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
