What a joke your argument is.
This is what happens when someone who reads conspiracy literature - and not the actual testimony - testifies. And when a conspiracy buff like yourself reads that testimony and accepts hearsay repeated from conspiracy books as the truth. It's actually the exact opposite of the truth.
Here's the actual exchange, and it's got nothing to do with coercing Humes. It's one doctor telling the other doctors on the medical panel to shut up and listen to Doctor Humes. I apologize for the length of the post, but it's necessary to get the point across. The medical panel invited Dr. Humes to testify, and this is what transpired.
Dr. PETTY. Joe Davis, you have questions, I think, about the inshoot area, don't you?*
Dr. DAVIS. Well, in terms of the inshoot, my impression when I first looked at these films was that the inshoot was higher, and I equated that with the lesion in photograph, I believe it was No. 26, color photograph- ------well, it's 43------- and I interpreted---- which on is this?
Dr. BADEN. This is No. 42.
Dr. PETTY. We were wondering if that had been the inshoot.
Dr. HUMES. No, no, That's no wound.
Dr. DAVIS. Because in No. 42 I interpreted that as a wound, and the other, lower down in the neck, as just being a contaminant, a piece of brain tissue.
Dr. HUMES. No, that was a wound, and the wound on the skull precisely coincided with it.
Dr. DAVIS. Now it was a tunnel--
Dr HUMES. Yeah, tunnel for a way.
Dr. BOSWELL. Yeah, it's longer than it is wide, and tunneled along and actually under here, and then at the actual bone defect was above the--
Dr. HUMES. And this photograph No. 45, I am quite convinced, is an attempt to demonstrate that wound, and not a very successful one I'm afraid, because I can't for sure pick it out. This, I believe, was taken looking down at the inside looking close to the posterior cranial fossa.
Dr. BOSWELL. And what we see here is a lot of red and fragments of bone.
Dr. COE. Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell, have you discussed these photographs with the other pathologists who have previously gone over this this with you?
Dr. HUMES. I have not.
Dr. BOSWELL. I went over the photographs with Humes.
Dr. COE. Because at least there's already one of them right---I had the impression that they apparently thought---I was just curious as to---
Dr. HUMES. Our written description clearly, I think, indicates that point right there.
Dr. COE. But they describe, some of them, the entrance they feel being 10 centimeters above the occipital proturberance.
Dr. PETTY. Well, there have been all sorts of changes from the original--l mcan, right and left and up and down.
Dr. COE. No. That's why I was interested in whether they had discussed it with the pathologists or whether the pathologists had been interpreting entirely from the photographs when they made the statement.
Dr. PETTY. SO, on photograph No. 42, then, down right at the hairline, right at almost in the midline, is the inshoot wound, and this photograph is not taken with the inshoot wound centered in the photograph, but rather the posterior extension of the scalp tear is the subject of the photograph.
Dr. HUMES. Again, to be sure that it was related to the gentleman's head rather than focusing specifically on a wound, no I don't think we took the photograph specifically at that site, do you, Jay?
Dr. BOSWELL. No.
Dr. PETTY. And, you say, Dr. Boswell, that the bullet entered the skin and that the wound in the skull was a little above that.
Dr. BOSWELL. Right.
Dr. PETTY. Because apparently the bullet had tunneled a little under the skin and then that corresponds with the diagram that I saw which showed a point on the back of the body, the diagram with an arrow pointing upward and slightly to the left.
Dr. HUMES. You caught---I don't know what you are referring to.
Dr. DAVIS. What I'm saying--what I'm inferring: in the absence of photographs and specific measurements, we could only conjecture as to how long the tunneling but I would envision this as a tunneling first and then entry into the skull.
Mr. LOQUVAM. Gentlemen, may I say something?
Dr. DAVIS. Yes.
Dr. LOQUVAM. I don't think this discussion belongs in this record.
Dr. PETTY. All right.
Dr. HUMES. I agree.
Dr. LOQUVAM. We have no business recording this. This is for us to decide between ourselves; I don't think this belongs in this record.
Dr. PETTY. Well, we have to say something about our feeling as to why we're so interested in that one particular area.
Dr. HUMES. Could I make a comment that I think would be helpful to you, and you can throw out anything I say or whatever? But I feel obligated to make a certain interjection at this point, having heard this theory which I hadn't heard from the committee because I didn't pay that much attention quite frankly. Our attention was obviously directed to what we understood and thought to be clearly a wound of entrance. If such a fragment were to have detached itself from the main mass of the missile, it would have to be a relatively small fragment because the size of the defect in the skull which approximated this point was almost identical with the size of the defect in the skin. Do you follow that line of reasoning?
Dr. PETTY. Yes, that makes sense. I mean, I've seen the same thing.
Dr. DAVIS. I've seen the same thing---bothers me a bit--part of that casing comes off.
Dr. COE. The reason we are so interested in this, Dr. Humes, is because other pathologists have interpreted the---
Dr. LOQUVAM. I don't think this belongs in the damn record.
Dr. HUMES. Well, it probably doesn't.
Dr. LOQUVAM. You guys are nuts. You guys are nuts writing this stuff. It doesn't belong in that damn record.
Dr. BADEN. I think the only purpose of its being in the record is to explain to Dr. Humes what--
Dr. LOQUVAM. Why not turn off the record and explain to him and then go back and talk again.
Dr. BADEN. Well, our problem is not to get our opinions, but to get his opinions.
Dr. LOQUVAM. All right then, keep our opinions off. Here's Charles [Dr. Charles Petty] and Joe [Dr. Joe Davis] talking like mad in the damn record, and it doesn't belong in it. Sorry.
Conspiracy books paint that - by quoting selectively - as Dr. Loquvam being party to a coverup and trying to keep Humes testimony out of the record when he says "I don't think this belongs in the damn record". But the truth is quite different. Dr. Loquvam was telling the other members of the panel to shut up and listen to Humes and let's get his opinions on the record. Humes' opinions were the ones they were trying to get on the record and why they invited him to testify.
And then you get Purdy, who supposedly attended that discussion, and heard all the above, repeating not what actually transpired but testifying to the conspiracy spin on it that he read somewhere and now 'recollects' and even testifies to his reconstruction of a false memory of Dr. Petty taking Dr. Humes aside to set him straight.
And you don't quote the actual transcript of the exchange, but Purdy's faulty recollection of the exchange from his testimony to the ARRB, which is about two decades after the exchange.
Moreover, Humes testimony is that the wound is in the hairline at the bottom of the head. As Purdy stated, "He's practically down to the shirt". Yet you claim, somehow, this is evidence "that Dr. Humes was coerced into agreeing with the cowlick placement", which disagrees entirely with what Purdy said and Humes testified to.
And that's why I say "What a joke your argument is."
Hank