17-06-2013, 11:32 AM
[quote=Martin Hay]Paul O' Connor told Andy Purdy that the "pink shipping casket..arrived approximately eight o'clock." (ARRB MD64) He said the same thing to David Lifton (Best Evidence, paperback edition, p. 695), to Roger Feinman (Between the Signal and the Noise, chapter 6), and William Matson Law (In the Eye of History, p. 35).
Dennis David said in a telephone interview for the ARRB that he witnessed the arrival of a "gray shipping casket" at about 6:45 pm. He did not see the casket opened. (ARRB MD177)
Roger Feinman writes about Donald Rebentisch in chapter 6 of Between the Signal and the Noise:
[quote]
For Donald Rebentisch, a petty officer who was stationed at Bethesda on the night of the autopsy, there was no big secret. Rebentisch was studying dental and medical equipment repair at the hospital at the time. According to Rebentisch, two ambulances carrying two caskets were employed one of them empty and one with the body of Kennedy in a deliberate charade to slip the President's body into Bethesda Naval Hospital. Rebentisch says his commanding officers told him the secrecy was planned to avoid the media and other onlookers. The empty casket was brought in the frontdoor while the casket carrying Kennedy's body was driven in a 1958 Chevrolet hearse to the back of the hospital where medical officials were to perform an autopsy:
"It was about 4:30 p.m., when our chief petty officer came to me and about five other petty officers and told us to go to the back of the hospital. I'm talking about the loading ramps where they used to bring in supplies.
"He told all of us that we were going to be there and we were going to bring the President's casket into the mortuary. We were told not to leave our posts.
"The chief said we got all the … ghouls and reporters and the TV and everybody at the front of the hospital. He said there would be an empty casket in the ambulance. He said the President's body would really come in the back.
"This made sense to me. I felt there was nothing wrong with this. I just bought it, as did the rest of us."
Rebentisch said he and five other officers took the President's casket out of the black hearse and pushed it through a rear freight entrance, 35 or 40 minutes before another coffin was taken through a mass of reporters and photographers at the front door. "Rebentisch said he doubted most of Lifton's claims." (The Associated Press, January 23, 1981, AM Cycle) Robert Muma, who was a Bethesda staff dental technician, corroborated Rebentisch's account:
"There were two ambulances that came in. One was lighted. It came up to the front door. The second one they kept dark and it went around to the back. That was the one that had Kennedy in it. It was common knowledge that there were two caskets." (The Associated Press, January 23, 1981, AM Cycle)
Another of Rebentisch's associates, Paul Neigler, also corroborated the former petty officer's story. (United Press International, January 24, 1981, AM cycle)
[end quote]
The report of Marine Sgt. Roger Boyajian does not say that the casket he and his men picked up on the evening of November 22, 1963, contained the body of President Kennedy. Asked during a telephone interview for the ARRB "if he remembered the arrival of the President's casket" he said "no." (ARRB MD236)[/quote]
Martin Hay is trying real hard to wriggle out of the implications of the Boyajian report, but he won't succeed. The report is a critical historical document written four days after the event, and accurately records the arrival of JFK's body at the Bethesda morgue. After all, that's what Sgt. Boyajian was there for--he was the NCOIC (Non Commissioned Officer in Charge) of the Marine Security detail assigned to the morgue.
Let's back up a bit. . . and the place to start is with Bethesda medical technician Paul O'Connor.
O'CONNOR'S ACCOUNT
Paul O'Connor told me that the shipping casket was delivered to the morgue at 8 pm. In Chapter 26 of Best Evidence, I wrote: "Repeatedly during our conversation, O'Connor said he logged in the body at 8 p.m." I applied under the FOIA for the log; it was not to be found. Literally, it has disappeared.
O'Connor was clear that the body was received in a shipping casket-he said that to the Florida newspapers in 1979, he said it to the HSCA, and he said it to meboth in my August, 1979 telephone interview, and then on camera in October 1980. My conclusion: Paul O'Connor was wrong about the time. Its fruitless to speculate about how such an error may have occurredthe fact is that O'Connor was firm about the body bag, and firm about the type of casketand those events occurred after the 6:35 PM arrival of the shipping casket to the morgue. Remember: Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch were both witnesses to that arrival; Dennis David described it to me in vivid detail on July 2, 1979 (and his account is set forth in Chapter 25 of Best Evidence) and Donald Rebentisch described that same arrival when I interviewed him on January 23, 1981, within about 10 days of the publication of Best Evidence.
But let's go back to the issue of the time.
How do we know it was 6:35 PM? Here's why: because Sgt. Roger Boyajianthe NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge) was assigned to morgue. Boyajian headed the security detail sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital from the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. expressly for the purpose of providing security when JFK's body arrived; and then he wrote a report (on 11/26/63) specifying that time as "1835" (i.e., 6:35 PM). So that's how we know the time, but then there is the important corroboration from Dennis David.
Dennis David told me, when I first interviewed him in July, 1979, that the casket arrived "a good 20 minutes" before the naval ambulance arrived at the front. And he repeated that, on camera, when I conducted a filmed interview at his home in October, 1980. The sequence was "vivid" said David. The naval ambulance arrived at 6:53 PM (per the SS report) or 6:55 PM (per the account of the reporter who was there from the Washington Star). So based on Dennis David's statement(s) to meboth in my telephone interview of uly 2, 1979, and then on camera in October, 1980its pretty clear that the "time of arrival" of the casket that Dennis David saw being brought into the morgue entrance was 6:35 PM or 6:40 PM. Within minutes of that time.
The Boyajian report documents the arrival of that casket at 6:35 PM. Boyajian was the NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge) of the Marine Security Detail at the autopsy. He wrote his report on November 26, 1963, the day after Kennedy's funeral. It was typed and submitted on November 26, 1963, just four days after JFK's assassination (and one day after his funeral). The key statement in this report (which was about the security actions taken to safeguard President Kennedy's body and his autopsy) which so offends Martin Hay is wherein it states that JFK's body arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 1835 hours (6:35 PM civilian time), a full 20 minutes before the Andrews AFB motorcade carrying the bronze ceremonial Dallas casket arrived out in front of Bethesda Naval Hospital. So Martin Hay tries to get around this by saying that Boyajian didn't open the coffin and actually see the body. So what? He was there to provide securityand that's what he (and his group) did. Does Martin Hay believe that some "other body" at the morgue, and that Boyajian failed to note that? And so does Martin Hay believe that Boyajian filed a report mistakenly stating that Kennedy's body arrived at 6:35 PM (when it was not Kennedy's body)? Oh pleez, Martin. . get real.
But then there is more. . . because then came his after-action report, and how it came to the attention of the ARRB in 1997. Former Sergeant Boyajian possessed an onionskin carbon copy of his 1963 report. He then mailed a validated photocopy of that onionskin copy to the ARRB staff after being interviewed by Doug Horne on the phone in 1997. Anyone who knows anything about military correspondence in the early 1960s, in the age of manual typewriters, knows that onionskin copies were never signed. Only original documents were signed. As has been noted by another researcher: "The point here is that Boyajian himself was the source of the document, and validated it himself, both orally in a telephonic interview, and later in the cover letter by which he sent a copy of it to the ARRB."
Martin Hay tries to get around the implications of this critical document by writing: "Asked during a telephone interview for the ARRB "if he remembered the arrival of the President's casket" he said "no." (ARRB MD236)"
This is still another weak, if not silly, argument - -- - "The witness. . he did not remember " argument. . . :
If someone witnesses a crime and writes a report for the police four days later, and then suffers brain trauma from an automobile accident and can no longer remember details of the event 34 years later, this does not invalidate the report he wrote for the police immediately after the event! This is the equivalent of what you are trying to do here, and it is, quite frankly, a non-issue. Now if Boyajian had attempted, in 1997, to repudiate his earlier report, or deny its authenticity, THAT would have been significant and worthy of reporting. But no such thing happened; in fact, he authenticated the report.
The report stands, and cannot be invalidated by the author's faded memory 34 years after it was written.
Doug Horne himself wrote the ARRB staff call report following the telephonic interview of Boyajian in which he (Doug) explicitly stated that Boyajian could no longer remember specifics of the events of Nov 22nd, 1963but Boyajian made clear that he did supervise the detail from Marine Barracks, and the fact that he did prepare and submit to higher authority the after action report dated Nov 26th, 1963. Horne then personally placed in the Archives, in 1998, Boyajian's letter to the ARRB, claiming a bad memory, but also authenticating the copy of his report he provided to the ARRB.
Another point: Boyajian provided the document to the ARRB, and he authenticated it as what he prepared in November of 1963. That is all that really matters. The Boyajian report is a contemporaneous document of profound importance, that was both provided to the ARRB, and authenticated, by its author in 1997. It is of similar importance to the reports written by the treating physicians in Dallas at Parkland Hospital on Nov 22nd, 1963.
And still another point: The Boyajian document describes the same event witnessed by Navy men Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch - the unaccountably early arrival of JFK's body at Bethesda, 20 minutes prior to the arrival of the Dallas casket from Andrews AFB - thus proving that there was in fact a shell game going on with the President's body the night of his autopsy. This document, and the very consistent recollections of Dennis David ever since 1975, together prove a break in the chain of custody of President Kennedy's body, and also cause us to ask the truly important question: what was going on with President Kennedy's body between its arrival at Bethesda at 6:35 PM, and the second delivery of the Dallas casket (with JFK's body placed inside it again) by the Honor Guard at 8:00 PM?
Now let's examine closely what Commander Humes had to say about all this.
COMMANDER HUMES
Let's start with the Warren Commission, when Humes volunteered information implying that something else was going on:
Specter: tell us who else in a general way was present at the time the autopsy was conducted in addition to you three doctors, please?
Humes: "I must preface by saying it will be somewhat incomplete. My particular interest was on the examination of the president and not of the security measures of the other people who were present." (2 WCH 349)
Huh??
When testifying before the ARRB, Humes was asked: when did you first see the body? His answer: 6: 45 pm.
Here's the exact quote, from the ARRB transcript:
Q: Dr. Humes, when did you first see the body of President Kennedy?:
A: I didn't look at my watch, if I even had a watch on, but I would guess it was 6:45 or 7 o'clock, something like that, (pause) approximately.
Now let's try to recap: the arrival of the shipping casket at 6:35 PM (with JFK inside, per Dr. Boswell's affirmation to Dennis David); the first delivery of the bronze Dallas casket (empty) at 7:17 PM; and the second delivery of the Dallas casket (with JFK reintroduced into it, and escorted by the Honor Guard) at 8:00 PM, are all without doubt distinct, separate events because they were conducted by different actors, at different times. The shipping casket delivered at 6:35 PM (witnessed by Dennis David and written about by Boyajian four days later) was delivered in a black hearse, by men in suits, and taken into the morgue anteroom by Navy sailors; the empty Dallas casket was delivered to the morgue anteroom at 7:17 PM by two FBI agents and two Secret Service agents; and the Dallas casket was again delivered (this time with JFK placed back inside) at 8:00 PM by the Joint Service Casket Team (or Honor Guard). The implications of this charade are obvious and cannot be denied by anyone who is willing to consider all of the evidence, instead of just attempting to explain away the evidence that is "inconvenient" or "unpleasant" in its implications.
Martin Hay attacks the account of Donald Rebentisch,by saying: "Roger Feinman writes about Donald Rebentisch in chapter 6 of his book. . " to which I respond: "So what?" And "Who cares?" The main point is that, as reported by the wire services around January 24, 1981, Rebentisch corroborates the account given by Dennis David. (And then I interviewed Rebentisch that same week, and then interviewed him on camera around April, 1981).
I don't think there's any question but that President Kennedy's body was delivered to the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 PM, as noted in the Boyajian report, and as witnessed by Dennis David amd Donald Rebentisch. Neither person opened the coffin. Neither person saw the body. But inside the morgue was Paul O'Connorand he certainly saw what was inside that coffin.
The coffin was a shipping casket, and inside was a body bag. When he opened the body bag, there was President Kennedy's body.
What that means: that the coffin offloaded from Air Force One was empty; because the naval ambulance carrying the Dallas coffin arrived at the front of the hospital some 20 minutes later, at 6:53 (per the SS report) or 6:55 per the account of the Washington Star reporter who was present. That naval ambulance carried the large Dallas coffin that was offloaded from AF-1, after it came to a halt in front of the world's press at 6:04 PM PST. That's when the coffin was offloaded via a mechanical lift, at the rear port side--an event that was broadcast on national television. Then the coffin was placed in the naval ambulance, and then Jackie and Bobby debarked, and got into that embulance, which left Andrews at 6:10 PM EST, and arrived at Bethesda at 6:53 or 6:55 PM.
If the body was delivered to Bethesda at 6:35 PM, then that coffin--offloaded from AF-1--was empty.
DSL
6/17/13; 3:30 AM PDT
Los Angeles, California
Dennis David said in a telephone interview for the ARRB that he witnessed the arrival of a "gray shipping casket" at about 6:45 pm. He did not see the casket opened. (ARRB MD177)
Roger Feinman writes about Donald Rebentisch in chapter 6 of Between the Signal and the Noise:
[quote]
For Donald Rebentisch, a petty officer who was stationed at Bethesda on the night of the autopsy, there was no big secret. Rebentisch was studying dental and medical equipment repair at the hospital at the time. According to Rebentisch, two ambulances carrying two caskets were employed one of them empty and one with the body of Kennedy in a deliberate charade to slip the President's body into Bethesda Naval Hospital. Rebentisch says his commanding officers told him the secrecy was planned to avoid the media and other onlookers. The empty casket was brought in the frontdoor while the casket carrying Kennedy's body was driven in a 1958 Chevrolet hearse to the back of the hospital where medical officials were to perform an autopsy:
"It was about 4:30 p.m., when our chief petty officer came to me and about five other petty officers and told us to go to the back of the hospital. I'm talking about the loading ramps where they used to bring in supplies.
"He told all of us that we were going to be there and we were going to bring the President's casket into the mortuary. We were told not to leave our posts.
"The chief said we got all the … ghouls and reporters and the TV and everybody at the front of the hospital. He said there would be an empty casket in the ambulance. He said the President's body would really come in the back.
"This made sense to me. I felt there was nothing wrong with this. I just bought it, as did the rest of us."
Rebentisch said he and five other officers took the President's casket out of the black hearse and pushed it through a rear freight entrance, 35 or 40 minutes before another coffin was taken through a mass of reporters and photographers at the front door. "Rebentisch said he doubted most of Lifton's claims." (The Associated Press, January 23, 1981, AM Cycle) Robert Muma, who was a Bethesda staff dental technician, corroborated Rebentisch's account:
"There were two ambulances that came in. One was lighted. It came up to the front door. The second one they kept dark and it went around to the back. That was the one that had Kennedy in it. It was common knowledge that there were two caskets." (The Associated Press, January 23, 1981, AM Cycle)
Another of Rebentisch's associates, Paul Neigler, also corroborated the former petty officer's story. (United Press International, January 24, 1981, AM cycle)
[end quote]
The report of Marine Sgt. Roger Boyajian does not say that the casket he and his men picked up on the evening of November 22, 1963, contained the body of President Kennedy. Asked during a telephone interview for the ARRB "if he remembered the arrival of the President's casket" he said "no." (ARRB MD236)[/quote]
Martin Hay is trying real hard to wriggle out of the implications of the Boyajian report, but he won't succeed. The report is a critical historical document written four days after the event, and accurately records the arrival of JFK's body at the Bethesda morgue. After all, that's what Sgt. Boyajian was there for--he was the NCOIC (Non Commissioned Officer in Charge) of the Marine Security detail assigned to the morgue.
Let's back up a bit. . . and the place to start is with Bethesda medical technician Paul O'Connor.
O'CONNOR'S ACCOUNT
Paul O'Connor told me that the shipping casket was delivered to the morgue at 8 pm. In Chapter 26 of Best Evidence, I wrote: "Repeatedly during our conversation, O'Connor said he logged in the body at 8 p.m." I applied under the FOIA for the log; it was not to be found. Literally, it has disappeared.
O'Connor was clear that the body was received in a shipping casket-he said that to the Florida newspapers in 1979, he said it to the HSCA, and he said it to meboth in my August, 1979 telephone interview, and then on camera in October 1980. My conclusion: Paul O'Connor was wrong about the time. Its fruitless to speculate about how such an error may have occurredthe fact is that O'Connor was firm about the body bag, and firm about the type of casketand those events occurred after the 6:35 PM arrival of the shipping casket to the morgue. Remember: Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch were both witnesses to that arrival; Dennis David described it to me in vivid detail on July 2, 1979 (and his account is set forth in Chapter 25 of Best Evidence) and Donald Rebentisch described that same arrival when I interviewed him on January 23, 1981, within about 10 days of the publication of Best Evidence.
But let's go back to the issue of the time.
How do we know it was 6:35 PM? Here's why: because Sgt. Roger Boyajianthe NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge) was assigned to morgue. Boyajian headed the security detail sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital from the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. expressly for the purpose of providing security when JFK's body arrived; and then he wrote a report (on 11/26/63) specifying that time as "1835" (i.e., 6:35 PM). So that's how we know the time, but then there is the important corroboration from Dennis David.
Dennis David told me, when I first interviewed him in July, 1979, that the casket arrived "a good 20 minutes" before the naval ambulance arrived at the front. And he repeated that, on camera, when I conducted a filmed interview at his home in October, 1980. The sequence was "vivid" said David. The naval ambulance arrived at 6:53 PM (per the SS report) or 6:55 PM (per the account of the reporter who was there from the Washington Star). So based on Dennis David's statement(s) to meboth in my telephone interview of uly 2, 1979, and then on camera in October, 1980its pretty clear that the "time of arrival" of the casket that Dennis David saw being brought into the morgue entrance was 6:35 PM or 6:40 PM. Within minutes of that time.
The Boyajian report documents the arrival of that casket at 6:35 PM. Boyajian was the NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge) of the Marine Security Detail at the autopsy. He wrote his report on November 26, 1963, the day after Kennedy's funeral. It was typed and submitted on November 26, 1963, just four days after JFK's assassination (and one day after his funeral). The key statement in this report (which was about the security actions taken to safeguard President Kennedy's body and his autopsy) which so offends Martin Hay is wherein it states that JFK's body arrived at the Bethesda morgue at 1835 hours (6:35 PM civilian time), a full 20 minutes before the Andrews AFB motorcade carrying the bronze ceremonial Dallas casket arrived out in front of Bethesda Naval Hospital. So Martin Hay tries to get around this by saying that Boyajian didn't open the coffin and actually see the body. So what? He was there to provide securityand that's what he (and his group) did. Does Martin Hay believe that some "other body" at the morgue, and that Boyajian failed to note that? And so does Martin Hay believe that Boyajian filed a report mistakenly stating that Kennedy's body arrived at 6:35 PM (when it was not Kennedy's body)? Oh pleez, Martin. . get real.
But then there is more. . . because then came his after-action report, and how it came to the attention of the ARRB in 1997. Former Sergeant Boyajian possessed an onionskin carbon copy of his 1963 report. He then mailed a validated photocopy of that onionskin copy to the ARRB staff after being interviewed by Doug Horne on the phone in 1997. Anyone who knows anything about military correspondence in the early 1960s, in the age of manual typewriters, knows that onionskin copies were never signed. Only original documents were signed. As has been noted by another researcher: "The point here is that Boyajian himself was the source of the document, and validated it himself, both orally in a telephonic interview, and later in the cover letter by which he sent a copy of it to the ARRB."
Martin Hay tries to get around the implications of this critical document by writing: "Asked during a telephone interview for the ARRB "if he remembered the arrival of the President's casket" he said "no." (ARRB MD236)"
This is still another weak, if not silly, argument - -- - "The witness. . he did not remember " argument. . . :
If someone witnesses a crime and writes a report for the police four days later, and then suffers brain trauma from an automobile accident and can no longer remember details of the event 34 years later, this does not invalidate the report he wrote for the police immediately after the event! This is the equivalent of what you are trying to do here, and it is, quite frankly, a non-issue. Now if Boyajian had attempted, in 1997, to repudiate his earlier report, or deny its authenticity, THAT would have been significant and worthy of reporting. But no such thing happened; in fact, he authenticated the report.
The report stands, and cannot be invalidated by the author's faded memory 34 years after it was written.
Doug Horne himself wrote the ARRB staff call report following the telephonic interview of Boyajian in which he (Doug) explicitly stated that Boyajian could no longer remember specifics of the events of Nov 22nd, 1963but Boyajian made clear that he did supervise the detail from Marine Barracks, and the fact that he did prepare and submit to higher authority the after action report dated Nov 26th, 1963. Horne then personally placed in the Archives, in 1998, Boyajian's letter to the ARRB, claiming a bad memory, but also authenticating the copy of his report he provided to the ARRB.
Another point: Boyajian provided the document to the ARRB, and he authenticated it as what he prepared in November of 1963. That is all that really matters. The Boyajian report is a contemporaneous document of profound importance, that was both provided to the ARRB, and authenticated, by its author in 1997. It is of similar importance to the reports written by the treating physicians in Dallas at Parkland Hospital on Nov 22nd, 1963.
And still another point: The Boyajian document describes the same event witnessed by Navy men Dennis David and Donald Rebentisch - the unaccountably early arrival of JFK's body at Bethesda, 20 minutes prior to the arrival of the Dallas casket from Andrews AFB - thus proving that there was in fact a shell game going on with the President's body the night of his autopsy. This document, and the very consistent recollections of Dennis David ever since 1975, together prove a break in the chain of custody of President Kennedy's body, and also cause us to ask the truly important question: what was going on with President Kennedy's body between its arrival at Bethesda at 6:35 PM, and the second delivery of the Dallas casket (with JFK's body placed inside it again) by the Honor Guard at 8:00 PM?
Now let's examine closely what Commander Humes had to say about all this.
COMMANDER HUMES
Let's start with the Warren Commission, when Humes volunteered information implying that something else was going on:
Specter: tell us who else in a general way was present at the time the autopsy was conducted in addition to you three doctors, please?
Humes: "I must preface by saying it will be somewhat incomplete. My particular interest was on the examination of the president and not of the security measures of the other people who were present." (2 WCH 349)
Huh??
When testifying before the ARRB, Humes was asked: when did you first see the body? His answer: 6: 45 pm.
Here's the exact quote, from the ARRB transcript:
Q: Dr. Humes, when did you first see the body of President Kennedy?:
A: I didn't look at my watch, if I even had a watch on, but I would guess it was 6:45 or 7 o'clock, something like that, (pause) approximately.
Now let's try to recap: the arrival of the shipping casket at 6:35 PM (with JFK inside, per Dr. Boswell's affirmation to Dennis David); the first delivery of the bronze Dallas casket (empty) at 7:17 PM; and the second delivery of the Dallas casket (with JFK reintroduced into it, and escorted by the Honor Guard) at 8:00 PM, are all without doubt distinct, separate events because they were conducted by different actors, at different times. The shipping casket delivered at 6:35 PM (witnessed by Dennis David and written about by Boyajian four days later) was delivered in a black hearse, by men in suits, and taken into the morgue anteroom by Navy sailors; the empty Dallas casket was delivered to the morgue anteroom at 7:17 PM by two FBI agents and two Secret Service agents; and the Dallas casket was again delivered (this time with JFK placed back inside) at 8:00 PM by the Joint Service Casket Team (or Honor Guard). The implications of this charade are obvious and cannot be denied by anyone who is willing to consider all of the evidence, instead of just attempting to explain away the evidence that is "inconvenient" or "unpleasant" in its implications.
Martin Hay attacks the account of Donald Rebentisch,by saying: "Roger Feinman writes about Donald Rebentisch in chapter 6 of his book. . " to which I respond: "So what?" And "Who cares?" The main point is that, as reported by the wire services around January 24, 1981, Rebentisch corroborates the account given by Dennis David. (And then I interviewed Rebentisch that same week, and then interviewed him on camera around April, 1981).
I don't think there's any question but that President Kennedy's body was delivered to the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 PM, as noted in the Boyajian report, and as witnessed by Dennis David amd Donald Rebentisch. Neither person opened the coffin. Neither person saw the body. But inside the morgue was Paul O'Connorand he certainly saw what was inside that coffin.
The coffin was a shipping casket, and inside was a body bag. When he opened the body bag, there was President Kennedy's body.
What that means: that the coffin offloaded from Air Force One was empty; because the naval ambulance carrying the Dallas coffin arrived at the front of the hospital some 20 minutes later, at 6:53 (per the SS report) or 6:55 per the account of the Washington Star reporter who was present. That naval ambulance carried the large Dallas coffin that was offloaded from AF-1, after it came to a halt in front of the world's press at 6:04 PM PST. That's when the coffin was offloaded via a mechanical lift, at the rear port side--an event that was broadcast on national television. Then the coffin was placed in the naval ambulance, and then Jackie and Bobby debarked, and got into that embulance, which left Andrews at 6:10 PM EST, and arrived at Bethesda at 6:53 or 6:55 PM.
If the body was delivered to Bethesda at 6:35 PM, then that coffin--offloaded from AF-1--was empty.
DSL
6/17/13; 3:30 AM PDT
Los Angeles, California