Alfred Goldberg - Author of the Warren Report Dies

 Alfred Goldberg – Author of the Warren Report Dies

                                       Alfred Goldberg DOD Historian - Washington Post Photo

Alfred Goldberg, the US Air Force and Pentagon historian, who wrote the Warren Report, dies at the age of 102.

Years ago, when I called him at the Pentagon, Goldberg told me that he was about to retire.  As he had also wrote the history of the Air Force during WWII and the Pentagon on 9/11, I told him my father had served as a waist gunner on a B-17 in the 8^th Army Air Force during the war, and my godmother’s brother, Admiral William Fallon, was in the Pentagon when it was hit on 9/11.

When I asked him about his role on the Warren Commission he explained to me that Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren had called him in and told him he didn’t want the final report to read like a lawyer’s brief, as each chapter would be written by different attorneys, so Gold berg was hired to write the narrative of the report so normal people could read and understand it.

Goldberg said he also wrote the entire Appendex 12 called Speculations and Rumors that he tries to set straight, although Joachim Joestein had a few words to say about that.

Joachim Joestein:  https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/?m=1           

Washington Post Obit:  Washington Post

Boston Globe Obit: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/10/metro/alfred-goldberg-historian-who-helped-probe-jfk-assassination-dies-105/

WR Appendex  12  - Speculation and Rumors:  https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-12.html

JFKCountercoup 2013 – DOD Historians Alfred Goldberg and Rudolph Winnacker: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/09/alfred-goldberg-and-rudolph-winnacker.html?m=1

Alfred Goldberg (Col. USAFR)

http://www.history.defense.gov/goldberg.shtml

Chief DOD Historian 34 years

Alfred Goldberg

Past Chief Historian

October 28, 1973 – November 28, 2007
 

Dr. Alfred Goldberg, an eminent and respected military historian, served as the Chief Historian for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 34 years. He began his service to the United States in 1942 with the U.S. Army, rising from the rank of private to captain and deploying overseas with the Army Air Forces to England and France. He worked in various capacities, ultimately as a field historian. He left active duty in 1946, but remained in the reserves and retired from the Air Force in 1978 as a colonel.

From 1946 to 1965, Dr. Goldberg worked for the U.S. Air Force Historical Division as a senior historian. During that period, in addition to earning a Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University in 1950, he was a Visiting Fellow at Kings College, University of London in 1962–63; a lecturer at the University of Maryland for many years; and a recipient of a Social Science Research Council Fellowship. In 1964 Chief Justice Earl Warren brought him onto the Warren Commission staff, where Dr. Goldberg served as a historical advisor and as co-author and co-editor of the Warren Commission Report. From 1965 to 1973, Dr. Goldberg was a senior staff member at RAND and also lectured at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.

In 1973, Dr. Goldberg assumed duties as the chief historian with OSD. He received the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award and the Presidential Meritorious Award. He was a long-time member of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, whose members include distinguished historians, archivists, and members of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Keenly aware of the historic significance of the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Dr. Goldberg joined with other military historians in documenting the event and its effect on the Pentagon and the military and civilian workforce.

Dr. Goldberg is the author or editor of numerous historical books and articles, many of which have earned special recognition and prizes. Most notably, he is co-author of the Army Air Forces in World War II (7 volumes); editor and co-author of A History of the U.S. Air Force 1907–1957; co-editor of the Department of Defense: Documents on Establishment and Organization, 1947–1978; co-author of The Department of Defense, 1947-1997—Organization and Leaders; author of The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years; general editor, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (5 volumes); and co-author of Pentagon 9/11. In 2011, Dr. Goldberg received the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award for distinguished contributions to public history.

Billkelly3@gmail.com

November 22, 1963 2pm EST

November 22, 1963 2 pm EST

To begin at the beginning, it was a cool, soft day in the fall when I was at 12 year old sitting in a 7th grade St. Joe's school class looking out the window at the leaves falling when the principle, a nun, came on the public address system and said the President had been shot. School would be let out early, even if it was only an hour early..

I walked the five blocks home through my East Camden, NJ neighborhood and since both my parents were working I went into the backyard to play, climbing on the wheeping willow tree and swinging on its branches when the phone in the house rang. I ran in the back door and picked up the wall phone in the kitchen . 

It was my father, a Lieutenant in the Camden Police Department, who said, "The President has been killed. Stay where you are and don't leave the yard. We don't know what this is all about."

I stopped and thought about it for a few moments, wondering how the murder of a President could remotely affect a school kid climbing a tree in his backyard. 

And I'm still wondering, even though I know it has.

BillKelly3@gmail.com

JFKCountercoup Update

 JFKCountercoup Update

Many thanks to the few longtime readers of this blog who inquired as to my health and situation with the absence of posts over the pa=st few months. I am okay, just stuck in a serious funk over the deaths of a number of close friends and associates, working a few weeks with the military, and a number of other things that I won't get I into.u

For starters, the deaths of one of my primary JFK mentors Dr. Cyril Wexht was not unexpected. He lived a good 93 years, the same as my mother, and as I predicted in my blog post Why CAPA is Kaput, there is no one capable of filling Dr. Wecht's shoes. CAPA secretary, Glenda DeVaney, who took over the position from me, and at my recommendation, has assumed the chair of CAPA director, even though she is not a researcher, has never been to the Archives, hasn't read the books and only gets her information from the internet. She also lied when she claimed the CAPA board voted me off the board for not supporting or promoting CAPA, when I was the person who was instrumental in organizing CAPA after the dissolution of COPA, and am the single person who has done more than anyone else to support and promote the organization I started. There was no vote by the CAPA board to remove me because I asked them and they were never asked to vote, and they would not have voted me off if a vote was taken.

DeVaney also lied when she posted that the CAPA board voted her chair to replace the late, great Dr. Wechet, when  there never was such a vote.  The bottom line is CAPA is Kaput, and I will be writing a brief history of both COPA and CAPA with all the sad details as soon as other more important things are taken care of.

I was honored to be the only independent researcher asked to submit an affidavit in support of the Mary Ferrell - vs. President Biden and NARA suit filed in San Francisco Federal Court. When I asked Bill Simpich, one of the attorneys involved, why? He said because I was one of the few researchers who filed document requests to NARA under the JFK Act, rather than FOIA, that most others do. 

As an example he cited my calling attention to the head of the JFK Collection at NARA to the reference in Gerald Blaine's book The Kennedy Detail, that he had boxes of Secret Service documents under his bed, including the missing Tampa Advance Report that he wrote. When NARA obtained the documents from Blaine they sent me some 30 pages, including the Tampa Advance Report, that I read closely looking for reasons the SS destroyed their official copy AFTER Congress passed the JFK Act in 1992.

The things that stood out were the fact that they had report of an anti-Castro Cuban plot to kill the President during the motorcade, and that the SS had enlisted the cooperation  of the Tampa Sheriff's office to supply officers with shotguns to man every overpass and snipers with high powered rifles with scopes to the rooftops of major skyscrapers. Of course that wasn't done in  Dallas as Sheriff Bill Decker had his deputies stand down and stand out on the street to observe the Assassination and be the first into the TSBD afterwards.

That was what I was thinking after the sniper attack on Donald Trump. 

While some associates have questioned my working for the military helping to train Army Reservists before they are deployed overseas, I enjoy the work and feel it is my duty and service in support of our national security.

And while working with first class snipers a few years ago, I learned that the only way to counter a sniper is for another sniper to shoot him. Knowing that, the third class sniper with a third class disposable weapon in the TSBD sixth floor window, placed boxes of books along the window sill,  not to use as an arm rest, but to protect him from return fire that never came.

I have also been asked to compare my Covert Operational Personality profile to the accused and killed sniper, though it doesn't appear he fits the profile, not using an alias,  no P.O. box, foreign language or travel, but despite knowing everything about Oswald within a few hours of the Assassination, we still don't have a detailed and accurate portrait of this kid.

It is also necessary to report that the Supreme Court decided not to review the AARC v. CIA case requesting the CIA's Operational Files on D.H. Byrd, the owner of the TSBD at the time of the Assassination, his African safari hunting partner Werner Von Alveslaben, and USAF Gen. James Doolittle, the primary author of the Doolittle Report on CIA Covert Operations commissioned by President Eisenhower. 

The Mary Ferrell v. Biden and NARA case continues to be active, with appeals filed opposing the judge's decision to drop the charges against President BIden, but his rulings to require the NARA to release ALL Congressional records, and force them to produce a clear guide to the JFK Collection are major victories that we must ensure will be followed.

And finally, at the request of numerous others, I am preparing my own book, based mainly on my JFKCountercoup blog posts over the past few decades, along with some new material, and if I can't find a publisher I will have it printed myself, with a tentative working title of - JFKCountercoup - How JFK was Killed and How they Got Away With it.

Thank you for your patience, and I hope to be back in the Deep End of JFK Research big-time, soon.

Billkelly3@gmail.com

AARC v. CIA

AARC v. CIA

There are two important active court cases concerning JFK assassination records including the Mary Ferrell v. Biden and NARA filed in federal court in San Francisco by attorneys Bill Simpich and Larry Schnapf. So far the judge has required the release of all Congressional records and the National Archives and Records Administration to create a working public guide to the JFK Collection as the JFK Act of 1992 requires.

The other case is now being appealed before the Supreme Court. 

Initially filed by Jim Lesar under the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), Lesar's long time associate Dan Alcorn is now the lead attorney since Jim Lesar is ill.

The case will be considered  by the Supreme Court this Thursday, shortly before they take the summer off, like most of the federal government in Washington, so if it is accepted they won't make any further decisions until they reconvene in the fall.

The case is an important one however, and their consideration of it gives us the opportunity to review the details and why they are significant.

For starters, the case revolves around three key individuals - Air Force General Doolittle, whose Doolittle Committee, appointed by President Eisenhower, reviewed CIA covert intelligence operations and recommended they be continued and increased, in order to oppose similar operations being run by the Communists against us. Another member of the three man committee was William Pawley, who JFK assassination researchers are familiar with as an Havana industrialist before Castro, and leader of the Bayo-Pawley raid to Cuba using his private yacht that also included John Martino and Rip Robertson.

The other two individuals involved in this case are D.H. Byrd, the big oil man owner of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination, and Weiner Von Alverslaben, a German who ran an Africa  safari that included Byrd at the time of the assassination. As Jim Lesar learned from OSS records, Von Alveslaben's father was described as an "assassination expert" and wrote an essay in support of Von Staufenberg's failed July 20, 1944 bombing plot to kill Hitler, that according to the CIA's Desmond FitzGerald was being used as an example of how to kill Fidel Castro. 

In my conversation with German Volkmar Schmidt, who hosted the house party set up for the Oswalds to meet Ruth and Michael Paine, Schmidt claimed to use a reverse psychology technique taught to him by his step father psychologist in Heidelberg, telling Oswald that it would be a good idea to kill fascist General E. Walker like Hitler should have been killed before he got to powerful. Schmidt told me that his stepfather knew two of the Valkyrie plotters including Von Trott, and that the Von prefex before their names was a sign of German royalty.

One of those whose CIA records were requested D.H. "Dry Hole" Byrd was an early aviation pioneer and in 1941 a founder of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), along with Cord Meyer, Sr., father of Cord Meyer, Jr. a close lieutenant of CIA director Allen Dulles. Among CAP cadets in New Orleans was Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of the President. Besides marrying Mary Pinochott Meyer, a fiend and paramour of President Kennedy, Cord Meyer, Jr. was founder of the World Federalists, established to support the work of the United Nations. Among those who became members of the World Federalists were Michael Paine's mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young, a European traveling companion of Mary Bancroft, who documents their association and her relationship with Allen  Dulles as his OSS secretary and paramour.

Byrd,  was also the owner of the TSBD, was on a safari with Von Alverslaben  at the time of the assassination, and Von Alveslaben's nephew, a professional photographer, took many photos including some of the animals Byrd and company killed.

Byrd had also gone on African safaris with Air Force General Doolittle, While Doolittle is best known for his daring bombing raid over Tokyo, he is also the author of the forementioned Doolittle Commission report that recommended the CIA increase its covert intelligence operational capabilities.

After returning to Dallas from Africa, Byrd added some new animal heads to his trophy room collection in his mansion, and had Von Alveslaben visit as a guest for a few weeks, as the Dallas newspapers reported.

Byrd also had a sixth floor window from the TSBD removed and added to his trophy room collection.

One key aspect of the AARC suit being considered by the Supreme Court is the long standing exemption of CIA Operational records, the primary excuse that the CIA is using to exempt their records regarding Doolittle, Byrd and Von Alveslaben, which means they were not just used as sources of information, but as operatives in covert intelligence operations.

The Assassination of President Kennedy was most certainly an operation, what I refer to as the Dealey Plaza Operation, and the idea that the CIA could continue keeping it's "Operational Files" from the public would mean that we would never know the full truth of the CIA's relationships with Dootlittle, Byrd and Von Alvenslaben, let alone William Harvey, John Rosselli, Cord Meyer, Jr., David Atlee Phillips and others involved in the Assassination of President Kennedy who were key CIA operatives.

The Supreme Court will review this case this Thursday, June 20th, so we should know soon.

Billkelly3@gmail.com 

Dr. Cyril Wecht RIP - May 13, 2024 - Age 93

Dr. Cyril Wecht RIP - May 13 2024 - Age 93

I first met Dr. Wecht in the mid-1980s when I was visiting Pittsburgh and stopped into his Forensic Pathology office to introduce myself. We talked for over an hour and got to know each other. A few years later in 1990, at the first organizational meeting of COPA – the Coalition on Political Assassinations at the Quaker Meeting Hall on Capitol Hill, Dr. Wecht was the only one nominated to be director and chairman of the organization that was the primary oversight of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and is mentioned in their final report. 

With the death of COPA Secretary John Judge, his closest associates at the time decided to disband COPA, and remove his huge collection of papers, books and John’s dream The Hidden History Museum, to rural York, Pennsylvania, where it is now truly hidden in a closed strip mall shop. So I obtained a free conference call phone number and organized a conference call among the top 20 assassination researchers in the country, and we formed CAPA – Citizens Against Political Assassinations, and Dr. Wecht was the only one nominated to be chairman. 

For the first four years I served as secretary, kept minutes of twice monthly meetings and wrote out agendas. Gerry Policoff served as the original treasurer, but after he had a falling out with the organization and died in a car crash shortly there after, Mike Nurko succeeded him as treasurer The CAPA board had twice monthly conference call meetings and I participated for over 7 years, and Dr.Wecht ran a good meeting, sticking to the agenda and often tinged his comments with some comic relief. Another aspect of Dr. Wecht’s personality not brought out in most reports was his temper that flared up when he was mad and his obscene vocabulary that ocassionally came out. 

At the 2013 anniversary conference at the Wecht Institute in Pittsburgh, organized by Dr. Wecht’s son Ben. I presented my combined transcript of the Air Force One radio transmission tapes, the cassettes from the LBJ Library and the reel to reel tapes found among the effects of General Clifton, the President’s military aide. I also presented Ed Premieu’s combined tape of both recordings that he also cleaned up, eleminating static and noise so it is more clear than the origionals. I also attended a magnificant dinner at Dr. Wecht’s house and met his wonderful wife Ingrid, and mingled with the other presenters, an amazing affair. 

I considered him my spiritual Godfather.

Although Dr. Wecht had actively and publicly argued and imposed WC attorney Arlen Specter, they remained friends to the end, with Specter even making a presentation at the 2013 Wecht Conference in Pittsburgh. It reminded me of Vince Salandria and Specter making amends over lunch shortly before Spector died.

Since his death Dr. Wecht came to me in a dream. He was joyful, happy and laughing and was glad to see me. I promised him I would carry on our work, a promise I intend to keep, and was about to ask him what it was like on the other side of life, but I suddenly woke up before I could ask him. BK NOTES: This is a work in progress and I will be adding tidbits to it as needed, and I will be writing a comprehensive history of both COPA and CAPA soon.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/triblive-online-only/name/cyril-j-d-obituary?id=55096

 https://www.post-gazette.com/news/obituaries/2024/05/13/cyril-wecht-jfk-allegheny-county-pittsburgh/stories/202403220106 Show #1199 May 16 2024 

My segment is Part H: beginning at 2:19:49 https://www.blackopradio.com/archives2024.html

https://www.kennedysandking.com/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/us/cyril-h-wecht-dead.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/05/13/cyril-wecht-jfk-conspiracy-dead-obituary/ 

Noted defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey called Dr. Wecht the “single most important spearhead of challenge” to the Warren report. A public memorial service will be held on Sunday, June 30 from 1-4 p.m. at the Temple Sinai 5505 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA and will be available on Zoom and Facebook Messenger. Request zoom link from benwecht@aol.com

Undercover of Night: The USAF and the Assassination of JFK

 

Undercover of Night: The United  States Air  Force  and the Assassination of President Kennedy – Two Volumes (Arlington, Wy,  2024), By Sean Fetter.

I probably wouldn’t have been so disappointed in these books if Sean Fetter hadn’t promised so much and delivered so little. After watching his promotional podcast in which he claims to have interviewed dozens of Air Force personnel; about what they did, saw and heard on November 22, 1963, I contacted Fetter about getting a digital version to review, but he said there were no digital or review versions available, and that I would have to purchase the books.

At almost $100 with shipping, that was out of my book budget at the moment though a West Coast associate ordered them for me (thank you PM)  though it took a month to arrive.

For starters I agree with Fetter that what occurred at Dealey Plaza was a coup d’etat, that the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had little to do with, and the Air Force angles are extremely important.

I didn’t know Billy Lovelady was dismissed from the USAF for stealing and selling 38 revolvers, only used by military police and B-52 pilots – interesting in light of the fact that the sling on the rifle found on the 6^th floor was from a B-52 pilot’s shoulder holster for a 38 revolver.

And like Fetter, I also think its important to determine the whereabouts of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. LeMay at the time of the assassination, but disagree with his conclusion.

And we part ways when it comes to anointing LBJ as the mastermind of the plot, since he didn’t have the intellectual capacity or knowledge of black propaganda and  covert intelligence operations to organize the Dealey Plaza operation. Nor do I believe that Sam Rayburn, who had died two years before, had anything to do with the assassination. And I don’t believe, because LBJ ordered the pilot of AF1 not to file a flight plan means LBJ was going to flee to Mexico to avoid being arrested for complicity in the assassination when the arrived in Washington.

Nor do I believe Jackie Kennedy placed her wedding ring on the finger of the wrong body, that Secret  Service Agent Roy Kellerman mutilated the body of JFK with a fire ax when a scalpel would be  necessary. The ax, says Fetter, was the one used to remove the handle of the ornate casket in order to get it into the door of Air Force One, the casket that didn’t contain the body of the slain president but it did contain a body, but Fetter doesn’t say who it is.

It’s true, as Fetter tells us, there were no such plane as Air Force Two, and Air Force One was whatever plane the president was in. But then he goes on to call the backup plane used by LBJ as Air Force 2, and continues to name other Special Air Mission planes AF3-4-5, and lists the planes he suspects as being the one used to transport of JFK’s body back to Andrews and Bethesda, including the Cargo plane, the Press plane, and a Silver Dollar Command  and Control plane that he says was ordered to pick up the body but  didn’t.

Fetter says that all of the Silver Dollar planes were based at Andrews, but Colonel Lowrey, in Louisiana is identified as a Silver Dollar commander who gave former USMC Thomas Blackmon, who was involved in the Big Easy Houma Bunker raid, a base pass. But Fetter says chasing the New Orleans  aspects of the assassination is a waste of time.

In discussing the tapes discovered among the effects of  the President’s military aide US Army General Chester Victor (“Ted”) Clifton Fetter says: "….following the cleaning and enhancement by a private third party, routine messages involving Silver Dollar Two, the airborne NEACAP backup  plane , were now audible.”

Since my name isn’t listed in the index at the end of Volume II, I  thought I might have gotten away clean, but when he mentions the General Clifton version of the AF1 radio recordings, he mentions me in footnote #172:

“JFK investigators (sic) Bill Kelly deserves universal thanks for making that valuable project happen: audio expert and engineer Edward J. Primeau and his colleague Brad Finegan (plus Ed Primeau’s son Michael) deserve enormous praise for actually performing the technical task.”

Well thank you Sean. But since I was responsible for getting it cleaned up and personally transcribed it, I don’t recall any mention of Silver Dollar, a Command and Control plane that we know was flying over Dallas at the time of the assassination because they called in for a radio check as detailed in the article by Larry Happanen  -  The Call That Came In Out of the Blue.

Kennedy Assassination Chronicles, Volume 8, Issue 2

Fetter says that the USAF pilots he talked to liked the Collins Radios on their planes, and correctly credits Gen. LeMay for placing them on all SAC and SAM planes, but fails to point out all of the other Collins Radio connections to the assassination that reveal the extent of the covert network that was responsible for the assassination.

[   JFKcountercoup: The Collins Radio Connections to the Assassination of JFK - Updated  ]

Fetter is full of himself and promotes his analytical ability, over and over, and calls himself an American historian and investigative journalist, but he neglects to utilize their basic practices, principles and procedures. He doesn’t like or trust documents and fails to document what he says, or the AF personnel he claims to have interviewed.

Most of his footnotes – hundreds of them simply read: “Author’s exclusive original discovery,” which isn’t a footnote at all, one that should give you a name, a book, a document, RIF#, date, etc., so  they can  be sourced  and followed up.

At first I went looking for the dozens of interviews he claimed to have conducted with AF personnel, but there are only his reports of what they say, and even Fetter admits that the significant things he attributes to them is something they themselves didn’t recognize as important. And almost all of the interviews- conversations with Air Force personnel took place in 1994- thirty years ago.

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

The fact is Fetter did not record and transcribe any of his interviews. He takes one sentence of what was said to him, and repeats it, over and over to make sure you get it. Then he jumps to a wrong conclusion based on simple facts.

My former associate John Judge is listed 10 times in the index, but is actually mentioned in only four of those.

While Fetter hates his former mentor, the late David Lifton with a passion, repeatedly mentioning his name and how he got things wrong, he likes John Judge, and talked with him on the phone a number of times. John told him about reading a news clip at the Archives II that falsely reported the death of Gen. LeMay in a plane crash.

From that Fetter concludes – “LeMay faked his own death.”

Well I was with John Judge at the Archives that day, as we often went together, and while I made photo copies of the Andrews Log Book for 11/22/63 that was fetched from a trash bin by a janitor, Judge had requested the records they had on Gen. LeMay. The archives staff wheeled out a cart with a dozen boxes of documents, news clips and magazine articles that John waded through while I copied the Andrews Log.

When I was finished, I went over to John and he showed me the news clip that falsley reported his death.

Instead of doing what John Judge did – go to Archives II, request the LeMay papers and read through them, he just asked Judge what was in them.

Fetter began his quest into the Air Force connections to the assassination at Maxwell AFB in Alabama, where the Air Force historical archives are kept, and that’s where he learned about Special Air Mission SAM Fox, an association of retired SAM officers.

He should have known that Maxwell was the site of a special two day conference of all active duty Air Force Generals chaired by AF Chief of Staff General LeMay, a week before the assassination, the agenda and minutes of which I’d like to read.

After the conference LeMay took a hunting and fishing vacation. Picked up by TV and radio personality Arthur Godfrey, also an Air Force Reserve General and pilot, Godfrey flew LeMay to Detroit in his private plane, a gift from Eastern Airlines President Eddie Rickenbacker, David Ferrie’s former boss. 

In Detroit, Godfrey talked with a local journalist who reported that Godfrey and LeMay were headed for a hunting and fishing resort in Michigan. Godfrey also said that the rumors of his death were greatly exagerated, possibly the source of false report of LeMay’s death, since they were both flying together.

After a few days at the resort Godfrey flew back East to resume his radio and TV shows while LeMay went to North Michigan to resume his vacation. 

LeMay’s wife was from Michigan, she attended the University of Michigan, and her family had a lake house that LeMay occassionally used. LeMay also stayed at a lake cabin in Michagan owned by Teamster Union boss Jimmy Hoffa that we know of because LeMay was on their guests Christmas card list. Some suggest that LeMay was possibly at the spy school known as Camp X.

The most likely place LeMay was at the time of the assassination was a remote lodge owned by Detroit auto industrialists, that could be reached by boat or small plane, and while it didn’t have a telephone, it did have a HAM radio, LeMay’s favorite means of communication.

From the Andrews AF base log retrieved fron the trash by a janitor, we know immediately after the assassination LeMay requested the Andrews SAM to send a plane to pick him up in Toronto, then had the plane- a Jet Star C-140 executive – what Fetter calls AF-5, redirected to Wiarton, Canada, apparently a close former military base near where he was.

Now Fetter places LeMay at the NORAD – North American Air Defense command HQ base at North Bay. According to Fetter, he was assigned to go there by LBJ with advance knowledge of the assassination, in order to prevent rabid SAC commander Gen. Powers from using the assassination as an excuse to spark WWIII in a Dr. Strangelovesque like Wing Attack Plan R.

But that was already covered by removing the code books from B-52s and SAM planes, as John Judge also discovered.

And the NORAD HQ was 350 miles from Wiarton, so I discount Fetter’s theory on LeMay’s whereabouts at the time of the assassination.

Fetter is one of the few who does note that the Warren Commission Report text and narrative was written by the official US Air Force historican Alfred Goldberg, who I have interviewed and believe is still alive.

In the end, I could find no significant nuggerts worth citing in either of these volumes, and it is quite clear that the full story of the US Air Force and the assassination has yet to be written.

BillKelly3@gmail.com

Relevant links:

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-collins-radio-connections-to-dealey.html?m=1

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/10/andrews-log-112263-salvaged-from-trash.html?m=1

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/11/thursday-november-21-2013-rebroadcastof.html?m=1

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2019/12/general-lemay-on-11-22-63.html?m=1

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2022/05/seven-days-in-lemay-updated.html

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2023/07/tales-of-af1-radio-tapes.html?m=1

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/09/alfred-goldberg-and-rudolph-winnacker.html?m=1

Doug Horne on Fetter

 Thank you Doug Horne for writing this and saving me a lot of trouble though I will be writing my own review to address other issues Fetter brings to the table.

DOUG HORNE'S REVIEW OF SEAN FETTER'S NEW BOOK "UNDER COVER OF NIGHT"

https://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2024/01/02/

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

This review is primarily a “medical critique” of three major aspects of Sean Fetter’s UNDER COVER OF NIGHT, as well as commentary about his historiography.

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

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

Here is my evidence:

(a) Gawler’s Funeral Home mortician Tom Robinson drew a wound diagram for both the HSCA on 1/12/1977, and for the ARRB on 6/21/1996, depicting a wound about the size of a baseball in the back of JFK’s head. The top of the head was intact in his diagrams. On the ARRB wound diagram, Robinson drew dotted lines that were more or less horizontal, below and above the baseball-sized wound. When we asked Robinson what the dotted lines were during his 1996 interview, he said: “Those were saw cuts---that’s where the skull had to be sawed open to get the brain out.” He told both the HSCA staff in 1977, and the ARRB staff in 1996, that he personally saw the brain removed at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

(b) Robinson also told the ARRB staff that the B&W autopsy photos showing the top of the head missing depict “what the doctors did, not what the bullet did.” By “the doctors,” he clearly meant the Bethesda pathologists, not the treatment physicians at Parkland Hospital.

(c) Navy x-ray technician Ed Reed testified under oath to the ARRB in 1997 that he saw Chief Pathologist CDR James J. Humes at Bethesda perform the first stages of post mortem surgery on the TOP of JFK’s skull, by using a scalpel and a circular bone saw to make long, horizontal cuts in JFK’s frontal bone just behind the hairline at the top of the President’s forehead. Significantly, he saw DR. JAMES J. HUMES perform this post mortem surgery---NOT Roy Kellerman! In contrast, Sean Fetter claimed in chapters 17 and 18 of UNDER COVER OF NIGHT that it was Secret Service Agent ROY KELLERMAN who mutilated JFK’s skull, using a “crash axe,” inside the forward luggage compartment of Air Force One, prior to takeoff from Love field in Dallas. (Fetter also appears to imply that this may have occurred between the swearing-in of LBJ at 2:39 PM, and takeoff, at 2:47 PM; very fast work, if true!) Fetter provided no single eyewitness to Kellerman performing this macabre deed, and did not even provide an eyewitness to Kellerman borrowing the AF1 “crash axe,” or even asking to use it!

(d) Significantly, Navy CAPT Robert CANADA (the Commanding Officer of the treatment hospital at Bethesda in 1963) told author Michael Kurtz on March 6, 1968 that he observed a “very large, 3 to 5 cm wound in the right rear of the President’s head, in the lower right occipital region,” and stated that it was “clearly an exit wound,” because the occipital bone was “avulsed,” or exploded outward. [See page 39 of Kurtz’s book THE JFK ASSASSINATION DEBATES. Canada requested that his description of what JFK looked like when he arrived at Bethesda be kept secret until 25 years after his death, and accordingly, Kurtz only published it in 2006.] Significantly, Canada did not describe any bone missing, or any wound, in the TOP of the head---only in the right rear. Like Robinson’s description, the head wound described by CAPT Canada was far too small for the brain to have been removed

(e) Finally, during his 1978 HSCA deposition, Dr. Ebersole, the autopsy radiologist, described an occipital wound (in the right rear of the skull) when he first saw JFK’s body before the autopsy began; he did not describe seeing any damage to the top of the skull at that time.

(f) The “outlier” here is the recollection of Navy corpsman Paul O’Connor, who told the HSCA staff on August 29, 1977 that when he looked into the cranium shortly after 8:00 PM the night of the autopsy at Bethesda, there was no brain in the cranium, only “splattered brain matter.” I have believed for years that O’Connor was exaggerating and misinterpreting the missing brain tissue in the forebrain area (shown as a black void in the lateral skull x-rays) as the “complete absence of a brain.” This was surely a subjective interpretation error by Paul O’Connor. It was the first impression he was confronted with when JFK’s head was unwrapped shortly after 8 PM in the morgue. But O’Connor could NOT have been correct, because Dr. Humes removed JFK’s brain at the autopsy, and Navy corpsman Jim Jenkins infused what was left of that brain shortly thereafter, when it was placed in a bucket of formaldehyde. FBI agent Francis O’Neill recalled seeing JFK’s brain removed at the autopsy during his 1997 ARRB deposition, as well. O’Connor’s time marker of 8:00 PM is significant; he was reporting on the results of post mortem surgery AT BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL in-between the time of 6:35 PM when JFK’s body arrived, and the commencement of the formal autopsy shortly after 8:00 PM. (There WAS post mortem surgery performed at Bethesda by Dr. Humes, to permit access to the brain so that bullets, bullet fragments, and bullet tracks in the brain tissue could be removed before the autopsy began. It was this state of affairs, shortly after that clandestine surgery was performed, that O’Connor was reacting to when he incorrectly inferred that there was “no brain in the cranium” during his HSCA interview in 1977. The removal of JFK’s brain by Dr. Humes, witnessed by FBI agent O’Neill, and the infusion of that brain by Jim Jenkins, prove that O’Connor was merely exaggerating when he said that there was “no brain in the cranium.”)

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

(2) I also find Fetter’s treatment of the JFK skull x-rays unsatisfactory, for the following reasons:

(a) In footnote 958 on page 366, Fetter states that the use of the “crash axe” on JFK’s skull in the forward luggage compartment of AF1 produced “HUNDREDS” of bone fragments, without producing any witnesses who saw hundreds of fragments; Fetter then goes on to expand “HUNDREDS” to “500 or 1,000” bone fragments---again, without any witnesses.

(b) Fetter concludes that since we only see about 6 large skull fragments in the JFK lateral skull x-rays, that “plainly, the existing official x-rays do NOT depict JFK’s actual skull,” and that therefore the extant x-rays are “falsified images.” But this conclusion of his is based on his personal estimate that there must have been “hundreds,” perhaps “500 or 1,000” small bone fragments after Roy Kellerman did his purported handwork on JFK’s skull with the “crash axe.” Sean Fetter has proven that he has quite an imagination; but imagining something does not make it a fact.

(c) In actuality, the true evidence that the extant JFK skull x-rays are altered copy films is not the imagination, or uninformed opinion, of Sean Fetter--- but rather, the optical densitometry analysis of Dr. David Mantik, MD, PhD, following his 9 visits to the National Archives to view the extant skull x-rays and examine them with an optical densitometer. Mantik’s conclusions about alteration are based on painstaking and repeated empirical scientific measurements, not the fevered imagination of a layman who never actually cited any witness to “500 or 1,000 bone fragments.” And Mantik has not concluded that “500 or 1,000” fragments were somehow covered up, but rather that a “white patch” (the result of light blasting of the original x-ray film in a darkroom) was created to hide the large occipital-parietal blowout seen in the right-rear of the head at Parkland Hospital. The missing tissue (brain and bone) from the exit wound in the right rear of JFK’s head is what was covered up by the optical “white patch,” according to Dr. Mantik. This has been rigorously explained in chapter 5 of my own book INSIDE THE ARRB, as well as in numerous other writings by Dr. Mantik himself.

(d) Sean Fetter’s anti-science approach to the skull x-rays is truly startling. In footnote 958 he wrote: “Thus all the well-meaning efforts by JFK researchers to ‘analyze’ the extant skull x-rays…have been a totally wasted effort. You do not and cannot uncover the truth by granting any credence or ‘legitimacy’ to criminally falsified imagery.” What Sean Fetter does not understand is that the only falsified part of the two lateral skull x-rays is the “white patch” that obscures the Parkland exit wound; and the only falsified part of the A-P skull x-ray is the “fake 6.5 mm bullet fragment” added to that image to implicate the accused assassin. The sinuses and the teeth in the JFK skull x-rays have been verified as JFK’s by an HSCA forensic radiologist. His attitude that nothing can be learned from studying the skull x-rays is unscientific in the extreme, and should be unacceptable to all readers of his book. The attitude he displays in this regard is that of a 19th century “know nothing,” someone who revels in his own ignorance.

(e) Qualified experts who have studied the extant skull x-rays have detected the presence of a partial brain (that is, what was left of the brain after JFK was hit by three headshots) in the cranium. I suspect that this is what is most unacceptable to Sean Fetter about those who want to scientifically study the skull x-rays, for this finding contradicts his theory that the brain was removed from the cranium long before JFK’s body arrived at Bethesda. The finding that some brain is present in the skull x-rays is shared by Dr. Mantik and Dr. Chesser (both well-credentialed JFK researchers who had access to the autopsy materials in the Archives), as well as by the ARRB’s radiological consultant, Dr. Fitzpatrick, a forensic radiologist. Sean Fetter’s anti-science attitude that these experts are not worth listening to is offensive, and does not serve the American people well. This attitude on his part is very detrimental to the legitimacy of his book.

(3) Sean Fetter also stated in UNDER COVER OF NIGHT that he believed all of the shots that hit JFK came from the front alone, and that all of the “wounds” supposedly on the back of JFK’s body [namely, an entry wound in the back, and an entry wound in the back of the skull] were “false wounds,” i.e., were man-made after his death. This is simply a repetition, and endorsement, of David Lifton’s theory in chapter 14 of BEST EVIDENCE, titled “Trajectory Reversal: Blueprint for Deception.” Fetter doesn’t acknowledge this overtly, but it is true. I object to this “false wounding theory” not only because Fetter did not produce any witnesses to such macabre activity, but also for the reasons stated below:

(a) Back (Thorax) Entry Wound: the autopsy determined that there was an abrasion collar around the entrance wound in JFK's back, indicating it was made by a bullet; the bullet holes in JFK’s shirt and coat appear to align precisely; and furthermore, the FBI detected traces of copper (from a bullet’s metal jacket) around the entrance wound in JFK’s suit coat, proving it was caused by an entering bullet.

(b) Skull Rear Entry Wound: all three pathologists at JFK’s autopsy provided convincing descriptions that the entry wound in the back of the skull had the characteristics of a classic wound of entry in the cranium---namely, internal beveling on the inside of the skull, opposite the smaller rear entry site. Furthermore, traces of metal from this entering bullet (from behind) were deposited on the Harper Fragment (of occipital bone) found Saturday, 11/23, in Dealey Plaza---per one of the x-rays taken of the Harper Fragment by the FBI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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