Greg Burnham

The truth is that the Parkland witnesses only saw ONE head wound--a large one, and that a large head wound can be either the exit for a bullet entering elsewhere, or a wound of both entrance and exit. Dr. Clark said he thought the wound was one of both entrance and exit.

If the large wound (which "everyone knows" is characteristic of an exit wound) was not an exit wound but "a wound of both entrance and exit" (which, I assume, means a tangential wound or from side to side, not one in which the bullet entered from behind then exited the way it came), this would seem to mean that the shot came not from the front or from behind but from JFK's right. Where would that place the shooter? Some place that everyone has been ignoring?

IF the bullet entered near the top of the head at a shallow angle, from either in front or behind the President, it could leave a wound of both entrance and exit. While the placement of this wound by the witnesses on the "right rear quadrant" would seem to suggest a shot fired from the front and slightly to the right, the fact is none of the Parkland doctors said as much, and a wound in this location would also be consistent with a bullet's being fired from above and behind, clipping off the right rear of the skull as the President leaned forward.

Now, I have come to believe that the recollections of the Parkland witnesses were off a bit, and that the wound was actually a few inches further forward on the skull than most remembered, but I will agree that it's not ridiculous to believe they were right, provided one sticks to the facts, and refuses to twist the words of the Parkland witnesses into a claim they all thought the wound was an exit for a bullet entering elsewhere, and that they all doubted the conclusions of the autopsy report, and that they all thought the autopsy photos were fake, etc.

I mean, when I first started reading about this case, I felt sorry for these poor doctors who I assumed knew the truth but were then pummeled into submission. The more I read, however, the more I realized that the vast majority of the Parkland witnesses were not conspiracy theorists at all, and had, as but one example, come to accept the brain they saw on the cart was macerated cerebrum, not cerebellum. The question then became if it made any sense to push that someone actually saw something when that person had readily admitted he'd been mistaken, and had denounced those claiming he wasn't.

By way of example, if 10 people having a picnic all claimed to see a cigar-shaped UFO, even though news footage of the day shows the Goodyear blimp on the horizon, I MIGHT believe them. But if, from reading up on the incident, I discovered that the majority of these witnesses later said "Yeah, I guess what I saw was the blimp," my confidence in their UFO claims would waiver, to the point where I'd assume they ALL had been mistaken.

But that's me.

First, why would you bring up UFO's in this post? Weird.

Second, there is a very distinct difference in the appearance of cerebrum versus cerebellar tissue. These doctors would know that difference. It is highly unlikely that ANY of them would have been mistaken about it. You are implying that all or the majority of them later retracted their first impressions of the tissue because they had been mistaken? That dog don't hunt.

Third, the autopsy X-rays and photographs have been PROVEN to be fabrications by David Mantik, MD, PhD.

David Mantik on Black Op Radio:

http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black571.mp3

Craig,

Your interpretation of Zapruder's testimony is quite self-serving. Joseph's & Lifton's interpretation more closely describes what is meant in "colloquially" phrased English. Your interpretation is very much a stretch.

Oh, God! Doug Horne has a fit over Clint Hill and Chris Matthews saying exactly what they've been saying for years, and claims they are deliberate liars, and fills his diatribe with so much nonsense one could accuse him of being just as bad.

To be clear, Clint Hill, has NEVER EVER EVER said he thought the large wound he saw was an exit for a bullet entering elsewhere. He has long presented, and has apparently always believed, that the fatal bullet entered where he saw a large wound--at the top of Kennedy's head, at the right rear. But instead of jumping on this FACT, and pointing out that "officially" the bullet entered on the back of Kennedy's head, and that what Hill thought was an entrance was an exit, Horne invents this whole scenario where Hill thought the wound was an EXIT.

He does us all a disservice, moreover, by making as though the Parkland doctors also thought the wound they thought was near the back of the head was an exit for a bullet entering elsewhere. (He inaccurately claims they didn't think it was at the top of the back of the head--when many of them did.) Far worse, however, is that even a cursory study of the statements of these doctors will indicate that Dr. Clark, the only doctor to study the wound and write about it in a timely manner--from the very beginning--claimed he thought the large head wound was a tangential wound of both entrance and exit.

Freakin' embarrassing, IMO.

What is embarrassing is that you fault Doug and not Chris Matthews!

Dear Friends,

I'm so upset about what happened tonight on MSNBC's "Harball," that I just posted a new journal entry. Please give it the widest possible dissemination.

Here it is:

SHAME ON BOTH OF YOU, CLINT HILL AND CHRIS MATTHEWS insidethearrb May 4th, 20:45

By Douglas P. Horne, author of "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board"

I watched a very sorry display on Chris Matthews' MSNBC show "Hardball" tonight: Chris Matthews conducted a short, stage-managed, cream-puff interview with retired Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, and the game was rigged "from the get-go." That was obvious. But it was also completely unacceptable, and forever tarnishes the reputations of both of these men.

The occasion was a brief discussion of Clint Hill's short new memoir, "Mrs. Kennedy and Me."

I picked the book up in the store about three weeks ago and read the three or so pages that everyone naturally turns to: Clint Hill's description of what happened during the shots in Dallas, on Elm Street, on November 22, 1963, when he ran from the left running board of the Queen Mary (the Secret Service follow-up car that day), to President Kennedy's limousine, only to arrive at, and mount the limousine, after all of the shots had been fired.

I was particularly interested to see whether Clint Hill's description of President Kennedy's head wound had changed from what he wrote in 1963, or from what he testified to in 1964 while under oath before the Warren Commission, or from the words attributed to him in the recent book "The Kennedy Detail." The words hadn't changed. In his new memoir, Clint Hill (again) described a large, gaping wound in the right rear of President Kennedy's head, and made explicitly clear that a large amount of debris had been blown to the rear after the fatal shot, and that Jacqueline Kennedy had emerged from her seat to retrieve a part of President Kennedy's skull that had gone to the rear, and lay on the trunk lid, after the fatal shot.

He described all of that again today on television with Chris Matthews. Anyone familiar with his 1963 written report, and with his 1964 sworn testimony, also knows that in this 1964 testimony before Assistant Warren Commission Counsel Arlen Specter, he said that a large portion of the rear of President Kennedy's head was lying in the back seat of the car, and that the trunk lid was covered with bloody water and brain issue. All of this---the biological debris from her husband's head retrieved by Jacqueline Kennedy from the trunk lid; the large, gaping wound in the right rear of the head of the 35th President of the United States; and the blood and brain tissue sprayed over the trunk lid---all of this, of course, speaks graphically and plainly of a fatal shot from the front, or right front (not a fatal shot from the rear, where the Book Depository was).

Clint Hill knows it, and Chris Matthews knows it. But they pretended otherwise, presumably for all the "low information voters" in the TV audience. The problem for these two guys is, there aren't that many low information (i.e., uneducated or stupid) voters watching this show. The show has a very highly educated audience. So what they did was not only grossly dishonest---it was blatantly offensive, as well as just plain dumb.

Now, anyone who has read about the JFK assassination knows that every doctor who treated JFK at the the side of his gurney in Trauma Room One at Parkland Hospital, in Dallas, described the same head wound that Clint Hill did in 1963 and 1964: a wound that could only have been an EXIT WOUND, which meant that the fatal shot had to come from the front, or right front, not from behind. Not one doctor at Parkland who wrote a treatment report the day of the assassination mentioned anything in those reports but a wound in the right rear of the skull. (And no onementioned any damage to the top of his head or the right side of his head above the ear.) If you don't believe me, read the treatment reports (they were published in the Warren Report, after all). The wound described by these Parkland treating physicians and nurses that day was an avulsed wound (exploded outward from within), and the right rear of JFK's head was devoid of scalp and skull, in an exploded area about the size of a baseball. The head wound observed at Parkland Hospital during the 40 minutes that President Kennedy was treated (that duration was given by Dr. Clark in a press conference that day) had none of the characteristics of an entry wound whatsoever. It had all of the classic characteristics of an exit wound. A large amount of cerebral brain tissue was missing---blown out---and part of the badly damaged cerebellum, the part of the brain very low in the rear of the skull, was extruding from the head wound onto the treatment cart, as the Parkland physicians treated President Kennedy and tried to save his life.

Even Chris Matthews knows that bullets make small holes when entering the body, and large holes when exiting the body. (Especially head wounds.)

And yet Chris Matthews asked Clint Hill today if he had come to any conclusions about the shooting, and Clint Hill, obviously prepared for the question, said, "Sure: one shooter, three shots, from behind," or words almost identical to that. Now, Clint Hill knows that cannot be true. He always has. In fact, he knows it is such utter bullxxxx that he didn't say that in his new book---he merely described the wound he observed (an obvious exit wound), without commenting on where the shots came from or who did the shooting.

I knew what game Clint Hill was playing when he described JFK's head wound in "The Kennedy Detail" and in "Mrs. Kennedy and Me"---the game was: I will describe exactly what I saw and will not lie about it, but neither will I openly challenge the Warren Commission's or the HSCA's "government line" that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy all on his own. The rules of the game Clint Hill was obviously engaging in when these two books were published were, "I will tell the truth about what I saw, but I will not comment on what it means." In playing by those unwritten rules, Hill managed to sit on the fence, and tell the truth about the head wound, and at the same time avoided directly refuting the Warren Commission and HSCA conclusions that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK from the Texas School Book Depository, firing from above and behind.

But today Clint Hill crossed the line, and said JFK was killed by a Communist sympathizer, Lee Harvey Oswald, firing all the shots from behind. Shame on you, Clint Hill. You crossed a line today that you did not cross in either of the two recent books that quote you. What you did was unforgivable.

And then Chris Matthews (who served in the Peace Corps, not in the military), gave us all his best benefit as a "firearms expert" by saying that when he stood on Elm Street in Dallas in the 1990s ("when I was down there with CBS," he said), he had concluded that killing JFK from the TSBD was "an easy shot." Gee, thank you, Chris, for this profound wisdom based on all your years as a trained marksman in the Peace Corps. Of course, Chris Matthews never mentioned today that the scope on the rifle was a cheap piece of crap that was misaligned; that the rifle found in the Depository was an unreliable piece of junk; or that it had a defective firing pin which the FBI had to replace before even test firing it. And Chris Matthews never discussed the last marksmanship test score noted in Oswald's USMC Service Record before being discharged from the Marine Corps, which was only one point above failure. (Oswald received average marksmanship scores in boot camp, achieving the middle of three shooter designations, but obviously received a "pass" in 1959---when he most likely failed his test that year. It is obvious to me that after his skills had atrophied through disuse, he was given the official score that was only one point above failure, as a gift. As fellow Marine Nelson Delgado explained to Mark Lane in 1966 (in the film "Rush to Judgment"), Oswald was such a poor shot he was always getting flagged with "Maggie's Drawers" at the El Toro shooting range; his poor marksmanship was a standing joke in his own unit.) Chris Matthews will not discuss evidence, because he knows he will lose the argument---he only wants to discuss the politically correct conclusions endorsed by the National Security State.

Chris Matthews has much to be ashamed of here. He used to be the principal aide to Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. It was Tip O'Neill who published in his own memoir, "Man of the House," on page 211 (paperback edition, St. Martin's Press, 1987), that the two aides closest to President Kennedy on a personal basis---Kenneth O'Donnell, and Dave Powers---told him at dinner in 1968, five years after JFK's assassination, that at least two shots came from behind the fence on the grassy knoll, to the right front of the limousine. O'Donnell also told Tip O'Neill at that dinner meeting that he had lied to the Warren Commission about the origin of the shots, at the request of the FBI.

Surely Chris, you cannot pretend to be unfamiliar with this recollection of Tip O'Neill's??? If he did not tell you himself over a beer one night, surely you read it in his memoirs? Don't tell me you have not read the memoirs of your former boss, Chris...that won't fly.

Clint Hill crossed the line tonight from telling just part of the truth, to telling a lie that I am sure he does not believe in, and that cannot be true. And he knows it.

Chris Matthews, an otherwise intelligent person, repeatedly promotes the falsehood of the Lone Assassin Myth as if it were certified fact, when it cannot be true. And he knows he is promoting a Big Lie. Is this the price for keeping your job with the Mainstream Corporate Media, Chris? Or do you really believe that by lying about JFK's assassination, and pretending there was NOT a coup in this country in 1963, that you are somehow "protecting America's institutions?" I hope not, because there is nothing more corrosive to a democracy than lies perpetuated by big media and the government.

How do you sleep with yourself at night, Chris? How do you look at yourself in the mirror when you shave every day?

This is the last night I will ever watch Chris Matthews or "Hardball" again. I am boycotting that show, and any show he appears on, as long as he remains alive on this mortal coil, for Chris Matthews has proven himself---once again---to be a man without honor whenever he discusses the assassination of the man he professes to be his greatest hero, Jack Kennedy.

The Intelligence Community (read: CIA) has a stranglehold on the national TV media and the national print media, when it comes to the JFK assassination. You are not allowed to speak about it anymore, unless you support the Warren Commission, or unless you disparage JFK's character and misrepresent the historical record of his presidency. The major executives of these outlets and their producers are in the government's pocket, when it comes to the taboo subject of the Kennedy assassination. The truth gets out on local and regional radio stations, and the government has not quite yet figured out how to shut down free speech on the internet, but Cass Sunstein, President Obama's Information Czar, would like to---he said so in a prestigious law school paper just about 4 years ago. Google his name, and you can read the outrageous paper, yourself. Sunstein actually advocated fining people on the internet who engage in "conspiracy" speech that he defines as irresponsible (including about JFK's death), and also advocated infiltrating such groups, and combating their messages, with government-sponsored third party surrogates. And this man was appointed America's Information Chief by President Obama. Unsettling, isn't it?

The response to this stranglehold on the mainstream media by the American people (80% of whom have consistently concluded over the decades that JFK was killed by a conspiracy, and that there was a massive coverup) should be to openly and vociferously protest the Big Lie whenever it is trotted out as it was tonight, and to aggressively boycott those shows that promote the Big Lie.

President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy that involved many in the National Security Establishment at the time, as well as former members of the National Security Establishment; and a massive medical coverup was implemented immediately after his death in an attempt to hide all evidence that he was shot from the front (as well as from behind). That coverup has now failed. If you are not familiar with how it was carried out, you can read my five volume book, "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board." The ten depositions taken by the ARRB General Counsel and me, of JFK autopsy witnesses, in 1996 and 1997, undeniably prove that a medical coverup occurred. Anyone not afraid of the truth, and of evaluating facts and what they really mean, should read my book. It will take you to a place where you are less secure, less proud, and less confident about your own country, but if you are someone who believes that truth can be cleansing, and have a powerful, positive, and redemptive force, than my book may just be the perfect antidote to the propaganda about the JFK assassination that will rule the mainstream media airwaves and the national print media between now and the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination.

Meanwhile, boycott MSNBC's "Hardball." If you truly believe that JFK was killed by a conspiracy and that the U.S. government covered it up, then turn off the tube every time Chris Matthews' face appears on the air. Chris used to only talk like this every November 22nd, on the anniversary of JFK's assassination; now he is going out of his way to do it as often as possible. Make MSNBC pay a price for promoting the Big Lie in America. We all deserve better journalism than that. END

Have you had opportunity to speak with Jack White? I do hope he is recovering.

I haven't spoken to him for quite some time. I seem to have called at the wrong times recently. He is still receiving a lot of in home care. Sure do miss him though...

Greg, when you catch up with Jack, please ask him if he has read William Dear's new book. If not, I would love to send him a copy.

Jack was quite impressed by Dear's first book.

I also miss Jack White's participation here. I sure wish him well.

I will, Michael.

Dallas 2010

[edit: Actually this was FORT WORTH]

Good stuff, Michael. You always offer very relevant data at just the right time. Great work...as usual.

Greg, thank you very much. Certainly appreciated.

Have you had opportunity to speak with Jack White? I do hope he is recovering.

I haven't spoken to him for quite some time. I seem to have called at the wrong times recently. He is still receiving a lot of in home care. Sure do miss him though...

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

Len,

I received various information from various sources. One confirming source, J Harrison, is now dead. Another source recently passed away. I will not reveal his name as his family is uncomfortable with his having spoken about any of this to begin with. I do not have the same sources as Bruce, including Burt Weenick. I am unsure as to where my original notes are located at this time and I am disinclined to hunt for them.

As I said when I first joined the forum, I am done with this part of the investigation. You are of course free to do your own research and publish your own findings. You are also free to reject my findings. However, in my opinion, it is disruptive for you to continue to raise these issues in other threads that are not of the same topic, such as, RFK threads, etc.

It is not uncommon for researchers of any subject to reach conclusions, publish those findings, and then move on. That is what I have done. Please desist in badgering me to revisit this topic.

I've already named one source: J Harrison. I do not own any of Bruce's books. However, I am going to buy them now. I will get back to all once I have read them if the names of the witnesses are therein--or with any other pertinent information.

No, Pat, we do not agree. The sentence in question is more or less a "throw away" line. Where I believe Prouty was speaking in a colorful manner you believe he was misinformed. Yet, during the pertinent years and shortly thereafter, Prouty was definitely in a position to know exactly what happened.

In 1955 he was appointed the first "Focal Point" officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations per National Security Council Directive 5412.

Thanks Tom.

Will Burham admit error? I doubt he is able to.

I am not admitting error, because I am not convinced that I committed an error. I just received a correspondence from Bruce Campbell Adamson a few minutes ago. He unequivocally confirmed that I am correct: Zapruder and Legon worked "side by side" at Nardis of Dallas. Bruce said that he found four people who worked at Nardis of Dallas and a Manager from Nardis "put it in writing" in Volume 10 of Bruce's book, The de Mohrenschildt Story. He confirmed that Zapruder's obituary mis-stated the year of Zapruder's departure from Nardis as 1949 when it was really 1959.

Two of my original sources are now deceased. However, it is significant that my sources confirm Bruce's research and vice versa.

There should be no alternative to 100% tight security 100% of the time when protecting the president. Is that really too much to ask? After all, keeping the POTUS alive is the Presidential Protective Detail's ONLY reason to even exist. It is their ONLY job.

.

A Closer Look At The Secret Service

By Russ Baker on Apr 30, 2012

Secret Service agents are one category of law enforcement whose agents typically get the glory treatment. Recent books by members of JFK’s secret service detail, almost devoid of revelations or candor, have nevertheless received lots of positive coverage. Meanwhile, legitimate questions about the service—how it works, what kinds of people it employs, how effective it is—are pushed aside.

Maybe that’s why the media reacted with such astonishment to learn that Secret Service agents preparing for Obama’s visit to Cartagena, Colombia, consorted with prostitutes. Eight agents have been forced out of their jobs, and a ninth is on his way out. Military personnel along on the trip are under investigation as well. The activity raised questions not only about the appropriateness of such conduct, but of whether this behavior threatened the President’s safety.

Just a One-Time Thing, Folks

Now the government is saying that the Cartagena hijinks were an aberration. Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano assured the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that the Secret Service’s Office of Professional Responsibility had received zero complaints of agent misconduct in the last two and a half years. That means total good behavior in roughly 900 foreign and 13,000 domestic trips.

But here’s the problem: it’s the Secret Service assuring us that the Secret Service is squeaky clean. The matter of self-policing came up last week when Napolitano faced the Senate committee. As ABC reports, Napolitano claimed that the Homeland Security Inspector General was supervising the investigation, but the IG’s own office said it was merely “monitoring” the Secret Service’s self-examination, and would review it when it was complete.

Since the events of April 12, a probe has grown, and investigators are very much just getting started. And not just about Colombia: the Associated Press reported on inquiries into possible Secret Service liaisons with strippers and prostitutes leading up to an Obama visit to El Salvador last year. And some agents are contending that cavorting and drinking heavily is actually quite common.

In fact, there are many other questions about the Secret Service and about presidential security that are not being properly addressed. Coming as we approach the 50^thanniversary of John F. Kennedy’s violent death, these are not idle concerns.

Obama and Kennedy

As we have noted here previously, the agency has been involved in serious security lapses and misjudgment before. For example, in Obama’s first year in office, the agency failed to keep an unauthorized couple with a hankering for publicity from getting into the White House and close to the President—and there may be more to the story.

Then, in 2011, a classified booklet containing Obama’s schedule, down to the minute, along with details on his security contingent, was found lying in a Canberra, Australia, gutter during an Obama visit to that country.

Those incidents are reported to have upset Obama—and that’s certainly understandable. Meanwhile, his trip to Colombia, intended to showcase new trade initiatives with Latin America, was totally overshadowed by the scandal. Presidential trips are carefully calculated to generate positive publicity and create goodwill at home and abroad, so the prostitution sideshow just wiped that one out.

Such incidents are not just bad for image—they raise all kinds of issues in the safety area. For one thing, the agents themselves are compromised, even made susceptible to pressure and blackmail, particularly if they want to keep their jobs and if, as in numerous cases, the agents were married.

But this is not new. Go back almost half a century, and look at the most shocking dereliction of duty ever—the failures that made it easy for someone (or someones) to assassinate John F Kennedy. The failings are endless, from not insisting that the bubble top go on Kennedy’s car, to having too few Secret Service agents protecting the president, to authorizing a particularly dangerous route that slowed the car way down, to allowing it to go through a canyon of windows—and then not checking or securing the windows or installing spotters or sharpshooters. A grade school kid could have done a more serious job of protecting the president.

Here’s an excerpt from Warren Commission questions to Special Agent Winston Lawson, who headed the Secret Service detail for Kennedy’s Dallas trip:

And yet we continue to let this agency off the hook. We forgot that even LBJ, a direct beneficiary of the agency’s sloppiness with his former boss, trusted the outfit so little himself that he inquired at one point whether he could have the FBI protect him instead.

A Telling Bumper Sticker

It is foolish to ignore the worldviews and attitudes of people expected to protect presidents. Former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden has described rampant racism and widespread contempt for Kennedy and his policies among Bolden’s fellow officers.

Now, here are a few salient details about the Secret Service today that go beyond trying to get a little “R&R”: When Washington Post reporters visited the Virginia home of Texas native David R. Chaney, one of the Secret Service supervisors on the Colombia trip, they found a silver pickup truck parked in front. On the vehicle they spotted abumper sticker with an outline of the state of Texas, and the word “secede.”

It is interesting to note that Chaney’s father served in the Secret Service when Kennedy was in office. As assistant agent in charge of personnel, he was friends with many of the agents who were in Dallas in November, 1963.

Speaking of Dallas, consider these excerpts from a Warren Commission affidavit of Texas Sen. Ralph Yarborough, who was riding in the motorcade:

In the early 60s, Secret Service protection was downright awful. Henry Bosworth, the late editor of the Quincy Sun newspaper in Massachusetts, used to recount how he climbed aboard a press bus with no credentials, was asked no questions nor frisked for weapons, and found himself inside Hyannisport having drinks with JFK himself.

And how is it now? Here’s an account of a WhoWhatWhy friend, from an Obama campaign stop in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in April, 2008.

Oh, by the way: during renewed government inquiries into JFK’s death in the 1990s, the Secret Service destroyed crucial assassination-related records.

(Posted for research purposes only)

"...died of lead poisoning..." is a euphemism for a violent takeover. It was not meant literally. He didn't die, his rule did. He wasn't shot with lead bullets, but may has well have been.

Greg, you got it backwards. The Secret Service did TWO re-enactments of the shooting. The FBI zero. The Secret Service showed the Zapruder film to photo experts, in an attempt to determine the shot sequence and locations. The FBI did not, and only reluctantly looked at the film.

And yet they came to similar conclusions, with the head shot much further down the road than shown in the films...

As far as your contention they dropped their guard on 11-22...I've seen nothing to indicate the protection was more lax that day than usual. They were a much smaller force back then, with a high burn-out rate. if you or ANYONE has collected information regarding other trips--in which someone popped a firecracker and the limo raced off, or an agent from the front seat catapulted himself into the back seat--then by all means, share this with us, so we can see how 11-22-63 was so different...

P.S. If the protocols in place were sufficient to save Kennedy, then why oh why has no president since Kennedy trusted his life to those protocols?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...in all due respect, you have no experience in these matters, Pat. You are not speaking from the POV of ever having protected the lives of targets or from the perspective of ever having been protected by body guards. You have only studied this aspect of the case academically. I can't fault you for your ignorance. There is little information available to the civilian student.

So ILLUMINATE for us, Greg, how and why it is unthinkable that a sniper could just as easily have picked off Eisenhower, or Truman, or Roosevelt, etc. I mean, have you EVER done the research necessary to make claims about the effectiveness of Secret Service protection prior to 11-22-63?

Here's a good place to start: Giusseppe Zangara. Please show us how the Secret Service stopped him from killing Roosevelt. Oh, that's right, they didn't. He missed. And would have had plenty of time to fire over and over again...IF he'd been firing from a window and hadn't been a near-midget standing behind a woman with a large hat.

http://www.prouty.org/anatomy.ram

Anatomy Of An Assassination

(Transcript of speech)

This subject which I am going to get into, I might call the anatomy of assassination, or the politics of assassination. Assassination is big business; in fact assassination is the business of big business. I've written quite a bit on this subject in various magazines and for those of you who have managed to get past some of the pictures that occur in some of those magazines, you'll know that in the November issue of Genesis I wrote on the subject of the Kennedy assassination. Just last month, March issue of Genesis I wrote about international assassination. I have to write five months ahead of time. I had an article completed and in the mail--the 24th of March--on assassinations in which I talked about the possibility of further assassinations in the Middle East. As I went to the Post Office on the 25th with a newspaper under my arm about the assassination of King Faisal, I had the intention of taking the article home and bringing it up to date. You see it's that kind of a subject.

What was your first thought when you read about the assassination of King Faisal? What goes through the minds of perpetrators of assassinations? Are we again confronted with a young man who was a lone nut, who kept a diary and friends on a grassy knoll, down there in Saudi Arabia? Or was the King killed by some sort of a machine or conspiracy that had other plans for action in the Middle East?

Mr. Kissinger had left the Middle East the day before. Mr. Nixon had tallied in Dallas until the morning of the assassination. So there's a theme running through these things that the King is dead. But what is the meaning then of the controls that go through these things? In this case, the resumption of power in Saudi Arabia almost seemed to be a little too even, too easy. What had really happened there? I think what had really happened there will give us a picture of what goes on in assassination, how they come about, and then we can take that kind of a picture and begin to unravel some of the others and then we might come a little closer to the mark.

Technically what happened in Saudi Arabia is that the King's guard, the King's elite, was broken. Now you can keep a man alive. If you don't believe that read your history of General De Gaulle. Even in the deepest darkest days of World War II there were thousands of people who would like to have taken a shot at De Gaulle. I remember after the Cairo conference in Marraketch, Morocco, Churchill was recovering with a bout of influenza and DeGaulle came to visit him several times. You can imagine the security measures that were taken in Morocco to keep the good General alive.

I was in Lima, Peru, in March of 1964 when DeGaulle came and captivated the country of Peru. Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians filled Plaza DeArmas to such an extent that they were pressing against the walls and trampling the trees, and yet, General De Gaulle, who is a good many inches taller than I, walked among these Peruvians that night with search lights on him in that huge arena, among hundreds of thousands of people, and no one took a shot at him because in the six months before he went to Lima the people whose business it was to keep De Gaulle alive, the guerrillas, if you remember their term of endearment, had thoroughly worked over the city of Lima. They had combed every list for people in that city who might be anti-De Gaulle, and had provided them with resort hotels a long way off. They had made sure when the General came to town he would stay alive.

What is it then that keeps these people alive? In every country the King would not live if there was not an elite guard. Who trains the elite guard? The Vinnell Corporation. It seems to me that there's a point to the subject that appeared just a while ago in The New York Times, the Washington Post and a great number of other papers--to the effect that there had been a contract issued with the Vinnell Corporation. I don't have any idea what their corporate connection's are, and the Defense Department of the United States, and the fact that the Vinnell Corporation had signed this contract for the purpose of training, first of all, the National Guard of Saudi Arabia, and National Guard there means more or less police, and the King's elite guard. I wonder which team they had in mind? Because when you control the elite guard of a country, when you train that guard, when you arm that guard, when you teach them to jump from an airplane at Fort Benning and in Fort Bragg and give them all kinds of weapons training, bring them down to Camp Peary in Virginia where there's a nice little resort, that guard knows how to keep a man alive, as long as that guard agrees to keep that man alive.

So I don't know whether the death of King Faisal preceded the work of the Vinnell Corporation or whether the Vinnell Corporation's contract began on the 25th of March. It is awfully important because whether those men stay alive or not is the function of their inner guard. Once you relax the guard you open up a hornets nest. A lot of people would like to control the bank accounts of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the rest of them. What keeps the King alive is not the election of the populous because they don't go through that there. It's simply his guard.

This is a key to it and the guard of many of these countries throughout the world where there have been so many coup d'etats, - a euphemism for the work of mechanics or assassination. These guards for many, many years in my experience for more than twenty-five years, (I was in Saudi Arabia in 1943 on clandestine activities ), is the work of the Central Intelligence Agency. The people who let the contracts for the Central Intelligence Agency are called the Department of Defense. The people who do the work are called such companies such as the Vinnell Corporation or Air America, or some of these others.

So you begin to see what comes about, and since I didn't come here this afternoon to really get into the assassination picture too deeply, I wanted to set a stage. So let me jump to some of the things we know about without having to dig too far under the surface.

In 1953 the CIA had a problem, only this time it was in the country of Iran. Mosadeque died of lead poisoning and the Shah who was escaping to the Riviera was brought back to resume the long 2500 year line of Cyrus, King Cyrus, and now he leads the country of Iran at the pleasure of the Agency's number one man in the world today, Richard Helms, who is called Ambassador. And so as long as the guard in Iran can keep the Shah alive, he will be our man there. As long as the Shah is our man, he'll probably be alive.

In Jordan, where King Hussein jets around and lives by grace of his elite guard, that guard has been trained through various corporate devices by the Central Intelligence Agency for at least twenty years. King Hussein has about the same chances as surviving that Faisal or Hassen or the Shah have, and that is: If he plays the game, his guard will take care of him.

These are important considerations because they are right there in the record. The thing is, we in this country don't think of it that way very often. You see they don't have elections in many of these third tier countries. How do you replace somebody? How do you replace people in countries where there is not provision for election? People in power hold the power until somebody else is strong enough to take it away. That ability to take it away is a very fleeting thing sometimes, as it was in the case of Trujillo or in the case of Diem. But, in every case, there are many people willing to move in and become heads of state. And the guard is trained in many cases by our own CIA...part of their business. Not many people write about that or know about it, but that's part of their prime business in the clandestine area. Then the men have the defense to keep them alive.

Now I'll close with an example but I think it's a extremely pertinent one because it leads to what will follow me in this program. The case of Ngo Dinh Diem... when Diem assumed the power in Vietnam 1954. If you'll remember, his country had no antecedent it was simply a piece of real estate lying south of the seventeenth parallel. When you take over a piece of real estate like that and begin to rule, who are your police? Who is your army? Who are your generals and who are your sergeants? Where is your power? This is important, where is your power?

Ed Lansdale, probably one of the best agents the Agency ever set in motion, came over from the Philippines where he had created a man named Magsaysay as President of the Philippines, pretty good job as far as that went. He brought his team with him to Saigon, I happened to be pilot on that airplane. We went into Saigon with the same what we used to call "Robin Hood technique" that if you can fool the people, you can fool the people.

Diem was created by a secret police trained by special forces, the Green Berets, in those days I don't think they wore the green berets, I'm talking about 1955/1956/1957. Diem owed his existence at the time to two clever maneuvers. One was the rapid placement of a good secret police and, secondly, the purchase of an army. If you remember, there were two army's in Cholon, they were more or less mercenaries and they purchased the army. Now as long as Diem had that backing, he was in pretty good shape by the summer of 1963, a summer that we all could write about and research about a lot more, that was a very important summer.

There were papers coming across my desk - at that time I was working in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - papers with no "top secret" stamps on them, no "eyes only" stamps on them, no register numbers on them. That meant they were really secret, if they are really secret you don't put anything on them. Then a man would come up to me and say have you seen this? And it would say we have had enough of Diem, what are we going to do about him? Well just that idea means that it won't be long until bullets are flying.

Because, what happens in Saigon, somebody like Lou Conien is told, "hey go check out the Generals, find out which general could take over the job. General "Big" Minh or Ngyuen Khahn or Ky, or Ky not ready but Khahn or Minn might be ready, check them out." The minute you tell people that in a city like Saigon - you could do it today - the minute you tell people that, they go back to their sources of power and they say, "Hey, you know what, the United States is changing its policy." It was changing its policy. It's like you stand on a stack of bibles, Chuck Colson and Howard Hunt tried to rewrite the stack of bibles to prove that is was Kennedy that said shoot him, but nobody in Washington said shoot Diem, you don't do an assassination that way. The way people are assassinated is by taking away the power that had been created to keep them there, it's a lot easier that way.

More interest to me than a genealogy of Lee Harvey Oswald and all the rest is, who said, "Lets go to Dallas Jack." I understand that Kenny O'Donnell feels real bad about it. I understand that Bobby Kennedy's said from time to time he wished he'd have put his foot down about it. Gerry Bruno, the greatest advance man in politics went there, but did Gerry Bruno pick the route? Maybe Mark can tell you. Who did, who decided let's go to Dallas? You've been to Fort Worth, you've got to go to Dallas. That's important because whoever decided that knew some things.

I have worked with the Secret Service in their good work to keep presidents alive. I went to Mexico City when Eisenhower was going down there in 1956 and I'll tell you, the Secret Service knows the game just like the gorillas in France knew the game. They can keep the President alive. Where were they? How does it happen you can have a six story building with a lot of empty floors. They never wired or sealed the doors as their manual says they will, nor had anybody on the roof with high powered guns and with radios as their manual says they will, or had a man in Dealey Plaza to look at the man on the roof and to look at the windows as their manual says they will. If you don't drive over 44 mph, a nice figure but it works out in tests, why did they bring that car down to a crawling speed. Those are more important to me than a genealogy of Lee Harvey Oswald or anybody else on the grassy knoll.

I think I'll stop there. That's what I call the anatomy of assassinations. It gets you thinking, you know.

L. Fletcher Prouty

Tom,

Thanks for supplying all that info. The New York Times bit is especially interesting... I will read all the rest of it as time allows. So far--great stuff...

Why did the Secret Service confiscate and/or destroy autopsy film and x-rays? As late as the 1990s, why did they destroy records requested by the AARB?

If the first shot had killed JFK, no one could blame the Secret Service agents for not reacting in time. Obviously, no one can respond instanteously to a shot that isn't being anticipated. However, after that first shot, the expectation was that those whose job depended on lighting quick reflexes in just such situations, and who had certainly been trained continuously for assassination scenarios, would have done more than clulessly look around them for 6-7 seconds. As Ralph Yarborough noted, a man can run fifty yards in less time than that.

Because the first shot wasn't fatal, the failure of Kellerman and the Secret Service agents on the follow up car to quickly push JFK down and shield him contributed directly to his death. The failure of driver Greer to follow proper procedure and hit the accelerator after the first shot contributed directly to his death as well. 6-7 seconds was plenty of time to cover the short distance between the cars, and obviously enough time for Kellerman to jump back and throw his body over Kennedy.

I have never understood the tendency on the part of CTers to absolve the Secret Service from responsiblity in the assassination. In an honest investigation, they would have been the first to be grilled over their conduct. Unlike shadowy assassins on the grassy knoll or elsewhere, we know exactly who it was that slowed the car down (if not stopped it) and stared at JFK. We know exactly who was sitting next to the driver in the car, and who was riding on the follow up car. The fact that first Blaine, and now Greer, are distorting historical truth and making money off of what should have been the most shameful moment of their professional careers-if not their lives-makes my feelings even stronger.

Greer isn't making any money on anything. He died on February 23, 1985. Blaine and Hill might be making money on it...due to the book. In my view, this should be a verboten source of income for ANY Secret Service Agent whose "charge" was lost on their watch.

Allowing any member of the Secret Service to make money as a result of their failure to protect the client is similar to Charlie Manson being allowed to make money writing a book on his masterminding the Tate/ LaBianca murders.

Good stuff, Michael. You always offer very relevant data at just the right time. Great work...as usual.

That is an amazing fabrication...and in record time!

L'agence a en effet recueilli des ressources supérieures dans sa vieillesse et faible.

Ya think MAYBE the autopsy report was entered into the court record?

.

Greg, you got it backwards. The Secret Service did TWO re-enactments of the shooting. The FBI zero. The Secret Service showed the Zapruder film to photo experts, in an attempt to determine the shot sequence and locations. The FBI did not, and only reluctantly looked at the film.

And yet they came to similar conclusions, with the head shot much further down the road than shown in the films...

As far as your contention they dropped their guard on 11-22...I've seen nothing to indicate the protection was more lax that day than usual. They were a much smaller force back then, with a high burn-out rate. if you or ANYONE has collected information regarding other trips--in which someone popped a firecracker and the limo raced off, or an agent from the front seat catapulted himself into the back seat--then by all means, share this with us, so we can see how 11-22-63 was so different...

P.S. If the protocols in place were sufficient to save Kennedy, then why oh why has no president since Kennedy trusted his life to those protocols?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...in all due respect, you have no experience in these matters, Pat. You are not speaking from the POV of ever having protected the lives of targets or from the perspective of ever having been protected by body guards. You have only studied this aspect of the case academically. I can't fault you for your ignorance. There is little information available to the civilian student.

It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. Greer saw people on the overpass. He knew they weren't supposed to be there. Then he hears a sound. Not sure what it is. Then another. Scared he's heading into trouble, he takes his foot off the gas. He looks back. Sees Connally falling. He realizes they are being shot at. From behind. He puts his foot to the floor.

Total time. Six to seven seconds.

Well, that was certainly an abuse of the "right to be subjective in one's interpretation" of the evidence, Pat. I do not believe that you have any way of knowing what was going through Greer's mind beyond supposition. However, I grant you that Greer's being incompetent to the task, or at the very least much less competent than other younger agents, is most certainly without dispute.

With the Kennedy assassination, the Secret Service had to publicly address something men like Kennedy had long known: that their presence was next to worthless when it came to protecting the president from sniper fire.

Not true. The problem is that they failed to follow their own protocol that day. Nothing is 100% guaranteed, but when you relax protection to that degree the odds are all in favor of the assassins.

So I don't blame the SS for the assassination. Nor do I blame them for their poor planning of the motorcade. I wouldn't be surprised if most every motorcade had a turn or two in which the limo would be forced to slow down. Heck, JFK was prone to jump out and talk to the crowd on occasion. In the eyes of the SS, THAT was their main concern--someone getting close to Kennedy and shooting him, which had historical precedent.

Again, there are procedures in place to accommodate the changing pace of the vehicle and/or the client's flights of fancy. None of them were observed in Dealey Plaza.

I do blame the SS for its poor investigation of the shooting, however. From their re-enactments of the shooting and study of the Z-film, they should have concluded that another shooter was likely, or at least admit Oswald was incrediby "lucky."

I couldn't disagree more. The Secret Service depends upon the Bureau for much of its intelligence. When the Secret Service was part of the Treasury Department it was good at investigating counterfeit money rings. However, it is not an investigative body when it comes to homicide. Their internal investigation of the failure in Dallas was so poor that they exonerated themselves! I don't blame them for conducting a poor investigation because that isn't what they are supposed to be good at. They are supposed to be good at keeping people alive.

Colby is lost again. I am not concerned so much with attempting to exonerate Sirhan as I am concerned with indicting those who perpetrated a fraud on the American people, who perpetuate the cover-up, and are guilty of obstruction of justice.

Me lost? Hardly, don’t you remember what you wrote (emphasis mine):

“Is there any other case in history where THE DEFENDANT WAS STILL CONVICTED of the crime given the testimony of the Medical Examiner?”

The part about “the testimony of the Medical Examiner” was a false premise because he said nothing at trial to exonerate Sirhan, you of course have a track history of refusing to admit error, e.g. your false claim Zapruder worked with LeGron

Let's start at the beginning of this misleading post. Given that ALL eyewitnesses who testified (and even those who did not, but spoke outside of a court setting) consistently reported that Sirhan was never within 3-5 feet of RFK at any time during the shooting; that Sirhan was never behind RFK; and that RFK's back was never exposed to Sirhan, then the testimony of the Medical Examiner, which states that the cause of death was a gunshot wound behind the right ear of the deceased from point blank range is exculpatory of the accused.

Even an idiot can see this. Perhaps you are not even an idiot.

As for Zapruder and Legon (not Legron), you are providing misleading information. There is no question that Zapruder worked with Legon at Nardis and/or Jennifer Juniors. A question remains as to the exact years in question. My, now deceased, source provided the years that I originally published. If the years are not accurate that still does not change the remainder of the facts nor does it alter their significance. One of my confirming sources for this information, J Harrison, knew DeMohrenschildt and Legon, personally, for many years, including the years in question. He knew others who worked at Nardis/Jennifer Juniors, as well. He worked for the Criminal Intelligence Division of the Dallas Police Department and was assigned to monitor the activities of some of the employees during an investigation in the years preceding--and in the months leading up to--the assassination.

I would also recommend the work of Bruce Campbell Adamson for further information.

But, I digress. Let's get back to RFK.

Kathy,

IMO, that they did, in fact, make "it" so violent; so available for public display; the "official version"so OBVIOUSLY at odds with reality...yes. Those things are NOT "personal" -- they are rife with intent. A purpose much, much bigger than Jack Kennedy.

I agree, Dawn, he should be exonerated. However, on a Deep Political level, unfortunately, debating Sirhan's guilt or innocence only serves the perpetrator's agenda. It is a distraction from the larger picture. I would liken it to the reality that we all must face when we realize that the death of JFK or RFK, although tragic on a personal level, must take a back seat to the larger picture. The larger picture includes the fact that JFK, for example, was not killed for "personal" reasons. Their intent was not to murder "JFK" as a "person". Their intent was to murder the Executive Branch of our government. That was paramount to the agenda of the entity. He was never the target, the office of the POTUS was.