The disappearance of the photographers' vehicle

[Tracy Riddle]

One of the examples of security stripping was the photographers' vehicle that was usually (though not always) in front of the President's limo during the longer motorcades.

In these two clips we see flatbed trucks positively overflowing with photographers. In the San Diego clip there are actually two vehicles. One can only imagine the amount of high quality footage we would have of the assassination if they had been in place in Dallas.



Start watching around 0:30



Start watching around 4:50

There were some motorcades where the photographers had been placed farther behind the president, but in Dallas they seemed to have expected a flatbed truck.

Dallas Morning News photographer Thomas Dillard (WC testimony (H 6 162-67)):
"We lost our position out at the airport. I understood we were supposed to have been quite a bit closer [to the President]. We were assigned as the prime photographic car which, as you probably know, normally a truck precedes the President on these things and certain representatives of the photographic press ride with the truck. In this case, as you know, we didn't have any and this car that I was in was to take any photographs which was of spot-news nature...and the whole parade, the whole trip to town, I could only distinguish the President's car on very few occasions in high rises in the ground, when we got on hills. It was difficult because the people in the cars ahead of me were sitting on the backs of cars which pretty well covered the President's car for me. We had a very, very poor view of the President's car at any time from the time the parade started."

Dillard told Richard Trask: "The sad thing news-wise was the custom always was that a selected group of press people - photographers - were to ride a flat-bed truck in front of the President. That was standard procedure in all presidential parades. I was one of the selected photographers. I was the head man at my paper and a pretty good photographer...It was understood the flatbed was going to be there. But at the last moment it was canceled. We bounced around and ended up on one of those Chevrolet convertibles." (Pictures of the Pain)

Henry Burroughs 10/14/98 letter to Vince Palamara---"I was a member of the White House pool aboard Air Force One when we arrived with JFK in Dallas on that fateful day. We, the pool, were dismayed to find our pool car shoved back to about #11 position in the motorcade. We protested, but it was too late." (Survivor's Guilt)


More security-stripping in the motorcade:

From Capt. Fritz's WC testimony (H 4 202-247): "Well, we had taken some precautions but those were changed. We were told in the beginning that we would be in the parade directly behind it, I don't know whether it was the second or third car, but the Vice President's car, that we would be directly behind that, and we did make preparation for that. But at 10 o'clock the night before the parade, Chief [M.W.] Stevenson called me at home and told me that had been changed, and I was assigned with two of my officers to the speakers' stand at the Trade Mart."

The HSCA found the SS's protective measures for the motorcade were deficient. Among other things, the Committee said:
"Surprisingly, the security measures used in the prior motorcades during the same Texas visit show that the deployment of motorcycles in Dallas by the Secret Service may have been uniquely insecure." (HSCA Report Vol. XI p 529)

Dallas Policeman (motorcycle escort), Marion L. Baker (WC testimony H 3 250-1): "When we got to the airport, our sergeant instructed me that there wouldn't be anybody riding beside the President's car." Baker receives these instructions about five minutes before the motorcade leaves Love Field.

Billy Joe Martin, another motorcade officer, reports that the four motorcycle officers covering the Presidential limousine are ordered that under no circumstances are they to leave their positions "regardless of what happened." (February 14, 1969 Clay Shaw trial testimony)
Martin will eventually explain to the Warren Commission that the Secret Service told them that they didn't want anyone riding past the President's car and that they were to ride to the rear. (6H293) Martin allegedly tells his girlfriend Jean Hill, "Johnson's Secret Service people came over to the motorcycle cops and gave us a bunch of instructions...They also ordered us into the damndest escort formation I've ever seen. Ordinarily, you bracket the car with four motorcycles, one on each fender. But this time, they told the four of us assigned to the President's car there'd be no forward escorts. We were to stay well in back and not let ourselves get ahead of the car's rear wheels under any circumstances. I'd never heard of a formation like that, much less ridden in one, but they said they wanted the crowds to get an unrestricted view of the President. Well, I guess somebody got an unrestricted' view of him, all right." (Jean Hill: JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, by Bill Sloan with Jean Hill (New York: Pelican, 1992), pp. 1124: Hill, quoting Martin)

It is standard practice that a military aide occupied the front seat of JFK's limousine during motorcades. Major General Ted Clifton was one such person. Another person was Presidential aide General Godfrey McHugh. But McHugh is placed in the back of the motorcade. He will later acknowledge that this is unusual. This is the first time he is advised not to ride in the car, "so that attention would be focused on the President." (May 11, 1978 interview with the HSCA's Mark Flanagan (RIF#1801007810465 [see also 7 HSCA 14]). McHugh said that he was asked by the Secret Service "for the first time" to "ride in a car in the back [of the motorcade], instead, as normally I would do, between the driver and the Secret Service agent in charge of the trip." (CFTR radio (Canada) interview 1976 Interview with McHugh conducted late 1975 via phone.) (Palamara, Survivor's Guilt)

WC testimony of Police Chief Jesse Curry (H 4 171):
Mr. CURRY - In the planning of this motorcade, we had had more motorcycles lined up to be with the President's car, but the Secret Service didn't want that many.
Mr. RANKIN - Did they tell you why?
Mr. CURRY - We actually had two on each side but we wanted four on each side and they asked us to drop out some of them and back down the motorcade, along the motorcade, which we did.
Mr. RANKIN - So that you in fact only had two on each side of his car?
Mr. CURRY - Two on each side and they asked them to remain at the rear fender so if the crowd moved in on him they could move in to protect him from the crowd.

[Gordon Gray]

Interesting that by removing the motorcycles from the front fenders they gave a more unrestricted view to someone in front of the motor cade, than to those behind.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Nice job Tracy.

Horne does some good work on this aspect in his book.

See, with no one in front, and without the agents riding on the back, the shots were unobstructed in either direction.

Was that done deliberately?

Well, who knows? Maybe, maybe not.

[Charles Drago]

Intentional?

Of course.

Criminal intent?

Make the leap.

Of course.

Who had the authority to FACILITATE the conspiracy by arranging the motorcade?

To reverse-engineer the event is to understand it.

[Gordon Gray]

Nice job Tracy.

Horne does some good work on this aspect in his book.

See, with no one in front, and without the agents riding on the back, the shots were unobstructed in either direction.

Was that done deliberately?

Well, who knows? Maybe, maybe not.

No maybe about it IMO. With two motorcycles off the front fenders of the limo and two agents riding on the back, the assassination simply couldn't have happened. The question is how complicit were the SS, if at all, or were they manipulated by someone higher up?

[David Lifton]

Nice job Tracy.

Horne does some good work on this aspect in his book.

See, with no one in front, and without the agents riding on the back, the shots were unobstructed in either direction.

Was that done deliberately?

Well, who knows? Maybe, maybe not.

No maybe about it IMO. With two motorcycles off the front fenders of the limo and two agents riding on the back, the assassination simply couldn't have happened. The question is how complicit were the SS, if at all, or were they manipulated by someone higher up?

Thanks for posting this footage. I particularly liked the San Diego footage. And you're correct, Gordon: there's no "maybe" to it. Security stripping and removing the frontally-based photographers was a vital element, although there always will be those who try to fuzz it up with "maybe. . maybe not".

And by the way: don't forget the fact that, in Dallas, Air Force Gen. Godfrey McHugh was specifically removed from riding in the presidential limo. He told me this when I first spoke with him in 1967. The request obviously was made via the Secret Service, although it was transmitted to McHugh (apparently) via Ken O'Donnell.

DSL
6/22/13; 6:30 PM PDT
Los Angeles, California

[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.

[Tracy Riddle]

These are some of the things that eventually turned me away from my view of a low-level plot (Cuban exiles, mobsters and some rogue CIA people) to a higher-level plot. I highly recommend Palamara's "Survivor's Guilt" (the original internet version, which was freely available for years but appears to be gone now).

[Jan Klimkowski]

These are some of the things that eventually turned me away from my view of a low-level plot (Cuban exiles, mobsters and some rogue CIA people) to a higher-level plot. I highly recommend Palamara's "Survivor's Guilt" (the original internet version, which was freely available for years but appears to be gone now).

Indeed. Such elements are completely incompatible with a low level right-wing Cuban or mob-led plot.

[Tracy Riddle]

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.