own personal feeling was that this was--would have been meddlesome on anybody's part after death to have done any further search.
Mr. SPECTER. Was any examination of his back made before death, to your knowledge?
Dr. JENKINS. No, no; I'm sure there wasn't.
Mr. SPECTER. Did he remain on the stretcher cart at all times while he was being cared for?
Dr. JENKINS. Yes, sir. Can I say something that isn't in the report here, or not?

Mr. Specter.

Yes; let's go off the record a minute.
(Discussion off the record between Counsel Specter and the witness, Dr. Jenkins. )
Mr. SPECTER. May the record show that we are back on the record and Dr. Jenkins has made an interesting observation about the time of the declaration of death, and I will ask you, Dr. Jenkins, for you to repeat for the record what you have just said off the record.
Dr. JENKINS. As the resuscitative maneuvers were begun, such as "chest cardiac massage," there was with each compression of the sternum, a gush of blood from the skull wound, which indicated there was massive vascular damage in the skull and the brain, as well as brain tissue damage, and we recognized by this time that the patient was beyond the point of resuscitation, that he was in fact dead, and this was substantiated by getting a silent electrical pattern on the electrocardiogram, the cardioscope that was connected up.
However, for a period of minutes, but I can't now define exactly, since I didn't put this in a report, after we knew he was dead, we continued attempted resuscitative maneuvers.
When we saw the two priests who arrived in the corridor outside the emergency room where this was taking place, I went to the door and asked one of those after turning over my ventilation, my respiration job to another one of my department-and asked him what is the proper time to declare one dead. That is, I am not a Catholic and I was not sure of the time for the last rites. As I remember now, he said, "The time that the soul leaves the body--is not at exactly the time that medical testimony might say that death was declared." There would be a period of time and so if we wished to declare him dead at that time they would still have the final rites.
Mr. SPECTER Did they then have the final rites after the time he was declared dead medically ?
Dr. JENKINS. Well, just a minute now--I suspect that was hazy to me that day--I'm not sure, it's still hazy. This was a very personal---on the part of the very anguished occasion, and Mrs. Kennedy had come back into the room and most of the people were beginning to leave because they felt like this was such a grief stricken and private affair that they should not be there. It was real intrusion even after they put forth such efforts at resuscitation and I'm not sure now whether the priests came in while I was still doing the resuscitative procedure, respiration at least, and while Dr. Clark was still doing the other. My memory is that we had stopped. I was still present, however, and that's the reason I'm not clear, because I hadn't left the room and I was still there as the rites were performed and a prayer was said.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Jenkins, would your observation of the wound and your characterization of it as an exit hole be consistent with a set of facts which I will ask you to assume for purposes of giving me your view or opinion.
Assume, first of all, if you will, that President Kennedy had a wound on the upper right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula, measuring 14 cm. from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm. below the tip of the right mastoid process, and that the missile was a 6.5 mm. jacketed bullet fired from a weapon having a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per second and approximately 160 to 250 feet from the President, and that after entering the President's body at the point indicated, the missile traveled between two strap muscles and through a fascia plane without violating the pleura cavity, and then struck the right side of the trachea and exited through

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