Ever since the Kennedy assassination, a popular parlor game has been: What happened to JFK’s brain? The game has served as a useful distraction from the much more critically important issue, one that is still unexplained to this day by the Pentagon, which, strangely, was the entity that conducted the autopsy on President Kennedy’s body. This unexplained issue is: Why did U.S. military officials substitute another person’s brain for President Kennedy’s brain during their autopsy of the president’s body?
Notwithstanding all the controversy that continues to swirl around the assassination of President Kennedy more than 50 years ago, everyone agrees on at least one fact: There was a gunshot that hit President Kennedy in the head, one that blew out a large portion of his brain. There is no controversy or dispute about that fact.
Yet, take a look at this rendition of an autopsy photograph of what is represented to be Kennedy’s brain that is part of the official JFK autopsy records. The rendition was done by Ida Dox, a professional medical illustrator who was hired by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reinvestigated the JFK assassination during the 1970s.
You will see that while the brain is split in two halves, it is fully intact. That is, it is not missing a quarter to one-third of its mass, which was the amount of the brain that was estimated to have been blown away by the shot that hit Kennedy in the head.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, when a brain has 1/4- 1/3 of its mass blown away, it is incapable of regenerating itself into a full-sized brain.
This brain mystery is reinforced by the official autopsy report, which reflects that the president’s brain weighed 1500 grams.
That poses a big problem because the brain of a normal, undamaged person weighs about 1350 grams. JFK’s brain supposedly weighed 150 grams more than the average-sized brain. Ordinarily, that might not be too surprising. But it becomes quite impossible when one considers that 1/4-1/3 of the JFK’s brain had been blown away before it was weighed.
There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from this set of circumstantial evidence: The U.S. military substituted someone’s else’s brain for that of President Kennedy.
Of course, there will always be people who say, “Jacob, unless and until the Pentagon confesses that they did this, I simply will refuse to accept that it was done.” That’s because for many people, the only thing that matters is what the law calls “direct evidence,” such as a written confession or eyewitness testimony.
But as any judge or lawyer in the land will tell you, in the eyes of the law what is called “circumstantial evidence” is just as valid as direct evidence.
What is circumstantial evidence? Assume that you wake up one morning and look outside and see a clear sky but snow on the streets, trees, homes, and lawns. Even though you did not see it snow during the night, which would constitute direct evidence, you can reasonably conclude from the circumstantial evidence that it did, in fact, snow during the night.
That is what has been going on in the Kennedy assassination for the past 54 years. People say, “Jacob, since the national-security establishment has never confessed to the assassination of President Kennedy, I’m just never going to believe that they would do such a thing.”
Such people ignore two important things: First, when it comes to covert state-sponsored assassinations, it has been the longtime policy of the national-security state to never put any reference to such assassinations into writing, for obvious reasons. Second, when it comes to the JFK assassination, as the veil of secrecy has gradually been lifted on national-security state’s JFK-assassination related records, the growing mountain of circumstantial evidence points to the national-security state has the malefactor in the president’s murder.
One way to consider this phenomenon is start with the autopsy and work your way backwards, focusing on the many mysteries and anomalies raised by the circumstantial evidence in the case and how they point to the national-security establishment as the malefactor in the president’s assassination.
First of all, ask yourself: Why would they insist on using the military in Maryland to conduct the autopsy, given that the assassination occurred in Dallas? Doesn’t that seem a little weird, especially since America was not a military nation and the death wasn’t brought about from some sort of wartime action? The Dallas medical examiner was fully prepared to conduct the autopsy, and in fact Texas law required him to do so. Why would Lyndon Johnson order a team of armed Secret Service agents to violate state law by forcibly preventing the autopsy from being carried out by the Texas civilian authorities? Why would that team of Secret Service agents implicitly threaten to kill the Dallas medical examiner and anyone else who got in their way by brandishing their guns and screaming and yelling for people to get out of their way?
Take a look again at the artist’s rendition of the brain photograph in the official autopsy records. Notice the middle, bottom section of the brain — the part that has horizontal lines across it. That’s the cerebellum. Notice that according to the rendition, it is fully intact.
Now, consider these statements by physicians who treated President Kennedy in Dallas:
Dr. Robert McClelland: “some of the cerebellar tissue had been blasted out.”
Dr. Kent Clark: “Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were protruding from the wound.”
Dr. M.T. Jenkins: “the cerebellum had protruded from the wound.”
Dr. Paul Peters: “You could … see cerebral injury to the cerebral cortex and I thought at the time to the cerebellum”
Such statements are another example of how circumstantial evidence can be used to prove a point — in this case, the point being that the military substituted another person’s brain for that of President Kennedy.
Is there any other circumstantial evidence to suggest that the military substituted someone’s else’s brain for that of President Kennedy?
As a matter of fact, there is. When the Assassination Records Review Board was securing the release of long-secret official records relating to the assassination during the 1990s, it discovered that there had actually been two separate brain examinations as part of Kennedy’s autopsy. The ARRB was the commission that was established in the 1990s after the release of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posits that the national-security establishment orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy, who they were at war against owing to Kennedy’s decision to end the Cold War and reach out to the Soviet Union and Cuba in a spirit of peaceful coexistence and friendly relations.
How did the ARRB discover that there had been two separate brain examinations? Through circumstantial evidence. The official autopsy photographer, John Stringer, testified before the ARRB that he had attended the brain examination and taken photographs of the brain. He testified that during the examination, the autopsy pathologists had “sectioned” the brain by cutting it as one would cut a loaf of bread.
Now, go back to the artist’s rendition of the brain photograph in the official record. It depicts a full-sized, non-sectioned brain.
Moreover, Stringer told the ARRB that the brain photographs that are now in the official record were not the photographs that he took of Kennedy’s brain.
Additionally, the testimony of the autopsy pathologists before the ARRB established that there were two separate brain examinations, attended by different people and at different dates.
Did the ARRB investigate the matter? They couldn’t. The law prevented them from doing so. When the JFK Records Act, which mandated the release of JFK records and called the ARRB into existence, was enacted, someone slipped a provision into the law that expressly prohibited the ARRB from investigating any matter relating to the Kennedy assassination. Their mandate was limited to securing release of still-secret JFK-assassination related records. Thus, when the ARRB discovered the two brain examinations, one that the circumstantial evidence established involved someone else’s brain, the ARRB was prohibited from investigating the matter.
Why wasn’t the matter investigated back in 1964 or the 1970s by the House Select Committee? Because the national-security establishment successfully kept it secret for 40 years, until the ARRB happened to have discover it (but could not investigate it).
Would it have been possible for military officials to secure a substitute brain during the autopsy? Of course. The Bethesda Naval Hospital, which is located on the grounds where the autopsy was conducted, was a teaching hospital. Necessarily, they would have had lots of brains on hand for medical students to work on. It would have been easy to bring one over for the autopsy.
Here are two articles published by the mainstream press in 1998 on the matter:
Newly Released JFK Documents Raise Questions About Medical Evidence by Deb Riechman (Associated Press, November 9, 1998).
Archive Photos Not of JFK’s Brain, Concludes Aide to Review Board by George Lardner Jr. (Washington Post, November 10, 1998).
Significantly, but not too surprisingly, after the publication of those two articles, neither Congress nor the Justice Department followed up with an investigation. By this time, people had become tired or too fearful to go where the circumstantial evidence led.
Why did the military substitute another person’s brain for that of the president? As I detail in my two books, The Kennedy Autopsy and Regime Change: The JFK Assassination, they were hiding the fact that the president had been shot from the front as part of an ingenious plot to pin the crime on someone who was supposedly firing from the rear.
In October 2017, another large batch of official records relating to the JFK assassination are set to be released under the mandate of the JFK Records Act. No, there won’t be any written confessions or admissions. But given the desire 25 years ago of the CIA and the Pentagon to delay disclosure of the documents for another 25 years, it is a virtual certainty that the records will contain even more circumstantial evidence that the national-security establishment carried out a regime change in America on November 22, 1963, no different in principle from the regime change operations it carried out in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1961), Cuba (1959-to date), Chile (1973), and others. That’s why, in my opinion, it is a virtual certainty that the CIA will request or strike a deal with President Trump (perhaps in exchange for dropping the Russia investigation) that enables them to have another extension of time for secrecy and cover-up.