The Kennedy Half-Century (116 page)

2
. The movement for quick release of all JFK assassination-related documents is supported by a wide range of prominent individuals including HSCA counsel Robert Blakey. In 2012 Blakey signed a letter addressed to the Archivist of the United States requesting the release of all assassination-related documents prior to the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s death, especially the estimated fifty thousand pages that are still being withheld by the CIA. Letter dated January 20, 2012, from Jim Lesar, president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, to United States Archivist David S. Ferreiro. It is not clear exactly how many pages or documents the agency is still withholding from the public. Gary Stern, General Counsel at the National Archives, told Jim Lesar, “We believe that the total number of pages is considerably less than 50,000, because our records indicate that the CIA has postponed in full as national security classified a total of 1,171 documents.” E-mail from Gary Stern to Lesar, May 9, 2012. The federal government is also withholding documents from the Church Committee’s mid-1970’s investigation of CIA abuses. Researchers believe that these documents may shed new light on Langley’s connections to November 22nd and have called for their immediate release. See Rex Bradford, “Missing JFK Files: The Church Committee Assassination Transcripts,” JFK Facts, June 1, 2013,
http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/from-the-files/missing-jfk-files-the-church-committee-assassination-transcripts/#more-4842
 [accessed June 3, 2013].

3
. A Dictabelt machine records sounds by pressing grooves into a plastic belt. In the early 1960s, many police departments used these devices to record radio conversations between officers. Dictaphone-brand “Dictabelts” were cheap and easy to replace.

4
. Mack is now curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

5
. Barger worked for Bolt, Beranek and Newman, a well-respected government contractor that specializes in acoustical analysis. BBN scientists helped the U.S. Navy design underwater detection devices. Barger’s expertise helped the federal government determine which National Guardsmen fired on students at Kent State University. During the Watergate hearings, his firm provided expert testimony on the infamous 18½-minute gap in one of Nixon’s tapes. Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 16.

6
. According to Paul Chambers, “… three Dallas police sharpshooters fired a total of fifty-six live bullets into three piles of sandbags located along the motorcade route on Elm Street.” Chambers also points out that, “An array of thirty-six microphones positioned along the route eighteen feet apart were used to record gunshots from the sixth floor of the [B]ook [D]epository and from the fence along the grassy knoll.” Chambers,
Head Shot
, 119–20.

7
. Telephone interview with James Barger, April 15, 2011.

8
. Chambers,
Head Shot
, 118–28.

9
. Dale K. Myers, “Appendix II: Rebuttal of the HSCA’s Photographic Evidence Offered in Support of the Committee’s Acoustic Evidence of Conspiracy,” Secrets of a Homicide: JFK Assassination,
http://www.jfkfiles.com/jfk/html/acoustics_8.htm#131
 [accessed July 20, 2011].

10
. 
The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy
, ABC-TV Special, 2003. Here’s what Gary Mack told me this about the documentary: “
Beyond Conspiracy
includes Dale Myers, who has done some interesting work regarding the timing of McLain at various locations in the Plaza as seen in a few of the films. But Dale relied upon camera speeds that had not been
measured by investigators and merely interpolated what they must have been by connecting them to each other. For example, he decided the Towner camera ran at 23 frames per second, which is 28%, faster than it was geared to run. Yes, her camera could have been operating that fast IF she had pressed the run button too far, but there’s no proof that she did so. He figured the Martin camera also ran at 23 frames per second, which would be either 28%, too fast or 44%, too fast, depending on which model camera he used. Trouble is, that information is unknown and unknowable. When I substitute standard rates of 18 frames per second, I find that McLain could have been in the right place at the right time … but that, of course, is not proof, just an indication. And that’s just one more reason why I personally think the acoustics evidence needs to be pursued.” Don Thomas is one researcher who believes that McLain’s police radio did in fact capture the sound of gunfire. See Donald Byron Thomas,
Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination
(Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2010).

11
. In July 1979 a rock musician named Steve Barber bought a magazine that included a plastic insert recording of the Dictabelt evidence; the recording had been produced by Gary Mack. Barber listened to the recording dozens of times and heard a faint voice over the final shot saying “Hold everything secure …” It turned out to be the voice of Dallas County sheriff Bill Decker. Barber does not accept the HSCA’s interpretation of the acoustical evidence. James C. Bowles believes that multiple replays of the Dictabelt may have created scratches that the House Committee acoustics team misidentified as gunshots. See James Bowles, “A Rebuttal to the Acoustical Evidence Theory,”
http://www.jfk-online.com/bowles.html
 and Stephan N. Barber, “Double Decker,”
http://www.jfk-online.com/doubled.html
 [accessed July 20, 2011].

12
. The complete NAS report can be found at
http://www.jfk-online.com/nas01.html
 #intro [accessed July 20, 2011].

13
. D. B. Thomas, “Echo Correlation Analysis and the Acoustic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination Revisited,”
Science & Justice
41, no. 1 (2001): 21–32.

14
. Michael T. Griffith, “The HSCA’s Acoustic Evidence: Proof of a Second Gunman?” Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&docId=413
 [accessed July 20, 2011] (quotation).

15
. Here is a new wrinkle for a novel or movie. There is a tiny but not fantastically infinitesimal chance two gunmen, Oswald and a picket-fence shooter, independently and without knowledge of the other’s intentions, chose Dealey Plaza for the assassination on 11/22. Oswald’s selection of shooting location was logical for him, facilitated by his place of employment. The picket fence/grassy knoll site was a sound option for someone else because it was at the very end of Kennedy’s motorcade route, therefore likely to have sparse crowds and less security, and it was adjacent to a large parking lot that could facilitate a fast getaway in the immediate chaos of the assassination. This theory strains credulity, and I certainly would not advocate it, but stranger things in human history have happened.

16
. The chief Dallas police dispatcher on the day of the assassination, Jim Bowles, theorized correctly about what had happened in his report, James C. Bowles, “The Kennedy Assassination Tapes: A Rebuttal to the Acoustic Evidence Theory”, 1979,
http://www.jfk-online.com/bowles.html
 [accessed July 25, 2013.] But he did not have the incontrovertible proof of his theory detailed in our study. Similarly, the National Academy of Sciences’ study, Committee on Ballistic Acoustics, National Research Council, “Report of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics,” the National Academies Press, Washington D.C., 1982, while doubting that
the Dictabelt proved what the HSCA claimed it did, suggested (as a possibility for future research) study of the location and the true identity of the motorcycle policeman with the stuck microphone, as well as further investigation of the impulses on the Dictabelt that were marked as potential gunfire.

17
. Price Obituary, the
Dallas Morning News
, October 12, 1999. “Services Held for Willie Price, 83”, 3rd edition, p. 19A. See also Willie Price Oral History Interview, September 24, 1994 by Wes Wise with Bob Porter; The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Oral History Collection.

18
. Interview with James C. Bowles, May 23, 2013. See also: “Radio Traffic Transcript, by an unknown author. Transcript of radio traffic from President’s arrival at Love Field to the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald” at
http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box14.htm
 [accessed July 25, 2013.]

19
. In November 2012, the city of Dallas unveiled a memorial to Tippit that stands on the street where he died. See Ken Kalthoff, “Dallas to Mark 50th Anniversary of JFK’s Assassination with Memorial Ceremony,” NBCNEWS.com, November 21, 2012,
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/21/15329670-dallas-to-mark-50th-anniversary-of-jfks-assassination-with-memorial-ceremony?lite
 [accessed November 26, 2012].

20
. “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy: Chapter 4: The Assassin,” pp. 165–75, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html#tippit
 [accessed June 10, 2011]; Gerald Posner,
Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
(New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 277.

21
. See Bonar Menninger,
Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

22
. It is impossible in this space to summarize all the accusations and possible evidence that researchers have submitted to point the finger at anti-Castro Cubans, but a sampling would include the following: Author Anthony Summers described a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and John Birch Society members that took place in October 1963 at a house in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch. According to Summers, a Bay of Pigs veteran named Nestor Castellanos attended this meeting and said, “We are waiting for Kennedy the twenty-second [of November] … We’re going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas” (Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 307–8). It is possible that during the first three months of 1963, Oswald may have attended three meetings (at least) arranged by anti-Castro Cubans living in the Dallas–Fort Worth area (Michael L. Kurtz,
The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 151, 190). Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuba’s Department of State Security, believes that anti-Castro Cuban exiles recruited by the CIA made plans to kill Kennedy. Escalante has pointed the finger at Luis Posada Carriles, a Miami resident accused of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines jet that killed 76 people. Carriles has also been linked to a spate of hotel bombings, which occurred in 1997, that were intended to sow chaos in Cuba and scare off tourists. Escalante is equally sure that Orlando Bosch had something to do with the Kennedy murder. Martin Roberts, “Cuban Ex-Intelligence Chief Recalls JFK Assassination,”
Washington Post
, July 12, 2010. Orlando Bosch, who died in April 2011, was a friend of Castro’s before he became a rabid anticommunist. In 1968, Bosch fired a homemade bazooka at a Polish freighter that he thought was headed to Cuba. According to the Justice Department, “from 1961 to 1968, Dr. Bosch was involved in 30 acts of sabotage in the United States, Puerto Rico, Panama and Cuba.” T. Rees Shapiro, “Anti-Castro Radical Was Acquitted in Jet Bombing,”
Washington Post
, April 30, 2011.

23
. The CIA suffered multiple wounds from negative press coverage and governmental investigations about Watergate crimes and many other controversies. For example, President Ford admitted that the CIA had participated in the 1973 overthrow of the Allende regime in Chile, an incident Senator Ted Kennedy called “not only a flagrant violation of our alleged policy of nonintervention in Chilean affairs, but also an appalling lack of forthrightness with the Congress.” In December 1974 Seymour Hersh published an article in the
New York Times
that accused the CIA of using illegal wiretaps, mail intercepts, and other nefarious methods to spy on American citizens. The Senate investigation of American intelligence activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID), exposed CIA assassination attempts against multiple foreign leaders, from the Caribbean to Africa to Southeast Asia. See the Church Committee Reports, Assassination Archives and Research Center website,
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm
 [accessed October 5, 2011], and Peter N. Carroll,
It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 168–69.

24
. Jefferson Morley, “What Can We Do About JFK’s Murder?”
The Atlantic
, November 21, 2012,
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/what-can-we-do-about-jfks-murder/265520/
 [accessed December 4, 2012].

25
. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–64
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 344–45; Jefferson Morley, “What JFK Conspiracy Bashers Get Wrong,”
Huffington Post
, November 21, 2007,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jefferson-morley/what-jfk-conspiracy-bashe_b_73722.html
 [accessed July 20, 2011].

26
. David Flick, “Robert F. Kennedy Suspected Conspiracy in His Brother’s Assassination, Son Says,”
Dallas News
, January 11, 2013,
http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2013/01/a-first-in-50-years-two-jfk-relatives-speak-in-dallas.html/
 [accessed January 14, 2013], and Michael Granberry, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Creates a Story With ‘Legs’ by Offering Pro-Conspiracy Views on His Uncle’s 1963 Assassination in Dealey Plaza,”
Dallas News
, January 14, 2013,
http://popcultureblog.dallasnews.com/2013/01/robert-f-kennedy-jr-creates-a-story-with-legs-by-offering-pro-conspiracy-views-on-his-uncles-1963-assassination-in-dealey-plaza.html/
 [accessed January 16, 2013].