Sean Fetter's new book on the JFK assassination posits that Lyndon Johnson micromanaged the JFK assassination!

[Joe Bauer]

19 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

November, 2023, William Ramsey interviews Sean Fetter, the author of "Under Cover of Night: The United States Air Force and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The interview is one hour long. Sean Fetter started studying the JFK assassination in the fall of 1983 - so he has 40 years of JFK research under his belt. I am enjoying reading Fetter's book currently and, no, I do not agree with all of his conclusions. Fetter focuses on the role of Lyndon Johnson and the Air Force in the JFK assassination.

 

Just finished listening to the entire interview.

Well spoken. Well paced. Very thought provoking.

Much more interesting and even quite gripping than I had imagined.

The power struggle between the Joint Chiefs and JFK ( especially between LeMay and JFK ) definitely does seem as epic and high stakes as the one depicted in the classic Presidential over-throw plot film "Seven Days In May."

 

[Douglas Caddy]

On 12/18/2023 at 7:18 PM, Charles Blackmon said:

Welcome Robert Morrow.

Welcome back, Morrow. We missed you.

[Stu Wexler]

Again:  so far nothing I have seen even makes me want to spend the time listening to the interview. Can someone give me something solid that makes me go "wow-- that is suspicious."  Plenty of people were covering up and cya'ing but who had nothing to do with the crime itself. Can someone give me something, even from the interview, that is on the level of say the Jane Roman quote to Jeff Morley and Newman, or the SS reports about Sierra/Echeverria, or the Odio story, etc. 

[Robert Morrow]

2 hours ago, Stu Wexler said:

Again:  so far nothing I have seen even makes me want to spend the time listening to the interview. Can someone give me something solid that makes me go "wow-- that is suspicious."  Plenty of people were covering up and cya'ing but who had nothing to do with the crime itself. Can someone give me something, even from the interview, that is on the level of say the Jane Roman quote to Jeff Morley and Newman, or the SS reports about Sierra/Echeverria, or the Odio story, etc. 

Sure. Here is one, Sean Fetter interviewed Jan Amos (now deceased) of Dallas extensively. She was the wife of Col. William Amos who was the right hand man of Gen. Joseph J. Cappucci, the head of Air Force counterintelligence - a very high up job. Gen. Cappucci in a very matter of fact way told Jan and her husband Col. William Amos that Lyndon Johnson killed JFK. Gen. Cappucci told the Amos' this at a party/dinner in Rome after Ted Kennedy was involved in his fatal accident at Chappaquiddick in July of 1969. Gen. Cappucci was a close friend of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and here is his bio: https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/107495/brigadier-general-joseph-j-cappucci/

Jan Amos also gave an oral history for Sixth Floor Museum. I also interviewed her at her apartment before she passed away (sorry for the video quality, the sound quality should be fine)(Fetter interviewed Jan in November, 2014; I interviewed her on 7/31/2014.):

 

I should add that over 40 years, Sean Fetter interviewed quite an impressive list of people with ties to the JFK assassination, the Air Force, JFK or Lyndon Johnson. Sean Fetter's thesis is that Lyndon Johnson micromanaged the JFK assassination and that he teamed up with the Air Force to murder JFK and also the Secret Service was involved in killing JFK. Sean Fetter believes - and I do not - that Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were planning as early as 1956 to get LBJ put on the Demo ticket as a Vice President and then murder the Democrat at the top of the ticket.  I don't believe that at all, but I do believe that LBJ and Sam Rayburn both used a heavy dose of last-minute sexual blackmail to force JFK to put Lyndon Johnson on the 1960 Democratic ticket. I believe that firmly and I also believe that Lyndon Johnson was planning to murder JFK from the moment he accepted the Democratic nomination for VP and certainly the moment he was elected VP of the United States in November, 1960.

[Greg Doudna]

The problem with the General Cappucci comment is how do you know whether he is speaking from suspicion--everybody on earth has opinions on the JFK assassination--or knowledge. It is not evidence unless Cappucci claimed and specified he was speaking from knowledge not suspicion. 

I ordered Sean Fetter's two volumes based on Robert Morrow's opening description, and Sean Fetter comes across well enough in the interview. He claims he has an original correct solution to the JFK assassination from 40 years of research in a magnum opus that in part deals with something happening to the body but which differs from Lifton whom he says got it wrong. From the interview, it seems Fetter is not arguing for a vast micromanaged plot in advance in explanation of the things which happened but suggests it was a plot which started going wrong immediately in real time and, like a football play where the quarterback is scrambling and nothing is working right, they were scrambling as things were not happening as they were supposed to. Not that the plot did not succeed in killing Kennedy, but the plotters also intended to get away with it and not be identified as the perpetrators, not so easily accomplished when things started falling apart. Fetter doesn't give the evidence he claims he has for this in the interview, says that is in the two volumes, but that seems to be the gist of what he says he argues. He says he obtained original interviews with Air Force personnel on Air Force One and Air Force Two that day which he claims helped crack the case of what happened. 

In his interview he tells of his starting point long ago: the Fred Whitcomb and Perry Adams 1974 privately circulated book manuscript which received little publicity since it was never published at the time but which is recognized today as having pioneered in original research (e.g. on the witness testimonies who saw and smelled gunsmoke near the limousine and grassy knoll area with gusts of wind from the southwest blowing northeast [therefore not from the 6th floor TSBD], to name just one).

I was in the fourth grade in Portage Path Elementary School in Akron, Ohio on Nov 22, 1963 when a child walked into our teacher's classroom and handed a note and our teacher read it to us and then started tearing up. 

Somewhere in 1976 or the spring of 1977 I was living and working in Santa Barbara, California and by total accident read a feature article in a local newspaper about someone local associated with the U. of California, Santa Barbara, who had coauthored a book manuscript on the JFK assassination, named Perry Adams. The article was so intriguing I looked up Perry Adams in the phone book, called him and asked if it would be possible for me to borrow the manuscript to read. My spirit fell when he said he had no copy he could lend out. But then quickly lifted again when he invited me, if I wanted, to come over to his place and I could read it in his living room. He just was not willing to let his copy out of his sight. So I did, read the manuscript, loose typed pages right in his living room, I think it may have been a Saturday afternoon while his wife took off for some errands and he did other things while I read for a couple of hours, then talked and answered my questions when I was finished reading. He told me of their having sent the mss to every member of Congress and some of the reactions of interest they had received. Perry Adams struck me favorably in person, as an intelligent, left-investigative-journalist or historian type. Adams' basic thesis was the Secret Service under the direction of Johnson and Connally had offed JFK while the government was out of the country in a plane flying over Japan, a coup. (I see here in the archived papers of Perry Adams who passed away in 1997 reference to only a single typescript manuscript draft--maybe that was the one I read in his living room that day: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2w1017hx/entire_text/.) Although I did not return until recent years to study the JFK assassination, that early encounter strikes a chord of curiosity of where forty years of research took Sean Fetter from that starting point. Its a chunk of money to set out for something unknown, but I'll report back what I think after the books arrive for the benefit of others less inclined than me to impulse buying. 

Edited December 27, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Robert Morrow]

I want to say - AGAIN - that there are many conclusions that Sean Fetter makes in his book Under Cover of Night that I do not agree with. I have known Fetter for about 12 years over the phone and have found him to be an honest and intelligent JFK assassination researcher - which does not make him right on everything. Fetter's thesis is that Lyndon Johnson teamed up with the Secret Service and the Air Force to murder JFK with LBJ and Sam Rayborn as the originators of the plot to murder JFK.

Sean Fetter has done a massive amount of primary research on the JFK assassination for 40 years and has interviewed people who were never interviewed before and Fetter has come up with some amazing material. You can pick and choose what you think is most credible. I highly encourage people to get Sean Fetter's book Under Cover of Night, both volumes.

As for the GUNPOWDER "nose witnesses" Fred Newcombe did a great job of listing them and this is yet another proof of a shooter or shooters from the Grassy Knoll; from Newcombe's Murder From Within:

QUOTE

***Motorcycle escort officer Billy J. Martin, riding one-half car length from the left rear fender of the Presidential limousine, recalled, “You could smell the gunpowder… you knew he wasn’t far away. When you’re that close, you can smell the powder burning. Why you—you’ve got to be pretty close to them… you could smell the gunpowder… right there in the street.”63 (Figure 3-7) “Nose” witnesses Sen. Ralph Yarborough rode in the second car behind the limousine. He smelled gunpowder in the street64 and said it clung to the car throughout the race to Parkland Hospital.65 He later commented, “. . . you don’t smell gunpowder unless you’re shooting at something up wind and it blows it back in your face…”65-a As noted, the motorcade headed into a breeze—photographs show bystanders’ skirts billowing in the wind. At Parkland Hospital Yarborough told reporters “the third shot may have been a Secret Service man returning fire”.65-b Two cars behind Yarborough was the Cabell car. Elizabeth Cabell said she “. . . was acutely aware of the odor of gunpowder.”66 She added Congressman Ray Roberts, seated next to her, had mentioned it also.67 According to press photographer Tom C. Dillard, two cars behind the Cabell car, he “. . . very definitely smelled gunpowder when the cars moved up to the corner [of Elm and Houston Streets].”68 Bystander Virgie Rackley stood in front of the depository building close to the street. “She recalled that after the second shot, she smelled gunsmoke…”69 At the time of the shots, patrolman Joe M. Smith moved from the intersection of Elm and Houston Streets toward the triple underpass.70 Patrolman Earle V. Brown, stationed 100 yards west of the underpass, heard the shots and then smelled gunpowder as the car sped beneath him.71 A police officer who was on the sixth floor of the depository shortly after the shooting failed to smell any gunpowder there.72 One newspaper summed it up: “. . . seconds later the cavalcade was gone. The area still reeked with the smell of gunpowder.”73 Shots from the sixth floor of the depository building would have caused no gunpowder smell in the street. ***

UNQUOTE

Fred T. Newcomb and Perry Adams (2011-11-03). Murder From Within: Lyndon Johnson's Plot against President Kennedy (Kindle Locations 1376-1377). AuthorHouse. Kindle Edition.

[Robert Morrow]

Here is Doug Horne's Amazon review of Sean Fetter's Under Cover of Night. By posting this review I am not saying I agree with either Doug Horne or Sean Fetter on the issues involved. I post Horne's review for educational purposes. In my *opinion* Lyndon Johnson orchestrated the JFK assassination and that there were members of the Air Force, Secret Service and even CIA involved in the murder of JFK.

I do believe that Sean Fetter's book is filled with original research that makes it a very historically important book whether or not I agree with all of Fetter's conclusions on various aspects of the JFK case. Most people will find something very valuable to keep in this book that greatly adds to the historical record around the JFK case. I encourage folks to buy both volumes of Under Cover of Night.

Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Under Cover of Night: The United States Air Force and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy 

DOUGLAS HORNE - 12/31/2023 - who gives the book a "one-star" on Amazon

"A Medical Critique

By Douglas P. Horne, Former Chief Analyst for Military Records, ARRB; and author of the five-volume work “Inside the Assassination Records Review Board,” also available at Amazon.com.

This review is primarily a “medical critique” of three major aspects in Volume I of Sean Fetter’s UNDER COVER OF NIGHT.

(1) Fetter has fully adopted and thoroughly advanced David Lifton’s hypothesis from BEST EVIDENCE that the post mortem surgery to JFK’s head wounds (evidenced in both Dr. Boswell’s autopsy sketch of the severe damage to the top of JFK’s skull, and in the graphic autopsy photos showing the top of JFK’s cranium removed---damage that no one saw at Parkland Hospital) occurred well before the President’s body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital the night of the assassination. In my many telephone conversations with Lifton from 1996-2000, before we largely parted ways with each other, Lifton indicated to me many times that he still believed this to be the case, in spite of the strong evidence to the contrary that I presented to him on numerous occasions. Fetter explicitly states his support for this old Lifton hypothesis when he states the same conclusions, on pages 46 and 52; in summary, in Volume I of UNDER COVER OF NIGHT, Sean Fetter concludes that JFK’s corpse was violently mutilated (namely, that the top of the head was hacked open with a “crash axe,” and his throat wound was torn open); his spinal cord was severed; and his brain was removed from the cranium, all long before 6:35 PM when Kennedy’s body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital. So, as much as Fetter decries Lifton’s analytical abilities, and disparages him personally, he has endorsed THE major hypothesis in Lifton’s BEST EVIDENCE.

And yet, strong dispositive evidence exists that post mortem tampering with JFK’s wounds did NOT occur prior to the arrival of his body at Bethesda Naval Hospital---and that JFK arrived at Bethesda with his head in the same condition that was observed when his body left Parkland Hospital, in Dallas: namely, with a localized, avulsed exit wound in the right rear quadrant of his head, about the size of a baseball or small orange; with the top of the head apparently intact; and with the brain still in the cranium.

Here is my evidence:

(a) Gawler’s Funeral Home mortician Tom Robinson drew a wound diagram for both the HSCA on 1/12/1977, and for the ARRB on 6/21/1996, depicting a wound about the size of a baseball in the back of JFK’s head. The top of the head was intact in his diagrams. On the ARRB wound diagram, Robinson drew dotted lines that were more or less horizontal, below and above the baseball-sized wound. When we asked Robinson what the dotted lines were during his 1996 interview, he said: “Those were saw cuts---that’s where the skull had to be sawed open to get the brain out.” He told both the HSCA staff in 1977, and the ARRB staff in 1996, that he personally saw the brain removed at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
(b) Robinson also told the ARRB staff that the B&W autopsy photos showing the top of the head missing depict “what the doctors did, not what the bullet did.” By “the doctors,” he clearly meant the Bethesda pathologists, not the treatment physicians at Parkland Hospital.
(c) Navy x-ray technician Ed Reed testified under oath to the ARRB in 1997 that he saw Chief Pathologist CDR James J. Humes at Bethesda perform the first stages of post mortem surgery on the TOP of JFK’s skull, by using a scalpel and a circular bone saw to make long, horizontal cuts in JFK’s frontal bone just behind the hairline at the top of the President’s forehead. Significantly, he saw DR. JAMES J. HUMES perform this post mortem surgery---NOT Roy Kellerman! In contrast, Sean Fetter claimed in chapters 17 and 18 of UNDER COVER OF NIGHT that it was Secret Service Agent ROY KELLERMAN who mutilated JFK’s skull, using a “crash axe,” inside the forward luggage compartment of Air Force One, prior to takeoff from Love field in Dallas. (Fetter also appears to imply that this may have occurred between the swearing-in of LBJ at 2:39 PM, and takeoff, at 2:47 PM; very fast work, if true!) Fetter provided no single eyewitness to Kellerman performing this macabre deed, and did not even provide an eyewitness to Kellerman borrowing the AF1 “crash axe,” or even asking to use it!
(d) Significantly, Navy CAPT Robert CANADA (the Commanding Officer of the treatment hospital at Bethesda in 1963) told author Michael Kurtz on March 6, 1968 that he observed a “very large, 3 to 5 cm wound in the right rear of the President’s head, in the lower right occipital region,” and stated that it was “clearly an exit wound,” because the occipital bone was “avulsed,” or exploded outward. [See page 39 of Kurtz’s book THE JFK ASSASSINATION DEBATES. Canada requested that his description of what JFK looked like when he arrived at Bethesda be kept secret until 25 years after his death, and accordingly, Kurtz only published it in 2006.] Significantly, Canada did not describe any bone missing, or any wound, in the TOP of the head---only in the right rear. Like Robinson’s description, the head wound described by CAPT Canada was far too small for the brain to have been removed.
(e) Finally, during his 1978 HSCA deposition, Dr. Ebersole, the autopsy radiologist, described an occipital wound (in the right rear of the skull) when he first saw JFK’s body before the autopsy began; he did not describe seeing any damage to the top of the skull at that time.
(f) The “outlier” here is the recollection of Navy corpsman Paul O’Connor, who told the HSCA staff on August 29, 1977 that when he looked into the cranium shortly after 8:00 PM the night of the autopsy at Bethesda, there was no brain in the cranium, only “splattered brain matter.” I have believed for years that O’Connor was exaggerating and misinterpreting the missing brain tissue in the forebrain area (shown as a black void in the lateral skull x-rays) as the “complete absence of a brain.” This was surely a subjective interpretation error by Paul O’Connor. It was the first impression he was confronted with when JFK’s head was unwrapped shortly after 8 PM in the morgue. But O’Connor could NOT have been correct, because Dr. Humes removed JFK’s brain at the autopsy, and Navy corpsman Jim Jenkins infused what was left of that brain shortly thereafter, when it was placed in a bucket of formaldehyde. FBI agent Francis O’Neill recalled seeing JFK’s brain removed at the autopsy during his 1997 ARRB deposition, as well. O’Connor’s time marker of 8:00 PM is significant; he was reporting on the results of post mortem surgery AT BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL in-between the time of 6:35 PM when JFK’s body arrived, and the commencement of the formal autopsy shortly after 8:00 PM. (There WAS post mortem surgery performed at Bethesda by Dr. Humes, to permit access to the brain so that bullets, bullet fragments, and bullet tracks in the brain tissue could be removed before the autopsy began. It was this state of affairs, shortly after that clandestine surgery was performed, that O’Connor was reacting to when he incorrectly inferred that there was “no brain in the cranium” during his HSCA interview in 1977. The removal of JFK’s brain by Dr. Humes, witnessed by FBI agent O’Neill, and the infusion of that brain by Jim Jenkins, prove that O’Connor was merely exaggerating when he said that there was “no brain in the cranium.”)

THUS, Sean Fetter’s conclusion that the post mortem tampering to JFK’s head wounds occurred well before Bethesda, and that his brain was removed prior to the arrival of JFK’s body at Bethesda, is firmly and conclusively contradicted. He has not produced one direct witness to ROY KELLERMAN (the culprit he identified) performing the vicious mutilation he ascribed to him in the forward luggage compartment of AF1 while on the ground at Love Field; Tom Robinson and CAPT Canada and Dr. Ebersole saw the same head wound on JFK at Bethesda that was seen at Parkland Hospital; Tom Robinson and Frank O’Neill saw Dr. Humes remove JFK’s brain at Bethesda; Jim Jenkins infused that brain after Dr. Humes removed it; and Navy x-ray technician Ed Reed saw Dr. Humes perform the illicit, clandestine post mortem cranial surgery AT BETHESDA, which means Sean Fetter’s claim that S.S. agent Roy Kellerman performed it hours earlier, at Love Field in the AF1 baggage hold, is manifestly incorrect.

(2) I also find Fetter’s treatment of the JFK skull x-rays unsatisfactory, for the following reasons:
(a) In footnote 958 on page 366, Fetter states that the use of the “crash axe” on JFK’s skull in the forward luggage compartment of AF1 produced “HUNDREDS” of bone fragments, without producing any witnesses who saw hundreds of fragments; Fetter then goes on to expand “HUNDREDS” to “500 or 1,000” bone fragments---again, without any witnesses.
(b) Fetter concludes that since we only see about 6 large skull fragments in the JFK lateral skull x-rays, that “plainly, the existing official x-rays do NOT depict JFK’s actual skull,” and that therefore the extant x-rays are “falsified images.” But this conclusion of his is based on his personal estimate that there must have been “hundreds,” perhaps “500 or 1,000” small bone fragments after Roy Kellerman did his purported handwork on JFK’s skull with the “crash axe.” Sean Fetter has proven that he has quite an imagination; but imagining something does not make it a fact.
(c) In actuality, the true evidence that the extant JFK skull x-rays are altered copy films is not the imagination, or uninformed opinion, of Sean Fetter--- but rather, the optical densitometry analysis of Dr. David Mantik, MD, PhD, following his 9 visits to the National Archives to view the extant skull x-rays and examine them with an optical densitometer. Mantik’s conclusions about alteration are based on painstaking and repeated empirical scientific measurements, not the fevered imagination of a layman who never actually cited any witness to “500 or 1,000 bone fragments.” And Mantik has not concluded that “500 or 1,000” fragments were somehow covered up, but rather that a “white patch” (the result of light blasting of the original x-ray film in a darkroom) was created to hide the large occipital-parietal blowout seen in the right-rear of the head at Parkland Hospital. The missing tissue (brain and bone) from the exit wound in the right rear of JFK’s head is what was covered up by the optical “white patch,” according to Dr. Mantik. This has been rigorously explained in chapter 5 of my own book INSIDE THE ARRB, as well as in numerous other writings by Dr. Mantik himself.
(d) Sean Fetter’s anti-science approach to the skull x-rays is truly startling. In footnote 958 he wrote: “Thus all the well-meaning efforts by JFK researchers to ‘analyze’ the extant skull x-rays…have been a totally wasted effort. You do not and cannot uncover the truth by granting any credence or ‘legitimacy’ to criminally falsified imagery.” What Sean Fetter does not understand is that the only falsified part of the two lateral skull x-rays is the “white patch” that obscures the Parkland exit wound; and the only falsified part of the A-P skull x-ray is the “fake 6.5 mm bullet fragment” added to that image to implicate the accused assassin. The sinuses and the teeth in the JFK skull x-rays have been verified as JFK’s by forensic anthropologists and forensic radiologists. His attitude that nothing can be learned from studying the skull x-rays is unscientific in the extreme, and should be unacceptable to all readers of his book. The attitude he displays in this regard is that of a 19th century “know nothing,” someone who revels in his own ignorance.
(e) Qualified experts who have studied the extant skull x-rays have detected the presence of a partial brain (that is, what was left of the brain after JFK was hit by three headshots) in the cranium. I suspect that this is what is most unacceptable to Sean Fetter about those who want to scientifically study the skull x-rays, for this finding contradicts his theory that the brain was removed from the cranium long before JFK’s body arrived at Bethesda. The finding that some brain is present in the skull x-rays is shared by Dr. Mantik and Dr. Chesser (both well-credentialed JFK researchers who had access to the autopsy materials in the Archives), as well as by the ARRB’s radiological consultant, Dr. Fitzpatrick, a forensic radiologist. Sean Fetter’s anti-science attitude that these experts are not worth listening to is offensive, and does not serve the American people well. This attitude on his part is very detrimental to the legitimacy of his book.

(3) Sean Fetter also stated in UNDER COVER OF NIGHT that he believed all of the shots that hit JFK came from the front alone, and that all of the “wounds” supposedly on the back of JFK’s body [namely, an entry wound in the back, and an entry wound in the back of the skull] were “false wounds,” i.e., were man-made after his death. This is simply a repetition, and endorsement, of David Lifton’s theory in chapter 14 of BEST EVIDENCE, titled “Trajectory Reversal: Blueprint for Deception.” Fetter doesn’t acknowledge this overtly, but it is true. I object to this “false wounding theory” not only because Fetter did not produce any witnesses to such macabre activity, but also for the two reasons stated below:
(a) Back (Thorax) Entry Wound: the bullet holes in JFK’s shirt and coat appear to align precisely, and furthermore, the FBI detected traces of copper (from a bullet’s metal jacket) around the entrance wound in JFK’s suit coat; and
(b) Skull Rear Entry Wound: all three pathologists at JFK’s autopsy provided convincing descriptions that the entry wound in the back of the skull had the characteristics of a classic wound of entry in the cranium---namely, internal beveling on the inside of the skull, opposite the smaller rear entry site. Furthermore, traces of metal from this entering bullet (from behind) were deposited on the Harper Fragment (of occipital bone) found Saturday, 11/23, in Dealey Plaza---per one of the x-rays taken of the Harper Fragment by the FBI.

The claims by Sean Fetter’s admirers that he has justified every claim and provided evidence for all of his findings are premature, to say the least. He has provided many tantalizing and exciting claims that supposedly come from the mouths of former members of Air Force flight crews that he has interviewed: pilots, co-pilots, flight engineers, stewards, radio operators, and refueling personnel. At first blush, and upon first reading, many of the words and statements he has ascribed to them are quite exciting to read. BUT…and this is a big “but”…unless his claims of what they have said to him are properly established, they cannot be treated as fully credible. Where are the audio tape recordings and/or video recordings, and the transcripts, which support the recorded audio or video? His readers need to see and hear those, before his claims about what they have said are worthy of belief. Without that supporting documentation, unsupported “witness statements” in his book are inherently suspect. The burden of proof for Fetter’s extraordinary claims of what they have said is on HIM. Only when Sean Fetter proves that his witnesses actually said these things that he ascribes to them, can we then began to seriously ponder what their statements might mean.

My final criticism of UNDER COVER OF NIGHT pertains to an outrageous statement made by its author on page 593 in Volume II, in which Fetter cavalierly dismisses the serious historical work of numerous historians over decades of painstaking work:

“…the JFK assassination plot did NOT occur because of fierce intra-governmental disputes over Vietnam, or Communism in general, or nuclear war, or Cuba, or Berlin, or civil rights, or the Federal Reserve, or the CIA---nor because of President Kennedy’s words, policies, actions, or inaction on any subject.”

This was followed immediately by a very revealing footnote, which highlights Sean Fetter’s remarkable hubris and disdain for the work of others, in which he continued:

“Author’s exclusive original discovery. (Anyone who believes otherwise simply hasn’t done their homework; lacks sufficient analytical skill; or has extremely limited contact with reality. Some people, of course, plainly suffer from all three maladies.)”

Summing up my cautionary review, Sean Fetter spends most of Volume II blaming the entire assassination plot solely on his “Beelzebub,” the lone criminal mastermind who (according to Fetter) initiated, engineered, and managed the entire JFK assassination plot: Lyndon Baines Johnson. If you don’t agree with him that LBJ was the mastermind and chief engineer and executor of the plot, he views you as a lightweight lacking in analytical skill that hasn’t done his homework, and who has limited contact with reality.

I am no lover of LBJ, not by any means, and furthermore, I do actually believe that he DID have foreknowledge of JFK’s forthcoming assassination (and indeed, welcomed it). But this simplistic view of history expressed by Sean Fetter, which rejects the decades of serious work by accomplished scholars like political scientist (and former Army intelligence officer) Dr. John Newman---namely, Fetter’s attempt to divorce the events of November 22, 1963 from any historical causation other than the machinations of one evil man---is so simplistic that it is a disservice to the American people, and disrespects the work of scores of serious historians on this subject. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us; even Isaac Newton (the world’s greatest physicist) recognized that. Only Sean Fetter, among all of the JFK researchers I know, doesn’t acknowledge this. This remarkable and stunning hubris---namely, that no one else has properly understood the evidence in the JFK case, and that only Sean Fetter has figured everything out properly---does not serve him well, and makes his book very hard to stomach. END

 

Edited January 5 by Robert Morrow
Added web link to Horne's Amazon review

[Joe Bauer]

On 12/23/2023 at 4:28 PM, Robert Morrow said:

November, 2023, William Ramsey interviews Sean Fetter, the author of "Under Cover of Night: The United States Air Force and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The interview is one hour long. Sean Fetter started studying the JFK assassination in the fall of 1983 - so he has 40 years of JFK research under his belt. I am enjoying reading Fetter's book currently and, no, I do not agree with all of his conclusions. Fetter focuses on the role of Lyndon Johnson and the Air Force in the JFK assassination.

 

I implore our members ( and our usual 75 guests ) to give this podcast a look/hear.

It is incredibly compelling.

The guest speaker is so well spoken which makes his presentation even more interesting. 

Reposting here an entry of mine just two days ago on the Curtis LeMay thread.

Fetter goes deep into the LeMay and Lyman Lemnitzer/JFK relationship in his new book which I am acquiring in the next week.

 I was listening to Coast to Coast last night when RFK Jr was on.  RFK Jr talked about the missile crises in Cuba and how there were many Russians operating the missile sites.  RFK Jr went on to say many in the Pentagon wanted to attack Russia,  but JFK refused to do so and thus caused a major  divide between his uncle  and the Pentagon.  The only person RFK Jr. revealed was Curtis LeMay.  Per RFK Jr,  LeMay called his uncle a traitor.  LeMay was the only person  RFK Jr  pointed out in the attack on his uncle.

I think it's fair to say that General Lyman Lemnitzer was also not a fan of JFK.

To what degree is the question.

Did Lemnitzer respect his fellow General Curtis Le May more than JFK?

Also wonder what Lemnitzer thought of General Edwin Walker.

 Lemnitzer was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September 1960 allowing to remain on active duty despite having reached the mandatory retirement age of 60. As chairman, Lemnitzer was involved in the Bay of Pigs crisis and the early years of United States involvement in the Vietnam War. He was also required to testify before the United States Senate Foreign Affairs Committee about his knowledge of the activities of Major General Edwin Walker, who had been dismissed from the Army over alleged attempts to promote his political beliefs in the military.

As chairman, Lemnitzer approved the plans known as Operation Northwoods in 1962, a proposed plan to discredit the Castro regime and create support for military action against Cuba by staging false flag acts of terrorism and developing "a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington". Lemnitzer presented the plans to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962. It is unclear how McNamara reacted, but three days later President John F. Kennedy told the general that there was no chance that the US would take military action against Cuba. Within a few months, after the refusal to endorse Operation Northwoods, Lemnitzer was denied another term as chairman.^[4

^]In 1975, President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer to the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, also known as the Rockefeller Commission, to investigate whether the CIA had committed acts that violated US laws, and allegations that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis (of Watergate fame) were involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.