Tales of the Air Force One Transmission Tapes

 TALES OF THE AF1 TAPES

Sometime in the early 1980s I received my copy of the Air Force One radio transmission tapes from the Assassination Information Center (AIC) on the third floor of a mall in an old warehouse in the West Side Market Place a few blocks behind the Texas School Book Depository.

It consisted of three cassette tapes, and Larry, who was a founder of the AIC, told me they came from the LBJ Library in Texas.

It took me the better part of the following summer to transcribe the tapes, that begin with a military officer, ostensibly with the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) explaining that the tapes are an edited version of the Air Force One radio transmissions from November 22, 1963.

I later learned that there are a number of other transcripts, including an official LBJ Library transcript, and another version transcribed by Kathy Cunningham. In the course of writing The Assassination Tapes, Max Holland had his secretaries transcribe portions of the tapes that he wanted to cite in his book, and Doug Horne transcribed sections that he wanted to use in his books Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB).

Yet another transcript must have existed, one of the unedited tapes, because three reporters – T. H. White, William Manchester and Pierre Salinger quote from it, though it apparently no longer existes.  White and Manchester were given permission to read and quote from the tapes at the White House by LBJ, while Salinger used a copy furnished to him to write his book about serving as the President’s Press Secretary. Salinger told Vincent Salandria that when he was finished with it, he returned his copy to the JFK Library in Boston, but the Library told Salandria they no longer had it.

JFKcountercoup: Tale of the Tapes - By Vincent Salandria

As Salandria points out in his article (Tale of the Tapes?), all three men quote from the unedited transcript things that are not on the existing tapes.

From Theodore H. White’s The Making of a President 1964 (Harper-Collins Kindle Edition)

Chapter One - Page 9:

“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.”

While the official LBJ Library transcript misidentifies “Liberty,” and Max Holland makes no mention of it at all, we now know that the “Liberty” was the relay station at the Collins Radio Headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Arthur Collins, as a young boy who built his own radio receiver in his garage, was the only one who intercepted Admiral Byrd’s radio broadcasts from his exploration of the poles. Collins dutifully turned over the information to the Navy, and after starting his own radio company, received military contracts during World War II. A close personal friend and fellow HAM radio enthusiast Air Force General Curtis LeMay arranged for Collins radios to be placed aboard all Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers, and the Executive Air Fleet, including Air Force One and the planes used by the Vice President and the Cabinet. And Collins maintained those radios and used their “Liberty” station to relay and monitor all conversations when the planes were in the air.

As White continues, “The voices are superbly flat, calm, controlled. One hears the directions of ‘Front Office’ (The President) relayed to ‘Carpet’ (The White House) and to the Cabinet above the Pacific. One feels the tugging of Washington seeking its President – tugging at the plane, requiring, but always calmly, estimated time of take-off and time of arrival. One hears the voices acknowledge the arrival of ‘Lace’ (Mrs. Kennedy) on the plane; one receives the ETA – 6:00 P.M. Washington. It is a meshing of emotionless voices in the air, performing with mechanical perfection. Only once does any voice break in a sob - when ‘Liberty,’ relaying the sound of ‘Carpet’ to the Pacific plane, reports that the President is dead and then Pierre Salinger’s answering voice breaks; he cannot continue the conversation, so that the pilot takes the phone and with professional control repeats and acknowledges the message, as he flies the Cabinet of the United States home in quest for leadership of the government of which they are so great a part. ….”

Chapter Two - Page 33:

“On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, learned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President's mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick. One might well try to envision him on this trip, for there is something essentially Johnsonian about it. Of all men in public life, Lyndon Johnson is one of the most friendless…”

But there is nothing of the kind on the existing tapes. No mention of conspiracy or no conspiracy, and no mention of Oswald or his arrest.

The tape is captivating however, as LBJ talks to Mrs. Rose Kennedy, the President’s mother, and military officers arrange the funeral in flight.

Then, I learned that another copy of the Air Force One tapes had surfaced among the effects of the President’s military attache General Clifton. After he died his effects were sent to a Philadelphia auction house, where among the letters, documents and phots were two exact duplicate copies of large reel to reel tapes, a generation closer to the original than the highly edited cassette tapes released by the LBJ Library.

Since they were exact duplicates one of the tapes was donated to the National Archives and posted on line for the public to hear, while the other one was kept as part of the auction and listed at an obscene price.

I immediately began listening to the Clifton tape, and began transcribing it, and while longer and containing new information, much of it was a duplication of what was previously released by the LBJ Library.

Two new items caught my attention, one was Pierre Salinger asking the White House Situation Room (WHSR) if the cabinet plane he was on should go to Dallas or return to Washington D.C. The WHSR officer, who identified himself by his code designation STRANGER, told them to return to Washington D.C. When Salinger told this to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, the senior official on board, Rusk demanded to know who STRANGER was, saying they can’t take orders from a virtual stranger. Salinger went to the pilot, who opened the safe that contained special documents, but the code book was missing. Rusk ordered Salinger to learn the identity of STRANGER.

You can hear Salinger on the Clifton tape requesting the name of STRANGER and shortly thereafter, STRANGER is identified as Colonel Harold R. Patterson, who Salinger knew personally and told this to Rusk.

JFKcountercoup: "Stranger" & the Missing Code Books on 11/22/63

When learning of Patterson’s name, I searched the internet and found him in Virginia, got his phone number and called him on the phone. I told him that I was listening to his voice on the recently released Clifton version of the AF1 tape, and he acknowledged that he was STRANGER, and that the code book on the Cabinet plane was missing. We talked a bit about the White House Situation Room at the time of the assassination, and he agreed to talk with me again.

The next day, after I gave Jefferson Morley Patterson’s phone number, Morley called him, but Patterson clammed up and wouldn’t talk at all.

The other item of interest on the Clifton tape and not on the LBJ Library version is a Colonel George Stanton Dorman, who identifies himself as General LeMay’s aide, who had an urgent message for LeMay, who Dorman said was on an Air Force jet returning to Washington D.C. from Canada. Dorman asked for a few moments of time on the air to give LeMay an urgent message, a message we never hear.

JFKcountercoup: Col. George Stanton Dorman

I looked up Dorman and sadly discovered that he was killed in combat in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, but his widow lived near Trenton, not far from where I was living. I found her phone number and called her, and she acknowledged that she was Colonel Dorman’s widow, and told recalled November 22, 1963 very clearly. She said she was working in the White House at the time, under a Mr. Castro, assisting in the historic restoration process begun by First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

While she was working, news that the President had been shot, so Mr. Castro ordered all the drapes closed, and Colonel Dorman called her and told her to go home immediately. While she left the White House to go home, she stopped at a church chapel to pray first. They lived on General’s Row adjacent to Arlington Cemetery. She said her husband never talked about his military work so she didn’t know what the urgent message he was trying to convey to LeMay.

She gave me the phone number of one of her sons, who told me he was only about ten years old at the time, but recalled the times clearly. He said his father once took him on a tour of General LeMay’s Command and Control plane, named “Speckled Trout,” a rare and hard to catch fish.

Young Dorman also recalled watching the funeral parade and grave side services from a tree in Arlington Cemetery, which was practically his back yard.

As I was transcribing the Clifton Tape and meshing it together with the LBJ Library tapes, I listed to National Public Radio, and heard an acoustical forensic expert, Ed Primeau, report on a cell phone tape of the murder of a black kid in Florida, killed by a Neighborhood Watch guy who thought the stranger was suspicious.

I looked up Ed Primeau on the internet and found him in Michigan, called him on the phone and asked him if he was interested in the Air Force One radio transmission tapes from November 22, 1963. He said he was, and I told him there were two versions, one longer than the other, that I had transcribed and combined. Would it be possible for him to combine the audio tapes so it was one seemless tape?

He said yes, and he would do it pro-bono.

I sent him links to both versions, and my combined transcript, and he and his team not only combined them, but also cleaned them up, removing noise and static and making them more clear to listen to.

JFKcountercoup: The Air Force One Radio Tapes Update - The Story Thus Far

I presented Premieau’s clear and combined version of the AF1 radio transmission tapes at the 2013 Wecht Conference at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and again at the 2014 AARC conference at Bethesda, both of which were well received. I asked Max Holland and Jeff Morley to attend my Wecht conference presentation, and Jeff, at his JFKFacts web site, called the Air Force One tapes the most significant evidence we have.

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Jeff then flew Ed Primeau to Washington D.C. and interviewed him on camera saying that there are dozens of places on the tapes that are clearly edit points, so we don’t have the original, unedited tape, the transcript of which was read and quoted from by White, Manchester and Salinger.

Then Primeau, Morley, Dorman’s son and John McAdams went on nationwide TV talk show and discussed the tapes, though I was disappointed, without needing credit or recognition, that my name was not mentioned even though I put the deal together. When he learned of my role McAdams apologized and said I should have been credited for my work.

2013 JFK Facts scoop #3: the Air Force One tapes > JFK Facts

The original unedited tape, I believe, still exists, either at Collins Radio or the White House Communications Agency, but the latter was extremely unreceptive to the JFK Act and did not cooperate with the Assassinations Records Review Board.