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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChilling tape from Air Force One on day JFK shot just released.
This is supposed to be 43 minutes of tape that was edited out and thought lost.
CBS News)
It's been nearly a half-century since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
But new information from that day in Dallas has just been released -- audiotape of conversations between Air Force One and Washington.
For the first time, the complete audio record of the flight back from Dallas to Washington is available to the public online, from the National Archives, for free.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57368696/chilling-tape-from-air-force-one-on-day-jfk-shot/
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I'm getting the ear goggles on.
In the meantime, background for those new to the subject:
Kennedy Military Aide: LBJ Hid in Bathroom, Cried After JFK Assassination.
Steven M. Gillon
Resident historian of the History Channel
Huffington Post
This month will mark the 46th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A recently declassified oral history by Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, President Kennedy's military aide on the Dallas trip, sheds new light on the critical hours after the shooting. McHugh makes startling claims about Lyndon Johnson's behavior in the wake of the assassination.
The interview with McHugh, originally conducted for the John F. Kennedy Library in 1978, remained closed for 31 years. It was finally declassified in the spring of 2009. I just happened to be working at the Kennedy Library on the day the interview was opened to the public and have used it for the first time in my new book, The Kennedy Assassination -- 24 Hours After.
After being informed at Parkland Hospital that Kennedy was dead, Johnson raced back to Air Force One, where he waited for Mrs. Kennedy and the body of the slain president, and made preparations to take the Oath of Office. Back at the hospital, the Kennedy group loaded the body into a coffin, forced their way past a local justice of the peace, and hurried back to Love Field for the long ride back to Washington.
It was standard practice for the plane to take off as soon as the commander-in-chief was onboard. Even after McHugh had ordered the pilot to take off, however, "nothing happened." According to the newly declassified transcript, Mrs. Kennedy was becoming desperate to leave. "Mrs. Kennedy was getting very warm, she had blood all over her hat, her coat...his brains were sticking on her hat. It was dreadful," McHugh said. She pleaded with him to get the plane off the ground. "Please, let's leave," she said. McHugh jumped up and used the phone near the rear compartment to call Captain James Swindal. "Let's leave," he said. Swindal responded: "I can't do it. I have orders to wait." Not wanting to make a scene in front of Mrs. Kennedy, McHugh rushed to the front of the plane. "Swindal, what on earth is going on?" The pilot told him that "the President wants to remain in this area."
CONTINUED...
Those who remember that day know the fall-out continues to the present moment.
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay called JFK an "appeaser" to his face.
LeMay was one of the guys, along with JCS Chief Lyman Lemnitzer and CIA director Allen Dulles, who proposed a nuclear sneak-attack on the USSR for "late in 1963."
JFK's assassination would make a perfect pretext for war. Gee. What an odd coincidence.
Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?
Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.
James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell | September 21, 1994
During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.
The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.
But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.
The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.
CONTINUED...
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_the_us_military_plan_a_nuclear_first_strike_for_1963
The fact LeMay never revealed where he was on Nov. 22, 1963 is news to me. The fact the USAF couldn't find him is suspicious. The unedited AF One tape may be a watershed moment in United States history.
deutsey
(20,166 posts)I know it concluded there was "probably a conspiracy" but I'd like to read more about what led to that conclusion.
I was a kid when the HSCA was convened and remember regularly hearing about its investigation on TV, but it's mostly gone down the memory hole since then.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation, now republished by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, is an insider's account of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, where "reality" became irrelevant compared to the need to produce a report. In this book, Fonzi tells of the several leads he developed in anti-Castro and anti-Kennedy milieu of South Florida's Cuban exiles and disgruntled CIA officers.
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/The_Last_Investigation
deutsey
(20,166 posts)Great stuff! Thanks as always, Octofish!
RandomKoolzip
(18,536 posts)I'm not sure if it's in print, but it's a great read.
deutsey
(20,166 posts)I'm familiar with Gaeton, just never saw his book. I'll see if I can track it down.
T S Justly
(884 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)EXCERPT...
"At a Georgetown dinner party recently, the wife of a leading senator sat next to Gen. Curtis LeMay, chief of staff of the Air Force. He told her a nuclear war was inevitable. It would begin in December and be all over by the first of the year. In that interval, every major American city -- Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles -- would be reduced to rubble. Similarly, the principal cities of the Soviet Union would be destroyed. The lady, as she tells it, asked if there were any place where she could take her children and grandchildren to safety; the general would, of course, at the first alert be inside the top-secret underground hideout near Washington from which the retaliatory strike would be directed. He told her that certain unpopulated areas in the far west would be safest." --Marquis Childs, nationally syndicated columnist, Washington Post, 19 July 1961
T S Justly
(884 posts)MineralMan
(146,286 posts)I guess I'll watch creative speculation to see what they're making out of this audio. Certainly, they'll make something out of it.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Why with the automatic "conspiracy theorists" fodder?
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)It's not something I interjected or made up.
MineralMan
(146,286 posts)would be interested in this. Nope.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)FWIW: Using a loaded term like "conspiracy theorists" tends to sidetrack discussion.
MineralMan
(146,286 posts)with conspiracy theory nonsense that it's almost impossible to discuss rationally any more. And this audio release will set off even more of it.
People will be fighting over the JFK assassination forever. They're still fighting about Lincoln for pete's sake. If this weren't a current story in the national news, the thread would already be over in Creative Speculation. I have no time for all the theories. It's a waste of energy.
librechik
(30,674 posts)Thanks for the tip, Mineral Man. You are always predictable.
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)Romulox
(25,960 posts)light of history.