Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination (5 page)

The ER team at Parkland Hospital in Dallas and the autopsy team at Bethesda Naval Hospital produced medical records that describe two completely different views of JFK’s wounds. Professor Ronald F. White succinctly summarized the problem as follows:

Because the ER team [at Parkland Hospital] focused exclusively on stabilizing vital signs, they did not turn over the President’s body, and therefore did not notice another bullet wound (or wounds) located in the President’s upper back. Hence, we have the makings of one of the most incredible foul-ups in medical history. The Parkland physicians didn’t
know of the back wound and the Bethesda autopsy team did not know that the tracheostomy incision concealed a bullet wound. Or, at least, so they have alleged. It is difficult to believe that subsequent controversy over the exact location of the wounds can be attributed solely to an unfortunate communication failure between two groups of physicians.
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After realizing JFK had been shot, the motorcade rushed from Dealey Plaza directly to Parkland Hospital. Once the presidential limousine arrived, the ER team at Parkland went into immediate action implementing trauma efforts to resuscitate JFK, despite realizing almost immediately that the president’s massive head wounds made their efforts to save his life futile.

Once JFK was pronounced dead, a scuffle arose between the Secret Service and local Dallas authorities who insisted the crime committed in Dallas had to be investigated and prosecuted in Dallas. At issue was whether or not the autopsy should be done in Dallas, supervised by Texas law enforcement personnel under the jurisdiction of Texas criminal law. JFK had been murdered in Dallas. Thus, the jurisdiction for the investigation and prosecution of the crime fell under the jurisdiction of Texas law. In 1963 there was no law making it a federal crime to assassinate the president. Truthfully, Jackie Kennedy and the White House had no authority to remove JFK’s body from Dallas. An autopsy should have been performed in Dallas under Texas law and a criminal investigation should have been undertaken in Dallas under Texas law. The FBI had no jurisdiction. Under Texas and federal statutes at the time, JFK’s body should have remained in Dallas for autopsy, and the criminal investigation and trial should have been handled locally.

Yet, the White House and the Secret Service won the argument in a confrontation that almost ended up in a fistfight. A casket was ordered to fly JFK’s body back to Washington, and the Secret Service quietly took LBJ back to Love Field. Once the casket arrived, the Secret Service made sure JFK’s body was whisked from Parkland Hospital and driven directly to Love Field where it was loaded aboard Air Force One.

Chaos would perhaps best describe the way JFK’s body left Dallas, and controversy would perhaps best describe the way the JFK autopsy was conducted. The hurriedly assembled autopsy team in Washington was not given the luxury of even a single night to prepare. Typically an autopsy
team takes time to research the case and plan the autopsy based on reports of the crime scene so they can produce reliable and comprehensive medical evidence that would be admissible in court. Jackie Kennedy insisted that since JFK was a navy officer, the autopsy should take place at Bethesda Naval Hospital, thus overruling administration officials who scheduled the autopsy to be conducted at the army’s Walter Reed Hospital.

In the confusion at both Dallas Parkland Hospital and at Bethesda Naval Hospital, no one imagined junior counsel Arlen Specter would virtually single-handedly take over configuring the medical evidence into a legal argument to frame Lee Harvey Oswald as the victim before the official Warren Commission government inquiry into the assassination. In doing so, Specter concocted his single-bullet theory in order to deflect consideration of a conspiracy, and in the process pinned the blame on the conveniently deceased Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole gunman responsible for shooting the president. Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder brought the criminal investigation to a screeching halt and obviated the need for a criminal prosecution. Yet the problem remained that Specter’s single-bullet theory depended upon establishing medical proof that CE399 passed from the entrance wound in JFK’s back, through JFK’s body, to exit in JFK’s throat and this theory was never considered or pursued by the medical team at either Dallas Parkland Hospital or Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Here was the crux of the medical dilemma:

• The Parkland Emergency Room doctors identified JFK’s throat wound as an entry wound, and never noticed the wound in his back.

• The Parkland medical team enlarged the throat wound with their tracheotomy.

• Once the Parkland medical team realized they had no chance of reviving JFK, they didn’t bother searching for an exit wound or the bullet in JFK’s body.

• The Parkland medical team assumed JFK had been hit twice from the front: once in the throat and once in the right front forehead.

• Viewing the throat wound as a large gaping hole, the Bethesda autopsy team assumed the throat wound was caused by a tracheotomy, not by a bullet.

• The Bethesda autopsy team assumed the wound in JFK’s back to be a superficial entry wound but could not identify the path of the bullet or find the bullet itself.

• Upon learning from Parkland that a pristine bullet had been found on a stretcher, the Bethesda autopsy team assumed it was the bullet they were unable to find.

• The Bethesda autopsy medical team concluded JFK had been hit twice from the back: first, in the back and then by a shot to the back of the head.

The doctors at Parkland assumed JFK had been shot from the front, while the doctors at Bethesda concluded JFK had been shot from the rear. Only after Arlen Specter proposed the single-bullet theory did it become important to prove the bullet that wounded JFK’s back and neck was the same bullet that wounded Connally. Both men
had
to have been wounded by the same bullet, or, given the Warren Commission’s conclusion only three shots could had been fired by the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle in the time available for shooting, there had to have been a second shooter. Moreover, Lee Harvey Oswald was firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, behind JFK when the shooting started. If the throat wound was determined to be an entrance wound, there had to be a second shooter positioned to the front of the motorcade. Specter’s entire argument came to rest on the hypothesis the bullet that entered JFK’s back exited through his throat and went on to cause all Connally’s wounds, despite the fact neither the medical evidence ascertained in the ER at Parkland nor the medical evidence ascertained in the autopsy at Bethesda supported that theory.

Arlen Specter was out of luck once he realized neither the doctors at Parkland nor Bethesda had established a bullet path through JFK’s body. That was a lynchpin for the Warren Commission’s central conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman responsible for gunning down JFK, but it did not deter Specter. Lacking the medical evidence to prove the point, Specter resorted to elaborate diagrams of various assassination reconstructions to argue the hypothetical case that a trajectory could be established making it possible for a single bullet to injure both men. Despite medical
and ballistics evidence, in the end the Warren Commission resorted to arguing it was possible the bullet entered JFK’s back, exited his throat, and then continued on its trajectory to hit Connally in the back, lungs, wrist, and thigh. The Commission had to succeed in their argument otherwise the effort to establish that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin would fail. If there were more than one shooter, that would mean there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, which would instigate a public outcry for an investigation. The Warren Commission sought to avoid that because no one knew how high up and widespread a conspiracy might go. As long as Lee Harvey Oswald remained the only viable suspect, the case could be closed as a horrible accident of history.

No doctor at Parkland or Bethesda ever thought to postulate a single-bullet theory. That took a lawyer like Arlen Specter. And JFK was long buried at Arlington Cemetery before anyone realized the single-bullet theory would depend on medical questions the doctors at Parkland and Bethesda had never thought to ask and on ballistic evidence establishing a bullet path from the back wound to the neck wound that the doctors at Parkland and Bethesda had never thought to look for. The simple truth was the doctors examining JFK at Parkland and at Bethesda never thought to connect the bullet paths through Kennedy’s body.

President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Justice Department used the Warren Commission to create an official government narrative explaining why and how JFK was killed. After the nearly yearlong investigation, the Commission interviewed more than 500 witnesses to document nearly 8,000 pages of testimony to produce an 888-page report. The transcripts to the testimony provide insight into the leading nature of the investigation and the desire to force a particular outcome. But if we take a look at the facts, the Warren Commission largely ignored how the doctors at Parkland Hospital, the first to see JFK’s wounds, nearly unanimously describe their findings in contradiction to the Warren Commission’s conclusions.

According to the doctors at Parkland hospital, JFK suffered an entrance wound in his neck. At a press conference held at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963, a newsman asked Dr. Malcolm Perry, the physician who had performed the tracheotomy on JFK, whether or not the wound to JFK’s throat was an entrance wound. Perry explained:

The wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat; yes, that is correct. The exit wound, I don’t know. It could have been the head or there could have been a second wound of the head. There was not time to determine this at the particular instant.
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Tom Wicker, reporting for
The New York Times
in an article published two days after the assassination, wrote, “Mr. Kennedy was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam’s apple, [Dr. Malcolm Perry, an attending surgeon at Parkland, and Dr. Kemp Clark, chief of neurosurgery at Parkland] said. This wound had the appearance of the bullet’s entry.”
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Wicker also reported JFK had “a massive, gaping wound” in the back and on the right side of his head and that Parkland physicians said immediately after the shooting that it was impossible to tell if JFK’s wounds were caused by one or two bullets. “According to the doctors at Parkland Hospital, the President suffered an entrance wound at the Adam’s apple and a massive wound at the head,” wrote assassination researcher Sylvia Meagher, whose 1967 book,
Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report
, is considered the definitive guide to the Warren Commission testimony.
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In his testimony to the Warren Commission on March 30, 1964, Dr. Charles James Carrico explained why the back wound went unnoticed at Parkland Hospital. Warren Commission counsel Arlen Specter asked Carrico about whether he had noticed a small wound on the right side of JFK’s head:

Dr. Carrico
: No, sir; at least initially there was no time to examine the president completely for all small wounds. As we said before, this was an acutely ill patient and all we had time to do was to determine what things were life-threatening right then and attempt to resuscitate him and after which a more complete examination would be carried out, and we didn’t have time to examine for other wounds.

Mr. Specter
: Was such a more complete examination ever carried out by the doctors in Parkland?

Dr. Carrico
: No, sir; not in my presence.

Mr. Specter
: Why not?

Dr. Carrico
: As we said initially, this was an acute emergency situation and there was not time initially and when the cardiac massage was done this prevented any further examination during this time this was being done. After the President was pronounced dead, his wife was there, he was the President, and we felt certainly that complete examination would be carried out and no one had the heart, I believe, to examine him there.
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According to notes he wrote on the airplane back to Washington, Secret Service Agent Glen A. Bennett, who had been riding in the follow-up car immediately behind the JFK limousine, wrote that he “saw the shot that hit the President about four inches down from his right shoulder.”
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In his testimony to the Warren Commission on March 9, 1964, Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman described how he discovered JFK’s back wound in the morgue at Bethesda Naval Hospital the evening of the assassination just prior to the start of the autopsy. “Just for the record, I wish to have this down,” Kellerman began. “While the President is in the morgue, he is lying flat. And with the part of the skull removed, and the hole in the throat, nobody was aware until they lifted him up that there was a hole in his shoulder. That was the first concrete evidence that they knew that the man was hit in the back first.”
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Interestingly, Kellerman commented here that the doctors conducting the Bethesda autopsy somehow concluded the back wound resulted from the shot that hit JFK “first.” Unfortunately, Kellerman did not get questioned on this point and he did not return to explain the comment. But the comment suggests a sequence of shots that would separate JFK’s back wound from his throat wound, providing additional support to the hypothesis the back and throat wounds were separate wounds.

During the Bethesda autopsy, Dr. Humes examined the back wound and found it to be a shallow entry wound that had penetrated less than an inch into JFK’s back. Navy Commander J. Thornton Boswell, attending the autopsy, found the depth of JFK’s back wound could be probed up to only the first or second knuckle of the little finger, a depth of about two inches.
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No path through JFK’s body could be established for the missile, and X-rays failed to detect any bullets yet remaining in JFK’s body. A report by FBI agents James W. Silbert and Francis X. O’Neill Jr., who were present during the autopsy, gives the following description of the examination of JFK’s back wound: