Robert B. Livingston was
born in 1918. He studied at Stanford University and graduated in 1940
before obtaining his M. D. from Stanford Medical School. During the
Second World War he served in the Pacific
and took part in the invasion of Okinawa.
In 1946 he began work at the Yale University School of Medicine.
In 1952 President Dwight
Eisenhower appointed Livingston as the Scientific Director of
the National Institute for Neurological Diseases. He also held the
post under President John
F. Kennedy.
In 1964 Livingston later founded the first ever department of Neurosciences
at UCSD.
In the 1970s, Livingston
was instrumental in developing some of the first 3-D images of the
human brain. Later he was awarded a major grant to develop a prototype
computer system to map the brain in three dimensions in microscopic
detail.
Livingston was active in
several anti-nuclear weapons and peace organizations, including the
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and in
1985 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Livingston,
along with David Mantik, Charles
Crenshaw,
Ronald
F. White and
Jack White, contributed to Assassination
Science (edited by James
H. Fetzer).
Robert B. Livingston died
in 2002.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Robert
B. Livingston, letter to David
Lifton (2nd May, 1992)
I learned from a former
classmate of mine from Stanford who was then a reporter for the Sr.
Louis Post-Dispatch, Richard Dudman, that he was one of the White
House press group that accompanied the President to Dallas. Not getting
much information from the Parkland Hospital, Dick went out to inspect
the Lincoln limousine in which the President and Connolly and their
wives had been riding. He thought he saw for certain, that there was
a through-and-through hole in the upper left margin of the windshield
He described the spaling-splintering of glass at the margins as though
the missile had entered from in front of the vehicle. When he reached
over to pass his pencil or pen through the hole to test its patency,
an FBI or Secret Service man roughly drew him away and shooed him
off, instructing him that he wasn't allowed to come so close to that
vehicle.
If there were a through-and-through
windshield penetration, in that location, according to Dick, it had
to come from in front. According to him, it would have been impossible
to hit the windshield in that location from the overhead angle from
the School Book Depository nor would a through-and-through penetration
have been likely to be caused by a ricocheting bullet bouncing up
from the rear.
What is most relevant
from my personal experience is that on that same evening before the
President's body on Air Force One had arrived at Andrews AFB I telephoned
the Bethesda Navy Hospital. I believe that the call was made before
the plane arrived because I recollect that it was following that call
that I watched Robert S McNamara (Bob McNamara, is a long-standing,
since 1952, mountain-climbing and hiking companion of mine) receive
the Kennedy entourage and the casket being lowered on a fork life
from the rear of the Air Force One onto the field tarmac.
Inasmuch as I was Scientific
Director of two of the institutes at the NIH - and both institutes
were pertinent to the matter of the President's assassination and
brain injury - the Navy Hospital operator and the Officer on Duty
put me through to speak directly with Dr Humes who was waiting to
perform the autopsy. After introductions, we began a pleasant conversation.
He told me that he had not heard much about the reporting from Dallas
and from the Parkland Hospital. I told him that the reason for my
making such an importuning call was to stress that the Parkland Hospital
physicians' examination of President Kennedy revealed what they reported
to be a small wound in the neck, closely adjacent to and to the right
of the trachea. I explained that I had knowledge from the literature
on high-velocity wound ballistics research, in addition to considerable
personal combat experience examining and repairing bullet and shrapnel
wounds. I was confident that a small wound of that sort had to be
a wound of entrance and that if it were a wound of exit, it would
almost certainly be widely blown out, with cruciate or otherwise wide,
tearing outward ruptures of the underlying tissues and skin.
I stressed to Dr. Humes
how important it was that the autopsy pathologists carefully examine
the President's neck to characterize that particular wound and to
distinguish it from the neighbouring tracheotomy wound.
I went on to presume,
further, that the neck wound would probably not have anything to do
with the main cause of death-massive, disruptive, brain injury - because
of the angle of bullet trajectory and the generally upright position
of the President's body, sitting up in the limousine. Yet, I said,
carefully, if that wound were confirmed as a wound of entry, it would
prove beyond peradventure of doubt that that shot had been fired from
in front-hence that if there were shots from behind, there had to
have been more than one gunman. Just at that moment, there was an
interruption in our conversation. Dr. Humes returned after a pause
of a few seconds to say that "the FBI will not let me talk any
further." I wished him good luck, and the conversation was ended.
My wife can be good witness to that conversation because we shared
our mutual distress over the terrible events, and she shared with
me my considerations weighing the decision to call over to the Bethesda
Navy Hospital. The call originated in the kitchen of our home on Burning
Tree Road in Bethesda with her being present throughout. After the
telephone call, I exclaimed to her my dismay over the abrupt termination
of my conversation with Dr. Humes, through the intervention of the
FBI. I wondered aloud why they would want to interfere with a discussion
between physicians relative to the problem of how best to investigate
and interpret the autopsy. Now, with knowledge of the apparently prompt
and massive control of information that was imposed on assignment
of responsibility for the assassination of President Kennedy, I can
appreciate that the interruption may have been far more pointed than
I had presumed at that time.
I conclude, therefore,
on the basis of personal experience, that Dr. Humes did have his attention
drawn to the specifics and significance of President Kennedy's neck
wound prior to his beginning the autopsy. His testimony that he only
learned about the neck wound on the day after completion of the autopsy,
after he had communicated with Doctor Perry in Dallas by telephone,
means that he either forgot what I told him (although he appeared
to be interested and attentive at the time) or that the autopsy was
already under explicit non-medical control.
That event, coupled with
Dick Dudman's report to me around the same time, of what appeared
to him to be a penetrating hole through the Lincoln windshield, seems
to me to add two grains of confirming evidence to the conspiracy interpretation.
Incidentally, sometime later, I learned that the Secret Service had
ordered from the Ford Motor Company a number of identical Lincoln
limousine windshields "for target practice". It seems to
me that they might have wanted to learn how much protection could
be expected from such a windshield. Alternatively, they might have
wanted to produce an inside nick in a windshield, without through-and-through
penetration, so that they could substitute that nicked windshield
for the other one, if it were needed for corroborative evidence relating
to the Warren Commission's investigative interpretation and thesis.
(2)
Robert
B. Livingston, letter to Maynard
Parker, editor of Newsweek (10th September, 1993)
I was Scientific Director
of the National Institute for Mental Health and (concurrently) of
the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, at
the time of the assassination. These two institutes are obviously
relevant to interpretations of brain damage sustained by the president.
On the basis of November
22, 1963, broadcasts from Parkland Hospital, I felt obliged to call
Commander James Humes, at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, who was about
to perform the autopsy. Our telephone conversation was completed before
the body arrived at Andrews AFB. I called to retail media reports
from Parkland Hospital that there was a small wound in the front of
his neck, just to the right of the trachea.
Humes said he hadn't been
paying attention to the news, but was receptive to what I had to tell
him. We had a cordial conversation about this. Based on my knowledge
of medical and experimental analyses of bullet wounding, and personal
experiences caring for numerous bullet and shrapnel wounds throughout
the battle of Okinawa, I told him that a small wound, as described,
would have to be a wound of entry. When a bullet exits from flesh,
it violently blows out a lot of tissue, usually making a conspicuous
cruciate opening with tissue protruding. A wound of entry, however,
just punctures as it penetrates. So I stressed the need for him to
probe that wound to trace its course fully and to find the location
of the bullet or fragments. I especially emphasized that such a wound
had to be an entry wound. And since the president was facing forward
the whole time, that meant that there had to be a conspiracy. As we
talked about that, he interrupted the conversation momentarily. He
came back on the line to say, "I'm sorry. Dr. Livingston, but
the FBI won't let me talk any longer." Thus, the conversation
ended.
Two important subsequent
events are noteworthy: Commander Humes did not dissect that wound,
and when asked why not, in the Warren Commission hearings, he said
that he didn't know about the small wound in the neck until the following
day when he had a conversation with Dr. Perry at Parkland Hospital.
A further issue concerns
reports of the appearance of cerebellar tissue in the occipital wound.
This was first reported "live" as observations by an orderly,
and by a nurse, both of whom were in the surgery where attempts to
resuscitate the president were conducted prior to his death. I didn't
give any credibility to those stories and dismissed them from my focus
at the time, attributing what I thought must be mistaken identification
of cerebellum to a likely lack of familiarity with neuroanatomy by
two non-medically trained individuals. It would be easy to assume
cerebellum in looking at macerated cerebral tissue protruding from
a bloody wound. But since then, around six reputable physicians who
saw the president at that time have testified that cerebellum was
extruding from the wound at the back of his head. That is an important
clue, indicating that something must have burst into the posterior
fossa with sufficient force to uproot the cerebellum and blow a substantial
hole through the heavy, covering, well-anchored, tentorium, which
separates cerebellum from the main chamber of the skull.
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