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Witness recounts what he saw on the plane carrying JFK's body back to Washington


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From the article:  After U. S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas Sarah Hughes (a longtime friend) had sworn in Johnson, with a stunned Jackie at his side, the plane took off. Whitehead retreated to the cabin where the president’s casket lay. Inside were Jackie and her Secret Service agent Clint Hill.

“Now comes the bad part,” said Whitehead. “Johnson and his people celebrated on the plane ride back to Washington. He was a heavy drinker. He drank about half a fifth of Cutty Sark [Scotch] on the flight back. They were laughing and talking about ‘what we gon’ do now.’ They were so loud we had to shut the door so Jackie wouldn’t hear them.”

https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/history/doyle-whitehead/

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The motorcade was not on TV.  If such an easily ascertainable fact is distorted in the opening lines, how can one accept the remainder of his story?

 

 

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Johnson looked and sounded perfectly sober to me when he made a short speech at Andrews after the plane landed. He had consumed half a fifth of scotch on the flight? Yeah right.

 

 

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No, the motorcade was not on TV.  Was that the article's authors statement/assumption or did Whitehead actually say it?

I've read LBJ consumed the full 5th of Cutty Sark or more on a nightly basis.  So he would have had a tolerance level.  Was LBJ celebrating or calming his nerves. given the circumstances?  Or both?

I've also read O'Donnell and others were doing the same in the back by the casket.  Not in a cabin.

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15 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Maybe somebody should send military aide Richard Lipsey some good JFKA books:

https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/history/eyewitness-to-history/

(*...sound of buttons being pushed...*)

Is this an authentic Collin Street Bakery Corsicana fruitcake?

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4 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Is this an authentic Collin Street Bakery Corsicana fruitcake?

"It was just myself and a couple of technicians in the room. We lifted the body out of the coffin and put it on a table. "

So, he was there when the body was removed from the Bronze casket at 7:20 (?) PM. How credible is this man, and his story?

It would be good to get an idea of what happened to the two caskets. I assume the body was put into the Bronze casket after the autopsy, and I assume it was kept at this morgue until the Monday ceremony and burial. And the shipping casket was just stored with all the other shipping caskets and had no importance?

 

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Donald Jeffries wrote on Facebook about  this article: Whitehead's comments corroborate what Penn Jones said Evelyn Lincoln told him- how Lady Bird's press secretary Liz Carpenter and the rest of LBJ's entourage were really "whooping it up" on the plane ride back to Washington.

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But Evelyn Lincoln wasn't on the plane herself right?

Albert Thomas's sneaky smiling "way to go Lyndon" thumbs up gesture right in the middle of what should have been the most somber and devastated Jackie Kennedy empathy respecting demeanor assemblage gives the "whooping it up" charge some credibility imo.

That photo of a smiling Thomas was sickening. He looked like a celebrating fan at a college football game after his team just kicked the winning field goal!

And as I have mentioned in past postings, making super traumatized Jackie attend that swearing in ceremony for LBJ's photo op benefit was a travesty.

It's hard to look at Jackie in those pics. Her eyes.  Battle field shell shocked.

Her dress, covered in her husband's 2 hour old blood.

LBJ...what a gross character.

 

 

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