(His accounts of these two emergency room proceedings are both coldly clinical and harrowing. In the case of the late president, for instance, McClelland describes how a portion of Kennedy's cerebrum fell out of the gaping wound in his skull and onto the operating table while surgeons were exploring a wound in his throat.)
Two years prior to the presidential assassination, McClelland paid a visit to Baylor Hospital to pick up his wife's paycheck. As he approached the side door, three black limos pulled up. A stern looking character invited the doc to step aside -- which he did -- and out of one of the cars stepped President John F. Kennedy. The new president was there to visit Senator Sam Rayburn, hospitalized for pancreatic cancer.
On a later occasion, McClelland was called in to assist a colleague with an exploratory surgery. Arriving at the hospital, he was directed to the operating room and took time to check the patient's clipboard beforehand. His name? Abraham Zapruder.
Interestingly, Dr. McClelland is convinced that more than one shooter was involved in the Kennedy assassination. According to Marian Ann J. Montgomery -- now Executive Director of PCHPS and one-time director of interpretation at the Sixth Floor Museum -- he is one of the few doctors on the scene at the time who now support this view.
PHOTO signed for me: Dr. Robert McClelland holds the blood-stained shirt he wore in the Parkland Hospital Emergency Room on the day he and other doctors tried to save John Kennedy Randal Ford
Testimony Of Dr. Robert M. Mcclelland Resumed
The testimony of Dr. Robert M. McClelland was taken at 3:25 p.m.,
March 25, 1964, at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Tex., by Mr.
Arlen Specter, assistant counsel of the President's Commission.
Mr. SPECTER - May the record show that Dr. Robert M. McClelland has return to have a brief additional deposition concerning a translation of "L' Express which has been called to my attention in the intervening time which has elapsed between March 21, when I took Dr. McClelland's deposition on the first occasion, and today.
Dr. McClelland, will you raise your right hand? Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give to the President's Commission in this deposition proceeding will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Dr. McCLELLAND - I do.
Mr. SPECTER - Dr. McClelland, I show you a translation from the French, of the magazine, "L' Express" issue of February 20, 1964, and ask you if you would read this item, with particular emphasis on a reference to a quotation or statement made by you to a reporter from the St, Louis Post Dispatch.
Dr. McCLELLAND - (Examined instrument referred to.)
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 ma
ny 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 it's 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 lake 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 tolling 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
