In case Tuesday was lookin' a bit dull to you;
This is either as nutty as it gets, or Oliver Stone left more on the table than his bong, when he did the movie JFK.
All I have done here is grab snips, and it's a long post. But this is a very well documented piece, posted today at Lew Rockwell, on this subject. One I had never read of before. So...
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Quote:
For almost 50 years, people have debated the Kennedy assassination. Some claim that the Warren Commission got it right – that Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone-nut assassin. Others contend that Kennedy was killed as part of a conspiracy.
It is not the purpose of this article to engage in that debate. The purpose of this article is simply to focus on what happened at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the evening of November 22, 1963, and, specifically, the events that took place prior to Kennedy’s autopsy. What happened that night is so unusual that it cries out for truthful explanation even after 47 years.
U.S. officials have long maintained that Kennedy’s body was delivered to the Bethesda morgue in the heavy, ornamental, bronze casket in which the body had been placed at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
The problem, however, is that the evidence establishes that Kennedy’s body was actually delivered to the Bethesda morgue twice, at separate times and in separate caskets.
Equally strange was the fact that the president’s body at the 6:35 p.m. delivery was in a body bag rather than wrapped in the white sheets in which the medical personnel in Dallas had wrapped it before it was placed into the heavy, bronze casket in Dallas.Quote:
When Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base from Dallas, Kennedy’s casket was placed into a gray Navy ambulance in which Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, was traveling. Proceeding in a motorcade, the ambulance arrived at the front of the Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:55 p.m.
At 8:00 p.m., a little more than an hour later, the casket was carried into the Bethesda morgue by a military honor team called the Joint Casket Bearer Team, which consisted of personnel from all the branches of military service, all of whom were in dress uniform and wore white gloves.
However, the evidence also establishes that at 6:35 p.m. – 90 minutes earlier than when Kennedy’s Dallas casket was carried into the morgue at 8:00 p.m. by the Joint Casket Bearer Team – another group of military personnel carried the president’s body into the Bethesda morgue. That casket was a plain shipping casket rather than the expensive, heavy, ornamental, bronze casket into which the president’s body had been placed in Dallas.
Arrival 1:
Quote:
At around 6:30 p.m., David received a phone call stating that “your visitor is on the way: you will need some people to offload. ” David rounded up 7 or 8 sailors to carry in the casket and a few minutes later, a black hearse drove up. Several men in blue suits got out of the hearse, along with the driver and passenger, both of whom were wearing white (operating room) smocks. Under David’s supervision, the sailors offloaded the casket and carried it into the morgue.
What did the casket look like? David stated that it was a simple, gray shipping casket similar to the ones commonly used in the Vietnam War.
Now keep in mind that the motorcade in which the gray Navy ambulance that carried Mrs. Kennedy and the heavy bronze casket into which her husband’s body had been placed in Dallas didn’t arrive at the hospital until 6:55 p.m., twenty minutes after Kennedy’s body was carried into the morgue by David’s team.
Keep in mind also that according to the official version of events, the Dallas casket wasn’t carried into the morgue by the Joint Casket Bearer Team until 8:00 p.m.
Arrival 2:
Quote:
David added that after his team had delivered the shipping casket into the morgue, he proceeded into the main portion of the hospital, where several minutes later (i.e., at 6:55 p.m.) he saw the motorcade in which Mrs. Kennedy was traveling (and the Dallas casket was being transported) approaching the front of Bethesda Hospital.
he later asked one of the autopsy physicians, a U.S. Navy commander named Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, in which casket the president had come in. Boswell responded, “You ought to know; you were there.”
Moreover, when Lifton showed David a photo of the Dallas casket in 1980, David categorically stated that that was not the shipping casket in which Kennedy’s body had been delivered at 6:35 p.m.
So, what do we have here? We have eight Marine and Navy enlisted personnel who were performing their assigned duties on November 22, 1963, and whose statements unequivocally establish that Kennedy’s body was delivered to the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 p.m. in a shipping casket and in a body bag rather than in the heavy, ornamental, bronze casket into which it had been placed at Parkland Hospital, wrapped in white sheets.
Let’s now turn back to the official version of events. The official version is that Kennedy’s body was carried into the Bethesda morgue by the Joint Casket Bearer Team at 8:00 p.m. in the heavy, ornamental, bronze casket into which it had been placed at Parkland Hospital.
So, which is it?
Was Kennedy’s body carried by a team of sailors into the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 p.m. in a shipping casket encased in a body bag after being delivered in a black hearse that contained several men in blue suits?
Or was it carried in by the Joint Casket Bearer Team at 8:00 p.m. in the heavy, ornamental, bronze casket from Dallas and wrapped in white sheets after being delivered in a gray Navy ambulance?
The answer: Both.
But wait... we aren't done yet!
So far we have two vehicles, two caskets, same president's body delivered, prepared two different ways.
Arrival 3:
Cui Bono?Quote:
Permit me to cite some of the adjectives that the noted attorney Vincent Bugliosi used in a chapter entitled “David Lifton and the Alteration of the President’s Body” in his book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: “preposterous,” “far out,” “unhinged,” and “nonsense.”
So, which casket delivery would you guess Bugliosi settled on – the 6:35 p.m. delivery of the shipping casket with the body bag or the 8:00 p.m. heavy bronze casket delivery with the white sheets wrapped around Kennedy’s body?
You guessed wrong!
Bugliosi settled on a third casket delivery.
A quick timeline, here:Quote:
Therefore, for all the witnesses to have all come up with the same fake story about the 6:35 p.m. delivery of Kennedy’s body into the Bethesda morgue in a shipping casket would have had to involve one of the most preposterous conspiracies of all time.
They would be alleging that eight enlisted men in the United States Armed Forces who were suddenly called to duty to serve at the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy’s body conspired to concoct a wild and fake story about how they delivered President Kennedy’s body into the Bethesda morgue in a shipping casket at 6:35 p.m. on the evening of November 22, 1963. Oh, I forgot – the conspiracy also would have included the most prestigious funeral home in Washington, D.C., the funeral home that the U.S. military had selected to handle the embalming of the president’s body.
And for what? Whoops! It still isn’t clear what the motive of all those “orderlies, technicians, and casket carriers” could have been.
Quote:
6:35 p.m.: First casket delivery. We know this from the statements of Marine Sergeant Boyajian, Chief of the Day David, the six other enlisted men, and the Gawler’s funeral home report.
Between 7:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Second casket delivery. We know this from statements made by FBI agents O’Neill and Sibert and Secret Service agent Kellerman, as shown below.
8:00 p.m.: Third casket delivery. We know this from the official report of the Joint Casket Bearer’s Team, as shown below.
We have already reviewed the evidence that establishes the first casket delivery and its time of delivery of 6:35 p.m.
And none of this is solved by other simple statements of fact:
How do you get x-rays of a man who isn't there yet? The guy who took them, and is on his way to process the x-rays, sees his "patient" arrive, yet again!Quote:
Ask yourself: How could preparation for the autopsy begin at approximately 7:17 p.m. if the Joint Casket Bearer Team didn’t deliver the body into the morgue until 8:00 p.m.? Of course, since we know that the body had already been delivered to the morgue at 6:35 p.m. in the shipping casket, preparation for the autopsy could have begun at 7:17 p.m.
In fact, recall that X-ray technician Jerrol Custer, one of the enlisted men who witnessed Kennedy’s body being brought into the morgue in the shipping casket, saw Mrs. Kennedy entering the main lobby of the hospital as Custer was heading upstairs to process X-rays of Kennedy’s body.
Question: How could Custer have been processing X-rays of the president’s body if the Dallas casket containing the president’s body had not yet been delivered by either the Joint Casket Delivery Team at 8:00 p.m. or by O’Neill, Sibert, Kellerman, and Greer sometime between 7:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.?
[more on the different deliveries made, here]Quote:
Here is what O’Neill wrote in a sworn statement to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978:
Upon arriving at the National Naval Medical Center of Bethesda, the ambulance stopped at the front entrance where Jackie and RFK disembarked to proceed to the 17th floor. The ambulance then travelled to the rear where Sibert, Bill Greer (Secret Service), and Roy Kellerman (Secret Service), and I placed the casket on a roller and transported it into the autopsy room.Notice that, once again, the implication is that the casket is promptly delivered after the 6:55 p.m. arrival of the motorcade. Also, notice that there is no mention of the Joint Casket Bearer Team and that O’Neill states that he, Sibert, Greer, and Kellerman transported the casket into the morgue on a roller.
And then he asks why.
Reason 1:
For reasons concerning fear of a possible attack on the hearse carrying the President, they switched the body to a different hearse.... right! And then let the 1st lady, and Atty Gen. ride with the empty coffin as bait? Or... could it may be:
Seems there's always more to this damned story.Quote:
The only other explanation for the multiple casket delivery that I can conceive of is a nefarious one, the one that is carefully detailed by Horne in his 5-volume work: that U.S. military officials at the Bethesda morgue, including the autopsy physicians, perhaps following orders based on national security, used the period of time from 6:35 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on the night of the autopsy to alter the president’s body in order to hide any evidence of wounds resulting from gunshots that came from the front of the president, e.g., from the grassy knoll.
Fred
