Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from iHeart Radio. For decades, everyone, it seemed,
Speaker 1: had a theory on how it really happened. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was the Russians or the mob, or the CIA declarations
Speaker 1: about the magic bullet, the Grassy Knoll, and the shot
Speaker 1: or shots that killed President John F. Kennedy on November
Speaker 1: twenty two, nineteen sixty three, in Dallas, Texas. Numerous congressional
Speaker 1: committees were formed to investigate the assassination without any real results.
Speaker 1: From the Warren Commission in nineteen sixty three, to the
Speaker 1: Church Committee in nineteen seventy five, to the US House
Speaker 1: of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: none of them put to bed the questions surrounding the
Speaker 1: government's position that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.
Speaker 1: The JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: sought to finally establish some answers for the American public.
Speaker 1: The Assassination Records Review Board AARRB followed. The independent federal
Speaker 1: agency was created to record and release as much information
Speaker 1: to the public as possible. My guest today Douglas Horn
Speaker 1: worked as chief analyst on the Military Records team for
Speaker 1: the AARRB in Washington, d C. He was a key
Speaker 1: participant in taking the depositions of ten witnesses to the
Speaker 1: JFK autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: Horn claims to have seen evidence that finally proves what
Speaker 1: many have believed all along that the government was engaged
Speaker 1: in an extensive conspiracy to cover up the truth of
Speaker 1: the JFK assassination. Horn believes there is proof that the
Speaker 1: official autopsy and the famous Zapruder film which captured the
Speaker 1: events live, were both doctored. I wanted to begin with
Speaker 1: how Horn found himself working for the a r RB.
Speaker 2: I was with the Navy in different capacities for twenty years,
Speaker 2: ten years on active duty as a surface warfare officer
Speaker 2: driving ships, and ten more years as a civil servant
Speaker 2: with the Navy.
Speaker 1: And what's the difference, by the way, in terms of duties.
Speaker 2: Well, on active duty driving ships around, I was on
Speaker 2: three different warships, a frigate and two guided missile cruisers.
Speaker 2: You know saying right, standard rudder all engines had full
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And as a civil servant. I
Speaker 2: was in a field office providing logistics support for some
Speaker 2: anti submarine warfare ships. So that was the same job
Speaker 2: every day ashore, you know, with no risk involved, you know,
Speaker 2: just going home and sleep at night, but still very
Speaker 2: much working for the same Navy, just in one in uniform,
Speaker 2: in the second one not in uniform. And so the
Speaker 2: way I was steered toward working for the review board
Speaker 2: was that was Oliver Stone's movie coming out, of course
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one, late nineteen ninety one and then
Speaker 2: into nineteen ninety two, there was a lot of talk
Speaker 2: about his film, and that caused me to reread. One
Speaker 2: of the major books in my life was David Lufton's
Speaker 2: Best Evidence, which was all about the medical evidence. And
Speaker 2: while mister Lufton did not come up with all the answers,
Speaker 2: he did draw attention to a major problem, which was
Speaker 2: that the wound on the President's head seen at Parkland
Speaker 2: Hospital in Dallas, where he was treated, was totally different
Speaker 2: from the wounds depicted in the autopsy photographs taken it
Speaker 2: Bethesden Naval Hospital. So he was very much concerned about
Speaker 2: that dichotomy and what was the reason for all that
Speaker 2: and so he shifted the focus from the single bullet theory,
Speaker 2: which had been the focus of the critics since the
Speaker 2: late sixties, to the head wounds, which I thought was appropriate.
Speaker 2: So after Oliver Stones's film comes out and has a
Speaker 2: a grand theme of a domestic conspiracy and who might
Speaker 2: have been behind that, and I noted at the end
Speaker 2: of his film, as did everyone else, that he talked
Speaker 2: about how all of the sensitive records of the House
Speaker 2: Select Committee on Assassinations from the nineteen seventies were sealed.
Speaker 2: We're under sealed for fifty years, which was outrageous since
Speaker 2: that was supposed to be a people's committee to explain
Speaker 2: to the American people what happened, and yet all their
Speaker 2: sensitive records are sealed. So that led to the drafting
Speaker 2: of the JFK Records Act by Robert Blakey. Now Robert
Speaker 2: Blakey was the Chief Council for the House Select Committee
Speaker 2: on Assassinations Chief Council for the HSCA, the second one
Speaker 2: after the first one was fired. The first one wanted
Speaker 2: to do a real murder investigation.
Speaker 1: Well, this is church committee.
Speaker 2: No, this is right after the Church Committee was the HSCA.
Speaker 2: Church Committee was not the and the HSCA was formed
Speaker 2: in seventy six and then wound up its work in
Speaker 2: seventy eight and published its report in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Robert Blake, who had been the second Chief
Speaker 2: Council for the HSCA, he drafts this legislation called the
Speaker 2: JFK Records Act, and it has bipartisan support in Congress,
Speaker 2: primarily by two different mindsets of people. So the mainstream senators,
Speaker 2: people like John Glenn and David Boren, who was head
Speaker 2: of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, they supported the
Speaker 2: JFK Records Act because they said, we'll show all these
Speaker 2: people that think there was a conspiracy in this country
Speaker 2: to kill Kennedy and they think there was a cover up,
Speaker 2: We'll show them by releasing all the records. We'll let
Speaker 2: all the records come out and be put in a
Speaker 2: public collection in the archives for public access. And that's
Speaker 2: why we support this bill. And then of course there
Speaker 2: were many others who supported the bill because they didn't
Speaker 2: trust the government and they thought that things were being
Speaker 2: withheld that were important and that the American people still
Speaker 2: didn't know the true story of what had happened. So
Speaker 2: this bill got bipartisan support and it was passed into law.
Speaker 2: And so what happened to me was I went to
Speaker 2: my first JFK symposium in nineteen ninety three and it
Speaker 2: was in Dallas, and what I found out it was electrifying.
Speaker 2: There were people on stage for six days, people who
Speaker 2: were PhDs in history, mds philosophy majors, and accredited teachers
Speaker 2: who were discussing this subject. And then I realized that
Speaker 2: this validates all the books I've been reading for years,
Speaker 2: since I was a teenager, that there are serious problems
Speaker 2: with the evidence in this case.
Speaker 1: Right, so you've been focused on this years before.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, I remember buying the condensed edition of the
Speaker 2: Warren Report in paperback through the weekly reader program in
Speaker 2: school I believe it was elementary school and not being
Speaker 2: satisfied with it. There were no pictures, there were no
Speaker 2: autopsy photographs published. I wasn't satisfied with some parts, that's
Speaker 2: what I thought were kind of simplistic. And yes, I
Speaker 2: even thought that at the age of fourteen, Yes, I
Speaker 2: did so. Then I proceeded to read the other first
Speaker 2: generation books Rushed to Judgment by Mark Lane, Accessories after
Speaker 2: the Fact by Sylvia Maher six seconds in Dallas.
Speaker 1: Robert sam Anson.
Speaker 2: Right, So Robert sam Anson was a big one in
Speaker 2: the seventies. They've killed the President, right, That was a
Speaker 2: big book. So I went to my first symposium in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. It was very well attended. It was
Speaker 2: the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination.
Speaker 1: Who hosted the event just a profit.
Speaker 2: Making group called ASK. It was a for profit symposium organization,
Speaker 2: but all of the people that were there were very
Speaker 2: highly credentialed and very serious people who had either written
Speaker 2: books already or had published papers. And they actually had
Speaker 2: people from both sides of the spectrum arguing with each other,
Speaker 2: which was great to see that debate on stage, people
Speaker 2: debating evidence. So then how did I get hired by
Speaker 2: the Review Board is a great story. I went to
Speaker 2: another symposium in nineteen ninety four in Washington, DC Research
Speaker 2: Symposium and the last speaker at the symposium was Jack Tunheim.
Speaker 2: So Jack Tunheim became the head of the Review Board.
Speaker 2: The five board members had just been approved by the
Speaker 2: US Senate and he had been elected by his peers
Speaker 2: to be the chairman of the Review Board. So he
Speaker 2: came to speak to us and give his stump speech
Speaker 2: about what the mission of the Review Board was, which
Speaker 2: was essentially to act as librarians and force their way
Speaker 2: into government files, get agencies to cooperate and release records
Speaker 2: that had been withheld, records that were either still classified,
Speaker 2: or records that the agencies just didn't want released for
Speaker 2: some reason. They had parts of them redacted, partially obliterated
Speaker 2: with blackouts, you know. So he was asked during his speech,
Speaker 2: are you still hiring staff, and he said, yes, we are,
Speaker 2: but you cannot have worked for a previous investigation to
Speaker 2: work for the Review Board. You cannot have worked for
Speaker 2: the Warren Commission or for the House Select Committee in
Speaker 2: the seventies, and you must not be a federal employee
Speaker 2: at the current time. You must not be a current
Speaker 2: federal employee. So I listened to that, I thought, okay.
Speaker 2: I wrote out a resume overnight, and I went to
Speaker 2: the first public hearing the very next day of the
Speaker 2: Review Board. So the Review Board didn't really have a
Speaker 2: staff yet. They'd only hired one or two clerical people.
Speaker 2: But they had their first public hearing on how do
Speaker 2: we define what an assassination record is? We're going to
Speaker 2: try to get records released, how do we define an
Speaker 2: assassination record? So they had a public hearing at the
Speaker 2: Archives and numerous leading lights of the research community showed
Speaker 2: up and gave their opinions, and I handed my resume
Speaker 2: to David Marwell. At the time, he was the staff director,
Speaker 2: David Marwell, and all they had hired at that time were,
Speaker 2: you know, like two or three other people. So over
Speaker 2: the next six or seven months, from the autumn of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four until March of nineteen ninety five, I
Speaker 2: underwent a gauntlet of telephone interviews. So I was working
Speaker 2: back in Hawaii at this time for the Navy and
Speaker 2: my civil service job.
Speaker 1: Did they suspend the rule that you couldn't be a
Speaker 1: government employee on your behalf?
Speaker 2: No, they didn't suspend the rule. It required me to
Speaker 2: make a major sacrifice and to take a big risk.
Speaker 2: So after six interviews on the phone, I finally got hired.
Speaker 2: But what I had to do was actually resign from
Speaker 2: the civil service for a couple of days and then
Speaker 2: trust them that they were going to be honorable and
Speaker 2: then pick me up. And what that meant was I
Speaker 2: did not have return rights to my job in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: If you're in the civil service and you transferred to
Speaker 2: an overseas job, you have return rights to go back
Speaker 2: to your job after two or three years. I did
Speaker 2: not have return rights. I literally had to resign from
Speaker 2: civil service, and then they picked me up, and I
Speaker 2: took a big pay cut, about a thirty two percent
Speaker 2: pay cut to go work for this temporary agency in Washington,
Speaker 2: and they weren't going to pay for my plane ticket
Speaker 2: or my move.
Speaker 1: Did you do that? Why?
Speaker 2: Well, I had become in a good way, I think,
Speaker 2: obsessed with the case because I knew that none of
Speaker 2: the medical evidence made any sense. It was the medical
Speaker 2: evidence in the case was so full of conflicts and
Speaker 2: things that didn't agree with each other and people who
Speaker 2: had made opposing statements about wounds that I thought, this
Speaker 2: isn't right. If we live in the I was always
Speaker 2: told as a kid, we live in the greatest country
Speaker 2: in the world. My mother and father told me that repeatedly.
Speaker 2: My father was an ex marine, he was a Republican,
Speaker 2: my mother was a Democrat. So we had an interesting
Speaker 2: family with interesting dinner table conversations disagreements. But they'd also
Speaker 2: told me we're in the greatest country. And I had
Speaker 2: questioned that a few times, is that really true? Do
Speaker 2: you guys believe that? And they'd say, yes, of course
Speaker 2: it's true, and they would look at me like, why
Speaker 2: are you asking us? Well, this was the kind of
Speaker 2: reason I was asking them. I don't like being lied to.
Speaker 2: I really don't like it. And if we're in a
Speaker 2: democracy that's functioning, the government shouldn't lie to the people,
Speaker 2: especially about important things. And the two most important questions
Speaker 2: I think that people should have on their minds as
Speaker 2: far as the government telling them the truth and being
Speaker 2: transparent is how do wars begin?
Speaker 1: Number one?
Speaker 2: And number two, how do assassinations happen? So you know,
Speaker 2: we had three big assassinations four actually in the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties of people that mattered a lot to the public.
Speaker 1: Is your fourth MegaR Evers? Or is it Malcolm X?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm thinking of Malcolm X.
Speaker 1: Got yeah, so there's five as far as that.
Speaker 2: That would be five, that's right, that's right, Jack Kennedy, RFK,
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. And so
Speaker 2: I've never had any patience with government lies. I know
Speaker 2: that to some extent, I've learned, as we all do,
Speaker 2: as we grow up that all governments lie at one
Speaker 2: time or another about different things. The question is how
Speaker 2: often do they do that? And do they lie about
Speaker 2: the really important things they do? And you believe that
Speaker 2: democracy is important and informed electorate is important, you should
Speaker 2: do something about it. So I felt the call to action,
Speaker 2: and I knew that this effort to get documents released
Speaker 2: was the last official body that would exist that was
Speaker 2: going to deal with this subject. And it was clear
Speaker 2: to me. So in the first place, why did I
Speaker 2: know that? Well, I knew that because the Congress, when
Speaker 2: they passed the JFK Records Act, they did not have
Speaker 2: the guts to empower another investigation. The Review Board was
Speaker 2: not officially allowed to reinvestigate. Our job is to find
Speaker 2: and locate within the government assassination records and then to
Speaker 2: force agencies to release them directly to the archives. And
Speaker 2: then if the agencies were not willing to do that,
Speaker 2: and they still wanted to withhold some of these records,
Speaker 2: then they had to give them to this body called
Speaker 2: the Review Board, which was the middleman.
Speaker 1: And that was their mandate.
Speaker 2: That was our mandate, was to find the records and
Speaker 2: review the ones that the agency did not want to release.
Speaker 2: And the View Board for the first time something called
Speaker 2: citizen review. These five board members, working with their staff,
Speaker 2: would decide what was going to be released and what wasn't,
Speaker 2: and their agencies were going to have to comply, and
Speaker 2: the only way they could not comply was to appeal
Speaker 2: to the President and then he would make the decision.
Speaker 2: So I thought this is worth being a part of
Speaker 2: because it's an honorable thing to do to try to
Speaker 2: get the rest of these records released, no matter what
Speaker 2: they say, no matter what they tell us about the assassination.
Speaker 2: And I also had a great interest in the medical evidence,
Speaker 2: and I thought, this is my chance, one way or
Speaker 2: another to learn more about the part of the case
Speaker 2: that intrigues me the most were the conflicts and the
Speaker 2: medical evidence, because I mean, a body after someone's been
Speaker 2: killed by gunshot is a map of the shooting. Where
Speaker 2: did the bullets go in, where did they come out?
Speaker 2: And the diagrams of those things tells you from whence
Speaker 2: the bullets came. So I knew that one of the
Speaker 2: people that had interviewed me, the head of Research and Analysis,
Speaker 2: Jeremy Gunn, was also the general counsel.
Speaker 1: For the Review Board.
Speaker 2: He was double headed and he had an intense interest
Speaker 2: in the medical evidence as well, and that became apparent
Speaker 2: during my interview. So we clicked on that score. And
Speaker 2: you know, he had to fill out four teams of people,
Speaker 2: a military records team, which is what I was hired
Speaker 2: to work on, an FBI records team, a CIA records team,
Speaker 2: and the fourth one was Secret Service and all other agencies.
Speaker 2: So officially they hired me because they needed another person
Speaker 2: on the military records team and they still had a
Speaker 2: vacancy there, and they also wanted to hire one person
Speaker 2: on the staff, just one who was widely read in
Speaker 2: the literature of the assassination, the literature by the critics,
Speaker 2: and so that I would know where to go and
Speaker 2: what book to find leads on where to find records.
Speaker 2: It was that simple on the surface. Beneath the surface,
Speaker 2: it was Jeremy Gunn someone of a like mind to
Speaker 2: assist him with looking into the medical and medicals. And
Speaker 2: the reason is you might ask, well, how can you
Speaker 2: look into that if you weren't allowed to reinvestigate. Well,
Speaker 2: this was a special case. It's a great story. Congressman
Speaker 2: Stokes from Ohio, from Cleveland, as it turned out, was
Speaker 2: still in office at the time, and he met with
Speaker 2: the five board members as they were going through their
Speaker 2: process of being confirmed by the Senate, and he told
Speaker 2: them at the time that no one was satisfied with
Speaker 2: the findings of the House elect Committee on Assassinations with
Speaker 2: regard to the medical evidence, no one was really satisfied,
Speaker 2: and that he encouraged them to do all they could
Speaker 2: to quote clarify the record unquote in that area. And
Speaker 2: so the board members had a kind of an informal
Speaker 2: mandate from the former chairman of the HSCA Chairman Stokes,
Speaker 2: to do some let's call it quasi reinvestigation. Other words,
Speaker 2: the Review Board was never going to be allowed to
Speaker 2: publish findings of fact or conclusions. But what we were
Speaker 2: allowed to do was take depositions and conduct witness interviews.
Speaker 2: So a deposition being a sworn witness interview with a
Speaker 2: court recorder, you know, making a record of it verbatim record,
Speaker 2: or disconduct unsworn interviews where we would write an interview
Speaker 2: report afterwards, and we can deposit those in the JFK
Speaker 2: records collection. So the American people have can have access
Speaker 2: to these depositions and interviews later and make up their
Speaker 2: own minds. That was the whole idea, was that the
Speaker 2: American people could study the records placed in the JFK
Speaker 2: Records collection and make up their own minds about what
Speaker 2: had happened. That's all the Congress had stomach for. They
Speaker 2: did not have the stomach to empower a new investigation.
Speaker 1: So, just for clarity's sake, you're in Washington. The board
Speaker 1: is in Washington. You relocate to Washington. This is formed
Speaker 1: by a Senate committee.
Speaker 2: Oh no, the Senate approved the board members who had
Speaker 2: been appointed.
Speaker 1: Who formed the board?
Speaker 2: Who formed the board, Well, the JFK Records Act had
Speaker 2: baked into it the template of how these people were selected.
Speaker 2: So one of the people was selected by the American
Speaker 2: Bar Association, and that was Jack Tunheim, who shortly afterwards,
Speaker 2: after he accepted his appointment, he was then given a
Speaker 2: federal judgeship and accepted it. So he's a federal judge
Speaker 2: at the time I go to work there.
Speaker 1: But the formation of the board is embedded in the
Speaker 1: Act itself.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's embedded in the Act. So the Act established
Speaker 2: the requirement to locate and declassified records. It established the
Speaker 2: structure of the board, and so two of the board
Speaker 2: members were appointed by American historical societies, the unions as
Speaker 2: it were for college history professors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of academics.
Speaker 2: Here, academics, and one was an archivist, and one was
Speaker 2: appointed by the White House. So that was another historian,
Speaker 2: Henry Grafts. So Henry graft is an historian. Bill Joyce
Speaker 2: was an archivist. Kermit Hall and Anna Nelson were historians,
Speaker 2: and then Jack Dunheim was a federal judge.
Speaker 1: The board is embedded in the act itself. How many
Speaker 1: people on the staff would you say?
Speaker 2: There were about twenty five people on the staff roughly
Speaker 2: when we were fully staffed up, and most of them
Speaker 2: were analysts like myself, and some were clerical, but most
Speaker 2: were analysts. So on the Military Records Team, I had
Speaker 2: three major areas of interest which Jeremy Gunn, my boss,
Speaker 2: my big boss, supported and concurred with. So the first
Speaker 2: one was finding records in the government on Cuba and
Speaker 2: Vietnam policy, and that was the function of the Military
Speaker 2: Records Team. The second area of interest was the medical
Speaker 2: evidence and the reason I got to do that as
Speaker 2: a military team member was it was a military autopsy,
Speaker 2: but as the Naval hospital, so that falls under the
Speaker 2: military team. That's the big unofficial reason why Jeremy hired
Speaker 2: me was I had an interest and a knowledge of
Speaker 2: that area. And the third area of interest which was
Speaker 2: developed as time went along was the Suppruter film, which
Speaker 2: we can get into later.
Speaker 1: Get into that. So my question, then, my last question
Speaker 1: before we dig into the main media, is when you
Speaker 1: do depositions of ten people? Are you doing this completely
Speaker 1: on your own? Are there lawyers with you? Do you
Speaker 1: do with a staff of people do conduct the depositions?
Speaker 2: Here's how it went. The person in charge of all
Speaker 2: ten autopsy deponents, all ten depositions of autopsy participants and
Speaker 2: witnesses was Jeremy Gunn. He was our general counsel. He
Speaker 2: was the only one allowed to ask questions and talk
Speaker 2: to the witness during the deposition. So he started out
Speaker 2: with a small group of three people I think, helping
Speaker 2: him develop exhibits and do research for him before the depositions,
Speaker 2: and that was whittled down to one person and that
Speaker 2: was me. So I was his primary and then sole
Speaker 2: research assistant in preparing for each deposition. So I attended
Speaker 2: each deposition with Jeremy. I sat right next to him.
Speaker 2: I was allowed to pass him notes. I was expected
Speaker 2: to hand him the exhibit when he needed it, hand
Speaker 2: him the correct exhibit, constructive suggestions if he was forgetting
Speaker 2: an important question, or write him notes. But he was
Speaker 2: the only one allowed to speak to the witnesses.
Speaker 1: You were there to assist him. Can you mention at
Speaker 1: least a couple of the people you'd deposed.
Speaker 2: Sure, all three autopsy pathologists at Bethesdenel Hospital, which was
Speaker 2: doctor Humes in the Navy, doctor Boswell in the Navy,
Speaker 2: and then an Army pathologist, doctor Fink, who arrived late
Speaker 2: after the autopsy started and assisted the other two pathologists.
Speaker 2: So they were still alive, and they reluctantly participated only
Speaker 2: because we subpoened them and they didn't call our bluff
Speaker 2: and they decided to reluctantly show up. They weren't looking
Speaker 2: forward to it, but they showed up.
Speaker 1: Well. Was their demeanor when they were being deposed.
Speaker 2: And their demeanor very different. Humes was a domineering, arrogant person,
Speaker 2: full of bluster. When he couldn't bully you into backing
Speaker 2: off from a question, he gave you a flippant answer.
Speaker 2: And there were four or five times during his deposition
Speaker 2: when I thought he was going to get up and
Speaker 2: walk out.
Speaker 1: How dare you subpoena me?
Speaker 2: And how dare you ask me those questions? Doctor Boswell
Speaker 2: was very laconic, calm measured in his responses, and totally
Speaker 2: unlike Humes in personality. He was not combative and he
Speaker 2: was not arrogant. Doctor Fink played the game of I'm
Speaker 2: an old man, I can't remember anything. Fortunately, in two
Speaker 2: or three important instances he did remember and gave us
Speaker 2: to honest answers, which we can get into, but he
Speaker 2: played I'm a forgetful old man as a cop out.
Speaker 2: Boswell gave us much more information than either of the
Speaker 2: other two, and for the first time we had split
Speaker 2: up the pathologists and done them on different days. They
Speaker 2: weren't in the room at the same time, so we
Speaker 2: got Boswell contradicting Humes on a number of occasions which
Speaker 2: had never happened before, which was very important. So two
Speaker 2: of the other important opponents were the two FBI agents
Speaker 2: who were present at the autopsy, Cybert and O'Neil. They
Speaker 2: had been interviewed briefly by Arlen Spector, one of the
Speaker 2: Warren Commision staff attorneys who later became a senator. And
Speaker 2: he didn't get along with them. They didn't get along
Speaker 2: with him, and he decided he was not going to
Speaker 2: take their depositions. And even the report they wrote about
Speaker 2: what they witnessed at the autopsy was deep sixth and
Speaker 2: it wasn't published by the Warren Commission. It was in
Speaker 2: the archives, but the Warren Commission didn't publish it or
Speaker 2: deal with it.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: They maintained that that yes, they heard hum say that
Speaker 2: there were only two shots that hit the president, and
Speaker 2: they were both from behind, but that the back wound
Speaker 2: was so low that it couldn't possibly have gone through
Speaker 2: his neck, and that it did not exit the body anywhere,
Speaker 2: and so the government didn't like that, and the Warren
Speaker 2: Commission didn't like that. So that's why they were ignored.
Speaker 2: So that the House Committee had interviewed them. The House
Speaker 2: staff had interviewed them each one time, and they wrote
Speaker 2: little interview reports, and then those reports were among the
Speaker 2: records that were sealed for fifty years, which was nonsense.
Speaker 2: And so we read their interview reports and all the
Speaker 2: other House Select Committee interview reports in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: when they were opened up by the JFKA Records Act
Speaker 2: in ninety three, they became publicly available. So we had
Speaker 2: reviewed all of these medical witness interviews from the HSCA,
Speaker 2: and we decided, oh, we need to depose these FBI agents.
Speaker 2: The government hasn't taken their their statements under oath yet,
Speaker 2: so we did and they were very forthcoming and very
Speaker 2: willing to cooperate.
Speaker 1: Well before we dive into Bethesda and autopsys. So for
Speaker 1: I wanted to just ask you, in American history in
Speaker 1: the last several decades, I can't think of a greater
Speaker 1: example of this kind of gamesmanship where the American public,
Speaker 1: and particularly that small section of it that has a
Speaker 1: burning curiosity about the truth of this matter. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was five years old when Kennedy was killed, but
Speaker 1: I've been obsessed with it since I was, Like you said,
Speaker 1: since I think I picked up They've killed the President
Speaker 1: on a little turning book display in a seven to
Speaker 1: eleven on the South Shove of Long Island where I
Speaker 1: grew up, and there was Oswald's autopsy photograph his naked
Speaker 1: body on a slab.
Speaker 2: And yet there are no autopsy photos of the president,
Speaker 2: which was the subject of the book, which was really
Speaker 2: strange when you think about.
Speaker 1: It, right, right, but nothing compares in our lifetimes in
Speaker 1: my mind, to this treatment of the Warren Commission material.
Speaker 1: Every decade, we're going to roll out this stuff, We're
Speaker 1: going to give you all the information. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: the Presidential Release Act or whatever the hell it is.
Speaker 1: Who cares? And even recently with Trump when he was
Speaker 1: in office, it was like, well, here it is again,
Speaker 1: We're going to roll out all the stuff and lay
Speaker 1: bare all the secrets and all the truths about Kennedy's assassination.
Speaker 1: And then nah, maybe not. Who do you think or
Speaker 1: who do you know? Because of all this work you've
Speaker 1: done with records, Who do you think really controls this information?
Speaker 1: And who do you and therefore is suppressing it from
Speaker 1: being I'm assuming he's not the President's who controls this
Speaker 1: information and refuses to release it.
Speaker 2: It's my understanding that of those records which are still withheld,
Speaker 2: almost every single one is a CIA record, and it's
Speaker 2: that agency comes up. They come up with the last
Speaker 2: minute every time there's a you know, let's back up
Speaker 2: just a second here. So the last of the Review
Speaker 2: Board records that had been withheld for a number of
Speaker 2: years were supposed to have been released in the year
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, no matter what. So before that there was
Speaker 2: a staggered sequence of releases withholding names or withholding some
Speaker 2: sources and methods and things like that if they were
Speaker 2: considered sensitive. And in the year twenty seventeen, everything was
Speaker 2: supposed to be released and it wasn't. So we got
Speaker 2: a false alarm under Trump and then false alarms under Biden,
Speaker 2: where each time it was the CIA primarily they came
Speaker 2: up and said, oh, not so fast, mister President. We
Speaker 2: object to the release of these remaining records, a few
Speaker 2: thousand records because we think it will damage national security.
Speaker 2: Just nonsense. This many years later.
Speaker 1: Jfk assassination expert Douglas Horn. If you enjoy conversations with
Speaker 1: those with the inside track on how our government actually works,
Speaker 1: check out my episode with Michael Wolfe, author of Fire
Speaker 1: and Fury, Inside the Trump White House.
Speaker 3: Not to be too high falutin, but I try to
Speaker 3: make a distinction between being a journalist and being a writer.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in, you know, why people do things, how
Speaker 3: they got to be who they are, how they talk,
Speaker 3: how they roll, and maybe in the end, the big
Speaker 3: difference I see between myself and everybody else is It's
Speaker 3: just me. I don't work for a company on the page.
Speaker 3: You just get me, and you can be assured of
Speaker 3: that it's not something else, It's not some other committee.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Michael Wolf, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Douglas
Speaker 1: Horn tells us why and how Kennedy's autopsy photos were falsified.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy was shot while riding in the presidential
Speaker 1: motorcade through Dealey Plaza. The thirty fifth president of the
Speaker 1: United States, was taken to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas
Speaker 1: and pronounced dead. I wanted ARRB chief analyst Douglas Horn
Speaker 1: to walk us through the events that followed.
Speaker 2: So he shot at twelve thirty. They arrived at the
Speaker 2: hospital about twelve thirty eight. He's pronounced dead at one o'clock.
Speaker 2: He actually flatlined a few minutes before that, but he
Speaker 2: was officially pronounced dead at one o'clock. A funeral home
Speaker 2: rings an ornate display coffin, very heavy bronze coffin, and
Speaker 2: he's put in that, and he's taken on board Air
Speaker 2: Force one at love Field at two fourteen pm, and
Speaker 2: then Jackie goes on board at two eighteen pm. And
Speaker 2: then the judge arrives at two thirty pm to swear
Speaker 2: hi men, to swear in LBJ, which many people have
Speaker 2: said was not necessary. But he wanted the public relations
Speaker 2: value of that photograph, and so he got it.
Speaker 1: He got what he wanted.
Speaker 2: The plane takes off at two forty seven Central time,
Speaker 2: it lands, it's about a two hour and thirteen minute trip.
Speaker 2: So it lands at Andrews Air Force Base south of Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. At six o'clock pm Local time, six o'clock
Speaker 2: pm Eastern Standard time. And that's where the story gets strange.
Speaker 2: And I'm just going to relay some simple facts, timeline
Speaker 2: facts to your audience and hopefully it'll attract some attention
Speaker 2: and they'll stay tuned here because this is the heart
Speaker 2: of the story. The Secret Service in radio conversations, which
Speaker 2: we have recordings of. Much of the conversations, part of
Speaker 2: them has been edited and remain edited. But the Secret
Speaker 2: Service decided that the autopsy is going to be at
Speaker 2: Bethesda Naval Hospital and that the body would go by helicopter.
Speaker 2: That was what they decided on the radio telling the airplane.
Speaker 2: The people on the airplane wanted the autopsy at Walter
Speaker 2: Reed Army Hospital, and they wanted it to go buy
Speaker 2: a car, but the Secret Service said, no, we're going
Speaker 2: to do it at Bethesda and the Navy, and we're
Speaker 2: going to fly it by helicopter. So here's what happens.
Speaker 2: The plane comes to a stop at six oh four PM.
Speaker 2: A light gray Navy ambulance pulls up next to the airplane.
Speaker 2: Now that was a cardiac ambulance. It was not a hearse.
Speaker 2: It was sent because there was a rumor that Lyndon
Speaker 2: Johnson had another heart attack like he had in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. That was why that was sent there. So anyway,
Speaker 2: Jackie sees the gray ambulance and she says, we'll go
Speaker 2: in that. And nobody was going to contradict her in
Speaker 2: those circumstances. So the casket that the President was placed
Speaker 2: in Dallas, the heavy bronze casket was loaded somewhat unceremoniously
Speaker 2: by Secret Service agents and part of the military honor guard.
Speaker 2: They're both kind of fighting over who's going to handle
Speaker 2: the casket. It's put into the cardiac ambulance because Jackie said,
Speaker 2: we'll go in that, and that drives away at about
Speaker 2: ten minutes after six. Is she in the car, Yes,
Speaker 2: she's in the car with Robert Kennedy and the President's
Speaker 2: military physician Berkeley, and the two Secret Service agents who
Speaker 2: were in the death car in Dallas. They're in there.
Speaker 2: Agent Greer's driving. He drove the limousine in Dallas and
Speaker 2: he drove this cardiac ambulance. He kicked the driver out
Speaker 2: and he took over Gweer and who Greer and Kellerman
Speaker 2: and Roy Kellerman was in the right front seat of
Speaker 2: the limousine in Dallas, and he's in the right front
Speaker 2: seat of this like gray ambulance. So they all drive
Speaker 2: out and that car.
Speaker 1: This is very now.
Speaker 2: That car does not arrive at Bethesda Naval Hospital until
Speaker 2: six fifty five pm, five minutes to seven. That's recorded
Speaker 2: by Secret Service agents in the reports and by the newspapermen.
Speaker 2: So that's a fact. You can't ignore that fact. But
Speaker 2: here's here's the problem. There was a Marine Corps sergeant
Speaker 2: named Boyagiin and Sergeant Boyagin was there to provide physical
Speaker 2: security with his marines from the Marine barracks for the autopsy,
Speaker 2: and he wrote a report just a few days later,
Speaker 2: the day after the funeral. Funeral's on Monday, the twenty
Speaker 2: fifth November. He writes a report the next day, and
Speaker 2: he says the president's casket arrived at six thirty five PM.
Speaker 2: Six thirty five, that's twenty minutes before the motorcade arrives
Speaker 2: out front from Andrews. And not only that, it's in
Speaker 2: the wrong car and it's in the wrong kind of casket.
Speaker 2: So other people who were present on the loading dock
Speaker 2: noted that the car that delivered the President at six
Speaker 2: thirty five PM was a black hearse, something that a
Speaker 2: funeral home would own, in this case Gawler's funeral home.
Speaker 2: They did the embalming on the President, so it's their car.
Speaker 2: And the casket taken off at six thirty five is
Speaker 2: not this ornate bronze viewing casket that was used in Dallas.
Speaker 2: It's a cheap aluminum metal shipping casket that you would
Speaker 2: use to ship bodies on airplanes and trains with. So
Speaker 2: we have the new time marker, the real time marker
Speaker 2: of six thirty five PM when JFK really arrives at Bethesda,
Speaker 2: and we have other witnesses, very reliable witnesses, Navy Petty
Speaker 2: Officer Dennis David and others that'd say, yes, it's arrived
Speaker 2: in a blackhearse and we unloaded the casket. It was
Speaker 2: a cheap gray metal box. It was not a fancy
Speaker 2: viewing asport casket. Yeah right, it was a transport ca
Speaker 2: So the real question is and so let's give the
Speaker 2: audience to the other time marker. The honor guard is
Speaker 2: separate and distinct from the security guard. So the security
Speaker 2: guards at the morgue or Sergeant Boyagian's team of Marines
Speaker 2: from the Marine barracks, they're people wearing the same uniform
Speaker 2: and they're carrying guns, and that's their jobs to provide
Speaker 2: physical security. The honor Guard are people that assembled at
Speaker 2: Andrews Air Force Base. There are people from all the
Speaker 2: different military services plus the Coastguard. They're in dress uniforms,
Speaker 2: they're wearing white gloves, and they do not have guns
Speaker 2: and their jobs to serve as pall bearers an honor guard.
Speaker 2: So they carry the Dallas casket, the bronze expensive casket,
Speaker 2: and at eight o'clock PM, much later, not until eight
Speaker 2: o'clock PM, and the official autopsy starts shortly after eight
Speaker 2: o'clock PM, and in fact, the FBI agent's recorded in
Speaker 2: their report that the first incision was at eight to fifteen.
Speaker 2: So we've got some problems here.
Speaker 1: So what happened? You've got my heart pounding here. It's
Speaker 1: like a shell game. Which casket is JFK's body in?
Speaker 2: It is a shell game, and it's an intentional shell game.
Speaker 2: It's a cover up on the fly. So here's that's
Speaker 2: what happens. The president's body really did arrive at six
Speaker 2: thirty five PM in the black curse, in the cheap
Speaker 2: metal shipping casket, the transport casket, and that's recorded by
Speaker 2: a gawler's funeral home document where they say, receive a
Speaker 2: metal shipping casket, you know from Dallas, Texas. Okay, So
Speaker 2: when a person from a funeral home runs shipping casket,
Speaker 2: that means something to them. It's not an ornate viewing coffin.
Speaker 2: It's a shipping casket. So the question is what happened
Speaker 2: to his body between six thirty five when it really
Speaker 2: arrived and eight o'clock PM when the honor guard takes
Speaker 2: in the bronze casket. What happens for those it's almost
Speaker 2: ninety minutes. It's an eighty five minute period. What's happening
Speaker 2: to his body. I'll cut to the chase and give
Speaker 2: you the big picture now, because I think it's important
Speaker 2: that people have that in their minds, and then we
Speaker 2: can go back and tie up any loose ends if
Speaker 2: you'd like after. But here's what really happened. The President
Speaker 2: arrived with the same wounds he had on his head
Speaker 2: in Della Texas. A big blowout in the right rear
Speaker 2: of his head, about the size of a baseball or
Speaker 2: a human fist, in the right rear of his head,
Speaker 2: not in the top of his head, and not on
Speaker 2: the right side of his head, in the right rear
Speaker 2: of his head. That's the blowout that's missing bone and scalp.
Speaker 2: A flap, Well, there was more than just a flap with.
Speaker 1: That chunk of bone that was flapped over that stayed
Speaker 1: correct intact, that flap that they closed.
Speaker 2: Well, no, that's not true. That's the story that the
Speaker 2: government's been wanting to tell.
Speaker 1: And that's a bogus picture. Okay, thank god you're here
Speaker 1: to tell me.
Speaker 2: For example, the reason we know it's a bogus picture
Speaker 2: is Agent Clint Hill, the Secret Service. Most people have
Speaker 2: heard his name. He rode on the back of the car,
Speaker 2: the limousine on the way to the hospital. He jumped
Speaker 2: onto the JFK's limousine and shielded the President and first
Speaker 2: Lady for seven or eight minutes on the way to Parkland.
Speaker 2: And he wrote a report a week later, and he
Speaker 2: testified the following spring, and he said the same thing
Speaker 2: each time, that the right rear of the President's head
Speaker 2: was missing, and that a piece of bone with hair
Speaker 2: on it was lying in the back seat. So it's
Speaker 2: very clear from him and from the Dallas doctor's treatment notes,
Speaker 2: the treatment notes they made the day that the President died,
Speaker 2: that there is a large area of missing bone and
Speaker 2: scalp in the right rear.
Speaker 1: The uniformity among all the staff at Barklay.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, uniformity. And so when the President was taken
Speaker 2: out of his shipping casket and first examined, he had
Speaker 2: the same wound on his head, the same noticeable large
Speaker 2: exit wound in the right rear of the head, because
Speaker 2: exit wounds are big and entrance wounds are small, that
Speaker 2: he had in Dallas. The trouble is over an hour
Speaker 2: and a half later at the official autopsy after eight
Speaker 2: o'clock in front of a large audience of over thirty
Speaker 2: three people. And this is a teaching hospital, so you've
Speaker 2: got a bleachers there, three rows of bleachers, very large
Speaker 2: audience there. The wounds look totally different after eight o'clock
Speaker 2: at night. The entire top of the head is gone.
Speaker 2: All the bone on the top of his head has
Speaker 2: been removed. There's nothing but shredded scalp on the top.
Speaker 1: Of his head.
Speaker 2: The rear of his head is also still gone, but
Speaker 2: you can't tell that from the photographs those have been
Speaker 2: that's been cleverly disguised. So most of the autopsy photographs
Speaker 2: that show the top of the head missing gone, which
Speaker 2: is not what anybody saw on Dallas. The back of
Speaker 2: the head is obscured in those photographs. It's lying in
Speaker 2: a metal head brace. So he's lying on his back
Speaker 2: on an examination table. You can't see the back of
Speaker 2: his head because his head is supported in a metal
Speaker 2: stirrup or head brace, so all you can see is
Speaker 2: the right side, which is rather gory looking, flapped out,
Speaker 2: big temporal bone flap flapped out, and the top of
Speaker 2: the head missing like what. So I'm telling you that
Speaker 2: that's what was going on between the early arrival of
Speaker 2: the president's body and they started the autopsy. His wounds
Speaker 2: were expanded to gain access to his brain and remove
Speaker 2: all the metal that could be found from his brain.
Speaker 1: In that ninety minute window. Oh yes, well, I want
Speaker 1: to put a finer point on this for the audience.
Speaker 1: And in that ninety minute window, which is not accounted
Speaker 1: for specifically, I mean it is as far as you're
Speaker 1: concern But in that ninety minute window, obviously we have
Speaker 1: some of the most purposeful cosmetic surgery ever performed in
Speaker 1: history to make it look like he was shot from behind.
Speaker 2: Correct, I will disagree with that. So here's the deal.
Speaker 2: What was done to him was not only profane and
Speaker 2: highly illegal obstruction of justice. At the very least, it
Speaker 2: was just like opening up a can. Okay, nothing was
Speaker 2: put back together. This is where Lyfton went astray in
Speaker 2: his book Best Evidence. There was no reconstructive surgery to
Speaker 2: put back together what these conspirators had opened up to
Speaker 2: get access to evidence. He was presented that way to
Speaker 2: the audience after eight o'clock as well. This is the
Speaker 2: way he arrived. This is what the bullet did. It
Speaker 2: blew off part of the back of his head and
Speaker 2: the entire top of his head and part of the
Speaker 2: right side of his head. It blew it all away,
Speaker 2: and so the audience was disbelieving of this. There this
Speaker 2: audience was were medical staff the hospital, They were heads
Speaker 2: of department and other physicians, and so they were aghast
Speaker 2: at this macabre scene that they saw. After eight o'clock,
Speaker 2: some of the people you deposed, the House Committee interviewed
Speaker 2: some of these people in the audience, and what we
Speaker 2: have over the years is there were two Navy cormen
Speaker 2: who were present assisting the three pathologists all night long.
Speaker 2: The two Navy cormen were Paul O'Connor and James Jenkins.
Speaker 2: And so what they told the House Committee and what
Speaker 2: they've told researchers over the years after the gag order
Speaker 2: was lifted in the seventies, was that the audience was
Speaker 2: hostile in disbelieving that a bullet, one bullet could have
Speaker 2: caused all this cranial damage. And it's even worse than that.
Speaker 2: Alec Jim Jenkins, this corman I just mentioned, witnessed after
Speaker 2: eight o'clock. He witnessed the brain of the president literally
Speaker 2: fell out of his cranium into the hands of doctor Humes,
Speaker 2: and doctor Humes said, quote unquote, the damn thing's fallen
Speaker 2: out in my hands, quote unquote. That just doesn't happen, Alex.
Speaker 2: I mean, your brain is connected to your spinal cord
Speaker 2: and there are other structures connecting the brain to the
Speaker 2: bottom of your cranium, and.
Speaker 1: It fell out because it had been previously removed to
Speaker 1: pull out all the metal out of his brain, that's right.
Speaker 2: And so what was done between six point thirty five
Speaker 2: and eight o'clock was somebody sanitized the crime scene by
Speaker 2: removing evidence, removing entrance wounds from the front where they
Speaker 2: could up cover up, removing as much bullet as you
Speaker 2: could from the brain, in which if you do that,
Speaker 2: if you remove all the bullet fragments from the brain,
Speaker 2: then you can control the narrative later with planet bullets,
Speaker 2: which is what they did. So, Yeah, that brain had
Speaker 2: been removed earlier. And Jim Jenkins is still alive, and
Speaker 2: he insists today that it had to have been removed
Speaker 2: earlier that evening because a brain just doesn't fall out
Speaker 2: of your cranium like that, and his job is to
Speaker 2: infuse the brain. So the brain was put upside down
Speaker 2: in a sling, in a bucket of fromaldehyde, and it
Speaker 2: was his job to infuse the arteries. You know, the
Speaker 2: carotid arteries go up through your neck into your brain.
Speaker 2: And so the brain that had been removed was put
Speaker 2: upside down in a bucket in a sling, and it
Speaker 2: was Jenkins's job to infuse the arteries with fromaldehyde from
Speaker 2: a big container on top of a cabinet. And he
Speaker 2: had a very hard time infusing formaldehyde into the brain
Speaker 2: because he said the arteries had been cut earlier and
Speaker 2: were retracting all by themselves. They were shrinking and shriveling
Speaker 2: up and retracting, and he says, that's proof that the
Speaker 2: brain was removed earlier that night. He says, also the
Speaker 2: brain stem had been severed on the left and the
Speaker 2: right with two surgical cuts. It was not torn, two
Speaker 2: surgical cuts that were on different planes, on different levels.
Speaker 2: So he noticed all this when he was infusing the brain.
Speaker 2: So that's evidence to him that the brain was removed
Speaker 2: earlier that evening. So Humes and Boswell are engaged in
Speaker 2: a charade after eight o'clock. You have to understand this.
Speaker 2: The audience expresses disbelief that this damage could all have
Speaker 2: been caused by one bullet. And at that point, Humes says,
Speaker 2: and the FBI agents recorded this that that's why the
Speaker 2: Warrant Commission didn't want to publish their report. They said,
Speaker 2: he said that it was apparent that surgery had been
Speaker 2: performed on the top of the head. Humes said that,
Speaker 2: and they recorded what he said. Now, I think he panicked,
Speaker 2: is what happened. He panicked because Jim Jenkins recalls doctor
Speaker 2: Boswell Humes's colligue saying to the people in the gallery.
Speaker 2: There were flag officers, generals and admirals in the gallery,
Speaker 2: and they saying to them, whe is there surgery performed
Speaker 2: and died? Yeah? Boss says that, yeah, yeah. And so
Speaker 2: here's the problem. Boswell created this famous sketch from the autopsy,
Speaker 2: which is the damage to the top of the president's head.
Speaker 2: And if you look at that sketch today, you'll see
Speaker 2: that it's only the top of the head. So when
Speaker 2: he makes the sketch, the President's lying on his back
Speaker 2: on the examination table. He's sketching the damage to the
Speaker 2: top of the head, and what he sketches is totally
Speaker 2: unlike anything seen at Parkland Hospital. He sketches the entire
Speaker 2: the bone and the entire top of the head missing,
Speaker 2: and he writes the dimensions of this area ten by
Speaker 2: seventeen centimeters missing. So he was asked by the House
Speaker 2: Committee and then by the Review Board under oath, what
Speaker 2: do these notations mean? You drew a dotted line around
Speaker 2: the top of the head ten by seventeen missing. He said,
Speaker 2: this is the area that was totally devoid of bone,
Speaker 2: and so he would he's representing in his sketch and
Speaker 2: for posterity that this was all removed by the assass
Speaker 2: bullet blown out. And of course we went down to Dallas,
Speaker 2: Jeremy Gunn and I. We interviewed three people who saw
Speaker 2: the president's body while he was being treated, who were
Speaker 2: not interviewed by the Worn Commission, and we asked, Nurse
Speaker 2: Bell and doctor Crenshaw, did you see any damage to
Speaker 2: the top of the President's head? And they looked at
Speaker 2: us like we were crazy, and they said no. Then
Speaker 2: they used that tone of voice, they said no. They
Speaker 2: were astonished that we would ask. They said, the top
Speaker 2: of his head to all appearances, appeared to be intact.
Speaker 2: They said there was no bone sticking out, and the
Speaker 2: hair appeared to be intact. There was blood everywhere. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of blood. And so what Boswell is doing,
Speaker 2: I think, is making a sketch before eight o'clock PM
Speaker 2: of the damage incurred by this post mortem surgery to
Speaker 2: sanitize the crime scene. And he's representing it as damage
Speaker 2: from the assassin's bullet. And it's a con job, to
Speaker 2: be honest with you. So if you marry up his
Speaker 2: sketch with the two Grizzly autopsy photos that show the
Speaker 2: top of the head missing, they more or less match.
Speaker 2: And yet so here's what we did, which was really fascinating.
Speaker 2: We knew we had a two dimensional diagram made by
Speaker 2: Boswell of just the top of the head and the
Speaker 2: bone missing from the top of the head. And I
Speaker 2: had suggested to Jeremy Gunn I said, we need to
Speaker 2: present him with a skull model. I said, I know
Speaker 2: where to get one. I can build one that's anatomically correct.
Speaker 2: It's got all the sutures in it, where the bones
Speaker 2: really are and everything. We can ask him to turn
Speaker 2: that two dimensional sketch into a three dimensional sketch so
Speaker 2: that we can find out was there any bone missing
Speaker 2: in the back. And so we did that, and doctor
Speaker 2: Boswell marked on the skull model and it's in the archives.
Speaker 2: You can see it today if you make an appointment
Speaker 2: and go look at it. That not only according to him,
Speaker 2: is the bone missing in the top of the head
Speaker 2: and on the right side of the head, but it's
Speaker 2: all missing in the right rear also, in other words,
Speaker 2: the place where the Dallas doctors said it was gone
Speaker 2: in the right rear. It's also missing there, but also
Speaker 2: in the top and the right side. So he was
Speaker 2: honest about that much. At least, he was honest about
Speaker 2: the fact that all the bone was missing in the
Speaker 2: right rear, whereas doctor Humes wasn't. He lied and said,
Speaker 2: oh no, that was all that was all intact. It
Speaker 2: was fractured, but it was all intact. None of it
Speaker 2: was missing. And then a week later, under oath, Boswell
Speaker 2: contradicts him and tells us the truth that, oh no,
Speaker 2: that was missing too.
Speaker 1: Assassination Records Review Board Chief analyst Douglas Horn. If you're
Speaker 1: enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to
Speaker 1: follow here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Douglas
Speaker 1: Horn shares the timeline for developing the Zappruder film and
Speaker 1: what he believes happened that led to it being doctored.
Speaker 1: I'm ALC. Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Douglas Horn believes that a cover up of the JFK
Speaker 1: assassination began almost instantaneously. Horn collected data and evidence that
Speaker 1: he claims can prove that the conspiracy stretched from Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland to Parkland
Speaker 1: Hospital in Dallas.
Speaker 2: Well, there's one man on the ground in Dallas. It's
Speaker 2: really important to understand this. Who's an honest broker in
Speaker 2: all this? So the county coroner, Earl Rose, Doctor Earl Rose, said,
Speaker 2: this is a murderer in Dallas County and we have
Speaker 2: to do an autopsy. It's the law in the state
Speaker 2: of Texas. And you're not leaving with the body. And
Speaker 2: he says, we're going to do an autopsy in Texas
Speaker 2: and that's at this point. At this point JFK's body
Speaker 2: had been he had long been declared dead at one o'clock.
Speaker 2: This is shortly before two pm. He's in this bronze
Speaker 2: ornate casket, the casket sealed. It's on a church truck,
Speaker 2: a vehicle with wheels. They can go up and down
Speaker 2: like an a accordion. The lift scissors lyft and they're
Speaker 2: wheeling it out. So the widow is there and the
Speaker 2: Secret Service is moving this thing, and one of the
Speaker 2: funeral home people, Aubrey Reich, he's there, and so there's
Speaker 2: this profane exchange of shouting and pushing between members of
Speaker 2: the Secret Service who insist on removing the body and
Speaker 2: taking it to Washington, and this honest County corner Earl Rose.
Speaker 2: He says, no, we're going to comply with the law
Speaker 2: and do an autopsy in Texas. And so they were
Speaker 2: bound and determined that there was not going to be
Speaker 2: an autopsy in Texas. And so, you know, they brandished
Speaker 2: their weapons, They pulled aside their coats and showed their pistols,
Speaker 2: and one of them even had a submachine gun. And
Speaker 2: so he was actually picked up and slammed against the wall. Eventually,
Speaker 2: and one of the doctors and attendants who witnessed this
Speaker 2: said in a recorded interview in the eighties, he said,
Speaker 2: they told doctor Rose, if you don't get out of
Speaker 2: the way, we will run you over with the casket.
Speaker 2: So this is a very heavy, four hundred plus pounds
Speaker 2: bronze casket when it was empty with a body inside.
Speaker 2: We're going to run you over with a casket. And
Speaker 2: all of this unseemly behavior is occurring in front of
Speaker 2: the poor widow. It's really really macabre and disturbing.
Speaker 1: You don't mind if we use your dead husband's body
Speaker 1: as a battering ram to knock these people out of
Speaker 1: the way so we can go come in our cover
Speaker 1: up of your husband's death. But what's interesting to me,
Speaker 1: forget about who they are for the time being. That's
Speaker 1: always the quandary. But there's people on the ground in Dallas,
Speaker 1: and there's people in Bethesda awaiting them, and we're switching coffins,
Speaker 1: and we're switching cars, and we're doing this and that,
Speaker 1: and we're having bodies arrive ninety minutes, you know, unaccounted
Speaker 1: for until later on it's accounted for, but arriving and
Speaker 1: then doing their work, you know, their cover up work,
Speaker 1: fumes and so forth. Now the other aspect I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about, which is even more we're
Speaker 1: kind of devastating us. As most people know, the most
Speaker 1: vital piece of this whole thing is the Zapruder Film.
Speaker 1: For most Americans, it's a movie taken by Abraham Zapruder.
Speaker 1: I think he's a dressmaker. Correct, he's in the clothing business.
Speaker 2: That's right, he's a dressmaker. And he has a shop
Speaker 2: in the dal Text building, which is right across the street,
Speaker 2: right across Houston Street from the book depositor.
Speaker 1: And now I want you to take us through Supruder's there.
Speaker 1: He's got a camera in his hand. He's filming what happens.
Speaker 1: It's a horror movie because the thing that always never
Speaker 1: ceases to be so ghastly to me is here. This
Speaker 1: man was the president of the United States back in
Speaker 1: the time when I think that meant something to most people.
Speaker 1: And they blow the top of his head off, the
Speaker 1: back of his head off, right in front of his wife.
Speaker 1: But I want you to take us through a timeline
Speaker 1: of Supruders. There he's filming the event. Where does that
Speaker 1: film go in a timeline after that?
Speaker 2: Okay, the timeline, the real timeline is very firmly established now.
Speaker 2: And part of the work was done by the review
Speaker 2: board staff, by me and Jeremy, and part of it
Speaker 2: was done years later by independent researchers. But here's what
Speaker 2: really happened. Zapruter. A couple of cops showed up at
Speaker 2: his office. They're in Deely Pleasant and wanted to film,
Speaker 2: and they had shotguns, and his secretary wouldn't give it
Speaker 2: to him, and he wouldn't give it to him, and
Speaker 2: so a secret service guy showed up and he says, well,
Speaker 2: I'll stay with you. Let's get it developed. And so
Speaker 2: everybody goes together to the local TV station. Zapruter does
Speaker 2: a brief interview, and the reason they went there was
Speaker 2: he mistakenly thought they might develop it for him. Well,
Speaker 2: they didn't have the capability. This is a special codochrome
Speaker 2: two daylight film. There's only four code act plants that
Speaker 2: can develop this in the entire country, and one of
Speaker 2: them is in Dallas. But the TV station can't do it.
Speaker 2: They can only do black and white newsreel film. So
Speaker 2: he does a little interview there and then the people
Speaker 2: he's with, numerous people, they take him over to the
Speaker 2: Kodeac plant. So the original film shot in his camera
Speaker 2: Bell and Howe movie camera is developed in the Kodak
Speaker 2: plant in Dallas that afternoon, and it's a double eight film,
Speaker 2: and it's a double eight means that you've got a
Speaker 2: piece of film. I'll keep it real simple here, sixteen
Speaker 2: milimeters wide. Double eight means you got one strip on
Speaker 2: one side, side A, that's eight milimeters wide, one strip
Speaker 2: on the other side that's another eight milimeters wide, Side
Speaker 2: A and side B, and they're upside down and backwards
Speaker 2: from each other. So when you shoot your twenty five
Speaker 2: feet of side A, which he had already done at
Speaker 2: home with a home movie, you've got to flip the
Speaker 2: film around in the camera. The take up reil becomes
Speaker 2: the new supply reel, and vice versa. And so the
Speaker 2: assassination was on side B, it was on the other
Speaker 2: side of the film. And so what they have developed
Speaker 2: is a double eight film that's still sixteen milimeters wide,
Speaker 2: it's got images upside down and backwards, and it's not
Speaker 2: yet slit down the middle. So they look at it
Speaker 2: quickly in a sixteen milimeter projector to make sure it's
Speaker 2: good images, very good images, crystal clear. So he says, okay,
Speaker 2: I want three copies of this today, and they said, oh,
Speaker 2: if you want copies, we're not going to slit this
Speaker 2: film down the middle. Yet, because normally what they do
Speaker 2: is they slid a film down the middle, and then
Speaker 2: you've got instead of one sixteen millimeter wide double eight
Speaker 2: film that's twenty five feet long, you would have two
Speaker 2: eight millimeter films a total of fifty feet long after
Speaker 2: they splice them together. So they said, okay, we're not
Speaker 2: going to slit these yet. We're going to give you
Speaker 2: three rolls of a film that you can use as
Speaker 2: duplicating film. We're going to send you over to another
Speaker 2: lab where you can have this copied on what we
Speaker 2: call a contact printer. They said, we don't have a
Speaker 2: contact printer. We're a developing lab. We're Kodak. We just
Speaker 2: develop movies. So you go over to the Jamison lab.
Speaker 2: We'll call them and tell them you're coming. And I said,
Speaker 2: that's what he did, and he handed them his camera,
Speaker 2: original film still sixteen milimeters wide, and the three rolls
Speaker 2: of duplicating film, and they ran off three identical copies
Speaker 2: for him on a contact printer, and then he took
Speaker 2: those three copies and the original back over to Kodak,
Speaker 2: and then Kodak had to also develop the three copies.
Speaker 2: So once they did, and once Kodak determined that the
Speaker 2: three copies were pretty good contact print copies. They were
Speaker 2: a little bit soft, but they were pretty darn good copies,
Speaker 2: and of course the original was needle sharp. Then they
Speaker 2: slid all four down to eight millimeters in width so
Speaker 2: they could be shown on an eight milimeter home projector.
Speaker 2: So here's what happens. Later in the day, he goes
Speaker 2: downtown to see Forest Sorels, who's the Secret Service agent
Speaker 2: that took into the Kodak plant in the first place. Well,
Speaker 2: Sorels left and he's now busy with the interrogations of
Speaker 2: this fellow named Oswald. And so Sorels says, don't bother me,
Speaker 2: I'm busy. I don't have time for your film. He says,
Speaker 2: why don't you take it? Go downtown to my office,
Speaker 2: and if you want to share a couple of your copies,
Speaker 2: give him to Agent Max Phillips. So the recruiter before
Speaker 2: he goes home Friday night, he goes downtown. He gives
Speaker 2: two of his three copies to Agent Max Phillips of
Speaker 2: the Secret Service, and he keeps with him the camera
Speaker 2: original and one of the copies. So of the two
Speaker 2: copies he gave the Secret Service that night, they flew
Speaker 2: one to Washington, d C. To the head of the
Speaker 2: Secret Service overnight on an airplane and then arrived before
Speaker 2: dawn the next day. That's fine, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: The other copy that the Secret Service had in Dallas,
Speaker 2: they loaned to the FBI. The next day, they loaned
Speaker 2: it to the local FBI. The FBI flew at the
Speaker 2: Washington and it was at FBI headquarters starting Sunday, right
Speaker 2: after midnight early am Sunday. So then what Zappruter has
Speaker 2: in his possession the next morning, which is what's important. Saturday,
Speaker 2: November twenty third, he has the camera original eight millimeter
Speaker 2: and he has one of his eight milimeter copies remaining.
Speaker 2: He meets with Dick Stolly of Life magazine, the West
Speaker 2: Coast editor who had flown out to Dallas to do
Speaker 2: this negotiation. Stolly offers him some money and Zupruter just
Speaker 2: smiles at him. It wasn't enough, So finally Stally says, okay,
Speaker 2: the maximum I'm allowed to offer you is fifty thousand.
Speaker 2: So the first of two contracts was cut that day
Speaker 2: for fifty thousand dollars. The Pruter agreed to do this.
Speaker 2: He would only loan the original film, loan it for
Speaker 2: a week to time Life, and then all they would
Speaker 2: be able to do make stills was make still copies
Speaker 2: of individual frames, still still picture rights, not motion picture rights,
Speaker 2: still picture rights, and after a week they would return
Speaker 2: the original to him and he could do whatever he
Speaker 2: wanted with it, then sell it as a movie, and
Speaker 2: he would then give him his remaining copy give it
Speaker 2: to them after a week. So that's the deal that's
Speaker 2: cut on Saturday. I'm going to tell you about the
Speaker 2: new deal that was cut on Monday, and then I'll
Speaker 2: tell you why that was necessary. On Monday, there's a
Speaker 2: new contract cut by Life magazine, and it's bizarre because
Speaker 2: it's not to their benefit. It's toz the pruter's benefit.
Speaker 2: So now the total amount of the sale goes up
Speaker 2: from fifty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand total.
Speaker 1: A lot of money back then, Yeah, that's a.
Speaker 2: Lot of money. And what they wanted was physical custody
Speaker 2: of all three copies and of the original and motion
Speaker 2: picture rights.
Speaker 1: When they want the rights to the film, they want.
Speaker 2: All the rights to the film, not just still picture
Speaker 2: all the motion picture rights and physical custody of the
Speaker 2: original forever, and of all three copies forever, and that's
Speaker 2: the new deal cut on Monday. And of course so
Speaker 2: Zapruter said, yeah, sure. So it's what happened in between.
Speaker 2: That's really the fascinating heart of this Sapruder film mystery.
Speaker 1: Douglas Horn, This is but one of hundreds of episodes
Speaker 1: from Here's the Thing. To hear more great conversations from experts, artists,
Speaker 1: and political insiders, head to our archives at Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing dot org. When we return, Douglas Horn share the
Speaker 1: accounts of eyewitness testimony on the ground in Dallas and
Speaker 1: how they dispute what was reportedly captured in the Supruter film.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Douglas Horne spent years collecting documents and witness testimony involved
Speaker 1: in the jfk assassination. One of the puzzle pieces he
Speaker 1: worked on was what happened to the Supruter film? After
Speaker 1: Life Magazine initially purchased the rights to it for one
Speaker 1: week's time.
Speaker 2: So here's what we know today. This story for years
Speaker 2: based on the memoirs of one Life Magazine person, Loud
Speaker 2: and Wainwright based on his memoirs written many years later.
Speaker 2: The official story was that, well, the film which Stolly.
Speaker 2: You know, he bought the original Saturday, just to borrow
Speaker 2: it for a week. He put it on an airplane
Speaker 2: to Chicago on Saturday. He didn't go with it, but
Speaker 2: he put it on an airplane to Chicago. And that's
Speaker 2: the part that remains unchallenged today. That's the fact. What
Speaker 2: happened to it after it got to Chicago is not
Speaker 2: what Loud and Wainwright and the mainstream or a research
Speaker 2: community has maintained. It did not stay in Chicago all weekend,
Speaker 2: as has been claimed for years. Here's what really happened.
Speaker 2: Two Secret Service agents or people who said they were
Speaker 2: Secret Service, intercepted the film in Chicago at some point,
Speaker 2: either at the airport or at the time Life Publishing plant.
Speaker 2: I'm going to assume it's at the time Life Publishing
Speaker 2: plant probably. Those two agents show up with the original
Speaker 2: Suppruiter film in Washington, d C. At ten o'clock PM
Speaker 2: on Saturday night. The same day, ten o'clock pm. They
Speaker 2: had not seen the film yet, so they're couriering it.
Speaker 2: They're bringing it from wherever they came from. But Obviously
Speaker 2: they came from Chicago because that's where it was sent
Speaker 2: by Dick Stalley. Who did they deliver it to. They
Speaker 2: deliver it to the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center, which
Speaker 2: is abbreviated Inpick. So the job of Enpick that night
Speaker 2: was to make briefing boards. And simply put, briefing boards
Speaker 2: are stiff panels with blowups from individual frames, just still
Speaker 2: picture blow ups of individual frames. Paste it onto the
Speaker 2: briefing board so you can brief government officials on what
Speaker 2: does the film show what happened? So the Secret Service
Speaker 2: agents tell Brigioni what prints they want. He had to
Speaker 2: go out and buy an eight milimeter projector in the
Speaker 2: dark at night, because you know it's an eight milimeter film.
Speaker 2: They didn't have an eight milimeter projector. They view it
Speaker 2: several times. They then make the selections the Secret Service,
Speaker 2: these are the ones we want. They leave town with
Speaker 2: a film at three am Sunday. He doesn't know where
Speaker 2: they're going. We know now where they went. They went
Speaker 2: to Kodak headquarters, to the Research and Development Lab Worldwide
Speaker 2: Research and Development Live.
Speaker 1: For Kodak in Rochester, Hawkeye.
Speaker 2: In Rochester, YEP. Hawkeye Works and so how do we
Speaker 2: know this. We know this because the film was brought
Speaker 2: back to the End Pick in Washington, d C. The
Speaker 2: next night, twenty four hours later. It's brought back there
Speaker 2: by a different Secret Service agent who says his name
Speaker 2: is quote unquote Bill Smith, obviously a pseudonym, because we
Speaker 2: determined there was no Bill Smith working for Secret Service
Speaker 2: on the review board we determined it. He brings it
Speaker 2: back to Endpick to a different work crew. Dino Brugioni
Speaker 2: and his high level confederates were not called in the
Speaker 2: next night, a different work crew was called in. Bill
Speaker 2: Smith tells them, this film just came from Hawkeye Works
Speaker 2: in Rochester, which was the code name for this the
Speaker 2: classified portion of this film lab the classified portion used
Speaker 2: by the CIA. And he lied. Then he said, well,
Speaker 2: this was donated by a patriotic American who didn't want
Speaker 2: to make any money, so he donated it to the government,
Speaker 2: and the original film was developed at Rochester at Hawkeye Works,
Speaker 2: and we want you guys to make briefing boards of it.
Speaker 2: So he told two big whoppers, two lies. So what
Speaker 2: you've got going on here is that I've concluded with
Speaker 2: a very high level of assurance that this film was
Speaker 2: crudely altered over about a twelve hour period on Sunday,
Speaker 2: November twenty fourth at Hawkeye.
Speaker 1: Works to depict what, to depict what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the important thing. Primarily to blackout with very
Speaker 2: crude blackouts, which are supposed to look like shadows, but
Speaker 2: they don't. They just look like blackouts like ink. To
Speaker 2: black out the huge exit wound in the right rear
Speaker 2: of the head that was seen at Parkland Hospital. And
Speaker 2: the reason this had to be done was the people
Speaker 2: in charge of this cover up, they already knew that
Speaker 2: the photos of the back of JFK's head, few of
Speaker 2: the few photos of the back of his head from
Speaker 2: the autopsy, were going to show no damage to the
Speaker 2: back of the head. They were going to be doctored,
Speaker 2: and they have been. They don't reference.
Speaker 1: The film is then to be Doctor two.
Speaker 2: So the film has to be Doctor to match what
Speaker 2: we're doing with the autopsy photos of the back of
Speaker 2: the head. So they had to match. So the only
Speaker 2: reason I'm just telling you right now the end pick
Speaker 2: let's cut to the chase. They had the world's best
Speaker 2: in larger and they were the place to make the
Speaker 2: briefing boards and the only reason to send the film
Speaker 2: to Hawkeye Works in the first place is if you're
Speaker 2: going to alter the film. And so the reason you're
Speaker 2: making a second set of briefing boards on Sunday night
Speaker 2: is you're making briefing boards from a sanitized, altered film
Speaker 2: which blacks out the huge exit wound in the right
Speaker 2: rear of the head. And so some people in Hollywood
Speaker 2: who are good friends of mine, Sidney Wilkinson and Tom Whitehead,
Speaker 2: Sidney purchased a film from the National Archives, a copy,
Speaker 2: a thirty five millimeter copy, a dupe negative of the
Speaker 2: so called original film in the archives. Sidney Wilkinson and
Speaker 2: her husband, Her husband is Tom Whitehead. They're a team
Speaker 2: and he's a Hollywood video editor and she's been involved
Speaker 2: with him and.
Speaker 1: The guys that are in the dock that I saw.
Speaker 2: Yes, she buy he was a thirty five millimeters dupe
Speaker 2: negative of the so called original film in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight because she's intrigued by these rumors that the
Speaker 2: film may have been altered and she didn't know what
Speaker 2: to think about all these arguments in different books. So
Speaker 2: her husband, he has the film scan. Six case scans
Speaker 2: were state of the art at the time, almost above
Speaker 2: state of the art. So when the movie's Ten Commandments
Speaker 2: and ben hur were restored, you know they were four K,
Speaker 2: so six K was even a higher level of resolution
Speaker 2: than that. At the time. He used the best scanner
Speaker 2: you could get, a six K scanner. Every frame was scanned,
Speaker 2: and later he made two K scans, which are a
Speaker 2: high definition like you're HDTV, So he had high resolution
Speaker 2: scans of the frames, and he discovers these crude black
Speaker 2: patches over the back of the head. The worst one
Speaker 2: is framed three seventeen, the most egregious, but also frames
Speaker 2: three twenty one and three twenty three are particularly bad,
Speaker 2: and so they clearly show artwork animation blacking out the
Speaker 2: back of the head. And obviously the artist wanted it
Speaker 2: to look like a shadow, but shadows on human hair
Speaker 2: don't have straight lines like the state of Ohio.
Speaker 1: And it's not consistent with Connolly either.
Speaker 2: Right, not consistent at all with Connolly in frame three
Speaker 2: to seventeen. So the evidence is out there. Other researchers
Speaker 2: have bought films from the archives, copies of this so
Speaker 2: called original film, and they see the same defects, the
Speaker 2: same artifacts in the film. So this was a rough job.
Speaker 2: The alteration. I figured after they got about three hours
Speaker 2: to take it to Hawkeye Works, about three hours to
Speaker 2: get it back to Washington for more briefing board Sunday night.
Speaker 2: In between those two travel events, they had about twelve
Speaker 2: hours to alter the film. And we even know how
Speaker 2: they did it now. I mean, there's a textbook. The
Speaker 2: first textbook ever published on special effects techniques was by
Speaker 2: Professor Raymond Fielding The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, and he describes the two effects techniques,
Speaker 2: the only two techniques available in nineteen sixty five, which
Speaker 2: is a traveling matt which is very complicated involves many
Speaker 2: passes through a camera, and aerial imaging, which is very simple.
Speaker 2: It involves one pass through a camera. So it's clear
Speaker 2: that an aerial optical printer, an aerial optical printer, a
Speaker 2: modified Oxbury optical printer with an animation stand attached, was
Speaker 2: used to alter this film. And then you just simply
Speaker 2: you draw whatever artwork you want on a clear acetate cell,
Speaker 2: you put it on the animation stand and rephotograph the
Speaker 2: frame that you've altered in a process camera, and then
Speaker 2: you create a new film by rephotographing the frames. You
Speaker 2: want a rephotograph, rephotograph all the frames, and that way
Speaker 2: you can optically edit the film and take out things
Speaker 2: you don't want to be in the film, like the
Speaker 2: exe debris traveling to the left rear in Dailly Plaza.
Speaker 2: You don't see that in the film. There were plenty
Speaker 2: of people that saw it that day, and Sappruter's partner Schwartz,
Speaker 2: saw it in the film. He watched that film copy
Speaker 2: that they retained fifteen times that weekend and he saw
Speaker 2: debris traveling to the well.
Speaker 1: They also talk about how the cloud, the red or
Speaker 1: pinkish cloud of mist, the atomized bone, brain fluid, all
Speaker 1: this crap blood that comes shooting out of his skull
Speaker 1: in the supprudor that we know doesn't match what happened
Speaker 1: because it's all confined to a certain area. Whereas eyewitnesses
Speaker 1: have testified who were there on the site, not examining
Speaker 1: films of testify there was a corona covering his entire
Speaker 1: circumference of his head.
Speaker 2: That's right. Especially the Willis family, they've been interviewed on film.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've seen it. They just testify to the
Speaker 2: red corona and the large cloud of debris traveling up
Speaker 2: and back. And then the other person who saw a
Speaker 2: very different pattern of debris that we don't see in
Speaker 2: the film today was Dino Brigioni, who did the first
Speaker 2: briefing board event, and he saw a massive verticalsure, a
Speaker 2: vertical head explosion that went three or four feet into
Speaker 2: the air, which is not in the film today.
Speaker 1: Let me see this as we were running out of time.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was always so disturbing to
Speaker 1: me and shocking to me was this ultimately, I mean,
Speaker 1: if your government black ops people that are doing this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, how do you get everybody to shut up?
Speaker 1: How do you get hundreds of people involved in some
Speaker 1: small or not so small component of this, What do
Speaker 1: you tell them? This has always been the searing mystery
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: There's an answer to that. One is to compartmentalize the
Speaker 2: different audiences so they don't even talk to each other.
Speaker 2: Of course, So that's what happened with a multiple cast assassination. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: they didn't. There was a compartmentalized operation, this cast at
Speaker 2: shell Game, so they didn't even become aware of each
Speaker 2: other until the late seventies, after the Congress. The Department
Speaker 2: of Defense lifted the gag order at the request of
Speaker 2: the HSCA, but the main technique used was intimidation and fear.
Speaker 2: So all the Navy personnel involved in the autopsy had
Speaker 2: to sign what we call a letter of silence. That's
Speaker 2: what we call They were threats that you will be
Speaker 2: court martialed. If you even discuss the events that you
Speaker 2: witnessed at the autopsy, you will be court martialed.
Speaker 1: So the other thing I was told is that people
Speaker 1: introduced was that if you tell the truth of what
Speaker 1: you're experiencing here. They didn't tell this to everybody, they
Speaker 1: didn't have to, just the fear alone that you're going
Speaker 1: to be have some kind of consequences, few legally or otherwise.
Speaker 1: But the idea that they told some of the more
Speaker 1: significant players that the Russians did this, all right, and
Speaker 1: if you say anything, we need to make sure that
Speaker 1: everything is such that it's a single guy who's alone nut,
Speaker 1: because if you say it's a conspiracy, it's more than
Speaker 1: one person. It's the Russians and we're gonna have World
Speaker 1: War three? Do you want World War III? Do you
Speaker 1: want the atomic bomb? Death? Using the atomic bomb? Reference
Speaker 1: from back then. Do you want the atom bomb death
Speaker 1: of forty million Americans in a single day to be
Speaker 1: on your shoulders, your mouth shut because the Russians did
Speaker 1: this to Kennedy.
Speaker 2: That's exactly I believe firmly I've concluded. That's exactly what
Speaker 2: the autopsy pathologist, Humes and Boswell were told. Is that
Speaker 2: we know there was a conspiracy in Dallas. We know
Speaker 2: there was a crossfire, and they told these doctors the
Speaker 2: Communists did it. We know they did it. And so
Speaker 2: it's your job to remove evidence and not report any
Speaker 2: shots from the front when at the autopsy you're only
Speaker 2: going to report shots from behind loan government and so yeah,
Speaker 2: and so this is what would have been used on
Speaker 2: others later who maybe expressed discomfiture or who wanted to
Speaker 2: speak out, is that no, this is on patriotic You're
Speaker 2: you're endangering the country. We could have forty million deaths.
Speaker 2: That's what Lyndon Johnson told people when he got people
Speaker 2: to sit on the Warrant Commission who didn't want to.
Speaker 2: So all I can all I want to lead with
Speaker 2: your audience is the final conclusion today that I have
Speaker 2: with great certainty after talking to a lot of medical
Speaker 2: experts is that there was one head shot from behind,
Speaker 2: but it was not from the book depository. It was
Speaker 2: from down low, almost horizontal, probably from the Dalte's building.
Speaker 2: There were two head shots from the front Alex. Two
Speaker 2: from the front. One entered the right temple just right
Speaker 2: in front of the ear, in the hair, right in
Speaker 2: front of the ear, where nobody at Parkland saw the
Speaker 2: entry wound. And the other shot from the front was
Speaker 2: very high in the forehead above the corner of the
Speaker 2: right eye, very high in the forehead, and that would
Speaker 2: have been hidden by the President's bangs at Parkland had
Speaker 2: long hair in the front, so they didn't see that.
Speaker 2: So all they saw was a big exit wound in
Speaker 2: the back. But there were two head shots from the front,
Speaker 2: one from behind. That means conspiracy period. And this evidence
Speaker 2: is embedded in the Skullx rays. So I've got a
Speaker 2: YouTube movie coming out in a month or two. I've
Speaker 2: already recorded the thing. It's in post production now, but
Speaker 2: explaining the Skullex rays and how to interpret them, and
Speaker 2: all these great geniuses who examined these for years were
Speaker 2: obviously not willing to tell the whole truth. They were
Speaker 2: hiding the other half of the story, which is we
Speaker 2: also had two shots from the front. The evidence in
Speaker 2: the skulls rays of two entry wounds in the front,
Speaker 2: one high in the forehead and one just close to
Speaker 2: the right ear, just barely above the right ear, is
Speaker 2: as obvious as the news on your face. And for
Speaker 2: the Clark panel in nineteen sixty eight and for the
Speaker 2: House Select Committee forensic panel to not identify these means
Speaker 2: that it was they were willfully blind.
Speaker 1: And we didn't even talk them. By the way, how
Speaker 1: the frames that they took out with the car slowed down.
Speaker 1: Do you believe we remove those images as well?
Speaker 2: I believe that a very brief car stop was removed,
Speaker 2: and there were too many witnesses to it. And all
Speaker 2: the witnesses to it were the people close to the car.
Speaker 2: I mean they should know. The four motorcycle cops to
Speaker 2: the left and right rear of the car said the
Speaker 2: car stopped briefly. The witnesses to the left and right
Speaker 2: of the car said it stopped briefly, and a lot
Speaker 2: of other people did. And so I think the pruter
Speaker 2: actually filmed the movie at three times the normal frame rate.
Speaker 2: He had a switch he could operate on his camera
Speaker 2: called slow motion, which meant it instead of filming at
Speaker 2: sixteen frames per second, he could film at forty eight
Speaker 2: frames per second and all he had to do is
Speaker 2: push down on the switch. And I think that if
Speaker 2: he filmed this movie with three times the normal frames,
Speaker 2: it would have been easy to remove a brief car
Speaker 2: stop without a jump cut, and which is what you
Speaker 2: have in the film. You don't see a massive jump cut,
Speaker 2: but you do see the car slowing a little bit,
Speaker 2: and they had to. And I think that's how you
Speaker 2: can remove EXITD debris frames, remove the EXITD debris frames
Speaker 2: which indicate shots came from the front, and remove this
Speaker 2: brief car stop which probably contained the car stopping and
Speaker 2: evidence of different head hits, you know, happening at a
Speaker 2: different time. Remove all that without it showing up as
Speaker 2: a jump cut, because he really filmed the event, I
Speaker 2: think at forty eight frames per second, not sixteen.
Speaker 1: You are a person who's made the pursuit of the
Speaker 1: truth of this matter such an important part of your life,
Speaker 1: and you've had such great success with it. Kennedy's assassination
Speaker 1: in sixty three was the beginning of the end for
Speaker 1: this country. It was my great pleasure to speak with you.
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful to hear and thank you, sir, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. My thanks to Douglas Horn. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hoban.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Daniel Gingrich. Here's the Thing is recorded at CDM Studios
Speaker 1: in New York. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is
Speaker 1: brought to you by iHeart Radio