Who Had "The Football" on 11/22/63?

[Bernice Moore]

According to Manchester, Gearhart had the football, and he was not left behind at Parkland. Johnson and his men paid no attention to him (I'm sure Johnson knew exactly what was going on and that the Russians had nothing to do with it), but Gearhart took it upon himself to sit on a policeman's lap from Parkland to Love Field.

Manchester says that eyeglasses seen reflecting light from the rear in the photo of Johnson being sworn in are Gearhart's glasses.

Ron

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

**********************

Hi Ron:

When Gearhart was separated from Johnson, it would not necessarily have been accidentally...It could have been deliberately arranged by the military personnal at the upper level of the plot..They may not have trusted Johnson with the steel

30lb.. suitcase that held the key to a retaliatory attack, perhaps it was imperative that for the first few hours following the transfer of power, that the planners have complete control of all aspects...foreign and domestic.

It is hard to believe the United States was off guard in anyway, within the Pentagon

where total control was concentrated, the high military officials were in command,

they were aware, and prepared for any situation that might arise from foreign or

a domestic source...

In Bishop's book, it contains another revealing incident: "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 MacNamara and the Joint Chief of Staff ' are now the President".".......Perhaps because the assassination was on a need to know basis ,the party that called was a low echelon officer who was unaware of what was happening..It was interesting that the communication officer who took the phone to announce the transfer of power was a member of the Presidential party and was fully aware of what was taking place.....

Communications of all kinds seemed to have been deemed important by those who planned and carried out the assassination..Several strange incidents that involved communications in Dallas..Washington...and abroad occurred..that day...

They of course have been attributed to coincidence , but what are the odds.?

In Dallas the police radio was immobilized at 12.29 Channel One of the DP radio system was rendered inoperative when someone within the dept. keyed his radio microphone button for four minutes, making it impossible for any police communication from the kill zone during the critical moments...and immediately afterward.....Channel One was reserved that day for those officers in the security of the President..From 12.29 till 12.33 the only audible sound on the police audio tape is the rumbling of a motorcycle engine...In Dallas the press telephone within the motorcade was immobilized..At 12.34 the radiophone in the press car carrying the members of the wire services was rendered inoperative, also.....In fact a fight broke out between UPI's Merriman Smith and Jack Bell of the AP.Bell finally managed to grab it after Smith has issued the initial report that shots had been fired , but to Bell's dismay, the line inexplicably went dead..

In Washington there was a crucial breakdown of communications when the telephone system ,in the capital went out at approximately 12.33..pm..It was almost an hour before full telephone service resumed ..It was explained ,that it was due to overloaded phone lines, was the Pentagon affected by this shut down??

Abroad, a teletype machine aboard a military aircraft carrying the Cabinet members to Japan began chattering the first report that shots had been fired, there was a moment of panic ,fearing an international plot, and with codes and procedures for such and emergency,Sec. of State Dean Rusk and Press Sec. Pierre Salinger attempted to contact the White House for verification..The did reach the Situation Room but were prohibited from authenticating the data because the "official code book was missing"..from it's special place aboard the plane.

After a futile search the Sec of State was forced to break procedures with coded communications ,Rusk was forced to break the code and communicate with the WH in plain English..

This was not happenstance that the President, the Vice President and six members of the Cabinet were away from the centre of power on Nov.22/63.It seems as though it was by design that Sec. of State Dean Rusk, Treasury Sec. Douglas Dillon, Interior Sec. Stewart Udall, and Labor Sec.W.W.Wirtz, as well as other administration officials like Press Sec. Salinger, were trapped on an airplane over the Pacific at such a critical time..These men perhaps thought they represented the true power of the nation but by all authority that day it belonged to the powerful military chieftans deep within the Pentagon....

As an additive....

In Hawaii on Nov. 21/63 , the day before......shortly after lunch Honolulu time , U.S.Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge made a long distance call from the lobby of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel..Now this distinguished diplomat had acces to phones in privacy from his room or the military circuits at no cost....Yet he was seen, according to the Honolulu Star Bulletin, with a stack of quarters in his hand pitting coin after coin into a pay phone??

Mr.Lodge was in Honolulu for a nine hour summit conference on Nam with Sec. of Defence Robert McNamara ,Sec of State Dean Rusk, financial aid chief David E.Bell ,Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell D.Taylor, Admiral Harry D.Felt, and General Paul D.Harkins, then the Commander of U.S.Forces in Vietnam..

Lodge was the only person of the seven member policy-making body to stay at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.....the others stayed in the military quarters.

This group of high level political and military policymakers had just decided to step-up military operations against communist insurgents in Nam.

This desicion was in Direct Conflict with Presidentt Kennedy's announced intention

of Oct.63..to withdraw 1000 U.S.military personnel from Sth.Vietnam, reducing U.S.troop strength there to approximately 14.500..

Three days later Lodge met with the new President and was instructed by LBJ to return to Vietnam and inform the Saigon government of the new U.S policy pf strong military support for South Vietnam..

But from Washington......on the afternoon of Nov. 22/63......somewhere high over the United States, the new President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the passengers aboard AF 1....received the news that the assassination had been performed by one individual and no conspriacy existed.....The news came not from the scene of the crime,Dallas.....but from Washington D.C....specifically, it came from either McGeorge Bundy or Commander Oliver Hallet in the Situation Room of the White House Communications Agency...........manned by military personnel and receiving much of it's information from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the Pentagon.....

and Last but not least there was in the air over the U.S a mobile military force able to be thrown into action anywhere in the U.S where needed.......if trouble developed..The largest peacetime airlift in history had taken place, Operation Big Lift....had moved an entire combat division from Texas to Germany for thirty days just one month previous.....On the day of President Kennedy was killed, the last third of the returning troops were in the air at the time of the shooting...estimated to be a brigade combat team armed with personal weapons, which could have been deployed anywhere into action, in the nation on a very short notice.....if perhaps needed.....

But this was of course all coincidence, if not then it was an indication of the careful planning undertaken by the Military ......That day in Dallas.....

From:

The Day Kennedy Was Shot....Jim Bishop

Dallas Radio Tapes..11/22/63

The Death of a President....William Manchester

Forgive My Grief IV...Penn Jones

The Making of the President...Theodore White

Cover-Up.........Gary Shaw

B

[William Kelly]

http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v3n2/v3n2ritchson1.pdf

[Bernice Moore]

Bill: Peter

Some below may be of interest.....

I searched the files on CWO Robert M. Powell...

Made after John's request, but I have never found anything further...

Here is some further info from a folder, that you may be interested in, posted below.....this first information did preceed my post from a.. few years ago, link here on the EF, but have not been able to find that older thread so far.....It is from.....the book....

"Cover Up " by Shaw & Harris.

In the book by Jim Moore, "The Day The President Was Shot"..(" a well written but inaccurate book which is, essentially, the Warren Report in narrative form"...Shaw..Harris)...

Bishop tells the story of Officer Ira Gearhart who was a member of the Presidential party, carrying a metal suitcase which carried the all important electronic apparatus so that if needed the President could call, in code, a nuclear strike..He was called the Bagman , he had to remember the combination for the safe dial that opened the Bag, and stay at all times never more than a few seconds away from the President. within the bag there were various bulky packets, each having wax seals...and the signatures of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...The second contained what appeared to be gaudy pages of close text with what looked like color cartoons..more like horror comics as they had been carefully designed so that any one of Kennedy's three military aides could tell him quickly how many millions of casualties would result from Retaliation Able, Retaliation Baker, Retaliation Charlie, etc...Captain Tazwell Shepard had prepared these, what were called the Doomsday Books.......In one were cryptic numbers which would permit the President to set up a crude hot line to the Prime Minister of the U.K...and France on a four minutes notice..

Gearharts only job was to follow the President ,stick around and lug the "Bag" and of course remember the combinations...He and his ghastly burden were necessary...In Harry Truman's time, the on slot of the Cold War, it would have taken him four hours to think things through, by JFK's watch, it has been reduced to 15 minutes and was shrinking...

...Bishop relates how Gearhart becomes separated from the VIP portion of the motorcade as it raced to Parkland...and after arriving he did not know where the President was nor whom he was..The SS kept him away from the booth where LBJ had been placed...and that Johnson and Gearhart had been separated again, when LBJ raced to Love Field..." Somehow in the flight from the hospital ,the new President had overlooked the Bagman and the Major General Chester V.Clifton, who understood the coded types of retaliation..If at this time the Soviet Union had launched a missile attack , referred to in the DOD ....In Manchester's "Death of a President"....He states the advance man for the Texas trip was Warrant Officer Art Bales (Sturdy) 30yr old vet who new every executive in the Southwest Bell Telephone Co...he could bug any line from the nearest manhole or... conduit , and had all the facilities that enabled him to scramble almost any conversation and disconnect it without notice...The President needed one clear circuit to Washington when he was out of town..at all times..which means that Bales could pull the plug more or less on any Cabinet Member, if necessary...In the motorcades Bales would ride in the Signals control car, and he states by tradition this was the last car in the caravan , and that his companion there would be a swarthy Gearhart..When he tried to get into Minor Medicine where LBJ was waiting but he was unknown to the VPs men and was kept secluded in booth 8...until Emory Roberts saw him and identified him..when leaving Parkland, he had forced himself and his bag into a policeman's lap.....Stoughton took photographs of LBJs swearing in, and though he wished he were elsewhere he dutifully performs his duty, in one of the photos can be seen Gearhart's spectacles, identified by two tiny points of light..

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

This information below was posted by Ed LeDoux at Lancer..

Thanks Ed....

I have darkened the sentence pertaining to who took turns carrying said football....Rotating Aides...One from each branch of the service..

Per Gil Jesus:

"Gen. McHugh, the "Man with the Football", who usually sat in the front seat of the President's limo between the agents was removed and seated further back in the motorcade, as was the President's physician, Admiral Burkley. This was done on the morning of the 22nd at Love Field, just before the motorcade left. In addition, the order of the......................."

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

From:SURVIVOR’S GUILT / Chapter 11 by Vincent Palamara

Among countless other trips (Truman–Johnson), McNally was on the

Texas trip, working closely with Chief Warrant Officer Arthur W. Bales, Jr. and Ira Gearhart, a.k.a. “The Bagman” (these two men rode near the end of the motorcade in the White House Signal Corps car).

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

From: The story about JFK's Bible begins on page 320 of William Manchester's 1967 book THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT:

Godfrey McHugh was beside John Kennedy's coffin, standing rigidly at attention. Ken O'Donnell withdrew to the corridor. O'Brien participated in setting up the ritual which Lyndon Johnson had said Bob Kennedy wanted; then he retreated behind Sarah Hughes. The feeling extended to members of the permanent Presidential staff. Stoughton himself wished he were elsewhere. In his prints two tiny points of light identify the spectacles of Ira Gearhart, but the bagman and his football had to be there; the thermonuclear threat was no respecter of tragedy. Gearhart was alone. The crewmen had quietly retired. Boots Miller of the baggage detail was in the staff cabin with his face averted, cradling in his arms a paper bag containing Jacqueline Kennedy's ruined pillbox hat, and Jim Swindal recoiled down the aisle to Clint Hill's side and pressed his face against Roy Kellerman's broad back. As 26000's pilot the Colonel should have been present. Nobody had known that he took politics seriously. But beneath his Milton Caniff air the dapper Alabaman had idolized John Kennedy. He had not known he could suffer so. He felt as though he had a stone in his chest. It would have taken every Johnson agent to drag him into the stateroom. As he explained afterward, "I just didn't want to be in the picture, I didn't belong to the Lyndon Johnson team. My President was in that box."...

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

From: Apocalypse Soon By Robert S. McNamara

In my time as secretary of defense, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) carried with him a secure telephone, no matter where he went, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The telephone of the commander, whose headquarters were in Omaha, Nebraska, was linked to the underground command post of the North American Defense Command, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado, and to the U.S. president, wherever he happened to be. The president always had at hand nuclear release codes in the so-called football, a briefcase carried for the president at all times by a U.S. military officer.

*****************

Next post information from Ed Le Doux......

Background:

The "Nuclear Football," otherwise known as the President's Emergency Satchel, is a specially-outfitted, black-colored briefcase used by President of the United States to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. While its exact contents and operation are highly classified, several sources have provided details of the bag.

It is presumed to hold a secure SATCOM radio and handset, the daily nuclear launch codes known as the "Gold Codes," and the President's Decision Book—the "nuclear playbook" that the President would rely on should a decision to use nuclear weapons be made, based on the Single Integrated Operational Plan.

The National Security Agency updates the Gold Codes daily.

The playbook is said to contain 75 pages of options, to be used against four primary groups: Russian nuclear forces; conventional military forces; military and political leadership and economic/industrial targets. The options are further divided into Major Attack Options (MAOs), Selected Attack Options (SAOs), and Limited Attack Options (LAOs). With the SATCOM radio and handset, the president can contact the National Command Authority (NCA) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). To make rapid comprehension of the materials easier, the options are described in a heavily summarized format and depicted using simple images. The Football also contains the locations of various bunkers and airborne command-post aircraft, procedures for communicating over civilian networks, and other information useful in a nuclear-emergency situation.

The Football is carried by one of the rotating Presidential Aides (one from each of the five service branches), who occasionally is physically attached to the briefcase. This person is a commissioned officer in the U.S. military, pay-grade O-4 or above, who has undergone the nation's most rigorous background check (Yankee White). These officers are required to keep the Football within ready access of the President at all times. Consequently, an aide, Football in hand, is always either standing/walking near the President or riding in Air Force One/Marine One/Motorcade with him. The case itself is a metallic, possibly bullet-proof, modified Zero-Haliburton briefcase which is carried inside of a leather "jacket". The entire package weights approximately 40 pounds (18 kg). A small antenna, presumbaly for the SATCOM radio, protrudes from the bag near the handle. Contrary to popular belief, the "football" is not handcuffed to aides. Rather, carriers employ a black cable that loops around the handle of the bag and the wrist of the aide.

The concept of the Football came about in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F. Kennedy was concerned that some Soviet commander in Cuba might launch their missiles without authorization from Moscow. After the crisis, Kennedy ordered a review of the U.S. Nuclear Command and Control system. The result was the highly classified National Security Action Memorandum that created "the Football.

It has been suggested that the nickname Football was derived from an attack plan codenamed Drop-Kick.

On April 24, 1999, President Bill Clinton left NATO's 50th anniversary summit, being held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.. The carrier and the football were left behind. The aide walked the half-mile back to the White House alone. The integrity of the football and the state of the officer were intact.

Similar incidents have occurred with Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan <1>, and George H. W. Bush <2>.

*****************************************

W/H Communication Branch........Gearhart

" We were approximately six cars and two Press & Staff busses behind the President....The WHCA Com, Car was around two corners from and not in sight of the President's car...

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=326722

FWIW.......

B............

Edited June 29, 2008 by Bernice Moore

[William Kelly]

So...was It Warrant Officer Ira Gearhart who had custody of the football, or was it CWO Robert M. Powell, as John Ritchson mentioned on another thread yesterday?

AND...if there actually IS confusion as to who had custody, WHY ? It would appear to MY feeble mind that there should be a straightforward, unequivocal answer to the question of who had possession of the football on 11/22/1963.

Or was Ira Gearhart the "alias name and ID" referred to by Mr. Hemming?

Was this issue ever resolved?

Before reviving it, I noticed that this thread petered out around the same time John Ritchson died, and he was the one who had said it was CWO Robrt M. Powell.

Where did he get that name?

Thanks,

BK

[Bernice Moore]

So...was It Warrant Officer Ira Gearhart who had custody of the football, or was it CWO Robert M. Powell, as John Ritchson mentioned on another thread yesterday?

AND...if there actually IS confusion as to who had custody, WHY ? It would appear to MY feeble mind that there should be a straightforward, unequivocal answer to the question of who had possession of the football on 11/22/1963.

Or was Ira Gearhart the "alias name and ID" referred to by Mr. Hemming?

Was this issue ever resolved?

Before reviving it, I noticed that this thread petered out around the same time John Ritchson died, and he was the one who had said it was CWO Robrt M. Powell.

Where did he get that name?

Thanks,

BK

Hi Bill :

I have no idea, but to my knowledge......I recall him posting this question on jfkresearch that day, but no information was forth coming....he also inquired on the other forums as well.....

The only other I found in the documentation, was of a proposed manifest of those who would be going to Dallas. below...and Gearhart is listed..

B.....

[William Kelly]

Whose got the football?

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articl...26/202623.shtml

Excerpts From the White House Situation Room on the Day Reagan Was Shot

NewsMax.com

Tuesday, March 27, 2001

Transcript of recordings made by National Security Adviser Richard Allen on the day Ronald Reagan was shot, March 30, 1981.

COLSON: Someone out there wants to know if you want the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

ALLEN: I don't think we need him here ... Cap is the – Cap is here.

HAIG: Cap is the – and the football is near the Vice President – so that's fine.

ALLEN: We should get one over here. We have a duplicate one here.

HAIG: Get the football over here.

ALLEN: There is one at the military aide's office. The football is in the closet ... I don't think we need the Chair of the Joint Chiefs over here, do you? Let's leave him over at the NMCC [National Military Command Center, at the Pentagon]. This is a draft statement, but I want to put something else in it.

FIELDING: Do you want any other Cabinet members?

ALLEN: No, they should all be told to stand by. Here's the copy of that draft statement [on the President's condition]. You don't want the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs over here?

WEINBERGER: Well, I want ... not over here, I want him ...

ALLEN: At the NMCC.

WEINBERGER: Yeah, and they should go on alert or be ready to go on alert. SAC [the Strategic Air Command] went on alert with Kennedy's assassination.

***

HAIG: We'll be on a straight line from the hospital. So anything that is said, before it's said, we'll discuss at this table ... and any telephone calls that anybody is getting with instructions from the hospital come to this table first [raising voice] ... RIGHT HERE! And we discuss it and know what's going on.

WEINBERGER: I have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming on, Jones, in just a second. We're going to tell him to get alerts to the Strategic Air Command and such other units that seem to him to be desirable at this point.

HAIG: What kind of alert, Cap?

WEINBERGER: It's a standby alert ... just a standby alert.

HAIG: You're not raising readiness?

WEINBERGER: No, but the main thing is that he should stay there in the Command Center. Not here.

HAIG: Right.

DARMAN: Is that information not to be released up till ...

ALLEN: It'll leak ...

WEINBERGER: Well, until we know more about it. The alert, they'll probably put themselves on alert, but I just want to be sure.

HAIG: Do we have a football here? Do we?

ALLEN: Right there.

REGAN: Al! Don't elevate it! Be careful!

HAIG: Absolutely! Absolutely! That's why I toned down the message that was going out ... there's no reason for that.

WEINBERGER: Yeah, I don't think anything that talks about continuity of government or anything ... that sounds like we know a lot more than we do.

REGAN: This is apt to turn out to be a loner.

WEINBERGER: I think it was!

MURPHY: Cap, what do they mean by "alert"?

WEINBERGER: Well, an alert is ...

MURPHY: We've been down this path once before with Henry [Kissinger].

WEINBERGER: That's right. The alert simply is that there are conditions which may require very quick actions.

MURPHY: Are you sure that doesn't mean Defcon Three ... or Four?

WEINBERGER: No, no ... I'll fill in ... It's a matter of being ready for some later call ...

HAIG: Yeah, I think the important thing, fellows, is that these things always generate a lot of dope stories, and everybody is running around telling everybody everything that they can get out of their gut ... and I think it's goddamn important that none of that happens. The President, uh, as long as he is conscious and can function ...

WEINBERGER: Well, that's right ... the Vice President's in an Air Force plane.

ALLEN: Well, just let me point out to you that the President is not now conscious.

HAIG: No, of course not.

***

FIELDING: A rather technical thing is that the President can pass the baton temporarily under the law, and we're preparing that right now ... toward the eventuality ...

HAIG: That's what I was going to ask next. What are the legal ...

FIELDING: It's being prepared right now.

HAIG: That's the pass the baton to the Vice President ...

FIELDING: On a temporary basis. It passes to him in writing from the President until the President rescinds it.

HAIG: Has somebody gone into the Eisenhower precedent on this? I think we need that from a public-relations point of view.

FIELDING: Well, we may not want to put it out.

HAIG: No, the things you want to make note of are first, precisely what happened, notification of the Vice President, assembly of the key crisis Cabinet, preservation of continuity of command, and that it was handled.

WEINBERGER (on the telephone to the Pentagon): No, I think what we want to do is increase the degree of alertness so that in the event there should be anything required shortly, that could be done within a minimum amount of time ...

Gergen interrupted to ask a question, and Haig declared that he himself was constitutionally the person in charge.

GERGEN: Al, a quick question. We need some sense, more better sense of where the President is. Is he under sedation now?

HAIG: He's not on the operating table.

GERGEN: He is on the operating table!

HAIG: So the ... the helm is right here. And that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the Vice President gets here.

GERGEN: I understand that. I understand that.

HAIG: Yeah.

***

WEINBERGER: We've got the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Joint Chiefs in the Military Command Center. The alert has been raised from a normal condition to a standby condition under which they can move to a much higher degree very quickly. There is no, there will be no publicity about it. And the degree of alertness at the moment is going to commanders only, so that there would not be a lot of leaks right away from the men. All of that on the basis that at this point it looks like an isolated incident, but there isn't enough information and we want to remain alert. So that's where the armed forces stand.

***

HAIG: Why don't you come with me?

Allen (to staff): Okay, I'll be back later ...

HAIG: How do you get to the press room?

ALLEN: Up here.

HAIG: Yeah ... he's just turning this into a goddamned disaster!

ALLEN: Who has?

HAIG: How can he walk into the press room ... Speakes ...

ALLEN: Did he walk in up here?

HAIG: He's up there now.

ALLEN: Christ almighty, why's he doing that?

PRESS STAFFER: They want to know who's running the government.

ALLEN: Oh, well, just a minute ...

HAIG: We'll assemble them ... we'll ...

STAFFER: You're coming back? [shouting] They're coming back again ... The Secretary of State! The Secretary of State!

***

PRESS REPRESENTATIVE: Who is making the decisions for the government right now? Who is making the decisions?

HAIG: Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State, in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the Vice President and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.

***

REGAN: Preliminary investigation by the FBI and the Secret Service, no plot, no reason why the suspect shouldn't be in the area. They're conducting a background investigation in Lubbock, Texas. He stayed at the Park Central Hotel here, which is one block from the Executive Office Building.

WEINBERGER: We have the SAC bases ... we have the crews who are normally on alert twenty-four hours a day move from the base to their planes. The nearest submarine is [redacted] minutes, forty-seven seconds off, which is about two minutes closer than normal.

ALLEN: Nearest Soviet sub. Al, are you listening? [Redacted] minutes, forty-seven seconds – the nearest Soviet sub.

WEINBERGER: Yeah. Not enough to worry about. They're in and out there all the time, but it is a close approach. And the bomber crews of the Strategic Air Command, they are always on the alert, certain numbers, and those that are on alert now are moving from alert in their quarters and on the post to their planes. Simply stated, that's all ...

HAIG: That's based on the Soviet situation and not on anything here?

WEINBERGER: Well, that's based on the idea that until we know a little bit more about it, it is better to be in the plane which saves three and a half to four minutes than it is to stay in their quarters.

HAIG: I said up there, Cap ... I'm not a xxxx. I said there had been no increased alert.

WEINBERGER: Well, I didn't know you were going up, Al. I think if ...

HAIG: I had to, because we had the question already started and we were going to be in a big flap.

WEINBERGER: Well, I think we could have done a little better if we had concerted on a specific statement to be handed out. When you're up there with questions, why then it's not anything you can control, and ...

HAIG: Well, we had just discussed that here at the table, and we said we were not going to increase alert.

WEINBERGER: It may not be increasing the alert from a technical point of view, but once you get the additional information which I got about the one sub being closer than they've been before, then it seemed prudent to me to save three or four minutes.

HAIG: Yeah, but I think we could have discussed it.

WEINBERGER: Yeah, well, you were not here. I didn't know that you were going to make any statement, and I don't think it was a good idea to make a statement when you are with a question period. I think the best thing ...

HAIG: Well, you have the right to say that when we discuss it, and we did talk about it and everyone agreed there wouldn't be an increased alert.

WEINBERGER: I didn't know you were going up. I didn't have the information about the sub at that time. The stuff is coming in every three or four minutes.

HAIG: Well, you're not telling me we're on increased alert.

WEINBERGER: We have changed the condition to the extent I indicated.

HAIG: Is that a Defcon increase?

WEINBERGER: No, I don't think it is formally classified as such.

ALLEN: It's a change of degree, is it not? It's a change ...

WEINBERGER: It's an increased degree of alertness, yes.

ALLEN: Within Defcon Five, I presume.

WEINBERGER: Yes.

***

HAIG: Let me ask you a question, Cap. Is this submarine approach, is that what's doing this, or is it the fact that the President's under surgery?

WEINBERGER: What's doing what, Al?

HAIG: That we are discussing whether or not to put the NEACP bird up in the air.

WEINBERGER: Well, I'm discussing it from the point of view that at the moment, until the Vice President actually arrives here, the command authority is what I have ... and I have to make sure that it is essential that we do everything that seems proper.

HAIG: You'd better read the Constitution.

WEINBERGER: What?

HAIG (laughing): You'd better read the Constitution. We can get the Vice President any time we want.

WEINBERGER: Well, one way or another, the initial steps, because he's not in a position there to take all of them without consultation, one way or another we ought to prepare at least enough so that we can move more rapidly than we could otherwise.

HAIG: Is it because of the submarine or because of the incident, that's the question I'm asking.

WEINBERGER: The reason that I asked to have them move to the planes is because of the incident, and I would continue to take that position until I know absolutely definitely that it's an isolated incident, which I think it is. But I don't know that yet, and I don't want to take any kinds of risk. The risk of some newspaper story or some rumor is a hell of a lot less than not having things in place.://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/26/202623.shtml

[Mark Knight]

Good stuff, Bill.

In my mind, there's a question as to why there's not a similar record of what was going on in Washington, at the Pentagon or wherever else, in the moments following the JFK assassination. Instead, there appears to be a black hole. Did no DOD officials ever put a report on paper? If so, why would such information be classified nearly 46 years later? To protect personnel long dead? To protect methods and technology long obsolete? After the "outing" of Valerie Plame, for which no one has yet been prosecuted, it seems absurd that long-gone personnel should be protected so much more stringently than recent personnel. A 45-year-old in 1963 would be 90 now...and AFAIK, the KGB's not known for hunting down 90-year-olds.

Or maybe it's exactly what it seems...scores of government and military personnel running around like chickens with their heads cut off, confused,...you might call it a flock of flustered clucks.

Or you might call it what it was.

[Robert Howard]

Good stuff, Bill.

In my mind, there's a question as to why there's not a similar record of what was going on in Washington, at the Pentagon or wherever else, in the moments following the JFK assassination. Instead, there appears to be a black hole. Did no DOD officials ever put a report on paper? If so, why would such information be classified nearly 46 years later? To protect personnel long dead? To protect methods and technology long obsolete? After the "outing" of Valerie Plame, for which no one has yet been prosecuted, it seems absurd that long-gone personnel should be protected so much more stringently than recent personnel. A 45-year-old in 1963 would be 90 now...and AFAIK, the KGB's not known for hunting down 90-year-olds.

Or maybe it's exactly what it seems...scores of government and military personnel running around like chickens with their heads cut off, confused,...you might call it a flock of flustered clucks.

Or you might call it what it was.

Besides, wanting others to see a part of the written record of part of one the communications systems related to the assassination, there is something of a mystery person "Porter" in the following narrative, any serious feedback as to who this person is would be gratefully accepted and would further the cause, if you will.

The Death of a President excerpts of pages 61-63; by Manchester, William (1967)

In the autumn of 1963 the White House telephone number was still NA-tional 8-1414, that winter the digits took over and it was changed to 456-1414, and when the man

of the house was home communications were relatively simple. Of course, the President himself didn’t answer the phone. A light would flash on a forty-bulb switchboard on the fourth floor of the Executive Office Building and if you knew a name of a Presidential aide one of the women operators would instantly connect you with the proper extension, from which you could be transferred to the oval office , or the mansion. But the moment the Chief Executive left his helipad all that changed. Elaborate security precautions went into effect.

Even names were changed. Codes replaced them, from time to time names and groupings were changed. One man, who was Porter (P) in November 1963, became Super (S) and then River®. He has retired. The White House was no longer the White House. It was Castle, and during a trip the President’s precise location at any given moment was Charcoal. He, himself was no longer John Kennedy, he was Lancer, who was married to Lace, whose children were a daughter named Lyric and a son named Lark. The First Family was all in the L’s— though Lyric’s and Lark’s grandmother lived in a Georgetown house which was referred to as Hamlet. Secret Service men were in the D’s. Chief James J. Rowley was Domino, Digest, Dazzle, Deacon, Debut, and Tom Wells of the kiddie detail were Drummer, Dresser and Dasher. W’s were for staff; Ken O’Donnell, Lancer’s chief vassal was Wand. Evelyn Lincoln, was Willow, Pierre Salinger, Wayside.

Mac Kilduff who was to do Wayside’s press chores on the Texas trip— and, who ironically, had been told to start looking for another job, because Wand had decided that he was expendable— had been christened Warrior. General’s Clifton and McHugh were Watchman and Wing. Taz Shepard, who would be minding the store at Castle during the Texas trip, was Witness. V’s were reserved for the Vice-President and his family. Lyndon Johnson was Volunteer, Lady Bird, who had never had much luck with names became Victoria.

Tourists thought of the President’s home as stationary, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They were wrong. The White House was capable of multiple division. It could be in several cities simultaneously. The girls on the fourth floor of the Executive Office Building remained on duty, but the real White House was wherever Lancer happened to be, and once he hit the road the key switchboard was a jungle of color-coded wires in the executive mansion’s east basement, manned by elite Signal Corps technicians of the White House Communications Agency. It was a national security precaution that Lancer always be within five minutes of a telephone.

Colonel George McNally, alias Star— this was the S group— saw to it that he was much closer than that. There were phones in the President’s helicopter, phones aboard Aircraft 26000, portable phones spotted fifty feet away from every airfield space where 26000 could park, and radiophones in his motorcade cars, operating on two frequencies. Like the Secret Service and the Democratic National Committee, Colonel McNally had a corps of advance men. By dawn of that Thursday morning temporary switchboards had been installed in trailers and hotel rooms in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin and at the LBJ Ranch. Each had its own unlisted phone number.

The Dallas White House, for example, was in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel. It could be reached through RIverside 1-3421, RIverside 1-3422, and RIverside 1-3423, though anyone who dialed one of them and lacked a code name of his own would find the conversation awkward. S’s advance man for the Texas trip was Warrant Officer

Art Bales (Sturdy) a gaunt thirty-year veteran who knew every executive in the Southwest Bell Telephone Company could bug any line from the nearest manhole or conduit and had the facilities to scramble almost any conversation, or to disconnect it without notice. When out of town the President needed one clear circuit to Washington at all times, which meant that Bales had to pull the plug on a Cabinet member, if necessary. (Once the Secretary of State found himself talking to a dial tone.) In motorcades Bales would ride in the Signals control car. By tradition this was the last vehicle in the caravan, and his companion there, and his roommate at hotel stops, was a swarthy S man, Warrant Officer Ira D. Gearhart. Gearhart, or Shadow, had been assigned the most sinister task in the Presidential party. No one called him by his Christian name, his surname, or even by his code name. He was the “man with the satchel,” or, more starkly, “the bagman”. The bag (also known as “the black bag” and “the football”) was a thirty-pound metal suitcase with an intricate combination lock. Within were various Strangelove packets, each bearing wax seals and the signatures of the Joint Chiefs. Inside one were cryptic numbers which would permit the President to set up a crude hot line to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of France on four minutes’ notice. A second provided the codes that would launch a nuclear attack. The rest contained pages of close text enlivened by gaudy color cartoons. They looked like comic books — horror comics, really, because they had been carefully designed so that anyone of Kennedy’s three military aides could quickly tell him how many million casualties would result from Retaliation Able, Retaliation Baker, Retaliation Charlie, etc. Taz Shepard had prepared these doomsday books. No one liked to think about them, much less talk about them, and on trips the man with the football was treated as a pariah. He needed Art Bales company. His only job was to stick around, log the satchel, and remember that vital combination in case the duty aide forgot it. Yet both he and his ghastly burden were necessary. At the outset of the nuclear age Harry Truman would have had four hours to think things through if Soviet bombers had appeared over Canada in force. In the Kennedy administration that time had been cut to fifteen minutes, and it was shrinking.......

END

There is a remarkable lack of information about the code system itself, I find "Porter/Super/River" who subsequently retired, beyond interesting, although whether there is any reason to suspect he was more than a simple cog in the wheel is speculative.

also

Operation Silver Dollar

The Kirknewton Intercepts

Eugene Dinkin

[Robert Howard]

Good stuff, Bill.

In my mind, there's a question as to why there's not a similar record of what was going on in Washington, at the Pentagon or wherever else, in the moments following the JFK assassination. Instead, there appears to be a black hole. Did no DOD officials ever put a report on paper? If so, why would such information be classified nearly 46 years later? To protect personnel long dead? To protect methods and technology long obsolete? After the "outing" of Valerie Plame, for which no one has yet been prosecuted, it seems absurd that long-gone personnel should be protected so much more stringently than recent personnel. A 45-year-old in 1963 would be 90 now...and AFAIK, the KGB's not known for hunting down 90-year-olds.

Or maybe it's exactly what it seems...scores of government and military personnel running around like chickens with their heads cut off, confused,...you might call it a flock of flustered clucks.

Or you might call it what it was.

Besides, wanting others to see a part of the written record of part of one the communications systems related to the assassination, there is something of a mystery person "Porter" in the following narrative, any serious feedback as to who this person is would be gratefully accepted and would further the cause, if you will.

The Death of a President excerpts of pages 61-63; by Manchester, William (1967)

In the autumn of 1963 the White House telephone number was still NA-tional 8-1414, that winter the digits took over and it was changed to 456-1414, and when the man

of the house was home communications were relatively simple. Of course, the President himself didn’t answer the phone. A light would flash on a forty-bulb switchboard on the fourth floor of the Executive Office Building and if you knew a name of a Presidential aide one of the women operators would instantly connect you with the proper extension, from which you could be transferred to the oval office , or the mansion. But the moment the Chief Executive left his helipad all that changed. Elaborate security precautions went into effect.

Even names were changed. Codes replaced them, from time to time names and groupings were changed. One man, who was Porter (P) in November 1963, became Super (S) and then River®. He has retired. The White House was no longer the White House. It was Castle, and during a trip the President’s precise location at any given moment was Charcoal. He, himself was no longer John Kennedy, he was Lancer, who was married to Lace, whose children were a daughter named Lyric and a son named Lark. The First Family was all in the L’s— though Lyric’s and Lark’s grandmother lived in a Georgetown house which was referred to as Hamlet. Secret Service men were in the D’s. Chief James J. Rowley was Domino, Digest, Dazzle, Deacon, Debut, and Tom Wells of the kiddie detail were Drummer, Dresser and Dasher. W’s were for staff; Ken O’Donnell, Lancer’s chief vassal was Wand. Evelyn Lincoln, was Willow, Pierre Salinger, Wayside.

Mac Kilduff who was to do Wayside’s press chores on the Texas trip— and, who ironically, had been told to start looking for another job, because Wand had decided that he was expendable— had been christened Warrior. General’s Clifton and McHugh were Watchman and Wing. Taz Shepard, who would be minding the store at Castle during the Texas trip, was Witness. V’s were reserved for the Vice-President and his family. Lyndon Johnson was Volunteer, Lady Bird, who had never had much luck with names became Victoria.

Tourists thought of the President’s home as stationary, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They were wrong. The White House was capable of multiple division. It could be in several cities simultaneously. The girls on the fourth floor of the Executive Office Building remained on duty, but the real White House was wherever Lancer happened to be, and once he hit the road the key switchboard was a jungle of color-coded wires in the executive mansion’s east basement, manned by elite Signal Corps technicians of the White House Communications Agency. It was a national security precaution that Lancer always be within five minutes of a telephone.

Colonel George McNally, alias Star— this was the S group— saw to it that he was much closer than that. There were phones in the President’s helicopter, phones aboard Aircraft 26000, portable phones spotted fifty feet away from every airfield space where 26000 could park, and radiophones in his motorcade cars, operating on two frequencies. Like the Secret Service and the Democratic National Committee, Colonel McNally had a corps of advance men. By dawn of that Thursday morning temporary switchboards had been installed in trailers and hotel rooms in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin and at the LBJ Ranch. Each had its own unlisted phone number.

The Dallas White House, for example, was in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel. It could be reached through RIverside 1-3421, RIverside 1-3422, and RIverside 1-3423, though anyone who dialed one of them and lacked a code name of his own would find the conversation awkward. S’s advance man for the Texas trip was Warrant Officer

Art Bales (Sturdy) a gaunt thirty-year veteran who knew every executive in the Southwest Bell Telephone Company could bug any line from the nearest manhole or conduit and had the facilities to scramble almost any conversation, or to disconnect it without notice. When out of town the President needed one clear circuit to Washington at all times, which meant that Bales had to pull the plug on a Cabinet member, if necessary. (Once the Secretary of State found himself talking to a dial tone.) In motorcades Bales would ride in the Signals control car. By tradition this was the last vehicle in the caravan, and his companion there, and his roommate at hotel stops, was a swarthy S man, Warrant Officer Ira D. Gearhart. Gearhart, or Shadow, had been assigned the most sinister task in the Presidential party. No one called him by his Christian name, his surname, or even by his code name. He was the “man with the satchel,” or, more starkly, “the bagman”. The bag (also known as “the black bag” and “the football”) was a thirty-pound metal suitcase with an intricate combination lock. Within were various Strangelove packets, each bearing wax seals and the signatures of the Joint Chiefs. Inside one were cryptic numbers which would permit the President to set up a crude hot line to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of France on four minutes’ notice. A second provided the codes that would launch a nuclear attack. The rest contained pages of close text enlivened by gaudy color cartoons. They looked like comic books — horror comics, really, because they had been carefully designed so that anyone of Kennedy’s three military aides could quickly tell him how many million casualties would result from Retaliation Able, Retaliation Baker, Retaliation Charlie, etc. Taz Shepard had prepared these doomsday books. No one liked to think about them, much less talk about them, and on trips the man with the football was treated as a pariah. He needed Art Bales company. His only job was to stick around, log the satchel, and remember that vital combination in case the duty aide forgot it. Yet both he and his ghastly burden were necessary. At the outset of the nuclear age Harry Truman would have had four hours to think things through if Soviet bombers had appeared over Canada in force. In the Kennedy administration that time had been cut to fifteen minutes, and it was shrinking.......

END

There is a remarkable lack of information about the code system itself, I find "Porter/Super/River" who subsequently retired, beyond interesting, although whether there is any reason to suspect he was more than a simple cog in the wheel is speculative.

also

Operation Silver Dollar

The Kirknewton Intercepts

Eugene Dinkin

This memorandum is compelling, it is dated December 4, 1963.

There are, ostensibly, only two documents that reference Hallett and Bromley Smith;

this is one of them.

202-10002-10180

MEMORANDUM FOR: BROMLEY SMITH

Home/Archive/Documents/JFK Assassination Documents/Department of Defense/Joint Chiefs of Staff/JCS Files, JFK Library/

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=78887

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

4 DECEMBER 1963

Subj. CHANGES IN DEFENSE READINESS CONDITIONS AS A RESULT OF ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

MEMORANDUM FOR:

Bromley Smith

1. By the authority granted under Joint Chiefs of Staff Emergency Action Procedures (SM-600-63) dated 12 June 1963, the JCS [redacted] or higher authority are authorized to declare Defense Readiness Conditions [DEFCONS] 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. A copy of Chapter Four of this publication is appended under Tab A.

2. Acting on this authority, the JCS after news of the Dallas shooting was received issued their message 3675 at 2:15 p.m. November 22.

3. Acting on this message [redacted] Copies of the three messages are appended under Tab C

4. [redacted] A copy of this directive is appended under Tab D (U.S. forces in Vietnam are in DEFCON 3 on a continuing basis)

5. [redacted] The NMCC received no other notifcations other than those specified above and appended. If a commander took precautions within his command [redacted] he need not necessarily inform the JCOS of them. NMCC received no other message.

notifications.

O.S. HALLETT

[William Kelly]

Good stuff, Bill.

In my mind, there's a question as to why there's not a similar record of what was going on in Washington, at the Pentagon or wherever else, in the moments following the JFK assassination. Instead, there appears to be a black hole. Did no DOD officials ever put a report on paper? If so, why would such information be classified nearly 46 years later? To protect personnel long dead? To protect methods and technology long obsolete? After the "outing" of Valerie Plame, for which no one has yet been prosecuted, it seems absurd that long-gone personnel should be protected so much more stringently than recent personnel. A 45-year-old in 1963 would be 90 now...and AFAIK, the KGB's not known for hunting down 90-year-olds.

Or maybe it's exactly what it seems...scores of government and military personnel running around like chickens with their heads cut off, confused,...you might call it a flock of flustered clucks.

Or you might call it what it was.

Besides, wanting others to see a part of the written record of part of one the communications systems related to the assassination, there is something of a mystery person "Porter" in the following narrative, any serious feedback as to who this person is would be gratefully accepted and would further the cause, if you will.

The Death of a President excerpts of pages 61-63; by Manchester, William (1967)

In the autumn of 1963 the White House telephone number was still NA-tional 8-1414, that winter the digits took over and it was changed to 456-1414, and when the man

of the house was home communications were relatively simple. Of course, the President himself didn't answer the phone. A light would flash on a forty-bulb switchboard on the fourth floor of the Executive Office Building and if you knew a name of a Presidential aide one of the women operators would instantly connect you with the proper extension, from which you could be transferred to the oval office , or the mansion. But the moment the Chief Executive left his helipad all that changed. Elaborate security precautions went into effect.

Even names were changed. Codes replaced them, from time to time names and groupings were changed. One man, who was Porter (P) in November 1963, became Super (S) and then River®. He has retired. The White House was no longer the White House. It was Castle, and during a trip the President's precise location at any given moment was Charcoal. He, himself was no longer John Kennedy, he was Lancer, who was married to Lace, whose children were a daughter named Lyric and a son named Lark. The First Family was all in the L's— though Lyric's and Lark's grandmother lived in a Georgetown house which was referred to as Hamlet. Secret Service men were in the D's. Chief James J. Rowley was Domino, Digest, Dazzle, Deacon, Debut, and Tom Wells of the kiddie detail were Drummer, Dresser and Dasher. W's were for staff; Ken O'Donnell, Lancer's chief vassal was Wand. Evelyn Lincoln, was Willow, Pierre Salinger, Wayside.

Mac Kilduff who was to do Wayside's press chores on the Texas trip— and, who ironically, had been told to start looking for another job, because Wand had decided that he was expendable— had been christened Warrior. General's Clifton and McHugh were Watchman and Wing. Taz Shepard, who would be minding the store at Castle during the Texas trip, was Witness. V's were reserved for the Vice-President and his family. Lyndon Johnson was Volunteer, Lady Bird, who had never had much luck with names became Victoria.

Tourists thought of the President's home as stationary, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They were wrong. The White House was capable of multiple division. It could be in several cities simultaneously. The girls on the fourth floor of the Executive Office Building remained on duty, but the real White House was wherever Lancer happened to be, and once he hit the road the key switchboard was a jungle of color-coded wires in the executive mansion's east basement, manned by elite Signal Corps technicians of the White House Communications Agency. It was a national security precaution that Lancer always be within five minutes of a telephone.

Colonel George McNally, alias Star— this was the S group— saw to it that he was much closer than that. There were phones in the President's helicopter, phones aboard Aircraft 26000, portable phones spotted fifty feet away from every airfield space where 26000 could park, and radiophones in his motorcade cars, operating on two frequencies. Like the Secret Service and the Democratic National Committee, Colonel McNally had a corps of advance men. By dawn of that Thursday morning temporary switchboards had been installed in trailers and hotel rooms in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin and at the LBJ Ranch. Each had its own unlisted phone number.

The Dallas White House, for example, was in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel. It could be reached through RIverside 1-3421, RIverside 1-3422, and RIverside 1-3423, though anyone who dialed one of them and lacked a code name of his own would find the conversation awkward. S's advance man for the Texas trip was Warrant Officer

Art Bales (Sturdy) a gaunt thirty-year veteran who knew every executive in the Southwest Bell Telephone Company could bug any line from the nearest manhole or conduit and had the facilities to scramble almost any conversation, or to disconnect it without notice. When out of town the President needed one clear circuit to Washington at all times, which meant that Bales had to pull the plug on a Cabinet member, if necessary. (Once the Secretary of State found himself talking to a dial tone.) In motorcades Bales would ride in the Signals control car. By tradition this was the last vehicle in the caravan, and his companion there, and his roommate at hotel stops, was a swarthy S man, Warrant Officer Ira D. Gearhart. Gearhart, or Shadow, had been assigned the most sinister task in the Presidential party. No one called him by his Christian name, his surname, or even by his code name. He was the "man with the satchel," or, more starkly, "the bagman". The bag (also known as "the black bag" and "the football") was a thirty-pound metal suitcase with an intricate combination lock. Within were various Strangelove packets, each bearing wax seals and the signatures of the Joint Chiefs. Inside one were cryptic numbers which would permit the President to set up a crude hot line to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of France on four minutes' notice. A second provided the codes that would launch a nuclear attack. The rest contained pages of close text enlivened by gaudy color cartoons. They looked like comic books — horror comics, really, because they had been carefully designed so that anyone of Kennedy's three military aides could quickly tell him how many million casualties would result from Retaliation Able, Retaliation Baker, Retaliation Charlie, etc. Taz Shepard had prepared these doomsday books. No one liked to think about them, much less talk about them, and on trips the man with the football was treated as a pariah. He needed Art Bales company. His only job was to stick around, log the satchel, and remember that vital combination in case the duty aide forgot it. Yet both he and his ghastly burden were necessary. At the outset of the nuclear age Harry Truman would have had four hours to think things through if Soviet bombers had appeared over Canada in force. In the Kennedy administration that time had been cut to fifteen minutes, and it was shrinking.......

END

There is a remarkable lack of information about the code system itself, I find "Porter/Super/River" who subsequently retired, beyond interesting, although whether there is any reason to suspect he was more than a simple cog in the wheel is speculative.

also

Operation Silver Dollar

The Kirknewton Intercepts

Eugene Dinkin

This memorandum is compelling, it is dated December 4, 1963.

There are, ostensibly, only two documents that reference Hallett and Bromley Smith;

this is one of them.

202-10002-10180

MEMORANDUM FOR: BROMLEY SMITH

Home/Archive/Documents/JFK Assassination Documents/Department of Defense/Joint Chiefs of Staff/JCS Files, JFK Library/

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=78887

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

4 DECEMBER 1963

Subj. CHANGES IN DEFENSE READINESS CONDITIONS AS A RESULT OF ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

MEMORANDUM FOR:

Bromley Smith

1. By the authority granted under Joint Chiefs of Staff Emergency Action Procedures (SM-600-63) dated 12 June 1963, the JCS [redacted] or higher authority are authorized to declare Defense Readiness Conditions [DEFCONS] 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. A copy of Chapter Four of this publication is appended under Tab A.

2. Acting on this authority, the JCS after news of the Dallas shooting was received issued their message 3675 at 2:15 p.m. November 22.

3. Acting on this message [redacted] Copies of the three messages are appended under Tab C

4. [redacted] A copy of this directive is appended under Tab D (U.S. forces in Vietnam are in DEFCON 3 on a continuing basis)

5. [redacted] The NMCC received no other notifcations other than those specified above and appended. If a commander took precautions within his command [redacted] he need not necessarily inform the JCOS of them. NMCC received no other message.

notifications.

O.S. HALLETT

That's interesting Robert.

I don't believe that a commander can change the DEFCON status to war without notifying the JCS, ala Dr. Strangelove.

Nor do I believe the DEFCON status was changed at all on 11/22/63 and there are records of this.

Bromley Smith is also all over the existing AF1 radio transmissions tapes.

BK

[John Dolva]

I don't know what defcon really is, but West Germany was, according to base personell stories I've come across, on hightened alert for a short time A heightened alert, given the times, seems reasonable. If there was a heightened alert, it lasting only a short time is perhaps of interest?

[Bernice Moore]

According to Manchester, Gearhart had the football, and he was not left behind at Parkland. Johnson and his men paid no attention to him (I'm sure Johnson knew exactly what was going on and that the Russians had nothing to do with it), but Gearhart took it upon himself to sit on a policeman's lap from Parkland to Love Field.

Manchester says that eyeglasses seen reflecting light from the rear in the photo of Johnson being sworn in are Gearhart's glasses.

Ron

''Manchester says that eyeglasses seen reflecting light from the rear in the photo of Johnson being sworn in are Gearhart's glasses.''...in back on the right..b

[William Kelly]

Can anyone tell me what "Message 3675" is?

Thanks,

BK

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

message 3675 at 2:15 p.m. November 22.

http://www.maryferre...x.php/Main_Page

This memorandum is compelling, it is dated December 4, 1963.

There are, ostensibly, only two documents that reference Hallett and BromleySmith;

this is one of them.

202-10002-10180

MEMORANDUM FOR: BROMLEY SMITH

Home/Archive/Documents/JFK Assassination Documents/Department of Defense/JointChiefs of Staff/JCS Files, JFK Library/

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=78887

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

4 DECEMBER 1963

http://www.maryferre....do?docId=78887

Subj. CHANGES IN DEFENSE READINESS CONDITIONS AS A RESULT OF ASSASSINATION OFPRESIDENT KENNEDY

MEMORANDUM FOR:

Bromley Smith

1. By the authority granted under Joint Chiefs of Staff Emergency Action Procedures (SM-600-63) dated 12 June 1963, the JCS [redacted] or higher authority are authorized to declare Defense Readiness Conditions [DEFCONS] 1,2, 3, 4, and 5. A copy of Chapter Four of this publication is appended underTab A.

2. Acting on this authority, the JCS after news of the Dallas shooting was received issued their message 3675 at 2:15 p.m.November 22.

3. Acting on this message [redacted] Copies of the three messages are appendedunder Tab C

4. [redacted] A copy of this directive is appended under Tab D (U.S.forces in Vietnamare in DEFCON 3 on a continuing basis)

5. [redacted] The NMCC received no other notifcations other than thosespecified above and appended. If a commander took precautions within hiscommand [redacted] he need not necessarily inform the JCOS of them. NMCCreceived no other message.

notifications.

O.S. HALLETT

Edited March 21, 2012 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

Can anyone tell me what "Message 3675" is?

Thanks,

BK

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

message 3675 at 2:15 p.m. November 22.

http://www.maryferre...x.php/Main_Page

This memorandum is compelling, it is dated December 4, 1963.

There are, ostensibly, only two documents that reference Hallett and BromleySmith;

this is one of them.

202-10002-10180

MEMORANDUM FOR: BROMLEY SMITH

Home/Archive/Documents/JFK Assassination Documents/Department of Defense/JointChiefs of Staff/JCS Files, JFK Library/

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=78887

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

4 DECEMBER 1963

http://www.maryferre....do?docId=78887

Subj. CHANGES IN DEFENSE READINESS CONDITIONS AS A RESULT OF ASSASSINATION OFPRESIDENT KENNEDY

MEMORANDUM FOR:

Bromley Smith

1. By the authority granted under Joint Chiefs of Staff Emergency Action Procedures (SM-600-63) dated 12 June 1963, the JCS [redacted] or higher authority are authorized to declare Defense Readiness Conditions [DEFCONS] 1,2, 3, 4, and 5. A copy of Chapter Four of this publication is appended underTab A.

2. Acting on this authority, the JCS after news of the Dallas shooting was received issued their message 3675 at 2:15 p.m.November 22.

3. Acting on this message [redacted] Copies of the three messages are appendedunder Tab C

4. [redacted] A copy of this directive is appended under Tab D (U.S.forces in Vietnamare in DEFCON 3 on a continuing basis)

5. [redacted] The NMCC received no other notifcations other than thosespecified above and appended. If a commander took precautions within hiscommand [redacted] he need not necessarily inform the JCOS of them. NMCCreceived no other message.

notifications.

O.S. HALLETT

JCS Files, JFK Library

JCS Message 3675

USCINCSO

Increased readiness to DEFCON 4

Message issued 2:15 PM22 Nov. 63

USCINSCO command attained DEFCON 4 readiness at 4:28 p.m.

Returned to DEFCON 5 12:29 pm24 Nov. 63

And is this the same Oliver Hallett who knew Oswald from Moscow when he was the Naval Attache at the US Embassy when Oswald defected, and was in the Sit Room at WH at the time of the assassination?

BK

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

[Robert Howard]

Can anyone tell me what "Message 3675" is?

Thanks,

BK

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

message 3675 at 2:15 p.m. November 22.

http://www.maryferre...x.php/Main_Page

This memorandum is compelling, it is dated December 4, 1963.

There are, ostensibly, only two documents that reference Hallett and BromleySmith;

this is one of them.

202-10002-10180

MEMORANDUM FOR: BROMLEY SMITH

Home/Archive/Documents/JFK Assassination Documents/Department of Defense/JointChiefs of Staff/JCS Files, JFK Library/

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=78887

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

4 DECEMBER 1963

http://www.maryferre....do?docId=78887

Subj. CHANGES IN DEFENSE READINESS CONDITIONS AS A RESULT OF ASSASSINATION OFPRESIDENT KENNEDY

MEMORANDUM FOR:

Bromley Smith

1. By the authority granted under Joint Chiefs of Staff Emergency Action Procedures (SM-600-63) dated 12 June 1963, the JCS [redacted] or higher authority are authorized to declare Defense Readiness Conditions [DEFCONS] 1,2, 3, 4, and 5. A copy of Chapter Four of this publication is appended underTab A.

2. Acting on this authority, the JCS after news of the Dallas shooting was received issued their message 3675 at 2:15 p.m.November 22.

3. Acting on this message [redacted] Copies of the three messages are appendedunder Tab C

4. [redacted] A copy of this directive is appended under Tab D (U.S.forces in Vietnamare in DEFCON 3 on a continuing basis)

5. [redacted] The NMCC received no other notifcations other than thosespecified above and appended. If a commander took precautions within hiscommand [redacted] he need not necessarily inform the JCOS of them. NMCCreceived no other message.

notifications.

O.S. HALLETT

JCS Files, JFK Library

JCS Message 3675

USCINCSO

Increased readiness to DEFCON 4

Message issued 2:15 PM22 Nov. 63

USCINSCO command attained DEFCON 4 readiness at 4:28 p.m.

Returned to DEFCON 5 12:29 pm24 Nov. 63

And is this the same Oliver Hallett who knew Oswald from Moscow when he was the Naval Attache at the US Embassy when Oswald defected, and was in the Sit Room at WH at the time of the assassination?

BK

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

One and the same.

Ex-navy Capt. Oliver Hallett

Supervised Great Lakes Recruits

October 31, 1992|By Kenan Heise.

Oliver Sawyer Hallett, 68, a retired captain in the Navy, was the commanding officer in charge of recruits at Great Lakes Naval Base in the early 1970s, then the largest naval training command in the country.

A resident of Hinsdale for the last 10 years, he died Friday at home.

``He really cared about people,`` his daughter-in-law, Jackie Lustig, said.

``He was very intelligent and had integrity. A lot of people are going to remember him.``

Capt. Hallett, who was born in Denver, graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and from the U.S. Naval Academy.

He served in the submarine command and received the Legion of Merit, the highest non-combat medal awarded by the Navy.

Capt. Hallett was a White House naval assistant in the terms of Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

He also served in diplomatic assignments in the former Soviet Union and in the Federal Republic of Germany.

When he was at Great Lakes, his command included 300 officers and 15,000 recruits. He was there from 1972 until he retired in 1975.

Survivors include his wife, Joan; a son, Christopher; two daughters, Carolyn Maginnis and Polly Kawalek; five grandchildren; a brother; and a sister.

Mass for Capt. Hallett will be said at 10 a.m. Monday in St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church, 5th and Clay Streets, Hinsdale.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-10-31/news/9204080691_1_naval-academy-command-recruits

Edited March 22, 2012 by Robert Howard