Joseph McBride

Dan Rather convinced CBS to have FIVE full camera crews covering JFK in Dallas, including the only live hookup (at the Trade Mart). ABC and NBC each had the usual one crew covering the president's trip to Dallas.

Mike Wallace of KLRD-TV was the announcer talking about the McKinley assassination during the live coverage of the presidential breakfast event in Fort Worth on November 22, 1963 (no, not the better-known Mike Wallace). Bob Walker, the station manager and news director of WFAA-TV in Dallas, also went on about assasinations during his live coverage of President Kennedy's arrival at Love Field. The concern was "in the air."

The disinfo agent Mary Ferrell urged me to read the Latimer book, which she said was definitive on this case. I had already read it and knew it is fallacious. That was one of the reasons I found Ferrell suspicious.

Zapruder's son, Henry, worked for the Justice Department at the time. Abe Zapruder was a member of the Dallas Petroleum Club along some other persons of interest in the case.

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE: Senator [Ralph] Yarborough [D-Texas, who was riding in the back seat of the convertible with LBJ and Lady Bird in the motorcade], who had “a lifetime of handling arms,” described for me his reactions to the shots fired in Dealey Plaza, giving an eyewitness and earwitness account that matched that of numerous other witnesses but is, like theirs, at odds over some details with what can now be seen in the altered Zapruder film: The first shot I heard I thought was a rifle shot. The second shot, the motorcade almost came to a halt. They said later that the president‘s car slowed to something like five miles an hour. I wondered what the hell they were stopping for when somebody is shooting. People were jumping out of the car in front of me [the Secret Service followup car] and running to the president‘s car. I thought maybe somebody had thrown a bomb in there. The third shot I heard was a rifle shot. When I asked Yarborough if he thought there was a gunman on the Grassy Knoll, he said, I believe I would have heard or picked the shot up. I just don’t [think so]. I didn’t think so at the time. There’s one possibility -- I don’t think there was a second gunman, but if somebody else fired a shot at the identical time as the gunman in the School Book Depository, if two shots were fired instantly, it would be hard to differentiate them. I know that when I’ve gone deer hunting, if I fire my rifle at the same time as somebody else fires his, you can’t tell the two shots apart. I agree with John Connally that it’s foolish to say that only two shots were fired [Yarborough apparently is alluding to the single-bullet theory, which Connally never accepted]. I’ve talked to Dallas policemen who told me that the people from Washington gave them an awful grilling. They came down with a theory in mind and they didn’t want to hear anything else that might not match up with their theory. I have the suspicion this fellow Ruby knew somebody about it, with his criminal connections. Oswald went by his room in Oak Cliff, to get his gun or something, and the direction he was walking in was the direction of Ruby’s apartment. I think it was a conspiracy, of course, but I don’t know who the conspirators were. Anyway, too many people wanted Kennedy dead.

A distinguished scholar such as Vince Palamara, who has written a number of important books on the case, does not need advice on his reading comprehension, "joking" or otherwise.

Ford's pardon of Nixon sealed his fate. Carter was sabotaged in the hostage rescue effort and then a victim of the October Surprise, so we should add him to the list. I go into O'Donnell's role in the plot in INTO THE NIGHTMARE: JOHNNY, HE HARDLY KNEW YE Further support for the presence of a shooter on the knoll came from surprising sources, Kennedy’s close aides Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers, who were riding in the Secret Service followup car and witnessed the assassination at close range. Their once-private recollections were reported in House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill’s 1987 book, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O’Neill (with William Novak). After John F. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952, O’Neill was the man who replaced him in their Massachusetts district of the House of Representatives before going on to become speaker from 1977 through 1987. O’Neill wrote in his book: I was never one of those people who had doubts or suspicions about the Warren Commission's report on the president's death. But five years after Jack died, I was having dinner with Kenny O'Donnell and a few other people at Jimmy's Harborside Restaurant in Boston, and we got to talking about the assassination. I was surprised to hear O'Donnell say that he was sure he had heard two shots that came from behind the fence. "That's not what you told the Warren Commission," I said. "You're right," he replied. "I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn't have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn't want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family." "I can't believe it," I said. "I wouldn't have done that in a million years. I would have told the truth." "Tip, you have to understand. The family -- everybody wanted this thing behind them." Dave Powers was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O'Donnell's. Kenny O'Donnell is no longer alive, but during the writing of this book I checked with Dave Powers [who from 1964 until 1994 was museum curator of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum]. As they say in the news business, he stands by his story. And so there will always be some skepticism in my mind about the cause of Jack's death. I used to think that the only people who doubted the conclusions of the Warren Commission were crackpots. Now, however, I'm not so sure. O’Donnell’s behavior surrounding the assassination, and not only his lie in this critical matter, raised questions in my mind. He had the reputation of being a great Kennedy loyalist, an impression promoted by the intermittently powerful yet somewhat ludicrous 2000 film Thirteen Days. Although it dramatizes the opposition Kennedy faced from General Curtis LeMay in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it blinks on the full implications of that conflict and grossly exaggerates the role of Kennedy’s special assistant/appointments secretary by portraying him as a key presidential confidant in that crisis; JFK’s speechwriter Ted Sorensen mockingly described the film as “Kenny O’Donnell saving the world.” It turned out the film was hardly an unbiased historical account. According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, it was covertly an O’Donnell family enterprise: “His son Kevin, an internet tycoon, helped bankroll a buyout of Beacon Entertainment, which made the movie, and appears to have been the partial inspiration for promoting his father -- played by Kevin Costner -- to the role of the ‘ordinary Joe’ hero audiences identify with.” I find it hard to accept Kenneth O’Donnell as a loyal, sympathetic figure because I can’t overlook his role in covering up the truth about the assassination. When asked by Warren Commission assistant counsel Arlen Specter his “reaction as to the source of the shots,” O’Donnell testified cryptically, “My reaction in part is reconstruction -- is that they came from the right rear. That would be my best judgment.” Powers more truthfully told the commission, “My first impression was that the shots came from the right and overhead, but I also had a fleeting impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of the triple overpass. This may have resulted from my feeling, when I looked forward toward the overpass, that we might have ridden into an ambush." The 1972 book by O’Donnell and Powers, with Joe McCarthy, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is silent on the source of the shots, but it does indicate that Powers, unlike O’Donnell, did not accept the single-bullet theory: “Dave, who was watching the President and Connally carefully during the shooting, still thinks that the first bullet hit Kennedy in the neck, the second struck Connally and the third one ripped open the President’s head.” O’Donnell also admits interfering with a Secret Service man’s attempt to respond to the shots: “A Secret Service agent beside me, probably Tim McIntyre who was standing behind Clint Hill on the left running board, pulled his gun and I reached for it, pushing it down, thinking that if he fired, he might hit somebody in the crowd.” O’Donnell also was instrumental in the illegal removal of Kennedy’s body from Dallas, which prevented a legitimate autopsy and made the coverup of a conspiracy possible. Furthermore, O’Donnell had played a major role, and probably a decisive one, in choosing the Trade Mart as the venue for JFK’s Dallas speech, evidently in concert with Texas Governor John Connally, who was pressing hard for it. And according to Secret Service expert Vince Palamara, it was O’Donnell who had decided that neither of Kennedy’s military aides, Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh or Major General Chester Clifton, would ride in the presidential limousine, as one usually did, and instead placed them far behind JFK in the motorcade and unable to see the president. The 1964 Ford Mercury station wagon in which they were riding was the sixteenth car in line, just ahead of the first press bus, and, according to researcher Todd Wayne Vaughan, originally was scheduled to carry members of the Washington press corps and was the personal vehicle of assassination “researcher” Mary Ferrell. The decision by O’Donnell to choose the Trade Mart for the president’s speech, with the additional connivance of the Secret Service, determined that the limousine would pass through Dealey Plaza at a slow pace. The HSCA staff report on the motorcade cites Gerald A. Behn, the Secret Service’s Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail, as stating that O’Donnell made the decision for the Trade Mart, overruling security concerns expressed by Behn and others about that location. O’Donnell testified to the commission, “There was a controversy between the Governor [Connally], and between some of the local Democratic figures, and between our people, as to whether the place finally selected was the best place for the President to give the address. The Governor felt very strongly on it. And we finally acquiesced to his views. But I would think that came rather late in the game, and it would have altered the route quite dramatically.” According to the HSCA, the principal advance man on the Texas trip, Jerry Bruno, made notes on November 6 indicating that “O’Donnell held and exercised the power to make the final decision and accordingly gave orders to Bruno and Behn to implement the decision.” But the decision was not finally settled until November 14, the day of the motorcade planning meeting in the office of Dallas attorney Eugene Locke, the head of the State Democratic Executive Committee of Texas; Bruno wrote in his journal, “On this day, Kenny O’Donnell [who was in Washington that day] decided that there was no other way but to go to the mart.” On November 15, Bruno wrote, “The White House announced that the Trade Mart had been approved. I met with O’Donnell and [Peace Corps deputy director and Texas advance man Bill] Moyers who said that Connally was unbearable and on the verge of cancelling the trip. They decided they had to let the Governor have his way.” November 14 was the day Democratic National Committee representative Jack Puterbaugh, who presumably was working closely with O’Donnell, participated in that final decision in Dallas or perhaps conveyed it from Washington (see further discussion of the all-important choice of the motorcade route, and the role of Locke as well, in Chapters 6 and 16). As mentioned earlier, when William Manchester interviewed O’Donnell about his and the Secret Service’s heated struggle, with guns being drawn, to remove President Kennedy’s coffin illegally from Parkland Hospital over the objections of the local medical examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, O’Donnell said, “it became physical -- us against them.” Manchester suggests that Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman made the initial decision to remove the body, but also calls O’Donnell “the leader of Rose’s opposition.” O’Donnell told the commission that it was his decision to remove the coffin so that Mrs. Kennedy would not have to stay in Dallas when an autopsy was being performed: ”I in my own mind determined that we had no alternative but to just depart. . . . I notified the Secret Service and [U.S. Air Force] General [Godfrey] McHugh [military aide to Kennedy], and told them to get ready to depart. We went in and took the body out.” Manchester quotes O’Donnell as saying to a Dallas policeman at Parkland, “Get the hell over. We’re getting out of here. We don’t give a damn what these laws say.” If all these actions by O’Donnell were the actions of a Kennedy loyalist, I wondered what a disloyal aide might have done under the same circumstances. And why was there such an effort in later years to burnish the image of O’Donnell, including not only a 2000 big-budget movie but also a 1998 book by his daughter Helen, A Common Good: The Friendship of Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth P. O’Donnell? I searched for clues about why O’Donnell’s loyalty to JFK might have been compromised. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh provides them in his 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot, alleging that O’Donnell was the center of a corruption scandal at the White House that appeared about to explode once the president returned from Dallas. John and Robert Kennedy reportedly were already working to shed Lyndon Johnson from the 1964 ticket, using the spreading Bobby Baker scandal as leverage. Hersh writes: “During his last days in Washington, [President] Kennedy was confronted with a serious allegation against Kenny O’Donnell.” According to Hersh, the allegation came from Kennedy presidential campaign and Democratic National Committee operative Paul Corbin, who was close to Bobby: “In the late spring of 1963, Corbin concluded that he had solid evidence of the skimming of campaign contributions by O’Donnell and two others, and he went to [a close friend of JFK, journalist Charles] Bartlett to have him warn the president.” Although JFK was dismissive of the allegations, Bobby was not. Hersh writes that Corbin returned to his inquiry with renewed determination, Bartlett told me, and, after months of preparation, “brought Bobby the stuff. He had affidavits proving that it was still going on” as of November 1963. “He was a good sleuth,” Bartlett said. “He told me he got it all together, signed statements, with Kenny O’Donnell being the bagman. He took it to Bobby and Bobby went through it and said, ‘This is it.’ He called Jack” in front of Corbin. Evelyn Lincoln told the attorney general that his brother had just left for Texas. “Bobby said,” Corbin told Bartlett, ‘“We’ll do it Monday. First thing.”’ After the assassination, the distraught attorney general told Corbin to let the issue rest. “Lyndon wouldn’t believe me,” Kennedy said, according to Corbin. So both O’Donnell and Johnson may have been saved by Dallas from expulsion from the administration or possibly even prison terms. Hersh reports that Bartlett in the summer of 1963 wrote JFK another memorandum revealing that O’Donnell, far from being loyal, actually held his boss in contempt: “O’Donnell, while drinking at a bar in Hyannis Port, had been overheard by a Secret Service agent making derogatory remarks about the president. ‘The purport of O’Donnell’s remarks,’ Bartlett wrote, ‘was that the President was in fact rather stupid and that if it were not for [O’Donnell’s] assistance, he would fall flat on his face. O’Donnell said he had had a great many offers from industry but that he was afraid to leave because he knew that the administration would fall apart.’ Kennedy’s response was to give the note to O’Donnell, who had the Secret Service agent immediately removed from the White House presidential detail, disrupting his career.” Hersh also quotes from a July 19, 1963, memo Bartlett wrote the president reporting, “An aura of scandal is building up -- someone as remote as John Sherman Cooper [the Republican senator from Kentucky] observed to me the other evening that . . . it would be a terrible thing if your record as President were to be impaired by disloyalty on the part of your associates.” Cooper that November was appointed by President Johnson to the Warren Commission. After the assassination, O’Donnell began a long slide into alcoholism that led to his premature death in 1977. He worked for LBJ for a while, and then for RFK in his 1968 presidential campaign, and he made two unsuccessful bids to become governor of Massachusetts. His daughter writes that he was always ”haunted” by Dallas. Although she makes no mention of the financial scandal that Hersh reports was brewing, and blames Governor Connally for choosing the Trade Mart, she writes that her father blamed himself for choosing the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza: “His decision would haunt Kenny for the remainder of his life.” O’Donnell would tell his wife, “I let him down. I failed. I let him down.” As Mort Sahl put it, President Kennedy “had a strange group of friends. Remarkably absent when he fell.”

Glad to hear of the widespread impact of the documentary, Jim. Excellent work by you and Oliver Stone. It does show that the interest in the subject continues strong -- even in the USA.

Thanks, Benjamin. I appreciate it. Hey, Ron, I think I figured out the phone glitch problem -- its battery is running low. It's probably as simple as that. I am glad you enjoyed the conversation.

Well, the joke does wear a trifle thin . . .

Calling the Democrats the Donk Party is like the Republicans calling them the Democrat Party. It gets tiresome and has been since I was first aware of that c. 1960.

Good news indeed. I am eager to own and see it. Shout! Factory also has a sparkling edition of ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, whose tenuous connection with the assassination is that one of the theaters where it opened in 1979 was the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff.

And he never was arraigned for the murder of Kennedy. Both Leavelle and Wade indicated to me that Fritz told them to make a case on Oswald for the Tippit killing because the case on him for the Kennedy killing was weak.

It was a fine interview by Chuck, but our phone connection went dead several times, and he shortly afterward called me back each time. We didn't know what caused that glitch. He said he filled in each time. He is indeed highly knowledgeable and an excellent interviewer.

From Chapter One of my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE: I watched Oswald being hauled through a corridor of the Dallas police headquarters on live television that Friday night at 7:55 (Central Standard Time), telling the national audience, “I haven’t killed anybody!” And I heard him proclaim as he was being dragged through the hall, “I’m just a patsy!” I watched the alleged assassin’s riveting, but all too brief, midnight press conference in which he denied involvement in the killing of the President. He denied even knowing he had been charged of that crime, a claim that at the time seemed almost incomprehensible. My strong belief in Oswald’s innocence from the beginning was reinforced by what I saw and heard while watching that press conference. Referring to his 7:10 arraignment on Friday evening in Captain Will Fritz’s office for the charge of murdering Officer Tippit, shortly after Fritz had signed that complaint, Oswald told the reporters at his press conference, Well, I was, uh, questioned by a judge [David L. Johnston, a justice of the peace]. However, I, uh, protested at that time that I was not allowed legal representation, uh, during that, uh, that, uh, very short and sweet hearing. Uh, I really don't know what this situation is about. Nobody has told me anything except that I am accused of, uh, of, uh, murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that, and I do request, uh, someone to come forward, uh, to give me, uh, legal assistance. When asked, “Did you kill the President?,” the accused man replied, No. I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall [voice quavering], uh, axed [sic] me that question. When Oswald said he had not been charged with the assassination, an offscreen reporter responded insistently, seemingly in anger, as if he were lying, “You have been charged. You have been charged.” Oswald looked confused, then angry, as he was quickly led out of the room. When a reporter asked how he had received his black eye, he replied, leaning into the microphone, “A policeman hit me.” Oswald was telling the truth: he was not aware at that point that charges had been filed against him in the assassination. The Warren Report states, “The formal charge against Oswald for the assassination of President Kennedy was lodged shortly after 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 23” (Captain Fritz signed the complaint at 11:26 p.m.). The Dallas Police Department would later claim Oswald was arraigned before Judge Johnston later that morning, at 1:35, for Kennedy’s murder. However, a little-noticed November 25, 1963, FBI document (written the day after Oswald was murdered in the police headquarters) states that Oswald was never arraigned for the murder of the president, only for the murder of Tippit: “The following information was obtained by SA [Special Agent] JAMES P. HOSTY, JR., from the office of Captain WILL FRITZ, Dallas Police Department, on November 25, 1963: . . . No arraignment on the murder charges in connection with the death of President KENNEDY was held inasmuch as such arraignment was not necessary in view of the previous charges filed against OSWALD and for which he was arraigned.” Furthermore, reports Anthony Summers in his history of the assassination, “Officer J. B. Hicks was on duty in the relevant office until after 2:00 A.M. and is certain Oswald was not arraigned at 1:35.” **** Detective Jim Leavelle also confirmed to me that Oswald was telling the truth at the midnight press conference in saying he was not aware at that point that charges had been filed against him in the assassination. -- JM

A two-hour podcast with the well-informed Chuck Ochelli on THE OCHELLI EFFECT about my recent book POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNED.

Oswald was arraigned for the murder of Tippit but not for the murder of Kennedy, though he was charged with both murders.

Yes, Pat, I often think of Hank Quinlan in TOUCH OF EVIL when I think of Will Fritz. The similarities are striking. But I don't know of any direct connection or knowledge of Fritz by Welles or the authors of the source novel, BADGE OF EVIL. Fritz, as I gather, was more of a local character than a national figure until the assassination. But in the film a license plate prominently seen on a vehicle is a Texas plate. Welles had recently played a Mississipian in THE LONG, HOT SUMMER and a tyrannical Texan in MAN IN THE SHADOW.

Yes, we know he threatened Frazier. And as you see in the film THE THIN BLUE LINE, Randall Adams was threatened with a gun while being interrogated by Dallas Detective Gus Rose, who was also involved with the Kennedy case. On the other hand, Fritz was known to be quite adept at interrogration. Part of his legend was that he once persuaded a suspect to confess to murder on the telephone to Nebraska. But the failure to take more than cursory notes in the interrogation of Oswald was unforgivable.

As we know, even Robert Oswald thought the Paines were somehow involved in the assassination. Maybe Will Fritz did too. To suggest that it is difficult to believe Fritz and the DPD giving someone the third degree is laughable.

David, I would hope that (1) you don't give your precious tapes to the opposing side, the Sixth Floor Museum; and (2) you have access to them in writing FINAL CHARADE, which we are all looking forward to with great interest. BEST EVIDENCE was a paradigm changer for me and many others.

Morrison immolated himself in front of the Pentagon, not the White House. McNamara witnessed it and was troubled by it.

Here's a link to Edwin Black's important article on the Chicago plot against JFK. This is a PDF in the Harold Weisberg collection: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/V Disk/Vallee Thomas Arthur/Item 05.pdf

"Follow the money." -- William Goldman (writing the line for the mythical "Deep Throat" in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN)

Jefferson Morley on how the mainstream media, despite the pardon, are maintaining their coverup of the reason Abraham Bolden was framed: https://jfkfacts.org/biden-pardons-abraham-bolden-the-only-secret-service-agent-who-sought-jfk-accountability/