In my blog post yesterday, I pointed out the Washington Post’s hypocrisy in pressing for an investigation to determine whether the assassination of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian state-sponsored assassination, as compared to the blind eye that the Post has long shown toward the convincing evidence pointing toward a U.S. state-sponsored assassination in the case of President Kennedy.
In my article, I pointed out two examples of where the Post could have and should have conducted an extensive journalistic investigation, namely (1) the two brain examinations that the military’s pathologists falsely and fraudulently conflated as one brain examination; and (2) the testimony of U.S. Petty Officer Saundra Spencer, which established that the military’s official autopsy photograph of the back of President Kennedy’s head was bogus.
Here’s a third example of the Post’s negligence or conscious indifference in the Kennedy assassination:
After the military concluded its autopsy on President Kennedy’s body, it swore all the participants to secrecy. Military officials told them the autopsy was a highly classified operation and that they were prohibited from ever revealing anything they had seen to anyone. The participants were given written letters that emphasized the need for perpetual secrecy and that threatened them with severe punishment if they ever disclosed what they had witnessed. One participant said that military officials put the fear of God in them if they ever talked.
When the House Select Committee on Assassinations initiated a re-investigation into the Kennedy assassination in the 1970s, it began releasing autopsy participants from their oaths of secrecy, over the vehement objections of the military.
Some of the enlisted men who had participated in the autopsy began telling a shocking and astounding story. They said that they had carried the president’s body into the Bethesda Naval morgue in a cheap shipping casket rather than the heavy, ornate casket into which the president’s body had been placed in Dallas.
Now, wouldn’t you think that such a story would attract the attention of an investigative newspaper like the Post? Wouldn’t you expect them to at least just telephone those enlisted men and ask, “Really?”
After all, if what those enlisted men were saying was the truth, that would mean that the Dallas casket that was in the vehicle carrying Jackie Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy from Andrews Air Force Base to the Bethesda Naval Center was empty. Wouldn’t you think that that that would interest a Washington Post investigative reporter?
Or let’s say that those enlisted men were lying and making up the whole story? Wouldn’t you think that the Washington Post, given its deep respect for the military establishment, would want to know why those veterans were sullying the reputation of the military by making up a false story about sneaking the president’s body into the morgue in a different casket than the one in which the body was placed in Dallas? Wouldn’t you think that the Post want to know what would motivate veterans to concoct such an amazing story?
Okay, let’s jump head to the 1990s. The ARRB summoned a former Marine sergeant named Roger Boyajian to testify before the commission. Boyajian confirmed the astounding and shocking story that those enlisted men had been telling since they were released in the 1970s from their secrecy oaths. He told the ARRB that it was his team that carried the president’s body into the morgue in a cheap, military-style shipping casket. Equally important, he produced a written report of the incident he wrote and gave to the military soon after the autopsy. He had saved the report, which the military had kept secret as part of their highly classified autopsy.
Boyajian’s report also stated that the president’s body was brought into the morgue at precisely 6:35 p.m. Other testimony to the ARRB from two FBI agents established that the body remained in the morgue until 7:17 pm. That means that that when the Dallas casket arrived at 6:55 p.m. at the front of the Bethesda medical facility, along with Jackie Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, it had to be empty.
Wouldn’t you think that that would attract the attention of a sharp investigative reporter from the Washington Post?
The ARRB then discovered a written report from Gawler’s Funeral Home, which was the most prestigious funeral home in Washington. It did the embalming of the president’s body and then conducted the funeral. The written report, which was done contemporaneously with the autopsy, confirmed that the president’s body had been brought into the morgue in a shipping casket.
Finally, Lt. Col. Pierre Finck, one of the three military pathologists who conducted the autopsy, testified in the late 1970s in a criminal prosecution brought in New Orleans against a man named Clay Shaw. In his testimony, Finck stated that at 8 p.m. on the day of the assassination and autopsy, he received a telephone call from Navy Commander Humes asking Finck if he would come over and assist with the autopsy. At that same time — 8 p.m. — the president’s body was being formally brought into the Bethesda naval facility inside the Dallas casket, supposedly for the first time.
During that telephone conversation, Finck testified that Humes told him that they already had x-rays of the president’s head. But if the president’s body was being brought into the facility for the first time at 8 p.m., how was it possible that Humes already had x-rays of the president’s head? There were no x-rays taken in Dallas. Humes was inadvertently confirming the shocking and astounding story that those enlisted men had told back in the 1970s, which was later confirmed by Marine Sgt. Boyojian and his written report as well as the written report from Gawler’s Funeral Home.
Did all this induce the Post to investigate the Kennedy assassination with the same determination and perseverance that it has displayed in investigating the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi? Nope. Maybe if Kennedy had been a columnist for the Washington Post rather than president of the United States, things would have been different.