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.
" I wonder where Kennedys brain is. "
Just before he was buried, they shoved his brain up his ass. When he was alive, that's where it was 90% of the time. Seemed appropriate.
BS. There is no one specific way a human body reacts to a gunshot from any given direction. People are not like pieces of wood. Over 200 bones, hundreds of muscles, etc. Each of those little interconnected parts, combined with the infinite number of ways they may be positioned and in motion at the moment of impact, lead to an equally infinite number of ways a human body can respond to a bullet. JFK could have gone forwards, backwards, sideways, you name it.
Don't buy into the Oliver Stone "back, and to the left" nonsense. Or Reston's nonsense. The corset certainly played its role, but only in that it was one of millions of little bits of positioning data that combined to form the physics of how JFK's body moved after being hit. Without the corset, JFK's body could just as easily have responded in a way that set Oswald up with an even better shot.
It did. They decide at the last minute at the airport to leave it off.
I was such a pretty day. Just one of those dozens of other little coincidences that had to take place.
Besides the bullet that took off the side of his head came from the front.
No it isn't. From that window on the 6th floor, you are looking damn near dead-on at the rear of where the Limo was traveling. From Oswald's vantage point, Connelley was exactly in front of Kennedy because Connelly was in a jump-seat, that was inboard from the door. The jump-seat also sat lower than the seat Kennedy was in which was elevated.
I have stood there and looked. It was an easy shot. There were at least 5 other people, all strangers looking at the same time, and they ALL said the same. The photos make it look long range and off at an angle. It wasn't long range and it nearly dead-on the rear of the limo.
I don't know about investigateworld's specific attempts, but a lot of people make the mistake of presuming that the 8.7 seconds (or whatever it was) includes the time Oswald spent lining up the first shot. It doesn't. The clock starts with the firing of the first bullet. That gave Oswald ~8.7 seconds to get off two shots, not three.
When ABC News did a special on the assassination last year, they had on a retired Marine Corps marksman. Using a Mannlicher-Caranco, he was easily able to get off three shots in the alloted time, even hesitating before the last shot, as Oswald did.
The marksman was 89 years old.
The first shot nicked a branch of a tree between Oswald and Kennedy.
[Speculation]
As has been experimentally proven, when a metal jacketed bullet is damaged by grazing a hard object such as a branch, the extremely rapid spinning of the bullet essentially causes it to spin itself apart. The jacket is torn off and has no aerodynamic shape and travels as such. Several witness report seeing a puff of smoke and sparks from the road behing the limo at the time of the first shot.
[Undocumented speculation]
This is likely the damaged copper jacket hitting the road. Also, (as experimentally proven), the lead core remains shaped like bullet. After grazing the branch its course was altered but flew essentially inline with the orignal trajectory but high, over the limosine striking the curb by the underpass.
[More undocumented speculation]
Analysis of the curb showed lead compostion consistent with the other bullet fragements, but no copper.
the second hitting JFK in the back, climbing to exit at the throat, then magically plunging to hit the Governor.
Wrong again. With the limo driving downhill the exit wound is slightly lower than the entrance wound, as expected. It then hits Connally. No magic.
Magic. The photos do not lie. Look at the one posted at #67, right above. The angles are all wrong.
This leaves the hurried third shot
No hurry. There is a significantly longer pause between the 2nd and 3rd shots than the 1st and 2nd.
Yet again, undocumented speculation on your part, not supported by the filmed record.
a very dubious [& unduplicated] feat for the rifle and any marksman to date.
Not true. The "feat" has not only been expermentlly duplicated, its been duplicated many times, with the marksmen usually remarking on how easy it was from 88 yards.
Simply not true. The Reports experts couldn't do it, and all of the media attempts since have been doctored up farces.
I'm pretty sure that top was not bulletproof. It couldn't have hurt, I guess, but I wouldn't have wanted to bet my life on it.
It doesn't matter which blur it was; Kennedy and Connally were indeed lined up perfectly. For some reason, the original conspiracy theorists made several assumptions about the relative positions of the two men in the convertible which simply were not true. Connally was in a jump seat which was several inches lower than JFK's seat, as well as several inches further inwards towards the middle of the vehicle. Put their seats in the proper positions, and place Connally in the right position (his torso already twisted to the right, hat in hand), and the "magic bullet" makes a perfectly straight line through JFK's torso and the Governor's wrist and thigh.
You insist that oswald acted alone. I see facts in the Report that indicate otherwise.
I guess anyone will do. From everything I have seen, Oswald acted alone.
The Report itself raises many factual doubts. I see them.
He had the means and the "motives", as twisted as they were, and all the circumstancial and physical evidence points squarely at him.
I have no doubt as to oswalds guilt. I have many doubts as to his being the lone gunman.
If there were some grand conspiracy with a cast of thousands, how the hell did they manage to keep it quite for 44 years? It completly defies logic for anyone not as kooked-out as Oliver Stone.
Obviously, there was no grand cast of thousands. Just a few kooks did the deed, and their tracks were then obliterated by a thousand [government] clowns.
The " Magic Bullet " theory is just that, a theory. I'll go with what Big John Connally, a life long hunter familiar with being around gun shots and his wife , also an old Texas hunter said about that day. They said that John WAS NOT hit by the same bullet that hit Kennedy. Connally said he'd go to his grave believing that and he did. The Zapruder film PROVES that no matter who turns it into a computerized cartoon and puts it on T.V. I dont give a damn who shot that piece of shit Kennedy but, I'll take credible testimony from the Connallys over a bullshit theory from a Yankee Lawyer any day.
Sure it does. And 3D computer modeling of Daly Plaza, the car, JFK and the Gov's positions, cross referenced from the numerous films and photos, bears this out. Ruler straight line from Oswald's window through all seven wounds.
No it isn't. From that window on the 6th floor, you are looking damn near dead-on at the rear of where the Limo was traveling. From Oswald's vantage point, Connelley was exactly in front of Kennedy because Connelly was in a jump-seat, that was inboard from the door. The jump-seat also sat lower than the seat Kennedy was in which was elevated.
Yet JFKs coat & shirt show a bullet hole 5" down the back, exiting at the tie, too high to hit Connelly unless JFK was noticeably leaning forward. He was sitting upright, as the film shows. Spectors Magic Bullet was necessary.
I have stood there and looked. It was an easy shot.
So have I. It was not an easy shot to this old hunter. Nor was it to any of the Reports experts.
There were at least 5 other people, all strangers looking at the same time, and they ALL said the same. The photos make it look long range and off at an angle. It wasn't long range and it nearly dead-on the rear of the limo.
The tree was admittedly in the way on the first shot; a balky action, buck fever, and a bad scope coupled with no indication of a hit would have made the next two shots very chancy. If oswald did it alone, he missed his calling as a world class sniper.
The Report is a near totally flawed document. - A government joke, as even some members of the Commission later admitted.
Be on the lookout for an upcoming episode of Conspiracy! on the History Channel, about Jack Ruby. #1 son is Associate Producer and Editor (Towers Productions)
ohd
I was sixteen at the time.
But the chance of deflection would have been greatly increased.
Plus with the glare from the sun, distortion and other small variables would have made the shots a moving target more difficult.
I still believe that too.
>>I thought Kennedy moved backwards after he was shot from behind<<
Probably stiffened from the pain. A commom reaction.
Just about every puzzling or mysterious thing that people think is relevant to the JFK assassination either never happened, isn't that mysterious at all, is pure fantasy, urban legend muddied from endless retelling, or can be simply explained. Posner shoots down every published conspiracy tale in detail and shows where the logic holes and plain ignorance of the facts are in the various conspiracy works, all the while showing the exact sequence of events in the timeline from Oswald's birth, his youth, his young adulthood, murder of JFK, his death, and the events that transpired afterwards.
I used to be a conspiracy theorist too, but never had the case summed up for me as well as Posner did. I know better now, and generally don't even want to talk to anyone that hasn't read his book.
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