Cont: JFK Conspiracy Theories V: Five for Fighting

[Tomtomkent]

So you think Hagan completely fabricated his memory of him and Joe Gawler helping Kennedy's aides to select a mahogany casket, and then personally transporting it to Bethesda?

That is neither what I said or asked. Are these straw men arguments deliberate?

 

[HSienzant]

I can understand why single-assassin theorists would think that the occam's razor evidence just shows a two-hit scenario to explain Kennedy's wounds. But then there's stuff like this that wakes you up and makes you realize that the Kennedy case probably does involve serious mysteries like shallow back wounds, tiny throat wounds, EOPs, etc.

So now you're conjecturing THREE MAGIC BULLETS (And I'm not even counting your EOP through the throat bullet).

Hilarious.

MAGIC BULLET #1:
A shallow back wound (I presume you mean only one and the plural was hyperbole) implies a bullet that penetrated JFK's body only a short distance, stopped, and wasn't found in the body.

MAGIC BULLET #2:
A tiny throat wound (I presume you mean only one and the plural was hyperbole) implies a bullet that entered the throat, penetrated JFK's body only a short distance, stopped, and wasn't found in the body.

MAGIC BULLET #3:
The bullet (Commission Exhibit #399) found in Parkland. You can't argue for the Parkland bullet causing any of JFK's wounds, you've already argued the bullet found in Parkland wasn't connected to the shooting whatsoever.

So you've got three magic bullets in total.
1. The one found in Parkland that wasn't connected to the assassination.
2. The shallow one in JFK's back.
3. The tiny one in JFK's throat.

You can now follow David Lifton's logic down the primrose path to body alteration, or you can slap yourself in the face and say "Snap out of it".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x-fkSYDtUY

If need be, I am willing to volunteer for this duty.

There's no magic bullet.

1. There's a bullet that struck JFK in the back, exited his throat, struck Connally, ended up in Connally's pants leg, where it fell out onto Connally's stretcher to be found by a Parkland janitor.

One bullet, with nothing magical about it.

Or your three magic bullets.

Choose one.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

I think the "11:00 PM" motif from the documents, Dr. Humes to the WC, and Dr. Hagan to the ARRB, comes from the fact that some of the embalming team arrived at the autopsy by 11:00 PM.

For at least the 50th time... nobody cares what you think.

The statement from Humes is the autopsy ended about 11pm.
Mr. SPECTER - What time did this autopsy end?
Commander HUMES - At approximately 11 p.m.

The contemporaneous record from Hagan is the embalming team took over after 11pm, and the morticians finished up their work about 4pm on Saurday morning.
CLEARANCE WAS RECIEVED TO PROCEED WITH THE PREPARATION AFTER 11 P.M., NOVEMBER 22, 1963. UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF MR. HAGAN, THE EMBALMING, COSMETICS, RESTORATION (EXTENSIVE CRANIAL DAMAGE), DRESSING AND CASKETING WAS COMPLETED BY 4 A.M. ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1963.

The record is clear, despite what you 'think'.

Hank

 

[MicahJava]

William Manchester's book The Death of a President has an part decently detailing the timeline of the selection of the coffin, when Joe Gawler, Joe Hagan et. al arrived at the autopsy:

Major General Wehle raced home, changed from greens to blues, raced back and was confronted by Lieutenant Sam Bird, who reported that the Dallas coffin was marred. He advised the general that the family be notified.

The call to the seventeenth floor was made by Godfrey McHugh. He said, “Bob, the casket we have is cheap and thin, it’s really shabby. One handle is off, and the ornaments are in bad shape.”

“Get another,” Kennedy said.

“I’m not going to leave here.”

“I want you to.” McHugh refused; he was, he explained, a guard of honor. “But I know a place near here. It’s only a few blocks down Wisconsin. It’s Gawler’s.”

Kennedy had heard of Gawler’s. A friend of his had been buried from there recently. McHugh suggested a bronze or mahogany coffin. But Robert Kennedy was tenacious, too; both he and his sister-in-law had rejected a private funeral home on principle, and upon reflection he decided that the military ought to handle the whole thing. There was no reason to bring in an undertaker. This conversation, like all others, was being screened through Clint Hill, and the mafia was listening. Ken O’Donnell and Larry O’Brien huddled and agreed that Bob was in a daze. He was going through enough; he shouldn’t be asked to worry about this, too.

Ken cut in. “We’ll take care of it, Bob.”

Thus Gawler’s, which had been vetoed by the Kennedy family, became part of the Presidential funeral. The damaged coffin was largely responsible—largely, but not entirely, for the issue of whether or not it was to be closed had not been resolved, and should the coffin have been open during the lying in state, the special arts of the undertaker would have been essential. Quite apart from that, however, the Attorney General was in a dilemma. He could scarcely permit a state funeral to proceed with a battered casket. A subsequent examination revealed that the Lieutenant and the two Generals had exaggerated the extent of the damage to Oneal’s Britannia, and that the casket was neither cheap nor thin, but Kennedy could not have guessed that, nor could he have been expected to come down and make his own inspection. He had been right the first time; they must get another. And O’Donnell was also correct: the mafia must spare him the actual choice.

Dave Powers squiggled:

Around midnight Ken, Larry, and I picked out a coffin for our President

Dave omitted another Irishman. Muggsy O’Leary had been summoned from the morgue. In a night sated with sentiment the journey of this quartet was especially touching. Dave was naturally reminded of a story; it was about himself. “You know, the Irish always measure the importance of people by the number of friends who come to their wakes,” he said in the car. “All my life I’ve thought of my wake being held in a Boston three-decker tenement. I just assumed he’d live longer than me, and I’d be so proud to have the President of the United States at my wake. And now here I am, going to get a casket for him.”

Gawler’s selection room contained thirty-two coffins that night, each of them mounted on a velvet-skirted estrade which in turn stood upon thick, cream wall-to-wall carpeting. Flush overhead lights gleamed softly; a tape recorder provided appropriate background music. Joe Gawler led them in. According to O’Brien, “I said to the man at the display room, ‘Would you show us the plainest one you have in the middle price range?’ I don’t know why I asked him that, but I think it was because I wanted the coffin to represent the American people. Therefore I thought it should be plain. And that’s what we got. He said, ‘Here.’ He showed us several, and we took the one with the simplest interior. I never asked the price.” According to O’Donnell, “The coffin we chose was the second one we looked at. I know that Larry and I had both reached the same decision simultaneously—that that would be the one we would use. It was plain.”

Tampering with their moving account is a pity, but the Irish, as John Kennedy once noted wryly, are not noted for their accuracy, and the casket in which he was to be buried is obviously a matter of some historical interest. Undoubtedly O’Brien’s recollection of their intention is correct. Robert Kennedy was thinking along the same lines. He believes he spoke to O’Donnell about price while Ken was at the funeral parlor, and he has a clear memory of talking to a girl who told him, “You can get one for $500, one for $1,400, or one for $2,000.” She went on about waterproofing and optional equipment. Influenced by the Mitford book, he shied away from the high figure. He asked for the $1,400 coffin, and afterward he wondered whether he had been cheap; he thought how difficult such choices must be for everyone.

But all this is mysterious, because no one on Gawler’s staff recalls talking to the Attorney General about price or anything else. Moreover, the casket O’Donnell and O’Brien picked—it was immediately to the left as they entered the selection room—could hardly be called plain. Known to the trade as a Marsellus No. 710, it was constructed of hand-rubbed, five-hundred-year-old solid African mahogany upholstered in what the manufacturer described as “finest new pure white rayon.” Gawler believed his visitors wanted “something fitting and proper for the President of the United States,” which does not gibe with O’Brien’s impression that they had purchased an ordinary coffin. It was unusual, and it was very expensive. In 1961 Jessica Mitford had found that the average bill for casket and services in the United States was $708. Muggsy O’Leary thought the price mentioned in the selection room was $2,000. Even that was low. Gawler’s charged $2,460. In a subsequent decision, the most expensive vault in the establishment went with it. The total bill, as rendered and paid, was $3,160.

Joe Gawler and Joe Hagan, his chief assistant, supervised the loading of the coffin in a hearse, or, as Hagan preferred to call it, a “funeral coach.” The firm’s young cosmetician accompanied them to Bethesda. The two caskets, Oneal’s and Gawler’s, lay side by side for a while in the morgue anteroom; then Oneal’s was removed for storage and the undertakers, Irishmen, and George Thomas were admitted to the main room. The autopsy team had finished its work, a grueling, three-hour task, interrupted by the arrival of a fragment of skull which had been retrieved on Elm Street and flown east by federal agents. The nature of the two wounds and the presence of metal fragments in the President’s head had been verified; the metal from Oswald’s bullet was turned over to the FBI. Bethesda’s physicians anticipated that their findings would later be subjected to the most searching scrutiny. They had heard reports of Mac Perry’s medical briefing for the press, and to their dismay they had discovered that all evidence of what was being called an entrance wound in the throat had been removed by Perry’s tracheostomy. Unlike the physicians at Parkland, they had turned the President over and seen the smaller hole in the back of his neck. They were positive that Perry had seen an exit wound. The deleterious effects of confusion were already evident. Commander James J. Humes, Bethesda’s chief of pathology, telephoned Perry in Dallas shortly after midnight, and clinical photographs were taken to satisfy all the Texas doctors who had been in Trauma Room No. 1.

The cosmetician then went to work. In Hagan’s words, “He was really under the gun. There were about thirty-five people, led by General Wehle, breathing down our necks. We were worrying about skull leakage, which could be disastrous. We did not know whether the body would be viewed or not.” The application of cosmetics required nearly three hours. It was quite unnecessary, but that was not the undertakers’ fault. Neither McHugh nor Burkley, who were in constant touch with the tower suite, could guarantee that the coffin would be closed. McHugh told Hagan it was better to take the time and be on the safe side. “The family may change their minds at any time,” he said. Burkley had spoken to Mrs. Kennedy. He knew her wishes, “but,” he explained afterward, “I was determined that the body be fully dressed and that the face be just right in case people opened the coffin a thousand years hence.”

 

[MicahJava]

Absolutely, positively, the autopsy pathologists did not complete their examination of the body by only 11 PM.

 

[HSienzant]

That is neither what I said or asked. Are these straw men arguments deliberate?

They would have to be at this point, wouldn't they?

I'm past the point where I give him the benefit of the doubt.

He apparently does this to deflect from points he can't respond to, buy himself some time, and ultimately wind up moving on to other points.

Voila! It gives the appearance he actually has a case to make. Remember, the goal here isn't to reach a resolution, the goal is to prolong the discussion.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

William Manchester's book The Death of a President has an part decently detailing the timeline of the selection of the coffin, when Joe Gawler, Joe Hagan et. al arrived at the autopsy:

And then you quote a bunch of stuff where memories differ drastically.

What are you attempting to do beyond prolong the conversation here?

Hank

 

[MicahJava]

So now you're conjecturing THREE MAGIC BULLETS (And I'm not even counting your EOP through the throat bullet).

Hilarious.

MAGIC BULLET #1:
A shallow back wound (I presume you mean only one and the plural was hyperbole) implies a bullet that penetrated JFK's body only a short distance, stopped, and wasn't found in the body.

The bullet could have been dysfunctional. Before learning about the throat wound, the autopsy doctors thought that the back wound was most likely created by an undercharged round, which then naturally squeezed out of the body through it's own entry wound.

MAGIC BULLET #2:
A tiny throat wound (I presume you mean only one and the plural was hyperbole) implies a bullet that entered the throat, penetrated JFK's body only a short distance, stopped, and wasn't found in the body.

A small throat wound can be explained by something other than a projectile entering there. It could indicate an exiting fragment or an very low-velocity projectile that exited.

MAGIC BULLET #3:
The bullet (Commission Exhibit #399) found in Parkland. You can't argue for the Parkland bullet causing any of JFK's wounds, you've already argued the bullet found in Parkland wasn't connected to the shooting whatsoever.

So you've got three magic bullets in total.
1. The one found in Parkland that wasn't connected to the assassination.
2. The shallow one in JFK's back.
3. The tiny one in JFK's throat.

There's a difference between CE399 being substituted with another bullet, and it not being used in the shooting at all. For example, CE399 could have caused the shallow back wound if it had been tampered with beforehand.

 

[HSienzant]

Absolutely, positively, the autopsy pathologists did not complete their examination of the body by only 11 PM.

And you're basing that on your profound belief in a conspiracy, apparently.

You are certainly not basing it on the evidence.

Because the chief autopsist, Dr. Humes, and the contemporaneous record of the mortician's staff both disagree with your assertion.

Both those said the autopsy ended about 11pm, and the morticians took over after that.

If you think your assertion makes it true, we've wasted a lot of time asking you for evidence of all your assertions in the past.

Hank

 

[MicahJava]

And then you quote a bunch of stuff where memories differ drastically.

What are you attempting to do beyond prolong the conversation here?

Hank

The Gawler's funeral home "first call sheet" says, under "CASKET DELIVERY DETAILS", "Date 11/23/1963", "Time 2 A.M.". Joe Gawler and Joe Hagan said that they didn't truly start their work until they arrived at the morgue with the new casket. I don't know what's so hard to understand. Several other witness statements from the autopsy indicate that it went on much longer than 11 P.M.

 

[HSienzant]

The bullet could have been dysfunctional. Before learning about the throat wound, the autopsy doctors thought that the back wound was most likely created by an undercharged round, which then naturally squeezed out of the body through it's own entry wound.

So MAGIC BULLET #1. It's still missing, right?

A small throat wound can be explained by something other than a projectile entering there. It could indicate an exiting fragment or an very low-velocity projectile that exited.

So MAGIC BULLET (OR MAGIC FRAGMENT) #2. It's still missing, right?

There's a difference between CE399 being substituted with another bullet, and it not being used in the shooting at all. For example, CE399 could have caused the shallow back wound if it had been tampered with beforehand.

No, it's still a bullet that shows up out of the blue at Parkland, according to you, with no link to the JFK assassination whatsoever (at least, that's what's been argued, and I think it's been argued by you).

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11769468&postcount=2766
Above you called it : "one of the most discredited pieces of forensic evidence ever"
You can't then turn around and pretend it had a role in the shooting.

So MAGIC BULLET #3.

Beat that dead horse.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

The Gawler's funeral home "first call sheet" says, under "CASKET DELIVERY DETAILS", "Date 11/23/1963", "Time 2 A.M.". Joe Gawler and Joe Hagan said that they didn't truly start their work until they arrived at the morgue with the new casket. I don't what's so hard to understand. Several other witness statements from the autopsy indicate that it went on much longer than 11 P.M.

Bolded: How many decades after the fact did they say that?

What does the contemporaneous record say?

Here, read it again:

CLEARANCE WAS RECIEVED TO PROCEED WITH THE PREPARATION AFTER 11 P.M., NOVEMBER 22, 1963.

Where does the contemporaneous record note a delay of over three hours while waiting for a new casket?

And what's the point of holding up the preparations while waiting for the new casket's arrival?

You can start the job independent of the casket being there. Why sit around waiting for the casket?

Hank

 

[MicahJava]

If the bullets did not end up in Kennedy's body, in this scenario they would have fallen into the limousine to be lost or stolen. The limousine is a notoriously neglected piece of forensic evidence.

 

[MicahJava]

Bolded: How many decades after the fact did they say that?

I guess Manchester's The Death of a President, published in 1967, just doesn't exist anymore?

 

[MicahJava]

What does the contemporaneous record say?

Here, read it again:

CLEARANCE WAS RECIEVED TO PROCEED WITH THE PREPARATION AFTER 11 P.M., NOVEMBER 22, 1963.

Where does the contemporaneous record note a delay of over three hours while waiting for a new casket?

And what's the point of holding up the preparations while waiting for the new casket's arrival?

You can start the job independent of the casket being there. Why sit around waiting for the casket?

Hank

I already gave an explanation for "11 PM": that's when some of the mortician's assistants arrived at the autopsy. Meanwhile, your explanation for the 2 AM casket delivery with Joe Gawler, Joe Hagan et. al is... a rift in the space-time continuum?

 

[HSienzant]

I guess Manchester's The Death of a President, published in 1967, just doesn't exist anymore?

No, it's still hearsay, and at least a recollection from a couple of years after the fact.

Hank

 

[Tomtomkent]

I guess Manchester's The Death of a President, published in 1967, just doesn't exist anymore?

A book from 1967?
Neither a document record, or contemporary then.

 

[MicahJava]

No, it's still hearsay, and at least a recollection from a couple of years after the fact.

Hank

They were interviewed for the book, and their experiences directly affects the autopsy examination/morticians restoration timeline in a way that is not hearsay.

 

[Tomtomkent]

I already gave an explanation for "11 PM": that's when some of the mortician's assistants arrived at the autopsy. Meanwhile, your explanation for the 2 AM casket delivery with Joe Gawler, Joe Hagan et. al is... a rift in the space-time continuum?

Why does one need to explain it? There is no evidence beyond hearsay and later memories. The assertion needs a solid foundation or it is not assumed as fact. One does not have to explain away something yet to be proven fact.

“A possible error of memory, at odds with the record” is a polite way of saying “not yet in evidence”.

Stop begging the question by assuming facts not yet in evidence.

 

[HSienzant]

I already gave an explanation for "11 PM": that's when some of the mortician's assistants arrived at the autopsy.

Not what the contemporareous record says.

CLEARANCE WAS RECIEVED TO PROCEED WITH THE PREPARATION AFTER 11 P.M., NOVEMBER 22, 1963.

Meanwhile, your explanation for the 2 AM casket delivery with Joe Gawler, Joe Hagan et. al is... a rift in the space-time continuum?

No, the explanation is simple. There's no delay of over three hours noted in the contemporaneous record. On the contrary, the contemporaneous record says the morticians got the go-ahead to proceed after 11pm, and concluded at about 4am the following day. There's nothing in there noting a delay while a suitable casket was obtained.

CLEARANCE WAS RECIEVED TO PROCEED WITH THE PREPARATION AFTER 11 P.M., NOVEMBER 22, 1963. UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF MR. HAGAN, THE EMBALMING, COSMETICS, RESTORATION (EXTENSIVE CRANIAL DAMAGE), DRESSING AND CASKETING WAS COMPLETED BY 4 A.M. ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1963.

You're doing your best to prolong the conversation but hearsay, recollections, and conjecture doesn't cut it.

You avoided these questions:

And what's the point of holding up the preparations while waiting for the new casket's arrival?

You can start the job independent of the casket being there. Why sit around waiting for the casket?

Hank