Kennedy Assassination

The Navy pathologists who performed the autopsy on John F. Kennedy have broken a long silence on their work. In interviews conducted by Dr. George M. Lundberg, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, they have made it clear that their own professional knowledge of physics, physiology and anatomy left them with no doubt that the two bullets that struck the president were fired from above and behind.Dr. James J. Humes put it this way regarding the fatal shot: "The pattern of the entrance and exit wounds in the skull prove it. [What that bullet did]

ConspiracyIt is unfortunately true, as Garry Wills says (Opinion * Commentary, Aug. 27), that many people believe what they want to believe, regardless of evidence.But this is an argument that cuts two ways. Mr. Wills shows a willingness to believe the government's official version of the John F. Kennedy assassination, despite the mounting evidence that the Warren Commission's report is seriously flawed.He forgets that that report's conclusion -- that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin -- is itself only a theory, untested in any court of law.This circumstance alone should entitle assassination researchers (dubbed "conspiratorialists" by Mr. Wills)

NEARLY 40 YEARS ago, the Warren Commission released its findings on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The report and its 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, with 17,000 pages of testimony and more than 10 million words, initially were celebrated as the most comprehensive investigation in history. The commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassinated JFK - there was no domestic or foreign conspiracy behind the tragedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Over the years, the conclusions of the presidential commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren have come under sustained attack by critics who charge that they were nothing more than official mythology, a massive deception to cover up the politically unacceptable truth that Mr. Kennedy was a victim of a conspiracy.

WASHINGTON -- Scores of researchers, reporters and assassination theorists descended on the National Archives yesterday to begin poring over 800,000 pages of newly released documents on the death of John F. Kennedy.The files, organized in gray cardboard boxes, held long-secret CIA cables and memos about Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as most records of the Warren Commission's investigation of the crime, the records of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 and those of the 1975 Rockefeller Commission study of CIA domestic activities.

I had always wished that my great-grandmother, who lived in Maryland during the Civil War, had written some personal notes as to what it was like for her at the time. They would be especially interesting for us now. With that thought in mind, I wrote some of my memories of World War II for my grandchildren. I attach the article for your review since Dec 7 is today, it puts a human touch on the anniversary date. Some things you never forget, and those of us living with memories of WWII recall with great sadness a quiet Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941.

Kenneth O'Donnell, aide to President John F. Kennedy, stepped into a small cubicle at Parkland Hospital, where Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson nervously waited with his wife and several aides to learn the condition of the president. Kennedy had been shot as his motorcade made its way through downtown Dallas on a sun-splashed November autumn afternoon. "He's gone," O'Donnell said to Johnson, who through an assassin's hand had become the 36th president of the United States. It was 1:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, Nov. 22, 1963.

F. Irvin Dymond,83, the New Orleans lawyer who won an acquittal for businessman Clay Shaw in the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy trial fictionalized by moviemaker Oliver Stone, died of cancer Saturday in New Orleans.Mona May Karff,86, a seven-time U.S. women's chess champion and one of the first four Americans to attain the rank of international woman master in chess, died Jan. 10 in New York.Pub Date: 1/21/98

Kenichi Fukui, 79, a Japanese chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his work on the principles of chemical reactions, died in Kyoto on Friday of cancerous peritonitis, family members said.Michael Tippett, 93, a composer who became one of Britain's most important musical figures while defying both English nationalism and academic musical fashion, died Thursday in London.Robert A. Houghton, 84, the former assistant chief in Los Angeles who led the police investigation into Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's assassination and the Manson family murders, died in Los Angeles Dec. 31.Pub Date: 1/11/98

HOLLYWOOD -- Now that "JFK," Oliver Stone's take on the Kennedy assassination, is on its way to theater next month, what's left for socially conscious filmmakers looking for conspiracies to unravel? Now there's the "October Surprise" -- the dark tale of political intrigue that suggests President Bush and the late William Casey were involved in a plot to delay the release of U.S. hostages held in Iran until after the 1980 presidential election. The controversial subject has already spawned books and could be headed for the big screen.

Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancon, 87, who as Archbishop of Madrid-Alcala led Spain's Roman Catholic Church during the country's transition in the 1970s from the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco to democracy, died of cancer Monday in Valencia. His outspoken defense of workers and demands for more freedom led to frequent clashes with General Franco during the waning years of the dictator's 1939-1975 regime.Nimrod Workman, 99, a folk singer and former coal miner who found fame in later years at folk festivals and on television, died Saturday in Knoxville, Tenn.