Reclaiming History (343 page)

^*
There’s even, since 1985, a “Jesus Seminar” of seventy-five prominent New Testament scholars with advanced theological degrees who analyze, write about, debate, and eventually cast their vote for one of four levels of authenticity (ranging from “Jesus definitely said or did it,” to “Jesus didn’t say or do it”) that each feels a particular Gospel passage has.

^*
Just two examples among many of the high esteem with which Weisberg is held in the conspiracy community: The aforementioned Robert Groden, the author of several conspiracy books, said before Weisberg’s death that “there is no man living today who knows more about the work of the Warren Commission and the FBI on the assassination, or whose writings on the case have so successfully withstood all challenges to their accuracy, than Harold Weisberg” (1996 reply brief by Groden in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, p.11,
Robert Groden v. Random House, The New York Times, and Gerald Posner
, Docket 94-9100). Walt Brown, one of today’s leading conspiracy theorists, has written books on the assassination and publishes the foremost monthly magazine for conspiracy devotees,
JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly
. Speaking of Weisberg’s death on February 21, 2002, Brown wrote that Weisberg was the “dean” of all Warren Commission critics and his “mentor.” He added that “everyone who ever had even a passing interest in the concept of conspiracy owes a massive debt of gratitude to Harold…He was a living history of the documentation of the most significant event of the 20th Century.” (
JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly
, April 2002, pp. 18, 21) Weisberg’s power and reach in the conspiracy community were such that fellow Warren Commission critic and conspiracy theorist Harrison E. Livingstone, himself a prolific and noteworthy writer in the conspiracy genre, but one who resented Weisberg’s fame and adulation, said that for years and years, “if he [Weisberg] damned something, it was lost. If he praised something, which was rare, then it or the person became an object of worship” (Livingstone,
Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy
, p.505).

^*
Indeed, if this book (including endnotes) had been printed in an average-size font and with pages of normal length and width, at 1,535,791 words, and with a typical book length of 400 pages, and 300 words per page, this work would translate into around thirteen volumes.

^*
At some point, of course, my writing on this case had to come to an end. Since the production and lead time for this outsized book was several months, and advance copies were scheduled to be sent out to reviewers on March 1, 2007, that point was in early November of 2006, when the book was in final galley form and my editor informed me that no further writing by me about new allegations being made in the case would be possible, only corrections to the galleys, or a very short insert here or there for clarification or other necessary purposes. So I was unable to respond to any book or other publication on this case that was published after early November of 2006.

†One character, for example, and there are many others, is so interesting that when Warren Commission counsel called him to testify about his relationship to Oswald, counsel became so captivated by the man and his story that counsel just listened to him, even telling the witness at one point, when the witness, on his own, started talking about Oswald, “I want to get to that,” but “first” he wanted to hear more of the man’s background—that part of the witness’s testimony consuming over twenty pages of small print in a Commission volume.

^*
It was not the most expensive and plush suite in the hotel. That was the Will Rogers Suite on the thirteenth floor, normally going for $100 a night, but rejected by the Secret Service because there was more than one access to it. So LBJ and Lady Bird stayed in that suite. (Gun,
Red Roses from Texas,
p.24)

†Twenty-eight Secret Service agents accompanied the president on his trip to Texas (HSCA Report, p.228).

^*
The Texas School Book Depository Company had two buildings: an administrative office and storage area at 411 Elm Street (at Houston), and a warehouse four blocks north at 1917 North Houston (between Munger and McKinney). Parking lot 1, designated for “employees and publishers,” was located across the street from the warehouse (Frazier parked there). Parking lots 2 (“company officials and customers”) and 3 (“publishers and managers”) were located on the west side of the Depository Building.

^*
Presidential historian Robert Dallek, the first scholar to examine Kennedy’s medical records on file at the Kennedy presidential library in Boston, reported in 2002 that Kennedy had nine previously undisclosed hospital stays between 1955 and 1957 and took a substantial amount of medication during his presidency on a daily basis. Included on the list were painkillers for his back, steroids for his Addison’s disease, antispasmodics for his colitis, antibiotics for urinary-tract infections, antihistamines for allergies, and, on at least one occasion, an antipsychotic for a severe mood change that Mrs. Kennedy believed was brought on by the antihistamines. According to Dallek, three doctors were treating Kennedy, including the famous “Dr. Feelgood,” Max Jacobson, who was giving him amphetamine shots during his first summit with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Although Dallek suggested that Kennedy and his advisers had recklessly deceived the public by not telling voters in 1960 just how sick he really was, Ted Sorenson, one of Kennedy’s closest advisers, and reporter Hugh Sidey, who followed Kennedy from 1957 to 1963, denied that the president’s medication kept him from performing his duties. Both reported that the president never faltered during the grueling 1960 presidential campaign, one that left them, and everyone else, absolutely exhausted. Sidey wrote that the newly released medical records were indisputable, “but they don’t give the whole picture and do leave the impression that Kennedy was little more than a chemical shell ready to self-destruct. I have my doubts. John Kennedy was a strong, determined President partly handicapped by a weakened body. But he was never an invalid.” In 1970, long before Dallek’s revelations, Kennedy’s two closest assistants, Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers, wrote of Kennedy’s “tireless energy and stamina which wore out everybody following him on an average eight-hour day of campaigning.” (Lawrence K. Altman and Todd S. Purdom, “In J.F.K. File, Hidden Illness, Pain and Pills,”
New York Times
, November 17, 2002, pp.1, 28; see also Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, pp. 213, 262, 398–399, 471; Lacayo, “How Sick Was J.F.K.?” pp.46–47; Sidey, “When It Counted, He Never Faltered,” pp.46–47; Peggy Noonan, “Camelot on Painkillers,”
Wall Street Journal
, November 22, 2002, p.A12; O’Donnell and Powers with McCarthy,
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
, p.116)

^*
The
Dallas Morning News
, Texas’s largest circulation daily at the time, with a readership of over a quarter of a million, was no friend of JFK’s, its editorials consistently being anti-Kennedy because of the right-wing inclination of its publisher, E. M. “Ted” Dealey. Indeed, in a White House meeting in the autumn of 1961 between Kennedy and a contingent of Texas media leaders, Dealey bluntly told JFK, “You and your administration are weak sisters,” adding that the country needed “a man on horseback to lead the nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle.” (Aynesworth with Michaud,
JFK: Breaking the News
, pp.6–7)

^*
Ultimately, 447 Dallas police officers were used on specific assignments associated with the president’s visit, 178 of them assigned to the motorcade route. The biggest assignment (one would think inappropriately from a priority standpoint) was to the Trade Mart, where 63 were assigned to work the parking area outside and 150 under the command of a deputy chief were to provide security inside. (King Exhibit No. 5, 20 H 464)

^*
In the spring of 1964, Robert Kennedy stated, “There was no plan to dump Lyndon Johnson. It didn’t make any sense…And there was never any discussion about dropping him.” The president himself told a close confidant in October 1963 that the idea of dumping Johnson was “preposterous on the face of it. We’ve got to carry Texas in ’64, and maybe Georgia.” (Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
, p.605)

^*
Kilduff was the acting press secretary in the absence of Pierre Salinger, who was en route to Hawaii at the time of the assassination.

^*
The president’s exaggeration was not great. Jacqueline Kennedy, traveling abroad to thirteen countries, alone or with the president, and speaking fluent French, Spanish, and Italian as she went, “soon carved for herself a niche of fame” independent of JFK. Described by many as beautiful, cultured, and imperious, “she drew crowds by the thousands and became a good-will ambassador for America on her own.” (Associated Press, November 26, 1963)

†Kennedy had unquestionably become an effective politician, but unlike most in his chosen profession, he wasn’t inordinately ambitious, was famous for never taking himself too seriously, and once said that he only started in politics “because Joe died. [Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., JFK’s older brother, was the one of the four sons of Joe Sr. who was being groomed for high political office; he and his copilot died during the Second World War when their plane, laden with explosives to be dropped on a German bomb-launching base in France, exploded in midair over the English Channel on August 12, 1944.] If something happened to me tomorrow, my brother Bobby would run for my seat in the Senate. And if Bobby died, Teddy would take over for him.” (
New York Times
, November 23, 1963, p.13)

^*
The president received a long, standing ovation when he referred to the controversial TFX jet fighter, built at the General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth, as a powerful force for freedom (
Dallas Morning News,
November 23, 1963, p.11).

†For years prior to its occupancy by the Texas School Book Depository Company, when it became known as the Texas School Book Depository Building after its principal occupant, the building was known as the Sexton Building, and many old-timers continued to call it that for years thereafter.

^*
The $8.6 million Boeing 707 jet, tail number SAM26000, was delivered to the air force on October 10, 1962. Though not the first Air Force One, it is the first jet aircraft designed specifically for presidents, JFK being the first one to make extensive use of a jet for presidential travel. (James Sawa, “
J
FK Air Force One: Conspiracy or Not,” self-published, 2004) When JFK first saw the new Air Force One, he exclaimed, “It’s magnificent! I’ll take it.” President Gerald Ford would later say, “When they fly you on Air Force One, you know you’re the president.” (TerHorst and Albertazzie,
Flying White House
, p.13)

^*
Variations in transcripts of both channels 1 (regular) and 2 (presidential motorcade) of the Dallas police radio transmissions are common. In 1982, the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Ballistic Acoustics (NAS-CBA) created a new recording of the channel 2 radio traffic at the time of the assassination directly from the original Gray Audograph disk. This recording proved to be the best to date, avoiding many of the skips and repeats inherent in previous recordings. Throughout this book, the most complete versions of channel 1 and 2 radio traffic conversations, primarily from the recordings themselves, are utilized.

^*
The Depository had previously been occupied by a wholesale grocery company engaged in supplying restaurants and institutions, and during the time it occupied the building, the floors became oil-soaked and this oil was damaging the books that were now being stacked on the floor (CD 205, p.135).

^*
Jackie would later recall that three times on the Texas trip “we were greeted with bouquets of the yellow roses of Texas. Only in Dallas they gave me red roses. I remember thinking: How funny—red roses for me” (Gun,
Red Roses from Texas
, unnumbered p.5).

†The president’s personal style causes the Secret Service deep concern. Not only does he travel more frequently than any previous president, but he relishes contact with crowds of well-wishers. The problem is compounded by the fact that Kennedy is not receptive to many of the measures designed to protect him, treating the danger of assault philosophically. (HSCA Report, p.228)

^*
According to U.S. Census records, the population of the city of Dallas was 679,684 in 1960. In 1970, it had increased to 844,401.

^*
Dealey Plaza is a three-acre, well-manicured patch of land with concrete pergolas and peristyles, reflecting pools, and some office buildings. It is called “The Front Door of Dallas” and was named in 1935 after George Bannerman Dealey, a Dallas civic leader and the founder of the city’s main paper, the
Dallas Morning News
. The plaza is in the form of a triangle, with three main thoroughfares, Main Street in the middle having east and westbound lanes, and flanked by Elm to the north having only westbound lanes, and Commerce to the south with only eastbound lanes. The three arteries converge at a triple underpass built in 1936 beneath the Union Terminal Railroad overpass at the southwestern tip of the plaza. (CE 877,17 H 897–898) The site of the Texas School Book Depository Building at the northwest corner of Houston and Elm in the plaza was originally owned by John Neely Bryan, the founder of Dallas.

^*
There is no evidence that the two Secret Service agents in the president’s limousine, Greer and Kellerman, were as alert as Youngblood and directed the president to get down.