Lemnitzer and LeMay

[Peter Lemkin]

From: http://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/6483.html

II. General LeMay's aide, a Colonel Dorman, urgently attempted to contact General LeMay by radio shortly before his inbound plane from Canada landed. This conversation is recorded on "side 2," the 66.3 MB MP3 recording, between times 11:05 and 12:04. Why have I declared this to be of such interest? Why is it more than just a passing, random, historical curiosity? Because: (1) General LeMay, returning from Canada to the United States following learning about the assassination, [B]disobeyed the orders of the Secretary of the Air Force (his nominal superior), Mr. Eugene Zuckert, and instead of landing at Andrews AFB as he was directed, landed at Washington D.C.'s National Airport adjacent to downtown Washington, D.C., instead; and (2) because Paul K. O'Connor, a Navy corpsman who assisted the Navy pathologists with the autopsy on JFK, stated many times before his death that General LeMay attended the autopsy of President Kennedy on 11/22/63. I documented the great antipathy that LeMay (Air Force Chief of Staff) and President Kennedy had for each other---as well as LeMay's disobedience toward the Air Force Secretary the day of the assassination---in volume 2 of Inside the ARRB, on pages 481-488. The real question here is, "Why did the editor of the LBJ Library version of the Air Force One tapes decide to remove this conversation from that version of the recordings?" Perhaps the whole subject of General LeMay, particularly whether or not he was present at JFK's autopsy, was "radioactive" when the tapes were edited in the 1960s. General LeMay did not retire from the U.S. Air Force until 1965; presumably he was still Air Force Chief of Staff when the edited and condensed tapes were assembled, and perhaps he had personally ordered the removal of that conversation from the record. Alternatively, someone else may not have wanted LeMay's name even remotely associated with the events surrounding the autopsy, especially if he had been present at JFK's post-mortem examination. More than one third of the air time on the Air Force One tapes is devoted to the autopsy arrangements, and "someone" may have been quite uncomfortable about the urgently expressed desire of LeMay's aide to contact him early that evening. LeMay landed at National Airport 52 minutes prior to the "on the blocks" time for Air Force One, and 83 minutes prior to the arrival of JFK's body at Bethesda (at 6:35 PM). He had plenty of time to be driven to Andrews if he had wanted to be there; and he certainly had plenty of time to drive from National Airport (or the nearby Pentagon) to Bethesda Naval Hospital, prior to the body's arrival.[/B]