A newsman asked Perry: "Where was the entrance wound?"
Perry: "There was an entrance wound in the neck..."
Question: Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At him?"
Perry: "It appeared to be coming at him."...
Question: "Doctor, describe the entrance wound. You think from the front in the throat?"
Perry: "The wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat; yes, that is correct. The exit wound, I don't know. It could have been the head or there could have been a second wound of the head. There was not time to determine this at the particular instant."[66] (emphasis added)
On 11/22/63 UPI reported that Perry had said, “There was an entrance wound below the Adam's apple.”[67] The New York Times reported, “... Dr. Malcolm Perry … [said] Mr. Kennedy was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam's apple … This wound had the appearance of a bullet's entry ... .”[68] On 11/23/63, the Dallas Morning News reported, “The front neck hole was described as an entrance wound,” and it quoted Perry to say, “It did however appear to be the entrance wound at the front of the throat.” These press accounts, and others like them, accurately reflect the fact that at no time during the press conference did Perry allow for any other possibility than that the throat wound was an entrance wound.
How did the Warren Report describe Perry’s press conference statements? It reported, “Dr. Perry... stated to the press that a variety of possibilities could account for the President's wounds.”[69] (Emphasis added) Whereas numerous press reports had accurately described Perry’s belief the wound was one of entrance, the Warren Report cited only the New York Herald Tribune’s vague and less accurate version. Ironically, Perry wasn’t easily dislodged from his original position.
In fact, although Specter himself has admitted that his supervisor, Commission counsel Norman Redlich, had banned pretestimony interviews,[74] Specter nevertheless interviewed Perry before he testified to the Warren Commission. He indicated that he would obtain recordings of Perry's public comments for Perry to review “prior to his appearance, before deposition or before the Commission,” which, Specter acknowledged, he had been unable to do.[75] Under oath, Perry repeatedly answered apologetically, and inaccurately, about how the press had misreported his explanation of JFK’s throat wound. After the Commission suggested Perry be furnished the suspect press reports, so that Perry could correct the errors,[76] Specter asked Perry for the second time during his appearance for clarification.
“Was it (the throat wound) ragged or pushed out in any manner?” Perry astutely replied, “the edges were neither cleancut, that is punched out, nor were they very ragged ... I did not examine it very closely.” [77] (emphasis added) No Commissioner was impolite enough to ask Perry why he would have made an incision on a President’s bleeding throat without taking a careful look at it. Nor did they remind the doctor that only a few minutes earlier, before Specter had made his preferences so plain, Perry had admitted that the throat wound’s “edges were neither ragged nor were they punched out, but rather clean.”[78] The Commission apparently either never examined the verbatim transcript of Perry’s press conference, or it neglected to discuss what Perry actually said, in either case settling instead for Perry’s Specter-abetted finger pointing. The libel against the press thus went unchallenged.
Ever the lawyer, Specter was still not satisfied. He undertook to further bolster his controversial theory by posing the following questions to Perry:
Mr. Specter: “Based on the appearance of the neck wound alone, could it have been either an entrance or an exit wound?”
Dr. Perry: “It could have been either.”
Mr. Specter: “Permit me to supply some additional facts, Dr. Perry, which I shall ask you to assume as being true for purposes of having you express an opinion.
“Assume first of all that the President was struck by a 6.5 mm. copper-jacketed bullet fired from a gun having a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per second, with the weapon being approximately 160 to 250 feet from the President, with the bullet striking him at an angle of declination of approximately 45 degrees, striking the President on the upper right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula, being 14 cm. from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm. below the tip of the right mastoid process, passing through the President's body striking no bones, traversing the neck and sliding between the large muscles in the posterior portion of the President's body through a fascia channel without violating the pleural cavity but bruising the apex of the right pleural cavity, and bruising the most apical portion of the right lung inflicting a hematoma to the right side of the larynx, which you have just described, and striking the trachea causing the injury which you described, and then exiting from the hole that you have described in the midline of the neck.
“Now, assuming those facts to be true, would the hole which you observed in the neck of the President be consistent with an exit wound under those circumstances?” (Emphasis added)
Dr. Perry: “Certainly would be consistent with an exit wound.”[79]
In this example of Specter’s “begging the question” with Perry – assuming as true all the unproven elements of the speculative theory he was asking Perry’s opinion about – the lawyer made it crystal clear that there was only one answer that would do, one that left his pet theory unwounded. And this wasn’t the only time Specter pursued this tact with key medical witnesses. He posed this same question to all the Dallas doctors he interviewed: Charles Baxter, MD [6H42], Robert McClelland, MD [6H38], Charles James Carrico, MD [3H362], Marion Thomas Jenkins, MD [6H49], Gene Coleman Aiken, MD [6H66], Robert R. Shaw, MD [4H113], Charles Gregory, MD [4H127], and George T. Shires, MD [6H110].
The Warren Commission counsel set out to get Perry to change his consistently-expressed opinion that the throat wound was a wound of entrance to an opinion that it was an exit wound.
It was an act of dishonesty and Perry went along with it for the sake of an easy life.
Had he not done so, then HS would likely have accused him of being a liar, as I believe he did to another doctor who would not change his view.
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