Dr. HUMES. Having completed the examination and remaining to assist the morticians in the preparation of the body, we did not leave the autopsy room until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. It was clearly obvious that a committee could not write the report. I had another commitment for that morning, a little later, a religious commitment with one of my children. And so I went home and took care of that, slept far several hours until about 6 in the evening of the day after, and then sat down and wrote the report that's sitting before you now myself, my own version of it. without any input other than the discussions that we thought that we had had, Dr. Boswell, Dr. Finck and myself. I then returned that morning and looked at what I had written--now wait, I'm a day ahead of myself---Saturday morning we discussed--
Dr. BOSWELL. Saturday morning we got together and we called Dallas.
Dr. HUMES. We called Dallas. See, we were at a loss because we hadn't appreciated the exit wound in the neck, we had been-- I have to go back a little bit. I think for your edification. There were four times as many people in the room most of the time as there are in this room at this moment, including the physician to the President, the Surgeon General of the Navy, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical Center, the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical School, the Army, Navy, and Air Force aides to the President of the United States at one time or another, the Secret Service, the FBI and countless nondescript people who were unknown to me. Mistake No. 1. So, there was considerable confusion. So we went home. I took care of this obligation that I had. To refresh my mind, we met together around noon on Saturday, 11 in the morning, perhaps 10:30, something like that and---
Dr. BADEN. Now this is the day after?
Dr. HUMES. The day after, within 6 or 8 hours of having completed the examination, assisting Waller's and so forth for the preparation of the President's remains. We got together and discussed our problem. We said we've got to talk to the people in Dallas We should have talked to them the night before, but there was no way we could get out of the room. You'd have to understand that situation, that hysterical situation that existed. How we kept our wits about us as well as we did is amazing to me. I don't know how we managed as poorly or as well as we did under the circumstances. So I called Dr. Perry. Took me a little while to reach him. We had a very nice conversation on the phone in which he described a missile wound, what he interpreted as a missile wound, in the midline of the neck through which he had created a very quick emergency, as you can see from the photographs, tracheotomy incision effect destroying its value to us and obscuring it very gorgeously for us. Well, of course, the minute he said that to me, lights went on, and we said ah, we have some place for our missile to have gone. And then, of course, I asked him, much to my amazement, had he or any other physician in attendance upon the President, examined the back of the patient, his neck, or his shoulder. They said no, the patient had never been moved from his back while they were administering to him. So, the confusion that existed from some of his comments and the comments of other standby people in the emergency room in Dallas had been in the news media and elsewhere, so that added to the confusion. So, following that, and that discussion, and we having a meeting of minds as to generally what was necessary to be accomplished, and being informed by the various people in anthority that our gross report should be delivered to the White House physician no later than Sunday evening, the next day, 24 hours later, or not quite 24 hours later. Not having slept for about 48 hours, I went home and rested from noon until 8 or 10 that evening, Saturday evening, and then I sat down in front of other notes on which I had made minor comments, handwritten notes. I wrote the report which is present here. Now we also have here--and since it's in the record I want to comment about it some comments that I destroyed, some notes related to this, by burning in the fireplace of my home, and that is true. However, nothing that was destroyed is not present in this write-up. Now, why did I do that? It's interesting, and I've not spoken of this in public. Not too long here of this, I had had the experience of serving as an escort officer for some foreign physicians from foreign navies, who were being entertained and given a course of instruction in the United States. We had 20 or 30 of these chaps, and they used to come through every year or two, and I often was escort officer for them. They spent 5 weeks in Washington or 5 weeks in the field, then we went various places. We went to submarine bases and Marine Corps installations and naval training centers to teach them how physicians function in the American Navy. One of the places to which I happened to take them--and we tried to teach them a little Americana--I took them to Greenfield Village, which, as many of you know, Henry Ford set up adjacent to his former home in suburban Detroit, Dearborn. And in that location is a courthouse in which President Lincoln used to hold forth when he was riding the circuit, and these men were very impressed with that, and they knew who President Lincoln was and were impressed with his courthouse and many other things in Greenfield Village. But what I was amazed to find there, because I personally did not know it was there until I made that visit, was the chair in which President Lincoln sat when he was assassinated. Somehow or other they got that chair out of Ford's Theatre, and Henry Ford got it into Greenfield Village, and it's sitting in this courthouse. Now the back of that chair is stained with a dark substance, and there's much discussion to this day as to whether that stain represents the blood of the deceased President or whether it is Macassar. I don't know if you all remember what Macassar is. When people our age were young and you'd visit yoar grandmother, on the back of the sofa there were lovely lace doilies in the homes of many people. And if you recall what I'm speaking of--they were on the sofas and reclining chairs--and those lace doilies bear the name antimacassar. You could go to a store in this country and buy an anti macassar. They don't exist any more. And Macassar was a hair dressing that gentlemen wore in those days to keep their hair in place. And these officers were appalled that the American people would wish to have an object stained with the blood of the President on public display. And I was--it kind of bothered me a little bit-it still does, to this day. And here I was, now in the possession of a number of pieces of paper, some of which unavoidably, and in the confusion which I described to you earlier, were stained in part with the blood of our deceased President. And I knew that I would give the record over to some person or persons in authority, and I felt that these pieces of paper were inappropriate to be turned over to anyone, and it was for that reason and for that reason only, that, having transcribed those notes onto the pieces of paper that are before you, I destroyed those pieces of paper. I think I'd do the same thing tomorrow. I had a similar problem, because I felt they would fail into the hands of some sensation seeker.
