From: david@cats.ucsc.edu (David Wright)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Re: Lifton
Date: 10 Apr 92 03:12:27 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz


In article <1992Apr8.202140.3387@PA.dec.com> grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant) writes:


|re: 803 (David Wright)
|
|I do not believe Mr. Lifton's thesis; in fact, I regard it as
|one of the silliest of the second gunman/conspiracy theories.
|
|
|1. Listen to Dave Powers:  "Lifton's book is the biggest pack
|of malarky I ever heard in my life.  I never had my hands or
|eyes off of [the coffin] during the period he says it was
|unattended, and when Jackie got up to go to the stateroom
|we stayed right there with the coffin and never let go of
|it.  In fact, several of us were with it through the
|whole trip all the way to Bethesda Naval Hospital.  It
|couldn't have happened the way [Lifton] said it did.
|Not even thirty seconds.  I never left it.  There was a general
|watch. 

Bowers story may or not may be true, and there does not seem to be any
confirmation of this story. There were 5 or 6 witnesses who saw the same
shipping casket, one witness reported seeing Kennedy brought in just before
he heard the sound of Helicopters. There was a time interval here, between
when the second casket was brought it, and when the autopsy began.  So Bowers
could be right and still there would be some time for some "preliminary
examinations" and "surgery of the head area", which the FBI report said
occured. However, a more likely story is that the body was transferred when
Jaquline Kennedy went to the front of the plane. If you want to descredit
Bower's testimony, you have to discredit Manchester's book which explained the
movements of the people on Air Force One. Why would he be in error
or make something up? Why didn't manchester mention there was a "general watch"
or say that Bowers was in the room with the coffin. Instead, Lifton says that
 Manchester says that only four other people matterd at the point in time in
question.  I put very little probability in manchester being wrong, since he 
was extremely meticulous in gathering information. I put more wieght in
the corroborative explanations above than the single story of Bowers.

Aside from Manchester, Lifton talked to the photographer on the plane, the
pilot of the plane, and relied on the pictures of the swearing in of the new
president. 

Now, I ask, have you read Lifton? It is clear that although you read him you
only did so very casually. For example, you think that he thinks that all
wounds he though came from the front, which is not necessarily true.  

|2. Lifton believes that no doctors at Parkland noticed the
|entry wound in the President's back.  But this isn't true.
|Dr. Jenkins felt this wound.  The wound was there in
|Dallas.  Lifton has been made aware of this, and accuses
|Lattimer and Jenkins of falsifying the dates of some correspondence
|they have had.  Lifton the scientist!

Do you have evidence that Dr. Jenkins said he observed a back wound at 
Parkland? If he saw the wound, did he make no attempt to tell anyone about it? 
What about the people who were in charge of cleaning JFK's body, why didn't 
they see it? Finally, who cares, and it doesn't manner, since all of the 
other people there didn't see it?

|3. It is by no means clear that the attending physicians in
|Dallas were reporting wildly different wounds than those
|reported by the autopsy team and by the Clark Panel. 

There are four different stories about the assassination comming from four
different places based on different evidence, and/or different interpretations
of the evidence. 

At Dallas:

The throat was an entry wound, the head was an exit wound. No one saw the
rear back or head wounds.

As to the head wound, the Dallas version is a smaller hole, in the rear of the
head, consistent with it being an exit wound from either the throat entrance
wound or a temple entrance wound. Numerous witness testimony backs this up, as
doese the head fragments that flew forward to the rear of the car.

Dr. McClelland finished his report that Kennedy was shot from the left temple.
So did Dr. Jenkins. Clearly no such report by Humes or conclusion of the HSCA
or Clark agrees with this.

At Dallas, the size of the head wound was 2 and 3/4 inches across, in Bethesda
it became 5 and 1/8 across, the largest being 6.7 inches.

At Dallas, the wound was described as occipital, and described in the
McClelland drawing showind a hole in the back of the head. Although Joel is
correct to say that the Bethesda people say that it went to the occipital, 
the Bethesda and autopsy photographs show a wound that is "chiefly parietal".
At Dallas, bones protruded through scalp. At Bethesda, the wound had no scalp,
and bones fell off the skull when Humes touched it. They did not fall off, 
unbelieably, when Perry deliverd cardiac message! The autopty photograph
shows scalp, in trying to hide the head wound. 

Now, there is a discrepency between the rear entry wounds of Humes and 
the photos. The photos show a high wound, all the Bethesda people place
it low, where the skull starts to turn inward.

As to the throat wound, well that is obvioulsy different from Dallas, where
everyone (including Crenshaw) says the wound was small, to Humes, who said
the wound was large. One witness, who may have seen the body before the
so-called preliminary examinations, say the throat wound was sutured.

As to cerebellum controversy, it appears somewhat irrelevent, although
the point is valid that the exit wound is so large and that rear part of
the head that one wonders how it could be an exit wound from a bullet
entering up high, if in fact it did so.

Then there is the back wound. Most of the Dallas people did not see it. The
Humes people said it came in at 40 degrees. The House said it came from
below the president.  The Clark Panel said that the wound was too small to
insert a finger, implying that there was either another wound or Humes
and the attending two other physicians were wrong.

|4. Speaking of the Clark Panel, let us not for the record that,
|after listing all the materials they examined, they state:
|"All of the above were listed in a memorandum of transfer,
|located in the National Archives, and dated Apr. 26, 1965."
|As stated in the autopsy, the undeveloped X-ray and photos
|were delivered to Roy Kellerman and/or George W. Burkley,
|who was the President's personal physician, who signed for
|them.  Subsequently, the material was in the possession of
|the Kennedy family.  From there they went to the National
|Archives.  And you can see that from the National Archives
|they went next to the Clark Panel, who noticed the inventory
|of what they had matched the inventory of what the National
|Archives said they should have.

What all this means is you failed to read p 654 of Lifton's Best evidence,
where is he notes that reciepts were changed, that the number of
photos from the Clark Panel did not match the HSCA, and other
peculiarties. It is also interesting to add to the fact that a CIA agent was
caught rifling through the files of the X-rays. CIA involvement could
explain disapearing and incomplete files.

|6. The HSCA itself, which believed there was a gunman on
|the grassy knoll, was unable to find any but acoustic
|evidence to support this view.

They found fairly large number of corroborative eye witness testimony that the
shots came from that direction. The acustic evidence could be valid if
cross-talk and interference from one band to another occured. The noises
apparently match the tests of echos made. Baden still believes in a shot from
the knoll, even aside the acoustic evidence.
-- 
   |^^^^^^|      _______________________________________________________
   |      |      |                                                     | 
   |      |      | "Be Prepared for Enormous Fustrations"              |
   | (o)(o)      O         --Kreps, A course in Micro theory, p. 352   | 
   @      _)    o|_____________________________________________________|  
    |  ____\ o o
    |     /   
   /     \                              All comments  are mine---(David Wright) 
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