Legacy of Secrecy (39 page)

far as to periodically visit the autopsy room during the procedure.”10

However, Bobby also had someone—an individual whom we spoke

with in 1992—assisting him in dealing with Burkley and the autopsy

room. The presence of this very sensitive, confidential source at the

autopsy has been confirmed by an official account, and his credibility

is not only clear based on the public record, but has been vouched for

by numerous associates of John and Robert Kennedy. These include

Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Harry Williams, and Bobby’s trusted FBI

liaison Courtney Evans.

It’s significant that our source who assisted Bobby at the autopsy

was fully knowledgeable not only about the JFK-Almeida coup plan,

but also about the Cuba Contingency Plans designed to protect it. The

bottom line is that whatever went on at the autopsy most likely hap-

pened with the full knowledge, and probably at the ultimate direction,

of Bobby Kennedy. Further proof of this concept is the fact that some of

the most important missing evidence, such as JFK’s brain, wound up

under Bobby’s control.

Even such a basic fact as when the autopsy started has caused much

debate and uncertainty over the past four decades. There was a delay

of at least forty minutes, and possibly as much as an hour, between the

arrival of JFK’s body at the facility and the start of the autopsy. While that

might not be very unusual in itself, something else was: There were two

ambulances—one was a decoy supposedly meant to throw off reporters

and sightseers who might have made it onto the base. After JFK’s body

arrived at the front of the building, the
Washington Post
reported that

Admiral Galloway himself “pushed into the front seat and drove to the

rear of the hospital, where the body was taken inside.”11

However, author David Lifton found that the men who were to guard

the ambulance with JFK’s body lost sight of the ambulance as it sped

away. The guards chased after the ambulance, but couldn’t find it. This

was followed by much confusion on their part, before they finally arrived

at the rear of the facility and found the ambulance at last.12 Oddly, Secret

Service Agent Kellerman says the autopsy started at 7:30, while the

casket team’s report says JFK’s casket was not carried in until 8:00 PM.

The two FBI agents say the first incision was made at 8:15 PM.

In addition to the unusual timing discrepancies, there were also easy-

to-document differences between how JFK’s body looked at Parkland

and how it looked (and was photographed) at the start of his autopsy

in Bethesda. The most obvious example is JFK’s throat wound, where

the tracheotomy incision had been made. Dallas’s Dr. Perry said that his

small, neat incision was only 2–3 centimeters. However, photos of JFK’s

body at the start of the autopsy show a very ragged incision, spread

open in the middle, that was at least two or three times larger. JFK’s

official autopsy report (now known to be at least the second completed,

and possibly the third) says the incision was 6.5 centimeters when the

autopsy began, while the lead autopsy physician, Dr. Humes, said under

oath that it was 7–8 centimeters.13 The throat incision was not enlarged

during the official autopsy, because, as assisting autopsy physician Dr.

Pierre Finck later testified, the doctors had been ordered not to.14

How did the small, neat incision in JFK’s neck more than double in

size to a wound so ragged that the autopsy physicians didn’t even real-

ize there had been a bullet hole there? Some experts have suggested a

solution that would also account for the timing inconsistencies regarding

the start of the autopsy, as well as the missing brain and other evidence.

They say there could have been a brief, hurried, unofficial “national

security autopsy” before the start of the official one. They point out that

on the night of November 22, the official autopsy results and evidence

were expected to be used in Oswald’s trial, and would have to be turned

over to his defense.

If Bobby Kennedy and other top officials were worried that evidence

of another shooter from the front could have generated calls to invade

Cuba and a conflict with the Soviets, this line of reasoning suggests they

might have wanted to learn as much as possible before the “official”

autopsy began. The greatly enlarged throat wound certainly appeared

as if someone had hurriedly explored it to see if a bullet was still lodged

inside.

While the official autopsy was jammed with officers and other per-

sonnel, such a national security autopsy might have been conducted

with only a few people present. This scenario could also explain other

discrepancies that have been documented. As the official account would

evolve, JFK’s back wound was supposedly caused by the complete

“magic bullet” found at Parkland on a stretcher—no bullet (or substan-

tial part of a bullet) was found at the autopsy. Yet Dr. Osborne—then a

Captain and later an Admiral and the Deputy Surgeon General—told

Congressional investigators he saw “an intact bullet roll . . . onto the

autopsy table” when JFK was removed from his casket. Osborne reiter-

ated to David Lifton that “I had that bullet in my hand and looked at

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

it.” He said it was “reasonably clean [and] unmarred,” and “the Secret

Service took it.”15

Dr. Osborne’s account is somewhat confirmed by the account of

x-ray technician Custer, who said that “a pretty good-sized bullet” fell

out of JFK’s “upper back,” where his back wound was located. He said

that when “we lifted him up . . . that’s when it came out.”16 Finally, the

Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical School at the time, Captain

John Stover, told author William Law, “Well, there was a bullet.” To

Lifton, “Stover confirmed there was a bullet in the Bethesda morgue”

from JFK’s body. However, Stover thought it was the bullet found on

the stretcher at Parkland. But it wasn’t, since that bullet was at the FBI

laboratory, many miles away.17

A brief national security autopsy prior to the start of JFK’s official

autopsy, as well as national security concerns after the official autopsy,

could also account for the many problems surrounding the autopsy

photographs and x-rays. Douglas Horne was the Chief Analyst of mili-

tary records for the congressionally created JFK Assassination Records

Review Board (ARRB) for three years in the 1990s. In addition to the

problem with JFK’s throat wound, Horne recently wrote, “There is

something seriously wrong with the autopsy photographs of the body

of President Kennedy. . . . The images showing the damage to the Pres-

ident’s head do not show the pattern of damage observed by either the

medical professionals at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, or by numerous

witnesses at the military autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. These

disparities are real and are significant.”

To cite just two of several discrepancies he uncovered, Horne writes

that “Navy photographer John Stringer, under oath before the ARRB,

disowned the [JFK] brain photographs in the Archives, because (1) they

were taken on a type of film he did not use; (2) they depict ‘inferior’

views of the underside of the brain which he was certain he did not

shoot; and (3) the photographs of several individual sections of brain

tissue that he did photograph were not present.” Horne also cites FBI

Agent Frank O’Neill, who “testified to the ARRB that the brain photos

in the National Archives could not possibly be of President Kennedy’s

brain, because there was too much tissue present; O’Neill testified that

more than half of President Kennedy’s brain was missing when he saw

it at the autopsy following its removal from the cranium, and his objec-

tions to the brain photographs in the Archives were that they depict

what he called ‘almost a complete brain.’”18

FBI Agent O’Neill, now retired, made other interesting observations.

Along with his colleague at the autopsy, Agent James Sibert, he doesn’t

believe in the “magic bullet” theory that was later proposed. Sibert says

he looked at JFK’s back wound from only two feet away. Measurements

of the bullet holes in JFK’s jacket and shirt show they were almost six

inches below the tops of the collars, well below the neck. Agent Sibert

says, “There’s no way that bullet could go that low, then come up, raise

up, and come out the front of the neck, zigzag and hit Connally, and

then end up in a pristine condition over there in Dallas.” Agent O’Neill

concurs, saying, “Absolutely not, it did not happen.”19

O’Neill also recently revealed something that Secret Service Agent

Roy Kellerman said to him at the autopsy: “He told me he [had] cau-

tioned Kennedy that morning not to be so open with the crowds for

security reasons. Kennedy told him that if someone wanted to kill him,

all they would have to do was use a scope rifle from a high building.”20

This statement was just one more indication of JFK’s mindset following

the Chicago and Tampa assassination attempts. When the events of the

autopsy are considered in terms of the cloak of secrecy those attempts

generated for national-security reasons, it starts to provide a rationale

for many, if not all, of the autopsy discrepancies.

The fact that there were national-security concerns for what should

have been a routine autopsy is confirmed by the fact that thirteen

people—including the three main autopsy physicians, most of the

lower-ranking people present at the autopsy, and even Admiral Gallo-

way’s secretary—were ordered to sign a secrecy order four days later. As

O’Connor said, they were told they were “under the penalty of general

court martial, and other dreadful things like going to prison.”21 The

orders were finally rescinded at the request of the House Select Com-

mittee on Assassinations in March 1978. However, it’s not known what

orders covered the higher-ranking people present at the autopsy, or

whether those orders were ever rescinded. As we document in Chapter

64, in 1978 Commander Almeida was still high in the Cuban govern-

ment, and his secret work for JFK had not yet been exposed. In fact, on

April 22, 1978, Almeida met at the UN with a representative of then–

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, and the JFK-Almeida coup plan was

never revealed to the Committee.

At the time of JFK’s assassination, Vance was Secretary of the Army

and fully aware of the JFK-Almeida coup plan. After the autopsy, JFK’s

body and funeral arrangements were put in the hands of Vance’s two

trusted aides, Joseph Califano (who would serve in the Cabinet with

Vance in the late 1970s) and Alexander Haig (later a Secretary of State

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himself). Haig has written that he “was assigned the duty of helping

with the preparations for the President’s funeral [and] handling details

concerning the burial site.”22 Califano has written that after JFK’s mur-

der, he went to the Pentagon and met Vance, who put him in charge of

arranging JFK’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery and meeting

Bobby there the next day.23

Califano and Haig have always been careful to distance themselves

from the most sensitive parts of Vance’s work on Bobby’s plans to elimi-

nate Castro, and neither has ever admitted to knowing about the JFK-

Almeida coup plan. But declassified files confirm that Califano and Haig

worked on the Cuba Contingency Plans for dealing with the possible

“assassination of American officials” when that planning started, in late

September 1963.24 Vance’s use of Califano and Haig makes sense, even

if both men had not yet been told about the JFK-Almeida coup plan.

Because of their admitted work on some of Bobby’s anti-Castro activi-

ties, and their involvement in the Cuba Contingency planning, Vance

knew he could count on each man if any problems arose that might

involve national security.

In fact, when a problem did arise, Haig showed how information

could be destroyed for reasons of national security. In his autobiog-

raphy, Haig wrote that “very soon after JFK’s death, an intelligence

report crossed my desk. In circumstantial detail, it stated that Oswald

had been seen in Havana in the company of Cuban intelligence officers

several days before the events in Dallas . . . the detail—locale, precise

notations of time, and more—was very persuasive. I was aware that

it would not have reached so high a level if others had not judged it

plausible. . . . I walked it over to my superiors. . . . ‘Al,’ said one of them,

‘you will forget, as from this moment, that you ever read this piece of

paper, or that it ever existed.’ The report was destroyed.”25 Unfortu-

nately, Haig didn’t realize that there were many similar reports later

shown to be bogus, most connected to associates of David Morales,

Johnny Rosselli, Santo Trafficante, and Carlos Marcello.

While JFK’s autopsy continued at Bethesda, the lines were buzzing