Found: The secret Air Force One tapes that capture
dramatic exchanges between White House staff after JFK's assassination
A long-lost version of the Air Force One recordings made in
the immediate aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, with more
than 30 minutes of additional material not in the official version in the
government's archives, has been found and is for sale.
There are incidents and code names described on the newly
discovered two-plus hour recording, which predates the shorter and newer
recording currently housed in the National Archives outside Washington and the
Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Texas .
The shorter recording was thought to be the only surviving
version of the tape.
The asking price is $500,000 for the reel-to-reel tape,
which is inside its original box with a typewritten label showing it was made
by the White House Communications Agency for Army Gen Chester 'Ted' Clifton Jr.
It is titled 'Radio Traffic involving AF-1 in flight from Dallas ,
Texas to Andrews AFB on November 22, 1963 .'
Nathan Raab, vice president of The Raab Collection, a
Philadelphia historic documents dealer that put the tape up for sale Tuesday,
said: 'As Americans have looked to the history of the Kennedy
assassination in search of answers, somewhere in an attic there existed a tape
made years before the only known surviving version, of the conversations on Air
Force One on that fateful day.'
The recording is the highlight of the personal effects from
the estate of Clifton , who was
Kennedy's senior military aide and was in the Dallas
motorcade when the president was assassinated.
For sale: The asking price is $500,000 for the reel-to-reel
tape, which is inside its original box with a typewritten label showing it was
made by the White House Communications Agency for Army Gen Chester 'Ted'
Clifton Jr
The Raab Collection, which is selling the tape and the rest
of the archive, acquired the items at a public sale from Clifton 's
heirs after the death of Clifton 's
wife in 2009.
'At a time when there really wasn't what we consider today a
chief of staff, Clifton carried on
many of those functions,' Mr Raab said. 'He retires in 1965, this goes with
him.'
The recording consists of in-flight radio calls between the
aircraft, the White House Situation Room, Andrews Air Force Base, and a plane
that was carrying Kennedy press secretary Pierre Salinger and six Cabinet
members from Hawaii to Tokyo
when the president was assassinated.
The Clifton
tapes include additional debate about whether Kennedy's body would be brought
to Bethesda Naval
Hospital or Walter
Reed Hospital
for autopsy and if first lady Jackie Kennedy would accompany the fallen
president, as well as expanded discussions about arranging for ambulances and
limousines to meet the plane.
No references to Kennedy nemesis Air Force Gen Curtis LeMay
occur in the shorter version, but the Clifton
tape contains an urgent attempt by an aide to contact him.
The aide, seeking to interrupt Air Force transmissions to
reach LeMay , is heard saying the general 'is in a C140.
Last three numbers are 497. His code name is Grandson. And I want to talk to
him.'
The whereabouts of LeMay , whose
enmity for the president makes him a central figure for Kennedy assassination
researchers, have long been disputed.
The newly discovered recording can finally end the
speculation and pinpoint his location immediately after the president's murder,
Mr Raab said.
Other conversations on the tape refer to 'Monument' and
'W.T.E.' - code names for people as yet unknown - and someone only called
'John.'
Parts of the audio are difficult to discern because several
conversations from the different patches are going on simultaneously.
Mr Raab said their digital recording was made as a
straightforward recording, not as a forensic analysis, and current or future
technology may be able to tease out and enhance the conversations.
The edited recording in the National Archives and the LBJ
Library, available to the public since 1971, begins with an announcer stating
it has been 'edited and condensed' but not explaining how much was cut or by
whom.
A more complete version of the Air Force One tapes were long
sought but never found, adding fuel to decades-old suspicions that there is
more to Kennedy's assassination than the official account naming Lee Harvey
Oswald as the lone gunman.
The Assassination Records Review Board, created by an act of
Congress in 1992 after the Oliver Stone film 'JFK' caused public uproar to
re-examine Kennedy's killing, unsuccessfully sought the unedited Air Force One
tapes for its probe.
Its final report in 1998, the board said the LBJ Library
version was filled with crude breaks and chopped conversations.
'That this tape even exists will change the way we view this
great event in history,' Mr Raab said. 'It took decades to analyze the shorter,
newer version and it will take years to do the same here.'
The Clifton tape
has been professionally digitized and a copy is being donated by the Raab
Collection to the National Archives and the John F. Kennedy Library so the
public will have access to the material even if the original tape is sold to a
private collector.
The wholly unedited 'raw' recording of the entirety of the
trip, which also would have included periods of silence and static, has never
been located. It would have been roughly 4 and a half hours long.
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