Air Force One communications

[William Kelly]

There's also a book - Nerve Center - a history of the White House Situation Room - Cliff said Bundy in charge there - he was not - Maj. Harold Patterson aka "Stranger" - was - and as soon as I got his name off the Clifton tapes I located him, called him on the phone and talked with him for about an hour. He had not heard the tapes but confirmed he was in charge of Sit Room as senior officer, Bundy came and went, and the code book on the cabinet plane was missing.

As for Ball - the tapes reflect the fact that LBJ did NOT want to meet with Ball when he got back - but Ball and Bundy did meet him at Andrews - and LBJ talked to Harriman on the phone - probably from EOB office.

BK

[Cliff Varnell]

There's also a book - Nerve Center - a history of the White House Situation Room - Cliff said Bundy in charge there -

As National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy was the highest ranking civilian official in the Situation Room.

Since when is the National Security Adviser under the command of a military officer?

he was not - Maj. Harold Patterson aka "Stranger" - was - and as soon as I got his name off the Clifton tapes I located him, called him on the phone and talked with him for about an hour. He had not heard the tapes but confirmed he was in charge of Sit Room as senior officer,

Senior military officer.

Bundy came and went,

Bingo! Bundy was operating independently of the military men.

and the code book on the cabinet plane was missing.

Yeah, a lot of stuff missing.

So, Bill, did Major Patterson say that he was the one who called in the lone-assassin angle? Did he admit to ordering that call?

As for Ball - the tapes reflect the fact that LBJ did NOT want to meet with Ball when he got back -

He met him anyway, whether he wanted to or not. Ball was with LBJ on the helicopter ride from Andrews, no?

but Ball and Bundy did meet him at Andrews

Ball went to the airport with Harriman and Alexis Johnson, according to Harriman's biography.

- and LBJ talked to Harriman on the phone - probably from EOB office.

Factually incorrect.

Jack Valenti as quoted by Bill Kelly:

http://jfkcountercou...ping-point.html

“It was a few minutes after 6:00 P.M., EST, Friday, November 22, 1963. Air Force One bearing the new president, and the body of the slain John F. Kennedy, had just landed after a flight from Dallas.”

“The trip of eighteen miles by chopper from Andrews to the White House took seven minutes…The president’s chopper had landed at 6:32 P.M.,…The president was still at the entrance to the Diplomatic Reception Room, talking to Under Secretary of State George Ball, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara...

...Shortly before 7:00 P.M., I escorted Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ambassador Averell Harriman into the office. I fidgeted outside, in the middle of what would have appeared to be an objective onlooker to be a mélange of confusion. No one of the Johnson aides, Marie Fehmer, his secretary; the late Cliff Carter, his chief political agent; Bill Moyers, nor any of the rest, was quite certain of what lay ahead.

Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes, pg 57

At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey Oswald [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association.

Edited November 29, 2014 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Jack Valenti:

“It was a few minutes after 6:00 P.M., EST, Friday, November 22, 1963. Air Force One bearing the new president, and the body of the slain John F. Kennedy, had just landed after a flight from Dallas.”

“The trip of eighteen miles by chopper from Andrews to the White House took seven minutes…The president’s chopper had landed at 6:32 P.M.,…The president was still at the entrance to the Diplomatic Reception Room, talking to Under Secretary of State George Ball, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara...

...Shortly before 7:00 P.M., I escorted Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ambassador Averell Harriman into the office. I fidgeted outside, in the middle of what would have appeared to be an objective onlooker to be a mélange of confusion. No one of the Johnson aides, Marie Fehmer, his secretary; the late Cliff Carter, his chief political agent; Bill Moyers, nor any of the rest, was quite certain of what lay ahead.

Harriman, Bundy, Ball, McNamara and Fulbright were elite White Anglo Saxon Protestants.

A swarm of WASPs!

In a court of law or in the history books the case remains unsolvable.

Out on the street we know who did it.

I explained that the day after the Kennedy assassination I met with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman.
We decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the U.S. government were innocent of any complicity in the
assassination, Oswald would live through the weekend. But if he was killed, then we would know that the
assassination was a consequence of a high level U.S. government plot.

Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot.
We further decided that the killing of Oswald would signal that no government investigation could upturn the truth.
In that event we as private citizens would have to investigate the assassination to arrive at the historical truth.

-- Vincent Salandria

Edited November 29, 2014 by Cliff Varnell

[William Kelly]

So despite saying on the plane he did not want to meet with Ball LBJ met him and Harriman at Andrews - I stand corrected.

Now follow LBJ and Moyers and Carter and Valenti to the EOB and what do they do there?

They call Texas Attorney General and Dallas DA and tell them NOT to charge Oswald with conspiracy - which is what Joe Goulden was trying to get them to do - then they ride around DC for an hour in a car before going to the Elms - LBJ's house.

The Lone Assassin scenario deal was sealed at the EOB not AF1 - or the Situation Room - as the assassination was supposed to be a communist conspiracy as it was planned.

Blaming the assassination on WASPs is like blaming the murder on protestants.

[David Andrews]

If we can identify a cluster of persons urging Johnson to "accept" (for public consumption) that the assassination is not a Soviet conspiracy, can we also identify persons that are urging otherwise?

[Paul Brancato]

Could someone refresh my memory - what is EOB?

Also wanted to suggest that in my mind it is not certain that the plotters had in mind linking Oswald to a communist conspiracy in order to precipitate military action against Cuba or the USSR. I think John Newman has a different idea , which is that the Communist linkage would precipitate a coverup, and that the plotters would have counted on this fact to bring on board non-conspirators after the fact. This presupposes two levels of pre-assassination planners - operational guys who thought they would bring about an invasion of Cuba, and high level planners who counted on being able to enlist the anti-Castro crowd to plan and execute the assassination, knowing that they could limit the investigation afterwards. Thus their real aim was simply the removal of JFK, not war with the Soviets or the removal of Castro. Though it does not prove this theory, history does show that Castro was never removed, war with the USSR never happened, the Cold War continued, and the military complex got their war - with Vietnam - and the profits flowed.

[Cliff Varnell]

So despite saying on the plane he did not want to meet with Ball LBJ met him and Harriman at Andrews - I stand corrected.

Now follow LBJ and Moyers and Carter and Valenti to the EOB and what do they do there?

According to Valenti they sat around confused, waiting for some direction to take shape.

According to Bill Kelly Johnson's staff was driving the narrative.

According to Valenti -- who was there -- the staff was wrought with chaos.

They call Texas Attorney General and Dallas DA and tell them NOT to charge Oswald with conspiracy

That was AFTER the WASP swarm of Bundy, Ball, McNamara, Harriman and Fulbright.

- which is what Joe Goulden was trying to get them to do - then they ride around DC for an hour in a car before going to the Elms - LBJ's house.

They were just following orders, Bill

The Lone Assassin scenario deal was sealed at the EOB not AF1 - or the Situation Room - as the assassination was supposed to be a communist conspiracy as it was planned.

The Lone Assassin scenario was set in stages.

First, Bundy tells LBJ on AF1 there's no evidence of conspiracy.

LBJ meets Harriman and Ball at Andrews. Ball accompanies LBJ to the White House by chopper.

Bundy is first to met LBJ at the White House.

LBJ talks with Ball and McNamara for several minutes before Harriman and Fulbright arrive.

It was only AFTER that that Johnson's crew swung into action killing the Fidel-did-it dream.

Blaming the assassination on WASPs is like blaming the murder on protestants.

Blaming the murder and blaming the cover-up are 2 different things, Bill.

Bundy didn't need to know anything about the murder other than it was going to happen.

I think William Corson's contemporaneous analysis of the overthrow and murder of the Ngo brothers in So Vietnam may set the template for the murder of JFK 3 weeks later.

From Joseph Trento's Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5:

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing

has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools

and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy

immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he

came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his

brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long

public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full

confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963,

according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it,

“Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor,

was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about

Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Saigon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his

replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer,

John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role

has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

W. Averell Harriman -- geo-political thug of the first magnitude.

Edited November 29, 2014 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Could someone refresh my memory - what is EOB?

Also wanted to suggest that in my mind it is not certain that the plotters had in mind linking Oswald to a communist conspiracy in order to precipitate military action against Cuba or the USSR. I think John Newman has a different idea , which is that the Communist linkage would precipitate a coverup, and that the plotters would have counted on this fact to bring on board non-conspirators after the fact. This presupposes two levels of pre-assassination planners - operational guys who thought they would bring about an invasion of Cuba, and high level planners who counted on being able to enlist the anti-Castro crowd to plan and execute the assassination, knowing that they could limit the investigation afterwards. Thus their real aim was simply the removal of JFK, not war with the Soviets or the removal of Castro. Though it does not prove this theory, history does show that Castro was never removed, war with the USSR never happened, the Cold War continued, and the military complex got their war - with Vietnam - and the profits flowed.

EOB -- Executive Office Building at the White House

I don't buy Newman's theory at all.

The "communist linkage" made a lone-assassin cover-up much harder to sell.

If they wanted to set up a lone nut all along -- why didn't they frame a truly lone nut ala Sirhan?

Why did Castro remain in power after the JFK assassination?

My best guess is he buckled under and agreed to run his drug smuggling operations thru George HW Bush's Zapata Off-shore.

Fidelito woke up on 11/22/63 with JFK's head in his bed...An offer he couldn't refuse.

Edited November 29, 2014 by Cliff Varnell

[David Andrews]

The "communist linkage" made a lone-assassin cover-up much harder to sell.

If they wanted to set up a lone nut all along -- why didn't they frame a truly lone nut ala Sirhan?

What I'm talking about. Paul Trejo made the distinction between those who set up the assassination and those who covered it up, saying that the former wanted a connected Oswald and the latter a lone nut.

So along those lines: Did anyone connected to the military or the Kennedy and Johnson administrations urge a Soviet conspiracy on Johnson?

Is Cuba just a rationale for stirring up the ground personnel that plotted Kennedy's death, whether they were the actual assassins or not? Was anyone higher up invested in war with Cuba and Russia as a response? If not, then the game has clearly left the hemisphere and gone to SE Asia. This game that meant life and death only two years before.

[Paul Brancato]

Cliff - I think Newman's point was that a real investigation of Oswald would have have led to a conflagration with the USSR, precisely because he was not really a lone nut. Even after the passage of 51 years there are still questions about the patsy that was chosen, about his motives, beliefs, connections. But at the time the obvious connection was to Communism. What would have prevented a deeper investigation of a real lone nut? Perhaps you could flesh out your objection a bit.

[Paul Brancato]

Or maybe I diverted this thread a bit.

[Cliff Varnell]

Cliff - I think Newman's point was that a real investigation of Oswald would have have led to a conflagration with the USSR, precisely because he was not really a lone nut. Even after the passage of 51 years there are still questions about the patsy that was chosen, about his motives, beliefs, connections. But at the time the obvious connection was to Communism. What would have prevented a deeper investigation of a real lone nut? Perhaps you could flesh out your objection a bit.

Why would they entrap the CIA and the FBI in a desperate attempt to avert nuclear conflagration just to set up a lone nut patsy?

Wouldn't that make contingency planning a total nightmare? -- what if the CIA and FBI were to screw up and a real investigation proceeded in part?

This strikes me as an unnecessarily elaborate and perilous way to set up a lone nut.

[Paul Brancato]

Assuming Oswald was set up, why choose him? Or do you have another theory of Oswald's involvement?

[Cliff Varnell]

Assuming Oswald was set up, why choose him? Or do you have another theory of Oswald's involvement?

Looks like he was sheep-dipped as an agent of Fidel. But to make the frame stick Oswald needed to be gunned down early Friday afternoon.

A dead patsy is easy to frame -- a captured patsy who proclaims his innocence, not so easy to frame.

Cooler heads among the perps prevailed.

[Paul Brancato]

So your point is that if Oswald had been killed on November 22 instead of 24 Castro would have been seen as the culprit and Cuba would have been invaded?