Dr. Jones. No; I have not seen a missile of this velocity exit in the anterior portion of the neck. I have seen it in other places of the body, but not in the neck.
Mr. Specter. What other places in the body have you seen it, Dr. Jones?
Dr. Jones. I have seen it in the extremity and here it produces a massive amount of soft tissue destruction.
Mr. Specter. Is that in the situation of struck bone or not struck bone or what?
Dr. Jones. Probably where it has struck bone.
Mr. Specter. In a situation where it strikes bone, however, the bone becomes so to speak a secondary missile, does it not, in accentuating the soft tissue damage?
Dr. Jones. Yes.
Mr. Specter. Dr. Jones, did you have any speculative thought as to accounting for the point of wounds which you observed on the President, as you thought about it when you were treating the President that day, or shortly thereafter?
Dr. Jones. With no history as to the number of times that the President had been shot or knowing the direction from which he had been shot, and seeing the wound in the midline of the neck, and what appeared to be an exit wound in the posterior portion of the skull, the only speculation that I could have as far as to how this could occur with a single wound would be that it would enter the anterior neck and possibly strike a vertebral body and then change its course and exit in the region of the posterior portion of the head. However, this was—there was some doubt that a missile that appeared to be of this high velocity would suddenly change its course by striking, but at the present—at that time, if I accounted for it on the basis of one shot, that would have been the way I accounted for it.
Mr. Specter. And would that account take into consideration the extensive damage done to the top of the President's head?