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Another Key Witness Conveniently Silenced: Navy Lieutenant Commander William Bruce Pitzer

A person who was very close to that bizarre autopsy of President Kennedy died a very “untimely” death; just as he was reportedly ready to go public about the altered autopsy materials.

They tried to say that United States Navy Lieutenant Commander William B. Pitzer committed suicide, but he didn’t: he was murdered. The evidence of that case indicates that he was “eliminated” because of his impending intentions. An experienced U.S. Special Forces assassin even came forward and documented that the CIA had requested him to assassinate Pitzer due to a matter regarding classified national security materials. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Lt. Commander Pitzer was the acknowledged “Head of the Navy TV Unit” at the National Naval Medical Center and was in charge of the Audio-Visual department at Bethesda.³⁵² He was called into work at the time of the Kennedy autopsy, and he handled film materials of that autopsy.³⁵³

His Navy retirement was only days away and he had expressed excitement about his upcoming well-paying job running the educational television department at a college.

On October 29, 1966, Pitzer was found in a pool of blood of the floor of his office at the TV studio in Bethesda, dead from a gunshot wound to the head that authorities quickly ruled was self-inflicted, stating that he was depressed and had committed suicide.

But a new book, Hit List, details the many reasons that Pitzer’s death was actually a “national security assassination” and not a suicide. The CIA even requested Daniel Marvin—an assassin with U.S. Army Special Forces—to “terminate” Pitzer for the stated reason that he was preparing to release “State secrets.” Marvin refused to volunteer for that mission, but later realized that Pitzer had indeed been assassinated by a fellow member of Marvin’s Special Forces team.³⁵⁴ I’ll show you the specific forensic evidence in a minute, but first, here’s the case in a nutshell:

Pitzer had a prime role in the documentation of records from President Kennedy’s autopsy, was reportedly well aware that the wounds had been altered and was said to be planning to expose the problems with the JFK autopsy. He was also not suicidal according to reputable accounts. U.S. Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin was requested by the CIA to assassinate Pitzer for national security purposes:

‘He was getting close to retirement and it was his plan that when he retired was when that information would be released to the public, ’cause they’d prove that the President was hit with more than one bullet in the head and he was hit from a different direction than they said.’³⁵⁵

Pitzer had been privy to a lot of classified materials regarding what he had witnessed during that autopsy. Pitzer was sworn to secrecy about those events, like most of the people involved in the autopsy, because the U.S. government had invoked “National Security”:

After the completion of the autopsy report, Admiral Burkley, the late President’s personal physician, requested written confirmation from Dr. Humes that he had burned his original notes. All Naval hospital staff who had been involved in the autopsy were called into the commanding officer’s office several days after and required to sign orders acknowledging their obligation to remain silent about what they had seen and heard, under penalty of court-martial.³⁵⁶

Lt. Colonel Dan Marvin was an amazing man of much integrity—I have tremendous respect for the guy. When you talk about a true patriot, I think of somebody like him. This is a guy who led Special Forces teams in Laos when we weren’t even technically in Laos. He saved a lot of soldiers’ lives, performed complex duties with valor, and was awarded for them. Marvin was even requested to do a special mission at one time; the assassination of Cambodia’s Crown Prince Sihanouk. He accepted that mission, but when President Johnson didn’t hold up his end of the deal and announce the elimination of allowing safe havens for the enemy in Cambodia, Dan Marvin told the CIA that the deal was off.³⁵⁷

So that’s the league this guy was in. He wasn’t just the kind of guy that you could trust with his testimony; he was the type of guy that you could trust with your life! Dan passed away a short time ago and if you want to know what I think of him, it’s the same thing Babe Ruth supposedly said: “Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.” He’s still with us in his books, though. There are also some clips online that convey the heroic humanity of this man. He was featured in “The Truth Shall Set You Free” episode of The Men Who Killed Kennedy. There’s a long segment on his story, starting at about 17:50 and you owe it to yourself to watch him:³⁵⁸ youtube.com/watch?v=iqpW89lhnE0.

LTC Marvin goes into great detail—in that video clip and in his books and articles—about the specifics of that assassination.³⁵⁹ He refused to volunteer for that mission, but he thought that a fellow assassin on his team, who went missing, was the one who killed Pitzer. But he remembered the name, and he remembered the mission and was positive that the assassination was requested by the CIA. As soon as he heard that Pitzer was shot, he knew it was an assassination—and that was a surety that he maintained till the day he died. He had nothing to gain by coming forward—and a lot to lose—but he did it anyway because that’s the kind of man he was.

Here are some of the many reasons why the evidence also shows it was not a suicide.

•  GSR testing for gunshot residue on the victim showed that he had not fired a weapon.³⁶⁰

•  You can see why the government withheld the paraffin results for so long—even from Pitzer’s family, by the way.³⁶¹ Once you read those results, it shows he had not fired a gun!

•  “The paraffin tests of Pitzer’s right palm and back of hand were negative, indicating the absence of nitrate, therefore no exposure to gunpowder. While false positives are not uncommon with this test due to contact with tobacco, cosmetics, certain foodstuffs etc., a negative result (as on Pitzer) is usually accepted as evidence of no recent contact with a discharged firearm.”³⁶²

•  The FBI paraffin tests also showed something else that proved he didn’t shoot himself. They showed that the revolver was held at a distance of over 3 feet away from his head.³⁶³ Think about it. That alone shows that he was murdered!

Check out this point too:

If we view all of Lieutenant Commander Pitzer’s actions on his final day as a ‘timeline’ to discern his frame of mind, they are dramatically opposite to a troubled person contemplating suicide. Quite to the contrary, in fact, his final day was typical, even mundane. He was described as ‘very cheerful.’ He made breakfast, raked leaves, got a haircut, stopped at the store, checked things at the office—and was then shot in the head.³⁶⁴

And this one’s my favorite. He wrote himself a note to remember to return the revolver to the security office.³⁶⁵ Now, if he was going to shoot himself in the frigging head with that gun then why in hell would he have written that

note?

There are actually a lot more reasons than the ones I listed above. But I think you get the idea.

Lt. Commander William Bruce Pitzer did not commit suicide. It was a national security assassination.

³⁵² Washington Post, “Cmdr. William B. Pitzer, Head of Navy TV Unit,” November 2, 1966: manuscriptservice.com/PitzerFiles/WBP_obits.pdf

³⁵³ John Simkin, “William Pitzer: Biography,” Spartacus Educational, retrieved 7 May 2013: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpitzerW.htm

³⁵⁴ Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin, US Army Special Forces (Retired), “The Unconventional Warrior Archives: Part Three—Orders to Kill,” August 23, 2002,: expendableelite.com/UW_archives/UW_archive.0003b.html

³⁵⁵ Belzer & Wayne, Hit List, 153—154, citing Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin, US Army Special Forces (Retired); Simkin, “William Pitzer: Biography”; JFK Assassination: 13 Version (Documentary), 2003: youtube.com/watch?v=uWiMEQYt1n8

³⁵⁶ Heiner, Without Smoking Gun.

³⁵⁷ Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin, US Army Special Forces (Retired), Expendable Elite: One Soldier’s Journey into Covert Warfare (TrineDay: 2005): mainemediaresources.com/ffj_danmarvin.htm

³⁵⁸ The Men Who Killed Kennedy — Episode VI, “The Truth Shall Set You Free,” (Documentary), produced by Nigel Turner, A&E History Channel, 1995.

³⁵⁹ Dan Marvin, “Bits & Pieces: A Green Beret on the Periphery of the JFK Assassination,” May 1995, The Fourth Decade, Vol. 2, No. 4: maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=519585; Marvin, Expendable Elite; Marvin, “The Unconventional Warrior Archives: Part Three—Orders to Kill”.

³⁶⁰ Heiner, Without Smoking Gun.

³⁶¹ Ibid.

³⁶² Allan R. J. Eaglesham & R. Robin Palmer, “The Untimely Death of Lieutenant Commander William B. Pitzer: The Physical Evidence,” January 1998, emphasis added: manuscriptservice.com/Pitzer/Article-1.html

³⁶³ Heiner, Without Smoking Gun.

³⁶⁴ Belzer & Wayne, Hit List, 163, citing Heiner, Without Smoking Gun.

³⁶⁵ Heiner, Without Smoking Gun.