From David Lifton
Mid December, 1980: THE FILM IS SCREENED (by me, personally) FOR DAN RATHER. . .
A few days later, I was back at CBS, this time alone, and I met with Dan Rather (who is eight years my senior) in a screening room. Once again, the lights went out, and the film was shown.
About 22 minutes later, the film was over. I turned to Rather?the same person of whom Steve Glauber, his producer, had predicted, ?Dan?s going to love this!?--but that was not Rather?s reaction. Not at all.
Instead, Rather professed puzzlement, as if he were a child, and what I had just shown him was beyond his comprehension. Really: he behaved in that fashion! He did not understand what the film had conveyed, he said, what it was all about. I had to go through it again, explaining it as if he were a child, that if the body was altered, then autopsy results could be changed; not because ?the doctors lied,?: but because the ?body lied to the doctors.?
Rather responded by saying something rather glib (but important) along these lines: ?But since Oswald assassinated the President, there would be no need to alter the body.? (Yes, he actually said that, or something darn near close to it. Of course: exactly the opposite was the case: if Oswald had not assassinated the President, then there would be every reason to alter the body, or falsify the autopsy in some way).
I could hardly believe my ears. I went over some of the points made in the film, including Dennis David?s account of the arrival of the black hearse, with the shipping casket, prior to the arrival of the naval ambulance at the front ("a good 20 minutes before," said David); and Paul O?Connor?s account of the body arriving inside the morgue, in a body bag, inside a shipping casket (and with an empty cranium).
Rather looked at me blankly and said: ?Well, I think you?ve found some witnesses who remember things a bit differently.?
