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JFK and the corset that helped to kill a president
Houston Chronicle ^ | 11-23-2004 | By JAMES RESTON JR.

Posted on 11/24/2004 12:03:50 PM PST by weegee

JFK and the corset that helped to kill a president

Back brace made Kennedy an almost stationary target

By JAMES RESTON JR.

Two years ago, historian Robert Dallek revealed new details about the extraordinary range of shots, stimulants and pills President Kennedy took to control his physical pain and present his youthful image to the world. Important and interesting as these details are, they should not distract us from the one medical remedy that probably killed the president: his corset.

Members of Kennedy's inner circle had often witnessed the painful ritual that Kennedy endured in his private quarters before he ventured in public, when his valet would literally winch a steel-rodded canvas back brace around the president's torso, pulling heavy straps and tightening the thongs loop by loop as if it was a bizarre scene out of Gone With the Wind.

Once in it, the president was planted upright, trapped and almost bolted into a ramrod posture. Many would wonder how JFK could ever move in such a contraption. And yet move he did, and, besides his painkillers, his corset contributed to the youthful, high-shouldered military bearing that he presented glamorously to the world.

But this simple device imparted a fate almost Mephistophelean in its horror to the sequence of events in Dallas 41 years ago.

In researching my biography of Gov. John Connally of Texas 15 years ago, I was put on to the critical importance of Kennedy's corset in the ghastly six seconds in November 1963 by a former Texas senator, the late Ralph Yarborough, who was in the motorcade that day.

Yarborough growled softly about that "damned girdle," and this led me to the remarks of two doctors, Charles James Carrico and Malcolm Oliver Perry, buried in Volume 3 of the 26-volume set of testimony that attended the Warren Commission report.

In November 1963, Carrico was the 28-year-old resident in the emergency room of Parkland Hospital who first received the injured president in the trauma room; Perry came quickly to the emergency room to supervise the case — and then to pronounce the president dead a half-hour later.

Before the Warren Commission, Carrico told of removing Kennedy's back brace in the first seconds after his arrival. He described the device as made of coarse white fiber, with stays and buckles.

Apart from the never-ending controversy over how many bullets Lee Harvey Oswald actually fired from the Texas School Book Depository, most experts agree with the Warren Commission that Oswald's first bullet passed cleanly through Kennedy's lower neck, missing any bone, then entered Connally's back, streaking through the governor's body and lodging in his thigh. This was the first so-called magic bullet.

When Connally was hit, he pivoted in pain to his left, his lithe body in motion as it swiveled downward, ending up in the lap of his wife, Nellie.

But because of the corset, Kennedy's body did not act as a normal body would when the bullet passed through his throat. Held by his back brace, Kennedy remained upright, according to the Warren Commission, for five more seconds. This provided Oswald the opportunity to reload and shoot again at an almost stationary target.

The frames of the Zapruder film confirm this ramrod posture: Kennedy's head turns only slightly in those eternal seconds, and his upper body almost not at all, from frame 225 (when the first shot entered his neck) to the fatal frame of 313.

Without the corset, the force of the first bullet, traveling at a speed of 2,000 feet a second, would surely have driven the president's body forward, making him writhe in pain like Connally, and probably down in the seat of his limousine, beyond the view of Oswald's cross hairs for a second or third shot.

With no bones struck and the spinal cord intact, the president almost certainly would have survived the wound from the first bullet. Both Carrico and Perry testified to this likelihood (and apropos of the decades-long controversy, both testified that the small, round, clean wound in the front of Kennedy's neck was an exit wound rather than an entry wound).

To Perry, under the questioning of then-assistant counsel — now senator from Pennsylvania — Arlen Specter, the injury was "tolerable"; the president would have recovered. Because the bullet had passed below the larynx, the wound would not even have impaired his speech later.

In the new focus on cortisone shots, codeine painkillers, barbiturates, stimulants such as Ritalin, and gamma globulin injections, the simple corset needs to be emphasized, tragically, in the context of those medical strategies Kennedy used to create the illusion of the vigorous leader.

--Reston's forthcoming book is on the Spain of Christopher Columbus and will be published by Doubleday next year.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; News/Current Events; US: Massachusetts; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: 22nov1963; assassination; conspiracy; conspiracytheory; crime; dallas; jfk; jfkassassination; johnfkennedy; johnkennedy; kennedyassassination; nov22; presidentkennedy; texas
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To: MAWG

Clymer aboard, I guess you'd say.


101 posted on 11/24/2004 9:07:07 PM PST by Texas Songwriter (Texas Songwriter)
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To: PRUE
Funny how all you lone gunmen theorists will swallow computer cartoons from the media,

My good friend, Occam, has a razor you may want to borrow. One does not refute evidence by dismissing it as a "cartoon".

3D modeling is a very good forensic tool, especially when the exact positions of all the relevant details can be verified by multiple reference points. The size of the car, position of the car, position of the occupants, speed, timing, etc. are all verifiable data points which can be plotted from multiple references and placed in a virtual "Daly Plaza" accurate in size and space. Given that, it is easy to look at the whole sequence from any angle in real time.

Unless you have evidence to refute the idea that the model is accurate in its construction, your mere dismissal doesn't hold water. I know it is hard to give up the cherished myths of childhood, but the truth is Oswald (or at least someone in the book depository window) was the assassin.

102 posted on 11/25/2004 12:58:24 PM PST by LexBaird ("Democracy can withstand anything but democrats" --Jubal Harshaw (RA Heinlein))
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To: LexBaird
Unless you have evidence to refute the idea that the model is accurate in its construction, your mere dismissal doesn't hold water.

The evidence is in the Zapruder film itself. None of the graphic 'models' actually use an overlay of the film, frame by frame, to prove that their graphics are accurate. Anyone can draw cartoons to 'prove' any POV.
The Z film doesn't lie. -- The angles for the magic bullet are all wrong.

I know it is hard to give up the cherished myths of childhood, but the truth is Oswald (or at least someone in the book depository window) was the assassin.

Exactly the adult point I made in a published letter to the editor in '64, shortly after the Report was issued.
Odds are that "someone", besides Oswald, was up there, and helped.

103 posted on 11/25/2004 1:23:39 PM PST by PRUE (Prudence indeed dictates that governments should be changed when its time. We're long overdue.)
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To: Monterrosa-24
One should remember however that it is not always the force and direction of a bullet that moves a body that has been hit. Nerve jump can do strange things. If Kennedy had not had on his back support, he might have remained upright anyway if the bullet passed through without hitting bone and then hit Connally passing more energy to the governor's body than to Kennedy's.

About 10+ years ago a young man returned to his old high school in Seattle and fatally shot an ex-teacher (who had molested him). He fired one round from an AR-15, from at least 100 yards away. The shot hit the teacher, and was a through-and-through. The teacher just stood there for several seconds, looking around at people and asking them, "What happened?" Then, he dropped to the ground, dead.

104 posted on 11/25/2004 1:46:53 PM PST by ExtremeUnction
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To: weegee; All
TRY THE SHOTS YOURSELVES

I never believed Oswald acted alone until I "shot" Kennedy myself from Oswald's position, using the software from the above link. Now, I think it's entirely possible he was a lone gunman.

105 posted on 11/25/2004 3:27:53 PM PST by FReepaholic (Proud FReeper since 1998. Proud monthly donor.)
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To: Dont Mention the War

Yes, I had forgotten; there was also that.


106 posted on 11/25/2004 4:37:36 PM PST by dangus
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To: PRUE
So have I. It was not an easy shot to this old hunter. Nor was it to any of the Reports experts.

88 yards?

107 posted on 11/26/2004 6:45:22 AM PST by Ditto ( No trees were killed in sending this message, but billions of electrons were inconvenienced.)
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To: Ditto

From the Warren Report:


   " ----  The Commission's test firers were all rated as "Master" by the National Rifle Association (NRA); they were experts whose daily routines involved working with and shooting firearms (3H445).

In the tests, three targets were set up at 175, 240, and 365 feet respectively from a 30-foot-high tower. Each shooter fired two series of three shots, using the C2766 rifle. The men took 8.25, 6.75, and 4.60 seconds respectively for the first series and 7.00, 6.45, and 5.15 for the second (3H446).

In the first series, each man hit his first and third targets but missed the second. Results varied on the next series, although in all cases but one, two targets were hit.

Thus, in only two cases were the Commission's experts able to fire three aimed shots in under 5.6 seconds as Oswald allegedly did.


In his testimony before the Commission, Ronald Simmons spoke first of the caliber of shooter necessary to have fired the assassination shots on the basis that only two hits were achieved:

    Mr. Eisenberg: Do you think a marksman who is less than a highly skilled marksman under those conditions would be able to shoot within the range of 1.2 mil aiming error [as was done by the experts]?

      Mr. Simmons: Obviously, considerable experience would have to be in one's background to do so. And with this weapon, I think also considerable experience with this weapon, because of the amount of effort required to work the bolt. (3H449)

      Well, in order to achieve three hits, it would not be required that a man be an exceptional shot. A proficient man with this weapon, yes. But I think with the opportunity to use the weapon and to get familiar with it, we could probably have the results reproduced by more than one firer. (3H450)


108 posted on 11/26/2004 10:42:12 AM PST by PRUE (Prudence indeed dictates that governments should be changed when its time. We're long overdue.)
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To: PRUE
The evidence is in the Zapruder film itself. None of the graphic 'models' actually use an overlay of the film, frame by frame, to prove that their graphics are accurate. Anyone can draw cartoons to 'prove' any POV.

There was a Discovery Channel program about two weeks ago that did this exact thing. Frame by frame overlay of the Zapruder film, cross checked and time-synced against overlays of the other films shot that day that give a POV from the other side of the car. Bullet lined up perfectly in a straight line. The main problem with the Zapruder film is that a road sign obstructs the view at the moment of the impact of the second shot, i.e. the "magic bullet". So, your contention is just factually wrong. Odds are that "someone", besides Oswald, was up there, and helped.

That is something that cannot be proved nor disproved forensically. The "magic bullet" can and has been. However, there are three casings from the window area, all with receiver marks from the same rifle. It seems unlikely that there were two shooters sharing a gun. But, since no one saw the shots fired, it is within the realm of possibility that it wasn't Oswald at the window. I consider that only slightly more likely than that JFK was offed by an orbiting UFO from Mongo. I hold no "reasonable doubt" that LHO was the killer.

109 posted on 11/27/2004 3:32:58 PM PST by LexBaird ("Democracy can withstand anything but democrats" --Jubal Harshaw (RA Heinlein))
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To: PRUE
Thus, in only two cases were the Commission's experts able to fire three aimed shots in under 5.6 seconds as Oswald allegedly did.

Where did you get the 5.6 seconds? Oswald had over 8 sec.

110 posted on 11/29/2004 4:54:31 AM PST by Ditto ( No trees were killed in sending this message, but billions of electrons were inconvenienced.)
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To: weegee

JFK - killed by a girdle ?!?!?!?!?!?!


111 posted on 01/06/2005 7:45:01 AM PST by Chi-townChief
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