DVP vs. DiEUGENIO
(PART 128)


JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

This guy [Fred Litwin] is a complete poseur. I did some work on him. He is the Canadian version of the useless carnival barker David Horowitz.

But if you read this you will see that his work, if that is what you wish to call it, is simply and completely pitiful. At best it's an obsolete relic, at worst it is simply a diversion from the unearthed facts.

In the sixteen downloadable pages of his chapter on Garrison, I could find not one declassified ARRB document that he read or used. Not one. And as I note that is really bizarre since the ARRB did some decent work in New Orleans. Who does he use as sources then? Aynesworth and Phelan. Without telling the reader about their intel associations and their denials of them. He then gets even more silly and drags in, of all people, Paul Hoch. I explain why this is bonkers in the piece. And he accuses Gary Aguilar of not being intellectually honest.

From what I could find out, the guy made a lot of money in the computer field and then became a Culture Warrior up in Canada. He is trying to be their Bill O'Reilly. Like we need another Fox News clown in the JFK case. Ridiculous.

Read it and weep.

KennedysAndKing.com/Jim Garrison Vs. Fred Litwin: The Beat Goes On (Part 2)


W. NIEDERHUT SAID:

Excellent, detailed analysis.

My question. What motivated Mr. Litwin to write and market this disinformazia?

Was it money, notoriety, or some misguided political agenda?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Canadian television interview with Fred Litwin (November 22, 2018):




W. NIEDERHUT SAID:

The CBC interview of Fred Litwin (posted by David Von Pein) is utterly appalling.

How did this dishonest, erroneous nonsense get televised in Canada?

Did the CBC interviewer really not know that Richard Helms admitted under oath that Clay Shaw was, in fact, a CIA asset? That Shaw was, in fact, guilty of perjury?

And what is Litwin's nonsense about two pathologists employed by the Kennedy family claiming that autopsy findings supported the Lone Nut in the TSBD narrative of the Warren Commission?

Someone needs to contact the Chairperson at CBC, Michael Goldbloom, and let him know that Fred Litwin is a bald-faced liar.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

What kind of junk/crap are you trying to peddle here, W. Niederhut? You surely know that there were seventeen (17!) different pathologists over the years who have ALL maintained that President Kennedy was shot only TWICE, with both shots coming from BEHIND.

Even mega-CTer Dr. Cyril Wecht (one of those 17 pathologists) agrees that the autopsy photos and X-rays show only wounds that were caused by bullets that entered JFK from the rear.

You owe Fred Litwin an apology for calling him a "bald-faced liar". But maybe you think those seventeen pathologists (from Bethesda to the Clark Panel to the HSCA) who agree that Kennedy was shot only from behind are the real "bald-faced liars", eh?


JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

If anything I was too soft on this guy [Fred Litwin]. He gets on Ontario TV and recycles the GIGO from his book.

He actually said that what closed the door on conspiracy for him was that the ARRB's 2 million pages was nothing but a zero.

Well, yeah, if you did not read them or choose not to address them, it's nothing. But as I quoted in my article, either Freddie Boy did read them and he does not want anyone to know about them, or he did not read them at all. These documents completely puncture the false image of Garrison and New Orleans that he is trying to peddle.

Clay Shaw was a highly valued contract agent for the CIA going back to the fifties. They admitted that in their own document. He was involved in at least two, probably three covert projects for the Agency. This is why he had a covert security clearance. They admitted that also. As I proved in my piece, Shaw committed perjury at least four times on the stand. And as I also showed, he could simply not tell the truth because it would open the door for more questions he simply could not answer since it would be too incriminating. What makes it worse is that the FBI knew what the facts were, and the CIA covered up for him with an internal lie.

David Ferrie lied his head off to the FBI. He then tried to obstruct justice by collecting evidence that would expose his perjury in the immediate days after the assassination.

Litwin even misrepresents the stuff about the Kennedy family and the autopsy artifacts. The Secret Service had those at first, until around 1966. Then a deed of gift was put together. When Garrison tried to get them for the Shaw trial, the government mightily resisted, and as Wecht would say later, the government lawyer screamed in court they would appeal until Hades froze over. But Ramsey Clark had no problem getting them for the Fisher Panel so that good ole CIA buddy Russ Fisher could change the original autopsy in order to cover up the exposure of it by Tink Thompson in his book. Again, that is not me saying that, it's Fisher saying it.

So what happened was that CIA buddy Russ altered the entrance point of the rear skull wound by raising it four inches, in other words about as far as you could on the back of the head. Then, someone, we do not know who, added a 6.5 mm fragment on the X-ray to make that alteration/falsification more credible. Neither Humes, Boswell nor Finck could recall seeing that artifact in the morgue. What makes it so hard to buy at all is that it's about 50 per cent larger than the one they did see. Yet try and find it in the report.

The other thing that happened is that they erased a particle trail that Humes wrote about which connected the lower entrance wound upward.

So let us tally up what Russ did: 1.) Raised the rear entrance 2.) added a bullet fragment which just happens to be 6.5 mm disk shaped 3.) Erased a particle trail.

Oh and I forgot. Stringer denied taking the pictures of JFK's brain in the archives today. He never used that film, or the press pack technique.

All of this was unveiled by Jeremy Gunn and the ARRB. As was the stuff on Shaw and Ferrie.

Fred Litwin should be ashamed of himself.

But he is a Culture Warrior. People like him and Daniel Pipes don't care about facts. In fact, they are actually at war with facts because they lead to an inconvenient political truth about America.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Were the 17 pathologists who confirmed ONLY REAR ENTRY WOUNDS all liars, Jim? Or do you want to pretend that all the photos are fake?


JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

Davey Boy:

In how many murder cases does the fatal wound change location, does the fatal bullet miraculously show up on the x rays five years later, and particle trails disappear? Plus the official photographer denies he took the most important pics? Can you name an instance outside of the movies or fiction?

(Sound of crickets in the night)

I have no idea what you are talking about with that second comment. Everything I listed and mentioned above is factual and shown by the government's own ARRB documents, which Litwin denies. If you want to say that these documents and this testimony is fake then that makes you quite a conspiracy theorist.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Jimmy Boy,

Not a one of those things happened, of course.

...The fatal entrance wound never "changed" locations. It was always in the same place on the BACK of Kennedy's head. And the "red spot" photo proves it was high on the head, not low. Mistakes have been made by some people (including the Bethesda doctors) over the years as to the precise place on JFK's head where that wound was located, but the biggest mistake was made by Humes & Boswell on the night of the autopsy by not measuring the vertical distance of the wound from ANY body landmark. Incredibly, it appears they didn't measure the "north/south" distance from any landmark at all! But the photographs confirm it was 100mm. above the EOP. Why not go with the BEST evidence (in this case, those photos)? Or am I supposed to believe this autopsy picture is a phony?

....Nobody KNOWS what the "6.5mm opacity" is on the A-P X-ray. Nobody can say for CERTAIN. Maybe it's a metal (bullet) fragment, but maybe it's not. We'll likely never know for sure.

....And your constant refrain of "The particle trail disappeared" has me shrugging too. What are you talking about? The "particle trail" is easily visible in the lateral X-ray of Kennedy's skull. Why would anyone insist it has "disappeared"? It hasn't disappeared at all. ~shrug time~




JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

Davey:

On February 13, 1996, the following dialogue took place between Jeremy Gunn and Jim Humes. The X rays were in front of the witness when Gunn asked the following question:

Q: Do you recall having seen an X ray previously that had fragments corresponding to a small occipital wound?

A: Well I reported that I did, so I must have. But I don't see it now.
(The JFK Assassination, by James DiEugenio, p. 152)

If this is too hard to figure Davey, Gunn referred to the occipital area because that is the area in the lower rear skull where the original doctors placed the entrance wound. As Humes admitted, and DVP will not, he saw and reported about a trail of particles that originated from that wound and rose upward. As many people have noted, they are gone today.

Your point about the disk shaped object tries to dodge the issue. Why did the pathologists not see this in 1963? Especially since it's bigger than [the] largest one they did see by a factor of fifty percent. But beyond that, is it credible that they would miss a disk shaped object that was in perfect position to complete the arc of the fragments and was also the right caliber? Maybe to Litwin and DVP, but not to the rest of the 99.9 per cent of the public who do not know about it.

Your last point is nothing but sophistry. The original autopsy had the fatal entrance wound at the lower rear of the skull. Will you have the cajones and honesty to admit that? Russell Fisher changed the entrance wound location and raised it four inches higher to the top of the skull. But if it was always there then why did Baden have Ida Dox paint in raised edges around it to make it look more like a bullet wound than a blood drop.

These are simple facts of the case which, like the others, you do not want to admit. Just as Litwin does not.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Jim,

Thanks for posting the ARRB testimony by Dr. Humes concerning the X-ray.

Yes, there are some problems and some discrepancies concerning the autopsy of President Kennedy. I cannot deny that fact. Nor have I ever tried to deny that these discrepancies and oddities exist in the record of this case. But I certainly don't believe that Dr. Russell Fisher of the Clark Panel (and his 3 colleagues on that 1968 panel) decided to falsely "move" the entry wound in JFK's head northward by a total of four inches as part of some sinister and covert cover-up operation.

That theory, in my opinion, is ridiculous (and, frankly, laughable), mainly due to the fact that the total amount of "net gain" that would have been attained via such an underhanded piece of on-paper surgery to the President's skull would have been extremely minimal to the people who were orchestrating such a fraud so as to fool the public at large.

Because whether the wound was right at the level of the EOP on JFK's head or 100 millimeters above that location (as determined by Dr. Fisher's Clark Panel in '68), the end result (either way) would have been a conclusion that has one single bullet striking the President's head--with that one bullet entering JFK's head from behind.

And both of those possible entry points--whether it be a high point or a low point--are both perfectly consistent and compatible with the conclusion that has Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone assassin firing his rifle from the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building (especially when factoring in the likelihood that the bullet that crashed into JFK's head probably changed directions somewhat after striking the hard skull, thereby eliminating any definitive conclusion that any investigative body would hope to reach about the precise angle of trajectory of the bullet as it travelled through the President's cranium).

For more about that pesky "6.5mm. Object" seen in one of JFK's X-rays....




W. NIEDERHUT SAID:

Mr. Von Pein,

I am a physician, (Harvard Medical School '83) and I have studied the original medical reports from the Parkland ER. JFK, clearly, had a right frontal entry wound that blew a fragment of his right occipital skull backward, behind the limo--consistent with the Zapruder film.

My understanding is that the physician who conducted the Bethesda autopsy was not even a forensic pathologist, and was quite reluctant to sign off on the substandard "autopsy" that may well have been conducted on a surgically altered cranium.

As for Fred Litwin, I will stand by my original comments about his utterly appalling interview on CBC television. He made several blatantly false statements. I would give him the benefit of the doubt and attribute his errors to ignorance, but I don't believe that he is ignorant.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Well, since you believe that President Kennedy sustained a "right frontal entry wound that blew a fragment of his right occipital skull backward", then you really have no choice but to also believe that ALL THREE of the photographic pieces of evidence depicted below (the autopsy photos, the autopsy X-rays, and Abraham Zapruder's home movie) must have been faked and manipulated by someone so as to completely eliminate the right-rear blowout of the President's skull. If you choose to believe in such wholesale fakery of the evidence, be my guest. But you'll pardon me if I excuse myself from sitting at your table.




W. NIEDERHUT SAID:

P.S. This is my last comment to you. I do not wish to converse with you, going forward.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:




JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

Davey wants to ignore the fact that, as Pat Speer discovered, Fisher admitted in a medical journal that the reason the panel was convened by Clark was for the express purpose of refuting some of the junk in Thompson's book. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination, p. 150)

Ramsey Clark was so disturbed by the Saturday Evening Post preview of Six Seconds in Dallas that he got hold of some of the proofs of the book. As anyone can see from looking at Thompson's book, p. 111, he creates a very large problem in trajectory since you have a bullet fired downward which is now going upward in JFK's skull. So Thompson showed how Humes and Boswell conned Rydberg into making a drawing in which JFK's head is much more ante flexed than it really is in the Z film at Z 312. In fact, its almost like Kennedy is bending over to look at his navel. 

Fisher's revisions solve this problem in all aspects. You raise the entry to straighten the trajectory, you then get rid of the lower particles, and the coup de grace, you place a 6.5 mm fragment where it needs to be. And by the way, in my book, with testimony from Custer, I show how this had been practiced before the fact with Ebersole and his so called White House "bust of Kennedy" which needed bullets and trajectory lines taped on it. Yep, that is not a joke. (p. 160)


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

And they went through all that fakery and legerdemain just so they could say basically the EXACT SAME THING --- that being: the bullet entered JFK's head from behind. Right?

And, Jimmy, you're not going to sit there and tell me that Dr. Russell Fisher, the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Maryland since 1949, would have held the opinion in 1968 when he was a part of the Clark Panel that a bullet which has just hit a very hard object like the skull of President John F. Kennedy could not possibly have changed its trajectory after striking that object? You don't really think that Fisher held such a belief, do you James? Anyone who thinks Dr. Fisher held such a crazy belief in the year 1968 must, themselves, be a little crazy.

Ergo, there was no good reason whatsoever for Russell S. Fisher to want to engage in the type of "Let's Raise The Entry Wound By Four Inches" scheme that James DiEugenio thinks he did engage in.


PAT SPEER SAID:

Wrong. When you actually read the statements and testimony of men like Clark, Spitz, Petty and Baden, it's clear they believed the brain photos proved a bullet hadn't entered near the EOP and exited from the top of the head. And that this led them to conclude the bullet exiting high must have entered high.

Well, think about it. They realized the evidence suggested more than one head shot, and opted to claim the autopsy doctors were mistaken about the EOP entry, rather than admit this fact.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Wrong. The medical evidence doesn't suggest any such thing, and the HSCA and Clark panels knew this. There was only ONE entry hole in JFK's head. All the autopsy doctors substantiate this, as does the autopsy report itself. If the HSCA and Clark panels saw any proof of the "EOP" entry in any of the photos or X-rays, of course they would have said so. There was no logical reason under the sun for those men to start lying about where that entry wound was.

Conspiracists have invented various reasons for the HSCA and Clark people to want to raise the wound up into the cowlick, but that's the fertile imaginings of the CTers at work and nothing more than that. The fact is: those men studied the photos and X-rays and saw the wound high on the head....so that's what they reported. Simple as that. (The unproven theories of CTers notwithstanding.)

David Von Pein
November 23-26, 2018




CBS EVENING NEWS
WITH WALTER CRONKITE

(NOVEMBER 22, 1963)





COMMENTS POSTED AT YouTube.com:


"Excellent video, like always, David Von Pein!! Don't know what I'd do without this guy's amazing JFK coverage! No other channel on YouTube has 90% of the footage/coverage that David Von Pein has. Just flat out amazing stuff right here! Thanks again, DVP!! YOU ROCK!!" -- An Anonymous Person; November 17, 2018


"David, what a find. Another wonderful historical document from that day. I have devoured all of the “as it happened” videos and audio from your fine channel, and was very excited to see you post this. Thank you so much for all of your work compiling these fascinating pieces of history." -- Brandon Grimes; November 16, 2018


==============================


ALSO SEE:















JFK ASSASSINATION ARGUMENTS
(PART 1294)


FRANCOIS CARLIER SAID:

This thread started with a question to David Lifton. I don’t know whether he took the time to come and read this thread. At any rate, he never bothered to answer.

Still, I would love to have some feedback/opinion/comment from people whom I consider both knowledgeable and reasonable, namely David Von Pein, Fred Litwin, W. Tracy Parnell, Paul Baker and Lance Payette.

Be honest. Tell me whether my hypothesis might have some probability or validity, or whether it is unrealistic or just plain silly...

Here was my question to Lifton:

Mister Lifton,

You have presented a whole theory in your book, "Best Evidence", that claims that Kennedy's corpse was taken off [sic; out of?] its coffin, and then the president's body was altered (wounds were changed), as part of a conspiracy.

People such as John McAdams, or Gerald Posner, or Vincent Bugliosi have written articles or books saying that you are completely wrong: the body was never taken off the coffin, and the wounds were never altered.

I listened to your Black-Op-Radio 2008 interview in which you complained about Bugliosi's book, because, as you said, he criticized your theory without really addressing important issues. You even said: "Who is he kidding?". In other words, you were saying that his arguments against your theory were not valid because they were incomplete and he did not really have an answer for some particular and important points that you had raised.

Is that a fair description?

Well, I have thought about it for a long time and have a question for you. What if you were both wrong and right? What if the corpse was indeed taken off the coffin (which would explain the blood evidence and other witness accounts that you gathered) but only for security purposes (which would support Bugliosi's contention that there was never a conspiracy)?

Here is my supposition (and I use the word "supposition" on purpose)....

We all know how the President's body left Parkland Hospital. The Secret Service agents were rolling the casket towards the exit when they were blocked by Dr. Rose. The physician told them that there should be an autopsy performed right there because the homicide had happened in Dallas County. But the Secret Service agents forced their way at gun point. Then they all rushed to the presidential plane, at Love Field. And that's what is important.

I can imagine the frantic state they were in. It's a terrible mess. No one knows really what is going to happen. Even the Kennedy party (Jackie and all) didn't know that Lyndon Johnson was in their aircraft and was waiting to be sworn in. I can imagine the Secret Service agents rushing from Parkland, fearing of being followed by the police and who knows, maybe a judge would rule that Kennedy's corpse must be autopsied in Dallas?

So they decide, as a desperate "security" measure, to take the corpse out of the coffin. That way, they figure that if the Dallas police decide to "impound" the coffin, well, by the time they get back to Parkland Hospital with the coffin, open it and realize that it is empty, Air Force One, with the Kennedy party and the President's body will have already taken off.

So someone in charge, possibly Roy Kellerman, decides to open the coffin. It's only a spur-of-the-moment thing. I mean, he may have vomited at the sheer thought of what he was doing. He decided it offhand, in the heat of action. They figured what mattered was to bring the president's corpse along with them, despite the law by which the Dallas authorities wanted to abide.

I mean, it was a crazy situation, arguably the craziest half hour in the history of the United States. At that precise moment, you had zero president, no one knew exactly who was in charge, nor where the danger might come from, nor whom to trust. The picture of Secret Service agents openly going against the law and fleeing from the local Police Department with the dead body of the President of the United States!! I mean, that's totally unique. Therefore, in their frantic state of panic, it might be conceivable that Secret Service agents decided at some point to "hide" the president's body from the local authorities, if only for a few minutes, in order to secure it and make sure it would be taken to Washington with Lyndon Johnson and Jackie Kennedy.

I might agree to believe that.

That would explain the blood on Kellerman's shirt (if there was blood. I don't know that. I am just going along with what you have said about your upcoming book).

And of course, despite all their efforts to be discreet and not tell anybody, they couldn't prevent people from noticing strange activity, which might explain Dennis David's account or other accounts.

But there was never any conspiracy. No plot. Nothing sinister. No pre-autopsy surgery at all. Nothing. (Maybe some bones moved a bit when the body was hastily moved around, that's all).

Do you understand my point? Or, rather, my supposition?

In a nutshell, could there have been just a simple (if one could use that term in such a situation) attempt by the Secret Service to temporarily "hide" the body from the Dallas police (after they had fled at gun point), with absolutely no desire to take part in any conspiracy or cover-up, no foul play...no malicious intent whatsoever? It was indeed a bad decision in retrospect, but only that.

That might reconcile some of your findings (that can sometimes be hard to explain away) with the arguments of the defenders of the official version (who, you have to admit it, have good reason to doubt your—may I say—farfetched conclusions about pre-autopsy surgery and a we-shall-fire-from-the-front-with-a-patsy-being-behind-and-take-the-body-unnoticed-and-change-the-wounds conspiracy (which even other conspiracists don't believe in).

What do you think?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Hi Francois,

While I don't think the scenario you laid out above actually happened on 11/22/63, I will say that your scenario is definitely more believable (and doable) than the outlandish "pre-autopsy autopsy" conspiracy theory put forth by David Lifton.

For the sake of argument, however, I'm wondering something....

If your "The Secret Service Took JFK's Body Out Of The Casket" scenario were true, then why did every single person who would have witnessed such an event decide to lie about it and say that the President's body was never removed from the casket at all? (That would include all of the Secret Service agents who would have been involved in such an action, plus many Kennedy aides, such as Ken O'Donnell and David Powers, plus Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy (who never said anything about such an extremely odd—albeit non-conspiratorial—event occurring aboard Air Force One on November 22nd.)

I would think if the situation were the benign and innocent event that you propose, then the truth of that event would likely have surfaced (at least many years later, if not sooner) via at least one or two of the people aboard the plane that day.

But I like the general idea that Francois has brought forth here --- that is, the idea that even some of the wildest and outrageous conspiracy theories could conceivably have a non-sinister and non-conspiratorial explanation after all.


FRANCOIS CARLIER SAID:

Thank you very much for your answer, David.

I enjoy that type of discussion.

I have to say that what you write makes sense. Indeed, if "my scenario" had happened, it is hard to conceive how it is that not even one witness ever said anything about it in fifty-five years! You are right. I don't have an answer for that.


W. TRACY PARNELL SAID:

Since you mentioned me in your post, Francois, I'll just say that for the record I agree with David VP. You simply can't reconcile each and every eyewitness statement and it is best to accept that some "outliers" will exist. Interesting idea though.


LANCE PAYETTE SAID:

Hi, Francois, I just noticed that you mentioned me. I'm flattered. I think I've mentioned previously that Lifton's original book was one that fired me up when I was a newbie gee-whiz conspiracy theorist many years ago. I now look at the entire body of his work as a species of insanity, to such a degree that I'm disappointed in myself for ever having bought into it. Of course, that was so long ago that I was still a writer of advertising copy and humor and had none of the critical-thinking skills that come with three years of law school and 35 years of being a lawyer.

As DVP said, I too have come to appreciate that many seeming indicia of conspiracy could indeed have non-conspiratorial explanations. I'm thinking in particular of the chaotic scrambling after the assassination to hide any association with LHO and any failure to monitor him, which could give the appearance of a cover-up conspiracy but could also simply be predictable cover-our-butts scrambling by multiple agencies in the wake of a tragedy as monumental as the JFK assassination.

Thinking way (WAY) outside the box, I wonder if this could be a wrinkle on your theory: Since it theoretically was a violation of Texas law not to have an autopsy in Texas, there had been the unpleasant confrontation at Parkland, and Admiral Burkley was right there, I wonder if someone with legal training might have suggested "Look, let's at least create a plausible defense by opening the casket and having Burkley do a cursory inspection before the plane takes off. It obviously won't be a real autopsy, but it will show good faith and probably be enough to defeat any charges under Texas law if the redneck Texas officials decide to push this silly issue. If they don't push the issue, it never needs to be mentioned."

This is indeed a far-fetched scenario -- but as a retired lawyer I can tell you it isn't far-fetched in terms of the way lawyers think.


RAY MITCHAM SAID:

How do Francois and DVP explain the butchery of the President's tracheotomy?


LANCE PAYETTE SAID:

I don't claim to have any surgical expertise, although I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express in El Paso last month, but do you find it unthinkable that in the utter chaos at Parkland, with an apparent bullet hole in the precise location where the incision would typically be made, the net result when all was said and done might have been somewhat more ghastly than a neat little hole? Are you suggesting that the surgeons should have thought "Wait, wait, we need to preserve this little bullet hole intact because whether it's an entrance wound or exit wound could be critical evidence?"


LANCE PAYETTE LATER SAID:

Perhaps those who insist there was "butchery" can explain themselves. Was it a big ugly gash by the time the death stare photo was taken (and probably before the body left Parkland)? Sure.

Is the explanation inevitably sinister when one considers (1) the type of incision associated with any tracheotomy, which is scarcely a neat and tidy hole; (2) the preexistence of what the Parkland doctors thought was a bullet entry wound and that may have caused them not to proceed as though this were a garden-variety tracheotomy; (3) the utterly chaotic ER circumstances of trying to somehow keep alive a President who was missing a substantial portion of his head; (4) the necessary handling of the body that occurred after the death at Parkland and upon the arrival at Bethesda, which may not have been as reverential as we might imagine; (5) an autopsy that began (apparently) without knowledge that a tracheotomy had been performed at Parkland; and (6) whatever additional probing there may have been at the autopsy, especially since the exit for the back wound was in doubt.

One can certainly hypothesize something sinister, but I see no reason that a sinister explanation is mandated or more plausible than a mundane one. Under the circumstances, I'd hardly expect an incision as clean as might occur in a routine tracheotomy. I don't see that Francois or DVP or Little Old Me needs to "explain" anything in this regard. If we do, I have now explained why I decline to engage in conspiracy-oriented hypothesizing about the tracheotomy incision.

There has been extensive discussion of this topic on past threads. You'd have to have something pretty startling and new not to be beating a dead horse.


MICHAEL CROSS SAID:

Nice assumption about Parkland, completely not based in fact. Any argument based on that assumption is groundless.


LANCE PAYETTE SAID:

Hello? That's why I said "probably," because it isn't my assumption that the death stare photo represents the condition of the incision when the body left Parkland. At least some of those at Parkland indeed said that the condition of the incision in the death stare photo was consistent with what they had observed at Parkland, which is why I said "probably." Perhaps "possibly" would have made you happier.

I would indeed assume, under the circumstances as I have described them, that the incision at Parkland would have differed, possibly quite substantially, from a garden-variety tracheotomy incision in which there was no preexisting bullet hole and the ER physicians weren't frantically trying to save a President with a large portion of his head missing. This seems to me an entirely reasonable assumption.

My other assumption, however, which I believe squares with common sense and logic, is that the incision would not have been precisely the same following the autopsy as when the body left Parkland. How great the difference may have been, I have no idea and neither do you. Possibly there was a very substantial difference, which would not inevitably suggest anything sinister to me because I am not in the grip of Conspiracy Logic.


REPLAY....
RAY MITCHAM SAID:

How do Francois and DVP explain the butchery of the President's tracheotomy?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Let me remind you, Ray, what one of the conspiracy theorists' all-time favorite Parkland witnesses, Dr. Robert McClelland, had to say in both 1988 and again in 2009 about the size of the tracheotomy wound in JFK's throat....

~~~~~~~~~

"The next time some conspiracy buff brings up the "gaping" nature of JFK's trach wound, show them the video on this webpage of Dr. Robert McClelland saying on PBS-TV in 1988 that the trach incision in the autopsy pictures looks "exactly the same size and the same configuration" as it was when he saw it at Parkland. .... And even though I think Dr. McClelland is as kooky as a 9-dollar bill with regard to his comments concerning the location of JFK's large head wound, I certainly don't have any reason to think he's kooky about his comments regarding the trach wound -- and that's because I don't believe for a single second that anybody "altered" any of JFK's wounds between Parkland and Bethesda." -- David Von Pein; November 2013

~~~~~~~~~

"Some people have even said 'Oh, that tracheostomy has been altered; it's too big a wound'. Well, I can speak for that -- no, it had not been altered. That's exactly the way it was made at Parkland. It's just that people expected it to be smaller." -- Dr. Robert McClelland; 2009



David Von Pein
November 14-15, 2018