Rex Bradford's presentation to the class on 22 March 2000
Rex Bradford is a developer of computer games who lives in Ipswich, Mass. Has been interested in the JFK
assassination for the last couple years, has become a conspiracist. Government
documents are where it's at.
Caution—all hard evidence is also
consistent with Lee Harvey Oswald's also being a conspirator.
The National Archives and Records Administration contains 4.5 million pages
of JFK documents.
He disagrees with K. Rahn's selective use of strong evidence to deduce
reliable facts about the assassination. After all, western civilization has used
the adversarial system, trial by jury, and all levels of evidence for several
centuries. This is the best way to decide guilt and innocence.
Will use today's time to tell two amazing stories—the
saga of the position of the head wound and the story of the Mexico City tapes.
The head wound
The Warren Commission concluded that JFK was hit by two bullets from the
rear. But there is ample evidence that shots were fired from the right front—many
witnesses heard shots from the knoll, saw smoke coming from behind the picket
fence, and felt bullets whizzing over their heads. The Warren Commission
concluded from the autopsy report that Kennedy's head contained two wounds, a
small entrance wound just above the EOP and an exit wound five inches in
diameter on the right side. These wound are depicted in drawings by Rydberg, one
showing the rear of the head and the other the
side. The problem is that the
reports from Parkland Hospital in Dallas don't match the Commission's drawings.
Dr. Kemp Clark noted on page 2 of his report that "cerebral and cerebellar
tissue were extruding from the wound," which meant that the wound was much
lower than Rydberg showed because the cerebellum is found at the bottom rear of
the brain. He also read aloud the WC testimony (Volume VI) of a couple of
the Dallas doctors about the large head wound and noted that the Dallas doctors
agree remarkably well on the its position. A drawing by Dr. McClelland, made for Josiah Thompson and Six
Seconds in Dallas, shows the shows the wound centered nearly in the back of
the head. [The ARRB misnamed this drawing somewhat. It was actually made for
someone on behalf of Josiah Thompson based on Dr. McClelland's testimony. Mr.
Bradford pointed out, though, that five Dallas doctors, including McClelland,
verified its general accuracy in 1998.] Rydberg's drawing also doesn't match the Zapruder
film. When Rydberg's
JFK head is rotated to its actual position in Z-312, the bullet would have had
to pass through it at an upward angle, which is nonsensical.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations
concluded that the bullet entered JFK's head four inches higher than where the
WC claimed, near the cowlick rather than the EOP. This high entrance allowed a
trajectory from the rear to be downward at the proper angle. But even up there
it was hard to find the tiny entrance wound. One of the autopsy photos, of the
back of JFK's head, fails to show an obvious entrance wound near the cowlick.
It also shows only hair where the Dallas doctors portrayed a large wound. Dr. Humes denied to his dying day that he and the other autopsy physicians had
mislocated the entrance wound. One of these denials is shown on a page of
testimony from the HSCA report, where he tells Dr. Davis and Dr. Petty that it
was just blood near the cowlick. Another page from the HSCA report makes the
point that whereas many Warren critics have refused to accept that all the
medical people at Parkland, who reported the large wound in the read of the head
rather than on the side, could have been so consistently in error. The report
counters by noting that the 26 medical people from the autopsy all reported
substantially the same location as shown in the autopsy photographs and X-rays.
But that's not true. The JFK Records Act of 1992
created the ARRB (Assassination Records Review Board) that between 1994 and
1998 was responsible for releasing millions of pages of documents related to the
JFK assassination, from which comes an amazing story. It now turns out that many
of the autopsy personnel saw the wound in the rear of the head, not on the side
as the Warren Report concluded. Tom Robinson saw it squarely in the rear of the
head. Roy Kellerman, of the Secret Service, drew it even left of center in the
rear. James W. Sibert, of the FBI, saw it in the upper rear. Medical Technician
Paul O'Connor saw it where the WC said it was. James Curtis Jenkins saw it in
the right rear. FBI agent Francis X. O'Neill remembered it in the right rear,
with a low entry wound nearby. Richard A. Lipsey believed the head was hit buy
two bullets, one entering at the small wound and the other at the large. X-ray
technician Edward Reed saw the large wound in the right occipital region.
Collectively, these observations mean that the previous statement about
unanimity among the 26 witnesses from the autopsy is flatly untrue.
In 1996 and 1997 the ARRB reinterviewed many of these witnesses. John
Stringer, of Bethesda, who in 1972 had reported a wound in the back of the head,
now changed his story to a version like the Commission's. Others did as well.
Why are they changing their stories? They are probably being pressured into
lying.
(Here follow four diagrams of the back of a skull with wounds superimposed,
which Mr. Bradford skipped. Diagram 1. Diagram
2. Diagram 3. Diagram
4. Text
from ARRB interview with Dr. McClelland.)
Summary page: Head Wound Facts #1. Six points stressing the contrasting
testimonies from Dallas and Bethesda. Second summary page: Head Wound Facts
#2:
Five more points supporting the idea that the autopsy photographs are
falsifications.
The sad thing is that Admiral Burkley, the president's personal physician,
could have cleared up all these problems but was not called to testify before the
Warren Commission. He also contracted the HSCA shortly after it was formed and
told them he had evidence indicating a conspiracy, but the HSCA apparently never
contacted him.
Government documents reveal that the true medical story was covered up by the
government itself. The Katzenbach memo of 25 November 1963 to new presidential
assistant Bill Moyers makes three main points: (1) "The public must be
satisfied that Oswald was the assassin" and would have been convicted at
trial; (2) "Speculation abut Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off…";
and (3) "The matter has been handled thus far with neither dignity nor
conviction." We can agree only with #3. The first two show the beginning of
a cover-up. Page 1 of memo. Page 2 of memo.
The Mexico City tapes
Rumors and speculations about Lee Harvey
Oswald's putative trip to Mexico City in late September and early October of
1963 are discussed on pages 658 and 659 of the Warren Report. The Commission
concluded that it was a rather ordinary trip in which he traveled there alone,
did nothing special, and returned with no extra money. The HSCA said that it
might not have been him who appeared at the Russian and Cuban embassies. The
"Lopez report," an amazing new document of 400 pages, deals with the
trip in detail.
A book by Michael Beschloss notes a telephone
call between Johnson and Hoover the morning after the assassination in which
they were already discussing tapes and photos from the Russian Embassy. Given
that neither the voice on the tape nor the man in the photo appeared to be
Oswald, could there have been a different person there posing as Oswald? The
tape or tapes seem to have disappeared, however. Several pages of documents
released by the CIA and FBI tell of confusion about the existence of the tapes
lasting several days after the assassination. Apparently such tapes are
transcribed and then rerecorded. The FBI first said that agents had listened to
the tapes, but later claimed this had been incorrect, and that they had only
read transcripts of the tapes. A summary
page, "The Mexico City Tapes That Weren't There," details the five
days of official confusion about the tapes.
A CIA memo of 20 December 1963 noted their
intention not to tell the Warren Commission about the existence of telephone
taps and to rely instead on information from Sylvia Duran and other
officials from the Soviet Consulate. A brief exchange between Commissioners
Russell B. Russell (Senator from Georgia) and Allen W. Dulles (former Director
of Central Intelligence), Russell claimed strongly that he didn't trust material
coming from the CIA because "I think they'll doctor anything they hand to
us."
One possible reason for keeping the tapes secret
would be that they tied Oswald to Valerie Kostikov, a KGB agent at the Russian
Consulate in Mexico City. It would also reveal Oswald's claiming to have friends
in the Cuban Embassy. The fear of revealing this explosive information started a cover-up of Oswald's
true identity and role in the assassination. Johnson's strong-arming of Warren
and Russell may have been part of this cover-up.
***************
In response to a question from the class about
the single-bullet theory, Mr. Bradford said that he believed that CE 399 was
planted and that bullets may have been removed from Kennedy's body. He also
noted that the two best books about the assassination may be Josiah Thompson's Six
Seconds in Dallas and Michael Kurtz's Crime of the Century.
Time then ran out, and class had to be dismissed.
Documents not shown by Mr. Bradford included:
Two pages of the autopsy report [First
page; second page]
JFK's face sheet, drawn by
Dr. Boswell
Dr. Peters's comment
on the position of the large head wound
Comments by Drs.
Humes, Boswell, and Finck on whether they changed their mind about the
location of the entrance wound on the head
The HSCA's note that
the DOD couldn't find the autopsy camera to compare it with the autopsy
photographs
An early memo by S. B.
Donahoe that the U. S. government could not release blow-by-blow news about
the investigation
