A few follow-up points on the SBT and the myth that the autopsy doctors knew nothing about the throat wound until the next morning:
-- Dr. Boswell destroyed the unaware-of-throat-wound myth in his 8/17/77 HSCA interview with HSCA staffer Andy Purdy. Boswell said that when the autopsy doctors saw the body, they assumed the throat wound ("anterior neck wound") was an exit wound, and he added that they were not certain that a tracheotomy had been done and only thought it was a possibility. And then, Boswell dropped the bombshell that he saw part of the perimeter of a bullet wound in the throat! I quote from Purdy's summary of the interview:
Dr. Boswell said that the autopsy doctors assumed that the anterior neck wound was a wound of exit, saying the hole is not that big and that it was "far bigger than a wound of entry." He said the doctors didn't explicitly discuss the possibility of a tracheotomy having been performed but said it was assumed this was a possibility. . . . Dr. Boswell said he remembered seeing part of the perimeter of a bullet wound in the anterior neck. ( p. 8 )
So not only did the autopsy doctors assume that the throat wound was an exit wound, but Boswell could see part of the perimeter of a bullet wound in the throat wound.
In his HSCA interview, Boswell also indicated that he and the other pathologists discussed the back wound and the throat wound with Secret Service agents during the autopsy. Note that Boswell repeatedly referred to the back wound as a "neck wound." And he said that a federal agent was on the phone "most of the time" during the autopsy (the parenthetical comment is Purdy's--my comments will always be in brackets):
DR. BOSWELL indicated that "we had gotten ourselves in dutch [in trouble] with the neck and throat wounds with regard to the Secret Service." DR. BOSWELL indicated that one of the agents (he wasn't sure if FBI or Secret Service) was on the phone most of the time. (He seemed to be implying they were on the phone that was in the main autopsy room.) (p. 4)
So the autopsy doctors were talking with the Secret Service about the throat wound and the back wound. That makes perfect sense. That is exactly what you would expect them to have done.
The federal agent who was on the phone "most of the time" during the autopsy may very well have been the person, or one of the persons, who repeatedly called Dr. Perry that night to try to badger him into changing his description of the throat wound from an entrance wound to an exit wound.
So, let us repeat for the millionth time that the autopsy doctors knew about the throat wound early in the autopsy. Boswell's HSCA interview was sealed, but the ARRB released it in the 1990s. Yet, lone-gunman theorists continue to peddle the myth that the doctors knew nothing about the throat wound until the next morning. This myth was created at least partly to explain Humes's highly unusual action of destroying the previous autopsy report drafts and his notes.
Let us continue. Even Purdy noted that Boswell contradicted himself when Purdy asked him why the autopsy doctors had bothered to probe the back wound if they knew the bullet had exited the front of the neck. Boswell's answer is not only unconvincing, but it casts further doubt on the official story:
Dr. BOSWELL was asked why the back wound was probed if the autopsy doctors knew the bullet had exited out the anterior neck (as Dr. BOSWELL stated earlier in the interview).
Dr. BOSWELL said that Dr. BURKLEY didn't mention the fact that a tracheotomy had been performed. He said that Dr. BURKLEY was very upset and this might have explained his failure to mention this important fact. Dr. BOSWELL said (without indicating that he was being inconsistent with his previous statement), the doctors felt the anterior neck damage was caused by a tracheotomy wound and in the later courses of the autopsy thought it may have included the exit wound of a bullet. (pp. 11-12; again, all parenthetical comments are Purdy's)
One would hope that not even the most gullible WC apologist would dare suggest that Dr. Burkley not only said nothing about the throat wound to the autopsy doctors but that he didn't even mention that a tracheotomy had been done.
Anyway, Boswell's claim that Burkley didn't mention the tracheotomy actually supports his earlier statement that the pathologists didn't know that a tracheotomy had been done. However, his claim that later in the autopsy the doctors opined that the throat wound included an exit wound contradicts his earlier statement that they had assumed the throat wound was an exit wound.
Purdy attempted to get Boswell to specify when the autopsy doctors concluded or began to believe that the throat wound was an exit wound. Boswell was "a little vague" in his reply:
Dr. BOSWELL is a little vague as to when the doctors felt that a bullet may have fallen out the neck wound, but seemed to indicate it occurred around the time they learned the bullet had been discovered in Parkland. . . . (p. 12)
So initially Boswell indicated that soon after they saw the body, they believed the throat wound was an exit wound. Then, when asked why they therefore probed the back wound if they had already assumed the throat wound was an exit wound, Boswell gave the irrelevant and doubtful answer that Burkley failed to mention that a tracheotomy had been done. Even if Burkley failed to mention the tracheotomy, this would not explain why the pathologists probed the back wound if they had already assumed that the throat wound was an exit wound.
Also, note Purdy's use of the phrase "fallen out the neck wound," implying that the bullet was barely moving when it allegedly exited the throat. This is consistent with Humes's description of the bullet tract to Dan Snyder: Humes said the tract went downward, and then upward, and then downward again, which would logically indicate that the bullet would have been moving very slowly when it exited the throat, certainly nowhere near rapidly enough to cause Connally's back wound. Is this another reason that Humes initially insisted that the SBT was impossible? Is this why he declined to defend the SBT when he spoke with Snyder?
-- CBS producer Les Midgley was so impressed with Dan Snyder's account of his conversation with Dr. Humes that he wrote about it to WC member John McCloy. After getting Richter's memo, Midgley apparently spoke with Snyder himself to get the story straight from Snyder, and he said the following about Snyder's account in his 1/11/67 memo to McCloy:
I have been told, by a man who is a personal friend of Dr. Humes, that he says one of the x-rays shows a wire left in the bullet path through the neck. If this is indeed true, publication of same would forever resolve the discussion about back versus neck wound and generally settle the dust about the autopsy.
We have multiple accounts that pictures and x-rays were taken of the probing of the back wound, and also of the chest cavity, which is standard autopsy procedure.
Importantly, Boswell stated that "they photographed the exposed thoracic [chest] cavity and lung" (p. 4), which is standard autopsy procedure: you have photos and x-rays taken of any damage that sheds light on the wounds, of any probing of wounds, etc., etc. Yet, no such photos or x-rays are in the extant collection of autopsy materials. I think we all know why, even if some of us can't bring ourselves to publicly say it.
-- Boswell said the back wound was less than 1 inch deep when probed with a finger:
According to BOSWELL, HUMES probed the neck wound [the back wound] with his little finger (indicating a point on the little finger which did not go past the first knuckle, less than one inch). He said HUMES also probed it with a metal probe. (p. 6)
-- James Jenkins, a medical technician who assisted Dr. Boswell at the autopsy, consistently described, in his HSCA interview and in filmed interviews with researchers, a back wound that slanted downward and that definitely did not transit the body because it did not even penetrate the pleura (the lining of the chest cavity and of the lungs).
In his 8/29/77 HSCA interview, Jenkins said that the back wound was very shallow," that it "didn't enter the peritoneal cavity," that Humes reached the end of the wound when he probed it with his finger, and that the pathologists spent a long time probing the wound.
In a 1979 filmed interview, Jenkins said the following:
Commander Humes put his finger in it, and, you know, said that ... he could probe the bottom of it with his finger. . . . I remember looking inside the chest cavity and I could see the probe . . . through the pleura. You could actually see where it was making an indentation. . . . It was pushing the skin up. . . . There was no entry into the chest cavity.
As I've documented in previous replies, a number of other autopsy witnesses likewise said that the back wound had no exit point.
Even the autopsy doctors made it clear in several statements that during the autopsy they never actually
saw a tract that went from the back wound to the throat wound, even after they opened the chest and removed the chest organs and even after prolonged and extensive probing (probing that included positioning the body "every which way").
Only later, after the autopsy, did they put forward the purely speculative opinion that the throat wound was the exit point for the back wound. They had not one shred of evidence for this speculation. They cited bruising around part of the lungs, but that bruising could have just as easily, and far more plausibly, have been caused by a projectile entering the throat.
We have known for many years that on the night of the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were absolutely, positively certain that the back wound had no exit point, and we have also known for a number of years that this fact was reflected in the first two drafts of the autopsy report. We now know that the second draft of the autopsy report concluded that a skull fragment from the head was blown out of the throat, causing the throat wound.
