Le May and the CIA

[Larry Hancock]

Actually it appears that what he was told to do was to make every effort to restrict an autopsy - first by ordering the staff at Bethesda simply to recover any bullet materials as evidence since the assassin was in custody (no need to do a full autopsy). When they rejected that he inserted himself into the actual autopsy in several ways (if you have SWHT 2010 check page 239-240).

Given that Burkley traveled back on AF1 and appears to have been involved in selecting Bethesda, and that he went directly from the plane to the autopsy I would have to say that his direction originated during the flight back to Washington.  Its far to lengthy to go into here by if you read my Chapter 15 his actions are extremely consistent with a number of others which can be traced back to Johnson - who appears to have initiated any number of actions to stop investigation of conspiracy and to suppress evidence of multiple shooters; those actions going into play at approximately the time Burkley was at Bethesda.

As to who gave Burkley the instruction,  I really can't put forth a name but I can say that what he was doing was totally in sync with other orders Johnson was giving in the same time frame.  It would be an interesting research project for someone to dig back though Manchester and other sources and try to prepare a really detailed timeline of Burkley's actions that day, including who he talked to, when.

 

[Ron Bulman]

On 11/15/2019 at 4:38 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Steve, I'll check this evening to see if it's referenced in his end notes.  The book is pretty well documented.  Ron

Haven't forgotten about this,  Been looking with mixed results.

[Ron Bulman]

On 11/14/2019 at 1:36 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Dulles and LeMay were pals, on a first name basis and exchanged gifts.

 

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01676R001200020047-8.pdf

I have never thought that the JFK murder worked through any kind of formal channels.

If you think about it this it really is amazing.  Le May searches Dulles office without him there, for cigars?  Dulles doesn't care and welcomes cigars?  Fascinating.  

[James DiEugenio]

Who is this guy?  I don't recall seeing this before.

Connor, the ambulance driver , said he saw a man with a cigar in his mouth barking orders

[Chuck Schwartz]

This is the Paul O'Oconnor I was referring to:On page 35 of William Law’s 2005 book In the Eye of History, from his interview of Paul K. O’Connor (a Navy corpsman who assisted the Navy pathologists with the autopsy on JFK), he quotes O’Connor as follows:

Right after we heard the helicopters come over, I distinctly heard one land in the back of the hospital, which was the Officer’s Club parking lot.  There was a big parking lot.  I heard one helicopter land there.  I heard another helicopter land at the north side of the hospital where there was a normal helicopter-landing pad.  Several minutes later, I can’t give you a definite time — maybe five minutes — the back of the morgue opened up and a crew of hospital corpsmen and a higher ranking corpsman brought in a plain, pinkish-gray, what I call a shipping casket.  It was not ornate.  It was not damaged…. They brought it up front where we were.  At that time we opened up the coffin.  Inside was the body bag.

 

Paul O'Connor later went on to describe the man with a cigar barking orders. Also, on Burkley, I believe he was commanding the aircraft carrier carrying the bombers that were going  to give air support to the Bay of PIgs invasion. JFK told Burkley to turn around and not give air support. Burkley was very upset. There is talk that he was connected to Gerald Ford, who was Navy. Both Ford and Burkley were both from Michigan.

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Chuck, 

I think you are confused between Burkley the doctor and Arleigh Burke the Navy admiral.

If you meant O'Connor, I am familiar with that. 

[Larry Hancock]

Chuck, you have Admiral Burkley confused with Admiral Burke who was on the JCS at the time of the Bay of Pigs landings; he was not on board the USS Essex but was indeed in a command role over the Navy group Task Force Alpha,  directed to support the operation at sea. And he did butt heads with JFK over sending in support for the landing force.

Burkley was a physician and his military career was medical:   http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ggburkle.htm

He did go on to become Johnson's physician - and ultimately tried to offer evidence to the HSCA, which they managed to obstruct and  his daughter refused to provide his papers to the ARRB.

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Larry;

I think Burkley was a vice admiral under JFK wasn't he?

I thought LBJ gave him a promotion to stick around after he said he wanted to leave after the assassination.

[Ron Bulman]

I thought James Jenkin in At the Cold Shoulder of History detailed Burkley at Bethesda directing Humes to not pursue the throat wound and one in the right temple but can't find it at the moment in the book.  Was it someone else, a different book?  I didn't dream this up.

[Larry Hancock]

Admiral Arleigh Burke was Chief of Naval Operations, and supported the Zapata plan for the amphibious landings.  At times he represented the Navy Chief of Staff in NSC meetings. In 1961 he did so in regard to Cuba, Laos and other national security topics.

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/people/chiefs-of-naval-operations/admiral-arleigh-a--burke.html

He and Admiral Dennison, CINCATLANTIC were the senior Navy officers involved in support of the Zapata landings.  You will see a great deal about them in my upcoming book which covers the Cuba Project and the Navy's support of the landings in considerable detail.

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/research-guides/modern-biographical-files-ndl/modern-bios-d/dennison-robert-l.html

Admiral Burkley was JFK's personal physician and went on to fill that role for LBJ as well.   And yes, he did direct that no autopsy was necessary, it was only necessary to recover the bullets/fragments.  That was overruled but he did proceed to insert himself in the proceedings as I described above.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ggburkle.htm

Burke and Burkley, two different people....

[Ron Bulman]

Found it.  Jenkin does say Burkey called Humes to the gallery to tell him not to purse the temple wound.  And calls out to move on from the throat wound, just a tracheotomy.  Humes was suspicious enough to call Malcom Perry about this?

[Jon Pickering]

so, now it's burkey, burke, and, burkley. way to muddle a thread. anyway, one of the techs said it was a high-ranking uniform smoking a cigar - in the gallery - that instructed not to explore. Was burkley in the gallery smoking a stogie, or, standing on the floor with the autopsists, smoking a stogie?

[Paul Jolliffe]

On 11/16/2019 at 10:50 PM, Larry Hancock said:

Actually it appears that what he was told to do was to make every effort to restrict an autopsy - first by ordering the staff at Bethesda simply to recover any bullet materials as evidence since the assassin was in custody (no need to do a full autopsy). When they rejected that he inserted himself into the actual autopsy in several ways (if you have SWHT 2010 check page 239-240).

Given that Burkley traveled back on AF1 and appears to have been involved in selecting Bethesda, and that he went directly from the plane to the autopsy I would have to say that his direction originated during the flight back to Washington.  Its far to lengthy to go into here by if you read my Chapter 15 his actions are extremely consistent with a number of others which can be traced back to Johnson - who appears to have initiated any number of actions to stop investigation of conspiracy and to suppress evidence of multiple shooters; those actions going into play at approximately the time Burkley was at Bethesda.

As to who gave Burkley the instruction,  I really can't put forth a name but I can say that what he was doing was totally in sync with other orders Johnson was giving in the same time frame.  It would be an interesting research project for someone to dig back though Manchester and other sources and try to prepare a really detailed timeline of Burkley's actions that day, including who he talked to, when.

 

Larry,

To me, the absolute proof positive that Admiral Burkley was an extremely sensitive source was the fact that the Warren Commission did NOT call him as a witness. Yet Burkley was the only man in the whole world who

1. Was riding in the Dallas motorcade when JFK was shot and

2. Was present throughout the life-saving efforts at Parkland Hospital and

3. Flew aboard Air Force One with JFK's body (and new president, LBJ) and

4. Was present throughout JFK's "autopsy" at Bethesda.

Further, Burkley's death certificate  - completed in Dallas! - totally destroyed the single-bullet theory ("a second wound occurred in the posterior back at about the level of the third thoracic vertabra.")

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=587&relPageId=2

Also, Burkley "verified" Boswell's sketch sheet, completed at the autopsy table in Bethesda. This sketch sheet showed an entrance wound in JFK's back (NOT his neck), just where Burkley's death certificate located it! Burkley signed just below where he wrote the word "VERIFIED"!!!!

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=582

The Warren Commission then published AN ALTERED COPY OF BOSWELL'S SKETCH SHEET - THEY DELIBERATELY DELETED BURKLEY'S SIGNATURE AND THE WORD "VERIFIED" !!!!!!!!

Finally, as late as 1977, Burkley was very open to telling his lawyer (at the time of the HSCA) that he had "information in the Kennedy  assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated."

http://www.jfklancer.com/Dr_Burkley.html

So, in the end, I don't agree that Burkley was necessarily calling the conspiratorial shots at Bethesda. I think he had a pretty good idea what was going on and kept his mouth shut for a while.

My personal suspicion revolves around a bizarre personal experience. While on a phone call with Harold Weisberg in the early 1990's, Weisberg mentioned to me his suspicion that his phone was tapped. I dismissed it at that moment as a figment of his imagination. Weisberg however insisted that when he mentioned certain names, strange things would happen with his phone. 

OK.

He and I discussed the autopsy a few minutes later, and he said the key to uncovering the cover-up was to determine exactly who controlled the autopsy. It was the U.S. military, of course, but who?

Weisberg then dropped a name with which I (at that time) was not familiar - the Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, Edward C. Kenney. As soon as Weisberg said "Admiral Kenney" a very audible blaring buzz began on the line. Weisberg asked me if I could hear it - of course I could! It continued for a few moments, and then stopped. 

I can't prove it, but I suspect Weisberg's phone really was tapped, and 1992 phone taps triggered by computer-recognition of key names conceivably could have made that buzzing noise. 

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

I certainly agree that Burkley had some unique information and indeed had a special role in the autopsy.  I would say however that in the role he was initially overridden in his effort to direct the Bethesda staff and its commander to skip an autopsy;  they flatly denied him on that.  If you look closely at the timeline for the autopsy and start to parse out when it went bad, you can see Burkley constantly trying to minimize its scope. Of course later you find considerable intervention to manage the reports and all types of the evidence from the autopsy. 

I personally have little doubt that Johnson issues orders throughout the evening to restrict the investigations and shut down indications of a conspiracy beyond Oswald as a lone shooter.  How that got to each element is something I wrestle with in detail in Chapter 15 of SWHT/2010 - which I completely rewrote based on the ARRB work and other new research.  Unfortunately I've seen nothing sense that makes me any smarter or pins it down in any further detail since then.  I certainly can't say that Kenney was not involved but I would say the key people in the obstruction had to be someone Johnson could reach out and touch, as the did the Secret Service chief.  If you put all the various acts of suppression within the first 72 hours together, at the top the reach to Johnson including orders that we know he personally directed towards law enforcement in Texas. 

It does need to be noted that while he was not questioned, Burkley did make statements before the Commission was announced and that appears in the 26 volumes as  CE 1126, a report Burkley wrote 2 days before the Commission was announced.

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/The_Missing_Physician.html

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

On 11/17/2019 at 12:13 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Who is this guy?  I don't recall seeing this before.

Connor, the ambulance driver , said he saw a man with a cigar in his mouth barking orders

Jim, where did you see this?  I thought I looked at all the links in the thread prior to your post.  We know it's not Paul O'Connor, he wasn't an ambulance driver.