Greg Burnham Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Good stuff, Michael. You always offer very relevant data at just the right time. Great work...as usual. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Robert Morrow Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 More on Sen. Ralph Yarborough: Senator’s Ralph Yarborough's Suspicion of Lyndon Johnson "There is the well-publicized story of Agent Rufus Youngblood, who reportedly threw himself on top of Vice President Johnson after the shooting began in Dealey Plaza.... Johnson, in a statement to the Warren Commission, mentioned the incident: I was startled by a sharp report or explosion, but I had no time to speculate as to its origin because Agent Youngblood turned in a flash, immediately after the first explosion, hitting me on the shoulder, and shouted to all of us in the back seat to get down. I was pushed down by Agent Youngblood. Almost in the same moment in which he hit or pushed me, he vaulted over the back seat and sat on me. I was bent over under the weight of Agent Youngblood's body, toward Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough.... However, former Texas senator Ralph Yarborough, who was sitting beside Johnson that day, told this author: 'It just didn't happen.... It was a small car, Johnson was a big man, tall. His knees were up against his chin as it was. There was no room for that to happen.' Yarborough recalled that both Johnson and Youngblood ducked down as the shooting began and that Youngblood never left the front seat. Yarborough said Youngblood held a small walkie-talkie over the back of the car's seat and that he and Johnson both put their ears to the device. He added: 'They had it turned down real low. I couldn't hear what they were listening to.'" --Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy Ralph Yarborough's Suspicion of the Warren Commission Investigators: "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." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Greg, you got it backwards. The Secret Service did TWO re-enactments of the shooting. The FBI zero. The Secret Service showed the Zapruder film to photo experts, in an attempt to determine the shot sequence and locations. The FBI did not, and only reluctantly looked at the film. And yet they came to similar conclusions, with the head shot much further down the road than shown in the films... As far as your contention they dropped their guard on 11-22...I've seen nothing to indicate the protection was more lax that day than usual. They were a much smaller force back then, with a high burn-out rate. if you or ANYONE has collected information regarding other trips--in which someone popped a firecracker and the limo raced off, or an agent from the front seat catapulted himself into the back seat--then by all means, share this with us, so we can see how 11-22-63 was so different... P.S. If the protocols in place were sufficient to save Kennedy, then why oh why has no president since Kennedy trusted his life to those protocols? It was reported less than five months before President Kennedy was assassinated, that Italian police in Rome were more aggressive in protecting him from the enthusiastic Roman public during a presidential visit to Europe than the Secret Service was, and that a man managed to lock his arm around JFK's neck and nearly topple him over a baracade, before "the Secret Service saw....." Despite the existence of so recent reporting, the W.C. report concluded that protecting the president from harm from members of street level crowds was the Secret Service's strong suit. From the time he was sworn in as POTUS, there was neither the money appropriated nor the will to earnestly protect President Kennedy, or to properly autopsy his remains or to thoroughly investigate his assassination, or the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, after the failure of the SS, FBI, DPD, and other federal and state of Texas agencies and personnel to effect his survival of his automobile trip through Dallas. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22protest+is+made+after+bundy+and+sorenson%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-nightly#hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-nightly&hs=Atm&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aunofficial&tbs=ar:1&tbm=nws&sclient=psy-ab&q=rome+bundy+and+sorenson&oq=rome+bundy+and+sorenson&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=serp.12...8900.10245.5.11052.2.2.0.0.0.0.166.325.0j2.2.0...0.0.7idv4JiAt4Y&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=5ca1148732e101&biw=1173&bih=729 US AIDES SHOVED BY POLICE IN ROME; Protest Is Made After... New York Times - Jul 2, 1963 ROME, July 1 United States officials protested informally today against rough ... made after two Presidential aides,McGeorge Bundy and Theodore Sorensen, ... Police Rough Up Staff, Ire JFK Boston Globe (Pay-Per-View) His Aides . Pittsburgh Post-Gazette CHARGES ROME POLICE ABUSED KENNEDY AIDS Chicago Tribune (Pay-Per-View) Hartford Courant The Warren Commission Report - Page 449 1964 - 726 pages - Agent Roy H. Kellerman, riding in the front seat of the Presidential car, stated that he scanned the Depository Building, but not sufficiently to be alerted by anything in the windows or on the roof. The agents in the followup car also were expected to scan adjacent buildings. However, the Commission does not believe that agents stationed in a car behind the Presidential car, who must concentrate primarily on the possibility of threats from crowds along the route, provide a significant safeguard against dangers in nearby buildings...... SECRET SERVICE IS REORGANIZED; Changes Result From Study by... New York Times - Nov 11, 1965 The face of the service has changed considerably since thej assassination of President Ken- nedy. Total appropriations for the fiscal year 1966,which began last July 1, are $12,105,000, roughly a third larger than the s budget two years ago. i By next year the service hopes to have 920 men on its rolls, of whom over 600 will be agents. At the time of the assassination it had about 600 employes, 400 of them agents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Jeffries Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Why did the Secret Service confiscate and/or destroy autopsy film and x-rays? As late as the 1990s, why did they destroy records requested by the AARB? If the first shot had killed JFK, no one could blame the Secret Service agents for not reacting in time. Obviously, no one can respond instanteously to a shot that isn't being anticipated. However, after that first shot, the expectation was that those whose job depended on lighting quick reflexes in just such situations, and who had certainly been trained continuously for assassination scenarios, would have done more than clulessly look around them for 6-7 seconds. As Ralph Yarborough noted, a man can run fifty yards in less time than that. Because the first shot wasn't fatal, the failure of Kellerman and the Secret Service agents on the follow up car to quickly push JFK down and shield him contributed directly to his death. The failure of driver Greer to follow proper procedure and hit the accelerator after the first shot contributed directly to his death as well. 6-7 seconds was plenty of time to cover the short distance between the cars, and obviously enough time for Kellerman to jump back and throw his body over Kennedy. I have never understood the tendency on the part of CTers to absolve the Secret Service from responsiblity in the assassination. In an honest investigation, they would have been the first to be grilled over their conduct. Unlike shadowy assassins on the grassy knoll or elsewhere, we know exactly who it was that slowed the car down (if not stopped it) and stared at JFK. We know exactly who was sitting next to the driver in the car, and who was riding on the follow up car. The fact that first Blaine, and now Greer, are distorting historical truth and making money off of what should have been the most shameful moment of their professional careers-if not their lives-makes my feelings even stronger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Burnham Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Why did the Secret Service confiscate and/or destroy autopsy film and x-rays? As late as the 1990s, why did they destroy records requested by the AARB? If the first shot had killed JFK, no one could blame the Secret Service agents for not reacting in time. Obviously, no one can respond instanteously to a shot that isn't being anticipated. However, after that first shot, the expectation was that those whose job depended on lighting quick reflexes in just such situations, and who had certainly been trained continuously for assassination scenarios, would have done more than clulessly look around them for 6-7 seconds. As Ralph Yarborough noted, a man can run fifty yards in less time than that. Because the first shot wasn't fatal, the failure of Kellerman and the Secret Service agents on the follow up car to quickly push JFK down and shield him contributed directly to his death. The failure of driver Greer to follow proper procedure and hit the accelerator after the first shot contributed directly to his death as well. 6-7 seconds was plenty of time to cover the short distance between the cars, and obviously enough time for Kellerman to jump back and throw his body over Kennedy. I have never understood the tendency on the part of CTers to absolve the Secret Service from responsiblity in the assassination. In an honest investigation, they would have been the first to be grilled over their conduct. Unlike shadowy assassins on the grassy knoll or elsewhere, we know exactly who it was that slowed the car down (if not stopped it) and stared at JFK. We know exactly who was sitting next to the driver in the car, and who was riding on the follow up car. The fact that first Blaine, and now Greer, are distorting historical truth and making money off of what should have been the most shameful moment of their professional careers-if not their lives-makes my feelings even stronger. Greer isn't making any money on anything. He died on February 23, 1985. Blaine and Hill might be making money on it...due to the book. In my view, this should be a verboten source of income for ANY Secret Service Agent whose "charge" was lost on their watch. Allowing any member of the Secret Service to make money as a result of their failure to protect the client is similar to Charlie Manson being allowed to make money writing a book on his masterminding the Tate/ LaBianca murders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Burnham Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Tom, Thanks for supplying all that info. The New York Times bit is especially interesting... I will read all the rest of it as time allows. So far--great stuff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 (edited) JFK had been dead just one day when Felix Belair, Jr. of the NY Times filed this Secret Service sympathetic, highly manipulative report transforming victim status from the assassinated president to....the : Four days in November: the original coverage of the John F. ... - Google Books Result books.google.com/books?isbn=0312321619...Robert B. Semple - 2003 - History - 628 pages ... the life of the president could not be discharged. Such was the mood of the 58 frustrated and angry young men who make up the Secret Service's White House ...... or : Secret Service Faces Changes in Its Procedures as a Result... New York Times - Nov 24, 1963 ... safeguard the life of the President could not be discharged. Such was the mood of the 58 frustrated and angry young men who make up the Secret Service's ... Article image 1 of 2 New York Times - Nov 24, 1963 "......They wanted to talk about yesterday s calamity at Dallas. Their consciences were clear.They had done everything they could in setting up security arrangements that had to include the Dallas police. But they knew that the service was somehow on trial in the public mind, and the order had come from high in the White House to "clam up." Questions Were Asked They knew that people in government and across the na- tion were asking whether there was no way to protect the life of the President against the twisted mentalities of potential assassins that exist in every big city. Men grown old in the business of guarding presidents gave this answer: "A president is just as safe as he permits himself to be." Another way of saying the same thing is that nobody can protect the President by means that he will not accept. That is why nobody in a posi- tion to do so even thought of telling John F. Kennedy yesterday that he must use the protective, "bubble top" or the bullet proof side windows with which the rented Lincoln Continental touring car is equipped. The removable top is made of clear molded plastic. It was designed for protection against Article image 2 of 2 weather. The plastic is not bullet proof, but it may deflect a bullet fir ed from a considerable distance. ..... "....Ringing in the ears of more than one Secret Service man today was the remark of a police official at the time: If anything happens, the police and the Secret Service will be left holding the big fat bag. ." l4Zembers of the White House detail had become increasingly jittery during the last year. Mr. Kennedy's insistence on ,showing himself and his disregard of readily available security techniques and equipment caused them concern. But there was nothing they could do about it. They expect it will be different with President Johnson. They believe that any man who saw yesterday s tragedy at Dallas must appreciate the need to cooperate ...." Police and Secret Service Fret Over Kennedy's Ban on Escort... New York Times - Nov 16, 1963 "If anything happens the police and the Secret Service will be left holding the big fat hag." The teen-alters who in on the cnr it was stopped for a red lil; at the Av Article Image Quite a "the damned fool had it coming to him" tone from Felix Belair, Jr., and from Secret Service agents unattributed by name in Belair's report because, according to Belair, they had been ordered not to speak publicly after they had lost "Lancer," one day before. Edited May 2, 2012 by Tom Scully Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Jeffries Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Oops...obviously a typo when I wrote Greer made money from a book. Hill is now clearly making money, and inventing an entirely new story in the process for his new book. Heretofore, we had heard nothing about the dramatic scene he now describes at Bethesda, when he was shown the rear "neck" wound that matched up to an "exit" wound in the throat. Exactly what is there to defend about JFK's Secret Service detail? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Uh Pat, you really do not think it negligent that so many Secret Service agents were drinking hard liquor at Kirkwood's the night before until the wee hours of the morning? I sure do. Especially when the morning call was at 7 AM. I mean do people who rely on their quick instincts and sensory perceptions work well when they are hungover and with three hours sleep? Of course, they were negligent. Of course, they didn't perform their jobs in the best fashion possible. My point is not that they were perfect, but that there is no legitimate reason to think they would have performed better if Eisenhower had been the target, or if Nixon had been elected, and been the target. One of the trains of thought one encounters when one realizes Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy is that the Secret Service failed, and that they were therefore part of the plot. I've concluded this train leads one down the wrong track. A better question--in my view--is not who MADE the Secret Service fail to protect Kennedy, but who KNEW, from personal experience, that the Secret Service was not up to the task of protecting Kennedy, or ANYONE riding in an open-topped limo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 This should come as no surprise. The background of the author of the rushed out (filed on 23 November, 1963) "Secret Service as victim" with a dash of "They knew that people in government and across the na- tion were asking whether there was no way to protect the life of the President against the twisted mentalities of potential assassins that exist in every big city...." report in the NY Times, is: FELIX BELAIR JR., 70; EX-TIMES REPORTER; Served in Washington Bureau for Most of His 47-Year Career 'Natural-Born Investigative Reporter' New York Times - Jun 23, 1978 Felix Belair Jr., a former White House correspondend for The New York Times who served in the bureau longer ... Mr. Belair was born in Washington on Dec. 29, 1907. He later moved across the Potomac and lived in a Federal-style ' townhouse in Alexandia, Va., but was a confirmed Washingtonian throughout his life. The only part of his career that he spent away from The Tirnes was as Washington bureau chief for Time Inc. I from 1940 to 1945. An acquaintance said later that Mr. Belair was unhappy at Time magazine, partly because he had to go to so, many meetings in New York. Some years ago, Mr. Belair.... We are only left to wonder whether Felix Belair Jr. received his immediate, post assassination directive from C.D. Jackson, or from Henry Luce, himself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Greg, you got it backwards. The Secret Service did TWO re-enactments of the shooting. The FBI zero. The Secret Service showed the Zapruder film to photo experts, in an attempt to determine the shot sequence and locations. The FBI did not, and only reluctantly looked at the film. And yet they came to similar conclusions, with the head shot much further down the road than shown in the films... As far as your contention they dropped their guard on 11-22...I've seen nothing to indicate the protection was more lax that day than usual. They were a much smaller force back then, with a high burn-out rate. if you or ANYONE has collected information regarding other trips--in which someone popped a firecracker and the limo raced off, or an agent from the front seat catapulted himself into the back seat--then by all means, share this with us, so we can see how 11-22-63 was so different... P.S. If the protocols in place were sufficient to save Kennedy, then why oh why has no president since Kennedy trusted his life to those protocols? Correct me if I'm wrong, but...in all due respect, you have no experience in these matters, Pat. You are not speaking from the POV of ever having protected the lives of targets or from the perspective of ever having been protected by body guards. You have only studied this aspect of the case academically. I can't fault you for your ignorance. There is little information available to the civilian student. So ILLUMINATE for us, Greg, how and why it is unthinkable that a sniper could just as easily have picked off Eisenhower, or Truman, or Roosevelt, etc. I mean, have you EVER done the research necessary to make claims about the effectiveness of Secret Service protection prior to 11-22-63? Here's a good place to start: Giusseppe Zangara. Please show us how the Secret Service stopped him from killing Roosevelt. Oh, that's right, they didn't. He missed. And would have had plenty of time to fire over and over again...IF he'd been firing from a window and hadn't been a near-midget standing behind a woman with a large hat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tom Scully Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 (edited) Or, Pat, if Zanagara had been aiming at FDR and not at Chicago mayor Anton Cermak. Oops...obviously a typo when I wrote Greer made money from a book. Hill is now clearly making money, and inventing an entirely new story in the process for his new book. Heretofore, we had heard nothing about the dramatic scene he now describes at Bethesda, when he was shown the rear "neck" wound that matched up to an "exit" wound in the throat. Exactly what is there to defend about JFK's Secret Service detail? Don, consider that Hill was "included" in the roll out of Gerald Blaine's "tell all", and that a woman originally sponsored by probably the most secretive advertising people, considering the size of their holdings and history, is the co-author, promoter, and the book tour minder of both of these elderly gentlemen, the proximity to the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, and you have to wonder if the sudden "openess" of Blaine and Hill is more a high level initiated propaganda campaign than two old men trying to cash in. This is the family that placed Lisa McCubbin in her first job in broadcast media.: ........................................................... .................................................................... .....Once Bob Smith found fame he kept the name Wolfman Jack and attempted to mask his true identity to create public interest in his radio character. The hip, sexually suggestive Wolfman Jack persona allowed Smith to ignore the prevailing racial segregation of American radio. According to former disc jockey Don Logan, Bob Smith’s career began on KCIJ-AM, a daytime station in Shreveport, Louisiana. In Shreveport, Gordon McLendon owned KEEL-AM as a part of his very successful group of stations which was challenged by a KREB-AM, a new station formed by Larry Brandon from the defunct KENT-AM. A radio “war” for the same listeners took place, in which Brandon ultimately lost and KREB also went off the air. Other sources, including the Radio Hall of Fame and Wolfman Jack’s autobiography (Have Mercy!) state that he started his career as Daddy Jules at WYOU-AM in Newport News, Va. in 1960. Larry Brandon then made a deal with attorney Arturo Gonzalez in Del Rio, Texas, who operated the Inter-American Radio Advertising, Inc. sales agency for XERF from his law office on Pecan Street. XERF was one of the Mexican border blasters that transmitted with power far in excess of the licensed commercial radio stations in the United States which were limited to 50 kW on AM. XERF had a 500 kW RCA transmitter that broadcast on a clear channel from Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio. Larry Brandon bought all of the available night time hours and with Don Logan, Buddy Blake and Bob Smith began making prerecorded radio shows on 10 inch, one hour tapes which were then mailed by Brandon from Shreveport to Gonzelez in Del Rio who had them delivered to Ciudad Acuña for airplay. According to Logan these programs replaced the preachers and went out from 6pm to 6am, but Logan also says that only six hours of programming was recorded per day and leaves the impression that the tapes were repeated. Brandon’s programming on XERF reached Shreveport which according to Logan presented a conflict of interest for the people who were making them. However, it was on these taped programs that Bob Smith began to morph into Wolfman Jack in order to conceal his real identity from the XERF listeners and from his daytime employers at KCIJ-AM in Shreveport. Logan says that when Smith began to create his gravely voiced character of Wolfman Jack to which he added a howl, he told Bob Smith: “That howl of yours would wake a dead man and that dead man might be Hank Williams and he, sure as hell, doesn’t want you ‘Howling at the Moon’.” Again according to Logan, the taping came to an end when Brandon began offering XERF listeners an autographed picture of Jesus. It was then that Bob Smith took off from Shreveport to visit Arturo Gonzalez at his law office on Pecan Street in Del Rio. It was Gonzalez who sent him across the U.S.-Mexico border each day to do live programs from the studio of XERF at Ciudad Acuña for Inter-American Radio Advertising, Inc., which Gonzalez operated from his law office...... DARK HORSES AND RADIO FREQUENCIES - ..........This angered Gordon McLendon to no end and is one reason why he bought KTBS radio and turned it into KEEL! Before Buddy left KEEL, Marvin Kasofski, known in the south as Marvin Burton came down from Newport News, Va. and bought KCIJ. He found a fellow, named Bob Smith at a carwash, and hired him. When KREB folded, Larry Brandon, bought 6pm to 6am nightly on XERF and made a deal with Bob Smith, Buddy and I to do the 12 hours nightly on tape he needed to program the station. He took all the preachers, who had not been paying their bills at the station, off the air and kept maybe one or two, who were paying. When, the three of us met in Brandon's office, I could see the envy in Bob's eyes over being there with Buddy. .... Edited May 2, 2012 by Tom Scully Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathleen Collins Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 While you are clearly entitled to your own opinion, Kathleen, you should be able to back up what you claim are facts. Where and when did Altgens "claim he didn't take" what is almost certainly his most famous photograph? It comes from Jack White. Altgens denied he ever took the Man in the Doorway picture. A lot of researchers believe he did. He might fear for his life if he's still alive. On the Internet go to Mysteries of the JFK Assassination: The Photographic Evidence from A-Z. by Jack White. “A is for Altgens … 8 shows Zapruder?”: This photograph is in contention for many reasons. One is that the imagery of “Zapruder” is a little ambiguous to interpret; the short Zapruder may or may not be a valid interpretation. But more important is the authenticity of this particular photograph. See my chapter. Altgens denied taking it, it never existed in the official reports, and Altgens’ own descriptions of his movements precludes his taking it." Kathy C Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Burnham Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 (edited) Greg, you got it backwards. The Secret Service did TWO re-enactments of the shooting. The FBI zero. The Secret Service showed the Zapruder film to photo experts, in an attempt to determine the shot sequence and locations. The FBI did not, and only reluctantly looked at the film. And yet they came to similar conclusions, with the head shot much further down the road than shown in the films... As far as your contention they dropped their guard on 11-22...I've seen nothing to indicate the protection was more lax that day than usual. They were a much smaller force back then, with a high burn-out rate. if you or ANYONE has collected information regarding other trips--in which someone popped a firecracker and the limo raced off, or an agent from the front seat catapulted himself into the back seat--then by all means, share this with us, so we can see how 11-22-63 was so different... P.S. If the protocols in place were sufficient to save Kennedy, then why oh why has no president since Kennedy trusted his life to those protocols? Correct me if I'm wrong, but...in all due respect, you have no experience in these matters, Pat. You are not speaking from the POV of ever having protected the lives of targets or from the perspective of ever having been protected by body guards. You have only studied this aspect of the case academically. I can't fault you for your ignorance. There is little information available to the civilian student. So ILLUMINATE for us, Greg, how and why it is unthinkable that a sniper could just as easily have picked off Eisenhower, or Truman, or Roosevelt, etc. I mean, have you EVER done the research necessary to make claims about the effectiveness of Secret Service protection prior to 11-22-63? Here's a good place to start: Giusseppe Zangara. Please show us how the Secret Service stopped him from killing Roosevelt. Oh, that's right, they didn't. He missed. And would have had plenty of time to fire over and over again...IF he'd been firing from a window and hadn't been a near-midget standing behind a woman with a large hat. http://www.prouty.org/anatomy.ram Anatomy Of An Assassination (Transcript of speech) This subject which I am going to get into, I might call the anatomy of assassination, or the politics of assassination. Assassination is big business; in fact assassination is the business of big business. I've written quite a bit on this subject in various magazines and for those of you who have managed to get past some of the pictures that occur in some of those magazines, you'll know that in the November issue of Genesis I wrote on the subject of the Kennedy assassination. Just last month, March issue of Genesis I wrote about international assassination. I have to write five months ahead of time. I had an article completed and in the mail--the 24th of March--on assassinations in which I talked about the possibility of further assassinations in the Middle East. As I went to the Post Office on the 25th with a newspaper under my arm about the assassination of King Faisal, I had the intention of taking the article home and bringing it up to date. You see it's that kind of a subject. What was your first thought when you read about the assassination of King Faisal? What goes through the minds of perpetrators of assassinations? Are we again confronted with a young man who was a lone nut, who kept a diary and friends on a grassy knoll, down there in Saudi Arabia? Or was the King killed by some sort of a machine or conspiracy that had other plans for action in the Middle East? Mr. Kissinger had left the Middle East the day before. Mr. Nixon had tallied in Dallas until the morning of the assassination. So there's a theme running through these things that the King is dead. But what is the meaning then of the controls that go through these things? In this case, the resumption of power in Saudi Arabia almost seemed to be a little too even, too easy. What had really happened there? I think what had really happened there will give us a picture of what goes on in assassination, how they come about, and then we can take that kind of a picture and begin to unravel some of the others and then we might come a little closer to the mark. Technically what happened in Saudi Arabia is that the King's guard, the King's elite, was broken. Now you can keep a man alive. If you don't believe that read your history of General De Gaulle. Even in the deepest darkest days of World War II there were thousands of people who would like to have taken a shot at De Gaulle. I remember after the Cairo conference in Marraketch, Morocco, Churchill was recovering with a bout of influenza and DeGaulle came to visit him several times. You can imagine the security measures that were taken in Morocco to keep the good General alive. I was in Lima, Peru, in March of 1964 when DeGaulle came and captivated the country of Peru. Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians filled Plaza DeArmas to such an extent that they were pressing against the walls and trampling the trees, and yet, General De Gaulle, who is a good many inches taller than I, walked among these Peruvians that night with search lights on him in that huge arena, among hundreds of thousands of people, and no one took a shot at him because in the six months before he went to Lima the people whose business it was to keep De Gaulle alive, the guerrillas, if you remember their term of endearment, had thoroughly worked over the city of Lima. They had combed every list for people in that city who might be anti-De Gaulle, and had provided them with resort hotels a long way off. They had made sure when the General came to town he would stay alive. What is it then that keeps these people alive? In every country the King would not live if there was not an elite guard. Who trains the elite guard? The Vinnell Corporation. It seems to me that there's a point to the subject that appeared just a while ago in The New York Times, the Washington Post and a great number of other papers--to the effect that there had been a contract issued with the Vinnell Corporation. I don't have any idea what their corporate connection's are, and the Defense Department of the United States, and the fact that the Vinnell Corporation had signed this contract for the purpose of training, first of all, the National Guard of Saudi Arabia, and National Guard there means more or less police, and the King's elite guard. I wonder which team they had in mind? Because when you control the elite guard of a country, when you train that guard, when you arm that guard, when you teach them to jump from an airplane at Fort Benning and in Fort Bragg and give them all kinds of weapons training, bring them down to Camp Peary in Virginia where there's a nice little resort, that guard knows how to keep a man alive, as long as that guard agrees to keep that man alive. So I don't know whether the death of King Faisal preceded the work of the Vinnell Corporation or whether the Vinnell Corporation's contract began on the 25th of March. It is awfully important because whether those men stay alive or not is the function of their inner guard. Once you relax the guard you open up a hornets nest. A lot of people would like to control the bank accounts of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the rest of them. What keeps the King alive is not the election of the populous because they don't go through that there. It's simply his guard. This is a key to it and the guard of many of these countries throughout the world where there have been so many coup d'etats, - a euphemism for the work of mechanics or assassination. These guards for many, many years in my experience for more than twenty-five years, (I was in Saudi Arabia in 1943 on clandestine activities ), is the work of the Central Intelligence Agency. The people who let the contracts for the Central Intelligence Agency are called the Department of Defense. The people who do the work are called such companies such as the Vinnell Corporation or Air America, or some of these others. So you begin to see what comes about, and since I didn't come here this afternoon to really get into the assassination picture too deeply, I wanted to set a stage. So let me jump to some of the things we know about without having to dig too far under the surface. In 1953 the CIA had a problem, only this time it was in the country of Iran. Mosadeque died of lead poisoning and the Shah who was escaping to the Riviera was brought back to resume the long 2500 year line of Cyrus, King Cyrus, and now he leads the country of Iran at the pleasure of the Agency's number one man in the world today, Richard Helms, who is called Ambassador. And so as long as the guard in Iran can keep the Shah alive, he will be our man there. As long as the Shah is our man, he'll probably be alive. In Jordan, where King Hussein jets around and lives by grace of his elite guard, that guard has been trained through various corporate devices by the Central Intelligence Agency for at least twenty years. King Hussein has about the same chances as surviving that Faisal or Hassen or the Shah have, and that is: If he plays the game, his guard will take care of him. These are important considerations because they are right there in the record. The thing is, we in this country don't think of it that way very often. You see they don't have elections in many of these third tier countries. How do you replace somebody? How do you replace people in countries where there is not provision for election? People in power hold the power until somebody else is strong enough to take it away. That ability to take it away is a very fleeting thing sometimes, as it was in the case of Trujillo or in the case of Diem. But, in every case, there are many people willing to move in and become heads of state. And the guard is trained in many cases by our own CIA...part of their business. Not many people write about that or know about it, but that's part of their prime business in the clandestine area. Then the men have the defense to keep them alive. Now I'll close with an example but I think it's a extremely pertinent one because it leads to what will follow me in this program. The case of Ngo Dinh Diem... when Diem assumed the power in Vietnam 1954. If you'll remember, his country had no antecedent it was simply a piece of real estate lying south of the seventeenth parallel. When you take over a piece of real estate like that and begin to rule, who are your police? Who is your army? Who are your generals and who are your sergeants? Where is your power? This is important, where is your power? Ed Lansdale, probably one of the best agents the Agency ever set in motion, came over from the Philippines where he had created a man named Magsaysay as President of the Philippines, pretty good job as far as that went. He brought his team with him to Saigon, I happened to be pilot on that airplane. We went into Saigon with the same what we used to call "Robin Hood technique" that if you can fool the people, you can fool the people. Diem was created by a secret police trained by special forces, the Green Berets, in those days I don't think they wore the green berets, I'm talking about 1955/1956/1957. Diem owed his existence at the time to two clever maneuvers. One was the rapid placement of a good secret police and, secondly, the purchase of an army. If you remember, there were two army's in Cholon, they were more or less mercenaries and they purchased the army. Now as long as Diem had that backing, he was in pretty good shape by the summer of 1963, a summer that we all could write about and research about a lot more, that was a very important summer. There were papers coming across my desk - at that time I was working in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - papers with no "top secret" stamps on them, no "eyes only" stamps on them, no register numbers on them. That meant they were really secret, if they are really secret you don't put anything on them. Then a man would come up to me and say have you seen this? And it would say we have had enough of Diem, what are we going to do about him? Well just that idea means that it won't be long until bullets are flying. Because, what happens in Saigon, somebody like Lou Conien is told, "hey go check out the Generals, find out which general could take over the job. General "Big" Minh or Ngyuen Khahn or Ky, or Ky not ready but Khahn or Minn might be ready, check them out." The minute you tell people that in a city like Saigon - you could do it today - the minute you tell people that, they go back to their sources of power and they say, "Hey, you know what, the United States is changing its policy." It was changing its policy. It's like you stand on a stack of bibles, Chuck Colson and Howard Hunt tried to rewrite the stack of bibles to prove that is was Kennedy that said shoot him, but nobody in Washington said shoot Diem, you don't do an assassination that way. The way people are assassinated is by taking away the power that had been created to keep them there, it's a lot easier that way. More interest to me than a genealogy of Lee Harvey Oswald and all the rest is, who said, "Lets go to Dallas Jack." I understand that Kenny O'Donnell feels real bad about it. I understand that Bobby Kennedy's said from time to time he wished he'd have put his foot down about it. Gerry Bruno, the greatest advance man in politics went there, but did Gerry Bruno pick the route? Maybe Mark can tell you. Who did, who decided let's go to Dallas? You've been to Fort Worth, you've got to go to Dallas. That's important because whoever decided that knew some things. I have worked with the Secret Service in their good work to keep presidents alive. I went to Mexico City when Eisenhower was going down there in 1956 and I'll tell you, the Secret Service knows the game just like the gorillas in France knew the game. They can keep the President alive. Where were they? How does it happen you can have a six story building with a lot of empty floors. They never wired or sealed the doors as their manual says they will, nor had anybody on the roof with high powered guns and with radios as their manual says they will, or had a man in Dealey Plaza to look at the man on the roof and to look at the windows as their manual says they will. If you don't drive over 44 mph, a nice figure but it works out in tests, why did they bring that car down to a crawling speed. Those are more important to me than a genealogy of Lee Harvey Oswald or anybody else on the grassy knoll. I think I'll stop there. That's what I call the anatomy of assassinations. It gets you thinking, you know. L. Fletcher Prouty Edited May 2, 2012 by Greg Burnham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Speer Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Sorry, Kathleen. Altgens never denied taking that photograph. And not only that. He discussed his taking of that photograph on numerous occasions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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