Doug Horne - 20 Questions

1) Your job description with the ARRB was that of an "Analyst." What's an analyst?

Doug Horne: Each of the four records teams consisted of a team leader (a supervisory analyst) and about 4 analysts. The job of the analyst was to define search criteria for records; liaise with pertinent agencies; and then analyze records with proposed redactions that were submitted for review by the ARRB. The "analysis" consisted of determining which portions of the document were important, which portions were unimportant, and developing recommendations for the Board Members regarding whether or not the records should be opened up, or whether the agencies' proposed redactions should stay in place---applying the standards in the JFK Records Act.

2) As the Chief Analyst for Military Records for ARRB you handled many classified records and were approved to handle such records based on your previous work in the Navy. In your opinion why are there still so many records about the assassination still classified?

D.H.: The redactions that remained in place in the military records I saw pertained only to military operational plans which were still in effect and had not changed since the assassination. Other redactions which remained in place in CIA or FBI records often pertained to protecting someone's true identity when a pseudonym had been used; or protecting a source or method which was in use at the time the record was created and was still in place in the mid 1990s. I am not aware of any redactions which were an attempt to withhold JFK assassination facts per se. The language and codes put in place by the ARRB analyst to explain the reason for each redaction is recorded on each redacted document---and in every case the codes/language used identifies the language in the Act that justified the redaction.

3) Why do you think you are qualified to review the medical records without having an academic background in science or medicine?

D.H. The readers of my book can judge, one by one, whether they think I am qualified to discuss particular medical issues on a one-by-one basis. I can say this: one of the persons who edited and peer-reviewed my book (who shall go un-named) was an M.D., and I benefited tremendously from his assistance. I also learned a lot from the 5 medical consultants who assisted the ARRB in evaluating the evidence: Ubelaker, Fitzpatrick, Kirschner, Lee, and DiMaio. My chapter on the x-rays, furthermore, was reviewed by a board-certified radiologist.

I have been immersed in reading about the medical evidence since 1967, so have gradually gained a pretty good understanding (for a layman) of the key medical issues surrounding the assassination. Most of the points I raise do not require an M.D. to understand or evaluate; most of the points I raise are where one person's testimony changes over time, or conflicts with that of another person, or with photographs in the official record. Anyone can connect those dots the same way I did. All you need is time and patience---not a medical degree. Dr. Cyril Wecht implored his audience at the 2003 conference in Pittsburgh NOT to defer to the so-called "experts" or to "authority" when evaluating the medical evidence in the Kennedy assassination, because, as he pointed out, the experts all disagree with each other. As he also pointed out, the positions taken by many of the so-called "experts" on the medical evidence defy logic and are really unsupportable from
an intellectual standpoint.

4) To jump to the chase, you conclude from your analysis of the records, that the President was killed as a result of a coup d'etat. Was there any specific record that made you come to that conclusion or was that based on the overall review of the records?

D.H.: The FBI's then-Top Secret December 1966 report on its bugging of the KGB Residency in New York City (which named LBJ as responsible for the assassination); the February 14, 1964 "Seven Days in May" Secret Service memo from Thomas Kelley to James Rowley (which implied a coup had already taken place, and cast suspicion on J. Edgar Hoover); and the 1968 Army Intelligence document that named Vice President Johnson as a close associate of George DeMohrenschildt (Oswald's surrogate father and handler before he went to New Orleans) in 1963, were three specific documents that led me to believe in a coup d'etat.

What those documents did was confirm my previous sense that there had been a coup, based on (1) my study of the serious frictions between JFK and his military leadership: Arleigh Burke, Lyman Lemnitzer, Curtis LeMay, and George Anderson; and (2) the publicly available knowledge of serious frictions between JFK and the CIA. The confessions of former DCI Allen Dulles to an interviewer after JFK's death that JFK had been "set up" at the Bay of Pigs; and the Northwoods documents (about pretexts for invading Cuba) from February-March of 1962, and the April 10, 1962 memo to McNamara from the Joint Chiefs strongly recommending an immediate invasion of Cuba, all further confirmed that the national security establishment was at war with JFK. The last straw was clearly JFK's decision not to invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis. This was the proximate cause of the assassination plot, given all that had come before the Missile Crisis.

The Peace Speech in June of 1963; the Test Ban Treaty in July of 1963; the 1963 decision to withdraw from Vietnam; and the secret attempt to establish a rapprochement with Castro in the fall of 1963, merely strengthened the resolve of the coup plotters, who I am convinced made their decision after the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved through diplomacy, rather than on the battlefield. The confessions of two CIA officials (David Sanchez Morales and the dying E. Howard Hunt) that they were either involved in the operational details of the assassination, or had personal knowledge of CIA involvement, was the clincher for me. In summary, it was a combination of all of the above factors that allows me to state with confidence that JFK was eliminated by a coup, and That the coup was carried out for reasons of foreign policy at the height of the Cold War.

5) In pointing to one of the items that the records appear to indicate quite firmly -that there were two distinct post-autopsy brain exams involving two different brains - why doesn't this automatically require a new, proper, forensic autopsy, which it would normally do under any other circumstances?

D.H.: The fact that there were two brain exams after JFK's autopsy (instead of one, as there should have been), and that the second exam was the vehicle for placing false and misleading brain photographs into the official record, does in fact invalidate the autopsy and casts all of the so-called official findings about JFK's death into serious doubt. The problem is that this is not an official finding of the government or of any medico-legal body---it is the opinion of one individual, me. Never mind that it has been endorsed by Drs. Mantik and Wecht in a 2003 paper---it is a private finding of one staff member. Perhaps if a grand jury was also persuaded by the same evidence that persuaded me, an exhumation and a new autopsy could be ordered.

6) Congress gave the ARRB the powers to subpoena records and require the sworn testimony of witnesses, powers that were apparently used sparingly. Why didn't the ARRB utilize its powers to answer the outstanding questions related to the records?

D.H.: According to my boss, Jeremy Gunn, none of the Board Members believed there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK; their minds were made up before the ARRB began its efforts. Since they did not believe there was anything to be "solved" or "uncovered," they were not engaged with the details of the medical depositions or the CIA depositions related to Mexico City.

None of the Board Members attended any of these depositions; they considered them to be academic exercises in "clarifying the record." They were motivated to release previously withheld records simply because they had an inherent dislike of excessive Cold War secrecy. They had a great interest in participating in an experiment in citizen review of goverment records, because all historians generally want to see more records released. I believed they thought they could do two things at once: restore faith in governmental institutions by releasing previously sealed records; and in the process, discredit unfounded conspiracy theories. This latter goal was, I am convinced, perhaps "the" major hidden agenda of the Board Members. It was not an official goal of the JFK Records Act, but it was clearly a personal desire of all five Board Members, whether they publicly admit it now or not. (Anna Nelson did admit it to one author circa 2000.) On the few occasions when Jeremy Gunn tried to brief the Board Members about some of the strange findings coming out of the medical depositions---about serious irregularities in the medical evidence---he told me he was summarily cut off by several Board Members, who didn't want to hear about any reasons to doubt the official record of what had happened. They had closed minds about the JFK assassination; generally trusted the Warren Report's conclusions; and were only interested in releasing records (without comment) and placing them in the Archives. They were completely unwilling to stretch the envelope and engage in any activities that could have been viewed as a reinvestigation---this was forbidden by the JFK Records Act. Jeremy Gunn and I were damned lucky that these five Board Members let us play in our medical evidence "sand box" as much as they did. Four of the five Board Members were almost completely unaware of the results we were gathering, and wished to remain so. This is what happens when G. Robert Blakey is allowed to write legislation which forbids a reinvestigation of the case, and which allows an establishment which is more interested in institutional stability, than in truth, to nominate the Board Members.

7) In the course of your studies of the assassination you had a couple of “epiphanies,” that changed the way you looked at it, particularly in regards to Tink Thompson’s “Six Seconds” and David Lifton’s “Best Evidence.” Can you say how those two books affected your thinking?

D.H.: Thompson's "Six Seconds" still provides clear evidence of crossfire in Dealey Plaza. Lifton's "Best Evidence" provided clear evidence that the wounds observed at Bethesda Naval hospital (at the autopsy) were no longer the same wounds that had earlier been observed at Parkland hospital in Dallas (during emergency treatment). In both cases, the evidence of eyewitnesses was so strong, and so persuasive, that it caused me to question not only official findings, but some photographic evidence.

8) In the course of your work as an analyst for the ARRB you had some similar “epiphanies.” Can you say what they were and how that changed your thinking?

D.H.: Dr. Boswell's 3-D diagram on a skull model depicting the area of missing bone on JFK's skull constituted proof for me that there was indeed post mortem surgery prior to the autopsy; the statements of former FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill about the inaccuracy of the autopsy photos of the back of the head impugned those photographs as evidence and proved to me that the Parkland physicians made accurate observations of a posterior exit wound; and John Stringer's testimony about the film he used at the brain examination he attended convinced me that the brain photos in the Archives cannot possibly be of JFK's brain.

9) You pretty much divide many of the critical characters into Good Guys and Bad Guys, some surprising, such as FBI Agents Sibert and O’Neill and autopsy doctor Finck being basically good guys who were hoodwinked, while Greer and Kellerman and G. Robert Blakey are clearly bad guys who were in on the shenanigans going on behind the scenes and chose to cover it up.

D.H.: These characterizations of yours are oversimplifications; there are many shades of grey here. For example, Finck was certainly unaware of the illicit, post mortem surgery to JFK's cranium when he first arrived at the morgue at 8:30 PM, and as a result (per John Stringer) "caused too much trouble at the autopsy." Certainly he knew something was seriously amiss when he arrived a week later for a brain exam (the second one) and saw a brain that looked different than the one he had previously seen already removed from the body at the autopsy---and yet, did he walk out and refuse to participate in a charade? No; he simply left a clue for us in his written report to General Blumberg. He "went along to get along."

FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill are to be commended for stating under oath that the single bullet theory of Arlen Specter is an impossibility based on what they saw at the autopsy; and they are personal heroes of mine for impugning the accuracy of the dishonest autopsy photos which (incredibly) show the back of the head to be intact. But they also failed in their mission to "stay with the body," and allowed themselves to be separated from the Dallas Casket by the Secret Service while manipulations were being performed on JFK's wounds. They hinted at this in bureaucratic doubletalk in their official report of November 26, 1963, but ever since they have "stonewalled" and refused to admit outright that they were separated from the Dallas casket and kept sequestered outside the morgue for a considerable period of time prior to the start of the autopsy. This stonewalling (which O'Neill continued until his death) has been a disservice to history.

Unlike Finck and the two FBI agents, Robert Blakey (Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the HSCA) is someone who I have absolutely no sympathy for, and no respect whatsoever. He withheld the results of his staff's medical interviews (about the Harper fragment and the observations of the autopsy witnesses) from his own Forensic Pathology Panel, and then approved a report which lied about what these autopsy witnesses said about the autopsy photos. He refused to question the Dallas treating physicians about the autopsy photos under oath, as he should have. He elected not to call in the autopsy photographers and x-ray technicians and question them under oath for the purposes of authenticating the autopsy photos and x-rays. (Some of them were questioned by the staff while not under oath, and then those interview reports were buried for 50 years.) He buried the HSCA deposition of Robert Knudsen for 50 years, as he also did with the depositions of Finck and Ebersole. (Thanks to Oliver Stone, and the resulting JFK Records Act, he did not get away with that.) He misrepresented what the Department of Defense said about the autopsy camera. I could go on and on. He only reluctantly reached a finding of probable conspiracy, when forced to by the acoustics evidence---and then had the arrogance to support the single bullet theory anyway and claim that shots impossibly close together in time had been fired by the same junk rifle, when he knew that was a physical impossibility. He told the press immediately after the HSCA issued its final report that the Mafia had killed the President, even though the HSCA's report did not say so. With virtual unanimity, his entire staff (except perhaps Richard Billings, co-author of both the HSCA Final Report and of Blakey's subsequent book) disagreed with that conclusion of his.

In the final analysis, all Blakey gave America was a modified, limited hangout conspiracy we could all believe in, and still sleep well at night. His very limited conspiracy (blaming the assassination on the Mafia) still proposes that Oswald's bullets (alone) killed the President, and that there was no government coverup. Like Gaeton Fonzi, I believe Blakey had a mission---and that mission was to uphold support for America's institutions, no matter the cost to the truth, or to his personal reputation. As a result of his actions and decisions, both have suffered terribly.

10) Do you believe, as it has been alleged on internet forums, that Greer shot JFK in the head with his pistol?

D.H.: No, I do not "believe" this as an article of faith, or as a firm finding. It is merely an unpleasant and disturbing possibility. I raised it as an "evidentiary afterthought," because there were so many nagging and interlocking indicators of both a left temporal entry wound, and of a pistol being discharged during the assassination. Four physicians at Parkland have strongly supported a left temporal entry at one time or another: McClelland; Jenkins; Jones; and Puerto (Porto). So did father Oscar Huber. So did Dr. Charles Wilbur (a renowned pathologist) in a 1999 letter, in which he stated his reasons in detail. Since the head of the deceased President was not shaved at autopsy, the autopsy photos do not answer this question. The autopsy report has been rewritten at least twice, so it is not trustworthy. The fact that Triage Nurse Bertha Lozano smelled gunpowder as JFK and Connally were wheeled past her at Parkland implies that there was a firearm discharged in the limousine and that particulate matter was embedded in someone's clothing - otherwise she would not have smelled gunpowder. Hugh Betzner observed a nickel-plated revolver in someone's hand inside the limousine during the assassination; and Jean Hill observed plain clothes men "shooting back." Both Clint Hill and Sam Holland heard a pistol discharged near the end of the shooting sequence. The fact that we do not see Greer doing so in the extant Zapruder film is meaningless, since we now know the film has been altered and the brief car stop was almost certainly removed from the film. This disturbing pattern of evidence is simply one of the many reasons why an exhumation should be conducted, and is further evidence that we really don't know exactly what happened in Dealey Plaza.

11) As the agency responsible for protecting the president, the Secret Service not only failed to do its duty in Dallas, but they also controlled the assassin’s wife, the body and the Zapruder film, and then purposely destroyed assassination records after Congress passed the JFK Act. Didn’t that anger the board, the staff or any Congressman, and what were their reactions to that brazen act?

D.H.: Executive Director David Marwell and General Counsel Jeremy Gunn were initially extremely angry that the Secret Service had destroyed assassination records related to Presidential protection (including the cancelled trip to Chicago in November of 1963). At first they wanted to conduct public hearings which would embarrass the Secret Service, call them on the carpet (so to speak), and set an example so that other agencies would not emulate that behavior. Tempers on the ARRB staff eventually cooled, and no public hearings were ever held---no Secret Service officials were censured. I have always assumed that Board Chair Jack Tunheim (and perhaps other Board Members) had something to do with the watered down approach taken by the ARRB to this Secret Service malfeasance, but this is just an impression of mine and I cannot prove it. As far as I know, no member of Congress was aware that the Secret Service had destroyed assassination records until the Final Report of the ARRB was released.

12) The person who destroyed the records is named in your book. Was he ever questioned by the Review Board, the staff or Congress?

D.H.: I do not know the answer to that question. Only Jeremy Gunn or David Marwell would know the answer to that question.

13) Besides the Secret Service records that were destroyed, your book is replete with instances of numerous other records that were either destroyed or went suspiciously missing, like for instance the autopsy records turned over to Mrs. Lincoln, the missing autopsy photos, the missing bullet fragments, Dr. Finck’s notes, RFK’s appointments book, the negative of the “wink” photo from the inauguration, the AF1 unedited radio transmissions and transcript. The “wink” photo negative must have been stolen from a vault safe at the NARA administered LBJ library. How is that possible, with no retribution?

D.H.: How is it possible for these things to occur without a proper investigation and punishment, where it is appropriate? It occurs when the national government (the Executive Branch) does not want to know the truth---or be forced to deal with the truth. The Justice Department has either run away from, or ignored, numerous chances to deal with these matters. From this I draw two conclusions: (1) there are insiders within the Executive Branch who know today, and who always have known, that there was a coup d'etat in America in 1963, and that there was a coverup afterwards; (2) incumbents do not want to deal with exposing this because they are afraid it will completely destroy what little faith is left in American institutions, and they don't have the guts to be at the center of the shitstorm that would ensue if the truth were to be told. The short answer to your question is that at the national level, within officialdom, we are a nation that would rather believe in myths about itself than deal with the truth; we are a nation engaged in denial, on a massive scale.

14) Many of your key witnesses are technicians, like photographers, the Navy grunts like Paul O’Conner and funeral hall employees like Robinson. Do you trust these people a little more than those above them?

D.H.: In general, yes, I have trusted them much more than highly ranked officials above them. They had no motive to lie about what they had seen, and most of them were not attempting to spin any theories when they provided their recollections. They also had no "turf" to protect, and therefore no axe to grind. Most of them were unaware of how important certain aspects of their testimony was, because they didn't have the big picture. The more unaware these people were about the serious conflicts in the evidence, the more I tended to trust them.

15) Then there are those obstructionist, like the ARRB staff analyst who was fired for trying to sabotage the taking of medical witness testimony and the guy who tried to plant a false story to discredit you. Why do you think they don’t want any more sworn testimony in this case and will do anything to prevent it?

D.H.: The ARRB analyst who opposed the medical depositions was not fired; he was simply summarily removed from that project. (He resigned less than a year after that.) My colleagues on the staff who opposed "clarifying the record" with depositions and interviews were simply Warren Commission true believers who didn't think anything good could come of such efforts---they believed that creating new records by taking new testimony would only cloud the record and create doubt. When people already have their minds made up, they never want to be confused with facts from a new data set. Human beings are very stubborn animals---territorial animals. And human beings defend ideas as territory.

On another level, I do believe the government has engaged in infiltration of the research community for decades, and has used surrogates to oppose views considered dangerous, and to spread confusion and discord. As you know, I had an experience with this myself, as recounted in my Epilogue.

16) Of course if there are Congressional Oversight Hearings, one of the things Congress can do is to subpoena records and require the sworn testimony of witness. Is there any specific document that you’d like to see if you could call for it, and is there any particular witness still alive who you would like to have testify, if there is ever oversight?

D.H.: It is very important that the American people see, in their entirety, the materials associated with the interviews conducted of Jackie Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy by author William Manchester. They are currently under a 100-year court seal (because the Kennedys sued to withold the interviews that they originally voluntarily granted) and are not to be released until 2067; Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg refused the ARRB's request to open the court seal and release those records. I find this patently unacceptable; the American people deserve to know what their own history is. I would also like very much to see a concerted effort by Federal investigators to find the original Air Force One audiotapes---the unedited version. (The ARRB was unsuccessful in this area because of stonewalling and indifference by both WHCA and the USAF.)

17) Just as you figured out how there were two brain exams, you now have evidence that there were two photo sessions at the NPIC, using two different types of film that is supposed to be the Zapruder film. One of these sessions made briefing boards for a briefing of CIA director McCone. Do you know who the other set of briefing boards were made for, and who was briefed? And what became of the briefing boards?

D.H.: We do not know with any certainty who the second (sanitized) set of briefing boards was made for, using the photo enlargements made by Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter (at NPIC event #2). Apparently there were three sets (of four panels each) made from those photos; only one set (of four panels) survives. It was turned over to the Archives in 1993 by the CIA's Historical Review Group.

18) If you are correct, and those who killed JFK also controlled his body, the autopsy, the Zapruder film, and took over the government, then wouldn’t the evidence be in the government records, and the suspects be well known to us?

D.H.: The suspects ARE well known to us, and are named in Chapters 15 and 16 of my book. I am doubtful that there is any "master report" of what happened in government files. It there is, it was withheld---willfully---from the ARRB in violation of the JFK Records Act. I do believe there is probably oral knowledge of what likely happened in 1963, passed down from one official to another within the government, but there is not likely any master written report in existence.

19) After seeing how the Warren Commission, HSCA and ARRB worked, or didn’t work, do you think there’s any hope at all of getting a resolution to the assassination or will it always be just a big debate?

D.H.: Like Gaeton Fonzi, I am very skeptical about the government ever coming clean with the American people about the coup d'etat in 1963. It is simply too embarrassing to those in power, and all they can see is a downside to such admissions---whoever attempted to try to do so would be branded as "unpatriotic" and would be discredited (or removed) by those who are still engaging in spin control over this issue. The best we can do is press for additional documents, one at a time, and try to put the puzzle together ourselves.

20) Now that you’ve done your part, what do you think should happen now, as far as determining the truth and seeking justice in the assassination?

D.H. I would love to see the mainstream historians remove their heads from the sand and stop acting like ostriches---and admit that there is overwhelming evidence of crossfire in Dealey Plaza, and therefore of conspiracy; and furthermore, that there is now also overwhelming evidence that there was a medical coverup immediately following the assassination. If the mainstream historians would do this, some in the national media might do the same. The American people should hold the national, mainstream media accountable for their blind, willful, and stubborn support of an indefensible position (the Warren Report) which has been discredited since 1966 or 1967.

I suspect that the media in this country is still riddled with part-time intelligence assets, as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.(This was all well-documented by reporter Carl Bernstein and the New York Times during the mid-1970s.) People sense this, which is why they don't buy what Posner or Bugliosi or Tom Brokaw or Roger Mudd or Peter Jennings or Chris Matthews have to say on this subject. If the mainstream historians would come around, this might help break the logjam in the media.

Inside ARRB Table of Contents - Expanded

Research Notes: While it's not an index, and it doesn't include them all, yet, here's an expanded Table of Contents with the addition of Subchapters, sub-subchapters and chart listings, with their page number. Hope this helps. - BK


Inside the Assassinations Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK
(2009) ISBN-13: 978-0-9843144-0-9

By Douglas P. Horne
Chief Analyst for Military Records, Assassinations Records Review Board

Dedication: Jeremy Gunn.

Table of Contents

Volume 1
Preface: Why Do I Care?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PART I: The ARRB Medical Witnesses
Introduction: Beginning My ARRB Journey
PROLOGUE: The Culture of the ARRB
Chapter 1: Epiphanies p. 25
Chapter 2: The ARRB Medical Evidence Depositions and Unsworn Interviews p. 59
Chapter 3: The Autopsy Pathologists p. 69
Illustration Section (Details Below)
Chapter 4: Autopsy Photography (Part One) p. 131
Volume II
Chapter 4: Autopsy Photography (Part Two) p. 255
Chapter 5: The Autopsy X-Rays p. 389
Chapter 6: The Morticians p. 589
Chapter 7: A Short Trip to Texas p. 641
Volume III
Chapter 8: FBI Agents Sibert and O’Neill p 667
Chapter 9: The Dallas Doctors Depositions – A Government FUBAR of Major Proportions p. 741
PART II: Fraud in the Evidence – A Pattern of Deception
Chapter 10: Two Brain Examinations – Coverup Confirmed p. 777
Chapter 11: Three Autopsy Reports – A Botched Coverup p. 845
Chapter 12: The Autopsy Photographs and X-Rays Explained p. 883
Volume IV
Chapter 13: What Really Happened at the Bethesda Morgue (And in Dealey Plaza?)
Chapter 14: The Zapruder Film Mystery p. 1185
Volume V
Part III: The Political Context of the Assassination
Chapter 15: The Setup – Planning the Texas Trip and the Dallas Motorcade p.1379
Chapter 16: Inconvenient Truths p. 1469
Epilogue p. 1777
Afterword p. 1797
About the Author p. 1805
The illustrations are located at the end of Chapter Three

Volume 1

Preface: Why Do I Care?

Acknowledgements

Part I: The ARRB Medical Witnesses

Introduction: Beginning My ARRB Journey

Prologue: The Culture of the ARRB p. 9

Chapter 1: Epiphanies p. 25

February 26, 1996: Boswell’s Skull Diagram. p. 25

March of 1997: Dr. Crenshaw and Nurse Bell Draw the Head Wound Seen in Dallas p. 27

September of 1997: The FBI Agents and the Autopsy Photographs p. 29

JFK’s Post-Autopsy Brain Exam: A Major Deception p. 35.

The Official Autopsy Photographer and an FBI Agent Impugn the Brain Photographs in the National Archives p. 38

September 25, 1996: The Oral Utterance by the Undertaker p. 55

Summation and Synthesis p. 56

Chapter 2: The ARRB Medical Evidence Depositions and Unsworn Interviews p. 59

Two Important Interviews That Never Took Place p. 64
(Paul K. O’Conner and James C. Jenkins)…

Chapter 3: The Autopsy Pathologists p. 69

THE EVIDENTIARY LANDSCAPE

The “Dallas Lens” p. 69

The “Bethesda Lens”

The Origins of the ‘Bootleg’ Autopsy Photos p. 77

The “Second Bethesda Lens:” Unraveling This Mystery Became a Major ARRB Staff Goal

OtherAutopsy-Related Issues

WHO WERE THE AUTOPSY PATHOLOGISTS?

Humes, Boswell and Finck

The Credentials of the JFK Autopsy Pathologists p. 80

The Dates and the Site of the Deposition p. 81

Three Distinct Personalities p. 81

ARRB Depostions Were Fact-Finding Events, Not Adversarial Proceedings

The ARRB Deposition of Dr. James J. Humes p. 84

Who Was In Charge of the Autopsy? P. 85

Why Was the Weight of the Brain Not Recorded at Autopsy? P. 88

Questions About Surgery of the Head Area p. 89

Was There Reconstruction of the Skull Prior to X-Rays Being Taken? P. 92

What Exactly Did Humes Destory By Burning In His Fireplace? P. 92

The Nature of the Entry Wound in the Back of the Head p. 101

The Nature of the Exit Wound p. 103

THE ARRB DEPOSITION OF DR. “J” THORTON BOSWELL p. 105

THE ARRB UNSWORN INTERVIEW WITH DR. ROBERT F. KARNI p. 126

STATUS OF OUR QUEST AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE PATHOLOGISTS’ DEPOSITIONS AND INTERVIEWS p. 129

Illustration Section (Details Below)

90 Illustrations over 40+ unnumbered pages


Chapter 4: Autopsy Photography (Part One) p. 131

The Paper Trail

The November 22, 1963 Photographic Receipts, the Sibert-O’Neill Report, and the December 5, 1963 Bouck Letter p. 132

Development of the Autopsy Photographic Images p. 135

Robert Kennedy Obtains Possession of the Autopsy Materials, with the Assistance of Dr. Burkley p. 136

The Burkley Inventory of April 26, 1965 p. 137

The Kennedy Family Deed-of-Gift Transfers the Autopsy Materials to the National Archives, Under Conditions that Prevent the Public from Seeing Them p. 138

Some of the Materials Transferred from the Secret Service to Evelyn Lincoln Are Found to be Omitted from the Deed-of-Gift – ‘Missing’ – Immediately After Donation by the Kennedy Family to the Archives p. 140

The Key Autopsy Participants Prepare the Numbered, Descriptive Catalogue of the Photographs and X-Rays That Is Still in Use Today p. 143

The Missing Sheet of Ektachrome Color Positive Transparency Film p. 144

Carl Belcher and the ARRB: A Confrontation p. 147

The November 10, 1966 Military Inventory Yields Nine Views of the Body and Brain of President Kennedy Used by the ARRB Staff at All of its Autopsy-Related Medical Evidence Depositions. P. 151

A Fortuitous Circumstance: The ARRB Stumbles Across Government Photographer Earl MacDonald at the National Archives, and Learns All About the Normal Standards for Photographing an Autopsy p. 152

Summary Comments p. 160

Outside Expert Review of the Autopsy Photographs and X-Rays p. 161

JOHN T. STRINGER AND THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS p. 163

HSCA Staff Outside Contact Report Regarding John Stringer and Autopsy Photography p. 164

The ARRB’s Initial Contact with John Stringer p. 166

The ARRB Deposition of John T. Stringer p. 168

Floyd Riebe’s Role at the Autopsy p. 176

FLOYD A. RIEBE AND AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHY p. 225

DR. EBERSOLE EXPERESSES RESERVATIONS ABOUT THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE BACK OF THE PRESIDENT’ S HEAD P. 240

FBI AGENTS SIBERT AND O’NEILL IMPUGN THE ACCURACY OF THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE BACK OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S HEAD P. 243

SYNTHESIS; ANOTHER EPIPHANY p. 245

ROBERT L. KNUDSEN AND AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHY p. 247 – 254

Volume II p. 255

Chapter 4: Autopsy Photography (Part Two) p. 255

JOE O’DONNELL DISCUSSES ROBERT KNUDSEN AND THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS p. 285

The ARRB Staff Conducts Its First Interview of Joe O’Donnell on January 29, 1997

The ARRB Staff Conducts Its Second Interview of Joe O’Donnell on February 28, 1997.

Analysis of O’Donnell Interviews p. 287

VINCENT MADONIA AND AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHY p. 292

VELMA VOLGER’S ACCOUNT OF THE DISPOSITION OF AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS p. 296

SAUNDRA K. SPENCER AND AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHY p. 298

DR. HUMES AND THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS

Testimony About Photographs Missing form the Autopsy Collection in the National Archives. P. 333

Joint Testimony (Unsworn) by Drs. Humes and Boswell on September 16, 1977 (In Closed Session) Before the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel About the Location of the Entrance Wound in the Skull, As Shown In the Autopsy Photographs of the Rear of the Head. p. 341

DR. FINCK AND THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS p. 373

Testimony About Photographs Missing from the Autopsy Collection in the National Archives

Testimony Before the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel on March 11, 1978 About the Location of the Entrance Wound in the Skull, As Shown in the Autopsy Photographs of the Rear of the Head p. 375

DENNIS DAVID’S RECOLLECTIONS OF WILLIAM PITZER’S DISPLAY OF POST MORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY. p. 380

Inevitable Questions About Dennis David’s Pitzer Recollections p. 383

SUMMARY OF MISSING PHOTOGRAPHS (Chart) p. 383

TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS p. 387

Chapter 5: The Autopsy X-Rays p. 389

THE PAPER TRAIL p. 391

The Ebersole-Kellerman Receipts, and the Contents of the Sibert-O’Neill Report

The Harper Fragment p. 392

Dr. Burkley’s April 26, 1965 Inventory and Receipt of Materials Transferred to Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln at the National Archives. p. 395

The Kennedy Family Deed-of-Gift p. 395

The Military Inventory Signed on November 10, 1966 p. 395

DR. JOHN H. EBERSOLE TESTIFIES BEFORE THE HSCA FORENSIC PATHOLOGY PANEL ON MARCH 11, 1978 p. 397

Additional Testimony About the X-Rays of the Body (chart) p. 413

DR. MANTIK INTERVIEWS DR. EBERSOLE p. 417

NAVY ENLISTED X-RAY TECHNOLOGISTS JERROL CUSTER AND EDWARD REED p. 419

Pages From the Past: A Possible Clue to Who Was Controlling the Autopsy is Pulled From the Trash ‘In the Nick of Time’ p. 478 (AF1 Andrews AFB Logbook)

Deep Background: The Rift Between President Kennedy and General LeMay p. 482

Dr. Ebersole Destroys an Assassination Record p. 490

SOME TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE AUTOPSY X-RAYS p. 540

THE CRUCIAL, GROUND-BREAKING WORK OF DR. DAVID MANTIK WITH THE AUTOPSY X-RAYS IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, USING OFFICIAL DENSITY (OD) MEASUREMENTS AS AN ANALYTICAL TOOL. p. 541

DR. HUMES TESTIFIES TO THE ARRB ABOUT THE SKULL X-RAYS p. 563

DR. FINCK TESTIFIES TO THE ARRB ABOUT THE SKULL X-RAYS p. 579

OUTSIDE EXPERTS ANALYZE THE SKULL X-RAYS p. 583

FINAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE AUTOPSY X-RAYS p. 587

Chapter 6: The Morticians p. 589

JOSEPH E. HAGEN

THOMAS E. ROBINSON

Gawler’s Documents p. 616

JOHN VAN HOESEN

A TENTATIVE, COMBINED GAWLER’S/AUTOPSY TIMELINE p. 620

THE SIGNIFIANCE OF THE KEY GAWLER TESTIMONY p. 627

AN EPIPHANY: THE POST MORTEM SURGERY TO THE HEAD WAS PERFORMED AT BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL AFTER THE BODY ARRIVED, NOT ELSEWHERE PRIOR TO THE BODY’S ARRIVAL p. 630

Chapter 7: A Short Trip to Texas p. 641

Crenshaw’s Summary of President Kennedy’s Wounds p. 642

NURSE AUDREY BELL p. 644

DR. ROBERT G. GROSSMAN p. 655

A SIGNIFICANT SAMPLING OF PARKLAND HOSPITAL TESTIMONY CONFIRMS THE RECOLLECTIONS OF CRENSHAW AND BELL p. 659

Dr. Robert N. McClelland p. 655

Dr. Charles J. Carrico p. 660

Dr. Paul Peters p. 661

Dr. Malcolm Perry p. 662

Dr. Ronald Coy Jones p. 662

Dr. Marlon T. Jenkins p. 662

Dr. Charles Rufus Baxter p. 663

What the Parkland Testimony Does Not Say – And Why That Is So Important p. 664

Volume III

Part 1 The AARB Medical Witnesses (Continued)

Chapter 8: FBI Agents Sibert and O’Neill p 667

Previous Government Interviews of Sibert and O’Neill Prior to their ARRB Depositions p. 668

Arlen Specter’s Inteview of Sibert and O’Neill on March 12, 1964 (in which he reveals that Secret Service agents Kellerman and Greer have repudiated certain statements made previously to the two agents) p. 669

The ARRB Depositions of James W. Sibert and Francis X. O’Neill p. 682

Sibert and O’Neill disavow the Autopsy Photographs of the Back of the Head p. 690

President Kennedy’s ‘Oral Utterance’ p. 695

Confirm Humes’ Statement About ‘Surgery of the Head Area,…’ p. 709

SUMMARY p. 738

Chapter 9: The Dallas Doctors Depositions – A Government FUBAR of Major Proportions p. 741

Dark Forces at Work? p. 752

JEREMY GUNN DEPOSES FIVE OF THE PARKLAND HOSPITAL PHYSICIANS IN DALLAS, TEXAS ON AUGUST 27, 1998 p. 756

Part II: Fraud in the Evidence – A Pattern of Deception

Chapter 10: Two Brain Examinations – Coverup Confirmed p. 777

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

Previous Efforts to Disseminate This Information p. 778.

A SUMMARY OF THE VARIOUS TECHNIQUES INVOLVED IN PRESERVING A BRAIN FOR SUBSEQUENT EXAMINATION, AND THE METHOD NORMALLY USED FOR EXAMINATION OF A BRAIN SUBSEQUENT TO ITS REMOVAL p. 780

THE TIMELINE EVIDENCE FOR TWO SEPARATE BRAIN EXAMINATIONS p. 781

Summary of Evidence in Support of a Brain Examination on November 25, 1963 chart, p. 791

Evidence of a Brain Examination Between Nov 29-Dec 2, 1963 p. 793

Summary of Evidence in Support of a Brain Examination Between Nov. 29-Dec. 2, 1963 chart p. 802

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE EXPOSES THE ‘BIG LIE:’ AUTOPSY
PHOTOGRAPHER JOHN STRINGER’S TESTIMONY IMPUGNS THE BRAIN
PHOTOGRAPHS IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND CONFIRMS THE TWO-BRAINEXAM HYPOTHESIS p. 803
How John Stringer’s ARRB Testimony Impugns the Authenticity of the Brain Photographs in the National Archives p. 812

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF FBI AGENT FRANK O’NEILL AND MORTICIAN TOM ROBINSON REVEAL WHY THE REAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S BRAIN HAD TO BE SUPPRESSED p. 812

HUMES’ AND BOSWELL’S DECISION NOT TO SERIALLY SECTION THE
FRAUDULENT BRAIN LED TO A WEB OF LIES, AND PERJURY BEFORE THE ARRB p. 813

Additional Evidence that the Brain in the Archives Photos Cannot be President Kennedy’s p. 820

REASONS FOR DOUBT p. 820

VINCENT BUGLIOSI’S ATTACK ON THE TWO-BRAIN-EXAM HYPOTHESIS p. 822

The Opinions of Others p. 827

Summary of Evidence for Two Separate Brain Exams Following JFK’s Autopsy chart, p. 832

EXPLAINING ANOMALIES IN THE SUPPLEMENTARY AUTOPSY REPORT, IN VIEW OF THE TWO-BRAIN-EXAM HYPOTHESIS p. 833

Brain Weight p. 833

WHAT HAPPENED TO PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S BRAIN?
CONGRUENT AND REINFORCING PATTERNS OF DECEPTION p. 839

CONGRUENT AND REINFORCING PATTERNS OF DECEPTION p. 842.

Chapter 11: Three Autopsy Reports – A Botched Coverup p. 845

LENS ONE: THE TENTATIVE AUTOPSY CONCLUSIONS REACHED JUST PRIOR TO MIDNIGHT AND WITNESSED BY FBI AGENTS SIBERT AND O’NEILL p. 848

Basic Conclusions of the Sibert-O’Neill Report p. 849

LENS TWO: RICHARD LIPSEY’S HSCA INTERVIEW REPORT REVEALS THE FIRST REVISION TO THE INITIAL AUTOPSY CONCLUSIONS—AND THE LIKELY CONTENT OF THE FIRST WRITTEN DRAFT OF THE AUTOPSY PROTOCOL p. 856

Lipsey’s Recollections of the Autopsy Conclusions p. 857

Tabular Comparison of Autopsy Conclusions in Sibert-O’Neill Report with Autopsy
Conclusions in the HSCA-Lipsey Interview chart, p. 861

Did the Conclusions in the HSCA-Lipsey Interview Become the Contents of the First Draft of the Autopsy Report on Saturday, November 23rd, 1963? p. 861

LENS THREE: THE AUTOPSY CONCLUSIONS WITNESSED BY RICHARD LIPSEY, EMBODIED IN THE FIRST WRITTEN DRAFT OF THE AUTOPSY REPORT ON SATURDAY, EVOLVE INTO THE FIRST ‘OFFICIAL’ VERSION OF THE AUTOPSY PROTOCOL, SIGNED ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 1963 p. 863

The Change in Content in the Autopsy Report Signed on Sunday, November 24th, 1963 Redescribed the Cause of the Throat Wound p. 864

A Timeline for the Revision of the First Draft of the Autopsy Protocol p. 867

The First Signed Autopsy Report Was Definitely Completed on Sunday, November 24, 1963—But It Cannot Be the Autopsy Report in Evidence Today p. 869

The Receipt Trail for the Signed Autopsy Protocol Reveals That There Were Once Two Signed Autopsy Reports, and That One Such Version Is Now Missing p. 870

The Significance of the Secret Service Transfer in October of 1967 p. 871

Tabular Comparison of the Changing Autopsy Conclusions chart, p. 872

WHAT THE AUTOPSY REPORT FRAUD MEANS TO THE RESEARCHER
p. 878

Chapter 12: The Autopsy Photographs and X-Rays Explained p. 883

THE HSCA EXAMINES AUTHENTICITY ISSUES SURROUNDING THE AUTOPSY PHOTOS AND X-RAYS p. 883

The HSCA Could Find No Evidence of Fakery or Forgery in Either the Autopsy Photographs or X-Rays p. 884

THE ARRB DIGITIZES THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS FOR POSTERITY, AND IN THE PROCESS, INFORMALLY EXAMINES THEIR AUTHENTICITY p. 890

Unresolved Mysteries About the Autopsy Photographs: Subjective Impressions from Rochester p. 893

THE ARRB SPONSORS OUTSIDE EXAMINATIONS OF THE ENHANCED AUTOPSY PHOTOS BY TWO INDEPENDENT EXPERTS p. 900

HOW THE EXISTING AUTOPSY PHOTORAPHS AND X-RAYS WERE CREATED p. 903

Photographs Taken Immediately After President Kennedy’s Body Arrived at Bethesda p. 904

Photographs Taken Immediately After Clandestine, Post-Mortem Surgery p. 904

The Skull X-Rays Were Taken Immediately After the Clandestine Surgery p. 906

Autopsy Photographs Taken by John Stringer and Floyd Riebe p. 908

Photographs Taken After the Departure of FBI Agents Sibert and O’Neill p. 909

The ‘White Spot’ Explained p. 910

The ‘Red Spot’ Explained p. 911

Saundra Spencer’s Recollections Supports My Hypothesis p. 914

The Brain Introduced Into the Morgue – Another Mystery Solved p. 915

A SPECIAL DISCUSSION OF AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS 17, 18, 44, AND 45 (FIGURE 66) p. 916

A REEXAMINATION OF THE TESTIMONY BEFORE THE HSCA FORENSIC PATHOLOGY PANEL OF HUMES, BOSWELL, AND FINCK ABOUT THE LOCATION OF THE ENTRANCE WOUND IN THE SKULL, IN LIGHT OF MY OWN INTERPRETATION OF THE ‘RED SPOT’ AND ‘WHITE SPOT’ IN THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS. p. 942

ARRB Post-Script p. 953

FINAL COMMENTS ABOUT THE HSCA FORENSIC PATHOLOGY PANEL p. 957

RECONSIDERING EVIDENCE IN FAVOR OF PHOTOGRAPHIC ALTERATIONS p. 958

Possible Future Tests That Could Be Conducted p. 962

FINAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE AUTOPSY X-RAYS p. 963

FINAL CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE AUTOPSY PHOTOGRAPHS p. 969

SUMMATION p. 977

POST-SCRIPT: A SIGNIFICANT AFTERTHOUGHT p. 978

A Second Post-Script: Humes ‘Screws the Pooch’ During the JAMA Interview in 1992 p. 984

EPILOGUE p. 986

Volume IV

Chapter 13: What Really Happened at the Bethesda Morgue (And in Dealey Plaza?)

PROOF THAT PRESIDENT KENNEDY ARRIVED AT THE BETHESDA MORGUE IN A SHIPPING CASKET AND A BODY BAG—AND NOT IN THE CASKET AND WRAPPINGS IN WHICH HIS BODY LEFT PARKLAND HOSPITAL p. 988

Summary of Shipping Casket and Body Bag Witnesses chart p. 989-992

Two Key Witnesses Provide Unassailable Evidence That President Kennedy’s Body Did NOT Leave Parkland Hospital in Either a Shipping Casket or a Body Bag, and that JFK’s Body Was NOT Wrapped Inside a Clear or Transparent Mattress Cover at Parkland Hospital p. 993

Summation of What the Differences Between the Dallas and Bethesda Descriptions Mean p. 995

DR. HUMES’ WARREN COMMISSION TESTIMONY PROVIDES THE TRUE ANSWER TO WHEN THE AUTOPSY WAS CONCLUDED, PERMITTING SOME IMPORTANT REVISIONS TO THE MORGUE TIMELINE p. 998

Implications of This Revised Time fo the Conclusion of the Autopsy p. 999

HUMES COMMITTED PERJURY BEFORE THE WARREN COMMISSION ABOUT WHEN THE BODY ARRIVED p. 1000

Stringer’s Testimony to the ARRB Makes the 7:35 PM Arrival Time for the Body Reported by Humes in 1964 Impossible. p. 1001

THE ANATOMY OF A COVERUP: REVISED TIMELINE OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS INSIDE THE BETHESDA MORGUE ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963 p. 1002-1013

STATES OF MIND p. 1013

Dallas: Aubrey Rike and Dr. Peters p. 1003

Bethesda: Paul O’Conner p. 1004

Bethesda: James Jenkins p. 1027

THE HSCA BURKLEY AFFIDAVID: TAKING LIFTON DOWN p. 1051

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE DALLAS CASKET BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY IN 1966 ENSURED THE CASKET CONTROVERSY WOULD NOT SURFACE, OR BE RESOLVED, DURING THE LATE 1960s, WHEN ‘THE HEAT WAS ON. p. 1057

‘ODDITIES’ IN THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE THAT RAISE SERIOUS DOUBTS ABOUT THE WARREN COMMISSION CONCLUSIONS p. 1063

CE 399: The ‘Magic Bullet’. P. 1079

The Bullet Fragments Found in the Front Seat of the Presidential Limousine May Have Been Planted [ or: “Boring Is Interesting”] p. 1096

The “Air Force One” Audiotapes p. 1099

The ‘Wrong’ Rifle Is Found in the TSBD Building in Dallas: The Vanashing Mauser p. 1102

Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig Witnesses the Discovery of a .45 Caliber slug Across the Street from the Grassy Knoll. P. 1106

Testimony of the Missed Shots for Which There Are No Photographs p. 1109

Two Different People Were Seen on the 6th Floor of the TSBD Just Prior to the Assassination; One of Them Is Seen Escaping; and Oswald Is Seen In His Company After the Assassination p. 1009

Evidence of Crossfire in Dealey Plaza Was Overwehelming on the Day of the Assassination p. 1115

The HSCA Acoustics Study p. 1127

Josiah Thompson Sums It All Up in 1988 – And A New Research Paradigm Takes Over in the Mid-1990s p. 1132

WHAT CAN WE NOW CONCLUDE, IN THE YEAR 2009, ABOUT THE ACTUAL WOUNDS INFLICTED ON PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S BODY IN DEALEY PLAZA? p. 1138

Secret Service Agent Hill, p. 1140

The Moorman Polaroid Photograph p. 1141

The Dallas Motorcycle Policeman in the Left Rear of the Limousine Were Covered by Bloody Debris p. 1142

Two Bone Fragments Found in Dealey Plaza Are Consistent with a Fatal Shot from the Right Front p. 1144

What It All Means p. 1146

The Throat Wound p. 1155

The Back Wound p. 1157

Governor Connally Was Shot from the County Records Building p. 1159

The Limitations of What Is ‘Knowable’ Must Be Accepted p. 1160

Motion Picture Film Post Production Technician Moses Weitzman of New York City Once Detected the Presence of an Apparent Grassy Knoll Gunman in the Original Nix Film of the Assassination, Providing Further Evidence of a Crossfire, and Therefore of Conspiracy. p. 1161

The Government’s Attempt to Suppress Evidence of Crossfire in Dealey Plaza Immediately After the Assassination Is the Surest Indication of a Larage, Sophisticated Conspiracy p. 1162

THE NATURE OF THE MEDICAL COVERUP p. 1162

Robinson and Reed Provide Proof That A Clandestine, Modified Craniotomy Was Performed at the Bethesda Morgue Prior to the Autopsy on President Kennedy p. 1163

The Strange Warren Commission Testimony of Roy Kellerman p. 1171

Humes, Boswell, and the Medical Illustrator, Harold A. Rydberg p. 1177

Pushing People’s Buttons and Getting Them to ‘Play Ball’ p. 1181

Chapter 14: The Zapruder Film Mystery p. 1185

Volume V

Part III: The Political Context of the Assassination

Chapter 15: The Setup – Planning the Texas Trip and the Dallas Motorcade p.1379

Primary References Used to Study Planning for the Texas Trip and for the Dallas Motorcade p. 1379

THE SETUP: LURING PRESIDENT KENNEDY TO TEXAS, OR THE CHANGING ACCOUNTS OF THE ORIGINS OF THE TEXAS TRIP p. 1380

Vice President Johnson Was A Key Player Involved In the Origins of Texas Trip Planning in April of 1963. p. 1382

Governor John Connally Repeatedly Lied About, and Misrepresented, the Origins of the Texas Trip After President Kennedy’s Assassination p. 1385

The Crucial Role of Congressman Al Thomas in Luring JFK to Texas, and Why It Matters p. 1387

THE AMBUSH: ENSURING THAT THE MOTORCADE ROUTE WENT THROUGH DEALEY PLAZA ON ELM STREET p. 1389

Jerry Bruno Goes to Texas, and In Opposition to Governor Connally, Recommends Against the Trade Mart Luncheon Site; In Washington D.C., the Secret Service Concurs and Agrees Not To Use the Trade Mart p. 1391

The Luncheon Site Dictated the Motorcade Route p. 1397

The Final Details of the Motorcade Route Are Determiend, and Then Reluctantly Published p. 1398

Have You No Sense of Shame, Sir? P. 1400

SECURITY STRIPPING: HOW THE DALLAS MOTORCADE WAS MADE “UNIQUELY INSECURE” p. 1401

The Motorcade Escort for the Presidential Limousine in Dallas Is Cut In Half, and Directed to Stay Behind the Rear Wheels of the Limousine, by Winston Lawson, The Secret Service Advance Agent for Dallas p. 1401

ASAIC Floyd Boring Instructed Clint Hill Just Prior to the Dallas Trip That President Kennedy No Longer Wanted Agents Riding on the Rear Steps of the Limousine During Motorcades – And Then Recanted Years Later. Admitting That JFK Actually Never Interfered With Any of the Operational Procedures Followed by Secret Service Agents p. 1406

Emory Roberts is Identified as Another Secret Service Agent Involved In Security Stripping p. 1410

Numerous Arrangements Pertaining to the Dallas Motorcade Deviated from Normal Practice and Bring Suspicion Upon the Secret Service, the Agency Soley Responsible for All Aspects of Motorcade Planning p. 1413

The Actions (and Inactions) of Roy Kellerman and William Greer p. 1415

HOW INDIVIDUAL SECRET SERVICE AGENTS WERE LIKELY ‘PITCHED’ AND RECRUITED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT KENNEDY p. 1418

Many Secret Service Agents Viewed President Kennedy as a Dangerous Communist Appeaser, Who Was ‘Soft on Communism’ p. 1419

President Kennedy’s Private Sex Life Created Deep-Seated Feelings of Disapproval and Disloyalty Among Some Members of the Secret White House Detail p. 1421

THE INCRIMINATING STATEMENTS AND ACTIONS OF BOTH LYNDON B.
JOHNSON AND JOHN B. CONNALLY POINT TO THEIR RESPECTIVE GUILT p. 1428

Lyndon Johnson Unsuccessfully Attempted to Have Connally’s Seat in the Presidential Limousine in Dallas Replaced by Senator Ralph Yarborough, His Political Enemy p. 1428
The ‘Victory Party’ at the Estate of Clin Murchison Proves LBJ’s Foreknowldge of the Assassination, and the Involvement of J. Edgar Hover and LBJ’s Financial Backers p. 1429

Governor Connally’s Brutal, Irrational Behavior During Trip Planning, and His Excited Oral Utterance During the Shooting, Indicate To Me That He Had Foreknowledge of the Assassination p. 1431

Lyndon Johnson’s Actions in the Motorcade Immediately Preceding and During the Shooting bring Suspicion and Dishonor Upon Himself p. 1433

LBJ’s Statements Prior to the Texas Trip, and His Own Psychological Assessment of the Situation Afterwards, Suggests His Foreknowledge of the Assassination, and His Knowledge of a Medical Coverup After the Assassination p. 1434

LBJ Reportedly Confessed His Assassination Guilt to a Psychiatrist After Leaving the White House p. 1435

THE EVIDENCE OF CROSSFIRE IN DEALEY PLAZA IS PROOF THAT A MILITARYSTYLE AMBUSH WAS SUCCESSFULLY EXECUTED ON ELM STREET p. 1436

Eyewitness and Earwitness Testimony, and the HSCA’s Acoustics Analysis Provide
Incontrovertible Evidence of Crossfire p. 1436

Two Distinct Impact Debris Patterns Demonstrate Shots From Both the Front and Behind p. 1439

Damage to the Limousine Provided Incontrovertible Proof of Crossfire and Conspiracy p. 1439

The Bullet Strike on the Chrome Strip Above the Windshild is Proof of a Shot Fired from Behind p. 1439

The Bullet Hole in the Windshield is Proof of A Shot Fired From the Front p. 1439

PROOF OF SECRET SERVICE INVOLVEMENT IN THE COVERUP OF THE
ASSASSINATION: HOW THE SECRET SERVICE AND THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY CONSPIRED TO SWAP OUT THE LIMOUSINE’S WINDSHIELD AND REFURBISH THE PRESIDENTIAL LIMOUSINE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE ASSASSINATION, AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT ATTEMPTS TO COVER-UP THAT ACTIVITY p. 1442

The Mystery Is Resolved: The Windshield Was Swapped Out in Detroit on Monday, November 25, 1963, the Day President Kennedy Was Buried at Arlington National Cemetery p. 1445

Both the Official and Unofficial Record of What Happened to the Windshield Is Incomplete, and Is Replete With False Leads, Red Herrings, and Subterfuge Meant to Confuse Researchers and Investigators—As Well As Evidence of a Botched, Inept Coverup p. 1448

THE DESTRUCTION OF KEY DOCUMENTS BY THE SECRET SERVICE IN 1995 SUGGESTED THAT THE SECRET SERVICE COVER-UP OF ITS OWN MALFEASANCE CONTINUED, MORE THAN 30 YEARS AFTER THE ASSASSINATION p. 1451

A Summary of the Records Destroyed by the Secret Service in January of 1995 p. 1452

Chronology of Letters Exchanged Between the ARRB and the U.S. Secret Service Over the Destruction of Protective Survey Reports p. 1454

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT’S OWN FATALLY CONFLICTED ANALYSIS IN 1964 OF WHERE SHOTS OCCURRED ON ELM STREET PROVIDES INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF THAT THE TRUTH WAS SUPPRESSED p. 1458

Comparison of CE 385, CD 298, and the Warren Report’s Conclusions chart p. 1462

CONCLUDING OVERVIEW p. 1463

Chapter 16: Inconvenient Truths p. 1469

LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON p. 1472

The Eisenberg Memo p. 1474

Did LBJ Obtain the Vice-President Spot on the 1960 Democratic Ticket by Blackmail? P. 1477

The TFX Scandal p. 1485

The Bobby Baker Scandal p. 1486

Was President Kennedy Going to Drop LBJ From the 1964 Ticket p. 1488

Madeleine Brown’s Allegations p. 1489

A “Smoking Gun” Army Intelligence Document: LBJ Is Linked to Oswald’s Friend George deMohrenschildt Prior to the Assassination of President Kennedy p. 1490

The KGB Fingers LBJ: The Ultimate “Smoking Gun” Document p. 1492

J. EDGAR HOVER p. 1497 – 1500

SEVEN DAYS IN MAY p. 1501

The Book

The Film p. 1503

The Document p. 1505

The Emissary Who Delivered the ‘Seven Days In May’ Message to the USSR p. 1506

CUBA POLICY p. 1511

The Bay of Pigs p. 1511-1523

The Approaching Missile Crisis: May 1961-September 1962 p. 1523

The Cuban Missile Crisis p. 1532

Post-Missile Crisis Policy p. 1535

Presidential Peace Feelers p. 1547

SOUTHEAST ASIA AND VIETNAM POLICY p. 1550

NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM NO. 263 p. 1595

VIETNAM AND FOREIGN POLICY RETROSPECTIVE p. 1609

THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY’S CLANDESTINE SERVICES BRANCH AND HEAD OF COUNTERINTELLIGENCE CARRY OUT THE WILL OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ESTABLISHMENT AND REOVE PRESIDENT KENNEDY FROM OFFICE p. 1613

CIA Officials and Operatives Involved in the Assassinations p. 1628

David Atlee Phillips

David Sanchez Morales p. 1631

James Jesus Angleton p. 1640

Edward G. Lansdale p. 1648

The ‘Mafia Did It’ Red Herring p. 1649

THE ASSASSINATION TAPES p. 1654

A Comparison of the Polygraph and the PSE Machine p. 1655

THE AIR FORCE ONE TAPES: MORE EVIDENCE OF U.S. GOVERNMENT COVERUP p. 1660

THE KATZENBACH-MOYERS MEMORANDUM p. 1655

WHAT HAPPENED IN NOVEMBER 1963? A POLITICAL OVERVIEW p. 1668

NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM NO. 271 p. 1683

THE POSITIVE LEGACY OF THE KENNEDY PRESIDENCY p. 1684

Retrospective: The Legacy of the ‘Peace Speech’ and the Test Ban Treaty p. 1753

A Dignified and Proper Remembrance for John F. Kennedy Can Only Be Achieved in the Proper Historical Context p. 1768

Epilogue: The Education of a JFK Researcher p. 1777

AFTERWORD

Concurrent Lines of Research

Pet Peeves

About the Author p. 1805

The illustrations are located at the end of Chapter Three

LBJ, JFK & Gen. LeMay

 

In the background of this photo of the Warren Commission, the three photographs on the wall are of LBJ, JFK and General LeMay?

Why is General LeMay looking over the shoulder of the Warren Commission?

Can anyone tell me where this photo was taken?

Thanks to Larry's tip I found two quick references to the Warren Commission meeting at the VFW Hall.

One is in the testimony of Lyndal Shaneyfelt when three of the Commissioners saw the Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore films and entered them into evidence.

The conversation was so interesting I've copied it here.

Then there's Arlen Specter's ancedotal story entered into the Congressional Record about Joe Ball, the California attorney and Warren Commission Senior Counsel, and the real origin of the single bullet theory. Specter mentions that the only identification they had was the pass to get into the VFW Hall, that they used to get into Bethesda to interview the autopsy doctors before questioning them on the record. This too is interesting because he tells how Frank Adams, also a Senior Counsel to the WC, got his job. - BK

VFW – WC

Warren Commission Meets at VFW Hall WC Volume V, Page 176 –

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh5/pdf/WH5_Shaneyfelt_2nd.pdf

http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol5/page176.php

Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt

Testimony of Lyndal L Shaneyfelt Resumed

(Present were Mr. McCloy, Mr. Dulles, and Representative Ford.)

Mr. Specter.

May the record now show that the Commission has now reassembled on the first floor of the VFW Building where a motion picture projector and slide projector and screen have been set up for viewing of the films. Mr. Shaneyfelt, what are you going to show us first of all?

Mr. Shaneyfelt.
The first film will be of the color motion picture made through the rifle scope as the car drove down the assassination route at approximately 11 miles an hour. It wi11 give the view the rifleman had as he aimed the rifle from the sixth floor window of the Book Building.
(Film)
Mr. Dulles.
Is that going 11 miles per hour?
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
This film will be the black and white photographs of the car in the fixed still positions in each of the frame numbers described in previous testimony.
In addition the final portion of the film is a run through of the car at 11 miles an hour on three separate runs filmed as the rifleman would have seen the car looking through the rifle.
On the first run of the car going down the assassination route I have stained frames in the vicinity of frame 222 which is after the first clear shot after the tree, I have stained the frame at the location of shot 313, which is the second pink flash you will see.
I found, in examining the film, that this is a shorter span of time than in the actual film. It is a span on the reenactment of about three and a half seconds between 222 and 313.
The second frame stained is 313 but since it is running at a faster speed I have also stained a spot that represents 5 seconds which is what the time lapse was between frame 222 and frame 313 in the actual assassination films. That will be after the car driving scene.
(Film)
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
This is the last clear shot and this is an adjusted last clear shot before going under the tree. This is the shot approximately 185. This is frame 186 which is the adjusted shots which would account for a 10-inch variance.
Shot of frame 207, and the adjusted frame which was 210. This is frame 222 and you can see the tree is still in the background.
This is 225 now. 231. At this point Governor Connally states he has been hit by now. This is 235. 240--249--255--and the shot to the head which is 313.
Mr. Specter.
What is this? Describe this, Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
This is the run at 11 miles an hour containing the pink stain. This is another run at 11 miles an hour. It will give you some idea of the difficulty of tracking a car with a heavy camera mounted on the rifle.
Mr. Mccloy.
You have to sight that with a camera?
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Sighting through a camera.
(Film)
Mr. Redlich.
Just as a final thing, Mr. McCloy, would you like to see the Zapruder film?
Mr. Mccloy.
I think we will take the original Zapruder again, I don't know whether we have anything that is more significant in the black and whites, I am talking about the particular movies of the frames, we have not seen those.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Yes.
Mr. Mccloy.
I think we have seen all we need to see with regard to that. What have you got left?
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
The original Zapruder film.
Mr. Mccloy.
We will see that.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
We have the duplication of the Zapruder film reenactment. The first portion of the reel is the still shots and the last portion is the run through at 11 miles an hour.
Mr. Specter.
I think you would find that worth while to see.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Then we have Nix and Muchmore of the same run.
Mr. Mccloy.
Let's do those, too.
Representative Ford.
First is the original Zapruder.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Original Zapruder. This is not the original. This is the first copy.
(Film)
Mr. Specter.
Will you state for the record what film we just saw?
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
This film we just viewed is a copy made directly from the original Zapruder film of the actual assassination.
Mr. Specter.
Could you now show us the film which was taken at the reconstruction from the Zapruder position?
(Film)
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
These films we made in Dallas have been developed and left intact and have not been edited in any way so there are a lot of blank spaces where we run the leader off and turn the film. This is position 161. This side-to-side jiggle is a camera malfunction.
Mr. Mccloy.
This is 16 mm.?
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
No; 8 mm.
Representative Ford.
Is this from his camera?
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Yes; taken with his camera. Frame 222, frame 225. This is frame 231.
Representative Ford.
He has a delayed reaction compared to what the President did.
Mr. Specter.
What frame is this, Mr. Shaneyfelt?
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
313, the head shot.
Mr. Mccloy.
The head shot.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
This is the position which is not duplicated on the Zapruder film. This is running the film out to reload it.
During that run at 11 miles an hour we made no effort to duplicate the body position because it would have been most difficult to know just when to turn. The only other films we have are the ones we shot with the Nix and Muchmore cameras of this same run from their positions.
Mr. Mccloy.
Did Nix, Muchmore get a second shot of the head shot?
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Mrs. Muchmore got the head shot and Mr. Nix got the head shot.
Mr. Mccloy.
They both got it.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
We have both those films.
Mr. Mccloy.
We might take a look at it while we are here. I don't think I have ever seen those. Those are 8mm, too.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
Yes.
(Film.)
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
This film is the film that was taken by Mr. Orville Nix of the assassination. This is along Houston street going toward Elm. There
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
was the head shot. We will roll it back and run it at slow motion. The head shot shows just a very faint pink.
Mr. Mccloy.
Very soon after this sequence begins. Just as the President is directly under the white abutment in the background. I will try to give you a clue about when it is going to happen, there.
The next film is the film that was exposed in Mr. Nix's camera standing in the position determined to be his camera position at the reenactment in Dallas, with the car traveling at approximately 11 miles an hour along Elm street.
These films were compared with each other and found to be consistent in the size of the car in the area of the picture and verified the position as being that of Mr. Nix.
(Film)
Mr. Specter.
Have you now shown us, Mr. Shaneyfelt, all of the movies that we saw, we took in Dallas?
Mr. Mccloy.
Mrs. Muchmore.
Mr. Specter.
Mrs. Muchmore.
(Film)
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
This is the motorcade coming down Main and turning into Houston street.
Mr. Mccloy.
She didn't know she took that.
Mr. Shaneyfelt.
No.
Mr. Specter.
Have we now seen all the films from Dallas? That concludes the films.
Mr. McCloy, for the record, I would like to have the films marked with Commission Exhibit No. 904 identifying the Zapruder copy. That is the copy of the original Zapruder film.
May I say here, parenthetically, that we do not intend to reproduce all of this in the published record of the Commission since we have extracted the key numbers on Exhibit 885 on the album which shows the frames of the Zapruder film after the President's automobile turns left off of Houston onto Elm, but for the permanent archives these films should be made a part of the permanent record.
I would like to have a copy of the original Nix film marked as Commission Exhibit No. 905. I would like to have the copy of the original Muchmore film marked as Commission Exhibit No. 906. I would like to have all of the movies which we took at Dallas marked in a group as Commission Exhibit No. 907.
Mr. Mccloy.
That is all the movies that were taken on May 24 in Dallas by the test team, so to speak.
Mr. Specter.
Right, Commissioner McCloy. They are marked as Commission Exhibit No. 907, and I would like to move formally for the admission into evidence of Commission Exhibits Nos. 904 through 907 at this time.
Mr. Mccloy.
They may be admitted.
(Commission Exhibits Nos. 904, 905, 906, and 907 were marked for identification, and received in evidence.)
(Whereupon, at 7:20 p.m., the President's Commission recessed.)

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8786314


Mr. SPECTER. The Times article details the specifics on the positions held by Mr. Ball in the lawyers associations, his professorial associations as a teacher, his experience as a criminal lawyer, and his experience, most pointedly, as one of the senior counsel to the Warren Commission, the President's commission which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy. It was on the Warren Commission staff that I came to know Joe Ball.

The original complexion of the Warren Commission on staffing was that there were six senior counsel who were appointed and six junior counsel. That distinction was replaced by putting all of the lawyers under the category of assistant counsel. But if there was a senior counsel, it was Joe Ball.

Then, in his early sixties, he was a tower of strength for the younger lawyers. When the commission began its work, I was 33. Most of the junior lawyers were about the same age. We looked to Joe Ball for his experience and for his guidance. He had a special relationship with Chief Justice Earl Warren, which was also helpful because Joe Ball could find out what Chief Justice Warren had in mind in his capacity as chairman and provide some valuable insights that some of the younger lawyers were
unable to attain.

Joe Ball worked on what was called area two, along with the very distinguished younger lawyer, David Belin from Des Moines, IA. Area two was the area which was structured to identify the assassin. Although the initial reports had identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin, and on television, on November 24, America saw Jack Ruby walk into the Dallas police station, put a gun in Oswald's stomach and kill him, the Warren Commission started off its investigation without any presumptions but looking at the evidence to make that determination as to who the assassin was.

My area was area one, which involved the activities of the President on November 22, 1963. There was substantial interaction between the work that Joe Ball and Dave Belin did and the work which was assigned to me and Francis W.H. Adams, who was senior counsel on area one.

Frank Adams had been New York City police commissioner and had been asked to join the Warren Commission staff when Mayor Wagner sat next to Chief Justice Warren at the funeral of former Governor and former Senator, Herbert Lehman. Mayor Wagner told Chief Justice Warren that Frank Adams, the police commissioner, knew a lot about Presidential protection and had designed protection for motorcades in New York City, with dangers from tall buildings, which was an analogy to what happened to President
Kennedy.

There was question as to how we would coordinate our work, and it was sort of decided that Joe Ball and Dave Belin would investigate matters when the bullet left the rifle of the assassin in flight, which was no man's land, and when it struck the President. That came into area one, which was my area: the bullet wounds on President Kennedy, the bullet wounds on Governor Connally, what happened with the doctors at Parkland Hospital, what happened with the autopsy, all matters related to what had happened with President Kennedy.

We had scheduled the autopsy surgeons for a Monday in early March. They were Lieutenant Commander Boswell, Lieutenant Commander Humes and Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck. The autopsy was done at Bethesda, where President Kennedy was taken, because of the family's preference that he go to a naval installation because he was a Navy man, so to speak, who had served in the Navy.

The testimony was to be taken on this Monday in March. There was quite a debate going on with the Warren Commission staff as to whether we should talk to witnesses in advance. It seemed to many of us that we should talk to witnesses in advance so we would have an idea as to what they would testify to so we could have an orderly presentation, which is the way any lawyer talks to a witness whom he is about to call. The distinguished Presiding Officer has been a trial lawyer and knows very well to what I am referring. There was a segment on the Warren Commission staff which thought we should not talk to any witnesses in advance, lest there be some overtone of influencing their testimony. Finally, this debate had to come [Page: S9562] to a head, and it came to a head the week before the autopsy searchers were to testify.

And on Friday afternoon, Joe Ball and I went out to Bethesda to talk to the autopsy surgeons. It was a Friday afternoon, much like a Friday afternoon in the Senate. Nobody else was around. It was my area, but I was looking for some company, so I asked Joe Ball to accompany me--the autopsy surgeons falling in my area. We took the ride out to Bethesda and met the commanding admiral and introduced ourselves. We didn't have any credentials. The only thing we had to identify ourselves as working on the Warren Commission was a building pass for the VFW. My building pass had my name typed crooked on the line, obviously having been typed in after it was signed. They sign them all and then type them in. It didn't look very official at all.

So when Commander Humes and Commander Bozwell came down to be interviewed, Commander Humes was very leery about talking to anybody. He had gone through some travail with having burned his notes and having been subjected to a lot of comment and criticism about what happened at the autopsy, and there were FBI agents present when the autopsy was conducted. A report had come out that the bullet that had entered the base of the President's neck had been dislodged during the autopsy by massage. It
had fallen out backward as opposed to having gone through the President's body, which was what the medical evidence had shown.

That FBI report that the bullet had entered partially into the President's body and then been forced out had caused a lot of controversy before the whole facts were known. Later, it was determined that the first shot which hit the President--he was hit by two bullets--well, the second shot, which hit him in the base of the skull, was fatal, entering the base of the skull and exiting at the top at 13 centimeters, 5 inches--the fatal wound. The first bullet which hit the President passed between two large strap muscles, sliced the pleural cavity, hit nothing solid and came out, and Governor Connally was seated right in front of the President and the bullet would have to have hit either Governor Connally or someone in the limousine.

After extensive tests were conducted, it was concluded that the bullet hit Governor Connally. There has been a lot of controversy about the single bullet theory, but time has shown that it is correct. A lot of tests were conducted on the muzzle velocity of the Oswald rifle. It was identified as having been Oswald's, purchased from a Chicago mail order store. He came into the building with a large package which could have contained the rifle. He said they were curtain rods for an apartment which already had curtains. The muzzle velocity was about 2,200 feet per second, and the velocity after traveling about 275 feet was about 1,900 feet per second.

At any rate, as Joe Ball and I went through it with the autopsy surgeons, we found for the first time--because we had only seen the FBI reports--that the bullet did go through President Kennedy and decreased very little in velocity. It was at that moment when we talked to Dr. Humes and Dr. Finck that we came to hypothesize that that bullet might have gone through Governor Connally. We didn't come to a conclusion on that until we had reviewed very extensive additional notes, but it was on that occasion that Joe Ball and I had interviewed the autopsy surgeons. It was a marvel to watch Joe Ball work with his extensive experience as a lawyer and as a fact finder.

He lived to the ripe old age of 97. The New York Times obituary had very extensive compliments about a great deal of his work and focused on his contribution to the Warren Commission, where he had written an extensive portion of the Warren Report, as he was assigned to area two which compiled a fair amount of the report.

America has lost a great patriot in Joe Ball, a great citizen, a great lawyer, and a great contributor. I had the pleasure of knowing him and working with him on the Warren Commission staff and have had occasion to reminisce with him about his work. I noted that on his office wall in California is his elegantly framed building pass.

In the absence of any other Senator seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Cuban Missile Crisis Briefing Map

 

President Kennedy: What is this map?

Carter: That shows the circular range capability...

...Kennedy: Well, I was just wondering whether San Diego de los Banos is where these missles are.

Carter: Yes, sir....

From The Kennedy Tapes – Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Edited by E. May and P. Zelikow; Belknap Press, Harvard, 1997) which notes: “Kennedy was in the Cabinet Room with his 5-year old daughter, Caroline, when the advisors filed in, accompanied by Arthur Lundahl from NPIC [National Photo Interpretation Center], and another CIA expert, Sidney Graybeal. CIA as a whole was represented by Acting Director Marshall Carter. McCone was on the West Coast, arranging the burial of his stepson. As Caroline left and the meeting began, Kennedy turned on the tape recorder...”

Missile Analysist Sidney Graybeal briefed President on Soviet missiles in Cuba using maps, photos and briefing boards prepared by the National Photo Interpation Center (NPIC), which also prepared two sets of briefing boards using Zapruder film photos of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Homer McMahon and his assistant Ben Hunter were color photo technicians at the NPIC at the time of the assassination and prepared one set of briefing boards. Another set of briefing boards were prepared by Dino Brugioni, which were used by Arthur Lundahl, who also briefed the President during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Sidney Graybeal, the analysist of the missile photos, was also responsible for directing the flight path of the U2s that flew over Russia, including Gary Power's ill fated fight. Here is an excerpt of a heavily redacted interview with Sidney Graybeal in which he describes in detail his briefing of President Kennedy, which set off the 13 days of what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Sidney Graybeal: Well, when the mission flew on the fifteenth of October and provided the photographs, they came into the National Photo Interpretation Center at around four, five o'clock in the afternoon. The photo interpreters started looking at these pictures and one of my branch chiefs was there and when he looked at 'em, he called me on the phone and said, we have something very hot, you'd better come down here immediately.

So I went to the Photo Interpretation Center. When I got there, the photo interpreters laid out the photographs of these canvas-covered objects. There was no question in my mind that we had offensive missiles in Cuba. The question was, what type of offensive missile is this and they could give very precise measurements of the length of this canvas-covered object. Now if this were a missile without its nose cone - you see nose cones are normally mated later - then it would be one type of missile, but if the nose cone was on, it would be a different one. So essentially, that measurement said if this is a complete missile with the nose cone, it would be an SS-3, a relatively short-range missile. If the nose cone is not on, it would be an SS-4, which is an eleven hundred-mile range missile. Now, knowing from Penkovsky and others that the nose cone is normally not mated, it was my judgment that this was an SS-4 and then if you look at a map, an SS-4 with a thousand, eleven hundred mile range can reach Washington and so my view was if the Soviets are going to deploy offensive missiles into Cuba, they would not deploy something that could only hit the southern part of the US when they had a missile that could hit Washington and that would be a real deterrent. So my judgment immediately was that this is an SS-4 missile, even though we didn't actually see the missile, we saw a canvas-covered object and we could see the erector that went with it and we could see all the information that we thought unambiguous, that we had an offensive missile and working with the PI's and looking at the range and looking at the data we had from Penkovsky, and looking at the data from the Moscow parades, where we had pictures of the missiles, we discerned that this was an SS-4 and that's when I advised my boss that night.

SG: Well, you're doing an evaluation of a ballistic missile's capabilities, specifically the missiles that we saw on photography in Cuba, it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You have a piece of information here that comes from human sources that tells you about it, of which Penkovsky was clearly a critical aspect on the manuals and how these missiles operate. You had photographic information, both of missiles in the parade in Moscow, but photographic information of the test range where these missiles had been tested. You had telemetry information which told you the characteristics of the missile, that it was a liquid fuel missile, how you would have to operate the missile, so these combined, give you a sufficiently clear picture that when we looked at the missiles in Cuba and when we get the question about how will they operate, how long will they operate, all the things that were asked during that first Ex-Comm committee meeting, it was a combination of intelligence sources put together by intelligence analysts, including the photo interpreters and the missile experts, which gave you an understanding to be able to, one, identify the missile, two, determine its characteristics, it carries a three thousand pound payload which could be two megaton warhead on the front end of the missile, so all of these things fit together which an intelligence officer uses to provide the conclusions.

SG: There is no question in my mind that finding offensive missiles in Cuba was an extremely important, startling development here within the US government, because it put a whole new perspective on the threat to the continent of the United States when the ICBM program in the Soviet Union was small, but here you're putting in ballistic missiles with range sufficient to hit a good part of the United States, so you have essentially doubled your capabilities of the Soviet Union to threaten the US. So as soon as we saw these were ballistic missiles, I knew we had something that was critically important process, but you don't panic in these type of situations, because you have to deal with facts and as an intelligence officer you recognize sometimes you will be wrong. But now you've got hard facts, so now you have to deal with these. These were provided to the DDI, which at the time Deputy Director for Intelligence was Ray Cline and he knew it was extremely important. The word was being passed that night to various senior officials.

The next day when I went to the White House with Art Lundahl to brief McGeorge Bundy, McGeorge Bundy knew exactly that this was extremely serious. There was no laugh, there was no joking about anything to do with this situation. McGeorge Bundy wanted to know the facts, are you sure these are missiles? Yes, we're absolutely sure these are missiles. Are you sure of the type of missile? Yes, we know the type of missile this is, what we don't know is the operational status of these missiles right now. Dillon came in, Dillon took it extremely seriously, no joking, left. Bobby Kennedy clearly knew that this was a major because Bobby Kennedy had been the person dealing with Dobrynin and others who were assuring the President there will be no offensive missiles in Cuba. So Bobby Kennedy's view immediately was they'd been lying to us. I mean, so immediately he understood the significance and he took off to go upstairs to speak to the President about the situation...

SG: Well, after we had identified the missiles in Cuba and reported these to the senior officials, we met with the Deputy Director of Intelligence at about seven o'clock in the morning, the next morning, and we prepared a three paragraph introduction to the subject which General Carter, who was acting Director of CIA because McCone was on the West Coast, for him to give at the Ex-Comm committee that meeting that morning. Art Lundahl, the Director of the Photographic Interpretation Center, and Sidney Graybeal, myself, were sent to the White House with our briefing boards of the missiles in Cuba to brief McGeorge Bundy, the head of the National Security staff, so we went to the White House, we laid out the pictures, the briefing from McGeorge Bundy. Dillon came in and we gave the same briefing to Dillon. Bobby Kennedy came in, we gave the same briefing to Bobby Kennedy and he took off to go upstairs to the personal quarters of President Kennedy to tell him.

We stayed in the White House all morning until the first Ex-Comm committee meeting took place at around eleven o'clock and then we all went into the Cabinet Room and we waited for the President. The President came in, good morning gentlemen, sat down and a side light, which is kind of interesting to me personally, is the door that the President had come through all of a sudden burst open and Caroline Kennedy came in and essentially said, Daddy, Daddy, they won't let my friend in. The President got up, went over, put his arm around her, took her out of the room, came back within a minute and says, gentlemen, I think we should proceed. The meeting started. What transpired at the meeting is General Carter read the three paragraphs, essentially what was the status, suggested the President should look at the evidence. Art Lundahl, head of the NPA, had these very large briefing boards which he laid on the table in front of President Kennedy, McNamara on the right, Rusk on the other side, so the three of 'em could see them and Lundahl said this is Cuba, this is San Forego , so forth. Then he mentioned, these are offensive ballistic missiles and he specifically pointed to them on the chart. The first question the President asked was, how long before they can fire those missiles? And Art Lundahl said, well, Mr. Graybeal is the missile expert. So he turned to me, I stood up behind the President, McNamara and Rusk and for the next probably five to ten minutes fired one question after the other. In answer to the President's question, how long can they fire these missiles, I relied primarily on the combination of intelligence sources...

The Ex-Comm committee meeting we had that morning was all business after the little... well there was all business in the sense that the President was extremely serious, he wanted to get the facts His first question clearly was how long before they can fire those missiles, 'cos he knew I've got an extremely serious situation here. These are offensive missiles threatening the United States. How much time do I have to act. And of course, as developed later, during those Ex-Comm meetings, do we go in and take them out? How do we get them out of there and there's a whole litany of debates within Ex-Comm which very, very well reported in various other publications. So the meeting was serious, the people were serious, the President wanted to know how much time he had, McNamara wanted to know where were the nuclear warheads. Rusk was worried about the political implications, what exactly had taken place here, what had they said to us, what did you say in your last speech Mr. President. So there was a whole variety of very good exchanges that took place.
Now Lundahl and I were excused from that first meeting after we had presented the facts, after we had answered all the questions that they asked about the operational characteristics of the missiles. So I was not present during the time where they started debating what do we do and if you want to get a good record of that get the book The Kennedy Tapes which has got an excellent description of what transpired in all of those meetings...

From: The Kennedy Tapes :

LeMay, Air Force General Curtis

“The Pacific War that had commenced at Pearl Harbor ended with Japan’s surrender in August 1945….Curtis LeMay, who would be the Chief of Staff of the Air Force in October 1962, and Kennedy’s most hawkish advisor, had been transferred from the European theater to take over the 20th Air Force, based on Guam. Slightly older than Rusk, he had joined the Army Air Corps in 1928, leaving Ohio State University without a degree. The mission of LeMay’s command was strategic bombing of the Japanese home islands. After analyzing the command’s operations, LeMay ordered a complete change in tactics. The B-29s had been flying at high altitude in order to be safe from antiaircraft fire. LeMay calculated that at much lower altitudes there might be a somewhat greater loss of aircraft, but that this disadvantage would be more than offset by increases in bomb loads and in bombing accuracy. Experience seemed to prove him right….”

“An admiring observer of LeMay’s management of the 20th Air Force was Army Air Force Lt. Colonel Robert S. McNamara, who would later be Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, and LeMay’s civilian boss. McNamara was less than a year older than Kennedy. He, too, came from Irish immigrants, but his forebears had taken the Panama route to California…McNamara and LeMay didn’t see eye to eye during the missile crisis. Indeed, they may not have seen eye to eye in 1945, when LeMay was clearly gratified not only the cost-effectiveness of his operations but by their consequences. Of the March 1945 raid, LeMay boasted later, ‘We burned up nearly sixteen square miles of Tokyo,’ then quoted the official report…’There were more casualties than in any other military action in the history of the world.’ LeMay also had command responsibility for the special bomber group that attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his attitude toward the first atomic bombs was dismissive. He rejected the notion that they were somehow special, morally or otherwise. ‘The assumption seems to be,’ he wrote, ‘that it is much more wicked to kill people with a nuclear bomb, than to kill people by busting their heads with rocks.’ At least in later years, McNamara would come to argue vehemently that nuclear weapons were special and ought never to be used.”

“McNamara, [Robert] Lovett’s nominee for Defense, was president of the Ford Motor Company, where he had gone after World War II…

“On October 14 a high flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft of the American Strategic Air Command flew a limited photographic mission over Cuba…During October 15, experts at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), in a nondescript building at 5th and K in Washington, pored over photos from the October 14 U-2 flight…”

October 19th Cabinet Room.

Taylor: Well, I would just say one thing and then turn it over to General LeMay. We recognize all these things, Mr. President. But I think we’d all be unanimous in saying that really our strength in Berlin, our strength anyplace in the world, is the credibility of our response under certain conditions. And if we don’t respond in here in Cuba, we think the credibility is sacrificed.

President Kennedy: That’s right. That’s right. So that’s why we’ve got to respond. Now the question is: What is our response?

LeMay: Well, I certainly agree with everything General Taylor has said. I’d emphasize, a little strongly perhaps, that we don’t have any choice except direct military action. If we do this blockade that’s proposed, a political action, the first thing that’s going to happen is your missiles are going to disappear into the woods, particularly your mobile ones. Now, we can’t find them, regardless of what we do, and then we’re going to take some damage if we try to do anything later on.

President Kennedy: Well, can’t they put some of these undercover,….now that they’ve been alerted?

LeMay: there is a possibility of that. But the way they line these others up – I’ll have to say it’s a small possibility…I don’t think there are any hid….Now as for the Berlin situation, I don’t share your view that if we knock off Cuba, they’re going to knock off Berlin. If we don’t do anything in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run….

President Kennedy: What do you think their reply would be?

LeMay: I don’t think they’re going to make any reply if we tell them that the Berlin situation is just like it’s always been. If they make a move, we’re going to fight. I don’t think it changes the Berlin situation at all, except you’ve got to make one more statement on it. So I see not other solution. This blockade and political action, I see leading into war. I don’t see any other solution. It will lead right into war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.

[Pause]

LeMay: Because if this whole blockade comes along, MiGs are going to fly….and we’re just going to gradually slip into a war under conditions that are at great disadvantage to us, with missiles staring us in the face, that can knock out our airfields in the southeastern portion of the United States. And if they use nuclear weapons, it’s the population down there. We just slipped into a war under conditions that we don’t like. I just don’t see any other solution except direct military intervention RIGHT now.

Anderson [Adml. George ] : Well, Mr. President, I feel that the course of action recommended to you by the Chiefs from the military point of view is the right one. I think it’s the best one from the political point of view….

LeMay: ….There’s one other factor that I didn’t mention that’s not quite our field, which is the political factor…I think that a blockade, and political talk, would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this. And I’m sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way, too. You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President.

President Kennedy: What did you say?

LeMay: You’re in a pretty bad fix.

[Transcript note: Kennedy makes an unclear, joking reply.]

[In the film “13 Days” Kennedy’s reply is: “If I’m not mistaken you’re in the fix with me.” ]


THIRTEEN DAYS REVISITED

The Cuban Missile Crisis movie “13 Days” serves as a prequil to Oliver Stone's “JFK”

As a testament to the idea that the things that happen to real people are more interesting and sometimes more incredible than anything you can possibly make up, the film “13 Days” takes the events of October, 1962 – the Cuban Missile Crisis, and presents them in a credible and fascinating way.

It’s interesting that President George W. Bush invited some of the Kennedy family to watch the film with him at the White House, a newsworthy situation that tells us that at least the new Pres saw the film even if he might not get the movie’s message, though it’s frightening to even ponder how the President today would be able to disregard the advice and desire of practically all of his generals.

Leaving the theater however, thoughts and conversations weren’t about how things would play out today, as most people didn’t even talk about the movie or the Missile Crisis, but instead, the focus of interest was on the assassination of President Kennedy. “13 Days” provides a motive as to why the assassination happened and who was really responsible. As researcher John Judge noted, “13 Days” is kind of a prequel to Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” as it lays out the groundwork and sets the stage for what was to come.

Of course the primary producer, Kevin Costner and actor, probably wouldn’t have made this film if he didn’t make “JFK,” but there’s more than just Costner’s starring roles in both film that brings these two startling events and movies together.

Since most of the viewers of both films weren’t even alive when the events portrayed actually happened, and those of us who were only know the secondary participants by name, “13 Days” gives good insight into the character and personalities of some major players in the JFK assassination drama, especially Air Force General Curtis LeMay, Maxwell Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, defense secretary Robert McNamara and UN ambassador Adele Stevenson, as well as the Kennedy brothers themselves.

The movie opens at Kenny O’Donnell’s home breakfast table where Costner quizzes his kids on the names and titles of Kennedy’s cabinet, of which he is a part. An important part of this movie is seeing how the Kennedy administrators thought and talked with each other, sometimes doubting and questioning each other’s judgment and then implicitly trusting other decisions while questioning the advice and motives others, especially those who tried to box them into a forced military reaction. Withholding that option and continuing a reasoned diplomacy was probably one of the most pivotal decisions that has shaped our society, while the assassination of JFK became a watershed event from which democracy has yet to recover.

Gearing up for a fight, and then not having one was harder on the military than we had been led to believe. A bar owner once told me that he hired bouncers, not to fight or eject unruly patrons, but to keep things cool and not have any fights. But sometimes bouncers don’t see it that way and don’t think they’re earning their money if they don’t punch somebody out every once in awhile. It’s sort of like a “Jack Ruby-Sparky Syndrome,” except in a more institutionalized form.

You see it in the wrath of the eyes of General LeMay, (played by Kevin Conway) the strategic “Bomb’m back to the stone age,” Air Force commander who was used to giving orders, not following the demands of a couple of punk rich kids a few years out of college. The generals weren’t even trusted by Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker), who had to sleep in his office at the Pentagon because he was afraid if he left the military would make a move without him, and McGeorge Bundy, the national security aid who served as a “buffer” between the military and the administration. Both were eventually taken in by the assassination and Vietnam.

It was the Cuban Missile Crisis and how Kenned handled it, which made the national security forces recognize that they weren’t going to be able to force their hand during a crisis, when they were paralyzed from holding a coup d’etat when it would be particularly visible and blatant. So they had to do it during a lull in the action, at Dealey Plaza, when the palace guard was down and most vulnerable.

After JFK permitted the producers of Fletcher Nebel’s “Seven Days In May” to film scenes in the White House, he was asked by journalist Joe Alsop if he thought such a coup attempt as depicted in the fictional story could ever actually happen, and Kennedy said it could, “if there was such an event such as the Bay of Pigs,” and then a similar event, then a military takeover of the government could happen.

The motive for the military’s acquiescence for the assassination, if not the actual execution, stems from the failure of the Bay of Pigs, together with the triumph of diplomacy over military action during the Cuban Missile Crisis, iced by the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the American University “Peace Speech,” all together ensured the removal of the Kennedy administration and replacing it, constitutionally, with one headed by Lyndon Johnson. This military take-over included McNamara and Bundy, who got the message, helped devise the necessary strategy and ensured the redirection of national security policy away from detente and diplomacy and towards war and covert and overt aggression.

The acceptance of this general outline and framing of the assassination of President Kennedy is one generally accepted by most people, but vehemently denounced by mainstream historians, politicians and the media, though it is one that will be born out by the evidence when all the facts are in and the total truth is known.

The association of the Missile Crisis and the assassination is not made as clearly in the otherwise excellent made-for-tv movie “The Missiles of October,” which stars Marty Sheen and also clearly delineates the back room dealings that went on during the crisis. The association may come out even more clearly with a closer reading of the actual transcripts of the taped conversations published in The Kennedy Tapes – Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, (Edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow; Belknap Press of Harvard, 1997).

These recently declassified and released papers are now available at the National Security Archives (NSA), at George Washington University, which was established by a group of journalists who researched and wrote books on national security matters based on government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Many of these documents are published on their web site, which makes note of the fact that few, if any of the official documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis even mention Kenneth P. O’Donnell, whose role played by Costner is a featured attraction in “13 Days.”

Some critics have said that O’Donnell’s actual limited role takes some legitimacy away from the truthfulness of the film, while the producers, in the aim of accuracy, pulled some early New York Times advertisements that included photographs of missiles that had yet to be developed in 1962. While the extent of O’Donnell’s role can be questioned, if not measured, you can’t get around the fact that he was there, in the room, when most of the significant events occurred, and I intend to explore his role further.

According to The Kennedy Tapes, “On Monday morning, October 22, Kennedy convened his advisors…in the Cabinet Room. One of those who had probably attended earlier meetings but who spoke for the first time at this meeting was Kenneth O’Donnell. A Harvard classmate of Robert Kennedy and an aide to John Kenney since the senatorial campaign of 1952, O’Donnell was Special Assistant to the President, charged especially with managing the President’s time…”

As described in A Common Good – The Friendship of Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth P. O’Donnell, by daughter Helen O’Donnell (William Morrow, N.Y., 1998), “Kenny’s desk was right outside the Oval Office. As special assistant and appointments secretary, he was the gatekeeper to the president. He was relentless and tough in his new job as had ever been on the campaign. He was widely known as Kennedy’s political chief of staff,…won the nickname ‘the Cobra’….There were three words that epitomized Kennedy O’Donnell in Jack Kennedy’s White House….’Cut the crap.’…That attitude made him valuable to President Kennedy, who knew he could rely on Kenny to handle what needed to be handled, preserve the president’s time, and protect the president’s back.”

As seen through the eyes of O’Donnell, “13 Days” takes you into the White House, the Pentagon war room and cockpits of the Surveillance planes, but leaves the reactions of the Cubans and Russians, other than backchannel KGB contact, totally out of the picture. Before they put in the Hot-Line red phones in the White House and the Kremlin, so both leaders can talk one-on-one in times of crisis, the official bureaucratic channels were so cumbersome that the best and quickest way to communicate a message to Khrushchev in Moscow was either through the press, which in this case meant a KGB officer who they knew had the direct ear of the Russian leader.

In the movie, the KGB officer’s bonafides as a close associate of Khrushchev are checked by comparing career chronologies of both men, which came up with a match of them having served in the same place at the same time during WWII, and shows the importance of compiling such chronologies when conducting such research.

One message RFK gives to to his KGB friend that’s not in the movie is that JFK is afraid that he can no longer keep the military leaders at bay and if he doesn’t take a more aggressive stance, they may even attempt to get rid of him and take over the government. Khrushchev knew the feeling well, as he too was under the same pressures from his military commanders, who eventually did contribute to the removal of Khrushchev within a year of JFK’s murder.

Rather than the Soviets, it is the U.S. Military commanders who come off as the Bad Guys they apparently were. In discussing the possible options the U.S. had in response to the placement of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba, about one fourth of the advisors, mostly military men, advocated an immediate surgical, tactical air strike and full scale invasion of Cuba. As we know today, that would have resulted in a total thermonuclear war since the Russians already had tactical nuclear weapons in place in Cuba under the command of field Colonels who would have used them if attacked. [We didn’t know this at the time however, and only learned of the tactical nukes at a unique conference on the Missile Crisis that was held in Havana in the 1990s and included Cuban, Russian and American scholars and participants, including Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The Cubans have already engaged in two similar conferences with American researcher in regards to the JFK assassination.]

JFK mentioning these tactical nukes in the movie is one of the few historical gaffs in the film. Another technical inaccuracy is press secretary Pierre Salinger shown giving a press conference – “The President has a cold,” without a cigar in his hand, while General LeMay is never shown without one, which brings up an interesting anecdote.

LeMay is reported to have been at JFK’s autopsy at Bethesda by attending technician, Paul O’Conner, who told me that one of the physicians performing the autopsy ordered him to tell whoever was smoking a cigar in the room to leave. When O’Conner told him it was Gen. LeMay, the order was withdrawn.

LeMay comes off as a particularly bad guy before the first day is over, when he storms out of a meeting saying, “Those Kennedy boys are going to destroy this country!”

LeMay wants the Air Force to be given the ball so they can throw their bombs, but instead, JFK, RFK and O’Donnell make personal phone calls to the pilots of reconnaissance planes to order them not to even get shot at so as not to instigate a forced retaliatory strike. When one pilot returns with the photos, his ground grew marvels at the bullet holes in the wing, which the pilot says were made by a flock of sparrows. “Were they .20 or .40 caliber sparrows?” the ground crewman asks, but LeMay is more forceful in his questioning, “Did they shoot you with so much as a BB gun?” LeMay wants to know, but the good soldier, true to his Commander-in-Chief, just says it was a “cakewalk.”

It was a good way of emphasizing the desire and determination of the military brass to get into a scrum, while at the same time showing how President Kennedy operated, and how his administrative style included making personal contact with the players on the front lines, making sure they knew the game plan and what their role was, as well as the fact that the guy issuing the orders was really on top of things.

The Kennedys, as they did in their personal as well as professional lives, looked towards challenges as they did the game of football. In the movie, as in their lives, events overtook them, but they still made time to joke a little, throw the ball around the meeting room or backyard and confront crisis as a team effort.

Rather than a close associate of the President, Kenny O’Donnell was one of RFK’s guys, the quarterback on Bobby’s Harvard team, and so he was given a quarterback position in the White House, the Appointments Secretary. O’Donnell was the greater at the door, the Sgt-at-arms who you had to get past in order to get to the President.

Bobby, as the Attorney General, was the nation’s Top Cop, but also served as JFK’s right-hand-man and chief crisis coordinator. While the Cuban Missile Crisis was probably RFK’s greatest moment, everyone in the entire country and probably the civilized world eventually became caught up in the anxiety of the crisis, as it concerned the continuation of our society as we know it.

In the middle of it all, Coster’s O’Donnell takes time out to see his son play some high school football. Then back at the office he has to run physical interference and step in for a block to keep LeMay from putting his chest into Kennedy’s face.

The football analogy is brought into play again later when JFK tells Bobby to get ready to take Adlai Stevenson out of the UN and put in someone more force full (John J. McCloy), but when nuclear push comes to shove Stevenson comes through in the clutch. Asking quite succinctly if the Russian Ambassador denies that there are long range offensive ballistic missiles in Cuba, Stevenson says, “I’ll wait for an answer until Hell freezes over.” Stevenson stayed in the game, then got roughed up by a gang of thugs in Dallas on UN Day and urged JFK not to go to there.

Kennedy however, did take General Walker out of the game, as he did CIA chief Allen Dulles along with Richard Bissell, the Godfather of the U2 and the architect of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Also pulled from his position was “America’s James Bond,” William Harvey, who experienced the wrath of RFK when Bobby learned that Harvey had sent in a commando team to Cuba after RFK had ordered a halt to all such operations.

Oswald was in the Great Game too, only a less significant player, but a player nonetheless. He had previously been associated with the U2 program as a USMC radar operator in Japan, before he defected to the Soviet Union, where his knowledge of the U2 (altitude and speed) would have been of interest to the Russians. Gary Powers said that he believed Oswald gave them the information they needed to shoot him down, thus averting the Eisenhower-Khrushchev detente meeting and postponing the end of the Cold War for decades. It’s possible Oswald attended Powers’ trial in Moscow.

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October, 1962, Oswald was back home in Texas with his Russian bride and baby daughter, and just beginning a technicians job at Jaggers-Chiles-Stoval, a graphics art firm that employed Oswald for six months. Besides doing routine advertising work for corporate clients, this company also did classified work for U.S. Army Intelligence, reportedly placing marks, arrows and captions on photographs, including aerial photos taken from the U2.

So it is conceivable that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, some of the U2 photos of the missiles in Cuba may have been tagged with their place names by Lee Harvey Oswald before they were seen by the President and his national security advisors. [See : Oswald at JCS - “Legend – The Secret Life of Lee Harvey Oswald” by E.J. Epstein.]

The possibility that the Russians would place long range offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba had been suggested years earlier by Gen. Walker, who claimed that such a scenario was played out in war games as long as seven years earlier, before Castro even came to power, and the prelude for crisis was enunciated quite clearly by Clair Booth Luce in Life Magazine a week before the actual crisis.

So the number of possible options they had to work with should have been more numerous than were available at the time, and the administration shouldn’t have had to think on it’s feet and devise their own plays once the crisis got underway, which is when the U2 photos showed undeniable, irrefutable and certifiable evidence of the presence of the missiles in Cuba.

From the transcripts of the tapes, Kennedy seemed to approach it like a chess match:

"President Kennedy: Let me just say a little, first, about what the problem is, from my point of view. First, I think we ought to think of why the Russians did this. Well, actually, it was a rather dangerous but rather useful play of theirs. We do nothing, they have a missile base there with all the pressure that brings to bear on the United States and damage to our prestige.

"f we attack Cuban missiles, or Cuba, in any way, it gives them a clear line to take Berlin, as they were able to do in Hungary under the Anglo war in Egypt….We would be regarded as the trigger-happy Americans who lost Berlin. We would have no support among our allies….After all, Cuba is 5 or 6,000 miles from them. They don’t give a damn about Cuba. But they do care about Berlin and about their own security...So I think they’ve got...I must say I think it’s a very satisfactory position from their point of view...And clearly, if we do nothing then they’ll have these missiles and they’ll be able to say any time we ever try to do something about Cuba, they’ll fire these missiles. So that I think is dangerous, but rather satisfactory, from their point of view...

"Now, that’s what makes our problem so difficult. If we go in and take them out on a quick air strike, we neutralize the chance of danger to the United States…On the other hand, we increase the chance greatly, as I think – there’s bound to be reprisal from the Soviet Union, there always is – [of] their just going in and taking Berlin by force. Which leaves me only one alternative, which is to fire nuclear weapons – which is a hell of an alternative - and begin a nuclear exchange, with all this happening...

"So I don’t think we’ve got any satisfactory alternatives…On the other hand, we’ve got to do something. Because if we do nothing, we’re going to have the problem with Berlin anyway…So that’s why we’ve got to respond. Now the question is: What is our response?"

During the course of the crisis, the lessons of history are mentioned throughout the great debate that would set the course of action – JFK mentions the failures of the strategic policy makers of World War I when he cited The Guns of August, which explains how the technology of warfare outpaced outdated and obsolete policies, which led to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of soldiers and civilians.

LeMay brings up “Munich,” after which there is a long, discernable pause in the conversation, since that is where the British under Lord Chamberlain, and the U.S. behind Joseph Kennedy, Sr., the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, attempted to avoid World War II by adopting a policy of appeasement towards the militaristic Nazi German government. JFK, as Joe Kennedy’s son, showed however, that he didn’t share his father’s position on isolation, nor his allegiances to his old bootlegger friends.

JFK: “We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth – but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.”

Both George Ball and Bobby bring up Pearl Harbor, and how the U.S. had not nor should pull off such a sneak attack, while others, like LBJ, didn’t want to “telegraph” the fact that we’re coming.

JFK even quotes Sun Tzu’s The Art of War when he says, “The war is won or lost in the temple, years before the battle is fought,” to emphasize the point that there’s something wrong about doing something against your own basic ethics and instincts.

LBJ, who is undisputedly the ugliest person in the entire show, gets in the last word, congratulating the President on his handling of the crisis with some offhand remark about “passing the mid-terms,” which I think he means by the positive effect the whole episode will have on the next election, which of course, he will win.

It must have been difficult to cram in so much in just a few hours, but the movie’s script, by David Self, is really well done, and such writers seldom get the credit when their work is so good.

It all quite fittingly ends with a voiceover of JFK giving the punch line of his American University speech of June 10, 1963, that many credit as laying the groundwork for detente, which ends with the final truth, “…and we are all mortal.”

O’Donnell and Dave Powers wrote their recollections of the Kennedy campaigns and administration in Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye, (Little, Brown, 1970), but the book ends before Dallas, though both men were in the motorcade and were witnesses to Kennedy’s death, as recalled in A Common Good, by Helen O’Donnell (Wm. Morrow, 1998).

“When we were riding through Dallas on our way from Love Field to the Trade Mart luncheon, the sun was shining brightly and warmly. The crowd at the airport had been warm, enthusiastic, and friendly. The crowds lining the street were equally warm and friendly. In the backup car, next to Dave Powers, I turned to Dave and said, ‘There is certainly nothing wrong with this crowd.’…Sitting on the two jump seats of the Secret Service backup car, only about ten feet behind the president and Jackie, we could see their faces clearly when they turned to nod and wave to screaming people pushing into the street beside them. The president seemed thrilled and fascinated by the crowd’s noisy excitement. I knew he had expected nothing like this welcome.”

“When we were making the sharp turn around Dealey Plaza in front of the School Book Depository building, I asked Dave Powers what time it was. Ahead of us in the back seat of the Lincoln, the president was sitting on the right side of the car with his arm outstretched, waving to the crowd in front of the Depository. Mrs. Kennedy, in her pink suit with matching pink pillbox hat perched on the back of her seat was beside him on his left with red roses presented to her at the airport on the seat between them….’It’s twelve-thirty,’ Dave said, looking at his watch. “Fine,’ said Kenny. ‘It’s only five minutes from here, so we’re only running five minutes behind schedule.”

“I had just finished speaking when we heard shots, two close together and then a third one. There must have been an interval of at least five seconds before the third and last shots, because, after the second shot, Dave said to me, ‘Kenny, I think the president’s been shot!’ I made a quick sign of the cross and said, ‘What makes you think that?’ ‘Look at him,’ said Dave. ‘He was over on the right, with his arm stretched out. Now he’s slumped over toward Jackie, holding his throat.’”

“While we both stared at the president, a third shot took the side of his head off. We saw pieces of bone and brain tissue and bits of reddish hair flying through the air. The impact lifted him and shook him limply, as if he were a rag doll, and then he dropped out of our sight, sprawled across the backseat of the car. I said to Dave, ‘He’s dead.’”

At Parkland Hospital, LBJ deferred the first few decisions to O’Donnell, then when JFK was officially pronounced dead, LBJ left to commandeer Air Force One, saying O’Donnell told him to take it instead of his own plane, Air Force II.

“Kenny O’Donnell often said, ‘We mustn’t live on might-have-beens.’ Sadly, he didn’t follow his own advice. He became trapped by the deaths of John and Bobby Kennedy in a realm of lost possibilities. My father never recovered from Bobby’s death….After those two tragedies, he never cared about politics again, and he never gave his heart over to another politician again…the fight in the man was gone. Though it was alcoholism that would be the technical cause of both my mother’s and father’s deaths, in reality they died long before their last breath was released.”