VINCE
SALANDRIA 1926 - 2020]
Vince Salandria
The
recent passing of Vince Salandria, of a heart attack at the age of 92, while he
was walking his dog, has inspired a number of tributes, three of which are
posted here:
Philadelphia
school teacher and attorney Vince Salandria was a major inspiration to
generations of JFK assassination researchers, including myself, who continues
Salandria’s pioneering work on the Air Force One radio transmissions.
Salandria
rightly notes that three respected journalists – Theodore H. White (The Making
of a President, 1964), William Manchester (Death of a President), and Pierre
Salinger (With Kennedy), were all given access to an unedited transcript of the
Air Force One radio transmissions of November 22, 1963, and quote portions of
the transcript that are not on the existing radio tapes that I personally
transcribed.
Those unedited transcripts have since disapeared.
Some of
the other articles I wrote on this subject:
Combined
Tapes annotated,
the
whereabouts of Air Force Chief of Staff General LeMay on 11/22/63,
- the
background of his aide Col. George S. Dorman,
- the
identity of “Stranger” and the Missing Code Books
- Maj.
Harold Patterson aka “Stranger” Commander of WH Situation Room
- the
return of Oliver Hallet in the White House Situation Room
-
radiomen after action reports
Dear
Bill,
Thank you for your articles. You have done so much good work and in
doing so have demonstrated a mastery of the art of understatement. You
have in superabundance what I have in very short supply, patience.
You make
reference to David Talbot's book"The Devil's Chessboard." Of
course, the New York Times saw no reason to review that fine work. Talbot proves
that if the JFK assassination had to be ascribed to a "Lone Wolf,"
that Lone Wolf was Allen Dulles who coordinated the coup on behalf of our
national security state. Please continue your arduous efforts to reach
others with the true meaning of the JFK assassination which David Talbot and
James Douglass have firmly established.
Fondly, Vince Salandria
While
Salandria lived in Philadelphia, just across the Delaware River from my Camden,
N.J. hometown, I failed to meet him until he gave his landmark Keynote Speech
at the 1998 COPA conference in Dallas.
I
assisted John Judge in preparing for that conference, and we recognized that
Salandria had never made such a conference appearance before, so he was given
two hours to make his presentation, and permitted to allow E. Martin Schotz to
preceed him.
Schotz’s
The Waters of Knowledge verses the Waters of Uncertainty: Mass Denial in the
Assassination of President Kennedy.
Salandria’s The JFK Assassination: A False
Mystery Concealing State Crimes (COPA, Dallas, 1998)
Afterwards
Salandria was given a standing ovation from the crowd, and was honored with the
COPA Lifetime Achievement Award.
As he
was leaving I walked out with him and requested a copy of his speech, that he
handed me, and graciously signed. I later retyped the entire speech and posted
it on line. John Kelin was there as well, and requested a copy and began an
interaction with Salandria that led to the publication of a book Praise From a
Future Generation – about the first serious researchers into the assassination.
Dave Ratcliff, at radical.org also posted many of Salandria’s articles on the
assassination that gives you a good idea of the breath and depth of the man.
Unfortunately,
with the death of John Judge, those who controlled his estate wrongfully
assumed that he “owned” both COPA - The Coalition on Political Assassinations, and the Hidden History Museum foundation Judge established. Both were meant to be independent institutions that belonged
to no one individual but were to last longer than any one. Even though they
were in different tax leagues, their moneys were wrongfully and probably
illegally co-mingled, COPA was disbanded and the Hidden History Museum moved to
the boondocks of rural Pennsylvania, despite John Judge’s desire that it be
located in Washington D.C.
So some
of the original COPA founders, including the Chairman Dr. Cyril Wecht and
myself, formed a new organization – Citizens Against Political Assassination
(CAPA), that we hope can continue the work that began with COPA nearly thirty
years ago.
In the
course of our re-organization I asked Vince Salandria to serve on our Board of
Advisors. This was one of the last correspondence I received from him.
Dear Bill,
First, allow me to state clearly that I much admire you and your Kennedy assassination work.
First, allow me to state clearly that I much admire you and your Kennedy assassination work.
Therefore,
it pains me to decline your kind invitation to serve on the board of advisors
to enforce the JFK Act. Bill, it would be hypocritical for me whose
essays are entitled a "False Mystery" to join a group which seeks to
have the U.S. government release more records on the state crime, a coup, which
that government has plainly perpetuated. I view the work of Douglass and Talbot
as dispositive of the question of who killed Kennedy and why. I do not see the
need for the killers, our national security state, to supply us the answers to
a non-existent mystery. When I read the "Warren Report, " I felt that
the U.S. government had released more than enough data in that report to
convince any objective person that the national security state had killed
President Kennedy and was transparently advertising it by inducing dunces
such as I to write about the killing and to debate it for more than a half a
century.
I have written on the subject, but I never accepted that invitation to
debate, and no one has ever invited me to debate the JFK assassination. I
am satisfied to remain out of this interminable interchange.
So, I am
compelled to decline your kind and courteous invitation despite the fact that I
have for you only great respect, admiration and Warm regards, Vince.
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