THE LBJ TAPES - New Exclusive Article on Air Force One Radio Transmission Tapes and transcripts
BK NOTES: One of the requirements of conducting a successful covert intelligence operation is control over the communications, which makes the Air Force One Radio Transmission tapes and transcripts a primary source for evidence in the case. While we have come a long way since this was written in the 1970s, obtaining an edited transcript and edited cassette tapes from the LBJ Library, and the edited reel-to-reel tapes from General Clifton's estate, this informed article stands up very well today. All of the facts that it establishes are still valid, and all of the questions it asks remain unanswered.
Now we are resuming our quest for the original unedited Air Force One radio transmission tapes and transcripts, that we know existed at one time, and believe they still exist today, but are being wrongfully and illegally withheld because of what they say and tell us.
Max Holland wrote a book on this subject - "The JFK Assassination Tapes," in which he neglects to mention or discuss any of the issues that Fred and Larry bring to the table, issues we are still grappling with, and issues that I believe we can and will resolve in the next few years, if only the effort is taken.
Many thanks for Fred Newcomb and Larry Haapanen to take up this issue, the Newcomb family for permitting us to post this publicly, and for Larry for keeping the issues alive today.
THE LBJ TAPES
By
Fred T. Newcomb and Larry Haapanen
The late Fred T. Newcomb of Van Nuys, California, was
an advertising art director, is co-author with Parry Adams, of a privately
printed book on the Kennedy assassination entitled “Murder From Within,”
(Author House, 2011)
Larry Haapanen holds a Ph.D from Washington State
University, is an ex-Air Force Captain and retired college professor.
SOMEWHERE IN GOVERNMENT FILES
SOMEWHERE IN GOVERNMENT FILES
Somewhere in government files is a tape recording of
much greater historical importance than any of the so-called “Watergate tapes”
that helped force the resignation of President Nixon.
Instead of centering around a bungled burglary,
these tapes contain conversations between high government officials immediately
after the assassination of President Kennedy, as his successor, Lyndon Johnson,
assumed the responsibility and authority of the Presidency.
The existence of the “LBJ tapes” remained a closely
held secret until April 21, 1964, when author William Manchester learned of
them while conducting interviews for his book, Death of a President.
Manchester found that President Kennedy had ordered
the Signal Corps to record all communications to and from Air Force One
whenever the presidential party was aboard, and that then-Vice President
Johnson had been unaware of the order. Manchester then requested White House
permission to obtain a complete transcript, which he wished to include as an
appendix to his book.
President Johnson initially refused his request, but
eventually, perhaps because the book had the backing of the Kennedy family,
Manchester was allowed to read an edited transcript at the White House on May
5, 1965. “Doubtless,” Manchester wrote in his book, “the tapes will be
available to future historians.”
But since security was not an issue, why was it
necessary to edit the transcript before it was shown to Manchester? Perhaps
because the principals didn’t know they were being recorded on orders of a man
who by then lay in a casket in the back of Air Force One.
As the tape reels turned on November 22, 1963, they
captured radio traffic between Air Force One (flying from Dallas to Andrews Air
Force Base in Washington), the cabinet plane (over the mid-Pacific carrying
half the Kennedy cabinet toward a conference in Tokyo) and the White House
Situation Room.
As fearful and distraught men sought to keep themselves
and the republic together at a most delicate moment in history, they spoke
without knowing their conversations were being recorded for posterity.
Another (or possibly the same) transcript was made
available to Pierre Salinger, JFK’s former press secretary, to assist him in
writing With Kennedy. In 1967, Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria learned
from Salinger that his copy, originally provided by the White House
Communications Agency, had been sent among some personal papers to the National
Archives. 2.
When the National Archives could locate neither the
tape nor the transcript, Salandria appealed directly to the White House
Communications Agency. Colonel James U. Cross, military aide to President
Johnson and former Air Force One pilot (and later executive director [of)]the
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department) replied for the agency:
“Logs and tapes of radio transmissions of military aircraft, including those of Air Force One, are kept for official us only. These tapes are not releasable, nor are they obtainable from commercial sources.” 3
“Logs and tapes of radio transmissions of military aircraft, including those of Air Force One, are kept for official us only. These tapes are not releasable, nor are they obtainable from commercial sources.” 3
In 1974, Fred Newcomb took up Salandria’s cause. If
Manchester and Salinger could gain access to the elusive transcript, he
reasoned, how could the government turn down another private citizen? Repeated
inquiries of the National Archives and the presidential libraries (and finally,
legal threats) produced and edited copy of the transcript from the Lyndon
Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. According to library director Harry J.
Middleton, “This Xerox copy came to us from the White House in a group of
miscellaneous papers.” 4
There was nothing to indicate when it was prepared,
by whom, or for what reason, and nothing to identify it as the transcript used
by Manchester or Salinger.
There are a number of historical questions the
original tapes or a complete transcript might clarify. This edited transcript,
however, raises more questions than it answers. For instance, among students of
the Kennedy assassination there has been cynical curiosity about the selection
of the Bethesda, Maryland Naval Hospital over Walter Reed Army Hospital and
Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
One reason has been that the autopsy performed there
is so fraught with unexplained conflicts and secrecy that it qualifies as a
major scandal of the Warren Report.
Another is the fact that but a few hours earlier in
Parkland Hospital there had been a nearly violent confrontation between Dr.
Earl Rose, Dallas County Medical Examiner, and certain members of the official
party when Dr. Rose had tried to detain the body in Dallas for the autopsy
required by Texas Law. 5
As Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry described it,
“They more or less snatched that body away from him.” 6
The Manchester account – which supposedly drew on
this same transcript – satisfied most of that curiosity. He reported that Rear
Admiral George Burkley (personal physician to JFK, and later to LBJ) had
proposed Bethesda to Mrs. Kennedy; she had consented; and Brigadier General
Godfrey McHugh, JFK’s Air Force aide, had alerted Washington to send an
ambulance to Andrews. This last conversation was described in detail. 7
But in the Newcomb transcript we find this three-way
exchange between Army Surgeon General Leonard Heaton in Washington and Major
General Chester V. Clifton (JFK’s military aide) and Dr. Burkley aboard Air
Force One:
BURKLEY: General Heaton, this is Admiral Burkley.
Did you contact MDW in regards to taking care of the remains of President
Kennedy taking him directly to Walter Reed? Probably Mrs. Kennedy will also be
gion out there. We will clarify that later.
HEATON: All right.
BURKLEY: Just a minute. General Clifton is here.
CLIFTON: This is General Clifton. We do not want a
helicopter to go to Bethesda Medical Center. We do want an ambulance and a
ground return from Andrews to Walter Reed, and we want the regular post-mortem
that has to be done by law under guard performed at Walter Reed. Is that clear?
HEATON: That is clear, General Clifton.8
Yet in the very next conversation we find General
Clifton talking to Gerry Behn, head of the White House Secret Service Detail.
He begins:
CLIFTON: This is Clifton. I understand that you have
arranged for an ambulance to take President Kennedy to Bethesda. Is this
correct?
BEHN: It has been arranged to helicopter the body to
Bethesda.
CLIFTON: Okay, if it isn’t too dark. 9
The exchange indicates a mutual awareness that
Clifton’s order to go to Walter Reed has been authoritively countermanded
during the flight. Though the order may have come from McHugh as Manchester
states, its omission in (the) transcript tends to renew old speculations.
There is reason to believe the Newcomb copy differs
from others: the transcript shown to Manchester apparently did not include the
conversation between Behn and Agent Kellerman that took place while Air Force
One was parked in Dallas, prior to President Johnson’s taking the oath of
office. Had he seen it, it is unlikely he would have written that taping did
not begin until the plane was airborne. 10
Other in-flight conversations recounted by
Manchester (whether from his transcript or his interviews is unclear) include
calls from LBJ aide Bill Moyers and from Secret Service Agents Clint Hill and
Lem Johns to the White House, and calls from Congressmen Albert Thomas and Jack
Brooks to their offices. 11
None of these appear on the Newcomb transcript.
The Newcomb transcript does, however, include communications
with the cabinet plane, implying that the same tape monitored both aircraft.
If this is true, then it is obvious from the conversation (the White House is reading from (a 10:40 bulletin on the AP ticker) that still more conversations are missing. 12
If this is true, then it is obvious from the conversation (the White House is reading from (a 10:40 bulletin on the AP ticker) that still more conversations are missing. 12
We know that LBJ had used the Air Force One
communications system from Love Field to talk to his aide Walter Jenkins and to
JFK advisor McGeorge Bundy in the White House, and to speak twice to Robert
Kennedy in Virginia (the text of these calls is an unresolved dispute).
Local calls were also placed to Dallas lawyers J.W.
(“Waddy”) Bullion and Irving Goldberg, and to Judge Sarah Hughes, and U.S.
Attorney H. Barefoot Sanders. 13
These too are missing.
It invokes a twinge of bitter humor to find among
the remnant conversations an unsigned footnote which reads:
(Note:) The next part of the tape is traffic between
SAM COMMAND POST and AF-1 advising them of weather conditions – tornadoes in
AF-1’s immediate flight path. I’m not putting in this traffic but I do have it
in my draft if you want it. 14.
So far, the omissions are of doubtful importance –
unlikely to yield anything more than firecracker surprises. But among the
missing is at least one conversation of nuclear potential. According to
Manchester, General Clifton talked to McGeorge Bundy, “asking again [!} whether
an international plot was emerging” in the wake of the assassination. 15
Author Jim Bishop, in The Day Kennedy Was Shot,
wrote, “It seemed that he [LBJ] was phoning McGeorge Bundy in the White House
Situation Room ever few minutes.” 16
Johnson, who first raised the question of conspiracy
during the lifesaving efforts at Parkland Hospital, is also alleged by
Manchester to have requested a briefing from CIA Director John McCone. 17
The Newcomb transcript yields only one Clifton-Bundy
exchange; and only three lines from President Johnson (to Rose Kennedy and
Nellie Connally); and no mention of any conversation of conspiracy, of an
international plot, or of the CIA. 18
If it were not for Theodore H. White, the story
would end here – Manchester’s reputation stalled against the anonymity of the
transcriber/editor.
In the Making of the President 1964, White wrote “On the flight [from Dallas] 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.” 19
In the Making of the President 1964, White wrote “On the flight [from Dallas] 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.” 19
It was so peripheral to the drama White was
presenting that its inclusion in his narrative seems almost accidental. Even
now, its significance is not readily apparent. Yet if it is true, it will rank
as one of history’s most electrifying revelations. Let’s restore the
perspective of the afternoon of November 22, 1963.
· When the plane touched down in
Washington at 4:59 P.M. (C.S.T.) it had been less than 3 hours since Oswald had
arrived at Police Headquarters.
·
There was no firm - - or even apparent –
link between the crime for which he had been arrested (the shooting of
Patrolman J. D. Tippit in Oak Cliff) and the assassination of President Kennedy
across the river in Dallas.
·
The rifle had not been traced, there
were no handprints, no bullets, no incriminating photos nor line-up
identifications at that hour to connect Oswald (or anyone else) with the
assassination.
·
But for those who could imagine such a
connection, it would have been difficult to dismiss conspiracy. Oswald’s name
was first announced at 3:23 P.M.; his Russian visit and his involvement in the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee were announced at 3:26 P.M. 20
·
It was 1:35 A.M. the next morning before
the Dallas Police felt secure enough of their suspect to charge him with the
President’s murder. 21
·
As late as 10:15 P.M., Police were still
reported to be questioning other employees of the Texas School Book Depository.
22
· On the afternoon of the following day,
Police were still looking for a negro suspect who was believed to have driven
Oswald from the crime scene. 23
·
While the plain was aloft, at least one
other man (Donald W. House) was being detained as a suspect assassin. 24
·
The American military had been put on
global alert. 25
·
Pennsylvania troopers had thrown a guard
around former President Eisenhower’s Gettysburg farm.
·
The CIA watch committee had been
activated. 27
·
The government of West Germany was
bracing for a possible invasion.28
Within the time frame of the historical flight,
strong suspicions of conspiracy were emerging and none had been laid to rest.
But aboard the presidential plane, according to
White, people were being told not only that Oswald was the assassin, but that
he acted alone!
The implications stagger the senses. These same
central conclusions which the Warren Commission would labor to bring forth by
September of the next year are seen in full dress rehearsal aboard the presidential
jet less than four hours after last rites were given the late President – now
lying in a bronze coffin in the back of the plane.
This is obviously not the sort of allegation to be
hung on a broadcast transcript of unknown origin; it challenges our whole
vision of American reality.
When something like this turns up, it must be a
mistake. Perhaps Theodore White’s Pulitzer Prize – winning journalism lapsed as
he wrote this account. No one else’s account confirms it.
“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, the Joint Chiefs communications center and
the White House communications center in Washington. 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….It is a meshing of emotionless voices in the air, performing with
mechanical perfection. Only once does any voice break into a sob…..”
When asked by Vince Salandria for the source of his
news denying conspiracy, White wrote back describing the tape. 30
Perhaps it is better that the tape has vanished. If
someone talking to the presidential plane knew the outcome of this
investigation before it began, how many on the plane knew it, too?
What if we were to assume the worst here: that the
primary beneficiary of the assassination, the former vice-president, was
somehow involved in a plot to promote himself? After all, it is a matter of
public record that the office did fall vacant on his home turf, and that the fatal
trip had been made at his behest to mend his political fences.
It becomes obvious now to see how such a tape could
be loaded with incriminating conversations; how the tape (and later the
transcript) could disappear from the archives after Mr. White has revealed it;
and why subsequent researchers would have to lobby and threaten to get even a
severely edited transcript. There are at least 25 reported conversations
missing from the Newcomb edition – who knows how many unknown.
But if the transcript were edited to conceal links
between the former Vice President and the murder, our conjectures seemed doomed
by another exchange retained in the Newcomb transcript.
BEHN: Yes, go ahead.
KELLERMAN: I’ll have to call you back. Get a couple
of men, rather the Volunteer (LBJ) boys to go over to his car and so forth.
We’ll also need hers and several others. 32
The presidential limousine was a mobile murder
scene. Its internal ravages – bullet holes, blood spray, embedded bullet
fragments – would be crucial evidence in determining the source of the gunfire.
Here is Roy Kellerman (Secret Service Agent in
Charge of the Dallas trip) ordering [!] his superior to have men – LBJ’s men –
go over the car “and so forth.”
If there was no controversy about the source of the
shots, these speculations would be pointless. But so many things do conflict
with the official notion of Oswald firing down from the Sixth Floor window; the
Zapruder movie shows JFK thrown violently backward (toward Oswald); the shots
seem to have come too fast for Oswald’s rifle; gunpowder odors are smelled in
the motorcade; the Parkland doctors describe a frontal entrance wound, etc.
Since there are few likely sources of shooting in Dealey Plaza which would not
have ripped up the innards of the limousine,
this car was obviously hot evidence.
Yet the LBJ “boys” who went over it that night
produced neither bullet holes nor any description of blood spray pattern (the
blood was washed out at Parkland by Secret Servicemen, according to hospital
employees) 33
Only a skull fragment, a cracked windshield, and
five bullet fragments were found. 34
It will surprise no one that two larger fragments,
with parts of copper jacketing still about them, were later matched to the
rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, and which
was later traced to Oswald.
But it may surprise some that all were lying loose
on the seats and floor of the car.
To put this in perspective, let us digress. Several
hours before these discoveries, Secret Service Agent Richard Johnson announced
another. He turned over to James J. Rowley, Chief of the Secret Service, a
nearly unblemished copper-jacketed bullet given him by a hospital employee at
Parkland, where it had been found on a stretcher. This became Warren Commission
Exhibit 399, the famous “magic” bullet later credited (with creating) seven
wound and two broken bones. 37
Like the limousine fragments, it was matched to
Oswald’s rifle. 38
Johnson apparently told no one of his bullet (no one
on Air Force One seems to have heard about it) until he returned to the White
House, and then both he and Chief Rowley broke the chain of evidence by not
inscribing it, as standard police procedure.
This is not the place to evaluate the controversy
about the “single bullet theory” or CE399. But because LBJ’s “boys” were sent
to “go over” the limousine, and because they found fragments of a
copper-jacketed bullet, we should note that all ballistic evidence lining
Oswald to the assassination passes through a single agency.
The doctors at Parkland found only lead particles in
Governor Connally, 39 as did the autopsy pathologists at Bethesda in President
Kennedy. 40 A bullet impression found on a curb near the shooting was also
leaden. 41 In fact, no copper jacketing was found embedded anywhere. It was all
found lying loose, and it was all produced by LBJ’s “boys.”
Barely three weeks after the shooting, UPI found
that the limousine had been quietly shipped to the Ford Motor Company in
Dearborn, Michigan to be bullet-proofed and completely refitted. One wonders
why LBJ – who so loved the status symbols of office – wanted to ride about in
this same car with its bitter (or at least bittersweet) memories. If this was
some macabre gesture of economy, it was most unfortunate since it prevented the
Warren Commission from making its own examination and using the car in its
filmed re-enactments. Only the bullet-scarred windshield (scarred with lead,
not copper) was saved for the Commission 43 and there is both photographs and
testimonial evidence to suggest it was not the same one that went to Dallas.
But enough. Asking questions about the Warren
Commission, the evidence, the meanings of it all, is like punching the Tarbaby
of Uncle Remus tale. Let’s end the speculation.
What we have here is a tape – a tape originally made
without the knowledge of those being recorded; belatedly discovered; and
eventually released by a President in edited form. The trail of discovery beckons
analogy to the Watergate tapes. The existence of the tape is at least
established, and if it does not turn up, or is not released to the American
public, the mystery of its unavailability will surely darken.
CITATIONS
1. William
Manchester, The Death of a President (New York; Harper & Row, 1967) p.
371n.
2. Letter
from Pierre Salinger to Vincent Salandria, 12/25/67.
3. Letter
from Colonel James U. Cross to Vincent Salandrai, 1/2/68.
4. Letter
from Harry J. Middleton to Fred T. Newcomb, 5/16/75.
5. Manchester,
p. 302-305.
6. Telephone
Interview, April 1971.
7. Manchester,
p. 349-350.
8. Transcript.
9. Transcript.
10. Manchester,
p. 371n., 268.
11. Manchester,
p. 341.
12. Transcript.
13. Manchester,
p. 268-272.
14. Transcript.
15. Manchester,
p. 342.
16. Jim
Bishop, The Day Kennedy Was Shot (New York; Funk & Wagnalls, 1968) p. 273.
17. Manchester,
p. 346.
18. Transcript.
19. Theodore
H. White, The Making of a President 1964 (New York; Signet Books, 1965)
paperback edition p. 48.
20. Manchester,
p. 284.
21. Bishop,
p. 505.
22. There
Was A President (National Broadcasting Co. 1966) p. 20.
23. Warren
Commission’s evidence, Vol. #24, p. 765.
24. NBC-TV
Broadcast, 2:45 P.M. (C.S.T.) Nov. 22, 1963.
25. White,
p. 20.
26. White,
p. 20.
27. Manchester,
p. 253, 269.
28. Bishop,
p. 285; There Was A President, NBC, p. 30.
29. White,
p. 21.
30. Note
from Theodore White to Vincent Salandria, undated.
31. Telephone
interview, Oct. 17, 1975.
32. Transcript.
33. Joe
L. Richards, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. #21, p. 226. Ibid, Vol. 21, p.
217.
34. Warren
Commission Exhibits NO. 841, 843.
35. Warren
Commission Document NO. 5, p. 163.
36. Report
of Secret Service Agent Richard E. Johnson, Commission Document NO. 3;
Testimony of Roy Kellerman, Warren Committion Hearings Vol. #2, p. 99.
37. Warren
Report, p. 104, New York Times Ed. , P.B.
38. Warren
Commission Document NO. 5, p. 163.
39. Testimony
of Robert A. Frazier, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. #5, p. 72.
40. Ibid.,
Vol. #15, p. 700; testimony of Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt.
41. New
York Times, December 17, 1963.
