New COMMANDER W.B.PITZER PAGE WITH FULL FBI FILE

[Jan Klimkowski]

In my opinion, Jim Rinnovatore has made a cogent and persuasive case for a preautopsy between ~6:45 and ~7:45 PM in the Bethesda morgue:<

http://www.manuscriptservice.com/BNH-chicanery/

http://www.manuscriptservice.com/Throat-Wound/

Allan - thank you. Much provocative and detailed material there.

A few pertinent excerpts:

EYEWITNESSES TO DELIVERY OF A CASKET AT 6:35-6:45 pm

Roger Boyajian was a marine sergeant in charge of a detail of marines on the evening of 11/22/63. His orders from Admiral Calvin Galloway, CO of the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) at Bethesda (of which the Naval Hospital is part), were to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering restricted areas around the morgue [2], as well as to prevent the press from interfering with the delivery of the president's casket. On November 26, 1963, Boyajian wrote an after-action memo describing the duties of his team including [3]:

At approximately 1835 (6:35 PM) the casket was received at the morgue entrance and taken inside.

Although he provided no details of its appearance, the coffin he saw being unloaded and delivered to the morgue could not have been the ornamental bronze casket in which the president's body had been placed at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, because, at 6:35 PM, that casket was en route from Andrews Air Force Base.

Dennis David, Chief of the Day for the Medical School (also part of the NNMC) on the evening of the autopsy, told the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1997 that he supervised the removal of a gray shipping casket from a black hearse at about 6:45 [4]. A group of sailors under his command carried the shipping casket into the anteroom of the morgue. After this event, David witnessed the arrival of the navy ambulance -- carrying the ornamental casket and Mrs. Kennedy -- at the front of the NNMC. He saw Mrs. Kennedy exit the ambulance and enter the lobby.

David also described the hearse as a black Cadillac, which, he was certain, arrived well before the gray navy ambulance. His recollection of the time of arrival of 6:45 PM is consistent with that of Sgt. Boyajian.

In February 2009, the author asked Dennis David what, if anything, he had noticed when he supervised the delivery of the shipping casket to the anteroom. He responded that he "saw marines in the morgue hallway." The ten-man security detail under Boyajian's command was composed of marines, whose presence would be conspicuous to a navy man.

Edward Reed a technician at Bethesda Naval Hospital, took a number of x-rays of the president's body during the autopsy. In his 1997 deposition to the ARRB, he stated that he reported to the morgue after being paged over the PA system [5, p. 20]. In 1978, he told Mark Flanagan of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) [6] that he arrived at the morgue at around 6:30 PM, where, according to his ARRB testimony, he found that the casket containing the president's body had already been delivered and was being guarded by five or six marine corpsmen [5, p.22]. Reed helped carry the casket into the autopsy room, was present when it was opened and saw that the body was inside a "plastic bag" [5, p. 24; 6]. Mr. Reed's account corroborates those of Boyajian and David of an early arrival of a casket at the Bethesda morgue and, furthermore, provides proof that this casket contained the president's body.

Hospital corpsman Floyd Riebe assisted in taking photographs during the autopsy on President Kennedy's body. He told the ARRB [7, p. 28] in 1997 that a gun-metal gray casket, brought into the autopsy room, contained the president's body, which was inside a body bag [7, p. 30] and that Paul O'Connor (see below) assisted in removing the body from the casket.

Paul O'Connor was a medical technician who assisted at the autopsy. In 1997 he told HSCA staff members that a pink shipping casket contained the president's body, which was in a body bag [8]. Mr. O'Connor's observations are consistent with those of Reed and Riebe.

Like Paul O'Connor, James Jenkins was a medical technician who was interviewed by HSCA staff members in 1977 [9]. Mr. Jenkins was not asked to describe the casket containing the president's body. However, in a phone conversation with author David Lifton in 1979, he said that the casket "was not a really ornamental type thing...not something you'd expect a president to be in" [1, p. 609].

Gawler's First Call Sheet. Gawler's Funeral Directors (Washington, DC) supplied a Marsellus 710 mahogany casket [10] as a replacement for the ornamental bronze casket, because the latter had been damaged in transit from Dallas. The president's body was interred at Arlington Cemetery inside the Marsellus casket. Gawler's First Call Sheet, dated November 22, 1963, states [10]:

Body removed from metal shipping Casket at USNH at Bethesda.

No time is given for this event; however, it is consistent with eyewitness accounts of delivery to the Bethesda morgue of a shipping casket containing the president's body.


EYEWITNESSES TO DELIVERY OF A CASKET AT 7:17 PM

When the plain shipping casket containing the president's body was carried into the Bethesda morgue at 6:35-6:45 PM, the motorcade bringing Mrs. Kennedy was en route from Andrews Air Force Base. One of the vehicles in the motorcade was a gray navy ambulance carrying the ornamental bronze casket that had been flown from Dallas; on arrival at Andrews AFB, it had been placed in the ambulance by an all-service honor guard, under the command of Lieutenant Samuel Bird. The honor guard made the journey to Bethesda by helicopter.

James Sibert and Francis O'Neill, FBI agents, were in the third car of the motorcade as it traveled from Andrews AFB to Bethesda. Their responsibilities were to maintain constant vigil over the bronze ornamental casket, which they believed carried the president's body, to attend the autopsy and to collect bullets or fragments recovered from the body. Their duties and activities are described in their subsequent report [11] and statements to Arlen Specter [12], to the HSCA [13; 14] and to the ARRB [15; 16].

FBI Agent O'Neill told the ARRB that, upon his (and Agent Sibert's) arrival at the front entrance of the hospital (at approximately 6:55 PM [17]), he observed Mrs. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and probably Dr. Burkley exit the gray navy ambulance, which contained the ornamental bronze casket, and enter the hospital along with Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman. After some time, during which the navy ambulance had not moved, he and Sibert approached Larry O'Brien (president's assistant) and asked about the delay. O'Brien said that SSA William Greer, who had driven the ambulance from Andrews AFB to Bethesda, was not sure how to find the morgue. Since O'Neill and Sibert were familiar with the Bethesda Hospital grounds, they drove to the morgue entrance at the rear of the hospital, with SSA Greer following.

Upon arriving at the loading dock outside the morgue, O'Neill noted SSA Kellerman coming out of a door to a corridor leading into the autopsy room, at which point he (O'Neill) introduced himself to Kellerman. Clearly, Kellerman had found his way from the front entrance of the hospital to the morgue complex.

This author estimates that Sibert and O'Neill, along with Greer and the ambulance, arrived at the morgue entrance just prior to 7:17 PM. Sibert told the ARRB that he and O'Neill assisted Greer and Kellerman in taking the ornamental bronze casket into the anteroom of the morgue at about 7:17 PM [15, p. 45; p. 50]. In their interview with Specter, both agents said that "preparations for the autopsy" occurred at approximately 7:17 PM [12, p. 2].


EYEWITNESSES TO DELIVERY OF A CASKET AT 8:00 PM

Samuel Bird was an infantry lieutenant in charge of a nine-man team (initially, two were added later) composed of representatives of the five armed services -- army, navy, air force, marines and coast guard -- called the "joint-service casket-bearer team" (generally referred to as the "honor guard"). In a report dated December 10, 1963, Lt. Bird described his duties, from 11/22/63 until 11/25/63 when the president's body was interred at Arlington Cemetery [18].

In the early evening of the day of the assassination, the honor guard off-loaded the ornamental bronze casket from Air Force One onto a gray navy ambulance. Mrs. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, along with Secret Service Agents Kellerman, Greer and Landis rode in the ambulance with the casket from Andrews AFB to the Bethesda Hospital entrance.

Bird's report states that the honor guard carried the ornamental bronze casket into the Bethesda morgue at 8:00 PM [18].


SOLVING THE CONUNDRUM

Three arrivals, two caskets, one body. What was going on?

In this author's opinion, the information provided above is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Kennedy's body arrived at the Bethesda morgue at shortly after 6:30 PM in a shipping casket. The ornamental casket, in which the body had been placed in Dallas, arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:55 PM, and was carried into the morgue twice. Initially this occurred at approximately 7:17 PM with the casket carried by FBI Special Agents James Sibert and Francis O'Neill and Secret Service agents into the anteroom, and it occurred again at 8:00 PM with the casket carried by the honor guard into the morgue.

I believe that the FBI agents dissembled in their November 26 report [11] when they implied that they maintained constant vigilance over the president's body. Omission of critical time points conveys the impression that their involvement with the ornamental casket was continuous when, in fact, it was not.

(snip)

IMPLICATIONS

Two entries of the president's body to the morgue raise the obvious question as to why the president's body was removed from the ornamental casket in which it had been placed at Parkland Hospital. A logical answer is that the wounds observed at Parkland, indicative of frontal shots, had to be altered and reversed to point to shots from the rear.

The accounts of Saundra K. Spencer to the ARRB in December 1996 and June 1997 provide additional proof that the president's wounds were altered. Petty Officer Spencer, stationed at the Naval Photographic Center at Anacostia, was in charge of the "White House" laboratory. In a telephone interview she said the following [22]:

On November 23, 1963, she received three or four duplex film holders (six or eight shots) of color negatives from a federal agent named Fox, which she understood to be autopsy photographs. She developed the negatives, made prints and gave all materials back to Fox.
The president's body was "very clean" unlike other autopsy photographs she had seen.
There was a circular wound at the base of the front of the president's neck, about the size of a person's thumb.
There was a wound in the back of the president's head, at about the center, 3 or 4 inches above the hairline. It was about 2 to 2.5 inches wide, which she described as a "blown out chunk."
She saw no damage to the side of the president's head.
She could not tell whether or not there was damage to the top of the head because the negatives she processed did not show it.

In a deposition [23], Spencer repeated some of these observations. She noted that although she was in charge of the White House lab, she worked under Chief Robert Knudsen who acted as her supervisor and liaison with the White House. Her observations included:
A photograph showed "a brain laid beside the body...But it didn't appear that the skull had been cut, peeled back and the brain removed..." As to whose brain it was, she could not say.
The throat wound appeared as "about the size of like your thumb pressed in."

After being shown the extant "official" photographs of the autopsy by the ARRB's Jeremy Gunn, Spencer noted the following:

None of the photographs was developed by her. In addition, the print paper used for the photographs she was shown was not the same type of paper she used in November 1963 when she processed the color negatives received from Agent Fox.
None of the photographs she developed in November 1963 was in the inventory of photographs she was shown by Gunn during her deposition.
In the photographs that she developed, the brain was less damaged than that depicted in the photographs shown to her during her deposition.

The importance of what Saundra Spencer told the ARRB cannot be overstated. Her descriptions of the wounds in the throat and head were as described by the Parkland Hospital doctors. Therefore, the photographs currently in the official inventory at the National Archives are untruthful representations of the wounds. One example of this is the photograph which shows the back of the president's head intact, concealing the real wound which the Parkland Hospital doctors found.

US Information Agency photographer Joe O'Donnell's phone interviews with the ARRB in January/February 1997 [24] confirm the observations of Saundra Spencer. O'Donnell, a friend of Robert Knudsen, stated that, at some time after the assassination, he was shown two sets of photographs by Knudsen. The first set included a photograph of a hole in the back of the president's head (about the size of a grapefruit), and a round hole in the forehead, just above the right eye, about three-eighths of an inch in diameter. In the second set, the hole in the rear of the head was gone; the hair, apparently wet, was neatly combed over the region of the hole. The wound over the right eye also was gone.

Clearly, at some point there existed photographs that documented the wounds that the president incurred in Dealey Plaza, as observed and reported on by the Parkland Hospital doctors. Based on the observations of eyewitnesses at Bethesda, the wounds were enlarged after the president's body left Parkland Hospital. The casket/body chicanery at Bethesda Naval Hospital, between 6:30 and 8:00 PM on the evening of the assassination was a necessary component of the body-alteration process. In his recently published book, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins [25], Dick Russell includes an important interview with Doug Horne. Horne describes having an epiphany in 2006 while writing a book on his work for the ARRB:

The evidence for three separate casket entries into the morgue...is overwhelming and unimpeachable, and the honest researcher cannot simply be in denial about these events if (s)he takes a scientific, empirical approach to the evidence

[W]hat (David) Lifton had speculatively called the pre-autopsy autopsy began about an hour and a half before the official one.

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.

OTHER EVIDENCE
Three other accounts suggest that the throat wound was altered after the president's body arrived at Bethesda: those of Dennis David, Joe O'Donnell and Saundra Spencer.

Dennis David
Chief of the Day for the Naval Medical School, which, like the Naval Hospital, was part of the National Navy Medical Center, Dennis David supervised the removal of a gray shipping casket from a black Cadillac hearse at about 6:45 pm [8].

In a telephone interview in 1997 with Doug Horne, who was working at the ARRB at that time [21], Mr. David said William Pitzer showed him a 16-mm black and white movie, 35-mm color slides, and 3x5-inch black and white prints of the president's wounds. Mr. Horne wrote that Mr. David observed a gaping wound in the right rear of the president's head; a small round wound in the right temporal area; the top of the president's head intact; and a gaping wound in the throat. The rear head wound resembled that observed at Parkland Hospital.

In an interview with William Law [16, p. 17], David said that he was not sure that he had seen the large throat wound at the time he was viewing the film and photographs shown to him by Lt. Pitzer.

In a conversation on body alteration, Allan Eaglesham told me that he and Dennis David spent an evening together about ten years ago during which Eaglesham showed David copies of the autopsy photographs and asked him specifically about the throat wound; i.e. what he had seen in the Pitzer movie. Eaglesham was surprised when David said that he had no recollection of the grossly exaggerated throat wound, as depicted in the "stare of death" photograph (Figure 1). Therefore, Mr. David's accounts to Eaglesham and Law regarding his observations of the throat wound in the Pitzer film and photographs were at odds with what was written in Doug Horne's summary of their unrecorded telephone conversation [21].

In a telephone conversation on March 18, 2010, I asked Mr. David to clarify the apparent differences in his recollection of the throat wound. He responded as follows:

During his conversation with Doug Horne [21], there was a misunderstanding. Prior to discussing the throat wound, he made the comment that -- referring to autopsy photographs that are published in Best Evidence [4] -- he did not see the "flap" in the right side of the president's head in any of the photos or the film that Pitzer had shown him.
His comment of a "sloppy" tracheotomy was also in reference to the autopsy photographs in Best Evidence and not to the Pitzer photographs or film.
Doug Horne must have assumed that his reference to a "sloppy" tracheotomy was in reference to the Pitzer photographs or film.

When I asked him how sure he was about not telling Horne that he had seen the "throat gash" in Pitzer's photographs and film, he replied, "I'm positive" (however, see [21a]).

Joe O'Donnell [21b]
In his interview with the ARRB [22], Mr. O'Donnell, a photographer with the US Information Agency in 1963, claimed that White House photographer Robert Knudsen showed him two sets of 5x7-inch black and white photographs depicting the president's wounds. One set showed a gaping hole in the right rear of the head plus a small wound above the right eye, whereas, in the other set of photographs, the rear head wound and the small wound on the right forehead were gone [22, pp. 2, 5]. O'Donnell made no comments on the throat wound or the top of the head for either of the two sets of photos. His omission of descriptions of the throat gash and of a defect in the top of the head suggests that neither was present at the time the photographs he observed were taken.

O'Donnell's description of the small wound above the right eye is consistent with that described by Dennis David, based on his observations of the film and photographs shown to him by William Pitzer.

Saundra Spencer
Petty Officer First Class Saundra Spencer worked at the Photographic Center at Anacostia, MD. In her ARRB interview [23], Spencer claimed that, a day or two after the autopsy, she developed color negatives depicting the president's wounds. She made the following observations:

One print showed a wound in the back of the head, 2 to 2.5 inches in diameter.
The throat wound appeared like "your thumb pressed in"; "like a finger, half-inch"; "it appeared just indented...clean...pristine..."

When shown an autopsy photograph depicting a "gaping gash type" wound at the throat (e.g. Figure 1), she said she did not see that in any of the negatives she developed. She made no comment about the top of the head because it wasn't visible in the negatives she developed.

Ms. Spencer's observations of the rear head wound and the throat wound conform to the observations at Parkland Hospital. That she failed to notice a throat wound is explainable in terms of the small trach incision made at Parkland Hospital having closed after removal of the breathing tube (per the accounts of Crenshaw and Perry [5, p. 54; 6, pp. 100-101]).

I believe that the negatives she developed were taken at Bethesda before any alterations were made. Moreover, I believe that the photographs seen by Dennis David, Joe O'Donnell and Saundra Spencier were taken by William Pitzer in the Bethesda autopsy room. In his interview with William Law, Jerrol Custer said that William Pitzer was "taking movies" [16, p. 116] and in his ARRB deposition, he identified the person taking movies as the "gentleman that had committed suicide" [14, p. 40]. It is also possible that Lt. Pitzer made photographs from frames of the movie.

One could postulate that the negatives Spencer developed were taken after reconstruction of the president's body. Her observations of negatives depicting a very clean body and a brain laid next to the president's head appeared to Doug Horne to be consistent with a time after reconstruction [based on a conversation with this author, December 2009]. It should be noted, however, that the president's body was washed at Parkland Hospital and both his head and his body were wrapped with sheets prior to being placed inside the bronze casket. Even though it is likely that some blood seeped from the president's head during travel from Parkland Hospital to the time of the arrival of his body at 6:35/6:45 pm, this blood could easily have been cleaned up at that time for photographs to be taken. There is no obvious explanation for why a brain (which clearly was not the president's) should have been placed next to the president's head and a photograph taken at either 6:35/6:45 pm or after reconstruction. Most of the president's brain was observed to be missing by autopsy technician Paul O'Connor [24, p. 2].

I discount the possibility that the negatives Spencer developed correspond to after reconstruction because the gross wound at the throat was sutured and wax was put over the suture to seal it at that time by the morticians. I do not believe she would have missed seeing that restoration. Her descriptions of the throat wound are clear: it resembled the post-tracheotomy wound observed by the doctors at Parkland Hospital.

IMPLICATIONS
The eyewitness reports indicate that the trach incision in the president's throat made at Parkland Hospital was enlarged after arrival at Bethesda Naval Hospital at the same time the head wounds were altered. Dennis David's recollections regarding the throat wound (as provided to Allan Eaglesham, to William Law and to me) suggest that he, Joe O'Donnell, and Saundra Spencer saw the same photographs of the president's wounds as they existed before alteration.

Provocative, complex and occasionally contradictory testimony.

Let's run with the hypothesis that there was a pre-autopsy (to alter the wounds) and an "official" autopsy, both conducted in a very short timeframe.

Here are some basic observations:

i) access to the pre-autopsy would have been strictly controled;

ii) overt filming of the pre-autopsy would have been even more strictly controlled (as this would represent evidence of the body of the President in a state which was never meant to be seen);

iii) covert filming of the pre-autopsy might have been possible, but is problematic.

At the technical level, if you want to get a variety of shots, in different framings and different shot sizes (eg wide shots, closeups, extreme closeups, from different angles), you have to move the camera position frequently and probably change lens. The quickest and easiest way of achieving this is through a lightweight handheld camera or a stills camera. However, the photographer would not only be visible to everyone in the room, they would also almost certainly have to interact with the doctors and personnel in the room: i) to get guidance on what to film; ii) to stop the surgical work to get their shots; iii) to move people out of their line of sight.

The alternative is covert CCTV. The problems are: i) how do you get bodies out of the camera line of sight? A ceiling mounted camera is about the only option I can think of; ii) how are you controlling the camera movement, to change angles and focal length? A rostrum camera setup can do it, but it's fiddly and time consuming.

My tentative conclusions are that it is entirely possible that the hypothesised pre- or alteration autopsy was filmed, but this was most likely done with a small lightweight handheld camera or a stills camera, with the photographer/cameraman being a known, accepted and trusted presence in the theatre, during a secret event which was never meant to be written out of history.

My tuppence worth.