“...Was a matter of timing and the timing was right” –Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul
A newly released documentary, “JFK: What the Doctors Saw,” irrefragably contradicts the Warren Commission’s finding that President John F. Kennedy was shot from behind by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone and firing from a sixth-story window of the Texas Book Depository as the motorcade slowed down to make a turn on the street below.
According to the doctors who tried to save him in Trauma Room 1 at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, the small hole in the front of Kennedy’s neck was an entry wound and the huge hole in the back of his head was an exit wound. In other words, whether or not Oswald was firing from above and behind the passing limousine, a fatal shot was fired from the direction in which the vehicle was heading, from approximately street level.
The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watchin’, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone’s eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done
Director Barbara Shearer splices together interviews with seven Parkland MDs and numerous narrators. It’s choppy but she gets her points across. Why had the events in Trauma Room 1 gone unreported all these years? “A lot of people just decided to keep their mouth shut,” a narrator states, ”including the Parkland doctors.”
CUT to Dr. Joe D. Goldstrich acknowledging, ”I didn’t want to be a target for those who killed our President. So I didn’t tell anybody for over 30 years that I was present in Trauma Room 1.” (It takes a really brave man to acknowledge being so afraid.) The Narrator asserts, “many people did die, who could have been involved in the assassination.” Then Dr. Robert McClelland recalls being warned by an FBI or Secret Service agent –r ight in the chaotic ER – “You must never ever say that this was an entrance wound again. If you know what’s good for you.”
What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
“Shut your mouth,” said the wise old owl
Business is business, and it’s a murder most foul
“The most dramatic thing to me was the chaos in the Emergency Room,” recalls Dr. Donald Seldin. ”The Secret Service with their machine guns looking around frantically, the President lying on the surgical bed, and with Mrs. Kennedy sitting by with the flecks of the President’s brain on her skirt. The whole atmosphere together was very chaotic.”
“The first thing I noticed,” says Goldstrich, “was this very small wound in his neck, in the front.”
Dr. Ronald Jones: “We could tell that the wound was in the front of the neck just above where the shirt and tie was, so it was visible to you.”
Goldstrich: “In my mind, the wound was pretty small, maybe a nickel, maybe a dime.”
Dr. Kenneth Salyer: “That small wound in the front of the neck, Malcolm [Perry, the resident who was in charge of the ER] thought originally it was an entrance wound because it was so small.”
McLellan: “As I walked by Dr. Perry leaned across the President and handed me a surgical retractor and said ‘Bob, would you go and stand at the head of the cart and put that retractor in the wound and pull it open,’ so he and Dr. Baxter could look down in the wound… The thing that really hit me when I got to the head of the cart was the wound in the back of his head. I said. ‘My God, have you seen the back of his head? It’s gone’.”
Riding in the backseat next to my wife
Heading straight on in to the afterlife
I’m leaning to the left, I got my head in her lap
Hold on, I’ve been led into some kind of a trap
Dr. Joe D. Goldstrich, a Texan, was a fourth-year med student doing a rotation in neurosurgery when he was summoned to Trauma Room 1 at Parkland all those years ago. A decade ago he retired after a long career in cardiology, and become a specialist in cannabis medicine. (My AVA piece about Goldstrich is online at BeyondTHC.com.) He is a board member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians and runs their highly regarded online library. He has recently published a book, “Cannabis and Cancer,” that’s available from Amazon.
The JFK doc is streaming on Paramount. A free, one-week trial subscription costs $5.95/month. If you don’t see any winners on the Paramount menu of movies (I didn’t), you can cancel after watching “JFK: What the Doctors Saw.”
I’m just a patsy like Patsy Cline…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgSgZjRp5YA
Thanks Norm. That was powerful. I watched it again with the lyrics. Even better.
Agreed, Rick.
“Murder Most Foul” hit me like a sledgehammer. I was in the 2nd grade, but my memories of that wretched day are etched in my memory with the crystal clarity of a laser-cut diamond. The days that followed, too. The boots backwards in their stirrups broke my young heart.
For years afterwards, my personal working theory has been that those shots in Dallas so thoroughly traumatized the nation that the manifold conspiracy theories in circulation acted as a balm in Gilead. It was as if Oswald did not fire the fatal shot, that the whole event would unravel and JFK would be alive today. It’s the reasoning of a dream, but I think many found in it some small measure of comfort and solace.
Now, I don’t know. In fact, I never did and likely never will.
Play “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”
Play it for the First Lady, she ain’t feeling any good
No longer news, but the term “conspiracy theory” was coined by the CIA in response to public skepticism over the Warren Report. A real winner in the battle for hearts and minds. It really took hold, and is still widely used as a blunt tool to deflect anything that ruffles the feathers of unthinking preconception.
For those who remain unconvinced that the JFK assassination involved more than a single shooter, or still believe in the “magic bullet” theory, I highly recommend the following:
– the book “Six Seconds in Dallas” by Josiah Thompson
– the book “The Final Witness”, by former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, who was on the Kennedy detail in Dallas that day as one of Jackie Kennedy’s bodyguards,
– Dr. Charles A. Crenshaw’s interview — he was one of the doctors attending JFK in trauma room one that day. You can search it on UTube,
– the Knott Laboratories’ report on its 3-D modeling of the trajectory of the “magic bullet”, and finding that it was impossible for the single bullet to have caused the wounds in both JFK and Governor Connelly. You can also find it on UTube.
Side note: When the Kennedy 50-cent coin was introduced in 1965, many in the school I was attending dubbed it the ‘Oswald Medal’. Ah, Sweet Home Alabama.
The documentary “JFK — What the Doctors Saw” is groundbreaking, myth shattering. Now is the time for the government — and the CIA — to release the final tranche of JFK assassination documents.
‘Nuf said.