The autopsy that the U.S. national-security establishment conducted on President Kennedy’s body has always been the Achilles heel of the assassination. That’s because the autopsy was fraudulent. But because the military “classified” the autopsy, forcing enlisted personnel to sign secrecy oaths and threatening them with court martial or criminal prosecution if they ever revealed what they saw or did, the military was able to cover up much, but certainly not all, of its autopsy fraud for decades. That cover-up came to a screeching halt during the 1990s during the term of the Assassination Records Review Board.
When I began delving into the JFK assassination many years ago, I naturally read lots of books. Gradually, I became convinced that the assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation orchestrated and carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment. I became convinced that it was no different in principle from other regime-change operations, especially ones that involved state-sponsored assassinations based on “national security,” such as those operations that targeted Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadegh, Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, Chilean Gen. Rene Schneider, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz.
But I was trained as a lawyer. My professional career began as a trial attorney. I practiced law for 12 years. I tried both civil and criminal cases in both state and federal courts. These consisted of both jury and non-jury trials.
While I became convinced that the Kennedy assassination was, in fact, a regime-change operation, I also believed that I could never walk into a courtroom and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard of proof required in a criminal case. I didn’t think that any of the assassination researchers had provided sufficient evidence to meet that burden. After many years of studying the assassination, I still believe that to this day.
To be sure, there are lots of suspicious aspects to the assassination, such as the so-called magic-bullet theory. But for me, all those suspicious aspects, while convincing me of criminal culpability, were still not enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
Thus, in my opinion, those who cry “Conspiracy theory!” when one focuses on what happened in Dealey Plaza are essentially saying, “You don’t have enough evidence to convict the national-security establishment of this offense beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Not so, however, with the autopsy. Once I came to the realization that the military establishment had conducted a fraudulent autopsy, it was “game over” and “case closed” for the national-security establishment. The fraudulent autopsy is the “back door” that establishes beyond a reasonable doubt criminal culpability of the national-security establishment in the Kennedy assassination.
The reason for this is that there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. None! No one has ever come up with one and no one ever will. A fraudulent autopsy necessarily equates to cover-up. And the only entity that the national-security establishment would be covering up for would be itself, especially since the scheme for the fraudulent autopsy was launched at Parkland Hospital at the moment that Kennedy was declared dead. That was when a team of Secret Service agents, brandishing guns and stating that they were operating under orders, knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately violated Texas state law by prohibiting the Dallas County medical examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, from conducting an autopsy on the president’s body.
That Secret Service team forced its way out of Parkland and took the president’s body to Dallas’ Love Field, where the new president, Lyndon Johnson, was waiting for it. Johnson transported the body to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where it was delivered into the hands of the military.
Keep in mind something important: This was a murder case under Texas law. No federal agency, including the Pentagon, the CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, or the Justice Department, had jurisdiction over this crime. Nonetheless, the military, which by this time had became a dominant force in American life, took control over the autopsy.
The military’s autopsy fraud is detailed in my two books The Kennedy Autopsy and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story. The following are three examples of the autopsy fraud:
1. The ARRB discovered the existence of a Navy petty officer named Saundra Spencer, who worked in the Navy’s photographic lab in Washington, D.C. She worked closely with the White House in the development of social photography. Spencer was the epitome of professionalism, competence, and integrity. Jeremy Gunn, the general counsel for the ARRB, stated that of all the witnesses who came before the ARRB, Spencer was the most credible of them all. No one, either in or out of the military, ever questioned her professionalism, competence, and integrity.
Spencer told the ARRB a remarkable story. She said that on the weekend of the assassination, she was asked to develop the photographs of Kennedy’s autopsy. She was told that the operation was “classified.” She had kept her secret for more than 30 years, until the ARRB released her from her vow of secrecy.
When the ARRB showed Spencer the official autopsy photograph showing the back of JFK’s head to be intact, she stated that that was not the autopsy photograph that she developed. The photograph she developed showed a massive hole in the back of JFK’s head. That, of course, would imply a frontal shot, which was contrary to the official narrative.
Spencer’s sworn testimony matched the statements of the treating physicians and several other witnesses at Parkland Hospital as well as witnesses at the Bethesda morgue, where the autopsy was carried out. I quote many of these witnesses in my book An Encounter with Evil. They stated that Kennedy had a massive, exit-sized wound in the back of his head. For example, Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the treating physicians stated, “I said, well, there is a wound in the back of his head here in the right side that’s at least five inches in diameter — a circular wound far in the back of his head.” Another example: Parkland Hospital physician Dr. Charles Carrico: “There was a large — quite a large — defect about here on his skull [pointing to the back of his head].”
If Spencer, Dr. McClelland, Carrico, and all the other witnesses were telling the truth — and I’m convinced they were — then there is only one inescapable conclusion that can be drawn — that the military’s official photograph showing the back on President Kennedy’s head to be intact was fraudulent.
2. The ARRB also discovered the existence of a man named Roger Boyajian, who, like Spencer, told the ARRB a remarkable story. He said that on the day of the assassination, he was a Marine Sergeant serving at the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center. He was ordered to go to the Bethesda morgue to provide security.
Boyajian, who, like Spencer, had been sworn to secrecy, told the ARRB that the president’s body was brought into the morgue at 6:35 p.m. That presented a problem because the undisputed official narrative is that the president’s body was brought into the morgue at 8 p.m., almost an hour-and-a-half later, in the heavy, ornate casket into which it had been placed at Parkland Hospital.
Boyajian had reported this early introduction of the president’s body in an “after-action report” that he delivered to his superiors the week following the assassination. That military never turned over that report to the ARRB, as it was required to do under the law. But Sergeant Boyajian had kept a copy, which he delivered to the ARRB.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the military had to be up to no good in sneaking the president’s body into the Bethesda morgue and then, an hour-and-a-half later, reintroducing the entry of the body into the morgue.
Was there corroboration for Boyajian’s extraordinary claim? Actually there was, and I detail it in The Kennedy Autopsy and An Encounter with Evil. Several Navy enlisted men stated that they carried the president’s body into the morgue in a light “shipping casket” rather than the heavy ornate casket into which the president’s body was placed in Dallas. Moreover, Lt. Col. Pierre Finck stated two times, including once under oath, that he was telephoned by Commander James Humes, the lead pathologist in the autopsy, at 8 p.m. inviting Finck to come to the morgue to assist with the autopsy. During that conversation, Humes told Finck that they already had x-rays of the president’s head. Since the undisputed official entry time of the president’s body was at 8 p.m., the only way that they could already have x-rays of the president’ head was if they were taking them after they sneaked the body into the morgue at 6:35 p.m.
3. The ARRB also discovered that there were two separate brain examinations in the Kennedy autopsy, one of which could not possibly have been the brain belonging to the president. Again, the details are set forth in my books The Kennedy Autopsy and An Encounter with Evil. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, when the military is falsely claiming that there was only one brain exam and when the military is falsely representing a brain to be that of President Kennedy, it would be difficult to find a better example of autopsy fraud than that.
As I stated above and as I have repeatedly emphasized over the years, there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. Once one concludes that the autopsy was fraudulent, one has automatically concluded that the assassination was orchestrated and carried out by the national-security establishment. There is no other reasonable conclusion that can be drawn.