Who changed the motorcade route?

[Paz Marverde]

13 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

In my opinion, the best answer to this is in Vince Palamara's book

Very kind as always, Jim

[Paz Marverde]

13 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

it was like the hit team designed the route

Totally agree

[Michael Walton]

21 hours ago, Paz Marverde said:

I'm deeply interested in this question. Who ordered the dog leg deviation so fatal for JFK? Confirmed it was Cabell? Any news from the latest docs?

For an alternative viewpoint, and one less sinister, here's Dealey Plaza today...

If you look at Main Street beyond the underpass, there's a wall there.  You cannot "turn right" onto the highway to get to the Trade Mart. Now, this is 55 years later but folks may also want to look at those photos taken right after the shooting down beyond the underpass looking back on Dealey - I haven't looked at them but if Main is showing in any of those photos and you could not get over to Elm from it to go on to the TM, then that may explain the reason for the route change. Of course, beyond Dealey - and if they had stayed on Main - there may have been other ways to get to the TM. Maybe it was a timing thing too - to get them there in time for the lunch and speech.

[Michael Walton]

3 hours ago, Paz Marverde said:

Totally agree

Do you EVER NOT agree with people here? Seriously, it *always* seems like you agree with others here.  And seriously, this is not a flippant question.  I *seriously* would like to know LOL

[Ron Ecker]

I recall that one official of the time said that staying on Main to the TM would have taken the motorcade along Industrial Blvd, and they didn't want the president to see all the winos there.

 

 

 

 

[Mark Knight]

1 hour ago, Ron Ecker said:

I recall that one official of the time said that staying on Main to the TM would have taken the motorcade along Industrial Blvd, and they didn't want the president to see all the winos there.

 

 

 

 

Ron, that sounds quite reasonable. You don't route the President of the United States through the "rougher" parts of a city if there is an alternative route, IMHO. Every city wants the President to see their best side, not their worst. Basic human vanity at play here more than anything sinister, IMHO.

YES, I fully understand that this point of view like the legs out from under the point of view that "the plotters" put Oswald "in place" at the TSBD specifically to kill Kennedy.  So be it. 

[Michael Clark]

A few miles of freeway driving is a few miles that require much less work to survey and secure and they could drive much faster. That said, the dog-legs and the gauntlet of Dealy Plaza should have been a no-go or thoroughly scoped-out, searched and protected.

[Paz Marverde]

1 hour ago, Michael Clark said:

A few miles of freeway driving is a few miles that require much less work to survey and secure and they could drive much faster. That said, the dog-legs and the gauntlet of Dealy Plaza should have been a no-go or thoroughly scoped-out, searched and protected.

That's it

[Michael Clark]

http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_Motorcade.pdf

 

 Moyers stated that the only "major decision" he made with
respect to Dallas was that... 
. ..some 24 hours before the President arrived, there was a dispute as to whether or not to print in the newspapers the route, and Betty Harris called me ...and said they were not going to print the route of the . . . [motorcade] procession and I said, "Oh, yes they are.He's not coming down here to hide.He's coming down here to get a public reaction, and the decision is to print the route of the President's pro- cession," and I don't know what Betty did after that, but the route was printed.(171)
Moyers later amended his recollection of when this decision occurred.
I think itwas the second night before his-preceding hisar- rival ...and we were printing the route in the other papers, and I couldn't see why an exception should be made in Dallas.(172)

[Paz Marverde]

28 minutes ago, Michael Clark said:

http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_Motorcade.pdf

 

 Moyers stated that the only "major decision" he made with
respect to Dallas was that... 
. ..some 24 hours before the President arrived, there was a dispute as to whether or not to print in the newspapers the route, and Betty Harris called me ...and said they were not going to print the route of the . . . [motorcade] procession and I said, "Oh, yes they are.He's not coming down here to hide.He's coming down here to get a public reaction, and the decision is to print the route of the President's pro- cession," and I don't know what Betty did after that, but the route was printed.(171)
Moyers later amended his recollection of when this decision occurred.
I think itwas the second night before his-preceding hisar- rival ...and we were printing the route in the other papers, and I couldn't see why an exception should be made in Dallas.(172)

Thank you very much, Michael. Really appreciated

[James DiEugenio]

Davey's reply above is right out of the John McAdams playbook.

The doglegs on the 11/22 map Dallas Morning News map would have been too hard to include in a small diagram.

LOL  ROTF, LMAO 

You got exposed for misleading people for what had been in the papers, right?  You tried to insinuate that it was depicted in only one way for over a week in advance.  

It was not!!

Its that simple. And the map is right in my book.  That is a FACT, not a theory.

The obvious question then is why was the wrong route in the papers? Were the papers trying to mislead the public?  Probably not.  The logical answer is that they were getting different signals from different sources.

And why ignore this:" As the HSCA attorney in charge of the motorcade route inquiry wrote, "Any map of Dallas in 1963 shows that it was easy to reach the Trade Mart on streets that join Main on the West side of the overpass."

And when Paz said "totally agree" she said that in response to my statement that the route Kennedy rode on could have been devised by a sniper running the ambush.  And I completely stand by that statement. I formulated it way back in 1993 when I stood on that trestle and looked down into Dealey Plaza and scanned the scene 180 degrees. And to me that is the cinching argument.  That route violated every rule of Secret Service protection, and that should have been the prime guideline for a milieu as hostile to Kennedy as Dallas.  And if you needed any proof, just look what happened to Stevenson a few weeks earlier. Look at Kennedy's meeting with that rightwing nut Mr. Dealey.  

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/jack-ohman/article2582975.html

Now, knowing that, how could any Secret Service officer pick such a route?  Consider:

1. Two hard turns, right and left, within a block of each other.  Thus, slowing the car down to ten MPH.

2. High buildings behind the car at this speed, with windows open.

3. Escape route behind both of those buildings.

4. Slightly rolling hill in front, with a picket fence to hide any assassin from the crowd below them.

5. Escape route behind the fence, I mean a  parking lot!

6. The late Sherry Fiester also concluded that there was another possible sniper's lair on the other side, the south knoll, and this also had a parking lot adjacent to it.

 

In other words, you probably could not have devised a better scenario if you were running a Secret Service class titled How Not to Approve a Motorcade Route. And I am altogether serious in that, its not at all satirical.  Every single officer involved in the approval of that route should have been fired.  But Rowley, as we know, was playing a PR game with the Warren Commission. He was already trying to cover up the night before at Kirkwood's when the Secret Service guys were getting bombed until 4 AM. And if you can believe it, they paid firemen to protect JFK at the hotel.

There was simply no excuse for approving that route. And Davey can scream and holler and misrepresent the newspapers, and borrow from McAdams and demean Vince Palamara and his witnesses all he wants. Because that is what he does with his life.  But I repeat: There was no excuse for the approval of that route.  Period.

 

 

 

 

 

[Michael Walton]

It wouldn't have worked.  There's a median curb separating Elm from Main as seen in the photo below.

4 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

I recall that one official of the time said that staying on Main to the TM would have taken the motorcade along Industrial Blvd, and they didn't want the president to see all the winos there.

I guess back then there was no such thing as gentrification LOL

[Rob Couteau]

I wonder what role C. Douglas Dillon played in all this. In THE DEVIL'S CHESSBOARD, David Talbot devotes a number of pages to JFK's Treasury chief, C. Douglas Dillon, who met with Allen Dulles on 2 Oct 1963. He writes: "Dillon, as Treasury chief, was in charge of President Kennedy's Secret Service protection. And the banking industry was locked in a long-running battle with the president over his economic policies." "Over the years the Dulles brothers and Dillon grew quite close." Dillon notified the President that he was taking a "deferred summer vacation" in November. So he conveniently removed himself from the scene. Talbot concludes: "If he was later asked toa ccount for himself, Dillon would have a ready explanation." During the WC, Dillon "stonewalled" Commission staff attorney Howard Willens's "efforts to pry loose Secret Service records, and when the Commission staff persisted, the Treasury secretary huddled with his old friend, Jack McCloy, and then appealed to President Johnson himself."

 

Edited May 27, 2018 by Rob Couteau

[James DiEugenio]

Now, what I find intriguing about it all are the roles of Sorrels and Lawson before and after the assassination.

As Doug Horne titles a section of  his book, IARRB, Volume five:

"The motorcycle escort for the Presidential Limousine in Dallas is Cut in Half, and Directed to Stay behind the Rear Wheels of the Limousine, by Winston Lawson, the Secret Service Agent for Dallas" (p. 1401)

Now, according to Horne's evidence, the original design of the cycle escort was four on each side of the limo. Grand total of eight.  On November 21st, Lawson cut the total to four, and advised that the last two be aligned with the rear fender. (ibid, p. 1402)  As Horne notes, this  juxtaposed dramatically with what had happened in Houston the day before. There, the cops had 18 cycles, nine on each side. Motorcycle cop B. J. Martin affirmed that he had been so instructed at the airport to align himself in what he considered a weird formation. (ibid, p. 1404) 

Now, Sorrels  assisted Lawson as the advance man, and along with him approved the motorcade route.  Well, as everyone knows, there is a big debate as to how Oswald got from the TSBD to his rooming house that day.  One of the most questionable aspects is whether he was on a bus.  Sylvia Meagher raised the most serious questions about this bus ride. Mary Bledsoe was the prime witness for that ride and recall she said Oswald looked like a maniac and his face was distorted.  

Bledsoe appeared with an attorney before the WC. Her name was Melody Douhit.  She had prepared a series of notes for Bledsoe to keep on the straight and narrow.. Those notes were prepared at the request of Sorrels. (https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/deeper-into-dave-perry)

I won't go into the whole Roberts/Rybka call off, or Rowley and the Perry cover up etc.  The WC did an absolutely horrid job in their inquiry into the Secret Service.  And to allow them to serve as the second most used investigative arm for their investigation was ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as letting the FBI serve as number one.

 

 

Edited May 27, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

And let us not forget that as Rob alludes to above, the Secret Service destroyed  important records after THEY KNEW THE ARRB WANTED THEM!

Horne wrote that the ARRB was very angry about this defiance of their authority. And they actually thought about going public and making a big deal about it.  But he implies that Marwell eventually decided not to.  But they did engage in a series of rather tense letters over the incineration of boxes of records they wanted to see.

" As the HSCA attorney in charge of the motorcade route inquiry wrote, "Any map of Dallas in 1963 shows that it was easy to reach the Trade Mart on streets that join Main on the West side of the overpass."

Again, there was no excuse for that route.  None.