Lifton’s Paper Chase

SINCE THE 1981 publication of his book “Best Evidence,” David Lifton has continued to probe and write about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Though many readers and critics find his Byzantine conspiracy theory difficult to accept, no one can fault him for lack of research. The 49-year-old historian is nothing if not meticulous and thorough.

“Best Evidence” was the product of 15 years of research and writing--not to be confused with, say, two years of research and writing and 13 years of staring out a window. The paper chase was staggering, starting with the Warren Report and its accompanying 13,000-page, 26-volume assemblage of evidence and documentary exhibits. Lifton also obtained copies of the Warren Commission’s working papers--interoffice memos and letters to investigative agencies. In search of witnesses and leads that the commission may have overlooked, he studied microfilm of all major American newspapers published from Nov. 22 through Nov. 25, 1963.

To construct a chronological flow chart of the events in Dallas and at Bethesda Naval Hospital, he analyzed the original, time-stamped AP and UPI wire copy and a tape of the Dallas Police Department’s radio transmissions. He obtained thousands of pages of FBI and Secret Service reports and combed them for any shred of enlightening evidence. That he might better deal with the complexities and technical nature of the data, he consulted neurosurgeons, forensic pathologists and lawyers. He wore a path to UCLA’s libraries to study “Gray’s Anatomy,” “Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy,” “Forensic Neuropathology,” by Cyril B. Courville, the Armed Forces autopsy manual and a battery of legal texts on evidence.

There were even more ambitious treks. Twice Lifton journeyed to the National Archives in Washington, on one occasion spending six weeks listening to tapes of all Dallas radio news reports that were broadcast during the tragic weekend. “I relived the event in extraordinary detail,” Lifton remembers. “I was deeply affected by those tapes, more so than when the assassination actually occurred.”

Twice he visited Bethesda. He went to Dallas and retraced the motorcade route. He went to Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington to interview witnesses.

At the heart of Lifton’s research have been his telephone interviews. He has questioned, among others, 10 of the 13 physicians and nurses known to have attended Kennedy in Dallas, two of the three Bethesda autopsy doctors, one of the FBI agents who wrote the “surgery to the head” autopsy report, autopsy medical technicians, autopsy photographers, at least five Secret Service agents and all eight members of the casket team that received Kennedy at Bethesda. Many of the individuals he interviewed were never questioned by the Warren Commission, the FBI or any other government investigators.

Lifton’s fastidious diligence paid off with a factually ironclad manuscript that withstood uncommon scrutiny at Macmillan Publishing. “We were more rigorous with that book than with any book that we published in my tenure,” says Albert Litewka, Macmillan’s president of general books when “Best Evidence” was published. “To my knowledge, there never was one fact refuted publicly or privately. Nobody’s ever come forward and disputed a word of it.”