7 JFK Assassination Doctors Break Silence, Dispute Key Government Claim

Several doctors who were in the emergency room when former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 raised serious doubts about the official narrative that says a lone gunman was responsible, according to a new documentary featuring interviews conducted in 2013.

The federal Warren Commission established that two shots fired by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, who was located in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, struck President Kennedy from behind as he was traveling in a motorcade in Dallas. One of the bullets entered his upper back and exited near his larynx, while the second bullet entered the right side of his head and exited via his forehead.

The former president was breathing when he entered Parkland Hospital before he was pronounced dead about a half an hour later. However, what seven doctors said in the recent footage disputes the commission’s claims about the event.

Jacquelynn Lueth, executive producer of “JFK: What the Doctors Saw,” interviewed the seven Parkland doctors for the documentary. She wrote for CBS News last week that the doctors’ “recollections were precise and clear, as if the intervening decades had melted away.”

“Each of them reacted strongly when the autopsy pictures were projected on a screen,” Ms. Lueth wrote. “They didn’t agree on everything, but it became obvious that the way the president looked at Parkland did not match the autopsy photos taken at Bethesda even before the official autopsy began.”

She added that the Parkland doctors “had no agenda other than trying to save the president’s life” but stipulated that those who witnessed the wound to the president’s neck “believed it was an entrance wound,” which would dispute the Warren Commission’s findings. “Several of them saw a gaping hole in the back of JFK’s head,” she said.

Warning to Keep Silent

In one of the clips from the documentary, several of the doctors recalled what was said by Dr. Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who attended to President Kennedy. He also attended to Mr. Oswald.

“So, at the press conference, Dr. Perry, in describing the [throat] wound here, said that he thought it looked like an entrance wound,” said Dr. Robert McClelland in the video taken from the documentary, released this month.

“So, we were thinking there were two wounds. Had to be an entrance wound and an exit wound. That was the only way we could put it together. And so, I thought it was an entrance wound,” said Dr. Ronald Jones, another Parkland doctor.

Later, Dr. McClelland recalled that he noticed something unusual after the press conference with Dr. Perry about the JFK assassination.

“When [Dr. Perry] left the room, someone came up to him who Dr. Perry thought maybe was a Secret Service man, and he told Dr. Perry, ‘You must never, ever say that was an entrance wound again if you know what’s good for you,’” he said.

Dr. McClelland, who died aged 89 in 2019, said that he believed that “in all probability there was a conspiracy, i.e. there was more than one shooter,” according to footage of the documentary released by the Daily Mail.

And Dr. Jones said that “in retrospect,” if Mr. Oswald “was in the sixth floor depository, how could he have been shot from the front then? And so was there more than one assailant?”

Another doctor, Joe Goldstrich, who was a medical student at the time of the assassination, asked: “How could a gunshot from the rear peel the scalp from the front back?

Other than the Warren Commission, established by former President Lyndon B. Johnson, the CIA also has long maintained that Mr. Oswald, who was shot and killed just days later, was the sole perpetrator.