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Route of the Dallas Motorcade


John Simkin

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Over the weeks there have been several discussions about the route of the motorcade. I thought it might be a good idea to start a new thread on this.

I would like to start with a quote from JFK's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln's book, Kennedy & Johnson (1968). Lincoln says that JFK was very reluctant to go on the trip to Texas: “Advance reports from our own staff and from many other people gave us cause to worry about the tense climate in Texas – and, most especially, in Dallas. Dallas was removed and then put back on the planned itinerary several times. Our own advance man urged that the motorcade not take the route through the underpass and past the Book Depository, but he was overruled.”

Lincoln comments on a meeting that took place between JFK and Connally only three days before Bobby Baker resigned. The meeting was about Baker and the proposed trip to Texas. After Connally left JFK told Lincoln: “He sure seemed anxious for me to go to Texas”.

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I have been able to find out more about this incident. Kennedy’s advance man was Jerry Bruno. He actually wrote about this in a book called The Advance Man (1972). In October, 1963, Bruno went to Dallas to inspect the route. He met with Ralph Yarborough who warned that Johnson and Connally might be involved in some conspiracy against Kennedy. He told Bruno that they would be “after Kennedy in a minute if they thought they could get away with it.”

After inspecting the route Bruno became convinced that it posed several dangers. He met with Connally and demanded that motorcade route should be changed. Connally refused and the discussion became heated. With this, Connally got on the phone to the White House. From what he heard Connally say, it appeared that the White House gave its backing to the proposed route. Bruno accepted the decision but after the assassination the White House Staff denied the Connally telephone call took place.

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John, I think this is a very important topic.

I have read that once the decision to have the noon luncheon at the Trade Mart was made, the route past the Texas School Book Depository was the only logical route. Do you, or anyone, know if that is correct?

It is important to determine when the conspirators would first learn that the probable route of the motorcade would take it past the TSBD. IF what I read is correct, the route past the TSBD could have reasonably been surmised when the decision to hold the noon luncheon at the Trade Mart was announced.

I recently read somewhere that the actual motorcade route was first published as late as Monday, November 18, 1963.

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I have been able to find out more about this incident. Kennedy’s advance man was Jerry Bruno. He actually wrote about this in a book called The Advance Man (1972). In October, 1963, Bruno went to Dallas to inspect the route. He met with Ralph Yarborough who warned that Johnson and Connally might be involved in some conspiracy against Kennedy. He told Bruno that they would be “after Kennedy in a minute if they thought they could get away with it.”

After inspecting the route Bruno became convinced that it posed several dangers. He met with Connally and demanded that motorcade route should be changed. Connally refused and the discussion became heated. With this, Connally got on the phone to the White House. From what he heard Connally say, it appeared that the White House gave its backing to the proposed route. Bruno accepted the decision but after the assassination the White House Staff denied the Connally telephone call never took place.

That is excellent information, John. It certainly sounds as if Connally was desperate to get JFK to Dallas. Do you think that is perhaps an indication that he was in on the plot? Or perhaps he was just insistent on the trip at the behest of LBJ? Of course, if you were going to assassinate the president and then cover it up, it would seem to be beneficial to have the governor of the state helping to keep the local authorities towing the company line, as it were.

If the WH advance man (Bruno) was adamantly opposed to this trip, then what person gave the final OK? If Bruno and JFK both had grave concerns about this visit, yet it was done anyway, why? Connally did the convincing, but who did he convince and who made the final decision? Could Shanet's theory, one implicating C. Douglass Dillon, come into play here?

Edited by Greg Wagner
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John

Thank you for this thread, the timming is perfect.

In the past I have referred to the Hosty note of November 5th that provided Washington with information about where Oswald was working. Within the last few hours I have learned that this note/information was never given a WC Exhibit number and was in fact written/sent on November 4th. In other words the note has been "lost" to history except for a few paragraphs buried within the WC records. My "Big Fish" thread talks alot about this note which you can find reference to in the testimony of James P. Hosty:

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/hosty.htm

The fact that this note is now "lost" only adds luster to its value. Within Hosty's testimony we find that it's existance is confirmed by the fact that the note generated Dallas regaining the designation as "Origin" for the Oswald file (the information arrived from New Orleans on November 22, 1963).

In the Jefferson Morley article, "What Jane Roman Said" we find that a previous note from Hosty made it to Thomas Karamessines (Richard Helms office) in a timely manner. It is easy to speculate that the note of November 4, 1963 would arrive in the same office before the motorcade route was decided.

http://www.history-matters.com/essays/fram...RomanSaid_1.htm

In rereading the Hosty Testimony it almost seems as if this information (Nov. 4th note) takes Dulles and McCloy by surprize. If so the "rogue agents" group would find this of interest. For myself there is one other element though. Whoever planned the route would also have to suspect/know that Oswald had taken a shot at General Edwin Anderson Walker for the whole mess to work.

Jim Root

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Well, Jim, I agree we are moving forward. Since Lee Oswald called a man in Raleigh North Carolina the night he was in jail in Dallas, and that man's name was John Hurt, then you are on the right track.

A John Hurt in the Signal Intelligence, a Japanese linguist from the WWII era, would tend to be an interesting choice for the counter-defector, Oswald.

Atsugi was not only a radio signals asia center, it was the asian center for the MK-ULTRA, and government documents show 100,000 dosages of LSD-25 in the safe at Atsugi in the period in question, 1959-1963.

Maxwell Taylor and Marshall Carter became heads of the Plans and Joint paramilitary agency structures, and structurally should have been aware of OPERATION TILT and the activities of a counter defecting former Atsugi Marine. The joint agency (military and civilian) model that General Maxwell Taylor brought to bear in the OPERATION PHOENIX counter-insurgency and assassination effort was inaugurated the night of November 21, 1963 when McGeorge Bundy changed the parameters and tasking mission for US forces in Indochina.

John Hurt, as is obvious from the above, was a string Oswald was trying to pull, and a solid lead for us today into the Signals and Joint Operations context of the 1959-64 period, as it points to a PROGRAM to run an AGENT via the well known and partially exposed MK ULTRA mind control and counter defector assassination directorate.

So yes, a signals intelligence translator from the Cold War era in Japan, would be a very telling person for the "Communist" or patsy, to call from jail right before he died.

Shanet Clark

John

Thank you for this thread, the timming is perfect.

In the past I have referred to the Hosty note of November 5th that provided Washington with information about where Oswald was working.  Within the last few hours I have learned that this note/information was never given a WC Exhibit number and was in fact written/sent on November 4th.  In other words the note has been "lost" to history except for a few paragraphs buried within the WC records.  My "Big Fish" thread talks alot about this note which you can find reference to in the testimony of James P. Hosty:

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/hosty.htm

The fact that this note is now "lost" only adds luster to its value.  Within Hosty's testimony we find that it's existance is confirmed by the fact that the note generated Dallas regaining the designation as "Origin" for the Oswald file (the information arrived from New Orleans on November 22, 1963).

In the Jefferson Morley article, "What Jane Roman Said" we find that a previous note from Hosty made it to Thomas Karamessines (Richard Helms office) in a timely manner.  It is easy to speculate that the note of November 4, 1963 would arrive in the same office before the motorcade route was decided.

http://www.history-matters.com/essays/fram...RomanSaid_1.htm

In rereading the Hosty Testimony it almost seems as if this information (Nov. 4th note) takes Dulles and McCloy by surprize.  If so the "rogue agents" group would find this of interest.  For myself there is one other element though.  Whoever planned the route would also have to suspect/know that Oswald had taken a shot at General Edwin Anderson Walker for the whole mess to work.

Jim Root

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I assume that this is only speculation, but I had read on the "DoeWatch" site that the decision to select the Trade Mart as the location for Kennedy's speech was decided as an alternative, as the convention center was snapped up, in a premeditated fashion, by the infamous Bottler's convention. The writer [Jim Phelps, if that is his real name] suggested something that provides an interesting theory which could be implied to account for a reason behind the hesitancy on the part of Richard Nixon as to his whereabouts on 11/22, due to the fact that he had attended said Bottler's convention - Phelps stylizes it as an elaborate sham to force the selection of the TradeMart in the first place.

In this time, Washington politics were also very interesting. JFK had won the election against Richard Nixon very narrowly by using Joseph P. Kennedy's influence with the Chicago Mafia and others. Nixon was one of the high level authors and sponsors of the "Bay of Pigs" invasion, when he was VP under "Ike." It was Nixon who was down in Dallas at the Pepsi Convention showing JFK how well he was liked there, and who dared the competitive JFK to go without his limo's top to show the same.

http://www.doewatch.com/jb.html

General Cabel's brother, Earl, was the mayor of Dallas and helped on the last minute route changes to set up JFK. A large Pepsi Conference and Nixon were in town to tie up a Dallas convention center and force the change to the Trade Mart and the route change.

http://www.doewatch.com/jfk.html

Jim Phelps has not replied to my emails, so I can't verify a source on his info. :angry:

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Lee

It is my understanding that the Trade Mart and therefore the route decission came down from Washington.  Info may be in the "Big Fish" thread but comes from the Warren Report.

Jim Root

Don't discount the Pepsi Bottlers, they were an important corporate group, especially where sugar and the Caribean were concerned. Pepsi had many international bottling centers, capitol city locations and a national US presence. Mr. Nixon was very close to a DONALD KENDALL who is implicated in much of the reactionary and corrupt politics of the WATERGATE, the NIXON IMPEACHMENT and the NIXON RESIGNATION AUGUST 1974.

His conference at the Center, his party with the pricipals and his shady exit from Dallas Texas around 9 a.m. 11/22/63 are grotesque, and point to a joint paramilitary sanctioned inside job with bipartisan support, ala the 25th Amendment..

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Shanet

I may be to simple minded but I like the old fashioned, "Col. Mustard in the Kitchen with the pipe wrench" approach.

What I mean, rather than a hugh conspiracy; how about one man who knew all the players, who knew the positioning and knew that everyone would be looking over their own shoulders, protecting their own rears, wondering who really did it as they willingly participated in a cover-up that would protect there own past misdeeds. Someone who would benifit from the assassination and could justify it in their own mind exactly along the lines that you have suggested within your posts.

Jim Root

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Is the "Trade Mart" that was the destination of the motorcade the same "Trade Mart" in which Clay Shaw was involved?  I've always been curious about this...

If the destination forced the route, then perhaps investigating the selection thereof is as important as the route itself...

Clay Shaw was the manager and director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans from 1946-1963. JFK's luncheon was at the International Trade Mart in Dallas.

Maybe a very distant connection, but nothing solid, I'm afraid.

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Shanet

I may be to simple minded but I like the old fashioned, "Col. Mustard in the Kitchen with the pipe wrench" approach.

What I mean, rather than a hugh conspiracy; how about one man who knew all the players, who knew the positioning and knew that everyone would be looking over their own shoulders, protecting their own rears, wondering who really did it as they willingly participated in a cover-up that would protect there own past misdeeds.  Someone who would benifit from the assassination and could justify it in their own mind exactly along the lines that you have suggested within your posts.

Jim Root

I.E., Maxwell Taylor. Yes, but my point is that the effort enjoyed large political support, assent and acquiescence, because of this quasi-legal security clearance issue and incapacity rationale. Johnson, Hoover, Nixon and the joint agencies seemed to conspire as if were legal. Nixon was in Dallas, and his soft drink multinational had lost property in Cuba. He had connections with Jack Ruby, secret Bahamian and Swiss banks, Miami financial concerns via Bebe Rebozo and 10-20 million dollar slush funds during his later election cycles...

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