JFK, PD Scott, and Mount Weather

[Brian Castle]

Hi all, thank you for your replies.

Maybe I can be a little more specific about the question.

Here's the sitch - let's assume that PD Scott is right, and that Mt Weather was in use for emergency communications.

If that is the case, then there had to be a link to the ground in Dallas, whether direct or indirect.

There are only two obvious ways that link could have landed in Dallas - one is, through the White House Communications Agency, and the other is, through the Dallas Emergency Operations Center, which means the Civil Defense channels. The former, is related to "Continuity of Government", while the latter, is more related to "disaster management".

If we're to take Mr. PD Scott's statement literally, it would seem to indicate he has some evidence regarding the specific nature of the link, and that's what I'm asking about.

First of all, I've been able to find no evidence whatsoever as to whether the Dallas Emergency Operations Center was actually in use that day. Its Director was allegedly at a luncheon at the Adolphus Hotel just after the assassination, seen by dozens of people and etc. The other person who might have had the keys to that building is Boise B Smith. And a mysterious figure named Col John W Mayo, who appears to be one of these ultra-right-wing anti-communist types.

From what little I've been able to establish so far, the WHCA radios that Winston Lawson installed in the cars were all low power, they were for local use only. Allegedly, the SS had some kind of communication center set up at the Sheraton, and from what I can glean this was essentially the "mobile White House", involving at the time two PBX's and one radio transceiver. Since it would have been impossible to set up a kilowatt transmitter on the spot, the communications would then necessarily have had to flow through a regional relay point where they could in fact have a kilowatt transmitter and a very large antenna. Such a point might have been the Emergency Operations Center, but it also could have been one of the regional Defense facilities like the 112th MIG at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

I'm not aware that Mr. Scott understands how these relays took place, which is why I'm asking what he means by "almost directly". He says that like he knows something, but if he does he's not telling us. The PBX's were down for over an hour while they were trying to install an additional switch, and therefore any communication that might have taken place during that interval had to happen by radio. Which means, there had to be a kilowatt transmitter in play someplace. It might have been at Collins HQ in Cedar Rapids Iowa, but it still would have get to get from Dallas to there, over a secure channel or in a secure manner.

First, if you don't know what Peter Dale Scott means, I suggest you ask him. I think he is not hiding anything as you seem to think. I think his mention has no special nor hidden meaning.
Second, the Dallas Emergency Operations Center was not only in use that day, but was CENTRAL to the plot. A lot about who was where are just lies to cover-up what was really going on and who was really where.
Speculations as to strength of transmitters will get you no where, IMHO. Collins Radio was capable of making short range and trans-continental secure communications [as were others like them].
There are several threads on all this on this Forum, but the search function is poor and I haven't located them yet; best to try to find them using an outside search engine. I'm having trouble locating the plethora of information on this site related to the Operations center and Crichton specifically.....when I find it, will link to it....below are some things to think about in the meantime.
Jack Crichton was up to his hairline in the assassination - before and during; even after in getting Marina a 'bad' interpreter to purposely twist her words to fit the official version - but his main job, IMHO was communication and coordination.

Hi Peter, thank you so much for posting all that, it's a lot of information.

I would love to ask Peter Dale Scott, is he on this forum? I've never met the man, in no way would I accuse him of trying to hide anything. I'm just after source information, that's all. This is very important stuff IMO, it deserves to be fleshed out. I'd like to see the source info for what we know "today", and then I'm entirely certain if you give me a little time after that I can contribute some few things to the body of knowledge.

So then, I have seen claims (including yours above) that the Dallas EOC was in use that day, but I would like to see the actual source evidence backing up these claims. If I see that, then maybe I can find more of it. Looking at "claims" does me no good, my purpose is to dig up new information. I'm a researcher, I'm not here to argue about speculations. I'm here to dig up new material, and bounce if off y'all to see how it might fit in.

The issues about transmitter wattage and antenna sizes and so on, are "technical issues". Those kinds of things, hopefully, are like going down a checklist. Once you have your crime scene model you have to make sure you have the infrastructure to support it. So it would be like, "enough power? check. big enough antenna? check." that kind of thing.

One thing not mentioned in your posts, is that although Crichton himself was fairly wealthy, he lost a pile of money on the Cuban Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust deal, when Castro nationalized the foreign oil rights. Crichton was apparently running around talking this company up, it was started by William F Buckley Sr and Crichton was one of its evangelists to the Texas oil community, where they found many rich investors. The CVOVT was the hottest company on Wall Street at one point. Sometime in the late 50's they'd negotiated 13 million acres of drilling rights in Cuba, under Batista, and then one day Castro declared that no foreign venture could hold more than 20,000 acres. The company went belly-up and got de-listed and all the investors lost their money, and Crichton not only lost money but he lost face too. He must have been upset about it, I certainly would have been.

So... all these things are good, but we have to dig deeper. Really... we have to push on this. This is a vital area of investigation, and it needs more meat, more substance. Let me see if I can find those threads you speak of, they sound helpful.

Thanks again Peter. Really, I'm not here to challenge anyone, that's not my purpose. I'm with you on this (hopefully), trying to do research. Maybe I can bring a few things to the table, we'll see. If not and y'all are way ahead of me, I'll skedaddle and y'all can carry on.

Crichton's relationship with DH Byrd is one of the areas I'd like to explore. Not just that there "was one", but the specific nature of it. I'm also interested in Byrd's activities in support of the Civil Air Patrol. There's just not a whole lot of actual source information on this stuff. People write volumes about it 'cause... yeah... it could be big important stuff. But we have to dig a little deeper on this - for instance - Crichton states that he was at this luncheon at the Adolphus, and just before 12:30 he "walked over to Elm St" and saw Jackie close enough to see her "pill box hat"... well, if you look at the map, walking over from the Adolphus to Elm by the shortest path would put Crichton right at the corner of Houston and Elm. If he's telling the truth, then he ought to appear in a picture somewhere, shouldn't he?

[Peter Lemkin]

Hi all, thank you for your replies.

Maybe I can be a little more specific about the question.

Here's the sitch - let's assume that PD Scott is right, and that Mt Weather was in use for emergency communications.

If that is the case, then there had to be a link to the ground in Dallas, whether direct or indirect.

There are only two obvious ways that link could have landed in Dallas - one is, through the White House Communications Agency, and the other is, through the Dallas Emergency Operations Center, which means the Civil Defense channels. The former, is related to "Continuity of Government", while the latter, is more related to "disaster management".

If we're to take Mr. PD Scott's statement literally, it would seem to indicate he has some evidence regarding the specific nature of the link, and that's what I'm asking about.

First of all, I've been able to find no evidence whatsoever as to whether the Dallas Emergency Operations Center was actually in use that day. Its Director was allegedly at a luncheon at the Adolphus Hotel just after the assassination, seen by dozens of people and etc. The other person who might have had the keys to that building is Boise B Smith. And a mysterious figure named Col John W Mayo, who appears to be one of these ultra-right-wing anti-communist types.

From what little I've been able to establish so far, the WHCA radios that Winston Lawson installed in the cars were all low power, they were for local use only. Allegedly, the SS had some kind of communication center set up at the Sheraton, and from what I can glean this was essentially the "mobile White House", involving at the time two PBX's and one radio transceiver. Since it would have been impossible to set up a kilowatt transmitter on the spot, the communications would then necessarily have had to flow through a regional relay point where they could in fact have a kilowatt transmitter and a very large antenna. Such a point might have been the Emergency Operations Center, but it also could have been one of the regional Defense facilities like the 112th MIG at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

I'm not aware that Mr. Scott understands how these relays took place, which is why I'm asking what he means by "almost directly". He says that like he knows something, but if he does he's not telling us. The PBX's were down for over an hour while they were trying to install an additional switch, and therefore any communication that might have taken place during that interval had to happen by radio. Which means, there had to be a kilowatt transmitter in play someplace. It might have been at Collins HQ in Cedar Rapids Iowa, but it still would have get to get from Dallas to there, over a secure channel or in a secure manner.

First, if you don't know what Peter Dale Scott means, I suggest you ask him. I think he is not hiding anything as you seem to think. I think his mention has no special nor hidden meaning.
Second, the Dallas Emergency Operations Center was not only in use that day, but was CENTRAL to the plot. A lot about who was where are just lies to cover-up what was really going on and who was really where.
Speculations as to strength of transmitters will get you no where, IMHO. Collins Radio was capable of making short range and trans-continental secure communications [as were others like them].
There are several threads on all this on this Forum, but the search function is poor and I haven't located them yet; best to try to find them using an outside search engine. I'm having trouble locating the plethora of information on this site related to the Operations center and Crichton specifically.....when I find it, will link to it....below are some things to think about in the meantime.
Jack Crichton was up to his hairline in the assassination - before and during; even after in getting Marina a 'bad' interpreter to purposely twist her words to fit the official version - but his main job, IMHO was communication and coordination.

Hi Peter, thank you so much for posting all that, it's a lot of information.

I would love to ask Peter Dale Scott, is he on this forum? I've never met the man, in no way would I accuse him of trying to hide anything. I'm just after source information, that's all. This is very important stuff IMO, it deserves to be fleshed out. I'd like to see the source info for what we know "today", and then I'm entirely certain if you give me a little time after that I can contribute some few things to the body of knowledge.

So then, I have seen claims (including yours above) that the Dallas EOC was in use that day, but I would like to see the actual source evidence backing up these claims. If I see that, then maybe I can find more of it. Looking at "claims" does me no good, my purpose is to dig up new information. I'm a researcher, I'm not here to argue about speculations. I'm here to dig up new material, and bounce if off y'all to see how it might fit in.

The issues about transmitter wattage and antenna sizes and so on, are "technical issues". Those kinds of things, hopefully, are like going down a checklist. Once you have your crime scene model you have to make sure you have the infrastructure to support it. So it would be like, "enough power? check. big enough antenna? check." that kind of thing.

One thing not mentioned in your posts, is that although Crichton himself was fairly wealthy, he lost a pile of money on the Cuban Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust deal, when Castro nationalized the foreign oil rights. Crichton was apparently running around talking this company up, it was started by William F Buckley Sr and Crichton was one of its evangelists to the Texas oil community, where they found many rich investors. The CVOVT was the hottest company on Wall Street at one point. Sometime in the late 50's they'd negotiated 13 million acres of drilling rights in Cuba, under Batista, and then one day Castro declared that no foreign venture could hold more than 20,000 acres. The company went belly-up and got de-listed and all the investors lost their money, and Crichton not only lost money but he lost face too. He must have been upset about it, I certainly would have been.

So... all these things are good, but we have to dig deeper. Really... we have to push on this. This is a vital area of investigation, and it needs more meat, more substance. Let me see if I can find those threads you speak of, they sound helpful.

Thanks again Peter. Really, I'm not here to challenge anyone, that's not my purpose. I'm with you on this (hopefully), trying to do research. Maybe I can bring a few things to the table, we'll see. If not and y'all are way ahead of me, I'll skedaddle and y'all can carry on.

Crichton's relationship with DH Byrd is one of the areas I'd like to explore. Not just that there "was one", but the specific nature of it. I'm also interested in Byrd's activities in support of the Civil Air Patrol. There's just not a whole lot of actual source information on this stuff. People write volumes about it 'cause... yeah... it could be big important stuff. But we have to dig a little deeper on this - for instance - Crichton states that he was at this luncheon at the Adolphus, and just before 12:30 he "walked over to Elm St" and saw Jackie close enough to see her "pill box hat"... well, if you look at the map, walking over from the Adolphus to Elm by the shortest path would put Crichton right at the corner of Houston and Elm. If he's telling the truth, then he ought to appear in a picture somewhere, shouldn't he?

No, PDS is not on any forum, but his email address is no secret if you try to find it. I happen to know Peter, but that also dates me - I've been working on JFK's Assassination likely much longer than you've been alive. I was just reacting to how I know him to write without hidden meanings.

I don't know why you believe Crichton's statement of where he was in Dallas on the 22nd. Ruby and many others involved also lied about their whereabouts...who wouldn't if they were involved.

Collin's radio comes up over and over in Dallas and in the lives of those involved in/with Dallas....take a look at this:

----

Saturday, February 18, 2012

The Collins Radio Connections

Collins Radio by Bill Kelly
Back Channels Magazine,
Volume 1, No. 4. Summer, 1992 p. 1-2.
Edited By Peter Kross

According to the former chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), "the principal impetus for the overwhelming support…establishing the HSCA…came from another source the … Senate Committee on Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. In this report, dated April, 1976, the Senate committee published revelations that raised in the minds of many, serious possibilities of government complicity in the assassination."

"Two astonishing facts had been developed by the Senate investigations," the counsel noted, "- the CIA, as part of an assassination of foreign leaders (executive action) program, had enlisted the cooperation of top underworld figures in the United States in an effort to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba. In addition, word of the CIA/Mafia plots had been withheld by the Agency from the Warren Commission."

In a sense, at least one member of the Warren Commission, former CIA director Allen Dulles, knew of the plots to kill Castro, but did not inform the other commissioners. Instead, he provided them all with a book about American assassins, and how they are, historically, mentally deranged loners.

The final report of the HSCA concluded that, "in the judgment of this committee, the CIA/Mafia plots, like the AM/LASH plots, should have been aggressively explored as part of the 1963-64 investigations."

Both the CIA/Mafia and the AM/LASH plots to kill Castro were extensively evaluated by the Congressional committees, and the CIA eventually admitted to partaking in at least six different plots to kill Castro.

But three respected researchers Gaeton Fonzi, Timothy Crouse and Paul Hoch, separately questioned why the CIA would admit to its attempts to kill Castro with flashy shellfish toxins, exploding cigars and dart gun pens, yet fail to mention the October 1961 and the November 1971 plots involving Antonio Veciana.

Yet another plot, the Rex raid of October 31, 1963, which is on the public record, is another example of the government's failure to affirm secret operations to kill Castro that are directly entwined with the assassination of President Kennedy.

The Rex episode first came to light on October 31, 1963 when Fidel Castro announced that a team of assassins were arrested on a beach in Cuba. They had high powered rifles and other assassination weapons and confessed that the CIA had organized arm shipments to Cuban insurgents and had trained them to kill Cuban leaders.

According to Castro, the men arrived in Cuba aboard two small motor launches, marked with the name "the Rex." A New York Times reporter in Florida confirmed that the Rex, a ship docked at Palm Beach, Florida, was indeed missing two of its launches. It was later written, "President Kennedy had expressed his great annoyance to the CIA at the fact that the Rex, one of the CIA's boats used in raids on Cuba, docked at Palm Beach while he was there on vacation."

This raid also took place against the clearly stated policy of the U.S. government that, "no raid against Cuba were to originate from U.S. shores." The CIA even launched the Bay of Pigs invasion from bases in Nicaragua and Guatemala.

The New York Times published a photo of the Rex in its November 1, 1963 edition, and identified the 174 foot vessel as registered out of Bluefields, Nicaragua, "but in fact operating out of West Palm Beach, Florida."

A decommissioned U.S. Navy sub-chaser, the Rex, captained by Aiejandro Brooks, was the flagship of the CIA's operation JM/WAVE fleet. It was outfitted with searchlights, a crane for lifting its speedboats aft, elaborate electronic gear amidships, and had an arsenal that consisted of two 40 mm cannon, a 57 cal. Recoilless rifle, two 20 mm cannon and two 50 caliber machine guns.

The Belcher Oil Company of Miami, had bought the Rex from Paragon, a company owned by Luis Somoza of Nicaragua. The New York Times reported that, "dockage for the ship was said to be paid by Sea Shipping Co. from a post office box."

In November, 1963, the ship was being leased to the International Division of the Collins Radio Company of Richardson, Texas, to be used for possible ELENT (electronic intelligence) gathering activity.

What is significant about the Rex and its mission to deposit assassins in Cuba on October 31, 1963, is that Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, once visited the home of retired Admiral Chester Brouton, then an executive of Collins Radio, the company that leased the Rex. So someone associated with accused assassin of JFK worked for a company that was actively engaged in an assassination attempt against Castro just three weeks before the President was killed.

Oswald's association with Brouton is cited in a HSCA report, specifically in the document, "I'm a Patsy," written by George DeMohrenschildt, who knew Brouton personally and took Oswald and his wife to Brouton's home in suburban Dallas where they had lunch by the pool.

Brouton's position with Collins is also mentioned in Legend: The Secret Life of Lee Harvey Oswald by Edward J. Epstein, but the Rex incident is ignored by the HSCA as well as by Epstein.

Although the associations between Oswald and Brouton, Brouton and Collins and Collins and the Rex should have been enough to warrant an investigation of the corporate structure of Collins Radio, Inc. yet another Collins Radio employee was investigated immediately after the murder of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit on November 22, 1963.

Tippit was killed in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas within an hour of the President's death and his murder was also attributed to the President's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The final report of the HSCA claims that, "…the committee's investigation uncovered no direct evidence of a relationship between Oswald and Tippit, nor did it attribute any activity or association to Officer Tippit that could be deemed suspicious…"

But the items listed under the Committee's report Section 11, Volume XII Oswald-Tippit Associates, are indeed suspicious. This is a serious discrepancy between the stated conclusions of the HSCA and the evidence it developed and published as part of the public record.

As former Warren Commission counsel David Belin put it, "the Tippit murder is the Rosetta Stone of the Kennedy assassination," and although he meant it to convict Oswald as the lone assassin, it may assist in the unraveling of the covert conspiracy.

Under Section XI Austin's Barbecue, it is revealed that besides being a Dallas policeman, Tippit also held a job moonlighting as a bouncer at Austin's Drive-In restaurant. The owner of Austin's was a partner with Bert Bowman, who owned money to and lived with Ralph Paul, Jack Ruby's financial backer.

Ruby also owed money to Paul an estimated $15,000, and the $3,000 Ruby had with him when he shot Oswald was reportedly Paul's cash. Although Ruby might not have known officer Tippit, both men worked for the same Bowman/Paul combine.

Both Oswald and Tippit also frequented the same Dobb's House restaurant in Oak Cliff, and both sat at the same counter for breakfast together on the morning of the day before the assassination. Although they weren't seen conversing together, Oswald complained loudly about his eggs being too well done, and the waitress said that Tippit "shot him a glace."

The HSCA reports also show that shortly after Tippit's murder, Oswald was seen sitting in a parked car that belonged to Tippit's best friend, Carl Mather, who worked for Collins Radio.

Listed in the HSCA reports as "The Wise Allegation," because it originated with former Dallas newsman and mayor Wes Wise, the report reads: "Wise…had received information that a car near the scene of the Tippit shooting was traced to Carl Mather, a close friend of Tippit's….A mechanic who worked across the street had observed a car in a parking lot of the El Chico restaurant on the afternoon of November 22, after radio reports were being broadcast about the shooting in Dealey Plaza. The mechanic told Wise that after the assassination there were sirens blaring and police cars all over the area near the garage.

"He noticed," the report continues, "a man sitting in an irregularly parked car in the restaurant parking lot; the car was slightly hidden by a billboard. The man in the car appeared to be hiding, all the circumstances seemed so suspicious that the mechanic went across the street to get a better look."

"When the mechanic saw news accounts of the assassination on television, he saw Lee Harvey Oswald and recognized him as being the man he had seen in the car that afternoon."

So on the afternoon of JFK's murder, the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald is seen sitting in a car belonging to a close friend of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, who Oswald is also accused of killing. That friend, Carl Mather, worked for Collins Radio, a company that was actively engaged in at least one plot to assassinate Fidel Castro three weeks earlier.

According to Professor Peter Dale Scott, the Rex mission of October 31, 1963 was sponsored by the anti-Castro Cuban group known as the MDC the Movement Democrato Christiano, which also ran a commando training camp near Lake Ponchartrain in Louisiana that Oswald had previously tried to infiltrate. The FBI raided that camp, and made some arrests and stirred up some publicity.

Scott also says that the Rex mission may have included Watergate burglar Rolando Martinez.

Like may other unsolved mysteries surrounding the Kennedy assassination, the secret mission of the Rex is yet to be fully explained.

William Kelly, Jr. is the Co-Founder of the Committee for an Open Archives (COA), P.O. Box 6008, Washington, D.C., 20005-0708. His research on the assassination of President Kennedy is supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Constitutional Government, Investigative Journalism Project.


From Crime & Cover-up by Peter Dale Scott:

"An MDC-Somoza anti-Castro mission of October 1963 fro a Florida-based ship the Somozas called the Rex, involved both Martinez as skipper (according to Sturgis) and very probably Sturgis himself as well. This Florida based raid violated President Kennedy's publicly announced prohibition of Cuban exile raids launched, manned, or equipped from U.S. territory.' It came only one month after Sturgis himself had been publicly warned by U.S. government officials to desist from such activities." (Note NYT Sept. 16, 1963, p. 39)

In Harpers Magazine, R. Crile and Taylor Branch interviewed Martinez:

"Although Rolando Martinez was in many ways typical of the Agency's Cuban volunteers, he was more accomplished and experienced than most. When he surfaced in 1972 as one of the Cuban-Americans captured at the Watergate break-in, Martinez was still on the CIA payroll an had 354 missions to Cuba recorded in Agency files. As a boat captain in the clandestine navy of JM/WAVE, he completed fifty missions before the Bay of Pigs and would complete some seventy-five more during the first four years of the secret war." (Harpers, p. 56)

Rolando Martinez: "….I took a lot of weapons to Cuba. Some were very special weapons for very special purposes. They were powerful rifles with sophisticated scopes Springfields with bolt action, rifles used only by snipers. They were not sent to shoot pigeons or kill rabbits. Everyone in the underground was plotting to kill Castro, and the CIA was helping the underground. I was with the underground as well as the CIA, so you could say I was involved in the plots too, but that is all so obvious." (Harpers, p. 83)

Collins Radio & the JFK Assassination 1994

In October 1994 I gave a talk at the national conference of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) in Washington D.C. on the Collins Radio Connections to the assassination of President Kennedy.

Unlike the main speakers Dr. Cyril Wecht, John Newman, Fletcher Prouty, Michael Parenti, Mark Lane and Judge John Tunheim who were the featured speakers, my talk was in a side-room big enough for only a hundred or so people, but the room was full, and I was glad to see that Peter Dale Scott, Bill Turner and others I respected went out of their way to listen to my short, 20 minute presentation.

While most of what I talked about took place in the 1960s, thirty years previous, Washington was in the middle of a major big time government scandal which dominated the front pages of the Washington Post concerning the emergence, over the previous three years, of a huge $310 million federal building on a 68 acre site near Dulles Airport.

The official cover story was that this was the new national headquarters of the Collins Radio Division of Rockwell International, but eventually it was discovered that it would be the new headquarters for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), jointly operated by the Air Force and the CIA.

The very existence of the NRO was not officially acknowledged until 1992, and former CIA director R. James Woolsley testified that he was concerned that he had committed a serious security breather by uttering the initials "N.R.O."

On August 10, 1994, NRO director Jeffrey Harris and deputy director Jimmy Hill "nervously and reluctantly joined in the first public testimony in the agency's 34-year history," the New York Times reported on page one the next day.

"For four years, the reconnaissance office, the agency that builds and maintains the nation's multibillion dollar fleet of spy satellites, concealed the money for the headquarters by breaking it up into different accounts in its operating budget, its leaders testified….This was normal, they testified. Building the new headquarters….was in effect, a covert operation."

"We have been negligent, clearly negligent, for not showing the budget breakdown for this project," Roger Marsh, project manager for the new headquarters said.

John M. Broder, of the Los Angeles Times (Aug. 10, 1994) wrote that even former budget director Leon E. Panetta, who became White House Chief of Staff (and is now Sec. of Defense), "had no idea the four mid-rise office towers belonged to the government."

Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D. Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that committee members knew the building was being constructed but "budget estimates and details were given to the committee piecemeal and buried in larger intelligence accounts."

When DeConcini told Clinton, Panetta and national security advisor Anthony Lake, after they read about it in the news papers, DeConcini said the three "were caught by surprise."

The President ordered the building project declassified, released construction costs, but when DeConcini "urged Clinton to name independent auditors to conduct an inquiry into the project," the President instead "put the review in the hands of the CIA and Pentagon, who were responsible for hiding the project's spending in their budgets."

DeConcini, still fuming at the betrayal by the intelligence agencies, said he had no idea whether the investigation would uncover other multi-million-dollar clandestine operations. "For all we know, they might have a battleship floating around out in the Pacific with a bunch of communications on it that we don't know about."

Then it got even better, when the 3rd Anniversary issue of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s George Magazine (Oct. 1998) included an article called "The Spys Who Lost $4 Billion," by David Wise, who had previously co-authored groundbreaking book "The Invisible Government."

"The NRO is a top secret spy organization whose satellites…can photograph a license plate from outer space,….so how did it lose billions of dollars from its own budget?, Wise asked.

According to Wise, "With some 3,000 employees and an annual budget of around $6.2 billion,….the NRO spends far more money than any of the government's 13 primary intelligence agencies. It's budget is twice that of the CIA….and has played a key role in virtually every major foreign policy event of the last 35 years."

"Yes, Virginia, there is a NRO."

And 35 years after its cover was blown by a front page story in the New York Times for fronting for the CIA in the operation of the Rex, the NRO pulled Collins Radio off the shelf to cover for the NRO's new headquarters, which they thought they could just build out in the Virginia suburbs without anybody knowing or asking what they were doing. And they tired to do it without the knowledge of the President, the head of the federal budget, the national security advisors or the head of the Congressional oversight committees.

Frank B. Strickland, Jr., deputy program manager of NRO's Support Office said, "Our adversaries will change tactics, and the adversaries themselves have changed. Now we have terrorists, rogue nations, nuclear proliferation. The NRO has to keep pace."

Collins Radio Connections

THE COLLINS RADIO CONNECTIONS to the Assassination of President Kennedy
By William E. Kelly Revised from report originally published in Backchannels magazine and presented at the national conference of the Coalition On Political Assassination (COPA), October 10, 1994.

If the assassination of President Kennedy was the result of not only a conspiracy, but a covert action and coup d'etat, as many people believe, there should be evidence of this from both the scene of the crime(s) as well as from the highest echelons of power among those who took over the government. This would be especially so if the assassination was not the actions of a lone-nut or a foreign attack by Cuban or Soviet intelligence service sponsors, but an internal manipulation of policy and control, an inside job.

As Edward Luttwack describes in his "How-To" book Coup d'etat A Practical Handbook(Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, p. 117), "Control over the flow of information emanating from the political center will be our most important weapon in establishing… authority after the coup. The seizure of the main means of mass communication will thus be a task of crucial importance."

At the scene(s) of the crime, eyewitness testimony is always suspect. Homicide detectives prefer more solid leads that provide documented evidence that can be introduced in court, such as fingerprints, telephone and automobile license records.

There are a number of automobile license records of significance in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy, including the tampered photo among the possessions of Lee Harvey Oswald of the license on 1957 Chevy in General Walker's driveway, plus the license numbers of cars seen in Dealey Plaza photos immediately before and after the assassination.

Most significant however, is the Texas plate PP4537. This number was jotted down on a piece of paper by an elderly Oak Cliff mechanic T. F. White, who noticed a man acting suspiciously behind the wheel of a 1958 two tone Plymouth sedan shortly after the murder of Dallas Policeman J.D. Tippitt in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. The car was parked behind a billboard in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant, with the driver, like White, watching the flurry of Dallas police cars racing down the street with sirens blaring, called to the nearby scene of the shooting of Tippit.

White walked across the street to get closer and exchanged glances with the man, who quickly drove away. White wrote down the license tag PP4537 on a piece of paper and forgot about it until later that day when he saw Lee Harvey Oswald on television and recognized him as the man he saw acting suspiciously in the Plymouth earlier that afternoon.

A few weeks later, when Dallas radio reporter and later mayor of Dallas Wes Wise gave a talk at the Oak Cliff restaurant, the owner of the garage where Mr. White worked mentioned the suspicious Plymouth to Wise, who then met White. White reluctantly told his story, but was reluctant to get involved, and Wise had to use all his powers of persuasion to convince White to share the information with him. Wise promised White he would not be brought into the investigation, but tat he, Wise, would handle it. "Do you have the piece of paper with the license number on it?" Wise asked, and sure enough, White had it right there in his pocket and gave it to Wise. It read: PP4537.

White told Wise that nobody knew who or what was really behind the assassination of President Kennedy and he really didn't want to get involved, but he handed over the paper to Wise, who passed it on to the police and FBI.

A quick check of the Texas plate #PP4537 indicated that it was assigned to Carl Mather, of Garland, Texas. When the FBI went out to the listed Garland address they found the two tone 1958 Plymouth right there in the driveway and knocked on the door. Mrs. Mather answered, acknowledged the car belonged to her husband, who was then away at work at Collins Radio, in nearby Richardson, Texas. When asked where her husband and the car was on Friday, November 22, 1963, she said that the car was in the parking lot at Collins Radio until sometime in the afternoon when her husband returned home and picked up the family to go to the Tippit residence to pay their respects to the widow and family of their good friend, who was murdered that day.

Instead of going out to Collins Radio to interview Mather however, the FBI went first to Mr. White, who Wes Wise had promised wouldn't be involved, and took additional statements from him, changing his story for the official reports and exchanging the two tone Plymouth to a red Ford Falcon. CBS News made a polite inquiry years later, leaving Carl Mather out of the documentary program they aired but listed Mrs. Mather in the programs credits. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) briefly looked into the affair, granted Mather immunity from prosecution to testify and then failed to question him under oath. The HSCA published a short report they titled "The Wise Allegation," when in fact Wes Wise made no allegations, and merely followed up on his reporter's instincts. He came up with an automobile license plate number that was scene near the murder of a Dallas policeman that was traced to one of the victim's best friends, Carl Mather, whose alibi is that he was at work at the time, at Collins Radio.

Documents later released under the JFK Act indicate that Mather was questioned by HSCA investigators and claimed that he worked on electronics at Collins, his specific job being the installation of the radio equipment aboard Air Force Two the Vice President's plane.

That this lead was not properly investigated, and remains uninvestigated today, is because such an inquiry actually does lead to the heart of the plot to murder not only Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, but as many believe, is tied directly to the assassination of President Kennedy. If the Tippit murder is connected to the assassination of the President, as the official stories alleges, then the Tippit murder may be the "Rosetta Stone" that could explain the mysteries of both murders.

The significance of the Collins Radio connections becomes apparent with a quick review of the published record, and that:

1. On November 1, 1963 the New York Times published a photograph of the ship the Rex, which Fidel Castro identified as the boat that dropped off a team of assassins in Cuba a few nights previous. The Rex was docked at Palm Beach, Florida, near the JFK family compound, and the Rex's Halloween eve mission was in clear violation of President Kennedy's March 1963 edict that no para-military raids against Cuba were to originate from U.S. shores. According to the article in the NYTs, the Rex had been sold by the Somoza regime in Nicaragua to the Belcher Oil Company, its dock fees paid by the CIA front company Sea Ship Inc., with the Rex then being leased to the Collins Radio Company of Richardson, Texas, "for scientific research."

2. Founded by Arthur Collins, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Collins Radio first made news headlines when young Collins was an amateur radio buff with the only (home made) radio receiver who could pick up the radio transmissions of Navy Commander Richard E. Byrd from his polar exploration expedition. [Richard Byrd is the cousin of the founder of the Civil Air Patrol and owner of the Texas School Book Depository building].

3. Collins Radio became a major defense contractor during World War II, and following the war, participated in Operation Paperclip, hiring Dr. Alex Lipisch, the former Nazi scientist who developed the Delta I glider and ME 163 Komet jet fighter. For Collins, Lipisch was assigned to the boat development program that worked with General Dynamics in attempting to build and refine a sleek, swift speedboat the V20 - that could be used for Cuban infiltration missions like the Rex mission. It was later used in Vietnam.

4. David Ferrie's telephone records reflect that in the weeks before the assassination he made frequent calls from the New Orleans law office of G. Ray Gill to the Belcher Oil Company of Dallas, Texas, the company that was the listed owner of the Rex.

5. In the week before the assassination, a reservation was made at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club for a large party of Collins Radio employees.

6. The Dallas P.D. Intelligence Division maintained a paid informant who worked at Collins Radio and reported on fellow employees who appeared suspicious or subversive, including one who was reported to subscribe to the leftist I.F. Stone Weekly.

7. When Lee Harvey Oswald returned to Texas from Soviet Russia, George DeMohrenschildt introduced him to retired Navy Admiral Chester Bruton, an executive at Collins Radio, with the idea of Oswald getting a job there, as he had worked in a radio factory in Minsk, USSR. Oswald and Marina visited Bruton with DeMohrenschilt.

8. At the time of the assassination Adml. Bruton was working on a top-secret nuclear submarine communications project for Collins, with the Navy's nuclear sub radar and communications HQ being based at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, close neighbors of Michael Paine's family island.

9. In 1963 Collins Radio began receiving large military contracts including one for the construction of a microwave communications network in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam.
10. After Oswald was murdered while in Dallas police custody by Jack Ruby, his widow Marina P. Oswald married former Collins Radio employee Kenneth Porter.

11. In Miami, Florida, a Cuban exile, and former executive of Collins Radio, was murdered, assassinated in a still unsolved homicide.

12. Collins Radio supplied and maintained the equipment used by the Voice of America, all manned NASA space flights, the Strategic Air Command (SAC), as well as all equipment used for the CIA's Guatemalan and Cuban operations. Most significantly, Collins Radio was responsible for installing and maintaining all radio equipment aboard Air Force One, Air Force Two and the Cabinet's plane.

13. According to the Collins Radio Annual Report to stockholders for 1963-64, Collins Radio not only installed and maintained the radios aboard most military and executive branch planes, they also operated the station known as "Liberty" at their Cedar Rapids, Iowa headquarters, which served as a relay station for all radio communications between the White House, the Pentagon, Air Force One, Air Force Two, the Cabinet plane and Andrews AFB in Washington.

[This "Liberty" station is misidentified on most transcripts of the edited version of the radio transmissions from Air Force One on 11/22/63. "Air Force One, the Presidential airplane, was placed in service in 1962 using communications equipment developed and manufactured by Collins. The aircraft…was modified to meet special requirements…In 1962, the station many remember as "Liberty" was opened and operated from the new communications building….(in Cedar Rapids, Iowa)…Collins had a contract with the Air Force to serve as either the primary communications station or as a backup whenever Air Force One, the presidential aircraft, and other aircraft in the VIP fleet carried cabinet members or high ranking military officers. Over the airwaves the station's call word was Liberty.'" From Collins Radio the First 50 Years.]

In his book The Making of a President 1964, Theodore H. White wrote: "There is a tape recording in the archives o the government which best recaptures the sound of the hours as it waited for leadership. It is a recording of all the conversations in the air, monitored by the Signal Corps Midwestern center Liberty,' between Air Force One in Dallas, the Cabinet plane over the Pacific, and the Joint Chiefs' Communications Center in Washington….On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, learned the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President's mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick."

According to the analysis of E. Martin Schotz and Vincent Salandria (in History Will Not Absolve Us, 1996), "And yet the White House had informed President Johnson and the other occupants of Air Force One, all of them witnesses to the hail of bullets which had poured down on Dealey Plaza, that as of the afternoon of the assassination there was to be no conspiracy and that Oswald was to be the lone assassin. If White's report were correct this would mean that federal officials in Washington were marrying the government to the cover-up of Oswald as the lone assassin virtually instantaneously. This could have occurred only if those federal authorities had had foreknowledge that the evidence would implicate Oswald and that he would have no confederates.' An innocent government could not have reacted in such a fashion internally."

Unfortunately, there is no longer "a tape recording in the archives of the government," as the original, unedited, multiple tape recordings of the AF1 radio transmissions cannot be located despite an Act of Congress, the request of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. Our government seems to have simply lost the recordings, with no records being kept of their whereabouts or destruction, if in fact they were destroyed.

The Final Report of the ARRB (p. 116) notes: "6. White House Communications Agency. "WHCA was, and is, responsible for maintaining both secure (encrypted) and unsecured (open) telephone, radio and telex communications between the President and the government of the United States. Most of the personnel that constitute this elite agency are U.S. military communications specialists; many, in 1963, were from the Army Signal Corps. On November 22, 1963, WHCA was responsible for communications between and among Air Force One and Two, the White House Situation Room, the mobile White House, and with the Secret Service in the motorcade."

"The Review Board sought to locate any audio recordings of voice communications to or from Air Force One on the day of the assassination, including communications between Air Force one and Andrews Air Force Base during the return flight from Dallas to Washington D.C. As many people are now aware of, in the 1970s, the LBJ Presidential Library released edited audio cassettes of the unsecured, or open voice conversations with Air Force One, Andrews AFB, the White House Situation Room, and the Cabinet Aircraft carrying the Secretary of State and other officials on November 22, 1`963. The LBJ Library version of these tapes consists of about 110 minutes of voice transmissions, but the tapes are edited and condensed, so the Review Board staff sought access to unedited, uncondensed versions. Since the edited versions of the tapes contain considerable talk about both the forthcoming autopsy on the President, as well as the reaction of a government in crisis, the tapes are of considerable interest to assassination researchers and historians."

"Given that the LBJ Library released the tapes in the 1970s, the paper trail is now sketch and quite cold. The LBJ Library staff is fairly confident that the tapes originated with the White House Communications Agency (WHCA). The LBJ Library staff told the Review Board staff that it received the tapes from the White House as part of the original shipment of President Johnson's papers in 1968 or 1969. According to the LBJ Library's documentation, the accession card reads: "WHCA?" and is dated 1975. The Review Board staff could not locate any records indicating who performed the editing, or when, or where."

"The Review Board's repeated written and oral inquiries of the White House Communications Agency did not bear fruit. The WHCA could not produce any records that illuminated the provenance of the edited tapes."

At the time I delivered my report on "The Collins Radio Connections" to the National COPA Conference in Washington in October, 1994, the Washington Post had just then exposed the true occupant of a new, mammoth, suburban Virginia building. It was not the headquarters for Collins Radio/Rockwell International as had been previously reported, but they had just been the cooperating cover company for the super secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), just as Collins Radio had served as a cover for the CIA in the operation of the Rex in Cuba in1963.

Also, in the October, 1998 issue of John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s George Magazine, - David Wise reported on how the NRO had "lost" $6 billion in U.S. taxpayer's money, and specifically mentioned the fiasco surrounding the construction of the HQ building, or which Collins/Rockwell served as a cover company.

[Peter Lemkin]

And this little snippet from Doug Horne, "Postscript: Researcher Bill Kelly has prepared and posted a transcript of the "Clifton" version of the Air Force One tapes on his blogsite, "JFK Countercoup," as well as much illuminating background information that will better inform anyone interested in this subject---information about Curtis LeMay and JFK; Colonel Dorman, LeMay's Aide; and "Liberty," the Collins Radio facility whose job is was to record air-to-ground Presidential communications, beginning in 1962. Here is the link to Bill Kelly's Air Force One transcript: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/...ssion.html

My own transcript of what I call "key conversations" from the "Clifton" version of the Air Force One tapes is now posted at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, and can be accessed by clicking on this link:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...cId=146531 "

[Peter Lemkin]

Jack Crichton, Stage Manager [from: http://whowhatwhy.org/2013/11/20/bush-an...-camelot/]
If Poppy Bush was busy on November 22, 1963, so was his friend Jack Crichton. Bush's fellow GOP candidate was a key figure in a web of military intelligence figures with deep connections to the Dallas Police Department and as previously noted, to the pilot car of JFK's motorcade.
Crichton came back into the picture within hours of Kennedy's death and the subsequent arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, when a peculiar cordon sanitaire went up around Marina Oswald. The first to her side was Republican activist and precinct chairman Ilya Mamantov, a vociferous anti-Communist who frequently lectured in Dallas on the dangers of the Red menace.
When investigators arrived, Mamantov stepped up as interpreter and embellished Marina's comments to establish in no uncertain terms that the "leftist" Lee Harvey Oswald had been the gunman the lone gunman who killed the president.
It is interesting of course that the Dallas police would let an outsider in particular, a right-wing Russian émigré handle the delicate interpreting task. Asked by the Warren Commission how this happened, Mamantov said that he had received a phone call from Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin. After a moment's thought, Mamantov then remembered that just preceding Lumpkin's call he had heard from Jack Crichton.
It was Crichton who had put the Dallas Police Department together with Mamantov and ensured his place at Marina Oswald's side at this crucial moment.
Despite this revelation, Crichton almost completely escaped scrutiny. The Warren Commission never interviewed him. Yet, as much as anyone, Crichton embodied a confluence of interests within the oil-intelligence-military nexus. And he was closely connected to Poppy in their mutual efforts to advance the then-small Texas Republican Party, culminating in their acceptance of the two top positions on the state's Republican ticket in 1964.
Jack Crichton

During World War II, Crichton had served in the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA. Postwar, he began working for the company of petroleum czar Everette DeGolyer and was soon connected in petromilitary circles at the highest levels. A review of hundreds of corporate documents and newspaper articles shows that when Crichton left DeGolyer's firm in the early fifties he became involved in an almost incomprehensible web of companies with overlapping boards and ties to DeGolyer. Many of them were backed by some of North America's most powerful families, including the Du Ponts of Delaware and the Bronfmans, owners of the liquor giant Seagram.
Crichton was so plugged into the Dallas power structure that one of his company directors was Clint Murchison Sr., king of the oil depletion allowance, and another was D. Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository building.
Clint Murchison Sr.

A typical example of this corporate cronyism came in 1952, when Crichton was part of a syndicate including Murchison, DeGolyer, and the Du Ponts that used connections in the fascist Franco regime to acquire rare drilling rights in Spain. The operation was handled by Delta Drilling, which was owned by Joe Zeppa of Tyler, Texas the man who transported Poppy Bush from Tyler to Dallas on November 22, 1963.
It was in 1956 that the bayou-bred Crichton started up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment. He would serve as the intelligence unit's only commander through November 22, 1963, continuing until he retired from the 488th in 1967, at which time he was awarded the Legion of Merit and cited for "exceptionally outstanding service."
[B]Gimme Shelter[/B]
[B]Besides his oil work and his spy work, the disarmingly folksy Crichton wore a third hat. He was an early and central figure in an important Dallas institution that is virtually forgotten today: the city's Civil Defense organization. Launched in the early 1950s as cold war hysteria grew, it was a centerpiece of a kind of officially sanctioned panic response that, like the response to September 11, 2001, had a potential to serve other agendas.[/B]
[B]So avid and extensive was the Dallas civil defense effort that the conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey singled it out for special praise in his syndicated column in September 1960: "The Communists, since 1917, have sold Communism to more people than have been told about Christ after 2,000 years," Harvey wrote, a sentiment common in rightist circles of the era.[/B]
[B]But they got their converts one at a time. You and I can convert' two others to become militant Americans this week . . . That's precisely the nature of the counterattack that has been mounted in Dallas.[/B]
[B]Early in 1961, Crichton was the moving force behind a cold war readiness program called "Know Your Enemy," which focused on the Communist intention to destroy the American way of life. In October 1961, Dallas mayor Earle Cabell introduced a short documentary Communist Encirclement 1961. Afterward, the Dallas Morning News wrote that the Channel 8 switchboard was "flooded . . . with calls from viewers lauding the program, which deals frankly with Communist infiltration."[/B]
[B]So great was the sense of alarm that at the 1961 Texas State Fair in Dallas, 350 people per hour made their way through an exhibitor's bomb shelter.[/B]
[B] In April 1, 1962, Dallas Civil Defense, with Crichton heading its intelligence component, opened an elaborate underground command post under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum. Because it was intended for "continuity-of-government" operations during an attack, it was fully equipped with communications equipment.[/B]
[B]With this shelter in operation on November 22, 1963, it was possible for someone based there to communicate with police and other emergency services. There is no indication that the Warren Commission or any other investigative body or even JFK assassination researchers looked into this facility or the police and Army Intelligence figures associated with it.[/B]
[B]On November 22, Crichton suggested Mamantov to the police department as the ideal person to interpret for Marina. His basis for knowing this was that in his role in military intelligence he maintained surveillance of Russians in Dallas, working closely in this regard with the police department.[/B]
[B]Marina's statements through Mamantov would play a crucial role in starting a chain of events that could have led to a U.S. missile strike on Cuba. In the hours following Kennedy's assassination, the Dallas Police Department passed along information purportedly gleaned from Marina Oswald that suggested possible ties between her husband and the government of Cuba.[/B]
[B]Though the information would turn out to be wrong, it was quickly passed to Army Intelligence, which then passed it along to the U.S. Strike Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, the unit that would have directed an attack on the island had someone ordered it in those chaotic first hours after Kennedy's death. That this sequence of events took place is confirmed by the original Army cable from military intelligence in Texas, declassified a decade later. What is not clear is how close matters ever got to zero hour.[/B]
[B]A key element in this tangled tale is the little-appreciated overlap between the Dallas Police Department and Army Intelligence. As Crichton, who has since died, would reveal in a little-noted oral history in 2001, there were "about a hundred men in that unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department."[/B]
[B]Thus Crichton was a crucial figure linking many seemingly disparate elements: military intelligence, local police, the GOP, the White Russians, the oil community, George de Mohrenschildt, and Poppy Bush.[/B]

[R.K. Locke]

I think the evidence shows clearly that COG was an important component of the assassination in one way or another. The next question is: what is the actual meaning/significance of COG?

[Peter Lemkin]

I think the evidence shows clearly that COG was an important component of the assassination in one way or another. The next question is: what is the actual meaning/significance of COG?

Is this a rhetorical question? I think Peter Dale Scott has repeatedly in his articles and books laid out [as have a very few others] what 'COG's' significance is. The name is deceptive, as is its [under- to never-stated purpose]. It is a secret means of controlling the US and World polity from the shadows; for trumping the Constitution and Laws of the United States and for putting in place a silent and slow coup d'etat until it is complete - as a National Security Neo-Fascist Police State with secret communications abilities; separate command structure; survivable bunkers; sworn-to-secrecy heads and staff; and prison camps and the means to arrest and detail those who would challenge such moves in them. It is a bit more, but that is the short summary and end game as I read it. It has been moving along since just after WW2 and has been used for various covert and false-flag operations [JFK Assassination, October Surprise, others]...but was really used in force and set into effect [possibly never retracted] on 9/11/01 - the date America ceased to be a Constitutional Republic and was a secretly controlled state, thanks to COG.

[Brian Castle]

I think the evidence shows clearly that COG was an important component of the assassination in one way or another.

Hi RK - yes, Johnson took the oath of office almost immediately.

I think the evidence shows clearly that COG was an important component of the assassination in one way or another. The next question is: what is the actual meaning/significance of COG?

COG means something specific. It means the evacuation of certain key personnel to the Mt Weather COG site. This actually happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis, at least one Congressman remembers being taken to Mt Weather.

Still looking for the source evidence that says that either the Dallas EOC or Mt Weather was engaged that day.

[Peter Lemkin]

I think the evidence shows clearly that COG was an important component of the assassination in one way or another.

Hi RK - yes, Johnson took the oath of office almost immediately.

I think the evidence shows clearly that COG was an important component of the assassination in one way or another. The next question is: what is the actual meaning/significance of COG?

COG means something specific. It means the evacuation of certain key personnel to the Mt Weather COG site. This actually happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis, at least one Congressman remembers being taken to Mt Weather.

Still looking for the source evidence that says that either the Dallas EOC or Mt Weather was engaged that day.

I would caution persons to not so quickly conclude we know even vaguely all the details of COG; for ALL of it - even its existence is top secret. Certainly NONE of the procedures, stages or levels of COG, facilities [and they certainly include more than just Mt. Weather - in fact it is known that more than ONE D.C. area facility underground exists with others in other parts of the country - one main one inside Cheyenne Mt. outside of Colorado Springs*. The eight [?] 'Doomsday E1B planes' also likely are flying COG centers.]. I would imagine there are various levels that activate certain illegal 'laws'/edits, facilities, persons to be underground, communication links, who-knows-what-else. Somewhere on this site the use of the Dallas EOC during 11/22 is discussed, but I can't locate it yet. I think Mt. Weather on that date is not important. By the way, there was recently a confession of a man who claimed to be the White House link on COG on 11/22/63 - but it can not be confirmed, as he who could isn't willing to prove what he said on the 60th. He was, however, in a position that may have allowed him to be just such a link. There seems to be a COG 'center' in the basement bunker of the White House and there certainly was at least a White House communications center/link on 11/22/63 somewhere in or near the White House if not also in AF1 then [likely - See Kelly's piece on the AF1 tapes!]

*some of the MANY facilities I hint about scattered all over the USA are also Nuclear War Command Posts and/or 'Homeland' Security Posts in time of 'National Emergency' - it seems that some of these either double as or share facilities with COG command and control facilities/capabilities.

[Peter Lemkin]

Tip of an 'iceberg' of underground facilities and command bunkers....



see, for example, also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex [and remember this is Mockingbird controlled wikipedia!]

[Peter Lemkin]

Emergency Command Posts and the Continuity of Government

[B]National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) A militarized Boeing E-4B (converted from a commercial 747-200) based at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, and ready for take-off on 15 minutes' notice, is available to the president and vice president for commanding nuclear forces from the air during a crisis.1 At least one aircraft (there are four in all) is always on alert with a full battle staff. When the President travels around the country or overseas in Air Force One (the designation for one of several aircraft at the president's disposal in peacetime), a NAOC often flies to a nearby location.2 While colloquially known as the "doomsday plane," the official code name for NAOC is "Night Watch." Classified assessments during the cold war questioned whether the president or his designated successor could actually reach the aircraft in the event of a nuclear attack, let alone get off the ground in time. Once airborne, the specially shielded and configured plane would allow the president to coordinate a nuclear war with senior military commanders (each of whom has his own airborne command post) and, if necessary, transmit EAMs to launch a nuclear attack.3[/B]

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project was completed in August 1998 and resulted in the book Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 edited by Stephen I. Schwartz. These project pages should be considered historical.

---

Several command posts have been established for use in the event of a nuclear emergency.

Although plans initiated under President Jimmy Carter and fortified during the Reagan administration envisioned a protracted nuclear war lasting days or weeks, NAOC, like all the other airborne command posts, can only remain aloft for seventy-two hours at most (assuming in-flight refueling from KC-135 tankers also kept on alert), at which point its engine oil will begin to break down and require replacement. A growing concern following the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens (whose ash drifted across much of the northern United States and forced the diversion of downwind commercial airline traffic) was that the large amounts of fallout generated by a Soviet attack on U.S. cities and military bases might clog the intakes of jet engines, further jeopardizing the survival of airborne command posts.4
Alternative Underground Command Posts Alternative underground command posts were built in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia (two), and West Virginia.
Site R/Alternate National Military Command Center (ANMCC): Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania. Blasted out of Raven Rock Mountain, about 6 miles (9.67 kilometers) north of Camp David on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, this underground bunker was built in around-the-clock shifts between 1950 and 1953 as a backup Pentagon and communications center should Washington, D.C., be destroyed. Site R's "footprint" is nearly 260,000 square feet (24,180 square meters); its total usable floor space is perhaps three times larger. Operated by nearby Fort Detrick, Site R's facilities are designed to handle 3,000 people and include sophisticated computer and communications equipment, a reservoir, medical and dental facilities, dining hall, barber shop, and chapel. Although twenty-four-hour staffing of the site ended in February 1992, by October 1997 more than 500 military and civilian personnel still worked at the facility.5Construction costs are unknown but likely match or exceed the $1 billion spent on Mount Weather. According to the FYDP, from fiscal 1962 to 1992 (the last year funds were recorded as being expended), maintaining and operating the ANMCC cost more than $1 billion.
NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex (NCMC): Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Planned in the mid to late 1950s and built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between June 1961 and May 1964, the NCMC ?dug out of Cheyenne Mountain replaced NORAD's previous vulnerable aboveground facilities in a converted hospital at Ent Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado. The NCMC was designed to protect the headquarters of the North American early warning and control network (jointly operated by the U.S. and Canada) from nuclear attack. Its primary mission was to detect and assess a Soviet nuclear attack, notify senior military commanders, and coordinate the launching of retaliatory strikes before the first Soviet warheads detonated. Although shielded by 1,750 feet (533 meters) of granite, the NCMC became vulnerable to direct attack by Soviet missiles deployed in the late 1960s. Inside 4 1/2 acres (196,020 square feet; 18,212 square meters) of the mountain, some 115,000 bolts shore up the wall (two noncommissioned officers continually check and tighten these bolts to keep the walls from weakening and collapsing). Fifteen buildings rest atop more than 1,300 large metal springs (3.95 to 4 feet [1.2 meters] long, 3 inches [7.6 centimeters] thick, and 20 inches [50.8 centimeters] in diameter), designed to cushion the shock of nearby detonations. The entire installation is sealed off by 30-ton blast doors, 3 feet (0.9 meters) thick, that can be hydraulically closed in less than a minute. The cost of the project by the end of 1965 totaled some $695 million.6 At present, NORAD monitors data from early warning satellites and radars and tracks more than 8,000 objects in near-Earth orbit. Most of these objects (90 percent) are "space junk" consisting of paint chips, metal hardware, and other debris associated with past space missions. Using sophisticated radars and computers, NORAD monitors everything and reports potential hazards in order to avoid damage to orbiting satellites or the Space Shuttle.
Costs for the NCMC from 1962 through 1995 are listed in the FYDP under four program elements: 102310F "NCMC Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment" ($1.7 billion), 102311F NCMC "Space Defense Systems" ($3.0 billion), 305906F "NCMC Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment" ($875 million), and 305907F "NCMC Space Defense Systems" ($49 million), for a total of $5.6 billion over thirty-three years.
High Point Special Facility (SF)/Mount Weather: Berryville, Virginia. The Mount Weather site is an unacknowledged continuity of government (CoG) facility operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The 200,000-square-foot (18,600-square-meter) facility, with an estimated floor space of three times that amount, also houses FEMA's National Emergency Coordinating Center, which operates twenty-four hours a day, tracking worldwide disasters, both natural and manmade. Located on a 434-acre mountain site 48 miles (77 kilometers) (by air) from Washington, D.C., the surface complex includes about a dozen buildings staffed by more than 240 employees. The Bureau of Mines began constructing the facility's tunnels in 1954, which were completed by the Army Corps of Engineers under the code name "Operation High Point." Total construction costs, adjusted for inflation, are estimated to have exceeded $1 billion. Tunnel roofs are shored up with some 21,000 iron bolts driven eight to 10 feet (2.4 to 3 meters) into the overhead rock. The entrance is protected by a guillotine gate and a 34-ton blast door that is 10 feet (3 meters) tall, 20 feet (6 meters) wide, and 5 feet (1.5 meters) thick and reportedly takes 10 to 15 minutes to open or close.
Completed in 1958, the underground bunker includes a hospital, crematorium, dining and recreation areas, sleeping quarters, reservoirs of drinking and cooling water, an emergency power plant, and a radio and television studio that is part of the Emergency Broadcasting System. From 1961 to 1970, the site was connected to the Bomb Alarm System, a network of sensors mounted on telephone poles adjacent to ninety-nine cities and military bases which would detect a nuclear detonation by its intense thermal flash and signal this event to Mount Weather and other military command posts, permitting both damage assessment and helping to confirm whether or not an attack had occurred. A large electronic map in a special room would indicate via tiny red light bulbs where explosions had occurred (this system was later replaced by more sophisticated space-based sensors).7 A series of side tunnels accommodates a total of twenty office buildings, some of which are three stories tall. Wth an on-site sewage treatment plant that can process 90,000 gallons (340,650 liters) a day and two 250,000-gallon (946,250-liter) aboveground storage tanks, the facility can support a population of 200 for up to 30 days. Although it is designed to accommodate several thousand people (with sleeping cots for 2,000), only the President, the Cabinet, and Supreme Court are provided private sleeping quarters.
For continuity of government purposes, senior officials are divided into Alpha, Bravo and Charlie teams: one would remain in Washington, another relocate to Mount Weather, and the third disperse to other relocation sites. Officials at Mount Weather track the location of everyone designated to succeed the president twenty-four hours a day. Designated evacuees carry special identification cards, and regular briefings and drills are conducted. Officials are not allowed to bring their families. The only full-scale activation of the facility came on November 9, 1965, during the great Northeastern power blackout.8 The 1974 crash of a TWA plane into the mountain, killing ninety-two people, brought the site to widespread public attention. Until May 1991, the site's underground weather station issued daily reports on potential fallout patterns.
From the mid-1950s until 1970, the 2857th Test Squadron, a special group of helicopter pilots and rescue workers based at Olmstead Air Force Base in Pennsylvania, and known as the Outpost Mission, was trained to fly to the White House in the event of nuclear attack, retrieve the president and first family, and relocate them to Mount Weather or several other sites, including (from 1961 to 1970) the National Emergency Command Post Afloat. If the team should have difficulty reaching the White House before an attack, it carried specialized equipment to break into the bunker underneath the executive mansion; a backup unit with heavier equipment, including cranes, was also available if the damage proved more severe.9
Mount Pony: Culpeper, Virginia. For nearly three decades, the Federal Reserve Board operated a 139,800-square-foot (13,001 square-meter) radiation hardened facility inside Mount Pony, just east of Culpeper, Virginia. Dedicated on December 10, 1969, the 400-foot-long (122-meter) bunker is built of steel-reinforced concrete 1 foot (0.3 meters) thick. Lead-lined shutters can be dropped to shield the windows of the semi-recessed facility, which is covered by 2 to 4 feet (0.6 to 1.2 meters) of dirt, and surrounded by barbed-wire fences and a guard post. The seven computers at the facility, operated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, were the central node for the transfer of all American electronic funds.
Until July 1992, the bunker, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) southwest of Washington, D.C., also served as a facility for the continuity of government. With a peacetime staff of 100, the site was designed to support an emergency staff of 540 for thirty days, but only 200 beds were provided in the men's and women's dormitories, which would be shared on a "hot-bunk" basis by the staff, working around the clock. A pre-planned menu of freeze-dried foods for the first thirty days of occupation was stored on site; private wells would provide uncontaminated water following an attack. Other noteworthy features of the facility were a cold storage area for maintaining bodies that could not be promptly buried (owing to high radiation levels), an incinerator, indoor pistol range, and a helicopter landing pad. Until 1988, Mount Pony stored several billion dollars worth of currency, including a large number of $2 bills in its 23,500-square-foot (2,186-square0-meter) vault, shrink-wrapped and stacked on pallets 9 feet (2.7 meters) high. This money was to be used "to replenish currency supplies east of the Mississippi."10 In November 1997 Congress authorized the transfer of the facility from the Federal Reserve to the Library of Congress, which, using funds from a private foundation, will purchase and upgrade the site to house its extensive motion picture, television, and recorded sound collections.11
The Greenbrier (Casper): White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. From 1962 until its decommissioning on July 31, 1995, this CoG facility, code-named Casper (later Greek Island) was to house the U.S. Congress. It is located on the grounds of the prestigious Greenbrier resort.12 The 112,000-square-foot (10,416-meter) bunker is 64 feet (19.5 meters) beneath the West Virginia wing of the hotel and includes a complete medical clinic, a dining room (with wooden frames for false windows with country scenes painted on them), a television studio (to broadcast to the surviving citizenry), communications and cryptographic equipment, decontamination showers, and a "pathological waste incinerator" (otherwise known as a crematorium). Until 1992, the small staff maintaining the site under the guise of television repair company quietly tracked all prescription medication for each member of Congress and kept fresh supplies on hand in the event the facility was called into action.13
Construction of the site which required 50,000 tons of concrete began in 1959 and took two and a half years to complete. The steel-reinforced concrete walls of the bunker, which is 20 feet (6.1 meters) below ground, are 2 feet (0.6 meters) thick. The facility includes separate chambers for the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as a larger room for joint sessions. These are located in the "Exhibit Hall" of the West Virginia Wing, which includes vehicular and pedestrian entrances that can be quickly sealed by 20-ton blast doors. The site was designed to house about 1,000 people for two months, although plans called for commandeering the entire resort (capacity: 6,500 persons) in the event of an emergency. While the cost of maintaining the facility for more than 30 years is unknown, construction costs from 1959 to 1962 totaled some $86 million.14

Notes:

1Until 1983, this aircraft then known as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post was based at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, a short helicopter ride from the White House. That year, in response to long-standing concerns about the vulnerability of the aircraft to an attack by Soviet SLBMs, the DOD assistant secretary responsible for C3I issues testified before Congress that NEACP would be moved inland to an undisclosed location where it could take off and rendezvous with the president, who would be evacuated from Washington by helicopter (maintained on alert at the Marine Corps Air Facility in Quantico, Virginia). The day after this testimony, Senator Dan Quayle (Republican of Indiana) surprised the DOD by issuing a press release announcing the stationing of NEACP at Grissom Air Force Base in Peru, Indiana (more than 50 miles [80.5 kilometers] north of Indianapolis). Quayle told reporters he had personally lobbied to have the aircraft transferred to Grissom to keep the base there open and to ensure that the surrounding community reaped the $4.6 million in extra spending generated by NEACP's presence. See Ford,
The Button,pp. 136-137.
[Back]
2 The first president to fly on NEACP was Jimmy Carter. The last was reportedly Ronald Reagan, who used it to travel from Texas to Washington, D.C. on November 15, 1981. [Back]

3 For a graphical depiction of NEACP and a general discussion of its capabilities, see Kenneth J. Stein, "America's Top-Secret Doomsday Plane," Popular Mechanics, May 1994, pp. 38-41. [Back]

4 Ford, The Button, p. 163. [Back]

5 From its creation, until October 1, 1997, Site R was operated by Fort Ritchie, Maryland. The impending closure of Fort Ritchie under a base realignment initiative necessitated the shirt to Fort Detrick. In 1992 Colonel Mark Scuerman, the site's commandant, proposed opening the facility for public tours, a plan rejected by DOD officials. See "Underground Pentagon Command to be Shifted," Baltimore Sun, April 29, 1996, p. 2B; Associated Press, "Secret Ceremony Seals Handover at Secret Site," Washington Times, October 13, 1997, p. A4. [Back]

6 David W. Shircliffe, NORAD's Underground COC, Initial Requirement to Initial Operation: 1956-1966, Historical Reference Paper 12, NORAD Public Affairs Office, January 1966 (classified, released with deletions under the Freedom of Information Act); U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Omaha District), The Federal Engineer-Damsites to Missile Sites: A History of the Omaha District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Omaha, Nebr., 1984), pp. 199-213.[Back]

7 This system was entirely dependent on commercial telephone and telegraph lines and was thus susceptible to power outages and other phenomena that limited its reliability. Although it helped in at least one instance (during the Cuban Missile Crisis) to confirm a false warning of missile attack by failing to signal a nuclear detonation, during the Northeast power blackout on November 9, 1965 the system's console at Mount Weather correctly noted the power outage at twenty-two sensor sites, but also reported that weapons had just exploded near Salt Lake City, Utah, and Charlotte, North Carolina. This condition triggered the full alert of the facility. It was only several days after the event that it was determined that the two detonation indications had been caused by faulty wiring in the console itself. Had such an error occurred during a time of international tension, the consequences could have far more serious. See Sagan, The Limits of Safety, pp. 130, 171, 183. [Back]

8 Ted Gup, "Doomsday Hideaway," Time, December 9, 1991, pp. 26-29. [Back]

9 Gup, "The Doomsday Blueprints," pp. 32-39. [Back]

10 Telephone conversation, Stephen I. Schwartz, with G.R. Schaar, vice president, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, December 31, 1997. After 1988, this money was dispersed to various Federal Reserve banks and passed into general circulation. Gold was also stored at the site for a time. Edward Zuckerman, The Day After World War III(New York, Viking Press, 1984) pp. 287-88; Gup, "The Doomsday Blueprints," p. 38; David C. Morrison, " And Not a Single Bang for Their Bucks," National Journal, August 13, 1994, pp. 1924-25. [Back]

11 Richard Tapscott, "In Virginia, a Fortress for a Film Collection," Washington Post, November 16, 1997, p. B3. [Back]

12 Following the removal by the government of certain classified equipment, the Greenbrier's owner, the CSX Corporation, began offering tours of the bunker in April 1996. [Back]

13 Jim Stewart, report on the CBS Evening News, December 17, 1995. [Back]

14 Ted Gup, "The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway," Washington Post Magazine, May 31, 1992, pp. 10-15, 24-27; Tom Curley, "Inside Look at Cold War Secret," USA Today, November 7, 1995, p. 10A. (Construction costs of $14 million then-year dollars cited in this article were confirmed by Ted J. Kleisner, president and managing director of the Greenbrier, e-mail communication, July 31, 1997.) [Back]