The Missing Physician

George Burkley, Assistant White House Physician at the time of this photo. He became JFK's personal physician in July 1963.

The Warren Commission was faced with contradictions in the medical evidence. The Parkland Hospital doctors who treated the mortally wounded President described an entrance wound in the throat and a large occipital (rearward) wound in Kennedy's head. The autopsy doctors declared the throat wound to be one of exit, and drawings they produced of Kennedy's head wound showed it to be largely on the right side. At issue in these varying descriptions is whether shots came from the front or the rear.

One man was best suited to address these conflicting accounts - the President's personal physician Dr. George Burkley. Burkley rode in the Dallas motorcade, was present at Parkland Hospital, rode Air Force One to Washington with the body, and was present at the autopsy, by some accounts running it. He signed the White House Death Certificate, wrote "verified" on a "face sheet" created during the autopsy, and took physical possession of JFK's brain and tissue slides.

The Warren Commission never interviewed him.

Though Burkley was continually mentioned by other Commission witnesses, the only statements from the doctor himself to appear in the Warren Commission's 26 volumes is CE 1126, a report Burkley wrote 2 days before the Commission was announced.

In 1976, Burkley's lawyer William Illig contacted Richard Sprague of the HSCA, saying that his client had information that "others besides Oswald must have participated." Sprague was ousted days later, and the reconstituted HSCA and its medical panel never took Burkley's testimony. Instead, a short phone contact the following year was followed up yet months later, when the HSCA was done with all its public medical presentations, with an strange affidavit signed by Burkley. The affidavit, in which Burkley attested to his constant presence with Kennedy's body from Parkland Hospital on, seemed almost solely devoted to refuting David Lifton's as yet-unpublished Best Evidence.

The ARRB in the mid 1990s contacted the family of the now-deceased Burkley, and initially received verbal permission to obtain the lawyer Illig's files. But Burkley's daughter subsequently changed her mind and in the end declined to sign the necessary waiver.

Questions abound about Burkley's handling of the now-missing brain of JFK, his role at the autopsy, and his involvement in the 1965 transfer of autopsy materials into the Kennedy family's hands. Did the Warren Commission and HSCA avoid Burkley because they were afraid of what he would say? In a 1967 oral history, Burkley was asked whether he agreed with the Warren Commission's view on the number of shots. Burkley's reply: "I would not care to be quoted on that."