COUP IN DALLAS

[Joseph McBride]

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, about strange discrepancies in

accounts of when McNamara heard the news

of the assassination. I find it patently unbelievable that I learned about

the assassination twenty minutes before the Secretary of Defense

supposedly heard the news, and I was a high school junior in Milwaukee:

 

Another indication of the way things were rapidly threatening to spiral out of control for Johnson in the immediate aftermath of the assassination is this report in Jim Bishop’s 1968 book The Day the President Was Shot: “Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in command. An officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘are now the President.’” This indication of a possible military coup underway, whether Johnson was wittingly involved in it or not, could have influenced his first decisions, including his controversial and seemingly somewhat irrational choice to be sworn in on Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas. Delaying his departure for Washington to take the oath was unnecessary since he had become president, according to the Constitution, immediately upon Kennedy’s death. An ulterior motive beyond what was publicly stated would help account for Johnson’s decision to commandeer Kennedy’s plane, for which he would take severe criticism from Kennedy aides and others.

William Kelly, writing on his website JFK Countercoup, theorizes that Johnson made that decision partly because Air Force One enabled him to make use of the most advanced and secure presidential communication lines at a time of maximum crisis: “All of the president’s communications were controlled by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), then led by Colonel George McNally (code name ‘Star’), who was having lunch at the airport terminal when the assassination occurred and returned to Air Force One to ensure that the new president could communicate with anyone in the world. . . . The WHCA Command Center and base station for the Dallas portion of the Texas trip was set up in a room or suite of rooms at the Dallas Sheraton Hotel.” Kelly proposes that the strange message from the WHCA Command Center about McNamara and the Joint Chiefs being “the President” did not have to do simply with presidential succession but with the National Command Authority (NCA) nuclear release authority, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower had set up to control the command of nuclear weapons if the nation’s chief executive were disabled or killed. Kelly notes that under that plan, if a president were disabled or missing, the authority to use nuclear weapons would have passed to the secretary of defense. . . .

Where was McNamara at the time of the assassination? He and Attorney General Robert Kennedy were the most important members of the Kennedy cabinet still in Washington at the time; fully half of the ten-member cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon (the cabinet officer responsible for the Secret Service), were in a plane bound for Japan, following a meeting in Honolulu to help decide Vietnam policy. But one of the many oddities of the official account of the assassination is that there are starkly contradictory accounts of McNamara’s whereabouts and activities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Dallas. In his 1995 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (with Brian VanDeMark), McNamara reports that he was at the Pentagon holding a conference about the defense budget that Kennedy planned to submit to Congress in January. With the secretary were with McGeorge Bundy; Kermit Gordon of the Budget Bureau; and Kennedy’s science adviser, Jerome Wiesner. Manchester reports in The Death of the President that during the meeting, McNamara was handed the first wire-service bulletin about shots being fired in Dallas, sent out at 12:34 by United Press International.

 

Simultaneously the Pentagon’s command center sounded a buzzer, awakening [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] General Maxwell Taylor, who was napping in his office between sessions with the Germans [the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr were meeting with the Chiefs that day]. . . . [McNamara] kept his head and made all the right moves. An ashen-faced aide came in with the bulletin. Jerry Wiesner studied the man’s expression as the secretary read it. Wiesner thought: The Bomb’s been dropped. McNamara quietly handed the slip around -- Wiesner felt momentary relief; anything was better than a nuclear holocaust -- and then the Secretary acted quickly. Adjourning his conference, he sent Mac Bundy back to the White House in a Defense limousine and conferred with Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs. Over the JCS signature they dispatched a flash warning to every American military base in the world.

 

1. Press reports President Kennedy and Governor Connally of Texas shot and critically injured. Both in hospital at Dallas, Texas. No official information yet, will keep you informed.

2. This is the time to be especially on the alert.

 

McNamara’s book, on the other hand, gives a considerably later time for when he learned the news, about 2 p.m. Eastern time, or 1 p.m. in Dallas. This seems bizarre, since it would mean that much of the world (including even me, a high school junior in Milwaukee) had known about the shooting for more than twenty minutes before the secretary of defense of the United States. McNamara writes about that meeting at the Pentagon:

 

In the midst of our discussion -- at about 2:00 p.m. -- my secretary informed me of an urgent, personal telephone call.  I left the conference room and took it alone in my office. It was Bobby Kennedy, even more lonely and distant than usual. He told me simply and quietly that the president had been shot.

I was stunned. Slowly, I walked back to the conference room and, barely controlling my voice, reported the news to the group. Strange as it may sound, we did not disperse: we were in such shock that we simply did not know what to do. So, as best as we could, we resumed our deliberations.

A second call from Bobby came about forty-five minutes later. The president was dead. Our meeting immediately adjourned amid tears and stunned silence.

 

Strange as it may sound, indeed. Why McNamara chose to put out that patently incredible story, twenty-eight years after Manchester published his far different report of a quickly-moving defense secretary working in concert with the chiefs to send out a worldwide alert, remains unclear. It’s conceivable that McNamara’s account represents a memory lapse or sloppy research, though he was always renowned for his sharp memory (it is still on display years later in Errol Morris’s 2003 film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, although McNamara’s memory conveniently falters briefly when he claims not to be sure whether he authorized the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, a toxic chemical used while he was secretary of defense). McNamara’s account in his book  of his actions on November 22, 1963, conflicts oddly with Bishop’s report that the White House Communication Agency was claiming that the defense secretary and the chiefs were “the president” (Bishop doesn’t offer an exact time for that story, but he suggests it was while Johnson and Air Force One were still at Love Field). What is clear from these muddled accounts is that important events were taking place at the highest level of power that the public was not supposed to comprehend, even decades later.

 

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Joseph McBride

[Paul Cummings]

3 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, about strange discrepancies in

accounts of when McNamara heard the news

of the assassination. I find it patently unbelievable that I learned about

the assassination twenty minutes before the Secretary of Defense

supposedly heard the news, and I was a high school junior in Milwaukee:

 

Another indication of the way things were rapidly threatening to spiral out of control for Johnson in the immediate aftermath of the assassination is this report in Jim Bishop’s 1968 book The Day the President Was Shot: “Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in command. An officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘are now the President.’” This indication of a possible military coup underway, whether Johnson was wittingly involved in it or not, could have influenced his first decisions, including his controversial and seemingly somewhat irrational choice to be sworn in on Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas. Delaying his departure for Washington to take the oath was unnecessary since he had become president, according to the Constitution, immediately upon Kennedy’s death. An ulterior motive beyond what was publicly stated would help account for Johnson’s decision to commandeer Kennedy’s plane, for which he would take severe criticism from Kennedy aides and others.

William Kelly, writing on his website JFK Countercoup, theorizes that Johnson made that decision partly because Air Force One enabled him to make use of the most advanced and secure presidential communication lines at a time of maximum crisis: “All of the president’s communications were controlled by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), then led by Colonel George McNally (code name ‘Star’), who was having lunch at the airport terminal when the assassination occurred and returned to Air Force One to ensure that the new president could communicate with anyone in the world. . . . The WHCA Command Center and base station for the Dallas portion of the Texas trip was set up in a room or suite of rooms at the Dallas Sheraton Hotel.” Kelly proposes that the strange message from the WHCA Command Center about McNamara and the Joint Chiefs being “the President” did not have to do simply with presidential succession but with the National Command Authority (NCA) nuclear release authority, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower had set up to control the command of nuclear weapons if the nation’s chief executive were disabled or killed. Kelly notes that under that plan, if a president were disabled or missing, the authority to use nuclear weapons would have passed to the secretary of defense. . . .

Where was McNamara at the time of the assassination? He and Attorney General Robert Kennedy were the most important members of the Kennedy cabinet still in Washington at the time; fully half of the ten-member cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon (the cabinet officer responsible for the Secret Service), were in a plane bound for Japan, following a meeting in Honolulu to help decide Vietnam policy. But one of the many oddities of the official account of the assassination is that there are starkly contradictory accounts of McNamara’s whereabouts and activities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Dallas. In his 1995 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (with Brian VanDeMark), McNamara reports that he was at the Pentagon holding a conference about the defense budget that Kennedy planned to submit to Congress in January. With the secretary were with McGeorge Bundy; Kermit Gordon of the Budget Bureau; and Kennedy’s science adviser, Jerome Wiesner. Manchester reports in The Death of the President that during the meeting, McNamara was handed the first wire-service bulletin about shots being fired in Dallas, sent out at 12:34 by United Press International.

 

Simultaneously the Pentagon’s command center sounded a buzzer, awakening [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] General Maxwell Taylor, who was napping in his office between sessions with the Germans [the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr were meeting with the Chiefs that day]. . . . [McNamara] kept his head and made all the right moves. An ashen-faced aide came in with the bulletin. Jerry Wiesner studied the man’s expression as the secretary read it. Wiesner thought: The Bomb’s been dropped. McNamara quietly handed the slip around -- Wiesner felt momentary relief; anything was better than a nuclear holocaust -- and then the Secretary acted quickly. Adjourning his conference, he sent Mac Bundy back to the White House in a Defense limousine and conferred with Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs. Over the JCS signature they dispatched a flash warning to every American military base in the world.

 

1. Press reports President Kennedy and Governor Connally of Texas shot and critically injured. Both in hospital at Dallas, Texas. No official information yet, will keep you informed.

2. This is the time to be especially on the alert.

 

McNamara’s book, on the other hand, gives a considerably later time for when he learned the news, about 2 p.m. Eastern time, or 1 p.m. in Dallas. This seems bizarre, since it would mean that much of the world (including even me, a high school junior in Milwaukee) had known about the shooting for more than twenty minutes before the secretary of defense of the United States. McNamara writes about that meeting at the Pentagon:

 

In the midst of our discussion -- at about 2:00 p.m. -- my secretary informed me of an urgent, personal telephone call.  I left the conference room and took it alone in my office. It was Bobby Kennedy, even more lonely and distant than usual. He told me simply and quietly that the president had been shot.

I was stunned. Slowly, I walked back to the conference room and, barely controlling my voice, reported the news to the group. Strange as it may sound, we did not disperse: we were in such shock that we simply did not know what to do. So, as best as we could, we resumed our deliberations.

A second call from Bobby came about forty-five minutes later. The president was dead. Our meeting immediately adjourned amid tears and stunned silence.

 

Strange as it may sound, indeed. Why McNamara chose to put out that patently incredible story, twenty-eight years after Manchester published his far different report of a quickly-moving defense secretary working in concert with the chiefs to send out a worldwide alert, remains unclear. It’s conceivable that McNamara’s account represents a memory lapse or sloppy research, though he was always renowned for his sharp memory (it is still on display years later in Errol Morris’s 2003 film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, although McNamara’s memory conveniently falters briefly when he claims not to be sure whether he authorized the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, a toxic chemical used while he was secretary of defense). McNamara’s account in his book  of his actions on November 22, 1963, conflicts oddly with Bishop’s report that the White House Communication Agency was claiming that the defense secretary and the chiefs were “the president” (Bishop doesn’t offer an exact time for that story, but he suggests it was while Johnson and Air Force One were still at Love Field). What is clear from these muddled accounts is that important events were taking place at the highest level of power that the public was not supposed to comprehend, even decades later.

 

 

Great information Mr. McBride. I just wonder if McNamara got a sense of coup but like others had to give a brave face and let LBJ walk into the White House.

[Leslie Sharp]

23 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, about strange discrepancies in

accounts of when McNamara heard the news

of the assassination. I find it patently unbelievable that I learned about

the assassination twenty minutes before the Secretary of Defense

supposedly heard the news, and I was a high school junior in Milwaukee:

 

Another indication of the way things were rapidly threatening to spiral out of control for Johnson in the immediate aftermath of the assassination is this report in Jim Bishop’s 1968 book The Day the President Was Shot: “Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in command. An officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘are now the President.’” This indication of a possible military coup underway, whether Johnson was wittingly involved in it or not, could have influenced his first decisions, including his controversial and seemingly somewhat irrational choice to be sworn in on Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas. Delaying his departure for Washington to take the oath was unnecessary since he had become president, according to the Constitution, immediately upon Kennedy’s death. An ulterior motive beyond what was publicly stated would help account for Johnson’s decision to commandeer Kennedy’s plane, for which he would take severe criticism from Kennedy aides and others.

William Kelly, writing on his website JFK Countercoup, theorizes that Johnson made that decision partly because Air Force One enabled him to make use of the most advanced and secure presidential communication lines at a time of maximum crisis: “All of the president’s communications were controlled by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), then led by Colonel George McNally (code name ‘Star’), who was having lunch at the airport terminal when the assassination occurred and returned to Air Force One to ensure that the new president could communicate with anyone in the world. . . . The WHCA Command Center and base station for the Dallas portion of the Texas trip was set up in a room or suite of rooms at the Dallas Sheraton Hotel.” Kelly proposes that the strange message from the WHCA Command Center about McNamara and the Joint Chiefs being “the President” did not have to do simply with presidential succession but with the National Command Authority (NCA) nuclear release authority, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower had set up to control the command of nuclear weapons if the nation’s chief executive were disabled or killed. Kelly notes that under that plan, if a president were disabled or missing, the authority to use nuclear weapons would have passed to the secretary of defense. . . .

Where was McNamara at the time of the assassination? He and Attorney General Robert Kennedy were the most important members of the Kennedy cabinet still in Washington at the time; fully half of the ten-member cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon (the cabinet officer responsible for the Secret Service), were in a plane bound for Japan, following a meeting in Honolulu to help decide Vietnam policy. But one of the many oddities of the official account of the assassination is that there are starkly contradictory accounts of McNamara’s whereabouts and activities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Dallas. In his 1995 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (with Brian VanDeMark), McNamara reports that he was at the Pentagon holding a conference about the defense budget that Kennedy planned to submit to Congress in January. With the secretary were with McGeorge Bundy; Kermit Gordon of the Budget Bureau; and Kennedy’s science adviser, Jerome Wiesner. Manchester reports in The Death of the President that during the meeting, McNamara was handed the first wire-service bulletin about shots being fired in Dallas, sent out at 12:34 by United Press International.

 

Simultaneously the Pentagon’s command center sounded a buzzer, awakening [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] General Maxwell Taylor, who was napping in his office between sessions with the Germans [the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr were meeting with the Chiefs that day]. . . . [McNamara] kept his head and made all the right moves. An ashen-faced aide came in with the bulletin. Jerry Wiesner studied the man’s expression as the secretary read it. Wiesner thought: The Bomb’s been dropped. McNamara quietly handed the slip around -- Wiesner felt momentary relief; anything was better than a nuclear holocaust -- and then the Secretary acted quickly. Adjourning his conference, he sent Mac Bundy back to the White House in a Defense limousine and conferred with Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs. Over the JCS signature they dispatched a flash warning to every American military base in the world.

 

1. Press reports President Kennedy and Governor Connally of Texas shot and critically injured. Both in hospital at Dallas, Texas. No official information yet, will keep you informed.

2. This is the time to be especially on the alert.

 

McNamara’s book, on the other hand, gives a considerably later time for when he learned the news, about 2 p.m. Eastern time, or 1 p.m. in Dallas. This seems bizarre, since it would mean that much of the world (including even me, a high school junior in Milwaukee) had known about the shooting for more than twenty minutes before the secretary of defense of the United States. McNamara writes about that meeting at the Pentagon:

 

In the midst of our discussion -- at about 2:00 p.m. -- my secretary informed me of an urgent, personal telephone call.  I left the conference room and took it alone in my office. It was Bobby Kennedy, even more lonely and distant than usual. He told me simply and quietly that the president had been shot.

I was stunned. Slowly, I walked back to the conference room and, barely controlling my voice, reported the news to the group. Strange as it may sound, we did not disperse: we were in such shock that we simply did not know what to do. So, as best as we could, we resumed our deliberations.

A second call from Bobby came about forty-five minutes later. The president was dead. Our meeting immediately adjourned amid tears and stunned silence.

 

Strange as it may sound, indeed. Why McNamara chose to put out that patently incredible story, twenty-eight years after Manchester published his far different report of a quickly-moving defense secretary working in concert with the chiefs to send out a worldwide alert, remains unclear. It’s conceivable that McNamara’s account represents a memory lapse or sloppy research, though he was always renowned for his sharp memory (it is still on display years later in Errol Morris’s 2003 film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, although McNamara’s memory conveniently falters briefly when he claims not to be sure whether he authorized the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, a toxic chemical used while he was secretary of defense). McNamara’s account in his book  of his actions on November 22, 1963, conflicts oddly with Bishop’s report that the White House Communication Agency was claiming that the defense secretary and the chiefs were “the president” (Bishop doesn’t offer an exact time for that story, but he suggests it was while Johnson and Air Force One were still at Love Field). What is clear from these muddled accounts is that important events were taking place at the highest level of power that the public was not supposed to comprehend, even decades later.

 

 

Joseph, I suspect you agree that a more thorough analysis of the November 22 meeting down the hall in the Gold Room at the Pentagon between the Joint Chiefs and their equivalent from the Federal Republic of Germany is in order. As is widely known, Curtis LeMay was not in DC that day but instead, he was on a hunting trip in Canada. A seasoned Canadian researcher has done extensive research into the circumstances of LeMay's trip. With his permission, and in light of our pursuit of former members of Hitler's Third Reich apparatus (identified on this forum for some strange reason as members of the “National Socialist Party” ), I'm incorporating his details in a (forthcoming) monograph specific to the military history of Adenauer's Bundeswehr generals who were meeting with Taylor, Lemnitzer, et al. as President Kennedy was being assassinated in Dallas.

A draft introduction . . . 
 

While searching for information that might explain how John Connally ended up in the jump seat of the president’s limo, I was advised by Vince Palamara to check William Manchester’s account of the day.  Although Manchester merely reiterates that the seating arrangements were as chaotic at Love Field as they had been earlier that morning in Fort Worth, the following jumped off the page of his award-winning book, "The Death of a President: November 22-November25, 1963". According to Manchester,
 

 

On Friday, November 22 in Washington DC, "Tight security was also enforced in the Pentagon's Gold Room, down the hall from McNamara, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in session with the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr [armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany]. General Maxwell Taylor, the Chiefs' elegant, scholarly Chairman, dominated one side of the table; opposite him was GENERAL FRIEDRICH A. FOERTSCH* [emphasis added], Inspector General of Bonn's armed forces. Everyone was dressed to the nines—the Germans out of Pflicht [duty], the Americans because they knew the Germans would be that way—and the meeting glittered with gay ribbons and braid. . . .

Simultaneously the Pentagon’s command center sounded a buzzer, awaken- 

ing General Maxwell Taylor, who was napping in his office between sessions 

with the Germans. McNamara had a tremendous reputation, and he 

deserved it. Despite his deep feeling for the President — the emotional 

side of his personality had been overlooked by the press, but it was very 

much there — he kept his head and made all the right moves. An ashen- 

faced aide came in with the bulletin. Jerry Wiesner studied the man’s 

expression as the secretary read it. Wiesner thought: The Bomb’s been 

dropped. McNamara quietly handed the slip around — Wiesner felt momentary relief; anything was better than a nuclear holocaust — and then 

the Secretary acted quickly. Adjourning his conference, he sent Mac 

Bundy back to the White House in a Defense limousine and conferred 

with Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs. Over the JCS signature they dis- 

patched a flash warning to every American military base in the world; 

 

1. Press reports President Kennedy and Governor Connally of Texas shot 

and critically injured. Both in hospital at Dallas, Texas. No official in- 

formation yet, will keep you informed. 

  In the Pentagon McNamara and the Joint Chiefs remained vigilant, 

though after their conference in the Secretary's office the Chiefs decided 

they should leave sentry duty to subordinate sentinels and rejoin their 

meeting. General Taylor in particular felt that it was important to present 

a picture of stability and continuity, that it would be an error to let their 

visitors from Bonn suspect the depth of the tragedy until more was known. 

At 2:30 he and his colleagues filed back into the Gold Room. He told the 

Germans briefly that President Kennedy had been injured. General Fried- 

rich Foertsch replied for his comrades that they hoped the injury was not 

too serious. The Chiefs did not reply, and for the next two hours they 

put on a singular performance. Aware that the shadow of a new war might 

fall across the room at any time, they continued the talks about dull mili- 

tary details, commenting on proposals by Generals Wessel and Huekelheim 

and shuffling papers and directives with steady hands. Even for men with 

their discipline it was a stony ordeal, and it was especially difficult for 

Taylor, who had to lead the discussion and whose appointment as Chair- 

man had arisen from his close relationship with the President. As America’s 

first soldier he would be expected to make the first military decision should 

war come. Meanwhile he had to sit erect and feign an interest in logistics 

and combined staff work. At 4:30 the meeting ended on schedule. The 

Joint Chiefs rose together and faced their rising guests. Taylor said evenly, 

“I regret to tell you that the President of the United States has been killed.” 

The Germans, bred to stoicism, collapsed in their chairs.

 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Thank you for your repdly, Leslie.

[Chuck Schwartz]

Thank you for your reply, Leslei.

[Chuck Schwartz]

Anthony, did you ever post the bits and pieces you mention in the first posting of this thread?

Posted October 2, 2021 (edited)

Early reviews are in for H.P. Albarelli's COUP IN DALLAS.

  Quote

“Remarkable! ... Truly, this is an epic study that will stand the test of time.”
—Dick Russell, investigative journalist and bestselling author of On the Trail of the JFK Assassins and They Killed Our President

“Notes in a dead man’s diary. Dark mischief? Or, as H. P. Albarelli writes, vital clues pointing to the true assassins of President Kennedy? Persuaded or not, readers will be gripped by his herculean research.”
—Anthony Summers, author of Not in Your Lifetime
 
“Who killed JFK? And why should it still matter? This long-awaited book provides astonishing new answers to those questions. What occurred that day in Dallas was, indeed, a coup—a coup meticulously carried out by fascist zealots still devoted to the cause that was ostensibly defeated with the fall of Mussolini's Italy and N*zi Germany. Backed by a global network of almighty private interests, abetted by covert state agencies, and with their every trace expertly hidden by the cover story blared throughout the media, they killed America's young president, and left American democracy for dead. Thus, Coup in Dallas is a necessary book not just for JFK researchers, but for all who want to know how the United States became a nation under permanent 'emergency' conditions, ruled by mandates and decrees.”
—Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University; editor, News from Underground, markcrispinmiller.com
 
 “Albarelli tirelessly worked the shadows where academic scholars feared to tread and other seekers lost their way, a shining torch for truth.”
 —Michael J. Briggs, former editor-in-chief University Press of Kansas, publisher of The Zapruder Film and Breach of Trust
 
 “An impressive and staggering piece of investigative journalism. Based upon the jotted-down notations found in the 1963 Datebook of an amoral clandestine government henchman, we now know the identities of some of the planners and perpetrators of the Crime of the Century.”
—J. Gary Shaw, coauthor of Cover-Up, cofounder JFK Assassination Information Center, ASK, and founding member of AARC 

“Mind-boggling. . . A fascinating compendium of new information which I will consult extensively in my own continuing JFK work.”
—Russ Baker, investigative journalist and historian, bestselling author of Family of Secrets, editor-in-chief of WhoWhatWhy, currently engaged in a two-decade JFK book research project
 
“When respected investigative journalists raise questions about political and social forces that gained substantial power advantages following the assassination of JFK, their work should not be dismissed lightly. Using an academic perspective, this compelling study examines the forces that likely influenced the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. If you believed that Kennedy was a traitor, then his assassination becomes an act of patriotism. Earlier forms of reactionary information systems, substantially (but not exclusively) on the political right, identified him as such, and as a threat to democracy. Decades later, the same forces motivated the insurgents that stormed the US Capitol in defense of the 45th president demanding a second term. As presented in Coup in Dallas, a similar network of conspiracist rightist mindset provided the script of liberal treason and betrayal that prompted the assassination of President Kennedy.”
—Chip Berlet, editor of The Assassination Please Almanac, author of Eyes Right!, coauthor of Right-Wing Populism in America

Expand  

I have a new, 4000 word essay appearing at the end of COUP IN DALLAS, which was written by me earlier this year following several months discussion and research with Albarelli's co-author Leslie Sharp. The process of putting together that essay uncovered a number of additional bits and pieces, some of which will eventually be posted here on the board. COUP IN DALLAS is out very soon on Amazon, and there are listings of either October 26th or mid November for the release date. It went to the printers a couple of weeks ago, so there will be no more delays.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Anthony Thorne

[Anthony Thorne]

Hi Chuck, I've posted a few things in some other threads which were met with either a 'hmmm' or a shrug. The big stuff I dug up takes a lot of writing to present in context and a chunk of it isn't even JFK related so it's on the back burner for now. That noted there were a few tidbits that Leslie and I discussed while mucking around on the essay that I'm not sure ended up in the final book. 

I have a couple of things here and there that might come out in the future, and there's an essay I want to write at some point that digs further into some of the stuff Lance De Haven Smith covered re the origins of the 'conspiracy theory' phrase used by the CIA in the 60's - he referenced some overseas news articles, and I dug up a couple of things referencing the names involved with that which kind of square the circle - but there's no timeframe for it.

I'll just add my essay involved a heap of research and conversation (the final piece was around 13,000 words, the one in the book is a bit over 3000 words I think) but it was all done right at the tail end of the work Leslie and HP had already done for COUP and I kind of was just throwing them some insights and research here and there at the very end of the process - yet the process of researching a few areas dug up a bunch of stuff, all largely from CIA Crest, which I'll have to tackle properly at some point. I think a couple of posters have read the longer essay.