s instincts will tell you something
and lead you to clues worth pursing. Every homicide investigator begins with a body, and a
suspect who can usually be identified as one who had the means, motive and opportunity to
commit
the crime. We have that with John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Their paths crossed at Dealey Plaza, an intersection out of the Twilight Zone,
one that we
keep
going back to see if we went in the right direction when we left there.
Oswald had the means, the U.S. Marine Corps training, the experience and the
tools - the
ability to kill. He also had the opportunity since he worked in a building at the scene of the
crime, which makes JFK one of the few assassination victims who, rather than being stalked
by
his assassin, is delivered to the window his killer.
The problem with Oswald is that he did not have a motive. He actually liked JFK.
Not even the
Warren Commission, even though they concluded Oswald was the assassin, could determine
a
motive for the murder. 3.
But the more you learn about Oswald, rather than finding the psychotic,
homicidal maniac,
you realize he was merely a pawn in a much bigger game of power politics, a game that
continues
to this day.
Although Oswald may have been a loner, he was seldom alone and not deranged. He
was
definitely an operative agent, although exactly who he was an agent for has yet to be precisely
determined,
but can be.
At an early meeting of the Warren Commission Allen Dulles handed out copies of a
book he
recommended
the other Commissioners read - Robert Donovan's The Assassins. 4.
Donovan’s The Assassins purports to show how American assassins are all
psychologically
deranged loners, but commissioner John J. McCloy called Dulles on this notion, pointing out
that Lincoln’s assassination was a conspiracy since co-conspirators were hung along with
John
Wilkes Booth.
But Dulles paraphrases Donovan, the author of the book, saying that Booth was
such a
dominating
person in the plot that it almost wasn’t a conspiracy.
And Dulles wasn’t the first to suggest the accused assassin was crazy, as
Donald Gibson
points out in, JFK Assassination Cover-up (Donald Gibson. P.99), which also gets into the
Dulles-McCloy
exchange over the Lincoln conspiracy. 5.
It is worth quoting Gibson as he writes:
...As was noted earlier, James Reston had suggested, less than 24 hours after
the assassination
, that this act was committed by one person and that it reflected a “strain of madness” in the
country. The New York Herald Tribune had editorialized on November 23 that the assassins
in the United States are typically “crazed individuals” and are “real lunatics.” On November
25, the Wall Street Journal asserted that assassins are “idiots” and suffering with “hysteria.”
Also, in Dallas, Mayor Earle Cabell was quoted in the November 23 Dallas Morning News
describing the assassination as the work of a maniac, as an “irrational act” of a “deranged
mind.” As documented earlier, this was not the view of the police officials or the district
attorney.
(Allen) Dulles was the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had
the experience
in intelligence work and in international affairs. He was one of the most sophisticated men in
the world. Later, we will discuss the relationship between Dulles and the other early sources
of the lone-nut theory. This man probably was not just repeating what he had seen in the
newspapers, unless what was appearing in the media immediately after the assassination
and
what he tried to impose on the Commission had a common source.
On December 5, (Earl) Warren briefly mentioned the mental illness issue. He then
also
brought this up and he began but did not get to finish a description of a book he had been
reading
which focused on “the psychiatric angle.”
On December 16, Dulles was far more aggressive in his promotion of this
“angle.” Dulles
was handing out copies of a book which analyzed seven previous attempts on the lives of
U.S. Presidents. Dulles was giving this book to members of the Commission and to the
Commission’s lawyers. As indicated by Dulles, the theme of the book was that such
attempts were typically the acts of lone individuals, usually individuals with mental
disorders. The book that Dulles was pushing was The Assassins by Robert J. Donovan.
Although Dulles did not identify it, the Donovan book was published in the year mentioned
by Dulles as the publication year and Donovan’s book contains a statement that is almost
identical
to something said by Dulles.
In response to a comment from McCloy that there was a plot in the Lincoln
assassination,
Dulles noted that that was true “but one man was so dominant it almost wasn’t a plot.” In his
book, Donovan, who was in 1963 the New York Herald Tribune’s Washington bureau chief,
argued
that in the U.S., assassinations were the work of individuals and he went on to
say:
This was true even in the Lincoln assassination, in which, though other
conspirators were
involved, Booth was the moving spirit and dominated his accomplices to such an extent
that
the plot was the product of one man’s will.”
The implication of this is that if conspiracies have leaders, they aren’t
conspiracies! Donovan’s
analysis contained another ingredient that was important in Dulles’s proffered conclusions
about
the assassination, i.e., that the assassins were usually crazy. Donovan’s
conclusion:
By and large the true story behind the assassination and attempted
assassinations of
American presidents is that the assassins not only were lone operators, but were, most of
them,
men suffering from mental disease, who pulled the trigger in the grip of
delusion...
When Donovan later wrote the introduction of the Popular Library Edition of The
Warren
Commission Report on the Assassination of President Kennedy, he applied his generalization
to
the Kennedy assassination:
“For the murder of President Kennedy was so horrifying, so senseless, so
heart-rending that
the act was difficult to comprehend in terms of the average person’s experience. To anyone
who happened to know the history of assassinations of American Presidents, Lee Harvey
Oswald conformed remarkably to the pattern of obscure misfits, loners, fanatics, cranks and
mentally deranged and deluded men who committed these historic crimes. Indeed he even
bore
a vague physical resemblance to them.”
“To millions everywhere, however, the crime in Dallas was too momentous in all
its
implications
to be accepted as the pitifully simple thing it was, the solitary act of a deranged and
deteriorating wanderer, taking his revenge on the world by destroying one of its finest living
figures. Surely, it seemed to many – especially to many abroad – there MUST be a further
explanation,
a more complex cause, a plot, a conspiracy.”
Donovan uses about eight different terms to suggest that Oswald was a lone nut.
The
official line that developed during the hours immediately following the assassination had
not
changed; it was restated with even greater emphasis by Donovan.
Donovan was not your everyday journalist. Although he never graduated from
college,
he was the Washington correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, and later the LA
Times,
and had written the best seller “PT 109,” that was made into a movie. 6.
Donovan’s Assassins was published in 1955 (Harper, NY), and after
Dulles’ genuflection,
he also wrote the introduction to A Concise Compendium of the Warren Commission
Report
(Popular Library, NY, 1964), which continued promoting the lone-nut thesis. 7.
The attempt to attribute psychological motives to the accused assassin
continues, and
many millions of words have been written on the subject, with Donovan’s original seven
case studies being expanded to over eighty subjects included in the Secret Service
Exceptional
Case Study. 8.
One of the problems with all of these official academic psychological studies of
assassins
is they accept the false premise that Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy, when
in fact it can be reasonably demonstrated that he was what he claimed to be – a Patsy.
So these authorative studies are of one animal - the Patsy, when they wrongfully assumed
they
were studying another animal - the Assassin. 9.
Whether assassin or fall-guy, Oswald was a covert intelligence operative, and in
fact he sets
the mold for what I call the Covert Operative Profile that can be used in the analysis of
political
assassins, just as the academic studies profile psychotics. 10.
Rather than use Donovan’s The Assassins as a primer on political
assassinations for the
Warren Commissioners, Dulles should have handed out copies of Sun Tzu’s The Art of
War, which he recommends highly in The Craft of Intelligence for anyone who wants to try
to
understand the arcane world of clandestine espionage and covert intelligence
operations.
Just as psychotic assassins are described by armchair psychoanalists as various
types
of paranoid skidso maniacs, covert operators can also be defined more precisely by
the
type of secret agents they are.
In his book The Craft of Intelligence Dulles elaborates on this theme
when he writes,
“In a chapter of The Art of War called the ‘Employment of Secret Agents,’ Sun Tzu gives
the basics of espionage as it was practiced in 400 B.C. by the Chinese – much as it is
practiced today. He says there are five kinds of agents: native, inside, double, expendable
and living. ‘Native’ and ‘inside’ agents are similar to what we shall later call ‘agents in
place.’ ‘Double,’ a term still used today, is an enemy agent who has been captured,
turned around and sent back where he came from as an agent of his captors.
‘Expendable agents’ are a Chinese subtlety which we later touch upon in considering
deception techniques. They are agents through whom false information is leaked to
the enemy. Sun Tzu says they are expendable because the enemy will probably kill
them when he finds out their information was faulty. ‘Living’ agents to Sun Tzu are
later-day ‘penetration agents.’ They reach the enemy, get information and manage to
get
back alive.”
There are many different English translations of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
but Dulles notes,
“For my remarks on Sun Tzu I am indebted to the recent excellent translation of the Art of
War
with commentaries by General Sam Griffith (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963).” 11.
Dulles continues: “To Sun Tzu belongs the credit not only for this remarkable
analysis
of the ways of espionage but also for the first written recommendations regarding an
organized intelligence service. He points out that the master of intelligence will employ
all five kinds of agents simultaneously; he calls this the ‘Divine Skein.’ The analogy is to
a fish nest consisting of many strands all joined to a single cord. And this by no means
exhausts Sun Tzu’s contribution. He comments on counter-intelligence, on psychological
warfare, on deception, on security, on fabricators, in short, on the whole craft of intelligence.
It is no wonder that Sun Tzu’s book is a favorite of Mao Tse-tung and is required reading
for Chinese Communist tacticians. In their conduct of military campaigns and of intelligence
collection,
they clearly put into practice the teachings of Sun Tzu.”
“Espionage of the sort recommended by Sun Tzu,” writes Dulles, “which did
not depend
upon spirits or gods, was, of course, practiced in the West in ancient times also, but not
with the same degree of sophistication as in the East; nor was there in the West the same
sense of craft or code of rules so that one generation could build on the experiences
of
another.”
Today, the same crafts and techniques are used, just as they were used centuries
ago
by Sun Tzu. There have been advances however, not only in the crafts and techniques
of espionage, but also in the technique of criminal profiling, a new tool in which criminal
behavior
is categorized in a similar way.
The category Oswald belongs to, since he should not be among the psychotics
studied
by the academics, is the Covert Operative Personality, which also includes other rogues
of similar persuasion – Feliz Rodriguez, Frank Forini Sturgis, Gerry Patrick Hemming,
Richard
Case Nagel, Michael Townley, Frank Terpel, El Nosair Sayyid, Ali Mohammad, et.
al.
The Covert Operational Profile fits those who are military trained, usually
USMC, and
from a military family, fluent in a foreign language, can travel extensively, maintains
safe house and dead drops, is familiar with codes, ciphers and covert communication
techniques, works on an operational need-to-know basis and does not talk about any
clandestine
affairs.
Of course Allen Dulles recognized these traits in Oswald, the primary suspect,
but instead
of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, as Dulles recommends in the very beginning of The Craft of I
ntelligence,
he promotes Donovan’s psychotic assassins.
In The Craft of Intelligence Dulles wrote: “But in the craft of
intelligence the East was
ahead of the West in 400 B.C. Rejecting the oracles and the seers, who may well have
played an important role in still earlier epochs of Chinese history, Sun Tzu takes a more
practical
view.”
“What is called ‘foreknowledge’ cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from
gods, nor by
analogy with past events, nor from calculations,” he wrote. “It must be obtained from men
who
know the situation.” [See: Note 16]
In “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu wrote about The Employment of Secret Agents.
“Now the
reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy wherever they
move,
and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.”
Sun Tzu: “Now there are five sorts of secret agents to be employed. These are
native,
inside, double, expendable and living. A native agent is one of the nationality of the enemy.
An inside agent is one who lives and works in the enemy camp. A double agent is an
enemy agent who works for both sides. An expendable agent is one that can be cut loose
after achieving his goal. A living agent is one that can get into the enemy camp and return
with information. When these five types of agents are all working simultaneously and none
knows their method of operation, they are called ‘The Divine Skein,’ and are the treasure
of
the sovereign.”
Although satellite and communication intelligence have become more significant
in today’s
world of espionage, the nature of the clandestine network in action – the “Divine Skein” is
still the most reliable means of learning the intentions of other people and governments
and
acting covertly against them.
In this regard, little has changed since the days of Sun Tzu. The same type of
agents are
classified and utilized today, as they were in the ancient Chinese dynasties as well as on
November 22, 1963 at Dealey Plaza. Now their means and method is known as “covert
intelligence operations,” and are “compartmentalized” on a “need to know” basis, so
each member of the network team only knows his job and role, and may not even know
who
he is actually working for.
The gunmen who killed JFK were well trained and competent professional marksmen
and killers, operating on a need-to-know basis as part of a covert intelligence operation.
The shooters were the easy part, mere technicians. It is the covert operational managers
at the top of the clandestine pyramid who are actually responsible for the crime, and the
subject
of this pursuit.
The accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was an agent trained in what Dulles
called
“the crafts of intelligence,” but he wasn’t a very good marksman, and undependable for
that part of the operation. Rather than the assassin, as the evidence suggests, Oswald
was what he claimed to be, an archetypical patsy, the fall guy set up and framed for a
crime he didn’t commit. Oswald was, at various times in his short, 22 year old career,
an inside agent, a living agent, possibly a double agent, and in the end, an expendable
one.
It is not the pawns in the Great Game we are after, but rather, the Knights,
Bishops and
Rooks, the middle managers and who they work for - the intelligence officers who pull t
he
chains of the puppets and pawns like Oswald, and Rodriguez, Sturgis and Townley.
Sun Tzu calls the men at the top “wise generals” and the “sovereign,”
and the operations
of the network “The Devine Skein,” giving it a sort of deity or godlike association, since
only the patriarch at the top knows all that is going on during the game. To the little man
on the street it appears to be divine intervention, or the work of God, when actually it is
mere
man-made magic.
Professor Paul Linebarger, who wrote the textbook on psychological warfare,
trained three generations of American spies in the techniques of psychological
clandestine operations – the “black arts,” including E. Howard Hunt, Ed
Lansdale and David Atlee Phillips. 12. (Psychological Warfare, Paul
Linbarger)
Besides his own textbook on propaganda, Linebarger had his students read
The American Confidence Man by David W. Maurer. 13. (The American Confidence Man,
Pocket
Books, N.Y. 1949).
A professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville (KY), Maurer’s book
started out as
a study of the slang used by swindlers and crooks in the big time confidence games
prevalent in the first half of the last century. Using a unique social science technique –
Maurer introduced himself to the crooks, told them what he was doing and after obtaining
their confidence, learned their lingo as well as how they pulled off such complicated o
perations as the Big Con or “The Big Store,” which was used as the basis of the popular
movie,
“The Sting.”
– Setting up a Big Store in a city where there are lots of transients –
Marks, the store
operators pay off the Dicks with the understanding only transients will be marked by
Ropers for a Sting and no locals will be taken advantage of. The Roper meets a Mark
casually, or what appears to be coincidental circumstances, though he’s actually been
selected out of a crowd because of his profile – class, money, out of his home element,
etc. and is brought to the Big Store where the Roper passes the Mark off to the Inside
Man, who sets up the Sting. The Wire is the operation used in the movie “The Sting,”
though there were other similar, totally theatrical productions like The Ring and The
Stock, which also end with the money being given to the thieves without the Mark
even
knowing he was robbed.
“The big time confidence games are in reality, only carefully rehearsed plays
in which
every
member of the cast – Except the Mark, knows his part perfectly.” - David
Maurer,
In the Big Store that is Dealey Plaza, JFK was the Mark, John Connally roped him
and
Lyndon Johnson played the Inside Man and greased the official Dicks. And it was the
American people who were swindled of their democracy, without even knowing how
they did it. Well now we know how they did it and can illustrate it quite clearly for
anyone
who wants to know.
As with The Sting, the behind the scene network of operators that makes up the
Devine Skein is compromised of many different types of people, from street-wise
con
artists to suave, Ivy League corporate executives and bankers in business suits.
Now ordinary people can look into the glass onion and see The Big Picture, like
a
moving picture that leaves Dealey Plaza into the cool, dark tunnel and then emerges
into the light of day on the trail of the assassins, the picture moves wherever the evidence
leads, to places on the board and individuals who are players in the Great Game, whether
they
want to be or not.
The names of the real assassins of President Kennedy may never become as famous
as Lee Harvey Oswald, but I am convinced that we will come to know them, even if they
are now dead. We look into the Glass Onion, enter the ‘wilderness of mirrors,” not to
name the guilty, but for the adventure of answering the questions, figuring out the
riddles, to learn the how and the why, and to view today’s circumstances with the
proper
perspective.
If Oswald was just crazy, nothing else would make sense, but when you look at
the
Devine Skein through the "Glass Onion" of covert operations, it all makes sense, and
you
learn to understand what happened at Dealey Plaza.
As William Manchester wrote, “…If you put the murdered President of the
United States
on one side of the scale and that wretched waif Oswald on the other side, it doesn’t balance.
You want to add something weightier to Oswald. It would invest the President’s death with
meaning, endowing him with martyrdom. He would have died for something. A conspiracy
would, of course, do the job nicely. Unfortunately, there is no evidence whatever that there
was
one.” 14. (The Death of the President, William Manchester, 1967).
But the evidence is there, if you know what to look for and where to look for
it. People
ask all the time, “Who killed JFK?” Well, anyone can know the answer, but you just
can’t say a name, you have to take the inquisitive journey and learn for yourself, not
just
who killed JFK, but how and why they did it.
While we don’t have all the pieces to the big picture and mural puzzle,
especially the
one with the “smoking gun,” and there probably are no still secret document that gives
the names to the men who pulled the triggers, the overwhelming circumstantial evidence
fits
in very nicely with the covert history of current events.
The psychological makeup of that “wretched waif Oswald” is of little
consequence, and
all the academic studies of the Patsy are wrong because they are based on the false
premise
that he was the assassin.
On the other hand, an understanding of the Cold War history and the rules of the
Divine Skein puts things in a proper perspective and balances out the scales of
history, if not justice. The tools of the social scientist are limited. We can read and
interview, and in the end we must judge for ourselves what is real and what is not.
A homicide detective once told me that even if you know who murdered someone,
you still need to develop the evidence to convict them in a court of law. But the
counter-intelligence investigator, the journalist and historian do not have to meet
those
same standards to know the truth.
Most of the American people have always known, in fact most assumed or have come
to believe there was a conspiracy at Dealey Plaza. Even if they couldn’t see through
the Glass Onion clearly, they knew in their hearts that something was wrong, not only
with
the official version of events, but with our constitutional democracy.
It has only been since Watergate in 1972 that the general public became familiar
with
the covert operational terms such as “black bag operation” and “executive
action.”
Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria calls it the “Transparent
Conspiracy,”
where it is prearranged for anyone who takes up the trail of the assassins to be
led into a labyrinth of never ending false trails, dead ends and Machiavellian intrigues.
“The material we already have demonstrates conclusively that only the only
candidate behind the assassination is the American government,” says Salandria,
“so to go into a microanalysis only gets oneself into a hopeless maze, and we fail
to address the real issues. You can try to develop a model of explanation of what
was going on, what happened and why, but to rehash this is useless.” 15.
(The Transparent Conspiracy, Vincent Salandria, COPA Conference, Dallas, 1998,
John
Kelin, ed.).
With an understanding of the crafts and history of covert intelligence
operations,
and applying standard homicide investigative techniques, the network responsible
for the assassination can be identified. The Divine Skein provides a model of the
labyrinth, a map of the maze from those who have been there to those who are
just taking up the trail and want to take it even further. To understand the truth of w
hat happened at Dealey Plaza you can’t get caught up in all of the ballistics,
trajectories, acoustics, autopsies and caskets. Forget the “single-bullet-theory,”
suspend judgment on any theories you may have developed. Take up the trail
cold
and follow it wherever it leads.
At the last meeting of the Warren Commission Allen Dulles tried to have all of
the testimony,
reports and exhibits classified, but was over ruled by the other commissioners. “Go ahead
and
publish the stuff,” Dulles said, “people won’t read it anyway.”
John Judge said, “What they are telling us is that ‘We killed the
son-of-a-bitch, and you
can’t
do anything about it’.”
Well, Dulles was wrong, and many thousands of people have read it, and I believe
we
can
do something about it.
My personal approach is to adapt the style David Maurer developed when he
researched and wrote about the “Big Con,” and get to know the players, the lingo
and the lexicon of the clandestine warriors, learn their history, get to know their
biographies, and where they live, and then slip up next to them and ask them
why
they did it.
[Billkelly3@gmail.com]
RESEARCH NOTES:
1. Dulles, Allen; The Craft of Intelligence (June, 1963, Harpercollins,
NY)
http://books.google.com/books?id=mH3qdHK6_EsC&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=
allen+dulles+the+craft+of+intelligence&source=bl&ots=AtnZlGxkzI&sig=2944V6_
VSGmESgORGlpwjU-GBI8&hl=en&ei=0ICPSuSvHsGllAfWhoWyDA&sa=X&oi=
book_result&ct=result&resnum=3
- v=onepage&q=&f=false
2. Sun Tzu; The Art of War By Sun Tzu – Translated by Samuel B.
Griffith
http://books.google.com/books?id=5QKhUYU-rwAC&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=
Gen.+Sam+Griffith&source=bl&ots=CQCabkQZEi&sig=0VTlfMkgMeBUw2UiE1zz
A42EwpA&hl=en&ei=WmmGSu7dH4WGtgeJ-NznDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=r
esult&resnum=5
- v=onepage&q=&f=false
3. The Warren Commission Report (1964) http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/
warren-commission-report/ / http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-
report/chapter-7.html - conclusions “...Many factors were undoubtedly involved in
Oswald's motivation for the assassination, and the Commission does not believe t
hat it can ascribe to him any one motive or group of motives. It is apparent, however,
that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not
appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people.
He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination
he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's
search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start.
He sought for himself a place in history--a role as the "great man" who would be
recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and
communism
appears to have been another important factor in his motivation….”
4. Donovan, Robert; The Assassins (Harpers, 1955, Elek Books, London,
1956)
See: Time review, June 20, 1955. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,86
1574,00.html
5. Gibson, Prof. Donald: The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up (Kroshka
Books, 1999)
http://books.google.com/books?id=7n_sF3PSvSAC&pg=RA1-PA194&lpg=
RA1-PA194&dq=Donald+Gibson+Assassination+Coverup&source=bl&ots=
h2f9dPlX9U&sig=h05pb9YPYKxXo657jYT6bVythIU&hl=en&ei=eH-PSqeiF4m1lAe
Dxuy4DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2
- v=onepage&q=&f=falsex)
6.Donovan, Robert J., 90, NYT Obit, Saturday, August 10, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/10/us/robert-j-donovan-90-the-author-of-pt-109.html
7. Donovan, R.; Introduction to A Concise Compendium to the Warren Report.
(Popular
Library, N.Y.,1964) See: #66 http://www.tomfolio.com/bookssub.asp?subid=1884
Warren Commission. Donovan, Robert J. [Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963]
A Concise Compendium of the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of
John F. Kennedy. Publisher: NY, Popular Library [1964]. Introduction by Robert J.
Donovan. 637 p.; "Since the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy, a great
controversy, both here and in Europe, has raged over the true facts of the assassination.
To end this debate once and for all, President Johnson set up the Commission, headed
by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren. Now, with the publication of the
Warren Commission Report, the public for the first time can find the answers to such
troubling questions as: Was Lee Harvey Oswald really the killer? Was he alone, or a
member of a conspiracy? Just what were his relations with the far Left, the radical
Right, the CIA, and Jack Ruby? What was the true sequence of events of the terrible
crime and its extraordinary aftermath?" "The conclusive findings of the Official
Investigation
into the most shocking crime of our century."
8. Exceptional Secret Service Study. http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac.shtml
Assassination in the United States: An Operational Study of Recent Assassins,
Attackers, and Near Lethal Approaches; Journal of Forensic Sciences, Volume 44,
Number
2, March 1999. http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac/ntac_jfs.pdf
9. More Recent Study – Presidential Stalkers and Assassins.
http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/34/2/154 By codifying their actions based
on motive,
presence or absence of delusions, active psychosis, and intent to do harm, the author
presents five descriptive categories that he suggests capture the various motivations
of presidential stalkers and assassins and characterize the clinical context in which
the
behavior occurs…
10. Covert Operative Personality Profile
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/08/covert-operational-profile.html
11. Sam Griffith; Obit; Sun Tzu (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964)
http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/Whos_Who/Griffith_SB.htm
Retired Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith II, a noted author, lecturer, and
Sinologue,
died unexpectedly 27 Mar. 1983 in Newport, RI. He was born 31 May 1906, Lewiston,
Penn.,U.S. Naval Academy 1929, 2nd Lt. USMC,. Second Nicaraguan Campaign, China,
Cuba, and England. In China, language officer at the US Embassy Peiping. WW II British
commando training, England and Scotland; 1st Marine Div, 1st Raider Bat., Guadalcanal,
and 1st Raider Reg. in New Georgia, Navy Cross, Sept. 1942 for “extreme heroism and
courageous devotion to duty” at Matanikau River, Purple Heart, Army Distinguished
Service Cross. U.S. Naval War College, Newport, R.I., Chief of Staff, Fleet Marine Force,
staff of the U.S. Commander in Chief, Europe, retired from the Marine Corps 1956, after
more than 25 years service. Following retirement, Gen. Griffith awarded D.Phil. in
Chinese Military History, Oxford University (New College) 1961, translated Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War,1963 and Mao Tse-tung’s On Guerrilla War, 1978, wrote The Battle for
Guadalcanal, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and In Defense of the Public
Liberty. Research Fellow Council on Foreign Relations and Institute for Defense
Studies
in London.
Also see: Samuel Griffith Society Annual Conference – Adelaide
http://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/pages/Conf21/conf21generalinfo.html
12. Linebarger, Paul; Psychological Warfare – International Propaganda and
Communications by Paul M. A. Linebarger (1948, U.S. Army; Duell, Sloan and Pearce,
N.Y.
1954; Arno Press, 1972),
13. Mauer, David W.; The American Confidence Man (The Big Con; Pocket
Books, 1949)
The American Confidence Man – (Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, USA,
1974)
14. Manchester, William; The Death of the President (1967, Harper &
Row, NY )
15. Salandria, Vincent; The Transparent Conspiracy COPA Conference Vincent
Salandria
speech to the Coalition on Political Assassinations, Dallas, Texas, Nov. 20,
1998.
http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/35th_Issue/vs_text.html
16. Foreknowledge and the Assassination of JFK. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/
2009/08/foreknoweldge-and-jfk-assassination.html
Bill Kelly0
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About Me
William Kelly
William E. Kelly, Jr. was born in 1951, the son of a Camden, New Jersey, policeman.
He majored in history at the University of Dayton, Ohio, School of Education, where
he did his thesis on the Bay of Pigs. After graduation he taught history and became
a freelance journalist and author of regional history books "300 Years at the Point"
and "Birth of the Birdie," a history of golf. He is writing a follow book on golf, "Flight
of the Eagle - The Growth of Golf in America," and a history of rock & roll at the Jersey
Shore. Kelly formed the Committee for an Open Archives (COA) with his college
associate John Judge, lobbying extensively for the JFK Assassination Records Act,
which was passed in 1992. With others, he was an original founder of the Coaliton
on Political Assassinations (COPA). With Judge, he also assisted the 9/11 Citizen's
Watch, which monitored the work of the 9/11 Commission. Kelly is currently
attempting to petition federal prosecutors to convein a special federal grand jury
to
review the evidence and get Congress to Oversee the JFK Act.
1
Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)
by Douglas Horne:A Nearly-Entirely-Positive Review
This is a Review of Volume IV, which includes
Part II: Fraud in the Evidence—A Pattern of Deception (continued)
Chapter 13: What Really Happened at the Bethesda Morgue?
(and in Dealey Plaza)
Chapter 14: The Zapruder Film Mystery.
David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.
February 26, 2010
The death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a
slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins,
Great Books (1954)—My title here is a parody of my review
1 of Reclaiming History (2007) by VincentBugliosi. Since that review was (in my opinion) rather devastating for Bugliosi, my title
was intended to be sardonic. Despite this, Vince lifted a few quotes from it (out of
context and without my permission) and included them with his abbreviated paperback
version,
Four Days in November (2008). The total page count (CD included) of hismassive doorstopper was about 2786, almost exactly three times as long as the 888-page
Warren Report
. Horne’s book, by contrast, is shorter: 1880 pages, including the frontmatter (pages i-lxxiii). I had stated that Bugliosi’s book was likely to stand forever as the
magnum opus
of this case, though not without serious flaws. As a magnum opus,however, Horne’s five-volume set is a serious challenge to Bugliosi, but with virtually
none of Bugliosi’s flaws. The current review, however, focuses (almost) solely on
Volume IV, which I regard as Horne’s set piece (as that phrase is used in literature and
film, but not in soccer).
Although some men believe that women age like fine wine, in this case it is Horne
himself who has aged well—he waited the better part of a decade after his experiences
with the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) before beginning the serious
work on his book. He does hint, though, that Bugliosi drop-kicked him (he is an Ohio
State Buckeye fan) onto the playing field. Volume IV focuses on the two chief themes of
the entire five-volume set: (1) the illicit surgery, before the official autopsy began, by
pathologists James J. Humes and J. Thornton Boswell
2 at the Bethesda morgue and (2)the Zapruder film riddles. It is likely that the success or failure of Horne’s work will rise
or fall with this single volume. In this review, I shall address these two topics in
sequence, critique a few puzzles, then draw some conclusions and finish with several
suggestions. By way of a
caveat emptor, I should confess that I initially encountered1
Google: “A Not-Entirely-Positive Review.” Also see Jim DiEugenio’s continuing and very extensivereview of Bugliosi’s book at
http://www.ctka.net/.2
Visit their photographs at Douglas Horne, Inside the ARRB (2009), Volume I at Figures 77-80.2
Horne at his first COPA (Committee on Political Assassinations) conference (when he
interviewed with the ARRB), have intermittently met him since, and consider him a very
good friend. He is also a very bright and strong-willed investigator.
Illicit Surgery at the Bethesda Morgue
In order to paint Humes and Boswell (H&B hereafter) as the morbid coconspirators,
Horne needs first to clarify the timeline—which he does brilliantly (see the
Appendix at the end of this review). The ARRB learned, for the first time, that JFK’s
body initially arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 PM local time (in a black hearse).
That information derives from an after-action report (written on November 26, 1963) by
Marine Sergeant Roger Boyajian.
3 Quite astonishingly, Boyajian had retained a copy ofhis report, which he presented to the ARRB. His report corroborates the recollections of
Dennis David
4 who saw the light gray navy ambulance (with the bronze casket fromDallas) arrive at the front of the hospital, where he saw Jackie exit; its arrival time was
either 6:53 PM or 6:55 PM (the sources vary).
5 But just about 20 minutes earlier, Davidhad directed his on-duty sailors as they delivered the body in a cheap casket, i.e., the
entry described by Boyajian. David estimated (from memory) the delivery time as 6:40
PM, or perhaps 6:45 PM. His estimate is strikingly close to Boyajian’s recorded time of
6:35 PM. Horne concludes that this arrival time of 6:35 PM must now be accepted as a
foundation stone in this case. As further corroboration for this time, he emphasizes that
even Humes agreed with it: before the ARRB, Humes cited the initial arrival as possibly
as early as 6:45 PM.
6 In my opinion, therefore, it is very difficult to disagree with thisearly arrival time. If this is accepted, though, the repercussions are colossal—it means
that the bronze casket (the one that traveled with Jackie) was empty. Horne next compiles
a long table
7 of witnesses to the cheap casket and the body bag, both of which were seenat this initial entry. He is also very persuasive here, although he rightfully credits Lifton
with much of this groundbreaking work.
Now if the body arrived at 6:35 PM in a cheap shipping casket, when did it exit
the bronze casket (the one that left Parkland)? Horne suggests that this transfer occurred
right after the bronze casket boarded Air Force One. (Lifton again blazed this trail.) As
corroboration for this, Horne
8 describes JFK’s Air Force Aide, Godfrey McHugh, asperturbed about a delay caused by a “luggage transfer” between the two official planes.
After this transfer to a body bag, tampering became feasible. Horne suggests that an
initial foray into the body took place in the forward baggage compartment prior to the
flight to DC; the goal was to extract metal debris or a bullet from the throat wound. (It is
not known whether anything was found.) Horne infers that a similar attempt was made on
3
Ibid. at Figure 68 and at xxxiii. A more detailed account is in Horne’s Appendix 38; seehttp://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/docset/getList.do?docSetId=1932
.4
David Lifton, Best Evidence (1988), at 569-588.5
For example, see Clint Hill’s statement at http://www.jfk-online.com/clhill.html:“The motorcade arrived Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:55 p.m.”
Hill also describes landing with Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base at 5:58 PM.
6
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1002.7
Ibid. at 989-992.8
Horne cites William Manchester, Death of a President (1967).3
the brain, but that attempt likely foundered because the requisite tool (e.g., a bone saw)
was missing.
The second casket entry (via a light gray navy ambulance) occurred at about 7:17
PM. James W. Sibert and Francis X. O’Neill, Jr. (the two-member FBI team) and Roy H.
Kellerman and William Greer (both Secret Service) together delivered the (empty)
bronze casket to the morgue.
9 This time is consistent with the arrival time of the bronzecasket (shortly before 7 PM) at the front of the hospital. The third casket entry (with the
body inside) has traditionally been accepted as the official one—at 8 PM (in a light gray
navy ambulance). It was delivered by the Joint Service Casket Team.
10 The transfer of thebody must have occurred (in the morgue) after the second entry at 7:17 PM. But it must
also have transpired
after the initial X-rays (for reasons to be discussed below).11 Finally,this transfer must have occurred well in advance of 8 PM so that the bronze casket could
leave the morgue (Tom Robinson recalled this temporary departure
12), be “found” by theofficial casket team, and then delivered again at 8 PM. This sequence of three casket
entries looks like a classic French farce, i.e., an affair concocted by a half-mad
scriptwriter. Unfortunately, all of the evidence points strongly in the direction of three
casket entries. Perhaps this would have been unnecessary, as Horne points out, if only
Jackie had not insisted on staying with the bronze casket en route to the morgue. (She had
declined a helicopter ride to the White House, which would have separated her from the
Dallas casket.) Most likely the plan had been to surreptitiously transfer the body between
caskets at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But Jackie’s unexpected decision to
remain with the bronze Dallas casket waylaid those plans, which meant that Kellerman
(who Horne nominates as the morgue manager) had to improvise on the spot. It was a
highly risky business, during which this escapade was nearly uncovered, according to
Horne.
Lifton had argued that body alteration had occurred somewhere
before Bethesda.He believed that altering the geometry of the shooting through "trajectory reversal"—i.e.,
turning entrance wounds into exit wounds, and planting false entrance wounds on the
body—was the primary reason for the illicit post mortem surgery, and that removing
bullet fragments was only a co-equal, or even secondary, goal of the clandestine
surgery
.13 Horne takes a different tack: he believes that the reason for assaulting the body(before Bethesda) was merely to extract bullet debris, not primarily to alter wounds.
My own views come into play at this point. Before Horne’s work, I had become
convinced that someone had messed with the throat wound, most likely to extract bullet
fragments. The evidence for this was that the two sets of witnesses—those at Parkland vs.
those at Bethesda—had disagreed so profoundly. Also, Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who
performed the tracheotomy, claimed that he had left the throat wound “inviolate,”
meaning that it was easily visible after the tube was pulled. In addition, Charles
Crenshaw insisted that the tracheotomy at Parkland was nothing like the one in the
9
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1006.10
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 70.11
The entire X-ray collection is listed in Ibid. at Figure 58.12
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1007.13
In retrospect, Lifton had been grievously misled by the HSCA’s false statements, namely that the autopsyphotographs were authentic and that all the witnesses agreed with them. This falsehood was only
discovered after the movie,
JFK, triggered the release of multiple, sequestered witness statements thatdisagreed with the photographs.
4
autopsy photographs. I also had my own (telephone) encounter with the autopsy
radiologist, John Ebersole.
14 I still sense the horror in his voice as he recalled thetracheotomy and declared that he would never do one like that. Horne’s witnesses (there
are more) only validate my prior conclusion about throat tampering.
Before Horne’s work, I was uncertain about head tampering before Bethesda
(although Lifton had made a strong case for it). Nonetheless, I had to agree that if the
throat had been explored, then of course the head might also have been invaded.
Although Horne is still open-minded about illegal tampering of the skull before Bethesda,
he believes that such an event can be inferred from (1) Finck’s statement (to the defense
team at the Clay Shaw trial in 1969) that the autopsy report (presumably an earlier one, as
the extant one does not say this) described the spinal cord as severed when the body
arrived at Bethesda and (2) Tom Robinson’s comment to the ARRB that the top of the
skull was “badly broken” when the body was received at Bethesda, but that the large
defect (in the superior skull) in the autopsy photographs was “what the [autopsy] doctors
did”—i.e., that the missing skull was due to the pathologists, not due an assassin’s
bullet(s).
15 These reports therefore provide more evidence that the head was exploredsomewhere
before Bethesda; the goal was to retrieve bullet debris, but it failed—becausethe brain could not be extracted from the skull. In summary then, the body arrived at
Bethesda as follows: (1) with a radically enlarged tracheotomy
16 and no bullet debris inthe neck (perhaps there never was any, as I have suggested elsewhere
17) and (2) with thesame (right occipital) exit wound that was seen at Parkland and with a brain that had not
been removed from the skull and that therefore closely, or possibly even exactly,
resembled the Parkland brain. Most likely the brain still contained most, or even all, of
the bullet fragments from Dealey Plaza. (These metal fragments are, of course, absent
from the official record today.) Those are Horne’s conclusions about H&B, but let’s look
at the evidence.
So why does Horne conclude that H&B illicitly removed (and altered) the brain
shortly after 6:35 PM,
before any X-rays were taken, and before the official autopsybegan? He here introduces two intriguing witnesses—the two R’s, namely Reed and
Robinson. Edward Reed was assistant to Jerrol Custer (the radiology tech), while Tom
Robinson was a mortician. Rather consistently with one another, but quite independently,
both describe critical steps taken by H&B that no one else reports. (Horne documents
why no one else reported these events—almost everyone else had been evicted from the
morgue before this clandestine interlude.) After the body was placed on the morgue table
(and before X-rays were taken), Reed briefly sat in the gallery.
18 Reed states19 thatHumes first used a scalpel across the top of the forehead to pull the scalp back. Then he
used a saw
to cut the forehead bone, after which he (and Custer, too) were asked to leavethe morgue. (Reed was not aware that this intervention by Humes was unofficial.) This
activity by Humes is highly significant because multiple witnesses saw the intact entry
hole high in the right forehead at the hairline. On the other hand, the autopsy photographs
14
James Fetzer, editor, Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), at 433 and 436.15
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1164.16
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 60.17
Fetzer (2000), supra, at 258-259.18
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 40, shows a sketch of the morgue floor plan, including the gallery.19
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1035, 1163-1171 and Volume II at 426 and 437.5
show only a thin incision at this site, an incision that no Parkland witness ever saw. The
implication is obvious: this specific autopsy photograph was taken
after Humes alteredthe forehead—thereby likely obliterating the entry hole.
Reed’s report suggests that Humes deliberately obliterated the right forehead
entry; in fact, the autopsy photograph does not show this entry site. Paradoxically,
however, Robinson (the mortician) recalls
20 seeing, during restoration, a wound about ¼inch across at this very location. He even recalls having to place wax at this site. So the
question is obvious: If Humes had obliterated the wound (as seems the case based on the
extant autopsy photograph), how then could Robinson still see the wound during
restoration? This question cannot be answered with certainty, but two options arise: (1)
perhaps the wound was indeed obliterated (or mostly obliterated) and Robinson merely
suffered some memory merge—i.e., even though he added wax to the incision (the one
still visible in the extant photograph), he was actually recalling the way it looked before
Humes got to it, or (2) the photograph itself has been altered—to disguise the wound that
was visible in an
original photograph. The latter option was seemingly endorsed by JoeO’Donnell, the USIA photographer,
21 who said that Knudsen actually showed him such aphotograph.
Regarding Robinson, Horne concludes that he arrived with the hearse that brought
the body (i.e., the first entry). After that, Robinson simply observed events from the
morgue gallery; contrary to Reed’s experience, he was not asked to leave. Just before 7
PM, Robinson
22 saw H&B remove large portions of the rear and top of the skull with asaw
, in order to access the brain. (Robinson was not aware that this activity was off therecord.) He also observed ten or more bullet fragments extracted from the brain.
Although these do not appear in the official record, Dennis David recalls
23 preparing areceipt for at least four fragments.
24Contrary to Reed and Robinson, Humes
25 declared that a saw was not important:We had to do virtually no work with a saw to remove these portions of the skull,
they came apart in our hands very easily, and we attempted to further examine
the brain….
Although James Jenkins (an autopsy technician) does not explicitly describe the
use of a saw, he does recall that damage to the brain (as seen inside the skull) was
lessthan the corresponding size of the cranial defect; this indirectly implies prior removal of
some of the skull.
26Horne adds an independent argument for multiple casket entries.
27 Pierre Fincktold the
Journal of the American Medical Association28 that he was at home when Humes20
Fetzer (2000), supra, at 250.21
Ibid. at 242.22
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1005.23
Lifton (1988), supra, at 492 and 579.24
Harry Livingstone actually prints a photograph of four fragments in High Treason (1998), at 562. Theirprovenance, however, seems uncertain.
25
Warren Commission Hearings, Volume II at 354.26
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1042-1043.27
Ibid. at 1000.6
telephoned him at 7:30 PM. (In his
2/1/65 report to General Blumberg he cites 8 PM.29)Finck, as a forensic pathologist, had been asked to assist with the autopsy. As further
confirmation for Finck’s overall timeline, he arrived (see his Blumberg report) at the
morgue at 8:30 PM. But here is the clincher: during this phone call, Humes told Finck
that X-rays had already been taken—and had already been viewed. On the other hand, the
official entry time (with the Joint Service Casket Team) was at 8 PM! If that indeed was
the one and only entry time, how then could X-rays have been taken—let alone
developed and viewed (a process of 30 minutes minimum)—even
before the officialentry time? The only possible answer is that the body did not first arrive at 8 PM.
Furthermore, Custer and Reed, the radiology techs, provide timelines consistent with
much earlier X-rays; in particular, they recall seeing Jackie enter the hospital lobby,
30well
after the 6:35 PM casket entry—an entry they had personally witnessed. Insummary, eyewitnesses convincingly support a much earlier timeline than the official
entry of 8 PM. Therefore, multiple casket entries are logically required. And that more
relaxed timeline gave H&B time both to perform their illicit surgery and also for skull Xrays
to be taken and read, most likely all before 7:30-8:00 PM.
The reader might well ask why Reed and Robinson (and Custer, too) were
permitted to observe (at least briefly) this illegal surgery by H&B. Horne proposes that
the morgue manager that night (Kellerman) was not present for the first casket entry—
that’s because he was riding with Jackie and the bronze casket. Therefore, before he
arrived (most likely that was shortly after 7 PM), there was no hands-on stage manager in
the morgue. It is even possible that Kellerman himself ejected Reed and Custer as soon as
he arrived. Robinson, on the other hand, dressed in civilian clothing, may have seemed to
Kellerman a lesser threat, so Robinson stayed.
Several conclusions follow from the above analysis. First, the official skull Xrays
31do not show the condition of the skull or the brain as seen at Parkland. Instead,
they were taken after tampering by H&B, perhaps even after significant tampering,
especially if Robinson and Reed are correct. Furthermore, the massive damage seen in
the photographs and X-rays was not caused just by a bullet or even by multiple bullets,
but instead by pathological hands. In particular, for a
single, full metal-jacketed bullet(the Warren Commission’s inevitable scenario) to generate such an enormous defect has
always defied credibility.
32 Likewise, Boswell’s sketch (for the ARRB) on a skull33 ofthis enormous defect only shows the condition of the skull after tampering by H&B—and
does not reflect the skull as seen at Parkland. (The Parkland witnesses fully concur with
this.) On the other hand, many witnesses at Bethesda saw the condition of the skull
before such tampering began. These witnesses, both physicians and paraprofessionals,
28
Breo, D.L., “JFK’s death, Part II—Dr. Finck speaks out, ‘two bullets, from the rear,’ ” JAMA 268:1749(1992).
29
http://www.jfk-assassination.net/weberman/finck1.htm. Or see Horne’s Appendix 29 or 7 HSCA 101,122, 135, 191. The list of appendices is in Horne,
supra, Volume I at xix-lii. The appendices themselves areat the Mary Ferrell website. See my footnote 3 for a link.
30
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1005.31
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figures 37-38.32
See Boswell’s sketch from the autopsy: Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 11.33
Ibid. at Figures 12-15.7
uniformly describe a right occipital blowout,
34 consistent with a shot from the front.Leaving aside the pathologists, as many as eight Bethesda physicians may be on this
list.
35 In photographs,36 both Parkland and Bethesda witnesses demonstrate withremarkable unanimity, on their own heads, the location of this obvious exit wound on the
right rear skull.
The X-rays do, however, show many small fragments distributed across the top of
the skull.
37 So why didn’t Humes extract more of these? I have previously proposed(based on their actual appearance—as viewed in detail on multiple occasions at the
Archives) that they look more like mercury than like lead. If so, then Humes would not
have been able to palpate them (mercury is liquid) and would therefore have been unable
to remove them during his illicit surgery phase.
We could go on to ask: What other evidence exists for such illicit surgery? Lifton
initially introduced this issue by citing the FBI report (by Sibert and O’Neill), which
quoted Humes as describing surgery to the head.
38 Sibert, in the 2000s, still insisted thatthey had quoted Humes correctly about such surgery.
39 (I also heard Sibert say this inFort Myers, Florida, during one of Law’s taping sessions.) Furthermore, the FBI had no
reason to fabricate such a statement. On Lifton’s tape (which I have heard), he queries
Humes about this; to me, Humes does sound remarkably suspicious and evasive. But the
FBI men are not the only witnesses to his statement. Another is James Jenkins, who
quotes Humes
40 as asking: “Did they do surgery at Parkland?” Furthermore, Humes waslater told, when some skull fragments arrived at the morgue,
41 that these had been“removed” during surgery at Parkland. We all know that did not happen, so where did
they come from? Horne implies that Humes himself had removed them during the illicit
phase. Another supporting argument is the remarkable ease of removing the brain from
the skull (during the official autopsy phase), but this is not so surprising if it had
previously been removed during the unofficial phase. James Jenkins
42 observed that thebrainstem had been cut, as if by a scalpel (not severed by a bullet), which also suggests
its earlier removal that evening (while Jenkins was absent). In any case, such an early
removal was likely essential to successfully search for (and extract) bullet debris. Even
Finck
43 bears witness to a transected spinal cord: to the defense team at the Shaw trial in1969, Finck stated that the autopsy report (presumably an earlier one, as the extant one
does not say this) described the spinal cord as severed when the body arrived at Bethesda.
Finck was still absent when the brain was removed, so someone must have told him this,
most likely Humes.
34
For two eyewitness sketches see Ibid. at Figures 21 & 30. Also see the sketch approved by Parklandphysician, Robert McClelland:
Ibid. at Figure 81.35
Michael Kurtz includes George Burkley, Robert Canada, John Ebersole, Calvin Galloway, RobertKarnei, Edward Kenney, David Osborne, and John Stover; see
The Assassination Debates (2006), at 39 and126.
36
Robert Groden, The Killing of a President (1993), at 86-88.37
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figures 37-38.38
Lifton, supra, at 295-307.39
William Law, In the Eye of History (2005), at 143-288.40
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1036 and 1038.41
See their X-rays in Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 39.42
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1037.43
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1036-1037.8
Horne comments further on the throat wound. He concludes that H&B were well
aware of this wound that night and he provides considerable evidence for this
conclusion.
44 However, given the absence of the throat wound from the FBI report, H&Bprobably learned of it only after the FBI left, i.e., after 11 PM.
45 That information thenled to the pathologists’ interim discussion of an exit through the throat, as later reported
by Richard Lipsey.
46 Horne even speculates that an early version of the autopsy reportincluded exactly this scenario, which later had to be discarded because of timing data
from the Zapruder film.
Regarding the throat wound I would add the following. Warren Commission
loyalists like to cite medical articles that ER personnel cannot reliably distinguish entry
from exit wounds. Even if true, though, that comment obfuscates the situation. To the
contrary, in this particular case several facts trump those medical reports: (1) such a tiny
exit wound could not be duplicated in experiments
47 and (2) Milton Helpern (who haddone 60,000 autopsies) said that he had never seen an exit wound that was so small
(under similar conditions).
48 Then there is the question of the magic bullet. As Hornesummarizes, its provenance has been extensively investigated by Josiah Thompson
49(with recent assistance from Gary Aguilar). In the face of the persistent refusal of the
pertinent witnesses to identify this bullet, most likely it would never have been admitted
at trial—and that alone would thoroughly devastate any Warren Commission case.
50 Afinal telling blow derives from the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC):
44
Ebersole also confirmed a call to Dallas during our telephone conversations (see my footnote 14). Heestimated the time as about 10:30 PM (
Ibid. at 999). What struck me, though, is the reason why he recalledthis event so clearly: he said that
after they learned about the throat wound, they stopped searching forbullet debris on the X-rays (Fetzer (2000),
supra, at 437). Quite interestingly, Stringer also seemed to recallsuch a telephone call (Horne,
supra, Volume IV at 1011; Volume I at 166; or HSCA interview with JohnStringer, Document 013617, at 4). Moreover, Stringer’s estimate of the time agreed with Ebersole’s
estimate. Dr. Robert Karnei (resident pathologist) also recalled a telephone call to Parkland on that Friday
night; see Harry Livingstone,
High Treason II (1992), at 186.45
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 999. Oddly enough, Malcolm Perry, before the Warren Commission,initially recalled his conversation with Humes as Friday night; see
Warren Commission Hearings, VolumeIII at 380 or
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/perry_m1.htm:Mr. SPECTER - Dr. Perry, did you have occasion to discuss your observations with Comdr. James J.
Humes of the Bethesda Naval Hospital?
Dr. PERRY - Yes, sir; I did.
Mr. SPECTER - When did that conversation occur?
Dr. PERRY - My knowledge as to the exact accuracy of it is obviously in doubt. I was under the initial
impression that I talked to him on Friday, but I understand it was on Saturday. I didn't recall exactly when.
46
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 83.47
Olivier, A.G., Dziemian, A.J., “Wound Ballistics of the 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano Ammunition. USArmy Edgewood Arsenal Technical Report CRDLR 3264.” March 1965. Also see Horne,
supra, VolumeIV at 1083 and Kurtz,
supra, at 35.48
Kurtz, supra, at 35. Also see Marshall Houts, Where Death Delights; the Story of Dr. Milton Helpern andForensic Medicine
(1967).49
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1089-1095. Also see Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), at176. Thompson here actually wonders if the bullet had been switched by government agents sometime after
its initial appearance. Also see
http://www.historymatters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm
.50
David Wrone has made a similar argument for the chain of possession of the Zapruder film; see Fetzer(1998),
supra, at 265. Wrone claims that a good lawyer could have kept the film out of the courtroom(although it did surface for the Clay Shaw trial). Given the recent interviews with Dino Brugioni (see
below), that argument today is stronger than ever.
9
before political leverage was exerted, their scenario actually included a
frontal throatshot!
51The Zapruder Film Mystery
Based on his relentless defense of the extant film, Josiah Thompson can
justifiably claim the title, “High Priest of Z Film.” His initial claim derives from his work
for
LIFE magazine in the 1960s, which led to Six Seconds in Dallas (1967). He claimed(p. 7): “Quite obviously, the Zapruder film contained the nearest thing to absolute truth
about the sequence of events in Dealey Plaza.” His most recent public paper (2007)
52finalized his claim to the above title. Unfortunately for Thompson, Horne’s work has
created deep fractures in his purported bedrock, and has pulverized some rockheads into
finely ground sand.
53 When Thompson wrote his “Bedrock” article he ignored twowitnesses
54 who had been extensively interviewed by the ARRB (actually by Hornehimself) and whose interviews were surely already known to Thompson, who is nothing
if not a very bright detective. These witnesses were Ben Hunter and Homer McMahon,
employees of the NPIC (a subsidiary of the CIA), who received the original (in their
view) film from a Secret Service agent. The latter, in turn, had just couriered it from
Rochester, New York, headquarters of Eastman Kodak. Moreover, this agent (“Bill
Smith”) specifically said that the film had been
developed (sic) in Rochester. If that wastrue, then there must have been a second film, one not shot by Zapruder (his film, after
all, had been
developed in Dallas), but rather one filmed from a nearly identical site inDealey Plaza.
55But Horne’s next stroke is the mortal blow to the Zapruder film, one beyond even
the skills of a contemporary Parsifal. Horne details Peter Janney’s encounters (including
seven interviews) with Dino Brugioni,
56 a founder of the NPIC. John McCone, Directorof the CIA, had telephoned the NPIC director, Arthur Lundahl (Brugioni’s superior),
asking him to assist the Secret Service in analyzing the original (Zapruder) film.
57Beginning late on Saturday night (November 23), Brugioni viewed an original, 8 mm
film and prepared briefing boards, which were presented to McCone the next morning.
Amazingly, Brugioni stated that neither Ben Hunter nor Captain Sands were at his event.
51
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1208-1212; the NPIC proposed such a frontal shot at frame Z-190. Ofcourse, there is also the article by Paul Mandel (
Ibid. at 1202 and LIFE, December 6, 1963) about theZapruder film: "…the 8 mm film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves
to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed---towards the sniper's nest---just before he clutches it."
52
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_in_the_Kennedy_Assassination.53
Ironically, a Captain (Pierre) Sands attended the Hunter-McMahon event (see below). The layman shouldunderstand that “rockhead” is neither an epithet nor a pejorative for certain types of music lovers. It is
merely a geological formation.
54
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1226-1227.55
John Costella, an Australian Ph.D. physicist with expertise in optics, has offered very compellingphysical arguments as to why more than just an original Zapruder film was absolutely necessary to
fabricate the extant film. See James Fetzer, editor,
The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), at 145-238. Oneresearcher has advised me that he has made some progress, but identifying the pertinent photographer(s)
remains an open question.
56
Dino Brugioni, Photofakery: the History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation(1999). His recollections of the Cuban missile crisis are documented at 109-110.
57
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1220-1243.10
(Brugioni did not recall ever meeting Homer McMahon; he could therefore
not personally report whether or not McMahon was present at Event I on Saturday night.
Of course, since Brugioni was positive that Ben Hunter was absent, and because Hunter
and McMahon were linked by their recall of one another, then McMahon should not have
been present at Brugioni’s event.) In a detailed analysis Horne shows convincingly that
two separate events, both highly compartmentalized, occurred on successive nights.
During these recent interviews, when Brugioni finally learned—after 46 years—of two
unrelated events, both at NPIC, he was stunned!
Horne assembles a magnificent table
58 that contrasts these two events: theSaturday night (November 23) event with Brugioni and the Sunday night event
(November 24) with Hunter and McMahon. Horne demonstrates how compartmentalized
these two events were: they differed in attendees, film format, and briefing boards.
Brugioni knew Ben Hunter, but did not see him at his event. Brugioni had handled an 8
mm film (Hunter and McMahon had a 16 mm film) that he considered an original; that it
was 8 mm is certain because NPIC had to purchase a projector (near midnight on
Saturday) from a private local store. (The NPIC did not own its own 8 mm projector.)
Brugioni also viewed photographs of the briefing boards currently in the Archives, which
had been authenticated by Hunter and McMahon. However, Brugioni was certain that
these were not his. He was even able to recall how his differed from these. Although
Hunter and McMahon’s film reportedly came from Rochester, Brugioni was not told
where his had originated (most likely it was Zapruder’s original—diverted from Chicago
to DC that Saturday).
Based on these interviews, Horne draws several conclusions: (1) the CIA had an
immediate and high level interest in the film; (2) the original film had been split from 16
mm to 8 mm in Dallas, just as the Dallas witnesses had agreed;
59 (3) the extremecompartmentalization implies that the two films were different; (4) Brugioni viewed
Zapruder’s original (8mm), whereas Hunter and McMahon viewed an altered film (in 16
mm, unslit format); (5) the alterations were done during the day on Sunday, November
24, in Rochester, New York; (6) most likely aerial imaging was used for these alterations;
and (7) the three copies of the original (already in circulation
60) then had to be replacedby copies of the newly altered film. The reason that Horne chooses Sunday is
straightforward:
LIFE’s next issue reached the marketplace on Tuesday (November 26)and it contained images from the extant film (the one currently in the Archives). Some of
these low resolution, black and white
LIFE images (in Horne’s opinion—and mine, too)show signs of alteration, particularly the bizarre debris (sometimes called the “blob”) on
58
Ibid. at 1236.59
This contradicts Roland Zavada’s final verdict on this question, although his initial conclusion had beenprecisely the opposite; see below for more on Zavada.
60
It is possible that some copies of these copies (sic) escaped the dragnet. Dan Rather, for example (TheCamera Never Blinks
(1977), at 127), claims that security for the film was extremely poor while he was atCBS. Multiple individuals have reported viewing a very different Zapruder film, actually one more
consistent with the eyewitnesses (Fetzer (2000),
supra, at 354). Millicent Cranor described to me a film thatshe saw in 1992 at NBC; she added that John Lattimer must have seen a similar film (
Resident and StaffPhysician,
May 1972, at 60). The LIFE issue of October 2, 1964, had six different versions according toPaul Hoch and Vincent Salandria (Fred Newcomb and Perry Adams,
Murder from Within (1974), at 143).In one version Z-323 had a caption that described JFK’s head as “snapping to one side” (also see my
footnote 67); another version replaced this frame with Z-313 and a caption describing JFK’s head as going
forward
.11
JFK’s face and the disappearance of the white object in the background grass. Horne
suspects that the alterations had all been completed by Sunday night, although he seems
not finally wedded to this concept. In any case, Loudon Wainwright
61 said that 31 frameswere employed for that issue of
LIFE. Although other frames might have been open toalteration after Sunday, it seems likely that these 31 frames would have restricted later
changes. (There are fewer than 500 in the entire film.)
Horne next reviews the momentous technical issues that bedevil the extant film—
anomalies that really should not be present. In fact, none of these would have been
predicted for an original film. Even a single one casts doubts on authenticity, but when a
complete list is compiled the evidence becomes overwhelming. Aside from image content
issues (which are very serious) this technical list includes the following items: (1) the
location of the punched number 183 is inconsistent on both the extant film and (in
photographic images) on the extant copies, (2) the punched numbers unique to each of
the three copies are quite strangely located, (3) the absence of intersprocket images on the
three copies was not predicted by the Jamieson lab, which had exposed them, (4) Zavada
could not reproduce the septum line, (5) the double registration of the Dallas processing
edge print is odd, (6) no one in Dallas recalled the bracketing (by exposure differences)
that is present in the three extant copies, (7) Zavada has shown remarkable indecisiveness
about when Zapruder’s film was slit from 16 mm format to 8 mm, (8) the “full flush left”
issue
62 was not resolved, and (9) claw flare is still a puzzle. That so many purelytechnical issues persist would, by itself, be a wonder if the extant film indeed were
authentic.
63Horne also reviews the curious stories of Dan Rather
64 and Cartha DeLoach.65Both had been early viewers of the film and both had reported that JFK’s head had gone
violently
forward. To put this into perspective, the reader might ask himself this question:How many individuals have you met who, after once viewing the film, agreed with the
reports of these two men? I have never met any. An actual Dealey Plaza witness, James
61
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1346. Wainwright was a LIFE employee who published The GreatAmerican Magazine—An Inside Story of
LIFE (1986). This includes a (second-hand) account of theseimages in
LIFE (November 29, 1963). He states that 31 enlargements were used in creating a sequentiallayout for that issue.
62
I recently viewed an original Zavada report; there is indeed one image of the red truck (Zavada Report(1998) at 1285) that does extend very near the left edge, just as Horne states. However, Horne’s point is
that the images in the extant Zapruder film nearly always extend fully left, whereas Zavada’s test images
only rarely show this phenomenon. Horne also cites the Janowitz/Myers film (Horne,
supra, Volume IV at1290), shot in Dealey Plaza with a camera like Zapruder’s. As he viewed it on a DVD it seemed to show
“full flush left,” but Horne noted that he personally could not authenticate this film and would really prefer
to see a film actually shot through Zapruder’s camera. For more on this J/M film see
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15326
.63
Many of these points had previously been made, as Horne acknowledges, both by Harry Livingstone andby me, although our work was admittedly based on Horne’s initial efforts. Horne emphasizes that he only
read Livingstone’s book
after he had done his own research. That the two of them reached so manycommon conclusions (they did indeed do so) is taken by Horne as (at least partial) verification of his own
work. See Fetzer (1998),
supra, and Fetzer (2000), supra, and also Harry Livingstone, The Hoax of theCentury: Decoding the Forgery of the Zapruder Film
(2004).64
Rather, supra, at 127.65
Noel Twyman and I independently discovered DeLoach’s report in his autobiography, Hoover's FBI: TheInside Story by Hoover's Trusted Lieutenant
(1995), at 139. DeLoach does not comment on his obviousdisagreement with the extant Zapruder film.
12
Altgens, a photographer, also described JFK’s head as going forward.
66 Horne alsoreminds us that early viewers of the film easily saw debris (possibly brain tissue) flying
to the rear. One of these witnesses was Erwin Schwartz (Zapruder’s partner), who saw
the film multiple times the very day that it was developed.
67 Such backward-flying debrisis nowhere seen in the extant film. Horne also notes the unrecorded turn from Houston to
Elm (which both Zapruder and his secretary recalled filming) as well as the now-ancient
problem of the limousine stop (first emphasized by Lifton many years ago). The
discrepancies between the autopsy photographs, on the one hand, and the Zapruder film,
on the other, are also reviewed. Horne offers likely explanations (of incompetent
tampering) for these inconsistencies.
In an Addendum, “The Zapruder Film Goes to Hollywood,” Horne recounts his
viewing of HD scans based on a 35 mm “dupe negative.” His Hollywood contact got her
copy of the extant film (for $795) from a private laboratory, to which she had been
referred by the Archives’ personnel themselves. (There is no other means to obtain such a
copy, as the Archives do not directly reproduce copies.) Horne describes his viewing
experiences with several Hollywood professionals (I have seen these, too). Quite striking
were (1) the black patch over JFK’s head,
68 (2) the oddly truncated corner of theStemmons Freeway sign,
69 and (3) the “blob” on JFK’s face.70 The black patch, inparticular, had sharp and geometric borders and was astonishingly black, especially when
compared to earlier frames (before Z-313) of JFK’s head and also when compared to the
natural shadow on the back and side of Connally’s head. I have since viewed the MPI
transparencies (copied directly from the extant film at the Archives) at the Sixth Floor
Museum in Dallas. These images, too, are quite striking. Since they are accessible by the
public, anyone should be able see them, merely by arranging an appointment with the
Museum. Horne concludes this section by printing his FOIA letter to the CIA and
associated letters on this subject to President Obama, Senator Webb, and DCI Panetta
(the CIA response is still pending). Among other items, he requested information on (1)
the highly secret CIA facility in Rochester, New York (Hawkeyeworks), (2) the optical
printer(s) available there in 1963, (3) the briefing boards prepared by Brugioni (which
might still exist), and (4) Brugioni’s personal history of the NPIC. Brugioni told Janney
that he himself had written this history, which included a brief mention of his Zapruder
film event.
Aside from David Wrone (not discussed here, but worth reading about), the
individual who fares worst as Horne’s mark is Roland Zavada, author of the nowinfamous
Zavada Report. Although this was purportedly a study to confirm the
authenticity of the Zapruder film, no such claim is actually made in that report. After
many
tête-à-têtes with Zavada, Horne concludes that Zavada has ruined his own66
Fetzer (2003), supra, at 200.67
Also see a review by Richard J. DellaRosa at http://www.jfkresearch.com/book_review.html: “Wheninterviewed in the 1990s, Zapruder's business partner, Erwin Schwartz, said that he vividly recalled
watching the film and remembered seeing JFK's head suddenly ‘whip around to the left’ and saw an
explosion of blood and brains from his head and that it had been blown out ‘to the left rear.’ ” Also see my
footnote 60.
68
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figures 87-88.69
Ibid. at Figures 85-86.70
Ibid. at Figures 89-90.13
credibility in matters of the Zapruder film.
71 Horne especially, and appropriately,critiques him for his public dithering on multiple serious issues, all of which are well
documented. I myself have accused him of frequently employing
ex post facto logic.72That may be appropriate in the courtroom but is wholly out of place in a scientific
investigation. Horne specifically faults him for these items: (1) the printing aperture
issue, (2) the bracketing issue, (3) the edge printing light issue, and (4) the inconsistent
locations of the punched numbers on the copy films. I concur with all of these—and have
previously so stated in print.
Critiques
It is impossible to write any comprehensive treatise about the JFK case and expect
to go unscathed (as I well know). The data are simply too complex and, as Horne
repeatedly emphasizes, they are too often corrupted. The sole recourse then for the
investigator is simply to speculate, based on those data he considers most reliable. Horne
clearly recognizes his vulnerability here. Horne and I differ, as he knows, on several
issues, the most obvious being the role of Robert Knudsen in the autopsy.
73Horne concludes that none (or at least very few) of the autopsy photographs
derive from the official photographer, John Stringer. Instead he nominates Knudsen as
the source of the extant autopsy photographs. Knudsen was the social photographer for
the White House and he told his family that he had been busy that night filming the
autopsy (he was not home for three nights in a row). The embarrassing fact, of course, is
that no one saw him there. Not even the Secret Service agents mention him, though they
surely recognized one another from their White House duties.
74 Horne regards theautopsy photographs as authentic (i.e., not photographically altered), chiefly based on his
viewing of high resolution images at Eastman Kodak, in Rochester, while he served on
the ARRB. (Nonetheless, he maintains that they are highly misleading.) On the other
hand, I regard several images (certainly not all of them) as photographically altered,
especially the posterior head images.
75 An entire essay could be spent developing thesedivergent arguments (of photo-alteration vs. no alteration), but I shall not do so here. My
viewing of the posterior scalp, with a large format stereo viewer (on multiple occasions
and while sampling all imaginable photographic variations of the two pertinent images),
repeatedly showed that the back of the head, precisely at the occipital blowout, did
notyield a 3D image. This could only occur if the occipital area was
precisely identical onthe two photographs in the stereo viewer; such a resulting 2D image is exactly what
would be expected if the
same photographic patch (a soft matte insertion) had been usedfor each member of the pair. (Ordinarily the two images should have derived from
slightly different
perspectives.) Otherwise, the expected 3D images were readily obtained,both on other portions of these same suspect photographs and also on all other
photographs that I examined. This impression of an anomalous area, precisely where the
71
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1281.72
See the Preface (by me—but amputated by Harry) to Harry Livingstone, The Hoax of the Century:Decoding the Forgery of the Zapruder Film
(2004).73
Horne, supra, Volume I at 247-254.74
Ibid. at 251.75
Ibid. at Figure 65 (autopsy photographs 43 & 44).14
witnesses disagreed with the photographs—
and only there—was inescapably striking tome. Unfortunately, Horne did not perform such stereo viewing, as he acknowledges with
some regret.
In addition, other serious problems plague Knudsen’s role as assigned to him by
Horne. Foremost is his statement to his own son: he rode in the limousine with the bronze
casket.
76 Now we know that the bronze casket arrived at the front of the hospital by 6:55PM and that it arrived at the morgue by 7:17 PM. That is a very tight timeline for
Knudsen,
if he was at the morgue at all. In view of that, it does seem unlikely that he tookvery early photographs of the right upper forehead. By then (according the timeline
offered by Tom Robinson, and also probably by Ed Reed), H&B had already committed
at least some of their nefarious manipulations. Some skull X-rays may even have been
taken by 7:17 PM. If that is true, how then could Knudsen have photographed the head
before
these alterations—as Horne claims he did? Perhaps he got there much earlier (anddid not ride with the bronze casket), but no evidence exists for this. And Stringer himself
clearly implies that photography began only after 8 PM. If both Stringer and Riebe are
correct about this timeline, then what equipment did Knudsen use? And who set it up for
him? That task would typically fall to an assistant, such as Riebe, but Ed Reed tells us
that he saw no photographic equipment when he took the initial X-rays.
77 And, sinceKnudsen was a total novice at an autopsy, how did he know to take two photographs
from a similar perspective, in order to create stereo pairs?
Here is another major challenge to Horne’s scenario: he proposes that Knudsen
took photographs
after reconstruction by the morticians, when both Riebe and Stringerwere absent from the morgue. Horne bases this on Riebe’s recollection
78 that they hadboth left by then. Unfortunately, that is not what Stringer recalled. In fact, he clearly
stated that he remained until reconstruction had been completed and that he did not get
home until about 4 AM.
79 Who would best remember Stringer’s presence during thattime: Riebe or Stringer? Therefore, if Stringer stayed around, Knudsen gets left out.
There is simply no need for two photographers. Furthermore, Stringer never saw
Knudsen.
80The record shows Knudsen making many trips to develop the autopsy
photographs. And, of all places, they went to the highly secret Anacostia facility.
(Ordinarily, Stringer would have developed his own photographs; furthermore, he would
never have used Anacostia.) That so many trips were required, over the next several
weeks,
81 is suspicious in itself. After all, there are only nine autopsy views and only 52catalogued photographs.
82 So why were so many trips necessary?76
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1003 (footnote 3).77
Horne, supra, Volume II at 435. Gunn: Did you, at any point, see photographers in the morgue?Reed: Yes, I did. But they didn’t have their equipment. There was no equipment at that time with them.
78
Horne, supra, Volume I at 237.79
Ibid. at 165 and 167. Of course, both men could be right. Stringer might have been only temporarilyabsent—shortly after Riebe left. Stringer also added a major observation: no photographs were taken either
during or after the embalming. Although Godfrey McHugh reported the opposite, I would be inclined in
this case to believe the photographer.
80
Ibid. at 250. Also recall that Knudsen claimed to be the sole autopsy photographer; by implication,therefore, he did not see Stringer.
81
Fetzer (2000), supra, at 275.82
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 57.15
My conclusions about Knudsen, only briefly supported here, disagree with
Horne’s. I instead conclude that Knudsen indeed worked with the autopsy photographs
(in the darkroom, but not in the morgue), perhaps by improving them cosmetically for the
Kennedy family—or by supervising someone else who did this. I suspect he was an
unwitting conspirator, being played by his superiors. Furthermore, if the Oswald evidence
photographs were doctored, if Dealey Plaza photographs were touched up, if the skull Xrays
were altered (in the darkroom), if the Zapruder film was revised, then why would the
autopsy photographs remain pristine? After all, it is much, much easier to alter a
photograph than to correctly improvise a misleading autopsy scene in the morgue
(especially a scene that was often described by attendees as a madhouse). Furthermore,
time limits do not apply in the darkroom, where one can leisurely keep improving the
image until success is achieved.
I also disagree with Horne about the semicircular defect (with apparent beveling),
as seen in F8.
83 This mysterious photo, which I consider to be the back of the head, wasdescribed as precisely that during the initial “military review” by the autopsy personnel
on November 1, 1966. In addition, Paul O’Connor (autopsy technician) clearly confirmed
this.
84 Horne concludes that this beveled defect represents an important exit site. Becauseit looks like an exit, I agree with Horne that the pathologists should have discussed it. In
fact, they do not—and that is suspicious. However, Roger McCarthy,
85 after his ownexperiments, concluded that such beveled defects can occur independently of exiting
bullets or bullet fragments. Furthermore, this site does not fit with any other metal debris
in the skull X-rays—certainly not the fragment trail across the top of the skull nor the two
fragments removed by H&B—nor does it match the right occipital blowout. To finally
bury this proposal, no witness at either Parkland or Bethesda observed a scalp wound that
corresponded to this semicircular beveled defect, so it may simply be a red herring.
How many shots struck JFK’s head? Horne argues for three,
86 which will perplexmany a reader. Even critics of the Warren Commission typically argue for only two head
shots at most. (The Warren Commission’s scenario was simple: a single shot entered at
the rear, near the external occipital protuberance (EOP).)
87 Although I agree with thatshot, a second shot likely entered high on the right forehead, very near the hairline.) I
confess that Horne has forced me to think again about a third shot. Although I had
previously been inclined to ascribe the supposed
left temple entry to observer error(confusing left for right—or perhaps just seeing a blood clot
88), I am now more inclinedto believe in such an entry. Horne cites the Parkland physicians—Marion Jenkins, Robert
McClelland, Ronald Jones, and Lito Puerto (aka Porto)
89—who clearly reported a small83
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1027. Also see Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 66 (autopsy photographs17&18, 44&45). Larry Sturdivan precisely identifies this site with a pointer; see
JFK Myths (2005), at 195(Figure 44). These sites are also identified in PowerPoint slides from my November 2009 lecture in Dallas;
see the Mary Ferrell website at
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. Alternate websites,with slightly updated slides, are at
http://www.assassinationscience.com andhttp://www.assassinationresearch.com
.84
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1027. Stringer also disagreed with Michael Baden’s orientation (Horne,supra
, Volume I at 165).85
Fetzer (2000), supra, at 282.86
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1147-1155.87
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 47.88
Horne, supra, Volume II at 642.89
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1150. Also see Horne, supra, Volume III at 757, 765-769.16
wound in the left temple. Others include Dr. Adolph Giesecke,
90 Dr. David Stewart,91Father Oscar Huber,
92 photographers Altgens93 and Similas94 and, more recently, HughHuggins (aka Hugh Howell),
95 who was RFK’s emissary to the autopsy.Although I was reluctant to visualize Greer with a pistol during the shooting,
Secret Service agents did pull their pistols during the tussle over JFK’s body in the ER. It
is even possible that Greer fired, though I can’t imagine what his target was. But it is
most unlikely that he deliberately fired at JFK. That would have been far too risky—
multiple witnesses would have fingered him, yet no one has done so. Furthermore, no
photograph shows him doing this (although it is theoretically possible that such
photographs have been culled or altered). Besides, although he may have disliked JFK,
we have no evidence that he was involved in the plot to kill JFK.
In the end, though, I must admit that evidence of a third shot to the head persists.
Perhaps the major clue is the right occipital blowout. The right forehead shot
96 likelyproduced the debris across the top of the skull X-rays (neither the Warren Commission’s
scenario nor the HSCA’s scenario match that trail), but that fragment trail does not fit (at
all) with a right occipital blowout. Furthermore, if the bullet that caused the visible
fragment trail had been mercury filled (as I suggested), then perhaps much of the mercury
remained inside the skull. So what produced the occipital blowout? The Warren
Commission shot (from the rear) surely could not do that. But a shot from the left front
could be just right. What is odd, though, is that no witness at Bethesda, absolutely no one,
ever reported such an entrance hole.
97Then there is the Clarence Israel story, related by Janie Taylor, a biologist at NIH,
across the street from the Bethesda Hospital.
98 Israel (now deceased), an orderly in themorgue that night, saw a doctor working at a “hurried” pace to mutilate
three bulletpunctures to the head area
. Like Jeremy Gunn, I don’t know what to do with this tale,although it is striking that
three head wounds are cited.Diana Bowron, a Parkland nurse,
99 told Livingstone that less than 50% of theright brain remained (the right rear quadrant was most effected) and about a quarter of the
left hemisphere was also missing. I am not aware of any other Parkland comments about
the left hemisphere, and there is very little clear-cut information from Bethesda either.
But if Bowron is correct, then her report constitutes powerful evidence for a left frontal
shot. Of course, her report also flatly contradicts the official brain photographs, which
show no missing left brain.
100 The optical density data also support Bowron; they showthat only 60-65% of the
left brain was present, as measured on the AP skull at the90
Warren Commission Hearings, Volume VI at 74. However, Giesecke also thought the occipital woundwas on the left side. He later admitted that he had described the wrong side:
http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v4n2/v4n2part1.pdf
.91
Harold Weisberg, Post-Mortem (1969), at 60-61.92
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~klark/leftwounds.html.93
Fetzer (2003), supra, at 200.94
New York Times, November 23, 1963; Edgar F. Tatro, The Quincy Sun, November 21, 1984, at 1-17.95
Bill Sloan, JFK: Breaking the Silence (1993), at 183.96
See the incision in the high right forehead, near the hairline, in Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 62.97
The autopsy photo of the left lateral head also does not show such an entry hole: Ibid. at Figure 59.98
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1063-64.99
Ibid. at 1045 (footnote). Also see Harry Livingstone, Killing the Truth (1993), at 195.100
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 35.17
National Archives.
101 Of course, in view of Horne’s conclusions, some of this missingbrain might have been due to H&B. But, even if H&B had removed this, that alone would
be suspicious—i.e., they would have had no reason to excise left brain tissue at all unless
trauma had occurred there.
To all of this, Horne adds the support of Dr. Charles Wilbur, who carefully
reviewed the microscopic pathology report of the left brain sample.
102 This showed“extensive disruption … associated with hemorrhage.” Wilbur concluded: “These
observations rekindle my interest in the observations made in Dallas on the ER table (by
several medical personnel) … that there was an entry hole in the left temporal region, in
front of the ear and at the hairline.” In conclusion, I would say that the left temple wound
seems more likely than ever, especially with support from the optical density data.
It might have been expected the brain photographs would have resolved this
mystery; unfortunately, they are not of JFK’s brain. Horne was the first to deduce, from
multiple lines of disparate data (see his detailed table),
103 that a surrogate brain had beenintroduced at a second brain examination. Even the (sole) autopsy photographer of the
brain, John Stringer, stated in no uncertain terms that these were not his photographs.
One reason was that they were on the wrong brand of film.
104 My own optical densitydata (taken directly from the extant skull X-rays at the National Archives)
105 are totallyinconsistent with the brain photographs (which I have observed at the National Archives
with Cyril Wecht). Insofar as the amount of residual brain goes, one can accept either the
X-ray data as authentic or the brain photographs as authentic, but not both. They are
inconsistent with one another—in fact, wildly inconsistent. To date, no Warren
Commission supporter has come to terms with this intractable paradox. It should also be
emphasized that the optical density data actually
preceded Horne’s proposal, but thesedata are entirely consistent with his two-brain proposal.
I also object to Horne’s proposal that puncture wounds
106 were deliberatelycreated in the scalp that night.
107 Oddly, he does not identify the perpetrator, or even whoissued the order. Of course, none of that is in the official record. Horne proposes that the
high posterior “red spot” (selected by the HSCA as the official entry site—albeit
persistently denied by the pathologists) was deliberately created that night. How the red
color was achieved he does not say. And why that particular site was selected is also
101
David W. Mantik and Cyril H. Wecht, “Paradoxes of the JFK Assassination: The Brain Enigma,” inJames DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, editors,
The Assassinations (2002), at 264.102
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1151. Also compare Wilbur’s description of the wound location to that ofDr. Marion Jenkins before the Warren Commission:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/jenkins.htm
.103
Horne, supra, Volume III at 777-844: “Two Brain Examinations—Cover-up Confirmed.” The relevanttable is at 791. Horne’s ARRB memo was dated June 2, 1998. Only while writing this review did I recall
that I had asked this same question some years earlier. See Harry Livingstone,
Killing Kennedy (1995), at268 (footnote): “Is Boswell describing different brains on these two occasions?” Horne, however, was the
one who pursued the question fully.
104
Horne, supra, Volume I at 42-43.105
Mantik and Wecht (2002), supra, at 250-271.106
These sites are precisely identified in PowerPoint slides from my November 2009 lecture in Dallas; seethe Mary Ferrell website at
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. Alternate websites,with slightly updated slides, are at
http://www.assassinationscience.com andhttp://www.assassinationresearch.com
.107
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 999.18
mysterious—did it fit better with the “sniper’s nest” than did the EOP site? If so, who in
the morgue would have known that so early in the game? But what madness it would be
to create another wound! After all, H&B had already identified a lower (EOP) entry site;
therefore this higher one would immediately imply
two shots to the head—exactly whatno one wanted that night. But Horne does not stop there; he also believes that the lower
“white spot” (very near the posterior hairline) was deliberately man-made.
108 We mightwell ask why he takes these risks. But that question has a simple answer: because he
refuses to consider photographic alteration, he has no choice. Think about this: that red
spot nearly correlates spatially with the 6.5 mm object on the skull X-ray—as it should
since both were fakes. However, what breathtaking serendipity such a match was for
subsequent government panels—they had their entry site!
109 But because Horne hasboxed himself in (no photo-alteration allowed) his only option is to say that the red spot
really was present that night. Unless photographic doctoring is permitted, that red spot
could not abruptly appear later. But
no one at the autopsy saw this red spot (let alone itscreation)—and the pathologists forever adamantly refused to recognize it (despite
Horne’s insinuation that they themselves had created it). All of this, taken together, is
quite damning evidence in favor of (at least some) photographic alteration.
110Horne suggests that the original Zapruder film may have been shot at 48 frames
per second, an option that was available on that camera:
Removing the Car Stop and the Exit Debris From the Film Would Have Been
Simple if Zapruder Had Actually Filmed the Motorcade at ‘Slow Motion,’ or at 48
Frames Per Second, Instead of at the Normal ‘Run’ Setting of 16 Frames Per
Second.
111Horne suggests that simple frame excision could then have eliminated much of the
evidence of conspiracy. But this cannot work, as Costella has explained: the ghost images
(in the intersprocket area) make this impossible.
112 When Zapruder’s camera exposedone frame (call it number 10), the gate (the metal frame that actually admits light to the
film) simultaneously exposed (in the intersprocket area) a modest portion of each
108
In his defense, Horne notes that Lipsey recalled seeing the white spot—and also recalled thepathologists’ discussion of it—during his HSCA interview. He even recalled it well enough that he
identified this site on a sketch. See
http://www.historymatters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/med_testimony/Lipsey_1-18-78/HSCA-Lipsey.htm
. As further corroboration,Horne adds that Robinson also recalled a probe entering low on the back of the head.
109
For an unbiased perspective, however, see the summary reports of the three medical experts for theARRB (Horne,
supra, Volume II at 583-587). None of them could identify such an entry site on the skullX-rays—and there was great uncertainty about the red spot, as well. For full summaries see Horne’s
Appendices at the Mary Ferrell website or visit my November 2009 lecture (about these experts) at the
same website:
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.110
Most likely the red spot was simply added in the darkroom; after all, that site fit much better with the“sniper’s nest” than did the EOP site. The white spot was merely an oversight. When the darkroom
magicians covered up the large skull defect they simply neglected to extend their new (photographic)
hairpiece inferiorly enough.
111
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1335.112
See these ghost images in Fetzer (2003), supra, at 210.19
neighboring frame (call these 9 and 11).
113 When Costella examined the film he learnedthat these ghost images are, in fact, consistent with the central frame in each case—i.e.,
10 is always adjacent to 9 and 11 (and this works for any three adjacent frames). In a
sense then, each adjacent ghost image “belongs” to its primary frame—and not to any
other frame. On the other hand, if frame excision had occurred, each ghost image would
become separated from its simultaneously exposed primary frame; i.e., such excision
would have led to an adjacent ghost image exposed at a
different time from the primaryframe. For example, for excision of every other frame, 10 would end up next to 8 and 12;
for excision of two of every three frames, 10 would end up next to 7 and 13. In either
case, these ghost images would not match the frames next to them. And Costella
emphasizes that enough information (e.g., motion blur) exists in these ghost images to
permit such a deduction. The bottom line is that such inconsistencies are
not found in theextant film. Furthermore, there is no escape from this problem, i.e., it is not possible
simply to erase a ghost image from the intersprocket area—once there, it is always there.
Partly based on this very powerful argument, Costella has argued that the extant film
must be a fabrication, i.e., a re-creation using parts of multiple films (and probably only a
rather modest portion of Zapruder’s film at most). At least one of these films must have
been shot during the motorcade, but others could have been shot before or after, even
some days before or after. These then had to be stitched together to compose the extant
film. Even differences of perspective (as would be expected for films shot from slightly
different sites) could be overcome by selecting only pertinent
parts of frames.Costella concludes that the Stemmons freeway sign is one example of such a cut
and paste job. By analyzing the effects of pincushion distortion
114 he concludes that thesign was placed into the film after the fact, i.e., it looks constant in all frames. On the
other hand, if it had been shot from Zapruder’s camera, it should have experienced
pincushion distortion: i.e., the sign would successively change its appearance from one
frame to the next. Furthermore, after several frames, these changes would accumulate to
become even more obvious. But the bottom line is that the Stemmons sign does
not showsuch pincushion effects, which means that it was placed after the fact by the film forgers.
This situation is closely analogous to the fake hairpiece on the back of JFK’s head, where
the image looks 2D rather than 3D via the stereo viewer. In both cases, the
same fakeimage was placed (into multiple photographs—or into multiple frames) in a manner that
violates the basic rules of optics.
Based on these arguments, Costella concludes that it would have been impossible
to alter the film without discarding essentially all of the intersprocket areas and starting
all over. In that case, he argues, the total time for (final) fabrication would have taken
much longer than several days. Although Horne does not require completion of a final
film (i.e., the extant film) by Sunday night (November 24) he does suggest that the
Jamieson copies were switched quite promptly, likely within several days. Such a prompt
(yet final) switch implies a timeline that sharply contrasts with Costella’s more leisurely
pace. Even David Healy (a professional video producer with decades of experience)
emphasized in his 2003 Duluth lecture that even if an altered film had been viewed on
Sunday night, November 24, it need not have been the final product (i.e., the extant film),
113
Each intersprocket area therefore contains two ghost images: one from the frame before and one fromthe frame after the primary frame that was exposed.
114
Fetzer (2003), supra, at xi, 23, 35, 164-169, 209.20
but merely an interim film.
115 Horne ultimately agrees that alterations might havecontinued for “several weeks” afterwards, especially if a traveling matte had been
employed.
116Costella also refers to the possibility that the proposed second film of the
motorcade (by an unknown photographer—or photographers) might have been shot in 16
mm format. If so, that would have made forgery ever so much easier, particularly since
the contemporaneous optical printers were not designed for 8 mm. It might also have
made the subsequent first generation copies (the extant ones, which are probably not the
Jamieson copies) appear more authentic after fabrication.
Costella goes on to wonder whether the splices in the film (e.g., between Z-208
and Z-212) were unavoidable during forgery for a simple reason: they may have
contained telltale ghost images of bystanders who appeared
under the left edge of theStemmons sign.
117 A splice is also present at Z-155 to Z-157. Curiously, this is close toframes where Michael Stroscio, a physicist, identified a possible shot at Z-152 to Z-
153.
118There is a final, simple argument against a 48 fps scenario for Zapruder. If 48 fps
had been used, then when the film was shown that weekend, all of the action would have
appeared in slow motion—as if the actors were subject to the lesser gravity of the moon.
However, no one reported such an odd effect, even though someone surely should have.
My final paragraph in this section is not really a criticism of Horne at all. It
merely reflects an unblinking reality: no one (not even Bugliosi
119) can addresseverything important in this case. I refer here to the police dictabelt and the acoustics
data.
120 Horne implies that the acoustics data support conspiracy—based on the numberof audible shots and also on timing problems, i.e., two shots are only 1.66 seconds apart,
an interval much too short for the Mannlicher-Carcano. However, he does not cite the
work of Don Thomas,
121 which reinvigorated this subject, nor does he mention the falloutfrom that work. The discussion continues; the interested reader may begin with
Wikipedia for current references.
122Conclusions
I stand in awe of the scope, detail, and profound insights that Horne has achieved,
especially in the medical evidence—to say nothing of his Olympian effort. Given the
circumstances of its creation (mostly on weekends, within a cumulative time span of
perhaps two years) it is nothing short of phenomenal. Contrast Horne’s effort with
Bugliosi’s, which extended over several decades, and which may have included writing
assistants and editors. Bugliosi also did not have to self-publish. The bottom line is that I
feel a deep debt of gratitude to Horne for further disentangling this nearly half-century
115
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1309. Healy has suggested two weeks for the complete job (Ibid. at 1339).116
Ibid. at 1341 (footnote).117
Ibid. at 220.118
Fetzer (1998), supra, at 343-344.119
See my footnote 1.120
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1127-1131 and 1213.121
Thomas, Donald B., “Echo correlation analysis and the acoustic evidence in the Kennedy assassinationrevisited.”
Science & Justice (The Forensic Science Society) 41: 21–32 (2002).122
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictabelt_evidence_relating_to_the_assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy.21
old Gordian knot. By contrast, I should emphasize that I never experienced that sensation
with Bugliosi.
If H&B indeed played alterationists with the skull and brain (as I now accept),
then Horne has initiated a paradigm shift in our understanding of the cover-up. But, as
Horne acknowledges, this does not necessarily convert H&B into villains. After all, they
may well have considered themselves to be heroic patriots, who single-handedly aborted
World War III,
123 depending on exactly what their military superiors124 had told them.Josiah Thompson has proclaimed that the Zapruder debate has been a gigantic
waste of time, because it is “junk science” that has produced nothing.
125 Like Einstein’sopinion of quantum mechanics,
126 Thompson’s mind is stuck in the past. In fact, Hornehas presented revolutionary new data about the chain of possession. In view of
Thompson’s now-shaky bedrock, many will find this new information very convincing
indeed—especially younger researchers new to the case, whose minds are still open. I
have previously summarized traditional historical (and scientific) views that were later
overturned,
127 so no one should be surprised at this dénouement. Without nascentheretics, our world would soon become more impoverished. In retrospect, it was best not
to offer obeisance to Roland Zavada (as the inerrant pope of the film), as Thompson
implied we should do.
128 The two-event sequence at NPIC has all the hallmarks of acovert operation—but for 46 years not even Brugioni knew what had transpired—
and hewrote the history of the NPIC
! Some of us did not need more evidence, but others did.These fence-sitters may now take their own time to decide. Some may even wish to make
a pilgrimage to view the MPI transparencies in Dallas. The real point, though, as Horne
states, is that the alteration of the film is, in itself, major evidence of a government coverup.
I could not agree more.
What remains controversial for many though is the timeline for alteration. Horne
favors a very short timeline, while Costella prefers a distinctly longer one. The early
appearance in
LIFE of altered frames (e.g., the “blob” on JFK’s face and thedisappearance of the white object in the background grass) indicate that
some frames hadbeen altered before Sunday night, November 24. In addition, the Hunter/McMahon
briefing boards show the extremely black patch over JFK’s occiput, as well as the blob. It
is possible, though not certain, that incriminating flying debris was also removed by
Sunday night. The Stemmons sign and the lamppost (both added after the fact, according
123
LBJ later gave Humes a personal set of presidential cufflinks, which Humes wore during his ARRBvisit.
124
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1188. Horne cites these superiors as Edward C. Kenney (Surgeon Generalof the Navy), Calvin Galloway (Commanding Officer of the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center), and
George Burkley (White House Physician). All were admirals. Also see Vincent Palamara’s summary at
http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v4n2/v4n2part3.pdf
.125
Josiah Thompson: “One way of looking at this continuing argument is to see it as a gigantic waste oftime, as a prime example of junk science from educated people who ought to know better. It may have
amusement value in some chronicle of ‘silly science,’ but, in terms of knowledge about the Kennedy
assassination, it has produced literally nothing.” See his entire essay at
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Bedrock_Evidence_in_the_Kennedy_Assassination
.126
Rebecca Goldstein (a MacArthur Genius Fellow), The Mind-Body Problem: A Novel (1983), at 140-141.127
Fetzer (2000), supra, at 371-411.128
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1290. At the 2003 Pittsburgh conference, Cyril Wecht set his sails inprecisely the opposite direction—he advised his audience
not to trust the experts but instead to do their ownanalysis; see
www.cyrilwecht.com/journal/archives/jfk/index.php. I very much side with Wecht.22
to Costella) also appear in
LIFE’s first JFK issue, in low-resolution black and whitephotographs. Now consider this: McMahon concluded that JFK was hit by 6-8 shots,
fired from at least three directions. Evidence for these shots is absent from the extant
film, so he must have seen a different film (though probably not the original). If
McMahon’s observations were correct, then he must have seen a
partly altered film. Thatwould leave time for Costella’s more leisurely scenario.
The chief argument for a short timeline is the need to dispose promptly of the
Jamieson (first-day) copies; the problem, of course, is that the longer these persisted the
longer the original images might be copied—or recalled—by others. Horne notes that the
FBI returned its Jamieson copy to the Secret Service by Tuesday, November 26.
129However, we do not know the disposition of any other FBI copies, i.e., later generation
copies made from the Jamieson copies (that the FBI might have already made by then).
130So perhaps this cover-up was a two-step process: (1) retrieve quickly all possible copies
(including Jamieson copies and all those made from Jamieson’s)
131 and (2) sometimelater (e.g., within one or two months) replace those earlier ones by copies subsequently
made from the extant film. Perhaps the FBI was even given some credible excuse for the
delay in replacement (e.g., an improved quality copy was pending); in any case, it is
likely that J. Edgar Hoover would have cooperated with any reasonable suggestion to
abet the cover-up. But
LIFE, too, had a copy. However, after their early assassinationcoverage, they had no need for the film, as a movie film. Given the role of C. D. Jackson
(
LIFE’s publisher), first in the very expensive purchase of the film, and then in hissequestering of the film (with no profit accruing to
LIFE), it is likely (especially in viewof his longtime intelligence connections)
132 that he also would have agreed to such adelayed replacement.
But there is still the matter of the three black and white copies of the
extant film,discovered in the year 2000 by the Sixth Floor Museum among materials sold to
Zapruder in 1975 by Time, Inc.
133 Their format is 16 mm, unslit, with the motorcade onone side and Zapruder home scenes on the other (adjacent) side. These include markings
on the film that identify specific frames actually printed in
LIFE.134 An irresistiblededuction from these markings, of course, is that the extant film had already been
completed by that early date. In fact, however, all that is certain is that specific frames
(those made public) must have been finalized by that date. On the other hand, if
Costella’s more leisurely timeframe is adopted, that would imply that these black and
white copies were only later placed into the
LIFE collection—marked up appropriatelyafter the fact
—so as to give the impression that the markings (and the extant film, too)dated to November. Although this scenario may be true, no eyewitness to date has
corroborated it.
129
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1199.130
The National Archives does possess later generation copies of the extant film, labeled as being from theFBI.
131
Costella implies that this collection process was not entirely successful, i.e., that there were “multiplefilms” in circulation, “not one.”
132
Ibid. at 1202.133
Ibid. at 1199.134
That issue was dated November 29, 1963, but most likely it first appeared on newsstands on Tuesday,November 26.
23
Suggestions
The HD scans (cited above) of selected Zapruder frames should be scanned with
an optical densitometer. If possible, multiple wavelengths (colors) should be employed.
These scans should then be compared to controls, e.g., JFK’s head before Z-313 and
Connally’s head (at most any time). This might quantify the magnitude of photoalteration,
thus making the conclusions more scientific. Further studies may be
forthcoming from the Hollywood nexus. New films shot via a camera like Zapruder’s
might yet provide further insights. Of course, if extant films (i.e., original ones, not
altered ones) from Zapruder’s actual camera can still be located that would be even
better. As Horne suggests, at the National Archives two autopsy photographs of the
posterior scalp (from a matched pair) should be overlaid on a view box. If the images of
the suspect area perfectly align, that would constitute powerful evidence of photoalteration.
Control areas should also be extensively compared, just to see what nonidentical
(but stereo-matched) pairs look like. Surprisingly, no one has done this.
There are three X-ray films of the bone fragments,
135 which seems a bit excessive.Is it possible that these extra films were taken to replace those X-rays that had been
discarded—in order that the total number of X-ray films remained fixed at 14? Is it even
possible that these three films are
identical to one another? If so, that would be even moresuspicious. To check on this (for the first time—no one has done this), Horne suggests
that the films simply be overlaid to see if they match precisely.
I have never looked for the head brace on the X-rays nor, apparently, has anyone
else. Since the autopsy personnel did not recognize this, it would be useful to look for this
on the X-ray films. (Custer told the ARRB that he had used a blanket behind the head,
but Custer’s memory has not always been reliable.) In view of Horne’s proposal that
Knudsen took autopsy photographs with the head brace (apparently while
no autopsypersonnel were present—because no one recalls this), the presence or absence of such a
brace on the X-rays might shed further light on Horne’s proposed timeline for Knudsen
(
if he was involved at all).The optical density data from the X-rays should be confirmed. The National
Archives have their own densitometer(s); perhaps they would even assist with this.
Actually the data need not be too extensive—even a few select data points inside the 6.5
mm object and inside the “white patches”
136 could be highly confirmatory.My observation at the National Archives of intact emulsion (where there should
be none) over the T-shaped inscription on a lateral skull X-ray
137 provided prima facieevidence that this X-ray must be a copy. That clearly means that (1) the original is
missing and (2) the door lies open to alteration (during copying). Surprisingly, no one has
yet attempted to confirm my observation (of the paradoxically missing emulsion), despite
the fact that Chad Zimmerman and Larry Sturdivan had that opportunity after my
135
Horne, supra, Volume II at 389.136
For an image of the white patch, see Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 67.137
See my November 2009 lecture at http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. Alternatewebsites, with slightly updated slides, are at
http://www.assassinationscience.com andhttp://www.assassinationresearch.com
.24
observation became public.
138 Furthermore, Bugliosi should be a bit red-faced that he didnot accompany them at that critical moment. Even he could have made that observation.
Perhaps some other creative minds can think further about three head shots. My
fear, though, is that this impasse may never be resolved due to insufficient data. Given
the destruction inflicted on the skull by H&B (and perhaps by their predecessors), I am
not even certain that a second autopsy would help to resolve that question.
Addendum: The 6.5 mm Mystery on the AP Skull X-ray
Although Horne’s discussion of the suspicious 6.5 mm object on the AP X-ray is
in Volume II, I could not resist a few comments about it here.
139 To date no one else hasexplained this object, not even the three experts interviewed by the ARRB.
140Furthermore, each one of the three autopsy pathologists (interviewed separately and
under oath) denied either seeing or removing this thing at the autopsy.
141 Even LarrySturdivan
142 admits that it cannot be a bullet fragment (this admission, almost by itself,destroys the case against the lone gunman), but then after his visit to the National
Archives he had to confess that it remained as mysterious as ever. He did, however, offer
one half-hearted proposal that he did not really endorse, namely that the fragment had
been present on the AP X-ray, but had fallen off before the lateral was taken. (He
necessarily assumed that the AP had been taken first.) But this does not explain an
awkward fact: the lateral X-ray
143 still shows a small metal fragment at precisely theexpected site
! Furthermore, this proposal disagrees with Reed’s sequence of X-rays: Reedsaid he took the lateral film first.
144 In fact, the only viable explanation for this bizarre 6.5mm object is photographic addition in the dark room.
145 Horne recounts my ownadventures with this fantastic forgery in some detail. Given that he began his odyssey as a
layman in medicine and radiology, Horne offers a splendid summary of this entire
subject.
146138
Sturdivan, supra, at 193.139
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 38; look inside JFK’s right orbit for this white object. Also see Fetzer(1998),
supra, at 120-137.140
Horne, supra, Volume II at 583-587. Detailed summaries of the experts’ opinions are in Horne’sAppendices; see the list of appendices in Horne,
supra, Volume I at xix-lii. The appendices themselves areposted at the Mary Ferrell website (see my footnote 3 for a link).
141
Horne, supra, Volume II at 564 (Humes), at 573 (Boswell), and at 580 (Finck).142
Sturdivan, supra, at 193.143
Horne, supra, Volume I at Figure 37.144
Horne, supra, Volume II at 426, 430-431.145
Fetzer (1998), supra, at 120-137. Also see my lecture (November 2009) at the Mary Ferrell website (seemy footnote 137). Alternate websites, with slightly updated slides, are at
http://www.assassinationscience.com
and http://www.assassinationresearch.com.146
Horne, supra, Volume II at 546-554.25
Appendix: Three Casket Entries
Time (PM) Casket Type Witnesses Remarks
Paul O’Connor
6:35 Shipping Roger Boyajian Black hearse
casket Dennis David Body bag
Donald Rebentisch
Floyd Riebe
Note: this first entry was documented by Boyajian and corroborated by the above
witnesses.
1477:17 Bronze viewing Jim Sibert Light gray navy
casket Frank O’Neill ambulance
(from Parkland) Roy Kellerman Empty casket
William Greer
Note: this second entry was documented in the report of Sibert and O’Neill.
1488:00 Bronze viewing Joint Service Casket Team Light gray navy
casket Godfrey McHugh ambulance
Body inside, wrapped
in sheets—no body bag
Note: this third entry was supervised by Lt. Samuel Bird from Fort Myer.
149147
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1002-1013.148
http://www.jfklancer.com/Sibert-ONeill.html. Or see Thompson, supra, Appendix G. The time of 7:17PM appeared in their interview with Arlen Specter (March 12, 1964): FBI 62-109060-2637 at 2. Also see
Lifton,
supra, at 484-485.149
Horne, supra, Volume IV at 1008 and Volume I at Figure 70. Also see Military District of Washington,Bird Report
and Lifton, supra, at 399, 406-407.
Contact Information tomnln@cox.net
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