Keven Hofeling

Yes, there is, as you describe,"a catalogue of slump witnesses," which I will present below, but first let's take a look at the "back and to the left" headshot sequence of the extant "original" Zapruder film, and some transcripts of Dan Rather's description of this segment in order to allow us to appreciate the significance of the "catalogue" you are inquiring about: A profoundly underappreciated fact in JFKA research circles today is that the violent and pronounced "back and to the left" movement of President Kennedy in the following headshot sequence of the extant "original" Zapruder film is unique to the film itself (as I will demonstrate below): In the following 2015 Education Forum post by @Robert Prudhomme, Mr. Prudhomme addressed two examples from Dan Rather's 11/1963 reports on the camera-original Zapruder film that he viewed that on first impression appear to be inaccurate, and for which Rather has been intensely criticized over the years, and Prudhomme presents independent evidence in support of the accuracy of one of them. Prudhomme's post (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/21612-dan-rathers-description-of-zapruder-film-corroborated-by-witness/) reads as follows (And NOTE the highlighted passage in bold relating to Rather's reports of JFK's movement upon being shot in the head): "Below is a link to a Youtube film showing newsman Dan Rather describing his viewing of the Zapruder film on 25/11/63 [This link has been cued for you in advance]. His descriptions vary greatly from what is actually seen in the version of the Z film we see today. I had put this down to Mr. Rather misremembering (OMG! Misremembering? I just used a classic LN verb) what he had seen but, after reading some eyewitness testimony today, I believe he was describing exactly what he saw. At about 1:34 in this film, Mr. Rather describes Gov. John Connally turning in his seat, and extending his right hand towards JFK. Of course, no such thing can be seen in today's version of the Z film. However, read this excerpt from the WC testimony of eyewitness S.M. Holland, a railroad worker who saw the assassination unfold from atop the Triple Underpass. "Mr. HOLLAND - And the motorcade was coming down in this fashion, and the President was waving to the people on this side [indicating]. Mr. STERN - That is the north side of Elm Street? Mr. HOLLAND - Yes; On the north side. Mr. STERN - All right. Mr. HOLLAND - And she was looking in this direction [indicating]. Mr. STERN - "She," is Mrs. Kennedy? Mr. HOLLAND - His wife. And about that time--- Mr. STERN - Was looking in a southern direction? Mr. HOLLAND - In the southern direction. Mr. STERN - South side of Elm Street? Mr. HOLLAND - And about that time he went over like that [indicating], and put his hand up, and she was still looking off, as well as I could tell. Mr. STERN - Now, when you say, "he went like that," you leaned forward and raised your right hand? Mr. HOLLAND - Pulled forward and hand just stood like that momentarily. Mr. STERN - With his right hand? Mr. HOLLAND - His right hand; and that was the first report that I heard. Mr. STERN - What did it sound like? Mr. HOLLAND - Well, it was pretty loud, and naturally, underneath this underpass here it would be a little louder, the concussion from underneath it, it was a pretty loud report, and the car traveled a few yards, and Governor Connally turned in this fashion, like that [indicating] with his hand out, and another report. Mr. STERN - With his right hand out? Mr. HOLLAND - Turning to his right. Mr. STERN - To his right? Mr. HOLLAND - And another report rang out and he slumped down in his seat, and about that time Mrs. Kennedy was looking at these girls over here [indicating]. The girls standing---now one of them was taking a picture, and the other one was just standing there, and she turned around facing the President and Governor Connally. In other words, she realized what was happening, I guess. Now, I mean, that was apparently that---she turned back around, and by the time she could get turned around he was hit again along in---I'd say along in here [indicating]. Mr. STERN - How do you know that? Did you observe that? Mr. HOLLAND - I observed it. It knocked him completely down on the floor. Over, just slumped completely over. That second--- Mr. STERN - Did you hear a third report? Mr. HOLLAND - I heard a third report and I counted four shots and about the same time all this was happening, and in this group of trees--[indicating]. Mr. STERN - Now, you are indicating trees on the north side of Elm Street?" So, Dan rather was not the only one to see Connally extend his hand out. Is this more proof of alteration of the Z film? We have @Pat Speer to thank for the following transcripts of Dan Rather's reports about what he viewed in the camera-original Zapruder film, which Speer emphasized, without realizing the significance of what he was highlighting. In short, Dan Rather, like Sam Holland above and those that follow below did not see or report to the American public the violent "back and to the left" reaction of JFK that is so prominent in the extant "original" Zapruder film today. The following is excerpted from PatSpeer.com (https://www.patspeer.com/jahs-chapter-4 ) : "...Wrong-Way Rather Meanwhile, in radio and TV land, a whole new reign of error was beginning. CBS newsman Dan Rather, after viewing the home movie of the assassination taken by Abraham Zapruder, rushed back to the studio to describe the film for CBS News' radio and television audience. His description was to have many unfortunate consequences. (This first transcript was published by Richard Trask in Pictures of the Pain.) Dan Rather (Radio Take 1): "Well, let me tell you then, give you a word picture of the motion picture we have just seen. The President's automobile which was preceded by only one other car containing Secret Service Agents...the President's open black Lincoln automobile made a turn, a left turn off of Houston Street in Dallas onto Elm Street, this was right on the fringe area of the downtown area. This left turn was made right below the window from which the shot was fired...as the car made the turn, completed the turn--went below the window from which this shot was fired...went on past the building--keep in mind the window was on the sixth floor...it got about 35 yards from the base of the building...that is if you had dropped a plumb line from the window to the sidewalk to...the President's car was around 35 yards from that spot...President Kennedy had just put his right hand up to the side of his right eye. It appeared that he was perhaps brushing back his hair or rubbing his eyebrow. Mrs. Kennedy was not looking in his direction. In front of them in the jump seat of the Lincoln...were Governor and Mrs. Connally. The Governor, as was the President, was on the side of the car of the building in which the assassin was located. Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connally were on the opposite side. Two Secret Service men on the front seat...At almost the instant the President put his hand up to his eyebrow...on the right side of his face, with Mrs. Kennedy looking away, the President lurched forward just a bit. Uh, it was obvious he had been hit in the movie but you had to be looking very closely in order to see it. Mrs. Kennedy did not appear to be aware that he was hit but Governor Connally in the seat just in front of the President, seemingly heard the shot...or sensed that something was wrong...Governor Connally, whose coat button was open, turned in such a way to extend his right hand out towards the President and the Governor seemed to have a look on his face that might say "What is it? What happened?" And as he turned he exposed his entire shirt front and chest because his coat was unbuttoned...at that moment a shot very clearly hit that part of the Governor. He was wounded once with a chest shot, this we now know...Uh, the Governor fell back in his seat...Mrs. Connally immediately fell over the Governor. Uh, I say fell, she threw herself over the Governor and at that instant the second shot the third shot total but the second shot hit President Kennedy and there was no doubt there, his head...went forward with considerable violence." (Note: Rather's description here is quite controversial. As Kennedy's head actually goes slightly forward, and then back and to the left with considerable violence, many see his saying that Kennedy went forward with considerable violence as a deliberate lie designed to sell the American people that the fatal shot came from behind. If it is true that Rather was trying to sell the American people the single-assassin scenario, however, it back-fired, as he also claimed the film showed Connally being hit well after Kennedy had first been hit, which is in conflict with the single-bullet theory so central to the single-assassin conclusion.) Rather then described the aftermath of the shooting: "Mrs. Kennedy stood up immediately her mouth wide open...The President slumped over against Mrs. Kennedy almost toppling her over as she was standing...Mrs. Kennedy then threw herself out of the back seat of the car onto the trunk of the car almost on all fours...stretched out over the trunk of the car...There was a Secret Service man standing on the back bumper. It would appear that Mrs. Kennedy was either trying to get herself out of what she knew instinctively was danger or perhaps was trying to grab the Secret Service man and pull him into the back seat of the car for help. At any rate Mrs. Kennedy was prone, uh face down on the back of the car on the trunk...The Secret Service man leaned over put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her back into the car. He seemed to be in danger of perhaps rolling or falling off the back. A Secret Service man in the front seat of the car uh was already on the telephone perhaps he had been on the phone all along it was not clear and the car sped away." Rather then answered a few questions from his fellow newsmen Richard Hotelett and Hughes Rudd. When asked if the limo ever stopped, he replied "The car never stopped, it never paused." When asked the length of the film, he replied "Well, the complete scene that I just described to you covers exactly 20 seconds--that is from the time the car made the turn until the car disappeared onto an underpass." When asked if the President was hit twice, he then added: "It was very clear that the President was hit twice. He was hit, Governor Connally was hit and the Gov...uh the President was hit again." When asked the length of the shooting sequence itself, he then offered: "No more than five seconds and I...am inclined to think slightly less than that perhaps." (Note: when all is said and done, this was perhaps Rather's biggest mistake. By assuming that the fatal head shot was the third shot, and timing the shooting sequence from the first hit to the final hit, without accepting that there could have been a miss--without studying the eyewitness testimony, moreover, to see that there very likely was a miss--Rather thoroughly misled the public.) Rather was then rushed onto television to describe the film to Walter Cronkite during CBS News' ongoing coverage of the assassination and aftermath. The time was approximately 4:07 PM EST. (Transcript created from the video on Youtube.) Dan Rather (TV Take 1): "We have just returned from seeing a complete motion picture of the moments preceding, and the moments of, President Kennedy’s assassination and the shooting of Texas Governor John Connally. Here is what the motion picture shows. The automobile, the black Lincoln convertible, with the top down - carrying, in the front seat, two secret service agents; in the middle, or jump seat, the Governor and Mrs. Connally; and, in the rear seat, President and Mrs. Kennedy – made a turn off of Houston Street, on the fringe of downtown Dallas, on to Elm Street. This was a left turn and was made right in front of the building from which the assassin’s bullet was fired. After making the turn, and going about 35 yards from the corner of the building – six stories up in which the assassin had a window open – and keep in mind here that President Kennedy and Governor Connally are seated on, both on the same side of the car, on the side facing the building. Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connally are on the side of the car away from the assassin. About 35 yards from the base of the building, President Kennedy, in the film, put his hand up to the right side of his face, the side facing the assassin. He seemingly wanted to brush back his hair, or perhaps rub his eyebrow. Mrs. Kennedy at this moment was looking away, or looking straight ahead. She was not looking at her husband. At that moment, when the President had his right hand up to this side of his face (gestures), he lurched just a bit forward. It was obvious that the first shot had hit him. Mrs. Kennedy was not looking at him, nor did she appear to know at that instant that her husband had been hit. Governor Connally, in the seat immediately in front of the President, apparently either heard the shot or sensed that something was wrong because, Governor Connally, with his coat open, his button was undone, turned in this manner (turns back to his right with right arm extended), his hand outstretched, back toward the President; and the Governor had a look on his face that would indicate he perhaps was saying “What’s wrong?” or “What happened?” or “Can I help?” or something. But as Governor Connally was turned this way, his white shirt front exposed well to the view of the assassin, the Governor was obviously hit by a bullet, and he fell over to the side. Governor Connally’s wife, immediately, seemingly instantaneously, placed herself over her husband in a protective position, it appeared; and as Governor Connally fell back, President Kennedy was still leaned over. At that moment another bullet obviously hit the head of the President. The President’s head went forward, violently, in this manner (gestures). Mrs. Kennedy, at that instant, seemed to be looking right-square at her husband. She stood up. The President slumped over to the side and, I believe, brushed against Mrs. Kennedy’s dress. Mrs. Kennedy immediately turned and flung herself on the trunk of the automobile, face-down on the trunk, almost on all-fours. The First Lady appeared to be either frantically trying to get the secret service man who was riding on the bumper of the car - the single secret service man riding on that bumper - to come into the car or to tell him what had happened; or perhaps, from the picture, it appeared she might have been trying to get out of the car some way. The car never stopped. The secret service man in the front seat had a telephone in his hand. The car…its acceleration increased rapidly and it disappeared under an underpass. Three shots - the first one hitting President Kennedy, the second one hitting Governor Connally, the third one hitting the President – consumed, possibly, five seconds. Not much more than that, if any. That is the scene shown in about twenty seconds of film that the FBI has in its possession. The film was taken by an amateur photographer who was in a very advantageous position, and who had his camera trained on the President’s car from the time it made the turn in front of the assassin until it disappeared on its way to the hospital. This is Dan Rather in Dallas." A short time later, he once again described the film to Cronkite. The time was approximately 4:21 PM EST. (Transcript created from the video on Youtube). Dan Rather (TV Take 2): "We have just returned from seeing a complete motion picture of the moments immediately preceding, and the moments of, President Kennedy’s assassination. The motion picture shows the limousine carrying: in the front seat, two secret service men; in the middle, or jump seat, Governor and Mrs. John Connally of Texas; and, in the rear seat, President and Mrs. Kennedy; a single secret service man standing on the back bumper; the top of the black Lincoln convertible down. The car made a turn, a left turn, off of Houston Street, on to Elm Street, on the fringe of Dallas’ down-town area; that turn made directly below the sixth floor window from which the assassin’s bullets came. After the left turn was completed, the automobile, with only one car in front of it - a secret service car immediately in front – the President’s car proceeded about 35 yards from the base of the building in which the assassin was. President Kennedy and Governor Connally were seated on the same side of the open car, the side facing the building: Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connally on the side of the car opposite the assassin. President Kennedy is clearly shown to put his right hand up to the side of his face as if to either brush back his hair, or perhaps rub his eyebrow. Mrs. Kennedy at that instant is looking away, and is not looking at the President. At almost that instant, when the President has his hand up to this side of his face (gestures), he lurches forward something in this manner (gestures): The first shot had hit him. Mrs. Kennedy appeared not to notice. Governor Connally, in the seat right in front of the President – by the way, the Governor had his suit coat open, his suit was not buttoned – perhaps either heard the shot or somehow he knew something was wrong because the picture shows just after that first shot hit the President, the Governor turned in something this manner, with his right arm stretched back toward the President, as if to say “What’s wrong?” or “What happened?” or say something. It exposed the entire white front shirt of the Governor to the full view of the assassin’s window; and as the Governor was in this position, and President Kennedy behind him was slumped slightly over, a shot clearly hit the front of Governor Connally; and the Governor fell back over toward his wife. Mrs. Connally immediately put herself over her husband in a protective position, and as she did so, in the back seat, this time with Mrs. Kennedy’s eyes apparently right on her husband, the second shot – the third shot in all – the second shot hit the President’s head. His head went forward, in a violent motion, pushing it down like this (leans forward, lowering his head as he does so). Mrs. Kennedy was on her feet immediately. The President fell over in this direction (leans to his left). It appeared his head probably brushed or hit against Mrs. Kennedy’s legs. The First Lady almost immediately tried to crawl on – did crawl on - to the trunk of the car, face-down, her whole body almost was on that trunk, in something of an all-fours position. She appeared to be either trying to desperately get the attention of the secret service man on the back bumper, or perhaps she was stretching out toward him to grab him, to try to get him in. Or perhaps even trying to get herself out of the car. But the car was moving all the time, and the car never stopped. The secret service man on the back bumper leaned way over and put his hands on Mrs. Kennedy’s shoulders – she appeared to be in some danger of falling or rolling off that trunk lid. He pushed her back into the back seat of the car. In the front seat, a secret service man was with a phone in his hand. The car speeded up and sped away. It never stopped, the car never paused. That’s what the film of the assassination showed. The film was taken by an amateur photographer who had placed himself in an advantageous position: eight millimeter color film. This is Dan Rather in Dallas." And that wasn't the last of it. Several hours later (one source claims at 8:26 PM EST) Rather described the film to Cronkite for a third and final time, and compounded his mistakes. (Transcript created from the video on Youtube.) Dan Rather (TV Take 3): "The films we saw were taken by an amateur photographer, who had a particularly good vantage point, just past the building from which the fatal shot was fired. The films show President Kennedy's open, black limousine, making a left turn, off Houston Street on to Elm Street on the fringe of downtown Dallas, a left turn made just below the window in which the assassin was waiting. About 35 yards past the very base of the building, just below the window, President Kennedy could be seen to, to put his right hand, up to the side of his head to, either brush back his hair or perhaps rub his eyebrow. President Kennedy was sitting on the same side of the car, as the building from which the shot came. Mrs. Kennedy was by his side. In the jump seat in front of him, Mrs. Connally, and Governor Connally, Governor Connally on the same side of the car as the president. And in the front seat, two Secret Service men. Just as the president put that right hand up to the side of his head, he, you could see him, lurch forward. The first shot had hit him. Mrs. Kennedy was looking in another direction, and apparently didn't see, or sense the first shot, or didn't hear it. But Governor Connally, in the seat in front, appeared to have heard it, or at least sensed that something was wrong. The Governor's coat was open. He, he reached back in this fashion, exposing his white shirt front to the assassin’s window, reached back as if to, to offer aid or ask the president something. At that moment, a shot clearly hit the governor, in the front, and he fell back in his seat. Mrs. Connally immediately threw herself over him in a protective position. In the next instant, with this time Mrs. Kennedy apparently looking on, a second shot, the third total shot, hit the president's head. He, his head can be seen to move violently forward. And, Mrs. Kennedy stood up immediately, the president leaned over her way. It appeared that he might have brushed her legs. Mrs. Kennedy then, literally went on the top of the trunk, of the Lincoln car, p-put practically her whole body on the trunk. It, it appeared she might have been on all fours, there, reaching out for the Secret Service man, the lone Secret Service man who was riding on the bumper of the car, the back bumper on Mrs. Kennedy's side. Uh, the Secret Service man leaned forward and put his hands on Mrs. Kennedy's shoulder to, push her back into the car. She was in some danger, it appeared, of rolling off or falling off. And when we described this before, there was some question about what we meant by Mrs. Kennedy being on the trunk of the car. Only she knows, but it appeared that she was trying desperately to, to get the Secret Service man's attention or perhaps to help pull him into the car. The car never stopped, it never paused. In the front seat, a Secret Service man was, was on the telephone. The car picked up speed, and disappeared beneath an underpass. This is Dan Rather in Dallas." (Note: in this, his fourth and final description of the Zapruder film, Rather repeated his inaccurate claim Kennedy's head went forward in response to the fatal head shot, but retreated from his speculation Mrs. Kennedy climbed onto the back of the limo while instinctively running from danger. In his 1977 book, The Camera Never Blinks, in which he acknowledged his mistake about the movement of Kennedy's head, but mistakenly claimed that he viewed the film on Saturday the 23rd, Rather did shed some light on something of interest: the reasons for his retreat. He admitted that "an editor" in New York told him to "leave out the part about her trying to flee." And that he did.) But Rather was not the only one making false assumptions and compromises. An 11-25 AP Dispatch (found in the 11-26 Milwaukee Journal) proves that Rather was not even the only one claiming Kennedy's head jerked forward upon impact long before anyone could possibly have concluded it had indeed jerked slightly forward. It read: "Dallas, Tex.-AP - A strip of movie film graphically depicting the assassination of President Kennedy was made by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8 millimeter camera. Several persons in Dallas who have seen the film which lasts about 15 seconds, say it clearly shows how the president was hit in the head with shattering force by the second of two bullets fired by the assassin. Life magazine reportedly purchased still picture rights to the material for about $40,000. This is what the film by Abe Zapruder is reported to show: First the presidential limousine is coming toward the camera. As it comes abreast of the photographer, Mr. Kennedy is hit by the first bullet, apparently in the neck. He turns toward his wife Jacqueline, seated at his left, and she quickly begins to put her hands around his head. At the same time, Texas Gov. John Connally, riding directly in front of the president, turns around to see what has happened. Then Mr. Kennedy is hit on the upper right side of the back of his head with violent force. His head goes forward and then snaps back, and he slumps down on the seat. At this time, Gov. Connolly is wounded and he drops forward on his seat. Mrs. Kennedy then jumps up and crawls across the back deck of the limousine, apparently seeking the aid of a secret service man who has been trotting behind the slowly moving vehicle. He jumps onto the car and shoves Mrs. Kennedy back into the seat. Then he orders the driver to speed to the hospital where the president died. The elapsed time from the moment when Mr. Kennedy is first struck until the car disappears in an underpass is about five seconds." An 11-26 article by John Herbers, published in the 11-27 New York Times, moreover, repeats this same mistake. Herbers writes: "The known facts about the bullets, and the position of the assassin, suggested that he started shooting as the President’s car was coming toward him, swung his rifle in an arc of almost 180 degrees and fired at least twice more. A rifle like the one that killed President Kennedy might be able to fire three shots in two seconds, a gun expert indicated after tests. (Note: this line is found in online versions of this article, but is not in a clipping of the article found in the Weisberg Archives. Perhaps it was only added for evening editions of the paper.) A strip of color movie film taken by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8-mm camera tends to support this sequence of events. The film covers about a 15-second period. As the President’s car come abreast of the photographer, the President was struck in the front of the neck. The President turned toward Mrs. Kennedy as she began to put her hands around his head. Connally Turns Around At the same time, Governor Connally, riding in front of the President, turned round to see what had happened. Then the President was struck on the head. His head went forward, then snapped back, as he slumped in his seat. At that time, Governor Connally was wounded. The elapsed time from the moment Mr. Kennedy was first struck until the car disappeared in an underpass was five seconds.” Now this is interesting. Note that the AP article and the New York Times article make the same mistakes and repeat the same non-fact facts (which I have highlighted). Note that they both claim Connally was wounded by the third shot, for example. This suggests that the AP writer and Herbers were either sharing information or being fed some of the same questionable facts from an outside source, most probably the FBI. Well, then, was their main mistake--that Kennedy's head went forward--something told them by the FBI, and, if so, should we then assume Dan Rather was also told to say this? I mean, really, is it just a coincidence that CBS News, the Associated Press, and The New York Times, in short order, all incorrectly reported that the Zapruder film showed Kennedy's head going forward? That's pretty hard to believe. Which brings us to UPI's article on the film. Here it is, as found in the 11-26 Philadelphia Daily News (4 star edition). The headline on the front page reads: “Man Who Came to See JFK Makes Tragic Movie.” Beneath this, there is the following explanation: “These dramatic pictures are from an 8mm ‘home movie’ reel, shot by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder who went to see President Kennedy ride through cheering throngs in Texas city. His camera recorded one of the most tragic moments in American history. Story page 3.“ Beneath this, are four frames from a home movie of the assassination. On page 3, the following story is presented: Movie Film Shows Murder of President Dallas (UPI) An amateur photographer shot an 8-MM movie film that clearly shows, step-by-step, the assassination of President Kennedy. The film was made by Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas dress manufacturer. He is selling rights to the film privately. It has been seen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and representatives of the news media. It is seven feet long, 35 seconds in colour, a bit jumpy but clear. It opens as the Kennedy motorcade rounds the corner from Houston Street and turns into Elm Street. Then it picks up the President’s car and follows it down toward the underpass. Suddenly, in the film, Kennedy is seen to jerk. It is the first shot. Mrs. Kennedy turns, puts her arms around him. A second later, the second shot. The President’s head becomes a blur on the film, lunged forward and up. The second bullet has torn into the back of his head. He rolls towards Mrs. Kennedy and disappears from sight. Mrs. Kennedy lurches onto the flat trunk deck of the Presidential car as a Secret Service man races to their aid. She is on her hands and knees. She reaches for him. He leaps up on the bumper. She pulls him up on the bumper or he pushes her back as the film ends...." And that brings us to the "catalogue of slump witnesses" that you had asked about, which was assembled from the testimony of Dealey Plaza witnesses by physicist and Zapruder film critic John Costella, and demonstrates that the Dealey Plaza witnesses also did not see the violent "back and to the left" movement of President Kennedy upon being shot in the head which is so prominent in the extant "original" Zapruder film today. Instead, the Dealey Plaza witnesses saw what Dan Rather reported, that upon being struck in the head President Kennedy fell forward and to his left into Mrs. Kennedy’s lap: 'What Happened on Elm Street? The Eyewitnesses Speak' | ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 | By John P. Costella |http://assassinationresearch.com/v5n1/v5n1costella.pdf The President fell forward and to his left into Mrs. Kennedy’s lap. James Chaney (motorcycle policeman, on the right rear fender of the Presi- dential limousine), November 22, 1963: “I was riding on the right rear fender. We had proceeded west on Elm Street at approximately 15 to 20 miles an hour. We heard the first shot. I thought it was a motorcycle backfiring and, uh, I looked back over to my left and also President Ken- nedy looked back over his left shoulder. Then the, uh, second shot came, well then I looked back just in time to see the President struck in the face by the second bullet. He slumped forward into Mrs. Kennedy’s lap, and uh, it was apparent to me that we’re being fired upon.” [Interview with Bill Lord of ABC News for WFAA-TV, as quoted in Trask, That Day in Dallas] Emmett Hudson (standing on the steps on the grassy knoll going to the picket fence), November 22, 1963: “At the same time the President’s car was directly in front of us, I heard a shot and I saw the President fall over in the seat.” [Sheriff’s Department affidavit: 19H481] Gayle Newman (on the north side of Elm Street, near the Presidential lim- ousine at the time of the shooting), November 22, 1963: “I saw blood all over the side of his [the President’s] head. About this time Mrs. Kennedy grabbed the President and he kind of lay over to the side kind of in her arms.” [Sheriff’s Department affidavit: CE2003: 24H218] Charles Brehm (on south side of Elm Street, close to the President at the start of the shooting), November 24, 1963: “Brehm said when the Presi- dent was hit by the second shot, he could notice the President’s hair fly up, and then roll over to the side, as Mrs. Kennedy was apparently pull- ing him in that direction.” [FBI report: CE1425: 22H837] LIFE Magazine (purportedly in possession of the original Zapruder film), November 24, 1963: “The President collapses on his wife’s shoulder ....” [LIFE, November 29, 1963, printed on November 24, 1963] Roy Kellerman (Secret Service agent, in the front passenger seat of the Presidential limousine), November 27, 1963: “The President fell on Mrs. Kennedy’s lap.” [FBI report: CD7] Emory Roberts (Secret Service agent, in the follow-up car), November 29, 1963: “I do not know if it was the next shot or the third shot that hit the President in the head, but I saw what appeared to be a small explosion on the right side of the President’s head, saw blood, at which time the President fell further to his left.” [Statement: CE1024: 18H734] George Hickey (Secret Service agent, in the follow-up car), November 30, 1963: “It looked to me as if the President was struck in the right upper rear of his head. The first shot of the second two seemed as if it missed because the hair on the right side of his head flew forward and there didn’t seem to be any impact against his head. The last shot seemed to hit his head and cause a noise at the point of impact which made him fall forward and to his left again.” [Statement sent to Special Agent in Charge of White House Detail, Gerald A. Behn: 18H762] Sam Kinney (Secret Service agent, driving the follow-up car), November 30, 1963: “I saw one shot strike the President in the right side of the head. The President then fell to the seat to the left toward Mrs. Kennedy.” [Statement: CE1024: 18H731] Clint Hill (Secret Service agent, in the follow-up car), November 30, 1963: “I jumped from the follow-up car and ran toward the Presidential limou- sine. I heard a second firecracker type noise but it had a different sound—like the sound of shooting a revolver into something hard. I saw the President slump more toward his left.” [Statement: CE1024: 18H742] Paul Landis (Secret Service agent, on the right running-board of the follow- up car), November 30, 1963: “I saw pieces of flesh and blood flying through the air and the President slumped out of sight towards Mrs. Kennedy.” [Statement: CE1024: 18H755] Austin Miller (on top of the triple overpass), December 18, 1963: “Turning back to observe the car, he saw someone fall forward, but he could not tell who was in the car ....” [FBI report: CD205] F. Lee Mudd (on the north side of Elm Street, near the Presidential limou- sine at the time of the shooting), January 24, 1964: “When the Presi- dent’s car came abreast of Mudd, he could see the President slumped over toward his wife, who was leaning over him.” [FBI report: CE2108: 24H538] Clint Hill (Secret Service agent, running from the follow-up car), March 9, 1964: “... the second noise that I heard had removed a portion of the President’s head, and he had slumped noticeably to his left.” [Warren Commission testimony: 2H138] Roy Kellerman (Secret Service agent, in the front passenger seat of the Presidential limousine), March 9, 1964: “Now, in the seconds that I talked just now, a flurry of shells come into the car. I then looked back and this time Mr. Hill, who was riding on the left front bumper of our fol- lowup car, was on the back trunk of that car [the Presidential limousine]; the President was sideways down in to the back seat.” (Mr. Specter: “In- dicating on his left side.”) Mr. Kellerman: “Right; just like I am here.” (Mr. Specter: “You mean, correct, left side.”) Mr. Kellerman: “Correct; yes, sir.” [Later:] (Mr. Specter: “Where did you look next; what did you observe following that?”) Mr. Kellerman: “Then I observed how the President was lying, which was—he was—flat in the seat in this direction.” (Mr. Specter: “On his left-hand side?”) Mr. Kellerman: “Yes, sir.” [Warren Commission testimony: 2H74, 77] Jean Hill (on the south side of Elm Street, near the Presidential limousine at the time of the shots), March 13, 1964: “Mrs. Hill heard more shots ring out and saw the hair on the back of President Kennedy’s head fly up. She stated she thought Mrs. Kennedy cried out, ‘Oh, my God, he’s been shot!’ As the President fell forward in his seat Mrs. Hill knew he had been hit by a bullet.” [FBI report: 25H853–4] Ewell Cowsert (on top of the triple overpass), March 17, 1964: “Cowsert ad- vised that just as President Kennedy’s car passed the Texas School Book Depository Building he heard two or three shots ring out and saw Presi- dent Kennedy slump forward in his seat.” [FBI report: 22H836] George Davis (on top of the triple overpass), March 17, 1964: “He stated his first impression was that someone had played a prank, but then he saw guns in the hands of the Secret Service agents with President Kennedy, saw President Kennedy slumped forward, and the police motorcycle es- cort maneuver swiftly about the area and he realized it was not a prank.” [FBI report: 22H837] Jean Hill (on the south side of Elm Street, near the Presidential limousine at the time of the shots), March 24, 1964: (Mr. Specter: “And what reac- tion, if any, did he have at the time of the first shot?”) [The following seems to correspond to what the other witnesses describe as the second shot.] Mrs. Hill: “As I said, I had yelled at him and he had started to raise his head up and I saw his head start to come up and all at once a bullet rang out and he slumped forward like this [indicating].” (Mr. Specter: “Lurched or slumped, as you say, to the left?”) Mrs. Hill: “Yes.” (Mr. Specter: “Did his head drop down?”) Mrs. Hill: “Yes; he was just, you know, slumping down like this.” [Warren Commission testimony: 6H208] James Jarman (looking out a window directly below the ‘sniper’s lair’ in the Texas School Book Depository), March 24, 1964: (Mr. McCloy: “Did you see the President actually hit by the bullets?”) Mr. Jarman: “No, sir. I couldn’t say that I saw him actually hit, but after the second shot, I pre- sumed that he was, because I had my eye on his car from the time it came down Houston until the time it started toward the freeway under- pass.” (Mr. McCloy: “You saw him crumple, you saw him fall, did you?”) Mr. Jarman: “I saw him lean his head.” [Warren Commission testimony: 3H204] Harry Holmes (looking through binoculars from the fifth floor of the Termi- nal Annex building, on the other side of Dealey Plaza, two blocks south of Elm Street), April 2, 1964: “Mr. Kennedy leaned over against his wife, Mrs. Kennedy, as this thing, firecracker, looked like, come out.” [Warren Commission testimony: 7H291] S. M. Holland (on top of the triple overpass), April 8, 1964: “In other words, she [Mrs. Kennedy] realized what was happening, I guess. Now, I mean, that was apparently that—she turned back around, and by the time she could get turned around he [the President] was hit again along in—I’d say along in here [indicating].” (Mr. Stern: “How do you know that? Did you observe that?”) Mr. Holland: “I observed it. It knocked him com- pletely down on the floor. Over, just slumped completely over. That sec- ond——” (Mr. Stern: “Did you hear a third report?”) [Warren Commission testimony: 6H243] Austin Miller (on top of the triple overpass), April 8, 1964: “After the first one, just a few seconds later, there was two more shots fired or, or sounded like a sound at the time. I didn’t know for sure. And it was after that I saw some man in the car fall forward, ....” [Warren Commission testimony: 6H225] Mrs. Kennedy, June 5, 1964: “And then he sort of did this [indicating], put his hand to his forehead and fell in my lap. And then I just remember fal- ling on him ... And just being down in the car with his head in my lap.” [Warren Commission testimony: 5H180] Emmett Hudson (standing on the steps on the grassy knoll going to the picket fence), July 22, 1964: (Mr. Liebeler: “What happened after the President got hit in the head, did you see what he did, what happened in the car?”) Mr. Hudson: “He slumped over and Mrs. Kennedy, she climbs over in the seat with him and pulls him over.” [Warren Commission tes- timony: 7H561] James Altgens (AP photographer, on the south side of Elm Street, close to the President at the time of the head shots), July 22, 1964: “... at the time I was looking at the President, just as he was struck [in the head], it caused him to move a bit forward. He seemed as if at the time—well, he was in a position—sort of immobile. He wasn’t upright. He was at an an- gle but when it hit him, it seemed to have lodged—it seemed as if he were hung up on a seat button or something like that. It knocked him just enough forward that he came right on down.” [Warren Commission tes- timony: 7H518] Ambiguous: Bill Newman (on the north side of Elm Street, near the Presi- dential limousine at the time of the shooting), November 22, 1963: “Then he fell back ... It looked like Mrs. Kennedy jumped on top of the Presi- dent. He kinda fell back and it looked like she was holding him.” [It is not clear whether Newman is describing the President falling back away from him, toward Mrs. Kennedy, or backwards in the seat.] [Sheriff’s Depart- ment affidavit: 19H490] Contrary: Charles Brehm (on south side of Elm Street, close to the President at the start of the shooting), November 22, 1963: “Then on the second shot he seemed to fall back.” [Dallas Times Herald]

That Erwin Schwartz specifically says the limo did not stop troubles me, and it also troubles me that Dino Brugioni, when interviewed by Peter Janney and Doug Horne in 2009, did not say that he had seen the limo stop. Yet, when we consult the earliest testimony of the eyewitnesses closest to the limo at the time of the headshot in Dealey Plaza, such as Bill Newman, Charles Brehm, Mary Moorman and Jean Hill, all four of them said it had in fact come to a stop... -------------------------------------------------------------- From Vince Palamara's article, ‘Fifty–nine Witnesses: Delay on Elm Street’, Dealey Plaza Echo, vol.3 no.2 (July 1992), pp.1–7. William Newman was adamant that the car stopped. Palamara cites several accounts of interviews with researchers: “the car momentarily stopped and the driver seemed to have a radio or phone up to his ear and he seemed to be waiting on some word. … Then the cars roared off. … I’ve maintained that they stopped. I still say they did. It was only a momentary stop, but … I believe Kennedy’s car came to a full stop after the final shot. Now everywhere that you read about it, you don’t read anything about the car stopping. And when I say ‘stopped’ I mean very momentarily, like they hit the brakes and just a few seconds passed and then they floorboarded and accelerated on … and just for a moment they hesitated and stopped.” http://22november1963.org.uk/did-jfk-limo-stop-on-elm-street ----------------------------------------------------------------- From 'An Interview with Assassination Eye Witness Bill Newman', THE DEALEY PLAZA ECHO, Volume 2, March 1992: " and the car momentarily stopped" And then I can remember that when we were on the ground - I'd like to bring this up if I may - looking back over my shoulder I can remember, I believe it was the passenger in the front seat - there were two men in the front seat - had a telephone or something to his ear and the car momentarily stopped. Now everywhere that you read about it, you don't read anything about the car stopping. And when I say "stopped" I mean very momentarily, like they hit the brakes and just a few seconds passed and then they floorboarded and accelerated on." LAW: "But you don't really see that in the Zapruder film." NEWMAN: "No, you don't. But anyway, that's the impression I'm left with." LAW: "Several people said that the car stopped." NEWMAN: "Yes, and then they shot on. You know, through the overpass, the railroad overpass, and that's the last we saw of them." http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/N Disk/Newman William & Gayle/Item 01.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------ From the 11/25/1963 FBI report of interview of Charles F. Brehm: "...BREHM expressed his opinion that between the first and third shots, the President's car only Seemed to move some 10 or 12 feet . It seemed to him that the automobile almost came to a halt after the first shot, but of this he is not certain. After the third shot, the car in which the President was riding increased its speed and went under the freeway overpass and out of his sight...." https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1425.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------ From the 11/22/1963 FBI report of interview of Mary Moorman: "...[Mary Moorman] recalls that the President's automobile was moving at the time she took the second picture, and when she heard the shots, and has the impression that the car either stopped momentarily or hesitated and then drove off in a hurry..." https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1426.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------- From the 11/22/1963 Dallas County Sheriff's Department report of interview of Jean Hill: "Mary Moorman started to take a picture. We were looking at the president and Jackie in the back seat... Just as the president looked up two shots rang out and I saw the president grab his chest and fell forward across Jackie's lap... There was an instant pause between two shots and the motorcade seemingly halted for an instant. Three or four more shots rang out and the motorcade sped away." https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340264/m1/1/ Of these eyewitnesses, Bill Newman has been most persistent in maintaining his account of the limo stop, as we see in the following 2016 presentation at the Sixth Floor Museum (and note that Newman's description mirrors that of the DPD motorcycle patrolmen accounts of the Secret Service agents fanning out from the follow up car and running up the grassy knoll along with some of the motorcycle patrolmen): And it is undeniable that the testimony of the numerous DPD motorcycle patrolmen who were flanking the limousine about the Presidential Motorcade coming to a stop and the Secret Service agents in the follow up car momentarily dispersing is very compelling: Larry Rivera wrote: 14 January 2019 at 12:19 pm | https://midnightwriternews.com/mwn-episode-107-douglas-horne-on-the-zapruder-film-alteration-debate/ Unfortunately, my two-part “JFK Horsemen” videos mentioned by Douglas [Horne] were scrubbed by Youtube last year after receiving thousands of views and likes. In the audiotapes provided to me by Tyler Newcomb, whose father Fred wrote “Murder From Within”, it was clearly established by the motorcycle escort, Hargis, Martin, Chaney, Jackson, and their supervisor Stavis Ellis, that the limo came to a complete stop, where a Secret Service agent snatched a piece of JFK’s skull from a kid standing on the South curb of Elm Street then tossed into the limo, five Secret Service agents dismounted and ran up to and surrounded JFK’s limo with guns drawn, AND Chaney described how Hargis parked his bike and “ran in between the two limos” on his way up the embankment. None of this is seen in any of the films that survive today. Moreover, one of the very first reports by Cronkite described “Secret Service Agents fanning out into the crowd, looking for the assassin” This is the reason why the motorcycle cops were hidden away and suppressed for years from researchers. To give you an example, Hargis and Martin were the only ones who testified before the Warren Commission for a grand total of 7 1/2 pages! The FBI did not interview any of the escorts until 1975, well after the fact, and it was only to establish shots from behind. These reports read like true theater of the absurd, where they are portrayed as looking over their shoulders toward the TSBD when in fact you see none of this in any of the films. ----------------------------------------------------------- ALL FOUR OF THE DALLAS POLICE MOTORCYCLISTS FLANKING THE REAR OF JFK'S LIMOUSINE REPORTED THAT THE LIMO CAME TO A COMPLETE STOP IN DEALEY PLAZA: "... The vagaries of eyewitness testimony are well known, and it might be argued that these police witnesses (as well as the other witnesses who also reported the limousine deceleration) were simply mistaken about what they observed. This seems extremely unlikely, however, because all four of the Dallas police motorcyclists flanking the rear of JFK’s limousine also reported the limousine stopped or slowed...." Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Georgia School of Law. -------------------------------------------------------------- "...I will now point to some of the evidence that the limousine did indeed stop or slow down. I pass over similar reports made by civilian spectators and news media people, and limit myself to reports made by police officers in or near Dealey Plaza. Using binoculars, Harry D. Holmes, a federal postal inspector, watched the presidential limousine as it turned from Houston Street and then proceeded down Elm Street from his fifth floor office window in a building two blocks from Dealey Plaza. He testified to the Warren Commission that he heard what sounded like three firecrackers. He saw what he thought was dust coming out of JFK’s head. Then: “The car almost came to a stop.” Earle V. Brown was a Dallas policeman standing on the overpass of the Stemmons Freeway, about 100 yards from Elm Street. Here is an excerpt from his Warren Commission testimony: MR. BROWN: “[T]he first I noticed the car was when it stopped.” MR. BALL (Warren Commission counsel): “Where?” MR. BROWN: After it made the turn [from Houston Street to Elm Street] and when the shots were fired, it stopped.” MR. BALL: “Did it come to a complete stop?” MR. BROWN: “That I couldn’t swear to.” MR. BALL: “It appeared to be slowed down some?” MR. BROWN: “Yes; slowed down.” MR. BALL: “Did you hear the shots?” MR. BROWN: “Yes, sir.” J.W. Foster was a Dallas policeman stationed on the railroad overpass at the corner of Elm, Main and Commerce Streets. In a statement to the FBI made on Mar. 26, 1964, he said: “Immediately after President Kennedy was struck with a second bullet, the car in which he was riding pulled to the curb …” D.V. Harkness was a Dallas policeman standing in Dealey Plaza south of Elm Street. Here is part of his Warren Commission testimony: MR. BELIN (Warren Commission counsel): “What did you do [when you heard the gunshots]?” MR. HARKNESS: “When I saw the first shot and the President’s car slow down to almost a stop—“ MR. BELIN: “When you saw the first shot. What do you mean by that?” MR. HARKNESS: “When I heard the first shot and saw the President’s car almost come to a stop and some of the agents piling off the car, I went back to the intersection to get my motorcycle.” The vagaries of eyewitness testimony are well known, and it might be argued that these police witnesses (as well as the other witnesses who also reported the limousine deceleration) were simply mistaken about what they observed. This seems extremely unlikely, however, because all four of the Dallas police motorcyclists flanking the rear of JFK’s limousine also reported the limousine stopped or slowed. Officer Bobby Hargis was the inside rider at the left rear of the limousine. In his testimony to the Warren Commission he said: “[W]hen President Kennedy straightened back up in the car the bullet hit him in the head, the one that killed him and it seemed like his head exploded, and I was splattered with blood and brain, and kind of bloody water. It wasn’t really blood. And at that time the Presidential car slowed down… I felt blood hit me in the face, and the Presidential car stopped immediately after that and stayed stopped for about half a second, then took off at a high rate of speed.” According to an undated, unpublished transcript of an interview he had with the Dallas Times-Herald, Hargis told the newspaper: “I felt blood hit me in the face, and the presidential car stopped immediately after that and stayed stopped about half a second, then took off at a high rate of speed.” (In a video of a 1995 interview, now on YouTube, you can watch Hargis tell the interviewer: “That guy [the Secret Service agent driving JFK’s limousine] slowed down… [He] slowed down almost to a stop.”) Hargis died in 2014. Officer B.J. Martin was the outside rider at the left rear of the limousine. He told the Warren Commission: “It [the motorcade] slowed down just before we made the turn on Elm Street [from Houston Street].” Officer Martin was later interviewed by researchers Fred Newcomb and Perry Adams and told them, as reported in their unpublished 1974 manuscript Murder from Within, that he observed the limousine stop for “just a moment.” Officer James M. Chaney was the inside rider at the right rear of the limousine. He did not testify before the Warren Commission, but two days after the assassination he was quoted in the Houston Chronicle as stating that the limousine stopped immediately after the first shot. Furthermore, Dallas police officer Marrion L. Baker, a Dallas police motorcyclist who was on Houston Street when the first shot was fired, testified to the Warren Commission that shortly after the assassination he had talked with officer Chaney and that Chaney told him that “from the time the shot rang out, the [limousine] stopped completely, pulled to the left, and stopped.” Officer Baker added: “Several officers said it stopped completely.” When then asked whether he had heard from other Dallas police officers that the limousine had stopped, he testified: “Yes, sir; that it had completely stopped, and then for a moment there, and then they rushed on out to Parkland [Hospital].” Officer Douglas Jackson was the outside rider at the right rear of the limousine. He did not testify before the Warren Commission, but he did tell researchers Newcomb and Adams that “the [limousine] just all but stopped… just a moment.”..." Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. is a Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Georgia School of Law, where he taught for 40 years. He has published nearly 50 articles in Flagpole magazine on the JFK assassination. Wilkes, Donald E. Jr., "Grassy Knoll Shots? Limousine Slowdown?" (2017). Popular Media. 279. https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1284&context=fac_pm DPD Motorcycle Patrolman Bobby Hargis's Accounts of Stop of Presidential Limo During Assassination DPD Motorcycle Patrolman B.J. Martin on Presidential Limo Stopping During Assassination DPD Motorcycle Patrolman Harry Freeman Stopped in Front of Presidential Limo During Assassination DPD Motorcycle Patrolman James Courson Says JFK Limo Stopped When Interviewed for 50th Anniversary DPD Supervising Motorcycle Patrolman Stavis Ellis re Skull Fragment Put Back in Limo During Stop Researcher Larry Rivera Explains Skull Fragment Being Placed Back in Limo During Assassination Add to that the numerous witness accounts of the Presidential Limousine either momentarily stopping and/or significantly slowing as compiled by researcher Vince Palamara, and you are confronted with massive evidence that this actually happened: Chapter Ten of 'HONEST ANSWERS ABOUT THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY' by Vince Palamara (Courtesy of Vince Palamara) "Master List of Witnesses Who Stated That the Limousine Slowed or Stopped – A Deadly Delay on Elm Street" The following is a complete listing, the largest one ever compiled, of every single witness I could find – over 70 in all – who stated that the limousine either slowed down or stopped. This deadly delay on Elm Street was Secret Service agent Bill Greer’s fault, pure and simple; he was the limousine driver. As even lone-nut authors agree, Greer’s inept driving of the limo during the shooting allowed the assassination to be a tragic success.... LINK TO PDF OF CHAPTER TEN: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AnVVyr2Qcdy-gccV7bF_4Je5GuEYaA?e=E6b8Ay So when I weigh all of the cumulative evidence of the stop and/or significant slowing of the Presidential Limousine -- as well as the evidence of Secret Service Agents fanning out and dispersing from the follow up car -- against the Erwin Schwartz and Dino Brugioni evidence to the contrary from their accounts of the camera-original film given thirty and forty years after the fact, I have to wonder whether they simply forgot those particular details after all of those intervening years. There has to be some kind of explanation along those lines, given that the evidence of a stop or near stop is so significant and compelling.

We can put at the top of the list Erwin Schwartz, Abraham Zapruder's business partner, who undisputedly viewed the camera-original Zapruder film multiple times on Friday and Saturday, 11/22/1963 and 11/23/1963, while Schwartz was accompanying Zapruder to have the film developed, and watched it projected multiple times for journalists and investigators. We can place him in the category of individuals who viewed "the other Zapruder film" because his descriptions of what he viewed in that film differ from what we see today in the extant "original" Zapruder film. I've long been interested in Schwartz's testimony in relation to his account (as well as the accounts of numerous other witnesses) of seeing blood, brain and skull blown backwards out of the President's head -- imagery that is not in the extant "original" Zapruder film. I have had the following, from Noel Twyman's "Bloody Treason," for a good number of years: "...When I interviewed Erwin Schwartz, I asked him several questions about what he saw on the film when he first viewed it in its original state at Eastman Kodak. [In a footnote, Twyman made clear that Schwartz was referring to first viewing the film in its 16 mm wide, unslit state at the Kodak plant in Dallas.] ...I also asked him to describe what he saw at the instant of the fatal head shot. His answer was very descriptive. He said he saw Kennedy's head suddenly whip around to the left (counter-clockwise). I also asked him if he saw the explosion of blood and brains out of the head. He replied that he did. I asked him if he noticed which direction the eruption went. He pointed back over his left shoulder. He said, "It went this way." I said, "You mean it went to the left and rear?" He said, "Yes." Bartholomew then asked him, "Are you sure that you didn't see the blood and brains going up and to the front?" Schwartz said, "No; it was to the left and rear." We went over this several times with him to be certain he was clear on this point. He was very clear. Of course. Schwartz's statement that the blood and brains went back to the rear and left was completely consistent with all of the eyewitnesses who said they saw the rear of Kennedy's head blow out and brain and blood go to the rear. It was also consistent with Dallas motorcycle policeman Bobby Hargis's testimony that he was riding to the rear and the left of limousine and was splattered with blood and brains...So here we have testimony from a man who first saw the original Zapruder film (he said he looked- at it at least fifteen times over the weekend)...who...saw the eruption of blood and brains in a direction opposite [to] what we now see on the Zapruder film...." In preparation for this post I did some research and found that Richard Bartholomew published the source interview for the above material on the internet on May 25, 2023, and the following excerpts from that interview are relevant to this subject: "...Erwin remembers that JFK leaned toward Jackie after the first shot. And the camera didn't stay on him. “It kind of moved,” Erwin said. Jackie “kind of pushed him upright,” Erwin said, and she looked at him as if to be saying, “What's wrong?” Then his head snapped back, and half of it came off. “You didn't see the open skull, but you saw stuff flying everywhere.” Erwin said the debris went toward the back. JFK was turned toward Jackie. Erwin did not see any stopping of the motion of the car or the film. “I don't think it ever came to a stop,” he said. This motion was seen by Erwin at the first viewing and during his subsequent viewings. “People have asked me, ‘did he go straight back like that?’” Erwin said. “No, he went that way. I mean, you know, because you could see his face after the shot,” Erwin answered.... ...Erwin cannot comment on witness claims that the limousine came to a stop because he wasn’t there. The car had not stopped in Erwin’s estimation. When Clint Hill caught up with it, the car was moving. Erwin did not see any indication in the film that the panning action of the camera stopped either. Erwin thinks Clint Hill’s actions were the most heroic thing he has seen. “He literally pushed her back into that seat. Dove on top of her. I mean, if anybody deserved a medal it’s that guy.” At the first indication that JFK had been hit, Erwin could not tell where he got hit. There was no blood or anything. Erwin always saw the film at full speed. He never saw it slow. The debris flew off JFK’s head quick enough that Erwin described it as “a jerk.” When asked if he saw any debris go forward, Erwin said, “No. Not that I recall. It went backwards, left.” It looked like just one shot, “then you see her trying to get the hell out of there.”..." 'Erwin Schwartz Interview, Nov. 21, 1994' Regarding Mr. Schwartz's and his business partner Abraham Zapruder’s early chain of possession of Mr. Zapruder's film BARTHOLOVIEWS | By Richard Bartholomew | May 25, 2023 | https://medium.com/@bartholoviews/erwin-schwartz-interview-nov-21-1994-c86708034449 The takeaways from this, in my opinion, are that just like Dan Rather of CBS and Cartha DeLoach of the FBI, Schwartz did not see the violent backwards head snap in the camera original film (the violent backwards headsnap also was not reported by a single Dealey Plaza witness as happening in real time [Doug Horne discussing this subject speculates that the violent rearward headsnap is the result of frame removal to excise the rearward flying biological debris coming out of JFK's head]). And Schwartz also repeatedly emphasizes seeing the rearward flying biological debris, imagery which is completely absent from the extant "original" Zapruder film (instead, we see only the black patch that covers the occipital-parietal wound in the back of JFK's head): The following witness accounts are indicative of the rearward flying biological debris we should be seeing in the Zapruder headshhot sequence directly above, but which has clearly been completely excised from the extant film: __________ "...BLOOD, BRAIN MATTER, AND BONE FRAGMENTS EXPLODED FROM THE BACK OF THE PRESIDENT'S HEAD. THE PRESIDENT'S BLOOD, PARTS OF HIS SKULL, BITS OF HIS BRAIN WERE SPLATTERED ALL OVER ME -- ON MY FACE, MY CLOTHES, IN MY HAIR..." Secret Service Agent Clint Hill (in his 2012 book "Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir"). __________ "...I HAD BRAIN MATTER ALL OVER MY WINDSHIELD AND LEFT ARM, THAT'S HOW CLOSE WE WERE TO IT ... IT WAS THE RIGHT REAR PART OF HIS HEAD ... BECAUSE THAT'S THE PART I SAW BLOW OUT. I SAW HAIR COME OUT, THE PIECES BLOW OUT, THEN THE SKIN WENT BACK IN -- AN EXPLOSION IN AND OUT..." Secret Service Agent Samuel Kinney (3/5/1994 interview by Vince Palamara). __________ "...WHEN PRESIDENT KENNEDY STRAIGHTENED BACK UP IN THE CAR THE BULLET HIT HIM IN THE HEAD, THE ONE THAT KILLED HIM AND IT SEEMED LIKE HIS HEAD EXPLODED, AND I WAS SPLATTERED WITH BLOOD AND BRAIN, AND KIND OF A BLOODY WATER...." Dallas Motorcycle Patrolman Bobby Hargis (4/8/1964 Warren Commission testimony). __________ "...I CAN REMEMBER SEEING THE SIDE OF THE PRESIDENT'S EAR AND HEAD COME OFF. I REMEMBER A FLASH OF WHITE AND THE RED AND JUST BITS AND PIECES OF FLESH EXPLODING FROM THE PRESIDENT'S HEAD..." Dealey Plaza witness Bill Newman interviewed about the JFK assassination -- 0:13-0:27 -- https://youtu.be/EEhlbAwI7Zg?t=13 __________ "...THE HEAD SHOT SEEMED TO COME FROM THE RIGHT FRONT. IT SEEMED TO STRIKE HIM HERE [gesturing to her upper right forehead, up high at the hairline], AND HIS HEAD WENT BACK, AND ALL OF THE BRAIN MATTER WENT OUT THE BACK OF THE HEAD. IT WAS LIKE A RED HALO, A RED CIRCLE, WITH BRIGHT MATTER IN THE MIDDLE OF IT - IT JUST WENT LIKE THAT...." Dealey Plaza witness Marilyn Willis from 24:26-24:58 of TMWKK, Episode 1, at following link cued in advance for you https://youtu.be/BW98fHkbuD8?t=1466 ). __________ "...Charles Brehm: 0:21 WHEN THE SECOND BULLET HIT, THERE WAS, THE HAIR SEEMED TO GO FLYING. IT WAS VERY DEFINITE THEN THAT HE WAS STRUCK IN THE HEAD WITH THE SECOND BULLET, AND, UH, YES, I VERY DEFINITELY SAW THE EFFECT OF THE SECOND BULLET. Mark Lane: 0:38 Did you see any particles of the President's skull fly when the bullet struck him in the head? Charles Brehm: 0:46 I SAW A PIECE FLY OVER OH IN THE AREA OF THE CURB WHERE I WAS STANDING. Mark Lane: 0:53 In which direction did that fly? Charles Brehm: 0:56 IT SEEMED TO HAVE COME LEFT AND BACK...." Dealey Plaza witness Charles Brehm interviewed about JFK assassination by Mark Lane for the 1967 documentary "Rush to Judgment": https://youtu.be/RsnHXywKIKs __________ "...I SAW THE HEAD PRACTICALLY OPEN UP AND BLOOD AND MANY MORE THINGS, WHATEVER IT WAS, BRAINS, JUST CAME OUT OF HIS HEAD...." Testimony of Dealey Plaza witness Abraham Zapruder -- who filmed the assassination -- at the Clay Shaw trial -- https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/zapruder_shaw2.htm __________ "...I also asked him if he saw the explosion of blood and brains out of the head. He replied that he did. I asked him if he noticed which direction the eruption went. He pointed back over his left shoulder. He said, "IT WENT THIS WAY." I said, "You mean it went to the left and rear?" He said, "YES." Bartholomew then asked him, "Are you sure that you didn't see the blood and brains going up and to the front?" Schwartz said, "NO; IT WAS TO THE LEFT AND REAR...." Excerpt from interview of Erwin Schwartz -- Abraham Zapruder's business partner -- who accompanied Zapruder to develop the camera-original Zapruder film, and saw the camera-original projected more than a dozen times. Bloody Treason by Noel Twyman. __________ "...Brugioni's most vivid recollection of the Zapruder film was "...OF JFK'S BRAINS FLYING THROUGH THE AIR." He did not use the term 'head explosion,' but rather referred to apparent exit debris seen on the film the night he viewed it. "...AND WHAT I'LL NEVER FORGET WAS -- I KNEW THAT HE HAD BEEN ASSASSINATED -- BUT WHEN WE ROLLED THE FILM AND I SAW A GOOD PORTION OF HIS HEAD FLYING THROUGH THE AIR, THAT SHOCKED ME, AND THAT SHOCKED EVERYBODY WHO WAS THERE..." Excerpt from interview of Dino Brugioni -- Photoanalyst at the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center -- who viewed the camera-original Zapruder film the evening of 11/23/1963. Douglas Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board" , 2009, Volume IV, Chapter 14, page 1329. __________

'Rich Della Rosa Describes What He Saw In The Other Zapruder Film' _______________ 'Rich Dellarosa: The Other Zapruder Film - Black Op Radio 2-26-09' Jack McFile | Published on May 20, 2013 https://youtu.be/wRhcQI4tFTI _______________ https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/4728545/the-great-zapruder-film-hoax-assassination-research

https://riversong.wordpress.com/l-fletcher-proutys-letter-to-jim-garrison/e L. Fletcher Prouty’s Letter to Jim Garrison Leon Fletcher Prouty was an Army tank commander in WWII, and then joined the Air Force and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA. Leon Fletcher Prouty In 1955, Prouty was assigned to create an Office of Special Operations (OSO) within the US Air Force headquarters, under provisions of National Security Council Directive 5412 (March 15, 1954) to provide “Air Force support of the clandestine activities of the CIA”. That directive defined “covert operations” as “all activities conducted pursuant to this directive that are so planned and executed that any US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that, if uncovered, the US government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.” This was the origin of the concept of “plausible deniability”. Prouty was the Senior Air Force officer with the Office of Special Operations for the Secretary of Defense and later Chief of Special Operations in the Office of the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon from 1962 through 1963, in charge of military support for CIA covert operations. As Special Operations Chief, Prouty secured two naval vessels for a covert Operation Zapata invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained Cuban exiles, had them repainted in non-Navy colors at an inactive naval base in North Carolina, and named the two landing craft “Barbara” and “Houston” (at the time when future president GHW Bush owned Zapata Offshore, based in Houston and was married to Barbara, but claimed he had no connection to the CIA). After his retirement from the military and government work in 1964, Prouty became an outspoken critic of the CIA’s covert activities. He stated that the June 28, 1961 signing by JFK of National Security Action Memoranda 55, 56 & 57 “stripped the CIA of its cherished covert operations role, except for small actions [and] the military-industrial complex was not pleased.” Prouty also said that, when JFK signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 on Oct 11 1963 – an order for the immediate withdrawal of 1,000 US military advisers from Vietnam and a timetable for complete withdrawal of all US personnel, including CIA operatives, by the end of 1965 – “he signed his own death warrant”. In 1973, Prouty published his book The Secret Team, in which he claimed that the CIA had worked on behalf of the interests of a “high cabal” of industrialists and bankers. Prouty believed that the Executive Action Program (program for the assassination of heads of state) had also been used in the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Prouty even named Major General and CIA operative Edward Lansdale as the leader of the operation. He claimed Lansdale was in Dallas on the day of the assassination: “He was there like the orchestra leader, coordinating these things.” Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale Major General Edward Lansdale had been involved with OSS and CIA, and was the head of Operation Mongoose, the highly covert CIA-led program to undermine Fidel Castro’s leadership, incite an uprising against Castro, or kill him. When JKF tried to restrain the Mongoose operation, it continued to act outside of presidential authority, in an attempt to force JFK into military action against Cuba and, of necessity, against the Soviet Union. In fact, it was the ongoing Operation Mongoose which led Khrushchev to move nuclear missiles to Cuba to pre-empt a likely invasion by the US, which resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world closer to all-out nuclear war than it had ever been before or since. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————— What follows is a (somewhat shortened) letter written by L. Fletcher Prouty to Jim Garrison in 1990. Jim Garrison fought in Europe in the US Army in WWII, worked for the FBI for a couple of years and then returned to New Orleans where he was elected District Attorney and became famous for fighting corruption at all levels. The full letter is available here. Garrison began investigating the JFK assassination in 1966 and in 1969 he prosecuted (unsuccessfully) the only criminal trial of JFK assassination conspirators. Some of his key witnesses suddenly died under mysterious circumstances just before testimony, and Garrison’s reputation was savaged for his efforts. Jim Garrison March 6, 1990 Dear Jim, I had known Ed [Lansdale*] since 1952 in the Philippines. And Lansdale was “King Maker” of the Philippines. [* Maj. Gen. Lansdale was an officer of the OSS and later CIA, involved in Operation Mongoose to kill Castro and later the Vietnam pacification program.] He had arrived in Manila in Sept 1945, after the war was over, for a while. He had been sent back there in 1950 by the CIA to create a new leader of the Philippines and to get rid of Querino. From 1950 to Feb. 1953 the Director of Central Intelligence was Eisenhower’s old Chief of Staff, Gen Walter Bedell Smith. Smith had been Ambassador to Moscow from 1946 to 1949. The lesser guys in the CIA at the time were Allen Dulles, who was Deputy Director Central Intelligence from Aug. 1951 to Feb. 1953. Frank Wisner became the Deputy Director, Plans (Clandestine Activities) when Dulles became DDCI. Lansdale had to have received his orders from among these four men: Truman, Smith, Dulles, and Wisner. Lansdale operated with abandon in the Philippines. The Ambassador and the CIA Station Chief, George Aurell, did not know what he was doing. They believed he was some sort of kook Air Force Officer there…a role Lansdale played to the hilt. Magsaysay became President, Dec 30, 1953. Ed told me many a time how he operated in the Philippines. He said, “All I had was a blank checkbook signed by the U.S. government”. He made friends with many influential Filipinos. Lansdale’s greatest strategy was to create the “HUKS” as the enemy and to make Magsaysay the “Huk Killer” [the Hukbalahap movement was peasant farmers fighting for land-reform in the Philippines]. He would take Magsaysay’s battalion out into a “Huk” infested area. He would use movies and “battlefield” sound systems, i.e. fireworks to scare the poor natives. Then one-half of Magsaysay’s battalion, dressed as natives, would “attack” the village at night. They’d fire into the air and burn some shacks. In the morning the other half, in uniform, would attack and “capture” the “Huks”. They would bind them up in front of the natives who crept back from the forests, and even have a “firing” squad “kill” some of them. Then they would have Magsaysay make a big speech to the people and the whole battalion would roll down the road to have breakfast together somewhere…ready for the next “show”. Ed would always see that someone had arranged to have newsmen and camera men there and Magsaysay soon became a national hero. This was a tough game and Ed bragged that a lot of people were killed; but in the end Magsaysay became the “elected” President and Querino was ousted “legally.” This formula endeared Ed to Allen Dulles. In 1954 Dulles established the Saigon Military Mission in Vietnam…counter to Eisenhower’s orders. He had the French accept Lansdale as its chief. This mission was not in Saigon. It was not military, and its job was subversion in Vietnam. Its biggest job was that it got more than 1,100,000 northern Vietnamese to move south. 660,000 by U.S. Navy ships and the rest by CIA airline planes. These 1,100,000 North Vietnamese became the “subversive” element in South Vietnam and the principal cause of the war-making. I have heard him brag about capturing random Vietnamese and putting them in a Helicopter. Then they would work on them to make them “confess” to being Viet Minh. When they would not, they would toss them out of the chopper, one after the other, until the last ones talked. This was Ed’s idea of fun…as related to me many times. Then Dulles, Adm. Radford and Cardinal Spellman set up Ngo Dinh Diem. He and his brother, Nhu, became Lansdale protégés. At about 1957 Lansdale was brought back to Washington and assigned to Air Force Headquarters in a Plans office near mine. He was a fish out of water. He didn’t know Air Force people and Air Force ways. After about six months of that, Dulles got the Office of Special Operations under General Erskine to ask for Lansdale to work for the Secretary of Defense. By 1960 Erskine had me head the Air Force shop there. He had an Army shop and a Navy shop and we were responsible for all CIA relationships as well as for the National Security Agency. Ed was still out of his element because he did not know the services; but the CIA sent work his way. Then in the Fall of 1960 something happened that fired him up. Kennedy was elected over Nixon. Right away Lansdale figured out what he was going to do with the new President. Overnight he left for Saigon to see Diem and to set up a deal that would make him, Lansdale, Ambassador to Vietnam. Ed came back just before the Inauguration and was brought into the White House for a long presentation to Kennedy about Vietnam. Kennedy was taken by it and promised he would have Lansdale back in Vietnam “in a high office”. Ed told us in OSO he had the Ambassadorship sewed up. He lived for that job. He had not reckoned with some of JFK’s inner staff, George Ball, etc. Finally the whole thing turned around and month by month Lansdale’s star sank over the horizon. Erskine retired and his whole shop was scattered. The Navy men went back to the Navy as did the Army folks. Gen Wheeler in the JCS asked to have me assigned to the Joint Staff. This wiped out the whole Erskine (Office of Special Operations) office. It was comical. There was Lansdale up there all by himself with no office and no one else. He boiled and he blamed it on Kennedy for not giving him the “promised” Ambassadorship to let him “save” Vietnam. Then with the failure of the Bay of Pigs, caused by that phone call to cancel the air strikes by McGeorge Bundy, the military was given the job of reconstituting some sort of Anti-Castro operation. It was headed by an Army Colonel; but somehow Lansdale (most likely CIA influence) got put into the plans for Operation Mongoose…to get Castro…ostensibly. The U.S. Army has a think-tank at American University. It was called “Operation Camelot”. This is where the “Camelot” concept came from. It was anti-JFK’s Vietnam strategy. The men running it were Lansdale types, Special Forces background. “Camelot” was King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table: not JFK…then. Through 1962 and 1963, Mongoose and “Camelot” became strong and silent organizations dedicated to countering JFK. Mongoose had access to the CIA’s best “hit men” in the business and a lot of “strike” capability. Lansdale had many old friends in the media business such as Joe Alsop, Henry Luce [publisher of Time, Life and Fortune magazines] among others. With this background and with his poisoned motivation, I am positive that he got collateral orders to manage the Dallas event under the guise of “getting” Castro. It is so simple at that level. A nod from the right place, source immaterial, and the job’s done. The “hit” is the easy part. The “escape” must be quick and professional. The cover-up and the scenario are the big jobs. They more than anything else prove the Lansdale mastery. Lansdale was a master writer and planner. He was a great “scenario” guy. I still have a lot of his personally typed material in my files. I am certain that he was behind the elaborate plan and mostly the intricate and enduring cover-up. Given a little help from friends at PEPSICO he could easily have gotten Nixon into Dallas, for “orientation’, and LBJ in the cavalcade at the same time, contrary to Secret Service policy. He knew the “Protection” units and the “Secret Service”, who was needed and who wasn’t. Those were routine calls for him, and they would have believed him. Cabell [Deputy Director of CIA, fired by JFK, whose brother was the Mayor of Dallas] could handle the police. [The Washington Post revealed in 1973 that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was preparing as late as March 1971 to accuse Charles Cabell of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.] The “hit men” were from CIA overseas sources, for instance, from the camp near Athena, Greece. They are trained, stateless, and ready to go at any time. They ask no questions: speak to no one. They are simply told what to do, when and where. Then they are told how they will be removed and protected. After all, they work for the U.S. Government. The “Tramps” were actors doing the job of cover-up. The hit men are just pros. They do the job for the CIA anywhere. They are impersonal. They get paid. They get protected, and they have enough experience to “blackmail” anyone, if anyone ever turns on them…just like Drug agents. The job was clean, quick and neat. No ripples. [On the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, James H. Fetzer, Distinguished McKnight Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, editor of three books on the death of JFK, and former Marine officer, named the six assassins in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963: see Assassination Science Exposes Official Complicity & Cover-Up and Names the Assassins] The whole story of the POWER of the Cover-up comes down to a few points. There has never been a Grand Jury and trial in Texas. Without a trial there can be nothing. Without a trial it does no good for researchers to dig up data. It has no place to go and what the researchers reveal just helps make the cover-up tighter, or they eliminate that evidence and the researcher. The first man LBJ met with on Nov 29th, after he had cleared the foreign dignitaries out of Washington was Waggoner Carr, Attorney General of Texas, to tell him, “No trial in Texas…ever.” The next man he met, also on Nov 29th, was J. Edgar Hoover. The first question LBJ asked his old “19 year” neighbor in DC was “Were THEY shooting at me?” LBJ thought that THEY had been shooting at him also as they shot at his friend John Connally. Note that he asked, “Were THEY shooting at me?” LBJ knew there were several hitmen. That’s the ultimate clue…THEY. The Connallys said the same thing…THEY. Not Oswald. Then came the heavily loaded press releases about Oswald all written before the deal and released actually before LHO had ever been charged with the crime. I bought the first newspaper EXTRA on the streets of Christchurch, New Zealand with the whole LHO story in that first news…photos and columns of it before the police in Dallas had yet to charge him with that crime. All this canned material about LHO was flashed around the world. Lansdale and his Time-Life and other media friends, with Valenti in Hollywood [president of the Motion Picture Association of America, liaison with the news media during the November 22, 1963 Dallas trip, and later special assistant to LBJ], have been doing that cover-up since Nov 1963. Even the deMorenschildt story enhances all of this. In deM’s personal telephone/address notebook he had the name of an Air Force Colonel friend of mine, Howard Burrus. Burrus was always deep in intelligence. He had been in one of the most sensitive Attaché spots in Europe…Switzerland. He was a close friend of another Air Force Colonel and Attaché, Godfrey McHugh, who used to date Jackie Bouvier [later, Jackie Kennedy]. DeM had Burrus listed under a DC telephone number and on that same telephone number he had “L.B.Johnson, Congressman.” Quite a connection. Why…from the Fifties yet? Godfrey McHugh was the Air Force Attaché in Paris. Another most important job. I knew him well, and I transferred his former Ass’t Attaché to my office in the Pentagon. This gave me access to a lot of information I wanted in the Fifties. This is how I learned that McHugh’s long-time special “date” was the fair Jacqueline…yes, the same Jackie Bouvier. Sen. Kennedy met Jackie in Paris when he was on a trip. At that time JFK was dating a beautiful SAS Airline Stewardess who was the date of that Ass’t Attaché who came to my office. JFK dumped her and stole Jackie away from McHugh. Leaves McHugh happy???? At the JFK Inaugural Ball who should be there but the SAS stewardess, Jackie of course, and Col Godfrey McHugh. JFK made McHugh a General and made him his “Military Advisor” in the White House where he was near Jackie while JFK was doing all that official traveling connected with his office AND other special interests. Who recommended McHugh for the job? General McHugh was in Dallas and was on Air Force One, with Jackie, on the flight back to Washington, as was Jack Valenti. Why was LBJ’s old cohort there at that time and why was he on Air Force One? He is now the Movie Czar. Why in Dallas? See how carefully all of this is interwoven. Burrus is now a very wealthy man in Washington. I have lost track of McHugh. And Jackie is doing well. All in the Lansdale – deM shadows. The Lansdale story is endless. What people do not do is study the entire environment of his strange career. For example: the most important part of my book, “The Secret Team”, is not something that I wrote. It is Appendix III under the title, “Training Under The Mutual Security Program”. This is a most important bit of material. It tells more about the period 1963 to 1990 than anything. I fought to have it included verbatim in the book. This material was the work of Lansdale and his crony General Dick Stillwell. Anyone interested in the “JFK Coup d’Etat” ought to know it by heart. [APPENDIX III to L. Fletcher Prouty’s book The Secret Team, a detailed program for nurturing controlling military elites in Third World nations to serve US geopolitical interests.] I believe this document tells why the Coup took place. It was to reverse the sudden JFK re-orientation of the U.S. Government from Asia to Europe, in keeping with plans made in 1943 at Cairo and Teheran by T.V. Soong and his Asian masterminds. Lansdale and Stillwell were long-time “Asia hands” as were Gen Erskine, Adm Radford, Cardinal Spellman, Henry Luce and so many others. In October 1963, JFK had just signaled this reversal to Europe when he published National Security Action Memorandum #263 saying…among other things…that he was taking 1000 troops home from Vietnam by Christmas 1963 and ALL AMERICANS out of Vietnam by the end of 1965. That cost him his life. JFK came to that “Pro-Europe” conclusion in the Summer of 1963 and sent Gen Krulak to Vietnam for advance work. Krulak and I (with others) wrote that long “Taylor-McNamara” Report of their “Visit to Vietnam” (obviously they did not write, illustrate and bind it as they traveled). Krulak got his information daily in the White House. We simply wrote it. That led to NSAM #263. This same Trip Report is Document #142 and appears on page 751 to 766 of Vol. II of the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers. NSAM #263 appears on pages 769-770 (It makes the Report official). This major Report and NSAM indicated an enormous shift in the orientation of U.S. Foreign Policy from Asia back to Europe. JFK was much more Europe-oriented, as was his father, than pro-Asia. This position was anathema to the Asia-born Luces, etc. There is the story from an insider. I sat in the same office with Lansdale, (OSO of OSD) for years. I listened to him in Manila and read his flurry of notes from 1952 to 1964. I know all this stuff, and much more. I could write ten books. I send this to you because I believe you are one of the most sincere of the “true researchers”. You may do with it as you please. I know you will do it right. Now you can see why I have always said that identification of the “Tramps” was unnecessary, i.e. they are actors. The first time I saw that picture I saw the man I knew and I realized why he was there. He caused the political world to spin on its axis. L. Fletcher Prouty The “Three Tramps” and Ed Lansdale walking the other way Lansdale & GHW Bush in Dealey Plaza In 1990-91, Prouty worked as Creative Advisor to Oliver Stone when he was making the film, JFK. The Mr. X character in the film played by Donald Sutherland is based on Prouty. Prouty also published JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (1992), in which he argued that JFK had been killed by elements of the United States military and intelligence communities. In the JFK film, Mr. X tells Jim Garrison: “The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is for war. The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers. Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term. He wanted to call off the moon race and cooperate with the Soviets. He signed a treaty to ban nuclear testing. He refused to invade Cuba in 1962. He set out to withdraw from Vietnam. But all that ended on the 22nd of November, 1963.” Jim Garrison: “I never realized Kennedy was so dangerous to the establishment. Is that why?” X: “Well that’s the real question, isn’t it? Why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia. Keeps ’em guessing like some kind of parlor game, prevents ’em from asking the most important question, why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?” ————————————————————————————————————————————— The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World by L. Fletcher Prouty, Col., U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Prentiss-Hall, 1973, 1992, 1997 Ballantine, 1991 Skyhorse Publishing, 2008, 2011 (with foreword by Jesse Ventura) The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World is a book by L. Fletcher Prouty, a former colonel in the US Air Force, first published in 1973. From 1955 to 1963 Prouty was the “Focal Point Officer” for contacts between the CIA and the Pentagon on matters relating to military support for “special operations” but he was not assigned to the CIA and was not bound by any oath of secrecy. It was one of the first tell-all books about the inner workings of the CIA and was an important influence on the Oliver Stone movie JFK. But the main thrust of the book is how the CIA started as a think tank to analyze intelligence gathered from military sources but has grown to the monster it has become. The CIA had no authority to run their own agents or to carry out covert operations but they quickly did both and much more. This book tells about things they actually did and a lot about how they operate. In Prouty’s own words, from the 1997 edition of The Secret Team: “This is the fundamental game of the Secret Team. They have this power because they control secrecy and secret intelligence and because they have the ability to take advantage of the most modern communications system in the world, of global transportation systems, of quantities of weapons of all kinds, and when needed, the full support of a world-wide U.S. military supporting base structure. They can use the finest intelligence system in the world, and most importantly, they have been able to operate under the canopy of an assumed, ever-present enemy called “Communism”. It will be interesting to see what “enemy” develops in the years ahead. It appears that “UFO’s and Aliens” are being primed to fulfill that role for the future. To top all of this, there is the fact that the CIA, itself, has assumed the right to generate and direct secret operations. ” – L. Fletcher Prouty, Alexandria, VA 1997 AUTHOR’S NOTE [to the 1997 edition] on suppression of publication and sales: After I had given the manuscript of the original draft of this book to my editor at Prentice-Hall, in 1972; and had received the galley proof of the first edition back from him, he called me to suggest that I keep it in a safe place at all times. He told me that his home had been broken into the night before, and he suspected it was an attempt to steal his copy of that galley proof. He said, “They didn’t get it. It was under the seat of the Volkswagon.” A few days later a nationwide release by the well-known Washington columnist, Jack Anderson, appeared across the country, “Book Bares CIA’s Dirty Tricks”. In that column, Anderson reported that the CIA had contacted a well-known bookstore in Washington and asked one of the employees to see if he could get a copy of the galley from me, and agreed to pay him $500, if he did. I agreed to meet him at my home that evening. I suspected his call, but invited him anyway. In the meantime I set up a tape recorder in the umbrella stand near my front door and arranged for it to turn on when I switched on the overhead light on the front porch. With that arrangement, I recorded the whole visit including his final burst, “They promised me $500.00, if I got that galley proof.” I took that tape to Anderson, and it was the basis of his March 6, 1973 column. The underground attack didn’t quit there. After excellent early sales of The Secret Team during which Prentice-Hall printed three editions of the book, and it had received more than 100 favorable reviews, I was invited to meet Ian Ballantine, the founder of Ballantine Books. He told me that he liked the book and would publish 100,000 copies in paperback as soon as he could complete the deal with Prentice-Hall. Soon there were 100,000 paperbacks in bookstores all around the country. Then one day a business associate in Seattle called to tell me that the bookstore next to his office building had had a window full of books the day before, and none the day of his call. They claimed they had never had the book. I called other associates around the country. I got the same story from all over the country. The paperback had vanished. At the same time I learned that Mr. Ballantine had sold his company. I traveled to New York to visit the new “Ballantine Books” president. He professed to know nothing about me, and my book. That was the end of that surge of publication. For some unknown reason Prentice-Hall was out of my book also. It became an extinct species. Coincidental to that, I received a letter from a Member of Parliament in Canberra, Australia, who wrote that he had been in England recently visiting in the home of a friend who was a Member of the British Parliament. While there, he discovered The Secret Team on a coffee table and during odd hours had begun to read it. Upon return to Canberra he sent his clerk to get him a copy of the book. Not finding it in the stores, the clerk had gone to the Customs Office where he learned that 3,500 copies of The Secret Team had arrived, and on that same date had been purchased by a Colonel from the Royal Australian Army. The book was dead everywhere. The campaign to kill the book was nationwide and world-wide. It was removed from the Library of Congress and from College libraries as letters I received attested all too frequently. That was twenty years ago. Today I have been asked to rewrite the book and bring it up to date. Those who have the book speak highly of it, and those who do not have it have been asking for it. With that incentive, I have begun from page one to bring it up to date and to provide information that I have learned since my first manuscript. In the beginning, this book was based upon my unusual experience in the Pentagon during 1955-1964 and the concept of the book itself was the outgrowth of a series of luncheon conversations, 1969-1970, with my friends Bob Myers, Publisher of the New Republic, Charlie Peters, founder of The Washington Monthly, and Ben Schemmer, editor and publisher of the Armed Forces Journal, and Derek Shearer. They were all experienced in the ways and games played in Washington, and they tagged my stories those of a “Secret Team“. This idea grew and was polished during many subsequent luncheons. After my retirement from the Air Force, 1964, I moved from an office in the Joint Chiefs of Staff area of the Pentagon to become Manager of the Branch Bank on the Concourse of that great building. This was an interesting move for many reasons, not the least of which was that it kept me in business and social contact with many of the men I had met and worked with during my nine years of Air Force duties in that building. It kept me up-to-date with the old “fun-and-games” gang. After graduating from the Graduate School of Banking, University of Wisconsin, I transfered to a bank in Washington where in the course of business I met Ben Schemmer. He needed a loan that would enable him to acquire the old Armed Forces Journal. During that business process I met two of Ben’s friends Bob Myers and Charlie Peters. We spent many most enjoyable business luncheons together. This is where “The Secret Team” emerged from a pattern of ideas to a manuscript. As they heard my stories about my work with the CIA, and especially about the role of the military in support of the world-wide, clandestine operations of the CIA, they urged me to write about those fascinating nine years of a 23-year military career. During the Spring of 1970 I put an article together that we agreed to call “The Secret Team“, and Charlie Peters published it in the May 1970 issue of The Washington Monthly. Before I had seen the published article myself, two editors of major publishers in New York called me and asked for appointments. I met with both, and agreed to accept the offer to write a book of the same name, and same concept of The Secret Team from Bram Cavin, Senior Editor with Prentice-Hall. After all but finishing the manuscript, with my inexperienced typing of some 440 pages, I sat down to a Sunday breakfast on June 13, 1971 and saw the headlines of the New York Times with its publication of the “purloined” Pentagon Papers.[1] One of the first excerpts from those papers was a TOP SECRET document that I had worked on in late 1963. Then I found more of the same. With that, I knew that I could vastly improve what I had been writing by making use of that hoard of classified material that “Daniel Ellsberg had left on the doorstep of the Times” and other papers. Up until that time I had deliberately avoided the use of some of my old records and copies of highly classified documents. The publication of the Pentagon Papers changed all that. They were now in the public domain. I decided to call my editor and tell him what we had with the “Pentagon Papers” and to ask for more time to re-write my manuscript. He agreed without hesitation. From that time on I began my “Doctorate” course in, a) book publishing and, b) book annihilation. As we see, by some time in 1975 The Secret Team was extinct; but unlike the dinosaur and others, it did not even leave its footprints in the sands of time. There may be some forty to fifty thousand copies on private book shelves. A letter from a professor informed me that his department had ordered more than forty of the books to be kept on the shelves of his university library for assignment purposes. At the start of the new school year his students reported that the books were not on the shelves and the registry cards were not in the master file. The librarians informed them that the book did not exist. With that letter in mind, I dropped into the Library of Congress to see if The Secret Team was on the shelves where I had seen it earlier. It was not, and it was not even in that library’s master file. It is now an official non-book. I was a writer whose book had been cancelled by a major publisher and a major paperback publisher under the persuasive hand of the CIA. Now, after more than twenty years the flames of censorship still sweep across the land. Despite that, here we go again with a new revised edition of The Secret Team. _______ 1. Any reader of the “Pentagon Papers” should be warned that although they were commissioned on June 17, 1967, by the Secretary of Defense as “the history of United States involvement in Vietnam from World War II [Sept 2, 1945] to the present” [1968], they are unreliable, inaccurate and marred by serious omissions. They are a contrived history, at best, even though they were written by a selected Task Force under Pentagon leadership. ————————————————————————————————————————————— Excerpts from Chapter 1: The “Secret Team” – The Real Power Structure The most remarkable development in the management of America’s relations with other countries during the quarter-century since the end of World War II has been the assumption of more and more control over military, financial and diplomatic operations at home and abroad by men whose activities are secret, whose budget is secret, whose very identities as often as not are secret – in short, by a Secret Team whose actions only those implicated in them are in a position to monitor and to understand. The Secret Team (ST) being described herein consists of security-cleared individuals in and out of government who receive secret intelligence data gathered by the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) and who react to those data, when it seems appropriate to them, with paramilitary plans and activities, e.g. training and “advising” – a not exactly impenetrable euphemism for such things as leading into battle and actual combat. The power of the Team derives from its vast intragovernmental undercover infrastructure and its direct relationship with great private industries, mutual funds and investment houses, universities, and the news media, including foreign and domestic publishing houses. The Secret Team has very close affiliations with elements of power in more than three-score foreign countries and is able when it chooses to topple governments, to create governments, and to influence governments almost anywhere in the world. Whether or not the Secret Team had anything whatsoever to do with the deaths of Rafael Trujillo, Ngo Dinh Diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu, Dag Hammerskjold, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and others may never be revealed, but what is known is that the power of the Team is enhanced by the “cult of the gun” and by its sometimes brutal and always arbitrary anti-Communist flag waving, even when real Communism had nothing to do with the matter at hand. The Secret Team does not like criticism, investigation, or history and is always prone to see the world as divided into but two camps – “Them” and “Us”. The Secret Team is not a clandestine super-planning-board or super-general-staff. But even more damaging to the coherent conduct of foreign and military affairs, it is a bewildering collection of semi-permanent or temporarily assembled action committees and networks that respond pretty much ad hoc to specific troubles and to flash-intelligence data inputs from various parts of the world, sometimes in ways that duplicate the activities of regular American missions, sometimes in ways that undermine those activities, and very often in ways that interfere with and muddle them. At no time did the powerful and deft hand of the Secret Team evidence more catalytic influence than in the events of those final ninety days of 1963, which the “Pentagon Papers” were supposed to have exposed. The New York Times shocked the world on Sunday, June 13, 1971, with the publication of the first elements of the Pentagon Papers.[1] The first document the Times selected to print was a trip report on the situation in Saigon, credited to the Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, and dated December 21, 1963. This was the first such report on the situation in Indochina to be submitted to President Lyndon B. Johnson. It came less than thirty days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and less than sixty days after the assassinations of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam and his brother and counselor Ngo Dinh Nhu. This pivotal report was written in Washington by members of the ST. Although it contained a lot of updated material from Saigon (some of which had been transmitted to Saigon verbatim for the express purpose of having it then re-transmitted back to Washington for inclusion in the report – with the all-important Saigon dateline), one may be certain that this report contained a skillful mixture of what the President wanted to hear and what its authors in Washington wanted the President to read. On the same day that the McNamara report was being handed to President Johnson, a former President was writing a totally different statement for the readership of the general pubic. President Harry S. Truman, observing the turn of events since the death of President Kennedy, and pondering developments since his Administration, wrote for the Washington Post a column also datelined December 21, 1963: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government… I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment that I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.” Truman was disturbed by the events of the past ninety days, those ominous days of October, November, and December 1963. Men all over the world were disturbed by those events. Few men, however could have judged them with more wisdom and experience than Harry S. Truman, for it was he who, in late 1947, had signed unto law the National Security Act. This Act, in addition to establishing the Department of Defense (DOD) with a single Secretary at its head and with three equal and independent services – the Army, Navy, and Air Force – also provided for a National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. And during those historic and sometimes tragic sixteen years since the Act had become law, he had witnessed changes that disturbed him, as he saw that the CIA “had been diverted” from the original assignment that he and the legislators who drafted the Act had so carefully planned. The ST always fights for the minds, the time, and the attention of the top-echelon men. It moves fastest and most adroitly when others are off guard. This report of December 21, 1963, was absolutely crucial to the interests of the ST. Twenty-five years of driving, devoted work by ST members through a whole generation of critical events culminated in the Vietnam War. Never before in all the long history of civilization was a country to devote so much of its resources, its men and their lives, its money, and its very prestige in so strange an event as that which is called “The War in Vietnam”. It made the coups d’état in Guatemala and Iran, the rebellion in Indonesia, the escape of the Dalai Lama and the underground war in Tibet, the Bay of Pigs, and the wasting war in Laos all pale before its magnitude. President Johnson, for all his experience and native ability, had not yet been singed by the fire of experience as had Jack Kennedy in Cuba or Eisenhower by the U-2. Johnson was a natural “wheeler dealer”, with courage and a flair for getting things done; but he had not yet learned how to say “No” and make it stick, rather, he had the inclination to defer the issue to a later day. This was the ideal formula for the ST, and they struck while the iron was hot. There is another important factor to weigh in considering the agility and cunning of the ST. In bureaucratic Washington, few things are worth more than prior information. If a subordinate knows now what his boss is going to know tomorrow, he is in the same position that the gambler would like to be in if he knew which horse was going to win in a future race. The ST has set itself up through the use and control of intelligence data, both real and manufactured, to know now what its bosses are going to know later. The ST seldom left anything to chance, and since they had the means of the “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, they made it a way of life to use it. Like the carbon rods in a nuclear reactor, to raise or lower the level of “radioactivity” or to heat up a latent insurgency situation to the level desired, this has been done in Laos for fifteen or more years. The policies that have been used in Indochina create and generate more combat than they quench. It has been said that the Vietnamese war is one of “re-counter”, the idea being that if you hit someone – even little, starving, terrorized, and homeless natives – long enough, they will eventually fight back with whatever bits of remaining strength they have. In the inner chambers of the Government, where secret operations are cloaked in sufficient cover-story language to keep even the experts and top echelon leaders in a state of unreality, nothing ever more closely approached the “emperor’s new clothes” syndrome than did the ST’s work on Johnson, Rusk, McCone, and McNamara. Brainwashing was the business of the ST in South Vietnam. No less than Robert McNamara, Robert Kennedy, Vice-President Johnson, and John McCone were thoroughly indoctrinated on South Vietnam by hardheaded experts who thought nothing of sharpening the scenarios skillfully drawn for consumption by top-level officials. Allen W. Dulles meant it when he called his book The Craft of Intelligence. To him and his inner ring of confidants and paramilitary experts, big-time intelligence was craftily managed. As a result, these carefully drawn reports told the President that things were getting much worse in Southeast Asia and that there was a strong possibility of a Communist take-over of all of South Asia if South Vietnam and Laos and then Cambodia succumbed to the insurgency which, the Team said, was running rampant there. After the reports and briefings of December 1963 and January 1964, it became evident that Johnson was giving way before the pressures of the CIA and the “military” who were working with the Agency. It is essential that the term “military” be clarified for use throughout this book. Many military men are regularly assigned to the CIA, in their primary roles as intelligence experts, for their own experience and training and to flesh out areas where the Agency can use them. These are legitimate military assignments, and such men are openly identified with the CIA. There is another group of military men who are fully assigned to the Agency, meaning their pay and allowances are reimbursed to the parent service by the CIA, but they appear to be with regular military units or other normal assignments so that their assignment to the CIA will not be revealed to those unwitting of their real task. This strong military bias of the Agency plays a very important part in the operations of the ST. It probably played an impressive role in the winning of President Johnson’s mind soon after be took office. He no doubt, as did most others, looked to such men as General Maxwell Taylor, General Victor Krulak, General William Rosson, General Edward Lansdale, General William Peers, General Richard C. Stilwell, General William Dupuy, and many many others as straight-line military officers. Although without question they all were military men, they all also had assignments of various types that made them effective CIA operators. By the very nature of their work, they worked with, for, and in support of the CIA. It was their first allegiance. Those mentioned above form but a brief list of the great number of senior officers in this category. This course was set by the winds of change as this Government responded to and reacted to various intelligence-data inputs from as far back as 1945. Vietnam was not so much a goal as it was a refuge and backlash of everything that had gone wrong in a quarter-century of clandestine activities. There can be no questioning the fact that Vietnam inherited some of the Korea leftovers; it inherited the Magsaysay team from the Philippines with its belief in another Robin-Hood-like Magsaysay in the person of Ngo Dinh Diem; it fell heir to the Indonesian shambles; it soaked up men and materials from the Tibetan campaign and from Laos in particular, and it inherited men and material, including a large number of specially modified aircraft, from the Bay of Pigs disaster. In its leadership it inherited men who had been in Greece in the late forties or during the Eisenhower era and who felt that they knew Communist insurgency when they saw it. The nation of South Vietnam had not existed as a nation before 1954 – rather it was another country’s piece of real estate. South Vietnam has never really been a nation. It has become the quagmire of things gone wrong during the past twenty-five years. ————————————————————————————————————————————— May 29, 1961- Brigade 2506 Excerpts from Chapter 22 – Camelot: From the Bay of Pigs to Dallas, Texas The Kennedy team had been together through a tough and long battle. Their operational procedures were honed and ready. When Kennedy wanted something done, he called upon one of his close friends, even upon one of his relatives, and after a brief discussion, they would go out and do what he had directed. This system can work in an operation such as the campaign had been, where the campaign team is the whole organization. However, in any organization as large and as immobile as the ponderous U.S. Government, this system is quite ineffective and leaves much undone and uncontrolled. It tends to leave tens of thousands of lesser bureaucrats on their own and to their own devices. Almost immediately following the inauguration, the Secret Team saw that the door was wide open. With practically no National Security Council meetings, and therefore no Council to effectively control the CIA, there was no application of those crucial parts of the National Security Act of 1947 that require the NSC to direct the Agency. Without such direction and control, the CIA was practically free to act on its own. Few men in the new Government had any idea of what was being put into shape for the Cuban invasion. Those who did, knew only bits and pieces of the whole plan. These men were not accustomed to the double-talk and undercover language and actions of the Agency. They heard briefings, but they did not know what they really meant. On the other hand, a large number of the new Kennedy team were old CIA hands. They did know exactly what was going on, and they used their special knowledge and experience to further isolate those who did not. Under the cover of the Bay of Pigs operation, much bigger moves were being made. All over the world the Military Assistance training program (MAP) was picking up volume and momentum. Thousands of foreigners from all forty countries converged upon the United States for training and indoctrination. The new curriculum was either the one at Fort Bragg or like it. The Army interest in political-social-economic programs, under the general concept of “nation building”, was gaining momentum. For every class of foreigners who were trained and indoctrinated with these ideas, there were American instructors and American soldiers who were being brainwashed by the very fact that they were being trained to teach this new doctrine. A whole generation of the American Army has grown up with this and now believes, to one degree or another, that the…army is the chosen instrument in nation building. In many cases, due to the great emphasis the CIA placed on training the police forces of certain foreign countries, a large number of American servicemen who were used for such training became active in what was really police work and not the scope of regular military work. It was the CIA, with help from a few other agencies, that put together the Inter-American Police Academy during the early Kennedy years, which played such an important part in emphasizing national police power in the nations of Latin America. The CIA brought in police instructors from all over the United States and from the military for this school. The success of this school, operating covertly from an Army base in the Panama Canal Zone, led to other schools in the United States that have carried on this type of work for police forces in this country. Part of the impetus behind the great buildup in the strength of police force all over the country dates back to this CIA police academy work and to the other schools it spawned. This police work not only involved training but it integrated new weapons, new procedures, and new techniques into American police work, some of which has been good and much of which has been quite ominous. At the same time this training program was under way, larger and larger civic action teams and other benevolently named organizations spread throughout the world. Military Advisory and Assistance Group (MAAG) units were no longer small logistics and training organizations. They had grown to large size and were frequently augmented by large units on temporary duty in the host country… with many on the CIA payroll. What had grown quietly, secretly, and almost totally unobserved within the infrastructure of the U.S. Government was by 1961 so large that it was time to bring it to life and give it some reason for existence. While Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy were seriously pondering what had gone wrong with the Bay of Pigs operation, this new doctrine and new organization was emerging. It remained necessary, then, for the Kennedys to find the master key to all of this activity. It took the Bay of Pigs Board of Inquiry to perform this feat. The day-by-day litany of the Board was designed to indoctrinate Bobby Kennedy and to win him over to this new doctrine of counterinsurgency, flexible response, civic action, nation building, and the rest – and through him, to win over the President. While the Board was meeting day after day in the back room in the Pentagon, something more important than the fate of the Bay of Pigs was being discussed and elaborated upon. As witness after witness filed through the Board’s chambers, Bobby Kennedy sat there saying absolutely nothing, just soaking up the hearings and searching for cracks in the story. At the same time, Allen Dulles and Maxwell Taylor paraded a hand-picked group of disciples into the room for interviews and questioning. These men were selected to preach the doctrine of the new covert intervention. Their interviews were designed to train, indoctrinate, and – to use an overworked term – even to brainwash Bobby Kennedy. What he heard each day was the Maxwell Taylor new-military-plan-for-flexible-response theme, and topped off by Allen Dulles’s own theme of secret operations. Bobby Kennedy emerged from the incessant catechism of the “truths” ready to soak up the doctrine of counterinsurgency. This was to be the new watchword. The Kennedy Administration became hooked on counterinsurgency, and the indoctrination occurred to a good measure right there in the Board of Inquiry process. Thus the inner Kennedy clan came out of the Bay of Pigs disaster with two strong convictions. Closely held and deeply felt was the conviction that the CIA had somehow done them in and that they had better be extremely wary of anything it did in the future. This was a very deep feeling and only seldom revealed in any official actions. In fact, Jack Kennedy developed a cover story of his own by giving the appearance as much as possible in public that he would go along with the CIA, when private actions and discussions tended to support otherwise. The second conviction was that the world was being divided sharply into two strong camps in the battle between the “world of choice” and the “world of coercion”. It was President Kennedy who said to Chairman Khrushchev, “The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.” The Dulles contribution to this philosophy was the reiteration of the Khrushchev challenge to support all wars of national liberation; and the Maxwell Taylor contribution was the simple reflex of the counterpuncher, the plan of flexible response. Defined in terms of the infantryman, this meant counterinsurgency. One of the better definitions of counterinsurgency as practiced in the Kennedy era was that written by a general who worked for the Secretary of Defense: “… the technique of using, in appropriate combination, all elements of National Power in support of a friendly government which is in danger of being overthrown by an active Communist campaign designed to organize, mobilize and direct discontented elements of the local population against the government.” Although counterinsurgency has been generally regarded as a military activity, careful analysis will reveal that it is really more a civilian-controlled action in the paramilitary area of operation. In other words, the actions of this Government, which were called counterinsurgency, were not very different from the actions that were attributed to the Communists and called subversive insurgency. As a matter of fact, they seemed to be identical. Note that the same material written by the spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense continues as follows: “A successful counterinsurgency strategy requires, therefore, the integration of all U.S. Government activities in the country concerned, under the central leadership of the Ambassador or [if the local situation had deteriorated to the point where U.S. Armed Forces are actively involved] the military area commander. In the final analysis, the defeat of a Communist-led insurgency hinges largely on the effectiveness of the Country Team. This depends in great measure upon the willing cooperation of the government departments and agencies in Washington.” We have a new doctrine at the Special Forces school, we have worldwide MAP training in the political-social-economic spheres, we have the new creed dramatically spelled out by the President’s Committee report and then, to tie this all together, we have the definition of counterinsurgency. The official doctrine of counterinsurgency states clearly that it is carried out “under the central leadership of the ambassador”. This means that counterinsurgency is intended to be civilian directed, even though it appears to be a military program, and that the senior man is to be the ambassador. He is placed in charge, not actually to be the country-team commander in chief, but to make it possible for him to delegate his authority to the CIA station chief rather than to some senior military officer. This has shaped the total efforts of the United States in Vietnam. It had historically always been clear that when war was the only remaining means of accomplishing national objectives, the ambassador and his staff would leave the scene and the generals would take over. Now here was the highest echelon of military power in the United States stating publicly the new doctrine of the Kennedy era to the effect that counterinsurgency (a form of war) would be “under the central leadership of the ambassador”. Why would a ranking U.S. Army general on a special assignment to the White House define the new training program for mutual security, and another ranking U.S. Army general on assignment to the Office of the Secretary of Defense define the new method of warfare designed to counter the Communist support of “wars of national liberation”, and both in terms of civilian direction of the military operations of U.S. forces? The answer is simple, although it has lain buried under the long years of the horrible disaster in Vietnam. Both of these men were closely affiliated with and had served with the CIA, and both were the type of men who make up the Secret Team. Even though they wear the uniform of the U.S. Army, their primary allegiance has been with the Secret Team/CIA new method of operations in peacetime. They saw that the time had come for the Secret Team to make its big move and for it to sweep out beyond the DOD and the CIA to form a massive paramilitary international power under paracivilian leadership and a monstrous cloak of security. By the end of 1962 this nation had gone so far down the line following the Agency, the new Special Forces doctrine, the MAP, and the new U.S. philosophy as outlined in the President’s Committee report, that it was saying openly it was well on its way to carrying out as top national policy a major clandestine operation so big in fact that the entire government would be involved. Obviously, it could not be really clandestine in the sense that it would be kept secret from our enemies; on the contrary, it was a new kind of “clandestine”, so it would be kept secret from all Americans. In 1963-1964, the ambassador could have been withdrawn in favor of the military commander as the escalation went into effect. Then the CIA chief should have been relegated to the Fourth Force role he should have in a wartime situation. As late as the end of 1963, every U.S. Army combat soldier in Vietnam (excepting a few assigned to such offices as the legitimate MAAG section – as differentiated from the oversized cover MAAG section) was under the operational control and direction of the CIA. It was only after the beginning of real escalation that the Army soldiers under Army generals began to take over certain roles and missions and areas in Vietnam. They never did take over full responsibility for what was called a “war”. One reason for this was that there never was a real honest to God military objective of this war. There never has been in Vietnam that objective, which when achieved by military force, would have spelled victory. When a nation is ready to demand from its people fifty-five thousand lives and more than $200 billion of its wealth as a contribution to some foreign action, it should at least have an objective that can be achieved in a tangible manner so that one can tell when it has been reached or when such attainment is beyond reach. What has happened in Vietnam is that the CIA got in over its head, and the Army was sent in to attempt to bring some order out of the chaos that existed there after the assassination of President Diem. Only then, when the Marines and the Army arrived, were troops serving under the actual command and direction of their generals. One of the real reasons the Army got in there in the first place was because when the Marines came in they refused to take the field under the CIA. By that time, General Krulak, formerly the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities on the Joint Staff, and then commanding general of Fleet Marine Forces, Pacific, knew too much about the CIA and its activities to permit his Marines to hit the beaches of Indochina under any command other than Marine and the U.S. Military Command, Vietnam. Kennedy undoubtedly saw the beginnings of this serious problem after the Bay of Pigs investigation. At that time he wrote two very powerful National Security Action Memoranda, NSAM 55 and NSAM 57. Both were issued from the White House in June 1961. NSAM 55 was a brief memorandum of greatest significance, which was addressed directly to the Chairman of the JCS and was signed personally by the President. In essence it said that Jack Kennedy would hold the chairman (Lemnitzer) responsible for all action of a military nature during peacetime in the same manner as he would hold him responsible for such action in time of war. In other words, the President was saying that he wanted any and all peacetime operations (military type-clandestine, covert, paramilitary, etc.) to be under the control, or at least under the close scrutiny, of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. General Lemnitzer was a fine soldier of the old and traditional school and one of the best administrators to serve after World War II. As far as that old soldier was concerned, that memo meant there would be no more clandestine military operations in peacetime and that such things as Indonesia, Laos, Tibet, and the Bay of Pigs were a thing of the past. I was the officer responsible for briefing this paper to General Lemnitzer and to the other Chiefs of Staff, and that NSAM rested in my files. There need be no misunderstanding about what the memo meant, what the President meant, what Lemnitzer understood and did, and what the other Chiefs of Staff understood. This was an unusual memorandum because Kennedy sent it directly to the chairman and sent information copies only to McNamara, Rusk, and Allen Dulles. It should also be noted that Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Allen Dulles knew that NSAM well and understood its full meaning and intent; and they knew exactly what President Kennedy meant by it. In other words, President Kennedy, by the explicit publication of this brief memo, was letting the entire top echelon superstructure above the Secret Team, wherever it existed, know that from that time on there were to be no more such ill-conceived, inadequately planned, and inherently dangerous clandestine operations. If this directive had been followed explicitly and if Kennedy had lived to assure that it was followed as he intended it to be, there is a very good chance that United States involvement in Indochina would never have been escalated beyond the military-adviser level. The second memorandum, NSAM 57, though issued at the same time, was signed, as most NSAMs were, by a member of the NSC staff for the President. Coming as it did paired with NSAM 55 there could have been no misunderstanding that it carried the same thrust as NSAM 55, and that it fully expressed the views of President Kennedy. This memorandum was much longer, and it gave much more detail. Following the policy of the National Security Act of 1947 and of such other directives as NSCID 10/2 and later NSCID 5412/2, it recognized that there might be requirements for clandestine activity from time to time. Then it went further than those earlier directives and became much more explicit. It said that any small and truly covert type of operation “may be assigned” to the CIA and that any which were larger would be the subject of special study and planning and then “may be assigned” to the military, that part of the military which would be sufficient only to carry out that one operation on a one time basis. It directed that large covert operations would not be assigned to the CIA. The CIA argued that if it remained covert, regardless of size, no such transition of direction could take place. The whole point of the CIA argument was to invalidate the President’s controlling mechanism, which depended upon a scale of size. After all the dust had settled, it began to appear that Kennedy’s directive had been turned into an encouragement to the CIA to go out and start small fires and count on the military to bail them out. This may seem an odd conclusion – almost funny – but it is exactly how we got into Vietnam in spite of the directives from the White House. The Secret Team is perfectly capable of turning a No into a Yes by its gift of irrepressible argument. Recall how the trouble in Vietnam started. The CIA had been involved in a great number of brush fire operations there for a number of years in one way or another since the OSS days of 1945. These raged out of control, becoming a general conflagration by the end of 1963. At that time there were more than sixteen thousand American military personnel there, more or less in the ostensible role of advisory personnel; but all of these were under the actual direction of the country team, which meant that they were under the operational direction of the CIA. CIA Phoenix Program of torture and assassination in Vietnam (water-boarding old-style) Even ten years later and after the escalation of military manpower had reached the staggering figure of 550,000 men – to say nothing of gross amounts of civilian manpower – the central leadership was never transitioned to the military as President Kennedy’s NSAM 57 had ordered. If anyone ever wanted an example of how far the Secret Team can turn things around, this is one of the best. In June 1961 the President stated one thing categorically; by 1962 the Army’s spokesman (actually in Army uniform; but a CIA/Secret Team spokesman) had totally turned this around in his counterinsurgency doctrine and definition. Then, after President Kennedy died, the Secret Team retained control of most of the Vietnam War from its earliest birth pangs to the peak of escalation. Even the combat phase of the Vietnamese War, which is called “pacification” and which in fiscal year l972 cost more than $1 billion, was totally under the direction and control of the CIA. The key to all of this, the matter that made it so easy for the Secret Team to wrest control of this major peacetime “covert” operation, even from the hands of the President and Commander in Chief, lay in the words of the Army general quoted above: “The JCS have recently established within the Joint Staff a special staff section dealing exclusively with the problem of counterinsurgency.” This was a carefully designed move, and it emerged from a formative series of events. Almost from the time of the creation of the CIA, the Secretary of Defense had maintained on his immediate staff an Assistant to the Secretary for Special Operations. Among other things, this man was charged with the responsibility for liaison with the CIA, NSA, Department of State, and the White House. His area of interest was almost totally within the field of clandestine operations, although he was interested in routine intelligence matters and other related functions. For the five or six years prior to the Kennedy inauguration, this office was filled by an extremely able and wise figure, a retired four-star Marine general, Graves B. Erskine. He had served in that capacity longer than any man had ever served in the office of the Secretary of Defense at such a level of responsibility. His tenure had covered service under Charles Wilson, Neil McElroy, Thomas Gates, and for a brief period, Robert McNamara. As he was utilized by the secretaries prior to McNamara, he kept a close eye on all CIA operational activity that involved the military in any way, and whenever in his judgment things were going too far he would inform the Secretary, and in most instances the CIA would be asked to drop its request for military support, which generally was tantamount to halting the project. Erskine’s role was one of considerable quiet power; yet he used it sparingly. Then shortly after U.S. Air Force Colonel Edward G. Lansdale came back from Saigon, where he had been working for the CIA ever since the establishment of the Diem regime and immediately before that had been in Manila during the selection and establishment of the Magsaysay regime, he was assigned to General Erskine’s office at the specific request of Allen Dulles. Along with a number of other CIA agent cover “plants” in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Lansdale provided a strong counterfoil to his boss, General Erskine, within the military departments, where he was known, except to a few, only as an Air Force officer on the Secretary of Defense staff. (By 1961 the CIA, partly as a function of the vast U-2 project, was widely and deeply entrenched in the DOD.) When McNamara became Secretary, he was advised that he really would not need an Assistant for Special Operations. He abolished that office. Then many of the old office staff were dispersed, especially in one sudden move the day after the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation. Those who were left moved to a new location in a new office, which was then headed by General (recently promoted) Lansdale. During this period, I had been assigned to the Erskine staff and was performing a rather special function, which I had been doing for about five years before in the Pentagon. My office was transferred from OSD to the Joint Staff, along with the necessary manpower spaces and authorization to staff the office with representatives of all services and administrative support. Then, as a progression of this first move, the Joint Staff created an office called the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA), and it brought with it a large staff of CIA oriented personnel from all services. It had several temporary special assistants, among them General Hemtges and General Craig, before it acquired its greatest and most dynamic driving force, U.S. Marine General Victor H. Krulak. The important thing to understand is that the much-heralded office of SACSA had very few military responsibilities. It was almost entirely CIA oriented. For example, the great proportion of its dealing with the Army was strictly limited to Special Forces activity. With the Air Force it was for the most part limited to Special Air Warfare activity, and with the Navy it was active in the Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) teams. There were other duties of course; but most of them gave the office something it could say it was doing while it performed its primary task of supporting the CIA, the Secret Team, and of breathing life unto the massive Frankenstein called counterinsurgency. SACSA played another very important role in the highest level policy discussions of this country. It has been said that Kennedy wanted to get out of Vietnam in 1963 but deferred it “until after his re-election”, as he told Senator Mike Mansfield, because such a move would stir up a “(Joe) McCarthy wave of sentiment” and would lose him the support of the JCS. The JCS Kennedy knew best was the voice of SACSA. The one officer he saw from the Joint Staff more than any other during those crucial days was General Krulak. This was because Allen Dulles and Maxwell Taylor (at that time the military advisor to the President) opened the door for Krulak, since Krulak’s job was to “support the CIA”. General Krulak’s closest advisors were such men as Bill Bundy, a long-time career CIA man on McNamara’s staff at that time; General Lansdale, and other key CIA agents and high officials. Later, when Maxwell Taylor had become the chairman of the JCS, the only JCS John Kennedy knew was even more CIA biased, since Maxwell Taylor himself was by that time more oriented toward the Secret Team than the military, and Krulak was closer than ever to the President. Thus it was not the real military that Kennedy would have offended if he had withdrawn from Vietnam in 1963. It was the chameleon Secret Team/CIA military who made him think they would have objected, and who made him think that they represented the military. As important to the Secret Team as SACSA was, of equal importance was the return to the government and especially to the Pentagon of Maxwell Taylor. After the Bay of Pigs, it was inevitable that Allen Dulles would leave the CIA. His chief lieutenant, Dick Bissell of U-2 fame and of Laos and Bay of Pigs infamy, left the Agency to become the head of the Institute of Defense Analysis, an organization with many interesting functions – among them, acting as a conduit for CIA activities. Dulles again showed that uncanny ability of his and of the Agency’s to rise above each fiasco on to new heights. During the Bay of Pigs inquiry he ingratiated Maxwell Taylor to the Kennedys so firmly that Jack Kennedy assigned General Taylor to the position of Military Adviser to the President. This was a good cover assignment for General Taylor. However, everyone else in the need-to-know clan knew that Maxwell Taylor was in the White House to be the President’s liaison man with the CIA. The President may not have known how closely Maxwell Taylor’s aspirations and those of Allen Dulles matched each other. During the last days of the Dulles era, Maxwell Taylor served as the focal point man between Dulles and his Agency and the White House. Maxwell Taylor had quit the Army in a dispute with the Eisenhower Administration and now he was in an ideal position to encourage with all support and haste the urgent development of the new flexible response army, attuned to the trumpet of Taylor’s own choosing – counter-insurgency. All the pieces were coming together, and during this formative period a new special group was formed. This was the Special Group (of the NSC), Counterinsurgency, better known as the Special Group CI, or CI. This group presided over the CIA, State and Defense Departments, and others, who hastily put together a list of counterinsurgency nations. It was a watch list, which varied from time to time as intelligence inputs rose and fell with the tides of international events. The Special Group CI list usually ran to about sixteen or seventeen countries, in the order of how deep they were along the path to insurgency and decay. It is worth noting that although the automatic target of CI was Communism, not a single “Communist” country, including Cuba, was on the list. It was characteristic of the new Secret Team focus that the United States was to intervene in the affairs of its friends and not in the affairs of Russia’s friends or of China’s friends. As countries were added to the list their military aid programs were hastily escalated, and literally hundreds and sometimes thousands of American military personnel of all types descended upon them. Sometimes they arrived in uniform and sometimes in civilian disguise. They went to work immediately in support of the new political-social-economic doctrine, and before long new schools were being built – by the army; new hospitals were being built – by the army; new farming techniques were under way – by the army; irrigation and water purification projects were under way – again by the army. Underlying all of the paramilitary and sometimes real military work was the CIA, working with the host government to weed out, to identify, and to categorize all of the subversive insurgents. In countries where the word Communism had never been applied to bandits, beggars, and rebels before, all of a sudden all opposition was given the name “Communist”. All the problems were attributed to Communists, and the counterinsurgency action was under way. Thus, all of these pressures and behind-the-scenes efforts piled up before Vietnam, and came to a head in Vietnam. As we have said before, the logistics equipment in huge amounts from Indonesia, Tibet, Laos, the Bay of Pigs, and many other operations all began to accumulate in Vietnam along with the Secret Team personnel, who saw an opportunity to accomplish, almost with abandon, all of the things that they had failed to do or had been unable to do before. While this was going on quietly and quite subtly before his eyes, President Kennedy did a lot of talking with many old hands about “what has gone wrong with the Bay of Pigs” and “what is the meaning of Vietnam”. One of Kennedy’s closest friends, Kenny O’Donnell, reports that General MacArthur had “stunned” the President in 1961, after the Bay of Pigs, with his warnings about the folly of trying to match Asian manpower and about the absurdity of the domino theory “in a nuclear age”. O’Donnell further reports, “The General implored the President to avoid a U.S. military buildup in Vietnam, or any other part of the Asian mainland…” And Mary McGrory, a reporter, has said, in words more truthful and important than she knew, “President Kennedy, who at the time was caught up in the counterinsurgency mania which had swept the New Frontier, was subsequently startled by the passionate objections of Mansfield. But he told Mansfield privately, after a White House leadership meeting, that he agreed with him “on a need for a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, but I can’t do it until 1965 after I get re-elected”. Kennedy had the misfortune, which he was overcoming rapidly, of being young and inexperienced in the inner ways of government, such as those employed by the Secret Team. He could not have realized that Maxwell Taylor, for example, by the time he had returned to the Pentagon as chairman of the JCS, was actually more of a Judas goat, as far as the military was concerned, than the leader of the herd, as he had been when he left three years before. Few great armies have been so vastly demoralized and stricken by an integral campaign as has the U.S. Army since those dark days of 1964 and 1965, when Maxwell Taylor and his Secret Team counterparts led them into Vietnam under the banner of counterinsurgency. Vietnam is not a simple thing. Businesses that had been all but knocked out of the defense contract arena by the end of the Eisenhower regime – some by the sudden and abrupt swing to ballistic missiles and space during the late fifties – saw new light at the end of the tunnel in the resurgence of the foot-soldier army and the ground warfare this new dogma presaged. They could expect to go back to making World War II type munitions again and dumping them on the shores of Asia. Perhaps the strongest support for the Vietnamese war has always come from the national defense industries, which benefited tremendously by this windfall. The helicopter industry, which was on the ropes in 1958-59, became a major supplier of war material for Vietnam. At the beginning of the war in Vietnam, the Air Force had very few aircraft that could carry a respectable tonnage of bombs – not because the planes could not carry the load, but because they had all been designed to carry nuclear weapons. As the war became a bombing war – what McNamara called the “sophisticated war of the North” – all of these huge bombers had to be refitted to carry conventional bombs, and the huge munitions industry put back to work manufacturing bombs. There were many periods in the early days of the bombing when the Air Force actually ran out of bombs while the industry was getting out its old tooling and delivering World War II weapons again. This war halfway around the world was a major bonanza for the transportation industry and especially for the air transportation groups. During peak years, the DOD was spending three quarters of a billion dollars on charter airlift for Vietnam alone. In the services, military personnel who saw forced retirement facing them during the sixties were looking at a whole new vista with the new plan and its return to a ground war of massive troop strength. There were so many diverse interests, which all came together in the springtide of Vietnam and grew and grew from under a cloak of classification and secrecy. Few people realized how some of these operations got started, and how important some of these seemingly small things were in the escalation of Vietnam. The Agency brought a squadron of helicopters down from Laos, and immediately these complicated machines needed a great number of skilled men to support them; then these vast agglomerations of men and machines created their own requirements for additional men to protect them and to feed, house, and support them. The first helicopters came in under the wraps of secrecy. No one seemed to know how they got there; but once they were there the great logistics tail that was essential to keep them operating had to be built in the open, without classification. It could not have been kept secret, even if anyone had tried. On top of this, since the Secret Team was running the beginnings of the war from Washington, they felt that every gimmick they could dream up was worth a try. Even before the escalation, this plan to build up the action in Vietnam was foreshadowed and preordained by official military-type Secret Team doctrine, which stated: “These natural advantages [of the guerrilla] can be largely neutralized by the imaginative employment of modern technological advances which military research and development have been perfecting since the last war… night vision devices, lightweight body armor, portable radar for infantry use, invisible phosphorescent dyes, defoliants to deprive the guerrillas of their jungle cover; fast lightweight, silent, shallowdraft boats for river patrol, and tiny reliable short-range radios… Practical uses for all these new developments can best be found by establishing combat development and test centers in the country where the counterinsurgency campaign is being waged.” Such centers were set up later in Vietnam and proved to be the modern counterpart of the horn of plenty and the runaway Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The center in Saigon was given the highest priority to send daily messages to the Pentagon, and from there every single request, large and small, important or unimportant, was given a high priority to be carried out, all on the assumption that each and every request of the CDTC (Combat Development Test Center) would help win the war of counterinsurgency. The floodgates were open for the zealots, the irresponsible, and the special interests. Such things make small wars grow fast. The CIA was the first in Vietnam with helicopters. It introduced the M-16 rifle there, and it brought into Indochina the B-26 bombers left over from Cuba and Indonesia and the T-28 trainer aircraft modified as a ground-attack plane. It had the first L-28 utility aircraft, and it brought in the old C-46, C-47 and C-54 aircraft of World War II vintage. It introduced many new ships, such as the Coast Guard patrol ships and the Norwegian-built PT boats. It used the U-2 and had the use of the product of the RF-105 reconnaissance planes. Many of the battlefield tactics used later by the army were first used in the field by the CIA. By the middle of 1963 it had become evident that either the President was going to have to step in and put a halt to the spread of this counterinsurgency conflagration or it would consume the country. Everywhere the young Kennedy team turned, they came up against CIA and Secret Team specialists. With the sage and powerful General Erskine gone from the staff of the Secretary of Defense, his replacement in this type of activity was either Bill Bundy, a long-time CIA man; Ed Lansdale, a long-time CIA man also, or others too numerous to mention and so well concealed (such as those who really sent the U-2 out on that fateful May 1 mission) that the unaware McNamara had no defense against their continuing pressures. Even in the office that he thought would give him some buffer between the Agency and the military – that special office in the Joint Staff – SACSA, McNamara was getting almost 100 percent CIA action, and when Maxwell Taylor became Chairman even his efforts were expended more in support of the Secret Team, as he saw it, than in regular line military. Top military men who had known Taylor for years, had seen him leave the Army in a huff and had watched him return to the White House, where he cast his lot with the CIA and the Secret Team. They knew that even though he was among them officially as the chairman, he was no longer one of them. He was leading the Army and certain elements of the Navy and Air Force away from their traditional roles and into an opportunistic and uncertain future with the CIA and the Secret Team – into the orgy of Vietnam. We have seen earlier that President Kennedy’s directive, NSAM 57, which laid out the ground rules for covert operations and broke them down on the basis that very small was for CIA and the larger ones must be reviewed and probably assigned to the military, had been so turned around that it had become, in practice, almost meaningless on the intangible issue of when to transition from the CIA to the military. To demonstrate how totally this directive has been circumvented, we should note that there has never been a transition in Saigon, even when the force strength stood at 550,000 men. We have not seen what had happened to NSAM 55, the memo Kennedy had sent directly to General Lemnitzer. The General filed that memo and used its silent power to assure that the military would not become involved in covert operations. When Maxwell Taylor became the chairman, he inherited this power. Whereas the President had called upon the chairman of the JCS to advise him in peacetime as he would in wartime, now he had appointed an adviser who was with the other side. The CIA knew that Taylor would not advise against them any more than Lansdale and Bundy would, up in McNamara’s office. Therefore, with the move of Maxwell Taylor to the chairmanship of the JCS, the Secret Team had checkmated President Kennedy on both NSAM 55 and NSAM 57. As the country moved into the crucial summer of 1963 the President admitted to his closest confidants that he could not move against the right-wingers and the Secret Team. As he told Senator Mansfield, “I can’t do it until 1965, after I’m re-elected.” And as he told Kenny O’Donnell, “In 1965, I’ll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now, we would have another Joe McCarthy Red scare on our hands.” Then in a broadcast on Sept. 2, 1963, President Kennedy gave a hint of his plans for disengagement when he said, speaking of the Vietnamese, “In the final analysis it is their war. They have to win or lose it.” As we look back to the beginning of this narrative and to those remarkable papers called, quite incorrectly, the Pentagon Papers we recall that early in October 1963, only one month after the above cited broadcast, McNamara and Maxwell Taylor reported to the President that it looked to them, after their visit to Saigon, as though things could be put under control and that we would be able to withdraw all personnel by the end of 1965. Now we can see why they chose that date. This was the date the President had used in his own discussions with his closest advisers. They all knew that he planned to announce a pullout once he had been re-elected. Less than one month after that report, the men who had been running South Vietnam since they had been placed in power there by the American CIA, along with Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Nhu, were dead, and the government had been turned over to one of the friendly generals who more properly fit the pattern for counterinsurgency and the new plan. If South Vietnam was to be redeemed it would best be saved by a junta of benevolent army generals – or so the new military doctrine went. Less than one month after that date, President Kennedy himself had been shot dead in Dallas. And what is even more portentous, it was less than one month after that tragic date that the same two travelers, McNamara and Taylor, returned again from Saigon and reported to a new President that conditions were bad in South Vietnam and we would have to make a major effort, including American combat troops and a vast “sophisticated” clandestine program, against the North Vietnamese. The Secret Team struck quickly. While the echoes of those shots in Dallas were still ringing, the Secret Team moved to take over the whole direction of the war and to dominate the activity of the United States of America. In the face of these shocking and terrifying events, who could have expected a man who had been in the range of gunfire that ended the life of his predecessor, to make any moves in those critical days that would indicate he was not going to go along with the pressures which had surfaced so violently in Dallas? He knew exactly what had happened there in Dallas. He did not need to wait for the findings of the Warren Commission. He already knew that the death of Lee Harvey Oswald would never bring any relief to him or to his successors. ————————————————————————————————————————————— Full text of The Secret Team is available here. ——————————————————————————————————————————— Dramatization of "X" (based upon Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty), in movie JFK (New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and Fletcher Prouty did not actually meet at the time Garrison was engaged in the investigation of the JFK assassination, but the charactor "X" in the movie is based upon Colonal Prouty's written account of the crime): https://youtu.be/vK8RosaXpyI?si=eB9pxlDrxQ5xNzkN 'Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty Explains the Bay of Pigs & LBJ's reversal of Kennedy order to withdraw from Vietnam' Col. Prouty spent 9 of his 23 year military career in the Pentagon (1955-1964): 2 years with the Secretary of Defense, 2 years with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 5 years with Headquarters, U.S. Air Force. In 1955 he was appointed the first "Focal Point" officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations per National Security Council Directive 5412. He was Briefing Officer for the Secretary of Defense (1960-1961), and for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At times he would be called to meet with Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles at their home on highly classified business. In this capacity Col. Prouty would be at the nerve center of the Military-Industrial Complex at a time unequaled in American History. http://www.prouty.org/preface.html

WHY DID JACKIE KENNEDY START TO CLIMB ONTO THE BACK OF THE PRESIDENTIAL LIMOUSINE AFTER JFK HAD BEEN SHOT IN THE HEAD? According to the testimony of multiple witnesses we should be seeing the ejection of much blood and biological debris from the back of JFK's head. It was all over the trunk of the presidential limo, and it is solidly substantiated that the reason Jackie Kennedy stood up was to go after some of that biological debris (in particular see Clint Hill's testimony below describing biological debris coming off the trunk -- imagery that has been completely excised from the film). ----------------------------------------------------- "...Jackie Kennedy told William Manchester in one of two, five-hour interviews conducted for his 1967 account of the assassination, The Death of a President: "He had his hand out; I could see a piece of his skull coming off," she said. She remembered being surprised by the fact it was flesh-coloured, not white; and later recalled climbing onto the trunk of the car to retrieve the serrated piece of his skull sliding onto the road...." https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/jfk-assassination-jackie-kennedys-iconic-pink-suit/DZ2IEVIFS2Z7URSTM6TU5Y3TBU/ ------------------------------------------------------ FROM A NEWSPAPER INTERVIEW OF DR. RONALD JONES: "...That day, [Dr. Ronald Jones] arrived in Trauma Room 1 just as the president was being wheeled in. The 15-square-foot room, which usually saw victims of car accidents or bar brawls, was quickly filling up with Secret Service agents, presidential handlers, doctors and nurses, he said. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy stood in a corner of the room, not crying but looking grim, her husband's blood still fresh on her pink wool outfit, Jones said. Earlier, when she first arrived at the hospital, she had handed another doctor a section of skull and some brain matter belonging to her husband that she had gathered from the limousine they were riding in, he said...." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/07/kennedy-assassination-doctor-parkland/2609969/ ------------------------------------------------------ TESTIMONY OF CLINT HILL REGARDING JACKIE KENNEDY "REACHING FOR SOMETHING COMING OFF THE RIGHT REAR BUMPER OF THE CAR" "...Between the time I originally grabbed the handhold and until I was up on the car, Mrs. Kennedy -- the second noise that I heard had removed a portion of the President's head, and he had slumped noticeably to his left. Mrs. Kennedy had jumped up from the seat and was, it appeared to me, reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper of the car, the right rear tail, when she noticed that I was trying to climb on the car. She turned toward me and I grabbed her and put her back in the back seat, crawled up on top of the back seat and lay there...." https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/pdf/WH2_Hill.pdf ------------------------------------------------------ MILICENT CRANOR ON DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ZAPRUDER FILM AND NIX FILM DEPICTIONS OF JACKIE KENNEDY AND CLINT HILL ON THE TRUNK OF THE PRESIDENTIAL LIMO: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2232161073506616/posts/4392428030813232/ Milicent Cranor wrote on 8/17/2021: "When comparing Jackie's position in the two films, please note that in the Nix film, Jackie's right arm is parallel to the trunk, and her hand clearly reaches to the end of it. In the Z film, her right arm is bent, and her right palm is flat on the trunk, not reaching out to Hill. And her distance from the end of the trunk could not possibly be explained by angle of camera." ------------------------------------------------------ "...* One clear indication of alteration in the Zapruder film is the fact that in the Zapruder film Jackie Kennedy goes only slightly beyond the middle point of the trunk before retreating back to her seat, whereas in the Orville Nix film she goes noticeably farther out on the trunk. This means that numerous frames have been removed from this segment of the Zapruder film. Z380 is the frame before Jackie begins to retreat from the trunk. She is barely halfway past the middle of the trunk in this frame. Her right hand is slightly beyond the middle point of the trunk—the rest of her body is clearly behind the middle point. Moreover, she is nowhere near Agent Clint Hill. Her right hand is at least 12 inches from Agent Hill, and the rest of her body is nowhere near him. In stark contrast, in the Nix film Jackie clearly goes much farther out on the truck and gets close to Agent Hill. Milicent Cranor, who has a background in medical forensic publishing, discusses this issue in detail in her article “JFK Assassination Film: Proof of Tampering?”..." Excerpt from 'Film Altered, Eyewitness Ignored - The Best 2014 Book on the JFK Assassination' Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. is a professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, where he taught in the law school for 40 years. This is his 39th published article on the JFK assassination. https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1207&context=fac_pm ------------------------------------------------------ The following is an excellent article by Milicent Cranor about the differences between the Zapruder film and the Nix film: ------------------------------------------------------ Milicent Cranor, a WhoWhatWhy senior editor with a background in forensic medical publishing, has studied the JFK assassination on and off for more than two decades. In this essay, Cranor asks readers to consider whether there is a significant discrepancy between the Nix and Zapruder films of the assassination, and if this indicates tampering. She also focuses on the Warren Commission testimony of Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who jumped onto the back of the President’s limousine. What he said seems to suggest he saw Kennedy being shot in the head — for a second time — immediately after the first time. This would contradict the Commission’s central finding that JFK was killed by a single shooter. https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/07/12/jfk-assassination-film-proof-of-tampering/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/2635884919800894/ GOVERNMENT INTEGRITY JFK Assassination Film: Proof of Tampering? MILICENT CRANOR 07/12/18 No need to rely on eyewitness testimony. Be your own witness. See if we prove that action seen on the Nix film of the assassination is missing from the more well-known Zapruder film. Or not. Listen To This Story Milicent Cranor, a WhoWhatWhy senior editor with a background in forensic medical publishing, has studied the JFK assassination on and off for more than two decades. In this essay, Cranor asks readers to consider whether there is a significant discrepancy between the Nix and Zapruder films of the assassination, and if this indicates tampering. She also focuses on the Warren Commission testimony of Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who jumped onto the back of the President’s limousine. What he said seems to suggest he saw Kennedy being shot in the head — for a second time — immediately after the first time. This would contradict the Commission’s central finding that JFK was killed by a single shooter. The other day I was trying to make sense of some strange discrepancies in what a Secret Service agent said about what he saw when President John F. Kennedy was shot. I’m referring to Clint Hill, the man who jumped onto the trunk of the limousine to protect Jackie Kennedy who had gone out onto the trunk of the car. Here’s what I can’t sort out: His stories do not agree with the films, and the films do not seem to agree with each other. Amateur films by Abraham Zapruder and Orville Nix do not agree with each other in at least one obvious way. James Norwood, a retired professor of Humanities, University of Minnesota, was perhaps the first to point out what seems to be a definitive discrepancy: In the Zapruder film of the assassination, Jackie goes only just beyond the middle of the trunk before retreating. In the Nix film, Jackie goes noticeably further out on the trunk. Before looking at stills from these rather fuzzy films, you may want to see a good clear picture of the trunk, and the reference points that help nail down Jackie’s location on the trunk at various times: the seatback, the handholds, and the word on the side of the limousine (Continental). One other thing to be aware of is the position of the photographers, relative to each other and to the street. The picture below — a still from the Nix film — shows Abraham Zapruder directly across from Nix, standing on an abutment. Zapruder’s position indicated by yellow arrow on the Nix film below. (From this version of the film.) Orville Nix stood across the lawn on the south side of Main Street, but we have no picture of him at the time. But you can tell a lot about where he stood from his film itself. Please go here to see an overhead view of Dealey Plaza. And to orient yourself even more, check out the view — in real time — from the alleged sniper’s nest in the Texas Book Depository Building: Earthcam of Dealey Plaza. Zapruder Film . Below is an especially clear copy of Zapruder frame #375. It shows the farthest Jackie gets onto the trunk, in this film. Consider the distance between Jackie’s right hand — and the left handhold grasped by Clint Hill. It looks to be almost a foot. To see a slow motion of the sequence showing Jackie on the trunk, please go here. For your convenience, here are links to frames that appear before, during, and after Jackie gets to the farthest place on the trunk. Before: Z-368, Z-369, Z-370, Z-371, Z-372, Z-373, Z-374. During: Z-375, Z-376, Z-377, Z-378, Z-379, Z-380. After: Jackie begins to retreat. Z-381, Z-382, Z-383, Z-384, Z-385, Z-386, Z-387, Z-388, Z-389, Z-390, Z-391, Z-392, Z-393, Z-394, Z-395, Z-396. (Go here for individual still frames from the entire extant film.) Nix Film . Below is a still frame that seems to show Jackie much closer to Hill. Jackie’s right wrist hovers at the edge of the trunk, and her hand seems to have reached the handhold. Her right elbow is above the word Continental on the side of the car. (It shows up only as a white blur on the blue near the bumper.) Where are the Zapruder film equivalents to these frames? I can find no cache of individual frames from the Nix film, but here are two copies of the film that offer different advantages: A good steady copy that stops on each frame: A slow motion film, but not too slow: What Does It All Mean? . We don’t really know what any of it means. But we do know that a tremendous amount of chicanery has been performed in the presentation of evidence in this entire case. (To see some astounding examples concerning the medical evidence, please go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Orville Nix said that frames from the copy of his film are missing. (The original was never returned to the Nix family; it was “lost.”) But that film — at least as far as Jackie’s escapade on the trunk is concerned — seems less edited than the Zapruder film. The Nix film shows far less detail because it was taken at a distance. But it does provide perspective and landmarks in the background. Removal of too many frames on that film would be noticeable. A third amateur film of the assassination, taken by Marie Muchmore, only shows Hill getting off the follow-up car and making a run for the Kennedy’s car. JFK is hit in the head before he reaches the car, or so it appears — on that badly damaged film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOthjMTWTlE The Zapruder film gives a much closer view of the action, and of whatever may have landed on the trunk as a result of JFK’s devastating wound which might suggest a shot from the front — a possibility that would raise serious questions about the official narrative of the assassination, that JFK was shot from behind. Such a possibility may explain why those frames were removed. But there’s something else about this close view — it’s so close you can’t see exactly when Clint Hill first gets into the picture. When did Hill actually grab onto the limousine the first time, before he fell off and got back on again? As you will see from what follows, this is a crucial question. If Clint Hill told the truth when he testified before the Warren Commission, then — without knowing it — he witnessed a second head shot. Hill said he saw JFK’s head come apart after he reached the car. But we know from all the films that JFK was shot in the head almost immediately after Hill got off the running board of the follow-up car. Many witness stories suggest JFK was hit more than once in the head in a flurry of shots fired close together. (Documented below.) In the following excerpts from Hill’s testimony before the Warren Commission, you will find specific reference points that seem to nail down the exact moment he heard the headshot. As you will see, he associates that shot with the first time he grabbed the handgrip. And, he says, when he mounted the car the sound of that shot was different from the earlier one. His analogy, standing against something metal strongly suggests he was in contact with the car when JFK was shot in the head. These are physical — even visceral — connections he makes with the time JFK’s head came apart. And that moment does not show on the Zapruder film. What Did Clint Hill Witness — and When? . I heard a noise from my right rear, which to me seemed to be a firecracker. I immediately looked to my right, and, in so doing, my eyes had to cross the Presidential limousine and I saw President Kennedy grab at himself and lurch forward and to the left. I jumped from the car, realizing that something was wrong, ran to the Presidential limousine. Just about as I reached it, there was another sound, which was different than the first sound. I think I described it in my statement as though someone was shooting a revolver into a hard object — it seemed to have some type of an echo. I put my right foot, I believe it was, on the left rear step of the automobile, and I had a hold of the handgrip with my hand, when the car lurched forward. I lost my footing and I had to run about three or four more steps before I could get back up in the car. Between the time I originally grabbed the handhold and until I was up on the car … the second noise that I heard had removed a portion of the President’s head, and he had slumped noticeably to his left. Mrs. Kennedy had jumped up from the seat and was, it appeared to me, reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper of the car, the right rear tail, when she noticed that I was trying to climb on the car. She turned toward me and I grabbed her and put her back in the back seat… Soon after, Hill was asked, “Was there anything back there that you observed, that she might have been reaching for?” His response: I thought I saw something come off the back, too, but I cannot say that there was. Asked about the origin of the “second” shot he heard: It was right, but I cannot say for sure that it was rear, because when I mounted the car it was — it had a different sound … than the first sound that I heard. The second one had almost a double sound — as though you were standing against something metal and firing into it, and you hear both the sound of a gun going off and the sound of the cartridge hitting the metal place… The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car … There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of this head. In recent interviews (here, here, here, and here), Hill revised what he reported in his sworn testimony. And he mixed in the claims of the official story, as if they were his own observations. For example, he said the bullet entered the back of the head [gestures to area low in the back of the head] and came out the front, causing a piece of bone to flip out, although it adhered to the scalp. A far cry from his original observation of a “large gaping wound in the right rear.” Corroboration of Sorts . It seems that several witnesses did not hear the actual first shot. Or even the next one. And some heard a shot — for the first time — when Kennedy was hit in the head, then they heard one or more shots afterward. The stories I find the most convincing are those involving a reference point associated with the sound of the shot, as shown in the case of Clint Hill. Here are a few examples: Emmett Hudson, Dealey Plaza groundskeeper: He associates the second shot he heard with the head wound. And he associates a third shot with the way it sounded as he lay on the ground. I happened to be looking right at him when that bullet hit him — the second shot … it looked like it hit him somewhere along about a little bit behind the ear and a little bit above the ear. I just laid down over on the ground [urged by another witness to get down] … and when that third shot rung out and when I was close to the ground you could tell the shot was coming from above and kind of behind. I don’t know if you have ever laid down close to the ground … when you heard the reports coming, but it’s a whole lot plainer than it is when you are standing up in the air. Another reference point is the moment a photographer takes a picture. Bystander Phillip L. Willis said, “The shot caused me to squeeze the camera shutter, and I got a picture of the President as he was hit with the first shot. So instantaneous … the crowd hadn’t had time to react.” To the west of Willis, about three seconds later, Associated Press photographer James W. Altgens also took a photo of the motorcade. The strange thing is, Altgens said he took that picture almost simultaneously with what he called “the first shot.” When questioned closely about the timing, Altgens swore that he heard no other shots or noises that could have been shots before this “first” one. Even further west, Mary Moorman took a Polaroid picture of JFK as he was being shot in the head. She said, “As I snapped the picture … I heard a shot ring out … Then I heard another shot ring out and Mrs. Kennedy jumped up in the car … I heard three or four shots in all.” Sheriff William Decker, who was in the lead car, which was so far to the west it was almost at the underpass, said, “As the Motorcade was proceeding down Elm Street, I distinctly remember hearing 2 shots. As I heard the first retort [sic], I looked back over my shoulder and saw what appeared to me to be a spray of water come out of the rear seat of the President’s car.” Special Agent George Hickey was also in the follow-up car with Hill. Below, he seems to be describing the effects of two bullets fired nearly simultaneously, one of which he thought was a near miss, disturbing only JFK’s hair. Other witnesses had the same impression. I heard a loud report which sounded like a firecracker … A disturbance in 679X caused me to look forward toward the President’s car … At the moment he was almost sitting erect I heard two [more] reports which I thought were shots and that appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them. It looked to me as if the President was struck in the right upper rear of his head. The first shot of the second two seemed as if it missed because the hair on the right side of his head flew forward and there didn’t seem to be any impact against his head. The last shot seemed to hit his head and cause a noise at the point of impact which made him fall forward and to his left again. Charles Brehm, bystander: The President was leaning forward when he stiffened perceptibly at the same instant what appeared to be a rifle shot sounded … the President seemed to stiffen and come to a pause when another shot sounded and the President appeared to be badly hit in the head. BREHM said when the President was hit by the second shot he could notice the President’s hair fly up … and then [he] roll[ed] over to his side … Brehm said that a third shot followed … between the first and third shots, the President’s car only seemed to move some 10 or 12 feet … almost came to a halt after the first shot [FBI statement] ‘I guess there was a noise’ . You may be wondering at this point: How could anyone with normal hearing not have heard that first loud bang? Jacqueline Kennedy gave a plausible explanation during her testimony to the Warren Commission: You know, there is always noise in a motorcade and there are always motorcycles besides us, a lot of them backfiring. I guess there was a noise, but it didn’t seem like any different noise really because there is so much noise, motorcycles and things. But then suddenly Governor Connally was yelling … Kennedy’s limousine was surrounded by nine motorcycle policemen: five in front, and four more close behind — two on each side putt-putting away. The Altgens photo shows that Clint Hill still has not jumped off the running board. But he testified that he did so immediately after hearing the “first” shot. Like many other witnesses, Hill apparently did not hear the first shot, nor did he hear the one that struck JFK in the head before he reached the car. Photo credit: Ike Altgens / AP / Wikimedia Another thing you should know: Promoters of the lone assassin theory often stress the fact that one shot can sound like two. But what they don’t tell you is that, depending on the location of the witness in relation to the shooter, two shots can sound like one. The first Bang can cause the little muscles supporting the eardrum to contract defensively, making one temporarily deaf to a second Bang. But many did apparently hear two nearly simultaneous shots at the time of the head wounding. (This has implications for jiggle analysis — the correlation of a shot with film blur caused by a photographer’s startle reflex. For more on this, go here.) Areas of Deception and Confusion . There is another, more sinister explanation for the confusion and discrepancies when it comes to the number and location of shots. It can be found in an article by attorney and JFK researcher Carol Hewett that is just stunning, rich in insight and very hard-to-get information. She came upon a diagram, printed in 1963 showing a circle surrounding three snipers in a triangle. Each sniper is in a designated spot: Area of Certain Location Area of Deception (directly across from the Area of Certain Location) Area of Confusion (one on each side of the Area of Certain Location) Its caption is chilling: Chart from Military Armament Corporation. The muzzle blast spread from a suppressed [i.e., “silenced”] weapon shows deception and confusion resulting from attempts to locate sound origin from a weak fixed source at various angles from the source. Photo credit: Deleuze Cinema Project 1 Doctored Sound, Doctored Film? . Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas, said in his book, “The present study seeks to make proper use of the photographs inasmuch as they constitute the only inviolable form of evidence. Whereas witness reports can be in error.” Films and photographs are hardly an “inviolable form of evidence,” as is acknowledged in what many consider the “bible on evidence,” McCormick on Evidence, 3rd Ed., Edited by Edward W. Cleary, West Publishing Co., St. Paul, MN, 1984. Title 8, Chapter 21, Demonstrative Evidence; Section 214: The principle upon which photographs are most commonly admitted into evidence is the same as that underlying the admission of illustrative drawings, maps, and diagrams. Under this theory, a photograph is viewed merely as a graphic portrayal of oral testimony, and becomes admissible only when a witness has testified that it is a correct and accurate representation of the relevant facts personally observed by the witness. (p.671) Motion pictures, when they were first sought to be introduced in evidence, were frequently objected to and sometimes excluded on the theory that they afforded manifold opportunities for fabrication and distortion… And in real life, as demonstrated by the chart from the Military Armament Corporation, there are also manifold opportunities for fabrication and distortion. I thank Pamela Brown, a flautist and JFK assassination researcher, for her help in understanding certain aspects of Kennedy’s limousine. Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Dealey Plaza (Father of Nehrams2020 / Wikimedia – CC BY-SA 3.0). Author Milicent Cranor is a senior editor at WhoWhatWhy. She has worked as a creative editor at E.P. Dutton, a comedy ghostwriter, and editor of consequential legal and scientific documents. She has also co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles for medical journals.

KEVIN BALCH WROTE: Here is Vince Palamar's very interesting analysis of William Greer's statements and testimony about stopping the limo (which has been excised from the extant Zapruder film) in Chapter Ten of his latest book entitled "A Master List of Witnesses Who Stated That the Limousine Slowed or Stopped– A Deadly Delay on Elm Street ": ----------------------------------------------------------- "...William Manchester, who interviewed Greer, tells us what the driver told Jackie on 11/22/63 at Parkland Hospital: “Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, oh my God, oh my God. I didn’t mean to do it [?!?!], I didn’t hear [who, Kellerman?], I should have swerved the car [how about hitting the gas?], I couldn’t help it [!]. Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, as soon as I saw it [?] I swerved. If only I’d seen it in time! Oh!” (The Death of a President, p.290). All these witnesses and the Zapruder film document Secret Service agent William R. Greer’s deceleration of the presidential limousine, as well as his two separate looks back at JFK during the assassination (Greer denied all of this to the Warren Commission). By decelerating from an already slow 11.2 mph, Greer greatly endangered the President’s life, and, as even Gerald Posner admitted, Greer contributed greatly to the success of the assassination. When we consider that Greer disobeyed a direct order from his superior, Roy Kellerman, to get out of line before the fatal shot struck the President’s head, it is hard to give Agent Greer the benefit of the doubt. As ASAIC Roy H. Kellerman said: “Greer then looked in the back of the car. Maybe he didn’t believe me” (The Death of a President by William Manchester, p. 160). Clearly, Greer was responsible, at fault, and felt remorse. In short, Greer had survivor’s guilt. But, then, stories and feelings changed. Agent Greer to the FBI 11/22/63: “Greer stated that he first heard what he thought was possibly a motorcycle backfire and glanced around and noticed that the President had evidently been hit [notice that, early on, Greer admits seeing JFK, which the Zapruder proves he did two times before the fatal head shot occurred]. He thereafter got on the radio and communicated with the other vehicles, stating that they desired to get the President to the hospital immediately [in reality, Greer did not talk on the radio, and Greer went on to deny ever saying this during his WC testimony].Greer stated that they (the Secret Service) have always been instructed to keep the motorcade moving at a considerable speed in as much as a moving car offers a much more difficult target than a vehicle traveling at a very slow speed. He pointed out that on numerous occasions he has attempted to keep the car moving at a rather fast rate, but in view of the President’s popularity and desire to maintain close liaison with the people, he has, on occasion, been instructed by the President to “slow down.” Greer stated that he has been asking himself if there was anything he could have done to have avoided this incident, but stated that things happened so fast that he could not account for full developments in this matter (!) [the “JFK-as-scapegoat” theme – and so much for Greer’s remorse from earlier the same day].” (Sibert & O’Neill Report, 11/22/63) Agent Greer to the FBI 11/27/63: “He heard a noise which sounded like a motorcycle backfire. On hearing this noise he glanced to his right toward Kellerman and out of the corner of his eye noticed that the Governor appeared to be falling toward his wife [notice that Greer now mentions nothing about seeing JFK hit – he does the same thing in his undated report in the WC volumes (18 H 723)] He thereafter recalls hearing some type of outcry after which Kellerman said, “Let’s get out of here.” He further related that at the time of hearing the sound he was starting down an incline which passes beneath a railroad crossing and after passing under this viaduct, he closed in on the lead car and yelled to the occupants and a nearby police motorcyclist, “Hospital, Hospital! [nothing about using the radio this time out]” Thereafter follows a complete physical description of Greer, as if the FBI agents considered him a suspect, including age, height, and color of eyes! (Sibert & O’Neill Report, 11/29/63) Critical excerpts from Greer’s 3/9/64 Warren Commission testimony before Arlen Specter: Mr. Specter: Were you able to see anything of President Kennedy as you glanced to the rear? Mr. Greer: No, sir; I didn’t see anything of the President, I didn’t look, I wasn’t far enough around to see the President. Mr. Specter: When you started that glance, are you able to recollect whether you started to glance before, exactly simultaneously with or after that second shot? Mr. Greer: It was almost simultaneously that he had – something had hit, you know, when I had seen him. It seemed like in the same second almost that something had hit, you know, whenever I turned around. I saw him start to fall. Mr. Specter: Did you step on the accelerator before, simultaneously or after Mr. Kellerman instructed you to accelerate? Mr. Greer: It was about simultaneously. Mr. Specter: So that it was your reaction to accelerate prior to the time – Mr. Greer: Yes, sir. Mr. Specter: You had gotten that instruction? Mr. Greer: Yes, sir; it was my reaction that caused me to accelerate. Mr. Specter: Do you recollect whether you accelerated before or at the same time or after the third shot? Mr. Greer: I couldn’t really say. Just as soon as I turned my head back from the second shot, right away I accelerated right then. It was a matter of my reflexes to the accelerator. Mr. Specter: Was it at about that time that you heard the third shot? Mr. Greer: Yes, sir; just as soon as I turned my head […] Mr. Specter: To the best of your current recollection, did you notice that the President had been hit? Mr. Greer: No, sir; I didn’t know how badly he was injured or anything other than that. I didn’t know. Mr. Specter: Did you know at all, from the glance which you have described that he had been hit or injured in any way? Mr. Greer: I knew he was injured in some way, but I didn’t know how bad or what. Mr. Specter: How did you know that? Mr. Greer: If I remember now, I just don’t remember how I knew, but I knew we were in trouble. I knew that he was injured, but I can’t remember, recollect, just how I knew there were injuries in there. I didn’t know who all was hurt, even. Mr. Specter: Are you able to recollect whether you saw the President after the shots as you were proceeding toward Parkland Hospital? Mr. Greer: No; I don’t remember ever seeing him anymore until I got to the hospital, and he was lying across the seat, you know, and that is the first I had seen of him. Mr. Specter: Your best recollection is, then, that you had the impression he was injured but you couldn’t ascertain the source of that information? Mr. Greer: Right. I couldn’t ascertain the source. Warren Commission finding: “The driver, Special Agent William R. Greer, has testified that he accelerated the car after what was probably the second shot.… The Presidential car did not stop or almost come to a complete halt after the firing of the first shot or any other shots.” (WC Report, page 641). 11/19/64 interview with Death of a President author William Manchester [RIF#180-10116-10119] – ”After the second shot I glanced back. I saw blood on the Governor’s white shirt, and I knew we were in trouble. The blood was coming out of his right breast. When I heard the first shot, I had thought it was a backfire. I was tramping on the accelerator and at the same time Roy was saying, let’s get out of here fast.”..." "...Warren Commission finding: “The driver, Special Agent William R. Greer, has testified that he accelerated the car after what was probably the second shot.… The Presidential car did not stop or almost come to a complete halt after the firing of the first shot or any other shots.”(WCReport, page 641)...." But remember what Roy Kellerman said: “Greer then looked in the back of the car. Maybe he didn’t believe me” (The Death of a President by William Manchester, p. 160). 2/28/78 HSCA interview [RIF#180-10099-10491] – ”The first shot sounded to him like a backfire. He did not react to it. After the second shot he turned to his right and saw blood on Governor Connally’s shirt. At the same moment he heard Kellerman say “We’re hit. Let’s get out of here,” or words to that effect. He said he immediately accelerated and followed the pilot car to Parkland Hospital [However, DNC Advance man Jack Puterbaugh, who rode in the pilot car, said they “pulled over and let the motorcade pass” (HSCA interview 4/14/78). The Washington Post from 2/28/85 reported Greer as saying that “I just looked straight ahead at the car in which the police chief was leading our way to the hospital” – this is the lead car. Nevertheless, the Daniel film and still photos depict the limousine ahead of the lead car, as it appears it was the lead motorcyclists who guided Greer to Parkland. Bill Greer passed away from cancer on 2/23/85. From a 9/17/91 interview with Bill’s son Richard: When asked, “What did your father think of JFK,” Richard did not respond the first time. When this author asked him a second time, he responded: “Well, we’re Methodists … and JFK was Catholic…” (Bill Greer was born and raised in County Tyrone, Ireland; 2 H 112 - 113) “My father certainly didn’t blame himself; it’s not one of those things – if only I was driving one mile per hour faster. “My father had absolutely no survivor’s guilt … he figured that events were kind out of their control... it was pretty common knowledge that a person riding in an open car was subject to a bullet at any time…” In any event, although the presidential limousine did not actually come to a full and complete stop during the assassination [1], it did slow down long enough to greatly help in the success of the assassination." Chapter Ten of 'HONEST ANSWERS ABOUT THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY' by Vince Palamara (Courtesy of Vince Palamara) "Master List of Witnesses Who Stated That the Limousine Slowed or Stopped – A Deadly Delay on Elm Street" LINK TO PDF OF CHAPTER TEN: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AnVVyr2Qcdy-gccV7bF_4Je5GuEYaA?e=E6b8Ay LINK TO POST OF CHAPTER TEN: https://www.facebook.com/groups/political assassinations researchhgroup/posts/5063457320376963/ KEVIN BALCH WROTE: You can find the accounts of Dave Powers and Kenny O'Donnell in the following. Thet are suggestive of the stop, but their testimony has been cleaned up. Chapter Ten of 'HONEST ANSWERS ABOUT THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY' by Vince Palamara (Courtesy of Vince Palamara) "Master List of Witnesses Who Stated That the Limousine Slowed or Stopped – A Deadly Delay on Elm Street" The following is a complete listing, the largest one ever compiled, of every single witness I could find – over 70 in all – who stated that the limousine either slowed down or stopped. This deadly delay on Elm Street was Secret Service agent Bill Greer’s fault, pure and simple; he was the limousine driver. As even lone-nut authors agree, Greer’s inept driving of the limo during the shooting allowed the assassination to be a tragic success.... LINK TO PDF OF CHAPTER TEN: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AnVVyr2Qcdy-gccV7bF_4Je5GuEYaA?e=E6b8Ay LINK TO POST OF CHAPTER TEN: https://www.facebook.com/groups/political assassinations researchhgroup/posts/5063457320376963/ For example, Powers and O'Donnell believed the shots that struck the President were fired from the front of the motorcade but were advised that it couldn't have happened that way by the Secret Service: 'KEN O'DONNELL ON GRASSY KNOLL SHOTS' “I told the FBI what I had heard [two shots from behind the grassy knoll fence], but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn’t want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family.” – Kennedy aide Kenneth O’Donnell, quoted by House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. in “Man of the House,” p. 178. O’Donnell was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car with Dave Powers, who was present and told O’Neill he had the same recollection. https://jfkfacts.org/ken-odonnell-on-grassy-knoll-shots/ "...Yes Dave Powers did film partly through the motorcade, but ran out of film before entering the Kill Zone/Dealy Plaza; thus, he did not record the JFK assassination, but eye-witnessed it from behind the motorcade in the follow-up car. “I was assigned to ride in the Secret Service automobile which proceeded immediately behind the President’s car in the motorcade…I sat in the jump seat on the right side of the car…” (http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/powers1.htm). As noted, Dave Powers, Kennedy’s Special Assistant, rode in the Secret Service follow-up car with Ken O’Donnell. Powers affidavit states: “My first impression was that the shots came from the right and overhead, but I also had a fleeting impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of the triple overpass. This may have resulted from my feeling, when I looked forward toward the over-pass, that we might have ridden into an ambush.” https://jfkfacts.org/ken-odonnell-on-grassy-knoll-shots/#comment-298881 'Tip O'Neill: FBI Pressured JFK aides to Change Testimony' Gil Jesus | Apr 3, 2024 Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough rebelliously resisted the efforts of the Warren Commission to change his testimony about the stop of the Presidential Limousine in Dealey Plaza, as he describes as follows: "A couple of fellows [from the Warren Commission] came to see me. They walked in like they were a couple of deputy sheriffs and I was a bank robber. I didn't like their attitude. As a senator I felt insulted. They went off and wrote up something and brought it back for me to sign. But I refused. I threw it in a drawer and let it lay there for weeks. And they had on there the last sentence which stated: 'This is all I know about the assassination.' They wanted me to sign this thing, then say this is all I know. Of course, I would never have signed it. Finally, after some weeks, they began to bug me. 'You're holding this up, you're holding this up' they said, demanding that I sign the report. So I typed one up myself and put basically what I told you about how the cars all stopped. I put in there, 'I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but for the protection of future presidents, they should be trained to take off when a shot is fired.' I sent that over. That's dated July 10, 1964, after the assassination. To my surprise, when the volumes were finally printed and came out, I was surprised at how many people down at the White House didn't file their affidavits until after the date, after mine the 10th of July, waiting to see what I was going to say before they filed theirs. I began to lose confidence then in their investigation and that's further eroded with time." - Texas Sen. Ralph Yarborough https://senatoryarborough.tripod.com/ KEVIN BALCH WROTE: The testimony of the DPD motorcycle patrolment who were flanking the limousine about the Presidential Motorcade coming to a stop and the Secret Service agents in the follow up car momentarily dispersing is instructive: Larry Rivera wrote: 14 January 2019 at 12:19 pm | https://midnightwriternews.com/mwn-episode-107-douglas-horne-on-the-zapruder-film-alteration-debate/ ST, unfortunately, my two-part “JFK Horsemen” videos mentioned by Douglas were scrubbed by Youtube last year after receiving thousands of views and likes. In the audiotapes provided to me by Tyler Newcomb, whose father Fred wrote “Murder From Within”, it was clearly established by the motorcycle escort, Hargis, Martin, Chaney, Jackson, and their supervisor Stavis Ellis, that the limo came to a complete stop, where a Secret Service agent snatched a piece of JFK’s skull from a kid standing on the South curb of Elm Street then tossed into the limo, five Secret Service agents dismounted and ran up to and surrounded JFK’s limo with guns drawn, AND Chaney described how Hargis parked his bike and “ran in between the two limos” on his way up the embankment. None of this is seen in any of the films that survive today. Moreover, one of the very first reports by Cronkite described “Secret Service Agents fanning out into the crowd, looking for the assassin” This is the reason why the motorcycle cops were hidden away and suppressed for years from researchers. To give you an example, Hargis and Martin were the only ones who testified before the Warren Commission for a grand total of 7 1/2 pages! The FBI did not interview any of the escorts until 1975, well after the fact, and it was only to establish shots from behind. These reports read like true theater of the absurd, where they are portrayed as looking over their shoulders toward the TSBD when in fact you see none of this in any of the films. ----------------------------------------------------------- ALL FOUR OF THE DALLAS POLICE MOTORCYCLISTS FLANKING THE REAR OF JFK'S LIMOUSINE REPORTED THAT THE LIMO CAME TO A COMPLETE STOP IN DEALEY PLAZA: "... The vagaries of eyewitness testimony are well known, and it might be argued that these police witnesses (as well as the other witnesses who also reported the limousine deceleration) were simply mistaken about what they observed. This seems extremely unlikely, however, because all four of the Dallas police motorcyclists flanking the rear of JFK’s limousine also reported the limousine stopped or slowed...." Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Georgia School of Law. -------------------------------------------------------------- "...I will now point to some of the evidence that the limousine did indeed stop or slow down. I pass over similar reports made by civilian spectators and news media people, and limit myself to reports made by police officers in or near Dealey Plaza. Using binoculars, Harry D. Holmes, a federal postal inspector, watched the presidential limousine as it turned from Houston Street and then proceeded down Elm Street from his fifth floor office window in a building two blocks from Dealey Plaza. He testified to the Warren Commission that he heard what sounded like three firecrackers. He saw what he thought was dust coming out of JFK’s head. Then: “The car almost came to a stop.” Earle V. Brown was a Dallas policeman standing on the overpass of the Stemmons Freeway, about 100 yards from Elm Street. Here is an excerpt from his Warren Commission testimony: MR. BROWN: “[T]he first I noticed the car was when it stopped.” MR. BALL (Warren Commission counsel): “Where?” MR. BROWN: After it made the turn [from Houston Street to Elm Street] and when the shots were fired, it stopped.” MR. BALL: “Did it come to a complete stop?” MR. BROWN: “That I couldn’t swear to.” MR. BALL: “It appeared to be slowed down some?” MR. BROWN: “Yes; slowed down.” MR. BALL: “Did you hear the shots?” MR. BROWN: “Yes, sir.” J.W. Foster was a Dallas policeman stationed on the railroad overpass at the corner of Elm, Main and Commerce Streets. In a statement to the FBI made on Mar. 26, 1964, he said: “Immediately after President Kennedy was struck with a second bullet, the car in which he was riding pulled to the curb …” D.V. Harkness was a Dallas policeman standing in Dealey Plaza south of Elm Street. Here is part of his Warren Commission testimony: MR. BELIN (Warren Commission counsel): “What did you do [when you heard the gunshots]?” MR. HARKNESS: “When I saw the first shot and the President’s car slow down to almost a stop—“ MR. BELIN: “When you saw the first shot. What do you mean by that?” MR. HARKNESS: “When I heard the first shot and saw the President’s car almost come to a stop and some of the agents piling off the car, I went back to the intersection to get my motorcycle.” The vagaries of eyewitness testimony are well known, and it might be argued that these police witnesses (as well as the other witnesses who also reported the limousine deceleration) were simply mistaken about what they observed. This seems extremely unlikely, however, because all four of the Dallas police motorcyclists flanking the rear of JFK’s limousine also reported the limousine stopped or slowed. Officer Bobby Hargis was the inside rider at the left rear of the limousine. In his testimony to the Warren Commission he said: “[W]hen President Kennedy straightened back up in the car the bullet hit him in the head, the one that killed him and it seemed like his head exploded, and I was splattered with blood and brain, and kind of bloody water. It wasn’t really blood. And at that time the Presidential car slowed down… I felt blood hit me in the face, and the Presidential car stopped immediately after that and stayed stopped for about half a second, then took off at a high rate of speed.” According to an undated, unpublished transcript of an interview he had with the Dallas Times-Herald, Hargis told the newspaper: “I felt blood hit me in the face, and the presidential car stopped immediately after that and stayed stopped about half a second, then took off at a high rate of speed.” (In a video of a 1995 interview, now on YouTube, you can watch Hargis tell the interviewer: “That guy [the Secret Service agent driving JFK’s limousine] slowed down… [He] slowed down almost to a stop.”) Hargis died in 2014. Officer B.J. Martin was the outside rider at the left rear of the limousine. He told the Warren Commission: “It [the motorcade] slowed down just before we made the turn on Elm Street [from Houston Street].” Officer Martin was later interviewed by researchers Fred Newcomb and Perry Adams and told them, as reported in their unpublished 1974 manuscript Murder from Within, that he observed the limousine stop for “just a moment.” Officer James M. Chaney was the inside rider at the right rear of the limousine. He did not testify before the Warren Commission, but two days after the assassination he was quoted in the Houston Chronicle as stating that the limousine stopped immediately after the first shot. Furthermore, Dallas police officer Marrion L. Baker, a Dallas police motorcyclist who was on Houston Street when the first shot was fired, testified to the Warren Commission that shortly after the assassination he had talked with officer Chaney and that Chaney told him that “from the time the shot rang out, the [limousine] stopped completely, pulled to the left, and stopped.” Officer Baker added: “Several officers said it stopped completely.” When then asked whether he had heard from other Dallas police officers that the limousine had stopped, he testified: “Yes, sir; that it had completely stopped, and then for a moment there, and then they rushed on out to Parkland [Hospital].” Officer Douglas Jackson was the outside rider at the right rear of the limousine. He did not testify before the Warren Commission, but he did tell researchers Newcomb and Adams that “the [limousine] just all but stopped… just a moment.”..." Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. is a Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Georgia School of Law, where he taught for 40 years. He has published nearly 50 articles in Flagpole magazine on the JFK assassination. Wilkes, Donald E. Jr., "Grassy Knoll Shots? Limousine Slowdown?" (2017). Popular Media. 279. https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1284&context=fac_pm DPD Motorcycle Patrolman Bobby Hargis's Accounts of Stop of Presidential Limo During Assassination DPD Motorcycle Patrolman B.J. Martin on Presidential Limo Stopping During Assassination DPD Motorcycle Patrolman Harry Freeman Stopped in Front of Presidential Limo During Assassination DPD Motorcycle Patrolman James Courson Says JFK Limo Stopped When Interviewed for 50th Anniversary DPD Supervising Motorcycle Patrolman Stavis Ellis re Skull Fragment Put Back in Limo During Stop Researcher Larry Rivera Explains Skull Fragment Being Placed Back in Limo During Assassination KEVIN BALCH WROTE: The footage of the Connallys and Secret Service agents at the time of the head shot -- in my estimation -- is from an earlier point in time when the limo was coming to a screeching halt (all four of them show the signs of simultaneous and involuntary reaction to the gravitational forces of the stop), and the headshot took place while the limo was at full stop, but these two moments in time have been spliced together in the extant Zapruder film. https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/5141044579284903/ Look closely at the Secret Service Agents and the Connallys reacting to the gravitational momentum of the limo stop which the Hawkeyeworks technicians were unable to remaove from the Zapruder film: And see this cropped footage of the Connallys being thrown forward by the greavitational momentum of the limo coming to a screeching halt: What do you think Bill Newman, Charles Brehm, Mary Moorman and Jean Hill (those closest to the limo at the time of the head shot) all said about the limo coming to a stop? All four of them said it had in fact come to a stop... -------------------------------------------------------------- From Vince Palamara's article, ‘Fifty–nine Witnesses: Delay on Elm Street’, Dealey Plaza Echo, vol.3 no.2 (July 1992), pp.1–7. William Newman was adamant that the car stopped. Palamara cites several accounts of interviews with researchers: “the car momentarily stopped and the driver seemed to have a radio or phone up to his ear and he seemed to be waiting on some word. … Then the cars roared off. … I’ve maintained that they stopped. I still say they did. It was only a momentary stop, but … I believe Kennedy’s car came to a full stop after the final shot. Now everywhere that you read about it, you don’t read anything about the car stopping. And when I say ‘stopped’ I mean very momentarily, like they hit the brakes and just a few seconds passed and then they floorboarded and accelerated on … and just for a moment they hesitated and stopped.” http://22november1963.org.uk/did-jfk-limo-stop-on-elm-street ----------------------------------------------------------------- From 'An Interview with Assassination Eye Witness Bill Newman', THE DEALEY PLAZA ECHO, Volume 2, March 1992: " and the car momentarily stopped" And then I can remember that when we were on the ground - I'd like to bring this up if I may - looking back over my shoulder I can remember, I believe it was the passenger in the front seat - there were two men in the front seat - had a telephone or something to his ear and the car momentarily stopped. Now everywhere that you read about it, you don't read anything about the car stopping. And when I say "stopped" I mean very momentarily, like they hit the brakes and just a few seconds passed and then they floorboarded and accelerated on." LAW: "But you don't really see that in the Zapruder film." NEWMAN: "No, you don't. But anyway, that's the impression I'm left with." LAW: "Several people said that the car stopped." NEWMAN: "Yes, and then they shot on. You know, through the overpass, the railroad overpass, and that's the last we saw of them." http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/N Disk/Newman William & Gayle/Item 01.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------ From the 11/25/1963 FBI report of interview of Charles F. Brehm: "...BREHM expressed his opinion that between the first and third shots, the President's car only Seemed to move some 10 or 12 feet. It seemed to him that the automobile almost came to a halt after the first shot, but of this he is not certain. After the third shot, the car in which the President was riding increased its speed and went under the freeway overpass and out of his sight...." https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1425.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------ From the 11/22/1963 FBI report of interview of Mary Moorman: "...[Mary Moorman] recalls that the President's automobile was moving at the time she took the second picture, and when she heard the shots, and has the impression that the car either stopped momentarily or hesitated and then drove off in a hurry..." https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1426.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------- From the 11/22/1963 Dallas County Sheriff's Department report of interview of Jean Hill: "Mary Moorman started to take a picture. We were looking at the president and Jackie in the back seat... Just as the president looked up two shots rang out and I saw the president grab his chest and fell forward across Jackie's lap... There was an instant pause between two shots and the motorcade seemingly halted for an instant. Three or four more shots rang out and the motorcade sped away." https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340264/m1/1/ -------------------------------------------------------------------

'THE CONFESSION OF E. HOWARD HUNT' Legendary CIA spy and convicted Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt. Before his death in January 2007, CIA master spy and convicted Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt confessed to being peripherally involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, and named several other participants. In notes and conversations with his son Saint John, and in an audiotape he created in 2004 to be played after his death, Hunt described being invited into the "big event" at a Miami safehouse in 1963. Others named in the plot: Frank Sturgis, an anti-Castro paramilitary closely associated with Hunt. Sturgis was one of the Watergate burglars. David Morales, Chief of Operations at the CIA's JMWAVE station in Miami. Morales himself told a few close associates of his involvement. David Phillips, CIA propaganda specialist and later Chief of Western Hemisphere Division. Phillips was assigned to Mexico City during the mysterious trip of Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone using his name, to that city in the fall of 1963. Antonio Veciana, Cuban exile leader of Alpha 66. Veciana told the HSCA that a "Maurice Bishop," thought by many to be Phillips, pointed out Lee Harvey Oswald to him. William Harvey, a CIA officer who ran the ZR/RIFLE "executive action" program. Harvey fell out of favor with the Kennedys when he sent sabotage teams into Cuba during the 1962 Missile Crisis. Cord Meyer, a high-level CIA officer whose ex-wife Mary Meyer was having an affair with JFK. French Gunman Grassy Knoll. Hunt's chart included an unnamed French hit man on the infamous grassy knoll. Lyndon Johnson, Vice-President. Hunt says he declined active participation but did have a "benchwarmer" role in the plot. In the tape excerpt made available so far, Hunt made no claims which would prove his allegations. However, the people he names have all been suspects in the assassination for some time, and many of them worked closely together in anti-Castro operations. In the "smoking gun" tape which helped drive him from office, President Richard Nixon said this of Hunt: "You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things..." He then instructed Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman to take a message to CIA Director Richard Helms, asking Helms to intervene in the FBI's early Watergate investigation because "the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again." In his book The Ends of Power, Haldeman described Helms' reaction: "Turmoil in the room. Helms gripping the arms of his chair leaning forward and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs'." Haldeman came to believe that the "Bay of Pigs" referred to the Kennedy assassination. 'E HOWARD HUNT'S CONFESSION' Federaljacktube | Published on Feb 10, 2010 | https://youtu.be/98OSYceGvWA ______________ https://www.crimemagazine.com/blowing-smoke-grave-e-howard-hunt-and-jfk-assassination Blowing Smoke From the Grave: E. Howard Hunt and the JFK Assassination Oct 2, 2009 - by Don Fulsom - 0 Comments June 6, 2007 updated Jan. 25, 2010 E. Howard Hunt Howard St. John Hunt, the son of super-spook E. Howard Hunt is now peddling a story that his father rejected an offer to take part in plot by rogue CIA agents to kill President Kennedy. Isn't it about time a congressional committee finds out what the CIA's role was in the assassination? by Don Fulsom Was a key Richard Nixon cohort in past and future covert intelligence operations – then-CIA agent E. Howard Hunt – in Dallas the day President Kennedy was killed in 1963? During a 1985 libel trial brought by Hunt against Spotlight – a newsletter owned by rightwing Liberty Lobby – for publishing an article in August of 1978 written by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti entitled "CIA to Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying," CIA operative Marita Lorenz swore she saw Hunt in Dallas the night before the assassination; Hunt co-worker Walter Kuzmuk at the CIA said he could not recall having seen Hunt between November 18th and sometime in December of 1963; and Joseph Trento, a reporter for the Wilmington News & Journal, insisted he had once seen an internal CIA memo that said, "Someday we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963." Hunt, by the way, lost the case. Most notorious for directing Nixon's Watergate burglary, Hunt died at 88 in January, 2007, in Miami. But Hunt's son – Howard St. John (known as "St. John") Hunt of Eureka, Calif., – is now peddling a story that his dad rejected an offer to take part in plot by rogue CIA agents to kill President Kennedy. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, St. John Hunt does admit to telling previous lies about his dad's whereabouts on that fateful day. He says he was instructed by Hunt in 1974 to back up an alibi for his whereabouts. "I did a lot of lying for my father in those days," St. John confessed. E. Howard Hunt's most frequently used alibi for that day was that he was at his Potomac, Maryland home watching TV with his children. Yet, asked in a Slate interview in 2004 about "conspiracy theories about your being in Dallas the day JFK was killed," E. Howard Hunt nervously replied "No comment." St. John Hunt, now 52, says his dad left him with enough juicy material about the JFK assassination to fill a book – and that he hopes to do just that. The material, St. John says, was cut from his dad's recent memoir, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, because the elder Hunt's attorney was worried he could face perjury charges if he recanted sworn testimony. Does St. John think his planned book will reflect badly on his father? "I don't think it was terrible that he was approached (with the assassination plot) and turned them down," he told the newspaper. In his memoir, E. Howard Hunt suggested that Vice President Lyndon Johnson might have headed the plot to murder JFK. Though Johnson disliked the Kennedys – especially Bobby – and profited most from President Kennedy's murder, few scholars believe LBJ was in on the conspiracy. Not long ago, the History Channel was forced to yank from its lineup, and apologize for, a program supporting that theory. In the Los Angeles Times and, later, in Rolling Stone, St. John said his dad definitely alleged that LBJ led the plot. And Rolling Stone printed the names of the men Hunt identified as the main conspirators: David Atlee Phillips, a Hunt friend and CIA propaganda expert who first worked with Hunt in helping to overthrow a leftist government in Guatemala in 1954. He was the chief of covert action in Mexico City in 1963. Phillips later ran President Nixon's successful CIA-led campaign to overthrow Chilean President Salvador Allende. Cord Meyer, a CIA agent and disinformation specialist. Meyer's beautiful bohemian ex-wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had had an affair with JFK. At age 43, Mary was killed by two professionally placed bullets, fired from up close, as she jogged on a canal towpath near the Potomac River in Washington. Bill Harvey, a CIA veteran with connections to the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and to Mafia godfathers Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana. Frank Sturgis, a CIA operative and Hunt pal who once boasted to another CIA operative Marita Lorenz that "We killed Kennedy." In 1972, Sturgis was arrested as one of Nixon's Hunt-supervised Watergate burglars. David Morales, a CIA agent who helped train Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs. He also ran CIA-assassination programs in South America and Vietnam. In a drunken tirade in 1973, he said to his close friend Ruben Carbajal, "We took care of that son of a bitch (President Kennedy), didn't we?" Antonio Veciana, a Cuban exile and the founder of the militant CIA-backed "Alpha 66." Veciana told a Senate investigator he once saw alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald talking with a CIA man he knew as "Maurice Bishop" – widely believed to have been David Atlee Phillips's CIA code name. In Rolling Stone, St. John Hunt also said dad his told him there was a "French gunman" firing from the famed grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. And he clearly recalled his mother telling him, on Nov. 22 1963, that his dad was on a business trip to Dallas. Does St. John's tale ring true? Perhaps in that last crucial area – his dad's whereabouts on that dark day. For the most part, however, it could just be that E. Howard Hunt was practicing what was known during Watergate as a "modified limited hang out." John Ehrlichman, the Nixon aide who dealt with the CIA, coined that term. It has come to mean a reluctant partial release of information. This is only slightly different than what is known at the CIA as a "limited hangout." Former CIA agent Victor Marchetti once defined that term as "spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting – sometimes even volunteering – some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts of the case." Both hangout tactics were used by Hunt many times before. Even while facing death, it seems, his old habits were hard to kick. He appears to have released to his son heaping helpings of disinformation carefully mixed with small portions of the full and true story – a mixture that would paint him in heroic and patriotic hues for the benefit of his family and his own legacy. "E. Howard Hunt Rejected Kennedy Conspirators"! That's the way he might have written the headline. Hunt was a talented writer – the author of scores of spy novels and the ghostwriter of the memoirs of CIA boss Allen Dulles. The real E. Howard Hunt, however, was a CIA loyalist, a gun-toting super-spook and propaganda expert who was close to Richard Nixon, and to top CIA officials, including Dulles, Richard Helms and James Jesus Angleton. Was he still protecting such men – as well as himself? That seems more reasonable. Even on his deathbed, Hunt was not likely to make a full display of what the agency calls "the family jewels." He was too much of a Company man. It seems likelier that the old master of disinformation was now blowing a little post-mortem smoke to deflect suspicion away from the real major players behind the JFK murder. Until his final "confession," E. Howard Hunt was destined to be remembered by history mainly as President Nixon's chief White House spy – a former senior CIA officer who served 33 months in prison for his role as a leader of the Watergate burglary. Now, however, it becomes much easier to at least believe that Hunt was in Dallas on Nov. 22 1963 – just as the jury at the libel suit concluded in that 1985 trial. What could have been the purpose of Hunt's "business trip" to Dallas? To stop the plot? It seems more logical to believe that Hunt was among the collaborators. The following little-known links between E. Howard Hunt and the JFK assassination seem to support that line of thinking: In New Orleans in the early 1960s, Hunt worked out of the same office building – perhaps even the same office – as Lee Harvey Oswald. On behalf of the CIA, Hunt had set up a dummy organization called "The Cuban Revolutionary Council" at 544 Camp Street – the same address Oswald put on pro-Castro leaflets he handed out. That very building, which was close to the local offices of both the CIA and the FBI, also housed the detective agency of former FBI agent Guy Banister, who associated with leaders of the CIA, the Mafia, Cuban exile groups, and with suspected JFK assassination plotter David Ferrie. According to a business acquaintance, Banister himself remarked "on several occasions that someone should do away with Kennedy." Banister and all those with whom he rubbed elbows blamed JFK for the failure of the 1961 CIA-backed invasion of Cuba. They felt the president acted in a cowardly fashion in not providing adequate air cover for the exile invaders. Future president Richard Nixon said Kennedy's behavior was "near criminal." All parties were keenly interested in ousting, even killing, Castro. Then, there's the handwritten "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter. Famous among JFK assassination researchers, it is dated "Nov. 8, 1963." It reads: "I would like information concerding (sic) my position. I am asking only for information. I am suggesting that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else. Thank you. (signed) Lee Harvey Oswald." The letter, which bears a Mexican postmark, was sent to assassination researcher Penn Jones. According to three handwriting experts, the letter was indeed written by Oswald. Was E. HowardHunt the Hunt addressed in the letter? It is highly likely that he was. It just so happens that Hunt was the acting CIA station chief in Mexico City at the time Oswald is supposed to have turned up there, according to Hunt's biographer. In Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt, Tad Szulc also reported that Hunt probably knew something about why the CIA destroyed its audio tapes and photos of a mystery man in Mexico City who purported to be Oswald, but who turned out not be him. Researcher Joan Mellen argues persuasively in A Farewell to Justice that Oswald was a CIA employee who also worked for the New Orleans FBI office, as well as for U.S. Customs. She claims Oswald was closely connected to CIA-sponsored anti-Castro figures in New Orleans, and with JFK assassination suspects Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. Back when Nixon was vice president, he and the CIA's Hunt secretly plotted an invasion of Cuba, and favored the murder of Castro. The CIA eventually brought the Mafia into those assassination plots. In addition, Hunt "helped run operations for Nixon against (Greek shipping tycoon) Aristotle Onassis in the late 1950s, when Nixon was vice president under Eisenhower," according to researchers Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone. Robert Maheu – a man connected to the CIA, the Mafia, and to Nixon – also took part in those secret anti-Onassis schemes. Maheu later disclosed that Vice President Nixon whispered to him at the time, "If it turns out we have to kill the bastard, just don't do it on American soil." Guy Banister's secretary and Lee Harvey Oswald's brother are among those who said Oswald was a frequent visitor to Banister's office. Ex-CIA agent Victor Marchetti has linked Hunt (and Hunt's old CIA buddy and fellow future Watergater, Frank Sturgis) to David Ferrie. Hunt's CIA-connected pal Bernard Barker – known as "Hunt's Shadow" because the two men were so close – was also spotted in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Assassination witness Seymour Weitzman identified Barker as the man on the grassy knoll who posed as a Secret Service agent and kept people out of the area. Nine years later, under Hunt's supervision, Barker and four other CIA men broke into the Watergate on behalf of President Nixon. In Mafia Kingfish, Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Mafia expert John Davis notes that Bernard Barker "had been very much involved with the Cuban Revolutionary Council in Miami, a Cuban exiles group that was closely linked to the Cuban Revolutionary Democratic Front in New Orleans." Davis says New Orleans Mafia godfather Carlos Marcello supported the New Orleans group – with money funnelled to the group through his jack-of-all-trades David Ferrie. Davis adds there are "credible links" between Barker and Jack Ruby, the Dallas striptease club owner who killed Oswald two days after the JFK assassination. As we have seen, Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis also had JFK assassination links. At the 1985 libel trial involving Hunt's links, CIA operative Marita Lorenz – a former Castro mistress and a friend of Sturgis – placed Sturgis, as well as Hunt and Jack Ruby, at a Dallas CIA "safe house" the night before the assassination. Sturgis himself admitted being questioned by the FBI shortly after the JFK slaying. He recalled agents telling him, "Frank, if there's anybody capable of killing the President of the United States, you're the guy who can do it." Believe it or not Richard Nixon was in Dallas on Nov. 22nd. Was he really there for his stated purpose – a PepsiCo convention (Nixon was Pepsi's chief lawyer at the time)? Or could his presence have been some sort of signal to his friends in the Mob and the CIA and among the Cuban exiles – the eventual chief suspects of JFK assassination conspiracy theorists? Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana proudly told relatives that – as the mastermind of the JFK assassination plot – he was also in Dallas at the time. He claimed he and Nixon had a pre-assassination meeting there to discuss the plot. Why did Nixon later try to cover up his presence in Dallas that day? Why did he lie to the FBI about it? Why did he express fear to an aide Stephen Hess that he would be blamed for JFK's murder? Why did he tell at least four different versions of how he heard of the assassination? Did he meet with Giancana in Dallas? Or with Hunt? Did he meet there with Jack Ruby – an informer for a young California Congressman Richard Nixon in 1947? Why did Nixon hold a conference of top GOP leaders at his New York apartment about his political future the day after the assassination? Shouldn't some congressional committee or sharp prosecutor question St. John Hunt under oath? After all, we're talking about the greatest unsolved political crime in American history. What kind of proof does he have to back up his claim? The Los Angeles Times describes as "inconclusive" the materials he produced for them. These materials apparently include a videotape of E. Howard Hunt. Why not subpoena the tape? And shouldn't some investigative entity grill Hunt's old White House boss, Charles Colson? After all, Colson was present when President Nixon declared in May 1972 that the Warren Commission staged "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated" in finding that Oswald was Kennedy's lone killer. What does Colson know about that particular Nixon comment on a White House tape released in 2002? And what might Colson know about Nixon's 1972 attempt to gain CIA help in the Watergate cover-up by trying to blackmail CIA chief Richard Helms over the secrets that E. Howard Hunt might blab? Secrets about the CIA's links to "the Bay of Pigs?" Top Nixon aide Bob Haldeman later revealed that "the Bay of Pigs" was Nixon/CIA code for the JFK assassination. Haldeman maintained that the CIA pulled off a "fantastic cover-up" of its role in the JFK assassination. In 1972, shortly after the Watergate burglary, on Nixon's orders, Haldeman tried to get CIA boss Helms to tell the FBI to stop investigating the break-in on grounds that it could hurt CIA operations. Helms lost his composure when Haldeman mentioned that Hunt's connection to the burglary could re-open "the whole Bay of Pigs thing." According to Haldeman, Helms, "a typically cold-as-a-cucumber, icy, super-spy type guy, came totally unglued … He leaped up in enormous excitement, concern and panic and said, 'This has nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs.'" After calming down, Helms did agree to talk to the FBI. On Nixon's behalf, aide John Ehrichman made several futile attempts to pry agency "Bay of Pigs" files out of Helms. Ehrlichman's notes show the president wanted the CIA chief to turn over the "full file" because Nixon himself was "deeply involved." Though he hated confrontations, Nixon had pressed Helms for the "Bay of Pigs" secrets at a meeting back on October 8, 1971. Ehrlichman sat in. His notes quote Nixon as telling Helms: "Purpose of request for documents: must be fully advised in order to know what to duck; won't hurt Agency, nor attack predecessor." Helms answers: "Only one president at a time; I only work for you." Yet the CIA boss never did comply with that particular presidential directive. A statement made later by Watergate burglar and former CIA operative Frank Sturgis supports the possibility that the "Bay of Pigs" phrase, when used in Nixon's White House, was a euphemism for the JFK assassination. Sturgis said Nixon asked Helms "several times" for "the files on the Kennedy assassination but Helms refused to give it to him, refused a direct order from the president." Sturgis even claimed the Watergate break-in was a CIA operation designed to topple Nixon because the agency felt he was becoming overly interested in the JFK murder. Backing Sturgis's assertion that the CIA failed to obey Nixon's order is a new Watergate tape of a May 18, 1973 conversation in which Haldeman tells Nixon: "(Helms says the CIA) has nothing to hide in the Bay of Pigs. Well, now, Ehrlichman tells me in just the last few days that isn't true. CIA was very concerned about the Bay of Pigs, and in the investigation apparently he was doing on the Bay of Pigs stuff. At some point, there is a key memo missing that CIA or somebody has caused to disappear that impeded the effort to find out what really did happen on the Bay of Pigs." There's yet another reason to believe Haldeman's take on the "Bay of Pigs." The CIA's own top-secret report on the invasion – when it was finally declassified in 1998 – disclosed major agency blunders and criticized the failure to inform President Kennedy "success had been dubious." But the report contains absolutely nothing that could be interpreted as sensitive to national security. "The Bay of Pigs" gets frequent mention on those new Watergate tapes. And the term is usually employed in ways that coincide with Haldeman's decoded translation. The new tapes are also studded with deletions – segments deemed by government censors as too sensitive for public scrutiny. "National Security" is usually cited. Not surprisingly, such deletions often occur during discussions involving E. Howard Hunt, the Bay of Pigs and John F. Kennedy. Isn't it long past time when these censored sections of the tapes are declassified? The forewoman of the jury that ruled against E. Howard Hunt in 1985 – Leslie Armstrong – told reporters afterwards that the jurors had faced a "very, very difficult" task because the attorney for the defense, Mark Lane, "wanted us to say our own government had killed our president. We listened to the evidence very carefully. We discussed it. We concluded that the CIA killed President Kennedy; and I call upon the United States government to do something about that." More than 20 years later, the government still has not done anything about that. Update 01/25/2009: After this article was originally published, St. John Hunt conceded that his dad had not told him the entire truth about the JFK assassination. In what he termed "probably the last interview I'll do," E. Howard Hunt's son said the longtime CIA spy had disclosed only "some of what he knew," and that "it's quite possible" his dad did "minimalize (sic) his role the JFK hit." "If only I had been able to stay with him longer and we were able to keep our project a secret from the rest of the family I would have been able to get the whole story," St. John told "Waking the Midnight Sun," a Web site devoted to "magic and realism, high weirdness and everyday life." St. John Hunt blamed his sisters, his father's second wife, and the senior Hunt's lawyer—who kept raising the prospect of lawsuits—for putting pressure on the legendary spy, which "resulted in him withdrawing his efforts to bring the truth out." The junior Hunt called his father's lawyer "a snake and quite possibly a 'handler' for the (CIA)." Aside from possibly hiding his own role in the JFK assassination, E. Howard Hunt may have "left out" the involvement of CIA Director Richard Helms, St. John said. "My father's loyalty to Helms is well known, and of course we all know that Helms was a master at getting the dirty work done while keeping his own involvement above suspicion." St. John Hunt also confirmed that his father set up a CIA front called The Cuban Revolutionary Council in New Orleans, and said his father might have met Lee Harvey Oswald in the office building both men reportedly used in there. "Certainly their paths crossed very closely and my father was training Cubans for the invasion in Guatemala around New Orleans." Don Fulsom covered the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton presidencies as a reporter. He has written articles about Richard Nixon and Watergate for a number of publications, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Esquire and the online magazine Crime. ______________

The prime suspects for Dealey Plaza were: Felix ‘El Gato’ Rodriguez Mendigutia (AMHAZE-2718/AMJOKE-1), Nestor ‘Tony’ Izquierdo (AMHAZE-2586), Carlos ‘Batea’ Hernandez Sanchez (AMHAZE-2523), Antonio Soto, Jorge Navarro (AMHAZE-2536), Victor Espinoza Hernandez (AMHAZE-2766/AMHINT-24), Frank Barnardino (AMHAZE-2512), John Koch Gene (AMHINT-26), Jorge Giraud Leiva (AMHAZE-2524), and Gonzolo Herrara (Gorilla-2 pilot during the Bay of Pigs invasion). These men, among others, were part of the CIA’s alpha team of anti-Castro commandos. They were the first recruits in what was to become Brigade 2506. They all lost friends and family members in the failed invasion. They had the crucial distinction of working directly under William ‘Rip’ Robertson, arguably the CIA’s top Special Activities Division commando. Rip’s men had his trust, and they had collectively risked their lives multiple times trying to liberate Cuba since 1961. As best as I can tell most of the names put forward by conspiracy theorists do not fit in our names of interest nor did they have an asset type relationship with the CIA as do our list of Cuban CIA paramilitary assets. They show up in reports and documents but that’s something entirely different than the list of names we are connecting to Carl Jenkins and Rip Robertson… and Rafael Quintero and Manuel Artime for that matter. At this point I am really interested in separating names that have been tossed around in JFK literature over the decades from those that we really can operationally tie to CIA paramilitary officers from 60-64. The further we dig, the more real they become; we are now at the point where we can trace many of them from their very first volunteer days, to Panama with Jenkins, on to Guatemala and then later separated and taken to Belle Chase and Key West for infiltration (and Castro assassination) operations. We can timeline that month by month….and do so up to the early fall of 1963. Then they join AMWORLD and we lose them until February, until the appear in Guatemala or even in the Congo. They become substantial, you can get the feel of how competent they were, how much they trusted each other and were trusted by people like Jenkins and Robertson – and that does not apply to all that many people. One can visualize how a select few could have been committed enough, extreme enough and trusted enough to end up in the Plaza. Convinced that what they were doing was absolutely critical. My view is being trusted by Robertson gets you in for Dallas and that means you have to have worked with him in actual missions. Having been trained by Jenkins and sent into Cuba on pre-Bay of Pigs missions gets you on the list of possible recruits. This is speaking to the actual shooter team, not any ancillary personnel. The Mexico City nightclub photo reveals a mixed group of apparent Cuban exiles, Italian wise guys, and square-jawed military intelligence types. It was discovered among keepsakes kept in the safe of the widow of CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal (third from left). It appears on the cover of “Barry & ‘the boys:’ The CIA, the Mob & America’s Secret History” (MadCow Press, Eugene OR. 2001). Goss appears second on the left. He is seated between notorious CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal (third left) and the equally-notorious CIA assassin Felix Rodriguez (front left), a Cuban vice cop under the corrupt Mob-run Batista regime who later became an Iran Contra operative and a confidant of the first George Bush. The only one of the spook celebrants displaying any hint of tradecraft (seated on the other side of the table covering his face with his sport coat) is Frank Sturgis, most famous as one of the Watergate burglars. Beside him sits (front right) William Seymour, New Orleans representative of the Double-Chek Corporation, a CIA front used to recruit pilots (like Seal), and a man who many Kennedy assassination researchers believe impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald on several occasions when the lone nut gunman was out of the country and so unable to impersonate himself. As we saw it, the photo was in a yellowed frame, the kind used by nightclub photographers to create instant keepsakes. Seal’s widow Debbie Seal kept it in her safe, where it was overlooked by a 7-man team from the State Department which arrived at her house in 1995 to comb through her records. It bears the name of a nightclub in Mexico City, and is stamped January 22, 1963, which, if you’re counting, was exactly ten months to the day before the Kennedy assassination.

That's the stuff of batshit crazy, of course...

Kevin Balch wrote: It appears to me that the bullet trajectory calculated by former criminalist Sherry Fiester solves the problem you are highlighting: Kevin Balch wrote: You seem to be suggesting that there is uncertainty about the existence of the large avulsive head wound in the occipital-parietal region of the right side of the back of JFK's head, but as all of the earliest medical reports of the doctors and nurses at Parkland Hospital (See in particular the first day Admittance Notes of Drs. Kemp Clark, Charles Carrico, Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, Robert McClelland, and Marion Jenkins [ https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/app8.htm ]) reported the occipital-parietal wound with extruding cerebellar brain tissue, and roughly a total of FIFTY witnesses attested to the existence of that wound (See Dr. Gary Aguilar's witness calculations below) it is, as JFK researcher @Sandy Larsen has demonstrated elsewhere, a mathematical impossibility that the large avulsive head wound was located anywhere other than in the right lower quadrant of the back of JFK's head: This is a link to Dr. Gary Aguilar's compilation of the earliest testimony of the Parkland Hospital AND Bethesda autopsy witnesses -- http://www.assassinationweb.com/ag6.htm -- and the following chart is in part based upon the the witness accounts outlined in the article by Dr. Gary Aguilar: -------------------------------------------------- DR. GARY AGUILAR'S APPENDIX - TABLES AND FIGURES: https://history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_tabfig.htm Kevin Balch wrote: First of all, can you see that this supposed "shadow" is a D-max black hexagon shaped blotch with sharp edges? Does that really appear to be a "natural shadow" to you? Secondly, are you able to see the pink color of Jackie's dress in the Z-317 below? If you can see pink in shadow, then why not the bloody occipital-parietal wound in "shadow"? And finally, if we can see Jackie's red roses in the same images, then why are we not also vividly seeing the blood, brain and skull that was blasted out of the back of JFK's head? Kevin Balch wrote: Dino Brugioni's hand gestures were very imprecise, and off hand. The point he was trying to make is that he and the NPIC technicians saw brain matter flying through the air, and that they were all very shocked when seeing it. More particularly, he was describing something that no longer appears in the extant "original" Zapruder film today: "...Brugioni's most vivid recollection of the Zapruder film was "...OF JFK'S BRAINS FLYING THROUGH THE AIR." (emphasis not in original) He did not use the term 'head explosion,' but rather referred to apparent exit debris seen on the film the night he viewed it. Dino had no other specific recollection about content during the 2009 interviews..." Furthermore, Dino Brugioni makes virtually the same statement while being interviewed by Doug Horne at 57:42 of the interview: https://youtu.be/J_QIuu6hsAc?t=3463 (Video is cued to 57:42 in advance for you). And note that the bulk of the witness testimony indicates that blood, brain and skull was blasted out the back of JFK's head, to the rear, and to the left: __________ "...BLOOD, BRAIN MATTER, AND BONE FRAGMENTS EXPLODED FROM THE BACK OF THE PRESIDENT'S HEAD. THE PRESIDENT'S BLOOD, PARTS OF HIS SKULL, BITS OF HIS BRAIN WERE SPLATTERED ALL OVER ME -- ON MY FACE, MY CLOTHES, IN MY HAIR..." Secret Service Agent Clint Hill (in his 2012 book "Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir"). __________ "...I HAD BRAIN MATTER ALL OVER MY WINDSHIELD AND LEFT ARM, THAT'S HOW CLOSE WE WERE TO IT ... IT WAS THE RIGHT REAR PART OF HIS HEAD ... BECAUSE THAT'S THE PART I SAW BLOW OUT. I SAW HAIR COME OUT, THE PIECES BLOW OUT, THEN THE SKIN WENT BACK IN -- AN EXPLOSION IN AND OUT..." Secret Service Agent Samuel Kinney (3/5/1994 interview by Vince Palamara). __________ "...WHEN PRESIDENT KENNEDY STRAIGHTENED BACK UP IN THE CAR THE BULLET HIT HIM IN THE HEAD, THE ONE THAT KILLED HIM AND IT SEEMED LIKE HIS HEAD EXPLODED, AND I WAS SPLATTERED WITH BLOOD AND BRAIN, AND KIND OF A BLOODY WATER...." Dallas Motorcycle Patrolman Bobby Hargis (4/8/1964 Warren Commission testimony). __________ "...I CAN REMEMBER SEEING THE SIDE OF THE PRESIDENT'S EAR AND HEAD COME OFF. I REMEMBER A FLASH OF WHITE AND THE RED AND JUST BITS AND PIECES OF FLESH EXPLODING FROM THE PRESIDENT'S HEAD..." Dealey Plaza witness Bill Newman interviewed about the JFK assassination -- 0:13-0:27 -- https://youtu.be/EEhlbAwI7Zg?t=13 __________ "...THE HEAD SHOT SEEMED TO COME FROM THE RIGHT FRONT. IT SEEMED TO STRIKE HIM HERE [gesturing to her upper right forehead, up high at the hairline], AND HIS HEAD WENT BACK, AND ALL OF THE BRAIN MATTER WENT OUT THE BACK OF THE HEAD. IT WAS LIKE A RED HALO, A RED CIRCLE, WITH BRIGHT MATTER IN THE MIDDLE OF IT - IT JUST WENT LIKE THAT...." Dealey Plaza witness Marilyn Willis from 24:26-24:58 of TMWKK, Episode 1, at following link cued in advance for you https://youtu.be/BW98fHkbuD8?t=1466 ). __________ "...Charles Brehm: 0:21 WHEN THE SECOND BULLET HIT, THERE WAS, THE HAIR SEEMED TO GO FLYING. IT WAS VERY DEFINITE THEN THAT HE WAS STRUCK IN THE HEAD WITH THE SECOND BULLET, AND, UH, YES, I VERY DEFINITELY SAW THE EFFECT OF THE SECOND BULLET. Mark Lane: 0:38 Did you see any particles of the President's skull fly when the bullet struck him in the head? Charles Brehm: 0:46 I SAW A PIECE FLY OVER OH IN THE AREA OF THE CURB WHERE I WAS STANDING. Mark Lane: 0:53 In which direction did that fly? Charles Brehm: 0:56 IT SEEMED TO HAVE COME LEFT AND BACK...." Dealey Plaza witness Charles Brehm interviewed about JFK assassination by Mark Lane for the 1967 documentary "Rush to Judgment": https://youtu.be/RsnHXywKIKs __________ "...I SAW THE HEAD PRACTICALLY OPEN UP AND BLOOD AND MANY MORE THINGS, WHATEVER IT WAS, BRAINS, JUST CAME OUT OF HIS HEAD...." Testimony of Dealey Plaza witness Abraham Zapruder -- who filmed the assassination -- at the Clay Shaw trial -- https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/zapruder_shaw2.htm __________ "...I also asked him if he saw the explosion of blood and brains out of the head. He replied that he did. I asked him if he noticed which direction the eruption went. He pointed back over his left shoulder. He said, "IT WENT THIS WAY." I said, "You mean it went to the left and rear?" He said, "YES." Bartholomew then asked him, "Are you sure that you didn't see the blood and brains going up and to the front?" Schwartz said, "NO; IT WAS TO THE LEFT AND REAR...." Excerpt from interview of Erwin Schwartz -- Abraham Zapruder's business partner -- who accompanied Zapruder to develop the camera-original Zapruder film, and saw the camera-original projected more than a dozen times. Bloody Treason by Noel Twyman. __________ "...Brugioni's most vivid recollection of the Zapruder film was "...OF JFK'S BRAINS FLYING THROUGH THE AIR." He did not use the term 'head explosion,' but rather referred to apparent exit debris seen on the film the night he viewed it. "...AND WHAT I'LL NEVER FORGET WAS -- I KNEW THAT HE HAD BEEN ASSASSINATED -- BUT WHEN WE ROLLED THE FILM AND I SAW A GOOD PORTION OF HIS HEAD FLYING THROUGH THE AIR, THAT SHOCKED ME, AND THAT SHOCKED EVERYBODY WHO WAS THERE..." Excerpt from interview of Dino Brugioni -- Photoanalyst at the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center -- who viewed the camera-original Zapruder film the evening of 11/23/1963. Douglas Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board" , 2009, Volume IV, Chapter 14, page 1329. Yet we see none of that in the following slow motion Zapruder film footage of the head shot. Instead, we only see the D-max black hexagon shaped blotch with sharp edges: Kevin Balch wrote: Just what exactly is it, really, that you are seeing in the extant "original" Zapruder film headshot sequence? What I see depicted as the large avulsive headwound is a cantaloupe sized crater in JFK's forehead which is not present in the autopsy photographs, and which none of the witnesses at Parkland Hospital and at the Bethesda autopsy ever reported. And why exactly is it that in Z-335 and Z-337 we are seeing Jackie's pink shoulder pad where we should be seeing JFK's forehead?: And why isn't the cantaloupe sized hole in JFK's forehead that we see in the extant "original" Zapruder film in the autopsy photographs?

To explain the head damage that the bulk of the testamentary and documentary evidence from Dealey Plaza, Parkland Hospital and the Bethesda autopsy indicates was caused by the headshot at Zapruder frame 313, this is the trajectory we must have: The team that conducted the assassination had trained to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro by triangulated ambush gunfire, so the analysis of the trajectories must take into account that it was a triangulated fire team that shot at President Kennedy from multiple directions: The following is the best information available about the paramilitary unit that carried out the triangulated ambush assassination of President Kennedy. There are multiple corroborating witnesses for this evidence. It also corroborates the revelations made by Santo Trafficante to his lawyers, In this article, Bill Kelly makes cryptic references to a living person knowledgeable about these events who Kelly does not name. My assumption is that he is referring to Carl Jenkins: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'PATHFINDER - PARTS 1 - 5 THE PLAN TO KILL CASTRO REDIRECTED TO JFK AT DALLAS' William Kelly | JFKcountercoup | Saturday, December 22, 2018 | https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/12/pathfinder-parts-1-5-plan-to-kill.html https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/6051134211609264/ "...As Bill Turner put it, “the mechanism was in place” to kill Castro, and they just switched targets, and instead of shooting Castro they redirected their fire to JFK at Dealey Plaza...." "...[W]e have now narrowed down the covert operational plans to kill Castro to a few – including Pathfinder that may have been the specific plan that was redirected to “snuff” JFK in Dallas. If it wasn't Pathfinder, it was one very much like it. Now we will soon know the names of the shooters – the five first-class Cuban mechanic-snipers who were paid and trained by the CIA to kill Castro but one or two of whom shot JFK in the head instead...." "...“I took high powered rifles with scopes to Cuba,” Eugenio Martinez said, “and they weren’t going to be used to hunt rabbits.” “Chi Chi” Quintero was a shooter, said Wheaton, who also names five or six other Cubans who were on that team, that maritime crew of anti-Castro Cuban commandos who were paid and trained to kill Castro. But when that mission was scrubbed – “disapproved” by “higher authority,” and they learned of the JFK- Castro backchannel negotiations at the UN (from Henry Cabot Lodge), they redirected the Pathfinder target to JFK at Dealey Plaza. And considered themselves patriots for doing so...." "...The U.S. Army Rangers are called Pathfinders, and two U.S. Army Ranger Captains - Bradley Ayers and Edward Roderick were assigned to the CIA by USMC General "Brut" Krulak to train the Cuban Commandos at JMWAVE. While Ayers trained the Cubans in small boat maneuvering at Pirate's Lair, Roderick trained the snipers at Point Mary, off Key Largo. The original anti-Castro Cuban Pathfinders were the best of the lot sent to Guatemala to train for the Bay of Pigs, and were commanded by US Marine Captain Carl Jenkins, whose specialty was infiltration and exfiltration of commandos while John "I.F" Harper trained the Cubans in explosives and sniper tactics...." The fire plan of the hit team probably looked something like the following: Immediately following the assassination, many witnesses (including DPD motorcycle patrolmen who had been flanking the limo, and Secret Service agents from the follow up cars [when the motorcade stopped]) ran up the grassy knoll chasing the sound of gunshots, but as you have pointed out, there are problems with this trajectory being the explanation for the right temple entry wound and large avulsive occipital parietal exit wound, and the trajectory from the sixth floor of the TSBD is even worse. However, note the trajectory from the South Knoll (lower left side of diagram), which appears more feasible: Also immediately after the assassination, many witnesses (including a DPD police officer) ran up to the corner of the picket fence and triple overpass cement railing chasing the sound of gunshots, but there are also problems with this trajectory being the explanation for the right temple entry wound and large avulsive occipital parietal exit wound: JFK assassination researcher Sherry Fiester, a former Certified Senior Crime Scene Analyst and court certified expert in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, totaling in over 30 Judicial Districts and Louisiana State Federal Court https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00B4TSUV2/about , has made a convincing case that the shot through the windshield of the Presidential Limousine, and JFK's right temple and occipital-parietal wounds were caused by gunshots from an assassin located at the South Knoll, as diagramed below: As diagrammed in the following, a gunshot trajectory originating from the South Knoll appears to be a solution to the problems you have pointed out: The following is a very helpful video which showcases Sherry Fiester's evidence for the gunshots which penetrated the limousine windshield and the headshot to the President having originated from the South Knoll: In short, the existing evidence (much of which I have not presented here) to me strongly suggests that there was a triangulated fire team shooting from multiple directions, and that President Kennedy was shot in the throat (either by the limousine windshield bullet of a glass fragment from the windshield shot), and in the right temple (exiting from the rear right quadrant of JFK's head), and that numerous nearly simultaneous gunshots missed the mark, doing other damage to the limo and to Govenor Connelly.

I think that David Boylan is absolutely correct that Carl Jenkins and Felix Rodriguez are the two living people who are most intimately knowledgeable about the inner-workings of the assassination operation that actualized the 1963 coup d'état at Dealey Plaza. An intriguing coincidence relevant to this topic occurred this last February shortly before a podcast interview with Felix Rodriguez. The interviewer, Danny Jones, was speaking with constitutional law professor and lawyer Danny Sheehan, who was discussing the S-Force - the paramilitary unit which carried out JFK's assassination - and mentioned "Operation 40." This led Danny Jones to inquire, "Do you know who Felix Rodriguez is?" Sheehan responded, "Felix Rodriguez was a shooter; he was one of the individuals involved in the President's assassination." Surprised, Danny Jones mentioned that he was set to interview Felix Rodriguez the next day. Sheehan then spent the next 45 minutes recounting the S-Force story and advising Danny Jones on how to conduct the upcoming interview with Rodriguez to potentially elicit new information. Here is a link to the Sheehan interview, with the relevant segment already cued up for your convenience: During the final half-hour of the Felix Rodriguez interview, Danny Jones attempted to ask questions aimed at uncovering Rodriguez's cover stories, but without success. Rodriguez's cover stories, however, revealed some information. When questioned about the JFK assassination, Rodriguez stuck to the standard CIA narrative implicating Fidel Castro as the mastermind behind the event. He even suggested that Castro's intelligence chief, Fabian Escalante, was the one who pulled the trigger. This is intriguing as a retaliation ploy by Rodriguez, given that Escalante on numerous occasions fingered Rodriguez as a potential participant in the assassination in his books and interviews. Felix Rodriguez also denied other unpopular personal achievements of his, such as his participation as a CIA interrogator in the the 1985 death of DEA Agent Kiki Camerena, and although he did admit his involvement in the assassination of Che Guevara, he tried very hard to minimize the brutality involved in the affair. The following is the link to the Rodriguez interview cued up for you to the relevant segment in advance: The following is the best information available about the paramilitary unit that carried out the triangulated ambush assassination of President Kennedy. There are multiple corroborating witnesses for this evidence. It also corroborates the revelations made by Santo Trafficante to his lawyers, regarding whgat Daniel Sheehan refers to as "the S-Force." In this article, @William Kelly makes cryptic references to a living person knowledgeable about these events who Kelly does not name. My assumption is that he is referring to Carl Jenkins: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'PATHFINDER - PARTS 1 - 5 THE PLAN TO KILL CASTRO REDIRECTED TO JFK AT DALLAS' William Kelly | JFKcountercoup | Saturday, December 22, 2018 | https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/12/pathfinder-parts-1-5-plan-to-kill.html https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/6051134211609264/ "...As Bill Turner put it, “the mechanism was in place” to kill Castro, and they just switched targets, and instead of shooting Castro they redirected their fire to JFK at Dealey Plaza...." "...[W]e have now narrowed down the covert operational plans to kill Castro to a few – including Pathfinder that may have been the specific plan that was redirected to “snuff” JFK in Dallas. If it wasn't Pathfinder, it was one very much like it. Now we will soon know the names of the shooters – the five first-class Cuban mechanic-snipers who were paid and trained by the CIA to kill Castro but one or two of whom shot JFK in the head instead...." "...“I took high powered rifles with scopes to Cuba,” Eugenio Martinez said, “and they weren’t going to be used to hunt rabbits.” “Chi Chi” Quintero was a shooter, said Wheaton, who also names five or six other Cubans who were on that team, that maritime crew of anti-Castro Cuban commandos who were paid and trained to kill Castro. But when that mission was scrubbed – “disapproved” by “higher authority,” and they learned of the JFK- Castro backchannel negotiations at the UN (from Henry Cabot Lodge), they redirected the Pathfinder target to JFK at Dealey Plaza. And considered themselves patriots for doing so...." "...The U.S. Army Rangers are called Pathfinders, and two U.S. Army Ranger Captains - Bradley Ayers and Edward Roderick were assigned to the CIA by USMC General "Brut" Krulak to train the Cuban Commandos at JMWAVE. While Ayers trained the Cubans in small boat maneuvering at Pirate's Lair, Roderick trained the snipers at Point Mary, off Key Largo. The original anti-Castro Cuban Pathfinders were the best of the lot sent to Guatemala to train for the Bay of Pigs, and were commanded by US Marine Captain Carl Jenkins, whose specialty was infiltration and exfiltration of commandos while John "I.F" Harper trained the Cubans in explosives and sniper tactics...." ___________________ SANTO TRAFFICANTE REVEALED MUCH IN CONFIDENCE TO HIS LAWYERS... Listen to this video about Santo Trafficante confidentially providing the details about the origin of the S-Force to his legal counsel under the protection of attorney/client privilege. Trafficante did not do so to seek publicity or sell books. He only did so in the utmost confidentiality, expecting that it would never be divulged to anybody. I've cued the video to the relevant segment for you. ---------------------------------------------------------- RE: THE S-FORCE In 1960, once VP Richard Nixon came to believe he was going to win the presidential election and decided to send a hit squad after Castro, he called upon Howard Hughes on whose behalf Robert Mayheu contacted Johnny Roselli who contacted Santo Trafficante (because Trafficante was the Don over Cuba). Trafficante insisted upon proof that VP Nixon was authorizing it, so Nixon sent the CIA Chief of Security to a meeting with Trafficante and Roselli to confirm. They then assembled a 15-man team made up of anti-Castro Cuban mercenaries, Italian organized crime assassins (who had worked for Trafficante in Cuba), CIA operatives (such as Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, etc.) and special forces operators. This "S-Force" was funded by a skim off Las Vegas casinos, and was trained on U.S. military bases and Clint Murchison's ranch in Mexico to conduct triangulated crossfire ambush assassinations, and they were deployed to conduct such an operation against the President of the United States during the weekend of November 22, 1963. This information is primarily derived from what attorney Daniel Sheehan has divulged about the attorney/client privileged communications between James McCord and Santo Trafficante and F. Lee Bailey while Bailey was representing them on CIA retainer during the period of the Watergate Hearings. Video is cued for you in advance to 45:39 where Professor Sheehan describes Santo Trafficante's confidential attorney-client privileged explanation of the relationship between Operation 40 and the "S-Force" which was originally constituted under the auspices of VP Nixon to off Castro, but was instead ultimately deployed to assassinate President Kennedy: Also see detailed account of the origins of the S-Force as presented in Daniel Sheehan's autobiography via the following link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/politicalassassinationsresearchgroup/posts/6787297377992940/

Here is a very recent additional example of the variety of deception Pat Speer employed in the case of James Jenkins, and in the cases of every other JFK back of the head wound witnesses on this forum, and on his web site. Speer had to have done this within the last three months, because it was not on his web site the last time I was fact checking his Ed Forum claims. It is a screenshot of ex-Secret Service Agent Paul Landis responding to a question asking him "where the head wound was located" by placing his hand onto the right rear quadrant of his head, with commentary from Speer advising his readers not to trust their own lying eyes: https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-19f-reason-to-doubt Note that Speer is claiming that Landis "is pointing at the right side of the head just above the ear," which is not at all what we see in his screenshot of Landis with his hand clearly outstretched on the back of his own head (Unlike those of Dr. McClelland and James Jenkins, Landis's gesture did not provide Speer with a sufficient opportunity to cherry pick a screenshot of Landis's hand elsewhere). Speer then goes on to write that Landis's hand gesture was "just back of the ear -- which is not the middle of the very back of the head at the level of the ear, where do many prominent "theorists" place the wound." But it is not true that "so many prominent theorists" place the wound in "the middle of the very back of the head at the level of the ear." The researchers that Speer is constantly railing on against -- Horne, Mantik, Law, Livingstone, etc. -- place the wound consistent with the vast majority of the witness testimony, in the lower right quadrant of the back of the head, just as is demonstrated by the following witness sketches: The only witness I can think of that places the large avulsive wound in the middle of the back of the head at the level of the ears is mortician Tom Robinson, who is anything but "a prominent theorist," and who, according to Speer, only placed it there because that was where it ended up after skull fragments were inserted and the head was "reconstructed" by the morticians (though in my opinion, Robinson merely misremembered it as being in the middle, rather than on the right side): Adding insult to injury is that when we view the actual video of Paul Landis which Speer has taken his screenshot from, we see that it is completely unambiguous that Landis is locating the large avulsive wound in the right quadrant of the back of the head and not, as Speer claims in his descriptive commentary, "at the right side of the head just above the ear." In fact, while demonstrating the location with his hand Landis clearly and unequivocally states: "Not knowing medical terms, right, rear head." Does Pat Speer believe that all his readers are suckers who will not fact check his claims? Apparently, he does.

The following is from Doug Horne's last minute "Addendum: The Zapruder Film Goes to Hollywood," in "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board": "...But frame 317 provides the most damning evidence of apparent film alteration.31 As David Lifton pointed out in his article in Fetzer’s anthology The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, when he first saw a Moses Weitzman 35 mm blowup of the Zapruder film in 1970 (a positive projection print), and again when he was using an Oxberry optical printer in 1990 to copy the Moses Weitzman high-quality 35 mm internegative of the Zapruder film loaned to him by documentary producer Robert Richter, he noticed that the back of JFK’s head in the frames following the head shot seemed unusually dark, and wondered if it had been ‘blacked out’ somehow during the film’s alteration. He was left with a very strong visual impression resulting from many, many hours of work with the film in 1990, during which he was often looking at magnified images of President Kennedy’s head. He talked about this repeatedly with me, and no doubt with others over the years, but no oral conversation could adequately impart the subjective impact of his visual experience. More than once I asked Lifton if his impression that the head had been blacked out could have been caused by looking at deep shadow on the back of JFK’s head, and each time he impatiently insisted: “No way! It was a patch! The back of the head is blacked out in the Zapruder film.” As the old adage says, “seeing is believing,” and in June of 2009, when Sydney Wilkinson forwarded to me a JPEG image of the HD scan of frame 317, I had my own epiphany. (See Figures 87 and 88.) The image of the limousine’s occupants in the HD scan of frame 317 forwarded to me by Wilkinson was not nearly as dark, or rich in color, as versions I had seen on television over the years, in documentaries. My initial impression (as a non-film person) was that the HD scan image of Z-317 was somehow washed out, or underexposed. As it turns out, I was incorrect; I was looking at a “flat” or “exposure neutral” scan of frame 317 from Sydney’s dupe negative of the extant film in the Archives. It had simply not been adjusted for purposes of aesthetics to make it more pleasing to the eye. What I saw was stunning. The lower half of the back of JFK’s head—hair that was very light brown, or perhaps a cross between auburn and light gray in the HD scan—was covered up by a jet black patch with very straight, artificial looking edges that appeared to be artwork to me, like opaque black paint placed on top of the natural image of his hair. It was as if a trapezoid (the black patch) with impossibly straight edges had been wrapped around the back of JFK’s head, in exactly the area where the Parkland medical staff had seen the exit wound behind the right ear in the posterior skull. My subjective reaction was that frame 317 was so obviously a composite image of artwork superimposed on top of a real film image that I literally expostulated “Holy xxxx!” when Sydney Wilkinson first brought it to my attention. Furthermore, when compared to the part of Governor Connally’s head that was in shadow in the same frame, the portions of the images of the two men’s heads that were supposedly in shadow were totally dissimilar. The portion of Connally’s head in shadow looked gray, and you could still see details inside the shadow; the black “patch” over JFK’s head was jet-black, with no details visible whatsoever. And guess what? You can actually see this patch with artificially straight edges on the MPI product sold in 1998, Image of an Assassination. It is best seen in the Close-up Frame view, using the ‘frame-by-frame advance’ feature on your remote. Even though the contrast of the image has been adjusted by MPI and the overall image appears much darker, with brighter and more vivid colors than the exposure neutral scan of Sydney’s, the curved trapezoid with improbably straight edges wrapped around the back of JFK’s head can still be seen! Take a look for yourself at home. In the surrounding frames on the MPI product, however—frames 313-337—the back of the head is so muddy and dark that the viewer cannot detect whether there is any overt, or blatant evidence of artificiality (i.e., straight edges associated with the black region on the back of the head) or not. The same is not true of the HD scans of the frames beginning with 313 (the ‘head explosion’), and continuing well past frame 337. The back of JFK’s head in all of these HD frames, beginning with 313, looks impossibly dark compared with the remainder of the image. The “black patch” on the HD frames, when viewed in extreme closeup on a high resolution video screen or monitor, appears to ‘hang in space,’ an impossibly dark mask supported by...NOTHING. Words are inadequate to convey how artificial this area of his head looks from frames 313 to 337 in particular, and even beyond that, until Jackie Kennedy pushes her husband’s head down out of view of the camera’s lens as she crawls out on the back of the limousine to retrieve part of his brain from thetrunk lid of the car. Frame 317 is just the most obvious of all of these frames, probably the one frame where the aerial imaging artist forgot to ‘fuzz up’ the edges of the black patch with his airbrush. The HD scan of frame 313 (the ‘head explosion’) also looks particularly bad when viewed in extreme closeup on a high-resolution video monitor: the ‘black patch’ actually comes down over the top of, and covers, the back of JFK’s shirt collar—and the so-called ‘head explosion’ seems to be coming from an area in space that is actually in front of President Kennedy’s head, rather than on his head. In other words, the aerial imaging artist who altered this frame screwed up twice, and in both respects depicted things that cannot be. One reason I am confident, even at this early stage in this investigation, that I am looking at the result of aerial imaging on an animation stand (such as described by Professor Fielding in his 1965 textbook), and not at a traveling matte, is that upon extreme magnification on a high-resolution screen, I believe I can see the real exit wound in the right rear of JFK’s head bleeding through the black patch in frame 313. This is a subjective impression that most (but not all) people see when I show the extreme close-up of the HD scan of Z-313 to them on the high-resolution screen (1200 x 1920 pixels) on my laptop computer. I believe I am correct because the darker ovoid shape that I see “coming through the black mask” is in exactly the location where the exit wound was described by the Parkland treatment staff, and is also the same size they described—about the size of a baseball (or slightly smaller). For any part of an original image at all to be seen through a patch of black artwork means that we are looking at a composite created by aerial imaging, in which the black paint used by the animator was not completely opaque, and where the light projecting the original film frame up through the condensers onto the animation stand was a bit too bright—so bright that part of the original image could be seen through the non-opaque black paint employed by the visual effects artist on his animation cell. A matte insertion could not, by its very nature, allow any of the original image to “bleed through” the matte, since when a matte is inserted into a film frame that portion of the original image has already been optically excised. Aerial imaging seems the likely method employed to alter all frames of the head wound for two other reasons, as well. First, the area being covered up (the back of the head) is so small—it would even be small on a 7.5 x 10 inch animation stand in an aerial imaging set-up on an optical printer—that registration problems would surely have occurred if a 35 mm traveling matte had been employed to cover up the real exit defect. (No such registration errors are seen in the HD frames.) Second, aerial imaging artwork is ‘self-matting’ by its very nature, since the animation cell is superimposed over the top of the image being projected through the condensers in the optical printer—which means that the new, composite image can be captured on the first pass by the process camera, resulting in less contrast buildup than would be the case in a traveling matte, which would be two generations farther down the line. This aerial imaging hypothesis is the most likely explanation for the altered frames of the head wounds that will be tested throughout the Los Angeles investigation as it proceeds. And if the back of the head has been blacked out, it necessarily follows that the so-called massive head wound, seen most vividly in frames 335 and 337, is artwork also. (See Figures 89 and 90.) If one wound has been covered up, a substitute wound must be created to take its place. In her Warren Commission testimony—testimony that was deleted from the 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits published in 1964, and only released by the U.S. government circa 1975—Jackie Kennedy said to J. Lee Rankin: “...from the front there was nothing...” when describing the head wound under oath. The full quotation of this section of her suppressed testimony is provided below: I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been, but from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on. [author’s emphasis] It should be no surprise to my readers that this testimony was suppressed! At a time when the Warren Commission, using the frames carefully selected by the CIA’s assets at LIFE magazine, was attempting to persuade the American public that JFK had an exit wound in the right-front of his head, our citizenry couldn’t be allowed to read graphic testimony like this that cast doubt upon the official cover story, or upon images from the Zapruder film published by LIFE. Jackie’s testimony, of course, was consistent with that of the Parkland medical staff in Trauma Room One, who overwhelmingly testified that the exit wound they saw was in the right rear of his skull, and consistently mentioned no damage to the right-front of JFK’s head. In later years, as pointed out elsewhere in this book, Dr. Peters, Dr. Crenshaw, Dr. Jones, and Nurse Bell all specifically stated that the right-front of President Kennedy’s head was undamaged when they saw him at Parkland hospital...."