The Audio of the Parkland Conference Might Be Available Soon

[Micah Mileto]

On 3/19/2024 at 2:16 AM, David Von Pein said:

 

This is David Lifton's comment from 1999:
 

NOTE: This post is a revised and updated version of something I wrote more hastily earlier this evening and placed on the thread "Two Paradigms". Please put all comments and replies at this location. Sorry for the inconvenience of what may at first appear to be a "double post."

 

* * *

 

A decent question deserves a decent response, and so here goes in response to a question by Tony Pittman:

 

David,

 

I dont know how many TV and radio stations covered that press conference live or how many bought the rights to broadcast it but wouldn't each and every one of them have had the actual film or tapes of it, never mind transcripts?And they would certainly have had them before the Oval Office. Why on earth would CBS have to get them from the Oval Office?

 

Tony

 

RESPONSE: I don't know who may have broadcast that press conference. But as to who was in the room and may have recorded it, that's another question, and one which I will try to address here.

 

I originally believed that the press conference was both recorded on audio AND on film (or video tape).

 

But (as far as I know) no such audio tape or film (at least, film with sound) or video has ever turned up. Now, why is that?

 

Around 1972, while spending several weeks at the National Archives, I found the following data which may explain just what is going on here.

 

In the months following the assassination, all---and I mean all extant tapes from every single Dallas radio station---was collected by agents of the Secret Service (as I recall) and brought to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma; and audio inventories created.

 

By "inventory", I mean that each and every tape was individually listened to and its contents carefully listed. i.e., someone sat with a headset, listened to the tape, and typed up a numbered list of what subjects were on the tape. The entries were a couple of lines apiece, and in the format of a brief synopsis.

 

Those inventories---along with the tapes---were (at some point) sent to the Wrren Commission, where they have a CD ("Commission Document") number (which I do not have handy). In a project that went on for a week or more, I sat in the office of archivist Les Waffen, examining each and every one of those inventories---there were hundreds of pages involved---and then listening with a headset to anything on the tapes that appeared interesting (and of course, back then, prior to the days of A and E and the History Channel, and the numerous documentaries that have been made on this case, just about everything seemed "interesting.")

 

Those audio inventories made at Tinker AFB provided a comprehensive"table of contents" as to what went out over the air that day (and even that weekend); and the tapes themselves provide a wonderful window to the JFK assassination, and how it was covered by the media.

 

Now let's go back to March, 1964, around the time the inventories were completed.

 

Once the Government had those inventories it would have been easy to control the historical archive on this event. Specifically it would have been easy for anyone working through the Secret Service to then spot---and delete---the Perry press conference. And then delete same on the corresponding tape.

 

In any event, and now coming to my main point: the inventories of Dallas radio station broadcasts ---as they were then called (and as I presume they still now exist at the National Archives)--- contain no entry for the Dallas doctors press conference; and, of course, the corresponding Dallas Radio Station tapes contain no such item, either.

 

The inventories themselve run several hundred pages; and when you see them (they are a Warren Commission CD, i.e., "Commission Document") you will immediately realize the tremendous effort that went into this"media" project---conducted at a U.S. military base just a few months after the Dallas assassination.

 

To create inventories as detailed as these means that, at Tinker Air Force Base (and within weeks of the assassination), there was a room with people wearing headsets poring over the Dallas radio tapes, one by one, listening to each tape, and then creating page by page snyopses of the content of each tape.

 

My question: Who ordered this huge operation? Why was it done? Was it a politician (i.e., someone in the Johnson White House?); Was it someone in the U.S. Secret Service? Or did some Air Force General suddenly take an avid interest in what went out over the Dallas airwaves that day?

 

My speculation: Somebody was looking for something; and my best guess is that its purpose was (a) to get a general view of what had gone out over the airwaves in connection with this event and (b) specifically to locate (and delete) the audio of that first (and very damaging, legally and historically speaking) press conference.

 

In any event, the "Dallas Radio Tape Inventories" exist and I spent not weeks, but months, working on the project of carefully studying them, recording selected excerpts from the corresponding tape collection, transcribing my voluminous excerpts, and then joining all that data with the WFAA Index (also at the National Archives) and then adding to that still another data base: both the AP and UPI original wire copy.

 

When all this stuff is joined together, and indexed by subject (which I did, in 1975, and it took months of hard work), the result is one or more 3 ring binders with a total of about 40 subsections, in which one can look up just about any subject of interest---JFK Medical data, what Wade said about the palmprint, etc.---and have a list of what media coverage there is of that item, at least insofar as I was able to locate such material; i.e., based on the Dallas radio station broadcasts, the WFAA collection, and the AP and UPI wire.

 

This project, incidentally, only reinforced me view that if you falsify evidence at the source (i.e., falsify autopsy conclusions by altering wounds on the body) you can deceive an entire investigatory and media apparatus, which simply relays the information "downstream".

 

But returning to the major point, and getting closer now to an answer to your specific question:

 

What became immediately apparent to me, from the Tinker Air Force Base project, was how unusual that project was, and that its genesis was never investigated. i.e., no one on the Warren Commission----upon receiving all these materials---ever asked the Secret Service: Who ordered this done, and why? Why were you bringing radio station audio to Tinker Air Force Base?

 

Anyway, from all this it became apparent to me that (a) no radio tape record of the Dallas doctors press conference existed (and this, as I have indicated, might be the reason why; i.e., any such item would have been located during the Tinker AFB project and then possibly deleted) and (b) no video (with sound) record existed either a similar operation took place with the video, or perhaps it was simply a case of no video cameras being in the room. (I have a vague memory of Gary Mack telling me that no video cameras were in the room.)

 

Now, returning to the afternoon of NOvember 22, 1963, and the tumult at Parkland Hospital:

 

This "Dallas doctors press conference" was treated ---at the time, and for administrative purposes---as a "White House press conference". Present was a stenographer, and the result was a transcript---but not a transcript that was released to the public, at least not at the time.

 

But the only reliable extant record is that of the stenographer (and a picture of him, taking down the words of Perry is published, in BEST EVIDENCE).

 

That "White House transcript" was physically located at the White House (and I was informed, back in 1976, by someone connected with the prduction of the four CBS specials---narrated by Walter Cronkite, and which were aired in June of 1967)---that the transcript was actually found in the Oval Office).

 

If this is in fact the case, then at the time that the Secret Service was asked by the Warren Commission---this was sometime in the Spring of 1964---to please locate any record of the Perry Press conference, that record had already been transcribed and the transcript was resident at the White House (yet the Secret Service told the Warren Commission they could find no such item).

 

As to its exact location: While it may have eventually ended up being placed in a White House press office file, I was assured that in 1967, when it was first discovered, it was located in the Oval Office, and was supplied by somenoe connected with the Johnson White House to a senior person connected with the four CBS TV project---this, again, in connection with their production of the very pro-Warren Report show back in June, 1967, which had to deal with the question of what exactly did Dr. Perry say at that very first meeting with the press?

 

Now we have to go from 1967 over to around 1975.It was a copy of that transcript that I learned from other Warren Commission critics (Stamm, Meagher, et all) had been located---by Roger Feinman (then a low level CBS employee)--- at CBS, and it was then, after I found that out, and had telephone contact with Feinman, and found how difficult he was to deal with, that I then ordered a copy from the JFK and/or LBJ libraries.

 

As posted previously to this group, I made no original discovery in this area. And I wanted to give Feinman credit for having found this item, but Feinman insisted that I claim (falsely, and to "protect" him) that it was actually found at the LBJ library. Of course, that was not the case. The existence of this transcript first came to light as the result of its being used as the basis for a portion of a book written in the aftermath of the four CBS-TV broadcasts---a 1967 book by Steve White titled "Should We Now Believe the Warren Report"---see Chapter 3 of Best Evidence for fuller discussion of all this). Anyway, in BEST EVIDENCE (see the section this in Chapter 3), I reported the truth---that the transcript was found at CBS and by a CBS News employee---but I left Feinman's name out of it, to avoid any legal

problems from him, and so he could continue playing his silly games up at CBS (and it was only later that I learned what the fuss was really all about; i.e., that the CBS copy of this transcript represented a company document, a "working paper" as they say, and---being in dutch with CBS at the time, and in fact having been fired in 1975, and with his case up for a hearing, he wanted to look clean as a whistle, and not have it charged that he had made off with any of CBS News' working papers. In fact, as I learned at about that time (and from someone close to Feinman who then related it to me) Feinman had repeatedly bragged that he had a footlocker full of documents pertaining to the creation of the four 1967 programs, and which he had made off with during the course of his employment at CBS News, and which he thought was hot stuff and which was supposed to "blow the lid" off the JFK assassination. In particular, it was apparently Feinman's intention to document the manner in which CBS had been engaged in a cover-up.

 

Hot stuff? Maybe it was and then again, maybe not. It was apparently not "hot" enough to make Feinman's alleged "book" a reality; although he talked about it quite a bit with his mentor, Sylvia Meagher, and she apparently had high hopes that "Feinman's book" would someday be a reality. But all that is another matter, and is not worth discussing here. Except to add that if you see Roger Feinman getting all sensitive as to whether the White House Transcript of the Perry press conference (formally numbered: 1347-C) came from the files of CBS News or whether it was first obtained (by Feinman) from the LBJ library, that is what the problem is and what the fuss is all about. Its not some minor historical footnote, in which Roger Feinman is suddenly oh-so-interested in historical accuracy. (And I certainly never said---in Best Evidence---that I discovered the document.) The underlying issue ---from Feinman's point of view---is "Feinman's Footlocker" (my quotes, let us be accurate. Tse. Tse.)

 

Hope you found this enlightening. In writing all of the above, I took a brief look at certain journals I keep about my work, the dates I visited the National Archives, records of conversations I had with various third parties; and at my "media project" binders from 1975, and am amazed at the work I put into all of this some 25 years ago. And all on typewriters! No computers then.

 

Let us call this post, informally: "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Transcript 1347-C. . . but were Afraid to Ask."

 

More pics: https://jfkassassinationfiles.wordpress.com/2019/08/29/parkland-hospital-transcripts/

 

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/malcolm-perry-signed-jfk-fdc-kennedy-1874928248

 

At least some parts of the conference were filmed, and there is at least 37 seconds of surviving silent footage of the time that Perry was speaking (Link). Photographs taken of the conference show multiple microphones in the room during Perry and Clark’s appearance (Link [link 2]). Clark and Perry told the Commission that there were “tape recorders” in the room (WC Vol. 6, pp. 18-27, Dr. William Kemp Clark’s 3/21/1963 testimony [text]), and Perry also mentioned there being “microphones” (WC Vol. 3, pp. 366-390, Perry's 3/30/1964 testimony [text]).

 

Edited June 6 by Micah Mileto