Mr. SPECTER. Now, have you had an opportunity to read over that excerpt?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you talk to a reporter from the St. Louis Post
Dispatch about this matter?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. And what was his name?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Richard Dudman.
Mr. SPECTER. And when did you have that conversation with Mr. Dudman?
Dr. McCLELLAND. As well as I recall, it was the day after the
assassination, as nearly as I can recall, but I'm not certain about
that.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you tell me as closely as you remember what he said
to you and you said to him, please?
Dr. McCLELLAND. The main point he seemed to be making was to attempt
to define something about the wound, the nature of the wound, and
as near as I can recall, I indicated to him that the wound was a
small undamaged--appearing punctate area in the skin of the neck,
the anterior part of the neck, which had the appearance of the usual
entrance wound of a bullet, but that this certainly could not be--you
couldn't make a statement to that effect with any complete degree of
certainty, though we were, as I told him, experienced in seeing wounds
of this nature, and usually felt that we could tell the difference
between an entrance and an exit wound, and this was, I think, in
essence what I told him about the nature of the wound.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, had you actually observed the wound prior to the time
the tracheotomy was performed on that neck wound?
Dr. McCLELLAND. No; my knowledge of the entrance wound, as I stated,
in my former deposition, was merely from what Dr. Perry told me when
I entered the room and began putting on a pair of surgical gloves to
assist with the tracheotomy.
Dr. Perry looked up briefly and said that they had made an incision and
were in the process of making an incision in the neck, which extended
through the middle of the wound in question in the front of the neck.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, you have just characterized it in that last answer as
an entrance wound.
Dr. McCLELLAND. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say the wound anyway, not the
entrance wound--that might be a slip of the tongue.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have a firm opinion at this time as to whether it
is an entrance wound or exit wound or whatever?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Of course, my opinion now would be colored by
everything that I've heard about it and seen since, but I'll say this,
if I were simply looking at the wound again and had seen the wound in
its unchanged state, and which I did not, and, of course, as I say, it
had already been opened up by the tracheotomy incision when I saw the
wound--but if I saw the wound in its state in which Dr. Perry described
it to me, I would probably initially think this were an entrance wound,
knowing nothing about the circumstances as I did at the time, but I
really couldn't say--that's the whole point. This would merely be a
calculated guess, and that's all, not knowing anything more than just
seeing the wound itself.
Mr. SPECTER. But did you, in fact, see the wound prior to the time the
incision was made?
Dr. McCLELLAND. No.
Mr. SPECTER. So that any preliminary thought you had even, would be
based upon what you had been told by Dr. Perry?
Dr. McCLELLAND. That's right.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, did you tell Mr. Dudman of the St. Louis Post
Dispatch that you did not in fact see the wound in the neck, but your
only information of it came from what Dr. Perry had told you?
Dr. McCLELLAND. I don't recall whether I told him that or not. I really
don't remember whether I said I had seen the wound myself or whether
I was merely referring to our sort of collective opinion of it, or
whether I told him I had not seen the wound and was merely going by Dr.
Perry's report of it to me. I don't recall now, this far away in time
exactly what I said to him.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. McClelland, I want to ask you a few additional
questions, and some of these questions may duplicate questions which I
asked you last Saturday, and the reason for that is, we have not yet
had a chance to transcribe the deposition of last Saturday, so I do not
have before me the questions I asked you at that time and the answers
you gave, and since last Saturday I have taken the depositions of many,
many doctors on the same topics, so it is not possible for me to be
absolutely certain of the specific questions which I asked you at that
time, but permit me to ask you one or several more questions on the
subject.
First, how many bullets do you think were involved in inflicting the
wounds on President Kennedy which you observed?
Dr. McCLELLAND. At the present time, you mean, or at the immediate
moment?
Mr. SPECTER. Well, take the immediate moment and then the present time.
Dr. McCLELLAND. At the moment, of course, it was our impression before
we had any other information from any other source at all, when we were
just confronted with the acute emergency, the brief thoughts that ran
through our minds were that this was one bullet, that perhaps entered
through the front of the neck and then in some peculiar fashion which
we really had, as I mentioned the other day, to strain to explain to
ourselves, had coursed up the front of the vertebra and into the base
of the skull and out the rear of the skull.
This would have been a very circuitous route for the bullet to have
made, so that when we did find later on what the circumstances were
surrounding the assassination, this was much more readily explainable
to ourselves that the two wounds were made by two separate bullets.
Mr. SPECTER. And what is your view or opinion today as to how many
bullets inflicted the injuries of President Kennedy?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Two.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, what would be the reason for your changing your
opinion in that respect?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Oh, just simply the later reports that we heard from
all sources, of all the circumstances surrounding the assassination.
Certainly no further first-hand information came to me and made me
change my mind in that regard.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. McClelland, let me ask you to assume a few additional
facts, and based on a hypothetical situation which I will put to you
and I'll ask you for an opinion.
Assume, if you will, that President Kennedy was shot on the upper right
posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula at a point
14 cm. from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm. below a
tip of the right mastoid process, assume further that that wound of
entry was caused by a 6.5-mm. missile shot out of a rifle having a
muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per second, being located
160 to 250 feet away from President Kennedy, that the bullet entered on
the point that I described on the President's back, passed between two
strap muscles on the posterior aspect of the President's body and moved
through the fascial channel without violating the pleura cavity, and
exited in the midline lower third anterior portion of the President's
neck, would the hole which Dr. Perry described to you on the front side
of the President's neck be consistent with the hole which such a bullet
might make in such a trajectory through the President's body?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Yes; I think so.
Mr. SPECTER. And what would your reasoning be for thinking that that
would be a possible hole of exit on those factors as I have outlined
them to you?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Well, I think my reasoning would be basically that the
missile was traveling mainly through soft tissue, rather than exploding
from a bony chamber and that by the time it reached the neck that it
had already lost, because of the distance from which it was fired, even
though the muzzle velocity was as you stated--would have already lost
a good deal of its initial velocity and kinetic strength and therefore
would have perhaps made, particularly, if it were a fragment of the
bullet as bullets do sometimes fragment, could have made a small hole
like this in exiting. It certainly could have done that.
Mr. SPECTER. What would have happened then to the other portion of the
bullet if it had fragmented?
Dr. McCLELLAND. It might have been left along, or portions of it along
the missile track--sometimes will be left scattered up and down this.
Other fragments will maybe scatter in the wound and sometimes there
will be multiple fragments and sometimes maybe only a small fragment
out of the main bullet, sometimes a bullet will split in half--this is
extremely difficult for me to say just what would happen in a case like
that.
Mr. SPECTER. Well, assuming this situation--that the bullet did not
fragment, because the autopsy report shows no fragmentation, that is,
it cannot show the absence of fragmentation, but we do know that there
were no bullets left in the body at any point, so that no fragment is
left in.
Dr. McCLELLAND. I think even then you could make the statement that
this wound could have resulted from this type bullet fired through
this particular mass of soft tissue, losing that much velocity before
it exited from the body. Where you would expect to see this really
great hole that is left behind would be, for instance, from a very high
velocity missile fired at close range with a heavy caliber bullet, such
as a .45 pistol fired at close range, which would make a small entrance
hole, relatively, and particularly if it entered some portion of the
anatomy such as the head, where there was a sudden change in density
from the brain to the skull cavity, as it entered. As it left the body,
it would still have a great deal of force behind it and would blow up
a large segment of tissue as it exited. But I don't think the bullet
of this nature fired from that distance and going through this large
area of homogenous soft tissue would necessarily make the usual kind
of exit wound like I just described, with a close range high velocity
heavy caliber bullet.
This is why it would be difficult to say with certainty as has been
implied in some newspaper articles that quoted me, that you could tell
for sure that this was an entrance or an exit wound. I think this was
blown up a good deal.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. McClelland, why wasn't the President's body turned
over?
Dr. McCLELLAND. The President's body was not turned over because the
initial things that were done as in all such cases of extreme emergency
are to first establish an airway and second, to stop hemorrhage and
replace blood, so that these were the initial things that were carried
out immediately without taking time to do a very thorough physical
examination, which of course would have required that these other
emergency measures not be done immediately.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you make any examination of the President's back at
all?
Dr. McCLELLAND. No.
Mr. SPECTER. Was any examination of the President's back made to your
knowledge?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Not here--no.
Mr. SPECTER. Do you have anything to add which you think might be
helpful in any way to the Commission?
Dr. McCLELLAND. No; I think not except again to emphasize perhaps that
some of our statements to the press about the nature of the wound
may have been misleading, possibly--probably because of our fault in
telling it in such a way that they misinterpreted our certainty of
being able to tell entrance from exit wounds, which as we say, we
generally can make an educated guess about these things but cannot be
certain about them. I think they attributed too much certainty to us
about that.
Mr. SPECTER. Now, have you talked to anyone from the Federal Government
about this matter since I took your deposition last Saturday?
Dr. McCLELLAND. No.
Mr. SPECTER. And did you and I chat for a moment or two with my showing
you this translation of "L' Express" prior to the time we went on the
record here?
Dr. McCLELLAND. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. And is the information which you gave to me in response to
my questions the same that we put on the record here?
Dr. McCLELLAND. To the best of my knowledge--yes.
Mr. SPECTER. Thank you very much, Dr. McClelland.
Dr. McCLELLAND. All right. Thank you.