The Knudsen Mystery in the Military’s Fraudulent JFK Autopsy

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Jacob G. Hornberger
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After I saw Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posited that the JFK assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, I read a multitude of books along those lines. Over time, I became convinced that Stone’s thesis was correct. But my conviction was never “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which is the standard of proof required for conviction in a criminal case.

Then I encountered Douglas Horne’s 5-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. Horne’s book convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. national-security establishment — specifically, the Pentagon and the CIA — orchestrated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Horne’s book established beyond a reasonable doubt the fraudulent nature of the autopsy that the military carried out on Kennedy’s body on the evening of the assassination at the Bethesda National Navel Medical Center morgue. Why is that important? Because there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. Once one concludes that the military did, in fact, conduct a fraudulent autopsy on JFK’s body, it is “case closed” on criminal culpability on the part of the national-security establishment.

Bethesda National Naval Medical Center

Therefore, one does not need to read dozens of books on the Kennedy assassination to arrive at a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. All that one needs to do is focus on the military’s autopsy. A finding of autopsy fraud on the part of the military equals a finding of guilt in the assassination itself.

I summarized Horne’s five-volume book in my book The Kennedy Autopsy. I highly recommend reading it prior to reading Horne’s book.

An ongoing mystery surrounding the Kennedy autopsy involves a man named Robert Knudsen. To this day, the national-security establishment remains mum regarding the Knudsen mystery. Of course, an unresolved mystery is not enough to convict, but it is enough to raise eyebrows, especially when added to the convincing evidence of autopsy fraud.

Knudsen was the social photographer for the Kennedy White House, He was a person whose credentials, integrity, and reputation were beyond reproach. As a testament to Knudsen’s qualifications and character, he served as a social photographer for six presidents — Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford.

When Knudsen died in 1989, his obituaries in the New York Times and Washington Post pointed out that he had been the official photographer for the Kennedy autopsy. In an interview that Knudsen gave in 1977 to a national photography magazine, he stated that he had photographed the JFK autopsy, pointing out that it was the “hardest assignment of my life.”

His family told the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s that Knudsen had been summoned by officials on the day of the assassination and was gone the rest of the weekend. When he returned, he told his family that he had photographed the autopsy but that he could not reveal details because he had been sworn to secrecy.

In a November 19, 2024, article in Vanity Fair about a highly unusual home-movie film in which JFK staged his own murder, the author, James Robenalt, wrote, “The next time Knudsen would see the president would be in the morgue at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was tasked with taking autopsy photos. Those lost photos comprise a different tale about lost film footage. But that’s another story.”

So, what’s the mystery surrounding Robert Knudsen that the military will not resolve to this day? It’s this: Knudsen wasn’t the photographer for the Kennedy autopsy. That is an indisputable fact. The official JFK autopsy photographer was a man named John Stringer, who was a highly competent autopsy photographer, not a social photographer like Knudsen. Stringer taught a course in medical photography at the Bethesda Medical School, which was located in the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center, where the JFK autopsy was conducted. Everybody involved with the autopsy would have agreed that Stringer, not Knudsen, was the photographer  for the JFK autopsy and that Knudsen wasn’t even there during the autopsy.

It is a virtual certainty that Knudsen didn’t make up his story. For one thing, he had an impeccable reputation, as reflected by his continuous service to six presidents. If he was a liar, he wouldn’t have lasted that long.

Moreover, if he was making up the story, the lie would never have stood. He would have easily been exposed and fired, especially when he went public by telling that national photography magazine that he was the autopsy photographer. Notice that after he gave that 1977 interview to that magazine, nobody in the military establishment stood up and exclaimed, “Robert, you’re a liar. John Stringer, not you, was the JFK autopsy photographer.” Instead, everyone in the military remained mum after Knudsen gave that interview.

Some time after the autopsy, Knudsen was summoned to Washington where he was asked to examine autopsy photographs. When he returned home, he told his wife that the autopsy photographs he examined where not the autopsy photographs he took. He told her that there it was that there were some shady things going on with the autopsy photographs that he examined but that he still could not go into detail with her given his vow of secrecy. He told her that if things ever blew up, he wanted her to know that he wasn’t part of whatever shady scheme was taking place.

So what was it that Knudsen actually photographed that he was led to believe was the Kennedy autopsy? We don’t know, and the military establishment is still not talking.

Will the military establishment ever resolve the mystery of Robert Knudsen and the JFK autopsy? Could there be some rational explanation for the Knudsen mystery in those JFK-related records that the CIA is still intent on keeping secret and that President-elect Trump has vowed to disclose?

Not a chance! That’s because the explanation for the Knudsen mystery would undoubtedly add to the mountain of evidence establishing beyond a reasonable doubt the fraudulent nature of the JFK autopsy, which is how we know that the U.S. national-security establishment orchestrated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.