August 28, 2025
David Lifton's "Best Evidence" (1981), as well as several other more recent publications, have made the extraordinary claim that JFK's body was removed secretly from Air Force One at Andrews, put aboard a helicopter, flown to Bethesda, placed in a so-called shipping casket and delivered to the morgue "early" for pre-autopsy surgery to remove evidence of shots from the front. Of all of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination, this may well be the boldest (some would say the most outlandish) one of them all.
But is any of it true?
In previous articles on this site, I've argued that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and that there is no first-hand evidence for any of Lifton's most important claims. For example, no one testified before the ARRB that they saw JFK's body IN any shipping casket or taken OUT of any shipping casket at the Bethesda morgue that night. On the other hand, there is a confirmed FBI/ARRB timeline that starts with the removal of the Dallas ornamental casket from Air Force One at Andrews; that proceeds with the Navy ambulance ride uninterrupted from Andrews to Bethesda; that extends to the entry of the Dallas casket into the Bethesda morgue (with the Honor Guard) and concludes with the removal of JFK's body (his head still wrapped as it was at Parkland) from that casket at around 7:15. The preliminary autopsy procedures (examination of the body, X-Rays, photographs, etc.) began shortly afterward. That timeline would seem to refute entirely the Lifton "body snatching" theory once and for all.
But even aside from any corroborated timeline, there is still another way to refute the Lifton theory. The first-hand testimony of Geofrey T. McHugh.
Brigadier General Geofrey T. McHugh was the Air Force Aide and primary briefing officer to President John F. Kennedy. After JFK was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital, General McHugh was a part of the "Irish Mafia" brigade (Dave Powers, Larry O'Brien, Kenny O'Donnell) that rather forcefully removed the Dallas casket from the hospital. He also helped load that ridiculously heavy Dallas casket onto Air Force One for the flight back to Andrews. He was also the so-called "supervisor" of Air Force One, and helped organize the removal of several seats in the rear of the plane to accommodate the large, ornamental casket. (The alternative was to put the casket in the cargo hold which was totally unacceptable.) And most importantly, according to a fascinating "Oral History Interview" that General McHugh gave in 1978, he "stood guard" with that casket in the rear of the plane and never left his post.
McHugh also was part of the motorcade from Andrews to Bethesda and part of the team (along with the Honor Guard) that transported the Dallas casket into the morgue. Finally, General McHugh was present at the formal autopsy of JFK. As he said at one point: "I never left the body" that day.
Thus General McHugh was certainly a key witness to several important assassination events; yet he was never called to testify before the Warren Commission. Curious.
What's important for this discussion, however, is that General McHugh repeatedly confirmed that he "stayed with the casket" from the moment it was loaded onto Air Force One in Dallas to the moment it was transported into the Bethesda morgue. There was never a time he abandoned his "guard post" with respect to the Dallas casket and there was never a time, therefore, for any "body snatching". The body-snatching thesis, a hoary conspiracy theory of the first magnitude, is a complete and utter fairy tale.
When Lyndon Johnson "commandeered" Air Force One (JFK's plane) and got himself sworn in as President before the take-off from Love Field, a long smoldering political resentment re-surfaced between the Johnson and Kennedy factions aboard. Several of the key Kennedy people (General McHugh, the Irish Mafia and Mrs. Kennedy) then migrated to the very rear of the plane (away from the Johnson contingent) where there were some seats, a small table, substantial amounts of alcohol and (of course) the Dallas casket... that Mrs. Kennedy could reach out and touch. At one point, when Jackie Kennedy briefly (and reluctantly) left that small group to attend LBJ's swearing in ceremony, she reportedly turned to General McHugh and said: "At least you don't leave him. Don't leave him. Stay with him."McHugh recollects: "So I'm the only one on board that airplane that stayed with the casket. Never left it."
At another point McHugh says this: "I stood with the casket. I felt I was his (JFK's) military honor guard, that I should stay with him." And later at Bethesda, it was suggested that since the Dallas casket had been damaged, McHugh ought to be involved in helping to find another. (Another casket was located and delivered to the morgue). But McHugh refused: "I said I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to leave the body..." Apparently he never did.
Given General McHugh's recollections, his important position within the Kennedy chain of command, and the uncontradicted confirmations of the Irish Mafia, it is flat-out impossible to believe that JFK's corpse was somehow spirited out of the Dallas casket for any early entry into the Bethesda morgue. We have first-hand testimony from General McHugh that the casket was never left unattended. Ever. We have NO contradictory first-hand testimony that anyone snatched that body or saw the body snatched; no one has ever come forward in the decades since to confess any involvement in such a nefarious plot. Logic and the facts dictate, therefore, that it just never happened. And since the alleged "body snatching" is the lynchpin of the entire pre-autopsy/wound-alteration scenario, it stands to reason that none of that could have happened, either.
Most conspiracy theorists (like the late David Lifton) are well-intentioned and are simply trying to make sense of an inexplicable event: How could a lone nut ex-Marine with a cheap Italian-made rifle change history? There just has to be more to the story. So I understand their frustration with the Warren Commission's explanation of the assassination and their own search for deeper, more profound answers. Nonetheless, our primary duty as researchers is to get things straight for truth and for history and the "body-snatching/ pre-autopsy surgery" theory of the JFK assassination can NEVER be one of those profound answers.