Episode 28: JFK - David Lifton's Best Evidence, the book & the documentary

In 1981, David Lifton published Best Evidence, which focuses on JFK's body as the best evidence of what actually happened on November 22nd. However, if that evidence was altered, it's not the best evidence after all. His main thesis is that the evidence used by the Warren Commission and the HSCA was fraudulent, hence, the conclusions from said commissions are also false. 

Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Evidence-Disguise-Deception-Assassination/dp/0881844381

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lifton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI-iRHBP9Go

https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/jfkwhp-1963-11-22-d#?image_identifier=JFKWHP-ST-527-10-63

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopsy_of_John_F._Kennedy#/media/File:JFK_posterior_head_wound.jpg

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about David Lifton's book, best evidence along with his best evidence research video that accompanies the book. We're going to be getting into some dark and macabre subject matter, gross at times. Probably there's just no way around that. If you're sensitive to that kind of content, consider this fair warning that this may just be an episode you want to skip if you're still with me, crack open a beverage of choice and we will saddle up and take this ride. David lifton's book best evidence was published in 1981 and it really represented a 15 year quest, his journey to find the truth. He became a skeptic of the Warren Commission report, and knew that there had to be more to the story. I just don't think he realized how much more to the story there really was and still is, until he got into the thick of it that happens to all of us. By the way, I myself am not a researcher. Wouldn't claim to be even, not even not an amateur sleuth on this. I'm just a voracious reader and somebody with a strong interest in the topic. And the more that you pull on one thread, the more that you find other threads, with other threads, with other threads, and it just becomes a crazy, tangled web. One thing I will say about the book, best evidence is if you look for a copy of it online, be prepared for an absolute price gouging, if at all possible, see if you can find a copy from a library or through an interlibrary loan. So even if your library doesn't have a copy in stock, sometimes they will participate in interlibrary loan programs where they can get it from another library in the country, even if you have to pay two or $3 to cover the shipping, just so you can have the book for a few weeks. That's still better than getting gouged to the tune of 50, 100 $150 for a paperback book, to me, that is just completely insane, especially if you've never read it before. You don't even know if it's something that you agree with. You don't even know if it's something you're going to be interested in. In this economy, spending that kind of money to get one book, I think, is completely insane. So if at all possible, see if you can find it through your local library system and save yourself a few dollars. The book is incredibly detailed. The paperback copy is more than 800 pages. It is quite a tome, so there is no way that I can sit here in a podcast episode and go through all the major aspects of the book, you can launch a podcast, honestly, that was nothing but going through piece by piece, detail by detail, what David Lifton has done in best evidence. I mean, you could literally have a show dedicated to nothing but that. I'm just going to try to give you the high points both of the book as well as the accompanying research video. I'm going to go now to David lifton's Wikipedia page, because it gives us a good, tight, clean, little summary. The central thesis of the book is that President Kennedy's body had been altered between the Dallas hospital and the autopsy site at Bethesda for the purpose of creating erroneous conclusions about the number and direction of the shots. He details evidence using both the Warren Commission documents and original research and interviews with those involved at both Dallas and Bethesda of a stark and radical change between the descriptions of the wounds by the medical staff at Dallas and those at Bethesda. For instance, nearly all the Dallas medical staff thought the head wound entered from the front and exited through a two inch by two inch hole in the exterior. The autopsy, on the contrary, reported a massive exit wound in the front, about four times the size of the reports of the Dallas staff, which would indicate a shot from the rear. It was these sorts of conflicts that drove his quest, the Warren Commission had ultimately resolved them through relying on what was considered the best evidence, ie, the autopsy report and photos. But that didn't satisfy Lifton. End Quote, so that really is if we were going to try to crystallize this 800 and some odd page tome down to a small Scintilla. That's really what it is that the best evidence typically would be the autopsy would be the body of the slain person. However, if the autopsy is based on. Uh, bogus conclusions, then it's not the best evidence anymore. If an alteration was done

then the autopsy, it's not that anybody intentionally lied. It's not that there was some intentional cover up. It's that they were reporting what they actually saw. It's just that there's a discrepancy between what the doctors saw at Parkland Hospital versus what the technicians saw at Bethesda. Well, how does that happen? We have to look at where the body was and how would it get altered, and to read a little bit more now from Wikipedia in connection with his body alteration theory, Lifton hypothesized about when and where the alteration took place. He posits that after John F Kennedy's Pop Pop, unnamed conspirators on Air Force One removed Kennedy's body from its original bronze casket and placed it in a shipping casket while en route from Dallas to Washington once the presidential plane arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, the shipping casket with the President's body in it was surreptitiously taken by helicopter from the side of the plane that was out of the television cameras view. Kennedy body was then taken to an unknown, unknown location, most likely Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where the body was surgically altered to make it appear that he was shot only from the rear. Among the explicitly stated clear implications of the book are the following, the Pop. Pop was an inside job with at minimum a number of secret servicemen involved, the ones who controlled the scene and the evidence. And Oswald was, as he stated after his arrest, a patsy end quote. Now I know that sounds unbelievable. That sounds crazy, doesn't it? If you are not familiar with some of the research, if you're only just coming to this topic today, that sounds crazy. They took the somebody snatched the body. They took the body and did surgery on it, post mortem. Who does that and for what reason it's on the face of it, I fully admit to you, it sounds crazy, but then you read a book like best evidence, and you watch the accompanying research video, and it's like, yeah, but wait a minute. Wait a minute. Just because it sounds crazy doesn't mean it is crazy. Then we find out that there was a memo about surgery performed on the head, post mortem surgery that was performed on the head. And then it becomes even stranger. I'm going to jump over now to David Lifton, best evidence research video. And I think it's great that he did this, because you're going to have plenty of people who will never read an 800 page book about anything, about no topic whatsoever, but at least it gives the opportunity for someone to get an introduction to this material. Or if somebody says, Yeah, I'm interested in the life of JFK or his presidential legacy, I'm interested in learning the truth about what happened in Dallas that day. But I don't have the time to invest 800 pages worth of reading to get into this one particular topic of the quote, medical forgery. At least you can take a few minutes. I don't know. It's probably 40 minutes long to watch this research video. So David Lifton talks about JFK head snap. And this is a point of contention, because if you've seen the early videos of Dan, rather talking about watching the Zapruder film, he alleges that JFK is violently thrown forward. But then when we as the public are able to see the Zapruder film, we see that his head goes back and to the left. Remember, there's that whole scene that Kevin Costner, portraying Jim Garrison, does in Oliver Stone's film, JFK, back and to the left, back and to the left. Bill Hicks even integrated that into some of his stand up routines, back and to the left. So how can everybody else be wrong if we've seen it on video and we know what we saw, how could what we see of the head snap be wrong? Why would it be that the Warren Commission is correct? Doesn't even make sense. So Lifton is trying to figure out which evidence to believe. Do you believe the Dallas doctors at Parkland Hospital. Or do you believe the Bethesda autopsy? Lifton concludes that a post mortem surgery occurred to obscure what truly happened. And the video was made in October of 1980 and Lifton says that his goal was to get the witnesses on tape for posterity. I'm sure that's true, but I think it's also possible that he was doing it for people that would never sit down and read the book. At least there's some means where they can obtain his research without having to sit down and read for that length of time. At roughly 1pm Kennedy is pronounced dead, and then about six hours. Later, the autopsy is performed. Lifton talks to Dennis David, who worked at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and on November 22 David was the chief of the day, and David tells Lifton that he was scared to talk for several years. Autopsies are used to determine what happened, but in this case, JFK, body was removed from its casket. It was surgically altered. Bullets were removed, and then the body was returned for the autopsy. So says Lifton, that's another good crystallization of what he gets at in the book. Lifton talks about a fox trot Bravo India report written by two agents who attended the autopsy. These names, if you have read anything at all, really about the Pop Pop, they may be familiar to you, Siebert and O'Neill, the two of them write that when JFKs body was removed from the casket, it was apparent that a tracheotomy had been performed as well as surgery of the head, namely at the top of the skull. So I my questions here are written in my notes. How did the head surgery happen? When, why, where, who did it? It's like the typical questions that a journalist would ask, Who, what, when, where and how. Well, if that's true, which we have two agents saying that it was apparent that surgery of the head, namely at the top of the skull, had been performed when the body was removed from the casket. Who did it? Why? How? Aubrey Reich, who was also interviewed in the men who killed Kennedy docuseries, he worked for a funeral home and drove an ambulance, and he was at Dallas that day, Reich says that he helped to put JFK in a bronze ceremonial casket at Parkland. But then at Bethesda Paul O'Connor, who was one of the technicians at the autopsy, O'Connor said that JFKs body arrived in a plain, gray metal casket. So we have Reich saying it was in a bronze ceremonial casket at Parkland, but then it's in a cheap shipping casket by the time it gets to Bethesda Reich is describing a bronze, expensive coffin. O'Connor said it was a cheap metal shipping casket. Things That Make You say, hmm. Dennis David recalls a black, unmarked ambulance, and the casket was offloaded, and it was a plain metal box, like for shipping in the photo of JFK body going back on the plane after he's been murdered, the coffin is not a plane shipping casket. If you are not familiar with the photo that I am talking about, I will drop a link to it. You can find it on the JFK library's website, and you can very plainly see that the casket that's going on to Air Force One is not a plane metal shipping casket. And in fact, when David Lifton shows Dennis, David the photograph that I'm talking about, Dennis confirms that the coffin in the photo was not the one that he saw at Bethesda, according to the House Select Committee, the body arrived in Bethesda inside of a body bag. Now, Reich said that JFKs body was wrapped in sheets and was still dripping blood from the head wound. Reich also said that they used additional sheets and a plastic mattress liner inside the coffin at Dallas. O'Connor said that at Bethesda, JFK was in a gray body bag with a zipper. The body bag was unzipped, and JFKs body was nude, except for a bloody sheet that was wrapped around the head area. Reich says they did not use a body bag. O'Connor said that JFK was in a body bag. So how did he get in one? Reich is certain that he did not use a body bag with a zipper. He used a plastic mattress pad. David Lifton asks O'Connor if he could be confused. O'Connor says he is sure that JFK was in a body bag at Bethesda. So the question then comes up, wasn't Jackie always with the coffin? Now this is my note. This isn't in the documentary. This is what I wrote as I was taking notes and rewatching this research video. Even if Jackie had stayed with the casket, jfk's body may not have been inside the casket that she was with, we also have to remember that she left at least for a few minutes for LBJ swearing in ceremony, Dennis David remembers the black ambulance because it was not the norm. Navy ambulances were gray. It was not a military ambulance. So it stood out in his mind as a memorable fact because it was black and not gray.

So one ambulance and. Casket comes to the back at Bethesda, while the televised casket arrived in the gray Navy ambulance out front. Now, all right, hold on to your hats. We're told that still, yet there was a third casket that arrived by helicopter. And in my notes, I've written what, with two question marks, why the need for all of this? Dennis David said he saw a helicopter offload, a plane shipping. Type of casket. Dennis David also says that he saw Jackie arrive at Bethesda. There's a story that goes around, sort of like internal gossip there within Bethesda of what was going on. There was a story that two caskets were fake for nebulous security reasons. One was real and contained Kennedy's body, but there were two decoy caskets just for security purposes. There was an x ray technician interviewed by David Lifton named Gerald Curtis, and he was carrying X rays from the autopsy, and said that he had some blood on him when he saw Jackie Kennedy walk in. So then the question becomes, how was JFK already there? Why wasn't he in the ambulance with Jackie? Was Jackie with an empty casket? Dennis David and Gerald Custer confirm that JFK was already at Bethesda when Jackie arrived. Others at Bethesda confirm more than one ambulance and more than one casket, and they just thought it was security protocol of some kind. Mean you are, in fairness to the argument, you're talking about an unprecedented event. Yes, there was the pop pop of Abraham Lincoln. But in terms of something like this happening in 1963 it's not like this was a protocol where everybody knew line by line what was supposed to happen. So if you just say it was probably a security measure of some kind, there might be enemy forces that would try to steal the body or maim the body. People probably would just go along with that idea. General Chester Clifton was aboard Air Force One, and he was JFK, senior military aide. He made arrangements for the autopsy, and said there was no decoy ambulance and no special security measures made. Now David Lifton says that he taped an interview with Chester Clifton. And Clifton told him all of that, that there was no decoy ambulance and that they had no special security measures in place. Do what you will with that information, right? Lifton also mentions a Foxtrot Bravo India report with two agents who followed the Navy ambulance with Jackie, which begs the question, why would they follow an empty ambulance, or, really, I should say, an empty casket, if the if that ambulance actually just had a casket in it that was empty, why would they need to follow it? I mean, obviously a body wouldn't be stolen out of an empty casket. This is weird, you know. So the body leaves Dallas with a wound about the size of an egg. It gets to Bethesda with a wound many times larger. The body left Dallas with a brain. Yet witnesses at Bethesda say that Kennedy's brain was gone. O'Connor and Custer say that most of the brain was gone, and the hole was huge. When the sheet around the head area was removed, there was an audible gasp in the room, according to O'Connor, both because of the size of the wound and the fact that the brain was gone. So how was there a brain involved in the autopsy? Remember, they they had a brain that actually had a heavy amount of weight to it, heavier than the brain of an average male. So where the hell does that? Did that come from? Who did who did it belong to? Why would they take X rays of a head with no brain in it? O'Connor described the head wound as being jagged. David Lifton called Siebert, but Siebert wouldn't talk to him. Just said, my conclusion stands, and that was it. So David Lifton flashes up a screenshot of these discrepancies. At Dallas, we have a smaller wound that's about 35 square centimeters, a brain ordinary sheets and a ceremonial casket. At Bethesda, we have a larger wound, 170 square centimeters or more, no brain, a zippered body bag and a plain shipping casket. Dennis David is certain of what he saw. The first casket with JFK Inside was a shipping casket. Dennis is unsure of why it would still be hidden after all these years have gone by, I think, I think a lot of us feel that way. The military men had to sign a document stating they would not disclose what happened at the morgue that night, and the penalty would be a court martial. The order was not rescinded until 1970 Eight none of David Lifton witnesses testified for the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee in terms of autopsy photos. Drawings of JFK were used in the Warren report instead of real photos. And if you have ever seen the drawings that they made of JFK, I don't know who did them, but my God, I hope they don't ever sketch me. There's jokes about like, I think it was Sam bankman Fried. Somebody had done a courtroom sketch of him, and he looks like a male model, when in real life, he does not. Well, it's really the opposite with JFK. It almost looks like, what if JFK was a ventriloquist dummy. The drawings are terrible. So like, why would you use drawings of JFK in the Warren report instead of the real photos? If you feel like the real photos are accurate and they back up your conclusion, then why are you using drawings? Lifton asserts that, and a consultant for the House Select Committee, says that the autopsy photos are forgeries. He includes photos that contradict both Dallas and Bethesda. There's one photo where JFKs head wound is barely there. So that also begs the question, what happened? You can see a medical drawing on Wikipedia of this posterior head wound. And it's bizarre. I mean, it looks like somebody is trying to hold together part of the scalp, and then you just see this very small entrance wound, nothing like what is described by the Parkland doctors, and nothing that makes sense in relation to the Zapruder film. It's just this very small wound. It's almost like most of the head is completely in place. Doesn't look like any gunshot victim I've ever seen. It's just it's weird. It's completely weird. So that again, this begs the question, what happened? How could all of these people be wrong? Could are they all lying? I mean, what's going on? Lift and says the whole government would not have to be involved in JFK murder, and then the subsequent mishandling of his body, slash, autopsy? Was it a covert domestic operation? So at the end of the video, Lifton calls for a third national investigation. Says it's too late for justice, but it's not too late for the truth. Otherwise, America had a secret election that day. Now my thought on that, when we when we start talking about there needs to be another investigation, there needs to be an official inquiry. It's like, why? When the hell do you think is really going to happen? What do you think is going to be different? The House Select Committee back in the 70s already said that JFK probably was murdered as the result of a conspiracy. They don't get into who, who did it and why they did it, just yeah, probably was the victim of a conspiracy. Do you really think if we put our taxpayer dollars to work, to have a third national investigation, that we would get any firm answer that seems logical, seems reasonable? I don't think so. I don't think that you can count on entities that were probably involved in some capacity, to then reveal that they were probably involved in some capacity. I mean, let's think about the Warren Commission, for example. Alan Dulles was part of that. Allen Dulles was fired by JFK, the two of them were not exactly chumsy, mumsy, palsy wellsy. Do you think anything different would happen if we funded a third national investigation? I personally don't think so. I think it'd be a huge waste of time and money, because you wouldn't get the truth. I put it honestly in the same category in terms of an exercise and futility of trying to choose between the donkey and the elephant, red versus blue, six in one half a dozen of the other doesn't really matter who you pick, the cronies and the fat cats and the hyper elites are going to come out on top, and John and Jane Q Public will not. And I don't think some Third National Inquiry into the death of JFK would have any other outcome to revisit David lifton's book when we go to page 814, of the paperback copy. This was a paperback copy that was updated, I think, in 1992 in the section titled synthesis, he writes, it is easy to believe that Oswald had help. It is not easy to believe that the coffin the nation watched being unloaded from Air Force One was empty, that even then, plotters in another place were fabricating a false history by altering the best evidence the President's corpse. Wesley Liebler. Discussed the psychological barrier with me many years ago. He said, You require people to accept the notion that somebody is playing around with Kennedy's body. David, I might as well tell you now. I mean, nobody will believe it. He referred to my research as an exercise in epistemology. You know, I don't think you really comprehend what kind of thing you're dealing with. What about the evidence? I asked, what would happen when I published a documented account showing the legal record itself contained evidence the body was altered? Well, I don't think that anybody will ever believe anything you say. Replied, Liebler, why not? I asked because it's relatively unbelievable. You know, there comes a point where, after all, the Emperor may rely on his power to demand that He is clothed. And this is not only a function of power, it is also a function of relative probability and a concession to the shortness of life. Liebler continued, the unconscious notion that the Emperor will be clothed is a very powerful notion to rely on. Let me put it this way, even if you were right, which I don't think you are, I think I could beat you in the argument how I asked because of the presumption that the emperor is clothed. This position, in my opinion, represents a cynical view of our society. It presumes the gullibility and timidity of the electorate and the absolute sanctity of vested authority. It is a view that I do not want to accept, yet I must concede that even if there is a new investigation, it is unlikely that the architects of this plot can be identified or brought to justice. But that is not the point. The disguise they erected must be torn down, and it must be done officially. That would be the most important outcome of a new investigation. If we cannot have justice, perhaps we can at least have the truth. At present, the disguise erected by the plotters not only conceals their identity, but some fundamental truths about our country, it hides the fact that sometime during Kennedy's 1000 days, a secret veto was cast on his presidency and his life. End quote, I will tell you, yeah, for my money, personally, the last little snippet there, I think, is absolutely true. Now that's just my opinion, and it could be wrong. I think at some point, indeed, a secret veto was cast, and that was just the end of it, we could debate all day long about who was involved, who masterminded it, who were the actual pop poppers, but I agree with Lifton statement there, at some point in the 1000 days, a secret veto was cast, and that was the end of it. I don't think there ever will be a new investigation, not anything formal, I don't think, and even if there was, if I'm wrong about that, I don't think we would ever get any semblance of the truth. They might. If there was another investigation, they would probably pinpoint some people that are long dead and gone, mobsters, drug heads, just general low life criminal creeps, and say these people did it, it would just be more of the same, more of what we got with Oswald. Here's this petty, creepy weirdo who's basically a giant nobody trying to be a big somebody by murdering a president. It would just be that, except maybe there's a group of them, two or three or four, ne'er do well, drug traffickers, mobsters, organized crime, nasty villains, who did it? Well. Why would I want my tax dollars to pay for that? I mean, I feel like that's okay. I mean, even if nobody can be brought to justice, we're supposed to get the truth. I don't know that we ever will in any kind of official capacity, not within my lifetime. I don't think so. Now, at some point in the future, as I have predicted before, you could see an agency or some faction of an agency, step forward in the manner I've talked about before, with the Dag Hammarskjöld situation when I was reading the golden thread and I was talking on my daytime broadcast about the death of Dag Hammarskjöldthis information that was published in the London book review, where Baron Lea talks about a conversation, allegedly, with Daphne Park, where she's like, Yeah, we did it in relation to the death of Patrice Lumumba, yeah, we did it. It was us. Something like that could happen with Kennedy down the road. I think it's going to take more time to poison the well of his legacy. And believe me, people are trying, they're trying to make him sound like the most sex obsessed, perverted, drug addicted, off the rails psychopath possible that anything good he did happened on accident because he didn't have a good bone in his body. He was just foul. It's going to take some more time, I think, for people that are of that mentality to continue to continue to poison that well, and if they are successful at it, then yeah, you could have some faction of an agency or an agency that's. Yes, we did it, but it was for your own good that asshole was going to kick off world war three. His pursuit of detente was would have had us all speaking Russian and being under the control of Putin or whoever's running Russia by then. So we did you a favor, and that could very well happen, but in terms of us having some official investigation and getting anything resembling the truth, that's I just don't see that happening. No. Now in this updated edition, he's written an Epilog to the 1982 edition where he writes, there has been no official reaction to best evidence. Perhaps that was to be expected. The House Pop Pop Committee concluded there was a conspiracy, but the Justice Department has yet to reopen the case. It has merely asked the National Academy of Sciences to review the acoustics evidence that appears to indicate a shot from the front. The NAS panel has yet to issue its report. End Quote, yeah, there's not going to be I mean, like I said, I just don't think, I don't think it's going to happen. There's an additional afterward that he puts in that updated paperback copy. Like, how could anybody get the body out of the coffin? Why would somebody do this? So he talks in the afterword about some important points. For example, there's a clip. There was some type of, like, metallic looking clip inside Kennedy's head. Why would that be? And then, who did it? If the doctors at Parkland didn't do anything like that when they were trying to, you know, save his life and were unable to, where did the clip come from? There were also post mortem abrasions. So how, how did that happen? And then, why would somebody do that again? I understand that we're in the realm of something that's very macabre. It's very morbid. And I think it's also upsetting to think about somebody just manhandling the body and desecrating a corpse. I mean, I live in a fairly small, sleepy community in the Midwest, and I remember there was a story some years back of this woman who I don't know if she had a psychotic break. I'm not really sure what happened, but her husband's ex wife or ex girlfriend died, and this woman went into the funeral home and desecrated the corpse and went to jail for it. I mean, we have laws. We have decided as a society that it's particularly ghoulish and particularly bad to desecrate a corpse. So why? Why would he be bruised up? Why was he manhandled? Then there's also the issue of the X ray slash photo mismatch. What was, what was actually holding the head together? Why were X rays taken? If there was no brain inside the head? Very weird, very, very weird stuff indeed. Whatever your conclusions may be about lifting and best evidence, you have to admit, there are a lot of very strange things afoot here, as is the case with anything relating to the murder of JFK in both the older hardback edition and then in this updated paperback edition, Lifton has reprinted a report by James Reston from the New York Times, dated, November 23 1963 and before I close out, I want to read this to you now. Did Kennedy have a premonition of tragedy that he who had set out to temper the contrary violences of our national life would be their victim last June, when the Civil Rights riots were at their height and passions were flaring, he spoke to a group of representatives of national organizations, he told off the problems that beset him on every side, and then suddenly, to the astonishment of everyone there, suddenly concluded his talk by pulling from his pocket a scrap of paper and reading the famous speech of Blanche of Spain and Shakespeare's King John the sons, or cast with blood fair day Adieu, which is the side that I must go with. All I am with both. Each army had a hand, and in their rage, I having hold of both, they whirl asunder and dismember me. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others.