91-yr-old Jim Sibert
davidemerling
news-press.com
Fort Myers, Florida
South Fort Myers resident Jim Sibert has answered the questions for 46
years, ever since the night the FBI special agent observed the autopsy
of President John F. Kennedy.
Over the years, Sibert, 91, has been interviewed for books. When the
other FBI agent who witnessed the autopsy, Francis X. O'Neill, died
earlier this year in Cape Cod, Mass., Sibert was quoted in a Boston
Globe obituary of O'Neill.
The calls and questions keep coming from teachers, authors and
historians.
"He told me a couple of years ago that he was never going to be
interviewed again," said Paul Mitchell, one of Sibert's neighbors at
the Cypress Cove retirement community on the grounds of HealthPark
Medical Center.
Sibert can't always say no. He has a story to share. Theories and
debates on conspiracies and motives and alleged cover-ups fill
bookshelves and bop around the Internet. Sibert doubts any secrets
remain to be unearthed.
"After 46 years," Sibert said, "there couldn't be."
Now, as Sunday's anniversary of the assassination approaches, Sibert
is being asked again about that historic day, Nov. 22, 1963.
"It started out like a normal day," Sibert said.
At the time, Sibert was a 45-year-old FBI special agent stationed in
Maryland and only a year younger than Kennedy. Late in the day, the
president of the United States was dead in front of him with a hole in
his head.
"It was a piece blown out of the skull," Sibert said.
Sibert and O'Neill met the casket at Andrews Air Force Base and
accompanied it to Bethesda Naval Hospital. They were assigned to watch
the autopsy, stay with the body and, as Sibert and O'Neill noted in a
report dictated four days after the examination, "to obtain bullets
reportedly in the President's body."
When Kennedy's body was removed from its casket and white sheets were
unwrapped from him, Sibert recalls how the sheet around his head was
blood-soaked.
"His eyes were fixed open," Sibert recalled.
No clothing came with the slain president. The suit Kennedy wore in
the open-topped limousine had been cut off in Dallas, where he was
gunned down.
What happened in Dallas that day remains contested with factions still
debating whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter or if he was
part of a wide-ranging conspiracy.
"I don't buy the single-bullet theory," Sibert said, "I won't go as
far as to say there was no conspiracy."
Sibert and O'Neill's report, titled "Autopsy of Body of President John
Fitzgerald Kennedy," stated that Commander James J. Humes, who
conducted the autopsy, noted another wound.
"During the latter stages of this autopsy, Dr. Humes located an
opening which appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the
shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal
column," Sibert and O'Neill reported.
Sibert won't guess on possible conspirators, on who else may have shot
Kennedy other than Oswald.
"I wouldn't have any way of knowing," Sibert said. "See, that's
another thing. All my work was in Bethesda, Maryland."
The FBI, Sibert said, had no jurisdiction in the investigation. The
FBI Web site notes that "when President Kennedy was assassinated, the
crime was a local homicide; no federal law addressed the murder of a
President."
During the autopsy, Sibert couldn't let the magnitude of the event
overwhelm his duty.
"You just kind of think, 'This happened to the president of the United
States,'" Sibert said.
Until the president's murder, Sibert had observed only two other
autopsies in his career.
One was of a little kidnapped boy. The other was on the wife of an FBI
clerk who had died unexpectedly. That autopsy was held to make sure
there had been no foul play.
Sibert recalls the somber atmosphere during the president's autopsy.
"There wasn't any joking," Sibert said. "No comic remarks made."
The experience, Sibert said, didn't change him profoundly.
But every now and then he gets calls from people who are still
curious. There are also the memories of the history he witnessed.
"The other thing was the ferocity of the wounds," Sibert said. "That's
tough. I never had nightmares, but it's something that flashes through
my mind a lot of times."
Still, he's not obsessed with what he saw or what may have been behind
the assassination.
"I don't think about it every day," Sibert said. "Generally, when
something comes up, an article in the paper, something about the
assassination, somebody wants to know about it. It's just another
incident in your bureau career that you handled the best you could."
Sibert continued with the FBI until 1972, handling criminal cases.
Now, the former World War II bomber pilot and FBI agent is a widower
who plays cards Friday evenings with Cypress Cove neighbors.
"Jim is a wonderful man," said neighbor and card player Elsie Thomas.
"He's very interesting. Very knowledgeable. And he likes to talk about
his time as an FBI man."
b garrett meadows
This is an excellent article! Mr. Sibert has my admiration for his
objectivity, sincerity, and frankness. Unlike those who have made a career
out of shopping their stories relative to their connection with the JFK
assassination to anyone wiling to listen, he has maintained a duty-bound
modesty that it is highly laudable.