Doug Horne and the document the ARRB did NOT overlook
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 1:26 pm
On May 11th 2010 Elisabeth Mons Whitten posted about "Jfkmurdersolved and the document the ARRB overlooked" on Douglas Horne's facebook page and Doug responded this: "I'll make this one comment on the above, since Elizabeth posted it here on my wall. This is the truth, if anyone is interested in hearing the real (and complete) story:The ARRB staff was very interested in Mr. Robinson. He was located, contacted, and interviewed by the ARRB staff circa May of 1996. About 5 members of our staff were present in ... Mehr anzeigenthe room when he was interviewed. My boss, General Counsel Jeremy Gunn, conducted the questioning. I took copious notes, and later wrote a detailed written meeting report, which was reviewed by two or three members of our staff (as I recall, both General Counsel Gunn and Executive Director Marwell reviewed it for accuracy). That meeting report was placed into the JFK Records Collection, along with all of our other staff interview reports. His interview report was first relesed to the public at the end of July, 1998 (along with a special medical document records release). It has been in the JFK Records Collection for the public to view since November of 1998.I requested---implored---that the interview be audiotaped. It was not, because General Counsel Jeremy Gunn refused to do so. His comment before the interview was: "Some of these witnesses are liable to say anything; the research community might get too excited if we were to record every interview," or words to that effect. [I did not agree with this methodology; I believed that all of our staff interviews should have been audiotaped.]Mr. Robinson gave us a very important interview. Both his HSCA interview transcript, and the meeting report of his ARRB interview, have been published in the Appendix to my book, which is online at the Mary Ferrell foundation website. I wrote extensively about what Mr. Robinson had to say in my book, particularly in Chapter 6, titled "The Morticians."Personally, I wish Mr. Robinson had been deposed. He was not. In order for a medical witness deposition to take place, the staff Executive Director, David Marwell, would have had to recommend this course of action to the Board, and then the Board would have voted on the proposal. Mr. Robinson gave us more than ample reason to take his deposition, with some of the recollections he provided to us about the procedures he witnessed, and the President's wounds, and about the bootleg autopsy photos (the versions the research community has had since 1981) which we showed to him in our office. It would have been very useful for us to show him the original autopsy photos, under oath, and elicit his responses to our questions, but since he was not deposed, this didn't happen.Although Mr. Robinson was very young when he witnessed the autopsy---about 20 years old---in my estimation he had one of the best memories of all of our medical witnesses, and was very, very credible. I don't think examining him under oath would have resulted in him changing any of his answers, but it would have resulted in him seeing the original autopsy images in the Archives, which would have been very important indeed, since they are of much better quality than the bootleg versions. (See my 1996 written report of his interview, and Chapter 6 of my book, for the reasons.)I am getting tired of explaining this, but just one more time I will attempt to do so: the ARRB was not empowered to reinvestigate the assassiantion, only to gather and facilitate the declassification of records. However, Congressman Stokes of Ohio encouraged the Board Members to do all they could to "clarify the record of the President's autopsy and to clarify the medical evidence," since he was aware that many of the HSCA's actions (while he was Chair of the Committee) had engendered controversy. The rules the ARRB staff operated under were such that we could conduct any unsworn staff interviews of any witnesses we wished without the approval of the Board Members; however, depositions required the approval of the Board Members, since they required an expenditure of considerable staff resources in both personnel and dollars. So while we did do "extra credit work" and attempt to "clarify the record" by interviewing Mr. Robinson, he was not deposed.Only Jeremy Gunn and/or David Marwell can answer the question of why Marwell did not recommend to the Board that Robinson be deposed. [There was certainly ample reason to do so, based upon his initial ARRB interview, if there had been the will to do so.]So, the ARRB didn't "miss" Tom Robinson, by any means---we simply did not requestion him a second time, under oath.As I point out in my book, in Chapter 6 and elsewhere, he provided us with vital information.That's it." So is this reason now to change some statements on the jfkmurdersolved website?