Exactly what I expected; outright dismissal! How you can claim that you are a "serious and objective observer of the evidence" when you simply close your eyes for anything that contradicts your world view. I bet you haven't even watched the interview....
More telling is even that you purposely ignored my question;
Sibert & O'Neill, Paul O'Connor, Jerrol Custer, Dennis David, Tom Robinson, James Jenkins and others are all basically telling (parts of) the same story. Why would all these people lie (because it seems that's where you're going with this)? Do you really think that all these people got together at some point in time and decided for no obvious reason to make up a false story?
To you, people who say something you don't like are simply lying or mistaken..... that's narrow minded and just sad.
Marty, calm down. I did not just outright dismiss the claims of the persons mentioned in your post. What I did was to weigh the evidence and make the decision that the trained pathologist who most closely examined the body had to have a better view than the others. Would you not agree with that?
As to the Jenkins video, I think he's full of crap. He believes in the casket switching nonsense that not even Robert Groden accepts. Kennedy's casket was accompanied by several persons throughout the entire episode from Parkland Hospital to when it arrived at the morgue in Bethesda Hospital and the body was removed and placed on the morgue's metal table while being viewed by Dr's Humes and Boswell.
Mr. SPECTER - Yes; would you like to start with the neck wound?
Commander HUMES - All right, sir.
I might preface my remarks by stating that the President's body was received in our morgue in a closed casket. We opened the casket, Dr. Boswell and I, and the President's body was unclothed in the casket, was wrapped in a sheet labeled by the Parkland Hospital, but he was unclothed once the sheet was removed from his body so we do not have at that time any clothing.
Jenkins goes on to state there was a shot from the front to JFK's throat and that it came from the triple underpass. He goes on to make more embarrassing remarks that the wound to the back only penetrated a few inches. I also believe he caught himself just in time to amend his observation of the rear entry shot when he quickly switched the location from up in the rear of the head to the lower part of the rear of the head, much as Humes described and which the X-Rays prove the Dr's observation to be wrong. I believe Dr. Humes would agree as he indicated in his testimony before the WC and later affirmed during his testimony before the HSCA that X-Ray and photographs taken previous to and during the autopsy where of the upmost importance in making an accurate description of the wounds to JFK's head and upper torso when writing his autopsy report.
After Dr. Humes saw the enlarged photographs and X-Rays during his HSCA testimony he changed his opinion of the location of the entry wound to the head to conform with the observations made by Dr. Baden but indicated he had trouble accepting the HSCA Forensic Panel's observation of a difference of 10 cm between his reported location of the entry wound to the rear of the head and that of the panels.
WC testimony of Dr. Humes
Mr. SPECTER - Is the taking of photographs and X-rays routine or is this something out of the ordinary?
Commander HUMES - No, sir; this is quite routine in cases of this sort of violent death in our training. In the field of forensic pathology we have found that the photographs and X-rays are of most value, the X-rays particularly in finding missiles which have a way of going in different directions sometimes, and particularly as documentary evidence these are considered invaluable in the field of forensic pathology
HSCA testimony of Dr. Humes
Mr. CORNWELL. And finally, would you agree that the relative center portion of the photograph has what you, upon initially being shown this photograph in the Archives by our panel, could not identify, that's what you said might be a clot or some other it, and that is relatively off-center in the overall photograph the past you identified as being the wound of entry, the locations are as I described them.
Dr. HUMES. Yes, apparently.
Mr. CORNWELL. Now, I would like to ask you today if you have had at least a greater opportunity to look at the photographs along the lines that I have just indicated to you and if, after doing so, you have a more well-considered or a different opinion or whether your opinion is still the same; as to where the point of entry is?
Dr. HUMES. Yes, I think that I do have a different opinion. No. 1, it was a casual kind of a discussion that we were having with the panel members, as I recall it. No. 2, and I think before we talk about these photographs further, if I might comment, these photographs were made on the evening of November 22, 1963. I first saw any of these photographs on November 1, 1966, almost 3 years after the photographs were made, which was the first opportunity that I had to see those photographs. At that point, Drs. Boswell, Finck and I were asked to come to the National Archives to categorize these photographs, label them, identify them and we spent many hours going through that. It was not the easiest thing to accomplish, I might say, after 3 weeks short of 3 years. But we identified them and I think in light of the very extensive opportunity that various panels of very qualified forensic pathologists have had to go over them, we did a reasonably accurate job in cataloging these photographs. So, I saw them on that occasion. I saw them again on the 27th of January of 1967 when we again went to the Archives and made some summaries of our findings. I go back further to the original autopsy report which we rendered, in the absence of any photographs, of course. We made certain physical observations and measurements of these wounds. I state now those measurements we recorded then were accurate to the best of our ability to discern what we had before our eyes. We described the wound of entrance in the posterior scalp as being above and to the right of the external occipital protuberance, a bony knob on the back of the head, you heard Dr. Baden describe to the committee members today. And it is obvious to me as I sit here how with this his markedly enlarged drawing or the photograph that the upper defect to which you pointed or the upper object is clearly in the location of where we said approximately where it was, above the external occipital protuberance; therefore, I believe that is the wound of entry. It relative position to boney structure underneath it is somewhat altered by the fact that there were fractures of the skull under this and the President's head had to be held in this position thus making some distortion of anatomic views produced in this picture. By the same token. the object in the lower portion, which I apparently and I believe now erroneously previously identified before the most recent panel, is far below the external occipital protuberance and would not fit with the original autopsy findings.....>>>>
Mr. CORNWELL. First, Dr. Humes, with respect to the X-rays, have you also today had an opportunity to look at those X-rays?
Dr. HUMES. Yes, sir.
Mr. CORNWELL. I would ask you if you would mind stepping to the easel and describing for us what your view, or your opinion, would be as to the location of the entry wound on that X-ray.
Dr. HUMES. OK. I believe, particularly in this rather enhanced picture, I might say, it is a pleasure to have such because I didn't have anything of this kind formerly, that this would be the point of entrance.
Mr. CORNWELL. For the record simply, would you try to describe the point that you just indicated?
Dr. HUMES. Well, in this approximate area would be about where external occipital protuberance would be, the knob we can feel in the back of our head. This would be above it. There is a great enlargement here, so it looks considerably further away than it would be on a standard size film or on the skull and I believe this is above the external occipital protuberance. I think it also shows on the film that Dr. Baden was showing earlier. I think it shows even better in the in the A.P. view, the anterior-posterior view of the skull.
Mr. CORNWELL. So, you, in effect, would agree with the testimony of Dr. Baden that the entry wound on the X-rays is at the point in which there is, simply from a novice point of view, a dislocation or a jutting out.
Dr. HUMES. It is a fracture line that juts out from that.
Mr. CORNWELL. Thank you.
Dr. HUMES. If I might add, and more importantly, I had the opportunity, which none of the gentlemen had to do, to examine the President's skull from the inside when the brain was removed, with great care. There was one, and only one, wound of entrance. I think we are in a somewhat of a semantic discussion as to where it was.
Mr. CORNWELL. And would you agree that the fragments shown in the upper portion of the skull would also be relatively consistent with the same entry location on the skull?
Dr. HUMES. Oh yes, however, this bullet was so disrupted, those fragments I think could virtually be any place.
Mr. CORNWELL. And referring to JFK exhibit F-302---
Dr. HUMES. Which is?
Mr. CORNWELL. The one on the very left, the drawing of the brain, would you also agree that the disruption of the brain, as shown in that drawing, is also in the upper portion and therefore would also be roughly consistent with the same entry location?
Dr. HUMES. Yes, sir, I do.
Mr. CORNWELL. Dr. Humes, you have indicated that you, of course, worked under the handicap, which, of course, was caused by conditions beyond your control, during the autopsy and the writing of the report, of not having autopsy photographs to work with; is that correct?
Dr. HUMES. Nor the X-rays by the time we were writing the report.
Mr. CORNWELL. Nor the X-rays. Your initial autopsy report indicated that, as you have just stated, the wound was, indeed, above, I believe the report is worded in terms of "slightly above," the external occipital protuberance. The testimony today indicates that the panel places that at approximately 10 centimeters above the external occipital protuberance. Would that discrepancy be explainable?
Dr. HUMES. Well, I have a little trouble with that; 10 centimeters is a significant--4 inches.
Mr. CORNWELL. I would like to simply ask you a few specific questions in order to determine----
Dr. HUMES. I go back to the fact there was only one, period.
Mr. CORNWELL. To determine whether we can understand how such a discrepaed [sic?][RHS] late at night; is that correct?
Dr. HUMES. That's correct.
