LBJ
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• Carter claimed that Johnson and Katzenbach decided that Johnson should stay in Texas until Johnson could take the oath of office. This is contradicted by numerous sources as detailed elsewhere.
• Carter also stated that O’Donnell and O’Brien determined that Johnson should return to Washington using the presidential Air Force One aircraft. “The judgment seems to have been made largely on the fact that Air Force One had certain sophisticated communication equipment that Air Force Two did not have and that if a man is going to be President of the United States he’s got to be in constant contact with all elements at his command. It was thought that that was not entirely possible on Air Force Two.”50 This comment seems illustrative of one that could only have come from Lyndon Johnson (completely false and baseless) and parroted by his sidekick Cliff Carter. It was contradicted by numerous sources including O’Donnell and O’Brien, as noted in the next chapter.
Another example of the wholesale cutback in Kennedy’s protection can be seen on widely circulated videos of the motorcade as it commenced. Emory Roberts, aboard the “Queen Mary” following the presidential limousine, orders agent Henry Rybka, who had been running astride the limousine ready to assume his normal position on the rear bumper step, away from the vehicle as it prepared to leave Love Field (another agent on the other side of the limousine was also ordered to stay off the car, though he is not visible in the film). This video illustrates, better than any words can possibly convey, the way John F. Kennedy was abandoned in Dallas by the men who were sworn to protect him; it is essential viewing for anyone wishing to understand the reality of what happened in Dallas. (Ref. youtube.com for video: “JFK assassination: Secret Service Standdown” showing agents being taken off their normal assignments.)51
No one has studied the Secret Service protection “security stripping” issue more than researcher/author Vince Palamara; he has stated that the usual array of motorcycles was four abreast of the limousine with one placed at each fender; on many occasions there were twelve to eighteen motorcycles near the limousine. He also maintained that Gerald Behn, the head of the White House Detail, and Floyd Boring (second in command) both assured him that JFK never vetoed or modified any Secret Service protection and that any claims to the contrary were incorrect.52
Another of Johnson’s instructions would also be fulfilled at Love Field, when the top was removed from the limousine. According to testimony given to the HSCA, Secret Service Agent Winston Lawson stated that “on the morning of November 22, he received a call from Kellerman in Fort Worth asking about weather conditions in Dallas and whether the bubble-top on the President’s car would be used or not. During that call, Lawson was told the bubble-top was to be on if it was raining, and off if it was not. The final decision in this matter was made by Bill Moyers. Moyers had been on the phone to Ms. Harris, informing her that the President did not want the bubble top. He told Harris to ‘get that God-damned bubble off unless it’s pouring rain.’ Shortly thereafter the weather began to clear. Ms. Harris approached Sorrels about the bubble-top and together they had the special agents remove the glass top.”53* The Discovery Channel included a rather odd description of a video they broadcast:54
The limousine had a removable plastic bubble-top that was neither bulletproof nor bullet-resistant, but could be used to shield the car’s occupants from inclement weather. Since the skies had cleared over Dallas on the morning of Nov. 22, Secret Service agent Winston G. Lawson ordered the top removed at the behest of President Kennedy’s press assistant [sic], Bill Moyers, who knew that the president preferred to ride without it.
This text contains two points that require some elucidation or correction:
• The “bubble-top was neither bulletproof nor bullet-resistant.” True enough; however, the majority of agents agreed with John E. Campion, an aide to the assistant chief for security, who wrote a December 5, 1963, memorandum “Specifications of Bubble Top” that included this information: “The bubble top material of the President’s limousine is 3/4" thick Plexiglass.”55 It would seem that this material would, at the very least, deflect a shot.56
• Mr. Moyers was not JFK’s assistant as indicated by the Discovery Channel; he was, of course, actually one of Lyndon Johnson’s longtime assistants who had been promoted to the position of deputy director of the Peace Corps. Regardless of his title, he was in Austin on November 22 to assist in planning the next stop but was in frequent contact with Betty Harris and others in Fort Worth and Dallas.
The term “bubble top” became widely used to describe the removable top apparently because it was made mostly of plastic even though the connotation of the term was that the top resembled a bubble. In fact, the top was much more than a clear “bubble” over a big convertible; it was a very formal design with a vinyl covering, which transformed the convertible into a limousine with a very small rear window. As such, it would make it nearly impossible for a sniper to see the occupants clearly enough to aim at any of them from above. The following photographs illustrate this:
The first photograph, exhibit CE 345 of the Warren Report, shows the actual top that was carried in the car’s trunk; the second shows it installed shortly after it arrived at Parkland Hospital. These photos show clearly why Lyndon Johnson’s words to Bill Moyers were forcefully repeated to others: the black vinyl covering would obviously have made it impossible for anyone to have a reasonably good shot at JFK.
Still another last-minute change was the route to be taken through Dealey Plaza; instead of straight through on Elm Street and under the triple underpass or down Main Street straight through Dealey Plaza and then a sharp turn around a concrete median (or alternatively the temporary installation of planks to allow the procession to go over the four-inch curb),* the motorcade would now turn right onto Houston Street for one block before then taking a sharp (120-degree) left turn onto Elm Street, which required each vehicle to slow to a crawl, especially the stretched length presidential carriage. The Main Street to Stemmons Freeway route had been published in that morning’s edition of the Dallas Morning News, causing confusion—between the routes published earlier and the morning paper account—and accounting for the relatively low number of people lining the streets into Dealey Plaza.
The rumors of a pending disaster were being repeated through the presidential party. Marty Underwood, an advance man who worked on the planning of JFK’s Texas tour stops in Houston and Austin (Lyndon Johnson took over the planning and coordination tasks only for the Dallas stop) would later state that the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, and the Mafia “knew (JFK) was going to be hit on 11/22/63 … we were getting all sorts of rumors that the President was going to be assassinated in Dallas; there were no ifs, ands or buts about it.”57 But instead of tightening security, to ensure there were no potential holes in the protection of Kennedy, nothing was done even about the known lapses. The only thing ever done about them was a campaign to deny and prevaricate about the Secret Service’s errors before the Warren Commission. As noted previously, thirty years later, the Secret Service would purge many of its files related to the assassination.
The “Killing Zone”
As the presidential motorcade snaked its way through the streets of downtown Dallas then on to Houston Street, it came alongside Dealey Plaza to its left; when it reached Elm Street, it had to slow to a crawl in order to make a sharp turn, 120 degrees to the left, a maneuver which was contrary to standard Secret Service rules. The driver of the limousine, William Greer, was apparently a little surprised by this since he almost ran the car into the curb before getting it straightened back out. As the president’s open-topped limousine slowly started its way down Elm Street below four buildings of more than six stories high—none of which had been secured in advance by the Secret Service—two men sat next to the sidewalk on a grassy knoll halfway down the street toward the underpass; one of them held an umbrella, which he began alternately raising and lowering as Kennedy’s car approached.58 As the limousine passed, the time on the H
ertz Rent-a-Car clock atop the Texas School Book Depository read 12:30 p.m; and at that moment, an unknown series of shots rang out over Dealey Plaza.
Shock and confusion caused people who were not standing next to the presidential limousine to have many different recollections of where the shots originated. Of 178 witnesses at the scene, 61 would later say they believed that at least some of the gunfire had originated in front of the motorcade. The confusion over this point was held mostly by the witnesses farthest away, people standing closer to the corner of Houston and Elm streets. Those who were closest to the limousine were all convinced that at least some shots were fired from the “grassy knoll.”59 It is now clear that the reason for all the confusion was the variance in decibel level of each shot, depending upon each witnesses’ position in the plaza and the location of each rifleman; each had a different opinion because of the wide disparity among them as to which gunshots each of them heard and whether echoes were also heard in their position. People at the corner of Houston and Elm only heard those shots emanating from the buildings overhead; those on the grassy knoll mostly heard only the shots originating there. The man closest to the target of the shots, Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman, stated to the Warren Commission on March 9, 1964, “A flurry of shells came into the car.”60 Within minutes, the whole world would know that John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, was killed on Elm Street in downtown Dallas, Texas.
Moments after the initial report—which missed the president and hit the curb well beyond the limousine, ricocheting upward and hitting James Teague as he stood below the underpass*— two more shots were fired from opposite directions, which many thought sounded like firecrackers,** and John F. Kennedy began slumping in the car and grasping his hands toward his throat. The first of these was fired from the roof of the County Records Building behind him, striking him in his back, about 5½ inches below his collar (which Gerald Ford would eventually move, through semantic gamesmanship, up to his neck in order to support Arlen Specter’s desperate attempt to explain how all of this happened with only two bullets). According to SS agent Kellerman and Nellie Connally, Kennedy exclaimed, “I’m hit” at that point, just before the next shot hit him in his throat. Douglas Weldon, JD presented a compelling case that the next one (being the third shot, altogether) to hit JFK was actually fired from an above ground sewer access structure near the south end of the triple underpass, which went through the windshield (making the sound of a firecracker) of Kennedy’s car and hit him in the throat.61 He had just clutched his hands toward his throat as a result of this shot when James Altgens snapped his camera’s shutter, capturing the moment in the most widely seen, highest-quality photograph taken of the assassination.
Based upon David Mantik’s and Noel Twyman’s work, it now appears that there were at least eight, possibly even nine or ten shots. Kennedy was hit four times—though none was “magic”—once in the back from behind (the second shot), once in the throat from in front (third shot), and two closely spaced shots to the head after the limo had been brought to a halt (fifth and sixth shots), one from behind and one from in front while another (seventh shot) from behind missed and hit the chrome strip above the windshield, and another from the knoll was recovered from the grass (eighth shot). Connally was hit in the back (the fourth shot of the sequence) from the side as he turned to his left to see what was going on with JFK and subsequently by as many as two other shots, which (interspersed between them) hit only him. With respect to the shots that hit Kennedy, Dr. Mantik has established that the final shot to his head was a frangible bullet fired from the north end of the Triple Underpass (from another above ground sewer access structure at the end of the grassy knoll), which entered his right temple and created shock waves that blew through his skull and caused an exit wound at the rear of his damaged skull as seen in frame 374 of the Zapruder film (shown below). This caused his brains and blood to be blown out toward motorcycle policeman Bobby Hargis with such force that he thought momentarily he himself had actually been hit. The diagrams below help to illustrate this fatal wound and how all four shots hit JFK; they were originally published by James H. Fetzer in “Dealey Plaza Revisited: What Happened to JFK?” the last chapter (30) of the book, JOHN F. KENNEDY: HISTORY, MEMORY, LEGACY.62
As the last shots in this “flurry” hit their mark, the vice president, crouched close to the floor of the Lincoln convertible two cars behind the president’s, suddenly became the thirty-sixth president; as he must have known, this was automatically triggered on the basis of the oath he had already sworn on that cold January day 1,037 days earlier. There was never any essential need for him to even take another oath, least of all in an airplane sitting on the tarmac of Dallas’ Love Field as he awaited JFK’s body, which he had ordered to be removed from the hospital and delivered to him on Air Force One. The new president had been a nervous wreck ever since arriving in Dallas, and throughout the motorcade he had hunched down in the car such that his profile was even lower than his diminutive wife’s for much of the trip; his behavior would become even more strange in the hours to come and would continue to become ever more controversial, even decades later.
But just moments later, as the “smoke cleared” in Dealey Plaza, an irrefutable natural physical phenomenum occurred, which provided conclusive proof of gunfire coming from someplace other than the TSBD building. Numerous witnesses near the grassy knoll, as well as many in the motorcade itself—including Senator Yarborough, Congressman Ray Roberts, and Mrs. Cabell, wife of the mayor—smelled gunpowder as they proceeded west on Elm Street through Dealey Plaza and past the “grassy knoll.”63 The weather front moving into the area from the northwest brought gusty winds, ranging from the southwest to the northwest and north;64 the only way anyone could have smelled gunpowder on Elm Street was from a grassy knoll or a “triple underpass” shot. In fact, moments after the shooting started, police officer M. L. Baker nearly lost control of his motorcycle from “a strong gust of wind from the north.”65 Only a wind blowing from the east could have possibly brought the smell of gunpowder into that area from the so-called “sniper’s nest,” and even that would have been unlikely because of the distance it would have had to travel. For such a pungent yet ephemeral odor to have wafted all the way down from the sixth floor of the TSBD building toward the southwest, when the wind—especially at sixty plus feet in the air—was blowing other directions, was simply impossible. Even considered apart from every other “anomaly” cited within this text, we have yet another powerful proof, if any more is needed, that the assassination was indeed a conspiracy.
The Witnesses Speak
The witnesses closest to Kennedy when the fatal bullet struck him were Jean Hill and Mary Moorman, both of whom said from the start that the shots had come from the grassy knoll. Ms. Hill said consistently that she heard from four to six shots fired from this area and that after the last shot, she saw a man run from the concrete façade toward the triple underpass.66 Other witnesses in that area said similar things, as we will see in due course. Five journalists also confirmed that they witnessed indications that shots had come from the grassy knoll or the area around the triple underpass: Tom Wicker of the New York Times, Ronnie Dugger of the Texas Observer, James Vachule and Jerry Flemmons of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, and Mary Woodward of the Dallas Morning News (with a group of three others who also agreed with her) all said that shots came from near their location, behind them as they watched the motorcade in the same area.67 Ms. Woodward was standing on the sidewalk along Elm Street within fifty feet of the Triple Overpass and stated, “Suddenly there was a horrible, ear-shattering noise coming from behind us, and a little to the right.”
Ms. Woodward further stated that “instead of speeding up the car, the car came to a halt … I don’t believe anyone was hit with the first bullet.”68 Mark Lane testified to the commission about the eyewitness’ statements he had gathered, a number of which indicated that some of the first shots had come from the triple overpass,
which would confirm Douglas Weldon’s findings, above, that the shot to Kennedy’s throat came from that direction. One of these witnesses, a reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, stated that “Kennedy was gunned down by an assassin, apparently standing on the overpass above the freeway.”69 Ms. Woodward was another witness he quoted as saying that “the shots came from the direction of the overpass, and not at all from the Book Depository Building, which was to their left” (i.e., the direct opposite direction).70 The wife of mayor Earle Cabell, who was riding in a car four vehicles behind the president’s car, was one of many others who swore that the entire motorcade stopped as a result of the Kennedy limousine stopping. “I was aware that the motorcade stopped dead still. There was no question about that.” [Later:] “As I told you, the motorcade was stopped.” [Later:] “Every car in the motorcade had come to a standstill.” [Later:] “we were dead still for a matter of some seconds.”71
As demonstrated by David W. Mantik, MD, PhD, the ten witnesses closest to Kennedy as he was being shot all stated unequivocally that the limousine either completely or nearly stopped just as Kennedy was being shot in the head.72 The anomaly this presents is that the momentary stopping of the car—what so many eyewitnesses swore to—was not reflected in the film supposedly shot by Abraham Zapruder. The fact that so many witnesses were absolutely certain of this renders the film of the assassination—generally used as the official timing record—suspect. The dilemma thus created leads inexorably to the conclusion that the film had to have been altered. As Dr. James H. Fetzer recently established, even Clint Hill, in the 2010 book The Kennedy Detail, inadvertently corroborates that point inasmuch as his actions—which he has consistently described for over forty-seven years—are not reflected in the Zapruder film. Moreover, his testimony also contradicts the autopsy x-rays and other photographs:73