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I wonder if anybody has yet figured out a way for a high-speed bullet entering John F. Kennedy's head from the RIGHT-FRONT (i.e., Grassy Knoll), per many/most CTer beliefs, to leave behind a huge gaping hole in the FAR-RIGHT-REAR of JFK's head, and yet have this Magical Missile (somehow!) LEAVE THE SCALP IN THE BACK OF KENNEDY'S HEAD COMPLETELY INTACT AND UNDAMAGED IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.
Has anyone been able to figure out this mystery yet? I sure haven't. Other than to say the obvious -- The CTers who believe this are nuts!
Of course, there are also the various sub-topics with respect to JFK's head, such as the fact that the left side of Kennedy's head suffered NO DAMAGE at all (in addition to the "No Right-Rear Scalp Damage" too).
Plus, there's also the fact that there were no bullet fragments found in the LEFT hemisphere of John Kennedy's head at all.
So that makes the "Knoll Shooter" promoters 0-for-3 in my view.
Of course, the CTers who think that Kennedy was shot in the head from the front can always go down "THE PHOTOS ARE ALL FAKES" path (as most conspiracy-loving kooks do, indeed, travel down, even though the HSCA said that ALL of the autopsy pictures are "unaltered" in any way whatsoever; but CTers, as always, feel it's just okay to ignore anything being uttered by an "Official Government" body).
To stress my main point again (via the opinion that the pictures linked below are GENUINE and are NOT FAKES, which, of course, IS the truth of the matter):
How would it be even remotely possible for a bullet to leave a huge hole in the FAR-RIGHT-REAR portion of President Kennedy's head and yet have the REAR SCALP of that same President Kennedy look like this (in the autopsy pictures below) after such a shooting event?
Was Kennedy's scalp made of bullet-proof cast iron or some other impossible-to-penetrate material? Lacking that type of crazy explanation, I cannot see how it would be possible for a bullet that caused the amount of damage to the RIGHT-REAR of JFK's skull that most CTers think it DID cause, to NOT have penetrated the RIGHT-REAR scalp of Kennedy's head and caused at least SOME visible damage to the outer scalp of the President.
In a word -- impossible.
David Von Pein
April 10, 2008
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CONSPIRACY THEORIST BEN HOLMES SAID:
He [David Von Pein]...dishonestly combined what LNT'ers believe with what CT'ers accept in order to produce a deceptively dishonest impossibility.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Ben needs to take a good look at Dr. Robert McClelland's crazy beliefs. Because McClelland is on record saying things that most certainly place him in the following categories (whether McClelland realizes he's in all of these categories or not). And my guess is that there are probably some additional people in the world who have decided to ride McClelland's coattails and therefore also fall into each of these categories as well:
1.) Robert McClelland is definitely a "CTer" [Conspiracy Theorist]. (We know this for a fact by listening to this 80-minute interview with Dr. McClelland in 2009, where he talks at some length about how he thinks the "mob" killed Kennedy and utilized Oswald as a patsy, etc.)
2.) McClelland thinks the fatal head shot came from the famous Grassy Knoll. (This, too, is revealed in the doctor's 2009 interview.)
3.) McClelland does not think the autopsy photos are fakes.
4.) McClelland thinks the scalp in the back of JFK's head was intact (just as depicted in the autopsy photos).
5.) McClelland thinks that there was a huge blasted-out hole in the right-rear of JFK's skull.
Now, maybe Ben Holmes would like to call me a liar again.
If so, I can always repeat the above five items, which indicate beyond all doubt that a conspiracy theorist named Robert Nelson McClelland is actually nutty enough to believe in an intact REAR SCALP but a blown-out REAR SKULL.
McClelland has obviously never even once thought about how silly and impossible his theory is. Because if he ever stopped to think about it for any length of time at all, he could never even begin to believe that a bullet could have created a massive blown-out exit wound in the occipital area of a human skull and yet leave the scalp in that same occipital area totally free of any injury. And yet that is EXACTLY what Dr. McClelland said he believes happened.
But other than McClelland's crazy BOH [Back Of Head] double-talk and his unsupportable "Mob" theory, his 2009 interview is totally fascinating.
Did you know that Dr. McClelland was involved in the medical care of John F. Kennedy, John Connally, Lee Harvey Oswald, AND Abraham Zapruder? (He operated on Zapruder several years after the JFK assassination.)
David Von Pein
December 31, 2011
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BEN HOLMES SAID:
Let me guess... you never admitted that you were lying, did you?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
No, of course not, Mr. Kook. Because I didn't lie. And, in fact, I even presented PROOF that you are wrong when you attempted to call me a liar and when you attempted to paint all CTers with one brush in the "scalp/skull" regard (although you did use the word "virtually" in your opening post, but you were definitely painting your fellow conspiracy-happy clowns with one brush in a later post).
And that proof I presented was Dr. Bob McClelland, who is a witness I know you conspiracy kooks love. There's no denying the fact you love his story.
But the truth is that McClelland believes something that is totally impossible. He thinks JFK's right-rear SKULL was blown out, but he also thinks the right-rear of President Kennedy's SCALP was left untouched by the bullet that McClelland thinks came from the Grassy Knoll.
Surely even an outer-fringe conspiracist like Ben Holmes can see how utterly stupid and impossible McClelland's theory is.
But as far as I know, Robert McClelland has never been asked the following question:
Dr. McClelland, since you have said in previous interviews that you believe the fatal shot to JFK's head came from the Grassy Knoll....how, then, can the following two things possibly co-exist in this case (which are things you are also on record saying that you believe are true) -- The right-rear of Kennedy's SKULL was blasted out and the right-rear SCALP of JFK was left totally intact?
ADDENDUM....
PASSAGE FROM VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S BOOK "RECLAIMING HISTORY" (REGARDING DR. ROBERT N. McCLELLAND):
“ When I spoke over the telephone to Dr. McClelland in late September and early October of 2002, McClelland, a respected Dallas surgeon whom no one accuses of trying to deliberately mislead anyone, only of being completely wrong in what he thought he saw (the most honest people in the world can think they saw the darndest things), said he was positive the president had a "massive hole to the back of his head."
He said at the time of his observation he was holding a metal retractor that was pulling the skin away from the president's trachea so Drs. Perry and Carrico could perform their tracheotomy. "I had nothing else to do or to distract me so I fixated on this large, gaping hole to the back of the president's head for ten to twelve minutes."
When I wondered how he could see the large hole when the president was always lying on his back, he said the wound was so large that he nevertheless could see "most of it." If what he said was true, I asked, how is it possible that on the Zapruder film itself, the explosion is clearly to the right frontal portion of the president's head with a large amount of brain matter spraying out, and the back of his head appears to be completely intact?
Dr. McClelland gave an answer that deserves some type of an award for inventiveness: "What the explanation for this is, I just don't know, but what I believe happened is that the spray of brain matter and blood was kind of like a bloodscreen, similar to a smokescreen, that precluded a clear view of the occipital area."
If, I pursued the matter, the exit wound was to the back of the president's head, where was the entrance wound for this bullet? McClelland, who believes the shot to the head came from the grassy knoll, said he believed the president was struck "around the hairline near the middle of his forehead."
If that was so, I asked, how was it that seventeen pathologists, including
Dr. Wecht, all agreed that the president was only struck twice, both times from the rear, and none of them—from photographs, X-rays, and personal observation (by the three autopsy surgeons)—saw any entrance wound to the president's forehead?
Again, McClelland, who acknowledged, "I'm not a pathologist and I've never conducted an autopsy," said, "I don't know the answer to your question." But he remained sincerely inventive in his imagination. "What I believe happened is that none of the pathologists saw the entrance wound because it became a part of the destruction to the whole right side and top of the president's head. In other words, it was no longer a separate hole that could be identified."
(Of course, none of the autopsy photographs show any such massive injury to the president's forehead extending to the right side of his head, and none is referred to in the autopsy report, nor in the reports of the Clark Panel and Rockefeller Commission. As the HSCA said, "There is no evidence that the president was struck by a bullet entering the front of his head.")
"So you do acknowledge," I said, "the explosion to the right front part of the president's head?" "Oh, yes," the doctor said, "but that's not where the bullet exited. It exited in the occipital region of his head, leaving a hole so big I could put my fist in it."
When I pointed out to the doctor again that not only didn't the Zapruder film show any large hole to the back of the president's head but autopsy photographs never showed any large hole there either, he said that although it was pure "supposition" on his part, at the time the photographs were taken, someone "could have pulled a flap of the president's skin, attached to the base of his neck, forward," thereby covering the large defect. When I asked him if he saw any such loose flap of skin at Parkland, he acknowledged, "I did not."
It was getting late in the evening, Dallas time, but before I ended the interview I reminded Dr. McClelland of the fact that in his Parkland Hospital admission note at 4:45 p.m. on the day of the assassination, he had written that the president died "from a gunshot wound of the left temple." "Yes," he said, "that was a mistake. I never saw any wound to the president's left temple. Dr. Jenkins had told me there was a wound there, though he later denied telling me this."
Since there was no bullet wound to the left side of the president's body, and since the conspiracy theorists allege that Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll to his right front, conspiracy author Robert Groden solves the problem and avoids having his star witness, Dr. McClelland, look very confused and non-credible simply by changing McClelland's words "left temple" to "right temple" in his book, The Killing of a President.
When I called Dr. McClelland the following evening to discuss further one of the points he had made, he quickly told me he was glad I had called because "since we hung up last night, I've had some second thoughts about the exact location of the exit wound."
Unlike the many conspiracy theorists who have exploited Dr. McClelland's obvious errors to their benefit, he told me, "I don't question the integrity of all the pathologists who disagree with me" (he wasn't so kind to his colleague, Dr. Charles Crenshaw: "Chuck had a lot of problems and fabricated a lot of things"), saying, for instance, that he and the three autopsy surgeons were "obviously looking at the same head and the same wound," but that the area on the head where they placed the wound differed because of "the different positions from which we viewed it and also because of the different interpretations of what we saw, which is normal."
But he made a major concession in an effort to reconcile his position with theirs. "I have to say that the sketch I first drew for Josiah Thompson's book a few years after the assassination was misleading. Since last night, I've been thinking that I placed the large hole in the president's head farther back than it really was, maybe. It may have been a bit more forward."
When I asked him where he now put it, he said, "Partially in the occipital region and partly in the right back part of the parietal bone" (which I told him was actually consistent with the original position he took in his Warren Commission testimony), but he still insisted that this large exit wound was not to the right frontal area of the president's skull as concluded by all the pathologists.
Dr. McClelland told me he believes there were two gunmen, Oswald and someone else, and further believes that "the CIA and FBI, mostly the CIA, were behind the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, and they brought in the Mafia, who carried out the killing."
He said he didn't know but suspects that "the Warren Commission covered up the conspiracy." On that note, I thanked the good doctor for his time and bid him a good night. ”
-- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Pages 405-407 of "Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy" (c.2007)
David Von Pein
January 1, 2012
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A 2021 E-MAIL EXCHANGE:
Subject: RN McClelland, MD--JFK
Date: July 1, 2021 (4:17 P.M. EDT)
From: Alison McClelland
To: David Von Pein
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Good afternoon,
I am Bob McClelland's daughter. I have two questions that I hope you will be willing to answer, and a comment or two that I hope will enlighten you. I'd appreciate your reply.
1. Do you still 'believe' Warren and Bugliosi? If so, on what hard, factual grounds?
2. What are your specific credentials that allow you to feel yourself more able to draw educated conclusions about the injuries to JFK than those of my father? (who was an award-winning surgeon and teacher who 1) is and was known for his measured, insightful, precise actions and 2) was at the head of the gurney, 12 inches from JFK's head wound).
3. On the website I saw from 2012 I believe, SO much of what you say is taken out of context or flat out inaccurate: Dad has as much right to consider possibilities as any citizen. He went through a period where the Mafia theory was interesting to him. He never stated it was 'true' and his interest had NOTHING to do with his medical testimony.
FYI -- Please don't cite anything said or claimed by Dr. MT Jenkins. He essentially 'flunked out' of his Southwestern Medical College surgical residency and was allowed to 'save face' by becoming an anesthesiologist instead. He has proven himself time and time again to be a shameless self-promoter who overstates his knowledge and involvement to a comical degree.
In closing, if you still back the same claims as you did in 2011-2012, I will be happy to on a point by point basis correct your misconceptions. With hard, corroborated, fully-objective, correctly stated evidence.
Thank you.
Alison McClelland
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Subject: Re: RN McClelland, MD--JFK
Date: July 1, 2021 (8:53 P.M. EDT)
From: David Von Pein
To: Alison McClelland
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Hi Alison,
Thanks very much for your e-mail today.
The answer to your first question is --- Yes, I do still "believe" Earl Warren and Vincent Bugliosi. (That is to say, I still believe the bottom-line conclusions that were reached by both Mr. Warren and Mr. Bugliosi relating to John F. Kennedy's death—i.e., assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK twice from behind and there was no conspiracy involved in the assassination.)
The "hard, factual grounds" for why I believe that Oswald acted alone have been posted many times on my websites since 2007. Here's a good overview of those "hard, factual grounds":
If I have seemed a little hard on your father in my online comments over the last several years, I apologize for that (on a personal level, that is, because I really liked to hear your father speak in the interviews he did). But given the things your dad said in interviews since 1963 and on the 1988 PBS-TV NOVA program, I have no choice (given my bottom-line "No Conspiracy" beliefs) but to be critical of some of the things the late Dr. Robert N. McClelland has said concerning President Kennedy's head wounds. And that's because Dr. McClelland's comments and observations simply do not match the things we can see in the official autopsy photographs and X-rays taken of JFK's cranium on 11/22/63.
My 2011 online post linked below provides, in brief capsule form, the things that have made me think that Dr. McClelland's observations are not exactly entirely accurate (or reliable):
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/head-wounds.html#McClelland
Now, since I'm a person who doesn't believe for one second that any of the autopsy photos or X-rays have been faked or manipulated in the JFK murder case, then you can see why I have difficulty with some of your father's statements concerning President Kennedy's head wounds.
Is it possible that perhaps the #3 item on my 5-item list in my post above is inaccurate? My #3 item is:
3.) McClelland does not think the autopsy photos are fakes.
Did your father ever say anything to you about the autopsy pictures and X-rays possibly be phony? As far as I know, he never expressed any such belief at any point in his life.
In the final analysis, I can't see how your father's statements about JFK's head wounds can be reconciled without Dr. McClelland believing that the autopsy photographs and X-rays had been faked.
Thanks again for writing.
Best regards,
David R. Von Pein
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Subject: Re: RN McClelland, MD--JFK
Date: July 2, 2021 (4:02 P.M. EDT)
From: Alison McClelland
To: David Von Pein
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Hi David, I truly appreciate your response.
Thank you for including your blogspot link. However, I’ve read your website closely which is what prompted me to contact you.
——While I don’t want to sound combative, providing me a link to your blog rather than giving me a direct response is a bit like some witnesses who in later years knew they were wrong and so rather than admitting so, deflected people by telling them to read their earlier testimony. I’m not asking you what you’ve written. I’m asking you to tell me what hard medical and ballistics evidence remains that allows you to now—today—believe the lone gunman theory.
——I notice you didn’t respond to my request for your credentials, training, experience. That’s a fair question that I do hope you will provide that to me.
——It fascinates me how you seem to completely ignore the enormous amount of credible, corroborated, widely accepted evidence, etc that has surfaced discrediting or disproving Warren. I’m truly curious as to on what grounds you choose to do so?
I’ve taught argument, rhetoric, and logic my entire career and in general these are errors in ‘argument 101’ I’ve noticed that so many lone-gunman/Warren supporters make:
——Ignoring evidence that does not jive with your argument automatically weakens the strength of your own.
——Resorting to ad hominem attacks when you can’t disprove another’s argument is wrong on every single level.
——Over-generalization is logical fallacy.
——The pro-Warren holdouts continued insistence on lumping together everyone who disagrees with you as a ‘nut’ or paranoid is ridiculous.
——Much of what you write about Dad on your blog is either you yourself quoting Dad out of context or reveals that you chose to believe at face value some other source doing so.
As I am on a family vacation for the weekend, it will be early next week before I can continue our dialogue. I do hope you will do so with an open mind and objective stance.
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Subject: Re: RN McClelland, MD--JFK
Date: July 3, 2021 (4:38 A.M. EDT)
From: David Von Pein
To: Alison McClelland
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Alison said: "I notice you didn’t respond to my request for your credentials, training, experience."
I have no "credentials" at all to speak of. I did help Mel Ayton write this 2014 book about the JFK case, but that was decades after I had already reached the conclusion (based on a wealth of evidence) that Lee Oswald was the lone killer of President Kennedy.
But I'm just a nobody in Indiana who has had a keen interest in JFK and his assassination since about 1981. And when I got a computer, I decided to start writing a lot of stuff on the Internet about Kennedy and Oswald and the assassination.
Alison said: "I’m asking you to tell me what hard medical and ballistics evidence remains that allows you to now—today—believe the lone gunman theory."
It's rather hard to believe that you could even ask such a question while limiting the areas of your inquiry to the "hard medical and ballistics evidence" in the JFK case. Because the fact of the matter is (and always has been) that the "hard medical and ballistics evidence" in this case leaves little to no doubt that John F. Kennedy was shot twice from above and behind, which is perfectly consistent with Oswald doing all the shooting from the sixth floor of the Book Depository.
Can you provide me with one piece of "hard medical" or "ballistics" evidence that proves a conspiracy took place in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63? I doubt that you can.
Alison wrote: "It fascinates me how you seem to completely ignore the enormous amount of credible, corroborated, widely accepted evidence, etc that has surfaced discrediting or disproving Warren. I’m truly curious as to on what grounds you choose to do so?"
Well, you see, Alison, the problem with a statement like the one you just made is that the things you are calling "credible" and "corroborated" are things that I would argue are far from being credible and/or corroborated. With the biggest example of this, I suppose, being the observations of the President's head wounds made by people like your own father at Parkland Hospital on November 22nd. The observations of those witnesses who said that JFK had a massive hole in the back of his head are simply not "credible" or "corroborated" as fact.
How can I say such a thing, you might ask?
Simple. Because the authenticated-as-genuine (by the HSCA) autopsy photos and X-rays of the President's body simply do not support the observations of those Parkland witnesses, including Dr. Robert N. McClelland. And that's why I asked you specifically in my last mail if you had ever heard your father mention whether or not he was of the opinion that the autopsy pictures and X-rays had been forged or faked in some manner.
Also, the "widely accepted evidence" that you're talking about (which you are claiming "discredits" or "disproves" the Warren Commission's conclusions) are things that can no doubt be disputed by a Lone Assassin believer like myself. An excellent example of this would be the "widely accepted" theory that Lee Harvey Oswald never received any rifle by mail-order in March of 1963.
There are thousands of conspiracy theorists out there today who will argue that Oswald never even ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano murder weapon from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago. But that "widely accepted" myth is just that—it's a myth. And it's a myth that can easily be debunked and destroyed by merely properly and fairly evaluating the evidence and the facts pertaining to Oswald's rifle purchase. (Which I've done here.)
And there are so many other things in this case that have been "widely accepted" by conspiracy believers (and labelled as "facts" by them), but when scrutinized carefully, those supposed conspiracy-favoring "facts" crumble into dust very quickly. Another popular one being: The Warren Commission said that Oswald had only 5.6 seconds to accomplish the assassination -- which is just a flat-out lie that continues to be told by thousands of conspiracy theorists every year. In reality, the Warren Commission fully acknowledged that Oswald's shooting feat could have taken as long as 7.9 seconds (WCR, p.117).
Another reason I believe that Oswald acted alone is due to Oswald's own actions on November 21st and 22nd of 1963. If anyone objectively studies everything Lee Oswald did on those two days, it becomes virtually impossible to arrive at the popular "LHO Was Merely An Innocent Patsy" conclusion that so many conspiracy believers seem to currently favor.
In short, Oswald's own actions and movements go a long way toward proving that he was a double-murderer who was acting on his own in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Alison said: "Much of what you write about Dad on your blog is either you yourself quoting Dad out of context or reveals that you chose to believe at face value some other source doing so."
Please provide some specific examples of this. I look forward to seeing how I am constantly quoting Dr. McClelland "out of context".
Thank you.
DVP
[DVP Note --- I haven't heard anything further from Ms. McClelland since the above 2021 e-mail exchange.]
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"Reclaiming History":
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