THE MEDICAL EVIDENCE DECODED David W

1 THE MEDICAL EVIDENCE DECODED David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D. THE MANTIK VIEW [Editor's note: After securing permission from the Kennedy attorney, Burke Marshall, Dr. Mantik visited the National Archives on at least seven occasions to review (and take measurements on) the autopsy photographs, the autopsy X-rays, JFK's clothing, and the ballistic evidence. Mantik's background as a radiation oncologist (certified by the American College of Radiology), together with his Ph.D. in physics (with a thesis in X-ray scattering) from the University of Wisconsin, make him uniquely qualified to address the conundrums of this exceptional case. No other individual with such credentials has ever reviewed this data. For the X-ray work, in particular, a background in medical physics (with an emphasis on X-rays) is essential. These skills would not be found in the ordinary radiologist, nor would a medical physicist, by himself, be competent to address the decisive medical issues that proliferate in this case. These talents of physician and physicist, must be combined in a single individual, as fortuitously occurs with David W. Mantik. This case has long been waiting for such a synthesis.] I found the minions of the law, the agents of the FBI, to be men who proved themselves not only fully capable, but also utterly willing to manufacture evidence, to conceal crucial evidence and even to change the rules that governed life and death if, in the prosecution of the accused, it seemed expedient to do so. -Gerry Spence Introduction Allegations of missing, mysterious, or even manipulated autopsy photographs, burned drafts of the autopsy report, altered X-rays, and the media to the conspiracy fringes usually ascribes a substituted brain. However, these admissions and intimations have recently emerged from an official review of the JFK assassination. Repeat depositions of the three autopsy pathologists and interviews with the two autopsy photographers (and many other medical personnel besides) offer fresh insights into anomalous events following 22 November 1963. In particular, a new interview with a darkroom technician who developed autopsy photographs, and new revelations from JFK's White House photographer, his family, and a close colleague, all offer further glimpses into irregular activities (related to the autopsy) immediately after the assassination. All of these reports derive from the Congressionally Mandated Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which was created by Congress in the surge of public interest generated by Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, and which ceased its operations on 30 September 1998. It is noteworthy that the ARRB itself cited ongoing doubts about the Warren Commission: Doubts about the Warren Commission's findings were not restricted to ordinary Americans. Well before 1978, President Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and four of the seven members of the Warren Commission all articulated, if sometimes off the record, some level of skepticism about the Commission's findings (Final Report of the ARRB, 1998, p. 11). 2 This essay focuses on the new medical evidence. Based on remarkable paradoxes in multiple areas, it is apparent that a series of extraordinary events many illegal, occurred in the immediate aftermath of the death of JFK. This study relies partially on two essays in the present volume, one by Gary L. Aguilar, M.D., and one by Douglas P. Horne. Horne worked at the ARRB for its entire lifetime (under then executive Director Jeremy Gunn) and was the primary staff member (apart from Gunn) responsible for the medical evidence. Since these authors provide details not repeated here, their essays should also be read. The Chasm that Divides the Partisans Ever since the early years of this case, partisans have argued fiercely for their own views, some insisting that Oswald was the sole protagonist, while others insisted that a wide conspiracy implicated the CIA, the Mafia, anti- Castro Cubans, and possibly even wealthy Texas oilmen. With the passing of the years, and especially with the new releases of the ARRB, the wide chasm that divides the partisans is now easy to identify: it is the credibility of the evidence, not just the medical evidence, but also the evidence against Oswald. The present essay, however, is confined solely to the medical and scientific arena and shall say nothing useful about the Oswald evidence. [Editor's note: See, however, the study of Jesse Curry's JFK Assassination File elsewhere in this volume.] A strong argument can now be made that the medical evidence cannot be taken at face value and that prior conclusions based upon it are not reliable. In a very real sense, the discussion must begin anew, almost as if the crime had been committed last week. In the opening quotation, Gerry Spence (From Freedom to Slavery 1995, p. 27 describes his own experiences with the FBI in the matter of Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The JFK case often seems hauntingly similar to Spence's own experiences. For example, in the Ruby Ridge affair Spence even notes a second "magic" bullet (1995, p. 50). If the evidence in the JFK case is merely accepted at face value, then the conclusions are rather trivial. The rookie Scotland Yard inspector can easily solve this case; it was Oswald alone. The real challenge is to assess the credibility of the evidence. Vincent Bugliosi, 1 the former Los Angeles County prosecutor of Charles Manson (and winner of virtually all of his other cases) still maintains that Oswald did it. He is even writing a book that will attempt to prove this. I have advised him that if he ignores this fundamental issue of evidence reliability then real communication between partisans across this chasm is unlikely to be advanced. In analogy to Gerry Spence's own experiences with the FBI, many private investigators, based on diverse lines of detailed research, believe that something is deeply, and tragically, wrong with the JFK evidence. My own analysis of the autopsy skull X-rays, based on hundreds of point-by-point measurements performed at the National Archives over multiple visits, indict the X-rays regarding several critical features, in a way that no prior investigation could do (James Fetzer, Assassination Science 1998, pp. 120-137). Short of X-ray alteration, these findings remain a deep, and probably insoluble, mystery, a matter to which I shall later return. Oswald's post-mortem conviction by the Warren Commission relied rather little on the medical evidence. In their final report, the pathologists merely repeated what they had 3 been told before the autopsy: namely that the fatal shots had come from the rear and that the sole assassin was already in custody. Based on the autopsy alone, they could not possibly have known who had fired the shots, nor, short of reviewing the photographic evidence from Dealey Plaza (which they did not do), could they have speculated meaningfully about the origin of the shots. This essay, being likewise largely confined to the medical evidence, can reach no meaningful conclusion about Oswald's ultimate guilt or innocence. It can, however, demonstrate in several significant ways how the medical evidence was used to frame Oswald. It can also strongly suggest that two successful shots came from the front. Figure 1. Posterior Head Photograph from the Autopsy. No eyewitness reported what is seen here. Eyewitnesses recalled an orange-sized hole at the right rear. No one saw the red spot (the supposed entry wound) near the top of the ruler, and no one knew what the white spot (near the bottom, just above the hairline) represented. Unlike the Ida Dox drawing (right}, the actual wound is not visible in this photograph (left), and no other photographs show it either. The pathologists concluded that only two shots struck JFK, both from the rear. They claimed that one struck the back of the head just above the right hairline) and that the only other successful shot hit the upper back. They insisted on this again when interviewed by Dennis L. Breo ("JFK's death, the plain truth from the MDs who did the autopsy," Journal of the American Medical Association, May 1992, pp. 2794-2803). Their conclusion of two successful shots from the rear was reasserted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1977-1979), albeit with one highly significant change: the headshot was moved up by 10 cm so that it now coincided with the "entry" wound on the photograph (Figure 1). (Author's note: I shall use quotation marks around "entry," regarding this specific site, because it is not an authentic wound; the evidence for this is presented below.) Although the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that there had been a probable conspiracy (based on acoustic data that arrived at the end of its work), in their view this additional shot from the grassy knoll had missed, thus leaving it beyond the purview of the medical evidence. The HSCA's primary conclusion of one 4 headshot at a higher location was based critically on posterior head photographs. Although the lateral X-ray was proposed as a supporting pillar for this conclusion, I shall demonstrate later how the new evidence has shattered this pillar to bits. So, although Oswald's accusers agreed that he had hit JFK's head, they nevertheless have disagreed by 10 cm (four inches) on where that bullet entered, an astonishing discrepancy of over half the width of the skull. It is as though a surgeon, operating on a melanoma of the eye, had removed the right eye instead of the left, his error in distance would have been less than that supposedly made by not one, but by three, qualified pathologists. The ARRB This was the state of the medical evidence when the ARRB took center stage in 1994.

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