The Kennedy Detail

[Bernice Moore]

here is the coffin deep sixed information..info...http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg14235.html

Sat, 29 May 1999 02:26:08 -0700 -Caveat Lector-JFK's Casket Was Dropped in OceanBy KAREN GULLO.c The Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) -- A bronze casket used to carry President Kennedy's bodyfrom Dallas to Washington is in a watery grave -- 9,000 feet down in theAtlantic Ocean, according to assassination documents.Materials to be released Tuesday at the National Archives will show that inearly 1965 the casket was dropped from a military plane into an area whereunstable and outdated weapons and ammunition are dumped, Kermit Hall, amember of the now-defunct Assassination Records Review Board, told TheAssociated Press.``The documents that will be released show it was dropped off theMaryland-Delaware border in 9,000 feet of water,'' Hall said Friday night.``There's actually a map in the documents that pinpoints the coordinateswhere it was dropped.''The revelation -- on the eve of what would have been President Kennedy's 82ndbirthday today -- that the casket was sunk resolves a lingering mystery aboutits whereabouts. But it also fuels speculation among assassinationresearchers that it was discarded to hide foul play.``The coffin is evidence just like the body is evidence,'' said David Lifton,who wrote a book about medical evidence in the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.``You don't destroy evidence.''What happened to the bronze casket has been a lingering question over thepast three decades. Last year a document released by the archives showed thata General Services Administration truck picked up the coffin on March 19,1964.In its effort to ferret assassination-related documents and information fromvarious government agencies, the review panel asked the GSA where the casketwas. The agency said in the summer of 1998 that it didn't know.The documents from GSA and the Justice and Defense departments being releasednext week, however, describe the disposition in detail, Hall said.``Essentially what was going on was an effort to make sure the casket didn'tturn into a historic relic for the marketplace,'' he said.Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a mahogany coffin thathad been purchased in Washington to replace the bronze one, which was missinga handle and had been damaged.In September 1965, former Texas Rep. Earle Cabell wrote to then-AttorneyGeneral Nicholas Katzenbach recommending that the bronze casket be discardedso it could never become a relic.``It is an extremely handsome, expensive, all-bronze, silk-lined casket, andfortunately, and properly, was paid for by the General ServicesAdministration, and presently is in the possession of GSA,'' Cabell wrote.``This item has ... value for the morbidly curious. And I believe that I amcorrect in stating that this morbid curiosity is that which we all seek tostop.''Katzenbach said in an interview Friday that he doesn't recall details aboutthe disposition of the casket. If anyone had asked him if it should bedisposed of, ``I'd have said that's a good idea,'' he said.Lifton thinks there might have been a darker motive.In conducting his research, Lifton talked with witnesses who said Kennedy'sbody arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital in a gray metal shipping casket, notthe bronze one obtained in Dallas. That the bronze casket was dumped in theocean -- after the Warren Commission issued its report in 1964 -- makes himwonder what clues it might have yielded to investigators.``If it had been an ongoing murder investigation, this would be obstructionof justice,'' Lifton said.Douglas Horne, who was the chief analyst for military records at thecongressionally created review board, speculated that the bronze casket wasdestroyed to end the two-coffin controversy.``I think the way to get rid of the problem is you get rid of the casket. Youthrow it out of an airplane,'' said Horne.DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER==========CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandicscreeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid mattersand 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outrightfrauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effectsspread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial andnazi's need not apply.Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.========================================================================Archives Available at:http://home.ease.lso...hives/CTRL.htmlhttp:/========================================================================To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:]

b

Coffin used to transport Kennedy's body sunk at sea

June 1, 1999

Web posted at: 5:33 p.m. EDT (2133 GMT)

:blink:note one says 1965 the next 1966 ... :blink:

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, June 1) -- At the Kennedy family's insistence, the polished bronze casket used to carry President John F. Kennedy's body from Dallas to Washington was dumped into the ocean in 1966, according to newly released documents from the National Archives.

Its whereabouts had long been a mystery and questions lingered about the casket after Kennedy's burial at Arlington National Cemetery in a mahogany coffin following his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

"I think it belongs to the family and we can get rid of it any way we want to," Robert Kennedy, the president's brother and the former attorney general, told Lawson Knott, the administrator of the General Services Administration, according to a memo recounting their February 1966 telephone conversation.

"What I would like to have done is take it to sea," Kennedy told Knott. "I don't think anybody will be upset about the fact that we disposed of it."

There were concerns that the casket was government property since the government purchased it from Dallas undertaker Vernon Oneal. The casket, lined with brushed satin, was replaced because it was damaged. It was also unclear whether it was covered by a law that made certain items of evidence related to the Kennedy assassination government property.

Researchers of President Kennedy's assassination consider the coffin evidence that should not have been destroyed, including author David Lifton.

"We are dealing with evidence," said Lifton, whose 1981 book detailed medical evidence in the Kennedy assassination.

Kennedy family spokeswoman Melody Miller said Tuesday that destroying the casket was appropriate and "in keeping with the tradition of President Kennedy's naval service and his love of the sea."

The new documents show that the casket was stored in the basement of the National Archives building in downtown Washington in February 1966 when Robert Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from New York, called the GSA, which oversees government property, and asked for it to be released to the military for destruction.

Knott told Kennedy that destroying the coffin might "raise loads of questions" in light of an upcoming book about the assassination and said the Justice Department would have to authorize release of the casket. Kennedy served as attorney general before he entered the Senate in 1965.

Kennedy said he would contact his successor as attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach. Eight days later, Katzenbach wrote in a February 11, 1966 letter to Knott that he felt it was necessary to dispose of the coffin.

"I am unable to conceive of any manner in which the casket could have an evidentiary value, nor can I conceive of any reason why the national interest would require its preservation," Katzenbach wrote. "It is obvious that it could never be used for burial purposes and its public display would be extremely offensive and contrary to public policy."

"As long as the casket remains ... there is always the possibility that it could be misused or misappropriated," he added.

Documents show that Oneal, the Dallas undertaker, wanted to get the casket back and display it in his funeral home.

On February 18, 1966, an Air Force van picked up the casket at the National Archives building in downtown Washington and took it to Andrews Air Force Base.

The casket was loaded with three 80-pound bags of sand. Numerous holes were drilled in both the casket and the pine box it was encased in "to ensure that no air pockets would develop," according to a memo written by John Steadman, special assistant in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

Both casket and pine box bound with metal banding tape and the whole apparatus was rigged with parachutes to break the impact of hitting the water.The Defense Department had sought the advice of a submarine officer with special training in hydraulics to devise a way to airdrop the coffin at sea, according to the documents.

At 8:38 a.m., a C-130 airplane carrying the casket took off from the Air Force base and flew off the Maryland-Delaware coast. The plane descended to 500 feet and at 10 a.m., the 660-pound load was pushed out of the plane's opened tail hatch.

"The parachutes opened shortly before impact and the entire rigged load remained intact and sank sharply, clearly and immediately after the soft impact," Steadman wrote in a February 25, 1966 file memo.

"The aircraft circled the drop point for some 20 minutes at 500 feet to ensure that nothing returned to the surface," wrote Steadman, who was on the plane.

The drop point -- in 9,000 feet of water beyond the continental shelf -- was chosen because it was away from regularly traveled air and shipping lines and would not be disturbed by trawling and other sea-bottom activities, the documents said.

The document released were from the National Archives and Record Administration's records of documents relating to Kennedy. Congress passed a law in 1992 requiring that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection at the National Archives with the intent of opening most of the records for research..

********************************************************

Edited December 4, 2010 by Bernice Moore

[Duke Lane]

I just watched the new Discovery channel program on The Kennedy Detail. It was fairly good, IMO. It really focused on the love these men felt for the Kennedy family, and how badly they were impacted by the assassination. It also allowed Clint Hill to say the first shot hit Kennedy without Gary Mack or some narrator saying he was wrong. It even allowed Win Lawson to claim the last two shots were much closer together than the first two...without Gary Mack or some narrator claiming he was wrong. This was kinda refreshing.

Unfortunately, it also had a number of flaws.

1. While cutting back and forth between Clint Hill's and Paul Landis' accounts of the shooting, they inserted Landis saying he heard a second report before Hill and Landis described the head shot. This hid from the viewer that BOTH Hill and Landis thought the head shot WAS the second report, and that NEITHER of them heard a shot between the one striking Kennedy in the back and the one striking Kennedy in the head.

2. There was no discussion of the late night drinking and carrying on by members of the detail the night before the shooting.

3. There was no discussion of agent Greer's slowing down the limo after the shooting began.

4. There was no discussion of Emory Roberts' ordering agent Ready back to the limo during the shooting.

5. There was no discussion of the Secret Service/FBI fight at the hospital.

6. There was no discussion of the clean-up of the limo at the hospital.

7. There was no discussion of the removal of the limo from Dallas, and agent Kinney's finding and removing evidence from the limo.

8. There was no discussion of agent Greer's having Kennedy's clothes at the autopsy, and failing to provide them to the autopsy doctors for inspection.

9. There WAS, however, some discussion of Oswald--some acceptable, with one agent claiming that with Oswald's murder we would never know what "really really" happened--and some not, with David Grant and Jerry Blaine basically calling Oswald a psycho who killed Kennedy for attention.

Some CTs no doubt will be tempted to shoot their TVs at that point.

Still, as I said, I thought it was pretty good overall. It was very emotional, and is likely to create interest in Kennedy and his assassination among younger viewers not already interested.

I concur with your observations, except that one of the agents referred to (at least I thought he did) the dispute between DPD and the Secret Service agents over the removal of JFK's corpse from Parkland.

As I recall, they discussed the dispute they'd had with the Dallas coroner. Landis even admitted that they were taking the body and the law be damned. But no one mentioned that there was an actual fight between an SS agent and an FBI agent, and that the FBI agent was knocked to the ground when he ran towards the emergency room without showing his ID.

Would the fact that the casket had to have it's handles removed before it would fit through the door of the plane be a difinitive way to tell if it was changed at some point to fit the" two caskets " theory? One of the agents descibed the casket as a cheap affair for the president's body to be shipped in and i have never heard of the handles removal before. He even goes on to say the piece of broken handle he was holding slipped from his grasp at one point almost causing a dropped casket.

Some interesting points. Hill did say that the casket "couldn't fit through the hatch" and that they "broke the handles off" to get it inside (Staughton's photographs don't seem to suggest any delay of the casket's entry onto the plane), yet they appeared intact when the casket was removed from the plane at Andrews without any explanation of how they "un-broke them back on" at any time. Landis described how one of the supposedly "removed" handles "broke" while he was helping to unload the casket. Unless both Landis was holding one of the head or foot handles and those men at the sides of the casket were in fact holding onto the bottom of the casket and not handles, Hill seems to be massively in error here.

My recollection (not looking for any of the above, specifically) is that the discussion (by Hill) was of a dispute with Dallas "officials," with no indication of who those officials may have been. One gets the impression that it was a reasoned discussion among professionals that reached an amicable "solution" rather than a stand-off or altercation: Landis said that they were taking the body "legal or not," but described how "an agreement was reached" whereby it would be "acceptable" to do so, as long as Admiral Burkley maintained official custody of the body and "never left its side."

I also thought it interesting how Hill described, in effect, his indispensibility to all concerned, as if the only man who actually made it to the limousine was the one whom everyone trusted to "get things done right" throughout the weekend. Despite his being a relatively junior agent (he'd joined the USSS — or perhaps WHD? — only four years earlier, in 1959) and assigned not to the President but to the First Lady, he recalls how people pulled him aside for special attentions such as procuring the casket from O'Neil's ("the best you've got"), getting scissors for Jackie while viewing the body, and Jackie's concern for "what will happen to you now" commisseration with him aboard AF1, among others.

As far as it went, The Kennedy Detail documentary (advertorial?) — and potentially the book — is a nice piece of emotional fluff, and certainly no effort to "set the record straight" other than as one man's argument: it is far from, say, the ARRB interviews of Sibert and O'Neill, or those present during the autopsy (even as limited as some people may consider them). It was by no means intended as, nor did it achieve being "the final answer" to all or any of the points that Pat Speer raised above, and it was by no means an adversarial proceeding: they — mostly Blaine — merely said what they wanted to, or responded to what they were asked (we don't see entire interviews, and have no idea what ended up on the cutting room floor or the what the context of their responses was (and like most people, they were cooperative to TDC's and Blaine's efforts and the attention they got).

It is, to me, perfectly understandable that they, all or any of them, take exception to Hickey's theoretical shooting of the AR-15, but it is hardly dispositive that these self-same agents who did not foil the assassination attempt in Dealey Plaza have any idea whatsoever what the nature of what defeated them actually was: they can have all the faith in the Oswald-did-it scenario that they'd like, it does nothing toward proving or showing that they know beyond any doubt what the underlying nature of the action against their protectee actually was. Had they been, they would have been able to prevent it and done so. They were caught by surprise, failed — deliberately or otherwise, on anyone's part — and have no more idea of what the actuality of the attack was than the next guy. "Being there" means nothing, and gives no-one a special insight into the mechanics of the shooting: even if one of them had looked up and seen the rifle barrel (as claimed by several civilian witnesses), they have no way of knowing who was at the other end of it.

Among all of the former agents who were on the show, only Blaine seemed to come off smugly (other than with respect to the notion of a USSS "conspiracy"), which may be understandable in light of his being the author and it being "his story" that was headlined, but somewhat curious in light of his being among the first, if not the first, to leave the Service, shortly after the assassination. That being so, even considering his being a founder and past president of the Association of Former Agents, and given the fact(?) that November 22, 1963, was a "forbidden topic" at any of its conferences, one must wonder at Blaine's omniscience of all that went on, what everyone meant, and what was said and believed by others, especially those long dead, and those who were in Dallas when he was himself asleep (by his own words) in Austin. Why should anyone presume that a former agent was given any special insight to what was "really going on" during and following the investigations of JFK's murder?

As much as Blaine — it being his story — likes to hang on the device of JFK's supposed "orders" for the PPD team to "stay off the limo" (whether only during "political events" or otherwise), neither he nor anyone else makes the claim of having heard this from JFK himself. Nor should we anticipate that anyone necessarily would have, being "grunts" in the chain of command and any such order or "request" reasonably being made only to the SAIC by JFK (and not his staff, inasmuch as the USSS would not, presumably, have considered anything coming from those who held no sway over it (they say that they could over-rule the President in certain matters, so why would they take "orders" from mere staff?) as having any weight of command.

This does not, however, preclude agents' belief that such was JFK's desire, especially if they were told that it was by the SAIC or even an advance man. It is reasonable to believe, IMO, that agents did not routinely ride on the back of the limo when crowds were sparse, since footage shown during this documentary show agents not on the limo when crowds were much denser than in Dealey Plaza. While that may explain why they were on the running boards of the Queen Mary before the shots — be they firecrackers or backfires notwithstanding — it does nothing toward explaining why they didn't apparently react by protecting their charge at those sounds (would it not have been better to have had egg on their faces than blood?), or why they were held back from responding when JFK's distress was evident.

(There have been enough independent and unrelated suggestions that at least keeping agents on the back or sides of the limo at a necessary minimum to suggest that it was in fact the case, whether by JFK's direction or someone else's. If there were others who believed otherwise, just as Vince Palamara's review suggests that Blaine's inclusion of which agents were interviewed for the book was limited by Blaine's own prejudices — particularly about "keeping the code," as if cops are duty-bound not to say anything that contradicts an "official story" — so, too, can we reasonably presume that he left out those and others who didn't support his story in full for any reason.)

The only explanation that makes sense to me came in Paul Landis's recollection of seeing Hill rushing toward the limousine and thinking "go, Clint, go!" and being concerned that, if he didn't make it, "we were going to run over him." In other words, if the limousine was supposed to have and actually did accelerate out of the area, they'd never have reached their destination or served their purposes as "human shields" even had they left the Queen Mary immediately after the first report. As it was, Hill only barely made it, and anyone leaving after he did might very well have gotten "run over in the line of duty," or at the very least left behind in Dealey Plaza (which might not have been a bad thing, but I recall that their job is not to secure or investigate the crime scene, but to secure the protectee). I don't believe that, if Hill hadn't made it to the limo — and didn't get run over by QM — anyone would have stopped to pick him up, but rather continued on with their jobs and come back for him later, or let him commandeer another ride (more likely).

Without ever having mentioned it directly, the whole gambit about how the USSS was supposed to "secure" a parade route, even to the extent of ensuring that windows were not open and that "manholes were welded shut" seems to be some wishful thinking on the part of some CTers. Repeatedly we saw footage of people standing on balconies, hanging out of open windows, even hanging on street poles and construction cranes as the motorcade drove by. We can only estimate how many manholes there might have been along a parade route 10 miles long (as was the case in Dallas), much less ones as long as in Tampa (28 miles, according to Blaine or someone), how long that many would take to locate and secure, and what anyone was supposed to do in the meanwhile between the times of the welding and the parade if something went wrong that required someone's access to what was below. Monday morning quarterbacking by someone not on the field?

All in all — and only in so far as it went as the first-ever (and probably only) reunion of several agents of the Kennedy detail in Dallas at Dealey Plaza — it was a great piece of work as an emotional recollection of the events of November 22, but utterly useless as evidentiary documentation, as it was not intended to be. It may be called self-serving (and was, inasmuch as it focused only on the agents and their recollections) and does nothing at all toward "furthering the cause" of determining (as Toby Chandler put it) what "really, really happened" in Dealey Plaza, I'm not quite as certain that it — the TV "documentary," not the book (which I haven't read) — can be put off as "propaganda," as an exercise in finger-pointing ("it was JFK's own fault"), or as anything other than the mere "fluff" that's usually put on parade around the anniversary.

In sum, touching but valueless.

[Duke Lane]

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, June 1) -- At the Kennedy family's insistence, the polished bronze casket used to carry President John F. Kennedy's body from Dallas to Washington was dumped into the ocean in 1966, according to newly released documents from the National Archives.

... "I think it belongs to the family and we can get rid of it any way we want to," Robert Kennedy, the president's brother and the former attorney general, told Lawson Knott, the administrator of the General Services Administration, according to a memo recounting their February 1966 telephone conversation. "What I would like to have done is take it to sea," Kennedy told Knott. "I don't think anybody will be upset about the fact that we disposed of it."

There were concerns that the casket was government property since the government purchased it from Dallas undertaker Vernon Oneal. The casket, lined with brushed satin, was replaced because it was damaged. It was also unclear whether it was covered by a law that made certain items of evidence related to the Kennedy assassination government property.

Researchers of President Kennedy's assassination consider the coffin evidence that should not have been destroyed, including author David Lifton.

... "I am unable to conceive of any manner in which the casket could have an evidentiary value, nor can I conceive of any reason why the national interest would require its preservation," Katzenbach wrote. "It is obvious that it could never be used for burial purposes and its public display would be extremely offensive and contrary to public policy." "As long as the casket remains ... there is always the possibility that it could be misused or misappropriated," he added. Documents show that Oneal, the Dallas undertaker, wanted to get the casket back and display it in his funeral home. ...

There are claims that Oneal was never paid for the coffin, but conversely, I've never heard of them suing for its return as unpaid or stolen merchandise. It can only be claimed as "government property" under some equivalent of "eminent domain" or, as the adage goes, "possession being 9/10ths of the law." "Title" would seem cloudy at best.

I have to agree with Katzenbach, tho': I can't conceive of how it could possibly be conceived as any evidence of the murder. In the very "best"-case scenario, I could only imagine its still having some remnants of rubber from a body bag, but since there's no claim that's what the body bag was contained in (rather, the gray shipping casket), that question would be moot.

As to any inappropriate use, all I can say is to witness Oneal's plan and the recent sale of Oswald's original pine casket.

[William Kelly]

I recently received copies of the Secret Service records that Gerald Blaine refers to in his book "The Kennedy Detail" and turned over to the NARA.

I've posted some of them at my blog and will post the rest when I can.

More to come - Bill Kelly

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/12/xsecret-service-records-thought.html

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/12/gerald-blaines-handwritten-notes.html

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-tampa-survey-report.html

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/12/implimenting-arrb-recommendations.html

Also see: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com

/