Historical Notes: Into the Archives

At the request of the Justice Department, 65 carefully guarded X rays, color slides and black-and-white negatives of pictures taken during an exhaustive autopsy on the body of John Kennedy at Bethesda Naval Hospital were turned over to the National Archives last week by the Kennedy family.

At the time that the Warren Commission was making its inquiry into the assassination, the X rays and photographs were available to investigators, but none felt it necessary to inspect them after hearing the minutely detailed testimony of the three autopsy surgeons. The doctors themselves had never seen the photographs either, though...