Context

At 2:38 PM (EST) on November 22, 1963, millions of Americans learned from Walter Cronkite that President Kennedy was dead. To say the least, this was shocking news, especially since he had been shot in public view while riding in a motorcade. Was it possible that a banana-republic-style assassination had taken place in our country? Was it possible that our much-loved president's young, vibrant life had been extinguished so horribly? Many of us found it inconceivable.

During the early evening of the day of the assassination, citizens, transfixed to their television sets for information, observed the arrival of Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, DC, at approximately 6:05 PM. The tail section opened and a bronze ornamental casket was off-loaded. Mrs. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, side-by-side, observed the lowering of the casket and its placement in a gray navy ambulance (Figure 1). Those in denial now knew for certain that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was no more, by observing his wife's blood-stained suit.

Mrs. Kennedy and her entourage entered the ambulance, which was part of a motorcade to the Bethesda Hospital, a division of the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC). Needless to say, she, as did the nation wide viewing audience, assumed that the president's body was in the ambulance. In fact, the casket was empty and the president's body, inside a body bag, was en route to the Bethesda morgue by helicopter. The removal of President Kennedy's body from the bronze casket, while en route to Andrews Air Force Base, was necessary to clandestinely take it to the morgue early, so that bullets could be removed and the wounds altered from what was observed and described by the doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas. The president had sustained wounds caused by shots from the front, whereas, in order to implicate Lee Harvey Oswald, the wounds had to appear as having been caused by shots from the rear. This was a key component to the cover-up of President Kennedy's assassination.

Author David Lifton made the astute observation many years ago in Best Evidence [2] that the president's body and his wounds—as observed by the doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas—were the "best evidence" for a true assessment of how President Kennedy was assassinated. The doctors at Parkland observed a wound in the anterior neck and in the right occipital (rear) region of the head. The latter wound was judged to have been fatal. Descriptions of these wounds are contained in their contemporaneous reports. [3, Appendix VIII]

There was unanimity among the observations of the Parkland doctors: the president had sustained what appeared to be an entrance wound at the throat and an exit wound in the right-rear section of the skull. Wounds with these characteristics conform to frontal shots.

At 1:33 PM (CST) it fell to White House Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff to announce the death of the president to members of the press assembled in a nurses classroom:

President John F. Kennedy died at approximately one o'clock central standard time today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound in the brain. I have no other detail regarding the assassination of the president.

The hapless Kilduff was then peppered with questions, during which he stated, "Dr. Burkley told me that it was a simple matter of a bullet right through the head," as he touched his forehead above the right eye (Figure 2).

These findings would, in due course, be contrary to the conclusions of the Warren Commission who determined that the president was shot from the rear by Lee Harvey Oswald, located in a sniper's nest of book cartons on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD).

Evidence of a Conspiracy and Cover-Up

In all criminal cases, the chain-of-custody must be unbroken in order for items of physical evidence to be deemed valid at trial. Since the president's body was evidence in this case, it follows that once it was placed inside the ornamental bronze casket at Parkland Hospital, it should have traveled in an uninterrupted manner to the morgue at the NNMC, Bethesda, for autopsy. It did not. Therefore, the autopsy report should be considered circumspect, as it would in a court of law. Proof of interrupted travel between Dallas and Bethesda follows.

2.1. Early Arrival of the Body at the Bethesda Morgue

The official arrival time of the president's body at the morgue was approximately 8:00 PM, when the honor guard carried in the ornamental bronze casket. [4, p. 1] The honor guard—men from all five services—had also attended the arrival of the bronze casket at Andrews Air Force Base (Figure 1) and had traveled to Bethesda by helicopter. [4, p. 3] On the other hand, eyewitness accounts indicate that the body was carried into the morgue at 6:35/6:45 PM, [5, p. 3; 6, p. 5] i.e. before the gray navy ambulance carrying the bronze casket arrived in the motorcade from Andrews Air Force Base at the front entrance to the NNMC at 6:55 PM. [2, p. 407]

2.1.1. Eyewitnesses outside the morgue

In an interview with the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), Dennis David, chief-of-the day for the Naval Medical School (a division of the NNMC), said that he supervised a detail of sailors who removed a gray shipping casket from a "black hearse" at approximately 6:45 PM. This shipping casket was like those he observed frequently during the Vietnam War. [5, p. 3] Obviously, he was not describing the ornamental bronze casket taken into the morgue later by the honor guard. He also said that he observed arrival of a "motor cavalcade" that included a gray navy ambulance from which Mrs. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, and others alighted and entered the NNMC lobby. [5, p. 3] The motorcade arrived after he and his detail of sailors had taken the gray shipping casket into the "anteroom directly adjacent to the morgue." [5, p. 3] Chief David was not present when the shipping casket was opened; hence he had no firsthand knowledge of its contents. Being aware of the arrival of two caskets, on the following day he asked J. Thornton Boswell, one of the autopsy pathologists, which casket contained the president's body. Dr. Boswell replied, "You...