Now, a Two-Casket Argument

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His remarkable conjecture: Kennedy's brain was on the cart, to be rejoined with the body for the autopsy.

Lifton further notes that Commander James Humes, the chief pathologist at the autopsy, reported that when he later removed the damaged brain from the skull, he found that none of the normal surgery procedures was needed to cut it loose. Lifton's theory: the brain had been removed earlier by the plotters to retrieve any bullet fragments that would signify shots from other than Oswald's rifle.

Lifton dwells at length on the anatomical differences as viewed through what he terms "three lenses": 1) the Parkland doctors and nurses; 2) the Bethesda doctors; 3) the autopsy photographs and X rays. Those differences are a matter of public record. Official investigators have resolved them by considering the X rays and photographs the "best evidence" of how the body had been mortally injured. Lifton contends, with substantial evidence, that the skull was so shattered that parts of it fell apart at the autopsy. He argues that some photos and X rays were taken when the skull was literally desired effect. "reconstructed" to Contrary produce the photos, plot he claims, were in one case deliberately destroyed by a Secret Service agent, while others known to be taken did not appear in the final collection at the Archives.

The Dallas doctors found a 2-in. by 2¾-in. wound at the right rear of Kennedy's head. They saw a small wound in the throat, where they made a tracheotomy incision of, at most, 3 cm in length.

They saw no wounds on the back. At first they concluded Kennedy had been shot from the front. The Bethesda doctors found a head wound that was much larger — more than five inches in its longest dimension — and extending more to the top and front of the skull than that seen at Dallas. They measured a throat incision up to 8 cm long. Unlike the Dallas doctors, they discovered a small, round "entry" wound at the bottom of the back of the head. They detected another shallow rear wound well below the collar line.

After much discussion, they reported that Kennedy apparently had been shot twice from the rear, one bullet going into his neck and exiting at his throat.

Lifton has great difficulty pinpointing when Kennedy's body could have been spirited away for the removal of bullets and the addition of the two rear "wounds." He found only one point in the public record when no one was reported in attendance at the bronze casket between the time it left Parkland land arrived at Andrews Air Force Base. That was between 2:18 and 2:32 p.m., when General Godfrey McHugh, Kennedy's military aide, was angered by a delay in the takeoff of Air Force One from Dallas' Love Field and had gone forward to argue with the pilot.

During these 14 minutes, Lifton conjectures, someone took the body out of its casket and hid it on the plane.

After landing at Andrews, Lifton theorizes, the body was slipped out a door on the plane's right side while TV cameras were recording the un loading of the bronze casket on the left.