“…Was a matter of timing and the timing was right” –Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul
A newly released documentary, “JFK: What the Doctors Saw,” irrefragably contradicts the Warren Commission’s finding that President John F. Kennedy was shot from behind by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone and firing from a sixth-story window of the Texas Book Depository as the motorcade slowed down to make a turn on the street below. According to the doctors who tried to save him in Trauma Room 1 at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, the small hole in the front of Kennedy’s neck was an entry wound and the huge hole in the back of his head was an exit wound. In other words, whether or not Oswald was firing from above and behind the passing limousine, a fatal shot was fired from the direction in which the vehicle was heading, from approximately street level.
The day they blew out the brains of the kingThousands were watchin’, no one saw a thingIt happened so quickly, so quick, by surpriseRight there in front of everyone’s eyesGreatest magic trick ever under the sunPerfectly executed, skillfully done
Director Barbara Shearer splices together interviews with seven Parkland MDs and numerous narrators. It’s choppy but she gets her points across. Why had the events in Trauma Room 1 gone unreported all these years? “A lot of people just decided to keep their mouth shut,” a narrator states, “including the Parkland doctors.” CUT to Dr. Joe D. Goldstrich acknowledging, “I didn’t want to be a target for those who killed our President. So I didn’t tell anybody for over 30 years that I was present in Trauma Room 1.” (It takes a brave man to acknowledge being so afraid.) The Narrator asserts, “many people did die, who could have been involved in the assassination.” Then Dr. Robert McClelland recalls being warned by an FBI or Secret Service .agent –right in the chaotic ER– “You must never ever say that this was an entrance wound again. If you know what’s good for you.”
What is the truth, and where did it go?Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know“Shut your mouth, ” said the wise old owlBusiness is business, and it’s a murder most foul
“The most dramatic thing to me was the chaos in the Emergency Room,” recalls Dr. Donald Seldin. “The Secret Service with their machine guns looking around frantically, the President ying on the surgical bed, and with Mrs. Kennedy sitting by with the flecks of the President’s brain on her skirt. The whole atmosphere together was very chaotic.”
“the first thing I noticed,” says Goldstrich, “was this very small wound in his neck, in the front.”
Dr. Ronald Jones: “We could tell that the wound was in the front of the neck just above where the shirt and tie was, so it was visible to you
Goldstrich “In my mind, the wound was pretty small, maybe a nickel maybe a dime.”
Dr. Kenneth Salyer: “That small wound in the front of the neck, Malcolm [Perry, the resident who was in charge of the ER] thought originally it was an entrance wound because it was so small.”
McLellan: As I walked by Dr. Perry leaned across the President and handed me a surgical retractor and said ‘ Bob would you go and stand at the head of the cart and put that retractor in the wound and pull it open’ so he and Dr. Baxter could look down in the wound… The thing that really hit me when I got to the head of the cart was the wound in the back of his head… I said ‘My God, have you seen the back of his head? It’s gone.’
Riding in the backseat next to my wifeHeading straight on in to the afterlifeI’m leaning to the left, I got my head in her lapHold on, I’ve been led into some kind of a trap
Dr. Joe D. Goldstrich, a Texan, was a fourth-year med student doing a rotation in neurology when he was summoned to Trauma Room 1 at Parkland all those years ago. A decade ago he retired after a long career in cardiology, and become a specialist in cannabis medicine. (My AVA piece about Goldstrich is online at BeyondTHC.com.) He is a board member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians and runs their highly regarded online library. He has recently published a book, “Cannabis and Cancer,” that’s available from Amazon.
The JFK doco is streaming on Paramount. A free, one-week trial subscription costs $5.95/month. If you don’t see any winners on the Paramount menu of movies (I didn’t), you can cancel after watching “JFK: What the Doctors Saw.”
I’m just a patsy like Patsy Cline…
Jackie on the Trunk
“Mrs Kennedy when she first came in with the President to Trauma Room 1, recalled NAME McLellan, WHAT RANK “was holding a large section of his crerebrum in her hand, and she handed it to Dr Jenkins.. If you’ve seen those pictures where she’s climbing back onto the rear of the car, people wonder why. She was retaining s piece of the president’s brain that had been blown out onto the rear deck of the limousine.
The Parkland Hospital doctors summoned to Trauma Room 1 all recalled Jackie’s calm in the midst of the tragic, chaotic scene. “She was still very much in command of herself. She was not weeping or hysterical,” said McLeallan. Her white gloves were stained red with blood. She wa splattered with blood and with =gray matter from her husband’s brain. She didn’t want him declared dead until a priest had administered last rites. Two priests were on their way.
The back half of his right cerebral hemisphere was gone and as I stoodd there o I his. Head onto the cart that hole in the back of fell out oft was obvious that this was a mortal, fatal wouldthe right half of his crebellum
Ronald Jones: “My initial impression seeing two wounds –a small wound here (points to the front of his neck, right of center) and a big wound back here (points to back of his head) it was an entrance wound and an exit wound… And usually the entrance wound I ssmsaller than the exit wound. I’ve seen a fair number of gunshotead –at the particular time.
Jackie didn’t want him declared dead until the priest arrived he came in the door has to of the doctors and two of the doctors who are about to leave would’ve had to push by here stop against the wall McClellan “so we were there in appropriately I felt when the priest administered last rites
Mrs Kennedy
When the priest tell Jackie “I’ve given him conditional absolution” she grimaced
She exchange the ring thing
Up in the operating room lounge the doctors discussed what had just happened. Dr NAME Perry, summoned to announce Kennedy’s death to the press, describes finding an entrance wound and an exit wound. McLellan recalls, “When he left the room, Dr Perry was approached by someone he thought maybe was a Secret Service man, and he told Dr Perry ‘You must never ever say that that was an entrance wound again. If you know what’s good for you.”
Robert K TanenbaumDeputy Chief Counsel House Select Committee on Assassinations 1976-77
Most4 of the staff had Parkland had memorialized their observation that it wan an entrance wound handed over to Dr, Clark, the chief of neurosurgery
Dr Earl Rose the medical examiner intended to do the autopsy. His office looked out on a fort
He saw them wheeling the cart along the corridor out of Parkland. He steps out of his office into the corridor asks them to stop held his hand up I’m required to tell you the if a miurder occurs inDallas County the autopsy occurs in Dallas County
R
President now in his coffin 2 secret service men one carrying Thompson submachine gun. Rose holds his hand up st4op any order committed in state of Texas the
They have a lid conversation. Salyer:”No way, we’re taking him away.
Then the SS man with the submachine gun walked sloltyover to Dr, Rose and put his hands underneath armpits and gently lifted him up off the floor and placed him up against the wall of the corro=idor and shook his finger in his face as if to say st4nad out of our way and then they turned and headed out the rear entrance too the ambusklasnce
Leon.
The Emergency Room nurse Doris Nelson was letting people in. And there was a policeman or secret service agent I’m not sure which, that pit area was hemmed in with men in business suits, shoulder to shoulder.
That might not be news to millions of US Americans who have given some thought to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Some 2000 books have been written on the subject. The movie Executive Action (1974), scripted by Dalton Trumbo from a story by Mark Lane, showed wealthy right-wing Texans hiring three professional snipers to do the deed –but didn’t claim to be definitive. Oliver Stone’s movie JFK (1991) relying on evidence developed by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, pinned the blame on Cuban exiles and CIA agents embittered by Kennedy’s refusal to provide air cover when their invasion met with resistance at the Bay of Pigs WHAT DATE. Stone cited more evidence when he revisited the subject in a 2021 documentary called “Through the Looking Glass.”
