Reclaiming History (244 page)

Moreover, Wecht adds, “if you try to alter the wounds, how do you know
how
to alter them? Lifton’s theory is like this elaborate Shakespearean drama, with the whole plot laid out, and then the plotters have to hope and pray that what later happens fits into their drama.” For instance, how could the plotters and doctors altering the wounds have known, Wecht says, “what conclusions the autopsy surgeons would come to later that night, or about the single-bullet theory, which hadn’t yet been born, or, for that matter, in deciding before the assassination to alter the wounds, how could they have known there would be a tracheotomy?”
¹⁵

Dr. Wecht, who at one time was called a “traitor” to the cause by Lifton, but who has since had a reconciliation of sorts with him, is being intentionally light-handed about Lifton’s thesis. The reality is that Lifton’s scenario couldn’t possibly be more insane.

Although Dr. Wecht’s observations about Lifton’s theory are valid, there are much more serious problems with his fantasy. For one, Lifton knew that somewhere in his tale he would have to tell his readers when and how the plotters got possession of the president’s body to do what they supposedly did. But instead of Lifton addressing this problem early on (which, if he had, would have caused any sensible reader to put the book down at that point, or to continue to read it but with a continuous smile on his face), the reader has to wait till page 678, right near the end of the book, for Lifton to write, “If my analysis was correct, the President’s body was inside the Dallas casket when it was put aboard Air Force One at 2:18 [afternoon of November 22, 1963], but was no longer inside the casket at 2:47, as the plane rolled down the runway.” What happened to the body? And how did it get from Dallas, Texas, to Washington, D.C.? Lifton writes, “I considered three possibilities: One, that it was aboard
Air Force Two
[the vice presidential plane]; two, that it was aboard some other plane of which I had no knowledge; three, that it was aboard
Air Force One
, but not in the Dallas casket.” Lifton ends up rejecting possibilities one and two as being too unrealistic (in an untethered fantasy world of one’s very own making, why would anything be unrealistic?), and settles for number three.
¹⁶

Even though at the Dallas Airport the president’s body had to be one of the most secure and protected objects on the face of this earth, with the Secret Service, FBI, presidential friends and staff, and media all either inside the packed plane or nearby on the tarmac, by cobbling together disparate inferences, Lifton postulates that the casket, which was in the aft galley (rear) of the plane—the presidential staff and Secret Service area—was mysteriously left completely “unattended” between 2:18 and 2:32 p.m. And Lifton says that at this point “President Kennedy’s body was removed from the casket and hidden somewhere on board
Air Force One
in a body bag…Disguised as luggage, it might have been put in the baggage hold, or in the forward galley area.”
¹⁷
Who removed the body from the casket? Lifton doesn’t deign to tell his readers because he admits he doesn’t know. Obviously, it had to be either strangers, who, I assume, would immediately be recognized and not allowed on the plane, or Secret Service agents,
*
or presidential assistants on the plane, such as the dead president’s “Irish Mafia” friends Ken O’Donnell and David Powers. If, as Lifton speculates, the body was hidden somewhere in the forward galley area, no one on the jam-packed plane apparently noticed when it was carried from the rear of the plane all the way down the aisle, past the press and staff area and crew’s quarters, to the front of the plane. Or if they noticed, they probably looked the other way because all of them were in on the plot too.
†

What about the body being hidden in the rear baggage hold of Air Force One? Conspiracy theorist Craig Roberts, in his book
Kill Zone
, came to Lifton’s aid by claiming there was a trapdoor into the baggage hold that the conspirators could have used.
¹⁸
But Pittsburgh assassination researchers James Sawa and Glenn Vasbinder conducted extremely extensive research into Air Force One, talking to people very familiar with the plane, including the flight engineer who had flown on it, secured diagrams and floor plans from Boeing, which manufactured the plane, even going to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and personally inspecting and photographing every area of the plane when it was retired in 1998. They learned that “there is no rear trap door into the rear cargo hold into which a body could have been moved.”
¹⁹

Lifton then writes, “If the body was hidden aboard Air Force One, how did it get to Bethesda, and where could it have been altered?” He concludes that when Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base, while the nation was watching the Kennedy party and presidential casket deplaning through the rear door on the left side of the plane, the plotters were removing the body from the front door on the right side of the plane and placing it aboard a waiting helicopter, which quickly flew it to Walter Reed hospital thirteen miles away, arriving at 6:05 p.m.
*
In Lifton’s psychotic (and psychedelic) scenario, this would allow, he says, “about thirty minutes for alterations.” Then, Lifton says, the body, in a “plain metal coffin,” was transported about five miles to Bethesda Naval Hospital either by helicopter to the rear grounds at Bethesda “for rendezvous” with a black Cadillac hearse, or by the hearse itself, arriving at the hospital “about 6:45” p.m. At this time the body in the casket was carried into the hospital by “a half dozen men in plain clothes,” removed from the casket, and placed on the autopsy table. Next, “the body [was] transferred into the Dallas casket” (the expensive bronze one) and taken outside and put into the “correct” ambulance. The casket was then removed from the ambulance by the District of Washington casket team and brought back into the morgue for the commencement of the autopsy at 8 p.m.
²⁰

Setting aside Lifton’s delirious “everybody had their eyes closed and never saw anything” theory for a moment, in addition to praise for his thorough research, Lifton does deserve one other compliment. Unlike the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theorists, he does not deliberately twist, warp, and lie about the official record. Such honesty, together with his being an indefatigable and resourceful investigator, would make him a worthy adversary if he had common sense on his side. Through his compulsive effort, he comes up with a speck of evidence here and a speck there to support his earth-is-flat theory. For instance, he tells us, and I assume he’s being truthful, that if one listens to the tape of CBS anchorman Harry Reasoner announcing the arrival of Air Force One at Andrews, “it [is] difficult to hear [Reasoner] because, thundering in the background could be heard the turning rotor of a helicopter,”
²¹
the one, Lifton assures his reader, that took the president’s body to Walter Reed hospital, where his phantom conspiracy surgeons performed the alterations. Assassination researcher Howard Platzman describes this tendency of the conspiracy theorists to stitch together bits and scraps of information to support their grand conclusions “hyperperspicacity. Seeing very clearly what isn’t there or what is innocently there. This special kind of seeing is what enabled me, at age 19, to discover 83 pieces of evidence in Beatles’ music and paraphernalia pointing inescapably to the conclusion that Paul [McCartney] was dead.”
²²

A sine qua non to Lifton’s entire premise is that at various points along the way, no one, literally no one, was paying any attention to the president’s casket, it being left unattended. Additionally, no one noticed the very busy movements of the plotters removing the body from the casket on the plane, transporting it down the aisle or elsewhere, removing it from the plane for the trip to Walter Reed, and then returning it to the naval ambulance at Bethesda. If you can believe that, then I assume you would believe someone who told you they had once seen a man jump away from his own shadow. The story, on its face, is unbelievable, and would be so even if no one was watching over the casket—but indeed, people were. Here are just a few: U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Godfrey T. McHugh says,

From the moment we wheeled the casket out of Parkland Hospital in Dallas and pushed it into the ambulance, I, who was an Air Force aide to the President, never left the coffin except for a few minutes. I did so only to talk to the pilot of
Air Force One
, and this was at Mrs. Kennedy’s request. She wanted to expedite our departure. During this time, Mrs. Kennedy, along with Larry O’Brien and Dave Powers, remained at the site of the casket. To suggest that anyone could have taken the body of the President out of the coffin with Mrs. Kennedy and two of his closest and most loyal friends a few feet away is illogical. Aboard
Air Force One
it would have been impossible. Further, the statement [by Lifton] that the ambulance sent to Andrews Air Force Base by the Bethesda Naval Hospital was left unattended at the front entrance of the hospital is false. I remained with the ambulance at all times. After a short while, I entered the ambulance. It was then driven to the emergency entrance, and the casket was immediately wheeled into the operating room.
²³

Secret Service agent Richard Johnsen of the White House detail was specifically assigned to watch over the casket. He said, “On the drive from [Parkland] Hospital to AF [Air Force] #1 I rode the follow-up car. Upon our arrival at AF#1 I assisted in placing the casket upon USAF#26000 [Air Force One]. While awaiting for the departure of AF#1 I was instructed by STSAIC Stout to ride in the rear of the plane with the casket. This had been a request of President Johnson.”
²⁴

Dr. George Burkley, the president’s personal physician, said, “Throughout the plane trip, Mrs. Kennedy sat in the vicinity of the coffin talking to Mr. [Kenneth] O’Donnell and various close members of the party.”
²⁵
Presidential aide O’Donnell said that “Dave [Powers], Larry O’Brien and I stayed with her [Jackie Kennedy] beside the casket until we landed in Washington.”
²⁶

FBI agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert were at Andrews Air Force Base before Air Force One arrived from Dallas. At 5:55 p.m. EST they received specific instructions from bureau headquarters to stay with the president’s body after it arrived. They were present when the president’s coffin was unloaded from Air Force One and placed inside a navy ambulance. They got into the third car in the motorcade, the car right behind the ambulance, and followed the ambulance to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where they assisted in unloading the president’s casket from the ambulance and helped carry it into the autopsy room. O’Neill says, “It would have been a physical impossibility for anyone to have tampered with the casket or the body from the time it left Air Force One until the time we took the president out of his coffin.” He added that from the moment the president’s coffin was placed in the ambulance at Andrews Air Force Base, “the ambulance carrying the president’s body was in my line of vision until the time we stopped our vehicle in the rear of the hospital.” He goes on to say that he helped remove the casket from the limousine and deliver it “next to [the] autopsy table.”
²⁷

Lifton’s theory is so outside the realm of possibility that even inveterate, hard-core conspiracy theorists like Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone found it too strong for their stomachs. They write in their book
High Treason
,

The evidence indicates that the coffin was never unattended. President Kennedy’s entire party, including several of his closest long-time friends and his wife, were crowded into the rear of the plane, since the new President and his party were also on board, filling the plane tightly. Dave Powers, a long-time friend and close aide of President Kennedy, told co-author Harrison Livingstone on June 12, 1987, that “The coffin was never unattended. Lifton’s story is the biggest pack of malarkey I ever heard in my life. I never had my hands or eyes off of it during that period he says it was unattended, and when Jackie got up to go to her stateroom where Lyndon Johnson was, Kenny O’Donnell went with her, but we stayed right there with the coffin and never let go of it. In fact, several of us were with it through the whole trip, all the way to Bethesda Naval Hospital. It couldn’t have happened the way that fellow said. Not even thirty seconds. I never left it. There was a general watch. We organized it.”
²⁸

Finally, as if this isn’t enough, Lifton’s fantasy couldn’t have happened because the conspirators would have needed
at least
three separate teams of plastic surgeons waiting in hiding, one at each of three hospitals. A team would have had to be waiting at Parkland, since the conspirators wouldn’t have known for sure that the autopsy would not be conducted there. (As we’ve seen in the “Four Days in November” section, almost physical force by the president’s inner circle was necessary to prevent the autopsy from being performed at Parkland.) Since the president was taken directly to the emergency trauma room at Parkland in an effort to save his life, if the autopsy was done there after he died, how would the team of conspiracy surgeons have stolen the body away from the emergency room doctors (as well as from the Secret Service, Kennedy’s wife and brother, and presidential assistants) to work on it before the autopsy? And where would they have taken the body if they could? To the basement at Parkland?

If the plotters speculated that the autopsy might be back East, Bethesda and Walter Reed would have been the best guesses, but it could only be a guess. And which one? The original plan was to take the body to Walter Reed. As Lifton himself says, “Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman, in a conversation [from Air Force One] with Secret Service Headquarters, said: ‘Arriving Andrews 6:05. The body will go to Walter Reed. Have an ambulance for Walter Reed to take the body there.’”
²⁹
The decision to go to Bethesda Naval Hospital was made
on the plane thereafter
by Jacqueline Kennedy.
³⁰
So if the autopsy was to be at Bethesda, the alterations would have to be at Walter Reed, or some other location, and if at Walter Reed, the alterations would have to be at Bethesda or some other location. Can you imagine that? At a minimum, in addition to all the other impossibilities and absurdities, three separate teams of plastic surgeons were apparently in hiding at hospitals, waiting, with their instruments, to reconstruct the president’s wounds and create new ones.