As a side note, if Senator Robert Kennedy came into possession of his brother’s brain, as appears likely, what did he do with it to make it inaccessible to others? For years, there have been rumors that when President Kennedy’s body was moved from its temporary site and reinterred at a new and permanent granite and marble site at Arlington National Cemetery* under floodlights on the evening of March 14, 1967,307 the brain was placed in the president’s grave. In a photo at the grave site (see photo section), Robert and Edward Kennedy stand between the Eternal Flame on their left and a curious box to their right. No one knows what this box’s purpose at the grave site was, or what it contained, if anything, but the speculation is that it contained the president’s brain. The subject photograph surfaced after the HSCA concluded its investigation in 1979, but the HSCA did interview the few people (it was a very private ceremony that the press was not privy to) who were present at the grave site, and they could not recall any additional package or material being placed in the grave. John Metzler, the superintendent of the cemetery, now deceased, told the HSCA that the coffin was in a sealed vault. He was present throughout the entire process—from the opening of the old grave site through the transfer by crane of the vault to the reinterment at the new site—and said there was no way anyone could have placed anything in the coffin or vault without his seeing it, and no one placed anything in the new grave site.308
Robert Tanenbaum, the chief assistant to Richard Sprague, the first chief counsel for the HSCA, told me that in a personal conversation he had years ago with Frank Mankiewicz, Robert F. Kennedy’s press secretary and close confidant, Mankiewicz told him that he was present at the grave site when JFK’s body was reburied, and that Bobby Kennedy had “put Jack’s brain in the coffin.”309 When I asked Mankiewicz about this, he denied expressly telling Tanenbaum this, though he conceded talking to Tanenbaum about the president’s brain and further acknowledged that he may have speculated to Tanenbaum that this could have happened. But since Mankiewicz was at the grave site, his “speculation” position doesn’t have nearly the believability it would have if he hadn’t been present, and it is unlikely that someone of Tanenbaum’s stature would have misunderstood what Mankiewicz told him about such an important matter.
Mankiewicz told me, “I do believe that the president’s brain was reburied with the president when his body was moved from its temporary grave to its permanent one,” adding, however, that he had no firsthand knowledge of this. Mankiewicz told the HSCA’sG. Robert Blakey in 1978 that after the reinterment, Edward Kennedy “seemed” to confirm that the brain was buried in the grave site, but when I asked Mankiewicz to elaborate on this, he said, “I honestly just don’t recall either Ted confirming this in any way, or telling Blakey this.”310
If, indeed, Robert Kennedy somehow placed the president’s brain in the president’s coffin when the president was reburied, we have a situation where the dead president was not “taking a secret to his grave,” but someone else’s secret.
Easily one of the most obscenely irresponsible documents ever promulgated in the assassination debate, and yet one whose contention is being hailed and widely accepted today in the conspiracy community, is the one written by Douglas P. Horne, the ARRB’s chief analyst for military records. The ARRB, established in 1994, was not authorized by Congress to be an investigative agency. Its sole function was to determine what previously unreleased documents pertaining to the assassination should be released to the American public. (See discussion in endnote to “The Investigations” section.) But the authorization to determine what records could be released enabled the board members to stretch their narrow mandate here and there by taking depositions under oath to “clarify points that weren’t clear from the original records.” Nowhere did they do this more, and cause more harm and confusion, than in the area of Kennedy’s autopsy.
The juggling of dates by Horne unfortunately will make this section confusing to many readers, despite my effort to present Horne’s theory in an understandable way. Before we get into Horne’s theory, the reader should know that even before the ARRB hired Horne for his jurisdictionally narrow job, one that required objectivity, Horne was already a strong supporter and believer in perhaps the craziest theory ever to come out of the conspiracy community, David Lifton’s theory that Kennedy’s body was stolen and his wounds altered before his autopsy.311
Horne wrote a “Memorandum for File” on June 2, 1998 (released by the National Archives on November 9, 1998), that has achieved iconic status in the conspiracy community. Its main conclusion belongs on the cover of the weekly tabloid Sun, which features stories like “Hitler Is Still Alive” and “Actual Photos of Heaven.” Unbelievably, Horne said that the depositions taken by the ARRB caused him to conclude that there were two (not one) supplemental brain examinations following the autopsy, and the second one—are you ready?—wasn’t on the president’s brain, but on another brain from some anonymous third party. Horne, accusing Drs. Humes and Boswell of criminal conduct to cover up the true facts of the assassination, said that what happened was a “carefully controlled, compartmented operation in regard to orchestrating who was present, and what procedures were performed, at the two separate brain examinations.”312 Horne’s star witness in reaching his conclusion was John T. Stringer Jr., the autopsy photographer.
The three autopsy surgeons negligently did not say, on the autopsy report they each signed, the date of its preparation. However, the chief autopsy surgeon, Dr. James Humes, testified that he prepared and delivered the final report on Sunday, November 24, 1963.313 One of the other autopsy surgeons, Dr. Pierre A. Finck, also has written, and testified, that it was the twenty-fourth.314 And a January 26, 1967, affidavit signed by all three autopsy surgeons reads, “The autopsy report, written by Dr. Humes with the assistance of Dr. Boswell and Dr. Finck, was…delivered by Dr. Humes to Admiral Burkley, the President’s physician, on November 24 at about 6:30 P.M.”315
The last page of the subject autopsy report reads, “A supplementary report will be submitted following more detailed examination of the brain and of microscopic sections.”316 But the surgeons continued their negligence in not saying, on their supplementary report, the date of their supplementary examination of the brain, or the date of the supplementary report, and as opposed to the date of the autopsy and autopsy report, the date of the supplemental examination of the brain, and the report thereof, has never been determined to anyone’s complete satisfaction. The handwritten date “12/6/63” in the upper right corner of the supplemental report was only determined to be the date Humes hand-delivered the report to the president’s personal physician, Admiral George Burkley.317
The supplementary autopsy report said, among other things, that “in the interest of preserving the specimen, coronal sections are not made. The following sections are taken for microscopic examination [seven sections are listed, e.g., “from the margin of the laceration in the right parietal lobe”].”318 So serial, coronal sectioning, sometimes called cross-sectioning, where the brain is sliced through and through—in small parallel intervals from one side of the brain to the other for interior analysis—was not done.* Only small sections of the brain were taken for analysis.
But in his appearance before the ARRB on July 16, 1996, when asked if the sections the autopsy surgeons took of the brain were “small pieces, or cross-sections,” John Stringer responded, “If I remember, it was cross-sections.”319 Apart from the fact that Stringer wasn’t absolutely sure and the supplementary report signed by all three autopsy surgeons clearly refuted his testimony, Humes had already testified in his ARRB deposition on February 13, 1996, that “we didn’t divide the brain like we often do…a so-called bread loaf-type incision.”320 The reason? Humes told JAMA that Admiral Burkley told him, “The family wanted to inter the brain with the President’s body.”321 Dr. Thornton Boswell, the second autopsy surgeon, in his February 26, 1996, ARRB deposition, also testified that the president’s brain was not serially cross-sectioned, only s
mall sections being taken.322 And the other autopsy surgeon, Pierre Finck, in a February 1, 1965, report (based on his notes taken around the time of the brain examination) to his superior, Brigadier General J. M. Blumberg, wrote, “Commander [Humes] takes sections from [the brain] but does not make coronal sections in order to preserve the specimen.”323
That should have been the end of it, right? But not for Mr. Horne. With Stringer speaking of cross-sectioning, and the three autopsy surgeons speaking only of small sections of the president’s brain being taken, he was off and running, concluding that there must have been two supplementary brain exams (all three autopsy surgeons have only referred to one), one of which was on the morning of November 25, 1963, and attended by Humes and Boswell, Stringer, and others. Drs. Humes and Boswell, Horne concludes, did not invite Dr. Finck to this exam. (The only supplementary report of a brain exam in the Warren Commission volumes is signed by Dr. Humes,324 and Humes testified that “Dr. Boswell, Dr. Finck and I convened to examine the brain.”)325 This was an examination that even Horne agrees was of the president’s brain. But Horne alleges there was a second brain exam, this one of someone else’s brain being represented as the president’s, on November 29, 1963, at which time Humes, Boswell, and this time Finck were present, but not Stringer.
It was critical to Horne’s mad theory that the “first” exam be no later than the morning of November 25 because he concludes the brain was buried with the president’s body, and the funeral was that afternoon.326 Hence, per Horne, the president’s brain wasn’t even available to be examined on November 29, when Horne says the “second” supplementary exam took place.† But to arrive at the twenty-fifth as the date of the “first” supplementary brain exam, Horne had to engage in what appears to be deliberate distortion. The only other option is serious incompetence. His main source for his conclusion of the twenty-fifth was an interview of autopsy surgeons Dr. James Humes and Dr. Thornton Boswell by JAMA editor Dr. George D. Lundberg and JAMA reporter Dennis Breo in the May 1992 edition of JAMA, in which Breo writes, “On December 6, 1963, Humes alone submitted to Burkley his supplementary report…Shortly afterward [i.e., after December 6, 1963], Humes [and Captain John Stover, the commanding officer of the Naval Medical School at Bethesda] turned over everything from the autopsy to Admiral Burkley—bullet fragments, microscopic slides, paraffin blocks of tissue, undeveloped film, X-rays—and the preserved unsectioned President’s brain.” Breo then quotes Humes as saying, “Admiral Burkley gave me a receipt for the autopsy materials, including the brain. It was my understanding that all the autopsy materials, except the brain, would be placed in the National Archives.” Although, Humes said, he didn’t know whether the brain was ultimately buried with the body, he did recall Burkley telling him that “the family wanted to inter the brain with the President’s body.”327*
Horne conveniently omits from his report the reference to the brain being turned over to Burkley after December 6, 1963. If he had, this would have proved that his theory that the president’s brain was buried with his body on November 25, 1963, was wrong. Instead, he focuses only on the desire of the Kennedy family to inter the brain with the body, and since the president’s funeral was on the afternoon of November 25, 1963, he concludes that “the supplementary brain examination [took place] prior to the November 25, 1963 state funeral of President Kennedy.”328
Could the highly unlikely argument be made that Horne was unaware of the JAMA interview with Humes? This argument, even if accepted, doesn’t save Horne. In fact, the situation gets much, much worse for him. Four years after the JAMA interview, Dr. Humes himself testified before the ARRB. And Horne was present at the deposition. Humes testified that Admiral Burkley told him that Robert Kennedy, as the “spokesperson” for the Kennedy family, told Burkley that the family wished “to inter the president’s brain with the body.”
ARRB counsel then asked him, “Did you give Dr. Burkley the [president’s] brain prior to the time President Kennedy was interred?”
Humes: “No, no, no, no, no, no. It was afterwards.”
Question: “Approximately when?”
Humes: “I can’t remember. I would say it was within ten days, probably.”329
Horne, with full knowledge of this, didn’t tell the readers of his memorandum report what Humes had testified to because, again, it would destroy his whole theory. And whether Horne believed Humes or not is completely irrelevant. You don’t write a single-spaced, fifteen-page report with footnotes and eighteen pages of supporting documents accusing Humes of this terrible crime without finding space to include what Humes had to say, under oath, about the matter. Nor, of course, did Horne tell his readers that Admiral Burkley had given an affidavit (which was also under oath) that after the supplementary autopsy examination of the president’s brain he had delivered the president’s brain, in a steel container, to the White House, and that on April 26, 1965, when the container was transferred to the National Archives, the brain was still in the container.330
Inasmuch as Drs. Humes and Burkley have given statements under penalty of perjury that the president’s brain was not buried with his body, I wonder if Doug Horne would be willing to testify under penalty of perjury that he didn’t know about Burkley’s affidavit, or about Breo’s article, and that he had also forgotten what he personally heard Humes testify to. Or that yes, he was aware of all three of these things, but he never included them in his memorandum because he didn’t think they were relevant?
By the way, at least as to Dr. Humes, could one make the argument that Humes lied under oath to protect himself from Horne’s accusation? No. Humes testified on February 13, 1996, and Horne didn’t even write the first draft of his unbelievable theory until more than six months later, on August 28, 1996.
Trying to construct his nonexistent case, Horne goes on to say in his memorandum that since Dr. Finck, in his letter to Dr. Blumberg, specifically says the supplementary brain examination was on November 29, this must have been a second supplementary exam, the only one of the two, Horne says, that Finck attended. Horne says that “although John Stringer did photograph the supplemental brain examination [the one that Horne says occurred on November 25, not the later one on November 29 that Horne claims took place], the photos of a brain in the National Archives today are not the photographs that he took at that event…Those photographs…are photographs of a different brain, and are not images of President Kennedy’s brain.”331 Horne doesn’t know who took these photos at the alleged second brain exam on November 29, but it wasn’t Stringer, he says. So according to Horne, the photographs held today at the National Archives that researchers are told are of the president’s brain, really are photographs of the brain of some anonymous third party, and all of the photographs of President Kennedy’s brain are missing. I see.
Horne’s modus operandi in reaching his incredibly far-out conclusion is standard conspiracy fare. All normal people know that people’s recollections of an event vary widely, sometimes just moments or a day after it happened, and it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s to be expected. For instance, Dr. Finck himself, whose recollections Horne relies on for his sinister scenario, stated at the end of his deposition before the ARRB, “that there are things I remember, others I don’t…And to me, it is a real burden to have to repeatedly answer questions, being asked, ‘Do you remember this, do you remember that,’ and quite often I have to answer, ‘Well, I don’t remember,’ or ‘I cannot answer that question with precision.’”332
But exactly like his congenitally suspicious predecessors, who apparently have different experiences in life than normal humans, whenever Horne spots a discrepancy in the recollection of two or more people trying to remember a long-ago event that supports his theory of what happened, he immediately smells the sweet (to him) aroma of a conspiracy. For example, Dr. Finck, in his report to General Blumberg, writes that “color and black and white photographs are taken by the U.S. Navy photographer: superior and inferior aspects of the brain.”333 Horne wr
ites in his report, “Navy photographer Stringer, who was present at the earlier brain exam [the first one, he says, of the president’s brain]…is on record [ooh!] in his ARRB deposition transcript that he did not shoot basilar [meaning base, below], or inferior views of the brain*…This Finck recollection of witnessing a photographer shoot inferior views of the brain, therefore, corroborates that he was at a different examination than was John Stringer.”334 I get it. If five witnesses to an automobile accident each give different versions of what they saw, there must have been five separate automobile accidents. Someone with this mentality was being paid with our tax dollars.
But when a discrepancy can’t be used to support Horne’s theory, he suddenly becomes normal and doesn’t think anything of it. For instance, FBI agents O’Neill and Sibert watched the entire autopsy proceeding together. Yet Horne has no difficulty at all with O’Neill testifying before the ARRB that he saw the president’s brain being removed from his cranium and measured, weighed, and put in a jar, and Agent Sibert not being able to recall seeing the president’s brain ever being removed from his cranium or seeing the brain at any time outside the body.335
Now why would Humes and Boswell, who testified that there was only one supplementary brain exam, have conducted a second one of a different brain? Of course, Horne has an answer, in effect accusing Humes and Boswell of being a part of a vast conspiracy to cover up the true facts of the assassination, which pointed away from the guilt of Oswald. He writes that there was coronal sectioning of the president’s brain on November 25, but photographs of the damage to these sections couldn’t be allowed to see the light of day. Why? Because they would have documented the damage to the president’s brain “in great and irrefutable detail” and hence, “was considered knowledge which had to be suppressed.” Therefore, “an examination of a second (different) brain (exhibiting a more acceptable pattern of damage), with photographs to record [that] different pattern of damage (such as those now in the Archives),” was deemed “necessary.”336
Reclaiming History Page 82
