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National Archives Accessions Newly Discovered Post-JFK Assassination Tape Recording


Peter Fokes

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So very good to hear Dr Burkley on this tape. I would love to know why the body was sent to Bethesda instead of Walter Reed. If someone advised Burkley to

send the President's body to Bethesda instead I imagine it would be on tape somewhere, and along with it the reason for the diversion given.

Hi Frankie, JFK was taken to Bethesda at the request of Jackie, who said that she wanted him to go there because he was Navy, not Army.

And Jim is right, we should use this issue to get the MSM to look into the facts as to why the original tapes and transcripts are missing.

BK

JFKcountercoup: Tale of the Tapes - By Vincent Salandria

FWIW: I had an approximately 2 hr interview with General Chester Clifton in his office in Washington, D.C. on July 15, 1980. It was by then known that Best Evidence was going to be published, and I requested an in-person on the record interview to clear up a whole bunch of things.

As I recall, I brought two recorders--one to record our interview, another to listen to the AF-1 tapes--the version which had by then been released via the LBJ Library. I know I had transcripts with me, and we went over the material in detail.

We had an in-depth detailed conversation, and I will be addressing what he said in a future writing.

FYI: the destination was in fact changed from Walter Reed to Bethesda, which was a substantial surprise to Clifton (or so he told me).

I am uncomfortable with the idea that the destination was changed "because Jackie wanted Bethesda" etc. --although that's the way Burkley wrote his 11/27/63 report; and as I recall that's the way it was portrayed in Manchester. But I think you'll find if you check O'Donnell's testimony, he claims it was Bethesda from the outset.

I interviewed quite a few people at Bethesda; they were told, from the gitgo, that the autopsy would be done there.

One thing I do recall: Clifton said that when he heard the shots, he thought they were giving the President "a 21 gun salute". This had been told me by Godfrey McHugh, who was in the same vehicle as Clifton; and Clifton admitted that to me, in our tape recorded interview, in fact elaborating on the matter a bit.

DSL

2/6/12 2:10 AM PST

Los Angeles, CA

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But I think you'll find if you check O'Donnell's testimony, he claims it was Bethesda from the outset.

Not at all.....

KENNETH P. O'DONNELL. We arrived at Andrews and meanwhile the Attorney General had been notified, the decision had been made that he would go to Bethesda.

ARLEN SPECTER. Who made that decision, by the way?

Mr. O'DONNELL. Mrs. Kennedy.

Mr. SPECTER. That the autopsy should be performed?

Mr. O'DONNELL. I don't think she knew anything about an autopsy. The question is where the body went. We didn't tell her there was to be an autopsy. And the choice was Walter Reed or Bethesda. He being a Navy man, she picked Bethesda.

Mr. SPECTER. She chose Bethesda, as between Bethesda and Walter Reed?

Mr. O'DONNELL. She did.

[7 H 454-455]

Edited by David Von Pein
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So very good to hear Dr Burkley on this tape. I would love to know why the body was sent to Bethesda instead of Walter Reed. If someone advised Burkley to

send the President's body to Bethesda instead I imagine it would be on tape somewhere, and along with it the reason for the diversion given.

Hi Frankie, JFK was taken to Bethesda at the request of Jackie, who said that she wanted him to go there because he was Navy, not Army.

And Jim is right, we should use this issue to get the MSM to look into the facts as to why the original tapes and transcripts are missing.

BK

JFKcountercoup: Tale of the Tapes - By Vincent Salandria

FWIW: I had an approximately 2 hr interview with General Chester Clifton in his office in Washington, D.C. on July 15, 1980. It was by then known that Best Evidence was going to be published, and I requested an in-person on the record interview to clear up a whole bunch of things.

As I recall, I brought two recorders--one to record our interview, another to listen to the AF-1 tapes--the version which had by then been released via the LBJ Library. I know I had transcripts with me, and we went over the material in detail.

We had an in-depth detailed conversation, and I will be addressing what he said in a future writing.

FYI: the destination was in fact changed from Walter Reed to Bethesda, which was a substantial surprise to Clifton (or so he told me).

I am uncomfortable with the idea that the destination was changed "because Jackie wanted Bethesda" etc. --although that's the way Burkley wrote his 11/27/63 report; and as I recall that's the way it was portrayed in Manchester. But I think you'll find if you check O'Donnell's testimony, he claims it was Bethesda from the outset.

I interviewed quite a few people at Bethesda; they were told, from the gitgo, that the autopsy would be done there.

One thing I do recall: Clifton said that when he heard the shots, he thought they were giving the President "a 21 gun salute". This had been told me by Godfrey McHugh, who was in the same vehicle as Clifton; and Clifton admitted that to me, in our tape recorded interview, in fact elaborating on the matter a bit.

DSL

2/6/12 2:10 AM PST

Los Angeles, CA

David,

Do you you have a tape or transcript of your two hour conversation with Clifton?

Did you ask him about what Manchester refers to as his repeated questioning of Bundy as to a conspiracy and Bundy's response that "the Pentagon was taking steps"?

You seem to have a lot of great filmed or taped interviews with witnesses who are now dead, will you share these with other researchers or are you releasing another book soon?

Thanks,

BK

JFKcountercoup: "Pentagon taking its own steps..." - Bundy

Edited by William Kelly
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From The Kennedy Presidency An Oral History of The Era

by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober

[Note This book is an updated edition of “Let Us Begin Anew:” An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency by the same authors]

page 450

ROBERT MANNING

We took off from Honolulu in one of the presidential aircraft and were several hundred miles west of there.

Several cabinet secretaries were with us, as was Pierre Salinger. I had been in the press, so I knew by

the sound that there was a flash on the news ticker. I walked toward the communications area and the

sergeant had a piece of wire copy in his hand. He said, “The secretary [Rusk] will have to see this.”....

It was a flash saying: “Dallas. President Kennedy shot.” Then a bulletin. “Perhaps shot fatally.” We

took it to Rusk and he asked me to bring the Cabinet secretaries to his compartment. We immediately

got on the phone with the White House Situation Room. They confirmed that something had happened

and that the president had been rushed to the hospital. Rusk got on the public address system and told

everybody we had some bad unclear news: President Kennedy had been wounded and we were going to

turn back. Salinger got in touch with the White House and used his code name. He said "This is Wayside.

What word do you have on Lancer?” At the other end the fellow said "Lancer is dead. Rusk then went

back on the PA system and said "I am sorry to have to bring you this grievous news, but President Kennedy

has been killed. We now have a new president. May God bless our President and the United States of America.

page 449

PIERRE SALINGER “I was trying to find out what had happened. When we first got the news, we were

not getting the information that he was dead but that he had been shot. That is why Rusk asked me to

establish communication between the plane and the White House; there was a lot of confusion. When

we got the news that the president was dead, there was some discussion on the plane as to who could

be responsible. Rusk thought it might be an international affair, and we sent a message to all U.S.

Embassies to see if they could find out anything.

The partial interview below is taken from

C-SPAN Booknotes

Pierre Salinger: P.S., A Memoir

Program Air Date: November 12, 1995

For more information about this program, visit www.booknotes.org

LAMB: How many times in your life have you been asked where you were the

night or the day that John F. Kennedy was shot?

SALINGER: Very often. A lot of people thought that I was with John F. Kennedy when he was shot, and they were always surprised to discover that I was on a plane flying with six members of his Cabinet and going to Tokyo. I mean, the reason the president was sending me to Tokyo was -- it was an conomic conference, but he wanted me to start working on a visit he was going to take in February of 1964, the first American president to visit Japan after the end of World War II. That's why I was on the trip. But we were only about three hours out of Honolulu, where we had spent a couple of days looking into the Vietnam issue, when suddenly we discovered that he had been shot. And we turned around. We didn't know he'd been killed, but we heard he was shot. And I was asked by Dean Rusk, who was then secretary of State, to open up the line to the White House so that we could have specific information as rapidly as possible. Well, it was about a half-hour after we turned around that we actually got the news that President Kennedy was dead.

LAMB: How many Cabinet officers were with you?

SALINGER: Six Cabinet officers: There was Rusk; there was McNamara; there was, well, I have all of them in the book, but they were coming for this economic conference, and that's why I was accompanying them.

LAMB: What happened after you got back?

SALINGER: Well, that was a long, long flight, as you know. We stopped in Honolulu. We had to put on the oil in this plane, then we flew. It was about 11 hours. We arrived here in Washington around 1:00 in the morning, went to the White House. It was about, I think, 2:30 or 3 in the morning that John Kennedy's body arrived, went into the West Wing. And then there was a Mass that I attended. And Jackie came up to me afterwards and put her arm around my shoulder and said, "Pierre, you know, you've just had a terrible day. I know, so why don't you spend the night here in the White House?" I mean, I had never spent the night in the White House in my life.

Anyway, I went upstairs with Larry O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell, and we spoke probably right up till about 6:30, 7:00 in the morning and then went to bed. And about 15 minutes later the phone rang, and it was the secretary at the White House who said, "Oh, Mr. Salinger, the president wants to speak to you." I must say, I had a little brain thing saying, "Oh, my God, I got a terrible -- I've had a terrible dream." But then I hear this voice saying, "Pierre, this is Lyndon Johnson," and he was the new president.

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From The Kennedy Presidency An Oral History of The Era

by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober

[Note This book is an updated edition of "Let Us Begin Anew:" An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency by the same authors]

page 450

ROBERT MANNING

We took off from Honolulu in one of the presidential aircraft and were several hundred miles west of there.

Several cabinet secretaries were with us, as was Pierre Salinger. I had been in the press, so I knew by

the sound that there was a flash on the news ticker. I walked toward the communications area and the

sergeant had a piece of wire copy in his hand. He said, "The secretary [Rusk] will have to see this."....

It was a flash saying: "Dallas. President Kennedy shot." Then a bulletin. "Perhaps shot fatally." We

took it to Rusk and he asked me to bring the Cabinet secretaries to his compartment. We immediately

got on the phone with the White House Situation Room. They confirmed that something had happened

and that the president had been rushed to the hospital. Rusk got on the public address system and told

everybody we had some bad unclear news: President Kennedy had been wounded and we were going to

turn back. Salinger got in touch with the White House and used his code name. He said "This is Wayside.

What word do you have on Lancer?" At the other end the fellow said "Lancer is dead. Rusk then went

back on the PA system and said "I am sorry to have to bring you this grievous news, but President Kennedy

has been killed. We now have a new president. May God bless our President and the United States of America.

page 449

PIERRE SALINGER "I was trying to find out what had happened. When we first got the news, we were

not getting the information that he was dead but that he had been shot. That is why Rusk asked me to

establish communication between the plane and the White House; there was a lot of confusion. When

we got the news that the president was dead, there was some discussion on the plane as to who could

be responsible. Rusk thought it might be an international affair, and we sent a message to all U.S.

Embassies to see if they could find out anything.

The partial interview below is taken from

C-SPAN Booknotes

Pierre Salinger: P.S., A Memoir

Program Air Date: November 12, 1995

For more information about this program, visit www.booknotes.org

LAMB: How many times in your life have you been asked where you were the

night or the day that John F. Kennedy was shot?

SALINGER: Very often. A lot of people thought that I was with John F. Kennedy when he was shot, and they were always surprised to discover that I was on a plane flying with six members of his Cabinet and going to Tokyo. I mean, the reason the president was sending me to Tokyo was -- it was an conomic conference, but he wanted me to start working on a visit he was going to take in February of 1964, the first American president to visit Japan after the end of World War II. That's why I was on the trip. But we were only about three hours out of Honolulu, where we had spent a couple of days looking into the Vietnam issue, when suddenly we discovered that he had been shot. And we turned around. We didn't know he'd been killed, but we heard he was shot. And I was asked by Dean Rusk, who was then secretary of State, to open up the line to the White House so that we could have specific information as rapidly as possible. Well, it was about a half-hour after we turned around that we actually got the news that President Kennedy was dead.

LAMB: How many Cabinet officers were with you?

SALINGER: Six Cabinet officers: There was Rusk; there was McNamara; there was, well, I have all of them in the book, but they were coming for this economic conference, and that's why I was accompanying them.

LAMB: What happened after you got back?

SALINGER: Well, that was a long, long flight, as you know. We stopped in Honolulu. We had to put on the oil in this plane, then we flew. It was about 11 hours. We arrived here in Washington around 1:00 in the morning, went to the White House. It was about, I think, 2:30 or 3 in the morning that John Kennedy's body arrived, went into the West Wing. And then there was a Mass that I attended. And Jackie came up to me afterwards and put her arm around my shoulder and said, "Pierre, you know, you've just had a terrible day. I know, so why don't you spend the night here in the White House?" I mean, I had never spent the night in the White House in my life.

Anyway, I went upstairs with Larry O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell, and we spoke probably right up till about 6:30, 7:00 in the morning and then went to bed. And about 15 minutes later the phone rang, and it was the secretary at the White House who said, "Oh, Mr. Salinger, the president wants to speak to you." I must say, I had a little brain thing saying, "Oh, my God, I got a terrible -- I've had a terrible dream." But then I hear this voice saying, "Pierre, this is Lyndon Johnson," and he was the new president.

Thanks for the Manning reference Robert,

BK

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General Clifton: "We do not want a helicopter for Bethesda Medical Center. We do want an ambulance and a ground return from Andrews to Walter Reed and we want the regular post-mortem that has to be done by law under guard performed at Walter Reed. Is that clear?"

PF

Sounds a lot like the body was going from Andrews to Walter Reed, then from Walter Reed to Bethesda.

I have analyzed this very carefully, conducted a number of interviews over the years, and here are my own conclusions and opinions as to what all this means:

(1) As AF-1 approached Washington, D.C., it was known that the President's body was not in the coffin, and a plan was put in place to return the body to the coffin prior to the autopsy (at Bethesda)--and the fact that the coffin was empty would remain secret.

(2) In order to accomplish that, it was stated that "the autopsy" would be at Walter Reed, the purpose being to bring the large Dallas coffin to Walter Reed, so that the body could be put back inside that coffin; and then brought to Bethesda. Even if this "side trip" became known, it could be ascribed to 'innocent error'--and the whole story about the President being a "Navy man" and hence the autopsy would be conducted at Bethesda.

(3) Mrs.Kennedy was supposed to be separated from the Dallas coffin. To accomplish that, a ramp was ordered for the front starboard side of the plane. THis can be verified by just listening to the tape. Clifton orders just such a ramp, and for exactly that purpose. His words (as I recall): We're going to bring the First Lady off by that route. (I confirmed all this with Clifton in my July 15, 1980 in person interview).

(4) A special helicopter was ordered to meet AF-1 on the starboard side. You can see the lights of that helicopter hovering on the starboard side, in some of the newsreel footage.

(5 ) I have interviewed that helicopter pilot. He was from Anacostia, and the special unit to fly the President and First Lady to the mountain hideout in the event of a nuclear alert. I met with him, filmed him, and actually examined his logbook.

The problem was that when he went to the starboard side, there was nobody there. So he flew back to base.

The above scenario--which is what was planned--could not be carried out, however, because of the following:

(a) As AF-1 approached the final spot, Jackie refused to leave by the starboard side. She insisted on leaving with the Dallas coffin.

(b ) When she and Bobby stepped onto the Army lift, a second unexpected development occurred. (See [c])

(c ) A Navy ambulance, dispatched with a cardio nurse (just in case LBJ needed any medical attention) was unexpectedly (and mistakenly) moved into position by the Army lift, on the order of naval aide Tazwell Shepherd. This was unplanned. Either an Army ambulance was supposed to be there, or--more likely--the Dallas casket waa going to be moved in a helicopter. (There is genuine confusion on the AF-1 tape on this issue.) But the naval ambulance, "moving into position" (on Taz Shepherd's orders) then led to the following situation. . .

(d) Jackie, spotting that ambulance, basically said: "We'll go in that."

(e) The combination of Jackie (1) refusing to leave by the starboard side and (2) spotting the naval ambulance and saying "we'll go in that", resulted in the the coffin being placed in the Navy ambulance and Jackie also going in that ambulance. Once that happened, any chance of the Dallas casket going to Walter Reed vanished.

The result: the coffin--which was originally going to be brought to Walter Reed, where the body would be reinserted into the coffin, and then brought to Bethesda--went directly to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

That resulted in a completely confusing situation at Bethesda, with near comical overtones. You can read what happened next by going to Best Evidence (see Chapter 16, 25-28):

(a) First of all, the President's body was rushed to Bethesda Naval Hospital , where it arrived (we now know) at 6:35 PM.

The report of NOIC Roger Boyajian --unearthed through the excellent work of Doug Horne, at the ARRB--establishes that entry.

(b ) The Naval ambulance, containing the Dallas coffin, Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, McHugh, etc. arrived at the front of the hospital at 6:55 PM. That is established through press reports and Secret Service reports. (See Chapter 16, Best Evidence, for derails)

(c ) That ambulance, containing the Dallas coffin, was commandeered by Admiral Calvin Galloway, and driven around to the rear, and the Dallas coffin brought up the ramp by the loading dock, on a conveyance with rollers, at 7:17 PM EST. (That entry is documented by Sibert and O'Neill, and one or two Army reports. Again, see Chapter 16 of B.E., or Doug Horne's book, Inside the ARRB.

(d) For a brief while, the FBI was kept out of the morgue. (This is reported in the Sibert and O'Neill Report, on the very first page, and I believe it to be accurate, even though O'Neill denied it). During this period, those inside the morgue were placed in another room. Then, the body was then transferred back into the Dallas coffin, brought outside, and returned to a naval ambulance--probably (though not necessarily, the same one driven by Admiral Galloway).

(e) At 8PM, the tri-service casket team--which had "lost" the naval ambulance, and could not find it for some 45 minutes (See My chapter 16, where I interviewed all of them) then escorted the Dallas casket, which now contained the body, back into the morgue. This was the "official entry" and that entry occurred at 8PM, according to their report.

This sequence of "3 entries of 2 caskets" is thoroughly documented by 3 separate paper trails (and has been written up, in slightly different style, by Jacob Hornberger, in a series of articles on the Internet).

As to all these goings on, Commander Humes, when testifying, hid behind the following figleaf, just in case all this came to light:

Specter: tell us who else in a general way was present at the time the autopsy was conducted in addition to you three doctors, please?

Humes: "I must preface by saying it will be somewhat incomplete. My particular interest was on the examination of the president and not of the security measures of the other people who were present." (2 WCH 349)

To recap the 3 casket entries, and the 3 paper trails left behind:

6:35 PM: The body was delivered, in a body bag, inside a shipping casket, per the Boyajian report

7:17 PM: The Dallas casket, which was then empty, entered the morgue for the first time (per FBI Agents Sibert andO'Enill, and at least one US Army report)

8 PM: The Dallas casket, which now contained the Presidents body, entered the morgue for the second time.

In short, the rigmarole of returning the body to the (empty) Dallas casket--which was originally planned to occur at Walter Reed--did not occur, because of the unexpected event(s) that occurred as Air Force One landed; at which time:

(a) Jackie refused to leave by the starboard side, on the special ramp that Clifton had ordered (and you can hear him going through these instructions, more than once, on the AF-1 tapes; and

(b ) Jackie was not flown away in the special helicopter that had been ordered to the starboard side, and whose pilot I have interviewed at length, both by phone, and then on camera, in 1996.

Had Jackie existed on the starboard side, the public would have probably witnessed a scene in which the Dallas coffin was either choppered to Walter Reed, or--possibly--brought to Walter Reed in an Army ambulance.

And that's the explanation for all the radio transmissions about "going to Walter Reed for the autopsy." It was not about having an autopsy at Walter Reed. It was bureaucratic cover for getting the body back into the Dallas coffin.

Of course, when I wrote Best Evidence, and laid out the Air Force One radio transmission (as I did) in Chapter 31, I did not have all the "puzzle pieces" that I have today. Certainly, I had the "empty coffin" data--that is all laid out, starting in Chapter 25 (with the account of Dennis David)--but I did not have the starboard chopper information, and there are other puzzle pieces I did not then have, and which I will be setting forth in a future writing. (So. . ."stay tuned.")

But again I emphasize: The Kennedy autopsy was never going to be done at Walter Reed. That was all "cover" for solving the "empty coffin" problem.

* * *

I'm positive this situation (which I have described above) is what explains the apparent "difference" between what the radio transmissions say (“Walter Reed” etc), and what actually happened ("on the ground"). I base this conclusion on not just having carefully analyzed the AF-1 tapes, but, in addition, on the following: certain research I have done on the unexpected action of naval aide Tazwell Sheperd in causing the naval ambulance with the cardio nurse to back into position on the port side of AF-1; my detailed interview with the helicopter pilot on the starboard side (from the top secret unit that was set up to fly the President, and other top officials to "the mountain hideout" in the case of nuclear war); my in-person detailed interview with General Clifton on 7/15/80; and, finally, research I have done about Jackie's refusal to exit the starboard side, despite the preparations that she do so--in the form of the ramp that was placed there (on Clifton's orders, which anyone can verify by listening to the AF-1 tape), and the helicopter that was ordered to be at that location (which I know from my detailed interviewing of the helicopter pilot).

The key point here is simply this: that certain top officials--including Attorney General Robert Kennedy--were well aware that the body was not in the Dallas coffin, and were attempting to rectify that situation, without the First Lady (much less the entire nation) learning that this was so.

That's what "the autopsy will be conducted at Walter Reed" was all about. (And not much more.) And that's why so many hours of "AF-1 tapes" are still "missing."

As I said above: stay tuned.

DSL

2/13/12; 10:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, California

Edited by David Lifton
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General Clifton: "We do not want a helicopter for Bethesda Medical Center. We do want an ambulance and a ground return from Andrews to Walter Reed and we want the regular post-mortem that has to be done by law under guard performed at Walter Reed. Is that clear?"

PF

Sounds a lot like the body was going from Andrews to Walter Reed, then from Walter Reed to Bethesda.

I have analyzed this very carefully, conducted a number of interviews over the years, and here are my own conclusions and opinions as to what all this means:

(1) As AF-1 approached Washington, D.C., it was known that the President's body was not in the coffin, and a plan was put in place to return the body to the coffin prior to the autopsy (at Bethesda)--and the fact that the coffin was empty would remain secret.

(2) In order to accomplish that, it was stated that "the autopsy" would be at Walter Reed, the purpose being to bring the large Dallas coffin to Walter Reed, so that the body could be put back inside that coffin; and then brought to Bethesda. Even if this "side trip" became known, it could be ascribed to 'innocent error'--and the whole story about the President being a "Navy man" and hence the autopsy would be conducted at Bethesda.

(3) Mrs.Kennedy was supposed to be separated from the Dallas coffin. To accomplish that, a ramp was ordered for the front starboard side of the plane. THis can be verified by just listening to the tape. Clifton orders just such a ramp, and for exactly that purpose. His words (as I recall): We're going to bring the First Lady off by that route. (I confirmed all this with Clifton in my July 15, 1980 in person interview).

(4) A special helicopter was ordered to meet AF-1 on the starboard side. You can see the lights of that helicopter hovering on the starboard side, in some of the newsreel footage.

(5 ) I have interviewed that helicopter pilot. He was from Anacostia, and the special unit to fly the President and First Lady to the mountain hideout in the event of a nuclear alert. I met with him, filmed him, and actually examined his logbook.

The problem was that when he went to the starboard side, there was nobody there. So he flew back to base.

The above scenario--which is what was planned--could not be carried out, however, because of the following:

(a) As AF-1 approached the final spot, Jackie refused to leave by the starboard side. She insisted on leaving with the Dallas coffin.

(b ) When she and Bobby stepped onto the Army lift, a second unexpected development occurred. (See [c])

(c ) A Navy ambulance, dispatched with a cardio nurse (just in case LBJ needed any medical attention) was unexpectedly (and mistakenly) moved into position by the Army lift, on the order of naval aide Tazwell Shepherd. This was unplanned. Either an Army ambulance was supposed to be there, or--more likely--the Dallas casket waa going to be moved in a helicopter. (There is genuine confusion on the AF-1 tape on this issue.) But the naval ambulance, "moving into position" (on Taz Shepherd's orders) then led to the following situation. . .

(d) Jackie, spotting that ambulance, basically said: "We'll go in that."

(e) The combination of Jackie (1) refusing to leave by the starboard side and (2) spotting the naval ambulance and saying "we'll go in that", resulted in the the coffin being placed in the Navy ambulance and Jackie also going in that ambulance. Once that happened, any chance of the Dallas casket going to Walter Reed vanished.

The result: the coffin--which was originally going to be brought to Walter Reed, where the body would be reinserted into the coffin, and then brought to Bethesda--went directly to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

That resulted in a completely confusing situation at Bethesda, with near comical overtones. You can read what happened next by going to Best Evidence (see Chapter 16, 25-28):

(a) First of all, the President's body was rushed to Bethesda Naval Hospital , where it arrived (we now know) at 6:35 PM.

The report of NOIC Roger Boyajian --unearthed through the excellent work of Doug Horne, at the ARRB--establishes that entry.

(b ) The Naval ambulance, containing the Dallas coffin, Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, McHugh, etc. arrived at the front of the hospital at 6:55 PM. That is established through press reports and Secret Service reports. (See Chapter 16, Best Evidence, for derails)

(c ) That ambulance, containing the Dallas coffin, was commandeered by Admiral Calvin Galloway, and driven around to the rear, and the Dallas coffin brought up the ramp by the loading dock, on a conveyance with rollers, at 7:17 PM EST. (That entry is documented by Sibert and O'Neill, and one or two Army reports. Again, see Chapter 16 of B.E., or Doug Horne's book, Inside the ARRB.

(d) For a brief while, the FBI was kept out of the morgue. (This is reported in the Sibert and O'Neill Report, on the very first page, and I believe it to be accurate, even though O'Neill denied it). During this period, those inside the morgue were placed in another room. Then, the body was then transferred back into the Dallas coffin, brought outside, and returned to a naval ambulance--probably (though not necessarily, the same one driven by Admiral Galloway).

(e) At 8PM, the tri-service casket team--which had "lost" the naval ambulance, and could not find it for some 45 minutes (See My chapter 16, where I interviewed all of them) then escorted the Dallas casket, which now contained the body, back into the morgue. This was the "official entry" and that entry occurred at 8PM, according to their report.

This sequence of "3 entries of 2 caskets" is thoroughly documented by 3 separate paper trails (and has been written up, in slightly different style, by Jacob Hornberger, in a series of articles on the Internet).

As to all these goings on, Commander Humes, when testifying, hid behind the following figleaf, just in case all this came to light:

Specter: tell us who else in a general way was present at the time the autopsy was conducted in addition to you three doctors, please?

Humes: "I must preface by saying it will be somewhat incomplete. My particular interest was on the examination of the president and not of the security measures of the other people who were present." (2 WCH 349)

To recap the 3 casket entries, and the 3 paper trails left behind:

6:35 PM: The body was delivered, in a body bag, inside a shipping casket, per the Boyajian report

7:17 PM: The Dallas casket, which was then empty, entered the morgue for the first time (per FBI Agents Sibert andO'Enill, and at least one US Army report)

8 PM: The Dallas casket, which now contained the Presidents body, entered the morgue for the second time.

In short, the rigmarole of returning the body to the (empty) Dallas casket--which was originally planned to occur at Walter Reed--did not occur, because of the unexpected event(s) that occurred as Air Force One landed; at which time:

(a) Jackie refused to leave by the starboard side, on the special ramp that Clifton had ordered (and you can hear him going through these instructions, more than once, on the AF-1 tapes; and

(b ) Jackie was not flown away in the special helicopter that had been ordered to the starboard side, and whose pilot I have interviewed at length, both by phone, and then on camera, in 1996.

Had Jackie existed on the starboard side, the public would have probably witnessed a scene in which the Dallas coffin was either choppered to Walter Reed, or--possibly--brought to Walter Reed in an Army ambulance.

And that's the explanation for all the radio transmissions about "going to Walter Reed for the autopsy." It was not about having an autopsy at Walter Reed. It was bureaucratic cover for getting the body back into the Dallas coffin.

Of course, when I wrote Best Evidence, and laid out the Air Force One radio transmission (as I did) in Chapter 31, I did not have all the "puzzle pieces" that I have today. Certainly, I had the "empty coffin" data--that is all laid out, starting in Chapter 25 (with the account of Dennis David)--but I did not have the starboard chopper information, and there are other puzzle pieces I did not then have, and which I will be setting forth in a future writing. (So. . ."stay tuned.")

But again I emphasize: The Kennedy autopsy was never going to be done at Walter Reed. That was all "cover" for solving the "empty coffin" problem.

* * *

I'm positive this situation (which I have described above) is what explains the apparent "difference" between what the radio transmissions say (“Walter Reed” etc), and what actually happened ("on the ground"). I base this conclusion on not just having carefully analyzed the AF-1 tapes, but, in addition, on the following: certain research I have done on the unexpected action of naval aide Tazwell Sheperd in causing the naval ambulance with the cardio nurse to back into position on the port side of AF-1; my detailed interview with the helicopter pilot on the starboard side (from the top secret unit that was set up to fly the President, and other top officials to "the mountain hideout" in the case of nuclear war); my in-person detailed interview with General Clifton on 7/15/80; and, finally, research I have done about Jackie's refusal to exit the starboard side, despite the preparations that she do so--in the form of the ramp that was placed there (on Clifton's orders, which anyone can verify by listening to the AF-1 tape), and the helicopter that was ordered to be at that location (which I know from my detailed interviewing of the helicopter pilot).

The key point here is simply this: that certain top officials--including Attorney General Robert Kennedy--were well aware that the body was not in the Dallas coffin, and were attempting to rectify that situation, without the First Lady (much less the entire nation) learning that this was so.

That's what "the autopsy will be conducted at Walter Reed" was all about. (And not much more.) And that's why so many hours of "AF-1 tapes" are still "missing."

As I said above: stay tuned.

DSL

2/13/12; 10:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, California

David, if the Attorney General knew, why didn't he squawk? It seems to me that Robert Kennedy was smart enough to know something was wrong if the President's body was not where it was supposed to be-- that no good could come from this. Couldn't he put two and two together? I do not doubt the basic time line as you presented it in Best Evidence. Subsequent revelations have confirmed your original thesis, IMO. But what power or persuasion would keep the Attorney General's mouth shut? And when do you think he found out about empty casket? I guess I'll stayed tuned. Respectfully, Dan

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This guy, Dave Emery wrote about the Lordes SIGNET facility in Cuba, where the Soviet Russians and Cubans tried to monitor and recorded the Air Force One radio transmissions.

He acknowledges that NSA, the Cubans, Russians, and probably our allies - Canada, Australia, UK and Israel also probably monitored and taped the AF1 radio transmissions, but unlikely they will acknowledge that let alone share the info with us.

More likely, he said, is the possibility that after news of the assassination got out, some private HAM radio operator listened in and taped it, and it sits in somebody's basement radio room today.

When told that the NSA said they no longer have it, heresponded:

Dave Emery: I find it rather surprising, even amazing, that the NSA would admit to having ever had a copy of that traffic. I believe they no doubt did, but there I quite a bit of sensitivity to a US government agency intercepting high level US traffic, and it is not clear to me under what operational directive they ran such a Mystic Star monitoring operation.

Back then it would have actually taken an operator or two dialing in frequencies on the R-390As and recording everything on tape – and I am most intrigued that you have got them to admit to having assigned such to Mystic Star in November 1963.

One supposes that once the news of the assassination became known within NSA (ASA/AFSS/NSG etc.) monitoring facilities some of the operators looked for the Mystic Star traffic and listened to it (military discipline aside, I am sure there were people curious enough to break the rules under the circumstances). And given that the intercept positions had tape gear, probably there were tapes made on the QT. But for anyone to admit to their existence is quite another matter.

I do know that continuous Crown patches on the AF-1 primary and secondary hi frequencies were almost certainly recorded by WHCA at the White House com center and probably also at Andrews com center Mystic Staroperators.

It seems inconceivable that these tapes weren't carefully saved, and probably played over by insiders many times. Of course considering the various conspiracy theories (and remotely possible also the presence of a real conspiracy) it follows that these tapes may have been edited or deliberately destroyed, or locked up under seal for another 50 years or whatever.

I have almost total certainty that WHCA and or the 89thSAM com operators had such tapes from the actual radios used to communicate with the plane – I would not consider it even remotely conceivable they weren't routinely taping the lines.

While I know that I unlikely, I've considered the possibly that the Cubans/Russians picked it up and may have intercepted the traffic.Whether this was done from Cuba at Lourdes or from the Soviet Embassy in Washington (or both) is less clear. Frankly considering what sometimes was said over Mystic Star in the clear in that era, it seems beyond doubt that the Soviets would have found it worthwhile to assign operators to routinely monitor the traffic and almost certainly record what they intercepted on tape for later translation, playing for leadership and whatever. The recent Mitroysin Archive book specifically mentions Soviet monitoring of VIPcommunications from aircraft, including such monitoring from the Soviet diplomatic facilities in the DC and NY areas.

And whilst the Russians were sometimes slow on the uptakeand the Mitroshin stuff mentions the Kissinger era, I find it rather hard tobelieve that they didn't know about and follow Mysitc Star practically from its inception.

By Dave Emey

GRU Snooping Continues. The interception, taping, and publication of a conference call between Newt Gingrich and other congressional leaders demonstrates the susceptibility of microwave-transmitted electronic communications to eaves dropping. A growing number of intracity phone calls,e-mail, and faxes, as well as nearly all long-distance calls, are carried viamicrowave. But it's not just itinerant Democratic Party activists with police scanners who can listen in on microwave communications.

This is complete horse pucky.Microwave is less and less and less used for long distance communications inthe US. Very little traffic now flows overmicrowave links - fiber has so much higher capacity and better data errorcharacteristics that it has nearly completely taken over long distancetelephone and data communications.

A typical microwave link cancarry 45 or maybe 130 megabits per second maximum per rf channel and maybe has6 rf channels in use at a time maximum whilst current fibers carry 1.5 Gigabitsper fiber and can be upgraded to 3.0 Gigabits easily and way more than 10 Gbswith current WDM technology. Typical installed fiber routes have around 30 ormore fibers just because it is as easy to install that many as one.

The remaining active microwavelinks are primarily used as backup for fiber routes and may not be carryinglive traffic at all. Virtually every route that used to be microwave has nowhad one or more fiber routes installed to replace it and if it hasn't they areplanned or being installed now. At the best there are a few remote places whereinstalling fiber is impractical that still communicate with the world onmicrowave links and there are a few microwave systems still in service to carrycertain vital national survival and security traffic where they provideredundancy.

Also, essentially all currentcommon carrier microwave is now digital rather than fm-fdm-ssb. These highcapacity and bit rate 64-QAM or 256-QAM signals are significantly harder tointercept and demodulate and demultiplex than the FM signals used until thelate 80's were. This is especially true of reception from sites that see onlymarginal scattered signals rather than the direct beam, as digital radio tendsto not work at all with marginal signals rather than being just noisy.

I think that probably less than1% of US long distance public telephone and datacommunications currently travel by microwave at any point in their journeycompared to more than 68% at the peak of microwave usage in the early 1980's.And this figure is dropping steadily over time as more and more fiber is put inservice.

> As the Center for Security Policy (CSP) points out, the GRU -the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian ArmedForces - maintains signals intelligence ("sigint") facilities inLourdes, Cuba, and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam which are capable of interceptingnearly all microwaved communication across the continental United States aswell as the Atlantic and Pacific.

This is not entirely true.Intercepting microwave signals from over the horizon is not possible exceptunder truly extraordinary propagation conditions and then only for briefperiods of time with gigantic antennas and from relatively nearby places. Andthe resultant scattered signal is of very poor quality and getting usable highbit rate data out of such scatter signals, as would be required to interceptcommon carrier traffic, is not easily possible.

At the very best the Lourdes facility might possibly be able to seeoccasional microwave scatter traffic from southern Florida and the Caribbean on very good days. This is hardly trafficfrom the entire continental US and one can be very sure that the NSA and otheragencies responsible for thinking about US communications security have long agoarranged in cooperation with the long distance carriers to ensure that nothingof any great use was showing up.

There are two categories ofmicrowave traffic those facilities can intercept - domestic and internationalsatellite traffic from US satellites with footprints that cover the Caribbeanand whatever radio traffic is intercepted by Russian low orbit ferretsatellites as they pass over North America and by high orbit monitoringsatellites parked over the western hemisphere.

Very little public point topoint telephone and data traffic between points in the US is currently transmitted via satellite.Fiber is so much cheaper and better in quality that the carriers gave upsatellite transmission of domestic traffic some years ago. There are somecompelling reasons for this - the long 240 ms delay in transmitting traffic viageosynchronous satellite is very noticeable to many humans in the give and takeof conversations, and without special protocol provisions many datacommunications systems give horrible throughput over links with that long adelay as well as giving unacceptably long echo delays in interactiveapplications. And satellite bandwidths are even less than terrestrial microwavebandwidths and compared to the vast amount of fiber now in service are just atiny fraction of the total.

Domestic communicationssatellites are primarily used for point to multi-point traffic such as creditcard authorization systems for gas stations and stores and distribution ofvideo to TV stations and cable companies, and broadcasts of data to largenumbers of receivers. It is rarely cheaper and more cost effective to put pointto point traffic on communications satellites. And most of what is there istraffic sent by private users of one sort or another such as large companiesand government agencies - much of which is securely encrypted if sensitive. Andthat which is not encrypted is readily accessible to anyone with the rightcommonly available equipment and a vanilla satellite dish of the sort there areliterally millions and millions of scattered throughout the US, Canada andMexico - the potential threat from this source dwarfs what the Russians mightdo with the information (and is readily controlled by link encryption).

Even internationalcommunications from the US are less and less routed via satellite ashigh capacity fiber trans-ocean cables are installed. I have seen numbers onthe order of less than 10% satellite transmission of international traffic andas new optical amplifier cables are installed (which one can assume the UK/USApartners such as the US NSA get the entire bitstream from) this number is alsoplunging. And most international satellite communications can be monitored fromthe other end and do not have to be monitored from near the US.

As a point of fact I would bemore concerned that Russian submarines have tapped the trans-Atlantic andtrans-Pacific cables somewhere than that the Russians pick up satellitecommunications. One hopes that the bitstreams on those cables are reallysecurely link encrypted - doing so would seem to be a no-brainer - but I havenever seen any reference to this being the practice.

What capabilities Russiansigint satellites still have in the post USSR era of economic collapse where Russia has not been able to launch a singleimaging spy satellite for several months and has no usable ones in orbit,according to a recent NY Times story, is not clear. Russiansatellites have generally had a much shorter useful life in orbit than USsatellites do and Russia and the Russian space program has been pretty poor anddisorganized for the last several years. At best such sigint satellites couldconceivably be used to monitor some few domestic microwave links that happenedto put a usable signal in the direction of the satellite and were far enough awayfrom other transmitters on the same frequency to be separated by antennadirectivity enough to stand out. While a satellite in geosynchronous orbitcould see all of North America, it is pretty certain that it could see only arather small fraction of modern digital microwave links well enough to recovertraffic from them. And it is absolutely certain that the capacity of thesatellite to intercept and relay traffic is only a few microwave linkssimultaneously at most. This is hardly everything or more than a small piece infact.

It has been reported thatRussian sigint satellites use laser optical links back to Lourdes rather thanthe Ka and higher frequency band microwave links that US equivalents have usedto pass the signals they intercept, but one suspects that the relevant USagencies have probably used whatever means were necessary to find these linksand determine what US traffic is being monitored and ensure that that anythingtruly important was routed by fiber instead.

In any case, the value of Lourdes is primarily as a base for intercepting US satellite communications and as aconvenient place to put a ground station for sigint and ferret satellites wheresatellite to satellite relay is not required to get the signals back to aground station. If Lourdes were shut down most of the sigint functions of thesesatellites could be operated from Russia using satellite to satellitecommunications of one sort or another. The only major loss would be the abilityto intercept certain domestic communications satellite signals which usefocused beams and not readily intercepted from other places where the Russiansmay have space to put antennas. And one suspects that the Russians couldprobably do most of this interception from covert sites under cover as legitimatesatellite installations in the US and Canada or other Caribbean or Central American countries.

In any case it is certainly nottrue that Lourdes can intercept a significant fraction ofUS telecommunications simply because most US telecommunications do not any longertravel via microwave radio. Lourdes undoubtably can intercept enough usefulstuff to justify continuing its operation, but this is partly because of blind US government policy on encryption ratherthan anything else. This especially applies to cellular communications whichcan be intercepted from satellites (and of course by anyone with a scanner ormodified cell-phone as well). How well even satellites with large 100 or 200foot dishes do at intercepting the dense network of US and other cellularsystems with hundreds of transmitters going at once on the same frequency inthe area of the footprint of the satellite receive antenna at 800 mhz I do notknow. And tracking and identifying calls of interest when the satellite canintercept only some cells on some cell-sites reliably must be fairly hard.

In any event the US operates several sigint satellites ofmuch more advanced design and capability than Russia and has for many more years than theRussians have. And it is widely reported that the US has worldwide ground monitoring stationslistening to essentially all communications satellites in the Clarke orbit andprobably any that aren't that could possibly carry useful traffic. Ourcapabilities and technology and expenditure in this area is well beyond anyoneelse's.

Furthermore, according to the CSP, "it is believed that boththe Russians and the Cubans are developing capabilities at Lourdes to conduct information warfare (IW). Sucha capability would permit these facilities to be employed not only to interceptinformation [but also to] make it possible for Moscow or Havana to manipulate telecommunicatedinformation so as to deny the American people and their government vitalservices or otherwise work against U.S. interests."

There may be some capability tojam US commercial communications satellites which for the most part have notany kind of protection against such jamming. Vital US military communicationssatellites do. Successfully conducting man-in-the-middle attacks on terrestrialmicrowave communications from Clarke orbit is difficult at the very very bestand probably essentially impossible simply because of the 240 ms delay involvedand the enormous difficulty of successfully interjecting the right kind ofsignal into a microwave link that uses highly directional antennas andmodulation techniques that are amplitude sensitive such as QAM. And one cancertainly assume that the US is carefully watching Russian sigintsatellites at all times and would certainly know immediately if they startedradiating enough signal to disrupt or spoof US communications systems.

Of course all sigint yieldsinformation such as passwords and encryption keys and spectral signatures ofspeakers and call addressing and routing information (traffic analysis) thatcan be used to good advantage in later active man-in-the-middle attacks. Andone can certainly assume that the Russians and many other governments includingthe US have spent considerable effort developingactive penetration and disruption capability. It has even been reported thatthe US has been using this to force networktraffic to be routed in Europe via facilities the US can monitor.

> According to former GRU Colonel Stanislav Lunev, "Thestrategic significance of the Lourdes facility has grown dramatically since thesecret order from Russian Federation President [boris Yeltsin] of 7 February 1996 demanding that the Russian intelligence community step up thetheft of American and other Western economic and trade secrets. It currentlyrepresents a very formidable and ominous threat to U.S. national security as well as the Americaneconomy and infrastructure."

>Yet the Clinton Administration insists that it is in America's interest to allow the GRU to continueits eavesdropping on the U.S. In congressional testimony delivered onMarch 16, 1995, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American AffairsAlexander Watson asserted that pressuring Russia to discontinue sigintactivities in Cuba "could limit our ability to promote reform and stabilityin Russia" as it could "be seen by the Russians as interfering withthe exercise of their right under the START Treaty to monitor compliance withthe agreement...."

And of course if we pressurethem and other governments to abandon sigint operations they can and will startto do the same to us. And ours are greater in magnitude and productivity thantheirs.

> As with so many other issues, the Clintonites and the Sovietsare reading from the same page regarding the Cuban sigint facility. Izvestiareported last November 30th that the U.S. "does not object in principle to thecontinuing existence of the electronic center in Cuba...."

One can make the argument thatsigint for national security purposes is stabilizing and not altogether a badthing. Many of us who are at least dimly aware of the technology fear itspotential in the hands of a future fascist police state greatly, but onesuspects that the Russians do not use the information effectively to damage USinterests. After all we are the top economic and military power in the worldand they are nearly in third world status economically and have a rapidlydeteriorating military. Perhaps the greatest risk from their Soviet era sigintcapabilities is that information will leak from starved intelligence agency employeesand officials to the Russian criminal mafias and benefit organized crime. Thereis certainly potential there for mischief, especially considering that a goodamount of criminally useful information flows unencrypted over radiocommunications in the US.

If I was in the US government and thinking about the threatof the Russian sigint capability I would be pushing for more use of encryptionin domestic commercial communications and especially such things as cell-phonesand wireless data systems. Universal link encryption with secure ciphers ofsuch radio based communications systems should not impact lawful interceptionof communications one iota since the government can always request wiretapsusing their spiffy new digital telephony tapping capability. The carriers would always have access to the unencrypted traffic after all and couldforward it to the government. And many of us think that end-to-end encryptionof traffic is a better choice in the long run than no encryption, even if itlocks out the government (and everyone else) from easily, and in largequantities, fishing through traffic. One supposes that the government willalways be able to obtain most traffic it wants badly enough, throughcryptanalysis, TEMPEST, rubber hose cryptanalysis, black bag jobs, bugging, andthe perfidy of informants of one sort or another, and of course most of all -carelessness and ignorance about INFOSEC and bugs and configuration problems insoftware.

But I would also be mindfulthat the Russians have decreasing intelligence capability to monitor USintentions and perhaps allowing them some access will keep them from developingparanoid fears of US intentions. The Russians probably still have a few workingICBMs after all...

In any case enough of thesespeculations. Perhaps a semi-retired telecommunications/computer engineer suchas myself with access only to public information gets the picture completelywrong. And perhaps not. I do know it is definitely and without a doubt not truethat more and more domestic communications flow over microwave point to pointradio, however. And I think that anyone propagating that myth deserves acorrection.

Dave Emery

die@die.com

Weston, Mass.

Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 17:01:31 CSTFrom: "U.S. Dept of State Listserver" <U09885@UICVM.UIC.EDU>Subject: 980403 U.S. State Dept. Press Briefing Transcript #41To: DOSBRIEF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU DEPARTMENT OF STATEDAILY PRESS BRIEFING [Excerpt]Friday, April 3, 1998Briefer: James P. RubinCUBA1 Russia Monitoring Facility at Lourdes in CubaQUESTION: Have you seen the story about the Russians supposedly using the listening post in Cuba to glean information about American battle plans and so forth?MR. RUBIN: We are well aware of the Russian signal intelligencefacility at Lourdes, Cuba. Like our own SIGINT facilities, it is used to collect military information, including information used in verifying arms control agreements. Because of the sensitive nature of such activities, we will not comment publicly on the degree to which we do or do not perceive Lourdes as a threat.

Russian Sigint

Lourdes signals intelligence (SIGINT) facility

CUBA AND INFORMATION WARFARE (IW):

Edited by William Kelly
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Air Force One RadioTransmission Tapes – Identities &Characters Persona

In the order of their appearance of the Air Force One Radio Tapes

86972 – Eight,Six, Nine, Seven Two is the tail number for the 707 used by the Cabinet on itsflight to Japan.

Andrews – AndrewsAir Force Base – Maryland, a fewmiles SE of Washington DC

26000 – Two, SixThousand – Air Force One – the Presidential Aircraft when the President is notaboard.

Air Force One – Presidentialaircraft when the President is aboard, aka "Angel"

Frequency – thefrequency number that they agree to use in order to communicate by radio.

One-Five – 15 –is the frequency number they use to communicate with Andrews.

Honolulu – Hawaii,Hickam AFB, where 86972 stops to refuel on way to Japan.

Command Post –SAC Command Post – (probably Ofutt AFB, Nebraska)

Zulu – Militarytime – G. Mean Time – 24 hour timerather than 12 hour AM/PM

ETA– Estimated Time of Arrival

Weather Officer –Location unknown but they frequently interrupt patches to obtain weatherconditions

Airman Gilmore –Radio operator at Andrews, coordinates many of the patches.

Patch – Radiooperators acting as middle-men for two people at two different locations whoneed to have a conversation, sometimes a radio to ground land line telephone orradio to radio. I have broken the radio transmission tapes into groups ofconversations that I have numbered and labeled "Patches."

On the block –Upon arrival at destination, blocks are placed at the base of the wheels of theairplane when it comes to a stop to keep it from moving, and that time isregistered and regarded as the official time of arrival.

Dallas Texas,Love Field, destination of Air Force One from Carswell AFB, Fort Worth.

Larry – Radiooperator, possibly at Liberty relaystation.

Situation Rom – WhiteHouse basement crisis nerve center.

LibertyLibertyRadio Relay Station – at Collins Radio HQ, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

CINPAC – ("SingSing"?) – Pacific Command, Hawaii

Traffic –Messages, radio communications, telephone calls, etc.

White House – akaCrown

Wayside – Code name for Pierre Salinger, the President's Press Secretaryaboard the Cabinet Plane over the Pacific.

Crown – WhiteHouse

Oliver Hallett –Situation Room radio operator

Connally – Texasgovernor John Connally, wounded at Dealey Plaza

Bromley Smith –State Department officer in the Situation Room at the White House.

Tickers – APAssociated Press and UPI United Press International wire service newsteletypes.

Secretary of State– Dean Rusk, senior passenter aboard 86972 Cabinet Plane

Parkland Hospital– Dallas, where JFK and Connally aswell as LBJ taken from Dealey Plaza.

Dallas Trade Mart – Original destinationwhere JFK was to deliver speech.

Andy – Hatcher

Cedar RapidsCollins Radio Liberty Radio RelayStation – Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Mr. Ball – Undersecretaryof State George Ball

Murray JacksonState Dept. Washington DC

Colonel Toomy – Pilotof AF1 26000.

ColonelHolland/Ireland?

LBJ Tape Reel 1 SideOne – Patch 8

Kilduff – AndrewKilduff, Asst. Press Secretary in Dallas,Delayed the announcement the President was dead until LBJ aboard AF1.

Stranger – MajorHarold R. Patterson US Signal Corp, WHCA

McGeorge Bundy – NationalSecurity Advisor – at Situation Room in White House

SAM Command – Strategic Air MissionCommand Post –

Hic Cup – HickamAFB Hawaii

Duplex – SecretService Agent Jerry Behn

Volunteer – VicePresident/President LBJ

Jerry – Newport Jerry? Radio operator.

Lace –Mrs.Kennedy – First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Col. Hornbuckel –Andrews Opeations officer – (See: Andrews Log)

Congressman Thomas

Congressman Thornbury

Congressman Brooks –

General Heaton –Surgeon General of the Army

Airman Stanz –Radio Operator

Walter Reed Hosptial– US Armyhospital in Washington DC

Dr. Burkley – JFK's personalphysician aboard AF1

Bethesda Medical Center Naval hospital where autopsy is performed.

Captain Shephard – President'sNaval Aide in Washington DC

Jerry Behn –Secret Serivice Chief at White House

General Clifton –President's Military Aide.

Watchman – Gen.Clifton

Tillerman – Unidentified

Secretary of Defense – Robert MacNamara in Washington DC

Sorrensen – JFKCabinet Member Ted Sorrensen on AF1

Kellerman –Secret Service Agent responsible for security for Texastrip.

Bob Burke –(Secret Service?)

Dr, John Walsh –Mrs. Kennedy's personal physician in DC

Colonel Dorman –Col. George S. Dorman, Gen. LeMay's aide in DC.

General LeMay –Chief of Staff of the Air Force (aka Grandson)

C-140 – Type ofPlane LeMay is in.

Dagger – Secret Service Agent RufusYoungblood

Victoria – Mrs.LBJ

Valley – LBJ's DChome.

Venus – LBJ's daughter

Wing – Gen. McHugh

Slugger – Capt.Cecil Stoughton, photographer

Warrior – MalcolmKilduff

Winner – AndrewHatcher

Witness – Capt. Tazewell Shepard USN

Speaker of the House– John McKormick

Carl Albert

Hal Boggs

Charles Halleck

Leslie Arends

Manfield

Humphrey

Dirkson

Smathers

Kuchel

Hickenlooper

Fish Room – WhiteHouse Conference Room

Mrs. Rose Kennedy – JFK'smother in Massachusetts.

Walter Jenkins – LBJ'saide in Washington DC.

Mrs. Connally –Governor Connally's wife at Parkland Hospitalin Dallas.

Tanker – Maj.Michael Cook (Andrews)

Tiger – Col.Swindel (AF1 Pilot)

Congressman Thomas –

Captain Benson – SAMCommand Post

C-130 – Planewith vehicles

Edited by William Kelly
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  • 3 months later...
Guest Tom Scully

Thanks Tom.

THat is it, the one Gibson quotes.

Gibson found out that Whitney came into the office that night to work on it.

The common denominator I've discovered in the background of Priscilla Johnson, her publisher Cass Canfield and her husband,

George McMillan, is the winter colony founded by Thomas Hitchcock and his wife and their friend WC Whitney, in the 1890's in Aiken, SC. Canfield's mother wintered there until 1937, his father died there in 1904. McMillan moved there in 1946.

Jock Whitney's father inherited the largest chunk of his mother's uncle's, Oliver Hazard Perry, because Jock's father, William Payne Whitney, shared his deceased mother's brother's (Perry's) disapproval of W.C. Whitney's second wife, who he married in 1896. She died two years later in a hunting accident in Hitchcock's woods in Aikern SC. It was reported in November, 1928, 18 months after the sudden death of William Payne Whitney, that his estate was valued at $217 million, an amont almost double the prior largest estate in the U.S. Jock Whitney's share was more than $50 million, the principal to be held in trust until he reached age 40.

https://www.google.com/search?q=john+train+john+hay+whitney&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-nightly#hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-nightly&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aunofficial&prmdo=1&tbm=bks&sclient=psy-ab&q=1941+1991+%22Brian+Crozier%22+Whitney+and+Sam+Park.+john+train&oq=1941+1991+%22Brian+Crozier%22+Whitney+and+Sam+Park.+john+train&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=serp.12...32280.44138.6.45606.14.13.1.0.0.0.234.1426.10j2j1.13.0...0.0.CJ04WdMADUY&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=e18be315238ef5fa&biw=960&bih=626

Free agent: the unseen war 1941-1991

books.google.com Brian Crozier - 1993 - 314 pages

...explicit name: the Current Affairs Research Services Centre (CARSC). I knew nothing of fund-raising,

I knew nothing of fund-raising, and very little of the world of money. 1 wondered whether I could persuade Jock

Whitney to back CARSC financially. In conversation, I aroused only marginal interest in Whitney and Sam Park.

I had also mentioned the idea to my CIA friends, whose show of enthusiasm was no greater. They thought of an ingenious

way of killing it with minimum pain. At their suggestion, Whitney and Park commissioned an

independent assessment. They sent a New York stockbroker, John Train, to London to look at the situation. By then, I

had published the first of a monthly series of monographs under the general title of Conflict Studies. Train was a

man of culture as well as money. He had lived in Paris and seemed as interested in the arts as in stocks and shares.

He spent a week in London and told me he was interested in our first product, but sceptical about the commercial

viability of the project as a whole. Back in New York, he wrote a report (which I never saw) advising Jock Whitney

not to invest in CARSC. John Train was in the full sense an unconscious agent. He had been briefed by Sam Park, who in

turn had been briefed by the CIA. I was disappointed but not surprised. In Train's place I should probably have

given the same advice. His job was to protect his client's financial interests. A negative verdict could not harm

those interests; a positive one, however, might have placed them at risk. His caution was in no way reprehensible. It

looked as though I would have to find the money independently.I had been seeing a good deal of Professor

Leonard Schapiro, the well-known Sovietologist, who held the Chair of 'Government with particular reference to

Soviet Studies' at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)....

http://www.nycommunitytrust.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/BioBrochures/Katharine%20A.%20Park.pdf

katherine Anderson came from a South Carolina town about 55 miles from Aiken.

In 1927, she met Sam Park, newly graduated from a Harvard master's degree program.

Soon the couple married and then Sam developed tuberculosis.

..."By the end of the 1930's, Sam was finally ready to return to work. They moved back to New York City where Sam

went to work for John Hay "Jock" Whitney, a fellow Yale alumnus. According to Whitney's biographer, Sam Park was

"Jock's chief fiscal agent." He served as a partner at J.H. Whitney & Company, on the executive committee of the New

York Herald Tribune (which Whitney owned), was an honorary trustee of the United States Trust Company and a trustee of

the John Hay Whitney Foundation. He also helped establish and served as first president of the Herald Tribune Fresh

Air Fund, created to send underprivileged children from New York City to the country for free vacations.

Sam Park remained with Whitney organizations until his death in 1976. At that time, his title was Chairman of the

Finance Committee of Whitney Communications....

Milburn Starts North.

Pittsburgh Press - Mar 26, 1928

Milburn Starts North. captain of the United States polo

team, was to leave for New York today in the private car of

Harry Payne Whitney to continue treatments for his

fractured collar bone, injured when his mount him during a

hunt last week .

HOLLAND'S LETTER

Pay-Per-View -

Wall Street Journal - Jul 13, 1917

Although the estimated value of the estate of Colonel

Oliver Hazard Payne fixed ... Upon one occasion early in

tho married life of W C. Whitney, Irs. found neon her ...

Mr. Vltftney's second marx3age was not viewed with favor by

Colonel Payne.

MRS. WC WHITNEY INJURED.; Thrown from Her Horse and Her ...

‎New York Times - Feb 22, 1898

Mrs. William C. Whitney was struck on the forehead and

knocked from her horse ... two miles from Aiken, where she

and her husband are spending the Winter. ... Havemeyer,

left the Whitney mansion to go fox hunting. ... Jay, the

wife'~of Col.

http://www.cityofaikensc.gov/index.php?page=historical_places

JOYE COTTAGE

129 First Avenue

Originally a simple house, this home was purchased from

Miss Sarah Joye and expanded into a more than 50-room

vacation ‘cottage’ in 1897 by William C. Whitney, a New

York banker who served in Grover Cleveland’s cabinet as

Secretary of the Navy. After a few years in a deteriorating

state, new owners have now lovingly restored this building

to its original grandeur.

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Guest Tom Scully

Is it coincidence that a small group of wealthy sons of the Aiken, SC winter colony of polo and fox hunt sportsmen were behind

the published works of William Manchester, Priscilla and George McMillan, Allen Dulles's memoirs and the "output" immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy, described as follows?

When it came time to serve up a narrative to the American public on just what happened to President Kennedy when he attempted to ride in a motorcade through the city of Dallas, TX, a city where local law enforcement was unsuccessful in both preventing the murder of the President of the United States, as well as of the man they quickly accused of being the lone gunman who assassinated the President, it seems all that was necessary was to trot out propaganda from old hands, Cass Canfield and George McMillan, both formerly of the Office of War Information, and Jock Whitney. In the case of the efforst of Whitney's new York Herald Tribune, the propaganda it quickly printed was the gospel truth the Warren Commission ate right up.

(quote)Betty Cushing Roosevelt, Jock Whitney to Wed

by John Ferris

The Washington Post - Feb. 22, 1942 pg. S!2

..Whitney, who made a settle- ment of three million dollars on his wife, the former Mary Elizabeth Altemus, when she divorced him in May, 1940, is director of the motion picture section in the office of intercontinental affairs (The Nelson Rockefeller Committee), working as a dollar-a-year man. He has a house in Georgetown where he lives alone, and does most of his work in Washington.....

...Joock's activities have been pretty well channelized since October, 1940, when he went to Washington. his aides say he goes out to Hollywood every month or so, and spends about one day a week in New York. He has an office and staff both here and in the Capital.

His work is chiefly the production of ducumentary films on American life, with a commentary in Spanish, for distribution in Latin America. Lately he has been putting Spanish soundtracks on Army, navy, and War Production Board films, showing the progress of war preparations in the United States. His office also produces films in Latin America for showing in this country....(/quote)

https://www.google.c...biw=960&bih=626

CIA Infiltration of Press Overseas viewed as Influencing...

New York Times - Feb 9, 1976

Until July 1975, the C.LA. operated Forum World Features, a news syndicate in ... times such well=known American businessmen as John Hay Whitney, owner ...

Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA; A Worldwide...

New York Times - Dec 26, 1977

A: owned news services was Forum World Features, founded in 1958 as a Delaware ... Forum was ostensibly owned during much of its life by John Hay Whitney, ...

http://www.washingto...egraf050299.htm

Decades of Contributions to Conservatism

By Ira Chinoy and Robert G. Kaiser

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page A25

Over the past four decades Richard Mellon Scaife has contributed to hundreds of different organizations that in different ways have been pursuing the same goal: spreading the conservative faith while encouraging implementation of conservative policies. ....

....Scaife undertook one unusual media enterprise in his own name. In 1968, he agreed to replace John Hay Whitney, last owner of the New York Herald Tribune, as the head of the parent firm of Forum World Features, a London-based news agency that received subsidies and guidance from the CIA. The proprietor of Forum, Brian Crozier, has said he was introduced to Scaife by the CIA. Scaife has never spoken about this.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

by John Simkin

.....For example, in 1998 Kangas argued that CIA asset Richard Mellon Scaife ran "Forum World Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA...

WORLD FOR THE CIA

jfk.hood.edu/Collection/.../C%20Disk/.../Item%2001.pdf

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View

By Russell Warren Howe - May 1978 (page 25)

...was water under the bridge. After all. Forum belonged to. Jock Whitney now. No one was suggesting that the New. York Herald-Tribune had been a CIA front. I never asked Lasky if Whitney was just a front. It was not just that Lasky, or Crozier, or Eprile, could never have answered in the affirmative, but the thought itself never occurred to me. On reflection, it seems naive, but when Galliard branded me an "agent" later that year, I never even considered that Forum might be the reason....

http://www.nytimes.c...nted=all&src=pm

Walter Thayer, 78, Herald Tribune President, Dies

By ALBIN KREBS

Published: March 05, 1989

Walter N. Thayer, a lawyer, partner in the Whitcom Investment Corporation and former president of The New York Herald Tribune, died of pneumonia yesterday at New York Hospital....

...Mr. Thayer was for more than 30 years a close associate of the late financier John Hay Whitney, on whose behalf he arranged the acquisition of the financially troubled Herald Tribune in 1958.

Through the Whitney Communications Corporation, of which he became president, Mr. Thayer also guided efforts to acquire Parade, the profitable Sunday newspaper supplement, and other properties that would help absorb some of The Herald Tribune's losses over the years to come....

....Instead, he went to Colgate University, from which he graduated in 1931, worked as a New York State parole officer and then earned a law degree from Yale in 1935. He spent two years as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York.

In Washington during World War II, Mr. Thayer was on the legal staff of the Lend-Lease Administration, the War Shipping Administration and the Foreign Economic Administration. In 1945 he became a partner in the New York law firm of Thayer & Gilbert.

Mr. Thayer won a reputation as a formidable and well-paid lawyer who drove a hard bargain on behalf of his clients. In his book, ''The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune,'' published in 1986 by Vintage, the newspaper's last literary editor, Richard Kluger, wrote of Mr. Thayer:

.....Rescuing The Herald Tribune

In 1955 Mr. Thayer became a partner in the investment firm of J. H. Whitney & Company and was Mr. Whitney's closest adviser. As Mr. Kluger put it, ''Thayer became a lawyer with only one client, Jock Whitney.''

In 1957 Mr. Whitney lent The Herald Tribune $1.2 million in the hope that the almost-moribund newspaper could be revived.

Mr. Thayer began a vigorous investigation of the newspaper's finances, its critical circulation problems and its longtime management by members of the Ogden Mills Reid family. He decided that if any more Whitney money were pumped into The Herald Tribune, Mr. Whitney would have to gain control of the company, which he did.

In the following years under the Thayer management, the newspaper attracted editors like John Denson and James G. Bellows, who revamped its appearance, and hired such talented reporters as Douglas Kiker, Jimmy Breslin, Tom Wolfe, William Whitworth, Dick Schaap, Seymour Krim and Stuart Loory.

A Breaking of Ranks

.....After The Herald Tribune closed, Mr. Thayer took greater responsibilities in the Whitney enterprises. Mr. Whitney died in 1982.

From 1969 to 1971, Mr. Thayer was a special counsel to President Richard M. Nixon.

Mr. Thayer was also a senior partner with Whitcom Investment Company, which has financial interests in television and radio stations, newspapers and magazines. Whitney Communications Company, of which Mr. Thayer was chairman, is Whitcom Investment's chief operating entity.

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all

TRIALS OF THE TRIBBY DAVID SHAW;

David Shaw is the press critic for The Los Angeles Times. His most recent book is ''Press Watch.''

Published: October 26, 1986

....There's Jimmy Breslin calling Whitney ''the only millionaire I ever rooted for,''

Since November 24, 1963, Has Jimmy Breslin Been Writing A Script

This topic relates to these other threads:

Dr. Malcolm Perry R.I.P. (1929-2009)

Why transcript 1327C is a fraud, The record of the first Parkland press conference has been doctored

Paul Mandel and the Zapruder Film

Reading the Breslin intro article the other day, written and published on November 24, 1963; before Ruby shot killed Oswald, influemced me to associate it with a foul smell. A smell even fouler than you smell after reading the posts by John Simkin and Bill Kelly about Paul Mandel and his article, at the link above this paragraph.

If it didn't seem more like a script than the earnest work of a journalist, back when it was published, the years, the comments of the Connallys, and the two later articles by Breslin, referenced below, seem to make it so, in hindsight. Breslin, in a few short paragraphs,gets it all, done, for Dr. Perry, for the official line, only in it's infancy, at that early date, making the contents of "A Death in Emergency Room One," all that more remarkable....

Jimmy Breslin's two days of "work" in Dallas preceding his November 24 article seems too pat, indicates that he had too much access; not only covering points like he did in his attention to Dr. Perry, but he presents a description of the bronze casket, the sicth floor window at the TSB, Oswald as the LN shooter....even of an expectation of a perpetually graceful and silent widow Jackie. Breslin seemed to have too much access that weekend, in the midst of such turmoil, to Dr. Perry, the priest, the funeral director, the history of the TSBD building, and he seems to have been everywhere; to the point where he observed Oswald in a Dallas P.D. hallway....similar to the perception we have of Jack Ruby seeming to be everywhere, that friday and saturday.

In the 40 years following the initial article, Breslin did not fail to continue to finger Oswald as the LN, and in 2003, he helped distort the record of Dr. Perry's actual November 22, front wound assertions, although they had been on the known record for 27 years....using the same false ploy the NY Times used in Dr. Perry's obituary, just last week. At the least, Breslin quoted Dr. Perry's distortion of what he told reporters, alongside Dr. Clark Kemp during the November 22, press conference, supporting Dr. Perry's false victimhood, without checking the transcript of that press congerence, available since 1976.

http://gangrey.com/2281

A Death in Emergency Room One

By Jimmy Breslin

New York Herald Tribune

November 24, 1963

....Perry hung up and walked quickly out of the cafeteria and down a flight of stairs and pushed through a brown door and a nurse pointed to Emergency Room One, and Dr. Perry walked into it. The room is narrow and has gray tiled walls and a cream-colored ceiling. In the middle of it, on an aluminum hospital cart, the President of the United States had been placed on his back and he was dying while a huge lamp glared in his face....

..The President, Perry thought. He's bigger than I thought he was.

He noticed the tall, dark-haired girl in the plum dress that had her husband's blood all over the front of the skirt. She was standing out of the way, over against the gray tile wall....

...Here is the most important man in the world, Perry thought.

The chest was not moving. And there was no apparent heartbeat inside. The wound in the throat was small and neat. Blood was running out of it. It was running out too fast. The occipitoparietal, which is a part of the back of the head, had a huge flap. The damage a .25-caliber bullet does as it comes out of a person's body is unbelievable. Bleeding from the head wound covered the floor.

There was a mediastinal wound in connection with the bullet hole in the throat. This means air and blood were being packed together in the chest. Perry called for a scalpel. He was going to start a tracheotomy, which is opening the throat and inserting a tube into the windpipe. The incision had to be made below the bullet wound.

"Get me Doctors Clark, McCelland, and Baxter right away," Malcolm Perry said.

Then he started the tracheotomy. There was no anesthesia. John Kennedy could feel nothing now. The wound in the back of the head told Dr. Perry that the President never knew a thing about it when he was shot, either.

While Perry worked on the throat, he said quietly, "Will somebody put a right chest tube in, please."...

...He saw only the throat and chest, shining under the huge lamp, and when he would look up or move his eyes between motions, he would see this plum dress and the terribly disciplined face standing over against the gray tile wall.

Just as he finished the tracheotomy, Malcolm Perry looked up and Dr. Kemp Clark, chief neurosurgeon in residency at Parkland, came in through the door. Clark was looking at the President of the United States. Then he looked at Malcolm Perry and the look told Malcolm Perry something he already knew. There was no way to save the patient.

"Would you like to leave, ma'am?" Kemp Clark said to Jacqueline Kennedy. "We can make you more comfortable outside."

Just the lips moved. "No," Jacqueline Kennedy said....

...Malcolm Perry turned to leave the room as Father Huber came in. Perry remembers seeing the priest go by him. And he remembers his eyes seeing that plum dress and that terribly disciplined face for the last time as he walked out of Emergency Room One and slumped into a chair in the hall.

Everything that was inside that room now belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy and Father Oscar Huber and the things in which they believe....

...This is different. Oh, it isn't the blood. You see, I've anointed so many. Accident victims. I anointed once a boy who was only in pieces. No, it wasn't the blood. It was the enormity of it. I'm just starting to realize it now."

Then Father Huber showed you to the door. He was going to say prayers.

It came the same way to Malcolm Perry. When the day was through, he drove to his home in the Walnut Hills section. When he walked into the house, his daughter, Jolene, six and a half, ran up to him. She had papers from school in her hand....

..Malcolm, his three-year-old son, ran into the room after him, and Perry started to reach for him.

Then it hit him. He dropped the papers with the block numbers and letters and he did not notice his son.

"I'm tired," he said to his wife, Jennine. "I've never been tired like this in my life."...

..At 10 a.m. we dodged cars and went out and stood in the middle lane of Elm Street, just before the second street light; right where the road goes down and, twenty yards further, starts to turn to go under the overpass. It was right at this spot, right where this long crack ran through the gray Texas asphalt, that the bullets reached President Kennedy's car....

...The windows on the first three floors are covered by closed venetian blinds, but the windows on the other floors are bare. Bare and dust-streaked and high. Factory-window high. The ugly kind of factory window. Particularly at the corner window on the sixth floor, the one where this Oswald and his scrambled egg of a mind stood with the rifle so he could kill the President.

You stood and memorized the spot. It is just another roadway in a city, but now it joins Ford's Theatre in the history of this nation....

....A red convertible turned onto Elm Street and went down the hill. It went past the spot with the crack in the asphalt and then, with every foot it went, you could see that it was getting out of range of the sixth-floor window of this rust-brick building behind you. A couple of yards. That's all John Kennedy needed on this road Friday.

But he did not get them. So when a little bit after 1 o'clock Friday afternoon the phone rang in the Oneal Funeral Home, 3206 Oak Lawn, Vernon B. Oneal answered.

The voice on the other end spoke quickly. "This is the Secret Service calling from Parkland Hospital," it said. "Please select the best casket in your house and put it in a general coach and arrange for a police escort and bring it here to the hospital as quickly as you humanly can. It is for the President of the United States. Thank you."

The voice went off the phone. Oneal called for Ray Gleason, his bookkeeper, and a workman to help him take a solid bronze casket out of the place and load it onto a hearse. It was for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Yesterday, Oneal left his shop early. He said he was too tired to work.

Malcolm Perry was at the hospital. He had on a blue suit and a dark blue striped tie and he sat in a big conference room and looked out the window. He is a tall, reddish-haired thirty-four-year-old, who understands that everything he saw or heard on Friday is a part of history, and he is trying to get down, for the record, everything he knows about the death of the thirty-fifth President of the United States.

"I never saw a President before," he said.

http://nymag.com/mov...000/index3.html

'Bonnie and Clyde' Revisited

". . . The movie is only a reflection, a very pretty one, of what makes people murder. Real murderers aren't ever that pretty . . ."

* By Jimmy Breslin

From the July 8, 1968 issue of New York Magazine.

..Now look at the man. He's playing a killer and he's handsome. This doesn't go. I mean, what the hell is this all about? You want to see a real killer, then you should have been around to see Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a miserable looking son of a bitch with blackheads on the sides of his nose and dirty sweat showing on the top of his chest, where he had the collar of his plaid sports shirt opened. The Dallas police brought him out of an office into a jammed hallway so they could take him to the bathroom and everybody got a good look at him. Richard Speck fits here too. He killed eight nurses in Chicago. He had slimy hair and acne all over his face. He stayed in flophouses that had no baths and he put cologne over his sweatdirt-streaked body so nobody would smell him. James Earl Ray is a guy with a prison face. Sirhan Sirhan has grainy skin and greasy hair. When they got him up on the metal table in the kitchen, his eyes were bugged out and rolling around. When somebody got at him and gave him a good choke, his tongue flopped out of his mouth and the teeth around it looked rotten....

http://www.history-m...tItWrong_1b.htm

HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG

Gary L. Aguilar, MD and Kathy Cunningham

May 2003

....What concerns us is not the interesting question of whether it was in fact an entrance wound, but how the Commission handled the early reports that said it was an entrance wound.

The Commission wrote, “Considerable confusion has arisen because of comments attributed to Dr. Perry concerning the nature of the neck wound. Immediately after the assassination, many people reached erroneous conclusions about the source of the shots because of Dr. Perry’s observation to the press ... Commenting on his answers at the press conference, Dr. Perry testified before the Commission: ‘I expressed it [his answers] as a matter of speculation that this was conceivable...’. Dr. Perry’s recollection of his comments [having been misrepresented by the press] is corroborated by some of the news stories after the press conference. The New York Herald Tribune on November 23, 1963, reported as follows: ‘Dr. Malcolm Perry … said he saw two wounds – one below the Adam’s apple, the other at the back of the head.’ He said he did not know if two bullets were involved. It is possible, he said, that the neck wound was the entrance and the other the exit.”[64]

In essence, the Commission was saying that the controversy only arose because the media was sloppy. However, Dr. Perry’s verbatim statements paint a different picture, one of the sloppiness on the parts of the New York Herald Tribune and the Commission.....

On 11/22/63 UPI reported that Perry had said, “There was an entrance wound below the Adam's apple.”[67] The New York Times reported, “... Dr. Malcolm Perry … [said] Mr. Kennedy was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam's apple … This wound had the appearance of a bullet's entry ... .”[68] On 11/23/63, the Dallas Morning News reported, “The front neck hole was described as an entrance wound,” and it quoted Perry to say, “It did however appear to be the entrance wound at the front of the throat.” These press accounts, and others like them, accurately reflect the fact that at no time during the press conference did Perry allow for any other possibility than that the throat wound was an entrance wound.

How did the Warren Report describe Perry’s press conference statements? It reported, “Dr. Perry... stated to the press that a variety of possibilities could account for the President's wounds.”[69] (Emphasis added) Whereas numerous press reports had accurately described Perry’s belief the wound was one of entrance, the Warren Report cited only the New York Herald Tribune’s vague and less accurate version. Ironically, Perry wasn’t easily dislodged from his original position.

The day after the murder Boston Globe medical reporter, Herbert Black, asked Perry how the throat wound could have been an entrance wound if the gunman was behind the President. Perry answered, “It may have been that the President was looking sideways with his head thrown back when the bullet or bullets struck him.”[70] [it is of interest that, after discussing what was visible in the Zapruder film, Life Magazine offered this same explanation on December 18th for JFK’s throat wound – that JFK had turned toward the sniper’s nest just before being shot.[71] The Zapruder film, however, discloses no such turn. Neither the Warren Commission, nor Life Magazine, nor the government, ever corrected Life’s error. This mischaracterization became but one of many exhibits cited by skeptics in criticizing the media’s handling of JFK murder.[72] [73]]

The Warren Commission's Arlen Specter was concerned about published reports from Perry's press conference....

Freeport Sulphur Elects JH Whitney Chairman

Pay-Per-View -

Chicago Tribune - Feb 8, 1949

Freeport Sulphur Elects JH Whitney Chairman Freeport Sulphur Elects IJ. H. Whitney

http://www.nytimes.c...nted=all&src=pm

Benno C. Schmidt, Financier, Is Dead at 86

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr

Published: October 22, 1999

Benno C. Schmidt, the right-hand man of the financier John Hay Whitney and a pioneering venture capitalist who became an important backer of biotechnology ventures, a New York civic leader and the head of the Federal Government's war on cancer, died yesterday at his home in New York. He was 86.

The cause was heart failure, said his son, Benno C. Schmidt Jr., the former president of Yale University who is now chairman of the for-profit Edison Schools Inc.

Mr. Schmidt came to national prominence in the 1970's, when he was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon to serve as chairman of the President's Cancer Panel. He was also a longtime chairman of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and served as an informal health-policy adviser to several Presidents.

But he had a larger impact as an early venture capitalist, a forerunner of a relatively new breed of investor who provided much of the seed money for technology and biotechnology industries by financing risky start-up companies with the knowledge that most would fail but that some would be big successes.

Mr. Schmidt's successful record at Mr. Whitney's firm, J. H. Whitney & Company of New York, including an early deal to stake Minute Maid orange juice, encouraged other investors to back similar investments. According to several accounts, Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Whitney, who later became editor in chief and publisher of The New York Herald Tribune, even coined the term venture capital by shortening ''adventure'' to describe their business....

......

After graduating, Mr. Schmidt joined the Texas law school faculty, and then spent a year teaching at Harvard Law School. Before World War II broke out, he was recruited to the War Production Board to help increase the nation's industrial capacity. After Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army, where he quickly rose to colonel and won a number of medals, including the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star. After the war, he spent a year as general counsel to the State Department's economics division, helping oversee economic relations with Britain and other allies.

Then one day he got a call from Mr. Whitney, one of the wealthiest men in the country. Mr. Whitney wanted to stake a new firm with $10 million to finance young companies in new industries.

Mr. Schmidt informed Mr. Whitney that he had no business experience whatsoever. According to Walter Curley, a longtime friend of Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Whitney replied: ''I'm not looking for somebody who has a lot of business experience. I'm looking for someone who has had a lot of experience with life.'' With that, Mr. Schmidt signed on, serving as a partner for 52 years, and as managing partner from 1960 to 1992.....

Edited by Tom Scully
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  • 8 months later...

From The Kennedy Presidency An Oral History of The Era

by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober

[Note This book is an updated edition of "Let Us Begin Anew:" An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency by the same authors]

page 450

ROBERT MANNING

We took off from Honolulu in one of the presidential aircraft and were several hundred miles west of there.

Several cabinet secretaries were with us, as was Pierre Salinger. I had been in the press, so I knew by

the sound that there was a flash on the news ticker. I walked toward the communications area and the

sergeant had a piece of wire copy in his hand. He said, "The secretary [Rusk] will have to see this."....

It was a flash saying: "Dallas. President Kennedy shot." Then a bulletin. "Perhaps shot fatally." We

took it to Rusk and he asked me to bring the Cabinet secretaries to his compartment. We immediately

got on the phone with the White House Situation Room. They confirmed that something had happened

and that the president had been rushed to the hospital. Rusk got on the public address system and told

everybody we had some bad unclear news: President Kennedy had been wounded and we were going to

turn back. Salinger got in touch with the White House and used his code name. He said "This is Wayside.

What word do you have on Lancer?" At the other end the fellow said "Lancer is dead. Rusk then went

back on the PA system and said "I am sorry to have to bring you this grievous news, but President Kennedy

has been killed. We now have a new president. May God bless our President and the United States of America.

page 449

PIERRE SALINGER "I was trying to find out what had happened. When we first got the news, we were

not getting the information that he was dead but that he had been shot. That is why Rusk asked me to

establish communication between the plane and the White House; there was a lot of confusion. When

we got the news that the president was dead, there was some discussion on the plane as to who could

be responsible. Rusk thought it might be an international affair, and we sent a message to all U.S.

Embassies to see if they could find out anything.

The partial interview below is taken from

C-SPAN Booknotes

Pierre Salinger: P.S., A Memoir

Program Air Date: November 12, 1995

For more information about this program, visit www.booknotes.org

LAMB: How many times in your life have you been asked where you were the

night or the day that John F. Kennedy was shot?

SALINGER: Very often. A lot of people thought that I was with John F. Kennedy when he was shot, and they were always surprised to discover that I was on a plane flying with six members of his Cabinet and going to Tokyo. I mean, the reason the president was sending me to Tokyo was -- it was an conomic conference, but he wanted me to start working on a visit he was going to take in February of 1964, the first American president to visit Japan after the end of World War II. That's why I was on the trip. But we were only about three hours out of Honolulu, where we had spent a couple of days looking into the Vietnam issue, when suddenly we discovered that he had been shot. And we turned around. We didn't know he'd been killed, but we heard he was shot. And I was asked by Dean Rusk, who was then secretary of State, to open up the line to the White House so that we could have specific information as rapidly as possible. Well, it was about a half-hour after we turned around that we actually got the news that President Kennedy was dead.

LAMB: How many Cabinet officers were with you?

SALINGER: Six Cabinet officers: There was Rusk; there was McNamara; there was, well, I have all of them in the book, but they were coming for this economic conference, and that's why I was accompanying them.

LAMB: What happened after you got back?

SALINGER: Well, that was a long, long flight, as you know. We stopped in Honolulu. We had to put on the oil in this plane, then we flew. It was about 11 hours. We arrived here in Washington around 1:00 in the morning, went to the White House. It was about, I think, 2:30 or 3 in the morning that John Kennedy's body arrived, went into the West Wing. And then there was a Mass that I attended. And Jackie came up to me afterwards and put her arm around my shoulder and said, "Pierre, you know, you've just had a terrible day. I know, so why don't you spend the night here in the White House?" I mean, I had never spent the night in the White House in my life.

Anyway, I went upstairs with Larry O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell, and we spoke probably right up till about 6:30, 7:00 in the morning and then went to bed. And about 15 minutes later the phone rang, and it was the secretary at the White House who said, "Oh, Mr. Salinger, the president wants to speak to you." I must say, I had a little brain thing saying, "Oh, my God, I got a terrible -- I've had a terrible dream." But then I hear this voice saying, "Pierre, this is Lyndon Johnson," and he was the new president.

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