From john.mcadams@marquette.edu Thu Jan 08 18:47:47 2004 Newsgroups: alt.assassination.jfk Subject: Aguilar's "Back of the Head" Witnesses - 22 From: john.mcadams@marquette.edu (John McAdams) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 00:47:47 GMT Gary Aguilar claims to have examined the testimony of 46 witnesses to Kennedy's head wound, at both Parkland and Bethesda, and found that 44 of the 46 described the head wound as contradicting the photos and x-rays of the autopsy as they exist in the National Archives. So does Gary have 44 "back of the head" witnesses? And are his 46 witnesses selected so as to avoid witnesses who placed the wound at the top of the head, or the side of the head? Let's take one example: The following quotes from Aguilar are taken from: http://www.assassinationweb.com/ag6.htm ------------------------------------ 2) JOHN STRINGER: was the autopsy photographer. David Lifton interviewed Stringer, in part, as follows: Lifton: "When you lifted him out, was the main damage to the skull on the top or in the back?" Stringer: "In the back." Lifton: "In the back?...High in the back or lower in the back?" Stringer: "In the occipital part, in the back there, up above the neck." Lifton: "In other words, the main part of his head that was blasted away was in the occipital part of the skull?" Stringer: "Yes. In the back part." Lifton: "The back portion. Okay. In other words, there was no five-inch hole in the top of the skull?" Stringer: "Oh, some of it was blown off--yes, I mean, toward, out of the top in the back, yes." Lifton: "Top in the back. But the top in the front was pretty intact?" Stringer: "Yes, sure." Lifton: "The top front was intact?" Stringer: "Right." Lifton, unsatisfied with precisely what Stringer may have meant by the 'back of the head' asked, as he had asked McHugh, if by "back of the head" Stringer meant the portion of the head that rests on the rear portion of a bathtub during bathing. Stringer replied, "Yes."--as had McHugh (BE, p.516) Aguilar doesn't bother to tell his readers that Stringer had earlier authenticated the autopsy photos. Quoting HSCA 7: 155. . . . in 1967 the autopsy pathologists, Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Finck, as well as Dr. James H. Ebersole, the acting chief of radiology, and one of the autopsy photographers, John Thomas Stringer, viewed the autopsy photographs or X-rays, or both, and verified them as accurately portraying the wounds of President Kennedy. (6) Of course, Aguilar thinks the autopsy photos are faked, since they don't show the large blow-out in the back of the head that he wants. But Stringer's first recorded testimony is that these photos are genuine, and show the wounds as they were. On November 14, 1993 the Vero Beach Press Journal's Craig Colgan reported Stringer's surprise when he heard, and positively identified, his own tape-recorded voice making the above statements to Lifton in 1972. He insisted in the interview with Colgan that he did not recall his ever claiming that the wound was in the rear. The wound he recalled was to the right side of the head. ABC's "Prime Time Live" associate producer, Jacqueline Hall- Kallas, sent a film crew to interview Stringer for a 1988 San Francisco KRON-TV interview after Stringer, in a pre-filming interview told Hall-Kallas that the wound was as he described it to Lifton. Colgan reported, "'When the camera crew arrived, Stringer's story had changed', said Stanhope Gould, a producer who also is currently at ABC and who conducted the 1988 on-camera interview with Stringer...'We wouldn't have sent a camera crew all the way across the country on our budget if we thought he would reverse himself.' Gould said...'(In the telephone pre-interview) he corroborated what he told David Lifton, that the wounds were not as the official version said they were,' Hall-Kallas said." (Vero Beach Press-Journal, November 14, 1993, p. 1C-3C. Provided to author by David Lifton.) The reader will have to decide for himself which description is more likely to be reliable. Of course, Aguilar feels that Stringer is lying scum, who must have been telling the truth to Lifton, and lying when he said the wound was not on the back of the head. Aguilar doesn't consider the fact that much of the stuff he's posted is dependent on the *interpretation* of what Stringer said by TV producers who wanted a particular story. Did he really "corroborate" that the wounds were "not as the official version said . . . " or did some TV producers who wanted a particular account interpret it that way? Speaking of media bias, by the way, it's interesting that they were willing to spend a lot of money to get *conspiracy* testimony, but not to get testimony that contradicted Lifton's version. Even the statement that Stringer gave Lifton could have been the result of (1.) Stringer having misspoken, or (2.) Stringer having given Lifton a "quick and dirty" approximation, and then becoming appalled when Lifton used it as he did. As a final note on the Colgan article: Author Gerald Posner attempted to discredit Charles Crenshaw, MD's claim of a rear wound to journalist Colgan claiming that conspiracists cannot accept Crenshaw's (tardy) posterior location if they do not also accept Stringer's later recollection of an anterior-lateral skull defect rather than a posterior defect he initially described. The comparisons are disanalogous, it seems, as Stringer repudiated his earlier, unambiguous account of a rear wound. Crenshaw never had claimed any other location than a posterior location for JFK's skull wound (before his book, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence). Thus the account to Lifton is described as "earlier" and "unambiguous." But his authentication of the autopsy photos was even earlier and just as unambiguous. Since it's inconvenient, Aguilar doesn't tell his readers about it. In the 1990s, to the Assassination Records Review Board, Stringer again rejected the notion of the back of Kennedy's head blown out. A: Well, it-Well, the bullet came in the back and came out the side. Q: The question that I'd be interested in is not what the trajectory of the bullet was, which wasn't discussed there- A: Yeah. Q:-but just where the wound was on President Kennedy. Did you tell Mr. Lifton that the wound was in the occiput or the occipital region? A: I don't remember telling him that, no. Q: Was there a wound in the occipital region of the President- A: Yes, the entry. Q: By "the entry", you mean what? A: Where the bullet went. One *could* argue that testimony from so late (the 1990s) is useless, but unfortunately Aguilar uses such testimony where it's convenient, most especially in his chapter in James Fetzer's book MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA. The simple fact is that Stringer appears to have contradicted himself, although the only solid "back of the head" account from him is the one he gave Lifton. Most of his recorded testimony, as well as the earliest testimony (authenticating the autopsy photos) contradicts Aguilar's "back of the head" theory. .John The Kennedy Assassination Home Page http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm