Friday, March 23, 2012
What happened to JFK's body? A cover-up "on the fly"
What happened to JFK's body? A cover-up "on the fly"
by Jim Fetzer (with Douglas Horne)
EDITOR'S NOTE: For this study, I interviewed Douglas Horne , who served as the Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), a five-member civilian panel established by Congress to declassify documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other agencies related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Its creation was motivated by the resurgence of interest in the case that was brought about by Oliver Stone's "JFK". George H.W. Bush, who was president at the time, adamantly opposed this legislation and, when it passed in spite of his best efforts to defeat it, refused to appoint its members, leading to a fifteen-month delay before the incoming Clinton administration was able to do so.
Only the president had the authority to override the decisions of the panel, which did not occur even once during the activities of the ARRB, which is an endorsement of the integrity of Clinton in this matter as opposed to the lack thereof shown by Bush. Of course, there is no reason to believe that Clinton had anything to do with the assassination, where the same cannot be said of Bush. After the ARRB closed its doors and shut down its operations, which led to the release of more than 60,000 documents and records, which federal agencies had wanted to suppress, Doug Horne committed himself to composing a scrupulously documented record of its proceedings and its findings in the key areas of the medical evidence and the Zapruder film, which he has published in his five-volume study, INSIDE THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD (2009), to which I shall refer as "IARRB".
Those of us who have committed ourselves to exposing the fantasy that is known as the "lone assassin" theory, including its incredible "magic bullet" hypothesis, are profoundly grateful to Doug for undertaking this Herculean task. Having published three collections of studies by experts on different aspects of the case--namely: ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003)--I am well-positioned to assert that, with IARRB, Doug Horne has produce a masterpiece of analysis, especially in relation to the medical evidence, that can only bear comparison with the very best work in the history of the assassination, such as Noel Twyman's BLOODY TREASON (1997) and David Lifton's BEST EVIDENCE (1980). And I regard it as a privilege to discuss his most recent work on this most peculiar aspect of the cover-up, which involves re-examining the evidence for multiple casket entries at the morgue of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the official autopsy was conducted.
The stimulus for our discussion of the multiple casket entries at the Bethesda Naval Hospital morgue on November 22, 1963 was the new, longer version of the Air Force One audiotapes from the day of the assassination, the version found in the personal effects of General Chester V. Clifton, U.S. Army, after his death. The new version of the Air Force One tapes, which is about 27 minutes longer than the previously released LBJ Library version from the 1970s, has been put on sale by the Raab Collection, which purchased it from Clifton’s heirs at an estate sale following the recent death of Clifton’s wife. General Chester (“Ted”) Clifton was the military aide to President Kennedy, and for a brief time, also for President Johnson. Clifton took professional papers and the reel of audiotape with him when he retired from military service and the public was unaware of its existence until the Associated Press, working with the Raab collection, broke the story in November of 2011.
The Raab Collection announced it was seeking $500,000.00 for the reel of audiotape, but also indicated it had professionally digitized the tape’s contents, and would soon donate this digital copy to the National Archives. In mid-February, Doug focused his attention on the “Clifton version” of the Air Force One tapes---now available for free online from NARA, as a two-part MP3 digital download---to see whether he could find any new material that was not present on the LBJ Library version long-studied by JFK assassination researchers. He did find new information in three subject areas, and Doug posted an article to discuss this new evidence on his blogsite, insidethearrb.livejournal.com, on February 26, 2012. He then set about transcribing key conversations from the “Clifton” tapes, a task that took about 50 hours from start to finish. Performing this task caused Doug to re-examine the multiple casket entries at Bethesda and to restudy the key conversations on the Air Force One tapes, which help to illuminate the cover-up being put in place as John F. Kennedy’s body was being flown from Dallas, Texas to Andrews AFB near Washington, D.C., on the day of his death.
“The three casket entries at Bethesda Naval Hospital would make a good French farce comedy movie, if the subject were not such a serious one,” Doug told me. “But of course, in reality there is nothing funny at all about a break in the chain-of-custody of President Kennedy’s body prior to his autopsy. The three casket entries at Bethesda, which David Lifton told us about in Best Evidence, were confirmed in various ways by the activities of the ARRB staff. They are now a documented fact, part of American history, just as much as the assassination itself or the attack on Pearl Harbor. And they constitute a primary basis for impugning the JFK autopsy report and for disbelieving the medical conclusions of The Warren Report.”
Of course, there should have been only ONE casket entry at Bethesda on November 22, 1963--but instead there were THREE. Let’s therefore revisit the three casket entries below, along with the key evidence that documents each one:
Casket entry number 1: A black hearse delivered a cheap aluminum shipping casket to the morgue loading dock at 6:35 PM. Men in suits got out of the hearse and turned the shipping casket over to a Navy working party assembled by Navy Petty Officer Dennis David. David’s sailors carried the aluminum casket (with JFK’s body inside) into the morgue anteroom, or chill room, and were told to depart. Later that evening, after the autopsy, Dr. “J” Thornton Boswell, one of the two Navy pathologists, confirmed to David that the President had indeed been inside the shipping casket that arrived at 6:35 PM. [Sources are Dennis David himself, Donald Rebentisch (a member of his working party), and the after action report of USMC Sergeant Roger Boyajian, who wrote on 11/26/63 that the president’s casket arrived at 1835 hours (or 6:35 PM civilian time). Boyajian authenticated his report and provided a copy to the ARRB. (See below.)]
Casket entry number 2: The light-gray Navy ambulance from Andrews AFB, carrying the heavy, bronze ceremonial coffin from Dallas, arrived at the front of Bethesda at 6:55 PM and sat motionless for 12 minutes. At 7:07 PM, it then followed the car the 2 FBI agents were in around to the morgue loading dock. Four Federal agents--Secret Service agents William Greer and Roy Kellerman; and FBI agents James Sibert and Francis O’Neill--then offloaded the ceremonial bronze Dallas casket and took it into the morgue anteroom, using a wheeled conveyance (most likely a “church truck”). The approximate time for this action was between 7:15-7:17 PM, based on oblique references in an FBI report from 1964. Sibert and O’Neill were then barred from entering the morgue by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Navy. (Marines from Washington’s Marine Barracks were providing security at the morgue.) [Newspaper reporters recorded the time of arrival of the Andrews motorcade, and the time the Navy ambulance drove away from the front of the hospital. The two FBI agents related their involvement in the second casket entry to the HSCA and reconfirmed this event to the ARRB, under oath. Their own FD-302 report, the so-called “Sibert and O’Neill report,” confirms in bureaucratic language that they were barred from the morgue for an unspecified time. Dr. Humes, the Chief Prosector at JFK’s autopsy, exaggerated the amount of time they were kept out of the morgue by telling a neighbor that they were never present at the autopsy at all--that they were even kept in a different room. We know this is an exaggeration, for Sibert and O’Neill took notes, once the Y-incision was made at 8:15 PM, and they wrote their own report of what they witnessed inside the morgue (after they were admitted shortly after 8 PM).]
Casket entry number 3: The “honor guard,” the Joint Service Casket Team, consisting of men in dress uniforms from the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, carried the bronze Dallas casket into the morgue at 8:00 PM, and set the casket down next to one of the two autopsy examining tables. They then posted a ceremonial guard outside the morgue. The Joint Service Casket Team had arrived by helicopter from Andrews AFB, but then spent much of the early evening chasing a “decoy ambulance” (a second light-gray Navy ambulance) around the grounds of the Bethesda complex in the dark, thinking that this vehicle had the Dallas casket inside. It did not, and amazingly, the Casket Team had lost the body of the President (which they falsely believed had been inside the Dallas casket when it had been offloaded from Air Force One at Andrews AFB), and were in danger of profound embarrassment, until they eventually found the Dallas casket sitting alone, unattended, in a light-gray Navy Ambulance shortly before 8 PM. [The formal entry of the Dallas casket into the morgue at 8 PM was documented in the official after-action report of the Military District of Washington; by the after-action report of the officer-in-charge, Lt. Bird, USA; and it was also written about by William Manchester in Death of a President , and extensively by David Lifton in Best Evidence. Lt. Richard Lipsey confirmed to the HSCA that there was indeed a ‘decoy ambulance.’]
I asked Doug Horne what all of this meant. “What it means, in a nutshell, was that the public offloading of the Dallas casket from Air Force One was a charade, enacted on National TV, just as David Lifton said it was in his book in 1980. THE DALLAS CASKET WAS EMPTY WHEN IT WAS OFFLOADED FROM THE AIRCRAFT. This has to have been the case, since (1) JFK’s body actually arrived at Bethesda at 6:35 PM in a cheap aluminum shipping casket, delivered by a black hearse, and (2) the light-gray Navy ambulance from Andrews (with the Dallas casket inside) did not arrive at Bethesda until 6:55 PM, twenty minutes after the hearse. This means that the four Federal agents took an empty Dallas casket out of the Navy ambulance at 7:15 PM (unbeknownst to the two FBI agents). The bronze casket weighed over 400 pounds, and they moved it using a church truck, so there is no way the two FBI agents would have known it was empty at the time.”
I asked Horne if the two Secret Service agents, Kellerman and Greer, knew the Dallas casket was empty at about 7:15 PM when it was offloaded. “You’d better believe they did. The Secret Service removed the body from the Dallas casket on the aircraft shortly after they took it onboard at 2:14 PM in Dallas. Jackie Kennedy went onboard at 2:18 PM. The swearing-in of LBJ did not occur until about 2:36 PM, and Air Force One took off at 2:47 PM, Dallas time. We know that the casket was surrounded by loyalists in the Kennedy entourage (and by the widowed First Lady) during the flight, so the body could not have been removed then. It must have been removed sometime between 2:14 PM and the time the swearing-in took place, at 2:36 PM. Immediately after boarding, the Kennedy entourage had not yet assembled around the casket for the Irish wake. Jackie Kennedy was composing herself in private, and the Air Force Aide, General Godfrey McHugh, made several trips forward to the cockpit to demand that the plane take off and even spent time looking for Lyndon Johnson (before finding him hiding, crying in the loo). The Secret Service must have removed JFK’s body from the casket during the initial process of “securing it to the deck” in the aft compartment of Air Force One. So Kellerman and Greer would have known all about it.” [EDITOR'S NOTE: William Greer drove the Presidential limousine in Dallas, and Roy Kellerman, who was responsible for all security on the ground during the Texas trip, occupied the front passenger seat of the limousine during the assassination.]
I asked Horne why the Secret Service or Lyndon Johnson would have wanted JFK’s body removed from the Dallas casket. “Don’t forget,” Doug said, “that Roy Kellerman essentially had to steal the body from Parkland Hospital to prevent the coroner, Earl Rose, from performing an autopsy--an honest autopsy--as required under Texas law. There was a loud, ugly altercation between Dr. Rose and Kellerman at Parkland, and the Secret Service agents eventually had to show their weapons in order to wrest President Kennedy’s body away from the hospital. I believe the principal reason the body of JFK was removed from the Dallas Casket at Love Field was to prevent it from being taken by Texas law enforcement authorities in the event they appeared at the airport, still demanding to do the autopsy required under Texas law. Lifton and I both believe that the body was probably removed from the aft compartment of Air Force One through the starboard aft galley door--immediately opposite the Dallas casket in the aft compartment--as soon as it was taken out of the casket. I agree with Lifton that it had to be spirited away in one of the airplane’s two luggage compartments during the trip to Washington, D.C.”
I asked Doug if there was any evidence supporting that this happened. “There are no eyewitnesses who have come forward, but there is indeed indirect evidence on the new Clifton tapes, as revealed in the transcript that I made. Roy Kellerman is talking on the radio to Gerald Behn--the Head of the White House Detail of the Secret Service, back at “Crown,” the White House Situation Room--and Kellerman tells Behn that everyone is onboard; that they are waiting for the swearing-in to take place--waiting for a judge to arrive--and then Kellerman suddenly tells Behn, in so many words,”I’ll have to call you back, Jerry, after the, ah body.” That is a significant statement. Something was happening with the body of the deceased President, something that interrupted Kellerman’s conversation and made him tell his boss he would have to call him back.
“I believe that ‘something’ was the spiriting of the body out of the Dallas casket,” Doug said, “and the operation to hide it in one of the luggage holds of the airplane. Remember, this did happen. We know it happened because the early arrival of the President’s body at Bethesda meant that the Dallas casket offloaded at Andrews AFB had to be empty. Since it was empty when offloaded, the body must have been removed almost immediately after the casket was taken onboard the aircraft. Kellerman’s gaffe, recorded for history, tells us when it happened--before the swearing-in took place.”
I asked Doug what other nuggets of information he had found on the Clifton tapes. “Well, there is provocative new information on the Clifton tapes--a ‘hot mike’conversation in which unknown persons at “Crown” (the White House) can be overheard discussing a ‘black car,’ specifically a ‘black Cadillac.’ This comes in the midst of a long conversation in which General Clifton is requesting that a ‘mortuary type ambulance’ be provided to move the President’s body after arrival. (Clifton uses this specific term twice.) A mortuary-type ambulance, in the funeral trade, is called a ‘hearse.’ And a hearse in those days was always a ‘black Cadillac.’ What this means is that we now have corroboration on the Air Force One tapes of plans being made at the White House Situation Room to transport JFK’s body in a black Cadillac--a hearse. The situation room was being run that day by Gerald Behn of the Secret Service, and by McGeorge Bundy, the President’s National Security Advisor. But wait--there’s more! Gawler’s funeral home was originally ordered to send a hearse to Andrews AFB, but that order was later rescinded. I believe it was their hearse--their black, mortuary-type Cadillac ambulance--that delivered the shipping casket containing JFK’s body to the Bethesda loading dock at 6:35 PM. The timeline fits. Air Force One rolled to a stop at 6:04 PM. The TV coverage was cut at 6:20 PM. There was plenty of time for a helicopter (there were 5 available at Andrews, all arranged by Kellerman) to take JFK’s body to Bethesda, and rendezvous with the hearse, prior to 6:35 PM.”
“But what is most important to understand,” Horne continued, “is that a tug-of-war was taking place during the flight from Dallas to Washington over where JFK’s autopsy would be conducted, and how his body would be transported. Onboard the airplane, three persons were lobbying, and lobbying hard, for JFK’s autopsy to be at Walter Reed Hospital (the Army site) in D.C.: Roy Kellerman, Admiral Burkley (the President’s military physician), and General Ted Clifton. All three of these people wanted ground transport--an ambulance--to take JFK’s body to Walter Reed. Opposing them was Jerry Behn at “Crown,” who not only said the autopsy was to be at Bethesda Naval Hospital, but that it would go by helicopter. The tapes reveal that those onboard the aircraft seemingly lost the battle to go to Walter Reed, and that Gerald Behn prevailed. Clifton then cautioned him to have a mortuary style ambulance available in case the Dallas casket was too heavy for the helicopter. Throughout the flight there was a coordinated effort, begun by Jerry Behn at the White House and reinforced by Clifton on the airplane, to separate Jackie Kennedy from JFK’s body as soon as the aircraft landed, and to send her and all other passengers to the South Lawn of the White House, while the body went alone to the autopsy site.”
As most readers will already know, that is not what happened. What occurred, in the harsh glare of the television Klieg lights at Andrews, was that Jackie Kennedy refused to leave the airplane in the darkness on the starboard side as General Clifton had wished and planned for, where she instead accompanied the Dallas casket to the tarmac. She then decided that she and Robert Kennedy would travel to Bethesda with the Dallas casket in a light-gray Navy ambulance that had pulled up nearby the airplane. So I asked Doug how this Navy ambulance fit into the story.
“David Lifton reminded me recently that the Navy ambulance was NOT a hearse, a black Cadillac mortuary type ambulance. It was a Pontiac; and it was a cardiac ambulance sent to Andrews because of rumors that Lyndon Johnson had had a heart attack, per William Manchester’s book. Jackie Kennedy simply ‘requisitioned it,’ on the spot, and no one could oppose the President’s widow. In doing so, she foiled the cover-up plans so carefully constructed by the military and the Secret Service. The helicopter that Behn had arranged to take the body away from the airplane taxied up in the dark to the starboard side, immediately after Air Force One rolled to a stop. David Lifton interviewed the USMC pilot of ‘Nighthawk One’ in 1996, and he confirmed that his orders had been to take the body to Bethesda. But when he saw the Dallas casket placed in the Navy ambulance and saw the former First Lady get in, he abandoned his mission and returned to base.”
I asked Doug why he thought the military and the Secret Service were so intent upon separating Jackie Kennedy from the casket, since this intent is so evident when one listens to the Clifton tapes or reads Doug’s transcript. “David Lifton has proposed, and I agree, that the intent was to covertly fly the body to Walter Reed, reintroduce it to the Dallas casket at that location and then, when the Dallas casket was eventually delivered to Bethesda for the formal autopsy, there would be no noticeable chain-of-custody problem. No one at Bethesda would ever have known that the casket offloaded at Andrews had been empty. Strong corroboration for this plan is the fact that in her handwritten notes, LBJ’s secretary Marie Fehmer wrote an entry at 5:58 PM (just before landing at Andrews) that reads: ‘Body to Walter Reed.’ To Lifton--and to me--this means that everyone ‘in the know’ on AF1 (LBJ, Clifton, Kellerman, and Burkley) knew the body was not in the Dallas casket anymore and that it had to be reunited with the casket at Walter Reed.”
Horne continued, “And this is where I part company with David Lifton. He believes JFK’s head wounds were tampered with prior to arrival at Bethesda Naval Hospital--and that this surgery was performed at Love Field. I don’t. The throat wound may have been tampered with prior to arrival in Washington, but the head wounds were altered after the body's arrival. I am confident about this for two reasons: (1) Three witnesses--Dr. Ebersole, CAPT Canada, and Thomas Evan Robinson of Gawler’s, who would prepare the body for the formal state funeral on Monday--saw the same head wound on JFK after his body arrived that was seen at Parkland hospital in Dallas; and (2) the ARRB discovered two witnesses to the post-mortem, wound altering surgery to JFK’s head wounds as they were being altered at Bethesda: Tom Robinson and Ed Reed (the Navy x-ray technician). And Navy x-ray tech Ed Reed, under oath, named James J. Humes as the man who performed this surgery. Why is this distinction relevant to the story of the three casket entries? Well, David Lifton believes the body of JFK (with the wounds already altered, per his hypothesis) was simply to be reunited with the Dallas casket at Walter Reed and quickly taken to Bethesda with no manipulations having been performed at Walter Reed. In contrast to David’s view, I believe that the original plan may have been to perform the illicit, clandestine cranial surgery on JFK’s head wounds (to remove all evidence of frontal shots) at Walter Reed, before the body was taken to Bethesda for the official autopsy.”
The mortician's description of the wounds during his interview with Joe West,
which Roy Schaeffer obtained from him and transmitted to David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.
“My reason for postulating this is the interview I conducted of Dr. Dick Davis of the AFIP while I was on the ARRB staff. Dr. Davis was a neuropathologist--the acting Head of Neuropathology at AFIP at the time--and he told me that he had a complete kit prepared with which to perform a craniotomy on the President’s body (surgical tools, cameras, etc.) but that the body never came to Walter Reed, and he was not called upon to perform the function he expected to perform. I believe that, if JFK’s body had been taken to Walter Reed to be reunited with the Dallas casket, then the post-mortem surgery on the cranium would have been performed at Walter Reed to “sanitize the crime scene” before the body was trans-shipped to Bethesda. But because Jackie Kennedy glued herself to the Dallas casket out of loyalty to her murdered husband, the casket could not go to Walter Reed. Because the Dallas casket could not go to Walter Reed, JFK’s body did not go there, even though that had been the plan for over two hours. The end result? As I see it, the immediate end result was the absurdity of three casket entries at Bethesda, when there should have been just one. But there is more implied here. If the post-mortem surgery to alter JFK’s skull wounds had taken place at Walter Reed, then Humes and Boswell (who were administrators and who were NOT forensic pathologists) would have been confronted with a fait accompli, with an enormous cranial defect that would have been represented to them as being ‘the damage caused by the bullet in Dallas.’ Instead, Humes was forced to conduct this obstruction of justice himself, and Boswell was required to assist him in selling the results of the surgery Humes performed as ‘damage from the bullet in Dallas.’ Boswell and Humes were placed in a most uncomfortable position that night and, unfortunately, they succumbed to the pressure. No doubt they were given a ‘World War III’ cover story like LBJ used on everyone else in the coming weeks.”
I asked Doug to clarify what happened at Bethesda between the time the body arrived at 6:35 PM and the time of the second Dallas casket entry at 8:00 PM. “An initial inspection was performed by Humes, Boswell, Ebersole, Canada, and Admirals Galloway and Kenney,” said Horne. “Humes and Boswell were given their orders, and they complied: all evidence of frontal shots to the head were removed from the skull--entry wounds, and bullet fragments, and any brain tissue that showed obvious bullet tracks. In order to do so, a modified craniotomy had to be performed, enlarging the original exit wound seen in Dallas to five times its original size. Following this procedure, the skull x-rays were taken and the initial series of autopsy photos were taken (with the head in a metal stirrup or brace, and a neat, clean Bethesda towel with a blue stripe displayed below the head to give the impression that the body had just arrived in that condition). Afterwards, at about 7:40 or 7:45 PM, JFK’s body was placed back in the Dallas casket and it was allowed to be ‘found’ by the Joint Service Casket Team so that they could perform their ceremonial function, and take the Dallas casket into the morgue.
“As soon as the Dallas casket was opened shortly after 8 PM, the two FBI agents were brought to the morgue, and they never knew that the Dallas casket had originally been empty. They saw JFK lying inside it and removed from it and then placed on the examining table shortly after 8 PM. The famous diagram Dr. Boswell made of the enormous damage to the top of the skull was a ‘con job,’ designed to fool history, and it worked for over three decades. As Tom Robinson told the ARRB staff in 1996, the horrific damage to the top of JFK’s skull seen in the autopsy photos was ‘what the doctors did, not what the bullet did.’ So this was a cover-up on the fly. Many mistakes were made, but they got away with it. They got away with it because people were ordered to remain silent, were threatened with courts martial if they did not, and because the Warren Commission made damn sure the Dallas doctors never saw the autopsy photographs. If the Dallas treatment staff had seen the so-called ‘autopsy’ photos, the medical cover-up would have been exposed.”
That concluded our discussion of this important topic. I urge all of you who have read this article to continue on below, and to study the transcript Doug Horne recently made of the key conversations in the Clifton tapes. In it you will find the tug-of-war over the autopsy and the transportation of the body that Doug mentioned above; the mention of the ‘black Cadillac;’ and Roy Kellerman’s mention of something going on with “the ah, body” after the Dallas casket was on-board the airplane and before the swearing-in ceremony. And pay special attention to the repeated attempts by the Secret Service and General Clifton to separate Jackie Kennedy from her husband’s casket. It’s all there, right in the transcript; thanks to Doug, we now know the proper context in which to evaluate all that information.
It is all rather Shakespearean but, in this case, American-style. And yet there are those who continue to maintain that the US is an exception to the kinds of plots and conspiracies that have dominated Europe and the UK throughout their history. The US, alas, is no “exception” at all. That is one more myth that deserves to be tossed into the dustbin of false history, along with the “lone assassin" scenario and the “magic bullet” fantasy that accompanies it. The unwillingness of our own government to come clean about the assassination, when virtually every element of the case against Lee Oswald has been proven to be false, is a stunning indictment of its own complicity, where elements of the American government were instrumental in the removal of its own highest official in a blatant exercise of power and control that deprived the American people of their own elected leader--an act of brutality and corruption from which this nation has not yet and may never recover.
