From:  THE BOSTON GLOBE, June 21, 1981.



EXPERTS: NO EVIDENCE AUTOPSY PHOTOS ALTERED

Based on the conflicting statements made to The Globe by the Dallas
doctors concerning the location of President Kennedy's head wound,
Yale Law School professor Burke Marshall, acting as spokesman for
the Kennedy family, allowed the newspaper to become the first news
organization ever to view the photographs and X-rays taken at the
late President's autopsy. 

      Though the photographs and X-rays have been made available to
a select group medical researchers over the years, they were not
open to the public and remain stored inside the National Archives In
Washington.  The Archives acquired the material in 1966 under a deed
of gift from the Kennedy family. But under the terms that deed, the
family, through Marshall, still controls access to the autopsy
material.

      It was also arranged that an independent panel of three
photo-optics experts and a radiologist could examine the photographs
and X-rays of the back of the head to see if they had been tampered
with, as alleged by Robert Groden, who served as the photo
consultant to the House Assassinations Committee. 

      Groden asserted in his committee report dissent that four
official autopsy photographs had been forged because within the
circumference of Kennedy's head, there could be seen ". . . an
irregular line. Within this line, the hair appears black and wet. On
the outside of the line, it is auburn and completely dry." He said
it appeared this was "characteristic of crop lines in matte insert
processes used for retouching and recompositioning of photographs." 

      The panel of optics experts consisted of Milton Ford,
associate chief of photo service for the National Geographic Society
In Washington; Hudson K. Howell, vice-president and general manager
of Coulter Systems Corp.  In Bedford and formerly head of the photo
science department for the Itek Corp., a Lexington optics research
and development firm; Charles W. Wyckoff, co-owner and manager of
Applied Photo Sciences in Needham, and Dr. Dieter Schellinger,
chairman of the department of radiology at Washington's Georgetown
University Hospital. 

      Also on the Globe's panel, having already expressed an
opinion, were Groden and Frank Scott, director of the Advanced
Technology Laboratory at Perkln-Elmer Corp., an electro-optics firm
In Danbury, Conn.  Scott served on the House Assassinations
Committee's photo panel and was the man who conducted tests on the
committee's behalf in which he concluded that the autopsy
photographs were authentic. 

      Panel members were given access to all 52 photographs taken at
the autopsy. After Groden expanded upon his views on the alleged
photo alterations and Scott gave a rebuttal, the four other
panelists spent the next 45 minutes studying the photos and X-rays
in detail, using various optics instruments.  

      Then, in separate statements, all four said they could detect
no evidence that the materials had been altered in any way thereby
validating the conclusions of the House committee.   

      The photo experts agreed with Groden that there was an area at
the back of the President's head where the hair appears to be
abnormally dark, but they said this must have been because the hair
was washed before the photos were taken to make the wound visible.
They said the area looked wet. 

      They also said the fact that other photographs of the back of
the head had been taken from the same perspective, but from a
slightly different angle, creating a "stereo" view which precluded
the possibility that an alteration of one photo would escape
undetected.

BEN BRADLEE