JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (98 page)

Question: “Was he a doctor?”

Finck: “No, not to my knowledge.”

Question: “Can you give me his name, Colonel?”

Finck: “No, I can’t. I don’t remember.”
[567]

Finck described an autopsy carried out in strict obedience to military commands, watched by an audience from the entire panoply of national security agencies:

Question: “How many other military personnel were present at the autopsy in the autopsy room?”

Finck: “That autopsy room was quite crowded. It is a small autopsy room, and when you are called in circumstances like that to look at the wound of the President of the United States who is dead, you don’t look around too much to ask people for their names and take notes on who they are and how many there are. I did not do so. The room was crowded with military and civilian personnel and federal agents. Secret Service agents, FBI agents, for part of the autopsy, but I cannot give you a precise breakdown as regards the attendance of the people in that autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital.”

Question: “Colonel, did you feel that you had to take orders from this Army General that was there directing the autopsy?”

Finck: “No, because there were others, there were Admirals.”

Question: “There were Admirals?”

Finck: “Oh, yes, there were Admirals, and when you are a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army you just follow orders, and at the end of the autopsy we were specifically told—as I recall it, it was by Admiral Kenney, the Surgeon General of the Navy—this is subject to verification—we were specifically told not to discuss the case.”
[568]

As the prosecutor zeroed in on the entrance wound in the president’s neck, Dr. Finck had more and more difficulty in responding to the questions:

Question: “Did you have an occasion to dissect the track of that particular bullet in the victim as it lay on the autopsy table?”

Finck: “I did not dissect the track in the neck.”

Question: “Why?”

Finck: “This leads us into the disclosure of medical records.”

Question: “Your Honor, I would like an answer from the Colonel and I would ask The Court so to direct.”

The Court: “That is correct, you should answer, Doctor.”

Finck: “We didn’t remove the organs of the neck.”

Question: “Why not, Doctor?”

Finck: “For the reason that we were told to examine the head wounds and that the . . .”

Question: “Are you saying someone told you not to dissect the track?”

The Court: “Let him finish his answer.”

Finck: “I was told that the family wanted an examination of the head, as I recall, the head and chest, but the prosecutors in this autopsy didn’t remove the organs of the neck, to my recollection.”

Question: “You have said they did not. I want to know why didn’t you as an autopsy pathologist attempt to ascertain the track through the body which you had on the autopsy table in trying to ascertain the cause or causes of death? Why?”

Finck: “I had the cause of death.”

Question: “Why did you not trace the track of the wound?”

Finck: “As I recall I didn’t remove these organs from the neck.”

Question: “I didn’t hear you.”

Finck: “I examined the wounds but I didn’t remove the organs of the neck.”

Question: “You said you didn’t do this; I am asking you why you didn’t do this as a pathologist?”

Finck: “From what I recall I looked at the trachea, there was a tracheotomy wound the best I can remember, but I didn’t dissect or remove these organs.”

Question: “Your Honor, I would ask Your Honor to direct the witness to answer my question.

“I will ask you the question one more time: Why did you not dissect the track of the bullet wound that you have described today and you saw at the time of the autopsy at the time you examined the body? Why? I ask you to answer that question.”

Finck: “As I recall I was told not to, but I don’t remember by whom.”

Question: “You were told not to, but you don’t remember by whom?”

Finck: “Right.”

Question: “Could it have been one of the Admirals or one of the Generals in the room?”

Finck: “I don’t recall.”

Question: “Do you have any particular reason why you cannot recall at this time?”

Finck: “Because we were told to examine the head and the chest cavity, and that doesn’t include the removal of the organs of the neck.”

Question: “You are one of the three autopsy specialists and pathologists at the time, and you saw what you described as an entrance wound in the neck area of the President of the United States who had just been assassinated, and you were only interested in the other wound but not interested in the track through his neck, is that what you are telling me?”

Finck: “I was interested in the track and I had observed the conditions of bruising between
the point of entry in the back of the neck
and
the point of the exit at
the front of the neck
, which is
entirely compatible with the bullet path
.” [emphasis added to Finck’s unsupported statement, in contradiction to the known evidence]

Question: “But you were told not to go into the area of the neck, is that your testimony?”

Finck: “From what I recall, yes, but I don’t remember by whom.”
[569]

Navy medical corpsman Paul O’Connor, who helped the doctors with the president’s autopsy, was dismayed, he said, by “the fact that we weren’t able to do certain critical things like probe the throat wound that we thought was a bullet wound. We found out it was a bullet wound years later.”
[570]

In an interview years later, O’Connor described how the military command kept the three Bethesda doctors from probing the throat wound, which had been identified in Dallas to the world’s press as an entrance wound:

“It got very tense. Admiral [Calvin] Galloway [the chief of the hospital command] started getting very agitated again, because there was a wound in his neck . . . and I remember the doctors were going to check that out when Admiral Galloway, told them, ‘Leave it alone. Don’t touch it. It’s just a tracheotomy.’

“He stopped anybody from going further. Drs. Humes and Boswell, Dr. Finck, were told to leave it alone, let’s go to other things.”
[571]

Paul O’Connor’s fellow hospital corpsman, James Jenkins, who also assisted in the autopsy, confirmed that the doctors were obeying military orders. Jenkins, too, said the pathologists’ failure to probe the president’s wounds was done at the command of Admiral Calvin Galloway, the hospital commander, who directed the autopsy from the morgue’s gallery.
[572]

Jenkins thought it odd the autopsy would even be done at Bethesda, rather than by the civilian doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas:

“In retrospect, I think it was a controlling factor. They could control Humes, Boswell, and Finck because they were military . . . I think they were controlled. So were we. We were all military, we could be controlled. And if we weren’t controlled, we could be punished and that kept us away from the public.”
[573]

Jenkins said his experience of the president’s autopsy changed forever his view of his own government:

“I was 19 or 20 years old, and all at once I understood that my country was not much better than a third world country. From that point on in time, I have had no trust, no respect for the government.”
[574]

The process of killing President Kennedy and covering up the conspiracy relied on parties whom the plotters knew in advance they could count on to enter into a conspiracy of silence. Those few witnesses who courageously broke the silence, such as Dr. Charles Crenshaw, suffered the consequences of being isolated and singled out. But the Dallas and Bethesda doctors who changed their testimony under stress, who lied out of fear for their lives, or who followed orders in not probing wounds and then stonewalling questions, were not alone. They joined in a larger conspiracy of silence that would envelop our government, our media, our academic institutions, and virtually our entire society from November 22, 1963, to the present.

The promoters of the systemic evil involved in killing President Kennedy counted on our repression and denial of its reality. They knew that no one would want to deal with the elephant in the living room. The Dallas and Bethesda doctors who saw the truth staring up at them from the president’s dead body, and who then backed away from it, were not unique. They are symbolic of us all.

Those who dared to break the conspiracy of silence risked consequences more severe than the assassination of one’s character. Dr. Crenshaw said he “reasoned that anyone who would go so far as to eliminate the President of the United States would surely not hesitate to kill a doctor.”
[575]

Or would surely not hesitate to kill a photographer who had taken pictures of what the doctors had seen. There was in fact such a photographer, documenting for history the wounds that the doctors saw—and would eventually deny seeing.

At 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, three hours after President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Lieutenant Commander William Bruce Pitzer received a phone call at his home in Takoma Park, Maryland. Lt. Cmdr. Pitzer was the head of the Audio-Visual Department of the Naval Medical School. In his audio-visual expertise, Pitzer worked closely with Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the president’s autopsy was about to take place.

After listening to his caller, Bill Pitzer hung up. He excused himself from his family’s dinner table, and said he was going to work. Pitzer took with him his 35 mm camera. He did not return home until the next afternoon. He did not discuss with his family the work he had done in the meantime.
[576]

On the Monday or Tuesday following the assassination, First Class Hospital Corpsman Dennis David stopped by the office of his good friend and mentor, Lt. Cmdr. Pitzer. David found Pitzer crouched over a film-editing machine.

“Come here,” said Pitzer, “I want to show you something.”
[577]

As Pitzer hand-cranked a sixteen-millimeter, black-and-white film through the machine, David watched the short movie on a small screen. What he saw was the body of President Kennedy viewed from the waist up, being touched by the hands of unseen individuals. He saw the hands roll the body onto its side and back.
[578]

Pitzer was editing the film. David watched him work on several reels. He got the impression, he said, that Pitzer “was pulling some of the frames off of the films to make slides with.”
[579]
In addition to the movie film, Pitzer had pictures and slides on his desk. They showed the president’s body from different aspects. Pitzer shared his photographic evidence with David. The two men talked over what they were seeing.

David recalled to an interviewer his and Pitzer’s conclusions: “Number one, it was our distinct impression—impression, hell, it was our opinion, actual opinion—that the shot that killed the President had to have come from the front.”

Asked why, David said, “Because we both noted a small entry wound here [interviewer notes that David points to the right side of his forehead] from another photo, and a large exit wound back in this area [indicates right rear of head]. I had seen gunshot wounds before, and so had Bill. I’ve seen a lot of them since, and I can assure you that it definitely was an entry wound in the forehead.”
[580]

That he and Pitzer were looking at an exit wound in the rear of Kennedy’s head was even more obvious: “It is inconceivable that anyone even vaguely acquainted with gunshot wounds would conclude that the massive wound in the
rear
of JFK’s skull could have occurred from a rear-entry projectile, unless it was from grenade or mortar shrapnel, which tears and rends flesh and bone rather than pierces it.”
[581]

Pitzer did not tell David he had taken the film he was editing, but David assumed he had. “I never asked him,” David said. “He was head of the Audio-Visual Department. I just assumed he had done it, he had taken it.”
[582]