Finck was fine under direct examination by Irvin Dymond. He recited the Warren Commission doctrine: Two shots from behind and above. And the bullet entering in the back performed the functions necessary for the Single Bullet Theory. The defense must have thought it blunted the previous week of testimony exposing a crossfire in Dealey Plaza. Likely, they did not remotely perceive all the myriad problems with the medical evidence in the Kennedy case. Problems which the Warren Commission had concealed or buried due to the adroit and studious censorship and dodges of Philadelphia lawyer Arlen Specter. It was Specter who controlled and choreographed the medical and ballistics evidence for the Commission. The problem for Wegmann and Finck is that Garrison, Oser, and Salandria had seen through the Specter smoke screen. For one of the memorable highlights of the trial was Oser’s cross examination of Finck. Considering when this examination took place, and the information assistant DA Alvin Oser had to work with, he did a creditable job.
The official autopsy report holds that there were two bullets that struck President Kennedy. One came in at the bottom of the rear of the skull and exited the right side of the head, above and forward of the ear. This wound was fatal. A prior bullet entered the back and exited the throat. According to the Commission, this bullet proceeded forward to enter and exit John Connally twice, and then entered his thigh where it lodged. The debate about these wound locations, even in the period of 1966–69, was loud and quite heated. It was complicated by the fact that Dr. Malcolm Perry had cut a tracheostomy over Kennedy’s throat wound to try and save his life. Many observers felt the back wound was too low to exit the throat. Therefore, the throat wound and the back wound were actually from two separate shots, which would betray a crossfire and therefore two assassins. Therefore, Oser explored this point. He tried to find out why Finck did not call the Dallas doctors that night to find out if there actually was an exit wound from the throat. Finck replied that he was not running the autopsy, it was Commander James Humes. When Oser asked if Humes was actually in charge, Finck made a disclosure which literally changed the face of the autopsy evidence forever. And it should have rocked the news media if Phelan had not been controlling it. Finck replied that Humes actually stopped and asked, “Who is in charge here?” Finck then said he heard an Army General say, “I am.” Finck then added, “You must understand that in those circumstances, there were law enforcement officials, military people with various ranks, and you have to coordinate the operations according to directions” (Italics added).
This was the first time that any of the three autopsy doctors—Finck, Humes, or Thornton Boswell—had stated for the record that they did not actually control the proceedings at Bethesda Medical Center that night. Which meant that the doctors were being limited in their practice by the many military higher-ups in attendance. (Finck stated that the autopsy room was “quite crowded” with top brass.) When Oser asked if Finck recalled the name of the Army General who replied to Humes, Finck said he did not. When Oser asked if Finck felt he had to take orders from this Army General, the pathologist replied with: “No, because there were others, there were Admirals… . And when you are a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army you just follow orders.” He then testified that at the end of the procedure they were told not to discuss what had happened that night.
Oser then got Finck to make another telling admission. Finck tried to imply that he had seen the autopsy photographs before he signed the official autopsy report. This was not true. And Oser had a document which Finck had signed in which the doctor himself stated that he had not seen the photos until January 20, 1967, over three years later. Impeached by his own document, Finck did something strange. He tried to deny he had said what he just said. Namely he had seen them before he signed the autopsy report. Oser had the stenographer read back the question and answer. Which showed that he had said just that. Desperate to show he had not just committed perjury, and his autopsy was haphazard at best, Finck actually said the stenographer had made a mistake. He finally amended his answer to, “I was there when the photographs were taken, but I did not see the photographs of the wounds before I signed the autopsy report.” Which begs the question: why they were taken in the first place? He then testified that the doctors did not have the photographs or X-rays when they were writing their final draft of the autopsy report. They were relying on their memories and notes. When, of course, the pictures and X-rays would be more reliable.
Oser then asked Finck when he first saw the Zapruder film. Finck replied he first saw it in March of 1964 before he testified to the Warren Commission. Oser then pointed to page two of the autopsy report, which is titled Clinical Summary. In the second paragraph it reads that “Three shots were heard and the President fell forward” (Italics added). This, of course, is contradicted by the Zapruder film which shows Kennedy’s body moving backward with incredible speed. The summary then quotes two newspaper reports which stated that “a rifle barrel disappeared into a window on an upper floor of the nearby Texas School Book Depository Building.” It also states that Governor John Connally, riding in the same car in a jump seat in front of Kennedy was wounded “by the same gunfire.” What this all did of course, was to frame the very questionable circumstances of the assassination into a setting which favored Oswald as the assassin. That is, it dictated how many shots were fired, from where, and that the same bullet went through Kennedy and Connally. It also lied about in which direction Kennedy fell. A lie Finck had to have understood when he saw the film in March. These were unsubtle stage directions for the pathologists to follow. Oser then showed that the pathologists had not verified any of this information before they committed to it. In fact, Finck had told the Warren Commission he really did not think that CE 399, the bullet that allegedly went through Kennedy and Connally, could have done so.
Oser then moved on to another key issue that exposed the pathologists as pawns. A very important point about the autopsy is its failure to convincingly prove directionality. That is, from which direction did the bullets enter the body. There have always been serious queries about whether the wound in Kennedy’s throat was an entrance or exit wound. If that wound was one of entrance, then Kennedy was shot at least once from the front. That shot could not have been from Oswald, therefore the murder was a conspiracy. What makes this possibility very real is that Malcolm Perry said during a televised press conference on November 22 that the throat wound was one of entrance. He repeated this three times that day.82 Since he did the tracheostomy right over that wound, he should certainly know. The best way to have proven this point once and for all was to have dissected the wound track. Amazingly, this elementary and integral procedure was not done. When Oser tried to find out why it was not done, Finck used every evasion he could to avoid answering the question. Going over the transcript of this exchange is a bit startling. The reader will find that Oser had to pose the question eight separate times. It got so bad that Oser even had to request that the judge direct the witness to answer the question. Finck finally answered with, “As I recall I was told not to but I don’t remember by whom.” Again, someone was controlling the pathology team in a way that prevented them from doing a full and correct autopsy. The invisible subtext of this exchange was this: If the wound was not tracked, how did Finck know it was a through and through wound? That is, if the two wounds did not meet, then they were caused by different bullets. Ergo, the killing was a conspiracy. Further, the fact the doctors were ordered not to track the wound indicated the military brass may have been trying to cover this point up.
If this was the case, then a piece of evidence the ARRB did not locate may be crucial. As we have seen, one of Kennedy’s chief antagonists during the Missile Crisis was General Curtis LeMay. In the recorded calls between the White House and Air Force One on its return from Dallas to Washington for the autopsy, there had always been some missing tape. Clearly, this tape had been edited. But a fuller version was located in 2011. On this newly restored tape there is a stunning request that General LeMay should be loc
ated! All references to LeMay had previously been cut. But on this version, LeMay’s aide wants to locate him badly and interrupts the dialogue in order to try and find him: “This is Colonel Dorman, General LeMay’s aide… . General LeMay is in a C140. Last three numbers are 497… . He is inbound. His code name is Grandson. And I want to talk to him.” This places LeMay in the air on the way to Washington three hours after the assassination.83 When this author interviewed the late Paul O’Connor, who was at the autopsy that night, he related an unforgettable story. He said that there were dozens of military brass in the gallery, the likes of which he had never seen. Someone was smoking a cigar. Dr. Humes called him over and said, “Please go tell than man to stop smoking.” O’Connor went over, and as he approached him, he saw it was LeMay. Needless to say, he was not going to tell the Air Force Chief to stop anything.84 If this information is accurate, then it casts the darkest aspersions over why the doctors were not allowed to proceed normally. And shows how close Oser was to uncovering a huge cover up.
Oser then deftly moved to the size of the back wound versus the reported diameter of the throat wound. He was trying to show, from the information in the autopsy report, that the wound in the back was larger than the wound in the throat. But how could an entrance wound be larger than an exit wound? Again this would suggest two bullets: One from the front and one from the back. And further two different caliber bullets. Dymond strenuously objected to this line of questioning on the grounds that this made Finck respond with information he did not experience firsthand. Dallas physician Malcolm Perry had partly obscured the throat wound by cutting a tracheostomy over it. So the information as to the size of the throat wound was garnered from his memory as conveyed to Humes via telephone the next day. But clearly, according to the measurements in the autopsy report, the back wound was larger than the throat wound. Which is almost unheard of in wound ballistics. With a path paved by Dymond, Finck managed to dodge the question by saying he really did not know since he was relying on someone else’s information.
Oser then asked Finck why he signed a review of the autopsy pictures and X-rays in January 1967 at the National Archives. Finck replied that he thought the idea was to correlate the photographs and X-rays with the report, and since the pathologists had not seen the photos before, and only saw the X-rays that single night. Oser asked Finck who asked him to do this. Again, Finck clearly did not want to answer the question. There was a long pause. So long that Judge Haggerty asked Oser, “Are you waiting for an answer?” Finally, the reluctant witness responded as to when he saw the photos for the first time. The judge then said the question was not when he saw them, but who asked him to go. Finck now finally came across with the name of Carl Eardley at the Department of Justice.85
Unbeknownst to Oser, he was now scratching the surface of the years old, large, and multi-leveled cover up about the medical evidence in the JFK case. One that was ongoing at that very instant. Because, through Connick, Eardley was following and monitoring Finck’s historic, landmark testimony. As Eardley read it, he went into a panic. In fact, Finck’s appearance had backfired so badly that Eardley did something very odd. He called fellow autopsist Thornton Boswell to prepare him to go to New Orleans to counter and discredit his own witness, Finck. In sworn testimony, Boswell told the ARRB’s Chief Counsel Jeremy Gunn that Eardley was “really upset” about the Shaw trial. Particularly about Finck’s testimony saying that it was the military, and not Humes, controlling the procedures performed during the autopsy. Eardley told Boswell that he had “to get somebody to New Orleans quick. Pierre is testifying and he’s really lousing everything up.”86 Eardley wanted Boswell to go down and testify that Finck was a “strange man” in order to discredit him.87 It is important to recall, it was Wegmann and Eardley who had called the “strange man” to the stand in the first place. Apparently, they did not anticipate Oser would be so acute, or that Finck would testify honestly under cross-examination.
Boswell then flew to New Orleans and went to a reserved hotel room. Connick had left a note there telling him to meet someone down around the wharfs. Boswell did so. The two proceeded to the federal building. Connick now showed Boswell Finck’s disastrous two days of testimony.88 Boswell spent the whole night studying it. But, in the end, Boswell did not testify. Perhaps because it would have looked silly to hear a clinical pathologist— Boswell—who had not done a gunshot autopsy in years, try to discredit a forensic pathologist like Finck, who was called into Bethesda for the very reason that he had vast experience in doing gunshot autopsies. During his ARRB testimony, Jeremy Gunn asked Boswell a rather logical question about this strange and previously concealed episode: “What was the United States Department of Justice doing in relationship to a case between the district attorney of New Orleans and a resident of New Orleans?” To which Boswell replied that clearly, “the federal attorney was on the side of Clay Shaw against the district attorney.”89 About that, there can be no doubt. As we will see, that federal attorney was marked out to do more than just help acquit Shaw.
What Finck and Boswell were doing with Eardley, and his Justice Department colleague Carl Belcher, was participating in Ramsey Clark’s cover-up of the medical evidence in the JFK case. This started in November of 1966, with the release of Edward Epstein’s critical book Inquest. It would continue until Clark’s Garrison-directed, strategic release of his aforementioned panel review of the autopsy photo and X-rays. In fact, the Justice Department had sent Boswell a letter to sign which would request that very review. They sent it to him in order make it appear that it was Boswell’s idea in the first place. It was not. Boswell was serving as a stage prop in order to make it look like it was not Ramsey Clark’s idea.90 Which it was. But Boswell signed the letter anyway. Which shows just how much in the pocket of the government the three pathologists were. That review was always meant to reaffirm the verdict of the Warren Commission. That particular review panel was convened in February of 1968. They did less than a week of work. Yet Clark held back on the public release of that report for eleven months. That is, until two days before jury selection began for the Shaw trial.91 The other part of this Clark directed cover-up was to get Humes and Boswell, the autopsy photographer, John Stringer, and radiologist John Ebersole, to sign sworn statements that the autopsy photos and X-rays they saw at the National Archives in late 1966 and early 1967 corresponded to the exact number and views that were taken during the autopsy in 1963. The four signed false statements. Because there were pictures missing at this time. And the signatories knew it.92 Then in January, Finck was brought back to sign another statement, along with Humes and Boswell. This one said that the newly reviewed photos and X-rays supported their original autopsy report. This is the document Oser showed Finck on the stand which proved the doctor had not seen the photos in 1963. And he had not consulted them in the writing of the autopsy report. Which is a bit startling. And it is why Eardley and Belcher, at Clark’s request, wanted these two new statements issued. Clearly, Clark was responding to pressure brought by the combination of critical books being published about the assassination and also to the furor around Garrison’s inquiry. We know that this was a conscious and coordinated effort on his part since declassified memos reveal that Clark was in communication with former Warren Commission lawyers David Slawson and Wesley Liebeler in November of 1966, when this process began. Slawson wrote to Clark that there was a reasonable chance of stopping the growing movement for a complete reopening of the Kennedy case “by a re-investigation limited to aspects of the autopsy.” And Clark complied with that request.93
On January 14, 1967, the Saturday Evening Post ran a cover story previewing Josiah Thomspon’s upcoming book, Six Seconds in Dallas. The director of the 1968 panel was Dr. Russell Fisher. He later stated that Ramsey Clark got hold of the proofs of Thompson’s book after this article appeared. The contents clearly upset the Attorney General. Because, as Fisher related, one reason that the Clark Panel was convened, was to “partly refute some of the junk” in t
hat book.94 The release of its findings were then delayed in order to be timed with the opening of the Shaw trial. In other words, Washington was countering the critics through concealed and controlled means. This multi-staged, intricate, ongoing Justice Department cover up of the medical evidence was the tip of the iceberg Oser was touching on in his milestone examination of Dr. Finck. Naturally, it drove Eardley up the wall.
The final witnesses during the prosecution’s direct case also dealt with Shaw’s use of the Bertrand alias. Mrs. Jessie Parker, hostess at the exclusive VIP Room at the New Orleans Airport, said she had seen Shaw sign the guest register as “Clay Bertrand” in 1966. She described his appearance and pointed to his signature in the book. She then pointed to Shaw as the man who signed in. She said she remembered him because of his striking appearance and because very few people used the room. One needed a pass key. The handwriting expert for the DA was the illustrious Elizabeth McCarthy. She was a graduate of Vassar and Portia Law School. She had been a leading authority in the field for over thirty years who had testified in many high profile cases, including that of Alger Hiss. She had been employed as a document examiner for both the Boston Police and the Massachusetts State Police. She stated the writing was Shaw’s. The authority that Irvin Dymond first announced in court to dispute that expert finding was New Orleans handwriting analyst Gilbert Fortier. But this was soon changed to longtime former FBI employee Charles Appel.95 When this author asked Dymond how this switch occurred, he said it was because Appel called and volunteered his services. Appel concurred with this.96 This was another smoke screen. For under cross-examination, Appel admitted he was actually contacted by Lloyd Cobb, Shaw’s former boss. As we have seen, Cobb had applied for membership on the CIA’s cleared panel of New Orleans attorneys. In keeping with that, Appel was one of Hoover’s closest and most trusted FBI colleagues; so close that he often had dinner with him at his favorite restaurant in Washington.97 So, predictably, Appel contested McCarthy’s analysis and said the handwriting was not Shaw’s.
Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case Page 45
