JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (129 page)

[
577
]. Ibid., p. 49.

[
578
]. Author’s interview with Dennis David, June 30, 2006.

[
579
]. Law and Eaglesham,
In the Eye of History
, p. 16.

[
580
]. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

[
581
]. Letter from Dennis David to Joanne Braun, October 31, 1991 (emphasis in original). Cited by Harrison Edward Livingstone,
High Treason 2
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992), p. 558.

[
582
]. Law and Eaglesham,
In the Eye of History
, p. 23. How could Bill Pitzer have taken an autopsy film unobserved? “One of the more interesting recent developments in the Pitzer case is the revelation that a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera existed in the NNMC morgue at the time of the Kennedy autopsy. A discreet CCTV recording made from a control room and later transferred to 16mm film is far more plausible than Pitzer’s presence in the morgue with camera in hand, managing to go unnoticed.” Heiner,
Without Smoking Gun
, p. 51. See also Law and Eaglesham,
In the Eye of History
, pp. 328-29.

Dennis David told me in an interview that Pitzer could have been in his office (in a separate building fifty to sixty yards away from the morgue’s back entrance) monitoring a remotely-operated, closed-circuit filming of the autopsy, unseen by anyone there. The likelihood of such a process is increased by the camera’s stationary nature in the movie film that David saw in Pitzer’s office: “To me it had to have been a static [camera], because there was none of that movement or flutteryness you sometimes see with a hand-held [camera].” Author’s interview of Dennis David, June 30, 2006.

Again from the film and slides David saw in Pitzer’s office, he thought the filming must have been done before the autopsy actually began: “I would say the films which
I viewed
with Bill were prior to the commencement of the postmortem, as there was no evidence of a Y incision on the torso, nor was the scalp incised and peeled forward on the face as would be done during a postmortem.” Letter from Dennis David to Joanne Braun, September 11, 1991. Cited by Harrison Edward Livingstone,
High Treason 2
, p. 557 (emphasis in original).

On November 22, Dennis David was a witness to the unloading of a “gray shipping casket” from a black civilian hearse at the back entrance of the Bethesda morgue around 6:30 p.m.—half an hour before the arrival at the hospital’s front entrance, which he also witnessed, of the gray navy ambulance that was officially carrying the president’s body in a bronze ceremonial casket. Law and Eaglesham,
In the Eye of History
, pp. 7-9.

In a brief conversation with David, the driver of the hearse that delivered the shipping casket “stated that he’d come up 16th Street, and then onto Jones Bridge Road, which would have brought him right by Walter Reed [Army Hospital].” Author’s interview of Dennis David, June 30, 2006.

David’s and other witnesses’ testimony regarding the two caskets has been used to support the hypothesis that the president’s body was altered before arriving at Bethesda, possibly at Walter Reed Army Hospital (on the route taken by the hearse that arrived at 6:30). Heiner,
Without Smoking Gun
, p. 62. If that were the case, Bill Pitzer’s movie could have been taken at Walter Reed (to which he had ready access in his work), which would make its evidence even more explosive than a film taken at Bethesda. Ibid., p. 68.

[
583
]. FBI Report, Baltimore Field Office, January 31, 1967: “William Bruce Pitzer—Victim; Crime on a Government Reservation—Death by Gunshot Wound,” Synopsis. Bureau File #70-44229.

[
584
]. FBI teletype, October 30, 1966, from Baltimore FBI Field Office to Director, FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C. Copies: Tolson, DeLoach, and others. Bureau File #70-44229-3.

[
585
]. Letter of transmittal concerning the death of Lt. Commander William Bruce Pitzer, from Commander H. H. Rumble II, Naval Investigative Service, to J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, November 1, 1966. Cited in Heiner,
Without Smoking Gun
, p. 18.

[
586
]. LCDR T. G. Ferris and CDR J. W. Guinn, February 13, 1967, “Informal Board of Investigation to Inquire into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Lieutenant Commander William Bruce Pitzer, MSC USN, 416681/2301 on 29 October 1966,” pp. 1-4; reproduced in Daniel Marvin and Jerry D. Rose, “The Pitzer File,”
The Fourth Decade
(January 1998), pp. 19-22.

[
587
]. Ferris and Guinn, “Informal Board of Investigation,” p. 3.

[
588
]. Heiner,
Without Smoking Gun
, pp. 46-47. When Bill Pitzer’s nephew was a young man, he idolized his uncle. He tried to follow Bill’s path, serving as an officer in Vietnam. Later, as the questions of the Navy’s cover-up of his uncle’s death deepened, he wondered what he had been doing in Vietnam, “if the country that I was serving could do this.” Bruce Fernandez, nephew of Bill Pitzer, to Daniel Marvin in telephone conversation, October 12, 1995.

[
589
]. Law and Eaglesham,
In the Eye of History
, pp. 25-26. In the interview I did with Dennis David, he granted the possibility that Bill Pitzer’s death could conceivably have been either murder or suicide. He suspected murder from the time he was informed of Pitzer’s death, knowing of Pitzer’s Kennedy pictures. As for the possibility of suicide, he said, “I have no idea why he would have committed suicide . . . I’ve heard the stories about his mistress—supposedly a mistress he had in Florida. But I don’t think that would have prompted him to commit suicide.” Author’s interview with Dennis David, June 30, 2006.

[
590
]. Heiner,
Without Smoking Gun
, p. 36.

[
591
]. “The Navy has not made any original interview document available [on the alleged fatal affair], and reports that such material is routinely destroyed twenty-five years after the investigation.” Ibid.

[
592
]. Ibid., p. 30.

[
593
]. Law and Eaglesham,
In the Eye of History
, p. 25.

[
594
]. Joyce Pitzer to Daniel Marvin in telephone conversation, January 31, 1995.

[
595
]. Interview with Dennis David on
The Men Who Killed Kennedy: Part Six: The Truth Shall Set You Free
, produced and directed by Nigel Turner. The History Channel.

[
596
]. Letter from Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin to Jim Douglass, January 15, 2006. See also
Without Smoking
Gun
, p. 119.

[
597
]. Joyce Pitzer to Daniel Marvin in telephone conversation, January 5, 1995. Cited in Heiner,
Without Smoking
Gun
, p. 46. Joyce Pitzer made substantially the same comment, about Naval Intelligence pressures on her to be silent, seven years earlier in a conversation with author Harrison Edward Livingstone. Livingstone wrote: “On January 21, 1988, I spoke at length with the widow of Bruce Pitzer . . . Mrs. Pitzer said that she was visited by Naval Intelligence who asked her never to talk to anyone about her husband’s death. She was nervous to talk to me about it, but clearly remains concerned about what happened and evidently felt that it ought to be investigated.” Harrison Edward Livingstone, “Lt. Cmdr. William Bruce Pitzer,”
The
Third Decade
(January 1988), p. 20.

[
598
]. Joyce Pitzer to Daniel Marvin, January 5, 1995.

[
599
]. Daniel Marvin to Joyce Pitzer, January 5, 1995.

[
600
]. Daniel Marvin, “Bits & Pieces: A Green Beret on the Periphery of the JFK Assassination,”
The Fourth
Decade
(May 1995), p. 14.

[
601
]. Ibid.

[
602
]. Interview with Daniel Marvin on
The Men Who Killed Kennedy: Part Six: The Truth Shall Set You
Free
, produced and directed by Nigel Turner, 2002 DVD. The History Channel.

[
603
]. Ibid. This particular paragraph, as I have transcribed it from Marvin’s interview, is taken from the 2002 DVD version of
The Men Who Killed
Kennedy
. It was not in the original 1995 telecast.

[
604
]. Marvin, “Bits & Pieces,” p. 16.

[
605
]. Ibid.

[
606
]. Ibid.

[
607
]. Ibid.

[
608
]. Ibid., p. 15.

[
609
]. Ibid., p. 16.

[
610
]. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

[
611
]. Heiner,
Without Smoking Gun
, p. 87.

[
612
]. Ibid., p. 88.

[
613
]. Marvin, “Bits & Pieces,” p. 17.

[
614
]. Heiner,
Without Smoking Gun
, p. 88. Dan Marvin described to a friend “the real danger” for a member of the Special Forces: “We don’t fear the enemy we are trained to defeat. We fear what may happen to us should those in power decide that our nation would be better served if we were no longer available for question or comment. Other volunteers, trained and dedicated as we were, would be asked to ‘dispose’ of us.” Jacqueline K. Powers, citing Dan Marvin, introduction to
Expendable Elite: One Soldier’s Journey into Covert Warfare
by Daniel Marvin (Walterville, Oregon: Trine Day, 2003), p. ix.