by Jim Fetzer with Douglas Horne
EDITOR'S NOTE: For this study, I interviewed Douglas Horne , who served as the Chief Analyst for Military Records for theAssassination Records Review Board (ARRB), a five-member civilian panel established by Congress to declassify documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other agencies related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Its creation was motivated by the resurgence of interest in the case that was brought about by Oliver Stone's "JFK". George H.W. Bush, who was president at the time, adamantly opposed this legislation and, when it passed in spite of his best efforts to defeat it, refused to appoint its members, leading to a fifteen-month delay before the incoming Clinton administration was able to do so.
Only the president had the authority to override the decisions of the panel, which did not occur even once during the activities of the ARRB, which is an endorsement of the integrity of Clinton in this matter as opposed to the lack thereof shown by Bush. Of course, there is no reason to believe that Clinton had anything to do with the assassination, where the same cannot be said of Bush. After the ARRB closed its doors and shut down its operations, which led to the release of more than 60,000 documents and records, which federal agencies had wanted to suppress, Doug Horne committed himself to composing a scrupulously documented record of its proceedings and its findings in the key areas of the medical evidence and the Zapruder film, which he has published in his five-volume study, INSIDE THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD (2009), to which I shall refer as "IARRB".
Those of us who have committed ourselves to exposing the fantasy that is known as the "lone assassin" theory, including its incredible "magic bullet" hypothesis, are profoundly grateful to Doug for undertaking this Herculean task. Having published three collections of studies by experts on different aspects of the case--namely: ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998),MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003)--I am well-positioned to assert that, with IARRB, Doug Horne has produce a masterpiece of analysis, especially in relation to the medical evidence, that can only bear comparison with the very best work in the history of the assassination, such as Noel Twyman's BLOODY TREASON(1997) and David Lifton's BEST EVIDENCE (1980). And I regard it as a privilege to discuss his most recent work on this most peculiar aspect of the cover-up, which involves re-examining the evidence for multiple casket entries at the morgue of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the official autopsy was conducted.
The stimulus for our discussion of the multiple casket entries at the Bethesda Naval Hospital morgue on November 22, 1963 was the new, longer version of the Air Force One audiotapes from the day of the assassination, the version found in the personal effects of General Chester V. Clifton, U.S. Army, after his death. The new version of the Air Force One tapes, which is about 27 minutes longer than the previously released LBJ Library version from the 1970s, has been put on sale by the Raab Collection, which purchased it from Clifton’s heirs at an estate sale following the recent death of Clifton’s wife. General Chester (“Ted”) Clifton was the military aide to President Kennedy, and for a brief time, also for President Johnson. Clifton took professional papers and the reel of audiotape with him when he retired from military service and the public was unaware of its existence until the Associated Press, working with the Raab collection, broke the story in November of 2011.
The Raab Collection announced it was seeking $500,000.00 for the reel of audiotape, but also indicated it had professionally digitized the tape’s contents, and would soon donate this digital copy to the National Archives. In mid-February, Doug focused his attention on the “Clifton version” of the Air Force One tapes---now available for free online from NARA, as a two-part MP3 digital download---to see whether he could find any new material that was not present on the LBJ Library version long-studied by JFK assassination researchers. He did find new information in three subject areas, and Doug posted an article to discuss this new evidence on his blogsite, insidethearrb.livejournal.com, on February 26, 2012. He then set about transcribing key conversations from the “Clifton” tapes, a task that took about 50 hours from start to finish. Performing this task caused Doug to re-examine the multiple casket entries at Bethesda and to restudy the key conversations on the Air Force One tapes, which help to illuminate the cover-up being put in place as John F. Kennedy’s body was being flown from Dallas, Texas to Andrews AFB near Washington, D.C., on the day of his death.
“The three casket entries at Bethesda Naval Hospital would make a good French farce comedy movie, if the subject were not such a serious one,” Doug told me. “But of course, in reality there is nothing funny at all about a break in the chain-of-custody of President Kennedy’s body prior to his autopsy. The three casket entries at Bethesda, which David Lifton told us about inBest Evidence, were confirmed in various ways by the activities of the ARRB staff. They are now a documented fact, part of American history, just as much as the assassination itself or the attack on Pearl Harbor. And they constitute a primary basis for impugning the JFK autopsy report and for disbelieving the medical conclusions of The Warren Report.”
Of course, there should have been only ONE casket entry at Bethesda on November 22, 1963--but instead there were THREE. Let’s therefore revisit the three casket entries below, along with the key evidence that documents each one:
Casket entry number 1: A black hearse delivered a cheap aluminum shipping casket to the morgue loading dock at 6:35 PM. Men in suits got out of the hearse and turned the shipping casket over to a Navy working party assembled by Navy Petty Officer Dennis David. David’s sailors carried the aluminum casket (with JFK’s body inside) into the morgue anteroom, or chill room, and were told to depart. Later that evening, after the autopsy, Dr. “J” Thornton Boswell, one of the two Navy pathologists, confirmed to David that the President had indeed been inside the shipping casket that arrived at 6:35 PM. [Sources are Dennis David himself, Donald Rebentisch (a member of his working party), and the after action report of USMC Sergeant Roger Boyajian, who wrote on 11/26/63 that the president’s casket arrived at 1835 hours (or 6:35 PM civilian time). Boyajian authenticated his report and provided a copy to the ARRB. (See below.)]
Casket entry number 2: The light-gray Navy ambulance from Andrews AFB, carrying the heavy, bronze ceremonial coffin from Dallas, arrived at the front of Bethesda at 6:55 PM and sat motionless for 12 minutes. At 7:07 PM, it then followed the car the 2 FBI agents were in around to the morgue loading dock. Four Federal agents--Secret Service agents William Greer and Roy Kellerman; and FBI agents James Sibert and Francis O’Neill--then offloaded the ceremonial bronze Dallas casket and took it into the morgue anteroom, using a wheeled conveyance (most likely a “church truck”). The approximate time for this action was between 7:15-7:17 PM, based on oblique references in an FBI report from 1964. Sibert and O’Neill were then barred from entering the morgue by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Navy. (Marines from Washington’s Marine Barracks were providing security at the morgue.) [Newspaper reporters recorded the time of arrival of the Andrews motorcade, and the time the Navy ambulance drove away from the front of the hospital. The two FBI agents related their involvement in the second casket entry to the HSCA and reconfirmed this event to the ARRB, under oath. Their own FD-302 report, the so-called “Sibert and O’Neill report,” confirms in bureaucratic language that they were barred from the morgue for an unspecified time. Dr. Humes, the Chief Prosector at JFK’s autopsy, exaggerated the amount of time they were kept out of the morgue by telling a neighbor that they were never present at the autopsy at all--that they were even kept in a different room. We know this is an exaggeration, for Sibert and O’Neill took notes, once the Y-incision was made at 8:15 PM, and they wrote their own report of what they witnessed inside the morgue (after they were admitted shortly after 8 PM).]
Casket entry number 3: The “honor guard,” the Joint Service Casket Team, consisting of men in dress uniforms from the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, carried the bronze Dallas casket into the morgue at 8:00 PM, and set the casket down next to one of the two autopsy examining tables. They then posted a ceremonial guard outside the morgue. The Joint Service Casket Team had arrived by helicopter from Andrews AFB, but then spent much of the early evening chasing a “decoy ambulance” (a second light-gray Navy ambulance) around the grounds of the Bethesda complex in the dark, thinking that this vehicle had the Dallas casket inside. It did not, and amazingly, the Casket Team had lost the body of the President (which they falsely believed had been inside the Dallas casket when it had been offloaded from Air Force One at Andrews AFB), and were in danger of profound embarrassment, until they eventually found the Dallas casket sitting alone, unattended, in a light-gray Navy Ambulance shortly before 8 PM. [The formal entry of the Dallas casket into the morgue at 8 PM was documented in the official after-action report of the Military District of Washington; by the after-action report of the officer-in-charge, Lt. Bird, USA; and it was also written about by William Manchester in Death of a President , and extensively by David Lifton inBest Evidence. Lt. Richard Lipsey confirmed to the HSCA that there was indeed a ‘decoy ambulance.’]
I asked Doug Horne what all of this meant. “What it means, in a nutshell, was that the public offloading of the Dallas casket from Air Force One was a charade, enacted on National TV, just as David Lifton said it was in his book in 1980. THE DALLAS CASKET WAS EMPTY WHEN IT WAS OFFLOADED FROM THE AIRCRAFT. This has to have been the case, since (1) JFK’s body actually arrived at Bethesda at 6:35 PM in a cheap aluminum shipping casket, delivered by a black hearse, and (2) the light-gray Navy ambulance from Andrews (with the Dallas casket inside) did not arrive at Bethesda until 6:55 PM, twenty minutes after the hearse. This means that the four Federal agents took an empty Dallas casket out of the Navy ambulance at 7:15 PM (unbeknownst to the two FBI agents). The bronze casket weighed over 400 pounds, and they moved it using a church truck, so there is no way the two FBI agents would have known it was empty at the time.”
I asked Horne if the two Secret Service agents, Kellerman and Greer, knew the Dallas casket was empty at about 7:15 PM when it was offloaded. “You’d better believe they did. The Secret Service removed the body from the Dallas casket on the aircraft shortly after they took it onboard at 2:14 PM in Dallas. Jackie Kennedy went onboard at 2:18 PM. The swearing-in of LBJ did not occur until about 2:36 PM, and Air Force One took off at 2:47 PM, Dallas time. We know that the casket was surrounded by loyalists in the Kennedy entourage (and by the widowed First Lady) during the flight, so the body could not have been removed then. It must have been removed sometime between 2:14 PM and the time the swearing-in took place, at 2:36 PM. Immediately after boarding, the Kennedy entourage had not yet assembled around the casket for the Irish wake. Jackie Kennedy was composing herself in private, and the Air Force Aide, General Godfrey McHugh, made several trips forward to the cockpit to demand that the plane take off and even spent time looking for Lyndon Johnson (before finding him hiding, crying in the loo). The Secret Service must have removed JFK’s body from the casket during the initial process of “securing it to the deck” in the aft compartment of Air Force One. So Kellerman and Greer would have known all about it.” [EDITOR'S NOTE: William Greer drove the Presidential limousine in Dallas, and Roy Kellerman, who was responsible for all security on the ground during the Texas trip, occupied the front passenger seat of the limousine during the assassination.]
I asked Horne why the Secret Service or Lyndon Johnson would have wanted JFK’s body removed from the Dallas casket. “Don’t forget,” Doug said, “that Roy Kellerman essentially had to steal the body from Parkland Hospital to prevent the coroner, Earl Rose, from performing an autopsy--an honest autopsy--as required under Texas law. There was a loud, ugly altercation between Dr. Rose and Kellerman at Parkland, and the Secret Service agents eventually had to show their weapons in order to wrest President Kennedy’s body away from the hospital. I believe the principal reason the body of JFK was removed from the Dallas Casket at Love Field was to prevent it from being taken by Texas law enforcement authorities in the event they appeared at the airport, still demanding to do the autopsy required under Texas law. Lifton and I both believe that the body was probably removed from the aft compartment of Air Force One through the starboard aft galley door--immediately opposite the Dallas casket in the aft compartment--as soon as it was taken out of the casket. I agree with Lifton that it had to be spirited away in one of the airplane’s two luggage compartments during the trip to Washington, D.C.”
I asked Doug if there was any evidence supporting that this happened. “There are no eyewitnesses who have come forward, but there is indeed indirect evidence on the new Clifton tapes, as revealed in the transcript that I made. Roy Kellerman is talking on the radio to Gerald Behn--the Head of the White House Detail of the Secret Service, back at “Crown,” the White House Situation Room--and Kellerman tells Behn that everyone is onboard; that they are waiting for the swearing-in to take place--waiting for a judge to arrive--and then Kellerman suddenly tells Behn, in so many words,”I’ll have to call you back, Jerry, after the, ah body.” That is a significant statement. Something was happening with the body of the deceased President, something that interrupted Kellerman’s conversation and made him tell his boss he would have to call him back.
“I believe that ‘something’ was the spiriting of the body out of the Dallas casket,” Doug said, “and the operation to hide it in one of the luggage holds of the airplane. Remember, this did happen. We know it happened because the early arrival of the President’s body at Bethesda meant that the Dallas casket offloaded at Andrews AFB had to be empty. Since it was empty when offloaded, the body must have been removed almost immediately after the casket was taken onboard the aircraft. Kellerman’s gaffe, recorded for history, tells us when it happened--before the swearing-in took place.”
I asked Doug what other nuggets of information he had found on the Clifton tapes. “Well, there is provocative new information on the Clifton tapes--a ‘hot mike’conversation in which unknown persons at “Crown” (the White House) can be overheard discussing a ‘black car,’ specifically a ‘black Cadillac.’ This comes in the midst of a long conversation in which General Clifton is requesting that a ‘mortuary type ambulance’ be provided to move the President’s body after arrival. (Clifton uses this specific term twice.) A mortuary-type ambulance, in the funeral trade, is called a ‘hearse.’ And a hearse in those days was always a ‘black Cadillac.’ What this means is that we now have corroboration on the Air Force One tapes of plans being made at the White House Situation Room to transport JFK’s body in a black Cadillac--a hearse. The situation room was being run that day by Gerald Behn of the Secret Service, and by McGeorge Bundy, the President’s National Security Advisor. But wait--there’s more! Gawler’s funeral home was originally ordered to send a hearse to Andrews AFB, but that order was later rescinded. I believe it was their hearse--their black, mortuary-type Cadillac ambulance--that delivered the shipping casket containing JFK’s body to the Bethesda loading dock at 6:35 PM. The timeline fits. Air Force One rolled to a stop at 6:04 PM. The TV coverage was cut at 6:20 PM. There was plenty of time for a helicopter (there were 5 available at Andrews, all arranged by Kellerman) to take JFK’s body to Bethesda, and rendezvous with the hearse, prior to 6:35 PM.”
“But what is most important to understand,” Horne continued, “is that a tug-of-war was taking place during the flight from Dallas to Washington over where JFK’s autopsy would be conducted, and how his body would be transported. Onboard the airplane, three persons were lobbying, and lobbying hard, for JFK’s autopsy to be at Walter Reed Hospital (the Army site) in D.C.: Roy Kellerman, Admiral Burkley (the President’s military physician), and General Ted Clifton. All three of these people wanted ground transport--an ambulance--to take JFK’s body to Walter Reed. Opposing them was Jerry Behn at “Crown,” who not only said the autopsy was to be at Bethesda Naval Hospital, but that it would go by helicopter. The tapes reveal that those onboard the aircraft seemingly lost the battle to go to Walter Reed, and that Gerald Behn prevailed. Clifton then cautioned him to have a mortuary style ambulance available in case the Dallas casket was too heavy for the helicopter. Throughout the flight there was a coordinated effort, begun by Jerry Behn at the White House and reinforced by Clifton on the airplane, to separate Jackie Kennedy from JFK’s body as soon as the aircraft landed, and to send her and all other passengers to the South Lawn of the White House, while the body went alone to the autopsy site.”
As most readers will already know, that is not what happened. What occurred, in the harsh glare of the television Klieg lights at Andrews, was that Jackie Kennedy refused to leave the airplane in the darkness on the starboard side as General Clifton had wished and planned for, where she instead accompanied the Dallas casket to the tarmac. She then decided that she and Robert Kennedy would travel to Bethesda with the Dallas casket in a light-gray Navy ambulance that had pulled up nearby the airplane. So I asked Doug how this Navy ambulance fit into the story.
“David Lifton reminded me recently that the Navy ambulance was NOT a hearse, a black Cadillac mortuary type ambulance. It was a Pontiac; and it was acardiac ambulance sent to Andrews because of rumors that Lyndon Johnson had had a heart attack, per William Manchester’s book. Jackie Kennedy simply ‘requisitioned it,’ on the spot, and no one could oppose the President’s widow. In doing so, she foiled the cover-up plans so carefully constructed by the military and the Secret Service. The helicopter that Behn had arranged to take the body away from the airplane taxied up in the dark to the starboard side, immediately after Air Force One rolled to a stop. David Lifton interviewed the USMC pilot of ‘Nighthawk One’ in 1996, and he confirmed that his orders had been to take the body to Bethesda. But when he saw the Dallas casket placed in the Navy ambulance and saw the former First Lady get in, he abandoned his mission and returned to base.”
I asked Doug why he thought the military and the Secret Service were so intent upon separating Jackie Kennedy from the casket, since this intent is so evident when one listens to the Clifton tapes or reads Doug’s transcript. “David Lifton has proposed, and I agree, that the intent was to covertly fly the body to Walter Reed, reintroduce it to the Dallas casket at that location and then, when the Dallas casket was eventually delivered to Bethesda for the formal autopsy, there would be no noticeable chain-of-custody problem. No one at Bethesda would ever have known that the casket offloaded at Andrews had been empty. Strong corroboration for this plan is the fact that in her handwritten notes, LBJ’s secretary Marie Fehmer wrote an entry at 5:58 PM (just before landing at Andrews) that reads: ‘Body to Walter Reed.’ To Lifton--and to me--this means that everyone ‘in the know’ on AF1 (LBJ, Clifton, Kellerman, and Burkley) knew the body was not in the Dallas casket anymore and that it had to be reunited with the casket at Walter Reed.”
Horne continued, “And this is where I part company with David Lifton. He believes JFK’s head wounds were tampered with prior to arrival at Bethesda Naval Hospital--and that this surgery was performed at Love Field. I don’t. The throat wound may have been tampered with prior to arrival in Washington, but the head wounds were altered after the body's arrival. I am confident about this for two reasons: (1) Three witnesses--Dr. Ebersole, CAPT Canada, and Thomas Evan Robinson of Gawler’s, who would prepare the body for the formal state funeral on Monday--saw the same head wound on JFK after his body arrived that was seen at Parkland hospital in Dallas; and (2) the ARRB discovered two witnesses to the post-mortem, wound altering surgery to JFK’s head wounds as they were being altered at Bethesda: Tom Robinson and Ed Reed (the Navy x-ray technician). And Navy x-ray tech Ed Reed, under oath, named James J. Humes as the man who performed this surgery. Why is this distinction relevant to the story of the three casket entries? Well, David Lifton believes the body of JFK (with the wounds already altered, per his hypothesis) was simply to be reunited with the Dallas casket at Walter Reed and quickly taken to Bethesda with no manipulations having been performed at Walter Reed. In contrast to David’s view, I believe that the original plan may have been to perform the illicit, clandestine cranial surgery on JFK’s head wounds (to remove all evidence of frontal shots) at Walter Reed, before the body was taken to Bethesda for the official autopsy.”
The mortician's description of the wounds during his interview with Joe West,
which Roy Schaeffer obtained from him and transmitted to David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.
“My reason for postulating this is the interview I conducted of Dr. Dick Davis of the AFIP while I was on the ARRB staff. Dr. Davis was a neuropathologist--the acting Head of Neuropathology at AFIP at the time--and he told me that he had a complete kit prepared with which to perform a craniotomy on the President’s body (surgical tools, cameras, etc.) but that the body never came to Walter Reed, and he was not called upon to perform the function he expected to perform. I believe that, if JFK’s body had been taken to Walter Reed to be reunited with the Dallas casket, then the post-mortem surgery on the cranium would have been performed at Walter Reed to “sanitize the crime scene” before the body was trans-shipped to Bethesda. But because Jackie Kennedy glued herself to the Dallas casket out of loyalty to her murdered husband, the casket could not go to Walter Reed. Because the Dallas casket could not go to Walter Reed, JFK’s body did not go there, even though that had been the plan for over two hours. The end result? As I see it, the immediate end result was the absurdity of three casket entries at Bethesda, when there should have been just one. But there is more implied here. If the post-mortem surgery to alter JFK’s skull wounds had taken place at Walter Reed, then Humes and Boswell (who were administrators and who were NOT forensic pathologists) would have been confronted with a fait accompli, with an enormous cranial defect that would have been represented to them as being ‘the damage caused by the bullet in Dallas.’ Instead, Humes was forced to conduct this obstruction of justice himself, and Boswell was required to assist him in selling the results of the surgery Humes performed as ‘damage from the bullet in Dallas.’ Boswell and Humes were placed in a most uncomfortable position that night and, unfortunately, they succumbed to the pressure. No doubt they were given a ‘World War III’ cover story like LBJ used on everyone else in the coming weeks.”
I asked Doug to clarify what happened at Bethesda between the time the body arrived at 6:35 PM and the time of the second Dallas casket entry at 8:00 PM. “An initial inspection was performed by Humes, Boswell, Ebersole, Canada, and Admirals Galloway and Kenney,” said Horne. “Humes and Boswell were given their orders, and they complied: all evidence of frontal shots to the head were removed from the skull--entry wounds, and bullet fragments, and any brain tissue that showed obvious bullet tracks. In order to do so, a modified craniotomy had to be performed, enlarging the original exit wound seen in Dallas to five times its original size. Following this procedure, the skull x-rays were taken and the initial series of autopsy photos were taken (with the head in a metal stirrup or brace, and a neat, clean Bethesda towel with a blue stripe displayed below the head to give the impression that the body had just arrived in that condition). Afterwards, at about 7:40 or 7:45 PM, JFK’s body was placed back in the Dallas casket and it was allowed to be ‘found’ by the Joint Service Casket Team so that they could perform their ceremonial function, and take the Dallas casket into the morgue.
“As soon as the Dallas casket was opened shortly after 8 PM, the two FBI agents were brought to the morgue, and they never knew that the Dallas casket had originally been empty. They saw JFK lying inside it and removed from it and then placed on the examining table shortly after 8 PM. The famous diagram Dr. Boswell made of the enormous damage to the top of the skull was a ‘con job,’ designed to fool history, and it worked for over three decades. As Tom Robinson told the ARRB staff in 1996, the horrific damage to the top of JFK’s skull seen in the autopsy photos was ‘what the doctors did, not what the bullet did.’ So this was a cover-up on the fly. Many mistakes were made, but they got away with it. They got away with it because people were ordered to remain silent, were threatened with courts martial if they did not, and because the Warren Commission made damn sure the Dallas doctors never saw the autopsy photographs. If the Dallas treatment staff had seen the so-called ‘autopsy’ photos, the medical cover-up would have been exposed.”
That concluded our discussion of this important topic. I urge all of you who have read this article to continue on below, and to study the transcript Doug Horne recently made of the key conversations in the Clifton tapes. In it you will find the tug-of-war over the autopsy and the transportation of the body that Doug mentioned above; the mention of the ‘black Cadillac;’ and Roy Kellerman’s mention of something going on with “the ah, body” after the Dallas casket was on-board the airplane and before the swearing-in ceremony. And pay special attention to the repeated attempts by the Secret Service and General Clifton to separate Jackie Kennedy from her husband’s casket. It’s all there, right in the transcript; thanks to Doug, we now know the proper context in which to evaluate all that information.
It is all rather Shakespearean but, in this case, American-style. And yet there are those who continue to maintain that the US is an exception to the kinds of plots and conspiracies that have dominated Europe and the UK throughout their history. The US, alas, is no “exception” at all. That is one more myth that deserves to be tossed into the dustbin of false history, along with the “lone assassin" scenario and the “magic bullet” fantasy that accompanies it. The unwillingness of our own government to come clean about the assassination, when virtually every element of the case against Lee Oswald has been proven to be false, is a stunning indictment of its own complicity, where elements of the American government were instrumental in the removal of its own highest official in a blatant exercise of power and control that deprived the American people of their own elected leader--an act of brutality and corruption from which this nation has not yet and may never recover.
TRANSCRIPT OF KEY AIR FORCE ONE RADIO CONVERSATIONS FROM NOVEMBER 22, 1963
Prepared by Douglas P. Horne, Formerly Chief Analyst for Military Records, ARRB
[NOTE: Conversations not included in this transcript include communications chatter regarding setting up radio patches; weather reports; introductory conversations between SAM 86972 and “Crown” announcing JFK's wounding and death by reading wire service reports; and LBJ's evolving plans to meet with various officials upon arrival in Washington, D.C. The classic version of this transcript as a pdf without photographs may be found at The Mary Ferrell Foundation archives.]
(Completed March 3, 2012)
Introduction
In the decade of the 1970s, the LBJ Library released an edited and condensed recording of the Air Force One radio conversations with the ground on November 22, 1963, the day of President Kennedy's assassination. [The tape left the White House late in 1968 or early in 1969 with all of the other LBJ Presidential papers and recordings, and its accession card with the LBJ Library is dated 1975.] The oral preamble to that recording admitted that the tape had been “edited and condensed.” Since the principal subject discussed on the tape was the forthcoming autopsy on President Kennedy--where it was to be performed, and how the body was to be transported to that site--there was a considerable amount of interest in the recording. Researchers and historians all wondered if they would ever be able to listen to the unedited version of the recordings. David Lifton published some of the key passages from the LBJ Library version of the Air Force One recordings in his 1981 book about the JFK medical evidence, Best Evidence (1980).
I served on the staff of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) from August of 1995 through September of 1998. It was a primary goal of the ARRB to locate the unedited, complete recording of the Air Force One conversations. In spite of our best efforts, we could not stimulate any interest in finding the original recordings in either the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), or the U.S. Air Force. The U.S. Air Force and WHCA claimed they could find no such recordings. Early in our search for the unedited tapes, I was assigned to review the LBJ Library Air Force One tapes at the National Archives. I wrote a 7-page staff memorandum (dated October 17, 1995) about the contents of the tapes; it can be accessed today in the JFK Records Collection at Archives II in College Park, Maryland. I also wrote about the Air Force One tapes in Volume V of my 2009 book, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (2009) on pages 1660-1664. Many other authors and researchers have written about the tapes in their own books, and on their own websites.
In November of 2011, the Raab Collection announced that it had purchased a longer version of the Air Force One recording from the estate of the late U.S. Army General Chester V. Clifton, who served as Military Aide to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Although the Raab Collection announced that it was intent upon selling the reel-to-reel tape recording purchased from the Clifton estate for $500,000.00, it also announced that its recording had already been professionally digitized, and promised it would soon donate this digitized recording to the National Archives. The digital recording of the new “Clifton” version of the Air Force One tapes is now available, for free, from a joint GPO-NARA website.
The new “Clifton” version of the Air Force One conversations is two hours and twenty-two minutes long, about twenty seven minutes longer than the LBJ Library version (which is approximately one hour and fifty-five minutes long). Generally speaking, the sound quality of the digital “Clifton” version is far superior to the LBJ Library recordings released on audiocassette years previously. [The deep bass rumble of the aircraft's jet engines, for example, has been significantly reduced, and is essentially “gone.”] The “Clifton” version can be downloaded from the GPO-NARA website in the form of two MP3 files, designated “side 1” and “side 2.” Side 1 is 70.1 MB in size, and side 2 is 66.3 MB in size. With one exception (discussed below), all of my transcript was derived from the longer, “Clifton” version, and the times listed in red next to the beginning (and end) of many passages refer to the location of those passages on either side 1, or side 2, of the “Clifton” version MP3 recordings released by NARA.
The only exception to this is the oral preamble, or introduction, to the LBJ Library version, presumably spoken by a member of the U.S. armed forces working for the White House Communications Agency. That LBJ Library preamble is reproduced verbatim below, for historical purposes. (Note: even though it is not present on the “Clifton” version of the Air Force One conversations, its absence is not conclusive evidence that the “Clifton” version is the complete, unedited, original version of the Air Force One conversations with the ground on November 22, 1963. See pages 1660-1664 of Inside the ARRB for an explanation of why the pristine, original Air Force One tapes should be much longer than the 2 hours and 22 minutes present on the “Clifton” recording.) The LBJ Library introduction follows:
Unknown Speaker: The following recording has been reproduced from ground recorded non-high- fidelity tape used to record [fax? patch?] communications between aircraft and air-ground facilities. This tape, although used to record radio traffic from the Presidential aircraft, also includes related traffic from jet aircraft 86972, carrying Secretary of State Rusk, then-Press Secretary Salinger, and other dignitaries en route between Honolulu and Japan. The following information relative to Presidential aircraft radio call signs is given for clarification due to interchangeable use: “Air Force One” and “Angel” are used when the President is aboard the aircraft; “Air Force 26000” is used at all other times. This tape has been edited and condensed to only contain pertinent communications relative to events during 22nd November, 1963. Only material available from radio circuits used is available.
The remainder of this transcript is taken from the longer, “Clifton” version of the recording.
BEGIN: Side 1, “Clifton” Version
Crown1 (32:21): 26000, ah, Duplex is on, go ahead.
[NOTE 1: “Crown” was the WHCA codename for the White House Situation Room, in the West Wing of the White House.]
SAM 26000: [garbled] Standby one.
Duplex2: Hello?
[NOTE 2: “Duplex” was the WHCA codename for SAIC Gerald Behn, Head of the Secret Service White House Detail.]
Digest3: OK. Jerry?
[NOTE 3: “Digest” was the WHCA codename for ASAIC Roy Kellerman, who was the Secret Service agent in charge of physical security for the Texas trip. He was riding in the right front seat of the Presidential limousine during the assassination.]
Duplex: Hello?
Digest: [garbled]…in here now, ah, we're at the airport, 26000, everybody aboard.
Duplex: OK, go ahead.
Digest: We're waiting for the swearing-in at the plane before takeoff.
Duplex: Of the--that's of Volunteer4?
[NOTE 4: “Volunteer” was the WHCA codename for Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson.]
Digest: Roger.
Duplex: Say again, Roy, say again.
Digest: We are waiting for judge to appear for swearing-in.
Duplex: That is for Volunteer, is that right?
Digest: Yes, we are having [garbled] before we take off, Jerry.
Duplex: That's affirmative. Do you have any idea yet what, ah, Lace5 wants to do and what Volunteer wants to do on their arrival here?
[NOTE 5: “Lace” was the WHCA codename for First Lady Jacqueline B. Kennedy.]
Digest: No. I will call you back. Suggest--we have a 2 hour 15 flight into Andrews. We have a full plane of at least 40.
Duplex: OK, go ahead.
Digest: I'll have to call you again after the, ah, body. However, I'm sure the, ah, Volunteer boys will go over his car and so forth. We will need [garbled] and several others.
Duplex: All right, let me know what Volunteer wants to do when they, ah, land, if they want to come into Crown by, ah, helicopter.
Digest: That's a roger, I'll call you again.
Duplex (33:12): OK.
AF1 (35:40): Ah, Command Post, Air Force One. How do you read?
Command Post: Roger sir, go ahead.
AF1: [static] Dallas at 2047 Zulu and will call in a couple of minutes with, ah, block time for Andrews.6
[NOTE 6: Air Force One appears to have just taken off from Love Field in Dallas, Texas, and is giving its actual takeoff time in “Zulu time,” or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which was (and still is) the standard for all military communications. “Andrews,” of course, refers to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, south of Washington, D.C. Andrews AFB was the permanent home of SAM 26000, the Presidential aircraft, and was the landing site whenever the destination was Washington, D.C. After an aircraft comes to a complete stop it is put “on the blocks”--blocks, or chocks, are literally placed around its tires, to prevent it from moving. In Air Force parlance, “block time” is the formal designation for the end of an aircraft’s journey. Because an aircraft has to taxi after landing until it reaches its assigned berth, the “block time” is usually a few minutes after “touchdown,” or time on the ground.]
Those revising the Zapruder film blacked out the blow-out at the back of the head
in earlier frames, but missed the visible wound in late frame 374.
Command Post: Do you have your approximate block time, sir?
AF1: I'd say that it'll be, ah, two plus one zero, Red.
Command Post: Two plus one zero, and do you have any passengers onboard?
AF1: Roger, full load, 40 plus.
Command Post: And, and [is] Mrs. Kennedy onboard?
AF1: Affirmative.
Command Post: Pardon?
AF1: I'll call you back, Command Post.
Command Post (36:36): Air Force One, SAM Command Post, go ahead.
AF1: Ah, roger, roger--you called me, go ahead please.
Command Post: Sergeant, this is Colonel Hornbuckle in operations, we have request from, ah, Chief [of] Staff‟s office7 to know if you have, ah, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kennedy's body aboard?
[NOTE 7: The “Chief of Staff” clearly refers to Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay. General LeMay was in Canada on the day of the assassination, in or near Toronto, for reasons unknown. The evidence for this is the “Chuck Holmes Logbook” passed to the ARRB by an Air Force civil servant who said he rescued the logbook from the trash. The log records the content of conversations between the 1254th Air Transport Wing Command Post at Andrews AFB, and various aircraft on special air missions, and details how one special air mission was sent to Canada to pick up General LeMay on the day of the assassination. A recent biography of General LeMay, by Warren Kozak, incorrectly states on page 356 that LeMay was on a hunting trip in Michigan when he learned of JFK’s assassination. LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay, was published in 2009. The Chuck Holmes Logbook was released to the general public by the National Archives in the autumn of 1998.]
AF1: Standby one. Ah, OK, ah, Air Force One, affirmative on, ah, all those questions, go ahead.
Command Post: Roger, thank you very much, out. (36:09)
Command Post (37:31): Ah, 26000, 26000, SAM8 Command Post.
[NOTE 8: 8 “SAM” is an Air Force acronym that stands for “special air mission.” It is normally used in conjunction with the tail number of an individual aircraft, such as “SAM 26000” or “SAM 86972.”]
AF1: Ah, SAM Command, Air Force One, go ahead please.
Command Post: Ah, roger, roger, Air Force One. Are you airborne at present, are you airborne at present?
AF1: Affirmative, airborne at 2047, twenty forty seven; estimated time on the blocks Andrews 2305, go ahead.
Command Post: Ah, roger, roger, understand. Departed at 2047, estimated time of arrival Andrews 2305, is that Charlie?9
[NOTE 9: The use of “repeat back procedures” was, and still is, common in military communications. It is a simple but effective way to confirm that the listener received the sender’s message accurately, and is particularly important in situations where the radio communications are tenuous and not “crystal clear,” which was the case on November 22, 1963. The quality of the radio communications between the various parties and Air Force One on 11/22/63 varied greatly throughout the 2 hour, 17 minute flight from Love Field to Andrews AFB. “Charlie” is military radio slang for “correct.”]
AF1: That is Charlie.
Command Post (38:41): Air Force One, this is the Air Force Command Post. If possible, request
the names of the passengers onboard, please.
AF1: Ah, we have 40 plus, go ahead.
Command Post: Forty people, is that affirmative?
AF1: Affirmative.
Command Post: Can you tell me, in regard to, ah, 1 and 2, or ah, the top people?
AF1: Ah, roger, ah, the President is onboard; the body is onboard; and ah, Mrs. Kennedy is onboard.
Command Post: All right, can you tell--confirm once again your takeoff time and your estimated time of arrival Andrews?
AF1: 2047 takeoff time, Andrews 2305.
Command Post: Ah, roger, thank you. This is the Air Force Command Post, out.
AF1 (40:51): Ah, Crown, Air Force One.
Crown: Ah, this is Crown, go ahead.
AF1: Sir, we need a patch with, ah, Surgeon General of the Army Heaton, go ahead.
Crown: Ah, please repeat the message, over.
AF1: Ah, roger, we want a patch with General Heaton, ah, H-E-A-T-O-N, the, ah, Surgeon General, go ahead.
Crown: Ah, roger, roger--General Heaton, the Surgeon General of the Army, over?
AF1: Ah, that is correct.
Crown: Ah, roger, roger--standby. Air Force One, Crown, ah, standby please, we are reaching the General now, over.
Crown (43:17): Ah, Air Force One, this is Crown, ah, you were cut out. Ah, General Heaton is at Walter Reed Hospital; you'll have to standby just a moment or else let me call you back when I get him on the line--it'll take about a minute to reach him. Ah, Air Force One, Crown, do you roger,10 over?
[NOTE 10: In military communications parlance, “roger” means “I understand,” or “I received your message clearly.”]
AF1: Ah, Crown, roger. If ah, ah, try to get General Heaton and in the meantime try to get the, ah, Deputy Surgeon General; we will talk to either one, go ahead.
Crown: Ah, this is Crown, roger. Ah, will you standby or have me call you back, over?
AF1: Roger, this is very important.
Crown: Ah, roger, I'll put an "emergency" on it, we'll get him as soon as possible. Stand by.
AF1: Roger, roger.
Crown (44:13): Ah, Air Force One, Crown. Roger, standby for a message.
Burkley: This is Dr. Burkley, [garbled].
Crown: Ah, Dr. Burkley--
Burkley: Did you hear?
Crown: Ah, Dr. Burkley, this is Crown, ah, you're cutting out, you're cutting out, you'll have to repeat, over.
Burkley: This [is] Dr. Burkley.11 I want to get in touch with General Heaton or General Heaton's deputy.
[NOTE 11: Rear Admiral George G. Burkley, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, was the Military Physician to President Kennedy. Early in the administration he did not hold a favored place at the White House, and was eclipsed by Dr. Janet Travell, JFK’s private physician. Eventually he rose somewhat in prominence, and Dr. Travell’s influence waned. Burkley was co