Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (78 page)

It certainly appears that Bethesda was not prepared for this most important autopsy. The three military physicians who performed Kennedy's
autopsy were clinical pathologists with little experience in gunshot wounds.
Neither Navy Cdr. James J. Humes nor Navy Cdr. J. Thornton Boswell
had practical, firsthand experience with bullet wounds. Army Lt. Col.
Pierre Finck did have some such experience, but he later said he was
hampered in his autopsy procedures by officials in the room. The military
autopsy doctors apparently were surrounded by both military and civilian
superiors who directed much of the autopsy-some of this direction going
against normal autopsy procedures.

During the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans, Dr. Finck was asked under
oath if Dr. Humes had been in charge of the President's autopsy. He
replied:

Well, I heard Dr. Humes stating that-he said, "Who's in charge here?"
And I heard an Army general, I don't remember his name, stating, "I
am. " You must understand that in those circumstances, there were
law-enforcement officers, military people with various ranks, and you
have to coordinate the operation according to directions.

An unnamed Army general in charge? Directions to the doctors? Finck
continued to describe the scene:

The autopsy room was quite crowded. It is a small autopsy room, and
when you are called in circumstances like that to look at the wound of
the President of the United States who is dead, you don't look around
too much to ask people for their names and take notes on who they are
and how many there are. I did not do so. The room was crowded with
military and civilian personnel and federal agents, Secret Service agents,
FBI agents, for part of the autopsy, but I cannot give you a precise
breakdown as regards the attendance of the people in that autopsy room
at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

New Orleans executive assistant district attorney Alvin Oser then pressed
Finck on why, as an autopsy pathologist, he had not tracked the bullet
wound through Kennedy's body to determine its exact path.

After dodging the question for a time, Dr. Finck finally was ordered by
the court to answer Oser's question. Dr. Finck stated: "As I recall I was
told not to, but I don't remember by whom." "Could it have been one of
the admirals or one of the generals in the room?" asked Oser. "I don't
recall," said Dr. Finck.

Finck, the only member of the autopsy team who was a member of the
American Academy of Forensic Sciences, asked to examine Kennedy's
clothing-a normal and acknowledged autopsy procedure. His request was
denied.

Further, the autopsy doctors were ordered not to talk about what they
had seen in the autopsy room. Finck again:

.. . when you are a lieutenant colonel in the Army you just follow
orders, and at the end of the autopsy, we were specifically told-as I
recall it, it was by Admiral [Edward C.] Kenney, the surgeon general
of the Navy-. . . not to discuss the case.

In 1977 Dr. Humes appeared before a medical panel gathered by the
House Select Committee on Assassination. Because of longstanding questions concerning the possibility that Kennedy suffered from Addison's
disease (which can be detected by studying the adrenal glands), Humes
was asked about the glands by Committee Medical Panel member Dr.
Charles Petty ". .. because normally we examine adrenals in the general
course [of an] autopsy, as we undertake it." Humes replied:

... Since I don't think it bore directly on the death of the President, I'd
prefer not to discuss it with you, doctor.. .. I'd only comment for you
that I have strong personal reasons and certain other obligations that
suggest to me that it might not be preferable.

Certain other obligations? To whom?

But for all the puzzles and the directions of superiors, Humes had come
to some definite conclusions by the end of the autopsy.

-One bullet entered the rear of Kennedy's head and exited from the top
of his skull.

-Another bullet entered the President's back and apparently worked its
way out during cardiac massage at Parkland.

The autopsy, which began at 8:15 P.M. the evening of the assassination,
was concerned with only two of Kennedy's wounds. Humes studied the
head wound and found about forty pieces of bullet metal, indicating a
bullet had fragmented while passing through the skull area. He concluded
that a high-velocity rifle bullet had entered the rear of the skull, fragmented, and then exited through the top of the skull. Death was attributed
to the head wound.

Not so easily explained was a wound in the President's back. The Dallas
doctors never saw this wound because they said they never examined
Kennedy's back. However, the autopsy doctors studied this wound carefully and wrote clear records of it. On the autopsy face sheet diagram
marked by Dr. Humes, a wound is depicted in Kennedy's back between
the shoulder blades.

In Kennedy's death certificate, it states: ". . . a second wound occurred
in the posterior back at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra." The
third thoracic vertebra is located almost midway between the shoulder
blades.

Two FBI agents, Francis X. O'Neill, Jr., and James W. Sibert, were
ordered to attend the autopsy and make a report. Their report, which was
kept classified by the Warren Commission for several years, stated:

During the latter stages of this autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening
which appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the shoulders and
two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column.

This description on the wound's location was supported by the testimony of Secret Service agents and bullet holes in Kennedy's clothing. Yet
it presented a real problem to the Warren Commission. If the President's
wound was between the shoulder blades, this was lower than the position of
the neck wound making for an upward trajectory-totally inconsistent with
the idea of shots from sixty feet above and behind the President.

The solution to this dilemma was simple-the Commission reported:

A bullet had entered the base of the back of [Kennedy's] neck slightly to
the right of the spine. It traveled downward and exited from the front of
the neck, crossing a nick in the left lower portion of the knot in the
President's necktie."

The Commission simply reported the back wound as located 51/2 inches
higher than determined by the evidence.

Later, when questioned about the location of the wound as marked on
the autopsy face sheet, Dr. Boswell stated the drawing was a "diagram
error." And Humes was quoted as saying the back wound was higher than
the throat wound, although he had marked it well below the neck wound.

The issue of the autopsy diagram was resolved in 1975 when researcher
Harold Weisberg obtained the original autopsy face sheet by means of a
Freedom of Information suit.

Researchers discovered that the original sheet-depicting a wound in the
low back-had been marked "verified" by Kennedy's personal physician,
Dr. George Burkley. This verification of the autopsy sheet had been
eliminated in copies of the document presented by the Warren Commission
to the public. Curiously, Dr. Burkley was never called to testify to the
Commission, although he was the only medical authority who rode in the
motorcade, viewed Kennedy's body at Parkland Hospital, and was present
at the autopsy. In 1982, Burkley reportedly told author Henry Hurt that he
believed Kennedy's death was the result of a conspiracy. However, Burkley
declined to elaborate further.

The Sibert-O'Neill FBI report further stated:

This opening [the back wound] was probed by Dr. Humes with the
finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile
entering at this point had entered at a downward position of 45 to 60
degrees. Further probing determined that the distance traveled by this
missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could
be felt with the finger. Inasmuch as no complete bullet of any size could
be located in the brain area and likewise no bullet could be located in
the back or any other area of the body as determined by total body
X rays and inspection revealing there was no point of exit, the individuals
performing the autopsy were at a loss to explain why they could find no
bullets.

Commander J. Thornton Boswell, Humes's assistant, told author Josiah
Thompson that all three doctors probed the back wound with their fingers
but could not penetrate past an inch or so. According to Boswell, a thin
metal probe also was used but no bullet track could be located.

After failing to find any bullet, agents Sibert and O'Neill called the FBI
Laboratory and were informed of the bullet that had been found on a
stretcher at Parkland Hospital. This information was relayed to Humes and
the autopsy doctors and led them to a conclusion expressed in the FBI
report of Sibert and O'Neill:

... since external cardiac massage had been performed at Parkland
Hospital, it was entirely possible that through such movement the bullet
had worked its way back out of the point of entry and fallen on the
stretcher.

At the end of the autopsy, the military doctors concluded, as recorded in
the Sibert-O'Neill report:

... that the one bullet had entered the President's back and had worked
its way out of the body during external cardiac massage and that a
second high-velocity bullet had entered the rear of the skull and had
fragmentized prior to exit through the top of the skull.

But if the back wound caused problems, they were nothing compared to
the problems that arose after Humes learned that the autopsy doctors had
completely missed one of the President's wounds.

On the day after the autopsy-with the President's body already prepared for burial and lying in state at the White House-Humes contacted
the medical officials in Dallas. He was shocked to learn that they had
observed a bullet wound in Kennedy's throat. The autopsy doctors had
noticed an opening in the throat but had assumed it had been made at
Parkland to facilitate a tracheal tube.

Here is one of the most suspicious of the differences recorded in
Kennedy's wounds: Dr. Perry at Parkland described the throat wound as a
small hole about 3 to 5 millimeters-or about '/s of an inch-in diameter
that had the appearance of an entrance wound. Perry said he made a
surgical incision laterally across this hole to facilitate a tracheotomy, but
did not obliterate the bullet wound. But by the time the autopsy doctors
examined Kennedy's throat, this wound had elongated to almost three
inches-such a gash that they didn't realize it obliterated a wound from the
assassination. Furthermore, all of the Dallas doctors said Kennedy had a large
blasted hole in the right rear portion of his head-not at all like the gaping
wound in the right top portion of his skull as reported by the autopists.

These differences in the descriptions of the throat and head wounds
suggest only three explanations:

1. The Dallas medical personnel lied about what they saw.

2. The autopsy doctors lied about what they saw.

3. No one lied-thus indicating the wounds were altered between the
time they were seen in Dallas and the autopsy.

The latter explanation is buttressed by the Sibert-O'Neill FBI report of
the Bethesda autopsy which states:

The President's body was removed from the casket ... and placed on
the autopsy table, at which time the complete body was wrapped in a
sheet and the head area contained an additional wrapping which was
saturated with blood ... it was also apparent that a tracheotomy had
been performed, as well as surgery of the head area, namely, in the top
of the skull.

Surgery in the top of the skull'? No such surgery was ever mentioned by
the Parkland medical staff.

This oddity became one of the focal points of an investigation by
researcher and author David Lifton, who reached some startling and
well-publicized conclusions.

David Lifton, a former NASA computer engineer who researched the
assassination for more than fifteen years, was the first person to interview
both medical personnel in Dallas and at Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
What he discovered shocked him.

In his best-selling book, Best Evidence, Lifton reported that not only
were there discrepancies in the descriptions of Kennedy's wounds, but
there were discrepancies in reports of how the body was transported.

It has been well documented how Kennedy's body was wrapped in a
sheet in Dallas and placed in an expensive bronze ceremonial casket for
shipment to Washington. Yet Lifton found Bethesda technicians who said
they removed Kennedy's body from a black zippered body bag that was
inside a cheap, gray military-style shipping casket, similar to those used to
transport bodies back from Vietnam.

Paul K. O'Connor, who was studying to be a medical technician, was
working in Bethesda's laboratory when Kennedy's body arrived. He said
the body arrived in a "shipping casket . . . kind of slate-type gray and a
kind of light pinkish color on the edges." Asked by Lifton the condition of
the body when the casket was opened, O'Connor replied: "He was in a
body bag." O'Connor's recollection was confirmed by others, including
Captain John Stover, Bethesda's commanding officer.

Just as startling was an interview with Bethesda X-ray technician Jerrol
F. Custer. Custer said he had already made X-ray photographs of Kennedy's body, had gone to an upper floor to process them, and was returning
to the morgue area of the hospital when he encountered a bloodstained
Jacqueline Kennedy, surrounded by newsmen and Secret Service agents,
entering Bethesda. Outside in an ambulance was the bronze Dallas casket
supposedly containing the President's body.

Based on this and much more information gleaned from official reports
and witnesses, Lifton concluded that the assassination was the result of a
plot "involving the Executive Branch of the Government."