1966 Texas Tower Sniper--Was it a Black Op?

[Rolf Zaeschmar]

8-1-66 U of Texas/Austin Tower Sniper Charles J. Whitman, 25* 17 dead, 32 wounded


Just before noon, Whitman killed three of his victims inside the University's tower, and 11 others on the ground from the 28th floor observation deck of the University's 307-foot administrative building. He wore workman's overalls and pushed a dolly carrying his marine-issued foot locker loaded with multiple rifles, pistols, knives, a shotgun, and 1,200 rounds of ammunition(among other supplies). He was shot and killed by two Austin police officers 96 minutes later. The tower massacre happened the day after Whitman murdered his wife and mother at their homes.

Although the shooting has been painted as the act of a lone gunman, there was plenty of evidence that more than one shooter was on scene:

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-29/n...-whitman/2
"He was firing so fast and so often, with so many puffs of smoke coming from different angles on the observation deck, that many on the ground believed there were two or three snipers."

http://www.deekmagazine.com/issues/20_Br...%20Saw.htm
"Whitman moved around the observation deck as he continued to shoot, leading witnesses to think there were multiple snipers."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy1B5mfzCBA
22:35 mark
PO Houston McCoy: I looked up there on the north end there's the one shot, then right in the middle there's a shot, then on the south end there was a shot.
Voice Over: .... (The sniper was)shooting from east, west, north, and south. He(the gunman) gave the impression that there was more than one sniper.
McCoy: I thought there was at least three of them right there, you know.
Voice Over: ...It was a time of uncertainty in America.
McCoy: The thing that hit my mind that with all these political factions going on
and everybody's saying they're gonna rebel against America, that this would just about be the time the revolution's started, you know.

Article from Austin-American Statesman, Aug 2, 1966
"It was so deadly and efficient police officers were not convinced until the moment of Whitman's death there were not two snipers firing at human targets below."

http://www.westtexasscoutinghistory.net/...story.html
Houston McCoy: "On remaining at the northeast corner, I had drawn and cocked my .38 revolver, being leery of another possible sniper."

http://www.westtexasscoutinghistory.net/...erald.html
Waco Tribune-Herald April 23, 1967
"From the volume of fire, police believed several people were up there...."

http://www.westtexasscoutinghistory.net/...Chief.html
Austin Police Chief Bob Miles:
"The first report didn't really strike a note; it just said something about invetigating someone shooting from the tower. But the next report, when I started paying attention, said there appeared to be two of them shooting from the tower."
Miles said police thought there were two snipers until an officer was sent up to circle the tower in a helicopter....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A8hgoACMpM
PO Jerry Day: 2:12 mark
"There were shots coming from everywhere. ... It looked like a gang of people up there."

The Sniper in the Tower, Gary Lavergne, pg171
"The sniper appeared to be everywhere and victims seemed to be falling on both the Drag and the South Mall at the same time."

[Rolf Zaeschmar]

The veterans of Dallas formed a mockingbird chorus pushing the agenda:


http://profilefacts.blogspot.com/2010/09...ofile.html
The event... also led President Lyndon B. Johnson to call for stricter gun control policies.

http://forum.goregrish.com/threads/charl...man.21709/
The Governor of Texas, Mr John Connally, pledged yesterday to re-examine his State's gun laws following the massacre at the University of Texas in Austin.

http://www.garylavergne.com/Rich.htm
J. Edgar Hoover, of all unlikely advocates, suggested more gun control as a preventative....

The solution:

A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders by Gary Lavergne
It is because of this high-profile crime that Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) units were developed.

http://www.associatepublisher.com/e/c/ch...hitman.htm
Together with the Watts riots of the early 1960s, Charles Whitman's shootings were considered the impetus for establishing SWAT teams and other task forces to deal with situations beyond normal police procedures. It also led President Lyndon B. Johnson to call for stricter gun control policies.

http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com...lse-flags/
This was a month before Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the first gun control legislation.*

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gaddy/gaddy56.html
...the state used this tragedy to move for more draconian firearms possession limitations on private citizens.

[Rolf Zaeschmar]

Deep Politics?


If this thing was some kind of covert op, why did they choose Texas as the location? I suspect the shooting was some sort of message to LBJ. The UofT/Austin was Lady Bird Johnson's alma mater. His eldest daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson, had graduated from the UofT/Austin just months previously. (During her time there, Secret Service Agents would accompany her to class.) And the shooting cast a dark shadow over the televised Washington DC wedding of his younger daughter, Luci Baines Johnson, just five days later, on 8-6-66. The LBJ Ranch, his home, was just 50 miles west of Austin. The Secret Service agents who responded were apparently stationed at their local office in Austin, and their duties probably included guarding LBJ's homestead.
Oh yeah, LBJ must have wondered about the whole thing. Is that why he personally ordered J. Edgar Hoover to do his own Federal investigation of the crime?

But if it was a covert op, what was it's purpose, other than the gun control/SWAT angle? Perhaps not coincidentally, a serious peace initiative to stop the war in Vietnam had emerged by the summer of '66:

'Operation Marigold'

http://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_9049_l3.htm?id=9049
...the United States ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Polish ambassador Janusz Lewandowsky had opened a «tripartite channel», as D'Orlandi(Giovanni D'Orlandi, Italian ambassador to Saigon) defined it, and since June(1966) had been conducting, amidst a thousand difficulties, secret negotiations, called "Operation Marigold" by the Americans, to halt the war in Vietnam.

"Lewandowsky, the Polish delegate to the Geneva Peace Talks... was the bearer of a message that left D'Orlandi speechless: Hanoi was disposed to compromise for the settlement of the Vietnam conflict, it demanded neither immediate reunification of the country, nor wanted to impose a socialist system on South Vietnam. It would not however accept solutions that could be read as a surrender and demanded, along with total secrecy for the operation, the end of the bombing also.... US President Johnson was informed from the very first moment of the negotiations.... But the hawks in the US administration, among them Rusk and McNamara, buried the agreement under a hail of bombs. After the umpteenth (bombing)raid on Hanoi of 13 December everything collapsed, and the North Vietnamese closed all negotiations."

So why didn't LBJ seize a face-saving way out of the quagmire when the opportunity arose? He was too astute a politician to not know how the war would damage him in his re-election efforts two years later. Maybe he tried to, only to have it vetoed by higher ups. So perhaps the 'message' of Austin was a stinging reminder to LBJ of the costs of straying from the prescribed agenda.

Another possible reason for selecting the UofT as the scene of the shooting was it's growing reputation as a center of anti-war activities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_fo...ic_society
(re the antiwar SDS orgainization)
--The convention(summer of '65) elected an Akron, Ohio student, Carl Oglesby, President and Jeff Shero, from the increasingly influential University of Texas chapter in Austin, as Vice President
By 1966, Campuses around the country were in a state of unprecedented ferment and activism. ...Austin, also a center of civil-rights and anti-war activities, was in 1967 the scene of an SDS-generated free speech movement (the University Freedom Movement) that mobilized thousands of students in massive demonstrations and other activities.

For what it's worth, the first two people shot, Claire Wilson and Thomas Eckman, were reportedly both members of the SDS(Students for a Democratic Society).

[R.K. Locke]

Interesting posts. I've always suspected that this was probably some kind of op, although I've never really had a chance to look into it properly. The fact that Whitman was an ex-marine who kept a "journal" should pique the interest of anyone with a basic knowledge of deep political history...

[David Guyatt]

I thought the strap-line in the above linked story was telling:

The lost paths to peace

The unpublished diary of Giovanni D'Orlandi, Italian ambassador to Saigon from 1962 to 1968. The untold story of "operation Marigold", a secret negotiation that could have stopped the war long before 1975. But there were those who preferred the smell of napalm …

The smell of napalm equates to the smell of dollars, I think.

[Rolf Zaeschmar]

Today is the 50th anniversary of this terrible event. There has been very little coverage in the media, most of it in Texas. Are we all burnt out on this type of thing?

Coincidence or not, today is also the day Texas' new law allowing the right to carry concealed handguns on campus went into effect:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/01/cam...later.html
Concealed handgun license holders in Texas can carry their weapons into public university buildings, classrooms and dorms starting Monday, a day that also marks 50 years after the mass shooting at the University of Texas' landmark clock tower.

[Drew Phipps]

Back in 1966, people left campus, went home and got their rifles, and returned to the scene to assist the police (others assisted by carrying the wounded to safety at no small risk to themselves). Fortunately, none of those helpers shot anybody. People around here remember how the community stood up for itself, and how it might have been worse without the civilians rallying around to help.

You have to remember that (and also the Alamo) when you try to understand how Texans feel about gun laws.