Mr. SPECTER. Would your experience with the type of bullet wounds you have just described be about the same as the other doctors have here at Parkland, or would there be some difference between what you have seen on bullet wounds and what the other doctors have seen?
Dr. AKIN. I think so, except there is one difference--I am not ordinarily on duty in the emergency room, so I am not very often the first doctor to see one of these people injured in this fashion. When I see them they are people who have sustained a gunshot injury, but who lived to make it to the operating room. We, I'm sure, have a lot of people who are shot and who are dead on arrival at the emergency room, and they are examined by the emergency room physicians, and I never see them, so there would be a lot of people down there that I never have seen. They might be injured with a hunting rifle or a good quality ammunition, and I would not have seen them.
Mr. SPECTER. Dr. Akin, permit me, if you will, to give you a set of facts which I will ask you to assume for the purpose of giving me an opinion, if you are able to formulate one. Assume that the President was struck by a 6.5 ram. missile which had a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per second at a time when the President was approximately 160 to 250 feet away from the weapon. Assume further that the bullet entered the President's body in the upper right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula at a point 14 cm. from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm. below the tip of the right mastoid process. Assume further that the missile traveled through or in between, rather, the strap muscles without penetrating either muscle but going in between the two in the area of his back and traveled through the fascial channel without violating the pleura cavity, and that the bullet struck the side of the trachea and exited from the throat in the position of the punctate wound which you have described you saw, would the wound you saw be consistent with a wound of exit under the factors that I have just outlined to you?
Dr. AKIN. As far as I know, it is perfectly compatible from what you have described, except when you say it passed through without injuring the strap muscles, are you talking about the anterior strap muscles of the neck or are you talking about the posterior muscles of the neck?

Mr. Specter.

The anterior strap muscles of the neck.

Dr. AKIN. It's a matter of clarification because there are no strap muscles posterior, by my terminology. Yes, this is perfectly consistent with what I know about, or what I have been told by military experts, concerning high velocity missile injuries.
Mr. SPECTER. And what is the basis of your information from the military experts you just referred to ?
Dr. AKIN. Military rifle demonstrations when I was a senior student at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio. We took a brief two day tour there with demonstrations of high velocity missile injury.
Mr. SPECTER. With respect to the head wound, Dr. Akin, did you observe below the gaping wound which you have described any other bullet wound in the back of the head?
Dr. AKIN. No; I didn't. I could not see the back of the President's head as such, and the right posterior neck was obscured by blood and skull fragments and I didn't make any attempt to examine the neck.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you have any opportunity to observe the President's clothes?
Dr. AKIN. I noticed them.
Mr. SPECTER. With respect to examining the shirt, for example, to see what light that would shed, if any, on the trajectory of the bullet?
Dr. AKIN. No; I didn't. The front of the chest was uncovered, the pants had been loosened and lowered below the iliac crest, and the only article of clothing I noticed in particular was his back corset.
Mr. SPECTER. What did you observe with respect to the back corset which you just mentioned?
Dr. AKIN. It had been loosened and was just lying loose.

Mr. Specter.

Can you describe the corset, indicating how wide it was?
Dr. AKIN. The only portion I saw was the front portion of the corset and