The case of the missing code books on the SAC bombers and the Executive Air Fleet at the time of the assassination sparked my interest in the subject of the nuclear war lines of command, and I have learned a lot.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 President Kennedy was upset, as exhibited in the movie 13 Days, that a regional Air Force general elevated the DEFCON status to 2, one step away from war, without his approval, as he said it sent a message to the Soviets he didn't want to send. The President himself also personally telephoned military officers in Nebraska responsible for launching the nuclear armed missiles, making sure they knew such an order required presidential authority.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy took an interest in it too, and established the telephone hot line to Moscow and ordered a review of the nuclear warfare lines of command and process, code named Drop Kick, that resulted in the creation of the "football" case with the nuclear codes and the military officer called "Bag Man," who carried it where ever the President went. It was officially called the President's Emergency Satchel.
In the film Seven Days in May you can see the Bag Man sitting outside the Oval Office and at the swimming pool, following the President where ever he goes.
I wrote extensively and in more detail about the BagMan and the nuclear football in a blogpost in 2019 that can be read here: JFKcountercoup: BAGMAN, THE NUCLEAR FOOTBALL AND THE STAR NETWORK
The Bag Man at the time of the assassination was Warrant Officer Ira Gearheart, who had the nuclear football bag handcuffed to his wrist. Gearheart was sitting in the backseat of the last car in the motorcade with technicians from the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), who monitored radios in the Pilot car, the lead car, the President's limo, the SS Big Bertha behind it, LBJ's car and the WHCA car at the end of the motorcade. The pilot of AF one was also entuned to the motorcade's security "Charlie" channel, and he remained in his seat listening in while most of the crew went to lunch at Love Field, including WHCA Colonel George McNally, whose code name was STAR. The communications radio and telephone network he ran was known as the STAR network.
WHCA technicians went everywhere the President was known to be going and set up a secure land line to the STAR network, as they did at all of the hotels on the agenda and at the luncheon site where JFK was due to be at the end of the motorcade. Their base of operations in Dallas was set up at a suite of rooms at the Sheraton Hotel, where George H. W. Bush stayed the night before, where Oswald applied for a job with deMohrenschildt's friend Sam Ballen and was said to have met Maurice Bishop-David A. Phillips in the lobby with Antonio Veciana, where Robert and Marina Oswald's lawyers office was located, and where a reporter left suspicious notes in the wastebasket that sparked an investigation of what he knew. The Sheraton is also part of the Southland Center, where the headquarters of the Haliburton company is listed as 3211 Southland Center. It was certainly a beehive of assassination related activities.
As the motorcade turned onto Elm Street in front of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) and the first shot rang out, Will Greer the driver slowed down rather than speed up as he was trained to do, and the lead SS agent Kellerman picked up the radio microphone, squeezed the button and began to talk as the fatal head shot was fired, and was caught on the WHCA tape recording of Charlie Channel, certainly much clearer than the dubious Dallas PD dictabelt recording. But the Charlie Channel recording has never been acknowledged let alone released.
\When they raced to Parkland hospital LBJ was separated from the Bag Man for the first time and when the WHCA car with the Bag Man finally arrived, the WHCA technicians took control of two of the row of pay phones in the emergency room for linking land lines to the STAR network.
Then when the SS suddenly took LBJ out of Parkland to AF1 at Love Field, the Bag Man was left behind once again, and had to force his way onto the lap of a policeman to catch up.
At AF1, there were land lines already set up, and LBJ used it to call the Federal Judge he had appointed who recommended he take the oath of office as soon as possible, and was asked to go to Love Field to administer the oath. LBJ then called Attorney General RFK to obtain the exact wording of the oath of office. And finally he called his personal attorney G. Waddy Bullion, whose inner office conference call phone was listened in to by another attorney in the office who later reported that LBJ instructed Bullion to sell his Haliburton stocks.
Now this may seem like an insignificant instruction, and I had never heard of Haliburton before former VP Dick Chaney took a job there after leaving the White House, and included Governor John B. Connally on its board of directors.
I have since learned that Haliburton is the Texas company that actually manufactured the Executive Satche - the nuclear football, the metal case that was used to contain the nuclear codes.
In the meantime there was considerable uncertainty as to who was really in charge of the government, as Secretary of State Dean Rusk wondered out loud aboard the Cabinet Plane that was missing its code book.
I first read veteran reporter Jim Bishop's book The Day Lincoln Was Shot while in grade school, and his 1968 book The Day Kennedy Was Shot in high school but it didn't spark my interest in the case, though when I later re-read it I found some interesting tidbits. One was the fact that Bishop had interviewed some of the WHCA technicians who ran Charlie channel in the motorcade and the STAR network from the Sheraton WHCA switchboard, command and control post.
One of them told Bishop that in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, "Officials at the Pentagon were calling the WHCA switchboard at the Dallas Sheraton asking who was not in command. An officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are now the President."
While the constitutional lines of authority are well known, and go from President to Vice President to the Speaker of the House, the authority to release nuclear weapons and go to war is different and goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatrick.
So the WHCA in Dallas was giving the Pentagon the lines of authority to go to war, not the constitutional continuity of government chain of succession.
We know however that McNamara and the Joint Chiefs were not exercising the war powers of the presidency in those uncertain moments. While I don't know where McNamara was or what he was doing, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were meeting with their West German High Command counterparts. Two of them were involved in the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, and were very familiar with how such assassinationss, coups and continuity of government plans went. They were perplexed however when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor continued their meeting after being informed the President had been shot. Aind then after being told he had been killed, Taylor took a nap. So they were not in charge of anything, though Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay was not present at that meeting but on a hunting and fishing vacation in north Michigan and Canada.
As LBJ wondered aloud on AF1 during the flight back, "I wonder if the missiles were flying?" we know from the existing AF1 radio transmission tapes and the reports of those who were on board, and as Larry Hancock has pointed out, that LBJ didn't bother to consult with any of his military advisors even when he arrived back at Andrews in Washington D.C.
The late Daniel Ellsberg has written in one of his books that the nuclear chain of command was not secure, and after John Hinkley shot President Reagan, the Bag Man with the nuclear football was left behind once again, and had to walk the half-mile back to the White House.
That's when Secretary of State Gen. Al Hague went on live national TV from the White House and announced " I'm in control here," when he really had no authority and was out of the Presidential line of succession or the power to go to war.
Things were so chaotic in the immediate aftermath of JFK's assassination as to who had the power, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was passed to detail the continuity of government authorities.
Which brings up the case of the missing Code Books, something that had to be intentional and done by someone with the power to remove them from the safes of SAC bombers and the Executive Fleet planes, and why it was done.
It ahs been suggested to me by a military man familiar with such things, that the code books were removed in order to short circuit the line of command to go to nuclear war, mainly because it was such an opportunity with the president assassinated and the possibility such radical Pentagon war mongers like Generals LeMay, Powers and Leimeitzer would take advantage of, as they wanted to instigate a first strike against the Soviets and believed they could win such a nuclear war.
Those planning the assassination operation were aware of this, and removed the code books in order to prevent that from happening, although they did want to blame Fidel Castro for the assassination operation, and have LBJ invade Cuba and remove him, they didn't want to kill 200 million people, including themselves, in the process.
While I don't know if that is true, it sounds reasonable enough to me, and is at least a valid reason for the removal of the code books at the time of the assassination,
In addition, as I will elaborate on next, it has been suggested by USAF Major Ralph Ganis (Retired), that the nuclear chain of command was possibly used to authorize the pulling of the assassination trigger in the officially, institutionalized mechanics of murder - ZRRIFLE and/or Zeta-Diogenese, set up by the CIA and the military to kill Fidel Castro.
To comment on this or anything else - Billkelly3@gmail.com
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