14-06-2013, 05:43 PM
David,
There was a time when my beliefs about the medical evidence were the same as most other conspiracy believers i.e. a massive blow out low down in the back of the skull and doctored X-rays and photos to cover it up. At that time I was open to the idea that something dodgy went down at Bethesda.When I first read Doug Horne's interview with Dick Russell I thought "Wow. This guy's book is gonna be a game changer." I can't tell you how disappointed I was when I actually read it. It didn't take me long to realise that, as well as being based on highly selective quotations from statements based on memories that were anything from 15 to 30+ years old, Horne's theory is completely illogical.
Think about it. When David Lifton first introduced the idea of body alteration, he did so to supposedly explain the apparent discrepancy between the descriptions of the wounds at Parkland and Bethesda. As Lifton told it, the whole point of the clandestine pre-surgery was to fool the autopsy doctors into thinking all shots came from behind. Of course, thanks to the work of people like Roger Feinman, David Wrone, and Cyril Wecht we now know that Lifton's theory has more holes than a hunk of Swiss cheese. I personally realised Lifton's book was fraudulent nonsense when I noticed that nowhere in several hundred pages did he tell his readers that, even though he says all shots came from the front, Connally's wounds were unquestionably delivered by a shot from the rear. Thus Lifton's dishonesty is revealed and his theory is dead in the water.
Along comes Horne (an admitted Liftonite) who by his own admission believed something untoward happened at Bethesda long before he found any evidence of such, to revitalize the whole sorry story by saying it was actually the autopsy doctors who altered the head wound. Ok. Fine. To fool whom? Themselves? Because that's the only inference to be drawn. And it makes absolutely no sense at all. There was no logical reason for the autopsy surgeons to perform a "pre-autopsy" when they were the ones who would be responsible for establishing the cause of death anyway! They could, and did, write anything they wanted to in their autopsy report whether it was correct or not. For example, the autopsy report claims that the track of missile dust begins at the EOP. That's a lie. And it pretends that the throat wound was an exit for the back wound when no such thing was ever established. So why would they need to secretly enlarge the head wound when they could essentially put whatever they wanted in their report? Answer: they would not and they did not. They OPENLY enlarged the head wound, in front of witnesses, to reach the brain (a proper medical procedure) and TESTIFIED to doing so.
There was no"pre-autopsy" and there was no need for one anyway. We don't need to resort to theories, we can look at what actually happened to see how the medical cover-up was achieved:
* The autopsy doctors wrote a report claiming that all shots came from behind. Witnesses were sworn to secrecy.
* The Warren Commission accepted their report and chose not to make use of the actual autopsy materials that would have contradicted it. Public access to the materials was restricted.
* In response to criticism of the alleged trajectory, and in an attempt to deal with the axis of metallic debris on the X-ray, a Justice Department panel pretended that the EOP entrance hole didn't exist and moved the entrance wound 10 cm up the head.
* Someone removed the brain and critical photographs and X-rays from the archive. The Kennedy family was blamed without evidence.
* A House Select Committee essentially rubber stamped the work of the Justice Dept. panel.
And there we have it: a cover-up that became institutional. Now no one in establishment circles will touch this stuff with a very long pole. The cover-up is maintained because to question the official story brings ridicule and rebuke or simply finding that one's words are ignored. For example,when Dr. Randy Robertson studied the autopsy materials and concluded that there were two shots to the head, he wrote a paper and submitted it to medical journals for publication. It was rejected. The Journal of Forensic Sciences wrote Dr. Robertson, "...there appears to be nothing materially wrong with this work from a technical standpoint. However, the central issue for us, for some time, has been whether to open this controversial matter in this publication." In other words, "you may be right but we sure as hell ain't gonna say it". As we can see, there never was any need for body alteration or any of that garbage, the cover-up was enacted and maintained perfectly well without it.
So, as far as I'm concerned, the confused recollections of witnesses speaking decades after the event about what time this and that took place at Bethesda amount to nothing and merely serve as an example of how unreliable human memory can be. And the two casket/ambulance thing was explained years ago as a security measure (see chapter 6 of Feinman's manuscript, Between the Signal and the Noise).
The great mystery that remains for many is the discrepancy between what was seen at Parkland and what was recorded at Bethesda. To me is this no longer a mystery. Firstly, as your graphic shows, the Parkland doctors described a wound that was in pretty much the area in which the fragment trail onthe X-ray shows the bullet did exit. Some of them thought it was lower down, some of them not. I don't find it surprising or troubling that some thought the wound was further back than it was. I don't agree with everything Pat Speer says but he does some fine work on this on his website.
Secondly, the autopsy report admits that the skull damage extended into the occipital region which actually confirms part of the Parkland doctors' recollections rather than contradicts it. But the autopsy report says that the wound was 17 cm, encompassing most of the right side of the head, which is obviously bigger than what was seen at Parkland. What to make of this? Well, I believe that Dr. Gary Aguilar provided the most reasonable explanation years ago in Murder in Dealey Plaza:
"...that the wound was described as larger at autopsy than noted by emergency personnel is not proof it was surgically enlarged. Wounds picked apart during an autopsy examination are often found to be larger than they first appeared to emergency personnel. In Kennedy's case, moreover, Jackie Kennedy testified that she tried to hold the top of JFK's head down while they raced from Dealey Plaza to Parkland Hospital. It is not hard to imagine the possibility that during the time it took the Presidential limousine to get to Parkland Hospital, clot had formed gluing a portion of disrupted scalp down making JFK's skull defect appear smaller to treating surgeons than it later would to autopsy surgeons." (p. 187)
In other words, the Parkland staff only saw the rear most part of the wound which fooled them into thinking it was located only in the rear of the head. This is perfectly reasonable and I have no problem accepting it as a probable explanation.
It is INFINITELY more reasonable than claims that the autopsy doctors performed illicit pre-autopsy surgery which, as I said above, was completely unnecessary anyway.
There was a time when my beliefs about the medical evidence were the same as most other conspiracy believers i.e. a massive blow out low down in the back of the skull and doctored X-rays and photos to cover it up. At that time I was open to the idea that something dodgy went down at Bethesda.When I first read Doug Horne's interview with Dick Russell I thought "Wow. This guy's book is gonna be a game changer." I can't tell you how disappointed I was when I actually read it. It didn't take me long to realise that, as well as being based on highly selective quotations from statements based on memories that were anything from 15 to 30+ years old, Horne's theory is completely illogical.
Think about it. When David Lifton first introduced the idea of body alteration, he did so to supposedly explain the apparent discrepancy between the descriptions of the wounds at Parkland and Bethesda. As Lifton told it, the whole point of the clandestine pre-surgery was to fool the autopsy doctors into thinking all shots came from behind. Of course, thanks to the work of people like Roger Feinman, David Wrone, and Cyril Wecht we now know that Lifton's theory has more holes than a hunk of Swiss cheese. I personally realised Lifton's book was fraudulent nonsense when I noticed that nowhere in several hundred pages did he tell his readers that, even though he says all shots came from the front, Connally's wounds were unquestionably delivered by a shot from the rear. Thus Lifton's dishonesty is revealed and his theory is dead in the water.
Along comes Horne (an admitted Liftonite) who by his own admission believed something untoward happened at Bethesda long before he found any evidence of such, to revitalize the whole sorry story by saying it was actually the autopsy doctors who altered the head wound. Ok. Fine. To fool whom? Themselves? Because that's the only inference to be drawn. And it makes absolutely no sense at all. There was no logical reason for the autopsy surgeons to perform a "pre-autopsy" when they were the ones who would be responsible for establishing the cause of death anyway! They could, and did, write anything they wanted to in their autopsy report whether it was correct or not. For example, the autopsy report claims that the track of missile dust begins at the EOP. That's a lie. And it pretends that the throat wound was an exit for the back wound when no such thing was ever established. So why would they need to secretly enlarge the head wound when they could essentially put whatever they wanted in their report? Answer: they would not and they did not. They OPENLY enlarged the head wound, in front of witnesses, to reach the brain (a proper medical procedure) and TESTIFIED to doing so.
There was no"pre-autopsy" and there was no need for one anyway. We don't need to resort to theories, we can look at what actually happened to see how the medical cover-up was achieved:
* The autopsy doctors wrote a report claiming that all shots came from behind. Witnesses were sworn to secrecy.
* The Warren Commission accepted their report and chose not to make use of the actual autopsy materials that would have contradicted it. Public access to the materials was restricted.
* In response to criticism of the alleged trajectory, and in an attempt to deal with the axis of metallic debris on the X-ray, a Justice Department panel pretended that the EOP entrance hole didn't exist and moved the entrance wound 10 cm up the head.
* Someone removed the brain and critical photographs and X-rays from the archive. The Kennedy family was blamed without evidence.
* A House Select Committee essentially rubber stamped the work of the Justice Dept. panel.
And there we have it: a cover-up that became institutional. Now no one in establishment circles will touch this stuff with a very long pole. The cover-up is maintained because to question the official story brings ridicule and rebuke or simply finding that one's words are ignored. For example,when Dr. Randy Robertson studied the autopsy materials and concluded that there were two shots to the head, he wrote a paper and submitted it to medical journals for publication. It was rejected. The Journal of Forensic Sciences wrote Dr. Robertson, "...there appears to be nothing materially wrong with this work from a technical standpoint. However, the central issue for us, for some time, has been whether to open this controversial matter in this publication." In other words, "you may be right but we sure as hell ain't gonna say it". As we can see, there never was any need for body alteration or any of that garbage, the cover-up was enacted and maintained perfectly well without it.
So, as far as I'm concerned, the confused recollections of witnesses speaking decades after the event about what time this and that took place at Bethesda amount to nothing and merely serve as an example of how unreliable human memory can be. And the two casket/ambulance thing was explained years ago as a security measure (see chapter 6 of Feinman's manuscript, Between the Signal and the Noise).
The great mystery that remains for many is the discrepancy between what was seen at Parkland and what was recorded at Bethesda. To me is this no longer a mystery. Firstly, as your graphic shows, the Parkland doctors described a wound that was in pretty much the area in which the fragment trail onthe X-ray shows the bullet did exit. Some of them thought it was lower down, some of them not. I don't find it surprising or troubling that some thought the wound was further back than it was. I don't agree with everything Pat Speer says but he does some fine work on this on his website.
Secondly, the autopsy report admits that the skull damage extended into the occipital region which actually confirms part of the Parkland doctors' recollections rather than contradicts it. But the autopsy report says that the wound was 17 cm, encompassing most of the right side of the head, which is obviously bigger than what was seen at Parkland. What to make of this? Well, I believe that Dr. Gary Aguilar provided the most reasonable explanation years ago in Murder in Dealey Plaza:
"...that the wound was described as larger at autopsy than noted by emergency personnel is not proof it was surgically enlarged. Wounds picked apart during an autopsy examination are often found to be larger than they first appeared to emergency personnel. In Kennedy's case, moreover, Jackie Kennedy testified that she tried to hold the top of JFK's head down while they raced from Dealey Plaza to Parkland Hospital. It is not hard to imagine the possibility that during the time it took the Presidential limousine to get to Parkland Hospital, clot had formed gluing a portion of disrupted scalp down making JFK's skull defect appear smaller to treating surgeons than it later would to autopsy surgeons." (p. 187)
In other words, the Parkland staff only saw the rear most part of the wound which fooled them into thinking it was located only in the rear of the head. This is perfectly reasonable and I have no problem accepting it as a probable explanation.
It is INFINITELY more reasonable than claims that the autopsy doctors performed illicit pre-autopsy surgery which, as I said above, was completely unnecessary anyway.