Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Author Jean Davison, in her fine book, Oswald’s Game, says that “although it is easy to point to anomalies in the mountain of evidence the Warren Commission accumulated, it is something else again to weave those anomalies into a credible scenario that illustrates how a conspiracy might actually have been carried out.” Citing Lifton, she says that when a conspiracy author tries to do so (to Lifton’s credit, the vast majority never bother, as he did, to even make the attempt) he ends up presenting “stories that are grotesquely improbable.”32

  One could safely say that David Lifton took folly to an unprecedented level. And considering the monumental foolishness of his colleagues in the conspiracy community, that’s saying something.

  Before moving on, I should mention in fairness to Lifton that although the FBI report by Sibert and O’Neill formed the heart of his theory that the president’s wounds had been tampered with, he also relied on his August 25, 1979, interview of one Paul O’Connor, a twenty-one-year-old laboratory technician at the Bethesda morgue whose job was to assist in postmortem examinations. He told Lifton that when the president’s body arrived for the autopsy on the evening of the assassination, it “didn’t have any brains left.” In other words, Lifton asked, “the cranium, for all practical purposes, had been eviscerated?”

  “It was gone. Everything was gone. There were bits of brain matter laying around inside the cranium, but…that was it.”

  Lifton asked if the brain being gone also included the left side of the brain, and O’Connor replied it did. “The left side of his brain was gone,” he said. “There was no brain on the body, near the body, or in the casket.”33

  If O’Connor’s observation that the president’s body arrived at Bethesda without a brain was correct, this would indeed be extremely suspicious, since the autopsy report clearly said that the left hemisphere of the president’s brain was intact. If that was a lie, then the argument could be made that the entire autopsy report was fraudulent, and all of the autopsy surgeons’ conclusions were suspect because they had all agreed to lie. And why would they tell such an egregious lie if they weren’t part of some sinister cover-up?

  Predictably, Gerry Spence called O’Connor to the stand for the defense at the London trial. On direct examination O’Connor testified that it would have been his job to remove Kennedy’s brain, but there was no brain to remove.

  Spence: “Are you saying that there was no brain in the president’s head?”

  O’Connor: “There was no brain. There were pieces of brain matter that were inside the cranium…Maybe half a handful…at most.”

  Spence: “And so [the president’s brain] was never…taken out?”

  O’Connor: “We didn’t have to…The brain was gone.”34

  On cross-examination, one tack I took to diminish O’Connor’s credibility was to show the jury the inherent improbability of his story by reviewing the detailed autopsy report, which showed the left side of the president’s brain was removed, photographed, and even weighed. It wouldn’t be reasonable to assume that three surgeons would make up a fantastic story like this, to the point of getting a photographer to agree to say that he took photos of a nonexistent brain.

  Question (Bugliosi): “The official autopsy report in this case, Mr. O’Connor, dated November 22, 1963, states on page 4, ‘The brain is removed and preserved for further study following formalin fixation.’ Also, ‘from the surface of the disrupted right cerebral cortex, two small irregularly shaped fragments of metal are recovered. These measure 7 × 2 millimeters and 3 × 1 millimeter. These are placed in the custody of Agents Francis X. O’Neill and James W. Sibert of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who executed a receipt therefor.’ Now, Mr. O’Connor, three surgeons signed their name to this autopsy report. Are you saying that none of these things happened?”

  Answer: “Not to my knowledge, they didn’t.”

  The above was an indirect attack (by reference to the assumed credibility of the autopsy surgeons) on O’Connor’s credibility. I then proceeded to attack his credibility directly.

  Question: “Now, would you agree, Mr. O’Connor, that the president arriving at Bethesda hospital with his brain already having been removed is one of the most shocking things that you have ever seen in your whole life?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “It’s the type of thing that if you lived to be one hundred years old—and I hope you do, sir—other than observing a terrible, terrible large defect to the right frontal area of the president’s head, certainly [this] is one thing you are never, ever going to forget. Is that correct?”

  Answer: “That’s correct.”

  Question: “And it goes without saying that you felt this is something that should have been investigated, right?”

  Answer: “Well, I thought it would be.”

  Question: “In fact, throughout the years you have often wondered what the answer to it was, right?”

  Answer: “Oh, I still have questions.”

  Question: “I believe you told me that you bought a copy of the Warren Report when it came out in 1964, and you looked for it, paying particular attention to the medical aspects of the report. Is that correct?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “In fact, you bought and got a hold of virtually every one of the many books on the Kennedy assassination. Is that right?”

  Answer: “Just about.”

  Question: “And you read the medical aspects of it?”

  Answer: “Yes, I did.”

  Question: “At the time you were interviewed by the [House] Select Committee in 1978, you hadn’t seen any reference in the Warren Report or in any of these books that you had read about this case mentioning that the brain was missing when it arrived at Bethesda hospital, is that correct?”

  Answer: “That’s correct.”

  Question: “And these books, they mention all types of weird things, isn’t that correct?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “Such as Oswald being Jack Ruby’s illegitimate son. You heard that one?”

  Answer: “I’ve heard a lot of stories.”

  Question: “And that the president is still alive on the top floor of [Parkland] Hospital?”

  Answer: “That’s a popular story, yes.”

  Question: “But nothing about that brain being missing?”

  Answer: “No.”

  Question: “With respect to your being interviewed by the House Select Committee, two investigators from that committee, one of whom was Andrew Purdy, interviewed you on June 28, 1978, at your home in Gainesville, Florida, is that correct?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “And this was a one-and-a-half-hour interview?”

  Answer: “Yes, as I remember.”

  Question: “Pretty much in depth, right?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “They wanted to know about your observations that night?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “And that interview is set forth in detail in JFK Document No. 013613. Have you ever heard those numbers before?”

  Answer: “No, sir.”

  Question: “Now, Mr. O’Connor, if the president’s brain being missing from his head is one of the most shocking things that you have ever seen in your entire life, a matter that you certainly think should have been investigated, and if they spoke to you for one and a half hours about your observations that night, why wasn’t it important enough for you to tell these people about it?”

  O’Connor was stumped for an answer, but he managed to come up with a completely inappropriate one: “I was under orders not to talk until that time.”

  That was true, but by his own admission (“until that time”) he was allowed to talk to HSCA investigators. The HSCA had gotten the secretary of defense, Harold Brown, to rescind the November 22, 1963, verbal order of Surgeon General Edward Kenney that personnel present at the autopsy not disclose their observations except under court order.* In 1978, letters wer
e sent out to everyone who had been in the autopsy room that night allowing them to speak freely with HSCA investigators, and O’Connor admitted he had received such a letter. Moreover, and more important, he didn’t dispute my assertion that he did, in fact, talk to the HSCA investigators “for an hour and a half” and “told them all types of things.”

  Question: “Paul, when I first asked you this question over the phone—it was a Sunday night, about eleven o’clock in Florida, eight o’clock in L.A.—did you tell me, ‘the reason I never told them is they never asked me?’”

  Answer: “Well, they didn’t ask me.”

  Question: “And that’s why you didn’t tell them?”

  Answer: “Yes.”†

  Question: “So, in other words, Mr. O’Connor, even though this was one of the most shocking things that you have ever seen, and you’re going to remember it until the day you die, and you felt this matter should have been investigated, and you read all these books—the Warren Report and all the others—and no one mentioned it, if those investigators from the House Select Committee didn’t ask you the magic question, by golly, you weren’t about to tell them. Isn’t that correct?”

  Answer: “No, sir. I only answered what I was asked, and that was it. I didn’t elaborate.”

  Question: “The problem, Mr. O’Connor, is that on August 25, 1979, over a year after you spoke to the investigators from the House Select Committee on Assassinations, you were contacted by author David Lifton.”

  Answer: “That’s correct.”

  Question: “And you told me, and I hold you to it now, that he didn’t ask you either but you volunteered it to him?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “And he wrote a book about this case, right?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “And you’re a big part of that book, right?”

  Answer: “I have a chapter in it, yes.”35*

  It should be noted that of all the doctors, lab assistants, FBI agents, military personnel, and others who were present at one time or another during the autopsy (when we include the four men from the funeral home who prepared the president’s body for burial, the total was thirty-two),36 O’Connor was the only one who said the president’s brain was missing. Indeed, seven photographs were taken of the brain at the time of the autopsy.37

  John Stringer Jr., the photographer for the navy at the autopsy, said he clearly remembered that “Dr. Humes took the brain out of the president’s head and put it in a jar of formalin. I personally saw this. I don’t know how anyone could say that the president had no brain, except for money.”38

  O’Connor told the HSCA investigators that the president’s body arrived inside a pink shipping casket,39 and told Lifton that the body arrived in a “cheap, pinkish gray casket, just a tin box.” But FBI agent James Sibert told me that he, his partner, Francis O’Neill, a few Secret Service agents, and a few others he doesn’t recall, carried the casket from the limousine at the back of the hospital to “an anteroom right next to the autopsy room.” He recalls that “one of the handles on the casket was damaged.” He doesn’t remember the specific color of the casket but vividly remembers “it was a very expensive one, definitely not a shipping casket” and he recalls it was “very, very heavy.”40 John Stringer also told me that the president’s casket was “an expensive, very heavy bronze casket. It definitely wasn’t a cheap shipping casket.”41

  Although the body was wrapped in sheets at Parkland, O’Connor told Lifton it arrived at the autopsy room, instead, “in a body bag…just a regular, zippered bag.” When Lifton asked him, “The kind of body bag they talked about in Vietnam, when they brought soldiers back?” O’Connor said, “It was the same.”42 Lifton also quotes photographic assistant Floyd Riebe as telling him, “I think [the president] was in a body bag,” and Dr. John Stover as telling him that “I think I remember seeing a body bag peeled off [the president].”43*

  But the November 26, 1963, report of FBI agents Sibert and O’Neill reads that when the president’s body arrived in the autopsy room, “the complete body was wrapped in a sheet and the head area contained an additional wrapping which was saturated with blood.”44 And in a July 21, 2000, telephone conversation, Sibert told me the body “was not in any body bag when it arrived at Bethesda.” John Stringer also told me that when the body arrived at Bethesda, it was “wrapped in two sheets, one around the head, the other around the rest of his body. The body was nude.” When I asked him if the body was enclosed within a body bag, he answered, “There was no body bag.”45 In 1992, Dr. Humes said, “I cannot imagine how this talk about the president’s body being delivered in a body bag got started, but it is absolutely false.” Humes added that Kennedy’s body was “wrapped in sheets.”46

  The recollections of Sibert, O’Neill, Stringer, and Humes about the president being wrapped in sheets is consistent with the testimony of the two Parkland nurses who tended to the president’s body before it was placed in the coffin at Parkland. Nurse Diana Bowron told the Warren Commission that “after all the work had been done” on the president’s body by the doctors, “we wrapped some extra sheets around his head so it wouldn’t look so bad.”47 Nurse Margaret Henchliffe told the Commission that “after the last rites were said, we…wrapped him up in sheets.”48

  But Lifton, although he presents in a footnote the statement of an employee at O’Neal’s Funeral Home that the president’s body was not in a body bag, elects to go with O’Connor’s version that it was. Translation: If we’re to believe Lifton (and O’Connor), the conspirators, who performed the most improbable and sophisticated body-snatching caper in history, and along the way performed other magical feats (per Lifton, the successful alterations of the president’s wounds) that even Houdini wouldn’t have aspired to, somehow neglected to do the simplest, most obvious thing imaginable: put the president’s body back into his original wrapping and casket. Determined to draw attention to themselves and to what they had done, or because these brilliant plotters suddenly became totally mindless, they apparently went out of their way not only to find a completely different casket to put the president’s body back in, but to put it in a body bag instead of keeping the body wrapped in the sheets it was in when they took it away.

  Ruby and the Mob

  One of the most widely accepted conspiracy theories is that organized crime had Kennedy murdered and then got Ruby to silence their assassin, Oswald. Contrary to what may seem logical, I am starting here with an emphasis on Ruby, not organized crime, because after reading the “Organized Crime” section, which follows, it will be very clear to the reader that the Mafia had nothing to do with Kennedy’s murder, and it would be terribly anticlimactic and superfluous for the reader then to go on to a whole chapter on Jack Ruby, his alleged association with the Mafia, and why it’s obvious he didn’t kill Oswald for them.

  But before discussing the allegation that organized crime got Ruby to kill Oswald, I must present the simple facts surrounding Ruby’s murder of Oswald, which by themselves preclude the notion of organized crime, or anyone else, being behind Ruby’s act. In fact, the issue of time alone precludes conspiracy. The time it would have taken Oswald, in armed custody, to exit the basement door at the Dallas City Hall garage and walk the ten steps or so to the unmarked police vehicle waiting to transport him to the Dallas sheriff’s office couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty seconds, if that, since the police car was close to the door Oswald exited.1 He had only taken a few steps toward the car when he was shot.2 Several fortuitous things happened, or did not happen—none of which the conspirators would have had any control over—which enabled Ruby to be in the basement at the precise moment he was, and gave him the opportunity to shoot and kill Oswald. If any one of these things had happened otherwise, Ruby would not have been in the basement at the right moment, proving that the shooting could not have been a planned event:

  1. When Ruby went to the Western Union office, there was only one customer ahead of him.3 If ther
e had been two customers in front of him, or even if the lone customer had had a transaction that took the clerk just a minute or two longer to complete, or if the clerk, for whatever reason, took longer than he should have, or if he was interrupted by a telephone call, Ruby would not have been able to shoot Oswald. We know that the twenty-five-dollar money order Ruby sent that morning, and the receipt for it, were both stamped 11:17 a.m. and that Ruby shot Oswald four minutes later at 11:21 a.m., the O’Neal Funeral Home logging the call it received for an ambulance at 11:21 a.m.4*

  When Doyle Lane, the Western Union clerk, was asked at Ruby’s trial, “Did you talk to [Ruby] very much, chat with him?” he answered “Only briefly.”

  “How did he appear to you?”

  “Calm.”

  “Did he leave then?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “Out the door and to the left.”

  “Was he in a hurry?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Just casually moving along?”

  “That’s right.”

  If Ruby had to be at a designated spot two or so minutes later to kill Oswald, how is it possible he would not have been in a hurry?5

  We also know that the distance from the doorway of the Western Union office to where Ruby shot Oswald was 454½ feet, and that walking at a regular pace—which Ruby was doing, per Lane, at the time he left the Western Union office—it took approximately one minute and thirty-five seconds (one minute and thirteen seconds to walk the surface street, twenty-two seconds to walk down the ramp) to walk the distance.6

  How long was Ruby in the basement before Oswald appeared and Ruby shot him? Although it is not completely in sync with the above times, we know it was less than a minute, probably in the vicinity of thirty seconds. Local television station KRLD was videotaping everything that was taking place in the basement area and furnished its tape to the Dallas Police Department. Dallas investigating officers Lieutenant C. C. Wallace and Lieutenant P. G. McCaghren, in a report to Chief Jesse Curry, said that they “timed the video tape from the time Lieutenant R. S. Pierce’s car left the basement and started out Main Street [the time Ruby entered and started to walk down the Main Street ramp] until the time the shot was fired. The time recorded on the video machine and checked twice was fifty-six (56) seconds.”7 Indeed, an NBC newsman testified before the Warren Commission that he saw Ruby coming down the Main Street ramp into the police basement “not more than fifteen to thirty seconds” before he shot Oswald.8 Ruby himself says he saw Oswald emerge from the jail office “just as I got to the bottom of the [Main Street] ramp.”9