This is simply incorrect. To my knowledge, only two of the Parkland doctors have expressed dissenting opinions. Dr. Charles Crenshaw has gigantic credibility problems, even apart from the fact that he was only in the room for a few minutes at the end of the efforts to save Kennedy. Dr. Robert McClelland is more ambivalent; although he has claimed to have seen something different, he also reported upon seeing the autopsy photos for the first time that he found “no discrepancy between the wounds as they’re shown very vividly in these photographs and what I remember very vividly.”
All the other doctors have consistently supported the description of the wounds in the Warren Report, and as shown in the autopsy photos.
This is simply incorrect. To my knowledge, only two of the Parkland doctors have expressed dissenting opinions. Dr. Charles Crenshaw has gigantic credibility problems, even apart from the fact that he was only in the room for a few minutes at the end of the efforts to save Kennedy. Dr. Robert McClelland is more ambivalent; although he has claimed to have seen something different, he also reported upon seeing the autopsy photos for the first time that he found “no discrepancy between the wounds as they’re shown very vividly in these photographs and what I remember very vividly.”
All the other doctors have consistently supported the description of the wounds in the Warren Report, and as shown in the autopsy photos.
Getting back to the OP: I just watched the ABC News special tonight on the assassination. It included a slow-motion, enlarged portion of the Zapruder film, in which Jackie Kennedy crawls onto the trunk of the presidential limousine. Despite speculation that she was trying to help Secret Service Agent Hill into the vehicle, I noticed that at no point does she extended her hand to him. To the contrary, her hands are down on the trunk lid, and her head, instead of looking at Hill, is cast downward.
At the point where Hill is stretching out his arm to Jackie Kennedy, she, instead of grabbing his hand to pull him in, turns around and retreats to the back seat.
My understanding was akin to yours, ever since Cronkite’s documentary “Who Shot JFK?” soon after he retired. However, to me, PUBLIC dissent by a treating physicians is not just surprising, but a probable violation of medical ethics. Physicians are not free to discuss patients in public, even after their death. JFK’s assassination is a special case, and I applaud the courage it must have taken, but for a physician to volunteer patient information to the public could mean serious trouble in ANY murder case. It’s simply not a doctor’s privilege. (It is, however, permissible to affirm information that is already in the public domain, such as an official finding)
My phrase “medical staff” was ill chosen. I was referring to a summary of the testimony of the staff (including nurses, etc.) before the 1978 House committee, where such remarks might be ethically permitted (and possibly compelled) and witnesses might feel somewhat safer in being forthcoming. Some of this material has been cleared for release by the ARRB, but I have not been able to find a widely available source (e.g. book or web archive) that has reprinted the summary in question. Due to its obvious interest to conspiracy fans, I’m sure it’s been reprinted in a book or site, but as I said, JFK-analia isn’t a special interest of mine .
So *KP, you’re saying that direct accounts by the attending physicians that autopsy photos accurately depict what they saw that day, are not valid evidence, uhh, because, uhh, you think it was unethical for them to make those statements? Is that what you’re saying?
You also state that the House Select committee in the 1970s said it was a probably conspiracy, but left out the little detail that they thought Oswald acted alone, until at the last minute the acoustic “experts” presented their findings that there was a fourth shot. Of course, that conclusion has been completely vacated when the acoustic analysis was discredited. That’s what you meant to say, right?
the acoustic analysis wasn’t really discredited. it was attacked. any real ‘expert’ can show that the claims of the drummer with the mystical hearing who ‘hears things most people don’t’ and the ‘crosstalk’ or whatever explanation it was, open more questions than it answers. i’m at work now, so i can’t comment authoritatively, but don’t swallow that discredited line. go with abandoned or attacked.
But it wasn’t just Steve Barber (“the drummer”) who thought that the acoustic evidence was flimsy. The truly scathing report was by a panel of physicists from the National Academy of Sciences.
Luis Alvarez, one of that report’s authors, later bluntly described the original pro-conspiracy expert testimony as “amateurish”. His comments on the affair in his autobiography (Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist, Basic, 1987) expand on why he thought the researchers involved became trapped in defending silly physics.
Nellie Connally still thinks to this day that it was two separate bullets that hit JFK and the Governor.
Its been demonstrated how the path of the bullet was more of a straight line than the “magic bullet” theory would require.
I think it was a case of her being too close to the madness to really have discerned what was really happening.
Sorry I joined this thread so late but I once read that, in a state of shock, she was going for a piece of JFK’s skull and when the Secret Service agent tried to order her back in the car (as he was ascending the trunk area) Mrs. Kennedy catatonicaly replied “but I know Jack will need this…” or something very similiar. I wish I could qoute the source, but I always thought this was common knowledge.
I had heard the story that she was after a piece of skull and also that she was just getting away and had no opinion either way until this weekend. On TV there was a piece about an ABC (I think) animator who had animated the Zapruder film to prove that the shots came from the Book Depository. In the course of showing the actual Zapruder film they showed that portion and I was struck by the fact that Jackie appeared to snatch at something with her right hand and head back toward her seat before the Secret Service Agent got to her. I only saw the image fleetingly but got this impression very clearly and was quite surprised.
A new, complete analysis by an independant radiologist, with access to the National Archvie material, concluded that one shot came from the front. Article also includes information about the mystery chunk-o-head.
