Subject: Russo, et al on family interference in JFK's autopsy
Date: 3 Feb 2000 06:04:16 GMT
From: garyag@ix.netcom.com(Gary Aguilar)
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk

Some Warren loyalists have argued that it was likely that JFK's
pathologists didn't dissect the back wound because of pressure from the
Kennedys. Though William Manchester,  Gus Russo  and John Lattimer, MD
have advanced this notion,  the weight of the evidence is against it.
(Not even the discredited Gerald Posner buys it.)

As I wrote to one such loyalist who claimed the family meddled in JFK's
autopsy:

I won't argue that the Kennedys probably wanted JFK's Addison's
disease, which was irrelevant to his cause of death, left unexplored.
So although there's no solid evidence for it, perhaps they did request
that JFK's abdominal cavity, which houses the adrenals, be left alone,
especially since JFK suffered no abdominal injuries. But even if the
Kennedys had made that seemingly reasonable request, it was ignored.
Russo recounts that one of JFK's pathologists, Pierre Finck, MD, said
that, "The Kennedy family did not want us to examine the abdominal
cavity, but the abdominal cavity was examined."  And indeed it was -
Kennedy was completely disemboweled.  If Finck was right, so much for
the military's kowtowing to the Kennedys. Perhaps the only "victory"
the family may have won was that the doctors kept quiet about JFK's
adrenal problems, at least until 1992.

Perhaps they also won the choice of venues for the post mortem:
Bethesda Naval Hospital. But they didn't win much else, and they didn't
interfere with the autopsy. They didn't, for example, select the sub
par autopsists; military authorities did. Realizing how over their
heads they were, the nominees requested that nonmilitary forensic
consultants be called in. Permission was denied,  restricting access to
second-rate military pathologists exclusively. The House Select
Committee (HSCA) explored the question of family interference in
considerable detail finding that, other than (reasonably) requesting
the exam be done as expeditiously as possible, the Kennedys did not
interfere.  And, finally, as an important, though not dispositive,
legal matter, RFK left blank the space marked "restrictions" in the
permit he signed for his brother's autopsy.

But I agree with you that it is likely there was interference in JFK's
autopsy, but not from the Kennedys. For the most glaring errors to my
mind - the selection of inexperienced pathologists and the exclusion of
available, experienced ones, the failure to dissect JFK's back wound,
and the failure to obtain his clothing - had nothing to do with
camouflaging JFK's secret disease, or even with significantly speeding
the examination. (Boyd Stephens, MD, the San Francisco medical
examiner, told me that dissecting the back wound would have taken not
much more than one hour. JFK was in the morgue more than eight.) Nor is
it at all likely the Kennedys would have imposed those specific
restrictions, in the off chance they had even thought of them. Instead,
these peculiar decisions are more likely to have come from high in the
military.

Why the military? Because it would have taken someone high in the
military to deny the pathologists' sensible request for competent
civilian consultants they needed. The autopsy of the century was thus
relegated to the inadequate military pathologists who, almost certainly
under orders, later destroyed primary autopsy evidence and signed false
declarations. (Could civilians have been counted on to do that?) And
because the only consulting forensic pathologist who was present, the
rusty Pierre Finck, MD,  testified under oath that during the autopsy
the chief pathologist, James H. Humes, MD asked, "Who is in charge
here?" and, Finck said that an "Army General" in the morgue, whose name
Finck said he couldn't recall, answered, "I am."   Because Finck also
testified he was ordered not to dissect the back wound by a superior in
the morgue whose name, again, just wouldn't come to mind.  Because
Finck also claimed that his request to examine JFK's clothes, a
rudimentary yet important exam, was denied by a superior in the morgue,
someone who, again, he didn't name. That someone was certainly not the
ranking autopsy surgeon, Humes.

Because Humes apparently confided in a personal friend - CBS's Jim
Snyder - that, as Bob Richter put it in 1967 in a once-secret,
internal, CBS memorandum, "Humes also said he had orders from someone
he refused to disclose - other than stating it was not Robert Kennedy -
to not do a complete autopsy."  Because two days after the autopsy,
Humes signed two affidavits he knew were false - admitting he had
destroyed only "preliminary draft notes" of the autopsy protocol, while
Humes withheld the salient fact that he had also destroyed original
notes that he and Finck had written during the autopsy.  (Humes gave a
silly explanation for destroying those notes - because they were
stained with the President's blood. Boswell's notes, which he did not
destroy, were also bloodstained.)

And, finally, because the autopsy photographer, John Stringer, admitted
under oath that he signed one of the two false affidavits he signed
only after his superior officer told him to sign it,  while Humes and
his second in command, J. Thornon Boswell, MD, both knowingly signed a
false affidavit declaring that no autopsy photographs were missing,
when they knew the opposite was true.

I am not persuaded that the Kennedys, who didn't even have the clout to
keep the pathologists' scalpels out of JFK's uninjured bowels, would
have had any more luck securing the kind of military cooperation that
would have been necessary to complete such an ambitious scenario - that
is, in the off chance they had wanted to.

I believe you also said Humes probably burned autopsy notes because he
wanted to vaporize the evidence that proved they'd done a lousy job. If
that indeed is what you said, it must be pure conjecture on your part.
If you have it, please favor me with some documentation, will you? But
even if that had been Humes' motive, he would certainly have also
destroyed Boswell's notes to eliminate the obvious and glaring errors
in that document.  Besides, autopsy notes from even the best autopsy
often don't reflect the quality of the work; they are usually just
preprinted pages with body organs listed alongside blank spaces, as
well as outline body diagrams, that are designed to be filled in - just
as in the only one, of three, that Humes didn't destroy: Boswell's.

Gary

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