THE COLLINS RADIO CONNECTIONS to the Assassination
of President Kennedy
CIA Raider Ship Rex - leased to Collins Radio in Nov. 1963 when it delivered anti-Castro Cuban commandos to Cuba from JMWAVE bases in Florida.
By William E. Kelly
Revised from an article originally published in
Backchannels magazine and a report presented at the national conference of the Coalition
on Political Assassinations (COPA) in Washington D.C. on October 10, 1994.
If the assassination of President Kennedy was the result of not only a conspiracy, but a covert action and coup d’etat, as many people believe, there should be evidence of this from both the scene of the crime(s) as well as from the highest echelons of power among those who took over the government. This would be especially so if the assassination was not the actions of a lone-nut or a foreign attack by Cuban or Soviet intelligence service sponsors, but an internal manipulation of policy and control, an inside job.
As Edward Luttwack describes in his "How-To" book Coup d’etat – A Practical Handbook (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, p. 117), "Control over the flow of information emanating from the political center will be our most important weapon in establishing… authority after the coup. The seizure of the main means of mass communication will thus be a task of crucial importance."
At the scene of the crime, eyewitness testimony is always suspect. Homicide detectives prefer more solid leads that provide documented evidence that can be introduced in court, such as fingerprints, telephone and automobile license records.
There are a number of automobile license records of significance in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy, including the tampered photo among the possessions of Lee Harvey Oswald obliterating the license plate on 1957 Chevy in General Walker’s driveway, plus the license numbers of cars seen in Dealey Plaza and parking lot in photos taken immediately before and after the assassination.
Most significant however, is the Texas plate PP4537. This number was jotted down on a piece of paper by an elderly Oak Cliff mechanic T. F. White, who noticed a man acting suspiciously behind the wheel of a 1958 two tone Plymouth sedan shortly after the murder of Dallas Policeman J.D. Tippitt in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. The car was parked behind a billboard in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant, with the driver, like White, watching the flurry of Dallas police cars racing down the street with sirens blaring, called to the nearby scene of the shooting of Tippit.
White walked across the alley and into the parking lot to get closer and exchanged glances with the man, who quickly drove away. White wrote down the license tag PP4537 on a piece of paper and forgot about it until later that day when he saw Lee Harvey Oswald on television and recognized him as the man he saw acting suspiciously in the Plymouth earlier that afternoon.
A week later, when Dallas radio reporter and later mayor of Dallas Wes Wise gave a talk at the Oak Cliff restaurant, the owner of the garage where Mr. White worked mentioned the suspicious Plymouth to Wise, who then met White. White reluctantly told his story, but didn’t want to get involved, and Wise had to use all his powers of persuasion to convince White to share the information with him. Wise promised White he would not be brought into the investigation, but that he, Wise, would handle it. "Do you have the piece of paper with the license number on it?" Wise asked, and sure enough, White had it right there in his pocket and gave it to Wise. It read: PP4537.
Mr. White told Wise that nobody knew who or what was really behind the assassination of President Kennedy and he really didn’t want to get involved, but he handed over the paper to Wise, who passed it on to the police and FBI.
A quick check of the Texas plate #PP4537 indicated that it belonged to one Carl Mather of Garland, Texas. When the FBI went out to the listed Garland address they found the two-tone 1958 Plymouth right there in the driveway and knocked on the door. Mrs. Mather answered, acknowledged the car belonged to her husband, who was then away at work at Collins Radio, in nearby Richardson, Texas. When asked where her husband and the car was on Friday, November 22, 1963, she said that the car was in the parking lot at Collins Radio until sometime in the afternoon when her husband returned home and picked up the family to go to the Tippit residence to pay their respects to the widow and family of their good friend, who was murdered that day.
Instead of going out to Collins Radio to interview Mather however, the FBI went first to Mr. White, who Wes Wise had promised wouldn’t be involved. They took additional statements from him, changing his story for the official reports and changed the two-tone Plymouth to a red Ford Falcon. Certainly a mechanic would know the difference between a Plymouth and a Ford.
CBS News made a polite inquiry years later, leaving
Carl Mather out of the documentary program they aired but listed Mrs. Mather in
the programs credits. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) briefly
looked into the affair, granted Mather immunity from prosecution to testify and
then failed to question him under oath. The HSCA published a short report they
titled "The Wise Allegation," when in fact Wes Wise made no
allegations, and merely followed up on his reporter’s instincts. He came up
with an automobile license plate number that was seen near the murder of a
Dallas policeman that was traced to one of the victim’s best friends, Carl
Mather, whose alibi is that he was at work at the time, at Collins Radio.
Documents later released under the JFK Act indicate that Mather and his boss were questioned by HSCA investigator Jack Moriarity and they explained that Mather worked on electronics at Collins, his specific job being the installation of the radio equipment aboard Air Force Two – then Vice President Johnson’s plane.
That this lead was not properly investigated, and remains uninvestigated today, is because such an inquiry actually does lead to the heart of the plot to murder not only Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, but as many believe, it is tied directly to the assassination of President Kennedy. If the Tippit murder is connected to the assassination of the President, as the official stories alleges, then the Tippit murder may be the "Rosetta Stone" that could explain the mysteries of both murders.
The significance of the Collins Radio connections becomes apparent with a quick review of the published record, and that:
1. On November 1, 1963 the New York Times published a front page photograph of the ship the Rex, which Fidel Castro identified as the boat that dropped off a team of assassins in Cuba a few nights previous. The Rex was docked at Palm Beach, Florida, near the JFK family compound, and the Rex’s Halloween eve mission was in clear violation of President Kennedy’s March 1963 edict that no para-military raids against Cuba were to originate from U.S. shores. According to the article in the NYTs, the Rex had been sold by the Somoza regime in Nicaragua to the Belcher Oil Company of Florida, its dock fees paid by the CIA front company Sea Ship Inc., with the Rex then being leased to the Collins Radio Company of Richardson, Texas, "for scientific research."
Arthur Collins - A Good Friend of General LeMay - a fellow HAM radio buff
2. Founded by Arthur Collins, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Collins Radio first made news headlines when young Collins was an amateur radio buff with the only (home-made) radio receiver who could pick up the radio transmissions of Navy Commander Richard E. Byrd from his polar exploration expedition. [Richard Byrd is the cousin of the founder of the Civil Air Patrol and owner of the Texas School Book Depository building].
3. Collins Radio became a major defense contractor during World War II, and following the war, participated in Operation Paperclip, hiring Dr. Alex Lipisch, the former Nazi scientist who developed the Delta I glider and ME 163 Komet jet fighter. For Collins, Lipisch was assigned to the boat development program that worked with General Dynamics in attempting to build and refine a sleek, swift speedboat – like the V20 – a shallow water craft that could be used for Cuban infiltration missions like the Rex mission, but was later used in Vietnam.
4. David Ferrie’s telephone records reflect that in the weeks before the assassination he made frequent calls from the New Orleans law office of G. Ray Gill to the Belcher Oil Company, the company that was the listed owner of the Rex.
5. In the week before the assassination, a reservation was made at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club for a large party of Collins Radio employees.
6. The Dallas P.D. Intelligence Division maintained a paid informant who worked at Collins Radio reported on fellow employees who appeared suspicious or subversive, including one who subscribed to the leftist I.F. Stone Weekly.
7. When Lee Harvey Oswald returned to Texas from Soviet Russia, George DeMohrenschildt introduced him to retired Navy Admiral Chester Bruton, an executive at Collins Radio, with the idea of Oswald getting a job there, as he had worked in a radio factory in Minsk, USSR. Oswald and Marina visited Bruton with DeMohrenschilt and had lunch with him.
8. At the time of the assassination Adml. Bruton was working on a top-secret nuclear submarine communications project for Collins, with the Navy’s nuclear sub radar and communications HQ being based at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The Woods Hole institute was responsible for locating the wreckage of the USS Thresher, that sunk on April 10, 1963, the day Oswald is accused of shooting Gen. Walker. Woods Hole is close to Michael Paine’s Forbes family island that Allen Dulles’ mistress and OSS operative Mary Bancroft had visited, and where Michael’s wife Ruth Hyde Paine was in residence when she wrote to Marina Oswald to ask her to move in with her in Dallas.
9. In 1963 Collins Radio began receiving large military contracts including one for the construction of a microwave communications network in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam.
Documents later released under the JFK Act indicate that Mather and his boss were questioned by HSCA investigator Jack Moriarity and they explained that Mather worked on electronics at Collins, his specific job being the installation of the radio equipment aboard Air Force Two – then Vice President Johnson’s plane.
That this lead was not properly investigated, and remains uninvestigated today, is because such an inquiry actually does lead to the heart of the plot to murder not only Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, but as many believe, it is tied directly to the assassination of President Kennedy. If the Tippit murder is connected to the assassination of the President, as the official stories alleges, then the Tippit murder may be the "Rosetta Stone" that could explain the mysteries of both murders.
The significance of the Collins Radio connections becomes apparent with a quick review of the published record, and that:
1. On November 1, 1963 the New York Times published a front page photograph of the ship the Rex, which Fidel Castro identified as the boat that dropped off a team of assassins in Cuba a few nights previous. The Rex was docked at Palm Beach, Florida, near the JFK family compound, and the Rex’s Halloween eve mission was in clear violation of President Kennedy’s March 1963 edict that no para-military raids against Cuba were to originate from U.S. shores. According to the article in the NYTs, the Rex had been sold by the Somoza regime in Nicaragua to the Belcher Oil Company of Florida, its dock fees paid by the CIA front company Sea Ship Inc., with the Rex then being leased to the Collins Radio Company of Richardson, Texas, "for scientific research."
Arthur Collins - A Good Friend of General LeMay - a fellow HAM radio buff
2. Founded by Arthur Collins, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Collins Radio first made news headlines when young Collins was an amateur radio buff with the only (home-made) radio receiver who could pick up the radio transmissions of Navy Commander Richard E. Byrd from his polar exploration expedition. [Richard Byrd is the cousin of the founder of the Civil Air Patrol and owner of the Texas School Book Depository building].
3. Collins Radio became a major defense contractor during World War II, and following the war, participated in Operation Paperclip, hiring Dr. Alex Lipisch, the former Nazi scientist who developed the Delta I glider and ME 163 Komet jet fighter. For Collins, Lipisch was assigned to the boat development program that worked with General Dynamics in attempting to build and refine a sleek, swift speedboat – like the V20 – a shallow water craft that could be used for Cuban infiltration missions like the Rex mission, but was later used in Vietnam.
4. David Ferrie’s telephone records reflect that in the weeks before the assassination he made frequent calls from the New Orleans law office of G. Ray Gill to the Belcher Oil Company, the company that was the listed owner of the Rex.
5. In the week before the assassination, a reservation was made at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club for a large party of Collins Radio employees.
6. The Dallas P.D. Intelligence Division maintained a paid informant who worked at Collins Radio reported on fellow employees who appeared suspicious or subversive, including one who subscribed to the leftist I.F. Stone Weekly.
7. When Lee Harvey Oswald returned to Texas from Soviet Russia, George DeMohrenschildt introduced him to retired Navy Admiral Chester Bruton, an executive at Collins Radio, with the idea of Oswald getting a job there, as he had worked in a radio factory in Minsk, USSR. Oswald and Marina visited Bruton with DeMohrenschilt and had lunch with him.
8. At the time of the assassination Adml. Bruton was working on a top-secret nuclear submarine communications project for Collins, with the Navy’s nuclear sub radar and communications HQ being based at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The Woods Hole institute was responsible for locating the wreckage of the USS Thresher, that sunk on April 10, 1963, the day Oswald is accused of shooting Gen. Walker. Woods Hole is close to Michael Paine’s Forbes family island that Allen Dulles’ mistress and OSS operative Mary Bancroft had visited, and where Michael’s wife Ruth Hyde Paine was in residence when she wrote to Marina Oswald to ask her to move in with her in Dallas.
9. In 1963 Collins Radio began receiving large military contracts including one for the construction of a microwave communications network in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam.
10. After Oswald was murdered while in Dallas police
custody by Jack Ruby, his widow Marina Oswald married former Collins Radio
employee Kenneth Porter.
11. After the assassination in Miami, Florida, a Cuban exile, and Collins Radio executive, was murdered, assassinated in a still unsolved homicide.
12. Collins Radio supplied and maintained the equipment used by the Voice of America, all manned NASA space flights, the Strategic Air Command (SAC), as well as all equipment used for the CIA’s Guatemalan and Cuban operations. Most significantly, Collins Radio was responsible for installing and maintaining all radio equipment aboard Air ForcThe Assassination Tapes.e One, Air Force Two and the Cabinet’s plane.
11. After the assassination in Miami, Florida, a Cuban exile, and Collins Radio executive, was murdered, assassinated in a still unsolved homicide.
12. Collins Radio supplied and maintained the equipment used by the Voice of America, all manned NASA space flights, the Strategic Air Command (SAC), as well as all equipment used for the CIA’s Guatemalan and Cuban operations. Most significantly, Collins Radio was responsible for installing and maintaining all radio equipment aboard Air ForcThe Assassination Tapes.e One, Air Force Two and the Cabinet’s plane.
13. According to the Collins Radio Annual Report to stockholders for 1963-64, Collins Radio not only installed and maintained the radios aboard most military and executive branch planes, they also operated the relay station known as "Liberty" at their Cedar Rapids, Iowa headquarters, which served as the relay station for all radio communications between the White House, the Pentagon, Air Force One, Air Force Two, the Cabinet plane and Andrews AFB in Washington.
This "Liberty" station is misidentified on most transcripts of the edited version of the radio transmissions from Air Force One on 11/22/63 and is not even mentioned in Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes.
The
book Collins Radio – The First Fifty
Years says: "Air Force One, the Presidential airplane, was placed in
service in 1962 using communications equipment developed and manufactured by
Collins. The aircraft…was modified to meet special requirements…In 1962, the
station many remember as 'Liberty' was opened and operated from the
new communications building….(in Cedar Rapids, Iowa)…Collins had a contract
with the Air Force to serve as either the primary communications station or as
a backup whenever Air Force One, the presidential aircraft, and other aircraft
in the VIP fleet carried cabinet members or high ranking military officers.
Over the airwaves the station’s call word was ‘Liberty.’"
In his book The Making of a President – 1964, Theodore H. White wrote: "There is a tape recording in the archives of the government which best recaptures the sound of the hours as it waited for leadership. It is a recording of all the conversations in the air, monitored by the Signal Corps Midwestern center ‘Liberty,’ between Air Force One in Dallas, the Cabinet plane over the Pacific, and the Joint Chiefs’ Communications Center in Washington….On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, learned the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President’s mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick."
According to the analysis of E. Martin Schotz and Vincent Salandria (in History Will Not Absolve Us, 1996), "And yet the White House had informed President Johnson and the other occupants of Air Force One, all of them witnesses to the hail of bullets which had poured down on Dealey Plaza, that as of the afternoon of the assassination there was to be no conspiracy and that Oswald was to be the lone assassin. If White’s report were correct this would mean that federal officials in Washington were marrying the government to the cover-up of Oswald as the lone assassin virtually instantaneously. This could have occurred only if those federal authorities had had foreknowledge that the evidence would implicate Oswald and that he would have ‘no confederates.’ An innocent government could not have reacted in such a fashion internally."
Unfortunately, there is no longer "a tape recording in the archives of the government," as the original, unedited, multiple tape recordings of the AF1 radio transmissions cannot be located despite an Act of Congress, the request of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. Our government - specifically the military's White House Communications Agency (WHCA) seems to have simply lost the recordings, with no records being kept of their whereabouts or destruction, if in fact they were destroyed.
The Final Report of the ARRB (p. 116) notes: "6. White House Communications Agency. WHCA was, and is, responsible for maintaining both secure (encrypted) and unsecured (open) telephone, radio and telex communications between the President and the government of the United States. Most of the personnel that constitute this elite agency are U.S. military communications specialists; many, in 1963, were from the Army Signal Corps. On November 22, 1963, WHCA was responsible for communications between and among Air Force One and Two, the White House Situation Room, the mobile White House, and with the Secret Service in the motorcade."
"The Review Board sought to locate any audio recordings of voice communications to or from Air Force One on the day of the assassination, including communications between Air Force one and Andrews Air Force Base during the return flight from Dallas to Washington D.C. As many people are now aware of, in the 1970s, the LBJ Presidential Library released edited audio cassettes of the unsecured, or open voice conversations with Air Force One, Andrews AFB, the White House Situation Room, and the Cabinet Aircraft carrying the Secretary of State and other officials on November 22, 1`963. The LBJ Library version of these tapes consists of about 110 minutes of voice transmissions, but the tapes are edited and condensed, so the Review Board staff sought access to unedited, uncondensed versions. Since the edited versions of the tapes contain considerable talk about both the forthcoming autopsy on the President, as well as the reaction of a government in crisis, the tapes are of considerable interest to assassination researchers and historians."
"Given that the LBJ Library released the tapes in the 1970s, the paper trail is now sketch and quite cold. The LBJ Library staff is fairly confident that the tapes originated with the White House Communications Agency (WHCA). The LBJ Library staff told the Review Board staff that it received the tapes from the White House as part of the original shipment of President Johnson’s papers in 1968 or 1969. According to the LBJ Library’s documentation, the accession card reads: "WHCA?" and is dated 1975. The Review Board staff could not locate any records indicating who performed the editing, or when, or where."
"The Review Board’s repeated written and oral inquiries of the White House Communications Agency did not bear fruit. The WHCA could not produce any records that illuminated the provenance of the edited tapes."
At the time I delivered my report on "The Collins Radio Connections" to the National COPA Conference in Washington in October, 1994, the Washington Post had just then exposed the true occupant of a new, mammoth, suburban Virginia building. It was not the headquarters for Collins Radio/Rockwell International as had been previously reported, but they had just been the cooperating cover company for the super secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), just as Collins Radio had served as a cover for the CIA in the operation of the Rex in Cuba in 1963. In addition, a night time security guard was murdered during the construction of this building.
Also, in the October, 1998 issue of John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s George Magazine, - David Wise reported on how the NRO had "lost" $6 billion in U.S. taxpayer’s money, and specifically mentioned the fiasco surrounding the construction of the HQ building, or which Collins/Rockwell served as a cover company.
In his book The Making of a President – 1964, Theodore H. White wrote: "There is a tape recording in the archives of the government which best recaptures the sound of the hours as it waited for leadership. It is a recording of all the conversations in the air, monitored by the Signal Corps Midwestern center ‘Liberty,’ between Air Force One in Dallas, the Cabinet plane over the Pacific, and the Joint Chiefs’ Communications Center in Washington….On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, learned the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President’s mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick."
According to the analysis of E. Martin Schotz and Vincent Salandria (in History Will Not Absolve Us, 1996), "And yet the White House had informed President Johnson and the other occupants of Air Force One, all of them witnesses to the hail of bullets which had poured down on Dealey Plaza, that as of the afternoon of the assassination there was to be no conspiracy and that Oswald was to be the lone assassin. If White’s report were correct this would mean that federal officials in Washington were marrying the government to the cover-up of Oswald as the lone assassin virtually instantaneously. This could have occurred only if those federal authorities had had foreknowledge that the evidence would implicate Oswald and that he would have ‘no confederates.’ An innocent government could not have reacted in such a fashion internally."
Unfortunately, there is no longer "a tape recording in the archives of the government," as the original, unedited, multiple tape recordings of the AF1 radio transmissions cannot be located despite an Act of Congress, the request of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. Our government - specifically the military's White House Communications Agency (WHCA) seems to have simply lost the recordings, with no records being kept of their whereabouts or destruction, if in fact they were destroyed.
The Final Report of the ARRB (p. 116) notes: "6. White House Communications Agency. WHCA was, and is, responsible for maintaining both secure (encrypted) and unsecured (open) telephone, radio and telex communications between the President and the government of the United States. Most of the personnel that constitute this elite agency are U.S. military communications specialists; many, in 1963, were from the Army Signal Corps. On November 22, 1963, WHCA was responsible for communications between and among Air Force One and Two, the White House Situation Room, the mobile White House, and with the Secret Service in the motorcade."
"The Review Board sought to locate any audio recordings of voice communications to or from Air Force One on the day of the assassination, including communications between Air Force one and Andrews Air Force Base during the return flight from Dallas to Washington D.C. As many people are now aware of, in the 1970s, the LBJ Presidential Library released edited audio cassettes of the unsecured, or open voice conversations with Air Force One, Andrews AFB, the White House Situation Room, and the Cabinet Aircraft carrying the Secretary of State and other officials on November 22, 1`963. The LBJ Library version of these tapes consists of about 110 minutes of voice transmissions, but the tapes are edited and condensed, so the Review Board staff sought access to unedited, uncondensed versions. Since the edited versions of the tapes contain considerable talk about both the forthcoming autopsy on the President, as well as the reaction of a government in crisis, the tapes are of considerable interest to assassination researchers and historians."
"Given that the LBJ Library released the tapes in the 1970s, the paper trail is now sketch and quite cold. The LBJ Library staff is fairly confident that the tapes originated with the White House Communications Agency (WHCA). The LBJ Library staff told the Review Board staff that it received the tapes from the White House as part of the original shipment of President Johnson’s papers in 1968 or 1969. According to the LBJ Library’s documentation, the accession card reads: "WHCA?" and is dated 1975. The Review Board staff could not locate any records indicating who performed the editing, or when, or where."
"The Review Board’s repeated written and oral inquiries of the White House Communications Agency did not bear fruit. The WHCA could not produce any records that illuminated the provenance of the edited tapes."
At the time I delivered my report on "The Collins Radio Connections" to the National COPA Conference in Washington in October, 1994, the Washington Post had just then exposed the true occupant of a new, mammoth, suburban Virginia building. It was not the headquarters for Collins Radio/Rockwell International as had been previously reported, but they had just been the cooperating cover company for the super secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), just as Collins Radio had served as a cover for the CIA in the operation of the Rex in Cuba in 1963. In addition, a night time security guard was murdered during the construction of this building.
Also, in the October, 1998 issue of John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s George Magazine, - David Wise reported on how the NRO had "lost" $6 billion in U.S. taxpayer’s money, and specifically mentioned the fiasco surrounding the construction of the HQ building, or which Collins/Rockwell served as a cover company.
One of the most important inside informants in the
assassination Gene Wheaton – worked as a security consultant in the Middle East
for Rockwell Collins International.
So in conclusion – if control over the
communications was a key attribute of the conspiracy and coup – then Collins
Radio is all over the playing board and is at the heart of the matter.
Please Support JFKCountercoup: https://www.gofundme.com/supportjfkcountercoup
[William E. Kelly is a freelance journalist whose research into the assassination of President Kennedy is partially sponsored by the Fund For Constitutional Government Investigative Journalism Project. He can be reached at: Billkelly3@gmail.com]
Please Support JFKCountercoup: https://www.gofundme.com/supportjfkcountercoup
[William E. Kelly is a freelance journalist whose research into the assassination of President Kennedy is partially sponsored by the Fund For Constitutional Government Investigative Journalism Project. He can be reached at: Billkelly3@gmail.com]
Once again Bill Kelley shows his brilliance and his outstanding research concerning the JFK assassination.
ReplyDeleteTommy Wilkens - Author - "Walking The Razor's Edge: The Dutchman and The Baron"
yes and as origins of
DeleteExcellent
ReplyDeleteAre they also involved n BUchency 911 COG communications?
ReplyDeleteAlso, in an old article of yours you said the Doomsday Plane was OVER DEALEY PLAZA. Those planes have all sorts of control over all communications including those on the ground. I believe they were responsible for shutting down the Secret Service Charlie channel in the motorcade, and for making sure that Parkland ER NEVER got the message that JFK had been shot, and to have ER gurneys and staff awaiting him upon arrival. I believe the coup plotters would leave NOTHING to chance and that this was part of the plan to to make sure that if JFK was wounded in DP and there was any chance of his survival, that he would be good and dead by the time he arrived in TR 1.
ReplyDeleteI've recently stumbled upon shocking evidence that there were no gurneys or medical personnel awaiting the President outside Parkland Hospital when they arrived. I discovered at least two nationally prominent Press witnesses who arrived right behind the limo at Parkland, who reported that when they arrived, there were NO doctors, NO Nurses, NO Orderlies, and NO GURNEYS, awaiting them.
Additionally, the triage Nurse, RN Bertha Lozano - the first point of contact in the ER for injured patients - and O'Neal Ambulance Driver, Aubrey Rike, who was standing inside the ER by the desk after a recent ambulance run, reported that 2 men charged through the ER doors one with a briefcase and the other with a big gun he thought was a machine gun. The man with the briefcase yelled "We need some stretchers right now!" and the man with the machine gun yelled "Alright everybody, clear out of here!"
With further research I've discovered at least two Secret Service Agents - Greer & Kellerman, the two in the Presidential limo, testified to the fact that there were no personnel or gurneys out front when they pulled in. This, even though Chief Curry, who was in the Motorcade Lead Car, immediately radioed the DPD dispatcher at the time of the shots, 12:30pm. Per the DPD tapes & transcripts:
"Chief Curry: Looks like the President has been hit. Have Parkland stand by"
"Dispatcher: 10-4. They (Parkland) have been notified."
Notwithstanding the dispatcher's alleged reassurance, I've found evidence that when they arrived at Parkland, it was as if NOTHING had been reported!
I've discovered recordings of two prominent, nationally acclaimed, journalists, who arrived at Parkland immediately behind the Presidential Limo, NBC Reporter, Bob Clark, and UPI's Pulitzer Prize-winning, journalist Merriman Smith, who said that there were NO GURNEYS or MEDICAL PERSONNEL awaiting them when they arrived! (Cont' due to length...)
Merriman Smith said beginning at the 2:10 mark in the following UPI Soundcloud recording, that there was NO ONE THERE WITH GURNEYS WHEN THEY ARRIVED - NOTHING!:
ReplyDelete2:10 Interviewer: When you got to the hospital, what as it like there?
2:11 Smith: "There were NO interns, NO litters...NO NOTHIN'! The President was face down in the back of the car & Jackie was bending over him. So...she was whispering in his ear, and you could see on the right side of his jacket, this growing, um, uh, stain. Which...he was bleeding at the time. And, uh, so, at this point I was pretty well convinced that he'd been awfully wounded and I yelled over at one of the Secret Service men [Clint Hill], I knew him: How badly was he hit? And he said, "HELL, HE's DEAD!"
Listen here:
"The Kennedy Assassination - Merriman Smith eyewitness account UPI Audio"(reassemble url):
soundcloud DOT com/upiaudio/merriman-smith-describes-the
And NBC Reporter, Bob Clark, interviewed on CSPAN3 in '96, said they waited a COUPLE OF MINUTES, before anything was brought out!
At 37:015 Clark recounts, when he arrived at Parkland (rt behind the limo):
"I STOOD THERE FOR COUPLE OF MINUTES, AND THERE WERE NO STRETCHERS WAITING WHEN THE PRESIDENT ARRIVED! AND WHEN THEY STARTED TO WHEEL THESE STRETCHER CARTS OUT, I realized I'd better get in the hospital ahead of them ..."
www DOT c-span DOT org/video/?72668-1/events-surrounding-jfk-assassination
Meanwhile the President was, for all they knew, bleeding out, while waiting for help to arrive!
In a filmed news interview at at Parkland on 11/22/63, of Ambulance Drivers/Asst. Undertakers, Aubrey Rike & Dennis "Peanuts" McGuire, Rike reported he was waiting inside Parkland by the desk after going on an ambulance run (he had picked up the epileptic, Jerry Belknap, in Dealey Plaza.) All was quiet - there were no reports of anything going on or commotion, let along about an arriving President who had been shot. Suddenly 2 men, one with a large machine gun, and one with a briefcase came crashing through the ER doors, yelling for stretchers and cots! He had no idea what was going on: "I thought it was "some sort of lunacy or something!" Then the Vice President Johnson came in. Then the newsman were asked about the President and he said they brought him in following that. RN Lozano had been quietly sitting at her triage desk when she reported the same thing - she had no idea the President was coming to Parkland! So obviously there was no one, and no stretchers awaiting them outside! Watch here (reassemble url):
November 22, 1963 - Interview with ambulance drivers Aubrey Rike and Dennis McGuire at Parkland
www DOT youtube DOT com/watch?v=YjhCbt5X4hA
Renowned Secret Service expert & author, Vince Palamara writes:
"Greer stated that there was no radio communication between the limousine and Parkland Hospital -- as evidenced by the fact that there were no waiting attendants or stretchers at the ready."
So, I was not the first to discover this, but didn't know of Vince's short post about it when I ame across Merriman Smith's & Bob Clark's recordings.
(Continued in a 3rd post due to length...)
Cont': Secret Service Agent, Greer, the Presidential Limo Driver, hemmed and hawed in his Warren Commission Testimony when asked repeatedly if medical personnel & gurneys were waiting, finally saying he ran in to get one!
ReplyDeleteSA Kellerman - the Secret Service agent in the front right seat of the Presidential limo, testified to the Warren Commission Testimony, that there were no gurneys or help out front when they arrived:
Mr. Kellerman: Fine. As we arrived at the hospital I immediately got out
of the car. Our follow-up car is in back of us, as you will recall.
I yelled to the agents, "Get in" — "Go get us two stretchers on wheels."
So obviously there were no medical personnel waiting outside with gurneys.
(Cont' due to length...)
Also RN Bertha Lozano (later Farrington) was the Parkland Triage Nurse that day, and recounted in her Price Exhibit report (a Warren Commission document), that she was sitting at the Triage Desk when suddenly the doors to the ER burst open and "an uncountable number of Dallas Police officers were screaming for a stretcher" to be brought out. She had NO idea what was happening! No one had contacted her about the President having been shot or being brought to the ER!
ReplyDeleteShe immediately called back to Major Surgery Area to Orderly, Joe Lewis Richards , to bring out a gurney. The officers returned screaming again for another gurney and she personally left the triage desk and ran back to the OB-GYN area to get one, and she and Dr. Bill Midgett rolled another gurney out to the ER entry where she saw a man with a coat over his head (JFK) wheeled past her (someone else had obviously gotten another gurney and taken it out, in the meantime). Back to Lozano's call to Orderly Smith...Smith reported in his Price Exhibit report, that he and (British) RN Diane Bowron, grabbed a gurney and ran out to the ER entrance with it. Smith and an officer lifted Connally onto the gurney and Smith and Lozano pushed him into Trauma Room 2. When Smith came out of TR2, he noticed some other gurneys had been brought out (by someone) and JFK was being wheeled into TR1.
But the point is NONE of this was waiting for them when they arrived, according to reliable witnesses, Bob Clark & Merriman Smith. (I think there was one other reporter who also noted this, but I can't remember who, and can't find it in my bookmarks.) This allowed JFK (had he been viable) to be "good and dead" by the time he was treated. And of course we know how critical urgent care is to saving someone during their "golden hour."
I believe they coup plotters left absolutely nothing to chance, and this delay was a component of the plan. Somewhere along the line, Curry's message to the dispatcher, obviously was NOT relayed to Parkland! So, what are the scenarios that would create such an emergent care collapse? Either... 1. The Dispatcher did not relay Curry's order, (he was either part of the plot, or just a right winger who hated JFK). OR... 2. He conveyed the message to a Parkland Operator, who was either part of the plot, or hated JFK, and did not alert staff. OR... 3. The plotters had somehow intercepted the phone circuit between the DPD dispatcher and the Parkland Operator (which they had the technical means to do), and made sure the message did NOT get thru to a real Parkland operator (ie: the call could've been re-routed to an "imposter" operator). A real operator who got the message, would have alerted Lozano STAT (via phone) or alerted all emergency room and surgical personnel, over the public address system, to bring out gurneys, doctors and nurses, and have them WAITING in the ER entrance - the same way the operator does in a CODE BLUE situation. This was the President who had just been shot, after all. One would expect all hands on deck out front, WAITING WITH GURNEYS when the Limo arrived!
BTW... I've been a JFK researcher for almost 50 years, and am a retired, CVICU/ICU/CCU/ER RN. I know how things normally gear up when the call comes in that an ambulance with an "ordinary" patient in critical condition is arriving - and this clusterf*ck is NOT how it goes down! I can only imagine what hell would've broken loose in the ER, if we had received a call that the President was shot and was being brought in! I smell a RAT! A very BIG RAT.
One other thing that intrigues me WHCA communications on 11/22. There was a Sixth Floor Museum Oral history taken of a gentleman named Allen D. Walker, who worked for the WHCA in Europe and who says he lost communiation with the White House that day. This seems to be an incredibly important story...yet, like the VAST MAJORITY of the Oral Histories done by the 6FM it hasn't been uploaded for the public to hear/watch! :
ReplyDelete"A member of the White House Communications Agency from 1962 to 1964, Walker was stationed in Paris and coordinated direct telephone communication from the White House to European leaders. He was alone in the office when the assassination took place and lost contact with the White House for more than an hour. Recorded July 12, 2007."
Does anyone know more about him and his story?