The disappearance of the photographers' vehicle

[Jim DiEugenio]

Fine.

You can say it was all deliberate but see then there is the problem of the other side coming up with films which show pretty much the same thing. I know since I have seen them. That is with JFK exposed directly to the crowd.

The second thing is, alright, then if you are saying it was a deliberate and premeditated part of a conspiracy, who are you going to accuse: Forrest Sorrels? On what evidence is he made complicit in the plot? I mean, please, I am all ears on this.

This stuff with the SS has been around since Murder from Within. Which was published eons ago and essentially had the Lifton plot before Lifton: body alteration, Z film alteration, SS complicity.

To me, the best evidence of some kind of premeditation with the SS is what happened in Chicago. And the exposure of that postdates Murder from Within. It was not really exposed in print until Edwin Black in 1975.

And IMO, it was the publication of Bolden's book that caused them to come out with the McCubbin book. In order to discredit Bolden.

BTW, let me add, nice to have Charles back. I guess it was not just a lark, either the bird or the cigarette. I didn't think it was.

[Gordon Gray]

The question is how complicit were the SS, if at all, or were they manipulated by someone higher up?

I would submit the qualified answer of "yes."

I've written often about the dangers inherent in referencing THE Secret Service or THE CIA or THE military in our analyses.

So to, for another example, THE U.S. government.

When we use language that would promote the inference that those organizational entities were/are operationally and ideologically monolithic, we obscure rather than illuminate the conspiracy's structure.

Am I splitting hairs? I don't think so.

Compartmentalization, the need-to-know. It's how the Defense Industry, the Pentagon, the intelligence community and the Mafia all function. The Manhattan Project was enormous but the secret was kept because every little worker did his tiny, compartmentalized job, didn't ask questions, and wasn't allowed to see the whole picture.

No Doubt. But someone in authority with the SS had to approve the plans to pull back the security for the Dallas motorcade. Once the word was passed down, then of course people simply followed orders, even though it is apparent that some realized they were dangerous. My question is; did some one with the authority to speak for the White House pass on the word to the head of the President's detail, that he President wanted more visibility in Dallas and therefore could the security be pulled back in these specific ways, or was some one in authority with the SS knowingly involved in the plot?

[Gordon Gray]

Fine.

You can say it was all deliberate but see then there is the problem of the other side coming up with films which show pretty much the same thing. I know since I have seen them. That is with JFK exposed directly to the crowd.

The second thing is, alright, then if you are saying it was a deliberate and premeditated part of a conspiracy, who are you going to accuse: Forrest Sorrels? On what evidence is he made complicit in the plot? I mean, please, I am all ears on this.

This stuff with the SS has been around since Murder from Within. Which was published eons ago and essentially had the Lifton plot before Lifton: body alteration, Z film alteration, SS complicity.

To me, the best evidence of some kind of premeditation with the SS is what happened in Chicago. And the exposure of that postdates Murder from Within. It was not really exposed in print until Edwin Black in 1975.

And IMO, it was the publication of Bolden's book that caused them to come out with the McCubbin book. In order to discredit Bolden.

BTW, let me add, nice to have Charles back. I guess it was not just a lark, either the bird or the cigarette. I didn't think it was.

I'm not quite sure what your point is here Jim. I would submit that pulling back the motorcade security would have had to have been part of the plan just as changing the motorcade route had to have been. They didn't just hope they would have an unobstructed shot that day. The question for me is, as I have said; to what degree of complicity was there if any, by "elements" of the SS.

[Albert Doyle]

It looks like they took the SS men out partying deliberately.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Everyone - what Tracy's OP demonstrates is the lack of the usual close convoy of snappers, aka photographers.

This is additional to the known and endlessly remarked upon SS stripping.

[Gordon Gray]

It looks like they took the SS men out partying deliberately.

Who's they? How does one invite a SS detail to a bar. Was this something they did on a fairly regular basis at the end of a trip? Or did someone in Johnson's group advise them of this place and say the drinks were on them? Does any one know just how this came about?

[Charles Drago]

The question is how complicit were the SS, if at all, or were they manipulated by someone higher up?

I would submit the qualified answer of "yes."

I've written often about the dangers inherent in referencing THE Secret Service or THE CIA or THE military in our analyses.

So to, for another example, THE U.S. government.

When we use language that would promote the inference that those organizational entities were/are operationally and ideologically monolithic, we obscure rather than illuminate the conspiracy's structure.

Am I splitting hairs? I don't think so.

Compartmentalization, the need-to-know. It's how the Defense Industry, the Pentagon, the intelligence community and the Mafia all function. The Manhattan Project was enormous but the secret was kept because every little worker did his tiny, compartmentalized job, didn't ask questions, and wasn't allowed to see the whole picture.

Indeed. Compartmentalization, as you usefully point out, is a highly critical and effective security tool.

But I'm referencing a deeper, almost always unacknowledged factionalization -- fault lines arising from irreconcilable ideological and agenda differences within ostensibly monolithic entities.

The intelligence community's Yankees and cowboys, for good example.

[Jim Hackett II]

Complicit?
Without any doubt to me. All the SS? All the Spook assets? No!

Maybe not the monolithic "they",
but too many solid indications of conspiracy exist in the evidence,
even as convoluted as the evidence is today.

Too many schisms even in the group of opponents to John Kennedy's politics.

[Phil Dragoo]

We participated in the renovation of a building in Santa Fe which had housed a switchboard in its basement routing all calls to Los Alamos the fortified home of the Manhattan Project whose total manpower numbered in the six figures yet managed to retain exclusivity until certain targeted espionage broke the dam.

Who informed the motorcycle officers? Who moved McHugh? Who chose the route? Who moved the press photographers?

Now, we know who called the agents off the bumper--but they tried to pin that on JFK. Vince Palamara wasn't having any.

When Perry described the entry wound, Elmer Moore did a telethon to give him the full Nosenko--the same Elmer Moore who thought of JFK as a "traitor."

The usual driver Agent Thomas B. Shipman died of a heart attack in the sack at Camp David October 14, 1963;

"I Brake For Snipers" Greer to the rescue.

All the cameras were confiscated and all the film culled. Some of it was returned. In some kind of condition.

The state crime of murder to the contrary notwithstanding, the Secret Service drew M-16s and stole the Best Evidence.

Nothing to see here; happens all the time.

Surely someone would have talked.

How 'bout that Manhattan Project?

It was the bomb.

[Don Jeffries]

Without the complete failure of every Secret Service agent in JFK's detail on November 22, 1963, the assassination wouldn't have been possible. If Greer had followed standard procedure and accelerated at the sound of gunfire. If Kellerman had followed standard procedure and jumped in back to shield JFK after the first shot. If the motorcycle cops had been in their usual (and logical) places. bracketing the limo on each fender. If any one of the agents on the follow up car had followed standard procedure and rushed forward at the sound of gunfire to cover JFK.

There will be no belatedly released memo delineating orders from someone, instructing the Secret Service agents not to protect JFK in Dallas that day. But the conclusion is inescapable that, for whatever reason, JFK's presidential detail did not follow standard procedures that day, and permitted the assassination to happen as a result. When you add in the other oddities that day, from McHugh not riding with JFK as usual, to the press corps being so far back in the motorcade, thereby robbing history of professional footage of JFK's assassination, to the continuing effort to absolve the Secret Service of responsibility, to the point of elderly agents writing books dishonestly trying to blame JFK for his own death, it should become obvious to any researcher that this is a productive line of inquiry.

We continue to chase shadowy entities like "rogue" elements, "anti-Castro" Cubans and the like, but are curiously reluctant to look at individuals who appear suspect. Emory Roberts, for instance, can be seen waving off an agent initially identified as Henry Rybka (and I still believe it is Rybka), as the limo leaves the airport. Rybka's reaction is very telling, and combined with the allegation that Roberts ordered John Ready to stay on the bumper of the follow up car when he was going to actually do his job, elevated Roberts to the status of a primary suspect, in my view, in terms of having prior knowledge of the assassination. Another more obvious suspect is Bill Greer. It's a jarring blow to common sense to watch him hit the brakes, and then turn around and watch JFK's response to the throat wound, and yet remain unresponsive until after the fatal head shot.

In any real investigation, the Secret Service agents in JFK's detail would have been grilled mercilessly, and considered at very best to have been monstrously derelict in their duties. Instead, they were actually praised by the Warren Commission and some still consider Clint Hill a hero.