Reclaiming History (103 page)

Dr. Cyril Wecht, a member of the HSCA’s forensic pathology panel, testified, “The bullet wound of entrance on the president’s back—[when] lined up with the bullet wound of exit on the front of the president’s neck, drawing a straight line—showed that vertically the bullet had moved slightly upward.
That is extremely important
…How in the world can a bullet be fired from a sixth-floor window, strike the president in the back, and yet have a slightly upward direction?”
²⁵²
The HSCA forensic panel did say that “when seen in the autopsy position, the outshoot wound was described as being at about the same height, (or slightly higher) relative to the inshoot wound.”
²⁵³

When I asked my pathologist for the London trial, the chief medical examiner for Dallas County, Dr. Charles Petty, about this problem, he explained to me during preparation for the trial that from an analysis of the Zapruder film, the HSCA determined that at the time the president was struck in the back, his upper body (though not his head) was inclined forward at “an approximate angle of 11 to 18 degrees” relative to the horizontal plane,
²⁵⁴
and
because of this
, Petty said, even though the bullet was at all times traveling downward (from the horizontal, i.e., relative to Elm Street) through the president’s body, from an
anatomic
standpoint (i.e., if the president had been seated ramrod straight—referred to medically as the “anatomic” or autopsy position) it was proceeding on a slightly
upward
path through his body.
²⁵⁵
Therefore, diagrammatically, the bullet that struck the president
appears
to be going upward—in that it is exiting at a point on the president’s body higher than where it entered—“but it is only doing so anatomically,” he said, adding that “the president was
not
in an anatomic or autopsy position at the time he was shot. If he had been, the bullet, even anatomically speaking, would have exited at a lower point on his body then it entered, because it would have entered higher up.” As the HSCA photographic panel of experts concluded, “The bullet was moving…downward by 4.0° relative to Kennedy
if he was sitting erect
(not inclined forward or aft).”
²⁵⁶

I literally struggled for an hour or so that afternoon to comprehend the points Dr. Petty had told me, eventually using my left hand and my right index finger to grasp this simple, yet deceptive reality. To follow what I did, extend the palm and fingers of your left hand (representing a human body) straight up and perpendicular to the ground. Now incline your hand backward, that is, to your left, illustrating the president leaning forward. Now take your right index finger, and keeping it straight, point it slightly downward, putting the tip against the palm of your open hand, the tip representing the descending bullet about to enter the body. Without moving your right finger but keeping the tip touching the palm, now straighten out your left hand. As you do so, though the tip of your right finger hasn’t moved, it (bullet) is now touching the palm (entering the body) at a point higher up and would thereby exit at a lower point.
²⁵⁷
Likewise, if you start inclining your hand back again to the left, the same bullet (tip of finger) that would have entered high up on the hand (president’s body) if the hand had been straight, now enters at a lower point on the hand (body), and hence would exit at a higher point. Indeed, the more the hand (body) is leaning to the left (forward), the lower the point of entry of the bullet and the higher the exit point.

See Exhibit A on this page for an illustration of the point that the
same
bullet enters and exits Kennedy’s body at different points (causing three separate bullet tracks) dependent on the orientation of Kennedy’s body at the moment of impact. As illustrated, if President Kennedy had been sitting absolutely straight up in the anatomic position at the time the bullet struck his body, it would have struck a point several inches higher than it actually did and exited a corresponding number of inches lower, in which case the whole issue of the exit point being higher than the entrance point would never have arisen.

Exhibit A

1. Where the point of impact (on Kennedy’s neck) would have been if the president had been sitting in the “anatomic position” at the time he was shot.

2. Where the point of impact would have been if the president had been leaning forward slightly at the time he was shot. Note that the exit wound would now be located higher up on the president’s body.

3. This representation of the president’s body, a reproduction of an HSCA sketch (HSCA volume 7, page 100), depicts the approximate orientation of the body at the time he was hit by the first bullet, although his head is tilted forward slightly more than it actually was as shown in the Zapruder film. The point of impact is now the lowest on the president’s upper right back, and the exit wound is the highest.

But the above only tells you why the orientation of the president’s body caused him to be struck precisely where he was, and why the bullet, passing through soft tissue, exited where it did (Exhibit A-3) as opposed to the two other bullet tracks (A-1 and A-2). Now let’s take this
single
bullet track (A-3) and see how it looks as the orientation of the president’s body changes. Exhibit B-1 (which is identical to A-3) is the actual track of the bullet through Kennedy’s body, and it is downward. But as we elevate the president’s head (B-2 and B-3), we see that the
same
bullet track, which is going downward through the president’s body, is traveling upward anatomically.

With the exception of Dr. Wecht, the HSCA understood this issue, and as opposed to the Warren Commission (see later discussion), dealt with it properly.
²⁵⁸
But in the committee’s attempt to explain this elusive and illusive concept visually (see Exhibit C),
²⁵⁹
it presented a sketch that, although correct, might be confusing to some. Although the three arrows (and lines) in Exhibit C are intended to represent the same single bullet track, without elucidation they could easily be erroneously viewed as depicting three separate bullet tracks, each one based on a different orientation of the president’s body at the time of impact. Exhibit B eliminates this confusion, and was the one I intended to present to the jury in London if Spence raised the issue, which he did not.

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

As indicated elsewhere in this book, the Kennedy family has not authorized any autopsy photographs to be released to the public. However, pirated autopsy photos have appeared in some conspiracy books on the assassination. Perhaps the clearest visual evidence of the fact that the entrance wound in the back was definitely above the exit wound in the throat appears in one of these photos taken of the left side of the president’s head as he is lying on his back, his head on a metal headrest. Only the wound to the throat is visible, not the wound to his upper right back. However, it couldn’t be clearer from this photo that the wound to the back was definitely
above
the exit wound in the throat.
²⁶⁰
And Dr. Humes, in his testimony before the Warren Commission, made it very clear that “the wound in the anterior [front] portion of the lower neck is physically lower than the point of entrance posteriorly [to the rear], sir.”
²⁶¹
Undoubtedly, one factor that has contributed to the mistaken illusion that the bullet entered at a point lower on the president’s body than it exited is that one’s back is
below
one’s neck, and the bullet entered the president’s back and exited in his throat (neck). But this ignores the reality (shown in the photo) that the
front
of one’s neck extends farther downward (i.e., lower) into one’s body than the back of one’s neck does.

T
here is another related matter that challenges, like no other in my judgment, the integrity of the Warren Commission. Although the autopsy report and autopsy descriptive worksheet both put the point of the entrance wound on the president’s
back
, the Warren Commission’s sketch of the path of the bullet through the president’s body
²⁶²
has the bullet entering the lower part of the president’s
neck
. The sketch was made for the Warren Commission under Dr. Humes’s direction from his recollection of the autopsy.
²⁶³
Moreover, Dr. Humes, no less than three times in his testimony before the Warren Commission, even specifically stated that the entry wound was in the “low
neck
.”
²⁶⁴
This, despite the fact that, as indicated, his own autopsy report states,
²⁶⁵
and the descriptive sheet of the president’s body made by his colleague Dr. Boswell at the time of the autopsy shows,
²⁶⁶
that the entrance wound was
not in the president’s neck, but lower, in his upper right back
. In fact, the autopsy photographs of the wound clearly show that the wound was almost 2 inches lower than what is shown in the Warren Commission’s sketch
²⁶⁷
—in other words, just about where the autopsy report says it is. And the HSCA concluded that the bullet entered “the upper right
back
of President Kennedy.”
²⁶⁸

In any event, I am compelled to conclude that the Warren Commission staff, in not challenging Dr. Humes’s testimony and sketch on this point, either was medically naive in not knowing (or negligently overlooked the fact) that the autopsy report’s description of the entry wound being in the “upper right posterior thorax just above…the scapula” (the shoulder blade) would put the wound in the upper right part of the back, not the low neck,
*
and hence did not realize that Dr. Humes’s testimony and his sketch varied materially from his own autopsy report and the autopsy descriptive sheet; or, erroneously believing they had no plausible explanation for the exit wound being
ostensibly
higher than (or even approximately the same height as) the entrance wound, changed the location of the entrance wound for the purpose of solving the higher-exit-wound problem.

USA Today
reported on July 3, 1997, that Warren Commission member Gerald R. Ford had changed the Commission staff’s draft of its report from the language that the bullet had entered Kennedy’s “
back
at a point slightly above the shoulder,”
²⁶⁹
to its entering “the back of his
neck
” in its final report.
²⁷⁰
To immediate charges by conspiracy theorists that Ford did this to cover up a conspiracy in the assassination, Ford is quoted in
USA Today
as responding, “My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory. My changes were only an attempt to be more precise.” Though Ford may have been responsible for changing the draft to reflect the entry wound as being in the neck, he would have had no influence over the sketch of the wound
²⁷¹
showing the
same
erroneous point of entry. As stated earlier, the sketch was made under Dr. Humes’s direction in preparation for his testimony before the Warren Commission.