Reclaiming History (352 page)

^*
Nothing done by the Warren Commission has convinced Americans more of a conspiracy in the assassination than the Commission’s allegedly “sealing the records” of the Commission for seventy-five years, thereby preventing Americans from learning “the real truth” about the assassination. The thinking goes that if the Warren Commission didn’t have anything to hide, why seal the records? This is a major misconception of the American people, and the entire matter is discussed in depth in an endnote on the Assassination Records Review Board. To summarize, the Warren Commission expressed, in writing, its desire that the American people have access to all the records. The sealing of the records (they are no longer sealed) was the result of a National Archives regulation that had nothing to do with the Warren Commission.

†Under Texas law, “The husband and wife may, in all criminal actions, be witnesses for each other; but they shall in no case testify against each other except in a criminal prosecution for an offense committed by one against the other” (Vernon’s Ann. C.C.P. art. 714).

^*
The mandate of the Church Committee was very broad: to investigate all improper and unlawful activities, domestic and foreign, engaged in by the FBI and CIA as well as American military intelligence agencies. It was not contemplated, however, that it would investigate the allegation that federal intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI were involved in the murder of President Kennedy. But when a committee member, Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, proposed that the committee expand its mandate into an investigation of the assassination, Senator Church appointed Senator Schweiker and fellow committee member Senator Gary Hart of Colorado to be a two-member subcommittee of the Church Committee looking into the assassination. Though it was just a subcommittee of the Church Committee, many assassination researchers refer to the Church Committee as the Schweiker Committee (or Subcommittee). Since the ultimate report on the assassination came from the Church Committee, not the subcommittee, this book will only refer to the Church Committee.

†In 1969, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison charged Clay Shaw, a local businessman, with having conspired “with David W. Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald [both of whom were now deceased] and others” to murder President Kennedy. The investigation and trial of Shaw are covered in the conspiracy section of this book.

^*
The first time the Zapruder film was ever shown to everyday Americans, albeit a very small number, was when Jim Garrison subpoenaed the film from
Life
magazine on February 13, 1969, and showed a multigenerational copy of it to the jury and a packed courtroom of spectators in the trial of Clay Shaw. And starting with its November 29, 1963, issue,
Life
magazine showed selected frames of the Zapruder film to its millions of readers at various times, such as in its undated memorial edition in December 1963 and its October 2, 1964, cover story on the Warren Commission’s findings.

^*
Sprague said the budget for the second year would be for the same amount—a total of $13 million, more than the $10 million the Warren Commission spent. However, he pointed out that in addition to the HSCA also investigating the assassination of Martin Luther King, the HSCA would be employing and paying for its own investigators, whereas the Warren Commission’s eighty-three-member staff was supplemented by 222 investigators borrowed from the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service, whose services the Warren Commission never had to pay for. (
New York Times
, December 10, 1976, p.19)

^*
On February 2, by a vote of 237 to 164, the House of Representatives (House Resolution 222) had given the HSCA the authority to continue temporarily.

†The lobbying of congressional members to get the HSCA reconstituted, mostly delegated by Sprague to Tanenbaum and his staff, was heavy, time-consuming, and not always pleasant. At a dinner meeting with several congressmen at a restaurant called the Chicken Place in Maryland, after Tanenbaum made his pitch, John Ashbrook, a conservative Republican from Ohio, said, “Well, we really don’t mind funding the Kennedy assassination, although I didn’t think much of the man, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to fund that nigger King’s.” (Telephone interview of Robert Tanenbaum by author on March 10, 2004. See also Fonzi,
Last Investigation
, pp.204–205. Gaeton Fonzi says Ashbrook called Tanenbaum aside to tell him this, but Tanenbaum told me it was right at the dinner table in front of everyone.)

‡At an April 11, 1977, press conference after he left the HSCA, Sprague described Gonzalez’s conduct as “McCarthyism,” but added that he had also begun to have friction with Gonzalez’s successor, Stokes, before he left, though he did not elaborate (
New York Times
, April 12, 1977, p.18).

^*
The mandate of the final HSCA had been set forth in the earlier, September 1976 House resolution, as well as House Resolution 222 on February 2, 1977, which authorized the HSCA to “conduct a full and complete investigation” of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, each crime the province of a separate subcommittee. The eventual, permanent Kennedy subcommittee was chaired by Representative Richardson Preyer of North Carolina, the King subcommittee by Walter Fauntroy. Each subcommittee had its own task force, each headed by a deputy chief counsel: Gary T. Cornwell for the Kennedy investigation, Gene R. Johnson for the King investigation. Each task force comprised a dozen or so senior and junior staff counsels, investigators, researchers, and administrative personnel. (HSCA Report, pp.9–10, 514) On April 28, the funding of the committee for 1977 was cut drastically to $2.5 million (Blakey and Billings,
Plot to Kill the President
, p.67).

^*
Although Blakey and his staff brought in many highly qualified experts in various fields to answer these questions (which applied equally to the King assassination), no one on the HSCA legal staff could compare with Sprague and Tanenbaum in the area of experience in handling major criminal murder investigations and prosecutions.

^*
Compare that to the report of the Warren Commission, which was unanimously agreed upon by all seven members.

^*
Although Blakey, as chief counsel for the HSCA, had much influence on the direction of the investigation toward organized crime more than any other alleged conspiratorial group, he turned out to have little, if any, influence on the committee’s ultimate conclusion. The HSCA said the same thing about individual members of anti-Castro Cuban groups as it did about organized crime, and no one was pushing the HSCA toward its conclusion about the anti-Castro Cubans.

†Blakey’s conclusion of the mob being behind the assassination is quite surprising given his background, inasmuch as the murder of Kennedy bore none of the indications of a mob hit. And with the mob’s history of never going after public figures, starting out with the most powerful man on earth is more than improbable. It’s completely far-fetched. (See organized-crime section for full discussion of issue.) And here we had Blakey—who had worked in the organized-crime section of the Justice Department under RFK, was considered one of the country’s top experts in the field of organized crime, and was a fixture at organized-crime seminars, having personal contacts with detectives in the organized-crime section of every major police department in the country—reaching that precise conclusion.
It must be noted that other than the acoustical fourth-shot conclusion of the HSCA, which, as indicated, has been completely discredited, the HSCA in large part did an excellent job of reinvestigating the assassination of President Kennedy, and much of the credit for this has to go to Blakey, who shepherded the investigation. This is why it is further surprising to me that someone of Blakey’s stature could say “the mob did it,” and then proceed to write a book (Blakey and Billings,
Plot to Kill the President
) that doesn’t offer one piece of credible evidence to support his conclusion.

^*
There was one other “investigation” of the assassination. Though under the auspices of the federal government, it was an unauthorized one. On October 26, 1992, Congress enacted “The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992,” popularly referred to as the “JFK Act,” to release to the American public all previously classified documents relating to the assassination. Pursuant to the JFK Act, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created to implement the objective of the act, and the board was in operation from October 1, 1994, to September 30, 1998, a period of exactly four years. Among the documents released, not one remotely resembling a smoking gun was found that would call into question the findings and conclusion of the Warren Commission. As the reader will see, particularly in the section on the president’s autopsy, certain overzealous members of the ARRB staff took it upon themselves to go beyond the ARRB’s limited mandate to release assassination-related documents, and decided to investigate what they perceived to be certain acts of conspiracy in the assassination. For those readers who want to know all about the ARRB and what it achieved, see endnote to this section.

^*
Though the autopsy surgeons should have used the more conventional technique of setting forth distances from the top of the head (or soles of the feet for lower wounds) and the midline of the body, the HSCA’s language here is loose and very misleading. The autopsy report did say that the entrance wound in the back was “situated on the upper right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula…This wound is measured to be 14 cm. from the tip of the right acromium process and 14 cm. below the tip of the right mastoid process.” The autopsy report said that the exit wound in the throat was “situated in the low anterior neck at approximately the level of the third and fourth tracheal rings.” And with respect to the head wound, the autopsy report said it was “situated in the posterior scalp approximately 2.5 cm. laterally to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberance.” (CE 387, 16 H 980–981) What person reading the HSCA’s harsh criticism would imagine that the above words appeared in the autopsy report?

†Normally, a medicolegal autopsy is part of a criminal investigation by a
forensic
pathologist—a pathologist who has a thorough understanding of death by so-called unnatural causes (homicide, suicide, and accidents)—who evaluates the circumstances of the death, including anticipating and answering questions that might arise later in legal proceedings. Forensic pathology, per Dr. Baden, is an “untaught speciality, a stepchild of the medical profession.” The only way to learn the specialization is to serve, after graduation from medical school, in a medical examiner’s office. (Baden with Hennessee,
Unnatural Death
, pp.ix–x) The medicolegal autopsy is often a multidisciplinary effort that requires the cooperation of and continuing communication with other scientific disciplines like toxicology, anthropology, and odontology. And in a criminal case, the pathologist works closely with the prosecutor and chief detective on the case as well as representatives from the crime laboratory of the law enforcement agency having jurisdiction.

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When Dr. Michael Baden of the HSCA’s forensic panel asked Dr. John Ebersole, the assistant chief of radiology at Bethesda who was present at the autopsy, if he had any impression “that somebody in the room was in any way giving orders” to Humes “as to how the autopsy should be done,” Ebersole responded, “Absolutely not” (Transcript of hearings before HSCA medical panel, March 11, 1978, p.15).

^*
Perhaps one of the best indicators that Humes was not out of his depth during the autopsy is a reading of his testimony before the Warren Commission in 1964, or better yet, before the HSCA forensic pathology panel on September 16, 1977, when he was, in effect, grilled by some of the top medical examiners in the land (e.g., Drs. Baden, Petty, John Coe, Joseph Davis, etc.) not only on the president’s autopsy but also on the extremely complex interpretation of the autopsy photos and X-rays taken under Humes’s direction at the time of the autopsy (2 H 347–376, WCT Dr. James J. Humes; 7 HSCA 243–265, Transcript of Dr. Humes’s testimony before the HSCA). I didn’t get the slightest impression from the give-and-take that major leaguers (the forensic panel) were talking to a minor leaguer, or, if we’re to believe Dr. Helpern, a sandlotter. It couldn’t be more obvious that Humes spoke knowledgeably and confidently about all aspects of the autopsy.

^*
That may have been his main mission, but Finck acknowledged that “although to start with I was there as a consultant” to study the wounds, he very definitely became “a part of the autopsy team,” signing, with Boswell and Humes, the autopsy report as one of the three autopsy surgeons (HSCA Record 180-10102-10409, p. 71; CE 387, 16 H 983). Indeed, FBI agent Francis X. O’Neill, who was present throughout the autopsy, told the HSCA that Finck seemed to “take over the autopsy when he arrived” (JFK Document 006185, HSCA staff interview of O’Neill on January 10, 1978, p.6).

^*
In addition to the three pathologists who conducted the autopsy, just who were all of these other pathologists who agreed 100 percent with the conclusion of the autopsy surgeons? Were they qualified experts? You be the judge. Dr. Wecht estimates that the following pathologists had collectively conducted “around 100,000 autopsies” by the time of their work on the Kennedy case. As of 1978, when he was on the HSCA forensic pathology panel, he alone had conducted “around 6,000” autopsies. (Telephone interview of Dr. Cyril Wecht by author on October 22, 2002)
HSCA
: Dr. Michael M. Baden, chief medical examiner (coroner) of New York City; Dr. John I. Coe, chief medical examiner of Hennepin County, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Dr. Joseph Davis, chief medical examiner of Dade County, Miami, Florida; Dr. George S. Loquvam, director of the Institute of Forensic Science, Oakland, California; Dr. Charles S. Petty, chief medical examiner, Dallas County, Dallas, Texas; Dr. Earl Rose, professor of pathology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa; Dr. Werner V. Spitz, chief medical examiner, Wayne County, Detroit, Michigan; Dr. James T. Weston, chief medical investigator, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, coroner of Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Clark Panel
: Dr. William H. Carnes, professor of pathology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; Dr. Russell S. Fisher, professor of forensic pathology, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland; and Dr. Alan R. Moritz, professor of pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and former professor of forensic medicine, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Wecht said that between them, Fisher and Moritz, two of the most experienced forensic pathologists in the field, would have conducted “upwards of 30,000 autopsies” at the time. (The panel also included Dr. Russell H. Morgan, professor of radiology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.)
Rockefeller Commission
: Lieutenant Colonel Robert R. McMeekin, chief, division of aerospace pathology, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Werner V. Spitz (see HSCA above); and Dr. Richard Lindenberg, director of neuropathology and legal medicine, state of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland. (The commission also included Dr. Fred J. Hodges, professor of radiology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, and Alfred G. Olivier, chief of the Wound Ballistics Branch at the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.)