Connally, Dealy Plaza, Trade Mart

[Ron Bulman]

On 10/22/2023 at 4:41 AM, Gil Jesus said:

My October-November 1963 timeline. It is incomplete, but I would like to share it with the group anyway.

October 4, 1963: Governor Connally meets with President Kennedy at the White House. He later has dinner with Vice President Johnson. Oswald is back in Dallas and stays at the local YMCA while he looks for work.
 

October 10, 1963: The Constitution Party holds a meeting in Indianapolis at the Marott ( not Marriott ) Hotel to, "put an end to the Kennedy, Khrushchev and King dictatorship." William Somersett attends the meeting and tells the FBI that there was talk of killing President Kennedy by those in attendance.
 

October 15, 1963: Ruth Paine calls the Texas School Book Depository and arranges for a job interview for Oswald with building superintendent Roy Truly. Truly interviews Oswald later that day and hires him for $1.25 per hour as a temporary clerk filling customer book orders. Oswald starts work the following day.

The FBI office in New Orleans contacts an informant inside the US Communist Party for information regarding Oswald and his wife. ( 17 H 797 )
 

October 18, 1963: The Delaware State News declares, "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. His name right now happens to be Kennedy----let's shoot him, literally, before Christmas." ( Manchester, Death of a President, pg. 46 )
 

October 20, 1963: Kenneth O'Donnell, special assistant and appointments secretary to President Kennedy, calls Jerry Bruno, the advance man for the Kennedy trips, and asks him to come to the White House to discuss the trip to Texas.
 

October 21, 1963: Bruno meets with O'Donnell and is told to contact Walter Jenkins, one of Vice President Lyndon Johnson's top administrative assistants, to solicit his input for the trip.
 

October 24, 1963: Bruno meets with Jenkins, who tells Bruno about the stops that Governor Connally has suggested. The first stop would be San Antonio on November 21 and drive in a motorcade to Brooks Air Force Base, then fly to Houston and drive in a motorcade to the Rice Hotel, where the Albert Thomas dinner was originally scheduled to take place, and stay overnight at the hotel. Then on the morning of November 22, the president would fly to Fort Worth to receive an honorary degree at Texas Christian University at 9:30 a.m. and then ride in a motorcade for the short distance to Dallas, where he would attend a luncheon at the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council at the Statler Hilton Hotel.  Finally, the President would attend a fundraising dinner in Austin before returning to Washington. 

United States ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson II delivers a contentious speech on United Nations Day at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium, where he is booed and heckled. After the speech, he is struck on the head with a picket sign and spit upon. Several people, including Stevenson, warned Kennedy against coming to Dallas, but Kennedy ignored their advice.

October 25-26, 1963: General Walker tells an audience in Jackson, Mississippi that, "it's interesting that the Communists killed first the people who helped them in their revolution", and suggests that because Kennedy had helped the Communist cause, the audience could expect the Communists to kill Kennedy. Walker is planting the seeds of a PSY-OP that will be the early "explanation" of the assassination of the President a month later.

October 29, 1963: Bruno meets with Henry Brown, president of the Texas AFL–CIO and a friend of Senator Ralph Yarborough, to obtain his input from labor leaders. He then has lunch with Governor Connally to review his itinerary.

The sharpest dissension is over the location of the Dallas luncheon. The Yarborough camp suggests that it be held in the Women’s Building, a massive exhibition hall on the state fairgrounds. Connally insists that it take place in the Grand Courtyard of the Dallas Trade Mart, a smaller venue, and that it be by invitation only. Bruno was taken aback by Connally’s intransigence about the location. The governor tells Bruno that Kennedy cannot come to Dallas unless the event is held at the Trade Mart. 
https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/john-f-kennedy-place-setting/

In late October, 1963, David Christensen was an Air Force sergeant who was stationed at an RAF base in Kirknewton, Scotland. The base had a relationship with the CIA and was used by the CIA as a top-secret listening station. He intercepted a communication in late October 1963 that an assassination attempt would be made on Kennedy. 

October 30, 1963: Bruno and Johnson aide Clifton Carter visit the Texas cities that the president will visit. The San Antonio and Houston sites are checked and confirmed as acceptable, but when visiting Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Bruno is informed by school officials that the university does not intend to confer an honorary degree to the president and that they have only approved the use of their campus as the location for a speech. Bruno informs Connally of this development, and Connally says that he will meet with the university's board of regents the next night. Bruno travels to Dallas to evaluate the ballroom at the Statler Hilton Hotel where the luncheon is planned to take place on November 22. He is met there by J. Erik Jonsson, chairman of the Dallas Citizens Council ( and an owner of Texas Instruments ) and Robert B. Cullum, chairman of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Tom Thumb Food Stores. Cullum informs Bruno that the ballroom at the Statler Hilton is now unavailable because organizers of a bottlers' convention had reserved it and would not surrender it.  Jonsson and Cullum suggest the Dallas Trade Mart, but after visiting the site, Bruno dislikes the many catwalks that would be above the president, which, in light of the Stevenson incident that had just occurred a few days earlier, could present a security problem. He asks to be shown other available sites in Dallas.

October 31, 1963: Bruno is informed that Governor Connally is unhappy with the decision not to use the Trade Mart for the luncheon because of the catwalk issue. Bruno agrees to visit the Trade Mart again but retains his misgivings. Connally telephones that he has met with the TCU board of regents and that they will not confer an honorary degree on the president. 

President Kennedy is asked at a press conference about rumors that Lyndon Johnson will not be selected as his running mate in the 1964 election, which Kennedy denies.

At the end of October, the Chicago Secret Service received an FBI teletype detailing a plot by four Cuban gunmen to kill Kennedy in Chicago with "high-powered rifles" during a motorcade. The President was scheduled to visit there on November 2nd to attend an Army-Navy football game. Two suspects were arrested and detained by the Secret Service in Chicago on November 1st. Two others escaped. The two that were arrested and detained were released shortly after their arrest.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 1, 1963: The Fort Worth visit is eventually resolved when the city's chamber of commerce agrees to sponsor a breakfast for the president. Because of this, the president's overnight stay is changed from Houston to Fort Worth so that he will have time to attend the breakfast.

That same day, Thomas Arthur Vallee, a vocal Kennedy critic and member of the John Birch Society, was arrested by the Secret Service in Chicago after a search of the vehicle he was driving revealed that he had an M-1 rifle, a handgun and three thousand rounds of ammunition. Vallee had asked his employer for the day of Kennedy's motorcade off. When arrested, he had been driving a car with New York plates, number 311-ORF. Kennedy's Chicago trip was cancelled, and Vallee was released on November 2nd. 

November 4, 1963: Robert Kennedy received a letter from Byron Skelton, a Democratic Committeeman from Texas, asking that Dallas be dropped from the President's itinerary because "they" would kill him there. Citing General Walker's pronouncement that Kennedy was a "liablility to the free world", Skelton believed that such a man was capable of doing the President harm, and observing the attitude in preparations for the President's trip, he simply felt that it was not safe to go there. Skelton felt so passionately about bypassing Dallas that he flew to Washington to plead his case.

White House Secret Service agent Winston Lawson is informed that he has been assigned to the Dallas visit.

Paul Rothermel, Head of Security for Hunt Oil, sends a memo to H.L. Hunt notifying him that the attempt to assassinate the President will be made during the motorcade, "there will be violence on the parade route taken by President of the United States John F. Kennedy", he writes. Rothermel also notifies the Dallas FBI and the Dallas Police of this threat. ( FBI file # 62-109060, Sec. 182, pg. 2 )

November 6-7, 1963: AWOL Pfc. Eugene Dinkin walks into the U.N. Press Office in Geneva, Switzerland and tells a stringer for Time-Life  that "they" were plotting against Kennedy and that "something" would happen in Texas. The information was forwarded to U.S. military authorities, the FBI and the CIA.

November 7, 1963: During the first week of November, Elizabeth Cole, President of the International Students Club at Hunter College, attended a Foreign Students Convention at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She claims to have overheard a Spanish speaking Cuban student talking on the phone describing the assassination of President Kennedy. According to Cole, the Cuban student mentioned the city of Dallas, a book publishing company and a "high government official" who would protect those involved. Cole claimed to have reported the incident to the FBI the next day during a phone call witnessed by her mother, but the Bureau said it had no record of her call. ( FBI file # 62-109060, Sec. 178, pgs. 49-59 )

November 9, 1963: Miami Police informant Willie Somerset recorded a breakfast meeting with his friend Joseph Milteer, who outlined the assassination of President Kennedy. Milteer was taped by Somerset as he spoke of Kennedy's coming visit to Miami on November 18th:

November 14, 1963: an "unnamed subject" who had been arrested in Piedras Negras, Mexico on September 30th for stealing three cars, told the FBI "that he is a member of th Ku Klux Klan and that his sources have told him that a militant group of the National States Rights Party plans to assassinate the President and other high-level officials". The FBI's Washington D.C. headquarters tells the Secret Service that, "no information was developed that would indicate any danger to the President...during his trip to Dallas".

Acquiescing to the wishes of Governor Connally, Kenneth O'Donnell reverses his prior decision to hold the Dallas luncheon at the Women's Building and changes the location to the Dallas Trade Mart. According to both O'Donnell and Bruno, this change in the luncheon site, although seemingly insignificant at the time, dramatically alters the motorcade route taken through Dallas.

November 15, 1963: The White House announces that the Dallas Trade Mart will be the site of President Kennedy's luncheon address and that a motorcade will proceed through downtown Dallas. 

November 16, 1963: Lee Harvey Oswald visits the Dallas FBI office. ( Dallas Morning News, November 24, 1963 ) I believe that it is this visit where he leaves the note for Agent Hosty. This would have been the Saturday before the assassination, when Oswald did not go to Irving for the weekend. 

November 17, 1963: Hoover sends out a teletype to all FBI offices notifying them that "information has been received by the bureau that a militant revolutionary group may attempt to assassinate President Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas November 22-23 1963. All receiving offices should immmediately contact all CIs ( Criminal Informants ), PCIs ( Potential Criminal Informants ), logical Race and Hate groups ( KKK, NSRP, Nazis ) and determine if any basis for threats. Bureau should be kept advised of all developments by teletype." In other words, no written reports: notify the Bureau by teletype. If the information was found to be true, it would end up in the hands of Hoover, who would make sure that the Secret Service would not be warned.

November 18, 1963: Kennedy confides to his good friend senator George Smathers of Florida that Vice President Johnson wants First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to ride in the car with him during the upcoming tour of Texas.  

The exact motorcade route is finalized and published in the Dallas newspapers.

November 19, 1963: The White House formally announces the timetable of events for the president's visit, including a planned arrival time of 12:30 p.m. CST at the Trade Mart.

November 20, 1963: In the early morning hours of November 20, 1963, a drug addict and prostitute named Rose Cheramie was found lying on the side of the road near Eunice, Louisiana. She had been thrown from a moving car.

State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge, investigating the incident, asked her what had happened. She told him that she had been travelling from Florida to Dallas with two Latin men. When he asked her what they were going to do in Dallas, she replied, "pick up some money, pick up my baby and ....kill Kennedy."
Battered and bruised and in a state of near hysteria, she was transported to Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson. She appeared to be under the influence of some drug. 
At the State Hospital, she repeated her claim to the doctors several times, saying that the President would be murdered in two days and said that she got her information from "word in the underworld". But because of her emotional state at the time, she was thought to be in a drug-induced delirium and her story was not believed.

Meanwhile in Dallas, Warren Caster, regional manager for Southwest Publishing Company, brings two rifles into the Texas School Book Depository, a 30.06 deer rifle for himself ( described as a "Mauser" ) and a .22 caliber rifle he claims is a Christmas gift for his son. The rifles are examined by TSBD manager Roy Truly and Supervisor William Shelley. This action is witnessed by Lee Harvey Oswald, who tells the Dallas Police of it after his arrest.

( this is as far as I've gotten )

Thank you, Gil. that's the best Oct-Nov timeline I've seen.  Another a few years back focused on Oswald's movements.  Integrating them today with the Pierre Laffite datebook would be interesting.

[David McLean]

Some random thoughts on this powerful timeline topic…

Apart from the appearance of fence-mending, did Kennedy believe that having John Connally in his car and line of fire would offer a measure of insurance against aggro or worse?

Where might Richard Case Nagell fit in?  His El Paso escapade and warning letter to the FBI occurred in late September and  was preceded by an attempt to disengage Oswald from plotters. May one hypothesise suspected Soviet agents Bruce Solie and perhaps James McCord in the Office of Security triggered his actions, but in some as yet unknown roundabout way so as to conceal and protect their double agent status?  

And Nixon and Bush hovering around Dallas on the day, the former there with newly appointed Pepsi CEO and later close  CIA collaborator Donald M Kendall, the latter with Alf Ulmer,Jr,  Niarchos, Robert Maheu asoociate, both of whom Nixon had previously  worked with and CIA station chief  in Madrid , base of Otto  and Ilse Skorzeny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

12 hours ago, David McLean said:

Some random thoughts on this powerful timeline topic…

Apart from the appearance of fence-mending, did Kennedy believe that having John Connally in his car and line of fire would offer a measure of insurance against aggro or worse?

Where might Richard Case Nagell fit in?  His El Paso escapade and warning letter to the FBI occurred in late September and  was preceded by an attempt to disengage Oswald from plotters. May one hypothesise suspected Soviet agents Bruce Solie and perhaps James McCord in the Office of Security triggered his actions, but in some as yet unknown roundabout way so as to conceal and protect their double agent status?  

And Nixon and Bush hovering around Dallas on the day, the former there with newly appointed Pepsi CEO and later close  CIA collaborator Donald M Kendall, the latter with Alf Ulmer,Jr,  Niarchos, Robert Maheu asoociate, both of whom Nixon had previously  worked with and CIA station chief  in Madrid , base of Otto  and Ilse Skorzeny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regarding the first part JFK did say we're in Nut Country today after seeing the black bordered Dallas newspaper page that morning.  By the same token he was there for image, the 64 campaign.  To heal the liberal (Yarbrough) and conservative (LBJ-JC) party split.  So having the governor in his car, and the VP and Senator in the same car makes sense for an image of "harmony".

Thanks for your comment.  Gil's timeline, expanded, is what I hoped for when I started the Sixty thread.  But this is good.  What day did Oswald get from New Orleans, when was he spotted in Mexico City (?) to Dallas.  How many days was he mia?  What days did Bill Harvey meet with (?) in Florida in was it March or April.  Dulles datebook is interesting here, as well as that of Laffite, George Hunter White as well.  Ruby's movements, calls.

[Ron Bulman]

On 10/22/2023 at 4:41 AM, Gil Jesus said:

Bruno travels to Dallas to evaluate the ballroom at the Statler Hilton Hotel where the luncheon is planned to take place on November 22. He is met there by J. Erik Jonsson, chairman of the Dallas Citizens Council ( and an owner of Texas Instruments ) and Robert B. Cullum, chairman of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Tom Thumb Food Stores. Cullum informs Bruno that the ballroom at the Statler Hilton is now unavailable because organizers of a bottlers' convention had reserved it and would not surrender it.  Jonsson and Cullum suggest the Dallas Trade Mart, but after visiting the site, Bruno dislikes the many catwalks that would be above the president, which, in light of the Stevenson incident that had just occurred a few days earlier, could present a security problem. He asks to be shown other available sites in Dallas.

I don't remember reading this before.  On October 30th, all Hallow's eve, my 7th birthday.  That's where Nixon spoke the night before.  Another effort to steer JFK to the Trademart.  It supports what I've come to believe.  The site was "picked", because of the route along Elm Street well before October.  The objective then was to maneuver him into position.  Thus, the Pepsi convention at the Statler Hilton and Connally's intransigence over the Trade Mart. 

[Gil Jesus]

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I don't remember reading this before.  On October 30th, all Hallow's eve, my 7th birthday.  That's where Nixon spoke the night before.  Another effort to steer JFK to the Trademart.  It supports what I've come to believe.  The site was "picked", because of the route along Elm Street well before October.  The objective then was to maneuver him into position.  Thus, the Pepsi convention at the Statler Hilton and Connally's intransigence over the Trade Mart. 

Ron, the CIA works in a very compartmentalized way. Each asset only knows his own role and this allows for deniability if the s**t hits the fan. There are no records kept. The weapons are provided by like-minded allies in the military. The President's protection is relaxed by the Agency's allies in the Secret Service. The coverup is under the direction of an FBI Director that the Agency can control through blackmail. The autopsy handled by ( again ) its allies in the military in order to coverup the President being shot from multiple directions by multiple shooters.

The patsy is selected by the Agency because he's an FBI informant who is trying to infiltrate the Agency's training of the assassins in New Orleans. When the training camp is raided by the FBI, the Agency moves it to Mexico.

Oswald's movements are controlled by Agency assets like George DeMohrenschildt and Ruth Paine. The Agency knows that Oswald will not wander far from his family, so at the time it's being announced that Kennedy will come to Dallas, Ruth Paine drives to New Orleans and brings a pregnant Marina and baby June back.

Ruth Paine, as you know, also played a role in getting Oswald a job in a building that was on the motorcade route. The Kennedy-hating superintendent of the building, Roy Truly, hired Oswald "temporarily" as extra help. In fact, Truly hired two men, one for the other warehouse and one to work in the building at 411 Elm St.

Truly selected Oswald to work at the Elm St building.

A month later, the Trade Mart was selected as the luncheon site.

It wasn't necessary for Connally to know that there was going to be an assassination attempt on the motorcade route. All he had to know was his role and his role IMO, was to make absolutely sure that the Trade Mart would be the location for the luncheon. He may have thought an attempt would be made there, because when the shooting started, he seemed shocked at the timing and yelled out, "My God, they're going to kill us all."

And he wasn't talking about Oswald.

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/19/2023 at 1:52 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Memory of his insistence for the Dallas Trade Mart, which required the trip through Dealy Plaza had me baffled. 

A key fact to remember is that the selection of the Trade Mart did not require the motorcade to drive on Elm Street. There was another way to get to the Trade Mart, a way that avoided driving on Elm Street. 

Edited October 30, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Ron Bulman]

11 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

A key fact to remember is that the selection of the Trade Mart did not require the motorcade to drive on Elm Street. There was another way to get to the Trade Mart, a way that avoided driving on Elm Street. 

The other route is not logical.  This has been discussed in depth before.  Straight down Main, not right on Houston, left on Elm to the Stemmons/I-35 (now) entrance ramp.

Straight down Main to Irving Blvd on the other side of Stemmons, right to (?) Harry Hines to the Trade Mart.  Longer at lower speeds.  I read once a pot holed, glass strewn area full of winos, hoboes and tramps.  I don't remember any of those going shopping with my mother and grandmother at a surplus warehouse among other warehouses on Irving Blvd within a year or so of this time (Grandmother lived in Irving).  Longer, no crowds, why go that way?

There was another thought expressed once by someone that they could have just jumped the curb from Main to the Stemmons entry ramp.  Huh?  The long, heavy (armored?) presidential limo?  I can just see it bottomed out on the median between the lanes.  

But my doubts were shattered when a poster suggested they could have built plywood ramps to traverse the median.

[Ron Bulman]

On 10/22/2023 at 4:41 AM, Gil Jesus said:

October 4, 1963: Governor Connally meets with President Kennedy at the White House. He later has dinner with Vice President Johnson. Oswald is back in Dallas and stays at the local YMCA while he looks for work.

That's interesting.  Connally comes to Washinton to talk with JFK about the late November visit to Texas, including motorcades.  The reports to LBJ that evening.