Glenn Nall

It's not even ironic that as enters DVP the thread, so enters conflict.

It's more a given, really.

Gee, there's a surprise. An LNer in conflict with CTers. Amazing, huh?

in fact it IS disappointing and none at all necessary, David. contrary to what appears to be your own experience, there do exist adults who can vehemently disagree and still avoid conflict with mature, impersonal and reasonable discussion, debate. conflict is something different.

what's amazing is that this would need to be pointed out to you at your age.

as predicted, your overuse of inconsequential adjectives and adverbs weakens your argument even more than its clear lack of any factual basis.

"The conversation has to change.... CTs don't need to prove his innocence and shouldn't try. LNers need to prove guilt."

this is the point that is so frequently and conveniently forgotten, it seems. the zealots have forgotten that THEY are the ones who have leveled the charge and are therefore obligated to provide the proof.

instead, they continually berate the populace and demand that his innocence be proven when he is, in fact and in spirit, already and STILL innocent. this basic practice has been in place since the beginning of the written language.

for a reason.

it's not even ironic that as enters DVP the thread, so enters conflict.

it's more a given, really...

and on a lighter note:

"...might have taken no notice at all of the smaller stamped date of [...] Or perhaps the FBI just didn't know what the [...]. So they just decided to go with the March 20 date as the "order date", even though that was really the "Shipping Date"."

are you serious? is that really your conception of how the Federal Bureau of Information operates, even in 1963?

really?

Where was Roy Truly Right after the last Shot was Fired?

Looking for a new employee to fill a sudden vacancy.

ha! very good... glad to see someone else attempting a little levity in here...

i was just reading today in Yankee Cowboy how Chief Justice Warren, who had an otherwise impeccable record, MIGHT have been hiding the truth for this reason. His lengthy meeting with Johnson may have been all about how the Reds did it and letting that cat out of the bag was the first step to nuclear war.

an interesting supposition. Oglesby doesn't claim that this is what happened, only that this might explain Warren's actions.

in another thread someone describes his picture of this thing as an hourglass, with powerful entities on either end, mostly unknowing of each other, and a group of "pawns" in the waist, not knowing exactly who or what they're working for. this kind of works for me, and the idea of Warren being one of those in the middle, just going on what he's been told by "the president" might be pretty plausible.

at my age, just having missed the nuclear, communist patriotism/anti-patriotism, it took me a while to understand how patriotism could explain such bold deceit - i understand it more now when you guys discuss it.

i also understand it more at my age because of the passion my patriotism incurs within myself. There are lots of things i'd do for my country that i would not have once before.

i cannot place Hoover in that category. I think his hypocrisy and ego spoke clearly enough to remove him far from any sacrifice for any other cause but his own.

see, this is what was throwing me:

6.5 mm = .2559"

6.65mm = .2618"

the numbers both grow in the same direction - UP.

when i saw "6.5mm rifles shoot a bullet .264" in diameter, while the Carcano shoots a bullet .268" What i saw was 6.5mm = .264" or = .268" which are both HIGHER than .2618" because the 6.5 designation you refer to is the bore width and the bullet is actually the groove width (6.8 in this case). and 6.65 refers to "who knows" since it complies with neither land nor groove in a 6.5mm Carcano rifle (happens to be right in the middle, doesn't it).

out of curiosity, is it that the MC grooves are deeper than other 6.5's since the bullets are 2 different sizes?

How far that extends into post-Military life, I don't know

that's pretty much what i'm saying. the irony is, by them saying that they're under strict orders to say nothing of the events fairly well implies sneakiness, cover-up when that's what was being asked about. so they were spared from sharing the details, but by pleading secrecy they admitted something.

i agree with what you've said here, mostly. my original question was simply of the validity of the phrase "Military orders," and in reality how far that extends and not all the extraneous stuff. i think being afraid to talk for fear of repercussion or being loath to talk in the interest of letting sleeping dogs lie, or whatever their reasoning, is a LOT different than what a phrase like "military orders" implies.

and by wearing out this little subtopic i now sound like i'm splitting hairs. never mind.

it was just my little ol' useless input.

right - they're what's known as Divigmentary (or Smart) Bullets (ask DVP about them) - they're designed to Divide precisely at the moment of impact of any human skull, pretty much cleanly down the middle, at which point the right half (or the bottom half, depending on how fast the bullet is spinning) continues along its path to immediately fragment into a state of complete disintegration doing minimal damage and requiring no exit - the other half is designed to absorb ~ 92.3% of the energy of the impact and delay its response just long enough to reverse its path and THEN fragment, creating a verifiably ugly exit wound very near to its own entrance.

Its purpose is to create havoc among paranoid, conspiracy driven maniacs causing decades of divisiveness within the ranks, as well as to assist the shootist with enough theoretic ambiguity to avoid a criminal conviction.

it does not always work.

i think what i'm asking is,

if 6.5mm converts to .268 inches ("6.5mm rifles shoot a bullet .264" in diameter, while the Carcano shoots a bullet .268"), how does a larger metric number, 6.65mm, convert to a smaller standard measurement, .2618 inches ("However, 6.65 mm works out to .2618")...?

isn't that really odd... i find it hard to believe that that is where he thinks he saw the large wound, or even where he meant to draw it.

i remember seeing that particular pic once before and thought in passing that it's just some odd mistake by some small player. didn't know that was Kellerman's. it's easy enough to understand some ambiguity about the general area of the left of the ear, etc, with all the malleable skull pieces and blood and mess - but not to that extent.

to the point of this thread, tho - there is clearly an agreement on a) a low entrance wound, and a different, larger wound in the rear.

of course.

that's all well and good - i can't speak for how he thinks or even sounds, as i have read very little of his testimony - it does seem to me that the gravity of this particular situation - a cover up of some kind of the death of the POTUS - if he were to have witnessed something 'questionable', would override any loyalties to any agency.

I was speaking strictly to the phrase, idea of "Military orders" and how wide a circle that might cast.

i don't think anybody of any substance relishes the idea of contradicting the federal government even if it's to expose a corruption at that level. i don't think there's any "great, i get to" tell the government that i know the army is lying about the autopsy. I'd think of it more as a duty to the philosophy of truth and honor, and patriotism. quite uncomfortable, but necessary - which would be felt by both the loyal and the not-so-loyal. i can see how he can feel a distrust for Congressional Committees -

but my concern is simply the idea of whatever "Military orders" might mean. there's a tendency among some of us to over dramatize things, to cloak-and-dagger things that just don't wear it well. I'm not at all saying that that's what I think you've done. just saying i've never heard the term in any official capacity, (or unofficial, really), and don't think that there is such a thing outside of the 'inner-sanctum'.

no offense. just my little ol' thoughts.

at least you reply to my replies. and questions.

Thanks, I can assure people that their are startling revelations in this book. It's not just about Walker, it's over 900 pages and covers a large area of Right Wing activity from 1956 through 1968.

From the likes of Guy Bainister to James O. Eastland to Joesph Milteer to HL Hunt, Robert Morris,Walker, Hoover etc etc........it covers the gamut. The book was originally over 1,200 pages, but the publisher though it best to keep under that figure. So,some things had to be left out or condensed. Hopefully a website in the future can be a repository for these eliminated items and more. This work will be self published and all costs are paid out of pocket. We don't expect to make much at all, it was a labor of love and a search for truth.

Bill

Those of us who are old enough to remember those dark and incomprehensible days of November 1963 have never thought of this subject as merely a crime. Something profound changed in our country as a consequence of JFK's murder---and that something has never been made right.

Subsequent developments including the murders of RFK and MLK only deepened our depression and the sense that we had lost our way as a nation. Then the Vietnam War, the racial riots, Watergate, and the resignation of Nixon made it impossible to believe that we could ever believe in ourselves and our future potential again.

Given this background, it comes as no surprise that 52 years later we still want to find some indisputable answer and some unmistakable villain(s) who were clearly responsible for taking our innocence from us. And I am absolutely certain that on the 100-year anniversary of JFK's murder, a new generation will still be arguing about whom was responsible.

Mr Lazar, i like the first two paragraphs so much that i would ask your permission to quote them, for the most part, on another website i'm beginning. with proper credit, of course.

well said. well focused.

Be my guest----but many historians have made similar comments.

of course; i just liked your wording. thanks

i've seen Mr Truly's name mentioned in a curious way a few times - THE GUN THAT DIDN'T SMOKE piece states that a Mauser was seen in his possession two days before the shooting; Bartholomew also suggests some significance in the floors of the TSBD being "redone" during the months of October and the first of November, up to the 5th floor, curiously enough, and suggests that as Mr Truly was more of a building manager than a company manager he would have worked more directly for DH Byrd...

just some suspicious points... is there any reason to wonder if he was in collusion with someone at some level...?

oh - right. a diameter is a diameter, perfect circle or not.

"under Military Orders" ...

while i agree with most everything you said, in all sincerity, what could that possibly mean to someone who is no longer in the military? except in intelligence matters, i would presume - the military has no further jurisdiction over any veteran who has resigned or retired, i'm fairly sure.

just wonderin'... (bein' a veteran and all...)

Also being a vet, don't the powers that be control his pension and other benefits?

Well, that's right Ray. Yet even more pressing, people with high security clearances are never really free from them, IMHO, no matter how old they get. Military secrets are forever -- until formally released in writing.

Notice the first question that Lipsey asked his HSCA interviewer -- 'Am I free from that contract I signed back then?'

The HSCA interviewer had no clear answer to that question; he only replied, 'Consult your own attorney.'

If that was the response to me, I would quickly conclude, "Nope, I guess I'm not free from it." At that point, if it were me, I'd start at the beginning with the Pre-Fab story we worked out as a team.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

I was Naval Aviation and had a Secret clearance - but that's not nearly as special as some may presume. many had a Secret clearance.

when I said "except in intelligence matters" that's kinda what i meant, that obviously there are some resigned, retired Intel types who are "never really resigned" -

but i have to disagree with a few of those points. one, the powers that control our pensions are not of a particular branch of the military, i'm pretty sure. so for the Army to issue 'military orders' in my opinion is far removed from those who could cause pension and benefit problems - AND, if those people were so inclined, it's not as easy as it might sound to "eff" with a man's pension.

i can think of several old veterans in VA hospitals getting their benefits messed up and the news channels being all over it. xxxx like that gets attention.

if it were the case that talking too much would likely get some people dead even today, i'd have to say that there are several ex-CIA types (and others) who could be considered very curiously still alive, in light of things they've said (i'm thinking of the pilot who used to frequent this forum and the things he's publicized regarding his old flying habits).

In MY honest opinion, retribution isn't as easy as it used to be.

I agree, 'Consult your own attorney' sounds pretty fishy, and I'd have thought the same thing if it were me he was saying it to. But in all fairness, he could have just been giving the pro forma response to such a question. I'm not sure why the HSCA would even know if Lipsey was released from a Military order.

I think Prouty and people like him were obviously still under a military thumb. but not so many people as to get as low as Lipsey.

The destruction of our US Constitution is mostly limited to the US Supreme court and their gavels - they get jealous and ornery if the lowly Army Generals try their hand at it.

Most 6.5mm rifles shoot a bullet .264" in diameter, while the Carcano shoots a bullet .268" (.2677" actually) in diameter. However, 6.65 mm works out to .2618"

Robert, please explain? am i having some math issues?

6.5mm = .268" &

6.65mm (bigger) = .2618" (smaller) ?

The sling on the rifle in the photo with the holster look similar, the sling on the rifle in the BYP doesn't seem to even resemble it. look at the photo in comment 260

I believe the entire Alba situation was used to suggest the sling was made for Oswald as opposed to provided and atached to the rifle by whoever it was that left it on the 6th floor.

I'd suggest that either no sling was sent and this other thing was used - some say it looks like a rope, I think it may be the cloth standard sling that Klein's says they send with rifles tha do not request a specific sling....

Point remain..

The BYPs are composites... the black clothing seen in the image was never found in Oswald's possessions...

I've seen the original, as have a few people who do the looking. While Roscoe White may have helped create the final product, I do not think it is he in the photo... there are other names to consider - but since the sources are unconfirmed I'll just leave it at that.

THAT rifle - I do believe I am in the process of proving via this essay I'm trying to finish - was never at Klein's along with the other 100 rifles in that shipment. In fact, there is not one shred of evidence which support that Klein's ever shipped or had in inventory these rilfes... only that 10 of 520 packing slips - one of which with C2766 listed - were used to create the evidence that Klein's rec'd that shipment.

I will prove otherwise. It's called "closed loop evidence" . As long as the evidence corroborates itself it can be believed. If it does not corroborate with any other process or order of shipment received (or that info is never offered to corroborate) we have a tautological presentation of evidence...

Slip #3620 with carton #3376 = Feb shipment = VC document = Blank Order = Hidell = Oswald

Except the only shipment related by the man who originally offered the slips is to June 1962 not Feb 1963.

And as much as DVP and other LNers cannot fathom it, each and every item in Evidence IS the conspiracy, NOT the investigation of the event... except for JFK's shirt and JAcket - there is no way to spin that to incriminate Oswald.

you have piqued my interest with this essay you're working on. i'm eager to see it.

(and I don't think that "fathoming" is their specialty.)

Thanks, I can assure people that their are startling revelations in this book. It's not just about Walker, it's over 900 pages and covers a large area of Right Wing activity from 1956 through 1968.

From the likes of Guy Bainister to James O. Eastland to Joesph Milteer to HL Hunt, Robert Morris,Walker, Hoover etc etc........it covers the gamut. The book was originally over 1,200 pages, but the publisher though it best to keep under that figure. So,some things had to be left out or condensed. Hopefully a website in the future can be a repository for these eliminated items and more. This work will be self published and all costs are paid out of pocket. We don't expect to make much at all, it was a labor of love and a search for truth.

Bill

Those of us who are old enough to remember those dark and incomprehensible days of November 1963 have never thought of this subject as merely a crime. Something profound changed in our country as a consequence of JFK's murder---and that something has never been made right.

Subsequent developments including the murders of RFK and MLK only deepened our depression and the sense that we had lost our way as a nation. Then the Vietnam War, the racial riots, Watergate, and the resignation of Nixon made it impossible to believe that we could ever believe in ourselves and our future potential again.

Given this background, it comes as no surprise that 52 years later we still want to find some indisputable answer and some unmistakable villain(s) who were clearly responsible for taking our innocence from us. And I am absolutely certain that on the 100-year anniversary of JFK's murder, a new generation will still be arguing about whom was responsible.

Mr Lazar, i like the first two paragraphs so much that i would ask your permission to quote them, for the most part, on another website i'm beginning. with proper credit, of course.

well said. well focused.

I see the hourglass as a shape to explain the assassination hierarchy.

Those at the base carried out the assassination. They had no knowledge of those at the top and did not do it for the same reason.

Those at the top were pure pragmatists. They knew and manipulated those below them.

The intermediary followed and gave orders.

For example :

Financiers, MIC, Int

........Walker

..Segregationists

I suggest that this book may cover the base and in combination with other work ends up covering the lot.

edit typo

many times when i'm contemplating the thought of just exactly who is "in on it" i get stuck thinking that "there's just no way" that number of people could all be in collusion, yet realizing that it sure seems that way.

this model of yours really does make some sense in that respect. it might be an effective way of filling in some gaps and remaining realistic. i can see how it coould make the placement of certain people less tedious.

i like this idea, as a new approach, at least, for now.

"The people skills ... required to ... facilitate ... the assassination of the President of the United States."

while i agree with you that Walker "didn't do it," I have to admit I haven't thought of it in those terms before...

i do, however, think that it's very likely that LBJ was one of "them," and i surely don't see his people skills helping him much, either.

i realize my editing the sentence blows the context - i was just really enjoying that phrase...

I'm not sure I understand your comment. LBJ was famous for his people skills -- which involved cajoling, reasoning, pressuring, and threatening in various measures to accomplish his purposes.

However, let me be clear about what I meant:

1. For his entire adult life, Walker functioned in a top-down authoritarian environment. In other words, his people skills were limited to giving orders to subordinates whom operated in a clear hierarchical system with explicit (and often severe) penalties for disobedience.

2. When somebody contemplates planning, organizing, and facilitating a complex crime (particularly one that requires the acquiescence and support and participation of numerous individuals in a non-hierarchical system --- i.e. where everyone has their own opinions and judgments about what should be done and on what schedule and whom should be given specific responsibilities) --- that requires an entirely different set of people skills. The temperament required to assure the success of the proposed objective is much different because so many different stakeholders are involved and they all have egos which must be taken into account.

3. My point about Walker is that he was not accustomed to using normal people skills - i.e. instead he was used to merely giving orders and having them obeyed. That is probably why (in 1959) he was attracted to, and joined, the John Birch Society because Robert Welch explicitly created it as "a monolithic body" to eliminate what he contemptuously described as follows:

"A republican form of government or of organization has many attractions and advantages under certain favorable conditions. But under less happy circumstances it lends itself too readily to infiltration, distortion, and disruption."

Because, (according to Welch), the "certain favorable conditions" were NOT in existence in December 1958 when the JBS came into existence, he proposed to create the JBS as a "monolithic" organization which "will operate under completely authoritative control at all levels" -- because, again quoting Welch, "democracy, of course, in government or organization, as the Greeks and Romans both found out, as I believe every man in this room clearly recognizes -- democracy is merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery and a perennial fraud."

Welch also explained how he would eliminate "parliamentary procedures" and what he described as the "two-sides-to-every question" problem.

It is this contempt for democratic processes which also explains why, in 1965, Walker assisted in the formation of the American Royal Rangers (Bossier City LA). The Rangers group was designed to take the place of the Klan and it was to be organized along military lines. Members were going to wear uniforms and be assigned ranks. Walker was to become a "five star general having jurisdiction over the entire organization" but he wanted to "remain in the background". So, again, you see Walker's pre-disposition for authoritarian top-down decision making where HE gave orders and subordinates obeyed them.

"LBJ was famous for his people skills -- which involved cajoling, reasoning, pressuring, and threatening in various measures to accomplish his purposes."

that's all I meant. I meant to be more clear at the end when i said that i was really just enjoying the phrase. the phrase "people skills" to me implies more of a Dale Carnegie talent - which is why i made fun of the fact that LBJ's were more of an aggressive, threatening or purchasing assortment.

i didn't mean to disagree at all. i agreed with what you said. just liked the refreshing way you said it. sorry. not necessary to explain...

Great post Pat!

Just wanted to point out that your location for a lower head entrance is supported by Vince Palmara's recent post on Richard Lipsey's eyewitness testimony:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=21142

As well, it sounds to me Kellerman puts the entry in the same place:

Mr. KELLERMAN. OK. This all transpired in the morgue of the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, sir. He had a large wound this size.

Mr. SPECTER. Indicating a circle with your finger of the diameter of 5 inches; would that be approximately correct?

Mr. KELLERMAN. Yes, circular; yes, on this part of the head.

Mr. SPECTER. Indicating the rear portion of the head.

Mr. KELLERMAN. Yes.

Mr. SPECTER. More to the right side of the head?

Specter had clarified earlier that he was referring to the right side of center of the REAR of his head, not the right of the SIDE of his head, which I initially thought.

Mr. KELLERMAN. Right. This was removed.

Mr. SPECTER. When you say, "This was removed," what do you mean by this?

Mr. KELLERMAN. The skull part was removed.

Mr. SPECTER. All right.

Representative FORD. Above the ear and back?

Mr. KELLERMAN. To the left of the ear, sir, and a little high; yes. About right in here.

It's interesting to me that FORD tries to imply (maybe not intentionally, maybe so) more above the ear than back of it, to which Kellerman corrects "to the left of the ear, and a little high" - which i think is significantly different in describing the placement of the wound, and is a significant difference in the placement itself.

this is why i changed my mind to take Specter to mean the center of the rear of his head instead of center of the right side view.

Mr. SPECTER. When you say "removed," by that do you mean that it was absent when you saw him, or taken off by the doctor?

Mr. KELLERMAN. It was absent when I saw him.

Mr. SPECTER. Fine. Proceed.

Mr. KELLERMAN. Entry into this man's head was right below that wound, right here.

Mr. SPECTER. Indicating the bottom of the hairline immediately to the right of the ear about the lower third of the ear?

Mr. KELLERMAN. Right. But it was in the hairline, sir.

as much as i'm convinced that Kellerman described an entry wound below the gaping wound, and that the gaping wound was more to the left of the ear than above the ear, and emphatically in the hairline, i can only assume that Kellerman didn't notice or hear the word "right" as Specter attempted to redirect the placement - or something - sinnce there IS NO hairline to the right lower third of the ear.

Mr. SPECTER. In his hairline?

Mr. KELLERMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. Near the end of his hairline?

Mr. KELLERMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. What was the size of that aperture?

Mr. KELLERMAN. The little finger.

Mr. SPECTER. Indicating the diameter of the little finger.

Mr. KELLERMAN. Right.

Mr. SPECTER. Now, what was the position of that opening with respect to the portion of the skull which you have described as being removed or absent?

Mr. KELLERMAN. Well, I am going to have to describe it similar to this. Let's say part of your skull is removed here; this is below.

Mr. SPECTER. You have described a distance of approximately an inch and a half, 2 inches, below.

thought this was interesting, too:

Mr. KELLERMAN. That is three. The fourth one I will have to collaborate with--the medical people in Dallas said that he had entry in the throat or an exit.

Mr. SPECTER. Now, you are indicating a part on the throat right underneath your tie as you sit there, the knot of your tie.

Mr. KELLERMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. SPECTER. Who told you that?

Mr. KELLERMAN. This comes from a report from Dr. Kemp Clark.

Mr. SPECTER. Did you talk to Dr. Clark personally?

Mr. KELLERMAN. I did not. This is a written report.

underneath the knot of his tie...? really?

"The people skills ... required to ... facilitate ... the assassination of the President of the United States."

while i agree with you that Walker "didn't do it," I have to admit I haven't thought of it in those terms before...

i do, however, think that it's very likely that LBJ was one of "them," and i surely don't see his people skills helping him much, either.

i realize my editing the sentence blows the context - i was just really enjoying that phrase...

"under Military Orders" ...

while i agree with most everything you said, in all sincerity, what could that possibly mean to someone who is no longer in the military? except in intelligence matters, i would presume - the military has no further jurisdiction over any veteran who has resigned or retired, i'm fairly sure.

just wonderin'... (bein' a veteran and all...)

IV

Neither Yankee Nor Cowboy

". . . Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day… A series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through a change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." Thomas Jefferson

"But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the report…" Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission

9

Those of us who will read find the record tells us to turn against Yankee and Cowboy elites equally; to turn against the domination and closing up of political life by all the clandestine forces and powers.

Many of us appear already well persuaded that democracy can no longer work and that we can only hope to make the technical oligarchy more receptive to individual merit. Or that the constitutional republic is made obsolete by the requirements of modern communications and control systems and the vicissitudes of the imperial stage. Or that independence either for the individual from the state or for government from a net of entangling alliances is an outmoded pastoral aspiration.

I sense a pervasive American feeling that beneath the kinds of pressures and temptations the contemporary setting brings to bear upon individual sensibility and collective consciousness, no one need bother dream of enduring. No one will not be jointly tempted and oppressed, no one will not stoop and be taken at the same time. This is just the way we live now. How does democracy govern a giganticized armed bureaucracy such as the country's public administration has become?

How does our republican Constitution answer the needs of our imperial presidency? How does the heritage of independence express itself when the rulers choose to remake the world in the matrix of their computers? The defeat and impotence of the tradition underlie the perverse sophistication that shows through every nuance of the Dallas-Watergate story. Democracy, republicanism independence, our triangular base of native, traditional' public values: these are treated by the operators on high as the values of political imbeciles. They, the men of the world of Southern California and New York, having studied the world at UCLA and Harvard, know that in reality the only serious political question is the question of the acquisition and use of power.

There is a danger that Watergate and the subsequent CIA and FBI discoveries will have actually deepened these attitudes in the public. I have a friend whose uncle was a straight-arrow Nixonian until Watergate, a hardworking middle-class shopkeeper. When he saw the truth of the men and the system he had been following with his hand over his heart like a fool, he said to himself, ''So be it," and became a robber. He was at first successful but then took a foolish risk and was brought down in flight by a ·single shot from a trooper's rifle, another victim of Watergate.

Will the new knowledge lead us only to accept the new state of total surveillance and to make new personal deals with the corruption and fascism implicit in its formations? Or will we turn the other way?

The sophisticated contemporary assault on native political values (as exemplified by the report of the Trilateral Commission3) flies wide of the mark. The challenge to democracy is not whether it too can govern the mega-state, it is rather: Can it resume the struggle against it? Not whether the Constitution can be reconciled to a general prevalence of criminal practice within government, but rather: Can the true republicans resume the struggle against state crime? Not whether independence of person from the state and of government from entangling alliances are compatible with "today's needs," but rather: Can independents resume the struggle precisely in view of "today's needs," against their entangling, entangled state?

The Traditional values stand in no shame for seeming unfeasible to us. It 1s not the purpose of values to be feasible probably, only to help chart the way, help define the situation. If one cannot make the tradition speak to the current predicament, that is one way of measuring the predicament, of getting a sense of its span and character.

But when we find our values incompatible with the lives we are leading, and can no longer deny this, our first response is often to try to change our values: we refute them, spit on them, call them obsolete, childish, premature, etc. This does not change the values, it only makes them more obscure; does not remove the need for values, only makes the values harder to find, harder to recognize and embrace.

Thus, to all the admonitions about practicality and the new age from Yankee and Cowboy power elites alike, a trio of democrat, republican, and independent will respond with a single music: We are not obliged to conquer Babylon, only to maintain an active position within it, a life, a forward practice.

The wheel spins. We do not come to politics to stop this spinning, only to play a role in it. Yes, we want to win an actual respite, to build a society of some grace and repose that might last a moment and leave something worth regarding. But that is the gamble of democracy, not the precondition. Independent, republican, and democrat may choose only to continue the ancient struggle I must make this incantation of mine about the values I am calling traditional at least this much more explicit:

By democrats, I mean those who believe that powers of decision in a healthy society repose sovereignly in the living generations. The state does not come from any power going beyond the human. The state comes from the people and is subservient to them equally and as a whole.

By republicans, I mean those for whom the legitimate I state is carefully circumscribed within society by an organic and reasoned body of explicit legal relationships and limits; those for whom the law is a set of limits to make society more prosperous and happy; who believe it is in the concrete self-interest of each generation after the next to preserve and refine this structure of law.

By independents, I mean those for whom the state does not fill up the human universe and who believe that there are vast domains of human experience in which the state should not be allowed in any way to intrude; that parties tend easily to become instruments of the state they seek to possess and must therefore be resisted for what they represent in themselves, the will to power.

To those who can see themselves anywhere in those vicinities, the question will rapidly become what to do. How do we resist the power-elite tendency to resolve differences through state violence? To these, I propose that a major immediate effort should be to politicize the question, who killed JFK?

That question sums up everything we need to fear in the Dallas-Watergate decade. To comprehend and solve that crime—and then the countercrime of Watergate, "Who cashiered Nixon?"—is to restore the precondition of any self-governing and republican people, the security of the public state. As we are a single nation, we have a single president whose destiny is participated in by all. When the president bleeds, all of us have to sleep in it. But then to wake up, to acknowledge the blood, to take rational action to find the truth of it and all the mysteries around it and flowing from it across the decade and a half: that would begin to make America a free country again.

No more than begin. Suppose the people successfully forced the issue, that would still be no guarantee of the next step. What indeed happens if implicit power rivalries are forced to become explicit? And as I have said before: Solve the crime, catch the conspiracy, still the food and fuel and economic and social crises remain, the Middle-East remains, the DOD and KGB remain…the dialectic remains. But the events of 11/22/63 form a central episode in the flowering of the clandestine state. Study of the JFK murder brings us close-up to the cancer Dean saw growing on the presidency, but at another of its radiant epicenters. It is the same cancer that a host of observers since Ross and Wise in 1964 have decried under one name or another-a cancer of the defense establishment, the security establishment, the foreign-policy establishment: a generalized state cancer whose growth we can trace back to the clandestine arrangements entered into by the U.S. government with the likes of Gehlen, Lansky, and the knights of the secret Round Table. The cancer attacks at Dallas 1963 and at Watergate a decade thereafter from the other side, leaving a trail of blood and disrupted function between and beyond. It now rules us.

But to get at Dallas '63 would be to get at this sickness by one of its major victories. It would be to get at the political bottom of the Vietnam war, of the structures of internal conflict that helped produce that entire decade, the decade of Dallas-Watergate and Vietnam. Understand Dallas: That is the start of the way out. As I write, there are new chances of congressional action such as have not heretofore existed, mainly stemming from the fact that Watergate and the CIA have definitively put right-wing subversion on the agenda. The Congress is agitated with the question and seems beginning to grapple with it in the committee system.

But we have seen such flashes of congressional light before. What can keep this issue alive now and detonate it at the heart of American political consciousness? One thing only, a movement of ordinary people demanding that the pressure toward the truth be increased and refreshed daily, ordinary people informed on the basic issues and confident of the authority of their purpose.

As I conclude this book a new controversy is brewing. Once it becomes at last publicly indubitable that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy hiding behind Oswald's and Ruby's graves, immediately the angry question will surface: Then what kind of conspiracy was it? I have developed aspects of one view in this book: I say JFK was killed by a rightist conspiracy formed out of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, the Syndicate, and a Cowboy oligarchy, supported by renegade CIA and FBI agents. The Warren Commission thought always in terms of a lone assassin versus a foreign conspiracy and scarcely entertained the domestic-conspiracy option except in those hushed, frightened secret meetings (transcripts of which were declassified in 1974 and 1975) called by Warren in January 1964 to discuss the troubling news that Oswald had possibly been an FBI informant for the fourteen months prior to the assassination. So it is today. The voices of cover-up are even now saying: There was no conspiracy, but if there was, it was a pro-Castro conspiracy. This view of Oswald has already begun to crystalize. It is the counterattack against a critique which has generally prevailed.

But all of us theorizers and patient watchers who are faithful to the traditional resolve can say we are ready to face and try to deal with the truth of Dallas, whatever it turns out to be certain indeed that if we cannot say who killed the president, then there is no respect in which we may still see ourselves as a self-governing people. We should then be obliged to celebrate our republic's anniversary by burying as a dead letter its one-time faith in people, law, and a sense of limits.

Appendix

THE OFFICIAL THEORY OF THE HUNT CRASH

First we examine the NTSB crash reconstruction, as much as is practical in the NTSB's own words. Then we test the validity of this reconstruction.

NTSB Crash Reconstruction

The NTSB concluded that the crew of 553 was distracted by the failure of the FDR at a moment in the landing process at which maximum attention ought to have been devoted to flying the airplane. As a result, when the checklist item "flight spoilers" (or "speed brake" or "air brake") was reached, and Second Officer Elder called out, "Speed brake?" copilot Coble took note of a green indicator light at the control console and answered, "armed," meaning that the spoilers were in the stowed position but readied for automatic deployment into the extended or "ground detent" position as soon as the airplane landed. The flight spoilers are flush with the wing upper surfaces in the stowed position and are not normally used in landing. They are more generally deployed only when the plane has already touched down. In deployment, they hinge upward from the top surface of the wing to spoil the airflow across it and decrease lift.

The flaps, which also figure in this drama, are aerodynamic control surfaces mounted in the trailing edge of the wing. At slower airspeeds, as at takeoff and landing, they are extended to give the airplane a broader wing and thus higher lift at some expense in air speed. They are retracted at higher speeds aloft.

Because Elder was worried about the FDR: theorizes the NTSB, Coble failed to realize that the green spoiler indicator comes on not only when the spoiler control lever is in the "armed" position, but also when it is in any position aft of that, including the "flight detent" position. In the "flight detent" position, the spoilers are deployed to their maximum in-flight extension. Had Coble taken the time to check the position of the control lever instead of relying on the green indicator light (reasoned the NTSB), which he misread, he would have known that the spoilers were extended, or more precisely, would have remembered that he had extended them shortly before. (Alas, if we had the CVR tape transcript healthy and whole, and the FDR data, we would know exactly when and why the spoilers were originally deployed.) As it was, the airplane was approaching a combination of flight-control settings, airspeed, engine thrust, and pitch angle that would culminate in a stall. When the stickshaker sounded its warning, and simultaneously the Midway tower ordered 553 to fly a missed approach, the pilot did not know—did not remember—that, according to some previous order of his to the copilot, the spoilers were deployed. He therefore did not order the copilot to retract them. Instead, he called for flaps to be decreased to 15 degrees (further decreasing aircraft lift, already degraded by the extension of the spoilers) preparatory to the application of "takeoff thrust" to fly the plane into a climbing left turn. Retracting the flaps had the immediate result that the airplane began to settle. Since he was running out of altitude (and his altimeter was fooling him by 150 feet on the high side, remember, with the visibility ceiling at only 500 feet), his reaction to this was to pull the nose up. This further deteriorated the airplane's lift and brought the airplane closer to the stall that finally precipitated the crash. In the NTSB's words:

"The rush of cockpit activities at this point, the first officer's routine callout that the spoilers were 'armed,' and the fact that the spoilers are seldom used during the final segment of an instrument approach, may well have caused the captain to overlook the position of the spoilers at level­off." (p. 28)

This theory is based on the results of four series of tests carried out by or for the NTSB: (1) A B-737 Performance Study, (2) a simulator study, (3) flight tests, and (4) a General Electric engine-thrust study. Following is a summary of the salient points of each as they bear on the NTSB's theory of the crash. The reader's close attention is invited. The material is technical and dense, but the technical shortcomings of the spoiler-error theory of the NTSB are precious enough not to miss.

I. The B-737 Performance Study

This study takes data from the ground radar record and the engine-spectrogram study and reconstructs from it the vertical flight path profile and the airspeed of the aircraft during the last moments of the flight.

"First," reads the NTSB report,

the aircraft's drag as a function of airspeed was computed for the different approach configurations (combinations of flap, landing gear, and spoiler positions) that could have been used. Next, the various drag values and the thrust values derived from the General Electric study were used to determine the resultant forces acting on the aircraft. These forces, in turn, were compared· with the vertical velocity and longitudinal acceleration values shown in the approach profile, starting with the descent from 4,000 feet, and ending with the activation of the stickshaker.

The ARTS-III altitude trace shows that the aircraft momentarily levelled off at 2,200 feet mean sea level [Midway's m.s.l. altitude is 680 feet] for approximately 12 seconds, which would have resulted in a decay of airspeed to 126 knots indicated airspeed [from a theoretically calculated entry airspeed of 152 KIAS]. A rate of descent of approximately 1,550 ft/min was established as the aircraft passed the outer marker. This descent rate was maintained until the aircraft levelled off about 1,000 feet m.s.l. [i.e., about 320 feet off the ground]. The correlation of the CVR with the ARTS­III data indicates that the stall warning stickshaker commenced 6 to 7 seconds after the aircraft levelled off. [Note that we do not know if this takes into account the 3-to-6-second deviations from the ARTS-III time base found in the treated CVR tape.]

In order theoretically to produce such a condition, it is necessary to assume [Note:] that the aircraft was in a configuration which resulted in sufficient drag to prevent a high positive acceleration during this final descent. It was shown in this study that had 30° flaps been selected at 1426:00, and had the spoilers been extended to the flight detent position upon establishing the 1,550ft/ min descent, the aircraft would have started to level off at MDA approximately at 133 KIAS. Any configuration producing less drag would have resulted in' the aircraft leveling off at a higher airspeed. (p. 17)

A higher airspeed, of course, would be inconsistent with the ARTS-III data and the subsequent events.

To make sure this much is well in hand: The B-737 Performance Study people looked at what the ARTS-III ground radar said about the altitude and airspeed descent profile of 553. Then they looked at a separate General Electric spectrogram study to determine from the CVR tape the engine thrust levels being developed from moment to moment along that profile. Also from the CVR, investigators determined the moment of stickshaker actuation. Thus they could reason: For the plane to be going this high and this fast with the engines winding this hard, what are the possible combinations of flaps, spoilers, landing gear, and aircraft pitch angle that could bring the plane to stall­ warning threshold within that much elapsed time? The conclusion was that the spoilers must have been in the flight-detent or extended position, or else the warning device would not have come on when it did.

II. Simulator Tests

Two series of simulator tests, the second based on the data from the General Electric study, "explored the effects of different techniques in recovering from the approach-to-stall flight regime." The study found that "to attain a 1,550 ft/min descent without allowing a significant speed buildup at a thrust level corresponding to 59 percent N1 , it was necessary to use [i.e., to assume] the following drag configuration: 30° flaps, landing gear down, and full flight spoiler extension." (p. 19)

That is, the simulator tests agreed with the performance study that the spoilers must have been in flight detent at the critical moment.

III. Flight Tests

The [stall] entry configurations were established as: 30° flaps, landing gear down, and with the right spoilers in the stowed, halfway extended, and flight-detent positions.

Recovery techniques consisted of power application to between 1.7 and 1.8 EPR (approximately 8,500 pounds of thrust per engine, 17,000 pounds total thrust), reduction of the pitch attitude to an approximately level attitude, and repositioning of the wing flaps as a variable, i.e., either retracted to, 15° or extended to 40° at the initiation of the recovery. Spoilers were left in their originally selected position. In all cases, recovery was effected with power application and a simultaneous decrease in pitch attitude. The pitch attitude at the onset of stickshaker activation was consistently near 12°, as shown on the captain's altitude indicator. The stabilizer trim corresponding to this position was seven units noseup. Trim was not changed during the recovery sequence. A loss of altitude of 150 to 500 feet occurred during all recoveries. The differences in flight spoiler positions upon entry into stall buffeting appeared to have little effect on the loss of altitude consistent with the recovery technique. (pp. 20-21)

IV. General Electric Engine Sound Spectrogram Study

"The CVR tape contained a high-level background noise," reports the NTSB, "which tended to mask meaningful frequency data. Through special filtering techniques much of the noise was attenuated, and some discrete frequencies corresponding to sound generated by aircraft equipment became evident." By studying these sounds spectrographically, analysts could determine the speeds and thus the thrust levels of the two engines.

The CVR-tape study found that "the final acceleration" of the engines occurred at 1427:03.35, or about one second before the tower radioed its order for 553 to "execute a missed approach" and about two seconds before the actuation of the stickshaker. Allowing for discrepancies in the CVR time track possibly attributable to its oil bath and four-day special treatment, we may assume this to be the result of a pilot response to the developing situation. "Just before the acceleration," continues the report, "one engine was at 58.6 percent N1 and the other at 57.2 percent N1," for a combined thrust of approximately 11,580 pounds. Conclusion 9 of the General Electric study states in its entirety:

"The sounds of both engines were detected during the acceleration. One engine peaked at 72 percent N1 at 1427:07.95. The other peaked at 79.2 percent N1 at 1427:09.55" (p. 17).

In other words, plus or minus three to six seconds, within four seconds of the actuation of the stall-warning device, the airplane was developing a total thrust of 15,100 pounds. This peak was maintained or increased over the remaining fourteen seconds of the flight. (Ground eyewitnesses and survivors agreed that the engines were winding hard during the moments before the crash.)

Critique of the Spoiler Theory

The critique of the theory that 553 crashed because the pilot neglected the flight detent position of the spoilers comprises five points.

1. Thrust levels identified by the General Electric study were apparently adequate to have accelerated 553 out of the stall regime even with the spoilers in the full flight-detent position. The report states:

A thrust in excess of 12,500 pounds should have been sufficient to accelerate the aircraft out of the stickshaker regime if the flight spoilers had been stowed. With the spoilers in the flight detent position, however, a total thrust of 14,500 pounds would have been required merely to maintain unaccelerated level flight within the stickshaker regime… The performance and simulator studies indicate that the B-737 has sufficient thrust capability to accelerate out of the approach-to-stall regime, even with the spoilers extended. If takeoff thrust is produced with 2 or 3 seconds of stickshaker activation, little or no altitude has to be sacrificed. (p. 29)

But as we have seen, the GE engine-sound study indicated a combined thrust during the last fourteen seconds of the flight of 15,100 pounds, easily greater than the 14,500-pound thrust needed to keep the airplane in straight and level flight within the stickshaker regime. This surge of power may even have preceded the actuation of the stickshaker.

2. The position of the spoilers is uncertain. We have cited NTSB text to the effect that spoilers are rarely used in an instrument landing such as 553 was flying. It is all the more important therefore that we are not shown the moment in the CVR transcript at which the captain calls for the spoilers to be deployed to flight detent, an unusual maneuver. The fragment of the transcript published with the final report shows only the routine checklist mention of the spoilers and only the routine response that the spoilers were armed for deployment upon landing, not already deployed.

3. The spoiler control lever was not found to be in the "flight-detent" position, but rather in the "stowed" position. The text is clear on this point: "After the accident, the spoiler lever was found in the forward or stowed position" (p. 30).

4. Neither was any part of the left or right spoiler assembly found in the flight-detent position in the wreckage. Again the text is unambiguous: "After the accident . . . the spoilers were in the retracted position" (p. 30).

The NTSB's explanation for the above discrepancies is the crash itself: "However, the post-impact condition of the center control pedestal and the possibility of spoiler retraction when hydraulic pressure was lost during the impact make this evidence inconclusive" (p. 30). Fine word, "inconclusive."

5. The post-impact position of the horizontal stabilizer control surface indicates that the spoilers were not deployed: "The post-impact position of the horizontal stabilizer trim was determined to have been 9 1/2 units noseup, which would correlate more closely with a spoiler-stowed configuration at speeds within the stickshaker regime. Boeing data indicate that a trim setting of 6 1/2 units would more nearly correspond with a 30° flaps, gear down, spoiler extended configuration" (p. 30). (Italics mine.)

To explain away this discrepancy, the NTSB states, "Although the position of the stabilizer trim as found cannot be reconciled with that which would be expected for the existing conditions, the Board believes that the significance of this condition is outweighed by the evidence regarding the deployment of spoilers during the final descent and level-off'' (p. 30).

Put it together. The NTSB must make 553's spoilers come out, even if they were not out at the wing, not out at the controls, and not out in either the captain's or the copilot's mind, and even if the control setting of the horizontal stabilizer was flatly inconsistent with their being out. This is because the NTSB must somehow get the airplane into a "stickshaker" configuration at a time determined by the perhaps faulty CVR tape to be twenty seconds before crash time, call it T-minus 20. Given that the speed and the descent rate for that moment are known from ground-radar data and engine thrust levels from the GE study, the NTSB's argument becomes totally circular. If the spoilers were not deployed at the moment of stickshaker activation, the NTSB is saying, then the stickshaker could not have been activated at that moment. The plane was going too fast then to start the stall-warning mechanism unless the spoilers were out.

That is the sole technical basis (a) for assuming that an experienced and qualified flight crew deviated without comment from standard operating procedures; and ( for flying in the face of "inconclusive" evidence indicating that the spoilers were indeed in their normal stowed position when the plane crashed, © that the controls also showed the spoilers stowed, (d) that the stabilizer's position was inconsistent with spoiler deployment, and (e) that even if the spoilers had been deployed, and never retracted at all, as the data of the GE study show, the pilot still increased engine power quickly enough to fly the plane away from the threatened stall with no loss in altitude, much less a stall and a crash.

If, on the other hand, we do not assume that the stickshaker-alarm actually sounded in the cockpit, and if we take the pilot's application of increased thrust at about T­ minus 18 seconds as his response to the wave-off signal from the tower, not to a stickshaker warning, then there is no longer any need to force the spoilers to have been where only inferential considerations say they were, and where a good many positive facts indicate they were not. But then we would need another theory of the crash.

The spoiler-error theory is simply not solidly rooted in the concrete facts of the crash as the NTSB report discloses them to us. It is based on assumptions which the NTSB's own technical findings controvert. It is not an implausible theory. It might actually turn out to be right. At least it has not been "briefly and tersely dismissed" by its few critics. But as of this moment, it is not terribly well stuck together. It is a kind of "single-bullet" theory in that it takes a conclusion (Dallas was a normal assassination, 553 a normal crash) and works backward to fit the facts to its needs, as is so apparent, for one example, in the chain of convenient inferential assumptions the NTSB is willing to make about the spoilers. Thus, it is "proved" that there was no sabotage because it is "proved" that the spoilers did it, and it is "proved" that the spoilers did it because if they did not, then the "accident" cannot be explained. Yes, correct, if it was an accident.

In no way could I have remained insensible of the risks one's credibility runs in being lent to these kinds of claims, that sabotage and murder are everywhere, that our political landscape is a burning rat race-maze of crime and conspiracy. But whatever way I turn the matter, it continually seems to me that the spoiler theory's shortcomings are intensified by the contextualizing events: the massive FBI presence at the crash scene, the Plumbers quickly scrambling and getting in deep around the investigation, the heavy White House pressure on the NTSB to put out a hasty report, the doubts surrounding the cyanide question, the pollution and "treatment" of the CVR tape, the exactly-at-the-right­ moment malfunction of the Flight Data Recorder, the passage of these vital precision instruments through the hands of the Nixon-Gray FBI and Mayor Daley's Streets and Sanitation types on their way to the innocent NTSB technicians; the mirror-image double failure of the two independent altimeters; the strained NTSB effort to explain this double failure away when it can scarcely explain one failure by itself; the irregular, out-of-code utilization of the Midway landing _ capabilities; the instantly corrected malfunction of the Kedzie Outer Marker just as 553 passed over it; and the whole uncanny silence, the apparent indifference, the "languor" of the crew in the face of the stickshaker warning: these things, impacted in the Hunt blackmail drama at the moment of its crisis, cry for another theory of the crash, a better explanation.

Notes

1. See chapter 7 of "Vietnam Crucible" in Carl Oglesby and Richard Shaull, Containment and Change (New York: Macmillan, 1967) for a treatment of the neo-imperial theme.

2. Speech by author to the SDS National Council meeting in Lexington, KY, March 1968, just before Johnson's abdication. The ideas were summarized in my three-part article appearing in the then-New-Left-oriented periodical, National Guardian, April 13, 20, and 27, 1968.

3. Carroll Quigley, ·Tragedy and Hope (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 1245-46. I chose in this book to avoid historical treatment of the Yankee/ Cowboy theme, but the above passage from Quigley indicates a usable perspective on the Civil War. That a power-struggle theory of some kind is in fact necessary from the beginnings, and that there has always been a split at the top, is suggested in a work published too late for me to note it here except through George M. Fredrickson's review "The Uses of Antislavery," New York Review of Books, October, 16, 1975. The work is David Brion Davis's The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975), the second volume in a continuing history of the revolutionary period. In Fredrickson's summary of Davis's thesis, ". . . the cost of nationhood in the United States was not merely a sectional compromise but also a compact between two distinct elites-a northern capitalist class that increasingly recognized the advantages of a free labor system and a southern planter class already implicitly committed to the preservation and extension of slavery ...Hence, the United States seemingly emerged from its revolutionary period without a national ruling class; it was in fact a federation of two regional ruling classes."

4. The defense industry's place in the Yankee/Cowboy analysis has been challenged by two West Coast sociologists, Steve Weissman and Steve Johnson; Weissman first (Ramparts, August 1974), then Johnson in much greater detail (The Insurgent Sociologist, Winter 1975-1976). They maintained that the defense industry as such must not be a foundation of Cowboy power, because the ownership pattern prevailing in the defense industry essentially mirrors the ownership pattern prevailing in the other basic national industrial sectors. That is, like steel, the defense industry is mainly owned by the big Eastern banks- or in my terms, the Yankees. The point about ownership is perhaps valid as far as it goes, although I find it strange that the criteria Johnson should set up for Cowboyhood in my sense should exclude from his Cowboy sample the case I have long argued is most archetypal and important, i.e., the empire of Howard Hughes (see chapter 6). More important, Johnson ignores the extent to which, in the words of a recent summary, "the emergence of the Sunbelt has been [dependent on] its ability to obtain defense contracts and space-exploration installations." (Jon Nordheimer, "Sunbelt Region Leads Nation in Growth of Population," New York Times, February 8, 1976). The Weissman-Johnson approach to the politics of the defense economy is to hang everything on the single criterion of ownership. My approach is to look also at the regional patterns in which the some $450 billion awarded in prime defense contracts since 1960 have been spent, because the money has in no sense been spread around equally. In his book Power Shift (New York: Random House, 1975), an independent elaboration of the Yankee/Cowboy perspective, Kirkpatrick Sale cites a Brookings Institution finding that from 1952 to 1962 "the overall contribution of defense to . . . the Pacific Region (especially Southern California) and the Mountain Region (primarily Arizona and New

Mexico) . . .[was] 21 and 27 percent, respectively . . . . At the same time . . . such states as Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana actually had negative growth rates" [in terms of the local economic impact of defense spending] (p. 25). By 1970, the Sunbelt's portion of the defense budget had grown to 44 percent (compared to 39 percent to the Northeast) and Texas had climbed past New York as the second state in total defense contracts behind California. The First National Bank of Boston and the Girard Trust of Philadelphia may own Lockheed, but Lockheed's plants are in California, Texas, and Georgia. Morgan Guarantee Trust and Chemical Bank of New York may own General Dynamics, but four out of five of General Dynamic's chief plants are in the Sunbelt (two in California and one each in Texas, Florida and New York). Assessment of the Yankee/ Cowboy factor in connection with the defense industry is thus more complex than the Weissman-Johnson analysis assumes.

5. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Dell, Delta Books, 1959); also see Williams, "The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy," History as a Way of Learning (New York: New Viewpoints, 1973). Turner argued that it was the pioneering of the Frontier that established American democracy. He paid no attention to genocide. Williams's version of this "success" is more modern and tragic, more attuned to the era of the Vietnam War.

1. "The Baker Report," The Senate Watergate Report, Dell (1974), pp. 733ff.

2. In Steve Weissman, ed., Big Brother and the Holding Company (Palo Alto, CA: Ramparts Press, 1974), p. 313.

3. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, pp. 950-56, from which the quotations in this section are borrowed.

4. Quoted in Jeff Gerth, "Nixon and the Miami Connection," in Weissman, Big Brother, pp. 251-75. This seminal essay is the chief basis of my treatment of Nixon here. As for who is Warren to throw stones, we test that question in chapter 4.

5. Ibid., p. 252.

6. Hank Messick, Lansky, Berkley Medallion Books, New York, 1971, p. 190.

7. Ibid., p. 190.

8. Rebozo was not accused of criminal conduct in cashing this stock in 1968. Bod Edler and John McDermott, Knight News Service, Boston Globe, November 1, 1973.

9. "The Story of Bebe Rebozo," Newsday Special Report, October 6-13, 1971, p. 6R.

10. Gerth, p. 257.

11. Ibid.

12. This section is based on E.H. Cookridge's Gehlen, Spy of the Century (New York: Random House, 1971).

13. R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 233-239, and 240. Gehlen was of course not the only high-ranking Nazi offering the United States deals just then. In April 1944, for example, Himmler's agents were floating "separate peace" balloons all over Europe. In one offer, Himmler would turn over to the United States the German treasury of intelligence data on Japan if the United States would stall the war in France and enable the Nazis to put more into their struggle with Russia. Smith does not use the Yankee/Cowboy framework or any counterpart, but his book offers an excellent analysis of the Yankee/Cowboy competition at full drive during the Cold War years within the heart of the American foreign policy apparatus. Particularly the regional-ideological character of the split rending the CIA emerges. He shows us why, how and to what effect the CIA was partitioned.

14. Ibid., p. 240.

1. Richard M. Nixon, "Cuba, Castro and John F. Kennedy," Readers Digest, November 1964.

2. L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 48.

3. Actually the Cuban jets were flown to another airfield the day before the invasion struck. So they would probably have survived the critical first moments of the invasion unattacked. Once off the ground, of course, they enjoyed all the advantages of jet-age fighters over piston-age bombers.

4. Tad Szulc, "Cuba on Our Mind," Esquire, February, 1974. Hunt claims he advised the CIA to kill Castro (Howard Hunt, Give Us This Day: The CIA and the Bay of Pigs [New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973], but that nothing came of it. On the contrary, the would-be assassins were almost successful. They were caught in Havana on the day of the invasion and executed. Many additional attempts on Castro's life followed in the years after. See Peter Dale Scott, "The Longest Cover-up," in Weissman's Big Brother.

5. Ibid.

6. Smith, OSS, p. 377.

7. Consider the following, a broadside distributed in the Cuban exile community of Miami just after JFK ordered a cessation of military activity against Castro. The broadside was ornamented with drawings of cowboys and the Alamo and signed, "A Texan who resents the Oriental influence that has come to control, to degrade, to pollute and enslave his own people." It reads: "Only through one development will you Cuban patriots ever live again in your homeland as freemen . . .[only] if an inspired Act of God should place in the White House within weeks a Texan known to be a friend of all Latin Americans . . . though he must under present conditions bow to the Zionists who since 1905 came into control of the United States, and for whom Jack Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller and other members of the Council of [sic] Foreign Relations and allied agencies are only stooges and pawns. Though Johnson must now bow to these crafty and cunning Communist-hatching Jews, yet, did an Act of God suddenly elevate him into the top position [he] would revert to what his beloved father and grandfather were, and to their values and principles and loyalties" (William Manchester, The Death of a President [New York: Harper and Row, 1967], p. 53.)

8. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 66-67.

9. Nixon, "Cuba, Castro."

10. Haynes Johnson, The Bay of Pigs (New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1964).

11. Prouty, Secret Team, p. 38.

12. Murray Zeitlin and Robert Scheer, Cuba: Tragedy in Our Hemisphere (New York: Grove Press, 1963).

13. Nation, June 22, 1964.

14. John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), p. 132.

15. Tad Szulc, "Cuba on Our Mind."

16. Nixon, "Cuba, Castro."

17. Halberstam, The Best, p. 67.

18. Prouty, Secret Team, p. 35.

19. See for example W.W. Rostow's "Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas," in M. Raskin and B. Fall, eds., The Vietnam Reader (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 110-12.

20. In the words of Kennedy's foreign-policy aide Roger Hilsman, "President Kennedy's policy . . . was to meet the guerrilla aggression within a counterguerrilla framework, with the implied corollary that if the Viet Cong could not be defeated within a counterguerrilla framework and the allegiance of the people of Vietnam could not be won, then the United States would accept the resulting situation and would be free to enter negotiations without "total consequences to our position in the rest of Asia" (Roger Hilsman, To Move a Natlon [New York: Doubleday, 1967], p. 537).

21. Prouty, Secret Team, pp. 114-21.

22. James M. Gavin, "We Can Get Out of Vietnam,” Saturday Evening Post , February 24, 1968.

23. Santa Barbara News-Press, February 11 1975.

24. Kenneth O'Donnell, Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1972), p. 16.

25. Boston Globe, June 24, 1973.

26. Boston Globe, March 13, 1973.

27. Rolling Stone, December 6, 1973.

28. Prouty, Secret Team, p. 415.

29. Stars and Stripes, November 1, 1963.

30. New York Times, October 3, 1963.

31. "GOP Vietnam Study," Congressional Record, May 9, 1967 (the "Hickenlooper Study").

32. Peter Dale Scott, "The Death of Kennedy and the Vietnam War," Government by Gunplay, ed. Sid Blumenthal and Harvey Yazijian, (New York: New American L1brar, 1976) pp. 152-87. NSAM 273, says Scott, is still unpublished and known only from various passing references to it. Scott’s impressive reconstruction is printed in the cited article on pp. 170 ff.

33. New York Times, "Vietnam Chronology," January 28, 1973.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. James Hepburn, Farewell America (Canada and Belgium: Frontiers Publishing, 1968), p. 244.

39. This memo is from the files of the James Garrison investigation of the JFK assassination. A copy is on file with the Assassination Information Bureau, 63 Inman St Cambridge, Mass. 02139.

40. William Turner, "The Garrison Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy," Ramparts, January 1968, p. 52; Paris Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy (New York: Meredith, 1969), p. 112.

41. Jeff Cohen, unpublished interview with Garrison, in Assassination Information Bureau files.

42. Halberstam, The Best, p. 411.

43. "Ten Years After," Playboy, November 1973.

44. Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little Brown & Co.,1971), p. 202.

45. Szulc, "Cuba on Our Mind." This hit 'was also recommended by Howard Hunt, whose hitman was Cuban physician Rolando Cubela Secades, who confessed after being arrested in Havana.

46. Tad Szulc, Compulsive Spy (New York: Viking Press, 1974).

1. Hearings before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vol. 17. (Hereafter cited as Hearings.)

2. Ibid.

3. Hearings, vol. 4, pp. 136.

4. Cyril Wecht, "A Pathologist's View of the JFK Autopsy: An Unsolved Case," Modern Medicine, November 27, 1972.

5. Cyril Wecht, "JFK Assassination: A Prolonged and Willful Cover-Up," Modern Medicine, October 28, 1974.

6. Hepburn, Farewell America, p. 57. See also Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (l\ew York: Bobbs­ Merrill, 1967), pp. 94-133.

7. Robert Healey, "Time to Reopen the Dallas Files," Boston Globe, April 25, 1975. '

8. Hearings, vol. 7, p. 535.

9. Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, pp. 553-55. (Hereafter cited as Report.) Warren discounted the gunshop owner's testimony because the official reconstruction had already placed Oswald in Mexico at the time the contact was supposedly made.

10. Kaiser, "The JFK Assassination: Why Congress Should Reopen the Investigation," Rolling Stone, April 24 1975.

11. But note that former CIA officer George O'Toole (see item following) implies that Oswald had no papers on him at all and that the Ridell-Oswald link was another of the preforged components of the cover-up. See O'Toole, The Assassination Tapes (New York: Penthouse Press, 1975).

12. Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 50.

13. O'Toole, Tapes, p. 131.

14. Ibid., Chap. 4.

15. Among them, Dr. Gordon Barland of the University of Utah, who claims already to have repeated O'Toole's tests and duplicated his results. Penthouse, April 1975, published testimonials from a half-dozen academic and practical specialists. The only objection one hears to the PSE is that like the standard "lie detector," it would not work with psychopath unaware of any standard of falsity or truth. But no one ever claimed, much less proved, that this was the kind of problem Oswald had.

16. Scott, Big Brother.

17. Zodiac News Service release, April 30, 1975. We are in galleys as the final volume of the Church Committee's probe of the intelligence agencies is released. This volume bears on the role of the intelligence agencies in the JFK assassination and concludes, as we have argued above, that the FBI and the CIA obstructed the investigation. What the Church Committee totally failed to do, however, was investigate the relation of Oswald to the FBI, the CIA and military intelligence. Likewise, it ignored late-developing information that Jack Ruby was also an FBI informant. The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies, Final Report, Book V, published July 23, 1976, Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities. (See note 53 below.)

18. The following account borrows on investigative reports from New Orleans Police Detective Frank Meloche to Garrison dated March 13 and March 22, 1967. These documents are on file with the Assassination Information Bureau.

19. Hearings, vol. 23, p. 166. See also Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris, The Green Felt Jungle (New York: Simon & Schuster, Pocket Books, 1963).

20. Hearings, vol. 14, p. 444. See also Scott, "The Longest Cover-up," in Weissman, Big Brother.

21. Senate Committee on Government Operations, "Organized Crime and Illicit Traffic in Narcotics,"

22. Hearings, 88th Congress, Second Session, p. 508, chart II.

23. Warren Hearings, vol. 22, pp. 300, 360, and 478. I am indebted to Peter Dale Scott for pointing out the following passages in the Warren Hearings. Report, p. 793.

24. Hearings, vol. 25, p. 244, Commission Exhibit 1268.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., vol. 22, p. 423.

27. Ibid., vol. 23, p. 369.

28. Ibid., vol. 23, p. 371.

29. Ibid., vol. 23, p. 372.

30. Ibid., vol. 23, p. 363.

31. Report , p. 801. But from the much-later-released transcript of the Warren Commission's meeting of January 27, 1964 (its second emergency secret meeting within five days), we know for a fact that the commissioners were not always so confident of this interpretation. Chief Counsel Rankin said at that meeting: "He [Ruby] has apparently all kinds of connections with the underworld ...There isn't any question but what he planned to go down to Cuba, and he did, and the story was that it was in regard to armaments ...My recollection is that one of the stories was that he was to try to sell guns and ammunition to Castro …That is all denied, and that he was going down there to make money on other kinds of sales but not anything that was munitions or armaments. There is no explanation of where he was there, what he did, or who his connections were. He had all kinds of connections with the minor underworld, I think you would call it, in Dallas and Chicago…" (New Republic, September 27, 1975).

32. Tad Szulc, "The Warren Commission in its Own Words," New Republic , September 27, 1975.

33. Warren Report, p. 368.

34. Warren Hearings, vol. 22, p. 426 and Vol. 23, p. 362.

35. The following quotations from the Ruby interrogation are excerpted from Hearings, vol. 5, pp. 181-212.

36. Ibid. vol. 14, pp. 504-70.

37. Ibid., vol. 14, pp. 566-67.

38. Ibid., p. 571.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., p. 572.

41. Ibid., p. 563.

42. Ibid., p. 572.

43. Ibid., p. 575-76.

44. Ibid., pp. 586, 588.

45. Ibid., p. 590.

46. Ibid., p. 591.

47. Ibid.

48. "Murdered—For Having Too Much On JFK's Killers," Midnight, January 18, 1977.

49. "A staff memorandum tells the Commission that if certain rumors about the assassination-the possibility of a foreign conspiracy-are not quelled, the 'could conceivably lead the country into a war which could cost 40 million lives"' Tad Szulc, "The Warren Commission in its Own Words," New Republic, September 27, 1975.

50. Anson, "JFK: The Truth," p. 22.

51. Boston Globe, April 27, 1975.

52. "Grief-stricken at the sudden calamity that cut the president down, Bobby Kennedy telephoned a ranking official of the CIA, who dumbfounded, heard him demand with commingled anger and emotion: 'Did your otfit have anything to do with this horror?"' (Seymour I:re1den and George Bailey, The Experts [New York: Macmillan, 1968], p. 85).

53. The Church Committee's review of the intelligence community's relationship to the JFK assassination and its cover-up (Book V of the Church report, published in July 1976), might easily have begun correcting this remarkable distortion. The committee knew, for example, as the Warren Commission evidently did not, that Ruby had at some point enjoyed some form of cooperative relationship with the Dallas FBI, but this fact did not even find Its way into a footnote. Yet at the same time, the committee devoted pages of repetitious detail to the story of a would-be assassin of Castro Rolando Cubela (CIA code name, AMLASH), whose attempt on Castro it imagines may have motivated a Castro-Oswald attempt on JFK.

1. Geoffrey Barraclough, "Wealth and Power: The Politics of Food and Oil," New York Review of Books, August 7, 1975.

2. Toward a New International Order, p. 402.

3. Barraclough, "Wealth and Power."

4. "And slowly Clifford found allies …In late March, Johnson summoned his Senior Informal Advisory Group on Vietnam, a blue-chip Establishment group. These were the great names of the Cold War: McCloy, Acheson, Arthur Dean, Mac Bundy, Douglas Dillon, Robert Murphy. And over a period of days they quietly let him know that the Establishment—yes, Wall Street—had turned on the war; it was hurting us more than it was helping us, it had all gotten out of hand, and it was time to bring it back to proportion" (David Halberstam, "Losing Big," Esquire, September 1972).

5. This account is based on Jeff Cohen's impressive summary "The Assassination of Martin Luther King" in Sid Blumenthal and Harvey Yazijian, eds., Government by Gunplay (New York: New American Library, 1976), pp. 38- 56.

6. J. Edgar Hoover, "Disruption of the New Left," dated May 14, 1968, in Weissman, Big Brother.

7. Alex Cockburn and Betsy Langman, "Who Killed RFK?," Harper's, January 1975.

8. The pistol was actually test-fired by a panel of seven cou t-appointed experts in October 1975 with inconclusive results. See Assassination Information Bureau interview with Allard Lowenstein, October 16, 1975, WBUR-FM Boston. Also Lowenstein, "Who Killed Robert Kennedy?" in Blumenthal and Yazijian Government by Gunplay, p. 4.

9. The Los Angeles Police Department's "Special Unit: Senator" was formed and run by Evelle Younger, current attorney general of California. After it had completed its apparently successful cover-up of the RFK evidence, SUS was given permanent form as the Criminal Conspiracy Section, remaining under Younger's control. The CCS shortly had taken over the war against local Reds and organized blacks. In support of its antisubversive purposes, it got involved deeply in the behavior-modification work going on in the California prison system, notably at Vaccaville, a psychofactory turning out police zombies the likes of Donald "Cinque" Defreeze and others involved in the formation of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Defreeze was explicitly a CCS creature. The thesis has thus formed that the SLA was always a plaything of the CCS and through it of the Southern California far right, and that the kidnapping of Patty Hearst was part of a larger project, possibly including also the Zebra killings of the same period and the murder of Oakland School Superintendent Marcus Foster, the purpose of which was to generate a public demand for wider police repression. (Based on material developed by Donald Freed and the Citizens Research and Investigating Committee of Los Angeles. SLA leader Emily Harris has denounced Freed as a conspiracy patsy.)

1. John Keats, Howard Hughes (New York: Random House, 1966).

2. New York Times, March 2, 1975.

3. Chronology and quotes following are from D.F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins (New York: Doubleday, 1961), vol. 1.

4. Keats, Hughes, p. 257-58.

5. Ibid., p. 258.

6. Ibid., p. 261.

7. Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books, April 20, 1972.

8. Besides Keats, see also Nicholas North-Broome, The Hughes-Nixon Loan (New York: APAI Books, 1972).

9. David B. Tinnin, Just About Everybody vs Howard Hughes (New York: Doubleday, 1973). This is an extremely powerful book.

10. Boston Globe, December 5, 1973.

11. Tinnin, Just About Everybody, p. 62.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 63.

14. Neither Keats nor Tinnin takes up the Las Vegas period. My reconstruction is based essentially on media accounts.

15. Wallace Turner, New York Times, October 1, 1973.

16. Thomas O'Hanlon, "The High Rollers Shoot for Power in Las Vegas," Fortune, January 1971.

17. Jack Anderson, Boston Globe, October 16, 1973; Wallace Turner, New York Times October 1 1973· UPI Los Angeles Times, January 10, 1974; Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books, April 20, 1974.

18. Selected samples of the Maheu-Hughes document were floated in Xerox around the press in 1972 and after. The quotations here are from a set of some 50 pages in my possession.

19. Anthony J. Lukas, Nightmare: A Narrative History of Watergate (New York: Viking Press, 1976).

20. James Hougan, "Hire a Spy " Harper's December 1974.

21. Richard Hammer, "History of Organized Crime" Playboy, April 1974.

22. Ron Laytner, Up Against Howard Hughes (New York: Manor Books, 1972), pp. 39-40.

23. Fortune, January 1971.

24. The John Meier story is reconstructed from news accounts, notably: Time, December 21, 1970; Bernstein and Woodward in the Washington Post, September 6, 1973; James M. Naughton; New York times, September 7, 1973; Seth Kantor, Madison Capital Times, September 24, 1973; Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, December 4, 1973; Boston Globe, December 12, 1973; Jerry Cohen, Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1973; UPI Los Angeles Times December 21, 1973; Jeff Cohen and Bill Hazlett Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1973; Robert Rawitch, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1974; Carroll Kilpatrick, Washington Post, January 26, 1974; Hank Messick, Lansky (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1971), p. 246. Kwitny's is a key piece.

25. Information obtained by author from member of Watergate Committee staff.

26. The Thanksgiving coup is reconstructed from Laytner, Up Against Howard Hughes; Wallace Turner, "All the Hughes That's Fit to Print," Esquire, July 1971; an unpublished manuscript by Jim Hougan; Stephen Fay, et al., Hoax (New York: Viking Press, 1972); New York Times, December 8, 1970; Time, December 21, 1970; Newsweek, December 21, 1970; Newsweek , December 28, 1970; Fortune, January 1971;Jack Anderson columns for January 9 and August 7, 1971; Clay Richards, Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1974; Boston Globe, September 22, .1973.

27. Tinnin, Just About Everybody, p. 379.

28. Laytner, Up Against, p. 75.

29. Tinnin, Just About Everybody, p. 380.

30. On February 27, 1976, Jack Anderson reported finding a handful of people who believed they had seen Hughes since 1970: New York stockbroker Julie Sedlmayr Nevada Governor Mike O'Callaghan and Gaming Board Chairman Phil Hanniflin in March 1973. Anderson points out, however, that the existence of a Hughes double has long been conjectured, and the main thrust of his story was that the IRS was on the verge of declaring Hughes legally dead. Anderson quoted from a February 18, 1972, memo of a "federal agent" who had "followed Hughes's movements": "It is my belief that Howard Hughes died in. Las _Yegas _in 1970 and that key officials in charge of runmng his empue concealed this fact at the time in order to prevent a catastrophic dissolution of his holdings" ( Boston Globe, February 27, 1976).

31. Laytner, Up Against , p. 96.

32. Turner, New York Times, October 1, 1973.

33. Tinnin, Just About Everybody, p. 386.

34. Hank Messick, John Edgar Hoover (New York: David McKay Co., 1972), p. 242.

35. Tinnin, Just About Everybody, pp. 415-18.

36. 36. Ibid., p. 395.

37. Laytner, Up Against, p. 94.

38. Ibid

39. Ibid., p, 42.

40. James Hougan, et al., article in manuscript.

41. Messick, Lansky, pp. 234-35.

42. Laytner, Up Against, p. 236.

43. This section is based on the following: July 2, 1974 Baker report; Robert L. Jackson, Los Angeles Times, December 11, December 21, 1973; National Observer, February 2, 1974; UPI dispatch Las Vegas, appearing in Rocky Mountain News (Denver), June 12, 1973; Lawrence Meyer, Washington Post, December I 1, 1972; Los Angeles Times, January 10, 1974;John Hanrahan, Washington Post, September 25, 1973.

44. James McCord, A Piece of Tape (Rockville, MD: Washington Media Services, Ltd., 1974), p. 21.

1. McCord, Tape, p. 46.

2. Harper's, October 1974.

3. New York Times, January 8, 1973.

4. McCord, Tape, p. 141.

5. Szulc, Compulsive Spy, p. 161.

6. Boston Globe, May 30, 1973.

7. Submission of Recorded Presidential Conversations to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives by President Richard M. Nixon. Tapes of March 21, 1973.

8. Skolnick tells the story that a federal narc named Ray Metcalf, an agent of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement, DALE, climbed out of the wrecked tail in an asbestos jumpsuit moments after the wreckage came to a rest. The Skolnickian jumpsuit detail is unconfirmed, but Metcalf was aboard 553, was seated in the tail section, and did walk away from the crash.

9. Per Skolnick.

10. "Part of John Dean's deal with the Watergate special prosecutor was that the Segretti-Kalmbach area, the whole Bremer connection, would not be explored" (Mae Brussell, "Assassination Report" aired on WBUR-FM, Boston, September 24, 1974).

11. New York Times, August 20, 1973.

12. Per Skolnick.

13. U.S., Congress, Senate, "Activities of the National Transportation Safety Board," Hearings before the Committee on Commerce, Serial 93-38, May 21 and 23, 1973, p. 2.

14. Ibid., p. 105.

15. 15. Ibid., p. 139.

16. Ibid., p. 140.

17. New York Times; September 5, 1974. Resigned September 4, 1974.

18. Phone conversation with author.

19. Single copies of this report are available free on request from the National Transportation Safety Board, Washington, D.C. 20591.

20. New York Magazine, May 21, 1973.

21. Ronald Dorfman, Nation, July 30, 1973.

22. Some investigators, notably Donald Freed of the Los Angeles-based Citizens Research and Investigating Committee, have claimed that the pilot and the copilot were actually not in their seats at the time of the crash. The NTSB report indirectly supports this in two passages suggesting unprecedented departure from basic flight routines on the part of the captain: "The 4-point seatbelt and shoulder harness release mechanism was found unlocked and operable. Shoulder harness straps were found retracted in the inertial reel" (p. 12). That is, if the pilot was in his seat, he had not fastened his seatbelt. And in Appendix I: "The injuries sustained by the captain, as well as the conditions of the captain's and first officer's shoulder harness in the wreckage, indicated that the shoulder harness had not been used."

23. Ronald Dorfman, Nation, September 3, 1973.

24. Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1972.

25. Ibid., December 14, 1972.

26. The NTSB report reads: "N931U was equipped with the Fairchild Model F-5424 Flight Data Recorder (FDR) serial No. 5134. The altitude, indicated airspeed, magnetic heading, and vertical acceleration traces ended abruptly 82:14 minutes after takeoff (approximately 14 minutes before the accident). Examination of the flight recorder showed that a miter gear . . . had slipped on its shaft causing the recorder to stop functioning" (p. 8).

27. As recorded in Appendix F of the NTSB transcript, the last eight minutes of 553's flight:

CAPTAIN WHITEHOUSE: Recorder go off?

SECOND OFFICER ELDER: Pardon me?

WHITEHOUSE: Recorder go off?

ELDER: yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (unintelligible).

WHITEHOUSE: See what's wrong with it, will ya?

That started at Chicago time 2: 19:30.5 P.M. There follows an exchange with O'Hare about runway assignment then at 2:20:37.5 the cockpit discussion of the FDR failure resumed:

ELDER: Braking action reported fair by a guppy. ["Braking action" could refer to the use of airbrakes, or spoilers, which indeed figure in the NTSB theory of the crash but which are customarily not used in landings and would certainly not be used. without an explicit command from the captain. In routine landings, the captain tells the copilot what to do while concentrating all his attention on the instruments and the outside environment. "Guppy" could refer to the Boeing 737 itself, dubbed "the Guppy" by pilots grateful for its great flyability. It could also refer to the small plane ahead of them, the private Aero-Commander which was about to circle in front of them in a for-some-reason privileged missed approach.]

WHITEHOUSE: Fair?

ELDER: On one, ah, three one left. [Does Elder start to say runway number one-three, the glidesloped runway formerly assigned to 553?] The only change is the altimeter thirty oh five.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (Unintelligible).

WHITEHOUSE: Sounds to me a circuit breaker, perhaps.

ELDER: Hah?

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (Unintelligible).

WHITEHOUSE: Yeah, I just meant, I thought you'd better check everything, ah.

ELDER: It, ah, -indicates.

Sound of several clicks (appear between words "ah" and "indicates" above) (heard on all four tracks sounds similar to circuit breaker deactivated and activated repeatedly).

ELDER: A wire on the reel to test. Sound of several clicks.

ELDER: It tests. I think it's okay. I think it's working.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (unintelligible). ELDER: It says off.

CHICAGO-O'HARE: (to Aero-Commander): Zero nine VS turn left to one three zero.

WHITEHOUSE: You got an "off" light.

ELDER: Yeah, but, ah, the signal, the encode light comes on.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (unintelligible).

ELDER: And it shows, indicating tape.

28. In view of this and the technical nature of the argument, I will quote here the NTSB's explanation in full: "Several sources for common errors in the two independent systems were considered. One was ice, which could have accumulated on the Pitot/static probes. However, since both probe heat switches were found in the "ON" position, and since examination of the filaments of the probe head indicating lights showed that probe heat was energized at the time of impact, it is unlikely that probe icing was the source of error in this case.

"Another source of error could have been the effect of the aircraft's extreme nose-high attitude during the final moments of flight. According to the Boeing Company Flight test data, pitch angles within the stall buffeting region can produce static system errors that result in altimeter readings 60 feet higher than the actual altitude.

"Also, if electrical power to the CADC was interrupted while the aircraft was in a nose-high attitude at impact, the Pitot/ static sensing ports could have been 20 feet or more above the elevation of the crash site.

"Additional errors inherent in th reported barometric pressure correction at the time of impact could account for still another 15 to 20 feet.

"Since it is possible, as shown above, to account for a significant portion of the difference between impact elevation and the CADC altitude computations at the time of power interruption, the Safety Board concludes that the static system errors reflected in the CADC readings at impact do not have a bearing on the events that occurred at Midway." (p. 24)

Ignoring the splendid non sequitur of that last paragraph, let us boil this down.

The NTSB has to account for an error of 157 feet in the pilot's altimeter and 103 feet in the copilot's. The possible sources of error, says the NTSB, are: (a) probe icing; ( an extreme nose-high attitude of the airplane in a stall; © an extreme nose-high ·attitude of the airplane at tail-first impact; and (d) "inherent" errors in barometric pressure sensing.

a. The NTSB determined that icing was not a source of error in the case of 553.

b. From the nose-high stall attitude of the aircraft, the report assumes the maximum possible deviation of 60 feet given by Boeing.

c. From the nose-high impact attitude, the report assumes another maximum error input of 20 feet. This even though the attitude-dependency of both these figures (b and c) probably means that the NTSB's 20 feet should be considered simply a component of Boeing's 60 feet, since both are derived from the fact that the tail-down geometry of the aircraft in a stall as well as tail-first impact puts the probe sensing ports higher than the tail.

d. From presumed sensing errors which it does not even try to guess the cause of, the report gets another maximum of 15 to 20 feet.

Added all up, then, the NTSB explanation accounts for a total of 95-100 feet of error, assuming the maximum values from all possible error sources. Yet this sill accounts for less than the known error at the copilot's altimeter (103 feet) and less than two-thirds of the error at the pilot's altimeter (157 feet).

29. Cockpit discussion of the landing-procedure anomaly takes place immediately following the discussion of the malfunctioning FDR quoted above:

FIRST OFFICER COBLE: wonder why they put that in there, final approach from holding pattern at Kedzie not authorized.

CHICAGO/O'HARE (to Aero-Commander ahead of 553 on runway 31L): Zero nine VS turn left zero nine zero.

COBLE: What would be wrong if you were there in the holding pattern? You'd be back here anyway. Wonder why?

CAPTAIN WHITEHOUSE: I don't know. The holding pattern's probably higher than fifteen-hundred feet.

COBLE: That's probably true.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: (Unintelligible).

SECOND OFFICER ELDER: Or it's not aligned with the runway.

COBLE: yeah.

This is followed by an exchange with O'Hare about approach speed and altitude, then a return to the problem of the vexatious FDR, as we have already seen.

30. MIDWAY: Nine VS, runway three one left cleared to land.

9VS: Okay.

MIDWAY: Nine VS, do ya have the right runway in sight by any chance?

9VS: Affirmative.

MIDWAY: 'ud you swing over to that and land? There's a jet about two m— and disregard that, ah, okay, I see ya now, you're cleared to land on thirty-one left.

31. Per Skolnick. See Barboura Freed, "Flight 553: The Watergate Murder?" in Weissman, Big Brother, pp.12 7-58.

32. Washington Post, June 3, 1973.

33. National Transportation Safety Board report, Appendix F.

34. Chicago Sun-Times, May 1, 1973.

35. Author interview with Skolnick and Bottos.

36. In June he was finally allowed to give his evidence, which consisted essentially of several thousand pages of NTSB technical reports on the crash (as with the Warren Commission, the technical investigation undermines the final report). But by that time his arguments had long since been prejudged and, as Public Information Officer Dunbar put it, "briefly and tersely dismissed."

1. CBS-TV News, January 5, 1974.

2. Ibid., February 24, 1974.

3. Ibid., March 24, 1974.

4. Neil Cullinin, New Times, September 8, 1974.

5. Boston Globe, December 6, 1974.

6. Time, August 27, 1973.

7. Boston Globe, April 4, 1973.

8. Harper's, October 1974.

9. Andrew St. George, Harper's, October 1974. Baker report, p. 17.

10. Ibid., p. 40.

11. Ibid., p. 43.

12. Ibid., p. 8.

13. Ibid., p. 12.

14. Paul Benzaquin, Boston Channel 5, December 18, Harper's, October 1974.

15. Ervin Hearings, August 6, 1973.

16. Times (London), June 3, 1973.

17. J. Anthony Lukas, "The Hughes Connection," New York Times Magazine, January 4, 1976.

18. McCord documents supplied by Ervin Committee.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Bernstein and Woodward, All the President's Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), p. 274.

23. Ibid.

24. For what it's worth, there are at least three different versions of this remarkable letter, a masterpiece of its kind. McCord prints two in A Piece of Tape (pp. 48 and 150) without mentioning their differences. The other is the typescript McCord gave the Ervin research staff, a photocopy of which is what I am using here. The variances are all trivial, but on the other hand, they are numerous, and to my mind there is some question why there should be any variances at all. By whom, how, and when would they have been introduced? Do they imply that McCord had memorized the text, but imperfectly, or that several hands worked it over so that several slightly variant copies came to exist? Why should anyone do that? Why else should there be any text but the one and single text McCord sent to Caulfield and gave a photocopy of to the Ervin Committee? Calling the Ervin Committee version number one and the versions at pages 48 and 150 of Tape numbers two and three, we can itemize the variances as follows:

1. Where version one opens coldly and abruptly with "Jack," the Tape versions read "Dear Jack."

2. Where number one continues with the McCordian clip, "Sorry to have to write," etc., two and three read, "I am sorry," etc.

3. Version one softens the preemptory tone of the single-sentence opening paragraph, however, by continuing: "but felt you had to know." The Tape versions omit this whole striking clause altogether.

4. Version one says, "and if the WG operation," where versions two and three leave out the if.

5. Two and three spell out number one's "WG."

6. Version two styles operation with an initial cap. In version three it's lower case.

7. Versions one and two read, "at CIA's feet." Version three reads "at the feet of CIA."

8. Version one reads, "Just pass the message." Vers10ns two and three omit just.

9. Versions one and two read, "I'm sorry." Version three drop the contraction, reading, "I am sorry..." So to be pedantic, version one differs from version two in six trivial details and from version three in nine. Two and three differ from each other three times. The variances are undramatic, but on the other hand, patient papyrologists discard no variance at all until they know how it could have occurred.

27. The March 19 letter is reprinted in Tape, pp. 173-74.

28. Washington Post, May 24, 1973.

29. A final note for the late-breaking news that Haldeman himself appreciated the political magnitude of Watergate and as of mid-1976 was still open to the possibility that somebody in the CIA might have been after Nixon. In serialized excerpts from his forthcoming memoir (see Universal Press Syndicate release of June 20, 1976, "Inside the Nixon White House," Part I), Haldeman says outright that if it had not been for Watergate, "South Vietnam would not have fallen," "Henry Kissinger would not be secretary of state, and the 1976 Republican presidential candidate would not have been either Jerry Ford or Ronald Reagan­ but John Connally." And in Part IV of the above dated June 23, 1976, he writes: "In retrospect, I'm ambivalent as to whether the [Central Intelligence] Agency was out to get Nixon. I don’t dismiss it as an impossibility. I do believe that there are a number of unanswered questions about the. break-in at the Watergate. The Agency had the capacity and perhaps, unknown to me, the motivation."

1. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 119-20.

2. Tad Szulc, "The Warren Commission in Its Own Words," New Republic, September 27, 1975, p. 47.

3. The Trilateral Commission met in 1975 to discuss the state of democracy in the First World countries. Its controversial final report, called The Governability of Democracies, argues that the troubles experienced by the advanced industrial democracies during the 1960s were caused by "an excess of democracy"—as though the "riot and rebellion" of that happy decade were not a thousand times over-provoked by the cowardice, arrogance, deceit, and stupidity of the ruling class elites re Vietnam, re social policy, re the environment. Governability implies furthermore that if the hazards facing the late twentieth century are to be handled "rationally" and "efficiently," then government will find it necessary to curtail democratic privileges everywhere.

4. And as of Thanksgiving 1975, of course, President Ford had acknowledged the need for a new investigation of one aspect of JFK's death, the question of Oswald's political connections and identity (see chapter 4). In a miracle, Ford or Church would have chosen to open up the question as a whole to a fully public airing in which all voices in this lengthy and trying dispute could be heard and fairly Judged by an informed public. But following the example of his predecessor, Ford chose instead the path of the “limited hang-out" and stuck with the original Warren theory that Oswald, whoever he was, fired all the shots. Any study of Oswald' taking his guilt as a foregone conclusion or an established fact will only repeat the performance of the Warren Commission.

* * *

Carl Oglesby is the author of two previous books Containment and Change (with Richard Shaull) and New Left Reader, a popular mass paperback which he edited. Oglesby has taught courses in Political Criticism at M.I.T. and Dartmouth and Antioch Colleges.

An early president of Students for a Democratic Society, Oglesby is presently associated with the Assassination Information Bureau (67 Inman Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02139) a group organized in 1972 to politicize the question of John F. Kennedy's assassination. His interest in the assassination of Kennedy and others and his involvement with the theoretical foundations of the antiwar movement in the sixties led to his work on this book.