From - Thu Dec 17 16:48:53 1998
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From: barb_j@ix.netcom.com (Barb Junkkarinen)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.assassination.jfk
Subject: PARKLAND DOCTORS TALK TO THE ARRB....part 4
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We left off after a discussion of the photo of the back of the head.
Gunn now moves the dialogue to the neck wound.

QUOTE

GUNN: Could we talk about the neck wound for a minute?

JONES: You want to take a break before we get started?

GUNN: Sure. That's fine.

(Recess taken)

GUNN: Talk briefly about the neck wound if we could.
Dr. Perry, do you think that you were the one who probably had the
best view of the neck wound?

PERRY: I'm the one that stuck my foot in my mouth, but actually it
looked like an entrance wound and the bullet appeared to be coming at
him and I based that mainly on the fact it was a small wound to the
neck and without any other information.
I prefaced those comments at the press conference both before and
after by saying that neither Dr. Clark nor I knew how many bullets
there were or where they came from. Unfortunately, my comment said
it's an entrance wound, and that was taken out of context of the
others, but I did say that small wound.
As I mentioned earlier, however, I didn't take any measurements. I
didn't wipe the blood off. I just went through it and it was the thing
to do at the time; had no concept about legal things. We did what we
were trained to do.

GUNN: For my purposes today, the question is not with any of these
whether you conclude that they were an entrance wound or an exit
wound. Those are all --

PERRY: Small like that.

GUNN: So those are --

PERRY: And I estimated, as I recall, about five millimeters like a
pencil eraser I think I used as an example, something like that and,
again, pointing out that it was covered with some blood and I looked
at it and it would be aout five millimeters and then I cut it.

GUNN: Does any of you have a recollection that differs from that
basically small, not jagged edges, five centimeter -- millimeters in
size?

BAXTER: No.

PETERS: I think you've heard the best comment.

BAXTER: I think you could sum up all of our comments on that wound
that it would -- it appeared to be an insignificant wound and --

PERRY: Except for where it was.

BAXTER: Yeah.

PERRY: There's a lot of material in there.

JONES: When Dr. Perry and I went back upstairs into the OR after this
had happened, I think we both -- we were both talking in terms that
this was an entrance wound, my impression when I saw it in the
emergency room. It never crossed my mind it was anything but an
entrance wound. Without having any history to go by, I thought it was
an entrance wound.

PERRY: Had we known, things would have been different; incomplete
information. You learn a great deal, and I learned a great deal in two
days. One is never allow yourself to be thrown into speculation with
the press, bad mistake. At 34 and naive, I thought the truth would
suffice. That is not the case.
Secondly, do not speculate about anything public, ever. I learned that
after operating on Oswald on Sunday when I went down to repeat the
press conference again, I went with a typed statement. I answered no
questions, and I didn't get into a bit of trouble. I learned a great
deal in two days.

PETERS: Great advice. Put that in for the future guys to read.
One thing could I say about that?

GUNN: Sure.

PETERS: I think most of us thought at first that day in the first few
minutes that, boy, it might have gone in through the neck and out the
back of the head, which would have been a big exit wound and a small
entrance wound.
And I was talking to one of the State policemen that day from the
texas Department of law Enforcement, and he said, you know, Doctor, he
said, I could make a hollow point bullet. If I shoot at a crow in a
tree and I hit him, all you'll see fall is a beak and two legs.
He said, if i miss him, if I hit a leaf in front of him, I'll miss
him. You can, you know, hone it down and make it that sensitive, but
it semed at the time without knowing about the hole back there that
had gone through, it semed it could have gone in there and hit the
cervical spine, gone out through the occiput. Seemed very logical.

PERRY: One has to be careful about extrapolating the behavior of
full-jacketed and military bullets with hunting bullets. Although i
don't hunt anymore, because I don't want to kill anything -- I haven't
killed anything in 25 years -- I still like to shoot and have done
some competitive shooting and hand-loading for a number of guns, my
son and I.
And the bullet is the quickest element in this thing about what
happens to it. And, of course, as you know by the Geneva Convention,
wartime you're not supposed to have so-called dum-dums with the points
off. It's just a full-jacketed and gilding metal all around them. And
we found out in Korea and other places where people cut their noses
off causing more damage. The bullet expands. All hunting bullets are
designed to expand.
Obviously, if a bullet goes all the way through an object and hits the
hill behind it, that doesn't cause as much damage as a bullet that
hits a person or an animal and expends all its energy within that
target; makes a lot of diference.
So the idea is to have bullets that expand and all their energy is
inflicted on the target, the way hunting bullets are. Unfortunately,
we're seeing it in wartime now and despite the Geneva Convention which
were deformed into every turn, but the full-jacketed and military
bullets would not be deformed.
And unless they keyhole or turn, entrance and exit wounds would be
essentially the same if the bullet has -- in the vernacular, has gone
to sleep; that it is rotating. And if it's a stable bullet that's
rotating, they look the same. Anyone who has hunted big game knows
that, of course, or who has been in wartime situation. If you don't
have that information, it's easy to be confused about what they do.
As Dr. Peters also pointed out, all of us at this table have learned
that the vagaries of trajectories cannot be predicted. We've seen all
kinds ofstrange trajectories. When the bullet is near the end of its
life, we've had -- go into the peritoneal cavity and drop into the
pelvis without injury to anything; get shot in the buttocks and the
bullet came up behind the ankle; shot in the forehead and it ends up
in the neck as it traverses theskull. We've seen all kinds of strange
things, so there's no way to predict the trajectory of the given
bullet.

GUNN: In the first --
PERRY: That may be more than you wanted to know, by the way.

GUNN: In the first two or three days after the assassination, did you
meet together at all and talk about it and try and put the pieces
together of what you had observed and what you were hearing from the
press?

JONES: I don't think as a group that I remember everyone sitting down
putting all this together. I don't remember us all sitting down like
today, which isone of the nice things to be able to come together
today, because I don't remember that we ever sat down as a group of
five and discussed this.
Individually, something this dramatic, you're goping to intermittently
exchange comments with one another, but I don't think we tried to sit
down and put it together.

McC: Talked about it a lot informally because at the time all ofour
offices were in very close connection with one another, so we just
kind of while going down to get a cup of coffee, you sort of
informally talked here, there, and yonder, but we didn't say let's
have a meeting and review.

GUNN: With the exception of Dr. Perry -- and I'll come back to him in
just a moment -- did any of you talk with any of the autopsy doctors
in Bethesda in the first week or so after the assassination?

JONES: No, I didn't.

GUNN: You're all shaking your head. If you can --

McC: Dr. Perry and I officed together. I remember him getting the call
and listening to him talk to him.

GUNN: Dr. Perry, there was obviously a controversy at the time of your
deposition by doc -- or by Mr. Specter regarding whether you had
received the call in the evening of the 22nd or the following morning.
I know that memory does not improve with age, but I'm just wondering
if you have any subsequent thoughts that help you place that telephone
call better?

PERRY: I thought we settled that. We talked to Humes. There was a lot
of stuff going on, but I thought he said he'd call me the next morning
now that I recall.

McC: Yeah, that's what it was. No question.

PERRY: And I may have said -- there was a lot of stuff happening on
Friday, of course, but as I recall, he called me the next morning and,
of course, he did not know about the trach that I'd done, and he did
not know about the anterior wound in the neck since I disfigured it
somewhat with the incision. And when he inquired about that, things
really fell into place then because he had a wound in the posterior to
account for that one. So things kind of came together.

GUNN: Dr. McClelland, you said there was no doubt about the timing of
that and that's because you were in the office yourself?

mcC: I was as far as I am from you.

GUNN: So ten feet or so?

McC: Yeah.

PERRY: It was Saturday morning sometime, but I don't know what time.

McC: Uh-huh, middle of the morning sometime.

PERRY: Huh?

McC: Middle of the morning sometime.

PERRY: There was a scheduled conference -- press conference on
Saturday morning and I'd asked Dr. Shires to accompany me to it. And
I'd asked Dr. Clark to accompany me to those press conferences for the
same reason. And this was conducted in Mr. Price's office and had to
do -- I think --

COURT REPORTER: Can you speak up, Doctor?

PERRY: I'm sorry. It was conducted in Mr. Price's ofice, who was
administrator there at Parkland and there Jimmy Breslin and Richard
Valeriani and a group of media were there and they wanted to talk
about it, and that was Saturday morning sometime.
And I asked Dr. Shires to accompany me there; that I was not willing
to go to the press conference unassisted as it was without senior
counsel, if you will, having had a really bad experience the day
before. And so -- but I don't know what relation that was to the phone
call before or after -- this must have been after because I think it
terminated about noon. I don't recall exactly.

JONES: You had --

McC: Well, it wasn't --

JONES: You had talked to me. We were making rounds as I recall. There
was three or four of us and we were going through the hall into the
back side of the cafeteria Saturday morning, as I recall, and you had
mentioned at that point that you had received a call.

PERRY: So it was early?

JONES: It must have been before the -- your conference.

PERRY: Yeah, I think so.

JONES: -- because i know it --

PERRY: That sounds about right.

JONES: Earlier in the morning I was --

PERRY: You know, as you might expect, Mr. Gunn, those of us who are
involved in our end of the business don't keep those kind of logs. You
recognize theimportance of exact time and date with respect to things
-- in the legal profession you do, but we don't think that way.

GUNN: I can tell you part of the significance of this, and this has
emerged in the -- in the depositions itself -- in the deposition of
Dr. humes he acknowledged that he wrote a draft of the autopsy report
which he then burned. He also burned his notes from the autopsy, which
wasnot exactly what he had told to the Warren Commission. And one
could put together that the original draft does not have any reference
to the bullet wound in the neck and the subsequent draft does have
that in it, but that can be a rason the timing was important.

PERRY: Those of us who do medical writing or writing of any kind, we
generally would be reluctant to let anybody see our first draft. It
often is forcontent and we come back for organization and syntax later
but, you know, you often throw those things away because they're kind
of kaleidoscope, if you will --

GUNN: Uh-huh.

PERY: -- and you wouldn't keep them. You don't recognize they have any
value till you -- because they contain all kinds of random thoughts.

END QUOTE

Next Gunn goes on to their impression that a shot came from the front
and asks them about any pressure from governmenttypes....coming soon
to a monitor near you!

Of note...Perry says that he thought Humes told him he'd call him the
next morning.....if he hadn't talked to him already, when did Humes
tell him that?

Barb :-)