Robert McClelland, respectable face of the JFK fantasists

Robert McClelland was a very good doctor but a bad historian. The Dallas surgeon, who died last month, was one of the team of medics who battled to save the life of John F Kennedy as he lay mortally wounded in Parkland Memorial Hospital on November 22, 1963. They failed to revive the president but even with today’s medicine that would probably have been impossible given his horrific injuries.

As McClelland stood above the dying president, helping to perform an emergency tracheotomy, he stared at the “terrible hole” in the back of Kennedy’s head. Based on that memory, the doctor concluded and maintained that what he had seen was consistent with a shot from in front of the presidential motorcade, which would indicate that Lee

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