Critical thinking about the JFK assassination often breaks sharply into several opposing camps.
THE ASSASSINATION DEBATE
The first camp accepts–with some minor reservations–the fundamental conclusions of the Warren Commission, that is, that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “lone assassin” and that he fired three shots from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) wounding Governor John Connally and killing President Kennedy. It also holds that there were no frontal shots, no illicit tampering with wound evidence and no conspiracy involving the CIA or any other private or governmental organization.
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The second camp holds that Oswald could not have acted alone since the single-bullet theory of the assassination is impossible. So there must have been multiple shooters and that means a conspiracy–almost certainly orchestrated by certain intelligence agencies–to kill the President. This camp also holds that specific evidence of conspiracy–such as wound evidence–was altered or fabricated and that some of this was accomplished during pre-autopsy surgery and during the official “fraudulent” autopsy as well.
A third camp holds that the Warren Commission–and several follow-up governmental inquiries–probably got some things correct about the assassination but also got some other things wrong. It also holds that several theories of conspiracy are probably worth taking seriously; on the other hand, it rejects many other conspiracy theories for an utter lack of logic or evidence. Finally, It argues that there are still important unresolved questions concerning the assassination and that more research is probably a good idea.
THE TESTIMONY OF SAUNDRA SPENCER
It is impossible here to sort out all of the claims and counter-claims concerning the assassination and any possible cover-up. After all, many hundreds of books have been written about the assassination that deal extensively with these specific controversies. The best we can do in this short essay is re-examine ONE important claim where assassination researchers appear to clash sharply, namely: Does the testimony of Saundra Spencer before the Assassinations Record Review Board (ARRB) in 1997 support a shot from the front?
It will be recalled that Saundra Spencer, a U.S. Navy Petty Officer in 1963, was tasked by an unknown FBI agent the weekend of the assassination with developing prints of the JFK autopsy. She performed her professional responsibilities as instructed and returned the negatives and all copies of the prints to the agent; the photos were never recovered. Her testimony before the ARRB thirty years later relied on what she remembered about the condition of JFK’s body in the photos she developed.
For an extended analysis of her testimony, see this.
The specific issue of contention here is that some assassination critics have claimed that Saundra Spencer’s photos showed a big, exit-sized wound in the rear of JFK’s head; and that this wound was explicit evidence of a shot from the front and, therefore, of a conspiracy. Moreover, they also contend that the head wound she described in her testimony “matched” descriptions of the head wound seen by several doctors at Parkland and Bethesda.
Recently, a well-respected assassination critic put the matter as follows:
“The photos she {Saundra Spencer} had developed, she said, showed a big hole in the back of President Kennedy’s head, which matched what the treating physicians at Parkland and others had said.”
But is this an accurate account of Saundra Spencer’s description of the JFK head wound she saw in her developed photos? I don’t think that it is. What she actually said was that it “appeared to be a hole, inch, two inches in diameter at the back of the skull” ( ARRB, p. 37). Now if it was actually a one inch hole, to describe the hole as “big” is probably an exaggeration. Indeed, Howard Gunn, counsel for the ARRB, at one point in the proceedings, actually characterized the hole Spencer described as “small.” (ARRB, p. 50) A two inch hole is certainly more impressive but to describe what Spencer recalled as a “massive exit-sized wound”–as this same critic did in a popular book on the JFK autopsy–seriously mischaracterizes her ARRB testimony. Susan Spencer never described the wound that she saw that way at all. Never.
This mischaracterization of Saundra Spencer’s testimony is compounded when it is asserted that the head wound she described allegedly “matched” the description of the wound seen by physicians at Parkland and Bethesda. This is simply not accurate. Spencer’s description of the hole that she remembered seeing (this is a 30+ year old recollection, after all) did not in any way match the horrendous, extruding head wound described by some hospital physicians treating the President after the assassination.
DR. McCLELLAND AND THE HEAD WOUND
For example, let’s take the precise testimony of Dr. McClelland, one of the assassination critics favorite doctors. Dr. McClelland had an excellent view of the JFK head wound at Parkland. After all, he stood adjacent to the stretcher where JFK lay on his back while Dr. Perry performed a tracheotomy. McClelland said that he peered “down” into the head wound and he gave the following description of that wound to the Warren Commission:
“I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted. It had been shattered, apparently, by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its right posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral half, and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of the brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out.”
Anyone who asserts that THIS description and location of JFK’s head wound somehow “matched” what Saundra Spencer described in her ARRB testimony is very seriously mistaken.
AUTOPSY OR POST-AUTOPSY PHOTOS?
During her testimony, Spencer was shown several “official” pictures of the JFK autopsy. She repeatedly said that those photos did not resemble the prints that she developed. The official autopsy pictures that Spencer viewed at her ARRB hearing showed a bloody and dirty JFK with an open mouth and eyes and a death stare. Contrariwise, Spencer remembered that her own prints showed a clean and pristine JFK whose eyes and mouth were closed. In short, there were no similarities whatsoever between the official autopsy photos and the ones that Spencer developed.
Now how can this discrepancy be explained? Does it mean that the official autopsy pictures are fakes or that Spencer is totally mistaken about what she remembered seeing in her own prints? Not at all. What it does mean is that the photos Spencer’s developed are undoubtedly POST-AUTOPSY photos that were taken after Tom Robinson, John Van Hoesen and the rest of the cosmetic and embalming team from Gawler’s Funeral Home had “reconstructed” JFK’s body in the early morning hours of Nov. 23rd in preparation for the funeral.
Tom Robinson, by the way, once told author Harrison Livingstone that despite their cosmetic reconstruction efforts, there was still a small hole in the back of JFK’s head that could not be completely “covered over.” This statement almost certainly explains the “small” hole that Saundra Spencer said she observed in the photos she developed. Finally, when Spencer was asked specifically by the ARRB council whether she believed that her prints likely showed JFK’s body “after reconstruction of the body” (ARRB, p. 59) she said: “Yes.” Case closed.
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CONCLUSION
In short there is nothing at all in Saundra Spencer’s testimony before the ARRB that confirms any large, “extruding” wound in the right/rear posterior area of the skull (and not the “back” of the head) or any shot from the front or any pre-autopsy surgery or any fraud. Absolutely nothing. Let’s be clear here, however. There may well have been a conspiracy to kill the president; that can’t be ruled out by simply refuting one conspiracy claim. Nonetheless, the straightforward testimony of Saundra Spencer before the ARRB does not support any conspiracy and it is unconscionable for some critics to continue to maintain that it does. They should fess up and move on.
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p.s.
Research mistakes happen; I get it. In 2017 I wrote an op-ed on this website that argued, among other things, that there was some reasonably compelling photographic evidence that seemed to place Lee Harvey Oswald in the doorway of the TSBD when the fatal shots were fired. After additional research, however, I now think that this doorway placement of Oswald was almost certainly incorrect. The man in the doorway (in the famous Altgens photo) is probably not Lee Oswald but another TSBD worker named Billy Lovelady. Mea culpa. And when we are mistaken, we must admit it and move on.
