• Once it becomes clear that Bethesda is to be the site, two things happen: first, both Admiral Burkley and General Clifton insist that the president’s body be transported to Bethesda by ambulance, even though Gerald Behn at the White House informs General Clifton that President Kennedy’s Naval Aide, Captain Shepard, has assured him that it will be no problem for the helicopter to carry the heavy casket; second, even though Admiral Burkley and General Clifton insist on ambulance transport of JFK’s body to Bethesda, Gerald Behn at the White House subsequently orders Roy Kellerman: “You accompany the body aboard the helicopter.”
• Finally, General Clifton insists and then repeats, in great detail, orders for a forklift and platform at the left rear of the aircraft for the casket, a personnel ramp at the left front of the aircraft for President Johnson and other passengers’ debarkation, and another personnel ramp at the right front of the airplane (the dark, unlit side of the aircraft where there is a galley door) for the departure of Jacqueline Kennedy.* These concerns are mirrored at flight’s end in a conversation from Colonel Swindal (Air Force One pilot) to Colonel Cross (USAF also) on the ground.
• Background chatter can be heard at one point, discussing a “limousine and ambulance at Andrews,” and later in the same background conversation, something about a “black Cadillac” … [in another call] “SAM Command Post” calls Air Force One and a “Colonel Arnbuck (phonetic) from OPS” expresses a concern from the Chief of Staff (General LeMay?) as to whether President Johnson and Mr. Kennedy’s body is onboard the aircraft. This question is followed immediately on the tape by the confusing tug-of-war over who will control autopsy arrangements, etc.
On more than one occasion during the flight, personnel in Washington specifically ask whether Mrs. Kennedy is on board. “A.F. Command Post” first asks this question, immediately before the “Chief of Staff’s Office” inquires about the whereabouts of President Johnson and Mr. Kennedy’s body. Subsequently, “Air Force Command Post” asks who the top people on board are. “Winner” (a Mr. Hatcher at “Crown”) later asks if Mrs. Kennedy is on board. During the flight, Admiral Burkley assumes that Mrs. Kennedy will accompany the body; General Clifton very carefully arranges separate debarkation arrangements from the aircraft for Mrs. Kennedy and Gerald Behn (head of White House Secret Service Detail) attempts on two occasions to separate all passengers on Air Force One from JFK’s body after arrival (desiring to send the body alone to Bethesda on a helicopter and all other personnel to the South Grounds of the White House). The significance of this repeated concern about Mrs. Kennedy’s whereabouts and her plans upon landing is a source of controversy among some researchers.
Immediately after Behn orders Kellerman to “accompany the body aboard the helicopter,” the following exchange takes place: Kellerman: “I was unable to get ahold of Payne and Bob Burke [names are phonetic approximations].” After a break, the words, “Payne and Burke at the ranch,” are heard; it is unclear whether the speaker is Kellerman or Behn. Finally, an unidentified speaker says, “Payne and Burke were not notified.” The meaning or possible significance of this exchange, if any, is not known.
One last noticeable exchange worth reporting is from “Wing” (Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, USAF, Kennedy’s Air Force Aide) to “Slugger” (Capt. Cecil Stoughton, USAF, White House photographer who photographed both the swearing-in of LBJ onboard Air Force One in Dallas, and the onloading of JFK’s casket at Love Field): Wing asks that Crown relay to Slugger that he must meet the aircraft as soon as possible after arrival Andrews, and that if he cannot do this, he is to see Wing as soon as possible after arrival, or contact him in any way feasible. The urgency and importance of this matter to Wing is very clear from his tone of voice. Later, Crown informs Wing that Slugger remained on the ground in Dallas. One of the many conversations not on the LBJ transcript which is on the edited tape reads as follows:
Andrews(?): Air Force One, this is very important.
Slugger: This is Capt. Stoughton in Dallas.
Air Force One: Warrior advises he is unable to speak with you at the present time and asks would you please call the White House in about 30 minutes. (Note: It is unclear what this is all about, and additionally unclear why Warrior is the party unable to speak with Slugger, when it was Wing who asked to speak with him in the first place.)
A particularly intriguing question arises from the “unidentified voice,” which twice made statements about someone being on “6970,” the designation of the previous “Air Force Two.” Given that there were only seventeen passengers on board that aircraft, none of whom were military officers (although a few Secret Service agents were aboard), it might have been “Lancer” (JFK) whose name was erased. Still another mysterious comment caught on tape, from Roy Kellerman to Gerald Behn, was “I’m sure the Volunteer boys will go over his car and so forth.”114 This is clearly a reference to the need for Lyndon’s “boys” to examine the limousine and make whatever fixes it might need to support the official storyline, and if that proved difficult, then to have the car rebuilt to hide whatever unwanted information it might hold.
Transporting JFK’s Corpse: A More Likely Explanation
One possible—admittedly bizarre, yet given Johnson’s capacity for audacious and outrageous conduct, realistic—interpretation from this edited transcript, based upon the other known facts and anomalies presented, suggests the following scenario:
• Kennedy’s body was taken from the ornate bronze coffin and put into a light shipping casket then moved to the “backup” aircraft formerly designated by LBJ as “Air Force Two,” (aircraft 86790) during a fourteen-minute period when the casket was unattended, as Mrs. Kennedy was forced to attend Lyndon’s swearing-in ceremony. At this point, both airplanes were parked next to each other and the passengers had already been seated and were waiting to take off. When Judge Hughes arrived, Johnson was intent on emptying the aft compartment of the plane, saying, “We’ll get as many people in here as possible.” He dispatched men to round up witnesses. Valenti, Youngblood, Roberts, and Lem Johns were sent into the staff area to extend a general invitation, and then he himself went in. Gesticulating broadly, he announced, “If anybody wants to join in the swearing-in ceremony, I would be happy and proud to have you.”115 It appears that Johnson’s mood swings were by then bouncing from one extreme to another: dour and morose in the motorcade to hysterical shortly after boarding the airplane and now, barely an hour later, celebratory and magnanimous as he encouraged everyone on board to witness him swearing to uphold the constitution.
Many of the Kennedy group were in no mood to watch Johnson being sworn in, but his efforts to empty the aft compartment, where the coffin was, and fill the stateroom—already insufferably hot and stuffy—with more people have to be considered more than a little odd.
• Johnson’s real intent was to keep the Kennedy people from the aft compartment, where the coffin had been secured, and move them into the forward, staff compartment while he “swore” that he would uphold the constitution. While Johnson was being sworn in, the entire party was either with him in the stateroom or in the forward compartments, leaving the rear of the plane behind the closed corridor door empty; the exception, of course, would be for anyone Johnson dispatched to have Kennedy’s body switched to another, smaller and lighter, shipping casket, which would then be moved to the backup aircraft.
• The backup aircraft followed Air Force One in the takeoff queue but overtook it in flight and reportedly landed well ahead of it at Andrews (the “leapfrogging” had been a common practice so that the vice president would arrive first in order to greet the president). This was confirmed by the FBI agents who interviewed the head of the Secret Service White House Detail, Gerald Behn, who stated that “Air Force Two passed Air Force One in flight.”116 The official Secret Service reports indicate that Air Force Two arrived at Andrews after Air Force One; however, the two contradictory statements cannot be reconciled. Given that Behn’s statement indicated that Air Force T
wo passed Air Force One in flight, it implicitly means that Air Force Two landed first. This was probably an indiscreet comment to make to the FBI agents, Sibert and O’Neill, but has to be considered more factual than the “official” Secret Service records, many of which have been widely discredited, as will be seen throughout the remaining chapters. In view of the massive fabrication of other evidence already cited, it is not far-fetched to suggest that the arrival time of “86790” was incorrectly recorded.
• Once Air Force Two (a.k.a. “backup aircraft” or “86790”) landed at Andrews, the body was immediately removed and taken by helicopter to Walter Reed Army Hospital, which could have been reached within five to eight minutes, allowing for at least forty-five minutes for preautopsy “surgery”—as (inadvertently) verified in the FBI report—before being sent on to Bethesda in a black Cadillac hearse and delivered to the rear door at 6:35 p.m., consistent with the testimony of three witnesses.
The assertion that JFK’s body had been moved to the “backup” aircraft is supported by David Lifton’s original finding that the typed report submitted by FBI agents Sibert and O’Neill, who were dispatched to the autopsy to retrieve any bullets found inside his body, had been “typographically altered* to replace ‘Air Force 6790’ with ‘Air Force One’”117 (emphasis added). Despite this finding, Lifton did not believe ultimately that the body was moved to Air Force Two because of the Secret Service’s logs, which showed that it landed almost one-half hour after Air Force One. My own opinion is that, given all of the other distortions and fabricated evidence, which are only summarized herein, it is not unreasonable to suggest that these records were also changed. The changes made in the FBI report, as such an example, are shown below:
Lifton wrote, “Thus, it was my theory that the Sibert and O’Neill report, as originally typed, read that the body was aboard ‘Air Force 6790, the President’s jet …’ It should be noted that 6790 was Lyndon Johnson’s jet, and he was now ‘the president.’ This typographical alteration suggested there had been a change in Sibert and O’Neill’s understanding as to which plane carried the body from Dallas to Washington and arrived at Bethesda before they did. Exactly what Sibert and O’Neill asked Gerald Behn at the White House on November 27, 1963, must remain a matter of speculation. But they did record the response—a response which suggests they may have been told that the body was aboard Air Force Two, and that Air Force Two passed Air Force One in flight.”118
The fact that the FBI agents took the trouble sometime later to go back and make this “correction” to their typed report indicates not only that it was a very important point but suggests that the reason it was even mentioned in the first place was because they had inquired about how the body arrived in Bethesda before they did. This is a very reasonable deduction given that—had the point not been raised as an “issue” in the first place—it would have been routinely typed “Air Force One” originally, and there would have been no reason to have to make such an obvious and glaring “correction.”
The tapes of conversations between people on Air Force One and on the ground (White House) reveal a lot of confusion about where JFK’s body was to be taken; almost all references to the location of the pending autopsy refer to Walter Reed (Army) Hospital and there is considerable talk about transporting JFK’s casket, and other people, by “chopper” to Walter Reed. Despite the fact that Jacqueline had requested, early on, that it be done at Bethesda, the recorded conversations continued to refer to Walter Reed as the destination for the casket. Even as late as 5:58 p.m., as Air Force One taxied onto the tarmac, Lyndon Johnson’s secretary, Marie Fehmer, continued making chronological notes for the new president; the final entry on these notes was “5:58 Arr. Andrews—Body w/Mrs. K. to Walter Reed.”119 Ms. Fehmer (now Mrs. Andrew Chiarodo) told David Lifton that “I’m sure someone told me, but … I have no way of remember[ing] who.”120
David Lifton’s book, published in 1980, still stands as the original definitive work on this aspect of the manipulation of JFK’s body; Noel Twyman’s 1997 book, William Matson Law’s 2005 book, and Douglas Horne’s 2009 five-volume work all added to that base. The above probable scenario is simply a condensed version of their meticulously researched analysis. One exception is that of my disagreement with David Lifton’s decision to accept the “official Secret Service records,” which indicated that Air Force Two arrived after Air Force One, despite the statement of Gerald Behn who implicitly said the opposite when he said Air Force Two passed Air Force One. That distinction either opens up or rules out the possibility of the body having been moved to Air Force Two (a.k.a. “backup aircraft” or “86790”) as noted above. By moving JFK’s body to a lighter shipping casket, it could also be disguised to make it appear as a plain crate, just another piece of cargo that had to be moved from Air Force One in order to make room for the Johnson party’s luggage. In this thesis, the body was moved while both airplanes sat side by side on the tarmac in Dallas—amidst mass confusion as baggage was moved from one plane to the other, back and forth—all while Johnson gathered together practically everyone on Air Force One to watch him take the oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United Sates of America.
In fact, the heart of this thesis is that Johnson had all of this meticulously planned for months; as we have demonstrated throughout this book, he was a genius at planning very manipulative, complex, and extensive scenarios to dupe others and had done it time after time. It is clear that the “miscommunications” between himself, Kenneth O’Donnell, and Robert F. Kennedy were all part of his plans to create a very chaotic situation at Dallas Love Field in order to set the stage for remaking JFK’s wounds to support the “lone gunman” scenario. His master plan had also called for a number of otherwise inexplicable actions, among them:
• The huge number of telephone calls that he and his assistant Cliff Carter initiated aboard Air Force One, mostly to Washington officials; the priority for them at this point would have been to ensure that JFK’s body was modified as necessary to show that he was only shot from behind;
• The numerous phone calls which Cliff Carter made to Dallas County Sheriff Decker, Captain Fritz and District Attorney Henry Wade, telling them to quit talking about “conspiracy” and to start closing down their investigation;
• Invoking “top secret” security measures for everyone involved in transporting and/or modifying the body and conducting the autopsy; everyone involved was sworn to secrecy and made to understand that they would suffer severe penalties if they failed to conform to these orders.
Further, this thesis is based upon the following purposes to Johnson’s actions:
• All of his actions at Love Field were part of his grand scheme; nothing he did was spontaneous and without some underlying purpose. By taking over Air Force One and holding it on the tarmac while he waited for JFK’s body to arrive with his widow, he could force the Secret Service agents to quickly secure the body, wresting it away from the hapless Dr. Rose and eliminate any chance that a rigorous, well-executed autopsy would be performed. He had clearly planned this weeks before, knowing that a “special” autopsy would be necessary, one that would obliterate any evidence that Kennedy was shot from anywhere but from behind; the doctors to be used in this would have been preselected by their superiors beforehand, probably on the basis of utilizing only those who would be absolutely obedient and vulnerable to their unconditional control.
• While the attention of everyone on board was distracted to his swearing-in “ceremony,” JFK’s body was removed from the big heavy casket and moved into a small shipping casket resembling an ordinary crate, which would then be moved with other baggage to Air Force Two, Johnson’s old airplane, which he would never have to suffer the embarrassment of riding in again. This explains why he insisted on having the baggage moved from one plane to another as reported by Manchester (clearly not something that he should have been concerned with at all given all the other events of the day and the fact that both planes would be
flying back to Washington at practically the same time anyway).121 It was critical to the need to make any “fixes” necessary to fit the “lone nut disaffected communist” theory, which was his preference all along, against the “Communist conspiracy conducted by Cuban sympathizers” option favored by some in the military and intelligence communities to provoke an invasion of Cuba.
• The remaining pieces would then follow: get the body to Andrews first, “chopper” it to Walter Reed to make whatever “final adjustments” might be necessary, redeliver it by a waiting hearse to Bethesda for “preautopsy” reviews and x-rays, create even more chaotic conditions at Bethesda so the body could be put back into the “false-decoy” ambulance, which would then reconnect with the original “decoy ambulance” carrying the ornate Dallas casket (after Bobby and Mrs. Kennedy got out of it at the front of the hospital). Only after such a “shell game” played out—in a zany “hide and seek” chase around the Bethesda Navy Hospital grounds that ended only minutes before 8:00 p.m.—would the original ambulance, with JFK’s body finally back in the original bronze casket, drive up to the rear loading dock of the hospital. Almost simultaneously, the truck conveying the “casket team” finally made its way back, just in time to carry the coffin into the hospital.
If all of that sounds a little outrageous, rest assured that it conforms to the stories of many witnesses, as we will see shortly; it is also not nearly as outrageously unbelievable as numerous aspects of the “official version” foisted on a credulous nation in 1964, the most outlandish of which was the absurd “Magic Bullet Theory” invented by Arlen Specter, which was then entered, arguably fraudulently, into official evidence as commission exhibit 399. All of this despite the questionable provenance of the bullet and its being in practically pristine condition, as only a bullet shot into thin air, a barrel of water or a very sizeable box of loose cotton might emerge. Jack Ruby probably knew where it came from, but no one thought to ask him.
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