From: jad@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (John DiNardo) Subject: Part I thru X, PACIFICA RADIO Investigates the Murder of President Kennedy Date: 4 Sep 92 13:26:52 GMT I made the following transcript from a tape recording of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio station WBAI-FM (99.5) 505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl. New York, NY 10018 (212) 279-0707 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GARY NULL: There is criticism on the part of the media to opening up the John F. Kennedy assassination to a new investigation. However, there are individuals who are willing to challenge this stance. They feel that there are more than enough reasons to open up the Warren Commission findings and to take another look; even to convene another impartial group of researchers and investigators who have subpoena power; even a special prosecutor, if necessary, to delve into this issue without the FBI and the CIA being the ones who are primarily responsible for giving the information, as some doubt has been raised concerning their objectivity in the original Warren Commission hearings and research- gathering. Our first guest on today's program is Harold Weisberg, the House Subcommitee on Assassinations investigator, the author of a book on Lee Harvey Oswald and the post-mortem, the whitewash and the frame-up. He has also written a book on the assassination of Martin Luther King. Welcome to our program, Mr. Weisberg. I would like you to give us your professional assessment of the House Select Committee on Assassinations -- since you were a primary investigator there -- on their findings, on the Warren Commission, and on .... HAROLD WEISBERG: I had no connection with the House Committee. I was the source for most of the stories that appeared that were critical of them. It was a synthetic duplication of the Warren Commission. It began with the intent (now, I'm not talking about each individual member. I'm talking about the staff who did it; especially Blakey, the general counsel and chief- of-staff) .... It began with the intent of putting down all the critics. Each hearing -- each public hearing -- began with what he called "the narration", and he picked out the critics whose work he was going to address, and then the hearing was dedicated to debunking them and proving them wrong. And I'm happy to say that there's only one critic he managed to avoid; and that's me. He wasn't going to pick a fight with me. All of their [the Committee's] work was faulted in varying degrees of ways, but they NEVER investigated the crime itself. In that, they did exactly what the FBI did, and exactly what the Warren Commission did. They did NOT -- any one of them -- investigate the crime itself. Now, I think you should know that, unlike the other books, there are no theories in my book. I'm a former investigative reporter, a Senate investigator, an intelligence analyst; and that's not my bag. And I don't think that that's what the people of the country need for the democratic system to work. They're factual. Now, I'm going to quote, accurately from memory, a record I got through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Perhaps it would help your audience to understand more about where I'm coming from to say that I filed about a dozen Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the Government. Most of them are on the Kennedy assassination. And most of the records I got were from the FBI. In all, I have about a third of a million pages of records. These are the same ones that Oliver Stone has been promoting for himself in his movie by saying that they're suppressed. Now, from the Department of Justice and from the FBI I got a record of a memorandum. Nicholas Katzenabach -- who was then the Deputy Attorney- General of the United States and acting Attorney-General as of the time in question, because Bobby Kennedy was not there because of the crime and the tragedy. He [Katzenbach] wrote Lyndon Johnson, through his [Johnson's] channel, Bill Moyers, recommending to Lyndon Johnson that they had to convince the country that Oswald was alone, that Oswald was the assassin, that he had no confederates who were still at-large, and that the evidence was such that he would be convicted in trial. The typed copy is dated early Monday morning the first working day after the assassination, November 25, 1963. I also happen to have gotten Katzenbach's handwritten copy, which he wrote when he had no typist available on Sunday. And from the FBI I got a record which said that Katzenbach had discussed it with [FBI Director] Hoover on Sunday, as soon as Oswald was killed. So as soon as the Government knew that there would be no trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, they closed the books, the crime was solved, and that was it. So you see, when the crime itself was never investigated, there are no leads for other people to follow. And I address this so that your audience can understand that those people, who develop theories and advance them as solutions, do it without a factual basis. I don't know of any theory that is factually supportable by the known evidence. And now I'm talking about the official investigative reports of the FBI and things like that which do establish some fact. GARY NULL: Okay, we thank you very much, Mr. Weisberg, for sharing your views and for giving us this insight on this important piece of critical information. I appreciate your being on with us today. Let's go now to another guest who is standing by, who has a different point of view, and who has additional information. I would like to invite Jim Marrs [author of CROSSFIRE] onto our program again. Welcome to our program, Jim. I'd like to pick up where we left off yesterday. For those of you who were not here yesterday and who didn't hear the program, we did a careful assessment, going step-by-step through the events that led up to the actual shooting, showing that the American Public has never been made aware of the fact that earlier in the day, in Fort Worth, there was also a motorcade for President Kennedy, but that motorcade was substantially different. It was VERY very heavily guarded, on proper protocol, by the Secret Service. And the police were maintained, meaning that sharpshooters were stationed on rooftops, no window was allowed to be opened, there was adequate protection. But all of that was suspended at Dealey Plaza and for the trip through Dallas. WHY? WHO was responsible? Who caused the rescinding of these orders? Those are questions that have to be thoroughly analyzed. I would like just a brief summary of some of the points from yesterday - - an overview of some of the discrepancies between what we have been led to believe and what actually occurred. Then I would like to go into the area that our previous guest, Mr. Harold Weisberg has suggested -- that there is NO evidence to support any of the assassination theories. I would like you to give us YOUR information, your belief, and whatever documentation you have that could, in any way, directly or indirectly, tie in any of a number of proposed agendas such as the renegade CIA agents, the knowledge that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover could have known or may have known in advance that the assassination was imminent, certain right-wing extremists, certain members of the military, and also members of Organized Crime, and some anti-Castro Cubans. Now, all of these have been alleged -- depending upon the theorist -- to have participated. But you have some unique insights and and I would like you to share with us some of those insights at this time. JIM MARRS [author of CROSSFIRE]: Well, first just let me say that the one thing I think that everyone including Mr. Weisberg, including Gerald Ford, including David Bigeley(?), including everybody who is connected with this thing at this point .... I think the one thing that we can all agree on is that there is substantial controversy over the death of President Kennedy and over the subsequent investigation and the medical evidence. Now, in this particular case, that confusion, that controversy, that obfuscation, if you will, is the basis of what can legitimately be called "the cover- up". There should not have been a cover-up. There should not have been this confusion. This was a case .... this was the President of the United States, for God's sake. There was an autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. There was treatment at a reputable hospital: Parkland, in Dallas. And there should not be this confusion. There should be some very clear-cut answers based on scientific, medical, forensic evidence to say: "Here's what happened. He was shot three times from the rear." Or: "He was shot once from the front and once from the rear." It should be very clear, but it's NOT. It is TOTALLY muddled. It is TOTALLY in confusion. And THAT is the nature of this cover-up. Not that there has never been any information, but that there has been so much information, and so much CONTRADICTORY information that it has thrown the whole thing into confusion and controvery, so that we can't seem to get to the bottom of this. I think that is very self-evident. Now, who has the power to do that? And who CAN do that? And who could have saved us from all of this? The Federal Government! The Government who supposedly had him autopsied. The Government who supposedly is in charge of the investigation. It should have been clear-cut, but it's not. And, to me, that shows, in an overview, that the Government has been responsible for all this confusion, rather than clearing it up and actually presenting us with factual information as to what happened. So this is what is causing all of the problems, because the Government is STILL saying: "Well, there's nothing there. It's all cut and dried." And yet, it's not. You can look at the evidence for yourself. For instance, in the medical evidence, I could go down the whole list of doctors in Dallas who said that he had a large gaping hole in the right rear portion of his head. Even Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who jumped up on the back of the car in a vain effort to save his life; in his Warren Commission testimony he says, quite bluntly, quite to the point: "The right rear portion of his head was missing." End-quote. Okay? How much clearer do you want to be? And every doctor in Dallas backed him up. Doctor Jones says that there was a large defect in the back side of his head. Dr. Perry said: "I noted a large evulsive wound in the right parieto- occipital area." I could go on and on and on. They all said the same thing: that there was a gaping hole in the right rear portion of his head. But today, we have an autopsy photograph that has come out of the Government that purports to show the back of President Kennedy's head, and there's no large gaping hole there. All there is is a small hole that the House Committee told us was an entrance wound. And yet, the autopsy doctor, Dr. Humes, in his testimony to the House Committee said: "Well, I don't know what that was, but that wasn't any wound of entrance. And I know that for sure." Okay? So what's going on here? I mean, the confusion points the finger at what REALLY is going on, and at who is generating all this. And it's the Federal Government! GARY NULL: Alright, so let's take a look here. You're suggesting that the Government, or various members of different areas of the Government have participated in a systematic cover-up. JIM MARRS: Absolutely! For instance, the Warren Commission tells us -- and the people who defend the Warren Commission to this very day tell us -- that one of the shots (it started off that it was the first shot. Now they're backing up by saying: Well, maybe it was the second one or the third one) .... but one of the shots, they say, went through Kennedy's neck and did not hit anything. It went on to strike Governor Connally, causing all of his wounds -- which has become known as "the single bullet theory"; this idea that one bullet went through both men. This is the foundation of the "single assassin theory". Okay? If you don't have one bullet going through two men, then you've got more bullets, which means more shooters, which means a conspiracy involving more than one gunman. So to keep from having to admit that, they came up with the "single bullet theory" which says that one bullet went through Kennedy's neck and struck Connally. Now, the problem is that the bullet did not go through his neck. The Warren Commission plainly states that it hit him in the middle of the back -- the third thoracic vertebrae, between the shoulder blades. Doctor Humes places it there in the Siebert-O'Neill FBI Report of the autopsy. His jacket and his shirt, in the National Archives, show a bullet hole in the middle of the back. Well, if there's a bullet hole in the middle of the back, and you try to track that to the throat wound -- which is what they do -- now you've got an upward trajectory, which destroys the idea that this bullet somehow cursed downward and struck Governor Connally. Plus, you've got Governor Connally's wrist X-ray, which shows that there are still more pieces of bullet in his wrist today than are missing off of the bullet that the Government still claims caused the wound. So it's very obvious that they're simply lying about what went on. We now have the January 27th minutes of the Warren Commission, in which their Chief Counsel admits that since we have a picture of where the bullet entered the back, that it's below the place where it came out the front. So how could it go and turn around, etc.? They knew it, and so they chose to lie to us and simply claim that the bullet went through his neck. And the supporters of the Warren Commission are still telling us the same thing, although this is totally opposite to what the medical evidence shows us. So it's a huge thing. You have to look at the totality of this case. Any one particular issue can be picked apart or explained away or rationalized as coincidence or happenstance, but if you look at the total picture, you can begin to get an understanding of what really went on. GARY NULL: Alright, Jim Marrs, I want you to hold on, because we're going to present some new information. By the way, Jim Marrs is an award- winning reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and he was a reporter at the time of the assassination for the Denton Record-Chronicle. He teaches at the University of Texas at Arlington. Now, just today -- just less than an hour ago -- the American Medical Association gave it's official position on the Kennedy assassination, and a Doctor George Lundberg, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and Editor-in-Chief of Scientific Publications of JAMA, read their position paper, and I'll just quote something from it. Later in the show we're going to come back to this, because we have a part of the press conference recorded by WBAI. It says: "The recent Crenshaw book" (and we had Dr. Crenshaw on the show) "is a sad fabrication based upon unsubstantiated allegations. The best explanation for the motivations of myriad conspiracy theorists are paranoia, the desire for personal recognition, public visibility and profit." Anyhow, it says that this is all nonsense. There was no conspiracy; that the Warren Commission was right. And THAT was the press conference. We'll get more on the press conference, but I just want you to know that finally JAMA (and I don't know why JAMA would be sticking it's nose into something that it knows nothing about, to begin with) came out and felt the need to hold a press conference to say that the Warren Commission was right. Everyone (they say) in the field writing books, doing broadcasts, or offering information to the public, must be doing it for profit, recognition or some other [personal] motive. JIM MARRS: I've got news for them. Talk to anybody who has known me and they'll tell you that I've been making the same criticisms since the early `70s, and I certainly never made any money. In fact, people .... GARY NULL: Jim, let me ask you something. Have you ever been found guilty, in an extended trial, of restraint of trade, monopolistic practices, and, if so, was that conviction upheld all the way clear up to all the different appeals courts, and now the conviction is final? JIM MARRS: Not me. GARY NULL: Well that has happened to the American Medical Association. So, when the AMA has the audacity to come onto a press conference -- with the muddled background that they have for having been caught engaging in the restraint of trade and in monopolistic practices -- claiming that others have ulterior motives, I think it's absolutely absurd. JIM MARRS: Anybody who knows anything knows that the AMA is a FIRM supporter of the status quo, and that it has been highly political for years. And I would ascribe political motives to almost anything that they do. The point that I want to make here is -- if my understanding is correct -- if they are simply quoting from the two autopsy doctors who worked on President Kennedy, well then, this is just an affirmation [of that autopsy]. Of course, those doctors are going to say the same things they said in 1963 and 1964, and it's going to support the Warren Commission's contention. But this is a diversion. This is a red herring. This is not the issue. The issue is that what the autopsy doctors saw was not the same as what the doctors saw [at Parkland Hospital] in Dallas. And there is a very DEEP discrepancy between the wounds as viewed in Dallas .... I just quoted you all these people who said that there was a large hole in the back of his head. This was not seen at the autopsy -- or not reported. So we've got some real discrepancies here, and this particular little news conference and their pronouncements are simply skirting the issue. GARY NULL: Okay, Jim, I want you to hold on because we're going to introduce some new evidence and a new individual to our conference here. He is Harrison Edward Livingstone, the author of HIGH TREASON II. Welcome to our program, Mr. Livingstone. HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: Thanks for inviting me. GARY NULL: I would like to go straight to some of the most important issues, and if you would, please give us the research that you have uncovered on these. First, I would like to have you review, from your perspective, the eyewitness descriptions of Kennedy's real wounds. HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: Well, as you know, I've been able to interview almost every living medical witness. I did not talk to Doctor Clark, although he gave me certain answers through his secretary, twelve years ago. I have talked to Doctor Humes, but I can't say that anything was productive there, even after as much as an hour of talk. But, other than that, my book presents the most complete history of what these doctors are saying today, and put in perspective of what they said and wrote in 1963. No other book or writer or researcher has achiveved this. GARY NULL: We're not here to promote your book, as such. We're here for you to please share your information with us. So if you could, please go right to the information. Would you talk about the evidence of forgery and retouching of the autopsy photographs and X-rays? HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: [initial words were drowned out by Gary Null's voice] .... doctors and the two autopsies. And the point being that they are trying to head off at the pass the research that I have just published, and for no other reason; also [they're targeting] Doctor Crenshaw's book and his statements. They made a number of totally false statements at this press conference. For instance, that Crenshaw (they quoted other doctors, and this is an example of how they cooked their article by the American Medical Association) .... that Crenshaw was not present at the autopsy - - when if you go and read in Volume Six of the Warren Commission books, he is mentioned by almost every doctor as having been there. And he was certainly in a position to observe the wounds and to see what was going on. And it doesn't take anybody more than an idiot to know that a bullet is either an entry hole through the skin of the neck, or it's an exit, because, if it's coming out, it's going to make quite a tear. And anybody, basically, would see the difference. I was pretty stunned, as you probably know, because I was at this press conference today. You ask: Why is JAMA [the Journal of the American Medical Association] doing this at this time, and I'm just telling you there is only one reason why they're doing it. It's because the whole cover-up perpetrated by the Government in this case is directly threatened by the research that I have done and by my making it possible for Crenshaw and the other doctors to come forward. GARY NULL: Alright. Would you give us some link between Richard Nixon's men and John Kennedy's killers that ties the assassination directly to Watergate? And could you please give us the facts? HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: Before I get to that, you had asked me a question on this medical evidence. Do you recall? GARY NULL: Yes. I asked you for the evidence of forgery and retouching in the autopsy photographs and X-rays. HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: This is my special area of research. I discovered that the X-rays were fake in that they show the entire face missing on the right side. And again, this is what JAMA tried to head off at the press conference today. They tried to ridicule criticism of the medical evidence without facing these facts. And I asked them at the press conference: "Didn't you notice that the face is missing -- that the President's face is missing in the X-rays, but it's NOT missing in the photographs?" And, of course, at that point, the press conference became tumultuous, and the whole thing began to be overturned. The photographs, of course, show extensive retouching and evidence of forgery. And this was directly how the Chief Justice of the United States was tricked -- with this faked evidence. The doctors, most recently (quite a few that JAMA did not interview, and they don't dare interview, and if they did, like other researchers, they're not going to report it) .... because those doctors insist, to this day, that that throat wound WAS an entry hole. And the many people who were at the autopsy .... and Doctor Fink, the forensic pathologist who was at the autopsy, who was not interviewed by JAMA, and whom they claimed declined, and I've talked to him. But he testified that the hole in the back was an entry hole that did not penetrate into the chest. So what JAMA did -- and as Jim Marrs just said: They're a political action committee that doesn't dare let this evidence link up because .... they've kept it compartmentalized. I asked them: "What about Doctor Humes's stating at the end of his testimony to Arlen Specter that the bullet that hit John Connally could not possibly have been the same bullet that went through John Kennedy because of the fragments that were found in Connally?" They said: "We did not discuss John Connally in this article. It's not relevant." So that's an example of compartmentalizing the evidence by a political action committee which has sought to control the medical community in this country. GARY NULL: Okay. Let's try to go back to the photographs. And please, if you would, try to keep .... we have limited time and we want the opportunity for you to give us as much information as you can. Let's go specifically to the fraud that you are asserting, and on the retouching of the photographs that no one else in the media has picked up on. HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: Right. This is the key to the case, right now. The Chief Justice, Earl Warren (and he mentions in his memoirs that he was shown autopsy photographs) [said] that he was tricked by phony photographs and X-rays which apparently show a shot that came from behind. They claim that there is an entry hole in the area of the cowlick, although the autopsists, Doctors Humes and Boswell, told the committee of doctors at the House of Representatives that they denied .... He said: I defy you to see this hole here where you say it is; that this is not a hole. It's something else. And it was four inches -- as the Clark Panel found in 1968 -- from where that entry hole was placed in the autopsy report by Doctor Humes and Doctor Boswell. It was four inches above it. Then, showing the face missing in the X-rays and not showing Earl Warren the photographs that showed the President's face intact made him think that his face was blown away. And that's what we see in the Zapruder film. And I believe that that's animated. GARY NULL: Okay, let's go to some specific references. I'm looking now at a photograph of John Kennedy. It's called "the stare of death" photograph. And I'd like for you to talk about the reference black triangle that appears on the right upper forehead of Kennedy in this photograph. HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: Yes, if you have a clear print of that in the negative, in the negative there is no light whatsoever that comes through that triangle. It's much clearer in a clear print. In my book, we were able to do the best possible reproductions, but, of course, they're screened and it's not that clear. But in a comparable right profile photograph, which we publish there, you can see what has been covered up. And they're from two DIFFERENT sets of photographs. One, with the reference black triangle is known as "the Fox set of photographs" which came into the possession of Mark Crouch, who was a friend of the Secret Service man, James K. Fox, who took the rolls of film from Bethesda Naval Hospital over to be developed in the Navy labs. The other set of photographs, which were in the possession of Robert Groden, show that there is a major laceration extending into the forehead of the President. This was NOT seen in Dallas, but two of the autopsy doctors did describe this laceration to me. They brought it up. I did not bring it up. And they told me about the laceration going a half an inch into the forehead above the right eye. That's where that reference black triangle is. What the reasons were for covering it up in some of those photographs are not clear to me. I can't answer that question. All I know is that they conflict with each other -- these two different pictures, as do many of the photographs conflict with each other. GARY NULL: Also, it's very clear that the whole right side of the head is blackened out, and only the ear is visible. That is CLEARLY retouching. HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: That's it. And the whole back of the head, extending around behind to the right ear was missing. And a major part of my research was to try to resolve the puzzles of the medical evidence. Exactly what did the wounds look like? I was able to determine -- by having the doctors and the witnesses at the autopsy and in Dallas draw on mannequin heads -- exactly where the bone defect was and how much scalp was missing. And they are identical. The wound was not altered, but there was a large hole that went all the way around to the side of the head. The autopsy report is accurate in that respect, but the problem was that there was sort of a flap of scalp that was badly macerated and it did have an egg- shaped-sized hole through it. But it could not possibly cover up all of the missing bone that was underneath there. And this caused a lot of confusion among engineers and accountants and other people with that mindset who do this research, because they can't semantically separate out the issues, for instance, between alteration and tampering, or between laceration and incision. A lot of the confusion in the case (in the medical evidence) is semantic, so I was able to determine that the body was not altered. It may have been tampered with, but even that doesn't appear to have been necessary when all they really had to do was to fake the photographs and flash them at Earl Warren who put them aside immediately because of their gore. GARY NULL: Alright, now there are two other very VERY important issues here. And they are that the photographs of John Kennedy's body, where he is on his face, lying on his stomach here, it shows .... HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: Lying on his back. There's no picture of him lying on his stomach. GARY NULL: Oh, okay. Yeah, it's been turned around there. I have a picture of his back, and the first bullet hole .... HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: He's lifted up from the table -- yes. GARY NULL: Okay. The first bullet hole is about four inches, it looks like, below the .... HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: Well the larger hole is not the hole. It's about two inches below that. You'll see a small red thing, closer to the roller, and that, the men all state, was a hole. And they also indicate that that deep depression down toward the bottom of the roller is a bullet hole. GARY NULL: Yeah, well there are two bullet holes in his back. How can a man have two bullet holes in his back, and then .... HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that there were gunmen all around that car. In Senator Dodd's report -- that was appended to the House Committee report when he was in the House of Representatives - - stated that there were at least three gunmen firing, and two of them had to have been from behind, because of the closeness of the shots. There ARE six shots on that Dallas [motorcycle] police tape recording. GARY NULL: Yeah, but you see, the Warren Commission does not state that. HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: No! They say that three shots were fired and two struck the President. GARY NULL: Also, you have the entire back of the head shown very clearly, and you do not see the .... HARRISON LIVINGSTONE: No. Part of that is not clear at all. You see the area that's out of focus there. The background is in focus and the foreground -- where the cowlick [is] closest to the lens of the camera -- is in focus. But the area all along the hairline from behind the ear down to the center of the neck (in the hair) is out of focus. And that's where they smudged all that over when they made their composite photograph. GARY NULL: Alright, what I'd like to do is this. Let's just summarize here for a moment. What we have are some CLEARLY retouched photographs. We have more bullet holes in the President's body than the Warren Commission, or any of the so-called "official" investigations, have recognized. How in the world does a man end up with this many proveable bullet holes, and yet, still have one man doing all the shooting? Some of these bullet holes are clearly exit wounds. Some are entrance wounds. And yet, the Warren Commission has, for whatever reason, only presented that these were rear entrance wounds. The autopsy photographs HAVE been altered. The X-rays HAVE been altered. It is not possible to end up with an X-ray .... Let's say if you took a normal anterior/posterior skull X-ray, and then you took the Kennedy anterior/posterior skull X-ray -- the Kennedy lateral skull X-ray -- there's an amount of facial bone that's missing. If this were presented in any regular forensic trial today, it would be LAUGHABLE. The evidence would be thrown out as inadmissible and faulty. We're going to take a brief break. I'd like both Jim Marrs [author of CROSSFIRE] and also, our guest on the phone right now -- who just returned from the press conference -- Harrison Edward Livingstone, who needless to say, was part of the reason that the AMA called this hasty press conference (and the press conference itself you'll hear a little later on. We tape recorded some of it) .... we're going to get to some information that I think the people in this audience have always wondered about. Are you aware that not ONCE were we ever given the real reason as to why the Watergate Break-In occurred? What was in the safe they were looking for? Why did CIA people go into that safe? Why did Nixon authorize it? That brought down the whole Nixon Administration -- about sixty-seven of his top cronies. Why? We were never asked that! The media never probed it further than what was given to them. Well, you're going to hear something when we come back, about the link between Richard Nixon's men and John Kennedy's killers that ties the assassination directly to Watergate. [JD: There was an incident which remains vivid in my memory, and it has never been explored by anyone, though it might provide a fuller picture of the possible link between the Watergate Break-In and the assassination of President Kennedy. Those of you who are old enough will recall the numerous Presidential press conferences of Richard Nixon during which he was interrogatively flayed and driven to the brink of impeachment by a concerted onslaught from the press corps, members of which have since been alleged to be journalistic prostitutes for the CIA (e.g. Walter Cronkite and, I think, Dan Rather, notorious among many). In one of those press conferences (I think it may have been the "I'm not a crook!" press conference) a reporter asked Nixon [I'm paraphrasing]: You said something about the John Kennedy assassination as an example or an analogy .... And then, Nixon cut him off and exclaimed, with distress: "No, no, no! I didn't mean to imply that I know any more about that assassination than anyone else does." Nixon's tenseness at this moment was striking. Since then, I have been suspicious that Nixon might have knowledge, if not some involvement in the assassination. What ought to be examined is a tape of that press conference so that perhaps a scientific voice analysis can be done to indicate, albeit not to prove, that Nixon was lying about his lack of knowledge of any unreported evidence surrounding the assassination of John Kennedy. If enough people wish to collaborate on such a project, we may be able to finance the purchase of the tape and the voice analysis with small cost to everyone involved. Please send me e-mail if you are interested. John DiNardo jad@cbnewsl.cb.att.com or jad@att!ckuxb GARY NULL: We're also going to talk about proof of fraud and disinformation campaigns WITHIN the assassination research community, and how a United States Senator and two former Presidents personally covered up facts in the case. And we're also going to talk about proof that bullets WERE removed from the President's body at Bethesda Naval Hospital before the autopsy began. That's just some of what we're going to talk about today. New information; very powerful information. And, contrary to what my first guest suggested (and I respect that each guest can have their own point of view, and everyone has the right to have a point of view, even if it differs with other people on the show) he suggested that there was no hard data. This is as good data as can be produced. Now I'm going to ask our guest, Jim Marrs, you're going to have about ten minutes, and Harrison Edward Livingstone, you're going to have about ten minutes. You can take a break, because you're talking on the commercial-free Pacifica Radio station in New York, WBAI, 99.5 FM, a 50,000 watt station. I've been here for fifteen years. We work for free -- those of us on the air, and we ask, three times a year, for pledges from the station's listners to help support our efforts. [JD: My apologies for missing the subsequent discourse. I'm trying to obtain a tape of it. If and when I do, I'll promptly transcribe it for you. However, I have taped numerous hours of information covering the succeeding episodes in the series. So the following transcript resumes the discussion with the next day's broadcast in the series.] GARY NULL: Alright, David, if you could, please, would you go through this evidence in some detail? You're making a lot of statements and a a lot of allegations. We'd like you now to substantiate the differences between the official version. DAVID LIFTON: Okay. With regard to the casket, for example, the witness who opened the casket .... the persons who saw the casket come in the back door of Bethesda Naval Hospital, and who actually unloaded it are Dennis David, the chief-of-the-day at Bethesda Naval Hospital and a man named Don Rabbatisch [sp] who was actually one of the casket toters, so to speak - - who took it out of the black hearse in which it arrived. The account of Dennis David is that he is at the back of the hospital. He is in charge of part of the security function. He is told that the President's body is going to arrive there. They go down. The black hearse pulls in. He assembles some of his men. Don Rabbatisch is one of them. They bring the casket inside. A black hearse pulls up. There's a group of plainclothesmen and two men in O.R. smocks. They get out of the ambulance. The shipping casket (and that's what it was: a shipping casket) is removed from the black hearse. It is brought onto the loading dock and it is brought to the door of the morgue. In the door of the morgue is Paul O'Connor. He's the medical technician listed in the FBI reports, and who is also listed in the official Navy records, and in the House Select Committee records. He opens the casket which is a shipping casket, according to O'Connor. Inside the shipping casket is a body bag. He unzips the body bag, puts the President's body, along with others in the morgue, on the table. He said that when the wrapping was removed from the head area, there was a gasp in the room, and he said: "and I looked down and said, `My God, there's no brain!'" And you could see this. It was apparent. The FBI, at that time, writes notes. They write a report that weekend. In their report, which was not published with the Warren Commission documents, but is at the National Archives, they write that when the body was removed from the casket in which it was transported, it was (quote) "apparent that there had been surgery to the head area; namely in the top of the skull." And that's the official record. That's the evidence. Now, the Warren Commission did not know about most of this evidence that I am talking about here. They did not perform this kind of analysis. They did not establish what, in law, is called a "chain of possession" on the body. So the Navy commander who performed the autopsy simply comes before the Commission, raises his right hand and testifies as to the condition of the body. And they accept that autopsy report which states that President Kennedy was shot twice from behind, based on wounds you see on the body which were NOT on the body in Dallas, if you compare Dallas versus Bethesda -- Dallas being where the President was shot, Bethesda being where the autopsy was performed six hours later. Based on the Bethesda wound pattern, President Kennedy IS, or appears to be, in fact, shot twice from behind. Based on the Dallas wound pattern, he was NOT. Now ordinarily, you would trust the autopsy over the accounts of the doctors at Dallas, because the autopsy is better evidence. It's, in fact, the "best evidence". It's based on the body of the President. But the irony is that, in this case, there is a subterfuge, and, in fact, the body was altered. That's what my book was all about: persuading the reader that there is evidence that the body was altered, and that this is the reason why the evidence looks the way it does. I might just add that if you start with this evidence in 1992, the same evidence that they had in 1963, unless this autopsy is overturned, you're going to come to the same conclusion: that Oswald shot the President. This autopsy is the legal foundation for that whole house of cards. It cannot collapse unless the autopsy is overturned in a definitive fashion. GARY NULL: What would have been the sequence of events to have allowed the brain to have been removed, since there is no evidence that it was removed in Dallas during the procedures that were performed on the body at that time? DAVID LIFTON: If I understand you correctly, you're asking me when was the body stolen. Is that what you're saying? GARY NULL: Yes. When was it stolen, and why would they have removed the brain, and where did the brain next appear? DAVID LIFTON: The only time that the body could have been taken out of the casket (and this is covered in the conclusion of my book), and the only time (I don't want to say that the casket is unguarded because there are always Secret Service agents around, and you cannot have this go forward without the connivance of some Secret Service agents), but the only time that the Kennedys aren't all over that casket is when they come back to Air Force One after the shooting. That is, after the President is pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital, a coffin is obtained -- a large viewing casket which everybody sees on national TV. They go out to Love Field with the President's body in the casket. They go aboard the aircraft and they learn that there is going to be a delay. "Why," they ask. "Why can't they take-off immediately for Washington?" "Well," they're told, "Lyndon Johnson is aboard this aircraft. He didn't go back to Washington on the other plane. He's on this plane." And he appears and says: "I spoke to Bobby Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy said, `Delay the flight. I must be sworn in first in the state of Texas.'" This is all denied that night by Bobby Kennedy who tells his sister-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy that he said no such thing to Lyndon Johnson; that he (Johnson) called Bobby Kennedy, who was Attorney-General in Washington, and said: I'm being told that I should be sworn in. Do you have any objections; that it wasn't the other way around. Anyway, the result of this is that the flight is delayed by about a half-hour, and basically, the Kennedys (Mrs. Kennedy and the Kennedy aides) are told or requested to come to the front of the plane to witness the swearing in. It is in connection with this activity of "delay the flight and let's go to the front of the plane for the swearing in" .... that's the only time that the Kennedy party is not all over that casket. That's the time, I believe, (and it's a process of elimination, I will concede. I don't have a direct witness; otherwise I'd have solved the Kennedy assassination) .... but it's during that period that the body must have been taken out of the casket and put into some other casket and brought somewhere. I personally believe, at the time I wrote BEST EVIDENCE, that the body was flown to Washington, D.C., and that the alterations occurred on the East Coast after the plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base at six o'clock. And I cited, as evidence, helicopter activity on the starboard side; that is, the side facing away from public view -- and from radio transmissions indicating that they were going to go with the body to Walter Reed Army Hospital where (quote) "an autopsy was to be conducted under guard." And all that's on the radio. And I spelled it out in my book. Now, it's an unsolved mystery as to where this body was taken. But wherever it happened, that's where the brain would be removed and the wounds altered. It would be done very quickly. It was done VERY sloppily, I might add. And that's why, when the body arrived without a brain, it was immediately noted that there had been surgery to the head area. That's what the FBI wrote down. We're not dealing with some kind of perfect fraud here. We're dealing with a very imperfect crime with footprints all over the place; footprints which are ignored by the Warren Commission because they saw the crime -- or you might say they saw these events through very Establishment eyes. They never questioned any of this stuff that's brought up in my book. GARY NULL: When did the brain next appear? DAVID LIFTON: A brain is infused, in the autopsy room, by another technician: James Jenkins. Now let me explain this. It's kind of interesting. There were three technicians in the room: a guy named Ranicki, a fellow named Paul O'Connor and a fellow named Jenkins. Paul O'Connor gives me the account (and it's a thing that he will never forget. It just came out of his mouth when I interviewed him in 1979), that the cranium is empty. There's no brain, etc. And on the chart where the body organ weights are listed (a chart which is perfectly authentic. It has little pink spots on it. That's Kennedy's blood. It's in the National Archives today) there is no weight given for the brain, but there is a weight for many of the other body organs. That night, at some point -- and I don't know when -- a brain is brought into the room. That brain is given to James Jenkins, another technician. James infuses that brain with formaldehyde. And that brain becomes the evidence brain. It is weighed ten days later, or something. It's weight is recorded in a supplementary brain report. When I confronted O'Connor, on camera, with the fact that there is this brain, he said: "Well I don't know where they got it from. It certainly couldn't have been the President's!" In other words, it did not arrive in the body. Now, that's the way an autopsy is supposed to happen. The body is supposed to have the body parts inside it. You know, we're not dealing with United Parcel Service where you send something and say: "See attached." The brain is supposed to come in the cranium. Now, a brain is definitely brought into the room. I do not know how it got into the room. I can just tell you that James Jenkins infused a brain that night, whereas Paul O'Connor said that the cranium was empty. And by the way, O'Connor's account is corroborated by the X-ray technician who said that the hole was so large and the thing was so empty that he could have put his hands inside the hole. GARY NULL: Alright. We're going to be speaking with Paul O'Connor in just a few moments. We have him on the show, as well, because we wanted indidividuals who could corroborate your information. But right now, we're going to ask you to remain on hold. We're in the midst of a WBAI fund-raising [period] .... .... My show is on the air five days a week bringing programs to you that will give you insights. Like right now we're doing a whole series on Government agendas and hidden agendas, and the conspiracies. We're targetting, right now, the [John] Kennedy Assassination, just because that assassination is something that everyone would agree had a major national impact. The trouble is, what we were told is the OFFICIAL position doesn't blend with what other researchers and first-hand observers are suggesting were the actual cases. And then, we have to ask: Why would someone cover-up this information? Why? Why would the media not report it? Why would the Government not investigate it? Why would the Warren Commission not explore it? So we're looking at that. Right now, on our program (and I want to thank our guests for being patient and for standing by) is David Lifton, the author of BEST EVIDENCE. He is suggesting that there were two caskets, one body; and that the body arrived without a brain; and that the brain that we were told was President Kennedy's brain may have, indeed, been someone else's; that there was a gaping hole large enough to put a fist through when it arrived in Washington; and that therefore, there had been alterations. Now, let us see what other corroboration we could have for this. We have, on the conference phone right now, Dr. Charles Crenshaw. Dr. Crenshaw, who graduated from the Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, who specializes in general surgery, is presently the chairman and director of the Department of Surgery at Saint Peters-Smith Hospital, in the Fort Worth area. He is a professor of clinical surgery at the University of Texas, Southwestern Health Center's Science Center in Dallas. Welcome to our program, Dr. Crenshaw. DR. CRENSHAW: Thank you. GARY NULL: By the way, Dr. Crenshaw is also the author of a very important work on the Kennedy Assassination called, JFK: THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE, which right now, I believe, is number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Isn't it? DR. CRENSHAW: Yes, it is. GARY NULL: And, by the way, THREE other books on the top-ten bestseller list are also about this assassination, so CLEARLY there is interest. Would you be good enough to explain to us the inconsistencies between your EYEWITNESS account and the official report upheld by the Warren Commission? DR. CRENSHAW: That day, on November the 22nd, 1963, all of the surgeons at Parkland believed that our President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot at least once from the front. We saw two wounds there. Both of them were from the front. The head wound was tangential in nature, coming in over the right side, above his ear, and leaving a large exit area, a vulsed[?] area in the right-rear part of the head. There was loss of part of the parietal, temporal and most of the occipital lobe of the right cerebral hemisphere, with exposure of the cerebellum. It was about two-and-a-half to two- and-three-fourths inches in diameter. It was more or less circular. And in the photos from the National Archives -- which are so damaging -- this wound had completely vanished. There was no wound seen in the exhibits that are marked "B" and "E" in the book. This wound, that ALL of the physicians at Parkland described, was completely gone. The second wound was in the anterior part of the neck. It was about three to six millimeters in size and with an arc the size of your little finger. It was clearly demarcated as round and relatively clean-cut. Then the tracheal tube that had been put down was ineffective. And then Dr. Perry performed a tracheostomy through the entrance wound. The incision was sharp with smooth edges, and about an inch to and inch-and- a-half long. It was no longer than the flange on the tracheostomy tube, which was one-and-three-fourths inches. Not only that, after the nurses had removed this tracheostomy tube before we placed him in the coffin, it was brought back again. The edges were still smooth and very sharp. And in the autopsy photographs that I first saw in looking for the head wound, this wound was widely gaping, it was irregular, and it was now about two-point-five to three inches long. So there was CLEARLY a change between these wounds, that I saw at Parkland, and the wounds that we saw on the autopsy pictures that were given from the National Archives. GARY NULL: Why didn't you or others at the scene later complain or even make an issue or an affidavit showing that this was an alteration? DR. CRENSHAW: We never saw the photos. The first time I saw these was in early 1991. The Parkland physicians were never given this opportunity. They were only told about the additional wounds (which I doubt whether there was another wound in the back of the head, because I looked there) and were never told or shown any other evidence. We were told only about the autopsy. And we, like most people, felt that they would have had the best forensic minds in our country to examine our President. However, obviously, [from] what has been discussed and what we now know, [that assumption] was wrong. And so, we had no other knowledge other than the description by the Secret Service. GARY NULL: So if you had the description by the Secret Service, by an extension of this logic, the Secret Service or someone would have had to participate in this cover-up, or this obstruction of information. Would that be a reasonable assumption? DR. CRENSHAW: I think that's a very reasonable assumption. JONES HARRIS: So, my point here is this: that the decision not to look very firmly at Organized Crime starts almost from the beginning. It starts with the Dallas Police. It starts with the Bureau [the FBI]. It starts with the Warren Commission. It continues to Garrison, and I must say that even though the Blakey Committee finally did come through and say: "Yes, it looks as though there might have been involvement", considering all the time that they spent, I found that their information was awful awful thin. GARY NULL: Alright. Let's explore that in some depth now, and let's go over to Mr. Fonzi. Please hold on, Mr. Harris. Mr. Fonzi, thank you very much for being with us. Let's explore a few things. Now you were an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Did you find that there was any attempt by either the FBI or the CIA or other leading law enforcement agencies or the attorney-general's office, after [Robert] Kennedy, to downplay or to disengage the interest of an investigation of Organized Crime in this? GAETON FONZI: Well that was not actually one of my areas of investigation. There was, on the part of all the agencies, I believe, not a total spirit of cooperation. And, of course, when it came to the CIA, that was even more so. Let me go back to something that John Davis said earlier on, as far as there being no concrete evidence of CIA involvement. There was no concrete evidence of anyone's involvement. There was no concrete evidence of Organized Crime's involvement. There was no concrete evidence of anti-Castro Cuban involvement or pro-Castro Cuban involvement. There was no concrete evidence of any type of involvement. There was, I believe, no concrete evidence of Lee Harvey Oswald's involvement in the assassination. GARY NULL: Are you suggesting that Kennedy shot himself? GAETON FONZI: What I'm suggesting is that after all these years, there has not been an adequate investigation. There was not an adequate investigation on the part of the Warren Commission, and there wasn't one on the part of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. GARY NULL: But why? There had to have been a reason. GAETON FONZI: Well, certainly from my own experience with the House Select Committee, I know the reason was strictly political. When Bob Blakey, the second chief counsel after the original chief counsel Richard Sprague was fired for wanting to conduct a murder investigation, a unique approach to the Kennedy Assassination, the new chief cousel Bob Blakey came in and told his staff this at the first meeting: "We have two priorities. Our first priority is to get a report done in time. Our second priority is to get a report done within our financial restrictions." And with those priorities we set out to do exactly that, limiting, of course, many many areas of investigation. Let me just go on for a minute in terms of some of the specifics that both John Davis and Jones Harris were talking about. I agree that Organized Crime probably had a part in the assassination because of Ruby's links to Organized Crime. But I think, in trying to determine any kind of strategic planning here, you've got to account for Oswald and Oswald's movements. You've got to account for Oswald's control. And when Senator Richard Schweiker, who headed the Senate Select Subcommittee on the [John] Kennedy Assassination under the [Senator Frank] Church Select Committee on Intelligence ..... when he first got into investigating the Kennedy Assassination, his immediate conclusion, after digging into it, was that "Oswald had", as Schweiker put it, "the fingerprints of Intelligence all over his activities." So I think that, unless you crank in the control of Oswald, any theory about the Kennedy Assassination just isn't complete. GARY NULL: Alright. Can you take us into an understanding of Alpha 66 and Antonio Visiana? GAETON FONZI: Yes, because that goes into .... when you talk about means and motivation, I think you can find the means and motivation, not only on the part of Organized Crime, but on the part of the anti-Castro Cubans or on the part of the intelligence agencies, and in almost any direction you look. But what I feel is the strongest is the overall picture of the intelligence agencies' connections to the anti-Castro Cubans, and their motivation. And that goes back to the period following the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy was given a lot of blame for the failure of the Bay of Pigs [Invasion], but it wasn't his fault. The Bay of Pigs was planned -- including the air strikes -- by the [Central Intelligence] Agency before Kennedy became president. And he was not even told about the air strikes. Subsequently, as a result of that failure, Kennedy was very angry, both at Castro and at the Intelligence Agency. And he sent his brother Bobby to actually begin taking over the Agency, and set up a secret war against Castro that was based out of this Florida area here. And over the course of the years this became the largest CIA operation outside of Langley [Virginia, CIA Headquarters]. It was called the Jam Wave Station and it conducted a very very effective operation against Castro almost on a daily and nightly basis. These training camps, or these guerilla camps, were set up by the Agency. They were controlled by Agency personnel using anti-Castro Cubans as the operatives. And their spirit and motivation became blended with the anti-Castro Cubans' goals. Come the Cuban Missile Crisis when Kennedy realized that, as a result of this very effective war against Castro, Castro permitted the Russian missiles to be brought into Cuba. Kennedy realized that he had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear disaster. So he made arrangements with [Soviet Premier] Kruschev to stop the secret war and to close down these guerilla bases in return for the withdrawal of the missiles. When he did that, the guerilla bases continued operating against -- in defiance -- of the President's orders. As a result of that, Kennedy was forced to use other agencies -- the Navy, the Coast Guard and other military agencies -- to close down these camps. And in the process, he arrested some of these anti-Castro Cubans whom the Government had been supporting. This was reason enough for the anti-Castro Cubans and their Intelligence [Agency] partners to consider Kennedy a traitor. And as a matter of fact, during the height of delicate negotiations with Kruschev, it was Alpha 66, one of the most militant anti-Castro groups, that tried to sink Russian ships in Havana Harbor, again defying Kennedy's orders. DR. CHARLES CRENSHAW: So I went back, I tapped Dr. Shires[?] on his shoulder and he looked at me because everything was bedlam there. And I said: "I've just been talking to the President of the United States, and that man over there is to take a deathbed confession." And we both just kind of looked and knew that, had Oswald survived, he wouldn't have been able to talk for two or three days anyway. Consequently, because of the ravages of hemorrhagic shock, Oswald's heart started failing and ultimately fibrillating. We tried all of the resuscitative measures -- chemical injections and starting with the shocks -- but to no avail. So I then went over and tapped this guy on the shoulder and said: "There'll be no deathbed confession today." So Oliver Hardy melted away again. I don't know who he was. I don't know how he got there. The only interesting part is that I know that the President of the United States knew that he was in the room. GARY NULL: Give us again the astonishing differences between the Dallas medical team's account of the JFK wounds and the findings of the official Bethesda autopsy team. DR. CRENSHAW: The most striking, of course, is the head wound which is right at the back of the head at this occipit. It was in the right-rear portion, in the occipital area. It was about the size of a baseball. In the official pictures of the autopsy, this wound had vanished. It was completely gone. And then the neck wound which had the tracheostomy performed there, which was an inch to an inch-and-a-half -- smooth, sharp edges, EVEN when the tracheostomy tube was removed. This is now gaping, irregular and was three inches in length [in the Bethesda autopsy]. GARY NULL: The Parkland Hospital's nervousness about residents treating the President, which resulted in the Warren Commission's failure to obtain crucial statements from the attending medical staff .... Would you give us some background on this please? DR. CRENSHAW: Well, basically, there were thirty visits -- twenty-four of them by the Secret Service and six by the FBI -- in which they talked to different physicians and nurses there. And it's interesting that not ONE of these conversations was given to the Warren Commission. GARY NULL: Not one of thirty? DR.CRENSHAW: Not one! GARY NULL: What does that tell you? What does that imply? DR. CRENSHAW: It would imply that they didn't want to hear any contradictory remarks. GARY NULL: Alright. What is your feeling about Robert Kennedy's involvement in any possible cover-up? DR. CRENSHAW: I've always felt that maybe he wanted to become president so that he could reopen this investigation. Three days before HIS assassination, in a small community college, he announced to everyone that only the power of the Presidency could unravel the mystery of his brother's death. And he was, of course, assassinated then. But immediately, Mrs. Lincoln, John Fitzgerald Kennedy's secretary, called Senator Ted Kennedy and told him of artifacts that the Kennedy Family had in their possession. And he told her not to worry; that everything was taken care of. So the implication has been that the attorney-general or Senator Kennedy, at that time, did have important information that he had sequestered there, so that, if it were at all possible, he could reopen this investigation. GARY NULL: And lastly, Jacqueline Kennedy's immediate reactions and behavior following the shooting? DR. CRENSHAW: I thought Mrs. Kennedy was very regal. She was standing there initially. We asked her to sit outside the room. And then, of course, after his death we did not officially pronounce him dead because of her request for a priest and the last rites. The priest arrived, and she walked into the room after him. We had pulled the sheet up. It was a little short. She stopped at the foot and kissed his great toe, and then went forward and stood there holding his right hand, listening to the last rites. Immediately after that, she took her wedding ring off and placed it on the President's little finger. It would not go past the knuckle, and so when she came in, after they had had the harangue about the autopsy, and before we placed him in the coffin, one of our orderlies there -- I believe it was Aubrey Wright -- helped her get the ring on his small finger. I had read many accounts of how their marriage was just that, in name only. But being in trauma surgery now for thirty years, I have seen grievances and unhappiness and definite examples of removing the facade of what one felt. And I still will always believe that there was no greater example of genuine and intense love for the President than that exhibited by Mrs. Kennedy. GARY NULL: I want to thank you very much, Dr. Crenshaw, for sharing your insights with us in this special report on cover-ups. DR. CHARLES CRENSHAW: Thank you. GARY NULL: Now let's shift gears. I want to go over to two other panelists standing by: Dr. Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics here at CUNY, the City University of New York. Would you give us your comments about the physics of the exhibit 399, the single magic bullet?