the reason for the assassination was to control the power of the presidency.
----------------------------
The following appeared in the October, 1975 issue of "Gallery," a porno
magazine which billed Fletcher Prouty as the "National Affairs Editor."
Some people feel there is no credible way to justify associating oneself
with such exploitative and demeaning media. Fletcher Prouty has told me
that since the Ballentine paperback edition of "The Secret Team" was
"disappeared" soon after it came out in February of 1974, it was very
difficult for him to find publishers who would print his writings (from
9/74 to 7/75 he was able to get 7 articles published in "Genesis" (another
porno magazine), and from 9/75 to 6/78 he got 14 articles printed in
"Gallery)". Up until the Ballentine paperback was squelched, he had been
published in the likes of "The Nation," "The New Republic," (including
cover-story features), and "Air Force Magazine." It is a telling
indictment of the reality of the lack of public access to the mainstream
corporate press, that a man like Fletcher Prouty--who served in the Air
Force for 23 years, rose to the rank of Colonel, was a briefing officer in
the Pentagon from 1955 thru 12/31/63, serving also as Focal Point Officer
(liason) between the DOD and the CIA, first in the Headquarters of the Air
Force (1955 to 1960), where he set up and then ran the structures that
supplied Air Force logistical (military hardware) support for CIA
clandestine operations world-wide, then in the Office of the Secretary of
Defense (1960 into 1961), and then in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff (1961 thru 12/31/63) where he ran the same support for all branches
of the military--that a man possessing such critical first-hand experience
and knowledge of the mechanisms, methodogy and factual history of CIA
covert operations in this seminal period, would find his writings and
analysis of these important issues essentially barred from the most
generally accessible publications. As long as the conglomerate press in
this country continues to increasingly restrict the range and variety of
points of view being published, writers will resort to certain types of
publishers they would not choose to go to if they had a better alternative.
_______________________________________________________________________
THE GUNS OF DALLAS
(c) 1975 by L. Fletcher Prouty
Reprinted here this one time only with permission by of the author
The shocking nature of what you are about to read in this article
makes it imperative that you be aware of some of the credentials
and experience of the author.
From 1955 to December 31, 1963, Col. L. Fletcher Prouty was the
Focal Point (liason) officer between the Pentagon and the CIA.
During 1962 and 1963 he was Director of Special Plans (clandestine
operations) in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In 1971 he was the president of the Financial Marketing Council,
Washington, D.C.
He is the author of numerous articles and of "The Secret Team,"
published by Prentice Hall (1973) and Ballantine Books (1974).
This article included a great deal of photograhic evidence of the events
in Dealey Plaza. The photographic research was by Richard E. Sprague.
Unfortunately, I will only be able to include the text in this post.
However, the captions are included in square braces, and an asterisk
character, `*', delimits pictures not seen by Warren Commission.
--ratitor
________________________________________________
How was the Warren Commission kept
from investigating and seeing evidence?
This is the real issue.
This is a crime to top the crime.
________________________________________________
As we prepare now to celebrate the beginning of the third century
of the founding of this country, we wonder if we live in the land
of the free. We wonder if at least we still have a government of
the people and by the people. Certainly, it is no longer a
government for the people. The sound throughout the land is ugly:
there is frustration, hate, and fear. We must act while there may
still be time.
There is a grave conspiracy over the land. The people have come
alive because of Vietnam and Watergate; but they have scarcely
scratched the surface. A President and a Vice-President have been
forced to resign. A President has been shot to death. Two
Presidential candidates have been shot, one of them killed. Many
of the President's men have been forced to leave, some have gone to
jail; others are still under indictment.
Yes, history has been made by a series of murders, but not
enough has been done to solve them. The trial of Watergate was the
trial of the cover-up. There has been no trial about the real
crime of Watergate. There has been no trial of the big power
behind Watergate. The Hunts, Liddys, McCords, and the Cubans were
not drawn into that drama solely for their own interests. They
were working for someone much higher up. They were all pawns, just
like Nixon was. This is a game for the biggest stake of all--
absolute control of the government of the United States of America;
and, with control of this government, control of the world. And
yet the real crime underlying all of this has not even been
identified, stated, and charged. The real criminals still walk the
streets, run their corporations, control their banks, and pull
strings throughout their political and financial machines.
This control mechanism did not start in 1972 with Watergate. It
began, in a tentative way, in the Korean War era, when the military
and the executive branch found out how easy it was to fool the
Congress and the American public. And with that recognition,
power-hungry and money-mad industrialists began to usurp more and
more power. And when those rifles crackled over Dealey Plaza, in
Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 and John F. Kennedy's brain was
splattered across the road, they had made their move into the big
time. They took over control of the President and of the
Presidency. The man they had killed was no longer a problem and
they had made certain that his successor, Lyndon Johnson, heard and
remembered the sound of those guns. It is the sound of those guns
in Dallas, and their ever-present threat, which is the real
mechanism of control over the American government.
It is possible now to reconstruct the scenario of that day, and,
with new information, to show why the murder of JFK may properly be
called the "Crime of the Century." If we the people of the United
States do not demand its resolution this year, it will stand in the
way of a free election in 1976. It will doom a third century of
democratic government in this country.
Almost everyone who has taken the time to do any reading and
thinking about that crime knows by now that John Kennedy was killed
not by a lone assassin, but by a group of hired "mechanics." Let's
look at some of the hard facts of this murder and put to rest once
and for all the "cover-up" report of the Warren Commission.
The Warren Commission categorically stated that Lee Harvey
Oswald was the killer of JFK and that he acted alone. The Warren
Commission says that Oswald fired three shots, only three shots,
from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building
and that his lair was at a window, number one from the right
(eastern-most on the south side) on that sixth floor. (See photo
1. [NUMBER 1. The Texas School Book Depository Building. Arrow
points to window from which Oswald supposedly shot Kennedy. (photo
by Willis.)])
If one breaks this contrived Warren Commission story, then the
fundament of the "lone assassin" theory is undermined. Break this
weak theory and you are confronted immediately with an awareness of
the existence of a massive conspiracy. And we are equally
convinced that this group hired at least four expert "mechanics"
(assassins). This group wielded control over elements of the
Dallas police, the Sheriff's office, the FBI, the Secret Service,
and the CIA. This great cabal had control high enough in
government, or at least in the councils of government, to be able
to influence the travel plans of the President, the Vice-President
and a Presidential candidate (Nixon), and all members of the
Kennedy cabinet. They were powerful enough to have orders issued
to the Army, and they were able to mount a massive campaign to
control the media during and after the assassination. They were
able to have Jack Ruby kill Oswald and to transfer jurisdiction of
the murder from Texas and then to effectively control the outcome
of the Warren Commission review.
Then as soon as JFK was dead, they began an even larger campaign
to cover up that crime forever. Penn Jones, the tenacious editor
of the Midlothian, Texas, "Mirror," has devoted his life to
"researching the hell" out of this conspiracy. He has a list of
some eighty-five people who, because they knew too much or got too
close, have died sudden and unnatural deaths since the JFK murder.
This great cabal had seen to it that Vice-President Lyndon
Johnson was in the Kennedy procession, and they saw to it that he
heard those hired guns, that he saw Kennedy die, and that he lived
through that terrible nightmare of the trip back to Washington on
Air Force One. From that day on, LBJ never again was that self-
confident, swash-buckling, free-wheeling Texan. Before he died,
LBJ told his old friend Tom Janos that he knew Oswald had not
killed JFK alone.
The American public is now ready enough to have the cloak torn
from the lies about the Kennedy murder and the cover-up; but the
American public has not had the guts to face the fact of the
massive conspiracy that arranged for that murder and which to this
day perpetuates its cover-up.
Many of us have been convinced, as a result of careful and
detailed study that the first of these glass barricades, the Warren
Commission report, is a lie. And, we are equally convinced that
the cover-up of the murder can be smashed and the conspiracy
exposed. But if we don't act now, there will be consequences.
These will begin with either the cancellation of elections in 1976
or with elections that will be a total sham. For who will dare run
against the candidate of the conspiracy? Will it be Wallace with
his wounds and from his wheelchair, or another Kennedy, or Ed
Muskie, who was badly roughed up in 1972, or George McGovern, who
was twice scheduled for assassination in 1972?
Who, unless he sells his soul to the cabal, can face those hired
guns?
Today, our country is being run by a President and a Vice-
President who have not been elected to office. This is merely a
process to condition the American public.
Let's begin here by breaking apart the whole fabric of the
lone-killer thesis. On November 28, 1963, less than one week after
Kennedy's death, the Secret Service, the agency closest to the
scene, reported that three shots were fired. The Secret Service
said that the first hit the President, the second hit Governor John
Connally of Texas, and the third struck the President. There were
no other shots according to the Secret Service. *The Secret
Service was wrong*!
On December 9, 1963, the FBI reported that three shots had been
fired and that two hit the President and that one hit John
Connally. The FBI says there were no other shots. The FBI was
less specific than the Secret Service. *The FBI was wrong*.
Then, much later, on September 27, 1964 (ten months after the
crime), the Warren Commission issued its report along with twenty-
six huge volumes of random data. This report states that there
were three shots. *The Warren Commission was wrong*.
According to the Warren Commission, the first shot, the "miracle
bullet" designed and dreamed up by one of its lawyers (Arlen
Specter), is one of the most fascinating contrivances of our
generation. Forced to account for a series of unrelated events,
Arlen Specter came up with a weird solution. He says the first
bullet hit JFK, passed through the muscle of his upper back exited
from his lower throat, traveled a few feet in the air, changed
course, and entered Connally's back, plunged through his body,
broke about five inches of one of his right rib bones, came out
again, and then slammed into his right wrist, where it broke two
more bones, exited again, and then pierced his thigh and ended its
strange journey embedded in his thigh bone.
An interpretation of this thesis, based on photographic and
medical evidence, means the bullet would have had to have made a
right and upward turn upon leaving JFK's throat, paused in midair
for more than two seconds, made a left and steep downward turn as
it entered Connally's back, made a right and upward turn as it left
Connally's chest, passed through Connally's wrist in the direction
backward from the way his wrist was facing, made another left and
downward turn, then wound up in Connally's left thigh.
Right here we see the brazen, "To Hell with the Public"
character of the Commission report. Can you imagine some lawyer,
even the persuasive and imaginative Specter, selling that bullet
and its bumble-bee flight to any jury of intelligent Americans?
The Commission was stuck with a "three bullet" crime because the
Secret Service and the FBI had both reported three bullets, because
there were only 6.8 seconds of shooting[1], as proven precisely by
a film of the event made by Abraham Zapruder, and because the
character who planted the shells at the "Oswald lair" had only put
three there. Furthermore, if they were going to stick with the
"lone assassin" solution, they were faced with the hard task of
making it appear feasible that Oswald alone could have gotten off
just three bullets in 6.8 seconds, let alone four, five, or six.
The Zapruder movie film, which shows the entire scene from
beginning to end, became invaluable as a master clock of the whole
affair. It established a foolproof chronology of the crime. It is
not too difficult to determine precisely when (what frame of the
movie film) the first shot was fired; and it is equally simple to
determine exactly the elapsed time until the last shot was fired.
So, unless the Commission could accept that there might have been
other gunmen who fired during the same 6.8 seconds--and this the
Commission categorically denied--it was going to have to show that
Oswald could have fired three bullets from that sixth-floor window,
and that he performed this feat in super-marksmanship time of 6.8
seconds. It is significant to stress here that the supposed murder
weapon was a cheap Italian Mannlicher-Carcano mail-order rifle, a
single-shot, bolt-action antique.
Another complication crept into the Commission's connivance.
One of the bystanders at Dealey Plaza that day was a man named
James Tague. He was hit by a fragment of concrete knocked off the
curb by a bullet that had hit a curbstone near where he stood.
(See photo 2. [NUMBER 2.* James Tague, on the far right, with cut
on face after he was hit by a fragment of concrete that was knocked
off the curb by errant bullet. (photo by Allen.)] ) He reported
his injury to a hospital. So there was another man on record as
having been hit during these same 6.8 seconds. This forced the
Commission to accept that one bullet, the second by their count,
missed both JFK and Connally. This complicated their task.
Remember, neither the Secret Service nor the FBI has accounted for
that "missed" bullet and there were only three shell cases and no
clips at Oswald's window. They both had said that three shots were
fired and that two hit JFK and one hit Connally. The FBI later
found the nick in the curbstone, took a section of it back to their
labs in Washington, analyzed it, and decided that a bullet had
indeed hit the curb.
The Zapruder film makes it abundantly clear that the top of the
President's head was blown off and the skull and brain spattered as
far as thirty-seven yards away by a third shot. Thus the
Commission gives the "official" version: three shots. The third
shot, the missed second shot, and none other than the contrived
"Specter Miracle Bullet"--the first shot. (See photos 3,4,5.
[NUMBER 3. Z-313, showing impact and explosion of third shot, which
killed Kennedy. NUMBER 4. "The Miracle bullet." Commission
exhibit 399: a portion was sliced from for FBI spectrographic
comparison with other bullet fragments. The results were never
released. NUMBER 5.* X-ray of fragment of the "miracle bullet"
still in John Connally's thigh. This fragment is larger than any
piece missing from the "miracle bullet."])
As if this were not fantasy enough, and as if this were not
carrying their "To Hell with the Public" role far enough, the
Commission reports that this same miracle bullet was found forty-
five minutes later in the Parkland Hospital more than three hectic
miles from the scene of the murder. It was on a stretcher which
"somebody" presumed Connally had been lying on.
This is the stuff of the Commission solution and this is what we
have been asked and forced to believe for the past eleven years.
Any ballistics expert worth his gunpowder would shrink from the
task of developing the theory of that bullet. Pictures of that
undamaged bullet show it as clean as a brand-new slug. It looks as
though it had hardly been fired at all, let alone having traveled
through two men, broken three bones, and lodged in a fourth. [3]
____________________________________________________________________
| How the Zapruder Film Created a Time Clock |
| for the Assassination in Dealey Plaza |
| |
| Abraham Zapruder's camera was running at a determinable |
| speed: 18.3 frames per second. The camera had a |
| governor control, so its speed was constant. Each frame |
| of the film was 1/18th of a second apart. Since John |
| Kennedy appeared in every frame of the relevant sequence |
| of the film, the FBI was able to plot on a surveyor's map |
| of Dealey Plaza, Kennedy's exact position at each frame |
| number. This "map" perfectly coordinated two functions: |
| time and place--where Kennedy was at each moment, within |
| 1/18th of a second accuracy, and a distance error of no |
| more than 7.3 inches. The Zapruder film was used to |
| determine the speed of the President's car, the elapsed |
| time between events, especially between the first and last |
| shots (6.8 seconds), and the timing of events in the |
| background. --Richard E. Sprague |
| |
| Z denotes Zapruder film and frame number. |
|___________________________________________________________________|
I have worked with the CIA and military officials in testing
special rifles. I have seen countless bullets fired into gelatin
and paraffin to simulate body hits on humans. I have seen goats
shot under controlled conditions to show what impact will do. In
my own experience, admittedly limited, I have never seen an
undamaged slug, no matter what substance it had been fired into,
except when fired carefully into cotton.[4] But even then there
are scars, lines, and even deformity. The "Specter Miracle Bullet"
does not even show that much damage.
There is no point in dwelling on this in more detail here except
for the most important fact that, if any of the major Commission
conclusions are shattered, then the whole house of cards comes down
and the whole Commission solution is exploded. And because this
solution is wrong, then Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone
assassin, and because he was not the lone assassin, there was a
conspiracy.
This incredulous miracle bullet, then, is the key to opening the
whole can of worms. Let's look at bullet Number Two, the one which
hit a curb and injured bystander James Tague. The Secret Service
and the FBI ignored it and the Commission passed over it lightly.
Now, if you were told that the assassin missed the President and
that the bullet hit a curb; and if you were told that the assassin
fired from high above from the sixth floor, you would not have been
wrong to have concluded that this errant bullet hit the curb on the
far side of the street beside the President's car. *Wrong*!
This bullet hit the curb on the far side of the next street and
more than twice as far away as the car was from the sixth-floor
window. The President's car was traveling down Elm Street, and
Tague was standing on Main Street. If that bullet was fired by
Oswald in the first window, then he missed JFK by twenty-one feet
on the right and thirty-three feet overhead and the shot went 260
feet rather than ninety feet. This is a fantastic and unbelievable
miss for a man who was supposedly able to fire the "Specter Miracle
Bullet" on his first try and then to knock the entire right side of
the President's head off with his third shot after pumping two
bullets into that ancient single-shot rifle in 6.8 seconds!
It is much more plausible to believe that this missed shot was
fired from a point much lower down and on a line with the nick on
the curbstone and the President's head. In other words, a near
miss. This would have placed the gunman's lair somewhere in the
adjacent Dal Tex Building, perhaps under the second-floor fire
escape. This establishes a second lair, a second gun, and a second
"mechanic." (See photo 6. [NUMBER 6. (Commission's Shaneyfelt
Exhibit.) Lyndal Shaneyfelt, the FBI's ballistics and photographic
expert, took this picture from the spot where the shot that missed
hit the curb. By sighting back to the sixth floor window, the
degree of miss can be seen. By sighting directly over JFK's
position, the top of the white car in the center lane, anyone can
see where the shot came from: the second floor window of the Dal
Tex building. See Altgen's photo, number 8.])
It is not hard to find another shot that Oswald could not have
made. The Zapruder film clearly fixes the time of the first shot
at frame Z-189. Also, the Zapruder film clearly fixes the location
of the car--and thus the President--at Z-189. (See photo 7.
[NUMBER 7. This is Z-189. JFK was slowly waving his right hand to
the crowd.]) There were broken white lines on the road and it can
be shown exactly where the car was at the time of each shot by its
position relative to these lines. Knowing this, it is possible to
draw a line from the precise position of the President at Z-189 up
to the Oswald "lair." In this process, another unexplained
oversight of the Commission is discovered. There is a huge oak
tree in front of the Book Depository building. In November 1963
that tree was so large that it made it impossible for anyone to
have lined up a shot from the Oswald window at the President at
Z-189.[5] (See photos 8,9. [NUMBER 8. The Altgens photo. The
building in the rear with a fire escape is the Dal Tex building.
NUMBER 9. The Secret Service reenactment photo from the sixth floor
window taken two weeks after the assassination through Oswald's
actual telescopic lens on his rifle. This would have been his
exact view of the limousene and JFK's head in the crosshairs at
Z-189.]) The earliest time a shot could line up with the President
was at Z-210. At that time the tree was no longer in the way.
What did the Warren Commission think? Apparently, nothing. It
ignored the tree. (See photos 10,11. [NUMBERs 10, 11. Two pictures
confirming that a shot struck JFK at Z-189. Compare photo number 7
with number 10. Picture number 10 is Z-190. JFK's right hand
snaps slightly forward in 1/18 second. From here until he goes
behind sign (Z-204) JFK's right hand drops steadily and begins to
clench into a fist. This motion continues until Z-225, after he
comes out from behind the sign. Conclusion: a shot struck JFK at
Z-189.])
Who then fired at Z-189? Was it the mechanic who missed later,
and hit Tague? This is impossible. (See photo 12. [NUMBER 12.*
This is Phil Willis' fifth photo, showing JFK approaching sign;
Zapruder in background on grassy knoll pedestal, camera at eye.
Willis said he snapped photo in reaction to hearing first shot.
Photo was sanpped at Z-202, confirming Z-189 was time of first
shot. A similar photo taken by Hugh Betzner confirms the timing of
this shot.]) The trajectory of that first bullet did not
correspond to a line from the President to that lair. In fact, the
medical evidence, statements from the doctors at Parkland Hospital,
as well as other evidence indicates that the shot came from the
front. So there had to be a third mechanic.
At this point it is important to make certain that we have laid
all of this out with reasonable credibility. I have been working
on this problem since 1963. Many others have been working that
long doing very specialized and very detailed work. (See photos
13-16. [NUMBERs 13-16. This series of frames from the Zapruder
film show that JFK's right hand is still falling and clenched as he
emerges from behind the sign (up to frame Z-225). Note the drastic
change in his position: hands, head, elbows, shoulders, and arms
(between Z-225 and Z-227) in just 2/18 of a second. This indicates
a second shot striking him in the back at Z-225.]) One of the best
of these investigators is Richard Sprague, a most experienced
computer technician and photographic analyst. We know of at least
510 photographs taken either before, during, or after the shooting
--all within the space of one hour. Sprague has accounted for
seventy-five photographers on the scene, thirty of whom were
professionals from newspapers, television studios, and photographic
agencies. Other men, such as R.B. Cutler, Ray Marcus, Josiah
Thompson, David Lifton, Fred Newcomb, and Jones Harris, working
both independently and together with Sprague, have done the most
professional work on this case. Ed Berkeley[6] published much of
this work in his magazine "Computers and Automation," notably in
the May 1970 and October 1973 issues.
It is astounding to learn that in their entire work the
Commission was permitted to see only twenty-six of these pictures,
and that the FBI limited its examination to some fifty of the 510.
The Commission principals interviewed only four of the thirty
professional photographers and saw only about a dozen of their
several hundred photographs. Here was evidence enough to arouse
the interest and curiosity of any investigator. How could all of
this vital, most essential evidence have been kept from the
Commission? Today, one of the members of this Commission is
President of the United States. He is an intelligent and
experienced man. How could it have been arranged so that men such
as Gerald Ford did not have the chance to see all of these
photographs? In all there were more than 25,000 frames of pictures
exposed within that crucial hour at Dealey Plaza. (This includes
the frames of movie camera film, some of which have been so vitally
important when studied frame by frame.) (See photos 17-20.
[NUMBERs 17-20. This sequence of Zapruder frames shows that the
final and fatal shot striking JFK at Z-313, which caused an
enormous explosion, drove his head and upper body back and to his
left until he bounced off the rear seat cushion at Z-321. The
acceleration back to the left in the first two frames following
Z-313 have been calculated by Josiah Thompson in "Six Seconds in
Dallas" at more than 75 feet per second per second. The shot
came from the grassy knoll, right to front.])
Consider what real professionals can do with such evidence. It
is possible to build a time-phased chronological moving panorama of
all events on Dealey Plaza from five minutes before the murder to
ninety minutes after it. Sprague and his associates have done
this. It reveals some amazingly accurate sequences. For example,
there is the "umbrella" man. (See photos 21-23. [NUMBER 21. View
of umbrella. (Photo by Willis.) NUMBER 22.* View of umbrella,
Z-227. NUMBER 23.* Umbrella man. Note that umbrella is folded.
(Photo by Bond.)])
As the President's car rounds the corner from Houston Street
turning left onto the fatal Elm Street, pictures show a man near a
road sign, right next to where the President was killed. This man
is holding a closed umbrella in a walking-cane position. It was
high noon and no rain. No one else at Dealey Plaza had an
umbrella. As the shots are fired, this man is seen in several
pictures with his umbrella open and over his head (some sort of
signal). Then other pictures show him later with the umbrella
lowered to his side. Although everyone else runs from the scene
and races around in the excitement, the umbrella man stays there
calmly, looking around. He is one of the last to leave the scene.
This man shows up on a number of photographs. His actions
certainly do arouse suspicion, and yet the Commission did not see
these pictures, did not know about this strange man. He was never
queried or identified in any way. This is no ordinary oversight.
This is a strange and dangerous subversion of justice. Who did
this? How could such evidence have been withheld from the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court and other singularly respected men who
were serving with him? It begs credulity to attribute such gross
errors to oversight. How was this Commission kept from
investigating and "seeing" such things? This is the real issue.
When you arrive at this question you are facing the issue of
conspiracy. A conspiracy that took over right from the beginning
and began to control action even within the chambers of the
Commission. It is ridiculous to say that all of the Commission
members were that dumb. They were not. It is ridiculous to say
that they did not have the authority to demand more assistance,
more facts, more investigation, and more results. For too long,
people have attributed such failings to the Commission. If you do,
then you make the Commission part of the conspiracy. It is much
more logical to recognize that the conspiracy controlled the
Commission, too.
The single-bullet theory is overly contrived, especially when
one is attempting to solve a major crime such as the murder of a
President. Consider the following:
* The fact that the Secret Service and the FBI both
state three bullets were fired, but account for no
miss.
* The fact that the Commission states that three
bullets were fired, including the near miss.
* The fact that the Warren Commission missed the
back-to-left motion of JFK's head (see photos).
* The fact that only three members of the Commission
ever saw the Zapruder film in motion.
* The fact that the Warren Commission missed seeing
the evidence of three separate bullets hitting JFK
and a fourth hitting Connally; and then
disregarding the "umbrella man."
All of the discrepancies, one after the other, stagger the mind.
Of course, the umbrella man could have been a perfectly innocent
guy, why not find out?
Then there was the "communications man." Photo Number 24
[NUMBER 24. Note first large figure on the right. He is the
"communications man."] shows a man across the street from the
umbrella man. This man was in the crowd near Houston and Elm
Streets at the time of the shots. The photo shows a two-way radio
in the man's left hip pocket with a wire dangling down. This wire
is an antenna. What did the Warren Commission say about this? Not
a word. They did not see the pictures. This man is known. He is
James Hicks, currently in an insane asylum. (See photo 25. [NUMBER
25.* James Hicks, the "communications man."])
There is no need to trace each error and oversight in the
twenty-six volume report which was thrown together by the staff of
the Commission. Once one sees the hand of the conspiracy and the
evidence that Oswald was made the patsy and then murdered to cover
his true role, it does not take too much deduction to see that the
whole thing was the work of a major conspiracy and that the cover-
up has been an even more weighty threat to our freedom. (See
photos 26,27. [NUMBER 26. Oswald holding rifle. Photos found in
Oswald's garage the day after the assassination. NUMER 27.* These
two photos are enlargements of the two photos found in the garage.
The line where Oswald's real head was glued onto the two photos of
another man's body at the chin line can be seen. A whole series
of mistakes was made by the team who did this work. One of the
most obvious is the way the shadow under Oswald's nose in the two
photos tilts with his head. This shows that the same head photo
was glued on at two different angles. These fake photos taken
with a camera that didn't belong to Oswald were accepted as totally
valid by the Warren Commission and the FBI. Marina Oswald was
forced by the assassination team to testify that she took these two
photos.])
Why an assassination conspiracy in the first place? Once you
decide that it was not the work of a lone nut, then there is no
turning away from the next step. Why was the President killed and
who would want to do it? These questions must be faced, cost what
they may, and then having faced them, they must be resolved. This
is what we have a government for. Individuals cannot subpoena,
cross-examine, or pursue for the sake of justice. It is up to an
honest government to do this. But why has the government for all
of these long years avoided this essential work? This conspiracy
has the power--in the face of public apathy--to control
investigation and prosecution, or the lack thereof.
I said earlier that it is now possible to trace the scenario of
this master plot. I'll try as best one man can and I'll leave it
to you to see how far you can go along this road with me. I'll say
right now that the more we know about this, the more we begin to
think of *today's* problems and the *less* we think of the JFK
murder; but it takes an understanding of one to face squarely the
issue of the other.
Kennedy had been in Miami in September 1963. Prior to that, a
Miami police informer had uncovered the existence of a plot to kill
JFK either in Miami or in some other city. The Miami police, in
accordance with good practice, turned this information over to the
FBI and the FBI informed the Miami Police that they had turned that
information over to the Secret Service. When JFK went to Miami, he
was well protected to and from the airport because he traveled by
helicopter. This was the beginning of the plot and from that time
on the FBI and the Secret Service should have been on maximum
alert. Why weren't they? Who pulled them off the job? Certainly
not Oswald. Certainly not Castro. Certainly not Khrushchev.
Before that time, plans were being made to have Kennedy visit
Texas "for political purposes." In accordance with this plan,
Eugene Zuchert, then Secretary of the Air Force, had suggested,
perhaps unwittingly, that JFK should visit San Antonio and make a
speech at the opening of an Air Force medical facility at Brooks
Air Force Base. With this first step planned, someone else
suggested that JFK should visit Fort Worth. A bitter multi-
billion-dollar contest over the award of the TFX (F-111) airplane
had ended with the contract being given to the General Dynamics
Corporation's facility in that city. The idea was that it would
make good sense for Kennedy to make political hay out of the "good
will" that Fort Worth might have for the President. JFK went from
San Antonio to Fort Worth.
Considering Texas politics, it would not have been right for the
President to go to Fort Worth and not go to Dallas; so plans were
made for the President to mend fences there, too, and there were a
lot of anti-Kennedy fences in Dallas at that time. This was done
despite the warnings from Miami and the Miami police. Jerry Bruno,
Kennedy's advance man, went to Dallas. Kenneth O'Donnell, another
Kennedy aide, worked on the trip, too. But somehow, after their
initial work, the plans were changed. By whom? Who selected that
unusual and devious route around Dealey Plaza? It was not Bruno or
O'Donnell.
Then things began to get complicated. Someone decided that the
Vice-President, Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, should go to Dallas with
the President, and that he and his friend John Connally should be
in the procession with Kennedy and other Democratic bigwigs. Also,
someone else saw to it that another useful tool--Richard M. Nixon-
-should be in Dallas that day. Indoctrination and near-complicity
is an excellent form of discipline, spelled BLACKMAIL. Here we
must stop and begin another analysis.
The Secret Service was founded on June 23, 1860. It is an old,
proud, and highly professional organization. I have traveled to
foreign countries and have worked in support of the Secret Service.
I am familiar with its operating procedures. I am familiar with
what is called "Protection" in its most elaborate sense. I was at
the Cairo Conference and the Teheran Conference, both in 1943. I
participated in actions designed to safeguard the lives of the
chiefs of state who attended those conferences. I traveled to
Mexico City during the tenure of President Eisenhower as part of a
mission to prepare for the security of his visit there. I was in
Lima, Peru in 1964 while that city went through more than three
months of preparation for a de Gaulle visit by the famous
"gorillas" whose skilled work kept Charles de Gaulle alive in the
face of repeated attempts on his life.
Because of my familiarity with these highly skilled and
meticulous organizations, I have been doubly concerned over some of
the events that did not take place in San Antonio, Fort Worth, and
Dallas during and before the visit by Kennedy in 1963. This is of
extreme significance. It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
It is even harder to keep an old dog from doing his old tricks.
How could it have happened that the Secret Service, contrary to
all good sense and all professional "Protection" practice,
permitted the President and the Vice-President to be in close
proximity in the same city, in the same procession? This is
unheard of. The Secret Service dates back more than a century and
they had never permitted that to take place before. Why this time?
Here we must go back to our scientific and systematic perusal of
the thousands of pictures available about this incident. One of
the most remarkable and important pictures taken of the entire
25,000 was one taken by James Altgens, a professional photographer
from the Associated Press. (See photo 8.) By cross-referencing
this remarkable photograph with the Zapruder film chronology, it is
possible to determine that this picture was taken 3.6 seconds after
the first shot was fired and 3.2 seconds before the last shot.
This is very important. This picture clearly shows JFK
beginning to clench his fists. It shows Jackie's gloved hand
holding his left arm just above the wrist (she begins to sense
something is wrong). It shows Connally sitting directly in front
of JFK just beginning to turn to the rear as if to see what the
trouble was. Then it shows a carload of Secret Service men
immediately behind the Presidential car, and save for three of
those eight men, one would say that they were, at that moment,
unconcerned and more or less unaware that anything was happening.
The three men are looking to the rear either because they had been
looking to the rear, as they are supposed to do at all times, or
because they may have heard something from that direction.
But then events in the third car show something quite startling.
The third car was the Vice-President's automobile. The driver and
Lady Bird Johnson are smiling and unconcerned at 3.6 seconds into
the assassination; Lyndon and his bodyguard are sitting in their
seats in this photo, but are partially obscured by the edge of the
car on the left.
Then we look at the fourth car in the procession. This was the
Secret Service car following the Vice-President. Here we can see
that a Secret Service agent by the name of Jerry Kivett has already
opened the door of that car and that he is preparing to jump out--
all by 3.6 seconds.
This one indelible record of a fragment in history tells a truer
story than all twenty-six volumes of the Warren report. It is
possible to place the first shot at Zapruder film frame 189 and the
Altgens photograph at Z-255. It is interesting to note that nearly
one half of the background of the Altgens photo is filled with that
huge oak tree we mentioned earlier. It has keen carefully
researched that a rifleman in the Oswald window could not possibly
have shot at the President through that tree and thus could not
have fired at the President until at least Z-210. In fact, under
the prevailing physical conditions, no one could have fired from
that window. (See photos 28,29. [NUMBERs 28, 29. Two photographs
showing that no one could have fired any shots from the sixth-floor
window and that the cartons in the window were arranged to look
like a sniper's nest three days after the assassination. Photo
number 28 is the official photo of the sniper's nest taken by
Dallas police photographer Robert Studebaker. It was probably
taken on November 25, three days later. Photo number 29* was taken
by "Dallas Morning News" photographer Jack Beers at 3:30 P.M. on
the day of the assassination. The most important thing the photos
show is that the real position of the boxes at the time of the
shots did not allow enough space for anyone to be in a firing
position.]) As important as this Altgens photograph is, it was
found that it had been severely cropped when it was tucked into the
Warren report. Why did someone go to that trouble? Here again is
the tricky hand of the conspiracy reaching into the Commission
chambers.
We have wandered a little because of the extreme importance of
that Altgens photo. Our objective was to show the seriousness of
the Secret Service oversight in permitting the President and Vice-
President to be under the same guns.
These were not the only oversights. I have always been
concerned about the failure of the Secret Service to act in
accordance with their long-established and highly professional
standard operating procedures on Kennedy's Texas trip. We know
that the Secret Service does not have the numbers to permit it to
cover every possible avenue and angle of danger; but what we also
know is that over the years it has keen the practice of the Secret
Service to call upon trained elements of the Armed Forces and other
technical assistance to flesh out their strength in compliance with
"Protection" policy.
In 1963 there was in Washington, D.C. the 113th Army
Intelligence Unit, which was highly trained for this purpose. A
counterpart of this unit was the 112th at 4th Army Headquarters at
Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The 112th had a detachment, the 315th, in
San Antonio. Its commanding officer, among others, complained
bitterly that his unit was not used in protection along with the
Secret Service after he had keen told that the services of his unit
would not be needed. On more than one occasion he called his
headquarters and called Washington to correct this "oversight."
Like the old dog, he and his men had keen well trained and they
were ready to go into action. It takes strong and deft control
from the top to keep a unit out of the action for which it has been
trained.
After the assassination, some of the men of the 112th dug into
the unit's files and found that they had note cards on a Lee Harvey
Oswald in Dallas, Texas. I do not know what other records they
had; but failure to utilize this unit and its files was part of
the conspiracy and an indication of how far up the hand of the
conspirators went.
Not only did the Secret Service disregard experienced and
qualified assistance from the Armed Forces, but they did not act in
accordance with their own time-tested regulations. I recall, when
we walked down Avenida Reforma in Mexico City before Eisenhower's
trip, being told that if we found a place where Eisenhower could
not be properly protected, the Secret Service "manual" stated that
the "President's car must maintain not less than 44 mph until clear
of any danger zones." I joked with the Secret Service officer
about the "44 mph." Why not "45 mph" or "50 mph." He answered
that tests had determined that a car traveling 44 mph was going
fast enough to guarantee all but 100 percent assurance that the
President would be safe. It was Secret Service men working under
the provisions of the same manual who let the President's car creep
around that corner at Dealey Plaza at 8-9 mph. Why?
____________________________________________________________________
| Army Aid to Help Protect President Kennedy Was Refused |
| |
| Trained U.S. Army Intelligence Units were told their |
| assisstance was not needed in Dallas during the JFK visit. |
| William McKinney, a former member of the crack 112th |
| Military Intelligence Group at 4th Army Headquarters, Fort |
| Sam Houston, Texas, has revealed that both Col. |
| Maximillian Reich and his deputy, Lt. Col. Joel Cabaza, |
| protested violently when they were told to "Stand Down" |
| rather than to report with their units for duty in |
| augmentation of the Secret Service in Dallas. McKinney |
| said, "All the Secret Service had to do was nod and these |
| units [which had been trained at the Army's top |
| Intelligence school at Camp Holabird, Maryland] would have |
| performed their normal function of Protection for the |
| President in Dallas." |
| The 315th, the Texas unit which would have been involved |
| if its support had not been turned down, had records in |
| its files, according to McKinney, on Lee Harvey Oswald. |
| The 315th had a Dallas office and its records were up to |
| date. |
| McKinney added that, "Highly specialized classes were |
| given at Camp Holabird on the subject of Protection. This |
| included training designed to prepare this army unit to |
| assist the Secret Service. If our support had not been |
| refused, we would have been in Dallas." --L.F.P. |
|___________________________________________________________________|
Also, as we looked up at the high buildings on Mexico City's
main street, he told me that agents would check and secure each
floor and each window of each building. This is not as big a job
as it may seem. The Secret Service knows the exact timing of the
movements of the President and they see to it, using radios and men
on rooftops, that his progress is covered all the way. This is
their business and they are good at it.
But in Dallas, for some strange reason, someone picked a
dangerous turn in the road. The procession passed slowly to the
right, and then it turned slowly to the left, and all of the time
the President's car was right under hostile windows. How simple
and how correct it would have keen for Secret Service men, aided by
all of the Armed Forces required, to have checked those buildings,
to have sealed any unused floors (such as that famous deserted
sixth floor), and then to have shut all of the front windows.
Then, by placing a radio-equipped man in the Plaza, all he would
have had to do was to watch if a single window opened. If it did,
he would call to the man on the roof and have someone dispatched to
check that window, and with that same call he would have alerted
the whole force, especially those with the President's party.
This chronology and theme need not be pursued further here.
What is important is to point out that trained and experienced
organizations such as the Secret Service and the Army were somehow
given instructions not to take part. In bureaucratic terms alone
this is hard to do. Each organization fights for its prerogatives
and for its role. Yet someone ordered them to stand down. The
power to keep units from operating automatically would have to have
been extreme and must have originated close to the top. Someone
had to put out the word to the Secret Service and through them to
the Army; and then that same power was able to rebuff repeated
attempts to right that wrong.
Recognition of this fact leads to the delineation of the origin
and source of the conspiracy, which was strong enough to directly
influence the role of major government organizations even before
the President was shot. I have spoken with men of these units.
Many had keen trained at Fort Holabird, the Army's top intelligence
school. There can be no interpretation of this suppression of the
forces created to protect the President other than that it was a
part of the whole conspiracy.
Turning once more to the infallible evidence of press
photographs, we find an excellent picture of the Texas Book
Depository Building taken by Thomas C. Dillard. ( See photos
30, 31. [NUMBER 30.* Photo by Dillard shows black men on floor
beneath the one from where Oswald supposedly fired. NUMBER 31.
This enlargement of the Dillard photo was used by the Warren
Commission in connection with the testimony of the black men in the
fifth-floor windows. However, the Warren Commission did not
realize that the photo was taken within 3.5 seconds after the fatal
head shot and therefore showed that the witnesses--who said they
saw a rifle sticking out of that window after the fatal shot--were
imagining things. Nor does the original Dillard photo show any
rifle or anyone holding a rifle in any window of the building 3
seconds after the last shot.]) In the procession, he was in camera
car number three. He took the picture only three seconds after the
shooting, about ten seconds after the first shot. In this one
picture one can see which windows were open and which were closed
at that time. Actually, the Commission severely cropped this
picture before it went into the report; however, Richard Sprague
was able to obtain a copy of the full original. Again, why did the
Commission see a cropped photo rather than the full original?
The importance of this picture is that it shows how easily and
how effectively the role of the Secret Service can be performed
when it is done correctly and in accordance with "Protection"
doctrine. An agent or an Army man placed properly in the Plaza
could have observed all of the buildings around the Plaza and all
of their windows.
Further evidence of the hand of the conspiracy is found
immediately after the shooting. Security on the scene was almost
nonexistent. Photographic evidence, including the famous "tramp"
photographs, show that ten men were "arrested" at Dealey Plaza. No
record of these arrests exists and there is none in the Warren
report.
In the case of the "tramps," those three men who were rounded up
on orders of Police Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer (the man in charge
of security activity at Dealey Plaza), we find a sequence of
astounding actions. A Sergeant D.V. Harkness was ordered to stop a
freight train and remove the men. Harkness arrested the three men
and turned them over to policemen Marvin Wise and Billy Bass, who
marched them all the way from the west side of the Book building,
around the north side of the Plaza, and into the vehicle entrance
of the Sheriff's office. Few people realize this entire procedure
took place almost on the steps of the Sheriff's office. While Wise
and Bass were marching these men to the Sheriff's office, William
Allen, George Smith, and Jack Beers of the "Dallas Times Herald,"
the Fort Worth "Star Telegram," and the "Dallas Morning News," took
several pictures of them. Their remarkable pictures show clearly
that Wise and Bass took them to the Sheriff's office. Yet Harkness
and Sheriff Harold Elkins couldn't remember that there were any
other policemen with Harkness. This is utterly ridiculous in the
face of so many clear pictures. Why was this done? And why
weren't these amazing pictures shown to the Commission so that it
could order the men before them. And worse still, there is
absolutely no record anywhere that these men were booked that day.
There are no "blotter" records at all. The men have simply
vanished. (See photos 32-35 [NUMBERs 32-35.* Policeman with
"tramps." None of these pictures were seen by the Warren
Commission.]).
I have been given a list of the names of these men. Also, the
pictures show three policemen. Did the Sheriff, or someone in that
office, spirit them away? And why did the Sheriff, who had all of
these men in his custody, permit them to get away within minutes of
the time that the President of the United States had been shot and
killed on his doorstep? These are tough questions, but let's go a
bit further. Why didn't the all-powerful Warren Commission--which
included the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the former
Director of Central Intelligence, the man who is now our President,
etc.--why didn't they have an opportunity to see these pictures?
The photos would have led them to ask these questions and then to
demand answers.
It is this type of grossly irrational action that leads any
concerned and level-headed person to conclude that a massive
conspiracy had taken over and was strong enough during 1964 to
control the Warren Commission. No one can buy the idea that the
Warren Commission was that incurious, that inexperienced, and that
stupid. Having gone this far, it is not a long step to realize
that this same cabal has been able to control these things for the
past eleven years. This is the greater crime.
I happened to be far away in New Zealand at the time of JFK's
murder. I was on my way to breakfast (the crime occured at
6:30A.M. on the 23rd of November there) with a member of Congress
from Ohio. As soon as possible, we purchased the first newspaper
available--the "Christchurch Star." It is amazing to re-read the
front page of that paper today and find all of the detail, the
remarkable detail, about Lee Harvey Oswald, about his service in
the Marine Corps, about his living in Russia, about his Russian
wife, and then the full scenario of the crime.[7]
Then one begins to wonder--understanding full well the
capability of modern-day communications and reporting--who it was
that was able in so short a time to come up with such a life
history of so obscure a twenty-four-year-old "loner." Even the
Dallas police had not charged him with any crime by the time that
paper had hit the streets. In the crime scenario it states that
two Dallas cops, J.D. Tippit and M.N. McDonald, had chased Oswald
into a theater and that Tippit was shot dead "as he ran into the
cinema." Who fabricated all of that news? Who was at the right
place at that moment to flood the whole world with all of this news
about Lee Harvey Oswald, when even the Dallas police weren't too
sure of their man, they said, because he carried two identities
(Oswald and Alek Hidell) in his pocket. (See photo 36. [NUMBER
36.* Oswald is arrested.]) Actually fifteen policemen, one of them
the Chief of Police for Personnel (a man who had never made an
arrest before), and an FBI man stormed the theater in that strange
episode, and Tippit did not. He was dead outside.
All of this proves that the American people, in their desire to
be "loyal," can be had. For eleven years we have been fed this
pap. The Warren Commission report is trash. Because it is trash,
the Warren Commission either was part of the conspiracy, and as
part of the conspiracy they used their report to cover and
obfuscate the crime, or they, too, had been put under the control
of that powerful cabal.
I prefer to believe the latter. I have known some of the men of
that Commission and I have known about many others. There was not
an ignorant or stupid man on that Commission. So they may have
been persuaded that the better part of discretion was to put out
the report "to soothe the public." But is that the way to solve a
crime or to prevent others? Did that Commission agree, nobly, to
let a whole team of criminals walk the streets? This is a big
question.
By the end of 1964, LBJ was President and he was being carried
along on the crest of a surging wave called Vietnam. Few people
have ever been able to understand our involvement in Vietnam. It
may be that clearing up the mystery of Dealey Plaza will help to
clear up the mystery of Vietnam. By 1968, Lyndon Johnson had had
all that one man could take of his ordeal. Uncharacteristically,
he announced that he was through and that he would "devote his time
to ending the war."
Then the guns rang out again. Martin Luther King was shot dead
on a motel balcony in Memphis and again we have had doubtful
treatment about that crime. Hardly had the dust, the flames, and
the seething anger settled over the country when Bobby Kennedy was
ambushed in Los Angeles. It was becoming harder and harder to get
good men to run for President. Then out of the wreckage of 1968
came Richard M. Nixon, the man who had been kicked around but who
was ready when called. He became President because his real
opposition had recently been buried in Arlington.
After a defeat in the mid-term elections during that winter of
our discontent in 1970-71, Nixon faced a panel of reporters on an
ABC broadcast in January 1971. When asked why he had been unable
to bring the country "the lift of a driving dream" he had promised
during the New Hampshire primaries, Nixon--in one of his rare human
moments--looked at the reporters and then mumbled, "When you have
inherited nightmares you are unable to bring the country the lift
of a driving dream." A few years later that lonely, abused and--
quite properly so--captive man won one of the strangest elections
this country has ever seen, and then was driven from the White
House by a nightmare of tapes spun by someone with the power to
plant tape recorders in the White House without giving the
President a switch that would at least enable him to turn them off
when he swore at his brood of worldbeaters.
It is fitting to note that Nixon's own prosecutors were from
among the old gang who worked with the Warren Commission, and that
he was replaced as President by a man who was the most vociferous
member of the Warren Commission and who had the best attendance
record at the Commission's meetings. All of these things are not
random. All of these things did not just happen accidentally. We
are caught up in this maelstrom and we must rise and rend this
cloak. Like the great magician, conspiracy is only effective as
long as the trick is a secret. We have the knowledge, we have the
facts, we have the desire, and we have the power. It is now up to
the American people to throw off this dreaded bondage. We have
work to do. We want free elections in 1976 and we want to begin a
glorious new century of the free.
[1] Even the tests which "prove" it could have been done in 5.7 seconds are
faulty. The shots in Dallas were not fired evenly; this is proved by
the Zapruder film and by the Commission's own figures--Zapruder film
frames 186-215-313. Tests were made with a "clip" of three bullets.
No clip was found in the Book Depository Building.
[2] The Warren Commission allowed even less time; according to their
report, the elapsed time was 5.7 seconds.
[3] X-rays show a piece of the bullet is still in Connally's thigh bone,
yet there is no fragment that size missing from that bullet.
[4] It is entirely possible that some technician did fire that bullet in
this manner from that gun in order to obtain a "laboratory perfect"
ballistics specimen. Then, when some eager conspirators' accomplice
got it, he "planted" it as the "Miracle" bullet.
[5] This is a highly technical point. Strangely, in its manipulations,
the Commission "notes" that a "gap occurred in the leaves of the tree
at Z-186," then says nothing. If there was this split-second gap,
then the gun would have had to have been aimed and fired in that
split second (about 1/20th of a second), and the Zapruder film tree
would have to confirm that possibility. It does not!
[6] Edmund C. Berkeley is the publisher of the magazine "People and the
Pursuit of Truth," Newtonville, Mass.
[7] First news reports that day said, "There were three bursts of gunfire
from automatic weapons." These reports were nearly correct.
--
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
"The Guns Of Dallas"
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