Authors: Lamar Waldron
far as to periodically visit the autopsy room during the procedure.”10
However, Bobby also had someone—an individual whom we spoke
with in 1992—assisting him in dealing with Burkley and the autopsy
room. The presence of this very sensitive, confidential source at the
autopsy has been confirmed by an official account, and his credibility
is not only clear based on the public record, but has been vouched for
by numerous associates of John and Robert Kennedy. These include
Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Harry Williams, and Bobby’s trusted FBI
liaison Courtney Evans.
It’s significant that our source who assisted Bobby at the autopsy
was fully knowledgeable not only about the JFK-Almeida coup plan,
but also about the Cuba Contingency Plans designed to protect it. The
bottom line is that whatever went on at the autopsy most likely hap-
pened with the full knowledge, and probably at the ultimate direction,
of Bobby Kennedy. Further proof of this concept is the fact that some of
the most important missing evidence, such as JFK’s brain, wound up
under Bobby’s control.
Even such a basic fact as when the autopsy started has caused much
debate and uncertainty over the past four decades. There was a delay
of at least forty minutes, and possibly as much as an hour, between the
arrival of JFK’s body at the facility and the start of the autopsy. While that
might not be very unusual in itself, something else was: There were two
ambulances—one was a decoy supposedly meant to throw off reporters
and sightseers who might have made it onto the base. After JFK’s body
arrived at the front of the building, the
Washington Post
reported that
Admiral Galloway himself “pushed into the front seat and drove to the
rear of the hospital, where the body was taken inside.”11
However, author David Lifton found that the men who were to guard
the ambulance with JFK’s body lost sight of the ambulance as it sped
away. The guards chased after the ambulance, but couldn’t find it. This
was followed by much confusion on their part, before they finally arrived
at the rear of the facility and found the ambulance at last.12 Oddly, Secret
Service Agent Kellerman says the autopsy started at 7:30, while the
casket team’s report says JFK’s casket was not carried in until 8:00 PM.
The two FBI agents say the first incision was made at 8:15 PM.
In addition to the unusual timing discrepancies, there were also easy-
to-document differences between how JFK’s body looked at Parkland
and how it looked (and was photographed) at the start of his autopsy
in Bethesda. The most obvious example is JFK’s throat wound, where
the tracheotomy incision had been made. Dallas’s Dr. Perry said that his
small, neat incision was only 2–3 centimeters. However, photos of JFK’s
body at the start of the autopsy show a very ragged incision, spread
open in the middle, that was at least two or three times larger. JFK’s
official autopsy report (now known to be at least the second completed,
and possibly the third) says the incision was 6.5 centimeters when the
autopsy began, while the lead autopsy physician, Dr. Humes, said under
oath that it was 7–8 centimeters.13 The throat incision was not enlarged
during the official autopsy, because, as assisting autopsy physician Dr.
Pierre Finck later testified, the doctors had been ordered not to.14
How did the small, neat incision in JFK’s neck more than double in
size to a wound so ragged that the autopsy physicians didn’t even real-
ize there had been a bullet hole there? Some experts have suggested a
solution that would also account for the timing inconsistencies regarding
the start of the autopsy, as well as the missing brain and other evidence.
They say there could have been a brief, hurried, unofficial “national
security autopsy” before the start of the official one. They point out that
on the night of November 22, the official autopsy results and evidence
were expected to be used in Oswald’s trial, and would have to be turned
over to his defense.
If Bobby Kennedy and other top officials were worried that evidence
of another shooter from the front could have generated calls to invade
Cuba and a conflict with the Soviets, this line of reasoning suggests they
might have wanted to learn as much as possible before the “official”
autopsy began. The greatly enlarged throat wound certainly appeared
as if someone had hurriedly explored it to see if a bullet was still lodged
inside.
While the official autopsy was jammed with officers and other per-
sonnel, such a national security autopsy might have been conducted
with only a few people present. This scenario could also explain other
discrepancies that have been documented. As the official account would
evolve, JFK’s back wound was supposedly caused by the complete
“magic bullet” found at Parkland on a stretcher—no bullet (or substan-
tial part of a bullet) was found at the autopsy. Yet Dr. Osborne—then a
Captain and later an Admiral and the Deputy Surgeon General—told
Congressional investigators he saw “an intact bullet roll . . . onto the
autopsy table” when JFK was removed from his casket. Osborne reiter-
ated to David Lifton that “I had that bullet in my hand and looked at
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
it.” He said it was “reasonably clean [and] unmarred,” and “the Secret
Service took it.”15
Dr. Osborne’s account is somewhat confirmed by the account of
x-ray technician Custer, who said that “a pretty good-sized bullet” fell
out of JFK’s “upper back,” where his back wound was located. He said
that when “we lifted him up . . . that’s when it came out.”16 Finally, the
Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical School at the time, Captain
John Stover, told author William Law, “Well, there was a bullet.” To
Lifton, “Stover confirmed there was a bullet in the Bethesda morgue”
from JFK’s body. However, Stover thought it was the bullet found on
the stretcher at Parkland. But it wasn’t, since that bullet was at the FBI
laboratory, many miles away.17
A brief national security autopsy prior to the start of JFK’s official
autopsy, as well as national security concerns after the official autopsy,
could also account for the many problems surrounding the autopsy
photographs and x-rays. Douglas Horne was the Chief Analyst of mili-
tary records for the congressionally created JFK Assassination Records
Review Board (ARRB) for three years in the 1990s. In addition to the
problem with JFK’s throat wound, Horne recently wrote, “There is
something seriously wrong with the autopsy photographs of the body
of President Kennedy. . . . The images showing the damage to the Pres-
ident’s head do not show the pattern of damage observed by either the
medical professionals at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, or by numerous
witnesses at the military autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. These
disparities are real and are significant.”
To cite just two of several discrepancies he uncovered, Horne writes
that “Navy photographer John Stringer, under oath before the ARRB,
disowned the [JFK] brain photographs in the Archives, because (1) they
were taken on a type of film he did not use; (2) they depict ‘inferior’
views of the underside of the brain which he was certain he did not
shoot; and (3) the photographs of several individual sections of brain
tissue that he did photograph were not present.” Horne also cites FBI
Agent Frank O’Neill, who “testified to the ARRB that the brain photos
in the National Archives could not possibly be of President Kennedy’s
brain, because there was too much tissue present; O’Neill testified that
more than half of President Kennedy’s brain was missing when he saw
it at the autopsy following its removal from the cranium, and his objec-
tions to the brain photographs in the Archives were that they depict
what he called ‘almost a complete brain.’”18
FBI Agent O’Neill, now retired, made other interesting observations.
Along with his colleague at the autopsy, Agent James Sibert, he doesn’t
believe in the “magic bullet” theory that was later proposed. Sibert says
he looked at JFK’s back wound from only two feet away. Measurements
of the bullet holes in JFK’s jacket and shirt show they were almost six
inches below the tops of the collars, well below the neck. Agent Sibert
says, “There’s no way that bullet could go that low, then come up, raise
up, and come out the front of the neck, zigzag and hit Connally, and
then end up in a pristine condition over there in Dallas.” Agent O’Neill
concurs, saying, “Absolutely not, it did not happen.”19
O’Neill also recently revealed something that Secret Service Agent
Roy Kellerman said to him at the autopsy: “He told me he [had] cau-
tioned Kennedy that morning not to be so open with the crowds for
security reasons. Kennedy told him that if someone wanted to kill him,
all they would have to do was use a scope rifle from a high building.”20
This statement was just one more indication of JFK’s mindset following
the Chicago and Tampa assassination attempts. When the events of the
autopsy are considered in terms of the cloak of secrecy those attempts
generated for national-security reasons, it starts to provide a rationale
for many, if not all, of the autopsy discrepancies.
The fact that there were national-security concerns for what should
have been a routine autopsy is confirmed by the fact that thirteen
people—including the three main autopsy physicians, most of the
lower-ranking people present at the autopsy, and even Admiral Gallo-
way’s secretary—were ordered to sign a secrecy order four days later. As
O’Connor said, they were told they were “under the penalty of general
court martial, and other dreadful things like going to prison.”21 The
orders were finally rescinded at the request of the House Select Com-
mittee on Assassinations in March 1978. However, it’s not known what
orders covered the higher-ranking people present at the autopsy, or
whether those orders were ever rescinded. As we document in Chapter
64, in 1978 Commander Almeida was still high in the Cuban govern-
ment, and his secret work for JFK had not yet been exposed. In fact, on
April 22, 1978, Almeida met at the UN with a representative of then–
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, and the JFK-Almeida coup plan was
never revealed to the Committee.
At the time of JFK’s assassination, Vance was Secretary of the Army
and fully aware of the JFK-Almeida coup plan. After the autopsy, JFK’s
body and funeral arrangements were put in the hands of Vance’s two
trusted aides, Joseph Califano (who would serve in the Cabinet with
Vance in the late 1970s) and Alexander Haig (later a Secretary of State
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himself). Haig has written that he “was assigned the duty of helping
with the preparations for the President’s funeral [and] handling details
concerning the burial site.”22 Califano has written that after JFK’s mur-
der, he went to the Pentagon and met Vance, who put him in charge of
arranging JFK’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery and meeting
Bobby there the next day.23
Califano and Haig have always been careful to distance themselves
from the most sensitive parts of Vance’s work on Bobby’s plans to elimi-
nate Castro, and neither has ever admitted to knowing about the JFK-
Almeida coup plan. But declassified files confirm that Califano and Haig
worked on the Cuba Contingency Plans for dealing with the possible
“assassination of American officials” when that planning started, in late
September 1963.24 Vance’s use of Califano and Haig makes sense, even
if both men had not yet been told about the JFK-Almeida coup plan.
Because of their admitted work on some of Bobby’s anti-Castro activi-
ties, and their involvement in the Cuba Contingency planning, Vance
knew he could count on each man if any problems arose that might
involve national security.
In fact, when a problem did arise, Haig showed how information
could be destroyed for reasons of national security. In his autobiog-
raphy, Haig wrote that “very soon after JFK’s death, an intelligence
report crossed my desk. In circumstantial detail, it stated that Oswald
had been seen in Havana in the company of Cuban intelligence officers
several days before the events in Dallas . . . the detail—locale, precise
notations of time, and more—was very persuasive. I was aware that
it would not have reached so high a level if others had not judged it
plausible. . . . I walked it over to my superiors. . . . ‘Al,’ said one of them,
‘you will forget, as from this moment, that you ever read this piece of
paper, or that it ever existed.’ The report was destroyed.”25 Unfortu-
nately, Haig didn’t realize that there were many similar reports later
shown to be bogus, most connected to associates of David Morales,
Johnny Rosselli, Santo Trafficante, and Carlos Marcello.
While JFK’s autopsy continued at Bethesda, the lines were buzzing