Dr. Livingston's Letter (repost)

[John McAdams]

I went round and round with Cleere on this a few months ago.

He was never able to come up with a halfway plausible conspiracy
scenario that fit this particular doctor's recollection.

My guess is simply that either:

1. Humes had a lot of people telling him all sorts of things, and
forgot about this fellow, and/or

2. Livingston led Humes to expect *both* a small wound in the throat
*and* a "neighboring trachestomy wound." When Humes found only the
trachestomy wound, he forgot about what seemed to be clearly mistaken
information.

In article <3gbo92$m...@pyrtech.mis.pyramid.com>,
bcl...@pyrtech.mis.pyramid.com (Bill Cleere) writes:

>It's been quite a while...some of the newer folk may enjoy this:
>
>In "Killing the Truth: Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case"
>(New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1993 --
>ISBN # 0-88184-424-4), Harrison Edward Livingstone quotes the
>following. His source is a letter to himself, dated May 2, 1992,
>from Dr. Robert B. Livingston, Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience
>at the University of California, San Diego. The ellipsis is
>clearly Harrison Livingstone's; it is not clear whether the
>emphasis is by him or Dr. Livingston.
>
> -- Bill Cleere
>******************************************************************
>
>Inasmuch as I was Scientific Director of two of the institutes at
>the NIH--and both institutes were pertinent to the matter of the
>President's assassination and brain injury--the Navy Hospital
>operator and the Officer on Duty put me through to speak directly
>with Dr. Humes, who was waiting to perform the autopsy. After
>introductions, we began a pleasant conversation. He told me that
>he had not heard much about the reporting from Dallas and from Parkland
>Hospital. I told him that the reason for my making such an importuning
>call was to stress that the Parkland Hospital physicians'
>examination of President Kennedy revealed what they reported to be
>a small wound in the neck, closely adjacent to and to the right of
>the trachea. I explained that I had knowledge from the literature
>on high-velocity wound ballistics research, in addition to
>considerable personal combat experience in examining and repairing
>bullet and shrapnel wounds. I was confident that a small wound of
>that sort had to be a wound of entrance and that if it were a wound
>of exit, it would almost certainly be widely blown out, with
>cruciate or otherwise wide, tearing outward ruptures of the underlying
>tissues and skin. I stressed to Dr. Humes how important it was that
>the autopsy pathologists carefully examine that particular wound and
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>to distinguish it from the neighboring tracheostomy wound....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> I said, carefully, *if that wound were confirmed as a wound of
>entry*, it would prove beyond peradventure of doubt that that shot
>had been fired from in front--hence *that if there were shots
>from behind, there had to have been more than one gunman*. Just at
>that moment, there was an interruption in our conversation. Dr.
>Humes returned after a pause of a few seconds to say that 'the FBI
>will not let me talk any further.' I wished him good luck, and the
>conversation was ended. My wife can be a good witness to that
>conversation, because we shared our mutual distress over the terrible
>events.... I exclaimed to her my dismay over the abrupt termination
>of my conversation with Dr. Humes, through the intervention of the
>FBI. I wondered aloud why they would want to interfere with a
>discussion between physicians relative to the problem of how best to
>investigate and interpret the autopsy.
> Now, with knowledge of the apparently prompt and massive control
>of information that was imposed on assignment of responsibility for
>the assassination of President Kennedy, I can appreciate that the
>interruption may have been far more pointed than I had presumed at
>the time. I conclude, therefore, on the basis of personal experience,
>that Dr. Humes did have his attention drawn to the specifics and
>significance of President Kennedy's neck wound prior to him
>beginning the autopsy. His testimony that he only learned about the
>neck wound *on the day after* completion of the autopsy, after he had
>communicated with Doctor Perry in Dallas by telephone, means...that the
>autopsy was already under explicit nonmedical control."
>(pp. 114-115)