From: grant_jo@ripple.enet.dec.com (Joel Grant)
Subject: Lifton
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date:  8 APR 92 12:12:44 PDT



re: 803 (David Wright)

I am told I should do what everyone else does and extract text,
edit, and respond with the quotes juxtaposed to my own comments.
If someone would show me the commands to do this I would be
happy to do so.  In fact, so poor are my technical skills
that it has been 30 minutes between the writing of this
sentence and the writing of the last sentence - someone came
into my office desirous of a "meeting."

But not being able to extract/quote apparently creates some
confusion when responding to a long posting.  Answering every
point without the extraction becomes more than a chore.  So
I shall try to respond to your (David's) basic thesis.  

I take your basic thesis to be support for the theory in
David Lifton's book _Best Evidence_.  (and yes, I have
read this book, which is why I am so negative about Mr.
Lifton, whom I regard as a ghoul)  Lifton's basic thesis
is that someone or some group of people surgically altered
JFK's body between the time Air Force One landed and when
the autopsy was performed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Lifton would convince us that JFK's body was not in the
coffin during the flight; rather, it was in a body
bag in the luggage compartment.  When the plane landed the
coffin we all saw being loaded into an ambulance, the ambulance
Mrs. Kennedy rode in, was empty.  The body was en route to,
if I recall, Walter Reed, there to undergo surgery designed
to convince the autopsy surgeons that all the wounds inflicted
on the President came from behind.

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.  We organized it."

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!

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.  Much
has been made of the word "cerebellum", as if the doctors
had stated they say a wound in that area of the President's
head.  This is incorrect:

From Kemp Clark's report: "...There was a large wound in the right
occipito-parietal region, from which profuse bleeding was
occurring... There was considerable loss of scalp and bone
tissue.  Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding
from the wound."

From Dr. Jenkins: "...There was a great laceration on the right
side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great
defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and
laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent
that the cerebullem had protruded from the wound."

From the autopsy: "...There is a large irregular defect of the
scalp and skull on the right involving chiefly the parietal
bone but extending somewhat into the temporal and occipital
regions.  In this region there is an actual absence of scalp
and bone producing a defect which measures approximately
13 cm. in greatest diameter."

The only real difference in these descriptions is that the
Parkland doctors saw a still-bleeding, still-brain oozing
wound in an emergency room situation.  The location of
the wound itself is placed just as the autopsy doctors
placed it.  We have already seen that the Clark Panel describes
the wound in essentially the same way.

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.

5. Nowhere does the Clark Panel express "skepticism" about
any of the photos.  David Wright has said he believes this
to be the case.  I interpret that word, in this context,
to mean question about authenticity.  The only aspersions
cast by the Panel on the photos is the notice that some
of the photos do not show sufficient contrast.  I do not
regard their comments as "skepticism."

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.  Their opinion was that
four shots were fired, three from the TSBD and one from
the Grassy Knoll.  Timing by the Z-film, they believed
the Grassy Knoll shot came at about 295-296, a time
when no one suggests anyone was hit by a bullet.

On a more general note, let us for a moment consider the
utter absurdity of trying to do a murderous conspiracy according
to a scenario that has you:

Firing at the President in a public place with a couple
of hundred eye/earwitnesses, armed with various still and
moving cameras, using two gunmen, one of whom is located
in an area under almost constant observation, by eye and
by camera, whose presence we will nevertheless try to 
hide by somehow devising a way to remove the heavily guarded
body of the President from a coffin, stashing it unnoticed
into a body bag, stashing the body bag into Air Force 
One, again unnoticed, removing the body from Air Force
One, yet again unnoticed, spiriting it away to Walter
Reed Hospital, in in the space of about thirty minutes
performing post-mortem surgery so refined and perfect
that autopsy doctors a few minutes later will not notice
it, so good all subsequent forensic specialists have not
noticed it, and (again unnoticed) bringing back the 
surgically altered body just in time for the autopsy.

Sound like the way you would plan to assasinate the 
President?

Joel